Big Doubts and Little Uncertainties, by Roberta Marcaccio

Ernesto Nathan Rogers used to say that he had ‘big doubts and little uncertainties’.¹ It was a way of explaining the long pauses that punctuated his speech, which also gave him time to formulate questions and explore often contradictory answers. At times, and especially in exchanges with younger people, it was also a way of drawing a veil over his own erudition so as to put his interlocutors at ease and let them into his thought processes.

Rogers was able to turn his doubts into strengths. He doubted his own identity — half Italian, half British, affectionately called an 'Austrian man' by his collaborators — and this propelled him onto the international stage. He shied away from grandiose titles such as ‘historian’ or ‘theoretician’, refusing to compose a systematic narrative of the history of the modern movement. Instead, he chose the editorial, the lecture, the article in a journal or the epistolary exchange to give voice to his reflections. This approach enabled him to establish immediate and effective dialogue with diverse audiences both within Italy and internationally.

Rogers also doubted his own abilities as an architect. He recognised his own weaknesses around technical drawing and regarded it as normal to seek the help of his colleagues at the BBPR partnership, the Milan-based design studio established by Rogers with Gianluigi Banfi, Lodovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso and Enrico Peressutti. Together they would review designs, examine one another’s writings, discuss teaching curricula, consider editorial lines. It was this collaboration with his partners at BBPR that allowed Rogers to personify a new type of intellectual and professional figure, one able to move seamlessly between design, writing and teaching while embracing varying forms of knowledge and mastering different languages.

In this sense, Rogers' self-effacement within both personal and collaborative contexts underscores a 'heroic' commitment to cultivating an environment where architecture and society could flourish. He fostered a culture of collaboration among individuals with diverse expertise, backgrounds, and perspectives, creating spaces where intergenerational exchanges of ideas could thrive. While today we might label such approaches as 'inclusivity' and 'interdisciplinary research,' for Rogers it represented something more fundamental: individuals contributing their unique insights, ethical wisdom and creative vision to a civic and architectural discourse that remained honest about the ambiguities and possibilities of its era. Rogers' persona, with its paradoxical blend of heroic ambition and intellectual humility, offers a compelling paradigm for contemporary architectural practice. His approach stands in marked contrast to both the theory- and form-mongers, as well as the outdated archetype of the infallible architectural genius. His nuanced positioning proves especially relevant during times of profound socio-political polarisation and uncertainty — periods that characterise both Rogers' era and our own.

Inspired by a homonymous article written by Vittorio Gregotti (Corriere della Sera, 9 July 2009), the title ‘hero of doubt’ seeks to celebrate these very traits of Rogers’ persona. At the same time, and although largely neglected by the historiography of the modern movement, he was in fact at the heart of a profound transformation in architecture’s understanding of itself in the second half of the twentieth century — caught, as it were, between the aberrations of fascism and the utopianism of modernist manifestoes. Needless to say, both fascism and some of the later developments of modernism were doubted by Rogers. In his opinion they aspired to accomplish too much, too instrumentally and with too few means, neglecting the contradictory realities that had emerged from the social and economic upheavals caused by the two recent wars.

The extracts shared below give a glimpse of the way Rogers embraced the 'complexities and contradictions' of the inter- and post-war period to shift mainstream discourse. Challenging the break from history espoused by his contemporaries, for whom the modern movement was a kind of epic phenomenon divorced from the past and exempt from criticism, Rogers used his involvement in the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (ClAM), his collaborative practice with BBPR and his parallel careers in teaching and writing to broadcast his highly controversial idea of continuità (historical continuity). Simultaneously he undertook the heroic task to ‘humanise’ the work of the great modern masters for a new generation and open it up for criticism — ensuring its continued vitality. This effort resonated with many of those who went on to shape postmodern discourse on both sides of the Atlantic. In this regard, Rogers' ideas can be credited with laying the groundwork for Aldo Rossi’s approach to the study of European cities; Vittorio Gregotti’s speculations on the disciplinary ‘territory of architecture’; Robert Venturi’s creative understanding of history and the everyday environment; and Team 10’s polemic against CIAM’s doctrinaire approach to urbanism, even if Rogers himself was not entirely convinced by some of these developments.²

In addition to the historical references manifest in BBPR’s architectural work, what confirmed Rogers as the forefather of these new approaches were the very words and concepts repeatedly utilised in his own writings — ‘words too are construction material’, not by chance, he remarked in his first editorial for Domus. Along with the already mentioned continuità and preesistenze ambientali or ambiente such terms are coerenza (coherence), tradizione (tradition), misura umana (human measure), utilità e bellezza (utility and beauty) and tendenza (artistic tendency). Rogers used them as a means of anchoring his thoughts, as literary topoi. Not only did they assist him in advancing his argument in an ongoing dialogue with himself and his interlocutors, they also helped him in the forging of his own identity. Yet none of these terms translate easily into English. Their meaning is highly nuanced and often highly elusive, even in the original Italian, which tends to be more tolerant than English of elusiveness.

