When architecture tells a story

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University of Trieste

When architecture tells a story

Guaragna Gianfranco

Triest

Abstract

language poetry architecture

We believe, beyond any doubt, there is a correlation between literature and architecture, a connection that traces back to the origins of man since both relate to that human ability to interpreting, describing, imagining and modifying the context.

Therefore, if there is an undeniable connection between language and tools, given the fact both relate to the same mental ability of man, the same principle applies to poetry and architecture as consequences of the same prerogative. The latter two, besides correlating with language and tools respectively, must accordingly connect one to another. We could say that architecture represents to utensils what poetry is to language, thus we know that architecture and poetry are closely related, just like utensils and language.

Naturally, we know that a complex subject like that is impossible to express in few pages, but, even if our analysis on the bond between architecture and literature is only partial, is not excluded that it can be a contribute for a theme appearing unfailing.

Linguistic evolution goes hand in hand with the technical progress of a civilization, since they have an identical structure that allows man to relate to the world by forging utensils and linguistic symbols.

Umberto Galimberti

Keywords: Architecture, Poetry, Construction, Story, Literature, Borges, Scotellaro, Semper, Loos, Gaudi, Plecnik, Hejduk, Rossi, Boullee, Kafka

Аннотация

Гваранья Дж.

УТ, Триест, Италия

Когда архитектура «рассказывает истории»

Если существует взаимосвязь между архитектурой и литературой (а мы, несомненно, считаем, что такая взаимосвязь существует), ее необходимо проследить практически от истоков появления человека, так как оба этих направления косвенно базируются на единой способности индивидуума, которая позволяет человеку относиться к окружающему контексту посредством построения специальных инструментов и лингвистических символов.

Поэтому, если между языком и инструментом существует неопровержимая связь, продиктованная тем фактом, что и то, и другое можно проследить до одной и той же умственной способности человека, то должны существовать и подобные отношения между поэзией и архитектурой, которые представляют эволюционный плод той же прерогативы. Следовательно, последнее, помимо того, чтобы быть в соответствующих отношениях с языком, а другое - с инструментом, должны, в свою очередь, также соответствовать друг другу.

Таким образом, мы можем сделать следующее заключение: если архитектура является инструментом, поскольку поэзия - это язык, то между архитектурой и поэзией существует такое же отношение, которое связывает инструмент с языком.

Конечно, мы прекрасно знаем, что тема такой сложности не может быть исчерпана на нескольких страницах, однако, поскольку наш анализ связи между архитектурой и литературой может быть частичным, наше намерение состояло в том, чтобы начать изучение темы, которая кажется неисчерпаемой.

Ключевые слова: Архитектура, Поэзия, Строительство, Рассказ, Литература, Борхес, Скотелларо, Семпер, Лоос, Гауди, Плечник, Хейдук, Росси, Булье, Кафка

Main part

We believe, beyond any doubt, there is a correlation between literature and architecture, a connection that traces back to the origins of man since both relate to that humanability to interpreting, describing, imagining and modifying the context.

Gottfried Semper's remark that it is generally possible to determine the cultural stage and characteristics of a civilization by examining the production of crockery2 was pushed even further by Adolf Loos, who noticed that an Egyptian vase, or a Greek one, could potentially unveil the topography, the hydrography, and thus the whole scenery of the places they belong to.3 (Figure 1) Rocco Scotellaro whose tomb, designed by the BBPR (Figure 2), helps keep his memory alive) (applies similar interpretations to language. He alludes to a consideration of Carlo Levi, who said that the dialect of a region could be used as a measuring system for the landscape, for the people, and also for the region.4 This becomes a sort of corollary for the assertion that a specific language - as Darwin says in The Descent of Man - cannot have two different places of origin. Both these considerations, despite they may seem unrelated, express similar concepts, since they highlight how tools and language maintain tight connections toman's environment; their structure hints to the place where they were born and the way they developed. They precisely point out a very important aspect, confirming Leroi-Gourhan's thought: `not only is language typical of man as much as his tools, but both are unique expressions of as symbols of real meanings. That happens because linguistic evolution goes hand in hand with the technical progress of a civilization, since they have an identical structure that allows man to relate to the world by forging utensils and linguistic symbols.'6

Figure 1 Figure 2

Therefore, if there is an undeniable connection between language and tools, given the fact both relate to the same mental ability of man, the same principle applies to poetry and architecture as consequences of the same prerogative. The latter two, besides correlating with language and tools respectively, must accordingly connect one to another. We could say that architecture represents to utensils what poetry is to language, thus we know that architecture and poetry are closely related, just like utensils and language.

