The proceedings of the webinar on human capital, spaces and architecture are available online. The eighth meeting promoted by the Eurispes Laboratory
The proceedings of the 8th meeting promoted by Eurispes’ Laboratory on Human Capital are available here. The focus of the debate was “Human capital: spaces and architecture”.
The meeting took place online on November 30, 2023. The participants in the discussion were: Maurizio De Caro, architect, Federico Andrea Lessio, people experience manager, Pietro Martani, Founder of Stella Workspace and strategic advisor to Colliers on workspace innovation, Adele Nardulli, author of the book “Si fa presto a dire smart” and entrepreneur, Benedetta Cosmi, Coordinator of the Eurispes Laboratory on Human Capital.
COSMI: Good afternoon and welcome back. We are at our eighth session in the container that is the Eurispes Laboratory on Human Capital, which is part of a large family, namely the one of the Research Institute. In this context today we are putting another piece in our research on the quality of Human Capital, how the ruling class is formed, institutions, values. Today we add another piece by doing it from a particular, and for me very interesting, perspective, which is the one offered by architects, offered by those who remodel spaces and also by those who live differently. We know that time and space are still the coordinates on which everything moves, even when we cross them, when the boundary is broken down or when we try to increase it, when we manage to do smart working, when we manage to do many things at the same time, many things that, perhaps, if done well help us to live better, more intensely. Done badly, on the other hand, they halve our opportunities to meet, to socialise, to live. In this, spaces are fundamental, crucial: spaces bring us together, they make us lose ourselves, they delimit and even delineate a society and the institutions themselves. Today, for example, is the birthday of a fantastic architect, it is time to introduce our first guest Maurizio De Caro, our architect, I will also drop this provocation on you. Welcome to you to our other friends. I shared and it is a special coincidence, because it was precisely on November 30, 1508 that Andrea Palladio, whose real name was Andrea Di Pietro della Gondola, was born. Everyone is reminded of that splendour he created that already looks like a painting, seems like the spectator is part of it; theatre is already his wall. Therefore, it is certainly a source of pride to be part of that category, but it is also a source of degradation, because many of the ugliness of our cities have been signed by architects as well. Here we are thinking about which city we can be, which office we are becoming, which spaces we are tearing down, rebuilding, rethinking. We are also doing this with the other guests, in particular Adele (Nardulli) who, with her book, takes us inside agile work, with Pietro (Martani) who was one of the first to think that doing things together meant having more opportunities and, therefore, offices are nice but if you knock down the walls and also get to know the companies next door or the one itself becomes an aggregator. They are today’s team, welcome to them all. I will start with you, Maurizio. Give us the architect’s vision, criticisms and hopes.
DE CARO: Well, since you mentioned him, I think Palladio was one of the first to have an adjective – palladian –, that is, a way to indicate a certain mode of neoclassical architecture. What I like about today’s meeting, I greet Pietro Martani and all the others, is that the recent transformations of the last 10-20 years have somehow forced architects to change course, to change paradigm. For example, one of the issues we have started to debate at the Politecnico but also in other places – in academies and so on – is the issue of the flexibility of space. Today, talking about the functionality of a space is an absolutely invalid argument because, as a matter of fact, a space must have more functions must have more ways of use. In fact, coworking has been quite an important change in office modality. Don’t forget that at the origin of land-use plans were residences, offices, standards, there were many other functions. I am speaking to you from a kitchen that is much more interesting to me than my office, therefore functionality has been completely overtaken by this aspect, but there is more. It is clear that over the years the houses had their own rigidity whereby a family of four, when the children left, was left with these rather important, large houses. Today, indeed, this flexibility, which of course also stems from technology, allows me to change the space as I like, as I want. I act as the architect who originally designed my home but I change it, which can be a home office – the Covid taught us this – because I want other functions. Technology allows us to do all this because it has evolved so much and this has changed behaviour, of course. Today there is no longer this strict separation between the residential and the work aspect. Another thing: residency. What is the residence? The student residence, the coworking, the temporary residence? There is also an issue of temporariness. Once home was forever, for life. Today, perhaps we are beginning to think that one can stay in a house for a year, then change, then go elsewhere depending on the various needs. Therefore, architecture has learnt one of the fundamental paradigms that