Phenomenology

This whole entry is about how phenomenology relates to my own studio work. Phenomenology is the study of your consciousness, how things appear by considering other ways of thought besides logic and scientific. This is the definition of phenomenology in philosophy.  Phenomenology in architecture is based upon the one’s experience of building form. It is a study of how you perceive the space and the environment around it.  

My studio project is to create the sculpture pavilion that contains eight Thai sculptures, which we get to have a site at Parc Paragon. The whole pavilion is ephemeral which its duration of exhibiting is three months. So started up with making a survey on how people think of Thai sculptures. It turns out to be that people think of it as something very archaic and traditional.  However, those sculptures that will be exhibiting are not traditional at all.  So it can conclude that people has visions in Thai sculpture. They have expectation of how Thai sculpture looks like. Nevertheless, their expectation isn’t always what things are.

So I decided to design a pavilion under the concept of unexpected. I design the façade of my pavilion to be as banal as possible. It is simply a black cube. However, when people get inside my building, they will see the white fluid form in paper waffle structure. People would feel that it is very unexpected. It is the sublime that people would experience by the unexpected of the form. It is also and unexpected by the structure and materials as well. Natural lighting comes from the ceiling that is full of squares as you look up above because on the top of the waffle structure, the roof that would protect the paper waffle structure from weather is made out of poly carbonate which allows natural light to come into the space but not too much. I also play with the idea of expectation in size. Inside my pavilion there are many thresholds that seeing from the outside they look all they same. However, the inside that there are different sizes in volume that you can’t guess or see it from out side. These are phenomena of my pavilion.

Lethal Theory

This entry is mainly on the reading Lethal Theory by Eyal Weizman. Since this class is all about “Theory”, we have to know its meaning first. Theory is something that answers phenomenal. It is something that we (human) create up to fulfill what we don’t know about this universe. The Lethal Theory is about the relationship between military strategy and architecture.

Everything in the world has changed. People no longer live in the village in jungle, which has weak protection. But now, we live in the city, which is a membrane of a country. It has better protection. The globalization and the satellite technology actually make us know what is going on with the world. With that we can prepare to handle with the troops better. So learning technology and architecture theory (especially architecture) can actually helps the military to create strategy in warfare.  

This space that you look at, this room that you look at, is nothing but your interpretation of it. Now, you can stretch the boundaries of your interpretation, but not in an unlimited fashion, after all, it must be bound by physics, as it contains buildings and alleys. The question is, how do you interpret the alley? Do you interpret the alley as a place, like every architect and every town planner does, to walk through, or do you interpret the alley as a place forbidden to walk through? This depends only on interpretation.

-       Kokhavi

This is actually one of my favorite quotes. That it can actually be used in a lot of things. First is in architecture and another thing is Military which is the example in the essay. Since cities and buildings are bounded with physical boundaries. If there are door or an arch on the wall, it suggests us that we have to walk passes that door or that arch. Or maybe we weren’t suggested but we interpret it. Or the way stair is, it links from one floor to another floor. It meant for us to walk up from one floor to another floor.  Or an elevator that is simple a box that transport us from one floor to another floor, all we have to do is to walk in there and press the button and we will be on another floor. We interpret these elements according to what we were taught. Not like they teach us to do this in school but as we grow up we see our parents and everyone do it. So we just absorb and learn how to interact with these elements. On another hand, if we were born as Tarzan growing up in the jungle with monkeys and elephants and one day we have to come to the city, how would we interpret and interact with those elements. For sure, we would see it with our fresh mind with no knowledge that frames our thoughts on it. We might climb up the wall like we climb up the hill. We climb up the stairs with our feet and hands. And we might just have no idea what the elevator is for. The IDF actually look at the architecture like Tarzan. They do not walk through the threshold but they walk through the boundary. Especially when they have technology like infrared scan that they can see where human are.

Writing about interpretation reminds me of the lecture by Alexander Brodsky I went on last Sunday. There is a building called Rotunda II. It is a building with circular plan that has no walls but doors surround it. The space in the building actually changes according to which door are open or close. As the space changes, we reinterpret it. At least, the interpretation on circulation is changed.

