Annotations

Material

Rubbish Theory

Thompson, Michael. “Introduction to the new edition.” In Rubbish Theory: The Creation and Destruction of Value, 1-10. London: Pluto Press, 2017.

Rubbish theory explains changes in value. It says that there are three types of goods: durable, transient, and rubbish. They have values: durable (+), transient (-), and rubbish (0). Transient objects, decreasing in value, first become rubbish, before they become durable good increasing in value. In other words, on their way from negative value to positive value, objects must pass through zero.

Thompson is concerned with the unforeseen creation of value over time: “value-creating transfer” (10). His research tries to answer these questions about the transfer of value through rubbish:

• What sort of people effect the transfer? (individualist actors)

• What sort of people try to prevent it? (hierarchical actors)

• What sort of people are able to profit from it? (egalitarian actors)

• What sort of people lose out? (fatalist actors)

These questions follow the Cultural Bias theory developed by Mary Douglas that divides actors into “four different kinds of ‘social beings’” (6). Thompson also explores how objects are categorized and valued. Controlling these categories is an interplay of culture, power, and wealth. The cultural paradigm stays largely the same, however, it must be allowed to change slightly. Rigid controls results in a caste system, where there is no social mobility or fluctuations in value.

Thompson holds that we need theories of “people and stuff” (10). He says that we “push around (and are pushed around by): materiality” (10). This is especially important when dealing with “discard-generating problems, such as climate change” (10).

Rubbish theory relates to my other research into Marxist theories of cultural production and physical reality. Dialectical materialism explains that the physical world impacts how we think, and in turn the way we think impacts the physical world. Rubbish theory is aligned with this dynamic, explaining how cultural status and value fluctuate throughout the lifecycle of an object: creation, degradation, reassertion.

Re-presentation

Harries, Karsten. “Representation and Re-presentation in Architecture.” In The Ethical Function of Architecture. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 118-133.

In this chapter, Harries discusses the representational qualities of architecture. He makes a distinction between buildings and architecture. In his terms, architecture is a building that also represents. Architecture is representative in two ways: 1) It represents the archetypal buildings. 2) it represents other buildings---from the past or from other types. Later, he bypasses this definition; he clarifies that architecture actually represents the imagination’s evolving ideal of architecture, based on changing desires and dreams that are influenced by changes in culture. Harries explains that architecture’s power comes from re-presentation---from drawing attention to elements. He explains different ways of doing this, such as translating elements into other materials or by taking elements out of context. Presented objects are taken for granted, but re-presented objects are notable and reflected upon. Karsten Harrie’s is a respectable source on these topics, because she is a professor of philosophy at Yale University.

Harries’ comments on the power of re-presentation in architecture is relevant to my interest in drawing attention to dialectical materialism in architecture. I want to make people ponder the origins, future uses, and impact of materials in architecture. I am exploring ways to do this, and the major way that I have found is through taking materials out of their normal context. Harries supports this method: “Re-presenting its materials, the work of architecture reveals its being. Such revelation requires that materials are worked in a way that invites us to step back from our usual involvement with things” (121). My major critique of Harries is her distinction between buildings and architecture. She claims that architecture is structures that strive for a level of re-presentation. I disagree with this definition, because I think that all buildings can be architecture; I think that architecture is in the design intention, not in the built work. The power of seeing things out of context is similar to Mezirow’s idea of the disorienting dilemma.

In my search to find an architectural practice that highlights dialectical materialism, I will consider Harries’s comments on re-presentation. Sometimes I consider my current approach---taking things out of context, using them in unintended ways---is unauthentic, going against truth in architecture. Therefore, it is good to have found a theoretical justification in Harries’ work.

Experience

Atmosphere

Pallasmaa, Juhani, “Space, place, and atmosphere: peripheral perception in existential experience,” in Architectural Atmospheres : On the Experience and Politics of Architecture, edited by by Christian Borch and Gernot Bohme, (Basel: Birkhauser, 2014), 19-39.

