Molly Bennett | Masters Research Project | University of Florida Graduate School of Architecture by Molly Bennett

COMPOSING ATMOSPHERES: INVESTIGATING ARCHITECTURAL IMPRESSIONS THROUGH POETRY

By MOLLY BENNETT

A PROJECT IN LIEU OF THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2021

Composing Atmospheres Investigating Architectural Impressions Through Poetry

Molly Bennett Master of Architecture 2021

And now, with gleams of half-extinguish’d thought, With mainly recognitions dim and faint, And somewhat of a sad perplexity, The picture of the mind revives again

William Wordsworth Lines Written a few miles above Tintern Abbey, 1798

Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore Florence, Italy Architect: Filippo Brunelleschi Photo taken by Author. January 2019.

Acknowledgements

To Bradley Walters, thank you for helping me see the value in myself and my work. You have always encouraged me to reach higher, even when it seems impossible. I promise to stay ambitious and enthusiastic.

To Nina Hofer, thank you for always pushing me to stay curious. Just when I think I may have the answer, you’re there to remind me there are a thousand more to explore. I promise I won’t stop searching for more.

To my aunt Lillian Harper, thank you for sharing your experiences, memories, and images with me as I dove into the world of Wordsworth. It was so fun to travel to The Lakes with you, if only in our minds.

To Mark Wilson, thank you for being my partner through it all. It has been the gift of a lifetime to spend this journey with you.

To my parents, I could not have survived the past 6 years (or 24 for that matter) without you. I am forever thankful for your endless love and support.

Contents

Abstract

15 19 23

OBSERVING Observing Ephemerality Eternal Moments

29 33 39

DISCOVERING Defining Impression Subtlety as Catalyst

43 47 55

REVEALING Engaging Light Duration

57 61 63 67

COMPOSING Lines Poetics of Place Methods of Translation

Sunlight

75 77 79

Intervention Establishing Threshold Depicting the Invisible

81 89

Moonlight Firelight

97 99

Illustrating Sequences Reflections

103 105

Image Citations References

Molly Bennett M. Arch. 2021 Chair | Bradley Walters Co-Chair | Nina Hofer Critics | Stephen Belton + Jeff Carney

Abstract

This project seeks to take the works of poet William Wordsworth and use them to compose inhabitable atmospheres that capture the essence of his lines. The architecture lies in the relationship between the words and the experience within these proposed or imagined spaces. The word composition is important in the process of translation from words to atmospheres because the action of composing implies a certain thoughtfulness and intentionality in the way these experiences are articulated. Within this process of translation lies a balance between intuition and intention. This method of translation developed predominantly through a rigorous study of light in its many forms. The ephemerality of spatial experience is strengthened by the constantly shifting quality of light, which directly affects mood and atmosphere. It is essential to observe and discover what light can do before embarking on the journey of designing through light conditions. Based on certain stanzas of Wordsworth’s poetry, light revealed itself in three forms within the atmospheric collage studies: sunlight, moonlight, and firelight. These compositions prompted ideas about scale, materiality, and apertures beyond. We remember spaces through the impressions they leave with us and although those may change, deteriorate, or enrich over time, they become our reality. By utilizing sensory experiences, one is capable of constructing a preserved fragment of memory: an atmosphere. This research seeks to uncover methods of designing through atmosphere rather than allowing atmosphere to become a product of design. By studying poetic fragments and interpreting these lines through an experiential lens, this research composes a different way of experiencing poetry, that allows you to inhabit these lines, transporting you into another world.

OBSERVING

chapter | title

Observing

“When I design a building, I frequently find myself sinking into old, half-forgotten memories, and I 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 in which everything had its own specific place and form.”

Peter Zumthor, Thinking Architecture

Peter Zumthor, Thinking Architecture (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1999), 8. Image: Kunsthaus Bregenz by Peter Zumthor Photo Taken by Author. March 2019. 17

Observing Ephemerality

Observing | Observing Ephemerality

The Beauty Of Light In Motion

Natural light is never stagnant. Even when the changes are imperceptible, light is in constant motion. These phenomena can be seen as light penetrates through a tree, with its leaves and branches blowing in the wind, creating a spectacle of dancing light casting on the surfaces beyond. It can be seen as light reflects off rippling water, projecting a network of caustic light across ceilings and walls, eternally in motion. Light can transform a space in a matter of moments, in a matter of hours, and over the course of the year, which is what makes the aspect of temporal shifting so fascinating. Artist James Turrell emphasizes the experience of light as volumes and surfaces rather than an invisible being that cuts through a space. Light is no longer seen as an influential yet foreign being in space, but as an entity that belongs just as much as the bounding planes of any piece of architecture. Light enters space and becomes another character in the story of that experience. Throughout his body of work, Turrell “invites viewers to contemplate the nature of light itself: its transparency or opacity, its volume, and its color.” ¹

Saint Benedict Chapel Sumvitg, Switzerland Architect: Peter Zumthor. Photo taken by Author. March 2019.

One of the beautiful factors of studying natural light is its ability to yield new discoveries. It can be manipulated, but never fully controlled. Turrell indulged his intrigue in manipulating natural light in his experimental first exhibition, entitled Mendota Stoppages (1966-1974). Throughout this project, he combines his interest of light’s influence on spaces and its natural shifting over time, both activating and observing the space he manipulated by harnessing light in a new way. Turrell invents a suggestive choreography for the light entering his studio, but the outcome is always determined by the movement of the light itself. ²

1. Turrell, James, Michael Govan, Christine Y. Kim, Alison de Lima. Greene, E. C. Krupp, and Florian Holzherr. James Turrell: a Retrospective. (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2013), 6.

2. Turrell, James. James Turrell: Light & Space: Whitney Museum of American Art, 22.10.1980-1.1.1981. (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1980), 7. 19

Turrell’s studio, located in the former Mendota Hotel in Santa Monica, California, became his playground for experimentation. In order to create a blank canvas to cast light into, he initially blocked out all light from the spaces by painting all the windows black. The trials began as he scratched openings in the paint on the windows, allowing slots of light to enter the space, shifting angles throughout the day. He also manipulated the walls within the space, carving out sections of wall and allowing light to penetrate deeper into the space. Working back and forth between manipulating apertures and receiving surfaces, he enriched the relationship between the evanescent and the permanent. With this space being on the corner of a major intersection, Turrell was able to explore the variable phenomena that occurs during the day when sunlight enters the space as well as at night, when “urban light”

enters the space. The conditions of the space relied heavily on the ever-changing activity occurring outside the space, “thereby creating intricate performances of light, shadow, color, and movement and transforming it into a space ordered by light.” 3 CAPTURING TRANSIENT LIGHT Turrell’s embrace of naturally occurring light movements enhances the fact that light can do remarkable things in just about any space. The images above originate from a video recorded over the span of 1 minute. While the receiving surface remains constant, the light continuously shifts. Though it starts as just a luminous haze, throughout the video, this spot of light morphs into a clear form defined by an amalgamation of objects which are influencing the geometry of the light. Once it reaches its peak clarity, the edges begin

Observing | Observing Ephemerality

to revert back, obscuring the distinct shape of the aperture through which this volume of light is passing. However, this pattern is not linear, with the intensity of the light changing irregularly, the form repeatedly fades in and out. The rapid shifting of the light's intensity creates varied sharpness of edges, which repeatedly dissolve into nothing before the eye can even comprehend the previous state. These fleeting moments of magic happen in everyday spaces, but can also be harnessed more intentionally, setting the stage and creating a surface for these displays of light and motion to occur. The term evanescent illustrates the ephemerality of these moments of observation, with no singular moment repeating in time.

and Dreams: An essay on the Imagination of Matter.

