2 minute read
Architectural Positions
A way to look at architecture
M. Frascari (1945-2019)
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Peter Zumthor (1943-)
Inspired by his essay ‘The Tell-The-TaleDetail’ Marco Fascari architectural vision had been an inspiration for looking carefully into the detail of the Paimio Sanatorium. Disregarding the extent of the buildings, the Sanatorium is relevant with its functionality within the detail and with the contextual placement.
The Sanatorium used to house patients exclusively suffering from tuberculosis and the project was built at a time where tuberculosis had a 50% likelihood of death. This resulted in the ideal making of design detail for tuberculosis patients.
In order to understand details and means, Fascari explains mathematics in architecture as a way to decipher a piece of architecture and to transform it into a creative language of form and visual signs. People process impressions by relating to previous experiences, and Frascari is saying that Mathematics – and therefore form and visual signs – is the way architecture communicates to the occupant.
The communication lies within the detail. Here, the gestures and the affordances of the architecture are to be seen. By looking into the Paimio Sanatorium designed by Aino and Alvar Alto, there is a lot to learn as architects about simplicity yet detailed architecture which forms this unique atmosphere (Foged & Hvejsel, 2018).
Peter Zumthor has also been used as another architectural position, to understand the atmosphere of a concept. Zumthor is linking atmospheric experiences together with details and thereby complements Fascaris point of view. We can tell a more sensational architectural story by looking into the detail, and according to Zumthor, the phenomenological essence of the architecture lies within the detail (Zumthor, 1988).
“Mathematics in architecture is basically a process of transformation of signs rather than the discovery of mathematical facts. They provide us with a framework which allows the classifying of the visual signs and the understanding in a creative way of the functions of the building. Mathematics provides a language for stating facts within a scale, a way of making a comparison, and relate singly visually perceived architectural details”
(Frascari, 1981)
“The mathematical issue of the relationship of the parts in a joint is not the result of a formal process. Instead, it is possible to recognize in the detail that it is ultimately the human use of symbols which is the foundation of mathematical inference.”
(Frascari, 1981)
“It is said that one of the most impressive things about the music of Johann Sebastian Bach is its “architecture”. Its construction seems clear and transparent. It is possible to pursue the details of the melodic, harmonic and rhythmical elements without losing the feeling for the composition as a whole – the whole which makes sense of the details.”
