theoretical underpinnings

Ballantyne, What is Architecture

Architecture is always more than building, representing as it does a folding together of buildings and culture, so that the buildings come to have meaning as they are caught up in a way of life--architecture is best appreciated as part of an art of living.

Buildings do not turn into architecture because they are big, or because they are expensive, but because they have some sort of cultural content--some sort of meaning.

The sense of the wild in buildings comes from them carrying cultural memories of caves and shells, primitive huts and cliff faces. At one end of the scale we have the nest, as a modest and comforting place to snuggle down and feel at home; at the other we have the extravagant pyre which consumes vast resources, and fills us with awe. This is the inspirational architecture which does not sustain us, but consumes whatever we can feed it. We admire it and stand back in amazement, and probably do not stop to think why it is that these achievements are so exceptional, but in their development they fly in the face of the everyday common sense that informs the economical nest.

Eco, How an Exposition Exposes Itself

Let us assume that architecture is an act of communication, a message, of which the parts or the whole can perform the double action of every communication, connotation and denotation.

This continuous oscillation between primary function (the conventional use of the object, or its most direct or elementary meaning) and secondary functions (its related meanings, based on cultural conventions, and mental and semantic associations) forms, the object as a system of signs, a message.

Eco, Architecture as Communication

To use a spoon to get food to one's mouth is still, of course, the fulfillment of a function, through the use of an artifact that allows and promotes that function; yet to say that it 'promotes' the function indicates that the artifact serves a communicative function as well: it communicates the function to be fulfilled.

green building across cultures (on Blackboard)

Gawne and Snodin, Exploring Architecture, "Building for Function"

"It is only in the last half-century that mechanical devices have made it possible to put up in one climate buildings in a style only suited to another. Excerpt for some local detailing there is little essential difference between a glass and steel skyscraper in temperate London or tropical Kuala Lumpur. This has been made possible by air-conditioning. Significantly, even in the West the same type of building often needs both air-conditioning and heating to cope with both the summer sun and winter heat loss through the large windows. Without air-conditioning other ways have been found to combat heat and strong sun, and the heavy rain and high humidity that often accompany them." (26)

David Lloyd Jones, "Sustainable Architecture," in Gawne and Snodin, Exploring Architecture

"The construction and use of buildings, in the developed world, accounts for one half of all energy use. It is also a major contributor to the depletion of resources." (34)

housing statues: Todai-ji

Coaldrake, The Great Eastern Temple

The Todai-ji site follows general principles of East Asian site planning that were introduced to Japan along with Buddhism and Chinese civilization from the sixth century onward. . . The central concept was a direct correlation between the essential order of the cosmos and visible order in the physical world. This equation was expressed in axiality, hierarchy, and geomancy. (37)

The constructi0n of Todai-ji was a government project on a scale unparalleled in Japan to that time. It was a tangible affirmation of religious belief as well as a demonstration of the physical resources of the state under Emperor Shomu. (39)

housing statues: the Parthenon

Adams, History of Western Art

Thus, in this arrangement [of the East pediment], the artist has formally integrated sculpture and architecture with iconography, time and place. (113)

light is the theme: Amiens Cathedral

Abbott Suger, De Consecratione, 12thC (in Roth, Understanding Architecture)

Thus, when--out of my delight in the beauty of the house of the God--the loveliness of the many-colored gems [on the altar reliquaries] has called me away from external cares and worthy meditation has induced me to reflect, transferring that which is material to that which is immaterial, on the diversity of the sacred virtues: then it seems to me that I see myself dwelling, as it were, in some strange region of the universe which neither exists entirely in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the purity of Heaven: and that , by the Grace of God, I can be transported from this interior to that higher world in an anagogical manner. (296)

Buchanan, The Power and the Glory: The Meanings of Medieval Architecture

It is important therefore to understand the meaning of medieval architecture in its own period. What were the people of the time trying to express, and why? (78)

