Cover: Photomontage of Laszl贸 Moholy-Nagy Between Earth and Sky and sketch plans for Villa Zoppas, Treviso by Carlo Scarpa 1
Contents
Acknowledgements
2
Introduction
3
Part I • • •
A brief history of Collage Collage and the Metaphor in Drawing Dwelling- Space and Time
5 8 19
Collagiste sensibility to sensibility of building
23
Part II •
Conclusion
39
Bibliography
41
2
Acknowledgements
I would firstly like to thank all my tutors at Kingston University. Eleanor Suess, my personal tutor for her patience in our tutorials and reading through my drafts, and for having faith in my work; Darren Dean, for his constructive criticism that got me back on track with this dissertation and for the invaluable discussions in his seminar group; and last but definitely not least Trevor Garnham for his inspiring lectures throughout the last two years which introduced me with phenomenology. I would also like to express my gratitude to Lynne Tran, for all her help and patience. Thank you for believing in me! I will always remember our conversations!
Olympia Nouska
3
Introduction Our Body as a dimension is both spatial and temporal; it occupies both space and time. As embodied beings we also experience through our body, spatially and temporally, in all our actions, in all situations. As embodied creatures, our mind and body are one, and we are one with this world, from the moment we come to exist in this world, to the moment we return to the ground. As embodied creatures we thus look for this kind of participation with the world in our place of dwelling. Architecture shapes space, it bounds space; but only time can give it character as a place when space starts to be activated, when it is used, when it allows the narratives of everyday life to take place and thus becomes full of time. Architecture should then allow for not only our spatial but also temporal participation in it. This can be achieved by a kind of ambiguous architecture, one that embraces the beauty in what is imperfect and incomplete, and so engaging with time in the potential of its completion through use, rather than an architecture complete and permanent, which seems to defy time. By allowing for this participation, not only do we as beings-in-the-world engage with it as it mediates between our bodies and the world, through our participation the work of architecture itself also becomes complete and its true nature revealed. “By means of a temple, the God is present in the temple� - Heidegger in Poetry, Language, Thought Our existence is a precondition to dwelling, while at the same time dwelling is a basic condition of our being. If we are subjects, beings-inthe-world, with our minds immersed in our bodies and our bodies immersed in the world, our place of dwelling, should open up the world of bodily experience to our senses, while setting it back again on earth. 4
If we are to feel at home in the world, architecture is to provide us with such a place of dwelling. Architecture should not then be an object, an entity in itself, but rather more open-ended and ambiguous, allowing us to become immersed in it, while it itself no longer an object distinct form its environment becomes immersed, set in its environment. Architecture should be experienced subjectively, however on a common ground, i.e. with reference to its context. This is a belief shared with all the authors whose text will be cited in this dissertation. A dissertation, initially sparked off by an interest in collage, as a better way of representing the world, which then proved to be a useful insight in how the ambiguity of metaphor and symbolic representation and meaning, and how the power of a detail or fragment as a generator of the whole, were used to break down the barrier between art and life, as art is essentially a part of the fabric of life, and restore meaning in the work of art. This collagiste sensibility as will be explained, is the key to an architecture not as an object as Renaissance with its perspective mode of representation would have it, but as a mediation, a gathering middle between our own subjective experience as embodied beings and the world in which we are all situated so that we can find our place in the world!
5
Brief History of Collage Although the creation of visual images by cutting and sticking bits together and the essential idea of collage of associating unrelated images to express a different identity1 has been around before modern art and the Cubist Movement, it is only then that the art of collage becomes a significant means of expression. Modern collage originated in the Cubist paintings. The Cubist movement itself “emerged during an era of dissatisfaction with positivism and materialism” which were based on the belief “that scientific research is the key to understanding life”2; an understanding that reduced the body and embodied experience to mere objects of scientific analysis. As a critique to this rationalisation of life, Cubists, seeking to redefine the properties of objects as experienced in life, turned to the dimension of time, which gave the freedom to transform space in response to their own subjectivity. This meant that multiple views of the object, all simultaneously existed in time on the surface of the painting, rejecting the Renaissance perspective mode of representation which assumed a single point of view. Space was no longer homogeneous Euclidean space, but an expression of concepts of time and experience that could not be explained scientifically; space as a “product of memory, imagination and experience”3. Analytical Cubism and in particular the artist Juan Gris became preoccupied with breaking down form and with the juxtaposition of the simultaneous presence of different aspects of the object. However, the great variety of perspectives sometimes became too abstracted and hard 1
Wolfram, Eddie History of Collage pg.14 Antliff, Mark Leighten, Patricia Cubism and Culture pg. 68 3 Ibid pg.86 6 2
to read, especially on the two dimensional surface of the canvas. The gluing on -collage4- of papers, such as newspaper cut outs and woodgrain paper contrasted this multitude of perspectives and aided the reading of the painting. This was done by setting up a background foreground tension; the foreground being about the objects- the actual stuck-on objects- while the background being about spaces of time and memory, given by the variety of views.
