Abstracting architectural hermeneutics

ABSTRACTING ARCHITECTURAL HERMENEUTICS

AUSTEN SCOTT 13089554 P30027 REPRESENTATION 2014

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ABSTRACTING ARCHITECTURAL HERMENEUTICS

When we address methods of representing architectural design we must first concern ourselves with the phenomena of interpretation, as it is the forbearing structure behind understanding what we design. However, in the postmodern context the process of designing architecture predominantly relies on a passive creation of multiple aesthetic configurations that crudely intend to represent design with no further questioning. This leads architectural design into a presumptuous state where the perceived meaning of things equates to simply communicating information; an information that is driven by logic and technology where the hermeneutic value of representation is superfluous to the requirements of the contemporary vocabulary (Thompson, 2007: 183).

Thompson continues by stating that the typical attitude toward hermeneutics in architecture is misleading and requires redefining. This can be observes in work such as Hale’s Building Ideas where the reader is incorrectly lead to acknowledge hermeneutics as the interpretation of architectural design as opposed to the interpretation of meaning itself.

When we choose to challenge such conventions of established systems we are able to create methods of representing architecture that offer far greater depth within design. Work such as Gehry’s exploratory scribbles do not represent specific objects in a vernacular sense but present an open text to be read (fig.1,2). These methods create a multi-layered interpretive experience where the perceived meaning of the design acts on numerous levels. (Angelil, Kingman, 1999). Despite this Gehry’s works and other similar methods of representation are predominantly self referential within the design process and therefore confine interpretive meaning to a soul author.

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This Essay intends to explore the interplay of representation and interpretation by using the method of abstraction as a tool to question the design process and authorship of meaning within such processes. The investigation is composed of 3 elements that relate to the development of the architectural intervention and how it is represented:

NARRATIVE (fig. 3) – The first element explores the world created within the fictional story of the artificially intelligent creature. By using narrative we create for ourselves a system of significations that resemble the basis of the investigation.

CONTEXTUAL/INTERTEXTUAL (fig. 4) – The second element shifts the authority of narrative by creating a physical experience that emulates the interpretations of the creature. This opens up the hermeneutic nature of the project and enables opportunities for multiple meanings.

DISCOURSE (fig. 5) – The third element creates a platform for the architect to assess the relationship between the Narrative and the Contextual/Intertextual.

This allows for a state of design where Instead of creating “closure and depth” within architecture “there is an infinite play of meaning across surfaces and spaces”, thus opening architectural though into a highly diverse and interdisciplinary position (Potteiger & Purinton, 1998: 33).

Before I expand on the three elements we must first assess our position within the hermeneutic discourse, primarily focusing on two archetypal yet opposing philosophical figures; E. D. Hirsch, who concerns himself with the science of interpretation (Hirsch, 1967), and H. G. Gadamer’s work which is based on the art of interpretation (Gadamer, 1976) Both philosophical thinkers create equally valid viewpoints within their respective works but despite this they are irreconcilable when determining a “correct” viewpoint. (Fry, 2009). We must instead find an understanding of the hermeneutic argument that rests between the extremes of Gadamers phenomenological stance and Hirsch’s positivistic views and in doing so allow for a fundamental theory that is viable for architectural research.

This viewpoint is shared with G. B. Madison’s Hermeneutics of Postmodernity, in which he claims that interpretation is fundamentally an existential act but a “viable Hermeneutics must allow for method” (Madison 1988: 29). By allowing for a method of examining existential though the architect is able to form a basis upon which we are able to enquire into the complexities of interpretation when concerning subject matter outside orthodox hermeneutics.

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Having defined a suitable stance of hermeneutic enquiry we are now able to adopt such philosophical theories into the 3 elements of the architectural investigation.

NARRATIVE Within the abstract nature of the architectural intervention exists a narrative that sets out a hypothetical architectural experiment; this narrative is based on a thought experiment set out by Martin Heidegger discussing the subject of Gadamerian hermeneutics: “When we have to do with anything, the mere seeing of the Things which are closest to us bears in itself the structure of interpretation, and in so primordial a manner that just to grasp something free, as it were, of the “as”, requires a certain readjustment… …The grasping which is free of the as, is a privation of the kind of seeing in which one merely understands” M. Heidegger, 1927, p.190 Heidegger declares that it is essentially an impossible act to interpret something without a forbearing or primordial knowledge of what that something is. If such an act were to be possible one would be required to adjust or create for their self a fundamental change in perspective. Nonetheless, he claims that seeing things without what Gadamer calls “prejudice” would be an extraordinary and fascinating act if one were able to do so. The narrative therefore is required to construct an architectural precedent where we are able to investigate such theories.

Upon developing the narrative through collage and montage we find our fictional architectural intervention; an artificially intelligent creature created by the architect. Once the intervention has been placed within the Oxford Castle Mound it is activated and as the creature gains ‘consciousness’ it is faced with the challenge of interpreting the reality in which it is situated. This scenario allows for the condition of seeing something free of a primordial knowledge or prejudice, as the machine has no pre-history to base an understanding of meaning on. However, this leaves us with the question: what does it sees? How does it experience? Also, how does it ascertain a spatial awareness?

Before we seek to represent the answers to these questions we must first expand on the method with which the narrative is explored and represented (fig 6,7,8). It is at this point that we question the author of interpreted meaning developed through the process of collage and montage.

