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Say there 's a mill ion bucks buried in the house next door.There isn't a house next door.

No? Then let 's build one. 1

byMarco Frascari

Ethical and aesthetic values no longer coincide naturally in con-temporary architecture. Architects must unlearn theiralB mode methods ofdesign to rediscoverthe proper presence and the elegant role of architecturein everyday life. In the context of edification, an ethicsmore fantastico canand must be reincorporated in the design, construction, and inhabitation of

buildings. Such a project should proceed without coveting the logic of otherdisciplines and must avoid producing even further convoluted definitions.Employing the considerable power of architects' curiosity, 2 the ethos andpathos of architecture can again uncovered within the long tradit ion ofbuilding speculations. The assumable result of these speculations becomesa sequence of elegant demonstrat ions presenting the magian vigor ofarchitecture, a discipline that is still compressible, resilient, resourceful andover and above all mysterious.

I do not want to sound as mil lenarist, but less than a decade isseparating our architectural achievements from the next millennium and Isee architecture bringing together, in an abnormal arrangement, sets ofquestionable criteria rooted in fashion, corporate image's fabrications and

dashing publici ty. The current concoctions of a rchi tec tur~oes notmatter i f p roduced by corpora te or cr it ical pract ice f irms-are mere lyglamorous application of seductive glosses, glamorous frostings and chicdecoys. The majority of architectural designers parent flaunting, brandish-ing and ostentatious buildings, but, at the same time, those constructionsare expressing dull , prosaic, obtuse and above all discomforting grimarchitecture. These designers have forgotten or never learned the great artof building well and how this consequential and cogent art is both the naturalcornerstone and the artificial keystone for an extremely critical art, the art ofliving well.

To repeat, architecture, as a vir tuous has lost its exemplarys ta tus . 3 Hardly, any e thica l scope or mora l s tandard i s embodied inbuildings , anymore. Future a rchi tects should d is remember what theyinherited from these glossy, end of millennium, designers. Oblivioning thefad, the future generation should descry the wonderful character of LadyArchitecture together with her powerful ethos. This new generation ofarchitects should not focus upon inherited specious procedures of design,but rather they should explore the inventive meanings of architecturalprojections and visions; they should perform acts of prediction by usingelegant graphic expression to evoke fu ture bUild ings. My advice topr,ospective architects is that they should probe creatively within theprimeval idea of wonder by delving into the architectural every-day. Thisquest should be based on an aggressive combination of the pieces compos-ing the puzzle of architecture. The result should be: a sum of theoretical

transactions elaborated by using tactics rather than strategiesthe ir assembling of these puzz le-p ieces will embody wogenerate an inaugural image for the future art of building w

I should also warn these future architects that the motion is macheronic. Although, through alternate proceding, editing and rewriting, architecture has lost its macherohas not lost i ts macaronic essence. The images, musteringbuilding well, are genuinely macheronic. They should discoas I did in my work that macheronic speculations must rule thdemonstrations.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .; :. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Macheronic speCUlations are a monstrous way for demonsbody of the architectural discipline is still and will alwaysflex ib le and fe rt ile . As I recently come to rea lize , I ammacheronic authors as Cesare Segre defines them in ending on the macheronic tradition:

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Generally, the macheronic persons are not revolutionar-ies. Their point of view is incompatible with the programof reordering of the world. Ifthey put in crisis the presentinstitutions, it is also easy to imagine that they will put incrisis any alternative institution. They may have somepolemical idols, and consequently they use, with terribleeffect, the weapons of mockery, paradox and caricature,they kil l using the r idicule. However, their cr it icism isbeyond politics, religion or morals: it is a critique invest-ing the basis of our comprehension and representation ofthe wor ld . I t is not revolu tion but demons trat ion, apermanent presentation of evidences. 5

e grotesque nature of macheronic rhetoric is the most proper form forchitectural thinking, drawing and writing.It is through this pantagruelicture of macheronic sapience that the taste of the marvelous nature ofhitectural things can be ascertained. Thus as an architecturally macheronic

thor I love macaroons,maccheroni al sugo, sing Yankee Doodle,bu t

ove all to hang within the threshold of the discipline, thoughts and thingsat can be unveiled by a careful use of marveling. They are the mirabilia ofchitecture. 6

