Understanding Architecture Robert McCarter Juhani Pallasmaa PHAIDON.Intended both as an introductory text for students as well as an accessible read for a general audience, Understanding Architecture presents a new way of understanding and experiencing architecture. Organised into 12 chapters based on key architectural themes, this comprehensive primer offers a personal ‘field trip’ to 72 buildings from around the world and throughout history — from the Pyramids to the Sydney Opera House. Each chapter opens with an introductory essay and features six iconic and inspiring projects that illustrate the theme. Personal and engaging text leads the reader around each site, enabling them to experience the architecture as if they were there themselves. Clear architectural plans display a numbered route which follows the text and numerous images illustrate the projects’ key features to give an evocative and informative account of each location. Robert McCarter is a practicing architect and has been Ruth and Norman Moore Professor of Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis, since 2007. He taught previously at the University of Florida, where he was Director of the School of Architecture from 1991-2001, and Columbia University, among others. He has written for numerous international publications and his books include Louis J. Kahn (2005); On and By Frank Lloyd Wright: A Primer of Architectural Principles (2005); Frank Lloyd Wright (1997); Unity Temple (1997) and Fallingwater (1994), all by Phaidon Press. He is also the author of Wiel Arets: Auto- biographical References (2012); Frank Lloyd Wright: Critical Lives (2006); and William Morgan: Selected and Current Work (2002). Juhani Pallasmaa is a practicing architect and Professor Emeritus of the Helsinki University of Technology. He has held several visiting professorships at institutions such as Washington University in St. Louis (1999-2004), University of Virginia (2002) and Yale University (1993). He has also been Director of the Museum of Finnish Architecture (1978-83) and Rector of the Institute of Industrial Arts, Helsinki (1972-74). He has published over thirty books including Encounters 1 (2005) and Encounters 2 (2012); The Embodied Image (2011); The Thinking Hand (2009); The Eyes of the Skin (2005, 2007 and 2012); The Architecture of Image (2001, 2007), and Animal Architecture (1995).Understanding Architecture A Primer on Architecture as Experience016 020 024 028 032 042 052 066 070 074 078 086 092 100 104 110 114 122 126 130 136 140 144 148 156 160 166 170 174 178 182 188 192 196 200 204 208 Introduction: Architecture as Experience Space — Existential and Architectural Space The Pantheon, Rome, Italy Piazza del Campo, Siena, Italy Santo Spirito, Florence, Italy, Filippo Brunelleschi Unity Temple, Oak Park, Illinois, USA, Frank Lloyd Wright Chapel of Notre-Dame-du-Haut, Ronchamp, France, Le Corbusier Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral, Los Angeles, California, USA, Rafael Moneo Time — The Space of Time Theatre, Epidaurus, Greece Palace, Fatehpur Sikri, India Soane House, London, UK, Sir John Soane Castelvecchio Museum, Verona, Italy, Carlo Scarpa Myyrmaki Church, Vantaa, Finland, Juha Leiviska Church on the Water, Hokkaido, Japan, Tadao Ando Matter — Matter, Hapticity and Time Temples of Amon-Ra and Khonsu, Karnak, Egypt Santa Maria dei Miracoli, Venice, Italy, Pietro Lombardo Post Office Savings Bank, Vienna, Austria, Otto Wagner Barcelona Pavilion, Barcelona, Spain, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Law Courts Extension, Gothenburg, Sweden, Erik Gunnar Asplund Saint Petri Church, Klippan, Sweden, Sigurd Lewerentz Gravity — Force, Form and Structure Baths of Caracalla, Rome, Italy Church of Saint Front, Périgueux, France Maison de Verre, Paris, France, Pierre Chareau Exeter Academy Library, Exeter, New Hampshire, USA, Louis Kahn The Menil Collection Exhibition Bt ig, Houston, Texas, USA, Renzo Thermal Baths, Vals, Switzerland, Peter Zumthor Light — Materiality and Tactility of Light Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey, Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus Chartres Cathedral, Chartres, France San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Rome, Italy, Francesco Borromi Benedictine Abbey Church, Neresheim, Germany, Balthasar Neumann Church of the Three Crosses, Imatra, Finland, Alvar Aalto Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, USA, Louis Kahn Silence — The Silent Voice of Architecture The Pyramids, Giza, Egypt Temples, Paestum, Italy Uxmal, Yucatan, Mexico Cloister, Santa Maria della Pace, Rome, Italy, Donato Bramante Chapel and Convent of the Capuchinas, Mexico City, Mexico, Luis Barragan Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California, USA, Louis Kahn214 222 226 230 236 242 248 252 260 264 268 272 276 280 286 294 298 304 308 314 320 326 334 338 344 352 358 362 370 374 380 384 390 396 400 408 414 418 424 442 Dwelling — Architecture, Dwelling and Home Dogon Village, Bandiagara, Mali, West Africa Roman Atrium House, Pompeii, Italy Villa Rotonda, Vicenza, Italy, Andrea Palladio Dar Martin House, Buffalo, New York, USA, Frank Lloyd Wright Villa Mairea, Noormarkku, Finland, Alvar Aalto Simpson-Lee House, Mount Wilson, NSW, Australia, Glenn Murcutt Room — The Rooms of Memory Laurentian Library, Florence, Italy, Michelangelo Bit théque N: nale, Paris, France, Henri Labrouste American Bar, Vienna, Austria, Adolf Loos Schréder House, Utrecht, The Netherlands, Gerrit Rietveld |, Racine, Wiscons USA, Frank Lloyd Wright Chapel of Saint Ignatius, Seattle, Washington, USA, Steven Holl Ritual — The Form of Ritual Markets of Trajan, Rome, Italy, Apollodorus Ise Shrines, Nagoya, Japan Certosa di Firenze, Florence, Italy Sagrada Familia Cathedral, Barcelona, Spain, Antoni Gaudi Grand Central Terminal, New York City, USA, Warren and Wetmore Villa Savoye, Poissy, France, Le Corbusier Memory — Memory and the Lifeworld Palace at Knossos, Crete, Greece The Alhambra, Granada, Sp: Chapel of the Holy Shroud, Turin, Italy, Guarino Guarini Resurrection Chapel, Municipal Cemetery, Turku, Finland, Erik Bryggman. Brion Cemetery, San Vito d’Altivole, Italy, Carlo Scarpa American Folk Art Museum, New York City, USA, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien Landscape — The internalized Landscape Hadrian’s Villa, Tivoli, Italy Katsura Imperial Villa, Kyoto, Japan The University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, Thomas Jefferson Woodland Cemetery, Stockholm, Sweden, Erik Gunnar Asplund and Sigurd Lewerentz Fallingwater, Mill Run, Pennsylvania, USA, Frank Lloyd Wright ‘Swimming Pools on the Sea, Lega da Palmeira, Portugal, Alvaro Place — The Power of Place The Acropolis, Athens, Greece, Ictinus and Callicrates; landscape, Dimitris Pikionis Piazza del Campidoglio, Rome, Italy, Michelangelo ‘Saynatsalo Town Hall, Saynatsalo, Jyvaskyla, Finland, Alvar Aalto Municipal Orphanage, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Aldo van Eyck ‘Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia, Jorn Utzon Renovations and Additions to Monte Carasso, Ticino, Switzerland, Luigi Snozzi FootnotesArchitecture as Experience By common consent, the Parthenon is a great work of art. Yet it has aesthetic standing only as the work becomes an experience for a human being ... Artis always the product in experience of an interaction of human beings with their environ- ment. Architecture is a notable instance of the reciprocity of the results in this interaction ‘The reshaping of subsequent experience by architectural works ismore direct and more extensive than in the case of any other art... ‘They not only influence the future, but they record and convey the past.! John Dewey‘This primer on architecture takes as its starting point the premise that architecture cannot be evaluated or understood without our experience of it. Understanding architecture does not require specialized knowledge or skills, but rather begins in the everyday experiences of inhabitation. Our experience is both the most important and the most appropriate means of evaluating architecture. Architecture has meaning, and matters tous only when it is experienced, when all our senses are simultaneously engaged in its inhabitation, and when it provides the settings in which the acts and rituals of daily life take place. Architecture that endures in human history and in the memory of its occupants is inspired by, grounded in and shaped to human experience. Architecture that engages our senses and shapes our experience draws us near, rewards our repeated encounter and only reveals its full character incrementally, over time. ‘The Finnish architect Alvar Aaltostated, ‘Itis not what a building looks like on its opening day, but what it is like thirty years later that matters.” On the other hand, buildings that engage only a single sense insolation — today typically vision — are not experienced in the same profound and moving manner, but rather become a spectacle whose novelty is exhausted in an initial visit, or on first viewing a photograph. We live in a time dominated by images, a time when what a building looks like’ is often all that matters in our evaluation of architecture. We feel we ‘know’ architecture and the places it makes, both old and new, through the photographs we see in magazines, books and online, without ever inhabiting their spaces. The Viennese philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein stated, Ethics and aesthetics are one,” and this dominant focus on architecture's exterior appearance over its interior spatial experi- ence as a primary means of evaluation reveals an inversion of the ethical ideal that internal values are more important than external appearances. Today, has become necessary to restate what would appear to be obvious: the experience of inhabitation is the only valid means of evaluating a work of architecture. Architecture as experience does not have to do with what a building looks like, but rather with how it engages the landscape,climate and light of its place; howits spaces are ordered to appropriately house the activities that take place within them; how it is built, how it is structured and of what materials itis ‘mace; that is to say, how all these affect what the building is like to be in — the experience of those who inhabit it.In this.itisimportant to recognize that architecture is not generally the object of our focused attention, but rather, as the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright noted, architecture is the ‘background or framework’ for daily life its spaces and forms determined by the ‘comfort and use’ of its inhabit- ants: Yet this seemingly humble definition should not lead us to underestimate the power of architecture. Through giving us a place in the world, architecture is, fundamental to the establishment of our sense of existence and identity. As the American philosopher John Dewey wrote, architecture allows man to feel ‘at home, since he is in a world that he has participated in making’. In this way, architecture defends the authenticity of human experience. ‘The interpretation of architecture presented here originates in our understanding of inhabitation and experience as non-static events. Henri Bergson, the French philosopher, wrote,'We attribute to motion the divisibility of the space which it traverses, forgetting that it is quite possible to divide an object, but not an act.” Rather than the static moment repre- sented ina photograph, people inhabit architecture with their entire body, through movement, memory and imagination. Space and material, light and shadow, sound and texture, the heavens and horizon are woven together in our experience to become the responsive setting for our daily lives. As Dewey noted,"We are accustomed to think of physical objects as having bounded edges ...Then we unconsciously carry over this belief in the bounded character of all objects of experience ... into our conception of experience itself. We suppose the experience has the same definite limits as the things with which itis concerned. But any experience the ‘most ordinary, has an indefinite total setting.” Memorable architecture involves an embodied experience, determined by the reach and grasp of our hand, the touch of our fingers, the feeling of heat and cold on our skin, the sounds of our footsteps, the stance we have taken and the position of our eye. And our eye is never fixed and focused only on one point,as is suggested by the photographs of buildings’ More powerful than focused vision in our everyday experience is peripheral vision, with which we navigate through space and perceive the constantly moving horizon. As the American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, ‘People forget that itis the eye that makes the horizon.” Architecture that endures engages the embodied experience, involving all our senses acting in concert, including the haptic sense of bodily position, balance and movement. The American architect Louis Sullivan noted, "It is that perfect concrete analysis by the senses and the sympathies which serves as a basis for the abstract analyses of the intellect.” ‘The binding of space and sensorial experience — embodied experience — comes through the agency of the particular materials used to build a work of architecture. The buildings we remember are those that provide us with more than an image by enclosing ‘Architecture as Experienceusin spaces that engage all our senses simultaneously. Memorable works of architecture can be visited not once but many times, even every day,as they allow as many different experiences as there are times of day, seasons of the year, varieties of activities taking place within them and people visiting them. ‘The experience of a memorable building is to a great degree characterized by the marks of its making: the joints, patterns, textures and colours of its materials and the various methods employed in its construction —what the American architect Louis Kahn called, the marks that reveal how a thing was done’.'° In this we recognize the craft, the work of others’ hands that went into the making of this place, andit is important to recall that, even today, with digital construction management and component fabrication, architecture continues to be almost entirely built by hand — and built places continue to be confronted and inhabited in a haptic and embodied manner. Upon becoming dean of the Institute of Architecture at the University of Venice in the early 1970s, the Italian architect Carlo Scarpa had carved above the entry of the school and inscribed on its diplomas a phrase of the early eighteenth-century Venetian philosopher Giambattista Vico: Verum Ipsum Factum. For Vico, this phrase, which we may translate as ‘we can only know what human beings have made’, meant that human beings can only learn from the history they themselves have made, from the places, works and writings made by other human beings throughout time. This book shares in this belief that the architecture we build, as Dewey noted above, shapes us through our experience of it, changing the future even asit stands as the most telling record of the present in which it was made. In 1894, at the dawn of the modern era, the German architectural theorist August Schmarsow stated that the history of architecture had been entirely determined by the evolution of man’s ability to perceive space. That same year the French poet Paul Valéry wrote, What we call space is relative to the existence of whatever structures we may choose to conceive. The architectural structure interprets space, and leads to hypotheses on the nature of space. This tension between architecture being defined by what we can perceive, and what we can perceive being continually redefined by the architecture we imagine, is fundamental to understanding architecture asexperience. Architecture only exists in the lived experience, and thinking about architecture has to be grounded in the personal encounter with the work in question. ‘The meaning of a work of architecture, which can ‘move us to tears, does not lie in the material structure itself or the geometric and compositional intricacies of the work: rather it arises from the encounter of the viewer's body and mind with the physical and mental reality of the building. The experiential encounter is the opposite of detached observation from outside; it is a complete fusion of our setting and our selves. Earlier experiences and memories fuse into the mental reality of this encounter, and we complete the work presented by the architect, as it were, making it our own. We settle into the space, and the space dwells in us,architecture becomes part of us and we become part oft. A profound work of architecture does not remain outside us as a separate object; we live and experience ourselves through the work, and it guides, directs and conditions the way we understand ourselves to be in the world. Architecture does not direct or channel our experience of it, and it does not lead us to a singular interpretation. Rather, architecture offers us an open field of possibilities, and it stimulates and emancipates our perceptions, associations, feelings and thoughts. A meaningful building does not propose anything specific:it inspires us to see, sense, feel and think our- selves. Great architectural works sharpen our senses, open our perceptions and make us receptive to the realities of the world. The real purpose of architecture is not to create aestheticized objects or spaces, but to provide frames, horizons and settings for experiencing, and understanding the world and, finally, ourselves. Architectural experiences are born of,and give rise to, actions, acts and activities. The window frame is not a primary architectural image; the way the window frames a view, allows light to enter and articulates the interplay of interior and exterior spaces, turns it into a genuine architectural experience. Similarly, the richness of the design of a door as a physical object merely offers visual beauty, whereas the act of entering through the doorway, the crossing of the boundary between two worlds—outside and inside, public and private, known and unknown, darkness and light — is an embodied, emotional experience that releases architectural meaning. The acts of entering and exiting are experiences of the deepest metaphysical meaning in architecture. In these simple but profound acts of arriving and departing, we understand how the emergence of meaning in architecture is intimately and inextricably bound up with experience. The experience of architecture is transformative, fusing temporal dimensions and reconnecting us with layers of deep forgotten memories The architec- tural experience is not just a visual or sensorial encounter; a great work engages our entire being, altering our existential sense —our very sense of self—changing both the world and us. This transform- ative power of an authentic work of architecture does not arise from a symbolizing link between the building as representation and an intended contentor meaning. Architecture isa reality in its own. right and enters our consciousness directly as we experience it. This experience is not mediated through symbolization; it is lived as a direct existential encounter —an intimate presentation of meaning, in the embodied experience of the work, rather than the distanced representation involved in symbolism. In great architecture, meaning is not something that arises from outside the work, to which we are referred by an applied symbol; architectural meaning is ‘inherent in immediate experience’,as Dewey has noted,” and is directly responsible for the impact, quality and permanence of the work. Finally, to be understood, architecture must be experienced — it cannot be grasped through any purely intellectual engagement. Dewey noted, In ‘common conception, the work of artis often identified with the building ... in its existence apart from human experience. Since the actual work of art is what the product does with and in experience, the result is not favorable to understanding ... When artistic objects are separated from both conditions of origin and operation in experience, a wall is built around them that renders almost opaque their general, significance!" Dewey separates ‘experience’ and ‘understanding’, stating that when a work of architecture is detached from the reality of experience, its very meaning and significance are lost. Architecture as experience, on the other hand, is an intimate, deeply engaging event, leading not so much 1g as to a sense of wonder.‘Revelation in artis the quickened expansion of experience. Philosophy is said to begin in wonder and end in understanding. Art departs from what has been understood and endsin wonder." This book introduces general themes and specific examples of architecture, both of which are presented in experiential terms directly related to our everyday inhabitation of buildings. The text is structured by a series of twelve primary themes of architecture, each introduced by a major essay that situates the architectural principle within the larger cultural and intellectual context of ideas and experiences, These themes are intended to be engaged as six pairs, Space and Time, Matter and Gravity, Light and Silence, Dwelling and Room, Ritual and Memory,and Landscape and Place. Each of these twelve essays is followed by six building examples, selected from around the world and throughout time, to indicate both the specificity of place and the universality of experience. These seventy-two building descriptions are written so as to allow the reader to feel as if they are ‘walking through” and inhabiting the spaces, experiencing architecture ints full phenomenological range, from its all- encompassing sense of place to its materiality and - most subtly nuanced detail. Itis important to note that any of these seventy-two buildings could be placed in any—orall—of the twelve themes, for they all engage the entire range of experiential qualities. All profound works of architecture are complete and integrated worlds in their own right. Experience constitutes the fundamental founda- tion for architecture, and the twelve themes we have chosen are unified within and through our experience of works of architecture. Together the essays and building descriptions are intended to allow the reader to perceive the manifold ways in which architecture, around the world and throughout time, from the dawn of recorded history to today, has been conceived and constructed to embody our common experience as human beings, dwelling on the earth, under the sky, in places that form one of the primary bases of both our individual and collective identity. A primary inspiration for this book is the 1934 publication Art as Experience by John Dewey. For Dewey, when we experience a poem, a painting, apiece of music or a building, we take it in, we make it our own, and it becomes part of our interior world, changing us even as we change it. For Dewey, awork of art or architecture does not exist except through our experience. In the writing of this book, Dewey’s definition has been paralleled by what George Steiner called ‘the criticism of persuasion’, an insight that emerges as the result of a powerful, transformative experience of place that one has undergone, the quality and beauty of which one feels compelled to communicate to others, in the hope that they too will inhabit and experience this place, and undergo the same experience. As Steiner says, “In this attempt at persuasion originate the truest insights criticism can afford.”’ But such a transform- ative experience only comes from being there, ‘in the flesh’. It follows that readers should not feel satisfied that they ‘know’ these astonishing works of architecture, much less architecture in general, based solely on what they find in this book. If, when they are finished reading, our readers feel compelled to experience these places, to inhabit them with their feet, hands, ears and eyes—with their entire embodied awareness—we will have succeeded. Architecture as ExperienceTime Matter Gravity Light Silence Dwelling Room Ritual Memory Landscape PlaceSpace[Gravity PLight poilence eth Itis as though space, cognizant... of ts inferiority to time, answers it with the only time doesn’t possess: with beauty.? Joseph BrodskyExistential and Architectural Space Space is the most fundamental architectural concept, and architecture is usually regarded primarily as the construction of humanly meaningful spaces and the art of articulating expressive space. In his influential history, Architecture as Space,the Italian architectural historian Bruno Zevi argues that space is the essential constituent of architecture, and he accepts only constructions that deliberately deploy internal space as an artistically expressive medium to be included in the category of architecture. Internal space... [which] cannot be completely represented in any form, [but] can be grasped and felt only through direct experience, is the protagonist of architecture‘, The history of architecture is primarily the history of spatial conceptions. Judgement of architecture is fundamentally judgement of the internal space of buildings. If, because of its lack of interior space... the structure of building... falls outside the history of architecture ....* The notion of space is equally fundamental in all other forms of art,in the science of physics and in the biological world too, from territoriality among animals to the spatial behaviour of humans* Both animal and human behav- iours utilize elaborate mechanisms of spatial monitoring, response and organization that mostly operate subliminally. Even languages are fundamentally grounded on references to spatial situations and relations, through the use of spatial and embodied metaphors.’ We perceive, under- stand and describe our experiential world regarding ourselves as the point of reference and centre. Inarchitecture, space is not merely amedium of guiding behaviour; it is also an intentional means of mental and artistic communication, and an object of aesthetic articulation. Architectural space mediates between the world at large and the human domain, the physical and the mental, the material and the spiritual. Architecture’s task is to provide our domicile in natural space. Architecture creates horizons and frames of reference for the perception and understanding of the world. It is true that architecture always arises from a distinct purpose and use; the function of a building may be purely utilitarian, or purely ritual and symbolic, yet it always serves a specific intention. But in addition to its utilitarian purposes, architecture has a significant existential and mental task; man-made structures domesticate space for human occupation by turning anonymous, uniform and limitless natural space into distinct places of human significance. Equally importantly, they make endless time tolerable by giving duration its human measure. As philosopher Karsten Harries argues,’Architecture helps to " Space1 Space and territoriality. The normal Spacing that non-contact animals. jintain in elation to other individuals is 'd personal aistance. This is one of ‘many intrinsic mechanisms of spatial u behaviour in animal and human lite replace meaningless reality with a theatrically, or rather architec- turally, transformed reality, which draws us in and, as we surrender toit, grants us an illusion of meaning... we cannot live with chaos. Chaos must be transformed into cosmos... When we reduce the human need for shelter toa material need, we lose sight of what we can call the ethical function of architecture.”* Or, as Gaston Bachelard has stated, *{The house] is an instrument with which to confront the cosmos’. At the same time, the abstract and indefinable notion of cosmos is always somehow present and represented in architecture and the human landscape. Landscapes and buildings are thus condensed worlds microcosmic represen- tations — and, consequently, the space built for human habitation is always also metaphorical space. Of course, if we thus define architecture as the art of making humanly purposeful and meaning- 2 ‘Architecture without internal space. Khaznet Firaun, or the Treasure Chamber of the Pharaoh, also called the Urn House. Petra, Jordan. The architectural structure ‘carved into a rock face is believed to originate from the time of Jesus Christ in Bruno Zev''s view, interior space is foundational for architecture, and his distinction would leave architectural Structures like Khaznet Firaun outside the concept of architecture. ful spaces, we have to acknowledge that we also perceive natural surroundings as spatial configu- rations and entities. The space of a cave, an open field,a desert or an ‘ocean can all provide powerful spatial experiences. But frequently wwe experience the physical space in which we exist as incompre- hensible and immeasurable. We strive to structure and articulate it to resonate with our measures, and to give it specific mental and cultural meaning. This creation of architectural space is accomplished through the manipulation of mass, geometry, structure, materiality scale, rhythm and light. Architectural space may be static or dynamic, geometric or sculpted, closed or open, centripetal or centrifugal, uniform or complex. The prevailing world view of a historical era has been shown to find its expression in the spatial structures and qualities of the era. Geometry is the most evident and explicit means of differentiating 3 ‘Space visualized as ts negative; a solid, impenetrable volume. The reversal of the ‘oid space into a solid mass renders it ‘almost experientially incomprehens Rachel Whiteread, House, 1993. cultural space from natural space, and giving it intentional cultural and mental definitions, character- istics and significations. Since ancient times, architecture has aspired to connect the human world with the principles of the universe through the use of geometrical constructions and proportions in order to create resonance between the worlds of divinity and mortality. ‘There was a continuous tradi tion from antiquity that regarded arithmetic (the study of numbers), geometry (the study of spatial relationships), astronomy (the study of the motion of celestial bodies),and music (the study of the motions apprehended by the ear) as the quadrivium of the math- ematical arts, whereas painting, sculpture and architecture were regarded as manual occupations. In order to raise them from the level of the mechanical to that of the mathematical arts, they had to be given a firm theoretical, ie.4 ‘Spatial complexity of a Bavarian Baroque ‘space. The total spatial image of the interpenetrating spatial units cannot be ‘unambiguously perceived or determined. Balthasar Neumann, Vierzehnhelligen, Church, Kronach (1743-1772). mathematical, foundation - something that was to be found in musical theory.” Referring to Pythagoras, the Renaissance archi- tect and theorist Leon Battista Alberti stated,“The numbers by means of which the agreement of sounds affects our ears with delight, are the very same which please our eyes and our minds. ‘We shall therefore borrow all our rules for harmonic relations from the musicians to whom this kind of numbers is extremely well known." Following these ideals of proportional harmony, archi- tectural spaces were proportioned in accordance with musical conso- nances, ie. based on the simple relation of whole numbers. ‘The two principal ideals of proportion in the history of architecture are the Pythagorean harmonies and the Golden Section or Divina Proportione,which both originate in ancient Greek culture and were reintroduced in the Renaissance. As Rudolf Wittkower 5 Proportional harmony has been regarded ‘as ameans to bring architectural Structures in resonance with cosmic dimensions and man himsolt. Leonardo da Vinci, Vitruvian Man, .1490, Accademia, Venice. has asserted,"The belief in the correspondence of microcosm and macrocosm, in the harmonic struc- ture of the universe, in the compre- hension of God through the mathematical symbols of centre, circle and sphere—all those closely related ideas which had their roots in antiquity and belonged to the undisputed tenets of medieval philosophy and theology, acquired new life in the Renaissance ...”” In this tradition, architectural space was thought of as an objective, geometric and definite space, a kind of negative solid, or an absent volume, or else as a distinctly defined, enclosed and usually geometricized room. However, the understanding of space varies historically and culturally. Even within the history of Western architecture, the concepts of space have differed dramatically through history: space has been conceived as static or dynamic, vertical or horizontal, continuous or discontinuous, 6 Le Corbusier, Modulor, 1948 Le Corbusierintroduced the use of the Golden Section, or Divina Proportione, Inmodern architecture, The architect's system of proportions and measures is based on this proportionalidea that ready known by the Greeks but was, re-introduced in Renaissance time by da Vines friend, Luca Paciol, and the assumed basic measures of the 18 e a Es somes a re singular or complex. The develop- ment of new structural principles and materials of construction in modern times have permitted an increasing transparency and continuity of space,as exemplified by the dynamic spatiality of Mies van der Rohe’s unbuilt project for Brick Country House (1924) and the Barcelona Pavilion (1929), both of which extend interior space outwards and fuse it with exterior space. In opposition to the Western tendency to understand space as an immaterial, negative shape, the Japanese concept of space, Ma, regards space as an interval between things and events, and does not make a categorical separa- tion between outdoors and indoors. Modernism introduced the concept of continuous, flowing space that articulates space as a dynamic movement, developing from one spatial situation to the next, instead of creating separate and static spatial entities and rooms.At the beginning of the6 Cubism had a decisive impacton the development of the modern space-time ‘concept that also changed ideas of architectural space and lead tothe view Of architecture as a dynamic interaction of spaces, volumes, surf ‘and colours. Georges Braque, {2 Guitar, 1941, ollon canvas, + ‘The Museum of Modern Art, New York. twentieth century, modern theories of architecture and art finally unified the notions of space and time into the dynamic concept of space-time, which regards space asa field of relationships, movements, events and meanings rather than an enclosed, static and negative spatial form. ‘Around the same time, new and complex ways of thinking about our relationship to space were coming out of philosophy as well. Common understanding also tends to regard space as a dimen- sion entirely outside the observer, as if we were living ona stage. But by the mid twentieth century Martin Heidegger would argue that, in fact, the opposite is true, stating, When we speak of man and space, it sounds as though man stood on one side, space on the other. Yet space is not something that faces man. Itis neither an external object nor an inner experience. Itis not that there are men,and over and above them 7 Neo-plasticism aspired to break open the closed volume of space and create rhythmic spatial continuum. Neo- Blastieistideas were applied from the Scale of painting to furniture design, architecture and pl Doesburg, Spatial House project, 1923, Rijkdienst Beeldende Kunst, La Haye space ...” As we enter an architectural space, an immediate unconscious projection, identifi- cation and exchange takes place; wwe occupy the space and the space settles in us. We grasp the space through our senses and we measure it with our bodies and movements. We project our body scheme, personal memories and meanings into the space; the space extends the experience of our bodies beyond our skin, and the physical space and our mental spaces fuse with each other. In accordance with the phenomenological understanding, space and mind merge, mingle or intertwine ‘chiasmatically’, to use a notion of Maurice Merleau-Ponty." ‘We do not live in an objectively given world of matter and facts, as commonplace “naive realism’ tends to assume. The characteristically human mode of existence takes place in the worlds of possibilities, moulded by the human capacities of remembrance and imagination. We occupy existential worlds,in which the material and the spiritual, as well as the experienced, remem- bered and imagined, keep fusing into each other. In this lived experience, memory and actuality, perception and dream, merge. This intertwining and identification of the physical and mental also takes place inall architectural experi- ences. Here lies the ethical power ofall profound architectural spaces; we internalize and integrate them with our very sense ofself.A fine piece of music, poetry or architecture becomes part of our physical and moral self, and it guides usto confront our own existence with heightened sensitivity and meaningfulness. Be like me’ is the moral command of a work of art, according to the poet Joseph Brodsky.® Lived reality does not follow the rules of space and time as defined and measured by the science of physics. In fact, the lived world is closer to a dream than to8 During the 1920s, architecture began to break out of the restricting image ofa closed volume, symmetry, and frontality ‘towards the idea of continuous space ‘experienced through movement and. minimizing the differentiation of outside ‘and inside. Mies van der Rohe, Brick Country House, unexecuted project, 1923. any scientific description. In order to distinguish lived space from physical and geometrical space, itcan be called existential space. Existential space is lived and structured on the basis of meanings, intentions and values reflected upon it by an individual or a group, both consciously and uncon- sciously; existential space is always ‘unique situational space interpreted through the person’s memory and intentionality. Every lived experience takes place at the interface of recollection and intention, perception and fantasy, memory and desire. In the words of Maurice Merleau-Ponty,‘we live in the “flesh of the world”,*and landscapes and architecture structure and articulate this existential flesh by giving it specific horizons and meanings. The lived space is also the object and context of both the making and experiencing of architecture, not geometric or physical space. Profound artistic and architectural works always project a lived reality,not mere pictures or symbolic representations of life. As the great modern sculptor Constantin Brancusi states,‘Art must give suddenly, all at once the shock of life, the sensation of breathing” Spaces are usually understood in purely visual terms, but real lived spaces are always experi- enced in a multi-sensory manner: in addition to their visual character- istic, spaces have their auditive, tactile and olfactory qualities and certain architectural materials or forms can even evoke sensations of taste; Adrian Stokes writes about “the oral invitation of Veronese marble’."*The experience of architectural space or situation is not merely an additive experience, either. As Merleau-Ponty describes, “My perception is... not asum of visual, tactile, and audible givens: I perceive in a total way with my whole being: I grasp a unique struc- ture of the thing,a unique way of being, which speaks to all my senses at once.” The sensory experience of space normally arises from visual boundaries, light and shadow, butalso the echo ofa space,as well as the haptic and olfactory qualities that contribute greatly to the experiences of monumentality or intimacy, harshness or affability, rejection or invitation. Spatial experiences are perceptions of the body through its movement through space. Due to this fundamentally embodied nature of architectural experience, drawings and photographs can only provide shallow hints of the lived experience of any building. Inatrue experience of architecture, the context and the object, the distant and the near, the exterior and the interior, and the material and immaterial, are experienced as a perpetually interacting system of relationships. A profound architec- tural space projects characteristics of life, and space is experienced in an animistic manner. SpaceThe Pantheon, Rome Italy 117-27The Pantheon, built during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian to celebrate all the gods of the Roman Empire, is one of the most powerful embodiments of the conception of existential space ever constructed In the city that was the centre of the Roman universe, the Romans built a space that condensed their unde standing of their place in the world by joining the earth to the heavens, bringing the form of the human cosmos into presence, and placing man at its centre. Exemplifying the Roman art of space making, the Pantheon is primarily an interior experience, with its massive, cast concrete construction only a shell or mould, which was built solely to shape the space of inhabitation within. ‘As we approach the building, however, this great interior room and its thick-walled brick and concrete encasement—the cylindrical exterior of which is marked with the series of relieving arches that direct the enormous weight of the structure to the ground — are not readily apparent, and would indeed have been entirely hidden in Roman times. @ Instead, we face large rectangular temple structure formed by a line of eight monumental, 12-metre (40-foot) tall granite columns. Because it faces north, the sun only strikes, this front facade at the beginning and end of summer days, and itis usually dark and deeply shadowed. The columns support a solid stone pediment, its gabled roof edges rising to a high point at the centre, inviting us to move down the symmetrical axis beneath. Passing between the columns and out of the sunlight, wwe enter ashadowed space where three wide bays are formed by rows of red granite columns,and the widest, central bay leads to the massive bronze double doors. In the doorway, the space darkens even further asit simultaneously contracts, the walls closing in on either side and the ceiling coming down low over our head. @@ ' Stepping inside, the space suddenly expands, and we find ourselves standing at the edge of an enormous curving room, utterly unlike anything that had existed in the world before this time.“The shape of the space was the shape of a perfect circle as the base of a perfect sphere, the circle of the Empire's horizon under the dome of its firmament. It was a space bounded, clear, complete, all-encompassing, having power to both magnify and to diminish,’ as archaeologist Frank E. Brown has written The Pantheon has an entirely centralized plan, focusing on the centre, where the four primary axes (precisely aligned to the four cardinal directions of north, south, east and west) cross, and out of which rises the vertical axis—the axis of the world—that connects the earth to the sky, running from the floor up through the oculus, a large circular opening in the roof. ‘The perfect geometries of the circle and the square are employed throughout the Pantheon. 7 Space ‘The PantheonThe circular floor on which we stand is constructed of a square grid of granite bars, inset with marble and porphyry panels that alternate between a dark circle in a grey square frame and a white square in a dark square frame, with a circle at the centre of the floor. Near where we stand, the 6-metre (20-foot) thick cylindrical lower ws ted of concrete cast into inner and outer brick form-walls,is opened with seven deep niches or recesses (the entry doorway making eight), each with a pair of columns set within and supporting the lower cornice above. On each of the sections of solid wall between the recessed niches, a small columned temple front projects slightly into the space. This lower wall surface is covered with the same stones as the floor, set in similar circle and square patterns. Above this, the cylindrical wall becomes less perforated, and carries a pattern of thin porphyry pilasters and shallow openings just beneath the cornice, a shadowed horizon line of projecting stone that circles the space at the bottom of the hemispherical dome. © A sphere of the diameter of 43 metres(142 feet or 150 Roman feet) can be precisely inscribed within the dome of the upper half of the room, and ifits lower half were completed, it would just touch the floor. To support this unprecedented span, the builders used lightweight volcanic pumice as the aggregate in the concrete of the dome, in contrast to the massivecylindrical walls, where they used heavier and stronger travertine and tufa, the local limestone. In contrast to the varied colours and forms that characterize the walls below, the interior surface of the dome is more pure, and the even, pale grey of its smooth plaster sur- face emphasizes the shadows cast upon it. The interior surface of the dome is structured by the horizontal and vertical lines of the square coffering, composed of aseries of inset recessed square frames,and angled such that they appear to rise higher above the floor than is actually the case. The square coffering of the dome, being set in a dynamic, ever-changing arc. complements the square stones of the floor below, which are set in a static grid. The grid of the coffering arcs inwards and gradually diminishes as it rises towards the oculus, an enormous, 8-metre (27-foot) wide, 1.5-metre (5-foot) deep circular opening at the roof, through which we can see the blue of the sky and the outlines of passing clouds. Through this oculus, the light of the sky dimly illuminates the space with a general diffuse glow. The typically abundant direct rays of the sun stream into the room, creating in the shadowed interior a spot of brilliant light, the movements of which allow the inhabitants to perceive the time of day and the season of the year. @ As the day progresses, the oval of sunlight moves down the grey coffered dome, along the marbled walls, slowly sweeping across the coloured stone floor, and then back up the walls and dome, finally disappearing as the sun passes below the horizon, leaving only the faint light of dusk in the space. Even more mysterious is the experience of heavy rain in the Pantheon, when the space is only faintly illuminated, and what little light there is, appears to flow in with the rain asit pours through the oculus, forming a light-filled column of water that falls into the centre of the room, disappearing into the small drains provided in the pavement, briefly forming a diaphanous connection of earth to sky. 0 Space ‘ThePantheonSiena‘The medieval Piazza del Campo is considered by many to be the world’s most beautiful outdoor public space. Built upon the foundations of an ancient Roman theatre, this living room for the citizens of Siena was established by a building law of 1262, regulating the heights, building line and window designs of the structures fronting onto the space. Praised by Dante in his Divina Commedia, and site for the annual Palio horse races to this day, the Piazza del Campo is a remarkable achievement for a small municipality, which only had a population of 12,500 in the fourteenth century, when the piazza was completed, and is indicative of the critically important part public space played in the life of the citizens of this medieval city. The perfect preservation of this piazza in the almost eight centuries since its formation, and the international recognition it receives today, both indicate the fundamental human need for such outdoor public spaces to be part of our experiences of daily urban life. The city of Siena is built upon three ridges that come together at the site of the Piazza del Campo, which is terraced into the existing topography, ‘occupying the top of a valley between the southeast and southwest ridges. When approaching the Campo (Italian for ground or field), we first enter the ancient city gates, at the outer edges of the three ridges, and then move along the narrow shadowed streets that run along the tops of these ridges, follow- ing the gently undulating line of the natural landform. Above and to the north of the Campo, these ridge- top streets are gathered into a ingle semi-circular street that curves around from east to west, with seven narrow passageways leading down into the Campo, which, in contrastto the shadowed streets, is bathed in bright sunlight. @ We emerge into a harmonious shell-shaped open space, curving in a broad but slightly irregular semicircle from west to north to east, with an almost straight edge along the southeast side. The spac is wider than it is deep, and measures 145 by 96 metres (475 by 315 feet) —a precise three to two ratio.