Just as today, medieval buildings were frequently described at the time as being 'beautiful.' This adjective was a convention, subsuming many different attitudes, and church beauty related to their function, which was never singular. As we have seen, while the most important role of the church was as the house of God and monument to the piety of the faithful, less spiritual concerns were never far from the surface. (90)

light is the theme: Beth Sholom Synagogue

Frank Lloyd Wright, "Is it Good-By to Gothic?" Collected Writings

Yes, it's good-by to Gothic--as a style. But not to its spirit of reverence for beauty. That should be expressed in new styles attuned to the new day, using steel, concrete, glass, and other modern materials. (227)

All forms of religion have a basic desire to function in harmony with their beliefs and I try to help them--to materialize their ideas in something beautiful for all humanity. It's the architect's job. For architecture is not just buildings. It's the living spirit that builds. (229)

the art of abstraction: Masjid-i-Shah

Kostof, A History of Architecture

[The mihrab] is the only ornamentation of the interior. Nowhere else on the walls, or the numerous whitewashed arcades that rise gently and hypnotically from their ancient columns, is any decorative indulgence tolerated. The floor is covered with mats and somehow domesticated. Here the faithful stood, row on row like the columns, equal in their relationship to God as His creatures, ready to perform the set motions and recite the fomulas as an expression of their obedience and devotion. (292)

Harpur, Atlas of Sacred Places

The effect is to suggest the descent of the divine, from the one to the many, or perhaps the moment of cosmic creation. At the same time, the cellular ensemble seems to lay bare the structure of the microcosm, highlighting the molecular patterns of the natural world. As such, the dome epitomizes Islamic art, in which symmetry, abstraction, and geometry create a unified field of vision, symbolizing the oneness of God. (145)

architectural imagery: Buddhist Borobudur

Nu and Frederic, Borobudur

Borobudur is therefore truly unique among all the world's monuments, as it expresses and contains in itself the world of all forms and the world of nonform or pure emptiness. It expresses every state of being and links space and time in a structure that is at once horizontal and vertical. (46)

Crouch, Traditions in Architecture

Pilgrims climb the sacred mountain to achieve spiritual enlightenment, inspired by these visual images and by the design of the monument itself. (112)

Gautama Buddha, Sermon at Deer Park, 5th C BCE, (www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld/borobudur)

Hear me, gracious ones, for I offer you knowledge of the path to Enlightenment. This is the first noble truth: life is suffering. The second noble truth: suffering is caused by human fears and desires. Third: suffering can be eliminated. And the fourth noble truth is that the elimination of suffering can be achieved by following the Noble Eight-fold path.

architectural imagery: Kandariya Mahadeva

Conti, The Grand Tour

The uninitiated visitor to this temple in India would probably only see wild sensuality: the observer well versed in Hinduism would perceive the supreme expression of Hindu philosophy in artistic form. (53)

home, sweet home: house-machine and american dream

Bachelard, Poetics of Space

Now my aim is clear: I must show that the house is one of the greatest powers of integration for the thoughts, memories and dreams of mankind. (88)

In the life of a man, the house thrusts aside contingencies, its councils of continuity are unceasing. Without it, man would be a dispersed being. It maintains him through the storms of the heavens and those of life. It is body and soul. It is the hman being's first world. Before he is 'cast into the world', as claimed by certain hasty metaphysics, man is laid in the cradle of the house. (88)

Memories are motionless, and the more securely they are fixed in space, the sounder they are. (89)

Gehry, The Architecture of Frank Gehry

My house. I'm afraid so much has been said about it that it is very difficult for me to add anything except that living there is very comfortable. (34)

I remember the early process of designing the house: I looked at the old house that my wife found for us to live in, and I thought is was kind of a dinky little cutesy-pie house. We had to do something to it. I couldn't live in it. That was Berta's intention. Armed with very little money I decided to build a new house around the old house and try to maintain a tension between the two by having one define the other, and to have the feeling that the old house was intact within the new house. . . I also explored the natural light and the idea of reflections. (35)

Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture (1923)

The airplane is the product of close selection.

