"Sanatsal Cömertlik, Alçak Gönüllülük ve İfade: Mimarlıkta Gerçeklik Duygusu ve İdealleştirme"
"Sanatsal Cömertlik, Alçak Gönüllülük ve İfade: Mimarlıkta Gerçeklik Duygusu ve İdealleştirme"
Tarih: 9 Mart 2011
Saat: 14.30
Yer: MSGSÜ Sedad Hakkı Eldem Oditoryumu, Fındıklı, İstanbul.
Mimar Sinan Üniversitesi 1999 Mimarlık Bölümü mezunu mimar Yunus Aran’ın anısını yaşatmak, mimarlık fakültesi öğrencilerinin birikimlerine katkıda bulunmak için ve mesleki kariyerlerini mimarlık alanıyla kesiştiren farklı disiplinlerden konuşmacıların katılımıyla 2001 yılından bu yana her yıl düzenli olarak Yunus Aran Birlikteliği ve Mimar Sinan Güzel Sanatlar Üniversitesi işbirliğiyle gerçekleştirilen Yunus Aran Konferansları’nın 41. konuğu Prof. Juhani Pallasmaa olmuştur.
Konuşmacılar hakkında daha fazla bilgi için http://www.yunusaran.org/prof-juhani-pallasmaa adresini ziyaret edebilirsiniz.
Konuşma Özeti:
Mimarlık bir tür sanatsal ifade biçimi olarak kabul edilir. Peki ya sanat ile mimarlık neyi ifade ederler? Güncelliğe ve tikelliğe itibar edilen günümüzde gerek mimarlık eğitiminde, gerekse uygulamada ve hatta eleştiride hakim olan görüş, yapıların tasarımcılarının kişisel estetik ideallerini, isteklerini ve hatta kendi kişiliklerini yansıtmaları şeklindedir. Kişiliğin mimarlığa yansıması kültü, günümüz mimarlığındaki değer sisteminin bir parçası olmaktadır.
19. Yüzyıl Romantisizm’indeki ilham perisi yaklaşımını devam ettiren sanatsal özanlatım, ne çare ki artistik fenomenin sığ bir algısına dayanmaktadır. Özgün bir ifadeye ulaşmak yerine, engin sanat ve mimarlık ürünleri, sorgulanmakta olan sanatsal biçime özgü nesnellik ve dolayımlama üzerinden gözleyenin, dinleyenin, ikâmet edenin ve onu çevreleyen dünyanın karşılaşmalarını ifade eden artistik benzeşimler ve metaforlar yaratmanın peşine düşerler. Mimarlığın ise, varoluşçu benzeşimleri, uzam, madde, yerçekimi ve ışıktan oluşur.
Sanat, dünyadaki varoluşumuzu, ve hatta dünyanın deneysel iç uzamlarını teşekkül ettirir ve biçimlendirir. Bu noktada Rainer Maria Rilke’in güzel kavramı Weltinnenraum’a atıfta bulunmak da yerinde olacaktır. Jean-Paul Sartre; “Eğer bir ressam bize çiçeklerle dolu bir peyzaj ya da bir vazo betimliyorsa, onun resimleri tüm dünyaya açılan bir penceredir.” diye ifade eder. Mimarlık da, akıl çelen ve arabulucu metaforları kullanarak iç ve dış dünyalar arasındaki uzlaşmayı sağlar. Sanatın varoluşçu metaforlarının, gerçeklerle, onları sembolleştiren bir bağı yoktur. Varoluşçu metaforlar, artistik anlamda transforme olmuş ve yaşanmış gerçeklerdir. Gerçek mimarlık ürünleri ise, dikkatlerimizi yapıdan ziyade dünyaya ve kendi varoluş deneyimimize yönlendirirler. Mimarlık, bir sanat olarak, tüm dünyaya açıktır.
Jean-Paul Sartre, cömertlik ve güvenin, yazar ve okuru arasında ne denli vazgeçilmez bir ilişki olduğuna değinir. Mimarlık da cömertliği gerektirmektedir. Mimarlık ürünü, algının çerçevesini, düzlemini oluştururken, deneyimi ve anlamı var eder. Ve nihayetinde, ötekinin sanatsal üretimi yoluyla, kendimizle yüzleşiriz.
