Contributions   Conference session 1   Conference session 2   Conference session 3   Abstracts' submission The house as place of life and culture Chairman: Adriano Cornoldi Adriano Cornoldi is Professor in "Composizione Architettonica" at the IUAV, (Venezia) and Visiting Professor in Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. He is author of L'architettura della casa (Roma, 1998), L'architettura dei luoghi domestici (Milano, 1994).   As Adolf Loos pointed out clearly once and for all, the house is not a question of art; contrary to art, it introduces implications in human behaviour and therefore in ethics. The house is then to be considered as a place of events rather than an (artistic) event, a container rather than an object. This is true especially of the architect's own house, because here, more than in any other place, being fully involved in his own existence without any danger (or alibi, or excuse) of compromises given by the client, the designer is challenged to express at the highest degree a philosophy of life: his way of life both in theory and praxis. The architects' own houses give the best opportunity to conceive new figures for the idea of home (i. e. see Olbrich, Horta, Rietveld, van Doesburg, Melnikov, Prouvé, Celsing), to experiment with new scales and kinds of spaces for everyday life (Muthesius, Le Corbusier, Asplund, Bill, Markelius, Ridolfi), to test new devices for comfort and efficiency (Behrens, Taut, Figini, Erskine, van Eyck, Utzon), to arrange new ways of placing furniture and objects (Baillie Scott, Mackintosh, Berlage, Mendelsohn, Albini, Gardella, Mollino), to establish the nature of dwellings - no matter whether rich or poor - as the realm of human being. As the most qualified thinkers remind us, an appropriate scale makes a building become a house (Bachelard), the quality of furniture says how much it is inhabitable (Freud), objects show its capability to connect man to the world (Heidegger), inhabitants are its real content (Rybczynski). A house without domestic scale, without a clear offer of well-being, without a full set of pieces of furniture and objects, without pictures showing how people enjoy it, is not a house. Furthermore, architects' own houses may express special potentialities in providing a new image of urban scenery (Guimard, Basile, Mallet-Stevens), or a new idea of economic (Perret) or social involvement (Voysey, Ginsburg, Scharoun). Finally, the continuous presence of the architect as inhabitant makes his house become a work in progress: a question of process and life, that is real architecture, versus a question of mere design. It is not by chance that several architects' own houses - such as Saarinen-Gesellius-Lindgren's, Horta's, Gray's, Goldfinger's, Plecnik's (and soon Aalto's will follow) - have become museums: important documents of life, ideas and habits, relevant in contributing, through their strong identity, to the development of a European culture.