Abstract

What is essential is not invisible to the eye. Reflections on the concept of “essential” in Architecture This work wonders about the concept of “essential” in architecture. In particular, it refers to the architecture of the house conceived as the founding place of the act of living by man. The concept of “essential” is explored both in a strictly architectural key – the space that is constituted only through the fundamental type-morphological elements – and in a conceptual and metaphorical key, trying to identify those components - even immaterial, invisible - which however represent the true (essential) meaning of people’s existence. In the end, the text argues that if the ideal of the essential, conceived by subtraction, corresponds to the shape of an empty space, of a bare space, it is precisely that void – as a trace full of memory – that represents a new beginning every time.