minimalismo
....people look at my house and say that they think it is very beautiful but how can I live like that. To me the thinking is all the wrong way round. The whole point is that this is how I live, so this is what my house needs to be like. The architecture is the physical expression of a way of being: the form does not follow a particular fashion, it follows a particular life. The life my sort of architecture follows is not one which feels right for everybody. I am passionate about my work, but I am not out to make converts. The only universal measure is whether space feels comfortable and right to the people who use it. Minimalism - or, as Donald Judd preferred to put it, the simple expression of complex thought - is but one valid response of an aesthetically diverse society, answering the needs of particular individuals and provoking debate in society at large about how we choose to live and how we expect architecture to support these choices.
- john pawson
this was taken from the essay titled minimalism published in 2004 by The Guardian. this interesting article talks about how minimalism should not be thought about as a style, but instead it should be thought about as a way of thinking about space. pawson says that minimalism is not "an architecture of self-denial" or some sort of meaningless space full of absence. he argues that (and i strongly agree) minimalist architecture is one that is absolutely defined by the contents of its space and the intensity by which the space is experienced.
i have defended this idea in some of my own designs. one time one of my classmates was examining my project and as he looked at my model, he began to list all the elements that he noticed were missing. he seemed amazed at how i had successfully designed this building with all these elements missing. he was obviously looking at it the wrong way. why ask what is missing. one should focus on what is present. not so far as to question what is essential. i believe the idea is to focus on what has been so carefully chosen to occupy a space. so i think the question is not what is essential? but what is essential to the essence of the space?
so there it is, my first blog. with any luck you'll see new posts now and then. until next time...
« Home
deep, Gussy. just like your voice. to me it is really important for the architecture to be imbrued with interwoven layers of meaning, commentry and insight otherwise no mater how beautiful a space is, it just becomes an empty and vacuous container without content and substance.
9/01/2005 06:55:00 PM
gustavo you are and will always be my hero. i look foward to re-living my studio days through your blog...
9/01/2005 08:18:00 PM
Excellent observation...essential to the esscence of the space. I ask, from where is the esscence derived? There must be elements existing that influence that... be it people, naturalistic elements, intangeble elements, whatever is present. Does it make sense that existing elements may infact become essential?
» Post a Comment