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Thinking Architecture- Review #3

Zumthor once again engages in marrying philosophy and architecture. While his essays 7-10 (The Magic of the real - The Leis Houses) are not as frustrating as I described 4-6 had been, Zumthor here seems to act like he has the ultimate and absolute views on what architecture is even though he never clearly defines what his views are. For example on page 85 Zumthor writes, “ That thought is related to my job as an architect. I work at the forms, the physiognomies, at the physical presence of the things that constitute the space in which we live. In my work, I contribute to the existing physical framework, to the atmosphere of places and space that kindle our emotions”. 

Zumthor clearly has a high view of himself in the context of his work. He talks as if he represents all architects of the world, which clearly demonstrates his views. One could say this demonstrates his arrogance. However, from the short time I have been engaged in the architectural world, I would say this is probably not a personal attribute rather it is an attribute assigned to Zumthor in this moment. I mean many architects can tend to be arrogant especially when it comes to the expression of ideas or philosophy and Zumthor is demonstrating this on page 85.

Before I want to remind the reader that I do not have harsh feelings against Zumthor as an architect or a writer, rather these reviews are my critique against his writing. Zumthor has a brilliant mind, I personally just feel his delivery of idea can fall a little short in Thinking Architecture. My last major critique of Zumthor’s delivery comes from page 92: “If I remember rightly, I have seen buildings of classical modernism...”. This quote actually brought me a little clarity to the entirety of the essays. The part “If I remember rightly” sounded very much like a personal pondering or something that would be written in a diary. Then I realized that perhaps that is exactly what Zumthor was doing. He simply published a collection of thoughts that he has had, but not developed. Perhaps he journaled this down and thought it worth publishing with little edits. If this is not the case, I am not sure why Zumthor would have written this particular passage the way he did. He could have easily research what he was saying below and stated it as fact, rather than pondering if his memory served him right. This explanation would explain why there are so many open-ended, vague questions throughout his text, versus claims, statements, and logical reasonings. 

To end on a good note, I will end with praise for Zumthor’s statements on page 96, 

“ I would describe the distinction between city and landscape like this: cities tend to excite and agitate me; they make me feel big or small, self-confident, proud, curious, excited, tense, annoyed... or they intimidate me. But the landscape, if I give it the chance, offers me freedom and serenity. Nature has a different sense of time. Time is big in the landscape while in the city it is condensed, just like the city’s space”.

This is a beautifully worded passage because of its clarity of thought and its reliability. I agreed wholeheartedly with this passage and it was a distinction I had not been able to put into words until now. I feel that the clarity of this distinction is going to be very useful in the future of my architectural career. 

Overall, Zumthor was a brave man to attempt to combine architecture and philosophy to this degree, and while I don't agree with his execution, I appreciate his line of thinking and his attempt.

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Reviewing: Thinking Architecture Part 2

Today I read another section of Thinking Architecture by Peter Zumthor. My first impressions of Zumthor were high-minded. I was fascinated by his writing because he combined two of my most loved topics: Philosophy and architecture. Now I am starting to wonder which topic spoiled Zumthor more...

Both Philosophy and Architecture can be know for being arrogant and lofty subjects, thus the people who study them have similar qualities. It seems that combining the two can be somewhat unbeneficial when it comes to published works.

What really started to confuse me was Zumthor’s “The Body of Architecture” essay. This entire passage was a series of 15 separate experiences that Zumthor had. He asked questions about these experiences, but provided no answer or even line of thinking to what the reader was to understand from this particular description. Not only did he become so philosophical as to leave poorly asked questions floating in the air, he also used an absurd number of examples with far too little description. If the point Zumthor was trying to get across is that the Body of Architecture is all about experience, then all Zumthor did was create an agitated experience in the reader trying to find a single solid point in the entire essay. 

