You are on page 1of 93

0

Architecture as Symbol
Architecture Poetry Film

zaIn mankanI

Contents

Introduction

The process of symbolization as applied to architecture Architecture


Walking Around Pablo Neruda Always for the First Time Andre Breton Bridges Arthur Rimbaud Pursuit Sylvia Plath A Winter Evening George Trakl

Poetry

Film space Why film succeeds where architecture fails Meaning and non-meaning in film architecture Architecture as a communicator of idea in Brazil Architectural purity in Labyrinth Pre/Post Production

Film

Conclusion

acknowledgement
I am, in the first place, most sincerely indebted to my internal advisor, Mr. Owais Hasin, for numerous illuminating conversations. I am also grateful to my external advisor and friend, Mehdi Rizvi, who helped to anchor my thoughts from the earliest. To all other professors, whom I have turned to for help and guidance, I also extend my thanks, specially Mr. Faisal Butt, Mr. Najeeb Umar and Mrs. Sheba Akhtar. I must also thank all my friends, and the deptt. of architecture, class of 2001 as a whole, for their valuable criticism and suggestions in particular, Sayem Ghayur without whose lateral assimilation of ideas, I would have concluded my dissertation otherwise.

Im spending the evening on a deserted street in the Grands-Augustins part of town when my attention is caught by a notice above a house door. This notice is: SHELTER or TO LET, in any case something no longer up to date. Intrigued, I enter and plunge into an extraordinarily dark passageway. -Andre Breton (1896-1966), French poet and
literary theorist

Introduction
I.

In all probability, this paper will not be half as interesting as I had hoped it would be. I can count on this, for I can observe this phenomenon in just about everything that I do. The finished work never does justice to the original thought, and it is just this dilemma, this frustrating incompetence of the real world, of things that enter into reality that forms the basis, the beginning, and the core of my paper.

What is it about an idea that makes its exact representation impossible? In their junior years, and for quite a few students in their senior years as well, the thing that causes the greatest anguish is the inability to draw what they conceive. For architecture students, drawing is an indispensable tool. The ability to draw well is a much-coveted skill that for many remains unattainable and only as a distant dream. To be able to conceive well and not draw well is the architects purgatory. For a writer, to have passion like Dostoevsky, or visions like Breton and not have their capacity for linguistic expression amounts to the same thing. And one can imagine the combined pressure of these two oppressive incapacities on one who sets out to write a paper on architecture. The question that we are dealing with is one of limitations. An idea is always limited by the means available for its representation. An idea is greater than what it is responsible for producing or bringing into the world. God is an idea, a spirit. He does not have a form, can not be represented in formal terms, because as an idea He can enjoy the stature, the power, the

multiplicity of meaning that can only be afforded by a thing unseen. An object that can be apprehended by the senses can not exert the same influence. Architecture faces the same problem. It is beautiful, poetic in the idea. A thing to be read about, a thing to be eulogized, but very rarely the same in its reality. When one thinks about architecture, a process that is initiated in those not involved in the profession by the force of literature, one has the freedom of the imagination and the guidance of fiction to assist in the creation of a fulfilling image. This image can not be upheld in the realm of the real world, or when one experiences architecture, because of two reasons, which are no more than the absence of the two factors named above. The first problem has to do with the guidance of fiction, and I shall touch upon it briefly here, and discuss it in detail later in connection with film. Architecture is dependent on literature, or narrative for its strength and meaning, because it is a peoples art; an art form that is to be experienced, and one that has little weight on its own. Without the narrative of human experience, architecture always appears

incomplete, lonely. Literature, and I refer to fine literature here, represents that narrative in its most beautiful sense. Everyone can not write, and more importantly, not everyone who writes can get published. What we call literature is what we read in books. These books, very obviously, represent only that section of matter written about human experience, that has passed the publishers careful criticism and managed to get published. Furthermore, only a percentage of these books make a significant impact on the public; are generally read and retained in the mind of the reader. All this amounts to the fact that what we encounter, and eventually accept as a representation of human experience, is a well-crafted and screened expression, that though derived from real experiences, is nevertheless composed and edited by individuals who have achieved a certain strength in the art form. This then is the context within which the reader of literature is presented with his architecture, or more precisely, an idea of architecture. It is well removed from reality, because the polished writer extracts from his composition all those elements that

may distract from the idea or weaken it, and adds some romantic elements that help to strengthen it. The text is hence a frame through which a selected and composed view may be seen, one that necessarily excludes certain undesirable realities, having no bearing on the work of fiction, but altogether unavoidable in the real thing. Furthermore, literature always presents architecture as a backdrop to a narrative. This allocation of architecture as the set for the human drama is in accordance with its nature and essence. It is in its position as a spectator of events that architecture can perform its best. Literature also has the power, or rather the freedom to appropriate the event and the setting. In literature, it is impossible to find an event that does not coincide with the architecture in which it is taking place. If such an occurrence does indeed manifest itself, there is always enough justification for it, and it is never without purpose. This is because literature is necessarily contrived, conceived, planned; as opposed to real life. Therefore, architecture that is read about, and which eventually finds its

way into the collective imagination is always appropriate, well-composed, and in the service of individuals who have a significant story to reveal. A story that adds the necessary dimension to an architecture that may otherwise seem meaningless and without content. The second discontent with built architecture, with architecture that is realized, is that it imposes a certain restriction on the freedom of imagination, or one might say on the possibility of a multiplicity in interpretation. This particular problem, more than the first, shall form the basis of our argument in the paper that follows, and it is therefore important to discuss it in detail in this introduction. Architecture that is encountered in literature or art necessarily exists within a frame. We have observed above how this frame exerts itself in literature. How it is formed by the writers exclusion and inclusion of events and details and how it guides the readers perception of the architecture he encounters in the book. In truth, this frame also has two components, that is, it is a frame for two entities: space and time. Let us observe the mode by which these two entities are framed in

various forms of expression, beginning with literature. In a novel, the framing of space in terms of architecture is achieved through what the writer describes and what he leaves out in his description. For instance he may elaborate on the form of a staircase, the way it curved, how many floors it passed through, where in the house or palace it was situated, what manner of carvings could be found on the banister, and so on. But he may choose not to mention perhaps the width of the landings, or the fact that the door to the pantry opened under it or that there was a store there. These, and many other details, which may be unnecessary to the objective of the writer and therefore left in the dark, help to keep open the avenues along which the readers imagination may progress alone. In truth, no matter in what detail the author describes the setting of his novel, the picture is never complete in the mind of the reader and he is always free to arrange the separate elements proposed, in the order dictated by his own imagination. By saying that the picture is not complete, I do not mean to say that there is anything lacking in the image that is generated in the mind of the reader, but only this that this

image can never be the exact one proposed by the writer. Everything that the writer suggests is open to interpretation by the reader. If he says chair, the reader will imagine a chair but it will not be the same chair that the writer had imagined. Even if the object is described in great detail, there are elements and properties that can be played around with. If he suggests a color, say for instance, orange, the reader will paint his interpretation of orange on the object being portrayed. There are numerous variations of a color and it is possible that the color named by the writer, though it may be an appropriate name, may induce an incorrect or just a slightly variant image in the mind of the reader. For the sake of elaboration, let me quote a piece of text from the Dostoevskys Crime and Punishment, where he describes the wretched abode of his main character:
It was a tiny cupboard of a room about six paces in length. It had a poverty-stricken appearance with its dusty yellow paper peeling off the walls, and it was so lowpitched that a man of more than average height was ill at ease in it and felt every moment that he would knock his head against the ceiling. The furniture was in keeping with the room: there were three old chairs, rather rickety; a painted table in the corner on which lay a few manuscripts and

books; the dust that lay thick upon them showed that they had been long untouched. A big clumsy sofa occupied almost the whole of one wall and half the floor space of the room; it was once covered with chintz, but was now in rags and served Raskolnikov as a bed. 1

This small passage serves to demonstrate the phenomenon we have been elaborating on so far. Raskolnikovs room is described in fair detail in the above passage. One can not say that it is difficult to form an image of the space in ones mind. In fact one will argue that there is sufficient information to believe that the fictional room created in the mind of the author has been more or less transplanted in the mind of the reader. There are certainly some indisputable characteristics about it. It is dirty, dusty, yellow, small, low, etc. And yet there are enough variables before us to say that no two readers will have exactly the same idea of the space occupied by Raskolnikov. For instance, how yellow is the yellow paper, and in what manner was it peeling off? What color was the painted table and how exactly were the manuscripts arranged on it? What was the pattern of the chintz on the sofa and how badly was it
1

Fyodor Dostoevsky, pg. 24, Crime and Punishment.

torn? Where was the door or the window? And so on. Often, it is possible that the object named by the writer or a certain term that he may mention, may be totally alien to the reader, and yet too familiar to the writer to warrant a careful description. Such instances are possible when the writer and reader belong to very different cultures and in such cases the reader may replace the object placed in the setting by one that he can comprehend, or take the particular term to mean something that he feels fits in with the context, and is a sufficient cover-up for his ignorance. It is indisputable that no two readers will ever have the same visual image of a text in their mind. It is therefore often a disappointment to see a film based on a novel. The film always manages to replace the image that we had formed in our mind, and if this new image is not satisfactory, it always leaves a bad taste in our mouth and we are irritated because we want to retrieve the image that existed in our minds prior to the viewing, but which is now lost forever. The second aspect of the frame is the time frame. In the novel, as in other art forms, this is clear and self-

evident. The narrative in the novel takes place over a certain time. The time period itself is unimportant in this context: it does not matter if the novel is set in the 13th century or in the 20th. What is important is that certain events are described whereas others are ignored. The novel can not keep the reader in the company of all the characters for every minute throughout the extent of the novel. It is therefore restricted to unfolding the narrative through a series of carefully picked events. In a few hundred pages, therefore, one can experience the entire life of a character, and all those intimate moments that are neglected by the writer may be formed over time in the readers mind. The events selected by the writer, are the elements of the time frame. The events he chooses to narrate allow him to add a certain drama to the life of the character. The writer is the editor of the lives of his creation. Through his manipulations, the mundane instances are weeded out and an ordinary life becomes a story worthy of being told to generations. The architecture that plays backdrop to such a narrative therefore acquires a certain sanctity, like a queen who only exposes herself to the public on occasion, so that they do not tire of waving to her.

10

The book also has a time frame in the sense that it begins at a certain point in time and ends at a certain point. It can not proceed according to the wish of Lewis Carrols King of Hearts when he says, Begin at the beginning, and when you reach the end, stop. The book leaves us with the freedom to create our own prebeginning and post-conclusion to the narrative. These events, additional to the text, can be performed (in the mind of the reader) in a space suggested by the book, and allow the reader to observe how this architecture performs against these free creations. With reference to art, the doubleaspect frame is perhaps even more evident. For a painting, the literal frame that bounds the canvas, is indeed the space frame of the work. The architecture that is presented to the viewer within its bounds is one that is restricted by one point of view, and by the physical limits of the canvas. The viewer of the work is therefore at liberty to imagine how this architecture proceeds once it steps out of his frame of view, and how it may appear from other angles. The time frame of the painting is the moment captured by the artist. What happens outside this moment is again something that the viewer has

the option to decide. A similar moment is often present in sculpture. Myrons Discobolus expresses the moment just before the discus is thrown. But the pose before or after, or the reaction at the performance of the discus are open to the viewers imagination.

Fig1: Myrons Discobolus

The phenomenon of this dual frame is perhaps most interesting in the case of film, because film combines the virtues of the painting (or the photograph) and the novel. Film has a space frame that is dependent on the scope of the lens. In physical terms, this can be seen as the dimension of the film itself and the composition framed within it. The viewer can only see what the camera allows him to see, and the camera can be manipulated so that a space is perceived as very different than it

11

may be in reality. It has the capacity to reveal a space to the viewer in little bits and pieces and the option to hold back parts of it. In this sense, the film can edit the space so that only that aspect of it is presented which is important for the purpose of the film and which may strengthen the narrative. It also has the space frame of the novel, that is to say, it needs to present only a selected number of events in order to unveil the story. A film also has a beginning and an end, which give it a time frame. A viewer often decides for himself, after the film has ended, how the lives of the characters will proceed from that point onwards. He is assisted in this task by the suggestion of the ending itself. However, he is left with the freedom to create the little events that will form the story after the end. Some films naturally lend themselves to such predictions, so that a sequel becomes inevitable, but even so a film or a series can only progress so far. In the end it will have to give in and surrender to the fate ascribed to it by the creative processes of the viewers mind.

II.

Now perhaps it is finally clear where architecture begins to pose a certain dilemma for itself. It is the absence of the restrictive space and time frames that reduce the worth of architecture and drag it down to the status of an ordinary object imbued with all the mundanities of our bland existence. Architecture has no space frame in reality. Once it is realized, it can be seen completely, experienced completely. It has no device by which to hide itself. It can not impose a frame on the horizon or show itself only in parts, and leave something for the imagination of the individual to explore. It has no time frame, because it is always there, forming the backdrop of our lives at every moment. We can not choose what events it will be allowed to host and what will escape its grasp. Architecture that has been built, that has been introduced into reality, is therefore no match for that which has remained in the mind, or in literature, or art. It is wholly exposed, naked. The observer of the real knows that the thing in question is nothing greater than what he sees

12

before him, that there is nothing more to it than what he has or can experience. To verify images kills them, and it is always more enriching to imagine than to experience. 2 The poet who refuses to explain his work is aware of this danger. Once something has been completely understood and assimilated, it no longer holds any interest or awe. Symbolic or surrealist poetry has just this truth at the root of its charm. It always communicates through abstracts, and through a language of symbols that is always suggestive, but never conclusive. If only this could be applied to architecture, space would appear poetic. It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality. 3 This is one reason that so much symbolism is to be found in the scriptures. A religious text has to survive generations of interpretation and maintain its charm and awe through centuries if it is to have any sustainable impact and assist in the propagation of the faith.