The lesson of the airplane lies in the logic which governed the statement of the problem and its realization.

The problem of the house has not yet been stated. (100)

We may then affirm that the airplane mobilized invention, intelligence and daring: imagination and cold reason. It is the same spirit that built the Parthenon. (101)

Never undress is your bedroom. It is not a clean thing to do, and makes the room horribly untidy. (MANUAL OF THE DWELLING, 114)

NOT IN READER:

Le Corbusier, quoted in Morel-Journel, LeCorbusier's Villa Savoye

"Site: magnificent property comprising a large meadow and orchard forming a "dome" surrounded by a belt of high trees. The house must not have a front. Set on top of the "dome" it must be open to the view on all four sides." (LeCorbusier's Villa Savoye, Paris, 1998, 16).

"The main view is to the north, that is to say against the sun, normally the front of the house would be on the other side." (36).

Mme. Savoye, quoted in Murphy, "The Villa Savoye and the Modernist Historic Monument"

It's raining in the hall, it's raining in the ramp, and the wall of the garage is absolutely soaked. What's more, it's still raining in my bathroom, which floods every time it rains." (Letter of Emilie Savoye to Le Corbusier, 1930, JSAH (2002), 72)

house and garden in japan

Morse, The Japanese House and its Surroundings, 1886

The outer screens are covered with white paper, and when closed, a subdued and diffused light enters the room. They may be quickly removed, leaving the entire front of the house open to the air and sunshine. (110)

Crouch, Traditions in Architecture

The use of space is culturally determined--a surprising idea to many who believe that everyone in the world puts things away as they do; unites studying with sleeping, as in an American college dormitory; and separates grandparents from young children, as is customary in residences for American senior citizens. But the use of space is a construct, not a "given" . . .

the villa in italy and america

Palladio, The Four Books on Architecture (1570)

One must describe as suitable [commodo] a house which will be appropriate to the status [qualita] of the person who will have to live in it and of which the parts will correspond to the whole and to each other. (Bk. 2, 77)

The site is one of the most pleasing and delightful that one could find because it is on top of a small hill which is easy to ascend; on one side it is bathed by the Bacchiglione, a navigable river, and on the other is surrounded by other pleasant hills which resemble a vast theatre and are completely cultivated and abound with wonderful fruit and excellent vines, so, because it enjoys the most beautiful vistas on every side . . . loggias have been built on all four sides . . . (Bk. 1, 77)

www.monticello.org, official Monticello website

And our own dear Monticello, where has nature spread so rich a mantel under the eye? mountains, forests, rocks, rivers. With what majesty do we there ride above the storms! How sublime to look down into the workhouse of nature, to see her clouds, hail, snow, rain, thunder, all fabricated at our feet! And the glorious Sun, when rising as if out of a distant water, just gilding the tops of the mountains, and giving life to all nature! (1786, TJ to Maria Cosway, 12 October, B.10.447)

Upton, Architecture in the United States

One of architecture's most important tasks is to sort out its users, setting them spatially and pyschologically into the desired relationships with one another. (25)

Jefferson's Monticello derived from an elite Southern tradition that also acknowledged differences in social roles spatially. (26)

the power of history: an african experience

Crouch, Traditions in Architecture

Access to the built environment--the right to use buildings and spaces--is a social privilege. (146)

The ruins, including towers and walls, lying about 17 miles (27 kilometers) southeast of Fort Victoria, offer evidence of a society whose monumental architecture was designed to express power. (183)

Caton-Thompson concluded that the plans and details of the site were "typically African Bantu," indicating "a mature civilization of a high kind, originality, and amazing industry." That these findings were not generally accepted, possibly because they conflicted with prevalent racial and cultural biases. (185)

palaces of european kings

Forty, "Versailles--A Political Theme Park?," Architecture and the Sites of History

