The Italian Epcot Center and the Nature of the Beast

As I write this entry mid-flight to Dublin, I am overwhelmed in my efforts to strategically recap the week of adventures I have just returned from and am still about to embark on. How do I distill three countries, seven cities, the permanent, the temporal, the familiar, and the unknown into a "blog" entry? I have decided to divide this daunting task into a series of entries, beginning with an account of my old stomping grounds, Italy.




To preface, my junior year I lived in Florence as part of a home-stay/study-abroad program. In what I might equate as a contemporary equivalent to the 18th c. "European Grand Tour," my experience was painted with Renaissance and Medieval art, generous portions of pasta, culture, and language lessons served to me by my host family, weekend travels via train, plane, and automobile, and an occasional brush with the other 4,000 North-face clad Americans studying in Florence at any given time.

Thus far my experience in London has been drastically different. For one, I am no longer studying fine arts. While my appreciation for Boccione and Bacon at both respective Tate's has not waned, I would argue the given terms and ambitions of my graduate architectural studies are more immediate and challenging.

In an effort to reconcile two admittedly different courses of study, I dare draw two major conclusions/assumptions. [I would happily debate these definitions to anyone with an opposing conviction.]

1) The beauty of studying art comes with the understanding of a moment distilled. Through a range of abstract, contextual clues contemporaneous to political, historical, and social movements, a work of art is given meaning through technique, expression, and on occasion, intuition.

2) The beauty of studying built architecture lies greatly in the acknowledgment that the subject of study is never a moment distilled. Architecture realized embodies a lack of precision due to its inevitable evolution. Therefore, to understand architecture, one must accept its inability to capture a moment, but rather, the beauty of its ability to evolve as the "moment" continues.

Therefore, upon my return to Italy, I had fresh eyes for a city that has inevitably evolved in the four years since I've lived there. While the danger of returning to places after they've been filed as utopic or euphoric was a concern, I did not feel jaded or disappointed by my return to Italy, but rather excited to experience it from a new perspective.

As an art history student in Florence, much of my experience was comprised of buildings as backdrop. Each street was a perspectival device with a vista at the end. Each museum or church was a skeleton fleshed out with paintings and sculptures of past golden ages.

Upon my return, the Duomo and other built, iconic friends loomed as ornamental relics of bygone centuries. However, from an architectural standpoint, I was less interested in reevaluating Brunelleschi's dome than I was to consider the trap that is now Florentine architectural tradition.



During my first stay in Florence, I was quickly exposed to a way of life steeped in tradition. I was enamored with the history of each family, building, recipe, word, and relic. I still love the fact that my classmates that are currently studying in Florence are living on the upper floors fo century-old apartments with 16' ceilings and no lifts. And it is still magical to me to drive through the small hillside villages from Florence to Arezzo and admire the consistent vernacular of the Italian Mediterranean villa.

What I am not enamored with is Florence's inability to embrace the future. While Italy as a country has never lacked innovation (the futurists are by far my favorite activists, and where would we be without perspective or Antonioni), Florence's city center remains untouched. A true double-edged sword if you will. For one thing, so much of Florence's industry is tourism that architectural development flies primarily under the guise of historic preservation and renovation. When people arrive in Florence, they expect the Duomo, the Baptistery, gargantuan cones of gelato, picturesque piazzas, and a naked David at every turn. (A menial testimony to this is that there is still no Starbucks in Florence's centro...yet.)

It is at this moment I readdress my statement regarding the beauty of studying architecture. If an integral part of architecture is responding to evolution and its inevitable resulting conditions, Florence's architecture remains a museum rather than a laboratory. The Duomo will always be a sign of invention and progress, however its lack of progressive architectural juxtaposition objectifies it as a relic of the past rather than an embodiment of the future.

So herein lies the crux of my entry, manifested as a question open to all. I imagine these are general questions many now-tourist towns face, however my specific interest is architectural strategy and intervention. How will Florence respond to the future? Or should it even bother? Is Florence meant to remain an Italian Epcot-Center, or should it begin to look forwards rather than backwards for sustenance?

If not for the wonderful people I know that still live there and personal sentiments of a past time, what will keep me coming back?