The Window: A paradoxical fiction that frames, mediates, orients, and delights
Luke Larsen June 11th, 2014
Charlie Brown The University of Oregon
larsen 8
The following exploration into the meaning embedded within windows is a direct result of information gleaned from and leads provided by Professor G.Z. Charlie Brown during his delightfully provacative lecture series about the pleasure and the performance of windows.
Additional thanks is due to Professor Kevin Nute for relentlessly and honestly pursuing the issue at hand, regadless of what form it might happen to take. He reintroduced me to poetry. larsen 1
The window as a mediator: The pane of the window is a very real plane. Variations in transparency, hue, thickness, and density influence the multitude of phenomenon that pass through it. Heat, sound, light, and air are altered by this transmission. The passage is multidirectional. The window both projects outwardly and penetrates inwardly. Light shining through rustling leaves animates any surface that it projects onto. A back lit person casts their silhouette out to their neighborhood’s night. People can see through windows when light levels are higher beyond the plane than the light levels in the viewer’s immediate surroundings. In the reverse lighting condition views are obscured. Comparative ambient luminosity thus effects visual penetration. Screens mediate transmission directly in the plane of the window. Their translucency shows shadows. They abstract the experience beyond the window by making it planar and locating it on the edge of the occupied space. The editing of view and the distortion of form lends a degree of order, control, and regularity to people’s interactions with screens. They, the people, however, remain free to interpret the poetic reality only partially revealed beyond the plane of the window. larsen 9
The following musings are a result of curious time spent wondering.
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The window as a paradox: Perceptions are manipulatable. The way in which a person perceives a thing and the actual manner of its being are often times quite different affairs. When a person encounters a window there is an inevitable exchange between that person and the space beyond the pane. There are no absolutes in this encounter and as such each unique exchange can change, or rather, can easily be persuaded. Thus a window can seem to be of one nature to some and yet be wildly different to others. There is a tension to be had in reconciling the opposites that result from variations in individual perceptions. As a matter of scale, a window may seem large to some and yet to others, or when applied in an alternate context, that same window might seem quite small. Local treatments at the window interface can further affect the apparent paradoxical size of a window. As a matter of performance, a window’s thermal convection and daylight exposure are inversely related. Though both desirable, the more of the one undoes the other. The performance paradox requires a window to be appropriately fitted to its climatic and programmatic contexts. And lastly as a matter of pleasure, a window both connects and isolates. It provides safety and refuge while offering exposure and prospect. The pleasure paradox is a temporally located balance between the immediate here and the more distant there. larsen 3
The window as orientation: To understand a space a person must first understand where they are located within it. Window frames mark, and then preserve, the views and experiences which pass through them. Memories attach to the things in the window. Distant views evoke slow time and geomorphological consistency. Close views are quicker to change considering that the comings and goings of people move in cultural time. Windows orient their viewers through the creation of memorable places. When coherently orchestrated, the experience through a window connects the viewer to the things beyond. Interest, often beginning with the aesthetic contemplation of beauty, leads a person to invest in the place by embedding a memory. Time passes and these controlled views collect as they continue to resonate with their viewer. They offer existential orientation by providing places to return to. Change is marked through the window. When we quiet and still ourselves, we become more aware of how the world moves around us. We are a part of a delicate and dynamic network which shifts subtly through the seasons while accepting moments of dramatic alteration. These markings of time help to locate us on a longer and more stable temporal continuum. This stability helps to satisfy our psyche in a taut world vibrating at the frenetic pace of industrial consumption. The experience of temporal orientation that windows offer can soothe us like a tonic.
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The window as a fiction: Anything less than the whole truth, including fabricated or interpreted information, is fictional. Windows selectively edit or filter the experiences that pass through them. In doing so the window becomes an interpretive plane. Our relationship to windows is one of action and transmission. When we pass through the window we explore heightened realities located beyond our immediate confines. Windows are real and we are, to varying degrees, sensorially isolated from what lies beyond them. The window alternately can either facilitate or stifle our abilities to see, to hear, to smell, to touch, and to taste what is out there. We have grounded sensory relationships with our immediate surroundings but beyond the window we are at a loss, and so we create fictive realities to replace the sensory stimulation that we lack. Poetry then, is the vehicle for a window’s transmission. Poetry lets us feel what is beyond and might otherwise be lacking.