is flexibility, it is the inverse of the classic rigidity that imposed spaces that were even, alas, constrained by current regulations. So, for example, a bathroom had to be done in a certain way. The real design was not done by the architect, it was done by the standard. This overcoming is extremely interesting both internally and externally. This, I repeat, changes our behaviour. It is obvious that today, defining the concept of home, defining the concept of office is absolutely outdated because, de facto, the office is the table where I right now have this computer placed, I don’t need anything else because from here I have access to all the technological functions that I can use. Now, this seems like a transformation but it is a Copernican revolution. It’s a bit like artificial intelligence – which, if you like, we’ll talk about later – which has imposed quite powerful rules on design. This, in my opinion, is the element that characterises contemporaneity: flexibility; the fact that there is no rigid and classical element, there has to be a continuous evolution. Architecture becomes continually evolving and I like that very much.
COSMI: Will the materials change as well as the reason for the ecological impact? Flexibility probably does not go with reinforced concrete.
DE CARO: Just these days we are doing a series of evaluations. I designed the service architecture for the Milan Expo in 2015, which was the first major wooden intervention ever in this country: 60,000 square metres of fir. This wood costs more, the structure costs about 20% more, but it has an extraordinary advantage, that is, it does not need maintenance at all. Some of the service buildings are still there perfectly functional after almost 10 years. Talking about materials, of course the focus on sustainability, eco-compatibility, is an obvious issue nowadays. It is logical that these days for us architects, us designers, we theorists, the theme of sustainability is implicit in the concept of design. It makes no sense to talk about the same kind of design that we had, for example, in the 1950s, with brutalism. This is a transformation that stems from the new natural conditions, the new planetary conditions. The energy issue is one that has been addressed in architecture for very few years. For decades there has been continuous gigantic glazing, which has created a whole series of problems that you are well aware of. It is logical that, today, there are a series of impositions, or rather stresses, that allow us to have houses that are perhaps a little smaller but which, in some way, at least react in a virtuous manner towards the planet. Architecture, you know, will always be at odds with the planet, at least in the last 2000 years it has been like that.
COSMI: Between two lovers of aesthetics like you and, indeed, Federico Lessio, I would introduce him. What element do you add for groups, for communities to this reasoning you do about spaces, society and also a bit of a vision for the future?
LESSIO: The theme is precisely the approach of a functional space to a function that is solved by the space as a tool together with other things. Technology helps us solve functions. We have misunderstood this rather rigid paradigm – we design a space because it has to do something – to actually take us somewhere else. What must the human being do? What must the working human being do? What must the human being do when living at home? We talked about the home place, in the sense of residence, then we talked again about the office place where activities take place. To disturb Marc Augè, place is a space where there is an identity. Every working tool today is faster, it is effective, it supports the activities of the human being well. If today we deal more with the issue of how work spaces are lived and how they change to be adapted to modernity, then perhaps modernity today is observing the human being and no longer observing the worker. The word employee is a very strong word that identifies someone who does what he is ordered to do. Today, however, the human being expresses his potential because he expresses who he is and does something that is consistent with his existence, so when he looks for a work space he looks for one that respects his values. What I find most fascinating at the moment is that there are many enlightened companies that have begun to realise that their company values are strongest when they are consistent with the value set of the people who contribute to that company. Consistency is, precisely, the ability to identify values and also make demands on architects to interpret these values so that the space is functional. It is not the person adapting to the space that has been created but it is the space as a tool that adapts to the functions to be performed by the person and, at that point, we have an acceleration. To do this we can’t do everything by planning it and implementing it, we need what futurologists call “diffusion on an acquired basis”: an innovation becomes reality when the world is ready to welcome it. Today, from what I can modestly see, the world is much more ready than it was a few years ago. We have lived many years with an almost mechanistic approach to the work space – the space is made to control the worker – arriving at a very new interpretation in which the work space itself becomes an instrument. I find this historical moment extremely fascinating, incredibly interesting. We need coherence and balance.
COSMI: Adele (Nardulli), do you feel called upon when it comes to workers? Especially in a company like yours, which organises people around the world, chooses to do it in a special way and also teaches it to others because it sees that it works. Tell us about it, also based on your experiences. Give us an overview.
NARDULLI: Thank you for your question. My experience as a businesswoman is based precisely on respect, on listening to people. It is not a slogan, it is something that led us to practice models of Smart Working back in the early 2000s – they weren’t even called that. They were, therefore, the utilisation of the first remote working technologies, which we exploited because we needed them to some extent for our type of service – the translation service, a language service – which had resources distributed all over the world, but above all it reflected what was the prevailing need in our company, namely the female component, prevalent as it is in the linguistic world. The objective was to try to meet what were the needs not only of the people but also of the company, in the sense that, clearly, putting the person in the best conditions to be able to work, and at the same time live, was good for the company in terms of productivity. It simply made people happy and thus also ensured the overall success of the company. Talking about space and time – dimensions that were then formalised in the 2017 law on agile work – means referring to something that we had already experimented with, that is, transforming these two components into something flexible and not necessarily always anchored to a fixed place, the company understood as the sole inhabitant of a space, not a coworking space, or an alternative at home as was the case with teleworking. Breaking this parameter, this equivalence, with the formalisation of the law and with companies that had already remodelled it, was such a magical element that it came in very handy with the pandemic. The Ministry itself took an already existing law and put it into the decree, solving its problems. In reality, as we know, it did not solve what was the culture of the companies. Let’s say that the big companies were ready or seemingly ready, I interviewed some of them in my book “Si fa presto a dire smart”. These companies had, of course, already started agile work programmes, pilot programmes, perhaps beginning with certain sectors of the company. What instead remained – and unfortunately still remains – behind are the small and medium-sized enterprises that make up 95% of Italian companies. When we adapted to this way of working in 2020, we did so as something superimposed on us, but of course it did not transform us from the inside. Those who had not transformed themselves culturally certainly did not do so at that time, so much so that when the pandemic ended, more than 50% of companies returned to face-to-face work. Instead, many got rid of offices completely and left people at home, cutting what was a significant cost item. We already had the solution in our pockets two years before the pandemic. I experienced the transition from an activity carried out in a single company space to a place where there was an aggregation of several companies. This transition testifies precisely to the growth that my company has made in leaving a single way of thinking and adhering to something shared that functioned as a system of communicating vessels. The meeting in the so-called “piazzetta” is not just networking, it is the growth of people within companies who talk to people from other realities, take ideas from a world that is different from their own, translate it into their own company, and that is where the idea is born. Creativity is also born in informal moments between people and clearly from teamwork between individuals from the same company, but above all if you contaminate yourself with other realities you are able to take advantage of something that has been used in a reality that is different from yours in your sector. That is where you innovate, you make yourself different. This mechanism benefits what coworking is. Having said that, let’s talk about the misunderstanding of smart working. Smart working for everyone today means working from home, because there has been the example of pandemic experimentation. Smart working, in reality, means working wisely; it does not only mean reconciling work requirements – because there is nothing to reconcile, they are not two opposing things, they are part of life – above all it means choosing according to the requirements of the job, the type of work to be done, according to one’s needs at that moment. Managing all these aspects is part of the smart work that is the meaning of smart working. It is clear that if today talking about smart working is equivalent to talking about working from home, all the misunderstandings arise. How do you solve this problem? I think that coworking is the ideal solution because it is flexible, you can adapt according to the company and the needs of the case, and there is also the possibility of having a location for those employees who may be located in various places on the peninsula, or even around the world. In our case, we have teams of linguists located in various parts of the world and they are in the coworking space closest to home, they work together, maybe they see the client: imagine what an explosion of possibilities there is compared to having your own fixed location or going and opening another office in another capital of the world, as was done before.
