One of the fundamental lessons learnt by architects in the wake of postmodernism was that ‘not everything goes’. Their generation had opened Pandora's box of styles and, astounded by it, brought them out one after the other: neo-Egyptian, American colonial, Roman pastiche, kitsch pop... Once again, the architect had at his disposal an innumerable repertoire of forms and solutions to apply in his work, which globalization had theoretically made acceptable in the most disparate contexts. Today, however, we look back on the products of that explosion with a certain surprise, like films that aged badly and seem to us to have been taken from an unknown cultural universe. Outdated, the pastiches that populate our peripheries have lost much of their appeal and remain the infamous reminder that ‘not everything goes’.
But then, what does count? What society considers beautiful is good, but first and foremost, what is not shielded by the veil of the ridiculous is good. In our age of new materials, new techniques and disparate stylistic influences, contradictions often arise in the built form that give it a ridiculous, ironic aura. In architecture, the ridiculous, unlike its extremely serious counterpart - the transcendental - gives the work an overly dialectical aspect, communicating meanings that are too unstable. We live in a rapidly changing culture in which it is often only possible to maintain the validity of a particular aesthetic through minimalism, avoiding placing any presence that with the passage of time may feel anomalous or out of place.
The designer therefore faces a double threat: on the one hand, he must choose from among millions of forms that society considers valid, but he must also be careful to abstract himself from the present in order to give his work a certain validity. A large part of his expertise consists in knowing how to be in tune with society, letting him to discard or appropriate each reference he receives from the immense flow of information he handles.
