archincont-stevenholl

8/14/2019 Archincont-StevenHoll

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ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT 2002-2003 Fall TermHLYA YREKL

Steven Holl, IntertwiningIntroduction: Alberto Perez-Gomez

Questions:1 What are the misconceptions that hide the potential richness of our experience?2 How does the author define architecture, by relating it to the ideas of Merleau Ponty?3 How does the author define reality?4 What is the reason of the crisis in architecture?5 How can this crisis be overcome? What does Perez Gomez propose for this healingprocedure in relation with the architecture of Holl6 How does the author relate the language with architecture, with the help of MerleauPonty's philosophy, "Phenomenological hermeneutics"?7 How does the author explain Holl's double awareness?8 As a summing up idea, how does the author define the architecture of Steven Holl?

Intertwining:Questions:1 What is the importance of architecture for Steven Holl?2 How does the author explain the metaphors in perception?3 What does the author mean by the word "enmeshing" and "enmeshing experience"4 What is the difference between perspectival, and fluid space?5 How does the author consider time?6 What are the metaphors related to gravity?7 How does the author explain order, geometry and proportion?8 In "idea and limit", which are the ideas explained in the text, and how are the limits ofthese ideas explained?9 What is the relation of haptic realm and materiality?10 What is the importance of remaining experimental?

Steven Holl, anchoring

Introduction: Kenneth FramptonQuestions:1 For Kenneth Frampton what are the characteristics of the works of Steven Holl?2 What are the two fundamental principles of Holl's architecture?3 Why is Holl close to critical regionalism?

Anchoring:Questions:1 What are the means of words for Steven Holl?2 Why is the concept anchoring a catalyst for the architecture of Steven Holl?

3 How does the author explain the relation of building and site through history?4 Why does the author define architecture as an extension?5 What are the results of the link of concept and form?6 What is the condition of the metaphysical elements of architecture before resumingthe design?7 What happens when the haptic realm opens?8 When is the open vocabulary of architecture limited?9 When the possible combinations of lines, planes and volumes float, which systemsfreeze the possibilities, and how can we still have a great range of possibilities?10 What are the three directions of architecture for the author? Explain briefly.11 Can you write a short essay on Wittgenstein's words: The aspects of things arehidden because of their simplicity and familiarity


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ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT 2002-2003 KI YARIYILIHLYA YREKL

Steven Holl, IntertwiningIntroduction: Alberto Perez-Gomez

Gomez writes the ideas of Maurice Merleau Ponty which is a philosophyabout perception, which is the humanity's understanding of meaning. Andcertain things, hegemony of linear temporality, where there is no presence,

the homogeneity of geometric space etc are merely partial truths,misconceptions that often hide the potential richness of our experience.This suggests, indeed the possibility of an architecture that may be capableof both revealing and constituting itself through experience as a non-idealizednotion, without nevertheless denying its co-presence with language.Reality is not reducible to the conventional poles of objectivity andsubjectivity, it is a gift to a non-dualistic, embodied consciousness-the whole,experiencing human body as a synthetic receptor. Meaning are mentalassociations and space is there or it is decontextualized images (incyberspace) and they are reality. This dualism puts architecture into crisis.(Analytic and destructive attitude of Eisenmann and Derrida against thissynthetic attitude)artists and poets, both traditional and contemporary, consistentlydemonstrate that meaning and its particular sensuous embodiment cannot bedissociated, that "content " cannot be reduced to "information".For Holl's architecture then Gomez says that: This issue could besummarized as the critical reinterpretation of the "program". Upon it hingesthe possibility to transform a passive observer into a participant, allowing theinhabitant to recognize a potential wholeness through experience.Plato's third element of reality chora besides being and becoming is theground of culture that can't be grasped directly but makes the miracle of

language possible by relating the ideal being to the concrete becoming. andthat only appears in works of human creation, as if in dreams.

The question of how language, poetic and philosophical, relates toarchitectural practice is crucial, as it seems to hold a key for ourunderstanding of architecture's potential relevance in the late twentiethcentury.Following from Merleau-Ponty's insight in his late philosophy,phenomenological hermeneutics has recognized the autonomy of poeticlanguage while demonstrating that its meaning hinges upon its capacity tospeak about something "other" that "grounds" it and "precedes" it, even if this"other" is given with language. This would suggest the possibility of politicalappropriate, yet meaningful architecture, beyond the mystifications of


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egocentric formalism on one extreme, and the banalities of politicalcorrectness on the other, anarchitecture based on the recognition of theautonomy of its poetic language, while acknowledging the power of theindividual imagination to make works that speak about something and thustranscend irrelevant self-referential games.

For Holl there is a double awareness:1 The perception that architecture matters, that culture and architecture areinseparable and that their dissolution into the functional pragmatism ofspaces for computer screens can only bring about a loss.2 An understanding that architecture cannot simply be identified with archaicforms of power or institutional presence and thus be "discarded" as amanifestation of the creative imagination.

