Para-Architecture

Jorge Cruz Pinto

Published Apr 14, 2021

Conventionally, the arts have their own disciplinary territories. According to B. Zevi, a painting is expressed in two-dimensionality, although it can represent three-dimensionality through the use of perspective, and its perception is defined in front of the contemplative observer in relation to the plan of the work; the sculpture is three-dimensional and its perception implies the movement of the observer in the space surrounding the work; while an architecture work is defined by the experience of interior space that allows being inhabited by the observer and user who walks temporally, pointed to the fourth dimension. However, such disciplinary categorization does not take into account the hybrid territories "between" Architecture and sculpture, as Marchán Fiz recognized, and the Follies, those architectural constructions existing in the baroque and romantic gardens that have a metafunctional condition. In the quest to categorize hybrid territories, I coined the broad concept of "Para-Architecture", which include works imaginary spaces and of almost inhabitable spaces, between architecture, sculpture, painting, and installation, under the praise of emptiness, of which are examples: paintings of Veronese, Tiepolo, Vermeer, Velazquéz, Giorgio de Chirico, Sironi, Vieira da Silva, Hopper, Paula Rego ..., where there is an architectural figuration of real and imaginary spaces; some sculptures of Bernini that configure emptiness, the volumetric“planits” of Malevitch, the empty sculptures of Jorge Oteíza, Eduardo Chillida, Donald Judd, Tony Smith, Richard Serra, LeWitt Sol, among others; And like some installations of Marcel Duchamp, Matta-Clark, Joseph Beuys, Cabrita Reis, Ana Vieira ... that have intentionally relations with the architectural space and with the materialities that conform it. The concept is extensible to experimental pedagogical methodologies that aim intentionally the architectural formation in between visuals arts.