This analogy is better observed in the Imperial Gardens of the Old Summer Palace in Beijing, where lines of poems were translated into real landscape architecture.7 The same connection comes up again, in a different and more incisive form, in the words of the Cata-lan writer and poet Joan Maragall, not only because he claims Gaudi's Sagrada Familia is not architecture, it is poetry of architecture, '8 but because of the union between the mystical delirium of religious fundamentalism and uncompromising Catalan independentism, which makes the Sagrada Familia a reflection of Maragall's poetry and opposite (Figure 3). This means that temple and poetry are reflections of one another, mainly because the Catalan poet, indirectly, was the creator of this Barcelona's place of worship.9 These statements are supported by the `anti-material' attitude typical of Gaudi's work, but it must not to be con-fused with an aversion against matter, since it is mostly a continuous resistance to its seductiveness - incarnation of sin - thus it could be read as a search for emptiness. In his works he creates such configurations that seem able to tame and mould air into rigorous, physical shapes, 10 therefore it is the very nature of his architecture, where materials cease to be as such, that aspire to an exchange with the incorporeal nature of poetry.

Figure 3

Borges also trusts in this analogy when, in Parable of the Palace, narrates of a poet who, when finding himself in front of the Emperor, recites a short composition: his poem contains the whole palace complete with all its lights, shadows, majolica, and all the moments of dynasties of mortals, dragons and gods that inhabited the place.11 But the affinity between poetry and architecture, for the Argentinian writer goes even further, to the point where they can be considered the same thing, as it happens at the end of The Dream of Coleridge, where he says poetry and the palace are essentially the same.12 And Boullee too, though in a different way, manages to eloquently translate into architecture a symbolically similar idea to Borges' concept, elaborating in a more concrete form a project where books and the building that houses them are one and the same: printed and built volumes virtually coincide: `Boullee thinks of a library', according to Aldo Rossi, `and the volumes are the library, they are the weight, not only static, that defines it; it is exhausted in this space'.13 (Figure 4) Etienne-Louis Boullee's majestic library would have been enjoyed by La Croix du Maine, who, towards the end of the 16thcentury, according to Foucault, `envisages a space that would be at once an Encyclopaedia and a Library, and would permit the arrangement of written texts according to the forms of adjacency, kinship, analogy, and sub-ordination prescribed by the world itself.'14

Figure 4

Borges again points out literature is made of dreams, reminding us that everything begins with a dream.15It would seem Stevenson dreamt the central scene of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and built the story around it.16Architecture too is built around a dream, since the dream is not necessarily tied to a precise psychological state: you can dream while awake.17 A dream is nothing more than the vision of an incorporeal image, and architecture has the primary power of making it come true, therefore turning an image, an idea, a dream, into matter.18

The English word project, as we know, comes from Latin proiectum, that means `something thrown forth', and in fact, what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees, as Marx wrote in Das Kapital, is the fact that the former `raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.' This means the artefact was only an idea in the mind of the designer before being built; an intangible image only architecture can forge into something concrete. More than any other artistic field, architecture has the peculiar capacity to operate on the reality of a place transforming it, by working on a subjective vision, in a reality objectively different; thus completing a metamorphosis of the existing. But this metamorphosis is nothing but the concretisation of an image, a vision, just a dream.

It can only bet he fruit of a dream, for example, Joze Plecnik's Ljubljana that, through a series of architectural interventions int he first half of the past century (between 1921 and 1957, the year he died, to be precise), he `invented' a city that only existed in his fantasy, where memories of Italy and Florence were blooming, where ancient Rome and Renaissance met Baroque and Slovenian typical architecture, and the knowledge and professional experiences he had in Europe.19 Vienna in particular, where he worked in Otto Wagner's office, and Prague, where he intervened beautifully on the Castle with a highly symbolic architectural approach.20In order to forge this `dream', Plecnik moves from the urban scale to architectural details, dealing withvarious themes of civilian and religious architecture. He takes on the is sue of the monument and manages brilliantly the coexistence of architecture and vegetation. The Slovenian architect attributes to architecture a meaning tied to the concept of collectivistic, and tries to restore a social and psychological dimension by recovering symbolic elements of local architecture.

