Narrative Architecture: A Designer's Story 9781317481195, 1317481194

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NARRATIVE ARCHITECTURE

Narrative Architecture explores the postmodern concept of narrative architecture from four perspectives: thinking, imagining, educating, and designing, to give you an original view on our postmodern era and architectural culture. Authors Sylvain De Bleeckere and Sebastiaan Gerards outline the ideas of thinkers, such as Edmund Husserl, Paul Ricoeur, Emmanuel Levinas, and Peter Sloterdijk, and explore important work of famous architects, such as Daniel Libeskind and Frank Gehry, as well as rather underestimated architects like Günter Behnisch and Sep Ruf. With more than 100 black and white images this book will help you to adopt the design method in your own work. Sylvain De Bleeckere, prof. em. dr. phil., worked as assistant professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Arts at Hasselt University in Flanders (Belgium). He was responsible for the graduate seminar Culture and was a leading member of the research group ArcK. Cross-fertilization between the design studio and research activities is central to his work. Since 1977, Sylvain De Bleeckere has continuously published about the postmodern philosophy of culture in relation to democracy, architecture, and cinematography. Sebastiaan Gerards holds a Master’s degree in Architecture (Hasselt University, 2010) and Arts and Heritage (Maastricht University, 2012). Since the end of 2012 he has been working as a PhD student at the Faculty of Architecture and Arts at Hasselt University, Belgium. The main focus of his research is the social and architectural design of multigenerational dwelling as a renewed housing concept for Flanders. A key element in his work is the design assignment ‘multigenerational dwelling’, which he organizes with Sylvain De Bleeckere at Hasselt University. Together they have developed a new collaborative educational strategy to respond to growing social and cultural complexity (in residential Flanders).

“Emphasizing the centrality of both designing and listening to stories in the conception and analysis of architecture and the city today, Narrative Architecture establishes narrative as method beyond architecture parlante.The excellent book takes the end of the metanarrative as the beginning of the multitude of openended architectural and urban narratives of designers, users, and communities.” –Tilo Amhoff, University of Brighton, UK “Weaving analyses of philosophy, architecture, urban design, and popular culture, Narrative Architecture provides a valuable argument on how thinking and imagination underpin meaningful architecture.” –Clifton Fordham, RA, IFMA, LEED AP

NARRATIVE ARCHITECTURE A Designer’s Story

Sylvain De Bleeckere and Sebastiaan Gerards

First published 2017 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Taylor & Francis The right of Sylvain De Bleeckere and Sebastiaan Gerards to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Names: Bleeckere, Sylvain de, 1950- author. | Gerards, Sebastiaan, author. Title: Narrative architecture : a designer’s story / Sylvain De Bleeckere and Sebastiaan Gerards. Description: New York : Routledge, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016028567| ISBN 9781138899360 (hb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781138899421 (pb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315707884 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Architecture, Modern—20th century—Philosophy. | Architecture, Modern—21st century—Philosophy. Classification: LCC NA680 .B538 2017 | DDC 724/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016028567 ISBN: 978-1-138-89936-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-89942-1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-70788-4 (ebk) Acquisition Editor: Wendy Fuller Editorial Assistant: Trudy Varcianna Production Editor: Ed Gibbons Typeset in Bembo by Keystroke, Neville Lodge, Tettenhall, Wolverhampton

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments vii

Setting the Scene

1 Thinking The Narrative of Architecture Phenomenology and the Crisis of European Sciences The Phenomenon In the School of Time 2 Imagining

1 5 6 14 20 36 42

In the Beginning There Was Imagination, But in the End It Was Lost 44 Reimagining Imagination 46 The Heart of Storytelling 49 Metaphor’s Story 51 The Designer’s Dionysian Imagination 54 Moral Imagination 62 A Personal Way of Life 96 3 Educating The Narrative of Education Architecture as Educator Educating the Architect

101 101 104 115

vi Contents

Reconnecting with Life in the Design Studio The Ultimate Question 4 Designing

122 124 127

Scope 128 Skills and Methods 149

Open-Ended Stories

175

Index 183

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Our book developed from our teaching and research at the Faculty of Architecture and Arts of Hasselt University, Belgium.There, we had the chance of having a team of hard-working students in the undergraduate and graduate design studios and the graduate seminar Culture, in which we organized our research on architecture and democracy.We sincerely appreciate the dedication and contributions of our students who motivated and challenged us. We regret that we cannot acknowledge everyone, but we would like to mention Femke Clerkx, Pieter Cloeckaert,Yentl Bielen, Rony De Fré, Roel De Ridder, Sibe Duijsters, Marie Frioni, Kristien Janssen, Ellen Lambrigts, Alexander Massoels, Duygu Özel, Daan Sillen, Bo Struyf, and Celine Styven. Our special thanks also go to our always supportive colleagues of the faculty, especially architects Roger Liberloo and Danny Windmolders. The writing of this book has been enriched by many illustrations of inspiring works of art and architecture. We want to express our gratitude to everyone who helped us in collecting these valuable pictures that helped us in telling our own story. In no particular order, we want to thank Atelier Bow-Wow (Tokyo, Japan), Gehry Partners (Los Angeles, USA), Schultes Frank Architekten (Berlin, Germany), Alejandro Aravena and his office Elemental (Santiago, Chile),Yi Architects (Cologne, Germany), Toyo Ito & Associates (Tokyo, Japan), AST77 (Tienen, Belgium), Dertien12 (Brugge, Belgium), ectv (Brussels & Gent, Belgium), Droog (Amsterdam, Netherlands), Charles Pétillon (Bavonchove, France), and Ciriacidis Lehnerer Architekten (Zürich, Switzerland). We also want to thank Notburga and Elisabeth Ruf for providing us with pictures of their father Sep Ruf, and the organization behind the Felix-Nussbaum-Haus (Osnabrück, Germany) for helping us to find pictures of the design of Studio Libeskind (New York, USA) and artwork by Nussbaum himself. We also owe our appreciation to Stefan Rappold and Elisabeth Spieker from Behnisch Architekten (Stuttgart, Germany), and also architect Alexander von Salmuth (Stuttgart, Germany). Additionally, we are indebted to the Art Institute of

viii Acknowledgments

Chicago (Chicago, USA), for helping us with the work of Hilberseimer. Furthermore, we want to thank the HKW (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany), especially Zdravka Bajovic, for their support and for providing us with pictures from Assemble (London, UK), DOGMA (Brussels, Belgium) and Atelier Bow-Wow (Tokyo, Japan). We sincerely thank the Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Bonn, Germany) for sharing their extensive knowledge.We express our gratitude to Professor Robert Jan von Pelt for providing us with permission to use the historic plans of Auschwitz-Birkenau and some important data from his research. We are also very grateful to Gerda Bracke and Laura Gerards for encouraging us during the long process of writing this book. Last but not least, our special thanks to editor Wendy Fuller for her interest in our work and for encouraging us to write this book, and to editorial assistants Grace Harrison and Trudy Varcianna for their sustained support during the writing process and finishing of our book.

SETTING THE SCENE

The era of architecture parlante – ‘Narrative’ architecture – was now inaugurated. (Kaufmann 1952, 440–441)

An American architect and his Roman colleagues applauding in front of the Pantheon in Rome becomes a wonderful scene in the film The Belly of an Architect under Peter Greenaway’s direction. This scene takes us to the city of Rome, an ancient and at the same time lively city full of marvelous buildings. The main character, the American architect Stourley Kracklite, dining on a terrace of Piazza del Rotonda, invites his Italian colleagues to gather on the steps of the Fontana del Pantheon and to applaud Rome’s ancient temple (Figure 0.1). Greenaway casts the building as the main character on Rome’s urban scene. The human characters, like architect Kracklite, are looking at the Pantheon as if it was a real actor who delivers a great architectural performance. In the mirror of this mesmerizing scene it seems that architecture can speak and act like human actors do. As a matter of fact, that’s what the French, historical expression architecture parlante suggests. It was the Austrian art and architecture historian Emil Kaufmann who was the first to point out the use of the expression architecture parlante in the text Etudes d’architecture en France that appeared without an author’s name in an 1852 edition of the French Magasin Pittoresque. Kaufmann ascertained that the anonymous author introduced the term architecture parlante in relation to the work of the French, eighteenth-century architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux. He is known for being a pioneer of French neoclassical architecture. Ledoux’s aim was to make architecture concur with the new French ideas inspired by the modern rationalism of René Descartes whose most accentuated concepts were autonomy, purity and geometry.The notion of architecture parlante indicates the intention of the new generation of eighteenth-century French architects to design buildings which

2  Setting the Scene

the Pantheon (Rome, Italy). Still: The Belly of an Architect (Peter Greenaway).

FIGURE 0.1  Applauding

express the autonomous language of architecture itself. Architecture must tell its own story instead of responding to practical necessities. From this point of view, Kaufmann draws a straight line between Ledoux and Le Corbusier. He calls it ‘the development of autonomous architecture’ (Kaufmann 1981). In his study ‘Three Revolutionary Architects, Boullée, Ledoux, and Lequeu’, published in 1952 by the American Philosophical Society, Kaufmann introduces the expression ‘narrative architecture’ as a synonym for architecture parlante.This approach is questionable. Are the terms ‘architecture parlante’ and ‘narrative architecture’ indeed synonyms? Is the modern tendency towards autonomous architecture the ultimate end of narrative architecture? Does modern architecture parlante encompass the whole architectural narrativity? Can modernist architecture in the wake of Ledoux-Le Corbusier claim the label ‘narrative architecture’ for itself? The work of the French thinker Jean-François Lyotard sheds a special light on those questions. He is the author of the postmodern adagio ‘the end of the great narratives’. He calls ‘the great narratives’ also ‘the metanarratives’ (Lyotard 1984, xxiv). A metanarrative accepts only its own narrative as the ultimate one and claims therefore a monopoly on all the little stories. Lyotard considers the nineteenth century as the era of grand narratives and their mutual competition. They all pursue the same objective: to become the one and only metanarrative with unquestionable legitimacy. In his The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1984) – the French original was published in 1979 – Lyotard concludes that the grand narratives of the nineteenth century have the strong desire to demonstrate their ‘unifying and legitimating power’: liberalism, communism, socialism, humanism, nationalism. Each ‘ism’ acts as a doctrine that doesn’t tolerate any other (Lyotard 1984, 38). Lyotard is convinced that with the First World War and the Second World War, with the Holocaust, ‘we have paid a high enough price for the nostalgia of the whole and

Setting the Scene  3

the one’ (Lyotard 1984, 81–82).That’s the reason why the postmodern consciousness doesn’t exert any kind of metanarrative. Asked what postmodernism means, Lyotard answers with this appeal: ‘The answer is: Let us wage a war on totality; let us be witnesses to the unpresentable, let us activate the differences and save the honor of the name’ (Lyotard 1984, 82). Indeed, our postmodern era is a time of different narratives. In the eyes of Kaufmann there’s only one narrative architecture: modernist or autonomous architecture. Kaufmann uses the label narrative in the sense of metanarrative. It was Charles Jencks who proclaimed ‘the death of modern architecture’ as a metanarrative. He wrote: ‘Modern architecture went out with a bang’ (Jencks 1977, 9). He specified:‘Modern architecture died in St. Louis, Missouri on July 18, 1972 at 3.32 p.m. (or thereabouts) when the infamous Pruitt-Igoe scheme, or rather several of the slab blocks, were given the final coup de grâce by dynamite’ (Jencks 1977, 9). Now we can approach our questions on architecture and narrativity in a new way. Kaufmann’s concept of narrative architecture and Lyotard’s postmodern critique on the metanarrativity concept open new horizons to explore the special relation between narrativity and architecture. Of course, the end of the metanarrative doesn’t imply the end of narrative architecture as such. We wrote this book to explain why the contrary is the case. Our book, Narrative Architecture, is a designer’s story in which our personal experiences in our school of architecture, our critical study of some important texts dealing with architecture and postmodern philosophy, our research on dwelling in the design studio, our visits to some inspirational buildings in Europe and the United States of America, and our analysis of some paradigmatic artworks and films are rhizomatically interwoven.To provide guidance for the reader, we have divided our story into four chapters.Thinking, Imagining, Educating, and Designing are the titles of these chapters as well as the cornerstones of our Narrative Architecture. Important to note is that our story is still an open-ended story – ready for interpretation and a life beyond the limits of a written book. In our postmodern era in which the little stories count, any dogmatic concept of style can no longer dominate narrative architecture. Because of its great story, modernistic architecture liked to reduce the narrative of architecture to a style concept, determined by an esthetical canon. The Bauhaus style worked as a paradigm of the one and only story architecture should tell. As long as this is the case, architecture and its narrativity will remain obsessed by the mindset of the Great Story. The narrative of style has overclouded the unique role of the architect for too long. The designer’s story became overshadowed by the obligation to work with a rigid set of stylistic rules and values. In our era of the little stories, we see a new horizon for the architect and his story appearing. In our exploration of narrative architecture, the role of the person of the architect, the designer, is crucial. We don’t approach the story of the architect from the perspective of his private life. We map out the architect’s story as the story of a designer who acquired competences to create buildings in a certain place and context, and who imagines narrative spaces and consequentially makes a difference in people’s lives. Remembering what Eric Owen Moss once wrote about architecture

4  Setting the Scene

as ‘a fight against nihilism’ (Owen 1993, 61), we can assure our reader that Narrative Architecture keeps the fighting spirit of architecture forever young.

References Greenaway, Peter. 1987. The Belly of an Architect. Film. Callendar Company, Modial, Tangram Film, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISpkKiDLMCU Jencks, Charles. 1977. The Language of Post-Modern Architecture. London, Academy Editions. Kaufmann, Emil. 1952. ‘Three Revolutionary Architects, Boullée, Ledoux, and Lequeu’, American Philosophical Society. New Series. 42, 431–564. Kaufmann, Emil. 1981. De Ledoux à Le Corbusier. Origine et développement de l’architecture autonome. Essais. Paris, Editions L’Equerre. Lyotard, Jean-François. 1984. ‘Answering the Question: What Is Postmodernism’, in Lyotard, Jean-François, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, 71–82. Manchester, Manchester University Press. Lyotard, Jean-François. 1984. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester, Manchester University Press. Moss, Eric Owen. 1993. ‘Out of Place Is the One Right Place’, in Noever, Peter (ed.), The End of Architecture? Documents and Manifestos:Vienna Architecture Conference, 61–72. Munich, Prestel.

1 THINKING

At first sight, it’s not so difficult to ascertain that the architect thinks. Take a look around the architecture bookshop. On the shelves, you can find books written by architects. Some famous postmodern architects even started their career by writing books on architecture. The Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas is one of them. Born in 1944 and co-founder of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in 1975, he found his way into the world of architecture by writing his influential book Delirious New York (1978). In his book he tells the story of Manhattan, New York, from a new point of view. Koolhaas was known as a thinker before becoming a designer of real buildings (Dutch Dance Theatre in Rotterdam, 1984–1987), and he demonstrates in his book that the metropolitan city of Manhattan originated from a special and unique way of thinking. The city plan, the ensemble of buildings, they all had their roots in a certain philosophy which Koolhaas articulates in his book. In a historic picture of Robert Moses, the most influential city planner of Manhattan, we see how the man is thinking while looking at a scale model of the future Manhattan. In the same way, Koolhaas is a reflecting architect. On the occasion of his doctorate honoris causa, bestowed upon him in 2007 by the rector of the University of Leuven, he presented himself not as an architect, but as a thinker. He repeated that statement when he was interviewed by Margot Vanderstraeten in 2013 for the Dutch newspaper De Morgen. Writing, expressing myself in language, for me that’s thinking. It’s trying to understand, to formulate what is happening. I need this form of consciousness. I needed it as a young architect. By writing, I created room for myself to become an architect. (Vanderstraeten 2013, 14) Confronted with the building policy in his own country, Japan, architect Toyo Ito expressed his deep concern about the role of architecture in 2016: ‘To strengthen

6 Thinking

people, we need to create a new way of thinking, a new era. If we don’t succeed in realizing this, the things we build will never make people happy’ (Ito 2016, 52). Along with Koolhaas and Ito, we can ask, what is the story of thinking in our postmodern era in relation to the designer’s story? Is there a story to tell? We see a very inspiring story about thinking as an important stepping-stone for the postmodern designer looking, like Ito, towards the future. Our story opens with a visit to three houses.

The Narrative of Architecture Three Houses We start our story about thinking and architecture with three houses in three different continents. The first one is located in Belgium. House AST 77 is situated in the small Flemish city of Tienen, in a row-house street, a typology that marks the Flemish architectural landscape (Figure 1.1). We find the second house in Tokyo, Japan. The White U house is a design by Toyo Ito, the architect who won the 2013 Pritzker Price (Figure 1.2). We visit the third house in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California. It’s the Rodes House for which Moore Ruble Yudell was awarded the 1981 Architectural Record House of the Year (Figure 1.3). When we look at these three houses, we see how much they differ. They all tell us about their distinctive cultures: a Belgian house, especially the Flemish terraced house, distinguishes itself by its openness to the street, while the other row houses

FIGURE 1.1  House AST

77 (Tienen, Belgium). Photo: © Steven Massart.

Thinking   7

FIGURE 1.2  White

FIGURE 1.3  Rodes

U (Tokyo, Japan), Toyo Ito. Photo: © Office Toyo Ito and Associates.

House (Brentwood, Los Angeles, CA, USA), Moore Ruble Yudell. Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

8 Thinking

rather appose themselves to the street, the Japanese one with its need for finding a peaceful place in a stressful life in the metropolis, and the Californian one with its specific sense for theatre. These three houses have a contrasting appearance: House AST 77 with its glass front, the concrete White U with its striking shape which looks very modern, while the Rodes House is known as a postmodern icon. Despite their differences, the houses have one important thing in common.They tell us about the phenomenon of housing.While designing the houses, each architect has thought about the far-reaching meaning of housing in human life generally and in the daily life of the inhabitants in particular. We owe our appreciation of that kind of thinking to the relatively recent movement in Western thinking, called phenomenology. Here, at the beginning of our story on thinking, we meet our main character, the phenomenon. It was created by Edmund Husserl, the founding father of what is now well known as the phenomenological movement.

The School of Athens Our human species didn’t have to wait until Husserl to discover the importance of thinking.The Italian grandmaster of the High Renaissance, Raphael, knew that. He remembered and honoured the famous philosophers of ancient Greece in one of his admired Vatican frescoes, The School of Athens. Around the two main figures, Plato

FIGURE 1.4  The

School of Athens (Vatican, Rome, Italy), Raphael.

Thinking   9

and Aristotle, Raphael painted an ensemble of different generations of pioneers of Western thought. The Italian master used the Western and modern technique of perspective, analysed and demonstrated for the first time by architect Filippo Brunelleschi. In his one-point perspective mural, Raphael located his ancient thinkers in the utopian scene of a future Athens.This was his prelude to the utopian ideas of modern architecture (Figure 1.4). The introduction of the phenomenon in the domain of thinking by Husserl in the twentieth century originated in the critical rejection of modern thinking in its most orthodox praxis. In the first half of the twentieth century, Husserl saw how modern thinking was practiced in the process of modernization of the whole of Western culture since the Enlightenment.We find the announcement of that process in Raphael’s mural. In this mural we can see a vision of the coming of the modern movement, which elaborated the ancient Greek marveling over humans’ capacity to think. In his mural the Italian painter demonstrated the new intellectual enthusiasm for the renewed belief in the power of human thinking as the great source for the creation of a new utopian world by and for humanity itself. In the one-point perspective, we can see how the power of human thinking became paradigmatic. Our sketch shows the typical logic of the modern practice of thinking (Figure 1.5).The big eye represents the human mind, the cornerstone of modern thinking. In ancient cultures, the mind was already seen as ‘the third eye’. And still in Christian culture God’s mind appears as one eye in a triangle, as can be seen on the American one dollar bill. The Indo-European languages also show how the meanings of the words ‘mind’ and ‘eye’ are closely related.The term ‘world view’ or ‘world vision’ clearly demonstrates this. It means opinion, the way of seeing things, the way of thinking.

FIGURE 1.5  The Third

Eye. Sketch: © Femke Clerkx.

10 Thinking

The Thinking I In our sketch, the big eye symbolizes the modern belief in thinking as a substance. The name for that substance is the Latin ratio, the English or French reason or raison. No one defined it better than the French philosopher and one of the founders of the modern school of mathematics in the first half of the sixteenth century, René Descartes, who came up with the modern vision on reason. He worked out the most famous formula of modern thinking: ‘Cogito ergo sum’, in English translated as ‘I think, therefore I am’. The moderns called the substance of thinking the I, the mental instance which can prove its existence by saying I. That means that the substance is self-conscious and knows its own existence. The ‘I says I’ awakens the power of reason, proclaiming its own autonomous existence in the world. From that position it opposes the world.The self-conscious I is clear, straightforward thinking: reason and pure reason only without any interference.The products of that untroubled thinking are clear ideas, logically connected and deeply rooted in the rational power of the I. That modern ratio proclaims the status of absolute assuredness for its self-built-up knowledge. That ratio creates the one-point perspective, as seen in our sketch. From the I, the open and clear eye, starts the rational design of the world that it wants to shape and realize. Its design doesn’t relate to the existing world, but to a utopian world instead. This modern eagerness to create its own utopia was already at work in Raphael’s vision of the new Athens which would rise from Renaissance thinking. Our sketch shows the subject-object structure which typifies modern thinking. On this side of the perspective, we find rational thinking, the modern I or subject, as the dominating substance. It acts as the stage manager of the scene. It enthrones its own autonomy. It prepends itself as the self-reliant substance and independent subject. On the other side of our image, the self-created new rational world is standing. The modern I wants to create its own utopia as an image of its own rational power.