One of the most difficult expressions to translate has been preesistenze ambientali, which, as Adrian Forty has noted, has often been misleadingly rendered in English as ‘context’, a word which has its equivalent in Italian in contesto, but which Rogers (and his younger collaborators) deliberately chose not to use.³ Indeed, ‘context’ fails to capture that which the more metaphysical preesistenze ambientali seeks to evoke: the importance of historical continuity, or consciousness of the historical past, as manifested by the city and as existing in the minds of the city’s inhabitants.

Some of the difficulties with translating these terms, and more broadly Rogers’ writings, are also tied to his complex relationship with English culture, which throughout his life was something both irreconcilably alien and suffocatingly familiar.⁴ As such ‘reading’ Rogers' voice in English, an unnatural form for him, remains very different from reading his Italian, which always ‘flowed fresh, precise, clear, immediate’ and with ‘such a firm unity between thought and expression that the two could not be told apart’, as he wrote in the 1940s. This new book forces Rogers to change language and face what he termed ‘the sound barrier of difficult words’, but with the sole purpose of allowing his voice, and his doubts, to reverberate and to reach new audiences.

1. Problems: Technique Domus no. 213, September 1946

Don’t laugh: someone will smile about us in a few years’ time. And we shouldn’t feel superior if we’re now able to travel into the stratosphere, almost leaving sound behind, catching up with light. Technique is a tool that can make life easier and more pleasant, but while it is the admirable fruit of reason, it is still not able to cross the boundaries of contingency, because with each discovery it surpasses or negates those that came before it: it can cooperate on the solving of spiritual themes, but it cannot solve them on its own. To despise technique is absurd, but to regard it as mythical is naïve.

The difference between the engineer and the architect (as such) lies here, in particular: for the former, technique is identified with the goals of his work, while for the latter it is simply a means by which he thinks about elevating physical material to become part of the world of art. The house of man is a problem of architecture.

Modern architecture is now on the verge of patching up the separation between the engineer and the artist that prevailed throughout the nineteenth century; inspired by the criteria of functionalism, it consciously attempts the synthesis of utility and beauty. (Perhaps functionalism is the result of an era that was torn between positivism and idealism.)

2. In Praise of Tendenza, Domus no. 216, December 1946

Less than a year into his editorship of Domus, Rogers wrote an editorial to defend his strategy of selecting works for publication. He made room in Domus, and later in Casabella, for all those experimentations which, however crude or dubious, kept the modern movement alive by challenging its established aesthetic, social and political drivers. Contrary to the idea of an avant-garde presenting a cohesive cultural front or a movement, Rogers' tendenza (artistic tendency) pointed to a looser strategy, more attuned to the changing nature of contemporary culture and society.

They say we have one-track minds, that we wear blinkers and fail to notice or gather the swathes of beautiful flowers by the wayside, then crown ourselves with garlands of withered boughs: they say we are presumptuous.

We, on the other hand, nurture the illusion that we are coherent, that we are following a tendenza with the aim of creating a style.

[...]

Tendenza consists precisely in taking responsibility for pointing out the horizons that offer only a glimmer of light, and for turning our backs on dioramas of papier-mâché and illusory sets even when they appear so much more spacious than those small windows.

For these reasons we often welcome works by young people, for all that we may recognise their immaturity and even mediocrity, as long as they are on the side of the barricades where criticism (and therefore action too) is deemed right; we stubbornly ignore products that may be more mature and perfect in themselves but are made by those who, in our view, dance to the tune of a dying or already dead world.

We do not set ourselves up as judges, assuming the vantage point of the infallible and impartial Almighty, but we do try to conduct subjective analyses from the more modest niche to which our human condition has assigned us, where partiality can aspire to universality only if it is transformed into faith.

Like any faith, this too is subject to the trials of doubt and temptation.

[...]

3. Who Are You?, Venezia Architettura, November 1953.

‘Who are you?’ was the rhetorical question addressed to young people in Rogers' opening lecture at the first post-war CIAM summer school in Venice in 1952. In this text, he defined the theme of continuità (continuity) with the work and ideals of previous generations within which he situated his own pedagogical approach and, later, the cultural strategies of Casabella, which he would soon be called upon to lead.

