1001 Words on Architecture

1001

Words on Architecture AN INTRODUCTORY READER

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HERE & THERE: PLACE ESSAY ON ARCHITECTURE MARC-ANTOINE LAUGIER (1753) THE PHENOMENON OF PLACE CHRISTIAN NORBERG-SCHULZ (1976)

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SOMETHING & NOTHING: SPACE SPACE - PROTAGONIST OF ARCHITECTURE BRUNO ZEVI (1957) SOLIDS AND CAVITIES IN ARCHITECTURE STEEN EILER RASMUSSEN (1959)

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PARTS & JOINTS: MATERIAL A WAY OF LOOKING AT THINGS PETER ZUMTHOR (1988) STAGED MATERIALITY / TWO BOOKSHOPS GERNOT BÖHME (1995)

TOYS & TOOLS: FUNCTIONS THE TALL OFFICE BUILDING ARTISTICALLY CONSIDERED LOUIS SULLIVAN (1986)

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THE MODERN FUNCTIONALIST BUILDING ADOLF BEHNE (1923)

YOU & ME: SOCIETY PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SPACE HERMAN HERTZBERGER (1991)

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PATTERNS OF EVENTS CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER (1979)

TO & FRO: SEQUENCES THE GESTURES OF PASSAGEWAYS WOLFGANG MEISENHEIMER (2007) WHY ARCHITECTURE MATTERS PAUL GOLDBERGER (2009)

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HERE & THERE: PLACE

Essay on Architecture Marc-Antoine Laugier (1753) (...)

It is the same in architecture as in all other arts: its principles are founded on simple nature, and nature‘s process clearly indicates its rules Let us look at man in his primitive state without any aid or guidance other than his natural instincts. He is in need of a place to rest.

On the banks of a quietly flowing brook he notices a stretch of grass; its fresh greenness is pleasing to his eyes, its tender down invites him; he is drawn there and, stretched out at leisure on this sparkling carpet, he thinks of nothing else but enjoying the gift of nature; he lacks nothing, he does not wish for anything.

But soon the scorching heat of the sun forces him to look for shelter.

A nearby forest draws him to its cooling shade; he runs to find a refuge in its depth, and there he is content. But suddenly mists are rising, swirling round and growing denser, until thick clouds cover the skies; soon, torrential rain pours down on this delightful forest.

The savage, in his leafy shelter, does not know how to protect himself from the uncomfortable damp that penetrates everywhere; he creeps into a nearby cave and, finding it HERE & THERE: PLACE

dry, he praises himself for his discovery.

But soon the darkness and foul air surrounding him make his stay unbearable again. He leaves and is reÂŹsolved to make good by his ingenuity the careless neglect of nature.

He wants to make himself a dwelling that protects.

An Essay on Architecture but does not bury him. Some fallen branches in the forest are the right material for his purpose; he chooses four of the strongest, raises them upright and arranges them in a square; across their top he lays four other branches; on these he hoists from two sides yet another row of branches which, inclining towards each other, meet at their highest point.

He then covers this kind of roof with leaves so closely packed that neither sun nor rain can penetrate. Thus, man is housed. Admittedly, the cold and heat will make him feel uncomfortÂŹable in this house which is open on all sides but soon he will fill in the space between two posts and feel secure.

Such is the course of simple nature; by imitating the natural process, art was born. All the splendors of architecture ever conceived have been modeled on the little rustic hut I have just described.

It is by approaching the simplicity of this first model that fundamental mistakes are avoided and true perfection is achieved.

The pieces of wood set upright have given us the idea of the 7

column; the pieces placed horizontally on top of them the idea of the entablature, the inclining pieces forming the roof the idea of the pediment.

This is what all masters of art have recognized. But take note of this: never has a principle been more fertile in its effect.

From now on it is easy to distinguish between the parts which are essential to the composition of an architectural Order and those which have been introduced by necessity or have been added by caprice.

The parts that are essential are the cause of beauty, the parts introduced by necessity because every license, the parts added by caprice cause every fault.

This calls for an explanation; I shall try to be as clear as possible.

Let us never lose sight of our little rustic hut. I can only see columns, a ceiling or entablature and a pointed roof forming at both ends what is called a pediment.

So far there is no vault, still less an arch, no pedestals, no attic, not evens a door or a window.

I therefore come to this conclusion: in an architectural Order only the column, the entablature and the General Principles of Architecture Pediment may form an essential part of its composition.

HERE & THERE: PLACE

If each of these parts is suitably placed and suitably formed. nothing else need be added to make the work perfect.

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The Phenomenon of Place

by Christian Norberg-Schulz (1976) Our everyday life-world consists of concrete „phenomena“.

It consists of people, of animals, of flowers, trees and forests, of stone, earth, wood and water, of towns, streets and houses, doors, windows and furniture. And it consists of sun, moon and stars, of drifting clouds, of night and day and changing seasons. But it also comprises of intangible phenomena such as feelings. This is what is „given“, this is the „content“ of our existence. Thus Rilke asks: „Are we perhaps here to say: house, bridge, fountain, gate, jug, fruit, tree, window, - at best column, tower…“. Everything else, such as atoms and molecules, numbers and all kinds of „data“, are abstractions or tools which are constructed to serve other purposes that those of everyday life. Today it is common to give more importance to the tools than our life-world.

The concrete things which constitute our given world are interrelated in complex and perhaps contradictory ways.

Some of the phenomena may for instance comprise others.

The forest consits of trees, and the town is made up of houses. „Landscape“ is such a comprehensive phenomenon. In general we may say that some phenomena form an „environment“ to others.

A concrete term for environment is place. It is common to say that acts and occurrences take place. In fact it is meaningless to imagine anything happening without reference to a locality. Place is evidently an integral part of existence.

What then, do we mean with the word „place“? Obviously HERE & THERE: PLACE

we mean something more than abstract location. We mean a totality made up of concrete things having material substance, shape, texture and colour. Together these things determine an „environmental character“, which is the essence of place. In general a place is given such a character or „atmosphere“. A place is therefore a qualitative, „total“ phenomenon, which we cannot reduce to any of its properties, such as spatial relationships, without losing its nature out of sight.

Everyday experience moreover tells us that different actions need different environments to take place in a satisfactory way. As a consequence towns and houses consist of a multitude of particular places. That fact is of course taken into consideration by current theory of planning and architecture, but so far the problem has been treated in a too abstract way. „Taking place“ is usually understood in a quantitative „functional“ sense, with implications such as spatial distribution and dimensioning. But are not „functions“ interhuman and similar everywhere? Evidently not. „Similar“ functions, even the most basic ones such as sleeping and eating, take place in very different ways, and demand places with different properties, in accordance with different cultural traditions and different environmental conditions. The functional approach therefore left out the place as a concrete „here“ having its particular identity.

Being qualitative totalities of a complex nature, places cannot be described by means of analytic, „scientific“ concepts. As a matter of principle science „abstracts“ from the given to arrive at neutral, „objective“ knowledge.

