The Belly of Architecture (Space and Landscape) - Changing ...

2^ BIENAL DE CANARIAS
The Belly of Architecture (Space and Landscape)
Renato Bocchi – Università Iuav di Venezia
Luigi Moretti - Spazio

Form (object) vs Space
Constantin Brancusi,
Beginning of the World
Arnaldo Pomodoro,
Sfera
Ludovico Quaroni, Chiesa Madre di Gibellina Kengo Kuma, Water/Glass House

“Los jardines zen abren un espacio de percepcion.
Lo mas importante es el tiempo en un espacio, y tu
movimiento a través de él: es un tiempo fisico. (...)
Lo que me interesa mas en un paisaje es el
alzado, qué sucede fisicamente cuando el alzado
varìa y no hay horizonte para orientarse, ni plano
alguno. Como entrar en ese paisaje, resumirlo en
n volumen y abarcarlo? Como conseguir que
moverse y mirar sean el contenido de la obra?(…)
En cualquier caso, la percepcion se basa en el
tiempo, el movimiento y la meditacion. Los jardines
japoneses reflejan el concepto de uji, o “sertiempo”,
en el cual las experiencias de espacio y
tiempo son inseparables y fluidas. Lo vacìo y lo
sòlido se consideran uno y se engloban el
concepto ma, que tambien se puede entender
como el espacio entre dos puntos, o como el
silencio entre dos sonidos, es decir, que el
concepto ma reconoce el espacio y el tiempo
como sustancia. La relacion entre elementos se
define por la distancia entre ellos: lo vacio y lo
solido se miden de igual forma (…) De mi
experiencia de los jardines zen brotò la necesidad
de aproximarme a un paisaje en terminos de
totalidad, cuya organizacion se basa en la idea de
que el espectador està constantemente en
movimiento. El problema ya no era como colocar
un objeto autonomo en un terreno, sino como
llegar a ver cosas entre cosas.”
Richard Serra and the Zen Garden

“Two people walking the distance of the field opposite one another, attempting to keep each other in view despite the curvature of the land,
would mutually determine a topological definition of the space (…). The horizon of the work was established by the possibilities of maintaining
this mutual viewpoint” (R.Serra, Shift).

Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao

Lo Profundo es el Aire XVI, 1996
Eduardo Chillida: Hollow Space and the Concept of Limit
Elogio de la Luz XX, 1990
“El espacio? Podria compararlo con el halito que hace hincharse y volver a contraerse a las formas, que abre en ellas el espacio de la vision.
Para mi no se trata de algo abstracto, sino de una realidad tan corporal como la del volumen que lo abarca”
(Eduardo Chillida, 1991)

Montaña Tindaya, Fuerteventura 1997

Elogio del Horizonte, Gijon 1990

Montaña Tindaya,
Fuerteventura 1997

“La forma deriva espontaneamente de las necesidades de ese spacio, que se construye su morada como el animal que
elige su caparazòn. Al igual que este animal, yo soy tambien el arquitecto del vacio”
(Eduardo Chillida, 1981)
Lo Profundo es el Aire VIII, 1989 Lo Profundo es el Aire IX, 1989

Peine del Viento, San Sebastian 1979
sostituire

Giuseppe Penone: Respirar la Sombra
“La obra està proyectada hacia el futuro, està ligada al crecimiento del arbol, a su existencia.
La voluntad de una relacion paritaria entre mi persona y las cosas es el origen de mi trabajo.
El hombre no es espectador o actor sino simplemente naturaleza.”
ART AND NATURE: IDENTIFICATION OF MAN WITH
NATURE

“La dimension de una obra de arte serà siempre a medida de los sentidos.
Arbol diapason; la oreja apoyada en el tronco de un arbol para oir sus años de crecimiento, para oir el rumor del viento que se
desliza en las ramas, en el tronco, en las raices hasta dentro de la tierra.
Cada especie de arbol un sonido, cada dia del arbol un sonido diverso.”
ART AND THE SENSES: THINKING AND UNDERSTANDING WITH OUR BODY

“Tocar, entender una forma, un objeto, es como cubrirlo de huellas.
Se puede decir “posar la mirada” pero solo despues de haber posado las manos se posa la mirada y la mirada regoge, decifra la
forma y la ve con las huellas de las manos.
Es una corteza humanizada, es una corteza cultural, una envoltura de conocimiento, una piel hecha de huellas, una envoltura similar
a la piel mudada de la serpiente.
Envolver, contener, llenar, adherir, adaptarse, acostarse, escurrir…
son acciones especificas de los fluidos pero son tambien las condiciones necesarias para la lectura tactil del ambiente.
La serpiente: el suyo es un continuo adherirse a las cosas; todo su cuerpo participa en la lectura tactil de la realidad que la rodea.”
THE TACTILE GAZE

“La condicion del sueño es la ceguera. Se imagina mejor con los jos cerrados. La luz invade la cabeza. Con los ojos abiertos se
absorbe la luz. Con los ojos cerrados se proyectan las imagenes de nuestro pensamiento sobre la boveda craneal, sobre el interior
de la piel que se vuelve frontera, division, definicion del cuerpo y contenedor de nuestro pensamiento.
El pàrpado separa el tacto de la vista.
La vista del ciego, el oido del sordo, es la memoria”.
THE “BRAILLE” SCULPTURE

“La piel es limite, frontera, realidad de division.
Reflejar la vision, el campo visual. Interrumpir la vista, reflejar las imagenes que el ojo deberia ver; absorber es reflejar la vision.
Los parpados cerrados, la exacta definicion de los limites y del espacio del pensamiento, reflejan la noticia del proprio cuerpo en el
espacio.
Ver a través de los parpados cerrados.”
THE SKIN AND EYE AS LIMIT AND INTERFACE WITH THE WORLD