Sanat yapıtları daima ortak çalışma ve işbirliğine bağlı olarak ortaya çıkarlar. Mimarlık ürünleri, nadiren bir mimarın tekbaşına inşa ettiği işlerdir. Yapılar, onlarca, çoğu zaman yüzlerce bireyin, uzmanın, ustanın, zanaatkârın, müteahhitin, mühendisin ve yatırımcının ortak çabasıyla vücuda gelirler. Lâkin mimarlık, esasen daha derin bir işbirliğidir. Anlam dolu yapılar gelenekten çıkarak yükselirler. Bir geleneği oluşturur ve onu sürdürürler.
Mimarlığın ortak bir çalışama olarak algılanması görüşü, şüphesiz günümüz kültünde, tasarımcının üzerine biçmeye çalıştığı emsalsizlik gömleğinin şanını, eşsiz bireysel yaratıcılık inancının büyüsünü zayıflatmaktadır. Oysa ki mesleğimiz, günümüz mimarlık dünyasına hâkim olan kibir ve ben-merkezli tutumların yerini alacak, alçak gönüllülüğü ve tavazuyu yeniden keşfetmelidir. “Şiir, muazzam bir güvensizlik ve belirsizlik okuludur.” diyen çağımızın en büyük poetik enteleketlerinden biri olan Joseph Brodsky, bu anlamda biz mimarlara paha biçilemez bir öğüt verir.
"Sanatsal Cömertlik, Alçak Gönüllülük ve İfade: Mimarlıkta Gerçeklik Duygusu ve İdealleştirme"
Prof. Juhani Pallasmaa
"Artistic Generosity, Humility and Expression: Reality Sense and Idealization in Architecture"
Prof. Juhani Pallasmaa
ARTISTIC EXPRESSION AND METAPHOR
Architecture is usually regarded as a form of individual artistic expression. But what do the arts and architecture express? In our time that values unforeseen novelty and uniqueness, the prevailing view in architectural education as well as practice and criticism seems to be that buildings express the personal aesthetic ideals and aspirations of the designer, or even characteristics of his/her unique personality. Signature architecture and a personality cult are clearly central in today’s architectural value system.
A few years ago, I visited the memorial exhibition of Balthus, the painter, in the Palazzo Grassi in Venice. Count Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, to use his real name, was undoubtedly one of the great figurative painters of twentieth century, whose paintings are characterized by an extraordinary sensuality and eroticism. Upon entry to the exhibition, the visitor was confronted with a striking statement by the artist: “I hear artists speak about expressing themselves in their works; nothing like that has ever occurred to me”[memorized quote]. In another context the artist elaborates his position further: "If a work expresses the person who created it, it wasn’t worth doing. […] expressing the world, understanding it, that is what seems interesting to me" [1]. This position sounds surprising for an eccentric artist, but in fact, no profound artist or architect of any time would be self-centered or naïve enough to see his/her art merely as self-expression. A few months before his death in 2001, Balthus re-formulated his argument: "Great painting has to have universal meaning. This is sadly no longer so today and this is why I want to give painting back its lost universality and anonymity, because the more anonymous painting is, the more real it is" [2]. Could we expect a similar position from one of today’s international star architects?
The idea of artistic self-expression continues the 19th century romantic idea of the blessed and haunted genius, but it is based on a shallow understanding of the artistic phenomenon. Instead of seeking personal expression, true works of art as well as architecture aspire to create artistic analogues and metaphors that express the encounter of the artist/viewer/listener/dweller and the world through means and materials specific to the artform in question. Poems, paintings and music create experiential universes, whereas the existential analogues of architecture are constructed of space, matter, gravity and light.
"How would the painter or poet express anything other than his encounter with the world?", exclaims Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the philosopher [3].
How could the architect express anything else through his/her art, we must also ask. Architecture, as all art, "makes visible how the world touches us", as Merleau-Ponty wrote of the paintings of Paul Cézanne [4]. Art and architecture articulate and structure our being-in-the-world, or the experiential inner space of the world, the Weltinnenraum, to use a beautiful notion of Rainer Maria Rilke, the poet [5]. "If the painter presents us with a field or a vase of flowers, his paintings are windows which are open on the whole world", Jean-Paul Sartre, the existentialist philosopher states [6]. Architecture, also, mediates between the outer and the inner experiential worlds by means of its suggestive and mediating metaphors. To be more precise in order to prevent misunderstanding: the existential metaphors of art do not have a symbolizing relationship with reality; they are human lived reality themselves. True works of architecture turn our attention away from the building back to the world and our own existential experience. Architecture, also, is "open on the whole world" in accordance with Sartre’s suggestion.
