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CIAUD, Research Centre for Architecture, Urbanism and Design, Lisbon School of Architecture, Universidade de Lisboa Portugal
The Architecture of Emptiness is an urban-architectural approach that focuses on the qualities and possibilities of unbuilt space, giving it primacy over built space. The proposed approach explores how emptiness can act as a generative force for urban-architectural pieces and how, in return, it echoes its built and natural environment. It highlights the relevance of what is conformed, surrounded, defined, and delimited, shifting the focus away from the material elements that delineate them. Starting from theoretical conception of emptiness based on four lines of thought: Buddhist, Taoist, Atomist, and phenomenological—this paper explores a possible application of these concepts through the work developed by CADO architectural studio.
This research was funded in whole or in part by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P. (FCT, https://ror.org/05qdjap63), under Grant of the Strategic Project with the references UID/04008/2025 and DOI https://doi.org/10.54499/UID/04008/2025. For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a CC-BY public copyright license to any Author‗s Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version arising from this submission.
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