In this essay, Pallasmaa explains the concept of atmospheres in architecture. He says, “atmosphere is the overarching perceptual, sensory, and emotive impression of a place” (20). By his definition, atmosphere is holistic. It is sensed instantly on an intuitive and emotional level. It is not concerned with details, analysis, or intellect. It is also, “a temporal process, as it fuses perception, memory, and imagination” (19). He addresses the issue of designing with atmospheres in mind, and explains that such designing must draw from intuition, like the process of Alvar Aalto. Pallasmaa also highlights the element of vagueness inherent in atmospheres. The perception of atmosphere is based on imaginatively filling in information, not on analyzing every detail of a space and then drawing conclusions. Therefore, vagueness in art lends itself to eliciting atmosphere, as in the William Turner painting Rain, Steam, and Speed. Pallasmaa goes on to explain that all perception is built on imagination. He elaborates that “the power of architecture lies in its ability to strengthen the experience of the real, and its imaginative dimensions arises from this strengthened and re-sensitised [sic] sense of reality.” On all of these subjects, Pallasmaa is a very credible source, because he is a well-respected architect and philosopher, having written seminal books in the field, such as The Eyes of the Skin.

This text is relevant to my research because understanding how people process their experience of space is relevant to any architect. It is especially relevant when we work towards creating a certain emotional effect in architecture. The text is relevant to my interests in particular because of the section where he talks about the human need for history in their spatial environment. It’s in an explination of how we layer temporal and narrative meaning onto spaces in the process of understanding its atmosphere. He says, “Don’t we seek historically dense settings because they connect us experientially and imaginatively with past life, and because it makes us feel safe and enriched to be part of that temporal continuum?” (30). This is by no means a full explanation of how people connect with history through the built environment, but it positions history within the intuitive, phenomenological experience of space, which I often have found are at odds philosophically. Overall, Pallasmaa’s text is in line with other scholarship on the embodied, holistic experience of space done by the likes of Donohoe and Mallgrave, the author of From Object to Experience.

This text helps me think of design as the creation of holistic experiences, not just built forms. The text had few suggestions on how to design physical spaces; however, the notes on art gave me many ideas of how to best express my design concepts through renderings. For example, the emphasis on vagueness makes me think of creating renderings that don’t show the whole building, but rather show vignettes and make the viewer piece together a mental image of the whole, as in Pallasmaa’s explanation of imagination while reading. It also makes me want to use more mysterious or foggy rendering styles such, as in Turner’s painting Rain, Steam, and Speed.

Experience and Meaning

Johnson, Mark. “The Embodied Meaning of Architecture.” In Mind in Architecture: Neoroscience, Embodiment, and the Future of Design, edited by Sarah Robinson and Juhani Pallasmaa, 33-50. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015.

In this chapter, Johnson examines the way that meaning is created through the body. He reviews research and philosophy that explains how all understanding is an outcome of the body’s interactions with space. These interactions create sensory, emotional, intellectual, and memory-related phenomena that all contribute to understanding. This concept of meaning exceeds the reductive conversations that limit meaning to the linguistic dimension. This school of thought says that meaning is entirely constructed through our ability to use symbols to convey messages. When this is applied to other fields, for instance art and architecture, the system breaks down. In these situations, it would be very limiting to try to create meaning through pure semiotics. Meaning in architecture is much more robust and multi-dimensional.

This reading is very relevant to my line of design research, because I am focused on making buildings that make people see the meaning of a place. I am constantly trying to define what makes a place meaningful and how to make people tap into that meaning. At the beginning of school, I drew from my background in the humanities to find what a place means in terms of history, geography, politics, and culture. However, thinkers like Johnson have redirected my focus to embodied cognition and meaning-making. In this way, Johnson is related to the original thinkers who keyed me into these ways of thinking: Pallasmaa and Mallgrave, who wrote From Object to Experience.

This reading explains that the way to create a meaning in architecture is through a multi-sensory experience that triggers emotion, memory, and intellect. It was especially helpful to have Johnson deny the power of semiotics in architecture as the main means of creating meaning. It is good to have an author confirm that the creation of a meaningful experience should be more robust.

Phenomenology - Background

Mitrovic, Branko. “Phenomenology and Hermeneutics,” 116 – 141. In Philosophy for Architects. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011.