1│1 Juan Gris Breakfast 1914 4
From the French verb coller which means ‘to glue’ 7
So Cubist painting came to incorporate different kinds of mass produced papers and objects. The use of these materials also meant the rejection of traditional painting materials in favour of these ordinary materials. There was a “shift form the ‘master’s’ touch, to the ordinary act of cutting and pasting”5. The actual glued on objects as well as the rejection of traditional painting materials, broke down the distinction between art and life, while the layering of surfaces, also gave a sense of capturing time and a sense of reality. The themes of the paintings themselves with the depiction of glasses, music sheets and cigarette packs were about ordinary everydaylife situations, such as the meeting of people in cafés to discuss and listen to music. The depiction however of these objects in fragmented and abstracted forms, marked the absence of a single interpretation of the work of art, leaving the viewer to experience his/her own subjective view. These elements, such as the rejection of perspective representation from a single point of view, the use of layering and materiality to capture time, the juxtaposition of images, and the issue of objectivity and subjectivity will now be discussed in the context of themes such as the fragment, situational meaning, literal and phenomenal transparency, the relativity of the one and the many/whole, and their importance in constituting collage a metaphorical drawing and symbolic way of representation.
5
8
Antliff, Mark Leighten, Patricia Cubism and Culture pg.159
Collage and the Metaphor in Drawing Collage rejected the perspective mode of representation of the 19th century that had reduced reality to a single viewpoint, in favor of multiple views and the juxtaposition of dissimilar images. The objective, distanced view of objects was rejected in favor of their subjective experience. The Cubists broke up their canvas’ unity, to allow the viewer’s creative intuition, his imagination, to establish unity. That a subjective experience of things is required to reveal the richness of things and their meaning as a whole R. Barthes recognises in his essay The Death of the Author. In the essay he states that a text can have an existence independent to that of the author. It can be endowed with meaning, outside that intended by the author, depending on the context, but most importantly depending on the reader. “To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on the text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing.”6 To assume that the only meaning is that as intended by the author, is to assume that we know this text with absolute clarity and therefore without any room for further interpretation. Barthes argues that this should not be the case, that the text should not be completely tied to the author’s beliefs and so have a single decipherable meaning, but rather allow the reader to disentangle the different layers of meaning running through the text “The reader is the space on which all quotations that make up a writing are inscribed, without any of them being lost; a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination”7
6
Barthes, Roland ‘ The Death of the Author’ in Image, Music, Text pg.147 9
Only through the participation of the reader does the total existence of the writing and its true nature become revealed. However much important though ‘the birth of the reader’ is, it must not be assumed to be at the expense of the ‘death of the author’. The meaning as intended by the author should be allowed to come through, however not as a final signified, but rather as something of more ambiguous nature that can be reinterpreted by the reader. This issue is not something that is solely confined to the world of literature, but rather something that concerns every work of art created, whether it be a piece of writing, a painting, or architecture. The issue of creation, poiesis, still remains the same. Should the work of art brought forward be self referential and embody meaning only as intended by the ‘author’ or should it also have reference to its context, while at the same time also allowing for reinterpretation by its ‘reader’? Should the work of art reveal something else other than itself? Should architecture reveal something else other than itself? If so, then it should not have a “final signified”, it should not be a sign for something, it should not just mean something, but rather allow meaning to present itself to its ‘reader’. This can only be done if it is symbolically significant. Symbols are not mere signs, something that simply implies another thing.8 They hold a certain mystery and form our shared cosmology of images and emotions. They tie together our being by reconciling opposites in our psyche; reason and emotion, rational and irrational, conscious and unconscious all of which are part of being human.
7
Ibid pg.148 Carl Jung Man and His Symbols pg.92 10
8
The word symbol, in Greek συµβολο has its root in the verb συµβαλλει, which means to bring together, to contribute9. Something more is brought together with what is created, a meaning other than that as intended by its creator. A work of art with symbolic resonance thus reveals something else other than itself, as it is able to evoke response. The birth of the reader is exactly this response, the thoughts and feelings conjured up in him that allow him to engage with the work of art, to participate in it, and bring in his own meaning, so that in turn the true nature of the work of art is revealed. In art, the birth of the reader, or rather the viewer came about with the art of collage. Making the unity of the painting implicit meant that the real nature of the painting could only be revealed in the in the eyes and mind of the beholder. In this case the viewer becomes the space on which all these abstract forms- these fragments- that make up the painting are inscribed without any of them being lost. The nature of collage as a metaphorical drawing and symbolic representation, owes a lot to the nature of these fragments themselves. The fragment is the result of the dissolution of the whole, or the object. The fragment which can be seen as a fracture, as something which has been broken off from somewhere or as something which has been desituated, even though integral in its existence, still retains some reference to its past, to the original context to which it used to belong. However, at the same time as it cannot be a substitute for the whole, it is not a mere sign of the whole, but rather as a symbol contain the meaning and value of the whole.
