1 00:00:02,700 --> 00:00:06,060 Right. Okay. Hello, everyone. 2 00:00:06,060 --> 00:00:16,410 Today we are going to think about architecture and architectural theory and one particularly important strand of architectural theory, 3 00:00:16,410 --> 00:00:21,270 namely space and thinking about architecture space. 4 00:00:21,270 --> 00:00:27,990 But I was going to start the lecture by sort of think making some more general remarks about architecture. 5 00:00:27,990 --> 00:00:35,280 And I'm particularly thinking about where architecture might belong in in the history of art, 6 00:00:35,280 --> 00:00:41,010 because I think for those of you in your second year, we've done a little bit of architecture. 7 00:00:41,010 --> 00:00:45,150 We did a bit like you did a bit last year with me, but not very much. 8 00:00:45,150 --> 00:00:52,140 And I think it's sort of we don't often sink about as art historians, whether architecture might be a little bit different, 9 00:00:52,140 --> 00:01:01,880 something that we might have to study in different ways and think about in different ways to others what we might call art objects. 10 00:01:01,880 --> 00:01:08,130 And I think architecture occupies a slightly strange position in the history of art, teaching and history of art degrees. 11 00:01:08,130 --> 00:01:13,740 Architecture students such as myself often can be found in our history departments. 12 00:01:13,740 --> 00:01:17,760 But as I said, there are certain things that we might do differently. 13 00:01:17,760 --> 00:01:22,150 I think architecture also has a complicated relationship with the other visual arts, 14 00:01:22,150 --> 00:01:29,850 and it's a relationship that has the potential to put architecture in, rather in a rather powerful and important position. 15 00:01:29,850 --> 00:01:35,430 If you think about it, most of the visual arts have to exist. Other visual arts have to exist in architecture. 16 00:01:35,430 --> 00:01:44,400 And to some extent, architecture might be seen as a master discipline as the as the one sort of art forms. 17 00:01:44,400 --> 00:01:54,030 That's all the others, in theory, have to comply to. This is certainly what a great many sort of writers on architecture have seen. 18 00:01:54,030 --> 00:01:57,370 One writer on architecture, not necessarily an architect. He's trained as an architect. 19 00:01:57,370 --> 00:02:01,800 He wasn't very good, very good architect or better designer wallpaper. 20 00:02:01,800 --> 00:02:07,140 William Morris, who in eighteen eighty eight and a very famous tax revived architecture, 21 00:02:07,140 --> 00:02:12,990 which is mainly a tax concerned with with with the Gothic revival and theory behind the Gothic revival, 22 00:02:12,990 --> 00:02:18,450 noted at the very start that in fact architecture was a master art, that the old ornament. 23 00:02:18,450 --> 00:02:27,160 The other ornament lost a largely dependent on it. And what William Morris means here, I think we can see if we if we go and have a look at his house. 24 00:02:27,160 --> 00:02:31,340 Here is his house. The Red House, a very, very famous house of a house. 25 00:02:31,340 --> 00:02:38,040 It was famous, as famous, if not more famous for its decoration than for its design. 26 00:02:38,040 --> 00:02:42,690 I don't mean we don't we're not going to go into this in very much detail. As you probably know, this is a very, 27 00:02:42,690 --> 00:02:53,100 very famous furniture and and decorative features read I saw designed by a combination of Morris and Resources and Van Jones and et cetera, et cetera. 28 00:02:53,100 --> 00:02:55,800 That's actually the point that Morris is making in that quote. 29 00:02:55,800 --> 00:03:04,290 Is that as important as all these art and some of them have gone on to become very famous and important pieces of art in their own right? 30 00:03:04,290 --> 00:03:05,310 As important as they are, 31 00:03:05,310 --> 00:03:16,650 they think they will also have to obey the logic of the design of the House of Web design that has been by the architect Philip Webb, not by Morris. 32 00:03:16,650 --> 00:03:22,910 They will belong. They were all designed to belong somewhere within within Webbs overall design. 33 00:03:22,910 --> 00:03:31,960 Okay, this might be an extreme case, but I think it's but I think it's an important one that because of architectural spatial properties, 34 00:03:31,960 --> 00:03:40,350 it has the potential to be to be very, very the dominant art form in this respect. 35 00:03:40,350 --> 00:03:48,300 The early 20th century German architect burnetii takes us even further. And in a sort of artistic manifesto from 1918, 36 00:03:48,300 --> 00:03:55,460 actually just calls for the scrapping of boundaries across the visual arts and just lumping them all in one architecture. 37 00:03:55,460 --> 00:03:59,970 He says there will be an in the future. There will be no boundaries between the crafts, sculpture and painting. 38 00:03:59,970 --> 00:04:05,940 All will be one architecture. We don't know yet, but fingers crossed. 39 00:04:05,940 --> 00:04:11,890 So tight, like Morris sees the potential for architecture to encompass everything, 40 00:04:11,890 --> 00:04:18,880 for the potential for arts to actually just be one architectural or architectural decoration. 41 00:04:18,880 --> 00:04:25,770 I'm like Morris Toutes is sort of interested in buildings in which decorative arts obey the laws of the buildings. 42 00:04:25,770 --> 00:04:33,270 He didn't design very much, but one of the things he does designs is this the Glass Pavilion for an exhibition in Cologne in 1914. 43 00:04:33,270 --> 00:04:38,220 And like the Red House is, it's a sort of example of what we might call Stamkos work. 44 00:04:38,220 --> 00:04:43,350 So everything, you know, everything's being the same principle. It is a total work of art. 45 00:04:43,350 --> 00:04:49,500 But if you think about the general principle, of course, Stamps.com Square, particularly when it comes to this sort of stuff, it's architecture. 46 00:04:49,500 --> 00:04:53,460 Architecture is where the buck stops. All these other decorative arts in this case, 47 00:04:53,460 --> 00:05:01,390 lots and lots of mosaics ultimately have to end with architecture, architecture, as well as housing them. 48 00:05:01,390 --> 00:05:05,730 And I suppose that's the sort of this sort of pro architecture around that. 49 00:05:05,730 --> 00:05:11,590 I've just been on the concluding remarks. Is that what this tells us about architecture? 50 00:05:11,590 --> 00:05:16,020 Why architecture has this position is because of its inherently spatial properties, 51 00:05:16,020 --> 00:05:27,570 because of its three dimensional properties, but also because it is space in which humans live in the interactive or existing. 52 00:05:27,570 --> 00:05:33,030 If you think about it, the paintings and sculpture are, we can see as products of human society and culture, 53 00:05:33,030 --> 00:05:39,060 architecture is where human society and culture takes place on the whole. 54 00:05:39,060 --> 00:05:43,880 Here is a famous architectural story, Nicholas patterned on this subject. 55 00:05:43,880 --> 00:05:50,700 It says that what distinguishes architecture from paintings and sculpture is its spatial quality in this and only in this. 56 00:05:50,700 --> 00:05:56,770 No other artist can emulate the architect. Thus, the history of architecture is primarily a history of man and woman. 57 00:05:56,770 --> 00:06:04,920 Man shaping space and a historian must keep spatial problems always in the foreground. 58 00:06:04,920 --> 00:06:08,670 Which is fine, which is all well and good, and I think that, you know, that's that's quite an apparent point. 59 00:06:08,670 --> 00:06:11,970 That's quite an obvious point that architecture has. 60 00:06:11,970 --> 00:06:19,970 Has spatial properties, other art forms that perhaps lack. The problem, I think is, though, how as a historian of architectural, 61 00:06:19,970 --> 00:06:29,880 as somebody that studies or writes about architecture, how then do we write a history of humans shaping space? 62 00:06:29,880 --> 00:06:34,500 How do you go about that process? How do we deal with this with this property of architecture? 63 00:06:34,500 --> 00:06:41,820 The spatial properties of such a height, in perhaps his words? Do we keep spatial problems always in the foreground? 64 00:06:41,820 --> 00:06:49,410 Well, I think if you actually look at the history of architectural writing and the development of architectural history, 65 00:06:49,410 --> 00:06:54,000 potentially most historians have written about architecture, have not obeyed peasant. 66 00:06:54,000 --> 00:07:04,440 They have not kept spatial problems always in the foreground. As an example of this, as a as a historian that I think we probably all know, 67 00:07:04,440 --> 00:07:11,580 though Flynn's treatment of architecture is too low is largely contrary to what Pavano is calling for. 68 00:07:11,580 --> 00:07:15,900 He would say it isn't it doesn't mean he isn't very interested in Morrison type. 69 00:07:15,900 --> 00:07:23,280 We're talking about earlier earlier the idea that that the other art forms might have to obey the laws of architecture. 70 00:07:23,280 --> 00:07:29,280 The principle is art history, which I am, which I think you probably all know, treats architecture in a way. 71 00:07:29,280 --> 00:07:33,780 It just it just treats it as firstly just one of numerous art forms. 72 00:07:33,780 --> 00:07:38,640 But secondly, as an art form in which the laws of the others can just be applied. 73 00:07:38,640 --> 00:07:43,590 It here is a wolf in talking about architecture. And I think this is a really interesting question. 74 00:07:43,590 --> 00:07:51,000 It reveals quite a lot about where Western thinking in the early 20th century got to when it came to architecture. 