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Not all windows can be circular

The window cannot allow itself the luxury of deforming, stretching or flattening at the will of the one who carries the pencil -or the mouse, in his case-. And no, the truth is that not all windows can be circular.

When the wall, vertical or something toiletted, but always dignified, agrees to allow the opening of a hole, the dimensions and shape come from the hand with a goal to which the drilling will destine the rest of its days. A task that will assign to space the quality of existing in a concrete way. Is it really an aesthetic decision for a being so valuable?

window barragan
The windows of the Gilardi House (Luis Barragán – Mexico 1976) sift a yellow tinted light that marks the pattern of the transit through the room.

If we emphasize the horizontality of the hollow, the landscape is pleasant, distant, almost framing the horizon. Verticality, on the other hand, enhances violence in the entry of light, setting a rhythm in its movement with the precision of a Swiss clock. Its dimensions can be imposing or ridiculous, but they always fulfil a purpose: To look, to ventilate, to illuminate… Their simple existence endows them with function.

However, the circular window goes one step further, to a mystical territory. Looking out of it puts us in the spotlight, in the epicentre of the window itself that directs us in the direction of an environment that is now a mixture of oculus and HAL9000. The eye becomes the shutter of a camera that longs to monopolize the world: The passive viewfinder becomes an active oteador; the pupil within the sometimes blind iris.

 

window mon oncle
Photogram of the film Mon Oncle (Jacques Tati, 1958), where the circular window plays a primordial role.

That’s why not all windows can be circular. The objective of the opening can be very diverse, but at the moment in which their angles become curved until kissing, the observer who crosses it with the look fuses with it forming the impossible astrolabe, abducting it to such a profuse and determined function, that if some vain adventurer -of those of mouse or pencil- dared to put more than one, or more than two, of these in a single route, it would be impossible for the traveller to merely pass through the building without losing his sense of being, his identity or gender, to become only the pupil of an evil eye.

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