BUILT OPEN FIELD: OBSERVATIONS AND PROJECTIONS
by
Bernard Deffet
A.B. in Architecture, Washington University, 1985
submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of
Master of Architecture at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
February 1989
C Bernard Deffet 1989. All rights reserved.
The author hereby grants to M.I.T. permission to reproduce
and to distribute publicly copies of this thesis document in
whole or in part.
Deffet
Signature of the author......................................................................................
Department of Architecture,
2q jqgry 1989
\
Ce r tifie d by ............................................................................................................................
..........
.......
William L. Porter,
Professor of Architecture
thqsis supervisor
Acce p ted by ........................................................................
S
MsASU
AV
IvAr 07 1989-
RMa
~otcth
.........................................................................................................
Imre Halasz, Chairman
Departmental Committee for Graduate Students
2
Acknowledgments
A special thank you to James Anderson
for the advisory role and time he gave to this
endeavor.
Thanks to Maurice Smith for his
dedication to the teaching of architecture.
Thanks to my friends in N-52.
Thanks to Heidi.
A mes parents......
3
4
Built Open Field: Observations and Projections.
by
Bernard Deffet
Submitted to the Department of Architecture on January 20, 1989
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of
Master of Architecture
Abstract
How are dimensions used in order to arrive at a relative relationship
between the figure and the ground? How do dimensions structure the field?
How do they generate movement, change, continuity, discontinuity,
transparency, alternations......?
This thesis attempts to answer these few basic questions. Basic in that
they all relate to an understanding of organization. The premise is that the
strength of a good physical environment lies in its organization, in the basic
relationships between the parts. The organization then becomes a support for
further transformation.
This thesis is also on observation. What is observation? What does it do?
How do architects observe? The premise here is that learning how to observe
or developing observational methods may be the only way to get us out of the
chaotic, singularnon-commital. disassociative state of today's built world.
This thesis is an observational exercise focusing on dimensional stability
as an organizing principle.
Thesis Supervisor: William L. Porter
Title: Professor of Architecture
5
6
Table of Contents:
1. On Observation
2. From Directional Field to Built Open Field
Introduction
1. Directional field
2. (Lateral) displacements
3. A directional, self-stable. reciprocal form
4. Packed, multi-directional, self-stable.
additive field (optional reversals)
5. Dimensionally-stable open field/built open field
3. Places Observed
Introduction
Places 1 to 25
Conclusion
4. Abstractions
Introduction
1. Concerning the larger stability
2. Concerning the smaller stabilities and their relation to the larger ones
3. Relationship between the stabilities and the built elements
5. Projections/Conclusions
6. Appendix
Appendix 1: observation/description/knowledge
Appendix 2: process
Appendix 3: collage
Appendix 4: figure-ground/figure-figure
Appendix 5: time/movement/alternation/transparency
List of illustrations
Selected bibliography
7
8
1. On Observation
9
"Even before science had officially
recognized that observation intervenes
The premice is a bold one. It argues
in some way to modify the phenomenon
that architects have yet to learn how to
being observed, Gadda knew that 'to
observe. If the gap between seeing and
know is to insert something into what is
looking has been bridged (and
real, and hence to distort reality.'From
sometimes even that remains doubtful),
this ariseshis invariablydistorting way
the one that exists between looking and
of representingthings, and the tension
observing seems to be more than ever
he always establishes between himself
present in how architects look/observe.
and the thing represented,so that the
Part of the argument being that learning
more the world becomes distorted
how to observe or developing
before his eyes, the more the author's
observational methods could be a (the)
self becomes involved in this process
key to the kind of knowledge that is
and is itself
needed to get us out of the chaotic,
distorted."(App. 1:20.Calvino.)
singular, non-commital, disassociative
This thesis is an observational
10
observation does.
state of today's built world.
thesis. It attempts to first understand
"The problem, it must be admitted,
what observation (observing) is, then,
is one of knowledge....... Designers do not
through a series of observational
have concepts and techniques that allow
exercises, attempts to find out what
them to describe and investigate the
kinds of spatial order that are to be
optical site was developed...."(App.1:3
found in highly complex physical objects
Klee.)
like towns and cities."(App.1:1.Hillier,
Hanson, Peponis, Hudson, Burdett.)
Looking relates to the appearance
Observing (which leads to
knowledge), as suggested by Gadda and
Calvino implies two things. A two way
of things. Observing relates to their
relationship between the observer and
essence. As Klee points out, the
the observed one (I look and I am being
demarkation between the two is faint.
looked at), but also a distortion of both
"There is no clash, just a specific
parties. The observer and the observed
something which demands that the
one are mutually affected.
essential be grasped."(App. 1:6.Klee.)
"Foran individual who has a
Looking implies a one way
contemplative disposition, the whole
relationship between the viewer and
secret of happiness is not to consideras
the viewee. One looks at an object. The
evil the invasion of his personalityby
relationship is one that goes always
objects.... (App. 1: 13.Ponge.)
from viewer to viewee. The result is a
"Objectismis the getting rid of the
"painfullyprecise investigation of
lyrical interference of the individual as
appearance.....In this way excellent
ego, of the 'subject' and his soul, that
pictures were obtained of the object's
peculiarpresumption by which western
surface filtered by the air: the art of
man has interposed himself between
11
what he is as a creature of nature (with
eyes are doing the looking? A s a rule,
certain instructions to carry out) and
you think of the ego as one who is
those other creationsof nature which
peering out of your own eyes as if
we may, with no derogation, call objects.
leaning on a window sill, looking at the
For a man is himself an object, whatever
world stretching out before him in all its
he may take to be his advantages, the
immensity. So, then a window looks out
more likely to recognize himself as such
on the world. The world is out there,
the greaterhis advantages,particularly
and in here, what do we have? The
at the moment that he achieves an
world still- what else could there be?
humilitas sufficient to make him of
With a little effort of concentration,Mr.
use. "(App.1:17.Olson.)
Palomarmanages to shift the world
"To do this, he has to face each time
problems of selection, exclusion,
sill, looking out. Now, beyond the
hierarchiesof preferences:he soon
window, what do we have? The world is
realizes he is spoiling everything, as
also there, and for the occasion has been
always when he involves his own ego
split into a looking world and a world
and all the problems he has with his
looked at. And what about him, also
own ego.
known as the "I." namely Mr. Palomar?
But how can you look at something
and set your own ego aside? Whose
12
from in front of him and set it on the
Is he not a piece of the world that is
looking at anotherpiece of the world?
Or else, given that there is world that
finished products. We learn the very
side of the window and world this side,
special kind of progress that leads
perhaps the "I," the ego, is simply the
towards a critical striving backward,
window through which the world looks
towards the earlieron which the later
at the world. To look at itself the world
grows. We learn to get up early to
needs the eyes (and the eyeglasses) of
familiarize ourselves with the course of
Mr. Palomar."(App.1:21.Calvino.)
history. We learn cogent truths on the
A transformation of the object
way from causes to facts. We learn to
observed is something that we have
digest. We learn to organize movement
been familiar with for quite a while.
through logical relations. We learn logic.
Cezanne, the cubists, the
We learn organism. As a result the
constructivists,.....were constantly taking
tension between us and the finished
the world apart in order to reconstruct
product eases. Nothing exagerated-
it and thus bring out new associations.
tension inside, beneath, underneath.
"We learn to see what flows beneath, we
Passionateonly deep within.
learn the prehistoryof the visible. We
Inwardness."(App. 1:4.Klee.)
learn to dig deep and to lay bare. To
explain, to analyze. "(App. 1:4.Klee.)
"We learn to look down on
formalism and to avoid taking over
In the world of writing, Francis
Ponge talks about how his observed
objects are transformed by semantics.
"0 infinite resourcesof the thickness of
13
things, brought out by the infinite
understandingsemerge. By focusing on
resources of the semantical thickness of
certain issues the drawings make
words. "(Ponge.)
possible not only these inferences but
How do (should) architects observe?
How do architects record their
beyond them............ This drawing has in
observations? What is the form of the
mind a sense of ruins, of overlapping
transformation that the object observed
ruins. A place is defined in time
has to take in order for us to extract the
therefore we are in the process of time.
kind of knowledge that may help us to
Tomorrow will be defined in a new way.
"set ourselves in motion. "(App. 1:5.K lee.)
We will add a new reading over that
The observational work done by
reading, but it will remain a place and
Fernando Domeyko in Cordoba (see
become even more a place..........Knowing
Places v.4.#2) is. I believe, a unique
the order of the place, you become able
example of the kind of work done with
to transform it into a new
an understanding of the concepts
reality."(Domeyko.)
mentioned so far. "The work starts with
How is the architect being observed
a careful dismantling or de-constructing
by the world? How is the world out
of a place that can reveal plural and
there transforming the architect's
even contradictorypoints of view. New
"inner" world?
issues, forms and,gradually,holistic
14
also transformationsthat go well
Observations do not just add up
anymore. Each new observation does
please me, distractme, even exalt me if
not just sit on top of the pile of prior
needs be: all this is TRUE. (I also chew
observations. Each new observation
my batch of first principles).BUT- and I
changes, transforms, adds to,
arrive at my own conclusion on this, at
negates,.....past observations. To the
least in certain areas- theymust, before
additive quality of our "inner" world is
all other things, CHANGE me. And thus,
added one of constant change which
first of all, stretch me and contract me:
generates new relationships, infinite
shake-up a bit that part of me that has
relationships, unknown relationships.
not yet been changed" (Ponge. The
"Because the traveler'spast changes
Power of Language, p.144).
according to the route he has followed;
This constant transformation of our
not the immediate past, that is, to which
inner world can now be seen as a
each day that goes by adds a day, but
"convergenceof infinite relationships,
the remote past. Arriving at each new
past and future, real and possible- and
city, the travelerfinds again a past that
demands that everything should be
he did not know he
preciselynamed, described,and located
had."(App. 1: 15.Calvino.)
in space and time. "(App.1:22.Calvino.)
"Iknow (it is a constant buzzing.
This way of operating is what will
but I can still make it out), YES, I know
generate the life of the transformation.
well enough that works of art must first
It is the place from where the
15
transformations will register, a
things converge in our inner world and
reference point.
be able to make use of them. Our inner
"....., it is necessary (1) to arriveat
a precise inventory of each thing that
transformation can only be of use if its
one has made the object of one's
original components can be, at any time,
contemplation: (2) to change objects of
referred to, reminded of, re-located in
contemplation ratherfrequently to
space and time.
assure a degree of equilibrium.But for a
The use of our inner world. with its
contemplative individual, what is most
inextricable complexity, convergence of
important is the progressive nomination
relationships is, I believe, what we call
of all the qualities that he
intuition. It is all that transformed
discovers...... "(App. 1:13.Ponge.)
knowledge, all of it, some of it, from
Naming, describing, making
which it is difficult to isolate particular
inventories, locating in space and time.
events or parts. Everything has or will
All these things have to be done with
influence everything else.
what is out there in the physical world.
16
world, in constant state of
What has become clear, I hope, is
Every day, one at a time, step by step,
that intuition starts with what is out
meticulously. Only then will we be free
there in front of us, how we transform
to let the great complexity of the
it, how what is out there looks at us and
infinite possible relationships between
how it transforms us.
The kind of intuition that I am
he knows nothing. "(App.2:12.Calcino.)
talking about is one that requires work,
knowledge, systematic observation. An
intuition which, because of how it came
about, frees us and allows us to move, to
keep on moving.
"Another very wrong idea that is
also going the rounds at the moment is
the equivalence that has been
establishedbetween inspiration,
exploration of the subconscious,and
liberation,between chance, automatism,
and freedom. Now this sort of
inspiration,which consists in blindly
obeying every impulse, is in fact
slavery. The classicalauthor who wrote
his tragedy observing a certainnumber
of known rules is freer than the poet
who writes down whatever comes to his
head and is slave to other rules of which
17
18
2. From Directional Field to Built
Open Field.
Introduction
1.
2.
3.
4.
Directional field
(Lateral) displacements
A directional, self-stable reciprocal form
Packed, multi-directional, self-stable, additive field
(optional reversals)
5. Dimensionally-stable open field/built open field
Conclusion
19
Jntroduction:
re-construct the "world" step by step,
This first chapter is an attempt to
always allowing one to understand
get at an understanding of the built
where a particular behaviour came from
open field by additively engaging
and where it may lead to. "Visual
known observable formal behaviours
knowledge acquiredin the past helps
such as directionality, alternation,
not only in detecting the nature of an
displacement, and many others.
object or action appearingin the visual
It was done by taking a closer look
at Maurice Smith's "ABC diagrams"
place in the system of things
which, through a series of additive
constituting our total view of the
transformations, take us from an
world. "(App.1:19.Arnheim.)
understanding of the directional field to
an understanding of the built open field.
These diagrams are, I believe, of
importance in that they are not a
representation of reality, but are
instead the outcome of an additive
understanding of particular formal
behaviours.
Their quality lies in how they
20
field: it also assigns the present object a
It is up to the observer of these
diagrams to understand them,
transform them and test them against
the physical world that surrounds them.