75 00:07:51,000 --> 00:07:59,160 So often says the examining examination of painterly and painterly poses is one of the big things in a tectonic arts. 76 00:07:59,160 --> 00:08:05,400 And by tectonic arts, he means architecture is especially interesting in that the concept here for the first time, 77 00:08:05,400 --> 00:08:13,410 liberated from confusion with the demands of imitation, can be appreciated as a pure concept of decoration. 78 00:08:13,410 --> 00:08:16,620 Of course, a painting and architecture, the position is not quite the same. 79 00:08:16,620 --> 00:08:22,270 Architecture of its very nature cannot become as the art of semblence to the same degree as painting. 80 00:08:22,270 --> 00:08:29,890 Yet the difference is only one degree, and the essential elements of the definition of the painterly can be applied as they stand. 81 00:08:29,890 --> 00:08:37,170 So what Buffett is saying here is that architecture, because architecture is, 82 00:08:37,170 --> 00:08:42,180 does not deal with the demands of imitation, as he calls it, which paintings and sculpture do what they do. 83 00:08:42,180 --> 00:08:48,060 And in 1915, anyway, it can be appreciated as a pure, pure concept of decoration. 84 00:08:48,060 --> 00:08:52,560 In other words, Wolfram just treats architecture as sort of very abstract art. 85 00:08:52,560 --> 00:08:57,780 It's not limited, is not representational. It's pure decoration. 86 00:08:57,780 --> 00:09:03,300 And then he goes on to say, you know, it's not an art of semblence to the same degree as painting. 87 00:09:03,300 --> 00:09:09,330 But the difference is only one degree and the essential elements of the definition painting can be applied as they stand. 88 00:09:09,330 --> 00:09:13,390 So architecture is a sort of it's less representational. 89 00:09:13,390 --> 00:09:20,040 It's more abstract. I mean, in that respect, it can be sort of treated as almost an extreme form of painting, 90 00:09:20,040 --> 00:09:24,870 just one that we can we can apply all our usual rules of painterly on painterly, um, painterly to. 91 00:09:24,870 --> 00:09:33,090 But potentially you can see them in their most sort of pure form in architecture, which, you know, Phil Flynn does to great effect. 92 00:09:33,090 --> 00:09:36,750 And here are two famous examples. These don't come from the principles of art history. 93 00:09:36,750 --> 00:09:39,930 These come from Wilfred's renaissance and Baroque. 94 00:09:39,930 --> 00:09:51,420 This is one of potent vote for in comparison to buildings that the Woelfel in some of his famous transition from Línea to painterly preventives, 95 00:09:51,420 --> 00:09:52,320 Renaissance building, 96 00:09:52,320 --> 00:10:02,190 the Tempesta 16th century, 16th century church in Rome and Borromeo needs versus Enza from proceeding from the Earth in the following century, 97 00:10:02,190 --> 00:10:06,950 the painting of the Baroque. But if we go back to that peasant, quote, 98 00:10:06,950 --> 00:10:12,450 peasants demand for us to to to engage with the spatial properties of art such as it is to 99 00:10:12,450 --> 00:10:18,030 think about how people shape space will often is not in the slightest bit concerned with that. 100 00:10:18,030 --> 00:10:23,780 He's treating these as extreme decoration, as pure forms of decoration. 101 00:10:23,780 --> 00:10:29,880 Wilson is in no way writes about the function of these buildings, what takes place in these buildings, but it happens in churches. 102 00:10:29,880 --> 00:10:34,890 But that's not really of great concern to both. And he doesn't really think about it. 103 00:10:34,890 --> 00:10:42,870 He didn't think about the three dimensional volume within them to any great degree or only when it when it plays a role in the decorative scheme. 104 00:10:42,870 --> 00:10:47,730 He certainly doesn't think about what it might be like as a user of these buildings. 105 00:10:47,730 --> 00:10:51,720 What was the experience of these buildings might be like? 106 00:10:51,720 --> 00:11:01,380 He treats them essentially as as as almost two dimensional art objects, as art objects that will obey the same rules as paintings and sculpture. 107 00:11:01,380 --> 00:11:05,860 But as we've seen, as I think we'll go on to see. That they're potentially not. 108 00:11:05,860 --> 00:11:18,610 They've they've got things in them that that might make them different. So we've seen since we get to this position in early 20th century art history, 109 00:11:18,610 --> 00:11:23,470 where architecture has just been lumped in with everything else or has or even is 110 00:11:23,470 --> 00:11:32,020 seen as a sort of more extreme example of the visual arts than anything else. 111 00:11:32,020 --> 00:11:33,360 I wonder how this happened. 112 00:11:33,360 --> 00:11:40,060 And I'm not going to sort of go back to the history of art, of architectural theory and try to work out how we got to this point, 113 00:11:40,060 --> 00:11:47,030 how we got to a point in which the spatial properties of architecture can be so spectacularly ignored. 114 00:11:47,030 --> 00:11:52,060 And I just think the roots of this problem lie in the very period that Wolf in 115 00:11:52,060 --> 00:11:58,320 was so obsessed with and so interested in the Renaissance and the 17th century. 116 00:11:58,320 --> 00:12:04,160 The Renaissance architecture in the Renaissance is, of course, as you as you will know, it goes for years. 117 00:12:04,160 --> 00:12:09,010 Is this the sort of stylistic change from the Gothic to the classical? 118 00:12:09,010 --> 00:12:13,000 But there's lots and lots going on in architecture, an architectural theory at the same time. 119 00:12:13,000 --> 00:12:20,320 Is that anything you could you could see, you can see in Renaissance thinking about architecture. 120 00:12:20,320 --> 00:12:28,840 Is a shift, perhaps, from thinking about architecture as something related to the human body and something related to sort of three 121 00:12:28,840 --> 00:12:35,410 dimensional space into something that can be represented on paper into something that is two dimensional? 122 00:12:35,410 --> 00:12:40,190 He's a very, very famous and probably the most famous image of them all from the Renaissance. 123 00:12:40,190 --> 00:12:46,440 You know, these Vitruvian Man was often forgotten about this very famous image is actually about architecture. 124 00:12:46,440 --> 00:12:54,100 It comes from the page. Well, it is a depiction of a theory that comes from the pages of the Romell, from architectural Vitruvius. 125 00:12:54,100 --> 00:12:57,280 And it comes from Vitruvius ism, 126 00:12:57,280 --> 00:13:03,490 which is a discussion of the proportions of the human body and how they might relate to perfect geometrical proportions, 127 00:13:03,490 --> 00:13:10,070 which in turn relate to architecture, how we should be designing architecture. 128 00:13:10,070 --> 00:13:14,740 So much for Vitruvius and for early Renaissance theory, the human body proportions, 129 00:13:14,740 --> 00:13:25,630 its human body work were integral to to how architecture was and had had geometry and architectural work that they're intrinsically linked. 130 00:13:25,630 --> 00:13:33,400 But at the same time as this. I think there was a sort of there was almost two movements away from that, Leonardo. 131 00:13:33,400 --> 00:13:36,880 It's sort of implicates it means to a certain extent, 132 00:13:36,880 --> 00:13:42,730 because whilst Renaissance architectural theorists were interested in the relationship between architecture and the human body, 133 00:13:42,730 --> 00:13:45,520 which you think the basis isn't inherently spatial relationships, 134 00:13:45,520 --> 00:13:53,050 they were also interested in ways in which architecture could be depicted in two dimensions. 135 00:13:53,050 --> 00:14:00,480 Here I'm talking about perspective. Of course, another is actually an earlier image, but equally, almost equally famous. 136 00:14:00,480 --> 00:14:07,950 One shows what is a building building on such a wall fresco. 137 00:14:07,950 --> 00:14:18,610 But it's a building depicted in perspective. The Soccio and and his sort of fellow 15th century painters have come up with a way to 138 00:14:18,610 --> 00:14:23,140 come up with a technique of representing Three-Dimensional Space in two dimensions. 139 00:14:23,140 --> 00:14:29,890 In this case, on the real plane, but also on paper. And this obviously is a very important moment in the history of paintings. 140 00:14:29,890 --> 00:14:37,180 We know. We know, we'll know it all. We know and it's very familiar, but it has important implications for architecture as well, 141 00:14:37,180 --> 00:14:41,320 because now architecture doesn't necessarily need to only exist in three dimensions. 142 00:14:41,320 --> 00:14:50,890 It can be rendered on a flat surface. So in the Saatchi's Holy Trinity, we see a Roman barrel vault surrounded by wall, 143 00:14:50,890 --> 00:14:58,290 signed by Ionic Arch and current and former Corinthian columns, plus as either side receding into the distance. 144 00:14:58,290 --> 00:15:05,500 And the Saatchi has mastered the art perspective. So what we might call covering on the on the vault recedes, get smaller. 145 00:15:05,500 --> 00:15:14,620 It's a it's it's a perfect representation of of of of classical space in two dimensions. 146 00:15:14,620 --> 00:15:22,630 So if the 15th and 16th century had had come up with a way of in paintings representing space in pictures, at the same time, 147 00:15:22,630 --> 00:15:29,080 people writing about architecture and thinking about architecture and designing architecture are on guard, 148 00:15:29,080 --> 00:15:38,470 coming up with similar ways of putting built space onto paper, which hadn't meant to any great degree been really done before. 149 00:15:38,470 --> 00:15:43,200 There are there are some mediaeval precedents, but but not to any great degree. 