Projects on the urban scale

Marta Lonzi’s writings as well as her design practice reveal her orientation towards a non-destructive creative process in relation to the pre-existing, whether it is the historic centre, the suburbs or nature. This is the approach with which she took part in a number of architecture and urban planning competitions in Italy and abroad. They included the competition for the urban park of Porto Navile and Manifattura Tabacchi in Bologna (1984), the competition of ideas for the makeover of Piazzale Matteotti and the use of the area of the former Macello and its surroundings in Vicenza (1986), the IBA Lützowplatz Competition in Berlin (1987). In the competition for the environmental and architectural structure of Bagno Vignoni (1992), she presented a project for its reuse and environmental repair. But often her proposals questioned the requirements of the competition regulations. A characteristic case was the project presented for the redevelopment and layout of Borghetto Flaminio in Rome (1994-95). (…)

As a token of her deep respect for the city’s historic identity, understood “as a common good to be safeguarded”, Marta therefore addressed, without a client, the issue of the outer suburbs, in particular in Rome. “Rome could be a city without outer suburbs”: her reflections, the subject of continuous studies in depth, would result in the project that she devised for Pietralata, then adopted by the neighbourhood’s grassroots associations, published in Del Sistema Direzionale Orientale (1997), then in Roma è da salvare. Pietralata New York Istanbul (with Francesca Garavini), 1999.

The point of arrival of extensive experimentation and research was her book Autenticità e progetto published in 2006, which sought to demystify the abstraction of the creative process.

A designer conscious – and therefore responsible – of her creative act, as she was of her life: this, in a nutshell, was the focus of Marta Lonzi’s discourse. A discourse conducted, through forty years of work, in a non-abstract form, interspersed with questions and doubts that accompanied her exploration of the nature and meaning of the spaces of human relationships.

“A good architect is not one who builds new architectures, who designs unusual solutions, but the one who succeeds in stimulating in people thoughts and feelings that otherwise would not be expressed in consciousness”. 
(ML 1982)

“The processes that underlie modern architecture and urban planning have had the effect of transforming design into a commodity on a par with all other goods... in which the split between design and ethics prevails” (ML 2006)

Listen: “Today the architect is stuck at a stage where he is at one with his creation”