That which is revealed completely is necessarily reduced in stature. This knowledge is applied to film direction by Zhang Yimou in Raise the Red Lantern. Yimous lead male character is a rich Chinese lord, whose four wives assume no greater position than those of mere concubines, their comfort in his estate subject to his attentiveness. Yimou refrains from ever showing his face, in the course of the film. With the result that the superiority of the character to the others is established, and his integrity maintained by the mystery that surrounds him. All other characters are seen as subordinate to him, unable to stand up against his wishes, which is the reality portrayed in the film. Architecture is reduced in worth by its very existence, through the same principle. Once it has revealed itself, its strength is diminished. If it had remained hidden, if it only appeared in flashes like childhood memories, it would have retained its awe. Perhaps this is the reason why architectural ruins command such admiration. Time erodes away their physicality, thereby hiding them and sending them back the way they came - to the realm of ideas. However, when architecture stands before us, fashioned completely, all its wonders

2 3

Gaston Bachelard, pg.88, The Poetics of Space Ibid. pg.61

13

displayed, we are more often than not, disappointed. Very few people return from a monument like the Taj Mahal, with the same admiration that they took along. This is because the Taj is more than what the building is. It is not simply the form that is the wonder; it is the history, the narrative, and the romance that it carries with it. In all this, the Taj Mahal is a symbol. To those who are aware of it, who have been introduced to its narrative early on, it means more than its material nature will ever testify to. For the people of the sub-continent it is a symbol of love; a royal love that people aspire to. The kind of love that they dream about, the kind they form into fixed reveries and mental images. The Taj is the center for such ideas. It produces and propagates such thoughts, and is firmly attached to them like a mother to a child. The dreamer can not imagine the architecture without its progeny. When he stands before the monument and sees only the monument, he is therefore dismayed. Perhaps architecture is nothing more than this, he feels, and all that he has associated with it was mere folly on his part.

Fig.2: The Taj Mahal

In contrast, one has the example of the Kaaba, Islams holiest site, visited every year by millions for the purpose of pilgrimage (Hajj). Very few people return from Hajj without a sense of awe. This is undoubtedly because the Kaaba is a living monument its narrative still intact after thousands of years. It is one of the few examples where reality has served to enforce the idea rather than weaken it. But it is also worth noting that the Kaaba is less space and more experience. 4 Thus architecture suffers from reality. The individual, unable to see the thought that inspired it or the idea invested in it, assumes that it lacks all these things, and is merely building. But architecture is not building. The two are rather
4

I am grateful to Mr. Owais Hasin for pointing out the example of the Kaaba, as a monument that works contrary to what I had been suggesting for monuments more broadly.

14

separate, and one must keep them clearly separated in the mind. Let us, therefore, at once confine the name, says Ruskin of Architecture, to that art which, taking up and admitting, as conditions of its working the necessities and common uses of the building, impresses on its form certain characteristics venerable or beautiful, but otherwise unnecessary. 5 Of course, Ruskin thinks only so far as the form, and therefore speaks of surface treatment, and elevational interventions. But, and this is really important, he uses the word unnecessary. Ruskin understands that what makes architecture architecture is the unnecessary. Without the unnecessary elements, architecture is reduced to building. An architect who studies classical architecture, who admires Gothic and Renaissance work, and has not accepted the emergence of modern architecture 6, will inevitably find the
5

unnecessary in the form, for the work in these periods is very rich in that area. But the disregard for the superficial devices, that was a result of the apotheosis of Modernism, also had a beneficial aspect: it forced man to step inside the building, and therefore turn his attention to the space defined by the building. A Modern or Postmodern architect, therefore, creates the unnecessary within the building. He infuses space rather than form with the venerable and beautiful in order to turn building into architecture. With this turnaround, the question has been posed upon the function of the building, which is an aspect of its space. The Postmodern architect, having come through the battle waged by Modernism, asks the question: What is the function of architecture? Is architecture merely a shelter or does it have a purpose beyond that? For the postmodern, the notion of architecture as merely a product of the need for shelter is clearly something no longer up to date. For him, architecture is a means to other ends as well. But what sort of
central spire of Rouen Cathedral, or the iron roofs and pillars of our railway stations, and of some of our churches, are not architecture at all.

John Ruskin, pg.16, The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 6 Ibid., pg.44, and so I both feel myself unable to escape the influence of these prejudices, and believe that my reader will be equally so, it may be permitted to me to assume that true architecture does not admit iron as a constructive material, and that such works as the cast-iron

15

end could be served by something that is useless? By something that has as its virtue, merely the fact that it is beautiful? Freud says of Beauty that it has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it. 7 Clearly, the question is not one of beauty, but one of unnecessariness. We are considering the virtues of that which in the first analysis appears to be without purpose. All that is unnecessary in architecture is art. Art, in the broader sense is something to which architecture also belongs. And what we call art is undoubtedly without purpose, unnecessary. That is why art is considered a luxury, to be pursued by those who have not the need to work. It is not considered work because work always has a purpose at the end and results in useful things. But art does have some utility. It expresses, it communicates. Like poetry, it affects the emotions of all those who apprehend it. It has little to do with the intellect, which only perceives it, but its focus is rather the feeling function of the individual.
7

Great art or architecture or poetry is that which moves the soul. Whether one understands it or not, whether it makes sense, is not important. When one observes great architecture, one rarely thinks of the purpose that it serves. One is rather overwhelmed by its sheer beauty, and is moved by the idea, or thought that is behind the work. When the idea is communicated, and when it is an idea that stirs our deepest emotions, we are in awe of the structure. But rarely is this achieved.
III.

What is the idea that moves, and why is it not communicated? If we admit that we accept art to be great only when it moves us, it follows that that which moves us, is art. The idea that moves is art; it is that which is useless. One will also observe, with respect to architecture, that we are never really touched by its functionality. If a building performs well, we may praise it, but for us to revere it, it has to do much more than that. How can something move a human being? It has to have the power to communicate. Only then can an

Sigmund Freud, pg.19, Civilization and its Discontents.

16

individual perceive it. Only then can he accept it, or react to it. If it does not communicate or does not communicate well, or in a language that is intelligible to him, he can not respond to it. It will not move him. Language here is important. Poetry only moves us when we understand the elements of the language it is written in. We may not understand completely the content of the poem as it was conceived by the poet, but we can have a semblance of it, only when we understand the elements of its composition. But whereas poetry is restricted by language, the visual arts are not confined by it. Art can communicate to anyone who has eyes to see, because it uses a language of symbols, which is universal. Symbols belong to a field of knowledge that everyone can partake of. In fact, they predate knowledge. Symbols affect us even when we do not have any knowledge of them. They affect everyone, that is, they are universal, because they are products of the collective unconscious which permeates the psyche of every human being. I have chosen the term collective because this part of the unconscious is not individual but universal; in contrast to the personal psyche, it has contents and modes of

behavior that are more or less the same everywhere and in all individuals. 8 Art, therefore, uses this universal language of symbols whose contents lie within the psyche of every human being, and which has to do principally with human behavior. The symbol is the basic unit of all human behavior and civilization. All human behavior originates in the use of symbolsAll civilizations have been generated and perpetuated by the use of symbols. All human behavior consists of, or is dependent upon, the use of symbols. Human behavior is symbolic behavior; symbolic behavior is human behavior. The symbol is the universe of humanity. 9 Using the symbol as the communicator, art expresses ideas about human behavior, which are at once absorbed by the psyche. Human activity, human behavior, feelings, emotions, apprehensions and all preoccupations that are essentially human, are undoubtedly common to all individuals. Art is that which
8

C.G.Jung, pg.3-4, Four Archetypes: MotherRebirth-Spirit-Trickster. 9 Leslie White, The Symbol, pg.22, The Science of Culture.

17

communicates human ideas. Ideas that are not concerned with the intellect, which are not useful, which do not achieve anything, do not produce anything, but still have worth. They are important to humans because they put our emotions in equilibrium, and since the symbols they use are familiar, ensure us that all those thoughts that concern us, occupy others as well. When Freud says that civilization can not do without the unnecessary, the beautiful, he means just this: that civilization can not do without it. The process of civilization results in certain discontents, which throw our emotions, our souls into imbalance. Art, which addresses human concerns, deals with these discontents which are the products of civilization, and communicates ideas in the form of symbols, in order to harmonize the soul. What is a symbol? A symbol may be defined as a thing the value or meaning of which is bestowed upon it by those who use it. 10 A thing becomes a symbol through use. Since the forming of symbols is characteristic of human
10

behavior, humans inevitably form symbols of all that comes under their use. Even architecture. Architecture becomes a symbol, that is, acquires symbolic value over time. This value, which is present in the architectural idea, can rarely be translated into architectural reality, or it is diluted by the reality, because of the specific nature of reality. Architectural reality has two main aspects to it, which can inhibit the representation of the idea. The first aspect is its dependence on physical limitations, that is, the limitations imposed by the laws of physics. The second has to do with the limitations due to functionality; because buildings have an obligation to fulfill, and must be used by people for a considerable period of time. Both these aspects, we will look into in detail in the chapter on film, when we see how film transcends these limitations. Though the architectural idea, with all its meaning, can not be represented in architectural reality, one can observe this symbolic/emotional side of architecture in other forms of expression, like art or poetry.

Ibid., pg.25.

18

Poetry, because it has no use for the functionality of architecture, can disregard it completely, and reveal the emotional or feeling value of architecture for all its worth. Poetry communicates through abstraction, through symbols. It relies on emotional contents and feeling values of things because it weighs and appropriates objects. It sets them side by side and draws parallels, and counts on the readers ability to associate values. It therefore uses its subjects only for their emotional content, and has no use for their functional utility. Film, when it represents architecture, often uses it as poetry, because it too is an art and therefore useless. It too has no purpose for the functionality of architecture. But because it has narrative, it can represent architecture in all its four dimensions. In film we see architecture being used, being inhabited. It therefore has the ability to convince us that an architecture can exist, can be in this form. It takes the architectural idea and turns it into reality within the virtual world suggested by the film. But it is also a reality, and quite often the closest reality for the architectural idea in its undiluted form, because the architecture we see in film, enters our consciousness as nothing other

than architecture. We include it in the domain of our architectural experience as architecture that we have been exposed to.
IV.

This paper attempts to establish the importance of the architectural idea, and suggest that it is greater than architectural reality. It also aims at revealing the symbolic aspect of architecture, which is present on the four-dimensional architectural thought, though more often than not, gets dispersed or lost in architectural reality. This, as we will discuss, results in an incapacity to transmute value (which is what a symbol contains by virtue of its multiplicity of meaning and richness of content) to the user. At the start, however, let us make the distinction between symbols in architecture, and architecture as symbol. The dissertation, as is obvious by the title, is concerned with the latter. More important than understanding the symbolism in architecture, is to understand the architecture that is symbol. We spend too much time trying to infuse architecture with meaning by the use of elements and not enough time in comprehending the meaning that

19

architecture offers itself. Such a course of study if undertaken however, will result in a true understanding of the power of architecture, its inherent or attributed/attributable meaning (which makes it valid as symbol), and its effect on the psyche of the individual and collective user. I have summarized the argument that we have undertaken in this introduction, and from which the following paper progresses, in the three points below:

1. Architecture has an emotional content present in the architecture as an idea, which is diluted by the functionalization (or bringing into function) of the architecture. 2. The truth or existence of this emotional content is verified/demonstrated by poetry or other art forms where it is properly symbolized.
3. Film uses the emotional content

of architecture (or architecture as symbol) without compromising the absoluteness of the idea to the demands of functionality.

20

1.
the process of symbolization as applied to architecture

21

What if were here just for saying: house, bridge, fountain, gate, jug, fruit tree, window, at most: column, towerbut for saying, understand, oh for such saying as the things themselves never hoped so intensely to be. Isnt this the sly purpose of the taciturn earth, when it urges lovers on: that in their passion each single thing should find ecstasy? O Threshold: what must it mean for two lovers to have their own older threshold and be wearing down so lightly the ancient sill -, they too, after the many before, before the many to come..
-Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), German poet

22
I.

In any dissertation that deals with symbolism, it is essential to begin by understanding what is meant by symbol, and to set it apart, at the very start, from what is referred to as sign. In the introduction to this paper, we came across a definition for symbol, according to which it may be seen as something upon which meaning is bestowed. The choice of the word bestowed itself suggests that the thing itself may not be worthy of the meaning, that the meaning given to it is greater than the thing itself. This is a very important aspect of a symbol. On the surface, a symbol may be unassuming, modest, and simple. And yet it will convey a cornucopia of meaning to one who is familiar with all its associations. A sign, however, never goes very far with its meaning. It is little beyond what it literally means, what it appears as on the surface. The sign is always less than the concept it represents, while a symbol always stands for something more than its obvious and immediate meaning. 11 Roadsigns are probably the best examples of signs. A zebra crossing,
11

for instance, means nothing more than this, that it is the point at which people are expected to cross the road. However, something like the cross in Christianity, or the Palm in Shiite Islam, hold a number of associations, which are more potent than the immediate impression of the image. The palm is a particularly interesting example, because in the local context, one can observe its use as both sign and symbol. When used as a sign, the palm advertises the location of a palmist, or an amil (a witchdoctor).

Fig.3: The palm as a sign Photo: Sayem Ghayur

C.G. Jung, Man and His Symbols, pg.41.

