A 'sheer drop' in the room

A SHEER DROP IN THE ROOM Poetic and phenomenological approach to architecture

Davide Perottoni

A ‘sheer drop’ in the room Poetic and phenomenological approach to architecture

Davide Perottoni

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room

ABSTRACT This paper is about the new possibilities offered to designers by an approach to architecture that employs concepts from phenomenological philosophy and the poetics of space, as defined by Gaston Bachelard. This point of view takes into account all those environmental and poetical values of architectural space trying to define what are the factors at play in our perception of space and in the design of those spaces where perception and evocation are taken in consideration. In order to do so, the canonical knowledge of architecture is not enough to understand the power of architecture in affecting its users; measures and proportions, composition and styles, material and techniques affect only in part the overall experience of architecture. To understand why we feel spaces and not only see them it is necessary to look at architecture from a different point of view. I believe phenomenology as a framework of investigation can help unveil new features of space and a new understanding on the experience and design of architectural spaces. An introduction on what is architectural space and what it can do from this point of view will show how phenomenology can investigate this matters, the analysis of the famous book of Aldo Rossi will give an insight on how this point of view can cast new light on the process of design of this often cryptic architect. Through the concept of atmosphere the phenomenological approach can be explained in a more practical sense and that will allow the comparison of two very different architects that have nonetheless much in common in the way they approach design, namely Rossi again and Peter Zumthor. All of these considerations are then resumed to give – it is the hope and goal of this paper – a new vision of things.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. The Perception of Architecture experiences and qualities of architectural space 2. Phenomenology and the poetics of space a theoretical explanation on the way we think and experience architectural space 3. Scientific Autobiography the poetics of Aldo Rossi 4. Atmospheres the power of architectural space 5. Analogy and sensibility a comparison of works and methods: Aldo Rossi and Peter Zumthor 6. A way of looking at things the poetic and phenomenological approach to architecture

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room

THE PERCEPTION OF ARCHITECTURE Experiences and quality of architectural space Everyone has felt on his person the influence of space at least once. It could be the reflective feeling of a religious building, the reverence inspired by some institutional monument, the cosiness of the armchair next to the fireplace. This goes as well for the greatness of an alpine peak, the oppression and fear of a dark cave or the quietness of a sandy bay. Space, natural of artificial, has an influence on us, even when it is only imagined or dreamed. For the purpose of this paper, the interest is on architectural space, meaning by that any space that has been crafted and designed by human will. Architecture here is considered in the broadest sense possible, from urbanism to design. Although urbanism and design are two completely different practices, they both – in different ways – collaborate to the overall perception of a space and influence each other. Architectural space in this

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sense is the result of a work on multiple scales but it is the intention of this paper to show how all of the different disciplines of design come together in a single result: the creation of space. Therefore in a typical Parisian street – to make a simple example – the urban plan by Baron Haussman and the design of the shop windows come together in the realm of perception as a undividable whole. That is not to say that every kind of design has the same effect and the same role, for the sake of this exploration though what is most important is the fact that everything is considered at the human scale. Be it an urban plan for a metropolis or the detailing of a window frame, they are all experienced at the same scale, through one’s eyes.1 It should be noted that, even though the interest is on architectural space, it does not mean that natural features do not play a role. It is common knowledge that

1

“Eyes” is intended in the rhetorical sense of sensual perception as a whole,

not merely sight

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room

Figure 1 - Urban planning, architecture and nature come together in the perception of a space

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light is a crucial factor in the perception of space, be it the designer’s use of light features or the particular weather of a summer evening. The same goes for temperature and draft – or even wind – as well as for other natural features.

Even though light, air and climate are “natural” features of a space they can be controlled and incorporated into the design. Even if that is not done as a conscious design act, a perceptual understanding of space cannot exclude these factors. The second point that is important to make now is about the observer, or even better, the perceiver.

Even though this research is about investigating a method for designers to better understand the effect of space on people, this effect is not dependent from the perceiver awareness. More importantly, it is not an objective science that will produce laws and method to reapply to design. The belief is that the first step for the designer is to gain as much awareness as possible about the experience of space and of the richness this awareness can add to the act of designing. This does not mean that the more aware someone gets the better his/her work is

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room going to be. A good reader is not necessarily a good writer but good writers who are not good readers are quite rare.

Phenomenology is not necessary in order to be a good designer but it is a very fruitful way of gaining a deep understanding of space and its effects. Something very important when design is consider as the act of creation of space.

The question then is: what is the relation between space and architecture?

Architecture creates space. It may be the most important quality of architecture and the one that distinguishes it from other arts. Space is not only suggested, shown, evocated; space is redefined and created in all its conceptual and perceptual aspects in any architectural work, regardless of its quality; it is the space of life. Therefore creating space means being able to shape not only the “container” in which people carry on their lives but also to affect them as well. Space is, first of all, a place. It is the “here” of our lives. It is the things by which it is made and at the same time what allows those

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Figure 2 - The space created by the Greek theatre is not only about the architecture itself but about the surroundings as well

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room things to be; simultaneously the container and the contained. Space or chora, to use the words of Plato, “is simultaneously the work and the “space”, its ground or lighting; it is that which is unveiled, the “truth” embodied by art, and the “space” between the world and the experience”.2 Such a definition opens up a whole world of possibilities and investigations. Science tries to describe space, art to depict it and poetry to evoke it. Architecture creates it3, and it does so by defining and shaping it, by making place. Symptomatic of that is the Greek temple where the first and most important architectural act is that of defining the place in which it is to be build, the stylobate is the temple itself.4 Architecture in this sense is the setting forth of a world, or to use Heidegger’s words:

2

Holl, S., Pallasmaa, J., & Pèrez-Gòmez, A. (2006). Questions of perception: phenomenology of architecture. San Francisco: William Stout Publishers. p.18 3 In a very interesting and different way, music creates space as well even if not in the way we are accustomed to. Music and architecture are often associated both by the common man and the scholar; for reasons of rhythm, proportion, colour and so on. Those features are not the essence of neither of those arts though, just the way in which they take shape and show themselves.

4 Le Corbusier has discussed this in his famous Vers une architecture confirming the permanence of this fundamental principle of the definition of space throughout centuries

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“The temple work standing there opens up a world and at the same time sets this world back again on earth, which itself only thus emerges as native ground.”5 The definition of space allows for all of the secondary qualities of architecture to appear. Identity and memory need places to root themselves and find a place in the world. Space can act as a symbol, an inspiration or an attraction, employing a wide array of semantics and features as vast as that of our experience of life. As Baudelaire said “In certain, almost supernatural inner state, the depth of life is entirely revealed in the spectacle, however ordinary, that we have before our eyes, and which becomes the symbol of it.”6 Architecture transcends space. While architecture creates space, when this creation is particularly effective space is simultaneously transcended as well. The meaning of this is a perception of space that goes beyond its

5

Heidegger, M. (2008). Basic Writings. New York: Routledge. p. 107 Baudelaire, C., Journaux Intimes – quoted in Bachelard, G. (1994). The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press. p.192 6

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room geometrical boundaries; touching the realm of poetics and imagination the act of perception is an active one that can yield quite unexpected results if it is looked at closely.

