Achieving the Metaphysics of Architecture

7/31/2019 Achieving the Metaphysics of Architecture

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Achieving the Metaphysics of Architecture:

The Architecture of Peter Zumthor Luis Diego Quiros, David Burns, Ethan Repp

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Introduction

I felt something in that building that was not usual in myeveryday experience of places, it was different and fulfillingsays David about his experience of a building designed bySwedish architect Peter Zumthor. 1

The first thing you have to believe to understand this essay is that architecture

is part physical and part metaphysical. Architecture is made of physical materials, but it also produces experiences

that go beyond the tangible world. This is what a group of students from Kansas State University called The

Metaphysics of Architecture during a course entitled with the same nameduring the Spring Semester 2001.

For their final paper they were asked to choose an architect whose projectsthey thought achieved this intangible component of architecture.

The objective of this essay is to show how Peter Zumthor consciously accomplishesthis through his architecture. It will be demonstrated how he produces, in the users of

his buildings, a basic, but strong, sensory experience through the use of nature,materials and light. And it is through this sensory experience that the metaphysics of architecture are reached in his designs.

The Metaphysics of Architecture

I felt different, weird... it is not a common building refers David, an architecturestudent, from the Swiss Pavilion designed by Peter Zumthor for the Expo 2000 inHanover.

What David felt was something caused by being inside a building. His experience of space made his mind and body to feel different from how he usually feels.

The term metaphysics means beyond the physical nature. Many parts of the humanexistence can be considered to be metaphysical: thoughts, feelings, memories,dreams, ideas or any other thing that goes beyond the physical word we live in.Humans have dealt with these intangible elements of life since the beginnings of consciousness.

Many philosophers, including Martin Heidegger, were concerned with themetaphysical because it is a fundamental part of human beings and their reality. Andit is this reality, or physical world, that interests architects. After all, it is what theywork with. The physical world, and architecture as a part of it, provokes metaphysicalreactions in the individual -such as feelings, memories and thinking. Thus, building

becomes a very important matter in our existence and for our experience of theworld.
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Heidegger wrote that to be a human being means to be on theEarth as a mortal. It means to dwell. Then he adds to theexplanation of the word bauen (building): But if we listen to whatlanguage says in the word bauen we hear three things: 1.Building is really dwelling, 2. Dwelling is the manner in which

mortals are on the Earth, and 3. Building as dwelling unfoldsinto the building that cultivates growing things and the buildingthat erects buildings .2

Thus, building is critical for human existence. Since the destiny of humanity is todwell on the Earth, and since the way we interact with the planet is by constructing,any structure we erect is an expression of dwelling.

Related to building as an expression, is the understanding of the built object. Then,how we express the way we dwell through a constructed entity -or built environmentin this particular case- becomes part of the job of the designer. What the architect isable to achieve in his projects is what others will perceive.

The architecture of Peter Zumthor is the object of this study. His thoughts and ideasare expressed in his buildings. They produce a metaphysical experience. Bydesigning spaces that enhance the natural and the real world, Zumthor makes theusers participate in a relation with the environment. He produces an effect in theperson; he makes them wonder about the most basic components of life. He refers toarchitecture:

Architecture has its own realm. It has a special physicalrelationship with life. I do not think of it primarily as either amessage or a symbol, but as an envelope and background for life, which goes on, in and around it, a sensitive container for the rhythm of footsteps on the floor, for the concentration of work, for the silence of sleep. 3

There is poetry behind these words. They are not just words that describe features of a particular edifice, but that describe a sensitivity for what lies beneath the real world.When architecture becomes just an envelope and lets all the other components of human existence become more important, the metaphysical appears. Architecture isno longer a building; it is now the container of poetry, thoughts and dreams. Peter Zumthor achieves this in his designs, and what follows is how he does it.

David describes his experience as he walked in one of the buildings designed byZumthor:

It was like entering a very different place. As soon as you step in, you can smell thewood, hear the music, see the different tonalities of light... it was amazing.