In this chapter, Mitrovic outlines the origins of the concept phenomenology in philosophy and its application to architectural theory. He starts with Husserl. Husserl originated the idea of phenomenology. The Greek origin of the word means “appearance.” Husserl’s concept of phenomenology was the study of conscious experience, opposed to the experience of the abstract essence of what things “really are” (118), as was common in philosophy up to that time. Based on experience, Husserl’s concept of experience was independent of the real world. His protege, Heidegger conceived of experience as dependent on the real world. He thought “pure consciousness was merely derived from historical consciousness” 120. Heideggar’s concept of experience was “Dasein”, which means “being here” or “thrown into” (123). To him, Dasein struggles to be done authentically, a concept some see as a secular form of the Protestant need for salvation (125). Heideggar’s saw place as the “result of human relationships to the place” (131), not defined by the physical or technical dimensions of the place. Norberg-Schultz applied hese concepts of phenomenology to architecture. He understood perception as based on pre-existing knowledge. To him, we perceive “meaningful forms” (139), not physical forms. Therefore to him, architecture is “concretizing symbols” (139). Therefore, “daily life has meanings that transcend the immediate situation” (139).

I respond to Heidegger’s idea that consciousness is rooted in historical consciousness. In my work, I hope to find ways to make people tap into this historical consciousness. I also like Norberg-Schultz’s idea that “daily life has meanings that transcend the immediate situation” (139). It makes me think about Zen Buddhism, and how a certain school (or maybe all of Zen), believes that epiphany and transcendence will come through meditatively performing mundane actions. Mitrovic exposes the flaw in Norberg-Scultz’s thinking: Where does this pre-existing, transcendent knowledge/meaning come from? The individual? The group? The question for me still is how to connect individual experience to collective experience.

Simultaneous Perception

Hiss, Tony. The Experience of Place: A New Way of Looking At and Dealing with Out Radically Changing Cities and Countryside. Vintage, 1991.

In these two chapters from Experience of Place, Hiss explains the concept of simultaneous perception---its basis in science, its causes in the environment, and its effect on well-being. According to Hiss, simultaneous perception is a combination of awareness and stream of consciousness reflection. He contrasts this with “ordinary perception” (3), when our attention is focused and blocks out stimuli. Scientific research on the “brain-body systems” suggests that modern life may be affecting the accessibility and impact of simultaneous perception. Simultaneous perception is possible in spaces that are calm, free of distractions, and safe, whereas ordinary perception is acute in busy or dangerous situations. Hiss outlines studies that prove the effect of certain types of stimuli on the body and mind. He also explores design suggestions to encourage simultaneous perception, like Olmstead’s rules for park design. Tony Hiss is a credible source on these issues, because he is an accomplished author, having written over 12 books on the subject of space, humans, and design.

This source is relevant to my research, because I am also interested in heightening people’s awareness of their surroundings. I similarly want to affect people’s awareness in order to bring them to a higher state of consciousness. I want to go one step further, making them tap into the primordial origins of those sensations. Hiss references a study that explains our preference for open vistas and textured ground planes with the early bi-pedal hominids on the Savanna. To make people tap into universal experiences, I want to use the power of archetypal places. A helpful reference from Hiss is the book Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander, who found that people have consistent responses to certain types or spaces. I also want to use this state of heightened awareness to help people understand each other, so I appreciate that Hiss connects simultaneous perception to a greater connectedness, illustrated by people’s ability to not hit each other in a crowd. Overall, Hiss’s book seems aligned with the book From Object to Experience by Harry Mallgrave. Like Hiss, Mallgrave explains the scientific underpinnings for the phenomenological experience of architecture.

Hiss explains the conditions that encourage simultaneous perception, which is the chapter’s greatest contribution to my own work. For example, he describes how such places require a sense of calm, security, and lack of distractions. Building on the work of Jay Appeleton, I will be mindful to create spaces with either a sense of “prospect” (vistas) or “refuge” (hiding place) (41). Likewise, I will also consider Olmstead’s rules for designing parks as ways to create a respite from the distracting city.

Phenomenology - Epistemology

Crotty, Michael. “Introduction” and “Interpretivism: for and against culture,” 1 -17, 66 – 86. In The Foundations of Social Science Research: Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process. London: Sage Publications, 1998.

