Botta says that “the new building is like a ‘thorn in the side’ of the Accademia, or like a beating drum keeping us awake and aware of our surroundings”. Could you explain this concept and its intrinsic meaning?
«To answer the question, one must first consider that public schools, contrary to what we would normally be inclined to believe, are ‘closed’ institutions, open to students and teachers for the main purpose of learning and teaching, but not necessarily to the public. Teachers and professors should be the point of contact students have with the world, but this relationship is essentially held in a private context. So in what ways does a school or a university open to the world, and to the public? Generally, through conferences or by publishing scientific articles, two activities which are perhaps the most obvious, or by engaging with the business or industrial world, which is what we already do at the Accademia. Nevertheless, even though a university is a public institution, it is essentially a place of study, and therefore it could be considered as a “private” environment. So how and where can this public entity measure itself with the world, directly? (Indirectly it does, through its students and their post-graduation professional lives.) The idea behind Teatro dell’architettura is to address this issue through an open dialogue between the university and the public. I believe that measuring oneself with the public is one of the most interesting exercises one can do at school. In my yearly mise-en-scène,I always bring my first-year students, which are around 140, in front of a live audience – that is the moment when one understands what this exercise means. As human beings, we exist by reflection, and the biggest and most important reflection is the public, and in life there is always a moment when one will have to measure his/herself with a real audience. This ‘real comparison’ is what keeps one awake – and aware – but not in a closed area, because the public is not like a closed circle. When architect Mario Botta says the Teatro is like a thorn in the side, he means of the Accademia, which constantly needs to measure itself with a non-specialist audience-the public».
La versione completa di questo articolo la potrete trovare all’interno dell’edizione cartacea di Ticino Welcome oppure su Issu a pagina 26