150 00:15:43,200 --> 00:15:50,940 In the 16th century or perhaps slightly earlier. Architects come up with ways of represent other ways of representing buildings on paper, 151 00:15:50,940 --> 00:15:56,670 although they also used perspective for perspective drawings used extensively in this period. 152 00:15:56,670 --> 00:16:00,940 But the principal way that Renaissance architects come up with to represent space 153 00:16:00,940 --> 00:16:08,400 on paper is this system represented here by Palladio as illustrations for 15 56. 154 00:16:08,400 --> 00:16:16,840 Talion translation of Vitruvius here. Here, Palladio uses three ways of sharing a building on paper. 155 00:16:16,840 --> 00:16:23,320 And in doing so, sort of flattens a building, puts it, puts it into two dimensions. His first way is, of course, the plan. 156 00:16:23,320 --> 00:16:27,670 This is a Roman temple that the maturity's is writing about. 157 00:16:27,670 --> 00:16:32,890 The Palladio is illustrating a thousand years later. So he comes up with a plan in this case. 158 00:16:32,890 --> 00:16:38,090 Columns represented by little round circles and then only the walls of the temple, 159 00:16:38,090 --> 00:16:46,000 the centre of the temple, the body of the temple is shown in plan instead of one place here, 160 00:16:46,000 --> 00:16:54,550 then moves on to what we call a section is the second way of representing architecture, which is at play here. 161 00:16:54,550 --> 00:17:00,130 Just cuts down the middle of the building, all the blank spaces where the masonry has been sliced and through. 162 00:17:00,130 --> 00:17:08,290 So we can see how the construction of the building works. And also we can see how the interior decoration might relate to the exterior decoration. 163 00:17:08,290 --> 00:17:16,800 So the section is a very useful way of showing how decorative elements in the building work, but also her structure elements work in radio. 164 00:17:16,800 --> 00:17:23,320 A third way or the Renaissance is third way of showing a building on paper is in elevation. 165 00:17:23,320 --> 00:17:31,630 So there's three plans. Section elevation elevation is just the front of it shown normally or suddenly here. 166 00:17:31,630 --> 00:17:36,360 In this case, we can see an idea showing us, again, decorative elements. 167 00:17:36,360 --> 00:17:42,010 So this is our Portico Temple. That's Palladio. 168 00:17:42,010 --> 00:17:48,800 We'll play you. Just gives us a straightforward front view of it. I'm actually in the section with the columns back the other way round. 169 00:17:48,800 --> 00:17:54,120 We're looking looking through the building from there, from the middle of it. 170 00:17:54,120 --> 00:17:59,500 And although this is an interesting perspective, like the previous image, it again is interesting. 171 00:17:59,500 --> 00:18:07,210 It's doing the same thing. It's putting architectural space onto paper, rendering it flat and rendering understandable. 172 00:18:07,210 --> 00:18:16,360 I think that's that's what. I was trying to do here. He wasn't what he and his fellow Renaissance architectural theorists realised is that it's quite, 173 00:18:16,360 --> 00:18:18,960 quite it's quite difficult to think about architecture. 174 00:18:18,960 --> 00:18:27,210 When you think about it spatially, thinking about volume and thinking about how we experience and use that volume is a difficult thing. 175 00:18:27,210 --> 00:18:33,150 And therefore, you need to come up with ways of representing us and making it easy to comprehend. 176 00:18:33,150 --> 00:18:42,870 In this case, Palladio and the editor of this Vitruvius Dan Farber, are interested in communicating ideas about ancient architecture to their readers. 177 00:18:42,870 --> 00:18:50,070 So this is a company by dense text, both both the translation opportunities and Barbaras commentary, 178 00:18:50,070 --> 00:18:56,490 which explains the readers how this temple worked, what the principles of Roman temple architecture were. 179 00:18:56,490 --> 00:19:00,450 Well, the columns go. What's it for? Blah, blah, blah. Had a decorative scheme. 180 00:19:00,450 --> 00:19:07,470 Works how the structure works. And the video's illustrations show how this works in a straightforward way. 181 00:19:07,470 --> 00:19:10,890 This is what we've laid the building flat here. Here it is, in fact. 182 00:19:10,890 --> 00:19:18,270 Here it is, Inception. Here it is in elevation. So it's a way of of making architecture easier to understand. 183 00:19:18,270 --> 00:19:23,280 What it also does is it makes architecture easy to see. 184 00:19:23,280 --> 00:19:31,950 It makes it visible previously. If you think, you know, architecture, space, it's quite difficult to to to comprehend just visually. 185 00:19:31,950 --> 00:19:39,420 But here it is made easy. It's made flat. And this is an architecture that we that we sort of experience only through vision. 186 00:19:39,420 --> 00:19:47,040 We look at it on paper. There's nothing more we can do with it. Even the space, even the volume is depicted in a way that we can just see it. 187 00:19:47,040 --> 00:19:50,880 We don't we don't need to use any of our other senses to deal with it. 188 00:19:50,880 --> 00:19:57,580 This is architectural vision. And at the same time as well. 189 00:19:57,580 --> 00:20:06,450 Shortly after Palladio is doing this. Other writers are becoming interested in vision and then how vision works and how 190 00:20:06,450 --> 00:20:11,340 potentially important vision might be in thinking and understanding the world. 191 00:20:11,340 --> 00:20:13,770 I think there's a sort of there's a two pronged attack. 192 00:20:13,770 --> 00:20:20,790 In the 16th and 17th centuries on architecture, one from the kind of sort of perspective drawing and planning section elevation representation. 193 00:20:20,790 --> 00:20:26,210 The other part of the attack on architecture is from scientific thinking, 194 00:20:26,210 --> 00:20:32,100 particularly in the 17th century, is a very famous 17th century scientist, a philosopher Descartes, 195 00:20:32,100 --> 00:20:37,890 who never really writes Fetcher doesn't seem to be particularly interested in architecture, 196 00:20:37,890 --> 00:20:42,720 but he's somebody whose writings end up end up becoming very, very important. 197 00:20:42,720 --> 00:20:51,960 I think in the history of architecture, with one particular aspect to decors writings that have profound influence on architectural theories, 198 00:20:51,960 --> 00:20:58,170 his writings on optics and his writings on vision of which I was obsessed with. 199 00:20:58,170 --> 00:21:01,890 There's loads of those attacks by day common vision. 200 00:21:01,890 --> 00:21:10,140 The is one of the most famous ones, which is which is partly a sort of anatomical investigation of the eye in the Iwerks, 201 00:21:10,140 --> 00:21:19,560 but also a lengthy investigation of how vision works or how vision works in relation to the 202 00:21:19,560 --> 00:21:26,460 other senses and in relation to how we think and and how we perceive the world around us. 203 00:21:26,460 --> 00:21:31,650 They call conclusions very, very, very roughly mapped out. 204 00:21:31,650 --> 00:21:36,930 All that vision is the principal sense, the principal sense which we understand the world. 205 00:21:36,930 --> 00:21:43,170 The sense that dictates all others. And to which the other senses are largely subservient to. 206 00:21:43,170 --> 00:21:51,690 So in this famous book, quite complicated diagram. Take our constant contemplates how we have in how we understand and look at an object, 207 00:21:51,690 --> 00:21:57,840 in this case, an arrow with his arrows to prove his point that sentences and what. 208 00:21:57,840 --> 00:22:02,850 But this this this image shows Descartes thinking about how the image before us 209 00:22:02,850 --> 00:22:09,210 enters ah ah ah brain through the eyes and goes into the gland in the brain, 210 00:22:09,210 --> 00:22:12,960 which is then lengthy the nerves to the rest of the senses. 211 00:22:12,960 --> 00:22:17,940 So then we might read it and touch the arrows and unexperienced it to the other senses. 212 00:22:17,940 --> 00:22:22,670 But we've all already comprehended it through vision and through sites. 213 00:22:22,670 --> 00:22:29,600 Descartes sort of obsession with optics and with how the Iwerks creates a way of 214 00:22:29,600 --> 00:22:35,820 feeling a movement in Western thought that largely prioritises vision over all others. 215 00:22:35,820 --> 00:22:39,970 It's called to the various philosophers that come up with fancy names for ocular. 216 00:22:39,970 --> 00:22:44,010 Eurocentrism is one of the hegemony of vision is another. 217 00:22:44,010 --> 00:22:51,480 And this, combined with what we saw in the previous century with Palladio, has important implications for architecture, 218 00:22:51,480 --> 00:23:01,200 because now if Western thought is in this position where vision is so important and architecture has already been reduced on paper in two dimensions, 219 00:23:01,200 --> 00:23:05,310 architecture then becomes something that is inherently visual. 220 00:23:05,310 --> 00:23:11,600 So architects can represent buildings on paper, which they. Then when they build them, they're building them, too. 221 00:23:11,600 --> 00:23:17,570 They're building them with what they looked like in mind, first and foremost. They're thinking of what their users will see. 222 00:23:17,570 --> 00:23:23,440 They can do this through innovation plan sections and they can work out. They can work out what their innovations are going to look like on paper. 223 00:23:23,440 --> 00:23:29,420 Then they build them and then they can predict what people are going to. When people look at them, what they've what they're going to look like. 224 00:23:29,420 --> 00:23:35,350 And actually, the history of sort of architecture on the raisons on is is obsessed with the idea of what buildings are going to look like, 225 00:23:35,350 --> 00:23:40,730 pass over and above what buildings might be like to experience. 