One way to track the activity of research of an editorial team with a thirty-year record of activity is through the sequence of issues and titles that have appeared at regular intervals in the finest bookstores and magazine racks. But what should really be celebrated is not so much the quantitative aspect – though it is certainly a respectable figure – but the overall narrative that we can read retrospectively through the satisfaction of qualitative choices. That is the proof that the magazine became what we meant it to be: a place for the study and spread of the ideas and themes that have marked the evolution of our profession from the end of the last millennium and into the beginning of this new one. There is no need of emphasis in detailing the results achieved, but simply the awareness and acknowledgement of fortunate intuitions that positioned Area in a privileged dimension on the international editorial scene. Founded in 1990 by Giovanni Baule as a quarterly reflection on architectural output (4 issues a year), the magazine stepped up the pace after issue no. 24 – when I took responsibility for its management – to become bimonthly, with six issues a year. Long- time subscribers will recall that, from issue no. 42, we acquired a new look, skillfully created by the vision of the late AG Fronzoni, that the magazine has maintained, with only slight variations, ever since. At that time, the magazine’s supporter and publisher Ivo Nardella, with the publishing house of Tecniche Nuove – decided to bring it out monthly and also to add four additional issues a year devoted specifically to the themes of interior decoration and design, just when many prestigious publications devoted to those topics had ceased publication in Italy. It has always been our desire to fill any gaps in our culture and keep our place, through the work of our editorial team, in a dimension of research that can serve to illustrate the disciplinary problems from both the operational and the critical standpoint. There is no doubt that the first years were characterized by the contribution of a scientific committee on which academics representing the top Italian schools specializing in the sector or architectural design participated with enthusiasm. We are grateful to all of them, some of whom are unfortunately no longer with us, also for having supported the idea that the profession in Italy did not need another architectural review specialized in the latest news, so much as a magazine devoted to critical reflection on specific project and cultural themes.

What resulted, with the rather long-winded title of “Area – a Magazine of Architecture and the Art of the Project”, was a sort of “book”, a thematic monograph in the form of “reports” on a work of editorial research that, while focused on architecture, occasionally ventures beyond it into topics or fields of investigation in other disciplines, from art to photography and design.

Each issue, as our readers know well and seem to appreciate, has a title and a theme that is the subject of the studies in progress, a sort of institutional progress report that we feed with our work but from which our “studio and editorial team” have also drawn tremendous benefit and inspiration. Area has been for us a tool of in-depth study and knowledge that has enabled us to stay in touch with the leading figures in the international world of architecture, with numerous companies producing elements and components for the construction business, and companies that in turn are also centers of study and research that we have visited and tried to involve in our work and in our projects. They have contributed in many ways to satisfy our curiosity about the materials, which are, for us, often the very essence of the projects.

Considering that architectural professionals are the main readers of our magazine – and that we ourselves are proud to be members of that same community – it is clear that the success that the magazine enjoys today is due in part to its autobiographical character and in part to its content of shared experience, because it if interests and involves, as architects, those who “produce it”, it necessarily interests all those who belong to that community, for whom it is their business and often the entire focus of their life.

With the monographic issues devoted to the work of their authors, we have had the honor to meet some of the most acclaimed architects at the international level and probe the depths of their thinking and work, and with our issues devoted to specific cities we have studied highly significant contexts, interesting for the evolution of the most stimulating contemporary urban environments, as we try to understand the role that develops in each case between architecture and the city. But it is the work of architecture that is the main focus of the magazine, reflected in its editorial policy which has explored the most controversial professional aspects and issues that the complexity of modern life has created for those who are tasked with designing its settings.

When topics are particularly thorny, we keep going back to them, laying out the arguments from various points of view, convinced that the more we study certain issues the more likely we are to zero in on feasible solutions. Some of the issues are cultural, some technical, like climate change and occupation of the land. We examine the need to build on soil already subject to construction; we need to discuss the pros and cons of reuse, restoration, simplicity and the use of poor materials and available technologies, the respect that should be shown to different cultural identities, and so on, at length. A glance at the list of titles of recent issues gives an idea of the work, which is largely interpretative and narrative.

We look for stories and compare them with other points of view and contrasting positions, but we also participate in and report on exhibitions, conferences, seminars and events that enrich the content and offering of the magazine, as we have always done. Our issue no. 200 give us the opportunity for a simple mathematical game based on 10 questions asked of 20 architects from different generations and cultural contexts, authors who have written and published, over the years, works and texts in Area, a significant sampling among the many leading players who have animated the world of the arts of the project in Italy and abroad. Reading their answers may not entirely represent the current state of the art but it can give us a sufficiently varied overview of current thinking in general, and enable those who deal every day with the unknowns of the project to understand the importance of their work and of their daily activities.

That is exactly what a magazine is supposed to do.

Download cover