GLEN HILL
PUBLIC LECTURE 2 TRANSCRIPT
VENUE: ADELAIDE UNIVERSITY
DATE: 9/9/08
SLIDE
A tale of 2 bodies:
SLIDE
The Absent Body
The Present Body
SLIDE
The Absent Body
SLIDE
The Habituated Body
User’s experience:
This is the body with which we most commonly experience architecture
Oddly it is the experience of architecture we don’t notice we are having
It is the bodily experience you want your client/user to have most of the time
(otherwise you need a large indemnity insurance policy).
It’s the experience you have most of the time in this building and in your home.
REMIND THEM of journey to this room (they describe). Did you notice anything?
Ceiling, floor? Are you noticing the seat you are sitting on now? (suddenly your
attention is drawn to it).
WHY?
Your body has already embodied this building. This building has been embodied by
you.
SLIDE
There is a word for this: you have inhabited the building. Turned the building into
habit.
HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?
SLIDE
On your side:
1. Practice: previous experience projected ahead (expand, experience + project,
expectation met…nothing, not met…notice). Smear ourselves over time and
space.
On the side of architecture
SLIDE
2. Building must be stable (cannot be changing, shifting) (Alice in Wonderland),
SLIDE
3. Must protect against thrusting things (cars, rain, wolves)
SLIDE
4. Must resonate with the body (otherwise have to pay attention doing everything)
eg head heights, flat floors, stairs, stair proportions, door opening widths, door
handle heights every aspect of a building is a response to the bodies within
(physical, psychological, cultural etc). Every bit of a building can be traced
back as a response to some need of the body (try it: flat floors, stair going/riser,
ceiling height, screen location, door width, ….) even exterior spaces fit the
body, or the combined body of the community.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?
(That a building turn into habit)
This is the true wonder of architecture that is in-habited: it frees you up to do other
stuff. Life. The difficult things. Thinking. Making.
Without it would be constantly on the lookout for things in our environment. Could
not plan anything etc. It would be a moment to moment existence. It is the
protective cocoon that frees us.
SLIDE
Could argue that it is the very basis of civilisation. Image of temple…no! it is the
everyday spaces!
McEwan: Socrates Ancestor
Designer’s role
Obviously can’t do the practice for the users.
But can design a building capable of being turned into habit.
Sam’s talk on ergonomics:
SLIDES
 Bodily fit (AJ metric handbook). Becomes second nature to architects.
 Cultural fit (easy from within a culture, hard from without)
(SHIFT)
But many people have argued that having a building disappear, be unnoticed, is not
architecture. Architecture should bring something to presence.
Ruskin: there is an excess in architecture that is noticed.
That which touches your heart and uplifts you, as Corb might have said.
SLIDE
The Present Body
The Aware Body
Your body is noticing the building
Architecture fills your awareness (previously, awareness was somewhere else)
User Experience
The aware body is the body least used to encounter a building, but is most
remembered!
Two ways the building can draw attention to itself/ make us notice it:
Negative: Something Broken. Not something architects should aspire to.
Positive: (wow! Cool!) Only this is of interest here.
plays on difference…Does not meet expectations…
I’ll take some examples from architectural history (spectacle, phenomenological,
deconstructivist)
SLIDE
1. Spectacle, stands out from context, excess of what is expected
Seville Cathedral (demonstrating power of church)
Multi-sensory
Now live in an age of spectacle
Ocular Excess (Power of the product)
Competition for attention: marketing, products, places
opera House
Gehry Building
SLIDE
2. Phenomenological Architecture
Awareness of the body’s senses
Stretto House Stephen Holl
St Ignatius Chapel Seattle
Offices Seattle
Thermal Baths Peter Zumthor
SLIDE
3. Deconstructivist Architecture
Fascinating: does play on destabilising the body (broken), and noticing your own
body
OH
Deconstruction:
Jacques Derrida
Looked back over the history of philosophy (since Plato)
Saw that it was LOGOCENTRIC (privileged the spoken word over the written word)
(why important?)
Influential early work: ‘Of Gramatology’ examined a series of seminal texts by
linguists, anthropologists and philosophers, to discover prejudice in favour of speech
and against writing
OH
Eg. Socrates: refused to write anything down (speech is alive, writing is a skeleton)
OH
Aristotle:
thoughts in mind (we are in direct contact)
Spoken word is a sign of those thoughts
Written word is a sign of a sign
OH
Rousseau: Only in direct human experience can we reveal our feelings
(could not communicate his feelings, so he wrote details of his true thoughts)
He saw writing as mere supplement to feelings
(Derrida’s analysis: Russeau wrote about evils of masturbation as a mere
supplement to real sex.