Light is like water in many ways. It has a level of reliability in its cyclical nature over time, but it can also transform in an instant. Gaston Bachelard explores the material and metaphorical qualities of water in Water

Perhaps light is the "transitory element," changing with each passing moment, often undergoing an imperceptible metamorphosis. Perhaps daily death is the death of light.

3. Turrell, James, Michael Govan, Christine Y. Kim, Alison de Lima. Greene, E. C. Krupp, and Florian Holzherr. James Turrell: a Retrospective. (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2013), 4.

4. Gaston Bachelard and Edith R. Farrell, Water and Dreams an Essay on the Imagination of Matter (Dallas, TX: Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, 2006), 6.

Just like water and light, we as humans are transitory, constantly changing our perception, our thoughts, our imagination and our limits. “Water is truly the transitory element...A being dedicated to water is a being in flux. He dies every minute; something of his substance is constantly falling away. Daily death is not fire’s exuberant form of death, piercing heaven with its arrows; daily death is the death of water.” 4

Below | 9:10 AM Marston Science Library

Eternal Moments

Observing | Eternal Moments

Illustrating Observations

An essential step in the process of this research is to establish a method of representing the experience of occupation. In Le Corbusier’s Creation is a Patient Search, he explores the idea of drawing as a method of uncovering and understanding. He describes his method of absorbing the specificities of a space into memory when he states that drawing means “first to look, and then to observe and finally perhaps to discover.” ⁵ Le Corbusier then explains that when one draws a space, searching for its imperfections and peculiarities, “it stays for good, entered, registered, inscribed.” ⁶ This emphasis on using drawing to comprehend, to remember a space is also inherently linked to time and the moments in time that are captured in a sketch are fleeting. Will this space look like this, feel like this, in a matter of minutes? Or will the sun dip behind the clouds, replacing what once was a beam of gleaming light piercing through an opening and across the floor in front of you with a dull shadow. Is what was drawn no longer rooted in reality? All we can do as beholders of phenomena is observe and commit those most impactful experiences to memory, and by deciding to record or document these observations, these brief moments in time become eternal.

In Between | 5:15 PM Architecture Building

DRAWING AS METHOD Drawing on black paper with a white medium brings about different questions than drawing on white paper with a typical graphite or charcoal medium. It encourages the viewer to focus on light rather than the shadows that occur as a result of the light in the space. In the drawing entitled Below, you can see how one plane remains untouched by the light, compositionally slicing through this patchwork of tone with pure black, defining that edge not with the presence of light, but 5. Le Corbusier, Creation Is a Patient Search (New York: Praeger, 1966), 37. 6. Ibid. 23

with the absence of it. This method allows one to view light in different ways: as a medium, a material, a series of independent surfaces and volumes. Choosing to view light as a spatial element and approaching drawing space with that in mind, reveals relationships and conditions you may have not noticed otherwise. This method exposes questions about light’s relationship with edges and surfaces, its independence and fluidity, how it can be broken, interrupted by surfaces but still continue as one being.

Light Beyond | 8:30 AM Stuzin Hall

Documenting and interpreting these spaces on campus through drawing allows one to see these beautiful moments in time where light is shining through these spaces and almost creating this feeling of volume, which it may not have without illumination. The way the angular light travels through these spaces paints the surfaces of the building elements, giving them a new life with its warm touch. The moments where a soft gradient hits a harsh bright line of direct light, like it's tracing these surfaces and corners just for you to see and understand. It works both ways, which is why drawing in different ways became so important to see these phenomena in different ways. Observation is an important step in understanding any phenomena of light. While the behavior of light can be predicted, simulation never lives up to reality.

Observing | Eternal Moments

Looking Up | 9:30 AM Marston Science Library

MERGING REALITIES What can be created when we take these depictions of moments and use them to create new realities? What is it like to draw multiple visual experiences of spaces within the same context and then collapse them into a compilation of momentary experiences? This image consists of multiple experiential light sketches and has been digitally collaged to find commonalities in the geometries the light is creating in these spaces. The use of digital tools brings the ability to reverse the perception of what is shadow and what is light, promoting fluidity between the two drawing typologies and allowing for new-found connections across a series of sketching experiments. These drawings have now become more than a singular moment in time. They have become a layered spatial sequence, with tonal zones overlapping and creating new qualities of light to be discovered within the drawing. They have become spaces of liminality and imagination, existing in a world of their own.

Observing | Eternal Moments

DISCOVERING

chapter | title

Discovering

“It is connotation again when architects metaphorically speak of ‘architectural statements,’ statements that invite interpretation. The creative architectural space begets new sights, new insights, new choices: it is a catalyst for cognitions. It suggests an ethical imperative that applies not only to architects, but to anyone who acts.”

Heinz Von Foerster, The Need of Perception for the Perception of Needs

Heinz Von Foerster, “The Need of Perception for the Perception of Needs.” Leonardo 22, no. 2 (1989), 226. Image: Brion Cemetary by Carlo Scarpa Photo Taken by Author. April 2019.

Graphite drawing of Trajan’s Market in Rome, Italy. This drawing was done as a study of light and surface and the relationship of dependency or independency between the two. The eroding edges of this ruin provided a rich variety of edge typologies for light to interact with, shaping the apertures and impacting the role of light in this space. 32

Defining Impression

Discovering | Defining Impression

De-constructing Figure Ground

Art can assist in developing an understanding of the term impression and how it can be represented differently in terms of representation techniques and subjectivity. How are elements experienced in relation to the human body and human eye? What disappears into the periphery and what remains in focus? VISION AND THE BODY It is important to understand the body as “an intertwining of vision and movement.” ¹ If we process thoughts through the lens of absolute artificialism, we would determine that bodies are simply objects taking up space in a world of other objects that function as a natural machine. However, if we shift the focus back to vision and movement, we become grounded in a state of humanity. Maurice Merleau-Ponty states: “We only see what we look at. What would vision be without eye movement?” ² There is a high level of interdependence between vision and movement, in how we perceive the world around us as well as our existence within that world and how we are affecting it constantly. We can begin to understand movement not as an intentional and deliberate decision made by the mind, but rather the “natural consequence and maturation of vision.” Merleau-Ponty describes visual elements of reality as being “within reach of my sight,” implying a sense of spatiality to our vision and perception. He described the map of the “I can” under this metaphor meaning a map of what he “can” reach in sight. ³ Our mind takes what we see and translates it into a basic understanding of the spaces which we inhabit, judging distance, depth and proportion simultaneously to create a bodily understanding of space.

1. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind,” in The Primacy of Perception. (Evanston, USA: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 162. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid.

“The painter ‘takes his body with him,’ says Valery. Indeed we cannot imagine how a mind could paint.” ⁴ Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eye and Mind An artist uses their body to translate their surroundings into paintings, becoming depictions of the world absorbed and filtered through the eyes, mind and body. Art acts as a mirror looking into the artist themselves and the moment in time they existed within and are now projecting outwards through their work. MerleauPonty explains that painting “gives visible existence to what profane vision believes to be invisible.” We do not need a “muscular sense” to understand the volume of the world, the eye translates these qualities within the painting to how we perceive space and texture in our own visual reality.⁵ A painter must accept that either they allow the objects they paint to pass into and through them, or that they allow their mind to venture out through the eyes to wander among objects. “I think that the painter must be penetrated by the universe and not want to penetrate it. . . . I expect to be inwardly submerged, buried. Perhaps I paint to break out.” ⁶ Andre Marchand

4. Ibid. 5. Ibid, 166. 6. Ibid, 167. 33

Figure 1 Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) L’Allée au Jas de Bouffan c. 1874–5 Oil paint on canvas Support: 381 × 460 mm, frame: 583 × 670 × 100 mm The Tate Gallery, London Photo © Tate

Discovering | Defining Impression

PERCEIVING DEPTH “To see is to have at a distance...” ⁷ Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eye and Mind Depth is inherently relative. In other words, we experience depth by understanding objects in space and their relative distance from one another in the first dimension. We have the ability to understand the distance between our bodies and each object in singular planes moving outward from ourselves. Understanding the composition and structure of art is one way that depth can be read visually. Depth was explored extensively in the art of the Renaissance period, but Merleau-Ponty argues that even after this intensive study, “depth is still new, and it insists on being sought, not “once in a lifetime” but all through life.” ⁸ Alberto Giacometti was quoted as saying: “I believe Cézanne was seeking depth all his life.” ⁹ In many of his landscape paintings, Cézanne explores the creation of depth using layers to build up a set of horizontal planes that draw the eye into the view (Figure 1). In order to comprehend depth in a visual sense, we can use this technique of establishing thresholds which our eyes can pass through even before the body does so in movement.

the impressions space leaves with would be less defined in spatial terms, but perhaps more enriched in mood or atmospheric terms. How can we utilize light and depth along with visual and bodily perception to create imagined spaces? How can we craft spaces that evoke emotional responses that cause these impressions to remain in our memory? In The World of Perception, Merleau-Ponty reflects on Cézanne’s works once again, illustrating how within his works we “get the feel of a world in which no two objects are seen simultaneously, a world in which regions of space are separated by the time it takes to move our gaze from one to the other, a world in which being is not given but rather emerges over time.”¹¹ Cézanne’s paintings make clear that “our relationship to space is not that of a pure disembodied subject to a distant object but rather that of a being which dwells in space relating to its natural habitat.” 12 To reflect on the role of the painter and their role in translating their world into the visual, Juhani Pallasmaa expresses that “the task of architecture is ‘to make visible how the world touches us.’” 13

In the water colors of Cézanne’s latter years, space radiates around planes that cannot be assigned to any place at all. These late watercolors are described in the reading as “a superimposing of transparent surfaces,” “a flowing movement of planes of color which overlap, which advance and retreat.” ¹⁰ While depth can be easily understood when presented to us in clear, sequential planes, it also can be obscured or questioned within a visual composition. In this case, 7. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind,” in The Primacy of Perception. (Evanston, USA: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 179. 8. Ibid, 180. 9. Ibid, 179. 10. Ibid, 181.

11. Merleau-Ponty, The World of Perception (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 54. 12. Ibid, 55. 13. Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. (Chichester: Wiley, 2014), 46.

Figure 2 Georges Seurat (French, 1859 - 1891) Madame Seurat, the Artist’s Mother (Madame Seurat, mère), about 1882–1883, Conté crayon on Michallet paper 30.5 × 23.3 cm (12 × 9 3/16 in.), 2002.51 The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Discovering | Defining Impression

IRRADIATION, GRAIN, LIGHT AND SHADOW “Her puzzling physical presence and psychological stillness is made all the more vaporous and ghostly by the drawing technique Seurat called “irradiation,” which avoided distinct lines and represented the subtleties of light and shadow through tones of black crayon.” ¹⁴ Georges Seurat’s charcoal drawing entitled Madame Seurat, the Artist’s Mother (Figure 2) is a depiction of his mother. This piece takes Seurat’s fascination with pointillism in a new direction by utilizing the drawing medium and grain of the paper to create gentle gradients from light to dark tones. How does he define and differentiate the sharpness or softness of edges? The subtleties in the way he transitions between tones have the ability to create a clear image of the light qualities in these scenarios.

Figure 3 Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) The Thames above Waterloo Bridge c. 1830–5 Oil paint on canvas 35 5/8 × 47 5/8 in. (90·5 × 121 cm) The Tate Gallery, London (1992) Photo © Tate

ATMOSPHERE AND AMBIGUITY Joseph Mallord William Turner creates compositions that center around color, light and atmosphere, but are often void of clear lines and starkly contrasting tones. What causes him to make these more detailed moves? Do these subtle marks indicate that those elements define place? Are they landmarks? John Ruskin described Turner as having the unique ability to “stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature.” ¹⁵ In The Thames above Waterloo Bridge (Figure 3), we exist within a haze that obscures most difinitive elements of the landscape from view, levaing only a hint of their presence behind. Our understanding of depth is disrupted as hues blend together to encompass Turner’s view, leaving with us an impression of this moment in time through the eyes of the beholder. 14. “Madame Seurat, the Artist’s Mother (Madame Seurat, Mère) (Getty Museum),” The J. Paul Getty in Los Angeles, accessed April 20, 2021, http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/182800/ georges-seurat-madame-seurat-the-artist’s-mother-madameseurat-mere-french-about-1882-1883/.

