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THICKNESSES. ARCHITECTURAL WALLS/SPACE CONSTRUCTION

L. Zecchin

Abstract

This essay reflects on the relationship between space and construction characterizing the contemporary in thickness architecture. Understood as a new project material, the system of walls/spaces is the result of an evolution and synthesis of three different wall conceptions and construction techniques. The first belongs to the Roman wall, a large and continuous mass that is transformed into the negative space of an inner volume. The second one belongs to the Renaissance, where the research focuses on the decomposition of the monolithic wall, restored as a sum of independent plans reconstructed according to the principles of perspective, where the mass is exfoliated in compressed layers. The third corresponds to the modern wall freed from static constraints, where the research is aimed at a succession of intervals between interior and exterior, an interface that accommodates spaces of disjunction between the closing elements and the structural ones. In contemporary combinatorial synthesis, the mass remains minimal, optimized and reduced to the essential, but the thickness grows exponentially. In some cases this is a question of spatial, technical and structural needs, to accommodate all the service elements necessary for the operation of a building. In other cases this is the device to recycle pre-existing building structure in new contemporary tectonics. The design concepts and the constructive characters are examined through the analysis of significant case studies in order to underline the strengths and values of the new architectural thicknesses.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2018H/51/S17.053

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