Clodagh Somers- Visual Essay
The Study of Architecture as a Time Based Art……
Introduction
I plan to investigate whether a building is an exact translation of drawing, or at what point in time they translate. I would also like to look at architecture as a time based art, studying musical scores and labanotation (dance notation), as a point of reference to see if there is a method to record the 4th dimension (time) in architecture.
Has this attitude towards time, changed over time, do we get closer to a direct translation, as new technologies appear in architectural drawing allowing for more accurate detailing and visualization of the design project.
To Translate
“To translate is to convey. It is to move something without altering it. This is its original meaning and this is what happens in translator motion”.
In language, to assume there will be no change through translation is seen as naive and delusional. But by assuming its pure and unconditional existence in the first place, it can allow us to gain knowledge of the patterns of deviations from this imaginary.
In “Translations from Drawing to Building”, Evans suggests that something comparable happens in architecture between drawing and building, and that a similar suspension of critical disbelief is necessary in order to enable architects to perform their tasks at all. I would like to suggest also that, while such a fabrication may be made overt, this has not previously been done in architecture, and that because of this inexplicitness an unusual situation has arisen which, while on one hand the drawing might be vastly overvalued, on the other the properties of the drawing – its peculiar powers in relation to its putative subject, the building – are hardly recognized at all.
Evans was struck by what seemed at the time a peculiar disadvantage under which architects labour, never working directly with the object of their thought, always working at it through some intervening medium, almost always the drawing, while painters and sculptors, who might spend some time on preliminary sketches and maquettes, all end up working on the thing itself which, naturally, absorbed most of their attention and effort.
Retinal Imagery
Aspects of the pathology of today’s architecture can be identified through an examination of the ocular bias that has developed within our culture in the last century. As a result of the power of the eye over the other senses, architecture has turned into an art form of instant visual gratification. Instead of creating exemplified representations of the world, architecture projects visual images for the purpose of immediate influence. Two dimensionality of surfaces and materials, uniformity of luminance, as well as the slow elimination of micro climatic differences within buildings, further reinforces the tedious homogeneity of experience. The tendency in todays’ technology driven culture to standardize environmental surroundings and make the environment entirely unsurprising is causing a serious corporeal deprivation. This flattening of buildings exacerbates the translating of drawing to building, as the building breaks down to a few key images, and the opportunity for over lap between the images and the built diminish.
The task of architecture is to make visible “how the world touches us”( Merleau- Ponty, 1964) writes of the paintings of Paul Cezanne. In developing Goethe’s notion of life- enhancing in the 1980s, Bernard Berenson suggested that when experiencing a piece of art we imagine a genuine physical encounter through ‘ideated sensations’. In Berenson opinion the most important of these is called ‘tactile values’. In Berensons view, the work genuine art simulates our ideated sensation of touch, and this stimulation is life – enriching. Juhani Pallasmaa believes that genuine architectural work, also evoke similar ideated tangible sensations, which enhance ones experience of oneself.
As a consequence of modern architectures formal ideals, the architecture of our time usually creates viewpoints for the eye, which seem to originate from a single moment of time and evoke the experience of flattened temporality. Vision places us in the present tense, whereas haptic experience evokes the experience of a temporal continuum. The inevitable processes of ageing, weathering and wear are not usually considered as deliberate and positive elements in design; the architectural object exists in a timeless space, an artificial condition separated from the reality of time. The architecture of the modern movement aspires to evoke an air of ageless youth and of a perpetual present. The ideas of perfection and completeness further detach the architectural object from the reality of time and the traces of habitation. Consequently, our buildings have become revered to the effects of time, and the revenge of time. The obvious example for this would be Corbusier’s Villa Savoye, a clear visual image of modernist architecture, which tried to fight time and maintain the idea of perfection, only to suffer through time and neglect.
A particularly thought provoking example of the human need to experience and read time through architecture is the tradition of designed and built ruins, a fashion that reached mania in eighteenth century Britain and Germany. John Soane wrote a fictitious story of a future antiquarian, while constructing his own house –which included ruins. As well as representing the Bank of England as a ruin, in order to solidify the concept, and sell his visual image to the client.Collage and assemblage are favoured techniques of artistic representation in more recent times; these media enable a density and non-linear narrative through the association of fragmented images deriving from opposing origins. Collage invigorates the experience of tactility and time. Collage and film are the most characteristic art forms of our century, and have penetrated into all other forms of art, including architecture.
Form vs Matter
Gaston Bachelard believes images arising from matter, protrude deeper and more profound experiences, than images of strong visual forms. Matter evokes instinctive images and emotions, but modernity as a whole has been concerned with a strong visual form.
Aalto in his movement away from the Modern Movement, towards a multisensory engagement, made a clear step towards ‘images of matter’. Aalto suppresses the control of a singular visual image. His architecture is not dictated by an overriding conceptual idea right through to the last detail; it grows through separate architectural scenes, episodes and detail elaborations. This move from form to matter, was made by Aalto, along with others such as Erik Gunnar Asplund in the 1930s. Haptic and multisensory architecture makes the passing of time healing and enjoyable, whereas the architecture of strong forms and geometry attempts to build dams to halt the flow of time. Haptic architecture doesn’t struggle against time, it reinforces the course of time and makes it acceptable. It seeks to oblige rather than impress, evoking domesticity and comfort rather than admiration and awe.
Study of Aalto’s Sketches
Aalto used various orthographic drawings in his design work, as well as free flowing sketches densely populating his sheets. From studying his drawings of Maison Carre, Bazoches, France 1956-59, one can study how his drawing method reinforced his ideas of multisensory architecture. One can follow his hand over the page as lines were drawn and redrawn as he contemplated the placement of walls and spatial boundaries. The use of drawing allowed him to study sequences through the building, of movement and spaces. Treating the drawing like a series of shots, or scenes. Aalto used the plan to study relationships between the building and its surrounding context, and between adjoining rooms, however he also used sketch elevations and sections to analyse vertical conditions. By compiling detailed plans and sections Aalto gave a clear three-dimensional representation of the project.
Whereas the usual design process proceeds from a guiding conceptual image down to the detail, this architecture develops from real experiential situations towards an architectural form. As drawings, these buildings might sometimes appear vague, fragmentary or incomplete, as the design aims solely at qualities arising in the experiential situation.
Notation for Time Based Arts
A final part of my study was a search for a method of notation or representation for time in architectural drawings. To better understand and try to develop a notation I began to study other time based art forms such as music notation and labanotation. As well as various artist who’s work examines time.
In the essay “Architecture as a time based art” Rion Williard plays with the notion that it is the reciprocal relationship between people and spaces that makes architecture seen as a time based art. We need to see architecture not as a series of spaces, which we occupy, but, spaces that are created by human occupation. This is he same idea from which Rudolf Laban began his notation of dance from, using the geometry of the outstretched body to develop points within space. Both Labanotation and music notation acknowledge the necessity of a performer for the body of work to exist. Whether architectural representation could develop a time based architecture dependent on the building inhabitants to be its impetus, I am unsure, but possibly digital technologies might provide a future for this. It would have to examine the role of the traditional architect as originator, and create a system that allows for an organic architecture that is open to interpretation and improvisation.
Time Based Art
I found myself drawn to the work of Julie Merriman, who has an extensive body of work completed studying and recording buildings over time. I think that my personal favourite, as well as possibly the most relevant of her works is the series Dis-Location, studying the tearing down of social housing, both the Fatima Mansions and her work of the 1960s Ballymun Towers. The works embody movement and time, created with overlays of what looks like a time lapse of the tearing down of the towers. I also feel a depth of emotion within her work, possibly due to her choice of media (carbon on paper), or possibly that she manages to record this important social moments extremely effectively.
Conclusion
Through my studies I have concluded that there may not be a direct translation from drawing to building, but by accepting that there is, one can study what small or large overlap there is between the image and the built. The study of visual images, and form, and the corresponding reduction in overlap of time between concept and built, was interesting as the flattening of designs to a few images thus reduced the acceptable results for the project.
While haptic architecture such as Aalto’s Sanatorium, which was designed in smaller details and then brought together, have more points for overlapping. Aalto’s extensive use of the plan for designing also leads to a more holistic design where every part of the project has received the same careful detailing so that a more tactile architecture has been produced that can be experienced from any point and with multiple senses. This method I think leads to a building that has been designed with time, not a specific time (like the Villa Savoye) but for an extensive period of time.
Although there are various other methods of time based notation, I do not yet feel like there is anything suitable for architecture, or possibly architecture and architects are not ready to create a system which gives away so much of their control. I do believe that designers could consciously consider time as a key design component and possibly the work of J. Merriman could act as a touchstone for the work that would allow architects to think about their work simultaneously in multiple time frames.
Architecture & Time 