Gaston Bachelard in his insightful book takes the reader on a tour of familiar spaces exploring sides of them that are simply indescribable if we stay fixed on a Euclidean conception of the environment that gives a much proclaimed objective – but so poor and thin – understanding of space. Only if we think that space can transcend itself we are able to understand what Rossi means when he says that there was a sheer drop in the room.7 As Bachelard points out “the poetical image is no longer descriptive, but resolutely inspirational.”8 It is not only a prerogative of the poet to be inspired, the reason why his work has an effect on us – Bachelard would say it reverberates – is that we can be inspired by space and things, establishing a connection that stems from

7

Rossi, A. (1982). Scientific Autobiography. New York: Oppositions books. p.37 8 Bachelard, G. (1994). The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press. p.53

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Figure 3 - The play of light and architectural detail creates a space that goes beyond its geometrical boundaries

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room phenomena to reach different levels of understanding.

Architecture inspires. It may not be common knowledge that architecture has an influence on people but it is common to use adjectives such as inviting, serious, calming and so on to define architectural spaces. It is again Bachelard who shows us how we use categories of human behavior to define spaces, “in the house Bachelard discovers a metaphor of humanness”. 9 How can an inanimate arrangement of matter have the character qualities of a being? Of course a brick is neither sad nor happy and it can never become such; once many bricks are spatially arranged though, the miracle of architecture happens and the brick cannot anymore be thought only as a rectangular piece of clay, it has become a constituent part of space with all its intertwining relations. Space, as the place of our being, in influencing us is given all the attributes that are stirred up in ourselves by its

9

Stilgoe, J., R. in Bachelard, G. (1994). The Poetics of Space.

Boston: Beacon Press. p.vii

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experience, therefore achieving characters of humanness through its effect on us. Understanding this concept helps to explain the power of architecture to inspire, from the feeling of reverence inspired in the believer by the tall and bright dome to the uneasiness felt in a dark, unhospitable alley. Bachelard talks about a “physically working intimacy” in the house; something is at work in the relation between space and the person. When Zumthor says that whenever he design a kitchen he thinks about his grandmother’s10 it does not mean that he is trying to replicate the same setting but to set into being the same kind of relation, the same kind of feeling his grandmother’s kitchen had on him as a child. He wants to “revive that vibrant atmosphere”. This does not mean that the same setting has the same effect on anyone; the communication is not a direct one from signifier to signified.

Architecture

communicates.

Similar

and

sometimes coincident to the empathic quality expressed

10

Zumthor, P. (2010). Thinking Architecture. Basel: Birkhäuser. p.7-8

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room above, architecture is a mean of communication much wider than that of stirring up feelings. Architecture, being the symbol of the physical control of man over its environment has developed a rich semantic, which can be very explicit and very subtle according to the case. In ancient times the sight of pillars and gable was the immediate sign of a sacred place as much as today anyone recognizes a gas station. Architecture – as every means of communication – is a language in itself; it has structure, grammar, syntax and so on. As for any language this is about symbols and convention, its communicability in this sense depends on them. That does not mean that when the meaning of a symbol is lost the symbol itself becomes meaningless. Being dependent on history and culture – as any other language – meanings can change or be forgotten but they do not completely impair the value and the communication power of architecture itself. A good example is the triangular pediment, which was used in ancient times only for sacred architecture, being adopted

by Palladio for his famous villas and therefore spread all

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Figure 4 - The house and the girl are both "characters" of the scene in this frame from Terry G

Davide Perottoni

Figure 4 - The house and the girl are both "characters" of the scene in this frame from Terry Gilliam’s Tideland

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room over Europe. Even though the reason for such a switch is most probably an archaeological mistake we cannot say that the actual result is faulty. These linguistic meanings of architecture enrich understanding but they are not the only way architecture has to communicate. The communicative power of architecture goes even deeper than conventional signs, as Venturi and Scott-Brown have shown11, simpler things as the dimensions and features of a window, or the morphology of an entrance, can convey many different meanings to the observer. We are not talking here about the secrets of the profession that the trained eye can see; it is instead a common interpretation of things that is still effective even though its origins are forgotten. In an ever more subtle way architectural space can communicate intimacy or publicness, can invite to be used or to discourage its use. Spatial configurations are perceived as meaningful. This understanding is probably one of the deeper and most immediate way by which we

11

Venturi, R., Scott-Brown, D., & Izenour, S. (1972). Learning From Las Vegas.

Cambridge, London: MIT Press.

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mediate space, through our instinctual ability to deal with the environment. Architecture speaks to us all the time but because of this non-stop rhythm of information we deal with it without even realizing it, as we are so used to this continue relation with the environment that we carry it on automatically.

Architecture is perceived phenomenologically. It is the goal of this paper to show that the way in which architectural space is able to convey all the qualities discussed above can be understood through a phenomenological analysis of perception. This is because space is rich of features and quality as well as the ways in which we perceive it and relate to it. It is the conviction of phenomenology that in order to gain an understanding of this everything has to be observed as is, as a whole.

Surpassing a merely psychological, historical or any other specialized approach; going back to perception means to go back at the things themselves. This is not an infallible

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room method or a tool to use; it is “a way of looking at things”.12 As Merleau-Ponty has said: The problem is to understand these strange relations woven between the parts of the landscape, or from the landscape to me as an embodied subject, relations by which I perceive an object can condense within itself an entire scene or become the imago of an entire segment of life. Sensing is this living communication with the world that makes it present to us as the familiar place of our lives.13

12

Zumthor, P. (2010). Thinking Architecture. Basel: Birkhäuser. p.7 Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012). Phenomenology of Perception. New York: Routledge, p.55-53 13

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Figure 5 - The strange relations woven between landscape and subject

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room

PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE POETICS OF SPACE A theoretical explanation on the way we think and experience architectural space What is phenomenology? To use the words of Merleau-Ponty it is “a philosophy for which the world is always “already there” prior to reflection – like an inalienable presence – and whose entire effort is to rediscover this naïve contact with the world in order to finally raise it to philosophical status.”14 It is the branch of philosophy that deals directly with phenomena as they appear to us, it tries to understand the way in which we place ourselves in the world in relation to what is around us. The phenomenological analysis discards psychological, cultural, social and any somewhat pre-formed notion in order to reach a sensorial comprehension of things.

