Praise of the fragment. Pierre Zoelly’s house for sculptor Peter Hächler in Lenzburg

Abstract

Instead of the finished object, Zoelly opts for the incomplete, for the fragmentary. By showing only a part and a moment of the building, he works with the aesthetic of the fragment, which it’s full of different possibilities, hiding the end, but opening the object to infinite interpretations. As if it were a reverse ruin, Zoelly tries, from the evocation, to show that architecture has a meaning beyond mere functionality. The house is presented as an enigma: a symbol of something that is not known but it exists. Through the analysis of the mode of presentation chosen by Pierre Zoelly to show his work in Elements of an architect’s language and in the Hächler’s house, the reasons and thoughts that led Zoelly to present his unfinished work are investigated, and also the links that are woven between architect and sculptor because of that fragmentary vision. The value of the fragment as a key to dialogue will be revealed, and a way of understanding architecture will be presented in which the important thing is the partial vision.