Filippo Zordan

La prueba del tiempo. Arquitectura

2012-07-12T19:08:00.003+02:00

La arquitectura debe tener el elemento del tiempo.

Como puedes juzgar una obra?

hoy digamos, alguna obra de algun arquitecto que conozcas

que es emocionante y maravillosa

y pasara 20 o 50 anos despues..

esa es su medida.

por eso sentiremos que siempre es tan perfecta

que cuando fue hecha su apariencia puede diluirse,

probablemente lo hará

pero la espiritualidad del proyecto quedara

asi entendaras la prueba del tiempo,

no hay duda.

Luis Moreno Mansilla died today, February 22nd 2012

2012-02-22T20:38:00.000+01:00

Luis Moreno Mansilla, Spanish Architect died today, at the age of 52 years old in Barcellona. He was there for a book presentation about Enric Miralles.

I just want to remember him with an interview made by David Neustein.

David Neustein: Your office seems accomplished in finding a very simple form that clearly communicates the idea of each project but also sticks in peoples’ minds. Is it as easy as it looks?
Luis Mansilla: Well, I think that it is very difficult. We are not just working with a site in physical terms when we make a project. There are a lot of different sites. I think there is a personal site, a physical site, an intellectual site, there is a material site and a cultural site. You have to work with all of these elements and try to extract from the work something that forms the project. So for instance, when we were working on the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Castilla y Leon (MUSAC), we were just playing and we scaled up the Roman pavement, which came to shape the museum plan of squares and trapezoids. Leo?n was founded by the Romans. So you take part of the city and you make a scaling transformation, with the means of our times, and then it has the possibility of entering the project. And, for instance, when we were dealing with the colours, we took the colours of the other [major] space of the city, which is the cathedral, and then we made a pixelisation, and then it could be entered in [the design]. So the idea is that you take parts of this discussion, and then you choose these parts to be transformed, and then arrive to one form. The Roman pavement wasn’t just interesting because it was a Roman pavement and was therefore a link to the city, it was also interesting because it allowed us to enter into an intellectual discussion, which is: what is the importance of the hand of the architect in the final decisions of the project? Since Peter Eisenman first started trying to explain that architecture is no longer able to inform architecture, we have spent 25 years looking to other devices for defining formal things. The scaling is an internal joke of this first movement of the present moment, which is computers, of buildings where the plan comes from flows of people, or the charts of Greg Lynn where the form comes from the speed of cars, or diagrams, or this use of parametrics in American universities. All are concerned with the same problem: trying to make the form not by the personal belief of the architect but by something outside of architecture. With this idea of, let’s say, squares and rounds, the architecture is based not on an axis but at zero/zero, it becomes more like a mathematical camp. The museum therefore can be bigger or smaller, you can make more squares or fewer trapezoids, but the museum remains absolutely the same. So in a way the form becomes indifferent, but also becomes the result of necessities. If you need more storage, then we will add more storage, no problem. The building will be absolutely the same. So we were trying to achieve a form in which we were able to insert different content or different layers.

DN So if I understand correctly, it is not so important what you begin with, it’s the process…
LM It’s the process. And for instance this project started at another point. It started when we spent eight years travelling every Thursday to make the Zamora Municipal Museum and the Leo?n Auditorium. This part of Spain is very nice; it’s the least densely populated part of Europe. So you can see fields in which there are traces of people working, preparing for planting by ploughing the fields. We were fascinated by the idea that when the internal order of the ploughing is established, the boundaries of the field don’t matter. So that was the first idea of the museum: it would be nice to make something in which you make an order so that the perimeter becomes absolutely independent.

DN What’s your relationship to modernism? Because it seems that you are working within the context of modernism.
LM I think we are moving to more organic models. But I think that from the beginning we had these references or these influences from working with Rafael Moneo. In Spain everything arrived late – or later than in other parts [of the world]. So when we finished school it was the moment of fighting against Franco, connected with the idea of recovering modernism, which had been forgotten elsewhere. And construction was very good in Spain but very simple. It was a poor country, so we started thinking in more rational terms. After a while, around 15 years ago, we realised that it was very strange to divide the work between minimalist and expressionist. We started thinking that maybe we could create systems of expressiveness in the interior of very controlled groups. This was also the origin of MUSAC, when we started to think like that. Before Enric Miralles and the Guggenheim Museum, the panorama in Spain was absolutely homogenous. And I think that it’s a very interesting movement because at the end it’s referring to the conditions of nature, which is something that is always very interesting, very deep. So the idea for instance, in this competition for the Kunsthal, is the idea of growth, the idea of dynamism, of change, which is related to a lot of things, particularly with the moon, the sun, the movements of the every day.