In the present production of buildings, there is a complete lack ofnder. In a Greek or Egyptian edifices, the automatic opening of a door wasource of astonishment and awe. Nowadays, the automatic opening oftheors, as in supermarkets and airports, is no longer a miraculous event .ese transparent glass doors negate the visual aim of marveling since theyen to show something that has been seen already through them. Nowa-ys, the expression wonderful is almost meaningless an utterance of praised celebration, used to avoid deeper and more specific comments. Prob-y the present negative condit ion of wonder is due to what Umberto Eco

called in artful manner the"eccesso di meraviglia" (excessive astonish-nt), a tendency to take consequently only the most evident elements andentatious events. 7 Nowadays, wonderment is part of a pretentioustine forgetting that marveling must dwell above all in the minimal events.nder is a design quality that, in architecture, has been used excessivelyy for the m ost patent and obvious expression of human monumentality.s is done disremembering the importance of the marvelous in the familiarnts of inhabiting, the habits of embodiment. The miraculous must dwellemperate places. Consequently a new wonder should be embodied intomary buildings so that architecture will move from the present osten-ous condit ion of wonderment to an elegant and balanced arnazementbodied within the domestic maze of our urban dwellings.

Architects must discover a new way for constructing architecturalmiration in ordinary architecture. A meta-historical category, a particulard exceptional s tate of mind, wonder is a type of mental predicamentrking the marvelous beginning of knowing and the end of unknowing in agent s tupor of mind. In the construct ion of the human world, a minglingaesthetic thoughts and practical thoughts, admiration deals with produc-n through a project. A category of imagination and an amazing meta-egory of production, wonder is the source of any architectural project it is always a projection of a dream. To dream architecture means toceive a building through an act of dreaming that has not been establisheda conjecture of wish- fulfillment,

of

but rather is the longing of architects who are not interested ishow. Eluding this too narrow interpretation of the constructeennobling architects of the next millennium can and must fosteture that can change the quality of life in an invisible but often

The l inks between architecture and dreams had been stated manner and energetically by Francesco Colonna in writing his rebus-opus entitled Hypnerotomachia Polifili, ubi humana omnsomnium essa docet.and published in Venice by Aldo Manuzio links between drearn and architectural imagination are unequintensely efficacious, but the connections that traditionally ardreamers have made are i ll -defined and tautological. To over

setbacks we must contemplate drearns as mode of thought. In

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pnerotomachia Polifil;,it is essen tia l to understand tha t the Love oflifilus for Polia is metaphorically representing the love of thinking. As Pj.G.banis has pointed out the forms ofthe images of dreams are closely linkedthe images of thought. The act of dreaming is the creation of a locus ofught. The world of dreams is a living forest in which fantasy dwells withinenigma by solving the riddle of architectural corporeality. A dream is an

of construction that m ust be construed. As Freud has stated, dreams areces of phylogenetic and ontogenetic memory. Polifi lus, the somnolentd slow hero of theHypnerotomachia,experienced a dream within a dream.st he felt asleep and he dreamed of being lost and bewildered in a forestere he plunged in heavy sleep a second time and during this poetic stupordreamed his rewording architectural adventure. Descriptions of doubleams are rarely told in western culture and the device is used by Colonnahis dream-tell ing to indicate that is not a wish-fulfi llment of Polifi lussonal desire for Polia but rather is a dream of knowledge being twice

moved from reality.

Architectural dreams are always recurring dreams allowing a slownstruction of the construed reality. They are a quest for an embodiment in

ne, brick, glass, plaster, wood and steel of the human natural thoughtterns. Little Nemo In Slumber/and,the astounding comic strip charminglyated by Windsor McCay, is another demonstrat ion of the strong t iesst ing between dreams and architectural imagination. Son of a lumber-n, essentially a self taught graphic artist, McCay elaborated a preciousmic strip based on the dreams of a little Victorian boy named Nemo. 8 Theventures of Little Nemo take place in Siumberiand. In this dream-land, theat architecture of Classical America prevails in a powerful surrealistic

mension. In his short dreams-il page long-Nemo has the most visuallylding and intriguing nocturnal adventures. Siumberiand, most of thees, is cons truc ted by tau tly sca le changing urban environments or

peditiously growing international exhibitions' esplanades or constantlytamorphosing edifices. This alchemic and weekly melanges of a recurring

hitectural dream is the paradigmatic environment for understanding howany architect is always present a li tt le childhood-self and how thisldhood-self is essential part for any extended quest for architecture. Thisago of architecture an idealized image of architectural bodies formed inldhood and persisting unconsciously into adulthood is the motor of anycess fu l des ign. As the Pythagorean Vit ruvius has pointed out , the

ucation of an architect begins during childhood and it is a slow process.tle Nemo's architecturally overloaded dreams point to this beginning andthemselves they are part of the slow process of image construct ionuired by proper marvelous architecture.

