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The thickness of paint

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2010

Extract

A photograph by Robert Polidori, of a room within the city of Petra, shows a pristine cubic volume hewn out of the rock. The nature of the stone reveals different textural and figural qualities of the material when it becomes a floor, a wall or a ceiling. There is no need to ‘put’ the building together, to assemble it, because it is already exists. This, then, is the fantasy of the architect, to sculpt from a single substance that is both structure and surface, with the only remaining questions pertaining to shape and smoothness.

Type
insight
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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