On walls and space

(Semper)

Art and Need


(Four Elements of Architecture, Gottfried Semper)
(pencil emphasis not by me)

"Art knows only one master - the need. It degenerates when it follows the whim of artists, even more so when it obeys the powerful patrons of art. Its proud determination can indeed raise a Babylon, a Persepolis, or a Palmyra from the desert sands, whose regular streets, mile-wide squares, stately halls and palaces impatiently wait in their sad emptiness the population that the despotic ruler was unable to conjure. The organic life of Greek art is not its work; it flourished only on the soil of need and under the sun of freedom."

On cultural imposition

Adolf Loos: "It would be nonsense to impose on people a cultural form that went against their inner feeling."

But, I thought,

at least the little shopgirls are honest...

What is architecture (Sullivan)

"In it is no joy of living - you know not what the fullness of life signifies"

What is the fullness of life (of the little shopgirls?)

Sullivan on imagination


Not the whole of what I mean by imagination, but nice to see it nonetheless.

The dreams of the little shopgirls

The Mass Ornament, "The Little Shopgirls Go to the Movies", Siegfried Kracauer

visual art (thoughts) - continued

A highrise building, being so tall, so ostentatious, so visible - to design it as visual art seems arrogant - a huge piece of sculpture. As the size of a sculpture increases, the feeling of arrogance increases - we can think about the statue of Nebuchadnezzar, or even the large portraits of contemporary dictators hung in public squares. It speaks of over-achievement, a striving of one over many or of the powerful over the weak. (-does it?) To design huge buildings as visual art is condescending and of bad taste. The best sculptors would not do it. The question is then, how does one design a tall building?

visual art (thoughts)

When architects make something for the sake of aesthetics - it could be form, ornament, cladding, material choice - it is going into visual art: like painting or sculpture. On the other hand, when architects make choices out of functional needs (or requirements, like in parametric systems), it is not visual art. So there are these two categories. An architect then consciously chooses whether or not to design this building as an artist or as a functionalist. These overlap most of the time, but the powerful works tend to lean very much to one side or the other.

On Mystery (draft notes)

I guess all that I write shall all be drafts, but I shall write them all the same... I was just reading Rem Koolhaas' Junkspace (2001), and could not deny that he is a really good writer, for this pulp-fiction, marvel comics generation. Also, I really like all the 19th and early 20th century architecture writers, they are so honest and so forthcoming about criticism, convicted about their opinions, and they are not shy at all about using words and notions that architects would not use today, the words and notions that have to do more with some unquantifiable quality than rationales, reasons, and all the rest of that. They discuss boldly the fundamental questions of architecture, and they depend boldly on their instinctual knowledge of beauty and meaning. It is so easy to read what they write, while it is tedious to read some of today's writings. It is easy to read Rem's writings too, in a different way. He is a really good writer for this generation - "junkspace generation?"

"Junkspace generation" - not a flattering term perhaps. Junk food, junk art, junk films, junk fiction, junk dreams... really? What makes a junk dream? What makes a worthy dream? In a teeming city of neon lights, of tall buildings, of anonymous faces of passers-by, what makes a dream?

(-- What is architecture for? Because I am an architecture student and I want to graduate, I am doing a thesis on architecture. Is that all? Then I graduate, and get a job, and live, and try to live well, and then -- today in church, the pastor had said "perhaps it's news to some of us here, but we are all going to die at some point." From this perspective (I think it a very worthy one to take), we would think it important to ask then about the meaning of everything that we do in this life. What is architecture for? --)

What is the meaning of art, what is it for? Why do people read fiction, why are we immersed in grand epic films? It is because human beings have hopes and dreams. No matter what architecture is out there, perpetuating what convictions to what ends, it is not a scientific endeavor, like bio-medicine for instance, or mechanical engineering. There are some scientific-aspiring or mathematical-aspiring architecture, but these are not pushing the limits or boundaries of science or math, they are not scientific or mathematical pursuits: they are trying to use science or math to advance architecture. Parametric design, green buildings, high-tech buildings, design technology, etc. We should not be confused about this, and in a sense - a person who enjoys scientific tidbits should not think himself a scientist.

Which brings me to Albert Einstein, the greatest scientist of our days. If anyone had a claim to scientific erudition it was him, and he had named an unquantifiable element as the most beautiful and essential thing that a person should know:

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. -Albert Einstein

What I had referred to in earlier posts as "imagination", I wonder if I could refer to it as the "mysterious?"