“El paisaje que nos rodea lo poseemos dentro de esta caja de proteccion. Es el paisaje en el interior del cual pensamos. Es el paisaje
que nos envuelve. Un paisaje que recorrer, examinar, conocer con el tacto, que dibujar punto por punto.”
THE SKULL AS THE PROJECTION BOX OF LANDSCAPE

“Pensar es pesar. El pensamiento no sobrevive sin la experiencia de la fuerza de gravedad. El espiritu no piensa, es el cuerpo el que
piensa.
La primera identitad es la del cuerpo, es una identitad cellular, una identitad de carne.”
THINKING WITH THE BODY

James Archibald Turrell: Architecture as Light’s Shape

“Voglio creare spazi che si esperiscano con gli occhi aperti. Solo quando la luce viene ridotta
considerevolmente possiamo avvertire la sensazione che gli occhi si muovano fuori nello spazio. Il mio lavoro
vuole ridurre l’intensità della luce al punto da avvertirne la presenza”
“...lavorando con la luce, ciò che è veramente importante ... è creare una esperienza di pensiero senza parole,
rendere la qualità e la sensazione della luce stessa in qualche modo realmente vicina al tatto. Spesso la gente
si sporge e cerca di toccarla” .

“Non si tratta tanto di appropriarsi della natura, quanto di porre l’osservatore in contatto con essa” .
“Le mie opere non sono uno sguardo su qualcosa, bensì uno sguardo dentro qualcosa; non il posizionamento
di una massa, ma l’intervenire nello spazio; non oggetti in una stanza, bensì la stanza. Il formato non è
costituito da cose all’interno di un ambiente, ma è l’ambiente stesso”.

Skyspaces

“Il mio scopo è realizzare un’architettura fatta di luce e spazio. Un’architettura topologica. Questo non
significa che non mi occupi di perimetrazioni e forma, bensì che voglio rendere più rilevante ciò che si situa
nell’interstizio, come contrapposto a ciò che contribuisce a creare l’interstizio.
Si tratta di un’architettura molto semplice. Un’architettura di luce”

Il senso dello spazio di Cristina Iglesias
“Oggigiorno i discorsi dell’architettura
convergono in vari aspetti con quelli della
scultura… Nella mia visione si fondono influssi
che vanno dalla sequenza del guardare o dal
montaggio cinematografico fino all’esperienza
del camminare in un labirinto.
Credo che l’architettura debba abbastanza al
territorio sperimentale della scultura. Il
Padiglione di Mies a Barcellona è una tra le
migliori sculture pubbliche che conosca.”
Cristina Iglesias

“La rappresentazione di un luogo comporta anche la possibilità di attivazione dello spazio… La natura
stessa della percezione fa sì che camminare attraverso questi luoghi di rappresentazione sia
un’esperienza”.
Cristina Iglesias

“Lo spazio International Style era caratterizzato dalla tendenza a enfatizzare un'espressione
dello spazio periferica, piuttosto che centrale.... Per parafrasare Gropius, la nuova esigenza
portò a sostituire la vecchia simmetria di parti simili con un equilibrio asimmetrico, ma
equivalente...”
(Colin Rowe).
Mies van der Rohe:
in search of the body-space
Mies van der Rohe, Barcelona Pavilion

"lo spazio non è una forma-base immediatamente percettibile come un tutto né è uno
spazio che possegga confini precisi. Essendo organizzato per mezzo di pareti libere,
esso si apre attraverso grandi vetrate alla natura che lo circonda. Ogni cosa che è
statica e composta tende a svanire per contrasto con il dinamismo di questi ambiti
spaziali che fluiscono l'uno nell'altro, il cui ritmo s'acquieta soltanto al di fuori, dove si
unifica con lo spazio infinito della natura“
(Walter Riezler).
SANAA, Installation, Barcelona Pavilion

"Casa Tugendhat illustra una grammatica di disegno spaziale
consistente nel rapporto che intercorre tra volumi e pareti, nel
trattamento delle aperture, allo scopo di costituire delle piante
con un grado variato di "libertà" . I punti fondamentali sono la
sovrapposizione di tramezzi paralleli, la proiezione oltre la
congiunzione di uno dei due muri che si incontrano ad angolo
retto, la libera estensione dei tramezzi relativamente ai pilastri
strutturali, l'introduzione di pareti di vetro a piena altezza per
indicare continuità e transizione "ideale“ e l'uso di pavimenti e
soffitti sporgenti per portare avanti il movimento spaziale. Tutti
questi mezzi si fanno strumenti dell'intenzione di mantenere
libero lo spazio“
(ChristianNorberg-Schulz)

"Nel Proun viene in luce in modo nuovo la sintesi delle risultanti delle singole forze. Vediamo che la superficie esterna del proun cessa di essere un
dipinto, diviene una costruzione che si deve osservare girando da tutti i lati, guardarla da sopra, esaminarla da sotto. La conseguenza è che viene
distrutto l'asse unico del dipinto, perpendicolare all'orizzonte. Girando ci avvitiamo nello spazio. Abbiamo messo in moto il proun e otteniamo così
un maggior numero di cose in proiezione; noi vi stiamo in mezzo e le separiamo tra loro. Stando nello spazio su questa impalcatura, dobbiamo
cominciare a caratterizzarla. Il vuoto, il caos,l'innaturale, diviene allora spazio, vale a dire: ordine, determinatezza, configurazione, se introduciamo
segni caratterizzanti d'un certo tipo e in proporzione determinata in e tra loro. La costruzione e la scala della massa di segni caratterizzanti dà allo
spazio una determinata tensione. Cambiando i segni caratterizzanti, mutiamo la tensione dello spazio che è costituito da uno stesso e medesimo
vuoto.“(El Lisitskij 1922).

