Economie de Moyens - Necessité - Eric Lapierre

ECONOMY OF MEANS
HOW A RCHITECTURE WOR KS
É R IC L A PIER R E
ECONOMY OF MEANS
How A r c h it e c t u r e Wor k s
Lisbon ArchiTecTure Triennale
The PoeTics of Reason

RATIONAL ARCHITECTURE
There is no architecture without rationality. Any work, irrespective

of the type or style, is the result of mental processes involving as-
sessments, decisions and manifestations of reason. Even intuition,
which moves fluidly between instinct and memory, is not free from
the scrutiny of reason, which is inherent to human nature itself.
But what kind of rationality is meant here? Is it possible to take a
critical perspective on the quality of the exercise of reason involved
in such decisions? One must also bear in mind that, if reason is a
faculty that is inherent to human beings, being rational is something
different, something that assumes a strategic disposition towards a
prevalent desire for logic and economy. So, what kind of architecture
can be classified as rational? What are the principles it follows?
From Modernism onwards, the term “rational” came to designate
a significant body of architectural output that incorporated the
values of said movement in accordance with principles of simplicity,
functionality and efficacy in the selection of building processes. But
what would be the conclusion if one were to analyse the architecture
of other centuries, and even contemporary output, in the light of
those principles?
Optimisation is an underlying principle of rationality – the search

for an “ideal” model that rejects the superfluous and goes beyond
the strictly necessary in order to fully realise a certain programme
in a certain context. Architecture that is produced in this way often
follows linear mathematic patterns and optimised, repetitive mod-
ular systems that are based on principles of economy. For this very
reason, it incorporates a notion of reduction: reduction of costs, of
processes, of compositional elements.
From the moral perspective, one could say that there is a certain
ambition, one that is both aesthetic and ethical, that underlies said
principles and the notion of precision, and that governs the consid-
eration and inclusion of all elements of this type of architecture.
Despite all connotations of being cold architecture without the ca-
pacity to move, there are those who would argue the contrary and
establish parallels with poetry, where economy, reduction, metrics
and precision are qualities that are intrinsically linked with formal
beauty and heighten the feelings to which they aspire.
Economy of Means is a reflection based on the exhibition organised
at the MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, under
the Lisbon Architecture Triennale’s theme for 2019, The Poetics of
Reason. Taking a broad approach in temporal and disciplinary terms,
it explores the value of the notion of economy, not only as a quality
but also as a pivotal condition for rational architecture.
4
José Mateus
Executive Chairman
Lisbon Architecture Triennale
4
Translated by Liam Burke.

6
6
Biosphere’s geodesic dome, Montréal, 1965–1967, Richard Buckminster

Fuller. Former United States of America Pavilion for the 1967 International
and Universal Exposition (Expo 67).
ECONOMY OF MEANS
“The marvellous is in the precision. The durable

is in perfection. Life is made up of an precise
calculation. The dream is based only on essen-
tial realities. Poetry acts only through precise
facts. Lyricism takes flight on wings of truth..
Only the genuine affects us.
Life, life! We measure its brilliance only by a
deep descent into the essence of things.”
Le Corbusier, Urbanisme.1
1. MEANS
In Ancient Greek, oikonomia refers to the man-

agement and governance of the home. By analogy,
economy of means could be defined as governance
of the means employed to obtain a specific result.
It is not, in its essence, a category that aims sim-
ply to use the fewest means possible to obtain a
specific result, but rather an attitude that seeks to
always look with a critical eye at the means that
are mobilised towards a defined goal.
1 Le Corbusier, Urbanisme, Paris, Flammarion, 1994, p. 287.

1st edition, Paris, G. Grès et Cie., 1925.
Translation by the author.
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8
Faces, 1968, John Cassavetes, film still.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
An attitude that never draws a distinction between

the result and the path taken to arrive at it. In ar-
chitecture, this reflection naturally applies to the
means mobilised towards the formal conception
of buildings. It implies therefore to give a precise
definition of what architectural form is.
2. FORM
The search for the appropriate form for any given

building is the very definition of architecture. It
is vital to come to an agreement on the definition
of the word form: an architectural form worthy of
its name has very little to do with the subjective
opinion of the architect.
Indeed, any human activity that is carried
out at a high level finds itself confronting formal
questions. Take the example of the profession of
lawyer. A lawyer’s goal is always to ensure that
their client is acquitted or receives the most lenient
punishment possible. A good lawyer is therefore
deemed to be one who obtains such a result; a great
lawyer, however, is one who arrives at this result
“in due and appropriate form”, that is to say: by
constructing pleas of great formal beauty.
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10
Nord, 1960, Louis-Ferdinand Céline.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
The competitions of eloquence within this profes-

sion are an illustration of this.
One could consider a writer to be a teller of
stories. However, it is evident that the main task
of literature is not so much to tell stories as to
understand how those stories should be told, that
is to say: how they should be put into form. This
is what Louis-Ferdinand Céline meant when he
declared: “The story, my God, is quite secondary.
It is style that is interesting. Painters manage to
relegate the subject matter, a jug, a pot, an apple,
whatever; it is the way in which it is rendered that
matters.”2 Given this lack of interest in the subject
matter, form itself is allowed to emerge.
Form is the final horizon of all human ac-
tivity. Here form must not be understood as the
simple outline of things, but rather as the exteri-
or manifestation of any given thing’s interiority.
Even the more scientific disciplines, which received
wisdom on formal and aesthetic questions would
tend to exclude from discussions about form, are
also concerned.
2 Louis-Ferdinand Céline, interview with Madeleine Chapsal,

L'Express, 1957.
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12
Nouvelles inventions pour bien bastir et a (sic) petits fraiz,

1561, Philibert de l’Orme.
ECONOMY OF MEANS
Thus, in mathematics, for example, proof is consid-

ered elegant when it is particularly concise or orig-
inal – when it is based, for example, on theorems
that do not appear, at first sight, to be related. So,
in judging the ultimate quality of any activity it is
always formal questions that are called into play.
3 . B EYOND NECESSITY
Like animals, men are constrained by the various

necessities that condition and limit their lives. But,
in the light of what has been said above, it would
appear that most human activities find their ulti-
mate meaning in going beyond the necessity that
originally motivates them. Going beyond necessity
in this way is thus one of the signs that defines
humanity. Indeed, it is only humans that behave in
this way. Sport could even be considered a symptom
of this phenomenon. And here too, of course, over
and above the mere result we admire the gratu-
itous beauty of any specific action. This need to
go beyond can be taken to absurd extremes when
people are willing to do absolutely anything to get
into The Guinness Book of Records, for example.
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14
Squid and ink, 2019, Iñaki Aizpitarte.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
And one sees immediately when considering the

record for eating hamburgers – ninety-three in
eight minutes – that such a performance is so di-
vorced from any formal necessity that, other than
its pathetic character, it tends to leave us indiffer-
ent. Because, fundamentally, the most beautiful,
unique and important part of human nature resides
in going beyond an authentic necessity.
Gastronomy and fashion are, like architec-
ture, entire disciplines which are founded upon this
notion of going beyond vital needs: eating and pro-
tecting ourselves from the vagaries of the climate
are heavy constraints which determine the very
possibility of life but which are also symptomatic
of the absurdity and fragility of our condition. And
so, we have replaced this enslavement to basic
needs with the pleasure of eating and dressing
well. Rather than passively enduring something,
we have collectively chosen to take this opportu-
nity to stimulate our senses and to stimulate our
sense of beauty. Animals live under the yoke of
immediate needs.
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16
Black glove top, 2001, Maison Martin Margiela.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
Man exists in a metaphoric and real surpassing

of such needs. And to conclude, isn’t sexuality
the ultimate example of this condition, replacing
the very survival of our species with pleasure, the
quality that Freud defined as the main engine of
our existence?
4. NECESSITY
The deep beauty of architecture is founded on the

necessity of its nature. A good building is beautiful
and useless, like a work of art, and fundamental-
ly useful as an indispensable object; indeed, its
beauty is made real by the vital necessity which
led to its construction. Out of this tension between
necessity and beauty an aesthetic is born which is
unlike any other: springing forth from mud archi-
tecture touches the stars. It satisfies in one single
movement our spiritual and material aspirations.
These two elements meet in the necessity which
determines both the immediate phenomenological
presence of architectural objects and their con-
ceptual brilliance. Necessity is the raison d’être
of architecture.
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18
Bull's Head, 1942, Pablo Picasso.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
It is from this foundation that architecture elabo-

rates its built dreams.
These dreams are founded on this very no-
tion of going beyond necessity. Moreover, architec-
ture is always something that is neither asked for
nor included in the initial programme. Architecture
is something that is gratuitous in the primary
meaning of the word. In its essence, architecture
has this point of analogy with man himself, in that
both find their definition in going beyond mere
necessity. However, in the same way that we have
seen how going beyond necessity in other human
activities has to be based on a genuine need if it
is not to fall into the absurdity of The Guinness
Book of Records, we also need to understand in
what way this overcoming of initial need operates
in the field of architecture in order to give birth to
genuine achievements.
By definition, the necessity of going beyond
necessity excludes the possibility that a good build-
ing is simply the result of a problem that is resolved
in a linear fashion.
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20
House Under High-Voltage Lines, Tokyo, 1981, Kazuo Shinohara.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
The “one problem/one solution” way of thinking is

anti-architectural in as much as a building always
exists at the place where a bundle of conceptual-
ly distinct problems, which cannot be resolved
one-by-one, meet. A piling up of solutions arrived
at in isolation from each other and in response
to specific problems cannot, by definition, pro-
duce architecture, if only because such a piling
up produces new problems at every intersection.
But first and foremost, because the primary goal
and the tool with which architecture intervenes
on reality is the creation of architectural forms.
Only reflection on form is capable of resolving
the numerous levels of constraint and meaning
which architecture must respond to in a holistic
and coherent manner – even if it is only the three
Vitruvian categories of beauty, utility and solidity
which are already, as in most cases, in contradiction
with each other. Architectural form is born from
the resolution of contradictions resulting from
the diverse necessities which underpin any given
problem. An architectural form is not, therefore,
merely subservient to the free will of its author
but is, above all, an exterior manifestation that is
born from the resolution of seemingly irreconcil-
able inner necessities.
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22
Administration Building Hochstrasse, Basel, 1985–1988, Roger Diener.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
5 . E C O NOMY OF DECISI ONS
The first economy of means consists, therefore,