1.Directional Field:
A directional field provides
"Al becoming is based on
optional directional zones of
movement."
association (d.1, i11.1).
(App.5:8.Klee)
At least four zones (five
Movement implies direction.
demarkations) are needed.
Movement implies time. "Spaceis a
-One zone: no option
temporal concept. When a point turns
-Two zones: either/or (most limited
into movement and line, it takes time."
option)
(App.5:8.Klee). Space is generated
-Three zones: Possible central
through movement.
control. Any one controlling behaviour
Movement implies direction. A
should be avoided.
direction allows one to go, to keep on
going.
d. 1
'.
-Four zones: First truely optional
,
111.1
21
field, where centrally controlled
there is no exchangeyet, between the
behaviour is not possible.
zones (d.2, ill.2.3.4).
The packed alternation is the most
The zones potentially provide a
packed alternation. Packed because
11l.2
basic kind of alternation. Basic
breathing. Better than no alternation.
Almost a rhithmic organization. Not
enough. Danger of a "regularitythat
soon becomes monotony.
(App.5:3.Kepes)
11.3
4Kj
22
The directional field is usually an
(landscape). "The most evident
intensification of an already existing
characteristicof movement is its unity,
direction. Recognizing and associating
its dynamic continuity". (App.5:4.Kepes)
with an existing direction is a first
Continuity is to be provided for
"contextual" move at the organizational
before discontinuity. Discontinuity
level.
cannot be the first move. Discontinuity
The landscape, built or natural, is
directional. Contours, direction of
is only understood in relation to a
pre-established continuity.
Start with the field in order to work
cultivation, winds, sun, edges,...(ill.5).
Intensifying the existing direction
"in open, or what can also be called
(movement), guarantees some
composition by field, as opposed to
continuity with the larger form
inheritedline, stanza, over-all form"
ml 'S
(App.2:6.Olson.)
The "energy" (movement implies
energy) provided by the existing
direction is found in the organized
directional field and remains a primary
source of energy to the person acting in
the field (experiencing the field).
(App.2:6.Olson.)
23
Energy as freedom. "Freedominto
movement and movement into
freedom ".(App.5:10.Klee.)
Direction provides energy to move
freely.
"From the moment the poet
ventures into field composition-put
himself in the open......he has to behave,
and be, instant by instant, aware of
some several forces.... "(App.2:6.Olson.)
Aware of a direction, instant by
instant.
"One perception must immediatly
and directly lead to a further
perception. It means exactly what it
says, is a matter of, at all points get on
with it, keep moving, speed, the nerves,
their speed, the perceptions, theirs, the
acts, the split second acts, the whole
business, keep it moving as fast as you
24
can, citizen. "(App.2:6.Olson.)
The directional field is a first move
towards a structuring of movement.
"that dictates the direction and
progression toward ever new spatial
relationships."(App.5:4.Kepes.)
2.(Lateral) Displacements.
With the packed alternation the
Where the directional field takes
dimension of each zone exists
care of the main (primary) direction
individually and independently from
(GO). the lateral displacement (move
one another. The lateral displacement
against main direction of the field)
generates a dimension which combines
provides for a place to STOP. Stopping is
the dimensions of two (or more) zones.
anew (next) action (d.3).
From: zone 1+ zone 2+ zone 3+ zone
A GO/STOP
4.
(1+1+1+1) -packed alternation.
(continuity/discontinuity) alternation is
generated. Not just a packed alternation
anymore. The action of stopping
generates an exchange between zones
(i.e. zone 2 exchanges with zone 3)
(011.6-10).,
,
113
d.3
.
,
5
111.6
25
To: zone 1+zone(2+3)+ zone4.
(1+2+1)- alternation+ exchange.
The continuity (GO) part of the
continuity/discontinuity alternation is
now seen as a registration zone. The
registration (always reinforcing the
direction of the field) is not to be seen
as a controlling element but rather as a
freeing one. "What thus became clear to
me was that the way a landscape is set
111.8
free by its horizon is akin to the way
the cohesive potential of a building
order can give a buildinga horizon from
111.7
111.9
26
111.10
which, strange paradox,it likewise
Lateral displacements may happen
draws its freedom "(Herman
on either side of the continuity. If the
Hertzberger).
lateral displacements are in a back to
The discontinuous move is
back position (mirrored), a double
understood in relation to a continuous
directional, central, processional form is
one. "The classicalauthor who wrote his
generated. (il.1 1.12).
tragedy observing a certain number of
known rules is freer than the poet who
writes down whatever comes into his
head and is slave to other rules of which
he knows nothing. "(App.2:12.Calvino).
111.11
27
If the lateral displacements are
displaced along the main direction, the
main direction still wins while the
displacements alternate (walk) along
the continuity (yet another kind of
alternation) (ill.13.14).
60
11.
WWI
28
ill. 13
-- -- 15
15
A built/unbuilt alternation (not yet
observed) may be part of the lateral
displacement (ll.15-18). The new
dimension generated by the
displacement now has a built and an
unbuilt component. The continuity
(registration) can be optionally seen as
being built or unbuilt.
111.17
~
111.16
u"6
~2
1
2.9
11.18
29
A built/unbuilt alternation can also
happen in the direction of the field. In
this case. the alternation is built into the
continuity (ill.19-2 1).
111.19
10
_
_
1
2
3
111.20
30
9
111.21
3.A directional self-stable reciprocal
form.
A second lateral displacement on
the same side of the continuity as the
first one generates a directional
self-stable directional form. Pie (d.4.
U
a
ill.22-32).
-
.111.22
iIt
*
o+:
'e
1V4.
o,:+.~
*
I
'
-
e
+
O'+ +o
d.4
111.23
31
Directional because the continuity
beyond itself. A stable territory.
(registration/GO) extends out beyond
Reciprocal (not just an exchange
the displacements (STOPS). Self-stable
anymore) because for the first time
because it generates some territory
there is an unbuilt STOP generated by
111.24
111.25
111.27
111.26
Plan of
1
L
32
larmbuldmg,
in Ceym
-3N
/
the built ones. Reciprocally, the unbuilt
The territory generated by the pie
STOP will be built and the built ones
form is stable in the sense that it is
will be unbuilt. This is the form of
defined by at least three edges and thus
reciprocity.
can be perceived as a partially closed
111.28
111.29
111.32
33
form which has particular dimensions in
two directions.
As observed with the single
displacement, the two displacements
(pie) can be found singularly or
multiply (11.33-37) in a back to back
situation. mirrored (11.38-40) or
displaced along a main direction
(ill.41-46).
From one displacement, to pie, to
multiple pie.
111.33
The built/unbuilt alternations
observed earlier within the lateral
displacement as well as within the
continuity are also observable in pie.
111 .35A
34
O
dd.
111.36
111.34
111.37
111.
35
.
~
111.41
111.39
111.40
A-
0
111.42r
36
11
i11.46.4
"M
111.44
01
37
4.Packed. multi-directional.
"For,if the appreciationof object or
self-stable. additive field (optional
figure is assumed to require the
reversas.
presence of some sort of ground or field.
Pie is now being deployed in the
if the recognition of some sort of
directional field (111.47). Pie and the
however closed field is a prerequisiteof
stable territory that it generates are
all perceptual experience and, if
optionally built (optional reversals)
consciousness of field precedes
(d.5).
This optional move is a first step
I
0
towards an "all built" world. A world
1
I
where the figure is ground and the
ground is figure (111.48-57).
I
--I
d.5
38
consciousness of figure, then, when
in which victory consists in each
figure is unsupported by any
component emerging undefeated, the
recognizableframe of reference, it can
imagined condition is a type of
only become enfeebled and
solid-void dialectic...." (App.4:9.Rowe.)
self-destructive."(App.4:6.Rowe).
the situation
... to be hoped for
should be recognized as one in which
both buildings and spaces exist in an
equality of sustained debate. A debate
39
"With the cubists......everything is at
The optional reversal is yet another
once subject and space between,
form of alternation. However, there
depending on which one's attention is
remains a one to one (OFF/ON)
focused." (App.4: 10 .Hertzberger).
relationship between the figure
111.52
111.51
~"iI.U
v~
3
111.53
40
111.54
(ground) and the ground (figure). It is a
dimensions are still present and work at
form of packing.
"locating" the built pieces. Dimensions
In the packed, self-stable field,
when something is left unbuilt, its
(not the actual physical definition) are
starting to play a primary role at
"building" the field.
Everything is built, physically or
virtually. The continuity is now two
fold. There is a built as well as an
unbuilt continuity. Along the same line,
there is a built as well as an unbuilt
discontinuity. The alternations are
111.55
111.56
multiple.
ii1.57
41
5.Dimentionally-stable open
field/Built open field.
but the dimensions that they generated
survive.
The optionality now lies in the way
The optional reversal (OFF/ON)
which generated a packed self-stable
the dimensions generated by the
field is now a total reversal (always OFF
unbuilt pies are used. The full reversal
or ON). All the stabilities (rocks) are
allows for more optionality in where,
now built (d.6).
how and when the dimensions may be
used.
The original pies are no longer
The dimensions are deployed
recognizable as seperate built elements
optionally in the field. They build and
open the field (sand). The stabilities
(rocks.objects). can be seen as ground or
3e I c
d.6
42
11.58
slack (ill.58-6 1).
purposes a solid assisting the legibility
"......and we speak of a willingness to
of adjacent spaces. And thus, for
reconsiderthe object which allegedly
instance, such buildings as the Palazzo
nobody wants and to evaluate it not so
Borghese may be taken as types of
much as figure but as ground."
habitablepoche which articulatethe
(App.4:7.Rowe.)
transitionof external voids.
is not hard
.it to acknowledge
(App.4:8.Rowe.)
that the recognition of poche is also a
matter of context and that, depending
on the perceptualfield, a building itself
may become a type of poche, for certain
0
Z:
a
II-bJ:
5
111.59
w
611%
El
20
111.60 El
Nil
43
Recognizable dimensions found in
two directions ( the quality of the
stability generated by the original pie)
are now also observable as part of the
continuous field. The continuous field is
built by an optional deployment of
dimensionally built stops (11.62).
\[.62
44
Conclusion.
figure/ground
In this chapter, the following
figure/figure
behaviours were looked at individually
The next chapter will look at how
as well as part of a series of
these behaviours participate at
transformations:
dimensionally building the field.
directionality
lateral displacement
exchange
registration
mirroring
optionality
stability
reciprocity
pie
alternation: packed
continuity/
discontinuity
along main direction
built/unbuilt
reversal
45
46
3. Places Observed
Introduction
Places 1 to 25
conclusion
47
Introductioa
The last part of the previous
(figure-ground/figure-figure).
This chapter looks at dimensions
chapter suggests. through a diagramatic
but more particularly at the deployment
transformation, that dimensions (a
(through displacements) of stabilities
double directional deployment of) play
(dotted squares). A stability occurs
an important role at building the field in
when one dimension is found in two
such a way that the figure-ground
directions. In order for a stability to
relationship (which was argued to not
exist, it has to be defined by edges. The
be a reasonable option) becomes a much
next series of diagrams shows the
more relative one
different ways in which a stability can
be generated.
D:
1.tP
The "square" quality of the stability
is almost never present as such (except
insquare buildings, square plazas or
LI; Li LA
48
square courtyards). What is found is a
essential. In the 'duo-decimal'system,
zone where one dimension can somehow
we have a certain element repeated
be found deployed in two directions.
several times. The repetition of this
Sometimes the stability will be partially
element plays a very important role in
filled with a building element,
the proportions.
sometimes it will be very closed or
The old measures differed from
sometimes it will be so open that the
region to region even from village to
square as such is hardly recognizable.
village. The 'eminee' of Saint-Carmat
Building the field by deploying
(700 meters), was different from the
stabilities (stops) is directly related to
one of pelissane, village located only a
the way dimensions are (or were) used
few kilometers away. The metric
to build. In appendix 6, a few
system, on the other hand, has
paragraphs dealing with dimensions
uniformed all dimensions and brought
from jean-Luc Massot's book "Maisons
along dimensions which did not
Rurales et Vie Paysanne en Provence"
anymore relate to human dimensions"
were translated. The following is an
excerpt.
"Most of the rural constructionsare
He goes on to give a few examples
of surface dimensions.
Le cano carado: a square measure of
dimensioned using the old system, the
a surface equivalent to a 4 meter
'duo-decimal'system. This appears to be
square. The piece of land that contained
49
1600 cano carado (63 acres) was
divided into 8 eminees.
Le panneaux: at Lambesc was worth
200 cano carado.
L'eminado: size of a piece of land
The observations included in this
chapter were done systematically.
Twenty five different places were
looked at, ranging from single farm
that could be seeded with one eminee of
buildings to a town. For every place was
grain.
generated a diagram that looks at
Le carteree: more or less a 2000
square meters.
Le destree: more or less an 8 meter
square.