Phenomena are consider in themselves as the constituents of our world and any notion can be

14

Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012). Phenomenology of Perception. New York: Routledge. p.lxx

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developed only starting from the understanding of this hierarchy, any concept of thought is developed starting from these impressions that we filter from the milieu of “stuff” we live in. Phenomenology though, does not filter; it does not evaluate things but only tries to describe them.

The phenomenological approach is a naïve one; in the sense that is does not look for meanings or rules but it let the thing itself have its effected on the senses. Perception is the key, free to happen and yield whatever kind of result

or

output;

to

approach

something

phenomenologically is to let this process happen and to observe its happening. In the usual context of objectivity and rationality, where things have to be categorized and “made sense of” in order to be useful and understandable this may seem like a useless approach. This naïve approach though, is that which allows the observer employing this point of view to grasp the infinite density of perception, where any sensual given is not a simple input to be catalogued in a pre-made conception of the world but it is a meaning in itself, showing the incessant

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room

Figure 6 - Even a monochrome painting can be filled with “being”

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communication between being and its presence in the world.

He who sees and touches in not exactly myself, because the visible world and the tangible world are not the world in its entirety. When I see an object I always feel that there is still something being beyond what I currently see, and not merely more visible being, but also more tangible or audible being, and not merely more sensible being, but moreover a depth of the object that no sensory withdrawal will ever fully exhaust.15 As already stated, “sensing is this living communication with the world� 16 , and this kind of communication is a very deep and rich one. The relation between the world and our sensible beings is what makes it possible for us to deal with reality and to make a

15

Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012). Phenomenology of Perception. New York: Routledge. p.224 16 Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012). Phenomenology of Perception. New York: Routledge. p.55-53

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room meaning out of existence. This starts to give an understanding about what it means to think with the senses. Senses are the ways in which we negotiate with the world and through them, make sense of it all. Our body schema is the Rosetta’s stone through which we understand and deal with things. It is not though a scheme of thought as we commonly think about it. It is more like the medium through which we measure things.

The Vitruvian man, made notorious by Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawing, is the expression of this understanding, centuries before phenomenology became a discipline.

The way in which we understand the world through our body is not an intellectual one. It is not dependent on talent, intelligence or education simply because it has nothing to do with what we normally consider understanding, as being able to place a new information in a mental scheme that allows us to put it in relation with our knowledge. Although we may say that the communication,

or

understanding,

by

phenomenology explains the relation between

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which

Davide Perottoni

Figure 6 - Leonardo Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room phenomena and ourselves works in the same way, the framework of knowledge employed is of a completely different nature. It is a knowledge of the senses, deprived of intellectual notions and mediations; things speak to us for what they are to our senses and in relation with the all-comprehensive milieu of sensations we are immersed in. It is important to consider that even though we are talking about senses it would be a mistake to consider them as we are used to, which is completely independent from each other and clearly defined into five categories.

The synthesis of the senses for phenomenology cannot be consider simply as the sum of vision, touch and so on; sensing is considered in a totality where the skin has eyes and vice versa. 17 This is very important in order to understand the deep way in which space has influence on us; this relation can be understood only if we consider space and its perception as a single omni-comprehensive

17

In order to understand this we must put aside the division and uniqueness of the senses to consider them as a single “sensor” that perceives vision together with touch, smell and so on; this incredible sensor is nothing else than our body, or body schema, prior to its dissemblance in different parts by a posteriori reflection

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thing whose reflective analysis forced into categories of thought can express only a small part.

We have the experience of a world, not in the sense of a system of relations that fully determine each event, but in the sense of an open totality whose synthesis can never be completed.18 Space communicates with us but in a way that is deeper then rational thought or intellectual reflections, we need a phenomenological approach in order to regain this immense richness of stimuli and be aware of them.

Not being aware of them does not mean that they are not at work though. As said before if we think about it anyone can recall some experience of space that is not explainable if considered only through the light of reason, whose luminescence may be bright but whose reaches are still very shallow. Luckily, phenomenology shows us a way to gaze into this immenseness and try to make sense

18

Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012). Phenomenology of Perception. New York: Routledge. p.227-228

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room of it all. The reason for it is not the simple pleasure of awareness but it allows us to unveil characteristics of space that are more appealing to the poet that to the builder, opening the way to an understandings of the poetics of our world.

The fantasies of the dream, those of the myth, each man’s favourite images, or finally the poetic image are not connected to their sense through a relation of sign to signification […] they genuinely contain their sense, which is not a notional sense, but a direction of our existence. […] I do not reduce them to their physical appearance in the waking world and consider them with all of their existential implications.19 By looking at things in this way we open up a new relation with them, we are able to connect with their essence and explain this communication between space

19

Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012). Phenomenology of Perception. New York: Routledge. p.298

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and being as a newfound awareness that reveals the inner relation between poetic and reality. Gaston Bachelard has expressed some of this is his seminal book The poetics of space; in the book he analyses the way in which we experience space with particular consideration to its poetic, evocative, power. To do so, from the start he says that in order to understand a poetical image we need to use a phenomenological approach beginning

of

perception

20

to get to the

where

the

deepest

communication between phenomena and ourselves occurs. Bachelard speaks about reverberation as the way in which we feel things most deeply: Through

this

immediately

reverberation, beyond

all

by

going

psychology

or

psychoanalysis, we feel a poetic power rising naively

within

us.

After

the

original

reverberation, we are able to experience resonances,

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sentimental

repercussions,

Bachelard, G. (1994). The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press. p.xvi

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room reminders of our past. But the image has touched the depths before it stirs the surface.21 Employing the phenomenological approach and drawing from literature and experience Bachelard shows us how much this kind of perception is important to understand the world of the imagination and poetics whose spaces are all around us, waiting to be recognised.

The tour he takes us on visits the house and the spaces of intimacy giving new light to those images that we can recognise as canonical literary figures as well as halfforgotten memories and impressions. The whole exposition of images and feelings puts in clear view those poetics that even though they may not be recognised are present in anyone of us and with whom we relate, at least at the level of the senses if not of consciousness.

Bachelard shows how imagination can inhabit space, how we can make an impression our own and how we can

21

Bachelard, G. (1994). The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press. p.xxiii

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Figure 8 - Whithout cultural schemes attraction can come from the most diverse sources

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room reach a richer feeling of being in the world by considering the richness of interpretation and inputs it can offer. He proves “that imagination augments the values of reality”.