An architecture driven by an ethical concern for the "other" rather than byaesthetic fashion, creating the possibility of meaning in diversity, rather thandenoting a meaning.

Holl's architecture does not pretend to refer back to absolute origins orfoundations, and yet is equally unwilling to accept a simplistic relativism andthe expression of cultural "difference" as its only options, it aspiresarchitecture as an action, rather than a state of being, a discovery of order inmaking, which is also self-making, invoking a wholeness (and a holliness)that may stand for all in our compressed planet, and yet remain emphaticallybeyond tyranny and anarchy.

Intertwining:

Architecture can shape a lived and sensed intertwining of space and time itcan change the way we live.Today architecture has the power to be both artistic and humanistic.

Architecture, with its silent spatiality and tactile materiality, can reintroduceessential, intrinsic meanings and values to human experience.

Perception is metaphorical:The metaphores of light and darkness, and the passing of time that allows thechanges,

Enmeshing:Architecture surrounds us. Architectural synthesis of changing back-ground,middle ground, and foreground with all subjective qualities of material andlight forms the basis of an intertwining perception. Ultimately, we cannotseparate perception into geometries, activities, and sensations. Compressed,or sometimes expanded, the interlocking of light, material, and detail createsovertime a "whole" cinema merging and yielding enmeshed experience.

Perspectival Space/Fluid Space:Proceeding through space in the city we move within a network of

overlapping perspectives in motion. As the body advances, vistas open andclose-distant, middle and near views palpitate. The shifting movement


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between near and far objects, walls, and building makes an always changing, visually tectonic landscape called parallax.Night light forms fluid luminous space. Fluid light has different viscosity. Thisis different in different cities. Architecture is sometimes a slow viscosity offluid space in motion.

Time is duration:

What are the facets of architecture's relationships with the fourth and fifthdimension within a three dimensional vocabulary? Time and perception inarchitecture intertwine with light and space of architecture within a certainduration. H. Bergson Not time but duration.The Greek time moved in a circle and was endless. Western time is anongoing historical time. For the Buddhist time is a continous flux, a fluidity oftime. Another Buddhist concept- discribes the unreality of the present instant

which is continously transformed into past and non-being.Time was posited as the fourth dimension of architecture. Today withsuperstring theory 5,6,7... dimensions are admitted.

Gravity of Mass in Tension:The stone and the feather.Fuller and weightlessness. Italo Calvino and lightness. The expression ofmass and materials according to gravity, weight, bearing, tension andbuckling, the the orchestration of musical instruments.Light and heavy both exist in phenomenal architecture. Heavy and lightmusical instruments and their contrast is an element of musical

composition.B. Bartok.

Order, Geometry, ProportionOrder does not imply beauty- L. KahnCity order and nature order exist in harmony and cacophony. The geometryof the city and nature collide to form a tornado of centrifugal and/orcentripetal forces.The work of intertwining considers new geometries andother orders, merging space and time in new ways. Geometrical infinities areconstantly subjected to finite ideas.

Idea/LimitArchitecture transcends geometry. It is an organic link between concept andform. Architecture's meaning lies in the intertwining of its site, its phenomena,its idea. Architecture may be expressive, yet it also carries like a vehicleontological and epistemological maps. Forming a concept defines a field ofinquiry-a territory of research for investigation that helps to form meaning.The idea is the force that drives the design. The field of inquiry sets the focusand the limit and most importantly, the responsibility of work in rigor anddepth.

A concepts distinctness and clarity is limited to a situation and can buildmeaning into a site and program. The organizing idea is a hidden thread

connecting disparate parts with exact intention. Organizing ideas areheuristic devices that can tie disparate architectural elements into a larger


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whole, and yet they must be free and open enough for functionaldevelopment.

Material and the haptic realm:The experience of material in architecture is not only visual but tactile, aural,olfactory it is all of these intertwined with space and our bodily trajectory intime. Perhaps no other realm more directly engages multiple phenomena andsensory experience than the haptic realm. The haptic realm of architecture isdefined by the sense of touch. When the materiality of the details of formingan architectural space become evident the haptic realm opens up. Sensoryexperience is intensified psychological dimension engaged.Copies of natural materials, alterations and transformations of knownmaterials, productions of new materials.

Remaining experimental:In Spinoza's thought, life is not an idea, a matter of theory but a way of being.Spinoza did not believe believe in hope or even courage, he believed in joyand vision. G. Deleuze.

Architecture must remain experimental and open to new ideas andaspirations. In the face of tremendous conservative forces that constantlypush it towards the already proven, already built and already thought,architecture must explore the not-yet felt.With intertwining we begin a new chapter of anchoring where thesite/situation is both the subject and the object, both existence and essence.

