Poiesis in Architecture by Pop Mihai

PoĂŻĂ¨sis in architecture

Poïèsis in architecture, and the image as a support of the creative process.

Mihai Pop Travail de fin d’études sous la direction de Wouter van Acker Faculté d’architecture La Cambre-Horta Université Libre de Bruxelles Année académique 2019-2020

This research is the result of a long process of exploration and collaboration, and as such, is very much indebted to the following people: Wouter, for his patience, availability and precious advice in helping me organise and clarify the research. Tomas, for his friendship throughout the years which has unravelled and nourished many of these reflections. The members of the collective PeachLAB for being able to experience with them the pleasure of making architecture in the field. Clelia, for experiencing the meaning of these ideas to the same extent as I do and helping me articulate them throughout our discussions and careful re-readings. My family, for supporting and encouraging me to pursue my passion since I was a kid, and many others for sharing the passion of collectively thinking about architecture throughout the years: Ayman, David, Ghazel, Boris, Myriem, Gregorio, Alice, Giulia, Joline, and Teo. Thank you.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 11

A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF DIFFERENT CONCEPTUALISATIONS OF THE IMAGE 19 Philosophical and Psychoanalytical conceptualisations of the Image.

THE OPERATIVE CAPACITY OF THE IMAGE 35 Image in the creative process of Peter Zumthor, Valerio Olgiati and Herzog et de Meuron. CONCLUSION 87

APPENDIX 115

ÂŤMidway upon the journey of life / I found myself within a forest dark, / For the straightforward pathway had ben lost.Âť Dante, Inferno, lines 1-3.

1. WHY? WHAT? and HOW?

Introduction «Everything we do is but the larva of our intentions.» 1

way around. The ontological nature of the question, at first, started to fascinate me more and more, and as such, it drew me to explore the concept of poïèsis, from the ancient Greek ποίησις, poíêsis, literally meaning “creation.” The word is etymologically derived from the Greek word ποιέω, which means “to make.” It was associated by Aristotle with a specific action that “transforms one thing into another”. This view stood in contrast with that of Plato, who saw it in more metaphysical terms as: “The activity in which a person brings something into being that did not exist before.” A commonality between the two views is that through the notion of poïèsis, the creative process is associated with a threshold, and a force that through action, brings into existence things that didn’t exist before, or that changes the nature of one thing into another.

The questions that are explored in this thesis are the bitter fruits of particular moments of crisis experienced during my studies. I’ve always been preoccupied with the meaning, personal and impersonal of the work I was doing regardless of its context, in order to nourish the creative process with the transitory pleasure it might have diffused. The illusory nature of the meaning stemming from any particular action became evident in the projects designed explicitly without a guideline, starting from a “blank page,” without context, or program, sometimes only surfaces, the permutations seemingly infinite, the variations interminable. However, from a different point of view2 than the one I was taking, almost any choice would seem arbitrary or without an apparent reference.

The change that occurs through the process of creation, or poïèsis generates impressions which once experienced can be seen similar to those created with a poetic effect. The concept therefore is etymologically related with the “art of poetry” which for Aristotle is: “L’art d’évoquer et de suggérer les sensations, les impressions, les émotions les plus vives par l’union intense des sons, des rythmes, des harmonies, en particulier par les vers.”4 This view of the poetic effect generated by the creative process viewed from outside can be analyzed in relationship with the Platonic view, which sees creation as divine possession or madness.56 The creative act can be seen therefore through the prism of the impression it creates, internally in its author, and externally, in its audience.7 The power of this impression becomes

In order to avoid a complete loss of direction throughout the creative process, it was necessary to ask the fundamental question: How does an act of creation take place? It is apparent that within the domain of architecture, this question is defined by a multitude of variables, and an answer that would address them all seems impossible. In attempting to formulate an answer, however, we find ourselves inside a «void» or a «forest» as Sébastien Marrot would put it, for whom, at the beginning of a project, the creative choices resemble a person fallen in the middle of the forest with a parachute, deprived of a map or rule that would offer guidance, they find themselves obliged to create arbitrary rules that would serve as: “une morale provisoire que l’on peut suivre par provision pendant qu’on n’en sait point encore de meilleure.”3

4. «Définitions : poésie». Dictionnaire de français Larousse, 22 Janvier, 2018. 5. Similarly for Nietzsce, artistic creation can only take place in a state of frenzy: “Toward a psychology of the artist. If there is to be art, if there is to be any aesthetic doing and seeing, one physiological condition is indispensable: frenzy (Rausch). Frenzy must have enhanced the excitability of the whole machine; else there is no art. All kinds of frenzy, however, diversely conditioned, have the strength to accomplish this: above all, the frenzy of sexual excitement, this most ancient and original form of frenzy. Also the frenzy that follows all great cravings, all strong effects; the frenzy of feasts, contests, feats of daring, victory, all extreme movement; the frenzy of cruelty; the frenzy in destruction; the frenzy under certain meteorological influences, as for example the frenzy of spring; or under the influence of narcotics; and finally the frenzy of will, the frenzy of an overcharged and swollen will. What is essential in such frenzy is the feeling of increased strength and fulness.” Fridrich Nietzshe, Twillight of the Idols, Oxford University Press, New York, 1998, p.47. 6.“A mood, nevertheless, does take possession of the artist either by willful indulgence to bring one about, in which the artist is not always successful, or in finding himself subject to some stimulus or series of stimuli which will bring into play associative memories and impressions that have long lain dormant in the unconscious faculty. The artist’s production in turn instills a mood in the observer or listener and it is actually in recreating the artist’s creation that we become lesser artists in our own right. Creation and recreation are after all not at great variance.” Julius Portnoy, A Psychological Theory of Artistic Creation, in College Art Journal Vol. 10, No. 1 (Autumn, 1950), p. 23. 7.“A mood is the effect whose cause is often unconscious in nature. Art is born of man’s emotions to stir others’ emotions. That is the nature and function of art.”

It would appear that illusion is a necessary ingredient to creation, a willful lie meant to push the work forward, the action, generating the meaning, rather than the other 1. Manfredo Tafuri, Storia dell’architettura italiana 1944-1985, Einaudi, Torino, (2002)., p.82. 2. “Through such acts of judgment the directed process necessarily becomes onesided, even though the rational judgment may appear many-sided and unprejudiced. The very rationality of the judgment may even be the worst prejudice, since we call reasonable what appears reasonable to us. What appears to us unreasonable is therefore doomed to be excluded because of its irrational character. It may really be irrational, but may equally well merely appear irrational without actually being so when seen from another standpoint.” Carl Gustav Jung, Collected Works Volume 8: Structure & Dynamics of the Psyche, Princeton University Press, 1969, p.67. 3. “La condition de l’architecte qui se lance dans un projet à un endroit donné peut être comparée à celle d’un homme qui se trouverait soudain parachuté au milieu d’une épaisse forêt. S’il ne dispose d’aucune carte ni d’aucune règle propre à l’orienter a priori, il aura sans doute intérêt à suivre, du moins jusqu’à nouvel ordre, quelques préceptes vraisemblables (par exemple, aller toujours le plus droit possible) qui lui permettront peut-être de se tirer d’affaire.” Sébastien Marot, L’Art de la Mémoire, Le Territoire et l’Architecture, Éditions de la Villette, Paris, 2010, p.12.

the force that drives one thing rather than another directly into existence, or in its transformation from one state into another.8

the illusory reality that we constructed ourselves disappear? Our methods, processes, the very own tools we use to define ourselves? A clear example of this experience would be the practice of ADVVT (Architecten De Vylder, Vinck, Taillieu), who defined themselves and based their creative process on the meticulous observation and understanding of the given context. When deciding to work in Austria, in a context they did not know and had trouble understanding, they denied themselves the very tools they used to fabricate their projects. In order to escape the “void” of arbitrary choices, they decided to use an image of a painting of Sol Lewitt they were interested in at that moment in time as the basis for the creative process.

Coming back to the question of how an act of creation takes place, it seems that fundamentally, the meaning of the act in my case became apparent through the experience of the aesthetic quality of the idea and the impression it created. By aesthetic, meaning, its excitement, frenzy, thrill, power, all these characteristics expressing the force that drives the creative act forward. However, another subtler aspect reveals itself when through a thought experiment we confront ourselves with the case of a given context while exploring the potential of the place, we realize that its appearance fills our minds; we start to imagine things that are in concordance or discordance with the existing, its picture, reminiscent in our minds, acting as a canvas for the different possibilities. If confronted directly, the image we have in our minds is projected onto the picture of the world we receive from outside through our senses, the fusion of the two creating a new reality to be brought into existence. At that moment, the creative process transitions from an almost idyllic process of aesthetic fulfilment to a real confrontation between sometimes opposing forces, the mental imagery, and the external experience.

In time, I have come to realize that the creative process of different architects can be seen as a fruitful confrontation or not between their personal obsessions and the surrounding reality. In my search for an intuition that would guide the creative process, I often found myself leafing through the monographs of Peter Zumthor, in order to find the “feeling” of what I would like to do. The “image” that would unify my

What other alternatives do we have when the support of our imagination, the visual domain, is taken away and we have to escape our imagination floating in the void, or avoid falling in the purely aesthetic aspect of the creative process if we deny ourselves the presence of the real? What happens when “our provisory morality” as Marot would put it, or even Carl Gustav Jung, Collected Works Vol. 6: Psychological Types, Princeton University Press, 1969. 8. “We maintain on the contrary that the entire opposition between the subjective and the objective (which Schopenhauer, too, still uses to divide up the arts, as if it were some criterion of value) is absolutely inappropriate in aesthetics since the subject, the willing individual in pursuit of his own, egotistical goals, can only be considered the opponent of art and not its origin. But where the subject is an artist, it is already released and redeemed from the individual will and has become, as it were, a medium, the channel through which the one truly existing subject celebrates its release and redemption in semblance. For what must be clear to us above all, both to our humiliation and our elevation, is that the whole comedy of art is certainly not performed for us, neither for our edification nor our education, just as we are far from truly being the creators of that world of art; conversely, however, we may very well assume we are already images and artistic projections for the true creator of art, and that our highest dignity lies in our significance as works of art - for only as an aesthetic phenomenon is existence and the world eternally justified - although, of course, our awareness of our significance in this respect hardly differs from the awareness which painted soldiers have of the battle depicted on the same canvas. Thus our whole knowledge of art is at bottom entirely illusory, because, as knowing creatures, we are not one and identical with the essential being which gives itself eternal pleasure as the creator and spectator of that comedy of art. Only insofar as the genius, during the act of artistic procreation, merges fully with that original artist of the world does he know anything of the eternal essence of art; for in this condition he resembles, miraculously, that uncanny image of fairy tale which can turn its eyes around and look at itself; now he is at one and the same time subject and object, simultaneously poet, actor, and spectator.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, Cambridge University Press, 1999, p.33.

Architecten de Vylder Vinck Taillieu, “A picture of a drawing by Sol Lewitt.”

Architecten de Vylder Vinck Taillieu, Bus Stop, San Gottardo, 2011.

After a while you can’t stand them anymore because of the biographical or regional spirit that becomes more evident once the spirit of the times has passed.”9

intentions. Upon further reading of his writings, I further discovered that the mental image as such was the basis of his whole creative process, this similarity and coincidence of interest drew me even further into his work, and soon the desire to understand the creative process through the lens of the mental image arose.

Zumthor’s work has mostly been framed through the prism of phenomenology; the extensive analysis of his built work is well documented. However, my interest lies in viewing his work as a reflection of his creative process, which is essentially centred around the image. This allows for a possible reframing of the perception of his work helping with the possible emergence of a multitude of new points of view that would distance the perception from the technical prowess of his constructions as being the main focus on his work in the contemporary field of discourse. As such, he offers the first piece in this research that of the role of the mental image in the process of creation. His approach is by far singular; however, because of his hermetic approach, it offers a distinct case study, and also, allows me to uncover my unconscious fascination. A historical look of the origins uncovers varied instrumentations of the image in the process of creation on the Swiss Architectural Landscape at the end of the century, figures such as Olgiatti, Markli, Herzog et de Meuron have been instrumentalising the image in their way. They have evolved different positions to that of Zumthor that would help reframe the role and capacity of the different forms of the image in the creative process.

However, this process has limits, as clearly seen in his latest projects where the mental image seems in direct conflict with the realities of its surroundings, especially with multiple actors involved, resisting its intended effect. The critique attributed to his work as being more a product than a result of a process became more and more prevalent in the recent years, especially after the culmination of his rewarding with the Pritzker Prize a few months before the beginning of the global economic crisis. Aureli criticizes him in Less is Enough and also, he is criticized in an indirect manner by his Swiss contemporaries Herzog and de Meuron saying: “Contemporary architects with a typical ‘personal style’ can sell their products better during a certain period of time because their buildings work like corporate identity products.

The role of the image is usually seen as a representational tool, in recent years, this dimension being exacerbated to the extent that a schism can be seen in the urban landscape between buildings that work in various ways with their surrounding environment and buildings that intentionally detach for a pure visual spectacle. The captivating power the image has in competition entries, its importance being exacerbated to the extent that now the majority of practising architectural firms delegate the production of the images in their competition entries to external offices which are focused exclusively on that. Juhani Palaasma primarily addresses this critique in Gernot Böhme’s Architectural Atmospheres: On the Experience and Politics of Architecture.

Peter Zumthor, LACMA, Los Angeles, USA, 2008 - Present.

As such, a disjunction can be perceived between the role of the image in conveying desired qualities of a finished “product”, and the role of the image as a conceptual and exploitative tool who abandons its external polish for its internal integrity. This dimension of the image, that is, the exploration of its many forms, from mental images to material photographs and their role in the creative process can be clearly perceived on the Swiss architectural scene from the Peter Zumthor, LACMA, Los Angeles, USA, 2008 - Present.

9. El Croquis, Herzog & de Meuron: 1981-2000, El Croquis Editorial, Madrid, 2010, p.21

1970s. This pivotal moment is attributed to the presence of Aldo Rossi by Eméline Curien in her book, Architecture Suisse Allemanique 1980-2000, where she describes this period as follows: “La plupart des premiers réalisations des architectes suisses allemands nés au début des années 1950 s’appuie sur les formes architecturales existantes et déjà connotées. Une volonté de s’émanciper de l’histoire apparait néanmoins rapidement au sein de plusieurs agences. Il s’agit de fonder les processus de conception sur des valeurs autres nourris de références autres. Émergent alors de nouvelles manières d’aborder le projet et le légitimer. Elles font appel à de nouveaux processus pour insérer les édifices dans leur contexte et exprimer leur destination. Au moins deux pistes de réflexion rendent possible ce désengagement vis à vis de l’histoire. Le premier passe par das Bild, l’image, le second par celle de la Gestalt, la forme en tant que structure qui détermine sa perception.”10

réalise d'ailleurs que les souvenirs et les émotions qu'évoquent en moi les lieux ou je vais construire forment le point de départ de pratiquement tous mes projets."11 The continuous impact of the mental image throughout different projects and its evolution can be traced throughout his Monograph; which contains precisely selected images and short descriptions hinting at essential ideas underpinning each project, however, it avoids external voices to contribute to its contents. In being a useful case study for the profoundly personal role of mental images in the creative process, by its hermetic constitution, it simultaneously encompasses its inherent conceptual limits. Valerio Olgiati's work transcends this limit by making a precise selection of personal images which coupled with a series of publications and interviews offer already a more transparent description of their conceptual role. The collection of images he calls his Iconographic Bibliography published in a set of 55 images, published as a small independent publication and in 2G, Valerio Olgiati, n°37, 2006, where he describes their importance as follows: "The illustrations on the following pages are important images stored in my head. When I design or invent a building, they are always hovering somewhere above me. These are the basis of my projects. They are with me when I sit gazing at the ‘white sheet of paper,’ so to speak. It is always my aim to build something that is related in some way or other to these images either the image itself or what it illustrates. Often the way it is illustrated is what fascinates me. For about a year now I have attempted, even in discussions with my assistants, to select only those images that have a special defining significance for our work, for my work."12

This voluntary separation expresses as a desire for conceptual autonomy for previous forms of legitimisation of architectural discourse. Eméline Curien frames the architectural production during that time around two aspects defining aspects of the period, Bild and Gestalt (or image and form), with envelope and structure, describing different bureaus at different stages and the way certain images integrate and define their projects. In uncovering a vast connection between various architecture practices and their shared conceptual landscape, her analysis restrains from an in depth analysis of the specificities of the ways each architect appropriates the notion of image, and as such is unable to uncover its conceptual and practical evolution in subsequent projects. The analysis focusing more specifically on a clear selection of projects sharing similar conceptual characteristics that are defined by the same underlying principles.

Their specific significance relating to each project is mostly ignored, revealing a profound lack of selfconsciousness and therefore imposes certain limits on our capacity to infer their validity. This frustration is equally shared by Adam Carusso, who directs the critique at his work and that of Kristian Kerez and their overly "polished" publications in an article called What Happened to Analogue Architecture saying: "Late-night films or a photograph of good food on an old timber table - these talismanic subtexts are clearly of significance to the work of these two architects, or at least to how they want their work to be received. It is a relief that neither book includes the customary, pageconsuming interview with the architect. However, the architects’ reluctance to mediate or explain the relationship between these found cultural icons and the production of

Peter Zumthor explores the role of the image as a conceptual tool in his well-known collection of essays entitled Thinking Architecture and Atmospheres, offering a profoundly personal and useful account of their intuitive formation and subsequent influence on the creative process. Although precisely descriptive in their subjective dimension, these texts evade to a certain extent the acknowledgement of their allencompassing dominance in the majority of his built work, which comes with a retrospective look during an interview with Mari Landing in her book, Présences de l'histoire, where he acknowledges the following: "Ce que nous voyons évoque souvent des images dans notre esprit, images qui sont associées à des souvenirs. (...) Les images de notre mémoire sont inévitablement liées à des sentiments et à des émotions. Les faits abstraits sont secondaires. (...) Rétrospectivement, je

11. Peter Zumthor & Mari Lending, Présences de l’Histoire, Scheidegger & Spies, 2018, p.26. 12. 2G, Valerio Olgiati, n°37, 2006, p.134.

10. Eméline Curien, Architecture Suisse Alémanique 1980-2000,Éditions FourreTout, 2019, p.61.

their work is irritating, and compounds a tendency towards the obscure that is characteristic of both books."13

ever done has been found on the street! All of our projects are products of our perceptions projected onto objects! This is also the reason why our buildings always look so different from each other. Since we turn our heads in different directions, the buildings arise from other perceptions. We work by observing phenomena!" This dimension of their work is further reflected and expanded upon by Stanislaus von Moos in, describing their work as evocative of a new wave of romanticism, in the introduction of their Mongraph, Herzog & de Meuron, 1978-1988.

The relationship between various images from the catalogue and their significance regarding specific projects is touched upon more in-depth in Valerio Olgiati, English Texts with interventions from Laurent Stalder14, Mario Carpo15, Bruno Reichlin, The Significance of an Idea, and the 151 edition of El Croquis with conversations with Markus Breitschmid16 chronicling his work and containing reflections on the evolution of these ideas throughout his career, and the obsessive attempts to liberate himself from their influence, in an attempt to create a "non-referential" architecture.

The objective of the research is thus to uncover specific relationships between various forms of images and their role in the conceptual process, as such, the research is dependent on the personal insights of the authors regarding their formation and influence. Thus, special attention is given to their interviews throughout different periods describing their creative process which reveal the role of the image in specific instances, and their evolution on larger time frames between different projects.

In contrast with Zumthor, the various interactions between different collaborators in his office, being able to reinterpret and redefine the contents of each image gives them the potential for a more comprehensive application for a shared creative process. However, the images themselves, are deeply connected to his own personal obsessions and interests and are in their essence primarily autobiographical and as such, they offer only a vague blueprint for their various forms of implementation, and we are left to ask ourselves as to what would be the potential of other images, even outside the field of architecture to contaminate and even corrupt such an idealistic attitude?

The image then leads us to questions of representation which present themselves as an integral part of the design process in order to show what we imagine, and also, fill out the blanks we could not have imagined. In order to visualize the embodiment of different ideas within an object, the image has been an essential tool for representing architectural ideas, partly because of its selective nature, offering a high degree of control over what is shown and what is left out. One of the most stringent critiques coming from phenomenologically inclined architects towards contemporary practice is related towards the exaggerated focus that contemporary architecture is giving to its visual perception, “the architecture of the image,” as such, the visual aspects of a building being given more attention than other more subtle aspects.

The projects from the beginning of the career of Herzog & de Meuron incarnate this potential, and their lectures and articles articulate the conceptual implications of this new tendency. In the Hidden Geometry of Nature, they dislocate the classical interpretations of the role of reference in architecture through the image by extending its sphere of influence to include even "natural, chemical or biological processes or simple artefacts that can generate the incipient imagery of the design" re-framing the perception of their work predominantly through a phenomenological lens centred around the unconscious perception of this image.

This approach, partly market defined and consumer drive expresses itself in the dominance of the visual aspects of buildings. Excessive focus on the façades on the detriment of visually less appealing aspects like spatial quality, absorbing the visual attention from their surroundings, hardly encountered without a sceptical, why? Aesthetic judgment is subjective; however, the influence one object comes to exert over another is not, as such, the visual anomalies defining the urban landscape become means of advertising. A central aspect of this attitude becomes evident, that of ‘mise en avant’, becoming a subtle form of subversion and a visible form of dominance.

The implications of the distillation of distinctive forms of images into the design process and their insistence and focus on a phenomenological perception of their projects are subsequently further expanded upon in an interview with Alejandro Zaera in El Croquis, where they exclaim: "Our approach is phenomenological! All that we have ever designed comes from observation and description. All that we have 13. Adam Carusso, Happened to Analogue Architecture, AA Files, No. 59 (2009), p.74 14. Laurent Stalder is Chair of the Theory of Architecture department at ETH. 15. Mario Carpo is Reyner Banham Professor of Architectural History and Theory at the Bartlett, University College London. 16. Markus Breitschmid is a professor at the School of Architecture + Design of Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University (Virginia Tech).

The advertising through the image becomes problematic when it assumes a specific form of independence from the concept, the images being produced, taking more

the properties of what is expected than expressing the realities of the project. The apparent result that the finished building rarely corresponds to the advertised image is hardly a surprise. However, the exaggerated attention on the image and the manipulation of the perception of the building is still, a convenient tool used in competitions, the skills becoming more and more specialized with entirely new professions being created for that reason.

Situating the research: WHY? WHAT? and HOW? WHY is it necessary to investigate the structure of the creative act in architecture? From a personal perspective, the research aims at finding an objective tool that can be used to navigate the complexities of the creative process. The image presents itself as an instrument that fulfils this role and as such, raises the question:

The problem would seem relatively clear, a dissociation between concept and representation, that is, in the subversive exploitation of the properties of the image, only a fraction is being built of what is usually shown, and the built environment is worse for it. In its most common form, this critique aims to de-emphasize the attention from the visual aspects of the building, and instead, promotes a more holistic approach to architecture in arguing for a more phenomenological engagement. However, I think a central aspect is neglected in this approach worth mentioning, that is, the accurate translation of particular conceptual properties of a project within a given domain of representation, that is, in emphasizing the tactile qualities, or the particularities of the sound, the project could still use those aspects as subversive means of advertising when the finished qualities of the project are lacking.

WHAT are the different ways in which the image is employed in the creative process by contemporary architects? The research aims to expand understanding in the larger field, around the discourse of the role of the image in the creative process of various contemporary practices while at the same time taking a critical stance towards its use at creating what could be called an â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;architecture of the eyeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. Methodology: In order to be able to harness the potential of the image as a foundation of the creative act, it is necessary to immerse oneself in the depth of knowledge created on this seemingly inexhaustible subject throughout the history of human thought. It, therefore, seems imperative for taking a cross-disciplinary approach in order to extract operative concepts that could harness the potential of the image in the conceptual process. The research thus aims at identifying precise instances in the incipient stages of each architect's career and understand the subsequent evolution of the role of the image as a conceptual tool in their later projects. Once the particular function of the image in the creative process of each architect is identified, its conceptual development is traced throughout their theoretical output, while simultaneously analysing the practical application of each concept. Complementary literature from other writers and architects touching on the same subject is brought into discussion in order to challenge the validity and deepen the understanding of the specific research questions asked in this thesis.

The apparent solutions seem rather obvious: maintaining the continual relationship and co-dependence between concept and representation, that is, using the image, in this case, to embody conceptual properties rather than convey expected qualities. The question arises: how can the image serve as a fundamental tool used to navigate the complexities of the creative process, and as such, become a means towards expressing the conceptual qualities rather than being merely an advertising instrument.

Method: HOW are the different concepts interwoven within a framework that seeks to offer a practical application for the process of architectural creation? The research concludes with a concrete example of a practical application of different concepts uncovered throughout the research, testing the role of the image as a support of the creative process in a project starting from a "page blanche", and confronting it with a physical reality.

“Two of far nobler shape erect and tall, Godlike erect, with native Honour clad In naked Majesty seemed Lords of all, And worthy seemed, for in their looks Divine The image of their glorious Maker shone, Truth, Wisdom, Sanctitude severe and pure, Severe, but in true filial freedom plac’t.” Milton Paradise Lost (Bk. IV, 11. 288-94)

1. THE IMAGE OF THE IMAGE.

An overview of different conceptualisations of the image. apparently bizarre aspects of the Medieval times.

One of the early conceptualizations of the notion of the image begins in the account of man’s creation in Genesis17: “This is the tradition which begins, of course, with the account of man’s creation “in the image and likeness” of God. The words we now translate as image (the Hebrew tselem, the Greek eikona18, and the Latin imaginem) are properly understood, as the commentators never tire of telling us, not as any material picture but as an abstract, general, spiritual “likeness.” The regular edition of the phrase “and likeness” to “image” (the Hebrew demuth, the Greek homoioosin, and the Latin similitudinem) is to be understood not as adding new information but as preventing a possible confusion: “image” is to be understood not as “picture” but as “likeness,” a matter of spiritual similarity.”19

In Greek philosophy, the word used for the image is usually eídōlon20, being closely connected with memory and remembrance in Plato. This notion further receives a critique from Aristotle who evolves it into the notion of phantasia. Platonic notions of the image evolve in different forms throughout his dialogues, achieving their highest development in connection to memory and his theory of forms. In many ways, the word he uses to describe the image (eidolon) which translates as “illusion” or “reflection” primarily reflect the place of images in his theory of knowledge and his metaphysical model of reality. He believed there are different representations of reality, and our experience of those different realities can be realized through the descending sequence of “reason,” “understanding,” “belief ” and “imagination.” Our experience finds itself on a gradient of perception of the ultimate form of reality (the place of “Ideas” where everything that exists has a perfect version of itself, the “Ideal Form”). Pictures, reflections, images were finding themselves at the bottom and being the least reliable guide to the ultimate source of knowledge and truth.