In order to explore these poetic qualities of space he employs phenomenology as the philosophical framework through which to look at things and literature as the mean to show the practical output of this particular experience of the world. Literature in this sense gives us the mean to investigate the multiplicity of factors that are at play in the identification, definition and creation of a poetic image; it is the art that most immediately and explicitly is able to show the phenomenological milieu in which the poet lives and create. It is interesting to mark this here because literature – even though it does not have the ability to create space like architecture – is the most effective mean to investigate the effect of space on ourselves in all its complexity. It is not a case then that it has been suggested as a methodological approach to both

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understanding and producing space22, or that we will find it later as source of inspiration and learning tool for architects23 as well as a mean to describe complex spatial situation that cannot be rendered otherwise.24 Particularly

in

the

phenomenological

approach to architecture [‌] writing can evoke architectural images and expose how architecture is related to and fused with human mental worlds.25

22

Havik, K. (2014). Urban Literacy: reading and writing architecture.

Rotterdam: nai010.

23 Rossi, A. (1982). Scientific Autobiography. New York: Oppositions books.

24 Zumthor, P. (2008). Atmosfere. Milano: Electa.

25 Havik, K. (2014). Urban Literacy: reading and writing architecture.

Rotterdam: nai010. p.14

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room

SCIENTIFIC AUTOBIOGRAPHY The poetics of Aldo Rossi Aldo Rossi is a very interesting figure to show how the approach advocated by this paper can help understand some otherwise obscure sides of theory and practice. He was a world famous architect, Pritzker laureate and important teacher and theorist. In his life he always advocated “rational architecture” and his most famous book, The Architecture of the City 26 , made him and his theory famous and appreciated worldwide.

Regardless of his interest for morphology, history and the study of the city as a rational science to be applied to a rational architecture, Rossi was not an architect of dogmas or of blindly applied scientifically sound rules. His architecture is like a painting by De Chirico taking form in the tridimensional world; one may agree with Rossi’s architecture or not but it surely is difficult to understand

26

Rossi, A. (1984). The Architecture of the city. Cambridge: MIT Press.

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his term rational as something cold and freed of inspiration. The reasons for this apparent contrast are multiple; it is not the goal of this paper to explore the didactic project carried on by Rossi and the Tendenza group or his theories on city form and typologies. Those sides of Rossi’s work are clearly and declaredly rational, it is when they get declined into an actual project – or even just a drawing – that we start to see how Rossi’s design process and realized projects are only partly “rational”. It is easy to see this in drawing and projects, in the playfulness of colours and volumes, in the constant reiteration of shapes and suggestions. Typical aspects of Italian architecture, from the vernacular ones to the modern architecture learned through is mentor E. N. Rogers 27 , are present in his work but only after their transformation through the analogical process Rossi always applies. This is no sterile copy-paste, nor simple

27

Rogers was part of B.B.P.R. architects, a very important group in the modernist movement in Italy, both in terms of didactic and practice. Rossi as is pupil worked as his assistant in the Polytechnic of Milan and later with him in Casabella Continuità magazine when Rogers was the chief editor.

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room formalism. It is evident for those who want to look at it that Rossi’s architecture in retaining those familiar features that we recognize at the same time transforms them, adding a new value to them that may be difficult to grasp but is quite evident to the sensible eye. It is exactly the act of adding a new or different value, to simple things that seems to be the key of Rossi’s poetic and the reason behind this “poetically rational” architecture of his. It is in this act of analogical metamorphosis, as Scully calls it28, that we will find the key to the poetic of Aldo Rossi. In the act of designing, memory, things, spaces and impressions all come together to transform and give value to the repertoire of form and techniques that are assembled into imagined or constructed architecture. This contrast between rationality and poetic, the attention toward things and simple spatial situations and the way in which memories and impressions are formulated and developed into the architectural process is exactly the reason why

28

Scully, V., L’ideologia della forma in Rossi, A. (2009). Autobiografia Scientifica. Milano: Il Saggiatore. p. 125

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Figure 9 - Aldo Rossi: the analytical process "unfolded"

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room Rossi is so interesting for the topic of this paper. In his book, Scientific Autobiography29, his process, inspirations and architecture are linked together unveiling a poetic understanding of architecture that is very much in line with the approach discussed here.

From the outset, one immediately realize this is no rational treatise; suggestions from memory are mixed with academic considerations, monuments confused with small hotels. Everything is put under a flickering light that casts unsure and ever-changing shadows over the intimate world that we are invited to explore guided by the author. Those who are looking for the final revelation, searching for the secret formulas of Rossi’s talent will not be satisfied. A clear explanation is hardly ever given, but something is there; we can feel it by visiting some of the most effective buildings he realized, by gazing at his drawings, by listening to the images and obsessions he shares with the reader. The way the book is written entails

29

Rossi, A. (2009). Autobiografia Scientifica. Milano: Il Saggiatore.

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the interested reader who seems to be invited to share with Rossi his most intimate affections and personal memories. It is as though for Rossi to explain his process and his interest in architecture is possible only to a certain point; after that, the reader has to follow him in a world that is made of impressions instead of rules, of feelings instead of proportions and historical data. To use again the beautiful words written by Scully “this is the great power of Rossi: he allows his eyes to concentrate on the non-rational life of things, which unfolds in the mind of man, but doesn’t coincide with his reason.” 30 Reading Rossi’s book, looking at his drawings and architectures we can feel this non-rational life of things but it isn’t made clear in any way why or how this is happening.

What is it then that is actually there? How can a poem about the sound of some flags become an architecture where people live?31 Before continuing, a

30

Scully, V., L’ideologia della forma in Rossi, A. (2009). Autobiografia Scientifica. Milano: Il Saggiatore. p. 123, my translation 31 Rossi, A. (1978). L'Architettura della Città. Milano: Clup. p.

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room

Figure 10 - Rational and irrational are mixed through memory and analogy

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note should be done: it is not necessary to understand in order to appreciate, not in this case at least. Awareness here is not important in order for the work to function, to have an effect on us. Awareness is important in order for the designer or the critic to understand the reason behind things, if not the meaning. That does not mean that Rossi’s poetic is made to be some kind of reproducible canon, which would be unproductive and useless. The reason is the belief that an understanding of these processes is always productive for designer and critic.

Although the work of Rossi has many self-proclaimed followers – the worth of whose is left undiscussed here – the goal here is not to increase their number but simply to present a process that, if better understood, would maybe produce less little-Rossi and more aware architects.

The metaphysical presence of the buildings in the Modena cemetery can be felt without knowing how or why it was evocated, the playfulness and richness of some drawings – where the scale is that of the mind, not that of

44

A ‘sheer drop’ in the room reality – can be enjoyed and looked at with marvel even without understanding why someone should draw coffeemakers as big as buildings or why that draws us to it. The Scientific Autobiography in itself does very little to make sense out of the chaos it presents us with, it is not very different from buildings or drawings; basically it is only a different medium. Nonetheless, writing even when confused is only so in a rhetorical way; “writing is fatally clear”32 and we can analyse it in the hope to find a way into Rossi’s thought.