in not adding arbitrary and misplaced decisions
to the project. In effect, as seen above, for human
activities to become significant the necessities that
they are called to overcome themselves need to be
“authentic” or, to use a less loaded term, that they
need in some way to be evident, to correspond to
a reality. In order to achieve this, the necessities
taken into consideration need to belong to the pro-
ject itself: architectural form must proceed from
internal necessity and not, to use an example,
from the arbitrary tastes of its author. The skill
of the architect consists in defining the form that
efficiently resolves all the internal necessities of
the project, and to do so as if it were natural and
with a certain self-evident clarity. With a notice-
able lightness of intervention, which is the mark
of successful architecture, where nothing seems
forced. It is for this reason that good architecture
often relates to convention, that it often appears a
little boring or overly conventional at first glance.
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24
Villa Foscari, Mira, 1559, Andrea Palladio.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
By way of example, the contradiction born of the

double necessity to support an edifice, while at
the same time laying out precisely dimensioned
and utilitarian spaces, for a long time dictated
the broad principles of drawing up architectural
plans. Le Corbusier considered these plans to be
“paralysed” by the necessity for load-bearing walls
to be superimposed from the bottom to the top of
the building, but in fact this is only true for bad
architects. In a villa by Palladio, for example, the
consummate art of mastery of the proportions in
the plan tends to make the walls “disappear” as
constraints, in the sense that they are no longer
perceived as potential impediments but, rather,
on the contrary as desirable elements which allow
rooms to be laid out in such a precise and beautiful
sequence that one no longer even thinks of them.
They are to a certain extent supplanted by the
resulting quality of their correct lay-out, and this
makes their presence so “light” that they all but
disappear from our perception.
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26
4’3’’, 1952, John Cage.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
Their alignment is, of course, determined by the

correct positioning in terms of usage, beauty, rela-
tionship to the landscape, etc., but also, and above
all, by the comparatively limited construction tech-
niques of the 16th century. Thus, the success of
these villas results from the bringing together of
technical possibilities, an ambitious programme to
create new forms of rural dwelling, and the desire
to give these dwellings a unique quality, notably
via a privileged relationship with the surround-
ing countryside. The architect’s job consists in
establishing a balance – which can at times itself
be unstable – between the project’s own internal
imperatives.
The architecture we cherish is built on a
process of accompaniment rather than imposi-
tion. It consists in allowing the project’s internal
necessities to exist and, in some manner, to allow
them to condition either explicitly or implicitly the
final outcome.
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28
“Vache à la collerette”, Lascaux cave, ca. 15,000 B.C.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
The unique quality of the resulting project will

come from the nature of the equilibrium estab-
lished by the architect between all these necessities
– in spite of, one should stress again, their contra-
dictory character – so that the project appears as
though belonging naturally to the entirety of these
necessities. As Adolf Loos once said when describ-
ing a lake in the Alps, the project must appear to
have emerged from the same “divine workshop”
as the sky and the mountains: “May I take you to
the shores of a mountain lake? The sky is blue,
the water green and everywhere is profound tran-
quillity. The clouds and mountains are mirrored
in the lake, the houses, farms and chapels as well.
They do not look as though fashioned by man, it
is as if they came straight from God’s workshop,
like the mountains and trees, the clouds and the
blue sky. And everything exudes an air of beauty
and peace…”
6. ANALYSIS
As we have seen, the first economy of means that a

good architect employs is an economy of decision:
he seeks not to intervene in a misplaced manner
so that the project can achieve the same level of
irrefutable reality as one of nature’s own products.
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30
St. Antonius Church, Essen-Frohnhausen, 1956–1959, Rudolf Schwarz.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
This does not mean that he does not intervene:

accomplished architecture can only be the result of
achieving balance between diverse imperatives and,
to the contrary, it always and primarily is charac-
terised by evident and freely made decisions. The
basis of all art is that these freely taken decisions
do not contradict with the internal necessities of
the project. The architect must therefore create the
conditions that make the realisation of these deci-
sions possible. A significant part of the rationality
of architecture resides in this process and in the
thought process on which it is founded. To begin
with, a period of analysis. An in-depth analysis
of the numerous necessities which constitute the
terms of the question being asked. This analysis
is, of course, in part a conscious one but it is also,
and first and foremost, a subconscious one. It is
founded on the fact that the terms of the question
must exist for a while within the architect himself,
as Le Corbusier explained so well: “When a job is
handed to me I tuck it away in my memory, not
allowing myself to make any sketches for months
on end. That’s the way the human head is made:
it has a certain independence.
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32
“Il pleut”, 1913–1916, Guillaume Apollinaire.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
It’s a box into which you can toss the elements of

a problem any which way and leave it to “float”, to
“simmer”, to “ferment”. Then one fine day there
comes a spontaneous movement from within, the
catch is sprung; you take a pencil, a drawing char-
coal, some colour pencils (colour is the key to the
manoeuvre) and you give birth on the sheet of
paper. The idea comes out – the child comes out,
it comes into the world, it is born.”3
7. CULTURE
In a sense it is in a second stage, and it is in this

second stage, which Le Corbusier describes when
he refers to the fact that he forbids himself from
making any drawings for several months, that
hypotheses about forms that one thinks will be
capable of allowing all the necessities to find a
precise balance within the project are elaborated
and tested. Such hypotheses are not a “mechanical”
product of the analysis but rather they are circum-
scribed within the limits of the project’s internal
territory, the territory of possibilities defined by
the project’s own imperatives.
3 Le Corbusier, Textes et dessins pour Ronchamp, Paris, 1965.

English translation: Texts and Sketches for Ronchamp,
Association Œuvre de Notre-Dame du Haut, 1st English language
edition, 1982.
34
34
Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, 1991–1994,

Jean Nouvel, Emmanuel Cattani & Associés.
ECONOMY OF MEANS
Such an approach is the diametric opposite of that

which produces an algorithm capable of automat-
ically generating the project from a database of
information. There is nothing diagrammatic about
it because it is based on the architect’s own herit-
age and culture.
When Le Corbusier, once again, evokes the
fermentation of the elements of a problem this
takes place in a specific field which he describes as
the inside of his memory. And this field is a cultural
one. It is the field of architecture as a discipline.
Outside of this, it is impossible to make relevant
architecture. After economy of decision, it is the
second pillar upon which supports the rationality
of architecture. The condition to be able to create
productive and efficient links with other cultural
and technical fields is part and parcel of being a
discipline. The art of shelter is a discipline as an-
cient as man himself. Over the course of time, a
large amount of experience has been accumulated
by imagining and constructing buildings which
saw the emergence, in the early 15th century in
Florence, of architecture as a conscious operating
concept.
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36
Deux Danseurs, 1937–1938, Henri Matisse.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
Once one becomes an architect, one becomes the

depository of this heritage. It is the very basis of
all accomplished architectural practice.
Architecture is thus constituted by an en-
semble of traditions which are like so many lines
that streak across the surface of architectural
knowledge. They relate both to specific localised
practices and also to more general concepts and
principles. Contrary to a widely propagated view,
inscribing oneself within a tradition does not con-
sist in sterilely reproducing a series of outdated
forms, but rather in reinventing and constantly
shifting a specific culture constituted by all the
experiences of other architects working in the same
lineage, sometimes over the course of many centu-
ries. Situating oneself within a tradition does not
imply a form of servile respect, but rather demands
that one constantly reinvents that tradition in
order to keep it alive by prolonging or shifting the
line of its horizon.
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38
Design for a one-room hostel (type E1), 1928–1929, Moïsseï Ginzburg.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
Those who inscribe themselves within a tradition

refuse to accept the simplistic notion of an original
work created ex nihilo and instead join, to their
advantage, the process of sedimentation of experi-
ence gathered out by all their forebears. It is thus
that new forms are created.
But beyond this, the process of the project
allows one to take hold of multiple different lines of
horizon and to play with them, like a draughtsman
manipulating splines on their computer screen in
order to make them meet at one specific point. One
arrives thus at one of the essential dimensions of
architecture: creating objects which refer both to
a shared experience of the world and to a unique
expression. This approach allows the architect to
go beyond their own subjectivity and become as
universal as possible; it is not their own obsessions
that the architect is called to express but rather ar-
chitecture itself, as an ensemble of ideas. And the
irreducible and untameable core of personal ex-
pression which survives this plan forms the unique
and spontaneous manner in which each architect,
like all creators, enfolds a foreign language into
the common tongue of his own discipline.
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40
Egg, New York, 1972, Stephen Shore.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
Here lies the productive obsession. It comes at the

end as a partly unconscious result and not at the
beginning as an automatic way of doing things.
The process of the project can thus be re-
sumed as being two perimeters, one contained
within the other: the first defines the field of pos-
sibilities that result from the project’s own given
needs; the second, more restrained since deter-
mined by the architect’s own imposed necessities, is
the field of the project itself. The first has irregular
contours; the second has more precise outlines
as it is the result of will. The whole appears as a
fried egg.
8 . IMAGINATION
It is precisely because culture plays a central role

in the creative process that Le Corbusier invokes
his memory as the place in which the data of the
problem resides. The capacity of an architect to
manipulate the different key elements of archi-
tectural culture necessitates that they are fully
interiorised beforehand.
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42
"English Journey”: Journal of a Visit to France

and Britain in 1826, Karl Friedrich Schinkel.
ECONOMY OF MEANS
This culture has been handed down to him by his

teachers during his years of study. He then com-
pleted his studies by reading, travel and all manner
of research. Travelling to Italy was a central part
of the learning process for Classical European ar-
chitects. The École des Beaux-Arts in Paris would
send its best students, often for a period of sever-
al years, to study the ruins in Rome and further
afield. Le Corbusier on the Acropolis; Louis Kahn
in Albi, Sienna or Egypt; Robert Venturi in Rome;
Rem Koolhaas in the Soviet Union on the tracks of
Ivan Leonidov or collecting post cards in New York;
Jean-Philippe Vassal in Niger; Kersten Geers and
David Van Severen in Los Angeles; and Emanuel
Christ and Christoph Gantenbein in Italy. What
were they all doing? They were building up their
own respective imaginative universes. Because the
first task of an architect is to construct their im-
aginative universe. As demonstrated by the Inner
Space exhibition at the fifth Lisbon Architecture
Triennale4, imagination is not some innate gift,
but a mental construction, a rational classification
which aims to establish a hierarchy and give spe-
cific sense to the mass of information that makes
up raw architectural culture.
4 The exhibition Inner Space (curated by Socks Studio – Mariabruna

