loneliness is your personal kind of void. that special state of mind dedicated to re-estimating, being yourself, independance. silence as well. it brings new insight in experiencing the city. reclaiming your personality, rethinking spaces. architecture is confidence, safety, assurance. a bird in a hand. always here, no matter what. similar to religion it hugs, invites and gives shelter to everyone in need. supportive, inspiring, concealing. strong connection with the ground. a root, an identity, a supportive column. architecture never fails you. especially when you are alone.
pursuit of loneliness architecture designed to be perceived alone or in silence It is without a doubt that architcture is made vivid by people. Lots of people. They make solid structures, thus stabile, more alive. Laugh, noise, steps. Lights turned on and off. Somebody is inside. However, some man-made architectural monuments can stand on their own and be alive even more. They posses that outstanding feature, they look better empty. And not only - they were designed to reveal their majesty in silence and magical loneliness only. The loneliness percipient feels in this intimate dialogue is needed for better understanding the whole concept. Tremendous beauty of slabs, menacing concrete walls, sublime spaces, materials, light. Congested, packed, with a force attacking every sense of yours. They were made like this. Designed for one honorable person on the first place. You. The unbelievable and overhelming feeling of excellence can be achieved only few times in your life. Hands are shaking, lips are dry. Dizzines. Eyes are scanning the space without any human barrier even more careful. My personal odd architectural-porn experience occured to me several times, once entering empty hall in Mies van der Rohe`s villa Tugendhat. I wrote this afterwards: The light coming from huge windows with the view on the city enlightened my face. Suddenly, the sound perception was turned off. I cannot hear my breath, even steps behind me are unheard. I have an urge not to blink my eyes - it takes too long without this picture that I keep them opened all the time. I would like to sit and look only. I want to breathe and swallow this space to be filled with it absolutely. I found myself smiling. It`s so pleasant.
When I look around, I`m not alone, everbody in this room have similar satisfied look on their faces. They all achieved architectural nirvana.... /published in OKO magazine/ Architect Louis Kahn - a master for this overhelming experiences with architecture - uses the concept of void felt as loneliness and silence as one of his basic ideas. His buildings are often depicted and photographed without people, and not only by a chance. They are designed to be monumental, perceived alone with humility, serving as intimate chapels for architectural religion. As Steven Holl once said, they are both ancient and futuristic. Timeless, I would add. Healing effects which his off-scale basic shapes has together with the materialiy they carry act as a poetic place. A fairy tale of concrete. Kahn knows everything about the secret dialogue that is created when nothing except architecture happens around you. It grabs you, overcomes you. You have to bow. Actually the silence you feel is not the same as usual. It`s architecture trying to get into you, blocking your ears. And the loneliness you feel is fullness, in fact. Fullness of architecture. It is everything then. You are small. Comparing to the beauty of architecture you hardly exist.
Kai Ziehl: the photographer of urban landscapes Cold and calming photography like the one by German artist Kai Ziehl shows how the coldness of urban landscapes can become meaningful and expressive. These black and white shots capture the true dimension of cities and their mesmerizing constructions. These images share a beautiful quietness that makes them alluring for audiences. Tall buildings, bridges and train stations become a series of breathtaking lines and patterns, adding a whole new level of meaning to each photo.The monochrome landscapes by Kai Ziehl are emotional and a stunning celebration of architecture and cities. And loneliness people feel.
loneliness, especially in big anonymous cities is growing really fast. more and more people living alone, surviving withou close relative or a friend. but not only, even youngsters suffer from loneliness. lifestyle of individuality influences, except of society`s feelings in general, architecture as well. cities growing bigger, people becoming more indiferent. can architects help?
solo-living an article from guardian, march 2012
Human societies, at all times and places, have organised themselves around the will to live with others, not alone. But not any more. During the past halfcentury, our species has embarked on a remarkable social experiment. For the first time in human history, great numbers of people – at all ages, in all places, of every political persuasion – have begun settling down as singletons. Until the second half of the last century, most of us married young and parted only at death. If death came early, we remarried quickly; if late, we moved in with family, or they with us. Now we marry later. We divorce, and stay single for years or decades. We survive our spouses, and do everything we can to avoid moving in with others – including our children. We cycle in and out of different living arrangements: alone, together, together, alone. Numbers never tell the whole story, but in this case the statistics are startling. According to the market research firm Euromonitor International, the number of people living alone globally is skyrocketing, an increase to 277 mil. of around 80% in 15 years. Sweden has more solo dwellers than anywhere else in the world, with 47% of households having one resident; followed by Norway at 40%. In Scandinavian countries their welfare states protect most citizens from the more difficult aspects of living alone. The Netherlands and Germany share a greater proportion of one-person households than the UK. And the nations with the fastest growth in one-person households? China, India and Brazil.