These few paragraphs show that
directionality, registration and
displacements (alternations), as well as
diagrams of stabilities found within the
place. The goal is to try to understand
how the deployed stabilities begin to
the use of dimensions as surfaces (two
generate directionality, registration and
directions) was in fact very real. Not
locating displacements (alternations).
only at a small dwelling size (4 meter
It is clear that for each place, not all
square. 8 meter square) but also at
the stabilities were looked at, Usually
larger block like sizes (2000 square
one or two seemed to be enough to
meters). Massot's observation that the
clarify the understanding.
old system is based on the repetition of
certain dimensional elements is really
50
the subject of this chapter.
Out of the twenty five places that
were examined, the first fourteen are
accompanied with a short text
(description) . The other nine , due to
1. Place: A ssafora, Portugal(i11.1,2)
Two squares (stabilities) next to
the increased complexity and size, were
each other. Two rooms (d.1). The stops
left undescribed. The principles remain
are the rooms. No displacements (no
the same. The behaviours do not change.
registration at the building size.
One final word about the
The photograph suggests that the
square......"In most ancient writings, and
building registers off of a garden wall
in the rock inscriptionsof earlyman,
(land/property demarkation). The wall
the square signifies the idea of
provides the continuity with the larger
enclosure, of house, of settlement."
landscape (11.3).
(Bruno Munari, Discovery of the square,
p.5)
111.2
d-I
111.3
d.1
L.........i-......-
51
2. Place: Assafora, Portugal(111.4,5)
Three squares build a directional
The dimension of the displaced
square includes the thickness of the
piece (as the two squares did in Place 1).
wall. The location of the displaced
One laterally displaced square generates
square is not controlled by any of the
a registration edge (d.2) as well as a
three that generated the main direction.
new size (larger than a one square
An L- shape (denial of main direction)
dimension) across what has now become
or a T- shape (central, balanced)
the main direction (d.3).
building is avoided. The place of entry is
at the exchange.
d.2
111.4
L........
d.3
111.5
AIltadun e corte
52
3.Place: Montagne-du-Gorray
direction (it slides along the continuous
Val-d7sere, Savoie, France.(111.6,7)
piece) (d.5.6), while the smaller one
There is now a built/unbuilt
works at locating the built pieces as
alternation included in the lateral
displaced elements going against the
displacement (stop). This provides for
main direction (d.7.8).
an access dimension along the main
direction. This access dimension
provides for an access continuity which
generates the built/unbuilt alternation
in the direction of the field (d.4).
111.6
Two different size stabilities are
.4U
found. The larger one works at locating
2.2~
the built elements along the main
d.4
111.7
53
4. Place: La Rosiere. Bourg SaintMaurice, Savoie, France (111.8)
The lateral displacement of the
small piece includes a built/unbuilt
alternation. In this case, the built piece
d.5
is displaced by its own dimension. The
displaced piece is controlled by the
small edge of the larger directional
piece. Registration is now found in both
d.6
L
I
directions (d.9).
-I
-
pwn" nrw I
Ui
d.7
i'40
I. .. A
d.8
54
111-8
ON=
MINOMINFRt
The larger stability shows that the
dimension of the larger building is also
found in the open space in front of it,
defined by the garden wall and the
smaller building. A basic alternation
(d.10.1 1).
--
d.9
d.10
1
d.11
55
As in the preceding example, the
5. Place: Le petit Chevrigne,
Saint-Hilaire-des-Laudes,region
displaced piece is controlled by the
nord-orientalede ]a Haute Bretagne
small edge of the longer piece. This
(Vendelais septentrional),France.
generates registration in both directions
(11.9. 10).
(d. 12,13,14).
The bread oven is displaced from
111.9
the main building by the dimension of
d. 12
L-
the main building itself. The court
II
(outside) that is generated has the
dimension of the main building (inside).
..... T
ill if)
d. 13
56
d.14
6. Place: Cumeada-Loule,Portugal.
(111.11.12.13).
The large stability (stop) partially
sits in the continuous part of the access.
The built/unbuilt alternations that
are part of the displacements generate
an access as well as a stop dimension.
while the smaller stabilities (where the
well is located) are off of it (d. 16).
The larger building's inside edge
The form of the access is not unlike the
provides for a strong registration. The
building form of place 2 (d.15).
edge control situation in the other
direction also generates some
registration.
111.12
111.13W4F
57
7. Place: Oasis of Turfan, western
China. (ill.14).
Some of the same observations as
for Place 6 can be made here. Although
the dimensions are different, we find
registration edges, access continuities
and discontinuities (d.17).
The largest stabilities register along
the main building and include the whole
access/building exchange which
c.15
generates the courtyard. Observe how
d. 16
58
I
il14
the short piece of wall outside is part of
the two largest deployed stabilities
(d.18).
The smaller size looked at does not
-
only generate the building sizes that
make up the building/access exchange
but also, by sliding along the main
direction, generates the sizes of the
stepping that move along the main
direction (d.19).
d.17
d. 18
d.19
59
The stability examined works at
8. Place: Viguera, Spain. (iIl.15,16).
locating building and access dimensions
In this case, the main registration.
along the main drection (d.2 1).
thus the main direction, is generated by
Observe how the stabilities
the alignment of a small building piece
with the arcades at the village entrance.
exchange in the space. As one enters the
From there. register displacements that
public place, one associates with more
locate other buildings much in the same
than one stability at a time.
way as in Places 6 and 7 (d.20).
I
d.20
Different situations of edge control
generate more registration in both
~7T
directions.
111.15
I
'.4
U
111.16
]
-jz
rz
16
V
-. 4
.21
Sj
12
zX
-t
60
9. Place: Le Bec-Rouge, Tignes,
line against the direction of the field.
Savoie, France.(i11.17).
The largest stability generates the
Two lateral displacements. One with
length of the long directional piece, the
and one without a built/unbuilt
size and the locations of the
alternation. The one without the
displacements and garden walls, as well
alternation moved along the registration
as the access dimension that was
and is located partially beyond the end
generated by the built/unbuilt
of the longer directional piece
alternation of the displacement (d.23)
(displacement in the direction of the
The smaller stability works very
field) (d.22).
much like the larger one but generates
the smallest access dimension (one
Both displacements generate
(through edge control) a registration
d.22
61
10. Place: Talforest, Plumelin,
person walking between the diplaced
Bretagne, France.(iIt.18).
pieces) and includes the thickness of the
As in Place 9.there are two lateral
wall (d.24).
displacements. In this case, the
displacement that slides along the
registration in the direction of the field
goes beyond the large directional piece
and thus also creates a built/unbuilt
alternation (this time in the direction of
the field). The other piece is displaced
d.23
I
I
(9
)0
1
3
E
d.24
62
,
111.18
from the larger building by the
dimension of the building itself (d.25).
The stability looked at not only
locates the displacements in relation to
the larger piece but also locates the
displacements in relation to one another
(d.26).
The registration going against the
main direction of the field, although not
shown, virtually exists.
d.25- -
d.26
63
The largest stability, which has and
11. Place: Debach Bayle,
Cier-de-Luchon,Pyreneegaronnaises,
includes the dimension of the largest
France.(i11.19-23).
building element locates the lateral
The laterally displaced element has
displacement and, if deployed three
moved in the direction of the field and
times in the direction of the field,
its inner edge now alignes with the
locates the tool shed (d.28).
larger building element's outer edge.
This is yet another example of a double
directional registration (d.27).
111.20
L
;ij
:~
.....
.
...
ill. 19
111.23
C
64
-
.
-
.
-
-
-
.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- -
-
- -.
d.27
-mO
L
.....................- ----.---.--
d.28
65
The edge control situation along
12. Place: Kerzeumet,
Plondalmezeau,Bretagne, France.
with the fact that the lateral
(11.24).
displacements are double sided
Three lateral displacements on both
generate registrations in both direction.
The "balance" occuring with the almost
sides of the large directional piece. Two
of which include a built/unbuilt
alternation. One displacement in the
direction of the field.
--
L.-..-..
111.24
d.30
II........
..
II
.
0--
L...
d.29
66
d.31
displacements have a built/unbuilt
An element displaced in the
alternation and generate a minimal
direction of the field from the second
access dimension.
larger building reinforces the main
On the one side of the larger
building where two displacements
direction (d.33).
This example starts to point out at
occur, an outdoor court is generated
how a few basic controlled moves can
(what is left of the closed courtyard).
start transforming a particular form. In
The other long directional piece is
displaced in the direction of the field (a
move to open the closed courtyard) but
this case, one can observe what is left of
a closed courtyard.
The stability looked at shows how
registers with the edges of the other
the dimension of the "original" court is
long building and one of the displaced
being deployed to locate other elements
element.
(d.34).
~1
.111~*
I I~*
d.33
I
I1~
.r-ij~I~ii
ri
~7.7I. I
I T~-'
I
F
-
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U
d.34
I ~-V--.--
-j
I
67
mirrored displacements could make one
question what the primary direction is
(d.29).
13. Place: Trerohant,Guisseny,
Bretagne, France.(11.25,26).
Two long directional buildings set
The largest stability partially
up the major direction. One of the longer
locates the displacements while
buildings has two displaced elements on
providing an overall dimension for the
one side and one on the other. Those
whole complex (d.30).
three elements generate a "walking"
The medium size stability locates
(while including or excluding) the
alternation along the main directional
buildings. Each of those three
lateral displacements in relation to the
larger piece (d.31).
L
The smaller stability locates the
displaced piece in relation to the
extremity of the larger one (d.32).
, i1.25
O
d.32
68
111.26
U
"court" which is further defined by two
14. Place: Mas-Saintes-Puelles,Midi
Toulousain et Pyreneen, France.(ill.27,28).
laterally displaced elements. The two lateral
The directional part of the building
displacements also include an built/unbuilt
includes a built/unbuilt alternation. The
alternation which generates an access
unbuilt part of the alternation generates a
dimension in the body of the building (d.35).
The larger stability generates the length
(three side by side) as well as the width
(includes lateral displecements) of the
building (d.36).
Registration in two directions is observed
and is used to define a fairly "closed"
interior court.
11.27
13,
LE,\
13
U6)"
UB;
111.28
ji5
69
d.35
d-36I
70
15. Place: Farmbuildingin Goysen,
Norway. (111.29,30), (d.37-42).
111.29
d.37
.a...
4--
':3
-.....
9*AAI~Z
111.30
Plan of farmbuildings
in Gysen
d-.38
.
t:i
r
I
an
ii
N
0
2
m
71
I
d.39
LdI39
d.4 1
IZI'
..............................
I
~1
1
d-.42
I
rl 40
.777-
72
Em
16. Place: Village des Bories. Gordes,
Vaucluse. France.(111.31-34). (d.43-46).
111.31
111.33
111.32
*ip
73
/
/
/
I
N
dl.43'
/
U [L-cJ
4..
d.44
/
Li c:ZZ7
7.
/
N
d.45
74
L
17. Place: Montes, Portugal.(111.35),
(d.47-5 1).
la cabela
75
I
I'
1
N
77
18-21. Place: Roman settlement at
Phase one: (d.52-55)
warendorf on the Ems River near Munster,
Germany. (11l.36).
-.-.-...- ..
Four successive phases over 150 years of
habitation.
d.52
00
flru
1S111C
0-~~C
d.53
OQC.
a
DO
111.36
0
E--(Y] El
d.54
~~~oLZZIW
-~
0...
Pe s
E]D
2J
6Z5
I
20Gn
78
Qo)
d-55
Phase two: (d.56-59)
F..
0~~~
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d56%5o
d.58
--C-n'A.>
d.57%
4~
A.
Q
d-.59
79
Phase three: (d.60-63)
I
I
I
9
I0
0~
L~I
ci.60
d.62L
.1
LZ
-rzii4~~zz
0ccy
L
d.61
30
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22. Place: Parrabeil,Pyrenees, France.
(111.36), (d.69-72).
OesaM10. Parrabeg
an 1851
111.36
I
/
Id,
-
S
1111||||
5
aeade
fourf
f0
Z"
escalier
porcierv,
F-1
d.69
grange
sore do Ia pente, verslo bas
82
A
I
9,
\
,.:<
.7>
/
/
7
dI.70
7
13
d.72
I
d.7 1
83
23. Place: Fallingwater,Bear Run.
Pennsylvania. USA. Architect: Franck Lloyd
Wright. (ill.37-40). (d.73-75).
111.39
e
-
I.tli1
'a -A
84
-
4
-
vr
r
1
I
r
L
t2
t.
*J
....
L
d.73
JA
I....
1
L.
.1
I
--
1k
-&---cmo
-
E3
.1
L......4
d.74
d.75
85
24. Place: Pueblo.New Mexico. (11.41).
(d.76-79).
0
0
C
0
0
0
0
I
I
m
z
I
z
c~j
Lu
0
z
I
0
I
F?
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IS
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l.41
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d.76
86
L
.
-
-
~1
ITI
-
k*7
d.777
1..7
il~i~
-
12
25. Place: Combarro Portugal.(111.42-45)
(d.80.8 1).
