Page 203 - ELEMENTS EUROPA (EN)

ELEMENTS EUROPA REASONS FOR DETAIL 199

The glass panel fixations on the secondary structure of the lantern are
an example of technical details. All details of the “constructive” vocabulary
of the assembly – from the load-bearing structure to the peripheral
structure supporting the glassy envelope, the vertical symmetries opposing
load-bearing and suspended elements, radiating sets and their twistable
articulations, the positioning of linking components between dressing
elements – individually address the multiple architectural questions
(mechanics, architectonic and perception). Technical solutions are
elaborated gradually but from a comprehensive environment, i.e. that of
the building and its shape and the system uniting its components with
one another. Eventually, in order to understand the nature of architectural
problems, visitors must see solutions before their very eyes. Understanding
architectonic language and representing the meaning of architecture occurs
through induction, such are the deep similarities between this exceptional
building’s engineering and the method elaborated by the artist codifying
polychrome: the “figural induction” eventually defines the logic common
to the architect, the engineer and the artist.

It is important to go over the conventional opposition between
“aesthetics” and “technique”. Details are “perspective” too: effects derived
from the elliptic shape and the peripheral circulation system surprise visitors.
Details cannot be isolated in places; not only do they appear as clues
facilitating perception or devices for a more or less demonstrative assembly
but also as a general result of architecture: they proceed from a synthesis
and they evidence spatial experience. Details not only present visible effects
or constructive explanations but they also turn into vehicles for meaning.
The latter cannot be separated from spatial experience properly speaking,
that of visits, attendance, usage and occupation. From a philosophical
viewpoint, details suggest and provide some comprehensive understanding
of the building. Details open up a perspective towards the hard-to-grasp
architectural whole; they represent it.

In that respect, is there a finer example of details than the emergency
staircase, at the head of the lantern’s wood floors? In Europa, those spaces
often are mistreated and confined to their subsidiary and ancillary role and
have turned into masterpieces of the art of reduction and that of material
economy. Almost aerial, their flights are superimposed and suspended to
simple perforated steel sails; their structure is rather transparent so as not to
hide the view from the atrium or reduce incoming light. Their feat is to reach
the ground almost without touching it!