In Greek philosophy, the notion of the image is represented through different words with different meanings attached to them. Very few accounts of images survived from the pre-Socratic period, one account of images that had a lasting impact throughout the centuries is that of Simonides and the method of loci as described in Cicero’s “legend.” In this account, images play a specific role as they seem to have a special relationship with the structure of memory itself in helping people to remember things. Images and mental spaces are used as tools to navigate and sort through the different forms of information that we have to recall.

a PICTURES reflections etc.

Architecture plays a particular role, and especially the varied types of architecture, the ones seemingly more varied and absurd prevailing as they were more memorable than others. In its essence, this relationship between images, memory and architecture in Sébastien Marot’s Art of Memory seems to have a profound relationship as for him, this method was used widely throughout the Middle Ages before the invention of the printing press to preserve information, and this obsession with bizarre things seems to explain the

b THINGS animals, trees, man-made things.

c THINGS AS PICTURES mathematical diagrams and models

IDEAS

We can also see similarities between Platonic notion of eidolon or reflection of a higher form as a similar idea to the notion of “likeness” in the biblical conceptions of the image, the created world as “likeness” of its creator. In the third book of Aristotle’s De Anima we find his most extensive analysis of the subject, Aristotle formulates the concept of imagination or phantasia as the “image-producing capacity of the soul” and he constructs what is essentially the first coherent theory of the mind with the image at its centre, in contrast to Plato, Aristotle tries to give a much more accurate description of the image and its role in cognition.

17. “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his [own] image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” Genesis, King James Version, {1:26}. 18. (εἰκών , (eikṓn): image, reflection) Image. In Plato’s mode of thinking in terms of mimésis, the “imitation” of the real entity is an eikṓn. The cave-dwellers, in the Sun-Line-Cave passage in the Republic, are in an epistemic state of eikasia, all they are aware of is images, imitations. Of course any representational art that begins from these images is one more step away from reality (Rep. X). But at a higher level, so to speak, the visible world is the eikṓn of the intelligible world (Tm. 30), time is the moving eikṓn of eternity (Tm. 37d). 19. W. J. T Mitchell, Iconology: image, text, ideology, The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London, 1986, p. 31.

Although notoriously difficult to decipher, his account has been incredibly influential throughout the history of philosophy both Western and Occidental and has 20. (εἴδωλον, (eídōlon), “Insubstantial image, as at Plato’s Sophist (266b), or illusion, as at Plato’s Phaedo (66c). Aristotle uses it in the sense of dream images, Div. Somn. (464b). Epicurus uses the word eídōlon to refer to the set of atoms (atoma) leaving the perceived object and coming to the eyes (Letter to Herodotus 46 ff), thus a “substantial” image.”

been up to the Enlightenment and the advent of Modern Psychology where the first attempts at changing the central place of the image in the theories of the mind has finally started to formulate convincing arguments and to replace it with a linguistic substructure.

up the image and then combining with that image. The combination of phantasia (i.e., images) with perception explains how we come to perceive incidental perceptibles and why our perceptual experiences are sometimes in error.”22 For Aristotle therefore, perception was linked with imagination, and whereas for Platon, the error we make is caused by memory, for Aristotle, it is caused by imagination or phantasia, and its intimate connection with perception. This aspect of the mental image, as a mental representation of an existing object through the capacity of imagination will not be further developed until the enlightenment, where the efforts to establish the limits of cognition and its different constitutive elements will be developed by Emmanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason where he says:

One important observation to make is that images for Aristotle encompass a wide range of phenomena including any perceptual experience and are not excluded to visual perceptions, in this sense, they are more like concepts than pictorial representations. For him, we can have a series of perceptual experiences that are stored in our memory that at a particular moment, combine to form a “unified experience”. This “unified experience” contains the traces that are common to all the different individual experiences in a single “unified image” which would serve as a concept for the “thing as such” represented by the different experiences, and cannot be traced to a single experience in particular.21 It is implicit, therefore, that in order to see something or more precisely understand it, we need to have a “unified image” in order to deduce the concept of the thing in question. His notion of phantasia is primarily used to explain the possibility of error in our perceptions, which Platon explained through the use of memory.

“No psychologist has yet thought that the imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself. This is partly because ... it has been believed that the senses do not merely afford us impressions but also put them together, and produce images of objects, for which without doubt something more than the receptivity of impressions is required, namely a function of the synthesis of them.”23 The capacity for synthesis or imagination is integral to perception in Kant’s framework, which situated it between sensibility and understanding.24 Sensibility being the capacity to represent the way we are affected by objects, and on the basis of this sensibility,25 we can have intuitions, while understanding being the capacity of thinking about the contents of our intuitions. Cognition for Kant is dependent on perception and understanding, the image is, therefore, an integral aspect of cognition: “The first thing that must be given to us a priori for the cognition of all objects is the manifold of pure intuition; the synthesis of this manifold by means of the imagination is the second thing, but it still does not yield cognition. The concepts that give this pure synthesis unity... are the third thing necessary for cognition of an object that comes before us, and they depend on the understanding.”26

“But Aristotle’s theory of recollection shows that he does see the images in the primary sense organ as movements that can set other images in motion. If images can stir up and recall other images, then surely our current perceptual experiences can stir up images, since perception is the same kind of movement as phantasia. On this reading, then, the combination of phantasia and perception, which occurs during incidental perception, does not require inference or deliberation. Instead, it is entirely possible for our current perception of an object to set into motion the image that most closely resembles or is often associated with the perception so that the two are combined in the primary sense organ, thus producing incidental perception. (...) Perceptual appearance does not involve two distinct processes: calling up an image and reflecting on or contemplating that image to see if our current perceptual experience matches up with that image. For one thing, the images involved in perceptual appearance are not mere copies of past perceptual experiences; they are accumulations of numerous past experiences that have combined to make a single unified image that cannot be traced back to any one particular perception. Secondly, when we have a perceptual experience that resembles this unified image, the perception automatically sets our perceptual system in motion, calling

Kant identifies these holistic representations as

22. Ibid., p. 271. 23. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p.239. 24. “Recent studies have revealed that the acts of perception and imagining take place in the same areas of the brain and, consequently, these acts are closely related. Even perception itself calls for imagination, as percepts are not automatic products of our sensory mechanisms; they are essentially creations and products of intentionality of imagination.” Christian Borch’s, Architectural Atmospheres: On the Experience and Politics of Architecture, Birkhauser, 2014, p. 30. 25.“The capacity (receptivity) to acquire representations through the way in which we are affected by objects is called sensibility. Objects are therefore given to us by means of sensibility, and it alone affords us intuitions (A19/B33).” 26. Samantha Matherne, Images and Kant’s Theory of Perception, University of California, Santa Cruz, p. 760.

21. Krisanna M. Scheiter, Images, Appearances, and Phantasia in Aristotle, Department of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania, 2012, p. 263.

images, which are the result of the process of synthesis of the manifold of percepetion, which offer intuitions that drive the cognitive process. In this aspect, a lot of insights overlap with those of Aristotle offering us an even clear representation of what an image is and how it operates: “Images can be regarded as complex, holistic representations that represent something from multiple spatio-temporal perspectives, e.g., an image of a house that represents not only the front side that is directly given to me, but its backside as well.”27

appearances of a matter according to the various sides and points of view. The mind must make an illustration [Abbildung] from all these appearances by taking them all together.”30 In order to fully clarify his position, he gives an example of forming an image of Paris being similar to the image of the oak tree described by Aristotle.31 We realise that the image is an essential element of Kant’s framework for perception, yet they are not stable precise elements, but changing phenomena that are influenced by different experiences, which run through a manifold of various representations which are combined into a more complex unified image, or mental representation; thus an object is perceived from different points of view, spatial and temporal, its image influencing us in a multitude of ways.

The image therefore contains not only information about what is present to us, but also about what is absent, this is what Husserl described as adumbrations: “A physical thing is necessarily given in mere “modes of appearance” in which necessarily a core of “what is actually presented” is apprehended as being surrounded by a horizon of “cogivenness”. ... [The indeterminateness of the horizon] points ahead to possible perceptual multiplicities which, merging continuously into one another, join together to make up the unity of one perception in which the continuously enduring physical thing is always showing some new “sides” (or else an old “side” as returning) in a new series of adumbrations.”28

The manifold is a holistic representation from multiple points of view for which: “Kant thinks that we can represent a manifold ‘as such’ or as ‘one representation’ only if we ‘run through and take together’ the manifold in synthesis. (...) although through synopsis the manifold comes to contain representations of various aspects of the object, e.g., its front and back side, these representations are still dispersed and separate because we have not yet represented the manifold in a holistic way, as something that contains representations of an object from multiple sides and points of view. However, when we represent the manifold ‘as such’ or as ‘one representation’, we form a holistic representation in which we combine the various representations within the manifold together as representations of parts of a whole. It is only once this happens that the representations in the manifold cease to be separate and dispersed in the mind.”

In a similar way, Aristotle viewed images as holistic representations of the superposition of the similarities of sense perceptions accumulated throughout different instances in time.29 The similarity with Aristotle’s conceptualization of the image becomes even more apparent in the following passage from his Metaphysical Lectures: “The mind must undertake many observations in order to illustrate [abzubilden] an object differently from each side. . . . There are thus many 27. Ibid., p. 745. 28. Husserl, Edmund, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Springer 1983, p.43, cited in Samantha Matherne, Images and Kant’s Theory of Perception, University of California, Santa Cruz, p. 770. 29. “It is this notion of combining similar perceptions into a single, unified experience that interests us. The ability to combine stored sense impressions means that our images are not limited to the exact impression of a single perception. When we perceive the oak tree in our front yard and we store this perception in our memory, the image that we have is of that particular oak tree. When we perceive another oak tree, one in our neighbor’s yard, we retain this sense impression, and so on until we have several individual impressions of oak trees. At some point, according to Aristotle, these individual impressions of oak trees combine to form a single image. When these impressions combine to form a new ‘unified’ image, the particulars (e.g. height, width, color) that differentiated our oak tree from our neighbor’s oak tree disappear, and all that remains are the features every oak tree we have ever experienced has, such as leaves that bud and change color in the Fall, acorns that hang off the branches, and so on. The unified image cannot be traced back to a single perceptual experience, and so we now have an image that we never directly experienced, but that is a conglomeration of several independent perceptions, and so still originates in perception. Implicit in Aristotle’s empirical story is the idea that before we have the unified image of an oak tree, we cannot perceive things as oak trees, that is, we cannot perceive incidental perceptibles. Before we have acquired a unified image, we can perceive only the special perceptibles, e.g. colors, odors, tactile sensations. Unified images allow us to distinguish objects from one another as physical objects and so it is only after we form a unified image of an oak tree that we can see the object as an oak tree.” Krisanna M. Scheiter, Images, Appearances, and Phantasia in Aristotle, Department of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania, 2012, p. 26.

We realise thus, that in Kant’s account the relationship between images perceived from objects, the sensations emerging from those images and the holistic representations we have of them are all tied by our own process of imagination which entertains and manipulates them consciously in a 30. Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Metaphysics, Cambridge University Press, 1997, p.236. 31. “To clarify his view, Kant picks the example of forming an image of a city. He says that when we visit a city, “the mind then forms an image of the object which it has before it while it runs through the manifold”. By a ‘manifold’, Kant has in mind the multiple given representations that represent the city from different sides and points of view. He claims that this manifold is the result of the mind “undertak[ing] many observations. . . . E.g., a city appears different from the east than from the west”. If, for example, I am wandering around Paris, a host of given-representations will arise in me, as I observe Paris from atop the Eiffel tower, along the Seine, at Sacré Coeur, etc., and these representations together constitute the manifold that Kant is talking about. According to Kant, in order to form an image or ‘illustration’ of Paris on the basis of this manifold my imagination needs to ‘run through’ the representations in the manifold and ‘take them all together’. The resulting image would be a complex, holistic representation of Paris, which represents it from various sides and points of view.” Samantha Matherne, Images and Kant’s Theory of Perception, University of California, Santa Cruz, p. 765.

sophisticated manner through different mental processes such as perception, synthesis, sensible representation and eventually understanding which generates intuitions, or the prima mater of our imagination.

imaginative synthesis and form an image without having reflectively brought a concept to bear on what I see. (…) However, prior to this act, the image of [an object] is unified insofar as it is a holistic representation from multiple sides and points of view. This latter unity is what the schema provides when it guides me in unconsciously synthesizing the manifold in accordance with [a concept]. As we might make the point, the image is something that is conceptually structured: it reflects how in this instance the various distinguishing marks of a concept show up in a sensible, holistic way. Yet we are not conscious of what we see as conceptually structured, as falling under that concept. (…) [thus] he allows for us to form images on the basis of synthesis that is unconsciously guided by a concept.”33

“In Kant’s view, the synthesis of reproduction is the process through which representations in the past are brought to bear on what we are representing right now. He sometimes makes this point in terms of associations: by associating the present representation with representation in the past, we can form a representation that reflects the aspects of an object we have perceived over time. (...) Ultimately, on Kant’s view, the synthesis of apprehension and reproduction are ‘inseparably combined’ in image production: in order to form a complex, holistic representation of an object from multiple sides and multiple points of view, we need the synthesis of apprehension to successively take up representations of that object and the synthesis of reproduction to hold on to representations of it from the past and bring them to bear on the present.”32

This takes us to the relationship between the image and the unconscious, which is another way of inquiring the relationship between image and memory. We have indeed observed through the analysis of the image in philosophical conceptualization the way it functions, however, in this account, we have failed to realize why it is so, that is to say, why does the image have primacy in the creative process, and what role does the generation of spontaneous images in imagination fulfil. The type of images that are generated in the imagination are specific to each individual; when I refer to a brick, we would all indeed have an image in our minds that could be identified as a brick. However, the particular brick that intuitively appears in our minds has a particular characteristic and value to us, which relates to our own intentions with the possibility of using that brick that differs from other people. Therefore, the particular image that appears in our minds is related to our unconscious desire, and the creative act can be viewed as a process at fulfilling them. For this, we shall turn to Freud to analyse the relationship between the image and unconscious motivations.

Image formation connects to memory and in reasoning about the way imagination works, that is, when our power of imagination takes off in the presence of an object or external environment and is connected through the image to understanding, through a sensible perception of what is in front of us, it becomes a representation that our imagination can manipulate. Therefore the foundation of imagination is a sensible understanding of the surrounding environment. As such, in order for something to unleash the imagination, it needs to speak to the individual’s sensibility and engaging in the process of active perception and the properties that evoke or interact with our sensibilities are in the objects themselves. Trough the process of imagination and synthesis, we represent a given object that nourishes our understanding and drives our thinking, and thus, when an external stimuli excites our faculties into producing a novel response which is repeatable and communicable, we can translate it into an actual concept which would be equally perceptible given that a series of determining factors are choreographed into unison of image and feeling. This underlying concept isn’t necessarily conscious, and the aggregation of a manifold of images around the same element reveals an underlying concept is is directly tied to it’s the image. “The exercise of our powers also takes place according to certain rules that we follow, unconscious of them at first, until we gradually arrive at cognition of them. (...) I take this to indicate that our schematizing activities are ones that occur on a more unconscious level. I can engage in schema-guided

While wondering about the process of writing, in his text Creative Writers and Day Dreaming, Freud comes to ask the question, as many did before him: How does a work of art come into being? In attempting to give an answer, he follows the thread of creative writing to childhood play. That becomes the foundation and a building block for a series of mental processes that will eventually manifest in various forms in creative writing. One particular aspect of his approach that is interesting to observe is that his process explains both the active production of creative work, and passive engagement in its consumption, and in essence, the capacity to create and appreciate are indeed connected through wish fulfilment.

32. Samantha Matherne, Images and Kant’s Theory of Perception, University of California, Santa Cruz, p. 759.

33. Ibid., p.772.

Childhood play for Freud arises from “the desire to alter the existing yet unsatisfactory world of reality.”34 The mental energy is therefore directed at creating a situation in which the possibility of fulfilling those wishes becomes a reality, in creating a world of his own, or in manipulating the contents of this world in such a way that they would please him. The act of play for the child, is therefore not something trivial or a simple escape from the pressure of reality, it is rather a serious attempt at resolving his inner conflicts arousing from his perception from reality. Therefore, for Freud, what opposes play is not what is “serious” but what is “real.”35

resolution from inner conflicts becomes more private and the pleasure stemming from them more intimate. Therefore, at their core, the act of playing and that of phantasysing are simply different forms of wish-fulfilments.37 In describing the process through which a phantasy takes place, Freud writes: “The relation of a phantasy to time is in general very important. We may say that it hovers, as it were, between three times the three moments of time which our ideation involves. Mental work is linked to some current impression, some provoking occasion in the present which has been able to arouse one of the subject’s major wishes. From there it harks back to a memory of an earlier experience (usually an infantile one) in which this wish was fulfilled; and it now creates a situation relating to the future which represents a fulfilment of the wish. What it thus creates is a day-dream or phantasy, which carries about it traces of its origin from the occasion which provoked it and from memory. Thus past, present and future are strung together, as it were, on the thread of the wish that runs through them.” It is clear from the way Freud describes it that a phantasy is triggered by an active process of perception of the outside world that creates an impression which at the same time connects with a pre-existing constellation of internal wishes and at the same time trigers a memory in which certain aspects of that wish were fullfilled in the past. From that instance, an active process of projection takes place that depasses the present moment and projects in the future an orchestration of reality in which the possibility of the fillfiment of the wish might be again possible. For Freud, this active yet unconscious process in which we engage during phantasizing is not so different from dreaming after all.38 This process translates into creative writing when: “A strong experience in the present awakens in the creative writer a memory of an earlier experience (usually belonging to his childhood) from which there now proceeds a wish which finds its fulfilment in the creative work. The work itself exhibits elements of the recent provoking occasion as well as of the old memory.)”

The touch with the background in the act of play is never lost according to Freud, further expressing the attempt at resolving an inner conflict instead of substituting one reality for another: “In spite of all the emotion with which he catheters his world of play, the child distinguishes it quite well from reality; and he likes to link his imagined objects and situations to the tangible and visible things in the real world. This linking is all that differentiates the child’s “play” from “phantasyzing.” As we mature, we slowly abandon the act of play, however, the central conflict arising from our perception of reality and our internal wishes remains unresolved, what pleasure we once gained from a particula form of resolution in the act of play cannot be abandoned and is substituted for “phantasyings”.36 In this manner, the negotiation and the 34.“From childhood play, fantasies and dreams to works of art, Freud establishes a common element: the human desire to alter the existing, often unsatisfactory or unpleasant world of reality. Mental activity is directed toward inventing a situation in which unsatisfied wishes will be fulfilled”, in his position: “The writer’s choice of subject matter then seems to be dictated by unfulfilled childhood wishes as well as by a “recent provoking occasion”; past and present are projected toward the future through the medium of art. The artist dreams aloud and in public. (...) But what is it that makes for the special pleasure we derive from the artist’s depiction of painful or unpleasant events? Despite Freud’s emphasis on the content or inner meaning of a work of art, he does deal with what he calls “poetical effects”: the source of our pleasure is the formal control that the writer exercises over his day-deams. Freud calls this aesthetic response a “bribe”, which enables us to overcome our repulsion and which frees us from our own anxieties.” Sigmund Freud, Creative Writters and Daydreaming, Yale University Press, 1995, p.11 35. “Should we not look for the first traces of imaginative activity as early as in childhood? The child’s best-loved and most intense occupation is with his play or games. Might we not say that every child at play behaves like a creative writer, in that he creates a world of his own, or rather, rearranges the things of his world in a new way which pleases him? It would be wrong to think he does not take that world seriously; on the contrary, he takes his play very seriously and he expends large amounts of emotion on it. The opposite of play is not what is serious but what is real. In spite of all the emotion with which he cathects his world of play, the child distinguishes it quite well from reality; and he likes to link his imagined objects and situations to the tangible and visible things in the real world. This linking is all that differentiates the child’s “play” from “phantasying.” Ibid., p.23 36. “As people grow up, then, they cease to play, and they seem to give up the yield of pleasure which they gained from playing. But whoever understands the human mind knows that hardly anything is harder for a man than to give up a pleasure which he has once experienced. Actually, we can never give anything up; we only exchange one thing for another. What appears to be a renunciation is really the formation of a substitute or surrogate. In the same way, the growing child, when he stops playing, gives up nothing but the link with real objects; instead of playing, he now phantasizes. He builds castles in the air and creates what are called day-dreams.

I believe that most people construct phantasies at times in their lives. This is a fact which has long been overlooked and whose importance has therefore not been sufficiently appreciated.” Ibid., p.26 37. “This difference in the behaviour of a person who plays and a person who phantasies is accounted for by the motives of these two activities, which are nevertheless adjuncts to each other.” (...) “Let us now make ourselves acquainted with a few of the characteristics of phantasying. We may lay it down that a happy person never phantasies, only an unsatisfied one. The motive forces of phantasies are unsatisfied wishes, and every single phantasy is the fulfilment of a wish, a correlation of unsatisfying reality.” Ibid., p.27 38. “I cannot pass over the relation of phantasies to dreams. Our dreams at night are nothing else than phantasies like these, as we can demonstrate from the interpretation of dreams. Language, in its unrivalled wisdom, long ago decided the question of the essential nature of dreams by giving the name of “day-dreams” to the airy creations of phantasy. “ Ibid., p.27

What becomes an essential aspect of the process is, therefore, the present trigger and the unconscious associations that are connected through that chain of connections which for Freud is not random, but is guided by a process of resolution of internal tensions. The product of this resolution is a mental creation that can be presented by the author to someone else in it’s pure form. However, Freud notes that the contens of phantasies are carefully concealed from other people because their authors are ashamed of them, and moreover, even in sharing them in their pure form as simple wish fulfilments, they would bring us no pleasure whatsoever.39

what actively mediates our conscious perception of the world and the contents of our personal unconscious, the union of the two creating the spark that unleashes the fantasy that can be harnessed in creative process.40 This fragment contains an important insight that offers us the possibility to consider the creative process not only through the lens of fantasy and wish-fulfillment, but also, through a conscious engagement with the contents of the personal unconscious or the pre-existent material contained in various collective sources, and the assembly of pre-existent material, this offers us a profound insight for completing our picture of what the image is and how it affects the creative process in considering it’s relationship with what Jung calls the “collective unconscious” and the different processes through which these images may be harnessed, and coming to therms with them .

The pleasure we enjoy when reading a great work of literature does not come from the direct exposure to the contents of the unconscious, but in their “mise en form”, or, “ars poetica”. The contents of the unconscious, are reworked and reshaped and their presentations is consciously orchestrated to have a specific effect. The feeling of aesthetic seduction that we experience from perception of the formal expressions of the contents of fantasies lies at the heart of the “ars poetica” and is for Freud what distinguishes good writers from bad writers. The formal presentation of the contents of the unconscious creates a barrier and offers the possibility of perceiving it from a distance and preserving his own intimacy in the process of association and wish fulfilment.

The different manners in which we can obtain the unconscious material can be through dreams, spontaneous fantasies in day dreaming or ideas “out of the blue”, slips, deceptions and lapses of memory. The spontaneous fantasies however are not common to everyone, some arise naturally, others need to be invoked, and the capacity for creating them has to be trained, by eliminating critical attention which will create a void in the consciousness to be filled by a particular fantasy. The starting point is the conscious and wilful immersion in a particular state of mind, without any reserve and representing all the fantasies and associations that come up. Once represented, they give expression to the underlying mood and the unconscious preoccupations concretely or symbolically. This elaboration of the mood gives a picture of the contents and the tendencies of the unconscious at that moment, as a result of the free play of different faculties expressing their contents in a visible form, that once obtained become an indispensable material for the inception of the creative process.

We can extrapolate the central aspect of this process and what fuels this activity from Freud’s perspective is an active and unconscious pursuit of “wish fulfillment” and the pleasure derived from attaining it. In guiding our attention towards the things that interest us from the things that don’t, for in this case, specific reasons, which might be caused by their specific contents, but more importantly, according to Freud could be from their “mise en forme”. This process is 39. “You will remember how I have said that the day-dreamer carefully conceals his phantasies from other people because he feels he has reasons for being ashamed of them. I should now add that even if he were to communicate them to us he could give us no pleasure by his disclosures. Such phantasies, when we learn them, repel us or at least leave us cold. But when a creative writer presents his plays to us or tells us what we are inclined to take to be his personal day-dreams, we experience a great pleasure, and one which probably arises from the confluence of many sources. How the writer accomplishes this is his innermost secret; the essential ars poetica lies in the technique of overcoming the feeling of repulsion in us which is undoubtedly connected with the barriers that rise between each single ego and the others. We can guess two of the methods used by this technique. The writer softens the character of his egoistic day-dreams by altering and disguising it, and he bribes us by the purely formal - that is, aesthetic - yield of pleasure which he offers us in the presentation of his phantasies. We give the name of an incentive bonus, or a fore-pleasure, to a yield of pleasure such as this, which is offered to us so as to make possible the release of still greater pleasure arising from deeper psychical sources. In my opinion, all the aesthetic pleasure which a creative writer affords us has the character of a forepleasure of this kind, and our actual enjoyment of an imaginative work proceeds from a liberation of tensions in our minds. It may even be that not a little of this effect is due to the writer’s enabling us thence forward to enjoy our own day-dreams without self-reproach or shame. This brings us to the threshold of new, interesting and complicated enquiries; but also, at least for the moment, to the end of our discussion.” Ibid., p.28

40. However, in a specific fragment of the text, Freud makes allusion to a fascinating aspect of this process, and that is, the use in the creative process of already existent material, therefore, situating the creative process not in direct connection with the individual’s personal unconscious but with what might be called a “collective unconscious”: “We must not neglect, however, to go back to the kind of imaginative works which we have to recognize, not as original creations, but as the refashioning of ready-made and familiar material. Even here, the writer keeps a certain amount of independence, which can express itself in the choice of material and in changes in it which are often quite extensive. In so far as the material is already at hand, however, it is derived from the popular treasure-house of myths, legends and fairy tales.” Ibid., p.30.

OUTLINE OF THE CHAPTER: Image as likeness in Genesis. Image as likeness in Plato, and also, image as a source of error. Image and phantasia in Aristotle, the condensation of a multitude of points of view into a single image. Image as concept in Kant, relationship of the image to perception, understanding and imagination. Expansion of the notion of image as an accumulation of different points of view encountered in Aristotle, relationship of the image to thinking and imagination. Image as “wish-fulfilment” in Freud, the mental image as a carrier of unconscious desires expressing through phantasies that can be translated into works of art. Conclusion: The image is perceived as a reflection of something that is more “real” than the image. The image can be a source of error in trying to understand the “real” thing. The image of a perceived object accumulates in “clusters” of “like images” trough time that can guide us to a concept of the thing that is the most common throughout all the images. In order to be able to perceive an image we need to understand it and as such we need the faculty of sensible perception and imagination. Once the cluster of images is accumulated in time, we need to make a “mental walk” among the images in order to apprehend the essence of the concept underlying them. The images that appear in our mind in relationship with objects we perceive and in the process of fantasizing are carriers of hidden wishes that try to resolve inner conflicts between the perceived and the expected reality. The contents of those images can be translated in works of art by harnessing the contents of the fantasy into the creative process. Through a voluntary exposure to the contents of the unconscious by various methods, by analysing our dreams, by observing and noting day dreams, by engaging in voluntary fantasies and plunging in an unrestrained manner our moods we can express through images unconscious tendencies which can offer valuable insights or counterpoints to our conscious tendencies and be valuable guidelines in the creative process.