9
Liddel and Scott
Greek English lexicon Oxford Press 11
Its ambiguous nature however provides a starting point for the possibility of forming something newly articulated every time, making the world of the possible meanings that the fragment can reveal inexhaustible. The implied unity of the fragments gives the possibility for a new radical structure to be articulated each time, however one which has reference to an original context to which these fragments belong to. This creative possibility of the fragment, as a starting point, a point of reference that has the possibility of revealing a whole, Dalibor Vesely suggests, was recognised first in literature and poetry, in what is known as an aphorism. Literally, the meaning of the word aphorism, or in Greek αφορισµος (αφ –οριζω), is to determine, to define10 to mark off by boundaries. Boundary (οριο), however is not just the point at which something stops, but also at which it begins to present itself. The end of something marks the beginning of something else. The boundary then, acts as this mediation between these two realities that are revealed. Aphorism has thus the ability to present, to reveal. Dalibor Vesely writes: “the real virtue of aphorism is its heuristic quality, its ability to discover a new insight into a personal world that may eventually become a common world”11. The fragment also shares this heuristic quality
12
as it can be used to
initiate symbolic meaning; that is, to take the fragment as a starting point which through our participation and intuition will reveal a whole to us, a whole that we put together, but one that refers to the original context that the fragments belonged to, this common world.
10
Liddel and Scott Greek English lexicon Oxford Press Vesely, Dalibor Architecture in The Age of Divided Representation pg.325 12 Heuristic from the Greek ευρισκω- to discover, but also to devise, to invent Liddel and Scott Greek English lexicon Oxford Press 12 11
In this light, collage can be seen as a visual text and the fragments that make it up can be compared to language, which has at its root a standardized form, however providing a whole world at our disposal to express and experience each time something new. And just as an author chooses his words to convey a particular meaning, so did the Cubist artists choose their fragments to initiate situational meaning while by their implied unity, evoking the viewer’s response and allowing him to bring his own interpretation into the work of art. Fernand Léger, in his painting The Card Party, shatters the human body and fuses the soldiers’ anatomy with that of the machine, which can be seen either to reflect the human body worn by war, or its transformation into a machine to show the precision, synchronized movement and discipline demanded of a soldier by the military; or as machines by stripping them of identity as human beings to show that rank and class among soldiers was no longer important in the trench.
13
1│2 Fernand Léger The Card Party, 1917 13
Antliff, Mark Leighten, Patricia Cubism and Culture pg.208 13
The use of common materials in collage, both as such fragments that evoke situational meaning, but also as materials that transcend their state to a new metaphorical significance, contribute to making collage a metaphoric medium. Metaphor, in Greek µεταφορα means the transferring to one word the sense of another
14
, from the verb φερω which means to bear. The use
of these material fragments, which bear situational meaning and new significance, transfer their sense to collage. In Picasso’s Still Life with Chair Canning, common place materials such as newspaper, an ephemeral medium, transcend their state to a new metaphorical significance, as they can be seen to have acquired the significance of more ‘precious’ artist materials. The use of newspaper at the same time, along with the depiction of life fragments, such as a pipe and a glass on a table suggest, by contemplation of these fragments, to the viewer, a café. By contemplating these fragments, the viewer is able to establish the narrative of the work of art, i.e. the Parisian café life, where people met, discussed, listened to music.
1│3 Pablo Picasso Still Life with Chair Canning 1912
14
Liddel and Scott 14
Greek English lexicon Oxford Press
Similarly, Picasso also uses newspaper cutouts in his collages to initiate political meaning and provoke by carefully chosing the newspaper articles that he used for his cut outs and which he would make sure were legible, while the use of colour in collages like Glass and Bottle of Suze, echoes the French flag.
. 1│4 Pablo Picasso Glass and Bottle of Suze 1912
Collage has therefore the ability to mediate between two realities, that of the ‘author’ and that of the ‘reader’, the ability to mediate between personal experience and the context in which it is situated. 15
This mediation between two realities, brings us to the next issue, that of transparency, a very important issue in translating certain principles of collage or cubist painting to architecture. These can be translated in a superficial manner, simulating appearance, or in a more profound manner through spatial organisation to establish a new perception. This according to Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky, marks the distinction between literal and phenomenal transparency. The ambiguity of perception that comes from the superimposition of planes or objects to allow their simultaneous interpretation is what gives them transparency. In Cubism ambiguity was possible through fragmentation, but where Analytical Cubism pulls elements apart, to reveal some inherent quality and then just reassembles them, Synthetic Cubism uses these fragments in a spatial organisation that favours the dissolution of planes and their superimposition to imply unity. The physical transparency of objects is suppressed so that through opaque planes, a figure ground play can be established, giving the image depth and allowing more than one reading, as at times different planes claim attention and come to the foreground while others dissolve in the background. This can be seen once more, in Picasso’s Still Life with Chair Caning 1.3 where several possibilities for the reading of the work of art are revealed. The glass, newspaper and pipe, sitting on a cafÊ table with a printed tablecloth, or placed on a glass table through which we view the seat of a chair, or on a glass table whose surface reflects the back of chair? A tension is created between these illusions, these imagined realities, and the presence of the glued-on imitation of chair caning; a tension between illusion and reality, or between fact and implication as C. Rowe 16
puts it. A tension created by their involvement in each other, no longer just separate. These structures do not represent the true nature of things as separate entities. The truth is deeper than mere facts end events and the ambiguous metaphorical space between fact and implication, established by phenomenal transparency, is needed to restore a certain irrationality and to create a new perception. Siegfried Giedon although proposing in his ‘Space, Time, Architecture’ that “irrationality is required to draw the world back to us, as rational buildings no longer mark the quintessentially human, but have become instead the cause of alienation from nature and society”15 suggests that the glass wall of the workshop wing of the Bauhaus at Dessau is analogous to Picasso’s painting L’Arlessienne.
