La materia soggiace all'idea

The essay proposes a reflection on the “material” starting with an investigation on the meaning the term assumes in an etymological sense and in the philosophy of the ancient time. Following this reasoning, the more appropriate term becomes substance – instead of material – because the thesis is that the topic cannot be reduced to the use of more or less performative materials that are today available renouncing in this way to a reflection on the coherence between forms, not only constructive but also representative, and the materials selected to express them with adequacy and clearness. Thinking of the research by Perret, Le Corbusier or Louis Kahn on the concrete and on that by Mies van der Rohe on the steel, it is possible to demonstrate that materials have a sort of “formal vocation” that can be made evident through an expressive coherence that emerges through different ways of construction. In this way it is possible to oppose the virtualization and reduction to image that seems to characterize part of the contemporary architecture and reaffirms that Architecture is, above all, an intellectual activity able to give sense to each substance.