2. FROM IMAGE TO ATMOSPHERE.

The evolution of the concept of atmosphere. concern, which takes the form of emotion.”48

The notion of atmosphere is notoriously slippery to dissect from a conceptual standpoint. Initially, the term comes from meteorology and was used to designate the “pregnant upper layer of air”41. However, during the eighteenth century, the initial meaning, that of describing specific natural phenomena has been imbibed with more metaphorically nuanced connotations such as “moods in the air,” or, “the emotional tinge of space.”42 The theoretical foundations of the concept find their roots in the work of Martin Heidegger, among others43, however a concrete theoretical foundation has been established by Hermann Schmitz44 defining atmospheres as: ‘moving emotional powers, spatial carriers of moods’ 45.

He describes their spatial character while at the same time, emphasizing their inherent ambiguity, as they are: “unbounded, poured out and placeless, that is, not locatable.”47 In being still influenced by the Greek view of feelings as something outside that affects the body, he defines them as “spatial but placelessly diffused atmospheres, which visit the body they embed in the manner of […] affective

One of the issue regarding the concept of atmospheres, or rather, their ambiguity is related to separation of their relationship to things. As such, their conceptualization encroaches at times an almost metaphysical level: “[the atmospheres] have initially nothing to do with things – much less might they be produced by them. At most, objects can capture atmospheres, which then adhere to them like a nimbus. The autonomy of atmospheres is thus so great [for Schmitz] and the thought that atmospheres might emanate from things so remote, that, on the contrary, he even regards things as aesthetic formations when they are characterized by atmospheres. (...) ‘I designate a manifest lower-level matter (e.g., a thing, sound, scent, colour) an aesthetic formation if it gathers into itself, in a quasi-corporeal way […], atmospheres, which are objective feelings, and thus indicate bodily emotion.”49 In attempting to deal with the inherent ambiguous property of atmospheres, Gernot Böhme further expands on the concept and gives a more richly nuanced framework for interpreting them. Concerning the subject, instead of relying on the metaphysically charged notion of the ‘perceiving soul,’ he replaces it with the notion of ‘felt body,’ and concerning the object, or the ‘carrier,’ he choses the notion of ‘determinant’50: “The decisive point here is that, in this way of thinking, the properties of a thing are considered ‘determinants’. Thus, a thing’s form, colour, and even smell are thought to distinguish it from others, to delimit it to the outside and unify it internally; in short, the thing (Emphasis mine) is generally conceived in its closure.”51 In attempting to formulate a new foundation regarding the concept of atmospheres, he tries to untangle the assumptions that underline different conceptualisations of ‘the thing’52 as something that determines the atmosphere in

41. Gernot Böhme, Atmospheric Architectures: The Aesthetics of Felt Spaces, Bloomsbury Publishing, UK, 2017, p.158. 42. Ibid., p. 158 43. Böhme cites other important precursors such as Otto Friedrich Bollnow, Hubertus Tellenbach and Christian Cajus Lorenz Hirschfeld. 44. In the Volume III. Chapter 4 of his System der Philosophy. 45. Ibid., p. 2. 46. “The thesis of the relative autonomy of images rests, amongst other things, on a resigned attitude resulting from the experience that a person’s physiognomy can carry a promise this person does not live up to. Therefore, Klages conceives of an ‘Eros of distance’ that does not strive for closeness and possession, like the Platonic Eros, but keeps a distance and finds its fulfillment in the contemplative participation in the beautiful. Images possess actuality insofar as they are able, as such, to grasp the soul. (On the Cosmogonic Eros),” Ibid., p. 19. 47. Ibid., p. 10.

48. Ibid., p. 20. 49. Ibid., p. 20. 50. “The idea of a soul has to be abandoned, in order to reverse the ‘introjection of emotions’, and humans must principally be regarded as felt bodies (Leiber), that is, as in their self-givenness and self-experience as originally spatial beings. To sense oneself bodily is to sense concurrently one’s being in an environment, one’s feelings in this place.” Ibid., p. 21. 51. Ibid., p. 22. 52. «Das Ding Lacan’s exposition of sublimation is framed within a discussion about the relationship of psychoanalysis and ethics within the seventh book of his seminars. Lacanian sublimation is defined with reference to the concept Das Ding (later in his career Lacan termed this objet petit a); Das Ding is German for ‘the thing’ though Lacan conceives it as an abstract notion and one of the defining characteristics of the human condition. Broadly speaking it is the vacuum one experiences as a human being and which one endeavours to fill with differing human relationships, objects and experiences all of which serve to plug a gap in one’s psychical needs. For this

His concept is based on Ludwig Clages’s notion of the ‘reality of images’ which are ‘autonomous entities in relation to their carriers’46. They are coloured by properties such as appearance, expression, character or essence, and are essentially separated from the reality underneath, or the ‘cariers.’ According to him, the ‘appearances’ are ‘emotional powers,’ or feelings, as we would describe them, and the chief property of the soul is it’s ‘affective and merging participation.’ Schmitz’s concept of atmospheres absorbs two aspects from the notion of the ‘reality of images’, first, the autonomy of ‘appearances’ in relation to things, and second, the active impact they have on our emotions upon their perception. He further expands this notion, by separating atmospheres even more from the things themselves and liberating them from their connection to images.

classical ontology. The first step of differentiation concerns the relationship between ‘the thing’ and its properties: “The being blue of the cup is then no longer thought as something that is in some way limited to the cup and adheres to it but, quite to the contrary, as something that radiates out into the cup’s surroundings and in a certain way colours and ‘tinges.’”53

contains in its very nature the idea that “a thing’s essence cannot be directly perceived”56, as such, a differentiation is made between the properties that a thing “truly has” and those that “belong, or are ascribed to it” in relation with a perceiving subject. Therefore, instead of focusing on almost metaphysical dimension of what a thing ‘is’, he chooses to define things in relationship with the way they are perceived, and thus focusing on the more subjective aspect of the argument. He describes that the way in which things come to be perceive is something he calls their ‘ecstasies’: “Thus, we must characterize things according to the forms of their presence. I deliberately do not say determine, since this traditionally means isolating and excluding. Forms of presence, by contrast, are modes in which a thing characteristically steps out of itself. I call these ecstasies.”57

He further develops this view saying: “It does not follow, of course, that being blue is something that determines the thing in and of itself – it is, though, the colour of its presence: colour is the visible presence of a thing. As such, it is also simultaneously always spatial. Through colour, the thing asserts its presence in space and radiates into it. Through its colourfulness, the individual thing organizes space as a whole, that is, it enters into constellations with other things or it centres the space if its colour is overwhelming, at the same time tinging and tinting all other things. As present, the colourful thing can be localized yet, in a certain way, its colourfulness is everywhere.”54

This reading of the notion of atmospheres allows us to explore the conceptual underpinnings of an operational description used to describe and analyse the work of Peter Zumthor. The intricate relationship between the experience of “atmospheres” in their relationship to mental images is crucial in order to unravel their apparent entanglement. One of the difficult aspects of this approach, is his apparent refusal to approach them conceptually as for him “atmospheres” are only about concrete things.

The predominant view in Western thought was that, an attribute such as colour, ‘adheres’ to the surface of the thing and as such, is an inherent aspect of its properties, as is its weight, or its volume. Therefore, things ‘are’ in themselves, and we only perceive certain aspects of them, we can understand material objects as enclosed within finite limits with certain perceptible properties, or the way in which things are ‘being different’ from the way in which they ‘are’. In Greek philosophy, it was one of the properties that have been associated with eidos (or appearance): “For (Plato), a being’s being is exactly its emergence in a specific manner. (...) Aristotle, of course, then followed him in that direction as the original meaning of eidos and idea already suggests. Eidos (εἶδος) and idea (ἰδέα) mean ‘appearance’.”55

He directly associates the "presence of things" with the notion of atmospheres as following: "When I design a building, I frequently find myself sinking into old, halfforgotten memories, and then I try to recollect what the remembered architectural situation was really like, what it had meant to me at the time, and I try to think how it could help me now to revive that vibrant atmosphere pervaded by the simple presence of things (emphasis mine), in which everything had its own specific place and form. And although I cannot trace any special forms, there is a hint of fullness and of richness that makes me think: this I have seen before. Yet, at the same time, I know that it is all new and different, and that there is no direct reference to a former work of architecture which might divulge the secret of the memory laden mood."58

We can infer the connection, when Böhme speaks of the way ‘a thing radiates into its surroundings’ is something akin to to the way for Plato, things emerge in a specific manner. With Aristotle however, this notion is nuanced in a much more subjective way, as for him, ‘eidos’, or ‘appearance’ reason Lacan also considers Das Ding to be a non-Thing or vacuole. The relationships which one relies on to overcome the vacuity of Das Ding are always insufficient in wholly satisfying the individual. Lacan considers Das Ding a lost object ever in the process of being recuperated by Man. Temporarily the individual will be duped by his or her own psyche into believing that this object, this person or this circumstance can be relied upon to satisfy his needs in a stable and enduring manner when in fact it is in its nature that the object as such is lost. It will never be found again. Something is there while one waits for something better, or worse, but which one wants’ and again ‘[Das Ding] is to be found at most as something missed. One doesn’t find it, but only its pleasurable associations.’ Human life unravels as a series of detours in the quest for the lost object or the absolute Other of the individual: ‘The pleasure principle governs the search for the object and imposes detours which maintain the distance to Das Ding in relation to its end.’ Ibid., p. 24. 53. Ibid., p. 23. 54. Ibid., p. 51. 55. Ibid., p. 39.

In many ways we see a hesitation to associate images and the atmosphere evoked by those images to specific things, or as Böhme would call them, determinants. This would lead us to assume that Zumthor indeed sees also images as "independent from their carriers", and thus, allowing for the possible manipulation of their contents. The new image rising from memory is "new and different", therefore, we can see a 56. Ibid., p. 44. 57. Ibid., p. 46. 58. Peter Zumthor, Thinking Architecture, Birkhäuser Basel, 2010 p. 37.

conceptual connection with what Aristotle defines as "unified experience" or Kant's notion of holistic representation, in the sense that they cannot be traced as a "direct reference to a former work of architecture", and thus we can interpret his atmospheric images as phantasms.

experience: "In my work, I contribute to the existing physical framework, to the atmosphere of places and spaces that kindle our emotions. The magic of the real: that to me is the “alchemy” of transforming real substances into human sensations, of creating that special moment when matter, the substance and form of architectural space, can truly be emotionally appropriated or assimilated."

However, the independence between atmospheric images and things, that is, their determinants is not total, or rather, they are not pure fabrication of imagination. They are a reflection of concrete lived experiences superposed in time that have in turn shifted and deformed to convey a fragment of their initial impact. Here the connection is made clearer, real objects have a specific presence which "tinges" the space around them through their form, colour, or even other physical aspects that may be perceived by our senses in the form of "ecstasies". The connection between physical objects and their properties with the felt atmosphere and the internal image evocative of them forms when their sphere of influence is within the visual domain.

The properties of a space and its objects "bleed" into the surrounding environment in forms of "ecstasies" that generate specific feelings which we ultimately associate with certain mental images. Therefore, in the sphere of the visual experience, the role of atmospheres in indeed to be a mediator, between what is real and what is imagined trough what is felt, or how we are emotionally impacted by what we see. Therefore, the association between particular images and feelings generates specific atmospheres that will affect the users in a desirable way. In this aspect, Böhme describes atmospheres as "tempered spaces", thus including the image as an essential component in the conscious process of creating spaces that are tempered in desired manners.

As Böhme makes the connection between ecstasies and Aristotle's notion of eidos, or the different pieces of the mosaic we would later call a "unified experience": “In De Anima, Aristotle determined this withdrawal very nicely by saying that a perceiver takes in the eidos without matter. Indeed, a thing’s ecstasies are lifted off in description or pictorial representation, that is, off their source and are only mediated as such. Thus, description or pictorial representation themselves belong to the having-come-forth of the thing; they are lifted off (i.e., further articulated and marked but, on the other hand, also isolated and immobilized) "ecstasies". Accordingly, the elements of a description or picture can certainly be heterogeneous to the thing. All that matters is that they allow – like the ecstasies of the thing itself – the thing to come forth and to be present. The relative autonomy accruing to phantasms vis-à-vis things and the free miscibility of their characters are, however, something quite different from the connection of concepts, whose objective reality, that is, their correspondence to things, could still be queried. Things themselves already step out of themselves and constitute the stage of fantastic events.”59

The following chapter immerses in the process of creating "tempered spaces", or spaces with a desired "atmosphere", and their role in unifying like-images, around the same themes, evocative of same moods, trough various forms of representation. Thus, atmospheres, are not only spatial phenomena, but also, conceptual tools which maintain a strong form of continuity between different forms of representation of the mental images, form drawings to models, to eventually the photos that are taken of the actual projects, which evolve in time within each project and between the different projects. Thus, the analysis concentrates on the incipient moments of their formation, and their subsequent evolution and transformation with each project.

In this manner, the felt atmosphere and the mental image associated with it are only evocative of their determinants, their role shifting from being a mental form of iconography to be copied and revered, to becoming mental objects to be analysed and understood60 and subsequently physically represented and consciously manipulated in order to arrive at result which would convey a new yet similar 59. Ibid., p.54. 60. “While I am designing I try to find out what these images mean so that I can learn how to create a wealth of visual forms and atmospheres.” Ibid., p.26.

Bibliographical Note Peter Zumthor, was born on April 26, 1943, the son of a cabinet maker, Oscar Zumthor, in Basel, Switzerland. He trained as a cabinet maker from 1958 to 1962. From 1963-67, he studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule, Vorkurs and Fachklasse with further studies in design at Pratt Institute in New York. His work is known for their pure, austere structures, which have been described as timeless and poetic. These qualities were noted when he was awarded the 2009 Pritzker Architecture Prize.

The Mental Image images can only help us to find new ones. Thinking in images when designing is always directed towards the whole. By its very nature, the image is always the whole of the imagined reality: wall and floor, ceiling and materials, the moods of light and colour of a room, for example. And we also see all the details of the transitions from the floor to the wall and from the wall to the window, as if we were watching a film. Often, however, they are not simply there, these visual elements of the image, when we start on a design and try to form an image of the desired object. At the beginning of the design process, the image is usually incomplete. So we try repeatedly to re-articulate and clarify our theme, to add the missing parts to our imagined picture. Or, to put it another way: we design. The concrete, sensuous quality of our inner image helps us here. It helps us not to get lost in arid, abstract theoretical assumptions; it helps us not to lose track of the concrete qualities of architecture. It helps us not to fall in love with the graphic quality of our drawings and to confuse it with real architectural quality. Producing inner images is a natural process common to everyone. It is part of thinking. Associative, wild, free, ordered, and systematic thinking in images, in architectural, spatial, colourful, and sensuous pictures - this is my favourite definition of design.”64

Peter Zumthor’s main body of work, built and unbuilt is contained in his monograph, which is probably one of the most famous publications in architecture. Alongside Thinking Architecture and Atmospheres, they are a carefully polished lens into the architect’s thought and practice.61 In time, however, his work came to be revered, predominantly for its technical prowess imbibing sensuous spaces with exquisite material qualities, in short, for it’s ‘atmospheres’.62 In being a crucial theoretical tool, for understanding his practice, it is also the reflection of a deeper phenomenon which defines and choreographs his creative process. He expresses the need for a work of architecture to be seen from multiple levels of interpretation as expressed in the following paragraph from Thinking Architecture: “Images, moods, forms, words, signs, or comparisons open up possibilities of approach. We must construct a radical system of approach that enables us to see the work of architecture as a focal point from different angles simultaneously: historically, aesthetically, functionally, personally, passionately.”63 As diverse as this reading may seem, I argue that essentially, underneath all those different angles of interpretation stands a single element, namely the “mental image”.

A series of preoccupations that define his creative process are revealed in this fragment, and at the same time, reveal my own interests in it. It starts with an acknowledgment of the ever-present influence of the things that surround us. Without being a revolutionary insight in itself, it stands to reason that everything has a particular influence, which crystallizes in the form of an image, and we carry some of those images with us and being able to “re-invoke” them in our “mind’s eye,” however, these images are not sufficient for a new design, they only help us find new ones. Further down, certain parts seem contradictory and paradoxical: “the image is in itself the whole of imagined reality” and yet, the “images are usually incomplete.” How can, an image represent the whole, and at the same time be incomplete? The answer it seems, reveals itself, when we realize that, at this point, Zumthor speaks of different images, or of images at different levels. The whole process becomes reminiscent of a craftsman creating a mosaic with the pieces he has at his disposal, unique and imperfect. Here, “the whole” depends on the individual piece, and the individual piece has meaning, only in its relationship with “the whole”. The image of “the whole” in this aspect is in its paradoxical appearance, incomplete, because it is composed by the individual images

We can certainly identify with the euphoric feeling of an idea rising from the unknown depths of our imagination in the beginning stages of a project presenting itself as a guide towards the desired object. As such, it helps us avoid the anxiety of having to arbitrarily fabricate rules that would temporally allow to navigate the vast field of possibilities. This idea can be of different natures, but in case of Peter Zumthor, it presents itself in the form of an image which intuitively reconciles “what can be” with “what should be.” This process is described more in depth in the following paragraph: “We carry images of works of architecture by which we have been influenced around with us. We can re-invoke these images in our mind’s eye and reexamine them. But this does not yet make a new design, or a new architecture. Every design needs new images. Our “old” 61. “Zumthor is renowned for his explicit articulations of atmospheric concerns, as is manifest, for instance, in his book Atmospheres”, (...) “It is the particular atmosphere of a building that moves us and hence endows it with architectural qualiy.” Achitectural Atmospheres: On the Experience and Politics of Architecture, p. 7 62. “When you ask me what comes to my mind when I think of the theme of atmosphere, it is this presence of history: old factories, industrial buildings – specifically old brick factories actually: pure constructions, full of atmosphere. There exist images of the Meelfabriek in Leiden, the project in the Netherlands I am currently working on, that have this kind of strength as well.’” OASE, 91, Building atmosphere, 2013, p. 63. 63. Peter Zumthor, Thinking Architecture, Birkhäuser Basel, 2010 p. 37.

64. Ibid., p.69.

to ask the question then, how does the mental image come to be, and how does it interact with the surrounding reality defining the creative process in architecture? In the opening pages of Thinking Architecture, we find that for Zumthor, the totality of architecture is essentially about image: “When I think about architecture, images come into my mind. Many of these images are connected with my training and work as an architect. They contain the professional knowledge about architecture that I have gathered over the years. Some of the other images have to do with my childhood. There was a time when I experienced architecture without thinking about it.”67 Thinking about architecture brings images to our mind, this doesn’t necessarily imply that the totality of architectural experience is visual, quite far from it, however, we come to realize that the essence of architectural experience is contained in the visual domain. We can test this assumption by simply closing our eyes, when we realize that almost the totality of what we could consider an architectural experience disappears from our grasp, being replaced, by the remnants of its once physical presence. The most significant architectural experiences come back in the form of souvenirs, similar to the way we perceived them the first time. The experiences we remember “without thinking” are echoes of parts inside ourselves of which we are usually unconscious, and they form a baseline of who we are.68 They express their contents during dreams, fantasies or in the concrete encounter between an external event

Peter Zumthor, photo of a drapery inside his house in Thinking Architecture.

yet to be defined, and which define individual portions of space. Specific images of the precise articulation between a wall, the floor and the ceiling, become such fragments of the mosaic. The image of their material composition, the feeling of the particular light and the colour filling the space becomes another piece, both independent and related to each other and “the whole.” For Schopenhauer, the creative process is by its nature architectonic65, that is to say that each element needs to support the other so as together, they would create “the whole”. The initial decisions having ramifications with sensible impact till the end, the cornerstone, or the “fertile, creative ground” as Zumthor would put it, becomes the mental image.66 We come

something different. Similar to the case of pain.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Writtings from Late Notebooks, Cambridge University Press 2003. 67. Peter Zumthor, Thinking Architecture, Birkhäuser Basel, 2010 p. 7. 68. ‘This is what I try to teach some talented young architects here at the office as well. Usually I just ask the group to make up their minds about two versions of a detail. Let me give you an example: this morning for instance we discussed a model for the veranda building. We had all the models and things around and I told them. “I have this image, could there be a low ledge there or should it go all the way down as it is in the model?” First I ask the people around, about six or seven people, all young architects, to make up their minds in silence. They are not allowed to discuss the question. Then I ask for a vote: “Who is for a ledge?” And then the hands go up. “And who does not like the ledge?” The same. Then, we can start the discussion. They for instance may explain: “With a ledge added, I feel more protected when I sit there.” That is a fine answer for me. Another would probably give a much more theoretical, conceptual reply. Something to do with voids and repetition for instance, and with consistency in the project. To me, that kind of reply is useless; and that is exactly what I would tell him. “I have no idea what you are saying. Could you please explain this so that your mother could understand what you mean?” That is a difficult one. But I urge them again: “You are not at university; you don’t have to give me an abstract intelligent answer. You just have to tell me what you like and what you don’t like.” This is a very simple trick I use. They need to explain to me why they think with or without a ledge is better. They are used to explaining things intellectually: “I like a ledge because . . .” No! There should be no because! They ask “Why?” And I say “Because I already know all of your ‘becauses’.”’ ‘I want them simply to say: ‘I like it’ or ‘I don’t like it’. You have to allow yourself to be concentrated. Just being there, doing your thing. It sounds like a contradiction but it is a relaxed concentration. This trick is thus to take away the pressure of rationalisation. To be connected to your feelings. To really feel things and see them. This is confidence This is concentrated confidence.’” OASE, 91, Building atmosphere, 2013, p. 63.

65. Dans l’idée de Schopenhauer ou un système de penser doit être structuré d’une manière architectonique. Arthur Schopenhauer, Le Monde comme Volonté et comme Représentation, Folio, 2009, p. 14. 66. “Sense perception happens without our awareness: whatever we become conscious of is a perception that has already been processed. (...) The ‘external world’ affects us: the effect is telegraphed into our brain, there arranged, given shape and traced back to its cause: then the cause is projected, and only then does the fact enter our consciousness. That is, the world of appearances which appears to us as a cause only once ‘it has exerted its effect and the effect has been processed. That is, we are constantly reversing the order of what happens. - While we see, it is already seeing

that stimulates our perceptual systems in similar manners, awakening hidden contents, too weak to traverse the threshold of consciousness by themselves, leaving traces of their pleasurable encounter behind. These images become “containers” of the meaning that has influenced us. The meaning reflecting the particular relationship they have with our state of mind in that moment. They do not present themselves as an isolated event, rather, they are an intensified moment in a continuum of experiences, and as such, they become memorable. Once their contents become assimilated, they can be connected to our conscious knowledge or other unconscious experiences.

that unbiased perception is the truest form of experience, the images we experienced that have come to influence and eventually define us are are from a shared landscape of experience which we can all intuitively share73, the creative act becoming at the same time a form of autobiographical expression and a cultural vehicle of meaning74, as Aalvar Alto puts it: “Led by my instincts I draw not architectural syntheses, but sometimes even childish compositions, and via this route I eventually arrive at an abstract basis to the main concept, a kind of universal substance with whose help the numerous quarrelling sub-problems (of design task) can be brought into harmony.”75

They form an unconscious tissue of references we might call the personal iconography69, the mystery70 during the creative process comes from the impossibility of predicting the image that will appear in the beginning of the process, generating a new series of connections and relationships in the tissue of “pre-existing” images. The sequence of superposition of the different images generates the identity of the ideas that will soon come to emerge, therefore, the meaning, at least in the beginning is the resultant of the intuitive, and quasirandom superposition that is not yet confronted with an object of reference. In order to materialize the desired object, Zumthor always employs the mental image as a starting point71, the image containing the pleasure of a moment once lived, alongside a series of associations with other similar images in the personal iconography, thus the process of creation becoming an act of “mimesis”, similar to “imago dei”.

It would seem that the necessary process of meaningful architectural creation starts with a deliberate step into a meditative state of mind which lets unconscious images, moods, feelings rise to the surface and express their contents. As such, those contents diffuse into a larger web of unconscious associations that have a shared meaning. The shared meaning of the contents and the associations becomes the conscious expression of the unconscious tendencies that have been underlying the creative process, or our thinking. These contents, and their expression becomes a starting point, whose trend can be consciously followed, confronted, or even ignored; nonetheless, it is a point of reference already, scholarly mission, Ehrenzweig quotes the declaralion of the pioneering American psychologist and philosopher William James (1842-1910) as the motto of his first book: “It is, in short, the reinstatement of the vague to it’s proper place in mental life which I am so anxious to press on the attention.” Juhani Pallasmaa, In praise of Vagueness: Diffuse Perception and Uncertain Thought, 2010, p.224 73. “How do you view your early projects now, looking back? How has the way you design changed over years? The method has become much better. I teach people working with me, and I think that now it’s functioning very well. We do things and then we talk about them. The process is very model-related, it’s core is imagerelated and I’m the director of it all. As you know, I gather everybody in the office in front of the project and I make up the questions. I put the questions in the right order and I wait for a reaction. When somebody wants to explain his answer I always say: “Please, no. Just say if you like this solution or that solution.” If you start to rationalize, you cover up the immediate reaction, your immediate feeling. It’s more like keeping this fluidum of immediate reaction to things. I really don’t want to kill off this first reaction by talking about it too early. And most of all I think that every emotional reaction is true for the person feeling it. It cannot be argued by another person..I think this procedure is pretty perfect for me.” Interviews by Francesco Garutti, James Pallister and Gili Merin. 74. “Le rapport entre le lieu, le bâtiment et la fonction du point de vue de ses utilisateurs relève d’une psychologie complexe. Du fait de notre appartenance au monde et lorsque nous utilisons un bâtiment, nous sommes toujours sujets à d’innombrables émotions, images et souvenirs. C’est ce que j’aimerais comprendre et orchestrer dans mes projets. Mes bâtiments doivent transmettre un sentiment de profondeur. Nous, les architectes, parlons souvent d’intervention, lorsque nous plaçons un nouveau bâtiment sur un site. Pour ma part, je ne suis pas certain de vraiment aimer ce terme, car il a quelque chose d’une action venue d’en haut. Lorsque je parle de reconstruction émotionnelle, j’entends par là permettre et stimuler des sentiments d’empathie voire de compassion, mais aussi une curiosité ludique qui pousse à faire l’expérience d’un lieu. Les volumes noirs et les espaces intérieurs que j’ai conçus pour le projet de Sauda sont une tentative de créer un environnement émotionnel qui témoigne de la vulnérabilité de ceux qui ont travaillé dans la mine. Au Kolumba Kunstmuseum à Cologne et dans l’abri pour vestiges romains à Coire, j’ai recréé littéralement des espaces rappelant des volumes disparus. L’imagination est stimulée, le souvenir peut parler.” p.72. 75. Aalvar Aalto, The Trout and the Mountain Stream, Domus, 1947, p. 97.

