ABSTRACT - History

ABSTRACT - history

Typical scene on the canal trail – the actual canal is a culvert that runs parallel along the left side of the trail in the above photo.…how should architecture be expressed as an interpretive construct in the landscape? Is it an objective construct, universal, searching for meaning in the stimulus and conditions inherent at its origin? Is it expressed subjectively beyond the constraints of place - seeking multiple meaning in arbitrary associations and self-serving permutations? Perhaps, to one extent or another, both conditions exist simultaneously and are necessary to fully create places that support wholeness, mutual regard and understanding, but at the same time, allow for differing viewpoints, variable experiences and multiple meaning.

Most of my work in 3rd and 4th year studios has been in the realm of urban theory and design. These projects include large-scale urban planning of mixed-use, transit-oriented developments, as well as, urban high-rise and mid-rise, mixed-use commercial and residential buildings. The set of “rules” and the theoretical basis for those projects was developed in earlier urban theory coursework, and these projects offered me a proving ground to put those theories into practice.

In considering a topic for my Comprehensive Architectural Project, and recalling my experience with the residence in Vermont, I decided I would propose a project in the landscape. The primary reason for this type of project was to discover a new set of rules for making architecture. I wanted to explore the notion of phenomenology (viewer experience), meaning, and interpretation as a means to evoke an architectural response, one that would promote self-discovery within my own process for design and making architecture.

Part of this search would be an exploration to discover meaning in place and re-establish that meaning into an architectural form that is perceivable by others. Part of making architecture would be to uncover a process for self-discovery of the site, based on phenomenological experience and individual interpretation. I asked the questions: “How do I interpret the landscape and reproduce my perceptions of place into forms and spaces capable of evoking meaning? How does an architecture that responds to the artifacts of place, capture the presence of those artifacts without becoming an object in and of itself? Another reason for selecting a project utilizing phenomenology and interpretive discovery (perceptions and experience) to produce architecture was to challenge and invigorate my existing design process. In the past, I have approached design as a linear process. The process began with the physical study of site, typological paradigms and the establishment of a realistic program. Conceptual schemes were then developed that solved programmatic functions and relationships. Parti and form were crafted to suite a particular architectural theme or style consistent with a typological precedent. In this project, hermeneutical phenomenology drives a process of exploration and discovery. The process is circular, whereby initial perceptions and conceptual ideas are investigated, interpreted, questioned and reinvented multiple times.

Part of this process involves contemplation. It is rooted in the exploration and discovery of site. Multiple site visits were performed over several months and change of seasons. The physical landscape and natural site phenomena were extensively recorded. The artifacts of the canal system; lock walls, canal channels, remnants of bridge abutments, old river crossings, and historic structures where all surveyed and recorded with attention given to their “presence.” The term presence is used to describe of how the object or artifact is related to the landscape and perceived or observed by the viewer. The interpretation of these artifacts is not necessarily to provide a tectonic or material inspired design, but rather, to understand how these artifacts evoke meaning, stimulate the imagination, and establish powerful and vivid imagery in our memory.

Part of this process involves making. The graphical (2-dimensional and 3-dimensional) composite images are summations of those interpretations made from exploring the site. The making process utilizes a series of vignettes, made from compositing images, that gives clues about an architectural response. The images set forth, through overlapping and collage, the qualitative rather than quantitative parameters of the architecture. The vignettes describe how a space might feel, where one might focus their eyes, what we might hear when we occupy the space, how sunlight filters through the space and what form is appropriate, etc.

In both cases, the process continually renews itself as new encounters in one area inform another. The multiple readings of the site and a process of conceptualization, focused on qualitative metrics, are part of a design process essential to an interpretive architecture. In its final form, the architecture will evoke from its users a multiplicity of meanings and interpretations that will resonate with the original conception of the work.