@ The walls of the buildings that front the space, while varying in their width, height, cornice line (overhanging clay tile roof or castle-like crenellations) and window type (rectangular or three-bayed pointed arches), never- theless together form a remarkably consistent fabri This is particularly evident in their masonry materials, proportions, window positioning and brown-painted wood shutters, the result of the ordinance establishing the public, shared nature of the piazza in the thirteenth century. While the Campo was the centre of civic life in the medieval city, we note that the largest opening along the curved edge of the space, containing a grand stair, leads to the nearby Piazza del Duomo, the centre of religious li at© Inthe Campo, the curving walls face towards the south, east and west, therefore receiving sunlight continuously throughout the day, while in contrast the walls of the buildings along the southeast edge, the city hall, the Palazzo Pubblico (1288-1309), and its tower, the Torre del Mangia (1338-1348), are almost entirely in shade. As a result, the shadow of the tower moves across the floor of the piazza over the course of the day. Within the Palazzo Pubblico, the Sala della Pace, the Hall of Peace, one of the most beautiful city council chambers in the world, is set 16 metres (53 feet) above the floor of the Campo, which it overlooks through four large, triple-bayed, double- columned, pointed-arched windows. In this room, where the civic deliberations of the city have taken place since medieval times, Ambrogio Lorenzetti 1338-40 painted a series of ethically themed frescos on the upper walls, depicting the Allegory of Good Government, The Effects of Good Government on the City Life, The Effects of Good Government in the Countryside and The Effects of Bad Government onthe City Life. @ [tis the floor of the Campo that is its most compelling and affective feature. As is appropriate to its name, the pavement of the Campo literally grounds the space, sloping ina very shallow half-cone shape from the curved upper edge down to the centre of the straight lower edge, where the taller centre section of the Palazzo Pubblico matches the height of the comice line of the buildings at the top of the space. All along the curved upper edges of the Campo, shops and restaurants are housed in the ground floor spaces and open out to the piazza, with tables and chairs set out into the space. A street-width section all around the outer edge of the Campo is paved in large rectangular grey paving stones, its inner edge lined with white stones—this is the space used each year by the Palio. Inside this perimeter paving, the largest part of the piazza is laid out in nine fan-shaped segments, wide at the top along the curved wall and narrowing toa point as they slope down to the Palazzo Pubblico, where a drain is opened to collect the rainwater. @ Each fan-shaped section is paved in reddish-brown brick set in a herringbone or chevron pattern, running across the slope, and the fan-shaped sections are separated by narrow lines of grey paving stones that run down the slope, from the top to the bottom of the piazza. Inhabiting this broad, gently sloping brick surface, we find it more comfortable to sit than to stand. Sitting and facing downhill, we find ourselves oriented more towards the other people gathered in the space rather than to any particular focal point. This is due to the uniformity of the enclosing walls, the off-centre position of the Torre del Mangia, and the fact that the facade of the Palazzo Pubblico marches across thespace ina steady even rhythm, with no central entry at its base. In our haptic, bodily response to the incline of the slope, and in the distant downhill views that open to either side of the Palazzo Pubblico, we sense the way in which the landform of the natural topography is still present in our experience, here at the centre of this most urban of places.Santo Spirito, Florence Italy 1428-36 Filippo BrunelleschiThe church of Santo Spirito in Florence epitomizes the Renaissance desire to construct space that is idealized through its proportional perfection. In this church, Brunelleschi employed a rigorous geometric order that was intended to connect and relate the work of humankind to the larger order of the universe. In adapting and transforming the architectural forms, spaces and structures he had found in his studies of the ruins of ancient Rome, Brunelleschi was able to forge relations between his contemporary designs and the works of his predecessors. The exterior of Santo Spirito was not completed according to Brunelleschi’s designs, but in approaching the building we can appreciate his careful positioning of the church at the end of its piazza, and his elevation of the church above the surrounding ground level on, the broad entry terrace, reached by a wide set of stairs. Entering the church, we find ourselves in what can perhaps best be described asa forest of elegant green-grey stone columns—made of pietra serena, the local limestone—each topped by its capital of stylized acanthus leaves, which march forward in rows to the left and right, leading the eye to the brightly lit crossing and dome ahead Standing here, we gradually sense that the space of the church, and all the surfaces and structures that, formit,is ordered by a repeating spatial and structural module. The module is established by the distance between the centres of the columns, and measures 11 braccia (the unit of measure common in Renais- sance Italy), a little less than 6 metres (19 feet). The nave in which we stand is two modules, 22 braccia (11.5 metres;37 feet, 7 inches) across, and four modules (23 metres; 75 feet) tall. The height of the columns, one and a half modules (8.5 metres;28 feet), is, matched by the height of the clerestory wall at the top of the nave. @ The two side aisles to our left and right are one module deep and two modules to the top of the arch that connects each pair of columns, making the side aisles exactly half the dimensions of the central nave in both width and height. The nave is twelve modules (68.5 metres; 225 feet) in length, and the transept that crosses it at the dome is six modules (34.25 metres; 112 feet, 6 inches) in length. In addition, a grid of squares, 11 braccia toa side, is employed to organize and structure the ground plan — the surface on which we stand. The square, the 11 braccia module, and their deployment in a two to one proportional ratio,is consistently used to order the entire fabric of Santo Spirito, resulting in the unification of numerous individual elements and spaces—a multiplicity brought into uni The proportional perfection of this space cannot be fully appreciated by standing at the entry, but must, be experienced by moving through it, measuring the space and its constituent elements with our own bodies. Santo SpiritoAs we walk down the space of the nave, we immedi- ately feel ourselves scaling our steps to the dimensions of the structural bays, pacing ourselves in time to the tempo of the columns, the proportional module of the space. ® This spatial module is highlighted by the capping of each square bay of the side aisles with adomed vaulting, each hemispherical ceiling carried by pairs of arches bearing on four columns, two against the outside wall, two at the nave edge. At the top of the nave,above our heads the green-grey stone arches springing from column to column carry the white plaster upper wall, opened above the centre of the arches with tall clerestory windows, and on which rests the flat ceiling But at the floor, which we walk, there are no flat walls enclosing the space we inhabit. The outer walls of the side aisles have embedded half-columns aligned with, matching in size, and joined by arches to the nave columns, and, between the columns, semicircular, white plaster- walled chapels are opened. These curving chapels are half a module in depth and are topped by a half-dome ceiling, the profile of which is defined by the arch that leaps from column to column, matching those along the nave. The concave chapels, curving outwards, and the half columns between them, curving inwards, form a continuously alternating concave and convex outer surface, making it ‘impossible to mid the forest of columns inevaluate the thickness of the outer wall, so that the structures no longer appear as material substance, but only as an articulation of a spatial entity’, as Giovanni Fanelli has written.’ Asa result of this undulating outer wall, the space of the church seems to pulse in and out, with the columns standing still while everything else is in motion. The columns, which wrap all the way around the central cruciform-shaped interior of the church, articulate the fundamental order of the space — the rhythmic repetition of single spatial module— both as actual structural support and as spatial structure. The continuous line of columns is only briefly interrupted at the crossing, where Brunelleschi places four square piers that rise to the spring point of the arches supporting the central dome. @ Here, at the edge of the crossing, we are able to see behind these piers, through the spaces of the aisles, to take in the entire width of the transept, and from this viewpoint the forest of columns appears to expand infinitely. @ Balancing this horizontal extension of space, bright light from above draws our eyes up the vertical axis, past the four arches to the dome, which is pierced with round windows at its base and has twelve stone ribs that arc up to the circle of light at the cupola. Standing here, the light-filled space defined by the rhythm of the columns,and bounded by the undulating chapels, comes towards us from all four directions, and this horizontal, terrestrial crossing is fused with the vertical connection to heaven that is the dome. Earth and heaven are united in this axis, ‘mundi, and the space of the church achieves a tran- scendent character only very rarely found. Space Santo SpiritoUnity Temple, Oak Park Illinois USA 1905-8 Frank Lloyd WrightUnity Temple, the name Frank Lloyd Wright gave to the building he designed for the Unitarian congregation of Oak Park, is the earliest example ofa modem house of worship. Grounded in Wright's deep understanding of the Unitarian faith, and in his shared belief in its ideal of unity, Unity Temple returns the practice of worship to its beginnings. Dispensing with the symbols traditionally associated with the exteriors of places of worship, Wright focused instead on the interior, the space within transforming space, geometry, material and light tomake a place where a common faith might come into presence. Q Unity Temple is first seen as a cubic concrete mass standing solidly on its corner site, with the only ‘openings being the high clerestory windows shadowed by the overhanging roof, and no readily evident means of entry. The prolonged entry sequence, involving several turns both outside and inside the building, and passage through increasingly dimly-lit,low and narrow spaces, incrementally compresses us such that when we are finally released, rising up into the sanctuary the room appears to be brighter than the outdoors we recently left. @ Our initial impression is that the space, acting as a kind of sacred vessel, has condensed and concentrated the natural light that has fallen into it from above and been captured within its walls. © The ceiling above the central, cubic space is opened by a grid of beams, into which are set twenty-five square coloured glass skylights, and on the outer walls clerestory windows run full width across the tops of each of the four balconies just under the outward-projecting roof, With the excep- tion of the thin 15-centimetre (6-inch) wide slits of glass that separate the four corner stair masses from the outside walls, light only enters the sanctuary from above—there are no views out at eye level- and the light is filtered, coloured amber and made geometric by the patterns of the leaded glass. Walking around in the space, we soon perceive that the deceptively simple plan of Unity Temple, a square with a cruciform set within it, is ordered on a rigorous system of proportion, determined on both exterior and interior by the measurements of the sanctuary space. The central space of the sanctuary is 9.75 metres (32 feet) square in plan (one to one proportion), and close to a cube in height. The arms of the cruciform —entrance passageways below and two levels of balconies surrounding the central space —are double-squares, half the size of the sanctu- ary space, 4.9 metres (16 feet) deep by 9.75 metres (32 feet) wide (one to two proportion). In both plan and section, the four double-square secondary spaces are gathered around and open into the central sanctu- ary space, geometrically dependent upon it as the centre of the cruciform volume. The four square outer 29 Space Unity Temp!corners, containing the stairs, are 3.35 metres (10 feet 8 inches) across (one to three proportion), and anchor and bound the composition. Our experience of the space is characterized by the pure, perfect geometries of square and cube that Wright employed to shape it,a constructed form that brings perfection into presence—an appropriate space in which to worship God.Chanting the square deific, out of the One advancing ... out of the square entirely divine, as Walt Whitman wrote in Leaves of Grass.! In Unity Temple, the cruciform-in-square floor plan employed by Wright results in the congregation facing more towards each other than towards the pulpit, and no one is further from any other than 19.5 metres (64 feet), the width of the space (exactly twice the dimension of the central 9.75-metre (32-foot) square space). In our experience, we find that the proportions of this cubic space, its generous and even illumination, and its resonant acoustics all facilitate the question and discussion of Unitarian worship services @ allowing all to be recognized and heard clearly, resulting in a sense of intimacy and almost familial relations with our fellow inhabitants. The building is characterized by a synthetic conception of unity’, resulting from the fusion of space, material and experience. The material with which the building was constructed—cast-in-situ reinforced concrete, exposed on the exterior and cement plaster-coated on Sa Po woe Fo] emg .the interior—is critical to this character, and in our experience the monolithic nature of the building, and the lack of joints or subdivisions, contributes to its unity. Also critical to our experience of unity in this space are the various ways in which soft, warm oak is, used to counterpoint the hard,cold concrete. We open wooden doors in entering, we grasp wooden handrails aswe ascend the stairs, we are given light by wooden- framed hanging lamps, we sit on heavy wooden benches and we are surrounded by thin lines of wood trim densely interlacing every concrete surface. While on the exterior, Unity Temple is as a heavy. solid, earthbound mass of stone-grey concrete, inside we find the exact opposite:a space defined by concrete rendered as light, floating, free-spanning pastel- coloured planes, seemingly collected and held in place by the light falling from above. @ All the interior surfaces appear to have been folded to construct the enclosure,and a network of thin dark oak trim ulates the continuity of surface around corners and between ceilings and walls In our experience of this space, there is a constant play between monolithic massive planes and thin nimble articulation of wood stripping that joins the planes, and the continuous folding of the interior surfaces constructs a similar continuity:a weaving together of the space within. In this room, the four massive corner piers c re-entrant corners that are folded so as to point eate inward, so that the space is split, folded, redirected back in upon itself, resulting in a multiplication of implied layers or boundaries, rendering impossible any single interpretation of the room’s edges, producing a true unity of space and form. Every surface, from the scale of the entire room to the hanging lamps,is rigorously proportioned, folding and unfolding from the square and cube, so that, geometry seems to come alive within this space. a SpaceChapel of Notre-Dame- du-Haut, Ronchamp France 1950-5 Le CorbusierThe Chapel of Notre-Dame-du-Haut, a pilgrimage chapel built on the hilltop site of ancient temples for sun worship, Roman camps and earlier Catholic chapels, is one of the greatest sacred spaces of modern times The dynamic spatial and formal plasticity of Le Corbusier's building responds to and brings into focus the topographical elements of the immense landscape in which it is set,as well as shaping an inte- rior space of remarkable emotional intensity, a place for intimate meditation and spiritual contemplation. The chapel may be seen from great distances when approaching, and it slowly rises into view as we climb the hill on which it is built. We first see the south face of the building, anchored to the west by a solid curving tower, housing a chapel, and dominated by the massive, 1.8-metre (6-foot) thick, curving, dark grey concrete roof structure projecting towards us, floating above a deeply perforated white stucco wall that angles away from us asit rises and curves out towards the east, coming to a point under that of the roof above. @ On the east face of the building, the walls form a concave space in which an exterior pulpit and altar are sheltered under the largest over- hang of the enormous roof, These massive concave forms joined at the roof peak at the southeast corner, together shape exterior spaces facing south and east on this hilltop clearing, drawing us close and giving a sense of shelter even in the open. Yet, by receding and opening outwards, the building also turns our attention to the distant views of mountains and plateaux. Rather than initially sensing an invitation to enter, the powerful plastic forms of the chapel inspire us to walk around the hilltop, where we find markedly different facades opening to each of the cardinal directions. @ On the north side, two curved chapel towers. facing east and west, curl in to form the secondary entry between them. This is counterpointed on the west side, where a large concrete rainwater scupper projects out at the low point of the roof, Returning to the south side, we find the primary festival day entry at the western end, next to the chapel tower. An enormous door, covered outside and in with enamelled murals, pivots at its centre to open. and we pass inside © We now find ourselves in a dim but dramatically lit,cave-like space, under the most astonishing roof. Rather than rising towards the centre of the space, the dark grey concrete roof curves down into the room as it crosses from the south wall to the north wall, its lowest point at the west wall and its highest point at the southeast corner. @ The massive form of the roof is striated by lines running from south to north, the marks of the wooden forms in which it was cast. The powerful presence of this heavy, thick roof dominates the space, slicing through the four different white stucco-faced walls beneath it. To the north and west, 33 Space of Notre-Dame-du-Hautwhere the strong vertical light of the chapels pours into the space, the joint between the wall and the roof is dark, but to the east and south, a continuous line of light runs all the way along the top of the walls, and we can see the roof extending over the walls to the outside. The glare from this bright line of light between the walls and roof makes it difficult to discern the small shadows of the narrow, widely- spaced concrete piers reaching up to carry the weight of the roof, and as a result the massive concrete surface appears to be hovering, unsupported, just above the walls. Facing the altar to the east, to the left the concrete pulpit projects from the opening to the east facing chapel; ahead the east wall is pierced with tiny, star-like windows; and to our right @ the massive, thick, angled south-facing wall is opened with numer- ous rectangular windows, each with steeply bevelled surrounds Rising to meet the roof at its highest point in the space, this complexly perforated wall is strongly illuminated by the south sun throughout the da and the dense, thick luminosity of the wall precisely counterpoints the dark massive weight of the roof overhead. @ The beautifully carved pews, made of iroko wood timbers, are placed to the right in the sanctuary, near the thick, luminous south wall, and are set on araised wooden base,so that our feet do not touch the cold floor in winter. The concrete floor,12.8 metres (42 feet) wide and 25 metres (82 feet) long. is divided into rectangular blocks by thin lines of smooth stone, and the surface slopes down towards the altar, following the natural topography of the ground beneath. At the cast-iron communion table, the floor steps up and rises to the stone plinth,on which stands the concrete altar. This constantly sloping, folded concrete floor, beneath the downward curving concrete roof, subtly eng: s our sense of balance, and our haptic and tactile senses reinforce the tension caused by the sight of the massive roof hovering overhead, without any visible means of support. This empathic experience is complemented by the experience of religious ritual. Walking down towards the communion railing, you lower yourself in humility as you approach the altar, and then, turning and walking back up, you rise in exaltation as you return to your seat.! “Harmony can only be attained by that which is infinitely precise, exact, and consonant; by that which delights the depths of sensation, without anybody's knowing; by that which sharpens the cutting edge of our emotions; noted Le Corbusier in stating hi intentions for this building* The chapel was ordered ‘on a proportional system based upon the dimensions of the human body and the Golden Section (1.618 to 1),a harmonic ratio first developed by the ancient Greeks Yet this proportional system is nowhere literally in evidence, having been fully sublimated in the fabric of the building. In our experience, the chapel acts upon all our senses: the sound of the human voice reverberating through the space, the tactile sensation of the massive wood benches, the subtle effect on our posture and stance as we kneel at the communion table, the faint scent of the ancient stones buried in the walls, and the many mysterious ways sunlight enters the space. At once ancient and modern, thisis profoundly moving space, producing in us a deeply spiritual feeling of harmonic resonance. a7 Space Chapel of Notre-Dame-du-HautOur Lady of the Angels Cathedral, Los Angeles California USA 1996-2002 Rafael MoneoThe cathedral of the city of Los Angeles establishes a prominent place for the practice of the Catholic faith in the very centre of one of the world’s largest cities. The downtown site, bounded by major roads and highways, exemplifies the degree to which contemporary US cities are dominated by the car Yet Moneo effectively counterpointed this typical condition by constructing an island of spiritual ritual, calm and repose — a place set apart from the everyday world. @ The cathedral and its bell tower stand at the ‘west end of a massive plinth, 91 metres (300 feet) wide and 244 metres (800 feet) long, which occupies an entire city block, contains parking below,and forms a large walled plaza on the east side of the church, lifted above the surrounding roads on three sides. ‘The monumental exterior of the church is a powerful rectangular grouping of angled masses, which gather around and protect the sanctuary within. The exterior walls of the cathedral, which are aligned with the streets to the west and south, and form angled faces to the plaza, are constructed of reinforced concrete. The walls at the building's urban edges are marked by bold horizontal projecting sills, which cast lines of shadow, while the walls at the entry and plaza are smooth, marked only by the shadow lines of the joints and subtle dot-like shadows of the formwork tie holes. The glazing of the building is organized in large blocks, horizontally striated and impossible to read as windows in any traditional sense, appearing more like the concrete walls that carry them. The thick, ‘occupied wall surrounding the site is lifted to allow us to enter the lower court, and then rise up stairs and ramps to the plaza. @ Ahead of us,a large glass volume, with a concrete cross set within it, projects from the top of the eastern wall of the cathedral, and the entry doors are located not in the centre of this facade, but to the side, with the principal entry on the left, where we find a massive door, opened only on high holy days, with a smaller door to the side, through which we enter. ‘Once within the sanctuary, we move slowly up tly sloping, stone-paved floor, under a lower ceiling, the sounds of the city now silenced so that we hear our own footsteps, as well as the sounds of the sacred ceremony. Having now walk down an ambulatory that extends the length of the sanctuary. As we walk, a series of tall, narrow fan-shaped, concrete-walled chapels, lit from above, open to our right. Rather than placing the chapels against the outer wall, opening in,as is traditional, Moneo has placed them along the outer edge of the sanctuary, opening out to the ambulatory in which we walk. As we pass each chapel, we notice that the stone floor pattern beneath our feet shifts direction, adjusting to the angled geometry of the chapel walls. entered from the east, we 30 Space ‘Our Lady of the Angels CathedralNow we also catch glimpses of the nave through the narrow vertical spaces that open every so often between the chapels, and we hear more ciearly the sounds of those gathered for worship within. Arriving at the end of the ambulatory, we notice that the pattern of the paving now changes, the stones being set in a gently curving arrangement, rather than in straight lines as they were before. These curling lines carry us to the right and into the nave. The sanctuary nave, 30 metres (100 feet) wide,84 metres (275 feet) long, and rising from 18 to 36 metres (60 to 120 feet) tall, opens out from the baptistery at the west wall to the monumental window at the east wall. Now we see the backs of the chapels we passed, a folding set of towering concrete walls marching down each side and rising up 6 metres (20 feet) past the ceiling, that together form the inner boundary of the sanctuary. Beyond the line of chapel walls,and high above them, we see light pouring, into the space through the enormous glazed openings in the tall outer walls of the building. As it enters the space, this light is filtered through bands of alabaster imparting a golden colour that, when it strikes the tan-coloured concrete walls, suffuses the space with an ethereal glow. The upper sections of the chapel walls are angled outwards, their bottom surfaces bouncing the light down into the chapel, while their upper surfaces channel the light down into thesanctuary. @ Floating down into the centre of this, space is a gently folded ceiling, constructed of thin wooden boards set in shifting patterns similar to those we noted in the paving of the ambulatory floor. The outer edges of the wooden ceiling turn up as they meet the massive pier-like chapel walls, which disappear out of sight overhead, and the church roof lifts at the outer walls, reaching up to let the light pour down into the space. Sitting in the wooden pews, beneath this wooden ceiling, the scale of the building is effectively measured and made comprehensible. As we slowly walk down the nave, the floor slopes down and we realize that the gently curving paving patterns are concentric circles whose centre is the altar. At the crossing, the transept walls are set back tocither side, and the roofs above them lift towards the centre of the church, so that bright light cascades down their tall back walls. At the tallest point in the sanctuary,high above the altar at the top of the eastern wall, an enormous window is opened in the wall and ceiling, The whole opening is glazed by thin bands of alabaster set in a chevron pattern, and carries two deep concrete walls, one vertical and one horizontal, that intersect to form across surrounded by light Our experience is balanced between the massive verticality of the concrete walls and the delicately striated surface of the horizontal wood ceiling they that hovers in the spi support; the vastness of the space and the tactile rhythm of the smalll stone pavers under our feet; the thick solidity of the concrete walls and the ethereal colour of the light, which has been filtered through translucent stone; the sound of the organ filling the space and the silence of our own prayers. As Carlos Jiménez has written, after experiencing the transcend- ent spirituality of this space, one returns to the outer world ‘fortified by an ineffable, lighter and ever- present sound, an echo of light which reverberates with the mystery of faith’.! a Space Cathedral ‘Our Lady of the AngsSpace Matter Gravity — Light - Silence Dwelling Room Ritual Memory Landscape PlaceTimeArchitecture is not only about domesticating space ...