We can reason therefore that the “conscious image” relates to the framework though which we come to understand architecture. When we think about something that we know, an image appears to express that knowledge, however, when we think about the “unconscious image,” whose contents are not yet assimilated, or simply, the images we have of architecture “before we were thinking about it,” they are inherently charged with personal meaning. It leads us to conclude that, the simple process of thinking about architecture, takes us to a personal journey of understanding the meaning of the images that constitute “architecture” for us. As such, for Zumthor, the “unconscious image” is the purest form of experience, unprejudiced and unbiased, it forms the basis of who we are and what we value, and in a radical act of self-acceptance, he decided to make it the basis of his creative process72. Therefore it operates on the shared belief 69. Phrase coming from Olgiati reffering to the images that have ifluenced him. 70. Le processus créatif pour Phillipe Boudon est mystérieux et indicible. 71. Zumthor thinks that all his projects have been done this way: Peter Zumthor & Mari Lending, Présences de l’Histoire, Scheidegger & Spies, 2018 p. 39. 72. “Ehrenzweig argued provocatively and convincingly that creativity arises from vague, juxtaposed, and diffusedly interacting images, and unconscious perceptions and processes, not from focused percepts, precision, and logical clariry. In his

to which the creative process can always return in order to avoid going adrift into endless permutations of different possibilities. The image as an object of conceptualisation and representation of the project has different stages. We can talk initially about the mental image, reconciling the potential of the place with unconscious tendencies. Once it becomes concrete enough that it can be apprehended by the ‘minds eye’, the image is further represented by drawings that try to capture various characteristics of the images that translate them into usable concepts. One unsurprising, yet notable thing is that Zumthor’s drawings traverse different stages throughout his career, and therefore, can reveal the unconscious tendencies that were underlying the creative process, and the way they developed in time. With it’s atmospheric qualities, it permeates the drawing and suggests at the hinted moods, feelings, intentions in a different form of conceptual representation. It becomes a tool for representing not only the possible space, but the desired space. It is the moment when the work becomes autobiographical.76

Peter Zumthor, Kolumba Art Museum, Cologne, Germany, 1997-2007

We can observe in the beginning of Zumthor’s career an obsessive preoccupation with the constructive aspect of the building, the light, materiality, space and the structure participate in the overall ambience in a very distilled and almost secondary manner. In time, these preoccupations do not get replaced, they get intensified, gaining mass and physical presence within the drawings. In the case of Kolumba Musem, we can see the light becoming almost material, having the same gravity and mass as the massive blocks enclosing it. From the drawings we realise that the light isn’t a simple element that penetrates an opening, it fills the space, it can be shaped, moulded, bent and twisted. This new conceptual flexibility with the components of his mental images expand enormously the potential of his creative process. The mental image becomes a starting point and a guide, but never defined

Peter Zumthor, Kolumba Art Museum, Cologne, Germany, 1997-2007

76. «Auparavant, je disais volontiers que je cherchais un moyen de créer une atmosphère adéquate. Mais aujourd’hui, lorsque je parle de la temporalité de mes lieux, j’essaie de réaliser ce que j’appellerais une “reconstruction émotionnelle”. J’entends par là les qualités formelles et matérielles que mes bâtiments devraient avoir pour parler de la temporalité de leur lieu […] Ce qui est essentiel dans la notion de reconstruction émotionnelle telle que je l’utilise, c’est qu’il s’agit d’une expérience partagée. Je peux utiliser des matériaux, de la lumière, de l’ombre et des sons pour composer une oeuvre d’architecture et lui donner une présence que la plupart des gens pourront associer avec quelque chose de leur propre paysage émotionnel. Nous venons tous de quelque part, nous sommes tous remplis d’images hautement personnelles qui nous sont chères, nous sommes remplis d’histoires. J’aime travailler avec cela. Lorsque j’ai lu pour la première fois le livre éclairant d’Aldo Rossi Autobiografia scientifica […] dans les années 1980, j’ai compris que si je voulais être authentique, je ne pouvais travailler qu’avec mes propres images. Qu’est-ce que je veux exprimer quand je parle d’un sentiment de l’histoire, d’un sentiment du temps, et quel langage architectural je vais utiliser pour l’exprimer?» Peter Zumthor & Mari Lending, Présences de l’Histoire, Scheidegger & Spies, 2018 p. 73.

William Turner, Rain, Steam and Speed, 1844.

as an end, it enters in a symbiotic relationship with its own representation, devouring and nourishing itself, like a snake biting its own tail. We can perceive this tendency applied to various contents of his mental images, seeing them evolving in time. The phenomenal experience it promises becomes material through representation, the temperature of the water becoming a visual experience, transpiring its content through other aspects of the project.

that of evoking that feeling, of warmth, or coldness in the viewer. In time, we come to perceive the intimate relationship between the mental images, the conceptual ideas that they embody, and the subjective feelings they evoke through the drawings.77 They express sensible relationships between elements. One thing that becomes evident is that there are a series of fundamental elements that are offered a special kind of attention, namely, colour, line, texture and depth, offering a glimpse of something almost metaphysical. It is this rather impossible starting point that infuses his work with a particular kind of energy as he tries to find a way to materialise that “metaphysical” aspect of the mental image, as each element is sublimated into something more trough colour and texture.

From this point of view, any form of representation becomes a tool that embodies the intimate relationship between concepts and feelings contained inside his mental images, or the glue that keeps everything together and avoids the process going adrift. He employs colour not as a conceptual tool, that is, to differentiate between the different constitutive elements of the image, rather, the function of colour is more subtler, that of a container of a specific feeling. Its role being

The object of our satisfaction is the result of the particular constitution of our desires. An object can touch several people at the same time, but certainly not in the same way, it seems obvious that some of its aspects will have more impact on certain people than on others. After continual discussions with the client, a certain agreement is necessary in order to be able to advance in the process, nevertheless, one particular thing at Zumthor is the independence of its process from external considerations78, evident by the fact that it remains motionless in his way of doing things, and customers have to adapt to his sensibilities, evident most by the fact that he is ready to destroy the finished object and start again if he cannot find the final form «beautiful»: “But if, at the end of the day, the thing does not look beautiful - and I’m deliberately just saying beautiful here, there are books on aesthetics if you want - if the form doesn’t move me, then I’ll go back to the beginning and start again. So you could say my very final chapter heading, my final aim probably is: The beautiful form”.

Peter Zumthor, House of Seven Gardens, Doha, Qatar, 2009

It should be noted that essentially, his process can be summarized as a search for a beautiful form. Beauty penetrates 77. “Design drawings that refer co a reality which still lies in the future are important in my work. I continue working on my drawings until they reach the delicate point of representation when the prevailing mood I seek emerges, and I stop before inessential start detracting from its impact. The drawing itself must take on the quality of the sought-for object. It is like a sketch by a sculptor for his sculpture, not merely an illustration of an idea but an innate part of the work of creation, which ends with the constructed object. These sort of drawings enable us to step back, to look, and to learn to understand chat which has not yet come into being and which has just started co emerge.” Ibid., p. 13. 78. “What is your relationship with other world-famous architects? Respect from a distance. The opinion of architects who don’t belong to the team working here would somehow disturb the work. Their opinion would bring a wrong kind of energy. The construction of a specific concept and emotion for a project developed here together over hundreds, maybe thousands of hours cannot be shared easily. Even good or intelligent critics would seem like an intrusion. Here you’re not disturbed by anything and are completely into the work, only focused on that. Yes, all the time. And if there’s something that can disturb this I have to eliminate it. You know I can be pretty hard and say: “Ok, that’s it, out please.” Because I need fire here and it has to be my fire.” Interviews by Francesco Garutti, James Pallister and Gili Merin

Peter Zumthor, House of Seven Gardens, Doha, Qatar, 2009

and unites the different preoccupations which once assembled generate a form which, if its not «beautiful», the process will be started over again, there is nobody who can judge in his place the beauty of the final form, certainly it is not precise if the customer has a word to say on it, and concerning the final aspect of its object, Zumthor will not delegate the final decision to someone else. Affective and intuitive judgments cannot be exteriorized, which gives it such a precious status, it is certain that the work can never be reproduced by anyone else, only copied.

come into their own. I believe every well - made thing has an inherently appropriate order chat determines its form. This essence is what I want to discover and I therefore stick firmly to the matter at hand in the process of designing. I believe in an accuracy of outlook and a truth content in real, sensual experience, which are beyond abstract opinions or ideas.”79 In his work, it seems that two particular elements define the genesis of the creative act, and these elements are his particular perception of beauty and essence that determine the thing that will be created. To make things even more confusing, for him «the hard core of beauty is concentrated substance», so he equates the notion of beauty and substance. Among the various elements on which his creative process depends, intuition seems to be the most obvious and mysterious. It is through intuition «that we achieve beauty», or the «substance» of which we find ourselves, also it is also with intuition that we manage to discover and recognize after exhaustive work the "essential nature”. We are confronted from the start with a series of terms from Zumthor’s vocabulary which have very particular but always vague and with mysterious meanings, substance, essence, beauty, presence, etc. It is with these terms that we manage to find the support for his creative act which seems to be a fabric of metaphysical signs and meanings.

“My task as a designer is difficult by definition. It is related to artistry and achievement, intuition and craftsmanship. But also to commitment, authenticity, and a deep interest in subject matter. To achieve beauty I must be at one with myself, I must do my own thing and no other because the particular substance that recognizes beauty and can, with luck, create it lies within me. On the other hand, the things I want to create- table, house, bridge - must be allowed to

Zumthor likes to describe the weaving of feeling80 and reason81 in his creative process, however, looked from outside, it becomes clear that the intuitive aspect, reflective of his own values and agendas is the dominant factor, whereas the rational part is there to support and give it form. This becomes even more evident when looking at the descriptions of his projects when specific personal requirements or preferences of clients are mostly omitted. The history, the materiality, Peter Zumthor, spatial and atmospheric model for his house.

79. Peter Zumthor, Thinking Architecture, Birkhäuser Basel, 2010 p. 47. 80. “Active thinking is an act of the will, passive thinking is a mere occurrence. In the former case, I submit the contents of ideation to a voluntary act of judgment; in the latter, conceptual connections establish themselves of their own accord, and judgments are formed that may even contradict my intention. … Active thinking, accordingly, would correspond to my concept of directed thinking. Passive thinking … I would call … intuitive thinking. The capacity for directed thinking I call intellect; the capacity for passive or undirected thinking I call intellectual intuition.” Carl Gustav Jung, Collected Works Volume 8: Structure & Dynamics of the Psyche, Princeton University Press, 1969, p.68. 81. The design process is based on a constant interplay of feeling and reason. The feelings, preferences, longings, and desires that emerge and demand to be given a form must be controlled by critical powers of reasoning, but it is our feelings that tell us whether abstract considerations really ring true. To a large degree, designing is based on understanding and establishing systems of order. Yet I believe that the essential substance of the architecture we seek proceeds from feeling and insight. Precious moments of intuition result from patient work. With the sudden emergence of an inner image, a new line in a drawing, the whole design changes and is newly formulated within a fraction of a second. It is as if a powerful drug were suddenly taking effect. Everything I knew before about the thing I am creating is flooded by a bright new light. I experience joy and passion, and something deep inside me seems: to affirm: “ I want to build this house!” Peter Zumthor, Thinking Architecture, Birkhäuser Basel, 2010 p. 21.

Peter Zumthor, selection of atmospheric materials for the House of Seven Gardens.

or even, the particular atmosphere of a place is relevant in so far as they are connected to the subjective factor, that is, his personal motivations. As such, the mental image, and its intuitive formation as described by the meaningful interaction between the exterior reality and the internal moods and their relationship with the unconscious contents is dependent on the aesthetic force of the external impression. This becomes clear when reading the description he gives about one of his projects:

into a construction that will in time answer to programmatic needs is a way to channel in a creative way his own life experiences, like a writer into an oeuvre that will in time becomes part of a place, its initial sources will be forgotten but the traces will be there somewhere, expressed through particular feelings evoked by specific things. The construction as an object being a part it’s surroundings, outlasting the influence of its author. The project for the Thermes de Vals offers the opportunity to emphasize certain evident yet subtle aspects of his creative process that may otherwise seem unrelated, or even invisible at a first look, giving the opportunity to confront the pertinence of specific ideas developed throughout the research. In order to better understand the relationship between a mental image and its different representations throughout the creative process, it is important to extract the and analyse the incipient moments and the overall “taste in the air” before the project began. As a tool for trying to apprehend its cohesive role in assembling the different elements into a built reality, Therme de Vals, would seem at first a paradoxical choice. When describing the project, in “Thinking Architecture”, Zumthor gives an almost contradictory statement of what we would have expected from his usual process, he writes:

“[He] points at a small model of a mountainous landscape. It shows a greyish slope and a few small existing volumes. Under the model, a small box with grey clay and a spatula to make changes. It is a different site than the initial one, states Zumthor: ‘The client first wanted to buy another site, but I advised him not to do this. I could not do the job if the site was unsuitable. It has to be a beautiful landscape, otherwise it is not worthwhile.’ (Emphasis mine) The new site is more suitable. However, the study of the landscape model has brought to the surface another problem: the new volume, according to Zumthor, needs to be placed just at the edge of the site: ‘My intuition tells me “I cannot build anywhere here. I would like not to touch this slope, but rather have it as a front yard park, and position the building just on the edge, overlooking the slope. I thus called the client and told him we should also purchase the adjacent plot.’ For Peter Zumthor, the setting of his projects in the landscape or urban environment is of utmost importance, and he is in the fortunate position to select his commissions and advise his clients in order to create the best conditions for the work to come about. If one is determined to construct atmospheres, it starts with the creation of excellent conditions.” 82

“(...) I remembered how we recently developed a project for a thermal bath in the mountains in my studio, not by forming preliminary images of the building in our minds and subsequently adapting them to the assignment, but by endeavouring to answer basic questions arising from the location of the given site, the purpose, and the building materials- mountain, rock, water- which at first had no visual content in terms of existing architecture. It was only after we had succeeded in answering, step by step the questions posed by the site, purpose, and material that structures and spaces emerged which surprised us and which I believe possess the potential of a primordial force that reaches deeper than the mere arrangement of stylistically preconceived forms. Occupying oneself with the inherent laws of concrete things such as mountains, rock, and water in connection with a building assignment offers a chance of apprehending and expressing some of the primal and as it were “culturally innocent” attributes of these elements, and of developing an architecture that sets out from and returns to real things. Preconceived images and stylistically pre-fabricated formal

Often, projects are formally undefined, yet conceptually clear, as the essence of the project transcends formal preoccupations. To say that form becomes only a container of the once defined atmosphere. The association between words and things, in a clear way, is perceptible through different mediums, Zumthor says that, there are no ideas apart from things, similarly to Jacques Derrida who says “il n’y a pas de hors texte.”83 Translating the personal image 82. OASE, 91, Building atmosphere, 2013, p. 60. 83. In Peter Zumthor’s office, the many different elements that together construct the ‘real things’ such as materiality, texture, sound, temperature, rhythm, light and shadow simultaneously, are being dealt with separately. We find this somewhat surprising, since the very experience of atmosphere lies in the simultaneity of all these aspects, the way they are coming together. However, argues Zumthor, in the design process one should be able to fully focus on one aspect at a time: ‘This is what psychologists teach us. Don’t mix things! You have to look at all different layers and levels separately. That is what we do in the office as well. For instance, we talk about materials, to see how they react to each other. First, I have to paint a picture in the minds of the team members so that they have an image as well. For example I ask them: “Can you see this silk? It is very thin, part of it is translucent, another part is dark.” And then this lights up in the minds of the team. “Do you get this?” I ask. I have to make sure that they get it right, before I add another material, which is the

next step. I describe to them: “This is waxed maple wood, right? Do you know this one? No?” Therefore I always have samples around, which I need to show as well. During these discussions, when somebody wants to talk about form, I bring it back to materials again. Form will come later. But this very moment is about materials. The next step follows: I take away the maple wood and exchange it for another material. Imagine this as a corner. What happens when I replace the maple wood with MDF particleboard in black? I ask: “Better or worse?” That is how we discuss material in a tangible way.’ Ibid., p. 73.

idioms are qualified only to block access to this goal.” 84 Following this description, we could assume an exception yet the overall impact of the different elements is that of a general cohesion and robust contingency. One of the fundamental elements defining the project is a photo of an advertisement for the future thermes in a magazine, speaking about Basel, as it was 50 million years ago. This element has a powerful visual impact and even a more powerful rhetorical tool, associating simplicity, and primal forces as constitutive aspects of the project. The process begins with a series of evocative images becoming a part of their surroundings, and an even subtler reflection becomes useful, that at the same time the surroundings can become a part of the project. Consequently, the local quarry stone becomes a defining element, setting the limits on what could, and should be achieved. The most compelling aspect of these images, in all their ‘a posteriori’ relevance to the central concept is that they appear as firm foundations to what is about to be. Independently, they evoke various qualities that can be grasped within their context like light and shadow, smoothness or roughness, cold and warmth, yet together, they merge and create an unified image of something yet to be created. What would a project, buried underground, appearing as if was there for millions of years, submerged in water, with high ceilings and corpuscular light, covered in stone look like? That seems to be the primordial energy emanating from the visual contents of the bedrock of the creative process. We can have a glimpse of this mental image through the drawings that show us the evolution of the project. What is significant in this instance, is that Therme de Vals (19901997) and the project for the Apartments for Senior Citizens (1989-1993) are among the first, where he uses colour in the design process in order to convey ambient feelings like coldness or warmth and contrasting materialities, granitwater, stone-wood as we journey mentally throughout the building. Its also worth noting the insistence on using only specific tools like graphite in order to convey his ideas, and translucent paper which captures much more smoothly the material giving he impression of a foggy, and gloomy presence, the continuity being so important that the same pattern is preserved even in the smallest technical details. As the general atmosphere of the mental image takes shape, it imprints certain qualities which transcend the different modes of representation, and fusing them into one another, from drawings to models to the actual building. In Peter Zumthor, reference images for Terme Vals.

84. Peter Zumthor, Thinking Architecture, Birkhäuser Basel, 2010 p. 32.

the model, the materiality is carefully selected to convey the same feeling, even filling it with water to give the natural reflections and colour, bleeding its atmosphere into the surrounding space. These same feeling and impression can be perceived within the built projects, the feeling captured by the initial drawings echoing into the visitor’s mind, and evoking unconscious associations of similar experiences, giving a strong impression of immersion and familiarity. The relationship between these two projects continues on a deeper level beyond the development of a new system where atmosphere is represented and manipulated conceptually, they also express novel shifts in his compositional attitude where for the first time small displacements between the constituent modules participate conceptually into the dynamics of the spacial experiences where the visitor has to observe them, giving the impression of almost natural imperfections. This small development marks an important conceptual liberation of the interior from the exterior, without the need of recurring to an overarching structure that would compose the whole, and whose effects ripple throughout his later work. The internal dissociation between “form” and “function”, or “inside” and “outside” is paramount in order to allow the natural interaction between mental imagery and surrounding environment, and a concrete response to programmatic demands, as Zumthor says in the introduction of his first Monoraph: “Every architectural design must question abstract specifications, because one can determine whether abstract preliminary thoughts will work only when they acquire concrete physical shape. I have to work that way. I design my buildings from the inside out and from the outside in and then once again from inside out until everything is right.”85 Following the evolution of the representation of the different projects, we observe a progression in the complexity of the mental images, although alternating at different moments, they follow recognisable patterns, situating them generally inside 3 groups which we could describe as Tectonic, Compositional and Organic, having a certain primacy over other elements in the generation “atmospheres”. The overall identity and essence of his early projects is the result of a very rigid interaction between the constructive and technical aspects of the building and the desired “atmosphere”, resulting in precisely executed yet almost “soulless” buildings. With the achievement of a certain technical maturity, his obsession shifts towards integrating the research Peter Zumthor, Apartments for Senior Citizens, Graubunden, 1989-1993.

85. Peter Zumthor, Monograph 1985-1989, Birhauser, 2013 p.12.

of atmospheres within the conceptual process, offering them the central stage, and putting precise emphasis on the precise representation of internal images. With the emphasis on atmospheres, the first disjunction between inside and outside occurs, each element of the building is treated independently yet working in unison with the whole. The compositional system emerges out of the need to calibrate precise spatial conditions, without the need of an overarching order86. The freedom to allow the different constitutive elements of a project to obey their own laws and to contribute in an independent manner to the composition of the mental image finds its first incarnation inside Termes de Vals, and further expands with the subsequent projects, therefore one aspect that becomes particularly captivating is the uncovery of particular archetypal images that traverse his whole body of work and manifest in different forms throughout his projects. The mental image uncovered with this project represents the tension between mass and void, each being treated as a physical substance, where the massive blocks have the dominant position of shaping the overall experience of the space, and the void being expressed almost like a left-over. Here also, the tension between the two is choreographed by the over-all equilibrium where each block constitutes a defined programmatic entity, serving a precise role within the whole. The same underlying principle metamorphoses throughout different projects later on, where the nature of experience can change by a precise shift of the materiality of the constitutive elements. We can see it further expanded in the initial drawings for the Swiss Pavilion for the Expo 2000, following a similar compositional system with massive blocks defining programmatic entities, positioned in specific relationship with each other to create a labyrinthine void in between, allowing for the circulations, and the overall movement to develop. In certain aspects, we can still feel the presence of a massive illusory cavernous body, reminiscent of the stone quarries used for the Termes de Vals expanding in the open air, subverted by lightness and warmth of the wood structure. The same underlying mental image, that is, a defined geometrical body constraining the tension between mass and void dominates subsequent projects which develop in three 86. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We spent years developing the concept, the form, and the working drawings of our stone-built thermal baths.Then construction began. I was standing in front of one of the first blocks that the masons had built in stone from a nearby quarry. I was surprised and irritated. Although everything corresponded exactly with our plans, I had not expected this concurrent hardness and softness, this smooth yet rugged quality, this iridescent gray-green presence emanating from the square stone blocks. For a moment, I had the feeling that our project had escaped us and become independent because it had evolved into a material entity that obeyed its own laws.â&#x20AC;? Peter Zumthor, Thinking Architecture, BirkhĂ¤user Basel, 2010 p. 62.

Therme de Vals, Graubunden, 1990-1996

completely different contexts, allowing for the possibility for a strong argument against his claims for a “contextual” approach. The project for the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance exploits the same principle both in plan and section allowing it to fully expand and choreograph the tension between the two within a complex three dimensional volume: “The basic idea of the design was to inscribe a tower in the city silhouette, dance studios stacked vertically, rooms of various sizes, shapes, different views and lighting situations, a sculpture of spatial vessels, platforms and compartments encased in a transparent membrane.” 87 Whereas this project is never constructed, the essential ideas articulated during its conception materialise with two subsequent projects, his Personal House and Atelier, and the Kolumba Museum. The image of floating spaces with various shapes stacked upon each other dominates the other aspects of the building, which have to be accommodated within this framework, with the structure adapting to the spatial requirements in order to sustain their weight, influencing the choice of materials equally, transforming the whole into a spatial organism, as Zumthor himself notes:

Swiss Sound Box, Swiss Pavilion, Germany, 1997-2000

“Nowhere else have we been able to create a spatial organism out of historical remains as we have here with the Kolumba Museum. The curators’ only specification was that it contain a rich variety of exhibition spaces in different shapes, sizes, and light qualities in which the pieces of the collection would in time come to find their natural homes.”88 Beyond the underlying idea of a space organism that spreads within an enclosed perimeter responding to the programmatic requirements and atmospheric desires of its users, the two projects use also the same type of visual representation highlighting their deeper connection. In many ways, when observing the connections between two projects from the inner courtyard to their spatial similarities, it is justifiable to argue that his personal house is in many ways a smaller version of the previous projects, even the intimate chamber created for the relaxation of visitors, facing the street on the second floor in the museum, filled with wooden panels split from the same trunk, similar to the way Mies employed the marble motifs in the Barcelona pavilion are equally present in the house, filled with books and musical instruments, an intimate space for collective gathering. We can further trace the same idea underlying the spatial organisation for a Residential Development in Lucerne, a State Art Gallery in Russia, a private house in for a Sheiq in Quatar and one in England which is the only one that 87. Peter Zumthor, Monograph, 1990-1997, Birkhäuser Basel p.92 88. Ibid. p. 168.

Laban Centre for Movement and Dance, Laban, 1997-2003

Kolumba Art Museum, Cologne, Germany, 1997-2007

Zumthor House and Atelier, Haldenstein, Graubundenland, 1998-2005

was built, later being revealed that the client was the English philosopher Alain de Botton.

placing the figures in appreciative, sympathetic surroundings, full of warmth and filled with shadows, light and depth. We have devised a particular spatial structure for the new Perm Museum and its collection. Just as a river meanders between rocks, so the visitor proceeds through the elongated building. An open exhibition passage leads between the volumes of the closed collection galleries. The passage moves back and forth, from the city to the river side. The rooms on the city side are tall and windowless, reminiscent of churches with the light of the sun penetrating from above; on the opposite side they are low, with wide windows looking over the flowing waters of the Kama River out toward the north and into the vastness of the Russian Landscape.â&#x20AC;?89

The Residential Development project, one of the few housing projects from Zumthor plays with fragmentation of the mass and void on a much larger scale than the previous projects, yet because of the buildings regulations, the spatial richness of the proposal is far less developed as each block is fragmented in order to accommodate specific apartment typologies for its future residents. The quality of the project again resides in its dynamic articulation between the mass and the void, which floats around the volumes like water around rocks in a river, transforming it into public space. This same principle is applied for the Perm State Art Gallery where he conceived a space to house a series of icons and objects from folk art that: â&#x20AC;&#x153;stand naked and unprotected, [and] a new museum would counteract this estrangement by

On a much intimate scale, the Chievelstone House expands on the same underlying principle of the spatial 89. Peter Zumthor, Monograph, 2008-2013, BirkhĂ¤user Basel p. 142.

flow around massive blocks defining programmatic entities as in the Perm Museum, the resulting space being capable of functioning equally well as a small private gallery, or residence, showing even further its versatility. Surrounded by vast expanding fields, the basic shape is less constrained by the surrounding context, and the idea of the project can be seen many times throughout the conceptual process , attesting to the fact that the most complex and carefully developed spaces in the previous projects were the result of rigid constraints defining the overall form and offering a basic framework within which the tension between mass and void can develop. It is surprising to observe the degree of consistency and continuity of the same basic underlying idea running throughout the different projects, usually an irregular polygonal shape defined by contextual factors delimiting the degree of conceptual movement, fragmented inside in a carefully measured proportions. The massive blocks usually being carved from within, containing small rectangular cavernous spaces responding to specific functional requirements, with the exterior space “flowing” between them, all within a well delimited form. This defining aspects of this conceptual approach stemming of the same archetypal mental image containing a constant tension between mass and void. The House of Seven Gardens is a hybrid containing several conceptual themes coexisting within one project, offering us a glimpse at the evolution of a second theme which we will call organic. It is defined by a tendency towards fluid shapes that confront a well delimited formal barrier, deconstructing the fundamental aspects of the compositional attitude analysed previously.