What is lost, however, is the everyday life-world, which ought to be the real concern of man in general and planners and architects in particular 2. Fortunately a way out of the 11

impasse exists, that is, the method of phenomenology.

Phenomenology was conceived as a „return to things“, as opposed to abstractions and mental constructions. So far phenomenologists have been mainly concerned with ontotlogy, psychology, ethics and to some extent aesthetics, and have given relatively little attention to the phenomenology of the daily environment. A few pioneer works however exist, but they hardly contain any direct refernce to architecture 3. A phenomenology of architecture is therefore urgently needed. (…)

In general we have to emphasize that all places have character, and that character is the basic mode in which the world is „given“. To some extent the character of a place is a function of time; it changes with the seasons, the course of the day and the weather, factors which above all determine conditions of light.

The character is determined by the material and formal constitution of the place. We must therefore ask: how is the ground on which we walk, how is the sky above our heads, or in general; how are the boundaries which define the place. How a boundary is depends upon its formal articulation, which is again related to the way it is „built“.

Looking at a building from this point of view, we have to consider how it rests on the ground and how it rises towards the sky. (…)

The structure of a place becomes manifest as environmental totalities which comprise the aspects of character and space. Such places are known as „countries“, „regions“, „landscapes“, „settlements“ and „buildings“. Here we return to the concrete „things“ of our everyday life-world, HERE & THERE: PLACE

which was our point of departure, and remember Rilke‘s words: „Are we perhaps here to say …“ When places are classified we should therefore use terms such as „island“, „promontory“, „bay“, „forest“, „grove“, or „square“, „street“, „courtyard“, and „floor“, „wall“, „ceiling“, „window“ and „door“.

Places are hence designated as nouns. This implies that they are considered real „things that exist“, which is the original meaning of the word „substantive“. Space, instead, as a system of relations, is denoted by prepositions. In our daily life we hardly talk about „space“, but about things that are „over“ or „under“, „before“ or „behind“ each other, or we use prepositions such as „at“, „in“, „within“, „on“, „upon“, „to“, „from“, „along“, „next“. All these prepositions denote topological relations of the kind mentioned before. Character, finally, is denoted by adjectives, as was indicated above. A character is a complex totality, and a single adjective evidently cannot cover more than one aspect of this totality. Often, however, a character is so distinct that one word seems sufficient to grasp its essence. We see, thus, that the very structure of everyday language confirms our analysis of place.

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SOMETHING & NOTHING: SPACE

Space - Protagonist of Architecture

by Bruno Zevi (1957) A satisfactory history of architecture has not yet been written, because we are still not accustomed to thinking in terms of space, and because historians of architecture have failed to apply a coherent method of studying buildings from a spatial point of view.

Everyone who has thought even casually about the subject knows that the specific property of architecture—the feature distinguishing it from all other forms of art—consists in its working with a three-dimensional vocabulary which includes man. Painting functions in two dimensions, even if it can suggest three or four. Sculpture works in three dimensions, but man remains apart, looking on from the outside.

Architecture, however, is like a great hollowed-out sculpture which man enters and apprehends by moving about within it.

When you want a house built, the architect shows you a rendering of one of the exterior views and perhaps a perspective sketch of the living room. Then he submits plans, elevations and cross-sections; in other words, he represents the architectural volume by breaking it down into the vertical and horizontal planes which enclose and divide it: floors, roof, exterior and interior walls. Our illiteracy regarding space derives mainly from the use of these means of representation, which have been carried over into technical books on the history of architecture and into popular histories of art, where they are supplemented by photographs.

The plan of a building, being nothing more than an abstract projection on a horizontal plane of all its walls, has SOMETHING & NOTHING: SPACE

reality only on paper and is justified only by the necessity of measuring the distances between the various elements of the construction for the practical execution of the work.

The facades and cross-sections of the exteriors and interiors serve to measure height. Architecture, however, does not consist in the sum of the width, length and height of the structural elements which enclose space, but in the void itself, the enclosed space in which man lives and moves.

What we are doing, then, is to consider as a complete representation of architecture what is nothing more than a practical device used by the architect to put on paper specific measurements for the use of the builder. For the purpose of learning how to look at architecture, this would be more or less equivalent to a method which described a painting by giving the dimensions of its frame, calculating the areas covered by the various colors and then reproducing each color separately. (…)

What, then, is architecture? And, perhaps equally important, what is non-architecture? Is it proper to identify architecture with a beautiful building and non-architecture with an ugly building? Is the distinction between architecture and non-architecture based on purely aesthetic criteria?

And what is „space,“ which we are calling „the protagonist of architecture“? How many dimensions does it have?

These are the basic questions, which present themselves in formulating a criticism of architecture. We shall try to answer them by beginning with the last, which is the most specific.

The facade and walls of a house, church or palace, no matter how beautiful they may be, are only the container, the box formed by the walls; the content is the internal space.

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(…)

How many dimensions, then, does space, this architectural „void,“ have? Five, ten, an infinite number perhaps. For our purpose it is enough to establish that architectural space cannot be defined in terms of the dimensions of painting and sculpture. The phenomenon of space becomes concrete reality only in architecture and therefore constitutes its specific character.

Having arrived at this point, the reader will understand that the question, „What is architecture?“, has already been answered. To say, as is usual, that architecture is „beautiful building“ and that non-architecture is „ugly building“ does not explain anything, because „ugly“ and „beautiful“ are relative terms. It would be necessary, in any case, first to formulate an analytic definition of „What is a building?“, which would mean starting once more from the beginning.

The most exact definition of architecture that can be given today is that which takes into account interior space. (…)

The experience of space, which we have indicated as characteristic of architecture, has its extension in the city, in the streets, squares, alleys and parks, in the playgrounds and in the gardens, wherever man has defined or limited a void and so has created an enclosed space. If, in the interior of a building, space is defined by six planes (floor, ceiling and four walls), this does not mean that a void enclosed by five planes instead of six—as, for example, a (roofless) courtyard or public square - cannot be regarded with equal validity as space. It is doubtful whether the experience of space one has in riding in an automobile along a straight highway through miles of uninhabited flatland can be defined as an architectural experience in our present use of SOMETHING & NOTHING: SPACE

the term, but it is certain that all urban space wherever the view is screened off, whether by stone walls or rows of trees or embankments, presents the same features we find in architectural space.

Since every architectural volume, every structure of walls, constitutes a boundary, a pause in the continuity of space, it is clear that every building functions in the creation of two kinds of space: its internal space, completely defined by the building its elf, and its external or urban space, defined by that building and the others around it. It is evident then that all those subjects which we have excluded as not being true architecture—bridges, obelisks, fountains, triumphal arches, groups of trees and, in particular, the facades of buildings—are brought into play in the creation of urban space. (…)

In conclusion, even if the other arts contribute to architecture, it is interior space, the space which surrounds and includes us, which is the basis for our judgment of a building, which determines the „yea“ or „nay“ of aesthetic pronouncement on architecture. All the rest is important or perhaps we should say can be important, but always in a Subordinate relation to the spatial idea. Whenever critics and historians lose sight of this hierarchy, they create confusion and accentuate the present disorientation in architecture.

