The recently published text of a lecture by Alexander Rappaport caused an extensive discussion. Some reasoning simply does not fit into the format of responses under the article - therefore, we publish a commentary to the lecture, written by a professor at the Voronezh State Architectural University of Civil Aviation, Peter Kapustin, separately, as a continuation of the discussion.
Petr Vladimirovich Kapustin.
Several thoughts on the lecture by A. G. Rappaport "Unsolved problem of architecture"
Meaning, not space or stone, is the material of architecture.
Alexander Gerbertovich states:
"Architecture provides a person not with buildings and structures, as was commonly thought, but with meanings."
I am ready to accept this thesis with joy and gratitude. And I myself had to assert something like that, for example:
Denotat in architectural design often acts in the deceptive evidence of a "natural object", which, as a rule, blocks the possibility of comprehending and developing the connotative meanings of the project. Meanwhile, it is the creation of connotative meanings that is the actual function of architectural design, while the function of denotative designation of a building object in the required drawings is fully related to the field of building design.
However, the following is alarming. Discourses about the spiritual and non-pragmatizable essence of architecture are not new, but has the spiritual power or the semantic instrumentality of architecture increased? After all, the modernists sang meanings, but how sweet:
“Architecture is one of the five living conditions: bread, clothes, work, home, fairy tale. Story? Yes, a fairy tale."
This is Gio Ponti. (Did you think "house" ?! The builders will build a house for you).
Or, even further into history:
"Architecture is also related to the art of building, like poetry to prose, it is a dramatic breakthrough beyond the profession, and therefore it is impossible to talk about architecture without exaltation."
Claude-Nicolas Ledoux.
At the same time, architecture, especially architectural design, has a clearly burdened relationship with meaning (since the beginning of modern times). He is remembered when it is necessary to designate the sovereignty of the architectural, when it is necessary to present architecture to the outside, when in the silence of the office they ask themselves about the main thing in the profession. But when it comes to practical action, architects routinely exclaim: "Build!" (Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, the same Ponty, et cetera). And there is no time for sentimentality, this is, according to Vitruvius, "the real thing." "Stones" are coming to the fore again. Why would it be so?
The answer could be this: we still do not have effective tools for working with meanings, and all of the existing ones, almost without exception, are created for completely different tasks. “Tools” here are not pencils or computers, but, first of all, the intellectual equipment of activity, its methodological, theoretical and methodological apparatus. Our rationality is still targeted and quantitative; ways of feeling into the environment, space, form, style are still not realized and are mastered only by chance; our intuition, completely forgotten by the theories of architecture and design, is in an undeveloped and latent state …
Can we hope for a quick change in the situation? For example, through the efforts of a renewing education? No, because, having overcome the purely production orientation of education, we remained in the Vitruvian "fork" - the separation of information "general use" ("approximate theoretical ideas about parts of separate sciences", according to Vitruvius, item 16, chapter 1, book 1) and knowledge for "practice", for "real business".
Meanings and, in general, everything "humanitarian" has long been attributed to the first, optional part. The situation has changed little, because today there is such an advanced opinion that the design component of architectural education is a production business and can no longer claim the fullness of our organizational and substantive concerns, which, on the contrary, should be addressed to all kinds of humanities - management in architecture, marketing, architectural PR, pedagogy.
And, among other things, to the popularization of "the ability to see architecture", which requires its own hermeneutics, the contours and level of which can be easily imagined, without waiting for them to appear in a nightmare. But design is not discussed at all, as if it satisfies everyone, as if it cannot be changed, as if its arrival from the New Age was a) natural and the only possible and b) stopped. This means that it will continue to be reproduced - everything is the same, far from the meanings and meaning. In a word, to turn the situation around, in order for meanings to finally become the architect's “real business”, a whole program of actions is required, primarily in the field of theory and education. And it is unclear who could do this, since a small number of those who could barely have the strength to pose problems and put forward ideas, each of which requires decades of development. But there is no other way.
Inborn to make a fairy tale come true
I'm not sure what the author is talking about meanings, although he uses this word. Alexander Gerbertovich speaks, rather, about intuition:
“Inbornness does not mean, in my understanding, something strictly physiological. It means the transcendental appearance of something on the horizon of being - the existence already given to us."
And he also speaks of phenomena and meanings, eternal or timeless:
"And today to discover architecture means to perform an archaeological action, to unearth it from under the so-called cultural layers with which it is covered."