Guterareal Residential Development, Lucerne, 2005-2006

Perm State Art Gallery, Perm, Russia 2007

At a first glance, one would hesitate to connect his work with de-constructivism, yet in this instance, although probably unconscious, the connection seems evident. The phenomenal capacity of the space to impregnate through materials and atmospheres the fabric of our experience becomes the new centre of focus and effort instead of the formal and geometric unity the previous projects. The spatial sequences are defined by the feelings of the different rooms, each spatial configurations seems particularly distinct yet part of a coherent whole. The non-hierarchical positioning of the volumes seems to liberate experience from structure, form from authority, the elements and activities are the defining elements of the experience creating a landscape of different emotions, connected by fluid circulation and no overarching formal unity. The tendency towards the “organic” expresses through fluid forms and shapes carved out of solid blocks,

Chivelstone House, Devon, England, 2008

instead of the rectangular shapes seen previously. The origin of this tendency can be traced to a small project called Poetic Landscape, in 1998: “The Poetic Landscape project opened new spaces for me, new spaces to think about the connection of architecture to landscape and the creation of buildings that serve less a practical purpose than a spiritual need. I tried to design small houses dedicated to the reading of a poem, to the sound of a poem, to the presence of a poem written for a specific place in the landscape. (...) And so we devised buildings like large vessels, hollow architectural forms, created to capture the changing intensity of daylight and to foster new experiences from place to place: buildings made for lingering, reading, and speaking, created and built to trace the sound of the landscape.”90 The image of a particular spatial quality resulting from the contrast between an irregular shape constraining an organic hollowed out space explored with this project later becomes the underlying principle for the development of the Harjunkulma Aparment Building, which didn’t find favour with the local officials in Jyvaskyla, similarly to the Guterareal Residential Development in Lucerne due to its over-emphasis on the overall quality of the public spaces in relationship with the surrounding context, the cost of which the officials were unwilling to undertake91.

House of Seven Gardens, Doha, Qatar, 2009

Bruther Klaus Field Chapel, is a direct formal and spatial result of the previous experimentations, as Zumthor describes: “The Poetic Landscape was never realized because the county government changed political parties. The stock of architectural images I dreamed of and worked on for this project later found expression in the Bruder Klaus Chapel.”92

Poetic Landscape, Bad Salzuflen, Germany, 1998-1999

With these projects, a slow evolution ocurs developing the tendency to liberate the organic from the constraints of the irregular shapes within which they were contained. The potential for this liberation can equally take place due to the remote and relatively unrestrained contexts in which the buildings would be conceived, as is evident with project for the Pingus Winery in Spain situated on a large field and buried underground to profit from the topography of the terrain or with the Summer Restaurant, to be situated on the Ufnau island on the Lake Zurich, amongst two churches from the twelfth century, an inn from the Baroque period, a barn, and a little pleasure house for the monks in the trees,93 which equally integrates the surrounding topography into the flow of the internal space and even into the slope of the roof.

90. Peter Zumthor, Monograph, 1998-2001, Birkhäuser Basel, p. 11. 91. Ibid, p. 12. 92. Ibid, p. 13. 93. Peter Zumthor, Monograph, 2002-2007, Birkhäuser Basel, p. 46.

Harjunkulma Aparment Building, Jyvaskyla, Finland, 2001-2004

In many aspects, the most surprising evolution takes place with a small project called A Tower for Therme Vals, represented by an atmospheric sketch illustrating “the hotel of his dreams.” It represents the conclusion of a long iterative design process, containing a spatial concept evoked by the same underlying mental image, a massive block excavated from within, alas, in an organic manner creating fluid cavernous spaces that stands in stark contrast with the initial Therme de Vals building. While it still remains unrealised, the mental imagery of its internal spaces was used in a later project situated in a completely different context that the Swiss Mountainous region, namely, the Chilean desert. Bruder Klaus Field Chapel, Mechernich, Germany, 2001-2007

The Nomads of Atacama Hotel employs a similar spatial layout, which instead of being organised vertically, follows the vastness emptiness of the surrounding landscape, and is spread horizontally, also, limiting the amount of sunlight exposure and increasing its thermal efficiency, as Zumthor describes: “As an architect whose everyday challenge involves dealing with the valley gorges of the Alpine landscape and responding to densely built and tightly structured situations in Switzerland and elsewhere, it was a great joy to design something for the desert, for its expanses and wide horizon. Forty-eight hotel rooms laid out on an endless horizon of 360 degrees for people wanting to experience the extremes of nature - this is the design that came out of that joy.”94

Pingus Winery, Valbuena de Duero, Spain, 2001-2005

The organic form is supposed to blend with the surrounding landscape, its interior courtyard, reminiscent of the public space for the Harjunkulma Aparment Building, has a steady source of water that fills the oasis every 25 days, nourishing the germinating seeds of the desert plants laying burred in the ground. The four clusters of diametrically opposed rooms are suspended by a large undulating structure, not unlike the concrete slab for the Learning Center designed by SANAA. Similarly, underneath the large structure in the shade, new open spaces are organised allowing the visitors to experience the rough climat of the desert.

Summer Restaurant, Insel Ufnau, Lake Zurich, Schwyz, 2003-2011

All of Zumthor’s museum designs follow the same underlying spatial concept that we have analysed with the previous projects and the incipient designs for LACMA are no exception. Indeed, we can see a reinterpretation of the previous principles to accommodate the gigantic program. Indeed, we can see at this point the various mental images explored previously as a mental toolbox, which is accessed when necessary and certain principles are extracted to respond to the problem at hand. As with previous projects, the overall shape, initially, was defined by the important “La Brea Tar Pits” that had to be protected. A Tower for Therme Vals, Graubunden, 2005-2012

94. Peter Zumthor, Monograph, 2002-2007, Birkhäuser Basel, p.10.

An irregular organic form emerges that is shaped intuitively to best mediate the tensions between the programmatic requirements and the surrounding contextual delimitations, and in many ways, its organic form and initial black colour are reminiscent of the tar pits that are lying underneath. The intuitive formation of the mental image is directly related to previous experiences and the particular interaction with the surrounding environment, and as such, its manifestations as a particular typology connects directly to a subjective reading of the context, offering glimpses inside a deep interaction between the subjective and objective dimensions of the creative process, as he describes: â&#x20AC;&#x153;At the beginning of the design process, the image is usually incomplete. So we try repeatedly to re-articulate and clarify our theme, to add the missing parts to our imagined picture. Or, to put it another way: we design. The concrete, sensuous quality of our inner image helps us here. It helps us not to get lost in arid, abstract theoretical assumptions; it helps us not to lose track of the concrete qualities of architecture. It helps us not to fall in love with the graphic quality of our drawings and to confuse it with real architectural quality. Producing inner images is a natural process common to everyone. It is part of thinking. Associative, wild, free, ordered, and systematic thinking in images, in architectural, spatial, colourful, and sensuous pictures - this is my favourite definition of design.â&#x20AC;?95 As observed with the previous projects, two general tendencies dominate the conceptual process in different periods, the compositional tendency defined by the fragmentation of constitutive elements of the program into massive blocks that compose the space within a delimited geometric shape, and an organic tendency, which often enters into a strong confrontation with a delimited shape that engulfs the whole program. The third tendency which traverses his whole body of work, is tectonic, which is defined by a strong focus on the structural aspects which dominate the overall design process and in the end, the final perception of the space.

Nomads of Atacama Hotel, San Pedro of Atacama, Chile, 2008-2010

Although still defined by form, structure and composition, the tectonic preoccupation in the background allows for the precise articulation of the desired atmospheres and working in a unison to articulate the desired mental image. Here, it dominates and subjugates completely all the other components for its own sake, as can be seen with the the Caplutta Sogn Benedetg Church, Bregenz Art Museum or subsequent projects.

LACMA, Los Angeles, USA, 2008 - Present

95. Peter Zumthor, Thinking Architecture, BirkhĂ¤user Basel, 2010 p. 37.

Caplutta Sogn Benedetg Church, Sunvitg, Graubunden, 1985-1988

Topography of Terror, Berlin, Germany, 1993-2004

Bregenz Art Museum, Austria, Germany, 1989-1997

Bregenzerwald, House of Craftsmanship, Andelsbuch, Austria, 2008-2013

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, London, England, 2010-2011

I Ching Gallery, Dia Center for the Arts, Beacon, New-York, USA, 2000

This aspect of Zumthors body of work is probably the most known, and given the most attention, by highlighting its technical proficiency, and constructive precision, however, in many ways it is the least interesting aspect with regards to the design process as often the structural and constructive aspects dominate the spatial freedom to articulate and develop specific mental images. As such, the essential qualities and properties of his creative process, with a profound connection to his mental images are mostly contained with the projects previously analysed.

3. IMAGE AND REMINISCENCE.

Bibliographical Note Born in Chur in 1958, Valerio Olgiati is the son of architect Rudolf Olgiati. He studied at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) and worked in the same city and then in Los Angeles. He returned to Switzerland in 1996 to found his own practice, which he based first in Zurich and then in Flims, in 2008, in the Grisons Alps. A visiting professor and a sought-after lecturer, he enjoys an international reputation. In addition to publishing a few books himself, his work has been the subject of numerous other monographs and publications around the world. Since 2001 he has taught at the Academy of Architecture of the University of Italian Switzerland in Mendrisio.

Valerio Olgiati, Bibliographic Iconography, 2G, nÂ°37, 2006, p. 134.

The Personal Image If the mental image presents itself as the most obscure and almost mystical grounding for the creative process requiring the medium of different forms of representation to hint at its elusive qualities, Valerio Olgiati’s work presents the possibility to step out of the prism of the mental image, liberating the creative act from the subjectivity of its author and allowing to stand in front of a material image, containing the information which can be interpreted in different ways to become another foundation for the creative process. Through selective publications and restrained presentations, his work would seem almost impossible to penetrate on its own, if not for the vague explanations carrying a powerful impression of the almost spiritual relevance that a series of references have for him presented as a series of 55 images, called his Iconographic Bibliography, a subtle reference to Aldo Rossi’s Scientific Autobiography, a collection of recollections presented as the foundation of his particular views and interest in architecture.

they give to the world. He writes in relation with the polished publication containing the elusive series of images, their role made even more obscure by abstract and almost technical descriptions: “Late-night films or a photograph of good food on an old timber table - these talismanic subtexts are clearly of significance to the work of these two architects, or at least to how they want their work to be received. It is a relief that neither book includes the customary, page-consuming interview with the architect. However, the architects’ reluctance to mediate or explain the relationship between these found cultural icons and the production of their work is irritating, and compounds a tendency towards the obscure that is characteristic of both books. (...) One can understand a reluctance to refer explicitly to ‘precedents’ or to architectural history, these things being deeply unfashionable in contemporary architectural discourse. One can also understand a desire to distance their work from the ‘starchitecture’ of the last decade, which aspired to be in tune with the immediacy, and the lack of depth, of fashion and advertising (work that will hopefully recede with the arrival of the current economic crisis). But why this refusal to communicate (which incidentally does not preclude widespread publication) and this insistence on a mysterious ‘point zero’ as the origin for their work? This difference is even stranger if one considers the robust trajectory of current architectural practice in German-speaking Switzerland, and the role that Kerez and Olgiati have played in it.” 96

He describes their relevance as follows: “The illustrations on the following pages are important images stored in my head. When I design or invent a building, they are always hovering somewhere above me. These are the basis of my projects. They are with me when I sit gazing at the ‘white sheet of paper,’ so to speak. It is always my aim to build something that is related in some way or other to these images either the image itself or what it illustrates. Often the way it is illustrated is what fascinates me. For about a year now I have attempted, even in discussions with my assistants, to select only those images that have a special defining significance for our work, for my work. All the rest were excluded. (...) Only a single mind can produce truly fascinating architecture. Always assuming one believes that fascinating architecture has to be prototypical and unique. Beneath each of the following images there is a short picture caption, sometimes accompanied by a commentary. Where there is no commentary, I have not yet been able to come up with a rational explanation of the image or what it illustrates.”

Adam Carusso’s criticism points at one of the fundamental problems when confronted with the work of Valerio Olgiati. The presence of the obscure generated by the “irritating” absence of descriptions connecting the build corpus of work with its conceptual substratum is indeed perplexing and frustrating. Besides its cultural significance and debt, his work presents another angle for the way architecture is conceived and interpreted, detaching it from historical values by taking a deliberate step outside this shared system of meaning. Yet it assumes at the same time its relevance as the single most important vehicle for the architect’s eccentricities and obsessions, therefore failing to distinguish itself from associations with at least certain forms of ‘starchitecture’ as Adam Carusso insinuates.

It becomes almost evident that, in certain circumstances, an architect’s work is profoundly inaccessible and superficially seductive if glimpsed through the lenses given to the world. This objection is shared equally by Adam Caruso in his article: Whatever Happened to Analog Architecture, where he tries to understand the work of Kristian Kerez and Valerio Olgiati in terms of the particular discrepancies between the cultural ground that they share, and the relatively distilled, hermetic, and to a certain degree, misleading presentations

Olgiati attempts to present his work as the meaningful interaction between his sensible reminiscences, remnants of 96. Adam Carusso, Whatever Happened to Analog Architecture, p. 5.

internal constitution, however, its visible presence becomes a matter of cohesion with the surrounding presence of the landscape. This quote contains a few precious insights that become a grounding point for understanding his motivations and a possible foundation for his creative act. It offers us the possibility to further analyse and eventually attempt to understand the legitimizing discourse, the foundation, and the edge where his creative act starts to bleed into the metaphysical. The presence of the idyllic landscape capturing a certain absence of productive human activity, reflecting a somewhat disinterested “a-temporal” existence with regards to nature with human life developing like a caterpillar inside a cocoon within a protected natural environment is instrumentalized for the conception of his summer retreat in Portugal’s Alentejo Region (Villa Alem).

Copper engraving, Palazzo Odescalchi, Lake Como, Italy, 1885,

the built environment imprinted on his mind, and particular architectural intentions defined by programmatic demands, all synthesized within a new object defined by a “sensible abstraction” of its prerequisite components. The sensible reminiscences present themselves in forms of recurring images that underpin his conceptual endeavour. With his father as an architect, beyond the parental pressure of stepping in his footsteps, Valerio also inherited his aesthetical baggage that traverses throughout his work, the foundations of his practice bring us back to his childhood, and the first image imprinted on his memory; in his Autobiographic Iconography, he writes:

The presence of the water reminiscent of the blue lake sitting on top of his bed as a child is rather apparent, however, the permeating effect of the blue colour emanating from the drawing is an illusion which contributes to the constructive details of the pool. As water naturally reflects the colours of the environment, surrounded by the pale concrete, it failed to evoke the same impressions as the engraving. As such, a blue layer of imported marble sits at the bottom, fulfilling that function and transmitting that feeling. Receding in the background of the courtyard a large opening frames the distant landscape of a nearby village; the proportions of the opening - “almost a square but not really a square” - as he says in an interview, mirror the proportions of a Flemish landscape painting98, now spatialised, waiting to be admired from the couch sitting at the other of the North-South axis inside the living room.

“The first picture is of a small etching from nineteenth century showing Lake Como. I should first give you some background information here. My father, who was also an architect, and who influenced my own work, hung this picture in a frame next to my bed at head height soon after I was born. You have to imagine that during childhood this picture hung some forty centimeters from my head. I grew up with this picture in the sense that it programmed me with his own bias in matters of taste, and I find myself still carrying this influence with me today. Whenever I am faced with a decision, my starting point is the kind of classical situation depicted in this etching. If I could, I would construct buildings like the one in this picture. I also like this wonderful boat floating alone on the surface of the water, steered by a lone figure.”97

Other images sitting at the conceptual foundations of this project are the Ruins of the tombs of Mitla in Mexico inspiring the layout for the intimate spaces, an important reference for him in its relationship to intimacy and privacy defined by the serpentine parcours as seen also in his Lake Cauma Project and that of an Indian miniature representing an ideal image of a paradisiac garden. Similarly to the Biblical Eden, it presents itself in the form of an enclosure delimited from an unknown and dangerous environment, with the entrance situated in the centre engaging the visitor in a very predictable parcours. These images inform the fundamental conceptual decisions of the project and influence it’s overall perception. The possibility for experiencing a recluse, idyllic existence99 being put forward as a central element of its conception.

We perceive the pervasive beauty of the landscape and the aesthetic qualities the image evokes. At a deeper level, we could read a specific idyllic form of existence, where the beauty of nature is the dominant factor influencing each action and “existence as such” could be perceived as the privilege of being a simple observer of the transcending spectacle of nature. Human existence and the necessities it brings with it, give architecture an individual autonomy in its

98. Tom Vanderbilt, Villa Alem, A Castle in the Sky, WSJ Interview. 99. In this aspect, the Villa ressembles a temple at the top of a hil: “The sense of

97. Valerio Olgiati, Iconographic Bibliography, El Croquis 156, p. 13.

Representation of Paradise, Indian miniature.

Villa Alem, Alentejo, Portugal, 2004.

His commitment to these principles is evident not only by the quality of the projects but by his descriptions of them taking a certain amount of pride in their realisation and a simultaneous indifference towards the cost of their realisation. He estimates that “more than 400 trucks of concrete were required for its realisation and a precision even above the Swiss standards”100, offering us a glimpse at a broader tendency towards “ideal” and “abstract” architecture which can be glipsed from his selection of images from the smallest details, informing his technical and constructive details to the big overall picture. In an article dissecting the Fifty-five Images Laurent Stalder, Chair of the Theory of Architecture department at ETH, writes: “Although the images reflect the author’s personal experience, their purpose by far exceeds any mere accumulation of personal souvenirs. Valerio Olgiati’s intent in collating the Iconographic Autobiography is more fundamentally to demonstrate an authoritative and hence superordinate order in architectural thought, which underpins his own work. To interpret the Iconographic Autobiography merely as a design instrument means to decipher its signs.”

Villa Alem, Alentejo, Portugal, 2004, Plan.

means to convey their contents, predominantly aesthetic102, more than half evoke a pleasant feeling of sensible curiosity. Ranging from purely aesthetic, to conceptual, technical or even abstract sometimes in a carefully constructed plan, or in a beautifully conceived detail, the images evoke the tension between different forces that drive his curiosity. Two tendencies seem to be the most dominant, an almost indifferent drive towards total abstraction contrasted with an intrusive form of aesthetic sensibility, or, a general tendency towards sensible abstraction. He describes this tendency more clearly by the difference between “abstract” and “nonreferential” architecture, presenting itself as a pure construct of the mind, and the other, “referential” architecture, a reflection of the image of a previous construction.

Without reducing them to a simple catalogue of ideas101 presenting itself as a provisory escape from the void of possibilities when confronted with a ‘white sheet of paper,’ they contain the roots of deeper preoccupations and interests that are a fundamental drive of his creative process. In attempting to penetrate the relative significance of these images, we come to realize that specific themes metamorphose from one image to the other. Their content is diverse and rich in the different interpretations, yet they employ different

In order to decipher specific conceptual ideas hidden inside the selection of images, we first have to analyse the meaning Olgiati attributes to “ideal” and “abstract” architecture. The “ideal” can be characterised by a certain poetic quality that the image evokes (as seen in the Indian miniature representation of paradise) and a particular aesthetic ideal which can be experienced phenomenologically. In this aspect, we can refer to it as “atmosphere” as defined by

celestial mystery deepens (...) as I begin to ascend the staircase - 110 feet of thin, precise concrete, without any railing, carved into the hillside - as if I’m climbing toward some temple of the sun god.” Idem, p.1. 100. Idem, p.4. 101. Valerio Olgiati’s Ideational Inventory, as desribed in El Croquis 156, p. 16.

102. “three possible levels of interpreting the collection: a transient one that encompasses the atmosphere of the images; a compositional one that concerns questions of geometry; and a conceptual one that relates to its inner structure.” Laurent Stalder Fifty-five Images, p.5.

Lake Cauma Project, Flims, Switzerland, 1993.

Mitla, Mexico, 450 - 700 CE.

Bohme, evoked by certain material qualities than an object possesses bleeding into the encompassing space, of the water, or the surrounding environment, the materials used and even their “mise en forme”103. What is specific about his view of “atmosphere”, although he avoids that description, possibly to avoid comparisons with another famous Swiss architect, its the pristine, rare and precious nature of the experience it generates, it is clear that he has no interest for the ordinary as a possible source of inspiration. The term “abstract” brings with it a certain amount of confusion, not least because it stands in close proximity with what Olgiati calls “non-referential” architecture, both of which he claims at different points to be his ultimate goal. In the description of his collection of images, he describes his attempts to “rise above the traditions handed down to me” and liberate himself from these images in the process “even to the extent that my architecture would become nonreferential”104 and in aiming to solve these contradictions he sets out to design “an architecture that in the end is ‘only’ abstract”105.

Lake Cauma Project, Flims, Switzerland, 1993.

the discourse of an origin that subsequently is transformed”, therefore possessing a specific “genealogy”, whereas the “nonreferential” architecture is “an invention does not have such ancestry (...) in regard to its formal properties as well as to its content.” He describes the temples of Angkor Wat as “abstracted depictions of the image of a mountain”, therefore defining “abstract” architecture as possessing an inherent form of pictorial analogy which the reader can unveil in his mind, and contemplate the “reference”106, whereas the Mayans, “do not depict anything with their temples, (...) they are a pure invention of the Mayan peoples’ power of imagination,” he then adds: “The difference between the two is important for me because I would like to work like the Mayans did. I would like to make something that is radically new, something that

He attempts to clarify the difference between the two, describing “abstract” architecture as an architecture based on a point of departure, or a reference, “an abstraction is always 103. “Indeed, atmosphere in architecture begins where construction ends. It describes vibrancy in terms of the color, light, odor or humidity by which a building establishes its outward appearance. Being thus committed to a tradition that understands architecture as the art of illusion, it ranges from the trompe l’oeil of the Baroque to the unconscious alphabet of metaphysical architecture, or the meticulously documented moods of the Swiss Analogen. It is that which determines the surfaces confining a space, which mediate between a building and its surroundings by means of structure, texture, material, color and ornament.” Laurent Stalder Fifty-five Images, p.6. 104. Valerio Olgiati, Autobiographic Iconography, El Croquis 156, p.6. 105. Valerio Olgiati, 2G International Architectural Review n°37, Barcelona, Editorial Gustavo Gili, 2010, p.11.

106. It is unclear why he does not simply use the word “referential” in opposition to “non-referential” therefore avoiding the confusion.

Borthwick Castle, Scotland, 1430.

Visiting Centre for the Swiss National Park, Zernez, Switzerland, 2003.

is invented. I am aiming for an architecture that has no origins and thus is non-referential.”107 From these descriptions, and differentiations, we can now better glimpse at the significance the images have on their own, and the qualities with which they infuse the projects, and even to a certain extent, how far they are adrift from his “impossible” ideal. In this regard, each project may be seen as an attempt of reconciliation between these two different and mutually exclusive ideals, producing a hybrid that leans more in either one direction than the other. Another example of the abstraction of a reference would be his Visiting Centre for the Swiss National Park where two simple rectangular volumes fuse on their diagonal, losing their individual qualities and resolving the technical requirements of the building. The reference for the project, the Borthwick Castle, Scotland, ca. 1430, with the description: “The stairs are set into the walls. The main hall comprises windows in all four directions” contains the essential conceptual ingredients standing at the foundation of the project, upon which it iterates, placing it therefore as a strong example of “abstract” architecture.

Visiting Centre for the Swiss National Park, Zernez, Switzerland, 2003, Plan R+1.

concrete. For example, I vary the colour of the concrete I am using in my buildings… For me, the use of white concrete is an expression or a reference that a building built in white concrete is based on an invention, an idea, perhaps I can use the term enlightenment”. It is thus a differentiation into two kinds, one of which is invented, abstract and non-referential, while the other is more earthbound, more referential.”108

What is interesting to observe is that these two attitudes take turns at influencing different aspects of the building throughout different projects. Here the “abstract” tendency, iterated upon a previous reference, providing a solution for the programmatic requirements of the building limits itself on its envelope which becomes an exercise in attempting to give it a “non-referential” appearance from the treatment of its materiality, he notes: “Most of my buildings are made out of concrete. So, I have the option to vary the

A reversal of this attitude can be seen in the project for the Learning Centre in Lausanne, where throughout the conceptual process up until the end, the project appears as

107. Valerio Olgiati, Iconographic Bibliography, El Croquis 156, p. 16.

108. Valerio Olgiati, Conversations with Students, Virginia Tech, 2007. p. 39.

Fathepur Sikri, India, 1563.

Learning Centre EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland, 2004, Model.

“non-referential”, defying any association with other previous buildings or the buildings contained in his “Iconographic Autobiography”. It presents itself as a pure mass of concrete laying on the plateaux, defined by a complex internal structure defined by its programmatic needs. The “non-referential” aspect of this project becomes evident as we start to analyse its constitution. By taking its programmatic requirements and spreading them on different plateaus, the resulting formal vocabulary creates a series of inherent complexities that need to be addressed. It is at this point that the aim for an “abstract and pure architecture” becomes evident, as the internal components become hybrid elements with a minimal physical presence and resolving the maximum amount of structural and technical requirements. The columns are inclined in order to resist both the static charges of the building, and those of it is environment pushing from all sides. As such, instead of having independent elements dealing with different functions, they all serve a coherent unity acting in unison for each specific need. As a process, the inception of the project becomes clear; however, in its different presentation, its double nature is revealed109. Various anecdotes from former students hint at his obsessive nature by insisting on all models to be painted white, emphasizing their abstract nature, this obsession, however valid, can be hinted at throughout his publications where all the photos of his models also appear painted in white.

Learning Centre EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland, 2004, Rendering.

This suggests that his creative process is an intellectual exercise in the creation of pure form, which is capable of responding to a series of programmatic requirements.110 The images serve to project specific desired qualities onto the abstract form suspended in the void. They are a bridge relating the “non-referential” to the real conditions of its environment. This becomes evident in the way the building is materialized through different collages, where qualities of Fathepur Sikri temple are evident on its body and skin. The massif concrete permeates the whole object transforming it more into an almost natural element than an artificially created object meant to answer specific needs and requirements. The mass of concrete is tinted in red, giving it earth like appearance, as if grown out of ground. The sky and its qualities are a direct reference to the photo taken of the temple, hinting at the

109. “Olgiati’s work displays a similar, a priori belief in conceptual unity, described by one critic as his ‘obsession with totality’. As stated at the outset, the process of design sets up a conflict between two or more contradictory premises – generally, a ‘rational’ premise and an ‘irrational’ gesture – which are then painstakingly and precisely reconciled by working through the consequences. This is an excellent illustration of Venturi’s notion of ‘both-and’ architecture, in which the ‘apparent irrationality of a part will be justified by the resultant rationality of the whole’.” OASE 99, The Architecture Museum Effect, OASE Foundation & NAi Publishers, 2017, p. 47.