Hilberseimer’s Radical Praxis of Thinking and Designing To better understand what this modern strategy of thinking implies and why phenomenology is opposed to it, the seminal design of the utopian metropolis of Ludwig Hilberseimer is very apt. Hilberseimer was a German-born American architect, urban planner and theoretician who taught at the famous Bauhaus until he fled Nazi Germany in 1938 for Chicago. There, he became head of urban planning at IIT College of Architecture and director of Chicago’s city planning office. He was also a member of the thinktank of CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne), a movement of radical modern thinking in architecture and urban design during the 1920s and 1930s. He was foremost a thinker and one of the pioneers of the discipline which is nowadays called urban design. Hilberseimer presented his utopian design in his book Großstadtarchitektur (1927), the full English translation of which only appeared in 2012, under the title Metropolisarchitecture. In his famous sketches in the book, Hilberseimer practices modern thinking with its one-point perspective in the domain of architecture

Thinking   11

FIGURE 1.6  Metropolisarchitecture.

Sketch: Ludwig Hilberseimer. © The Art Institute of

Chicago.

and urban planning (Figure 1.6). With his design he erased the existing world and wanted to create an entirely new urban environment for future mankind living in megacities. Ever since, Hilberseimer’s images have belonged to the narrative of metropolis. Pier Vittorio Aureli, the present-day Italian architect who mainly practices architecture as a thinker, notes that ‘these two images have been used so often to represent the horror of the modern metropolis that they have become clichés, especially because they are often considered only as images and not as illustrations of a precise urban proposal’ (Aureli 2013, 334). We support Aureli’s rediscovery of Hilberseimer as a protagonist in the movement of modern architecture, but we dispute his interpretation of Hilberseimer’s sketches.They are not just images, not even illustrations.They are instead real expressions of the modern will to thoroughly reshape the human habitat. Modern thinking in its purest form here becomes architecture as a thinking praxis. Architectural design becomes a research praxis in the human and social domain. In the words of Hilberseimer himself: ‘The chaos of the contemporary metropolis can only be confronted with experiments in theoretical demonstration’ (Hilberseimer 2013, 112). Directly in line with Descartes’ rational ego, Hilberseimer explores this new way of thinking in the field of the human urban habitat. Fully in accordance with that modern logic the existing urban reality has no value whatsoever for Hilberseimer. This can be seen in his thinking sketches.We do not see any kind of heritage building or any kind of already existing greenspace integrated in the design. In point of fact Hilberseimer designed his urban utopia from practicing modern thinking in its most radical mold. Hilberseimer writes in his essay The Will to Architecture:

12 Thinking

‘Rational thinking, accuracy, precision, and economy – until now characteristics of the engineer – must become the basis of this comprehensive architecture’ (ibid., 284). As his English translator comments, Hilberseimer introduced ‘the primitive, productive architecture’, ‘in its elemental, geometric rigor’ (Anderson 2013, 31, 33). Hilberseimer’s own words confirm that ‘elemental’ thinking: ‘Architectural design must be conscious of the fundamental elements of all design’ (Hilberseimer 2013, 283). Architecture design must act autonomously, it must evade every sparkle of subjectivity. Here it becomes clear how the modern ratio, as the I proclaiming its own existence, really performs. It operates motivated to create reality itself. More than in pure theory or words only, ‘creative rationalism’ reveals its own power in the fully objective design of an entirely new world. Hilberseimer’s metropolis sketches are the work of an extreme modernist in the architectural domain. In his sketches we cannot find any footprint of subjectivity. The character, the appearance and the program of buildings cannot be influenced by individual desires any more.The pure ratio can only design a world without any exception; as Hilberseimer himself puts it: ‘The general case, the law is respected and emphasized; the exception, however, is put aside, nuance is swept away, measure becomes master, chaos is forced to become form: logical, unambiguous, mathematics, law’ (ibid., 280). Hilberseimer demands that the modern architect in the first place acts as an authentic thinker who cares foremost about his ‘formation of a vision’ (ibid., 268). That vision leads to a completely rational object. Hilberseimer’s sketches demonstrate how the two factors of architecture, as seen by Hilberseimer, the individual cell of the room and the collective urban organism, are parts of one objective ‘constructive formation of the room and the building as such’ (ibid., 287).

Tafuri’s Crisis of ‘Operative Criticism’ In the second half of the twentieth century, the Italian theoretician and historian of the modern movement in architecture, Manfredo Tafuri, tried to reconnect architectural discourse with the rational tradition promoted by Hilberseimer.Tafuri published the first edition of his influential Teorie e storia dell’architettura in 1968.The study was translated as Theories and History of Architecture (Tafuri, 1980). The title clearly unveils Tafuri’s point of view. He distinguishes between theory and history of architecture. It means that he divides the domain of architecture into two parts: theory on the one hand and history on the other. We can read this as a dichotomy between theory and praxis of architecture, where the field of thinking and that of designing and building are treated as two separate activities. This approach has the advantage of arguing for the unique role of thinking generally, and in the domain of architecture more specifically. In his pressing for thinking in postwar architecture, the Venetian Tafuri did not stand alone.The most famous scholar of Husserl’s school of phenomenology, Martin Heidegger, gave his famous lecture ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’ (‘Bauen Wohnen Denken’) in 1951 during the German conference on ‘Man and Space’ (‘Mensch und Raum’) in the city of Darmstadt. With his lecture, he impressed the new generation of German architects who were eager to engage in

Thinking   13

rebuilding the bombed-out cities of their country. In his unique phenomenological rhetoric, Heidegger explained that when building praxis has become just a technoeconomic process, decoupled from its roots in thinking, it is doomed to ruin instead of rebuilding the human habitat. In Tafuri’s portrayal of postwar architecture, we hear an echo of Heidegger’s persuasive argument for the role of thinking in that same period. We must be cautious not to overlook the fundamental conflict between the rational (Tafuri) and the phenomenological (Heidegger) viewpoints. The conflict consists of two oppositional modes of thinking in postwar modern times. The two protagonists of the conflict are the ideology and the phenomenon. Let’s first focus on Tafuri. Tafuri makes his point standing within the modern tradition of thinking, rationalism, in Western culture, especially in the domain of architecture. That’s why he typifies Hilberseimer, together with Bruno Taut and Alexander Klein, as one of the three followers of ‘the Masters of European rationalism’ (Tafuri 1980, 158). Tafuri admired ‘the operative criticism’ in the theoretical work of someone like Hilberseimer in the 1920s and 1930s (ibid., 8, 227–237).The avant-garde thinking of Hilberseimer developed architecture as a thinking praxis which criticized the existing state of architecture, and at the same time he created a utopia to revolutionize that architectural state. Not only in his Theories and History of Architecture, but even more in his Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development (1979) (Progretto e Utopia, 1976), Tafuri tried to analyze ‘the deep crisis of operative criticism’ as the basis for finding the path for a new ‘operative criticism’ in the postwar architectural field (ibid., 8, 141–170). To realize his ambitious plan, Tafuri adopted the method of Karl Marx’s version of modern rationalism, better known as dialectical materialism. Marx, the great theoretician of nineteenth-century Marxism and communism, dedicated his life and work to the historic analysis of modern, industrial society. He concluded that capitalism was the last but one phase in the evolution of the process of history, of which the ultimate phase will be the communist state. In such a state the great ratio of humankind will be the one and only regulator of human society and economy.Within the field of architecture and situated in the postwar period of the twentieth century, Tafuri wanted to be ‘the pure critic’ of the modern history of architecture (ibid., 3). The task of ‘the pure critic’ cannot be made co-extensive with the work of the architect in the field.The architect must always find ‘some sort of coherence in the contradictions of the “job” of planning’, whereas the pure critic wants to lay bare those contradictions. To the end, Tafuri still dreamed of a position of the critic as the theoretician who guides architectural, ideal practice in an ideal society. Such a utopian dream inspired Marx’s writings in which he portrayed the Communist Party as the enlightened and leading force in the ideal society. Marx’s utopian dream was implemented in the former Soviet Union which collapsed in 1990. Tafuri avoids referring to the postmodern era in postwar Western society. He understands the difficulty of defending the great story of modern architecture after the moral collapse of pure modern and rationalist architecture, as reported by Charles Jencks’s The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (1977). He must accept that

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one of the decisive factors in the history of twentieth-century architecture was ‘the rise of theory in the 1960s and 70s’, introduced as a powerful force by a young generation of architects who created a postmodern discourse on architecture. Elizabeth A.T. Smith articulates that reality in her overview of ‘architecture and its history at the end of the century’ (Smith 1998, 22–99). As one of the two curators, she also demonstrated that reality in the international exhibition At the End of the Century – One Hundred Years of Architecture, which was shown in Tokyo, Köln, Chicago and Los Angeles.Those young postmodern architects disseminated their adoption of postwar modern thinking in their own publications and journals. But Tafuri didn’t like what he branded as ‘critical eclecticism’, demanding ‘a rigorous criticism’ (Tafuri, 1980, 5, 4). He linked his position, of hardline critic, to that of a tightroper who has to keep balance ‘while constantly changing winds do their best to blow him down’ (ibid., 3).Tafuri noted with some regret that ‘the merging of the character of architect and critic in the same person’ is almost ‘the norm in architecture’ (ibid.). Here, Tafuri seemed to suggest that architects who practice architecture by nature cannot be thinkers. True to his Marxist viewpoint, he denounced ‘the split personality of the architect who writes and theorizes and also practices’ (ibid.). Tafuri tried to comprehend the crisis of ‘operative criticism’, as he called it, in terms of nineteenth-century ideology.That ideology cultivated the logic of the great story, a story that encompasses all stories that have been told and that can be told. The modern ideology pretended to dissolve all little stories in one great Story, the happy end Story of all human history. Such a Story pretended to end the long period of telling stories (De Bleeckere 2015, 177–190). Now, the ideology claimed to have the necessary knowledge to dismantle all past stories. Indeed, modern ideologies like Marxism claimed to be the acme of all human rational knowledge. Well, it’s exactly this presumption that Edmund Husserl saw at the heart of the crisis of European sciences. Husserl didn’t separate theory and practice to save ‘ideological’ theory as an autonomous, rational activity in any domain, including that of architecture. Husserl’s analysis dug much deeper in the ground of thinking. It’s there that Husserl, the master of Heidegger, first found ‘the phenomenon’, introducing that new character on to the stage of thinking.

Phenomenology and the Crisis of European Sciences If we present Western culture as a great theater, then we can say that thinking occupies an important stage of that theatre. Modern thinking represents one big scene on that stage. And something special is going on there. The character of the modernist thinker and designer, from Descartes to Hilberseimer, wants to impose his canon on every other figure presented on the stage of thinking. The modernist wants to erase each thinker from that stage who wants to play the thinking game in another way. The motive for their dramatic action is their strong conviction that only their modern way of thinking has the right to represent the power of thinking as such. While watching this dramatic scene, we put the play on hold and take some time to ask if that scene doesn’t fail to take into account the realm of thinking. Indeed, the

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drama of modernist thinking raises a lot of questions on the real nature of thinking in the destiny of humanity. Is thinking a human power with an end in itself? Does it really exist for its own sake? And is the practice of thinking without any constraint really the biggest achievement possible in human evolution? Is thinking as a pure rational praxis definitely the acme of what can be understood under a liberated humanity in such a way that it transcends every other use of the power of thinking? These kinds of questions resonated in the emergence of the phenomenological movement during the interbellum period of the twentieth century. All those questions with their own rationale culminated in the work of the German philosopher we mentioned earlier, Edmund Husserl. In his seminal The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, he summarized and deepened at the same time his phenomenological answer to the serious questions raised by the appearance of modern thinking on the stage of human sciences in Western culture. Sadly, the older Husserl couldn’t finish his manuscript before his death in 1938 (Biemel 1962, xiii–xxii; Carr 1970, xv–xliii).

The Crisis of (Modern) Thinking During the same decade in which Hilberseimer developed his passionate plea for the purest possible design of the modern world, Edmund Husserl questioned that modern praxis of thinking. When Husserl introduced the phenomenon as a main character on the scene of thinking in the first decades of the twentieth century, he performed a two-way action. In the first place, he criticized blank modernism. Secondly, he corrected that modernism by introducing a new way of thinking. By doing so, he paved the way to a new interpretation of thinking in architectural discourse and practice. The criticism of modernism by phenomenology can be misunderstood. It’s not a conservative reaction against the emancipation movement that leads the modernization process in Western society. The aim of phenomenology is to emancipate the human mind and knowledge from a too narrow vision on thinking, practiced by modernism.Within the field of modern thinking in general, phenomenology broadens the scope of thinking.This means phenomenology is not an anti-modernist but rather a postmodern movement in the domain of Western thinking. It enriches the narrative of modernism with a new chapter. The main concern of phenomenology’s disapproval of blank modernism is the human dimension of the use of modern sciences and technology in increasing the modernization process all over the world in general and especially in the Western world. When modernism practices thinking in a fundamentalist way, it forgets the origin of thinking itself. Husserl was very alarming about it, as can be inferred from the title of his book: The Crisis of European Sciences. He stressed the notion of crisis of the European spirit (Geist) (Husserl 1962, 8; 1970, 10). Husserl was not the only one speaking and writing about the crisis in modern Europe in the 1930s. Crisis was in the air everywhere. Alongside the worldwide Great Depression, caused by the Wall Street Crash of 1929, there was the political crisis, especially in Germany.

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The successful Nazi ideology and propaganda claimed they had the best solution to the deep crisis of European values. Their racist solution, motivated by a nationalistic way of thinking, forced Husserl himself, as a German Jew, to withdraw from any participation in public and academic life. Contrary to what one could expect, Husserl didn’t focus on politics. His concern was the fact that European culture was sick. ‘That European sickness’ related to the spirit which came to bloom in the Age of Enlightenment, also named the Age of Reason, of which, as Husserl notes, we possess ‘undying testimony‘ (‘ein unvergängliches Zeugnis’) in Beethoven-Schiller’s ‘glorious hymn “Ode to Joy”’ (1970, 10). When Husserl wrote his last work in the 1930s, several great historic events were still yet to happen. First of all, the Second World War and the postwar period with the foundation of the European Community, since 1993 renamed the European Union (EU). Husserl couldn’t have foreseen that in 1985 the EU heads of state and government would adopt the famous Beethoven-Schiller hymn as the official anthem of the European Community. While writing his last work, Husserl asked himself what had become of that flourishing, so laudable and enlightened European spirit, so well incarnated in the words and sounds of the modern hymn (ibid.). As we all know, the voice of the philosopher Husserl didn’t sound as loud as the voice of the German Führer at that time. Is was indeed in the aftermath of the Second World War and the beginning of a new era that Husserl’s phenomenology found its audience, architects included. Before we join that postwar audience, we’ll explore some central elements of Husserl’s analysis on the crisis of the European spirit. In his analysis, Husserl developed the narrative of thinking. For Husserl, it was very clear that the European countries were heading up a dead-end street, which was, as we now know, leading to the Second World War. For Husserl, that street was called positivism. That was the dominant modern way of thinking at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. That thinking caused the cultural sickness of Europe’s spirit. In the mirror of it, Husserl helped us to discover the paradox, even the tragedy of Western culture in the first half of the past century. In the first decades, modern Europe became sick because it forgot the roots of its greatness: the narrative of thinking. Modern thinking degenerated, and in a way it ruined thinking itself. This is a very harsh statement, but we believe it is worth listening to Husserl’s arguments.

Technization of Science and Knowledge The positive sciences, their methodologies and technologies, decided to occupy the whole area of thinking. Guided by the philosophy of positivism, developed in the first half of the nineteenth century by the French philosopher Auguste Comte, the positive sciences claimed themselves to be the only legitimate representative of true human knowledge on the stage of modern thinking. Accordingly they installed a new praxis of producing scientific knowledge. Their fetish was facts. Only objective recorded facts could get the label of true knowledge. Husserl stresses that such

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a thinking praxis not only reduces the power of thinking itself but decapitates the whole human body of thinking. The positivistic praxis empties ‘the meaning of mathematical natural sciences through “technization”’ (ibid., 46). Even original modern scientific knowledge, based on ‘mathematical-physical formulae’, loses its own dynamic, because ‘technization takes over all other methods belonging to natural science’ (ibid., 48). It initiates ‘the tendency to superficialize itself to accord with technization’ (ibid.). Even eighty years after Husserl’s reflections, we can easily see the same technization process at work in the field of sciences and knowledge. Today, we are able to see that the technization process has reinforced itself thanks to the computerization of modern society, knowledge included. This new mode of technization of science and knowledge reached the domains of politics, finance, economics, commerce, architecture and even education. The new code name for the ‘technization’ process became ‘rationalization’. It implies the tendency to measure the value of things and knowledge in the format of rationally produced data, and to evaluate them in order to develop a strategy aimed at higher rational performance. Even in the new world of social media, there is a tendency to measure the value of a person by the number of ‘likes’ on their Facebook page. And it’s well documented by different news media, studies and documentaries that the worldwide financial crisis in 2008 broke out due to the fetish for bonuses cultivated by the bankers of New York’s Wall Street and the City of London. The biographical black comedy, The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), directed by Martin Scorsese, based on the memoir of the same name by Jordan Belfort, depicts the atmosphere of the financial world in which knowledge only exists in financial ‘facts’, expressed in mathematical symbols. The autobiographical text reveals that in the long term, this kind of thinking harms the main characters. This ‘technization process’ of thinking leads to moral, physical and financial downfall.

Phenomenology’s Narrative of Thinking Husserl saw the reason why the ‘technization’ process of the modern sciences and knowledge was breaking down. He described how the power of thinking, reason, was disassociated from its true origin. To explain this, Husserl referred to the narrative of thinking. Indeed, thinking has a history that reveals the not yet corrupted nature of thinking. The cradle of thinking was in ancient Greece. Husserl speaks about ‘the image of dawn’ when he reminds us of ‘Greek philosophy in its beginning stage’ (ibid., 338). The awakening of man’s ability to think levered human consciousness once and for all out of the darkness of ignorance. Man became aware of his power to be in touch with the world around him and at the same time he could explore himself as a thinking living being in that world. At that crucial dawn, he started to ask serious questions which became his compass on the road to the new realm of knowledge and sciences.They were ‘what is’ and ‘who is’ questions.Those questions have no practical, everyday reach, such as: ‘Which road do I take to go from Athens

18 Thinking

to Sparta?’‘How many pounds of olives and how many amphorae of wine do I need for my dinner party for thirty guests?’ The new ‘what is’ and ‘who is’ questions opened up new debates and discoveries. They changed humankind, they created a new human being, the philosopher, the thinker, one who focuses on that new genre of questioning. Husserl describes those philosophical questions as the beginning of an ongoing struggle. Indeed, the new art of thinking started an intellectual endeavor.The awakening of reason and rationality deployed a never ending debate on rationality itself: ‘It is rationality which, discovering again and again its unsatisfying relativity, is driven on in its toils, in its will to attain the true and full rationality’ (ibid., 339). In the process of dealing with the discovery of thinking, some new fundamentals for human existence were explored for the first time in human evolution. One was the ability to change one’s whole life through thinking, experienced as making plans, outlining a strategy to obtain one’s formulated goals. An individual can move from one city to another because he has lost his house in a fire, but he can undertake the same action after evaluating his current existence in the light of new opportunities elsewhere. This fundamental implies the amazing idea that a man has the power to improve his living conditions radically just by the act of thinking.This fundamental exposed another one. Man discovers a sense of freedom by exercising his power of thinking. It’s just a small step from the ability to change one’s living conditions to the will to improve one’s social environment. In this context Husserl talks about ‘the theoretical and practical autonomy’ (ibid., 8). In very old times, before the dawn of thinking in ancient Greece, man was always confronted with practical obstacles to survival. He was always fighting against nature in all its manifestations, and other hostile groups. Sometimes, he lost his life in that ongoing battle, sometimes he stayed alive. By trial and error, he gained some experience which he tried to pass on from generation to generation, if his destiny was favorable. But in ancient Greece, especially in Athens, a new leaf was turned in the book of human history. A new epoch, which we are still living in, began. From now on, thinking began writing a whole new chapter in the book of life. That’s what Husserl means by ‘theoretical autonomy’. Humans knew that it was possible to change their living conditions radically through conceiving ideas by thinking freely. With those ideas humans could build theories that they used as levers for changing the world around them. In his review of the narrative of thinking, Husserl found that those fundamentals, the ability to change one’s destiny, and the power of free thinking, were rediscovered and exploited by the geniuses of the Renaissance. After the dawn of thinking in ancient Greece, in the Renaissance thinking reached maturity. If thinking can be seen as a stage character, then its days of coming of age were over. The modern age of mankind started for good. Husserl put it this way: ‘This means not only that man should be changed ethically [but that] the whole human surrounding world, the political and social existence of mankind, must be fashioned anew through free reason, through the insights of universal philosophy’ (ibid.). Based on these fundamentals, Husserl stresses the universal character of thinking and the universal dimension of the great questions thinking generates. Those

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universal questions relate not to one person, or one nation, or even one race. They transcend all those demarcations. They are relevant to every human being. Now those questions already have a century-old tradition. Mostly they’re branded as ‘meta­physical’ questions. They only make sense within the domain of universal thinking. There, they encompass all issues about the evaluation of knowledge, ethical values, non-physical realms like ideas, laws, forms, souls, deities, time and eternity, space and infinity, and so on. ‘All these “metaphysical” questions, taken broadly – commonly called specifically philosophical questions – surpass the world understood as the universe of mere facts’ (ibid., 9). Now we reach the point where we can understand Husserl’s critical analysis of the crisis of European sciences. Husserl saw how in Europe thinking was suppressed by a dominant praxis of sciences, obsessed by facts and facts only. Scientists had to work under the pressure to produce new facts. The overall consequence of that praxis is the loss of the human origin of thinking and of its fundamentals.With Husserl, we define that suppressing praxis of modern thinking as a kind of irrationalism ‘which is taken for philosophical rationality as such’ (ibid., 292). In his Vienna lecture ‘Philosophy and the Crisis of European Humanity’, delivered at the Vienna Cultural Society on May 7 and May 10, 1935, Husserl qualified the dominant praxis of ‘one-sided rationality’ as ‘an evil’ for the future of humanity (ibid., 291). Reason had become its own enemy.Thinking produced a child that wanted to kill its father. Husserl expressed in his own intellectual way the drama of thinking that was played on the stage of European culture. The dominant irrationalism was in opposition to the increase of human culture, which started in ancient Greece.

