Lara B-Term1 HTS Essay

Lara Behmoaram de Toledo 1

Quest for a Timeless Complexity: Dealing with multiplicity through Time, Movement and Indeterminacy in Transitional Spaces In “Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture”, R. Venturi manifests that he will be embracing complexity in order to deal with the increasingly diverse programmatic , structural and mechanical needs of his time.(Venturi 1966, p.16). This objective makes his ideas very relevant to and inspirational for many following generations of architects; as the diversity of the needs of buildings have only been increasing since his time. As the manifold solutions he claims to bear with multiple and paradoxical meanings in his buildings (particularly in his mother’s house) are analyzed; the evaluations will be based on how the elements of time, movement[of user] and speed will prove the multiple meanings he has created to be useful. Further on, as the use of these elements re-‐occur in Eisenman’s house VI, one may see that the time factor and the movement within space becomes key factors in creating a new kind of complexity where functionality is not addressed. The two case analysis will guide this essay through depicting the use of time and movement to create rich transitional spaces. If the increasing needs of functionality and the change of needs in time is the departure point of Venturi’s quest for complexity, one can assume that the aim of an architect should be to create a spatial experience that keeps many options open for the user where they could navigate through the space with “slider bars” of time and movement; and indeterminacy naturally arises as the natural result of the different combinations of these variables. One aspect Venturi often mentions and praises in “ Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture” is vitality. In his writings, he claims that he would achieve this by multiplicity of meanings on a single built element. He expresses this by saying “Simultaneous perception of a multiplicity of levels involves struggles and hesitations for the observer, and makes his perception more vivid.”(1966, p.25) However, the ambition to achieve a vivid experience at a single moment (signaled by the use of the word “simultaneous”) seems arduous and overly ambitious. Since the word “vivid” resonates “animation” and “liveliness”, one finds it difficult to imagine a “ vivid” experience without movement and time. Although Venturi chooses to define his attempts of tackling complexity with the “both”, “and” approach, where he defines spaces with two “contradicting” adjectives which are based on symbols; one cannot help but think this sort of a portrayal is undermining and unfair to his own work. To illustrate his “both” , “and” approach better, let us look at his use of this rhetoric: “The Mannerist elliptical plan of the sixteenth century is both central and directional. Its culmination is Bernini's Sant' Andrea al Quirinale , whose main directional axis contradictorily spans the short axis.”(Venturi 1966, p.26) As Baroque churches are absolutist symbols of Catholic Churches that shall be static, depicting their qualities through symbolical values may sound reasonable. However, if we try to depict the staircase in the Vanna Venturi house with this rhetoric, and for instance, say “the datum is both a staircase and a fireplace”, this would be unfair, since such a statement would have only been based on the symbols seen in that part of the house, and not based on the experience this


structure embodies. If one tries to be more fair, the core could be described as “both circulatory and static”, “both central and asymmetric”, “and a void and a vectoral space” … However, such richness is not experienced simultaneously hence these values are not contradicting but are inter-‐transitional and one’s tools to create such transitional qualities are the “time “ and “movement” “scroll bars”.

Vanna Venturi House Living Room

Staircase coiling around chimney


As one is standing in the living room of the Vanna Venturi house, in front of the fireplace, a moment of slowness is induced as the fireplace suggests sitting down in front of it and reading a book. As the user coils around the fireplace, he finds himself on a crammed, crooked triangular step as he is facing a stair flight that expands until the moment it reaches the side wall of the chimney intersecting the flight. The narrow beginning of the flight almost pushes the subject to pass and go up the stairs very quickly , since he would be uncomfortable on the crammed steps and would want to reach the wider part. As the subject reaches the chimney wall, he is now standing at a bright and wider space, lit by the large window a few steps above him, and the wall suggests a pause or slowing down. One could treat this relatively comfortable position on the stairs as a balcony and watch the living room. One can also be influenced by the contrast between the width of the previous and following flight. Since the following flight is very narrow (approx. 70cm), the contrast makes this position feel more comfortable, hence slowing down the subject. Such contrast of width also highlights that the following narrow flight is only directional and should be passed through quickly; hence is a “fast zone”. As one continues this journey on stairs, he will now be left behind the walls of the chimney where he cannot view the living room. This dark and narrow path should now feel more like an escape route one goes through as fast as possible. Finally, once the subject reaches the first floor and turns around the chimney, looking down, he can see the well lit void of the staircase again and can find relief on this moment of slowing down and gazing. Further on, if the subject keeps moving, he could use the following dysfunctional narrow flight of steps that leads nowhere as a station he could sit on and gaze at the lightwell. This whole journey of the Vanna Venturi house’s staircase carries many signalers (symbols, such as the chimney wall, the triangular window sash, the dysfunctional narrow flight of steps etc.) which are quite modular and add a striated quality. However, the continuity of the appearance of the elements through the varying moments of movement and speed allows for a transitional quality that brings meanings richer than the sum of the symbols and signs along the way. So to say, all of the moments between the symbols along the way, and the relational effects created between them (such as the contrasts) engender new possibilities within the experience; allowing the transitional quality of the space to bear multiplicity.