110. “the ambition to create a ‘suggestion of infinity by architectural devices’ Olgiati’s concern with geometry has a similar implicit aim. He envisages ‘architectural systems of dividing that are dependent on an internal logic. . . . The architecture of dividing is based on one thing, one idea, and then takes that one thing and divides it up until it works as a building. The reliance on geometry stands for the Platonic notion of the idea as infinite potential, more real than reality itself.” OASE 99, The Architecture Museum Effect, OASE Foundation & NAi Publishers, 2017, p. 48.

clear intention to fabricate an impression that is if somehow alien to the building’s requirements, yet least aligned with his own intentions. Another project which takes the double functioning aspect of the references to another level is Das Gelbe Haus, by its ironic name, already implying a disjunction between different components. Currently functioning as a museum, it was a master builder’s house built in the 19’th century in the middle of Flims which Valerio Olgiati’s father donated to the municipality along with a collection of local cultural artefacts. One of the principal clauses of the donation was his wish that the building’s conversion into a museum had to be carried out following the principles of his own architecture, and the “façades should be painted white,” and as Bruno Reichlin notes:“the radical renovation carried out by his son deserves to be defined as “brutal.”111 It stands in his oeuvre as the most obvious example for a balanced relationship between inside and outside, and “referential” or “abstract” and “non-referential”. From its enclosure, it appears as a massive white body of stone, producing the impression of having been carved out of snow. It quickly becomes evident though that the building’s envelope is an exercise in iconic reference, taking its inspiration from the Palazzo Strozi in Florence, influencing its rough appearance, the small windows and even the corniche, which poured in concrete, “appears to be enclosed by a continuous ribbon, like a bandaged forehead”,112 whereas the inside, independent from its envelope is sustained by a singular column traversing all three floors and taking all the charges in a quadripartite manner, similar to the column in Fathepur Sikri temple.113

Das Gelbe Haus, Flims, Switzerland, 1996, Model.

reality, plasterwork and colour stretched a fragile veil over the “bricolage” of materials, and over the technical inexperience of builders, craftsmen, and architects, whose ambitious technological ideas exceeded their means. Das Gelbe Haus, in contrast , is a palimpsest— in white. The fact that it caused a sensation is understandable, for it is one of the rare, truly iconoclastic pieces of architecture of the late 20th century.”114

The simple removal of the plaster of the building’s facade gives it the rough and abstract appearance revealing underneath a rudimentary masonry structure, only intensified by the thin layer of paint, as Bruno Reichlin later writes: “(...) the building would be inconceivable in the public space of Flims without the magical power of this white, which transforms the spare walls into a rich, vibrating, and glowing fabric that encompasses the object’s gigantic mass more than covering it. (...) We know that the smooth and sometimes only nominally white plasterwork of many incunabula of avant-garde architecture of the first half of the 20th century are better viewed as forerunners of future improvements. In

The colour white is the purest expression of the all encompasing tendency towards “ideal” and “abstract” architecture. Asked about his fascination with the “nonreferential”, his relationship to the past, and history in an interview for El Croquis, he contemplates his own attempts at detachment from tradition saying: “I am working very much in the stream of endeavours that deal with the nonreferential. This is true for my architecture but it is not limited to my work as an architect. I admire a mental capability for the non-referential in all kinds of activities and people. I can also state that I do feel, at times, like somebody who

111. Bruno Reichlin, This is not Das Gelbe Haus in Valerio Olgiati, English Texts, Quart Publishers, p. 16. 112. Idem. p.14. 113. “the creative ‘gesture’ resides not in the antithesis, but in the synthesis of two initial contradictory systems. The broken column mediates between the requirement for a central support to the roof structure and the programmatic need for uninterrupted floor space.” OASE 99, The Architecture Museum Effect, OASE Foundation & NAi Publishers, 2017, p. 98.

114. Idem. p.14.

Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy, 1538.

Das Gelbe Haus, Flims, Switzerland, 1996.

Fathepur Sikri, India, 1563.

Das Gelbe Haus, Flims, Switzerland, 1996.

is tied back with ropes that prevent me from going further towards the absolutely non-referential. I wonder sometimes whether my mentality prevents me from being able to think more non-referentially. It is not obvious why I am striving to work non-referentially. It is not something with which I was

born or grew up with. I do speculate that the fact that I was living in Los Angeles for some time brought forward a desire for the non-referential. It made me aware of the culturally

broken.”115 His earliest project express a strong affinity towards history and classicism which, later on traverses only as a mirage his iconography, and his built architecture, as seen with das Galbe Haus. In this regard, Miroslav Sik who was one of the pivotal figure for the establishment of an authentic and fertile foundation for the creative process at ETH and Olgiati’s teacher describes the incipient moments of his intellectual development in an interview with Emeline Curien on subject Analogue Architecture saying: “Q: Un groupe d’étudiants s’était constitué autour de vous et de l’idée d’Architecture Analogue. Pensez vous que ces recherches et discussions s’illustrent dans leur travail aujourd’hui? - Je pense que oui pour certains. (...) un peu en ce qui concerne Valerio Olgiati, même s’il hésite entre forme forte et forme issue du contexte; (...) Valerio Olgiati comme Kristian Kerez ont tous deux réalisé au cours de leur études les bâtiments les plus classiques que l’on puisse imaginer. Ils produisent aujourd’hui les édifices les plus néo modernes qui puissent etre et parlent de “no context”, “no place”..”116

or form as a determinant structure of its own perception. These two concepts are fundamental to what Olgiati essentially calls “referential” architecture, or architecture evolved on the basis of other existent architecture. By defining his fundamental creative drive as an attempt to liberate himself from the emprise of this form of architecture and strive towards what he would consider the “non-referential”, or a pure “product of imagination”119. The desire to incorporate these aspects of the image translated into tendencies appearing as an ominous quality of his work, acknowledged at different moments which can be traced in his period as a student with the emphasis on history and tradition being the dominant preoccupation driving his projects. Indeed, his reference to Rossi and his Scientific Autobiography, is not entirely arbitrary or coincidental, as he came to have a defining influence on the creation of a new legitimizing discourse in the creative process by offering new tools for justifying its discourse with his arrival and relatively short stay at ETH in 1972. The fruits of this influence are now known as Analog Architecture, a conceptual system developed after his departure by his assistants, Bruno Reichlin Fabio Reinhart and later, Miroslav Sik. Valerio Olgiati’s work can be seen as a continuation and a reaction to the strong influence of Rossi’s methodology present in the aspirations of the Analogue Architecture, as Bruno Reichlin notes in an interview with Eméline Curien:

Emeline Curien also describes the fundamental aspects defining the Swiss architectural scene during this period as the result of a struggle with previous forms of knowledge and authority117. The new generation had to break free from the convictions of the old generations, and used the image as a tool: “La plupart des premiers réalisations des architectes suisses allemands nés au début des années 1950 s’appuie sur les formes architecturales existantes et déjà connotées. Une volonté de s’émanciper de l’histoire apparait néanmoins rapidement au sein de plusieurs agences. Il s’agit de fonder les processus de conception sur des valeurs autres nourris de références autres. Émergent alors de nouvelles manières d’aborder le projet et le légitimer. Elles font appel à de nouveaux processus pour insérer les édifices dans leur contexte et exprimer leur destination. Au moins deux pistes de réflexion rendent possible ce désengagement vis à vis de l’histoire. Le premier passe par das Bild, l’image, le second par celle de la Gestalt, la forme en tant que structure qui détermine sa perception.” 118

“Aldo Rossi nous a beaucoup fait rêver sur une possible histoire architecturale faite à travers l’architecture elle même. (...) Nous faisions des cours sur la “ville analogue”. J’ai persécuté Aldo Rossi pour qu’il écrive un long texte sur ce thème qui devrait être la pièce principale d’un cahier d’Architèse autour du réalisme et du formalisme. Nous voulions qu’il écrive le chapitre sur les rôles de l’analogie, parce que nous cherchions une légitimisation à un procédé que nous utilisions depuis longtemps, et qui consistait à travailler à partir des choses existantes, à expliquer une architecture par une autre architecture, et non plus seulement au travers de la description et de l’analyse. (...) dans son texte sur la “ville analogue”: il dit qu’il existe une connaissance des choses qui ne se passe qu’a travers d’autres choses, et non par le discours. Il est vrai que les architectes qui font de très belles choses ne sont souvent pas des théoriciens. Mais ils ont une intelligence, une compréhension de l’image. L’image c’est un plan, une configuration, une structure, un agencement, une façade...Nous nous intéressions à la psychologie, aux théories sur l’association telles que l’empathie, que l’on peut nommer

Bild, or, the image is a central aspect alongside Gestalt, 115 El Croquis, p.27. 116. Interview with Miroslav Sik, in Eméline Curien, Architecture Suisse Alémanique 1980-2000, Éditions Fourre-Tout, 2019, p.103. 117. In this regard, Valerio Olgiati makes an intimate confession admitting to his struggle with his father’s authority who in many way embodied the old modernist tradition, and his personal attempts to break free: “He would always tell me - my whole life - that he would know the truth. It was hard to grow up around him when I was a boy and when I was a youth because he possessed the truth and I did not have that truth. (...) I had to consciously liberate myself from my father.” Markus Breitschmid, The Significance of an Idea, Verlag Niggli, 2009 p. 35. 118. Idem. p.149.

119. “The difference between the two is important for me because I would like to work like the Mayans did. I would like to make something that is radically new, something that is invented. I am aiming for an architecture that has no origins and thus is non-referential.” Idem. p.150.

de mille autres façons, mais qui restent inexplicables. C’est pour ça que j’attendais tellement ce texte, pour y trouver une sorte d’explication et surtout de légitimité.” 120

forms of expression such as drawings or illustrations, and conceiving almost exclusively based on their verbal discussions and descriptions.

As we have seen throughout the different examples, his work exists on a spectrum where the image functions as container of specific ideas to be employed in certain conditions, and progressively adapted, their usefulness being akin more to mathematical formulas than typological references. His body of work can be seen as a progressive evolution towards the “non-referential” where the architectural “idea” and the building containing it exist independently for their own sake, as opposed working based on “pre-existent architecture used to explain another architecture” as Reichlin explains. It develops into a direct expression of the desire for intellectual independence from his earlier influences and eventually from the general influence of his time, just as his buildings perform their role towards their programs and their sites in vaguely allusive terms, similarly his practice as a whole can be seen such an exercise in atemporal production of architecture.

“I do not invent buildings on paper through sketching. I together with the architects of my office, make up a project by discussing. So you have to imagine that we sit around a table and discuss projects, architectural problems, the idea of architecture itself. We discuss and discuss, and then we discuss some more. Then, when the building is invented, we can describe it in words, we can describe its idea - its architectural intent. It is an architecture based on ideas about architecture. See, architecture is about ideas. The fact that we can articulate it intellectually from the outset makes architecture even more conceptual. It is conceptual because we give birth to it in the realm of an intellectually articulated language. After we all know the building, when we can imagine it, then, one architect does up the entire building with line drawings by computer. Afterwards, we will see the first drawings on the computer, and then, sometimes it happens that we are not satisfied. Then, I begin to bringing my sense of how the building should look, I bring in my sense of proportion, and we discuss various aspects about the project so it begins to work. This is part of how we work in the office. But perhaps I should be careful not to make it sound too casual and relaxed a process because my buildings are like mathematical calculations than compositions. Much is determined by the idea. The idea tells you how it has to be. There is the presence of an internal logic to my buildings. To uncover that logic is what is more important for the making of my architecture than a compositional playfulness.”121

“Now, you are the architect who does not believe in anything and your buildings do not carry a specific content. How can your buildings be magnificent if they are not about anything? The most radical and most beautiful kind of a magnificent building would be a building that can exist in only one particular way and no other way despite the fact that it is not the result of an ideal. This is the definition of a magnificent building in our own epoch of the early 21st century! Such a building is the result of an idea and not of an ideal. The building gets its magnificence by means of being completely coherent according to the building’s idea. The building is the result of an invented value system. The magnificent building has its very own system of values and it is of no importance whatsoever if that system is important for other buildings. It would be completely autonomous… like it would have been built by God’s hand. A fait accompli! I would love to design such a building! A building that is pure architectonic presence, that has no references at all, and that nobody can comprehend.” The personal image, acting as a conceptual underpinning of the creative process presents a different and unique perspective into the possibilities unleashed once accepting and externalising our obsessions which become subjects to scrutiny and collective debate. The design process in Valerio Olgiati’s office functions almost exclusively on this shared system of references which are alluded to occasionally, while being deeply synched into the collective unconscious of each collaborator, without even the need to rely on visual

Indeed, this goes so far as to use the drawings almost exclusively like a visual form of communication, limiting their expression as much as possible, the black lines on a white background functioning more as text than a visual representation.122 They attempt to be as non-didactical as possible123, inviting the spectator to project their imagination onto their background and bringing them alive. This quality applies to his architecture as a whole, where the reference, and the mental image lies hidden behind a veil which the visitor has to move consciously with their mind and make 121. Markus Breitschmid, The Significance of an Idea, Verlag Niggli, 2009, p. 47. 122. Ibid., p. 49. 123. “Contradictions do have something didactic about themselves but not in the common sense of learning, in this case learning something about a building. Actually, my architecture does not have a teacherly mission, not at all! What I do think, though, is that people do think of something as being good only once they comprehend it. It is a common human desire… and people actually like to be continuously engaged. Once they have figured something out they put it aside or they have conceptualized it to a degree that they simply apply it for further reference without thinking about it any longer. I am convinced that if people are confronted with something that does not remind them of anything they have ever seen or of

120. Eméline Curien, Architecture Suisse Alémanique 1980-2000, Éditions FourreTout, 2019, p. 61.

the connection, his buildings as a whole functioning more as mental entities to be understood than physical objects to be admired. This hints at the inherent limitations of this system of references, while they allow for a complex articulation of personal obsessions and interest, to some extent, even beyond practical or economic concerns, they simultaneously restrict the visitor’s capacity to immerse himself and project his own iconography. In offering a starting point for a discussion, the image becomes quickly a background waiting to reveal other images with similar properties and qualities, unleashing a flood of information to be sorted through in order to arrive at the essence of the “idea” itself in a Platonic sense, or the underlying principle connecting the different elements together. The aim for the “non-referential” is a consequence of a conscious aim to uncover an underlying “metaphysical” truth, almost akin to Kant’s “thing in itself ” and explore its particular qualities within the given conditions with the personal image as a guide.

something that they not yet have had an agreeable experience with and, then, they begin to comprehend something about it they also begin to enjoy it. I would go even further: If something begins to make sense to a person, then, even an ugly thing could be thought of as being beautiful.” Valerio Olgiati, Iconographic Bibliography, El Croquis 156 p. 35.

3. IMAGE AND EXPERIENCE.

Bibliographical Note Herzog & de Meuron Architekten is a Swiss architecture firm, founded and headquartered in Basel, Switzerland in 1978. The careers of founders and senior partners Jacques Herzog (born 1950), and Pierre de Meuron (born 1950), closely paralleled one another, with both attending the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in ZĂźrich. They are perhaps best known for their conversion of the giant Bankside Power Station in London to the new home of the Tate Museum of Modern Art (2000). Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron have been visiting professors at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design since 1994 and professors at ETH ZĂźrich since 1999.

The Impersonal Image Almost midway in the article, The Hidden Geometry of Nature containing excerpts from a lecture given by Jacques Herzog at Harvard in 1988, in a slightly submissive and reverent way, he expresses the intrinsic relationship between images of existent realities as a starting point for their architectural thought, and a defining aspect of their practice: “What else can we do but carry within us all these images of the city, or pre-existing architecture and building forms and building materials, the smell of asphalt and car exhaust a drain, and use our pre-existing reality as a starting point and to build our architecture in pictorial analogies? The utilization of these pictorial analogies, their dissection, and recomposition into an architectural reality is a central theme in our work.”124

an emphatic rejection of Venturi’s iconoclastic tendencies regarding historical forms “by means of quotation [and with] this practice penetrates no further than the surface of the eye’s retina,”128 they adopted a new attitude which mediates these different influences and the essence of architecture distinctively through the prism of the image which stands in a metonymical relationship between the referent and the built reality of architecture. They develop this point in a conversation with Stanislav von Moos, saying: “We think that architectonic images must receive their strength as images through the medium of architecture with their ability to speak, to console, to heal. In searching for our architecture, we are not interested in any language outside of the medium of architecture. We are not making collages; we are trying to create entire, specific architecture.”129 Now, looking back, we observe a multifaceted approach regarding the image, and its conceptual potency. To better understand the complex alchemy between the image as history and the image as a projection, we have to relate it to a specific experience of the essence of an architectural artefact radiating its contents in the form of an almost hallucinogenic delirium by connecting with past types of built realities in a transitory manner, virtually like flashbacks evading concrete references and deliberate intentions materialized through precise manipulation of the hidden “geometry of nature itself.” As such, we will have to isolate specific instances and specific projects which deal with these themes and dissect them separately to reveal the underlying structure penetrating the whole. To better understand how images materialize themselves within specific projects, we will initially attempt to deconstruct the evolution of the concept of the image inside their practice. Writing in the introduction of the first Monograph chronicling their work from 1978 to 1988, Gerhard Mack makes a surprising connection regarding the particular instantiation of what they perceive to be the

In being a central and concrete point of focus in their early work, it later dissolves into a vaguer and more phenomenological approach. The direct relationship to history mediated by the image in the form of typological reference, as proposed by Rossi in Citta Analogua offered a new point of departure for a different kind of legitimization of the conceptual process, alongside Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction, both taking the history, and the built reality of architecture as its necessary referent, “architecture is architecture – as Aldo Rossi has said.”125 Deprived of the experience of the “reality of architecture” at the beginning of their formation, leaning more towards a sociological understanding than concrete experience126 meant that Rossi’s presence was deeply formative, giving them the necessary impulse to immerse within the reality of architecture breaking from the influence of external referents. However, interestingly, this impulse instead of pushing them towards the direction of Rossi’s preoccupations, had the opposing effect127, and alongside 124. Herzog & de Meuron, The Complete Works 1978-1988, Volume 1, Birkhäuser, 1997, p. 207-211. 125. (“Architecture as “Language of Images”.) 126. “When we were in school in the early ‘70s, we were trained in architecture as a form of sociology, a product of the post ‘68 transformation of the discipline. Our first teacher was Lucius Burckhardt, a very interesting man, who taught us that whatever we do, we should not build; instead, we should think, we should learn about people. It was inspiring, but it was also frustrating... Then Aldo Rossi came to teach us, and he told us the opposite. He said forget sociology, return to architecture. After that, we returned to architectural building with a vengeance… In that regard, Rossi was perhaps our greatest influence. He interested us in images, but we were never interested in his images, never interested in collecting images of architectural memories.” Interview made by Jeffrey Kipnis to Jacques Herzog in 1997 in El Croquis; 84. 127. "If I were to define your work in relation to an architecture as a three-dimensional expression of “personality”, I would call it “pictorial”, meaning by this that for you the “image” is very important; i.e. the image of the urban or the scenic situation which you find in each case. And this image is not only put together from architec-

tonic or urbanistic, or even building components. Natural and technological components of all kinds play a role and are addressed. In this I also see a certain counterposing to the one-sided fixation on “typology” so characteristic of many among the students of AIdo Rossi.” Stanislav von Moos Interview in Herzog & de Meuron, The Complete Works 1978-1988, Volume 1, Birkhäuser, 1997, p. 13. 128. “The relationship to pre-existing architectural and building form is unavoidable and important. Architecture has never arisen out of nothing. But there is no longer a mediatory tradition. This can also be seen in the way that contemporary architecture so often tries to fabricate a relationship to historical forms by means of quotation and with this practice penetrates no further than the surface of the eye’s retina.” Herzog & de Meuron, The Complete Works 1978-1988, Volume 1, Birkhäuser, 1997, p. 207-211. 129. Stanislav von Moos Interview in Herzog & de Meuron, The Complete Works 1978-1988, Volume 1, Birkhäuser, 1997, p. 11.

essence of architecture in their early projects. He makes an unexpected connection with early romantic tendencies of the 19’th century. This connection with romantic ideals is later affirmed by Jacques Herzog, citing Goethe as an influence in their intellectual development. This thread of relationships leads to the discovery of a more massive structure underpinning their creative process, ever-present through allusive hints in the form of a highly scientific approach meant to lead towards a spiritual epiphany. Gerhard Mack further develops his point describing an early artistic intervention of Herzog et de Meuron reminiscent of their posterior preoccupations writing: “The sense of smell, the visual and imaginative capacity, emotion and intellect, different levels of representation, memories and the present were all tied together. In a text for a 1983 exhibition in Basel, the appearance of an image, a “Face with Siren”, was mentioned, which becomes visible through the pattern of the tapestry and then disappears again, whereas the parquet floor and tapestry walls seem to open and close, bow and insist, without changing their distance to the storyteller. The subject expanded the surface into a space, recognised an opposite, and seemed to disappear within it - all this without changing the visible appearance. One is tempted to speak of a genuinely romantic experience throughout the centuries, in the sense of Friedrich Schlengel. Taking the subject back into the space, charging the space with subjectivity and discharging it as an objective quantity determined the following installations as well as the buildings that were designed more or less at the same time. Herzog et de Meuron further developed all these things after the first decade in an expanded dimension and a different materiality if one thinks of the different coatings and imprints of the façades. With the Plywood Box from 1986, an object formally related to the work of Donald Judd, they began their first researches into the spatiality of a surface”130

Joseph Beuys, Wrapped grand piano in cloth, 1966.

the unknown, for the mysterious, for what to be revealed”, and that “the world is a universal tropus of the spirit, a symbolic picture thereof ”, whereas Friedrich Schlegel writes that: “Romantic art points to the infinite in the representation of the finite, insufficient.”133 Architecture is a material art; its perception fusing with the materials that embody its essence from observing the romantic dimension of their concept of experience as described by the two poets. We can see the relationship and the interest they had in Joseph Buys art, which has “detached a whole series of materials from their usual functional contexts and offered them as art.”134 Their early work is defined by thorough research on different materials to choreograph their qualities and the different perceptions of their qualities into a higher form of spiritual experience as described by the following inscription on their exposition at the Basel architecture museum in 1988: “The reality of architecture is not the built architecture. Beyond these conditional forms - built and not - built - architecture forms its own reality, comparable to the autonomous reality of a painting or a sculpture. The reality we mean is thereof not that which is actually built; it’s not the tactile and not the material. We may love this tangible substance, but only in a context that exists within the entire (architectural) work. We love its spiritual quality, its immaterial value.”135

The spatiality of a surface, or the way the properties of an object bleed into the surrounding space, creating haptic feedback, evidence of an object’s properties, yet mysterious about its nature131, “The energetic space that surrounds the physically experienced space, the space from which images rise and in which subjects seemingly disappear, indirectly refers back to Joseph Buys.”132 The romantic dimension that seeks up inside their work is an echo of the way early German poets of the movement defined their art, for Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, or Novalis, to use his pseudonym, who sees the “sense of poetry” to be a “sense for

They see the invisible as a potential model for the visible world. The complex relationships present within a material reflect a higher form of order, or an “unresearchable perfection,”136 whose essence can be glimpsed 133. Idem., p. 12. 134. Idem., p. 12. 135. Idem., p. 13. 136. “Our interest in the invisible world is in finding a form for it in the visible world. That is, in breaking through the deceptive, visible and familiar guise to take it apart, to atomize it, before relating to it anew. The invisible world is not a mystic

130. Herzog & de Meuron, The Complete Works 1978-1988, Volume 1, Birkhäuser, 1997, p. 10. 131. Similar to Gernot Bohme’s concept of atmospheres, see Chapter 2. 132. Idem., p.11.

Herzog & de Meuron, Ricola Storage Building, Laufen, Switzerland, 1986.

through its visible image. Therefore the creative process becomes analogous to a higher form of natural perfection. The research, the reflection, and the real encounter in the architectural form of the “hidden geometry of nature” becomes a spiritual experience. The connection with a higher natural order that lays hidden within nature, waiting to be discovered and reflected through a creative process analogous to those principles, is also one defining aspect behind the ancient Greek notion of “mimesis.”137

process being akin to a “synthetic a priori form of truth” underpinning the legitimisation of architectural discourse. This “transcendent form of truth” is hinted at and subverted at the same time by Herzog et de Meuron. This attitude finds its most potent expression in the project for Ricola Storage Building in Laufen, constructed in 1987, where a duality emerges in the building by the subversive juxtaposition of the image of the lime quarry, and that of a stack of wood panels defining the conceptual substratum139.

This view of the analogous relationship between the creative process and hidden laws of nature expressed intuitively through art is present equally in Goethe’s thought, who, upon the encounter of Palladio’s work, said that he had given him “the way to all art and life,” expressing that his Italian Journey and the experience of Palladio’s architecture being a determinant factor in his discovery of the process of metamorphosis in plants,138 as such, the analogous process that “metamorphoses” from the natural domain to the creative

The building functions as a fully automated storage of herbal sweets, alluding to its function, and reinterpreting nature through visual imagery becomes a central part of the conceptual process. The building, positioned around numerous sawmills in the area alludes to the traditional stacking of sawn timber boards, and to the rock quarry in which it is situated. However, the radically different perceptions of the two materials, and their essences, the lightness of the wood and heaviness of the stone become elements of play in the generation of impressions and orchestration of the experience. As such, the natural presence of the mountain’s weight is expressed frontally by the careful juxtaposition of eternit panels creating an opaque body. In conjunction with the sensation it evokes, the careful articulation of the detail is an image of a solid mass of stone evoked from our unconscious. It is at this level of analysis, we can see the most explicit departure from Rossi’s and Venturi’s teachings.

one, but it is also not a world of natural sciences, of invisible atomic crystalline structures. With this we mean the complexity of a system of relationships which exists in nature, in an un-researchable perfection exists, and whose analogy in the realm of art and society interests us. Our interest is thus the hidden geometry of nature, a spiritual principle and not primarily the outer appearance of nature. More interesting than a more far-reaching theoretical explanation of these ideas or a position finding against the important philosophers and artists who have done research in related areas, such as Goethe and Novalis, and Rudolf Steiner and Taut and Joseph Beuys, seems to me that I try to portray some of our works in this light as with the warehouse or the settlement in Vienna in which the code, that is the feedback of the most possible and complex forms of the project in the clearest and most comprehensible principles interested us.” Idem. p. 14. 137. Mimesis, the art of mimicking. 138. Goethe’s statement that Palladio has shown him “the way to all art and life” is considered as an indication of the great extent to which Palladio affected him; and also in what way his experiences of Palladio’s architecture contributed to his understanding of metamorphosis. Sharp Simon, Goethe and Palladio, Lindisfarne Books. Kindle Edition.

The opaqueness of the form reads as a clear

139. “l’empilement traditionnel de planches de bois sciées autour de nombreuses scieries de la zone, ainsi que la carrière de calcaire dans lequel le batiment de stockage se trouve.”

Image of a stacked wooden boards used as a reference.

