Matter, material, architecture. The tectonic conception between spontaneous consciousness and critical consciousness

Abstract

[EN] Talking about of place and matter as indissoluble terms of architectural practice could at first appear tautological, because of the essential link that makes them participating in the construction of anthropic structures. But nowadays it has become of utmost importance to emphasize it, in the light of the profound changes that concern the architecture in the last decades, during which the importance of technology as a value in itself that summarizes all the meanings of the project has questioned the link always existed among materials, building and language, as expression of a type-morphological world in which to recognize themselves collectively. In this sense it may be useful to analyze some nodal points characterizing developments and discontinuities of this relationship, to investigate the role of memory as a "working theme" of architecture, performed above all through materials, and to highlight the importance to seek a critical link between place and type read in the ontological dimension of the building, that has no nostalgic or historiographical purpose, but on the contrary it is necessary to root the project into a cultural palimpsest that allows the present of construction to be dense of social meanings.