FUSION OF THE SELF AND THE WORLD
In the text he wrote in memory of Herbert Read in 1990, Salman Rushdie, the writer, describes the weakening of the boundary between the self and the world that takes place in artistic phenomena both in the processes of conceiving and experiencing the work. "Literature is made at the boundary between self and the world, and during the creative act this borderline softens, turns penetrable and allows the world to flow into the artist and the artist to flow into the world" [7]. The writer’s description applies precisely to the making of architecture: the architect internalizes his existential experience and sense of being, and embodies the countless parameters of the design task, and this fusion gives rise to an architectural analogue of the utterly compressed condition of awareness. "Writing is literally an existential process", the poet Joseph Brodsky argues [8], and the same must surely be said of both the conception and experience of architecture. Profound architectural works reach beyond visual aesthetics towards the enigma of human existence itself. Artistic and architectural works emerge and exist in a mental state of divided awareness, or as Sartre writes, in an "imaginative consciousness" [9]. An existential awareness gives rise to an artistic image that is not merely a product of intellectual deduction, aesthetic elaboration, or emotional expression. We should rather say, that architecture is all of this fused into simultaneously diffuse, compressed, and pregnant embodied mental imagery.
As we settle in a space, we allow the boundary between ourselves and the space soften and become sensitized in accordance with Rushdie’s view. The external and internal space, the physical and mental, the real and imaginary, constitute an indivisible continuum, a singularity. “I am the space where I am", as poet Noël Arnaud confesses [10]. After thirty years, I can still vividly recall the complete loss of my separate self as I was forced to identify myself with the fused space, matter and time of the gigantic and shockingly silent Peristyle at the Karnak Temple in Luxor. That very space remains in me forever and a part of me was eternally left in that superhuman space. Every profound artistic experience is an exchange and transformation.
I could tell of countless spaces and places that I have encapsulated in my memory and that have altered my very being. I am convinced that every one of us can recall such transformative experiences. This is the true power of architecture; it changes us, and it changes us for the better through opening and emancipating our view of the world.
All great artistic works are complete universes and microcosmic representations of the world. They are pieces of magic that manage to contain everything in a singular mental and experiential image. Ezra Pound, the arch-modernist poet, gives a convincing definition for the power of the artistic image: "An image is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time. Only such an image, such poetry, could give us that sense of sudden liberation; that sense of freedom from time limits and space limits; that sense of sudden growth, which we experiencing the experience in the presence of the greatest works of art" [11]. Constantin Brancusi, the mythical modern sculptor, the Romanian shepherd, makes a surprisingly similar statement: "Art must give suddenly, all at once, the shock of life, the sensation of breathing" [12]. The sculptor’s stunning notion "the shock of life" must be an equally valid criterion in architecture. Great buildings are not about aesthetics; they are about ethic judgment and genuine life.
CONDENSATION OF EXPERIENCE
Poetic images are not mere formal inventions of an artistic ingenuity; they are condensations of countless experiences, perceptions and memories. They are fruits of profound life. Rilke expresses the idea of artistic condensation touchingly, indeed: "[…] Verses are not, as people imagine simply feelings […] they are experiences. For the sake of a single verse, one must see many cities, men and things, one must know the animals, one must feel how the birds fly and know the gesture with which the little flowers open in the morning." [13].
Architecture, like poetry, arises from existential experiences, not from mere formal ideas, the quest for expression, or a forceful image. Brancusi, whose sculptures combine purity and evocative power, rejects entirely the idea of form as an aesthetic preconception: "I never seek to make what they call a pure or abstract form. Pureness, simplicity is never in mind; to arrive at the real sense of things is the one aim." [14]. He offers another view to the usual way we tend to understand artistic simplicity: "Simplicity is not an end of art, but one arrives at simplicity in spite of oneself in approaching the real essence of things, simplicity is a bottom complexity and one must be nourished on its essence to understand its significance." [15]. To arrive at the reality and essence of things must also be the architect’s true aim; meaningful architectural simplicity is likewise utter complexity and compression. As a consequence, true minimalism is not an explicit aesthetic intention; one arrives at simplicity through a search for the essential “in spite of oneself”, as Brancusi teaches us.
During the past couple of decades, I have hardly given a lecture anywhere on any subject without showing an image of Giorgio Morandi’s still-lifes. This painter rarely crossed the boundaries of his native city, Bologna, but he was capable to condense our entire existential mystery in these metaphysical works. His minute paintings of a couple of bottles and glasses on a tabletop are deep meditations on the fundamental questions of being: Why does something exist rather than not. They are, in fact, akin to Martin Heidegger’s subject matter in Being and Time, yet, the painter’s, the poet’s, and the architect’s philosophizing are fundamentally untranslatable into verbal concepts and constructs. They are a form of embodied thinking, or "a philosophy in the flesh", to paraphrase the title of the thought-provoking book by Mark Johnson and George Lakoff [16].
We should not, however, dismiss the role of the artist’s intelligence, either. Henry Moore, another great master of twentieth century sculpture, gives us a lesson: "The artist works with a concentration of his whole personality, and the conscious part of it resolves conflicts, organizes memories, and prevents him from trying to walk in two directions at the same time." [17] Even poetic imagery and creativity have their characteristic logic, or "poetic chemistry", to use a notion of Bachelard.
GENEROSITY
During the past couple of decades, the phenomenological approach has been accepted as one of the significant ways of investigating architectural experience, but the ideas of the existential philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre are not often discussed in the context of architecture. Yet, I have found the philosopher’s books and essays very stimulating and surprising gentle and optimistic considering the general gloomy reputation of his existential thinking. Books like Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions [1939], What Is Literature? [1948] and his improvised lecture "Existentialism and Humanism" [1945] are thought -provoking reading for an architect. These books help to shatter the naïve realist view of architecture as a professional craft that serves only practical and economic purposes by means of technology.
Sartre writes about generosity and confidence as necessary relationships between the writer and his/her reader: "[R]eading is an exercise in generosity, and what the writer requires of the reader is not the application of abstract freedom, but the gift of his whole person, with his passions, his prepossessions, his sympathies, his sexual temperament, and scale of values. Only this person will give himself generously [..,] Reading is a pact of generosity between author and reader. Each one trusts the other; each one counts on the other demands of the other as much as he demands of himself. For this confidence is itself generosity."[18].
Allow me to project Sartre's idea of the writer's generosity and the mutual confidence of the writer and the reader, to the field of architecture. The relationship of the client, or better, the occupant, and the architect is not usually thought of in such personal and intimate terms. Yet, also architectural impact is a matter of generosity and confidence. We may well think of the interaction of the client and the architect during the design process, but generally we regard buildings as self-sufficient objects east into the world to be encountered anonymously without any intimate relationship between the maker and the observer. As a building is finalized, it is expected to sail independently through time and human destiny.
However, as we encounter a building, say, Brunelleschi’s Foundling Hospital or Michelangelo 's Laurentian Library, both in Florence, our own experience and intentionality encounter the architect's existential sense across the abyss of half a millennium. I am not suggesting that the two Renaissance master-architects would arise from death to communicate with us, but the re is a distinct encounter, a way of touching, in the very sense that Merleau-Ponty speaks of the painter's or poet's encounter with the world. We encounter the architect’s architectural metaphor of his/her existential world and this imagery inspires, frames, and strengthens our own existential encounter with our own world. Through an architectural generosity the designer donates his existential sense, his life experience and existential wisdom, to the occupant. The architect offers both his body and mind to the service of the occupant. The architect holds the occupant by hand, as it were, and narrates to him/her the specific existential situation of that specific place and time. Experiencing an artistic work is always an exchange: the work lends me its magic aura, and lend the work my personal feelings and emotions. The emancipation and joy I encounter in Brunelleschi's hospital, and the healing melancholy I confront in Michelangelo's library are undoubtedly both reflections of my own emotional condition. Architectural works create frames and horizons of perception, experience and meaning, and ultimately, I confront myself through the work of the other. This intrapersonal exchange implies architectural confidence and generosity.
