The Reinvention of Modernity: Gianugo Polesello and the Gruppo Architettura

The theoretical constructs developed by Gianugo Polesello in the field of urban studies, which have characterized the research activity of the Gruppo Architettura since the second half of the 20th century, provide a methodological reflection aimed at defining tools and operational categories for urban and territorial planning sub specie architecturæ conceived not as an ideological reconciliation of contradictions, but rather as a unifying logic capable of sustaining conflicts within a unitary construction that assumes the “dialectic of the distinct” as the only possible relationship between irreducible specificities. To revisit these researches also entails questioning, today as then, the “legacy of the Modern” and its reflection in contemporary experience, with intentions that aim not so much at “orthodox” reformist agendas or ideological totalitarianisms, but rather at a “heterodoxy” very attentive to the thought and figures that represent an alternative vision of Modernity. An “other Modernity”, indeed, which, in our view, has its roots in the full acceptance of “partiality” and “conflict” as indispensable conditions of a “design thinking” that does not seek to dissolve multiplicities to overcome contradictions, but rather, to embrace their components as a constitutive principle of a new “idea of space” for the city and its territory.