Rotunda by Alexander Brodsky
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ypalmin/sets/72157625217087923/

19th Century

This is a period of the emerging of mass market. It is a period when people becomes globalized that makes the technology of building spread into different part of the world by the world expo. With the first world expo was held that the Crystal palace that was designed by Joseph Paxon with the Used of iron and glass, while the interior is done by Owen Joan. There is an issue of alienness of the building that Joan has to deal with because at that time there is no one makes such a big building out of glass. Joan turned the alienness of the building into the decoration of the building. I personally like this building as it is the great invention of the construction of technology and as thinking as people that dress like characters from Downton Abbey  and walk in a glass building. It gives out such an odd feeling that people there would have felt that they are in the future world. Another world expo, the Columbus world expo took place in Chicago. I would say that I appreciate people back then for building the entire city within four months. However, it is too bad that everything was burned down in the great Chicago fire. And that actually makes this windy city became a city of architecture in the present time. 

Is Baroque erotic?

So to answer this question I guess the most important thing to identify is what erotic architecture is and what quality makes the architecture erotic. For me I think that Erotic architecture is an architecture that plays with emotion of the user in the space. It can be something that attracts people. It could also be something that controls human’s action or surprise them. This quality can be brought up by the used of lighting, material, texture, repetition and scale. These are the thing that can create attraction and eroticism.

It is obvious that Baroque is erotic since my instructor is trying to make us prove that it is erotic but how? How baroque architecture is erotic? Baroque architecture happened in a period of Catholic reformation after the protestant reformation. So Catholic Church would do everything to make sure that their reformation will bring back their people and becomes great again. One way to do that is using the architecture to impress people and to bring people back in faith.

Baroque architecture is the deformation of Renaissance architecture. It has a lot of Elements of the building are manipulated. Comparing to Renaissance architecture, most of the building are simple and express the perfect geometric shapes. They have no ornaments. Unlike, Baroque architecture has a lot of ornaments in it with a lot of high value material such as gold and marble. Baroque architecture also plays with the quality of light. When light shine upon the material, it create the magnificent effects on lighting. The example of erotic Baroque architecture can be seen from the interior of Saint Andrea al Quirinal by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Bernini brought the light from outside to inside of the building, which creates the erotic quality in to the church. He make a hole just right on top of the golden sculpture. When the light hits the sculpture, the sculpture shines. The light complement the sculpture. 

Interior of Saint Andrea al Quirinal by Bernini

Early Renaissance

It is the age of change. In medieval time, people were so obsess with religion and that somehow make some people take advantages of Christianity’s faith. This issue led to the misunderstanding in the core of religion. Therefore, one clergy, Martin Luther decided to make the whole thing right again by posting his 95 theses and decided to translate the Bible that back then has only in Latin version in to German so other than clergy commoner can study bible and they don’t have to study the bible by listening to the priest only but the can just read it. This is the breaking point of the Christianity. It is a big change in society.

This event made a big change in society. The role of religion to the society is not as important as in middle age. Philosophe had gained a lot of role in the society. People became more intellectual that they did. People started to do everything by themselves and not relying on God’s good grace all the time. Without the power of the church controlling people to believe in everything they want them to, many scientists came up with a lot of theory and the world is no longer flat. This doesn’t mean that people were atheist but the church has less important role in their life.

As I have mentioned that people are still have faith in God, people brought the idea of God is sacred into architecture of this period. They believe that people are perfect in term of the way they look because God has created them according to the way he looks. Human body is symmetrical. So one characteristic of Renaissance architecture is symmetry. Then, Leonardo Da Vinci made a sketch of Vitruvian man. Human body can be fitted within the circle and square. So it made these two shapes become perfect and sacred.  In Renaissance architecture, people always put the shape of circle and square into it. For example, the arches have the combination of square and circle. This becomes the most important part of renaissance architecture. 

Vitruvian man by Leonardo Da Vinci 

Renaissance arch

Parametric design

What we have learned last class was about Parametric design which relates to the postmodern architecture. Parametric design is the design that comes from the parameter of what we interested in. So it took the parameter of the subject interest and turn it into the data. Then let the program calculate it and turn it in to a form of architecture. In my opinion, I think that paramentric design is something that is different from what we have had before. It is something that doesn't need the artistic quality as much as the scientific quality. By letting machine compute and build it complete shift the way we look at design because parametric design needs perfection that human cannot give. If only one little millimeter is off, the whole building might not be able to stand.

This is a great shift of design which has occured by the advance in technology. But have you ever thought if it is the right direction. For me I think it is wrong by relying too much of the technology which is equal to how we underestimate human's abilities. And If one day in the future there's no machine, how can we survive by not relying ourself on any technology. Or another sense, can they be architects without any computers?