“The essential is invisible to the eye, one
cannot see rightly but with the heart.”
The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The snake, as it is, shown in side view, digesting
the elephant, takes the shape of a hat. The drawing was not a
picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant.
“Grownups” overlook the little details that are the essence of the object, and
would say that there is nothing frightening in the image of a hat. What needed
to be realized is that the frightening aspect of the picture is invisible. This
puts forward the idea of the absent and unseen, and declares that there must be
something that we have overlooked.
But clearly, what is invisible is invisible. And to
insist on defining the nature of absence would be missing the point. Because it
would be trying to define something that has been absented from the field of
vision. It would be defined and made visible in order to say that it is absent,
which is again useless.
For example: “The elephant is not seen in the
picture”, says, by negation, that the elephant is not there. Such procedure of
thinking goes against the whole purpose because it is only by opposition. It
states that “absence” is standing in opposition to what is seen, or present.
This is why the thesis will simply put forward the hypothesis that there is a potential in
the idea of absence in architecture. There is something of
value in building to see the essence of what is not there. So the main question becomes finding a way
(methodology) to explore this phenomenon of absence.
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