CHAPTER 3: ACHIEVING AN AWARENESS

ality of the Portland Building: the city hall of Portland (figure 26). As a result of overemphasising visual appearance, the emphasis is only on how it appears on the outside. Windows bring almost no natural lighting. In the interior, there are offices on the middle that have almost no access to circular ventilation. Which was not supporting and discarding of human activities.

As a conclusion, although the postmodernists’ attempt to provide connection of people with a building was evident, the preoccupation and focus was mostly from the exterior. This may not be nearly enough. Buildings and/or urban fabrics need to be more holistically communicative and meaningful to humans. By attempting to provide a wholistic value to buildings, we should not forget or discard primal values such as functional, thermal, ergonomic, and economic characteristics. Such buildings become detrimental to life and lose their value once they fail to provide us with basic needs and requirements. They must be meaningful in more valid and integral ways not just by the over emphasising of visual aspects but a host of other aspects.

ACHIEVING AN AWARENESS

The powerfulness of historical continuity

It is worth noting that humans, overtime have shown a necessity of historical continuity in perceiving a building. There is a mental need for people to always connect with the history and archaeology of the past. This does not necessarily comply with the abrupt disruption that modernist or even postmodernist architects promoted in their works.

We need to extend our understanding on a further scope of time, to comprehend that humans are biological beings, with senses and neural systems that have developed over the years (Harari). Humans are a product of thousands if not millions of years of evolution, when we look at our bodies, our minds, our organs and thought patterns, we should be able to resonate with our ancestors. Some even argue that pain and trauma are carried through DNA (Davis). That is why humans have the need of a historical understanding.

Therefore, we should be able to find that through architecture. Architecture should be able to reflect and seamlessly deliver and provide us with clues to who we are and who we were in the past as humans. This expanded understanding can help architects design buildings that support both mind and body. Exploring how the built environment affects our behaviour, thoughts, emotions, and well-being. It is evident that our deepest experiences of settings and architecture reflect the course of human biocultural develop-

ment, these circumstances are concealed in our neural and psychic constitution and reactions. Archaeology helps us understand the hierarchy of events that led to the current situation regardless its nature. Regarding that, Michael Foucault describes:

“looking at history as a way of understanding the processes that have led to what we are today. Examining the discursive traces and orders left by the past in order to write ‘a history of the present’” - Michael Foucault

No doubt, our aesthetic preferences reflect our biological paths, and our aesthetically based choices have had evolutionary values. The ancient and historical masterworks teach us the meaning of the cultural continuum. They also make us understand that the mental, spiritual, and artistic aspirations in architecture have not fundamentally changed; architecture still articulates and expresses the human condition, aspires to find meaning in existence, to mediate between ourselves and the world, and to elevate and dignify our lives.

The smaller scale: Interior. Scandinavian approach

Just like critical regionalism was modified over time to include the avant-garde and innovative pushing the boundaries of historical examples while maintaining some connections to radical modernism qualities, Scandinavian architects as well took the vernacular and reworked it. Where it maintained the vernacular style and language, while also developing a translation of it within a modern radical context. In Säynätsalo Town Hall in Finland, (Figure 27), one can notice the use of vernacular forms. These forms were not depicted in the exact repeated way they would be in past existing precedents, but rather by translating it in a newly understood way that corresponds with newer understandings and adaptations of architecture that relates to the body and the senses.

Figure 28: modern Scandinavian Inte- Figure 28 & 29: Säynätsalo Town Hall – Finland 1951

Scandinavian architecture is a more wholistic contemporary example because this architectural style responds to more than just aesthetics. Its main principles are light, comfort, energy efficiency, sleek shapes, and connection with nature. Modern Scandinavian architecture is widely recognized for its clean lines and natural colour palette. This architectural approach tends to behold the main principle of existential architecture. It seems to exhibit signs of responding to existential human needs. The calm and subtle forms of the interiority and its deliberate style, provide and achieve qualities that allow one to feel protected and stimulated enough to settle in a space. In figure 28, the dark womb of the council Chamber of alvar Aalto's Saynatsalo Town Hall achieves qualities of deep shadows and darkness. These spatial features not only make distance ambiguous, but also dim the sharpness of vision (Frampton 29). The darkness in general elevates and emphasises the spoken word as it dims the vision, and therefore creates an enriched sense of community.

On an interior level, Gaston Bachelard considers the first home as the point and origin to all subsequent ones. "the home we were born in is physically inscribed in us", he explains. Our home and domicile are integrated with our self-identity, they become part of our own body and being. Architecture is important in shaping our identity and providing existential needs. Perhaps the nature of the multisensory-focused Scandinavian Interior has achieved basic qualities of what allows the boundary between ourselves and the world to soften and become transparent.

However, for architecture to settle our respond to our existential needs, it needs to coordinate and form experiences, beliefs, and imaginations of the world. But how can that be achieved through deliberate designing? If we assume that what Pallasmaa suggests is correct, that in order for architecture to settle our minds and memories, it needs to project distinctive frames and images, and provide horizons of understanding and meaning (Pallasmaa, 215), then how can individual-specific characteristics and qualities be achieved to create a wholesome “mind-settling” experience? and will there ever be a wholistic fulfilled and flawless architecture?