second november essay
buildings are figures, not ideas
No matter how complex they are within their own context and presence, buildings operate through their approximation or approach to wholeness. Architecture is essentially synthetic; it is not abstract [1] in any reductive or analytical sense. It requires embodiment and sits as a body within the world. Any body demands stability and coherence; even if this can, at best, be achieved through an unstable equilibrium of otherwise incoherent parts. Ideas are incorporeal. They are not limited by rationality or compromise. Compromise, like the irrational, lies at the heart of habitation. When architecture becomes dominated by its idea, when its body takes form by way of illustarting ideas, when it is determined by a hegemony of ideas alone; buildings are pushed towards the anti-figural in their design.
I include the phrase “in their design” because it is my contention that they can never be so in their operation or physical -experiential presense. However, when they are pushed towards the anti-figural, they sustain losses of disconnection from otherwise essential involvements in the larger world. They suffer a reduction from the fullness of their program and from the dimensioned relationship they ought to maintain with the human body. The result is a significant reduction of their ability to house the interest and desire of the mind. Buildings-as-ideas cannot help being anti-architectural in this sense. Pure ideas, philosophy, cannot survive incorporation without loss: loss of purity, loss of isolated wholeness. Buildings-as-buildings are defined by forces of interaction. They carry innumerable compromises to their integrity brought on by the complexity and contradiction displayed by being related to “everything” else.
Architecture as Idea operates best on paper and other abstracting presentations. Precisely by not being built, by not becoming architecture at all, it retains enough coherence and isolation to be meaningful. If built, it must compromise or fail. Their ideas, built into them, are compromised. They could only hope to become ‘models,’ not buildings. If they lie at the periphery of use and need, they may sit as embodied abstraction – as objects of contemplative enquiry, as art.
[1] Here the meaning of abstract is to be weighted towards its verb use; meaning to deduct, remove; and most particularly to disengage the attention from, and dissemble. [abstract3 v.t. (OED): Deduct, remove; (euphem.) steal; disengage (attention etc.) from; consider abstractly; summarize; hense ~or n. [f. abstract1]. This sense possesses the metaphysical and experiential implications of reducing complexity and suspending necessary connectivity (of parts or meanings). This meaning is tied to the adjectival use of abstract; meaning that which is left after an operation which separates it from matter and parctice. [abstract1 a. (OED): 1. Separated from matter, practice, or particular examples; not concrete; . . . [ME f. OF, or f. L abstractus p.p. pf abs (trahere draw)]].
No matter how complex they are within their own context and presence, buildings operate through their approximation or approach to wholeness. Architecture is essentially synthetic; it is not abstract [1] in any reductive or analytical sense. It requires embodiment and sits as a body within the world. Any body demands stability and coherence; even if this can, at best, be achieved through an unstable equilibrium of otherwise incoherent parts. Ideas are incorporeal. They are not limited by rationality or compromise. Compromise, like the irrational, lies at the heart of habitation. When architecture becomes dominated by its idea, when its body takes form by way of illustarting ideas, when it is determined by a hegemony of ideas alone; buildings are pushed towards the anti-figural in their design.
I include the phrase “in their design” because it is my contention that they can never be so in their operation or physical -experiential presense. However, when they are pushed towards the anti-figural, they sustain losses of disconnection from otherwise essential involvements in the larger world. They suffer a reduction from the fullness of their program and from the dimensioned relationship they ought to maintain with the human body. The result is a significant reduction of their ability to house the interest and desire of the mind. Buildings-as-ideas cannot help being anti-architectural in this sense. Pure ideas, philosophy, cannot survive incorporation without loss: loss of purity, loss of isolated wholeness. Buildings-as-buildings are defined by forces of interaction. They carry innumerable compromises to their integrity brought on by the complexity and contradiction displayed by being related to “everything” else.
Architecture as Idea operates best on paper and other abstracting presentations. Precisely by not being built, by not becoming architecture at all, it retains enough coherence and isolation to be meaningful. If built, it must compromise or fail. Their ideas, built into them, are compromised. They could only hope to become ‘models,’ not buildings. If they lie at the periphery of use and need, they may sit as embodied abstraction – as objects of contemplative enquiry, as art.
[1] Here the meaning of abstract is to be weighted towards its verb use; meaning to deduct, remove; and most particularly to disengage the attention from, and dissemble. [abstract3 v.t. (OED): Deduct, remove; (euphem.) steal; disengage (attention etc.) from; consider abstractly; summarize; hense ~or n. [f. abstract1]. This sense possesses the metaphysical and experiential implications of reducing complexity and suspending necessary connectivity (of parts or meanings). This meaning is tied to the adjectival use of abstract; meaning that which is left after an operation which separates it from matter and parctice. [abstract1 a. (OED): 1. Separated from matter, practice, or particular examples; not concrete; . . . [ME f. OF, or f. L abstractus p.p. pf abs (trahere draw)]].
posted by haro d' aires at 4:26 a.m.
1 Comments:
The authoritative message :), funny...
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