Special issue
Edited by Maurizio Cohen

End of 2013. The Master programme in architecture at the School of Architecture La Cambre Horta includes a set of elective courses, among which some are labelled to the "History, Theory, Criticism" area. Within this frame, the students were proposed to conduct interviews with [Belgian] architects chosen among those who started working in the nineteen fifties. The initial idea is to confront the younger generation with a little-known era and to question the practices, ambitions, successes and disappointments of past decades, as well as the professional paths, theoretical and sometimes more ordinary cultural and human concerns. At the core of the interviews, the students attempt to tell the stories of these architects, favouring a narrative approach but still singling out the choices, attitudes and opinions on architecture of the interviewees. At the same time, the personal narratives and retrospective gaze of each interviewee is left free to flow.