A cryptic beauty. Ode to the Ungers’ formal canon

Classical architecture can be identified by the recognizability and coincidence of canon and code. The first one is the "scheme referred to as the rule of an art”. In fact, thanks to the κανών it’s possible to proportionally reconstruct the entire work from the fragment. The second one is "the set of conventional signs that leads to the identification of each individual unit of a given system" and it allows deciphering from a fragment. The contemporary wonders about the possibility of rediscovering the presence of codes or canons within the architectural project, but these have not disappeared, the relationship between them and their use has changed, while in the classic they coincided. This split resulted in three ways of operating: The refusal of canon and code: architecture, by refusing an apparatus of objective laws, lives in a system that cannot be compared, relying on subjective language; The adoption of the code without the use of the canon: the theme is endorsed by architect in favor of a system of universally recognizable signs. But if there is no decoding process, architecture aims to be an instant image, a faithful representation of the present or only answers to functional needs; The use of the canon without code: not providing a decoding key presupposes that in the contemporary architect operates on the canon through abstraction as a "process through which [...] all the occasional elements are eliminated [...] in order to reach the extreme form of things […] their essence.” (Purini, 2003). In the last way, architect develops a system of rules working in the construction of pure form and intervening on the laws that regulate it. An example of this procedure can be provided by the work of O.M. Ungers who sees the need for form “more urgent than laws of construction, demands of users or functional result. [...] the architect's spiritual responsibility [...] is not the technique of building but the art of building.” (Kieren, 1997). The paper aims to analyze the relationship between canon and abstraction in O.M. Ungers’ work and to answer a question: does the true value of a piece of architecture lie in the existence of a canon which, although not codified, offers the possibility of a logical and therefore democratic translation or in the immediate fruition operable thanks to instant codification?