The Architecture of Nothingness: Reconceptualizing Abandonment Through the Potential of Absence

Abstract

Architecture can emerge not only from presence but also from absence. By engaging with the condition of abandonment in Chișinău’s neglected tram depot, the research explores how nothingness, philosophically and spatially, holds transformative potential. Drawing on metaphysical thought, particularly the writings of Heidegger and Derrida, the study repositions voids, silence, and disuse as active agents in architectural meaning-making. The analysis moves through philosophical inquiry, artistic interpretation, and architectural case studies, including projects by Louis Kahn, Aldo Rossi, and Peter Zumthor. These examples illuminate how absence can be articulated as structure, memory, and atmosphere. Artistic works by Kazimir Malevich and Rachel Whiteread further support the notion that the void can evoke presence more powerfully than material form. In Chișinău, the tram depot’s erasure from public consciousness becomes symbolic of a broader urban forgetting. The excavation, both physical and conceptual, serves as a design strategy to reveal the latent voids embedded within the site. The resulting intervention proposes an interdisciplinary academic center that fosters intellectual exchange while honoring the site's layered history. Spatial strategies focus on exposing underground volumes, creating axial connections, and embracing asymmetry and silence as organizing principles. The architecture that emerges does not impose meaning, but draws it out of what is already there yet unseen. In doing so, nothingness becomes a framework for poetic, ethical, and spatial engagement.