This intervention takes place within a master plan for the extension of the old city designed by Max Fabiani. (Figure 5). The two shores of the river are treated as urban spaces. Plecnik transformed the levees in an original way repurposing them as pedestals for the buildings on the street level. Besides the many artefacts soaked in evident symbolic values, he designed bridges of extraordinary beauty, a dense web of open spaces, a series of urban furniture objects of high quality, placing statues, fountains, obelisks and colonnades in a whole plan where every little architectural gesture gets a sense of completeness, also on a urban scale.21Even vegetation finds a role thanks to the careful choice of arboreal essences that goes as far as planting weeping willows with their branches pointed toward the water in the same spots where the river arches into a curve. Thanks to a detailed work on composition, Plecnik manages to shape a peculiar promenadearchitecturale22 articulated into a harmonious string of spaces and paths that will soon become the city's main walk. (Figure 6-7-8)

Figure 5 Figure 6

Figure 7 Figure 8

If a dream was the starting point for Plecnik's Ljubljana, Gaudi's Barcelona, with its lavish architectures, transports us directly into the dream. This is obviously mostly due to that `material fury' Tafuri spoke about, 23which leans toward a sense of total petrification. Laureate says this is one of the most eloquent effects of Guell park, 24somethingthat, in a similar fashion, characterizes housing complexes such as Casa Mila. (Frampton saw in La Pedrerathe image of a rocky wall eroded in time, 25 and Semerani defined it as rocky and Wagnerian.26) (Figure 9) All of his other buildings are peculiarly shaped into sinuous forms that, topped with sculptural shapes, create an effect of strong emotional impact. In fact, Gaudi's houses - with their fantasy-like appearance, their sense of petrification or an opposite, polychromic, kaleidoscopic, richly had recladding of the facades - seem to be taken right out of a dream and, just like in a fantasy tale, they show scaly surfaces, there iomorphicshapes, and interiors animated by plastic objects and grotesque deformations that create a sequence of surreal and phantasmagorical environments.

Figure 9

For example, House Battlo, realized between 1904 and 1906, (Figure 10-11-12) despite being a work of renovation of an existing building, urges the same emotional response as the projects he made from scratch. The old building is heavily transformed, especially the facade and most of the internal distribution, to the point it acquires a completely new and extremely expressive configuration. The balconies take on the appearance of un-settling masques, the facade is dressed with a mosaic of varied ceramic fragments; the en-tire building is adorned with decorative and architectural elements inspired by the animal or vegetal world, geological and organic shapes, fossils, dragon backs and snake scales. How-ever, the dream could come close to being a nightmare when fantasy forms and petrified images accompany the sense of magic, of myth, as it can be seen in the `informal and delir-ious'27 arrangement of the Guellestate, where pillars become trunks and trees petrify: the re-al trees Gaudi planted in the garden of the park are weeping willows, poplars and elms, all of which are trees that Esperide's daughters were turned into in Jacint Verdaguer's poem La Atlantida, dedicated to Antonio Lopez.28

Figure 10 Figure 11

Figure 12

Architecture, dream, poetry and tale thus cross their paths, they penetrate into each other, fuse and exchange roles to settle the perspicuity of the differences of narration's capability to evoke. Plecnik's Ljubljana is accordingly a sort of tale, a narration. Sergio Polano uses this term when saying Plecnik builds compositions on the urban scene `by the narration imprinted on places along the flow of water, the unfolding of the streets, the pauses of the squares.'29And also Paolo Portuguese, describing the cemetery of the Slovenian capital - where Plecnik designed every single detail, from the benches to the uniforms of the funeral service workers -, compares his little constructions to the words of a tale.30 Just like in certain novels, Plecnik's `tale' also contains various architectural and decorative elements that pave the way to the creation of a language with different levels of understanding, as high-lighted by Burkhardt, Artois and Von Eybesfeld.31 (Figure 13)