Therefore attack on writing stems from his fear of masturbation.
OH
Levi Strauss:
Was guilty about teaching the Nambikwara writing
(Contaminating their pure oral culture)
OH
But Derrida points out they already had a well developed sign system.
In all cases Derrida shows writing is part of speech, one does not ground the other.
The point of Derrida’s attack:
Not just about speech and writing.
It is about every attempt to find grounds for anything.
THERE IS NO ULTIMATE GROUND FOR ANYTHING.
ON BOARD
Derrida looks at Levi-Strauss notion that the mind constructs binary opposites:
Male Female
Light Dark
High Low
Truth Fiction
Presence Absence
For Derrida these are not universal, but the logo-centric discourse has operated
since Socrates.
We privilege one over the other (work through list)
By detailed analysis of text can show that opposite is the case.
His point is not to reverse these binary pairs, but show instability of any attempt to
claim a ground (for anything).
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR ARCHITECTURE?
Derrida’s deconstruction has been around since 1967
But Deconstructivist architecture was not named til 1988 (MoMA exhibition, Johnson
Wigley)
Brought together 7 architects whose forms or rhetoric paralleled the ambitions of
deconstruction:
Peter Eisenman
Coop Himmemblau
Bernard Tschumi
Zaha Hadid
Daniel Liebeskind
Frank Gehry
(many rejected the category)
The exhibition claimed:
1. Roots of Deconstructivism lay in Russian Constructivism
2. The projects “did not derive from the mode of contemporary philosophy known as
deconstruction”
What was going on?
Why deny deconstruction.
Why link it to Russian Constructivism.
Deconstructivism is linked to Deconstruction (but cannot claim one is the ground for
the other)
It is a practice.
SLIDE
Russian Constructivism was a form of proto-deconstruction:
It undermined the traditional grounds of architecture:
 Balance
 Symmetry
 Order
 Pure Forms
It used impure, skewed geometry to generate unstable restless compositions.
It showed the traditional grounds of architecture could be disrupted with positive
results. Therefore showed the uncertainty of all grounds.
SLIDE
What are the traditional grounds of architecture?
 Form relates to function
 Clear expression of structure (gravity)
 Identity
 Dwelling /Habitation
In each case architects took one of these and tried to undermine them.
FUNCTION
SLIDE Tschumi’s follies at Parc de la Villet
SLIDE Tschumi’s follies at Parc de la Villet
Functionless (Like Art: forced to notice them)
Form gives no hint of function
Used in different ways, at different times, by different communities.
(Formal nod to Russian Constructivism)
STRUCTURE
Memesis: vertical body secured to the ground through gravity (disturbed: notice)
SLIDE Eisenman Wexner Centre, challenges gravity
SLIDE Eisenman Wexner Centre
SLIDE Zaha Hadid
SLIDE El Lizzistky
SLIDE Zaha Hadid
SLIDE Zaha Hadid
SLIDE Eisenman Reinhardt Building
SLIDE Eisenman Walls support roof, sit on floor
Here, wall merges with roof and floor (mobius strip)
Uncertainty, which is wall, floor, roof?
IDENTITY
Does not meet expectation of building as building with its own integrety
SLIDE Eisenman Wexner Centre, generated by grid of adjacent building and
memory of armory
SLIDE Eisenman Columbus Convention Centre, product of wider urban conditions:
railroad, roads, urban fabric all crunch together to create an architecture of the
‘between’.
SLIDE Liebskind Jewish Museum
SLIDE Liebskind, generated by the Music of Schoenberg’s Aaron and Moses, and
joining arbitrary addresses in plan.
DWELLING / INHABITING
Fascinating: disrupts the habituated body.
SLIDE Liebskind Video museum Gronnigen
SLIDE Liebskind Video museum Gronnigen
SLIDE Liebskind Video museum Gronnigen
SLIDE Liebskind Video museum Gronnigen
SLIDE Eisenman House VI
SLIDE Eisenman House VI
Designer’s Role
The design process exploits this present/aware body (disproportionately).
We assume everyone will notice what we put into a design (arrogant). In fact they
don’t.
Very often focal moments that drive a design (image of someone on a balcony,
sitting around a fire, spectacular elevation…)
We project this ahead and maintain it (other aspects don’t matter or aren’t noticed:
just arrive by convention (kitchen bench, hinged cupboards).