That space—void—should be the protagonist of architecture is after all natural. Architecture is not art alone, it is not merely a reflection of conceptions of life or a portrait of Systems of living. Architecture is environment, the stage on which our lives unfold.

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Solids and Cavities in Architecture

by Steen Eiler Rasmussen (1959) The architect can become so interested in forming all the structural parts of a building that he loses sight of the fact that constructions is after all, only a means and not an end in itself. The elaborate exterior of Beauvais Cathedral was developed to make possible the fantastically high nave - not from any desire to create a spiked monument striving to pierce the heavens with its sharp points. But it is understandable that the architect can come to the conclusion that the aim of his calling is to give form to the materials he works with. According to his conception, building material is the medium of architecture.

But, you may ask, can there be any other? And the answer is yes; it is possible to have quite a different conception.

Instead of letting his imagination work with structural forms, with the solids of a building, the architect can work with the empty space - the cavity - between the solids, and consider the forming of that space as the real meaning of architecture.

This can be illustrated by an example. Ordinarily a building is made by assembling the materials on the site and with them erecting a structure, which encloses the space of the building. In the case of Beauvais the problem was to raise a church on a flat tract of land. But let us suppose the site to be an enormous, solid rock and the problem to hollow out rooms inside it. Then the architect‘s job would be to form space from eliminating material - in this case removing some rock. The material itself would not be given form though some of it would be left standing after most SOMETHING & NOTHING: SPACE

had been taken away.

In the first instance it is the stone mass of the cathedral which is the reality; in the second the cavities within the mass.

This can also be illustrated by a two-dimensional example, which may make it clearer.

If you paint a black vase on a white ground, you consider all the black as „figure“ and all the white as that which it really is - as background, which lies behind the figure and stretches out on both sides with no determination of form.

If we try to fix the figure in our minds we will note that at the bottom the foot spreads out on both sides and above it a number of convexities also project on to the white ground.

But if we consider the white as figure and the black as ground - for example, a hole in the figure opening into black space - then we see something quite different. Gone is the vase and in its stead are two faces in profile. Now the white becomes the convexities projecting out onto the black ground and forming nose, lips and chin.

We can shift our perception at will from one to the other, alternately seeing vase and profiles. But each time there must be an absolute change in perception. We cannot see both vase and profiles at the same time.

The strange thing is that we do not conceive the two figures as complementing each other. If you try to draw them you will involuntarily exaggerate the size of the area which at the moment appears as convexities. Ordinarily convex forms are seen as figure, concave as ground. This can be seen in the figure above. The outline here being a wavy line it is possible to see either black or white convexities, as you choose. But other figures, such as one with a scalloped edge, are not perceptually ambiguous.

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There are innumerable classic patterns which are identical no matter how you look at them. A good example is found in weavings in which the pattern on the reverse is a negative reproduction of the one on the right side. But most two-dimensional motives that are carried out in two colors force the observer to see one of the colors as figure and the other as ground.

In Carli in India there are a number of cave temples. They were actually created, as I have described above, by eliminating material - that is by forming cavities. Here the cavity is what we perceive while the solid rock surrounding is the neutral background which was left unshaped. However, here the problem is a more complicated one than in two-dimensional figures. When you stand inside the temple you not only experience the cavity - the great three-aisled temple hollowed out of the rock - but also the columns separating the aisles which are parts of the rock that were not removed.

I purposely use the word „cavity“ because I believe it illustrates this type of architecture better than the more neutral word „space“ so often used in architectural writings nowadays.

This question of terms is of great importance. German arthistorians use the word „Raum“ which has the same root as the English „room“ but a wider meaning. You can speak of the „Raum“ of a church in the sense of the clearly defined space enclosed within the outer walls. In Danish we use the word „rum“ which sounds even more like the English word but has the wider meaning of the German „Raum“. The Germans speak of Raumgefühl, meaning the sense or conception of the defined space. In English there is no equivalent. In this book I use the word space to express that which SOMETHING & NOTHING: SPACE

in three dimensions corresponds to „background“ in two dimensions, and cavity for the limited, architecturally formed space. And I maintain that some architects are „structureminded“, others „cavity-minded;“ some architectural periods work preferably with solids others with cavities.

It is possible to plan a building as a composition of cavities alone but in carrying it out the walls will almost inevitably have certain convexities which will intrude on the observer in the same way as the pillars in the Carli temples do.

Though we begin by conceiving the temples as compositions of architectural cavities, we end by experiencing the bodies of the columns. The opposite can happen. You see a house under construction and think of it as an airy skeleton, a structure of innumerable rafters sticking nakedly into the air. But if you return again when the house is finished and enter the building, you experience it in quite a different way. The original wooden skeleton is entirely erased from your memory. You no longer think of the walls as structures but only as screens which limit and enclose the volume of the rooms. In other words, you have gone from a conception of solids as the significant factor to a purely spatial conception. And though the architect may think of his building in terms of construction, he never looses sight of his final goal - the rooms he wishes to form.

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PARTS & JOINTS: MATERIAL

A Way of Looking at Things

by Peter Zumthor (1988) Work within things It must be said that one of the most impressive things about the music of Johann Sebastian Bach is its „architecture“. Its construction seems clear and transparent. It is possible to pursue the details of the melodic, harmonic, and rhythmical elements without losing the feeling for the composition as a whole - the whole that makes sense of the details. The music seems to be based upon a clear structure, and if we trace the individual threads of the musical fabric, it is possible to apprehend the rules that govern the structure of the music.

Construction is the art of making a meaningful whole out of many parts. I believe that the real core of all architectural work lies in the act of construction. At the point in time when the concrete materials are assembled and erected, the architecture we have been looking for become part of the real world.

I feel respect for the art of joining, the ability of craftsmen and engineers. I am impressed by the knowledge of how to make things, which lies at the bottom of human skill. I try to design buildings that are worthy of this knowledge and merit the challenge to this skill.

People often say „a lot of work went into this“ when they sense the care and skill that its maker has lavished on a carefully constructed object. the notion that our work is an integral part of what we accomplish takes us to the very limits of our musings about the value of a work of art, a PARTS & JOINTS: MATERIAL

work of architecture. Are the efforts and skill put into them really inherent parts of the things we make? Sometimes, when I am moved by a work of architecture in the same way as I am moved by music, literature, or a painting, i am tempted to think so. (...)

Chinks in the Sealed Object Buildings are artificial constructions. They consist of single parts which must be joined together. To a large degree, the quality of the finished object is determined by the quality of the joints.