THE TWO REALlTIES OF ART
The mental re-orientation caused by an architectural work can be truly surprising. A dozen years ago I had the opportunity of visiting the Currutchet House [1948-55] of Le Corbusier in La Plata Argentina. I found the embodied spatiality of the house exceptionally moving and forceful. The house is simultaneously below and above, in front and behind left and right of the visitor. It embraces the occupant like a "cradle" [19], to use Gaston Bachelard's metaphor for the protective embrace of architecture. Le Corbusier's house marks the edge of the city and stretches itself as well as the occupant’s awareness towards the open view of the adjacent park, and eventually to the whole wide world. After having returned back to my own country on the opposite side of the globe, I felt that my senses of gravity and horizon, up and down, and of the cardinal orientations had all been recalibrated by this extraordinary house; a piece of modern architecture turned literally into "an instrument to confront cosmos" [20], as Bachelard famously describes the metaphysical power of architecture.
We tend to take reality as something given, objective and unproblematic; this view is called "naïve realism". But there is nothing axiomatic or revealed about "reality". As the therapist Viktor von Weizsacker tells us: "Reality is the opposite of the obvious" [21]. Sartre points out that artistic experience always takes place in the dimension of unreality, or the realm of the imaginary. Surely the performance of a symphony orchestra, a book of poetry or a building are really but the experience of the symphonic work, the poem, as well as of the building is unreal, and imaginative. It has its mental and experiential existence only.
An artistic work exists thought-provokingly simultaneously in two realities the physical reality of its material essence, making, and performance, on the one hand and in the imaginative reality of its artistic image and expressive structure, on the other. A painting is simultaneously paint on canvas, and an imaginary picture or world. A sculpture is similarly a piece of stone and an image, and a building is an object of utility matter and structure, and an imaginative spatio-temporal metaphor of human existence that seeks its embodied identification. The tension between the two existences of a work of art charges the work with a hypnotizing power. As we are experiencing an artistic work we are suspended between the two realities.
The generosity of the writer and the architect lies in the fact that they offer their freedom of imagination, identity and association to the reader and the occupant. Whenever i enter the Villa Mairea [1938-39] by Alvar Aalto, I am touched and welcomed by the building; it promises to take 9000 care of me. A work of art is always an invitation, a promise and an appeal.
Skillfully designed buildings are usually expected to direct and channel the occupant's experiences, feelings and thoughts. In my view, this attitude is fundamentally wrong; architecture offers an open field of possibilities, and it stimulates and emancipates perceptions, associations, feelings, and thoughts. A meaningful building does not argue or propose anything; it inspires us to see, sense and think ourselves. A great architectural work sharpens our senses, opens our perceptions, and makes us receptive to the realities of the world. The aura of the work also inspires us to dream. It helps us to see a fine view of the garden, feel the silent persistence of a tree, or the presence of the other, but it does not indoctrinate or bind us.
There are two kinds of mental images: the first type forces and indoctrinates attention and interpretation, as in the case of commercial and political images, whereas the second, the poetic image, emancipates and sets free. As the first type of images closes and limits, the second opens up by offering new horizons of possibility and understanding.
"The writer should not seek to overwhelm; otherwise he is in contradiction with himself; it he wishes to make demands he must propose only the task to be fulfilled. Hence the character of pure presentation, which appears essential to the work of art" [22], Sartre reasons and continues: "The reader must be able to make a certain aesthetical withdrawal [...] [Jean] Genet justly calls it the author's politeness towards the reader" [23].
In addition to an "aesthetic withdrawal" and "politeness", I have written of an “architectural courtesy" referring to the wav a sensuous building offers gentle and subconscious gestures for the pleasure of the occupant: a door-handle offers itself courteously to the approaching hand, the first step of a stairway appears exactly at the moment you wish to proceed upstairs, and the window is exactly where you wish to look out. The building is in full resonance with the wider setting and with your body, movements and desires. Architecture constitutes an empathetic choreography for events and incidents of life.
Instead of imposing its own aesthetic formalism, a meaningful building resonates with the landscape and situations of life. Kengo Kuma, one of today's "minimalist" architects, aspires to design buildings that "listen" to the place instead of dominating or appropriating the landscape and using it as a springboard for an artistic effect. "Listening to the place is a method that has not been used by modern architects", he says [24]. Kuma's observation is a call for a deliberate artistic withdrawal, passivity and repetition that aim at creating a pensive and receptive silence. Architectural "politeness" or "courtesy" also implies the inviolability and Integrity of the occupant; situations of life and actions are allowed to unfold naturally as If the architectural ensemble constituted a second nature.