DN You studied in Madrid and you worked for Rafael Moneo for many years. So where does the interest in nature come from?
LM I think there are two interesting things for us. The first one is from Moneo himself. We learned the idea of showing honesty in our work, which means that there is a value in the work, which is not just a matter of being a genius or having good ideas or whatever, it’s a matter of work, not just thinking the projects, but also building them. This is one of the reasons we have decided not to grow, we are happy with 12 [staff], and having time to take care of the things we are doing. And then construction is a way of doing the project. This honesty is very important.
The second thing is that when Moneo was awarded with a prize, he said, ‘I thank architecture because it permits you to see the world through its eyes’. In a way, we thank Moneo, because he permitted us to see the world through his eyes. I think the most interesting part is that architecture has three legs: the world of building, the world of teaching, and the world of research. We always try to keep these three legs. We normally teach in the autumn semester in Madrid and the spring semester at different schools in Lausanne [Switzerland] and Harvard University, and we are teaching in Princeton University for the next three years. And also, doing research, making a continuous research on others, is a way of doing research on us. For instance, with this small magazine we have called Circo, once a month we stop the office and produce an edition for 500 people all around the world. It’s like a continuous conversation that permits us to keep thinking. You have to think, not just produce, maybe there are some geniuses who fortunately for them don’t have to think, that would be wonderful, but we have to work at it.

DN I understand that in the 1990s you and Emilio were editors ofArchitecture magazine in Spain. How important is publication in your strategy?
LM Absolutely important. At the very beginning there were six people working on the magazine of the Association of Architects. It was this group, the generation, including Abalos and Herreros, that were fired because we were too left wing. That was the problem. So we spread and then each one of us then produced a magazine. Ours is very different, it has no design. It has continuity, it’s the only one that has run for 13 years every month, 37 numbers. It’s a representation of us. Whoever sends us a postcard will receive it for free, but you have to make an effort, a physical effort.

DN I understand the European Union is trying to bring Spanish architectural education into line with the rest of Europe, losing the engineering component. Will this have a big impact on architecture in Spain?
LM I think yes, because the Spanish model comes from the French model of the Polytechnic. Spanish students are forced to work during seven years and then have a complete knowledge of structures, metal piping, tubes, lighting, because the model is that the architect is the only one responsible. I am making this Convention Centre project for instance, where the project will be 400 million Euros, and there will be just my signature on it. There will be no signatures of engineers, just my signature. So this is something ancient we will have to change. But in Spain, you make your own structures, and when I made my first work with Emilio we calculated the beams. This is a model that is not possible anymore, now we’re concerned with controls (which is good), but before we had all the power and all the responsibility. Personal responsibility. You go to jail directly, but you also have all the power. That’s why Spanish architecture sometimes feels so entire, so complete, because it’s you who thinks about what you will do with this pipe coming out of here, and what will be the size of the beam, and what will be the connection with that. You have to think how that will appear: in the MUSAC for instance the space, the structure and the finishes are the same thing. That was the fight with that design.

DN It’s really interesting to be hearing all the conversation that is going on in your studio. Is this normal?
LM We actually believe in this model. There is no one who is usually in charge of this or that. What’s very important for us is that all the work we have is through competitions. We never had a client, well, once, and for a small thing. At the very beginning we were very serious and said that, as we are good, nobody should ask anything of us! Let’s do competitions. So during the years we made about 10 competitions each year and won one. Well, if you win fine, but if you lose you are close to the tenth one, you have to lose nine to win one! If you lose it doesn’t matter, you’re just nine, just eight away. Right now we prefer this model. We’ll always go through a competition in which you have the freedom and the time to express your ideas. And if those ideas have a coincidence with the next ideas it’s perfect, it’s better not to stop. It’s a bit like a laboratory. We are not in a sect, not monks in a cave isolated from the world. Every two months we make a proposal to society. Let’s think about that. If they say no, it is not the fault of the society but of the architect. It’s a model of training. Because you never know when the race will be, but you are training because sometimes you realise, well, the race is today.

DN So many architects express fatigue from too many competitions. Why don’t you?
LM We just finished one competition a week ago, and we believe in this formula from the social and political point of view, so there is no other alternative for us. We cannot say, no, I am tired of doing competitions, I cannot even think about it. We will keep doing and keep doing and keep doing, and we will always learn. A competition is not just for winning or losing, it is for learning something. It doesn’t matter if I lose; well, it matters, but this is not the most important thing. Otherwise you get tired of competitions. But if you see competitions as models of research, of an approach to something, then you are not losing your time. Forty percent of the time of our people is dedicated to competitions, dedicated to research.

Rest in peace Mansilla.

