what's the void? Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi

I think so far the answers given about this question are pointless . The void - as nothingness - is, still a trap-concept we can define only negatively. The void is the absence of fullness. The negation of matter. It's what hasn't substance. As we define the void negatively - as something it is not - it shouldn't exist. How can something that exist doesn't have phisical qualities? We needn't be Parmenide to realize what doesn't exist isn't worth our consideration. It isn't exactly so. In architecture one can't accept the concept of absolute void, that is to say the philosophical negation of fullness, but, some space, or rather what is delimited by fullness. It's quite something. Something less solid, more aerial than building material, some air. Therefone one first definition: in architecture the void isn't the absolute void but some space inside walls, barriers, shapes; or in geometric terms, a volume. I'll make myself more clear: exactly as inside a cylinder, a cone, a sphere there's a surface which delimits a inner area which is delimited, as there's an architecture with a 'container' which contains and an inner space which is contained.

Well, this is a step forward but slight. This simple consideration is barely sufficient to make architecture known to us in completely different light. Considering it as contained not as a container. Considering a space starting from the walls which contain it is one thing, observing a space which is defined by the walls is another thing.

Mr Bruno Zevi strongly introduced a new point of view in architecture: in a memorable exhibition he went as far as to have plastics models made, in which Michelangelo's architecture was seen "negatively", that is starting from demited spaces.

And Mr Rem Koolhaas himself utilised a similar approach for the French library's project.

He thought of a big parallelepiped fully piled up of books and hollowed by spaces, which, like the holes of a Gruyère, would erode the mass. Then he made two different plastics models: one to make the volume seen as full; the other made by holes seen negatively as full volumes, to make one know their logical aggregation. Koolhaas states that the structure of the hole build the library's architecture as it's inside them that life goes on ways wind & where searching & studying activities are performed.

So Mr. Zevi & Mr. Koolhaas show us how one can plan voids.Instead of assembling walls, the planner will join volumes, or rather spaces, toghether. But is this answer fully satisfactory for an architect? I don't think so. As it might hide a formalism as inferior as that one set up on the composition of fullness. In the hands of people less skilled than Mr Zevi or Mr Koolhaas, the ensemble of spaces may become a gratious play, an umpteenth way of grouping which, instead of working by adding on plasters, walls, windows, projects by juxtaposing prismed, parallelepipeds, spheres or -even though it's the same- saddles, Moebius' bands, hiperbolic paraboloids. In short, the umpteenth formalist plague which impoverished architecture, turnig it into a useless geometric play.

So a third term is required: the user. The user is the one who measures and gives substance to the space; as a void makes sense only with reference to its user. In a common way, for example, a three metre-high room has a certain value for the user who lives in it, but a thirdy metre - room has another value. A plastic model is one thing, a real building is quite another. This consideration immediately takes us to another one: a link that should exist among fullness, void and human being. And it's just this relationship which fixes or not the real value of an architecture. I admit I had thought about this question for long. And the at I haven't found a fully satisfying solution except for one basic idea. Here it is. Let's think over the void. We already said it doesn't exist but negatevely, as what is full. Now imagine you are inside a space. You'll have an idea of its spatial value only by the pesception of what this space delimits: walls, barriers, ceilings. And even according your point of view. So the perception of void hasn't a value by itself but it has a relational characteristic. In mathematical terms we'd say: the perception of void is a function of fullness which delimits it and of the user who utilises it. It varies whether the first one changes (its grain, its dimentions, its shape) or the second one chenges(his size, his position, his point of view). What does the space which has relational characteristica imply? First of all man(with his needs, his feelings) plays a leading role in it again. In architecture, space makes sense only with a man who uses it. Therefore, end of formalism and beginning of living which is certainly more interesting than formalism. Secondly, space may be considered in informatic terms. The information theory is the best means we have to manage informing processes, and so, interrelations. Finally, the awareness that even the flows gain weight in the new informing space. They're all those immaterial activities which up to now architecture has scarcely considered. And as walls and ceilings, they establish a relation with the user who utilises and perceives them. And in the en, to put it midley, the architecture of the third millennium can come into sight.

Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi