And Now for a Non Sequitur

Hello freinds and bloggers. I am posting again for the first time since starting this blog, and I apologize for my absence - crit week plus end of semester assignments have been paralyzing. This paper I'm posting now is a bit of a non sequitur following our discussion of sustainability... I wrote it for Kai Mah's class on Space in Architectural History, and have found myself thinking obsessively about the topic. So here is my book review of Steven Holl's essays in the A+U edition titled "Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture." The paper:

On Architecture, Phenomenology, and Poetry:
a Few Remarks about Questions of Perception by Steven Holl


The later proponents of phenomenological theory, from Husserl to Merleau-Ponty, pursue phenomenology as a means to understand our experience as human beings. The questions raised by these inquirers of sensory experience are those that pure third-person science cannot address; questions of how we relate to our environment emotionally and spiritually, even poetically. Unlike most dogmatic cosmologies, which start with faith or myth and consider physicality almost as an afterthought, phenomenology as a philosophical method uses sensory perception – being in the world – as the starting point of inquiry. The goal is not to find hidden truths (esoterica) so much as it is to better understand ourselves as world-bound human beings.

Steven Holl, both in his work and his words, testifies to the spatial, temporal, and personal nature of sensory experience. Beyond buildings, Holl brings to architecture ideas of rhythm and process; his work addresses impressions, shadows, tactile moments, the stuff of being and perceiving in space. In his collection of essays in Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture, Holl writes of the built environment like a true phenomenologist, constructing a unified understanding of space through a collection of partial and collaged perspectives. To quote Holl:

Our experience of the city can only be, however, perspectival, fragmented, incomplete. This experience – unlike a static image – consists of partial views through urban settings, which offer a different kind of involvement or investigation than the bird’s eye view, which is typically used by architects and planners (48).

This is the city seen from the street, a “re-assertion of the human body as the locus of experience” (116), rhythmanalysis in action.

While he writes like a phenomenologist, however, Holl’s essays have an intent that suggests a difference between phenomenology as philosophical discipline and phenomenology for architecture and design; the former studies phenomena and experience for the purpose of understanding, the latter seeks to become a provocateur. The series of mini essays in Questions of Perception are referred to on the title page as “Phenomenal Zones” and bear such headers as “of Color” and “of Sound.” They read at times as exegesis of Holl’s work, at times as manifesto and manual for the phenomenally - minded architect. Phenomena and how they impress upon our senses is something studied by Holl with the intent to create a deployable architectural vocabulary.

Running beneath this stream of information and poetically rendered observations is a purpose revealed in Holl’s title essay by a quote from Rilke: “The attempt to convey heightened awareness is, in Rilke’s words, ‘a matter of becoming as fully conscious as possible of our existence’” (40). Rilke, a turn-of-the-century German poet, was regarded as a transitional figure between traditionalism and modernism. His work has been described as focusing on “the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety” (Wikipedia, Rilke). Later in his title essay, Holl writes:

“… born into this world of things, are we able to experience fully the phenomena of their interrelation, to derive joy from our perceptions? … To advance toward these hidden experiences, we must penetrate the omnipresent veil of mass media. We must fortify our defenses to resist the calculated distractions, which can deplete both psyche and spirit… Only by forcefully and passionately asserting our existence can we access what Mallarme termed the ‘force of the negative… that which removes the reality of things and delivers us from their weight.” (41)

Phenomena are ubiquitous, the experience of phenomena happens without question, without intention, but what emerges about Holl’s work from these quotes is his attempt to provoke a heightened awareness of phenomena and, by extension, ourselves. It is an attempt that seeks to provide some remedy and self-reflection in the face of rapidly proliferating distractions and anxieties in a technological and media saturated society.

In trying to sort out the particulars of this remedy, Holl appears closer to the pursuit of poetry than science. To follow his argument, it is necessary to put on the table one taboo word that even Holl omits from his essays (but not his work) - beauty. Take Holl’s NYU Department of Philosophy Renovation as a case in point: what makes that stark white stairwell stand out, with its shifting rainbows of prismatic light? Clearly, it surprises us because of its unexpected beauty, pure and simple. In the middle of Manhattan, in a building like many others around it, on our way from A to B, we come across a moment of beauty, so quietly accomplished, subtle but striking. Stop a minute. Look out the window. Sit on the sill. Then remember your watch, your appointments, and head off again, into the fray. Such moments of repose are indeed a remedy, and often few and far between. They are important, they alter the quality of our lives. To quote Holl:

Architecture holds the power to inspire and transform our day-to-day experience. The everyday act of pressing a door handle and opening into a light-washed room can become profound when experienced through sensitized consciousness. To see, to feel these physicalities is to become the subject of the senses. (40)

The beauty that Holl brings to his work, however, is not an iconic beauty, it’s natural beauty, filtered into form through studied acts of intention. This is where phenomenology really becomes architecture. The source behind the shifting rainbows is the shifting sunlight, and the simple and elegant intervention of prismatic windowpanes is the generator that draws awareness to the source, to the sun outside, and to our position inside. This is where the remedy takes shape, in countering the artificiality of our media-bombarded experience with a little kick towards the sun. Holl is a bit like Carlos Casteneda at such moments, without the drugs and surreality – Stop. Look. Listen. Forget who you are, so you can remember who you are, if only for a moment. Of course, he expresses it much more elegantly: “One of the tragedies of modern urban life is that the complex of urban constructions often puts us out of touch with the poetry and unpredictability of the everyday change in the weather” (83).

Take as comparison a recent work by Rem Koolhaus, the MTCC Student Center at IIT in Chicago. Here is a piece of architecture that seems to take as its premise the media saturation of today’s youth culture. What does Rem do with this idea? He piles on the saturation, he layers his space with more media than you can shake a stick at, creates pathways that converge and diverge like confusing intercontinental flights, slaps a tv monitor at every corner and slathers walls with hip imagery. Spending time in there is like spending time in a pinball machine, ADD’R’US. This building is a paean to the fray, to the inevitability of over-stimulation. There is certainly an intoxicating excitement about this space, but it also fails to offer even one moment of relief. There is no quiet corner, no place to escape, except outside. Leaving provides the only relief; crisp lawns and staid modernist glass boxes sit quietly there, perhaps never so well appreciated as in comparison.

Rem is the opposite of Holl. Rilke would have hated him. The punk-rock impulse can find a sort of methed-out truth in the building, but the architectural impulse feels like it just ate a pound of White Castle sliders. The point? Saturation shouldn’t necessary beget more saturation. The need to step away, regather, remember ourselves and check the weather outside (not on your Blackberry), will always be necessary in the face of excess.

Returning to the question of phenomenology, perhaps the work of architects like Steven Holl can help reinvigorate our discussion of the transformative power of architecture in daily life. The subtleties of space, light and form, the qualities of materials and the role they play in defining architecture are subjects now chalked up to nostalgic modernism. ‘Been there, done that,’ say the pundits. It is obvious, however, that the sensory experience of architecture will never be irrelevant, if we are indeed interested in the people who occupy the spaces we design. There is nothing hi-blown about this, it is a question of a fundamental interest in architecture, which is different from an interest in theory, fashion, even art. Don’t mistake Holl for a less-than-conceptual architect; the idea behind a project is as much a part of his picture of architecture as the phenomena he so engagingly writes about: “to fuse site, circumstance, and a multiplicity of phenomena, an organizing idea… a driving concept… is required. The unity of the whole emerges from the thread that runs through the variety of parts; whether it be one discrete idea or the interrelation of several concepts” (119). Steven Holl’s architecture straddles a boundary between highly conceptual contemporary work and traditional concerns for form, proportion, experience, poetry, beauty. In this way he transcends the containers of ideas – modernist, post-modernist, etc – into a place where architecture has all the richness of its conceptual potential without falling short of being good architecture.

Cara Ellis
M.ARCH Candidate, 2nd year
May 8th, 2008