The idea of lightness in the architectural language And the concept of domesticated light
Now more than ever, we are obsessed with the idea of lightness. In every field, from technology to economy to sociology, from the art world to the fashion system to the tendencies in cooking, we go toward a removing of the weight. The term lightness, then, can be read from infinite points of view. It deals with the concepts of weightlessness, brightness and frivolousness and many others. I am not trying to write a complete overview of the term, but to define its variety of meanings in the architectural language and to understand how they are linked by the value of domestication. To explore this value, then, I will follow a particular pathway, which goes through different examples and concludes with the notion of lightness as a form of domestication. I see the introduction as a review of images taken from different spheres, evoking the idea of lightness, and as a question about the meaning. In the first part, I will start speculating about the term in literature, as Calvino did in Lezioni Americane. Sei proposte per il prossimo millennio, using some contemporary examples, to formulate a notion of lightness in the language. My reflection will move to the field of art, to explain how the lightness is perceived as aesthetic value. By art, I mean all the areas dealing with aesthetics. There will be a chapter about the lightness in painting, another about lightness in sculpture, and in music. The third assumption will evaluate the term lightness in social practices. The choice of the key study-cases has been done through a selection of those I consider as icons. At this point the reader will be ready to see lightness in architecture in a complex way, diverging from the popular idea that associates lightness to the use of lightweight materials. The opinion that, for example, considers glass as quality of lightness will be deconstructed in order to open a critical vision of the subject. In my interpretation, the term lightness evokes a certain space that can be perceived as domesticated. This idea stems from the consideration of lightness as a favorable condition for the human being, which is ensured by the role of architecture. At the same time, light is domesticated. The representation of the light in Flemish
paintings, for example, defines an image of domesticity opposing to the outside world where light is not controlled. In the natural world, light can be “heavy”, in the sense of bodily, such as in the rays of the sun. In the Flemish paintings instead, the atmosphere is, together with the invisible light that comes through the window, made light by a certain spatiality and by the presence of some furnishings, such as tapestries and potted, which evoke a domesticated world, somehow light. Lightness, however, cannot be considered as an architectural object. It is rather an idea that becomes material through the incidence of the architectural features or body. We can grasp part of the sense in Baudrillard’s words about the Cartier Foundation in Paris, If I look at the façade, since it’s bigger than the building, I can’t tell if I’m looking at the reflection of the sky or at the sky through the glass…The lightness is not in the material; it is rather in the possibility of looking at the surface as the reflection of the sky or as if were the sky.