Composing Architecture Through Context, Type and Figure

In my generation, which is no longer so young, a recurring question arises: should we consider ourselves the last architects of the twentieth century or the first of the twenty-first century?
The scenario before us, globalized and worldized, seems entirely disproportionate to the concepts and tools provided to us as somewhat certain and secure during our education. How can we try to adapt them and make them effective in relation to a development (and not necessarily progress) that still appears entirely fluid?
In this scenario, will it become possible and credible to pursue a design research oriented towards knowledge, towards the deepening of the city and its articulation in architecture, as well as the rays of mutual influence along which time has exchanged cultures, from the Mediterranean to the Modern Movement? Will it be possible to derive from this contextualization, a typification, and a figuration of architecture capable of establishing an authoritative and credible dialogue at various levels of demand posed by today's mondialized society?
The following notes aim to offer a generational perspective on the current evolution of architectural composition, which presents numerous uncertainties and, consequently, numerous questions.

"Riccardo Canella offers an empathetic, emotionally resonant, and partisan point of view, yet one that is neither sectarian nor bigoted, navigating through all the critical phases of modern architecture's emancipation. His work suggests that the advent of a self-aware, critical modernity capable of addressing contemporary challenges may not have overcomed, drowned in its own outmoded presumption and failures, but is still yet to arrive" (from the Foreword by Davide Borsa).

Riccardo Canella, graduated from the Faculty of Civil Architecture at the Politecnico of Milano Bovisa, where he began teaching Architectural Composition in 1997, affiliated with the DPA (Dipartimento di Progettazione dell'Architettura). He has been a member of the research group Architettura e Città, until its closure in 2009, the year of the death of its founder Guido Canella. The interests of the research group focused on the figures and experiences of modern and contemporary architecture, the typologies of major collective life activities, the characteristics of settlements, some key figures in 20th-century Italian and international architecture, and the relationship between architecture and structural and cyclical phenomena in society.