So many superfluous lectures, and now this too? What justification could I have for asking for still more of your attention? Well, the previous speakers have made a valid contribution to your education by sharing their thoughts on various aspects of architecture that you yourselves will have observed, although not actively shaped.

But now I would like to talk about you, and more precisely about the part you have played — and will play — as protagonists. [...] You will excuse some inevitable generalisation, I hope, as this is an issue that needs to be discussed in generational terms rather than our lingering over individual personalities. So I’m addressing all of you students — men and women — who are around 20 to 30 years old. And when I’m talking about you, I’m evidently essentially referring to your qualities as architects, which should incorporate all other human qualities.

[...]

I will speak to you in all earnestness, to establish parity between those who are being judged and those who are taking it upon themselves to do the judging, a parity that makes it possible for us all to judge one another. [...] In considering the events of this century we should recognise that the modern movement asserted itself as acontinuous revolution — a revolution that, while being very dramatic in terms of its inner dialectic, does not provoke rifts between the three generations it encompasses. We are all on the same side of the barricades, albeit with weapons of different potential.

[...]

The dialectical tension between generations (and, it should be clear, between individuals), far from being a source of weakness, takes on new meaning if the youngest, rather than opposing the eldest, joins forces with them to take architecture forward. Young people can accept this position of serious and effective struggle if the older generation, in turn, knows how to set aside personal ambitions and forgo any attempt to impose, with the authority conferred by a white beard, preconceptions disguised as axioms.

It is possible to have a vibrant school when those who were born earlier are willing, as they teach those born later, to learn alongside them. This is also how to achieve a continuity of direction outside the school, keeping alive this productive exchange, a sense of everyone having a role in the same play.

So, to reaffirm the premise of this discussion, while I said I do not believe in an opposition between the present generations, I can still be cognisant of differences in age and use the words ‘old’ and ‘young’.

Yet you would have to be living on a different planet not to notice that, as things presently stand, young people today are restless and often disgruntled: this is true in Italy, France, Argentina, Chile, Peru, the USA, Scandinavia, Holland, Switzerland — everywhere I have been — and I could mention members of other nationalities that I’ve met in Italy.

If you make an effort to help young people, challenging them with questions about architecture, awakening their intuitive faculties, setting them on the path of analysis and thus impelling them to take charge, you may be rewarded with their respect and their friendship, but their rebellion will not necessarily be quelled. In fact, this teaching method often leads to discouragement and anxiety. Rebellion, doubt and dissatisfaction are often signs of fertile vitality: in the face of this phenomenon, the older generation needs to act like patient farmers, trying not to trample on the seedlings, while young people need to accept some helpful pruning from those with more experience. Critique and self-critique blend in mutual sympathy, that is, in an understanding of how to suffer together.

I have always admired a brilliant group of English students at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, a group I have had the privilege to count among my students. They are the most rebellious, the most obstinate and even the most presumptuous students I have ever met, so I affectionately call them the ‘I don’t agree’ gang. I have learned a lot from these English friends of mine, so much so that sometimes, well… I don’t agree with them either.

The motto ‘I don’t agree’ is the only possible guide to understanding the nonconformist essence of the spirit of the modern movement, so I would like it to become the slogan of all those who try their hand at modern architecture — that way they will always be prepared (and this should not seem like a paradox) to continue in the spirit of previous generations. ‘I don’t agree’ is the motto of systematic doubt, the dialectical basis of scientific thought, but it is valid only if seen as a means, not as an end in itself. Otherwise, it is a closed figure — like that of the serpent that bites its own tail and poisons itself. So we have to be careful. And when we study, say, Thales Theorem, we have to apply the system of the dialectic ad absurdum to reach the objective conclusion he has suggested to us — even if, my friends, this means admitting that the generations who came before yours were right all along.

But why do young people rebel; why are they dissatisfied? I believe there are three main reasons: the first, felix culpa, lies in youth itself: in its expansive energy, its natural explosions — those of a volcanic land, convulsing with its own inner fire. The second reason lies in a historical superstructure, usually identified with the Oedipus complex, that is, a feeling of inferiority in relation to the older and already established generation and the concomitant irrational dissent felt towards it. The third reason lies in a rational awareness of the real shortcomings young people observe in the world they have inherited from their fathers. (Naturally the first two reasons often influence the objectivity of the third.)

[...]

The generations before yours shared a deep conviction that the new aesthetics brings with it a certain set of ethics, whereby their every work must represent the indivisible synthesis of utility and beauty. (For what else does ‘functional architecture’ mean if not true structures for true people?)

