Paola Tosolini | EPFL Graph Search

À propos de ce résultat

Cette page est générée automatiquement et peut contenir des informations qui ne sont pas correctes, complètes, à jour ou pertinentes par rapport à votre recherche. Il en va de même pour toutes les autres pages de ce site. Veillez à vérifier les informations auprès des sources officielles de l'EPFL.

A LOVE PILGRIMAGE. Luigi Figini's Travels to Ibiza and the Lessons of vernacular Architecture

Paola Tosolini

In 1950 Luigi Figini travelled to Ibiza. He named this journey a “love pilgrimage” to the most western of the “isole beate” (holy islands), to one of the earthly paradises of white architecture. It wasn’t the first such island he had visited since he has already travelled to others, such as Ischia, Procida, Capri, Santorini and the Greek islands, some years earlier. The diary of this Spanish journey, which was published the following year, has been scarcely analyzed and largely undervalued by both critics and historians. It is a passionate essay that, far from being only a documentary, a tourist guide, is a statement of his way to conceive architecture. At the same time it is a denunciation towards those who didn’t want to admit that Mediterranean vernacular architecture played an important role in the definition of some paradigms of modern architecture. What Figini recorded with his camera in the city of Ibiza, but also in S. Antonio Abad, S. Inés, S. Eulalia and S. Carlos, are examples of “humble and anonymous” houses and churches, details of walls, pergolas and roofs. In describing the grammar of these buildings’ simple language, Figini evokes evident analogies between them and some works of Le Corbusier and Breuer. Such comparisons were not yet new. Probably the Italian architect knew that his Spanish colleagues from G.A.T.E.P.A.C had done the same in 1930 when comparing a project of J. J. P. Oud to the fishermen houses in San Pol de Mar. For Figini the districts of Sa Penya and Dalt Vila were an ”historical museum of contemporary architecture built ante litteram”. The article considers Figini's journey to Ibiza comparing it to other travels on the island by some Spanish architects including José Luis Sert and the members of the G.A.T.E.P.A.C. It also demonstrates how, after the journey, the work of Figini-Pollini office was “contaminated” somehow by the lessons he learned from vernacular architecture: the lessons of “morality”, “logic”, “life”, and “style”.

T6) Ediciones - Escuela Tecnica Superior de Arquitectura. Universidad de Navarra2010

Contaminazioni linguistiche

Paola Tosolini

In contemporary debates about sustainable development, vernacular architecture plays an important role. Presenting itself as a dictionary of man’s constructive logic, it declares with no uncertainty its own usefulness, its connection to the soil, to the climate, the economy and technology. The capacity to incorporate change, to absorb the passing of time without losing the architectonical idea on which it lies, has made its forms intelligible and its language comprehensible to everybody. These qualities, together with the wide variety of forms that are found available within it, make vernacular architecture a reserve from which one can draw in order to stimulate creative thought upon a project. Despite vernacular architecture having been partially revalued, the role that it has played in the debate around ‘modernity’ and its contribution to the birth and development of modern architecture have been scarcely analysed and very much undervalued by both critics and historians. This thesis demonstrates the importance of the contribution made by vernacular architecture, investigating the architectural practice of some of the most renowned protagonists of architecture in the 20th century, among whom Mackintosh, Hoffmann, Loos, Le Corbusier, Sert, Aalto, Figini, Ponti, Rudofsky, Stirling, Abraham, the Smithsons, Venturi and Scott Brown. Furthermore, this thesis shows how some linguistic contaminations have been produced in the work of architects through their encounter with vernacular architecture during travels in native lands and abroad, and through the resulting theoretical reflections which have been documented in a large quantity of written material. For linguistic contamination I mean the analogous action undertaken by an element over another, on a morphological or semantic level. These actions are the result of a process that starts with the act of seeing, of observing and which matures in the thought put down on paper. For this reason I have decided to structure my thesis around the activities peculiar to architectural practice – seeing, thinking, projecting – to which the three sections of this thesis – travels, writings, projects – refer to. The first part demonstrates the importance of travel as a means to discover and gain direct knowledge of vernacular architecture and its legacy. For legacy I mean that baggage of impressions, sketches and photographs used by architects for reference in their future intellectual work. The second part highlights the existence of a large quantity of written material (articles, essays, books, conference papers) that witnesses the real and steady interest of modern ‘orthodox’ architects towards vernacular architecture. This section also considers the way in which some theoretical parameters of ‘modernity’ have been defined according to the observations contained in the written material. Finally, the third part shows the presence, in modern projects and works, of elements, structures, materials, and spatial and morphological devises that can be traced back to vernacular architecture, and that allow me to support the hypothesis of contaminations of vernacular architectural language on modern architectural language.

EPFL2009

Linguistic contamination: an epistemological tool for interrogating vernacular tradition and contemporary architecture

Paola Tosolini

In 1919 in an essay entitled Tradition and the Individual Talent T. S. Eliot stated that a poet “is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living”. The paper will investigate the idea of tradition intended as 'matière vivante', as an operative tool used in architectural practice. A tradition, whose epistemology can be achieved through the analysis of what I call linguistic contamination. It is through this analogous action, made by one element over another on a morphological or semantic level, that tradition "moves" regenerating its forms and meanings. This approach allow to liberate the classical concept of tradition from its historical, time-bounded limits and to consider it in a new dynamic way. Tradition can be recognised in the survival of "architectural constants" ferried from the past to the present, sometimes remodelled and sometimes deformed under the flux of progress and change. The epistemic exercise will focus on the identification of the different kinds of contaminations which have occurred between vernacular architecture and modern architecture. The way in which a lexicon of the past has been used in a language whose syntax is yet new, will be investigated through some case studies from modern and contemporary times.

IASTE Center for Environmental Design Research2008