111.43
111.44 1ii
88
d.80
O
i
d.81
89
Conclusion:
'Looking for the stability' as a way to
individually, the next chapter will attempt
understand the inherent spatial structure of
to find out whether or not there exists
a place appears to be useful in that it allows
principles at work common to all (most)
one to look at a great range of built
places.
environments.
This particular quality is important in
order to start making abstractions, extract
rules, principles from what has been
observed. These abstractions would then be
the base for the development of a
generative design tool based on our
understanding of the principles.
"Abstraction is the indispensable link
and indeed the most essential common trait
of perceiving and thinking. To rephrase
Kant's pronouncement: vision without
abstraction is blind: abstraction without
vision is empty." (App. 1:20. Arnheim.)
90
Where this chapter was looking at places
4. Abstractions
Introduction
1. Concerning the larger stability
2. Concerning the smaller stabilities and their relation to the
larger ones
3. Relationship between the stabilities and the built
elements
91
This chapter is an attempt to
- Part One looks at the larger
abstract from ALL the places looked at
stability for all the places looked at. Of
particular behaviours concerning:
particular interest is how the larger size
- The deployment of the largest
stability (largest size).
- The deployment of the smaller
stabilities (smaller sizes).
- The relationship between the
gets deployed and what its relationship
to the registration is.
- Part Two looks at the smaller
stabilities, how they are deployed and
what their relationship with the
deployment of the larger and the
registration is. Part Two also looks at
smaller stabilities.
the relationship between the larger and
- The relationship between the
deployment of the stabilities and
registration.
- The relationship between the
stabilities and the built physical
smaller stabilities.
- Part Three looks at the
relationship between the stabilities and
the physical elements that make up the
place.
elements that make up a place.
The first two parts start with an
The chapter is divided into three
parts
92
overview of the principles observed.
The diagrams relating to the the
principles described follow directly. One
found and thought to be important for
should read the explanation of a
the overall understanding.
principle and then flip through the
diagrams to look for evidences. Part
Three is a general discussion of
principles that relates to all the
diagrams included in part One and Two.
For clarity, diagrams come in
groups of three. For each stability
looked at are drawn:
- A diagram of the place with the
deployed stabilities.
- A diagram of the place with the
deployed stabilities plus registration.
- A diagram of just the stabilities
and the registration.
Every so often, a place generates six
diagrams instead of three. This may
happen if for example two different
larger stabilities (close in size) were
93
Part One: concerning the larger
stability.
1. The dimension of the larger
line.
5. The large stability moves
laterally against the main direction of
stability is usually a (the) large public
the field in order to generate a
dimension.
registration zone.
2. All the built elements that make
6. The large stability is never
up the place participate in defining the
displaced from the registration by more
large stability. The larger size
than its own dimension. If it did. a new
participates 'fully' in locating the built
registration would have to be set up.
elements.
3. The large stabilities, when
deployed, either overlap or are set
against one another. there is never a
--
*L
IL
I
discontinuity in the deployment of the
larger stabilities. The larger size
provides for the continuity.
4. The large stability moves
laterally in the main direction of the
field in order to generate a registration
94
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1. The smaller stabilities are often
deployed discontinuously. Small
2.9
stabilities never overlap. Where the
2.6
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some (at least one) of the small
stabilities associate directly with the
registration.
3. The small stabilities intensify the
larger ones (total or partial overlapping,
corner intensification.....).
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Part Three: relationship between
the stabilities and the built physical
building elements and the stability
elements that make a place.
diagram.I looked at examples where
1. Each size stability has the
there is in fact a one to one relationship
dimension of a building element. Once
(see below). The building is the diagram
this relationship is established, the
and vice versa. The diagram controls the
stability is free to do more work
building and vice versa. everything
without having to relate to an element
controls everything else. It is no longer
of the size which originally provided its
a field.
dimension. This shows that the notion of
organization is no longer just concerned
with how the pieces relate to one
another, but rather how the pieces
relate to a more or less complex
deployment of stabilities whose
dimensions are generated by the
elements themselves. The notion of
organization becomes a much more
relative concept.
2. There is never a one to one
166
relationship between the deployed
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168
5. Projections/Conclusions
169
5. Prolections/Concluslons:
of the figure/ground relationship does
not allow either one to dominate.
The previous chapter suggests that
a deployment of stabilities can be seen
to work? Can it become a generative
as a system. An independent system
tool? When a place has been observed
with components (large stabilities, small
as it has been in this thesis and a
stabilities, registration) and rules that
diagram of its stable framework is
generate a series of potential
abstracted, is it possible to start
relationships between these
working from this diagram?
components.
A system whose importance lies in
Or, if there are particular qualities
about a place that one may be
its ability to make relative the notion of
interested in to generate a 'new' design,
organization, in that organization is no
could one start working directly from
longer just a set of relationships
the stable framework?
between parts but also a set of
These questions hint at the notion
relationships between those same parts
that the stable frameworks abstracted
and what can now be seen as a stable
from places could somehow be used (as
framework. This relationship between
a whole) independently from what
the parts and the stable framework is
generated them.
what generates the field. The relativity
170
How can a stable framework be put
Two short exercises brought the
following conclusions.
1. If, in order to generate a new
particular situation does not seem
appropriate. This way of working would
design. a stable framework was chosen
suggest that the diagram has a form of
according to the particular formal
overall control. It becomes a concept, a
qualities of the place that generated it,
'big idea'. It is a closed way of working.
when working, it became impossible not
The quality of the stable framework
to keep refering back to the place itself.
lies in its formation, in how it comes
In other words, the exercise became one
about, how it grows, how it generates
of transformation of the existing place.
movement, change, transparency.
2. If, in order to generate a new
overlapping and how through its
design, a stable framework was worked
optionality it becomes a base for a
on while disregarding the formal
collage attitude towards the built world.
qualities of the place that generated it.
"The relation between formation
it became obvious that the diagram was
and form can be stated in one sentence:
getting in the way and in fact
the way to form is higher then its own
'controlling' every move.
end and goal......formation determines
What this suggests, is that the idea
form and is therefore the greaterof the
of building up a file of stable
two. Thus form may never be regarded
frameworks out of which could be
as solution, result, end, but should be
extracted, at will, a diagram useful for a
regardedas genesis, growth, essence.
171
Form as phenomenon is a dangerous
viewpoint is not strictly static: it is
chimera. Form as movement, as action is
displaceda little and the object moves
a good thing, active form is good. Form
along... The irregularconsists in the
as rest, as end, is bad. Passive,finished
accentuationof parts or the omission of
form is bad. Formationis good. Form is
certain parts.In any case this
bad: form is the end, death. Formation is
introduces freedom into movement and
movement, act. Formation is life."
movement into freedom." (App.5:10
(App.2:3 Klee)
Klee)
When a stability gets deployed by
172
"One cannot look at a static
displacements, the continuity is
relationshiplong without losing interest
provided by the repetition of the
anymore than one can survive for in a
dimensions while the optionality in how
sealed room where the supply of oxygen
the stabilities get built provide for
is soon exhausted. The image as a living
constant changing relationships. As one
experience cannot long exist in a frozen
moves, the built definitions move as
stucture. For the image to remain a
well. Movement always understood in
living organism, relationshipswithin it
relation to the stabilities (stops).
must be constantly changing. The eye
Ultimate alternation! "The first step is a
and the mind must be fed with changing
regulardeviation based on projection.
visual relationships.....Changeimplies
Projectionmeans here that the
motion. The plastic image must also be
articulated,therefore, in the time
transformations. Our understanding of
dimension."(App.5:2 Kepes)
the formal world makes up our
The overlapping of the stabilities
"universeof instruments and when we
(not just a subdivision, grid), brings
work, we make do with whatever is at
about a quality of 'transparancy' to the
hand at a particulartime. "(App.3:1
built world which multiplies at any
Rowe). Our understanding of
instant (no more singularity) our
dimensional stability is yet another
association with it. "Transparancy
instrument. A basic one.
means a simultaneous perception of
My understanding of dimensional
different spatial locations."(App.5:5
stability has or will,1 hope, become
Kepes). This quality is obvious when
another tool among the set of tools that
experiencing let us say....a good italian
I already had. One collects tools not
hilltown.
always knowing when they will be used
Finally, the formation of the
and for what purpose. "They are defined
diagram suggests a step by step,
only by their potential use.....because
incremental, one move at a time, collage
the tools are collected or retainedon the
like attitude towards the built world. As
principle that theymay always come in
observed, stabilities may be added,
handy. "(App.3:1 Rowe). What a set of
intensified, very built or very open.
tools contains "is the contingent result of
They can take layers of change,
all the occasions there have been to
173
renew or enrich the stock or to maintain
it with the remains of previous
copulation of ideas, the discovery of
constructionsor destructions." (App.3:1
some occult relation between images in
Rowe).
appearanceremote from each other; and
Each new tool added restructures
an effusion of wit, therefore,
the whole set, or how one thinks about
presupposes an accumulation of
the whole set. It sits there, ready to be
knowledge; a memory stored with
used. Now, later, maybe, next, there. It
notions, which the imaginationmay call
will not do the job by itself. More tools
out to compose new assemblages.
will be needed. It may not even be
Whatever may be the native vigour of
useful at all in some instances. So it will
the mind, she can never form many
sit some more and itself be constantly
combinationsfrom few ideas, as many
restructured, reshaped by new tools
changes can never be rung upon a few
coming in.
bells. "(Samuel Johnson, The Rambler,
"Each life is an encyclopedia, a
library,an inventory of objects, a series
of styles, and everything can be
constantly shuffled and reorderedin
every way conceivable." (App.2:12
Calvino).
174
"Wit, you know, is the unexpected
#194,
Saturday, 25 jan.1752).
6. Appendix
175
176
APPENDIX 1
Obsevation / Description /
Knowledge
1.
spatial order that are to be
found in highly complex
physical objects like towns and
It is because
cities.
designers today do not properly
knowledge-architectural
understand their spatial logic
that they cannot develop a
knowledge.
proper understanding of their
The problem, it must be
admitted, is one of
There is a
substantial gap in our
knowledge of the social
implications of strictly
formal, hence architectural,
decisions. There is no
adequate description and
social consequences.
The problem is one that
architecture shares with many
the relations of parts one to
another and to the whole
correspond to hidden numerical
relations present in other works
of art and nature; that these
numbers and proportions do not
signify something cold and rigid,
but breathe life; and that their
importance as an aid to study and
artistic creation is clear.
--
other branches of knowledge:
that of understanding patterns
Paul Klee:
Eye.
The Thinking
p22
of spatial relationships.
explanation of why certain
types of spatial patterning
seem inevitably to lead to that
curious feeling of a
disembodied architecture,
--
Hillier, Hanson, Peponis,
Hudson and Hurdett "Space
Syntax"
devoid of human contact and
3.
Yesterday's artistic creed
and the related study of nature
consisted, it seems safe to say,
in a painfully precise
investigation of appearance. I
and you, the artist and his
object, sought to establish
optical-physical relations across
the invisible barrier between the
'I' and the 'you'.
In this way
excellent pictures were obtained
activity, any more than there
is an understanding of why
common-or-garden urban space of
the past so easily provided a
setting for the life that
nowadays seems so often to be
missing. We believe that this
2. Already at the age of
twenty-three, Klee felt laws to
be decisive, and that one
should not begin with
lack of knowledge-and probably
gives me more than any
by the air;
the loss of responsibility as
well-stems from a conceptual
high-flown theoretical graphs;
the typical will come
automatically from series of
art of contemplating unoptical
difficulty.
Designers do not
have concepts and techniques
that allow them to describe and
investigate the kinds of
hypotheses but with examples,
'If I can
no matter how small.
recognise a clear structure, it
Seeing the
architectural monuments of Rome
in 1902, he was convinced that
examples.'
of the object's surface filtered
the art of optical
sight was developed, while the
impressions and representations
and of making them visible was
neglected. Yet the investigation
of appearance should not be
177
underestimated; it ought merely
to be amplified. Today this
way does not meet our entire
need any more than it did the
day before yesterday. The
artist of today is more than an
improved camera; he is more
complex, richer, and wider. He
is a creature on the earth and
a creature within the whole,
that is to say, a creature on a
star among stars.
--
Paul Klee;
Eye.
The Thinking
p63.
4. We construct and keep on
constructing, yet intuition is
still a good thing. You can do
a good deal without it, but not
everything. Where intuition is
combined with exact research it
speeds up the progress of
research. Exactitude winged by
intuition is at times best.
But because exact research is
exact research, it gets ahead
even without intuition, though
perhaps not very quickly. In
principle it can do without
intuition. It can be logical;
it can construct. It can build
bridges boldly from one thing
178
to another.
It can maintain
order in the midst of turmoil.
In art, too, there is room
critical striving backward,
toward the earlier on which the
later grows. We learn to get up
enough for exact research, and
the gates have been open now
for quite some time. What was
accomplished in music before
the end of the eighteenth
century has hardly been begun
early to familiarise ourselves
with the course of history. We
learn cogent truths on the way
from causes to facts. We learn
to digest. We learn to organise
movement through logical
in the pictorial field.