After all, meanings are whimsical and situational, subjective and transient; they, of course, can also be generated in one or another tradition, but they can also be about it, in loose reflection, as well as against any traditions in general. Moreover, meanings always arise, even in puffs of smoke, some see the devil and other characters that are not there (or are there? You cannot check, since the meanings are not verifiable and the question “what did you understand?” Is meaningless). And, if we talk about innate ideas, is it worth calling them so "frivolous"?
Science and the problem of synthesis
Can't share the universalist optimism:
“At first glance, there are no direct connections between external and internal in architectural experience and in scientific or philosophical thinking, but if architecture is in fact a field of universal meanings, then such connections should be and, most likely, they are hidden … The task of the theory of architecture partly today is the disclosure of these connections."
Philosophy and its connections with everything and everyone do not cause objections, we are talking about science, its claims to the picture of the world, its vicious connections - these "disgusting scientific tentacles destroying the poetry of earthly mirages" (Sergei Makovsky in "Apollo", 1913). There is no need to remember the problem of the synthesis of knowledge. The two competing paradigms with total claims undoubtedly have much in common, but they will not yield an inch to each other. Moreover, so far, alas, we are not talking about Architecture, but about the subject architectural and design knowledge, which was formed under the powerful field of scientific authority. These are transformed forms, their alliance is unhealthy (following Paul Feyerabend), can only spawn mutants. Actually, he gave birth to - see the menagerie of actual architecture. If the disclosure of such connections is the task of the theory of architecture, then, rather, for hygienic purposes.
Object flickering
Great reflexive observation by Alexander Herbertovich, extremely bold:
“… The sculptor sculpts and this process is continuous, in contrast to architecture, which works with rigid materials and discrete appearance and disappearance of its object.
Such a flickering, flickering type of consciousness in an architect."
It says a lot! But I associate the flickering not with architectural experience (pre-linguistic and pre-sign), but with a purely project experience - because of the constant and technically necessary transitions from sign to de-sign, which are most likely caused by the weakness of the models, that is, the youth of design, that's all. still dependent on the model method. These transitions, by the way, have been completely unintelligible to "design theorists" since the 1960s. to this day, therefore, the world of their analytic-synthetic tediousness is flat and homogeneous. And instead of a flickering object - not blinking staring at close range - however, already at mirages and fictions of positive reason (alas, even Rudolf Arnheim was not free from this).
From the inside to the outside and back
There is no doubt that all these winds and streams of architectural and design consciousness are very important and interesting. The direction "from the inside - out" became the mainstream for modernists, they did not change it even despite the obviousness (Henry Dreyfus in 1955 (!) Proudly writes: "Honest work in design should flow from the inside to the outside, but not from the outside to the inside" [Designing for People, p. 15] - and this is Dreyfus, known as the organizer of large-scale and detailed research programs!); They did not leave him even when they declared their social concern or planned the post-war reconstruction of the country (see Corbusier in the text "On the Unity of the Plastic Arts" (1946) - one of, perhaps, his most farcical texts). Oh, these were the locomotives of light and reason, rushing swiftly in the darkness of other people's delusions and vices; they were beaming directly from the brain through the eyes-eyepieces … But here's what's interesting: early design theories drastically change orientation, they describe the determination of design consciousness by all sorts of external factors and derive "design decision-making processes" from the transmutation of a set of factors. The modernists saw themselves as transcendental to the world, but the world itself was in their pocket, and when the time came for their heirs to direct the ray of reflection on themselves, and not on ideological enemies, it turned out that they could give nothing but total immanence. There was, as it were, the "pushing" of the design thought onto the outside world, which is thus structured in categories and design patterns (more precisely, of course, design). Is this how "innate meanings" are revealed and allocated ?! It is unlikely, and this is a problem, it is one of the unresolved and unsolved today, it seems, by no one.
These counter and undivided flows began to extinguish each other and led to a stupor, if not the design imagination itself, then certainly the theory of architecture and design theory.
The lecture fragment on time and weight is remarkable: perhaps it can provide new tools for the analysis of modernist absence (including "nonlinear", et cetera):
“By the way, in a light construction, time flows out of you - outward. It kind of flows out of you. You absorb emptiness. Near a heavy structure, you become infected with its weight, and you begin a rather complicated and mysterious dialogue with this weight. But all this is not described, it is poorly visible in the projects, the expertise and criticism does not pay attention to it."
