IDENTITY vs MODERNITY

Pietro Pagliardini

Contemporary architecture produced by the star-system architecture, and its provincial emulators, is destroying the identity of the city, homogenizes, makes them all equal to each other. With a few targeted interventions cities lose the cultural heritage accumulated over the centuries. All in the name of modernity: but modernity not telling us anything on the form it should take.
Modernity means responding to the needs of contemporary society; for example means that if a city needs fast connections should make fast connections, if you need a centre for the youth culture, we must make a centre for the youth culture, but not telling us anything about these works form that should take.Who did say that the link should be a monorail that passes over a city and who did say that the centre for culture must be a metal and glass amoeboid form?The architecture is not a dress that changes with the seasons and fashion shows, and it is not responding to the need for change which arises from the need to sell new products and food market, and the city is not a shop that has to change for ever to stand up to competition with the market.In a mature society inserted in the global market, the cultural identity of every people, nation or city must be safeguarded, not least because it is an economic value, the greater the larger and noble is his identityAt Wikipedia, remaining in the world of the Internet, the identity voice says:In sociology, science ethno-anthropological and other social sciences in the concept of identity concerns, on the one hand, the way in which individuals and manufactures considers himself as a member of certain social groups: nation, social class, level of education, ethnicity, gender, profession and so on, and, on the other hand, the way in which the rules of these groups enables each individual to think, move, place and relate than himself, to others, to the group which is concerned and external groups aimed perceived and labelled like otherness.If this is true is always true, it is true even today unless you really think that man "contemporary" is anthropologically different from that of a hundred years ago.When you see is different because only influenced by cultural models inoculated by the media.So, the identity has a positive value because strongly encourages the integration of the group even if, taken to excess, where ethnic identities become too strong, it can lead to the clash between different identities.But this tells us a lot about how architecture and urban design can support, so call it, the good identity, one that integrates and accepts, that helps the individual to feel secure within its environment without this fear other identities.For example, a separate city districts each characterized by a different nationalities is a city that does not communicate, where everyone lives in their own closed area.This means the end of European cities and certainly the end of the Italian one.But the end of European city is also marked by construction organisms unrelated to it that have nothing to do with architectural tradition, which creates a "rupture" in the.The revolts in the French banlieue should do think everbody, because they are an example to us: place of division and social exclusion in a dehumanising urban environment, devoid of any identity so that its residents do not belong to any social group or that of its origin or that of adoption.
The identity of a city means that the city must inform and communicate their brands to those who live there and must tell them: "I am your city and not another one, you are in the right place because you recognize me, because I identified, because not much difference of what you have seen in the old town and what you see here in the suburbs, you saw homogeneous signs though with some variations; don’t worry, you are not lost”.So when the inhabitants of a city go to visit another one, this will say to them: "Have you seen how beautiful I am? Different from your city but equally beautiful. Nice to know different cities, as it is beautiful to know different people. Think how boring if you meet people all the same! "