It is through the interaction between the human body-mind and the physical elementsof a building that metaphysical experience is produced. Thus, what the designer doesis to manipulate any effect that an intended object has on humans. In the case of thebuilt environment it has been the architect who has change that effect.

The intention of the creator becomes very important since it is his idea that will guidethe design of the future space to be experienced by others. In this sense, and inorder to achieve reactions that go beyond the physical, Zumthor proposes:

I thus appeal for a kind of architecture of common sense basedon fundamentals that we still know, understand and feel. I
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person the feeling of belonging to the world, of being alive. It makes people face thefacts of history and existence.

This idea of archetype is present in Zumthor's beliefs:

Nevertheless, I am convinced that real things do exist, however

endangered they may be. There are earth and water, the lightof the sun, landscapes and vegetation; and there are objectsmade by man, such as machines, tools or musical instruments,which are what they are, which are not mere vehicles for anartistic message, whose presence is self-evident... They reachbeyond signs and symbols, they are open, empty. It is as if wecould see something on which we cannot focus our consciousness. Here, in this perceptual vacuum, a memory maysurface, a memory which seems to issue from the depths of time. Now, our observation of the object embraces apresentiment of the world in all its wholeness, because there is

nothing that cannot be understood. 7 Archetypes that can produce a reaction on any person --such as David- are theelements that Zumthor considers and tries to find with his architecture. Enhancingelements that could be considered archetypes, such as components of nature likemountains and water, is what this architect does through his buildings. The outcomeis a very powerful experience of reality and the successive reaction in the person'sbody and mind.

Nature as a Source for Archetypes:

The smell of the wood, which is a constant in the pavilion, takes you back to the

forest. The wood in the building transcends its physicality... you could touch, but Ithink it had a deeper meaning.

David refers to the natural smell of wood and materials in the project.

Nature can be understood as many things: the Universe, the Earth and everythingthat it includes. One would think that nature is part of our lives and that it isunavoidable to interact with it in a daily basis. But there is one thing that is separatedfrom this given nature: and that is what humans have produced through their history,including architecture. These products of humanity have reached such adevelopment and have been produced so massively, that humans are no longer inrelation to the natural given world. Cities and big metropolis are the places thatembody human lives today. Routine life is one of the products of this separation of daily human life and the natural world.

As Mircea Eliade states in his book The Sacred and TheProfane, modern man, or non-religious man, as he calls it, is nolonger impressed by the heavens (natural world) and rationalthought has stripped them of their sacredness. Unfortunately, inhis quest to rationalize the world, modern man has closed hismind to the possibility of transcending this profane existence. 8

Peter Zumthor talks about the actual human state in the world and suggests that:

We get used to living with contradictions and there are severalreasons for this: traditions crumble, and with them cultural
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identities. No one seems really to understand and control thedynamics developed by economics and politics. Everythingmerges into everything else, and mass communication createsan artificial world of signs. Arbitrariness prevails. Postmodernlife could be described as a state in which everything beyond

our own personal biography seems vague, blurred, andsomehow unreal. The world is full of signs and information,which stand for things that no one fully understands becausethey, too, turn out to be more signs for other things. The realthing remains hidden. No one gets to see it. 9

As a response to this, in Zumthor's designs we find that nature is the source of images and of sensory stimuli. The direct contact between the person and the naturalsetting is what becomes important. It is what causes the person's reaction. The user is place in a space where he wonders.

In this sense, Zumthor understands architecture in a similar way

that Heidegger understood building. For Heidegger, two other elements that are closely related to the physical part of humanexistence, according to Heidegger, are the process of buildingand buildings themselves. He explores the process of buildingand its relation to human dwelling. He talks about therelationship between a bridge and what he calls the fourfold.The fourfold are the basic given components of human'sdwelling on the earth, because by dwelling on the earth wedwell under the sky , we remain before divinities and thatincludes belonging to men's being with one another. 10 Thus,one basic character of dwelling is to preserve this fourfold bybuilding.

