SPAZIO N°1

The first chapter is entirely devoted to the first issue of SPAZIO and to Moretti’s editorial titled ‘Eclecticism and Unity of Language.’ The chapter opens with an Italian-to-English translation of Moretti’s theoretical text. In it, Moretti addresses the theme of architectural language understood as a cultural fact, a meta-historical fact to be read and interpreted on multiple levels, ranging between the ‘concrete reality’ of form and the ‘expressive will’ of the designer. In this sense, the director’s first editorial represents what may be called an ‘Ouverture théorique.’ The English version of Moretti’s editorial is followed by a commentary essay titled ‘The Morphogenetics of a Unitary Language.’ The critical text, constantly referring to the editorial of SPAZIO, deals with the theme of the continuity/discontinuity of architectural language, its rules, and its invariants, over time and styles, in search of a line of coherence between classical, modern, and contemporary languages and expressions. More specifically, Moretti’s theoretical point of view, his idea of ‘universal laws of language’ together with the conceptual categories he proposes, will offer the reader the critical filter through which to read contemporaneity. The chapter is closed by the iconographic documentation containing reproductions of the articles in their original layout, which provides valuable support for researchers all over the world.