What is the first memory that comes to your mind related to the Faculty of Architecture of Pescara?

There are two earliest memories, the first is when I was invited in 1985/1986, the School of Architecture was still in the former Montessori elementary school in via Italica and an exhibition of young Roman architects was organized to which I was invited, followed by a debate, there was my daughter with me, at that time she was ten years old, she had stretched out on the first three seats of the faculty, while I was talking she was asleep. It was an exhibition in which many of those who exhibited later became teachers of the Faculty, Carmen Andriani also presented her work, there was ABDR where Paolo Desideri already had a role in Pescara, Filippo Raimondo, Stefano Cordeschi who later became himself for a short period of teaching in the Faculty. The second memory is when I became an adjunct professor, that was the first lesson I gave, also in Via Italica, I was very excited, I was already working at the university as an assistant of Terranova in Rome, but I had never done a lesson at the university , I had done a lot of revisions but no lessons and I remember that when I started talking it started to snow with flakes as big as oranges, it was snowing horizontally, everything was closed, the highway for a few days, the schools ... I thought ... " Well God doesn't want me to do this job ”an unequivocal sign! Then luckily it wasn't like that.

One of the phenomena that has affected the Faculty of Architecture of Pescara since its origins has been that of TREND. What is TREND? and what did it represent for you?

When I arrived in 1986 to teach for the first time in the Faculty of Architecture in Pescara there was a very strong group of teachers who came out of that school. I knew the trend well for some protagonists, I studied it, I read many books. Aldo Rossi, who was a friend of the family, had proposed to me to graduate with him in Venice, but I did not want to go there because my father taught there. When I arrived in Pescara it seemed to me that from a methodological and cognitive point of view the Tendenza had strong qualities and was able to give a working and research method to those who approached a wonderful but at the same time elusive profession as is the architecture. I think that the Trend was very important, it is no coincidence that it was the last Italian architectural cultural movement that had a very widespread diffusion also in Europe and beyond. When it was applied in the project, with a code to be respected, with few variations, this seemed to me a strong limit and therefore, being culturally an eclectic, I fought a lot this second idea more than the first. It seemed to me that the Tendenza was excellent for getting closer to architecture, to get inside it but when there was to be deepened on the project all this was too ideological on one side and not very curious about the rest of the world on the other, I distanced myself from it, I repeat more than culturally precisely by design, linguistically, formally. I was like Mao Tse-tungMao in the Hundred Flowers Campaign.

What do you think you have left in this faculty?

I think that the Faculty of Pescara in those years was a unique and unrepeatable opportunity. First because we were all young, there were already stabilized personalities who had studied with Aldo Rossi and Giorgio Grassi who left a profound mark, then there was a group of boys, friends, who had more than power available to them. to be able to do! We took courses, exhibitions, trips ... I remember a magnificent exhibition that MAXXI would like today, with the original drawings by Ludovico Quaroni that we took from his archives with both hands and there were drawings from EUR to the Sandbanks of San Giuliano ... all on display. .that we had organized in 15 days. This group of young people behaved in a responsible manner but without too many academic frills, we were like the group of 2nd B who had just entered the control room. I passed the grade and I teach in a school that is still of great prestige, the years in Pescara from the point of view of strength and enthusiasm are unrepeatable. Another interesting thing is that the faculty of architecture in those years was the only faculty of architecture that overlooked the Adriatic. The catchment area of the students ranged from Puglia to Romagna, most of them came from outside and both students and teachers used the city as if it were a campus. At the time Pescara was a bad city where you lived very well! We opened lines of research on the widespread city, we tried to examine the phenomenon for what it was and the whole relationship between architecture and infrastructures developed in Pescara before that in other places.

In his career he has faced different academic realities. Are there any distinctive features that can be recognized in the various universities? If yes, what are they?

I would say that on the one hand yes. I don't know how much all this is linked to architecture, that is, I think that architecture changes over time, it depends on the people and the times that the school goes through. There is a more affluent and poorer time of openness, of reserve and of cultural politics. I am more for analyzing individualities and products than schools. I remember that it was said that for example in the school of Rome people drew well and they still say today, it is enough to see a drawing by Anselmi, Cordeschi or Filippo Raimondo to realize it, but within this it cannot be said that the architecture of Anselmi or Cordeschi and Raimondo are the same, I would say no. They were even more distant then than now, the school of Venice is of a morphological type, that of Pescara on the widespread city, that of Rome was archology and design, but these are categories that change over time. The school of architecture is a kind of "copy paper" of society and is strongly influenced by its mutation. The society of twenty years ago is no longer what it was before and therefore the school of architecture also changes.

If you were to return to teaching in Pescara, what experiences would you try to introduce into the reality of the Department of Architecture?

I have an attitude of discontinuity, I have always proceeded by leaps rather than by continuity in life. If I went back to Pescara I would try, as I already tried in the late 1980s, when we brought with great difficulty Enric Miralles and Peter Eisenman , Rem Koohlaas , to bring an opening towards the outside, towards other Italian and European schools. The intent was to identify emerging and "new" people of architectural culture, often in contrast with the other great cultural current of the faculty which was that of the Tendenza . Can you imagine the difficulty at the time of comparing Giorgio Grassi and Enric Miralles ? It was fun, however, to see one and the other, also to decide on the basis of one's inclinations and passions. Furthermore, for several years I have always been involved in organizing workshops with foreign faculties in various continents. They are called metropolitan laboratories . I believe this is a good way for the recognition of some educational activities of a student. Another is Villard , one of the things we founded with M. Ricci and A. Ferlenga in the years of '99. I could try to find the development of local systems to make the studies effective once I leave the university. I would have a cross-eyed look, a distant and a close look.