giovedì 28 agosto 2008

Egotists of Expression (eidolon)

Living and viewing Rem's architecture, do we get to know Rem the man any better? From Zaha's? Perhaps a bit more. And more again from Mies. But what of Palladio?

It seems that these people's art does not closen us to them as, say, William's or Gunther's. Or even Thomas's or James's.

But perhaps what we think (or expect by analogy), is but a mistake. As what "seems". In any and every case, what the architecture seems to reveal about it's "creator" seems pretty uninteresting, and we are much more attracted and interested in the architecture. And often the little it reveals we would rather not know, for instance who Norman thinks he is.

There remains this sense of residual difference and distinction around architecture: that it is not about particular men but of Man. Of mice and men not Of writers and readers.

For my part, I have never tried to express myself. At least, only in a second moment. First the architecture (that is, the idea), and if it leaves me kindly room for my fancies and fixations, all the better.

Architecture is one art (at least) safe from those predative, maniac egotists of expression. Such as Lady M. But yet ever menaced by those who have nothing to say, like Lady M, who is no lady, but a beast.

1 commento:

Anonimo ha detto...

Architecture is the expression of the ideal of man, and ideal of life (ideal in the meaning that a project is imagination, and the "ideal" is the imaginated). The building is the habitat imagined for the Man. In this way every building talks about the architect who create it, his ideals, his vision of life, his idea of that specific site...

G.B.