15. “J.M.W. TURNER: Reflections on the Painter of Light,” Ashmolean Museum, accessed April 21, 2021, https://www. ashmolean.org/article/reflections-on-the-painter-of-light. 37

Subtlety as Catalyst

Discovering | Subtlety as Catalyst

The Convergence Of Precision And Ambiguity

OBSCURED IMPRESSION I have been thinking a lot about how we remember architecture through the impressions it leaves with us and how those may change, deteriorate, or enrich over time. Certain elements of an experience can remain ingrained in our memory of a space. What is the difference between an abrupt light change and a gradual light change? This begins to introduce more temporal aspects of space such as observing change over time or change while in motion. The whole is the sum of the moments experienced. This initial set of studies (Charcoal Drawings 1-4) began with experimentation with charcoal as a medium, how to build tone, create a light wash and so on. These tonal studies originated from observing light conditions around campus, just as the first set of sketches did. Alternatively, these focused in on smaller zones, light on surfaces and created flattened expressions of these conditions. By studying gradients, hard edges, darkness of shadows, clarity of light, and subtle differences in tones across a surface, this exercise encouraged an attentiveness to detail while still remaining an abstraction of reality. Drawing light using this looser, more abstract approach prompted a method of digital collaging and overlaying, which yielded a new understanding of the power of subtlety in light and shadow. These charcoal impressions brought into question the qualities of foreground and background in architecture. We once again return to the inquisitions: How are elements experienced in relation to the human body and human eye? What falls into the periphery and what remains in focus?

Charcoal Drawings | 1-4

Charcoal Overlays | 3-6

Discovering | Subtlety as Catalyst

CHARCOAL OVERLAYS 1 + 2 This set of tonal studies display the theme of subtlety most clearly, with Overlay 2 appearing to be washed with light from the side, illuminating that theoretical plane and obscuring our perception of its tone or texture. In this case, Overlay 1 appears to be only slightly illuminated by a possibly indirect light source. I quickly began to realize there were so many differing spatial implications that could be drawn from the slightest difference in tone. CHARCOAL OVERLAYS 3 - 6 This set of collages explores subtleties and the process of light shifting over time and creating different spatial conditions. As the set developed, it began to feel as though light is moving around this ambiguous space and illuminating different planes throughout the day, which also has an effect on how the space is perceived as a whole. Some planes remain constantly illuminated while others reveal themselves as being part of the composition only when illuminated. How can we study light over a duration of time as it moves within a fixed setting? LIGHT AND SUBTLETY Building off of these concepts, the importance and power of subtlety to drive perception became a key concept in my research. Our understanding of the scale, depth and mood of a space can be altered by harnessing veils of light or shadow, obscuring view and leaving room for individual interpretation of what lies ahead. Light and shadow can also reveal what we may have not seen before. Using these abstract charcoal drawings as a generative study, I began to wonder how these themes of masking and revealing, obscuring and uncovering, could be demonstrated in a threedimensional model, harnessing light to test these phenomena. Charcoal Overlays | 1+2

REVEALING

chapter | title

Revealing

“So the first of my favourite ideas is this: to plan the building as a pure mass of shadow then, afterwards, to put in light as if you were hollowing out the darkness, as if the light were a new mass seeping in.”

Peter Zumthor, Atmospheres

Peter Zumthor, Atmospheres: architectural environments, surrounding objects (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2006), 59. Image: Jewish Museum Berlin by Daniel Libeskind Photo Taken by Author. March 2019.

Engaging Light

Revealing | Engaging Light

Constructing Aperture and Surface

“Light is not so much something that reveals, as it is itself revelation.” James Turrell PHYSICAL ASSEMBLIES Building off of the charcoal impression studies, I felt the need to create something three-dimensional that would allow me to study and test light conditions, remaining flexible in nature to yield different outcomes. The following models were created under a few simple rules: I began with two pieces of thick bristol paper that were folded in half, creating an L-shaped form that was 3 inches by 3 inches wide and 6 inches tall. By limiting the construction of these models to 4 moves of cutting, scoring and folding, I was able to create simple enclosures and apertures for light to pass through and interact with. Volumes quickly began to reveal themselves and seeing the different ways the light illuminated the volumes, or hit the surfaces directly brought forth many spatial ideas about scale, interiority and atmosphere. I kept each of the original L-shaped pieces separate and used a modular system of measurement to determine where to make any cuts or folds. This allowed me to interchange different pieces with others, rotating them to discover new orientations. This kept the process generative and loose, limiting the possibility of over-choreographing movements or anticipating connections before they could be found more organically.

Engaging Light | Model Photo Series

Revealing | Engaging Light

All in all, the full study consisted of 5 L-shaped pieces at 3” x 3” x 6” dimensions. This series of photos depicts many of the combinations I discovered while joining, separating and re-orienting pieces to discover new spatial relationships for the light to interact with. Intersecting the models allowed me to work quickly and study vigorously, removing the pressure of perfection and planning, and rather creating a more iterative and fruitful process. I utilized both natural and artificial light over the course of this study. Artificial light allowed me to have more control and study multiple conditions in quick succession. Since I had control over the angle, intensity, and tone of light, these photos are more calculated, removing some guessing out of the equation. To study natural light’s effects on the models, I would bring two model pieces together and set them on my desk in studio as I worked throughout the day, watching as light illuminated planes directly, or shone through the thick paper to faintly reveal itself on the opposite face. These moments brought me back to my initial interests in the ephemerality of light and light in motion, as I studied these models in the same space I recorded the video of light shining through those windows, appearing and disappearing on the floor of that very same room.

Collage 1

Collage 2

Revealing | Engaging Light

COMPOSITE LIGHT COLLAGES Once I had this set of model photos, I began collaging them digitally, initially intending to create what would appear to be a compiled model of many different pieces, brought together by corresponding geometries and planar movements (Collages 1+2). This step acted similarly to the previous action of intersecting physical models to discover new relationships. Rather than doing this physically, however, utilizing digital tools allowed the models to break out of their physical scale and become more interpretive. A smaller area of one of the physical models could be re-scaled to encompass an entire construct. Soon, spaces of vastly different scales and conditions were beginning to reveal themselves with each new photo overlay. Further into the collaging process, I began to align photos based on their lighting conditions rather than the geometry of the physical planes of the model (Collages 3+4). Aligning these model photos based on their light conditions created ambiguity for these light conditions to exist within, concealing the edges of planes and allowing the light to guide the eye. In Collage 4, light truly drives the spaces. Shadow is embraced as the light penetrates through, uncovering spaces that are geometrically ambiguous, only revealing themselves by what is illuminated. This ambiguity allows us to speculate on what specificities could exist around the light to create these phenomena. What would happen if I imagined the architecture these phenomena existed within?