COSMI: An interesting point of view, that of the company that chooses coworking. Often we used to talk about it – especially before Covid, let’s say since 2015 – referring more to freelancers, VAT numbers, individuals. In fact, the individuals we were talking about are the same ones you mentioned now, i.e. those who, for example, working for a company that has its headquarters elsewhere rely on these strategic points. However, there is also the idea that instead it is the company that devises spaces, rethinks them with features that create, somewhat emphasise, the community. Pietro (Martani), you came up with this service first, you founded and were the creator of one of these coworking spaces, Copernico, in Milan. What direction are you going in now? What ideas do you have? What inspires you?
MARTANI: Before talking about the future, it is worth discussing the past for a moment. Historians teach us that in order to better understand the future we have to look a little bit at the past. Lessio built Copernico with me and was the person who developed the concept of community, of a certain kind of experience within a multi-company context. Copernico, unlike the classic company space, had dozens or hundreds of companies, thousands of participants – depending on the different properties we had developed. Today Federico (Lessio) runs this same experience in a large company. I will probably have a few questions to ask him to understand how the large company experience can be transposed to a context of many companies. First, however, I will answer the question that was asked. What happened before and what happened during the pandemic? The last four years have taught us so much, they are probably equivalent to twenty years of normal history. Innovation has been pervasive. We in 2015 started a business by putting people at the centre, that was our mantra. The most sophisticated companies like Google, Apple, Ferrero and so on, have put the person at the centre, thinking about well-being, the meaning that work transfers to the individual and, therefore, realises the person. We really started from the person and the logic was to transfer the benefits that people working in a big company have within a space with several smaller companies that cannot afford those spaces. When Covid came, we went to work at home and people said that office work would die because it was meaningless. There were several surveys around the world showing how people were balancing life and work more; they had to make fewer trips from the office, many fewer kilometres, less pollution in our cities. Then, gradually, it was back to the office. However, the notion that the office was dead persisted. In the years that followed, new studies began to emerge that showed that people were beginning to be alienated, a little tired of working from home. At the same time, companies were emphasising how the home or rather a video chat was not a tool for collaboration and innovation. Innovation, which is a little bit the fuel of modern companies, comes from three-dimensional interactions, from a dialectic made of the use of tools, of the encounter between people, with all the elements of physicality, because the two-dimensionality we experience today is not as rich as if we were in a presence context. There are pros and cons of working from home, they have become clear. But today there is a great opportunity, a legacy of the pandemic: hybrid work. We speak of hybrid work and office, of a more balanced life, some speak of an ecosystem of spaces. There is the home, which has become more appropriate for work, closer, more ergonomic. There is the office, which has changed radically: from a place where you punch in, sit at a desk and grow old in that chair to a place of interaction, stimulation and social place. All the things I see are going in this direction. The pandemic has given us a great opportunity today.
COSMI: Moving into the future, where do we go from here?
