SEASON 2
Towards materialized spaces
We have kicked off episode three of the current meteora season. Equipped with stories that inhabit our buildings and dreams that crystallize these dreams of our Freihauses we move towards materializing them and synthesizing them into our existing buildings ins Buenos Aires, Moscow and Zurich. Introducing state-of-the-art software like Quixel Mixer enabled by the Unity Game Engine we are digitality shaping our envisioned realities. By materializing the spatial enclosures of our scenes, enriching them with the condensed narratives, we are setting the stage for life to unfold. Designing the sequence of chambers and focusing on multiple instances per chamber we invoke not only a kind of spatial narrative or storyboard that informs the architectural decision-making, but we tie life more closely to the architectonics we articulate. We see this process not as a linear one, where the narrative creates the architectonics and rests, but as a circular one: a continuous crossing of intellectual bridges towards a precise synthesis embodied in universal architectonics.
Midterm Episode 2
A tightknit weave of spatial ideas and rituals is crystallizing from the endeavors into the Freihaus. What makes spaces of free thought and speech? What cultural and cognitive foundations come into play, and what are their spatial manifestations? And consequently: What does architecture need to do to set us free in these rituals? Is she enabling, overpowering, loud, clean or soft? The answers are manifold as they are interconnected. Videos carry the dreams of these spaces into the architectural realm, the suggestive grammars of the Eigen-images (that embody multiple readings in a convergence of realities, and thereby offer up a new perspective) charge our ideas with tensions that give the spaces directions. Walls, floors and ceilings become messengers; speakers and mute listeners, witnesses and actors in this play that ties together. THE RESULTS ARE more than idea of program and space unfolding from the plenty. The calm rationale of the coded machine reads and assembles the layered complexity of culturAL RICHNESS WE FEED INTO IT. IT ASSEMBLES FOR US A virtual stack that we can articulate into architecture. We think of this machine as something without emotion IN ITSELF but as something that can be harmonically played. Like an instrument we use it to create, ENGAGING our human faculties tO aligns things, ideas and spaces into a precise and meaningful relationship. AND SO, A new voice arises from the noise that does not intend to drown it out but to embody and embrace it with clarity of articulation - this is how we think of in digital architectonics: Playing an instrument that creates architected order through articulatING and enriCHING the spaces we WANT TO inhabit.
EXPLORE SELECTED BOOKLETS FROM EPISODE 2 IN THE GALLERY BELOW. HEAD OVER TO THE MAIN PAGE FOR THE FULL Panorama OF ONGOING WORK.
FIRST DIRECTIONS OF EPISODE TWO
In episode two we are directing our cinematographic machine, that gives us access to the endless richness of cinema as it encapsulates emotions, dreams, and hopes, fears that let us expand the articulations of spaces into our collective imaginations. We are striving towards composing a canon of floor, wall and ceiling that is talking from our pasts, presents and imagined futures. With the creation of atlases, dreams, and related icons or protagonists we are now charging our primary elements of architecture with meaning and constitute them in a certain direction. We give the floors, walls, and ceilings substance while we imagine and weave functions and programs into them as a general direction that sharpens our articulations of these new spaces. The atlas spans a panorama of atmospheres, feelings and procedures that introduce a spatial sequence or dramaturgy while the dreams generated from the library give each chamber a mood, program, and atmosphere that are then enriched with our protagonists (from our texts) that talk to us and bridge the barriers between the real and the imagined.
