from Michelangelo to Mies
Sculpture is “that which is made by the force of subtraction”, said Michelangelo. And Vasari added, “...the superfluous from the matter”. Four centuries later, Mies van der Rohe's “less is more” echoes the same spirit (and not by chance—his father was a stonemason).
To subtract not to reach the essential, but the essence itself, that “less” which allows us to hear the spaces, and the light that silently washes over them.
It is in the lightness of that silence that every sound gains its deepest meaning.
Sculpture is “that which is made by the force of subtraction”, said Michelangelo. And Vasari added, “...the superfluous from the matter”. Four centuries later, Mies van der Rohe's “less is more” echoes the same spirit (and not by chance—his father was a stonemason).
To subtract not to reach the essential, but the essence itself, that “less” which allows us to hear the spaces, and the light that silently washes over them.
It is in the lightness of that silence that every sound gains its deepest meaning.
bringing into the world
A built thing lives on its own. An imagined one is but a reflection...
Perhaps Paulo Mendes da Rocha was right when he said that we can only imagine what we know how to build.
To build is, quite literally, to “bring into the world”: to give life to something that, from that moment on, will exist beyond us, intertwining with the lives of others.
One must know clearly what to build… and how to build it.
A built thing lives on its own. An imagined one is but a reflection...
Perhaps Paulo Mendes da Rocha was right when he said that we can only imagine what we know how to build.
To build is, quite literally, to “bring into the world”: to give life to something that, from that moment on, will exist beyond us, intertwining with the lives of others.
One must know clearly what to build… and how to build it.
densities
“But if in your thought you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the others, and let the present embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.” — Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
Waiting reveals time, makes it felt—tangible, almost “physical” (we count our breaths, our heartbeats, our steps, the hours, the minutes…).
And yet at the same time, it dissolves time, drawing the future into the present moment, condensing all the moments yet to come into each passing second.
“But if in your thought you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the others, and let the present embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.” — Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
Waiting reveals time, makes it felt—tangible, almost “physical” (we count our breaths, our heartbeats, our steps, the hours, the minutes…).
And yet at the same time, it dissolves time, drawing the future into the present moment, condensing all the moments yet to come into each passing second.
separation
I have never believed in the supposed dualisms between aesthetics and functionality, meaning and purpose, art and engineering.
The creative act must draw from every possible impulse, so that the destiny of things may take shape.
I have never believed in the supposed dualisms between aesthetics and functionality, meaning and purpose, art and engineering.
The creative act must draw from every possible impulse, so that the destiny of things may take shape.
on (meta)physical perception
The Obvious is merely a crystallization of the Surprising. The loss of its fluid state.
Not only in architecture.
The Obvious is merely a crystallization of the Surprising. The loss of its fluid state.
Not only in architecture.
correspondences
A long time ago, my younger daughter — she couldn’t have been more than ten — left a post-it note on my desk:
“Wings are for the rehabilitation of dreams, but
dreams are for the rehabilitation of wings.”
I’m not sure she fully understood what she had written.
But to me, it has always embodied the mutual — and truly rehabilitating — relationship between end and means, feeling and reason, hope and determination, the creative act and the technical tool.
A relationship I believe lies at the heart of that “wise, rigorous and magnificent game” that is architecture.
That post-it has never left my desk.
A long time ago, my younger daughter — she couldn’t have been more than ten — left a post-it note on my desk:
“Wings are for the rehabilitation of dreams, but
dreams are for the rehabilitation of wings.”
I’m not sure she fully understood what she had written.
But to me, it has always embodied the mutual — and truly rehabilitating — relationship between end and means, feeling and reason, hope and determination, the creative act and the technical tool.
A relationship I believe lies at the heart of that “wise, rigorous and magnificent game” that is architecture.
That post-it has never left my desk.
custodians or owners
“I am a custodian, not an owner. I must strive to be worthy of the task I have been set,” says Lord Crawley in the renowned British series Downton Abbey.
Just so: more custodians than owners, if we truly wish to be worthy of our role.
Because to care for something does not merely mean to preserve it, but to protect its value through change.
“I am a custodian, not an owner. I must strive to be worthy of the task I have been set,” says Lord Crawley in the renowned British series Downton Abbey.
Just so: more custodians than owners, if we truly wish to be worthy of our role.
Because to care for something does not merely mean to preserve it, but to protect its value through change.
less is more (the lesson of nature)
We should be able to structure space starting from a minimal amount of matter: the complexity of information, relationships, and connections created does not depend on the quantity of materials used, but on how they are organized into meaningful systems. Less matter, less resources, less mass, less weight, less excavation = more freedom, more interaction, more responsiveness, more availability, more communication.
An atom is almost entirely made of empty space, and what remains escapes any selective definition: matter, energy, information? Probably all three at once. Yet the two great conceptual revolutions of the 20th century — quantum mechanics and relativity — have so far only grazed the minds of us architects!
We should be able to structure space starting from a minimal amount of matter: the complexity of information, relationships, and connections created does not depend on the quantity of materials used, but on how they are organized into meaningful systems. Less matter, less resources, less mass, less weight, less excavation = more freedom, more interaction, more responsiveness, more availability, more communication.
An atom is almost entirely made of empty space, and what remains escapes any selective definition: matter, energy, information? Probably all three at once. Yet the two great conceptual revolutions of the 20th century — quantum mechanics and relativity — have so far only grazed the minds of us architects!
figure and ground
We are in constant need of reconciling the sharpness of detail with the elusiveness of memory, the measured rhythm of time and space with horizons of unreachable distance.
So that the eye never forgets how to look beyond...