Figure 13

This idea of a story however, although under a different aspect and with a different meaning, is a concept we find often also in John Hejduk's architecture. The universe of Hejduk's thought, as Renato Rizzipoints out, is a unitary and undivided `reality' of a Trinitarian form, where poetry, painting, and project are interconnected and undistinguishable worlds.32 His is a deeply dramatic architectural universe; a sort of reliquary inhabited by angels and demons and adorned with fantasy characters, animals, machines and anthropomorphic figures. A world completely infused with a poetic soaked of a profound sense of the sacred, where word and image become the two pieces of wood of a cross.33This tight connection between architecture and literature, in addition to marking his entire work, is also a way of relating to the teaching activity at the Cooper Union school, whose classes required the study of both architecture and literature. This connection can be traced to the experiences made during his teaching in Austin alongside Colin Rowe, 34 who was a passionate supporter of a humanistic and historically aware approach to architecture, and even back: Hejduk, before becoming a teacher and then the principal, was a student at the Cooper Un-ion, where, already at that time, aesthetic-philosophical experiences informed the approach to design.35

Therefore, for him writing and architecture were combined in a unitary form. The House of the One Who Refused to Take Part, for example, is a 1979 project for Venice, 36 (Figure 14) accurately described in all its parts and functions, and contrived as a sort of tale in which images and writing become complementary. In this project, the theme of `showing' is completely different from the concept that characterised the main aspects of the Modern Movement. Namely it has nothing to do with the idea of transparency tectonically conceived, where, as Dal Co remarks, the harmony of inhabiting takes form by showing it-self.37 On the contrary, many years before the TV show Big Brother and many years after the appearance of the modern on the international architectural stage, the unveiling, in Hejduk's Venetian project, translates dramatically in to a sort of pillory for the inhabitant, who, placed in a room specifically thought for this function, is implacably doomed to show him self in a mirror placed on the facade of the facing tower, which re - flecks outside his image. (Figure 15-16) The House of the One Who Refused to Take Part is not an isolated project but is part of a personal quest the New York architect conducts on his own inner contrasts, which finds in Venice the incentive and the depth that help him to examine a multitude of themes through this sort of literary architecture. In fact, it connects directly to three previous projects where we can see concentrated a certain amount of considerations on duality: be-tween `Europe and America; abstraction and historicism; individual and collective; freedom and totalitarianism; the colours white, black, and grey; silence and speech; clear and ambiguous; narrative and poetry; observer and observed.'38Reading this detailed enunciation of themes, just as we cannot not notice narrative and poetry being mentioned, we also can-not deny how the names chosen for the projects evoke on some level the world of novels or poetry. The Cemetery of Ashes of Thought (1975), The Silent Witnesses (1976), and the Thirteen Guarding Towers of Cannaregio (1979), are in fact titles of other Venetian projects, perfectly represented in a series of drawings and coloured models. They complete, together with The House of the One Who Refused to Take Part, the entire cycle of the Venetian tetralogy. This latter, further more, reproposes Hejduk's Wall House in one of its many re-elaborations; an architectural type already present in the project for The Cemetery of the Ashes of Thought that, besides the anthropomorphicidea of architecture, it represents undoubtedly another peculiarity of his work.

Figure 14

Figure 15 Figure 16

If on the one hand Etienne-Louis Boullde's project for the National Library was an explicit homage to the School of Athens, and to culture and erudition, John Hejduk's Cemetery of the Ashes of Thoughts the celebration of literature. This is not just because of the specific function it is destined to, but because of the peculiar use of text that in all of his works transcends its merely pedagogic role. He strictly describes the intervention, indicating the colours of the walls, the size and height of the holes for housing the transparent cubes containing the ashes, the position and the material of the bronze plates with the names of authors and works. On the other hand, the project involves the construction of an artificial island in the lagoon on which a home for a single inhabitant will be built. The lone resident will live there only for a limited time and will look at the graveyard. No one else will be al-lowed tolive on the island during his stay.39Just as we have seen in The House of the One Who Refused to Take Part, Hejduk takes on again, in his own way, the theme of solitude. He intentionally puts aside the established role of the architect to assume a different one. He overpasses the typical function of the designer who, responding to a hypothetical need, develops a living space for a client. Hejduk thinks of a house for alone person, interpreting the nuanced meaning of the term and of the condition it describes. In fact, as a director or a writer, he decides where and how a lonely man's house should be, but most of all he establishes the role the inhabitant takes on inside this tale, where architecture becomes literature. And if the one who `refused to take part' was forced to show himself, the man on the is-land is doomed to watch. Watching appears to be the only action allowed to that one in-habitant whom, even though immersed in the muffled silence of the lagoon, seems to be-come a guilty man, condemned to atone his - punishment kept in forced solitude. It is undeniable that these lonely men, doomed to watch or to be observed, seem to be placed there in order to expiate for a fault not so well defined and that takes us back to a Kafka unconscious guilt of the guiltless guilty. The way Hejduk developes the project is suesand elaborates its representation makes it clear this is not an occasional approach for him, in the sense that it is not aimed to a specific theme. Since The Cemetery of the Ashes of Thought is thought as the place where architecture and literature intertwine, for Hejdukit becomes an opportunity to express his own idea of architecture. For example, when he talks about the consistency of space in Proust and Gide, what he refers to, as he himself states, is not the consistency of space as described in texts, that is dense in the former's view and rarefied in the latter's, but to the consistency of thought as such.40The Cemetery of the Ashes of Thought cannot be reduced therefore to a mere functional object, even though it performs a function. It is not only a tribute to important literature authors, as a rhetoric pantheon consecrated to literary thought. It also represents the will to turn thought into matter. It is the supreme space that celebrates thought, a though table to go beyond a specific discipline. (Figure 17)