In the introduction, Crotty outlines the different epistemologies, or ways of knowing, in research. Objectivism sees an object as independently meaningful. Constructivism sees an object and the subject in dialogue, creating meaning. Subjectivism sees the subject imposing meaning on an object. The chapter outlines addresses Interpretivism, an approach in the constructivist epistemology. Interpretivism is the idea that meaning is “culturally derived and historically situated interpretations of the social life-world” (67). It is in contrast to positivism, an approach in the objectivist epistemology. Part of Constructivism, interpretivism is closer to constructionism, the belief that we filter our understanding of objects through culture; therefore our understanding is influenced by received meaning. Phenomenology is an “invitation” to bypass culture and to experience the phenomena of things themselves. It is a form of cultural critique and liberation. It sees culture as a barrier and sees the world as full of primordial experiences that abound with potential meanings. In North America, phenomenology has been adopted to a subjectivist epistemology. It focuses on the individual experience. It asks researchers to set aside their cultural/received perceptions, but to allow subjects to be influenced by culture. In this way it is an exploration of acculturated experience. Unlike the original European phenomenology, it is uncritical. Michael Crotty is a respectable source on these issues, because he is a lecturer in education and research studies in the Department of Public Health at The Flinders University of South Australia.

This reading is relevant to my research because I want to use phenomenology to tap into both historical understanding and universal experience/meaning. It has helped me see that my goal is really a two-part goal and that the two goals have different philosophical foundations. In an interpretivist and constructionist sense, I would like to help people see places and their meanings as culturally constructed. In a phenomenological sense, I would like to help people see past those cultural meanings and to feel something more primordial and universal. This reading has helped me see that this later goal, to feel something archetypcal and universal, is about liberation from culture, whereas before I understood it as an outgrowth of cultural understanding.

In my work, I see that my two-part goal implies a two-layer approach to design. I have an instructive goal, of making people see how their understanding is influenced by culture. This might include historical cues, references to the site’s past. I also have a liberating goal of making people see past those cultural understanding. This would involve making people address the elemental parts of the design---a material, a motion, action like looking up or crossing a threshold. Now I must address the following questions: Do I want to pursue a dual goal? Or do I want to focus on one goal over another?

Phenomenology - Memory and Place

Donohoe, Janet. “A Phenomenology of Memory and Place.” In Remembering Places: A Phnomenological Study of the Relationship between Memory and Place, 1-24. London: Lexington Books, 2014.

In this chapter, Donohoe explains the connection between the body, place, and memory. She explains that “experience is implaced; memory likewise is implaced.” (1). She then surveys several philosopher’s understanding of embodied place memory. Paul Rincoeur sees memory as inscribed in place, place as a pneumatic device. Husserl understands place as constructed through lived experience. He also considers that construct accessible in other times and places, and therefore not dependent on the physical space. Donohoe then takes up the issue of attentiveness to place. They body can be familiar with a place, such as home, and move with muscle memory, unattentive. She also clarifies that the body is not a passive participant in the construction of place but an active agent, a part of the equation. Bachelard in the Poetics of Place describes the importance of the construct of home as a safe space that people then compare the rest of the world to. Donohoe criticizes this as overly romantic and not true across all people’s childhoods. Heideggar says that dwelling means to care, to cultivate, to make culture. Donohoe uses Husserl to compare the homework and the alienworld. Similar to Bachelard’s points, the homeworls is the familiar point of comparison and absentmindedly experienced, whereas the alienworld is actively constructed. In the case of people moving or being displaced, like immigrants, the homeworld is a palimpsest, overwritten but not forgotten. On these issues, Donohoe seems to be a credible source, having thoroughly researched the philosophers and thinkers, as a professor of philosophy at the University of West Georgia.

This chapter is directly connected to my work, because I want to connect people to history and collective memory using phenomenology. For this reason, I will read the second chapter of the book, “From Individual to Collective Memory.” That chapter should fill a whole in my research on how to make visitors to a specific spot connect to a greater understanding of that spot. I look forward to reading more, because Donohoe does a good job of synthesizing the work of others to prove these points about place and memory. However, her work lacks more scientific underpinnings. A book that does this more clearly is From Object to Experience by Francis Mallgrave.