A new intensity is anticipated in a criss-crossing of the tangible (haptic), thethought (idea-force) and the site. Herein lies a mystery that is familiar butunexplained. The intertwining has a between that alternates from within towithout.Our body moves through and simultaneously, is coupled with the substancesof architectural space-the flesh of the world (M:Merleau-Ponty)

Steven Holl, ANCHORING

Introduction: Kenneth Frampton,

Phenomenological intensity and a preoccupation with tactile experienceshave both been salient characteristics of Holl's work over the past decade.He is the only american architect that is influenced by the main lines ofthought of modern philosophy from Husserel to Heidegger and music ofBartok and Schnberg.Two fundamental principles underlie his architecture. The first of these is theanchoring of the building in site, although like Siza he believes that thearchitect has as much responsibility to challenge the site as to harmonize

passively with its form. The second is Holl's need to integrate the conceptuallevel of his work with a phenomenological experience of its presence. While


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he strives for a more open architectural language, he also searches for aclose phenomenological/typological relationship, their conjunction is positedas an analogue for our experience of nature. Holl constantly attempts toestablish a non-reductive ground for our late modern architecture, whereinthe "limited concept" may be allowed to unfold not only in accord with its own

internal rules but also with regard to its intrinsic sensuality. Being close tocritical regionalism.

Anchoring:Architecture is a wordless silence which is mainly composed of space, lightand matter. Although they fall short of architectural evidence, words present apremise. The work is forced to carry over when words themselves cannot.

Words are arrows pointing the right directions taken together they form amap of architectural intentions.

Some of the catalyst thought of Holl's architecture are,Anchoring: Architecture is bound to situation, the site of a building is morethan a mere ingredient in its conception. It is its physical and metaphysicalfoundation.Building transcends physical and functional requirements by fusing with aplace, by gathering the meaning of a situation.

A building has one site. In this one situation its intentions are collected.Building and site have been independent since the beginning of architecture.In the past, this connection was manifest without consious intention throughthe use of local materials and craft, and by an association of the landscapewith events of history and myth. Today the link between site and architecture

must be found in new ways, which are part of a constructive transformation inmodern life.

Architecture is an extension a modification establishing absolute meaningsrelative to a place. Even when a new work is an invasion of inherentconditions, its order attempts to embody an aspect, or illuminate a specificmeaning distinct from generalities of abstract space. An ideal exists in thespecific an absolute in the relative.Nunnery in Uxmal: Time transparent, function unknownL. Kahn Salk Institute: Architecture and nature are joined in a metaphysics ofplace.

Idea and Phenomena:The essence of a work of architecture is an organic link between concept andform. Pieces cannot be subtracted or added without upsetting fundamentalproperties. A concept, whether a rationally explicit statement or a subjectivedemonstration, establishes an order, a field of inquiry, a limited principle.The intertwining of idea and phenomena occurs when a building is realized.Before beginning, architecture's metaphysical skeleton of time light, spaceand matter remain unordered. Modes of composition are open: line, plane,volume and proportion await activation. When the site, culture and programare given, an order, an idea may be formed. Yet the idea is only conception.

Then there is the haptic realm that opens, and then there is the spatialexperience of parallax, or perspective warp, time, space and light.


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If we consider the order (the idea) to be the outer perception and thephenomena (the experience) to be the inner perception, then in a physicalconstruction, outer perception and inner perception are intertwined. From thisposition experiential phenomena are the material for a kind of reasoning that

joins concept and sensation. The objective is unified with the subjective.Outer perception of the intellect and inner perception of the senses aresynthesized in an ordering of space, light and material, the hope is to uniteintellect and feeling, precision with soul.Proto-elements of Architecture (an open language):The open vocabulary of modern architecture may be extended by anycompositional element, form, method, or geometry. A situation immidiatelysets limits. A chosen ordering concept and chosen materials begin the effortto extract the nature of the work. prior to site, even prior to culture, a tangiblevocabulary of the elements of architecture remains open.

Proto elements: possible combinations of lines, planes, and volumes in spaceremain disconnected, trans-historical, and trans-cultural. They float about in azero-ground of form without gravity but are precursors of a concretearchitectonic form.Lines:Planes:VolumesLike in music there are certain classical systems but if we extend are limits ofthis system we have a great range of possibilities.Ideology VS. Idea:

In architecture if a particular theory is true, then all other theories are false.Pluralism on the other hand leads to an empirical architecture. A thirddirection, is the adoption of a limited concept. Time, culture, programmaticcircumstance, and site are specific factors from which an organizing idea canbe formed. A specific concept may be developed as a precise order,irrespective of the universal claims of any particular ideology.

A theory of architecture that leads to a system of thinking about and makingbuildings has, at its base, a series, a series of fixed ideas constituting anideology. The ideology is evident in each project that is consistent with thegeneral theory.

By contrast, an architecture based on a limited concept begins withdissimilarity and variation. It illuminates the singularity of a specific situation.It can become an ideology but everchanging. It will deny homogeneity.Mysterious beginnings, unique meanings with precision, variation andcelebration of the as-yet-unknown

The aspects of things for us are hidden because of their simplicity andfamiliarity, Wittgenstein.

archincont-stevenholl

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