Any images leading your design?
SLIDE
The Present Body is Shortlived
Architecture quickly becomes background
Unlike art, which remains in foreground, WHY? (functionality)
Guggenheim for those who work there.
Even Deconstruction.
For me Habitual body most powerful.
But not just reproducing current habits of living.
Change peoples habits and also their way of seeing. My projects.
Examples from our studio:
POWERPOINT
M.Arch intro presentation Sem 1 2008.ppt
(nothing to do with Gym, but indicates power)
Power of architecture to transform way of seeing through transforming habit, not
spectacle…last, mention McEwan, socrates Ancestor.
YOUR PROJECT
As a juror I would be looking for a building that does more than just that provide the
basic spaces in the brief.
Looking for a building that challenges the current form of gyms.
How to approach your task: not a spectacle, or a symbol,
A building that transforms people’s habits,
Thus transforms their way of seeing
 bonding the community through the gym (bringing groups together not usually
brought together, aboriginal men, aboriginal women, women from wider
community),
 new relation between genders (women are sometimes uncomfortable
presenting their body, as are some men),
 new relation between spectator and participant (spectator becomes immersed
as a participant),
 research the obesity epidemic and offer a spatial solution,
 some way of making you notice the transformation of your own body over time
through the architecture,
 or way of making people notice the difference between bodies and normalising
this difference,
 Or way of making people notice that body image is culturally constructed and
therefore allows people to be comfortable with a body that does not fit some
constructed image
 (only one)
binary opposites built into all texts (speech/writing, light/dark, male/female etc)
privileging of one,
overturning that privileging
show groundless
look for binaries in architecture (dig out examples).
Eisenman
Wardell (fighting against habituation)
The Present Body is Shortlived
Architecture quickly becomes background
Unlike art, which remains in foreground, WHY? (functionality)
Guggenheim for those who work there.
Even Deconstruction.
DESIGN JURY (next week)
What I look for:
1. Least appreciated: Attempts only to satisfy the habitual body only (conventional
spaces that satisfy the basic requirements of the body). Simply take the brief spaces
and try to arrange them so that they are efficient.
Try only this and fail, saddest outcome.
Try only this and succeed, bare pass.
2. Most appreciated: Attempts to satisfy the habitual body, and also the aware body.
Tries to give something in excess of the conventional requirements. A gesture that
takes the design beyond the norm of other gyms.
Fails to satisfy the habitual body, but attempts to do more. Jury may become
obsessed with small details not working and miss the big gesture you are making.
EXAMPLES FROM MY STUDIO
(nothing to do with Gym, but indicates power)
Power of architecture to transform way of seeing through habitual, not
spectacular…last, mention McEwan, socrates Ancestor.
Lochlan
Refugees
Sarah
Roads
Georgina
(Noticed body, decon (disturb) and phenom (enhance) and spectacle (overpower)).
Present Body
The noticed
The different
Negative noticing (something’s broken),
Positive noticing (shit, wow, cool)
Rare, and disproportionately important to architecture. Some would argue this is
where architecture is found. The rest only building.
Designers play with and against these established expectations (most often provide
stuff that disappears, important. Occasionally, but most importantly for architects do
things that don’t meet expectations. Only need a few points in each building, but they
lead design). Design led by difference, history examples, my students.
French allow special place for exceptional buildings..
Differentiate experience from designers intention (remember how we project those
key moments and visualise them in our buildings)
Spectacle: Gehry/Scharon? Po mo? (surface, lack tectonic, stage set). Object is to
draw attention to itself. Shout at you. Draw you out of… Usually works on the eye
(same root as eye).
Separate symbolism (visual analogy, metaphor) from bodily resonance. Symbolic
buildings I find problematic. Shallow. Gym that looks like a boxer or body builder or
a glove. A one off gimmick. Spectacle. Appeals to the eye and mind, not whole
body. Church’s power is that it lifts the body to god. We connect to the light from
heaven.
Decon: Make you notice something that is taken for granted as an habituated
architectural ground. Remove that ground.
Phenomenology: Notice a sensory experience by heightening it. Thermal baths.
Eyes (Holl, seasons reflected, stretto), ears (stretto), taste, smell (Murcutt).
Experiential (to me most powerful). Change peoples habits and also their way of
seeing. My projects.
Explain how jurors work (me anyway). Best work…. Offers some original noticed
experience, plus has all background experience working. Worst work achieves
neither.
Good architecture changes habit and way of seeing world.
Rational habit of mind (Socrates Ancestor).