Views from the staircase journey


Ever in flux and process, reality cannot be approached directly, Reality is too vast, and direct means fail. Suitable tools are needed, as in the raising of an obelisk. In technics, as in science and art, we must create the tools with which to dominate reality.(Giedion 1948, p.14) Speaking in Giedion’s terms, movement and time elements proved to be successful tools in dominating the reality of Venna Venturi’s house to bring out the richest meaning of a static built reality. Therefore, we will keep using the same tools to analyze Eisenman’s House VI, to investigate how the movement of body in space, over time, will bring out manifold and rich meanings in this house’s transitional spaces. Analyzing the experience, as the subject is at the void where the staircase is, one shall see many beams floating above him or in front of him, some non-‐functional ones which appear to have shifted from their original positions, sinking into the steps at one corner. However, none of these floating elements seem to change any conditions as the subject moves along the staircase. The level of openness or the speed induced to the subject(the user) is always the same. This is because Eisenman’s “recording” of the process(the movement of semantic elements) has only recorded a few glimpses of the transformation and not the whole process. Furthermore, Eisenman is forcing the user to move around the house by “freezing” the design at a moment where the form is most incompatible with the needs of the user. One can sense this notion of forced movement by the rather illogical or unconventional design decisions made.


House VI-‐ first floor plan A closet space that only has a half door sized opening to the dressing room and is not accessible directly through the bedroom is one example of such decisions, in which the user will have to walk through a rather long path to get from the bedroom to the closet, having to pass under an upside down staircase that is not leading anywhere. In “Animate Form”, Lynn describes the formation of a boat hull almost as a molding process where the sea shapes the hull with its varying vectoral forces, while the result of all the different positioning of the hull is being recorded onto the form of the surface, in order to achieve a single form that reciprocates to a multiplicity of functions. (1999, p.10) Based on this method, one would expect that Eisenman’s House VI, which is declared to be an embodiment of elements in constant movement, would show the same level of performance in terms of functionality. After all, the design process was based on a set of Cartesian grids moving along on one another’s axes and the building is the recording of this movement.(Peres 2011). Hence, one would hope that, in time, the user could physically move along the materialized recording of the movement in the design process, in order to find a desired functional reciprocity. However, Eisenman fails to fulfill this expectation by keeping his recordings highly symbolical and modular. Kipnis also confirms that Eisenman’s intentions were never about functionality and spatial relations but “a syntax for semantic elements.”(2001, p.34)


On a journey starting from the staircase, coming from the groundfloor of House VI, the subject first reaches a pseudo-‐hallway where there is a hall space but the space is only leading to the bedroom and does not allow access to any other spaces within that floor. This of course causes a forceful effect where the subject would have to go through the bedroom and a series of other spaces, in order to reach separate “functions” within the first floor, such as the bathroom or closet space. When the subject progresses into the bedroom, he will see the famous “split-‐bed” where a glass slit opening goes through the middle of the bed, forcing the double bed to split into two single bed where the husband and wife would have to sleep separately and light coming through the glass section in the middle of the bed would wake them up at sunrise. This slit in the room is a mere symbol representing a plane belonging to Eisenman’s virtual grid, that passed through the room during the design process. Moving on to the dressing room, one reaches a bright space, lit with the natural light received from the room’s glass wall which would expose anyone getting dressed in the room. As mentioned