FIGURE 1.7  Masterplan

of Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Image: © Robert Jan van Pelt, Peter Gallagher and Paul Backewich.

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FIGURE 1.8  Masterplan

of Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Image: © Robert Jan van Pelt, Peter Gallagher and Paul Backewich.

Husserl couldn’t refer to the Holocaust, which was in the making when he was delivering his lecture in Vienna. But now we know that ‘the irrationalism’ of the Holocaust was the product of a very rational construction, even in an architectural sense. The design of Auschwitz II-Birkenau reveals how rational it was (Dwork and van Pelt 2003, 236–353). It was the work of modern German engineering and it’s not difficult to see the similarity to Hilberseimer’s metropolis design, discussed earlier (Figures 1.7, 1.8). Historian Robert Jan van Pelt is world-renowned for his extensive research on the architecture of the Auschwitz camp. Ever since, Auschwitz has represented the loss of humanity of thinking. The Holocaust reminds us and future generations of the fatal consequences when the human power of thinking disconnects itself from its universal roots and fundamentals. In the words of Husserl, speaking about the ‘irrationalism’ of the common praxis of rationalism: ‘It has dropped all the questions which had been considered under the now narrower, now broader concepts of metaphysics, including all questions vaguely termed “ultimate and highest”’ (Husserl 1970, 9).

The Phenomenon Husserl didn’t only analyze and criticize the crisis of European sciences. He wanted to explore a new Renaissance of thinking and transcend that crisis within the domain of thinking itself. Just like the men of the Renaissance at the dawn of the modern age who were looking back to ancient Greece, especially Athens, to create a new future for the self-emancipation of humanity, Husserl wanted to reconnect in

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the same way with the ancient Greek origin of thinking. He succeeded in realizing his ambitious plan by working out what he called his ‘transcendental phenomenology’. For him phenomenology should be able to complete the narrative of thinking with a whole new chapter. The nucleus of that new modern praxis of thinking is the phenomenon. Let’s explore for a while this ‘enigma of all enigmas’ (ibid., 13).

A Close Encounter The very core of the phenomenon is the close encounter between man as a thinking person and the surrounding world. The word phenomenon itself comes from the ancient Greek word phainomenon, derived from the verb phainein [φαίνειν], meaning to show, shine, appear, manifest. Husserl deepened that meaning in his own way. He asked himself what’s happening when something appears to someone. That something can be everything for which humans have words, for instance, houses, mountains, flowers, and so on. In his transcendental phenomenology, Husserl isn’t so much interested in the surface of what appears. It’s not the color of the paint on the walls in a house, or its market price or even its style that constitutes the house as a phenomenon. In Husserl’s view, we can discover the phenomenon of the house by asking what makes a house a home. By asking such questions, the human consciousness is no longer magnetized by mere facts. It starts to explore the mechanism that helps us to understand the existence of phenomena. Husserl found that the mesmerizing encounter between the human consciousness and the world gives rise to all kinds of phenomena. Thinking itself appears now as the open door to the world. For Husserl, it was clear that a phenomenon cannot be considered as a fact or an object. Facts or objects are always abstracts from an underlying phenomenon. In a real encounter, certainly in a close encounter, at least two different elements are involved: the world and the human consciousness. In the encounter they lose their proper status to become something new. In the close encounter of the phenomenon, the world resonates in human thinking and human thinking resonates in the world. In our sketches, we can see what kind of thinking the phenomenon performs. In the first image, we can see a world without phenomena (Figure 1.9). We see a lot of things as if their presence is obvious. The rock, the landscape, the lake, the trees, a horse, a traveler and a boat with a fisherman. It’s the view of an animal. It just sees the things without having any names to communicate about them with others. The horse we see in the landscape is just one element of that landscape. It belongs to its surrounding world. But in the second image, the situation changes (Figure 1.10). Now the human consciousness enters.We see a man sitting on the rock, making sketches of the valley. Now a close encounter takes place. This is an encounter of the second kind because the presence of the human consciousness meets the landscape and registers it like no other creature can do. In the first picture, there are also encounters. The horse sees the trees and the grass. It eats and in the evening it seeks shelter under the trees. It doesn’t have an overall picture of the situation. Even the man who travels through the valley, while he’s heading for the next city where

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FIGURE 1.9  The

phenomenon I. Sketch: © Femke Clerkx.

FIGURE 1.10  The

phenomenon II. Sketch: © Femke Clerkx.

he wants to sign a contract for a deal of a hundred horses, has no time to mind the lake, the trees. He’s a human being with a consciousness, but he doesn’t activate it while travelling to the city. In contrast, the man on the rock opens his mind to what appears to his eyes. In his mind the phenomenon of landscape is coming into existence. Everything is now connected to everything. The act of thinking makes contact with the appearing world.

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Looking in the Mirror of the Phenomenon At the beginning of our story of thinking, we visited three houses on three different continents. They can help us here to come to a better understanding of Husserl’s exploration of the phenomenon. Indeed, the houses differ in form, style, program and material, but they meet each other in the phenomenon of housing. Despite their divergent look, organization and context, the three houses transcend their differences in the phenomenon of housing which unites them. This path of the three houses guides us to Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. Indeed, the phenomenon, as analyzed by Husserl, transcends the physical aspects of the things we see around us.They are more than material facts or material objects. That moment of transcendence is a moment of intense thinking which engenders a phenomenon. In general, Husserl wants to explore that unique contact between the human mind and the world that constitutes a phenomenon. Some distinguishing marks of the phenomenon as described by Husserl reveal even more the overall postmodern status of thinking in our human culture. The narrative of thinking receives a new chapter.We will keep the three houses in view in order to get a better understanding of that new chapter. Even in the very distant past, when humans didn’t yet build houses and cities, they lived in a shelter they found in the landscape, a cave maybe or just a lowgrowing tree. That reveals that humans were not the first existing things on earth. The world, the earth with its countless elements, was already a realm millions and millions of years before man made his first appearance. He found himself being born on earth, his big habitat, when his story began.That’s what Husserl designates as the firstness of the world as a whole. Each phenomenon reveals the same old mesmerizing mystery of the bond between world and man. Husserl expresses his own wonder regarding the world. That wonder appears to man when he’s able to interrupt for a moment his natural attitude to existence, as shown in Figure 1.10. Husserl pictures this liberating moment of abstention in his own philosophical language: But it is necessary now, to make really transparent the fact that we are not left with a meaningless, habitual abstention; rather it is through this abstention that the gaze of the philosopher in truth first becomes fully free: above all, free of the strongest and most universal, pregivenness of the world. Given in and through this liberation is the discovery of the universal, absolutely selfenclosed and absolutely self-sufficient correlation between the world itself and world-consciousness. By the latter is meant the conscious life of the subjectivity which effects the validity of the world, the subjectivity which always has the world in its enduring acquisitions and continues to shape it anew. (Husserl 1970, 151)

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Correlations The deepest thought that every phenomenon reveals is that the world is always in advance (ibid., 110, 142–143, 148). Another very striking notion, which is apparent with each phenomenon, is that the world and the human mind are not alienated from each other. They are intertwined with a whole range of ‘correlative types of consciousness’ (ibid., 143).The world appears to humans in such a way that humans can register this appearance, and at the same time the human mind is able to be open to the world as a whole. As a human being we can see the three houses just as objects in the street, the metropolis or the landscape. We can pass them by without any notion of what those objects are, because we’re in a hurry. On the other hand, we have the capability to become conscious of the three houses in all their differences and their unity in the phenomenon of housing. Because of those phenomenological competences of the human mind, we can understand that humans could evolve in modeling their habitat. They were not condemned to stay for ever in their first shelter. This phenomenological consciousness seems to be obvious, but that’s not the case. As the crisis of modern sciences reveals, humans too easily forget their phenomenological consciousness and regress into a kind of natural attitude towards the world of things. Even in modern times of sciences and knowledge, man forgets the realm of thinking. Husserl wanted to remind us to transcend that kind of forgetfulness.Transcendental phenomenology insists yet again that the human mind in its thinking capacities is an open structure. It acts like an open window, which connects with the appearing things of the world. Husserl never tires of explaining the fundamental correlation between the nature of man and the world (ibid., 151–152, 159–160, 165–166, 233–234).

Horizons The openness of the human consciousness implies that the human mind cannot replace the appearing world as a whole. Man cannot change the world as given to humanity. Husserl is eager to explain the horizon-consciousness of phenomenological thinking (ibid., 161–164). Every act of thinking, every consciousness of something, includes a horizon of knowledge.Thinking is a never-ending story about the close encounters of humans and the world of things. As the world appears to humans as a flux of horizons, so are human thoughts mental landscapes with horizons.That means that ‘no line of knowledge, no single truth may be absolutized and isolated’ (ibid., 291). Husserl concludes that ‘any philosophy that exists at a given historical time is a more or less successful attempt to realize the guiding idea of the infinity and at the same time even the totality of truths’ (ibid.). Human thinking, which tries to lock itself up in one single truth, like the modern one-sided rationality, ‘can certainly become an evil’ (ibid.). This practice of thinking contradicts the phenomenological nature of the human mind and ‘the totality of its horizons of infinity’ (ibid.).

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The Life-World Through the three houses we can see the open-mindedness of thinking (Figures 1.11, 1.12, 1.13). Each architect designed with a consciousness of the phenomenon of housing without pretending that they wanted to lock up the phenomenon in one single possibility of life in the world. Each architect had an open mind to the infinite possibilities of housing in the world by creatively exploring the opportunities of the place, the demands of the clients and the richness of the architectural grammar. Husserl titled the fifty-first paragraph of his Crisis manuscript ‘The task of an ontology of the life-world’ (ibid., 173–175). In this paragraph, he articulates what we can consider as the ethical sense of thinking. Thinking has a responsibility towards

FIGURE 1.11  Floor

plans. House AST 77 (Tienen, Belgium). Image: © AST 77.

26 Thinking FIGURE 1.12  White U (Tokyo, Japan), Toyo Ito. Photo: © Office Toyo Ito and Associates.

FIGURE 1.13  Rodes

House (Brentwood, Los Angeles, CA, USA), Moore Ruble Yudell. Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

Thinking   27

its own world-oriented nature. The phenomenon reveals the unique presence of the human mind in the world. That defines man as more than an animal among animals, even more than a rational animal. As a thinking being, man is responsible for the world and its things. In the close encounter between mind and world, man discovers that the world isn’t a neutral, indifferent place. It’s a life-world. The world appears to man not as a dead body, but as a whole of moving elements which color the world. The phenomenon of housing for example shows in how many different ways the life-world appears. Building a house in a street, as Peter van Impe did with his house, in a metropolis, as Toyo Ito did with the White U House, or in open nature as Charles Moore did with the Rodes House, reflects how differently the life-world shows itself to the open mind of the designer. The three houses reflect exactly what Husserl calls evidence of ‘creative ontology’ (‘schöpfende Ontologie’) (Husserl 1962, 176).The English translator is missing the point by omitting the word ‘creative’ (Husserl 1970, 173). In the perspective of transcendental phenomenology, thinking appears as the creative act of an open human mind connecting itself with the multiple chances the appearing life-world offers to the mind. Human creativity, the mental energy of each designer, springs from the enduring correlation between man and life-world. In the mental space of that correlation, the discovery of the phenomena that color the concrete daily life of human existence on earth, starts.

Dwelling One of the most affecting phenomena in human existence is dwelling. The three houses, which guide us in our story of thinking, represent three continents. They demonstrate in a convincing way that in our postmodern times, humans – if they get the opportunity – want to live in a house they can call their home. Even after the destruction of the house in the metropolis plans of Hilberseimer, the house survives – even in the metropolis of Tokyo, as seen in the U House. In the Belgian region of Flanders, terraced houses mark villages and cities, as is the case in the small city of Tienen. In the huge city space of Los Angeles, the house colorizes the landscape of the city, as seen worldwide in so many Hollywood films. Against all odds, seen from a stringent modernist point of view, the phenomenon of housing and the architectural house has played a central role in the development of architecture in the past century (Colomina 1998, 127). The story of human existence on earth is indeed intertwined with dwelling, even in the twentieth and twentieth-first centuries. But, it is in a sense strange to see how recent the thinking on the phenomenon of dwelling is. Transcendental phenomenology paved the way for renewing the role of thinking in the designer’s story after the impact of modernism in the domain of architecture. It was the phenomenological movement which, in the past century, started the ongoing research on the relation between thinking and the domain of architecture. It was no coincidence that the first connection between phenomenology and architecture took place in postwar Germany. In early August 1951, the young generation of German architects gathered in the city hall of Darmstadt (Blundell Jones 1995,

28 Thinking

136). The main issue of their colloquium was ‘Human Space’ (‘Mensch und Raum’). They wanted to reflect on how to deal with the urgent need to rebuild German cities after the massive destruction of the Second World War. They invited Martin Heidegger. As the main scholar of Husserl, Heidegger had already made a name for himself in the still young tradition of phenomenology. In his lecture, ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’ (‘Bauen Wohnen Denken’), the German philosopher formulated Husserl’s analysis of the crisis of European sciences in his own way, for the architects, accentuating that building without thinking is like acting blindly (Heidegger 2008, 343–364). He pointed out that the phenomenon of dwelling connects thinking with building. Some of the German architects were impressed by Heidegger’s lecture. But Heidegger wasn’t very precise on the phenomenon of dwelling except for his plea for vernacular German architecture. It was the German philosopher Otto Friedrich Bollnow who picked up where Heidegger left off. In his Human Space, first published in German as Mensch und Raum (1963), referring to the Darmstadt colloquium, he explored what thinking really means in relation to one universal phenomenon, dwelling. The transcendental phenomenology of Husserl entered the human domain of dwelling. Here our story of the three houses opens a new chapter.

Lived Space Like Husserl, Bollnow wants to practice thinking in a postmodern modus. He starts from the transcendental phenomenon of space and explores the existential phenom­ enon of dwelling. In line with Husserl’s vision of the phenomenon as a close encounter between the human mind and the appearing world, Bollnow doesn’t approach space as an object. In this sense, thinking space always implies focusing on ‘erlebter Raum’, which means ‘experienced’ or ‘lived space’ (Bollnow 2011, 19) (Figure 1.14). When analyzing the way humans always stay in connection with the surrounding space as life-world, Bollnow discovers that dwelling is the overall existential phenomenon. In analyzing human consciousness of dwelling, he finds that consciousness in between two oppositional modifications: on the positive scale humans develop a basic and at the same time naïve space consciousness of being in the safe shelter of the womb of the mother, while on the negative scale human consciousness of space is determined by homelessness or houselessness, the sense of being lost. American white and black folk music expressed that sense of being lost very accurately. In the first stanza of his song ‘I Ain’t Got No Home’, written in Los Angeles, Woody Guthrie expresses the consciousness of homelessness (Nowlin 2013, 88). In turn, the black blues musician Lightnin’ (Sam) Hopkins sings in ‘Mojo Hand’ that the cold ground has been his bed and the rocks his pillow. Between those two opposite modifications, human consciousness finds a fundamental sense of space in the basic feeling of being at home. In the same period that Bollnow published his phenomenological study on human space, Bob Dylan wrote his ‘Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest’. In the sixth stanza he sings about the difference between a house and a home (Dylan 2014, 282). A house is a shelter and an architectural object. It’s located in the space on earth, you can find it with Google

Thinking   29 FIGURE 1.14  House AST

77 (Tienen, Belgium). Photo: © Steven Massart.

Maps Street View. But a house, the object, can gain a special meaning for someone who lives in the house for many years. For that person, that house is a home. Bollnow knew very well that a phenomenological consciousness always focuses on meaning. Real thinking indeed means listening to the human side of what comes out of the life-world. And existing in that life-world cannot be human without being concerned with the meaning of things and actions.Thinking is indeed always thinking of someone or something. And that’s exactly the case for the phenomenon dwelling. Even if we travel, we’re conscious of the place we call our home. And if ill fate forces us to leave our home, we feel sad, like the countless streams of fugitives in human history did, and still do. To adequately think about dwelling, Bollnow understood that it is important to listen to different kinds of people, especially artists like musicians, filmmakers, poets, novelists, because they have a special talent to evoke the sense of dwelling in human life. In this perspective, Pallasmaa refers to J.H. van den Berg who has remarked that ‘poets and painters are born phenomenologists’. In Pallasmaa’s view, the same applies for novelists, photographers and film directors. And he adds: In the recent Berlage Papers (January 1994) the filmmaker Jan Vrijman makes this thought-provoking remark: “. . . why is it that architecture and architects, unlike film and filmmakers, are so little interested in people during the design process? Why are they so theoretical, so distant from life in general?” (Pallasmaa 1994, 4)

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Geborgenheit For Bollnow, another source for the phenomenology of dwelling is psychotherapy, which deals with people whose mind and behavior are disturbed because of an experienced trauma. Most of the time, that trauma reveals their broken relation with what they considered their home for a while. In their broken state of mind, they feel homeless. This mirrors how humans relate to the life-world in the modus of dwelling in a common or natural state of mind. Another source for finding the meaning of an existential phenomenon like dwelling is language, especially the etymology of words. The collective mind saved and documented its consciousness of things in a unique vocabulary. Indeed language encompasses the story of the evolving heritage of the human mind. Some old words are sediments of phenomenological value.They store the stories of the human mind and of its connection with the life-world. That’s the reason why Bollnow rightly pays attention to the Germanic word for dwelling: ‘wohnen’.  The etymological roots of ‘wohnen’ go back to the general basic meaning of being ‘at ease or content’ and to the definition in spatial terms as ‘stay, linger, be in [a place]’ (Bollnow 2011, 122). Bollnow adds, ‘to dwell means to have a fixed place in space, to belong to this place and be rooted in it’ (ibid., 124). Bollnow argues that the phenomenon of dwelling always evokes a feeling of ‘Geborgenheit’. He links this German word to the French ‘intimité’. Nevertheless, the translators of Bollnow’s book opted for ‘security’ as an English translation for the German ‘geborgen’. According to Bollnow, the key to the phenomenon dwelling is the basic feeling of being ‘geborgen’, being secure. Man can only dwell in a place where he feels secure from the outside world. Here, Bollnow forgets to note that the German words ‘Geborgenheit’ and ‘gebären’, giving birth, are related to each other. Both go back to ‘bären’, which means to bear. For each human being the first secure (‘geborgen’) space, his or her first home, is indeed the mother’s womb.

Homeliness Bollnow is right when he brands the existential phenomenon dwelling as the bottom rung of lived space in general. What a human mind needs primarily in connection with the world he lives in, is to feel at home. Bollnow identifies the phenomenon dwelling with ‘homeliness’ (‘Wohnlichkeit’). It evokes a state of mind characterized by coziness and comfort (ibid., 142). Being at home in a house means that a person makes that house his home. Homeliness includes an active correlation between a human being and a certain space on earth. A person builds a house hoping he or she can say: ‘Well, I feel good here, it’s my home.’ In our three houses, the inhabitants develop each in their own way a deep sense of being at home. We see how a phenomenon like dwelling is always at the same time universal and particular. There’s a basic sense of feeling at home which can be found in every place on earth where humans live, and simultaneously the three houses, located in Tokyo, Los Angeles and Tienen, each tell a unique story of dwelling. Each phenomenon always has a subjective side. That subjective element of the

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phenomenon dwelling is founded in the creative act of those who build their home. By creating in their house ‘a common life space’, it becomes their place, their home (ibid., 248). Every home is initially grounded in a strong sense of togetherness, as experienced by lovers who want to start a family. By creating their home in a house or an apartment, they express their desire for an enduring togetherness. In the mirror of the phenomenon of dwelling, we find in the core of each phenomenon that kind of togetherness. The phenomenon language for instance can never be considered the property of a single man or woman. Words and grammar belong to a people. Through their language the individual members of the people can communicate with each other.That understanding of each other edifies communal life in the villages and cities. The sense of togetherness is not a by-product of the phenomenon, it’s part of its essence.

