ABSTRACT
Architectural discourse has often appropriated the dialogical construct to introduce and promote new ideas that would otherwise be uneasily accepted or polemically rejected. Oscillating between a distributed and a disguised authorship, the construction of a non-dialectical dialogue in architecture is itself a project: it negotiates and produces a project that does not aim to fulfil a predefined solution or to achieve a satisfactory synthesis. The Parere is set to continue Piranesi’s defence of the superiority of Roman architectural “invention” over the architecture of ancient Greece, but it does much more. Architecture, argues Piranesi through Didascalo, must be designed to change; otherwise, it can only repeat itself. In words and graphic provocation, Piranesi’s dialogue establishes the autonomy of architecture. The excessive use of ornamentation proclaims a non-referentiality that dismisses a source, an external referent and a sole origin. As operation of manipulation of itself and on itself, architecture becomes autonomous.