In sculpture, there is a tradition that minimizes the expression of the joints and joins between the single parts in favor of the overall form. Richard Serra‘s steel objects, for example, look just as homogenous and integral as the stone and wood sculptures of older traditions. many of the installations and objects by artists of the 1960s and 70s rely on the simplest and most obvious methods of joining and connecting that we know. Beuys, Merz, and others often used loose settings in spaces, coils, folds, and layers when developing a whole from the individual parts. The direct, seemingly self-evident way in which these objects are put together is interesting. There is no interruption of the overall impression by small parts that have nothing to do with the object‘s statement. Our perception of the whole is not distracted by inessential details. Every touch, every join, every joint is there in order to reinforce the idea of the quite presence of the work.

When I design buildings, I try to give them this kind of presence. However, unlike the sculptor, i have to start with functional and technical requirements that represent the 27

fundamental task I have to fulfill. Architecture is always faced with the challenge of developing a whole out of innumerable details, out of various functions and forms, materials and dimensions. The architect must look for rational constructions and forms, for edges and joints, for the points where surfaces intersect and different materials meet. These formal details determine the sensitive transitins within the larger proportions of the building. the details establish the formal rhythm, the building‘s finely fractionated scale.

Details express what the basic idea of the design requires at the relevant point in the object: belonging or separation, tension or lightness, friction, solidity, fragility...

Details, when they are successful, are not mere decoration.

They do not distract or entertain. They lead to an understanding of the whole of which they are an inherent part.

There is a magical power in every completed, self-contained creation. It is as if we succumb to the magic of the fully developed architectural body. Our attention is caught, perhaps for the first time, by a detail such as two nails in the floor that hold the steel plates by the worn-out door-step.

Emotions well up. Something moves us.(...)

The tension inside the body Among all the drawings produced by architects, my favorites are the working drawings. Working drawings are detailed and objective. Created for the draftsmen who are to give the imagined object a material form, they are free of associative manipulation. they do not try to convince and impress like project drawings. they seem to be saying: „This is exactly how it will look.“ Working drawings are like anatomical drawings. they reveal something of the secret inner tension that the finished PARTS & JOINTS: MATERIAL

architectural body is reluctant to divulge: the art of joining, hidden geometry, the friction of materials, the inner forces of bearing and holding, the human work that is inherent in man-made things. (...)

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Staged Materiality

by Gernot Böhme (1995) In the old city of Constance there are two bookshops, only a few hundred meters apart, but so different from each other that one could believe, going from one to the other, that one was entering another world or time. The one Das Bücherschiff is approached by steps and a narrow entrance door.

It gives the impression of being jammed into a residential house: one passes through roomsunclearly and crookedly jammed into each other by steps. In actuality, the space is articulated not by walls, but by wooden beams of half- tombering, whose spaces are filled not with bricks and mortar but with books. The beams are what shape the athmosphere f this bookshop, yellowish brow., rather soft wood, corresponding to the warm light of the incandescent lamps. The wood gives the impression of being well-worn, irregularly hewn, old, but not aged; rather: matured. The athmosphere tempts to linger, to rummage. One feels no sense of beeing observed; one could belong there oneself. In the summer, they say, one can also drink tean in the courtyard of the bookshop.

Th other bookshop, Gess, entering at ground level, one slides, so to speak past the sales bins in the front, through the glass door, and onto a „conveyor-belt“ running at a angle trough the entire store, in actuality a marble passage. Following it one passes the stack of sale books and best-sellers and the cash register, quickly finding ones way to varoius departments clearly indicated on the walls. Towords the rear, the the store widens and receives a second floor, clearly marked, announcing its presence with a steel platform PARTS & JOINTS: MATERIAL

cutting into the marble path at an angle. Glas, marble, stainless steel, and metal surfaces clothed in elegant grey define the athmosphere here.(...)

The visit one feels must be quick and decisive. Information is at stake and this is the place to find it. Are these different worlds? Yes and no. The spatial organization and above all the dissimilar materials do in fact produce a feeling of being in different worlds. One result of this difference might be that the two shops would attract quite different clienteles and customer personality types. And for people of the sort who have “their” bookshop, the difference in the atmospheres of the two stores certainly will determine their priorities .But the fact that two bookshops, as is usual, have different areas of specialization - the one perhaps more visual arts and literature, the other more design, languages travel and pop psychology – is basically irrelevant. The retail book trade as a whole is so outstandingly organized – there is probably nothing in the entire world to compare to the German book trade – that one can order practically any book in any store and receive it the next day. Functionally considered all bookshops are alike they are terminals of the major retail booksellers. But in their atmosphere they are not alike at all. On the contrary: their functional sameness permits and indeed necessitates the differences in their aesthetic presentation. Precisely because the differences between two bookshops can scarcely be articulated functionally, they must be articulated in the design. The competition is a competition of atmospheres: here wood, rustically , and warm light, there chrome, glass, steel, and neon lighting and so the initial assessment is reversed. For what appeared at first glance to be the old and the new, the conservative and the progressive, the difference tow worlds, proves upon 31

closer examination to be the broad range of variation of a single world, the Modern or Post – Modern . Both variations are the product of design, the conscious creation of atmosphere, a theatre of, and by means of, materials.(...)

The materials the raw matter, is defined not by its character, but by functional equivalents. This gives rise on the one hand to the dominance of characterless materials in current production – of particle board, concrete, plastic. It leads to the systematic construction of materials as engineering technology: ceramics, alloys, crystalline structures and sophisticated hybrids of all three are developed with great ingenuity for specific functions. On the other hand, the character of materials becomes autonomous; materiality becomes pure outward form. Wood, glass, steel, and marble as elements of architecture and design no longer designate materials in themselves, but qualities of appearance, indeed the more characteristic, the better. Wood may still be wood, but oak is certainly a veneer and red oak a stain. Decades ago, Jean Baudrillard spoke of the valeurs d’ambiance. Nowadays this phrase should probably be translated as “theatrical value”.Paradigmatic for the rift between material and materiality, between the quality of the raw stuff and its theatrical value, is particle board. But of course the discrepancy between surfaces and inner structure that it epitomizes has precursors reaching back far into the past; not only related veneer techniques, but also architectural facings, stuccoed marble, enameling. In fact the materialist Semper’s own opera house is a prime example of the split between material and the staging of materiality, or materiality as theater: the marble columns are stucco, the wooden paneling is painted.This could bring us to the premature concusPARTS & JOINTS: MATERIAL

sion that the discrepancy between material and materiality is perennial phenomenon, a part of culture per se it were.

After all, weren’t the Egyptians already masters of surface finishing, and wasn’t objective of 2000 years of alchemy the semblance of matter, i.e. the production of materiality?

There is certainly truth in this. But one has to recognize that the interest in materiality as the reality of appearance is tied to particular cultural and economically-defined epoches, in short, to epoches of luxurious economy. And as far as alchemy is concerned: the absence of quantitative methods of description left no alternative but to define materials by the quality of their outward appearance. Only, such a definition necessitates the warning that not “all that glitters is gold”.

Materiality is thus revealed as a product of economic development and the state of science and technology.

