HUMTEKArchitecture and its cultural dimension

FIGURINGDISFIGURINGREFIGURING

Camelia Elias

aim of the workshop

• To what extent can buildings be considered cultural texts (texts that can be interpreted as a manifestation of specific cultural events)?

• Why are some buildings more iconic (recognizable) or iconoclastic (destroyers of norms) than others?

• What is the role of art in the shaping of technological artifacts?

• How does architecture inform our sense of identity?

architecture as culture• “From birth we try to orientate ourselves in

the environment and establish a certain order. A common order is called culture. The development of culture is based on information and education and therefore depends on the existence of common symbol-systems. The culture integrates the single personality into an ordered world based on meaningful interactions.”

(C. Norberg-Schultz, “Meaning in Architecture” in Meaning in Architecture, C. Jenks and G. Baird,

eds., 1969)

art and architecture

until recently• gravitate towards

abstraction and figuration (re-figuration)

• privilege either the abstract and the formal the concrete and the figurative

(ornamental)

currently• between abstraction and figuration

Romantic roots

• art and architecture seeks to unite sensuousness and reason

• human experience is suspended between the sensuous drive and the formal impulse. (Schiller, 1799)

beauty and sublime

• beauty: conveys finality in its form the object

appears pre-adapted to our power of judgment (Kant, 1790)

• the sublime: goes beyond beauty encountered in the overwhelming power of

nature beyond our power of apprehension

the absolute

• the self-manifestation of the absolute in a work of art/architecture falls under 3 divisions: symbolic the moment of abstraction classic the moment of concreteness romantic the moment of both

abstraction and concreteness together

representations

• symbolic emphasizes universality at the expense

of particularity

• classical stresses particularity but ignores

universality

• romantic synthesizes universality and particularity

to create an organic work

The evolutionary model of modernism

FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION

• ‘Architecture and design for the masses must be functional, in the sense that they must be acceptable to all and that their well-functioning is the primary necessity.’

(The Sources of Modern Architecture and Design)

the essence of modernism

• is in the use of the characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself - not in order to subvert it, but to entrench it more firmly in its area of competence.

(Clemet Greenberg: “Modernist Painting”

originality through purity

• every artistic creation – architecture included – has to purge itself of influence and thus become ‘pure’.

• purity means ‘self-definition’

• self-definition means ‘autonomy’

• autonomy means ‘self-determination’

• self-determination means ‘self-reflection’ aim: to test norms and conventions in order to

determine which are inessential and which are timeless

modern moves

• from figuration and ornamentation to abstraction and formalism

• from detail/the particular to the overarching idea/the general

• from symmetry to asymmetry

From baroque/manor houses (18th c) to Le Corbusier (19th c)

Le Corbusier (1887-1965) aesthetics

• modern architecture harbors revolutionary potential. “Architecture or Revolution. Revolution can be

avoided.• sensuality is primitive – savage. Rationality

is modern – civilized.• follows Pythagoras: “number is the base of

all beauty” “Less is more” (Mies van der Rohe)

• detail must be negated in order to reach the general idea ornamentation must be disfigured

to disfigure• to mar the figure or appearance of; destroy the beauty of;

to deform or deface to disguise to carve

• disfigurement designates a defacement, deformity, blemish or flaw dis negation, lack, invalidation, deprivation figure form, shape; an embodied form; to trace, mark,

adorn, embellish, calculate, take into consideration• DISFIGURE:

THE NEGATION OF FORM, THE NEGATION OF CALCULATION AND SOLUTION

• DISFIGURING: IS A FORMATION THAT IS A DEFORMATION AND A

DEFORMATION THAT IS A FORMATION

Architects state:

• Keep it simple

symmetry• Why is architectural symmetry so satisfying? As

Leonardo da Vinci's famous drawing demonstrated, it reflects the human body, which has a right side and a left, a back and a front, the navel in the very center. Du Sautoy writes that the human mind seems constantly drawn to anything that embodies some aspect of symmetry. He observes that "[a]rtwork, architecture and music from ancient times to the present day play on the idea of things which mirror each other in interesting ways.“

