The spiral… the spiral…

Already Vico “won,” so to speak…

The spiral won.

The spiral, which fascinated and continues to fascinates many artists (and we include architects here too), never ceases to exist.

Why? Because the spiral and the “scandal” it provokes testifies about a more complex sense of reality, but also about a continuity (in time) that is not linear.

To neglect the spiral is to neglect the labyrinth, but more importantly, is to neglect KAIROS, the god of cyclical time.

We don’t know if indeed after The Age of Man and The Age of Chaos will follow, again, The Age of the Gods, as Vico inferred…

Maybe… but, for example, both Brancusi and James Joyce admired Vico and it is not an accident that the portrait of Joyce that Brancusi made (the “abstract” one that the great writer approved) was nothing else but a spiral.

It seems Brancusi rejected the labyrinth, yet, it seems, he approved of the spiral. That is, of Vico. That is, of circularity, of a vertical circularity but also of “the eternal return of the same,” if we are to mention Nietzsche. But this “eternal return of the same” is not about that “sameness” that the tradidionalists defend. No, the “return” is slightly different, thus, the circle becomes a spiral.

Now, 350 years since the birth of Giambattisa Vico we invite you to reflect on his work and to imagine A HOUSE FOR GIAMBATTISTA VICO.

Several buildings of the past and present could qualify, indeed, as possible “houses” for Giambattista Vico, from the Guggenheim Museum to the spiral museum by Le Corbusier, to various other buildings by Ingels and others… and the twisting of buildings copiously practiced today could relate to the spiralic motif conceptually deriving from Kairos, and Vico.

But a specific “House for Vico” would inevitably make reference to the four ages of human history, connected, on the spiral of time, by a continuity that is rather a-historical.

If Joyce and Brancusi (among others) were fascinated by Vico and the spiral and the return of the same, perhaps we could also connect with these themes of “philosophical speculation”. After all, maybe Vito Acconci was right (“architecture is not about space, it is about time).

Time, indeed, we often neglect.

Although, indeed, we cannot escape it.

We invite you to imagine A HOUSE FOR GIAMBATTISTA VICO.

A house that flows in two directions, a house that has no beginning and no end, really, a circular house (not necessarily in form) that makes us less alone and less obsessed  by entropy, since this is indeed the great promise of the spiral and of Kairos: time doesn’t flow irreversibly and linearly, time is circular, time is a spiral, time contracts and expands following other rules than the fatal entropy.

WELCOME TO THE SPIRAL. WELCOME TO KAIROS. WELCOME TO VICO.

Please send us your work by October 1st, 2018. Please register before the deadline to receive a registration number with which to anonymously identify your work. We will publish all the works received. We will also exhibit them through various venues, since we believe Time is indeed very important. If you have any questions, please write to us.