226 00:23:40,730 --> 00:23:44,510 I don't think architects in the in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries on the whole, 227 00:23:44,510 --> 00:23:50,830 don't tend to be that interested in what people's feelings might be about buildings, how they might experience them. 228 00:23:50,830 --> 00:23:56,000 They're obsess over overly obsessed with what they actually look like. 229 00:23:56,000 --> 00:24:00,680 Of course, I'm generalising here and I'll show some examples where that isn't the case later. 230 00:24:00,680 --> 00:24:08,060 But it is, I think, a prominent strain in thinking about architecture across across the three three centuries. 231 00:24:08,060 --> 00:24:15,830 If we sort of fast forward and deep into the 18th century, we can I think we can see this in action. 232 00:24:15,830 --> 00:24:20,480 This is a conceptual design by the French architect, Boulay, 233 00:24:20,480 --> 00:24:26,070 most of whose designs were conceptual and those anything because most of his designs are unbuildable. 234 00:24:26,070 --> 00:24:31,430 And Brunei's perhaps an extreme case in this. But bood, I think, is one of those architects, 235 00:24:31,430 --> 00:24:39,490 one of these architects that's been sort of influenced by Descartes under the Renaissance theory, is obsessed with what buildings look like. 236 00:24:39,490 --> 00:24:45,590 And in particular, he's obsessed with the idea that buildings should be geometric, they should look geometric, perfect. 237 00:24:45,590 --> 00:24:54,120 Here's a plan, something that doesn't get built as a plan for a for a palace today, which is geometrically perfect. 238 00:24:54,120 --> 00:24:58,520 It's it's perfectly symmetrical and it's a complicated piece of geometry. 239 00:24:58,520 --> 00:25:02,930 This as a plan. It's a plan, of course. 240 00:25:02,930 --> 00:25:07,490 It's sort of building up and part parkland seeing from the. 241 00:25:07,490 --> 00:25:13,820 But we get no sense from this what this building might actually be, what it might be like to be in this building. 242 00:25:13,820 --> 00:25:22,580 But then it's not very interesting. Boy, well, it really is interested in is making three dimensional space geometrically perfect on paper? 243 00:25:22,580 --> 00:25:26,270 In a way, this is sort of when it is almost that a principal can write this. 244 00:25:26,270 --> 00:25:29,000 This is an extreme Demeritt pure decoration. 245 00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:36,160 It's building reduced to pure, simple geometric form just because it looks nice, because it looks impressive. 246 00:25:36,160 --> 00:25:40,130 And even in the elevations of Boulez buildings, you can get Bill. 247 00:25:40,130 --> 00:25:47,510 We can see this here in his famous conceptual design for Cenotaph in Newton. 248 00:25:47,510 --> 00:25:55,010 Again, the building is. It's a building that's just made as a pure, simple geometry, very big, monumental geometry. 249 00:25:55,010 --> 00:25:59,330 But from this elevation, we get very little sense of of. 250 00:25:59,330 --> 00:26:05,510 We get a little sense of what this building might actually be like to experience. And again, I think there is perfect interest in that. 251 00:26:05,510 --> 00:26:12,560 What he's interested in is is making a perfect geometrical building. 252 00:26:12,560 --> 00:26:19,230 It's just a series of huge geometrical shapes. This and again, I am dealing in I'm dealing in general extreme cases. 253 00:26:19,230 --> 00:26:26,090 But but I think they I think they prudent they they they make an important point. 254 00:26:26,090 --> 00:26:34,550 If you go forward to the 20th century, this idea of architecture is something that is experienced first and foremost through the visual. 255 00:26:34,550 --> 00:26:39,980 And something that can be rendered on paper in the visual reach reaches its apogee, I think, 256 00:26:39,980 --> 00:26:46,580 and its apogee comes about through the work of the famous high priest of modernist architecture propitiate. 257 00:26:46,580 --> 00:26:54,260 Might very well be the villain of this lecture, I'm afraid. Here he is sitting at his desk with his famous glasses, OVC Capezio. 258 00:26:54,260 --> 00:27:00,560 He's always wearing his famous glasses, which sort of goes with his with his sort of ocular centric mindset. 259 00:27:00,560 --> 00:27:04,380 I think Koby's Yates, perhaps about any other architect, 260 00:27:04,380 --> 00:27:12,560 was obsessed with visions and about what buildings look like, but also what the user sees in a building. 261 00:27:12,560 --> 00:27:17,670 He writes on this and the book. But but but the best place to see. 262 00:27:17,670 --> 00:27:21,660 So all architects to the funding refer to him as called SAVAK. 263 00:27:21,660 --> 00:27:26,130 They see corpse obsession with vision in his drawings. 264 00:27:26,130 --> 00:27:33,200 This is a remarkable series of Visio drawings that in which we see Corbusier 265 00:27:33,200 --> 00:27:38,870 working at how architectural space works in terms of vision and vision alone. 266 00:27:38,870 --> 00:27:47,930 This figure appears in a number of Capezio during this stick figure with an enormous, disembodied eye floating above their heads. 267 00:27:47,930 --> 00:27:54,920 This is Corbusier's user of architecture. Who is he who uses architecture only through the eye and Capezio. 268 00:27:54,920 --> 00:27:59,720 This drawing below shows Capezio plotting the route of a person through a building. 269 00:27:59,720 --> 00:28:05,410 But it is the person with with him who only sees the building through their eyes. 270 00:28:05,410 --> 00:28:08,490 Capezio doing here is working at views. What? 271 00:28:08,490 --> 00:28:14,570 Whether what the building will look like, it looked like at any moment, the viewer is experiencing it in a way. 272 00:28:14,570 --> 00:28:19,200 And this is this is treating this the the space this is treating the building spatially. 273 00:28:19,200 --> 00:28:22,530 But it's saying the space only through the eye there. 274 00:28:22,530 --> 00:28:28,770 No interest in the other senses or in anything in any any of the other ways in which we might experience architecture. 275 00:28:28,770 --> 00:28:36,840 I think two things like memory loss or fear or the emotions. 276 00:28:36,840 --> 00:28:42,660 In one of cabooses writings towards a new architecture in 1959, Capezio spells this out. 277 00:28:42,660 --> 00:28:47,860 The principal way in which we experience architecture, Busia says, is through our eyes. 278 00:28:47,860 --> 00:28:54,610 So he says, the man looks at the creation of architecture with his eyes, which are five feet, six inches from the ground. 279 00:28:54,610 --> 00:29:02,640 He wasn't very tall, but so he's thinking about cool Capezio saying here is that the architecture must 280 00:29:02,640 --> 00:29:07,530 be built with with with with with the height of the eyes of the floor in mind. 281 00:29:07,530 --> 00:29:12,420 So that is where we are coming from when we go into building. That is how extensive from this level. 282 00:29:12,420 --> 00:29:16,080 So they should be designed with that level in mind. 283 00:29:16,080 --> 00:29:24,780 In a way, this is sort of oddly reminiscent of of of of Vitruvian Man and that it posits a relationship with an architectural space in the human body. 284 00:29:24,780 --> 00:29:31,530 We experience architecture through the body. That's what graffiti is saying. But for Capezio, the body is the eyes. 285 00:29:31,530 --> 00:29:36,320 We experience architecture through the eyes and therefore the proportions of the height of the eyes of the Freud. 286 00:29:36,320 --> 00:29:41,880 If there's any relationship, it's an architectural portion and the proportions of human body. They relate to the height of the eyes of the floor. 287 00:29:41,880 --> 00:29:46,860 Five foot six inches in appreciates. Case here. And this is the bullet. 288 00:29:46,860 --> 00:29:52,470 This is the body that experiences Capezio as architecture of the human body that exists in architecture. 289 00:29:52,470 --> 00:29:58,170 It is this small, badly drawn stick figure and a huge disembodied eye. 290 00:29:58,170 --> 00:30:03,170 And it's amazing how this idea sort of not floats of art and modernism particularly. 291 00:30:03,170 --> 00:30:08,590 And obviously, years follow us is a drawing by one of these days. 292 00:30:08,590 --> 00:30:15,130 Disciple's Austin name a famous Brazilian modernist who designed the Brazilian capital, Brasilia. 293 00:30:15,130 --> 00:30:20,300 I think to an even more extreme and Capezio is the stick figures gone? 294 00:30:20,300 --> 00:30:24,450 It's just eyes, eyes looking at. What will the building look like? 295 00:30:24,450 --> 00:30:34,590 What will the view be like? Half of the window? What will the I see and what will be I see in any particular point in the architectural space. 296 00:30:34,590 --> 00:30:40,260 And if you think about it, that that's sort of the history of of of of architectural theory up to this point, 297 00:30:40,260 --> 00:30:43,380 starting in the Renaissance has been sort of building towards this. 298 00:30:43,380 --> 00:30:50,700 The minute you start putting built space down onto paper in three dimensions, you end up in this sort of mindset. 299 00:30:50,700 --> 00:30:59,850 Suddenly, architecture becomes a series of two dimensional views. Just what does it look like at any particular point in your experience of. 300 00:30:59,850 --> 00:31:05,460 And if we sort of move away from the. Well, the theory now and look, look, look at some specific designs. 301 00:31:05,460 --> 00:31:10,020 I think we can see this work and passage of Extreme Case again. 302 00:31:10,020 --> 00:31:19,650 But an interesting case, one of Capezio zone designs of a famous design and a software in France with Capezio built at the end of the 1920s. 303 00:31:19,650 --> 00:31:27,090 These buildings are famous for lots of other things. Lots of Capezio design principles are embedded into this design. 