HUMTEK
Architecture and its cultural dimension
FIGURING
DISFIGURING
REFIGURING
Camelia Elias
aim of the workshop
• To what extent can buildings be considered
•
•
•
cultural texts (texts that can be interpreted
as a manifestation of specific cultural
events)?
Why are some buildings more iconic
(recognizable) or iconoclastic (destroyers of
norms) than others?
What is the role of art in the shaping of
technological artifacts?
How does architecture inform our sense of
identity?
architecture as culture
• “From birth we try to orientate ourselves in
the environment and establish a certain
order. A common order is called culture.
The development of culture is based on
information and education and therefore
depends on the existence of common
symbol-systems. The culture integrates the
single personality into an ordered world
based on meaningful interactions.”
(C. Norberg-Schultz, “Meaning in Architecture” in
Meaning in Architecture, C. Jenks and G. Baird,
eds., 1969)
art and architecture
until recently
• gravitate towards
•
 abstraction and figuration (re-figuration)
privilege either
 the abstract and the formal
 the concrete and the figurative
(ornamental)
currently
• between abstraction and figuration
Romantic roots
• art and architecture seeks to unite
•
sensuousness and reason
human experience is suspended between the
sensuous drive and the formal impulse.
(Schiller, 1799)
beauty and sublime
• beauty:
 conveys finality in its form  the object
•
appears pre-adapted to our power of
judgment (Kant, 1790)
the sublime:
 goes beyond beauty
 encountered in the overwhelming power of
nature
 beyond our power of apprehension
the absolute
•
the self-manifestation of the absolute
in a work of art/architecture falls
under 3 divisions:
 symbolic  the moment of abstraction
 classic  the moment of concreteness
 romantic  the moment of both
abstraction and concreteness together
representations
•
symbolic
 emphasizes universality at the expense
•
of particularity
classical
 stresses particularity but ignores
•
universality
romantic
 synthesizes universality and particularity
to create an organic work
The evolutionary model of
modernism
FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION
• ‘Architecture and design for the
masses must be functional, in the
sense that they must be acceptable
to all and that their well-functioning is
the primary necessity.’
(The Sources of Modern Architecture
and Design)
the essence of modernism
•
is in the use of the characteristic
methods of a discipline to criticize the
discipline itself - not in order to
subvert it, but to entrench it more
firmly in its area of competence.
(Clemet Greenberg: “Modernist Painting”
originality through purity
• every artistic creation – architecture
•
•
•
•
included – has to purge itself of influence
and thus become ‘pure’.
purity means ‘self-definition’
self-definition means ‘autonomy’
autonomy means ‘self-determination’
self-determination means ‘self-reflection’
 aim: to test norms and conventions in order to
determine which are inessential and which are
timeless
modern moves
•
•
•
from figuration and ornamentation to
abstraction and formalism
from detail/the particular to the
overarching idea/the general
from symmetry to asymmetry
From baroque/manor houses (18th c)
to Le Corbusier (19th c)
Le Corbusier (1887-1965)
aesthetics
• modern architecture harbors revolutionary
potential.
 “Architecture or Revolution. Revolution can be
avoided.
• sensuality is primitive – savage. Rationality
•
is modern – civilized.
follows Pythagoras: “number is the base of
all beauty”
 “Less is more” (Mies van der Rohe)
• detail must be negated in order to reach
the general idea
 ornamentation must be disfigured
to disfigure
•
•
•
to mar the figure or appearance of; destroy the beauty of;



to deform or deface
to disguise
to carve


dis  negation, lack, invalidation, deprivation
figure  form, shape; an embodied form; to trace, mark,
adorn, embellish, calculate, take into consideration
disfigurement  designates a defacement, deformity,
blemish or flaw
DISFIGURE:

•
THE NEGATION OF FORM, THE NEGATION OF CALCULATION
AND SOLUTION
DISFIGURING:

IS A FORMATION THAT IS A DEFORMATION AND A
DEFORMATION THAT IS A FORMATION
Architects state:
• Keep it simple
symmetry
•
Why is architectural symmetry so satisfying? As
Leonardo da Vinci's famous drawing demonstrated, it
reflects the human body, which has a right side and a
left, a back and a front, the navel in the very center.
Du Sautoy writes that the human mind seems
constantly drawn to anything that embodies some
aspect of symmetry. He observes that "[a]rtwork,
architecture and music from ancient times to the
present day play on the idea of things which mirror
each other in interesting ways.“
(from Witold Rybczynski, Mirror Images: Why is
symmetry so satisfying? on Symmetry: A Journey
Into the Patterns of Nature, Marcus du Sautoy)
asymmetry
•
Architectural Modernism thumbed its nose at tradition
and firmly avoided symmetry. Being symmetrical was
considered as retrograde as being, well, decorated. All
exemplary Modernist buildings celebrated asymmetry:
The wings of Walter Gropius' Bauhaus shoot off in
different directions; the columns of Mies van der
Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion are symmetrical, but you
can hardly tell, thanks to the randomly spaced walls;
nothing in Frank Lloyd Wright's pinwheeling
Fallingwater mirrors anything else; and Le Corbusier's
Ronchamps dispenses with traditional church
geometry altogether.
(idem)
functional design
Mies van der Rohe:
Barcelona Pavillion, 1929
Walter Gropius: Bauhaus,
1926
Le Corbusier: Notre Dame
du Haut, Ronchamp, 1956
Architects state:
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959)
•
•
•
•
Every great architect is - necessarily - a
great poet. He must be a great original
interpreter of his time, his day, his age.
Form follows function - that has been
misunderstood. Form and function
should be one, joined in a spiritual
union.
Noble life demands a noble architecture
for noble uses of noble men. Lack of
culture means what it has always
meant: ignoble civilization and therefore
imminent downfall.
The architect must be a prophet... a
prophet in the true sense of the term...
if he can't see at least ten years ahead
don't call him an architect.
Fallingwater, 1935, PA
prime ex. of organic
architecture
the modernist cultural discourse
(end of 19th c – mid 20th c)
• organic architecture anticipates eco•
criticism, and the turn to the discourse
about ecology
the turn from roundness (ornamentation)
to the geometry of the square (reduction to
the point) anticipates structuralism and the
focus on binary constructions
 man (capable of reason) /woman (capable of
emotion)
 primitive (decorated) / civilized (restrained and
controlled)
 nature (wild, unpredictable) / culture
(normative, and predicable)
modernist architecture
more ICONIC than iconoclastic
•
•
•
•
•
ICON: an object of worship
(religion)
an arbitrary sign that has
acquired a conventional
significance (semiotics)
a repeated sign, in
constant circulation
recognizable (cultural; it
takes a community to
make it value it as such)
1957-1963
values the SIMPLE FORM
postmodern architecture
more ICONOCLASTIC than iconic
•
•
•
•
•
•
ICONOCLASM:
destroying images;
heresy, unorthodoxy
breaks with the norms
established by
modernist architecture
values surface rather
than depth
returns to the fluidity of
the wave
back to the aesthetics
of the circle
values the COMPLEX
form
1997
Frank Gehry (1929-)
•
•
“Architecture should speak of its time
and place, but yearn for
timelessness.”
“You've got to bumble forward into
the unknown.”
discourse on man
Peter Cook /Colin Fournier 2003
Mies Van der Rohe, 1958;
man stands alone, and erect,
triumphant, and distant
man embodies multitudes;
others are welcome  the self is
a relational self  horizontal rel.
“The Friendly Alien”, Graz
postmodern architectural cultural
discourse
•
•
formally, the move from the grid
structure to the complex structure,
anticipates the multicultural turn
offers a critique of modernist
architecture
 if modern architecture reflects a
reduction to ‘nothing’, what can we then
speak of?
Purity
•
•
to purify, to make clear
disfigure  remove figures, symbols,
designs)
 how do buildings reflect separation,
individualism, supremacy?
 how do ‘pure’ buildings reflect a
dominant ideology? (those that have the
money decide)
Logocentrism
• to locate the center of any text or discourse
•
within the logos (word, reason, or spirit);
for Plato: a constant search for the "truth"
re-figure  put back into design, to refigure the sign in ‘de-sign’
 how do buildings reflect a proliferation of
meanings?
 what is the significance of modern kitschy
constructions and deliberate excess for our selfunderstanding?
Refuse
•
•
to resist, to decline, to elude; refuse: to reunite
refigure disfiguration 
 how do buildings suggest haunting
presences?
links
•
•
•
•
•
Slate (iconic architecture, visual
essay on failed icons)
Slate (anti-iconic architecture, slides)
Mirage-studio-7 (architecture is
poetry)
A daily dose of architecture (blog)
Tegnestuen Trio – “arkitektur med
kunden I centrum”
modern architecture (slideshow)