He says in his essay Building Dwelling Thinking about thebridge -a built form:

The bridge gathers the earth as landscape around the stream...The waters may wander on quiet and gay, the sky's floods fromstorm or thaw may shoot past the piers in torrential waves -- thebridge is ready for the sky's weather and its fickle nature... Thebridge lets the stream run its course and at the same timegrants their way to mortals so that they may come and go fromshore to shore... Now in a high arch, now in a low, the bridgevaults over glen and stream -- whether mortals keep in mindthis vaulting of the bridge's course or forget that they, alwaysthemselves on their way to the last bridge, are actually strivingto surmount all that is in common and unsound in them in order to bring themselves before the haleness of the divinities... Thebridge gathers, as a passage that crosses, before divinities --whether we explicitly think of, and visibly give thanks for, their presence, as in the figure of the saint of the bridge, or whether that divine presence is obstructed or even pushed whollyaside... The bridge gathers to itself in its own way earth and

sky, divinities and mortals.11
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For Zumthor architecture should express this and he commentsthat occupying oneself with the inherent laws of concrete thingssuch as mountains, rock, and water in connection with abuilding assignment offers a chance of apprehending andexpressing some of the primal and as it were culturally innocent

attributes of these elements, and of developing an architecturethat sets out from and returns to real things. 12

There is a close relation between Heidegger's words and Zumthor thoughts. Theyboth relate architecture to the real world. They think building expresses the way wedwell and that the there should be a very close link between both. In this sensearchitecture becomes an expression of life and of the world itself.

Materials and Light

It was not just the wood, but the floor -a plane hard surface- and the light. Theintensity of light changed and was stronger as it moved further into the building. The

views produced by this change of intensity guided me through the space. They callyour attention as you move.

David expresses about being inside the pavilion.

Matter is part of the real world . Nature is the source for thematerials we use to build. But Zumthor makes an importantdifference since he is dealing with the problematic of architecture and materials.

Zumthor is against a separation between materiality and human reality and life. For him, mass production and scientific-technological advances have contributed to thedesacralization of materials. As far from its natural state a material is, the less sacredit is for us. For example, synthetic materials are not related at all with the naturalreality. They are a product of years of technical advances and they have contributedto the desacralization of the act of building as a dwelling expression. We don'tinteract with nature directly anymore. We have manipulated and changed naturalmatter so much that we build with products that no longer relate us to the Earth -our real world.

Zumthor acknowledges the use of materials in his past experiences and his writings:

To me, there is something revealing about the work of Joseph Beuys and some of the artists of the Arte Povera group. What impresses me is the precise and sensuousway they use materials. It seems anchored in an ancient, elemental knowledge aboutman's use of materials, and at the same time to expose the very essence of thesematerials, which is beyond all culturally conveyed meaning.

I try to use materials like this in my work. I believe that they canassume a poetic quality in the context of an architectural object,although only if the architect is able to generate a meaningfulsituation for them, since materials in themselves are not poetic.13

But was also the light David includes, there was this glow, this mood caused bylight... it was just unreal.

It is important since we are talking about materials, nature andbuildings, to talk about one thing that affects all three of them:


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light. Light is closely related to materials, and we may evenrecall how Louis Kahn defined materials as spent light . Whenreflected by materials it makes them visible, makes them havespecific colors. It is what penetrates our eyes and makes usperceive the objects. In this way, the relation between light and

materials is something very important to consider whendesigning.

Kahn says about light:

Inspiration is the feeling of beginning at the threshold whereSilence and Light meet. Silence, the unmeasurable, desire tobe, desire to express, the source of new need, meets Light, themeasurable, giver of all presence, by will, by law, the measureof things already made, at a threshold which is inspiration, thesanctuary of art, the Treasury of Shadow. 14

In this sense, we could relate Zumthor's work with Kahn's ideas on the importance of light. He treats light with great importance in his projects. He designs the interiors asspaces where light becomes the most important element. All the materials he usesare related to specific tones of light and this how he tries to impress people.

