Casa a Lisbona, 2008
The wall – destined to enclose and shape space – can’t be obtained in a single piece from the crust. Materials, the elements taken from the ground, must be “assembled” to create construction dispositives, textures, coverings, surfaces, and in the end architectures. But architecture – as Henri Focillon said – “isn’t a collection of surfaces, but an ensemble of parts whose height, length and depth come together and constitute a previously unseen solid, which comprehends an internal volume [space] and an exterior mass.”1 In order to isolate architectural space from the immeasurable terrestrial surface, it’s necessary to “bend” the wall or at least to create a couple of walls positioned so that their settlement produces a veritable spatial “block”. In all these cases, thanks to the inclusive use of wrapping walls – as the Egyptian sacred fences, the Mycenaean city walls, or the tèmenos in Greek temples – a gap between terrestrial surface and physical vertical walls appears: this is the archetypical and eternal magic of the creation of architectural space. On the horizontal scenario of the ground the wall construction is set in an incisively volumetric way, bringing along – as in a case – the definition of architectural space full of particular value and character. In Verona Manuel Aires Mateus renovated the ritual of spatial creation. The pavilion designed for Pibamarmi is articulated with a series of visual barriers, i.e. stonewalls – monochromatic, of the same origin, homogenous, coplanar, characterized by solid and consistent figural aspects. The fruition experience into this labyrinth-like structure is filled with the dimensional strength of the massive stone volumes that – partially hiding and partially revealing glimpses to the sight of the visitors – invites to move in the interior space characterized by daedalic intensity, multiplying viewpoints and perspective effects. Within the contracted and enclosed space of the pavilion, narrow passages alternate with widenings and openings, being the counterpoint to unexpected dead ends: it’s an equilibrated game of full and void spaces that seems evocating, on architectural scale, the same morphology animating the tubs and basins made of marble exhibited in the interior space. These stone creations actually give shape to the materials, offering a calibrated game of masses and cavities. The sharp corners of walls and pillars are here substituted with the sinuosity and softness of curves, as they suggested the fluid corporeity of the water these objects are supposed to be filled with.
1 Henry Focillon “Le forme nello spazio” p. 32, in Vita delle forme, Torino, Einaudi, 1990 (Vie des Formes suivi de Éloge de la main, 1943, p. 134).
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