Picos de Europa / Capilla-Vallejos Arquitectos

Picos de Europa / Capilla-Vallejos Arquitectos

Retinal Architecture and Loss of Plasticity by Juhani Pallasmaa

The architecture of our time is turning into the retinal art of the eye.
Architecture at large has become an art of the printed image fixed by the hurried eye of the camera. The gaze itself tends to flatten into picture and lose its plasticity; instead of experiencing our being in the world, we behold it from outside as spectators of images projected on the surface of the retina.

As buildings lose their plasticity and their connection with the language and wisdom of the body, they become isolated in the cool and distant realm of vision. With the loss of tactility and the scale and details crafted for the human body and hand, our structures become repulsively flay, sharp-edged, immaterial, and unreal. The detachment of construction from the realities of matter and craft turns architecture into stage sets for the eye, devoid of the authenticity of material and tectonic logic.
[...]
The current over-emphasis on the intellectual and conceptual dimensions of architecture further contributes to a disappearance of the physical, sensual embodied essence of architecture.

In “Questions of Perception; Phenomenology of Architecture”
by Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa and Alberto Pérez-Gómez

Architecture of the Senses by Juhani Pallasmaa

Every touching experience of architecture is multi-sensory; qualities of matter, space, and scale are measured equally by the eye, ear, nose, skin, tongue, skeleton and muscle.
Architecture involves seven realms of sensory experience which interact and infuse each other.
[…]
A walk through a forest or a Japanese garden is invigorating and healing because of the essential interaction of all sense modalities reinforcing each other; our sense of reality is thus strengthened and articulated.
[…]
The senses do not only mediate information for the judgment of the intellect, they are also means of articulating sensory thought.

In “Questions of Perception; Phenomenology of Architecture”
by Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa and Alberto Pérez-Gómez

Silence, Time, and Solitude by Juhani Pallasmaa

However, the most essential auditory experience created by architecture is tranquility. Architecture presents the drama of construction silenced into matter and space; architecture is the art of petrified silence.
[..]
An architectural experience silences all external noise; it focuses attention on one’s very existence. Architecture, as all art, makes us aware of our fundamental solitude. At the same time, architecture detaches us from the present and allows us to experience the slow, firm flow of time and tradition. Buildings and cities are instruments and museums of time. They enable us to see and understand the passing of history.
Experiencing a work of art is a private dialogue between the work and the viewer that excludes other interactions. “Art is made by the alone for the alone”, as Cyrille Connolly writes in The Unique Grave. Melancholy lies beneath moving experiences of art.

In “Questions of Perception; Phenomenology of Architecture”
by Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa and Alberto Pérez-Gómez

Images of Muscle and Bone by Juhani Pallasmaa

There is an inherent suggestion of action in images of architecture, the moment of active encounter or a promise of use and purpose. A bodily reaction is an inseparable aspect of the experience of architecture as consequence of this implied action. A real architectural experience is not simply a series of retinal images; a building encountered – it is approached, confronted, encountered, related to one’s body, moved about, utilized as a condition for other things, etc.

As we open a door, our body weight meets the weight of the door; our legs measure the steps as we ascend a stair, our hand strokes the handrail and our entire body moves diagonally and dramatically through space.

A building is not an end to itself; it frames, articulates, restructures, gives significance, relates, separates and unites, facilitates and prohibits.
Authentic architectural experiences consist of approaching, or confronting a building rather that the façade; of the act of entering and not simply the frame of the door, of looking in or out of a window, rather than the window itself.

The authenticity of architectural experience is grounded in the tectonic language of buildings and the comprehensibility of the act of construction to the senses. We behold, touch, listen and measure the world with our entire bodily existence and the experiential world is organized and articulated around the center of the body. Our domicile is the refuge of our body, memory and identity. We are in constant dialogue and interaction with the environment, to the degree that it is impossible to detach the image of the Self from its spatial and situational existence. “I am the space, where I am” as the poet Noel Arnaud established.

In “Questions of Perception; Phenomenology of Architecture”
by Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa and Alberto Pérez-Gómez

The Task of Architecture by Juhani Pallasmaa

The timeless task of architecture is to create embodied existential metaphors that concretize and structure man’s being in the world. Images of architecture reflect and externalize ideas and images of life; architecture materializes our images of ideal life.
Buildings and towns enable us to structure, understand, and remember the shapeless flow of reality and, ultimately, to recognize and remember who we are. Architecture enables us to place ourselves in the continuum of culture.
[…]
In memorable experiences of architecture, space matter and time fuse into one single dimension, into the basic substance of being, that penetrates the consciousness. We identify ourselves with this space, this place, this moment and these dimensions as the become ingredients of our very existence. Architecture is the art of mediation and reconciliation.

In “Questions of Perception; Phenomenology of Architecture”
by Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa and Alberto Pérez-Gómez

the space of architecture by Alberto Pérez-Gómez

"If architecture can be said to have a poetic meaning we must recognize that what it says is not independent of what it is. Architecture is not an experience that words translate later. Like the poem itself, it is its figure as presence, which constitutes the means and ends of the experience.
[…]
In an attempt to clarify the ultimate status and specificity of architecture as a Fine Art it was declared, indeed for the first time (1898), that architecture was the art of space, its intentional raison d’être, according to Schmarzow, was the artistic manipulation of space.
[…]
Fully to address the dangers of aestheticism, reductive functionalism and either conventional or experimental formalism, architecture must consider seriously the potential of narrative as the structure of human life, a poetic vision realized in space-time. The architect, in a sense, now must also write the “script” for his dramas, regardless of whether this becomes an explicit or implicit transformation of the “official” program. This is, indeed, a crucial part of his design activity, and also the vehicle for an ethical intention to inform the work.”

