ABSTRACT
Progress, understood as a growth or movement towards a goal or higher state of existence, is deeply connected to the visual arts, including architecture. Art and architecture, responding to human needs, allows the progress of the world shape itself and then moves beyond it, promoting and accommodating new views, leading the way into new heights of the self and new depths of the spirit. The work analyses four inner progresses, embodied in the significance of contemporary creations. Firstly, a brief analysis of the progressive journey of the arts is presented, observing how its essence expanded and clarifying that contemporary art still strives to embody new ideas (beyond the depiction of the world) that relate to the self and its significant growths. Secondly, the significant inner progresses are presented, analysing both its aims, origins, and contemplating examples. These are: (1) the openness of existence and being, (2) the wholeness of the self, (3) connectivity and integration, and lastly (4) expansion and infinity. By connecting man to himself and to the world (cosmological and metaphysical dimensions), and by promoting an integrated open wholeness, art and architecture guide existence into new depths, defined not only by outward creations, but also and mostly, by the profound ideas that define our spirits.
