THE EZRA POUND HOUSE: A one-family dwelling for a sociopathic philosopher, or the First Monadic Architecture Manifesto

Abstract

The project developed by the MLDG1 architecture and design studio involved profound research into the ontological bases of the logic used in architectural projects. It defends the need for not only designing the architectonic aspects of buildings, but also, and simultaneously, of formulating the deep logic that rules the very language of its con-formation. This is a fundamental characteristic of the projective process that the authors have termed ‘monadic architecture’. In our analysis, we have opted for a logical-spatial ontology that explicitly seeks to undermine all sharp distinctions between the exterior and interior, questioning their epistemological grounds and including the building’s exterior in the projective logic of the interior, which is principally instantiated via the use of optical-visual relations.

To this end, the project enters into dialogue with the principal theoretical forms of conceiving this relation, developed over the last three decades, via the analysis of its logical functioning in the works of Peter Eisenman, Bernard Tschumi and Rem Koolhaas. In this context, the Ezra Pound House will be the first practical example of the ‘monadic architecture’ developed by MLDG. Its design embodies a spatio-visual and corporeal schema (both in its material and tectonic aspects and in the corporeal shifting of its users) which has never been explored, either under the concept of language or that of scale. The project developed by MLDG involves the infinite openness of the logic of the design of interior spaces to the exterior of a project via its introduction into the logic of absolute interiority as a historical characteristic of Mediterranean architecture.