Mathematics and physics provide
a lever in the form of rules to
be observed or contradicted.
relations.
They compel us - a salutary
necessity - to concern
ourselves first with the
function and not with the
finished form. Algebraic,
exagerated - tension inside,
behind, underneath.
Passionate
geometrical, and mechanical
problems are steps in our
education towards the
essential, towards the
functional as opposed to the
impressional. We learn to see
what flows beneath, we learn
the prehistory of the visible.
We learn to dig deep and to lay
bare.
To explain, to analyse.
We learn to look down on
formalism and to avoid taking
over finished products. We
learn the very special kind of
progress that leads towards a
We learn logic. We
learn organism. As a result the
tension between us and the
finished product eases. Nothing
only deep within.
--
Inwardness.
Paul Klee; The Thinking
Eye. p69.
5. In our business the motives
for analysis are naturally
different. We do not undertake
analyses of works because we want
to copy them or because we
suspect them. We investigate the
methods by which another has
created his work, in order to set
ourselves in motion. This
approach should save us from
regarding a work of art as
something rigid, something fixed
and unchanging. Exercises of
this kind will gard us against
creeping up to a finished
product hoping to pick off what
is most striking, and to make
off with it.
--
The
Gyorgy Kepes:
Language of Vision.
process; it is a creative act.;
p13.
But the language of vision
8.
has a more subtle and, to a
--
Paul Klee: The Thinking
Eye.
p99.
certain extent, an even more
important contemporary task.
To perceive a visual image
implies the beholder's
6. Forms react on us both
through their essence and their
appearnace, those kindred
organs of the spirit. The line
of demarcation between essence
and appearance is faint. There
is no clash, just a specific
something which demands that
the essential be grasped.
--
Paul Klee: The Thinking
Eye.
p154.
7. The language of vision,
optical communication, is one
of the strongest potential
means both to reunite man and
his knowledge and to re-form
man into an integrated being.
The visual language is capable
of disseminating knowledge more
effectively than almost any
other vehicle of communication.
participation in a process of
organization. The experience
of an image is thus a creative
act of integration.
Its
essential characteristic is
that by plastic power an
experience is formed into an
organic whole. Here is a basic
discipline of forming, that is,
thinking in terms of structure,
a discipline of utmost
importance in the chaos of our
formless world. Plastic arts,
the optimum forms of the
language of vision, are,
therefore, an invaluable
educational medium.
--
9.
The
Gyorgy Kepes:
Language of Vision.
p13.
To perceive an image is to
participate in a forming
From the simplest form of
orientation to the most embracing
plastic unity of a work of art,
there is a common significant
basis: the following up of the
sensory qualities of the visual
field and the organizing of
them. In dependent of what one
"sees," every experiencing of a
visual image is a forming; a
dynamic process of integration, a
"plastic" experience. The word
"plastic" therefore is here used
to designate the formative
quality, the shaping of sensory
impresions into unified, organic
wholes.
--
Gyorgy Kepes:
of Vision.
The Language
p15.
10. Confronted with a compelx
optical field, one will reduce it
to basic inter-relationships.
Just as in nature there is a
tendency to find the most
economic surface unity in every
formation, so in the visual
organization there is a tendency
to find the most economic spatial
unity in the ordering of optical
differences.
179
--
Gyorgy Kepes:
The
Language of Vision.
p45.
individual characteristics
retreat and something entirely
further than their measured and
exact meanings.
new appears --
the chord.
Similarly, the optical units
11.
organized into spatial
Forces of organization
driving toward spatial order,
configurations become more than
toward stability, tend to shape
the sum total of their
optical units into closed
compact wholes. Confronted
component parts.
--
with a complex optical
situation, the beholder
Gyorgy Kepes:
The Power
Francis Ponge:
of Language. p79.
In vain, great-hearted
Kublai, shall I attempt to
14.
The
Language of Vision.
p51.
describe Zaira, city of high
bastions. I could tell you how
searches for the form with the
many steps make up the streets
most stable unity, or with the
least disturbed relationship to
13.
rising like stairways, and the
degree of the arcades' curves,
the environment.
a contemplative disposition,
For an individual who has
the whole secret of happiness
--
Gyorgy Kepes:
The
Language of Vision.
p51.
12.
Due to the laws of visual
organization, no visual unit
can exist in itself on the
is not to consider as an evil
the invasion of his personality
by objects. In order for that
experience to avoid becoming a
mystical one, it is necessary
(1) to arrive at a precise
inventory of each thing that
and what kind of zinc scales
cover the roofs; but I already
know this would be the same as
telling you nothing. The city
does not consist of this, but of
relationships between the
measurements of its space and the
the height
events of its past:
of a lamppost and the distance
beyond itself and implies a
one has made the object of
one's contemplation; (2) to
from the ground of a hanged
usurper's swaying feet; the line
larger whole.
change objects of contemplation
strung from the lampost to the
rather frequently to assure a
degree of equilibrium. but for
railing opposite and the festoons
into wholes with a common
a contemplative individual,
queen's nuptial procession;
function. Three musical tones
have each its particular wave
length, its individual tonal
what is most important is the
progressive nomination of all
the qualities that he
height of that railing and the
quality; but when the three are
discovers; those qualities that
TRANSPORT him should not
transport him
guttering and a cat's progress
along it as he slips into the
picture-plane.
Each unit leads
Thus units not
only live on the picture-plane;
they also grow.
They merge
sounded together their
180
--
that decorate the course of the
the
leap of the adulterer who climbed
over it at dawn; the tilt of a
same window; the firing range
of a gunboat which has suddenly
15.
appeared beyond the cape and
imagined his answer) that the
the bomb that destroys the
guttering; the rips in the fish
more one was lost in unfamiliar
quarter of distant cities, the
past changes according to the
route he has followed:
not the
immediate past, that is, to which
net and the three old men
more one understood the other
each day that goes by adds a day,
seated on the dock mending nets
cities he had crossed to arrive
but the more remote past.
and telling each other for the
hundredth time the story of the
there; and he retraced the
Arriving at each new city, the
traveler finds again a past of
his that he did not know he had:
the foreignness of what you no
gunboat of the usurper, who
some say was the queen's
illegitimate son, abandoned in
his swaddling clothes there on
the dock.
As this wave form memories
flows in, the city soaks it up
like a sponge and expands.
A
Marco Polo imagined
gradually as he advanced on his
journey, because the traveler's
answering (or Kublai Khan
stages of his journeys, and he
came to know the port from
which he had set sail, and the
familiar places of his youth,
and the surroundings of home,
and a little square of Venice
where he gambled as a child.
At this point Kublai Khan
interrupted him or imagined
description of Zaira as it is
interrupting him, or Marco Polo
today should contain all
imagined himself interrupted,
Zaira's past.
The city, however, does not
tell its past, but contains it
like the lines of a hand,
with a question such as:
written in the corners of the
streets, the gratings of the
windows, the banisters of the
"You
longer are or no longer possess
lies in wait for you in foreign,
unpossessed places.
--
Italo Calvino:
Cities.
16.
Invisible
p28.
...Newly arrived and quite
advance always with your head
turned back?" or "Is what you
see always behind you?" or
rather, "Does your journey take
ignorant of the languages of the
place only in the past?"
All this so that Marco Polo
Levant, Marco Polo could express
himself only by drawing objects
from his baggage -- drums, salt,
steps, the antennae of the
could explain or imagine
fish, necklaces of wart hogs'
teeth -- and pointing to them
with gestures, leaps, cries of
lightning rods, the poles of
explaining or be imagined
wonder or of horror, imitating
the flags, every segment marked
explaining or succeed finally
the bay of the jackal, the boot
in turn with scratches,
in explaining to himself that
of the owl.
indentations, scrolls.
what he sought was always
--
Italo Calvino:
Cities.
Invisible
pps 10-11.
The connections between one
something lying ahead, and even
element of the story and another
if it was a matter of the past
were not always obvious to the
it was a past that changed
emperor; the objects could have
181
various meanings:
a quiver
filled with arrows could
indicate the approach of war,
less happy than in the past:
to be sure, words were more
and repetition.
useful than objects and
with new samples of merchandise,
or an abundance of game, or
else an armorer's shop; an
gestures in listing the most
the repertory of mute comment
important things of every
province and city -- monuments,
markets, costumes, fauna and
tended to become closed, stable.
hourglass could mean time
passing, or time past, or sand,
or a place where hourglasses
are made.
But what enhanced for
Kublai every event or piece of
news reported by his
inarticulate informer was the
space that remained around it,
182
flora --
and yet when Polo
began to talk about how life
must be in those places, day
And as the
vocabulary of things was renewed
The pleasure of falling back on
it also diminished in both; in
their conversations, most of the
time, they remained silent and
immobile.
after day, evening after
evening, words failed him, and
little by little, he went back
--
Italo Calvino:
Cities.
Invisible
pps 38-39.
to relying on gestures,
a void not filled with words.
The descriptions of cities
Marco Polo visited had this
virtue:
you could wander
through them in thought, become
lost, stop and enjoy the cool
air, or run off.
As time went by, words
began to replace objects and
gestures in Marco's tales:
grimaces, glances.
So, for each city, after
the fundamental information
given in precise words, he
followed with a mute
commentary, holding up his
first exclamations, isolated
nouns, dry verbs, then phrases,
was established:
hands, palms out, or backs, or
sideways, in straight or
oblique movements, spasmodic or
slow.
A new kind of dialogue
the Great
17. What seems to me a more
valid formulation for present use
is "objectism," a word to be
taken to stand for the kind of
relation of man to experience
which a poet might state as the
necessity of a line or a work to
be as wood is, to be as clean as
wood is as it issues from the
hand of nature, to be shaped as
Khan's white hands, heavy with
wood can be when a man has had
ramified and leafy discourses,
metaphors and tropes. The
foreigner had learned to speak
rings, answered with stately
his hand to it.
movements the sinewy, agile
getting rid of the lyrical
the emperor's language or the
emperor to understand the
understanding grew between
them, their hands began to
language of the foreigner.
But you would have said
communication between them was
assume fixed attitudes, each of
which corresponded to a shift
hands of the merchant.
As an
of mood, in their alternation
Objectism is the
interference of the individual as
ego, of the "subject" and his
soul, that peculiar presumption
by which western man has
interposed himself between what
he is as a creature of nature
(with certain instructions to
to the extent to which it is
this subsumption can take place
carry out) and those other
creations of nature which we
fitted to some organized
only if perception involves also
first and foremost the formation
may, with no derogation, call
objects. For a man is himself
an object, whatever he may take
to be his advantages, the more
likely to recognize himself as
such the greater his
advantages, particularly at
that moment that he achieves an
humilitas sufficient to make
him of use.
--
Charles Olson:
Poems.
shape. In addition, there
generally is an amount of
visual noise, accompanying and
modifying the perceived shape
with more or less fague detail
and nuances, but this
contributes little to visual
comprehension.
--
Rudolph Arnheim:
Thinking. p27.
Visual
Perception consists in
fitting the stimulus material
with templates of relatively
simple shape, which I call
visual concepts or visual
categories. The simplicity of
are made,"
as Bruner calls it in
the paper to which I referred
earlier. The mind cannot give
This has
been evident, for example, in the
development of the so-called
projective techniques in
psychology.
19. The most useful and common
interaction between perception
and memory takes place in the
18.
classification is not simply "the
sensory stuff from which percepts
shape to the shapeless.
Selected
p24.
of a concept of the object to be
classified. The object of
--
Visual
Rudolph Arnheim:
Thinking. p27.
recognition of things seen.
Visual knowledge acquired in
the past helps not only in
detecting the nature of an
object or action appearing in
20. The purely cognitive
difficulties opposing this
approach have been discussed.
these visual concepts is
relative, in that a complex
stimulus pattern viewed by
the visual field; it also
assigns the present object a
place in the system of things
constituting our total view of
have pointed out that perception
and thinking cannot get along
without each other. Abstarction
is the indispensable link and
refined vision may produce a
the world.
rather intricate shape, which
act of perception involves
trait of perceiving and
is the simplest attainable
subsuming a given particular
phenomenon under some visual
thinking.
matters is that an object at
concept - an operation most
abstraction is blind;
which someone is looking can be
typical of thinking.
without vision is empty.
under the circumstances.
What
said to be truly perceived only
Thus almost every
I
indeed the most essential common
To rephrase Kant's
pronouncement:
vision without
abstraction
As I pointed out earlier,
183
--
Rudolph Arnheim:
Thinking. p188.
visual
21.
To do this, he has to face
each time problems of
selection, exclusion,
hierarchies of preference; he
soon realizes he is spoiling
everything, as always when he
involves his own ego and all
the problems he has with his
own ego.
But how can you look at
something and set your own ego
aside? Whose eyes are doing
the looking? As a rule, you
think of the ego as one who is
peering out of your own eyes as
if leaning on a window sill,
looking at the world stretching
out before him in all its
immensity. So, then:
a window
looks out on the world. The
world is out there; and in
here, what do we have? The
world still - what else could
there be? With a little effort
of concentration.