1│5 Workshop wing of Bauhaus
15
1│6 Pablo Picasso L’Arlesienne
Siegfried Giedon quoted in Evans, Robin The Projective Cast pg. 70 17
The glass wall of the workshop wing might have transparent overlapping planes, however transparency is only literal due to the inherent qualities of the glass as a transparent material, contrary to the phenomenal transparency of the juxtaposed planes of the painting, while the space inside this glass wall without any tension or significant difference in the quality of spaces remains unambiguous.16 This kind of translation, is merely a simplification or reduction of an image to a transcription of geometrical elements to architecture, disregarding the potential of a drawing or image such a Cubist painting or collage, to create a tension between an illusion and something that is present, a tension between ‘real’ and ‘ideal’ or implied space. Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky however, although making the distinction between literal and phenomenal transparency, do “not intend to suggest that phenomenal transparency is a necessary constituent of modern architecture, nor that its presence might be used like a piece of litmus paper for the test of architectural orthodoxy”17 What makes the distinction however, between literal and phenomenal transparency, is that the emphasis when concerned with phenomenal transparency is on the process, rather than just the mimicking of form. Process is important. “If what is represented is a process, then what is made tells a story, a narrative, a myth”18 In collage, where ambivalence is preferred to resolution, since the unity of the fragments only implied, the emphasis is not on an end result, but exactly on the process.
16 17 18
Rowe, Colin Slutzky, Robert ‘Transparency; Literal and Phenomenal’ in Perspecta Vol.8 Ibid
18
A process, of the many becoming the one and of the one becoming the many, “the one never resolved because of the many that continue to impinge on it”.19
A process that as a result is never finished, never
resolved. No matter how much an illusion of completeness it remains a continuous process of becoming, of coming into being and a metaphor of our becoming
20
that tells the narrative, the story of our existence and
our being-in-the-world, as a “meeting place of the past, present and future, carrying forward the past in cultivating of the future and living this bodily momentum as actual present”21 The fragment, as used in collage, it too carries a past, present and future. Whether real or imaginary, the fragment must have a past, as it once belonged to something from which it has been broken off, and through the unity of synthesis in collage it has a future in the potential of its becoming, as well as the actuality of its presence. These elements constitute the essence of collage; the layering of ‘space’ and materials, the choice of materiality and the use of each material, by their juxtaposition to set up the tension between two realities and phenomenal transparency, the use of fragments as generators of the whole and of situational meaning. These qualities, or sensibilities, make collage a metaphorical way drawing and a poetic image, that established that the relationship between objects, and between the object and space is just as important, for the establishment of a narrative.
19
Alfred North Whitehead quoted in Kuspit, B. Donald ‘ Collage: The organizing principle in the age of the relativity of art’ Mestres Del Collage : De Picasso a Rauschenberg 25 Nov.05- 26 Feb.06 20 Ibid 21 Langer, Monika M Merlau Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception pp32 19
Dwelling- Space and Time If architecture, wants to resist its objectification so that it can be experienced subjectively, it “must consider the potential of narrative as the structure of human life, a poetic vision realised in space time”22 These elements that constitute the essence of collage as a metaphorical drawing, as described previously, can be used to restore the poetic element in architecture. But, how is it that this poetic vision of human life is realised in space and time? The notion of dwelling is a key notion to analysing the spatiality and temporality of our embodied existence. Martin Heidegger in Poetry Language Thought suggests our existence to be closely linked to the notion of dwelling. “To be human means to be on this earth as a mortal. It means to dwell.”23 In the same book Heidegger also says: “The nature of building is letting dwell”24 So what is this relationship between our existence in the world, our dwelling on this earth, and building which also seems to be inseparable from this notion of dwelling? Heidegger uses the German meaning of the word bauen “to build” which also means “to dwell” and is in turn derived form the imperative form bis, used as ‘ich bin, tu bist’ meaning “I dwell, you dwell” , but also as ‘ich bin, to bist’ meaning – “I am, you are”. So to build means also to dwell, and to dwell means also to be. What is then the common ground in this relationship between building, dwelling and being? 22
Gomez, Perez Alberto Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge pg.392 Heidegger, Martin Poetry, Language, Thought pg.145 24 Ibid 20 23
If we start from ourselves as beings in the world25 and our bodily existence, Merleau-Ponty says “our body is an expressive space”26; a ‘space’ since as a living creature we occupy space, and ‘expressive’ in the potential of expressing different actions and engaging in different situations. Our body as a dimension exists in space and time, so our existence in this world implies our engagement with spatiality, and temporality in the impermanence of our stay on earth as mortals. This impermanence of our stay on earth makes us dwellers of this earth as we would be dwellers of any residence. Dwelling as such is a basic condition of our being; it is our being at home in the world. This sense of being at home comes from a sense of intimacy, a sense of belonging, a sense of place. This sense of place then comes from the intimate experience of space, in the activities we engage in. It is space that is activated by time that grants a sense of place.27 Dwelling as a noun could then be seen as a place that embodies this sense of belonging, this being in the world, this feeling of being at home in the world. The act of building on the other hand, by bounding space, establishes this intimacy and sense of place. The ‘embodiment’ of this place of dwelling, is then achieved through building. So this common ground then between building, dwelling and being seems to be both space and time. So this intimacy and sense of place28
