Targetti news - EVENTS - Interferences... Art and Architecture

Drawing a line that can separate art and architecture is a veritable dilemma that has been tormenting philosophers, semeiologists, critics, artists and architects for centuries. Some try for a classification, others aim at a definition. The Parthenon, is it sculpture or architecture? Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, Le Corbusier, Hollein, Acconci D. Prix Coop Himmelb(l)au – just to mention a few – architects or artists? The truth is, that ever since the “beginning” the arts have been intertwined, mixed, confused and contaminated, and not only by each other but also, and mainly, by science and technology.

New materials, new techniques, and new concepts of space have allowed architecture to transform itself into a plastic material and become sculpture and even more image, icon and semantic element. Today “Archiscultura” – archisculpture in English – a term coined by Maurizio Fagiolo has come to prevail among the new generations of architects who seem to carry this fusion in their DNA, a fusion that characterized much of the last century, from the Avant-Garde to the Bauhaus interlude, to the technological utopias, to radical cultural to deconstructionism..

And now, it is losing its physicality to lose itself in the intangible mazes of the virtual, totally freed from the constraints of the laws of physics. The creation of virtual spaces is the true liberation of architecture: like the visual arts and music, architecture is releasing itself from matter to become pure energy.

While architecture intertwines and interferes with sculpture, art seems to flee from what many critics have defined as the “classic baroqueness of the architects” to go and explore new frontiers that are less obvious and belong more to the world of introspection than to the image and formal extravaganza. When it finally seemed that architecture could embark on a process similar to that of the other arts, it was art that changed course and pushed architecture aside, once again making it seem like something totally separate that has much closer ties to economic phenomena and dominant cultural trends. If we compare the last edition of Documenta at Kassel with the last two editions of the Biennale di Architettura in Venice, the gap seems unprecedented, it seems as if we are looking at two completely distinct and unrelated worlds.

These are the topics that the young TV reporter, Innes Mitterer, will discuss with Amnon Barzel (Targetti Light Art Collection Curator), Pino Brugellis, Hans Hollein, Brigitte Kowanz, Peter Noever (MAK Director), Fabrizio Plessi and D. Prix Coop Himmelb(l)au on 10 December at the MAK in Vienna. The conference, organized by Targetti and Legrand, is a concept of the Osservatorio dell’Architettura that will move from its traditional Florentine headquarters for this occasion to study the philosophical trends from beyond the Alps.