When there is a public debate about the rise of living alone, commentators present it as a sign of fragmentation. The rise of living alone has been a transformative social experience. It changes the way we understand ourselves and our most intimate relationships. It shapes the way we build our cities and develop our economies. So what is driving it? The wealth generated by economic development and the social security provided by modern welfare states have enabled the spike. One reason that more people live alone than ever before is that they can afford to. Yet there are a great many things that we can afford to do but choose not to, which means the economic explanation is just one piece of the puzzle. In addition to economic prosperity, the rise stems from the cultural change called the cult of the individual. The cult grew out of the transition from traditional rural communities to modern industrial cities. Another driving force is the communications revolution, which has allowed people to experience the pleasures of social life even when they're living alone. But on the other it means making great efforts to be social: building up a strong network of friends and work contacts. Living alone and being alone are hardly the same, yet the two are routinely conflated. In fact, there's little evidence that the rise of living alone is responsible for making us lonely. Research shows that it's the quality, not the quantity of social interactions that best predicts loneliness. What matters is not whether we live alone, but whether we feel alone. There's ample support for this conclusion outside the laboratory. As divorced or separated people often say, there's nothing lonelier than living with the wrong person. Ultimately, it's too early to say how any particular society will respond to either the problems or the opportunities generated by this extraordinary social transformation.
the void felt as loneliness can take two forms. it is either emptiness literally - a space with nothing inside, except of you. or it may be developed as a side effect when lacking something personal, what you have relationship with, what is familiar. so that, even when the space is actually full, it seems to you as unfamiliar and empty. these feelings are typical for travellers, ex-pats, students for everybody who miss thier countries, cities or homes.
milota the walker Milota Sidorova is a marvellous slovak woman, an urban designer, fullbright scholar and researcher. Having studied landscape architecture in different cities of Europe, she is a mother of prestigious urban festival reSITE in Prague. In these days, she has bond her body and soul with New York. Absolutely alone, she decided to take up her research in understanding the city through walking. How is one of the fastest cities in the world when you decide to walk it? Her blog is a colorful diary of observations - pictures, essays, all kinds of maps about New York. Here are some of her notes: What’s my progress in New York? I came here on the edge of burn out with huge emotional, work and personal overload. I was anxious – I was about to enter the best city in the world, the city of opportunities, city where you shouldn’t waste one damn minute. But it didn’t touch me at all. I didn’t care about glamorous aura of New York. I felt nothing. The only thing I knew was if I maintained the same lifestyle as in Prague I would ruin myself. That’s when I decided to stay “inside”. First month I spent in heremit mode - walking the city, sleeping, God - for the first time in my life really sleeping, not talking too much, zero personal emails, not talking to my family, rarely meeting friends, less and less drinking and smoking. I was consciously creating a void and a silence. I wanted to face myself in a scary –no drama, no action, no nothing – mode. In this state I grew a way nobody else could see. While I remained suspiciously invisible for the rest of the world, my walks reached distant parts of New York. With dying communication with my existing friends and relatives more and more I spoke to random people and in the end all of this seemed interesting enough to create my working project.
I had nothing but smartphone to take pictures, walking shoes and curiosity to explore the city. And it showed me many things – places that looked like Indian slums or industrial, post apocalyptic Manchester suburbs. Corporate centers side by side to parks and forests and beaches and Russians and Hispanics and Jewish enclaves blending into each other. Daily life patterns that resulted from the built environment of New York. And New York turned out to be a completely different mechanism, different from what I knew from movies, books or talks with my friends. Every street, every shop, every commercial, man on the corner - all of them were riddles to solve. What created this city? Why? What are there connections? What is the role of architecture, local culture, food in creating this particular microcosm? Friends are always joking I should be working for FBI. Associations, induction and deduction were extremely helpful in New York. I used all kinds of exploration techniques, reading, guessing, talking to people and I was always on alert. Street became my ultimate university. My urban knowledge expanded and I got seriously interested in topics like poverty, social justice, homelessness, criminality, ethnicity, transportation, informal culture, urban agriculture, economy and municipal leadership – all of this invaluable dimensions for my profession of urban planner, designer – but most likely a polemicist. I got fit, more courageous and after 4 months I was ready to re-enter the world of “living” again. Full power and confident working and networking. Meeting up with friends and new inspiring people. Going to bars or dancing, flirting or picking up men I liked, but maintaining the discipline and internal peace - and something I was missing until now – a growing feeling of enjoyment.