MARTANI: It is useful to distinguish between large and small companies because they are two somewhat different worlds. I briefly mention what I see in large companies. The clients I work with are transforming space, everyone is investing in space because the office has become a business lever, a place where companies have to attract people. Some people talk about destination office, the office as a destination not as a place where you have to go. There is another way to summarise this change: before we used to talk about 20% collaborative spaces 80% operational spaces while today we talk about a 50-50 ratio. Offices are changing, they are becoming closer to home, more sensitive to people and to the different functions we have to perform during the day. All days are not the same, designing an office space in one setting or two does not correspond to the needs of work, which instead is made up of different needs: a phone call, an informal interaction, a formal one and then perhaps individual work. The space must respect the productivity of the individual and the more or less formal teamwork. Some speak of Activity Based Working, this label in the world of architecture today is one of the mantras of workplace transformation. What I am trying to do, today, with a dozen or so real estate funds that have old-style offices, is to accompany this transformation with a focus on the SME rather than the large company. Let me give you an example, I am working on a 40,000 square metre property in Corsico, which is not exactly the most fun place to work, despite the fact that there is an urban fabric. How do we turn such a place into something that becomes attractive, that makes the human capital we were talking about be enhanced? We started from the top, we took 5000 square metres of solar pavement and turned it into a big garden with even swimming pools and different workspaces, following what is the legacy of the pandemic, being outside and breathing the air not stuck to a desk. Then you do a whole series of actions that lead the person working in a small company to experience the opportunities of the big company and the opportunity to do business with others. If the space, the technology and the processes are designed for people to meet, then a lot of opportunities arise for these small companies. Young people under the age of 35 no longer want to be cooped up in an enclosure, they need to be left in a stream flowing with fresh water, learning and growing. This benefits the company. The transformation, if you like, is from these “pond places” to “stream places”.
COSMI: The words “training” and “places” come to mind. Once the place of training was the school, now it would be said that the place itself also conditions the type of training. There is a whole issue also linked to redesigning didactics. What do you think Maurizio (De Caro)?
DE CARO: We have a studio in Piazza Sant’Ambrogio, which is not a suburban area, in front of the basilica. Our studio is Luigi Caccia Dominioni’s and it is exactly as it was. We kept it that way to dive into this deeply creative culture – we even have carpeting on the floor, which I don’t think anyone has anymore. I say this because, in reality, our problem as architects, as designers – we are about twenty architects – is that telematic work is almost impossible for us to do because when I talk to collaborators I have to understand exactly the type of reaction they have towards an installation which then, don’t forget, will become a piece of the city. We have very heavy responsibilities, it is clear that for us to design an office, a space, whereas once it was only a motive related to aesthetics, today it is perfectly within the context of ethics. People now prefer to stand on a terrace and work there rather than shut themselves away in a constraining situation that becomes alienating. Here, this develops productivity instead. It seems unbelievable, we produce one hall of residence a day, every other day. There is a kind of mood that drives us to this kind of creativity, I can’t explain it exactly. I use the pencil, young people use artificial intelligence, but the problem stays the same. We have found a perfect balance of people – they are all guys under 30, except for two or three partners – where we actually don’t have to give any kind of indication, they give us that indication. Believe me, the change in office flexibility is something that came over us, that’s the theme. Before, we were somehow talking to ourselves whereas today architecture feeds on everything that is not architecture. Architecture is the end result but there is anthropology, sociology, music, art, there is more. And this gives us the desire to get to eat all together as we set about making a project, because, evidently, this is the condition that produces the so-called human capital that you were talking about at the beginning.
COSMI: I’ll give you one last nudge. In a post today they spoke of Rome, which is one of those cities with an insatiable need and hunger for cultural spaces open in the evening, despite having so many of them. Today, they have finally realised this and now in Rome you can study inside museums in the evening too. One “discovers” that we have beauties that are already dedicated to culture and, above all, enviable, which can also be an asset in attracting students from other parts of the world. Knowing that one can come to study in heritages like the ones we have in Italy – all the more so in the capital – can also be an element that attracts human capital. To you, Maurizio (De Caro), the idea of spaces for students.