23

But it is also a very strong symbol when seen in conjunction with the alam (a banner of war), which is how it manifests itself in a Shiite procession. More universally, a palm signifies martyrdom, or victory over death. In Shiism, it holds similar associations, but is more directly linked with the Battle of Kerbala, and the victory of Hussain, through his martyrdom. It also represents rebellion against tyranny, and unwillingness to surrender to worldly decadence as opposed to a religious and spiritual way of life. Because of its juxtaposition with the banner of war, it also becomes a dynamic and threatening symbol, representing the spirit of battle and the potential for extreme action (which is responsible for the negative associations people have with the Shiite sect). It is evident that a symbol can have multiplicity of meanings. Its specific meaning is often dependent upon the context in which it appears. This is perhaps clearer when we refer to numerical symbols like, for instance, the number seven. Seven can stand for the union of man and soul or matter and spirit. It can represent the Seven Vices and the Seven Virtues, or the seven planets, the seven tones of music, the seven days

of the week, the Seven Heavens, and so on. The multiplicity of meaning is what gives a symbol its strength, and the power to impress upon the mind. This strength, or force, is a derivative of the mystery and ambiguity (as we have discussed in the introduction) that may be found in any conscious or unconscious expression. A symbol is powerful because it can convey a multitude of things. Its strength lies in its ability to carry a number of meanings. This of course, does not mean that a symbol means everything and nothing. Its multiplicity is always within the range of a broad specific meaning. As Jung explains: When in conversation, I use any such term as state, money, health, or society, I assume that my listeners understand more or less the same thing as I do. But the phrase more or less makes my point. Each word means something slightly different to each person, even among those who share the same cultural background. 12 A similar multiplicity can be seen also, in the symbolic representation of architectural elements, such as the dome. To a lot of people, especially
12

Ibid., pg.28.

24

in the local context, the dome is a sign for a mosque. But churches have domes too (Florence Cathedral, St. Peters, St. Pauls etc.,), and so it can be taken to represent the religious type. However, a dome can also be found over mausoleums (The Taj Mahal, Quaids Mausoleums etc.,) and civic buildings (The U.S. Capitol). It therefore has an ambiguous symbolism. It can represent spirituality, or ascension towards heaven. Because of its upwards rising form it can represent aspiration, and it is dominating (the relationship is in the words), therefore it represents power. The skyward pointing form can be seen in relation to the Pyramids, which represent both the ascension of the spirit, and the power of pharaohs. Columns have similar variation in meaning. The form is a derivative of the tree-trunk, and it therefore represents the tree. But it can mean support as in the pillars of wisdom and it can represent strength. When it marks an entrance, it can represent the beginning of a journey. It has different associations when it appears in different orders. The Doric order has specifically masculine connotations. When used in a Greek temple it suggests dedication to a male deity, but because of its associations to

strength and integrity, it often appears in the facades of bank buildings.


II.

Symbols are produced spontaneously and automatically. Unlike signs, they cannot be invented. One cannot consciously decide to give a particular meaning to an object or an image, in order to turn it into a symbol. Would one attempt this, one would only create a sign. The meaning, which is what makes a symbol, is either inherent in it (if it is an archaic symbol), or it is suggested by the symbol itself through use. The association of Mother with Matter and Father with Spirit, as none will argue, is not something concocted, because there is no known origin for these ideas. They are as old as the psyche itself, and their representations may be unearthed in every civilization. But manufactured objects can acquire meaning and become symbols as well. For Corbusier, for instance, the car symbolized the emerging spirit in art. Its functionality and aesthetic sensibility were therefore adopted in architectural design. The Maison Citrohan was no more than the

25

embodiment of the car symbol in the house.

together, have distinct associations to sado-masochistic attitudes. These objects, like so many others, have acquired their symbolic associations through use. Man, it appears, is quick in bestowing this additional value to the things he uses. We cansay that the minute a new form is invented it will acquire, inevitably, a meaning. 13

Fig.4: an early Citroen

In fact, it is this ability (or rather compulsion) to weigh things, and associate a value to them, which makes us human. This is the occupation of the feeling function of the psyche; a rational function, like thinking, which decides how much importance a person may attach to a thing or event and what it essentially means to him. Everything that humans do or come into contact with or are exposed to, comes under the scrutiny of the feeling function. We are constantly associating, or relating, and it is unreasonable to assume that architecture, which at all times surrounds us, and has us in its grips, can possibly escape this scrutiny.

Fig.5: Corbusiers Maison Citrohan Project 1927

Specs with colored lenses, the sort worn and made popular by John Lennon, now represent the music of that era, and bell-bottom trousers remind one of the sixties, with all its socio-political associations. Chains and whips, when they appear

13

Charles Jencks, Semiology and Architecture, pg.11, Meaning in Architecture.

26

It is not a point of debate, or of lengthy discourse that humans form symbols. The history of civilization, and all art bear testimony to this fact. The question that one must grapple with here, in the hope of understanding the importance of this psychic process, is: Why? Why do we form symbols? What is the compulsion or the need?
III.

To a large extent, this process is unconscious. When we associate an object with a meaning that is apart from its literal or superficial meaning, there is no conscious effort required. It is an automatic process. When we confront a phenomenon in conscious reality, we observe and understand its superficial meaning, but we unconsciously become aware of its latent meaning, as well. Or it suggests another meaning to us, which ties it to other past individual or collective experiences. In any case, with every conscious impression, there are certain unconscious impressions involved as well. And these may suddenly dawn on us, in a moment of quiet reflection or in our dreams.

Wordsworth points to these moments, in his poem Winander Lake, about a boy who stands by the still waters of a lake in the evenings and enjoys the response of the owls to his mimic whistling: and, when a lengthened pause Of silence came and baffled his best skill, Then sometimes, in that silence while he hung Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise Has carried far into his heart the voice Of mountain torrents; or the visible scene Would enter unawares into his mind, With all its solemn imagery, its rocks, Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received Into the bosom of the steady lake. 14 Jung properly explains the idea, when he says, Our conscious impressions, in fact, quickly assume an element of unconscious meaning that is physically significant for us, though we may not be consciously aware of this subliminal meaning or of the way in which it both extends

14

Prelude, v, ll. 364-88

27

and confuses the conventional meaning. 15 It is true, that in everything we do, there is the possibility of seeing a more profound meaning. This inevitably happens when we tie one thing to another or, again, associate. Perhaps, more modestly, we can understand it thus, that we often see the grander scheme of things in the little coincidences that take place in our everyday lives. Sometimes, certain mishaps that are a source of immense annoyance or a stroke of bad luck reminds us of similar events in the past, and makes us exclaim, c'est la vie. This expression seems to suggest that we lack the ability to live in the moment, and have a habit of seeing events in relation to each other. When we associate one thing with another, we symbolize, and though this is a rather natural process, it is often a useful and indispensable tool. Humans are capable of abstract thought. It is this faculty that ultimately sets us apart from the animal kingdom. We developed abstract nouns, such as happiness, beauty, divinity, which, no animal could conceive. A dog may be happy
15

to see his master return home, but he cannot know that this is called happiness. To him it is an instinctual feeling that never crosses the bounds of unconsciousness. Only humans are capable of coming up with phrases like Happiness is a daily decision. 16 We have the power to develop abstract concepts, as those fat books on philosophy will declare. What is that ultimate reality that Plato spoke of? What are ethics and why are they important? What is an Oedipus complex? What is existentialism? Can one explain these things to a non-human? Indeed, how does one man explain such ideas to another man? One needs language, undoubtedly, to arrive at such ideas and to perpetuate them. Without language one cannot have abstract thought, nor can one represent it. But what sort of language is necessary? A sort that is written down, and spoken? One that is itself made of abstractions? For what is the alphabet A or H or T, if not a sign by which we understand something else. Naturally, written language is
16

C.G.Jung, pg.27, Man and His Symbols.

This phrase, pinned up on a softboard at college serves to demonstrate that we can think of instinctual reactions as pertaining to the sphere of conscious activity.

28

composed of elements that are symbols. These symbols group themselves together, and because we have created them ourselves, and can interpret them, we can read, and understand. It is evident then, that one cannot propagate an idea that is abstract, without the use of language. Of course this is true of any idea, for ideas are abstract to begin with. However, the distinction is necessary to set idea apart from that which can be represented by a physical reality. One can represent a rock, by a rock and an apple by an apple, and so forth. But if an apple falls to the ground, how does one communicate that this is by virtue of an invisible force that pulls two objects together. This must eventually be surmised in an equation, the elements of which are symbols that represent things other than what they conventionally represent. Because there are an innumerable things beyond the range of human understanding, we constantly use symbolic terms to represent concepts that we cannot define or fully comprehend. 17

Language itself, however, is oftentimes a barrier, because language is like a secret pact between a number of individuals. There is a direct parallel to this in architecture, which used to be called style. Style, too, was a social contract between people, who agreed that certain elements of architecture should mean certain things, and like language it also comprised a set of rules for the use of those elements in certain ways. 18 It is however useful to our purpose to keep in mind then, that certain ideas can not be exchanged between two people who do not speak the same language. Here then, is the basis for a language that is universal. When one talks about ideas that are collective (and there are undoubtedly ideas that are collective, that inhabit the realm of the collective psyche), then one must accept the need (and also the existence) of collective language(s), via which these ideas can be expressed and communicated.

18 17

C.G.Jung, pg.4, Man and His Symbols.

Geoffrey Broadbent, Meaning into Architecture, pg.51, Meaning in Architecture.

29

IV.

Let us then investigate what this collective language could be. I assume that very few people would be unfamiliar with the idea that music is a universal language. The term is almost used as a clich for this form of expression. However, clichs usually hide great truths under the cover of profanity, and these should not be overlooked, or underestimated. Undoubtedly, music is a universal language. One need not know a particular language, or belong to a cult in order to appreciate music. But I would say the same for all of the arts. In fact, any form of communication that relies on sensory experience. Sensory experience belongs to everyone. It is universal. Anyone can be party to a sensory experience, if he or she has not lost the use of the sense in question. Everyone who has eyes to see has the capability to appreciate painting (unless a lot of intellectuality is infused into it), or finely woven fabric, if one is judging by the sense of touch. A universal language, a language of images (I dont mean exclusively visual), has the capacity to communicate universal ideas, even

abstract ones. This is evident by the fact that we receive a number of complex impressions from even the simplest paintings. There must be a mass of philosophical rhetoric written about the Mona Lisa, for instance. How much, I do not know, nor have I bothered to look up, but it is something I can guess by my own experiences of the mandatory History of Art course, where a cornucopia of gibberish is poured over every slide. I stress the word receive because I am of the opinion that in certain cases a number of these impressions are contrived, and not present in the original work, but simply the fact that we read so much into these images, points to the fact that they at least have the power to suggest these abstract ideas. And suggestion is at least half the meaning itself, for as Jung says, Is meaning necessarily more than mere interpretation an interpretation secreted into something by an intellect hungry for meaning. 19
V.

Now we have finally cornered the argument to the most significant


C.G.Jung, On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry, pg.77, The Spirit in Man, Art and Literature.
19

30

point. Form the lengthy discourse that we have so far indulged in, we have arrived at two facts: firstly, that a symbol is that upon which a meaning, other than its conventional meaning, is bestowed by the user; and secondly, that a universal language (of images) is necessary to represent certain universal, and abstract ideas. Now the question that ties the two facts together, and forms the core of this chapter surfaces before us: Why do these representations of ideas have to be symbolized? 20
20

The question why can be answered thus: that there are abstract ideas that cannot be represented by an image if one allows the image to retain its conventional meaning. It is therefore necessary to invest an image with a special, latent, higher meaning. Feelings of nostalgia or the passion that one feels when one is in love cannot be represented by means of an image with specific meaning. For these, and countless other ideas on life, death, religion etc., that incorporate abstracts like hope, fear, frustration, melancholy, and so on, one must have a language of symbols, that are constructed of representable elements, but which are bestowed with meanings that go beyond their conventional meaning. That forms can be bestowed with this special meaning is again obvious in the example of art. If one observes the works of Mondrian, without feeling for a moment that they are trying to communicate something more than what they are conventionally expected to, one will not be able to arrive anywhere, and the work will be meaningless and without value. (It is another matter of course, that when one hears an explanation of the work, one loses the value developed by observing it.

That abstract representations are symbolized need not be debated. Those who are familiar with dream imagery (as I am sure everyone is), or who have ever considered and reflected upon rituals (where complex ideas are symbolized into acts), will not argue here. The dream imagery, I will indulge in in chapter 2; here I would like to give the example of a ritual to illustrate my point. One ritual which is sufficiently contextual to quote here, is the washing of the brides feet by the bridegroom, on the wedding night. I have heard a handful of explanations for this little ceremony, but the one I prefer has to do with the fact that Jesus used to wash the feet of his disciples. The complex idea inherent in the act is that he who is to be superior in the relationship (the prophet over his disciples, and in our context, the man of the house over his wife) should not consider himself to be so high and mighty. He should therefore remind himself that he is the caretaker of the others interest, by performing an act that lowers him before the other.

31

But this in no way takes away from the fact that the abstract forms are capable of transmuting ideas that are special, and separate from their conventional impressions).

point out that they do indeed exist, and that they are clear examples of the way man takes silent, modest and impotent forms and bestows them with meaning in order to communicate ideas that are otherwise incommunicable.
VI.