Relevance for Architecture Transcendental phenomenology has placed thinking high on the agenda of our postmodern times.The narrative of thinking enriched itself by discovering the need for being critical towards thinking itself. In the wake of the modern Enlightenment, thinking developed a very confident and autonomous practice until it was confronted with the self-induced crisis of politics, science and technology.The modern movement forced the narrative of thinking into the mold of rationalism. Modern thinking became too greedy and lost its innocence. Thanks to phenomenology, we realize that thinking now is more than the praxis of modern rationalism and that it has the enduring task to stay connected with its own roots in the human mind and the life-world. Our question now is: What’s the value of thinking in our postmodern times for the domain of architecture? Maybe someone could object that the postmodern, phenomenological practice of thinking only guides us to obvious insights without any relevance for disciplines like architecture. That criticism is not justified. It overlooks the realm of the phenomena which appears in the act of thinking. Furthermore, the resonance of the renewed thinking in the domain of architecture reveals how substantial it is for the future of mankind in general and utterly relevant for architecture in particular. Thinking, recharging its batteries through phenomenology, came to architects via the issue of dwelling. At first sight, dwelling is an obvious issue.We see it everywhere, it’s common and only natural. So why should we take time to think about what is obvious for everyone? In the perspective of transcendental phenomenology, the narrative of thinking learns that it is the most difficult task for humans to become conscious of the value and existential meaning of what appears to be usual or ordinary. Humans forget easily, even valuable thoughts about what makes their lives worth living. Even modern sciences and technology forget how they are anchored in the human mind, the source of every kind of consciousness, knowledge and science. The development of phenomenology at a crucial moment in recent human

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history was needed just to remember and reactivate the narrative of thinking to help modern humans not to forget their humanity.

Designing Our Global Home The reconnection with the roots of thinking isn’t just a matter of remembering and looking backwards. The opposite is true. The involvement of thinking in our postmodern times concerns the future of our planet, our humanity and so even our architecture. Let’s look once again at our three houses. They aren’t just buildings, they are homes for the people who live there. When we look more carefully, we discern a very important element. Each of the houses maintains a special bond with the outside world. Through its glass front wall, House AST 77 is connected directly to the street in which it is integrated. Its openness contrasts with the other houses. Its hybrid use as a house for the architect and as his office defines its inviting character, as for instance can be experienced when the owner invites an artist to transform the house and office temporarily into an art gallery. The White U house in the centre of Tokyo is defined by the story of the owner, the older sister of the architect, and her daughters, after they lost a husband and a father to cancer. The family lived in one of the city’s anonymous high-rise apartments.The family wanted to mourn in close contact with the soil, with the poetry of the light and the garden. The mourning house is designed as an inward-looking gesture with close contact with the diffusing light and the interior garden, engrained in the old culture of Japanese gardening. By connecting to that Japanese heritage, the inward-curving house maintains a strong link to the outside life-world. That also applies to the Rodes House, but in a more Californian way. Related to the Hollywood scene, its interior is designed as a stage for the owner, a professor in English literature and history of theatre, who likes to invite his students and actors to play in his house. The front of the house appears postmodern, an outward-folding stage, turning itself towards the city (Klotz 1984, 168–170). The phenomenon of dwelling implies a decisive consciousness of the complex nature of a home. Homeliness, as Bollnow clearly shows, comprises a complex relationship between the sheltering inner space and the surrounding world. It’s impossible to withdraw oneself totally into the self-created security and coziness of the home. At this point, the phenomenon of dwelling reveals how homeliness becomes a metaphor for the meaning of human space in general. Bollnow makes very clear that dwelling indeed defines the whole life-world as a home. In every consciousness of the phenomenon dwelling, we can find a strong need for a safe life-world. In Bollnow’s own words: Thus the house is today still an image of the world, a smaller world, whose order corresponds to that of the greater world outside. I will once again quote Bachelard: ‘[The house] is our first universe, a real cosmos in every sense of the word. It’s the human being’s first world.’ House and world correspond to

Thinking   33

each other. For the small child the house is still the whole world, and it’s only because the child is rooted in the house that he can grow into the world. It is only because man lives in the house that he can then also be at home in the world, and dwell in the world. (Bollnow 2011, 141) Transforming the life-world, the global space that humans call their planet Earth, into a home is a never-ending task for humans, assisted by architects. We find that far-reaching awareness, anchored in the phenomenon dwelling, well expressed in the Chancellor’s Bungalow in Bonn. It was built as the house for the chancellor of the postwar Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, the father of West Germany’s Wirtschaftswunder (Economic Miracle), asked his friend the architect Sep Ruf to design a house for the chancellor as a representative building for the new and democratic Germany. He promoted the modern, progressive Bauhaus style of designing. It’s not a bombastic, neoclassical-style building. It was designed as a house where the chancellor and his family could live in the park of the Palais Schaumburg, the official seat of the headquarters of the Federal Republic of Germany, along the riverside of the Rhine. The Chancellor’s Bungalow was the private home for all German chancellors from 1964 until 1999. The private house, now the jewel of postwar German architecture and history, is a very open house for a family, and at the same time it can be used as a guesthouse for invited politicians and world leaders, and also common civilians, artists and so on. The private house became the core of building a democratic society not only in West Germany, but also in Europe and even further afield.The same kind of analogy between the private house and making the world outside our Global Home can be found in the most famous house on Earth, the White House. This house is the seat of the American president and his family, but also the working place for the president and his vicepresident. It was constructed on the site selected by the first president, George Washington, in 1791. Architect James Hoban designed it and the first resident was the second president, John Adams, and his family, who moved into the unfinished house in 1800. The lasting meaning of the White House was very well formulated by the then First Lady Michelle Obama, wife of the first black American president, Barack Obama. She declared: This is really what the White House is all about. It’s the ‘People’s House.’ It’s a place that is steeped in history, but it’s also a place where everyone should feel welcome. And that’s why my husband and I have made it our mission to open up the house to as many people as we can. (Obama 2014) In her words the famous statement of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, carved in stone at his memorial site in Washington, DC, resounds: ‘I never forget that I live in a house owned by all the American people and that I have been given their trust’ (Halprin 1997, 68). Following the same line of thinking, we know of

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FIGURE 1.15  Franklin

Delano Roosevelt Memorial, Washington, DC. Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

some public buildings which have been designed with a clear consciousness of the phenomenon of dwelling. An excellent twenty-first-century example is the Casa da Música in Porto, Portugal (Figure 1.16). The concert hall, opened in 2005, was designed by Rem Koolhaas and OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture). Koolhaas himself disclosed that the design of the concert hall was based upon a meta­morphosis of a previous design for a house that had not been built (Van Gerrewey 2011, 32). Back in the Middle Ages the greatest building in the city, the church, usually a cathedral, was seen as Domus Dei, the House of God (Figure 1.17). This identification was still used in the 1950s. ‘The House of God’ was used as a public space where everyone – the rich and the poor, the king and the serf, the bishop and the layman – was welcome. It was the beginning of a consciousness that there must be at least one communal space that everybody can call home. And in the same wide-ranging meaning, the Palace of Westminster in London is commonly known as the Houses of Parliament. The two houses, the House of Lords and the House of Commons, transform the use of the former palace into a house for the people. There the elected representatives of the people use legislation to transform society into a democratic living place. Similarly, in the well-known Capitol in Washington, DC, the United States House of Representatives resides, frequently referred to as ‘The House’.

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FIGURE 1.16  Casa

da Música (Porto, Portugal), OMA. Photo: © Pavel Krok.

Dei, Holy Heart Church (Brussels, Belgium). Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

FIGURE 1.17  Domus

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In the School of Time Our three houses, as we have shown, have their own story to tell, while they reveal to us not only the phenomenon of dwelling but also the phenomenon as such (Figures 1.18, 1.19, 1.20). The structural cognitive relation between a phenomenon and the very concrete figures of the phenomenon is not defined by the abstract-concrete model. The phenomenon doesn’t exist apart from the concrete appearances in the life-world. Our three houses disclose the realm of the phenomenon of dwelling in their own way. Their uniqueness cannot be dissolved by some abstract thinking, captured in one idea. Each of the three houses expresses its own narrative of dwelling. Aware of that, we can justify the narrative nature of every phenomenon. Here the narrative of thinking becomes the thinking of the narrative. Such a practice of thinking guarantees the humanity of our species. That indicates that thinking is the engine of stories of all sorts.

FIGURE 1.18  House AST

77 (Tienen, Belgium), AST 77. Photo: © Steven Massart.

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FIGURE 1.19  White

FIGURE 1.20  Rodes

U (Tokyo, Japan), Toyo Ito. Photo: © Office Toyo Ito and Associates.

House (Brentwood, Los Angeles, CA, USA), Moore Ruble Yudell. Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

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It was the French phenomenologist Paul Ricœur who focused on narrativity as the core of each phenomenon. By analysing accurately the valuable thoughts of Western thinking, especially those of phenomenology, Ricœur found in the core of the phenomenon the realm of time. He explained why in human thinking time is experienced as a very special phenomenon. It is not just one among others. Poets, musicians, painters, philosophers know that already, each in their own way. And in our postmodern times, time has defined thinking dramatically. We can hear that profound awareness, listening to the seminal sixties song by Bob Dylan, ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’’ (1964). And in 1997, Bob Dylan released his thirtieth studio album, ‘Time Out of Mind’. The two titles sculpt two sides of the same coin of awareness. The realm of time has different sides, the different times that appear like waves in the sea of time. Humans experience time as a never-ending changing flow. At the same time, humans are struggling with their awareness of time. Sometimes they long for the absence of time in their mind, while knowing the impossibility of it. The phenomenon of time generates the narrativity in human consciousness. That’s what Ricœur explained while reflecting on humans’ amazement at time’s power. Time is at the heart of the life-world and can never be overruled by any thinking and any of its sciences. Ricœur specified that thinking is confronted with the three aporias of time: totalization, ultimate unrepresentability and inscrutability (Ricœur 1990, 241–274). The three aporias buttress each other. It’s impossible for any kind of thinking to encompass the realm of time in just one total idea, knowledge or conceptual framework. At the same time, none of the available or future representations can claim to frame the reality of time. In the close encounter with the phenomenon of time, thinking always has a blind eye. Time comes to humans with an inscrutable mask. The utopian desire to construct a kind of absolute knowledge, which covers a phenomenon, especially the phenomenon of time, is an illusion and a bad dream. In our postmodern times, this growing awareness of the lost dream of the one and only absolute truth liberates the modern human from his hubris. Ricœur argued this point clearly when he wrote: What fails is not thinking, in any acceptation of this term, but the impulse – or to put it in a better way, the hubris – that impels our thinking to posit itself as the master of meaning. Thinking encounters this failure not only on the occasion of the enigma of evil but also when time, escaping our will to mastery, surges forth on the side of what, in one way or another, is the true master of meaning. (ibid., 261) Inspired by the modern crisis of European sciences and phenomenological awareness, postmodern thinking opens a horizon for a new era of thinking that builds up the humanity of mankind. That liberating thinking engrafts itself on the phenomenon of time and generates an abundant narrative culture. This culture opens the

Thinking   39

path to meaningful stories and takes ‘narrative as a guardian of time, insofar as there can be no thought about time without narrated time’ (ibid., 241). Narrative is the existential phenomenon that encompasses human storytelling, the most profound practice of thinking that keeps humanity human. The stories of all sorts emanate from thinking as ‘the configuration of time in narrative and its refiguration by narrative’ (Ricœur 1990, 4). Guided by our three houses, while exploring the landscape of thinking, we have increasingly come to appreciate the importance of narrative thinking. It brings to light some important implications for the domain of architecture. Now, we can say that architecture appears as a cultural as well as an existential phenomenon that plays a main role in humanizing life on earth.The discipline of Western architecture went a long way on the path of thinking autonomously. But in the aftermath of the Second World War, modern architecture was out of its depth when it came to selfconfident, rational thinking.The discipline of architecture became free of every kind

FIGURE 1.21  Hearst Tower

(Manhattan, NY, USA), Foster + Partners. Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

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FIGURE 1.22  Hearst Tower

(Manhattan, NY, USA), Foster + Partners. Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

of stylistic canon. A new era of cultural and social consciousness in the discipline of architecture arose. Architecture gained its freedom to look back and forward at the same time. It discovered its own creative power to tell valuable stories for individuals and communities. The London-based Foster + Partners demonstrated this new storytelling freedom, as one mode of postmodern thinking in architecture, in their design of the Hearst Tower in Manhattan, NY, the first skyscraper in Manhattan after September 11, 2001 (Figures 1.21, 1.22).Their design is postmodern not just in the style of the diagonal lines of the zigzag diagrid and the concave windows, but even more in the combination of the cast stone façade of the historic, six-story building, designed by architect Joseph Urban, and the new forty-six-story tower, built within the historic building. Here, architecture affirms itself as a storytelling character in the city. It engrafted a new story upon an old one and created an inspiring narrative at a crucial moment in the city’s history. By showing how it incorporates the narrative in its own thinking, architecture revaluates imagination as its creative power. In the school of the phenomenon of time, thinking becomes a practice of imagining.

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References Anderson, Richard. 2013. ‘Translator’s Notes. An End to Speculation’, in Hilberseimer, Ludwig, Metropolisarchitecture, 12–83. New York, GSAPP Books. Aureli, Pier Vittorio. 2013. ‘In Hilberseimer’s Footsteps’, in Hilberseimer, Ludwig, Metropolisarchitecture, 334–363. New York, GSAPP Books. Biemel, Walter. 1962. ‘Einleitung des Herausgebers’, in Husserl, Edmund, Die Krisis der Europäischen Wissenschaften und die Transzendentale Phänomenologie, xiii–xxii. Den Haag, Martinus Nijhoff. Blundell Jones, Peter. 1995. Hans Sharoun. London, Phaidon Press. Bollnow, Otto Friedrich. 2011. Human Space. London, Hyphen Press. Carr, David. 1970. ‘Translator’s Introduction’, in Husserl, Edmund, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. An Introduction to Phenomenology Philosophy, xv–xliii. Evanston, Northwestern University Press. Colomina, Beatriz. 1998. ‘Das Wohnhaus als Schaustück’, in Koshalek, Richard and Smith, Elizabeth A.T. (eds.), The End of the Century – Hundert Jahre Gebaute Vision, 126–165. Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art. De Bleeckere, Sylvain. 2015. Levensbeschouwing democratisch belicht. Kalmthout, Pelckmans. Dwork, Deborah and van Pelt, Robert Jan. 2003. Holocaust. A History. London, W.W. Norton & Company. Dylan, Bob. 2014. Lyrics. Edited by Christopher Ricks, Lisa Nemrow and Julie Nemrow. New York, Simon & Schuster. Halprin, Lawrence. 1997. The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial. San Francisco, Chronicle Books. Heidegger, Martin. 2008. Basic Writings. Edited by David Farrell Krell. New York, HarperCollins. Hilberseimer, Ludwig. 2013. Metropolisarchitecture. New York, GSAPP Books. Husserl, Edmund. 1962. Die Krisis der Europäischen Wissenschaften und die Transzendentale Phänomenologie. Den Haag, Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. An Introduction to Phenomenology Philosophy. Evanston, Northwestern University Press. Ito, Toyo. 2016. ‘Interview’, in Briegler, Till, Innen Architekt, außen Utopist, Art Kunstmagazin, February, 46–53 (our translation). Jencks, Charles. 1977. The Language of Post-Modern Architecture. London, Academy Editions. Klotz, Heinrich (ed.). 1984. Revision der Moderne. Postmoderne Architektur 1960–1980. München, Prestel. Nowlin, Bill. 2013. Woody Guthrie. American Radical Patriot. Nashville, TN, Rounder Books. Obama, Michelle. 2014. ‘Inside the White House’. Retrieved from www.whitehouse.gov/ about/inside-white-house [September 5, 2015]. Pallasmaa, J. 1994. Identity, Intimacy and Domicile: Notes on the Phenomenology of Home. Retrieved from www.uiah.fi /studies/history2/e_ident.htmp [April 2, 2014]. Ricœur, Paul. 1990. Time and Narrative, Vol. 3. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Smith, Elizabeth A.T. 1998. ‘Re-Examining Architecture and Its History at the End of the Century’, in Koshalek, Richard and Smith, Elizabeth A.T. (eds.), The End of the Century – Hundert Jahre Gebaute Vision, 22–99. Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art. Tafuri, Manfredo. 1979. Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. Tafuri, Manfredo. 1980. Theories and History of Architecture. London, Granada Publishing. Vanderstraeten, Margot. 2013. ‘Interview Rem Koolhaas’, De Morgen Magazine, February, 2, 12–20 (our translation). Van Gerrewey, Christophe. 2011.‘What Are Men to Rocks and Mountains?’, OASE 84, 31–48.

2 IMAGINING

In the spring of 1998, we stood before the Chiat/Day Building (1984–1991) on Main Street,Venice, CA (Figure 2.1).We were mesmerized by seeing the big binoculars, understanding why the building is also referred to as the Binoculars Building. We had previously seen other works by the couple Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, American Pop artists known for large-scale sculptures. Never before had we seen one of their sculptures integrated in a building. When we walked to the side wall of the extraordinary building, a big Apple billboard appeared. It said: ‘Think different’ (Figure 2.2). In the photo, a rather elderly person was staring at us. Soon, we discovered it was a photo of the architect of the building, Frank Gehry. Many years later, we saw Aitken’s 2015 documentary Imagine . . . Frank Gehry: The Architect Says “Why Can’t I?”, in the BBC One arts series Imagine. Presenter Alan Yentob introduces the documentary saying that Gehry’s buildings are ‘all products of one extraordinary imagination’. Peter Lewis characterized Gehry in the same way, after he heard the architect lecturing in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1984, in the city’s museum. ‘He was impressively insightful, profound and imaginative, but seemed like a down to earth guy’ (Goldberger 2015, 283). Lewis, the billionaire chairman of Progressive Insurance Company, became a close friend of Gehry. He introduced his friend Frank to Thomas Krens, the director of the Guggenheim Museum (ibid., 287). The designer’s story of architect Gehry is that of a very significant exponent of narrative architecture in our postmodern times. This insight clearly demonstrates the importance of the phenomenological consciousness with its notion of narrative. It brings us closer to the imagination, the core of the phenomenological thinking of the designer.

Imagining   43

FIGURE 2.1  Chiat/Day

Building (Venice, Los Angeles, CA, USA), Frank Gehry. Photo: © Bobak Ha’Eri.

FIGURE 2.2  Chiat/Day

Building (Venice, Los Angeles, CA, USA), Frank Gehry. Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

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In the Beginning There Was Imagination, But in the End It Was Lost The work of imagination does not come out of nowhere. (Ricœur 1991, 25)

The man whose thinking dominated the narrative of Western architecture for ages, Marcus Vitruvius, worked during the first century BCE of the Roman Empire. He published De Architectura probably around 15 BCE, and dedicated his work to the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus (Fensterbusch 1991, 1–8). He coined three fundamentals of Western architectural theory and termed them firmitas (firmness), utilitas (commodity), and venustas (delight). With those theoretical pillars of architectural discourse, Vitruvius has captured the imagination of architects ever since. No one before him had taken the time to write down their reflections on the issue of architecture. Indeed, the self-consciousness of Western architecture began with an act of thinking. By doing so, Vitruvius became the founding father of Western architectural discourse. Most remarkable is the fact that Vitruvius’ thinking was in the first place powered by the narrative force of imagination. While writing the ten books of his work,Vitruvius studied the impressive power of Greek architecture. The unique narrative of those never seen buildings captured his imagination. The core of that narrative was palpable in Vitruvius’ clear recollection of the images from Greek buildings, the splendor of which he and every one of his contemporaries admired. The impact of Greek architecture on Vitruvius’ imagination was so intense that he was eager to capture the knowledge invested in it. He deduced from the Greek temples and theaters he so admired his mantra of good architecture: firmitas, utilitas, venustas. He considered his writing of the ten books on architecture an act of gratitude to the founding generations of the makers of the Greek miracle, with ancient Athens as its core (Vitruvii 1991, 3–11, 64–65). The Roman author leaned exclusively on a mindset framed by the classical worldview of the ancient Greek thinkers. He referred directly to Plato as his undisputed authority (ibid., 66, 155, 212–214). In his book, the finished product of many years of research and experience-based learning, Vitruvius succeeded in raising the Greek imagination, embedded in its buildings, to a status of authority. This was well understood by the geniuses of the Renaissance. The Italian humanist Leon Battista Alberti presented the first draft of his De re aedificatoria (On the Art of Building in Ten Books) to Pope Nicholas V in 1452. The manuscript was first printed in Florence in 1485 (Choay 1997, 290). Alberti’s treatise did far more than offer an improved version of Vitruvius’ work. It established the termini or fundamental principles of ancient Greek architecture as the ultimate authority in architectural thinking and practice. This was well understood by the other Florentine genius, Leonardo da Vinci. He commented on Vitruvius’ treaty in his famous drawing, Vitruvian Man (Figure 2.3). In his turn, Raphael promoted this interpretation in his School of Athens by painting the personage of Plato with the facial features of the old master of Florence. It’s difficult to overestimate the significance and impact of the canonization of Vitruvius’

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presentation of the Greek architectural termini by the creators of the Renaissance. We can read their canonization as an exploration with an open eye towards the near and far future.This process, at the dawn of modern times, resulted in establishing the concepts of ‘the Rule and the Model’ in architecture for the ages to come. Françoise Choay has done extensive research on the development of normative theory in architecture and urban design. She concludes her research with these words: In the process, Alberti’s De re aedificatoria has acquired dimensions hitherto unacknowledged, which allow it to lay claim to the decisive rupture, the inaugural moment when a new and improbable demand for rationality gave rise to the instaurational project and inscribed it in three discontinuous texture figures: the architectural treatise, the utopia, and the theory of urbanism. (ibid., 271)

FIGURE 2.3  The Vitruvian

Man, Leonardo da Vinci.

