APORIA IN ARCHITECTURE: WHAT NOW?

Heidegger in ?The age of the world-picture? reminds us that we are not limited to possessing a picture of the world; it is that the world itself is a picture. And it?s not that a picture is worth more than words, it is that words are pictures. That is why it is so necessary to speak about their materiality, their texture, their carnality, almost as if about materials for the construction of a certain eroticism. Polyxeni Mantzou summons us to this challenge: the one of establishing spaces, which we can inhabit without having to resort to the consolations, the alleviations or the chambers of a settled language. Maybe only then does it become possible to wrap ourselves up in words: those that practically do as much as they say; that are even more and also different from what they say; that literally designate, signify and, in their own way, construct. (…)No longer will it be possible to look either equally or in the same way. And the public will not be a site, nor a process, but rather another dimension of the physical. It wouldn?t even be considered a place, or an ambit in which drifting is possible but it would still provoke incisions to all willing to be emplaced in it. That is why Mantzou speaks about the hybrid, which is not just a merging, but rather the engendering of an other reality. (…) This beautiful and enigmatic book makes Mantzou?s consideration a text that is not merely reflective. Something is happening, it is happening to us. And not just us, or preferably us. Perhaps architecture is also, as its name reveals, an originating principle of doing, but not one of remittance to an origin from which it should break free. Angel Gabilondo Universidad Autónoma de Madrid