[I]t is also a deep defence against the terror of time. The language of beauty is essentially the language of timeless reality." Karsten Harries Time, like mind, is not knowable as such. We know time only indirectly by what happens in it: by observing change and permanence: by marking the succession of events among stable settings;and by noting the contrast of varying rates of change.* George Kubler Talways adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least His spirit is* Joseph Brodsky ‘Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future,/ And time future contained in time past./ If all time is eternally present / All time is unredeemable* T.S.EliotThe Space of Time Time is the most mysterious dimension of both the physical reality and human consciousness. Ttappears self-evident in the context of everyday life, but, in deeper scientific and philosophical analyses, it seems to be beyond comprehension or definition. Time was originally looked upon as.a deity, and even as the manifes- tation of the supreme divinity, from which time flows like a river of life. ‘As Saint Augustine remarked, “What is time? If people do not ask ‘me what time is, Iknow. If they ask me what itis, then I do not know.’* Our common everyday understanding of time seems to fall apart under the scrutiny of science, and today there are several very different theories of time in physics. In the literary arts and cinema, time is regarded as totally mouldable and reversible. There are vastly different scales of time, such as cosmic time, geological time, evolutionary time, cultural time and human experiential time. Everyone knows how varied experiential time can be depending on the human situation, or the horizon of experience or expecta- tion, that happens to provide the measure of duration. In the same way that the invention of the telescope and microscope expanded the under- standing of the extremes of the realm of space, photographic and cinematic means of slowing down, and stopping or speeding up time, as well as the ‘invention’ of speed, altered the understanding of time. “We affirm that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of spee FT. Marinetti proclaimed in the Parisian Le Figaro of 20 February 1909, a full century ago In the early years of the twenti- eth century, progressive writers, poets, painters, sculptors and arc tects alike abandoned the idea of an objectified and static external space and the closed trajectory of linear time—as exemplified by perspectival representation and linear narrative—and entered the dynamic experiential reality of human perception and conscious- ness that fuses space and time, reality and dream, actuality and memory. During the modern era, we have even changed our bodily position in relation to the flow of time;the Greeks understood that the future came from behind their backs and the past receded away in front of their eyes, but we have turned our faces towards the future,and the past is disappearing behind our backs’ ‘These new experiences of the world, both scientific and artistic, placed not only the distinct concepts of space and time, but also the new idea of a space-time continuum at the centre of theories of architecture and art throughout the twentieth century. The new space-time concept is the central theme in Sigfried Giedion’s treatise Space, Time and Architecture, originally published in 1941.*Space 45 Time1 In many cultures and mythologies time has been regarded as a Delty. Contrary tothe cyciical time of indigenous ‘cultures, Christian concept of time: linear, witha definitive beginning and ‘end. Time began at the moment of Creation and the end of times the last Judgement. Hieronymus Bosch, Seven Deadly Sins, c. 1485-1600. ca. 1485, ol 120.em x 150 cm, Prado Museum, Madrid, in modern physics is conceived of as relative toa moving point of reference, not as the absolute and static entity of the baroque system of Newton. And in modem art, for the first time since the Renaissance, anew conception of space leads to aself-conscious enlargement of our ways of perceiving space. It was in cubism that this was most fully achieved, Giedion writes* The masterpieces of Cubism, Purism, Constructivism, Neo-plasticism and Futurism, as well as modern architecture at large, exemplify this novel integration of space and time through the movement of the observer and object, and frag- mentation and recombination of elements and images. In Giedion’s view, this new concept was first formulated by the mathematician Hermann Minkowski, who claimed in 1908, "Henceforth, space alone or time alone is doomed to fade into a mere shadow; only a kind of union of both will preserve their existence’? 2 ‘The course of cultural time is measured and expressed by human constructions. ‘The great pyramids are an image of deep time, permanence and eternity ‘The Pyramid of Cheops was built ca. 2550 B.C., Chefren ca, 2494 B.C. ‘and Mycerinus ca. 2455 B.C. Inmore recent years, philosophers of Postmodernism have identified distinct changes in our perception and under- standing of the relationships and interactions of space and time that have taken place since the modem era. For instance,a curious reversal or exchange of the two physical dimensions is taking place: the spatialization oftime and the temporalization of space. These reversals are exemplified by the fact that today we commonly measure space through units of time and vice versa;We use units of time to express distances (an hour's drive,a ten hour flight) and spatial units to denote time, such as geographic time zones. The past few decades have also brought about an entirely new phenomenon; the collapse or iplosion of the time horizon altogether onto the flat screen of the present. In today’s world of fast travel, instant global communication and fluid immate- rial capital, we can appropriately speak of the simultaneity of the world. David Harvey writes about ‘time-space compression’ and argues: *...we have been experiencing, these last two decades, an intense phase of time-space compression that has had a disorienting and disruptive impact upon political-economic practice, the balance of class power, as well as upon cultural and social life’! tis evident that this collapse of time’ is also reflected in archi- tecture, and indeed contemporary architectural projects often seem to reject the experiential element of time in terms of a gradual temporal continuum and duration in favour of an instantaneous and explosive impact. We even seem to be losing our capacity of memorization as a consequence of the acceleration of speed and time, Milan Kundera makes a thought-provoking remark to that3 ‘ACalendar structure for the purpose of {grasping cyclical events and cosmic time. Stonehenge, Wiltshire, builtin various stages botween ca. 3100 and 1930.B.C. effect:"The degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional tothe intensity of forgetting." ‘The acceleration of experiential time during the past few decades can be well recognized, for instance, in comparison with the slow and patient time projected by the great Russian, German and French classical novels of the nineteenth century. Italo Calvino has commented on this,Long novels written today are perhaps a contradiction: the dimension of time has been shattered, we cannot live or think except in fragments of time each of which goes off along its own trajectory and immediately disappears. We can re-discover the continuity of time only in the novels of that period when time no longer stopped and did not yet seem to have exploded. ?? A contemporary slow architecture—one that grows and structures and enriches itself gradually through an individual's progressive and repeated process of experiencing both a building and its contextual and historical relations and dialectics—may similarly be a‘contradiction’ Perhaps we can experience a benevolent embrace of time only in buildings of the era before our age of hurried time. Calendar structures in various cultures, such as Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England, the immense geoglyphs of Nazca and Pampas de Jumana in Peru, and the Indian observatories of Jaipur and New Delhi, are apparently instruments with the explicit purpose of tracing celestial movements, seasonal cycles and the course of time. All architectural structures, however, concretize and dramatize the passing of time through the continuous play of light and shadow. As Karsten Harries notes, ‘light serves to remind us of the way the language of space is also a language of time’. Architectural structures also have a seminal meaning as externalizations of human mental structures, and as extensions of our individual and collective memories and consciousness. Buildings are instruments for grasping and sustaining historicity and time as well as understanding social and cultural realities and the role of human institutions. Great buildings are not mere historical remains, symbols or metaphors: they are also museums of time. As we enter a great building of the past, its particular mode of time enters our awareness and emotions. In fact, the primary measure and expression of the depth of historical and cultural time is architectural construction Thisis true even if we have not actually experienced these structures in reality:how shallow and scaleless would our sense of history be without the image of the Egyptian pyramids or other a Time4 The Futuristic beauty of movement and ‘speed. Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms ‘of Continuity in Space, 1913. Bronze, 26x 89 40 cm. Private collection, Rome, well-known early constructions in our minds? When we do enter a building of the past, however, we fully understand that it can be a repository of different experiential qualities. In the Karnak temple at Luxor, time stands firmly still—in fact, we can experience a powerful unity of undifferentiated space, matter, gravity and time, as if the physical dimensions had not yet differentiated from the sense of singular being. In Romanesque and Gothic spaces, the experiential sensation of time arises majestically slowly as we enter and move about the space. These spaces do not acknowledge haste and rush. Architectural entities can only be experienced through movement in space, and thus architectural space is fundamentally kinetic and embodied. Architecture creates its own altered reality as buildings project specific horizons of perception and understanding that transform our experiences of space and duration. Thus, architec- ture conditions our reading of the physical reality and time. Like the cinematic or literary arts, architec. ture can speed up, slow down, halt, or even reverse the experience and understanding of time. A particularly thought- provoking example of the human need to experience and read time through architecture is the tradition of designed and built ruins,a fashion that became a in Western Europe after the sixteenth century. The earliest known deliberately built ruin was the Baretto, the Duke of Urbino’s park at Pesaro, built c. 1530 and later destroyed. Ruins are associated not only with retreat from the world to a hermitage, butalso with nature and the garden. Both themes were to recur frequently, the latter reaching its climaxin the eighteenth century. The melancholy of ruins arises from the realization that we are not masters of our own destinies, and all achievements of5 Experiential “speed” of architecture. Architecture that expresses slow ‘experiential time. The Cistercian Abbey of Le Thoronet in Provence, France, builtin 160-1190. civilizations will eventually be con- sumed by nature, decay and time. While engaged in the construction of his own house at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London—which incorpo- rated numerous images of ruins— Sir John Soane imagined his own house as a ruin through writing a fictitious study of his building by an imaginary future antiquarian entitled Crude Hints Towards an History of My House (1812)."* The ruin motif has also been used in modern architecture. Alvar Aalto inserted subconscious images of antiquity, ruins and erosion in his designs to evoke a comforting sense of a cultural continuum and layered time, and to give the Bergsonian notion of duration’, the inevitable passing of time,a concrete and material expression. His frequent use of the amphitheatre motif is another example of the deploy- ‘ment of images of the past to evoke a pleasurable feeling of historical duration. ‘The desire for built history and an illusion of depth in time is. equally popular today. Shopping malls, hotels, city centres, as well as governmental buildings seek the authority and nostalgia of time through fabricated history. J.B Jackson describes this quest for the experience of time followingly, ‘[A] kind of historical, theatrical make-believe is becoming increasingly popular;not only the noonday shootouts and other roadside attractions, but costumed guides in historical show places, candlelight concerts of period ‘music, historically accurate dinners and feasts, re-enactment of historic episodes are gradually changing the new reconstructed environments into scenes of unreality, places where we can briefly relive the golden age and be purged of historical guilt. The past is brought back in all its richness. There is no lesson to learn,no covenant to honor; we are charmed into astate of innocence and 49 Time6 Fast architecture of today. Coop Himmelb()au, The UFA Cinema Centre, Dresden, project. become part of the environment. History ceases to exit." Every age and every building has its characteristic sense of time and velocity. There are slow patient and calming spaces as well as fast and nervously hurried spaces. We can experience the gradual quickening of time in early modern buildings, and an even more increased velocity in the deconstructivist structures of the recent past, which often appear hasty and tense, or even as mere momentary explosions of form. The celebrated buildings of our time often seem to be rushing as if the dimension of time were about to disappear altogether. Our culture reveres youth, aspires to agelessness and is frightened by signs of age, wear and decay. As a consequence of this, ‘obsession, and the qualities of our man-made materials, contempo- rary environments have lost their capacity to contain and communi- cate traces of time. Our buildings often seem to exist in a timeless space without contact with the past or confidence for the future. Paralleling this infatuation with youth, our contemporary culture is also preoccupied with uniqueness and novelty, and the art of our own time is often appreciated and judged primarily through its unforeseen novelty Lars Svendsen, the Norwegian philosopher, makes the paradoxical but persuasive argument that this obsession with newness is a cause of experiential impoverishment. “But as novelty is sought only for the reason that itis new, everything becomes identical, as it has no other properties but newness’ We are usually unaware of our fundamental biological and evolutionary constitution, as well as of our own historicity. Yet in truth we do not live ina single moment; we are historical beings and immense depths of time con- tinue in our biological constitutions. Our constructed settings do, andindeed should, reflect this historicity instead of detaching and alienating us from the element of time. In today’s technological and globalized world, we are not just urbanized individuals taking advantage of digital technologies and virtual realities. We are also condensations of evolutionary processes; there are hunter- gatherers, fishermen and farmers hiding in our genes. In our bodies We continue to carry rudiments of ‘our early past as marine and tree- climbing species. We are certainly bound to carry similar mental and psychic remnants that direct our behaviour and emotions. We can safely assume that our sources of fundamental architectural pleasures are not mere aesthetics; they are buried deep in our genetic Constitution. Why do we so much enjoy sitting by the fire? Isn’tit because our forefathers have been dreaming in the safety of flames ever since the domestication of fire, and the pleasure and domes- 7 ‘The ruin motif used to evoke anostalgic experience of past and layered time. The ‘walls of the courtyard are an ‘experiment in the use of various types of bricks and ways of laying them. The courtyardis experienced as acollage and var Aalto, ‘Muuratsalo, ticity of fire has become integrated in our very mental structure?” Such feelings of pleasure can be called primary experiences. In our fabricated and technologized lifestyle we have dramatically lost such sensations of causality, but it is the task of architecture to reintro- duce these primary existential experiences. Architecture needs to fuse us with our causal and experiential reality, not to alienate and isolate us from it. ‘The magical quality of artis in its disregard of progressive and linear time. Great works of art overcome the abyss of time and keep speaking to usin the present tense. An Egyptian building con- fronts our eyes and mind with the same force of life and actuality as any building of our own day. Across the void of over 20,000 years, the cave paintings of Altamira and Lascaux appear as fresh and mean- ingful as the art of our own time. ‘An artist is worth a thousand centuries’ as writes Paul Valéry.* 5 TimeTheatre, Epidaurus Greece 330 BC‘The theatre at Epidaurus exemplifies the unparal- Ieled degree to which Greek social and religious life took place in direct relation to nature, and in rhythm with its daily and seasonal cycles. Counterpoint to the temple, the place of the gods, the theatre was the place of community gathering, where events carrying religious, political, ethical and aesthetic meaning were held, and where the citizens of the city-state came to articulate and celebrate their shared cultural bonds. Due to the theatre being literally built into the earth, they are often all that remains largely intact today to mark the existence of these c Seen from the Sanctuary of Asklepios to the north- west, the theatre is carved into the earth, occupying a fold in the rocky hillside. @ As we approach, the theatre opens before us, a concave-curved, shallow conical volume, stepping back in horizontal tiers asit rises up the slope. Complementing its intimate embedment into the topography, the geometric pre- cision of the whole clearly reveals the theatre to be the work of humankind. The entire theatre is ordered with a set of concentric circles, the largest having a diameter of 110 metres (360 feet), and the central stage having a diameter of 18 metres (60 feet). From the central stage to the walkway at the top of the theatre, the seats rise 21 metres (70 feet) in height, and they are 43 metres (140 feet) deep, ratio of one to two. The lower section of the theatre has thirty- munities. three tiers of seats, and its outer edges curve around further than a semicircle to either side of the stage. The upper section has twenty-two tiers of seats, and its outer edges curve around only slightly more than a semicircle. This difference in arc responds to the slope of the landform, so that the outer walls of the upper section, connecting into a higher level of the hillside, are set further back than the outer walls of the lower section Entering from the side, we move along the two sets of massive retaining walls that carry the outer edges of the theatre seats past the edge of the natural ground. @ Upon first sight, the great curving bank of tiered seats appears almost monolithic, as ifit had been cut from one monumental block of stone, carved from the living rock of the hillside. After seventeen centuries of weathering, the joints between the large blocks of stone remain remarkably tight. © Mounting the massive cut stone stairs, two steps for each tier of seats, we note the way in which the overhanging front edge of each seat folds down to form the first step up to the next section, the second step being the front edge of the foot space of the next set of seats. This detail is complemented by the way the undercut beneath the front of each seat is curved rather than sharp-edged—a detail that, being hidden in the shadowsis first revealed by our touch An equally subtle detail is the way each stone seat is Theatre, Epidauruslifted slightly above the level of the foot space behind it,so that one does not set foot on the surface upon which others sit. Taking our seat on these massive sculpted blocks of stone, we turn and face the stage below. ‘Yet, rather than the human action on the stage, it is the landscape, opening out in all directions, which the theatre first brings into presence for us. To our left we see the remains of the Sanctuary of Asklepios, to our right rises a nearby mountain peak, and in the centre, to the north, opening out directly ahead is layer upon layer of foothills and mountains— the central axis of the theatre aligned precisely with abreak in the hills A broad sweeping view opens before us, filling our entire field of vision, and the expanse of the dramatic landscape is framed on the left and right by the low angled outer walls of the theatre, joining the bowl-shaped theatre to the larger concavity of the landscape. Nature provides the spatial background, and the movement of the sun across the day and through the seasons sets the temporal rhythm for the actions taking place in the foreground, on the stage. We now perceive the subtle yet effective manner in which the stage itself has been detailed to call out its special importance to the theatre. To begin, the stage is the only part of the building that is given the complete and perfect form of the circle. @ Unlike the rest of the floor surfaces of the theatre, the circular disc of the stage is not paved with stone, rather it is a smooth surface of pounded earth. The stage is defined by a ring of stones, set into the ground flush with its earth surface. Inside the arc of seats, facing the audience, shallow, stone-paved trench is opened in the space between the outer edge of the ring of stones around the stage floor and the low walls at the inner edge of the seats, and the inner stage edge is faced with a semicircular stone band that projects out into the trench. The bottom of this curving moulding is lost in its own shadow, so that the disc of the earth- floored stage appears to float slightly above the bottom of the stone-paved trench that surround: detached from the rest of the theatre. Sitting in the theatre, we feel the stones of the earth beneath us, we feel the warm sun on our backs,and we feel the gentle dry breezes on our skin. When someone stands on the stone that marks the centre of the stage below, and begins to speak, we hear the astonishing acoustical qualities of this space, ‘Though out of doors, and open to nature, sounds are so effectively projected in this space that, from the top row of seats, one can hear a coin being dropped, and, without being raised the human voice carries clearly throughout the theatre. This remarkably resonant space is ordered by harmonic geometries, carved from the bones of the earth,and opened to the distantmountains, allowing us to experience a fusion of human life-world and the natural landscape, choreo- graphed to the rhythm of the sun’s movement At the theatre, as Yale professor Vincent Scully has written, the whole visible universe of men and nature comes to} ether ina single quiet order’.! 