Mr. Palomar
for the occasion has been split
into a looking world and a
officially recognized that
observation intervenes in some
world looked at.
way to modify the phenomenpn
being observed, Gadda knew that
"conoscere e inserire alcunche
nel reale; e, quindi, deformare
And what
about him also known as "I,"
namely Mr. Palomar? Is he not a
piece of the window and world
this side, perhaps the "I," the
ego, is simply the window
through which the world looks
at the world. To look at
itself the world needs the eyes
(and the eyeglasses) of Mr.
Palomar.
--
Palomar.
184
The world is also there,
Mr.
p114.
22.
Starting from there,
Roscioni explains how for Gadda
this knowledge of things - seen
as the convergence of infinite
relationships, past and future,
real or possible - demands that
everything should be precisely
named, described, and located
in space and time.
--
manages to shift the world from
in front of him and set it on
the sill, looking out. Now
beyond the window, what do we
have?
and
Italo Calvino:
Italo Calvino:
Six Memos
for the Next Millennium.
p107.
23.
Even before science had
il reale" (to know is to insert
something into what is real, and
hence to distort reality).
--
Italo Calvino:
Six Memos
for The Next Millennium.
p108.
APPENDIX 2
Process
1. We need mechanical
function. This means working
on the basis of a law, not in
order to demonstrate the law,
but in order to create a freer
once.
This possibility was
seriously discussed only after
it had been used by artists who
action is a good thing, active
form is good. Form as rest, as
end, is bad. Passive, finished
knew how to unify and combine
organic processes.
form is bad. Formation is good.
Form is bad; form is the end,
death. Formation is movement,
--
Paul Klee:
Eye.
The Thinking
act.
Formation is life.
p152.
--
form, based on the rules.
Paul Klee:
Eye.
--
Paul Klee:
Eye.
The Thinking
p151.
In art the essential is to
create movement according to
2.
rules, to create deviations
while bearing the rules in
mind. If you adhere too
strictly, you get into barren
territory. There is no need to
demand absolute conformity. It
is only recently that we have
been free to deviate from the
rule. What do we gain by it?
We gain possibilities of
Spatio-Plastic representation
and movement that we limited
under earlier methods. With
constructive dexterity such
effects might be obtained from
But that is only
one way and not the direct way
of showing different things at
one position.
The Thinking
p169.
3. The relation between
formation and form, which we
discern even in the smallest
things, retains its fundamental
character in later stages,
because it is determined by a
principle. I think the nature
of this relation can be stated
in one sentence: the way to
form, dictated no doubt by some
inward or outward necessity, is
higher than its own end and
goal. The way is essential and
determines the conclusive or
concluded character of the
work. Formation determines
form and is therefore the
greater of the two. Thus form
may never be regarded as
solution, result, end, but
should be regarded as genesis,
growth, essence.
Form as
phenomenon is a dangerous
chimera. Form as movement, as
4. Marco enters a city; he sees
someone in a square living a life
or an instant that could be his;
he could now be in that man's
place, if he had stopped in time,
long ago; or if, long ago at a
crossroads, instead of taking one
road he had taken the opposite
one, and after long wandering he
had come to be in the place of
that man in that square. By now,
from that real or hypothetical
past of his, he is excluded; he
cannot stop; he must go on to
another city, where another of
his pasts awaits him, or
something perhaps that had been a
possible future of his and is now
someone else's present. Futures
not achieved are only branches of
the past:
dead branches.
185
--
Italo Calvino:
Cities. p29.
Invisible
"What is the aim of a
city under construction unless
it is a city? Where is the
and may, the way things look,
lead to new poetics and to new
concepts from which some sort of
plan you are following, the
blueprint?"
"We will show it to you as
drama, say, or of epic, perhaps,
beyond the plank fences, the
sackcloth screens, the
scaffoldings, the metal
soon as the working day is
over; we cannot interrup our
a man learns, if he works in
armatures, the wooden cat walks
hanging from ropes or supported
by sawhorses, the ladder, the
trestles. If you ask, "Why is
Work stops at sunset.
Darkness falls over the
building site. The sky is
filled with stars.
"There is
the blueprint," they say.
5.
Those who arrive at Thekla
can see little of the city,
Thekla's construction taking
such a long time?" the
inhabitants continue hoisting
sacks, lowering leaded strings,
moving long brushes up and
down, as they answer, "So that
its destruction cannot begin."
And if asked whether they fear
that, once the scaffoldings are
removed, the city may begin to
crumble and fall to pieces,
they add hastily, in a whisper,
"Not only the city."
If, dissatisfied with the
answers, someone puts his eye
to a crack in a fence, he sees
cranes pulling up other cranes,
scaffoldings that embrace other
scaffoldings, beams that prop
up other beams.
"What meaning
does your construction have?"
186
he asks.
work now,"
--
they answer.
Italo Calvino:
Cities. p127.
Invisible
6. I want to do two things:
first, try to show what
projective or OPEN verse is,
what it involves, in its act of
composition, how, in distinction from the non-
may emerge.)
First, some simplicities that
OPEN, or what can also be called
COMPOSITION BY FIELD, as opposed
to inherited line, stanza,
over-all form, what is the "old"
base of the non-projective.
(1) The kinetics of the
thing. A poem is energy
transferred form where the poet
get it (he will have some several
causations), by way of the poem
itself to, all the way over to,
the reader. Okay, then the poem
itself must, at all points, be a
high energy-construct and, at all
points, an energy-discharge.
So:
how is the poet to
accomplish same energy, how is
he, what is the process by which
projective, it is accomplished;
a poet gets in, all points energy
and II, suggest a few ideas
at least the equivalent of the
about what stance toward
energy which propelled him in the
reality brings such verse into
being, what that stance does,
first place, yet an energy which
both to the poet and to his
reader.(The stance involves,
for example, a change beyond,
is peculiar to verse alone and
which will be, obviously, also
different from the energy which
the reader, because he is a third
and larger than, the technical
term, will
take away?
extension of content under
inside the machinery, now, 1950,
This is the problem which
any poet who departs from
hand.)
There it is, brothers,
sitting there, for USE.
of how pojective verse is made.
closed form is specially
Now (3) the process of the
thing, how the principle can be
made as to shape the energies
confronted by.
And it involves
a whole series of new
recognitions. From the moment
he ventures into FIELD
COMPOSITION -
put himself in
the open - he can go by no
track other than the one the
poem under hand declares, for
itself.
Thus he has to behave,
that the form is accomplished.
And I think it can be boiled
down to one statement (first
pounded into my head by Edward
Dahlberg):
ONE PERCEPTION MUST
IMMEDIATELY AND DIRECTLY LEAD
TO A FURTHER PERCEPTION. It
--
Charles Olson:
Poems.
7.
Selected
pps 15-17.
One need only look at the
role that resemblances among
elements play in a work of art.
They are frequent and are used by
artists for what Picasso once
"Painting is
called assonances.
and be, instant by instant
means exactly what it says, is
poetry and is always written in
aware of some several forces
a matter of, at all points
(even, I should say, of our
management of daily reality as
of the daily work) get on with
verse with plastic rhymes, never
in prose," he said to Francoise
Gilot. "Plastic rhymes are forms
just now beginning to be
examined. (It is much more,
it, keep moving, keep in,
speed, the nerves, their speed,
the perceptions, theirs, the
acts, the split second acts,
that rhyme with one another or
suppply assonances either with
other forms or with the space
A viewer
that surrounds them..."
discovering such assonances in a
metronome.)
(2) is the principle, the
law which presides
conspicuously over such
the whole business, keep it
moving as fast as you can,
citizen. And if you also set
painting will thereby trace
connections that may be essential
to its structure.
composition, and, when obeyed,
is the reason why a projective
process at all points, in any
poem can come into being. It is
this:
FORM IS NEVER MORE THAN
perception must must must MOVE,
for example, this push, than
simply such a one as Pound put,
so wisely, to get us started:
"the musical phrase," go by it,
boys, rather than by, the
AN EXTENSION OF CONTENT. (Or
so it got phrased by one, R.
Creeley, and it makes absolute
sense to me, with this possible
up as a poet, USE USE USE the
--
Rudolph Arnheim:
Thinking.
given poem always, always one
Visual
p56.
INSTANTER, ON ANOTHER!
So there we are, fast,
there's the dogma.
And its
excuse, this usableness, in
practice. Which gets us,
For in an age, allegedly, of
optional latitude and pluralist
intention, it should be possible
as least to plot some kind of
8.
187
strategy of accommodation and
coexistence.
--
Rowe and Koetter:
Collage City. pps 65-66.
as a result that there have
emerge a series of
have the curiosity of
Hadrian-of Hadrian who is,
counter-productions, a barrage of
imperfectly defined reactions,
apparently, so disorganized and
casual, who proposes the
reverse of any 'totality', who
not only to the monolithic
offensiveness of would-be
Now, for present purposes,
the obvious construct to mount
along side Versailles is the
seems to need only an
accumulation of disparate ideal
fragments and whose criticism
Villa Adriana at Tivoli. For,
if the one is certainly an
of Imperial Rome
9.
exhibition of total
architecture and total design,
the other attempts to
dissimulate all reference to
any controlling idea; and, if
there is absolute power under
two impersonations, then one
might even feel constrained to
digress and to ask which is the
more useful model-for us.
There is unambiguous,
(configurationally much like
his own house) is rather an
systemics but also to its related
lack of responsiveness to fine
grain association, immediate
circumstance, vitality.
--
Rowe and Koetter:
City. p96.
Collage
endorsement than any protest.
--
Rowe and Koetter:
Collage City. p90.
10. Which is not to deny the
usefulness of well-concerted
information nor the heuristic
utility which fantasies of
In order to escape the
11.
arbitrary nature of existence,
Perec, like his protagonist, is
forced to impose rigorous rules
and regulations on himself, even
if these rules are in turn
But the miracle is
that this system of poetics,
arbitrary.
highly organized reality may
which might seem artificial and
moral is declared to the world
and the advertisement, like so
often supply; but which is to
mechanical, produces
notice that, by now, the
inexhaustible freedom and wealth
many things French, can
literal extension of total
of invention.
The
unabashed Versailles.
This is because it
design into total management
coincides with something that had
total control and the glaring
It is the
illumination of it.
and total print out, has, as
been Perec's Passion ever since
much among its proponents as
his first novel (Les choses,
triumph of generality, the
prevalence of the overwhelming
its critics, begun, for some
1965): a passion for catalogues,
for the enumeration of objects,
scarcely be refused.
This is
idea and the refusal to the
exception.
188
with this single-minded
performance of Louis XIV, we
And then, compared
time, to appear as a rather
dubious and fruitless
enterprise. And it is perhaps
each defined both in itself and
by its belonging to any epoch, a
style, a society; a passion
extending to menus, concert
programs, diet charts,
bibliogrphies real or
imaginary.
--
Italo Calvino:
Six Memos
For The Next Millennium.
p122.
13.
Who are we, who is each
one of us, if not a
combinatoria of experiences,
information, books we have
read, things imagined? Each
life is an encyclopedia, a
library, an inventory of
objects, a series of styles,
and everything can be
constantly shuffled and
reordered in every way
12. Another very wrong idea
that is also going the rounds
at the moment is the
equivalence that has been
established between
inspiration, exploration of the
subconscious, and liberation,
between chance, automatism, and
freedom. Now this sort of
inspiration, which consists in
blindly obeying every impulse,
is in fact slavery. The
classical author who wrote his
tragedy observing a certain
number of known rules is freer
than the poet who writes down
whatever comes into his head
and is slave to other rules of
which he knows nothing.
conceivable.
But perhaps the answer that
stands closest to my heart is
something else: think what it
would be to have a work
conceived from outside the
self, a work that would let us
escape the limited perspective
of the individual ego, not only
to enter into selves like our
own but to give speech to that
which has no language, to the
bird perching on the edge of
the gutter, to the tree in
spring and the tree in fall, to
stone, to cement, to plastic...
--
Italo Calvino:
Six Memos
For The Next Millennium.
p124.
--
Italo Calvino:
Six Memos
For The Next Millennium.
p123.
189
APPENDIX 3
Collage
means compared to those of the
craftsman.
The 'bricoleur' is adept at
1.
'There still exists among
ourselves,' says Claude
Levi-Strauss, 'an activity
which on the technical plan
gives us quite a good
understanding of what a science
we prefer to call "prior"
rather than "primitive" could
have been on the plan of
speculation. This is what is
commonly called "bricolage" in
French; and he then proceeds to
an extended analysis of the
objectives of 'bricolage' and
of science, of the respective
roles of the 'bricoleur' and
the engineer.
In its old sense the verb
'bricoler' applied to ball
games and billiards, to
hunting, shooting and riding.
It was however always used with
reference to some extraneous
190
of tools and materials, or
'instrumental sets', as there are
different kinds of projects. It
engineer, he does not
is to be defined only by its
potential use... because the
elements are collected or
subordinate each of them to the
retained on the principle that
availability of raw materials
they may always come in handy'.