REALITY AND IDEALlZATION
"Realism usually provides the strongest stimulus to my imagination", Alvar Aalto confesses [25]. On the other hand, he makes clear that his design method is that of a poetic logic: "Whatever our task, whether large or small, whether it arises from ugly banality or the most sensitive emotional element, be it a city or its part, a building or a transport network, a painting, a sculpture, or a piece of utility-ware, there is one absolute condition for its creation before it can attain a value that qualifies it as culture [...] in every case, opposites must be reconciled [...] Almost every formal assignment involves dozens, often hundreds, sometimes thousands of conflicting elements that can be forced into functional harmony only by an act of will. This harmony cannot be achieved by any other means than art... [26] At the same time Aalto acknowledges the significance of idealization in architecture: "Architecture has an ulterior motif [...] the idea of creating paradise. That Is the only purpose of our buildings [...] Every building, every architectural product that is its symbol, is intended to show that we wish to build a paradise on earth for man." [27].
Uniting the polarities of realism and paradise is another example of the miracles attainable through art. Aalto's idea can easily be dismissed as a literary metaphor or romantic naïvite, but the dimension of Idealization is equally essential in poetry, painting and architecture. As Rilke notes in a letter: "Art is not a little selective sample of the world, it is a transformation of the world, an endless transformation towards the good." [28]. Every profound piece of art addresses a world that presents a better reality, a more sensitive, cultured and compassionate Humankind than today’s, "if ever so slightly" [29], to use the expression by which T.S. Eliot describes the secret way how a profoundly novel work of art re-structures the entire history of art. This idealizing dimension of art is true regardless of the genre, or the emotional tone of the narrative. Kafka's novels and short stories present gloomy and hopeless life situations, yet their mental Impact Is integrating and invigorating because of the unique ethical and literary strength of the work. The hopelessness of the protagonist's situation magically promotes hope in human reason and compassion. The generosity and freedom of the work lay in the qualities of the literary construction, independently of the anxiety and lack of freedom in the depicted life of the protagonist. "Thus, there are only good and bad novels. The bad novel aims to please by flattering, whereas the good one is an exigency and an act of faith.", Sartre explains [30]. He reminds us again of the dual reality of the artistic work: "Aesthetic contemplation is an induced dream and the passing into the real is an actual waking up." [31].
THE REALITY OF THE CLlENT
At this point of my argumentation, a professionalist architect would most likely arise to defend his/her realist position by arguing that one must identify precisely the clients requirements, needs and desires to produce a design in direct response to this reality. However, I would like to make the opposite argument: the architect needs to create an ideal client- "if ever so slightly"- in order to elevate his work to the realm of architecture.
This is surely what a true writer does. "Thinking about the reader is a deadly error for the writer", as J.M. Coetzee, the Nobel laureate writer argues [32]. In the "postscript" to his immensely successful The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco explains that there are two types of writers: the first type writes what he expects the reader to want to read, the second creates his ideal reader as he writes. In Eco's view, the first writer will be able to write mere kiosk literature, whereas the second type is capable of writing literature that timelessly touches and elevates the human soul [33]. Architecture must similarly aim at a better world and it has to be based on an optimistic view of the human destiny. Without optimism architecture is bound to produce architectural kitsch or cynical and apocalyptic settings. Indeed, the Patron Saint of architecture is Hope.
This view of idealization that I am promoting does not imply self-centeredness or narcissism of the architect. On the contrary it calls for a heightened sense of responsibility. In my view, meaningful architecture must be conceived for a "glorified" client, and it must aspire for an Idealized world, a condition that is more cultured, humane and subtle, than the concurrent actuality. Meaningful architectural always transcends its given conditions and achieves more than it is consciously commissioned to do. This is the true political dimension of our craft.
To be more provocative, and at the same time, more precise, I wish to argue that a true architect does not at all design for a client as an external "other". He/she internalizes the client as well as all the physical and logistic parameters, and designs for him/herself in his/her role as the intemalized client. True architectural experiences and emotions cannot be analyzed deducted or projected; they have to be lived through one 's embodied imagination and body. I cannot divine how another person feels, I can only sensitize my own capacities of imagination and compassion. At the end of the design process the architect donates the house to the actual external client the other. Like love, architecture is always a gift and a miracle. It achieves and embraces more than it was set out to do, and more than anyone could have imagined. Significant architecture always constructs a new and unforeseen microcosmic world at the same time that it reinforces traditional and cultural continuity. The more radical the work is, the more firmly it ends up strengthening the continuum of cultural and artistic tradition.
