Water as Architecture, Architecture as Water: The Court of the Lions
ARC 511: Architecture History May 2, 2016
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Water as Architecture, Architecture as Water: The Court of the Lions
A tasteless, scentless, and odorless chemical compound of nature and the primary symbol of life on earth: water. We are all familiar with how water affects living things on Earth but few have yet to familiarize this fluid substance as a solid architecture itself. Focusing my research on the Court of the Lions in the Alhambra palace, water has been the primary feature and a metaphoric centerpiece of the entire court. Washington Irving, renowned author of the nineteenth century, poetically describes his experience of the palace with an obvious emphasis on water and how it creates an enchanted atmosphere in semi-specific spaces with respect to almost all of the senses in his novel, Tales of the Alhambra: An abundant supply of water, brought from the mountains by old Moorish aqueducts, circulates throughout the palace, supplying its baths and fish pools, sparkling in jets within its halls, or murmuring in channels along the marble pavements. When it has paid its tribute to the royal pile, and visited its gardens and parterres, it flows down the long avenue leading to the city, tinkling in rills, gushing in fountains, and maintaining a perpetual verdure in those groves that embower and beautify the whole hill of the Alhambra. 1 Irving’s experience led me to reevaluate the connotation of what the Court of the Lions is trying to express, extrapolating the court’s language of water as an architecture and its architecture as water through poetics and the architecture of the court itself.
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Washington Irving, “Tales of the Alhambra” (New York and New Orleans: University Publishing Company, 1896) 18.
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Formulating a connection from low land to high land, water is transported from the valley of the Darro River through a conductive series of aqueducts to a fortified site tucked into a ridge at the top of the Sabikah Hill, overlooking the province of Granada, Spain (figure 1). The seemingly fortress like site serves as a resting place to one of the greatest wonders of the world, the Alhambra. Formally built of Islamic faith in the medieval ages, the Alhambra and its aqueducts was first
Figure 1: http://fineartamerica.com/featured/aerial-photo-alhambra-and-albaycin-in-granadaguido-montanes-castillo.html
commissioned by Mohammed the First, succeeded and completed by Yusuf the First, and followed by his son Mohammed V after Yusuf’s assassination in 1384. The feat of acquiring water from the valley to the top of the hill through aqueducts was an achievement in and of itself, allowing the Alhambra to thrive over the centuries of wear, tear, and rehabilitation. With the Alhambra’s many water features and water uses, one could go as far to say that water built the Alhambra; as if water was an architecture of itself. If not for the water, the Alhambra would not have been successful with its centuries of use. The court of the Lions, located in the southeast corner of the Alhambra is an enclosed oblong courtyard that has become the heart and soul of the Alhambra. This courtyard has been presumed to have been a lush garden to just a few trees. Although there has been no clear and valid evidence of what was living in the garden, we can only infer to what is given in its
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inscriptions, and architecture. The court is surrounded by a forest of 128 slender trunk-like columns, capped with intricately detailed capitals whose entablature wraps around the surrounding
Figure 2: https://www.studyblue.com/#flashcard/view/9512578
perimeter (figure 2). The Court of the Lions features engraved Arabic calligraphy of poetry and references to the Koran along with perplexing geometries (figure 2). The entablature pronounces its embodiment of a forest canopy. Its fractal like geometries is an explicit representation of leaves connecting the forest canopy together as it frames, feeds, and grows off of the centerpiece of the court, the Fountain of the Lions. The Court of the Lions consumes and replenishes as water circulates throughout the yard. Serving as a centerpiece of the court, twelve lions courageously stand their ground on all fours on top of a dodecagonal platform. Fierce and strong, the twelve lions embrace a large alabaster basin, almost overflowing with gallons of fresh water from the valley, hovering over each of their backs (figure 3). Through the elaborate and technical system of the fountain, the lions relinquish the simple yet highly complex fragment of life on the Sabikah Hill through their mouths. From the basin and through the mouths of the lions, water is continuously spouted out the lion’s mouth onto a lowered marble-like dodecagonal grove allowing water to pass and
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channel along the lion’s platform as it encompasses the base (figure 3). The water is then narrowly guided from the dodecagonal cavity by conductive channels into 4
Figure 3: http://homepages.stmartin.edu/Fac_Staff/rlangill/Islamic%20Spain.htm
separate pavilions of the Alhambra and beyond to smaller fountain features, thus dividing the court into four quadrants (figure 4, highlighted). The divisions serve as a directional compass as if it were guiding one into adjacent rooms to the Court of the Lions: the Hall of the Two Sisters, the Hall of the Kings, the hall of the Abencerrajes, and Sala de Los Mocarabes.