Perhaps we laboured too much under the illusion that exemplary architecture could instigate social renewal. Such aspirations have suffered many setbacks — that cannot be denied — yet it also remains true that individual works, whatever their purpose, use or users, have sought to represent this ideal symbolically. It was for this ideal, fighting as partisans in the Resistance, that the Italian architects [Giuseppe] Pagano and [Gian Luigi] Banfi lost their lives, as did the student Giorgio Labò and many other friends who are the true martyrs of our faith. I am certain that each of you thinks of them with gratitude: they also died for you.

The ideological morality of the rational, the honest and the poetic can be found in the work of architects who have refused all compromise. Frank Lloyd Wright may design houses almost exclusively for wealthy, privileged people, but in the attempt to actually build them he has suffered for years, running up debts and even ending up in prison.

Le Corbusier, at the age of 64, is only now starting to reap some financial rewards, but while he was building that masterpiece known as the Unité d’habitation in Marseille he was threatened by a number of reactionaries, who sued him for 20 million francs in the name of protecting the French landscape.

Gropius, who is 70, is obliged to go on seeking work, because his academic pension is very small.

These are the masters. As for our finances … the less said the better; we can all speak of ongoing daily struggles.

Who are you? You are the heirs to this history of struggle.

And there is still much to be done.

So, your dissatisfaction is justified, though it seems to me there is less justification for your rebellion or for the pessimism of those of you who believe we have to start all over again, from scratch.

[...]

4. The Utopia of Reality — Casabella Continuità #259, January 1962

Utopia is not always a ‘futile image without foundation’, nor is it ‘a chimera, a castle in the air, etc.’ as indicated by the definitions found in dictionaries. It can be teleologically charged in its projection of the present into a possible future in spite of the fact that its forms are not yet achievable, and there being many obstacles to the expression of the ideas that underpin them as well as the actions needed to realise them.

The task at hand is to reframe the concept of utopia: to think concretely about a better society (certainly not just a world of the honest, the beautiful and the good, but a world constructed with real means for real ends). After all, progress has never happened without a drive to reach for higher goals, however distant they may be.

[...]

Some people, constrained, above all, by the exigencies of professional practice or unaware of current research, have imagined that the constructive and creative sense of culture could and should be replaced by practicalism (which is as limited a description of the entire architectural phenomenon, a muscle being taken as expressing someone’s whole being).

Who would deny that techniques are required for the realisation of the phenomenon? On the other hand, who would claim — without implicitly revealing their own vapidity — that techniques are enough in themselves to allow the insertion of the phenomenon into the whole of history and to grant it vitality? There is no alternative to or contradiction between the technical and the theoretical activities of architecture as both must be present in the creation of the architectural phenomenon.

Thoroughgoing research must be granted its rightful place, not least in order to rebalance the curriculum in schools of architecture, because in these eventful times, it is necessary to reconsider all human knowledge: to deepen our understanding of reality and to imagine the possibility of crossing its perceived boundaries. It is clear that while traditional academic schools erred on the side of abstraction, allowing only a partial formalistic understanding of the architectural phenomenon, schools dealing mainly with practice are equally lacking, because they are applying the template of a design office and fail to prepare students for other goals, or to make a proper contribution to current architectural training.

If we are not afraid of words and we want to get beyond mere nominalism, which is now somewhat discredited, we may nurse the hope that the school will become an academy, as it should be, rather than a place cut off from life where practices that are already sanctioned (and how miserable those sanctions can be!) are sanctified or at best simply perpetuated. Instead, it should offer a service to the whole of society, acting as a laboratory for creating culture.

There are some risks involved if one openly confronts the problems of life, in that evolution involves continuous struggle. Given how necessary it is to produce tools to respond to the challenges of the world rather than simply adapting to them, which might seem more certain, we will be obliged not just to accept but also to encourage criticism and imagination as the mainstays of architectural and committed work (within its academic limits) and therein lies its value; it has to be assessed within those limits, and it is not hard to find flaws in it, the most obvious of which is immaturity, due to the fact — felix culpa — that it has been put together by young people.

[...]

Even existing regulations could be reframed, because we will find in the utopia expressed in these works new critical points of reference capable of broadening our understanding of reality.

Bio

Roberta Marcaccio is an educator, editor, and research and communication consultant, whose writing has been featured in books including The Last Grand Tour (2023), Real Estates (2014), and Erasmus Effect (2014). She is the coeditor of AD issue The Business of Research: Knowledge and Learning Redefined in Architectural Practice (2019) and, together with Harriett Harriss and Rory Hyde, of Architects After Architecture: Alternative Pathways for Practice (2020) — a book which traces the broader applicability of architectural thinking beyond the making buildings and towards addressing the multiple systemic crises of our time, from climate crises to extreme social inequality.