Architecture reveals itself most clearly at the moment it allows something to pass through it. Light, air, view, a body, time.
An opening is never neutral. It is not simply the absence of wall, or floor or roof. It is an act, a decision, a position taken on how a building relates to the world beyond it - how you will relate and interact and how the outside will interact with you.
In much contemporary work, openings are the result of division. Walls are split apart, pulled back, erased in service of plan, program, or transparency.
There is another way of thinking about openings. One that begins with the assumption that the wall matters.
To pierce a wall rather than divide it is to first acknowledge its mass, its weight, its continuity - its integrity. The opening is not made by separating, but by carefully cutting into something whole - something valuable. It is less violent, more deliberate, and often quieter. The wall remains present, and the opening gains meaning because of it.
This distinction, subtle as it may appear, produces very different atmospheres.
Louis Kahn was the master of the opening. In his Bangladesh parliament in Dhaka, openings are simultaneously sculptural and graphic. The walls remain heavy, almost immovable, and yet they are alive with openings that feel inevitable and expressive. At the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, apertures are treated as moments of passage and compression. The thickness of the wall becomes a place in itself, a zone where inside and outside briefly coexist.
Elsewhere, Claudio Silvestrin’s Neuendorf House in Majorca operates with similar consideration. Its openings are celebrated and deliberate characters: sometimes they are measured incisions within continuous surfaces, other times they appear as slices cutting walls in two.
What these projects share is a respect for mass. A belief that architecture begins not with void, but with substance.
Within our own work, we have explored both approaches. We have split walls open to create generosity and connection. We have also pierced them, carefully, to test how little is required to admit light, view, or movement. Over time, the difference has become increasingly apparent, not just visually, but experientially.
As our work evolves, we are consciously moving away from buildings that read as extrusions of the floor plan. Plan remains essential, but it is no longer sufficient. We are more interested in architecture as a three-dimensional condition, where walls are volumes, not lines, and openings are shaped with intention.
An opening asks a question of a wall. How much can be removed without diminishing what remains? How deep must it be to feel generous rather than exposed? How can it admit the world without surrendering the room?
These are modest questions, but they carry weight. They affect how a space feels at different times of day. They shape how we move, where we pause, and how architecture reveals itself slowly, over time.
