Energia del Tempo (Energy of Time)

Esther Giani

Paolo Mazzanti, concentric visions

 Every rule is nothing more than a means.

It is subordinate to the purpose it helps to achieve. Therefore, it should not be obeyed in a superstitious or mechanical way. It is an authority that exists only to serve and it may even be advantageous to avoid it.

(R. Caillois, ad vocem, Rule, in “Aesthetic Vocabulary”, Bompiani, Milan 1991, p. 26)

Premise

From the notion of “type” in architecture emerges the way in which society transmits its cultural achievements through the mediating work of the architect; achievements that, through form, surface into consciousness and become history. Energy of time.

From the synthesis of the definitions that follow, three interpretative directions of the notion of Type can be identified, or rather three different research attitudes.

The first is of a historical-cultural nature, leading to the examination of type framed within a specific context of architectural culture and culminating in the historical verification of its varied phenomenology.
The second refers to architectural investigations of a theoretical nature: the concept of type finds particularly fertile ground in the study of related disciplines such as art, semiotics, and philosophy (one may think of the many possible references to the Platonic world of ideas, Aristotle’s category of the general, the Kantian schema, etc.).
The third, finally, of a philological nature, while remaining within the field of architecture, seeks a logical explanation, using a scientific method, of the process of typification and investigates the characteristics¹ of its manifestation.
Evidently, the three critical positions allow for reciprocal interferences, leaving ample interpretative possibilities. Just as in the work proposed by Mazzanti.
For our purposes, however, it is sufficient to highlight certain tendencies, still relevant today, which seem to suggest new and interesting “openings” to typological investigation and design practice, the ultimate aim of my studies.
In extreme synthesis, it is believed that the study of types remains today a useful and necessary tool for design, a practice that should precede the poietic phases of giving form to an initial intuition.
Furthermore, knowledge of previous experiences nourishes what is commonly called an idea, making it informed and pertinent to the question we seek to answer through the architectural project.

Before proceeding with the reading of the images proposed by Mazzanti, attention is drawn to the etymological and semantic meaning of the word “type.”

Type. Etymology. From the Latin typus and the Greek TUPOS: a visible impression made on an object by striking or pressing. An imprint for making other imprints. Fig. original model.
Ad vocem

From G. Devoto, G. Oli, “Dictionary of the Italian Language”

“Type – and – type. First and second element of compound words, in which it most often has the meaning of ‘mold’ or ‘matrix’ (typography; daguerrotype; stereotype), or of ‘specimen’ or ‘model’ (archetype; prototype); also common in scientific language, particularly in biology (biotype and biotypy).
[from the Greek TUPOS: ‘imprint’].
From Quatremère de Quincy, Historical Dictionary of Architecture (1832)²

“The word type does not so much present the image of a thing to be copied or perfectly imitated, as the idea of an element that must itself serve as a rule for the model. Thus one should not say (or at least should not say) that a statue or a pictorial composition has served as a type for the copy made from it; but if a fragment, a sketch, the thought of a master, a more or less vague description has given rise in the imagination of an artist to a work, it will be said that the type was provided to him by such or such an idea, for such or such a reason or intention.”

These premises help us read the images on display: a concentric vision that the author, accustomed to architectural studies, proposes of unusual cities such as Milan, Venice, and Urbino.
The sharp, close-up, and precise gaze on an apparently shared phenomenology places the emphasis on the sense of Time. That time embedded in a cultural continuum, the result of a measured slowness that energetically bursts forth in the synthesis of a moment.
Deep and mysterious images of architectural fragments compose a mosaic of visions that, with centripetal force, compel us toward an upward gaze.
Shadows, repetitions, juxtapositions, and perspectival breakthroughs accompany the observer along a path of approach that is almost dizzying.
Concentric because the author leads us, in a paratactic manner, toward his vision of time. A Time that has neither beginning nor end, a Time that approaches yet remains distant, a Time that is slow yet vortex-like in the multitude of shots; a solitary energy because it is a point of view and therefore debatable, and at the same time shared because it is argued through a choice.
Every choice is already a project. And this project is a lesson.
The Project needs time, which cannot be rushed without a loss of Quality.
That Energy of time which gives reason (or wrong) to a project, whether architectural, educational, or cultural.
It is up to the viewer to reclaim these visions and appropriate them within a collective and shared imaginary.
As an architect, I find here that meaning of type, prolific in meanings, returning to the author that system of references indispensable to any Project. Because project is synonymous with vision.

A fragment of time hinc et nunc.

Esther Giani,  Architect and Lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture of IUAV University of Venice, for the course “Typological and distributive characteristics of buildings”
Curator of international events and exhibitions

1. Character, from the Greek Karakter, imprint. In ancient usage it meant any sign, imprint, or stamped, engraved, or impressed mark by which things are distinguished from one another. Metaphorically, also the set of moral qualities that distinguish one person from another. Sound principles. The typological characteristics of buildings: the principles that identify and intervene in the formal definition of a project (utilitas, firmitas, venustas), from the initial scheme to the final product as it manifests itself.
2. Antoine Quatremère de Quincy (1755–1848), theorist of the arts and architecture, is the author of a theoretical corpus that exerted a hegemonic influence on European Neoclassical culture. In the articles composing the Historical Dictionary of Architecture, Quatremère aims to “bring together the principal materials of a history of architecture” as well as all the “ideas and notions, more or less abstract, that have made it an art of imagination, imitation, and taste.” Initially drafted within Panckoucke’s Encyclopédie Méthodique between 1778 and 1825, the Dictionnaire historique d’architecture was published with some modifications in Paris in 1832. The entries “Character,” “Type,” “Idea,” and “Style” belong to what Quatremère defined as the “theoretical part” of his dictionary.

See V. Farinati and G. Tyssot (eds.), Quatremère de Quincy. Historical Dictionary of Architecture, Marsilio ed., Venice 1992, entry “Type” from p. 271 onwards.

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