Figure 17

Of course, we know that a few pages are not enough to deal with a topic of this complexity. However, we have considered it appropriate to conclude with this John Hejduk's project, precisely because of its sublime working out of the relationship between architecture and literature. Hejduk's figure, more than any other one, focusedon this connection, making it explicit. It is in him that architecture and literature, words and design, writing and project live and interact with extreme naturalness.

Notes

1 See note 6.

2 Gottfried Semper, Lo stile (Bari: Laterza, 1992), pp. 195-196.

3 Adolf Loos, Parole nelvuoto (Milan: Adelphi, 1984), pp. 41-42.

4 `Carlo Levi has rightly explained the influence of the ideophoneme in the setting of other civilizations. The language of Lucania, in its current state, has also given a certain ca-dence to his Cristo si e fermato a Eboli, because that language is the measure of all the land-scape, the men and the things of that region.' Rocco Scotellaro, L'uvaputtanella. Contadini del Sud (Bari: Laterza, 1972), p. 263. This and the other following translations from non-English texts are mine.

5 Andre Leroi-Gourhan, Le gesteet la parole (Paris: Albin Michel, 1964).

6 Umberto Galimberti, Il corpo. Antropologia, psicoanalisi, fenomenologia (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1983), p. 92.

7 `The old Summer Palace was in fact a complexof palaces begun in the early eight-een century and added to over 100 years. […] Landscape gardens celebrated the diverse scen-eries of the empire, among them rice paddies of the Yangtze Valley, noted for the peach flowersand bamboo groves and meandering brooks in their midst. In one, after a poem by the eight-century poet Li Bai, a waterfall was created falling into a pond of chiselled stones, making music as the force ofthe water varied.' Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (London: Jonathan Cape, 2013), p. 31.

8 `Maragall calls the Sagrada Familia a «stone blossom», and says: «that portal is something wonderful. It is not architecture, but poetry of architecture. It doesnot look manmade. It looks like earth, the ropesthat try to lose the passiveness.' Juan Jose Lahuerta, Antoni Gaudi 1852-1926 (Milan: Electa, 1992), p. 273.

9 `The admiration that D'Ors [EugeniD'Ors wrote in La Veu de Catalunya, organ of the LligaRegionalista] had for Maragall, perhaps against his will, has much to do with the as-sociation between poet and temple, because it was Maragall the one who created the building thatfrightened him, that monument that, as only few others, waits, in its glory, to be used.'Lahuerta, p. 258, my translation. More about Maragall, in relation to the Sagrada Famil-ia, in chapters V-VI of the same volume.

10 Juan Jose Lahuerta, `Spazio e vuoto', in Antoni Gaudi 1852-1926, pp. 239-240.

11 Jorge Luis Borges, `Parabola del palazzo', in Antologiapersonale (Milan: Longanesi, 1981), pp. 96-97.

12 `Perhaps an archetype not yet revealed to mankind, an eternal object (to use Whitehead's term), is gradually entering the world; its first manifestation was the palace; its second, the poem. Whoever compares them will see that they are essentially the same.'Jorge Luis Borges, `Coleridge's Dream', Selected Non-Fictions, ed. by Eliot Weinberger (New York: Viking, 1999), vol. 3, p. 372.