The economy of developed industrial nations is dependent on the production of luxury articles. When basic need are satisfied and production for war decline, the maintenance of production levels and, indeed any growth at all depends on the demand for luxuries and on their artificial i.e. fashionable – or technological obsolescence. This leads to the dominance of the appearance value of products, of aesthetics over practicality. On the other hand the development of science has deepened the rift between essences and appearance and has made the definition of materials independent of their outward form. In effect, the progress of technology has situated the level of human creativity ever deeper within the material. For the Greeks, the prototype of creativity was the craftsman giving a particular form to given material (the carpenter, the stonemason). Today, the material itself is the actual object or creativity; what is created is its inner, not its outer form.

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TOYS & TOOLS: FUNCTIONS

The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered Louis Sullivan (1986) The architects of this land and generation are now brought face to face with something new under the sun namely, that evolution and integration of social conditions, that special grouping of them, that results in a demand for the erection of tall office buildings. (...)

Problem: How shall we impart to this sterile pile, this crude, harsh, brutal agglomeration, this stark, staring exclamation of eternal strife, the graciousness of these higher forms of sensibility and culture that rest on the lower and fiercer passions? How shall we proclaim from the dizzy height of this strange, weird, modern housetop the peaceful evangel of sentiment, of beauty, the cult of a higher life? (...)

All things in nature have a shape, that is to say, a form, an outward semblance, that tells us what they are, that distinguishes them from ourselves and from each other. Unfailing in nature these shapes express the inner life, the native quality of the animal, tree, bird, fish, that they present to us; they are so characteristic, so recognizable, that we say, simply, it is „natural“ it should be so. Yet the moment we peer beneath this surface of things, the moment we look through the tranquil reflection of ourselves and the clouds above us, down into the clear, fluent, unfathomable depth of nature, how startling is the silence of it, how amazing the flow of life, how absorbing the mystery. Unceasingly the essence of things is taking shape in the matter of things, and this unspeakable process we call birth and growth. Awhile TOYS & TOOLS: FUNCTIONS

the spirit and the matter fade away together, and it is this that we call decadence, death. These two happenings seem jointed and interdependent, blended into one like a bubble and its iridescence, and they seem borne along upon a slowly moving air. This air is wonderful post all understanding. 
 Yet to the steadfast eye of one standing upon the shore of things, looking chiefly and most lovingly upon that side on which the sun shines and that we feel joyously to be life, the heart is ever gladdened by the beauty, the exquisite spontaneity, with which life seeks and takes on its forms in an accord perfectly responsive to its needs. It seems ever as though the life and the form were absolutely one and inseparable so adequate is the sense of fulfillment.

Whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight or the open apple blossom the toiling work horse, the blithe swan, the branching oak, the winding stream at its base, the drifting clouds, over all the coursing sun, form ever follows function, and this is the law. Where function does not change form does not change. The granite rocks, the ever brooding hills, remain for ages; the lightning lives, comes into shape, and dies in a twinkling.

It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.

Shall we, then, daily violate this law in our art? Are we so 37

decadent, so imbecile, so utterly weak of eyesight, that we cannot perceive this truth so simple, so very simple? Is it indeed a truth so transparent that we see through it but do not see it? Is it really then, a very marvelous thing, or is it rather so commonplace, so everyday, so near a thing to us, that we cannot perceive that the shape, form, outward expression, design or whatever we may choose, of the tall office building should in the very nature of things follow the functions of the building, and that where the function does not change, the form is not to change?(...)

Does this not readily, clearly, and conclusively show that the lower one or two stories will take on a special character suited to the special needs, that the tiers of typical offices, having the same unchanging function, shall continue in the same unchanging form, and that as to the attic, specific and conclusive as it is in its very nature, its function shall equally be so in force, in significance, in continuity, in conclusiveness of outward expression? From this results, naturally, spontaneously, unwittingly, a three part division, not form any theory, symbol, or fancied logic.

And thus the design of the tall office building takes its place with all other architectural types made when architecture, as has happened once in many years, was a living art. Witness the Greek temple, the Gothic cathedral, the medieval fortress.

And thus, when native instinct and sensibility shall govern the exercise of our beloved art; when the known law, the respected law, shall be that form ever follows function; when our architects shall cease struggling and prattling handcuffed and vainglorious in the asylum of a foreign TOYS & TOOLS: FUNCTIONS

school; when it is truly felt, cheerfully accepted, that this law opens up the airy sunshine of green fields, and gives to us a freedom that the very beauty and sumptuousness of the outworking of the law itself as exhibited in nature will deter any sane, any sensitive man from changing into license, when it becomes evident that we are merely speaking a foreign language with a noticeable American accent, whereas each and every architect in the land might, under the benign influence of this law, express in the simples, most modes, most natural way that which it is in him to say; that he might really and would surely develop his own characteristic individuality, and that the architectural art with him would certainly become a living form of speech, a natural form of utterance, giving surcease to him and adding treasures small and great to the growing art of his land; when we know and feel that Nature is our friend, not our implacable enemy that an afternoon in the country, an hour by the sea, a full open view of one single day, through dawn, high noon, and twilight, will suggest to us so much that is rhythmical, deep, and eternal in the vast art of architecture, something so deep, so true, that all the narrow formalities, hand and fast rules, and strangling bonds of the schools cannot stifle it in us then it may be proclaimed that we are on the high road to a natural and satisfying art, an architecture that will live because it will be of the people, for the people, and by the people.

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The Modern Functionalist Building

by Adolf Behne (1923) Man originally builds for shelter - against cold, against animals, against foes. Necessity forces him, and if not for very definite, obvious and pressing needs, he would not build.

The character of his first buildings is purely functional; in essence they are tools.

However, by studying the beginnings of human culture we find that the practical is inseparable from the urge to play.

Primitive man is not a strict utilitarian. He also demonstrates his urge to play through his tools, which are well and nicely formed beyond the purely practical, which he paints and decorates with ornaments. These are evenly and beautifully formed, painted or decorated with ornaments beyond pure necessity.

The house as a „tool“ is no exception to this.From the very beginning the house is as much a toy as it is a tool. It is hard to say how long it remained in a balance between these two poles.In the course of history, we only rarely find it in balance. It was the urge to play that created the interest in form. Without this it would not be possible to understand, why the house as a „tool“ should have a good appearance and a particular design. It was the urge to play that gave rise to certain laws of form.

The laws of form changed from time to time. In the development of all building these are without a doubt the secondary element. However, throughout history the laws of TOYS & TOOLS: FUNCTIONS

form became the harder, firmer and stiffer principle - harder, firmer and stiffer than the pure fulfillment of the toollike functions. The consideration of form overwhelmed the consideration of function.

Returning to the functions always has a revolutionizing effect. It overthrows forms that have become dominant. By focusing on the original function from a neutral point of view a rejuvenated, vibrant and breathing form is created.

The nature of the building as a tool makes it a relativum.

The nature of the building as a toy makes it an absolutum.

The building must keep a balance between these two poles.

In the last centuries of the history of European building one cannot speak of balance. Form outweighed function and it seemed to be sufficient if the house functioned in spite of the form and if form did not negate function altogether.

