Motion: the most modern experience

The essay reconsiders built and unbuilt architecture of the last 150 years by interpreting the themes featured in the DS+R exhibition, especially flexibility, mobility, expandability and interaction. By investigating the experience of motion in architecture, the essay identifies the veritable “culture of motion” which produces symbols—gears, motors, vectors, and arrows—and sensations—impetus, exhilaration, giddiness, and restlessness—that have been the most effective antidote to the culture of boredom and indifference, conditions that afflict the contemporary age. From the nomadic Dymaxion houses of the american engineer Bucky Fuller, to the kinematic Maison de Verre of Pierre Chareau and Bernard Bijvoet, from the "technical animals" of the Soviet artist Vladimir Tatlin to the archetype interpretation of Noah’s Ark by Massimo Scolari (Triennale 1986), the essay declaims the avant-guardism of the experience of motion as the most 'modern' architecture.