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wagihyoussef · 4 years

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Architecture and the Education of the Eye

Abstract

It is perilous to speak only of certain states of the eye by which composition is determined according to certain notions of pleasure. The eye always impinges on other spiritual spheres. A building is not a collection of surfaces, but an assemblage of parts, in which length, width, and depth agree with one another in a certain fashion, and constitute an entirely new solid that comprises an internal volume and an external mass. Light does not only illuminate the internal mass, but also collaborates with the architecture to give it its needed form. There is a mental component in architectural form operating against all haphazard irregularities. The speculative motion of light must attempt to embrace optical and spiritual realities and experiences dialectically.

Keywords: visual field, tectonic appeal, pattern, assemblage, artistic light, architectural form

Introduction

In a reductively visual sense, architecture is a process in which a given design is made into a visual image suitable for use in a pictorial form. The concept of pictorial form is applicable to the whole visual artifice such that concepts of repose, grandeur and prominence are essentially impressions to be made without relation to feelings and states of mind, but which are the results of a more complete cultivation and education of the eye.

However, the eye desires more, the desire for ever greater variety of content within the field of vision, because its powers of absorption have been significantly increased. At the same time designs have become simpler, targeted and prepared for the eye. The possibility of movement is constantly sought out by increasing the amount of space, to give an impression of spaciousness inside the limited boundaries of an interior design, i.e. the seeking of beauty in solidity. Superfluous space is avoided when giving the impression of compactness and solidity. The expression of a specific emotion in relation to the temper of the new age is constantly towards ever-increasing richness of the visual image of the third dimension. The intention is to make the act of perception as easy as possible for the eye to obtain a strong and emphatic effect in which no single stone could be removed without upsetting the equilibrium of the whole.

In this respect architects ceased to regard architectural backgrounds as arbitrary enrichments, to be added on - the principle of the more the better; but came to look for inevitability in the relationship between landscapes and buildings. There has been a feeling that the dignity of human beings could be increased by an architectural accompaniment, but the buildings got out of hand. From the moment when architecture cast off its immature and playful flexibility and became mature it took over reins for all the arts. In fact, architecture had the last word. Composition, light, and color no longer merely serve to define form, but have their own life.

There are cases in which absolute clarity has been partly abandoned to enhance effect, but clarity as a great all-embracing mode of representation first entered the history of art at the moment when reality was beheld with an eye towards other effects and a different attitude to the world. In their forms, nature is seen, and art manifests its contents. But it is dangerous to speak only of certain states of the eye by which composition is determined according to certain notions of pleasure. In fact, the eye always impinges on other spiritual spheres.

Light

Light shines before everything with its own brilliance. The idea of light includes a great many phenomena which seem to us today to have little to do with light that as a physiological sense-datum. For example, to hold ourselves to the realm of the created world is the postulation that light is a fundamental form of matter and as such is defined as the form of everything, in so far as it is, through its form, giving mobility. Nevertheless, it can be shown that the speculative conception of light has always remained closely in contact with palpable light experience out of which it originally grew; among all objects of perception. There can be no doubt that the medieval metaphysics of light has taken its bearings from the sensuous experienced light. The Leaded Windows in cathedrals would have been considered simply as jewels of glass.

The light material would have been assigned a high rank within visible light, but its true element, the artistic, would not have been signified. But this light in so far as it is artistic light must be of its elemental quality. This essential light, apparent as it is in episodes pertaining to the legend of salvation markedly alien from the usual light of the material world, so that everyone yields to it. The speculative motion of light must attempt to embrace optical and spiritual realities and experiences dialectically. In the artistic light-world both are one, in the literal sense light is something sensuous. Darkness is the withdrawal of illuminating light, and illuminating light is the withdrawal of darkness. Shadow is the diminution of light. Strong lighting is a means of emphasizing depth and solidity. In the same way strong light on a rounded form stresses its solidity by the smooth transition from an intense highlight to a deep shadow. Only if the forms become complicated, and the lighting arbitrary, is the effect destroyed, and replaced by a dazzling surface vibration.

Light and the Three Dimensions of Space

The space occupied by ornament is not the space of life. The art of architecture exerts itself in a true space, one in which we walk and in which the activity of our bodies occupies to utilize this space, and perhaps to shape it anew. The three dimensions of space are not simply the locus of architecture. There are also the relationships which unite them in a building, relationships that are never casual, nor predetermined. The order of proportions comes into play in the treatment, conferring originality upon the form and modeling the space according to calculated proprieties. A perusal of ground plan and of elevation gives but a very imperfect representation of these relationships. A building is not a collection of surfaces, but an assemblage of parts, in which length, width, and depth agree with one another in a certain fashion, and constitute an entirely new solid that comprises an internal volume and an external mass. A ground plan can tell us a great deal. It can familiarize us with the nature of the general program and permit a skilled eye to comprehend the chief structural solutions. The notions of plan, of structure, and of mass are indissolubly united, and it is a dangerous thing to attempt to disjoin them. Such certainly is the case when laying stress upon mass.