Fabrizi and Fosco Lucarelli) was presented from 4th October to
5th January 2020 at the Museu do Chiado – Museu Nacional
de Arte Contemporânea and led to the publication of the book,
Mariabuna Fabrizi and Fosco Lucarelli, Inner Space, Constructing
the Imagination, Barcelona, Ediciones Polígrafa, 2019.
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44
Charles Mauduit House, Sceaux, 1934, Auguste Perret.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
It is via this work of organising data that each

architect manages to make the common culture
of architecture their own. The construction of this
personal imagination by each individual architect
constitutes the third pillar of architectural ration-
ality: the key words are classification and hierarchy.
To classify is already to imagine, already to project.
It is the operating principle by which each architect
imagines, invents and defines their own story of
the discipline, a story which constitutes the unique
cultural field within which they will “ferment” the
interior imperatives of the project so as to create,
via a process of informed intuition, accomplished
architectural forms. The second economy of means
relating to the creative process of architecture is
thus an economy of the imagination. It consists in
concentrating on what makes the greatest degree
of sense and leaving to one side, in full awareness
of the situation (which is to say, assuming a way
of thinking diametrically opposed to ignorance),
whole swathes of architectural culture that are
deemed to be less pertinent or simply less attrac-
tive.
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46
Latapie House, Floirac, 1993, Lacaton & Vassal.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
The stronger the architect’s imagination the easier

it will be for them to forget culture at the moment
of taking action. For indeed, culture is an opening,
but it can also be a curse. For this reason, the ar-
chitect needs to constantly forget what they know,
at least consciously, so as to act in an intuitive
manner, because throughout this process intuition
plays a primordial role. But the informed intuition
of the savants who temporarily forget what they
know so as to act is the opposite of ignorance. Cul-
ture is not something extraneous to the architect
but rather a tool which allows action. Not so much
by consciously invoking it, but rather, more often
than not, by letting it inform their own intuition in
spite of themselves. It is an instrument of embodied
creativity, the exact opposite of the general culture
of society’s performing poodles. The stronger the
culture the more powerful is its abandonment.
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48
Petit Trianon, Versailles, 1768, Ange-Jacques Gabriel.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
9 . RELATIONSHIPS
We have already observed how the architect brings

together the different internal necessities of the
project in order to both satisfy them and balance
them in a specific manner. Each architect will
choose to give primacy to one or the other of these
internal needs – one may be interested, above all
else, in the composition of the plan, while another
may develop their project around its relationship
to a context and a physical territory; Viollet-le-Duc
favoured structural expression while Gottfried
Semper considered cladding to be of the utmost im-
portance. Then, from the raw mass of architectural
culture, the architect starts the job of classifying
and ranking the key elements of the architectural
discipline – ideas, principles, concepts, buildings,
works by his predecessors, etc. – with the goal of
developing his own unique imagination upon which
to build his work.
To produce an equilibrium and to draw up
a hierarchy are both activities that depend upon
the establishment of relationships.
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50
Munge Stool, 2010, Gonçalo Prudêncio.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
And, indeed, all architectural activity depends on

the establishment of relationships. One could even
affirm that architecture is in its essence structural-
ist in the sense that Claude Lévi-Strauss used the
term. The relationship between internal impera-
tives so as to create the potential conditions of the
project; the relationship of these imperatives with
the architect’s own necessities; the relationship
of the diverse elements that constitute architec-
tural culture in order to define an imagination
which will permit the architect to enact his own
intuition and cultivated spontaneity; and in the
building itself, the relationship between the ar-
chitectural elements – a Corbusian free plan or a
variable Miesian plan both establish unexpected
relationships between, for example, construction,
composition of the plan, space and the status of
the façade. Invention is born out of the creation of
unexpected relationships between permanent and
conventional elements.
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52
“Application des jointures des os à la mécanique”,

1881, Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc.
ECONOMY OF MEANS
Indeed, it is this fundamental quality that allows

architecture to continue to be a relevant cultural
medium for contemporary society even though
it is no longer based on a common language, as
it was, for example, during the Classical period.
These relationships form an infra-language, which
predates all vocabulary; the economy of means
constitutes its grammar.
The key question now is to know how archi-
tects can create an architectural form at the same
time as they evaluate it and judge its relevance.
And, of course, it is here that the economy of means
appears as the cornerstone of all valid form, both
as a way of conceiving and evaluating form.
1 0 . ECONOMY OF MEAN S
If form is the horizon of all human activity, the

economy of means is its DNA.
Form in the largest sense and, more specif-
ically, architectural form is always defined by its
unitary character. From a strictly visual or com-
positional point of view, this form can be either
fragmented or the result of a gathering together.
54
54
Kocher Canvas Weekend House, Northport, New York, 1934, Albert Frey.
ECONOMY OF MEANS
But correct architectural form, in as much as it is a

coherent external representation of a given thing’s
interiority, is always unitary. Take the example of
an abbey or a convent: made up of a series of build-
ings which are all different in their forms, types and
functions – chapterhouse, refectory, oratory, chap-
el, library, cells, etc. – the ensemble nevertheless
forms one coherent whole which is referred to as a
building, a convent, an abbey. This is the case from
Thoronet to la Tourette, from Cluny to Carmel
de la Paix. And to go further, these convents, like
any accomplished building, form a unity between
themselves and the territory in which they are im-
planted, rich in future developments as Sébastien
Marot so eloquently showed in the exhibition and
eponymous book, Taking the Country’s Side5.
The economy of means allows one to de-
termine the shortest possible route between the
different necessities which are the origin of all
architectural form: constructional, functional and
aesthetic necessities constitute the three catego-
ries on which Vitruvius built his own definition of
architectural form.
5 Taking the Country’s Side was presented from 5th October to 16th
February 2020 at Garagem Sul – Centro Cultural de Belém, as part
of the fifth Lisbon Architecture Triennale. The book of the same
name is published in Barcelona by Ediciones Polígrafa.
56
56
À la recherche du temps perdu, Tome II, À l’ombre des jeunes filles

en fleurs, 1918, Marcel Proust.
ECONOMY OF MEANS
Many others have since been added to these, either

imposed by the reality of the present moment or
by the architects themselves in dialogue with their
own respective imaginations.
In the Vitruvian system and in the work of
subsequent Classical architects, these necessities
were brought together into a coherent whole by
means of a system and a vocabulary of codified pro-
portions. If time and space allowed, the manner in
which this formal system is itself based on a kind of
economy of means deserves to be discussed, since
the beauty and complexity of Classical works can
often mask their conceptual and creative under-
pinnings.6 Nevertheless, beneath this vocabulary,
one finds economy of means in all accomplished
works of Classical architecture and, indeed, in ac-
complished works of any epoch and any medium.
Economy of means creates a coherent narrative
that goes beyond questions of vocabulary. It is this
that renders visible and intelligible the imperatives
that each architect has chosen to put into play. It
is this that allows the observer to understand the
author’s intentions and which allows the author
to firmly establish his own decisions.
6 Sébastien Marot explores an aspect of this question in Taking the

Country’s Side, following on from Goerd Pescheken.
58
58
La Jetée, 1962, Chris Marker, film still.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
At the heart of any valid form it is economy of

means that allows a work to speak its own lan-
guage and go beyond inherited vocabularies and
conventions in structuring the logic of its own form.
It is present everywhere – from the squinches of
the Château d’Anet to the Eames House in Pacific
Palisades, from the vestibule of the Hôtel de Ville
in Arles to the Rolex Centre in Lausanne – in any
work which, while the product of an individual
creator, nevertheless achieves a universal dimen-
sion which is understandable to all. It is precisely
this that Roger Diener was talking about when he
explained, while discussing the manner in which
he set back the façade on one side of the ground
floor of his courtyard building in Amsterdam, that
it was important that the original form was sim-
ple enough – a parallelepiped – for the action of
removing the façade to be understood; the removal
of the façade is also, and above all, a removal of
matter from the original volume. The final form of
the building is perfectly unitary; the use of brick
and the proportions of the volume reinforce this
impression.
60
60
“Grille de 6 x 6 sans noir”, Georges Perec.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
But, despite this aura of stability and solidity, the

building can be read in two ways: its actual built
existence with the cantilever but also, in some
manner, the initial and full volume of the simple
parallelepiped. Such an approach could be inter-
preted as a continuation of the theory of concrete
art developed by the Swiss architect and sculptor,
Max Bill, for whom each work of art must, by a
process of rational abstraction, allow for the ex-
plicit comprehension of its own form.
Here too, the economy of means comes into
play. It allows one to carry out the different de-
cisions of the project in a determined manner,
without leaving any space between them, so as
to create an ensemble whose different parts are
firmly joined, as in a high precision machine: every
element has its place, its role to play, possesses its
own unity, but also finds itself connected to a larger
whole to whose proper functioning it contributes
and which in turn gives it a meaning greater than
itself.7
7 Georges Pérec’s crossword grids which contain no black squares are

