Formaggio’s philosophy of architecture: the body as a projecting principle

Abstract

The study of the specifics of the development of D. Formaggio's philosophical thought is impossible without recourse to the origins of his work—his formation, which occurred in the 1930s. This era in Italian philosophy of the Northern School (the Milanese Phenomenological School) was characterized by intellectual unrest, initiated by A. Banfi. Basing his thinking, like his teacher, on aesthetic issues, D. Formaggio showed a particular interest in the active component of artistic work. Central to this was the idea of artistic technique, interpreted primarily as the intelligibility of natural laws inherent in architecture. These views led D. Formaggio to conceptualize artistic creativity through the concept of “body”, which gained a certain weight in Italian phenomenology thanks to A. Banfi. However, the concepts to which D. Formaggio appealed were articulated primarily by E. Husserl and M. Merleau-Ponty. This paper attempts to analyze an interview published in 1986 in the canonical architectural journal “Domus”. The analysis of correlations between the philosophical views of D. Formaggio and the architectural vision of E. Ranzani occupies a central place in this work.