Synchronic nodes and Mediterranean thought. A journey into the myth, where places amplified architects’feelings.

“Mediterranean” defines in contemporary architecture a sense of belonging that disregards the places of residence. It is based on the perception of a landscape, on the ability to recognize and feel certain spaces, tastes, smells, materials, sounds and noises as one’s own. “Mediterranean” is today an invisible spirit that still runs under the skin of many projects and visions. In order to go back to the origins of this common feeling, in this contribution the documents of the most influential travels of architects that took place in the Mediterranean area, in the first half of the XX century, have been collected1. Tracks, paths, attentions were repeatedly compared and overlapped to find recurring topics. This kind of comparison has allowed us to identify some points that we could define as ‘amplifiers places of Mediterranean thought’, places that have sown waves of emotions within specific topics of architecture. In these places – which we will call “synchronic nodes” – the most recurrent thopos have been declined, over the centuries, several times and then distributed along the entire basin, coming up to our days in the form of emotional language useful to architecture.