Ever since the rise of mass society, the discipline of architecture has looked to the new audiovisual, telematic and computer technologies with the intention of introjecting their processes, products and sometimes their forms and languages. This phenomenon generated avant-garde experiments that engaged technology to transfigure space and its perception, to expand the meanings and semantics of architecture, or even to warn the user of the dangers inherent in the use and abuse of the technological médium. Today, from the latest advances in home automation to wearable technologies and recent research into virtual or augmented reality environments, technology keeps on dialoguing with architecture, still questioning its fundamental principles. One of the most significant moments of this dialogue, whose origins go back to the nineteenth century, is represented by the transdisciplinary experiments that Ugo La Pietra conducted during his career in search of new synergies between architecture, design, craftsmanship, urban planning and the visual arts, making technology an ever-changing tool, from a means for amplifying the semantic and experiential value of the project, to a device for denouncing the power of the capital over the society, the territory and the individual. Interviewing Ugo La Pietra on the role of technology in architecture means investigating one of the most relevant experiences of the Italian neo-avant-gardes and assessing the topicality of a theme that persists in the contemporary architectural debate, questioning the prophecies and false myths set up by La Pietra, in search of new forms of dialogue between technology and the habitat.
This article explores a conceptual figure, architect (en-)habitant (that mix in a same expression “living architect” and “inhabitant architect”) by an in-progress research-experimentation carried out by YA+K on the territory of Bagnolet. On one hand, this figure and transdisciplinary theoretical matrix contribute to defining a specific field of architectural practices. On the other hand, it constitutes an attitude which, experienced in a radical way, contributes to thinking differently about the relationship with the project, both from the point of view of its status and its methodologies.
The text, by means of a choral approach to the history, intends to observe the relations between Eupalinos ou l’architecte and the architectural milieu that allowed its birth. The study of the milieu has made it possible to reconstruct the analogies between Paul Valéry’s literary work and Louis Süe et André Mare’s architectural work, and to observe the motivations that led, during the 20th century, to the emancipation of the one from the other : the fame of Eupalinos was countered, for a long time, by the oblivion of the latter.