a good metaphor of the precision and gapless density towards which
economy of means leads.
62
62
Town Hall, Arles, 1676, Jules Hardouin-Mansart.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
These decisions manifest themselves in certain

formal characteristics whether relating to con-
struction, composition, formal analogy, choice of
colour, a certain relation to context, ground or the
surrounding environment. In describing Diener’s
building in Amsterdam one could say that the
brick reinforces the volumic design of the building,
that it confirms its significance and its well-chosen
proportions. But ultimately one could also say that
the volume reinforces the brick. When looked at
through the lens of economy of means these two
elements, volume – and hence also proportion – and
materials, find themselves in a harmony that makes
them inseparable, forming a single whole through
a relationship of mutual strengthening which is
the essence of all successful architecture. Nothing
can be added or removed from such a building
without weakening the coherence and cohesion of
its diverse formal components, of which, out of a
desire for simplification, only two are mentioned
here but which are of course far more numerous.
Everything is thus not just interdependent but
almost, as it were, fused and melded together in a
unique and perfectly concretised unity.
64
64
“Jackson Pollock at work, Number 30”, Long Island, 1950, Hans Namuth.
ECONOMY OF MEANS
1 1 . CONCRETISATION
This notion of concretisation is important because

it is what distinguishes a successful architectural
form conceived under the aegis of the economy
of means from one which is the result of a simple
application of a process: extruding, cutting, stretch-
ing, fragmenting, bending, etc. The creation of
forms is always, in one way or another, a process.
But, in fine, the economy of means allows one to
attain the state of concretisation in which there is
neither before nor after, only the irrefutable evi-
dence of a coherent form which, like an animal, a
plant or a mountain, cannot be imagined as other
than it is. In contrast, in projects that want to leave
the process visible, the sequence of actions which
leads to their construction can be read, as though
left apparent, in the order in which they were car-
ried out. The whole does not become inseparable
because the process and its unfolding dominate
everything else as if one dimension of the project
overwhelms all the others and thus, of course, is
incapable of leading to concretisation.
66
66
Housing, Pantin, 1955–1957, Fernand Pouillon.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
On the other hand, and thanks to the economy of

means, the accomplished form is ready to remain,
in some way, both full and novel in whatever mo-
ment in time it is called upon to exist.
12. STYLE
It is evident that, in order to establish the rela-

tionships between the diverse elements and com-
ponents of an architectural form that will allow
for the creation of this state of concretisation with
the necessary degree of precision, and also allow
their subtlety to become visible, nothing misplaced
must be added to this ensemble. It is precisely here
that the economy of means is the architect’s sur-
est guide. It allows him to suppress, remove and
forbid all superfluous elements, so as to conserve
only those which are indispensable to the clarity
of the discourse. It is in this light that we should
understand the remarks of Fernand Pouillon when
he explains that “[…]
68
68
Notes sur le cinématographe, 1975, Robert Bresson.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
A limited vocabulary always gives more force to

expression”8, or those of Robert Bresson declaring:
“the faculty of using my resources well diminishes
as their number grows.”9 The economy of means
guarantees the intelligibility of devices and ele-
ments which in themselves are not significant.
Building materials, windows, floors, ceilings, walls
and pillars are not significant in themselves. It is
through the economy of means that they become
significant. By eliminating all that is not neces-
sary to the building and by linking decisions to
each other, the economy of means gives a voice to
the mute mass of material things. By magnifying
abstraction which is, to varying degrees, at the
heart of all architectural practice, the economy of
means renders significant that which previously
was not; abstraction also becomes significant. It
is this economy which allows one to arrive at Au-
guste Perret’s goal of “making the fulcrum sing”10.
Auguste Perret who cites Marmontel in his Con-
tribution à une théorie de l’architecture : “Express
8 Fernand Pouillon, Mémoires d’un architecte, Paris, éditons du Seuil,

1968, p. 440, cited in Jacques Lucan (dir.), Pantin, Montrouge,
Boulogne-Billancourt, Meudon-la-Forêt: Fernand Pouillon, Archi-
tecte, Paris, Éditons du Pavillon de l’Arsenal et Picard, 2003.
9 Robert Bresson, Notes sur le cinématographe, Paris, Gallimard, 1975,
p. 9. English translation: Robert Bresson, Notes on the Cinematog-
rapher, (transl. Jonathan Griffin, 1986), Green Integer, Copenhagen,
1997, p. 13.
10 Auguste Perret’s conference on 31st May 1933 at the Institut d’art
et d’archéologie de l’Université de Paris. Cited in Roberto Gargiani,
Auguste Perret: la théorie et l’œuvre, Paris, Gallimard, 1994.
70
70
Entretiens sur l'architecture, 1863, Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
one’s thought with the fewest possible words and

the most possible force, this is the style”11.
And with that, the word is out in the open: style.
Because yes, it is precisely the question of style
that brings the economy of means into play. Style,
that is to say: a certain necessary but not suffi-
cient condition for the apparition of beauty. Thus,
Viollet-le-Duc in his Discourses On Architecture,
describes the form of a vase which according to him
has style because “the form obtained is that which
most readily conforms to the substance of which it
is made, and to the use for which it is destined. It
has style, because the human reason has indicated
exactly its appropriate form. […] There comes […]
a second coppersmith, who proposes to modify the
form of the primitive vase in order to seduce the
purchaser with the attraction of novelty; to this
end he gives a few extra blows of the hammer and
rounds off the body of the vase, which until then
had been regarded as perfect. […] A third, seeing
the success of this expedient, goes still further,
and makes a third vase, with rounder outlines, for
anybody who will buy it.
11 Marmontel cited in Auguste Perret, Contribution à une théorie

de l’architecture, André Wahl, Paris, 1952.
72
72
Flor da Rosa, Crato, Portugal, in Inquérito sobre a Arquitectura

Regional Portuguesa (1955-1960).
ECONOMY OF MEANS
Having quite lost the sight of the principle, he

becomes capricious and fanciful; he attaches de-
veloped handles to this vase, and these he declares
to be in the newest taste. It cannot be overturned
to be drained without danger of bending these
handles, yet every one applauds to the new vase,
and the third coppersmith is regarded as having
singularly perfected his art, while in fact he has
only robbed the original work of all its style, and
produced an object which is really ugly and com-
paratively inconvenient.”12. Here one can clearly
see that style is rooted in a radical economy of
means – Viollet-le-Duc explains that the second
coppersmith gives more hammer blows and that
the third one goes too far – and that the talent of
the creator of the first vase lies not in the applica-
tion of misplaced exogenous decisions, but rather
in a clear appropriation of the internal necessities
to which this object must respond. It is up to the
creator to attain beauty by finding the means to
respond to these constraints, while simultaneously
producing a form that is pleasing to the eye.
12 Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Discourses On Architecture, orig-

inal edition, Paris, 1863. American edition published in Boston by
James R. Osgood and Company, in 1875. Translated by Henry Van
Brunt. Sixth discourse, pp. 177-178.
74
74
Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts, Or, Practical Aesthetics,

1860–1862, Gottfried Semper.
ECONOMY OF MEANS
13. FUSION
A minimum of matter – “the form obtained is that

which most readily conforms to the substance of
which it is made” – clearly implies that matter must
be used with parsimony; a minimum of effort. It
is explained that the second coppersmith “gives
a few extra blows of the hammer”: economy of
means always tends towards a certain reduction
for it is in this reduction that things take on sense
and intensity. Just like with a sauce that needs to
be reduced in order to become concentrated and
have an intense and deep taste.
This reduction is at the heart of architec-
ture’s operating system. Indeed, valid architectural
choices have always had several reasons for existing
and brought together necessities of many different
orders into one inseparable whole. Take, for exam-
ple, the Doric column which to this day is considered
to be one of the most accomplished architectural
elements ever invented. It is nothing but a simple
and functional pillar, a purely technical element.
76
76
Palais de bois, Paris,1924–1927, Auguste Perret.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
But, at the same time, it is also a sculpture: the

fluting, when it is present, is not an added deco-
ration – and it is worth noting that the fluting is
grooves in the mass – but constitutes part of the
logic of the form of the column whose roundness
they magnify. The perfection of its execution gives
a quasi-mechanical precision to the column, thus
stripping it of a purely technical status and instead
placing it in the camp of works of art. It is thus,
at the same time both a pillar and a sculpture, but
not quite just one or the other. The Doric column,
stripped of all ornamentation save for its fluting
and the fine horizontal lines at its summit, is the
perfect illustration of an accomplished architectural
element. Its radiant beauty, which has fascinated
people since the period of its creation, is the out-
come of bringing together two levels of internal
formal necessity: on the one hand, the prosaic ne-
cessity of its static function and, on the other hand,
the supposedly superfluous aspect of its proportions
and ornaments.
78
78
Railway Sleeper House, Miyake Island, 1970, Shin Takasuga.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
It is proof of how impossible it is to separate these

two dimensions, so firmly are they fused in the
very nature of the column, that, since the 18th
century the purpose of entasis has been a subject
of dispute: some arguing that it reinforced the load
bearing capacity of the columns, while others con-
sidering it as one of the optical devices the Greeks
often used in their temples to correct visual effects
they considered unseemly according to the laws of
perspective.
1 4. DISTANCING
It is the fusion of two such clearly opposed neces-

sities that is the foundation of the Doric column’s
eternal beauty. And indeed, it is only natural when
one considers an object in which multiple levels of
necessity are combined to examine the distance
between these necessities and to enquire if the
richness of the object is, to some degree, propor-
tional to the distance between these necessities.
And herein lies one of the essential dimen-
sions of architecture: to produce meaning and beau-
ty out of objects of necessity. Even more so in the
contemporary context.
80
80
“Simon Hantaï in his atelier working on Tabulas”,