Mies van der Rohe, Farnsworth House

Mies van der Rohe, Resor House

Lake Shore Drive Apartments
Neuesgalerie, Berlin

Giovanbattista Piranesi
Carceri
con restituzioni grafiche dello spazio prospettico

Carlo Scarpa, Museo Revoltella, Trieste

Pablo Beitia, Museo Xul Solar, Buenos Aires

Le Corbusier, Casa Currutchet, La Plata

Le Corbusier: “promenade architecturale” and montage
“ L'architetto assegna degli scopi agli assi. Questi scopi sono il muro (il pieno, sensazione fisica) o la luce, lo spazio (sensazione fisica)…
Bisogna tenere conto che gli elementi architettonici di interno non sono che delle superfici che si incastrano per ricevere la luce e mettere in
evidenza i volumi. Si deve pensare in termini di spazio” (Le Corbusier, Vers une architecture)

Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye, Poissy

Le Corbusier, Soviet Palace, Moscou
“Unité dans le detail, tumulte dans l’ensemble”

October
Sergei M. Eisenstein

Peter Greenaway
The Belly of an Architect Watching Water, Fortuny Museum, Venice

Alina Marazzi, Un’ora sola ti vorrei

Steven Holl:
space of multisensory perception
“Lo spazio è il mezzo essenziale dell’architettura.
E’ molte cose simultaneamente: i vuoti e lo spazio intorno
all’architettura, le vastità del paesaggio e della città, lo spazio
intergalattico dell’universo.
Lo spazio è qualcosa di intrinseco e relazionale.
La parallasse – ossia il cambiamento della disposizione di superfici
che definiscono lo spazio come risultato del cambiamento della
posizione dell’osservatore – si trasforma quando gli assi del
movimento lasciano la dimensione orizzontale.
La definizione spaziale viene ordinata dagli angoli della percezione.
Spostamenti verticali e obliqui sono la chiave per nuove percezioni
spaziali.
La nostra facoltà di giudizio è incompleta senza l’esperienza
dell’attraversamento degli spazi.
La motilità e il soggetto-corpo sono gli strumenti per misurare lo
spazio architettonico.”
“Dobbiamo considerare spazio, luce, colore, geometria, dettaglio e
materiale come esperimento continuo. Un collegamento complesso
tra tempo, luce, materiale e dettaglio, crea il “tutto” cinematico
all’interno del quale non riusciamo più a distinguere i singoli
elementi”
St.Ignatius Chapel, Seattle

Steven Holl, St.Ignatius, Seattle

Steven Holl, Y house

Kiasma Museum, Helsinki
“Il Kiasma di Helsinki dimostra come il corpo sia la vera misura dello
spazio sovrapposto. L’incrocio tra il concept dell’edificio e l’intrecciarsi del paesaggio, della luce
e della città segnano molte strade attraverso il museo, implicano spostamenti del corpo e la
parallasse di spazi che si aprono.” (Holl 2000)

Steven Holl, Kiasma Museum, Helsinki

“Vedere significa entrare in un universo di esseri che si mostrano, ed essi non si mostrerebbero se
non potessero essere nascosti gli uni dietro gli altri, o dietro a me. In altri termini: guardare un
oggetto significa venire ad abitarlo, e da qui cogliere tutte le cose secondo la faccia che gli
rivolgono. Ma, nella misura in cui le vedo, tali cose rimangono dimore aperte al mio sguardo, e,
situato virtualmente in esse, io scorgo già sotto differenti angoli l’oggetto centrale della mia visione
attuale. Ogni oggetto è pertanto lo specchio di tutti gli altri… Io posso quindi vedere un oggetto in
quanto gli oggetti formano un sistema o un mondo, e ciascuno di essi dispone degli altri attorno a
sé come spettatori dei suoi aspetti nascosti e garanzia della loro permanenza… L’oggetto compiuto
è traslucido, è penetrato da tutti i lati da una infinità attuale di sguardi che si incontrano nella sua
profondità e non vi lasciano nulla di celato. “ (Maurice Merleau-Ponty 1945)

The Picturesque Garden
• B.T. Pouncy, after T. Hearne, engravings from R. Payne Knight, The
Landscape: A Didactic Poem, 1794.
• The methods of Kent and Capability Brown as parodied by R. Payne Knight.
• The upper of the two engravings shows the ‘nature’ of the ‘Improvers’ with its
shaven lawns, ‘nude waters’, monotonous ‘clumps’ and serpentine walks.
The lower shows the return to nature advocated by Knight and other
champions of the picturesque school.

atelier le balto
“Il giardino è come il silenzio in una pièce artistica, sia per il professionista che per l’abitante” (Anselm Franke)

The Belly of Architecture (Space and Landscape)
Renato Bocchi – Università Iuav di Venezia
Peter Greenaway – The Belly of an Architect
End of the First Part
Peter Greenaway, The Belly of an Architect

