Pezo von Ellrichshausen Architects shared with us their exhibition at the Venice Biennale, showing two buildings with a similar size are located in two different contexts. A light grey concrete piece rests in the middle of a natural scene. A cooper oxide green concrete prism stands in the middle of a suburban setting. Two opposite conditions which are presented by a disproportionate relationship between figure and background. The proposed constructions are reproduced as small sculptural models. The landscape is recorded in a huge panoramic backlight photograph. The objects, autonomous from their location, seem insignificant in front of the monumental effort of trying to capture most of the details and complexities of the surroundings.
In Architecture there is an eternal tension between context and object. Since a building is inevitably placed in a particular and unrepeatable location, it establishes a limited set of specific relationships with it. Considering this physical inevitability, to willingly base the integrity of a building in those common places (such as orientation, views, access or topography) is in itself a common place, or at least the minimum that an architect should aspire to do. To explain a building as an answer to a place is to explain the place, not the building. It is no more than a tautological exercise, instrumentally required for political or commercial purposes. However, a building, in its inner formal structure, could also be understood as an independent logical grammar. In its unitary conclusiveness, an architectural object could be separated from its location, from its anecdotal dramas. An isolated building is a singular entity. It is a piece, a device that resists, with more or less integrity, the problems (social, cultural, economical or technical) of the context that supports it.
