Two exhibitions... two opinions

"Architecture is beyond the utilitarian."

Le Corbusier's quote shows perhaps most succinctly what this synthesis of art and technique, creation in the Platonist sense of the word, abstract in its liberation from the natural and concrete in its presence - the complex framework of the lives of millions of people - must mean. Usefulness, then, is no more than a motivation, creation itself necessarily existing as a consequence, and this is bound to happen regardless of the social context. Even in the most troubled periods of history, the people of that time, beneficiaries, designers and builders, knew not to forget what beauty meant. Moreover, this notion, which is an obligatory function of any type of creation, can be included in the very concept of function extended to the psychological-affective field. The resultant artificial environment, without which civilization, life itself, cannot be conceived, determines behaviours and connections of the most diverse kinds, shapes space and also individual or collective personality. What is more, architecture must generate feelings and excite emotion. Indifference to all this is the death of architecture and perhaps even of life.