25 This is Heidegger’s notion of embodied existence, of being-in-the-world, our body and mind as one immersed in the world 26 Langer, Monika M Merlau Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception pg.47 27 Harries, Karsten in ‘Building and Dwelling’ in The Ethical Function of Architecture discusses the notion of dwelling in relation to Heidegger’s Black forest Farmhouse, “To dwell is to feel at home. Building allows for dwelling by granting a sense of place.” 28 Harries, Karsten in ‘Place over Space’ in The Ethical Function of Architecture talks of Heidegger’s view that the “attack on distance” that came with the use of modern technology and the greater sense of freedom it grants, has also been “an attack on intimacy” 21
that building can achieve, can only be if building both as a verb and noun, i.e. both as a process and end result engage with space and time. To engage with space and time, means no longer to consider space as a dead object, that can just be understood by geometry, but as a living structure that is in constant dialogue with our being. As embodied creatures, we experience through our bodies with all our senses. As M.Ponty says “the things I perceive, I perceive always in reference to body, as I have an immediate awareness of my body itself as it exist towards them”29 In recent times, increasing specialisation and classification of knowledge, helped gain greater control over the practical tasks of technology, but disregarded human experience which perceives the world as interconnected meanings. We do not know things separately as mathematics or physics, even though we try to understand them under these principles; nor do we experience them as such individually just through vision. We do not understand space as a mathematical model or just geometry, nor do we experience it from a single point of view. We experience spatiality through our bodies, and we establish the spatial structure of the world around us to which we belong, through all our senses inseparable, engaging constantly with the actual and possible structures of the world.30 Actual structures being a space as it is, as established31 and possible structures being those spatial conditions that engage with the phenomena subject to the passage of time, such as the play of light on objects depending on the suns path in the sky and the
29
Langer, Monika M Merlau Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception pg.43 Vesely, Dalibor in ‘ The nature of Communicative Space’ in Architecture in The Age of Divided Representation pg.48 says “spatiality is dependent not on position or direction of human body but on continuity between actual and possible structures of the surrounding world to which the human body belongs” 31 Ibid 22 30
movement of the clouds, the change of seasons. These possible structures, these situations, cannot be reduced to mathematics or predicted by a mathematical model and so we cannot assume that scientific measure refers to reality as a whole. They are not objects that can be understood from a single point of view. They have to be experienced and so the nature of architecture should allow us to participate in it both spatially and temporally so that while mediating between our bodies and the world, through our participation the work of architecture itself also becomes complete and its true nature revealed. “Poetry is what really lets us dwell, but through what do we attain to a dwelling place. Through building. Poetic creation which lets us dwell is a kind of building�32 The next chapter will be looking at work from Le Corbusier and Carlo Scarpa, in the context of these themes, and in referece to the perception and response to the elements of collage, their collagiste sensibility
33
in
the treatment of form and materiality to restore the poetic element in architecture that lets us dwell.
32
Heidegger, Martin Poetry, Language, Thought pg.213 The term collagiste sensibility is used by Dagmar Motycka Weston in ‘Le Corbusier and the restorative fragment in the Swiss Pavillion, and was chosen as the term to describe best the sense of collage especially with respect to the collage-like treatment of tectonic and materiality in architecture 23 33
Collagiste Sensibility to sensibility of building Le Corbusier was closely involved with the movement of Cubism which rejected perspectivity. In architecture this meant the dissolution of the perspectival understanding of space34. The fragments as used in collage were juxtaposed in a new context to enrich meaning and act as generators of the whole. Metaphorical meaning and analogical thought achieved by the ambiguity of layered space and use of fragments to generate situational meaning are some of these elements of collagiste sensibility used by Le Corbusier. Using the more explicit example of Le Corbusier’s Beistegui apartment solarium we can start to see how tectonic and materiality start to be informed by this collagiste sensibility, to create ambiguity and generate situational meaning. Looking at the Beistegui apartment solarium, we see
2│1
34
Le Corbusier’s Beistegui apartment solarium
Weston, Dagmar Motycka ‘Le Corbusier and the restorative fragment at the Swiss Pavilion in Tracing Modernity; Manifestations of the Modern In Architecture and the City pg. 174 24
a furnished living room enclosed by walls, but without a ceiling. Even the walls which are present are just low enough to make visible only monuments of Paris such as the Arc de Triumph, rather than the Parisian landscape itself. This can be seen as a fragment deliberately made visible to evoke situational meaning as a symbol of Paris. At the same time the sky as a ceiling and the use of a grass carpet on the floor implies open space, while at the same time the actual presence of the walls and fragments such as the chairs, cushions and fireplace imply a closed interior. The space becomes an ambiguous inside outside, open to a series of readings, and depending on which of the fragments claims attention to either reveal the context of a room, a city or nature. This ambiguity by the juxtaposition of different realities that are against our expectations, is needed to restore a certain irrationality and draw us into forming a new perception of the space. Le Corbusier’s Beistegui apartment solarium itself at the same time however, seems to be a fragment in its own right, only part of the building, resembling the setting of a Surrealist painting. Perhaps a better example to demonstrate Corbusier’s collagiste sensibility would be The Swiss Pavilion in Paris, in which Dagmar Motycka Weston in the essay ‘Le Corbusier and the restorative fragment at the Swiss Pavilion’ sees the subversion of the modernist rational approach, by the overlaying of the pristine surfaces of a purist building, to create tension and a poetic analogy between different elements of the building. The most dominant feature of the Swiss Pavilion seems to be the curved rubble wall. The wall serves as a de-situated fragment, as the bulky stone brings to mind Swiss mountainous landscapes. At the same time it’s curved, organic form sets up a tension with the orthogonal steel frame structure of the residential block above. However, the mortar joins on the wall “resemble a lacework veil draped over the wall, giving a 25
