About the permanent in architecture. Luigi Snozzi a resistant architect

Defining the centina of reference in which the architectural project is built, Luigi Snozzi unequivocally declares his ideological position and the importance of having a moral conscience with regard to the society in which one operates. This socialist conception of the world contrasts to an utilitarian and efficient vision in whom architecture must maintain its own disciplinary autonomy: non sfuggire alle responsabilità, occupati della forma, in essa troverai l’uomo, he says in one of his aphorisms. He is capable to draft a sort of poetic and didactic manifesto: not only designed to his own personal research but also to the pedagogical panorama where he taught. He underlines the structural characteristics of two categories linked together by an ancestral relationship: architecture and politics. The first one, architecture, aims to the permanent and it is inherently anti-efficient: this architecture is capable to re-generate itself regardless of the individual. He further stated: adattarsi mantenendo la forza della propria struttura, dei suoi elementi architettonici stabili. On the other hand, there is the political discipline. Here, he argues that deve continuamente modificarsi e adeguarsi, regarding the crumbling of fragmented and ever-changing society. This practice tends unequivocally towards the ephemeral in the research for a maximum efficiency. The permanent in architecture is expressed through the drawing up of canons, codes and their transgression in the application to the design and critical thought. Here, the emphasis underlines how a different stance, an alternative one, will represent the freedom and the democracy of thinking. The purely performative character of the language is not considered. Concerning the political sphere, the poetic question is addressed and not the ideological one: how does the idea of a new perspective manifest itself in the project? Identifying canons and codes relate to the sphere of the Locarno architect's project, the essay makes a series of considerations to understand a language that is, at the same time, hectic and logic. On the table for discussion is addressed not only the poetical dimension for the construction of a formal language but also the political one applied for the design thinking.