55 Time Theatre, EpidaurusPalace, Fatehpur Sikri India 1569-85The palace built by Akbar the Great at Fatehpur Sikri formed the centre of a new city, with a mosque. caravanserai, lake reservoir and other major structures. Within the city, only the plans of the mosque and the palace are oriented to the cardinal directions, indicating the emperor's close relation with the Islamic faith. Yet while the mosque is gular form in plan, shaping a single courtyard, the palace is composed of a more loosely organized series pure rectan- of rectangular courtyards that step diagonally along the top of the ridge. The entire palace is walled, creating a private inner world, a place apart. © Within the palace, we fi plexly layered series of spaces,almost all opened at the ground by arcades, through which we move from exterior sunlight to interior shadow and back again, our sense of time alternating between slow and fast. The sunlit courtyards se and take a long time to cross; whereas the shaded arcades and buildings at the edges of the courtyards seem small and domestic in scale, offering only the briefest pauses. The palace is experienced as a sunlit labyrinth,and each courtyard differs from the next in size, shape and the character of the buildings that formit,so that when we move from one to the next we have to reorient ourselves, seeking the order of the space in which we now find ourselves. What remains constant, asa measure for our movement, is the rhythm ind ourselves in a com- n immense and endless, of the 3-metre (10-foot) spacing of the columnsin the arcades. What remains constant, as a means of orien tation within the larger labyrinth of walled spaces, the shadows cast by the sun, and their consistent marking of our relation to the cardinal directions. ‘The columns, beams, walls and perforated screens of the buildings and arcades, as well as the courtyard floors, are all constructed of intricately carved slabs of local red sandstone, giving the whole place a remark ably unified character. The red sandstone floor of the palace is raised and lowered to produce a series of low plinths and courts, and this stepped terracing of the ground is found both inside and outside, weaving together the entire space of the palace. Incorporated (0 both the courtyard floors and the walls of the buildings was an elaborate system of channels through which water was distributed throughout the palac which, in this hot, dry climate, provided both functional ts. The heat of the sun has surpris- ingly little effect on us in the palace, being tempered by the cooling breezes that flow continuously through this largely porous structure. The two most important spaces in the palace, Akbar’s residen harem, where he slept, are related in a complemen- tary manner. @ The harem, the most formal, axially symmetrical space within the palace, is comprised ofa series of thick-walled rooms surrounding a 55 by and sensual bene! where he spent his days,and the 87 Time Palace, Fatehpur Sikri50 metre (180 by 160 foot) courtyard. At the centre of each of the four elevations isa large, two-storey pavilion, opened at its centre, while at each of the four corners is a tower room, accessible only from inside the adjacent spaces. With the exception of the baths, the spaces of the harem are among the most deeply shadowed in the entire palace. The central part of the harem courtyard, separated from the periphery by the shadow line of a deep water channel,is experienced asan island of stone. © Akbar’s residence, on the other hand, is surpris- ingly informal and asymmetrical, with four different elevations framing the central courtyard, which is not closed at the northwest comer. Here, itis anchored by a two-storey pavilion which is arcaded at ground | and more closed above. The east, north and west elevations are arcaded, and the residence islayered into the south side, its three levels all opened and shaded by continuous arcades. Towards the eastern end of the residence’s courtyard is a square stepped water tank, nearly 30 metres (100 feet) across, with four narrow bridges spanning to the island room at its. centre, where a raised square seat is provided. This largest body of water within the palace marks the emperor's residence as the literal oasis for the whole complex. A dialogue is also set up between two spaces closely associated with Akbar's residence, the first Time Palace, Fatehpur Sikribeing the entirely arcaded,five-storey Panch Mahal, which narrows at each level as it rises, stepping up toculminate in a single pavilion supported by four columns at its corners. @ The tallest structure in the palace, this diaphanous, colonnaded pyramid of space is where the emperor withdrew to contemplate and to converse with leaders of the five great religions ofhis time—Istam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism—which he hoped to reconcile during his reign. When we stand at the top of the Panch Mahal today, feeling the wind and taking in the extended views in all directions, we feel strongly connected to the larger world, and to the steady passage of time. Diagonally to the northeast is the Diwai Khas,a square plan building, 14 metres (45 feet) ona side, two storeys tall, with four pavilions at the corners of its walled roof terrace. This is the most solid building in the palace, its 2.5-metre (8-foot) thick walls opened at the ground by four doorways, one at the centre of each side, and leading to the 8.5-metre (28-foot) square, double-height central room within Inside, at the centre of the room stands a single carved stone column, which, asit rises from the square base, becomes first octagonal, then sixteen-sided, and finally circular. Above this, the column carries an enormous conical capital composed of outward- stepping layers of radiating serpentine brackets, which in turn supports a small circular platform connected bynarrow bridges to the four corners of the surrounding gallery. This extraordinary structure clearly recalls our experience of the stepped water tank in the courtyard of the residence, with its four bridges, only now we are standing not on the bridges above but in the deep pool of cool shadow beneath This room, with its massive central column, thick walls and deep black shadows surrounding us, feels like a rock-cut temple, set deep within the ground. Submerged in the thick, dark depths of this room, we withdraw from the world, and time stands still. Time Palace, Fatehpur SikriSoane House, London UK 1792-1824 Sir John Soane The residence, architect’s office and collection of architectural artefacts that Sir John Soane constructed for himself by renovating three adjacent terraced houses on Lincoln’s Inn Fields over forty years, is, a masterpiece of spatial and temporal condensation Working within the severely limited confines of the existing building walls, and deploying carefully cali- brated methods of natural lighting, Soane constructed a habitable ruin characterized by unexpected spatial depth, compositional complexity and connections across time. The three structures housing the Soane con are faced in red brick, and to the centre house, number 13, the architect added a limestone facade that projects forward a few feet from the face of the brick walls, with three bays of arched windows on the ground and first floors. © After passing through the narrow entry foyer, we step into the dining room and library, which together share a double-square plan. The library opens on to the street to the south through two tall arched openings, which match the window in the outer limestone facade and are composed of two thin wood layers, resulting in a triple iteration of the outer window in light and shadow, and a layered space as deep as the window is wide. The two side walls of the room are largely filled with glass-faced mahogany bookcases that run up to door-top height, where plexthe walls are opened with various arched niches. The library and the dining room both have flat ceilings into which paintings have been inset, and the boundary between the rooms is marked by a projecting pier to either side, at the front edge of which four metal posts support the double-layered, triple-curved hanging arches that separate the two ceilings. Almost all the surfaces are cut away and revealed to be hollow or open to beyond, creating a sense of transparency and multiplication of views that is increased by the large mirror set between the two windows of the library, and the tall narrow mirrors inset into the piers that separate the two rooms. For those visitors lost in this increasingly complex layering of space, Soane provided small signs in the piers between the library and dining room that read ‘east’ and ‘west’. The dining room is opened by a very large square window that rises up to meet the ceiling, looking on to the internal ‘monument court’, and the comers of the room all have pairs of wooden doors, suggesting it opens in all directions. Passing through one of these doors, we enter the breakfast room. A domed ceiling hovers over this small room, floating away from all four walls, and aminiature cupola skylight opens at its centre. In the tall, narrow, hall-like spaces on the north and south ends, light falls into the breakfast room from skylights far above, illuminating the paintings hung on the walls. The east wall of the roomis angled out, and at its centre a large window, which rises above the outer edge of the domed ceiling, opens to the monument court. In addition, three of the four walls of this room are openedat the corners, giving views into the adjacent spaces and light courts, so that light enters the room from every direction. This effect is multiplied by the circular convex mirrors set into the corners and edges of the ceiling, and by the double mirror over the hearth, where a large framed mirror projects forward out of its mirrored surround. Itseems that every inch of the wall surface is opened either by a door or window, or by mirrors, or by the architectural drawings and paintings packed on to the walls, allowing views both real and imagined, all intertwined in our experience of the house. Drawn by the strong light of the long skylight and the view of architectural fragments suspended in space, we step through the door in the north wall We find ourselves standing on the narrow edge ofa three-storey space, opening both down to the basement, where a large Roman sarcophagus stands, and up to the roof far above, where a large domed skylight caps the space. @ Light from the skylight cascades down the inner and outer walls, which are filled from top to bottom with hundreds of architectural fragments, mouldings, column shafts and capitals, cornices, carvings, vases, urns, models, bustsand statues all either original marbles or plaster casts made from famous buildings of antiquity This densely compacted and layered collection was carefully ordered and positioned on two levels by Soane, and ranges from the dramatically illuminated architectural fragments in the ‘dome’ and“colonnade’ above—lit by a series of small skylights—to the near darkness of the reliquary collection in the ‘crypt’ below. Soane placed the most remarkable space in this house at the end of our meandering promenade. © The ‘picture room’, or painting gallery, isa square room, half again as tall as it is wide, the ceiling of which is lifted as a lantern, with light coming through tall clerestory windows on the north, west and south sides, and through a skylight running from north to south at the centre of the room. Below the clerestories, the four walls are completely covered with large paintings of architecture from throughout history — interior and exterior spaces shown in perspective. @ The room is not as fixed as it first appears, and it can be literally unhinged by swinging open three of the walls, which pivot to reveal paintings both on the back of the swinging wall and on the second wall behind — three layers in all The outermost south wall also swings outwards into the upper part of the two-storey ‘monk's parlor’, which is lit by both a skylight above anda large window into the ‘monk's yard! to the south. Whether standing in the brightly lit picture room, with its pivoting layers of views of buildings distant from usin both space and time, ‘windows’ opening on all sides to other periods and places;or walking through the deeply shadowed, narrow passages of the colonnade and crypt, brushing against the fragments, of ancient architecture on all sides, with the faint light coming only from far above—in the layered labyrinth of this house, antiquity is brought near to us,and time is at once condensed and suspended. ° 65 Time ‘Soane HouseCastelvecchio Museum, Verona Italy 1956-78 Carlo ScarpaThe Castelvecchio, the ancient castle of Verona, founded on Roman ruins and set on the Adige River, had been successively demolished and added to over the years, and sustained significant damage during WWII Scarpa worked on the conversion of the Castelvecchio into the city museum from 1956 until his death, and rather than privileging one historical period over another, he celebrated the continuous inhabitation of this place, and the resulting complex layering of time—from ancient to modern—is simultaneously embedded in the historic building. We enter the Castelvecchio by crossing the original drawbridge and passing through the castle portal, stepping on to the gravel floor of a carefully choreo- graphed garden court. @ To our left isthe stone and brick wall of the medieval river bridge,crenellated at its top; to our right and ahead a white, rough-plastered wall, which has an irregular pattern of Gothic stone window-frames set into it. That these Gothic windows are not original, but were in fact transplanted from other buildings in Verona in a 1920s renovation, is suggested in the way that steel-framed glass volumes project in and out of them. @ Diagonally across the garden, we see that the walls do not meet in the far corner, and a statue emerges from the shadows high up in the irregularly formed gap between the walls. This is the Cangrande, the most important arte! the museum's collection. but to reach it we must cross a series of shifted ground planes of stone paving, grass and shallow pools of water, into which artefacts from the collection have been woven into contemporary constructions. As we walk, fragmented views of the sunlit facade of the building are reflected in the rippling surfaces of the pools, reminding us that the facade itself has been recomposed over time. @ Adjacent to the entry,a steel-topped cubic mass projects through the doorway tothe left, its walls clad in a non-repeating pattern of smalll squares of the local Prun stone, a pink-white limestone, the surfaces of which alternate between roughly hammered and smoothly polished. We are drawn to run our fingers over this soft, warm stone pattern, then to touch the deeply worn surface of the ancient sarcophagus, carved from a single massive sundial block of Prun stone, and the ancient circule made of Prun-stone figures set intoa grey stone field. Upon entering the museum, we first walk through five square, thick-walled rooms that open regularly to the garden court through the large, south-facing, Gothic-framed windows. The layered floor opens before us like a polished tray, constructed of dark grey cast concrete, tamped to produce a slightly reflective ribbed surface, and into which bands of smooth white Prun stone are set,running ross our path as well as around the floor’s outer Time Gastelvecchio Museumedge, which is set 15 centimetres (6 inches) in from the base of the white, rough-plastered walls. Each of the five rooms has a unique set of artefacts, from large sculptures, to architectural fragments, to small medallions and artworks, Each artefact is precisely positioned in its own bracket or stand, unique and unlike any of the others. The sculptures are arranged in informal groupings, carefully placed to catch the natural light that brings them to life, so that, when we enter the room, it seems we have interrupted an ongoing conversation among them. In the last room, we find a glass window set into the floor, surrounded by wooden rails that swing at our touch, and through which we can see the Roman ruins beneath the building, uncovered during construction. We walk through a large woven steel gate and a pivoting glass door, and then down winding steps made of large interlocking slabs of stone to reach the exterior covered space between the main building and the bridge. High above our heads is the statue of ‘Cangrande, which acts as a spatial pivot for the entire museum. Walking beneath the roadway of the river bridge, we find a stair inserted in a tower, its new treads set on brick risers, which brings us to the painting galleries on the far side of the bridge. Here the floor is of wood, which creaks beneath our feet, the walls are of white plaster, and the ceilings are ancient carved and coloured wood beams. @ The paintings are mounted either on custom-designed steel and wood frames, each complementing the painting’s historic frame, or displayed on the most intricately detailed wood and brass easels—as if the artist had just left the room before we entered, ‘Walking back across the bridge, now above the street, we arrive at a suspended walkway made of blackened, flame-finished wood and black steel which crosses at the top of the gap between the museum and the bridge. Here,as we walk to the upper galleries facing the garden court, we again see the Cangrande statue, now at eye-level. The floors of the seven tall painting galleries are made of smooth, polished deep-red terracotta tiles, the joints so tight that they merge into a continuous, slightly reflective surface. @ The galleries are divided by thick cross-walls that stand free of both the river and garden court walls, and are linked by a narrow. Prun stone-paved passageway along the river wall. Large, Gothic-framed windows open to the south, and narrow, bevel-walled windows open to the north, so that the sounds of the rapidly rushing river are constantly heard. The ceiling overhead is composed of panels of coloured polished plaster, an ancient Venetian building technique, with wood lattice- screened ventilation openings. The ceilings of the first six rooms are olive-grey in colour, while the last room —above the entry foyer—has a brilliant blueGround Floor First Floor ceiling, bringing out the predominantly blue colour of the paintings hung there. ‘Throughout the museum, innumerable details of construction reveal the simultaneous presence of multiple layers of history, allowing the building tobe experienced as a series of spatial and temporal joints, new and old at the same time, weaving history into the present moment. The building and its fully integrated collection of artefacts together form an intensely worked tactile fabric that invites the hand, foot and eye to explore the craft marks of making the patina and pattern of human use, and the slow, successive layering of historical time. As Kenneth Frampton has written, the Castelvecchio is, above alla disquisition on time, on the paradoxical dura- bility and fragility of things’, based on the belief that architecture is ‘capable of transcending the ruinations of time”! Time Castelvecchio MuseumMyyrmaki Church, Myyrmaki Vantaa Finland 1980-4 Juha Leiviska‘The Lutheran church and parish centre, located ina new town outside Helsinki, may best be described as, distillation and abstraction of the natural conditions that characterize Finland — a place of dense forests and widely varying sunlight. While the church is experi- enced as an entirely natural place, the space is exclu- sively composed of linear elements, ordered ina rigorous right-angle structure. The dramatic change in ight through the seasons, from midnight sun in summer to darkness at noon in winter, as well as the moving patterns of sunlight across each hour, makes the weekly experience of this space one of constant change, even as the rhythm of the ritual remains the same. The church was required to be built on a long narrow site directly adjacent to a major railway line. A long, almost solid wall of tan-coloured brick, tallest to the south and gradually stepping down to the north, runs the full length of the building along this west side, forming an acoustical and visual barrier. The building is composed of aseries of tall narrow spaces that are set against this solid wall, opening to the park-like stand of birch trees to the east. As we approach from the south, we pass the tallest element, the bell tower @, and then walk slowly up the sloped, brick-paved path between the church and the shallow birch forest. The wall of the church is composed ofa series of tall vertical brick piers and vertically striated white wooden walls, which are sliced open from top to bottom by narrow windows in an irregular,non- repeating pattern. These vertical piers and walls step rhythmically outwards and run from earth to sky, matching the thin lines of the birch tree trunks. A low horizontal roof plane projects out to mark the entry. Arriving under this overhanging canopy, we turn our backs on the birch forest, and move forward and then back to the south through the door. In contrast to the incessant verticality and height of the walls we passed on the way in, we now find our- selves in a low narthex space, the ceiling constructed of densely overlapping and interwoven layers of small thin, white wood boards. The walls of the narthex are aseries of stepping white wooden planes and thin vertical wooden slat screens in a constantly changing pattern. The floor is also wood, quieting our footsteps. ‘We pass through a pair of wood-slat screened doors and step on to the brick-paved floor of the sanctuary. The low, wood-slatted ceiling provides a space of discrete entry along the eastern edge of the sanctuary, from which we move out and take our seat in the Jong white wooden pews. ipression is of the overwhelming f this space, the densely layered surfaces composed of non-repeating vertical lines of white wood, plaster and concrete, with every vertical sliver of solid framed on either side by vertical slices of light. © This effect reaches a climax on the stepping east n Time Myyrmaki Church,wall, rising high above the low entry foyer, which is composed of a forest of narrow vertical lines of glass and wood, the whole forming an irregular pattern of lines of light, both direct and bounced off white walls, and lines of shadow —and even the shadows are white. In this complexly interwoven space, as in the birch forest, the light enters in vertical slices. Yet, despite our initial impression of verticality the space is in fact a perfect square in section, and is asymmetrically balanced, in both light and form, between the vertical and horizontal. Counterpointing, the horizontal light coming through the vertically striated eastern wall, a large skylight opens at the top of the western wall, pouring vertical light down into the space. © The ceiling of the sanctuary is crossed by the regular rhythm of the deep concrete beams running from east to west. @ The upper ceiling plane, carried by the concrete beams, is marked by a regular rhythm of deep wood boards, and the lower layer of ceiling planes set between the concrete beams, is composed of a dense lattice of thin wood boards of varying depths and lengths While we can see the concrete beams meet and bear upon the west wall beneath the skylight, at the east wall the beams disappear into a thicket of vertical surfaces, merging with the striated ‘wood ceiling as it floats over the stepped lateral beams so that the vertical wall and horizontal ceiling elements are interwoven and locked together. ‘The complex vertical layering of the eastern wall, at our backs, is complemented by the more subtle artic- ulation of the western wall, towards which we face. © This wall is layered with a series of thin planes made of vertical wood boards. At the centre of the wall light appears to have eroded and dissolved the solid surface, breaking it into a series of vertical planes that are shifted both inwards and outwards. @ A single central opening —where the largest section of walll recedes ‘outwards —houses the altar. Strong light pours into this niche from the south, bouncing off a series of step- ping vertical piers, illuminating the back wall behind the altar. This intensely glowing volume of light behind the altar is complemented by the constantly moving lines of light and shadow falling at an angle from the south and striating the western wall In our experience, the density of the linear elements and the diversity of their many sizes, the depth constructed by the multiple layered surfaces and the ambiguous distance from the outer world this, creates, and the innumerable unseen slices through which sunlight enters the space from every direction casting lines of shadow and light, together construct a‘shimmering, constantly changing veil of light’! as Leiviskii has described it. In this space, the time of day, the season of the year and the span of life are all marked by both that which remains constant,and that which is constantly changing.Church on the Water, Hokkaido Japan 1985-8 Tadao Ando Built to serve a nature retreat located in a valley of the Yubari Mountains, where snow covers the ground from December to April, the Church on the Water an idealized design involving both architecture and landscape. Here the intention was to create a place where those who dwell in densely urbanized environ- mentsare invited to transcend their daily lives through spiritual communion with the natural world. In the tradition of Japanese gardens, the chapel and its con- structed landscape act to condense and bring into presence the scale of the mountains, the distance to the horizon and the duration of human history. A grey-white concrete wall surrounds the chapel on ts south and east sides, and rising above this wall isa black steel-framed glass volume, within which four concrete crosses form a cubic inner space, towards which we are drawn. But we must walk to the west along the outside of the wall, almost to its end, before we find a doorway. @ Passing this threshold, we see for the first time the water: a large pond that stretches away to left and right. @ We turn towards the chapel, seen across the water, a simple concrete wall that, frames an enclosed, dark space on the right and an ‘open space to the left, with the glass volume floating above and behind. The ambiguous scale of the hori- zontal surface of the water and the vertical surfaces of the concrete walls make the dimensions of this exterior space difficult to grasp, and in response wewalk more slowly as we climb up the slight incline on the path along the inside of the wall. At the top, we turn with the wall and walk behind the cubie mass of the chapel, where, past a convex concrete wall, we find a doorway in the base of the glass volume. Climbing a short flight of slate stairs, turning and climbing again, we reach the floor of the glass volume. © The space is square in plan, 10 metres (33 feet) on aside, 5 metres (16 feet, 6 inches) tall, its glazed outer walls are framed in steel, divided at the middle verti cally and horizontally. In the middle of this outdoor room, we stand on a translucent glass floor, divided at its centre by a concrete cross, and we are surrounded and enclosed by four freestanding 5-metre square concrete crosses that almost touch at the corners, seeming to embrace us. This space is open to the sky above, and its reflective glass floor and walls seem to capture and condense the light that falls into it. While the horizontal view is filtered and framed, the view of the zenithal light of the sky overhead is unob- structed. Standing on the glass floor within this glazed volume, framed by grey-white concrete and black steel,we look out to the distant mountains, feeling that we have been lifted above the horizon line and are floating in the space of the sky. We pause, suspended in vertical light, and time also seems suspended. Walking down two straight stairs—losing sight of the horizon—we then descend into the darkness below on a curving stair, also of slate, which is set between a pair of curving, semicylindrical concrete walls. At the bottom of the stair, we step down on to the slate floor of the chapel. The plan of the chapel is again ordered by a square, 15 metres (50 feet) on a side, 5 metres tall, but the corner of the base of the glass volume and the curved wall of the stair protrude into the northeast corner of the square, producing an L-shaped space. The chapel is furnished with Ando-designed wooden pews and chairs, and their thin, elongated and reserved detailing complements the severity of the space. The chapel is formed on three sides by solid concrete walls, the finish of which is so precise that, seen from an oblique angle, they are slightly reflective. @ The fourth wall —facing west to the water—is entirely glazed, with four large sheets of glass held in a cross-shaped black steel frame. When this glass wall is closed, the extended horizontal of the steel frame, running across the centre of the opening, combines with the horizontal lines of the floor below and ceiling above, to form a series of stratified horizon lines, above and below the true horizon, unseen beyond the mountains. © When the enormous glass wall is opened, sliding to the right into the open concrete frame we saw from outside, the chapel is transformed. The sounds of nature enter this resonant room, magnified by the hard, smooth concrete and slate surfaces. The breezes 75 Time Church on the Watergently pass through the space, carrying the smells of the forest in summer, and the biting chill in winter. We also become more aware of the black steel cross that is set out into the water, and the space of the room now seems to reach out across the surface of the water to the cross, and beyond. The expansive horizontal, reflective, dark surface of the w almost flush with the floor of the chapel, so that in our experience the space of the chapel merges with that of the lake. The chapel’s black slate-paved floor terraces down twice, at the back and the front, producing three floor planes that step down towards the water. We now perceive that the surface of the water also steps down in the distance, collapsing and bringing close the curvature of the earth. ° the outer walls to left and right, the slate floor is held back, creating a shadowed slot into which the concrete wall slips out of sight. Because the wall does not meet and bear upon the floor, as the relationship of the wall to the ground is uncertain, and the rippling surface of the black slate floor appears to float free of the walls, merging with the rippling surface of the water. Suspended above this boundless horizontal surfac the horizon is brought near to us, the mountains close in to frame the space we inhabit, and time seems to open out, so that, as Ando wrote, we discover ‘the eternal within the moment’. Church on the WaterMemory Landscape PlaceMatterBut most unforgettable of all were the walls themselves. The stubborn life of these rooms had not let itself be trampled out. It was still there; it ‘clung to the nails that had been left, it stood on. - the remaining hand- breadth of flooring, it green into grey, 3d yellow into an old i J Tleave it to others toattend to the beauty of forms while I devote my efforts to defining a beauty intrinsic to material substances; their many hidden attractions, all that affective space concentrated in the interior of things? Gaston Bachelard You cannot make ‘what you want to make, but what the material permits you to make. ‘You cannot make out of marble what you would make out of wood, or out of wood what you would make out of stone... Each material has its own life, and one cannot without punishment destroy aliving material to make a dumb sense- less thing. That is, we must not try to make materials speak our Janguage, we must go with them to the point where others will under- stand their language.’ Constantin Brancusi Ipreserve that fine memory. O material! Beautiful stones! ... O how light are we become!* Paul ValéryMatter, Hapticity and Time Gaston Bachelard, the French philosopher whose books on poetic imagery, imagination and matter have inspired architectural thinking for more than half a century, dedicated a separate book to each one of the four elements in classical Greek thought—earth, water, air and fire—and he argues that poetic images in all the arts are bound to resonate with these four basic substances. The basic materials in the history of architecture —stone, brick, wood and metals—all derive from earth,and these materials re-unite buildings back to the earth and its processes. These materials also have a dialogue with time and its processes. Buildings are necessarily put together of different materials, yet buildings and spaces built predominantly of a single material possess.a special emotive power. ‘The churches of Petra and Lalibela, carved into the bedrock, or the all-stone vernacular building traditions in various parts of the world, the all-brick settings of Siena,and the traditional wooden towns, churches and interiors of Northern Europe, all exude an air of unity, coherence and sincerity. Inhis phenomenological investigation of poeticimagery, Bachelard makes a thought- provoking distinction between “formal imagination’ and “material imagination’. He argues that images arising from matter project deeper and more profound experiences, recollections, associations and emotions than images evoked by form. Yet, architecture at large, and especially modern archi tecture, has consistently privileged form and geometry over the ‘mental suggestions of matter. Le Corbusier's passionate defini- tion, Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light’? exemplifies this predominantly visual and formal orientation. Inits quest for the perfectly articulated and autonomous artefact, the main thrust of Modernist architecture has preferred materials and surfaces that produce flatness, geometric purity, immaterial abstractness and timeless whiteness. In Le Corbusier's words, whiteness serves‘the eye of truth’ Sand so itmediates moral and objective values. The moral implications of whiteness are hyperbolically expressed in his statement, “Whiteness is extremely moral. Suppose there were a decree requiring all rooms in Paris to be given a coat of whitewash. I maintain that that would be apolice task of real stature and manifestation of high morality, the sign ofa great people.” In addition to the preference for whiteness, smoothness and abstraction, an aspiration towards immateriality, transparency and weightlessness has characterized the modern sensibility. To be modern is to be part of a universe, in which, as Karl Marx said, “all at Matter1 Architecture of one material. Traditional Mediterranean stone-architecture on the Greekiisland of Santorini that is solid melts into air”; writes Marshall Berman in his book on the experience of modernity.” Striving towards immateriality was even regarded as a moral virtue “Tolive ina glass house isa revolu- tionary virtue par excellence. Itis also an intoxication, amoral exhibitionism that we badly need, Walter Benjamin writes." André Breton, the Surrealist writer, demonstrates this modern obsession with the immateriality and transparency of glass:* Icontinue to inhabit my glass house, where one can see at every hour who is coming to visit me, where everything that is suspended from the ceilings and the walls holds on as if by enchantment, where [rest at night on a bed of glass with glass sheets, where who I am will appear to me, sooner or later, engraved ona diamond. Surfaces in Modernist archi- tecture, painting and sculpture are characteristically treated as 2 All-wood architecture. The wooden vaults of Finnish peasant church echo the (geometry of Renaissance stone vaults. Petajaves! Old Church, bulltby a local builder Jaakko Klemetinpoika Leppinen in 1763-64. abstracted boundaries of volumes, and they have a formal, conceptual and visual, rather than a tactile essence. The surfaces themselves tend to remain mute,as volume is given priority;form is vocal, whereas matter remains silent. The preference for pure geometric form, reductive aesthetics and minimalist expression has further weakened the experiential pres- ence of matter. The experiential absence of matter gives rise toa feeling of distance and outsideness, whereas strong materiality evokes haptic sensations and an experience of intimacy and nearness. Materials and surfaces have a language of their own. Stone speaks of its distant geological origins, its durability and inherent permanence, whereas brick makes one think of earth, fire, gravity and the ageless traditions of brick construction; a brick ‘wants to be anarch’ as Louis Kahn suggested." Bronze evokes the extreme heat of its manufacture, and the ancient 3 ‘The ideal of whiteness in modern architecture. In addition to an aesthetic reference, whiteness was regarded as ‘morally advantageous. Le Corbusier, Villa Stein-de Monzie, Paris, 1926-8. North tagade. processes of casting, as well as the passing of time as recorded in its patina. Wood speaks of its two existences and timescales; its first life as a growing tree and the second as a human artefact made by the caring hand of a carpenter or cabinetmaker. Alll these traditional materials speak pleasurably of time, duration and use. The carefully chosen materials of Adolf Loos, Mies van der Rohe and Carlo Scarpa often evoke a deliberate ambience of luxury anda tradition of skilled craftsmanship. Our contemporary, highly technological environments, built of man-made materials,do not usually mediate traces of time and history. Instead of promoting rootedness anda sense of belonging, they evoke an air of alienation and detachment. ‘Contemporary architecture relies predominantly on factory-made synthetic materials that usually do not reveal their physical origins4 Luxury and preciousness of architectural ‘materials. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, man Pavilion, International Exhibition, Barcelona, 1920. Rebuilt in 1086. or the processes of their manu- facture, and they do not express duration and the passing of time. Plate glass, painted and enamelled metal surfaces and plastics are characteristically devoid of depth and temporal associations. In the modern era, architecture has deliberately aspired to evoke an air of ageless youth — the experience of perpetual nowness. The ideals of perfection and completeness further detach the architectural object from the reality of time and the traces of use. Asa consequence of these ideals and obsessions, modern buildings have become vulnerable tothe negative effects of time— the revenge of time, as it were. Instead of offering our buildings positive qualities of vintage and authority, time and use tend to attack them negatively and destructively. Asa reaction to the loss of materiality, and experience of the dimension of time characteristic of Modernism, architecture and art are again becoming sensitive to the language of matter, as well as to scenes of erosion and decay. At the same time, other sensory modes besides vision, especially the haptic qualities, are being acknowledged as channels of artistic expression. During the decades following the Arte Povera movement of the 1960s, the arts in general have shifted towards images of matter, or the poetics of material imagination— ‘poetic chemistry’, to use a notion of Bachelard."* Architects have become interested in the depth, opacity, weight, patina and aging of materials. This new interest in materiality is accompanied by an increasing acceptance of orna- ‘mental motifs integrated with materials rather than applied patterns on the surface. The frequent presence of earth asa subject and medium of artistic expression during the past few decades, from land and earth art to buildings partly sunk in earth, reveals another aspect of the growing e .gement in images of matter. The re-emergence of images of Mother Earth suggests that after the utopian journey towards autonomy, abstraction and immateriality, art and architecture are moving back to materiality and towards primor- dial female images of interiority, intimacy and belonging. Modernity at large has been obsessed with masculine images of strength and suggestions of departure, flight and journey, but images of home- coming are gaining ground. This should not be seen asa sign of conservative return to images of land and earth, but asan acknowledgement of our genuine mental need for groundedness and basic existential experiences. The inescapable need for real sustainability puts a new focus on the qualities and production processes of materials; what is sustainable in the final balance of 83 Matter5 Material, form and structure. rick wants to be an are." Louis Kahn, Management Development Centre, Indian ‘atitute of Management, Ahmedabad, India, 1962-74. energy consumption, use of resources and generation of pol- lution, is not self-evident. At the same time, materials technologies are introducing innovative materials that are self-maintaining or adjust automatically to various environmental conditions, such as temperature, moisture, air ‘movement, light and noise, in the way of the living skin. But even within the modern tradition, not all practices tended toward smoothness. Collage and montage are characteristic forms ‘of expression in modern art, and these modes of image making, that originated in painting and cinema, have penetrated all other forms of art, including architec- ture. These artistic techniques combine materiality and layered time, and enable the weaving of a dense and non-linear narrative through the juxtaposition of fragmented images that derive from irreconcilable origins. The transition away from orthodox reductive Modernism that was made during the early modern era by architects of “the other tradition’ "—most notably, Erik Gunnar Asplund, Sigurd Lewerentz and Alvar Aalto—implied a departure from the predominantly visual and form-driven air of modern architecture, towards materiality and tactile sensibility. The modern Nordic design approach at large has been sensitive to materiality and the use of natural materials, giving rise to an ambience of relaxed domesticity and a sense of tradition. At the same time, external visual effects are given less importance thana heightened sense of interiority and tactile intimacy. In this haptically sensuous architecture, materiality and a sense of tradition evoke experiences of natural duration and temporal continuum. We are not only obliged to dwell in space, we also inhabit a continuum of culture and are surrounded by ‘material memory. Whereas the visual architecture of purist geometry attempts to halt time, the haptic and multi-sensory architecture of matter makes the experience of time healing and pleasurable. This architecture does not struggle against time; it concretizes the course of time and wear, and makes their traces comfortable and acceptable. Itseeks to accommodate rather than impress, and to evoke the intimate sensations of domesticit and comfort, instead of external. authority and awe. ‘The aspiration for abstraction and perfection tends to lead the attention to the world of ideas, whereas matter, weathering and decay strengthen the experiences of causality, time and reality. There isa decisive difference between an idealized human existence and our real existential condition. Real life is ‘impure’ and ‘messy’ and profound architecture tends to‘and even structural \d columns, Kazuyo Sejima-Ryue Nishizawa/ SANAA, Glass Pavilion, Toledo Museum of Art, ‘Ohio, USA, 2001-2006. provide a margin for this essential impurity of life. John Ruskin believed that, imperfection is in some way essential to all that we know of life. Itis the sign of life ina mortal body, that is to say, of a state of process and change. Nothing that livesis, or can be, rigidly perfect; part of itis decaying, part nascent ... And in all things that live there are certain irregularities and deficiencies, which are not only signs of life but sources of beauty..* Echoing Ruskin’s view of the importance of imperfection, Alvar Aalto spoke of the unavoidability and meaning of human error,"We may not be able to eliminate error, but what we can try to achieve is that we should all commit as few errors as possible, or better still: benign errors” Jean-Paul Sartre points out the emotive power of destruction, defeat and decay, When the instruments are broken and unusable, when plans are blasted and effort is useless, the world appears with a childlike and terrible freshness without supports, without paths. Ithas a maximum reality because ... defeat restores to things their individual reality. ‘The defeat itself turns into salva- tion. For example, poeticlanguage rises out of the ruins of prose." We dream of eternal life through images of timeless beauty and perfection, but mentally we also need experiences that mark and measure the passing of time. Traces of erosion and wear remind us of the ultimate fate of the physical and biological world, the ‘horizontal death" —to use a notion of Gaston Bachelard— but they also situate us concretely in the flow of time. Through these traces, time is turned into haptic sensation. Matter expresses time, whereas shape, particularly geometric form, focuses on space. We cannot mentally live in a placeless space, but we cannot exist in a timeless situation, either. MatterTemples of Amon-Ra and Khonsu, Karnak Egypt 1529-1156 BC‘The complex of structures that constitute the Temple of Amon-Ra were constructed over a period of four centuries in the Egyptian city of Karnak, on the River Nile. Being the main temple of Amon-Ra—the sun god and king of the gods—the complex was expanded by the addition of temples for other gods, built by succession of pharaohs, such that Karnak became known as ‘Collector of Holy Places’. Built entirely of stone, these structures exemplify the Egyptian civilization’s absolute mastery of monument building, of making constructions meant to be permanent, to stand against time, so as to make present for all future generations the cultural achievements of their builders. ‘The Temple of Amon-Ra is approached from the west, and the Nile: the landing place for boats and, more importantly, sacred source of life-giving water for the Egyptians, both in seasonal floods and in daily drinking and irrigation. Stepping off the boat, in the distance we see the first massive pylon:a solid, two-part gate of square-cut stone, its inner and outer, walls battered, angling in as they rise, with an opening atits centre. @ Approaching the first pylon, we walk down the length of a stone-paved avenue, flanked on, both sides by stone sphinxes. The monumental doorway in the centre was originally framed at its top bya large stone block that also connected the two halves of the pylon. @ Passing into the shadow of this thick stone walll, we enter the outer court, an 80-metre (260-feet) deep and 100-metre (330-feet) wide space, framed on left and right by lines of massive, cylindrical, papyrus-capital columns. The stone columns glow a golden colour in the intense sun, casting deep shadows, while the many sharply incised surfaces of the walls behind cast a delicate tracery of thin shadow lines. Measured against the endlessness of the desert outside, it was difficult to grasp the scale of the temple, but now, standing in this court, we begin to realize the enormous dimensions of these buildings, stretching out before us for 350 metres (1150 feet). © We now pass through the second pylon gate, pausing in the deep shadow of the small room within, and then step out into the great hypostyle hall, one of the most astonishing spaces ever built. The hall of columns, 50 metres (165 feet) deep and 100 metres (330 feet) wide, is filled with massive cylinders of stone that march away in all directions. They are so large, and placed so close together that in experience it seems there is less space between the columns than is occupied by their curving bodies. Down the central aisle run two rows of ten enormous papyrus columns, with bell-shaped capitals, that stand 24 metres (80 feet) tall and over 3.65 metres (12 feet) in diameter. To left and right extends a forest of over 120 papyrus bundle columns, 12 metres (40 foot) tall and 3 metres (10 feet) in diameter at their base, spaced twice as closely together as the larger columns. 27 Matter ‘Temples of Amon-Ra and Khonsu© Moving through the hypostyle hall, the heavy columns stand so close together that we only occasion- ally get views between them, and we are enclosed in stone. The densely packed columns carve the space into small rooms, in each of which we feel the massive stone cylinders, bulging out at the base where we stand, pressing in on us. Peering up between these massive columns, we see the carved stone grills, opened by vertical slots, on either side of the hi central aisle that would have been the only source of light in the hypostyle hall. The columns are so massive, so closely spaced, and take up so much of the floor of the room, that we are perpetually in their shadow, as if the entire space had been carved from solid rock. Moving through this dense, thick space, navigating with our tactile sense more than by sight, we feel the massive, heavy presence of the columns with our whole bodies We run our fingers over the columns and walls, feeling the way the stone was carved in shallow relief so as to respect the monolithic integrity of the surface of the stone. The contrast between the massive dimensions of the blocks of stone, and the delicate incising of the carvings in their surfaces, makes us intensely aware of the remarkable craft, care and effort that went into the building of this place. In the hypostyle hall time stands still, and for a moment we exist in the same time as the makers of the building, sharing their pride. ‘Temples of Amon-Ra and KhonsuWhile the Temple of Amon-Ra was built over more than 400 years, and involved major renovations, the adjacent Temple of the moon god Khonsu, built from 1193-1156 by Ramses III, exemplifies the perfected form. @ Facing south to the Temple at Luxor, the temple’s main pylon remains intact and carries an outward-curving cornice at its top. Passing through the shadowed gateway of the pylon, we enter a 25-metre (82-foot) square court- yard, with double porticos of papyrus columns on three sides, forming a deeply shadowed outer edge. Stepping up on to the temple porch between the columns ahead, we walk through the shadow of the portico and enter the hypostyle hall. Dimily lit, the hypostyle hall is formed by the four taller columns at the centre, which are flanked on either side by pairs of lower columns, and small slivers of light enter the space through stone grills set into the upper walls of the higher central space. At the end of the hypostyle hall a smaller pylon is inset in from the outer walls, with its own curving cornice at the top, behind which the ceiling of the hypostyle hall disappears into the shadows. We step up on to the portal threshold, and enter an almost completely dark, lower-ceilinged space. We gradually become aware that in the centre of the room stands a smaller rectangular temple, with its own portal and outward-curving cornice that stops short of the beams in the ceiling above, surrounded on alll sides by narrow passages. Stepping up, sensing the ceiling lowering overhead, we enter this final chamber, totally dark and seemingly carved from solid rock. In this carefully structured spatial sequence —a series of buildings set within buildings, all made of massive, thick stones—the floor level was raised, so that we stepped up when entering each successive chamber, the ceiling height was progressively lowered, the outer walls gradually moved inwards, and the light level was incrementally diminished, culminating in the absolute darkness of the barge chapel of the god, the most sacred space in the temple. Matter * ‘Temples of Amon-Ra and KhonsuSanta Maria dei Miracoli, Venice Italy 1481-8 Pietro Lombardo The reliquary church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, built to house a miracle-working image of the Madonna, is exemplary of the manner in which public structures in the densely built city of Venice often shape both the interior spaces of formal function, and the exterior urban spaces of daily life. This small church is unique in the richness of its marble cladding, both inside and out, and presents the highly refined surface patterns and subtle colourations particular to buildings in Venice. In Venice, sunlight comes both from the sky above and reflected from the water below, and the buildings, pedestrian passageways and piazzas,rather than standing on solid earth, are lifted just above the surface of the water. Santa Maria dei Miracoli is located in an extremely tight site, squeezed between a narrow walk- way and a canal. The church has a simple rectangular form, its roof a half-cylinder barrel vault, with a smaller apse and bell tower at the eastern end of the church. The apse may be seen froma small piazza, Campo S. Maria Nova, to the north across the canal, and the entry to the church opens on toa tiny piazza to the west. @ To gain access to the church, we cross the bridge, and at the centre we stop, riveted by the sight of the most unique aspect of the building: this is the only church in Venice that has one of its sides directly on a canal. The long, taut side wall, seen at an acute angle, is framed by two sets of twelve shallow i i pilasters, one above the other, and its illuminated by light from the sky above and light reflected off the water below. Between the pilasters of the lower level are solid marble panels, while between the pilasters of the upper level solid panels alternate with tall, narrow rounded-top windows, set beneath arches that spring from the capitals of the pilasters. ‘The rippling surface of the glass in the windows appears dark, matching the colour of the water below. At the bottom of the wall, near the water, the pilasters stand on slightly projecting bases, and these are supported in turn by pilaster capitals that ‘emerge from the water—a surprising detail, unique to this church. The entire wall is reflected in the surface of the canal, and the stone-clad church appears to float, as if it were weightless. @ Walking around the apse and along the narrow passageway on the south side, we are brought close to the other side wall of the church, and we reach out and touch the smooth surface of the marble. Between each pair of white Istrian stone pilasters is a double- square panel, with a grey marble frame running around all four sides, and in the centre is a cross of reddish Verona Prun stone, surrounded by four rec- tangles of white, veined marble. We feel the difference in the weathering of the surfaces of the marbles, the Prun stone smooth, cracked and flaked while the white marble feels gritty and matt. We also see theway the Istrian stone is bright white where itis struck by the sun every day, while the parts that do not receive sunlight are dark, almost black, like a permanent shadow. The tautness of this marble skin and the way the stone glows in the sunlight makes the exterior wall of this church appear to be thin and translucent, and we can sense the interior space pressing outward just beneath the surface. Walking around to the tiny piazza on the west de, the front facade of the church is now close, and we feel pressed up against it. © Here circular dises and rectangular panels of deep red porphyry stone are set into the centres of the marble panels surrounding the doors. Not only the front facade, where it is usual, but all of the exterior facades of this church are intimately engaged in the daily life of the inhabitants of the city, and, for those who pass by, its function of housing a sacred relic is clearly conveyed through the exceptional quality of materials,and craft of fabrication, of its marble ski We enter the simple,rectangular interior, our eyes taking a few moments to adjust to the dim light. © The barrel-vaulted, coffered ceiling above is made ‘of wood, while the floor is made of the same coloured marbles we saw in the wall outside —white, grey, pink and red —laid in a square woven pattern, each frame of which encloses a rotated white square at its centre. @ The floor of the high altar, where the imageof the Madonna is displayed, is even more remark- able, being made of the same coloured marbles laid in a complex trapezoidal interlacing pattern with inset triangles and depicting three-dimensional, cubic, shadowed volumes within the surface of the floor. These woven stone floors beneath our feet, their smooth surfaces polished by centuries of wear, reflect the weak light in uneven, wave-like patterns, reminding us of the paradoxical impression we received on the exterior —that this heavy stone building is floating on the water. But again itis the walls that are the most sensuously fabricated surfaces. The walls are composed in two layers of stone panelling, corresponding to those on the outer walls, with smaller rectangular panels below, at the level of the seating in the nave, and larger sets of four rectangular panels above, at the level of the altar and sacred image. @ The panels of intensely white marble, richly veined with black, are set in a book-match rhythm; that is, each pair of slabs is cut and folded open, as one would open a book, so the veining patterns are mirrored across the centre joint. Between each book-matched pair of marble panels at the upper level, a window is opened, and, from inside, we can now see clearly the small circular, convex glass discs, each set in a delicate metal frame and stacked in horizontal and vertical rows. From the outside these windows were dark, like the water, but within, these glass discs admit the most ethereal light. Yet the glass, like the marbles that surround it,came from the earth. As Adrian Stokes has written, this church is built with ‘marbles inhabited by emotion, feelings turned to marble’. In Venice,*Light and shade are thus recorded, abstracted, intensified, solidified. Matter is dramatized in stone.” 