This chapter has made me think more about activating memory through space. In particular, it has made me think of how memories differ and are constructed. For example, do I want to harness the power of the “homeworld” by making people feel comfortable? Or do I want to harness the power of the “alienworld” by making people feel uncomfortable?

Meaning

Atmosphere

Beauty = Justice

Murphy, Michael. “Or, And, Is” in Justice Or And Is Beauty, ed. MASS Design Group. (The Monacelli Press, 2019), 24-31.

In this introduction, Michael Murphy explains the origins of MASS Design Group’s values. MASS is an acronym: Model of Architecture Serving Society. They believe that there is not a “false binary” (30) choice between beauty and justice. To them, justice is beauty and beauty is justice. They developed this philosophy during their formative works in Rwanda designing hospitals. There, they encountered assumptions that the most efficient and economical designs would downplay beauty and favor costs. However, they countered that good design could improve outcomes and improve well-being. They resist the idea that beauty is a luxury affordable only to the wealthy. They hold that beauty is an issue of human dignity. For them, “To be an architect should be to fight for the beauty and dignity that others have been denied” (27). For them, “the choice...was not between a beautiful building or a basic building; the choice was to lower expectations about what was possible, or not to” (27). After their hospital was complete, a doctor who questioned the expense of beauty said, “I realized we need this too. The unquantifiable, the beautiful, is in the service of our patients and our beliefs” (29).

When working on the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Bryan Stevenson asserted that “the opposite of poverty is not wealth. The opposite of poverty is justice.” In that vein, MASS operated under the adage that “the opposite of beauty is not ugliness, it is injustice” (30).

MASS believes that the “false dichotomy…is indicative of all the ways human rights in our society have been commodified” (30). Law, health care, and architecture (dignity) are reserved for rich. Public service has been removed from architecture. To counter this situation, they pursue beauty, because for them “the search for Beauty is the search for Justice” (31).

Liberation Theory - Four Stages

Elias, John L. and Sharan B. Merriam. “Radical and Critical Adult Education” in Philosophical Foundations of Adult Education, Third Edition, 147 – 186. (Malabar, Florida: Krieger Publishing Company, 2005)

This chapter explains the foundations of Radical/Critical Education, in particular the Liberation Theory of Paolo Freire. The basics of Radical/Critical Education is to question givens and challenge the status quo. Its origins started in anarchist thought, which saw school as a place of acculturation. The Freudian Left saw school as a place of personality change and the imposition of the patriarchal family. Marxism then articulated that school is where the values of the dominant class are imposed on youth. The Frankfurt School combined the Marxist critique of school with other schools of thought, notably phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and symbolic communication. The Frankfurt School concerned itself with examining the dialectic social reality, hegemony, domination, and cultural imperialism. Paolo Freire’s thoughts followed from the Marxist critique and the Frankfurt School.

Freire proposes a type of education that is a process of radical concientization, which he outlines in the book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Radical conscientization is a process where people (both the oppressed and the opporessor) liberate themselves from oppressive modes of thought that perpetuate existing power structures. The end of the process is achieving praxis, a combination of reflection and action, where people practice behavior change and social action.

Freire outlines four stages in radical conscientization

1. intransitive consciousness

In this stage, people cannot comprehend the forces that shape their lives. They are concerned with meeting their immediate needs, and live in the “oppressive present” (156).

2. semi-intransitive / magical consciousness

In this stage, people internalize the oppressive frameworks of the dominant culture. In the context of the peasantry, people might resort to superstition and magic in an attempt to control their reality.

3. naïve transitiveness

In this stage, people start to understand the nature of their reality: the power structure that creates it and its inherent problems. They become critical, but they can be pacified by the comforts of the dominant culture and economy.

4. critical consciousness

In this stage, people take responsibility for creating their reality. They understand how their reality is constructed and take action to influence it. They strive for praxis, the combination of reflection and action that can lead to critical change in behavior. They engage in dialogues with others to spread their critical consciousness.

This reading relates to my other readings in Liberation Theory and Marxist conceptions of culture. In particular, it relates to Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Freire; however, that book does not outline the four steps of critical consciousness as is done here. Perhaps Freire outlined it more clearly in another text.