Paris, 1973, Édouard Boubat.
ECONOMY OF MEANS
More buildings have been constructed since the be-

ginning of the 20th century than in the rest of hu-
man history combined. This mass phenomenon has
inevitably and radically changed the very meaning
of constructing a building. The architects of the
Modernist movement understood this very well and
considered mass housing as the central question
of their time. In such a context, the very fact of
architecture continuing to exist as a sophisticated
cultural medium creates a fundamental division
of values between disparate necessities. This leads
to difficulties of realisation, but potentially also to
great achievements: to offer the best to everyone
and to allow learned culture and beauty to emerge
where one least expects it. Architecture is a water
lily floating on a lake of mud.
The more the necessities which are brought
into contact and fused – for make no mistake, we
are talking about a veritable fusion where in the
end, as we have seen with the Doric column, it is
impossible to separate what comes from these dif-
ferent necessities: everything comes in one move-
ment and in one sole form – are distant from each
other, the more intense the final result will be.
82
82
"Lithic tip found in Châteauneuf-sur-Loire”, Maurice Bourlon, illustration.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
It is only through reflection on form that we can

create the unity of such disparate necessities13 as
those encountered in a building.
This process of bringing together resonates
with other productive ways in which distant ne-
cessities can be brought into contact. In 1918 the
proto-surrealist poet, Pierre Reverdy, used a met-
aphor to describe the way in which poetic images
are created:
“The image is a pure creation of the mind.
It cannot be born of a comparison, but only
of the bringing together of two more or less distant
realities.
The more the relations of the two realities
brought together are distant and fitting, the strong-
er the image – the more emotive power and poetic
reality it will have.
Two realities without any relation cannot
be usefully brought together. Then there is no
creation of an image.
Two contrary realities will not come together.
They are opposed.
13 As Robert Venturi shows, these necessities are sometimes so far

apart that they can become contradictory. See Robert Venturi,
Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, New York, Museum
of Modern Art, 1966.
84
84
“Doric Order Parthénon”, Histoire de l’architecture, 1899, Auguste Choisy.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
We rarely get anything strong from such an op-

position.
An image is not strong because it is bru-
tal or fantastic – but because the association of
ideas is distant and fitting.
The result obtained immediately controls
the fittingness of the association.
Analogy is a means of creation – a resem-
blance of relations; and the strength or weakness
of the image created depends upon the nature of
these relations.
What is great is not the image itself – but
the emotion it provokes; if this emotion is great,
we value the image proportionally.
Emotion thus provoked is pure, poetically,
because it is born beyond all imitation, all evoca-
tion, all comparison.
There is surprise and delight in finding one-
self before a new thing.
We cannot create an image by comparing
(always weakly) two disproportionate realities.
86
86
Equisetum hyemale, 1928, Karl Blossfeldt.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
On the contrary, we create a strong image, one that

is new for the mind, by relating, without compar-
ison, two distant realities whose relations can be
grasped by the mind alone.
The mind must grasp and taste a created
image without any admixture.”14
“The image is a pure creation of the mind,”
wrote Reverdy in 1918. Five years later in Vers une
architecture, Le Corbusier would write: “Archi-
tecture, pure creation of the mind”15. These two
thoughts are identical. By “creation of the mind”,
these two authors stress that their respective dis-
ciplines cannot solely be described by using the
language of science – had they wished to do this
they would have used a word such as “reason”
and not the more emotionally charged “mind”16.
But, in invoking the mind, they also stress that
their respective disciplines are nevertheless gov-
erned and judged by thought. And it is precise-
ly here that one can locate the unique quality of
architectural rationality: architecture is rational
14 Pierre Reverdy, «L’Image», in Nord-Sud, n° 13, mars 1918. Edition

consulted: Pierre Reverdy, Œuvres complètes, Paris, Flammarion,
2010, p. 495. English translation: available at https://www.sabzian.
be/article/the-image, consulted on 22nd May 2019
(transl. Adrian Martin).
15 Le Corbusier, Vers une architecture, Paris, Éditions Crès,
Collection de “L’Esprit Nouveau”, 1923.
16 In this regard it is worth bearing in mind that Le Corbusier was
never a functionalist, nor did he ever seek to transform architecture
into a science, as did many of his colleagues in the Modernist
movement. For him function was always a necessary, but not the
sole, condition of beauty.
88
88
Solo House, Matarraña, 2017, OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen.
ECONOMY OF MEANS
because it can be explained, can be passed on, can

be judged; but this rationality does not form part
of the Cartesian order we associate with science.
Architectural rationality relies more on analogy
and metaphor than on analysis in the mathemat-
ical sense of the term. Even though measures and
dimensions form one entire section of architectural
culture, architecture cannot limit itself to purely
quantitative or measurable questions. Architecture
goes beyond quantitative problems, as can be seen,
most notably, in questions relating to scale which
allow one to modify the way in which dimensions
are perceived in space, and in those relating to
the symbolic importance afforded to certain meas-
ures. Moreover, the question of proportion is also a
question of relationships and not purely a question
of measure or quantity. Once again, we arrive at
the observation that architecture speaks to us by
means of relationships and not by using isolated
elements.
But the metaphor which underlies the cre-
ation of poetic images is not the only phenomenon
of bringing together that we can compare with the
way in which architectural objects are given form.
90
90
Milk drop coronet, 1935, Harold Edgerton.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
Remember, as we saw earlier, that mathematicians

consider proofs to be “elegant” and “profound”
when they are remarkably concise and/or when, in
order to solve a problem, they draw on theorems
which do not appear to be related to the question
asked, and/or when the results allow one to solve
other comparable questions.
Concision, the bringing together of theo-
rems which at first glance appear alien to each
other, the further applicability of the result – all
of these criteria relate, in one way or another, to
a form of efficiency that is related to the economy
of means such as we have described in the context
of architectural form.
1 5 . PLAY/SURPRISE
The idea of the mathematical proof which is ele-

gant, surprising and unexpected echoes Reverdy’s
observation which concludes his reasoning on met-
aphor: “There is surprise and delight in finding
oneself before a new thing.”17. Surprise has the
virtue of keeping us on guard. Architecture itself
is a form of remaining on guard.
17 Reverdy, op. cit., p. 496.

92
92
Bottle Rack, 1914, Marcel Duchamp.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
Just like the cairn – two rocks found in situ and

placed one on top of the other so as to form a sign:
“here is an invisible path” – and which makes an
inhabited and directional space out of a rocky cha-
os, learned architecture always begins with a sign,
an exceptional object (sometimes exceptional by its
very ordinariness) which manages to detach itself
from the background of built normality. It plays,
with varying degrees of intensity, with contrast,
uniqueness and amazement; it is in this way that it
keeps mankind on guard. It allows him to mediate
his relationship to nature by providing him with
an artificial environment which can even become
“anaesthetising” if it reaches the point where all
links with nature, even the metaphorical ones, are
finally dissolved.
Mankind’s shelter, the built environment
which replaces the natural one, must therefore,
if it is to keep man on guard, provide him with
intriguing built enigmas. These enigmas are, by
definition, like so many games sprinkled in space,
so as to endow it with meaning by making it sur-
prising.
94
94
“The Hexadic figure”, The Hexadic System, 2015, Ben Chasny.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
Architecture replaces natural lookouts with aes-

thetic, conceptual and perceptive ones. While the
natural environment is charged with signs indi-
cating opportunities or dangers, the architectural
one is charged with enigmatic signs which give
meaning to the prosaic need for shelter.
It is here that we encounter the question of
play and surprise. That surprise and astonishment
that results are not durable if they are merely
skin deep, if they are founded on arbitrary archi-
tectural forms which are themselves based on a
superficial wish for novelty and not on a natural
response to the profound inner needs of the project.
The enactment of the surprise depends, therefore,
on the strictest respect of the economy of means.
And so, a form of surprise can emerge which is
not weakened over time and which is the sign of
an accomplished architecture since it is situated
in the very substance of space and its component
parts, a long way from the “astonishment and ex-
citement” which Auguste Perret denounced in his
day as “shocks that never last”18. Its character is
related to the notion of the uncanny.
18 Auguste Perret op. cit., as quoted by Peter Collins [in:] I mutevoli

ideali dell’architettura moderna, (Changing Ideals in Modern
Architecture, London, 1965), Il Saggiatore, Milano 1972, p. 393.
96
96
Norton House, Los Angeles, 1983–1984, Frank Gehry.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
1 6 . LIMIT SPACE
The reduction of means to the point where the ar-

chitectural elements and devices fuse several levels
of necessity into one single object or one single
composition places such projects in a limit state.
Adalberto Libera’s Malaparte House is a staircase
transformed into a house and a roof transformed
into a staircase. The roof of Rem Koolhaas’ D’All
Ava House is a swimming pool; the exhibition spac-
es at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum
are a ramp; the MASP, a building in the form of a
bridge by Lina Bo Bardi offers a public space – a
public square – in São Paulo, a city that is sorely
lacking such spaces; Louis Kahn’s congress centre
in Venice is another bridge building, this time in
a city of bridges, etc…
Placing projects in a limit state on the basis
of a profound understanding of their own interior
necessities to which the architect adds his own
imperatives, ones which are compatible with the
former in one way or another, allows the architect
to go beyond their own imagination.
98
98
Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1963, Edward Ruscha.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
While the architect’s decisions are informed by

their own culture, they are thus able to set them-
selves enigmas on whose resolutions the project
is based and which the carrying out of the project
will solve. The architect’s own culture can become
a burden and create a form of paralysis. The econ-
omy of means lays down rules which enable the
architect to act almost, as it were, in spite of their
own culture. It is a way to render that culture pro-
ductive by stepping outside any system based on a
sterile reproduction of past forms. In a historical
moment where all common architectural language
has disappeared, economy of means provides rules
which allow space and its component parts to be-
come significant in themselves.
1 7. EXPERIENCE
Placing projects in a limit state brings architec-