sense of strange dematerialisation and lightness”35. The delicate ‘weaving’ of the mortar joins not only sets up a tension with the bulkiness of the stone, at the same time, resembles the foliage that stands in front of it, creating a “thematic tension of affinities and contrasts, challenging the absoluteness of physical qualities and abolishing facile preconceptions which see each object as a determinate, discrete entity.”36 A collagiste sensibility here is shown both by tectonic form and materiality to set up an analogy. Analogy would be a better word to use here, rather than comparison, as analogy is a “symbolic structure reflecting resemblances, similarities and eventually the balanced tension of sameness and difference between individual phenomena”37
2│2 Curved rubble wall and orthogonal residential block of The Swiss Pavillion 35
Ibid pg. 180 Ibid 181 37 Vesely, Dalibor Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation pg.136 26 36
Moving on to the interior spaces of the ground floor they are not the homogeneous, standardised modernist spaces. They are not endowed with the pristine crisp whiteness you would expect of a Purist building, that seems to defy the passage of time, but rather irregularly shaped spaces of organic form and materiality that seem to engage with and reflect the passage of time. “The varied materials begin to have a life… which allows for a gradual transformation through use and weathering, as in the case of the rubble wall or the board marked concrete of the pilotis…engaging with temporality as a poetic element”38 Even when unambiguous materials such as glass are used, the inherent qualities of glass are used in such a way as to create ambiguous and fluid space. By layering clear glass with semi transparent glass to give different levels of transparency, during the daytime under the shadow of the pilotis view into the interior spaces is obscured and the illusion of being underwater is created, while the fluidity of space contrasts that of the rigid unambiguous space above. During the night when the interior is lit up, these spaces are revealed while the mass of the residential block above becomes dark matter. The material language set up by the sensitive use of glass in this way, takes us back to the distinction C. Rowe makes between literal and phenomenal transparency. Here, although Le Corbusier makes use of the inherent qualities of glass, however not just its transparent qualities which one would expect to result in a literal transparency like that of the glass wall of the workshop wing of the Bauhaus, but also its planar qualities, so the collagiste sensibility with which the glass is overlaid sets up the tension between real and implied
38
Weston, Dagmar Motycka ‘Le Corbusier and the restorative fragment at the Swiss Pavilion in Tracing Modernity; Manifestations of the Modern In Architecture and the City pg. 183 27
space, while also engaging with temporality to give a background foreground play of the different planes. The ground floor space, already irregularly shaped is interrupted also by the positioning of fragments in this fluid space; the double column and radiator beside the entrance, the glass enclosed lift, the stair bordered by the ventilation duct.
2│3 The fluid space of the ground floor interior of the Swiss Pavilion
28
A collagiste sensibility is also evident in the work of Carlo Scarpa, and it can be seen in the entire process of his work, form drawing, to the detailing of the joint, to the whole building. Especially, since most of his known works are interventions into existing buildings, rather than new ones altogether. The adoration of the joint as a fragment and generator of the whole here is at its peak! Scarpa “would not start from a general set up to focus on structural joints and mouldings, he would reverse the process, attacking with ferocious inventiveness and extraordinary tension of energy each and every detail in order to make them signifying in certainty that from their dialogue and interlacement it would spontaneously spring the message of the whole.”39 The entire intervention takes the character of a collage; the layering of the spaces over the old ones, and the careful choice of materials sets up the tension between the age-weathered materials and freshly applied ones. In the city of Venice, water and water levels are of great importance and greatly influence the everyday lives of its residents. There is also a long and still strong tradition in crafts. Scarpa uses these themes to set up the narrative of the work of architecture, while at the same time expressing the idiosyncrasy of a unique city like Venice. The Querini Stampalia foundation in Venice, is entered via a bridge, through one of the windows that has been turned into a doorway. The new bridge seems to be of both symmetrical and asymmetrical character at the same time! From a distance, the central deck and the same angle of inclination of the handrail in either direction, give the illusion of symmetry, while in reality the asymmetrically is found in the different 39
Frampton, Kenneth ‘ Notes on the Fragmentary Architecture of Carlo Scarpa’ in Fragments; Architecture and the Unfinished pg.383 29
number of steps and the different treatment of these steps on either side. “The banks emerge as banks only as the bridge crosses the stream”40, and the bridge designed by Scarpa, with the tension set up between its symmetrical and asymmetrical character seems to indicate the different context on either bank and create two different thresholds for the two different end conditions; the horizontal surface of the campo at one end, and the vertical penetration of the façade at the other end41. The bridge not only stresses the difference of these end conditions, but the treatment of the jointing and handrail, sets up the richly articulated tone that will continue inside. The fragment takes the form of the joint here, as a generator of the tone and atmosphere of the whole building. There are two handrails and no balustrade and the structure of the jointing becomes more and more delicate until you reach the highly tactile nature of the upper handrail.
