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The issue of Genius Loci was a problem dear to Christian Norberg Schulz, and the term has become central to the theory and practice of architecture and planning in Norway. In this article, professor Alberto Prez-Gmez engages phenomenology and the use of language as a means to further the conversation on this important topic. This lecture was delivered at the Sverre Fehn Symposium at Hamar in May 2006.
central question for an ethical contemporary architecture is how architecture and urban form may acknowledge the specific cultural particularities that we associate with the identity of a place. This question, however, is very difficult to unpack in my view, it is inherently ambiguous. Contrary to what many architects and critical theorists may think, contextualism is not an obvious operation, particularly when what is at stake is a poetic practice. Artistic products from the most diverse cultures touch us by virtue of their paradoxical universality; they both belong to a time and place and transcend it, contributing to our self-understanding regardless of our own particular culture. The difficulties surrounding this question are a direct result of a typically modern cultural dilemma, namely the challenge of imagining and building a meaningful human order in a world that almost regardless of geographical location remains in the grip of Cartesian
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or information), it demands that we take a position. History is our full inheritance, both the constitution of the mental framework that has its roots in the Western tradition (for the contemporary technological world is constituted out of that tradition), and the local architectural artifacts that are real cultural symbols because we have made them, and that can be gleaned as an order allowing for our present orientation. We should seek basic strategies for poetic inhabitation in the artifacts, history and fictions that constitute its background. This is of course far from being a call for a simple return to the vernacular.
architects broad and deep cultural roots in his/her own space/time. This is at the heart of architectural meaning: the participatory role of architecture which, in its manifold historical embodiments, has allowed the individual inhabitant at different times in history and in all cultures, to belong to an institutional totality and understand life as a coincidence of opposites, as a given sense (meaning) in the poetic incandescence that shows life (plurality) and death (unity) not as polar opposites (order and chaos) but as potentially one.
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The coopers house, seen from the directors villa. La Saline Royale DArc-et-Senans, 774-779. Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (736-806). From Michel Gallet: Ledoux, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt 983.
Far left: The Rothko chapel, Houston, Texas. Interior with paintings by Mark Rothko. Architects: Rothko collaborated with Philip Johnson on the plans. Howard Barnstone and Eugene Aubry completed the building in 97. Left: The Rothko Chapel, exterior with Barnett Newmans sculpture The Broken Obelisk.
photo: hickey-robertson. the rothko chapel, houston
The world and the body image finally ceased to be classical in the early nineteenth century. Thus an architecture of concrete, qualitative places, is not resolved through a simple-minded extrapolation from historical or autochthonous, vernacular buildings. The theory of functionalism obviously failed, becoming prey to it own reductionist obsessions, and yet almost regardless of what architects themselves may have said or written about their work, true modern architecture has been produced and is not identical to technological building. Some modern architecture has immense symbolic power, and it is all diverse and heterogeneous, from Gauds Casa Mila to Aaltos Paimio Sanatorium or Villa Mairea, from Miess Barcelona Pavilion to Le Corbusiers La Tourette or Ronchamp. Regardless of its style, or of its more or less figural or abstract quality, such architecture allows for cultural recognition; it allows for our dreams, it represents our values in a mode ultimately irreducible to paraphrase. Contrary to common assumptions, this architecture is profoundly meaningful precisely because it does not have a meaning, like the logo of a company or a false idol, and rather opposes all strong dogmatic and ideological reductions. Perhaps we should emphasize this further: Luis Barragans architecture does not represent Mexico as a nation-state. The same could be said for Aaalto and Finland, or Le Corbusier and France. This coupling is one of the most problematic misunderstandings of regionalism. Ultimately nation-states are modern fabrications, product of states of exception and police power. True architecture always overwhelms its simple function as a sign and plays with power, this is why it is crucial for humanitys survival.
The Barcelona pavilion (929) with statue by Georg Kolbe. Reconstruction from 986. Mies van der Rohe. From Sol-Morales, Cirici, Ramos: Mies van der Rohe Barcelona Pavilion. Editorial Gustavo Gili, 993.
yet, in our modern world place can no longer by simply disclosed, it has to be reinvented. This operation is first gestural and linguistic, rather than simply a question of images. Suggesting that we can recognize purely material qualities typological, topological, or morphological at each one of the different scales addressed by the planner or architect, in order to build a figural building or city, in a supposedly identifiable place with its particular genius loci, is a delusion. Dwelling in the early third millennium demands a reinvention of the ground of architecture by identifying first our renewed, non-Cartesian body image and its particular and necessarily fragmented recollection of Being. Through an introspective search, in the form of self-knowledge through making, the architect can then expect to generate an order appropriate to the task and site, without giving up the quest for figuration. The search is a personal one and, in this sense, is intimately related to the search of the painter, the writer, or the musician, one always oriented by a historical sense, by the identification of a founding tradition. As in Rothkos dark canvases in Houston, the embodiment of the archetypal landscape is today perhaps closer to the universal than say in the works of an 8th century painter, yet remains uniquely concrete, immediately transformative, and equally impossible to paraphrase. To conclude, let me return to the crucial role of language in all of this, the language of poetry, of course, as a language against the conventional connotative power of prose, capable of expressing for us the true essence of a place, a city or a region, but also the language of stories, capable of articulating ways of life, relationships, modes of engagement, and most importantly, ethical issues. These are the stories of the traditional dwellers, of the historical dwellers, and of the future dwellers, eventually taking the form of the programs that architects and urban designers put forward for new modes of collective participation in the city of the future. This latter use of language is part of the architectural and urban project, as important I would argue as the drawings that may give it form, one which has precedents in the early modern works of Ledoux and Lequeu. This language is emphatically not algorithmic, it is not about functions but a vision of a poetic life, for an idealized client, one that is thus related to its context. It is the language of the humanities, and not one of hard science. It is deliberately a narrative language, keeping in mind Merleau-Pontys observation that our fixation with calculation and universal language is a sure way to kill true language and human expression. The program for the new city respectful of cultural identity is a promise, and must be one of beauty and justice, terms that as Elaine Scarry has shown, point to the same value rather than being antithetical; it is borne from the architects responsible, personal imagination, through compassion for the other, as a project for the common good. alberto prez-gmez
alberto prez- gmez is saidye rosner bronfman professor of history and theory at mcgill university school of architecture in montreal. he is the author of several reference works of architectural theory, such as architecture and the crisis of modern science, architectural representation and the perspective hinge (with louise pelletier), and built upon love: architectural longing after ethics and aesthetics. this lecture was delivered at the sverre fehn symposium at mamar in may 2006. notes: . Martin Heidegger, The Age of the World-Picture, The Question Concerning Technology (New York: Garland Publishing, 977), 36.
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