II part (only on demand!): ALONG THE RIVER AND INTO THE TREES

Trento – piano guida della fascia fluviale

Mario Botta, Biblioteca universitaria

Renzo Piano, Progetto dell’area ex-Michelin e del MUSE

The End
The End

THE BELLY OF ARCHITECTURE (SPACE AND LANDSCAPE)
Renato Bocchi
I believe that space is the key word uniting art, architecture and landscape.
Space is also the direct counterpart of the word form, which is often indissolubly linked with the experience
of architecture.
A preferential interest for space marks a distance from the objectiveness of architecture and underscores its
topologic, experiential and use aspects.
(Objective) form does not require in itself to be used or experienced and may simply be observed or
contemplated. On the contrary, space strongly presupposes use and - even more - experience, since it not
only involves the sense of sight but also touch and the other senses, in a total sensory experience.
While (objective) form may become a “still life” and freeze itself in a static picture, space is basically alive
and presupposes a relational experience (relation is central to the definition of space; in fact space, since it
is space among things, is in itself logos, relation, connection); it furthermore requires processes and
kinematics, because it involves time and movement.
While (objective) form - in its extreme essence – can be ab-solute and crystallize in a pure object, without
any need for relations with other things, space becomes absolute only in sidereal space: in its terrestrial
dimension it can only be a field of (topologic) relations.
My interest for space derives from my interest for an architecture of relations, i.e. an architecture which is, in
a way, “dirty”, “hybrid”, characterised by the fact of being “in relation with...” or “in function of...”, which does
not so much take care of the iconic form of an object or of language meant as style, expression (be it
individual or collective) of a world to represent but which rather marks relations with the ground, with a
location, with the urban and local context, and with the experience made by its users: i.e. with use, meant in
a broader sense than sheer function.
Space in art
I believe that the investigation of the evolution of experiences in contemporary sculpture (and not only those
explicitly linked with landscape, as is the case with land art) is especially enlightening for the above
mentioned topics in that they led from a concept of full relief sculpture, which could even be set on a
pedestal, to a concept of sculpture which you experience directly, in which you can live, coming in direct
contact with the construction of space it proposes. This process brings sculpture significantly closer to
architecture.
Richard Serra and Zen gardens.
Richard Serra declared: “Zen gardens open up a space of perception. The most important one is time in
space and your movement through it: it is a physical time. (...) The experience of Zen gardens led me to my
works in landscape and to my meeting with Smithson. (...) I was interested in a penetration into the ground
which would open up space and include you physically and not only through a visual relation. (…). In any
case, perception is based on time, on movement and meditation. Japanese gardens reflect the concept of
uji, or “time-being”, in which the experiences of space and time are indivisible and fluid. Empty and full are
considered as one and are incorporated in the concept of ma, which can be meant as a space between two
points, or silence between two sounds, i.e. the concept of ma recognises space and time as substance. The
relationship between the elements is defined depending on the distance between them; empty and full are
measured in the same way (…). Following my experience of Zen gardens I felt the need to come closer to
landscape in its entirety, based on the idea that spectators are constantly moving. The problem was no
longer how to position an autonomous object on the ground but how to come to see things between the
things”.
Serra’s works, influenced by his interpretation of Zen gardens, take on – based on the intelligent definition
by Yve -Alain Bois – the qualities of an ambulatory space, and a peripatetic vision of landscape.
In Shift, the boundaries of the work are defined by the maximum distance that two people can cover without
losing sight one of the other. Even in more recent works, and in particular in the fantastic installation of his
oxidized steel sculptures at the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, the meaning of the work is to be found in
the constantly changing sensory perceptions that visitors accumulate when they are in the spaces
generated by the high, curved walls: paradoxically, the enormous effort in terms of structure and matter that
the work involved, entirely dissolves in the shaping and sensory qualities of the generated spaces.
Hollow space and the concept of limit in Chillida’s sculptures.
The sense of space in Eduardo Chillida’s work is mainly linked to the concept of limit.

Space, a concave, hollow entity is carved out in matter or defined by screens in respect to the endless
space.
Cutting out a space in Mount Tindaya means creating a space, between heaven and earth, from which you
can contemplate the horizon and connect to the light and the architecture created by light itself.
Enclosing a space in the sculpture Elogio de l’Horizonte in Gijon means building a room of air and wind,
which relates spectators with the distant view of the sea, with the horizon.
Kosme de Barañano explains: “Chillida knows that the material of a sculptor is space, as is void and that
only both make it possible to construct “full” places; and he knows that the material of music is sound and
silence... The issue, which is fundamental in sculpture, of creating a place extracting matter but replacing it
with space, is the basic idea behind the project of Mount Tindaya... A sculpture which is not set in a place
but whose empty space emanates the place”.
This concept of “charged space”, of “void full of tension and vibrations” is at the centre of Chillida’s spatial
investigation: a void to live in, to dwell.
Chillida knows that the homogeneous and objective space of geometry has a meaning only in relation to the
body’s orientation in space, from which, by abstraction, it is built. Transiting, flowing, passing are decisive.
Limit, horizon, void and space are two-dimensional or immaterial entities, undertaking to set up meaningful
relations, to make tension vibrate and be perceived in void, in silence; they undertake to interpret and attach
a meaning to places by means of building simple scaffolds to look at, to read and interpret nature and the
world.
Building does no longer coincide with laying one stone on top of the other or inserting objects in a space;
building means constructing space, the immaterial form of space.
Chillida's spatial geometry reinterprets geometry in the direction of the concept of relation and, in many
ways, is based on the concept of Raum developed by his friend Heidegger, the philosopher.
A space where man is, the geometry of which is not only perceived but also felt.
This is why it is a space to live in.
Giuseppe Penone: Breathing the Shadow
For Giuseppe Penone, man is an integral part of nature. The point, therefore, is not so much using nature
as material for the work but to plunge oneself and the work in nature itself, in its life.
This is therefore work of art conceived as a “vital” process, in which the time factor is fundamental.
As a consequence of this idea of an identification between man and nature, an extraordinary importance is
given to the senses as a means to acquire knowledge and of artistic expression.
Through his senses, i.e. the body, man can approach nature, penetrate it, interfere directly with the vital
processes, influence nature and be influenced by it.
The “sensualist conception” of art proposed by Penone expresses itself in the so called “tactile look", i.e. in
the supremacy of touch as the essential and primary form of knowledge of nature, definitely having priority
over sight.
Fingerprints and the skin are the way by which touch gets to know nature: not by chance a very large part of
Penone’s artistic production works on these two elements of the surface of things. This is not done in a
“superficial” way, though, but looking on the surface for the deep traces of matter and for the decisive
factors in the “conformation” of forms.
It is easy to derive from the concept of “tactile look” the idea, only seemingly paradoxical, of a sculpture to
be perceived with closed eyes, in a sort of “braille” language of sculpture, which is also a lofty way to bring
together the senses and inner life.
Through the deep look of tactile perception you can get to the deep strata of the human soul: memory, grey
matter.
Through the filter of skin and eyelid, the (deep) world of the inside and the world of the outside (landscape)
connect and dialogue with each other, in a way which is less direct and explicit than the one you usually
attain through sight.
In a way, it is like the difference between a photograph and an x-ray. The relationship is biunique and
specular: from the inside to the outside but also from the outside to the inside.
The sensory relationship works therefore also by mirroring.
There is a short distance between reflection/mirroring and projection: not only does the eyelid act as a filter
and the lens as a mirror but the skull becomes a projection box of landscape and of the world.
The body surface (skin, eyelid, the inside of the skull), in its essence of two-dimensional membrane,
becomes therefore an interface in the relationship between man and the world, between man and nature.
In this perceptive process, the artistic sensibility of “thinking with one’s body”, of transferring “sensuality” or
“sensitivity” into the grey matter, i.e. thoughts and reasoning faculty, develops.
Through this process Penone manages to give and convey a rational essence to a work which completely
originates from the senses.

