2024-01-08 12:27:35
by STEFANO BUCCI
Art, poetry and the urban planning project in Arabia: «An inhabited monolith 170 kilometers long». The architect (born January 9, 1944) speaks, who wanted to be a man of letters, then a philosopher, finally a painter
What painter (or what poet) would Massimiliano Fuksas have been if he had not become an architect? Definitely a surrealist, a dada, “because I love everything that uses the imagination well.” What better way, then, to celebrate his eightieth birthday (he was born in Rome on 9 January 1944) than with the story of his next project, the one for the three and a half kilometers of The Line, the 170 kilometer long linear city and 200 meters wide within the Neom area (in the province of Tabuk, in the north of Saudi Arabia) which will host over 9 million residents without conventional cars by 2030, with all basic services at a distance of 5 minutes on foot.
The Fuksas studio, the only Italian studio, will design three modules of this new city (his wife Doriana will be the only female architect) which is decidedly surrealist given that “the surrealists – according to Treccani – represent things by giving them a decidedly unreal external appearance” . Just like Fuksas, author of imaginative projects (starting with sketches, drawings, renderings) «which – explains the architect himself – use technology only as a tool of the trade», projects that have made history (and often controversy) such as the Rho-Pero Fair (Milan, 2005), the «La Nuvola» Conference Center in Rome (2008-2018), the Shenzhen-Bao’an Airport in China (2010-2023), the Piedmont Region Skyscraper in Turin (2021-2022).
«Mine won’t be a special birthday, I simply don’t want to celebrate it, because it would be like saying “I have to start fixing things” – he specifies at the beginning of the conversation -, because I’ve never taken stock and because I can’t think about what I could do and I didn’t do, but rather what I will still do.” Eighty years? «Quoting my friend Giorgio Armani I could say: “What a shame!”, I still feel so young». But the memories, however, do not seem to disturb Massimiliano Fuksas at all, on the contrary they seem to please him a lot: «In elementary school I had Giorgio Caproni as a teacher, in high school Alberto Asor Rosa was my Italian teacher, my love for everything it’s imaginative, perhaps it comes from them; then at sixteen, thanks to Giorgio Castelfranco, I went to work in Giorgio de Chirico’s studio in Piazza di Spagna and painting was added to literature, philosophy and poetry, even if in the master’s studio I mostly tidied up”. Fuksas repeats that he didn’t really want to be an architect, but (precisely) a poet: «I still remember when I told my mother: “I can already see the failure behind you. No!”. The philosopher? “No!”. Then I thought of the first manual trade that came to mind; the architect? A “yes” without particular enthusiasm was his response. In short, it was all a coincidence.”
What memory do you have of your mother Tersilia? «A very beautiful woman, but very tough, in none of the many portraits you have taken of her does she smile». And what about his father Raimondas, a Lithuanian doctor of Jewish religion who emigrated to Rome between the two wars? «I love him, perhaps because he died in 1950, when I was only six years old. Thus, as Sartre wrote, I did not have to suffer the Oedipus complex” (today Fuksas has dual citizenship, Italian and Lithuanian).
The happiness of the Fuksas family was interrupted by the racial laws, the war and “the aberrations of fascism” and after the death of his father Massimiliano went to live with his mother in Gratz, Austria, at his maternal grandmother’s house, and then returned to Rome , Gianicolo area. Today, how much does family matter to him: «Doriana (his second wife, ed.) is everything to me, she gave me the courage that I didn’t have, a courage that I seemed to have when I was constantly looking for a fight. And Doriana also gave me certainties, security, harmony.” The two daughters (Elisa, director, and Lavinia, jewelery designer) you had with Doriana? “They are extraordinary, I love them, I am their victim.”
Among the beloved (but also often betrayed) masters Fuksas cites (in no particular order) Bruno Zevi, Kahn, Wright, Le Corbusier, Prouvé, Gio Ponti, Libera, Terragni, Piacentini. But what is architecture for Fuksas? “Curiosity. I am always fascinated by the idea of learning about new realities, for me the architect must have all of humanity as his first client.” Among Fuksas’s most recent proposals (“I don’t know how many projects I’ve done, 500, 600, more, I’ve never counted”) there is a new plan for the house, “the first since Fanfani’s time”.
You have always been considered a man of the left… «It’s an imprinting that I carry with me with great pride». Her relations with the right now in government: “I’ll try to understand.” According to Fuksas, who defines himself as a secular non-believer and who has repeatedly created architecture in Israel, what are the reasons for this new war: “We have the wrong prime minister, Netanyahu is not up to par with Peres or Sharon.”
But won’t Massimiliano Fuksas really celebrate his eightieth birthday? «In the end I will celebrate them, but at home, alone with my family, when I finish working in the studio». Perhaps thinking back to the utopia of The Line: «A monolith with mirrored walls – he says proudly – which will contain everything you can imagine in a city of the future». More surrealist than that.
January 8, 2024 (changed January 8, 2024 | 11:25)
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