Kitsch : learning from Ordinary Dreams of Architecture

Kitsch eludes definition, it is often associated with a negative meaning, confused as a synonym for “bad taste”. Looking at the state of the art, the concept is traversed by a dual condition; on the one hand, it appears largely outdated, belonging to social and cultural conditions long gone; on the other hand, it seems to have recently returned inside the contemporary debate, which, overturning its meanings, proposes kitsch as an attitude that permeates many spheres of life: running secretly behind the dominant design culture, it now draws many of our spaces undisturbed (Belpoliti, Marrone 2020). From the perspective of architecture, declinations of the word emerge that are still operative today: kitsch can be synonymous with “waste” and with “overuse” (Eco 1964); in the seduction of the invisible, of what remains hidden in the private, it promotes the power of the already known, of the “essentially conciliatory” (Mendini 1979), to design “restful and moderate spaces” (ibidem); it pursues the desire to build Splendid Houses (Superstudio 1971) for “immediate identification” (Greenberg 1938); but in kitsch there is also the simulation and copying of elements that determine authentically false operations, there is the power of the irritating and the traumatic as a form of design and the need to narrate new stories, even looking at the Unbelievable (Hirst 2017). Through a methodology that will intersect the analysis of the many etymological outcomes of the word kitsch with some contemporary design experiences (such as Architecten De Vylder Vinck Taillieu or the 2023 news about the construction of Eternal City a copy city of Samarkand), the contribution aims to define the legacy of kitsch and its possible design trajectories for the future, to retrace some commonplaces on architecture.