BAP – 211

THEORY OF DESIGN

REPORT -
EXPERIENCING
ARCHITECTURE
By Steen Eiler Rasmussen

GARIMA SINGH
00906142017
SEMESTER III
26TH OCTOBER 2018
 CONTENTS

I. Chapter 1 – Basic Observations

II. Chapter 2 – Solids and Cavities in Architecture

III. Chapter 3 - Contrasting Effects of Solids and

Architecture
 CHAPTER 1
Basic Observations

Steen Eiler Rasmussen starts his book ‘Experiencing Architecture’ by telling us

about the basic observations one needs to make in daily life.
Chapter 1 gives various definitions to architecture, how people perceive
architecture and what makes architecture different from sculpture, sketching,
painting, etc.
Architecture, sculpture and painting have been known to be ‘Fine Arts’ which
appeal to our eyes. People often misjudge architecture just by its external
appearance.
The author was explaining the project of a house to a man, to which the man said
deprecatingly that he did not like sections. The man seemed rather a delicate
person who was repulsive by the idea of cutting sections.
Architecture is not only adding plans and sections to elevations but something
else and much more even though it is not well defined.
Art should not be explained but experienced.
Steen compares architect to a painter and sculptor and tells how an architect is
different from other two as his work is functional art and it solves practical
problems. Even the most abstract piece of sculpture does not become
architecture. It will still lack utility. And in case of a painter, every stroke, is purely
a personal document but an architect remains anonymously in the background
resembling a theatrical producer. The building is produced like a motion picture
without any star performers, a sort of documentary film with ordinary people
playing parts.
He compares architecture with other branches of art and he feels architecture is
incapable of communicating an intimate, personal message from one person to
other; it lacks emotional sensitivity. But this very fact makes it positive as well as
architect is forced to seek a form which is more explicit and finished. Therefore,
architecture has a special quality of its own and great clarity. No other art
employs a colder, more abstract form, but then no other art is connected to daily
life of a man right from the cradle to grave.
Architecture is a very special functional art which confines space so people can
dwell on it. It means shapes formed around man, formed to be lived in and not to
be merely seen from outside. It is produced by ordinary people, for ordinary
people and hence should be comprehensible to all.
It is impossible to take over the beautiful architecture of a past era; it becomes
false and pretentious when people can no longer live up to it.
Another great difficulty for an architect according to the author is that he needs
to live on into a distant future. His buildings need to be ahead of time and adapt
to surrounding even in future.
Rasmussen talks about church of S.Maria Maggiore which stands on one all
Rome’s seven famous hills. Initially it was very unkempt but later the slopes were
smoothened and articulated with a flight of steps. The tourists coming hardly
notice the unique surroundings. The author notices boys playing a ball game on
the top step of stairway behind the church. For him the boys experienced certain
basic elements of architecture though quite unconsciously as they utilized the
curved wall in their game.
The author further explains how a child discovers things which are hard, soft,
sharp and pointed. He tries to tell us that what one perceive as of now even
without touching is just because of the conception one already has created in our
minds. Similarly, few buildings only produce a single effect such as hardness or
softness other buildings give a mixed effect. And to experience, one needs to
know all these elements. This is how one connects to a building. Its external
features become a means of communicating feelings and moods.
Towards the end of this chapter, he talks about various animals creating shelter
for themselves by digging hole underground or building some sort of habitation
above it and the same species does it the same way. But, man alone forms
dwellings which vary according to requirements, climate and cultural pattern.
The child’s play is continued after growing up and just as man progresses from
simple blocks to most refined implements, he progresses from the cave games to
more and more refined methods of enclosing space.
And thus, bringing order and relation into human surrounding is the task of the
architect.
 CHAPTER 2
Solids and Cavities in Architecture

