7 Mart 2012 Çarşamba

IDEA, PHENOMENON AND MATERIAL by Steven Holl



There is a story that when Louis Sulllivan lay on his deathbed in a little hotel room, someone rushed in and said, ''Mr. Sullivan, your Troescher Building is being torn down.'' Sullivan raised himself up and responded, '' If you live long enough, you'll see all your bıildings destroyed. After all, its only the idea that counts.''It is the idea that counts. The concept, whether an explicit statement or a subjective demonstration, establishes an order, a field of inquiry, and a limitedprinciple. An orginizing idea is a hidden threat connecting disparate parts.An architecture based on a limited concept begins with dissimilarity and variation but ends up illuminating the singularity of a spesific situation. In this way, concept can be more than an idea driving a design; it can establish a miniature utopian focus.The essence of a work of architecture is the organic link between idea and phenomenalexperience that develops when a building is realized.Architecture begins with a metaphisical skeleton of time, light, space and matter in an unordered state; modes of composition are open. Through line, plane and volume, culture and program are given an order, an idea and perhaps a form. Materials the transparency of a membrane, the chalky dulness of a wall, the glossy reflection of opaque glass - intermesh in reciprocal relationships that form the particular experience of place. Materials interlock with the senses to move the perceiver beyond accute site to tactility. From linearity, concavity, and transparency to hardness, elasticity and dampness, the haptic realm opens.Through making, we realize that an idea is a seed to be grown into phenomena. The hope is to unite intellect with feeling, and precision with soul.Architecture must remain experimental and open to new ideas and aspirations in the face of conservative forces that constantly push it toward the already proven, already built and already thought. Architects must explore the not yet felt. The realization of one insipired idea in term inspires others. Phenomenal experience is worth the struggle. It yields a silent response - the joy radiated in the light, space, and materials of architecture.My favourite material is light. Without light, space remains in oblivion. Light's myriad sources, its conditions of shadow and shade, and its opacity and transparency, translucency, reflection and refraction intertwine to define or redifine space. Light makes space uncertain. What a pool of yellow light does to a simple volume, or what a paraboloid of shadow does to bone-whitewall-these comprise the transcendental realm of the phenomena of architecture.I recently had an opportunity to make something out of just light and one other material, frozen water. The work is a nine-meter cube that I created in collaboration with the sculptor Jene Highstein. One enters the cube and comes into a space of reflection. The idea is that this architectural space is made of almost nothing. A month after its completion, it disappears and leaves no trace. Using materials as minimal and ethereal as light an water, one can make something that expresses and idea.The design for the cube was based on a historical event in the city of Rovaniemi in northern Finland.At the end of World War II, the Germans burned down the entire city as they retreated. They didn't have to do it - the war was nearly over. When the inner circle of the nine meter cube melts through, the first view one has is directed precisely toward Rovaniemi.Between idea and phenomenon, meaning vibrate, gather, loosen, disperse, shine, and mutate.Even delayed meanings may exert pressure, crack, fissure and be pulverized.

The state of Architecture at the Beginning of the 21st Century Edited by Bernard Tschumi + Irene Cheng p: 27

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