Welcome David Chipperfield

With the arrival of the acclaimed British architect as guest editor for 2020, Domus shows it is at the centre of the global debate around architecture and reaffirms the key role of the designer in our time

- Massimo Valz-Gris

The arrival of David Chipperfield as the Domus guest editor for 2020 confirms the magazine’s capacity for renewal by attracting, now as in the past, top exponents in architecture and design who willingly share with us a voyage of knowledge that is quite a challenge. It’s an ambitious, complex — but as we see it — inevitable challenge. Indeed, we live in an era where profound changes happen on a daily basis. In order to face them, we need vision, perspective and lexicon. When we celebrated our 90th anniversary, we decided to move toward our first 100 years with a project called 10 x 10 x 10. Each year for 10 years, we would present 10 issues of a unique, different and original Domus. After the first two cycles — under Michele De Lucchi for 2018 and Winy Maas, from whom we take leave and thank for having accompanied us for 2019 — we are honoured to host David Chipperfield.

British by birth, but cosmopolitan in his vocation and work, Chipperfield seeks architecture that is not a self-congratulatory concept detached from the world and its problems, but a dialogue with the material surroundings, reality and its incongruences.

Almost a foreigner in his native country of England where he trained academically and culturally, he found first in Japan, then in Europe (especially Italy and Germany), and then the rest of the world support and success for a type of architectural design that immediately appeared to be congenial to our times, to the issues of the postmodern city and its forlorn inhabitants, to the need to take on the delicate management of the past, memory and heritage.

This is thanks to Chipperfield’s elegant yet obsessive search for balance between innovation and conservation; the individual and society; personal identity and national identity.