This issue of Domus is titled The oceanic. What are your remarks on “the oceanic feeling”?
MP I believe that the experience of architecture is always relative to what is in front of us together with what is actually not there, between the presence of things and their representation. When I experience a thick column, of course I can touch it, I can move around it, I can feel its size in relation to my own body. And yet, at the same time, I know there is something else that the column is concealing. There is a physical behaviour, the actual transference of structural loads to the ground, which I can’t see, as much as the memory of a tree trunk, the robustness of a primal character, or the sheer indication of the time of the day through its cast shadow. That hidden dimension can be equated with the oceanic feeling, and not only with the sense of oneness but also with a sense of incommensurability, of vast extension, while being in a one-to-one relationship with a man- made thing. Thus, the column can be interpreted as a latent subject, as a vertical force, straight and stable, in resonance with our own verticality and our own stability.
SvE I would also expand the understanding of the oceanic feeling, the sense of unity within vastness, to the primitive feeling of solitude. I believe that architecture is ultimately a form of empathy, of identification of subjectivity at a very deep level. Almost as if in a loving couple, in which one member takes care of the solitude of the other, our relationship with buildings, at least with the buildings we admire or we would aspire to produce, is based on that primitive loneliness. Our Luna House, for instance, defines a secluded domain within the natural landscape. It is both a cloister and a maze, detachment and puzzle, abstraction and wilderness. This is a kind of tacit marriage, following Rainer Maria Rilke’s advice, in which “each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude”.