LECTURE –
THE PROCESS OF TECTONIC TRANSFORMATIONS : MATTER / MATERIAL / ELEMENT / CONSTRUCTION
Matter is the physical and perceptible part of the world knowable through experience, the substance from which the
bodies of the universe are composed.
The term expresses both indeterminacy and the ability to receive form. Therefore, not being the building material, matter
is the given of the problem, preexisting any transformation.
It is the primary origin of the built reality.
It is no coincidence that the Latins used materia rerum to mean the origin of things. The term, moreover, etymologically
derives from mater : matter as the mother of all construction. But in Latin, mater also indicates the stump of a tree,
providing a suggestive image of the sequence of transformations through which the architect is called to operate: the
stump is the origin of the plant structure that necessarily binds branches, roots, and leaves. The difference between
matter and material concerns, even before the concrete construction, human consciousness. Recognizing within nature
the disposition of certain materials to be transformed into materials is part of the history of human consciousness
(spontaneous or critical) in relation to the Universe.