Then again, how can architecture create mystery? A Gothic cathedral is as mysterious to me as a boring office building is mysterious to a time traveler from the past. In this sense, it is the culture and environment of a person that jades his senses - if every woman looked like a femme fatale, the mystery would be gone. In this age, so many strange skyscraper forms had been built that the world is no longer surprised by anything - mystery is not to be found in novelty. In the same vein, mystery is not to be found in mere size of building in an age of skyscrapers. Mystery is when we think there is something we do not know, something hidden - perhaps we can find it. A blank wall could be mysterious because we think there is something behind it that is intriguing - we imagine all the scenarios. An office building could not be mysterious, because we already know what an office is like. Mystery is when imagination is activated. Imagination can be activated in a lot of ways. How can architecture activate imagination?

(-- Detail is the signifier of mystery. --)



Then again, all these that I just wrote seems to be "making mystery for the sake of it." It is like making something beautiful for the sake of it. Yet are these things not part of life itself, in other words, is not life itself mysterious, the fountainhead of imagination? Then, what is the role of architecture - how is life in a utilitarian building different from life in an 'architectural' building? (And another notion I had always had at the back of my mind, is not the blank slate ideal, the blanker the better - that life may write on it?)

Rococo

Oh, Le Camus...


"Any form was permissible; if only it rippled, everyone was happy"

Richness

(Le Camus)

A fine and delicate taste is needed to use richness...

On the art of pleasing in architecture


(Le Camus)

Yet what I am concerned about in this thesis, might be less about pleasing in the sense of what is beautiful, but pleasing in the sense of satisfying the desire for mystery in the inhabitants of a city...

Mystery

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.  
-Albert Einstein

When we look at some great fabric

(Le Camus)


"One sensation induces quiet reflection; another inspires awe, or maintains respect, and so on." That a flower charms the eye: how does this relate to the argument that ornament is or has to be symbolic? What is a flower a symbol of?

Sculpture, composition, mininalism

(Issue) perfume bottle

Tyrone Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, 1963. Ralph Rapson.

What is it about this that I don't like? (Though it looks like a very nice thing?) That it is a one liner? That it is an object? "A perfume bottle?" But what isn't a perfume bottle? Architecture is more than a perfume bottle - is it a crime for buildings to look like objects? But why do I dislike that idea?

(Edit: could it be that, 'as a composition it is not powerful, as an object it is not minimalist?' If we were to judge something based on pure looks, like this, from a picture, or like spectators from the street, like passers-by, like the inhabitants of the city -- if we were to judge architecture based on pure looking (i.e. without studying the plans, or understanding how the inside works, or what it wants to do with regards to space, to relationship) then is it not the same as looking at an artwork? A painting, or a sculpture. The problem that moves to the #1 spot here, then, is that not every architect is an artist -- perhaps someone like Le Corbusier could make a building work as a sculpture, but it cannot be said for every architect. Yet, many buildings are designed today like this, for viewing from the street, for public view, like displaying artwork by an amateur artist - not bad, but not especially good.)

Phantasmal values

Pecuniary


mechanical etcetera


How shall we impart to this sterile pile, this crude, harsh, brutal agglomeration, this stark, staring exclamation of eternal strife, the graciousness...

Sullivan, Louis H. The tall office building artistically considered. Lippincott's Magazine, 
March 1896. 



Sullivan on the tall office building. Many 19th century writers reflect something about this sentiment,because the tall building was a new thing. Today, people do not recognize that the tall building is not desirable. Perhaps people today don't mind the tall building. Maybe some even like it.

Therefore, the "problem of the tall building" seems to have fallen asleep with time: it is not brought up as an issue for much of today's architecture conversations. The focus on facade technologies, parametric computations, green building considerations, so on and so forth, have taken the focus away from the subject. But, in my opinion, the subject is not dead. Tall buildings are still sterile piles, crude, harsh agglomerations, stark staring exclamations of eternal strife, just that the people of this age have become (have become, or are born in an age) desensitized to that.

Resonances; affect


"It has no intention to decorate, and there is in it no hidden meaning. At the best of times, ornament becomes an "empty sign" capable of generating an unlimited number of resonances."


