03 Architectural Theories

Figure 25: Making of A Room, Louis Kahn 3.1 ‘Society of Room’ - Louis Kahn

Architecture can provoke strong emotions and experiences just like poems. Louis Kahn talks about buildings as societies of rooms, architecture comes from the making of a room. Kahn researched the essence of a building is by meeting the most basic human desires that are demanded in creation. He believed this is the only natural way of developing a fully functioned room.

Kahn elaborated this concept in his designs, “The room is the beginning of architecture. It is the place of the mind. You in the room with its dimensions, its structure, its light respond to its character, its spiritual aura, recognizing that whatever the human proposes and makes becomes a life”, as he stated. This can be understand as the room is a place inhabited by the mind, to self-reflect.

3.2Arhcitecture and Nature - Tadao Ando

Ando’s ideology rooted in the idea should be conceived his buildings almost as Land Art. Ando aims to discover the arcane beauty of a place, enriching the sense of Genius Loci for each unique site. This is an investigation of the significance of physical experience in architecture in response to nature and site.

He referenced his oeuvre of Japanese Shinta as a method to maintain a consistent balance between architecture and nature. Shintai is not passive but a sacred body of Cosmos, as Ando wrote this, “the body articulates the world. At the same time, the body is articulated by the world.”

His architectural language formed a physical and spiritual journey as a means for passengers to engage with nature through his buildings

Figure 26: Ando, 2004, The Oval at Benesse Art Museum Naoshima, Japan

Figure 27: Ando, 1988, Church On The Water, Osaka

3. A bodily Mass - Peter Zumthor

‘A bodily mass, a membrane, a fabric, a kind of covering, cloth, velvet, silk’...’A body that can touch me ‘ - Peter Zumthor

Zumthor tries to instills into materials, beyond the rules of composition, smell and acoustic qualities. He believs that when one senses emerge, specific meanings of certain materials in the buildings can be perceived in only way by people in this one particular building.

Figure 28: Zumthor, Brother Klaus Field Chapel, 2007 Wachendorf, Eifel, Germany

3.2 Thick Line

The site, from topography to light scale or the direction and strength of wind are a continuum with the building, modification occurs in each aspects. As Diana Balmori elucidated in her writing “Across the Divide: Between Nature and Culture”, illustrated a thick line exist in tactile spatial unit between the two entities. A thick line symbolised a painted stroke that is wide and varied intensity, just like the circle drawn by a Zen Buddhist. The integration in the technique of the brush stroke from visible to invisible, is an analogy to Balmori used to described the segregation threatened by the modern movement. In another perspective, it is a type of art that emerge the two entities as a whole, therefore the transition becomes a natural phenomenon in the construction of architecture.

Figure 29: Thick Line