The last finally query that we shall address in this chapter has to do with the subject towards which we are gradually progressing, and which is the eventual aim of this dissertation: architecture. The question is this: Why and how is architecture symbolized? Clearly, we have already answered the first half of it, and the second half has also been alluded to. Why is architecture symbolized? Because firstly, it is human nature to symbolize the objects apprehended by the conscious mind, and secondly because man needs symbols for the representation of abstract concepts. He looks for symbols in everything that confronts him, and architecture, which takes center stage among his experiences, cannot escape the axe. The elements of architecture and the elements of architectural experience are inevitably sorted out and

Fig.6: Mondians Composition in Red, Yellow and Blue

Or take any other abstract work. If one does not read between the lines, so to speak, one will greatly undermine it. It will be reduced then, to mere whimsical and nonsensical scribble. That there exists some abstract idea to which these forms allude, is suggested by the mere fact that such abstract works are undertaken by artists. It is not my purpose to analyze what these paintings stand for, and why such works exist in the first place, or whence they come from; only to

32

bestowed with special meanings, that have nothing to do with their conventional positions in the context of what we conventionally refer to as architecture. As to the question how, this too we have partly answered by stating that all invented objects achieve symbolic value through use. When one is using an object, one inevitably, at some point, contemplates the life-situation in which he is using it, and thereby ties the object to the life situation and to the emotions that the situation may give rise to. Otherwise, there is something in the character of the object that one becomes aware of over time, and which one sees in aspects of real life. In this manner, a sort of association can be formed between the object and certain human emotions or human ideas that have to do with the life of the being. Two short examples will suffice to explain this point. In the former case, one may reflect upon the real life situation of parting. When one is parting with a member of the household, one sees him or her cross the threshold. The threshold is the point beyond which, when the person steps, he has, in effect, left us. People often stand in the doorway

and gaze after a dear one who has just left. Therefore, parting, and hence the sadness that accompanies it is tied with the threshold. One can almost transfer the profound feeling that one experiences at that point onto the material reality of the threshold. The threshold can therefore embody a feeling, and it can hence communicate that feeling. The threshold is, however, the meeting point between the outside and the inside, and it can therefore function, as a symbol, in the inverse case as well. One is officially inside our house, or has arrived, when he or she steps over the threshold. Therefore it can just as easily be related to the joy of meeting. With reference to the contribution of the objects particular characteristics towards the process of symbolization, it will do to take the example of a difficult staircase: one in which the ratio, perhaps, of tread to riser is too odd, so as to make traversing it difficult. It is unlikely that one may have never come across such a menace. I believe we all have, and we have been rather frustrated in the process of trying to conquer it. We may have uttered something like Why is everything so difficult?. In any case, such experiences always have a way of reminding us of other

33

frustrating events in our lives. Its because we can relate one event to another that we come up with metaphors. We might say, Climbing this staircase is like something or the other, it doesnt matter what. The fact is that being difficult is the characteristic of the particular staircase, which can be associated to a phenomenon in real life that escapes literal representation. We have so far been able to conclude the following things about architecture, which are essential to our present discussion: 1. The architectural idea, in its pure form, like any other idea, cannot be represented without losing some of its vitality and worth. 2. That the representation of any abstract idea, not representable in real terms, requires a symbolic language. In the next chapter we will be considering what exactly is left behind, of the architectural idea, in the process of three-dimensional representation, and review more specific examples of complex ideas that manifest themselves in architecture.

34

2.
architecture
We may live without her, and worship without her, but we cannot remember without her.
-John Ruskin (1819-1900), British writer and art critic (on Architecture)

SARAH: (walks over to them) this was a dead end a minute ago B.RIGHT GAURD: no, that's the dead end behind you (they both laugh) SARAH: (turns to look at it) it keeps changing, what am I supposed to do?
-Labyrinth Terry Jones and Laura Phillips

35
I.

Architecture, as we understand it in its purest sense, deals with the experience of space. The architectural idea, therefore, is something that is connected with, or represents an experience. As we have stated before, this idea cannot preserve its purity when it is translated into reality because reality confronts it with certain hurdles, which often if not always, cannot be surmounted without compromise. The question that we deal with in this chapter is: What is in the original idea that is diluted in the process of realization? We may approach this question by understanding what the architectural idea is and what it encapsulates. Space is not conceived of in terms of its functionality. In the process of conceptualization, the thought that is supreme is the experience of the space, and hence, perhaps, the function, but not the functionality. When one is designing space, one does not weigh in ones mind whether the space should be functional or not. It is understood that it must be so. Therefore, one can say without hesitance, that functionality is not a concept, but a

pre-requisite and is therefore precluded from the original thought or idea. The decisions that one takes in order to make a space functional do, of course, require intellectual activity but they are nevertheless decisions which always follow idea and are not encapsulated within it. When one imagines a space, one does so in terms of form, proportions, light, air, color etc., and of course the experience of the human user (which we will discuss in more detail in chapter 4). These attributes compose the nature of the space, which is the undulating factor that differentiates one design from another. This nature is independent of functionality (or we can be braver and say that it is independent of reality). There is nothing inherently functional about a large space or a modest space; a bright room or a dark room; a space that is open on all sides or one that is completely enclosed. Its functionality can only be seen in relation to the function that is to be performed there. To say that the idea is independent of reality means that one can conceive of a space without regard to issues of practicality and functionality. Just because an idea is impractical will not keep one from arriving at it. If it were indeed so, there would be no

36

debate on the issue. One would never have to analyze an original idea to see to what extent it is applicable to a real project. One would assume that since the idea has been conceived, it is practical and applicable. But the truth is far from this. We regularly come up with ideas that in the final analysis appear to be unreasonable. Therefore, one can state clearly that for an idea to be conceived, it is not necessary that it should be practical. Practicality is something against which it is later measured.
II.

(A) Prior experiences of an individual or collective nature. (B) Ideal notions of space, light, color, etc. In the first case, the image is based upon the nature of space previously experienced. This can belong to the collective experience, not simply of the society that one lives in, but also of the collective humanity that has preceded us. It includes the experience of previous civilizations, from the experiences of our cavedwelling ancestors, and those of present civilizations, that have filtered into the evolving collective unconscious. And it can belong also to the individual experience, and be composed of reminiscences of childhood experiences. For our purpose, an analysis of the individual experience will be sufficient, and will remain within the scope of this work. Individual recollections based on past experiences, especially in childhood, undeniably influence the ideas of the adult. However, these recollections cannot be expected to incorporate an idea of what is functional or appropriate, for the following reasons:

Furthermore, it is not possible to base the process of conceptualization, or the ideating, upon considerations of a functional nature. The idea is not a conscious expression. One does not arrive at an idea, one begins with it. The idea appears as a vision, an image. That is the form of the idea. As we have discussed, everything that communicates has to have a form, an image. Since the idea is that which communicates to the self, it too requires a form. The vision is generated by a complex of impressions based on:

37

(i)

(ii)

Space experienced in the past may not be functionally sound. There is no guarantee that the house one lived in as a child had no functional drawbacks whatsoever. The case may be quite the opposite, the space being rather mal-designed, and thereby posing all sorts of difficulties for the users. Even so, the space will have its influence upon the individual, and since it is the only significant architectural experience of the individual, it will affect his design sensibility. Therefore any idea regarding space that he has in adult life will inevitably incorporate some of the elements of this mal-appropriate space, in however a disguised form. Moreover, and what is more important, is that the remnants of childhood experiences are, often if not always, those aspects that deal with events and experiences, or space in the broader sense, rather than in terms of details. This may have to do with

(iii)

the childs habit of simplifying things. A circle is a circle to a child even if the line, moving round, does not join itself, or even if it is not so much a circle as an ellipse. The child is willing to forgive these little faults, because of its love for what is pure. He is born with a sense of the platonic. He reduces all his encounters to the pure forms for which he has an inborn understanding, and does not give due measure to the incongruities. He therefore remembers spaces for their essence, their nature, but forgets their impracticalities. After twenty years, in spite of all the other anonymous stairways, we would recapture the reflexes of the first stairway, we would not stumble on that rather high step. 21 Thirdly, events or experiences that have a retentive quality have little to do with the space in which they have taken place. One may have had

21

Gaston Bachelard pg.14, Poetics of Space

38

certain experience in ones childhood that he remember with fondness, but which transpired within a badly designed space. However, the feelings that he will attach to the space will be amicable, because of the nature of the experience, and he will want to repeat the space in later life out of love for the experience. Therefore one can say that experience is also space. The house where I spent my childhood may have been badly designed, but it still has a place in my heart and it still exerts an influence on my sense of space.

would be twisting Bachelards words if one were to quote him here as saying, childhood is certainly greater than reality 22, but I believe that an alternative truth may be found in that phrase.

Fig.7&8: A wall pane that is nine feet high is three times as high for a child three feet tall, but only one and a half times as high for a six-foot adult. The same applies to floor planes.

Apart from all this, there is always the fact that childhood perceptions of space are not accurate. Or rather, one should say, that these perceptions are not applicable to adult life. This can be observed by the fact that when one visits ones childhood residence, one is always surprised to see that what one imagined to be a very large space is actually quite a modest room. One

22

Ibid, pg.16.

39

If ones perception can differ in this simple respect (of dimensions), from the condition of being a child to that of being an adult, then there is reason to suspect that it could differ in other aspects as well. Change of scale changes a lot of things, and influences adult perception in a myriad of ways. For instance, we always feel that our ancestors lived in houses larger than ours. (This may very well be a fact, but it is interesting to imagine that it could equally be a result of the fact that we remember our parents houses, where we spent our childhood as larger than they actually were). People therefore often stress on having larger rooms than they require, when having their own houses designed. Is this perhaps simply because they remember big from their childhood? There is also little guarantee that the spaces we inhabited in childhood are quite the way that we remember them. A childs imagination is a powerful thing because the withdrawal from the unconscious (and into consciousness) is not complete. Therefore, it is quite likely that many of the spaces we remember from the past may be an amalgamation of places weve

experienced and places weve fancied. Also, as Bachelard explains, it often happens that the spaces we treasure from our past have an ambiguous nature. Our values alter facts 23, or we may remember them at once in a variety of states or in juxtaposition with other spaces that they were not actually in proximity with. In the past, the attic may have seemed small, it may have seemed cold in the winter and hot in the summer. Now, however, in memory recaptured through daydreams, it is hard to say through what syncretism the attic is at once small and large, warm and cool, always comforting. 24

III.

Ideal notions of space, light, color etc., or what one might again call platonics, are also inborn. They do not have to be learnt, but rather are inherited. No matter how ignorant a man or how uncivilized a society may be, the meaning of a circle, square or triangle is not lost upon them. These are archetypal realities that reside within the collective psyche and are
23 24

Ibid., pg.100 Ibid., pg.10

40

understood by all. They represent undeniable truths. We have observed in the nature of the child, that certain things have to be ignored, when face to face with real phenomena, to arrive at the ideal. When one is in love, he or she does not see the vices of the object of love. The one who is loved is idealized. That which is idealized is raised above us. It leaves the plane of humanly existence, and becomes something unfettered by mundane realities. It is no longer something real. It therefore need not possess all the characteristics of real things, or of reality. All of us have their personal vision of Paradise; an idealized environment based on notions of beauty and perfection that are raised from the real plane of existence, but no one wonders where theyll put the sewerage lines, or in which of the many pools of water these will eventually end up. What is ideal therefore ignores certain aspects of the real. Ones lover is too perfect to be touched by the inadequacies that haunt real people. Ones ideal abode is too perfect to have to deal with issues of sewerage. Ideal notions always exclude mundanities and aspire

towards divinities. It is therefore unreasonable to expect ideas to enclose issues of functionality and practicality, which are essentially human and mundane concerns. We have concluded that functionality is not something that is present in the idea or the source of the idea. What is missing form the idea can therefore not be expected to be lost from it in the process of realization.
IV.

In processes of thinking, it is the form, not the function that is important. By processes of thinking, I mean all those processes that are involuntary, or in other words, which are responsible for the idea. As we have seen, the idea comes about through a bringing together of past recollections (individual or collective), or of ideal notions. Therefore, thinking processes are necessarily those that bring together. Poetry, which is a function of feeling, I nevertheless put down as a process of thinking, because of the symbolization (or bringing together) that takes place in its creation. The conception of space is to be seen as a

41

similar process, as also dreams and visions, which amalgamate our real or psychic experiences and express them in the symbolized or interconnected form. The form is that which communicates in the idea. We have discussed above that form is a component of the nature of a thing or space. What does form communicate? To answer this, we must analyze how we react to form, because reaction confirms communication. The nature of the space, we said, was the undulating factor that differentiated one design from another. We can now elaborate on this point by saying that two buildings can have the same function, and yet have different form. The design changes when the form, that is the planning, the proportional allocation of spaces, the material of construction etc., changes. The form produces an effect in us. We look at a building and react, either positively or negatively. Often, of course, it refuses to communicate and we do not respond to it. When it does communicate, our interface with a building produces an emotion in us. This emotion or feeling helps us to appreciate the building. It helps to convey the idea behind the

architecture. When it does not communicate, we say that the architect has designed without thinking, because we cannot perceive the thinking process behind the form. The emotional vibes that are relayed by form are best experienced when we come face to face with great art, which as we had earlier concluded, is without purpose, and therefore all form and no function. The importance or value of art lies in the fact that it moves us; it arouses emotions in us. It communicates by way of emotions. When we apprehend art, we try to arrive at the idea behind the work by means of what the form expresses. We can do only this with art, in the absence of function, and therefore we can write volumes for what it might mean or stand for. Hence we can say that the idea incorporates emotion or feeling, and that this is the resource that is diminished when the idea comes forth into reality. This is of course not to say that built architecture does not have the capacity to communicate idea. There are numerous examples of buildings that embody, or even are as though entirely idea.

42

Fig.10: Bramantes Tempietto of San Pietro Fig.9: The Pantheon

The Pantheon is one such example. It embodies the idea of a pure, spherical space. It is a spatial idea, just as is the idea of the central plan, embodied perfectly in Bramantes Tempietto. One will observe however, that both these buildings make no stringent functional demands.