(from Witold Rybczynski, Mirror Images: Why is symmetry so satisfying? on

Symmetry: A Journey Into the Patterns of Nature, Marcus du Sautoy)

asymmetry• Architectural Modernism thumbed its nose at tradition

and firmly avoided symmetry. Being symmetrical was considered as retrograde as being, well, decorated. All exemplary Modernist buildings celebrated asymmetry: The wings of Walter Gropius' Bauhaus shoot off in different directions; the columns of Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion are symmetrical, but you can hardly tell, thanks to the randomly spaced walls; nothing in Frank Lloyd Wright's pinwheeling Fallingwater mirrors anything else; and Le Corbusier's Ronchamps dispenses with traditional church geometry altogether.

(idem)

functional design

Mies van der Rohe: Barcelona Pavillion, 1929

Walter Gropius: Bauhaus, 1926

Le Corbusier: Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, 1956

Architects state: Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959)

• Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age.

• Form follows function - that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.

• Noble life demands a noble architecture for noble uses of noble men. Lack of culture means what it has always meant: ignoble civilization and therefore imminent downfall.

• The architect must be a prophet... a prophet in the true sense of the term... if he can't see at least ten years ahead don't call him an architect.

Fallingwater, 1935, PA

prime ex. of organic architecture

the modernist cultural discourse (end of 19th c – mid 20th c)

• organic architecture anticipates eco-criticism, and the turn to the discourse about ecology

• the turn from roundness (ornamentation) to the geometry of the square (reduction to the point) anticipates structuralism and the focus on binary constructions man (capable of reason) /woman (capable of

emotion) primitive (decorated) / civilized (restrained and

controlled) nature (wild, unpredictable) / culture (normative,

and predicable)

modernist architecturemore ICONIC than iconoclastic

• ICON: an object of worship (religion)

• an arbitrary sign that has acquired a conventional significance (semiotics)

• a repeated sign, in constant circulation

• recognizable (cultural; it takes a community to make it value it as such)

• values the SIMPLE FORM1957-1963

postmodern architecturemore ICONOCLASTIC than iconic

• ICONOCLASM: destroying images; heresy, unorthodoxy

• breaks with the norms established by modernist architecture

• values surface rather than depth

• returns to the fluidity of the wave

• back to the aesthetics of the circle

• values the COMPLEX form

1997

Frank Gehry (1929-)

• “Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.”

• “You've got to bumble forward into the unknown.”

discourse on man

Mies Van der Rohe, 1958;

man stands alone, and erect, triumphant, and distant

Peter Cook /Colin Fournier 2003

man embodies multitudes; others are welcome the self is a relational self horizontal rel.

“The Friendly Alien”, Graz

postmodern architectural cultural discourse

• formally, the move from the grid structure to the complex structure, anticipates the multicultural turn

• offers a critique of modernist architecture if modern architecture reflects a

reduction to ‘nothing’, what can we then speak of?

Purity

• to purify, to make clear

• disfigure remove figures, symbols, designs) how do buildings reflect separation,

individualism, supremacy? how do ‘pure’ buildings reflect a

dominant ideology? (those that have the money decide)

Logocentrism

• to locate the center of any text or discourse within the logos (word, reason, or spirit); for Plato: a constant search for the "truth"

• re-figure put back into design, to re-figure the sign in ‘de-sign’ how do buildings reflect a proliferation of

meanings? what is the significance of modern kitschy

constructions and deliberate excess for our self-understanding?

Refuse

• to resist, to decline, to elude; re-fuse: to reunite

• refigure disfiguration how do buildings suggest haunting

presences?

links

• Slate (iconic architecture, visual essay on failed icons)

• Slate (anti-iconic architecture, slides)• Mirage-studio-7 (architecture is

poetry)• A daily dose of architecture (blog)

Tegnestuen Trio – “arkitektur med kunden I centrum”

• modern architecture (slideshow)