The Human Body

It was strange David says, as I walked in, I felt so many different things at the sametime: the smell, the music, the light...

In this event, David sensed the space with his body and then his mind produced allkinds of strange feelings.

We exist on Earth as minds in our bodies. Our body is what produces the interactionbetween our minds and the real world. This happens through our senses: sight,touch, smell, hearing and taste -though some argue that there are more than thesefive senses, such as thermal sensitivity.

Feeling the world is the job of our body. Carl Jung expressesthis well in his book Man and His Symbols when he is arguingthat there are four functional types of feeling that orientate our existence:

These four functional types correspond to the obvious meansby which consciousness obtains its orientation to experience:

sensation (sense of perception) tells you that something exists;thinking tells you what it is; feeling tells you whether it isagreeable or not; and intuition tells you whence it comes andwhere it is going. 15

For Jung these are all part of the conscious experience and human behavior, andthus they produce a series of reactions in the person's mind and then becomeimportant issues in the analysis of dreams. But there is no need to get in thediscussion on the human mind and the differences and functions of the consciousand the unconscious.

Zumthor acknowledges this in his works and clearly states that the experience of architecture goes beyond our daily interaction with functional spaces. He says:


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To experience architecture in a concrete way means to touch,see, hear and smell it. To discover and consciously work withthese qualities. He then adds about his own spatial experience:I like absorbing moods, moving in spatial situations, and I amsatisfied when I am able to retain a feeling, a strong general

impression from which I can later extract details as from apainting, and when I can wonder what it was triggered thesense of protection, warmth, lightness or spaciousness that hasstayed in my memory. When I look back like this it seemsimpossible to distinguish between architecture and life, betweenspatial situations and the way I experience them. 16

In his architecture we can find all kinds of sensory stimulus that are meant to trigger feelings and ideas within the person. These incentives are directed to the senses of human body. Framed views of mountains are intended to penetrate the person'smind through sight, thermal comfort is meant to make someone feel good through his

skin and smell is used to trigger memories from the past. All these designed moodsmake the person feel aware of the space. It triggers the aesthetic experience, whichis what Zumthor looks for with his architecture:

The strength of a good design lies in ourselves and in our abilityto perceive the world with both emotion and reason. A goodarchitecture design is sensuous. A good architecture design isintelligent. 17

He makes the person think. And the word thinking here is not used as well developthoughts, as the production of theories or discoveries of new scientific data. Thinkinghere is used as the process by which wonder is produced, by which awareness of life

is achieved. Recall what Eliade says about the modern man and about his life: henever wonders any more, he is not religious, he doesn't think about his life and hisworld. For the non-religious man existence is just the rational movement of the bodythrough space in time, no feelings, no afterlife, nothing. Zumthor apparently refusesthis view. He highlights the importance of experiencing, of feeling alive, of thinkingwhy and how do we dwell as humans.

Memory

The smell of the wood, which is a constant in the entire building, takes you back tothe forest David remembers thinking while he was in the pavilion.

Memory is maybe one of the most important issues in Zumthor's architecture.The fact is that humans, after the environment stimulates them, produce images,thoughts and feelings in their minds. But how this production of internal reflectionaffects the person is related to his or her previous experiences. It is just the sameway as how the architect's previous experiences affect his designs. Zumthor explains:

When I think about architecture, images come to my mind. Many of these images areconnected to my training and work as an architect. They contain the professionalknowledge about architecture that I have gathered over the years. Some of the other images have to do with my childhood. There was a time when I experience

architecture without thinking about it. Sometimes I can almost feel a particular door handle in my hand, a piece of metal shaped like the back of a spoon.