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) once noted, 'Architecture immortalises and glorifies something. Hence there can be no architecture where there is nothing to glorify.' Wittgenstein's categorical statement suggests architecture is always about something people believe in, whether secular or spiritual; if true,then to understand architecture we need to find out its political or religious subject. (53)

The first problem is that Versailles, like most other buildings, is certainly not a reliable medium of ideas; it may indeed immortalise and glorify something, but what people understand that something to be is all too likely to change. (62)

Versailles shows that architecture is not a reliable means of conveying precise political messages; liable to a variety of interpretations, only the most generalized political theme survives. On the other hand, architecture can provide a setting against which actions acquire meaning . . . While architectural spaces and forms cannot themselves speak of a political or religious theme, seen in relation to people, architecture may indeed 'immortalise and glorify.' (63)

captains of industry: the corporate skyscraper

Daniel Burnham, c. 1890, quoted in Trachtenburg, Architecture: Prehistory to Postmodernity

These buildings, standing in the midst of hurrying, busy thousands of men, do not appeal to them through the more subtle means of architectural expression . . . To lavish upon them profusion of delicate ornament is worse than useless . . . Rather should they by their mass and proportion convey in some large elemental sense an idea of the great, stable, conserving forces of modern civilization. (474)

Louis Sullivan , 1896, "The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered," Lippincott Magazine

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Herbert Muschamp, "Opposites Attract: the Seagram tower, where the classical and the Gothic are welded together," New York Times, 4/18/97

For much of the past thousand years, the pendulum of Western architectural taste has swung between two esthetic poles: Gothic and classical, they eventually came to be called. Because it fuses elements of both positions in a supremely elegant whole, the Seagram Buildng is my choice as the millenium's most important building.

Mies once defined architecture as the will of an epoch translated into space. For architects of his age, it meant reckoning with the reality of the industrial age and the transforming power of machine technology.

Gawne and Snodin, Exploring Architecture, 26

It is only in the last half century that mechanical devices have made it possible to put up in one climate buildings in a style only suited to another.

Schittich et al, Glass Construction Manual, Basel 2007

"Towering, glazed office blocks became fashionable as company headquarters. . . Glass curtain walls became the status symbol of confident companies and the silhouette of glass towers the sign of a prosperous city"

the tall office building reconsidered: greening the skyscraper

Paul Goldberger, "The Sky Line: Triangulation," The New Yorker, 12/19/05

If you believe that there is something noble about a building expressing its structure, you will like the Hearst tower. But if you belive that it is more important for buildngs to animate the skyline, you will like the Hearst tower every bit as much. . . . From the Met's roof, you can see the tower emerge in its full glory, rising over Central Park, at once fitting into New York's skyline and transforming it."

temples of culture: the museum and memory

Fraser and Kerr, Beyond the Empire of Signs

Re: The Guggenheim Bilbao as "transcultural object," "cultural hybrid:"

Here is a building designed by a Canadian-American architect, whose practice has been based in the Los Angeles area for twenty years, created for a New York cultural institution which has traditionally displayed a Eurocentric tendency in its patronage of contemporary art, and then built in a Spanish city which itself is a prominent center of Basque culture. (139)

Identity is paradoxically obtaind through a global tademark and signature, and uniqueness depends on planetary design tools and work processes. (141)

Weiberg, The Holocaust Museum

The monumental four-story atrium known as the Hall of Witness . . . evokes an immediate emotional reaction. People speak of feelings of fear, loneliness, helpnessness, almost panic, but also of holiness. (24)

A kind of angry passion shook me, and I knew I had to do this for those who were gone and who we must remember and for the survivors who knew, and for those like myself who did not know but knew we did not know and who, but for the accident of time, would hve known. We owed the greatest debt, for we had not only survived but had survived in ignorance. (24)

Young, The Art of Memory

Perception, or memory, is the most important thing. Because memory is a charlatan. Everybody I talked to has reconstructed a different memory of the event. I as the architect reconstruct yet another memory that never was, but it can act as a resonator for the memories of others. (96)