It also appears to be generally easier to encapsulate an idea in a religious building. Perhaps this is because, the religious building type involves one simple function, as opposed to the complexity of functions that may be found in a house or a civic building. Hence, one finds numerous such examples in churches (the whole of Gothic architecture and the strong spiritual idea of the age is to be found in this building type) and Le Corbusiers chapel at Ronchamp strongly evokes the idea of the ark as savior.

43

Fig.11: Corbusiers Chapel at Ronchamp

in the built form without much compromise. When the idea is something that does not conflict with reality, it is possible to realize it. The pompidou centre is however not a practical building. Its maintainance is much higher than any building with its services concealed. If one were to go always by what is most feasible or practical, many important architectural ideas would never see the light of day.

Corbus Villa Savoye is also often quoted as an example of an idea of architecture, because it demonstrates what architecture is, for the Modern car-toting citizen.

Fig.13: Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, Centre Culturel d Art Georges Pompidou

Fig.12: Interior of Villa Savoye car sensibility

A post-modern building that I find worth mentioning here is the Pompidou Center. It represents a clear idea the inversion of outside/inside, that is communicated

Philip Johnsons Glass House also strikes me as almost entirely an idea demonstrating a mode of living inside a transparent container. It is, in a way, an enthusiastic glorification of a new-found building material. And yet, the idea could not be taken to the extreme, and the permeability of the house is obstructed by the

44

bathroom. This is perhaps the most apt example of the way in which reality modifies an idea.

Fig.14: Philip Johnsons Glass House

V.

analyses however, was wont to ascribe certain specific meanings to elements observed in the dream. His method of analysis, which is in sharp contrast to the more flexible and inclusive method of interpretation advocated by Jung, is nevertheless very useful for our present discussion, where we hope to establish that architectural elements observed in dreams can mean something, and that this meaning is different from the conventional meaning that we ascribe to these objects or elements. That is to say that architecture is here symbolized. For Freud, the symbolism was almost invariably sexual: Steps, ladders or staircases, or, as the case may be, walking up or down them, are representations of the sexual act. Smooth walls over which the dreamer climbs, the facades of houses, down which he lowers himself often in great anxiety correspond to erect human bodies 25 A dream of going through a suite of rooms is a brothel or harem dream. 26
25

There is a lot to learn from architecture that has not been concretized. We should therefore look at examples where architecture appears free of reality, so as to understand how the idea and its emotion is embodied in architectural form. One important example of this is of course to be found in films and we will in due course analyze the nature of film. But an equally important example also lies in the architecture of dreams, and we may discuss this briefly here. The dream, and therefore the dream space, exists in order to communicate. This fact has been known for ages. Freud, in his

Sigmund Freud, pg.472, The Interpretation of Dreams. 26 Ibid., pg.471.

45

pillars and columns represent the legs, every gateway stands for one of the bodily orifices (a hole) 27 It is probably disheartening to see architecture fall from grace to such depths. But there is undoubtedly some measure of truth in these analogies. More important than the specificity of the symbolism, however, is the discovery that architectural elements or experiences can, at least in some sphere, represent ideas other than what we consciously hold them to. The human body as a whole is pictured by the dream-imagination as a house and the separate organs of the body by portions of a house. 28 Apart from references of a sexual nature, for which architectural elements as well as other means of disguise may be required, according to Freud, by a psychical censor 29, the dream may also use architectural experience to represent certain conditions or states of being which do not have any tangible physical form, and therefore cannot be expressed by direct representation.
27 28

This, rather important point, can be demonstrated by one of Freuds personal dreams given below. One day I had been trying to discover what might be the meaning of the feelings of being inhibited, of being glued to the spot, of not being able to get something done, and so on, which occur so often in dreams and are so closely akin to feelings of anxiety. That night I had the following dream: I was very incompletely dressed and was going upstairs from a flat on the ground floor to a higher storey. I was going up three steps at a time and was delighted at my agility. Suddenly I saw a maidservant coming down the stairs coming towards me, that is. I felt ashamed and tried to hurry, and at this point the feeling of being inhibited set in: I was glued to the steps and unable to budge from the spot. 30 Here the feeling of being unable to move on, which, being an abstract reality, can not be represented in an image, is expressed by being symbolized in the inability to progress up a flight of stairs.

Ibid., pg.462. Ibid., pg.320. 29 Cf., Ibid., pg.223-226, 493-498, 677-678.

30

Ibid., pg.335-6.

46

In like manner other architectural experiences also have the potential to express abstract ideas, but they are unable to exercise this power in the real world because, once they are realized, they are no longer as malleable, nor can they be bounded to a specific narrative that would assist the expression, the way the narrative of the dream does.

47

3.
poetry
there are but two strong conquerors of the forgetfulness of men, Poetry and Architecture
-John Ruskin (1819-1900), British writer and art critic

Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.
-Jean Cocteau (18891963), French author, filmmaker.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson (180382), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher.

Only poetry inspires poetry.

48
I.

In the last chapter, we had placed poetry into the casket of thinking processes, for which we had also a ventured a definition. According to the definition, the thinking process is guided by an a priori which cannot be arrived at, but which presents itself to consciousness of its own accord. One can argue here that poetry, like other forms of art, can be created by an act of will that is independent of any a priori principle or inspiration. This is indeed true. Jung, in a discourse on art and literature recognizes two modes of creation. The introverted attitude is characterized by the subjects assertion of his conscious intentions and aims against the demands of the object, whereas the extraverted attitude is characterized by the subjects subordination to the demands which the object makes upon him. 31 The object referred to here is the work of art, and the two attitudes differ from each other, with respect to our argument, in such manner that in the first case the poet appears to be the creative
C.G.Jung, On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry, pg.73, The Spirit in Man, Art and Literature.
31

process itself, and to create of his own free will without the slightest feeling of compulsion, whereas in the latter case he only comes into the picture as a reacting subject. 32 However, the guiding inspiration is present in both processes of creation, and although it might well be that the poet, while apparently creating out of himself and producing what he consciously intends, is nevertheless so carried away by the creative impulse that he is no longer aware of an alien will, just as the other type of poet is no longer aware of his own will speaking to him in the apparently alien inspiration, although this is manifestly the voice of his own self. The poets conviction that he is creating in absolute freedom would then be an illusion: he fancies he is swimming, but in reality an unseen current sweeps him along. 33 This unseen guiding principle is the collective unconscious, which permeates the psyche of every individual and inspires or communicates by means of a symbolic language.

32 33

Ibid., pg.74. Ibid.

49

Poetry, by the use of symbols and imagery, brings together. It juxtaposes, sets things side by side, so that they may be judged and valued by the psyche of the reader. This judging and weighing is, as we stated earlier, carried out by the feeling function of the psyche, which is why we say that we feel something when we read poetry. It is a thinking process; in the way that Heidegger defines thinking. Heideggers thinking, Denken, is a re-thinking, Andenken, a recalling, remembering, memorializing, and responding to an original call coming from the central living presencing of the being of the world, and of men and other beings in the world. It calls for a complete opening of the human spirit what otherwise gets fragmented into intellect, will, heart, and senses to the ever present possibilities of the truth of being 34 This response to a call is at the basis of every creative (thinking) process. The poet heeds the call and produces in the language of the call he has received. He takes the symbols, which have no language and uses his power over language to dress them. The work, when it appears to the
34

poet in the form of the inspiration, may use whatever symbolism is best to convey the abstract and nonrepresentable meaning that it carries. It may take the symbolism from any phenomenon that is familiar to the poet, and may subordinate any object or experience for its purpose of communication. The same phenomenon is also observable in dream imagery. A number of objects may appear as references for the same thing: all weapons and tools are used as symbols for the male organ: e.g. ploughs, hammers, rifles, revolvers, daggers, sabers, etc. - In the same way many landscapes in dreams, especially any containing bridges or wooded hills, may clearly be recognized as descriptions of the genitals. 35 Indeed, the very fact that Freud saw references to sexual repression in just about every dream image is evidence of the fact that a variety of symbols may be used to represent a single idea. We saw also in the last chapter, that this symbolism, as far as dreams go, may be taken from architectural elements or experiences. It is reasonable to suppose then, and in fact it must appear as obvious to a
35

Albert Hofstadter, Introduction to Poetry, Language, Thought by Martin Heidegger.

Freud, pg.473, The Interpretation of Dreams.

50

poetry reader, that the same is applicable to poetry. The fact that poetry uses architecture as a symbol to communicate ideas makes it useful for our present discussion. In poetry we can find architecture employed for its symbolic or feeling value. Here, again, there is no place for functionality. It is only in its capacity for association that it is put to the task of generating a response in the reader. By analyzing the use of architecture as symbol in poetry, we can begin to understand the meaning that can reside within a work of architecture. We can begin to appreciate the associations that we, in our capacity as symbol-makers, bestow upon the built environment that we interact with every day of our lives. It can give us a better idea of the true worth of this art, and we may even be able to see it eventually as more than an occupation with purely functional aims. Once, our focus shifts from its obvious providence, we might see its other aspects; perhaps recognize it, as Ruskin does, as the safeguard of our memories, or see in it the beauty of the dialogue that man perpetually indulges in with himself. I have been careful with my choice of poetry, to take up for analysis only

those works where architecture appears in its symbolized form. There are of course a great many instances in poetry where architecture has been referred to, but the majority of these references are of a physical/descriptive nature. These form the body of the poetry, not its content. They are descriptive rather than communicative. They do not make the poem, but reside in it. Where architecture appears as a symbol, one can see it embodying the poetical idea clearly. The essence of the poem is radiating in the image. It is one with the poem; it communicates at the microcosmic level what the poem communicates in its entirety. In the examples that follow, the architecture that we encounter either refers to an idea by association, or is in itself simply a creation in support of an idea. In either case it reveals its associative power, and shows us how it can transcend its worldly state, in which we commonly confront it, and assume a higher existence.

51

Walking Around
Pablo Neruda
(1904-1973) Translated from the Spanish by Robert Bly

It so happens I am sick of being a man. And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie houses dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes. The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs. The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool. The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens, no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators. It so happens I am sick of my feet and my nails and my hair and my shadow. It so happens I am sick of being a man. Still it would be marvelous to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily, or kill a nun with a blow on the ear. It would be great to go through the streets with a green knife letting out yells until I died of the cold. I dont want to go on being a root in the dark, insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep, going on down, into the moist guts of the earth, taking in and thinking, eating every day.

52

I dont want so much misery. I dont want to go on as a root and a tomb, alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses, half frozen, dying of grief. Thats why Monday, when it sees me coming with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline, and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel, and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the night. And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist houses, into hospitals where the bones fly out the window, into shoeshops that smell like vinegar, and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin. There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines hanging over the doors of houses that I hate, and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot, there are mirrors that ought to have wept from shame and terror, there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical cords. I stroll along serenely with my eyes, my shoes, my rage, forgetting everything, I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic shops, and courtyards with washing hanging from the line: underwear, towels and shirts from which slow dirty tears are falling.

53

The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs.


The above line in Nerudas poem reflects perfectly the thought that makes the poem: It so happens I am sick of being a man. When Neruda says barbershop, he raises this building type to the level of a symbol. True, it is unwise, and dangerous perhaps, to analyze a poem in this manner, using terms like building type, or architectural element, but the analysis is important in order to understand how the reference to an architectural entity differs here from if it were to appear in everyday conversation. The question that will lead to an understanding of this dual meaning is: Why? Why does the poet say that the smell of barbershops makes him cry? There is here an allusion to an emotional content in the entity. It communicates something to the poet that produces an emotional response.

One can very well argue here that the emotional response is generated by the smell, or more broadly, the experience of the barbershop than the shop itself. However, if one is of the understanding that an architectural reality exists only in conjunction with the experience it affords, one will agree that the smell and the shop are really one. Without the architecture, in any case, the experience is impossible. But as we will see, the shop as a physical entity is also responsible for the associations. What does a barbershop mean? Perhaps it means nothing other than this that it is a place to get a haircut. But if we are to take only this superficial association we would be thinking of the barbershop as merely sign. A sign cannot be responsible for emotional response, because it communicates nothing it simply points to something. If however, we come across an exhibition of emotion, a judgment by the feeling function, we must become aware that we are confronting a symbol. I will venture to suggest that the barbershop is a masculine symbol. It is a symbol of manhood. Which is why we never think of a woman going to a barbershop. It is difficult

54

to make compatible the image of a woman, with the image of a barbershop. The shop rejects any feminine associations. Women get haircuts as well, but they go to a parlor. So it seems that it is not really the act of getting a haircut that is alluded to, because this of course means nothing in the context of the poem, but the shop and all the associations that it carries. The barbershop, because of its exclusion of feminine associations, is a sexually specific architectural entity. It is the same as a necktie. It is not that women cant wear neckties, but the images are incompatible. Incidentally, the dictionary definition of barbershop is:
barber-shop: n. a popular style of close harmony singing, esp. for four male voices (often attrib.: barber-shop quartet). 36

Now when Neruda says, that he is sick of being a man, we can understand also why the image of the barbershop is so tormenting to him. The architecture has developed a symbolic relationship with manhood, and can therefore double as a representation of the complex meaning of manhood. Walking into the shop reminds the poet of his sexually specific existence in society, which he is so sick of, that it brings tears to his eyes.

Here again, language reminds us of the associations of the object. The grouping of men, though the purpose be for singing, is at once associated with the similar grouping in the exclusively male experience of the barbershop.
36

The Concise Oxford Dictionary, Ninth Edition.

