Abstract

Human biological characteristics are the product of a model of life developed to live, explore and move on a horizontal environment as a consequence of gravity. The pervading presence of this force have modelled our habitat and the status quo we live in. A room is a tool used to delimit actual and imaginative space. The tectonic archetypical model of a room is a consequence of gravity. In a frame structure, the design of joints is an example on how gravity laws and their effects have formed aesthetics and human constructed environment. The Japanese architectural experience has explored gravity consequences elaborating a horizontal landscape. The Katsura Villa is a horizontal sequence of rooms, each one preserving the original tectonic meaning, linked together to create a continuous environment. Japanese metropolis of the XXI century has lost its horizontality, configuring itself as a sequence of indoor and outdoor rooms, creating endless tridimensional configurations. Physical and perceptual movements are possible in every directions making the urban experience an implicit tendency to a condition of absence of gravity. The image of flowing particles, suggested by Kengo Kuma, could be found in this passage from a primordial state of gravity into a universe oriented experience. The Japanese Kibo module of the International Space Station, the biggest living unit in space, is a room where no horizon could be found and the spacial experience can finally be made from human subjective point of view. Moreover the condition of absence of gravity creates a real tridimensional sequence linking all the modules of the Station. The tectonic and construction elements in the architecture of a room as we have known before, are lost forever.