Collage 3

Revealing | Engaging Light

Collage 4

Duration

Revealing | Duration

Metamorphosis of Light Over Time

“We have come to understand the nature of existence as ephemeral- relative to time, place, and mind-set...” ² Melinda Wortz Once these collages began to establish an identity of their own, I began to envision light moving around these imagined “constructs,” illuminating different zones as time passed. How would the shifting of light reveal new spaces? Would the shifting of light broaden our understanding of some of the existing spaces seen in the collages? How would a change in the angle or intentity of light change the occupied atmospheres within these spaces? With this in mind, I drew a perspective of one of the interior spaces discovered through Collage 1 and rendered it over the span of a day, constructing what direct light would do when passing through this constructed aperture above. By addressing the idea of duration, I was able to get a better sense of what it would be like to inhabit this imagined space over time or to pass through it once and revisit that moment at another time of day.

2. Melinda Wortz, “Introduction” in James Turrell: Light & Space: Whitney Museum of American Art, 22.10.1980-1.1.1981. (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1980), 7. 55

COMPOSING

chapter | title

Composing

“If architecture can be said to have a poetic meaning we must recognize that what it says is not independent of what it is. Architecture is not an experience that words translate later. Like the poem itself, it is its figure as presence, which constitutes the means and end of the experience.”

Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Questions of Perception

Alberto Pérez-Gómez, “The Space of Architecture: Meaning as Presence and Representation” in Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture. (San Francisco, CA: William Stout, 2006), 8. Image: Jewish Museum Berlin by Daniel Libeskind Photo Taken by Author. March 2019.

Lines

Composing | Lines

Translating Poetry to Atmosphere

“To capture a glimpse of the essence, no physical science, no reduction into categories nor any other form of short-cut will help us: only, as Martin Heidegger seems to suggest, only through poetry may we come close. This notion of essence and poetry is, if not directly threatening, immediately suspect in a positivist atmosphere.” ¹

way. Perez-Gomez argues that it is the responsibility or even the gift of the architect to facilitate these deeper emotional connections through the atmospheres they create. ³

Lars Lerup, Building the Unfinished: Architecture and Human Action

Three things that drew me to poetry were the use of imagery, depth of emotion, and specifically, the style of storytelling. English poet William Wordsworth is known for being open about his emotions and enforcing their validity through his words, one of the first to be this raw and personal in his writing. While Wordsworth has an extensive collection of poems, I’ve focused on a series of poems that are all entitled Lines. These poems are not collected in a singular place, but they reappear throughout many years. Each has a unique subtitle or continuation of the title that typically describes the place, season, or time of day in which Wordsworth wrote them.

CONVEYING MEANING IN ARCHITECTURE What is an architecture that speaks? How can an architecture clearly communicate a story, or even more importantly, a feeling or an understanding? Alberto Perez-Gomez references Frederick Kiesler’s metaphor that architecture should “respond to our moods not by pleasing us, but by challenging us, promoting the use of our imagination…” Kiesler uses the metaphor of understanding water as more than H2O, but also coming to understand the poetic nature of water as a “life-giving and primordial liquid, a vehicle of purification.” ² We can begin to understand architecture at a similar, more meaningful level when we open our minds to the space around us and listen to what it’s trying to convey. If carefully composed, architecture speaks to the mind, body and soul. Not all architecture achieves this level of meaning and clarity in a way that can be understood without explanation, but rather through a spatial experience. Words are important, and creating spaces that emulate certain words can be a key catalyst to creating these spaces that speak directly to the soul, almost bypassing the science of the brain and going straight to a level of deeper connection. It is through this lens that poetry can enter architecture in a direct 1. Lars Lerup, Building the Unfinished: Architecture and Human Action (Beverly Hills: Sage publications, 1977), 23. 2. Alberto Pérez-Gómez, “Mind, Mood, and Architectural Meaning,” in Timely Meditations: Selected Essays on Architecture, Vol. 2, (Montreal, Canada: Rightangle International, 2016), 264.

THE POETRY OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

One poem specifically that I will be referencing is entitled Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey. In this poem, Wordsworth speaks in a tone of reminiscence, both of sights and imagery as well as emotion. According to Wordsworth, poetry is “the spontaneous overflow of feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” ⁴ In the pursuit of creating spaces that speak to the mind, body, and soul, I have developed a series of atmospheric collages that work to materialize poetry through light, tone, color and sequencing. Each of the three central collages in this set features a different type of light: sunlight, moonlight, and firelight. The poems themselves mention each type and that distinction is fundamental to make in order to capture the essence of the poetry in these inhabitable imagined spaces. 3.Ibid, 264-265. 4. “William Wordsworth,” Poetry Foundation (Poetry Foundation), accessed February 4, 2021, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/ poets/william-wordsworth. 61

Poetics of Place

Composing | Poetics of Place

The Lakes District of England

Poets often write about their surroundings, using their environments as metaphors for life and describing place in an intimate way using both imagery and emotional connections. William Wordsworth displayed his appreciation and celebration of nature through his poetry. His thoughts are deeply rooted in the place he writes them, whether explicitly stated or not. Grasmere lies in the famous Lakes District of England, and is where Wordsworth lived for much of his life. There is a museum in and around his former home, which is marked on the map as “Wordsworth Grasmere.” The museum lies at the base of a hill that overlooks rolling fields of pasture and the lake below. Commonly traversed by hikers, the road up the hill transitions into a path that circles around the peak of the hill. The potential intervention sites lie along this path, which Wordsworth certainly traveled along daily for years.

Ullswater Photo by Lillian Harper.

On the map to the left, there are seven sites marked, and I have developed atmospheric collages and interventions for three of them, each site chosen to enhance the light condition they are yearning for. Since these poems have such a deep and clear connection with this landscape and culture, it is highly important that they are affixed within this context. Wordsworth described Grasmere as “the loveliest spot that man hath ever found.” ⁵

5. William Wordsworth, A Farewell, 1802.

Rydal Mount was William Wordsworth’s home from 1813 until his death in 1850. Rydal Mount is located in the small village of Rydal, which lies between Ambleside and Grasmere. 6 Photo by Lillian Harper.

6. Visit Rydal Mount & Gardens, accessed April 12, 2021. www.rydalmount.co.uk

Composing | Poetics of Place

A SERENDIPITOUS CONNECTION An unexpectedly fruitful moment in the process of understanding this place occurred when I discovered my aunt, Lillian Harper, had traveled to Grasmere and the Lakes District many times over the years. We began to discuss Wordsworth and the Lakes District, exchanging information I had learned through my research and memories and photographs she had from her many visits. As she sent groups of photos, she would include a short anecdote of the day she took them. Tales of drinks at a pub down the road, coffee at the local bakery, stone cottages she stayed in, walking for hours to reach the place captured in each photo. There truly was no better way of understanding the impressions this place can instill than by reading these stories that felt remarkably personal.

Photo by Lillian Harper.

This really helped me understand the place and what the experience of walking among these hills might be like. Some of these images appear in the final collage studies to come.

Rydal Mount Photo by Lillian Harper.