Image of a stone quarry evocative of the qualities of the surrounding site.

departure from post-modernism, the transparency of postmodernism140, where the symbolic building vocabulary refers to another building, and its identity dissolving into a selfreferential game. The transparency of the building produced by the underlying system of references akin to a screen projecting and referring to other images and ideas takes us into another place and connects us with other ideas than what is in front of us. In contrast, an opaque object is conceptually independent of other objects existing in and by themselves.141 This attitude is translated even at the choice of materials, where they explain their philosophy behind their choices: “Le materiau est là pour définir le batiment. Il ne suffit cependant pas que le matériaux existe, encore faut-il lui donner une forme qui témoigne de son existence. Nous poussons à bout le matériaux que nous utilisons pour le libérer de toute autre tache que d’éxister.”142 Instead of a simple allusion, or a direct reference,

the intention is refreshingly elusive and self-contradicting, perceived through their reinterpretation of the classical notion of firmitas in this project. Instead of expressing the notion of structural stability through the massive emphasis on the physical body, they symbolically allude to its conceptual obsoleteness, in a conference given at Basel, Jacques Herzog says: “Aside from this, firmitas doesn’t exist. Firmitas is a theoretical term and – as paradoxical as it may sound – a virtual reality. It can’t be achieved in the built reality. The building materials used today are neither immovably stable nor lastingly crystalline. A building today moreover consists of materials with a differing aggregate state. Increasingly, permanently plastic polymers, foils and groove fillers guarantee stability. Today’s buildings are hermaphroditic beings made of organic and solid matter, equipped with a digitized building technology that has become more indispensable than the architect who doesn’t know how to use it. (...) It is not the fact of the stable materiality but the immaterial, spiritual quality that is communicated to our senses through the material solidification. It is the indissoluble bond between material

140. Une réaction contre le post-modernisme et contre le déconstructivisme, Interview with Theodora Vischer in Architectures of Herzog & de Meuron, Portraits by Thomas Ruff, Peter Blum Gallery, New York, 1995, pp. 28-32. 141. Le Neutre: Étude de la suspension de la signification en architecture contemporaine, Université Libre de Bruxelles, 2015, p. 83. 142. Pierre de Meuron, Jacques Herzog, Natural History, Lars Muller Publishers,

2003, p.459

Close-up image of the facade revealing its double nature.

the perception of the building’s wood structure, generating a lighter impression and diffusing the first image’s gravity. The eternit panels fixated on a light wooden structure suspended in a horizontal manner turning all around the building, protecting it from rain and snow. Similarly to the wooden structure berried underneath the wooden logs left to dry in the sun, beneath the surface, it becomes visible only when we further approach the building and shift our perspective. Even then, they can only be perceived by looking up, demanding a close relationship to unveil the building’s intimacy.

Frontal image of the building revealing its opaque cladding.

and immaterial characteristics of architecture that attracts us and refuses to let go; it is that to which we submit ourselves like to a beloved body that takes us away for a moment into a magical world.”143

Furthermore, when peaking beneath the surface, we observe a subversion of the relationship between the perception of the volume and the nature of the envelope. The structure, again, inspired by the log stacking differs substantially, alluding to the principle of the former. Instead of suspending each panel to carry its weight and the weight of the panels above it, attached at various angles throughout each layer’s section standing completely independently from the different elements from behind and above. The weight of the ensemble being redistributed beneath the skin on the building’s internal skeleton, a sequence of equidistant columns punctuating the internal space and absorbing the total weight.

The intervention is focused on the envelope, as the interior space is wholly dedicated to the storage. The image of the stone layers of the surrounding quarry and the wood stacks informs even the building’s detail, where in its development, we can see traces of a nuanced interpretation of Venturi’s double functioning element, as the eternit panels at first create the visual impression of a body of stone lying in the quarry like a piece of furniture. The stratification of the different panels differs from one layer to another in a harmonic rhythm creating the impression of weight accumulating on the top, compressing the layers on the bottom. This impression of weight and opacity is completely perturbed once we approach the building and perceive it from a different angle. Here, the building subverts the impression of a mass of stone trough the detail of the fixation of the eternit panels.

Therefore, we go through a series of mental states, carefully choreographed and constructed, shifting from one point of view to another, yet completely free, leaving the visitor to go through a personal series of images and impressions. The ambiguity between the different intended perceptions to subvert the belief in the presence of an overarching conceptual structure that choreographs the whole. The perception precedes and defines the conception, the building’s structure is subordinate to the user’s experiences, resulting from the apparent necessity to resolve the constructive complexities

Suddenly, the first image dissipates, creating space for

143. Herzog & de Meuron, The Complete Works: 1989-1991, Volume 3, Birkhäuser, 2000, p. 4.

Karl Blossfeldt, Art Forms in Nature, 1928.

form, usually, the latter citing, interpreting, or, copying the properties of the former, however, with this project, the possible sphere of reference mediated by the image becomes much broader, extending beyond its usual association with past experiences of the built environment and known forms of architecture. With this project, Herzog et de Meuron expand their conceptual sphere, and the references with which they can infuse their designs beyond built forms to incorporate natural, chemical or biological processes, or simple artefacts that can generate the incipient imagery of the design.

Karl Blossfeldt, Achillea umbellata, 1928.

defined by visual references. The potential to use the building, not to project and control precise images, but to absorb and evoke the user’s imagination becomes a subtle form of criticism which we can attribute to Rossi and his hermetic system of references. As such, we are observing the dissolution of the former system in favour of a newer, subtler process of their invention. They say in an interview with Werk, Bauen + Wohnen in 1988 explaining this process: “Les images, d’abord apportées comme énergie initiale de l’architecte, disparaissent, palissent, au profit d’autres images toujours nouvelles qui se forment chez l’observateur, l’utilisateur. Les images de celui-ci ne sont d’ailleurs pas nos images et il ne les comprendrait pas ou elles l’ennuieraient si leur présence était directe, si bibliographique, si figurative.”144

The visual impact generated by the physical presence of a physical object further explored with the second Ricola building realised in 1993 marks a critical moment. The influence of Donald Judd and the minimal art reach its limits, and the need for ornament arises as a necessary form of excess to maintain the engagement with the object when the programmatic demands for storage require a generic volume similar to the first building. Instead of exploring the same route by deconstructing the metaphorical meaning of a visual reference exposing the structural system underneath giving it an ornamental dimension, here, they decide to work on the surface of the volume itself, adding a new layer of texture. The image of reference is a photo of a leaf (Achillea umbellata) taken from a botanical book by Karl Bloossfeldt a sculptor becoming famous after publishing his book Urformen der Kunst (published in English as Art Forms in Nature). The photographs in the book were commissioned by Moritz Meuter, a painter and an art teacher in Berlin. The two set out on: “extensive travels in countries around the Mediterranean to study flora in the art of antiquity. Meurer’s objective was to instil new life into the German arts and crafts movement, which he felt had become too caught up in its own past. It was his hope that the precise study of plant structures and their use in decorative ornament might help to

The building is meant to blend in its surroundings, natural and cultural, by absorbing and transforming visually and conceptually the prima mater of its constitution, its essence in a deliberate act of non-conformity. The image serves as a mediator between a form of reference and the projected 144. Ein Ruckblick auf einen Ausblick = Une rétrospective dans une perspective, un entretien. Werk, Bauen + Wohnen, 1989, n.9, p.67, dans Eméline Curien, p.158

Ricola Production and Storage Building, Mulhouse, France, 1992.

facade – we have found Blossfeldt’s photograph in an old book and liked the degree of abstraction in his pictures.”146 The image is both stylistic and ornamental, as the “hidden geometry” of the leaf does not inform a particular form of naturalistic design. However, in fulfilling its role as a symbolic signifier, at the same time, it generates a phenomenological experience of the building. Instead of merely making a first-degree reference to the building’s program, (a storage facility for plants), they opt for a more profound connection with the surrounding environment, in its process, however, trying to solve the peculiar needs of the interior spaces, some being offices and administration spaces.

Karl Blossfeldt photograph printed on silkscreen panels.

set German arts and crafts back on a course that might lead to the production of designs comparable to those of classical antiquity.”145

The leaf motif, in virtue of the way it is realised, evokes a similar experience hinting at the same subverting intention underlying the first building. By taking an abstract natural element as a reference, the building cuts ties with architectural history, becoming a separate piece of history itself, referring to itself and the set of ideas evoked by the image of reference taking us outside the realm of architecture and into the natural world. Once applied to the building, the peculiarity of the image becomes as intriguing as the experience it generates. The transparent and the opaque, instead of merely relying on the observance and perspective of its viewer to make this impression only from outside, they become a quotidian form of experience continuously reflecting the exterior weather. With more sun, the panels become more illuminated, and the light pierces through, giving it the impression of transparency, (Figure 1.), and with the weather becoming more cloudy, the motif underneath becomes darker, giving the impression of a concrete wall with a texture on its surface147. Whereas this motif is imagined on one side of the facade, it fully materialises on the other, subverting

Within the project, the photograph is meant to add a metaphorical layer of meaning symbolizing the building’s relationship with its surrounding environment, similar to the first building. Jacques Herzog comments on their choice of the image saying: “We wanted something that related to the garden outside, but that was not too naturalistic. We tried many different images, especially leaves and plants. It is amazing when we work with images; it is impossible to actually say in the end how we decide. The effect of the image in repetition was crucial; the one we chose was still recognizable as a plant, but the repetition also turned it into something different, something entirely new… This effect of repetition, its ability to transform the common place into something new, is an aspect you can also find in Andy Warhol’s work. Anyway, we cannot tell you how we knew it. Some of the tests were just horrible – e.g. wrong in scale – but when we saw the one we used, we knew it was right, absolutely, viscerally. We did not work with an artist on that

146. A Conversation with Jacques Herzog (H&deM), El Croquis. Herzog & de Meuron 1993-1997, No. 84, Madrid, 1997. pp. 7-21. 147. “Oh, those Greeks! They knew how to live. What is required for that is to

145. Pierre de Meuron, Jacques Herzog, Natural History, Lars Muller Publishers, 2003, p. 303.

Ricola Production and Storage Building, Mulhouse, France, 1992.

the impression we just experienced as the buildings drainage system empties on the length of the wall creating a translucid impression akin to a piece of glass. The water gliding down the wall, while serving a functional purpose to hydrate the concrete wall, in time, it also allows for the growth of vegetation on its surface that mimics the symbolic form of ornament present on the adjacent wall, therefore the two systems of reference complement and subvert each other by a visual form of a monologue. Analogous to an inverted mirror, the vertical elements composing the reflective surfaces can transform the perspective and the experience of the environment in which the building is situated. The result is an immersive experience of a virtual space148 that incorporates the image into its overall composition, creating not a mere background or a decorative object but instead becoming a formative element of the overall experience. It transcends its role extending beyond the skin of the building inside the interior spaces where it is situated as a form of reflective surface connecting virtually with the outside environment and transforming our assumptions, considering this double motif, they say: “Designing and detailing a building becomes a mental trip into the interior of a building. The exterior becomes like the interior. The surface becomes spacial. The surface ‘attracts.’ It attracts you while you work on it as a designer. You mentally penetrate the building in order to know what the building will be like. The depth of the surface, and its perception as such, arouses, for many critics, an association to minimal art. Rosalind Krauss characterized minimal art, specifically the work of Agnes

Martin, as geometry without a centre, or better said, with a hidden centre which forces the surface, to the play of light or the texture of materials.” 149 The presence of the image as an underlying element influencing the conceptual and experiential aspects of the building is evident throughout the design process, the result presents itself as a spatial composite of different frontal elements, “the face being transmuted to the landscape”, as it can be traced throughout their drawings where the absence of perspectives and the emphasis on elevations are prevalent. The experience of the building becomes a disjointed series of frames interconnected into a three-dimensional space: “Herzog & de Meuron’s determination to operate from the surface is quite clear from their very design process, which originates in the characteristic lead pencil drawings on paper where a two-dimensional organization is asserted as the seed of the project. The notable absence of perspectival or three-dimensional representations in the elaboration and presentation of projects are an evident manifestation of a specific style that is clearly exemplified in the Tavole House, where the figure of a cross is projected and rotated successively to constitute the central feature of the project. This traditional way of approaching projectual operations does not, however, inherit the constrictions of a system, that of faciality, born within the representational paradigm. The faces of Herzog ft de Meuron are not stable, they do not define edges, borders or frameworks. They diffuse, through the materiality of the surface, the limits between holes and screens. They do not specialize the parts functionally, but rather turn them into traces.” Their work is on the verge of alternation between the face - what is ordered, pregnant - and the landscape - the chaotic, emergent.”150

stop courageously at the surface, the fold, the skin, to adore appearance, to believe in forms, tones, words, in the whole Olympus of appearance. Those Greeks were superficial - out of profundity.” Nietzsche, (trans. W. Kaufmann), The Gay Science, New York: Vintage, 1967. 148. “Their oscillation between almost brutal existence and a more Virtual aura is beginning to reveal a dcliberate strategy of separate roles assigned to the skin of buildings and their interior planning.” Rem Koolhaas, New Discipline, p. 114.

149. Ibid., p. 116. 150. El Croquis. Herzog & de Meuron 1993-1997, No. 84, Madrid, 1997. p. 26.

Andy Warhol, Car Crash, 1963.

Andy Warhol, Marylin Monroe diptych, 1962.

tools, experimenting with textures, the transition of meaning through their manipulation becomes a part of the underlying structure that guides the relationship between the chosen image and the skin of the building.

They note on their tendency to abstract certain aspects of the image151 in order to separate it from quotidian connotations, liberate them from their original meaning and metamorphose them into an abstract concept, transforming them into pure architectural experience. Drawing numerous parallels with pop art, and the work of Andy Warhol in the early ’60s whom they cite as a reference in taking common elements and transforming their meaning and their reading through repetitions, or variations in texture, colour, size and format.152

These two projects underline two essential developments in Herzog & de Meuron’s thinking and the way they innovated the relationship between the image and the creative process reflective of their later career. As seen with the first Ricola building, this marks an essential distancing from iconographic or typological references, more so, it presents itself as the particular incarnation of their philosophy regarding architecture by developing a new vocabulary in order to express their architectural language. Expanding the range of images used as a reference supporting the conceptual decisions, they use the external reality is surrounding the future projects as a building material offering the starting and ending point of the reflection. The choice of the image is not arbitrary but deeply connected with the site’s history and memory.

Certain parallels can be drawn between the Ricolla storage Building and his Car Crash and the Marylin Monroe diptych153. The artworks are divided into two sides, similar to the envelope of the building, like book pages opening before the viewer. One half containing a composite of photos taken from different points of view, and the other, emptied, letting the canvas become a screen of the viewer’s imagination, similar to the exposed concrete wall of the Ricola building, where instead of thoughts gliding down the canvas, reflecting the visitor’s state of mind, the water slides reflecting the building’s surroundings. The banality, to a certain extent, and its emphasis, by the simple use of repetition, the initial element loses its identity, becoming submerged into a whole new landscape of associations, previously excluded by the solid frame. Through the use of rigid, yet simple compositional

The limits of the first approach expressed with the first building were inherent with its intentions. The image serving as a model permeated the conceptual and technical aspects of the building, which meant to reflect its likeness. In this regard, we can still observe a particular connection to history and tradition where the image and the building considered as one. This attitude, distilled by a more flexible approach observed with the second building, where the image becomes only a metaphorical instrument for grounding the building’s perception in the local environment, limiting its effects on the surface of its skin, while allowing more freedom with the constructive aspects of the building. The image serves as a texture, a tattoo on the skin of the building, acting as a flexible tool which can be employed in any environment to justify the building’s relationship with the surrounding context.

151. “We offen use things that don’t necessarily belong to architecture, for example silk screening or photos, texts, etc., and apply them so that in the end they are only architecture. It is most interesting when they are transformed to such an extent that they almost lose their original source. The photos of the individual plant leaves, with Ricola, become a wall. It has nothing to do with decoration. The comparison to Andy Warhol is flattering. For me he’s one of the greatest artists. There are images by him that despite seriality”. A Conversation with Jacques Herzog (H&deM), El Croquis. Herzog & de Meuron 1993-1997, No. 84, Madrid, 1997. pp. 7-21. 152. Ibid., p. 20 153. Herzog & de Meuron, The Complete Works: 1989-1991, Volume 3, Birkhäuser, 2000, p. 120.

4. CONCLUSION

Conclusion Architecture is a spatial medium engaging us with a complete bodily experience. However, we can perceive an imbalance between the senses and the different forms of experience they produce by observing the primacy of the visual domain throughout history as the primary language for architectural production and the image becoming a central tool in its conception, legitimization, and experience. Throughout history, the concept of the image acts as a screen projecting different ideas of different cultures, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the image is situated at the edge of the real, offering us a glimpse of the metaphysical through its fundamental property, that of likeness.

contents, it is dependent on a sensible representation and a clear understanding154 to manipulate them and generate intuitions which can further drive the creative process. Thus for him, thinking in general is dependent on perception, synthesis, representation, and understanding. In this aspect, images are an essential aspect of our relationship to the world, as we are limited by our own capacities. The concept of atmosphere presents itself in the form of a mood in the perceiver, relating different images into different clusters and thus bringing them together in the creative process, throughout different mediums and forms of representation aiding in the conception of specifically "tempered spaces."

The legitimacy of the image as a reliable form of experience of reality was questioned by Plato, who sees its fundamental property, that of likeness taking us away from the fundamental reality underneath, instead of approaching it, thus the legitimacy of the image as an objective tool of inquiry, physical and the metaphysical, is questioned. With Aristotle, the image is seen as a tool to analyse a different form of reality, specifically, the mental one. For him, it becomes the primary medium of most of our mental processes, when saying: “The soul does no think without an image.” In attempting to explain the different ways in which it can induce us in error by not being a true reflection of reality, its connection with imagination, or fantasy is discovered. The conceptual dimension of the image is expanded as not merely a tool of reflection, but also, for being a passive product of our daily experience, and simultaneously an active tool of projection and manipulation of the experienced reality trough imagination, thus its central position in the creative process is established.

As such, the mental image presents itself as the most subjective and inaccessible conceptual tool which operates as a support for the creative process. It can only be hinted at and glimpsed through various forms of representation and its essence is only partially accessible to an external viewer. Its intuitive formation is closely related to an active perception of a given environment, relating in our mind previous experiences of similar places and in merging them, it projects new forms of desired experiences. It is this aspect of the mental image that finds itself to be the most useful for the creative process, as it offers a starting point for the reflection which is deeply connected to the author's clandestine experiences, imprinting the creative process with a unique quality. The dependence of the creative process on the inner images forces upon their author an inherent creative hierarchy, where people have to follow the authors subjective lived experiences, and have little room for expressing their own if they do not share the same mental landscape. It also forces the author to undertake projects which can stimulate, and by the particular characteristics of their surroundings, enter in a symbiotic relationship with his particular mental landscape. The process, in allowing a profound connection of the project with an underlying substratum, cultural, formal, spatial or material of a particular site, it also demands a careful laborious process of elaboration where the defining aspects of the projects overshadow pragmatic or functional requirements for subjectively defined concerns. Thus, as revealed by Freud, the intuitive constitution of mental images

Instead of seeing the image in its pictorial dimension, as a mental snapshot of a particular moment in time relating to a particular experience, Aristotle sees it as an accumulation of such experiences, and simultaneously, when the thought process is set in motion, it calls up and merges with other images hinting at a language of images guiding our mental process. Similar images gravitate around each other. By seeing an image of a tree, we can understand the type of tree we're seeing by connecting it to past experiences of similar trees with similar visual properties. Thus for him, the mental image contains a conceptual dimension and a temporal one connected to our subjective experience of reality. For Kant, the accumulation and union of different experiences into one singular image happens trough the process of synthesis which he considers integral to imagination. In order for our imagination to be able to manipulate its

154. “It is in fact this imaginative process that I am trying to uncover, the same process which can be applied to understanding the flowering of an artistic impulse as much as it can be applied to understanding why the rose flowers appear on the rose plant and the lily on the lily plant. I would emphasize: “One sees with quite different eyes and with understanding of what one sees.” Sharp Simon, Goethe and Palladio, Lindisfarne Books. Kindle Edition.

is deeply connected with the inner constitution of particular desires and obsessions of each individual, and their expression throughout the creative process materialised into physical objects can be seen as a spatial form of wish fulfilment, as Peter Zumthor's work exemplifies.

presence and a "conceptual opaqueness" that forces the viewer to engage with the object phenomenologically, in a free state of uncontrolled associations, instead of a pre-defined experience. This step outside a personal system of references allows for a broad collaborative approach where everyone can contribute with their images in a personal or arbitrary manner, and the value of ideas is judged interpersonally, as it is evident by the vast amount of collaborators and the size of their office, in comparison with the other architects. As with each approach, this one has its downsides equally, as the choice of an existing, external image is already an autonomous entity with regards to an existing context, and the intrinsic properties of the image starting to have primacy over other aspects of the building, in many ways conferring it an artificial aura as opposed to an organic approach where the images intuitively develop through free association of different contents of a unified experience that anchors the conceptual substratum directly to the "spirit of the place."155

The subjective dimension of this process becomes its own limit as it prevents a fluid exchange between the different actors involved, as such, it hints at the necessity to discover and analyse another architect which takes this process one step further and navigates the complexities of the creative process with the aid of a set of subjective external images. The work of Valerio Olgiati explores the potential of the former where, instead of the intuitive formation of a mental image that would have a personal relationship with the context, his collection of images allows for a completely a-contextual approach defined simply by an internal formal logic that responds to the requirements of the site. In many ways, the limit of this approach, that is the referential process where each project presents itself as an evolution of a previous reference is taking away from the conceptual autonomy and independence of each project. This, in turn, reveals a conscious attempt at separation and distancing from their influence that would transform itself in a truly "non-referential" architecture.

In taking into account the potential of each approach for infusing the creative process with richness and meaning by overcoming the role of the image as an advertising tool, we realise that with Zumthor, the difficulty is mostly in managing to represent and spatialise his mental images, with Olgiati the difficulty is in separating from the influence of his personal images, and with Herzog & de Meuron in selecting the precise image that would serve as an anchor for the creative process. Thus we are left with the responsibility to discover our own images that would create the grammar of a personal language that would allow us to communicate and project what essentially constitutes for us the meaning of a work of architecture.

As he later admits this is an impossibility, as a "nonreferential" architecture is an illusion, a utopic "trompe lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Ĺ&#x201C;il", attempting to justify his obsession with abstraction. What appears to be a "non-referential" architecture to someone from another culture is indeed just an appearance, as we cannon trace the evolution of the different ideas generated within the specific culture from outside their context, as every idea has ancestry in opposition to or in continuation of another idea relating to a complex tissue of relationships that may be invisible from outside, thus mostly concluding with desperate attempts at abstraction with a white layer of paint attempting to cover the iconographic traces nourishing each project. In this aspect, the early work of Herzog & de Meuron offers a possible solution, regarding the dilemma of how to explore the potential of mental and iconographic images without falling prey to their inherent limitations. Thus, instead of focusing on the "autobiographical" dimension of the image, they take an objective stance by stepping outside this subjective system of associations and thus expanding their sphere of reference and allowing themselves to focus on the intrinsic qualities and ideas contained within an image than at its personal value and subjective meaning. The potential of expanding their sphere of reference outside architecture to "natural" or even "chemical" processes, ensures that in its essence, the project will become "non-referential" with respects to other previous constructions thus conferring it a physical

155. "I have a passionate desire to design such buildings, buildings that, in time grow naturally into being a part of the form and history of their place." Peter Zumthor, Thinking Architecture, BirkhĂ¤user Basel, 2010 p. 17.

Bibliography Aalvar Aalto, The Trout and the Mountain Stream, Domus, 1947. Alice Galligo, Le Neutre: Étude de la suspension de la signification en architecture contemporaine, Université Libre de Bruxelles, 2015. Aristotle, De Anima, Cambridge University Press, 2007. Arthur Schopenhauer, Le Monde comme Volonté et comme Représentation, Folio, 2009. Carl Gustav Jung, Collected Works Volume 8: Structure & Dynamics of the Psyche, Princeton University Press, 1969. Carl Gustav Jung, Collected Works Vol. 6: Psychological Types, Princeton University Press, 1969. Christian Borch’s, Architectural Atmospheres: On the Experience and Politics of Architecture, Birkhauser, 2014. El Croquis 156, Valerio Olgiati, 1966-2011, El Croquis Editions, Madrid, 2011. El Croquis 84, Herzog & de Meuron 1993-1997, El Croquis Editions, Madrid, 1997. El Croquis, Herzog & de Meuron: 1981-2000, El Croquis Editions, Madrid, 2010. Ein Ruckblick auf einen Ausblick = Une rétrospective dans une perspective, un entretien. Werk, Bauen + Wohnen, 1989, n.9. Eméline Curien, Architecture Suisse Alémanique 1980-2000, Éditions Fourre-Tout, 2019. Friedrich Nietzsche, Writtings from Late Notebooks, Cambridge University Press 2003. Fridrich Nietzshe, Twillight of the Idols, Oxford University Press, New York, 1998. Friedrich Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, Cambridge University Press, 1999. Friedrich Nietzsche, (trans. W. Kaufmann), The Gay Science, New York: Vintage, 1967. Gernot Böhme, Atmospheric Architectures: The Aesthetics of Felt Spaces, Bloomsbury Publishing, UK, 2017. Husserl, Edmund, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Springer 1983. Herzog & de Meuron, Natural History, Lars Müller Publishers, 2003. Herzog & de Meuron, The Complete Works: 1989-1991, Volume 1, Birkhäuser, 2000. Herzog & de Meuron, The Complete Works: 1989-1991, Volume 3, Birkhäuser, 2000. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Cambridge University Press, 1998. Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Metaphysics, Cambridge University Press, 1997. Jacques Lacan, (Seminar of Jacques Lacan), The Ethics Of Psychoanalysis, Book VII, W. W. Norton & Company, 1997. Julius Portnoy, A Psychological Theory of Artistic Creation, in College Art Journal Vol. 10, No. 1, 1950.

