A Mediterranean Lesson for Contemporary Architecture

Mediterranean landscape has been a great muse for artists of all ages. During the XX century, architects used the Sea – and the land lapped by the sea - as a reservoir of ancient knowledge, using the journey as a tool in a fluid experimentation laboratory in which new ideas about spaces, forms and sites were born. In this paper, I aim to discuss the XX century’s Mediterranean lesson in Architecture, following the journeys of Gunnar Asplund, Le Corbusier, Josep Lluís Sert, Louis Kahn, Dimitris Pikionis, Giuseppe Pagano, and Alvar Aalto. Some topics emerge by comparing tracks, paths, attentions and sketches: the adherence of sections to the site, the determining influence of climate in the planning process, the geometric simplification of volumes, the relationship with light, the coincidence of forms of life and spatial structures. We can read these constants as an immaterial patrimony that, in the historical-geographical interpretation of Mediterranean «longue dureè» made by Braudel, tries to deconstruct the myth by decomposing it into architectural archetypes that come up to our days