The structuring vacuum.

In art, as well as in life, we need " vacuums " that can be times of reflection, analysis or assimilation. We can imagine, for example, “Toccata and Fugue” by J. S. Bach, we will immediately realize the importance of silences. Between silences and notes the piece is structured; between empty and full, architecture and city are created, in fact, we inhabit the contained vacuum. What happens when this in architecture is not considered?

I take the license to criticize those architects who have their checklist and forget about beauty. They simplify architecture to a harshly technical discipline like an automaton artificial intelligence program would. Where is all that feeling that the architect must put to their work? Artificial intelligence may write poetry, in the future, who knows, but for the moment let us design those four facades with a bit of art and humanity. Let us give that interior space a certain dignity. For that architect who complies only with the square meters and the regulations, these words are to see if I put a little light. I am an inhabitant of spaces, and cities, what you build affects me!

With the problem raised, there are two development paths. The first is by being generous with the surrounding space. Just as in the city the square is the space that precedes, intensify and magnifies the building understood as the silence that announces that melody. On a domestic scale (if you are lucky enough to project a building on a plot without dividing walls), it would be those spaces around the building. Show your genius and dexterity. Give it the importance and space for its delight. Respect what exists, respect the perception of your future building.

I will explain a little history and some examples. I will analyse how the emptiness outside can energize and activate the interior.

To speak of the void in art, I have to speak of the Basque sculptor Jorge Oteiza. He did not remain in the simple trace that the void leaves when acting on some material, he created through it. It gives the void its own character, it is raw material, it is existence in absence. He began his search in the dispossession of all material traces which allowed the emptiness to be the protagonist. Perhaps to understand his work a little I should refer to "the law of closure" of the Gestalt Laws. Basically, this refers to the tendency of the human being to simplify the forms to a known object or basic figure.

Another artist who used the void for inspiration or perhaps academic experiments was PaulKlee. As a professor at the Bauhaus in Weimar, he explained to his students the different ways to activate a composition using a positive and a negative cube. With this he explains another of the Gestalt figure-ground laws, but with the peculiarity that it was a few years before these laws were described.

As far as architecture is concerned, we have works by Rem Koolhaas to me "the prophet" if I make an analogy with religion. I can cite "Agadir Convention Centre" (project) or the Zumptor hot springs in Vals, Switzerland.

I particularly want to stop and reflect on a building constructed in 2008 by the brilliant Irish architects Yvonne Farrell & Shelley McNamara co-founded Grafton Architects and 2020 Pritzker Prize Laureates. The building is the headquarters of the University of Economics "Universia Luigi Bocconi" in Milan. Making an analogy with the city, these spaces of exchange, of commerce and socialization are brought into architectural language and conceptualized in this case in this magnificent building. Part of the conceptual centrality of the "patio" empty space which articulates its form and function.

The façade with more contact with the urban life of Milan, the architects reinterpret and articulate the void-full, engaging and creating a game that may well be a Chillida sculpture. Light takes hold of the void and forms a symbiosis between external and internal spaces. This is powerful architecture.

- It adapts to the place.

- It gives special treatment to its different facades, considering its envelope, the city or the buildings around it.

- It creates a fusion, but at the same time filter between the interior exterior between city and building.

- It has a common thread that conceptualizes and helps to understand the project.

This is architecture.

A few years ago, before I started studying architecture, I had the habit of going to the Chinatown of my country (Cuba) because they had very good second-hand architecture books and I remember that with a certain naivety I bought one that as I remember it was called "The Good Architect”. One thing I remember is that it is a profession of vocation and of upright, honest people. It is not enough to just fill out the checklist and comply with the laws of the politician on duty. Let us analyse the space, the impact the building has on the site and more if it is a waterfront. Architects have a great social responsibility. Buildings are inhabited by a certain number of people, but they impact thousands over a relatively long time. Do each order with awareness and care, your prestige is in your buildings, each one of them is part of you. Does that building represent you?

© Yibby

Editor: Drewry Cooper

Yvonne Farrell & Shelley McNamara "Universia Luigi Bocconi"  ©Brunetti