13 Aldo Rossi, Autobiografia Scientifica (Parma: Pratiche, 1990), p. 57.

14 Michel Foucault, Le parole e le cose. Un'archeologia delle scienze umane (Milan: Rizzoli, 2010), p. 52.

15 `Namely I believe it is a mistake thinking literature might be made out of words. No, it is not made of words; I mean, it is also made by words, but mostly by images, dreams […] and the past is also a dream.' Borges in conversation with Alberto Arbasino, in Jorge Luis Borges, Antologiapersonale, p. VI.

16 `I remember a famous case: Stevenson dreamt the central scene where Dr. Jekyll becomes Mr. Hyde; then he had to make up all the rest. But […] the central scene was a pre-sent of the dream.' Ibid., p. VII

17 `I think it always starts with the Dream, it starts with the Muse, it starts with the Holy Ghost, with the King, with God, for Jews with the Bible, and then these materials must be reworked. […] It starts with a dream and imagination, which is the same thing. To dream: it doesnot matter if you are asleep or awake, no!» Ibid.

18 `There must always be two elements: the first is imagination, the dream, the image […] and then the reason must be put to work. They need to cooperate, they are not foes. Ibid., pp.VII-VIII. `Dreams are real, like being awake; dreams are real and fantasy is real; my past is real; my past and memory, the story is real, and the story is a dream for us […] or, as Schopenhauer well put it, Die Welt als Will und Vorstellung, The World as Will and Representation: our will and the dream are one and the same.' Ibid., p. VIII.

19 `In 1921, with the construction of the building for the newly born Technical School of Ljubljana and the startingof its architecture class, Plecnikseems willing to take on an active role inside Slovenian culture. The architect gets set to transform Ljubljana into a capital city: the search for a suitable language of shapes forthe current artistic-cultural reality is pursued neglecting the folkloric repertoire, and drawing from the archaic and classic wells of the Med-iterranean architectural patrimony and from the inventions of a few select Italian Renaissance masters. With the architecture of the Slovenian capital, Plecnik intends to shape thoughts that sink their roots in the times of his trips to Italy, when the young architect had matured the certainty that Slavs «will still must go searching in Rome» for theirown «original force.» ' Sergio Polano, Lubiana. L'opera di Joze Plecnik (Milan: Stella Polare, 1982), p. 9.

20 `The process of working on the Castle - symbol of the city - engages the architect for morethan a decade, from the early 1920s, in an idealcomparison with his experience in Ljubljana. […] He wants to infuse the Castlein Praguewith the value of the place people identify with, transforming it froma regal manor into an ideal bastion of the new republic, born after the eclipse of the Austro-Hungarianconstellation.' Ibid., pp. 8-9.

21 This occurs for instance in the two obelisks realized in 1929 and 1938, the former marking the beginning of an organized street, that ends with propylaea, the latter, `an enor-mous pillar that takes inspiration from the Tuscan order of Vignola and that replaces an old monument placed in St. Jacob Square. […] A similar role is attributed to the Pyramid of Zois, of 1927; he used itto mark the breaking point of the street axis, and at the same time tovisually interrupt the inclination of the terrain towards the Ljubljanica.' Damjan Prelovsek, `Il mestiere e la vita di un uomo', inJoze Plecnik Architetto 1872-1957 (Rocca Borromeo: Centro culturale di arte contemporanea internazionale, 1988), pp. 73-74.

22 Polano, p. 10.

23 Manfredo Tafuri, `L'architettura del Romanticismo nordico e il «Modernismo» cata - lano', in Architettura Contemporanea, ed. by Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co (Milan: Electa, 1976), vol. 1, p. 77.

24 Lahuerta, p. 138.

25 Kenneth Frampton, Storiadell'architettura moderna (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1982), p. 68.

26 Luciano Semerani, `Continuity e discontinuity', Iuav, 65 (April 2009), Elogiodell'ar - chitettura. Omaggioa Ernesto N. Rogers, p. 4.

27 Tafuri, p. 77.

28 Lahuerta, p. 43.

29 Polano, p. 10.

30 `Plecnik's most important work might be the Cemetery of Ljubljana, the Jugoslav city where the architect was born and where he was active between the two World Wars. The small cemetery, that opens with a colonnade, inhabited only by light, and made of small con-structions in human scale, tied to one another by a relation ofcontinuity, like the words of a tale.' Paolo Portoghesi, `L'architetto deglianni Ottanta', in Joze Plecnik Architetto 1872-1957, p. 4.

