Architecture is a wide field of study, which affects in every moment, even without us noticing our everyday lives. There have always been discussions about the real meaning of architecture. Firstly, what we need to do is to differentiate between architecture and building in terms other than eighteenth century aesthetics- to reach beyond the exhausted philosophical distinction between the good and the beautiful and to articulate the specific status of architecture as embodying wisdom while remaining in the context of a constructed world- our technological world. This distinction is crucial for the survival of our civilization whose worth is manifest in the great works of art and artifacts that constitute our common cultural traditions. People are indecisive about what is a meaningful order for human life. This is the concern of architecture.

      Vitruvius identified the origin of architecture with the origin of language. As we have also mentioned in our previous lessons, here again I found out that the origin of architecture starts with fire and the first gatherings of people around this fire, forming a shelter, the first architectural elements. Vitruvius by the example of fire establishes that architecture consists of practice and theory. So, he is alluding to that which is made and that which gives it a reason: the mathematical ratios. I agree to his opinion that this is the crucial knowledge that the architect must possess in order to guide his practice.

      Discursive work of cosmology was indeed the significatur of the constructed work named as significat, the architecture that signifies. During the last two centuries, the architect has become a narrator of events-disclosing “fictional” modes of dwelling by deconstructing and twisting the language of technology, both in his constructions and his words.

But how can the architecture of the late twentieth century “represent” and yet aspire to retrieve its status as an architecture of “presence”? Here comes out the concept of Chora.

        Plato is one of the first ones to mention it. We all know the theory of plato about the creation of universe. But, there was a problem about it. Even Plato himself understood that like the sun itself, absolute truth and goodness could never be contemplated directly and made objects of pure knowledge, but rather had to be experienced as the “lighting” that makes it possible for the things of our world to be what they are. Any artifact or work of art that allowed such lighting to be experiencd was therefore highly appreciated.  

        Timaeus is the first system of universe, autonomus from myth, all in mathematical proportions, when mankind tries to propitiate a virtous life and ultimately to seduce Fortune (destiny) and frame human institutions (and power!) with the true order. Chora(space, place)- the third, complicated form which is the stuff of the world. Air, water,earth,fire -are always changing , that’s why they are called qualities. The receptacle is compared to a neutral plastic material, prima material which has no definite character of its own, yet it is the ultimate reality of all things. I found it interesting the comparison of this neutral plastic material with male, female and their offspring.

         According to Plato there must be 3 components of reality:

1-the unchanging form,uncreated and indestrctible..(Being);

2-that which bears the same name as the form and resembles it,but is sensible..(Becoming),and

3-Chora which is eternal and endestructible.

So, I came into the conclusion that Plato is making a description of human creation, relating it to topos (natural place) and chora (space). Chora is both cosmic place and abstract place, and it is also the substance of human crafts.

Prior to Plato, there was no awareness of this third term. Only in Greek architecture, the relationship Hermes-Hestia represents a religious articulation of space and movement, of centre and path, of immutability and change. It is interesting the parallelism of Hestia with interior space and Hermes with external, public spaces of action. That reveals that space and movement are connected to each other.

      Another interesting point that drew my attention was the Greek spring ritual dedicated to Dionysus, which became the center of Western art and architecture. Here we have the theatres Focused on the circular performing stage and the process of mimesis and catharsis.

Vitruvius in his ten books of architecture, we can notice the relation between the both event of tragedy and also the mythical origin of the constructive arts. Whereas ritual enables primitive man to propitiate the external world and dwell in a totality, the Greek theatre frames the transformation of the same task, now in the realm of art.Vitruvius emphasizes the importance of a healthy site for the theatre and makes a very meaningful and interesting comparison between the flow of human voice of actors and the circular waves formed when we throw a stone in a smooth water. The aim, as it is also mentioned in the text, is to emphasize that in the design of the theatre, the architect should apply his knowledge of harmony, by perfecting the ascending rows of seats in a theatre by means of “the canonical theory of the mathematicians and the musicians.”