98 Matter ‘Santa Maria dei MiracotiPost Office Savings Bank, Vienna Austria 1903-12 Otto Wagner‘The Imperial Post Office Savings Bank, built as the central banking institution for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is a massive, seven-storey tall structure, occupying an entire city block and housing both administrative offices and public banking halls. ‘The bank’s exteriors an outstanding example of cladding, wherein a woven fabric of finish materials covers the structural frames and walls, while at the same time representing the building’s honorific status to the city. @ We first see the bank from the Georg Coch Platz, on to which the building faces. The walls at the base of the building, bearing on a reinforced concrete foundation and rising a floor and a half, are clad with thick horizontal slabs of granite, and each slab curves outwards towards the bottom, where a recessed slot meets the top of the slab beneath. ‘The four floors above the base are clad in square slabs of polished white Sterzing marble, and on the two projecting ends of the facade, the slabs of marble are curved slightly outwards, giving the facade a quilt-like character. Both the granite and marble cladding are secured to the structural walls behind by iron bolts covered with sheets of lead and aluminium caps. Atthe undulating granite base, these aluminium caps are recessed into the stone; at the white marble above, the caps project forward of the surface of the stone, so that both details are marked by shadows. ‘The pattern of the aluminium anchors, kind of stitching of the fabric of the building’s skin, is comple- mented by the aluminium frames that surround the large windows, as well as by the aluminium cornice and parapet wall at the top of the facade. The main entrance to the bank is through five double doors—each topped by a large glass transom —which open between tall granite piers that expand and curve outwardsas they meet their bases. In front of the six piers, and standing on their own smaller bases, are six thin aluminium- clad iron columns, the lower halves of which are banded. These columns support the delicate iron and glass canopy that projects out to cover the entry doors. The entry portico condenses the comple- mentary relationship between the heavy, massive stone and the light, thin metal and glass that characterizes the exterior of the bank. Stepping up the stairs between the metal columns and stone piers, pulling open the glass door—faced with an aluminium grill—we ste the entry foyer. © This large, square room is com- pletely filled with stairs, with a wide set of stairs going up the middle and two narrower sets of stairs going down to either side. The side walls of the room, and the walls and treads of the stairs, are clad in slabs of white marble, and the railings are made of aluminium. While the outer walls of the stair are Post Office Savings Bankclad with curving, stepping and interlocking polished marble slabs, attached with small aluminium bolts, the ceiling overhead isa simple, quiet white plane, incised with a shallow square coffering pattern. ‘We climb up the central stair, which rises slowly towards the three double glass doors at its top, step across a hallway, and pass through glass doors into the main banking hall. Itisas if we have entered another world, for, buried at the heart of this massive, stone-clad structure, we find a room entirely made of glass and flooded with light. Square in plan, the banking hall is covered by a glazed ceiling composed of square sheets of frosted glass held in a thin metal grid frame. ‘The ceiling slopes slightly up from either edge towhere it meets the thin iron columns that support it,at which point it arcs up steeply and then makes a tall, gently curving vault across the centre of the room. This glass fabric glows with a white light falling from above, as if we have stepped outdoors again. ‘We now see that the entire room is wrapped in glass, as the cashiers’ windows to either side are made of large sheets of glass, and the floor beneath our feet is, made ofa grid of square glass lenses, set into a concrete frame. Where the metal window frames, columns and bolt caps were the lightest elements of the stone-clad facade, in this glass-skinned room the metal elementsare in contrast the most substantial, solid components. Along the outer edges of the room, between the cashiers’ windows, cylindrical aluminium heated air outlets stand just in front of the piers, which are clad in polished white Sterzing marble. @ These cylinders, slightly taller than we are, carry horizontal banding above their flared bases, similar to the thin columns at the entry, and at their tops they open with a series of horizontal louvres, spaced away from each other by stacked pairs of spherical balls. The aluminium ele- ments in the room have a glossy finish that catches the light and colours it silver, and itis impossible to resist touching their smoothly textured, cool surfaces. Five thin, widely spaced iron columns run down both sides of the high, curving central vault, and each is tapered from top to bottom. At their wider, upper sections, the columns are clad with thin sheet metal, attached with bolts, while at their narrower lower sections, the columns are clad in layered aluminium plates, which are attached with closely spaced bolts. Where they meet the floor, the columns have delicate, slightly flared bases—the opposite of the granite piers we passed at the entry. These slender, tapering, widely-spaced columns do not appear to engage and support the glass vault;instead, they slide through the glass, gradually disappearing into the white glow of the skylight overhead. Squinting into the light, we can barely perceive the ghostly shadows of the thin iron frame that supports the glass canopy. The majority of the necessary supporting structure is not visible to us from within the room, being hidden in the glowing glass fabric at the periphery of the space. Where the exterior facade presents us with a woven fabric of heavy, shadowed stone, its enormous structural capacity immediately evident, this interior room presents us witha woven fabric of light, glowing glass, with no apparent structural capacity whatsoever. Standing here in this glass room, we feel asif we are floating in light and suspended in air, and the complete contrast with the massive facade through which we entered exemplifies the widely varying experiential qualities with which materials can be imbued. Matter Post Office Savings BankBarcelona Pavilion, Barcelona Spain 1929 Ludwig Mies van der RoheWhile the German Pavilion was built for the Barcelona International Exposition of 1929, the Barcelona Pavilion is in fact experienced as an idealized modern house:a free and dynamic flow of space between the neutral horizontal planes of the floor and ceiling thatis enclosed by the sensuous density of material. The entire building is composed of simple rectangular planes, horizontal and vertical, ordered on a modular grid, so that the materials of which the planes are made, and joints where they meet, become the focus of our experience. When first seen from the north, the Pavilion appears as three low horizontal layers of solid and void: a warm white plinth or base, made of travertine stone, which anchors the Pavilion firmly to the ground;a wide, deep layer of walls, made of dark green marble and shadowed glass, which seems to float ambiguously above the plinth; and a thin cool white roof line of cement plaster at the top, which hovers just above the walls. The travertine plinth, its surface matt in texture, extends across the entire structure, and is set back on the right side, where we find a set of travertine stairs. @ Walking towards the stairs, we pass the polished Alpine green marble wall, resting on the travertine plinth. The roof then cantilevers over to align with the edge of the travertine plinth, and then, shortly before we reach the first step, the marble wall stops and a full-height glass wall begins, through which we see red velvet curtains When we reach the top of the stairs, the entry is nowhere to be seen. Spreading out before us is the top surface of the travertine plinth, into which a large reflecting pool is set. The travertine walls that stand behind the pool form a U-shaped outdoor court, and are mirrored in the surface of the pool. The travertine plinth, which we now perceive to be the floor of the entire structure, is made of 1.1-metre (3 feet, 7 inch) square slabs, and this is the grid that orders both the horizontal and vertical surfaces of the Pavilion. The travertine walls in the distance, across the pool, as well as the dark green marble walls we passed on entering, are made of 1.1 by 2.2 metre (7 feet,2 inch) stone slabs, placed horizontally and stacked three high, their vertical joints aligned with every second joint in the travertine floor. @ The white plaster ceiling plane, its surface lightly textured, floats just above the travertine walls, and is 3.3 metres (10 feet, 10 inches) above the travertine floor. ‘To our right, dark green marble wall stands in the shadow of the broadly cantilevered roof, with a single thin column standing just in front of it. A cruci- form in plan, the column is clad with chrome metal with a mirror finish, and the width of its outstretched arms precisely matches the thickness of the green marble wall behind it. This shimmering bundle of 101 Matter Barcelona Paviliontaut vertical ines of light, reflecting all the colours around it, runs from the travertine floor to the smooth plaster ceiling, without any base or capital. Turning to our right again, we see the entry doors, two full- height glass doors, framed in the same chrome metal as the column, which, when pivoted open, stand as, glass planes set the same distance away from the marble wall as the columns. © Walking into the main room of the Pavilion, our attention is immediately drawn to a wall of richly patterned polished red onyx standing in the middle of the space. Unlike the other stone walls, the onyx wall is divided vertically into two slabs. rather than three, and the two slabs of stone have been book-matched, cut and folded open, as one would open a book, so the veining patterns are mirrored across the horizontal joint line. Because of the 3.3-metre height of the wall, slightly less than 11 feet, this horizontal joint in the onyx wall, exactly halfway between the floor and ling, is set at our standing eye level, typically around 1.65 metres (5 feet, 6 inches). This joint is the only line in the Pavilion that appears perfectly horizontal when we are standing and walking—forming an interior horizon line. © The red onyx wall and its horizontal centreline draw our eyes to the right, where we see, beyond a wall of vertical glass panels,a pool with a sculpture standing in the corner. We open the glass door andwalk out into this walled water court. The narrow travertine terrace on which we stand is covered and shaded by the roof, but the wider pool is open to the sky. The water court is surrounded on three sides by walls of Alpine green marble, the slabs of which are book-matched both horizontally and vertically. In the far corner of the pool, standing on her ow small green marble plinth, is the sculpture Sunrise of 1925 by Georg Kolbe, a larger than life-size female figure shielding her eyes from the bright light. Both the sculpture and the bold patterns of the green marble are mirrored in the surface of the pool, the bottom and sides of which are of smooth black stone. As we walk through the spaces of the Pavilion, moving from inside to outside to inside again, we perceive that the entire space is covered and shadowed by one large roof plane. Yet at the same moment we also find ourselves surrounded by constantly changing groupings of vertical planes of glass, both transparent and translucent, and planes of polished marble of varying colours and patterns. These freestanding reflective planes run from floor to roof, andslide in front of and behind one another all around us as we move. Occasionally a thin, cruciform chrome-clad column comes into view, but the columns are difficult to distinguish from the equally thin and chrome-clad frames surrounding the large sheets of glass, with which they tend to merge as we move, forming shim- mering vertical screens The absence of any perceivable regular structural rhythm results in the roof seeming to be suspended over our heads, as if it were weight- less, Due to the positioning of the walls, we can never see the entire space from any one viewpoint, yet the reflectivity of the vertical and horizontal surfaces— both literal mirroring in reflection, and book-match mirroring of the marble —allows us to perceive the space in multiple, ever-changing, yet always ‘optically coherent’! compositions, through the mirroring of both real surfaces and reflected images. Matter i 3Law Courts Extension, Gothenburg Sweden 1913-37 Erik Gunnar AsplundGround Floor First Floor Z 105 a co Tp ey An addition and extension of the original city law courts dating from 1672, Asplund worked on this building from 1913, when he won the design competition, until 1937, when the final design was realized. The materials with which the building is constructed, and the manner in which they are detailed, respond both to the need to appropriately fit and integrate with the important historic civic structures that surround it, and the need to create acontemporary place providing both public decorum and psychological comfort. ‘The Law Courts are first seen from Gustav Adolf ‘Square, which opens to the central canal of the city. The historic courts building is a symmet three-storey structure centred on a three-bay entry portico, and the new extension is to the right. In contrast with the Classical building's vertical windows and structure of two-storey pilasters standing ona one-storey rusticated base that projects forward in front of the wall, the extension is clearly modern, with square windows and square structural frame flush with the wall. Yet the extension also defers to the historic building by aligning horizontal levels, shifting windows off centre, employing the same finish colours, as well as by having no entry door. We enter through the double-columned portal of the historic building and step into the arcade at the edge of the sunlit central courtyard. @ We are Law Courts Extensionsurrounded on three sides by the massive walls of the ‘oric building, with vertical pilasters running from the stone paved floor to the roof, between which small vertical windows are opened. In marked contrast, the fourth wall of the courtyard is a taut, freestanding plane pressing slightly forward into the space, with no visible structure. It is opened across its entire width bya two-storey glass walll, framed by thin wood-faced horizontal mullions. Projecting from the middle of this glass wall—one level above the floor of the courtyard—is a balcony,running across the full width of the wall, with a closely spaced vertical railing alongiits front face. Beneath this balcony, the glass wall has no openings, and, turning to our right, we find the entry to the extension at the end of the arcade. Stepping inside, our attention is immediately drawn to the long wide stair that slowly descends towards us through an opening in the ceiling above— clearly this is the primary path to the courts. But before ascending, we walk past a glass-walled lift, framed in thin lines of steel, and out to the middle of, the three-storey tall central hall. The floor of this room is paved with the same square granite slabs as the courtyard, and the two spaces, inside and out, seem to merge, separated only by the thinly framed glass wall. @ Sunlight pours into the hall horizontally from the courtyard to the south, and light also cascades down vertically into the northern half of the hall through the large set of south-facing skylights that are opened in the ceiling high overhead. The three solid outer walls of the hall —as well as the balustrades that line the walkways running around the edge of the central space —are clad in smooth plywood, and the southern sunlight striking the wood causes the room to take ona warm glow. ‘The balustrade of the gallery running along the south side of the hall isa closely spaced vertical metal railing topped with a wooden handrail, matching that on the courtyard balcony. @ Unlike the other three sides of the halll, the south side is completely open, and the sunlight washes over the ceilings, which are surfaced in white cement plaster, as are the ten steel columns and tapered beams supporting the galleries adjacent to the courtyard. Walking to the stair, we pass the columns standing in the sunlight, their beautiful sculpted shapes softly shadowed, their rounded surfaces smooth to our touch. Aswe climb the stairs, we slow our pace, for the treads are wider and the risers shallower than those usually found indoors, being closer to those found in the landscape. Walking up this very long stair, which runs almost the full length of the south glass ‘all, allows us to calm down and regain our composure before beginning the court proceeding, On reaching the top of the stairs, this comforting effect is reinforced by the lack of enclosure and 107 Law Courts Extensionfreedom of movement provided by the open, brightly lit gallery, which hovers between the courtyard and the hall. The floor of this upper level is made of warm oak, a soft glowing light comes from the opal glass lights that hang in pairs on either side of each column, and informal clusters of bentwood lounge chairs are provided for waiting. At the west end of the central hall stands a highly sculptural switchback stair — for staff use — which begins its ascent on this first floor level, winding upwards and disappearing through the ceiling above. The skeletal steel frame and stepping treads of the stair are surfaced in smooth rounded white plaster. and the thin steel side railings curve out towards their tops to accommodate the width of the wooden handrail. Beneath the large projecting circular wooden clock, the landing spills out in a large graceful curve towards the courtrooms. The courtrooms are on the north side of the hall, across from the waiting gallery, and their walls curl dramatically outwards into the room, catching the light from the skylight above and contrasting with the walls of the walkways, which curve inwards at the corners. As we draw closer, we perceive that the courtrooms are not clad in smooth plywood, as are all the other interior walls of the hall, but are instead clad in thin vertical slats of Oregon pine, subtly imp] the courtrooms’ honorific status within the buil Atthe centre of the north side of the hall, between the two courtrooms, two columns mark the public entry. @ Inside, the courtroom ist by a band of windows opened at the ceiling on the straight north wall. With the sole exception of the ceiling, which is smooth white plaster, all the interior surfaces, of the courtroom are clad in wood, with vertical pine slats on the walls and oak parquet on the floor. ‘We sit in wooden chairs, facing the wooden judge's desk, which curves inwards, as do the wood walls all around us,so that we feel both enclosed and embraced by wood. 109 Matter Law Courts ExtensionSaint Petri Church, Klippan Sweden 1962-6 Sigurd LewerentzThe Church of St Petriis located in a park at the edge of the small town of Klippan. Upon first sight, the church appearsas a solid brick-walled mass, the parish house wrapping and protecting the la rectangular sanctuary. As we move closer, we perceive that the brickwork of the outer walls varies widely in bond pattern, spacing, mortar jointing and corner details: Despite what appears to be rough craftsmanship in the brickwork, on closer examination we see that every brick is whole:no bricks have been cut in the making of this church. The profile of the outer walls of the church has ar, non-repetitive shape, rippling in an erratic, curving, broken wave pattern along the west wall of the sanctuary. At the window openings, simple sheets of glass—slightly larger than the openings they cover—have been set against the exterior surface of the brick wall and held in place by metal clips at top and bottom, so that the glass floats in front of the wall. As we approach the entry court on the north side, we see small rectangular towers of brick emerging through the metal roof of the smaller volume on the right, while the larger volume on the left has an overhanging metal roof that resonates with the ringing of the bells. Walking down the sloped, terracotta tile-paved floor of the small entry court, we arrive at the large wooden door set on the inside face of the wall. Now we can perceive the depth of this massive brick wall avery irreg Passing through this thick threshold, we find ourselves in a dark space — the walls of brick, the floor a grid pattern of light and dark tiles, upon which stands a brick altar and brick bench. The ceiling is two over-lapping brick vaults, one low over the altar and one high above the entry, their edges carried by steel beams. The room is dimly lit by two thin lines of light: vertical slot of light cut through the side wall and a vertical slot of light cut up through the brick vault above our heads. This slot overhead seems impossibly deep, suggesting that we are somehow embedded within the earth. Behind this entry chapel is a smaller waiting space, also entirely made of masonry and similarly illuminated, which is furnished only with a brick bench set beneath the low brick vault. Here in this dimly lit, cave-like space, we feel very far removed from the everyday world, We enter the sanctuary from the chapel, stepping through an opening between the north and west walls. We are standing in the corner of a large square room (18 metres by 18 metres; 60 by 60 feet), the space immediately in front of us dimly lit by the few ‘openings in the west wall to our right, while the space to the east remains deeply shadowed. We pause to regain our balance, for the brick floor we are standing on is not flat, but gently slopes up towards the east. forming an interior topography. @ Close at hand we see a large half shell of a mollusc, held above the floor am i—_ ot bya black bent steel frame, with water dripping into the shell from a steel pipe just above it thisis the baptismal font. Then we simultaneously see and feel the swelling and lifting of the brick floor in front of the shell, providing a place for a child to stand. We become aware of the long opening in the floor,a cross marking the position of the priest on the lower side, and with bricks sticking out like fingers at either end. Peering into the darkness within this opening in the floor, we are unable to discern its depth. We hear the sounds of dripping water resonating, not from the dripping into the shell, but from the dripping of the shell into this subterra- nean sacred pool. ‘The entire space in which we stand is made of brick,and © we can now perceive the complexly folding and curving roof overhead, a series of narrow brick vaults bearing on steel beams at their shared edges, and running from west to east towards the altar. At the middle of the room, two double steel beams run across from north to south, with short steel posts reaching up to support the beams between the brick vaults. @ These two double beams are in turn carried by a large T-shaped double column and beam that stands near the centre of the floor — the only visible means of support for the roof. Despite their substantial thickness, it is not clear what part the brick walls play in supporting the roof. a The openings that are cut in the west and south walls are solid brick all the way through, and we cannot see the unframed glass floating outside the wall. Yet there are other openings in these walls too, including the numerous thin vertical slots cut in the west and south walls— opposite the organ and choir—to dampen sound. Also, there are shallow openings cut in all the walls, revealing them to be double-layered, with a hollow space between to allow the introduction of warm air in winter. The massive altar, bishop's throne, priest’s bench, and pulpit—with its slightly rotated Bible stand—are all made of brick, and they are set against the east wall of the sanctuary, the only wall without any openings. Two deep slots of light are cut in the roof, casting a diaphanous wall or curtain of vertical ht that falls at the meeting of the nave and altar spaces, marking the path of the priest from the sacristy door into the sanctuary, and defining the sacred space of the apse. ‘The St Petri Church exemplifies the manner in which the materials of architectural construction can be employed to shape and bring into presence the rituals of daily life, allowing the human actions that take place to come forward, while the archi- tecture recedes as background or framework for experience. In this way,as Walter Benjamin has written, architecture is not the object of our focusedoptical attention, but rather is perceived thro “tactile appropriation [which] is accomplished not so much by attention as by habit’,' through use, movement and touch—our haptic inhabitation ofa familiar place.Space Time Matter Light Silence Dwelling Room Ritual Memory Landscape PlaceGravityrime ‘Miatter : Cont, Architecture is the art of ordering space. Lightness is born of heaviness and heaviness of lightness, instantaneously and reciprocally, returning Itexpresses itself through structures Auguste Perret creation for creation, gaining strength proportionally as they gain in life,and as much more in life as they gain in motion. They destroy one another also at the same time, fulfilling a mutual vendetta, proof that lightness is created only in conjunction with heaviness, and heaviness only where lightness , follows”Force, Form and Structure Architecture takes place under the laws of physics, and it usually deliberately expresses these consti- tutive physical forces. Meaningful architectural structures are not arbitrary formal inventions or sculptural whims;they arise from physical, material, cultural, functional, as well as mental causalities, and they turn these undeniable facts and conditions into metaphoric architectural expressions. All physical structures are bound to recognize the force of gravity. The load-bearing structure is the primary and most potent source of expression in architecture.