Architectural masses are determined by relationship of the parts to each other, and of the parts to the whole. Light takes possession of it uniformly and instantaneously. On the other hand a multiplicity of lights will compromise and weaken a wall; the complexity of ornamented forms will threaten its equilibrium, and look flimsy. Light cannot rest upon these forms without being broken apart, and when subjected to such incessant alternations, the architecture wavers, fluctuates and loses all meaning. The space that holds evenly on a continuous mass is as immobile as that mass itself. But the space that penetrates the voids of the mass and is invaded by the profilation of its reliefs is mobile. In some new cities the buildings’ mass is treated as a full solid, and the architects seek for what is called the mass envelope, but the profound originality of architecture as such resides in the interiors.

Light does not only illuminate the internal mass, but also collaborates with the architecture to give it its needed form. Light is form since its rays, streaming forth at predetermined points, are compressed, attenuated or stretched in order to pick out the variously unified and accented members of the building, for the purpose either of tranquillizing it or giving it vivacity. A work of architecture conceived as an object within the universe, lighted as other objects are by the light of day or as a universe with it, has its own inner light, constructed according to certain rules. This difference of conception is connected with the difference between techniques but does not absolutely depend upon it. Ornamental space is the most characteristic expression of the high middle age in the western world. It is an illustration of a philosophy that renounces development in favor of involution that surrenders the concrete world for frivolities of fantasy.

Visual Field and Visible Pattern

However, architecture does not affect us by its form alone, but also its content. The combination of form and content gives meaning to representative art and emotional value apart from the purely formal esthetic effect. The mere attempt to represent something is to communicate an idea, one that is effective. An artistic concept maybe presented in the mind but becomes a work of art only when it is technically perfect. The artistic work begins after the technical problem has been mastered. Otherwise, the result cannot be a work of art. Evolution means the continuous change of thought and action, or historic continuity when it is conceived as meaning the universally valid continuous development of one cultural form out of a preceding type.

There is a mental component in all architectural form operating against all haphazard irregularities. Visible pattern is an attribute of the visual field rather than of the visual world. The visual field imposes its patterns upon the un-patterned visual world which it portrays, and the appeal of its geometric form with the interested recognition of representational content. But in architecture, the visual field is not a fixed constant, as in a painting, but a shifting and changeful appearance because it is only a visually projected surface appearance. As we look abroad on the world seeking to understand the content of vision, we habitually convert every total visual field into an assembly of things, each of which is set apart by a characteristic shape within a defining shape, within a defining boundary.

This is most pertinently exemplified in Greek architecture. The exterior colonnade of a Greek temple communicates visually an expression of gravitational balance and structural stability in terms of abstractly patronized elements. The distinctively individual pattern of shapes for the component elements intelligibly fitted one to another in a fixed sequence, combined to produce the overall design of the order.

The architects of the Renaissance were fully aware of this property when they added the classic orders as ornamental cover plate to every irrelevant construction which they chose. But this restriction of the visible building to the flat pattern of its façade was prevented from weakening the essential architectural impression of sound rational support and material strength by compensating the loss in visible depth and density with a subtle linear articulation of structural profiles and surfaces. This visual communication of weight carried in balanced support is what is intended by the expression ‘tectonic appeal’. Yet, in Greek building the superimposed pattern structurally vitalized the total design.

Gothic and Renaissance Space

Gothic space is infinite as compared with the block-like spaces in Romanesque Architecture or the Renaissance space which is organized coherently into a system of geometry dependent upon proportions. The treatment of space and time is involved as well with light, color, and atmospheric tone, qualities that differentiate the spatial conception of Gothic and Renaissance architecture. Renaissance vision is portrayed by spatial juxtaposition in representing events separated in time, and the lack of a uniform scale in rendering objects presented within the same pictorial unit. When we see the whole our perception is instantaneous. The Gothic approach is the opposite, it proceeds from one item to the next, taking in the content of the painting as it moves along in tandem with the intellectual movement of the viewer.

Two different modes of conception oppose one another, Gothic and Renaissance. In Gothic the representation is deeply complex. Space and time are not separated as categories and are not yet conceivable, they fuse into a unified inseparable texture of experience. Space and time in their spatial Renaissance form of perception and conceptualization are essentially alien to the Gothic imagination. In this inseparable fusion of space with time is grounded the phenomenon of Gothic movement. This conception of space as movement is not understood in the Renaissance sense. One would be making an error if one took a Gothic structure to be an optical pictorial impression. One cannot separate the exterior from the interior of a Gothic cathedral.

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