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These two disciplines allow for the creation of work assembled from various pre-formed sources that contain within them a closed narrative independent of the architectural intervention. By disposing of colour and manipulating these sources into new forms the architect allows for an open interpretation into new meanings through abstract overlaid narratives (fig. 9). This method of abstracting form is duplicated in the digital montages, where the now pre-formed meanings within the collage are broken into components and reassembled to form yet another narrative (fig. 10).

By using an assemblage of external forms to create new wholes we begin to blur the notions of authorship over meaning within the works. When reading the collages and montages the work can no longer be traced to a specific conceived source but instead is compiled from different cultural and methodological systems where the work is constantly reciprocating new and ever more abstract definitions of content (Barthes, 1968: 146). Consequentially, when we read into these works we are unable to reduce the image to an absolute meaning deriving from a single creator. What the reader experiences instead is a “multi-dimensional” abstraction in which meaning “overlaps and merges”, creating what can be interpreted as a heterogeneous architectural design. (Angelil, Klignamm, 1999)

CONTEXTUAL / INTERTEXTUAL It is at this point that we are able to challenge the Heidegarian proposition of seeing something ‘free’ as it were through the eyes of the intervention. By using technologically driven methodologies such a filmmaking, the architect is required to challenge the way in which we convert phenomena into “meaningful semantic agents”. However, instead of rationalising interpretive meaning into logical form we intend to create a sense of irrational abstract disorder. This is achieved through a reduction in symbolic representation by abstracting the very syntax of the formal architectural language of Oxford’s urban environment (Bourdieu, 1994).

Filming begins in the urban environment, where footage is produced that resembles the norm of everyday interpretation (fig .11). It is than digitalised and subjected to arbitrarily ‘splicing’ film into a series of moving images that resemble space in its most primordial state yet still texturally recognisable as authentic forms. (fig. 12) This film is than projected onto a series of hanging translucent fabrics that creates a three dimensional architectural space. This therefore creates the opportunity to interact with the sensations of the film

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itself. (fig. 13). Only at the final stage is an interaction created between the self and an architectural space (fig. 14).

As one walks through the layers of fabric they are interacting with the abstract fundamental interpretations projected through the film, touching and warping ephemeral boundaries that create momentary glimpses. (fig. 15) These glimpses form the bases of otherworldly experiences by challenging built order and creating transitional landscapes that question our horizons of interpretation.

Between these flowing membranes we confront the semiotics of architectural space through creating complex and augmented spatial signifiers. It is within the intentions of the architect to disrupt the part-whole relationship that occurs between the signified and the signifier, a relationship that is indisputable to those who “know knowledge as it is meant to be” (Dewey, 1949:80) The resulting process of the film creates what Roland Barths (1975) defines as “the pleasure of the text” where the “transition from interpretation to materialisation”, otherwise seen as the transition of narrative to the contextual/ intertextual describes “the subversive moments in which everything is under attack”. This ‘everything’; the ideologies, the prejudices, and the uniform interpretations are broken down to allow for spontaneous readings of space.

However, this spontaneity does not dissolve meaning but instead “interrupts and undermines the act of interpreting itself”

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DISCOURSE When the architect concerns himself with enquiring into ontological thought it is important to ensure there is a sense of control. This is not to mean control in an objective or scientific sense but to prescribe to a responsibility of the knowledge that has to do with the way we manipulate representation. This is true when we consider the “risk of falsifying architectural meaning�, as if such a control were to be ignored we may never seek justification in the representing abstract phenomena (Perez-Gomez, 1988).

Upon reflecting on the narrative and the contextual it is clear to see that they share no aesthetic relationship to one and other. Yet they are both interlinked on multiple levels where one does not constitute dominance over the other but instead interweave in and out of a meta-discourse between each other. This leaves the question of which one is the architectural intervention?

Is it the fictional realm of a kinetic beast that roams the landscape, amassing cultural information to assist in its understanding of the world? Or is it the film, in which we interact with a sea of projected phenomena? A third possibility may be the physical model where we glimpse into captured artefacts of cultural history (fig. 16,17). Here we find the fictional creature in physical form, displaying

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the now contextless objects viewed within the film.

The Avant-garde nature of this architecture becomes a speculative allegory for the infinitesimal “structure of our consciousness” and through “unity” between these interventions a fusion of interactive and fluid architectural reading becomes apparent (deleuze, 1988). When all three share meaning we allow for the simulation of adjustment, creating momentary lapses between fiction and reality where we are held in suspension. This suspension, if not challenging Heidegger’s claim, at least bares thought to an initial endeavour into assessing its theories.

By creating an interplay between Avant-garde architecture and philosophical theories the architect creates an opportunity within the language of representation to analyse and understand the human expression and action within our society (Tatla, 2011: 353). By adopting such hermeneutic theories we create for ourselves methods that are no longer grounded in traditional, architectural disciplines but instead play upon a revealing and concealing that is never absolute or objective.

It instead defines a method of representation that allows for the accumulation of knowledge, an evolution and growth in the extremities of architectural thought that never becomes finalised or complete but is re-articulated in numerous readings and indefinite meanings. This creates a platform for architects to play with contemporary fundamental questions that concern the self and through experimenting with the nature of interpretation we concern ourselves with the psycho-geography of our landscape, becoming able to represent abstract forms of architecture such as the examples noted in this work. Only now do we truly concern ourselves with further questioning architectural space and seek richness and depth within representing design.

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