Barleti University

Gëzim Paçarizi, Open Lecture
12.11.2024

What is Architecture?

At the beginning, I would like to clarify a few basic concepts in architecture.I will start with the word “project.” The word project can be understood as a combination of two ideas: “pro,” meaning forward or toward the future, and “jet,” meaning to throw. In this sense, a project can be understood as a throwing forward into the future. A project gathers the ideas that guide the realization of a building or a spatial organization that will exist later.Architectural projects are usually expressed through plans. Therefore, let us also examine the word “plan.”What is a plan?
A plan is a visual summary of the information necessary to realize an architectural idea. It must contain everything needed for the construction of a building or for the organization of space.

However, I do not want to focus only on the utilitarian aspect of the plan. What interests me more is its conceptual dimension.A plan should contain everything that will happen in a project. In a certain sense, the plan is a promise. It anticipates what will later be built. A plan must possess beauty, precision, and a certain mathematical and visual completeness. Often we can read far more about a building in its plan than in a photograph of the finished object.The third concept is Architecture.

Architecture is a complex field. It includes not only buildings and spatial organization, but also theory, history, and the entire practice surrounding these activities. However, here we will focus on architecture as it appears in buildings and spatial arrangements.Whenever we speak about architecture, we should clarify that we are speaking about good architecture, because the idea that “bad architecture” exists is misleading. Only good architecture truly deserves the name. Constructions and spatial arrangements without quality cannot really be called architecture.As Antonin Artaud once said:
“Only the good exists in this world.”Nevertheless, every morning we must convince ourselves again of this truth.

The same applies to architecture: only good architecture exists; everything else is a waste of time.Let us now attempt to understand architecture in its essence.I have often wondered how to explain architecture to young architects. For myself it took an entire lifetime to begin to understand it, and even today I cannot say that it is easy to explain. Architecture is more a feeling, a truth, than a simple definition in words.The early French architectural theories of the eighteenth century focused on three concepts:Disposer – distributionArranger – arrangementComposer – compositionThese concepts suggest that architecture emerges from the way elements are organized and related to one another.For Louis Kahn, architecture is the “thoughtful making of spaces.” He said that “the plan is a society of rooms,” that “architecture is the realization of human institutions,” and that architecture consists of form and design.For Kahn, form is the conceptual essence of a project, while design is the concrete realization of that idea.But what exactly is this conceptual content?If you want to design a house, you begin with a program: the number of bedrooms, the kitchen, the living area, entrances, bathrooms, and other spaces.Then you imagine the spatial situation:
Are you in the city or in nature?
Is the terrain flat or sloping?
Is there a view or not?You will examine the surrounding environment, the available materials, and their nature. You will think about the relationship with climate, sunlight, water, and wind. You will attempt to imagine an environmentally responsible approach.All these elements can be considered elements of architecture.

If your sensitivity is refined enough, at some point a “fil rouge” will appear—a central idea, a general atmosphere that will guide the architecture you are imagining.But architecture truly emerges only when all its elements reach an equal relationship with one another. This is a particular creative moment—a kind of suspension—when everything begins to reinforce everything else.It is the moment when architecture has a reason to exist. When the spaces we create have meaning and are not simply empty formal exercises.We might also say that the small is within the large, but the large is not necessarily within the small. Yet the small can be the seed from which the large grows.Here we must understand something important:
the mind can analyze the elements, but the whole can only be grasped through intuition.Architecture therefore becomes a language that can be understood only when mind and intuition work together.From this perspective we will examine several examples. We will try to understand what the central idea is in each case, and how that idea manifests itself in architecture—how ideas take form and how space becomes architecture.