      Although Vitruvius describes the Roman (and not the Greek) theatre, his account of its reality as a cosmic place is poignant enough. It is here that the real architecture happens, disclosing an order that is both spatial and temporal. Because drama is experienced as a tight weaving of temporality and spatiality through its poetic language, that makes possible the feeling of catharsis, a recognition of the presence of being in the events of everyday life. The receptacle-dance platform or orchestra-takes its shape through the mimesis of Being and Becoming. It is here that we find the ever-present origin of architecture, an approximation of its invisible significance.

During the Renaissance, transformations in theology and architectural theory, and more specifically in their concepts about the theatre, already reflected a different understanding of the Greco-Roman chora. Renaissance architects developed an interest in geometrical perspective. There are no points in infinity. This is visible in Danielle Barbaro’s La Pratica della Perspettiva(1569), where he emphasizes that the principal tools of architectural ideation is not scenographia as Vitruvius said, but sciographia, interpreted by Barbaro as section. Here we have a similarity with Luca di Pacioli, because he gives the planimetric development of space-filling bodies generated by proportional ratios, the same way Pacioli represented the Golden Section as the proportion of a pentagon, which in turn is the basic surface of the dodecahedron. Here I found out very interesting and moving the connection between Golden section of Pacioli and Plato’s chora, stating that this dodecahedron, the prima materia, is also the receptacle that circumscribes the four other platonic solids in this cosmography and this is the secret, according to Pacioli, you need to know to become a successful architect.

         But Barbaro and the other Renaissane architects believed that construction was more important than perspective per se and the theatre had a particular revelatory power. Renaissance architecture therefore never conceives space as geometric entity. It is just a modification of the original chora, still retaining its character as a space of transition.

We can mention Giulio Camillo’s memory theatre gives somehow an orientation relating to seven planets and universe, so the spectator can occupy the chora.

          During Renaissnace, the third element, chora was not clear and elusive and everyday life. Only Galileo was able to imagine a differnet physics, so he brought Platonic space, the original chora, down from the supra-lunar heavens to the earth of man through his scientific cosmology. He created the conditions for instrumental and technological culture in general.

During baroque period, a wonderful synthesis of natural space and geometrical reality of chora was represented for the fist time. Much less ambivously than in Renaissance, man now contemplated `the space of God, repesented exclusively as a geometrical entity. In order to experience the epiphany of the point in infinity, the man has to leave behind the binocular bodies. Here the author makes an interesting point of view by mentioning Descartes and his love of lines rather than colors. Descartes believed in the potiental of line drawing and he seems to be the pioneer of objectifying space through mathematical proportions, so it is no longer between the Being and the Becoming. So, now it is defined as the third dimension, analogous to length and breadth.

               Meanwhile, as everything was developing and the concept of chora was being improved through the years, artists and architects became divided about the nature of their work. Some of them just thought about construction without concerning about the meaning. It was first thought to engage this work to the engineers, but there were a lot of discussions, because, also according to my opinion, is offensive to classify the art of architecture as the ornament added to shed. So, as a result, architecture was defined as the art of space.

               Although architecture had finally had a scientific definition, it was still unclear to ordinary people. So, what did the artists and architects do? They tried new methods such as destructuration and recollection of embodiment to show new depths connected to human feelings, so people wouldn’t just see the it from outside, but would be able to feel it. Also, by the example of Plato about love, the author wants to emphasize that everything beautiful comes out of the order of things.

               To conclude, we can say that architecture is not unclear on invisible now. It has all to do with our experience and it exists only if it represented in embodiments. Rather than simply meaning “something”, architecture enables the meaning to present itself. The work of architecture as chora is indeed space-matter, and lies above all other arts such as sculputure and painting, because architecture is something more than just ornament. Chora, an empty gap that is not nothingness, assumed by common sense to be the exclusive space of action, is the meaning of architecture. Chora is the site of darkness, the space of mimesis that is our nature and must be preserved for the survival of humanity.