DELIRIUM OF AN ARCHITECT

By Mete Kutlu

Buildings are no less alive than people. They have a birthday, an adolescence; they reach maturity, grow old and finally find silence in a cold death. Each one of them has a character and a way of thinking, just like every person is different in his tastes, his ideas and his feelings. In this sense, I would go as far as saying that buildings do live just like us. Since all living creatures interact with each other, buildings and people have influences on each other as people live in and with architecture. Let's think of a studio flat occupied by someone who enjoys watching TV and placed a huge television on one of the walls, later the same studio is occupied by someone who enjoys reading books and placed a big bookshelf on the same wall. In these two cases, even though the wall has not changed, because of the differences of the inhabitants in their life styles, tastes and characters, the wall's meaning, feeling and function have completely changed. What is more interesting for me than this human influence is the influence of architecture on people. During a speech addressing the English Architectural Association in 1924, Winston Churchill said There is no doubt whatsoever about the influence of architecture and structure upon human character and action. We make our building and afterwards they make us. They regulate the course of our lives. This strong bind and interaction between architecture and humans happen at many levels in various ways and contexts. The built environment around us shapes our lives. It defines how we live, what we think of a living room, what we would do in it and how we would feel in it. We adapt ourselves to the space in which we are present. We do what we want or need according to the very logic and organization of the space. However, this adaptation happens in a very progressive and familiar way, moving smoothly, with such little interference that we have no clue of its process. It's happening by itself. So, without even realizing it, we form expectations about the spaces that we will encounter in the future. These expectations are further strengthened by our fast paced lifestyles with continuous experience of the same spaces; home, work, home; or spaces that are created by similar expectations. Because of this repeated experience of similar spaces, we start living in them without really thinking about how or why we act in the way we do. We stop questioning and live as if our life, as a whole, is just a routine. Many architects and sociologists criticise the fact that people no longer look at what is around them. People have lost, or more correctly have been forced to lose interest in it because of their fast, busy and tiring urban lifestyles. On the way from home to work, we look at the virtual digital screen of our mobile phone and text with a friend or put headphones and break our relationship with the world around us. It seems that people are lost between their jobs, bills, iPods, mobile phones, computers and TV. It seems that people are stuck in Baudelaires simulacrum, became numb and don't know what they are actually living. It seems that people are unaware of what is around them. It seems that people are taking a train from one stop to another without knowing where these places are on the map. I believe that people should sometimes jump from the train and walk to their destination, learn and understand the journey the train makes. Even though our lives force us to give importance only to the arrival at the destination, I think our lives gain meaning by the journey itself. By knowing what is on the journey, maybe farms and cows, maybe cities and factories; the obstacles on the journey and how the train manages to pass them, we will reach to happiness, creativity and success at our destination. Or maybe, we will come to like walking or another way we've found to arrive at our destination and begin using this method. In the context of architecture and people, the conclusion here would be that the numbness and unawareness of the society about what is around them should be prevented in order for inhabitants to see other possibilities of spatial organization and lifestyles, leading to a better appreciation or perhaps a dislike of the habitat. This also must be prevented in order for the world of

architects to have an open-minded design approach and see various other possibilities of architecture. Even though similar critiques and conclusions have already been made about the subject, society's loss of interest in what is around them could not have be prevented. Instead of looking for solutions in other domains such as sociology and economics, maybe architects should critique architecture and try to find a solution within architecture, itself. I believe that the solution to this problem is an architecture that is capable of triggering the interest, the senses and the reflection of people. In fact, after Derrida, a post-structuralist French philosopher, came up with his idea of "deconstructivism" in the 60s, architects like Peter Eisenmann and Zaha Hadid (Deconstructivist Architecture at MoMA in 1988), influenced by Derrida, proposed a new expressive architecture. Their buildings trigger the senses, draw attraction and break down the routine and the clichs. However, their concern was mostly the exterior skin of the building and transforming it into a plate of expression by using geometry. Even though I find this kind of an approach very successful in achieving its goal, the movement was a reaction to the coldness and extremeness of rationality of the modernists, whereas I would like to put in question the very notion of "rationality" with the purpose of freeing people from restrictive customs, structures and false rationality. Since the modern times, we always look for the cheapest, the shortest, the easiest, and the most efficient as if we were some robots working by algorithms. The rising notion in our lives is: the Ratio. Why so Rational? Why not madness? Why not feelings? Why not dreams? Why not irrationality? Why not the longest, the slowest and the hardest? I would like to focus on the stereotypes, the clichs and the expectations of people about any kind of space, which is essentially based on a rational way thinking; and break them all, do the contrary. An architecture based on irrationality, the unexpected, the surprise and the impossible. This kind of an approach will reawaken the individual and finally make him realize the space he is in and appreciate or dislike it but, in any case, it gives the individual the possibility of conscious preference. Mistakes and imperfections should not be seen as negative heuristics. On the contrary, as the mistakes and imperfections of people make them unique, special, particular and loved, a building's character is defined and made unique by its imperfections, too. One of my favorite television programs is Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia which has already broken many television rules with its assault on mores, racial boundaries and religious taboos. On the new season the character Mac who was a young good-looking guy in the first season suddenly appears as a big fat guy who gained 50 pounds. It caught my attention and I became more interested in the program. The co-creator of the series Rob McElhenney (Mac) explains this sudden onset of obesity; which is a kind of imperfection, as, It came when I was watching a very popular sitcom, and I noticed the people were getting better and better looking as the seasons were going on. I thought that what we were trying to do on Sunny was the deconstruction of the sitcom. The important point, which leads to an interesting result here, is that humanitys desire for the ideal sometimes causes them to overlook the facts. If this is understood, presenting an imperfection to a society always looking for perfection would lead to a shocking effect and a certain revival. In this approach, not only the architecture is questioned, but the society and the way we live is questioned, too, since its focus is not the clichs and stereotypes about architecture that exist for architects, but instead the ones existing for society. In this way, it can also be considered as an experimental approach leading to redefinition of any kind of space and questions like, "What can be done with a bathroom?, "What did it mean yesterday? And what could it mean today?" or "What if we put a huge fountain in the middle of a bathroom?"