We are in constant need of reconciling the sharpness of detail with the elusiveness of memory, the measured rhythm of time and space with horizons of unreachable distance.
So that the eye never forgets how to look beyond...
dwelling poetically
“Mortals dwell when they save the earth (…). To save is not merely to rescue from danger, but to free something, to let it come into its own essence. He who saves the earth does not make it his possession, nor turn it into a slave (…).
Mortals dwell when they receive the sky as sky.
To the sun and the moon, they grant their course; to the stars, their path; to the seasons, their blessings and their harshness. They do not turn night into day, nor make of day a breathless race.”
Martin Heidegger, from Building, Dwelling, Thinking
“Mortals dwell when they save the earth (…). To save is not merely to rescue from danger, but to free something, to let it come into its own essence. He who saves the earth does not make it his possession, nor turn it into a slave (…).
Mortals dwell when they receive the sky as sky.
To the sun and the moon, they grant their course; to the stars, their path; to the seasons, their blessings and their harshness. They do not turn night into day, nor make of day a breathless race.”
Martin Heidegger, from Building, Dwelling, Thinking
sensory alchemy
The seashore: a shifting threshold where wind, sea, and sand condense the three states of matter, expressed through their most unstable form.
Pure sensory alchemy!
The seashore: a shifting threshold where wind, sea, and sand condense the three states of matter, expressed through their most unstable form.
Pure sensory alchemy!
on incorporeality
Architecture—like our world of everyday objects, work tools, and means of connecting with reality—is undergoing a process of dematerialization. As its "bodily mass" progressively diminishes, there is a corresponding shift toward the use of energy, required to manage both its functional processes—sometimes true transformations of matter—and its modes of interaction. This evolution, at times disorienting, moves our inquiry from the intrinsic value of the object (its craftsmanship, materials, fabrication, form) to its existence in terms of performance and meaning.
The object frees its form from internal functional constraints and redirects it toward interaction with the outside—spatial, emotional, tactile, symbolic.
Incorporeality is also at the heart of contemporary art’s fate—an anticipatory one—which has long grappled with questions of time and the lasting value of installations or performances, as opposed to the concreteness of object-based artworks.
Architecture—like our world of everyday objects, work tools, and means of connecting with reality—is undergoing a process of dematerialization. As its "bodily mass" progressively diminishes, there is a corresponding shift toward the use of energy, required to manage both its functional processes—sometimes true transformations of matter—and its modes of interaction. This evolution, at times disorienting, moves our inquiry from the intrinsic value of the object (its craftsmanship, materials, fabrication, form) to its existence in terms of performance and meaning.
The object frees its form from internal functional constraints and redirects it toward interaction with the outside—spatial, emotional, tactile, symbolic.
Incorporeality is also at the heart of contemporary art’s fate—an anticipatory one—which has long grappled with questions of time and the lasting value of installations or performances, as opposed to the concreteness of object-based artworks.
the puddle of water
“And a puddle of water no deeper than a finger / lying among the stones of the street’s paving / offers an underground view just as deep / as the vast abyss of the sky opens up from the earth: / so that it seems you are looking down at the clouds, and seeing the sky there / bodies wondrously removed from the heavens, here on earth.”
Titus Lucretius Carus – De rerum natura, Book IV, Sensation and Thought, The Puddle of Water, vv. 414–419
“And a puddle of water no deeper than a finger / lying among the stones of the street’s paving / offers an underground view just as deep / as the vast abyss of the sky opens up from the earth: / so that it seems you are looking down at the clouds, and seeing the sky there / bodies wondrously removed from the heavens, here on earth.”
Titus Lucretius Carus – De rerum natura, Book IV, Sensation and Thought, The Puddle of Water, vv. 414–419
rootedness
The act of building, like planting a tree, begins with an excavation into the ground.
Of this hollow, of this “moment of genesis,” the house will retain a memory through the cellar (the unconscious of the house, as Jung puts it). Beneath the cellar, in contact with earth and stone, lie the foundations — the roots of the house. They establish the indivisibility of its bond with the place, its permanence, and – in a way – its dependence on the earth.
By rooting itself in the ground, the house seeks to become part of the place, to fill — through its very existence — the void created by the digging of its foundations.
The act of building, like planting a tree, begins with an excavation into the ground.
Of this hollow, of this “moment of genesis,” the house will retain a memory through the cellar (the unconscious of the house, as Jung puts it). Beneath the cellar, in contact with earth and stone, lie the foundations — the roots of the house. They establish the indivisibility of its bond with the place, its permanence, and – in a way – its dependence on the earth.
By rooting itself in the ground, the house seeks to become part of the place, to fill — through its very existence — the void created by the digging of its foundations.
nature and technology
The most advanced technology is also the least intrusive: the more it evolves, the closer artifice comes to nature.
The most advanced technology is also the least intrusive: the more it evolves, the closer artifice comes to nature.
a "gentle" technique
If Augustus boasted of having found a Rome made of bricks and leaving it in marble, our dream as architects today is to recover, in all places, the human scale. By liberating them – and liberating ourselves – from the subjugation to the dictates of technique, and using it to enhance the quality of our lives.
From a harsh technique, opposed to our instincts and desires, to a gentle technique, one that can instead accommodate them.
If Augustus boasted of having found a Rome made of bricks and leaving it in marble, our dream as architects today is to recover, in all places, the human scale. By liberating them – and liberating ourselves – from the subjugation to the dictates of technique, and using it to enhance the quality of our lives.
From a harsh technique, opposed to our instincts and desires, to a gentle technique, one that can instead accommodate them.