Methods of Translation

Composing | Methods of Translation

Reflections on Intuition and Intention

“In accepting the existence of different interpretations and seeking to understand them rather than validate them, one approaches the task through empathy with the interpreter rather than through seeking justification of the interpretation.” ⁷ J. William Rudd INTERPRETING POETRY My approach to creating the collages was to mainly let my intuition guide me, but there are some steps I took before starting them and during the process of making them. When starting a collage, I would first read the stanza as a whole and write down some spatial qualities that resonated with the story being told. In many of his poems, William Wordsworth wrote from a firstperson point of view, which automatically grounds the reader within the words he wrote. Wordsworth is very descriptive but often not directly in the sense of imagery or describing specific visuals. His simplicity in the visual and complexity in his illustration of emotion is what drove these collages to develop into representations of both the image and the emotion he detailed. The collages became characters born from the stories Wordsworth has told, embodying the narrative and conveying the emotional conditions he explored. In order to bring these intangible qualities to life in the visual sense, I would use techniques of overlay, masking, and selective removal to compose conditions of light within the void of the page. These compositions prompted ideas about scale, materiality, and apertures beyond. It became a balance between intuition and intention as I allowed the poem to open the door to its visual counterparts, while also pursuing ideas about the spatial implications these collages began to reveal. 7. J. William Rudd, “Architecture and Ideas: A Phenomenology of Interpretation.” Journal of Architectural Education (1984-) 38, no. 2 (1985), 10. 67

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Composing | Sunlight

To My Sister It is the first mild day of March: Each minute sweeter than before The redbreast sings from the tall larch That stands beside our door. There is a blessing in the air, Which seems a sense of joy to yield To the bare trees, and mountains bare, And grass in the green field. My sister! (’tis a wish of mine) Now that our morning meal is done, Make haste, your morning task resign; Come forth and feel the sun. Edward will come with you—and, pray, Put on with speed your woodland dress; And bring no book: for this one day We’ll give to idleness. No joyless forms shall regulate Our living calendar: We from to-day, my Friend, will date The opening of the year. Love, now a universal birth, From heart to heart is stealing, From earth to man, from man to earth: —It is the hour of feeling.

Lines Written in Early Spring William Wordsworth July 13, 1798

Come forth and feel the sun

Composing | Sunlight

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Intervention

Composing | Intervention

Mediating Interior Atmosphere and Exterior Expression

Even though these collages are interior-focused, the context remained highly important. It is essential to carefully site these compositions and allow that to bridge between the interior and exterior expression. Wordsworth spent his life largely walking and wandering through the countryside, jotting down thoughts as he went or when he came to a natural moment of pause. As these interventions are located along a walking path, they act as markers in the landscape, choreographing the journey along the trail and allowing for moments to pause and reflect. This intervention sits at the high point of a pasture that overlooks the Lake below. You would enter from the walking path and move into a dark corridor before the space opens up and reveals the scene portrayed in the atmospheric collage. These light conditions are shaped mostly by overhead light and light from the plane that faces the lake, which features a layered screened condition to slightly obscure the direct view of the landscape and allow overhead light to be the focus of this experience. Each intervention features a facade materiality and construction technique that is native to this region. The traditional barn structures are such a fixture in the landscape of the Lakes District and Wordsworth even reflected on the use of stone itself in his poem Lines Written with a Pencil upon a Stone in the Wall of the House on the Island at Grasmere. They are called dry stone walls and they are typically composed of carefully stacked slate, with some small vertical openings to allow small amounts of light to penetrate into the darkness within. It’s important that these constructs don’t feel foreign or out of place and including endemic building practices can enhance the relationship between place and intervention.

Establishing Threshold A series of collaged layers that frame view and carve a pathway towards the space depicted in the Sunlight collage. 76

Establishing Threshold

Composing | Establishing Threshold

Framing View and Carving Path

While shifting between interior and exterior expressions, thoughts of movement from inside to outside become increasingly important. This threshold, or series of thresholds, is an integral element of the experience of the occupant as they become encompassed by the poetry itself. In this series of collage studies, model photos are juxtaposed onto the atmospheric collage, Sunlight, in order to create a clear sense of depth, distance, and threshold as we gaze into the space beyond. Using these techniques to develop a potential foreground for the base collage highlights the ability of planes to come together and frame the view to the space beyond, establishing depth as each new layer reveals itself. This exercise was also prompted by the fact that in order to create darkness for this sunlight to penetrate, there needs to be a series of layers to block the light from the entry sequence and preserve the purity of the sunlight seen at the final point in the sequence. We must create darkness in daylight.

Depicting the Invisible

Composing | Depicting the Invisible

Translating Through Imagination

“Light, lighting, shadows, reflections, color, all the objects of his quest are not altogether real objects; like ghosts, they have only visual existence. In fact they exist only at the threshold of profane vision; they are not seen by everyone. The painter’s gaze asks them what they do to suddenly cause something to be and to be this thing, what they do to compose this worldly talisman and to make us see the visible.” ⁸ Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eye and Mind In order to infuse intangible or invisible elements of being into paintings, painters must develop methods to translate the invisible into visual representations within the composition. In many ways, this can be equally applicable to architecture. Architecture gives us the opportunity to create atmospheres to exist within. Rather than having to translate elements of tactility or sound, we are able to harness these factors that will always be present in the human experience and manipulate them into a spatial composition. Connotations and relationships between tactility or feelings can be translated through color, light and transparency. The Sunlight collage brings together physical and emotional feelings related to a line from a poem by William Wordsworth entitled Lines Written in Early Spring. Taking cues from the line, “come forth and feel the sun,” the collage depicts a bright space in the distance bathed in warm tones and partially hidden behind semi-transparent surfaces. It sparks intrigue and prompts the occupant of this spatial sequence to move forward, towards the light in hopes of feeling the warmth of sunlight. It is the composition of this visual that allows the viewer to understand this translation from words to image to an imagined space.

8. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind,” in The Primacy of Perception. (Evanston, USA: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 166. 9. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind,” in The Primacy of Perception. (Evanston, USA: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 164.

IMAGERY AND IMAGINATION “It is more accurate to say that I see according to it, or with it, than that I see it.” ⁹ Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eye and Mind It is from this example, that we can begin to question the role of “image” in our perception. The term “image” has the connotation of being a duplicate, a tracing, a representation of something that exists in another state, but why can’t an image itself be the visual? Is an image an entirely new reality? What role does imagination play in creating imagery? When reflecting on the role of the imaginary in our mind, Merleau-Ponty states: “For the imaginary is much nearer to, and much farther away from, the actual.” ¹⁰ The imaginary is nearer to the actual because it exists in our bodies and minds as “a diagram of the life of the actual, with all its pulp and carnal obverse exposed to view for the first time.” ¹¹ The imaginary is so near to actuality for us as humans because it lives within the mind, closely tied to memory in the sense that when we are not existing in a present moment of place, space or mind-set, we retreat to our imaginary version of that place. These imaginary “diagrams,” include impressions of place that remain ingrained within us and remain important in capturing atmosphere in a way that makes sense to us individually. This is also where the imaginary can diverge because we all interact with and imagine reality differently.