31 Plecnik does not hesitate to add to his architecture decorative elements that allow for the creation of a language with many levels of reading. «Francois Burkhardt, `Moderno, post - moderno: unaquestione di etica?', in Joze Plecnik Architetto 1872-1957, p. 107. `This will be the side where we will offer a second reading keyfor Plecnik's work: the side of the cul-ture of the city conceivedas a «big shape» that places itself in history through asure and rev-erentknowledge of «small architectural shapes», allowing the continuouscounterpointorches-tration of the city.' Alain ArvoisandCristina Conrad von Eybesfeld, inJozePlecnikArchitetto 1872-1957, pp. 29-30.

32 `The universe ofHejduk's thought is always a unitary, undivided reality»: a trinitar-ian form made of poetry, painting, project. They are interconnected, undistinguishable worlds arranged according to a specific hierarchy like the angelic orders in order to bridgegaps oth-erwise impossible to bridge. Those contained between universal and peculiar, between con-templation and compassion. Renato Rizzi, John HejdukIncarnatio (Venice: Marsilio, 2010), p. 20.

33 Ibid., p. 11.

34 `With the arrival of Colin Rowe at Austin, Texas, a radical change in the way architectural education and research are conceivedoccurs. By stressing a re-reading of the Modern Movement and especially the issues raisedby Cubist painting, Colin Rowe proposesa shift in the architectural process: the idea takes the central stage in making architecture. The theme of the idea is repleteof philosophical contents, from Plato onwards, and Panofsky's observations ought to be mentioned too. But what is the idea for Colin Rowe? It is that that constitutes the «autonomous» content of every architectural object.' Francesco Semeram, John Hejduk. Dalla forma alla figura all'archetipo, PhD thesis (Trieste: Universita degli studi di Trieste, Dottorato di Ricerca in Progettazione architettonica e urbana XIX Ciclo, 2008), p. 5.

35 Giuseppina Scavuzzo, `John Hejduk: Or thePassion to Learn', in John Hejduk, ed. by Lamberto Amistadiand Ildebrando Clemente (Florence: Aion, 2015).

36 10 immagini per Venezia, ed. by Francesco Dal Co (Rome: Officina, 1980), pp. 66-76.

37 `It is in fact', Francesco Dal Co writes, `the nostalgia of inhabiting a harmonious place, therefore, where life can openly be fulfilled, in the designed continuity of interior and exterior, where the most profound intimacy does not exclude a Scheerbartian luminosity, where comfort is not a synonym for a mere process of objectification. Utopia, ultimately, of a technically conceived transparency, where the harmony of inhabiting materializes by showing itself.' Francesco Dal Co, Abitarenel Moderno (Bari: Laterza, 1982), p. 4.

38 `Since 1974, Venice has been a precursor for the essence of my work. It is the fo-rum of my inner contrasts. Thoughts refer to Europe and America; abstraction and histori-cism; individual and collective; freedom and totalitarianism; the colours white, black and grey; silence and speech; clear and ambiguous; narrative and poetry; observer and ob-served.'10 immagini per Venezia, p. 67.

39 `The Molino Stucky Building's exteriors are painted black. The Molino Stucky Building's interiors are painted white. The long extended walls of the Cemetery for the Ashes of Thought are black on one side and white on the other side. The top and end surfaces of the long extended walls are grey. Within the walls are one-foot-square holes at eye level. Within each one - foot-square hole is placed a transparent cube containing ashes. Under each hole upon the wall there is a small bronze plaque indicating the title, and only the title, such as Remembrance of Things Past, The Counterfeiters, The Inferno, Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, etc. Upon the interior of the walls of the Molino Stucky Building are small plaques with the names of the authors of the work: Proust, Gide, Dante, Milton, Melville, etc. In the lagoon on a man-made island is a small house for the sole habitation of one individual for a limited period of time. Only one individual for a set period of time may inhabit the house, no others may be permitted to stay on the island during its occupation. The lone individual looks across the la-goon to the Cemetery for the Ashes of Thought.' John Hejduk, Mask of Medusa: Works 1947-1983, ed. by Kim Shkapich (New York: Rizzoli International, 1985), p. 80.

40 `The central theme is the consistency of space, not that described by the literal text, but the literary space, rarefied as in Gide or dense as in Proust. It deals with, then, a consistency of thought. Scavuzzo, p. 85.

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