before, this room does not have a direct access to the closet space but a rather unconventional one; only by going under an upside down staircase sitting between the dressing room and the closet. The upside down stair feels like a relic of the virtual space of transformation Eisenman had in his mind and has casually been frozen in a moment where it is idle. The stair “symbol” here can be seen as an intentional decision to keep that space unused, creating a moment for stopping at the end of the journey. It is a stair symbol, which intrinsically suggests a journey but actually is a stop sign. All these signs, suggest that the house is at a moment of transition, possibly to meet the needs of the user; but in fact, this is merely a suggestion and the selected moment of the transition actually pushes the user to navigate through the inanimate building with the movement “scroll-‐bar” to reach a compatible moment of movement and time. What is unfortunate is that, although the building is signalling a transition mode where one would expect to see many possibilities embodied at once, this representational building only comprises of a few still frames from the transition and therefore the user would not be able to find the frames in between the few selected still frames; hence the possibilities within the building would be limited. Furthermore, as the spaces are only connected on a linear path, a movement of “passage” is imposed to the user throughout the house, hence, not just the staircase, but the entire house can be interpreted as a transitional space. However, this journey embellished with “moments” of intrusive non-‐functional symbols bears many transits rather than a continuous transition. Such discontinuity in meaning, speed and movement does not allow the user to find new meanings and possibilities in between the modular symbols given but rather causes a loss of meaning. House VI design process diagrams:



Lara Behmoaram de Toledo

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In both cases, in Eisenman’s House VI and Venturi’s mother’s house, we see that the architect aims to get detached from the conventional meanings of built elements by distorting their use and re-‐configuring these pre-‐defined symbols of architectural language; in order to get novel reactions from the users and transcend from the straightforward uses and meanings of these elements. Such a quest of re-‐defining user reaction becomes evident in Venturi’s writing, since Eisenman also confirms in “Ten Canonical Buildings: 1950-‐2000” that Venturi has been questioning capacity for social reform through architecture.(2008, p.129) In the same publication, Eisenman also states that the Venna Venturi

house has been evolved from the nine-‐square grid plan scheme many other modernists have been using. This is evident in the earlier version of the house’s plan. Although he has altered the nine-‐square grid plan drastically, distorting the grid’s symmetry by eliminating one row of the grid, this reference leaves the design open to pre-‐conceived judgements about it. The fact that the house’s façade is so detached from the interior’s divisions is also proof that he has merely “embellished” the façade, with a very mannerist approach and such embellishment is merely a configuration of symbols referencing

Vanna Venturi House IIa plan, 1959


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Vanna Venturi House final plan

Vanna Venturi House elevations

Vanna Venturi House back facade to architectural elements one would recognize from the past’s architectural languages. The non-‐structural arch motif and the horizontal element crossing it, are mere references to the structural elements of an arch and a beam the arch would sit on, yet in this case the arch is cut in half from the point it would conventionally provide structural strength and the “supporting” beam symbol crosses through the arch, instead of supporting it, blurring the meaning of a beam even more. The vertical slit on the façade is also an element that has been seen before and is a reference to the lightwell niches providing natural light to staircases of multi-‐storey housings, as seen in Casa il Girasole by Moretti.(Eisenman 2008, p.136) One could interpret that all this effort to distort meanings of architectural elements by detaching these symbols from their essential meaning and context is to depart from the predefined and constrained functional meanings loaded to building elements. Such departure would set the user free and create openings for the users of this new architecture by pushing them to give unconventional reactions to the new configurations of these symbols and find new meanings in this new built environment, by the alternative


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movements the user would perform within the new circumstances provided. This would be the anticipated indeterminacy notion in Venturi’s architecture, which would be provided by the altered human movement. However, using architectural symbols which have been loaded with different meanings from the past’s architectural culture will not be helpful for the architect in this endeavor as all of the “referencing” will tie the reactions of the users to the root meanings already defined in their memories. It is stated very clearly in “Atlas of Novel Tectonics” how such referential symbols within space would actually limit and fix the emerging meanings to be found in these environments, blocking any potential indeterminacy: A meaning based practice actually stops process because it is judgmental, concerned with stability rather than unfolding, and relies on outside semantic criteria that are generally separate from material processes.(Reiser + Umemoto 2006, p.173) One could imagine that the outside semantic criteria that Reiser and Umemoto is talking about would be based on the memory of the user.


