Thesis Reasearch Meeting Notes

Thesis Meeting 12.06.2007

Trying to understand the essence of what makes an experience.
The poetry within the everyday.

Slow time. Make a place for contemplation.

The difference between aggressive observation and relaxed observation
Joseph Piper “Ideas of contemplation”
The idea that a relaxed observation looks to your intuition.; relates to memory and past experiences.
Allow you to see it for what it is.

"Vita Contemplativa”
related to the concept of leisure

Not leisure like a vacation

Joseph Piper “Leisure + the making of culture”
Retreat > reflection > rejuvenation
Relates to the Sacred.

Getting in touch with your sapient knowledge: a kind of knowledge understood as being from experience. Similar to our concept of wisdom.

A place to put one in touch with their sapient knowledge. i.e. to reflect on their lives and their experiences.

Becoming in touch with your senses.

A therapeutic architecture.

I want to critique the visual culture by bringing out feelings we’re not in touch with because I believe it’s important for the health of the individual.

“For the art of living well” “the art of thinking well”
- M. Frascari

Martin Heidegger “Building, Dwelling, thinking”
To have a good life there needs to be a time for thinking.

That is what I am building.

description of precedent (work in progress)

Therme Vals, Peter Zumthor

You open the glass door and step through it. Immediately the moist air fills your lungs and you’re aware of the wetness of this place.

You scan your token and enter the long hallway, water streams down the right wall. Stains recalling the path it gravity has forced it to take. Reminding you that this building in which everything is at a perfect 90 degree angle is in fact part of nature, subject to its wear, time, and its power.

You enter the changing room, the quality of the wood beckons you to touch it, but the high gloss lacquer removes any sort of tactile quality the wood once had.

You spread open the heavy leather curtains and are immediately hit with the sound of the people.

People inhabiting the space, splashing, enjoying, relaxing? The noise forces you to question the sanctity of the space.

You walk down the steps, the smoothness of the stone on the floor is like nothing you’re foot has touched in a while, maybe ever.

Water pools on the floor, the cracks in the floor are so precise. They mimic the cracks in the roof, which with the same precision are letting light into the main chamber.

You drape your towel on a simple brass rod, nothing about the rod is telling you what its for but yet there’s no question you’re plush, soft towel needs to grace the gentle rounded shape of the cold, hard metal.

You step into the main pool, your feet feeling the stone beginning to give after years of people walking up and down these steps. The water is warm, light is bouncing up and down around and around the room.

It’s 2 o clock. The soft glow of the light spilling into the space through the cracks gives way to a opening. The glass barely visible, detailed to the point of invisibility. You don’t understand the view, but it’s beautiful nonetheless.

There are dark rooms, you don’t go in them.

To the right there is a room with people running out of it, screaming. You gather it’s the cold room.

You avoid that one.

To the left you glance into a red chamber. The red on the walls invited you into its 38 degree waters. You sit and gather your thoughts. The white fine pebbles that line pool give the water a whiting glow, contrasting with the redish orange walls. Creating the dynamism of a fire.

You are in the fire. It’s beyond relaxing.

Minutes go by. Your body is tired from the heat. You slowly wade through the water, out of the chamber your body is compressed by the smallish, narrow opening you must go through to exit.

preliminary description of program. work in progress.

click to enlarge

Thesis Reasearch Meeting Notes

Thesis Meeting 11.27.07

2 weeks to go...time to wrap things up.

Ideas and important issues in research will surface as a result of...

Precedent Studies and Analysis. More specifically in my case, Sinaesthetic analysis of the Therme Vals.

Site Documentation and preliminary analysis. Sinaesthetic description of site... photomontage

Program and program analysis. Phenomenological description of program/uses

Read George Perec's "Species of Spaces and other places"

Site

Praia do Pulso, Ubatuba
Brasil

references

Juhani Pallasma

“The Eyes of the skin”
“Hapticity and time”
"Questions of Perception"

Steven Holl
“Parallax”

Merleau Ponty
“The Phenomenology of perception”

Peter Zumthor
“Thinking Architecture”
“Atmospheres”

*Italicized works have yet to be read

What is it about phenomenology that interests me?
How do I see phenomenology in architecture or the built environment?
What arguments can I make?

The fundamental flaw/issue for me in contemporary architecture is its inability to connect to the human body. Questions of scale may be addressed however, things like the interaction between person and building never move beyond the simple turn of a door handle and even that is not usually premeditated by the architect. It’s most often simply a matter of cost and/or aesthetic. Little thought is given to function, touch and the action thereof.