KICKOFF EPISODE 2
IN EPISODE TWO JORGE IS SHOWING US HOW TO PICK UP THE THREADS WHE HAVE SPUND AND GUIDES US AS WE WEAVE THEM INTO A RICH SPATIAL STORY THAT TALKS ABOUT OUR ARTICULATIONS OF THE FREIHAUS. WE ARE GOING FROM A LINEAR NARRATIVE TOWARDS A SHOW – A SPATIAL ENCAPSULATION OF THE DRAMA THAT WE ARE LETTING UNFOLD IN SPACE. BY USING A CUSTOM MADE CINEMATOGRAPHIC MACHINE THAT BRINGS TOGETHER IMAGE, TEXT, AND SPACE WE ARE LOADING MEANING INTO THE NARRATIVE AND INTO OUR GIVEN STRUCTURES IN ZURICH, MOSCOW, and BUENOS AIRES. WE ARE CONNECTING THE SPOKEN WITH THE SPATIAL. WE ARE PUTTING ON A SHOW OF SANGUINITY AND MELANCHOLIA, MAKING SPACES OF DAY AND OF SPACES OF NIGHT WHILE WORKING TOWARDS CONSTITUTIONS ARTICULATING CHARGED CEILINGS AND NARRATING FLOORS THAT FORM A FRAME WHERE LIFE CAN UNFOLD.
REVIEW EPISODE 1
With great care we have spun our NARRATIVE threads in the first episode of this semester. Miro has – WITH GREAT CARE AND SENSIBILITY FOR LANGUAGE – set us off on a journey from the plenty OF THE WORLD AND TAKEN US towards a clear story that induces and infuses the creation of a new kind of architecture. We have FRAMED THE IDEAS OF OUR HOUSES AND named theIR chambers, WE have sown their content through telling their stories. THEY Take us from THE ETYMOLOGY THAT MAKES UP OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE WORLD OVER CONTRADICITONS OF MEANING OVER TIME towards new ideas of space and gentry THAT SLUMBERS WITHIN THEM. the threads of episode one are a first iteration of the circular mode of thinking, rethinking and challenGing our ideas of what our architectures can and should do. we have taken from the xenotheka a richness of arguments and given them A DIRECTION BY SPINNING OUR THREADS. THEY now find THEIR way back into THE XENOTHEKA with the compilation of this episode. explore the rich vocabulary and the tales from THE CHAMBERS OF ARGUMENTS in our archive of s02e01 and see a selection from the plenty below.
BEGINNINGS: EPISODE ONE
WE are diving into framing and directing our ideas towards a “freihaus” A BUILDING FOR FREE SPEECH AND THOUGHT IN THE CITIES OF MOSCOW, BUENOS AIRES AND ZURICH. THE FREIHAUS NEEDS RULES AND CODES OF CONDUCT, RITES, RITUALS AND PROCEDURES FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLD INTO AN OPEN TALK AND DIALOGUE. WE BEGIN BY LOOKING FOR MEANING IN WORDS THAT FRAME OUR INTENTIOn. through the xenotheka libary we give thesE words direction, tracing their etymology and stretching and WEAVING THEM it into a spatial intention. SOME ADDRESS THE RISE AND DECLINE OF BEAUTY and RATIONALITY, others delve into the nomenclature of hearing and architecture or take us from spaces for IDEAS to ideologies THAT ALLOW US TO “SPEAK EASILY” ABOUT WHATEVER WE WANT. we write to stage spaces where childhood becomes the foundation of newly constructed subjectivities. through the xenotheka we TIE new meaning into the spaces we want to inhabit and give them a direction towards the articulation of architecture. WE SEE A VARIETY OF SUBJECTIVE FRAMINGS OF IDEAS, LEADING TOWARDS SPATIAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS THROUGH LENSES OF TRANSLUCENCY and TRANSCENDENCE oR ARTICULATING IDEAS OF JUSTICE, SCALES OF SOCIAL COHESION AS THE FOUNDATIONS FOR A FREIHAUS. the xenotheka gives us a voice WITH the power of centuries, with the resonance of the thousands and with a tone that can cut through the noise of the plenty.
Let us lead into TWO FIRST texts below, that ARE starting to work as compassES FOR THE PROJECTS.
Harmonices Aedium
We are constantly distracted from looking within ourselves by looking at ourselves through others. Our society has become an instrument of moral uniformity and social denunciation. (…) In all its variations and excesses, its violence and its artificiality could bring on madness [1]. It is necessary to the happiness of individuals, and still more necessary to the security of society, that the mind should be elevated to the idea of general beauty, and the contemplation of general truth. (…) Whatever abstracts the thoughts from sensual gratifications, whatever teaches us to look for happiness within ourselves, must advance in some measure the dignity of our nature [2].