10. Ibid, 166. 11. Ibid, 165.

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Composing | Moonlight

The heart that loved her; ‘tis her privilege, Through all the years of this our life, to lead From joy to joy: for she can so inform The mind that is within us, so impress With quietness and beauty, and so feed With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all The dreary intercourse of daily life, Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon Shine on thee in thy solitary walk; And let the misty mountain-winds be free To blow against thee: And, in after years, When these wild ecstasies shall be matured Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, Thy memory be as a dwelling-place For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then, If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief, Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts Of tender joy wilt thou remember me, And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance— If I should be where I no more can hear Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams

Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey William Wordsworth July 13, 1798

Therefore let the moon Shine on thee in thy solitary walk; And let the misty mountain-winds be free To blow against thee

Therefore let the moon Shine on thee in thy solitary walk; And let the misty mountain-winds be free To blow against thee:

Composing | Moonlight

Therefore let the moon Shine on thee in thy solitary walk; And let the misty mountain-winds be free To blow against thee

Therefore let the moon Shine on thee in thy solitary walk; And let the misty mountain-winds be free To blow against thee:

Composing | Moonlight

NARRATIVE What does it mean to “let the moon?” This is a phrase we discussed in my meetings a few times about how these stanzas can say so much in just a few words. To me, the action of ”letting the moon” directed me to create a space that captures the phenomenon of moonlight, letting the moon act as it does but gathering some of its light and bringing it into an interior experience. This collage can be interpreted two different ways: In one view, it appears that the changing element in this sequence is the position and angle of the moon and how the space receives it differently. In another view, the moonlight collage feels like you are within the intervention and ascending up into this moonlit space. The way the moonlight changes from shining directly through the aperture to being slightly above and shining at more of a downward angle felt to me like the viewer is ascending as they enter this space, meaning their plane of view is shifting as they emerge into this room and experience the moonlight in different ways.

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Composing | Firelight

The day is come when I again repose Here, under this dark sycamore, and view These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, Which at this season, with their unripe fruits, Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves ‘Mid groves and copses. Once again I see These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms, Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke Sent up, in silence, from among the trees! With some uncertain notice, as might seem, Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, Or of some hermit’s cave, where by his fire The hermit sits alone These beauteous forms, Through a long absence, have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye: But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind With tranquil restoration:—feelings too Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps, As have no slight or trivial influence On that best portion of a good man’s life,

Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey William Wordsworth July 13, 1798

With some uncertain notice, as might seem, Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, Or of some hermit’s cave, where by his fire The hermit sits alone

Composing | Firelight

With some uncertain notice, as might seem, Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, Or of some hermit’s cave, where by his fire The hermit sits alone

Composing | Firelight

NARRATIVE

APPROACH

The stanza feels quite solitary as it discusses a hermit in the woods and it feels very much like an outsider’s or an omniscient point of view. This could also be the cause of the more exterior quality of the collage compared to the others.

This intervention really centers around the approach, since this is the only collage that didn’t feel particularly interior to me when I made it. For me, this intervention is really about intrigue. It’s about wandering alone through nature and coming across this construct that is set back into the treeline across a field. Perhaps you see the glow emanating out before you see the source of the glow or any hint of the actual architecture of the intervention. It remains ambiguous.

As we move through this sequence of images, a narrative begins to unfold. It tells a story of wandering and discovery, letting the firelight guide your way through and into the darkness of the houseless woods. In contrast to the previous Moonlight collage, the selected words do not explain the passage of time and movement of light, but rather they weave a sequential story through the collages. Beginning with uncertain in the houseless woods… of vagrant fire, the image of the woods is masked over, obscuring view but maintaining a vague impression of the context. The wash of color changes the atmosphere completely, illuminating the woods with a warm glow. In some hermits cave, Now, we begin to understand where the source of the glow may be coming from, the woods receding into the back of our mind and view. Carved openings reveal themselves as something foreign to the nature we find ourselves in. The fire remains hidden. notice, dwellers in the fire. An opening is revealed. We see a potential entry point and our intrigue and understanding of the space are growing. By his fire, the hermit sits alone The illumination dims, our view narrows, understanding the individual scale of this space.

sunlight

moonlight

firelight

Illustrating Sequences

Composing | Illustrating Sequences

Vision and Movement

I recently discovered an excerpt from notes I had taken fairly early in the process of this research while reading On Moving Architecture by Jenefer Robinson: Specific elements of an experience can remain ingrained in our memory of a space. What is the difference between an abrupt light change and a gradual light change? This begins to introduce more temporal aspects of space. It could be temporal in multiple ways: change over time or change while in motion. The whole is the sum of the moments experienced November 13th, 2020 These ideas about spatial sequences and their transformation due to time or movement ended up carrying through to the final two collages: Moonlight and Firelight. The Moonlight and Firelight collages each feature full stanzas from a poem. By isolating a few words from the chosen stanzas for each consecutive image, they begin to tell a story of evolution through the sequence. This technique really brought a new life to the poems and the spaces I was creating. It introduced both intention and intuition into the words themselves rather than just the imagery, allowing the words to guide us through these moments.

The Firelight collage uses the sequence of images to tell a more linear story of the experience. It depicts a journey of discovery, first seeing a faint glow within the dense tree canopy, then moving closer. Layers of ambiguity dissolve as we advance towards this construct, edges revealing themselves, an opening emerging among the trees. This sequence revolves around the relationship between the construct, vision, and the movement of the body. You cannot experience a piece of architecture in one moment or viewpoint. It is the overall impression, the sum of all moments and emotions, that impacts an occupant at the end of the day. This breaks down the object-like quality a building can take on, into its true qualities of inhabitation. “The appreciation of architecture, like that of any other art form, depends on a first-hand experience of it that one then tries to recreate in imagination.” ¹² Jenefer Robinson, On Being Moved by Architecture

Each sequence tells a different type of story. The Moonlight collage depicts light changing over time, leaving the manner in which it is changing up for interpretation. Is the viewer moving through the space? Is their spatial relationship with the moon, the apertures in the space, and their bodies shifting as they move? Or is this series from a still viewpoint? The light illuminates the space differently over the course of the night, the moon shifting in angle as it reveals and obscures the edges of this space we are encompassed by. 12. Jenefer Robinson, “On Being Moved by Architecture.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 70 (no. 4, 2012), 343.