Huge loss.

Filippo Zordan

Architecture Matters

2012-02-01T15:53:00.000+01:00

Here another interesting lecture about Architecture Matters by Peter Eisenman at the Vanderbilt Chancellor's Lecture Series, September 2005.

a copy of a thought

2012-01-31T22:27:00.001+01:00

Sometimes I think if I really feel for being an architect.
It is not a reflection granted. Just think of what you meet with a client who, in his ignorance, tries to convey the connotations that its future home will have and the Architect, interpreter between what is the idea and what is done is in the process , able to sum up with a line that investors want.

A desire which is much deeper than mere beauty driven by fashion, beauty define a popular word used improperly by people who think they can baptize with this sneaky word-objects, a desire that is much deeper to see and appreciate desire realized.

What a buyer wants is to feel at home. He wants to love because he knows that he's the owner and no one else has access to it. The beauty he wants to go beyond the global aesthetic connotations. The house will be the object of desire that every day, at any time, you can transmit what it is and nothing else. Your home.

The house is the life of a man, a view material of a desire made moves in every moment, but can deliver the best in moments of silence, which comes into direct contact with what's around you. Being in a home means to feel feelings of safety and gentleness that only you can try them.

It's not nice having a room designed and ordered the best, but he is loving the feeling of having a residence such as your deepest desire and he wanted to. It is in that moment when you realize that you live to be home.
Like when you open the door to enter. "I'm home!"

The architect must make clients feel at home in their home. It 'a perceptive work of synthesis that only a great designer can do.

"The architect, artist, when he builds a house does not seek praise for formal values, aesthetic or style, or taste these values after a few years are" outdated. " The highest praise to which he must draw is that the inhabitants say: Architect, this house that you have done for us... we live in it (or have lived) with our happiness: we love it. It is a happy event of our lives. But this is more mind you need the architect to the inhabitants that aesthetics, and aesthetic values reach only so sure, cast by the right format, aesthetic forms indisputable, true: human. [...]

The architect, the artist, to interpret the character is curious men and women: love them and love: the true architect should fall in love, for every house that makes or furnishes, clothes (and housing). "

Madrid reminds

2012-01-31T14:41:00.001+01:00

Amazing moments in Madrid

that moment

2012-01-31T09:57:00.000+01:00

the moment when you think nothing is more important

the moment that you live in solitude

the time that you hate

the moment that makes you hate yourself

the moment when you have not realized what is happening to you

the moment when someone thanks you

the moment when you say thanks to someone, but he will not hear it

the time when you have greeted someone who you did not know

the time that you remember

that moment when you smile

the moment when you feel stronger than before and move on

the moment you get up again

the moment when you realize you are older

the moment when you hold a person in your arms

the moment when you feel good about yourself

the time when you do a favor to others

The moment you start to love

il momento in cui pensi che niente è importante

il momento che vivi in solitudine

il momento che odi

il momento che ti fa odiare te stesso

il momento in cui non ti sei reso conto di cosa ti stesse accadendo

il momento in cui qualcuno ti ha ringraziato

il momento in cui tu hai detto grazie a qualcuno, ma questo non ti ha ascoltato

il momento in cui tu hai salutato qualcuno che non conoscevi

il momento che ti ha segnato la giornata

quel momento in cui hai sorriso

il momento in cui ti senti più forte di prima e vai avanti

il momento in cui ti rialzi

il momento in cui ti accorgi di essere più grande

il momento in cui stringi tra le tue braccia una persona

il momento in cui ti senti bene con te stesso

il momento in cui fai un favore agli altri

il momento in cui inizi ad amare

the Architect

2012-01-31T01:29:00.002+01:00

We do not know where is the boundary between normality 'of a thing and the love you feel for it;

the own passions are like the delicate petals of a rose, that you need to cultivate, knowing that might have alovely color, but also that could fly at any moment without having the hope of getting it back in your hands ..

and so what i study..

Architecture ..

maybe for me it's everything I'm searching in my life.

and perhaps it's too much to say but' I find nothing more remarkable in the world of being able to design solutions for people.

Not in a political way, or practical.

It's a human fact that involves the realization of a man's dream that you build with your ideas.

There are people dying for their house, there are people who defend their own house and this is the highest expression of human understanding to be able to build a house for one person.

It creates friendship. confidence is created.

You create emotions, you create security. Privacy is created.

It creates spirituality... you create a building where you are allowed to meditate.

When you are faced with a blank sheet of paper and you're just aware that your pencil will go'to draw even a simple library, you know that that building will be' “the building” for many people, will be 'a place to socialize, friendships will born in there,love will born there,it will create culture, it will make possible the ideas of many.