I wish to argue firmly that the ethical potential and task of architecture resides In its very capacity to transcend naïve realism and instrumentality, to dream of a better and more sensitive and sensuous world, and to facilitate the emergence of this world in the realm of the real. Architectural reason and sensitivity sincerity and beauty surely resonate with ethical ideals. Beauty itself evokes the existential core of being and it is a harbinger of eternal life. Beauty will save the world, as Fyodor Dostoevsky believed. As Joseph Brodsky argues further: "on the whole every new aesthetic reality makes man's ethical reality more precise. For aesthetics is the mother of ethics. The categories of "good" and "bad” are, first and foremost aesthetic ones, at least etymologically preceding the categories of "good” and “evil" [34].
ARCHlTECTURE AS MENTAL COLLABORATION
Artistic work is always bound to be a collaboration simultaneously on several levels. As John Dewey informs us in his seminal book Art As Experience [1934] [36], the artistic dimension arises from the encounter of the work and its reader/viewer. The artistic experience is a collaborative effort of the writer and the reader, the painter and the viewer, the architect and the occupant. As Sartre argues: "It is the joint effort of author and reader which brings upon the scene that concrete and imaginary object which is the work of the mind. There is no art except for and by others" [37].
"Great poetry is possible only if there are great readers", argues Walt Whitman significantly [38]. lt is equally evident that there are good buildings only as long as there are good dwellers and occupants, but aren’t we, citizens of this obsessively materialist consumer world, loosing our capacity to dwell, and as a consequence, becoming unable to promote architecture? The modem man's ideal condition is the journey not dwelling. In one of his notes Ludwig Wittgenstein suggests: "Architecture immortalizes and glorifies something. Hence, there can be no architecture, where there is nothing to glorify." [39]. Architectural thought arises from given conditions, but it always aspires for an ideal. Hence, the loss of the ideal dimension of life implies the disappearance of architecture.
Architectural works are rarely built by the architect himself alone; buildings arise from the collaborative effort of tens, often hundreds of individuals, experts, builders, craftsmen, engineers, and investors. But architecture is collaboration also in another and, perhaps, more fundamental sense. Meaningful buildings arise from tradition and they constitute and continue a tradition. In his book The Art of the Novel, Milan Kundera writes of "the wisdom of the novel" [40], and he argues that all great writers listen to this wisdom, and as a consequence, all great novels are wiser than their writers. No doubt, there is also a "wisdom of architecture", and all profound architects listen to this wisdom In their work. No architect worthy of his craft works alone; he works with the entire history of architecture "in his bones" [41], as T.S. Elliot writes about the tradition-conscious writer. The great gift of tradition is that we can choose our collaborators; we can collaborate with Brunelleschi and Michelangelo if we are wise enough to do so.
My view of architecture as collaboration certainly takes away same of the glory from the unique individual invention that today's cult of the creator tends to cast on it. In fact, I dare to suggest that our profession should re-learn the art of humility and modesty to replace the air of arrogance and self-centeredness that often prevails in today’s architectural world. "Poetry is a tremendous school of insecurity and uncertainty", Joseph Brodsky, one of greatest poetic minds of our time, writes poetically and continues: "Poetry-writing it as well as reading it-will teach you humility and rather quickly at that. Especially, if you are both writing it and reading it." [42]. So will architecture. The art of architecture does not simplify the world into self-evident truths. On the contrary, great buildings open up the mysteries, complexities and unpredictabilities of the world and human life, but in doing so they provide the true ground for human dignity and freedom.
Notes:
[1] Claude Roy, Balthus. Boston, New York, Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1996, p. 18.
[2] Bafthus in His Own Words, A Conversation with Cristina Carrillo de Albornoz, New York: Assouline, 2001, p. 6.
[3] As quoted in Richard Kearney, "Maurice Merleau-Ponty", in Richard Kearney, Modem Movements In European Philosophy. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994, p. 82.
[4] Maurice Merleau-Ponty, .Cezanne's Doubt", In Maurice MerIeau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense. Evanston: Northwestem University Press, 1964, p.48.
