This article is about a distinction we often tend to overlook: the difference between ‘place’ and ‘site’. Even if the two terms are both used to denote a territory or a piece of land, I hold – as others have done before me –[1] there is a reduction of meaning in the passage from ‘place’ to ‘site’: a reduction which…
In 1982 renowned architects and theorists Christopher Alexander and Peter Eisenman met at Harvard University — Graduate School of Design — to debate on the concept of harmony in architecture: ‘Contrasting Concepts of Harmony in Architecture’ was the argument of that witty, biting, and ironic debate, which was originally published in the magazine Lotus International n° 40 (1983), and later…
… it is helpful to think of architectures as ‘archi-textures’, to treat each monument or building, viewed in its surroundings and context, in the populated area and associated networks in which it is set down, as part of a particular production of space. HENRY LEFEBVRE, The Production of Space In this article, I will show how the concepts of space…
From the very first time I passed under the red-black capital ‘A’ placed on the main façade just above the entrance of the School of Architecture, at the Politecnico di Milano, I seriously tried to answer ‘The Question’ every architect or student of architecture wants to figure out: ‘What is Architecture?’ Before getting enrolled at the Politecnico, when I was…
By the term spatiophilia, I present the result of the photographic survey I have been conducting for a couple of years now on how the concepts of space and place are perceived and used with communicative intent through the streets of Milano, Italy. The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space. MICHEL FOUCAULT, Of Other Spaces…