ABSTRACT
In nature an appearance may be of such kind that the
arrangement of its accents with respect to the functioning of
the eye does not coincide with the accents which we need for
the perception of spatial objects, and therefore the interests
come into conflict. However, it may so happen that by
chance an appearance may be such that both are discovered
together and that the object, as a unified appearance, has an
unexpected significance for the eye. This provides a strong
visual image; for all interference is removed from the act of
perception and the greatest resultant force is achieved. For it
is not just a matter of a lack of interference, of the negative,
as it were, but something positive, a matter of enhanced
perception, of heightened force. Such moments in nature are
The ‘heightened force’ points to the beholder’s imagination and the active power of perception. Acting between the observer and the world, chance is a silent mediator in this process, the agent that causes perceptions to coincide, clash or match, until the image is evoked. This process of acute, associative and imaginative observation is a foundational precondition for drawing and for architecture because it links the remembered, the observed and the imagined in a synthetic manner. In his book A Scientific Autobiography, based on notebooks from the 1970s, Aldo Rossi remarks on the creative value of observation in his work. He writes:
Perhaps the observation of things has remained my most
important formal education; for observation later becomes
transformed into memory. Now I seem to see all the things
I have observed arranged like tools in a neat row; they are
aligned as in a botanical chart, or a catalogue, or a dictionary.