ture to its own outer limits and leads, finally, to
an interrogation of its own definition and its own
component parts.
100
100
Bauakademie, Berlin, 1832–1836, Karl Friedrich Schinkel.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
Such projects, like taut strings which vibrate and

produce both sense and beauty under the influ-
ence of the economy of means, can reach a high
degree of expressivity without having to resort to
any artificial or ostentatious devices. This state of
being makes architecture that is elaborated under
the economy of means by definition experimental.
It allows the architect to deviate from their own
beaten path by proposing a method of elaborating a
project which, at each step along the way, provides
them with a series of objective/subjective choices
which flow from the initial choices that were tak-
en in accordance with the own innate necessities
of the project itself and the questions posed. The
economy of means traces the network of these
ramifications which are not determined by choice,
not in a way that leaves the architect to one side,
because the architect always has the possibility of
creating new ramifications in the same way that
we all do when we create new neural pathways in
our brains in any process of learning.
102
102
Upper Lawn Pavilion, Wiltshire, 1963, Alison and Peter Smithson.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
The economy of means does not deprive the crea-

tor of their own free will or their own obsessions,
rather it provides the opportunity to make coherent
rearrangements by combining this free will and
these obsessions with the own interior necessities
of the question asked, in order to imagine intelli-
gible and coherent forms which the creator would
not have been able to imagine a priori by adopting
the method which consists in drawing ideas in a
notebook, ideas which are, by definition, already
preformed in the mind. The economy of means
allows, on the one hand, to produce intelligible
projects despite the absence of a common language
and, on the other hand, offers the creators a form
of augmented imagination based on their own im-
agination which, while an indispensable tool for
carrying out the project can also turn into a cre-
ative prison. It is in allowing the creator to fully
explore the potential of their own imagination, by
putting it to one side, that the economy of means
places both the project and the architect who is its
vector in a limit state, thus celebrating the exper-
imental element which has always characterised
architecture of the highest level.
104
104
Unité d’habitation, Marseille, 1947–1952, Le Corbusier.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
This is the path that Le Corbusier took when he

invented “the romanticism of the lousy ”19, which
arose out of a necessity imposed on him by a con-
struction company that proved incapable of car-
rying out his unité d’habitation in Marseille with
the level of quality he had in mind. Does this mean
that we should not consider him to be the author
of this concept that has been so important to the
history of architecture? Does this deprive him of
any merit? Does this dilute in any way the credit
he is owed or his authority as an author? Not in the
slightest! Because someone other than him might,
for example, have chosen – a choice he himself
considered at one stage – to cover the building in
order to hide this supposed misery. He alone, in
his day, was capable of embarking so visibly and
in such a pioneering manner at such a scale and
in such an undertaking.20 It is worth pointing out
that Le Corbusier had, as early as 1925, described a
concrete handrail as “sauvage” in his L’Almanach
d’architecture moderne21, in an unspoken ode to the
economy of means, an ode whose outcome twenty
years later he could not possibly have foreseen.
19 Le Corbusier, Interview with Georges Chrensol, 1962.

In CD, Frémeaux & Associés.
20 For a detailed discussion of the genesis, realisation and
signification of this project, see Roberto Gargiani and Anna
Rosellini, Le Corbusier: Béton Brut and Ineffable Space (1940-1965):
Surface Materials and Psychophysiology of Vision, Lausanne,
EPFL Press, 2011.
21 Le Corbusier, Almanach d’architecture moderne, Paris, 1925.
106
106
Framework houses, Siegen Area, Germany, 1990, Bernd and Hilla Becher.
ECONOMY OF MEANS
Rem Koolhaas followed a similar path when, faced

with an unrealistically short delivery date, he decid-
ed to transpose his project for the Y2K House onto
the scale of a large public building in a seemingly
unconnected location, and thus invented the Casa
da Música in Porto. Here he adopted a strategy of
changing the nature of an object by changing its
scale, an approach which has been at the centre
of his thought process since Delirious New York
and which is a surrealist method par excellence.
It is not for nothing that he chose to title his “au-
to-monograph” S, M, L, XL and that he chose to
present his works arranged by size. When he was
starting out in his career and entered the compe-
tition to build the Parliament in The Hague, along
with Zaha Hadid and Elia Zenghelis, rather than
subscribing to the canons of architectural compo-
sition he opted for an “exquisite corpse” where he
brutally juxtaposed autonomous elements and saw
what happened rather than trying to anticipate
the result.
108
108
House in a Plum Grove, Tokyo, 2003, Kazuyo Sejima & Associates.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
There are numerous similar examples. By being

open, in a posture of positive opportunism, to the
internal necessities of their projects and in allow-
ing those necessities to intersect with the sphere
of their own obsessions, these two architects be-
have like navigators who know whence they depart
and where they must arrive but cannot know in
advance the exact itinerary they will follow since
that is dependent on their own talents in using
the winds to their own best advantage. This itin-
erary provides the trip with a unique character,
either dominated by furious storms or by the play
of accompanying dolphins. It is exactly the same
for the architect: starting from the non-form of a
question to arrive at the form of a finished project.
The economy of means allows him to navigate in a
productive manner among the internal imperatives
of the project and his own needs which are like so
many opposing winds. It is upon this that the final
character of the project depends.
110
110
The Box, Sweden, 1942, Ralph Erskine.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
1 8. LETTING GO
Ultimately, all such approaches can be understood

as forms of “letting go”. They aim to interrogate
the means of production of a given project, both
in its conception and in its realisation. By its very
nature, raw concrete is a material that is impossi-
ble to control completely. The vagaries of casting
produce a result that no one can anticipate, in the
same way that it is impossible to know, at the mo-
ment when one plants a tree, exactly what form it
will take since this depends on numerous natural
uncertainties. The use Le Corbusier made of raw
concrete was a way for him, at some level, to limit
the control he had over his project and to enrich it
with a form of natural spontaneity, which is gen-
erally considered alien to architecture. When he
decided to dramatically increase the size of the Y2K
House, Koolhaas, in the same way, was expecting
unexpected results.
112
112
“Miracles box”, 1952, Le Corbusier.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
Through the economy of choices he employed in

this project, in deciding not to use a more conven-
tional approach for finding an appropriate solution,
and in digging in his heels and defending his own
method of architectural conception, he was, to a
certain extent, trusting in the real to have more
imagination than him. Indeed, a few years earlier
he had declared that he had placed the tower blocks
of the Euralille neighbourhood over the new TGV
station “to force architects to have imagination”22.
1 9 . SPONTANEITY
All of these approaches aim to accept the internal

necessities of a project – its profound reality – with
spontaneity. At the end of the debates of the 8th
Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne
(CIAM) in Hoddesdon, which marked the beginning
of the rehabilitation of the traditional city by the
architects of the first generation of the Modernist
movement, Le Corbusier presented a prismatic
building as the matrix of the future. He called this
building, which was of extreme geometrical simplic-
ity, the “boîte à miracles”, in an ode to spontaneity
which he linked to the traditional quality of the city,
an intellectual position which calls to mind that
of the surrealists’ celebration of the “marvellous”,
22 Rem Koolhaas, discussion with the author, Rotterdam, 2003.

114
114
Housing, Milan, 1933–1962, Mario Asnago and Claudio Vender.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
which Aragon defined as the appearance of “the

contradiction within the real”.23
In his Abécédaire, Gilles Deleuze explains,
when discussing teaching, that the more one pre-
pares a class the more one is able to improvise in
a creative and efficient manner when one actually
teaches it. All teachers have observed this: by pre-
paring a class so thoroughly that one has made the
material one’s own, one arrives at a paradoxical
state where one’s spirit is free to fly and make
free associations rather than staying stuck on the
ground under the weight of a lesson which, while
well learnt, nevertheless remains external to you.
In the same way, the architect discovers an
imaginative spontaneity which is the basis of the
extension of their own imagination when they allow
themselves to be guided by economy of means, in
spite of the heavy burden of culture they necessar-
ily must accumulate in order to be able to invent
buildings.
23 See Gray Read, “Aragon’s Armoire”, in Thomas Mical (ed.)

Architecture and Surrealism, London, Routledge, 2004, p. 36.
116
116
Villa Snellman, Djursholm, 1917–1918, Erik Gunnar Asplund.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
The economy of means provides a way out of the

aporia which otherwise leads to tedious didactic
and/or post-modern architectures which simply
recite a language like a bored and unmotivated
schoolchild; architectures which are riddled with
references and which are, to the ideas and build-
ings to which they refer, what a dusty butterfly on
a pin is to the one which makes you dream when
you notice it flying fleetingly among the flowers
of a garden and mistake it for a flower carried off
by the wind.
At the interface of reality and culture, the
economy of means allows the cultivated imagina-
tion of the architect to emancipate itself from its
own knowledge and find a free path without the
risk of wandering off into forms that, because they
are either too laboriously learnt or too autobio-
graphical, are, in essence, arbitrary. The economy
of means allows the spontaneity of knowledge.
118
118
Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard, 1914, Stéphane Mallarmé.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
It is a way of remaining modern in a post-modern

world without any nostalgia for modernity, and
it achieves this in two ways. First, by forcing ar-
chitecture to be on the defensive, it allows us to
create definitions while remaining firmly within
its disciplinary field; it defines architecture not
by its centre but by its periphery. Second, by en-
abling architecture not to fear the inclusion of
new imperatives in its disciplinary field, in order
to confront the constantly changing challenges of
each new era. It is thus that architecture can both
continue to be the permanent cultural discipline
that Filippo Brunelleschi and his acolytes brought
to the level of an operational system in 15th century
Florence, while also facing up to the necessities of
our own time.
2 0 . NEW NECESSITIES
Under the aegis of the economy of means, archi-

tects are thus able to easily integrate any new ne-
cessity and transform it into a means of extending
their own imaginative field.
120
120
Housing Unit for the Praunheim, Frankfurt, 1926–1929, Ernst May.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
From constructive rationality emerges the uti-