Those buildings, that somehow managed to attract human attention, which were more than a fence or a shed - that was the form-building: the work of an artist. Its function was totally subordinated.Besides this there was also the functionbuilding - fence, shed, blockhouse, stable: the work of an anonymous builder.

The form-building and the function-building were worlds apart, as form and function were kept separate. Schinkel: „Two things have to be differentiated: practical needs and pure ideas. The former slowly evolves towards an ideal, the latter directly aims at that.“ Now, practice showed that the function-building was aesthetically not as bad as one would assume given its distance from form. It also showed that the form-building was not as attractive as one would have 41

expected given its superior air over the supposedly shallow functions. An experience that was proven time and again is that modern human beings with common sense rejected the form-buildings of their times and preferred looking at the function-buildings: steel bridges, cranes, factory halls.

How could that be possible?

The aesthetic sense had gone through a revolution. In the 1890s heavily loaded forms were compulsorily admired and art was equated to plaster. However, at the turn of the century, the joy of the light, the crisp and the clear broke through and eyes were opened for the beauty of the functional. The senses started to reject finding the superfluous beautiful and were willing to follow the logic of function. (…)

Attitudes had fundamentally changed. Architectural form was seen as dangerous and the fulfillment of functions almost as a guarantee for the evolution of a good building.

While previously it was believed that the artist had to work very skillfully to create a good building in spite of its function, it was now believed that the likelihood for the evolution of a good building was greater the less the architect was driven by formal ideas and the more he was guided by functional considerations. Buildings were, once again, seen as tools.

The concept of functional building took the place of the formal conception of the “art to build” – In former times the functional building used to be a specific group of buildings determined by its contents - a consensus in between the free creations of the building artist and the naked funcTOYS & TOOLS: FUNCTIONS

tionality aspired by engineers and technicians. Now every building is a functional building - that means it is approached according to its functions, to its purpose. Fulfilment of its purpose is a means of architectonical design, since Otto Wagner 1895 in „Baukunst unserer Zeit” stated „Something impractical cannot be beautiful.“

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5

YOU & ME: SOCIETY

Public and Private Space

by Herman Hertzberger (1991) The concepts ‚public‘ and ‚private‘ can be interpreted as the translation into spatial terms of ‚collective‘ and ‚individual‘. In a more absolute sense you could say: public - an area that is accessible to everyone at all times; responsibility for upkeep is held collectively; private - an area whose accessibility is determined by a small group or one person, with responsibility for upkeep.

The concepts ‚public‘ and ‚private‘ may be seen and understood in relative terms as a series of spatial qualities, which differing gradually, refer to accessibility, responsibility, the relation between private property and supervision of specific spatial units. (…)

An open area, room or space may be conceived either as a more or less private place or as a public area, depending on the degree of accessibility, the form of supervision, who uses it, who takes care of it, and their respective responsibilities. (…)

Your own room is private vis à vis the living room and e.g. the kitchen of the house you live in. You have a key to your own room, which you look after yourself. Care and maintenance of the living room and kitchen is basically a responsibility shared by those living in the house, all of whom have a key to the front door. In a school each class-room is private vis à vis the communal hall. This hall is in turn like the school as a whole, private vis à vis the street outside.

All over the world you encounter gradations of territorial claims with the attendant feeling of accessibility. Sometimes the degree of accessibility is a matter of legislation, YOU & ME: SOCIETY

but often it is exclusively a question of convention, which is respected by all. (…)

When, in designing each space and each segment, you are aware of the relevant degree of territorial claim and the concomitant forms of ‚accessibility‘ with respect to the adjoining spaces, then you can express these differences in the articulation of form, material, light and colour, and thereby introduce a certain ordering in the design as a whole.

This can in turn heighten the awareness of the inhabitants and visitors of how the building is composed of different ambiances as far as accessibility is concerned. The degree in which places and spaces are accessible offers standards for the design. The choice of architectonic motifs, their articulation, form and material are determined, in part, by the degree of accessibility required for a space. (…)

By marking the gradations of public accessibility of the different areas and parts of a building on a groundplan a sort of map showing the ‚territorial differentiation‘ will be obtained. This map will show clearly which aspects of accessibility exist in the architecture as such, which claims are laid on specific areas and by whom, and what kind of division of responsibilities for care and maintenance of the different spaces may be expected, so that these forces may be intensified (or attenuated) in the further elaboration of the plan. (…)

In the organization of a plan, as you design it in terms of groundplans and sections and also in the principle of installations, you can create the conditions for a greater sense of responsibility, and consequently also greater involvement in the arrangement and furnishsing of an area. Thus users become inhabitants. (…)

We must always look for the right balance between view 47

and seclusion, in other words for a spatial organization that will enable everyone in every situation to take in the position of his choice vis à vis the others. In the section devoted to articulation the concept of partition inevitably received more attention than that of combination, separation more than unification. Yet the openness of the different places is just as fundamental as their separateness, indeed the two are complementary, to that enclosedness and openness can each exist only by the grace of the other; they relate to each other dialectically, as it were.

The degree in which places are separate or open vis à vis each other, and the way in which that is done, lies in the hands of the designer, and consequently you can regulate the desired contact in a particular situation in such a way that privacy is ensured where that is required, while the range of vision of ‚the other‘ does not become too restricted.

By introducing differences in level the scope of possibilities is expanded, but with different levels, we must take into account that those who are higher up look down on the ones standing below; the positions are therefore not equal, and we must see to it that the ‚lower-downs‘ have the opportunity to avoid the gaze of the ‚higher-ups‘. (…)

Using elementary principles of spatial organization it is possible to introduce a great many gradations of seclusion and openness. The degree of seclusion, like the degree of openness, must be very carefully dosed, so that the conditions are created for a great variety of contacts ranging from ignoring those around you to wanting to be together, so that people can, in spatial terms anyway, place themselves vis à vis others as they choose. Also the individuality of all must of course be respected as much as possible, and we must indeed see to it that the constructed environment never imYOU & ME: SOCIETY

poses social contact, but at the same time we must never impose the absence of social contact either. The architect is not only a builder of walls, he is also and equally a builder of openings that offer views - both - walls and openings are crucial. (…)

Whatever an architect does are deliberately leaves undone - the way concerns himself with enclosing or opening - he always influences, intentionally or not, the most elementary forms of social relations. And even if social relations depend only to a limited extend on environmental factors, that is still sufficient reason to aim consciously at an organization of space that enables everyone to confront the other on an equal footing. (...)

Architects in general have a predilection for theatrical simplifications. Attunement to psychologically and socially inescapable factors was never a prime concern in architecture. Carefully calculated dimensions, a correct articulation and the right proportion of openness and seclusion are the starting-points for the shift in attention to the ‚habitable space between things‘.

The mere choice between a door opening outwards or inwards is in itself an indication of this inescapable responsibility - for the direction in which the door opens will decide whether everything that goes in the room can be seen at one glance upon entering, or whether those inside the room have the time to prepare themselves for your entrance.

