On Absence Matija Dolenc

1. Courtyard wall, U House, Toyo Ito

2. Shelters for Roman Archaeological Site, Peter Zumthor

The remaining wall of the U-House enclosed a courtyard of grass without any interruptions, no plants, water, barbeque or hills hoist. The closed U held by the thickness of the living spaces of the house appear to echo the absence from which the house was initially imagined. But in one photo the owners two young children navigate the edge of the void, the image capturing them just as they depart the camera frame at velocity.

Peter Zumthor's project for a building to shelter Roman archeological ruins, is designed to echoe the original volumes of the three lost roman villas. The two timber enclosures embrace the edge of the ruin, the wooden slates establishing a datum between the remaining low rock walls of the villas, and the imagining of their decorous scale. A skylight above allows the passing of the day to mirror the passage of time observed in the vetrines of small artefacts of everyday roman life.

Both the photograph of the U house and the architectural qualities of Zumthor's project are burdened by the loss of those things they attempt to grasp. But they offer an outline of an architecture that acknowledges what it cannot attain.