Catalog 2023
Looking at the past, to build the future.
As architecture faces a state of growing instability, either challenged by the ability of Artificial Intelligence to produce real-time imagery at an unprecedented pace or questioned by the multiple concerns raised by urgent environmental, social, and productive issues, our present condition inevitably triggers a reflection on the definition of architecture’s own field. Throughout time, the definitions ranged according to different perspectives and agendas.
Even today, assessing the intrinsic qualities of a given building or specific building elements, such as a door or a window, might benefit from a return to the past. Roman architect Vitruvius, the author of the first known treatise, De architectura (c. 30-15 BCE), defined architecture as a building or object responding to three essential conditions: being structurally sound (firmitas), functional (utilitas), and beautiful (venustas). Firmitas, strength and necessity, advocates for using “materials wisely and liberally selected”, regardless of the expense. Utilitas, utility or convenience, prescribes the building or its part is arranged faultlessly so that it “presents no hindrance to use”. Finally, Venustas, beauty – or delight (voluptas), the term adopted by Leon Battista Alberti – will be such that the “appearance of the work is pleasing” and elegant, by the just proportion of all parts.
Two millennia after Vitruvius, panoramah! minimalist windows still respond directly to these three timeless categories. Utility and comfort, or the question of what a window should do, is answered through the accomplishment of very large sizes while maintaining smooth operability and a flexible array of opening typologies. Strength and necessity, or the concern of how a window should perform, are matched by the highest results, not only in terms of robustness, but also of thermal, acoustic, air and watertightness. A series of add-ons complement the solutions, providing additional efficiency. Finally, beauty and delight, or the wonder of what a window should look like, finds in its uncompromised minimalist design an accurate correspondence to all aesthetic concerns and beyond. panoramah! windows achieves the trilogy through the celebration of minimalism, not as a design trend but rather an ethos that values simplicity and the elimination of redundancy through technical refinement, reducing each element to its minimum, purest expression.