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The narrative of rationality was already awakening in the classic period of ancient Greek culture, architecture included.Vitruvius was very well aware of that aspect of the Greeks. He continually praised the decimal number system and pure geometric shapes like the circle, the triangle and the square, as the key to the magic of proportion, harmony and symmetry (Vitruvii 1991, 65–67).The belief in rationality as the key to defining unity, truth and beauty became, via Vitruvius, the main concern of architecture and urban design. The growth of the architectural authority of the Renaissance continued into eighteenth- to nineteenth-century Neoclassicism and reached its most developed phase in the rational utopia of CIAM’s Charter of Athens and Hilberseimer’s metropolis design. It all started with a very strong imagination that shaped a completely new human and cultural mental frame that defined even the identity of Western culture, but it ended in a tragic dead-end street. The story of Western architecture, always a mirror of the whole culture, ended in the twentieth century with a chapter which was literally painted in black by artists such as Kazimir Malevich, Ad Reinhardt and On Kawara. Edmund Husserl was standing in the dead-end street of Western rationalism and rediscovered the art of thinking in his philosophical narrative of the phenomenon. In the light of this narrative, postmodern thinking began to flourish. It engendered the work of Paul Ricœur who restored the human and cultural value of the narrative. In its wake, thinking and imagination regained trust in each other. Indeed, when listening to the story of architectural discourse, we see that it all started with imagination and it ended with the paradoxical death of that imagination. By coining the ancient Greek architecture as the Model, the Rule and the Ultimate Reference, the power of imagination was first restricted and in the end condemned.

Reimagining Imagination The ex-Beatle John Lennon released his song ‘Imagine’ in October 1971. He praised the power of imagination to build a global world worth living in. Inspired by his wife Yoko Ono, a New York-based multimedia artist, Lennon’s song represented the yearnings of a whole generation, born after the Second World War.They understood that without a positive reassessment of the power of imagination, a new apocalyptic disaster could not be avoided in the future of mankind. Artists of all kinds found a new innocence to create new stories which appealed to people’s hearts and minds. The global dangers of the Cold War, managed by harsh rational thinking, were culturally counter-attacked by the creation of new works which appealed to people’s imagination, young and old. New stories appeared on the scene of popular culture in the second half of the last century, with characters like Luke Skywalker (Star Wars) and Harry Potter (the Potter books and films). This tradition continued in twenty-first-century mainstream culture in the form of literary and cinematic characters like Frodo Baggins (The Lord of the Rings, inspired by the high-fantasy and anti-modernistic 1954 novel of J.R.R. Tolkien), Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games) and Daenerys Targaryen,Tyrion Lannister, Jon Snow and many others (Game

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of Thrones). Moreover, comic book heroes Batman, Superman, and Spiderman resurfaced on the silver screen. Those fictional stories are just a small part of postmodern culture and its practice of narrative thinking. Frank Gehry and other postmodern architects responded to the new Zeitgeist and gave a new place to imagination in designing architecture. And

FIGURE 2.4  The

Dancing House (Prague, Czech Republic), Frank Gehry and Vlado Milunic´. Photo: © Sergey Ashmarin.

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on the scene of postmodern thinking, Paul Ricœur explored the strong phenom­ enological bond between thinking, narrativity and imagination.That bond originated in ancient Greece, out of a totally new cultural and architectural world. Since the second half of the last century, that phenomenological bond has laid the foundation for a designer’s story, telling how the designer freed himself from restrained imagination. That’s exactly what Gehry has done in Prague (Figure 2.4). Fred and Ginger, also known as the Dancing House (1994–1996), with its glass and curved concrete pillars, sits on the right bank of the Vltava (Moldau) river in Prague.The House was commissioned by the Nationale-Nederlanden Bank, since 1991 the ING Group, in Prague. Frank Gehry designed the House in close collaboration with Czech architect Vlado Milunic´. Milunic´ was a close friend of Václav Havel, a dissident writer in Soviet-dominated postwar Czechoslovakia, who became the first and the last president (1989–1992) of democratic Czechoslovakia and also the first president (1993–2003) of the new European state, the Czech Republic. Michael Žantovský portrays Havel as ‘a key figure of the twentieth-century’ (Žantovský 2014). Without a doubt, Havel played the main role in the designer’s story of the Dancing House (Gehry, Milunic´, and Fialová 2003). Indeed, Havel had lived in the neighborhood from his childhood and became co-owner of the neighboring house, a city house in Neo-Renaissance style, built at the end of the nineteenth century and destroyed during the bombing in 1945. The remains of it were finally removed in 1960. After the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, President Havel wanted to revive his neighborhood and asked Milunic´ for a first design study for a building on the empty site. When the Dutch Bank came in, they asked Milunic´ to collaborate with a world-renowned architect. Gehry was chosen. With an almost unlimited budget, the Californian-based architect and Milunic´ worked on Milunic´’s original design which was based on an ensemble of a rather static and a more dynamic, a kind of yin-yang, composition (Goldberger 2015, 236–259). At the end of the process, the design seemed to appear as a real challenge to being accepted by the government and the citizens of Prague. A public controversy grew regarding the unfamiliar appearance and strange construction of the building. Again, it was Havel as president who defended the design. In spite of all the criticism, the construction began in 1994 and was finished in 1996. Nowadays, the Dancing House has become a city icon, a landmark. In 2005, the Czech National Bank issued a gold coin with the motif of the Dancing House as the final coin of the series ‘10 Centuries of Architecture’. The building is more than a praised postmodern, deconstructivist icon in Prague. It tells in its own unique way the story of a new era for the city, the era in which the imagination came back to the reborn city. Havel wanted the building to become an expressive sign of the Velvet Revolution, the non-violent transition of Czechoslovakia from a communist regime to a parliamentary democracy, accomplished between November 17 and December 29, 1989. Havel wanted to express publicly that now the time had come to reimagine the city and the country from a free, democratic perspective. That included a new space for architecture, designed with the power of a freed imagination. Gehry responded to that fundamental need to create a real sign of a changing society. Therefore, he created a new character on the

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scene of the old city. He himself named the house ‘Fred and Ginger’, after the legendary dancing couple of Hollywood film, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (Gehry, Milunic´, and Fialová 2003, 76, 92). In his view, Californian Hollywood is built on freedom of imagination which produces artistic works that get a strong response in popular culture. The nine successful musical comedies featuring Astaire and Rogers, released between 1933 and 1939, remain forever engraved on the collective memory as interwar works of genuine artistry, dancing elegance and the art of enjoying life together. Those qualities of life are only made possible when there is a social space where people are free to imagine their world. Seen in that perspective, the Dancing House tells a lasting story in which Lennon’s song ‘Imagine’ still resonates.

The Heart of Storytelling Every human being, young and old, knows from his own personal experience, precisely what kind of fascination listening to a narrated story involves. It stimulates the power of both the narrator’s and listener’s imagination. This mental process transcends the quotidian time experience. Ricœur characterizes the phenomenon of experiencing time during a narrated story, ‘as a temporal totality and as the creation of a mediation between time as passage and time as duration’ (Ricœur 1991, 22).While narrating or listening to a story, our imagination creates a unique mental space in which we experience time as passage and as duration at the same time. This phenomenon is not exclusive to oral or written storytelling. The binding of opposite tendencies, passage and duration, in one creation applies equally for buildings as storytellers. The Dancing House appears as a narrator who catches the imagination of the city. It visualizes passage and duration in the image of one building. The curved glass tower evokes time as an iterant reality while it dances with the more static part of the building, expressing duration. The same process happens on the level of the listener. The person who walks along the bank of the Vltava (Moldau), halts a moment at the building and listens to its story, feels his imagination awakening, which introduces him to a narrative space where passage and duration intertwine. Indeed, narrative architecture acts as every story, being ‘the synthesis of the heterogeneous’ (ibid., 22). Besides the intensive time experience storytelling realizes, the analogy between oral/textual and architectural narratives reveals another creation by the mental power of imagination. Again it’s Ricœur who shows us the way, even if he restricts himself to narratology in a narrow sense, i.e. the study of literature. Let’s consider for a moment how he explains emplotment as ‘the creative centre of the narrative and narratology’ (ibid., 24). It is the function of poetry in its narrative and dramatic form, to propose to the imagination and to its mediation various figures that constitute so many thought experiments by which we learn to think together the ethical aspects of human conduct and happiness and misfortune. (ibid., 23)

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No novelist, no playwright, no filmmaker, no stand-up comedian can tell a story without a plot. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle was the first to theorize the narrative phenomenon of emplotment. In his Poetics (Greek: Περὶ ποιητικῆς, Latin: De Poetica, c. 335 BCE) he tried to understand the phenomenon of storytelling, which was a big deal in ancient Greece (Aristotle 1996). Before the great philosophers – Socrates, Plato, Aristotle – took the stage in Athens, the public adored listening to lyric and epic poetry as well as to dramas, i.e. comedies, tragedies and satyr plays.They liked those works of imagination so much that they even imagined and realized a completely new architectural place in human culture: the theater. This narrative place, never seen before, became the birthplace of the phenomenon of spectatorship (De Bleeckere 2015, 229–239). In the open air theater, people came together just to sit down, be silent, listening and looking intently at the dramatized play. During the show, each spectator practiced his imagination to a great degree.Thinking was an act of imagined narration.There wasn’t a strong distinction between thinking and imagination. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle introduced such a detachment. Imagination, images, theater, narration, in short all narrative culture became the object of criticism.The concept of eternal truth henceforth dominated thinking, and imagination became a separate element, isolated and in the end condemned. Thinking and rationality happened to be synonyms. In that perspective, Aristotle secluded the play from the theater and locked the play up in the text, the logic of which he analyzed. In his study, he termed the narrative logic of the play the plot. He was eager to restrain the imagination, invested in the play, by proclaiming the esthetic laws of the genre, especially of the tragedy genre. Ultimately, the textual narration of a play was just an exercise in practicing some esthetic laws. Because of the logic of the plot, the quantum of thinking in a narrative text is, according to Aristotle, always inferior to pure thinking and pure logic, emancipated from any kind of imagination. In our postmodern times, we realize that the human mind cannot be split into different parts, one constructive and one destructive. The human mind works as a whole and the narrative is no longer considered an inferior part of human thinking. The plot is not just an application of esthetic so-called eternal laws.The plot is rather a narrative time unity with a beginning, a middle and an ending (Ricœur 1995, 309). In our postmodern perspective, the narrative and its emplotment are now granted the status of being essential for building up human society and art. Ricœur understood this very well when he concluded that the emplotment makes a narrative an authentic way of thinking in the crucial domain of human existence. The oral or textual storytelling brings different elements together in one time sequence. It’s a composition, a configuration. The essence of storytelling is not imprisoned in the written or spoken words.Their configuration is just the basis of the second component of storytelling, ‘the reconfiguration of life by narrative’ (ibid., 22). Not only is the writing or telling of a story an imaginative praxis of the human mind, but the same activity comes into play in the mind of the reader or listener. A story comes to life through the praxis of interpretation with its two mental levels. First, there’s the interpretation in the mode of understanding the words of the narrative. Second,

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the interpretation also appears in imagining the story line by creating the time unit of the story, time as passage and duration, and the mirroring of the same narrative line in one’s own existence. Ricœur designates the first level ‘the internal configuration of the work’ and the second level ‘the external refiguration of life’ (ibid., 27). The necessary praxis of bi-level interpretation of the spectators in the ancient Greek theater, watching the drama Oedipus the King by Sophocles, happens in ‘the point of intersection’ of the internal configuration and the external refiguration of life. Here, we find the true nature of the phenomenon of thinking in the mode of the imaginary. Indeed, Ricœur describes the phenomenon of narrativity as ‘a mediation between man and the world’, in which we find Husserl’s identification of the phenomenon in general as an encounter of man and the life-world. Ricœur zooms in on the phenomenon of the narrative and finds there three ‘mediations’ or encounters: one between man and the world (referentiality), another one between man and man (communicability), and the third one, between man and himself (self-understanding) (ibid.). During the imaginative praxis of thinking, the spectator or story-listener/reader is reviewing not only his own life but also that of humankind. He actively considers the whole range of human existence in the ethical spectrum of good and bad, and the existential spectrum of happiness and misfortune. During the act of imaginative interpretation of the story, the spectator or listener/ reader is moving around the meaning of his life and human life in general. Consider for one moment the biblical stories which, throughout the ages, stayed textually the same, but the deeper meaning was and is reinvented by every new generation and its different communities. Even the first generations of Christians created their own image of Jesus, as can be seen in the existence of the four Gospels. This postmodern underlining of the never-ending process of interpretation in relation to human life itself, rediscovers the value of the phenomenon of tradition. It consists of the intense relation between the poles of sedimentation and innovation. By creating its own existence in time and history, the productive imagination works between those poles. Thanks to that continuing process of interpretation, the narrative tradition is kept alive (ibid., 25). Without it, traditions attenuate and ultimately die away. By creating living traditions, narratives constitute the identity of individuals as well as communities. By telling and retelling their stories, individuals and communities constitute their narrative identity (ibid., 241). One important component of these identities is the built environment and its architectural stories.

Metaphor’s Story Stories matter. In 2016 and beyond, those who wish to create a better world will have to make storytelling the center of their efforts, not an afterthought. It’s clear that economic and military might will always be the key levers of statecraft. But more than ever before, swift and dramatic change is being driven by powerful narratives that crisscross the world at the speed of a click or a swipe. (Murdoch 2016, 19)

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This postmodern voice belongs to James Murdoch, CEO of 21st Century Fox, looking out from the window of 2016 into the near future. Murdoch’s proclamation of the power of narratives sounds in harmony with our postmodern era. Indeed, our times are moving further away from the rational roots of modernist ideology and, as a consequence, the freedom of imagining and creating change in society and culture – and also in the domain of architecture – is gaining ground. A sure sign of this dynamic is the narrative process of restoring metaphor. The word metaphor belongs to the European languages and is derived from the ancient Greek noun μεταφορά (metaphora) and verb μεταφέρειη (metapherein). The compound noun is made up of the preposition meta, meaning ‘after, with, across’, and the verb pherein, meaning ‘to bear’. Metapherein refers to the action of carrying something from one place to another, especially in the sense that someone has to overcome some gap, for instance they have to cross a bridge over a river. That happened once in a physical sense during the Cold War when the Americans and Soviets used the Glienicke Bridge in Potsdam near Berlin to exchange spies. Director Steven Spielberg tells this historic story about the unique encounter between two ideological enemies in his film Bridge of Spies (2015). At the same time, the material bridge also produced a political and existential mental landscape for everyone who was involved in the process, like the Russian spy Rudolf Abel and the American lawyer James B. Donovan. This example shows how the physical or literal sense of the process of metapherein grounds the more figural or broader sense of the word metaphor. Within the realm of imagination, this metaphorical process of creating meaning goes on forever in human culture. Indeed, the engine of this cognitive and at the same time poetic action of the human mind never halts within the realm of imagination. This doesn’t mean that in history the creating force of metaphors has always received acclaim from everyone. The presence of the Greek word metaphor teaches us that, already in ancient Greek, metaphor was a well-known narrative phenomenon. It was praised and used for its poetic and rhetorical radiance in storytelling.While reflecting on the narrative power of Homer’s epic stories, the Iliad and the Odyssey, ancient Greek storytellers and writers discovered the strong and direct influence of metaphors upon the audience’s imagination. They understood how metaphors are an essential key to the language’s ability to create meaning, the understructure of any communication between men. Even politicians in the parliament and lawyers in the courtroom hoped to win the attention of, respectively, the elected members and the judges, by using well-chosen metaphors in their speeches. When the Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, appeared on the intellectual scene in Athens, a new intellectual tradition started. The use of metaphors became the favorite target of censorship. In the name of the supposed Universal Truth with its rational control over the imagination of the human mind, metaphors’ radiance was bleached. In architecture, the imagination with its metaphors was curtailed by the esthetical duress of the Hellenistic canon of styles, models and rules. And when modern rationalism tried to occupy the architectural scene, the only metaphor that was accepted was that of the rectangular box. Houses were designed as shoeboxes; apartments and offices

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appeared as blocks of great boxes. Goldberger, biographer of the 1989 Pritzker Prize winner Frank Gehry, refers to this metaphorical minimalism of modernist architecture when he writes: ‘Frank was consciously going against the puritanical strain that had always run through modernist architecture, the belief that a building needed to be “honest”, “pure”, and “rational”’ (Goldberger 2015, 319). Gehry’s revival of the metaphor in architecture in the 1990s and the first decades of the twenty-first century, stems from the postmodern revolution in thinking that started with Friedrich Nietzsche in the 1870s and 1880s. At the dawn of postmodern thinking, Nietzsche retold the metaphor’s story. Under the motto, ‘to look at science in the perspective of the artist, but at art in that of life’, the German philologist and philosopher argued that the phenomenon of metaphor is one of the cornerstones of language. By using metaphors, humans are able to communicate and create meaningful imagery in words, paintings, statues and buildings (Nietzsche 2009, 5). Nietzsche explained how modernistic rationalism developed an anti-metaphor strategy, pursuing the goal of a totally controlled metropolis. He rejected such a modernistic utopia. His main concern was the value of life on earth, not only human life but the earthly phenomenon of life as such. Only by the mental force of imagination can humans stay connected with the surrounding life-world. Meaning is the key to this. Metaphors are meaning-bearers, by means of which humans try to create meaning in life by telling stories that matter. For Nietzsche, that process of creation demands free spirits who have the courage to evaluate and reinterpret traditions with their sediments in words and works. Traditions like esthetic canons and styles use metaphors that sometime later become petrified. Therefore, an open mind and free spirit keep the imagination always connected to the living world, humans and things. Then, humans can create vibrant metaphors, rooted in the realm of life itself. In his 1975 essay La métaphore vive, translated as The Rule of Metaphor, Ricœur endorsed Nietzsche’s idea of the remaining relevance of the metaphor (Ricœur 2003). Due to the work of Nietzsche and Ricœur, the metaphor regained its indispensable place in human culture. Imagining always creates metaphors as an expression of a cognitive process, a thinking action so to speak, that creates a sense of personal and collective meaning. Metaphors, helping to shape stories, sustain a process of changing meaning (Ricœur 2003, 128–139). The postmodern recovery of the cognitive phenomenon of metaphor and its narrative landscapes opens the door to a truly revolutionary path of creativity. Metaphors have liveliness when the imagination they spring from stays related to time, movement and change. That became the program of some of the most important avant-garde movements at the beginning of the last century. Inspired by Nietzsche’s eulogy of life, the avant-garde artists, aligned with Dadaism and Surrealism, wanted art to stay attuned to real life (Hopkins 2004, 1–29).They began to explore new horizons in the landscape of imagination, contravening the established esthetical canons, especially academicism, the nineteenth-century canon of so-called classical eternal beauty. ‘Rather life’ than art as a goal in itself, was their

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priority (ibid., 30–61). Kadri characterizes the aim of the movement of Surrealism as ‘reimagining life’ (2011, 17–78). In their works there resonates Nietzsche’s rediscovery of the role of the Olympian god Dionysus in ‘the birth’ of the art of Greek tragedies. If someone were to transform Beethoven’s Ode to Joy into a painting and not restrain his imagination when millions of people sink dramatically into the dust, then we would come close to the Dionysian. Now the slave becomes a free man; now all the stiff, hostile barriers break apart, those things which necessity and arbitrary power or ‘saucy fashion’ have established between men. (Nietzsche 2009, 13) In the pre-Socratic era of the great epics, tragedies and comedies, the god Dionysus represents the imagination captured by life-related topics: body, sexuality, spring, wine, lust, ecstasy, dance, music, rhythm, festival, carnival, coalescence (Daraki 1985, 73–116; Graziosi 2013, 230). While Apollo represents rational order, stability and even eternity, his opponent Dionysus incorporates time, flow, change, movement. The Olympian Dionysus connects life and art via the metaphorical source of river and stream currents. In that Dionysian space of imagination, Thales of Miletus, the pre-Socratic philosopher and mathematician, learned that the originating substance of nature and matter is water. In the next generation of early Greek philosophers, Heraclitus of Ephesus coined the aphorism ‘panta rhei’ (πάντα ῥεῖ), meaning ‘everything flows’. In the same sense, in 1971 Bob Dylan recorded his song ‘Watching the River Flow’ (Dylan 2014, 386). Postmodern humans feel like nomads in time, experiencing their imagination as a river of thoughts, feelings and images. James Joyce ended his novel Ulysses (1922) without using any punctuation. All words spring from what literary criticism calls ‘a stream of consciousness’ or ‘interior monologue’, of which the undercurrent is a stream of imagination.