This is a fundamental process for all works of art, including architecture: the work originates from the
senses – from an artistic sensibility and/or intuition – and translates, through the knowledge of the logic
process underlying it and therefore through a “scientific” method, into a work expressing a rational thought,
i.e. an intelligible work.
James Turrell’s light as matter.
Contrary to Penone, who searches for a tactile perception with closed eyes, James Turrell theorizes
perception through light. Paradoxically, however, he comes to the same effect of tactile perception and
immersion into phenomena.
Light itself is for him a subject matter of investigation and construction of architectural and existential space:
he wrote “I want to create spaces that you experience with open eyes. Only when light is considerably
reduced, we can feel the sensation that eyes move outside, into space. My work intends to reduce the
intensity of light to the point that I can feel its presence”.
In this way light stops being the object of tactile and visual experience and ends up being - at the utmost of
abstraction - an “experience of thought”.
What interests me most in Turrell’s work, is the fact that he conceives and treats light as the raw material of
composition. The point is not using light to reveal and – plastically - enhance – the forms of architecture
(based on Le Corbusier’s famous saying), but to build with light as matter, precisely as John Cage
constructed sound with silence as matter: i.e. paradoxically building with an “immaterial” matter, objectifying
void and revealing with it the essence of landscape, of nature and of the world, drawing upon the source of
human sensory perception and of thought itself. Light-matter becomes in this way space-matter and
architecture and its relation with landscape are defined by the fact of being the construction of a light-space,
a room of light which reveals the landscape and the world.
This process is not very different from working on the air dust matter, which we find in Chillida’s work or – in
architecture – in Mies van der Rohe, as I will try to explain.
Cristina Iglesias’s vibrant sense of space
The sculptural work of Cristina Iglesias, her sense of space (see the title of her exhibition here in Milan at
the Pomodoro Foundation), confirm the common research of sculptors and architects in the contemporary
art and their links with the film research: a research pointed to the “sense of space”, to the possibility to
investigate the experience of sensorial immersion into the space.
The construction of this immersive experiences into the space by Cristina Iglesias fulfils through a highly
narrative sequence, which traces sensitive itineraries on literary storyboards. In this case it is the
hyeroglyphic reproduction of a landscape description by J.G.Ballard from his book Crystal World -
translated into a intertwined texture of iron wires that veils and makes vibrant the gazes and the light and
shadow effects in her Suspended Corridors.
In this way Iglesias draws in the space multiple palimpsests of landscape; traces spatial diaphragms with
two-dimensional textile elements, with a own decorative texture of oriental and maghreb flavour.
The textile matter, the arabesque, give vibrant and tactile matter to the fluid space: not so far from the textile
devices or the onix slabs used by Mies van der Rohe or the wood vibrant walls used by Kengo Kuma in
their architecture; and not so far form the tattoo surfaces used by Herzog and De Meuron on the skins of
their buildings.
Thus the space is “activated”: it isn’t an immobile space, but a dynamic, vibrant one, in which the spectator
must merge and give a subjective interpretation.
Space in architecture
Let’s know turn to architecture.
The investigations of space made by part of contemporary sculpture have significant antecedents not only
in the art of the avant-gardes of the 20 th Century but also - and strongly so – in the investigations made by a
number of masters of modern architecture (from Mies to Le Corbusier, from Scharoun to Aalto).
Mies van der Rohe’s “bodily” space.
Mies’ – and even more Le Corbusier’s - “free plan”, actually frees space from structure and consequently
from its envelope. Space becomes fluid: there is no longer any correspondence or symbiosis between
content (space) and container (envelope). Therefore a clear-cut distinction between external and internal is
no longer justified. Hence the space is the raw material of composition.
And: space is no longer symmetrical or axial; it takes on a “different” order vis-à-vis the principles of
classicism (Colin Rowe defined it as “asymmetrical balance”), it is read and accomplished as a dynamic
space, as fluid matter. This is evidenced in certain respects also by the recent installation of SANAA
Architects, which interprets and enhances the fluid transparency of spaces in the pavilion in Barcelona.

