Forgetting architecture: investigations into the poetic experience of architecture

o forget architecture means to show that architecture is not solely related to the execution of a functional plan but is also a creation whose shapes possess a material order as well as an emotional, historical and symbolic one. Architecture is different from construction in that it is the expression of the human need to occupy space and to possess and dwell in places created for life, gods and history. Architecture is a stage (Rossi), which is to say that we are dealing with the conditions that permit life to manifest itself in all its ambiguity and uncertainty. For this reason, architecture must be uncertain and ambiguous. Forgetting architecture means neither that its rigour and precision should be abandoned nor that the development of construction strategies and methods is unimportant. In this case, forgetting serves to highlight three aspects: 1) man does not inhabit abstract spaces but places that are configured by taking into account the most common human activities and experiences; 2) architecture is the ex- pression of a way of thinking (Wittgenstein); 3) architecture should become invisible in the name of human experiences and actions; in other words, architecture extends a form of life.