304 00:31:27,090 --> 00:31:30,330 But one thing I thought was one thing I think is really interesting about it 305 00:31:30,330 --> 00:31:34,650 is that you can see this building as a series of views that have been very, 306 00:31:34,650 --> 00:31:38,340 very carefully constructed by the architects at every point in this building. 307 00:31:38,340 --> 00:31:43,410 Capezio is thinking about what you're going to look at and what the building is going to look like, 308 00:31:43,410 --> 00:31:48,750 but also what the world around the building is going to look like from within the building. 309 00:31:48,750 --> 00:31:51,750 So these are the windows in this building, I think are really interesting. 310 00:31:51,750 --> 00:31:56,280 They they they they don't have as big as you might expect for an architect to see. 311 00:31:56,280 --> 00:32:04,440 So obsessed with vision. But what they do is they train the vision of the user onto particular things on the particular views. 312 00:32:04,440 --> 00:32:12,120 And if we go inside the villas by the windows frame, the rest of the architecture is very controlled and close way. 313 00:32:12,120 --> 00:32:17,880 So we always give them specific views out into this courtyard, rise onto the world around us. 314 00:32:17,880 --> 00:32:24,030 This is not an architecture that seems to be very interested in the other senses or in emotions or anything like that. 315 00:32:24,030 --> 00:32:27,690 It's an architecture that does, as I said, 316 00:32:27,690 --> 00:32:35,790 is only really interested in what what the building might look like or what you can see out of the building. 317 00:32:35,790 --> 00:32:41,910 And there's that sort of that that does that window. You're just looking at all into it from the outside. 318 00:32:41,910 --> 00:32:45,750 And you can see the other windows to controlling where the eye might go. 319 00:32:45,750 --> 00:32:55,630 We can imagine this space. I think I can imagine this space being negotiated by Koby's a stick figure, massive I person. 320 00:32:55,630 --> 00:33:04,360 And again, if you've got the staircase, it's just a series of other sort of cold and rigid views more outside. 321 00:33:04,360 --> 00:33:15,700 Okay, so perhaps an extreme example, but a building that's it seems to embody what Polizia is doing, his drawings and his theory at the same time. 322 00:33:15,700 --> 00:33:21,840 And actually, this building is designed not long after Phil Flynn has written his principles about the art history. 323 00:33:21,840 --> 00:33:24,720 I'm not saying that both in academia have that much in common, 324 00:33:24,720 --> 00:33:30,090 but but they do seem to be basic treating architecture in a very similar way as something inherently visual, 325 00:33:30,090 --> 00:33:35,760 something that you can just look upon, look at and think about in terms of. 326 00:33:35,760 --> 00:33:45,480 In terms of decoration involved in this case or in terms of the view and propitiate at the same time, 327 00:33:45,480 --> 00:33:54,360 is this though this these ideas are beginning to be challenged and the challenge doesn't come from architectural or architectural theory initially. 328 00:33:54,360 --> 00:33:59,070 The challenge comes from philosophy and it comes in the form of a challenge on takeoff. 329 00:33:59,070 --> 00:34:06,480 It doesn't hate architecture until about a bit later, perhaps in the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century. 330 00:34:06,480 --> 00:34:15,630 A group of philosophers decided decided they'd had enough of decor's theories on vision in the world and decided to attack him. 331 00:34:15,630 --> 00:34:20,220 These are group of philosophers that we might call phenomenologists. They were interested in other things as well. 332 00:34:20,220 --> 00:34:23,250 It's a complicated it's a complicated branch of philosophy. 333 00:34:23,250 --> 00:34:29,220 But one of the things that the early phenomenologists do is they go for Descartes in a big way. 334 00:34:29,220 --> 00:34:34,620 And what they one of the things that they they dislike most about Descartes is this obsession with vision. 335 00:34:34,620 --> 00:34:37,930 Perhaps the two the two biggest Descartes bashes are hetman. 336 00:34:37,930 --> 00:34:42,980 So I think at the end of the 19th century and the 20th century, philosopher Maurice Money Pontac, 337 00:34:42,980 --> 00:34:48,150 who I think is is a sort of ceaseless in his attack on day casting and vision. 338 00:34:48,150 --> 00:34:53,820 Both of these philosophers write extensively about the other senses, about how important they are, 339 00:34:53,820 --> 00:34:59,730 but they also write about some of the other things that that might that might dictate our experience of space, 340 00:34:59,730 --> 00:35:05,220 things like memory, things like experience and how we exist in the world. 341 00:35:05,220 --> 00:35:09,920 What what what the world means to us, not just in terms of vision. 342 00:35:09,920 --> 00:35:20,790 And actually, one of the texts that I've set, the second is here, Bashardost, poetics of space is informed by by this particular branch of philosophy. 343 00:35:20,790 --> 00:35:23,280 And once, once, once, once for all, 344 00:35:23,280 --> 00:35:29,850 phenomenological philosophy takes hold in Western thought and begins to challenge some of the principles of Cartesian ism. 345 00:35:29,850 --> 00:35:36,570 It is only a matter of time before it creeps into architecture and people writing about architecture begin to think of its implications. 346 00:35:36,570 --> 00:35:41,700 And suddenly, in architectural theorists, writers on architecture suddenly begin to think, 347 00:35:41,700 --> 00:35:45,480 well, maybe, maybe we've been saying maybe we're too obsessed with vision. 348 00:35:45,480 --> 00:35:50,910 Maybe we've been thinking about this one way, maybe we ignored another. But a bunch of other stuff. 349 00:35:50,910 --> 00:35:53,370 Well, that's right. Writer on a very important writer on it. 350 00:35:53,370 --> 00:36:00,360 In this respect, is the rise of God only the father who isn't necessarily phenomenologists where he's not actually he's a he's actually a Marxist. 351 00:36:00,360 --> 00:36:06,390 But a lot of his theory, I think, is influenced by phenomenology, or at least it's doing the same things. 352 00:36:06,390 --> 00:36:16,150 In particular, the first critique of of how Western thought is come to understand space is is particularly important here. 353 00:36:16,150 --> 00:36:23,850 Lefèvre is a whole book on space, one of the earliest books to be written on the on on the subject of space as an idea. 354 00:36:23,850 --> 00:36:27,990 Most of most of this text is not necessarily that relates to talk or texture. 355 00:36:27,990 --> 00:36:32,010 It's more general than that. But there are moments in which the Fed does address architecture. 356 00:36:32,010 --> 00:36:38,110 And he says, I think really interesting things, in fact, critiques much of what I've just been talking about. 357 00:36:38,110 --> 00:36:47,940 Okay, so here is a lengthy quote from from from the introduction to the text in which the Fab Five let the five turns. 358 00:36:47,940 --> 00:36:56,820 Thinking about space into thinking about architectural space. And what he does is critique contemporary architectural practise. 359 00:36:56,820 --> 00:37:02,430 So Faff says, as for the eye of the architect, it is no more innocent look than the lot. 360 00:37:02,430 --> 00:37:06,870 He given to build on the blank sheet of paper on which he makes his first sketch. 361 00:37:06,870 --> 00:37:10,590 His subjective space is freighted with all too objective meanings. 362 00:37:10,590 --> 00:37:20,220 It is a visual space, a space which is to blueprints, to mirror images to that, quote, world of the image which is the enemy of the imagination. 363 00:37:20,220 --> 00:37:27,420 These reductions are accentuated and justified by the rule of linear perspective within the spatial practise of modern society. 364 00:37:27,420 --> 00:37:34,560 The architect discusses himself in his own space. He has a representation of this space, one which is bound to graphic elements. 365 00:37:34,560 --> 00:37:41,220 Sheets of paper, plans, innovations, sections, perspective, views of facades, modules, and so on. 366 00:37:41,220 --> 00:37:45,690 This conceived space is thought by those who make use of it to be true. 367 00:37:45,690 --> 00:37:52,710 Its distant ancestor is the linear perspective developed as early as the Renaissance, a fixed observer and a mobile perceptual field. 368 00:37:52,710 --> 00:37:58,260 A stable visual world. What that does here is he critiques architecture, 369 00:37:58,260 --> 00:38:03,000 but he turns that on the whole history of architecture from Renaissance and just brings it all together. 370 00:38:03,000 --> 00:38:07,140 He says, well, the Renaissance came up with linear perspective. 371 00:38:07,140 --> 00:38:11,520 It came up with plans, elevation's and sections of perspective views. 372 00:38:11,520 --> 00:38:15,810 What that's created is what he calls an immobile perceptual field, a stable visual world. 373 00:38:15,810 --> 00:38:26,430 And it's very, very easy to see Capezio as disembodied eye drawings lurking behind much of what Lefebvre is critiquing here. 374 00:38:26,430 --> 00:38:34,320 We haven't got sort of the world would be the world of the image, the mobile perceptual field. 375 00:38:34,320 --> 00:38:43,700 What? Well, involve the eye of the architect where he opens and he and he pulls out, he doesn't see that as an innocent thing. 376 00:38:43,700 --> 00:38:51,380 He sings, this is a very option and sort through thing that's been given off consideration. 377 00:38:51,380 --> 00:38:54,630 But what the Fed also does and I think this is a really important point. 