[5] Liisa Enwald, editor, "Lukijalle" [To the reader], Rainer Maria Rilke, Hiljainen taiteen sisin: kirjeitä vuosilta 1900-1926 [The silent innermost core of art; letters 1900-1926]. Helsinki: TAI-teos, 1997, p.8.
[6] Jean-Paul Sartre, What is literature? Reprinted in Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writings, edited by Stephen Priest. London and New York: Routledge, 2001, p.272.
[7] Salman Rushdie, “Eikö mikää ole pyhää?” [Isn't Anything Sacred?]". Helsinki, Parnasso 1:1996, p. 8.
[8] Joseph Brodsky, Less Than One. New York Farrar Straus Giroux, 1986, p. 124.
[9] As quoted in Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writings, op. cit, p. 291.
[10] As quoted in Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press, 1969, p. 137.
[11] As quoted in Mc Clatchky, J.D. "Introduction", Poets on Painters. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London; University of California Press, p. Xi.
[12] Quoted by Dorothy Dudley in "Brancusi”, Dial 82 [ February 1927]. As republished in Eric Shines, Brancusi. New York; Abbevllle Press, 1989, p.107.
[13] Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, p. 26.
[14] Quoted by Dorothy Dudley, op. cit, p.106.
[15] Catalogue of Brancusi Exhibition, Brummer Gallery, New York. 1926. As republished In Erik Shines, Brancusi. New York: Abbeville Press, 1989, p.106.
[16] Mark Johnson, George Lakoff, Philosophy in the F/esh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books, 1999.
[17] Henry Moore. Henry Moore on Sculpture. London: MacDonald, 1968, p. 62.
[18] Sartre, op. cit, p. 268 and 271.
[19] Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beaeon Press, 1969, p.7.
[20] Gaston Bachelard, op. cit., p. 46.
[21] Viktor von Weizsacker, Der Gesta/tkreis. Stuttgart: Georg Thieme, 1968.
[22] Jean~Paul Sartre, QP. cit., pp. 267-268.
[23] Jean-Paul Sartre, op. cit.. p. 268.
[24] Kengo Kuma, “Particle on Horizontal Plane", Stone Museum, project description, Kengo Kuma. Tokyo, The Japan Architect, 38: summer 2000, p. 28.
[25] Interview for Finnish Television, July 1972 in Göran Schildt, ed., Alvar Aalto in His Own Words. Helsinki: Otava Publishing Company, 1997, p. 174.
[26] Alvar Aalto, "Art and Technology", 1955, inaugural lecture as member of the Finnish Academy, 3 October 1955. In Alvar Aalto in His Own Worlds, ibid., p. 174.
[27] Alvar Aalto, lecture at the jubilee meeting of the Southwestern Sweden Master Builders' Society in Malmö, 1957. In Alvar Aalto in His Own WOrlds, ibid., p. 215.
[28] Rainer Maria Rilke, letter to Jaeob Bamn Uexkull, Paris 19.8.1909, Enwald, op. cit., p.41.
[29] T. S. Eliot "Tradition and Individual Talent", Selected Essays, new edition. New York: Harcourt, Brace World, 1964.
[30] Jean-Paul Sartre, op. cit., p. 275.
[31] Jean-Paul Sartre, op. cit., p. 298.
[32] Interview of J. M. Coetzee, Helsingin Sanaroat [summer 1987].
[33] Umberto Eco, "Postscript to the Name of the Rose", Matka arkipäivän todellisuuteen [Travels in Hyperreality]. Helsinki: Werner Söderstrom Oy, 1985, pp. 231-264.
[34] Joseph Brodsky, “Uncommon Visage", On Grief and Reason. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997, p. 49.
[35] Jean-Paul Sartre, ibid., p. 272.
[36] John Dewey, Art As Experience. New York: Perigree Books, 1980.
[37] Jean-Paul Sartre, op. cit., p. 264.
[38] Quoted in Joseph Brodsky, Less Than One. New York: Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 1997, 179.
[39] Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, George Henrik von Wright in collaboration with Heikki Nyman, editors. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998, p. 74e.
[40] Mllan Kundere, Romaanin taide [The Art of the Novel]. Helsinki: Werner Söderström Oy, 1986, p. 165.
[41] [...] The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write, not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whore of literature [...] has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order.”
T.S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent” op. cit.
[42] Joseph Brodsky, “In Memory of Stephen Spendar", On Grief and Reason, op. cit, p. 473 and 475.
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