“In the city, we define an urban space by means of the interrelation of objects in the void.
The volumes of these objects are unlikely to be the pure, platonic solids that Le Corbusier wrote about in Vers une architecture. Many different factors—brief, context, technology—will distort them, converting them into objects more like Brancusi’s pieces, his studio a metaphor of the global city.
At their base, surface is a texture, to be defined. In our case, we try to rediscover the earth, primeval nature.
The outer faces of the volumes present their enveloping surfaces. New textures appear. Despite Deleuze (“The deepest is the skin”), on occasions we have tried to see the skin as the expression of the bones, as a primitive invertebrate. Then, too, breaking it down into layers, going beyond the purely epithelial condition of its exterior to turn it into volume, into thickness.”

Josep Lluís Mateo

Thursday, 26 May, Josep Lluís Mateo will be at the Politecnico de Milano giving a talk entitled “Volume, Void, Surface”. The talk forms part of the Advanced Landscape and Public Space Design Workshop, taught by landscape architect Paolo Bürgi.