the amaizing pyramides

telling stories

"Some people do not tell you what their work means. They offer no explanation of it. All they do is tell how it was they happened to think of doing this or how they hit upon that. Most contemporary painters and scuptors still take this line, despite the external pressure to legitimize their work by dressing it in a theory in the way that architects of note very often feel obliged to do. It is note that painters and sculptors are more honest and less pretentious: there is more advantage in it than this. It allows them to evade, to some extent, the intrusive, constricting authority of words. Although they are visual artist, there is no way they can keep their work out of range of words, any more than a writer could keep their work out of range of vision. Since silence is no answer, they tell stories.
[...]
The rapid obsolescence of the thoughts in the writing compensates for the changelessness in the architecture. Under the circumstances there would be no point at all in demanding that architecture live up to the writing or that the writing correspond to the architecture, reasonable as the request may seem."
in Translations from Drawing to Buildin and Other Essays by Robins Evans

Walls

"Walls are the armoury that preserves our personal integrity against the inroads of the rest of humanity and nature."
in Translations from Drawing to Buildin and Other Essays by Robins Evans

Beauty by Alberti

"Alberti Thought it prudent to build beautiful buildings, because beauty preserves things from assault. He asks, 'Can any Building be made so strong by all the Contrivance of Art, as to be safe from Vilolence and Force?' and he answers that it can, since 'Beauty will have such an effect even upon an enraged Enemy, that it will disarm his Anger, and prevent him from offering it any Injury: Insomuch that I will be hold to say, that there can be no greater Security to any Work against Violence and Injusty, that Beauty and Dignity.'" in Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays by Robin Evans

by Le Corbusier

Architecture is the art above all others which achieves a state of platonic grandeur, mathematical order, speculation, the perception of the harmony which lies in emotions. This is the aim of architecture.

"Essentially, criticism is a form of
self-introspection."
in "Interviews with Arata Isozaki in Asia"

by Arata Isozaki

"If a place has a history, the culture will subsiste as traces of memory, and I think if architects were willing to take them into considerations, they would become crucial. Such manual labors as used in the Stone Age would become crucial. That is why architects will be forced to develope a skill to navigate through the world. Unless you know how to swim well, you will be easily drowned. Such a strange era we are in."
in "Interviews with Arata Isozaki in Asia"

o meu pensamento

"Está em mim como eu mesmo; age infalivelmente; julga, decide... Mas quanto a exprimi-lo, é-me tão difícil como dizer aquilo que me faz ser eu, que conheço de forma tão precisa e tão diferente."
in "Eupalino ou o Arquitecto" de Paulo Valéry

Faço minhas estas palavras...

Eupalino ou o Arquitecto

"Sócrates:
Existem portanto, duas artes que encerram o homem no homem; ou antes, que encerram o ser na sua obra, e a alma no seus actos e nas produções dos seus actos. Através de duas artes, ele envolve-se de duas maneiras, de leis e de vontades interiores, figuradas numa matéria ou na outra, a pedra ou o ar.

Fedro:
Vejo bem que a Música e a Arquitectura têm cada uma esse profundo parentesco connosco.

Sócrates:
Ambas ocupam a totalidade de um sentido. Não escapamos a uma senão por uma secção interior; à outra, senão pelos movimentos. "
in "Eupalino ou o Arquitecto" de Paul Valéry

in praise of shadows

"Whenever I see the alcove of a tastefully built Japanese room, I marvel at our comprehension of the secrets of shadows, our sensitive use of shadow and light. For the beauty of the alcove is not the work of some clever device. An empty space marked off with plain wood and plain walls, so that the light drawn into it forms dim shadows within emptiness. There is nothing more. And yet, when we gaze into the darkness that gathers behind the crossbeam, around the fectly vase, beneath the shelves, though we know perfectly well it is mere shadow, we are overcome with the feeling that in this small corner of atmosphere there reigns complete and utter silence; that here in "mysterious Orient" of which Westerners speak probably refers to the uncanny silence of these dark places. Where lies the key to the mystery? Ultimately it is the magic of shadows. Were the shadows to be banished from its corners, the alcove would in that instant revert to mere void.
This was the genius of our ancestors, that by cutting off the light from this empty space they imparted to the world of shadows that formed there a quality of mystery and depth superior to that of any wall painting or ornament."
in "In Praise of Shadows" by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki

Fábula de um Arquitecto

A arquitectura como construir portas,

de abrir: ou como construir o aberto;

construir não como ilhar ou prender,

nem construir como fechar secretos;

construir portas abertas, em portas;

casas exclusivamente portas e tecto.

O arquitecto: que abre para o homem

(tudo se sanearia desde casas abertas)

portas por-onde, jamais portas contra;

por onde, livres: ar luz razão certa.

de João Cabral de Melo Neto

Picos de Europa / Capilla-Vallejos Arquitectos

Picos de Europa / Capilla-Vallejos Arquitectos

Retinal Architecture and Loss of Plasticity by Juhani Pallasmaa

The architecture of our time is turning into the retinal art of the eye.
Architecture at large has become an art of the printed image fixed by the hurried eye of the camera. The gaze itself tends to flatten into picture and lose its plasticity; instead of experiencing our being in the world, we behold it from outside as spectators of images projected on the surface of the retina.

As buildings lose their plasticity and their connection with the language and wisdom of the body, they become isolated in the cool and distant realm of vision. With the loss of tactility and the scale and details crafted for the human body and hand, our structures become repulsively flay, sharp-edged, immaterial, and unreal. The detachment of construction from the realities of matter and craft turns architecture into stage sets for the eye, devoid of the authenticity of material and tectonic logic.
[...]
The current over-emphasis on the intellectual and conceptual dimensions of architecture further contributes to a disappearance of the physical, sensual embodied essence of architecture.

In “Questions of Perception; Phenomenology of Architecture”
by Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa and Alberto Pérez-Gómez

Architecture of the Senses by Juhani Pallasmaa

Every touching experience of architecture is multi-sensory; qualities of matter, space, and scale are measured equally by the eye, ear, nose, skin, tongue, skeleton and muscle.
Architecture involves seven realms of sensory experience which interact and infuse each other.
[…]
A walk through a forest or a Japanese garden is invigorating and healing because of the essential interaction of all sense modalities reinforcing each other; our sense of reality is thus strengthened and articulated.
[…]
The senses do not only mediate information for the judgment of the intellect, they are also means of articulating sensory thought.

In “Questions of Perception; Phenomenology of Architecture”
by Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa and Alberto Pérez-Gómez

Silence, Time, and Solitude by Juhani Pallasmaa

However, the most essential auditory experience created by architecture is tranquility. Architecture presents the drama of construction silenced into matter and space; architecture is the art of petrified silence.
[..]
An architectural experience silences all external noise; it focuses attention on one’s very existence. Architecture, as all art, makes us aware of our fundamental solitude. At the same time, architecture detaches us from the present and allows us to experience the slow, firm flow of time and tradition. Buildings and cities are instruments and museums of time. They enable us to see and understand the passing of history.
Experiencing a work of art is a private dialogue between the work and the viewer that excludes other interactions. “Art is made by the alone for the alone”, as Cyrille Connolly writes in The Unique Grave. Melancholy lies beneath moving experiences of art.

In “Questions of Perception; Phenomenology of Architecture”
by Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa and Alberto Pérez-Gómez