378 00:38:54,630 --> 00:39:00,680 So this is an attack on an architectural practise, an attack on architectural practise over the last 300 years. 379 00:39:00,680 --> 00:39:06,050 But it's not just the architect that's to blame. It's not just the architect that is complicit in this. 380 00:39:06,050 --> 00:39:12,680 The federal so at the end of the quote thinks about that users of architecture. 381 00:39:12,680 --> 00:39:17,220 He calls the architecture conceived space and see by the architect as conceived on paper. 382 00:39:17,220 --> 00:39:21,980 But then he says that this conceived space is thought by those who make use of it to be true. 383 00:39:21,980 --> 00:39:26,380 And he puts true in italics, is on my italics, isn't here. Well, 384 00:39:26,380 --> 00:39:30,410 he's saying here is that we've become so accustomed to thinking about architecture and Spain in 385 00:39:30,410 --> 00:39:35,230 graphically on paper and in terms of perspective and in terms of very mobile perceptual field, 386 00:39:35,230 --> 00:39:40,640 that it's not how the architects and I are thinking. This is how we actually experience buildings. 387 00:39:40,640 --> 00:39:48,530 People use us in the mid 20th century are experiencing buildings through vision, through through mobile perceptual fields, 388 00:39:48,530 --> 00:39:55,220 and almost in terms of a plan section elevation, we managed to convince ourselves that this is what architecture, 389 00:39:55,220 --> 00:40:01,400 what the experience of architecture should be like. Although for the feminine, the goes on to say, well, it's not like that. 390 00:40:01,400 --> 00:40:05,300 There's lots and lots of other things going on here as well. But for some reason, we've ignored enough. 391 00:40:05,300 --> 00:40:14,450 We've let a bunch of architects and Renaissance philosophers shape make us think about architecture in a particular way, 392 00:40:14,450 --> 00:40:21,540 which I think is a really important point, a really interesting point. The idea that we to complain Capezio is as busy as much as we like. 393 00:40:21,540 --> 00:40:28,210 So maybe we will actually following him, maybe involve in his following him and his lot. 394 00:40:28,210 --> 00:40:33,560 Maybe when we go around buildings, we just look at them and we look at them through our eyes. 395 00:40:33,560 --> 00:40:39,490 Only we believe we see them in terms of sections, renovations and plans. 396 00:40:39,490 --> 00:40:42,530 This, I think, is a really important moment. It's really important. 397 00:40:42,530 --> 00:40:47,710 And again, the second is in the way in the three texts that we're going to look at in class later. 398 00:40:47,710 --> 00:40:53,720 Bachelard, both. To some extent are engaging with this problem. 399 00:40:53,720 --> 00:41:01,490 Some of them as well, to some extent, trying to find ways out of it to explain how we might experience architecture in ways 400 00:41:01,490 --> 00:41:07,850 that aren't just about about about a mobile perceptual field in a stable visual world, 401 00:41:07,850 --> 00:41:09,350 as Lefevre puts it. 402 00:41:09,350 --> 00:41:16,850 So this, I think, is the sort of the pivot in this lecture at the moment in which in which that history of architectural theory is challenged. 403 00:41:16,850 --> 00:41:21,620 And then a challenge is then made for us and for architectural theorists and writers to come 404 00:41:21,620 --> 00:41:27,950 up with way other ways of saying architecture and other ways of experiencing architecture. 405 00:41:27,950 --> 00:41:32,900 Quite how we do that is very, very difficult, perhaps because we've got ourselves. 406 00:41:32,900 --> 00:41:42,100 So we we're we're in in that such as sort of defined modern mindset that has represented thing about architecture. 407 00:41:42,100 --> 00:41:48,020 I think one of the reasons that those three steps are rather complicated is because they're dealing with a complicated thing, 408 00:41:48,020 --> 00:41:52,460 dealing with the experience of space in a way that isn't necessarily visual or even if 409 00:41:52,460 --> 00:41:56,330 it is visual in the case of one of their text is visual at a much more complicated way. 410 00:41:56,330 --> 00:42:02,630 Them architectural theorists often have conceived of it. 411 00:42:02,630 --> 00:42:06,530 What I'm gonna do, though, is I'm going to for the rest of this lecture, 412 00:42:06,530 --> 00:42:16,400 look at the work of three architects who were contemporaries of the Karbasi 8th in whose work we might potentially see ways out of the first problems. 413 00:42:16,400 --> 00:42:21,500 These are the three architects that I think treat space in a very different way to look VCA 414 00:42:21,500 --> 00:42:28,280 and in a way that that that opens up questions and other questions about how space works. 415 00:42:28,280 --> 00:42:34,790 In doing so, I'll introduce some of the ideas that I think are in the three texts that some of you've been reading. 416 00:42:34,790 --> 00:42:38,300 First, architects, I want to talk about as it can to open group of architects, 417 00:42:38,300 --> 00:42:47,830 perhaps are contemporaries in the Capezio architects working in the steel movement and in Holland and the end of the 1910s, beginning in the 1920s. 418 00:42:47,830 --> 00:42:51,500 There is still movement is is is always seen as part of modernism. 419 00:42:51,500 --> 00:42:57,410 Many of you will probably know it for its for its most famous protagonist, Pete Mondrian. 420 00:42:57,410 --> 00:43:04,370 Easel paintings and wall paintings. I'm sure you are aware of. But still movement also had architects working in it. 421 00:43:04,370 --> 00:43:08,970 And these were a group of architects to particular TIV and Ostberg and and get me out. 422 00:43:08,970 --> 00:43:13,880 But we were completely obsessed with the idea of space in buildings and their thinkings on space. 423 00:43:13,880 --> 00:43:15,830 I think are very different from Rakove. Easier. 424 00:43:15,830 --> 00:43:21,770 Even though the shell and the crazy are often grouped together as part of a sort of international modernist movement, 425 00:43:21,770 --> 00:43:25,670 rebuilding vendors like a very, very different in how you can see space. 426 00:43:25,670 --> 00:43:30,320 One of the things that there's still architects think about in space is how space 427 00:43:30,320 --> 00:43:35,620 might be a much more complicated phenomenon than most architects conceived of it has. 428 00:43:35,620 --> 00:43:41,830 What are the general principles of distil art and architecture is a sense of universality. 429 00:43:41,830 --> 00:43:50,370 In the modern world, as has been just letting people see it, the individual is far less important than the universal. 430 00:43:50,370 --> 00:43:52,060 And as a result, they they in their architecture, 431 00:43:52,060 --> 00:43:59,320 they try to sort of break down the boundary between private and public space, but also between exterior and interior space. 432 00:43:59,320 --> 00:44:05,020 And does work here is playing around at some conceptual designs. The idea that space, 433 00:44:05,020 --> 00:44:12,890 the architectural space can be something homogenous that you can cut can flow between interior and exterior space and between individual planes, 434 00:44:12,890 --> 00:44:21,370 they same I this is unbuildable. But architecture here is reduced to just a series of geometrical planes floating in space. 435 00:44:21,370 --> 00:44:30,880 This is a rather complicated conception of space, a space that flows in and around objects in a way that's unlike sort of Koby's in his and his eye. 436 00:44:30,880 --> 00:44:34,800 We don't we don't just see space as something flat. That's a series of flat images. 437 00:44:34,800 --> 00:44:40,750 Air space is much more dynamic and fluid than just back in the image. 438 00:44:40,750 --> 00:44:45,940 Still, Manifesto talks about this. He says that the new architecture is the architecture that is spacings antique. 439 00:44:45,940 --> 00:44:51,400 KUBIC That is to say, it doesn't try to freeze the different functional space cells in one closed cube. 440 00:44:51,400 --> 00:44:58,120 Rather, it throws the functional space cells as well as the overhanging plains balcony volumes centrifugal from the core of the cube. 441 00:44:58,120 --> 00:45:02,100 And this means height, width, depth and time, 442 00:45:02,100 --> 00:45:08,290 i.e. an imaginary four dimensional entity approaches a totally new plastic expression and other open spaces. 443 00:45:08,290 --> 00:45:13,060 In this way, architecture that acquires more or less floating aspect that's so to speak, 444 00:45:13,060 --> 00:45:21,310 works against the gravitational forces nature, which is all very well and good in theory, but that you think you have to build it, 445 00:45:21,310 --> 00:45:28,710 then you have to try and build an architecture that throws the functional space cells centrifugal from the core of the cube, 446 00:45:28,710 --> 00:45:35,100 which is quite hard in only one building that did the rebound and then come up with a way of doing this. 447 00:45:35,100 --> 00:45:37,020 Really. And this is the Shrader House. 448 00:45:37,020 --> 00:45:44,330 And you tracked the most famous steel building, which looks like many of those fantastic drawings I was showing you minutes ago here. 449 00:45:44,330 --> 00:45:48,070 Do you have any sense of the difference between an exterior? 450 00:45:48,070 --> 00:45:53,860 Interior space is broken down because Rietveld just complicates the wall plan that will play into such a great degree. 451 00:45:53,860 --> 00:46:01,720 He places a series of rectangles in rather complicated positions on the war plane to break it down to 452 00:46:01,720 --> 00:46:06,700 to make it unclear where the building begins and ends when it reveals ideas behind this building. 