lisation of the bare minimum of raw materials
thanks to the formal intelligence of structure;24
from ornamentation emerges the possibility of
producing beauty out of necessity, in particular
through an ingenious arrangement of the struc-
tural elements.25 The economy of means is at the
heart of nature’s creations which seem never to
favour the superfluous nor to spend more than
is necessary in order to attain a chosen goal. It is
frugality, ultimately, that is at the heart of nature,
which by no means prevents it from being often
referred to as “shimmering” and the primary source
of all beauty.
It is precisely under the aegis of frugality
that we will have to learn to live, and it is frugality
that we will have to employ in our interactions with
the environment, at every level where architecture
operates – not just buildings but everything that
is built26 – in order to confront the contemporary
24 The exhibition, Natural Beauty, and the book of the same name,
which were presented as part of The Poetics of Reason, the fifth
Lisbon Architecture Triennale which ran from 5th October to the
2nd December 2019, and which was curated by Tristan Chadney
and Laurent Esmilaire, were dedicated to this topic.
25 The exhibition, What is Ornament?, and the book of the same name,
which were presented as part of The Poetics of Reason, the fifth
Lisbon Architecture Triennale which ran from 5th October to 2nd
December 2019, and which was curated by Ambra Fabi and Giovanni
Piovene, were dedicated to this topic.
26 “MOBILE OR MOTIONLESS/EVERYTHING THAT STANDS
IN SPACE/BELONGS/TO THE FIELD OF ARCHITECTURE”,
Auguste Perret, op. cit.
122
122
Photo Grids, 1977, Sol LeWitt.

ECONOMY OF MEANS
challenges of climate change and the rarefication of

natural resources. Too often these crucial questions
that concern our own survival and the possibility
of imagining a future are approached via the same
technical and pseudo-rational bias that got us into
this situation in the first place. The economy of
means is both an instrument for the creation of
meaningful forms and an aesthetic category. And it
is, above all else, inclusive: it allows one in a positive
way to take into account all forms of necessity. As
an instrument for the conception and production
of knowledge, the economy of means allows us to
confront the drastic necessities that face us today
and to look at reality, which always has more im-
agination than any architect, with conscience and
confidence; thanks to it, we can set in motion the
necessary paradigm shift that will enable us to
move beyond the technical and silo-based manner
in which we currently approach the question of
construction’s environmental impact. It will thus
enable us to put into practice formal solutions is-
sued from the discipline of architecture in collab-
oration with other fields and disciplines and not
simply from the world of engineering.
124
124
Hung guitar, Lee Ranaldo, performance with Leah Singer,

28th January 2017, Chris Marker Residence, Paris, 2007–2017,
(ÉLEX, architects).
ECONOMY OF MEANS
As an aesthetic category it will enable architecture

to continue to exist as a sophisticated cultural me-
dium that allows our environment to function in a
harmonious manner while simultaneously giving
it a broader meaning that goes beyond the ques-
tions being posed, and it will do so not just in spite
of these new necessities but also, and above all,
thanks to them. This architecture is still to come.
The fifth Lisbon Architecture Triennale, The Poet-
ics of Reason/A Poética da Razão has tried, through
its five exhibitions, to set out the conceptual and
formal bases that define the unique character of
architectural rationality.
126
126
ECONOMY OF MEANS
Publication
Editorial Concept and Text
Éric Lapierre
Translantion
Rufo Quintavalle
Copy Editing and Proofreading
Liam Burke
Editorial Coordination
projecto editorial
Publication Assistance
Ricardo Batista, Amélie Évrard, Claudia Mion
Editorial Coordination
projecto editorial
Graphic Concept and Design
Marco Balesteros (Letra)
Design Assistance
Pedro Sousa
Color Separation
Estudio Polígrafa / Carlos J. Santos
Printing and Binding
Gráficas Rey, Barcelona
© of images: the authors

© of texts and translations: the authors
© of this edition: Lisbon Architecture Triennale, Lisbon; Polígrafa,
Barcelona
ISBN [volume 1]: 978-84-343-1388-0

ISBN [set of 5 volumes]: 978-84-343-1393-4
Legal deposit: B. 39615 - 2019
Print run: 1800
Acknowledgements
I thank José Mateus and the Triennial board to have chosen my
team for the fifth Triennial of architecture of Lisbon. I thank the
Triennial team for their commitment.
I thank Amina Sellali, Director of the École d’architecture de la ville

128
et des territoires Paris-Est, for her constant support during the years
of preparation for the Lisbon Architecture Triennale 2019. More
generally, I am also grateful to all the administrative staff of the
school who have enabled me to carry out my research and teaching
on a daily basis for twenty years; in particular, I am indebted to
Inbal Bismuth-Haddad and Claire Minard.
Thanks to the many exchanges with my colleagues at the École

d’architecture de la ville et des territoires Paris-Est over the years,
my view on architecture and the definition thereof has been enriched
and become more articulated. I especially thank to Tristan Chadney,
Laurent Esmilaire, Ambra Fabi, Mariabruna Fabrizi, Fosco Lucarelli
and Sébastien Marot, all teachers of the Master’s course Architec-
ture & Experience, for the collective journey of questioning on which
they so generously accompanied me. And also, more particularly,
I would like to thank Éric Alonzo, Ido Avissar, Thibaut Barrault,
Frédéric Bonnet, Laurent Koetz, Fanny Lopez, Paul Landauer, Yves
Lion, Olivier Malcles, Marc Mimam, Giovanni Piovene, Anna Rosel-
lini, Adelfo Scaranello, Odile Seyler and Christophe Widerski for
their active presence and the richness of the exchanges with them.
I am also grateful to the students of the Master’s course Architecture

& Experience, with whom some of this research has been conducted.
Since my formative years and by means of an ongoing dialogue,

Jacques Lucan has introduced me to the beauty of reason; Rober-
to Gargiani, first as a writer and then as a colleague at the École
polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, has conformed me that archi-
128
tecture, for its stakeholders, is an existential question; Sébastien

Marot’s intellectual rigour pushed me to my limits and showed me
the need to venture into new fields of reflection; Kersten Geers’ love
for architecture and taste for pedagogical experimentation allowed
me to strengthen my convictions.
My ongoing conversations with Patrícia Barbas, Stéphanie Bru,

Adam Caruso, Emanuel Christ, Jan De Vylder, Roger Diener, Tom
ECONOMY OF MEANS
Emerson, Tony Fretton, Christoph Gantenbein, Sharon Johnston,

Djamel Klouche, Mark Lee, Paola Maranta, Quintus Miller, Caro-
line Poulin, Jonathan Sergison, Pier Paolo Tamburelli, Alexandre
Thériot, David Van Severen and Andrea Zanderigo are a continuous
pleasure as well as an opportunity to dig deeper.
The people who work with me at ÉLEX have taught me, and contin-
ue to teach me, a lot and allow me to progress in my work, thanks
to their rigour, individual and collective creativity and generosity.
Ricardo Batista, Sophie Dulau, Amélie Évrard and Claudia Mion as-
sisted me on the exhibition and the catalogue; without them nothing
would have been possible.
Last but not least, my family, through its love, unwavering support
and its specificity, is a permanent source of pleasure and amazement
that is essential to my work.
Image copyrights and sources

P. 6 — Photo: © Filip Dujardin, 2008; P. 8 — © 2019, Album Scala, Florence;
P. 10 — Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 2008, p. 20; P. 14 — © Inaki Aizpitarte;
P. 18 — © Musée Picasso, 2019, Sucession Pablo Picasso, SPA (Portugal); P. 22 —
© Photo: Christian Vogt, 2019; P. 24 — Drawing: © ÉLEX, 2019; P. 26 — © 2010
John Cage Trust; P. 28 — © Philippe Psaila / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY; P. 30 —
Photo: © Hélène Binet; P. 32 — In: Guillaume Apollinaire, Œuvres poétiques, coll.
Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Éditions Gallimard, 1965; P. 34 — © Jean Nouvel,
ADAGP; photo: © Luc Boegly, 2019; P. 36 — © 2019, Christophel / Photo Scala,
Florence; P. 38 — In: Moïsseï Ginzburg, Dwelling, Ginzburg Design Ltd. with
Fontanka Publications, London, 2017, p. 79; © Ginzburg Design Ltd.; P. 40
— © Stephen Shore, courtesy of 303 Gallery, New York; P. 42 — Courtesy of
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin — Preußischer Kulturbesitz; P. 44 — © Fonds
Perret, Auguste et Perret frères, Institut Français d’Architecture (IFA); P. 46 —
© Philippe Ruault; P. 48 — In: Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos, Ange-
Jacques Gabriel l’héritier d’une dynastie d’architectes, Archives nationales:
VA/XXVI/5. Éditions du Patrimoine Centre des Monuments Nationaux, Paris,
2012, [drawing] p. 126; P. 50 — Edited by Ghome; © Gonçalo Prudêncio;
photo: © António Forjaz Nascimento; P. 52 — In: Laurence de Finance et Jean-
Michel Leniaud (eds.), Viollet-le-Duc les visions d’un architecte, [drawing] p. 106,
Éditions Norma / Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, Paris, 2014; P. 54 —
© A. Lawrence Kocher Collection; P. 56 — In: Marcel Proust, À la recherche
du temps perdu, (Tome II: À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs), 1918, Paris,
Gallimard, 1992, p. 393; P. 58 — © Argos Films, 2019; P. 60 — In: George

