Architecture: Place of Gesture

Abstract

The paper focuses on an experiment in researching and teaching design carried out at the Architecture of Interiors Design Studio at the Polytechnic School of Architecture in Milan. The studio addressed the theme of sacred space, understood as a dwellable place, and able to welcome its users in the fulfillment of gestures that express its most profound being.

The hypothesis underlying the experiment is that the design of sacred space causes students to move beyond some contingent themes and to focus their design attention on the project of a hospitable form capable of accommodating the gesture of the person who dwells in it. It also calls into question the issue of worship spaces, not only as a problem of space for one specific religion to be juxtaposed or composed with those of other religions, but as a problem of space, or better a "system of spaces" on which religions can look out and experience together their specificity and each other's differences. 

The experience demonstrated an interest in the theme for students in architecture who could experience the possibility of understanding the coexistence of these spaces that, while traditionally radically different, retain a unified foundation capable, if grasped, of bringing together other gestures. Its outcomes are of value beyond the specifics of the sacred space project and allowed, from our point of view, to effectively practice some cross-cutting architectural themes that are valid regardless of the subject.