Rather than focusing on arbitrary ideals, we should direct our attention to a general beauty. By a parity of reasoning it may be contended that the perception of beauty (…) is a mere act of seeing [3], but it is much more than that. The eye being placed in a certain point (…) perceives nothing but what is opposite to it [4]. It is a sense far too subjective to be treated alone and refrains us from being fully immersed in beauty. Let us for a moment take a short survey of the progress of the mind towards what is, or ought to be, its true object of attention [5]; the pleasure of harmony [6].
Originating from the greek Harmonia, in the sense of agreement of feeling, harmony is what characterizes the aforementioned ‘general beauty’. As it is void of any direct meaning, harmony is universal [7], unequivocal. It has been and always will be a gift of nature and the heavens (…) in our power to acquire [8], and appreciate. But appreciation of harmony is merely one of hearing; and the argument is correct so far as it goes, the fact being that we are seeing and hearing, and something more [9]. Indeed, harmony is an attribute of music as well as architecture [10].
Through time, we have placed harmony against a backdrop of rationality [11]. It is becoming increasingly difficult to make room for anything which is difficult to explain. We witness the clash of (…) the rationality of science and the existential, so that it is very difficult to know ‘where one is’, and how to feel and behave ‘right’ [12]. Harmony is a forgotten tool, left only to the musician. But the ancients were so fully sensible of the necessity of (…) harmony of proportion, and of the concord of sweet sounds, that the poets feigned Amphion to have built the walls of Thebes by the powers of music; and Vitruvius tells us that an architect should not be ignorant of music [13].
Colonna argues for a precise similarity between the working processes of the architect and those of the musician [14]. Examples of specific code articulation in architecture are found in classical theories of harmony that utilize the articulation of musical codes and arithmetical proportional series for the invention of specific architectural codes, which are then used to determine the proportions of and relationships among the different elements of a building [15]. It has however only been applied in the design process of the facade and plan of a building; that is to say a projection onto a rational plane [16]. But just as music has a stereoscopic image, so should its projection be applied to a three-dimensional space.
Music was always celebrated by the ancients and held to be a sacred thing; and how it was the opinion of very wise philosophers that the world is made up of music, that the heavens in their motion make harmony, and that even the human soul was formed on the same principle, and is therefore awakened and has its virtues brought to life, as it were, through music [17]. Today, the sacredness of music has been left behind in favor of rationality, and with it, our soul is lost as well. But let us not forget that there are three forces of the human soul — the ability to think, to feel, and to live — and they correspond to the following musical intervals: the octave (2:1), fifth (3:2), and fourth (4:3) [18].
Few people today would take seriously an architectural theory based on the assumptions of (…) musical proportions that determine the proportions of the human body [19] and the space which it occupies. It has however become a necessity. It is our duty as architects to make use once more of the gift of harmony that has been bestowed upon us. Is it not written in 1 Timothy 4:14; ‘Neglect not the gift that is in thee which was given thee (…)’ [20]? The question is then to wonder if this kind of search has something to do with religion [21]. I’m afraid that the concept of religion only reinforces the division we suffer from today and is contrary to that of harmony. Therefore architectural design shouldn’t be preoccupied with an interest for institutionalized religion, but with an idiosyncratic spirituality: sacred places offer the much needed signification and orientation in a time of noise and disarray [22].
One needs to understand the fact that today spirituality is spoken of more and more rather than religion [23]. Spirituality is the key to self-reflection, which in its turn is essential to fight today’s madness. But as spirituality is linked in many minds to religion itself, it needs to be replaced with the concept of harmony. With today’s knowledge and technology, it has the potential of becoming a therapeutical tool for self-reflection. Mersenne himself had a firm belief in the therapeutic value of harmony and in its absolute power (…) and he came to believe that modern music might reach a power beyond that of the ancient [24].