De Stijl’s lesson is brought to its extreme consequences. The difference lies in the fact that it is no longer a
process of “decomposition” in planes-plates of the original geometric solids: on the contrary, Mies creates,
playing with planes, a process of "composition" from the nothingness of space, using a procedure which is
much closer to constructivist proposals. The wall-plane is not the outcome of a decomposition but the
opposite: the factor of spatial composition itself, the element generating space.
In this sense, it has an active role, a generative role.
Behind Mies’ buildings is nothing, a void on which a space is designed and recomposed: in this way his
process is more "constructivist” than "neo-plastic".
The spiral movement with which modern space is perceived and experienced, in a space-time conception,
brings us back to the discourse of suprematist space and to Proun’s constructivism ( “while we turn, we
raise ourselves into the space”, wrote El Lissitzky), to which Mies is certainly indebted.
The rediscovery of empty space as the real “bodily” matter of construction of the architectural composition is
fully accomplished in all Mies’ buildings.
Scarpa, The Revoltella museum in Trieste
While recalling Tafuri’s insightful analyses, we need to reiterate that the evolution towards a fluid and
dynamic space, characterizing modern masterpieces such as those by Mies or – in other ways –Le
Corbusier’s experiences of dynamic space, which I will address in a moment, is based not only on the
revolution made by the historical avant-gardes but also on antecedents in the 18 th Century, as is the case
with Piranesi, in whose prints with an architectural subject “the centre is displaced from the physical centre
of the work and is found instead in a moving point”, so that “the expansion of the work permits to perceive
and locate several centres” (Ulya Vogt-Goknil).
Significantly, the film director Eisenstein analyses the Carceri by Piranesi and finds in them “a vision in
depth which is constantly in perspective … A series of planes in depth … constructed in portions of
independent spaces, which are not connected by a continuous sequence but by a series of very intense
spatial shocks, with different depths”. “It is a process of retention of visual images which is absolutely similar
to the one based on which the phenomenon of kinematic movement is constructed” (montage).
The paradigm of Piranesi’s space in a dynamic sequence can be briefly described resorting to one of the
least considered projects in the production of Carlo Scarpa: the Revoltella museum in Trieste, which I
actually consider to be one of the most significant works as an evidence of his skill in addressing spatial
relations, both inside and inside/outside, precisely because it is free of his usual decorative accents,
refinements and virtuosity.
The space in the Revoltella museum revolutionises the interior perceptive sequences, while strictly
respecting the pre-existing wall envelope. It shows an ascending maze-like development, full of tension,
and – at the same time – at the top, it displays a daring, parasite superfetation of the pre-existing building.
Here a constructive and spatial exercise is performed which is capable of catching, in an unexpected way, a
marvellous visual and sensory relationship with the urban landscape and the sea.
Pablo Beitia, Xul Solar museum
The design work that Pablo Beitia will tell you about is not very different: it was developed in the Xul Solar
museum in Buenos Aires and is based on a metaphorical and abstract interpretation in architecture of the
painting and poetic story of an exceptionally interesting artist: Xul Solar.
Again we have a spatial, super-constructed, “Piranesian” spatial belly which develops in multiple ascending
spiral sequences, rigidly contained in a block of a Buenos Aires “manzana”: a sort of magic box is the result,
capable of causing an emotional route which accompanies the one produced by the exhibition of the artist’s
works.
Le Corbusier’s promenades.
Perhaps it was not by chance that I met Pablo Beitia in the rooms of the Currutchet House in La Plata, one
of the works which best express Le Corbusier’s “promenade architecturale”.
Le Corbusier’s interest for “topologic space” and for a “peripatetic vision” is extensively documented, from
his first studies onwards.
In Vers une architecture, Le Corbusier accompanies the re-examination of the Acropolis in Athens based on
Choisy ‘s reconstruction with that of Pompeian domuses, as an explicit anti-academic polemic and
underlines misalignments and topologic relations governing those spaces, that Choisy defined
“picturesque”.
The concept of promenade architecturale and its implementation in the villa La Roche, in the villa Savoye or
later in the Indian buildings and in the Currutchet House in La Plata, can be considered the consistent result
of the old attention for the “peripatetic vision” of space, and the kinematics: it is the mechanism by which the
sequential and ascending movement inside buildings develops, capable of connecting – both visually and