It's a matter of great responsibility, the Architecture.

must be made with the heart, the Architecture ...

because it's the passion and love of a person... a lover.

A lover who will not care about celebrity or richness.

This lover cares about to know that, what he's drawing, will be a project that will recognize his light, his hope, his emotion, his love...

...and only this lover, the Architect, will be 'able to love like that.

l'architettura

2012-01-31T01:04:00.001+01:00

Non sappiamo dove sta il limite tra la normalita' di una cosa e l'amore che si prova per essa;

le proprie passioni sono come dei petali delicatissimi di una rosa che bisogna coltivare sapendo che potrebbero avere dei colori adorabili, ma sapendo anche che potrebbero volare da un momento all'altro, senza poi aver la speranza di riaverli tra le nostre mani..

Cosi e' quello che studio nel mio intimo.

..l'Architettura

per me forse e' tutto quello che sto cercando nella mia vita

forse e' esagerato dirlo pero' non trovo niente di piu straordinario al mondo del fatto di poter progettare le soluzioni per la gente.

non e' un fatto politico, pratico.

E' un fatto umano che si concretizza con la realizzazione di un sogno di un altro. che tu costruisci con le tue idee.

E' la massima espressione della comprensione umana riuscire a realizzare una casa per una persona.

Si crea amicizia. si crea fiducia, si creano emozioni, si crea sicurezza, si crea intimita', si crea spiritualita'... si realizza cio' che permette all'uomo di meditare.

Quando ti trovi di fronte ad un foglio bianco e sei solo, consapevole che la tua matita andra' a disegnare anche una semplice biblioteca, sai che quell'edificio sara' l'Edificio per molte persone, sara' un luogo in cui socializzare, sara' un luogo dove nasceranno amicizie, nasceranno amori, si creera' cultura, si renderanno possibili le idee di molti.

E' un fatto di magnifica responsabilita', l'Architettura.

va fatta con il cuore, l'Architettura...

perche' e' la passione e l'amore di una persona, amante.

Un amante a cui non interessa sapere se sara' o meno conosciuto, se sara' piu o meno ricco.

a questo amante interessa solo sapere che cio' che sta disegnando con la sua matita sara' un progetto che riconoscera' la sua luce, la sua speranza, la sua emozione, il suo amore...

...e solo lui, l'Architetto, sara' in grado di amare cosi.

El Croquis + Levene House in El Escorial, Madrid. UEM

2012-01-27T18:10:00.002+01:00

It has been a very interesting morning, this one, through the spanish architecture masterpieces in El Croquis showroom in El Escorial / Madrid.

After the visit to this beautiful showroom (we've also met Fernando Marquez Cecilia, founder of the magazine) we visited Casa Leneve, in El Escorial. I just leave some images. it's something amazing.

Thanks again to my professor Miguel Luengo Angulo and my classmates from Universidad Europea de Madrid.

Filippo

PS: here a Louis Kahn book signed from Fernando Marquez Cecilia

Keep reading ;)

thoughts of an architect

2012-01-26T22:41:00.000+01:00

"A work of art is not a living thing as it walks or runs

but the making of the life, that which gives you a reaction;

to somebody's the wonder of man's fingers,

to somebody's the wonder of the mind,

to somebody's the wonder of technique,

and to some it is how real it is, to some how transcendant it is,

like the 5th Symphony...

it presents itself with a feeling,

that you know it if you heard it once, and you'll look for it;

though you know it, you must hear it again,

though you know it, you must hear it again.

Truly, a work of art is one that tells us that

nature cannot make what man can make."

- Louis I. Kahn

relationships

2012-01-26T17:02:00.001+01:00

"Relationships don't work the way they do on television and in the movies. Will they? Won't they? And then they finally do, and they're happy forever. Gimme a break. Nine out of ten of them end because they weren't right for each other to begin with, and half of the ones who get married get divorced anyway, and I'm telling you right now, through all this stuff, I have not become a cynic, I haven't. Yes, I do happen to believe that love is mainly about pushing chocolate covered candies and, y'know, in some cultures, a chicken. You can call me a sucker, I don't care, because I do believe in it. Bottom line is: it's couples who are truly right for each other wade through the same crap as everybody else, but the big difference is they don't let it take them down. One of those two people will stand up and fight for that relationship every time. If it's right, and they're real lucky, one of them will say something."

"I rapporti non funzionano come in tv o al cinema... 9/10 si mollano perche' non sono ben assortiti fin dall'inizio.
Credo che l'amore serva solo a vendere cioccolatini...datemi dell'ingenuo, ma continuo a crederci.
In buona sostanza le coppie veramente giuste sguazzano in mezzo alla stessa ***** di tutti gli altri e la differenza e' che non si lasciano sommergere... uno dei due si fara' forza ogni volta che occorre lottera' per quel rapporto (se e' giusto e se sono fortunati).
Uno dei due dira' qualcosa."

