From “tabula rasa” towards “terrain vague”. Emptiness as inception

Abstract

The relation between man and territory is always mediated by the particular understanding of where does the point of departure stand. This seminal situation needs to be described before any action can take place. Traditionally, the modern attitude towards the existing has been defined by a ‘tabula rasa’ approach, that is, the erasure of past traces as the only way to bring about the new. Le Corbusier’s visionary plans for Paris are usually taken as a paradigmatic case for this ideal of a cleared-out departure, which still today haunts the architect every time he is confronted with the design of a large-scale intervention, as is made evident at certain works by OMA. On the other hand, the term ‘terrain vague’ started being used during the last decades of the past Century to describe an alternative emptiness; one that claims no zero state of things, but admits instead the embedded information of a place, even if it is scarce. This postmodern reading of the territory was first promoted by art, photography or films, and then absorbed into the architectural practice with the promise of building up another kind of origin where the non-normative and the accidental are welcome. By the confrontation of these two well-known phrases, the neutral condition of emptiness itself is problematized, interrogating at the same time the nature of our current disposition towards the territory.