453 00:46:06,700 --> 00:46:15,810 All the windows can be open to 90 degrees and the opening of the windows can complicate the space further if we go to Windows open mode. 454 00:46:15,810 --> 00:46:21,970 Wouldn't the whole building begins to break down. It always looks like a sort of frozen explosion and it begins to look like those windows. 455 00:46:21,970 --> 00:46:24,760 Drawings like this is a very flexible space. 456 00:46:24,760 --> 00:46:31,390 This is a very free flowing space in a building, and it's one that breaks down boundaries between interior and exterior. 457 00:46:31,390 --> 00:46:36,290 But in what ways does it go beyond thinking about the building in terms of vision? 458 00:46:36,290 --> 00:46:42,070 Well, if we go inside again, this is the interior. Again, there's a sense of planes floating in free space here. 459 00:46:42,070 --> 00:46:44,860 The furniture colludes that the furniture is impressive. 460 00:46:44,860 --> 00:46:52,150 Famous Ritvo chair looks like just bits of rectangles, floating coloured rectangles floating in space. 461 00:46:52,150 --> 00:47:01,780 But it's in the plan of this building that we felt takes us to the most extreme and the plan revo designs to be flexible and up to the user. 462 00:47:01,780 --> 00:47:07,840 So this is the plan of the upper floor in closed mode and open mode, 463 00:47:07,840 --> 00:47:13,810 enclosed by a series of screens can be pulled across to separate areas according to what the user wants to do with them. 464 00:47:13,810 --> 00:47:18,820 I notice that that rebound leaves it quite open to the other work or sleeping like the sleeping, 465 00:47:18,820 --> 00:47:24,400 sleeping, living or dining, all these three screens and we move the way to create open plan. 466 00:47:24,400 --> 00:47:28,480 This is, you know, this is architect thinking about how it how people use buildings, 467 00:47:28,480 --> 00:47:32,080 how the function of buildings might change and alter depending on the user or 468 00:47:32,080 --> 00:47:36,950 depending on the time of day or depending on on on what's going on in the house. 469 00:47:36,950 --> 00:47:42,910 So this again, there's a sense of flexibility and space that's reflected on the exterior, that's mirrored in the plan. 470 00:47:42,910 --> 00:47:51,060 There's building change. It can shift, the planes can move space, can flow in and around them and function to flow in and around. 471 00:47:51,060 --> 00:47:52,690 And function is part of it. 472 00:47:52,690 --> 00:48:00,520 You can do different things in different spaces depending on what you do with the hands and the walls in a way that this, I think, 473 00:48:00,520 --> 00:48:05,620 reflects some of the ideas in the text that make you read the idea that space 474 00:48:05,620 --> 00:48:09,070 is a complicated thing and how we interact with space is a complicated thing. 475 00:48:09,070 --> 00:48:16,390 Even when spaces can be demarcated as having particular functions, they can be quite complicated. 476 00:48:16,390 --> 00:48:25,060 You can do what you like in here. You can work or you can sleep depending on on what you want to do or how you arrange the walls. 477 00:48:25,060 --> 00:48:27,280 And again, this was something else. 478 00:48:27,280 --> 00:48:34,960 This house does is it complicates the boundaries between the interior and the exterior and within individual bank individual. 479 00:48:34,960 --> 00:48:36,970 Injuries in the house, fragments of it. 480 00:48:36,970 --> 00:48:44,480 It complicates them in a way, I think perhaps that in a way that I think that perhaps the board you attacks me, we read is interesting. 481 00:48:44,480 --> 00:48:50,350 And as well, I mean, it's interesting, the complexities of states and it's interested in the boundaries between different spaces and how 482 00:48:50,350 --> 00:48:56,920 those boundaries might be contested or complicated or or inscribed in particular ways of thinking, 483 00:48:56,920 --> 00:48:59,710 in particular ways of doing. 484 00:48:59,710 --> 00:49:05,650 And also, I'm not saying it's a direct analogy between both you and me here, but I think that this bill introduces some of these ideas. 485 00:49:05,650 --> 00:49:08,830 Plus, it's an interesting building. It's an interesting way of thinking about space, 486 00:49:08,830 --> 00:49:14,160 and it represents a different way of being an architect who's thought very carefully about how space works. 487 00:49:14,160 --> 00:49:19,240 And it's come up with something, a new way in which a building might might work with space. 488 00:49:19,240 --> 00:49:28,330 Another architect who I want to I want to talk about and an architect is very unique in that in the early 20th century is Frank Lloyd Wright, 489 00:49:28,330 --> 00:49:35,870 one of Cabezas enemies. They hated each other. Frank Lloyd Wright famously called the subway a box on stilts. 490 00:49:35,870 --> 00:49:40,450 Right. In his architecture, particularly Zahedi architecture, not his Lytro architecture. 491 00:49:40,450 --> 00:49:44,440 That's rubbish, really. So that the unstuff today in his early architecture. 492 00:49:44,440 --> 00:49:49,630 Right. Is particularly interested in spatial and spatial properties of buildings as well. 493 00:49:49,630 --> 00:49:55,670 And what he and he does something rather unique for this period with the spatial properties is that he's been particularly as Ali Prarie has, 494 00:49:55,670 --> 00:50:06,220 as he's interested in firstly the house as sort of protective warming, nurturing space and how it might protect the household and the family. 495 00:50:06,220 --> 00:50:11,890 He's also interested in the symbolic properties of space in all of the early prarie houses. 496 00:50:11,890 --> 00:50:15,860 Right. Always puts the hearth in the middle. This is the plan of the Moors. Well, it has. 497 00:50:15,860 --> 00:50:21,430 And the whole plan of the house, all the rooms, the house sort of rotates around a central space, which is the hearth which which. 498 00:50:21,430 --> 00:50:30,040 Right. Sees the symbol of the family. The hearth is the most sacred, warm protective space in the house and it's in the centre of the house. 499 00:50:30,040 --> 00:50:35,170 All other spaces revolve around it and are largely subservient to it. 500 00:50:35,170 --> 00:50:36,720 If we go in the high, well, that's that's there. 501 00:50:36,720 --> 00:50:44,560 That's the hearth there in the centre of the series of spaces that seem to sort of move around it here. 502 00:50:44,560 --> 00:50:49,420 Right. Is saying something about the symbolic properties of space, which goes it goes much further. 503 00:50:49,420 --> 00:50:54,830 It means that in some ways it goes goes to addresses some of the fans concerns here. 504 00:50:54,830 --> 00:50:56,830 Space represents I think it means something. 505 00:50:56,830 --> 00:51:06,310 It means something symbolically, but it also could mean something in terms of memory, in terms of experiences. 506 00:51:06,310 --> 00:51:14,270 In other White Houses, he he he creates spaces within spaces, and that seems to sort of protect the user, 507 00:51:14,270 --> 00:51:20,550 create spaces around the user spaces with interior spaces within interior spaces in the Robie House in Chicago. 508 00:51:20,550 --> 00:51:24,330 This famous example of this is the dining table where famous Wright's famous 509 00:51:24,330 --> 00:51:31,280 tool back chest create in little separate interior spaces within the interiors. 510 00:51:31,280 --> 00:51:36,930 The reform includes enough. I think there's a sense that this this space wants to protect its use. 511 00:51:36,930 --> 00:51:39,810 It wants to protect the family within it. 512 00:51:39,810 --> 00:51:47,860 And again, there's a sort of sense of space having meaning here, having meaning and memory and meaning and experience. 513 00:51:47,860 --> 00:51:52,500 Accorsi. Another classic example of this is his Wright's obsession with play playrooms. 514 00:51:52,500 --> 00:52:01,160 Lots of these Wright houses have playrooms for children to play in. And they're always these warming kleiss sort of nurturing spaces. 515 00:52:01,160 --> 00:52:04,830 And in Wright's architecture, we can see some of the ideas that Bojo talks about, 516 00:52:04,830 --> 00:52:08,700 the idea that the architectural space might have symbolic properties. 517 00:52:08,700 --> 00:52:15,360 But we can also see some of the ideas that Bachelard is talking about, ideas about how memory experience, 518 00:52:15,360 --> 00:52:18,840 particularly childhood experience, might shape our interactions with spaces. 519 00:52:18,840 --> 00:52:25,800 I think you can you can just you can go and write is reading Bachelard and they just they just work with each other perfectly. 520 00:52:25,800 --> 00:52:33,240 These these houses are the sort of almost sacred, dreamlike spaces of childhood passion talks about. 521 00:52:33,240 --> 00:52:39,970 And again, it's a way of thinking about the building, the way of thinking about architecture. This is very, very different from the Capezio. 522 00:52:39,970 --> 00:52:48,060 Right. Right. He's interested in experience and how and how his users might experience these spaces, how they might be protected by them. 523 00:52:48,060 --> 00:52:51,870 In what way might they remind them of their own childhood? Natural, right. 524 00:52:51,870 --> 00:52:55,410 Had a very, very unhappy childhood, we're told is always moaning about his writing. 525 00:52:55,410 --> 00:53:00,230 You could sort of argue that what he's doing here is making up for his for his unhappy childhood. 526 00:53:00,230 --> 00:53:06,810 He's protecting others. This incredible nurturing playgrounds are all making up for what he lacked. 527 00:53:06,810 --> 00:53:17,040 And he was a child. If you're into sort of like biography and architectural less than then that might work. 528 00:53:17,040 --> 00:53:20,430 The final architects I want to talk about again, I'm sort of movement in architecture. 