Juhani Pallasmaa, In praise of Vagueness: Diffuse Perception and Uncertain Thought, 2010. Krisanna M. Scheiter, Images, Appearances, and Phantasia in Aristotle, University of Pennsylvania, 2012. Markus Breitschmid, The Significance of an Idea, Verlag Niggli, 2009. Manfredo Tafuri, Storia dell’architettura italiana 1944-1985, Einaudi, Torino, (2002). OASE, 91, Building Atmosphere, OASE Foundation & NAi Publishers, 2013. Peter Zumthor, Thinking Architecture, Birkhäuser Basel, 2010. Peter Zumthor, Monograph 1985-1989, Birhauser, 2013 Peter Zumthor, Monograph 1990-1997, Birhauser, 2013 Peter Zumthor, Monograph 1998-2001, Birhauser, 2013 Peter Zumthor, Monograph 2002-2007, Birhauser, 2013 Peter Zumthor, Monograph 2008-2013, Birhauser, 2013 Peter Zumthor & Mari Lending, Présences de l’Histoire, Scheidegger & Spies, 2018. Plato, Complete Works, Hackett Publishing Company, Cambridge, 1997. Pierre de Meuron, Jacques Herzog, Natural History, Lars Muller Publishers, 2003. Pier Vittorio Aureli, Less is Enough: On Architecture and Asceticism, Strelka Press, 2013. Samantha Matherne, Images and Kant’s Theory of Perception, University of California, Santa Cruz 2010. Sébastien Marot, L’Art de la Mémoire, Le Territoire et l’Architecture, Éditions de la Villette, Paris, 2010. Sharp Simon, Goethe and Palladio, Lindisfarne Books. Kindle Edition. Sigmund Freud, Creative Writters and Daydreaming, Yale University Press, 1995. Vanessa Lux, Sigrid Weigel, Empathy, Epistemic Problems and Cultural-Historical Perspectives of a Cross-Disciplinary Concept, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany, 2014. Valerio Olgiati, 2G International Architectural Review n°37, Barcelona, Editorial Gustavo Gili, 2010. Valerio Olgiati, Conversations with Students, Virginia Tech Architecture Publications, 2007. Valerio Olgiati, English Texts, Quart Publishers, 2007. W. J. T Mitchell, Iconology: image, text, ideology, The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London, 1986.

*This fragment contains a series of personal photographic and lyrical explorations of the meaning of architecture.1 As such, they are not in the strict sense, a part of the corpus of research, they present themselves however as auxiliary material that is supposed, if driven by curiosity or intrigue, to reveal a personal attempts at giving an answer to the question of meaning in architecture. Their value is that of revealing the unconscious motivations, desires, drives, wishes aspirations that underline all the questions that are articulated in the main corpus of research, and as such, offer a glimpse into their origin.

1. The essays are written as reflections based on collaborative interventions on abandoned sites realised with the Collective PeachLAB. PeachLAB is a collective created in 2016 by a multidisciplinary team of architects, engineers and photographers. Born from Brussels Third Landscape, the collective establishes its practice between the extraordinary city and the quotidian city; between reality and fiction. PeachLAB means experiment; to propose an idea upon an environment; to evolve ideas along with evolving possibilities; to exploit the diversity offered by people and places.

ETAPHYSICAL INVESTIGATION

TRANSCENDENT SCEPTICISM

“The spirit of the depths even taught me to consider my action and my decision as dependent on dreams. Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their language. One would like to learn this language, but who can teach and learn it? Scholarliness alone is not enough; there is a knowledge of the heart that gives deeper insight. The knowledge of the heart is in no book and is not to be found in the mouth of any teacher, but grows out of you like the green seed from the dark earth. Scholarliness to the spirit of this time, but this spirit in no way grasps the dream, since the soul is everywhere that scholarly knowledge is not” (Carl Jung, Red Book I, 2, “Soul and God”) soul (noun): Old English sāwol, sāw (e)l, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch ziel and German Seele. 1. the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal regarded as immortal. 2. emotional or intellectual energy or intensity, especially as revealed in a work of art or an artistic performance. “Their interpretation lacked soul.”

The Place of the Soul. Where is the beautiful, the possessive, the good and the transcendent to be found? Inside or outside? Inside the outside or outside the inside? Who should be your guide? Maybe what is an easier answer, light is omnipresent, its colours suffocating with meaning. Maybe the smell, or nothing of the above but the fact of bringing to life something long dead, like making a garden in the desert, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s where the soul lives. But what is the soul? Is the image of what you most desire and least want to look? Is it what you cast away as a child? A child in the desert, hungry for pleasure and play, the birthplace of meaning, is that the image of your soul? What is most deserted of meaning than the modern city? Where is our childish self-hiding? Where do we least want to look?

The Abandoned Inside and the Saturated Outside. We are drawn to what is no longer among us, we are drawn to what is dead and has a life of its own, hidden, forgotten, abandoned. Is it to kill what it is or to bring to life what it was? Maybe to kill what it is with what it was and drown the pain of our existence in its blood. But how can we kill what never was, or bring to life what always is? Maybe through innocent play, death becomes a mother and meaning and beauty are her children. Children grow, and play and forget, and they kill in order to grow, and they forget in order to live, but they always play, is that what justifies and gives meaning to their existence? Is that what allows the rivers of blood to keep flowing? Maybe blood is the only thing that can make a garden grow in the desert.

The Mirage in the Desert. The image of the soul can be a mirage in the meaningless desert of existence, but it happening is as real as anything. When starving for meaning, meaninglessness can disguise as nourishment, how can we then trust our senses during our existence in the desert? What oasis should nourish our thirst? We might die of thirst chasing meaningless shadows of whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s real in empty lands, should we not dig our own well then, and nourish ourselves in its riches? He who chases the shadow is the one who spills his own blood to settle his thirst, but he who digs a well in the middle of the desert, grows a garden from his blood and makes the mirage a living thing.

The Place of the Garden. We know the place of the garden, and the flowers it grows, but weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re unwilling to provide them nourishment. Life kills in order to live, unwatched, unattended, in its blind ambition, the beautiful become its victim. Seeds for growth are not to be found in meaningless sacrifice, and yet, death makes a void for the garden and for the smell of its flowers. But children and gardens do not go well together, play is disinterested and cruel, the beauty falls its victim. What is it then that should die, for beauty to live ? From its ashes what often rises is a beautiful yet meaningless existence, an adult walking among the flowers, a child playing on concrete, an endless pit separating them, yet play acts as a bridge.

Potential. Desire is a window into the future, often covered by the image of the present. When not, it is devoured by the present in a cannibalistic indifferent, ignorant, narcissistic way. The remains, ruins of the unborn sparkle in the urban landscape, a last hope of reincarnation. And yet the past with its corporeal presence stands between the present and the future, often lying itself on the table of sacrifice, what should be done when time itself surrenders itself to you ? It speaks to your weakest instincts, unformed, untouched, unaddressed in the de-materialized present. Its voice appears silent, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s meaning transparent, its body like water, impossible to take grasp of, but to take hold of water, you must transform it into ice, and so does the past. But stagnation is the mother of decay. Its presence announced by a veil of dust, slowly covering what is, the present becomes a cocoon and through stagnant metamorphosis, it transforms into unexpected beauty, devouring marble columns, brick walls, metal beams, all reversing into formless slums. Everything can become everything, and everything new attracts the soul, unattended and unwatched, the ruin becomes a temple of madness. A temple of colors, a temple of light, waiting to be stumbled upon.

The in between. Experience is a child of the past, continuously growing and in the search for play. But children, in their playful indifference transform and create the present into the future. Creation is positioning yourself, an irreversible act of acknowledgment, your existence becomes a reality in between. You realize your existence as a moment after something is and before it becomes, your choice, the only act of “control” over your existence and over existence itself evaporates in the heat of desire that transforms what is into what it could be, but what something ought to be? A question born out of uncontrollable desire and anxiety. It’s answer, in the simplest and most profound form, presents itself in a courageous act of surrender. That’s when, things unknown to you, unknown to everyone, yet known, burst into existence. Matter takes a life of its own, gently guiding your hands, an idea searches for body, you release it into being by imprisoning yourself in the act of creation. By surrendering yourself, you gain your freedom, exposed to the danger of choice again, you understand the indifferent nature of reality, and you are her object of desire, your needs, your wishes devour you slowly so as to expose your remains to the world, and yet, that’s the best we can offer and what we most desperately want.

Genealogy of the Creative Act Love opens the window from the present into the future, a good future is a child of love, and what future does not come from love is not a future worth encountering. Love guides, reveals, and justifies, never satisfied with what is, we wonder into the unknown, indifferent of expectations, we liberate ourselves from conventions, we step into the unexplored. Indifferent to everyoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pretensions, nature lives and dies, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s existence, an ethereal meaninglessness springs forth the most indifferent of beauties, almost in a cruel and playful manner. Willing to know ourselves we act, almost in a cruel and playful manner, driven by desire and experience, we decide to exist, when tired of playing with ourselves and knowing others, we decide to play with others and know ourselves.

Paralysis Vacillation consumes the body and paralyzes the soul, nascent ideas linger into hibernation, life ceases to flow, widening the rift between the body and the soul. From the desert into the forest, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the fate of the one that dares to create, from blinding sun to overwhelming shadow, pain is the price of creation, vacillation is itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s womb, hope appears as a comfort; yet it can be poison once overdosed. Hope is nourished by the things existent, seen, perceived and felt, a warm breeze of fresh air. Hands sliding in the shadow, searching for varied shapes, can anything brought out from the shadow be called creation? It would seem only in as much as it can fill the emptiness left by the hope that preceded it. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re either empty and the world is full, so we search to fill our emptiness with the world, but our emptiness is a bottomless pit, things fall in, never to be seen again, their echoes heard again from time to time. Sometimes we try to empty our emptiness into the world yet the world is full and cannot receive what it already has, when we are full and the world is empty, we roll and twist and break the emptiness of the world into pieces so that we can build with it. Emptiness is full of itself.

Melancholy Abandonment is the fate of all creation is the price for its freedom and the road to its eventual destruction. How can a thing be, and have a life of its own if itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not abandoned? Abandoned to fate, abandoned to time, entropy takes hold and consumes, transforms and creates, abandon creates a void inside that needs to be filled, abandon fills the outside which needs to be emptied, entropy moves the matter from one place to another, from outside inside by creating the unexpected, by deforming the expected, by twisting and biting into what we once thought finished. Potential emerges out of entropy, seed of abandon, nourished by time, growing in the shadow.

THE ULTIMATE PLEASURE OF ARCHITECTURE

The ultimate pleasure of Architecture lies in the satisfaction of needs not experienced, but imagined. Therefore, the ultimate pleasure of Architecture is not physical, but metaphysical, that is to say, it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t satisfy the needs of the body, but the needs of the soul. The needs of the body are evident: shelter, warmth, protection from the elements, the body speaks for itself, but what about the needs of the soul? The needs of the soul become apparent after an accidental intoxication of pleasure when we transgress the limit from need to pleasure. The ultimate object of architectural pleasure transgresses the needs of the body intentionally to find the limit and the beginning of the soul. It satisfies needs apparently non-existent yet natural. It delights when one needs to be satiated, it comforts when one needs to be protected, it pleases when one needs to be sheltered. The ultimate object of architectural pleasure sings to its users, instead of speaking. The ultimate object of Architectural pleasure is a hedonistic prison from which the soul will try to escape, it cannot be contained, its limits are endless, it searches liberation from the same, it draws into the open, into the endless, into the new. The soul seems to find pleasure in distancing itself from pleasure at times, even from punishing itself, the soul seems to find pleasure in the new. And what is new and always changing yet always punishing if not nature? Punishment leads to growth, and growth leads to change, and the desire to experience the old in a new way. Nature protects and punishes, it satiates and delights, in its indifferent presence, it always controls. Once overwhelmed, the comfort of the past acts as a retreat, the prison becomes a shelter again. The ultimate pleasure is not the actual experience of pleasure but the future promise of pleasure, the imagines pleasure is more powerful than the real one, nature is capable of that promise and of revealing that potential.

THE DREAM: Z: For many years I have pretended not to see you but now, you come to me grinning, and you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think I can see what you are doing? Setting of the dream: Date:10.09.2019 Hour: 04:01 a.m. (Date of writing) CONTEXT: I have been writing the memoir for some time now intermittently while thinking about Zumthorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s architecture process. I have been in architecture for a few years now exploring his architectural process, but never fully realizing it, never fully, truly sticking to it but mostly combining it with other processes.

I found myself throughout the dream in different spaces, sometimes in a church a new church which I was only imagining again in the dream (so a second layer of imagination), and I wasn’t happy of it completely, the image was that of the Oblaz Monastery, and during the image, a voice appeared saying: “This is the most real fake I have ever seen.” (Concerning one of the monasteries/interiors of the churches.) It seemed as if we were in the old church, in front of the altar looking at it, with the new priest, I, and talking about it, while P was there, behind the altar and then he came out to join us. I was speaking with I about the “real” and the “fake” aspects of the new churches and what they were lacking compared to the old ones in experience. Fast forward we found ourselves somehow in a bus, traveling around, going seemingly nowhere and talking, it was I there with whom I was still talking and having the conversation, and somehow Zumthor was also with us, and the other guy, M that I have met with T. It seemed as if I was having a conversation with I and suddenly the bus made a turn, and I recognized we were in Basel, just under the Thermes de Vals. For a weird reason, I confounded it with a museum inside, it did become a museum inside, although I was somehow well aware they were Thermes. I excused myself from I and quickly run to admire the Museum of Vals and I was struck by its appearance, it looked as I remember from photos, solid rock on the outside, a part of the mountain, yet a new element has appeared, loose, between the rocks, in the joints, close to a window, and it also became a part

of the building and for some reason they decided not to take it off I remember admiring its exterior appearance and standing in awe, while looking behind and seeing Zumthor with his wife Lisa also looking at it and thinking something to themselves, it seemed for me as if he was happy with how it aged. I didn’t see nor recognize his wife Lisa, (I never saw her even in a photo) so he was there but I a distance, so I couldn’t see her. I went inside the “foyer of the museum” and instantly I was greeted with two “artistic objects” exposed at my right and to my left. I was immediately strung by the beauty of the “object on the right” and I started to admire it, it was either a painting of a mosaic, or a photo of a mosaic, a kind of Byzantine mosaic but never really Byzantine, which was somehow weirdly attributed to Raphael. It was a Virgin Mary, sitting in Jesus’s pose from the last supper, his body was made like almost out of squares (mosaic) of beautiful blue light and golden and pale red colors, she appeared like an angel and then transformed into the Christ figure through her posture, I can’t remember the face, it is because only a vase on top of a body, a round object, a face which felt of ceramic (conceptually) slightly turned on the right from my side of view and then with pale blue and white stripes running around it to the top. I can’t remember precisely the background but it was lightly colored, almost a landscape but certainly a golden background as in orthodox icons, the light blue, golden and red colors represented clothing. I remember admiring it and stepping back looking further cause I couldn’t figure out if it was a mosaic or a painting or a photo of a mosaic, or maybe in the dream I realized which one it was but I was admiring its beauty, so I was stepping

backwards and then suddenly I felt a presence sticking to my back, and somehow the surface of the other object on the expo was like glued a little bit and it stuck to my back and I dragged and it came a little off the wall but didn’t fall, and I managed to take it off me but I know I may have ruined it or something, and then people around me have turned away and someone who didn’t look like but felt like L came to me and started shaming me, for two reasons, it seemed clearly I was appreciating more the figure on the right than the one on the left which was in a red-terracotta impressionistic Jackson Pollock style, and she also started shaming me that I’ve entered inside and started to participate in the exhibition but was stupid enough not to know to run in a separate building to buy the ticked first. I started explaining that I was only admiring the other “painting” and was slowly backing away for other people to have space to enter and navigate the hallway while it happened and I touched my back to the other painting and that it was their fault that they didn’t delimit a protective area around it, the argument seemed to have ended in a draw and I run outside to take money from my wallet to buy the ticket, I knew it was late so the museum might have not let any more visitors. I run and saw I (the monk) with the M guy at the table around a beer talking, I think there might have been P with them also (the priest). But I didn’t manage to resume my discussion with I because I quickly run away to try to buy the ticket knowing Zumthor has also entered inside while I had the incident with the painting and I might not get another occasion to speak to him. I ran to buy the ticked but it was already closed as I expected and the museum was still open but it looked empty, as

people left already the expositions, I managed to have a look at the walls and was terribly surprised to find out they were inside made of crepy like the one we did outside on the buildings which I disgusted and I almost thought it didn’t look that bad, white, in a brutal manner (which is completely anti-Zumthoresque) and sometimes it was only filled at places like in a very brutal manner, yet from the inside it was that perfect execution and precision, on the inside this layer was the one we were always, I was always criticizing but turned inside. I looked around sad that I wasn’t able to see the other spaces cause I knew we will go away in the morning, then I saw him coming with a hat on his head, I knew they let him stay a bit later in the expositions, it was his building after all, so I waited for him to join me and we walked outside, me constantly in awe and with a big smile on my face happy to meet him, enthusiasm radiating everywhere, while preparing to ask him what’s the deal with the crepy inside and how he decided to do it, it seemed an innocent question, born more of a conceptual interest than a judgment of his work, at least in my conscious mind in the dream, when he just said this: Z: For many years I have pretended not to see you but now, you come to me grinning, and you don’t think I can’t see you? I’m still not sure with what offended him, I felt completely shocked, stunned in the dream and I didn’t know what I have done to make him feel that way, but I remember thinking that he thought he knew something about me.

TRANSCENDENT SCEPTICISM

5. SPATIALISATION OF THE UNCONSCIOUS.1

1. Project realised in the studio APA (Art, Paysage et Architecture) under the supervision of Patrice Neirinck, Emilio Lopez Menchero and Julie Martineau.

Fra Carnevale,The Ideal City, 1425-1484.

Industrial Silos, Anderlecht, Bruxelles, 2018.

Watercolour of a mental image of a Gothic alcove.

This project offers a personal example of a practical application of different insights uncovered throughout this research. Realised during the first semester of the academic year of 2018-2019, the subject of the project focused on the “spatialisation de la folie” divided into two themes, “Géométrie et Matière”, and “Paysage et Climat”. Without direct guidelines, a context or a program, the project is a clear example of “page blanche”, and offers the possibility of analysing the role of the image as a support for the creative process.

During the process, images started to come to the surface and express hidden meanings and obsessions. The process of active imagination, as Jung calls it, reduces the tension and separation between conscious and unconscious thoughts, the two dimensions of our psychic life merging into one and producing spontaneous representations of hidden contents in various forms. The image became a vehicle for meaning and a trojan horse for hidden assumptions waiting to be revealed. By exposing hidden unconscious tendencies, they would first offer a necessary material to explore the question of madness and its spatialisation in architecture, and secondly, by integrating them consciously in a creative process, I would liberate myself from their influence and eventually be able to take an objective look on their meaning, with the goal of transcending their sphere of influence.

When confronted with the question of what is madness and how it could be spatialised, instead of immersing inside the academic literature on the subject and extracting operational definitions based on various concepts, I have decided to interrogate my unconscious and extract a definition based on personal experiences. In order to achieve that, I’ve decided to do a writing exercise around different themes that would come intuitively on my mind. The texts called Transcendent Scepticism, and The Ultimate Pleasure of Architecture is a result of this experience, attempting to articulate and extracting unconscious contents, with the assumption that, those unfiltered documents would contain hidden meanings, that lay unconscious and influence my conscious decisions usually without my awareness.

The first writing exercise, similar to a schizophrenic person revealed hidden obsessions with industrial architecture and their apparent volumetric complexity. A second obsession that became apparent was one that pursued me throughout my studies relating to classicism and the purity of rational forms. Once these obsessions became conscious, I realised that an act of madness in this instance would be the acceptance of their apparent contradiction, and unite them

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Plan R+0.

Plan R+1.

inside a singular object.

it became conscious when I realised my fascination with industrial architecture and its perplexing subversion of the notions of “order” and “chaos”, and its fascinating relationship with nature. In many ways, it hints at the paradoxical nature of these ideas and their dependence on a particular point of view.

My fascination with order stretches back to my childhood, where having grown up in a small village in Romania, on the border with Ukraine where the environment was defined predominantly by a profound lack of aesthetic unity and conceptual order. The built landscape was detached from building regulations and cultural conventions, therefore, mimetic shapes and artisanal inventions attempt to courageously defy the forces of nature, waiting to reclaim its dominance.

While clear codes and rules govern the classical body, its internal constraints in many ways generate restrictive behaviours that are anything but “ideal”. As such, its internal restrictions for an exterior unity are from a practical view futile, and an existential point of view, depressing. The industrial volumes appear from outside as chaotic conglomerates of various forms while at the same time following precise internal rules governing their relationship with each the in a precise choreography of form and function.

As such, my first encounters with classical architecture had a profound impact. Usually experiencing the dominance of nature throughout different seasons, the seductive image of the classical ideal of order and clarity, implying a profound reversal of power in front of natural cataclysms and the seductive implications of the illusion of a serene reality had an almost spiritual appeal. At a deeper level, a subtler idea was lying hidden underneath various assumptions, that of the liberation of the creative process and of architecture itself from a functionalistic attitude governing each choice without the awareness of a higher ideal. In many ways, these ideas followed me throughout my studies, radiating their contents at various moments when confronted with different choices unconsciously.

The precise articulation of specific needs through volumetric means, generating a seemingly chaotic external reality utterly dependent on its internal function presented itself as the antithesis of the “higher ideal” focused on external order, previously encountered. It soon became apparent that a truly “humanist architecture”, that is, an architecture focused on human needs while simultaneously being aware of its external reality, was necessary and the reconciliation of the two opposing principles inside one singular object was paramount, the inside with the outside, the classical with the industrial.

The process of disillusion with the “ideal” was gradual, expressing itself at various moments through different means,

The subversion of the “classical ideal” presented itself in images through, dreams, visions, memories and reflections

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Watercolour of a Classical colonnade in an abandoned landscape.

Section of the project.

Imagined ambience in a cold day in Winter.

which became part of the creative process, juxtaposing archetypal images of classical colonnades with deserted, abandoned places where nature has imposed its presence. The classical body is open to the intrusion and subjugation of nature, lying open it coexists instead of dominating, physically becoming part of its environment while conceptually maintaining its autonomy.

Madness, therefore, presents itself in the form of an independent element, volumetrically, materially, spatially, atmospherically which perturbs the whole. Space develops from a series of contradictions, indeterminations and agglomerations concentrated around a stable element, the classical colonnade, which in its turn is perturbed by the changing atmosphere and the changing activities. The space in its whole tissue of contradictions made to contain, and liberate the inherent madness of the entire process - clarity and lack of clarity - simultaneously. The atmosphere of madness is characterised by incoherence and cohesion of volumes, the congestion of feelings, functions, and materials confront each other in a concert of ambiguousness.

The spiritual dimension of the creative act reveals to be hidden in the process of reconciliation of opposing principles, physically incarnated waiting to be contemplated and experienced in the form of a mandala. This need to accommodate this experience with the aid of a sculptural object created by Constantin Brancusi called The Table of Silence, which I was carrying with me since I was little. As the industrial ruins are usually abandoned where strangers cross paths sharing the same obsessions, the centre of the emerging object became not only to unite opposing intellectual tendencies but also to unite people with different views around the same subject, at least for a moment, sharing their ideas, then leaving, probably not to be seen ever again.

The quest for the desires atmospheric experience inside the construction brought to consciousness an intuitive image of a what appeared to be an alcove carved within a concrete wall containing a mosaic and seemingly Gothic like decorations of its windows all descending in its centre and forming an image of a mandala, or a symbolic image of hidden unconscious contents. The mandala became the foundation

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Photo of the Implantation Site next to the Electrical Power Plant, Anderlecht, Brussels, 2018.

Imagined ambience in a warm day mid-Summer.

of the atmospheric experience of the project, split on two levels, shifting and reinterpreting the notion of “phenomenal transparency” from an intellectual understanding to a phenomenological one.

expression of natural phenomena. Its displacements on two levels mean to attract the attention of the visitor at its presence while simultaneously concealing its complete form, hidden by the table and the same number of chairs sitting on its petals.

In its initial formulation by Le Corbusier, the notion of “phenomenal transparency” shifted the perception of the transparency of the building from literal to phenomenal, that is, instead of looking through the building’s openings to experience its transparency. The building’s internal concept and ideas were materialised in physical form and composed within the building like pieces of a puzzle to be perceived and recomposed in the visitor’s mind as a whole, similar to a cubist painting, experiencing an intellectual epiphany and a subtle, transcendent union with its author.

Once the visitor climbs to the first floor, its centre unifies, and the metaphorical union between water and vegetation transforms into a physical plant spreading into the inner courtyard from which the only escape is to enter one of the surrounding spaces and experiencing the traces left by the previous visitors. What ought to feel like a private space now suddenly has a public aura. The only real escape, that is, following the path of exploration is to enter the tunnel and jump on a dune of sand waiting bellow, an act of madness in itself. This brings us to the second part of the project, which interrogates the possible generation of experience of madness trough the means of “paysage et climat.’ The site was chosen to fully anchor the different experiences in a real place, was that of an abandoned hangar next to the electric power plant in Anderlecht, which was starting to be destroyed by a real estate agent planning to expand an adjacent industrial space.

The presence of the mandala aims to critique and shift the understanding from a conscious intellectual reconstruction of the “puzzle” to an unconscious, intuitive one. Trough its colours, it connects with the essential aspects of its surrounding environment, water and vegetation, two elements that combine naturally to create the chaotic

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GSPublisherVersion 0.33.100.100

Implantation Plan.

Each element, related to a prior experience lost in the unconscious, uncovered and re-lived in order to satisfy newly articulated desires. The conglomerate of different elements assembles the essential qualities that I search in architecture, being simultaneously a discovery and liberation from personal obsessions. It is an ideal place of reclusion from the pressures of the city, a place for the renewal with the relationship with nature, with oneself and with others.

Beyond its poetic qualities, the site offered an expansive playground for artistic experiences, and as such, offered an interesting challenge to implement the previous reflections. By its imposing dimension, 150m x 50m x 10m, upon the first encounter, it started generating a series of intuitive images that would confront or complement visual perception of the site. As such, a series of elements started to emerge, a small plantation of trees, giving a labyrinthine experience of its entrance while simultaneously concealing it imposing depth. Next to it, in order to escape the labyrinthine enclosure, a tower serves as a guide for the exploration of its surroundings. Bellow the tower, the vegetation fills the space, and as such, a concrete platform appears to accommodate an inner desire for play and protecting the vegetation. Later on, an apple tree, a symbol of man’s connection with nature qualifies the surroundings with an “Edenic” presence, offering the possibility to taste a fruit directly from its branches, a rare experience in the city, further on, a series of plants bringing a deliberate presence into the engulfing chaotic vegetation, with next to it, a small pond, offering visitors an almost peripatetic ambience, by letting them chill their feet in the water during the summer heat, and a small basin, collecting the water from the rain while allowing for algae to grow on its surface.

The different dimensions became evident later on: the mental images allowed for the careful articulation and exploration of unconscious desires, while the external images that I had before me offered clear and conscious sources of reference which demanded to be abstracted and liberated from. Similarly to Zumthor’s process, the mental images were expressed trough concrete drawings that attempt to convey as carefully as possible their inner contents, forming a baseline of the aesthetic experience of the project through its atmospheres. The concrete photos of the actual atmospheres are used to imbibe the photomontages with the desired experiences of the place that reflect it as closely as possible. Similar to Olgiati, they are realised with photos taken on the site at specific moments of the day throughout different

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seasons during weekends usually reflecting evening hours when people would decide to take a walk and have the occasion of experiencing those images themselves. In a less literal manner, the integration and relationship of the project with the site and its surroundings express in a decorative manner, similar to Herzog & de Meuron, where the mandala symbol expresses in a visual metaphor the union of water and vegetation, which are the defining aspects of the surrounding site, decorating the building.

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Poïèsis in architecture Mihai Pop Travail de fin d’études sous la direction de Wouter van Acker Faculté d’architecture La Cambre-Horta Université Libre de Bruxelles Année académique 2019-2020