The Designer’s Dionysian Imagination Can the designer of architecture be a storyteller? It seems that the designer’s story is rather boring because its main character is always moved by just use and utility, efficiency and profit. Indeed, the trivialization of modernistic axioms turned deadly for the mental power of imagination and produced lifeless spaces. From the midtwentieth century, a new generation of designers wanted to tell another story. They wanted to design architecture through connecting it with the life of the people, and began to tell vibrant stories, forged with a Dionysian imagination.

Gehry’s Folds Gehry: ‘If you go back in history, in the art world, the fold has always been a fascination. It’s clearly a manifestation that has some resonance with humanity

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and I say it happens because it’s primitive, because when you’re in your mother’s arms, you’re enveloped in folds.’ (Aitken 2015) The Dancing House in Prague realizes the impossible: transferring the Dionysian metaphor of dance to a building. The creative essence of the dance is the fold. In the documentary Imagine . . . Frank Gehry:The Architect Says “Why Can’t I?”, Gehry refers to the esthetic element of fold as a distinguishing mark in the paintings of Flemish Primitives and in the paintings and statues of the Baroque. The interview between Gehry and Yentob in Aitken’s documentary affirms what the American architect Philip Johnson, the curator of the 1991 Venice Architecture Biennale, said of his younger colleague Frank Gehry who was one of his favorite architects: ‘His muse is Art’ (Goldberger 2015, 274). Art prospers preeminently in the mental hotbed of imagination. While searching for his own designer’s path, Gehry always found artists to inspire him. One of them he encountered during his extended travels through Europe. In Dijon, once the Burgundian capital, he was mesmerized by the sculptures of Claus Sluter (Figure 2.5). The fourteenth-century Dutch sculptor felt himself challenged by the fascinating realism in the paintings of the Flemish

FIGURE 2.5  Mourner (Dijon, France), Claus Sluter. Photo: © Walters Art Museum.

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Primitive painters, the brothers Jan and Hubert van Eyck. Contemplating Sluter’s monk figures with corrugated drapery, especially the cowls of the monks in The Mourners of Dijon, standing around the tombs of the Dukes of Burgundy, started ‘Frank’s thinking about the notion of evoking the draping of fabric in solid form’ (Goldberger 2015, 273). Sluter’s folds belong to the mourning Cistercian monks contemplating death. In the designing hands of Gehry, the fold refers back to its origin, the realm of life. This metaphorical creation has gained the status of a paradigm in the outstanding design of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, open to the public since 1997. It is quintessential Gehryesque architecture, the Dionysian cathedral of postmodern art. The different components of its fold metaphor are the curved plates, the changing light, the vicinity of the river, the neighborhood of the bridge, the interwovenness with the city. To realize the folds maximally, Gehry decided to use curved titanium plates. In Bilbao, titanium became a new material in the field of architecture and it demanded a whole year of research in the Edgar Thomson Steel Works of Pittsburgh, PA, to find the required plates (van Bruggen 1997, 141). Those titanium plates shape the persona of the building with its unique appearance on the scene of the city. Due to the carefully chosen material for the folds, the sunlight steers the appearance of the Museum. That look is never the same, it’s a perpetual mobile of light. It’s a very concrete solution to how to make a static and stabile thing, i.e. a building, that highlights change and movement, markers of a Dionysian experience (Figure 2.6). The Bilbao Museum doesn’t act alone. It touches the water of the Nervión river and, at the same time, remains firmly on the shore. In all his designs, Gehry exploits the metaphorical sense of water as the earthly source of life (Figure 2.7). As an experienced sailor, he developed a strong feeling for the water and the wind, freely

FIGURE 2.6  The

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (Bilbao, Spain), Frank Gehry. Photo: © Phillip Maiwald.

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FIGURE 2.7  The

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (Bilbao, Spain), Frank Gehry. Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

playing in the sails of the boat. The strong Dionysian feeling of being closely connected as a human being with nature’s life forces – water, wind, light – strengthened Gehry’s imagination as a designer. In his Bilbao Museum, the folds in the titanium act like the sails of a moored boat because using titanium made it possible that the plates can even be slightly billowed by the wind without disturbing the smooth surface of the building. The metaphorical transfer of the meaning of the ever changing water to the expressive Bilbao building is further emphasized by the image of the steam, occasionally pumped up out from ‘under the surrounding walkway between the river and the moat in front of the glass-walled atrium’ (Faires 2007, 25).The steam evokes the image of the steamboat, representing the industrial, shipbuilding and metallurgical past of the location and, at the same time, esthetically it links the building with the fluidness of water. The steam acts like the water kissing the building and even enveloping the wanderer, the building and the water, again a Dionysian experience. Extending the life metaphor of water, fish always play a leading role in Gehry’s designer’s story (van Bruggen 1997, 44–49). He studied tirelessly the smooth movements of fish in rivers or in the sea. Sometimes, he expresses his findings directly in his designs, such as the 52-meter-long Golden Fish Sculpture (El Peix), designed for the 1992 Summer Olympics and still a striking landmark on Barcelona’s seafront, the sculpture Standing Glass Fish in the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and the Fishdance Restaurant in Kobe, Japan. And the titanium plates of the Bilbao Museum can also be seen as fish scales.

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Every metaphor bridges. Gehry likes building in the neighborhood of a bridge and, when possible, he wants to connect his design with the existing bridge. That happens in Kobe, Japan, and even more in Minneapolis with the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum on the University of Minnesota campus, overlooking the Mississippi River and connecting with the Washington Avenue Bridge. In Bilbao, Gehry marries his Guggenheim Museum with the La Salve Bridge. The Bilbao bridge gives the northern quarter, La Salve, up in the hills of the Basque country, access to the city over the Nervión. By designing a tower which invites the La Salve Bridge to dance, Gehry reinforces the connecting performance of the bridge on the scene of the city. A bridge creates an aura that always has a positive effect on people crossing it. A bridge not only builds relations, it also enables surprising views without slowing down the flow of the river. In this perspective, the connotation of the word bridge differs totally from that of the word dam. The positive performance of a bridge regarding the river and the land resembles the performance of a metaphor regarding the creation of meaning in the realm of imagination. Seen in that light, Gehry is a bridge-building architect, a ‘pontifex’ in the domain of architecture, just like Dionysus, the Olympian, in ancient Greek culture. The whole design process – the first sketches in July 1991, the start of the construction in October 1993, the opening in October 1997 – ended the story, told mostly in Los Angeles, about Gehry and his unbuildable fantasies or costly follies. The worldwide acclaim Gehry received with his Bilbao Guggenheim Museum was not only due to the mesmerizing design, but also to the detailed research of the city plan, location and different street views. Before he worked out his accurate design regarding the relation of the Museum to the city, Gehry, together with Thomas Krenz, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, suggested to the city the new location of the Museum. The first idea of the government of the Basque region was to transform the huge abandoned old wine warehouse, the Alhóndiga, into a contemporary art museum. After the government invited Krenz and the Guggenheim Foundation to carry out its plan as an important stepping-stone in the revitalization strategy for the whole city, Krenz invited Gehry to come to Bilbao. They both agreed the Alhóndiga couldn’t be converted into an art museum (Goldberger 2015, 290).They proposed a whole new plan and found a fitting place for a new museum to be built on the bank of the Nervión near the La Salve Bridge, revitalizing the abandoned industrial site. And so it happened. The government gave Krenz the green light to organize a design competition between three architects, each from a different continent: Arata Isozaki, Japan (Asia),Wolf Prix from Coop Himmelb(l)au,Vienna (Europe), and Frank Gehry, Los Angeles (North America). Chaired by Heinrich Klotz, the former director of the Deutsches Architecturmuseum in Frankfurt, the international jury’s choice of Gehry’s design was not a foregone conclusion (Goldberger 2015, 288–293). Ultimately, Gehry won the competition. One important argument of the jury was the potential of the design to deliver a building that could become a recognizable emblem of the city.Throughout the process, the Basque delegation deliberately referred to the Sydney Opera House by Jørn Utzon. Indeed, the finished Gehry

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building reshaped the self-consciousness of citizens in Bilbao. Gehry’s Museum behaves as the bride, dressed up to meet her groom on the day of their wedding (Figure 2.8). This isn’t a cheap metaphor. With the opening of the brand new Museum, Bilbao was born-again. The city’s new future began. As with a stroke of magic, the detrimental international image of the city melted as snow in the sun. Having been a city of fear for decades, haunted by the terror attacks of the armed Basque separatist organization, the Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), the city transformed itself into a city of joy. Every international visitor who traveled to the Museum in the months after its opening in October 1997 – almost four million within the first three years (ibid., 303) – could experience how proud the citizens of Bilbao were about their Museum. It immediately became clear that Guggenheim Museum Bilbao had written a whole new chapter in the story of the city, a story with a happy ending. The whole building process was nearly completed in time and it was ‘three million dollars under budget’ (ibid., 299). It was only as a result of additional tourist taxes that the Basque regional treasury was reimbursed for the cost of the building (ibid., 303).

FIGURE 2.8  The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (Bilbao, Spain), Frank Gehry. Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

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The physical and mental fusion between the Museum and the city was in all its facets so excellent that we can call it without any doubt a phenomenal Dionysian act, a very strong statement of the creative power of imagination. And that statement sounded out loud internationally. Gehry’s biographer, Goldberger, characterizes that sound very clearly, writing that Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao ‘brought forth the most famous building in the world, transformed tourism, reimagined the museum, and changed the role of architecture as a force for urban development’ (ibid., 311).After the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, nearly every city in the West and even in the East wanted to redefine its image to the world with ‘an iconic building’: ‘Gehry changed the course of architecture with his museum at Bilbao’ (Jencks 2005, 9).And Giovannini adds: ‘The art ideas Gehry brought into architecture irreverently challenged a whole value system consolidated during decades of Modernism’ (Giovannini 1997, 21). As for Gehry himself, the successful Bilbao experience had the side effect of making him a famous architect on the world scene and he got called to do other ‘Frank Gehry’ buildings (Jencks 2005, 9).Those callers, only motivated by pursuit of profit by means of architecture, had no idea how intensely the building of the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum was interwoven with the city. They missed the designer’s story. Fortunately for Gehry, the city of Los Angeles, overwhelmed by the worldwide response to the Bilbao Museum, felt a sense of guilt that it hadn’t yet found a way to build Gehry’s striking design for the Walt Disney Concert Hall. After Bilbao, the time had come to show the world that Los Angeles was indeed a world-class cultural metropolis. After the opening of the hall in the fall of 2003, the musicians, the audience and the critics were unanimous in praise of the building. Hubert Muschamp of The New York Times was one of those critics. He wrote that the Disney Hall brought him to ‘aesthetic ecstasy’, adding that ‘audience, music, architecture were infused by a sensation of unity so profound that time stopped’ (Goldberger 2015, 324). Those words bring us back to the Dionysian nature of the fold metaphor, an important key to Gehry’s designer’s story, excellently representing the postmodern narrative era of imagination. If we can say that ‘Bilbao’ opened the door for Gehry as a world architect, it’s even more apposite to conclude that Gehry first opened the door to imagination in postmodern architecture and culture. In that perspective, Goldberger notes quite pertinently, linking the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao with the Guggenheim Museum New York (1959) by Frank Lloyd Wright: If Wright showed in 1959 that architectural space did not have to be enclosed in a box, Frank nearly half a century later demonstrated that architectural space did not have to be defined by a single system of geometry or, for that matter, by any conventional order. (ibid., 296)

Pétillon’s and Sloterdijk’s Foam White balloons spill out of the windows and doors of a house in a series of installations by French artist Charles Pétillon (Figure 2.9). In his work, the Paris-based

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FIGURE 2.9  Souvenirs

de famille (Invasions), Charles Pétillon. © Charles Pétillon.

photographer and installation artist aims to use balloons to alter the way people perceive familiar things and spaces.‘These balloon invasions are metaphors’, the artist says. ‘Their goal is to change the way in which we see the things we live alongside each day without really noticing them’ (Mull 2015). In his installation Souvenirs de famille (Invasions), the white balloons act as foam. This image of the foam-house is a life-metaphor for childhood family memories that emerge from homes. However, Pétillon’s installation also strongly portrays how architecture can literally be broken up by a shifting life inside. Indeed, architecture is not an autonomous discipline and the objects it produces are certainly not autonomous objects. Pétillon’s house is subject to internal changes. It is not by chance that German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk also uses the metaphor of foam; in his case, to describe our postmodern era (Sloterdijk 2004). In his book Schäume/Foams (2004), Sloterdijk offers a philosophical theory of the present age from a specific angle. Life, Sloterdijk argues, unfolds in a multi-focal fashion. The metaphor of foam serves to reassert the pluralism of world inventions, thus allowing Sloterdijk to formulate a philosophical-anthropological interpretation of our postmodern narrative era, going beyond existing descriptions. Foam likewise answers the question as to what shape a bond must take in order to bind individuals together to form what the sociological tradition terms ‘society’. Sloterdijk correctly recognizes that the story of our society is constantly in motion. Furthermore, his project demonstrates how belief in a grand unity has dissolved and how, instead, a

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heterogeneous social order has emerged which has no center and which is characterized by no overarching logic (Borch 2011). Even on the scale of the house this phenomenon becomes visible. Here too, we have to admit, there is not just one story to be told. In most of the Western world the hierarchically structured traditional family has disappeared and has given way to a multitude of different, fluid and polycentric life-forms. Without any intentional link, Sloterdijk and Pétillon clearly use the same metaphor, to narrate about current time and its rediscovery of the creative power of imagination. Another element that connects both the French artist and the German philosopher is their indirect call to architecture. What do we have to expect from architecture in this rapidly moving period of change? If we take foam as a medium that only fleetingly allows identification of provisional identities (or bubbles), then, Sloterdijk advocates, the task for the designer is to create the conditions of cohabitation. And indeed, one of the challenges of modern collectives is that of ‘creating spatial conditions that enable both the isolation of individuals, and the concentration of isolated entities into collective ensembles of cooperation and contemplation’ (Sloterdijk 2004, 607, our translation). And Sloterdijk adds,‘this calls for a new commitment on the part of architecture’. Indeed, present-day architecture has to make room for a postmodern society. And there is even more. Architecture can and must play its own role in both developing and maintaining this open society. The name for that open society is democracy. Here, we reach the bridge where the designer’s story and the story of democracy meet.

Moral Imagination Thus far, we have followed the route of imagination. We as humans experience imagination as a strong narrative force in the realm of our mind. Without it, our mind wouldn’t be able to register and direct any movement or change. Dreaming while sleeping shows how the narrative force of imagination can be overwhelming, in a negative as well as in a positive sense. Nightmares can carry us away in very frightening stories while other dreams can transport us into hopeful scenes. The narrative force of imagination has a dark and a light side. The successful science fiction story Star Wars is based on that universal human condition. It demonstrates how the way we use our imagination determines the connections with ourselves, each other and the surrounding world in either a constructive or a destructive way. Imagination, as the way to see things and events in the light of time – past, present, future and a mixture – always has either negative or positive consequences for human life in society. Indeed, the force of imagination never operates in an impartial way.Therefore, imagination always works as a moral force, especially when humans, while awake, express their dreams about their life, their future, their society. The narrative of ‘The American Dream’ contains the national mindset of the United States. And, in this sense, it’s understandable that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic speech ‘I Have a Dream’, delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, has been described as ‘one of the most memorable speeches of the

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FIGURE 2.10  Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr. at Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963 (Washington, DC, USA). Photo: Unknown.

century’ (MacArthur 1999, 327–332) (Figure 2.10). His speech, calling for a United States without racism and discrimination, echoes the moral imagination, which the American philosopher John Dewey, respected as a socially oriented American pragmatist, intensively studied (Haack 2006, 38–40). Dewey rejected every kind of classical or modern thinking which pretends to possess a set of unchangeable truths and rules, hanging over real life. He underlines how the ongoing practice of moral imagination succeeds in connecting thinking and life. Imagination is the life force of every individual human being born on earth. As a conscious being, every human has the possibility to deliberate about how he can live a meaningful life in narrow coexistence with surrounding nature and other humans. In this life-perspective, every human can practice moral deliberation which is ‘fundamentally imaginative’ and appears as ‘a dramatic rehearsal’ (Fesmire 1999, 65–81; 2003, 4, 69–91). A person always stays connected to the surrounding world, the life-world as Husserl called it, in which he encounters all kinds of life issues: satisfying one’s hunger, attaining a space one can call one’s home, developing one’s willingness to learn, establishing good relations with family, friends and strangers, and so on. These and other problems in life demand solutions which cannot be found without imagining them first. For that, we humans can rely on our mental ability to envision imaginatively possible solutions, weighing up, emotionally as well as cognitively, different options, dramatizing them in scenarios so that we can

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see which scenario is preferable to be incorporated in real life. This force of moral imagination, performing a dramatic rehearsal, needs a democratic society to be practiced and developed. Dewey argues tirelessly that a democratic society not only procures the necessary political space for putting moral imagination into practice, but by grounding his philosophy in history, he clarifies how modern democracy is the ongoing performance of moral imagination at its best. Our route to imagination comes to a conclusion by taking us to the Western democracies of the United States of America and Germany, and to the anchoring of architecture in the practice of moral imagination, shaping a democratic social environment.

The National Mall in Washington, DC Visited annually by approximately thirty million people . . .  (May 2012, 5)

Called ‘America’s Front Yard’, the National Mall in Washington, DC is a wide open space where about thirty million people gather every year. It appears as the green artery of the United States capital, but the radius of its meaning goes far beyond America’s borders (Figure 2.11). First of all, its presence defines the democratic identity of the political headquarters of the United States of America. Indeed, Washington, DC is the only city in the world which is deliberately designed to spatially embody the first modern democracy in human history. The first president George Washington himself had chosen the ‘right spot’ (Savage 2011, 25) along the Potomac River and near the colonial harbor settlement Georgetown, to serve as the site of the new national capital. After the signing of the Residence Act in 1790, the new capital, named in honor of Washington and through him in honor of the American Revolution (1776) and its democratic

FIGURE 2.11  The National Mall (Washington, DC, USA). Photo: © Carol M. Highsmith.

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guiding principles, came into existence. Creating a complete new city, instead of rebuilding an existing one, expressed the strong revolutionary will of the Founding Fathers, among them George Washington,Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton (Scott 2002, 37). They all demonstrated vigorous willpower to write a whole new chapter in the history of humanity, telling the story of how humanity started to live democratically together. And in the first lines of that chapter the brand new city Washington, DC was the main character. The French-born American architect and civil engineer Pierre ‘Peter’ Charles L’Enfant was asked by President Washington himself to design the urban plan for the ‘Federal City’.The basic elements of the L’Enfant plan are easily recognizable today. L’Enfant wanted a masterplan with a symbolic representation of the new independent country (ibid., 38–41). Indeed, L’Enfant’s plan captured the democratic spirit of the new state. The urban plan registers the story both of its spatial origin and of its soul. The grand avenues represent first of all the thirteen British colonies which formed the United States of America. Of all the avenues, Pennsylvania Avenue has primacy of place, linking the Capitol and President’s House, now called the White House, because in the city of Philadelphia, PA, the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence (Figures 2.12, 2.13). Also noteworthy as a democratic statement is the Main Avenue, now the National Mall, creating an immense open green space for the people who are represented in the Capitol, which faces the Mall westwards. In his original plan L’Enfant designated the Mall as ‘public walks’, a term first introduced by Jefferson. According to Lewis, the Mall in L’Enfant’s plan had its

FIGURE 2.12  United

States Capitol in 1898 (Washington, DC, USA). Photo: © Detroit Publishing Company.