Figure 4: https://www.studyblue.com/#flashcard/view/2214204
Water can take on three forms: solid, liquid, and gas and for the most part water is colorless, odorless, and tasteless. With these ideologies about water, many poetics can be formulated around them, creating new perspectives and ways of thinking about how water can be formed and romanticized. There is a strong sense of poetics inscribed throughout the Court
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of the Lions and throughout the Alhambra itself, figuratively and literally, form the inscriptions to the architecture. The poetics give an identity of the court and establishes significance to water in correlation with divinity and love. Water is drawn by many parallels in the poetic inscriptions in order to transcribe the material based on its pure, simplistic, jewel-like, and lifegiving characteristics. Most of these physical characteristics points in a solid direction in regards to the inscriptions; as we know water is not solid, unless frozen or vaporized. Ibn Zamrak beautifully evokes the illusion of the water as a sold substance using figurative speech of metaphors and hyperboles inscribed on the fountain’s basin (figure 3): Blessed be He who gave to the Imam Muhammad [i.e. Muhammad V] abodes which grace by their perfection all abodes; Or does not this bower contain wonders like unto which God did not allow Beauty to find an equal. A sculpted monument, its veil of spender consists of a pearl which adorns Beauty to find an equal. A sculpted monument, its veil of spender consists of a pearl which adorns the environ with the diffusion of gems; Silver melting which flows between jewels one like the other in beauty, white in purity. A running stream evokes the illusion of being a solid substance and one wonders which one is in truth fluid. Don’t you see that it is the water which is running over the rim of the fountain, whereas it is the monument which offers long channels for the water. Like one in love whose lids overflow with tears and who curbs the tears in fear of slander. What else is it in truth but a mist which sheds forth from the fountain drenching towards the lions? It [the fountain] resembles in this the hand of the caliph [leader] when it happens that it sheds forth supports towards the lions of the Holy War. O thou who beholds the lions whilst they are crouching, timidity preventing them from becoming hostile; O thou heir of the Helpers {of Muhammad, the Prophet] and thus not through distant kin, a heritage of glory enabling you to raise even the well-rooted [mountains].
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God’s blessing upon thee and mayest thou be blessed eternally to reiterate celebrations and to wear down thine enemies. 2 Zamrak speaks of water as a sculpted monument of jewels, gems, pearl, silver, tears in a lover’s eye, and in some translations, crystal. This impression gives a likeness to the materiality of water. Water changes at different given moments, dependent upon variables of environmental factors such as topography, light, additives, the wind, and water currents. A calm flowing state of water is quite different form a rapid course. In the Court of the Lions, you would see a more calming serene scape of flowing water as it dances in the sunlight, gleaming with a jewel like resemblance, as expressed in the poetic inscriptions. This calming state alludes to many different characteristics of the court; the idea of Islamic paradise, the unified pattern in the entablature, and the actual water features of the court; the fountain and the divided streams flowing to the court from smaller fountains. Frederick Bargebuhr, a scholar of religion, philosophy, and author of ‘The Alhambra’ discovered poetry from Ibn Gabirol, a Jewish poet of the eleventh century whose writings describe a palace analogous to the Court of the Lions and its features. 3 Gabirol writes as if there were a sea of water resting on lions and the lions spurted water out of their mouths. He also mentions channels of water that provided livelihood to a garden in a courtyard. Although scholars are not sure whether Ibn Gabriel’s poetry is of fact, fiction, or even related to the Alhambra and the court, it is reasonable to contemplate that the physical role of water that Gabirol describes in the poem was a part of a metaphysical role in which we cannot see but can be understood. This abstract question of existence of water in different forms poses a forefront
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Oleg Grabar, “The Alhambra” (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts 1978) 124-127. Frederick P. Bargebuhr, “The Alhambra” (Berlin, de Gruyter 1968) 114-120.
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to my argument. The Court of the Lions, presumed once to be a garden, played a highly important role as the garden reproduces the life that water gives into many forms. The weather in Granada, Spain is relatively a Mediterranean climate; although conditions may vary depending on the geographical location of low land and high land. Diving deeper into the semantics of the built environment of the Court of the Lions, the multitude of dense and sparse columns with a corresponding entablature that skins the entire middle deck and eaves is explicit in its representation as it is imitating a forest. In Islamic religion, man or woman cannot produce imagery of living beings because it essentially replicating the work of God; therefore, they play with geometry and mathematic principles, invented by man, is a substitution of imagery as it is an intricate language that can only be exposed in the microbial depths of nature itself; fractal geometry. Fractal geometry is a major key to the theory of water as architecture in the Court of the Lions as it is a natural phenomenon, depicted in the courts outer shell. Forest thrive on water and as one contemplates within this space, the tiny engraved stone representation of a forest canopy grows as it consumes and fills the mind with wonder and enchantment. The columnar trunks, arranged from spare to coupled, makes the court feel larger than it actually is. The columns, along with the entablatures underlying growth serves as a figurative expression of water through a seemingly weightless stone architecture. The weightlessness and fluid representation can be seen through an organized and fixed system of miniscule light penetrations. Although the columned forest is made out of stone, the solid icicled constructs can be seen as a fluid substance. Rain drops off the forests leaves and sinks into the depths of the surface to replenish growth in the garden to endure forever as
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divinity and paradise endures forever. Water in the fountain is solid as the forest columns is fluid. The cycle continues. Analyzing the materials and architecture forming the parameter, Bargebuhr supports the reasoning that the architectural stone entablature is an artifice of its true intention in creating a representation of water in motion as if it were a fluid substance, by asking the question, “Was the strong desire for formation, ornamentation, and dynamic fluctuation, pared with a propensity towards dissolving solid matter into frail filigree, towards mirroring and distorting of solids by light and water undulation, a tendency to produce the illusion of magic?” 4 This contemplative illusion of magic that Bargebuhr questions in the Court of the Lions exemplifies water as architecture and architecture as water as he goes onto answer his own question, “…water which did not allow us to discern which of these phenomena were solid and what was fluid. Thus we understand that the famous stalactite surfaces of the Alhambra domes produce an illusion: the vaults resemble dripping waters made solid by an everlasting spell.” 5 With this, it is not merely the solidity of the artifacts found in the court, such
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Figure 5: https://www.flickr.com/photos/europanostra/8533663249/in/album72157632933688070/
Frederick P. Bargebuhr, “The Alhambra” (Berlin, de Gruyter 1968) 112. Frederick P. Bargebuhr, “The Alhambra” (Berlin, de Gruyter 1968) 113.
