Poetics

This seminar explores the relationship between architecture, psychology and history. Anticipated by a silent sequence of images, it opens with the enigma of architecture as a place where the dead speak to the living. Recalling Jung’s The Red Book and a lost project by Paolo Portoghesi and Bruno Zevi to unite architecture and depth psychology, the text reframes architecture as a dialogue with memory, death and the unconscious. Structured in three movements – twilight ambivalence, the historicity of the Soul, and beauty as epiphany – it presents architecture as a hermeneutic act, a garden of reflection where imagination and psyche converge.

This lecture articulates the architect’s craft as four questions – style, form, proportion, position – where the first asks who one is and the last where one is. Moving from the absence that marked the Seventies in Trapani, it argues that architecture’s recurring figures come not from migrations but from millions of years of phylogenetic evolution, and that every life is the product of three historicities – the archaic one of archetypes, the personal one and that of places. In proportion it recovers the lost unity of philosophy and mathematics, and in position a resistance to a present built out of news.

This lecture explores architecture as a perceptual and historiographical phenomenon, where buildings gain meaning through collective imagination and interpretation. The website becomes a reflective body, a stratigraphy of others’ readings – critical, poetic, contradictory – forming a mirror of the work itself. Architecture is framed not as a finished object but as a time-based interface, a conduit for memory and psychic resonance. Through self-analysis and documentation, the project becomes a vessel for messages to the soul, resisting the arrogance of the present and preserving continuity across generations.

This lecture explores architecture as a symbolic and psychological act, where ancient archetypes and cultural opposites converge in spatial form. Through seven interpretations of his own works, the speaker reflects on Plato’s cave, Wagner’s mythology, Jung’s analytical psychology and the sacred eroticism of architectural signs. The talk culminates in a meditation on the tension between culture and civilisation, proposing architecture as a vessel for the intuitive function – a mirror of the soul’s unknown background, and a resistance to the utilitarianism of modernity.

This lecture explores the symbolic and psychological resonance of vaults, grottoes and arches, tracing their decline in modern architecture and their enduring presence in the collective imagination. Drawing on Heidegger and Jung, the talk critiques the dominance of rational thought and the fetishisation of purity, proposing polychromy as a universal language of inclusion and evocation. Architecture is reframed as a sensual and sacred act, where ancient forms and colours reconnect us with the archetypal depths of Being.

This interview explores formative influences from Sicily and Rome, the narrative potential of architecture, and symbolic archetypes such as the grotto and arch. Themes of sensuality, minimal syntax, and philosophical depth emerge, alongside reflections on the challenges of producing meaningful architecture in a superficial cultural climate.

This lecture reflects on the manipulation of history, the illusion of professionalism, and the integrity of architectural creation. Through the lens of the Seven Houses for No One, the talk critiques the fetishisation of built form and the dominance of commercial narratives. Architecture is reframed as a literary and mythopoetic act, where imagination precedes construction and representation becomes a vessel for deeper meaning. The speaker calls for a return to sacred space and storytelling, resisting the flattening effects of journalism, client-driven design and industrial fragmentation.

This manifesto calls for a return to architecture as a syncretic, critical and poetic act. It denounces the corporatisation of design, the obsession with novelty, and the erasure of historical meaning. Architecture is framed as a solitary journey, a collision of fragments and a resurrection of interrupted tales. Small scale becomes a site of resistance, where imagination and memory prevail over branding and spectacle. The text advocates for spaces that transcend function, embody time, and restore the literary and emotional dimension of the built environment.

This interview explores architecture as a narrative and critical act, shaped by memory, light and historical stratification. Themes include the rejection of luxury, the role of radiance in spatial design, and the tension between rational form and expressive identity. The conversation touches on the influence of music and cinema, the archetypal nature of housing, and the idea that beauty lies in spaces that transcend their original function. Architecture is framed as a timeless pursuit, rooted in values rather than trends.

This essay explores architecture as a medium of light and imagination, where reverberation becomes a measure of spatial depth. Drawing parallels with music, the text reflects on opacity, concealment and the evocative power of remote places. Through references to John Soane’s paintings and the ruins of Villa Adriana, the article critiques the transparency of modern architecture, proposing instead a poetics of sedimentation, suggestion and luminous decay. Architecture is framed not as object, but as instrument – where light performs and memory resonates.

These drafts from the thesis carried out with Antonietta Iolanda Lima, and left unfinished, read 2001: A Space Odyssey as a work of architecture. Themes include montage as the art of sequence, close to dreams and to space, association as a way of giving new meanings to what already exists, the final room as a return home, and the possible future that Kubrick distilled from the 1960s. The text touches on psychedelia and the interface between human and machine, and closes on the architect as producer of their own projects.