DOSSIER TRANSLATIONS

Abstract

In a recent conversation, the owner of an Italian publishing company declared that his fascination with architecture, the subject of a large number of his publications (even though it meant a permanent risk of economic bankruptcy), depended on the fact that it is a discipline constantly reinventing and defining itself. And that, in fact, the very word discipline is not adequate to describe it.
 The editor referred to is Cesare De Michelis, and the publishing company, Marsilio. He himself measured the gulf which exists between “Architettura della citta”, whose first 1966 edition was issued when the publisher was still in Padova, and the present interests and approaches which go through his work as an editor. According to De Michelis, unlike other practices, either more professional or more aesthetic, architecture is a fluid area constantly altering and modifying its fields of work, the objects of its interest, its research and work methodology and, in general, its horizon of cultural reference. In particular, while it is easy to see what literature, law or medicine are about, in the case of architec- ture this clarity does not exist, and it has weakened mainly since the affirmation of modern architecture.