The architectural design at different scales: a question of landscape

“From the spoon to the town” is an expression becoming famous after E. N. Rogers' Zurich conference (1946). Since then, the world has changed, the architect's profession and the ways of teaching architecture have also changed. Today, futuristic techniques are taught in place of architecture and students are encouraged to design buildings that are beautiful, shiny, fashionable … but no one thinks about man anymore. Everything seems to be subject only to the laws of economy and finance. Is this contemporaneousness? We need to combat the progression of these upheavals, seeking to start again from the sense of the architecture design. Architecture should be able to combine innovative techniques and materials with the values of the locations, history and traditions: this could become a new challenge for those building the landscapes of the third millennium. Landscapes - and not just buildings - because the locations in which we live are a compendium of houses and spaces, and because the architect's activity should embrace all scales, from the general to the particular. Perhaps, again, we need to question everything. We must try, every time, to give an additional definition of landscape, to seek to add something new to our scientific research.