Introduction and Spatial Grounding

The grounding of this dissertation begins with my experience of the Pantheon in Rome. Words cannot describe the sensation. The space was extraordinary, unlike anything I had ever felt before, it was breathtaking. The light, the enormity, the oculus, the sound... left me stunned, silent, astonished. Seven years later it happened again; I entered James Turrell’s Aten Reign at the Guggenheim in New York. The immensity, the light, the colour, the strangeness, the energy... moved me to bewildered awe and amazement. Though different from the Pantheon, the power of the room conjured the same absolute astonishment.

This dissertation uses new methods of immersive technology, film, and design that are rigorously grounded in historical and theoretical discourse to explore the field of astonishment in architecture. Researching great architectural experience through the theoretical realm of astonishment may expand into understanding, and potentially creating, great architectural spaces in future practice. The first chapter of the exegesis investigates a group of spatial practitioners whose work, influences, and writings resonate with extraordinary presence in architecture. The common threads across their work form the basis of the theoretical position of the ‘Ineffable,’ which is then contrasted to Edmund Burke, and Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of the ‘Sublime’ (Goldthwait 1960) and (Boulton 2008). In combining the notions of Burke and Kant with the observations of Juhani Pallasmaa, it is found that astonishment is the emotional reaction to the sensation of God, and it is at the intersection between the Ineffable and Sublime that astonishment might occur in architecture (Pallasmaa 2007). The tangible parameters of Light, Order and Material, and Infinity and Obscurity, are elicited from the Ineffable and Sublime respectively.

The next chapter of the exegesis will see these parameters investigated, while deeply grounded in historical precedent, through iteratively testing their outcomes when combined together in the design process to compose a mixed use tower in New York. ‘Looking Up,’ ‘Looking In,’ and ‘Looking Out’ are elicited from the initial precedent research as the three common modes of experience in extraordinary architectural spaces. Looking Up was further explored in the formative weeks (August 2014) in a research expedition to Canberra to film and experience James Turrell’s “Within Without” a dynamic oculus room, which was imperative to the later “Oculus Interrogations” in this dissertation. Foyer at ground, Pool at centre, and Meeting Place at peak, correlating respectively to the modes of experience, are the three spaces designed as the core of the tower. The investigations, taking place at Curtin University’s HIVE immersive research laboratory, begin simply, then refined to more intimate explorations, all experienced at one to one scale inside a spherical projection. The experience of each test is then observed, reflected upon and recorded in a digital Manuscript App, which allows all tests and reflections made throughout the research, including navigable spherical projections, to be experienced simultaneously at any time. The limitless capacity of the Manuscript also allows for continual expansion of the research beyond this dissertation.

The third chapter discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the interrogated tangible parameters, individually and combined, and the outcomes of the tower design, as depicted through film experience. Finally, the exegesis reflects on the knowledge gained and limitations of exploring astonishment in architecture, the opportunities for future research, and the power of sacred presence found in the near approximation of the final design spaces to architectural astonishment.