‘Structures are the mother tongue of architecture’, as Auguste Perret argues, ‘The architect is a poet who thinks and speaks through structures’ He saw the honest expression of the structure in moral terms.‘A builder who hides any part of the building frame, abandons the only permissible and, at the same time, the most beautiful embellishment of architecture. The one that hides aloadbearing column makes an error. The one who builds a false column commitsa crime-*As structural forces are inescapable physical facts, they provide the ground for aheightened sense of reality;an architectural approach that aims at precise structural articulation and expression turns intoa form of poetic realism. The entire history of architec- ture can be interpreted as the evo- lution of new structural materials and ideas of enclosing and spanning space. Buildings not only have to fight gravity, they also have to resist varying forces of wind, weatherand earthquakes, as well as the structural loads introduced by their use. This story includes Egyptian pyramids, Greek temples, Roman vaulted spaces and Gothic cathedrals, through the Modernist structures in concrete, steel and glass to today’s High-Tech architec- ture, built from man-made metal alloys, plastics and composites. 7 Gravity ‘The Greek column and beam, the Roman vault, the Gothic pointed and ribbed arch, as well as Robert Maillart’s, Luigi Nervi's and Buckminster Fuller's modern engineering structures, all clearly and visibly articulate and poetize logical structural forms and their dialogue with the forces of gravity. ‘The articulation of the Greek column with its plinth, fluting, entasis,capital and abacus, as well as the intersecting network of the ribs of the vaults and columns of + the Gothic cathedral, express the». _ gathering and directing of the forces of gravity through the architectural system of structure and expressive language. The spatial structure of a building inhibits or invites specific activities, whereas the proportions and the juxtaposition and counterpoint of parts convey experiences of elegance and beauty. ‘The logic of construction is not limited to the load-bearing structure alone,as the entire1 Graceful caryatids support the weight of the lonian structure enacting the carrying function of columns. Inthe columns of Greek architecture the loadbearing action. is abstracted but we still sense it through ‘our own body. Erechtheion, Acropolis, ‘Athens, Greece, 421~407 BC. 2 ‘The Gothic cathedral expresses a vertical ‘soar through a plantlike articulation of the structure. The picture shows the rhythmic sequence of compound piers which alternate round with four octagonal attached shafts, and octagonal with four round shafts. Chartres Cathedral, Chartres, France, 1145; reconstructed over a 26-year period after the fire of 194. process of construction, the detailing and joining of units, the sequencing of different works, etc. demand their own rationality. Architectural expression that is based on these constructional and technical realities,and the various crafts of construction, is often referred tos the ‘tectonic’ princi- ples of architecture. The tectonic language of architecture expresses how the building is constructed and how the various elements and units of construction are joined to each other to form the complex structure. The tectonic expression is by necessity in dialogue with the force of gravity and other causalities of the physical world. This tectonic expression can be regarded as the natural language of architecture, Historically, inventions in engineering have developed in parallel with the evolution of archi- tecture; one of the best examples of this are the great engineeri structures of the nineteenth century, such as the Crysta Palace (1851) in London by Joseph Paxton, and the Galerie des Machines at the International Exhibition in Paris (1889) by Contamin and Dutert, which gave a strong impetus to the emergence of moder architecture. Architecture can influence engineering as well. One of the legendary structural feats in the history of architecture is Filippo Brunelleschi’s dome of the Duomo in Florence. In addition to inventing the novel structural system of a double dome as a way to span the largest space ever up to that time, the architect devised the vehicles to transport the stones long distances to the site,as well as the machinery to elevate huge blocks of stone to the dizzying heights of the dome. The architectural struggle against gravity echoes the basic human desire for liberation from the constraints of matter, for weightlessness and flight; this is3 ‘Aweightless horizontal slide of a Stone structure through space. Filippo Brunelleschi, The Foundling Hospital, Florence, 1419-1445 (Brunelleschi's name appears on the construction documents only cunt 1427). 4 ‘The Crystal Palace, designed and builtin ‘an amazingly short time for the Great Exhibitionin London, is one of the most astonishing construction projects in history. Sir Joseph Paxton, The Crystal Palace, London, 1851. amental duality expressed in Bachelard’s psychology of gravity’? The history of architecture reveals a general tendency towards a reduction of mass and weight, although stylistic preferences have ‘occasionally dictated ‘counter- evolutionary’ structural articula- tions that reinforce the sense of mass and gravity. Louis Kahn's work, for instance, reintroduced archaic images, such as brick arches and concrete vaults, in modern architecture and in so doing brought back a sense of gravitas. Froman engineering point of view, the force of gravity is fought with appropriate materials, geometries and structural shapes that conduct the gravitational forces through the structure down to earth. The need for windows, doors and other openings, and the growing desire for transparency and interconnectedness of exterior and interior spaces, have gradually reduced the solidity and massiveness of walls and led to framed structures that can be punctured at will Antoni Gaudf conceived his ingenious organically shaped and flowing structures by means of physical models which reversed the direction of gravity; gravita- tional pressure was transformed to suspension. He photographed the canvas and wire structures suspended with small bags providing the weight,and used these structural lines and forms as the basis of determining his vaulted stone forms. Gaudi’s structures encounter the force of gravity as imperceptibly and self-evidently as the forms and structures of biological life, and the feeling of weight and mass seems to disappear. We experience architectural structure through an unconscious bodily mimesis and projection. Structural characteristics, tensions, dynamics and loads are re-enacted and sensed by our skeletal and ‘muscular system. Architectural 19 Gravity5 ‘Antoni Gaudi conceived his structural {designs through an inverted model that tumed the structure of compression nto Structure in tension, and used the force of ‘ravity itself to give the structuraits correct shape. Antoni Gaudi, Church for the Colonia Guell, Barcelona, 1898-1908. ‘Gaudi made the wash drawing of the ‘space on the basis of the photograph, tured upside down. structures, volumes and surfaces are experienced as virtual movements; the movement of a Gothic cathedral isa vertical soar that seems to gain velocity asit rises, the walls of a Baroque space seem to swell and bulge, pushing, pulling and moulding the space, whereas Modernist and contemporary buildings usually suggest a weightlessly gliding horizontal flight. We also project sense of touch into our visual observations and we feel the texture, temperature and weight of materials. Adrian Stokes writes about the primary architectural dialogue between ‘smooth’ and ‘rough’, Our bodies are sensitive in making the judgement between real and unreal structures, between the true articulation ofa structure and mere decorative aestheticization of the elements of construction. ‘The Finnish architect and theorist Gustaf Strengell gives a vivid description of this bodily mimesis in the experience of Greek architecture, “Every line ina Greek temple functions in the manner of an edge, the sharpness of which one understands,even simply by looking at it,in a tactile manner, through internal imitation. Its beauty is concealed in an assumed finite and immutable plastic form. Hence, here, one can speak of the reality of the object. Inanother context he elaborates, “In the Greek Doric column .. ve find a supporting form, a form which in an invincible manner has turned the static function of bearing into an expression which can be experienced even physically. When we see this type of column, we immediately get the feeling that it supports, and when this supporting is both sure and free, it awakens in us a feeling of harmony. ...”* Kyésti Alander, another Finnish architectural historian, also describes the effect of physical forces in a mimetic manner, The whole temple, as.6 ‘The concrete bridge appears to jump ‘across the ravine like an animal, Robert lart,Salginatobel Bridge, 1929-30. such, rests on its foundation, wate ful and expressive, but perfectly at peace. Even all its various partsare in astate of absolute balance: the columns effortlessly support the beams, and do not seem to have any other aspiration. ‘The vertical and horizontal parts of the building are in perfect agreement. One’s gaze follows the lines of the building in both directions with equal serenity,and at no point is it diverted beyond the boundaries of the building. No component is so emphasized that it distracts one’s attention elsewhere.” Since the development of the mathematicized theories of struc- tures they have been conceived through calculation. Nevertheless, an intuitive understanding of stresses and the anatomy of structures continues to be the core of ingenuity in engineering. The plastic expression of the forces through the structure calls for a sculptor’s eye, as exemplified 7 ‘The huge convention space of ste! tohouse 30,000 persons spans 216 meters (720 feet), and the height ig 33 meters (110 feet) Mies van der Rohe, Convention Hall, Chicago, project, 1953-54. One of the cantilevered Corners of facade model. by the dynamic flow of force in the Reims Cathedral (after 1254), or Robert Maillart’s Salginatobel Bridge (1930), for instance. The computer has opened up rely new possibilities for the conception, modelling, mathemati- cization and testing of complex structures, as well as for facilitating the processes of manufacture and assembly. Yet, even in the age of virtual reality, architectural constructions and structures have to speak to us through our senses and embodied experience. sat GravityBaths of Caracalla, Rome Italy 206-17The Baths of Caracalla were the second largest imperial baths in Rome, and were among a number of public baths available to the citizens of the city for daily use. The enormous scale of the baths, the significant investment in infrastructure they represented, their prominent location within the city and their construction by the Emperor indicates the importance for the Romans of the public life taking place within their spaces. The baths exemplify the Roman mastery of massive masonry and concrete construction, engaging the forces of gravity in forming monumental spaces for human inhabitation. @ The Baths of Caracalla stands within an enormous walled garden measuring 360 by 340 metres (1200 by 1100 feet), encompassing 120,000 square metres of space (30 acres). In the outer walls of this, garden are located meeting rooms, libraries and sports stadium seating, which is built over the water cistern for the baths. The massive main bath buildi itself is 220 by 110 metres (730 by 365 feet),and we can walk today among the ruins of its precisely formed spaces, cubes, rectangles, cylinders and semicircles, all originally covered by cross vaults and domes. As we walk through the thick-walled rooms, we are first struck by the height of the vaults overhead, the ceilings one and a half times as tall as the rooms are wide. For the Romans, the shape and height of the ceiling of a room clearly indicated its importance asa public space, This generosity of space overhead extends even to the secondary rooms that serve the main spaces, such as the apodyteria (changing rooms) @ we would have first entered, men’s and women’s to the left and right on the northeastern facade, These double-height spaces open on two sides to pairs of smaller changing rooms, and from these there are large stairs leading directly to the roof terraces for sunbathing. From the changing rooms, we walk into a space with a cross- vaulted ceiling and through the columns at its edge arrive at the large swimming pool, the natatio. This completely fills its space, measuring 55 by 30 metres (180 by 100 feet), and is open to the sky above 30-metre tall walls. Two large semicircular niches to either side of the pool are provided with continuous curved seats, allowing bathers to sit in the water in the shade of the half-dome overhead. Walking the other way from the dressing rooms, we enter the palaestra, an arcaded open-air court where exercise was taken before entering the baths. The floor of the palaestrais covered in geometric mosaic patterns,and in the large exedra— originally top-lit by a semicircular window —which opens off the inner side, the floor mosaics depict athletes and gladiators. Passing through the exedra, we walk down the 123 Gravity Baths of Caracallamain southeast-northwest axis of the building, which connects the palaestra at either end to the frigidarium, orcold baths, at the centre. @ The frigidarium, in which the two primary movement axes of the building cross, is the largest interior space in the building, measuring 55 by 25 metres (180 by 82 feet), and was originally roofed by three monumental cross-vaults rising to 38 metres (125 feet). The room was originally litby eight large semicircular windows at the tops of the vaults, and served as the main space — the literal crossroads of the enormous baths complex. ‘Through double columns, four shallow, tall cold baths open off the corners of this room, their back walls slightly curved. From the centre of the frigidarium, we can walk northeast to the natatio @, the swimming pool, which opens directly off the central room,or to the southwest, where we enter the repidarium,a 15 metre (50 foot) square room, 22.5 metres (74 feet) in height, with shallow tepid baths opening left and right, through arched openings. Walking through the small, narrow, low-ccilinged passages at the southwestern wall of the tepidarium, we enter the caldarium: the hot baths. This space was originally a 35 metre (115 feet) diameter cylinder topped by a semicircular dome rising 52.5 metres (172 feet), surrounded by 7 metre (23 feet) thick outer walls, into which were set seven hot baths, housed in arched niches. A semi-circular window was set at thetop of the curved back wall of each of the hot baths. Above each hot bath niche, a large semicircular arched window was opened in the cylindrical wall under the dome, through which warm afternoon sun would have entered. The floors of the caldarium, unlike the other spaces in the baths, are not paved with mosaics, but rather are paved in white and polychrome marbles, indicating the central importance of the hot baths The cylindrical caldariwm is embed- ded less than halfway into the rectangular mass of the baths building, and the majority of its massive cylindrical volume stood outside, at the precise centre of the large square walled-garden court within which the baths are housed. © Today, all that remains of the caldarium is the curved back wall, but, in the way the curved surfaces, now in ruin, still throw back sounds, we can get a sense of how the sounds of bathing reverberating off the curving walls, originally clad with marble like the floor, would have filled this monumental room. ‘Standing on the tessellated mosaic floors, between the massive masonry walls, the baths are experienced asa cave-like inner world, a rhythmically choreo- graphed sequence of interior spaces, lit from above, establishing its own sense of time, gravity and horizon. Walking among the ruins of tall, massive walls—with the traces of different mosaics on the floors of each room, and the interlacing of the remnants of enormous arches and vaults overhead —we feel the way the builders integrated the structure and space, conceiving of them as one and the same, carved from solid mass raised out of the earth. Seeing the rhythmic curving lines of the relieving arches embedded in the walls, bringin; it down, we can feel the way this massive construction of masonry and concrete balances the downward pull of gravity with its own upward rise of the walls and spring of the arches and vaults. The massive masonry surfaces that shape the spaces we are in, for many centuries resisting the pull of gravity, bring to life the ancient mason’s aphorism, ‘weight never sleeps’. 125 6Church of Saint Front, Périgueux France 1120-60© The Church of Saint Front in Périgueuxis one of asseries of all-stone sanctuaries constructed during the medieval period in the Aquitaine region of France. These churches are called Romanesque because of their deployment of forms drawn from the build the Romans had constructed throughout Europe. Saint Front is exceptional in the rigour and geometric precision of its plan, as well as in that, on its interior, the massive stonework is exposed, rather than being clad with finer finish materials as it was in many other churches builtin this period. While the exterior of Sai and modified in the 1800s, the majority of the interior remains almost exactly as when it was first completed. © Entering the dark church from the bright sunlight outside, it takes a while before our eyes can adjust to the faint light. Then, as we become aware of the form, of the space, time seems to slow to match the rhythm of the series of massive piers, arches and semi-spherical domes that open out before us. The plan of the church is a perfect cruciform in shape, 60 metres (200 feet) in length and width, with four square arms crossing to form a fifth square © at the centre. Each of the five squares is centred on asemi-spherical dome, 12 metres (40 feet) in diameter and rising to a height of 30 metres (100 feet) above the floor. The five domes are carried on spherical pendentive vaults that merge the cornice-lined lower ngs Front was renovated estic edge of the dome with the top of the arches below. The spherical pendentives bear on 6-metre (20-foot) wide arches, and are shallowest at the top of the four arches and deepest at the four corners where adjacent arches meet. The arches spring from massive square piers of the same dimension, 6 metres toa side. Finally, asit comes down to the floor, each large pier is carved and hollowed out to produce a cluster of four, 2-metre (6 foot, 7 inch) square piers, within which has been carved a tall, narrow cruciform- shaped, 2-metre wide space, opening out in all four directions and topped by an arched cross vault. This extraordinary interioris built entirely with the local limestone of the Aquitaine region, cut into massive rect of the sanctuary have all been finished flush and smooth, so that the stonework seems to flow across the surfaces, joining piers to arches to spherical pendentives to domes. The only projecting elements within the main space are the diminutive base, only a few inches high, at the bottom of each pier cluster; the small narrow stone cornice that marks the tops of the major pier clusters at the spring points of the arches; and the similar smalll cornice that marks the spring point of the spherical domes above the pendentives. The lower edges of the domes are set outside the face of the spherical pendentives that support them, so that the domes are cast into deep igular blocks, and the inner surfaces 127 Gravity Church of Saint Frontoe cl shadow, receiving much less light than do the curving pendentives from the windows at the top of the outer walls of the church, making the domes seem to recede into the distance. Four small arch-topped windows are opened in the shadows at the base of each dome, above the corner of the pier below and thus diagonal to the axis of movement. These bright little spots of light are like stars shining out of the darkness of the space of the domes. © Pairs of small, arch-topped windows, the same size as those in the domes above, are opened at the top of each of the four faces of each pier—this is the only indication of the scale of a human being within the upper reaches of the sanctuary. Walking through the tall, narrow cruciform-shaped spaces hollowed out within the large piers, between the four small piers and under the cross-vaulted ceiling, we see that tiny cornices project into the interior of this space to mark the spring point of the arches and cross-vault above. These cornices are sliced off cleanly at the outer face of the pier cluster, revealing profiles of their crosssection to the main space of the sanctuary. Standing inside one of them, we perceive that these cruciform-shaped spaces carved within the piers are, in both their shapes and dimensions, miniature restate- ments of the overall spatial structure of the church: Yet itis also here, in these narrow, 10-metre (33-foot) tall spaces—where we can reach out to either side and touch the cool, hard stones of the piers—that we most feel the compression exerted on us by the massive stone surfaces rising from the stone floor to the stone domes hovering in the darkness above Stepping back out into the main space of the church, we sense how the continuous, thick, smooth stone surfaces of the piers, arches, pendentives and domes, which are broken only by the most minimal of details and the smallest of openings, clearly br their own enormous weight down to the ground, Yet,at the most crucial of junctures—the way the domes float above and in the shadow of the spherical pendentives, and the tiny, insubstantial bases upon which the piers stand at the floor —the massive, heavy stone surfaces, their blocks interwoven and inter- locking like a fabric, also appear to defy gravity. barely touching down onto the floor and leaping acefully across the space over our heads. 129 Gravity Church of Saint Front