Memory Sketch of Peter Zumthor’s Therme Vals This sketch is part of a short exploration on memory and architecture in which I drew impressions of the spatial sequence of Therme Vals from memory, showing perveived depth, space and proportion of the spaces. 98

Reflections

“It is the regret of not being everything, and a rather groundless regret at that.” ¹ Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eye and Mind While a painter years to capture the world, an artist can only capture the world in which they find themselves, and if they can do that, it’s more than enough. As architects, we yearn to penetrate the mind, body and soul through moments spent in the spaces we create. The hope is to impart upon the occupants impressions of moments as they move through these spaces, their minds writing and re-writing the story constantly over time, shifting in its connection to reality and later prioritizing personal experience and imagination as they come together to form memories of place. These memories can be just as moving as the moments which they are based on, perhaps becoming even more saturated with meaning as the original memory deteriorates and imagination is supplemented in. In the process of crafting atmospheres that speak to their inhabitants, it is integral to consider the action of composing, as it implies a certain thoughtfulness and intentionality in the way experiences are created. Although light and spaces are often unpredictable and ever-changing, we must not see this as a burden, but rather as a gift. The ephemerality of occupation gives us the gift of variance, of magical moments that happen only once in a while. We can design to create these moments but they can also come as unexpected wonders, a product of happenstance, or maybe of a design that leaves room for the magic. Architecture must not over-choreograph.

pictures, both visual and emotional, of his life and his surroundings that it makes it nearly impossible not to be drawn in. By utilizing the tools and techniques developed throughout this process, I have composed a different way of experiencing the poetry of William Wordsworth, that allows you to inhabit his lines, transporting you into his world. Although it has been such an integral element in the development of my ideas, this research is not just about the specifics of Wordsworth and Grasmere and these particular poems, but I believe it can have broader theoretical implications. Moving forward with this research, I am eager to test some of the techniques I have developed using different subject matter. Perhaps exploring other emotive inspirations such as art or music will lead to the development of more techniques and different methods of translation. Fundamentally, it is my hope as I continue my journey as a designer to maintain this connection to humanity and empathy in architecture. To never stop yearning to make spaces that move people, that leave impressions and memories that will be revisited for years to come. That is what defines an architecture that speaks.

Diving into the world of William Wordsworth has truly transported me into a world that is both romanticized and incredibly real. His words paint such vivid 1. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind,” in The Primacy of Perception. (Evanston, USA: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 190. 99

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chapter | title

“Atmosphere is my style.”

JMW Turner to John Ruskin in 1884

Peter Zumthor, Atmospheres: architectural environments, surrounding objects (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2006), 5. Image: Ghost. Venice, Italy. Photo Taken by Author. January 2019.

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Image Citations

Figure 1 Cézanne, Paul, L’Allée au Jas de Bouffan, Oil paint on canvas, 1874–5, (The Tate Gallery, London), https://www.tate.org.uk/art/ artworks/cezanne-the-avenue-at-the-jas-de-bouffan-t01074 Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported), Photo © Tate Figure 2 Seurat, Georges, Madame Seurat, the Artist’s Mother (Madame Seurat, mère), Conté crayon on Michallet paper, 1882–3, (The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles), http://www.getty.edu/art/ collection/objects/182800/georges-seurat-madame-seuratthe-artist’s-mother-madame-seurat-mere-french-about-18821883/?dz=0.4576,0.4576,0.46 Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program. Figure 3 Turner, Joseph Mallord William, The Thames above Waterloo Bridge, Oil paint on canvas, 1830–5, (The Tate Gallery, London), https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-the-thames-abovewaterloo-bridge-n01992 Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported), Photo © Tate

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

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References

Bachelard, Gaston, and Edith R. Farrell. Water and Dreams an Essay on the Imagination of Matter. Dallas, TX: Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, 2006. Campbell, Mark. “Geoffrey Scott and the Dream-Life of Architecture.” Grey Room, no. 15, 2004. Corbusier, Le. Creation Is a Patient Search. New York: Praeger, 1966. Holl, Steven, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Alberto Pérez-Gómez. Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture. San Francisco, CA: William Stout, 2006. Koss, Juliet. “On the Limits of Empathy.” The Art Bulletin 88, no. 1, 2006. Lerup, Lars. Building the Unfinished: Architecture and Human Action. Beverly Hills/London: Sage Publications, 1977.

Turrell, James, Michael Govan, Christine Y. Kim, Alison de Lima. Greene, E. C. Krupp, and Florian Holzherr. James Turrell: a Retrospective. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2013. Von Foerster, Heinz. “The Need of Perception for the Perception of Needs.” Leonardo 22, no. 2, 1989. Wordsworth, William, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Fiona J. Stafford. Lyrical Ballads: 1798 and 1802. Oxford University Press, 2013. Wordsworth, William, and Richard E. Matlak. Poems, in Two Volumes 1807. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2016. Zumthor, Peter. Atmospheres: architectural environments, surrounding objects . Basel: Birkhäuser, 2006. Zumthor, Peter. Thinking Architecture. Basel: Birkhäuser, 1999.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. “Eye and Mind,” in The Primacy of Perception, 159-190. Evanston, USA: Northwestern University Press, 1964.

“J.M.W. TURNER: Reflections on the Painter of Light.” Ashmolean Museum. Accessed April 21, 2021. https://www.ashmolean.org/ article/reflections-on-the-painter-of-light.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The World of Perception, London: Routledge, 2004.

“William Wordsworth.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation. Accessed April 26, 2021. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/ william-wordsworth.

Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. Chichester: Wiley, 2014. Pallasmaa, Juhani. The thinking hand: existential and embodied wisdom in architecture. Chichester, U.K.: Wiley, 2010. Pérez-Gómez, Alberto. “Mind, Mood, and Architectural Meaning,” in Timely Meditations: Selected Essays on Architecture. Vol. 2. Montreal, Canada: Rightangle International, 2016. Robinson, Jenefer. “On Being Moved by Architecture.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 70, no. 4, 2012. Rudd, J. William. "Architecture and Ideas: A Phenomenology of Interpretation." Journal of Architectural Education (1984-) 38, no. 2, 1985. Turrell, James. James Turrell: Light & Space: Whitney Museum of American Art, 22.10.1980-1.1.1981. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1980.

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Molly Bennett earned her Master of Architecture degree from the University of Florida Graduate School of Architecture, and graduated in spring 2021. She served as the Executive Editor of the fifth edition of VORKURS, the school’s student-run graduate publication. After graduating with her Bachelor of Design from the UF SoA in 2019, Molly attended the Vicenza Institute of Architecture in the spring of 2019, which heavily influenced her research interests as she entered graduate school. Her fascination with light and the occupational experience of architecture is present in every avenue she pursues, and she hopes to further explore the possibilities of composing atmospheres as she enters the profession.

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Molly Bennett | Masters Research Project | University of Florida Graduate School of Architecture

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Composing Atmospheres | Investigating Architectural Impressions Through Poetry