Page 8 - Exploring Taste Magazine N.2

EXPLORING TASTE—SANTA MARGHERITA GRUPPO VINICOLO

e owe a lot to the people who work hard to increase the quality of what
they make and what they do. It is thanks to them that three virtuous
W circles come to life. The f rst is the one that develops between the de-
mand for quality and the of er of quality, two elements that foster one another with
continuous and multiple ef ects. The second virtuous circle consists in the claim
of our civilization around the world, at least in terms of lifestyle and consumption.
This leads to the ability of being a benchmark for other people’s choices and thus to
the ability to communicate, which in turn leads to the desire to communicate with
the world. The third one lies in increasing the level of professional quality and of
erudition and in continually improving the scientif c and technical knowledge on
activities formerly considered traditional. We simply have to look at how dif erent
a modern winery is (in terms of the quality of the people who work there and the
quality of the procedures) from what was once called agriculture (and, in the Santa
Margherita Gruppo Vinicolo headquarters, I am a direct witness of this). The word
that best represents this phenomenon is “vitality”.

THE VIRTUOUS CIRCLE OF QUALITY

by PAOLO BARATTA President of La Biennale di Venezia

his year it is the turn of Biennial Architecture. We pooled our energies
and resources in order to increase its quality and establish it as the
T most important architecture exhibition in the world – and we have
succeeded. With Biennial Architecture we want to encourage attention and vi-
tality towards the quality of the space we live in, beyond the world of consumer
goods. We are convinced that no community lifestyle is fulfilled if it does not
show a strong interest in the quality of public and private spaces and an adequate
capability of ruling them, if it does not express a higher desire for the quality
of “inhabiting”, not just our homes but the world as the space we live in (city,
countryside, territory, landscape, etc..). In all these years, it has appeared to us
that architecture (in its wider definition) and civil society are disconnected when
it comes to the ever-growing demand for quality for private and personal con-
sumption. And we cannot settle for continuously evoking, with over-indulged
satisfaction, our past and the beauty that we inherited. Without architecture each
and every one of us is poorer and less believable. “Vitality” cannot be confined
to sectors, it must be present in every “lifestyle” display in the society we live in.
With the Biennial Architecture we will find spurs that will inspire us to think,
to reflect on different possibilities, to not settle for solutions that show lack of
thought and inadequate public capability. In this case too, it is necessary to exe-
cute “vital virtuous circles”.

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