Abstract

During the Covid19 pandemic, our surroundings became the closest things, not the landscape. In past debates, confined spaces have been linked with mind expansion. This dualism has been presented by Pier Vittorio Aureli’s book Less is Enough: On Architecture and Asceticism (2014) related to the monk’s space: the cell obliges him to be apart from others, living in a condition of essentiality but, also, it leads to a connection with interiority, contemplation, and asceticism. These opposite aspects also define the minimum cell, as Aureli underlines in his The Architectural Review article (1453, 2018): it could be seen as the emblem of “an atomized and precarious existence” and alienation, as well as a “representation of interiority.” The cell is the condensed unitary construction in which we feel protected in primitive hut terms (Bachelard defined it as a “nest” or “shell” in 1957), and it could promote meditative activities. The physical properties of the concentrated space culminate in mind concentration itself. Since the notorious Le Corbusier has decided to refuge himself in a small fisher hut in the South of France, the notion of rational design has changed. The rustic house exterior turns into an interior designed as a shell. It follows the aurea rectangle rules, getting more closed as its uses are more intimate (Sola-Morales, 2000). Meanwhile, we are locked down, and small spaces interrogate us for their ambiguity. Since the minimum spaces had not been chosen, “less is not more” seems a challenge: in our silent and intimate “cage”, can we (re)invent the inner space and nourish our Imaginarium? How to do "more with less" (Aureli, 2014)? Less space could lead to more Imaginarium? Revisiting Aureli’s critical thought and the ideas in Cabanon’s design allows us to rethink our situation nowadays.