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FIGURE 2.13  The

front of the White House (Washington, DC, USA). Photo: http:// wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/obf_images/84/e3/56a5a1e6a5639ce105b 4e5bc9bed.jpg

origins in Jefferson’s own ‘clever sketch plan for the new federal city’ (Lewis 2008, 13). The cleverness of the plan originated from L’Enfant’s desire to incorporate the United States democratic revolution in his design of the masterplan. He succeeded in referring to the mostly French tradition of baroque planning, with the Palace of Versailles as the European paradigm of royal absolutism and Pierre Pate’s eighteenthcentury plan (1765) for Paris with its two urban axes (Scott 2002, 44–45). On the one hand, the designer L’Enfant took his own life as a source of inspiration. He was born in Paris as the son of Pierre L’Enfant, a painter who worked in the service of King Louis XV, one of the three Bourbon monarchs who ruled France from Versailles. At the age of 23, L’Enfant arrived in the American colonies as a military engineer among the French troops backing the colonial rebels who were fighting their American Revolutionary War. Two years later, he even served on George Washington’s staff. Despite his aristocratic background, L’Enfant found a new identity in the cause of the American rebels and he changed his first name Pierre to Peter. The treaty of Paris of 1783 ended the American Revolution, sealing the independence of the federal United States of America. With his masterplan, L’Enfant indirectly cites classical Versailles and all the French imitations, as a sign of gratitude for French support. But, on the other hand, L’Enfant deconstructs the political meaning of the Versailles palace by transforming it into a democratic narrative. In the monumental new palace, the Capitol, the people’s representatives reside, not the monarch. The absolute monarch of noble birth is dead; the elected civic president is born. His place is important, but not central anymore. L’Enfant, endorsed by Jefferson, concentrates

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on the priority of the open public space and therefore defines the location of the President’s House, the White House, off-axis with the Capitol and the Mall. The president gets no palace, but a house which is also a place of work. Since 1800, under the presidency of John Adams, the White House has remained the residence of every American president (Pearce 1999). It was designed by Irish-born American architect James Hoban. He designed a three-story building for the president’s residence, but Washington himself asked Hoban to reduce the height of the building to two stories, which makes it look more like a city house. There are free public tours of the White House nearly every day. And the president and the first lady often open the White House and host visits by schoolchildren, artists, sportsmen, civil workers, victims, veterans and so on. In the twentieth century, the White House became the starting point of the visual north–south axis of L’Enfant’s plan, meeting the Mall’s Washington Monument and ending at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial (1939–1943) on the Potomac River Tidal Basin. Thus, every president always lives visually connected with the collective memories of the two important Founding Fathers and Presidents. In keeping with the democratic spirit of L’Enfant and the Founding Fathers, the president of the most powerful nation in the world lives just in a house, whereas for instance the king of Belgium, a small democratic European state, owns two monumental palaces, one to dwell in and one to work in. And just decades ago, communist dictator and president of Romania’s People’s Republic, Nicolae Ceaus.escu, built a colossal palace, the world’s largest palace by floor space, primarily for himself and his family, but also for his communist government (Delettant 1998) (Figures 2.14, 2.15). Through the irony of fate, Ceaus.escu never saw the finished building, and never lived a single day in his palace, because of the 1989 Romanian revolution which ended his cruel megalomania, and his life (Galoway and Wylie 1991; Ujica 2011). In contrast with the European palace tradition of popes, monarchs and dictators, L’Enfant’s plan for the first capital of modern democracy made an urban gesture

Ceaus.escu’s Palace of the Republic (Bucharest, Romania). Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

FIGURE 2.14  Nicolae

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Ceaus.escu’s Palace of the Republic (Bucharest, Romania). Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

FIGURE 2.15  Nicolae

that reinforced the democratic space narrative: the people and its Capitol, not the president and his House, act as the main character on the scene of the city. From the very beginning in Washington, DC, the Capitol and the Mall have been democratic twins. The Capitol was raised high on Jenkin’s Hill, described by L’Enfant as ‘the pedestal awaiting its monument’ (Scott 2002, 42). Indeed, the story of the United States Capitol begins in the early days of American democracy. British-American architect Dr. William Thornton submitted his design in 1793. It was immediately accepted by Washington and Jefferson as the monument for, in Jefferson’s words, the ‘infant republic’, needed to render its achievements and aspirations (Whiffen 1996, 126, 130). The original building was completed in 1800 but was soon expanded by three architects: Thornton himself did the elevations with pilasters; Benjamin Henry Latrobe designed the east portico, moved the main entrance to the east and drew the whole interior; and Charles Bulfinch was responsible for the dome, the west terrace and colonnade (ibid., 130). The heart of the building is the United States Capitol rotunda, topped by the Capitol dome and connecting the House of Representatives and the Senate. Greenberg defines the democratic narrative of the Capitol’s central Hall of the People as the symbolic center of the capital city and of the nation. From here, twelve avenues radiate out through the surrounding city and, metaphorically, to the far corners of the country, inviting citizens to visit their living room in the heart of their nation. (Greenberg 2006, 106–107)

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In the era of the Founding Fathers, only the first steps were taken towards the implementation of L’Enfant’s urban plan for the new federal capital. When the famous British writer Charles Dickens visited Washington, DC in 1842, he experienced the city ‘as a ruin in the making, a monument to a deceased project’ (Savage 2011, 26). At that time, the Mall wasn’t the imagined ‘public walks’. Its intended meaning remained invisible without any prominence, as planned by L’Enfant. A journalist discovered an undeveloped ‘waste ground, a largely unregulated zone where people dumped trash and tended their own vegetable garden’ (ibid., 35). Instead of being the urban manifestation of democratic freedom for the people, the growing slave trade was situated ‘at the edge of the Mall’ and the Mall itself became a path for chained ‘slave coffles shuffling to loading docks on the Potomac’ (ibid., 46). The contrast between the monumental Capitol, demonstrating its democratic pretensions, and ‘the miserable reality of the traffic in slaves, undertaken in plain sight’ (ibid.) at its feet, was extremely provocative.The opening sequences of the Academy Award-winning movie 12 Years a Slave (2013), directed by Steve McQueen, reenact those years of Washington, DC as the capital of the American slave trade. In 1850 this slave trade was abolished in the city and the story of the National Mall could be continued. But then came the Civil War (1861–1865). Even the existence of the federal city itself became questionable. And after the Civil War, raising money for public works in Washington, DC was nearly impossible and the division between the Southern and Northern congressmen slowed the decision process. But there was an urgent need for a Washington monument (Savage 2011, 112–133).The reunited but deeply wounded nation discussed long and intensely how to imagine an architectural design that could express the unity as well as the identity of the modern democratic state. The main issue was: how to express the identity of the united nation by honoring its first president and, at the same time, to demonstrate its strong desire to profile itself not only as a competent but even more as a leading nation in the worldwide ongoing modernization process. American architect Robert Mills (1781–1855) won the competition with an Egyptian obelisk design to be built where L’Enfant’s east–west axis of the Capitol and the Mall crosses with his north–south axis of the White House and the Mall. At the end of a decades-long process, the American engineer Thomas Lincoln Casey Sr., head of the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds for the District of Columbia, succeeded in refining Mills’ obelisk by omitting any ornament, by reshaping the tower into ‘a huge stone crystal that had been cut and polished to perfection’ (ibid., 128), and by constructing the building in an outstanding way. The Washington Monument was officially opened on October 9, 1888. ‘Without question, the Washington Monument succeeded in remolding the landscape of the capital. It gave the city a whole new focal point’ (ibid., 134). But even then, the Mall didn’t appear as a readable space and the huge obelisk itself honored less the agrarian Washington than the iconoclastic, modern and abstract art of engineering. The true democratic spirit was only to be found in the invention of the passenger elevator lifting the visitors to what was then the highest sightseeing platform in the world. But to expose its potential radiance of ‘mystifying

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blankness’ (ibid., 144), the Washington Monument needed to be in visual dialogue with the Capitol.Therefore, a new designed landscape for the National Mall became the new challenge.This much-needed transformation of the existing green meander of trees and paths into a ‘flow of space’, a term coined by landscape critic Elbert Peets (ibid., 147), was envisioned by the Senate Park Commission at the dawn of the twentieth century. Leatherbarrow wrote about the phenomenon of ‘spatial flow’ from the perspective of ‘common ground’, the theme of the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2012: ‘Common ground would seem to exist by virtue of spatial flow . . . Often described as a discovery of our time . . .’ (Leatherbarrow 2012, 27). Here, we must correct this statement. The concept of spatial flow has its origin in the moral imagination of the Founding Fathers and their democratic legacy, as understood by the Senate Park Commission (Figures 2.16, 2.17). At the beginning of the twentieth century, the collective will had grown strong enough to rediscover L’Enfant’s plan of the main axis of the city, the National Mall, and to return to its democratic essence.The McMillan Plan for the improvement of the Park System of the District of Columbia has the credit for the actual appearance of the National Mall and its democratic performance.The Plan was written in 1901 by the Senate Park Commission (ibid., 147–152). The most important authors of the design story of the Plan were American architect and urban planner Daniel H. Burnham (1846–1912), American architect Charles Follen McKim, and American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. This trio can now be seen as true practitioners

FIGURE 2.16  The National Mall (Washington, DC, USA). Photo: © Chief Photographer’s

Mate Johnny Bivera.

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FIGURE 2.17  Thomas

Jefferson Memorial (Washington, DC, USA). Photo: © Ingfbruno.

of moral imagination. Their work represents what has been called ‘the American Renaissance’ (Wilson 2008, 32). Wilson characterizes the influential McKim, who was once president of the American Institute of Architects, as a designer who refused to see the discipline of architecture as ‘personal whim’: ‘For him, the architect had a duty in the public sphere as a creator of spaces and buildings but also as an ennobler of life’ (Wilson 2008, 30). The three most inspired figures of the Senate Park Commission wanted to implement the Beaux-Arts tradition in the United States of America, and first of all in Washington, DC. As they expressed in their McMillan Plan, the National Mall must be developed as the centerpiece of ‘the country’s single largest work of art’ (Lewis 2008, 23). The classical ‘sacralization of high culture’ (Wilson 2008, 32) stirred their imagination. They strongly believed in the value of esthetic beauty in life. Burnham for instance found beauty as necessary to living as breath (Lewis 2008, 53). They subscribed to classicism as the foundation of architectural beauty and considered it as a universal style.Their interpretation of the ideal of classicistic beauty was open-mined and motivated by a democratic spirit. They revitalized Jefferson’s dictum that designing buildings in the United States, inspired by European classical style, was ‘a means of educating American public taste in architecture’ (Whiffen 1996, 130; Wilson 2008, 38). The esthetic concept of the McMillan Plan for the further development of the National Mall area didn’t focus on the classical canon as an aim in itself, but on the human concepts of dignity and beauty (Field 2008, 41–42). The McMillan Plan reinforced L’Enfant’s plan for designing the National Mall as ‘the stage’ of American ‘representative democracy’ in the twentieth century (Lewis 2008, 11–26).

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The McMillan Plan succeeded in moving two nineteenth-century terminal stations out of the Mall area in order to build a new Union Station on Massachusetts Avenue. Inspired by L’Enfant’s plan for a central axis between the Capitol and a notyet-defined monument, and aware of the unchangeable presence of the Washington Memorial in its spatial dialogue with the Capitol, the authors of the McMillan Plan wanted to redefine the Mall as the new monumental central core of the national capital.Their vision, outlined in the Plan, was realized during the first decades of the twentieth century and has been admired by countless users and visitors ever since. The National Mall gave the public not only a grand open walking space, but also a unique spatial platform to freely discover arts, sciences and history in an avenue of landmarks, museums and memorials. Designing urban space as an ensemble of politics, memories and art experiences, the National Mall ‘enshrined a national narrative of reunification the authors no doubt believed would be universal and timeless’ (Savage 2011, 152). From Union Square with the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial at the base of Capitol Hill, to the Washington Monument, linked by the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to the Lincoln Memorial itself, the end of the east–west axis, the National Mall traverses a distance of 3 kilometers/ 1.86 miles. The Lincoln Memorial sits in the middle of the visual north–south axis, starting at the White House and ending at the John Russell Pope-designed Thomas Jefferson Memorial, built between 1939 and 1943, on the Potomac River Tidal Basin. This monumental coherent urban space is the work of generations of politicians, designers and workers who created the worldwide scene for the identity story of modern democracy, deeply rooted in the history of the United States of America. The long process of its creation was also a learning process in democratic thinking and imagining: ‘The approval process for a new building or monument is very democratic, which is sometimes messy, but more often than not it results in a better design’ (May 2012, 116–117). With its narrative scene, the National Mall and its different memorials of Founding Fathers, presidents, war heroes and victims of discrimination, established a spatial scenery that feeds the moral imagination of the whole nation. In that sense, the Mall’s democratic essence provides a free platform for democratic performances by different groups who want to gather and send their message to their representatives in the Capitol. One of these historic performances was the March on Washington of the postwar Civil Rights Movement, with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, delivered at the end of the rally on the platform of the Lincoln Memorial.

The Government Districts in Bonn and Berlin Everything is a story. (House of Cards 1.2)

In the Washington DC-based television series House of Cards, the main character House Majority Whip Francis ‘Frank’ Underwood reminds the ambitious young

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reporter Zoe Barnes that everything is a story. This statement certainly applies to America’s national capital which manifests itself as a bunch of stories. All these stories shape the narrative of American democracy in buildings, monuments and open spaces. Europe doesn’t have any city with that kind of narrative of democracy in such a positive way as Washington, DC, with one important exception: Bonn in postwar Germany, especially in the former West Germany, also known as the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) (1949–1990), or the Bonn Republic or the Bonn State. In the historic Rhine city, the first postwar generation of politicians and their constituencies faced the unique historic task of imagining how to build a democratic society out of the ashes of the worst imaginable regime. Hitler and his Nazism, the Third Reich, revealed the horror arising from complete lack of internal democracy. Both Hitler and his house architect, Albert Speer, were eager to manifest Germany’s radical negation of democracy in imagining a total reshaping of the capital city Berlin as ‘World Capital Germania’ (Welthauptstadt Germania) (Figure 2.18). Heinrich described the masterplan as the implementation of ‘the monumental “Lager” Germania’ (Heinrich 2015, 188).The German Lager means a military camp. Hitler and Speer wanted to transform the city of Berlin into the center of the world, seen as one great Lager. It was built to produce fear in the individual. Each person would feel themselves reduced to a tiny piece of an enormous political and military machine, required to be ready at any time to sacrifice themselves for the collective aim. Heinrich characterized the Speer architecture as ‘Attrappenarchitektur’ or ‘façade architecture’ (ibid., 194).The blowing up of each façade of the new urban buildings was intended to create a collective scenery to demean human dignity and self-respect, blocking the force of imagination in each individual. The urban design of Hitler/Speer would be implemented after Germany’s anticipated victory in the Second World War. The highlight of this demiurge masterplan was Speer’s Monster-Building (Monsterbau), the People’s Hall (Volkshalle) or Hall of Glory (Ruhmeshalle), inspired by Rome’s classical Pantheon (ibid., 182–203).The colossal building must appear as the massive coronation of the north–south axis of the new metropolis.The axis itself was designed for mass groups of uniformed members of the Master Race (Herrenvolk), all marching to the center of the capital of the world. Entering the Hall, the uniformed masses must be impressed by Hitler’s tribunal which identified the central round, ‘monstrous’ arena, from which the dictator could directly address a crowd of 180,000 supporters. This gigantic building must become a public temple to worship Hitler, his successors and their German Reich for more than a thousand years. This temple would have manifested the definitive triumph of modern ideologies of nationalism and racism over the force of human imagination and its moral, democratic praxis. After Germany’s defeat in 1945, the new generation of German intelligentsia, backed politically and financially by the government of the United States of America, faced the difficult question of what kind of architecture was needed for their democratically elected Chancellor (Bundeskanzler) and the assembly of their members of parliament. They found the answer in the city of Bonn and in the

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FIGURE 2.18  World

Capital Germania, Albert Speer. Photo: Unknown.

moral imagination of some young architects, motivated to design for the young democracy. Sep Ruf and Günter Behnisch designed two important buildings in Bonn. Both Ruf ’s Kanzlerbungalow and Behnisch’s Federal House (Bundeshaus) represent the unique narrative of a young democratic society which had to invent itself after the apocalypse of a radical anti-democratic regime in which their parents and grandparents were involved.

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Chancellor’s Bungalow (Kanzlerbungalow) One of the clients of postwar architect Sep Ruf was the Chancellor, Ludwig Erhard, known as the ‘Forerunner and Father’ of the Economic Miracle (Wirtschafswunder) of the FRG (Adlbert 2010, 21; Schmid and Herles 1979, 175). When he became Chancellor in October 1963, Erhard immediately decreed the design of the bungalow (Schätzke and Warmburg 2009, 9). He wanted a new residence for the Chancellor as a very clear expression of the democratic spirit of the FRG (Figures 2.19, 2.20). Therefore, Erhard asked his friend Sep Ruf to design a representative, modern building in the tradition of Bauhaus modernism. As a politician and art lover, Erhard was a convincing proponent of the democratic spirit of the modern style in art and architecture. With the design of the Chancellor’s Bungalow, Erhard and Ruf wanted to react to the dictatorship of Hitler’s regime that, in 1933, had closed the German school of modernism in art and architecture, the famous Bauhaus in Berlin. The plotline of the story Erhard and Ruf wanted to tell was the modern style being in sharp contrast with the fascist interpretation of the neoclassical Dorian style of Albert Speer (Heinrich 2015, 186–187, 188). Erhard and Ruf didn’t want to replace one dogma (fascism) with another (modernism). In his design, Ruf freely uses the architectural language of Bauhaus modernism to express the democratic will of the German people to rebuild their society on the ruins of the Third Reich.

FIGURE 2.19  Chancellor

Ludwig Erhard and architect Sep Ruf (Tegernsee, Miesbach, Germany). Photo: © Gerhard Gronefeld. © Deutsches Historisches Museum.

76 Imagining FIGURE 2.20  Chancellor

Ludwig Erhard and architect Sep Ruf (Bonn, Germany). Photo: © Hanns Oberberger.

The Chancellor’s Bungalow, since 2001 a protected monument, is one of the locations of the Way of Democracy (Der Weg der Demokratie) in the city of Bonn. It can be found in the park of the ninetieth Palais Schaumburg, the seat of the first residence of the Chancellor of the FRG. From 1964 until 1999, the Chancellor’s Bungalow was the home of the FRG Chancellor. There, the Chancellor and his wife hosted national and international political leaders and personalities. Since 1999, the bungalow has been uninhabited. In 2005, Wüstenrot Stiftung began the restoration of the bungalow to its original state. On April 16, 2009 the bungalow opened to the public and activities of the Wüstenrot Stiftung. Erhard and Ruf communicated a clear choice for a new democratic society in the design of a modest house, a bungalow, located in the park on the bank of the river Rhine (Figures 2.21, 2.22). With its steel skeleton, glass walls and flat roof, the bungalow exudes an atmosphere of weightlessness and overtness.The grand plan consists of two rectangles of 20 3 24 meters (21.9 3 26.2 yards), offset relative to each other. Both have an atrium of 8 3 8 meters (8.7 3 8.7 yards). Each of the main spaces has its own character. One of the spaces is more open than the other, for hosting visiting world leaders, and including the office of the Chancellor.The other space has a more private and intimate character for housing the Chancellor and his family. Today, the visitor can experience the very light and open character of the modern design. It shares the same poetic and open dialogue that traditional Japanese housing has with surrounding nature. It’s not an exercise in purist style, but a political statement of modesty. The bungalow shows its ‘world open, humane’ spirit (Schätzke and Warmburg 2009, 14). It appears as a democratic house that invites its inhabitants and visitors to engage in encounters, exchanges of ideas, willingness to discuss controversies and find a consensus. Ruf ’s democratic house denies every formalarchitectural gesture or authoritarian claim to absolute power.The bungalow provides a

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FIGURE 2.21  Chancellor’s

Bungalow (Bonn, Germany). Photo: © Celine Styven.

FIGURE 2.22  Chancellor’s

Bungalow (Bonn, Germany). Photo: © Alexander Massouls.

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meeting-place and, at the same time, a spot for quietness and contemplation. In his inauguration speech on November 12, 1964, Chancellor Erhard explained that the bungalow reflected ‘the true nature of his wife and himself ’ (Frenzl 2009, 5) (Figures 2.23, 2.24). The life-metaphor of the house from then on defined the core of the political power of the new democracy under construction in the FRG. FIGURE 2.23  Chancellor’s

Bungalow (Bonn, Germany). Photo: © Celine Styven.

FIGURE 2.24  Chancellor’s

Bungalow (Bonn, Germany). Photo: © Celine Styven.

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Ruf ’s design also reflects a kind of proto-postmodern complexity. It seamlessly combines two different functions, political representation and housing. It brings the two functions under one roof and that architectural gesture looks like the most obvious thing in the world (Schätzke and Warmburg 2009, 22). It interweaves the democratic praxis of government with a domestic sphere (Figure 2.25, 2.26). Thus, on the southeast side, on the sun terrace, the inhabitants and visitors can see the bronze sculpture Great Motherhood (Grosse Maternitas) by German sculptor Fritz Koenig, whose other sculpture The Sphere, damaged in the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York, stands now, left unrepaired, as a memorial to the victims in Battery Park, Manhattan, NY. The unique atmosphere of the Chancellor’s Bungalow in Bonn has helped to profoundly reshape the international political scene. Indeed, it was where the postCold War era was born, with the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 and the official reunification of Germany on October 13, 1990 (Figures 2.27, 2.28, 2.29, 2.30). The starting point of that peaceful process was the meeting between Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Mikhail Gorbachev, the eighth and last leader of the Soviet Union. In his autobiography, Vom Mauerfall zur Wiedervereinigung. Meine Erinnerungen (2009), not yet translated, Kohl tells how he and his wife, Hannelore Renner, hosted, in private and without any photographers around, Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa Titarenko, in the bungalow in June 1989.Within the domestic sphere of the house, both leaders reflected, freely and without ceremonial restraints, upon the changing times in Europe and Russia. While watching the flow of the nearby Rhine, Kohl contemplated the life-metaphor of the river, saying:

FIGURE 2.25  Chancellor’s

Bungalow (Bonn, Germany). Photo: © Alexander Massouls.

