Page 10 - Between light and shade
P. 10
between light and shade, TRANSPARENCy and reflection
eyes. You will not touch or smell the aroma of
materials, nor their intimate relationship with
the taste of mouth-watering food, and I will only
briefly allude to the sensory role of materials,
which is equally as decisive for the enjoyment of
architecture.
On the other hand, although it is limited,
in this case, to visual and auditory perception,
architectural design thinking should never-
theless be global in its nature.
In effect, architecture is built by acts of creati-
vity, discovery and inventiveness, and enters the
realm of art, science and engineering:
—— like art, it draws “on this well of raw
feeling,… in complete innocence 9”;
—— like science, it “manipulates things, esta-
blishes internal models for itself and, on the
basis of these indices or variables, making the
transformations that their definition allows, only
infrequently encounters the modern world 10”;
—— like engineering (or technology) it shapes
matter in the quest for invention,
—— like philosophy, all architectural questions
must be posed from the standpoint of perception
and feed on the observation of paradoxes.
Among the latter, the most fundamental
appears to be that articulated by Merleau-Ponty
9 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, op. cit., p. 9.
10 Ibid., p. VII.
10