my personal void, felt from times to times since my studies in athens began is actually pleasing for me. except of architecture, there are several other things thatcan help to cope with it. music player, sketchbook, pen, book, computer and will to be with yourself most of the time. and what are the places to spend time when you are alone? park, library, sights, nature, public spaces and buildings never let you down.
the loneliness in metropolis a paradox of anonymity Imagine all different kinds of people you meet every day. Young, old, short, tall, slim, fat, smart or dumb as a post. Those in cars, pedestrians, bikers, babies in buggies. Sellers, vendors, customers. On streets, in metro, in a bank. Try to count them and then tell: how many of them you really know? You won`t probably see again plenty of them, there`s ever no need to speak with each other, you have nothing in common with most of them. You perceive their presence but it doesn`t matter. Void, loneliness. Standing on a bus stop, in shop. No relationships. Nothing than anonymously breathing the same air. Except of one paradoxical feature - sharing the same city. What does this mean in general? Does it bind you together with millions of other Athenians, New Yorkers or Venetians somehow? Does it bring you anything to get rid of lonely feelings? No, it makes them even worse. You run into hundreds of faces but the feeling of loneliness was never bigger. Or let`s call it emptiness. Even though that thoughts of people in your train coach may be similar, you never ask them anything. Loneliness grows. A man in front of you had set on the same journey, with his sneakers on, he looks like you in male version. Same time, same place, same destination. Lots to tell perhaps. The barrier gained in metropolis, the rules your mother used to tell, never lets you speak with a stranger. You rather read a boring book or watch the countryside. Why to bother, you say. In fact, the fear of failure is so strong that you cannot make even an eye contact. Living in a city full of people that don`t know each other - you are simply not used to do random relationships.
In general, humans essentially need other humans to feel good, to survive. Social touch is one of the most important characteristic of living and creating places to live. However, the comfortability felt when other persons around has its limits. For some reason, a group of people with constantly growing number of members trying to have more enjoyable contacts, can gain in a short time completely oppposite effect. The fact is: the more people you put together, the more lonely and distant they would feel. This paradox, along with booming social networks which behave antisocial in fact, created a whole new quality of living in big cities. The invisibility. According to Simmel`s thoughts /The Metropolis and Mental Life/, a metropolis individual is nothing more than a number. Its reactions, relationships and personal matters are not important for the flow of strongly rational society which seem very indifferent. And that`s how he behaves. The inhabitant of a big city, contrarly to smaller settlements where everybody knows each other, reckons only with his merchant, his customer, his servant and frequently with the persons with whom he is thrown into obligatory association. These relationships stand in distinct contrast to those which can be called as voluntary and pleasing. In the period when staying in touch with a chosen group of friends is easier then ever, the anonymity felt in cities grows fast. And the will of changing the situation has disappeared somewhere between short messages in your mobile and tweets of your grandma. Ignoring each other is more comfortable. Moreover, the comfort zone of metropolis inhabitants is too thick to overcome.
following pages include results of the survey made by students of architecture in Prague. their spontaneous compilate about masking required exagerrated volumes of buildings finishes with a chapter on so-called masking people. students react on the fact that lots of people live alone, even in a crowded city and are not willing to change it. is it natural or has this developed only in recent period? there is a mention about other fact as well: we detest people so much so we do not even want to bear them.
a privacy = people cannot see me we dislike queues, crowds, traffic jams, loud laugh, people with dogs, cristians, libelars, generals, doctors, politicians, technicias, hippies, gays, fat ones, slim ones, right ones, left ones, black, white, corean, russian, americans, ehadmasters, lawers, office workers, blonds, women, those who speak too much, pedestrians, drivers, wise ones...
a quiet = I cannot hear people we do not dare to say but what matters are people. we would like to live in a world consisting of us and our friends.
we seriously need each other for the existence but we detest it.
we have to mask in order to be hidden and invisible
bibiliography http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/mar/30/the-rise-of-solo-living Pavel Gebrian, David Švácha, František Lukeš, Zikmund Vávra: Maskování kapacit, bulletin 2014 http://www.kaiziehlphotos.com/ http://milotathewalker.tumblr.com/ Neil Leach: Rethinking architecture: A reader in cultural theory, Routledge 1997 Lívia Gažová: Architektonické porno, OKO magazine, page 16, 02/2013