DE CARO: I believe that, first of all, we must be able to use all the wonderful spaces we have available. The project for Ferdinando Fuga’s poor man’s hotel in Naples, which is one of the most extraordinary buildings in the history of Italy, has just been approved and will become a cultural centre. Culture must become a driving force behind all this because if I, to give you an example, have the opportunity to create elements of cultural production within the student residence, you will see that they will become different forms of aggregation. It is pointless to talk about sociality if we then do everything possible not to have public spaces; the private sector tries to reduce this gap, but in fact it is difficult. This is the real challenge for the future. I want a space where things actually happen as if there were no distance between the outer and inner space. This is the public city of the future in my opinion.
COSMI: Federico (Lessio), I imagine you also have something to say about this because I heard you say the same thing about “making things happen”.
LESSIO: Projects are made to be magnified into something that people can use, otherwise they remain an exercise in style. Maurizio (De Caro) talked about using spaces to stimulate people, first we talked about the space-time relationship and how spaces are able to perform functions in relation to the time people spend inside them; this balance is fundamental for space to be an attraction, a tool that must guarantee you the possibility of spending quality time. Then we talked about experience. I personally love the concept of people’s experience. The measure of the success of a good project, of a good realisation, is the experience that people have. Everything else is a talking shop. A good experience designer should think about this, should always ask himself the question “What constitutes a good experience?”. For me, the answer is: everything. Everything contributes to the experience. There is another assumption that I find very interesting and which is very much available today, and that is to rely on neuroscience. The brain is extraordinarily curious and responds consistently to a variety of stimuli. So, out of metaphor, art, plants, natural light, working on a terrace as we said, means stimulating people. People perceive this not as something transcendental, they perceive it because of the way our brains are built. Since our brain is a saver, it is able to produce more energy and more value when it does not have to worry about too many things. I give a very banal example: if I walk in a park, ideas will probably flow more freely because I am calm, I feel good because the environment around me stimulates me; on the other hand, if I walk in a station at night where I may not feel safe. The action of walking is the same but which of the two environments is more likely to stimulate the action of thinking or getting good ideas? Allow me this metaphor to say that the environment influences people, the way people think. Returning to workspaces, if we want to create a workspace that is suitable for supporting activities, we have to ask ourselves what needs we have to satisfy, what will be the channels through which our brain will perceive that space and, at that point, decide whether I want to make it more stimulating or more relaxing depending on what I have to do within that space. The ambition and the opportunity, today, I see in that. We have more tools than before to design, to refine, to collect continuous feedback and, therefore, to constantly have the idea that we are doing it right. Sociality is a basic need of the human being if we can support it by creating suitable environments, then again we accelerate the human being. I would like to return to Pietro’s (Martani) question asking what is the perspective of large companies and smaller ones. It is logical that the concept of community differs: if we have very small companies we have a community that needs connections outside the micro group; when, on the other hand, we talk about large companies we have a lively, multifaceted internal community that by nature is already very diverse. That is why the large company has the possibility of building these environments knowing that it can refer to the internal community – which is already very rich – and then create points of connection with the external community. Perhaps this is the difference in perspective, with the common goal being how to develop, how to support human capital. Still, today, human capital makes a huge difference.
COSMI: Let us take an emblematic case, of a Lombard, Milanese phenomenon: the fuori salone, the furniture fair, with all its many initiatives. If this was no longer a meeting point for professionals but became a ticket, albeit a free one, to an exhibition, an art show, there would be a difference between the two. There it would no longer be the initiative that was consistent with the spirit of this region. It would become something else. Is there a risk that the city is becoming, from this point of view, more about passing tourism than community building, as it could be in that case the meeting of professionals, entrepreneurs around activism and the sparkling reality of a city like this? What do you think, Pietro (Martani)? Is there this risk of misunderstanding?
