Note
- ^ Luchino Visconti, Il Gattopardo [film], Titanus, Rome, 1963. The screening followed the lecture.
What still forms us
Architectural Association School of Architecture, London,
Alexandra Savtchenko-Belskaia introduces the House of Dust lecture, part of The Language of Flowers, the 2013 Intermediate Unit 2 programme at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London
Introduction
Alexandra Savtchenko-Belskaia
Recently we went on a trip to Sicily as a group, and this evening is meant to recall some of the things we were thinking, discussing and seeing there, but also to go a little deeper into an understanding of the unit, the school’s teaching studio, and of what we do in it, and to hear about the work of Antonino Cardillo, who has generously joined us tonight.
We met Antonino through our work in the unit, and in Sicily it was a privilege and a pleasure to hear him discuss the architects of the Baroque. I wanted to introduce some of these ideas by asking a few broad questions, which are perhaps also my own motivation for becoming involved in this unit. I think that Antonino’s work, and the film we are going to see, are a starting point for addressing them. How can it be possible to know one’s time and to know oneself, so that the architecture we put into the world is appropriate for the people who will use it now and in the near future, and carries real meaning: meaning that is not abstracted, produced, packaged and wholly alienating, but direct, relevant and, one might say, alive? Especially if we are not architects.
Is it even possible for architecture to achieve this? Obviously I think the answer is yes, otherwise we would not be here. Surely it is not the goal of every architect, or of all the architecture out there, but I believe, and this is why I am doing it too, that it is what we are looking for, and that it is needed. And I believe it is a truly important question to ask for us, soon to be architects, because we live in a world that is changing around us faster than probably ever before, simply by the pace at which everything is shifting and turning. I also think there is a common understanding that what changes is not necessarily changing for the better.
You might agree that there is a notion completely different from, and very much the opposite of, the modern idea that things in the future will be better. And yet there is a kind of rift, a void, between our awareness of our time now and what we had in modernism, while we still live by and are structured by some of the same things and structures in the world as before. This is why I believe it is a truly important question to ask: how can we find ways of making architecture that is genuinely relevant to the people living now and in the near future, and not alienating? Having said that, through the conversations we have had with Antonino, and the way he has talked about his work, I think that these issues of understanding the past of architecture, and of working with a particular way of approaching architecture historically, are extremely relevant and really something we can learn from. I find it very inspiring.
Source
- Alexandra Savtchenko-Belskaia, ‘Introduction’, spoken introduction to Antonino Cardillo’s lecture House of Dust, Intermediate Unit 2, AA School, London, 20 Nov. 2013 [English]; transcript published on antoninocardillo.com, 13 July 2026.