If we recall the relentless urge of modern architecture to ephemerize, then Alexander Gerbertovich seems to be giving us an aspen stake against architectural vampires. I especially remember, of course, Richard Buckminster Fuller - the inspired filler of voids (consciousness or hippie skull with the wind buzzing in it) and the devastator of bodies from full-fledged architectural experiences.
On environmental and stylistic sensitivity
A. G. Rappaport says:
"I think that in a hundred or two hundred years, architects will understand that their professional intuition is the ability to resonate in a way."
I completely agree: since architects cannot yet design a style and environment (I would also add a city, region and existence), there is one way: to tune consciousness to a wave - to ontological, or rather even phenomenological emanations, ceasing to indulge their vanity with "procedural paradigms" and psychologisms of all stripes. The cultivation of such a resonant sensitivity should be the responsibility of the institutions of the reproduction of activity - as a project of the demanded architect (and not the current inculcation of preoccupation with the erection functions).
In general, education, theory and methodology of architecture and design should become the leading, even dominant, occupations in the field of architectural activity, and not the production of design estimates or construction; the ideal would be an attitude that mirrors the current situation. And the question arises (see above): where, then, should design be attributed, if it can become semantic, humanistic and humanitarian-oriented? My answer: exactly in the first, most part (not to be confused with the development of design and estimate documentation).
On the eidos of artificial (unprecedented) objects
Plato probably could not see the idea of the Large Hadron Collider, or did not have time to remember it. But he certainly would not have expressed the shadow of a doubt that it exists and that it is eternal. Neoplatonism begins to prepare the ground for (human) creative thinking, and design, in particular, acquired independence as the practice of permanent artification. Unlike Architecture, for which ancient memories are constitutive and stability is important, designing them does not have and does not want to stand still. Memories of Architecture for design are almost natural, since they have existed for a long time. And the question (S. Sitara) is not so much about the artificial (including the architectural artificial), but about the unknown yet. Design has no memories, but this does not mean that the corresponding objects are missing. Archeology is already confusing today and will certainly soon delight us with new / old artifacts. Who knows if the LHC will be among them?
A. G. Rappaport is right:
"In order to know for sure whether a local innovation is a replenishment or a reproduction, one must have a sufficiently powerful distinguishing apparatus and a memory apparatus."
Could the creation of such devices be a matter of theory? Isn't that her unsolved problem? After all, we are only at the very beginning of our journey. And while we do not have such devices, our "architectural design" is an endless series of compromises (mostly unconscious), fooling eidos and prototypes and giving absolutely no reason for creative conceit.
Style as a Meaning-Generating Mechanism in Architecture
I cannot agree with the lecturer's hasty and energetic consent to the question of the generation of meaning (the enthusiasm of the answer, however, dries up already on the second sentence). It seems to me that Alexander Gerbertovich speaks about something else: that architecture is a direct embodiment of meanings, and not a mechanism of someone's meaning-making - modernists, engineers, authorities wanted to make it that way … This is the history of “architectural design”. So, let's take architecture at the ready, and with this weapon … It's the same with style (at a time when the word was not negative). Alexander Herbertovich calls to turn from this path, but sees only one side of the turn - in favor of Architecture. But she is no longer alone, she cohabits with Design and will not leave it anywhere, apparently. And the roommate will not let go. Is this couple sterile?
Does it give rise to meanings, and not just miserable benefits, sufficient strength and beauty (similar to the exclamation mark in a soap advertisement)? Yes, of course, because meanings are generated by anything, even science (involuntarily, of course). But isn't it time to ask: what are these meanings? Are we so hungry for meanings that any will go? Mies didn’t think about meanings, but he also generated them, or rather, created reasons for the audience’s, user’s meaning generation, which did not bother him at all (and in vain, or even the reasons would have been different). After all, we are always talking about something else: the integrity of style and meaning lost by the Architecture are not replenished by design. Everything that has been created under the name of the architectural profession since the modern era was by no means created for meanings and not for content.
“Architecture is usually seen as something under construction,” writes Philip Sears. - But what happens if we try to describe it differently: not as something developing in accordance with the order, plan, Gestaltung, internal logic, but, on the contrary, as a project that must be subjected to strict doubt, undergo the experience of ontological criticism ? Will we not then come to the conclusion that, using a lot of tricks, the sphere of architecture was diligently trying to elude the law common to the creations of human hands, claiming a status unusual for it, evading the authorities to which it was called upon to obey?"
In such conditions, it really remains to hope for God and for the transmission of style.