MARTANI: Absolutely. I am working a lot in Venice on a project in the lagoon and at the centre of the debate is the inclusion of turnstiles, of turning Venice into a Disneyland. They probably have to go in this direction because it is becoming impossible to manage flows in the city. Milan has grown so much in recent years – almost trebling since the 2015 Expo – and there is a really transient tourism. But this is a generic argument, I believe there are many possible actions that are actually already being implemented and that give these gentlemen passing through some content. Staying with Federico’s (Lessio) metaphor, content as the driver of experience and the city, in some ways, is a great office, if we want to remain within this logic of parallelism. With so many people arriving, we have to make sure that we, as actors in a city, develop those contents, make the space evolve by making it open, osmotic, and that it becomes a place of expression of the richness of each territory, each from its own point of view. The example of libraries is beautiful. This is the direction: open places, whether private or public. It is the market that makes the offer, it is people coming from all over the world to taste something in two days. But if, on the other hand, we are able to offer an experience other than “pass by and see the same old things”, surely the situation changes. The tourist on duty has the opportunity to start from the internet, to browse through a palimpsest of rich, hyper-diversified events – from the micro to the macro. The “fuori salone” experience is supreme on a global level from the point of view.
COSMI: On this aspect, on the difference between being neat in the queue and coming in to see an exhibition and, instead, that question of space as a “square”, what do you add?
LESSIO: We could open up really wide discussions on this, i.e. the difference between going to see a performance and therefore being a spectator or being a protagonist. In the 1980s and 1990s there was this misunderstanding in the relationship between art enjoyed, which was seen, and participatory art in which the spectator became part of the art itself. The fuori salone, which we mentioned, has this disruptive force, that of being a participatory event; there is no organiser and no user, there is an entire city that – in true Milanese style – welcomes the third, the other. Milan has a beautiful characteristic: it is a pocket metropolis, always inhabited by different populations; it is the place where things happen. It is in Milan’s nature to be welcoming, even though sometimes one might say the opposite, because it is inhabited, populated, participated in by many, and this crossroads of cultures makes the difference between standing in line to see something or participating in it.
COSMI: Adele (Nardulli), in this context, the permanent training of human capital, which certainly also concerns your sector, is experiencing a certain competition now with artificial intelligence which, however, is subject to permanent training and updating. What would you like to tell us about this?
NARDULLI: (connection problems)
COSMI: Maurizio (De Caro), you go ahead.
DE CARO: The thing that interests me a lot in this debate is the search for an identity. One of the great traditions of Lombardy, Milan in particular, is the idea that “doing” is in itself “doing well”, that is, moving to make things happen. The substantial theme of these years will be to understand what the identity of this city is. Milan has always been the capital of art, of literature, the capital of discography. This is no longer the case. This is the real issue: Milan lives very much on rent. Before there was the Milanese style in architecture, it was a codified style. After it became international style it was something else. So, do we want to recover this identity? Do we really want to give deep signals even within this famous “piazza” that is to be built? Do things happen in this square? Very well, let’s make them happen, but let’S also give it a deep cultural density, because otherwise all we do is say “we do”, but from here to saying that we do well, there is a long way to go. Think – I say this because I want to be a critical voice – of one thing: among European architecture projects, Italy is always last among those selected. We have to create that research because there is this depth that seems to me to be a bit dormant these days. The numbers are there, they work. Milan is looking for an identity and, above all, it must understand whether it wants to become an inclusive city or an exclusive city, that is, a big circus for the rich, as I have written and as I have said, or something else.
COSMI: They actually go hand in hand. Even rich Milan has cracked up a bit, we have to admit. The anagraphic reason cannot be entirely underestimated. The moment the image of the exclusive Milan cracked, the money for the inclusive Milan was also lacking. If this city turns to the past and not to the future, it becomes a worrying snapshot of the country. What do you think?
