Key Concepts of Minimalistic Architectural Design

Abstract

This study presents a systematic understanding of architectural minimalism, a design methodology that initially coalesced in the late 1980s and attained its most definitive articulation in the 1990s, whose theoretical underpinnings remain, to this day, fragmentary and polemical.
Purpose: The aim of this work is to identify the key concepts of the architectural minimalism design approach.
Methodology/approach: This study is based on the analysis of works of theorists and practitioners of minimalism from this period who took a fundamental approach to the theory of minimalism: Vittorio Gregotti, Franco Bertoni, John Pawson, and Peter Zumthor.
Research findings: Four interrelated concepts are identified that constitute the design method: 1) the critical-methodological (minimalism as critical reduction and contextual dialogue); 2) historical- genealogical (formal origins and connection to Minimal Art); 3) phenomenological (reduction as a means to generate an intensified sensory experience); 4) sociocultural (minimalism as a site of convergence for artistic, commercial, and critical forces).
Value: Architectural minimalism is revealed through the dialectical tension between these concepts. This sustains its relevance as a contemporary design paradigm, capable of providing integrated responses to questions of architectural critique, genesis, perception, and cultural agency.