55

always for the first time


Andre Breton
(1896-1966) Translated from the French by Bill Zavatsky and Zack Rogow

Always for the first time Hardly do I know you by sight You return at some hour of the night to a house at an angle to my window A wholly imaginary house It is there that from one second to the next In the inviolate darkness I anticipate once more the fascinating rift occurring The one and only rift In the facade and in my heart The closer I come to you In reality The more the key sings at the door of the unknown room Where you appear alone before me At first you coalesce entirely with the brightness The elusive angle of a curtain It's a field of jasmine I gazed upon at dawn on a road in the vicinity of Grasse With the diagonal slant of its girls picking Behind them the dark falling wing of the plants stripped bare Before them a T-square of dazzling light The curtain invisibly raised In a frenzy all the flowers swarm back in It is you at grips with that too long hour never dim enough until sleep You as though you could be The same except that I shall perhaps never meet you

56

You pretend not to know I am watching you Marvelously I am no longer sure you know Your idleness brings tears to my eyes A swarm of interpretations surrounds each of your gestures It's a honeydew hunt There are rocking chairs on a deck there are branches that may well scratch you in the forest There are in a shop window in the rue Notre-Dame-deLorette Two lovely crossed legs caught in long stockings Flaring out in the center of a great white clover There is a silken ladder rolled out over the ivy There is By my leaning over the precipice Of your presence and your absence in hopeless fusion My finding the secret Of loving you Always for the first time

57

Bretons poem resists analysis in the strongest way. It is the perfect symbolist work. More than that, for me personally, it is the perfect poem. Every line calls for a swarm of interpretations, and no matter how many times one may have read it, whenever one turns to it again, it is always for the first time. Its freshness is ensured by the rich symbolism it offers, and in its benevolence, it takes even architecture to that supra-mundane level of multiplicity of meaning.

swarm of interpretations surrounds each of your gestures

not dwell upon this vision. The window, the architectural elements are merely a backdrop for the event that takes place with reference to them. They do not merit interpretation, as opposed to the actions of the one being spied: A

You return at some hour of the night to a house at an angle to my window


What I appreciate about this line in Bretons poem is its utter innocence. There is a wonderful truthfulness about this line. The house at an angle to the window is an image that has been cut and grafted into the poem without any interpretation or analysis by the self. The house is not really at an angle to the window, of course. That is obvious to any reader. It is the angle of vision of the poet, which the poet conveys through this line. The voyeur is sitting, or perhaps lying in such a manner that he sees the house at an angle, but he does

Breton has also very cleverly identified the interface that takes place with architecture in the process of perception. The house is at an angle to the window, because the window is the poets source of information and his point of reference. It is my window and a house. He therefore does not question the image presented by the window but accepts it at face value. To me this is a very subtle reflection of our own attitudes in general towards our milieu. We do not question what is ours, and it therefore exercises great influences over our mind. We become used to seeing things the way we do, that over time we forget that our perception may be relative, that there may be another way to look at things.

58

You return at some hour of the night to a house at an angle to my window


There is such an expression of faith in that line a sort of blind belief that things are the way they are. That if they appear at my window at an angle then they must be at an angle. The house can be wrong, the whole street and eventually the entire world and all the streets that traverse it may have inclined the moment I put my head to the pillow, but my window, which is my middleman, the agent through which I explore the world tells the truth. It is the detached eye through which I see the world.

context or expressed it as simply and effectively.


The closer I come to you In reality The more the key sings at the door of the unknown room Where you appear alone before me

Breton demonstrates here a very subtle and exquisite problem. What is the unknown room? The unknown room is where the woman he is fantasizing about appears before him alone. So why is it unknown? The unknown room is so termed because the event has not yet taken place, and has very little probability of ever taking place. Breton knows very little about the woman he is talking about. He sees her from a considerable distance when she returns home at night. He doesnt see her face and she is clearly a stranger to him. (In truth, the woman he is referring to is not the one who appears at this house every night, but rather someone he imagines and who has all the qualities he desires in a woman). He can not picture her clearly in his mind, and he knows of no context in which he would meet her, if he did meet her at all. If she were a colleague at work, the context would be the office; if she were a relative,

the unknown room


The concept of the unknown room is also something that interests me deeply, because it is something that I have experienced (I use the word experienced for want of a better word, for it is not really experience that I am talking about) although only a poet of Bretons stature could have put it in such a beautiful

59

the context could be her home, or his home or that of some common relative, so on and so forth. But he does not know her in any such respect. She is a complete stranger, and Breton does not know how or where she could possibly appear before him. What is interesting in all this is this very basic (and in part, very obvious) idea that comes to the surface. That one cannot imagine a space if one knows no real event to link it to (again experience = space). If the narrative does not exist, can the space exist? For a space to be imagined, it must have a narrative. To give an event a backdrop, one must have some sense of what the event is or have experience of something similar.

The unknown room therefore, is an allusion or a symbol, a very peculiar symbol, of a space that cannot be imagined for lack of a narrative. It refers, going beyond conventional meaning, to a space or event that denies the possibility of representation as a direct image. It is only by calling it unknown that Breton can communicate his desperation to get a grip at this intangible, loathe fantasy.

60

By Arthur Rimbaud
Translated from the French by Louise Varese
(1854-1891)

The Bridges

Skies the gray of crystal. A strange design of bridges, some straight, some arched, others descending at oblique angles to the first; and these figures recurring in other lighted circuits of the canal, but all so long and light that the banks, laden with domes, sink and shrink. A few of these bridges are still covered with hovels, others support polls, signals, frail parapets. Minor chords cross each other and disappear; ropes rise from the shore. One can make out a red coat, possibly other costumes and musical instruments. Are these popular tunes, snatches of seigniorial concerts, remnants of public hymns? The water is gray and blue, wide as an arm of the sea. A white ray falling from high in the sky destroys this comedy.

61

It is difficult, at first glance, to see the symbolic association in the above poem. It appears at first to be simply a descriptive work, dwelling on the strange design of bridges over a dark body of water, and we would simply dismiss it as thus, without being able to reach down to the poets thoughts if it were not for the last line:

observations? We can then begin to understand that even the bridges are not merely bridges. To be sure, people think of the bridge as primarily and really merely a bridge; after that, and occasionally, it might possibly express much else besides; and as such an expression it would then become a symbolBut the bridge, if it is a true bridge, is never first of all a mere bridge and then afterwards a symbol, in the sense that it expresses something that strictly speaking does not belong to it. 37 Rimbauds bridges are also true bridges. Just as Heidegger thinks of the bridge as a thing that gathers together the fourfold of earth, sky, mortals and divinities, so Rimbauds bridges are entities that draw together the various elements of the human comedy. Rimbaud secretly develops this idea in the reader by constantly drawing him away from it during the course of the little piece. He only hints at it by side-remarks like: are these popular tunes? Only in the end, does he reveal the image, the associations that he sees in the four-dimensional
37

A white ray falling from high in the sky destroys this comedy.
The use of the word comedy takes us back to the hoarse sobs of Neruda in the first poem. Certainly, we say, there is something more to the poets effusions. A second reading makes us further aware of this, and we wonder at the meticulous description. The suspicion of a latent thought, an ulterior reading slowly dawns on us. Now we can stop at the line:

Are these popular tunes, snatches of seigniorial concerts, remnants of public hymns?

And we can ask what makes admissible these peripheral

Martin Heidegger, Building Dwelling Thinking.

62

character of the bridge which reflects the idiosyncrasies of the human race, their comedy, by the lucid line:

A white ray falling from high in the sky destroys this comedy

63

Sylvia Plath
(1932-1963)

Pursuit

Dans le fond des forets votre image me suit RACINE There is a panther stalks me down: One day Ill have my death of him; His greed has set the woods aflame, He prowls more lordly than the sun. Most soft, most suavely glides that step, Advancing always at my back; From gaunt hemlock, rooks croak havoc: The hunt is on, and sprung the trap. Flayed by thorns I trek the rocks, Haggard through the hot white noon. Along red network of his veins What fires run, what craving wakes? Insatiate, he ransacks the land Condemned by our ancestral fault, Crying: blood, let blood be spilt; Meat must glut his mouths raw wound. Keen the rending teeth and sweet the singeing fury of his fur; His kisses parch, each paws a briar, Doom consummates that appetite. In the wake of this fierce cat, Kindled like torches for his joy, Charred and ravened women lie, Become his starving bodys bait.

64

Now hills hatch menace, spawning shade; Midnight cloaks the sultry grove; The black marauder, hauled by love On fluent haunches, keeps my speed. Behind snarled thickets of my eyes Lurks the lithe one; in dreams ambush Bright those claws that mar the flesh And hungry, hungry, those taut thighs. His ardor snares me, lights the trees, And I run flaring in my skin; what lull, what cool can lap me in When burns and brands that yellow gaze? I hurl my heart to halt his pace, To quench his thirst I squander blood; He eats, and still his need seeks food, Compels a total sacrifice. His voice waylays me, spells a trance, The gutted forest falls to ash; Appalled by secret want, I rush From such assault of radiance. Entering the tower of my fears, I shut my doors on that dark guilt, I bolt the door, each door I bolt. Blood quickens, gonging in my ears: The panthers tread is on the stairs, Coming up and up the stairs.

65

Entering the tower of my fears, I shut my doors on that dark guilt,


A multitude of symbolism is presented by the above verses, which goes beyond the reference to the tower. The tower here is a composition parented by the emotions that the poet is dwelling upon. The fear increases, and increases until it takes the shape of a tower. The tower is not apprehended first and adopted for its associative worth. Rather, the feelings so strongly associate with an architectural element that they demand the analogy themselves. Though that be the case, it still assists us in understanding the communicative capacity of the architectural element. The heightening of a feeling is encapsulated in the tower. It is because this particular emotional disposition is present in the object that it can be called upon to represent it. If the relevant feelingvalue was missing in the symbol,

surely the symbol would be useless, and in fact seem out of place. The poems symbolic make-up is very obvious throughout its body. The very nature of the pursuit makes us aware that it is entirely built upon allusion. The poet chooses the hypothetical hunt as an allegory to present some complex emotional ideas whose direct representation if possible would nevertheless be hardly poetic. That the panther is an allegorical character, though all the while clear, becomes obvious with the reference to the animal as that dark guilt.

I shut my doors on that dark guilt,


Again, the poet takes even the doors of the tower to the other side, of symbolic association, by saying my doors. As soon as she makes that choice, she switches from an object that can be understood to exist in physical terms, to one that is mere analogy. Whenever an architectural element is taken upon oneself, its symbolic use becomes apparent, because at that point it is no longer representing a

66

neutral physical reality, but an emotionally inclined human reality. The poems strength lies in the ease with which it combines the descriptive with the symbolic. The reader confronts a narrative which can only progress through the use of descriptive language, but along the path he is also constantly aware that this is not a real story, not a real chase but an illusion that has the truth wrapped in a ball of yarn. Towards the end, the landscape is thoroughly laid out before us, and the only thing we are capable of imagining within it is an architectural intervention. So the poet raises one for us. A tower that begins as a figure of speech to support the emotions arrayed by the poet, but which becomes more and more real as the feelings are heightened, until it is the only reality a real tower, with very real steps which the poet can ascend and which the panther can navigate as well.

67

A Winter Evening
George Trakl
(1887-1914)

Window with falling snow is arrayed. Long tolls the vesper bell. The house is provided well, The table is for many laid. Wandering ones, more than a few, Come to the door on darksome courses. Golden blooms the tree of graces Drawing up the earths cool dew. Wanderer quietly steps within; Pain has turned the threshold to stone. There lie, in limpid brightness shown, Upon the table bread and wine.

68

Pain has turned the threshold to stone.


The above poem is meditated upon by Heidegger, in a lecture on Language. Heidegger uses the poems central idea of the union of opposites, embodied in the threshold symbolism (interface of outside and inside), to reveal his own philosophy of the unity of the fourfold. Though the discourse presented by Heidegger is irrelevant to our purpose, it is interesting to note that Heidegger also observes that the second verse of the third stanza speaks all by itself in what is spoken in the whole poem. 38 The verse contains on a microcosmic level, what the poem contains as a whole. It is hence, one with the poem. Once again, the architectural element is referred to in conjunction with an emotion, which reveals its symbolic associations. To comprehend the nature of these associations, we will once again have to look at the idea communicated in
38

the poem, that is, see the context in which the symbol appears. At one level, the poem is undoubtedly about the union of opposites, which makes it suitable for the exemplification of Heideggers ideology, as well as justifies the threshold analogy. The threshold is nothing more than the point where the outside and inside meet. It has associations, therefore, of meeting, interface, union etc. However, the conjunction with pain remains unexplained.

Pain has turned the threshold to stone.


The pain is so strong that the poet can only see the physical nature of the threshold as a consequence of this emotional characteristic. Why are there associations to pain, in the threshold? As we discussed in chapter 1, the threshold also embodies the idea of parting (and meeting) because we essentially part with someone when they cross the threshold. Before this, they are within our homes, and afterwards, not. The poem is also about parting, or the duality of parting and meeting.

Martin Heidegger, pg.203, Poetry, Language, Thought.

69

In the poem, the parting has taken place already in fact it has infinitely taken place, to the point that the threshold has turned to stone over the recurrent loss. What is left, is the void, and this the poet only conveys by showing us what is there, rather than what is not: The table is for many laid. By showing us a full table, the poet makes us aware of its emptiness: the absence of the human element. Again, the object (threshold) is symbolized by incorporating in it a human condition. The threshold is in pain, because it is waiting for the unification; of outside, inside; of the laid table with the human company; of the wanderer with the housebound. Interestingly, Freud states that Tables, tables laid for a meal, and boards also stand for women. 39 So we can see that the human element is present, in a symbolic way, in the other objects represented as well. The laid tables, or the women, await the wanderers out in the snow. Their pain at the parting (or of the consequent absence), and their anticipation of union are
39

summed up in the symbol of the threshold.

Freud, pg.472, The Interpretation of Dreams.

70

4.
Film
Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.
-Ingmar Bergman (b. 1918), Swedish stage and film writer, director.