His next essay was light years better, but not perfect. The essay “Teaching Architecture, Learning Architecture” starts off with a question: “What is the first thing we should teach them?” (Zumthor, 65), but answers it in the very next line. Bravo! Bravo! Zumthor! Now I can clearly have a direction for the rest of the essay! He makes excellent points too. He states, “Practicing architecture is asking oneself questions, finding one’s own answers with the help of the teacher, whittling down, finding solutions. Over and over again” (Zumthor, 65). Part of the reason I love this is because I am currently a student of architecture, therefore I relate, but also because of the clarity of thought. Sometimes philosophers and architects can become so wordy that they loose all meaning, even though they might have hand great thoughts to begin with. That is what I believe Zumthor did in the previous essay, but here he starts to reign in himself and clarify his points which is a huge relief to me. I feel that Zumthor begins to drift ever so slightly away in the following paragraphs, but pulls it back in which showed great discipline in this essay. 

One last thought on this essay then I will move on. Zumthor states “Architecture is not abstract” (Zumthor, 66), which I do not fully agree with. If Architecture is more than the form I think architecture must be partly abstract. To transition into the next essay, “Does Beauty Have a Form?”, I think that beauty is also abstract. I think beauty is a phenomenon in which it affects the material and immaterial world. It is the space in-between God and Adam’s figures in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. There is nothing else like the concept of beauty. It is holy in a conceptual way. So yes there are forms that capture elements of the phenomenon beauty, but no one element could completely encapsulate beauty in its entirety. Why? Because if we get into the theological side of it, God is Beauty. Let me say that one more time for the people in the back. GOD IS BEAUTY. As in GOD=BEAUTY. That is why we struggle to define beauty because we cannot define God with our finite minds. 

Now before I start becoming a hypocrite and become arrogant and lofty with this review let me end it by saying this. Zumthor is a brilliant man. I appauld him for his strive to connect architecture and philosophy like I have yet to see another author do (whether he did it intentionally or not). The two fields are so similar in so many ways, I even started to catch myself using a loftier form in my writing. While architecture and philosophy can not always provide a clear cut answer, one thing good philosophy and architecture do is provide a direction. We may not know how to clearly define beauty, but we can offer direction to what it should be and there are no better field to provide that direction that philosophy and architecture. 

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Peter Zumthor’s Thinking Architecture

Recently, I began an excellent adventure through Peter Zumthor’s Thinking Architecture. In beginning this post I wonder how to review this book? My question is can I simply quote the entire book as my review? There are so many quotable parts in this book it makes me want to just quote the entire thing. But, sticking with good form, I shall resist in quoting it all. 

There is a specific passage that stuck out to me on page 17, “These buildings appear to be anchored firmly in the ground. They give the impression of being a self-evident part of their surroundings and they seem to be saying: ‘I am as you see me and I belong here’”. Zumthor claims that these buildings are unique in that their presence seems demanded by the space around them. To remove the building from that space would leave the space feeling wrong. The building is so rooted there that an uncanny feeling would be the only thing remaining if they building was torn down. 

Why does Zumthor think only certain buildings have this quality. I would say even the worse pieces of architecture (a Home Depot) would have this affect if torn down. Many people use buildings to orientate themselves in a town or city and sometimes just painting over a blue house throws people off. Perhaps Zumthor is talking about how long this uncanny feeling would last. If it was a significant building maybe this feeling last longer, but if a Home Depot is torn down it lasts for a couple of weeks?

The third chapter was rather interesting from my stance as an architecture student. Zumthor goes on and on about various spaces that created a specific emotion for him. How the architecture affected his mood and even altered his memory. While the concept that architecture should be about experience and the emotions that flow with that rather than the form itself is understandable, I am not sure I can personally attest to this theory. To quote Zumthor “The longer I think about it [space] the more mysterious it becomes”. That is why architecture is so difficult to learn and even to teach. Architecture is all about space, but we don’t really know what space means. Space is like a blackhole in that it is this void that exists, but we don’t really know much about it. We say a space spans the distance from one form to another, but does it? We can’t really test it. Yet space is not just a scientific in concept it also heavily plays on our emotions and that is, in a large part, where architecture comes in. Yet the struggle with architecture is that we cannot pick space up and mold it in our hands, we must use forms- no not use forms, play with them until we get it just right. Until the forms are positioned just right to create a very specific experience. 

