‘Purity lies in the incompletion’ Oikos-logy – The place of Mankind.

This contribution by an architect and teacher of architecture to a conference organised in a school of architecture aims to bring a moment more of reflexion about: ‘What has architecture it self to do with ecology?’ It pones almost the question ‘is architecture oikos-logy?’ And what are the consequences of that position. The paper will argue that the ecological crisis requires to rethink the place of mankind. The place of mankind is, for sure, an architectural question in all her ethic. It is not the question of where mankind has to place itself, but it is to interrogate how does the human being has to hold it self in and with ‘nature’? It is so really a question of structure of this place in and with ‘nature’. Great question of architecture itself. Till now, in the humanistic way of thoughts, mankind was sure to be outside nature as a superior exception and lived just in front of ‘nature’ and apart of ‘nature’ in a sort of purity of his perfect and sufficient exception. The architectural paradigms of that are numerous. But by the need that we have to live ‘in and with’ nature (and not in front of nature of apart of nature) because we need nature in all her diversity to live, we have to think us as not sufficient or not completed, even in structure. ‘Purity lies in the incompletion’, citation of the architect Louis I Kahn, gives us a new sense of the structure of our place. This contribution will suggest an analysis of the architectural consequences of this incompletion till, of course, in the necessary spatial structures of the cities, interpreting the Lobe-city of Tjallingii but having also a few suggestive words for the signs of un-humanistic structure in some important architecture of the recent time