If architecture is art and is viewed and thus experienced, as such, then when is it designed as the place in which art itself resides, whether a museum or an art gallery, the delicate problem arises of the relationship between container and content, between being and trespassing. On the first statement, that is, on the certitude that the discipline of architecture must belong among the arts – one that makes use of the technique of building and other professional skills in order to express itself –, in the opinion of this writer, there can be no doubt (see Area 109, “Art and Architecture“ march/april 2010). This means that what separates architecture from simple building does not reside in its physical consistency so much as in its intentional and narrative value, a distinction which has already been made clear by many artists and that has its apex in the bicycle wheel or in the urinal that Marcel Duchamp could not resist evoking (1917) as much as in more recent visions like those of Claes Oldenburg (1966) all the way to Maurizio Cattelan’s gold certification. But it is the second question that appears more subtle and sophisticated because if it is true, as we have repeated, that architecture is art, it is also absolutely true that architecture is, to all intents, the art of living. It therefore remains to be seen what happens when it is home to itself, that is, also art, as is the case of all those places conceived, designed and built for the enjoyment of art. The short circuit is immediate in relation to the centrality of living and thus the presence of the life of the people around and inside the architecture. Echoing to some extent Wright’s thinking, Bruno Zevi solved the problem by introducing the concept of the essence of space, in the absence of which architecture loses its disciplinary features and acquires the role of sculpture. This intuition, that for Zevi is unquestionably the statement of a principle, helps us to understand and resolve, in this case, the relationship between container and contents in the places of art insofar as, in this case, it is not art itself that is the purpose of the project, but rather the possibility of achieving, through the built space, a contemplative experience of awareness. In this sense, what is required of the architecture is that it achieve that difficult balance with great care, tending not to limit the built art on the expressive plane but to facilitate the better, more sensitive and effective perception of the art it contains. It is, in other words, art for the sake of art, the greatest height an architect can achieve, if he is able to understand, as Immanuel Kant has asserted, that his art is an art of service, a dimension that does not limit architecture but, indeed, exalts it as the art of life for people. 

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