Handling uncertainty
The architecture may think that it is operating with anything, while noticing too late that it has been operated on again. Making a Frankenstein or a cyborg out of architecture, you can sew more and more organs to its telos and focus on their functioning, but the Architecture remains a “body without organs” (“I was given a body - what should I do with it, // So one and so mine?”). Architecture - built - is always affirmative, and therefore is definite - even the "Cloud" by Diller and Scofidio is like that. No matter how much architecture is covered by design, no matter how much it builds from itself a universal or total design practice (or its alleged basis, historical and ideological), it only deceives itself, prolongs oblivion of its own existence, postpones its terms, but does not become something- something different; dissolving in anything, it does not flow anywhere entirely.
The themes of architecture's assimilation of "uncertainty", "ambiguity", "immateriality", "disappearance" and other very fashionable themes are another surge of architectural naturalism and naivety. Architects are the greatest naturalists. They (we) really want to see their deeds at the forefront of natural science and natural philosophy - apparently, the genetic memory of the intellectual primacy of Architecture in antiquity, destroyed by the efforts of the regiments of vitruvia from the profession - compilers of compendiums of common sense, haunts. Not everyone gets it down to the antics of Peter Eisenman, hurrying to “materialize,” as Malevich put it, every newborn scientific theory as if it were a naked ontological truth, but this is only because not everyone can afford it. The ontological confusion of architecture is flagrant today. Therefore, there is no theory, but there is an empiricism of "practice" or "creative search", symbiotically using everything to keep afloat, on the crest of the market and demand at the social vanity fair.
It's another matter that the mission of assertion has long been pulled away from Architecture by design, acting under different faces (UNOVIS and Prouny are just frank names in this masquerade). It seems that architecture has already resigned itself to the role of being engineering ("the engineering world", according to GG Kopylov) for anyone and anything, that is, an affirmator of other people's truths, knowledge and opinions. This gave rise, among other things, to a serious problem for Architecture - it is a herd transcendental to itself, its "body without organs" (or autonomy, according to A. G. Rappaport) became the object of its passionate desires: from this autoerotic tension alone, a new style. The trouble is that since the end of the 19th century it has become customary to build "styles" solely by rejecting the body, on the waves of oblivion, in new and new layers of semantic substitution. And the generation of meaning has been going on for at least a century, with Nietzsche on the same road.
But in Architecture already “everything is there” and it seems to me that A. G. Rappaport is very right when he recalls this.
And, in the end, about vulgarity
For Ruskin, Morris, Spengler, Bashlyar, vulgarity was the untruth of a form that imitates a false construction, false material, or an illusory function, and thereby undermines meanings. In my opinion, vulgarity today is a joke with ontology. This is when MIT students "reproduce" crop circles at night, or when border guards organize PR actions in favor of poor orphans with "catching" Bigfoot, as it was the other day. Humanity cannot afford such jokes today, since it is in the stage of transition to a different picture of the world. But that is precisely why people allow themselves this - they, the poor, react to the drama of the situation.
Numerous design theories and methodologies of the twentieth century did not doubt: in design, vulgarity is the unconscious. Or, which is the same, the weakness of reflection (although they themselves often lacked it). Today we also have good critical views on reflection, but what about the unconscious, if it is undoubtedly innate ?! If you can associate meanings with it, just immerse the meanings in it. All our meanings are vulgar, is it? Not in the sense of the anecdote about Rorschach spots, but in the original meaning of the word, which was recently recalled by A. G. Rappaport, that is, they came from the past. We all know what a feast the carnivorous idea of "creative inheritance" ends up with. In this sense, the search for “places” where there is “meat”, where “meat” is cooked is an occupation doomed to success: here they are everywhere! And there are far fewer places where not meat, but nerves. Even if they interrupt with grass, not yet ready to answer many of the questions posed in the lecture, but naked and, in fact, sensitive and resonant.
I want to believe, that it will be so, as the respected lecturer says:
"The architect will be immersed in the mystery of the life of meanings and the mystery of their transition from internal states of consciousness to external ones and some kind of connection of a person's stay in the world, inside and outside some spaces and times."
And also to say a huge thank you to A. G. Rappaport and his interlocutors for interesting and informative material!
P. V. Kapustin
01– 02.12.2012
reference
Petr Vladimirovich Kapustin: Candidate of Architecture, Head of the Department of Architectural Design and Urban Planning of the Voronezh State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering, professor. Author of 150 scientific papers, incl. monographs: "Experiments on the nature of design" (2009), "Design thinking and architectural consciousness" (2012), textbooks.