perceptively - the spaces of a house and the inside with the outside; it deploys the relations between plan
and section, it shows the relations between the various heights of the rooms, it breaks spatial rigidity both in
the plan and especially in the elevation and therefore in its section; in short: it introduces movement as a
category of spatial definition.
In the same way, Le Corbusier, starting from the studies of the Acropolis, directs his interest for the dynamic
vision of space and its composition, by juxtaposing and mounting separate bodies, to an urban landscape.
Consider, for instance, the project for the Palace of Soviets in Moscow and the famous comparison Le
Corbusier proposes for it with the Square of Miracles in Pisa: space is resolved with a system of inner
tension between the separate individual architectural bodies and their relation with the horizon connecting
them (the wall of the graveyard in Pisa, the river in Moscow) This is again a topologic space, which cannot
be measured using Euclidean categories.
It is certainly not by chance that Le Corbusier’s architectural investigation is again considered with an
explicit interest by Eisenstein and linked to his studies on film editing. Giuliana Bruno wrote: “From this
perspective, you notice that cinema and architecture are connected by a narrative action … The visitor is
the subject of this practice: a transit through spaces of light”.
We go back to the “peripatetic” spatiality that Yve-Alain Bois talks about the modern “picturesque”.
Giuliana Bruno wrote: “If I assert the affiliation between picturesqueness and cinema even beyond the
aspect of editing, it is because I am interested in showing that the connection between the two consists of a
cultural transit …. The act of attributing this special genealogy to cinema is in itself a way to acknowledge
for both cinema and picturesqueness their nature of complex mapping practices, which imply an emotive
design”.
I believe that this topic of “emotive design” may also introduce the use of other editing techniques for
“narrative” and “emotional”, purposes, that hybridize strictly cinematographic pictures with other material –
either technologically very sophisticated material (Bruno wrote: “with Prospero’s Books, for instance,
Greenaway proposed a new figurative modality, including recent technologies such as the Graphic
Paintbox” and using interpolations with graphic writing and painting) or archival bricolage material (the
amazing and highly effective narrative-emotional technique developed by Alina Marazzi in her documentary
films, editing exclusively archival material, including both films and photographs, written material and
sound).
Steven Holl’s space of multisensory perception.
Now, let’s go back to architecture
The American author Steven Holl is central, because of the attention he devotes to an architecture of
relations. It is not by chance that his work constantly refers to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s theories of the
phenomenology of perception and to the attempt at bringing them back to the architectural work.
Holl’s investigation is therefore very close to the rediscovery of the principles of picturesqueness that Yve-
Alain Bois attributes to Richard Serra’s sculptures. I believe that it is definitely not by chance that a number
of interior spaces, designed by Holl, recall with surprising accuracy the perceptive deformation of space that
you can experience inside Serra’s big corten steel sculptures. Nor can it be by chance that even Holl, like
Serra, explicitly refers to the geometrical principle of the parallax to describe the essence of his architectural
investigation.
Holl’s architecture is based especially on the creation of spaces featuring a complex perception and on a
refined and equally complex usage of materials, light, and textures, to achieve a multiple, multisensory
perceptive sense.
Consequently, all Holl’s architectural works are constantly changing in their formal characters, both when
perceived while moving, from the outside, and passed through inside: think, for instance, of the
kaleidoscopic Y House.
The Kiasma museum in Helsinki, designed together with Juhani Pallasmaa, is probably the clearest
example of this investigation: the concept of chiasm the project is based on, entails an interplay between
the mass of the building and the geometry of the city and of the landscape that defines the shape of the
building itself, applying a torsion which is decisive in the making of the external architectural object and of
the internal subdivision of spaces.
The relationship between building and landscape is decisive in Holl. And yet it is not a simple question of
“contextuality”, it is a constituent element of form itself: the building introjects and represents in itself the
complexity of the urban and natural landscape surrounding it, in an almost syncretic way.
Kiasma, in this, represents a development more in Holl’s work, passing from the attention for rootedness in
a place, distinguishing his first works and described in his first treatise on Anchoring i.e. rootedness, to the

attention for relational logic, which defines the architecture described in his second treatise on Intertwining,
all the way up to the logic of the Parallax of the third treatise.
Abalos and the picturesque metamorphosis
The concept of parallax brings us back to the topic of “picturesqueness” that I mentioned before and this
leads us directly to the issue of landscape.
A recent, very interesting treatment of this subject is made by Iñaki Abalos in his Atlas pintoresco and is
called “picturesque metamorphosis”.
Once again, the phenomenology of perception suggests an interpretation of space and landscape that goes
beyond a static prospective view and produces a mutual relationship between spectator and landscape,
where objects themselves tend to transform into subjects and the spectator’s look extends to a sensory
experience that is increasingly all-absorbing, all the way up to the experience of living in it.
Iñaki Abalos’ idea develops along the same line of reasoning. He is the last and most committed author
reappraising picturesqueness in contemporaneity.
Abalos opposes to the notion of landscape as an object, looked at in a totally detached way and with a
constant sense of abstraction, a more subjective and sensitive relationship, that “listens to” landscape as
well as looking at it.
A central element in Abalos’ reflection is the proposal to conceive landscape (both in ecologic and aesthetic
terms) as a subject, which we should not only look at and analyse but also listen to: a subject-landscape
which claims a life of its own, which you experience going through it, living it.
What is proposed is an architecture of relations which retrieves, through a close relationship with landscape
architecture, the possibility to create a significant landscape of architecture.
Abalos looks for an answer in a provocative way: putting beside two pictures of Central Park in Olmsted and
Ville Radieuse by Le Corbusier, two antithetical visions of the relationship between architecture and
landscape, both in terms of discipline and ideology, which nevertheless lead to an almost identical image, in
which figure and background, landscape and architecture engage in a tight dialogue by means of inverting
the usual relationships of 18 th Century landscape painting. So much, that they end up creating a unicum, in
which architecture learns from landscape art new rules to learn and design a world of living forms, and in
which landscape art learns from architecture the rules of formal abstraction.
In this way, landscape architecture and the landscape of architecture present themselves in a new and wellpromising
symbiosis.
The space of landscape
Moreover, the perceptive-spatial component of landscape has always been, as is the case with the
temporal dimension, a key-factor in design compositions, from historic experiences onwards.
In the already mentioned experience of Japanese gardens as well as in the British experience of
“picturesque gardens” of the 18 th -19 th Century, the kinematic features of moving “view” and of “direct
experience” are an essential component of the architecture of new landscapes.
Contemporary landscape architecture experiences also express a constant and strong interest for both
phenomena of perception while moving and, more in general, for the process of designing landscapes,
definitely including in this the incidence of the time and evolution factor and also the need to account for
maintenance techniques and deterioration.
Undeniably many landscape projects also feature “objective” elements of the composition (including trees)
that are actually meaningless if not considered in their mutual relation and in their relation with the
surrounding landscape.
Space becomes again decisive as the connective substance matter of the project, crossed by connections
that you experience physically while moving or visually, looking at them.
This grid of virtual construction of space constitutes the main strength lines of the project and defines its key
system of perception.
And more: we may say that it is increasingly processes (the development, the becoming of things) that are
the real protagonists of landscape works:
The Atelier Le Balto stated: “precisely therefore, rather than talking about “finished” gardens, we prefer to
display the process of creation leading to their implementation”.
The project of a landscape, or garden, becomes therefore an infiltration in the interstices of existing
landscapes, aiming at re-establishing the role of “art like nature” in the construction of the new
“contemporary space”.
Le Balto, quoting Anselm Franke, wrote: “A garden is like silence in an artistic piece, both for the
professional and for the occupant”.