[1] Foucault_History of Madness | [2] Harrison, Wood, Gaiger_Art in Theory | [3] Fergusson_An Historical Inquiry | [4,5] Harrison, Wood, Gaiger_Art in Theory | [6] Younés_The Historical Dictionary of Architecture of Quatremère De Quincy | [7] Williams_Daniele Barbaros Vitruvius of 1567 | [8] Castiglione_The Book of the Courtier | [9] Fergusson_An Historical Inquiry into the True Principles of Beauty in Art | [10] Younés_The Historical Dictionary of Architecture of Quatremère De Quincy | [11] Foucault_History of Madness | [12] Coomans_Loci Sacri | [13] Watkin_Sir John Soane | [14] Onians_Bearers of Meaning | [15] Hays_Architecture Theory since 1968 | [16] Foucault_History of Madness | [17] Castiglione_The Book of the Courtier | [18,19] Williams_Daniele Barbaros Vitruvius of 1567 | [20] King James Bible | [21,22,23] Coomans_Loci Sacri | [24] Rykwert_The First Moderns
The Cupboard of Goods
If we pack the whole of humanity, its cultures and practices, into shelves we might find this:
Spaces are either overflowing with the advance of accumulation and capable of being transformed into additional capital[1], while others are rather slowly evolving or even receding, growing empty[2].
There are seemingly two sides; one rich and full, not failing to exploit and explore[3], sometimes leaving the other an unstructured vacuum[4].
The middle ground in between, an empty space of transaction and redistribution from one side, to the other, frequently lost in the abyss, where goodwill surely is drowned at last.
However, out of this space, conceived as empty and isotropic [5] new movements form, becoming a first quantum, or molecular segment[6], polarising to either side.
Where a multitude of objects are presented to us in one point of view, and rush in at once upon the eye, there symmetry is necessary.[7] That is why the eye itself strives for the concept of symmetry.
The observance of this law, from the equal distribution to each (Shelf), is called equity and distributive justice.[8]However, how will this order be achieved, so that the distribution of (goods) will be made to conform the conception of social justice?[9]
Does all logic turned upside down to reach equality? Maybe a seeming anarchy (needs to) take over[10] as the first step to introduce the law for the equal distribution of goods.[11] Because it has its own kinds of rules: it is just (…) operated from the bottom up, not from the top down.[12]
Is the abandonment of laws and all order that there was (which was unequal at all) to reform to a more even distribution, perfect line-up of goods, the right thought to an ideal society? Or is inequality even a necessary part?
The goal of resetting the scales never be reached by the symmetry and the eye. As so stated, the blind fold of Justitia has to be embraced and a state of total oblivion has to be entered.
Noone knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does anyone know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like. We can even assume that the parties do not know their conceptions of the good or their special psychological propensities[13], as it might be that contrary to our believes, the law (as society knows it), first creates the temptation, and then punishes those who yield to it.[14]
At the Freihaus, we try in this state of unknown and thought impartiality to renegotiate the equalities of inequalities existing today. What remains is the right of Nature (…), the natural Liberty of (Humanity)[15], our basic right to freedom.
There are no ‘minimum sacrifices versus equal Justice[16]’. Because we are led by our emotions and senses, while one is obstructed.
Water, sand, boxes filled, equal to the human in conversation, to the morals one’s attain, the will which (will) determine the act.[17]
[1] Karl Marx – The Capital Volume One [2] Schumacher – The Autopoiesis of Architecture [3] Piketty – Capital in the Twenty First Century [4] Schumacher – The Autopoiesis of Architecture [5] Schumacher – The Autopoiesis of Architecture [6] Deleuze/Guattari – A Thousand Plateaus [7] Harrison/Wood/Gaiger – Art in Theory [8] Hobbes – Leviathan [9] Hayek – The Constitution of Liberty [10] Hofstadter – Godel Escher Bach [11] Aristotle – A treatise on Government [12] Hofstadter - Godel Escher Bach [13] John Rawls – A Theory of Justice [14] Smith – An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. [15] Hobbes – Leviathan [16] Hayek – The Constitution of Liberty [17] Rousseau – The Social Contract
SEASON 2 INTRODUCTION