This theory of consciousness is relevant to my research, because I want to use architecture to help people on this trajectory toward critical consciousness. I see architecture as a chance to helpe people understand how their reality is constructed. The built world is an expression of the dominant power structure. It reveals the dominant culture’s values; it reveals how the dominant class combines materials to create a physical reality that reinforces people’s internal subjective reality. Currently, I am interested in exploring how to help people understand this at the micro/basic level of material. By reprocessing consumer goods, such as t-shirts, into architectural elements, I hope to raise people’s awareness of the creation of material culture, its cyclical nature, and how they might intervene in this cycle.

Design

Anti-Object

Kuma, Kengo. “Making a Connection: The Hyuga Residence by Bruno Taut.” In Anti-Object, 4-9. London: Architectural Association, 2013.

Thus chapter is supposedly about the Hyuga Residence by Brüno Taut. Actually, it is an explanation of how Western thinking, from classical times to the 20th century, has given preference to the object. For example, Kuma explains that one point perspective and the house in a garden are both examples of the subject’s singular perspective defining and dominating its context.

Kuma explains that Brüno Taut’s work was not popular because he designed experiences, not objects. To Kuma, modern architecture values architecture that photographs well, whose meaning can be communicated widely based on visuals, instead of experiences, like Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe.

Kuma then turns to the relationships between space, time, and matter. In particular, he takes a turn towards economic philosophy. The concept of “invisible hand” of the 1920s devalued the influence of matter on economy. However, Keynesian economics used matter as an intervention to connect and control time and space. Building great works (i.e. infrastructure) with loans and government intervention speds up the time line. It brings something from a future point in the economic timeline to the present.

The technology/information era has devalued objects, highlighted their “failure.” However, Kuma says we should not abandon matter all together. Instead, we should find a type of matter that isn’t an object. He is in pursuit of an “anti-object.”

Spatial Layering

Belfiore, Matteo and Kengo Kuma. “On Japense Spatial Layering / sure l’étagement des plans japonais.” In Le carré bleu: feuille international d’architecture, no. 2 (2012).

In this article, Kuma and Belfiore explain the concept of spatial layering in Japanese architecture. The article begins with a text from Kum and then a commentary from Belfiore, a post-doc researcher at the Kengo Kuma Lab at Tokyo University. In addition, he explains its evolution in Japan, influence on Western architects, such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Carlo Scarpa, as well as its use by contemporary Japanese architects such as Toyo Ito and Sou Fujimoto. Primarily, Belfiore contrasts the Japanese control of space through overlapping thin, movable bi-dimensional planes and the Western way of boxing in space with thick, permanent walls. He explains that this overlapping creates a sense of openness, where as the western boxing creates a sense of confinement. It also encourages a different attitude towards distinctions between inside and outside, allowing a sense of porosity and connection to nature. This is a major thread in Kuma’s ongoing pursuit of the “anti-object,” or architecture that disappears.

Both Kuma and Belfiore explain how layering is an adaptive outgrowth of living in the density of Japanese cities and argue that the modern world can now benefit from the Japanese methods of layering space, as the world becomes more urban and dense. Some of these Japanese architectural elements include transparent screens, folding screens, cloth curtains, reed shutters, sliding partitions, and lattice screens. Functionally, these alaments are adaptive ways of controlling light, views, sounds, and security in confined spaces. In terms of sustainability, these are low-tech and user-controlled methods for passively controlling human comfort.

This article connects to other readings of mine in regards to architecture that defers to context instead of dominating it. The main reading in that vein is another work by Kuma: Anti-object, which outlines his ideas on architecture that dissolves, in contrast to Western architecture, which dominates. The article also relates to another text, After the Crash: Architecture in Post-Bubble Japan, which mentions how contemporary Japanese architecture may be reaching the extreme of transparent and lightweight architecture, denying people the sense of depth and enclosure that way historically a part of layered Japanese space.

This article connects to my research in making buildings that highlight that architecture is constructed, a composition of assembled parts (brought together by forces at a certain point in time and space). Kuma’s concept of “particularized” architecture is a way of illustrating this point. Exploring the Japanese idea of layering as a way of constructing space, opposed to boxing space, will lead me to ways of emphasizing the ephemerality of defined space and architecture.