The city of the collection

“Having refers to things and things are fixed and describable. Being refers to experience and human experience is in principle indescribable“. For Erich Fromm (1900 – 1980) Having is Being and Massimiliano Gioni in the 2013 Venice Art Biennale summarizes this assumption by wondering if the knowledge that passes through the knowledge of objects is less truthful than experience. He does so in the curation of the exhibition on Marino Auriti who in 1955 in the utopian project for “Il Palazzo enciclopedico” in Washington dreams of gathering all knowledge in a single large architectural organism. According to Maria Grazia Meda, this is the mania for collecting that can be summarized in terms of Having, Being and Knowing. Through the possession and knowledge of the objects we collect we find our identity. But if collecting is usually summarized in its noblest Wunderkammer image, to a private dimension made up of small and large objects that build the surfaces of an interior space, if we open our eyes to the contemporary city we can identify it as a city of the collection. The proposed essay deals with the theme of the city as a large tray on which “signed” objects are placed too often without any relationship with the existing urban fabric. It is a city – museum for occasional visitors. A city that must amaze as Rome did in the early Middle Ages following the “emergencies” encountered along the Einsiedlen Route. From Dubai to Milan, the cities of the image are collecting object – architecture: is this a new practice or just the evolution of a building process already underway for centuries?