-cit.-

Micaël Reynaud awesome gif

2012-01-16T15:19:00.001+01:00

amalgamation from dunun on Vimeo.

Made by Micaël Reynaud

My Portfolio

2011-12-21T21:52:00.000+01:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More architecture

Diagram of Exteriority

2011-12-21T21:34:00.002+01:00

Writing this narrative text of the diagramming process is a retrospective act. It takes a process that did not have an inner trajectory and forces it to obey such a narrative structure. The first diagrams in my Ph.D. thesis were never intended as the beginning of such a process. Rather, that work intended to distinguish my idea of the formal from other interpretations of the time. It proposed a relationship of built work to an interiority of architecture, something that seemed to be absent from other formal discourses. Most formal studies at the time concerned an analysis and explanation of buildings. My use of the diagram, therefor, was fairly innocent. It was a way of opening up the relationship between an interiority and individual buildings. As the idea of interiority began to develop in my own work, the diagram also beacme more implicated: it was not only explanatory but also generative. however, when the diagram became a generative device – when it was not merely used to explain the relationship between a building and interiority – it introduced other concerns. It suggested an alternative relationship between the subject/author and the work. Such an alternative suggested a movement away from classical composition and personal expressionism toward a more autonomous process. Diagrams became a means to uncover something outside of my own authorial prejudices. In this sense, diagramming was was potentially a more rational and quasiobjective means to understand what I was doing. It was also a means to move away from a subjective consciousness to an unconscious diagramming apparatus. Second the process suggested that the built work could manifest the traces of the diagramming process as a means of relating built work to the interiority of its discourse.
As the diagrams progressed through the houses, two issues concerning interiority became clear: (1) the diagrams assumed that interiority was an “a priori” condition of value, that is, a stable set of geometric icons, and (2) in transforming the geometry of the diagram into architecture, it was realized that geometry does not merely transform itself from a diagram to become architecture. Architecture is something more than geometry; walls have thickness, and space has density. Thus the value placed on any geometry – euclidean or topological – as a prior condition of interiority would always be contingent on some architectural interiority. Thus, as the diagrams shifted from Euclidean to topological geometry, it was seen that this substitution of one geometry for another merely displaced the value given to Euclidean geometry without displacing geometry itself. This raised other questions: Why did the diagram necessarily evolve form some preexistent geometry? Why did the diagram begin from an architectural interiority that was not seen as a stable condition of essences? If interiority was unstable, was it possible that some other process other than transformation was appropriate to diagramming? As an initial answer to these questions, the idea of a process of decomposition suggested that the interiority of architecture could be seen as a complex phenomenon from which a less complex condition of the object could be distilled. Interiority in this sense was no longer seen as either pure and stable or necessarily geometric. But because architecture is always based in geometry, the value of a formal universe as an embodiment of architecture was still present. In order to displace these embodied values, a series of other diagrams was introduced into the diagrammatic process that were not based in geometry, which could be seen in some way to relate to, but at the same time be distanced from, an interiority as it had been previously defined. Thus, a series of external texts was introduced in an attempt to displace that which seemed embodied, immanent, and ultimately motivated in architecture’s interiority. [...]
(P. Eisenman)

Faith

2011-12-19T01:56:00.003+01:00

It's like when you try to get something more on your life.
It happens that sometime you hit your dream and it becomes truth and it happens sometime that your idea or your thought just stay in your mind keeping up you dreams.

life is like a game

the difference between game and life is that you can't believe in something else than win when you play otherwise you will just be the guy who "tried". In your life you need to keep "everything" going on and when i say everything i mean "everything"... your life, your job, your studies, your love, your thought, your religion.

...and sometime it's like you need to be strange for the others because they are just different from you (or for you?)
and sometime you just need to be yourself.
it's unfair to say this because it should be perfect if we could just be ourself every time we meet other people and it should be awesome to be ourself in every kind of situation because it's just being ourself that make us perfect for our life.

i think that it's just the way we want to appear.
we can be egoist, honest, unfair, lucky, bad guys.
but time we will never change what we are for real.
it's like our faith comes true every time we try to cheat on it.

and this is the most beautiful thing that can happen.
at the end we are just the person we show to be.

we are like a story, and our story is what we want to be. our faith teaches what we are going to be.

"Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking" cit. Gibran

new cv & portfolio

2011-12-18T12:51:00.001+01:00

working on the new portfolio. here it is my cv for now

http://www.filippozordan.it

simple

2011-12-17T23:22:00.002+01:00

Sometimes a moment, sometimes all life long you need to understand who you are facing.
Sometimes we live with illusions and just when that mirrow is broken we can see things that we should discover time ago..

It seems that sometimes the world revolves around us and at a certain moment everything which was "past" become just a memory with the world ...
Other times we wake up and realize that we live in a world that we never would have expected.

We can be strong, capable, clever or good magicians,
but we will never cheat our fate
because it is smarter than us.
Not others.

... Sometimes we need just a little gesture to discover a smile can change your day ...
... The touch of a child, a hug and other small gestures with their delicacy convey strong emotions.

Sometimes we fall asleep so happy that we desire that morning again.
Other times we are afraid to wake up.
Not everything always goes as it sounds.
The important thing is knowing that every day we grow
and this is the greatest gift that we have granted.
Only then we can realize how beautiful and great is the simplicity.

modernism

2011-12-17T01:11:00.001+01:00

The quest of beauty has always brought people to a study of what the aesthetic might give them in practical terms.

Ordering all these things we could understand how the “beautiful” is a pure intuition of the human eye in front of an aesthetic formalism that structurally responds to the artistic demands often personal.

A beauty so subjective that draws its formal expression by a pure intuition.

Purity behind the objectivity of a studied work; precise because pure.

“an aesthetic judgments can be accomplished when the human mind perceives a sequence of elements, such as a sequence of notes in the case of a musical composition, colors in the case of painting, architecture or space ( JF Herbart).

Until a few centuries ago, the benchmark for any architecture was the classic, the story, then fixed to mediate between theory and practice of architecture. The last time you face these issues in a completely different design. The knot that holds together the architect in architectural thought is the social function. This implies a design approach that puts first the problem of the generic form that responds to social needs.

It ‘important to understand because it means that you will lose the value of the building as an entity isolated from the context.

“In practical terms it is clearly impossible to create a specific building having as an objective absolute fixed end, as each new unit will not only change the existing order, but also change, with its very presence, each unit future” (P. Eisenman)

I also agree with Rowe when he said that nothing more could happen in architecture since 1965, or after the death of Le Corbusier. Rowe interprets it as the work of Swiss architect was the culmination of the “most sophisticated modernist formalism".

Today we could easily make up for the Kantian thought that what is central to the idea of form is the process of understanding intended as a pure form of intuition or as a form of thought, namely as a process through which the conceptual mediated the different forms of intuition. For Kant the concept of form refers not to the phenomenology of the superficial things, but the process of formation of the representation of objects that you can find in the nature. As argued by Gasche, the idea of form is the synthesis process without sensible intuition from which no cognitive process may arise.

It's was a "Bella Lezione" - Europan 11

2011-12-16T12:53:00.001+01:00

Sometime you just woke up thinking to your business and work, but sometime it happens that you can just think at some things like "yesterday i've been in Eindhoven for Europan 11 award ceremony". that's crazy but it happened like this.

We didn't have a clue of what was going on last days because we received an e-mail some weeks ago saying to go to Eindhoven for the 14th for the award ceremony of Europan 11 . no more, no less .
So we went: we actually were guys from Italy, Spain and France meeting the 13th in Brussels to visit it since it's a very interesting city (i just want to remember la "Galerie de la Reine"-1847).

Lucky me I have my friend Zeynep living there if not i should walk around looking for an hotel! Thanks Zeynep!

The 14th we left the city at 9am ready to go to Eindhoven and we arrived there at 1pm.
I have to be honest; as first impression Eindhoven is presented like a very contemporary city trying to dialog with the past and there's a very interesting thing to say as well: there's a good dialog between Architecture and Art within the centre.
It's amazing how they manage the streets, how they can manage the walk ways and the respect they have for cyclists.
As I said the first impression was so good. I would love to go back there one day :) hope soon.

The award ceremony begins anyway.
Little coffee break where we met some very interesting guys from Holland and then ready for the conference.

The conference was well organized and the speakers were so funny but so good because they were just reading a text and a lot of time they lost themselves reading their own paper. Anyway they began the announcement of the finalists.

All the groups called as finalist had a very nice project that and really appreciated another thing; the jury's Assessment was very critic and honest and true :)

In our section the first price was won by some spanish guys leaded by: Francisco Javer Castellano Pulido, Tomas Garcia Piriz, Luis Miguel Ruiz Aviles, Paloma Baquero Basatz and Juan Antonio Cerrano Garcia.
These guys were from Cuac Arquitectura in Granada and they did a very interesting work. I personally really appreciate they way they managed the housing and its composition. I hope i will get a section or a plan of their work in the next days so i will publish it here (if i can).