People sometimes say that the way things happen in the movies is unreal, but actually its the way things happen to you in life thats unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, its like watching television you dont feel anything.

-Andy Warhol (192887), U.S. pop artist.

71

Film Space
If we proceed from our earliest definition of architecture, as an experience of space, we must include in the realm of architecture any experience that may fall under a spatial experience, however slight or removed from our orthodox understanding of architecture it may be. In this respect, one cannot deny that space that is represented in film must be seen as architecture. Indeed, there have been architects that have involved themselves in the designing of film space. The set for the 1920 German film Golem was designed by Hans Poelzig, an architect, and the film owes much of its fame to his extra-ordinary vision, which produced a bizarre and twisted space for the equally dark narrative. Claudia Dillman writes in an article, The architecture of Golem city was considered by architecture critics to be so important that the film became the subject of analysis whilst still in production. 40 Space that is represented in film extends our understanding of real
40

space and real architecture in much the same way as H.G. Wells or Jules Vernes literary predictions of our scientific/technological future helped in shaping this future, or Aldous Huxleys moral admonitions in Brave New World helped to evolve our stands on moral issues. By using all the possibilities inherent in film, and all of its technology, the medium could offer the architectonic potential to allow us to look far into the future by enabling us to immerse ourselves in previously unimaginable spaces. 41 But more important than that, though perhaps not as significant, is the fact that what we confront in a film enters the domain of experience. For a number of people this is a notion that is difficult to accept, though it is not very difficult to understand. How can events that are viewed externally, as a third person, be equated with events that are experienced personally? We all feel, after reading an intensely involving novel, that we have closed a chapter of our lives. A really good book, is one that we dont want should end, because it is a part of our
41

Claudia Dillman, Realizing the Spiritual City, pg.17, Architecture + Film II, Architectural Design vol.70.

Karin Damrau, Fantastic Spatial Combinations in Film, pg.58-61, Architecture + Film II, Architectural Design vol. 70.

72

life, or has become entangled with our life. When we watch a film, we associate with the characters in the film. We see in the protagonist, a reflection of ourselves. We experience his experiences with him. When he laughs, we laugh. We are happy with him and sad with him. Indeed, the very success of a film depends on how easily the audience can associate with the characters. The viewer therefore lives the life of the character in an indirect way. In the film he participates in the events that he cannot participate in real life. Though distanced from the action, he is still in the center of it. The experience of the film becomes an actual experience by somewhat the same mechanism that Bachelard explains allows childhood fantasies to get entangled with childhood reality and hence enrich the memory. The experience of film, though a virtual one (that is, one not directly apprehended by the senses) is still experience at some level. We have to accept the fact that the world we can experience with our senses is only a partial view of a multilayered reality, and that it is only with the aid

of instruments that we can access a further area. 42 To say that experience is not experience without physical interaction is to say that dreams, for instance, which are psychic experiences, are not experiences at all. But most psychologists today would give as much importance to these nighttime escapades as they do to our daytime activities. Even if one refuses to attribute any meaning to dreams, one cannot disregard them as lying within the circle of experiences. Once we have witnessed a dream, we cannot deny it, at least in this very superficial sense that we are aware of a possibility of such a series of events. In short, as bizarre or unrealistic a dream may be, we can not deny that the particular form or configuration of events depicted in it has entered our consciousness. If one views film space even at this superficial level, one must attach some importance to it. It is space, and therefore architecture that has entered our consciousness, regardless of how removed from reality its particular form or configuration may be.

42

Ibid.

73

Why Film succeeds where Architecture fails


The notion that architecture is a three-dimensional art is slightly off the mark by one dimension. There are, in truth, four dimensions to architecture, the fourth being the narrative. The process of conceptualizing space begins from this four-dimensional form. Space is conceived along with the narration. One designs space with this pre-requisite of narrative. It is impossible to conceive a space without this pre-requisite, although the narrative may be indistinct or left undefined by terminology. Even when one simply conceives of a space without imagining an activity there, the form, scale, language, material, etc., predisposes it to a particular kind of activity. One can say, that space is an archetype, and a particular space is a model by which one can see the archetype, because it is impossible to conceive archetypes except in the form of definite models with definite attributes (or, in this case, narratives). The inclusion of narrative is most obviously applicable to film space, and its necessity can be best

understood in connection with film space. The narrative here is linked to the characters played out in the film and is shared by the viewer when he projects himself into the characters, thereby partaking of their experience. So space is not simply the enclosing horizontal and vertical planes but the physical being in that space, which is created between the directors three-dimensional vocabulary and the spectators projected emotional occupation of that space. 43 There is no mode of escape from this appendage of narrative. However the appendage itself is not the cause of distress for the architect, but the lack of control over it. The trouble begins when one carries the thought, or the architectural idea, onto the 2 dimensions of the drawing, and subsequently the 3 dimensions of the actual work. These will always fall short of the original idea, because here the narration is missing. Without the essential narration, from which the architecture draws its life, it appears pale and banal. The architect cannot endow the work with the narration
Barbara Bowman, pg.6, MASTER SPACE Film images of Capra, Lubitsch, Sternberg, and Wyler.
43

74

that existed in his mind along with the work. This is always grafted onto the work by a third entity (the people who inhabit or use the space). It is therefore impossible to exercise any sort of control over this dimension. No matter how carefully an architect takes into account the living patterns of the eventual users, it is not in his capacity to determine it with precision and design the space accordingly. Moreover, great architecture (in the formal respect) may stem from a fictitious narration that is the creation of the poet in the architect. In that case, it may not be based very rigidly on the lives or stories of the end users (which are often rather mundane). One therefore sees a lot of beautiful and powerful architecture (Corbusiers Textile Mill owners Associations building is an appropriate example) that seems misused, and therefore outside of its narrative or context.

Fig.15: Le Corbusier, Textile Millowners Association Bldg.

75

there is no question of a variation in the script and no element of surprise. They are at liberty to play God with the action of the film. The actors are people who willingly conspire with them in carrying out the scenes exactly as decided to the end of the film. The result is obviously a beautiful retreat from the ugliness of life. The set of a film (where sets are properly designed) compliments the action of the film, and is hardly at odds with it. One rarely finds the actors and the action standing out sorely against the backdrop. This is an altogether inconceivable notion because the proceedings of the film, unlike the proceedings of our daily lives, are altogether predetermined. To try and conceive it would be rather like trying to imagine what background would be better suited for the face of Mona Lisa.

Fig.16: conference room at the TMA.

Not so with film. This problem simply does not exist. The threedimensional space of the film and the narration within it are produced simultaneously, with the result that there are no gaps, no misfittings, and no disappointments. The team that creates the separate parts of the film is one team. The story in its entirety is present before them in the form of the script and the characters that are to act out the narration are clearly mapped out and their traits set forth in character sketches. All fronts are therefore guarded. The director and his team are aware of all the possibilities, and

Fig.17: Leonardo da Cezanne, Mona Lisa at Mont Sainte-Victoire

76

Meaning and Nonmeaning in Film Architecture


The representation of space is essential to film, because film is a narrative. However disjointed this narrative may be, the film is supported by it. And just as space cannot be conceived without a narrative (as we observed in the concept of the Unknown Room), so narrative cannot be conceived without space. But just as we saw in relation to poetry, there can be two modes of representation. One remains merely superficial and to the extent of description, while the other transcends and arrives at symbolism and meaning. In Master Space, Barbara Bowman makes a distinction between habitual and acute spaces in film. In her analysis, film can represent spaces as being familiar to the characters (habitual) or in a sort of tension with them (acute). The former, she explains, dont demand our interpretation. These habitual spaces have an unframed quality,

Fig.18: Leonardo da Picasso, Mona Lisa at Avignon

Fig.19: Leonardo da Warhol, Four Monas

77

unlike acute spaces, which are framed and composed. 44 A similar distinction can be made when talking about meaningful and non-meaningful spaces. Meaningful film space, or what I mean by the term, corresponds closely to what Bowman calls acute space. It is space that is not neutral, but interacts in the narrative of the film by communicating alongside the characters. It is, in a way, anthropomorphized, or humanized space; space that has a feeling-value; that is not inert, not a backdrop, but a living part of the production endowing the narrative with meaning. Certainly, a director might pragmatically instruct an actor to move in a certain way through space to saunter or scurry. But were the director to embody characters motives in the total scene, he or she might achieve acute space. The actors still act, but the simple distinction between characters, props, set design, and camera position and movement break down, and convey the same message in a more intensely realized manner.

Sometimes this means that the qualities we conventionally attribute to character inform the environment as well; motive or intention (the inner state of the fictional character) would be apparent in the composition of the film space as well as in the actors performance 45 This meaningful space is possible to achieve in film because film space is engineered with a single specific narrative in mind. It is exclusive, as opposed to real architecture, which has to be inclusive in order to stand against the very varied narrative of real life. Real architecture cannot convey one feeling, one idea, one script, because life does not end after 90 minutes. It goes on, and keeps changing. If anything, it can be compared to a soap opera, where the storyline can take any sort of twists and turns. One can therefore observe the same banality and superficiality in the set of a soap opera as can be seen in most built architecture. To produce film space for real life, one would have to have a complete character sketch of the client, displaying his psyche and suggesting his mode of behavior in any situation, and perhaps also knowledge of the series of events that
45

44

Ibid., pg.31.

Ibid., pg.8.

78

he is meant to experience in the course of his life. One would thence be in a position to design the kind of space that would produce a dialogue similar to the characters own expression, thereby lending integrity and meaning to every event. But since this is clearly impossible, one must turn to film to get a notion of the extent to which space can acquire meaning, in the context of a specific narrative. Film architecture is an architecture of meaning. There is nothing in the frame that does not have something to sayFilm space is an emotional place made up of wall, light and shade. 46 Film allows us to explore space, which for various reasons, would be impossible to realize. In that sense, film space becomes important, if not meaningful, when it presents a unique spatial configuration, or presents space in a previously unseen perspective. In Danny Boyles Shallow Grave (1194), David (Christopher Ecclestone) lays siege on the attic of the apartment he shares with his two friends and, in his paranoid state,
46

drills holes in the floor of his lair in order to keep watch on his fellow boarders. In one scene, Alex (Ewan Mcgregor) climbs up into the attic, and the camera reveals the dark space traversed with numerous tiny beams of light emerging from the drilled floor. This is an example of a space that, because of its reliance on an extraordinary and specific narrative, would hardly be possible to apprehend in real life.

Fig.20: David in the attic, in Danny Boyles Shallow Grave.

Hans Dieter Schaal, Spaces of the Psyche, pg.13 Architecture + Film II, Architectural Design vol. 70.

79

Architecture as Communicator of Idea in Brazil

oppressive system. The scenario is straight out of George Orwells 1984, but Gilliam also creates a critique of modern architecture, and uses the film to demonstrate the demoralizing and oppressive nature of social modernity. 48 He therefore gives special importance to the architecture of the film, since that is much of the subject. The buildings, he uses as characters that also act and thereby communicate. In Brazil, buildings appear as malevolent beings, vomiting their guts at any provocation. They are machines for living in that function reluctantly. 49

Fig.21: Interrogation room in Brazil

Terry Gilliams Brazil (1985) provides a perfect example of film space that has an anthropomorphic character. The city portrayed in the film has a psyche, by way of which it becomes a living, breathing organism that exerts its will on its inhabitants. Brazil is a cannibalistic environment where human flesh and trivial data fuel the expansion of the metropolitan superorganism. 47 Brazil narrates the trials of one maladjusted citizen, Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), in a malicious and hostile future city run by an
Rachel Armstrong, Cyborg Architecture and Terry Gilliams Brazil, pg. 55-57, Architecture + Film II, Architectural Design vol. 70.
47

Fig22: Sam Lowry struggles with his desk in Brazil.

48 49

Keith James Hamel, Brazil (critical review). Edwin Heathcote, Modernism as Enemy, pg.20-25, Architecture + Film II, Architectural Design vol. 70.

80

It is because Gilliams buildings appear as beings that they are able, so well, to communicate the idea behind the narrative. Here we come across meaningful or acute space because the qualities that we conventionally attribute to character inform the environment. The space acquires a feeling-value and is no more inert. Of course, in order to do this, the director has to overstep the bounds of reality. He has to exaggerate certain things. Even the narrative (the script is co-written by Gilliam) does not depict reality, but certain trends in real life that are pushed to the extreme. Just as in Orwells 1984, the notion of surveillance is heightened to the extent that big brother actually watches you all the time, and it is suicide to attempt to avert his gaze, so in Brazil, the system is all-powerful, everyone is suspect, and no one can be trusted. To heighten the idea of a claustrophobic and vicious system, Gilliam portrays the buildings, products of the system, as oppressive and dangerous beings, that assist the system in making the lives of the inhabitants miserable. Gilliam is not interested in capturing reality so

much as capturing a particular mood or feeling. 50 This mood or feeling is best conveyed when all components of the film, the actors, the set, the camera movement, are working in synergy, thereby producing a unified effect. Brazil achieves this by putting its architecture through the same processes and ordeals as are undergone or suffered by the characters. Or if one chooses to see things the other way round, one can say that the narrative is specific and engineered in such a way that the characters reflect the events that are experienced by the architecture of the film so that their experiences itself become a critique on architecture or on modernity in toto.

Fig.23:a plastic surgeon works on Lowrys mother

50

Keith James Hamel, Brazil (critical review).