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as the lions, the basin, and the forest of columns but rather the implementations of the water and its likeness, along with the inscriptions that support and impart the architecture of the court; water as a solid, solid as water. In respect of the court as a whole, the architecture is made up of an intricate carved stone skin with a polished stone material at and around the fountain, as well as channels of water in a polished stone, spreading outward below the crystalline basin. Within the past decade the Court of the Lions received a restoration of the lions, basin, and pavement of the courtyard. Paved in white marble rather than crushed gravel, the restoration may be seen as an act of cleansing and of purification; a part of the cultural ritual that endows the court as a whole into a rebirth of Islamic paradise. Although the white marble pavement was not a part of the original plan, it exemplifies the original idea, as the polished nature of the white marble conveys the indication of purity and cleanliness that is very important in the Muslim religion. The polished marble also evokes the characteristics of water (figure 5). Stepping on the marble pavers is like walking on water, this interaction of the visitors, architecture, and water is what sparks the mind as people associate what they know with what they see. The architecture immediately comes to life when people notice that the polished marble looks and even feels like water itself; the blueish-gray perfect imperfections evoking motion of the shiny, reflective, cold to the touch calming surface. From beginning to end, fluid to solid, the Alhambra carries with it a language of its own. The language of water, in its variety of forms and poetics, has served as the foundation of the palace and its courts. The Court of the Lions in particular explores and induces the meaning and existence of what is actual, what was possible for man, and what is yet to come, a heavenly
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paradise. The poetic inscriptions along with the design and planning of the court are the only genuine information of our time. Through a thoughtful breakdown and investigation of the Court of the Lions’ physical evidence, it is clear that there is a profound correlation to water existing throughout the space that invites and extends to other spaces. Drawing one closer to the life giving substance, the idea of water is abstracted through many associations as it takes on many conditions based on the environment. The notion of water as architecture and architecture as water particularizes the different forms that water can transcend into: solid, liquid, and to every extent gas. What can be objectified that has been abstracted as a substance or as an architecture is not limited to the fluidity or solidity of its discourse. Frozen, yet liquefied in time and space, the Court of the Lions.
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Bibliography Bargebuhr, Frederick P. The Alhambra. Berlin, de Gruyter 1968. 112-120. Europa Nostra. "The Fountain of the Lions, Granada, SPAIN." Flickr. July 24, 2012. Accessed May 02, 2016. https://www.flickr.com/photos/europanostra/8533663249/in/album72157632933688070/. Figure 5. Fine Art America. "Aerial Photo Alhambra And Albaycin In Granada by Guido Montanes Castillo." Aerial Photo Alhambra And Albaycin In Granada. May 09, 2013. Accessed May 02, 2016. http://fineartamerica.com/featured/aerial-photo-alhambra-and-albaycin-ingranada-guido-montanes-castillo.html. Figure 1. Grabar, Oleg. The Alhambra. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1978. 124127. Irving, Washington. Tales of the Alhambra. New York and New Orleans: University Publishing Company, 1896. 18. Owens, Abigail. "Unit Four Review." STUDYBLUE. Accessed May 02, 2016. https://www.studyblue.com/#flashcard/view/2214204. Figure 4.
Seger, Caty. "Ch. 8 - Islamic Art." STUDYBLUE. Accessed May 02, 2016. https://www.studyblue.com/#flashcard/view/9512578. Figure 2. St. Martin Edu. "Islamic Spain." Islamic Spain. Accessed May 02, 2016. http://homepages.stmartin.edu/Fac_Staff/rlangill/Islamic Spain.htm. Figure 3.