In this way we go back to the topic chosen for the Bienal de Canarias by Juan Manuel Palerm: silence, a
silence which becomes listening to the world, to landscape, to ourselves, to our vital sensations, within it.
II PART
ALONG THE RIVER AND INTO THE TREES
The urban design project I present now starts from the consideration that the reference ground for the new
urban form may be no more the traditional urban morphology (the concept of urban tissue or texture), but
more generally a territorial system we can approximately define “landscape”: a system where the large
unbuilt space is almost more important than the built environment.
The geographic geo-morphological characters of landscape (the agricultural or the riverside landscape)
seem to me to be the true figurative structure of the environment, the unique true formal structure with
which the new urban architecture can relate and find solid roots.
Any architectural proposal, in such situations of edge, must meet a relations system at a large scale, able to
involve relationship with the place geography itself. Thus it must meet the landmark role as hits in the
territory; and at the same time the urban scheme must embrace the ground design itself and the unbuilt
areas design: in a word, the integrated landscape design: because only a strict integration between
architectural and ground design can assure to achieve the urban design primary aim, i.e. the design of the
whole system of relationships, the new “landscape geometries”.
the mission of the project was to control and define not specifically the definitive architectural forms but
overall the guidelines, the relation network, on which the urban design scheme, as urban guide-plan, can
give a direction to the future transformations.
Trento and the river Adige
The parallel presence on the western edge of the valley - the railway and the river Adige – after the several
rectification of the river from the second half of the 19th century – and the most recent events of the
motorway and the by-pass road – draw a strong sign of discontinuity between the city of Trento and the
strong slope of the Mount Bondone. They give a marginal role to the ancient burgh of Piedicastello and the
monumental presence in the urban landscape of the rocky hill named Doss Trento.
The river has since long a separate life in the city: it leaves to the railway the task to mark the western
boundary of the city.
Besides, the new course of the river, passed in the 19 th century from a meander flux to a very rectilinear and
quick course, has substantially changed the character of relationship among river, city and landscape.
The historical city was born with a symbiotic relationship to the river; the modern city broke the relations with
it and the river became a sort of canal-infrastructure like the railway, the motorway and the by-pass road.
The valley became in this way the place of speedy fluxes, of territorial crossing and the place of non-urban
settlements (industries, barracks and so on): a place of extra-urban role, alternative to the network of inner
urban relations present in the core of the city towards east.
Today it is practically impossibile to restore a real role of the river, expanding the city to face the river,
crossing the railway. It is more interesting to design a new way to conceive the new part of the city along the
river, starting from the river itself and the flow-lines parallel to the river, in a vision of a landscape-city, formed
as a flux-city, coming in from the South agricultural lands and going inside up to the historical city.
A new part of the city where the major leisure facilities, tourism, sport, performance and cultural facilities, can
be placed.
This was the main idea on what we worked for the Guide-Plan commissioned from the Comune di Trento.
The model tends to function in a strict integration between geographic elements (the mountain, the hill, the
river) and the human settlements: a model of anti-urban nature, if we conceive the city texture in a traditional
way, defined by squares, streets and blocks, but linkable to a more modern urban concept, where the
distinction among natural and agricultural landscape and urban landscape is weaker and the urban space
concept can expand to landscape perceptions.
Such a model tends towards a dynamic concept of flux, different from the static concept of the Euclidean
geometry involved in the morphology of the traditional compact city.
A urban space conceived not as finished (street and square), but open to the characters of the countryside,
the park, the large panoramic views, the movement and the continuous flux.

The horizon of these spaces is not yet the one of very near building walls, but a larger skyline which looks at
the mountain or the geographic landmark of the rocky hill.
It is central in the project the creation of a long riverpark, with different segments, running parallel to the river,
bringing nature inside the core of the city, pointing at the hill and the urban central park of the station, and
bringing a chain of architectures as urban facilities.
The riverpark finds its knots of connection with the existing city
-in the 16 th century villa delle Albere, now modern art museum, to which is given a new large empty precinct
and where we re-open the connection to the city interrupted by the railway,
-and in the new university library at the head of the 19 th century axis of via Verdi, pointing to the Cathedral.
These two projects are part of a general new layout of the urban spaces in the university and museum
campus, integrated with the new Science Museum, now designed by Renzo Piano, and a new touristic and
cultural terminal.
Other strategic projects are: the new music centre replacing the Italcementi farm at Piedicastello, the
connection to the hill, the reuse of the tunnels, the new Library (now designed by Mario Botta); a new sport
centre, the new hospital, the new stadium as urban south gate.
The new linear system is helped by a new parkway as spine of the riverpark.