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In Eisenman’s House VI as well, we see great effort to detach built elements from any meanings, by leaving them non-‐functional, hence abstract. Yet, although all elements are detached from any meaning and all that one can see in this house is an array of simple geometric rectilinear prisms shaping into rods and planes; as they are based on the very common modernist language, they will always be read as walls, columns, beams and steps. For this reason, because they will be perceived as what they refer to in architectural language, the users will keep occupying these spaces the same way they would occupy any other modernist space. For instance, the dining area in the ground floor of House VI, eventhough is a very narrow space which gets interrupted by a floating column that doesn’t touch the ground, is still an area where there is a large dining table people sit around and the fact that it is a narrow or ruptured space fails to impact on the users’ eating behaviours; it does not direct them to use the kitchen as a fast-‐food stall they would pass by and not sit to eat at. This would be because the “interruption” of the space appears in the form of an inconveniently positioned column but the space defined by the prismatic walls is not open to other definitions. Reiser+Umemoto also points out that the use of such “universalized fixed , simple geometries and timeless typologies” result in “stable and unchanging frameworks within which, and against which, the temporal unfolds”; in which case, the emergence of new meanings defined by the movements of the user, in time, would be challenged, as they would have to work “against” the definitions.(Reiser + Umemoto 1998, p.85) With all of this analysis into the Vanna Venturi House and Eisenman’s House VI, one can conclude that the relatively “smoother” transitional qualities seen in Venturi’s staircase where one can oscillate through manifold spatial qualities on a continuous manner proves to provide a rich environment where the temporal movements of the users can bring out new meanings within this environment, to some extent. On the other hand, Eisenman’s HouseVI’s non-‐functional and contradicting syntax of elements, is quite successful in detaching the built elements from the burden of serving functional requirements and defined programs. However, in both cases, due to the very suggestive “language” used, and the symbolical approach, it is hard to imagine a great degree of dynamism in meaning; especially based on the more contemporary requirements of complexity and dynamism. This is not to say their work is insignificant for today’s circumstances as Venturi’s transitional qualities embodied in his staircase and Eisenman’s attempt to detach the built shell from functional associations can be seen as the seeds of more contemporary theories, such as the likes of Reiser and Umemoto’s, where they claim that gradational fields of spatial qualities embedded into the material texture of our environments which are “persistent” to any functional determination will embody the freedom and richness level of today’s needs. In their “Recent Works” book, speaking about the “ Water Garden” project, they define the field they have proposed as :


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a hierarchical series of global and local transformations-‐ warps, dimples and folds-‐ are expressed. Extreme and unstable configurations in the topology are essentially built into the concrete substrate in order to express them in the vital media( water, soil, plant materials, and chemical salts) of the ‘flow space’ above”(…) “the dead yet intensive geometry of the grooves excites material or biological novelty in the media.(p.86)

Interlacing earth berms of “Water Garden” Project

“Water Garden” Project


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The moments they have defined as “extreme and unstable configurations in topography” highlights the interlace points of the earth berms they are proposing, which would excite the water flow in the gardens. These points where a wide path is narrowed into a smaller tunnel resonates a moment in Venturi’s staircase where there is a sudden narrowing down of the flight. What remains unknown and the future of architecture will unfold is whether such fields proposed by Reiser and Umemoto, which don’t carry any reference to architectural language of our past, will be able to incite human movements that will find new meanings and uses within these non-‐descript fields.


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Citations 1. Eisenman, Peter. Ten Canonical Buildings: 1950-‐2000. New York, Rizzoli International Publications inc., 2008. 2. Giedion, Siegfried. Mechanisation Takes Command, New York: Oxford University Press, 1948. 3. Lynn, Gregg. Animate Form. Princeton Architectural Press, 1999. 4. Kipnis, Jeff. Perfect Acts of Architecture. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2001. 5. Reiser, Jesse and Nanako Umemoto. Recent Projects. London: John Wiley and Sons Academy editions, 1998. 6. Reiser, Jesse and Nanako Umemoto. Atlas of Novel Tectonics. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006.

7. Peres, Adelyn. “AD Classics: House VI/ Peter Eisenman” 04 Jun 2010. ArchDaily. Accessed 23 Nov 2011. < http://www.archdaily.com/63267>

8. Venturi, Robert. Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. New York: The Museum of Modern Art Papers on Architecture, 1966.


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Appendix

Venna Venturi House’s further staircase diagrams


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House VI groundfloor plan

House VI elevations


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House VI


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House VI interior views

The split beds in House VI


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Lara B-Term1 HTS Essay