Phenomenology – especially Bachelard – helps us in clarifying Rossi’s vagueness. The attraction of Rossi toward things, his continuous reference to memory and analogy are immediately made clear. Bachelard taught us that we can see a universe in a drop of water and perceive a shepherd hut as the most splendid of mansions. What Rossi does in his book – maybe not so clearly even to himself – is showing us how he perceives, remembers and

32

Barthes, R. (1969), Introduzione all’analisi strutturale dei racconti. Milano: Bompiani. p.16

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Davide Perottoni

designs things employing this poetic method of looking at things.

I could ask myself what does real mean in architecture. For example a dimensional, functional, stylistic, technological matter: I could write a treatise. But I think instead about this light house, about a memory, about one summer.33 This way of looking at things seems to be the key to understand Rossi position toward design. He calls it his “formal education”, looking at things as “final moments of a complex system, of an energy that was visible only in these facts”34. This complex system – the life of objects – is made particularly explicit in Rossi’s drawing when this attention unveils new meanings and new values in things; a building structure is literally conceived as a skeleton, churches become small artefacts as big as their

33

Rossi, A. (2009). Autobiografia Scientifica. Milano: Il Saggiatore., my translation 34 Rossi, A. (2009). Autobiografia Scientifica. Milano: Il Saggiatore. p. 18, my translation

46

A ‘sheer drop’ in the room photograph and coffeemakers reach the sizes of buildings.

This formal sensibility, far for being some sterile formalism, is the act of giving new light to things, of changing their value through the assimilation of memory and suggestions. It is Bachelard again who explains how “objects that are cherished in this way, really are born of an intimate light, and they attain to a higher degree of reality than indifferent objects, or those that are defined by geometric reality.”35 We now understand what Rossi means when he says he think of a lighthouse, a memory, a summer. All of these things are constantly thought over, repeated, remixed and re-evaluated under the light of memory through that analytical process that is the signature style of Rossi. Evidence of that can be find in his many drawings and projects where spatial situations, objects and memories are constantly repeated and reelaborated. Famous for this are his Elba Island changing rooms about which he writes “I wanted to reduce the

35

Bachelard, G. (1994). The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press. p.68

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Davide Perottoni

Figure 11 - The Elba cabins, title of the drawing: "Another Summer"

48

A ‘sheer drop’ in the room house to these values felt in the seasons”.36 Through this process of memory and drawing, he re-creates a simple everyday architecture embodied with feelings and memory from his summer holidays. This is no different than what many “poets of houses” quoted by Bachelard do in their poems, it is exactly his reading of a house as a live being representing the life of the inhabitants that helps us understand how can Rossi see the feelings of seasons in a small wooden box with a door and a pediment.

A long list of reflections and suggestions unfolds, strikingly similar to those of Bachelard. The interest for things in a deeper way than that of function and form unveils a poetic approach to reality that is very similar to the one advocated by the French philosopher. Memory as a storage of impressions and feelings that intertwine themselves with reality giving it new values and

36

Rossi, A. (2009). Autobiografia Scientifica. Milano: Il Saggiatore. p.

67

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Davide Perottoni

meanings; formalism not as a mere attention to shape but as the outer representation of an inner reality that is revealed through the eyes of imagination and empathy.

All of this is carried out in a constant contrast between real and unreal, between the interest for the masonry worker and the poet, social life and intimate memories.

Archetypes and analogies, impressions and scientific facts are alchemically mixed together giving as a result something very familiar but at the same time new. The courtyard of the school in Fagnano Olona is almost a stage setting of life, it seems a very plain and unpretentious spatial configuration of regular types but it unveils a key point in Rossi’s architecture, the strive toward what he calls a “mute” architecture. The process described above while enriching the architecture with memory and meaning at the same time makes it familiar and silent. No surprise then when we read that in admiring Hopper’s paintings Rossi said to have understood his architecture,

50

A ‘sheer drop’ in the room made of timeless miracles, of “the things that are only themselves”37.

The things that are only themselves. Reading this and looking at Hopper’s paintings, it is easy to think about the way phenomenology understands reality. This ability to appreciate phenomena as miracles, as beautiful things that must be felt, not expressed.

This does not mean that Rossi was interested in phenomenology or that he read the work of Bachelard.

He surely does not really speak much of the reasons behind this approach, conceiving it as of something that is part of his being and not a method he has learned somewhere. Even so, to the reader accustomed to phenomenology some expressions will sound familiar; for example, when he praises Loos for his great discovery in architecture, “identifying yourself with the thing through observation and description”.

37

38

A relation with

Rossi, A. (2009). Autobiografia Scientifica. Milano: Il Saggiatore. p. 25, my translation 38 Rossi, A. (2009). Autobiografia Scientifica. Milano: Il Saggiatore. p. 70, my translation

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Davide Perottoni

phenomenology can be traced to the person of Enzo Paci, a philosopher from Husserl’s school who worked with Rossi on some editorial projects 39 , but it is not really important here to define whether or not Rossi’s work was consciously done employing the point of view of this paper. Instead, it is clear that this kind of reading gives a better understanding of the fascinations and methods employed by Rossi in conceiving and designing his architecture.

39

Olmo, C. (1988). Across the Texts. Assemblage, N. 5, p. 93

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room

ATMOSPHERES The power of architectural space “Atmosphere is my style”, writes the painter J. M. W. Turner to J. Ruskin in 1844.40 We are all quite familiar with the word and use it fairly often, surely much more than phenomenology or poetics of space. Nonetheless, what does atmosphere mean and by what is it defined?

To begin from experience we may say it is something we feel, it is like the character of a place, at the same time defined by every feature but not identifiable in any of them. Character as we would say for a person, is that overall feeling we have about someone which can be traced in actions and features but not defined as a thing independent from those. To use a simple but effective example, let us try to think about facial expressions. We can immediately tell from the face of a person whether he/she is happy, sad, hangry and so on. At the same time

40

Quote from Zumthor, P. (2008). Atmosfere. Milano: Electa. p.5

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Davide Perottoni

– and this is well known by painters – a single feature like lips or eyebrows can alter completely the emotion conveyed by changing even in the slightest way. This does not mean that the whole expression was dependent from that feature only, or that only that particular configuration can covey that determinate expression; what we are looking at here is the power of the overall configuration to be perceived by us as a whole – phenomenologically – and gain a meaning in itself that is immediately communicated without an understanding of the role of the various parts. In the same sense, we can think about the atmosphere we associate with space, as a sensorial configuration that can be perceived and understood only as a whole.