But obviously the best group wasn't the first price! :-)
The personally best one was our group who got the 2nd price (runner-up)!
Alina and Leonardo, our group leads, went to receive the honor and the price (Alina was almost dying when the speaker called her :-) ).
Our project was very interesting from the master plan and composition point of view but it wasn't very well composed in the housing-typology and representation.
But as Ivo said: you guys got a "bella lezione" today. And we can promise that we will be stronger for the next Europan and we'll try to hit that thing that the spanish guys got this year :)

I think that sometime these kind of things teach you how to grow up. we are so happy now but we are stronger because we now understand how we can still grow up for the future, both personally and as group, and if those spans guys didn't join this Europan 11 we could probably win the 1st price but honestly it's better like this (i'm talking as student now because it's clear that the first price is always the best).

After that conference the Europan 11 group moved to TU/e Showroom where the university organized first an exhibition of the winners (we were so proud to see our work exposed) and then a dinner between the groups leads (and me and our friend went to try the KFC in Eindhoven).

It was a great experience guys. This is just a way to start to be an architect maybe because from these little things you begin to understand what's going on out of your university and around europe. it's so useful to meet other architects from other countries and then talk with some developers and understand their point of view as well.

We are just so happy of this

So many thanks again to our group!! Thanks to LAP office, Alina Lippiello, Leonardo Zuccaro Marchi, Filippo Zordan, Fabio de Ciechi, Manuele Mossoni, Annalisa Romani, Pierre Bertrand Guyot de Hardruyere, Fausto Cuzzocrea and Vesna Markovic!! A special thanks to Ivo which was so patience with us and brang us to this awesome trip through holland!

It was Bella Lezione and a great Experience

See you in Europan 12 maybe :)

Filippo Zordan

Madrid

2011-10-30T20:29:00.002+01:00

Here we are
let's just say that this blog is going to be written just just for a simple reason..
lately i'm not speaking italian that much and i'm just living abroad now (in madrid to be precise... but i'm not writing in spanish :) )

What about my life now..
i'm discovering new places, i'm meeting new amazing people, i'm talking with special people as well and i am just so proud of my choice to be far from my homeland because this world is so damn big and filled by ... i miss the word ... let's say beautiful people with so many different stories, so many different habits, so many different thought and it's just so perfect to share your personal experience with them..

I'm meeting Madrid. I'm meeting a city with his own "new" heart.
how can i describe it..
someone said to me that it's the city where you can live
someone said to me that it's the city where you can open your culture to the world because the culture opens itself to you.
someone said that it's lovely
someone said that you can just miss it

those things are the same that i heard about Milan and i have to be honest...
the difference between Madrid and Milan is that when you are in Milan you miss madrid... but when you are in Madrid you can't miss Milan.
it could be just a sensation
but that's what my friend said to me

and that's awesome how in a city of 3 million people you can meet everyone and everyone say you Hola when you cross him/her on the road.

it's brilliant how people can smile here all the time
it's brilliant how people are so respectfully clean for their city.
it's amazing how you can just walk in a city and relax.

thanks to everyone for this amazing experience

i will talk about my friends :) they are all making me feel myself here

Don't Go Away

2011-01-18T15:15:00.002+01:00

A Cold and frosty morning.. there's not a lot to say..
About the things caught in my mind
As the day was dawning my plane flew away
With all the things caught in my mind
And I wanna be there when you're...
Coming down
And I wanna be there when you hit the ground
So don't go away say what you say
But say that you'll stay
Forever and a day...in the time of my life
Cos I need more time yes I need more time
Just to make things right
Damn my situation and the games I have to play
With all the things caught in my mind
Damn my education I can't find the words to say
About all the things caught in my mind
Me and you what's going on?
All we seem to know is how to show
The feelings that are wrong

2011-01-18T00:49:00.003+01:00

Vorrei imparare a scandire il tempo come fanno le volte gotiche..

...e come non fanno più i piatti e lucidi soffitti moderni che lasciano spazio al vuoto

Vorrei imparare a scavare me stesso come i giapponesi contemplano il vuoto

Vorrei imparare a riempirmi di gioie come gli antichi romani decoravano i loro capitelli

Vorrei imparare ad essere più sincero come un' architettura di Kahn

Vorrei imparare ad essere più onesto come un segno di kandinsky.

