Batilux 2012.
At the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco, Architects speak about rules.
Monaco, the Grimaldi Forum. January, 19th-20th 2012

On 20th January 2012, at the eighth edition of Batilux, architecture and construction exhibition in Montecarlo, was held the Meeting of Architects, an event that brings together 28 international architects to discuss the major issues related to sustainability in its environmental, social and economic aspects, and to define the principles of a New Architecture.
The debate focused on the role of standards in architecture, the ability to transform constraints to new opportunities for the development of creativity and the redefinition of new rules.
The results of the work were summarized in the Monaco Statement, disclosed to reporters and to the public in a big press conference.
Representing Italy, together with the architects Cesare Maria Casati, Dante Oreste Benini and Tommaso Valle, there was Architect Joseph di Pasquale, from AM Project in Milan.
Architect di Pasquale gave a speech entitled: "Cultural sustainability”, an antidote for the mind against the poison of “financial ideology", that is summarized in two basic steps.

Sustainability is today reduced to “financial matter”, which means the savings of energy and money.
We wish to "build for life", but in this ideological climate to achieve this goal we can't do anything but turn everything into numbers, laws and regulations that will always miss the heart of the problem.
We must instead promote a "cultural sustainability" to preserve those values that couldn't never be translated into numbers and regulations, and we should strongly affirm the primacy of that values on numbers and finance. The absolute primacy of the "how" on "how much".

"We possess the source codes of creativity. We must use them to overturn the codes of expression, to reinvent the language, wrong-footing those who strive to wipe out creativity through homogenisation. What creates true wealth in nature is difference, not sameness. This is the cultural sustainability that we have a duty to uphold against all those who seek to impose a single model and thinking instead of design and creativity".

For several years, Joseph di Pasquale brings forward a reflection on cultural sustainability in architecture, which arises from the comparison between his Italian culture as a designer and the international context where he operates. His point of view, original and innovative, has already been appreciated during intensive seminars at the universities of Russia, Brazil and China, where he designed many buildings, from 2008.

Joseph di Pasquale's speech is available at the following link.