This creates a problem with atmosphere, although we can perceive it quite easily and be aware of this perception if we care to; reaching a definition of it is a much more difficult thing. Havik, Teerds and Tielens use a phrase from poet J. L. Borges to explain this complex matter of awareness versus understanding: “We might

54

A ‘sheer drop’ in the room

Figure 12 - Architecture, nature, people and weather blend together into the atmosphere of the place

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Davide Perottoni

say that we know something only when we are unable to define it…This is what we know what poetry is. We know it so well that we cannot define it.” 41 This may be the reason as of why there are so many different definitions of atmosphere in architecture books and description of spaces. It can relate to emotions, memory, symbols, detailing, empathy; the list could easily go on for a while.

Keeping in mind the phenomenological approach set for this paper, an analysis of perception as thought by Merleau-Ponty is able to unveil many ambiguities we seem to have found in the concept of atmosphere. If we apply that framework, we understand that identifying an atmosphere only through the feeling we are living it by, or by any single or composite feature we may think of does not make sense. Atmosphere, from this point of view, is nothing else then the effect of perception – considered phenomenologically, as a whole – on ourselves. We discussed already that from the phenomenological point

41

Borges, J. L. (2000). This Craft of Verses. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room of view it makes no sense to separate seeing from touching, and in the same way, we cannot separate the amount of light from the texture of the material it illuminates. Considered in a wider sense, when we say we feel an atmosphere, we are feeling the effect of this perception, we are allowing space to influence us without filtering it through categories or concepts; indeed as soon as we do start to filter and analyse, we may grasp more details but we lose the full picture and with that the power that space has on us.

Why then do we not always feel this thing? What is it that in certain situation makes us stop in our tracks in the middle of a square, gazing around for everything and nothing at the same time? Peter Zumthor is openly very interesting in this topic, so much that he published a book about it42 and says many times how the atmosphere of a space is the thing he tries to achieve most in his projects.

He defines atmosphere as the quality of a space which is

42

Zumthor, P. (2002). Atmospheres. Basel: Birkhäuser.

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Davide Perottoni

able to reach us emotionally 43 , as that quality which reaches us more immediately than any other because, to paraphrase Zumthor, it is the kind of perception that works faster because it is the one humans need in order to survive. Although Zumthor does not expressly say it, the relation to the phenomenological perception is quite obvious. All this is founded in the belief that “men and things influence each other”44 and that is the theme on which Zumthor’s architecture is build. He does that through the careful attention to materials and crafts, by closely looking at context and history but at the same time letting himself be fascinated by a painting or a movie. This proves again how wide this realm of perception is and how much can be accounted for a seemingly simple and obvious concept, that of atmosphere.

As

Zumthor

points

out,

the

concept

of

atmospheres is not only an objective feature; it does not depend on formalism and spatial configuration, or even

43 44

Zumthor, P. (2008). Atmosfere. Milano: Electa. p. 11 Zumthor, P. (2008). Atmosfere. Milano: Electa. p. 17

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room objective sensations. When we are considering this kind of perception – the most abstract and elevate one but at the same time the most immediate, close to the world itself – both objective and subjective features come to play. As Gernot Böhme points out 45 atmosphere is a conjunction of personal and emotional experiences of space, the result of the interaction between objective architectural features and subjective perception. In both Zumthor and Rossi, this seems to come together when they talk about architecture in a practical point of view and at the same time about memory and impressions, arts and literature.

Such a manifold concept, where opposite things interact – rational and irrational, objective and subjective – makes this definition of atmosphere apparently absurd.

Phenomenology again, even though it does not use the term atmosphere, helps us to understand this apparent duality.

45

Böhme, G. (2013). Encountering Atmospheres. OASE #91 - Building Atmospheres, 93-100.

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Davide Perottoni

Figure 13 - The atmosphere of a place cannot be defined by its singular features

60

A ‘sheer drop’ in the room As long as we acknowledge the dream, madness, or perception as, at the very least, absence of reflection […] then we do not have the right to level out all experiences into a single world, nor all modalities of existence into a single consciousness. […] things are taken to be the incarnation of what they express, because their human signification rushes into them and is presented, literally, as what they mean.46 It is easy then to understand the play of real and unreal both Bachelard and Rossi talk about even if in different ways; and the depth and wideness the concept of atmosphere can have in the perception of space. This definition of duality between objective and subjective perspective helps us to understand why we say that even though the effect of space is real for everyone it does not necessarily mean that everyone feels it in the same way

46

Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012). Phenomenology of Perception. New York: Routledge. p. 303

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or that there can be a formula to solve the uncertainty.

The communicability is much deeper than the simple relation signifier-signified, as Bachelard puts it; it is an ontological problem. 47 As both Bachelard and MerleauPonty say, this is not a problem of causality, it is reverberation. The concept is very similar to that of music, it is as though we can perceive things because we are attuned to them. That is what stops you in your track when you perceive this image rising, it is what carves a view in your mind. It is what Böhme means by sensitivity when he describes atmosphere as “mindful physical presence in space”.48 When we talk about subjective perception and irrational, or memory and impressions, it is not to go toward a psychological approach. Psychology tries to explain the reason for something that has already happened; it comes after the image has had its influence.

47

Bachelard, G. (1994). The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press. p. xvii Böhme, G. (2013). Encountering Atmospheres. OASE #91 - Building Atmospheres, 93-100.

48

62

A ‘sheer drop’ in the room As Bachelard writes in a quite sharp language, when the psychoanalyst abandons ontological investigation of the image to look into the past of man, he explains the image through the man’s history, “he explains the flower by the fertilizer”.49 Of course, the two things are connected and related to each other but not in a direct and casual way.

C. G. Jung, one of the fathers of modern psychology and psychoanalysis, makes this quite clear: [by persisting in the habits of judgement inherent

in

psychoanalysis],

interest

is

diverted from the work of art and loses itself in the inextricable chaos of psychological antecedents; the poet becomes a ‘clinical case’, an example, to which is given a certain number in the psychopathia sexualis. Thus the psychoanalysis of a work of art moves away from its object and carries the discussion onto a domain of general human interest, which is

49

Bachelard, G. (1994). The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press. p. xxx

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not in the least peculiar to the artist and, particularly, has no importance for his art.50

50

Jung, C. G. (1928). “On the relation of analytical psychology to the poetic art” in Contributions to Analytical Psychology. New York: Harcourt – quoted in Bachelard, G. (1994). The Poetics of Space.

Boston: Beacon Press. p. xxxi-xxxii

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room

ANALOGY AND SENSIBILITY A comparison of works and methods, Aldo Rossi and Peter Zumthor To understand the practical application of the approach advocated in this paper it is interesting to compare two very successful and very different architects.

