ESSAY ON ARCHITECTURE By Henning Larsen
ON ARCHITECTURE
These two senses complement each other. With our sense of touch we experience form, space, and rhythm even without seeing them. This tactile sense is the most elementary of all senses. As small children, we experience form by direct contact with our mother’s body, experience form by crawling over, under, and into all sorts of forms. On the other hand, space is difficult to comprehend. Sight plays an important and corrective function in a precise spatial perception. If one crawls into a dark cave and gropes along the walls, one gradually achieves a vague impression of the cave’s limitations. The moment there is light, one can comprehend the totality of the space. Music does not exist directly in nature, at the most as structuring sound. Music is a product of fantasy and is based on a notion or feeling.
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Architecture consists of the same elements as music, namely, a form, a pause, rhythm; the way in which form and space are linked together together. Around this supporting notion or feeling, subordinate themes and details stratify, falling into place as a unity, which, when played, gives rise to a corresponding feeling in the listener. In the same way that music requires a notion, an idea that unifies tones, pauses, and rhythms, architecture requires an idea that structures form, space, and rhythm as a unity. Architecture has much of its basis in nature. Both form and space are experienced in our earliest childhood through our senses of sight and touch. Architecture consists of the same elements as music, namely, a form, a pause, rhythm; the way in which form and space are linked together. Music has a simple way of revealing the individual elements it is composed of. A tone or a sound, a pause or an interval, and ultimately a rhythm, the way in which tones and pauses succeed each other. Music cannot be touched or held, we perceive it with our sense of hearing. Music is elusive, it’s gone when it has been played, existing only as a memory. Music, to a great extent, is abstract. It’s not like anything we see with our eyes or feel with our hands. Yet we often perceive it as form and space. Architecture, though composed of abstract elements, is concrete. It is purely physical, and can be perceived both with our sense of touch and sight.
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Architecture differs from music in that it doesn’t have to be experienced lineally in time. Even though a piece of music, when finished, can appear as a total experience, it still is dependent on being played from beginning to end. Architecture can be experienced in many different ways by wandering in and around it. It can be seen from within, from without, from above, etc. It can be both tangible and intangible at the same time. Yet when at its best, it can also be a total experience. Both the feeling that creates the notion and the feeling in those who experience it, are culturally determined. Throughout time an incredibly varied wealth of experience has been created, built up over the fundamental elements; tone, pause, and rhythm, or form, space, and rhythm.
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This fantastic, expressive wealth has been based on the needs of the secular or religious societies of the times. Certain cultures suppressed and literally renounced architecture, as in early Islam, where great displays of talent were considered impious. Even the building of a good, solid, and durable mosque was considered superfluous and a waste of resources. This was because one didn’t waste energy on anything other than the intrinsic, namely Allah. All was concentrated on Allah. In other cultures, music was of no great value, as was the case, as far as I know, in ancient Rome. There are cultures in which the senses have been cultivated to the height of refined articulation. Some cultures have elevated form over space. Others have done the opposite, giving space priority over form. In Greece, the dominant interest was form. The brilliant, simple form of the temple, which stood on the edge of the cliff in the sunlight, with its white columns leaving the spaces between them as hard, dark shadows. In the great epochs of Islam, it is the inner space that dominates form. In the inner space of the mosques, light sifts in through small openings, there is a dimness. The bright daylight of the outside world is dissolved in this space. Now and then, even the gravitational notion of up and down seems to dissolve, in that the slender columns seem no longer able to bear the heavy mass above. It appears almost as if the columns are hanging from the pediments. Sometimes the wall surfaces are so decorated with complicated figure / ground patterns, which constantly shift in one’s consciousness that we slip into a world of unlimited surfaces with no sense of up and down, space becomes infinite. Here it is easy to glide into a meditative ecstasy. In Japanese culture, space is not limited and form is not dominant. Here one speaks of a universal totality, an infinite space. One that is modeled and articulated in a refined and delicate interplay of form and space, of nature and the man-made universe, where buildings and landscape melt together in one great unity. Our own western European culture, in a way somewhat similar to the Japanese, builds on the conception of the room as a totality, modeled with form and space in a dialectic interplay. However, the resulting expressions, architecturally speaking, have little of the lightness and grace that characterizes the Japanese. Our culture’s architectural zeniths, such as the Gothic, gave man the opportunity of removing himself from everyday life, in a meditative calm, or ecstasy. The builders of the times, possessing the most advanced knowledge at hand, could form space, proportion patterns and rhythms after a quite clear, but secret set of rules, so that these spaces, with an unfailing ability, could bring the followers into a trance. This was the intention, to aid in reaching an inner awareness. That type of sensory experience is no longer in fashion. Society does not ask for sectarian rooms for rapture, or inner awareness. Our direct sensory perception of our surroundings seems to be more and more in opposition to the scientific cognizance of our culture.
