Permanent versus Temporary: A Struggle within City Transformations

Abstract

Permanence and temporariness are two counterposed terms that characterise architecture and urban transformations. This essay intends to address some of the many interpretations of this binomial: from the role of urban permanence and the temporaneity of use, as addressed by Aldo Rossi in The Architecture of the City, to the concept of the temporary duration of the life of buildings and the concept of conservation, presented by Rem Koolhaas with his research Cronocaos. Next, the fundamental role of unplanned areas is analysed as a place for experimentation of the temporary, as a means to test future scenarios, taking as an example the survey conducted by the Urban Catalyst group, and then concluding with the experience of the IPA—Institute for Public Architecture, in the desire to reduce the transitory nature of living, avoiding gentrification and offering a permanent living condition to the most disadvantaged social groups. The examples presented are intended to illustrate how architecture and the city often live in the balance between permanence and transience, that there are no absolute instances and that only a well-structured architecture, on a formal basis that refers to a collective memory, can embrace the continuous transience of function and always remain vital within the urban organism.