《Encounters - Architectural Essays 奇遇》书评

[摘要]The Lived Metaphor - Juhani Pallasmaa

ARCH 150的阅读材料，仅作摘录，供分享。Architecture threatened by instrumentalization and aestheticization;Architecture is not only to provide physical shelter, facilitate action and stimulate sensory pleasure; buildings are mental projections, and are externalizations of imagination, memory and human conceptual capacities. "Man-made structures 'tame' the world for human habitation and understanding."Gaston Bachelard, "Our house is our corner of the world...it is our first universe, a real cosmos in every sense of the word." Opposing Heideggerian "thrown into the world" view, he argues that we are born in the "cradle of the house".Architects articulate the encounter of the world and the human mind as painters and writers do. An authentic architectural metaphor is a highly abstracted and condensed entity fusing the multiplicity of human experiences into a singular image through which people are able to communicate the complex experience of being human. Andrei Tarkovsky, "The image is not a certain meaning, expressed by the director, but an entire world reflected as in a drop of water."Architectural metaphors are frequently used in other art forms to describe their work as can be understood spatially and structurally. Henry James likens the writer to a craftsman building a "house of fiction" with a "thousand windows".The current phase of industrial culture is frequently characterized as the "culture of images". There are images that deliberately focus our attention to an object or message or hypnotically dull the senses and weaken our sense of self, yet poetic images open up a stream of association, strengthen our existential experience and sensitize the boundary between ourselves and the world. An architectural metaphor is both an abstraction and condensation of the world; it is an interpretation and concretization of the order of the world.Architecture humanizes the world by giving it a human measure and horizon. Architectural structures give measure to the frightening infinity and homogeneity of both space and time. Karsten Harries, "Architecture helps to replace meaningless reality with a theatrically or rather architecturally transformed reality..." The essential dimension in the art of architecture: as opposed to other art forms, architecture takes place in the real world of life, in the actual theater of life. Its ethical task is to be supportive of life and to enhance our existential experience by providing life with a specific horizon of meaning.Deep architectural experiences are actions instead of objects. Noel Arnaud, "I am the space where I am." There exist a vivid unconscious identification, resonance and correspondence between our images of the house and our own body with its sense organs and metabolic functions. I place myself in the space and the space settles in me.A moving and soothing architectural experience arises from images concealed in our very historicity as biological and cultural beings (running in the childhood house like blood does in veins, dreaming about the cave for primitive humans...).Architectural metaphors, as poetic images, have their mental impact through emotional and embodied channels before they are understood by intellect; or metaphors may not be understood at all, yet move us deeply. Architectural images do not project specific meanings, but elicit certain experiences, feelings and sociations.The primal architectural images are: floor, roof, wall, door, window, hearth, staircase, bed, table and bath. The categories that are usually used as foundational in analyzing architecture such as space, light, structure, scale, or materiality are all experiences articulated by architecture, yet of a composite nature; they arise as interactions of the primal images existing outside and independently of the ream of architecture. Architectural images can be most clearly identified in the house, the human dwelling.Eyes and windows:Dim light stimulates dreaming and imagination. A window with a view has been given specific meaning. People dream with closed-eyes, and a room for dreaming has to be shaded by curtains or closed with shutters. A door is simultaneously a sign to halt and an invitation. Opening a door the an intimate encounter between the house and the body. The automated glass doors make entry physically convenient, but strip the act of all existential meaning. Excessive convenience and functionalization dilute meaning. Bachelard, "How concrete everything becomes in the world of the spirit when an object, a mere door, can give images of hesitation, temptation, desire, security, welcome and respect."The dilution of architectural images are too common in the modern world(see original text). Tradition is the accumulation of conventions.