Thanks to their interest and their works, as well as their writing, we can compare Rossi and Zumthor to understand how different works and methods can be analysed and understood through the same approach, proving the universality of the approach itself. Reading the Scientific Autobiography and Thinking Architecture we start to get an understanding of the two different approaches while at the same time finding some similarities. The same attention is given to memory, personal experiences as well as poetic, and artistic references related to the architectural conception. The sensibility toward things and phenomena is translated

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into two different architectural results but is strong in both cases.

The

two

architects

intentionally

stage

architectural spaces, creating atmospheres of strong impact and giving a personal identity to the environment thus defined. Nonetheless, even though it is relatively easy to find relations and similarities, the two would doubtfully be put on the same chapter in any architectural history book. This is exactly what makes this comparison interesting and productive, the phenomenological approach to architecture, far from being the determinant of a style, is a way for looking at things and considering them in a way that has to be mediated by the author ensuring the highest amount of freedom. It can enrich both Rossi’s rational architecture and Zumthor material sensibility; they both employ this approach on their own terms with a completely different architectural output but with the same phenomenological value.

This is probably the main value of the phenomenological approach to architecture, it enriches

66

A ‘sheer drop’ in the room

Figure 14 - Play of light and shadow by Aldo Rossi

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Davide Perottoni

the work and the methods without homologating them; it traces a continuity in the history of architecture that starts from the prehistorical hut and arrives – throughout all styles and periods – at Zumthor’s chapel or Rossi’s Modena Cemetery.

Many themes are common between Rossi and Zumthor, one of the most important ones is their attention to reality, everydayness, and as they say: “the things themselves”. Both of them, in different ways declare to owe much to their childhood memories; experiences of space ranging from the hotel on the lake which Rossi says has become his own architecture to the kitchen of Zumthor’s grandma which always comes to him when he think about those homely impressions. Their attention for particular kind of spaces, like the Spanish ones preferred by Rossi or the Swiss villages described by Zumthor both attest a particular sensibility, one that mediated

by

Bachelard

seems

right

to

call

phenomenological. Be it a coffeemaker or a tool, an hotel or a kitchen, this fascination for things and memory is the

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room

Figure 15 - Play of light and shadow by Peter Zumthor

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Davide Perottoni

tell-tale sign of the poetical approach to reality which allows both architects to use their personal experience not only for themselves but to create something that will be that much effective for others as well. Both of them are very interested in history and context, in the reworking of typology and the awareness of the impact of a building on a site. Again, this kind of attention is a methodological one that is not always carried out with strictly academicals tools. Zumthor writes: “When I work on a design I allow myself to be guided by images and moods that I remember and can relate to the kind of architecture I am looking for”51 while Rossi confesses: “It is sure that some things are unthinkable if not related to the emotion with which they were lived. There are form me some extremely important facts, also in a formal sense, that I can hardly express.”52 Again, the impression is very similar but it is quite difficult to say that this similarities yield the same built result.

51 52

Zumthor, P. (2010). Thinking Architecture. Basel: Birkhäuser. p.27 Rossi, A. (2009). Autobiografia Scientifica. Milano: Il Saggiatore. p. 27

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room One of the first thing that differentiate Rossi and Zumthor is their approach to details and materiality in architecture. Zumthor, also thanks to his education as a cabinetmaker,

has

a

profound

sensibility

for

materialization and for details. He is an architect that, as Pallasmaa would say, works with the senses.53 When he describes his impressions as well as his design, materials and sensuous qualities end up dominating the discourse in the end. His sensibility is that of the craftsman. Memory, fascinations and experiences are transformed into materiality and connections, light and temperature; reaching the kind of attunement necessary for the communication of the poetic image. Bachelard’s reverberation is felt through the sensual qualities of the architecture. In this sense, Rossi is completely different.

Whereas Zumthor looks at the anatomy of architecture in construction drawings Rossi thinks of anatomy in a much

53

Pallasmaa, J. “An Architecture of the seven senses” in Holl, S., Pallasmaa, J., & Pèrez-Gòmez, A. (2006). Questions of perception: phenomenology of architecture. San Francisco: William Stout Publishers.

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more abstract sense, so much that the house of death of the Cemetery of Modena becomes a real skeleton in his drawings through the association with a personal experience.54 The sensual qualities advocated by Pallasmaa and applied by Zumthor find a common ground in the poetics of space described by Bachelard and executed by Rossi in the realm of phenomenology. Here the essence of things is made visible and communicated by either their haptic quality or their composition, but no matter the final method with which it is brought into the real world, the power behind both approaches is the same. They are able to discard canonized languages and formal expression to go back at the things themselves; it is not a surprise then that both architects are looking for an architecture that does not speak up, that is silent or mute.55

54

Rossi had a serious car accident at the time he started designing the cemetery, keeping him in bed for a long time and making him “feelâ€? the bones in his body 55 Zumthor, P. (2010). Thinking Architecture. Basel: Birkhäuser. p.33 and Rossi, A. (2009). Autobiografia Scientifica. Milano: Il Saggiatore. p. 71

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room

A WAY OF LOOKING AT THINGS The poetic and phenomenological approach to architecture What this paper advocates is not a set of rules or a particular toolbox to be employed by the architect. The goal and the interest here is to explore a way of looking at things. The conviction is that space is the main matter with which an architect works and what this essay hopes to have made clear is the fact that space is not just a passive container or a stage for our lives. The relation with space is that which defines the real, the world we live in.

It is by getting back to the things themselves that we gain an understanding of this relation and its importance. As Merleau-Ponty points out 56 , knowledge and our entire frame of thinking stems from the observation and dialectics between the person and the world. This

56

Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012). Phenomenology of Perception. New York: Routledge.

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Figure 15 - A way of looking at things that unveils new layers of reality

74

A ‘sheer drop’ in the room produces science and culture, taste and habits, behaviours and feelings. All of these things though – even if originating from our relation with phenomena – take a distance from the phenomena and their apprehension as sought by phenomenology. It is by going back to the things themselves – a phrase for which even the serious scholar Heidegger uses an exclamation mark57 – that we can see all canonical knowledge from a new light. It may seem paradoxical that an act that seems to bear the highest abstraction is actually very practical, literally down to earth. Back to the things themselves! Looking for meanings that are not attributed but are present in themselves.