81

Even the individual characters are unstable beings on the border of personal rejection or destruction. Lowrys mother employs the technologies of medicine and surgery to transgress her biological old age and restore her original femininity, but her body is constantly at war with the unnatural processes of eternal reinvention. She suffers many surgical complications and finally ends up on the floor as a gelatinous mixture of separate cyborg components. The fabric of the metropolis is also on the edge of dissolution, manifesting its systems weaknesses through accidental detonations as deliberate acts of sabotage, as system malfunctions and information errors. 51

Architectural Purity in Labyrinth

Fig.24: The Labyrinth

In the introduction to our discussion, we had suggested two factors of architectural reality that inhibit the pure representation of architectural idea. The first of these is the physical limitations imposed by reality, which cannot be superseded; the second is the limitations due to practicality and functionality. Both of these can be tackled by film, because it can exist in total disregard to the issues pertaining to the real world.
Rachel Armstrong, Cyborg Architecture and Terry Gilliams Brazil, pg.55-57, Architecture + Film II, Architectural Design vol. 70.
51

That film can easily side-step reality is most noticeably and effectively demonstrated in The Matrix and the

82

more recent Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Everything from leaping across buildings in single bounds to running up walls and trees to dashing across pools of water and even flying becomes possible for man in films. Sometimes a justification for these flights of fancy is provided in the narrative, but sometimes even that is deemed unnecessary. Apart from the fact that the narrative of the film does not need to correspond to the same physical laws as that of reality, film has the added advantage that it shows you everything through the biased eyes of the camera which very casually overlooks a number of practical and functional issues. Therefore, space that would in reality by either impossible or unfeasible to construct can be designed and produced for a cinematic venture. And since the raison detre of such a space is none other than this one specific production, and it need not be sustained beyond it, no issues related to long term concerns may impinge. Jim Hensons Labyrinth takes a premise based on magic (as a departure from reality) and combines it with the architectural phenomenon of a labyrinth to present a number of exciting spatial

concepts that cannot exist outside the screen. The film climaxes within a dramatic Escher-like space where staircases do dizzying and inexplicable things and one can end up walking on a plane that was a ceiling just moment before, but there are intriguing configurations and spatial ideas that pop up every now and then during the course of the film.

Fig.25: The Castle at the centre of the Labyrinth

Early in the film, when Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) is beginning her adventurous journey through the maze, she finds herself in a long passage that seems to go on and on. Short on time, she starts running between the huge walls, trying to find an opening leading into the complex network of pathways that make up the labyrinth. But she finds none. Baffled at this quirk, she exclaims:

83

What do they mean labyrinth? There are no turns or corners or anything, it just goes on and on

picks up one that is lying on the floor and places it against a wall. Then he opens it: the first attempt leads into a cupboard, but then he opens the door from the hinged end and reveals a tunnel. Again, a kind of warping of space is demonstrated here that is explored further only in film. To escape from the tunnel, the duo climbs up a very high, rickety ladder and finally emerges from inside an earthen vessel. The camera draws back to show that the vessel rests on top of a table, thereby rolling the entire space of the oubliette, the tunnel, and Sarahs experiences so far, into the small confines of the urn - a kind of dream-like representation, with an illogical sequence of events. Film has the capacity to string together a narrative using elements that dont join up seamlessly, and leave part of the work for the viewer. The viewers assemble the sequences using their own imagination, thus creating a world beyond depictable reality. 52 Such configurations and juxtapositions of spaces may have little relevance to architecture, but
Karin Damrau, Fantastic Spatial Combinations in Film, pg.58-61, Architecture + Film II, Architectural Design vol. 70
52

Fig.26: Sarah tries to find an entrance into the Labyrinth

Whereas we can only hope to imitate the concept of the endless corridor, the film produces an actual one one that does not need to compromise in the face of reality, because it produces its own reality. Further on, she finds that walls of the labyrinth shift and change their configuration at their own will or by the will some unseen agency - a kind of flexibility, borrowed from modernism and, taken to extreme. At one point when shes trapped inside the oubliette (a place to put people to forget about them), a goblin comes to show her an exit. The dungeon has no door, so he

84

on a wider level nevertheless opens up avenues of thought regarding space. They help us see spaces in terms very different from those we are used to. True, the application to real work may be little, but it is there in the sense that the architect exposed to such ideas will at least possess another perspective. By the aid of this perspective, he will be able to ask questions that, formed broadly, are rational. The image of Sarah and the goblin emerging from the vessel, for example, may evoke the question: How can a very large space be confined within a very small one? Set in this way, the question doesnt seem altogether odd, and who knows to what extent, and in what manner we may draw closer to that absolute idea. Given the way in which humans alter their reality, just about anything is possible. And even if the idea never gets translated into reality, in any way whatsoever, it at least allows us to add to our collection of spatial experiences, and thereby raise our consciousness with regard to what might, under different laws, be possible, however superficial this experience may be.

Pre/Post-production
Pre-production techniques, and postproduction intervention often work together in film to produce space that cannot exist in reality. 2-D drawings, 3-D animation and photography, collected before the shooting, are later combined on a single plane and with the assistance of computer-generated visual effects, produce a reality today that is seldom seen as a farce. Eric Hanson, who worked on the sets for the Luc Besson film The Fifth Element, explains in an article, how the real and virtual were combined to produce the architectural backdrop. Miniatures of 1960s Metabolistinspired clusters of modular apartment units were set against a 3D computer generated model of the skyline, with conventional matte painting filling in the lower reaches. The Thai restaurant boat was shot as a full-size built element, its attached jet engine a 3-D computer model. The small vehicles crossing the 3-D computer model of the Brooklyn Bridge were created as 2-D painted animation and, finally, the

85

smoke of the jet engine was rendered with a 3-D particle system. 53

Fig.28: Milla Jovovich takes a plunge

Fig.27: the virtual environment of The Fifth Element

Fig.29: A view from the top

This, of course, gives us only a taste of the extent to which space is digitally manufactured for film. As we drop further below the daylight of street level, we begin to enter an artificially lit realm, the cacophony of Times Square, intact and independent of the time of day. These backgrounds were created entirely on the computer, and offer a glimpse of what digital capabilities can provide for creating large-scale environments. 54

These digitally produced sets can cheat in little ways, as when they exhibit lighting for which no source is architecturally possible or produce little nooks of spaces that add up to be greater than the whole, or they may cheat in a big way as in the case of Ridley Scotts Gladiator, where a section of the Coliseum served as enough of a real set to produce, virtually, the whole amphitheatre. Ridleys team built part of the Coliseum, and only up to a certain height on a location in Malta, and created the rest in CG, even giving it a computer generated patina to make it appear 150 years old.

53

Eric Hanson, Digital Fiction New Realism in Film Architecture, pg.62-69, Architecture + Film II, Architectural Design vol.70. 54 Ibid.

86

architectural Coliseum but the event within the architecture that is virtual. For the sporting events, the production team required an audience of 70,000 a task impossible to achieve without computer aided post-production intervention. The solution was achieved in an ingenious way by Mill Film, the digital post-production facility on the project, and John Nelson, VFX supervisor, explains how, in another article by Fordham:
We needed a robust strategy that

Fig.30: the partially built coliseum

John Nelson, Blood, Sweat and Gladiator, an article by Joe Fordham lends us a clue to the extent of the involvement of computer software: Scenes were tracked with 3D Equalizer; structures were modeled in Softimage and Alias|Wavefront, with animation in Softimage combined with Maya fabric-simulation software. Shadow information was achieved using radiosity techniques achieved with Lightscape software. Scenes were rendered in Renderman and composited in Discreet Logic's Inferno, graded to reflect Scott's visual plan. Not only is the architecture heavily dependent on the computergenerated effects, but sometimes even the narrative relies on it. In the case of Gladiator, it isnt simply the

would allow us to handle an unlimited variety of shotsLaurent Hugueniot came up with the idea of shooting tiles of crowd and placing them into our 3D portions of the stadium. To create those tiles, we focused on creating individual crowd characters. Rob Harvey, the Mill Film cosupervisor, came up with the idea of shooting crowd performers against a greenscreen with bluescreen slashes of color in their costumes that could be digitally re-colored. Fordham writes, The success of the first test prompted the construction of a greenscreen photo-booth arrangement, designed by Steven Hall to facilitate the photography of

87

crowds on location in Malta. Three Betacam cameras were mounted to provide a top view, side view and front view of each crowd artist. Steven lit the shots so that they could be captured in the open shade, with no main key light, just a hard fill from the side, the front and then the back, Nelson said. We shot all day, pulling extras away from the Coliseum set, encoding different performances -- staring, cheering, nonchalantly talking, thumbs up, thumbs down. We used a high key to fill the lighting ratio, at 4:1. The hard key separation allowed us to catalog the performances and slide the characters in wherever they were needed with the proper lighting. If we needed a cheering person, we could go to all our cheering shots and pick one from a certain angle, lit a certain way. 55 Architectural experience, that 4dimensional entity that comprises of space and narrative can be created outside of reality in the realm of CGI. Here it can substitute all that is not available in the real world, surpass the limitations imposed by physical laws and be unfettered by practical concerns. Films can therefore

provide a very powerful architectural image.

Fig.31: virtually Rome

55

Joe Fordham, John Nelson, VFX Supervisor, on Creating Ridleys Rome.

88

I dove into the abyss of the poorest houses underneath the bed, in the kitchen or deep inside a closet where nobody could probe me, and I wrote on, simply to keep from dying. It made no difference. They rose up threatening my poetry with hooks and knives and black pliers.
-Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), Chilean poet

Conclusion
Our contention with the architecture of the real world has been, throughout this dissertation, with the loss of symbolic meaning, which exists in the architectural idea. The loss of symbolic meaning, or the inability to translate the idea into reality without a generation loss so to speak, is due to a reasons which we have managed to identify as 1. The physical limitations imposed by reality, 2. Functional/practical considerations and 3. The lack of control over narrative. In conclusion, it is perhaps appropriate, if not essential, to observe if at all it is possible to prevent this loss of meaning from taking place, or indeed to induce

89

symbolic meaning in built architecture. Im convinced that the problem cannot be approached from a logical procedure, that is, by working against the very factors that are responsible for diluting the meaning of the architectural idea. This point of approach is impractical, precisely because it works against practical impositions in architecture. To attack the problem from this side would mean to strip architecture of a raison detre. If the dilemma can be confronted, it can only be done so from lateral plane of thinking. Here one must take Cobusiers advice and ask the right question. The right question, in my opinion, is: what makes a symbol a symbol? If the task is to induce architecture with a lost symbolic meaning, that is, to restore its symbolic status, we must understand what it is that makes a thing symbolic. The question has more or less been answered in the course of this dissertation. The symbol relies on multiplicity of meaning for its strength. A symbol is something that signifies more than one particular thing. The palm, the cross, the apple, the snake, the tree, the sword, the sun-wheel, the fish all these

symbols represent a number of things. It is their huge store of meaning that makes them potent as symbols. If their meanings are restricted, as in the case of the palm when it appears over an amils den or the cross when it appears over a grave, they stop functioning as symbols and are reduced to signs. A similar thing can be anticipated in architecture. The window may be symbolically strong in itself, but when it is repeatedly viewed as simply an opening in a wall, its symbolic potency is dissipated, and it becomes a superficial element without multiplicity of meaning. A similar idea is embodied in Marcel Duchamps 1917 exhibit of a urinal, which he titled fountain. Duchamps retrieval of the toilet fixture from its familiar setting, made one aware that it can be viewed as more than that perhaps even as an art object, because it is surely not without formal aesthetics. 56

56

Cf., Tony Godfrey, pg.6-7, Conceptual Art.

90

Fig.32: Duchamps Fountain

Architectural elements are restricted in their meaning by the imposition of a particular function that lacks flexibility or possibilities of reinterpretation. When a bathroom is just a place to take a bath or relieve oneself, and a bedroom a place to sleep or indulge in sexual activity, then the possibilities that are inherent in the space are eroded, and it cannot communicate the mass of meaning it is capable of, to the observer. If spaces could maintain a certain ambiguity of function; if their function was not at once apparent; or if they could be made to be inclusive of other functions, then perhaps the symbolic aspect of architecture could be safe guarded. The table below summarizes our discussion and concludes the dissertation:

91

bibliography
Architectural Design Vol.70, Architecture + Film II Bachelard, Gaston The Poetics of Space Baldock, John Christian Symbolism

Beacon Press, Boston, 1994

Element Books, Brisbane, 1995

Bowman, Barbara MASTER SPACE, Film Images of Capra, Lubitsch, Sternberg, and Wyler
Greenwood Press, New York, 1992

Translated by Bill Zavatsky and Zack Rogow Coach House Press, Toronto, 1993

Breton, Andre Earthlight

Translated by Constance Garnett Bantam Books, New York, 1987

Dostoevsky, Fyodor Crime and Punishment

Translated by Joan Riviere Edited by James Strachey The International Psychoanalytical Library No.17 The Hogarth Press and The Institute of Psychoanlysis

Freud, Sigmund Civilization and its Discontents

The Interpretation of Dreams

The Standard Edition

Fordham, Joe John Nelson, VFX Supervisor, on Creating Ridleys Rome

92 Godfrey, Tony Conceptual Art Hamel, Keith James Brazil (critical review) Heidegger, Martin Poetry, Language, Thought

Translations and Introduction by Albert Hofstadter Perennial Library Harper and Row Publishers, New York

Jencks, Charles and George Baird Meaning in Architecture


The Cresset Press, London, 1969

Jones , Terry and Laura Phillips Labyrinth Jung, Carl Gustav Four Archetypes: Mother, Rebirth, Spirit, Trickster
Ark Edition, 1989

Laurel Press, Dell Publishing, New York

Man and His Symbols

The Spirit in Man, Art and Literature


Translated by R.F.C. Hull Ark Edition, Routledge, London, 1984

Translated by Edward Snow North Point Press Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York

Rilke, Rainer Maria The Duino Elegies

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1984

Ruskin, John The Seven Lamps of Architecture White, Leslie A. The Science of Culture

Evergreen Books, New York, 1949

You might also like