TEDx2025

The other day I was explaining Greek orders to my daughter, who was doing her homework on the history of art.
Céleste is 16 and she tells me that she doesn't want to become an architect. However, she is curious enough to ask me why Greek temples always have even numbers of columns.

I explained that when you have an even number of columns, you always have a space in the middle where you can place an entrance. You can call it symmetry.
If you had an odd number of columns, let’s say five for example, you would have a column in the middle, so you would have to place the entrance to the left or right, but not in the middle. So actually it is the entrance that gives the rule.

But there are a few exceptions, and exceptions should confirm the rule, right?
The Basilica at Paestum has nine columns—an odd number of columns—because it has a double entrance. In this way we still see the symmetry.This is a simple way of seeing things.
But actually there is another meaning behind it.
If you consider a column as a plane and the space between columns as a void, you have an even number of planes and an odd number of voids. And in the middle you will have a void.For the Greeks and all other older cultures, the void was more important than the plane. So they always used an even number of columns—at least in cases where they did not have two entrances.

So what is the void that is so important?
The void is a space; it is the emptiness that creates the inside and the outside of every building.Let’s imagine a building like a bottle, and you start to fill it with water. The water that you can fill into the bottle is space—a void, the emptiness.The bottle itself is a plane. It is the materiality of architecture: the construction, the walls, the bricks, the stone, the concrete, the wood. Everything you need to enclose and create the emptiness inside.Of course architecture is both—the bottle and the water. But it is the water that really counts.
You need planes to define, to construct, to frame the void, but it is the void that really matters.

So the void, or emptiness, is the center of any architecture.
Architecture is a work of art, but it is a work of art with an inside that we can live in. The inside can sometimes be an outside, but it is still architecture. In any situation it is space—an emptiness, a void—that is central.It is a simple thing, but to me it was a discovery.

So when we imagine a building, a site, or a project, we have to start with an idea related to the void.
But let’s not forget that every building should have a meaning.So what is the meaning?Meaning is the other side of the void.
Void and meaning are one and the same. You cannot separate them.So let’s conclude that void—space—emptiness should have a meaning.
You can say that the void is more phenomenal, while the meaning is more social.If you start with the idea of the void, you will also have a meaning.
Void and meaning are one and the same, and they are the beginning of architecture.

So what is the next step?We explained that architecture starts with the idea of space, which is the idea of the meaning of the future building.After that you have to define and decide the programme, which is actually a very practical thing. You imagine rooms and spaces that a certain programme may need.After you dispose or compose all the elements that the project needs to reach the unity you have in mind, you will start to articulate.

Articulation is a very important process, which means finding and maybe reaching “what the building wants to be.”The most common mistake in architectural practice is wanting to do something precise at any cost. I illustrate it with the image of someone trying to fit an elephant into a small car.Articulation is a way to understand what the building wants to become. When you do, you simply follow that path until you reach the moment when you feel you have reached unity—and then you stop.

Because architecture is rational and intuitive at the same time.
With rationality you can conceive parts, but it is only with intuition that you can feel the unity.Architecture can be many things at the same time, but the only thing that cannot be anything else but architecture is the feeling of space—the feeling of beauty in space. 

So what is beauty in architecture?Beauty is the feeling of harmony—a moment when all the composing elements have reached equal relationships with one another, and this harmony becomes visible.Beauty is the manifestation of love. Without love there is no architecture, only meaningless and endless constructions that unfortunately fill and destroy our environment.