The marvelous alters the conception of the transcendental imagi-ion, within which all perceptions are ascribed to one consciousness. Thervelous challenge the limits of this consciousness by remaining outside

standard awareness, producing a perception that is in between. Theition of being in between or being located in a threshold, is the condition

pending thoughts. Macheronic thinking is all based on pending thoughts,ce it is organic and 'alive: Being at the same time sublime and subliminal,s f igurative procedure of pending thoughts, dreams, looms weights andmb-lines can also weave the purple fabric of architectural theory withinmarble loom of construction.

The marble loom and the piece of purple fabric hanging within it areference to a beautiful construing of a Homeric text. The philosopher, poet

d hierophant , Porphyry is the one who worded the only intact allegoric

exegesis of a poetic text handed down to us from Classical Antiqdescribes a cave located on the shore of Ithaca, and inhabited b

Beneath it lies, the Naiads delightWhere bowls and urn of workmanship divineAnd massy bearns in native marble shine;

On which the Nymphs arnazing web displaysOf purple hue, and exquisite array. 9

The Hellenistic hierophant interprets the passage as a represreality as corporeality.

For the formation of the flesh is on and about the bonewhich in the body of animals resemble stones. Hencthese instruments of weaving consist of stones, and noof any other matter. But the purple web will evidently the flesh that is woven from the blood. 10

In his interpretation of Homer 's f igure of thought Porphyry

architectural corporeality to construe the artifacts located in thnative marble and the purple fabric are two wonders of the corpembodied in the extraordinary tectonics of architecture. Tartifacts are simultaneously the cosmos and the cosmetic of theworld, its bare structure and pleasurable clothing, the skeleton and its necessary decorative flesh. The marble loom, a represedoor frame within which is hanging a red curtain generates a mutation and a pause. In it the pending thought of the corporeal figan allegory of the architectural body. To be more precise twoincorporated in the artifacts, the human body, the weaver, andthe artifact itself. Sometimes they merge and sometimes they This tension between them allows the constructing as well as thof human artifacts. The Italian and French verbs pensare and p

to hang something as related to thought, combing accomplishmeidea of pending-to think with pause, the thing with visual lullispace oxymoron is an elegant notion tying together posing wdesire for deferment to make present in the making of images. this image of a marble structure incorporates two other fundamof architectural thinking, the divine bodies of Janus and Cardedoors and gates and the goddess of hinges

The desire of wonder is the hinge of the gate to the undof architecture. Wonder and the wondrous are obsolete ideas also the solely feasible way for escaping from the present architectural design where novelty must be traumatic and buildcerting. The present trends, in architectural design fashionableare multifaceted acts of propaganda for making unhappy edifwith envy, anger, d i sp lacement and fear. Many theoret icaconstructions, most of which published by architectural magaadvance nor envelop the human art of living well anymore. envy, as a way of li fe , by augmenting our human terror of t imecontemporary reality, the writing of architectural criticism rejany thoughtful and learned elaboration on the therapeutic temconstructed world. This hides the hideous reality that artistic pness isto conceal the existence of an architecture conceived as rather than as commodious structures. Since wonder is a gratuand not a highbrowed commodity output, the outcome is that thof the magic properties of edifices is an occult practice that doe

in currency. The hideous consequence is that the practice of w

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not become a theoretical cult with a proper divulgence embodied in operativewrit ings, drawings and const ruc tions. Not so long ago , I wrote a bookconcerned with the divinatory intel ligence required for the creation ofarchitectural monsters. Analogy is the founding canon of the ars combinatoriatha t makes our cons truc tions comprehens ib le . A famous, bu t to ta llyenigmatic, Vitruvian aphorism suggests that this intersecting occurrence ofthe signifier with the signified is the leading principle of architecture

Both in general and especially in architecture are thesetwo things found; that which signifies and that which issignified. That which is signified is the thing proposedabout which we speak; that which signifies is the dem-onstration unfolded in systems of precepts. 11

The concocting the incorporeal with the corporeal is the kernel of the Stoicsemantics that originated this Vitruvian aphorism, postulating a divinatoryin te ll igence . Monsters , spec ia l events of human representa tion , a remeaningful occurrences inviting transmutations, that is the merging of thesignified with the signifier through a translation. Architectural monsters, asextraordinary events, celestial novelties, untouchable sacred signs of pos-sible building elements for future constructions must be taken as propheciesstanding against the conventional crit icism of depressing and anointeddesign routines. Monsters are manticsema foretelling future events, sincethey are signs originated in analogic reasoning.