It is a way to discover all the possibilities of design for a space in the 21st century society. Another strong tool can be mockery because of its critical aspect. For example, the toilets of an important public building are placed on the front faade. When the viewer outside the building states that he finds the building very beautiful, he would be actually looking at the toilets. It is also a very artistic approach as I think the act of imagination is, by nature, art itself. I think of an architect as being just like a painter. A painter has his tools; many kinds of brushes, pencils, paints, and each comes with its own particular application technique. The artist uses these tools, knowing how to hold that brush or apply that kind of paint, and creates a unique piece of art. The architect has different kinds of spaces as his tools, such as toilets, kitchens, rehearsal rooms, or receptions etc., each again coming with its proper basic rules such as the act of cooking happens in the kitchen-. He uses these tools, knowing the essential principals of spaces, and creates a unique piece of art. However, in some cases, the artist doesn't respect the traditional way of using a specific tool and he uses a tool in the way that another tool is used. He mixes and shuffles the principals of his tools. I think the architect can do the same and shuffle the principles of spaces since they are already bound to change in time. For example, the meaning of the bedroom in the 19th century was the place where people go to sleep and nothing else could happen there, whereas today, we would watch TV, study and even eat in our rooms. Since the functions and the meaning of a certain space is changing constantly, why not question the use of it today by incorporating defunctionalism and imagination? In 1924, Andr Breton included in the Surrealist Manifesto a phrase by poet Pierre Reverdy; a juxtaposition of two more or less distant realities. The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be the greater its emotional power and poetic reality.. As for architecture, the functionality, morphology and sensibility of a certain space can be juxtaposed with a concept completely out of architectural context, or with the meaning of a different kind of space in order to produce illogical and startling effects. My approach is highly subjective and artistic, intending to pose questions and reveal the answers lying in the person himself. Hence, an explanatory example of such an approach would consist of questions and a certain way of approaching a problem instead of absolute oppressive information. I'd like to talk about hospitals because most of the people think that this kind of an approach would be appropriate only for recreational and entertainment related areas, such as opera houses, cultural centers or parks. Even though such spaces could evidently be the subject of this approach, since the real objective here is to question the society and the way we live, I think hospitals can and should be a subject, too. First of all, we should pose the question "What comes to mind when we think of an hospital?" and try setting out the stereotypes. I would say, a building painted white, gray or some cold color both on the outside and inside, long endless corridors with artificial lighting and a particular smell. It brings a picture of a very boring, banal, functional, "ugly", modernist, rationalist, cold and soulless building filled with sick waiting patients to my mind. Then, I would ask myself "What does a hospital mean to me?". It's a place where people need hope, look for a little smile, want to feel loved and be healed. Of course, they're looking for doctors but it is also a place where we want to be with our family and friends and don't want to feel alone or insecure. We look for any kind of help. So, instead of a hospital which constantly reminds the patient that he is at a hospital, that he is sick like many others and giving him nothing but coldness and pessimism, it should instead be a place that gives hope, love of life, ways to enjoy it, means of distraction and that can even make people forget their sickness. It is also known that many incurable illnesses can be sometimes cured by placebos, thought and

simply love of life. I would like to ask, "Could architecture be that placebo?" We, as architects, always say that architecture is not like painting a picture and that it is about the society and the way we live, it even influences human behavior; hence I think that architecture of the unexpected, of irrationality and of surprise is very much capable of creating a design that can have the qualities I have just laid out for a hospital. Clearly, there are some functional requirements such as ease of access and speed etc. However, the challenge of the architect should not be creating the most efficient or best functioning design but rather creating a design respecting these requirements that also goes beyond them and has other qualities and objectives. After breaking down the first layer of clichs and arriving at a higher goal in the very meaning of hospitals, we can continue and break down the clichs that exist for various parts of the building such as the waiting room, cafeteria, patient rooms, halls, toilets, garden etc. We can create disturbances, unexpected impressions, excitement, and bring life to the building by including unexpected openings to outside, rooms with unusual lightning, halls shaped in many different ways, spaces with contrasting colors or materials and by many other ways only limited by our imagination. This is the architecture of madness, of a delirium. This is the very beginning and the very end of the world, as we know it. It is not only about architecture. Its about love and life. Its about you. Its about me. Its about the constant change. Its the lost part of our society. Its the creativity of a mad man we see every day in the subway. Its about the fall of Cogito and Descartess famous phrase I think, therefore I am which reflects a falls mindset as explained by Michel Foucault, a French philosopher who died from AIDS in the 80s. Im also aware of the fact that as I write these lines they will no longer be my ideas and whoever agrees with them will be actually agreeing with whatever they understand from them. However, this doesnt prevent me from writing them. It actually encourages me. I like the uncertainty of resulting reactions.