I would speculate that this lack of narration affects the architectural field in the way the project is thought. The necessity and the rapidity to give a quick spatial answer that focuses on the aesthetic paradigm rather that the analysis of the territory is to me one of the main issues today in architecture. This problem comes along with the impossibility of the architect and urbanist to imagine and narrate future scenarios. The quote from Benjamin’s “Storyteller” in the previous paragraph can be easily applied to architectural design today. I reckon that our generation largely lacks the capability to imagine the evolution of everyday life in 10, 20, 50 years and are satisfied by rendering a new building into the present way of living. On the contrary, I reckon that the aim of the architecture project is to shape the change of how the city and the territory will be lived and the imaginative power of the architect is the main tool for this. In my project, the main output of the research phase has been imagining how future life will shape the territory and, at the same time, how an architectural intervention can play a role in the transformation of everyday life. A series of microstories has been imagined to envision the change of space and society. The first part of the project itself lies in the capability to narrate the future. The project as a form of
narration. Envisioning the project through microstories forces the architect to reach a great level of detail to reflect on everyday elements of the future way of living without the necessity of forcing the strictness of planning. It allows to understand which are the critical points and the improvement to be made that will influence the transition between present and future, but it leaves rooms to the uncertainty of reality and freedom of users. A traditional, comprehensive urban masterplan as it was done until a decade ago would result completely anachronistic today. This is why it is necessary to read, to study and to translate the territory in a much deeper way to find out the crucial points to intervene on wisely. First of all, because the public economic resources are not enough anymore for great interventions and architectural intervention are now often related to the metaphor of acupuncture. Secondly, because the world is changing so fast (politically, culturally and economically) since the great development of telecommunications on that a large, “definitive” intervention may
14