Perec, Les mots croisés, précédés de Considérations de l’auteur sur l’art et la
manière de croiser les mots, collection Folio, P.O.L. Éditions Gallimard 2012,
p. 17; P. 62 — Drawing: © ÉLEX, 2019; P. 64 — © Jackson Pollock, ARS, 2019;
P. 66 — Photo: © Hélène Binet; P. 68 — Gallimard, Paris, 2012; P. 70 — Paris,
A. Morel et Cie. éditeurs, p. 182; P. 72 — © Ordem dos Arquitectos; P. 74 —
130
In: Gottfried Semper, Du style et de l’architecture, écrits 1834–1869, Collection

eupalinos, Édition Parenthèses, Marseille, 2007, p. 160; P. 76 — photo: © Chevojon;
© Fonds Perret, Auguste et Perret frères, Institut Français d’Architecture
(IFA); © Auguste Perret, SAIF 2019; P. 78 — Drawing: © ÉLEX, 2019;
P. 80 — Photo: © Édouard Boubat / Rapho; P. 84 — In: Auguste Choisy, Histoire
de l’architecture, Édition Inter Livres, Paris, 1991, p. 309; P. 86 — In: Urformen
Der Kunst: Photographische Pflanzenbilder, Verlag Ernst Wasmuth A.G. Berlin,
1928; P. 88 — © Office Kersten Geers David Van Severen; P. 90 — © 2010 MIT.
Courtesy of MIT Museum; P. 92 — © Service de la documentation photographique
du MNAM — Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / Dist. RMN-GP;. © succession
Marcel Duchamp / Adagp, Paris; P. 94 — © Ben Chasny, 2019; P. 96 — Photo:
© Éric Lapierre, 2019; P. 98 — Edward Ruscha, National Excelsior Press, U.S.A.,
1963; P. 100 — © Courtesy of Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-
Brandenburg; P. 102 — In: Alison and Peter Smithson, The Charged Void:
Architecture, “View from the southeast with folding doors open for summer use”
[photo by Peter Smithson], The Monacelli Press, New York, 2001, p. 244; P. 104
— Photo: © Éric Lapierre, 2019; P. 106 — © Bernd and Hilla Becher, Bild-Kunst
2019; in: Bernd and Hilla Becher, Typoligien/ Typologies, München, Schirmer/
Mosel, Munich, 1990/1999; P. 108 — Drawing: © ÉLEX, 2019; P. 110 — © Holger
Ellgaard and Arvid Rudling; P. 112 — © F.L.C. / ADAGP, Paris 2019; in: CIAM,
The Heart of the city, Pellegrini & Cudahy, New York, 1952, p. 52; P. 114 —
Photo: © Hélène Binet; P. 116 — In: National Association of Swedish Architects
(SAR), Gunnar Asplund architect 1885-1940 Plans, sketches and photographs,
“Elevation to garden”, AB Tidskriften Byggmästaren, Stockholm 1950, Reprint
Byggförlaget, Stockholm, 1981, [drawing] p. 87; P. 120 — Drawing: © Éric Lapierre,
2019; P. 122 — © Sol LeWitt, ARS, 2019; P. 126 — Photo: © Philippe Lapierre,
2019.
130
ECONOMY OF MEANS
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Every effort has been made to contact the owners and photographers
of the images published here. Anyone having further information
concerning copyright holders is asked to contact the publishing
house (info@poligrafa.com) so this information can be included in
future printings.
132 132
The Poetics
of Reason
Curatorial Team
Éric Lapierre – Chief Curator, Ambra Fabi, Fosco Lucarelli, Giovanni
Piovene, Laurent Esmilaire, Mariabruna Fabrizi, Sébastien Marot,
Tristan Chadney – Curators, Claudia Mion – Curatorial Assistant
Deputy Executive Director

Manuel Henriques
Management Assistance
Helena Soares – Coordination
Cláudia Rocha
Production
Isabel Antunes – Coordination, Beatriz Caetano, Carla Cardoso
Carolina Vicente, Inês Vidal, Marta Moreira, Ricardo Batista,
Sofia Baptista, Tiago Pombal
Communication
Sara Battesti – Coordination, Ana Guedes, Cláudia Duarte,
Inês Revés, Raquel Guerreiro, Ricardo Chambel, Susana Pomba
Educational Service
Filipa Tomaz – Coordination, Letícia Carmo, Joana Martins
Fundraising and Partnerships
Joana Salvado, Joanna Hecker
Graphic Design and Art Director
Marco Balesteros (Letra)
Website
Marco Balesteros (Letra), Sara Orsi
Board of Directors
José Mateus – Chairman, Nuno Sampaio – Vice-Chairman,
José Manuel dos Santos, Maria Dalila Rodrigues, Miguel Varela
Gomes, Pedro Araújo e Sá.
Supervisory Board
José Miguel Alecrim Duarte – Chairman, Miguel Luís Cortês Pinto
de Melo – Vice-Chairman, Ricardo Ferreira
Advisory Board
Leonor Cintra Gomes – Chairman, Álvaro Siza Vieira, Ana Tostões,
António Mega Ferreira, António Mexia, António Pinto Ribeiro,
Augusto Mateus, Bárbara Coutinho, Bernardo Futcher Pereira,
Cláudia Taborda, Delfim Sardo, Diogo Burnay, Eduardo Souto
de Moura, Fernanda Fragateiro, Filipa Oliveira, Gonçalo Byrne,
134
Gonçalo M. Tavares, João Belo Rodeia, João Gomes da Silva, João

Pinharanda, João Luís Carrilho da Graça, Jorge Figueira, Jorge
Gaspar, Jorge Sampaio, José Monterroso Teixeira, José Fernando
Gonçalves, José Manuel Pedreirinho, Luís Santiago Baptista, Luís
Sáragga Leal, Manuel Mateus, Manuel Pinho, Maria Calado, Mark
Deputter, Miguel Vieira Baptista, Miguel Von Hafe Pérez, Nuno
Crespo, Nuno Grande, Pedro Baía, Pedro Bandeira, Pedro Gadanho,
Raquel Henriques da Silva, Sérgio Mah
This book is part of the main exhibition entitled Economy of Means

showcased at MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology,
in the context of The Poetics of Reason, the fifth edition of the Lisbon
Architecture Triennale (3 October to 2 December 2019).
The Lisbon Architecture Triennale is a non-profit association whose

mission is to research, foster and promote architectural thinking
and practice. Founded in 2007, it holds a major forum every three
years for the debate, discussion and dissemination of architecture
that crosses geographic and disciplinary boundaries.
134
Concept a nd Orga nisation
Strategic Partners Str ucture Fina nced by
Member
Co-Producers
Institutional Partner Inter national F u nds
Partners
Associated Bra nds
Media Partners
Associates
High Patronage of His Excellency the President of the Portug uese Republic
Competition Support: Rock-Cultural Heritage Leading Urba n F utures, You ng Bird Pla n.
Support: Cision; Dizplay; Space Collectors. International Partners: École d’Architecture
Mar ne-la-Vallée, MIARD - Piet Zwart Institute, F u ndació Catalu nya-La Pedrera,
Fondazione Aldo Rossi. Hotel: Hoteís Heritage Lisboa.
Triennale Patrons 2019/21: FSSMGN Arquitectos, Aurora Arquitectos, Colin Moorcraft.
9 788434 313880
Lisbon ArchiTecTure Triennale
The PoeTics of Reason
Ediciones Polígrafa

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ECONOMY OF MEANS

HOW A RCHITECTURE WOR KS

Lisbon ArchiTecTure Triennale

The PoeTics of Reason

There is no architecture without rationality. Any work, irrespective

Optimisation is an underlying principle of rationality – the search

Translated by Liam Burke.

Biosphere’s geodesic dome, Montréal, 1965–1967, Richard Buckminster

“The marvellous is in the precision. The durable

In Ancient Greek, oikonomia refers to the man-

1 Le Corbusier, Urbanisme, Paris, Flammarion, 1994, p. 287.

Faces, 1968, John Cassavetes, film still.

An attitude that never draws a distinction between

The search for the appropriate form for any given

Nord, 1960, Louis-Ferdinand Céline.

The competitions of eloquence within this profes-

2 Louis-Ferdinand Céline, interview with Madeleine Chapsal,

Nouvelles inventions pour bien bastir et a (sic) petits fraiz,

Thus, in mathematics, for example, proof is consid-

Like animals, men are constrained by the various

Squid and ink, 2019, Iñaki Aizpitarte.

And one sees immediately when considering the

Black glove top, 2001, Maison Martin Margiela.

Man exists in a metaphoric and real surpassing

The deep beauty of architecture is founded on the

Bull's Head, 1942, Pablo Picasso.

It is from this foundation that architecture elabo-

House Under High-Voltage Lines, Tokyo, 1981, Kazuo Shinohara.

The “one problem/one solution” way of thinking is

Administration Building Hochstrasse, Basel, 1985–1988, Roger Diener.

5 . E C O NOMY OF DECISI ONS

The first economy of means consists, therefore,

Villa Foscari, Mira, 1559, Andrea Palladio.

By way of example, the contradiction born of the

4’3’’, 1952, John Cage.

Their alignment is, of course, determined by the

“Vache à la collerette”, Lascaux cave, ca. 15,000 B.C.

The unique quality of the resulting project will

As we have seen, the first economy of means that a

St. Antonius Church, Essen-Frohnhausen, 1956–1959, Rudolf Schwarz.

This does not mean that he does not intervene:

“Il pleut”, 1913–1916, Guillaume Apollinaire.

It’s a box into which you can toss the elements of

In a sense it is in a second stage, and it is in this

3 Le Corbusier, Textes et dessins pour Ronchamp, Paris, 1965.

Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, 1991–1994,

Such an approach is the diametric opposite of that

Deux Danseurs, 1937–1938, Henri Matisse.

Once one becomes an architect, one becomes the

Design for a one-room hostel (type E1), 1928–1929, Moïsseï Ginzburg.

Those who inscribe themselves within a tradition

Egg, New York, 1972, Stephen Shore.

Here lies the productive obsession. It comes at the

It is precisely because culture plays a central role

"English Journey”: Journal of a Visit to France

This culture has been handed down to him by his

4 The exhibition Inner Space (curated by Socks Studio – Mariabruna

Charles Mauduit House, Sceaux, 1934, Auguste Perret.