“Horror vacui“, Latin for “fear of empty space”, began as an aesthetic category.
But, as often happens, it did not remain confined within frames for long.
At first it is art. Then it becomes behaviour.
Originally, it describes an almost compulsive urge to fill every available space: no margins, no pauses, no visual silence.
From Baroque art to Byzantine mosaics, from medieval miniatures to Gothic architecture, all the way to Victorian aesthetics, the principle is clear: if a space exists, it must be occupied. Better still, saturated.
In these traditions, emptiness is not a choice. It is an error.
Aristotle provided an elegant theoretical justification: nature abhors a vacuum.
It does not tolerate it. It fills it. Always.
A principle so reassuring that it endured for centuries, until Blaise Pascal, in 1647, demonstrated that the vacuum does indeed exist.
And, worse still, it works.
From that moment on, the problem was no longer physical.
It became human, because contemporary horror vacui no longer concerns walls.
It concerns diaries.
Full calendars. Constant notifications.
Conversations that fill silence before it even has time to emerge.
Meetings to prepare other meetings.
Presentations that explain what no one has had the time to think.
Emptiness today has not disappeared; it has been declared illegal.
So we fill it: with content, opinions, activity, words.
Often not to add value, but to avoid that subtle and uncomfortable sensation that emptiness brings with it: the possibility of thinking.
In psychology, this tendency appears as an inability to tolerate open spaces, silence, pauses.
But in everyday life it takes on more refined, socially acceptable forms: relentless productivity, hyper-connectivity, the need to always be “in motion”.
A sophisticated form of escape.
In business, horror vacui is particularly insidious.
It disguises itself as efficiency. As control. As operational intensity.
Yet it often conceals the opposite: an inability to choose, a fear of removing, a difficulty in distinguishing the essential from the noise.
Filling is easy. Selecting is leadership.
The paradox is that value often emerges precisely from the space left unfilled.
A clear strategy is, by definition, a list of things not done.
Effective communication is made of pauses as well.
A team that works is not the one that is constantly busy, but the one that knows when to stop.
But emptiness, as we know, is uncomfortable, so we decorate it.
With slides. With words. With initiatives. With urgency.
A well-furnished corporate horror vacui.
Perhaps the point is not to eliminate this tendency.
That would be counterintuitive, and probably impossible.
Perhaps the point is to recognise it and, from time to time, with a certain degree of courage, leave a space empty.
Not for lack of ideas, but out of respect for those that might arrive.