ABSTRACT
As a volume-oriented property, porosity usually implies subtracting, carving out, eroding, piercing solids with multiple holes, gaps, or perforations. It often involves manifold spatial connections within a material mass that allows the passage of light, air, or liquids. Spatial transparency in these organizations occurs when light and vision penetrate through several consecutive spaces.
Ancient, carved architectural spaces survive to our day in the fantastic cave dwellings of Cappadocia, Turkey, at Uplistsikhe, Georgia, and in rock cut temples such as Ajanta in Maharashtra, India. These ancient carved spaces are paralleled by new and proposed, unprecedented artworks that depend on interconnected excavations such as James Turrell's Rodent Crater in Coconino County, Arizona, and the controversial project of sculptor Eduardo Chillida's Mount Tindaya, in Fuenteventura, Canary Islands. There are also many constructed spaces that, while built and not excavated, could be also experienced as being carved spaces, including the interior labyrinths of the Palace of Knossos, defensive medieval castles, and Peter Zumthor's Thermal Baths at Vals, Switzerland.
Common to these examples is their high degree of spatial confinement and simultaneous connectivity within their massively enclosed interior spaces. Cave-like spaces can take sculptural forms since their containing masses can be articulated three-dimensionally in depth; they could be dimensionally perforated, or volumetrically molded.
