From the very first time I passed under the red-black capital ‘A’ above the entrance of the School of Architecture at the Politecnico di Milano, I began confronting the question every architect or student of architecture asks: What is Architecture? Image 1: Main entrance of the School of Architecture, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, IT. Architect: Vittoriano Vigano’ (project/realization: 1970 –…
I argue we cannot understand the meaning of the concepts of place and space, and their impact on our understanding of the nature of reality, without considering the meaning of other basic concepts that are co-implicated with and necessary for understanding the very concepts of place and space. That was particularly evident ever since I introduced Julian Barbour’s scientific history…
By the term ‘spatiophilia’, I present the result of the photographic survey I have been conducting for a couple of years now on how people perceive and use the concepts of space and place with communicative intent in the streets of Milano, Italy. The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space. MICHEL FOUCAULT, Of Other Spaces…
These considerations arose from a recent conversation I had with a colleague architect about the reception of the concept of space in architecture before the modern epoch. I hope they can help avoid possible misinterpretations where, in a previous article — Concepts of Space in Vitruvius —, I discussed the possibility of interpreting space (spatium) in a three-dimensional sense in…
Now what does the word “phusis” say? It says what emerges from itself (for example, the emergence, the blossoming, of a rose), the unfolding that opens itself up, the coming-into-appearance in such unfolding, and holding itself and persisting in appearance—in short, the emerging-abiding sway.[1] Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics. Image 01: ‘Phusis’ – the natural existent which has in itself…