"vertical affect", "weighted affect", "quilted affect"... - yet none of these are of the social relationships and imaginations of people in a city, they are like sculpture affects, not architecture

Symbolism


"meaning in the eyes of the public" - yet I think it is no longer about symbolic meaning but meaning in imagination


As such, these buildings are devoid of imagination
Is loneliness a constant?

We can agree that if there is no loneliness, Blade Runner could not be made. (Is there any great movie that can be made in the absence of loneliness..?)

Yet, are there people who feel nothing for Blade Runner? Perhaps they would not notice if loneliness is not present? Perhaps they do not sense loneliness? Is it necessary?

What is architecture, what can it do if the canvas is loneliness?

Is there loneliness in a small town? Is there loneliness in a warm family?

Loneliness in a city full of people? Warmth in a city full of emptiness?

Why is a red balloon most red against a solid blue sky? "There is nothing redder in this world" - who said this..?

Loneliness co-efficient

Is the loneliness of the high-rise the loneliness of the city?

We might think here of Paolo Virno’s distinction between the “multitude” and
“people.” The latter positions individuals in relationship to larger shared identities in which individuals recognize themselves and with which they see shared experience, while multitude (which Virno characterizes as the dominant tendency of the present) describes subjects incapable of recognizing themselves in social groupings or of imagining shared experiences. The individuals of the multitude are bound together as multitude by the recognition in one another of the shared experiences of alienation.
- Contemporary Ornament: The Return of the Symbolic Repressed by Robert Levit

Loneliness of the High-rise













On Ornament: notes for an architecture thesis (draft)

It seems quite apparent that in the present age, "ornament" is not part of the conversation. The discussion of "ornament" is of a past age. The designers of today's buildings would be very quaint and eccentric indeed to discuss the necessity of ornamentation in architecture. There had been one or two recent discussions on "ornament," I am not acquainted with their contents, and will not comment on those discussions here; but "ornament" has not come back in the way it was the topic of much debate and consideration in the 19th and early 20th century - not in school curriculum nor in practice.

Yet, though the overt mention of "ornament" has not resurfaced, there is a spirit of "ornament" - the spirit that is the essence of matter, as great artists, musicians and writers know something about. Call a rose by another name and it is still a rose -- here we go deeper: when the rose dies the spirit of the rose remains as an essence (or a memory, if you will). In an extreme illustration, if the rock I hold in my hand has the spirit of a rose, then looking past all materiality which is known to be fading, temporal and transient, I could say with not a little confidence that I have a rose. If the red rose I hold in my hand have the spirit of a rock, then while I say I hold a rose, I hold nothing when the rose dies in the habitual way of roses. Spirit is closer in distance to thought than it is to matter. Thoughts are not material, having no weight, no texture, no grain, no dimensions - yet thoughts are the essence of action and material. In a murder trial, for example, whether or not the crime was premeditated -in other words, did this thought exist?- is the crux of the matter in deciding for or against the gravest punishment. What is the motivation for much of today's architecture? In this particular thesis, the subject of interest is the high-rise building. What is the spirit of the high-rise?

In most cases, the high-rise is a wrapped core. The elevator core as a practical necessity to transport inhabitants vertically - that being established, the program of the building wraps itself around the core in stacked floors, and finally the whole building is wrapped again in a "skin" which is the subject of much research in recent years in the form of facade treatment, technology and design. The skin is justifiably important, mediating between the weather elements and the inhabited interior, and its fine-tuning could translate into energy savings which is an important topic in a world concerned about climate issues. Yet here another old debate: one which in my view has not ended and should not be ignored until interested parties come to each their own satisfied conclusions - the question of the division between the architect and the engineer.

The spirit of "ornament" is not the spirit of "architecture" (whether or not the latter encompasses in some degree the former is open to discussion.) Yet, in the contemporary field, architects have not recognized, and if recognizing they have not deliberated, and if deliberating they have not articulated, the existence and nature of the spirit of architecture. This is perhaps a sweeping statement, considering that there are small houses and buildings which endeavor to experiment and converse about the spirit of architecture (or, also known as, the meaning of architecture,) but in the high-rises, particularly the steel-and-glass skyscrapers, one could not sense it - as dry as a desert is the seeming oasis of architecture.