Such elements are specialized up
to a point, sufficiently for the
'bricoleur' not to need the
performing a large number of
but, unlike the
diverse tasks:
and tools conceived and
procured for the prupose of the
project. His universe of
instruments is closed and the
rules of his game are always to
make do with 'whatever is at
equipment and knowledge of all
trades and professions, but not
hand', that is to say with a
set of tools and materials
which is always finite and is
also heterogeneous because what
it contains bears no relation
to the current project, or
only one definite and determinate
enough for each of them to have
use. They represent a set of
actual and possible relations;
they are operators', but they can
be used for any operations of the
same type.
indeed to any particular
project, but is the contingent
result of all the occasions
there have been to renew or
--
Rowe and Koetter:
Collage
102-103.
City. pps
enrich the stock or to maintain
it with the remains of previous
2.
constructions or destructions.
confrontation of the 'bricoleur's
movement: a ball rebounding, a
dog straying or a horse
The set of the 'bricoleur's'
'savage mind' with the
'domesticated' mind of the
swerving from its direct course
to avoid an obstacle. And in
our time the 'bricoleur' is
still someone who works with
defined in terms of a project
(which would presuppose
besides, that, as in the case
of the engineer, there are, at
his hands and uses devious
least in theory, as many sets
means cannot therefore be
We have not only a
engineer, but also a useful
indication that these two modes
of thought are not
representatives of a progressive
serial (the engineer illustrating
a perfection of the
'bricoleur', etc.) but that, in
fact, they are necessarily
coexistent and complementary
conditions of the mind. In
other words.
We might be about
to arrive at some approximation
of Levi-Strauss's
'pensee
logique au niveau du sensible'.
--
Rowe and Koetter:
Collage city.
p104.
Indeed, if we are willing
to recognize the methods of
science and 'bricolage' as
concomitant propensities, if we
are willing to recognize that
3.
they are - both of them - modes
of address to problems, if we
are willing ( and it may be
hard) to concede equality
between the 'civilized' mind
--
Rowe and Koetter:
p105.
Collage City.
4. You remember that bull's
head I exhibited recently? Out
of reference; memory;
anticipation; the connectedness
of the handlebars and the
bicycle seat I made a bull's
of memory and wit; the integrity
of wit; this is a laundry list of
reactions to Piccasso's
proposition; and, since it is a
head which everybody recognized
as a bull's head. Thus a
metamorphosis was completed;
and now I would like to see
another metamorphosis take
place in the opposite
direction. Suppose my bull's
head is thrown on the scrap
heap. Perhaps some day a
fellow will come along and
say:
'Why there's something
that would come in very handy
for the handlebars of my
bicycle...' and so a double
metamorphosis would have been
achieved.
(with its presumptions of
logical seriality) and the
'savage' mind (with its
--
even be possible to suppose
that the way for a truly useful
future dialectic could be
prepared.
proposition evidently addressed
to people, it is in terms such as
these, in terms of pleasures
remembered and desired, of a
dialectic between past and
future, of an impacting of
iconographic content, of a
temporal as well as a spatial
collision, that resuming an
earlier argument, one might
proceed to specify an ideal city
of the mind.
--
Rowe and Koetter:
City. p138.
Collage
Rowe and Koetter:
Collage City. p138.
analogical leaps), then, in
re-establishing 'bricolage'
alongside science, it might
and re-cycling of meaning (has
there ever been enough to go
around?); desuetude of function
with corresponding agglomeration
Remembrance of former
function and value (bicycle and
5.
minotaurs); shifting context;
an attitude which encourages
the composite; an exploitation
6. With Picasso's image one
asks: what is false and what is
true, what is antique and what is
'of today'; and it is because of
an inability to make half way
adequate reply to this pleasing
difficulty that one, finally, is
191
obliged to identify the problem
of composite presence in terms
of collage.
--
Rowe and Koetter:
Collage City. pps 138-139
7. Collage and the architect's
conscience, collage as
technique and collage as state
of mind.
--
Rowe and Koetter:
Collage City. p139.
dealing with the ultimate
problems of, either or both,
utopia and tradition; and the
provenance of the architectural
assemblages. Whatever may be the
native vigour of the mind, she
can never form many combinations
from few ideas, as many changes
objects introduced into the
social collage need not be of
great consequence. It relates
can never be rung upon a few
bells. Accident may indeed
to taste and conviction. The
objects can be aristocratic or
they can be 'folkish', academic
parallel or a striking contrast;
but these gifts of chance are not
or popular.
Whether they
originate in Pergamum or
Dahomey, in Deetroit or
Dubrovnik, whether their
implications are of the
sometimes produce a lucky
frequent, and he that has nothing
of his own, and yet condemns
himself to needless expenses must
live upon loans or theft.
--
8. Objects and episodes are
obtrusively imported and, while
they retain the overtones of
their source and origin, they
--
Rowe and Koetter:
Collage City. pps
114-115.
gain also a wholly new impact
form their changed context.
10.
--
Rowe and Koetter:
Collage City.
p140.
9.
192
Wit, you know, is the
Rowe and Koetter:
City.
twentieth or the fifteenth
century, is no great matter.
Collage
p148.
11.
This brings us to the
cubists again, and in particular
to the early collages of Picasso
and Braque; to the way everyday
objects and materials are taken
out of their accepted context and
unexpected copulation of ideas,
the discovery of some occult
placed in a new one, altering
relation between images in
appearance remote form each
sets off sequences of new
associations.
It is suggested that a
collage approach, an approach
other; and an effusion of wit,
in which objects are
conscripted or seduced form out
of their context, is - at the
present day - the only way of
accumulation of knowledge; a
memory stored with notions,
which the imagination may cull
therefore, presupposes an
out to compose new
their significance, which in turn
--
Herman Hertzberger, "Aldo
Van Eyck" p26.
12. Carlo Emilio Gadda tried
all his life to represent the
world as a knot, a tangled
skein of yarn; to represent it
without in the least
diminishing the inextricable
complexity or, to put it
better, the simultaneous
presence of the most disparate
elements that converge to
determine every event.
--
Italo Calvino:
back in (speech is the "solid" of
verse, is the secret of a poem's
well as the image, the sound,
the sense) must be taken up as
participants in the kinetic of
the poem just as solidly as we
are accustomed to take what we
has, by speech, solidity,
everything in it can now be
treated as solids, objects,
call the objects of reality;
and that these elements are to
the reality of verse from that
other dispersed and distributed
thing, yet each of these elements
be seen as creating the
Memos For
The Next Millennium.
p106.
tensions of a poem just as
totally as do those other
objects create what we know as
the world.
The objects which occur at
13.
It comes to this, this
whole aspect of the newer
problems.
let me indicate this, that
every element in an open poem
(the syllable, the line, as
(We now enter,
actually, the large area of the
whole poem, into the FIELD, if
you like, where all the
syllables and all the lines
must be managed in their
relations to each other.)
is a matter, finally, of
It
OBJECTS, what they are, what
they are inside a poem, how
every given moment of
composition (of recognition, we
can call it) are, can be, must
be treated exactly as they do
occur therein and not by any
ideas or preconceptions from
outside the poem, must be
handled as a series of objects
in field in such a way that a
there, how they are to be
used.
being.
This is something I want
to get to in another way in
Part II, but, for the moment,
things; and, though insisting
upon the absolute difference of
of a poem can be allowed to have
the play of their separate
energies and can be allowed, once
the poem is well composed, to
keep, as those other objects do,
their proper confusions.
--
Charles Olson:
Selected
Poems. pps 20-21.
series of tensions (which they
also are) are made to hold, and
to hold exactly inside the
content and the context of the
poem which has forced itself,
through the poet and them, into
they got there, and, once
energy), because, now, a poem
Because breath allows all
the speech-force of language
193
APPENDIX 4
Figure-Ground / Figure-Figure
other. The structure and the
scale of this mass of
indicative signs imparts a
field from light to dark moves up
and down between the poles of
white and black. In nature it is
certain tension to space. By
changing these signs we alter
the tension of space, which is
formed from one and the same
assuredly white that can lay
1. 'The energetic task which
art must accomplish is to
transmute the emptiness into
space, that is into something
void.'
which our minds can grasp as an
organized unity.'
--
proportions.'
Joost Baljev:
The New
Joost Baljev:
The New
Space in the Painting of
El Lissitzky. 1966.
Joost Baljev:
The New
Space in the Painting of
El Lissitzky.
1966.
2.
'Fulfilment depends on the
arrangement of space by means
of lines, plans, volumes. Not
self-contained, individual
bodies, but relations and
--
--
4. Chinese and Japanese
calligraphy also has a sound
respect for the white
interval. Characters are
written in imaginary squares,
the blank areas of which are
In the
beginning resistance is dead and
the whole is without movement or
is light itself.
life. We must bring black and
summon it to battle against the
formless strength of light.
Thus
we use offensive and defensive
energies together or in turn. A
living balance between the two
poles - this is the task we
cannot avoid. The penetration of
nature based on black and white
[1].
The concept of balanced
opposites.
given as much consideration as
the graphic units, the
strokes. Written or printed
communication is living or dead
Space in the Painting of
depending upon the organization
El Lissitzky.
of its blank spaces.
1966.
claim to the most primordial
activity. White given in nature
--
Paul Klee:
Eye.
6.
The Thinking
plo.
Certainly, in considering the
modern city from the point of
-3.
'Emptiness, chaos, the
Gyorgy Kepes:
The
Language of Vision.
view of perceptual performance,
p32.
unnatural become space, that
means order, definition, form,
when we introduce determinate
signs of a specific type and in
a specific relationship to each
194
by Gestalt criteria it can only
be condemned.
For, if the
appreciation or perception of
5. Natural order in the
cosmos, i.e. the natural
balance of nature.
The partial
object or figure is assumed to
require the presence of some sort
of ground or field, if the
recognition of some sort of
however closed field is a
prerequisite of all perceptual
experience and, if
consciousness of field precedes
consciousness of figure, then,
when figure is unsupported by
any recognizable frame of
And thus, for instance, such
buildings as the Palazzo
Borghese may be taken as types
of habitable poche which
articulate the transition of
external voids.
--
reference, it can only become
enfeebled and self-destructive.
--
Rowe and Koetter:
Collage City. p64.
Rowe and Koetter:
Collage City. p79.
9.
To summarize:
it is here
proposed that, rather than
; and we speak of a
willingness to reconsider the
object which allegedly nobody
withering away of the object
(while, simultaneously
manufacturing versions of it in
profusion unparalleled), it
wants and to evaluate it not so
might be judicious, in most
much as figure but as ground.
cases, to allow and encourage
the object to become digested
in a prevalent texture or
matrix. It is further
suggested that neither object
nor space fixation are, in
themselves, any longer
...
--
8.
Rowe and Koetter:
Collage City. p68.
It is not hard to
component emerging undefeated,
the imagined condition is a type
of solid-void dialectic which
might allow for the joint
existence of the overtly planned
and the genuinely unplanned, of
hoping and waiting for the
7.
should be recognized as one in
which both buildings and spaces
exist in an equality of sustained
debate. A debate in which
victory consists in each
acknowledge that the
represensative of valuable
recognition of poche is also a
attitudes.
matter of context and that,
depending on perceptual field,
indeed, characterize the 'new'
city and the other the old;
The one may,
the set-piece and the accident,
of the public and the private, of
the state and the individual. It
is a condition. of alerted
equilibrium which is envisaged;
and it is in order to illuminate
the potential of such a contest
that we have introduced a
rudimentary variety of possible
strategies. Cross-breeding,
assimilation.
--
10.
Rowe and Koetter:
City. p83.
Collage
With the cubists every doubt
on this score is soon dispelled
a building itself may become a
but, if these are situations
owing to the basic equality
granted all component elements,
type of.poche, for certain
which must be transcended
rather than emulated, the
situation to be hoped for
so that things of major or minor
importance become interchangeable
- everything is at once subject
purposes a solid assisting the
legibility of adjacent spaces.
195
and space between depending on
which one's attention is
focused.
With Max Ernest the space
in between acquires articulate
shape - it even becomes a
figure in its own right.
Such things belong to the
game in both music and the fine
arts, but in the realm of
architecture I have, so far,
never come across anything
built along these lines. It
was Van Eyck and, as far as I
know he alone, who kept
pointing to relativity as the
true constituent pivot of
20th-century thought. So
continually shifting attention
away from where it is usually
focused as a matter of course
and on to what is contingent is
to be expected in his case,
though not less surprising for
all that.
--
Herman Hertzberger, "Aldo
Van Eyck"
196
p22.
APPENDIX 5
Time / Movement / Alternation /
Transparency
When something appears or
disappears, moves from one
place to another, changes its
1.
shape or size or color or
brightness, the observing
person or animal may find his
own condition altered; an enemy
approaching, an opportunity
escaping, a demand to be met, a
signal to be obeyed. The most
primitive organ of sight, the
light-sensitive spot or nerve
fiber in a clam or a barnacle,
will limit information to
changes to brightness and
thereby permit the animal to
withdraw into its shell as soon
as a shadow interrupts the
sunlight. To contemplate
immobile parts of the
surroundings is more nearly a
luxury, useful at most to spot
the locations of possible
future changes or to view the
context in which events take
place.
