This edition of the magazine, dedicated like its predecessor to a review of Italian projects, explores the relationship between architects and builders. The protraction, for over one year now, of the health crisis and its effects on both society and economics, as well as changes in how we experience domestic and urban space, together with the opportunities destined to come in the wake of the Next Generation EU plan, require a serious and culturally broader reflection on the notion of design and trasformation of territories. The European Community plans to channel a series of funding initiatives into the development of the city along three primary axes: digitalisation, ecological transition and reducing inequalities. It is an occasion that will see cities play a strategic role as tools for achieving objectives of environmental and social sustainability.
We cannot waste these chances because we are unprepared or worse yet each seeking to ensure funding solely for his or her own category. This will be a time for constructing a broader vision of the future of our cities through an organic system and by pursuing interventions of transformation and the promotion of projects that are no longer only speculative but truly centred on quality and the common good. It is an occasion for relaunching the value of architecture by approving a law regulating its quality. This law, pursued for years and once again at the heart of debate thanks to initiatives proposed by various subjects (CNAPPC, MiBACT, In/Arch), can restore the focus, above all for public works, on the value of design and not only on the management of a process that, as important as it may be, cannot be mistaken for the true goal. To reach these objectives we must call on the sensibility of the other category involved in these processes – builders – in order to jointly wage a cultural battle that sees architecture as an added value and not simply an obstacle to timing and financial results. The projects presented in this issue, together with the winners and honourable mentions from the 2020 edition of the InArch/ANCE awards, present an appeal for the new synergies between architects and builders. It is from shared cultural values, also with the power to constitute a driving force for the economy, that the world of architects and the system of builders must set out together to restore actions intent on transforming our habitat to coherent trajectories of development, respectful of people and the environment.