In “Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture”
by Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa and Alberto Pérez-Gómes

de re aedificatoria

"Let it be said that the security, dignity, and honor of the republic depend greatly on the architect: it is who is responsible for our delight, entertainment, and health while at leisure and our profit and advantage while at work, and in short that we live in a dignified manner free from any danger.
In view of the delight and wonderful grace of his works, and of how indispensable they haven been proved, and in view of the benefit and convenience of his inventions, and their service to posterity, he should no doubt be accorded praise and respect, and be counted among those most deserving of mankind's honor and recognition."

in "De re aedificatoria" by Leon Battista Alberti's in 1440's

thinking architecture

acabei de ler o livro "Thinking Architecture"
do arquitecto Peter Zumthor,
um livro bonito de se ler e acabei de descobri que
o autor foi o vencedor do Prémio Pritzker deste ano.

http://archidose.blogspot.com/2009/04/pritzker-architecture-prize-2009-peter.html

thinking architecture

"There is a power in the ordinary things of everyday life, as Edward Hopper's paintings seem to say. We only have to look at them long enough to see it.
[...]
Precious moments of intuition result from patient work.
[...]
I frequently come across buildings that have been designed with a good deal of effort and will to find special form, and I find I am put off by them. The architect responsible for the building is not present, but he talks to me unceasingly from every detail, he keeps on saying the same thing, and I quickly lose interest.
Good architecture should recieve the human visitor, should enable him to experience it and live in it , but it should not constantly talk at him.
[...]
To me, buildings can have a beautiful silence that I associate with attributes such as composure, self-evidence, durability, presence, and integrity, and with warmth and sensuousness as well; a building that is being itself, being a building, not representing anything, just being.
[...]
I listen to the sounds of the space, to the way materials and surfaces respond to touching and tapping, and to silence that is a prerequisite of hearing."

in "Thinking Architecture" by Peter Zumthor - Birkhäuser

architecture of the everyday

Acabei de ler o livro "Architecture of the Everyday" edited by Steven Harris and Deborah Berke,
Princeton Architectural Press, Yale Publications on Architecture.
Interessante, mas não recomendo.

critical regionalism

"The forms that people used in other civilizations or in other periods of our own country's history were intimately part of the whole structure of their life. There is no method of mechanically reproducing these forms or bringing them back to life; it is a piece of rank materialism to attempt to duplicate some earlier form, because of its delight for the eye, without realizing how empty a form is without the life that once supported it. There is no such thing as a modern colonial house any more than there is such thing as a modern Tudor house. [...]
If one seeks to reproduce such a building in our own day, every mark on it will betray the fact that it is fake, and the harder the architect works to conceal that fact, the more patent the fact will be. [...]
The great lesson of history - and this applies to all the arts - is that the past cannot be recaptured except in spirit. [...] Our task is not to imitate the past, but to understand it, so that we may face the opportunity of our own day and deal with them in an equally creative spirit."

"As with a human being, every culture must both be itself and transcend itself; it must make most of its limitations and must pass beyond them; it must be open to fresh experience and yet it must maintain its integrity. In no other art is that process more sharply focused than in architecture."

by Lewis Mumford
in "Critical Regionalism" by Liane Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonis

Built Upon Love

terminei de ler

e recomendo a quem ama ser arquitecto

Built Upon Love

"Like literature and film, architecture finds its ethical praxis in its poetic and critical ability to adress the questions that truly matter for our humanity in culturally specific terms, revealing the enigmas behind everyday events and objects."

in "Built upon Love - Architectural Longing after Ethics and Aesthetics"
by Alberto Péres-Gómez, MIT Press

Built upon Love

"The world of humanity tolerates ambiguity, even madness and confusion, but not lack of meaning. Despite importante differences between spoken or written languages and other "plastic" or even "musical languages", they are all endowed with a communicative force. Because the poet cherishes the ambiguity of the word, poetry is closer to spoken language than to prose. While the prose writer imprisons language, the poet sets language free.
Likewise, while technology uses up matter to make utensils, poetic making sets matter free. Poetic matter has color, rhythm and texture, yet it is always something else: it is image.
A poetic work is a peculiar form of communication. Without ceasing to be language, it transcends language. A building will also be a poem if it expresses something other than its parts, its materials, its contruction process, its ideology, or the identity of its owner or inhabitants."

"To convey a moment of insight, a prose writer describes it. A poet, in contrast, evokes an experience, with all its contradictory qualities. Similarly, the architect uses rhythm, light and shadow, to re-create our first encounter with depth, the wondrous place of human dwelling that cannot be conveyed through descriptive geometry, a photographe, or an illusionistic reproduction. The experience is always surprising, like a clearing in the forest that we identify with a place in our dreams."

in "Built upon Love - Architectural Longing after Ethics ans Aesthetics"
by Alberto Péres-Gómez, MIT Press