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The window as a delight: When asked what form a poem should take, Robert Frost replied “it begins in delight and it ends in wisdom, much like love.”
There is an expansive and ever unfolding reality waiting just beyond our fingertips. We, as people, have a primitive inclination to take satisfaction in sensory stimulation. To run in the rain is invigorating. But as we have come to control more and more of our environment, we have minimized and mitigated our exposure to the exteriority of the world. This dulled and comfortably numb reality is safe, predictable, easy to control, and excessively boring. We can work to undo this condition by conceiving of shelter in less absolutist terms. Shelter combines canopy with enclosure. The window is a violation of either. It is a portal for sensory experience. Multiple stimuli influence our existential existence. Sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch can be activated through experiencing windows. What we actually encounter inside and what we subjectively perceive outside may not be the same. But the blending of the immediate sensory stimulation with the more distant poetic image makes for a power and enjoyable cocktail. The window is delight. With time and the deciphering of experience it later becomes wisdom.
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The window as a frame:
Windows reveal all that is not concealed. The frame is a transmissive aperture which reminds us of separation. The frame is a means of controlling experience. It marks both spatial and temporal references. It borrows both landscapes and memories. Frames confine: be it an image to a portal; an aroma to a room; a sound to a season; or even a breeze to an evening. Frames highlight experiences. They give weight to the poetry beyond them.
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The Window: A paradoxical fiction that frames, mediates, orients, and delights
Luke Larsen June 11th, 2014
Charlie Brown The University of Oregon
larsen 8
The following exploration into the meaning embedded within windows is a direct result of information gleaned from and leads provided by Professor G.Z. Charlie Brown during his delightfully provacative lecture series about the pleasure and the performance of windows.
Additional thanks is due to Professor Kevin Nute for relentlessly and honestly pursuing the issue at hand, regadless of what form it might happen to take. He reintroduced me to poetry. larsen 1
The window as a mediator: The pane of the window is a very real plane. Variations in transparency, hue, thickness, and density influence the multitude of phenomenon that pass through it. Heat, sound, light, and air are altered by this transmission. The passage is multidirectional. The window both projects outwardly and penetrates inwardly. Light shining through rustling leaves animates any surface that it projects onto. A back lit person casts their silhouette out to their neighborhood’s night. People can see through windows when light levels are higher beyond the plane than the light levels in the viewer’s immediate surroundings. In the reverse lighting condition views are obscured. Comparative ambient luminosity thus effects visual penetration. Screens mediate transmission directly in the plane of the window. Their translucency shows shadows. They abstract the experience beyond the window by making it planar and locating it on the edge of the occupied space. The editing of view and the distortion of form lends a degree of order, control, and regularity to people’s interactions with screens. They, the people, however, remain free to interpret the poetic reality only partially revealed beyond the plane of the window. larsen 9
The following musings are a result of curious time spent wondering.
larsen 2
larsen 10
The window as a paradox: Perceptions are manipulatable. The way in which a person perceives a thing and the actual manner of its being are often times quite different affairs. When a person encounters a window there is an inevitable exchange between that person and the space beyond the pane. There are no absolutes in this encounter and as such each unique exchange can change, or rather, can easily be persuaded. Thus a window can seem to be of one nature to some and yet be wildly different to others. There is a tension to be had in reconciling the opposites that result from variations in individual perceptions. As a matter of scale, a window may seem large to some and yet to others, or when applied in an alternate context, that same window might seem quite small. Local treatments at the window interface can further affect the apparent paradoxical size of a window. As a matter of performance, a window’s thermal convection and daylight exposure are inversely related. Though both desirable, the more of the one undoes the other. The performance paradox requires a window to be appropriately fitted to its climatic and programmatic contexts. And lastly as a matter of pleasure, a window both connects and isolates. It provides safety and refuge while offering exposure and prospect. The pleasure paradox is a temporally located balance between the immediate here and the more distant there. larsen 3
The window as orientation: To understand a space a person must first understand where they are located within it. Window frames mark, and then preserve, the views and experiences which pass through them. Memories attach to the things in the window. Distant views evoke slow time and geomorphological consistency. Close views are quicker to change considering that the comings and goings of people move in cultural time. Windows orient their viewers through the creation of memorable places. When coherently orchestrated, the experience through a window connects the viewer to the things beyond. Interest, often beginning with the aesthetic contemplation of beauty, leads a person to invest in the place by embedding a memory. Time passes and these controlled views collect as they continue to resonate with their viewer. They offer existential orientation by providing places to return to. Change is marked through the window. When we quiet and still ourselves, we become more aware of how the world moves around us. We are a part of a delicate and dynamic network which shifts subtly through the seasons while accepting moments of dramatic alteration. These markings of time help to locate us on a longer and more stable temporal continuum. This stability helps to satisfy our psyche in a taut world vibrating at the frenetic pace of industrial consumption. The experience of temporal orientation that windows offer can soothe us like a tonic.