ABSTRACT - Justification

ABSTRACT - justification

Considerable discourse and criticism surrounds the philosophical and architectural notion of phenomenology. In part, discussions concerning a phenomenological architecture rose out of a lack of confidence in “modern” architecture towards the end of the twentieth-century. Contemporary architecture and the theory that shaped it was said to lack the necessary “tools” (theory) of self-criticism. Architectural theory was criticized as operating at a superficial level largely autonomous and within itself ignoring conditions outside its domain or refusing to test itself against a broader cultural debate. In contrast, by engaging in theoretical debates outside its domain, architecture would acquire better means for its own self-criticism and a depth of models that explore the way the built environment is perceived.[i]

As such, architecture must be seen as a result of deeper concerns and a way of thinking where solutions are brought forth from the root of the problem with a focus on the thinking and associations that form the construction. Phenomenology, and more specifically, hermeneutical phenomenology, offers a model to examine problems below their surface, and inquire about the fundamental basics of relationships, interactions, experiences and perceptions of the human condition.[ii]

Phenomenology can be studied broadly across differing philosophic viewpoints. The work in this project incorporates the ideas for a phenomenological architecture based on discourse found in Saussure’s linguistic studies (structuralism) and Derrida’s arguments for redefining language and meaning (post-structuralism). In addition, the design is conceived in ideas of phenomenology as expressed by architects working within similar philosophic methods. These ideas will be presented in later sections of this manuscript under Methodology.

In terms of phenomenology, I have concentrated on the discourse of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer. The two are considered the foremost representatives of the movement of hermeneutical phenomenology.[iii] They developed the necessary discourse capable of assuming deeper, interpretive dimensions into the realm of human awareness and sensory perception. As such, there was new potential for a revelation in the understanding of truth and reality. They proposed that art should represent some form of symbolic truth. The aim of a hermeneutical phenomenological architecture is to uncover the ontological dimension of the built environment. An architecture that seeks to evoke a “presence” of place, rather than, a simplistic occupation of place as a construct void of phenomenological associations, and seeks to uncover a richer understanding of the world.

Also studied were writings within the discipline of structuralism, most notably Saussure and his analysis of linguistic systems. Saussure was concerned with the underlying systems of language and their relationship to individual utterances. He recognized that language did not refer only to literary systems, but that all cultural forms could be analyzed as an analogy with language, and as such, could be read. Saussure described words as “signs”, and that “signs” were made up of a “signifier” and the “signified.” The former refers to the form of the object; the latter identifies the content or meaning. The relationship between the two is arbitrary, as the word used is different across many languages. In addition, the “signified” is defined by what it is not. For example, a bird is a bird, because it is not a fish. Opposition is fundamental to structuralism, and the physical world can be seen as structured as a system of paired opposites; in/out; wet/dry; male/female; hot/cold; etc. This has an implication for architecture as the notion of “signs” (science of semiology) can be used as a tool to read or decode the landscape as part of an analysis or used as a phenomenological element in the architecture to convey meaning.[iv] In this project the building form is a collection of abstract objects organized to convey their meaning.

In reading the post-structuralist writings of Jacques Derrida I am most interested in the effort to examine the universalizing tendencies of structuralism by introducing “specificity” into the argument. The notion of specificity considered in terms of time and difference, where meaning is not fixed, but subject to interpretation by other influences and change over time.

Derrida has explained post-structural deconstruction as a kind of pioneering, using the metaphor of “clearing a path.” The path is symbolic in architecture as a precondition to habitation, as the building by locating on a path, makes arrival and departure possible from the outside, while corridors, staircases and doors make passage on the inside possible. For Derrida, being “on the path” and proposing new language and references indicates an infinity of thinking.[v] Deconstruction also questions the structural notion of conceptual pairs. Rather than accepting these concepts as self-evident and natural. Their meanings are challenged through non-restricted thinking. In this project the viewer is put on a path to discover the language and references associated with the canal site.

[i] Mugerauer, Robert. Interpretations on Behalf of Place. New York: SUNY Press, 1994.
[ii] Leach, Neil. Rethinking Architecture. New York: Routledge, 1997. pg. 14-15.
[iii] Website: Hermeneutical phenomenology: http://phenomenologyonline.com/inquiry/5.html.
[iv] Leach, Neil. Rethinking Architecture. New York: Routledge, 1997. pg. 163.
[v] Leach, Neil. Rethinking Architecture. New York: Routledge, 1997. pg. 320.