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I used to take hold of it when I went into my aunt's garden. Thatdoor handle still seems to me like a special sign of entry into aworld of different moods and smells. I remember the sound of the gravel under my feet, the soft gleam of the waxed oakstaircase, I can hear the heavy front door closing behind me as

I walk along the dark corridor and enter the kitchen, the onlyreally brightly lit room in the house... 18

Memory is very powerful. Our personality is shaped by past events and our future isdeeply affected by our past experiences. The way we think is based on past mistakesor on knowledge acquired years ago. Thus, memory in architecture experience playsa very important role: relating the present stimuli produced by the environment to apast experience so that a feeling or a thought is produced in the person's mind.

Zumthor tries to relate the person to past joyful experiences -even archaicexperiences when he uses archetypes. By triggering the person's memories hemakes sure the actual experience of the building will also be related to the feeling of

joy and of being alive.

Conclusion

The Experience of Existence

This essay demonstrates how Peter Zumthor uses the most basic elements found inthe real world, such as materials, nature and light, to try and make people aware of their existence through memories, feelings and thinking. In other words, what hebuilds is architecture that allows the experience of basic components of humanexistence. And it is through this relation between the person and the world that themetaphysics of architecture are achieved in his designs. All of those reactions wereprobed by David's responses to one of his buildings, The Swiss Box. Zumthor causedthis experience, and that is what he wanted: to make the user feel architecturebeyond the physical plane, to achieve the metaphysics in architecture.

Notes

David is a current fifth year student at Kansas State University and visited the SwissPavilion in the year 2000.

Heidegger, Martin: Poetry, Language and Thought New York: Harper andRow, 1975.

Zumthor, Peter: Thinking Architecture , Boston: Basel, 1999 Zumthor, Peter: Thinking Architecture , Boston: Basel, 1999 Zumthor, Peter: Thinking Architecture , Boston: Basel, 1999 Jung, Carl: Man And His Symbols , Dell: New York, 1964. Zumthor, Peter: Thinking Architecture , Boston: Basel, 1999 Eliade, Mircea: The Sacred and the Profane: The nature of religion Florida:

Harcourt, 1957 Zumthor, Peter: Thinking Architecture , Boston: Basel, 1999 Heidegger, Martin: Poetry, Language and Thought New York: Harper and

Row, 1975 Heidegger, Martin: Poetry, Language and Thought New York: Harper and

Row, 1975 Zumthor, Peter: Thinking Architecture , Boston: Basel, 1999
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Zumthor, Peter: Thinking Architecture , Boston: Basel, 1999

Lobell, John: Between Silence and Light: Spirit in the Architecture of Louis Kahn.Boston: Shambhala, 2000

Jung, Carl: Man And His Symbols , Dell: New York, 1964. Zumthor, Peter: Thinking Architecture , Boston: Basel, 1999 Zumthor, Peter: Thinking Architecture , Boston: Basel, 1999 Zumthor, Peter: Thinking Architecture , Boston: Basel, 1999

Bibliography: A+U Architecture and Urbanism : February 1998: Peter Zumthor. Antoniades, Anthony: The Poetics of Architecture: Theory of Design New

York: Wiley. Eliade, Mircea: The Sacred and the Profane: The nature of religion Florida:

Harcourt. Heidegger, Martin: Poetry, Language and Thought New York: Harper and

Row, 1975. Heschong, Lisa: Thermal Delight in Architecture Massachusetts: MIT Press,

1979. Jung, Carl: Man And His Symbols , Dell: New York, 1964. Koestler, Arthur: The Act of Creation London: Arkana, 1989. Kubler, George: The Shape of Time: Remarks on the history of things

London:Yale University Press. Lobell, John: Between Silence and Light: Spirit in the Architecture of Louis

Kahn. Boston: Shambhala, 2000.

Norberg Schultz, Christian: Kahn, Heidegger and The Language of Architecture Oppositions 18: Fall 1979. Pallasmaa, Juhani: The Eyes of The Skin: architecture and the Senses

London: Academy Group, 1996. Zumthor, Peter: Swiss Sound Box , Boston: Basel, 2000. Zumthor, Peter: Thinking Architecture , Boston: Basel, 1999.

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Achieving the Metaphysics of Architecture