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Architecture and Being

A few years ago, a girl sat in front of me and recounted her experience of the Thermal Baths in Vals, Switzerland. The conversation went something like this:

“I remember soaking there for hours. There’s a large bath that begins inside and extends out to vistas — snowy mountains and a light pink dawn. You gaze out and feel the chill of the Alps on your skin. It’s mysterious, to a point where you feel like you’re on a different planet. Some of the tubs are hot, others cool. There’s one small space with the scent of… Flowers? Another room is pitch black with an angled stone bed for you to lay on and listen to the sound of a ringing bell. You need all of your senses to feel the space out.” I leaned in. The smell of fresh coffee grounds whiffed through the small cafe and helped heighten the mood.

“And what about the material?”

“The water level is perfect and kept near the same level as the ground. As you descend down the stone steps, it just feels natural. The walls and floor are made of slate. They look like the rooftops of the surrounding village. And the ceilings, they’re very high. Light streams down through these small slits and hits your eye in a strange way. The whole place has this aura, like it existed before it was built.”

This was my first experience with architect Peter Zumthor, the winner of this year’s Pritzker Prize, the most prestigious award in architecture. At that time, I had heard his name mentioned in passing by various architects but hadn’t become acquainted with his work. Books were hard to come by and he was sort of an enigma. However, I was able to find a small book of his lectures and writings, titled Thinking Architecture.

In the book’s opening section, Zumthor describes his “search of lost architecture.” He recounts his thoughts in a simple way, distinguishing between two ways of thinking about space. “When I think about architecture, images come into my mind. Many of these images are connected with my training and work as an architect.” Zumthor goes on to distinguish this rigorous type of thinking with the experiences of his childhood: “… I went into my aunt’s garden. That door handle still seems to me like a special sign of entry into a world of different moods and smells. I remember the sound of gravel under my feet, the soft gleam of the waxed oak staircase.” As he recounts these past occurrences, he stresses the way that special places have left an indelible imprint on his consciousness. You get the feeling that Zumthor isn’t just reminiscing, but that these spaces are actually a part of him.

A few pages forward, he critiques the Postmodern condition that generally prevails in our world. “Everything beyond your own personal biography seems vague, blurred, and somehow unreal. The world is full of signs and information, which stand for things that no one fully understands because they, too, turn out to be mere signs for other things. Yet the real thing remains hidden. No one ever gets to see it.” Nevertheless, Zumthor is is convinced that the “earth and water, the light of the sun, landscapes and vegetation… objects, made by man, such as machines, tools, or musical instruments” do, in fact, exist.

Zumthor’s seemingly mystical account of existence comes to us through a strain of philosophy called phenomenology. If we want to understand where he’s coming from, it’s necessary to look at the thinkings of philosopher Martin Heidegger, widely regarded as this field’s most important figure. While it’s beyond the scope of this article to take an in depth look at the man’s thought, a few comments are in order. While studying in Germany in the early 1930s, Heidegger came to believe that philosophy was hopelessly mired in esoteric questions that posed little relation to the world around us. He felt that humankind was thrown into a mysterious world that we discovered through our actions, experience, and thoughts and that analytical thought failed to adequately address this condition. His life’s work revolved what it meant “to be.”

In one of his final lectures, titled “Building Dwelling Thinking,” Heidegger asserts that building, in the broadest sense of the word, is what helps us understand our existence and fulfil our potential as human-beings. We realize ourselves through dwelling in and around the things we create in the world. Seizing on this lecture and other works, architectural theorists like Christian Norberg-Shulz, Thomas Thiis-Evensen, and Christopher Alexander worked to create a practical philosophy of building. Architects like Stephen Holl and Sverre Fehn (another Pritzker winner) worked on creating spaces that were proper for dwelling.

Since Heidegger’s death, some people have looked at how the man himself dwelled. After all, if his philosophy is based on creating physical works, it’s reasonable to assume that we might glean something by studying his lifestyle. Pilgrimages to his residence in the Black Forest of Southern Germany are common. Indeed, at the end of “Building, Dwelling, Thinking,” Heidegger describes the construction of a farmhouse similar to his:

“(It) was built some two hundred years ago… Here the self-sufficiency of the power to let earth and sky, divinities and mortal enter in simple oneness into things ordered the house. It placed the farm on the wind-sheltered mountain slope, looking south, among the meadows close to the spring. It gave it the wide overhanging shingle roof, whose proper slope bears up under the burden of snow, and that, reaching deep down, shields the chambers against the storms of the long winter nights… A craft that, itself sprung from dwelling, still uses its tools and its gear as things, built the farmhouse.”

The farmers didn’t learn how to do all of this work analytically, but rather through a culture that seemed to exist forever (at least within their own perception). They didn’t discover their being by asking philosophical questions, but rather through creating places out of the earth.

The book Heidegger’s Hut, by Adam Sharr, takes a close look at the cabin where Heidegger worked. It is a small structure built into the side of a mountain. It has with a plain interior with a plan organized into four different dwelling-specific squares: A living space, kitchen, bedroom, and study. Storage space is relegated to the rear of the house. The building is primarily timber-framed and was presumably made with simple hand tools. The exterior is clad with shingles. Although we don’t know how much Heidegger was involved in the design and construction, one can assume that he participated in its conception. According to Sharr, “Heidegger considered the hut to be small and basic. For him, it had resonant simplicity.”

This urge for simplicity and living with nature is appealing. One sees similarities to the sustainable architecture movement of today. However, this type of thinking can also lead to provincialism and anti-technological thinking. According to Sharr, the challenge of architects should be to ask the question: “How can so powerful a datum be achieved–without exclusion–in urban conditions.” The history of the last century is replete with the horrors of discrimination, xenophobia, fascism; all of these Conservative viewpoints offer themselves up as grounding viewpoints available only to those privileged enough to take part in them. For Sharr, “If… (Heidegger’s philosophy) might make a contribution, it appears to lie in the memory of its centering power for the philosopher’s life. Arguably, the greatest potential of the hut lies in the hope that such centering power need not be invidious or exclusive. Why cannot every life hold out hope for a resonant, centering datum? This need not keep others at bay, cast them as strangers, or be situated outside the city.” In other words, the task of making lives better falls on the shoulders of those that take part in the act of creating meaningful places for others.

While a provincial life in a hut might not be possible now, might the idea of centering provide respite from the fast paced, increasingly networked society we live in? Is this way of thinking doomed to be eclipsed by technology? Zumthor offers a particularly poetic passage on this situation at the end of Thinking Architecture. The architect describes Los Angeles at night:

“Seen from an approaching aircraft that is gradually losing altitude, the nighttime illumination of Los Angeles looks like a magical image. Later, on the streets of the city, that same light seems palid and sickly to me, an unnatural brightness in which the green lawns and bushes in front yards of the houses look as if they were made of plastic.”

The conservative force of Heidegger’s thinking is striking when compared to the world we live in now, and even to the world of the last century. The work of architects like Zumthor evokes a primal state of being that is largely lost in our increasingly networked world. The increased alienation and destruction of the individual in today’s society may not yield the Utopia we desire. At the same time, reactionary tendencies have caused much misery in the last century. Hopefully, the work of contemporary thinkers can point a way towards a sustainable future with the planet, allow for technological advances, and continue to create spaces of transcendence.

>Written by d/visible contributor Kevin Clement.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 11:38 am and is filed under Industrial, Culture, Architecture, Art & Design, Literary form. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Architecture and Being

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