Throughout history we can observe how Architecture has responded to the dichotomy of the Subject- Object dialectic.

The Renaissance was the expression of a social project in which reason prevailed and where the Subject was organised in a predictable structure. In contrast to the particular, universal doctrine was exalted. In architecture, harmony was geometrically expressed and order meant rational composition. The beauty of this movement resides precisely in this lattice of everything being objectively rational, secured and ordered, with little or no acknowledgment of the personal.

Mannerism arrived when the social project of the Renaissance could no longer be sustained. The XVI century was unstable and could not offer the illusion of order for the individual. The architecture responded with tension and instability, expressing and stimulating the Subject to participate, to make choices, to take decisions. The beauty here resides in the unexpected.

Today, certain celebrated architecture based on classical neo-rationalist composition, seems to be adopting a Renaissance approach, as if the individual (particular) should be contained within a rigorous order (universal). One wonders what the relevance of such an approach is when we consider the times in which we live.