constantly being revised with the scientific knowledge each individual acquires, as well as cultural influences and their presentation. Our feelings and changing moods are for the most part still based on direct sensory experiences. The major part of most people’s lives is spent within the sensory world. Illusion or not, we know that our senses are unreliable compared to precise instruments. Sensory perception was scientifically described years ago. Yet in our daily lives, and the daily movements in the streets, houses, spaces, etc., our senses are indispensable. But why do our senses burn so low, why is music reduced to a consumer product that we call Muzak, which has become a necessary background noise for many of us, absent of any sensory challenge or conscious mental life, only a soporific noise. Why has architecture become a gray and dismal affair, offering no challenge to our senses, a necessary and meager consumption of immaterial forms. The articulation of form, space, light, rhythm, and color could play a more meaningful part in the quality of our daily lives. Each day sees an increasingly wanton impoverishment. An impoverishment of our potential, our knowledge, our sensitivity and awareness. The design competition program of today asks for so many square feet of building with so many large and small rooms. Beyond this, it must be cheap, both in cost and maintenance. Nothing is mentioned about beauty or harmony, or of being presentable or even of possessing chosen qualities. Society no longer builds cathedrals or castles to honor gods or the power plays of princes. Society rarely asks an architect to create a beautiful space. It is up to the architect himself to introduce quality in a building, through its space, its light, its forms and its atmosphere. The architect works as best he can with the traditional sensory qualities. But the old craftsman’s knowledge of proportions, patterns, light effects, etc., has been lost. Architects are much more reserved in approaching these difficult areas. Much training and insight is necessary, much knowledge and ability, and a great degree of sensitivity and patience. Sometimes they succeed in adding a few extra qualities which lie above and beyond the basic demands of the client. Sometimes music arises in space, light in the forms, sometimes they succeed, through the sensory qualities experienced, in touching our feelings and enriching us.
Originally published in Living Architecture 4 (1984)
Even far back in history, wise men recognized the world as an illusion that truth lies far beyond our senses. Our senses deceive us. This concept corresponds with the modern concept of science. Yet despite the fact that ancient wisdom and modern science seem to agree on what reality is, our daily life is still based on an immediate, sensory perception. Our every day is still deeply rooted in our five senses, though it is
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Henning Larsen (1925-2013) In 1959, Henning Larsen founded his architecture studio, and he was active for more than 50 years. His life work counts a number of significant building works, and he was often described as a “master of the light”. From 1968 to 1995, he was a professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture in Copenhagen. His unique approach to architecture combined a sharp artistic with a strong analytical eye. His tool was space and daylight. His significance for architecture goes far beyond his own projects. He inspired generations of Danish and international architects with initiatives such as the architectural journal SKALA, which he published for more than 10 years. Henning Larsen received a number of awards and recognitions. In 2012, he was acknowledged with what is often referred to as the Nobel Prize of art, the Praemium Imperiale. In 2001, he established the Henning Larsen Foundation with the objective of promoting and disseminating architecture in its broad sense. Among Henning Larsen’s most important works abroad, you find the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia, 1984), The Danish Embassy in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia, 1987) and Malmö City Library (Sweden, 1997). The Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs was acknowledged with the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1989 – the most prestigious architecture award in the Islamic world.
Front page: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Photo by Richard Bryant Page 1: Sketch by Henning Larsen
www.henninglarsen.com