We’re proud to announce the publication of the architecture and urbanism magazine STUDIO©, a quarterly independent journal edited and directed by Romolo Calabrese together with RRC studio architects.
STUDIO© is an independent magazine about the contemporary urban condition.
It’s a platform, a raft. It’s a travelling sharing of theories and critics, experiences and proposals, bound for save ideas for city from the city itself.
It’s written by architects, but it’s not written only by architects or just for architects.
It’s research. It concernes the city, in a generic way. It’s ephemeral. It does not solve, but it poses issues.
It’s a mental activity of learning and knowledge. Every issue is conceived as a collection of writings, commentaries, reportages, photographic galleries, f ilms and videos on urban topics.
It has a multidisciplinar approach and open discussions based on a comprehensive overview.
It’s based in Milan and it uses different medias to reach a global audience.
STUDIO© is where STUDIO© was born, grows, will develop.
The recently published issue#01 – [from] CRISIS [to] – is a reflection on how the economic recession has revealed the culmination of an extended and protracted aesthetic crisis, oriented toward the pursuit of excess in the name of growth at any cost, which bequeaths ghost towns,
endless constructions, landscapes in bankruptcy.
In a urban environment made of an exclusively speculative housing, without any identity. In an overcrowded world -seven billions of human beings- protagonists of an uncontrolled growth of the territory. In the spreading of ghost towns and in the indifference for disuse and abandoned urban areas
-with the awareness that the city is a precious and essential part of the man growth -we assist at the materialization of the world economy decadence with the crisis of cities development. Which analysis, which reflections, which changes, which future events, which turning points […] are we supposed to face?
Romolo Roberto Calabrese
Editor in chief
From crisis to crisis, the contemporary instability implies a mutament, as from the ethymological meaning of the word. From the Greek krísis means decision, a turning point; a condition of instability or danger, as in social, economic, political, or international affairs, leading to a decisive
change. In our opinion, that’s what is necessary to return its substance to the architecture.
To re-think, re-write, and re-use both the physical territory and the theoretical one, related to the discipline itself.
Structurally organized in different ways of contribution – essays, insights, experiences, images coming from every creative field – on STUDIO© #01 the issue has been investigated by a multidisciplinary global perspective, through the invitation of some of the most interesting international authors in relation to the theme: Giacomo Costa, Domenico Di Siena, Marco Introini, Léopold Lambert, Rietveld Landscape, Bernd Upmeyer, Zuloark and many others. This has made our intent possible: building networks and exchanging opinions and transform the magazine in a net of ideas, in a platform – a raft – as it is concerned in its own definition.
Through some iconic examples of speculation – expressed as a way of representation and opinions on unfinished and desolated cities, on urban sprawl, on abandoned sites – the reconsideration of a sustainable urban development is identified as the cover topic. From mapping and reuse of abandoned urban areas, from the evaluation of hypotheses of innovative settlements in terms of economic and social policies, up to reconsiderations of architectural practice, which will mark the transition from the logic of excess to the logic of change.
Many questions were waiting for an urgent answer.
How to react to urban sprawl? Which models are effectively to be considered as sustainable? How to return democracy to the urban system? Indeed, which evolution and for which city?
Only by reading STUDIO© you can finally find the answers.