NARDULLI: I would like to say something about this issue of cities. Let’s go back to agile work, intelligent work. I live in Milan, seeing it empty out during the pandemic period and also in the following years certainly had an impact on me. Now it is revitalising even during the day, there are no longer the crowds at the restaurants, at the bars, but in the evenings there are thanks to the greater volume of tourism. Milan has become less of a daytime working city but, perhaps, it is becoming more extended into the evening and, therefore, those initiatives like libraries or open bookshops would be welcome. As far as the rest of Italy is concerned – if we want to remain only on the national territory – let us think of what smart working has been able to produce in terms of the revaluation and enhancement of other places, even that other countries, thanks to the fact that people live, thanks to hybrid work or total smart working, almost all remotely. The great thing would be to get people out of their homes. If you work remotely you don’t necessarily have to live this life, this day, inside four walls. We have seen what alienation produces, what little stimulus it brings to personal development, growth, one’s own professional evolution, creativity and so on. This is what I think we should work on, beyond the city of Milan, which has its transformations, but always comes out on top in the end. There are all these opportunities to re-evaluate the countries of the South, the more rural, more remote areas. South working started with the pandemic and it is a reality that today gives the possibility of expanding the range of recruitment. For us entrepreneurs it was something pervasive, it was a huge training, we had never hired people outside the circle of Milan – except, of course, the employees who do the language services and have to be in the various countries of the world – but if we have to talk about managers and so on, they were looked for close to the headquarters because every now and then they had to meet. Whereas now we also choose them in Rome, in Turin, we choose where the talent is. These talents, however, have the opportunity to stay closer to their family, their reality. Then there is the issue of women who are predominantly known to be caregivers – it is so, whether we like it or not. Many women give up work precisely because they cannot reconcile the time of day effectively and efficiently. Here, smart working has certainly given more possibilities in this respect to female employment, with the downside that it has locked many women at home. So we need to work on this new reality of living space that has become work space. We must develop the famous “15-minute cities” and seize this opportunity we have been given to enhance the territories.
DE CARO: They certainly seem to me to be interesting solicitations, it is clear that the opportunity that has arrived for this, unfortunately, such a dramatic episode that we have experienced, someone has put it into practice, certainly succeeding in creating the conditions to, even, change their work for the better. This applies to everyone, of course. These opportunities apply to those who have great creativity or great productive capacity and are very deleterious for those who do not have it naturally: it is like saying that technology is deleterious, but it depends on how you use it. It is not the computer that determines the quality of work, just as it is not smart working that determines the quality of meetings. These transformations, however, need attention: we have to go back to the old paradigms of sociology so that, inevitably, we have to understand what is happening. This kind of transformation has to be experienced but with some detachment, almost philosophical, from what is happening.
COSMI: But is there a public, collective deontology of the architect? Or is it individual? Do you each act out of conscience or is there a collective call to a vision of the city, of the country, of the profession?
DE CARO: The architect by nature is a soloist, someone who uses an instrument. There are very good trumpet players, pianists, harpists, but in order to find an orchestra that plays in an extraordinary way, there is a lack of someone to conduct, as could be, for example, the conductor: it could be politics, the civil service, which is unfortunately lacking today. This is the great drama, public direction.
COSMI: Speaking of the space-time boundary, one has already been disregarded. Pietro, do you want to close?
MARTANI: At the moment we think it was better in the past, human nature is like that, but if we look at our city, our cities, things have improved. Let’s look at Milan, which we all know: there is more greenery, transport has improved, there is also more crime, but actually, if we look at the statistics, that has improved too. Let’s not look at the news with their flash headlines, let’s look at the statistics and see the direction in which we are going. Then, everyone in their own world does what we have said during this hour and a half: let’s open up the places and put the content at the centre, let’s make people grow, let’s work on human capital, let’s value the legacy of the pandemic, the possibility of living in the city but also having freedom to go into nature. Maybe work one day a week in nature and recharge ourselves and then come back with others to do collaboration and innovation.
COSMI: Thank you very much to everyone. To those who followed us via streaming through countless social networks and profiles of the Eurispes Institute, thanks to our directing team who also helped us with this webinar. Obviously, the topics on the table – such as that of opening up spaces – are a shake-up for human capital and we hold them close in our intentions.