For us a building is the sum of all those small gestures which, like the thousands of muscles in a ballet dancer‘s body, together create a unified whole. It is this grand total of decisions, provided they are taken with proper consideration and due care, that can result in a truly welcoming architecture.

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Patterns of Events

by Christopher Alexander (1979) Activities; events; forces; situations; lightning strikes; fish die; water flows; lovers quarrel; a cake burns; cats chase each other; a hummingbird sits outside my window; friends come by; my car breaks down; lover‘s reunion; children born; grandparents go broke ...

My life is made of episodes like this.

The life of every person, animal, plant, creature, is made of similar episodes.

The character of a place, then is given to it by the episodes which happen there.

Those of us who are concerned with buildings tend to forget too easily that all the life and soul of a place, all of our experiences there, depend not simply on the physical environment, but on the patterns of events which we experience there.

The life of a house, or of our town, is not given to it, directly, by the shape of its buildings, or by the ornament and plan - it is given to them by the quality of the events and situations we encounter there. Always it is our situations which allow us to be what we are.

It is the people around us, and the common ways we have of meeting them, of being with them, it is, in short, the ways of being which exist in our world, that make it possible for us to be alive.

We know, then, that what matters in a building or a town is not its outward shape, its physical geometry alone, but the events that happen there.

YOU & ME: SOCIETY

It is all the events which happen there - the human events given by the situations which are repeated, the mechanical events, the rush of trains, the fall of water, the slow cracking of structures, the growing of the grass, the melting of the snow, the rusting of iron, the flowering of roses, the heat of a summer‘s day, the cooking, loving, playing, dying, and not only of ourselves, but of the animals, and plants, and even of the inorganic processes which make the whole.

Of course, some events happen once in a lifetime; others happen more often; and some happen very often indeed.

But although it is true that a unique event can sometimes change our lives completely, or leave its mark on us, it is not too much to say that, by and large, the overall character of of our lives is given by those events which keep on recurring over and over again.

And, by the same token, it is roughly true that any system, any aspect of the life of a part of the world, is essentially governed by those situations, human or non-human - which keep on repeating there.

A building or a town is given its character, essentially, by those events which keep on happening there most often.

A field of grass is given its character, essentially, by those events which happen over and over again - millions upon millions of times. The germination of the grass seed, the blowing wind, the flowering of the grass, the movement of the worms, the hatching of the insects ...

A car is given its character by the vents which keep on happening there - the rolling of the wheels, the movement of the pistons in the cylinders, the limited to and fro of the steering wheel and axle, as the car changes direction.

A family is given its character by the particular events which keep on happening there - the small affections, kis51

ses, breakfast, the particular kinds of arguments which keep on happening, the way these arguments resolve themselves, the idiosyncrasies of people, both together and alone, which make us love them ...

And just the same is true in any person‘s individual life.

If I consider my life honestly, I see that it is governed by a certain very small number of patterns of events which I take part in over and over again.

Being in bed, having a shower, having breakfast in the kitchen, sitting in my study writing, walking in the garden, cooking and eating our common lunch at my office with friends, going to the movies, taking my family to eat at a restaurant, having a drink at a friend‘s house, driving on the freeway, going to bed again. There are a few more.

There are surprisingly few of these patterns of events in any person‘s way of life, perhaps no more than a dozen. Look at your own life and you will find the same. It is shocking at first, to see that there are so few patterns of events open to me.

Not that I want more of them. But when I see how very few of them there are, I begin to understand what huge effect these patterns have on my life, on my capacity to live. If these patterns are good for me, I can live well. If they are bad for me, I can‘t.

Of course, the standard patterns of events vary very much from person to person, and from culture to culture.

And indeed, the world does have a structure, just because these patterns of events which repeat themselves are always anchored in the space.

I cannot imagine any pattern of events without imagining a place where it is happening. I cannot think of sleeping, without imaging myself sleeping somewhere. Of course, I can YOU & ME: SOCIETY

imagine myself sleeping in different kinds of places - but these places all have at least certain physical geometrical characteristics in common. And I cannot think about the place without also knowing, or imagining, what happens there. I cannot think of a bedroom, without imagining the bed, lovemaking, sleeping, dressing perhaps, waking up ... breakfast in bed ...

The life which happens in a building or a town is not merely anchored in the space but made up from the space itself.

For since space is made up of these living elements, these labeled patterns of events in space, we see that what seems at first sight like the dead geometry we call a building or a town is indeed a quick thing, a living system, a collection of interacting, and adjacent, patterns of events in space, each one repeating certain events over and over again, yet always anchored by its place in space. And, if we hope to understand the life which happens in a building or a town, we must therefore try to understand the structure of the space itself.

We shall now try to find some way of understanding space which yields its patterns of events in a completely natural way, so that we can succeed in seeing patterns of events, and space, at once.

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TO & FROM: SEQUENCES

The Gestures of Passageways

by Wolfgang Meisenheimer (2007) The preconditioning denominator of every architectural place, all phenomena of habitability, is the building’s placement next to a patch, to an intersection, which allow for probabilities of a coming and going. There is no such thing as a building without streets leading the way onto to or away from it, without walkways, staircases, passages, doors. - Jacques Derrida Straight ahead! Turn right, turn left. Up the stairs! Down the stairs! Along the wall! An entire codex of architectural elements referring to directional commands of this kind, reflecting the phenomena of passageways in the broadest sense of the word. Their practical function as well as their qualities of expression, their gestures, resembles the architecture’s characteristics features particularly clear. Inside a hallway, outside a pathway, alongside a road, across a bridge - places potential happenings…

The features of architectural elements refer to movements to a virtual quality, they indicate from an inside point of view what might be happening. The void-space offers preliminary views and drafts onto an anticipated scope of occurrences. While places indicate the status of developed “coagulative” conditions, passageways represent the virtual sequencing of events. Time is being depicted in space as a phenomenon of the before-and-after, i.e. as a textwork, making the passenger (the person walking the passageway) turn into a person who reads the text. A passageway will have to paced out, an anteroom to be entered, a doorway to TO & FROM : SEQUENCES

be passed through in order to provide for the experience of the before-and-after. The door, the threshold, the stairway, the intersecting roads etc., may all be forms of spatial character; however, what is actually being proposed by their implementation is the scope of possible processes. Space and time being in this sense inseparably woven together, space containing the dimension of time as a virtual quality.

The formal structure of passageways reflects a scheme of body-movement, which addresses the passenger’s sense of pretension and retension (as phrased by Edmund Husserl, 1859-1938, Theory of Phenomenology), i.e. his sense of being directed forward as well his sense to reflectively looking backwards, in expectations and in memory. They propose as a set of movements to the body by referring to points of memory and desire, to advantages and experience.

If well-designed the built structure may assist the body in simplifying or channelling the movements it needs. Inside of a familiar structure we may repeat any of these movements blindly, with our eyes closed.