così

2010-10-17T23:26:00.002+02:00

il momento in cui pensi che niente è importante
il momento che vivi in solitudine
il momento che odi
il momento che ti fa odiare te stesso
il momento in cui non ti sei reso conto di cosa ti stesse accadendo
il momento in cui qualcuno ti ha ringraziato
il momento in cui tu hai detto grazie a qualcuno, ma questo non ti ha ascoltato
il momento in cui tu hai salutato qualcuno che non conoscevi
il momento che ti ha segnato la giornata
quel momento in cui hai sorriso
il momento in cui ti senti più forte di prima e vai avanti
il momento in cui ti rialzi
il momento in cui ti accorgi di essere più grande
il momento in cui stringi tra le tue braccia una persona
il momento in cui ti senti bene con te stesso
il momento in cui fai un favore agli altri
il momento in cui inizi ad amare

un sorriso

2010-10-17T23:22:00.003+02:00

A volte vivi dei momenti in cui non vorresti esserci mai entrato,
non vorresti nemmeno sfiorare certe situazioni, ma soltando dire che sai come funzionano le cose.
Vorresti a volte invece entrarci per poter appoggiarti al male per poter deviare da situazione scomode.
Molte volte invece preferisci lasciare agli altri il proprio destino.
Quasi tediato da quello che ti circonda a volte succede che ti chiudi e inizi a pensare.

E forse tutto il male viene per poter spronarti, per farti star meglio
E' proprio vero che alcune persone le incontri quando non te lo aspetti
E' proprio vero che la felicita' la puoi incontrare solamente quando riesci a rialzarti da terra.

Modernismo

2010-04-25T00:31:00.001+02:00

La ricerca della bellezza ha sempre portato le persone ad uno studio approfondito di ciò che l’estetica potesse dare a loro in termini pratici.
Andando con ordine potremmo capire come ciò che è bello sia cioè una pura intuizione dell’occhio umano di fronte ad un formalismo estetico che risponde strutturalmente a delle esigenze artistiche spesso personali.
Una bellezza quindi soggettiva che trae la sua espressione formale da una intuizione pura.
Purezza che sta alla base dell’oggettività di un’opera analizzata; proprio perchè pura, quest’opera deve essere completa in ogni sua parte in quanto può essere giudicabile.
Giudizio che ha delle cause non banali quali la completezza e la purezza intuibile.
Non sarebbe tale se l’opera non fosse compiuta. Proprio perchè “un giudizio estetico può compiersi nel momento in cui la mente umana percepisce una sequenza di elementi, come una sequenza di note nel caso di una composizione musicale, di colori nel caso della pittura, o di spazi nel caso dell’architettura” (J.F. Herbart). C’è da dire inoltre che un giudizio, di qualunque genere esso sia, non può rivelarsi se non in uno stato di assoluta indifferenza, oggettività di fronte a quell’opera che è in analisi, in modo da poter mantenere un equilibrio mentale che trascende da eccitazione e malinconia.

Ma facciamo un passo indietro…o meglio cerchiamo di capire in che epoca viviamo…

Fino a pochi secoli fa il punto di riferimento per qualsiasi architettura era la classicità; quella storia, quel punto fisso che fungeva da mediatore tra la teoria e la pratica architettonica. Nell’ultimo periodo si affrontano in modo completamente diverso questi aspetti progettuali. Il nodo che tiene insieme l’architetto al pensiero architettonico è la funzione sociale che l’opera del primo dovrà avere. Questo implica un approccio al progetto che pone in primo luogo il problema della forma generica che risponde a delle esigenze sociali. Ed il risultato di ciò lo si ritrova nella modernità.

E’ importante capire ciò perchè significa che andrà perso il valore formale dell’edificio come unico, come entità isolata rispetto al contesto. “In termini pragmatici è chiaramente impossibile creare un edificio specifico avendo come obiettivo un fine assoluto prefissato, poichè ciascuna nuova unità non solo cambierà l’ordine esistente, ma modificherà anche, con la sua stessa presenza, ogni unità futura” (P. Eisenman)

Mi trovo d’accordo con lo stesso Rowe quando dichiarava che nulla più poteva succedere in architettura dopo il 1965, ovvero dopo la morte di Le Corbusier. Rowe infatti interpreta l’operato dell’architetto svizzero come fosse il punto di arrivo del “più sofisticato formalismo modernista”.

Al giorno d’oggi potremmo rifarci benissimo al pensiero kantiano secondo cui ciò che è al centro dell’idea di forma è proprio il processo di comprensione inteso come pura forma dell’intuizione o come forma del pensiero, cioè come processo concettuale attraverso il quale vengono mediate le diverse forme dell’intuizione. Per Kant il concetto di forma non si riferisce alla fenomenologia superficiale delle cose, ma al processo di formazione della rappresentazione degli oggetti della natura. Come ha sostenuto Gasché, l’idea di forma è il processo di sintesi senza il quale nessuna intuizione sensibile e nessun processo cognitivo potrebbero avverarsi.