I want to explore the possibility of an architecture that fully engages the body and mind. I find it ironic that LeCorbusier coined the term “a machine for living” when speaking about a home considering his early work was so sterile and gave little thought to the sensory experience of the body. This is when I believe it became apparent that his early work was not where he intended it to be allowing him to move on to true machines for living such as the monastery at La Tourette. The greatest difference between the two being that once he fully understood the spirituality of the human body, he was able to understand human beings as more than just a proportioning system. A true machine for living complements the human body and forces a reaction from it and in some cases reacts to it.

I hope to understand further the phenomenology of the body to be able to impart this knowledge and create a more humane, sensual architecture. One that fully complements our being; aurally, visually, haptically. I believe that architecture today is too concerned with the beautiful image, that which is framed by the photographer is much more important than that which is experienced by the user.

Neglect for the peripheral view and the other senses.

I would like to argue that people and the art of building are being truly deprived when architects neglect to understand fully the workings of the human being. Experiences can be enriched through this greater understanding.

“Architecture has its own realm it has a special physical relationship with life. I do not think of it as either message or symbol, but as an envelope and background for life which goes on in and around it. A sensitive container for the rhythm of footsteps on the floor, for the concentration of work, for the silence of sleep”

Peter Zumthor

What if architecture responded to the movement of the body? What if it enhanced your sense of being? Could it possibly force you to feel a certain way, to feel certain things?

Can architecture and nature act in tandem to augment our most basic feelings?

I would like to explore these possibilities on a beachfront site in Brazil. I believe that this sort of architecture can be further amplified by the sheer grandeur of the natural surrounding of Praia do Pulso. The proximity to the crashing waves, the tropical climate of the Mata Atlantica and the solitude of a very sparsely populated region coupled with an exploration of these ideas can create an architecture that brings one further into touch with nature and their own selves.

Architecture today: Sensory deprivation.

“I think it is appropriate to challenge the hegemony of vision in the ocularcentrism of our culture. And I think we need to examine very critically the character of vision that predominates today in our world. We urgently need a diagnosis of the psychosocial pathology of everyday seeing -- and a critical understanding of ourselves, as visionary beings”
David Michael Levin, Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, 1993.

“Touch is the unconsciousness of vision, and this hidden tactile experience determines the sensuous quality of the perceived object, and mediates messages of invitation or rejection, courtesy or hostility.”
Juhani Pallasmaa

Musings

Cultural concepts of Space
Significance of movement [through space?]

Thesis Reasearch Meeting Notes

Thesis Meeting 11.06.2007

An architecture for contemplation.
An architecture that slows us down.
An architecture that induces a sensory experience.

How the architecture allows for contemplation, how it allows for oneself to remove themselves from everything, yet connect to nature.
To the many sights, sounds, and smells occurring around them.

Etymology of the word contemplation

Idea of the temple as a place to talk to God.
Significance of the temple as opposed to synagogue….

Sensory description of site
Think about sounds, weather, climate, geology, vegetation, views, and geography.

Typology.

What is the building doing?
How is the building doing it?

A retreat.

pedagogy?

So I've been thinking more and more about what it means to be a student. More specifically in my case, a graduate student. What is the role of the teacher? What is the role of the student?

Is that even the correct terminology to be used? Maybe therein lies the problem.

I decided to enroll in a graduate program. I'm paying thousands of dollars a year. Why can't we talk about what interests me? If there's one thing I've learned in the past 5 years of being in an academic environment is that there is not one way of doing something. When a professor imposes his pedagogy on a student and doesn't allow them to react, in accord or discord, what kind of intellectual growth is occurring?

Should a graduate program have an agenda? Or should it allow one to develop their own?

I don't claim to be a genius, or to know the answers but I read something the other day that really changed me.

"Young people go to university with the aim of becoming architects, of finding out if they have got what it takes. What is the first thing we should teach them?
First of all, we must explain that the person standing in front of them is not someone who asks questions whose answers he already knows. Practicing architecture is asking oneself questions, finding one's own answers with the help of the teacher, whittling it down, finding solutions.
Over and over again"

Peter Zumthor - Thinking Architecture

techno.thesis

I've reached a turning point. I am now dedicating this blog to all things thesis. More to come in this area but I'm hoping that by posting my thoughts and musings on my thesis topic. I'll be able to create dialogue and begin to concretize my thoughts into a real thesis.

Capri, not bad.

View from our hotel. The sound of crashing waves right outside your window isnt bad either...

Siamo arrivato a Roma

After a one year hiatus I'm back. Quick stop in Rome and off to Capri.