I say all this to explain that architecture requires a lot of play and part of that play is emerging oneself into other’s play. I have not experienced enough architecture to directly see how these emotions are carried out through this play. I hope to experience more very soon and hopefully directly relate to what Zumthor seems to have experienced in his search of fine architecture. 

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when i was young the world was known as a dangerous place but as i grew older it was like i was the one who became dangerous

 self destruction  (via ashleymacleanblog)

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Transparency

People of Tumblr,

Below I have included my review of an essay named, Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal by Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky.

Architecture is a funny word in its lack of a good definition. Some think of architecture as a science that is purely practical, and others say it is an art meant for greater understanding. In truth it is somewhere in the middle, but the terms of how this works is largely unknown to the masses.

The same is true with the word “transparency”. Now, you are probably thinking that transparency is not at all a complex creature that needs to be dissected for further examination, but it is actually even more complex than that. Before reading Transparency I had no idea that transparency, especially in architecture, meant more than materials. Using glass or plastic to see through something. I was just as clueless as you probably are now so hold on because I’m going to learn you something I only learned thirty minutes ago.

So the big take away is that there are TWO types of transparency. Literal transparency- using material to literally see through a surface. Glass and plastic are some of the first materials to come to mind, but mesh wire or other materials with multiple holes could be considered transparent literally. But the more mind blowing philosophical kind of transparency is called phenomenal transparency.

Take a deep breath, I know you can stick with me. This type of transparency will be best described with Gyorgy Kepes quote when he says, “'If one sees two or more figures

overlapping one another, and each of them claims for itself the common overlapped part, then one is confronted with a contradiction of spatial dimensions. To resolve this contradiction one must assume the presence of a new optical quality. The figures are endowed with transparency; that is they are able to interpenetrate without an optical destruction of each other” (Language of Vision). To help illustrate what he is saying I made a quick sketch of how I understood it. (See Image 1)

 (Image 1)

I drew two overlapping types of transparency, yet each had elements of the other, so if you said “take out the circle” both the blue and the pink drawings would be affected and the effect torn apart. To take away from one both would be destroyed, yet together they both imply transparency.

Throughout the essay, Rowe and Slutzky give examples of pieces that have elements of phenomenal transparency. Some have strong ideas of cubism (artists that REALLY like cubes) but there are also elements of light coming together with shadow to form structure. To be honest there are a lot of great art pieces that they included, but the idea of phenomenal transparency is too abstract an idea that I am not able to see it in them. However, one last thought I had on phenomenal transparency might help make the concept feel tangible. To begin I must quote Rowe and Slutzky when they said, “ …discovered in the haphazard superimpositions produced by the reflections and accidents of light playing upon a translucent or polished surface”. Here the authors are talking about way in which phenomenal transparency can be see and I instinctively thought of drawings of an eye where their environment is reflected by the gleam in their eyes. I drew my own example below (See image 2)

(Image 2)

If you look closely, you can see the outline of people, some with their hands in the air (like they just don’t care) in center of the eye. This reflection is a phenomenal kind of transparency because we are able to get a depth perception and understand of different optical spaces represented in the sketch. There are two images in one that cannot be split. While this might not be a perfect example of phenomenal transparency, it is a start at the dissection of the monstrous word we named as “transparency”. For further investigation I encourage you to read Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal by Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky for your own. I have included the formal citation below for easier accesses to the essay.

Rowe, Colin, and Robert Slutzky. “"transparency: literal and phenomenal".” SHI NING, 15 Mar. 2016, shiningportfolio.wordpress.com/2016/02/19/transparency-literal-and-phenomenal/. Accessed 18 Sept. 2017.

If you understood nothing from what I wrote I hope you can take away at least that “transparency” is not, simply the equivalent to the properties of glass. Have a fantastic day everyone!