Architectural mantic procedures are founded on analogic thinkingin its most refined forms. Analogic thinking yields our perceptions of whatwe see, smell, taste and make. Analogies consent us to discern in formlessmatter the semantic relationship by which our own bodies become the basisof our construing. For instance, the construction of geographical namingsees bodies in the landscape and the resulting teratology or collages of bodyparts satisfy our expectations. A visual form of this rule can be derived from

Arcinboldo's painting of human figures represented by an assemblage ofseemingly related objects, as in theFour Seasons that he painted by makingpersonification out of st il l l i fe compositions arranged with fruits of thecorresponding pedod. In the personification ofSummer, cherries make theips and peaches the cheeks.

Science is born of the codification of experience, whereas magics born of the pregnancy of tradit ion. Architecture is born by the union of

experience and tradition. Science is founded on the believe that experienceand reasons are always valid. Magic is founded on the certainty that hopecannot fail and desire cannot deceive. Architecture derives its strength fromhe merging of experience and desire, and that reason and hope share theame ground. Sc ien tif ic knowledge i s dictated by a reasoning logic ,

architecture by analogical reasoning since it is the constructed result of thehuman autonomous power of creating desired need.

Architecture ritualizes humans' optimism to enhance their faith inhe victory of hope over fear, asit was stated by Alberto Sartoris in a richigure of thought where he said thatit can befound in the architectural grotto

of AIi-Baba. Architectural magic, Sartoris' magie constructive is ruled by thehree principles of the General Theory of Magic elaborated by the great

French anthropologist Marcell Mauss, viz similarity, contiguity and opposi-ion. Architectural mantic processes are based on a mimesis unifying

metaphor i.e., similarity, metonymy i.e., contiguity and irony i.e., opposi-

tion. These three tropes rule the most mysterious aspects oation of pragmatic and symbolic attitudes towards reality.

The intent of architectural quests is a crit ical csuggestive fables of thaumaturgic urban and architecturalambition is to ascertain if thaumaturgic intelligence can bconsequential capacity within the domain of architecture.English definition of teratology was "a discourse or narraprodig ies ; a marve lous tale or a co llec tion of such ta ledictionary definition, the relationship existing between maris revealed to be the same as the Greek primeval associathaumas and teras. Architectural monsters are thaumaturgic einterpreted with vague precision.Teras an d thaumas can be assiman ontology. Considering that architecture has lost the senstelling of wondrous stories might help to ascertain again appropriate tactics in constructional knowledge. To transceof too many fields to know, the architect must possess structure that l inks and solves them in architectural constknowledge of logical connection, i.e., the similarity of logo

all the technai of a construction, derives from a concert betwpractice, a merging of thehomo faber with thehomo sapiens. This mgenerates the homo solerte that is the architect.

P H I l A D E L P H I A

Notes1 The title is a quotation of a joke-line of the Marx Brother2 Curiosity kills cats not architects.3 Architecture as queen of virtues is the extraordinary persodiscipline presented by Barbaro, Caporali, Palladio and mansance theoreticians.4 For a clear discussion of the difference existing betweestrategies De Certeau( 1984).5 As Teofilo Folengo, I am de sanguine Mantos. Folengo'sepic poem, Baldus was my preferred reading during the eareducation. Probably most of my philosophy generated out reading.6 The travels of architects are similar to those of the macaronyoung Engli shmen of the 18th and 19th century who acustoms.71n his/conologia, Cesare Ripa (1603:305) wrote:-Meraviglia (wona certain stupor of mind that occurs when something new (uis represented to the senses; and the suspension of the sensething makes man marveling and stupid:81n latin: Nemo=nobody. Nemo is also Ulysses' alias, intendother Cyclops to think that Poliphemus has dreamed up the9 Porphyry,Selected Works,T. Taylor tr., London 1823, p.171.10 ibidem, p.18011 Vitruvius,De Architectura,l,iii,3.12 Short Dxford English Dictionary,1983, vol. 2; my underlining