Remembering the Academy
Thinking Space
The project of the cone is a sample of the despair that first invaded me when knowing the point of view of the philosophy. Philosophical thinking gradually destroyed the certainty it had over things. I began to think and with that to doubt. Everything I believed was gradually crumbling and I was removing the innocent security of the architectural projection with which I had begun. The way of thinking was opened, but another closed. It closed behind me and devoured the path forever.
The story is about an idea as platonic as it is a cone, an idea that has to be put into practice to prove its impossibility. An idea that challenged the tradition of construction and the laws of physics. The construction of his sister’s house. The creative need to transform this idea demands a process of continuous and perpetual correction. Correction because everything said, done and thought is a falsification subject to correction. And the correction, another fallacy connected to the same process. After this continuous correction is hidden the confrontation of contemporary man against the world. There is Wittgenstein’s thought, and his vision of a world made up of facts and not things.
It is this specific house, designed with the intention of a glove, to fit perfectly to our individual needs, that shows the impossibility of a house. A house like those of yesteryear. This house should be located in the exact geometric center of the Kobernausse (or Kundmanngasse) forest, and should serve as the supreme residence and happiness of your sister. The house would be a cone. An inverted cone, which is rather a tomb. A house that leads us to think of a grave, or an uninhabitable house. Or rather it is a tomb that serves as a home to the inhabitant.
A world of image where these Viennese saw daily the cause of their passions, against which they fought in their work, in a fight against moral and aesthetic degradation. It was a struggle against the value of things in the image, against the applied arts, against ornament in the utensil of daily use, architecture as a city, language or music. A struggle that takes effect, and that is in itself the crisis of the culture of the West; Envelops us daily and affects the development of our lives.
In this way the architecture changed for me. It ceased to be merely a search of the question of dwelling and became something larger than an architectural questioning. Not only did I ask about living, but the search for meaning became a question to understand the moment in which I was living. I wanted to understand the unbridled time that surrounded me and the question began to include a questioning about the image. From here the world of the image and the world of architecture would never be separated in my projects again. All this search was condensed into a single element as an excuse to understand the philosophical background of my questioning. My search became to understand the screen as an architectural element and would never leave this element behind. My architecture began to become a statute. In a personal investigation that would continue to lead me on paths I never planned. So the search continues and the adventure for me was just beginning.
