Project icons

Representation architecture in the work of Renato Rizzi

Abstract

Due to its inner material need, an architectural work is always controversial: each architectural form has its own specific aesthetic dimension through which the figurative relationships with the environment become the urban life fundamental. This polemos is rooted in the archaic essence of architecture; it deals with the representation of values, hopes and collective expectations of city inhabitants. It is through the tense interplay between the uniqueness of contemporary architecture and the aesthetic diversity of its products that representation is intended to shape the reasons and relations set among the invisible world of ideas, the architect productive subjectivity and the material complexity of architecture. The notion of representation as figurative construction is grounded on the definition of a new similarity concept. What the project imitates by means of the icon is a particular figurative and conceptual synthesis which sees architectural work as the highest tension point between the material world and the spiritual world, i.e., between the visible and the invisible. As project icon, Renato Rizzi’s work wound brings into play the fundamentals of the individual architectural work.