Change is absent in
immobile things but also in
things repeating the same
action over and over or
persevering in it steadfastly.
Psychologists discussing
satiation and adaptation point
out that animals, even quite
by a static situation. They are
an elementary form of intelligent
primitive ones, will stop
reacting when a given stimulus
reaches them again and again.
The constant factors of a
refuses to be bored.
visual setting, e.g., the
particular color of ever
present sunlight will vanish
from consciousness, just as a
constant noise or smell will.
When a person is forced to
stare at a given figure he will
use any opportunity to change
he may
it by varying it;
reorganize the grouping of its
parts or make a reversible
figure switch from one view to
the other. A color looked at
steadily tends to bleach, and
if the eye is made to fixate a
pattern without the small
scanning movements that are
never absent otherwise, that
pattern will disappear from
sight after a short while.
These reactions to monotony go
all the way from conscious
defense to the purely
physiological wearing off of
impulses generated in the brain
contempt for indiscriminate
attention. Noticed and attended
to is only what matters. One
--
Visual
Rudolph Arnheim:
Thinking. pps 20-21.
One cannot look at a static
relationship long without losing
interest any more than one can
survive for long in a sealed room
where the supply of oxygen is
soon exhausted. The image as a
2.
living experience cannot long
exist in a frozen structure. For
the image to remain a living
organism, relationships within it
must be constantly changing. The
eye and the mind must be fed with
changing visual relationships.
Only this changing variety can
provide the stimulation necessary
for holding attention upon the
picture surface. Change implies
motion. The plastic image must
also be articulated, therefore,
in the time dimension. The
ultimate aim of plastic
organization is a structure of
movement that dictates the
197
direction and the progression
toward ever new spatial
relationships until the
experience achieves its fullest
spatial saturation.
--
Gyorgy Kepes:
The
Language of Vision.
p52.
3. Rhythmic organization,
although an essential condition
for keeping the attention and
thus prolonging the life span
of the image, is not in itself
fully sufficient to secure the
maximum endurance of attention
necessary for integration of a
plastic form. One is well
acquainted with the irritating
sensation produced by the
regular repetition of a sound
of a drum. One knows almost
instinctively that a simple
conditioned by the neccessity
to feed attention by
progressively changing optical
material.
Change implies
movement. The final task of
plastic organization is, then,
the creation of an optical
structure of movement that will
relationships. Their artistic
goal was the optical scientific
mastery of nature. Conditioned
by the aspirations and outlook of
the Renaissance, they sought to
achieve this step by step by
focusing always on one aspect, on
one cut-out sector, of the
dictate the direction and
progression of plastic
unbounded wealth of surrounding
nature. Like the anatomist -
relationships until the
experience reaches full
integration. The most evident
characteristic of movement is
another pioneer of the same
spirit, who made his conquest of
knowledge by eliminating the
living, moving aspects of the
body - the artist - anatomist of
its unity, its dynamic
continuity.
--
The
Gyorgy Kepes:
Language of Vision.
p59.
5. Transparency means a
simultaneous perception of
different spatial locations.
the visual image - eliminated the
flux of the innumerable visual
relationships that the visible
world has for the spectator. He
froze the living, fluctuating
wealth of the visual field into a
static geometrical system,
eliminating the time-element
always present in the experience
of the spectator.
rhythmic pattern possesses a
regularity that soon becomes
--
monotony.
The
Gyorgy Kepes:
Language of Vision.
--
p77.
Gyorgy Kepes:
of Vision.
--
Gyorgy Kepes:
The
Language of Vision.
p59.
4. The power of rhythm in
keeping attention prolonged is
198
The Language
p86.
The use of this geometrical
relationship was re-introduced
by the Renaissance painters as
7.
the main device for
representing spatial
and Japanese painters assign to
linear perspective a
6.
In accordance with the
ancient Chinese canons, Chinese
diametrically opposite role
from that given it by western
painters.
In their system
line - that takes time. Or
a line is displaced to
a plane. And the same is
when
form
true
into
harmoniously.
Here the links are
important. And the scale depends
also on the distance form the
parallel lines converge as they
approach the spectator. They
open up the space instead of
come into being all at once?
beholder.
The first step is a regular
deviation based on projection.
closing it.
No, it is built up piece by
Projection means here that the
piece, the same as a house.
viewpoint is not strictly static;
it is displaced a little and the
object moves along. We can also
The picture space
is not a scientific optical
diagram of the apparent
--
positions of objects but a
medium of experience, an active
two-dimensional panorama for
the spectator, who lives the
image.
The same approach was
used in many early European
paintings.
--
Gyorgy Kepes:
The
Language of Vision.
p86.
of the movement of planes
spaces. Does a picture
Paul Klee:
Eye.
The Thinking
remain stationary and displace
p78.
the object.
9.
In the work of art, paths
are laid out for the beholder's
The irregular consists in the
accentuation of parts or the
omission of certain parts. In
eye, which gropes like a
grazing beast (in music, as
any case this introduces freedom
into movement and movement into
everyone knows, there are
freedom.
channels leading to the ear -
in drama we have both
8. All becoming is based on
movement. In Lessing's
Laocoon, on which we wasted a
certain amount of intellectual
effort in our younger days, a
good deal of fuss is made about
the difference between temporal
and spatial art.
For space itself is a temporal
When a point turns
into movement and
--
Paul Klee: The Thinking
Eye. p153.
muscles).
--
Paul Klee:
Eye.
The Thinking
p78.
But on closer
scrutiny the fuss turns out to
be mere learned foolishness.
concept.
varieties). The pictorial work
springs from movement, it is
itself fixated movement, and it
is grasped in movement (eye
10.
We must work our way back
to unity. This can be done in
the pictorial field by bringing
disparate things together
199
APPENDIX 6
Dimensions
In the Provence region, the
site chosen for contruction is
very rarely a site that does
not already possess some built
physical definition. The site
usually has been occupied
during periods of expansion,
during the time of the Gallo Romains.
The perimeter of the piece
of the building that is to be
built is roughly defined by
drawing lines on the ground.
The basic measurements are
taken. One puts up sticks at
each extremity of the new
facade in order to appreciate
its length. The lines drawn on
the ground show the peripheral
the alignment is easily
broken. There is not at the
beginning a well defined plan,
but a constant adaptation to
the ground.
Most of the rural
constructions are dimensioned
using the old system. The Duo
decimal system. This appeares
to be essential. In the Duo
decimal system, we have a
certain element repeated
several times. The repetition
of this element plays a very
important role in the
proportions.
The old measures differed
from region to region and even
from village to village. The
"eminee" of Saint-Carmat (700
walls and all the bearing walls
meters), was different from the
in order to show the location
one of Pelissane, village
of the rooms in relation to one
another. One uses knotted rope
located only a few Kilometers
to obtain right angles. The
proportions are elementary, in
away.
The metric system, on
the other hand, has uniformed
all dimensions and brought
general the square, the
along dimensions which did not
rectangle, the double square.
The alignment is simply
anymore relate to human
dimensions.
provided by the sticks. Thus,
nothing is really aligned, nor
200
are the right angles perfectly
square. If an assemblage of
massive rocks get in the way,
SURFACE DIMENSIONS:
A square measure
Le cano carado:
of a surface equivalent to 4
The piece of land
that contained 1600 cano carado
meter square.
(63 acres) was divided into 8
eminees.
The Panneaux: At lambesc was
worth 200 cano carado.
Size of a piece of
The eminado:
land that could be seeded with
one "eminee" of grain.
The carteree:
More of less 2000
meter square.
The destree: More or less an 8
meter square.
--
Jean-Luc Massot:
Maisons
Rurales et Vie Paysanne en
Provence.
List of illustrations
201
List of illustrations
ill. 1. Cayar, north of Cap Vert, Senegal.
Gester George. Below from Above, Aerial Photography.
ill.2. Baled Hay, Central Ohio, 1938.
The Photographic Eye of Ben Shahn. Edited by Davis Pratt.
ill.3. Kartoffelsetzer in der Ostschweiz, um 1939.
Paul Senn, Photographies aus der Jahren 1930-1953.
ill.4. Storage of Tiles.
Albert Renger-Patzsch, 100 photographs, 1928.
ill.5. Source unknown
ill.6. Calligraphy in draft script written in a continuous brush stroke
Attributed to Wang Xianzhi (344-388).
Nicole Vandier-Nicolas: Chinese Painting.
ill.7. Shaker interior, Sabbathday Lake, Maine 1975
Urban Romantic. The photography of Goerge Tice
ill.8. Cites de Limes, 1965. Sigismond Kolos-Vary.
ill.9. Cumeada, Portugal.
Arquitectura Popular em Portugal. Lisboa 1961, Edicao do sindicato
necional dos arquitectos.
i11.10. Assafaro. Portugal.
Arquitectura Popular em Portugal.
ill.11. source unknown
i11.12. Versailles, plan of garden
Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter, Collage City
ill.13. Le livre de l'Outil.
Andre Velter and fred koetter, Collage City
ill.14. Kitchen wall in Bud Fields Home, Hale Country, Alabama, 1936.
Walker Evans, Apature.
ill. 15. Kerzeumet, Plondalmezeau, Bretagne, France.
202
L'architecture rurale francaise. Berger-Levrault, Editeur.
ill. 16. Montagne-du-Gorray, Val-d'Isere. Savoie, France.
L'architecture rurale francaise.
i11.17. Detroit, 1941. Callahan.
iIL.18. Le Bec-Rouge, Tignes, Savoie, France.
L'architecture rurale francaise.
ill.19. Le Rastel, Mas Saintes-Puelles, Pyrenees, France.
L'architecture rurale francaise.
ill.20. Village des bories, Gordes, France.
c. Pierre Viala 1978.
ill. 21. Red Sky, 1952. De Stael.
ill.22. Le livre de l'Outil
ill.23. Galveston, Texas
ill.24. Geta: wooden clogs.
ill.25. source unknown
ill.26. Procida, Italy
ill.27. Farmbuilding in Goysen. Norway.
Wooden Houses. Harry N. Abrams. INC. Publishers. New-York.
ill.28. Landhuizen (d). Scheveningslaan. Kijkduin, Den Haag.
Duiker, architect
ill.29. San Gimignano.
Norman F. Carver Jr. Italian hilltowns.
ill.30. Eglise de Veze
ill.31. Shooner Fox August, 1868. Bernard Rogan Ross
Private Realms of light. Amateur photography in Canada, 1839-1940.
ill.32. Le Livre de l'Outil.
ill.33. New-York City, 1930. Walker Evans, Aperture.
ill.34. Hair-Combs of boxwood.
Werner Blaser, Structure and form in Japan.
203
111.35. Surf and Headlands, California. 1958.
Cole Weston, Eighteen Photographs.
ill.36. PietraSecca, Italy.
Italian Hilltowns. Norman F. Carver, Jr.
111.37. Casares, Spain.
Iberian Villages. Norman F. Carver, Jr.
ill.38. Nara farm buildings in front of Jiko-in, near Horyu- ji
Form and Space of Architecture. Norman F. Carver Jr.
ill.39. Monsanto, Portugal.
Iberian Villages. Carver.
ill.40. Alvar Aalto: maison Carre.
11l.41. Seville, Spain, 1932
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Aperture.
ill.42. Nephodium Molu.
Albert Renger-Patzcch: 100 Photographs, 1928.
111.43. Tree fungus, Biloxi, 1961.
The photographs of Lyle Bonge.
ill.44. Tree #12, New-York 1965.
iIl.45. Source unknown
ill.46. Sonogno, Switzerland
ill.47. Le livre de l'Outil.
ill.48. source unknown
ill.49. Montes, Portugal.
ill.50. Mont Saint-Victoire seen from les Lauves. 190 1-1906. Oil on canvas
Cezanne: the late Work. The Museum of Modern Art, New-York.
iI.51. Aix Cathedral seen from les Lauves. 1902-1904. Pencil and
watercolor. Cezanne: the late Work.
ill.52. Drawing 752. The drawings of Paul Cezanne. A catalogue Raisonne.
Volume two.
204
Drawing 751. Cezanne.
i1l.54. Drawing 765. Cezanne.
il.55. Drawing 784. Cezanne.
il.56. Drawing 889. Cezanne.
ill.57. George Braque, Le Sacre Coeur 1910
G. Braque by Maurice Gieure. Editions Pierre Tisue- Paris.
il.58. Henri Cartier-Bresson, Madrid. 1951.
i1l.59. Parrabel, Pyrenees. France.
L'architecture rurale francaise.
ill.60. Roman settlement at Warendorf on the Ems River near Munster,
Germany.
i1.61. Combarro. Portugal.
ill.62. Casares. Andalesia. Drawings by Maurice Smith. Places, vol 5. #2.
ill.53.
205
206
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