Editorial

The action of mediating between two disputing people or groups.

 According to the Oxford Dictionary (online)

Engineer Giacomo Matte Trucco’s Fiat Lingotto Factory opened in Turin, Italy in 1923, a radical new development in the factory typology. Referencing Albert Kahn’s Ford factories in the United States, the reinforced concrete 5 storey 500 meter-long linear assembly line was organized to embody the processes of production. Manufacturing began at the ground level where nearby rails deliver raw materials; assembly continued in a vertical spiral up through the building until the finished car was delivered onto the roof’s race track for a test drive. The completed product would exit the building on one of the monumental ramps at the two ends of the building, ready for display and sale. The building operated as a factory until the early eighties, until Fiat S.p.A. held a competition to transform the interior of the factory into an entertainment hub. In 1985, Fiat commissioned the Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW), to convert the factory, adding commercial space, offices, an art gallery, an auditorium, conference center, and multiple hotels.

Although the exterior remained largely intact to maintain the previous identity of the building, the factory interior is transformed from a space of production into a space of consumption, permitting the coexistence of each iconic program to construct a new architectural identity. A clear understanding of both functions—the overlapping of the demands and intentions of a space of production from the first quarter of the century and the current understanding of spaces of leisure—come together into a new specific formalization. This radical shift of program from one of work into one of leisure has created a situation in which the spaces of the converted factory reflect these design processes of conversion and conciliation. Despite this otherwise almost seamless conversion, RPBW’s most prominent addition to the project, “The Bubble,” a spherical glass conference space floating above the factory’s roof, is emblematic of the difficulties inherent to the project, an incongruous object of compromise that highlights the complications of mediation and the struggles of resolution.

We open the issue with an interview with Jonathan Sergison, where he discusses the role of architecture in creating an image of and for society and how his own practice both as an architect and teacher approaches this matter; Aureng-Silva presents the idea of the fragment as a framework to conciliate processes of reconstruction and conservation in damaged heritage, and in doing so reconsiders narratives of identity associated to them; Hannah Strothmann finds a refreshing complexity in the common place metaphor of bridges as symbols of conciliation; Marina Montresor and Stephan Lando present Baldessare Peruzzi’s Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne as a work impregnated with tensions and dilemmas of a change of paradigm;  Lemonot takes us to central Bolivia, where they have studied the contemporary cholets and mausoleums typical of the region; Erica Overmeer questions the categorization of identity building processes proposed by this year’s cycle by referring to Herzog & de Meuron’s Barranca Museum once more; and Lagemman’s fourth contribution to the cycle, a fictional interview with Gottfried Semper, speculates upon a possible conciliation of art, architecture, and industry today.

Paired with the processes of assimilation, appropriation, and rejection, we see conciliation as a fourth methodology within architecture’s processes of building identity.  With this final text issue of CARTHA’s On Building Identity, we posit conciliation within architecture as a project of negotiation between two parties, a spatial diplomacy that instrumentalizes the apparent incompatibility of two ideologies to produce a new identity.