ABSTRACT
Hiddenness is not an exception in architecture, but an essence. It is possibly architecture’s most ancient principle, certainly it is the rule and purpose behind the first protocols of technē. We lack a vocabulary for the hidden and must unearth unusual terms from history, topology and Lacanian psychoanalysis to describe its logic: ‘katagraphics,’ ‘co-agency,’ ‘pharmakon’ and so on. One term is already well known, thanks to Edgar Allan Poe: ‘purloined.’ In this famous story about the letter hidden by being left out in the open, we may derive a foundational study method to explain how concealment is best done by reversing the desire to find.
