SPAZIO N°6

The sixth chapter is entirely dedicated to SPAZIO No. 6. It contains two important editorials by Moretti, titled ‘Values of Mouldings’ and ‘Structure as Form.’ The chapter is opened by the translation of Moretti’s two texts from Italian into English. In the first editorial, ‘Values of Mouldings,’ Moretti asks why moderns have decided to expunge from architecture the plastic and communicative power of mouldings, ‘the only non-figurative plastic forms of ancient architecture.’ He then goes on to say that mouldings, in their formal abstraction, contain ‘another and more powerful value … the capacity to thicken to the utmost the sense of the concrete, the sense of existence, of objective reality,’ effectively raising the issue of the relevance of the concept of decoration that modernism had hastily abolished. Moretti’s seventh editorial, ‘Structure as Form,’ addresses the theme, complementary to the first, as a key connection between the two concepts of form of structure and structure of form. This inseparable link between aesthetic qualities, logical compositional processes, and static qualities intrinsic to form, in Moretti’s narrative, unites static and aesthetic problems. In this scheme of references, the translation of Moretti’s editorial is followed by a critical commentary essay titled ‘The Prevalence of Exteriority and the Structures of Objective Reality.’ It deals with the two editorials in a unified manner, highlighting the resonances and values of Moretti’s concepts of ‘Non-Figurative Form’ and ‘Form-Structure.’ Through a series of comparisons with other contemporary cultural positions, Moretti’s discourse will help us distinguish between form as an end in itself and forms capable of ‘simultaneously fulfilling unequivocal practical and expressive functions.’ The chapter is closed by the iconographic documentation containing the reproduction of the articles in their original graphic form, which provides valuable support for researchers all over the world.