In fact -and I refuse to blush- even the term "spirit", and such terms as "meaning", or "essence", is kept inside dark closets in the elite schools of architecture. Rationalism reigns, structuralism is respected, materiality viewed with some interest, environmental or green design the new secret police chief. All these being means to various ends, the end not in essence "architecture." To avoid confusion, at this point one would want to define the meaning of architecture. This thesis student says: the meaning is in life and not death. Death is in the dearth of spirit, the dearth of spirit is the essence of doing things without conviction. Doing things with conviction but in the wrong way would yield a terrible failure but not a boring banality. Then, I also ask, who should be an architect? Should I say, each to his own? Even in Manhattan the myriad of buildings each have their admirers and detractors, and countless others that are boring banalities - yet as a whole tapestry we cannot but be impressed by the majesty of a landscape of towers. My opinion is as such: the high-rise that stands alone, because of the verticality and the harshness of its figure rising upwards, could not be but arrogant - this arrogance reminiscent of the arrogance of the tower of Babel. It speaks of the mortal effort to achieve, to rise above, and yet this mortal body is bound to earth and returns to dust - if it be without spirit. The castles and fortresses of old, though majestic and towering, speak of a different kind of spirit, one of defence, of royalty, of country, of piety, of loyalty - yes, and even of community, of kingdom, of family and of life: these things by which even the modern man could feel his heart stirred - such as we see reimagined in movies. Yet today, the tall towers and skyscrapers speak of very little other than the one thing: capital. The dollar sign. A pauper could be instantly a king if he had but money. Money as flag and banner has from the very beginning been the genesis of the high-rise. When land became expensive, landowners built more stories to gather more rent. With the old masonry construction, certain heights could be reached, but a limiting factor is the massive bearing walls swelling and eating away at the ground floors which are the most rentable and profitable. The height reachable is also limited by the human ability to travel vertically, five stories being the comfortable limit. With the invention of the elevator, the height was doubled. With the introduction of steel skeletal construction, the massiveness of the bearing walls at ground floor was done away with, enabling the height of the building to again be doubled. Indeed it was not a structural limit that barred the high-rises of earlier years from rising higher - the limit was profit. Hence, both the steel skeleton construction and the elevator are economic solutions. The skyscraper was generated from a dollar sign.

Singapore was generated from a dollar sign. The British had recognized the strategic location of the island as a gateway in the South-east Asian trade route, and bought the island to turn it into a free port under the empire. Business and revenue was the banner. The first immigrants to settle in Singapore were the Chinese from China and the Indians from India -- they came bringing not their loyalties but wallets to be filled and sent home to their families. There was no question about who they were culturally or nationally - Singapore was only a place to make some money. With the second generation, Singapore started to become a home. Further down the road, the Second World War and the Japanese occupation, and afterwards the independence from the British and merger and subsequent split from Malaysia were events that mixed and cemented the nation. Following the split from Malaysia, the communist saga and the race riots, Singapore gradually developed an identity, fostered in no small part by a national school curriculum which inculcated in young children the ideas of social harmony, racial tolerance and respect for authority. The government which developed such a program to nurture identity was also the decision maker behind all economic strategies including the choice of industries to build up, the focus of education, the promotion of a tourism image, the last of which led to the creation of the Merlion. This half-lion, half-fish creation became known as the symbol of Singapore, testified to by thousands of photographs by tourists through the years posing with the water fountain sculpture made in its likeness. It was a devious success, almost 'cool' in the way gaming and hacking could be considered as such, the best known evidence being its appearance in the 1998 Japanese cult-animation series "Cowboy Bebop."

At this point, the project of this thesis is a “Singapore high-rise”: following the previous arguments we can see this phenomenon (Singapore highrise) as being generated from the original expression “$ $”. The thesis project is a discarding of baggages - we discard the dollar signs and we discard the genealogy and generation of both phenomenons “Singapore” and “high-rise”. Looking at only the present, the living and the remaining, we generate the project Singapore high-rise. It can be said to be a clean-slate project in spirit. It defines “Singapore”, “high-rise”, “architecture, “ornament.” If it cannot define, it discusses.


(----INSERT #1: High-rise: Singapore version

Necessity:
Human beings need a place to live.

Factor:
Many people need to live on a piece of land.

Necessary evil:
High-rise.