In this chapter, the author talks about his idea of having solids and cavities in
architecture. He begins with comparing retina to a movie screen on which a
continuously changing streams of pictures appear but the mind behind the eye
is conscious of only few of them. On the other hand, only a very faint
impression is necessary to think that one has seen a thing; a tiny detail is
enough.
He takes an example of a man walking down the road and how the man
observes someone wearing jeans. The man then, concludes someone else to
be the same person he crossed path with just by looking at jeans even if it is a
girl. He does not observe more details. When he gets into more details like the
hair, body structure and even more minute details, he may be compared to a
portrait painter. The activity of such a spectator is creative; he recreates the
phenomena to form a complete image what he has seen.
What impression an art piece gives not only depends on how it has been made
but also on the observer’s susceptibility, his mentality, education, his entire
environment. The same painting will affect everyone differently.
A laughing face on a painting will cheer people while a tragic face will make
people sad. This is how commercial artists and producers of comic strips make
use of it. To advertise a dress, a glamorous model is made to wear it so that
even a middle-aged woman thinks that she will resemble her by donning that
dress.
The author speaks of classical architecture where people speak of supporting
and supported members. In Greek columns, a slight outward curvature of
profile – ‘entasis’ is used which gives impression of straining muscles – a
surprising thing to find in a rigid and unresponsive pillar of stone.
To Dickens a street house was a drama, a meeting of original characters, each
house speaking with a voice of its own.
Further, he explains how a German art-historian analyzed German town of
Nördlingen. He tells how proportions of a two – dimensional picture converted
to a three-dimensional structure. The eye passes from smaller roofs until it
Finally rests on the church of St. George. One regards a church as a distinctive
type but when one sees this, it is quite difficult to remember it as a church. As
already one has a perception of a church, how it looks like and how it is
supposed to be.
The mental process that goes on in the mind of a person observing a building is
alike to that going on in an architect’s mind while planning a building.
The author talks about town of Beauvais with its great cathedral which
collapsed once and when rebuilt, it turned out to be a rich composition of piers
and arches embellished with sculpture.
An architect instead of working with structural forms, with the solids of a
building can also work with cavities. He can consider the forming of spaces as
the real meaning of architecture.
There are many classic patterns which are identical no matter how one looks at
them. For example, in weaving the pattern on the other side is a negative
reproduction of the one on the right side. Steen compares it to cavities and
solids.
In Carli, when one stands, he not only experiences the cavity – the three aisled
temple hollowed out of rock but also the columns separating the aisles which
are part of rock that were not removed. Though, he begins by conceiving the
temple as composition of architectural cavities and ends by experiencing the
bodies of the columns.
He talks about the extraordinary transition from Gothic love of construction to
Renaissance cultivation of cavities which can still be experienced.
After a building is completed, it is impossible to form any idea how the building
was made. What one experiences is a rich composition of regular cavities:
circular/rectangular courts, stairways, round/square rooms with type of walls.
According to the author, the contrasting effects between solids and cavities
can play a major role in changing the perspective of a spectator. All the
monuments, buildings, houses listed above are such examples which have
changed the view of the observer.
 CHAPTER 3
Contrasting Effects of Solids and Cavities

The author in Chapter III talks about the contrasting effects of solids and
cavities. He gives examples from various buildings in Rome and explains how
the buildings have contrasting elements, how each building is unique in its own
way and how the material used can also add contrast to a building.
He talks about the city gateway southeast of S.Peter’s in Rome – Porta di Santo
Spirito, by Atonio da Sangallo. It is entirely composed of familiar elements: a
vaulted archway in a framework of columns and niches. But, these old
elements appear in a new and sublime form, amazingly whole and impressive.
Half-columns are of equal simplicity which are emphasized by curves at their
bases. The gateway wasn’t finished ever but one does not feel anything is
lacking from it. The most striking part about the monument is that without
ornaments; it has only bold, clear-cut mouldings which outline the main form
at decisive points and emphasize important lines by the dark shadows they
cast. It represents harmony and balance.
Steen further tells about The Porta Pia designed by Michelangelo. The most
bizarre details are crowded together in fantastic combinations: hard against
soft, light, projecting bodies set in deep, dark recesses. This gateway seems to
be deliberately restless like an effort to create an architecture that was felt to
be dramatic.
A period of rigorously correct architecture is often followed by one in which
the buildings deviate from accepted canons. An architect needs to employ
forms and combinations of forms if he wants his building to be an experience
for other. Employing familiar forms with eccentric turn will take the spectator
by surprise and force him to regard the work more closely.
Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne in Rome is another example. It stands in a broad
street. It was not like this before. The street was widened to its present width
in 1876. There are blocks indicated by dark hatchings and in between the
narrow streets form a weird, light pattern. Streets, squares, entrance courts
and church interiors, all are in white. Instead of arched entrance it has a deep,
murky cavity cut into solid block, a cavity that seems even darker behind pair
Of columns. The monument overall is a great piece showing contrasting effects
of cavities and solids.
Fontana di Trevi is a remarkable square in Rome. The narrow streets converge
into a lower, oblong piazza. The ground has been hollowed out to receive an
enormous stone basin which is filled with water. And in violent contrast to this
purely spatial composition the fountain’s architect has piled up a landscape of
rugged rock which clashes smooth-hewn stone of basin.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water in Pennsylvania is a building coming out of
fantasy. One does not expect light to be there while entering thought the
woods. But, it is a huge element of surprise when suddenly one sees light,
horizontal lines of the house in among the vertical trunks and leafy boughs of
the trees. It appears to be a composition of large concrete slabs cantilevered
out of a waterfall. He house is entirely composed of horizontal masses. It is a
good example of bringing architecture in harmony with nature. In order to
fulfill his desires, he creates a /mannerism of his own with accentuations,
recesses skillful contrasts between concave and convex forms, juxtapositions
of raw and refined materials.
The employment of masses and cavities together in effective contrasts leads to
works which lie in one of peripheries of architecture, close to the art of theater
and at times to that of sculpture.
There are problems being solved by utilizing visual effects and there are
architects who do their best in dramatic architecture of this kind.