Ensamble Studio, Hemeroscopium house, Lasrozas-Madrid, Spain 2008 – photo by Roland Halbe
Architectural planning and the subsequent construction bears witness to an own interior beauty – the most appropriate term would however be felicity – which must not be confused with the pursuit, as futile as it is fragile, of codified aesthetic and formal values. Conceived beyond a mere technical practice, architectural planning always reveals an intellectual activity, a genesis that is the consequence of an interior labour which produces, with the same conditions – site, program, budget – results and in other words architectures that always differ as the author, and in other words the interpreter of the premises, changes. Architecture, and thus the project which prefigures it, coincides – like all humanistic activities – with the solution of an equation which not only has infinite variables but which allows infinite results, that are sometimes completely contrasting yet equally correct and legitimate, even amazing. This is the inner beauty of architecture, that intimate marvel which characterizes all arts of composition, of com-posing, putting together elements, be they notes, colours, letters, bricks, whose combination generates an idea which may be conveyed regardless of whether it is perceived as image, sound or text. The famous, somewhat trite but still very topical indication proposed by Paul Valéry in the early years of last century on speaking architecture – which communicates – shifts the terms of the aesthetic research from appearing to being. A change in values which appears decisive, because it requires a dialogue between differences, where the exchange assumes a significance that is ethical, and in the final analysis aesthetic, capable of opposing the rampant standardization of a readymade, global, international beauty independent of contents, places and people. By choosing this path, design frees itself from ”fashions” and “manners”, returning to that “interior beauty” which, having discarded the barren assumption according to which “form follows function”, may appreciate and express the present-day requirement according to which “form follows the contents”, the ideas and suggestions proposed and interpreted by a “narrating I”, consciously or unconsciously perceived by the public. Consequently, living does not mean to suffer, passively and uncritically, the hypothesis of living inside containers that are more or less formally up-to-date and suited for their use, but rather to enjoy an experience which brings to mind memories and knowledge, as when one reads a book, watches a movie, listens to music. The beauty of building, analogously to the beauty of writing, of composing music or performing any artistic activity, is consolidated and manifested in the opportunity of being able to use any human means of expression to communicate and exchange knowledge, share notions and emotions. To analyse and meditate on this “inner beauty of building”, in addition to presenting a reasoned selection of works that the editors consider to be examples express, with different accents and manners, of this idea of architectural “felicity”, Area has asked various authors to make a free reflection on the theme: Massimo Majowiecki, designer, builder and professor at the University Institute of Architecture of Venice, expert in structures and themes related to building; Spyros Papapetros, critic and professor at Princenton University and Christian De Portzamparc, architect, interviewed just after the completion of his last important work: La Cidade da Musica in Rio De Janeiro.
The results of these synthetic “incursions”, which are obviously fragmentary and partial, reveal unexpected and paradoxical visions which range from the assertion of a structural and constructive incoherence to an analysis of the role of the facade and the rear in modern architecture, to the relationship between shell and internal space interpreted by the French architect in his gigantic work in Rio.
