Páginas do livro “La matérialité de l'architecture”, de Antoine Picon
Foto divulgação [Website Amazon]
The book La materialité de l'architecture, recently published by Parenthèses in France, starts from the thesis that the role of architecture is to give expression to matter. From this assumption, Picon reviews the history of Architecture from this point of view to arrive, in the final chapter, to materiality in the digital age. According to him, the information age did not start with the emergence and popularization of computers, but much earlier, since the end of the nineteenth century, with the need to treat information for the “good functioning of companies and sectors of administration”. The development of computers would therefore be the consequence, not the cause of the information society.
Picon asserts that, the purposes of the computer have changed significantly throughout the twentieth century, from calculator to computer, passing through a machine of logical ordering (ordinateur) and finally reaching a pervasive hybridization with other equipment, becoming something that mediates our relationship with the physical reality, thus influencing our conception of materiality. However, the author affirms that while contemporary architecture broke ranks with some presuppositions of modernity, it would remain faithful to the modern movement on the issue of the symbolic, which is clearly manifested in spite of the return of the ornament, a theme already discussed by him in other publications.
The book concludes with some very interesting questions about the future of Architecture. For example, in view of the fact that architectural design moves progressively from the design of spaces to the design of events made possible by the capacity of buildings to communicate and act, Picon wonders if, when becoming the main actress, Architecture would not be losing its important role as scenery, capable of giving meaning to human existence.
Páginas do livro “La matérialité de l'architecture”, de Antoine Picon
Foto divulgação [Website Amazon]
