Heteronomy of architecture: Un Dialogo di/A Dialogue of Matteo Ruta con/with Benedetta Tagliabue

Abstract

I’m not calling today about the competition we are holding for Reinventing Cities here in Lambrate - I am calling to ask you if you would like it if we had a dialogue together on the Heteronomy of Architecture.

Benedetta Tagliabue: Hello Matteo! Don’t even talk about it, everything is so sad. You know just how important it is for me to travel and meet people all the time... in person.

Dialogue? Absolutely! But... what is this “heteronomy”? You don’t mean it’s something that excludes someone? You know I don’t like it...

M.R. Come on, we’ve known each other for years! Look, it’s exactly the opposite. A very interesting concept which Giancarlo De Carlo summed up well in a sentence I am going to read to you. «As you can tell as you listen, one cannot help but think of your way of knowing, investigating and reading the places and cities in which you design. It is also impossible not to think of how you live together with others, and how this has always been the way you live architecture on a daily basis, and how you know how to transmit it and build it together with all the people you meet: collaborators, citizens, users, clients, politicians, artists, producers of materials, craftsmen, friends, etc. [...]».

B.T. Oh well... I was actually joking a bit, you know it amuses me. I remembered this idea of Giancarlo’s from when I was studying at the Faculty of Architecture in Venice, and I was struck by his strength and energy in knowing how to interpret it at its best and translate it into splendid practice on many occasions.

Thank you also for your kind words, it was so kind of you to have thought of me. It certainly is an interesting theme to delve into in a monographic issue of a magazine, and I would like to congratulate those who thought of it.

So... Yes, I like it: let’s dialogue!

You already know that we’ll have to talk again a few times.

M.R. Of course I know... it’s always a great pleasure!