In 1982, Christopher Alexander and Peter Eisenman, renowned architects and theorists, engaged in a witty, biting, and ironic debate on harmony in architecture — ‘Contrasting Concepts of Harmony in Architecture’ — at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. The debate was published in the Italian magazine Lotus International n° 40 (1983), and later reprinted in Studio Works 7, by the…
… 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 This article explores how the concepts of space and place shaped…
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 –…
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…