Tra realismo e utopia. Per una didattica dell’architettura

architecture teaching methodology ‘Professional skills develop more quickly when the intuition is nourished, while mere routine can never take the place of creative vision. Only a being who has known the most sublime unreality can give form to the highest reality.’ (Walter Gropius, ‘Schema educativo per la formazione degli architetti’, 1939) Realism, solidity, on one hand, and utopia on the other, are easily opposable terms, but are constantly found interwoven in the formulation of theoretical thinking on architecture of all times, and particularly in reflections on teaching methodology. Faced with a reassuring certainty given by didactic bases related to solidity – less reassuring in the outcomes of the education, whose crisis we are continually called on to manage – that which I would like to repropose is the fervid, dense and, I believe, topical formulation of the question regarding the role of realism and utopian tension in teaching. The argument has involved the very foundation of modern architecture didactics, such as to become a way of perceiving the relationship between architecture and society, with a renewed sense of civil participation and responsibility, considered unchallengeable. In particular, as I note, Walter Gropius indicated how fundamental the relationship with the highest possible number of real experiences is in architecture teaching. The subjects posed by Gropius have been developed in Italian architecture schools by Giuseppe Samonà and many participants of his Venice School, and by Ernesto N. Rogers, keeping a utopian characteristic alive alongside a highly realist approach, conducted through ‘case studies’, projecting ‘the present in a possible future’ (Rogers). The profound, necessary link between university and society, with its real requirements, is not antithetical to the utopian characteristics that precisely this didactic dimension allows, not being pressured by contingency. This makes it possible to prevent realism being confused with an ‘empiricism’ hidden by ‘professionalism’, which is a risk the university cannot run – now more than ever – as it would mean the emptying and debasement of its own foundations of content and method. The possibility and expediency of a close relationship between society and university, between business, local bodies and cultural workshops, as documented in the pages that follow, is a declaration of attention and responsibility, of awareness and consciousness, without renouncing that yearning to foreshadow possible realities, to orient interventions.