2│4 The handrail to the bridge of the Guerini Stampalia foundation and detail of the joint
40
Heidegger, Martin Poetry, Language, Thought pg. 152 Murphy, Richard Architecture in Detail; Querini Stampalia Foundation 30
41
The overall treatment and presence of the bridge is also juxtaposed with the old traditional bridge that is situated just adjacent. This tension set up, reflects Scarpa’s belief that style should not just be imitated. “Buildings that imitate look like humbugs and that’s the way they are”42 The way things were made reflected a different way of life and a different way of doing things; to imitate the end result, would just be false. Scarpa turns to process to reinvent and reinterpret! From the entrance, the staircase that takes you up to the library, is an articulation between old and new which are treated with the same sensitivity. The risers of the refaced stairway are divided in two so that the surface of the old stone stair is visible at the centre and at the edges where the balustrades are anchored. In this way both the old and new staircase are simultaneously visible and coexist in time.
2│5
The staircase to the library - Simultaneous presence of both the old and new staircase
42
Ibid 31
Progressing from the entrance room, one has to turn parallel to the canal and step down into a marble floor, edged with a concrete moat. The exaggerated moat serves to express the insertion of these new elements into the existing fabric, whilst also being both a practical and mental barrier for the high tide, acqua alta, a frequent phenomenon in Venice.
2│7 The concrete moat
32
Water and its fluctuating levels are used here to evoke temporality and Scarpa engages with these natural phenomena by encouraging water invasion from the canal through the grilled Watergates. Form the water edge ‘ladder stairs’ made of cast concrete and capped with stone, square in shape with a corner cut off at 45˚ fit together in such a way, that the sequence of descent or ascent is like that of a stair, one foot follows the other. Each capping has a narrow slot, so that the visitor is constantly aware of the depth and nature of material stepped upon.43 In addition to this the fact that one is forced to climb over the kerb into the new floor to climb down the stairs, once again helps to reinforce our perception of the intervention and insertion of a new passageway. At the same time, the uniqueness of position and shape of each step act as a datum for the level of water, a reference point on which water level measurements can be registered. Scarpa uses the temporality of tides as a poetic element, marking the passage of time, while even the use of materials is used to accentuate and engage with such natural phenomena, such as the play of light and the reflection of water on the polished surface of the stone steps!
2│8
43
Ibid 33
In the main exhibition room, the asymmetry and unexpected rhythms of the floor slabs set within bands of stone draw our eyes towards the far end of the room and the garden.
2│9
Main exhibition room and view to the garden
The frameless glass separating the garden from the exhibition room creates an ambiguity between what is inside/outside space, even more so because the same materials used for the exhibition room floor continue outside. Once again, like in Le Corbusier’s Swiss Pavillion, the duality of day and night is used to bring different elements into focus. The slabs of travertine stone on the walls are interrupted by vertical fluorescent lights behind etched glass set flush with the surface of the stone wall, so that during the daytime, in bright light these lights are hardly noticeable, while daylight coming in from the garden is reflected on the bands of stone on the floor. At night time, it is the rhythm of the fluorescent lights that comes in the foreground.
34
The final element of this topographic narrative44 is the garden. A long narrow watercourse runs behind a retaining wall, at the level of the lawn, which acts as a horizontal plane, a horizon in a sense, in reference to which visitors move up and down45; our movement becoming a constant reminder of the fluctuating levels of the tide whose measurements are in relation to the sea level.
2│10
The watercourse as an impermeable horizontal plane- a datum
Here Scarpa also makes use of fragments such a sculpture at the water source, a maze through which the water finds its route, as a metaphor for Venice, the City of Water with its multitude of canals and islands! At the other end of the watercourse, a stone lion once again symbolises Venice. A shallow pond in the garden, filled to the brim with water, creates that feeling of tension when water is about to overflow, a tension all too familiar to the Venetians. The presence of water at the same time, as well as evoking temporality and situational meaning, also contributes to the experience of the space.
44 45
Frampton, Kenneth ‘Notes on Fragmentary architecture of Carlo Scarpa’ pg365 Murphy, Richard Architecture in Detail; Querini Stampalia Foundation 35
The visitor is invited to sit down by the pond, dip his fingers in the water on a hot summer day, while the flow of the water which is finally swallowed up by a well at the end of the watercourse to return back to the source, adds to the acoustic experience of the place.