529 00:53:20,430 --> 00:53:29,370 And again, as I said, the contemporary with the BCA and and write and and still is in Russian and Russian constructivism, 530 00:53:29,370 --> 00:53:37,860 some other modernist movement. That, again, I think does things with space in a different way to to other other architects working in this period. 531 00:53:37,860 --> 00:53:44,640 And then again, it opens up questions of how we might think about space more generally and constructivist architecture, much like steel. 532 00:53:44,640 --> 00:53:52,980 Actually, they're interested in making new spaces, unfamiliar spaces, spaces that break down and change traditional forms of making space. 533 00:53:52,980 --> 00:53:57,590 And architecture is a very famous constructivist building. One of the anyone's ever got better. 534 00:53:57,590 --> 00:54:04,880 This is Malakoff Soviet Pavilion from 1925, which in fact I think is this is quite close. 535 00:54:04,880 --> 00:54:09,840 Still project here in the building itself. We don't really get much sense about to begin building begins. 536 00:54:09,840 --> 00:54:15,000 Iran's space is a very complicated one because it has a staircase running through the middle of it. 537 00:54:15,000 --> 00:54:20,900 These these what we call imagining these these roof elements, complicated, fragmented as well. 538 00:54:20,900 --> 00:54:30,900 This seems like the shell architecture, fragmented space, the sense of of of geometrical planes moving in free-floating space. 539 00:54:30,900 --> 00:54:36,420 But the plan is totally bonkers. And there's this there's never been a plan like this in the history of architecture. 540 00:54:36,420 --> 00:54:41,320 It looks nothing like any of Palladio plans or any of the eight million miles away. 541 00:54:41,320 --> 00:54:46,140 It delays geometrically. Perfect plan palace. It's totally insane. 542 00:54:46,140 --> 00:54:52,080 And the planning, you can't be sort of built on principles of diagonals, I suppose. 543 00:54:52,080 --> 00:54:56,910 But again, there's no sense of how where this space begins and ends. 544 00:54:56,910 --> 00:55:01,440 What's going on here, of course, for Malakoff on this this read the reasons behind this, 545 00:55:01,440 --> 00:55:08,550 a different Rietveld Malakoff is less interested in in complicating sort of interior next Syria. 546 00:55:08,550 --> 00:55:14,700 He's more interested in articulating the newness and modernity of his world in space. 547 00:55:14,700 --> 00:55:17,370 This is immediately after the Russian Revolution. 548 00:55:17,370 --> 00:55:23,550 These architects are wanting to express their new political system and their new life way of life in space. 549 00:55:23,550 --> 00:55:27,270 And to do that, they're rejecting the whole of the Western canon of architecture. 550 00:55:27,270 --> 00:55:34,410 They're coming up with new, different forms of space that reflect how societies become a different space. 551 00:55:34,410 --> 00:55:39,180 In 1920s Russia, but they're doing something else as well. 552 00:55:39,180 --> 00:55:45,570 And that's sort of linked to that because that suggests the architectural space can have a political meaning. 553 00:55:45,570 --> 00:55:50,280 It can embody political values. And it could also potentially do things for politics. 554 00:55:50,280 --> 00:56:00,300 It could. It could be political itself. This jolly looking building is one of the only other examples of constructivism that actually gets built. 555 00:56:00,300 --> 00:56:05,050 This is the Northampton Apartments in Moscow in the late 1920s built. 556 00:56:05,050 --> 00:56:13,380 So, Ginzberg, this is a big apartment block that was built in the middle of Moscow for civil servants work party workers. 557 00:56:13,380 --> 00:56:18,140 He worked for the government to live in and on the outside. 558 00:56:18,140 --> 00:56:25,740 That shows, as you can see now, it's falling down. What if it wasn't happy days on the outside? 559 00:56:25,740 --> 00:56:27,840 It looks like sort of kupelian modernism. 560 00:56:27,840 --> 00:56:35,700 It looks like such a kind of architecture that's being built in lots of places across across Europe in this period, 561 00:56:35,700 --> 00:56:38,370 although it's got quite, quite a funky plant. 562 00:56:38,370 --> 00:56:47,760 If we if we go inside and look at the plan, we can perhaps see some elements of the construct of this idea of creating new and dynamic spaces. 563 00:56:47,760 --> 00:56:52,680 There aren't many buildings in the Western world in this period that have a plan like that. 564 00:56:52,680 --> 00:57:02,750 But we'll make this. What makes this plan so extraordinary is the way that the space works in terms of private and communal, in fact. 565 00:57:02,750 --> 00:57:09,270 So these are all individual element. These are individual flats or apartments that the workers live in. 566 00:57:09,270 --> 00:57:17,550 But they are sleeping spaces only. These spaces here are the communal spaces which contain the kitchens and the living areas. 567 00:57:17,550 --> 00:57:21,660 This is communism in space. Okay, so everyone goes home and sleeps. 568 00:57:21,660 --> 00:57:27,780 But then the rest of the day is spent communally. They cook together. They live together, which is good. 569 00:57:27,780 --> 00:57:31,980 You know, if you're if you if you're sort of diehard communist, that's greater than others. 570 00:57:31,980 --> 00:57:36,000 But potentially what the building does is also make people think like that. 571 00:57:36,000 --> 00:57:40,250 Okay. So if you if you live in this building and suddenly your flat doesn't have a kitchen, 572 00:57:40,250 --> 00:57:45,750 well, you're going to be forced to have to cook these communal kitchen. Right. It sounds a bit like Ch'ien accommodation. 573 00:57:45,750 --> 00:57:50,080 I know. But like I said, that in this case, these are sort of these are the workers work, 574 00:57:50,080 --> 00:57:56,460 the private individuals that are working for the state and also renting out the state. 575 00:57:56,460 --> 00:57:59,230 And the building, in a way, is trying to make them behave in a certain way. 576 00:57:59,230 --> 00:58:04,290 It's trying to make them is trying to make them adhere to a political system. 577 00:58:04,290 --> 00:58:11,390 But as I said, actually changing their behaviour and making them live in a particular way according to the principles of the state. 578 00:58:11,390 --> 00:58:20,020 And actually, Ginsberg makes us give it says this. And in his writings, it's saying that when he's designing this see, 579 00:58:20,020 --> 00:58:25,290 Ginzberg says 1924 that we can no longer compel the occupants of a particular building to live collectively, 580 00:58:25,290 --> 00:58:31,170 collectively, as we have attempted to do in the past. A Yes, we have tried to make people alter their behaviour through art, through the spaces. 581 00:58:31,170 --> 00:58:35,580 We've done it. But he may a generally with negative results. 582 00:58:35,580 --> 00:58:41,460 We must provide for the possibility of a gradual transition to communal utilisation in a number of different ways. 583 00:58:41,460 --> 00:58:48,270 We considered it absolutely necessary to incorporate certain features that would stimulate the transition to a socially superior mode of life. 584 00:58:48,270 --> 00:58:55,950 Stimulate but not dictate. I gradually coerce people into behaving in certain ways, not just telling them outright. 585 00:58:55,950 --> 00:59:03,830 The space here I think is taking on an acceptable space takes on a really interesting role that space is playing here is really interesting. 586 00:59:03,830 --> 00:59:12,670 Space is is. It is a tool. It's an apple is the apparatus by which Ginsberg and state could could change people's ways. 587 00:59:12,670 --> 00:59:24,330 Could they. The gradual transition to utilisation is being carried through is being is being the work is being done by the space in the building. 588 00:59:24,330 --> 00:59:30,900 Space is being thought of as something that can fundamentally affect the user's behaviour. 589 00:59:30,900 --> 00:59:35,790 This gives a lot of power to the architect and more power to the state. But but it. 590 00:59:35,790 --> 00:59:41,340 But but but. But but it's not. But it goes beyond Capezio sort of controlling the user's vision here. 591 00:59:41,340 --> 00:59:44,700 The user's behaviour, the way the user thinks, the way the user lives, 592 00:59:44,700 --> 00:59:50,730 the way the user lives, their day to day life is being shaped and dictated by the building. 593 00:59:50,730 --> 00:59:53,930 And of course, it's ideas like that that that Ficco is talking about. 594 00:59:53,930 --> 01:00:05,370 And Panopto CISM and full of Ginzberg sort of fall for Ginsburg's hopes that the knock on effect doesn't seem very, very far removed from prison. 595 01:00:05,370 --> 01:00:12,140 This is a space that suddenly is not just it's not just there to be sort of experienced fidei. 596 01:00:12,140 --> 01:00:18,120 This is a few vision. This is a space that is now fundamentally Tavia. 597 01:00:18,120 --> 01:00:26,040 So we've gone from a position where where architecture is sort of rendered on paper as it is, is made visual by the architects, 598 01:00:26,040 --> 01:00:33,320 is something that the architect can largely dictate in terms of two dimensions to a three dimensional space that is now fighting back. 599 01:00:33,320 --> 01:00:37,260 It's now it's not controlling people and altering behaviour. 600 01:00:37,260 --> 01:00:45,740 So can we start outside of this actually suggesting that architecture is a sort of master art that has mastery over all the other decorative arts? 601 01:00:45,740 --> 01:00:53,700 I'm concluding it by saying that perhaps it's even more powerful. And that's actually it has it has the potential to be the master of us as well. 602 01:00:53,700 --> 01:00:57,128 Thank you.