I am going to try presenting a repertoire of phenomena of passageways, elements and variables of their beginnings as of their endings and thresholds, being the main structuring elements throughout the course of a passageway. Also, the classic criteria of directional and sequential order. As a typological approach this sketch will finally be including phenomena of borderline position: spirals, labyrinths and the passageways of endless, pointlessly futile character.

The representation of passageways as a system of spatialtemporal structures, meaning the nation of movement, has so far not been accomplished within architectural discourse. Similarly within the discipline of dance, even though the existing efforts produced so far as in Feuillet’s 57

notations (Raoul Auger Feuillet, 1660-1710, a.o. ChorÊgraphie ou l’art de decrier la dance), from the court-dances of the French baroque to the writings of Laban (Rudolf J.- B. A. von Laban, 1879-1958, a.o. Labanotion), might be considerably instructive for tracing the analogues phenomena in architecture. Because : in seeking for new forms and approaches of architectural representation and its design, we not only have to understand its spatial- but also its actual parameters, i.e. the spatial quality in combination with bodily actions in context to dimensions of time. The most simple of activities are the movements of the human body and its devices, its vehicular tools etc.

Reversibility and non-reversibility of sequential events both being concepts of time - belong to the scenic environment of human culture. One of these concepts refers the schemes of movements - including those of architectural quality - to the bodily space ; sequential events remaining rhythm-related and irreversible; beginnings having a totally different character than endings, etc...

The other concept of time - including forms of architectural passageways - goes back to principles of the physical-chronometrical model, meaning an evenly working, in principle always reversible operation of the machine. The history of architecture proves that both concepts of time have their significance in the lay-out of constructed passageways, and that both of these structures influence the interior spaces, the building as well as the urban spaces in quite contrasting ways.

Sometimes a work of architecture is being anchored within forms of organic body space. A scenery like this tends to be finitely structured by drama, climaxes, pauses, modes of intensification. On other times a work of architecture is TO & FROM : SEQUENCES

oriented along concepts of physical schemes, in which case the forms of its passageways - very much like the technical dissemination of news content - remain reversible along with an infinite tendency.

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Why Architecture Matters Paul Goldberger (2009) (...)

The spatial quality of architecture is something you often begin to feel before you pass through the door. In an essay called “Whence and Whither: The Processional Element in Architecture,“ Philip Johnson wrote that what he called procession, the experience of moving through a building, was actually the most important element of all in architecture: “Architecture is surely not the design of space, certainly not the massing or organizing of volumes. These are auxiliary to the main point, which is the organization of procession. Architecture exists only in time.”

Johnson exaggerated for rhetorical effect, of course, since he hardly believed that shape and massing were not important. But he was not wrong. Architecture docs exist in real time, and our experience of it is frequently a function of our movement toward it and through it. Is there anyone who has not found the approach to the Taj Mahal as moving and as powerful as the building itself if not more so? Or felt the sense of mounting drama as you walk down the center aisle of a church? And, to turn to everyday experience, think of the pleasure of approaching an attractive suburban house by walking from the street to the front door, as the facade looms larger with each step, the Taj Mahal experience in miniature. Most of the time today, sad to say, this experience is lost when people arrive by car and drive to the side or the rear, and more often than not enter through a garage and a back door, missing everything. Rare are the houses, even new ones, that are designed to accept the reality of the TO & FROM : SEQUENCES

automobile not by putting it in a back or side garage and forcing everyone to use a back door but by a design that somehow makes the fact of arrival by car as a central idea, organizing a whole facade around automobile arrival so as to use it is a way to heighten rather than obscure architectural experience.

Frank Lloyd Wright had the notion of movement through his architecture always in mind. His characteristic low entrances were intended to give tis a sense of impression, to make the sensation as you move into a larger space beyond the entrance all the more dramatic. That is why you enter the Guggenheim Museum not directly into Wright’s extraordinary, seven-story high rotunda but into a low vestibule, and only after that does Wright`s great space reveal itself. Wright was nothing if not cinematic, and he designed always with an awareness of how people would move through his buildings and a desire to control that movement as best he could, like a director pacing the story as it unfolds. (‌) Mr Johnson understood that we first experience architecture from afar, watch it change as we move closer, and have (if we are lucky) an experience of great drama as we move, step by step, into it. And then we see it in different ways again when we stand inside and move around within its spaces. Architecture reveals itself in stages as we move toward it, and then space unfolds in stages as we move within it.

We may talk about proportion and materials and scale and composition when we stand still and look at a building. but that is still fundamentally a two-dimensional experience.

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Space adds a third dimension, and movement through space brings yet another dimension to the experience, the fourth dimension of time. So does movement toward a building. (…)

Chartres Cathedral exists in one form rising above the wheat fields of Beauce, in another as it commands the main square of the village of Chartres, and in still another when we enter its nave. First we see it as mass from afar, in the context of a regional landscape, with no sense of its texture or materials and only the most abstract impression of its shape: then, as part of a village, dominated by the form and feeling of its stone and its details now crisply and powerfully visible, and finally from within, as the light and color of the stained glass join with the stone vaults to define the nature of the space. Seeing Chatres in each of these ways is part of the experience of the building. All are necessary to understand it, and they need to be seen one after the other, as you move through space, towards the cathedral.

If architectural space connect inevitably to movement, a building’s plan, its interior layout, is the guide to that movement. The floor plans the building´s map. It dies not literally represent space, but it implies space. A plan you might say, is a two dimensional diagram of a building´s threedimensional reality. (…)

In a building of many rooms, the plan shows us the architects ideas for how spaces are arranged and for what your experience will be as you move from one to the next.

You can think of a plan how you enter and how you go fro there: what choices you have when you move beyond the entrance, which spaces are major and which ones are minor, TO & FROM : SEQUENCES

and how they all relate to one another. It shows that spaces have a hierarchy as well as a sequence.

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PICTURE CREDITS

HERE & THERE: PLACE PAGE 5 Walter de Maria, Lightning field, New Mexico, 1977, Collection Center for the Arts, New York image: http://www.kunstverein.de/veranstaltungen/ rueckblick/20100707-landart.php

SOMETHING & NOTHING: SPACE PAGE 15 Eduardo Cillida, Eulogy to the Horizon, sculpture of concrete, Gij贸n concrete, 1989 image: unknown

TOYS & TOOLS: FUNCTIONS PAGE 25 Sauerbruch.prothesis, 1930, Collection Helmholtz-Zentrum f眉r Kulturtechnik (HZK), Humbold University, Berlin

PARTS & JOINTS: MATERIAL PAGE 35 Detonation of the 80m high chimney of the Milchhof in N端rnberg, 2008 imge: http://www.curt.de/nbg/content/view/662/124/

YOU & ME: SOCIETY PAGE 45 Peter Handke, Die Stunde in der wir nichts voneinander wusseten, 1992 image: Theater heute 12/95, S.20

TO & FRO: SEQUENCES PAGE 55 Martin Scorses, Taxi driver image: French, Karl: Kunst von Filmregisseuren. Gerstenberg Verlag, Hildesheim, 2005, p. 170 - 173

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