larsen 11
larsen 4
larsen 12
The window as a fiction: Anything less than the whole truth, including fabricated or interpreted information, is fictional. Windows selectively edit or filter the experiences that pass through them. In doing so the window becomes an interpretive plane. Our relationship to windows is one of action and transmission. When we pass through the window we explore heightened realities located beyond our immediate confines. Windows are real and we are, to varying degrees, sensorially isolated from what lies beyond them. The window alternately can either facilitate or stifle our abilities to see, to hear, to smell, to touch, and to taste what is out there. We have grounded sensory relationships with our immediate surroundings but beyond the window we are at a loss, and so we create fictive realities to replace the sensory stimulation that we lack. Poetry then, is the vehicle for a window’s transmission. Poetry lets us feel what is beyond and might otherwise be lacking.
larsen 5
The window as a delight: When asked what form a poem should take, Robert Frost replied “it begins in delight and it ends in wisdom, much like love.”
There is an expansive and ever unfolding reality waiting just beyond our fingertips. We, as people, have a primitive inclination to take satisfaction in sensory stimulation. To run in the rain is invigorating. But as we have come to control more and more of our environment, we have minimized and mitigated our exposure to the exteriority of the world. This dulled and comfortably numb reality is safe, predictable, easy to control, and excessively boring. We can work to undo this condition by conceiving of shelter in less absolutist terms. Shelter combines canopy with enclosure. The window is a violation of either. It is a portal for sensory experience. Multiple stimuli influence our existential existence. Sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch can be activated through experiencing windows. What we actually encounter inside and what we subjectively perceive outside may not be the same. But the blending of the immediate sensory stimulation with the more distant poetic image makes for a power and enjoyable cocktail. The window is delight. With time and the deciphering of experience it later becomes wisdom.
larsen 13
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larsen 14
The window as a frame:
Windows reveal all that is not concealed. The frame is a transmissive aperture which reminds us of separation. The frame is a means of controlling experience. It marks both spatial and temporal references. It borrows both landscapes and memories. Frames confine: be it an image to a portal; an aroma to a room; a sound to a season; or even a breeze to an evening. Frames highlight experiences. They give weight to the poetry beyond them.
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Making a window As a compliment to Alvar Aalto, I deployed side lighting strategies to make a window seem paradoxically bigger than it actually is. Light washes across the wall surface drawing attention and focus without needing an excessively large aperture. This window connects to the entry and the garden. A viewer is free to create the fictive stories of what might happen in those poetic places. The window frames a view of a small maple, the frame is static but the view changes with time. It marks. The window mediates between the interior and exterior. It projects people into the garden while bringing views, scents, sounds, and tastes in. The garden is always growing, changing and in need of tending. The window orients viewers and brings an awareness of the slower natural world. The window is one of side slipped pair. The two play with each other and mark different passages of time. We experience things inside, outside, and far away. Savoring the coming together of diverse and rich experience is, quite simply, a delight.
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Making a window As a compliment to Alvar Aalto, I deployed side lighting strategies to make a window seem paradoxically bigger than it actually is. Light washes across the wall surface drawing attention and focus without needing an excessively large aperture. This window connects to the entry and the garden. A viewer is free to create the fictive stories of what might happen in those poetic places. The window frames a view of a small maple, the frame is static but the view changes with time. It marks. The window mediates between the interior and exterior. It projects people into the garden while bringing views, scents, sounds, and tastes in. The garden is always growing, changing and in need of tending. The window orients viewers and brings an awareness of the slower natural world. The window is one of side slipped pair. The two play with each other and mark different passages of time. We experience things inside, outside, and far away. Savoring the coming together of diverse and rich experience is, quite simply, a delight.
larsen 19