Yet there are benefits. 1) Raised off the ground, the winds are stronger - a much appreciated phenomenon here. 2) In a building full of people, there is a sense of safety. Singapore children grew up never knowing the deep darkness of a farmhouse out in the country at night. The noise and the lights never ceases, they might be muted at some point, but the corridor lamps and every vibration of the inhabitants find their way, attenuated, into private spaces of others. Even if there is no material seepage, there is mental knowledge of the nearness of other human beings. The high-rise is a crowd. A crowd has the potential to be a community -- is a community desirable? There could be opportunities in the high-rise to create varied opportunities of community.

END INSERT----)



(----INSERT #2: Architecture of the high-rise

Function and beauty:

We are no longer tied to structure - to build high is not a structural concern - engineering gymnastics have been done in many examples, e.g. the CCTV. Anything is possible if it be pure structural limit. We do not need to, rather, this is not the age to be like the Gothic masons who discovered and evolved very beautifully the flying buttresses. That is not the spirit of architecture of this age. The spirit of architecture of this age is not about structure -- the structural feats accomplished in buildings, though great, are of the spirit of engineering. The economic facet, the cost of the structure, is a concern. In this sense we are limited by structure.

Regarding truth, honesty, authenticity in the old debate: To be authentic for the sake of authenticity is not authentic, it is pretentiousness. Yet one cannot deny that purely structural buildings are beautiful, for instance, bridges. The need for insulation and weatherproofing in inhabited buildings render it impossible to make an honest authentic building in this sense. Perhaps in a tropical region it could be possible - here again Singapore is an open ended question.

Here, again, the issue of the spirit of "ornament". Ornament for the sake of ornament - that is out of the question. But in wanting to make a building attractive, be it with cladding, with form, with massing - is that not the spirit of ornament? What is not ornament is the part unconcerned with visuals. Here, I think about the human body. If earrings and necklaces are the old style ornaments, and clothing the new ornament in terms of cladding, am I considering then the body shape itself as ornament? The spirit in the body (indeed, the ghost in the shell) is the one important thing, this much one has to come to understand to hold anything more solid than dust and ashes in this life - yet, how could this spirit in architecture be expressed, and would not the material reflect the invisible?

END INSERT----)



(----INSERT #3: Ornament

I look at the picture of Amiens Cathedral and such are my thoughts:
Beautiful - why beautiful? Ornament, detail, arches, proportion
Impressive - why impressive? Scale, size, ornament, detail, arches, proportion
Imaginative - why imaginative? Detail, filigree, scale, size
This last point brings me to the landscape of the film Blade Runner. Why imaginative? So many spaces for so many lives (yes, even android lives) to interact, to touch each other, to speak to God. I thought, such is the characteristics of the filigree.
Filigree: it occurred to me that as we zoom in closer and closer into a city-scape such as Manhattan, the interesting-ness is carried by the detail, and these details (the windows, the doors, the dividing lines) are something like filigree. Filigree-like. Layers and layers of filigree - a filigree of possible spaces. Even in Blade Runner, the neon lights draw a landscape of filigree in the rain and the dark mist. Such is the difference between a real city and a model of a city made out of wooden blocks - from a certain distance the wooden blocks city is interesting, but zooming in they tell nothing more - it is a dead thing. This thesis student thinks: the meaning is in life. “You cannot clothe the petty things of life in majesty” - perhaps not (and that is why high-rises are not seen as “majestic”, no matter how tall and imposing - because majesty is of the spirit, and the majestic spirit cannot exist in today’s commercial climate), but we can clothe them with imagination - the spirit of imagination can live anywhere, unlike the spirit of majesty it is not loathe to clothe the petty things of life.
END INSERT----)

Hierarchy

Street of possible spaces

Hildeshiem: storied and gabled fronts

Hildesheim, Germany

Re: structure and construction classes

"To awaken and discipline the sense of this beauty, there is no means so good as that of drawing from nature itself....The sense of proportion and all the amenities of art are dependent on the training of mind and eye that drawing tends to give."
- Charles H. Moore

that he was designing elevations and not a building

on the Flatiron

Detail

Empire Building, New York City, Kimball & Thompson, 1895-98

Engineering vs architecture

Browning, Dramatis Personae, "Rabbi Ben Ezra."

The weight of the matter

Using vs copying

architecture to reflect life or not. c.f. literature

They failed to appreciate the fact that we had never yet been under this bondage