“Quintessential Architecture” is the term Hiromi Fujii uses when referring to the work in his early period of conceptual exploration. This concept describes architecture devoid of traditional conventions, where all that remains is an absolutely neutralized image. Cold and dehumanized, his architecture becomes empty, i.e., without history. Fujii achieves this emptying of meaning using the spaces of the grid. By creating a totally homogeneous image, one identical in every way, the grid makes it possible to neutralize space, and take away its principle of differentiation. In the A-House project (1968-1971), contemporaneous with the Superstudio’s research with Histogrammes and the Continuous Monument, the grid forms the precondition for architecture. The grid seems to pre-exist the architecture and it is from it that the very forms of the project can emerge. From the exterior, there is nothing more to see than a monolithic volume whose only apertures are slits providing access to the core. Here, there are neither doors nor windows. There is nothing but the most elementary geometry of architecture: the composition of volumes and sizing. The grid becomes the image of a primitive and universal absence.