2│11 Collagiste treatment of the garden
The garden seems to be the place where all the themes encountered in the building seem to reoccur. The watery realm of Venice with its fluctuating tides, the change of seasons and the passage of time, while at the same time drawing in the participation of the visitor, making his experience as intense as it is visually also acoustically and tactile. 36
Nowhere else is the establishment of a topographic narrative more evident in Scarpa’s work than in the Brion Cemetery in S.Vito di Altivole in Treviso, a garden more than a building with a sequence of built fragments. Upon entering, one is faced with the choice of either going left toward the arcosolium or right to the meditation platform. The water pavilion is accessed by a narrow causeway with water on both sides and a glass door stands on the way to the meditation platform. The glass door can only be opened by pressing the sheet of glass into the water, something which not only requires the participation of the visitor, the entire body must participate to lower the door, taking up a foetus-like position as if to re enter the mother’s womb46, or rather earth’s womb by returning to the ground, a metaphor for death.
2│12 The system of pulleys for the movement of the glass plate
The meditation platform itself which looks like a long box is reminiscent of a sarcophagus. Once on the platform, if one stands up the horizon is 46
Zambonini, Giuseppe ‘Process and Theme in the Work of Carlo Scarpa’ Perspecta Vol.20 pg.40 37
no longer visible, so the pool becomes the focal point and the different objects immersed in the water at different levels revealed, making the surface of the water the horizon, horismos, the boundary between the two worlds, one above and one below the water. The meditation platform becomes a place of meditation on death and life, our stay in this world.
2│13
The meditation platform and alignment with arcosolium
The meditation platform is aligned with the axis of the arcosolium at the other end of the garden. The arcosolium, an arch tomb shelters the sarcophagi of Giuseppe Brion and his wife. The arcosolium is the conceptual hinge of the cemetery as the 45Ëš angle of the arch directs the visitor towards the mausoleum of the family. The acoustic experience of the place is just as important as the visual perception of the cemetery. At the entrance, the prefabricated concrete slabs sit on hollow space as the water channel runs beneath them; our 38
footsteps echo our journey to the glass wall and the sound of the pulleys and steel cables as it is being submerged. The relationship between these fragments, whether they are actual built fragments or themes carried out in space and time as particular moments that have to be experienced, and the unity of the whole (even if only implied) juxtaposes beliefs such as that only the plan is a generator. With great collagiste sensibility, the detail takes the role of the generator. “Rather than being appreciated as a singular image, the palimpsest of Brion Cemetery can only be understood as an unfolding progression, passing continually from part to part and joint to joint”47 Carlo Scarpa’s work has been said to only attain a semblance of unity through the establishment of a topographic narrative48. It is exactly this representation of a progression in spatial sequence and process, an open ended process, an action undertaken at a given moment in time that give the work of architecture a story, a narrative.
47
Frampton, Kenneth ‘ Notes on the Fragmentary Architecture of Carlo Scarpa’ in Fragments; Architecture and the Unfinished pg.383 48 ibid pg.365 39
Conclusion “The poetical content of reality, the a priori of the world, which is the ultimate frame of reference of any truly meaningful architecture, is hidden beneath a layer of formal explanations”49 The attempt of the scientific world to define our human condition purely in terms of rationality, or as a separate entity from irrationality, has failed to see that logic and the mind are not separate from the realm of bodily experience. The art of collage, an art of resistance at its conception, was a resistance to this increasing rationalisation of life, and the overshadowing of its subjective nature along with the whole range of emotions and bodily experience. Where science failed to recognise that things are not just this or the other, art recognised that reality is but a delicate balance between things. Georges Braque, one of the founding members of the Cubist movement and ‘inventor of collage’ writes: “The space between seems to me as essential an element, as what they call the object. The subject matter consists precisely of the relationship between these objects and between the object and the intervening spaces. How can I say what the picture is of when relationships are always things that change? What counts is the transformation.”50 Architectural space should not be treated as an object either, but as living structure undergoing transformation by the experiencing person that participates in it and continually reinterprets it. The principles of 49
Gomez, Perez Alberto Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science pg.6 Georges Brague quoted in Vesely Dalibor Architecture in The Age of Divided Representation pg.338 40 50
collage can then be seen as a way of establishing such open ended architecture that embraces the poetic content of reality, in the same way that collage embraces the fact that what really matters are the relations between things and that objects are not this or that but the ‘in-between’.
Le Corbusier- plate of Milieu (in between) from Poeme de l’angle droit
41
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42
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Rowe, Colin – Slutzky, Robert ‘ Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal’ Perspecta: The Yale University Press Vol.8
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Zambonini, Giuseppe ‘Process and Theme in the work of Carlo Scarpa’ Perspecta: The Yale University Press Vol.20
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Norberg-Schulz, Christian ‘Heidegger’s thinking on atchitecture’ Perspecta: The Yale University Press Vol.20
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Vesely, Dalibor ‘Surrealism and Architecture’ Architectural Design 1978 Volume 48/2-3
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Kubova, Alena ‘ Fragment sociologique de l’habitat: une généalogie de datascapes’ L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui Issue 345 Mais- Avril 2003
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Paczowski, Bohdan ‘Langage- Collage- Bricollage’ L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui Issue 343 Nov.- Dec. 2002
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