Phenomenology here is considered also in the way it is employed by Bachelard to analyse the relation with spaces in a more subjective and poetic way. Again, it is a way of looking at things, of being aware of the values we give and receive from a space toward which we have

57

Heidegger, M. (2008). Basic Writings. New York: Routledge. p. 35

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empathy. Empathy, or it would maybe be better to say sensibility, is a fundamental quality to break down the vision of things as a sterile empirical observation. Here we can see what phenomenology can be when we compare it to empiricism. While the latter considers experience as an objective acquisition of facts that can be generalized and become universal, the former considers experience in a much more direct and deep way. Here is the richness of this approach, phenomenology does not look for laws and generalized objectivity, it looks deeper into things in that elemental way which far from being dim or simplistic is the most open and universal one. It is not then about appearances – not at least in the common use of the term – but about essences. Only in this way “the penetrating gaze of the little window” 58 can find place in academic knowledge and not be simply a beautiful poetical description or a senseless phrase.

58

Bachelard, G. (1994). The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press. p. 50

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room

Figure 17 - Space is to be experienced

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Davide Perottoni

In a period when the concept rules over the artefact and the meaning is not to be found in the work itself but in its contextualisation in an increasingly complicated structure of thought, phenomenology frees both the critic and the designer by giving them a more essential way of considering things. The act of looking at things is of course not relegated only to the organ of sight.

It means to be able to find the essence of a project in the line of a poem, the way the light baths a particular surface or a childhood memory; it is to feel materials and proportions instead of calculating them59, to understand that the mansion and the hut are not mere typological variations of the act of dwelling.

To use the words of Pallasmaa, this paper is an attempt to counteract “the current over-emphasis on the intellectual on conceptual dimensions of architecture [that] further contributes to a disappearance of the

59

The first thing that comes to my mind in this sense is the anecdote about Louis Kahn talking to a brick in his studio, asking the material to say how to be used

78

A ‘sheer drop’ in the room physical, sensual and embodied essence of architecture”60.

We can render space in words and pictures as much as we like, but space is to be lived, not represented.

60

Pallasmaa, J., An Architecture of the Seven Senses in Holl, S., Pallasmaa, J., & Pèrez-Gòmez, A. (2006). Questions of perception: phenomenology of architecture. San Francisco: William Stout Publishers. p.29

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A ‘sheer drop’ in the room

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Arnheim, R. (2011). Arte e percezione visiva.

Milano: Feltrinelli.



Bachelard, G. (1994). The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press.



Böhme, G. (2013). Atmospheres as mindful physical presence in space. OASE #91 - Building Atmospheres, 33-52.



Böhme, G. (2013). Encountering Atmospheres.

OASE #91 - Building Atmospheres, 93-100.



Calvino, I. (1996). Le città invisibili. Mondadori.



De Botton, A. (2007). The architecture of happiness. London: Penguin Books.



Havik, K. (2014). Urban Literacy: reading and writing architecture. Rotterdam: nai010.

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

Havik, K., Teerds, H., & Tielsen, G. (2013). Editorial: Building Atmospheres. OASE #91 - Building Atmospheres, 3-12.



Healy, P. (2003). Bachelard: The Phenomenology of the Image. In P. Healy, Beauty and the sublime (p. 105-113). Amsterdam: SUN.



Heidegger, M. (2008). Basic Writings. New York: Routledge.



Holl, S., Pallasmaa, J., & Pèrez-Gòmez, A. (2006).

Questions of perception: phenomenology of architecture.

San

Francisco:

William

Stout

Publishers. 

Lobsinger, M. L. (2002). That Obscure Object of Desire: Autobiography and Repetition in the Work of Aldo Rossi. Grey Room, No. 8, 38-61.



Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012). Phenomenology of Perception. New York: Routledge.



O' Byrne, B., & Healy, P. (2008). Architecture and Phenomenology. Footprint 3, p. 1-5.

82

A ‘sheer drop’ in the room 

Oliviero, A. (2015). Lo spazialismo tra arte e scienza. Prometeo n.129, 102-107.



Olmo, C. (1988). Across the Texts. Assemblage, N. 5, 90-121.



Plummer, H. (2009). The Architecture of Natural Light. London: Thames & Hudson.



Rossi, A. (1978). L'Architettura della Città. Milano: Clup.



Rossi, A. (2009). Autobiografia Scientifica. Milano: Il Saggiatore.



Rossi, A. (2012). Scritti scelti sull'architettura e la città 1956-1972. Macerata: Quodlibet.



Rossi, A., & Huet, B. (1997). Architecture, Furniture and Some of My Dogs. Perspecta, Vol. 28, Architects. Process. Inspiration, 94-113.



Stout, F. (2014). Tout est poesie. Eindhoven.



Turan, B. (1998). Is "Rational" KNowledge of Architecture Possible? Science and Poiesis in

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"L'Architettura

della

Città".

Journal

of

Architectural Education, Vol. 51, No. 3, 158-165. 

Venturi, R., Scott-Brown, D., & Izenour, S. (1972).

Learning From Las Vegas. Cambridge, London: MIT Press.



Zumthor, P. (2008). Atmosfere. Milano: Electa.



Zumthor, P. (2010). Thinking Architecture. Basel: Birkhäuser.

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LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 – San Marco square, Venice source: 1ms.net

Figure 2 – Greek theatre in Segesta, Sicily photo by the author

Figure 3 – Pantheon Dome, Rome photo by the author

Figure 4 – Screenshot from the movie Tideland by Terry Gilliam Figure 5 – Elliott Erwitt, New York Figure 6 – Yves Klein, Blue source: adventuresineurasia.files.wordpress.com

Figure 7 – Leonardo Da Vinci, Vitruvian Man Figure 8 – Slodounik, H., At the San Francisco Museum of Art, an abstract gets close scrutiny Figure 9 – Aldo Rossi, Sine Titulo Figure 10 – Aldo Rossi, Costruzioni in collina Figure 11 – Aldo Rossi, Un’altra estate Figure 12 – Turner, J. M. W., Ancient Rome Figure 13 – Aldo Rossi, Fountain source: Rossi, A. (1999). Tutte le opere. Electa: Milano.

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Davide Perottoni

Figure 14 – Peter Zumthor, Bruder Klaus Field Chapel photo: Hélène Binet

Figure 15 – Aldo Rossi, Modena Cemetery source: Rossi, A. (1999). Tutte le opere. Electa: Milano.

Figure 16 – Man Ray, Le Violon d’Ingres Figure 17 – James Turrell, Skyspaces

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Mit gelben Birnen hänget Und voll mit wilden Rosen Das Land in den See, Ihr holden Schwäne, Und trunken von Küssen Tunkt ihr das Haupt Ins heilignüchterne Wasser.

Wehr mir, wo nehm’ ich, wenn Es Winter ist, die Blumen, und wo Den Sonnenschein, Und Schatten der Erde?

Die Mauern stehn Sprachlos und kalt, im Winde Klirren die Fahnen.

Hälfte des Lebens F. Hölderlin

TUDelft Spring 2015 Davide Perottoni davide@perottoni.com