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Look at the river flowing before us. It’s an image of the fluidness of history. Technically, one can stop its waters but its course will always find the sea. As surely as the Rhine flows to the sea, the German reunification will become a fact. (Kohl 2009, 28–29, our translation) FIGURE 2.26  Chancellor’s

Bungalow (Bonn, Germany). Photo: © Alexander Massouls.

FIGURE 2.27  The Wall

(Berlin, Germany). Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

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FIGURE 2.28  Chancellor

Helmut Kohl at the re-opening of the Brandenburg Gate on December 22, 1989 (Berlin, Germany). Photo: © DPA/BelgaImage.

FIGURE 2.29  Destruction

of the Wall (Berlin, Germany). Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

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FIGURE 2.30  Destruction

of the Wall (Berlin, Germany). Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

Gorbachev listened and didn’t deny Kohl’s reflection.Their personal understanding opened the way for the most radical and peaceful change in recent human history. The main architectural actor and witness of that process was the open, modest and friendly Chancellor’s Bungalow.

Federal House (Bundeshaus) The second highlight on the Way of Democracy in Bonn is the Federal House, designed by Günter Behnisch and Partner. It was created as the home of the postwar West German parliament. Some forty years after its founding, the FRG parliament could move into its first new House. From September 7, 1949 on, the parliament of the FRG assembled in Bonn in the adapted gym of what had previously been the Pädagogische Akademie am Rhein (Pedagogic Academy at the Rhine). But the members of the FRG soon envisaged a whole new campus on the existing site in Bonn. Two postwar German architects, Egon Eiermann and Sep Ruf, designed a masterplan for a new government quarter in the style of Bauhaus modernism (Schmid and Herles 1979, 186–187). In the end, the government and the parliament decided to build only a new Federal House. In 1973, the competition for the building was won by the office of Behnisch and Partner. After long years of endless discussion, building began in 1988 and was finished in 1990. By that point, German reunification was a new political reality and the decision to make Berlin the new capital had already been taken. Behnisch’s Federal House is a remarkable architectural design of moral imagination and a clear statement in architecture of a strong will to build together

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a democratic society in Europe. The Federal House itself appears as ‘nearly unosten­tatious, filigree and transparent’ and was enthusiastically accepted by the public because of its ‘serenity, unobtrusiveness and freedom’ (Hauptmann 2007, 67). A great majority of the citizens of the FRG recognized the building as ‘the completion of the Bonn Democracy’ (ibid., 68). Architectural critics praised the Federal House as ‘built Constitution’ and as ‘a great work of democratic building’ (ibid.). And Hauptmann concluded her study of the Behnisch building as a symbol of democratic, German consciousness by saying that the new Federal House represented the beginning of a new period of democratic building (ibid., 69). Thus, the building opened a whole new chapter in the narrative of architecture and democracy. To value and understand the German parliament building, it’s important to recognize the moral imagination as practiced by Behnisch. He had a strong vision of the responsibility and task of architecture in shaping a new democratic society. In his reflections about democracy and architecture, Behnisch asserts that architects always depend on the ideas of rulers and their political power. In the far and near past, all sorts of kings and dictators asked architects to transfer their political ideas into the material world. Behnisch reminds his readers of the ideas of the French King Louis XIV for the Palace of Versailles and the ideas of Hitler and Speer for Berlin (Behnisch 1992, 67). In a democratic state, however, political power loses its absolute status; it’s more differentiated and decentralized.When clarifying his design for the Federal House, Behnisch referred to Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Gettysburg Address in which the president of the United States of America declared that ‘the government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth’ (ibid., 69). As an architect working in postwar Germany, Behnisch also invoked the West German academic and politician Carlo Schmid and his concept of democracy as the opportunity for every citizen to help in humanizing the state (‘den Staat vermenschlichen können’) (Schmid and Herles 1979, 319–325; Behnisch 1992, 70). According to the vision of Schmid, democracy directs society in such a manner that all human beings, independently, if they belong to the majority or minority, have the constitutional right to deploy their talents and realize the essence of their human existence. Humanitas must be the core of making a democratic society. The implications of such a belief in the moral imagination of humans affect every aspect of human culture and endeavor, architecture included. Architect Behnisch understood this narrative of democracy very well, as can be experienced in his design of Bonn’s Federal House (Figures 2.31, 2.32, 2.33, 2.34, 2.35, 2.36). The House appears as a modest building and at the same time as very strong in its expression. The main entrance and the public square merge seamlessly into each other. In contrast with most monumental official buildings, no staircase separates the entrance door from the public square. Moreover, Behnisch designed the entrance to the House as a way of descending towards the lower situated foyer and the Plenary Hall (Plenarsaal). This meaningful architectural gesture implements an attitude of modesty in the minds of the members of parliament. It helps them always to stay conscious of promoting the interests of those who elected them and of democratic society as such. The architect defined the gesture of descending by having two

84 Imagining FIGURE 2.31 

Federal House (Bonn, Germany), Günter Behnisch. Photo: © Qualle.

FIGURE 2.32 

Federal House (Bonn, Germany), Günter Behnisch. Photo: © Alexander Massouls.

FIGURE 2.33 

Federal House (Bonn, Germany), Günter Behnisch. Photo: © Alexander Massouls.

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House (Bonn, Germany), Günter Behnisch. Photo: © Yentl Bielen.

FIGURE 2.35  Federal

House (Bonn, Germany), Günter Behnisch. Photo: © Yentl Bielen.

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FIGURE 2.36  Federal House (Bonn, Germany), Günter Behnisch. Photo: © Marie Frioni.

parallel identical staircases, one for the members of parliament and one for the public and the press. Both staircases appear the same; the design doesn’t single out one of the staircases as more important than the other. And the two are also visually connected to each other. They are just separated by the guardrail and a colorful work of art. That makes the separation of the two staircases subtle and at the same time playful. Entering the hemispherical Plenary Hall creates a feeling of being invited to a spiritualized place orchestrated by the abundance of clear light, the seats in blue and its transparent glass walls. Press and public can use the comfortable tribunes with the same seats as the members of parliament. Instead of descending into darkness, the architectural path brings the members and the public into a sphere of light and color. At the same time, that enlightening path is visually reinforced by connecting with the nearby Rhine and the second entrance on the bank of the river. Another appealing element of the moral imagination invested in the building is the playful integration of the artworks by Sam Francis, Mark di Suvero, Rebecca Horn, Joseph Beuys and Hermann Glöckner. The different postwar artworks by American and West German artists, men and women, remind the members of parliament of the main principles on which a democratic society is built.The artworks represent the free imagination and the human right to express oneself.The artworks deny every form of totalitarianism by commemorating creatively how Nazism censured and even burned all kinds of modern artworks. The Federal House creates a working place for the heart of German democracy by combining earnestness and playfulness, formal and informal behavior. That kind of balance failed absolutely in Nazi politics. The Nazi leaders and party members

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always sounded very serious. In his brave film The Great Dictator (1940), Charlie Chaplin ridiculed that kind of political behavior that lacks any kind of humor. Behnisch has given the members of parliament a unique space to practice their awareness of the relativity of their legal power. After their earnest debates in the Plenary Hall or rooms of the special commissions, they could gather informally in the restaurant that opened out onto the green areas on the riverside. The restaurant itself doesn’t look like a functional space. Because of the low ceiling, which was something that Behnisch couldn’t change, the architect asked Italian, self-taught artist Nicola de Maria to paint the roof (Figure 2.37). The bright colors create a childish, playful atmosphere in a postmodern performance. It’s an expression of imagination and creativity, inviting the members of parliament to socialize informally with each other in the same spirit and to step out of their role as powerful politicians for a while. The democratic spirit of Behnisch’s Federal House inspired the reunited German politicians to design their working places in the new capital Berlin. The Reichstag, the Chancellery Building (Bundeskanzleramt) and the other new buildings of the Government District on the bend of the Spree River, combine the new selfawareness of the democratic German people with openness to and connection with the people (Krüger 2014, 26–85). The Reichstag building, designed by Paul Wallot (1841–1921), was meant to be the monumental seal in stone of the new German Empire (Das Kaiserreich), founded in 1871 (Figures 2.38, 2.39). After being the seat of the first democratic parliament

FIGURE 2.37  Federal House (Bonn, Germany), Günter Behnisch. Photo: © Marie Frioni.

FIGURE 2.38  Design

for the German Reichstag. First place in the competition 1882 (Berlin, Germany), Paul Wallot. Image: Paul Wallot.

FIGURE 2.39  German

Reichstag (Berlin, Germany), Foster + Partners. Photo: © Jürgen Matern.

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after the First World War, the building stayed empty during the Nazi regime. Today, the Reichstag is the architectural face of the new political capital Berlin and the home of the parliament (Deutsche Bundestag) of the reunited democratic German state. The reopening in 1999 of the heritage building, designed by Norman Foster, manifests its loyalty to the authentic democratic spirit of the Bonn Federal House. In his design of the renovated building, Foster integrated the graffiti that was drawn by the Russian soldiers after taking the building and thereby ending the Second World War in the West (Figure 2.40). Seen in the mirror of those drawings on the walls, the present German parliament acts as a living witness of the victory of democracy over dictatorship. The redesigned state building must be understood as an act of humanization of the state through architecture. The same democratic essence of openness to the public in Behnisch’s Federal House in Bonn has motived the design of the adaptive reuse of the Reichtstag, albeit on a larger scale. The building is open to the public almost every day, even during sessions in the Plenary Hall, with the visiting public only separated from the Hall by a transparent glass wall – another reference to Behnisch’s Plenary Hall (Figures 2.41, 2.42). The visitor ascends by walking up to the 24-meter-high roof terrace and continues 250 meters up the spiral of the glass dome to the 40-meter-high visitors’ platform. During this walk, the visitor can enjoy various artworks while always keeping an open view of the Plenary Hall, and likewise, through the 360 mirror elements, the members of parliament always see a kaleidoscopic reflection of the walking visitors they represent.

FIGURE 2.40  Inscriptions

of the Soviet soldiers in the German Reichstag (Berlin, Germany). Photo: © Denis Apel.

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FIGURE 2.41  Roof

terrace of the German Reichstag (Berlin, Germany), Foster + Partners. Photo: © Michael Palsmeier.

FIGURE 2.42  Plenary Hall of the German Reichstag (Berlin, Germany), Foster + Partners.

Photo: © Andreas Praefcke.

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FIGURE 2.43  Chancellery

Building (Berlin, Germany), Schultes Frank Architekten. Photo: © Werner Huthmacher.

FIGURE 2.44  Chancellery

Building (Berlin, Germany), Schultes Frank Architekten. Photo: © Werner Huthmacher.

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The Chancellery Building (Bundeskanzleramt), the winning design of the German Schultes Frank Architekten, opened in the summer of 2001 (Figures 2.43, 2.44). After an open competition and intense discussions, Chancellor Helmut Kohl decided on Schultes Frank’s design. The Berliners’ nickname for the building is Kohlosseum.The Chancellery keeps an urban dialogue with the parliament building, the Reichstag. It has an open façade and an entrance without staircases, just like Ruf ’s Chancellor’s Bungalow and Behnisch’s Federal House in Bonn. Inside, the building denies monumentality through its open character, allowing an enjoyable space flow. The new Berlin Government District is a safe, open urban area with a lot of green space, near the Spree River, allowing the public to walk and cycle in the center (Figures 2.45, 2.46). At same time, the new District is an open public place, built on the site of the fallen Berlin Wall with significant monuments commemorating the victims of the Nazi regime, namely the Memorial of the Murdered Jews of Europe, designed by Peter Eisenman, and the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism, designed by Dani Karavan.The new Berlin Government District creates a meaningful narrative, composed of the three constituents of time: past, present and future (Figures 2.47, 2.48, 2.49, 2.50). This urban narrative architecture reflects the first postwar West German democratic environment in Bonn near the Rhine, now called the Way of Democracy. In that sense, the new Berlin Government District can be experienced as Ways of Democracy.

FIGURE 2.45  New

Berlin Government District (Berlin, Germany). Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

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FIGURE 2.46  New

Berlin Government District (Berlin, Germany). Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

FIGURE 2.47  Memorial

of the Murdered Jews of Europe (Berlin, Germany), Peter Eisenman. Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

FIGURE 2.48  Memorial

of the Murdered Jews of Europe (Berlin, Germany), Peter Eisenman. Photo: © Sebastiaan Gerards.

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FIGURE 2.49  Memorial

of the Murdered Jews of Europe (Berlin, Germany), Peter Eisenman. Photo: © Sebastiaan Gerards.

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FIGURE 2.50  Memorial to the Sinti and RomaVictims of National Socialism in Tiergarten

(Berlin, Germany), Dani Karavan. Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

A Personal Way of Life Imagination is its own form of courage. (House of Cards 3.4)

From the perspective of moral imagination and creating a democratic society, this quote from the fictional character President Francis Unterwood sounds right. Indeed, in the light of works of moral imagination as important as the National Mall in Washington, DC, the Chancellor’s Bungalow and the Federal House in Bonn, and the new Government District in Berlin, we can see the human value of freedom at work in the narrative praxis of imagination. On the cornerstone of that freedom of imagination, the narrative of democracy in human history is busy being built. When reading about democracy, the first thought that comes to mind in the Western world today is of a modern system of government in which all the citizens of a state are involved by means of their representatives in a parliament. Then, the common image of democracy stresses the freedom of periodical elections. For a lot of citizens in democratic states, democracy appears as a kind of political mechanism or automatism, whereas for thousands of years non-democratic and even anti-democratic policies shaped the course of human history. Democracy is still a relatively recent and ongoing experiment. That awareness helped American thinker Dewey formulate his philosophy of democracy. He stresses that democracy is a personal, individual ‘way of life controlled by a working faith in the possibilities of human nature’ (Dewey 1998, I, 341; Talisse 2000, 74–78).

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Therefore, Dewey sees the moral imagination working at the very heart of human existence in constantly recreating each house of democracy. In Democracy and America (On Thomas Jefferson), Dewey explains that democracy as a method of governance is not an aim in itself, but just a way to provide the juridical conditions to let citizens, architects included, build their own society as an expression of their humanitas. He clarifies: I’m inclined to believe that the heart and final guarantee of democracy is in free gatherings of neighbors on the street corner to discuss back and forth what is read in uncensored news of the day, and in gatherings of friends in the living rooms of houses and apartments to converse freely with one another. (Dewey 1998, I, 342) Seen in that perspective, architecture is an indispensable practice to develop the narrative of democracy. From the architectural moral imagination originate not only important government buildings, but all the necessary surroundings for a humanized state. Architectural designs help to tell the story of that ongoing humanization. In Creative Democracy – The Task Before Us, Dewey makes clear that democracy is ‘not concerned with freaks or geniuses or heroes or divine leaders but with associated individuals in which each by intercourse with others somehow makes the life of each more distinctive’ (ibid., 78). Harvard philosopher of postmodernism, Richard Rorty, wrote that for Dewey the terms ‘America’ and ‘democracy’ ‘are shorthand for a new conception of what it is to be human – a conception which has no room for obedience to a nonhuman authority, and in which nothing save freely achieved consensus among human beings has any authority at all’ (Rorty 1998, 18). In that same sense, Sverre Fehn, the Norwegian architect who in 1997 received the Pritzker Prize in the almost-finished Bilbao Guggenheim Museum praised the design of the building: ‘This museum by Frank Gehry expresses the instant of freedom’ (Goldberger 2015, 301). Designing such buildings in a democratic state is co-designing the continuous humanization of that state. Given the fact that most citizens in democracies do not always have a clear democratic consciousness, architectural designs can create ex­periences of freedom of imagination, and by delivering such spatial experiences, they act as educators in moral imagination. ‘For the sake of our cities and the cultures they represent, there is no more pressing task than the clarification of the conditions under which communicative space can be re-imagined’ (Leatherbarrow 2012, 30).

References Adlbert, Georg. 2010. Der Kanzlerbungalow. Erhaltung, Instandsetzung, Neunutzung. Ludwigsburg, Stuttgart and Zürich, Wüstenhof Stiftung, Karl Krämer Verlag. Aitken, Sally. 2015. Imagine . . . Frank Gehry: The Artist Says “Why Can’t I?” Documentary. London, BBC Arts. www.youtube.com/watch?v=34tJ7JAjSW0. Aristotle, Poetics. 1996. Penguin Classics. London, Penguin Books.

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Behnisch, Günter. 1992. ‘Bauen für die Demokratie’, in Flagge, Ingeborg and Stock,Wolfgang Jeasn (eds.), Architektur und Demokratie. Bauen für die Politik von der amerikanischen Revolution bis zur Gegenwart, 66–75. Ostfildern-Ruit bei Stuttgart, Gerd Hatje. Borch, Christiaan. 2011. ‘Organizational Atmospheres: Foam, Affect and Architecture’, Organization 17 (2), 223–241. Chaplin, Charles. 1940. The Great Dictator. Film. Charles Chaplin Productions. www.youtube. com/watch?v=Br9Y_ZPcrAI. Choay, Françoise. 1997. The Rule and the Model. On the Theory of Architecture and Urbanism. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. Daraki, Maria. 1985. Dionysos. Paris, Arthaud. De Bleeckere, Sylvain. 2015. Levensbeschouwing democratisch belicht. Kalmthout, Pelckmans. Delettant, Dennis. 1998. Romania under Communist Rule. Bucharest, Civic Academy Foundation. Dewey, John. 1998. The Essential Dewey. Edited by Larry A. Hickman and Thomas M. Alexander. Vol. I. Pragmatism, Education, Democracy. Vol. II. Ethics, Logic, Psychology. Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press. Dylan, Bob. 2014. Lyrics. Edited by Christopher Ricks, Lisa Nemrow and Julie Nemrow. New York, Simon & Schuster. Faires, Nancy D. 2007. This Is Not a Museum.The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Reno, University of Nevada, ProQuest Information and Learning Company. Fensterbusch, Curt. 1991. ‘Einleitung’, in Vitruvii, De architectura libri decem, 1–19. Darmstadt, Wissenschafliche Buchgesellschaft. Fesmire, Steven. 1999. ‘The Art of Moral Imagination’, in Haskins, Casey and Seiple, David (eds.), Dewey Reconfigured: Essays on Deweyan Pragmatism, 133–150. Albany, SUNY Press. Fesmire, Steven. 2003. John Dewey and Moral Imagination. Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press. Field, Cynthia R. 2008. ‘When Dignity and Beauty Were the Order of the Day’, in Glazer, Nathan and Field, R. Cynthia (eds.), The National Mall. Rethinking Washington’s Monumental Core, 41–53. Baltimore, MA, Johns Hopkins University Press. Frenzl, Markus. 2009.‘Saumagen im Barcelona-Pavillon’, in Kurth, Ingmaer (ed.), Kanzlerbungalow, 4–5. Frankfurt am Main,Trademark Publishing. Galoway, George and Wylie, Bob. 1991. Downfall: Fall of Ceaucescus: Ceaucescus and the Romanian Revolution. London, Sphere. Gehry, Frank, Milunic´,Vlado, and Fialová, Irena. 2003. Dancing Building. Prague, Zlaty rˇez. Giovannini, Joseph. 1997. ‘Art into Architecture’, in Calnek, Anthony and Krens, Thomas (eds.), Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 16–23. New York, Guggenheim Museum Publications. Goldberger, Paul. 2015. Building Art. The Life and Work of Frank Gehry. New York, Alfred A. Knopf. Graziosi, Barbara. 2013. The Gods of Olympus. A History. London, Profile Books. Greenberg, Allan. 2006. The Architecture of Democracy. American Architecture and the Legacy of the Revolution. New York, Rizzoli International Publications. Haack, Susan (ed.). 2006. Pragmatism Old and New. Selected Writings. New York, Prometheus Books. Hauptmann, Christine. 2007. Die Symbolik der Parlementsarchitectuur in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Magisterarbeit. Norderstedt, GRIN Verlag. Heinrich, Klaus. 2015. Dahlemer Vorlesungen. Eine architektonische Auseinandersetzung mit dem NS. Aachen, Arch+, 48. Jahrgang. Hopkins, David. 2004. Dada and Surrealism. A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

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House of Cards (Willimon, Beau, creator). US TV Series. Media Rights Capital,Trigger Street Productions, Season 1 Episode 2, 2013; Season 3, Episode 4, 2015. Jencks, Charles. 2005. The Iconic Building. New York, Rizzoli. Kadri, Raihan. 2011. Reimagining Life: Philosophical Pessimism and the Revolution of Surrealism. Plymouth, UK, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Kohl, Helmut. 2009. Vom Mauerfall zur Wiedervereinigung. Meine Erinnerungen. München, Knaur Taschenbuch. Krüger, Thomas M. 2014. Das Berliner Regierungsviertel. Berlin, Deutscher Kunstverlag. Leatherbarrow, David. 2012. ‘The Sacrifice of Space’, in Chipperfield, David, Long, Kieran, and Bose, Shumi (eds.), Common Ground. A Critical Reader, 27–40. Venice, Fondazione La Biennale di Venetia. Lewis, Michael L. 2008. ‘The Idea of the American Mall’, in Glazer, Nathan and Field, R. Cynthia (eds.), The National Mall. Rethinking Washington’s Monumental Core, 11–26. Baltimore, MA, Johns Hopkins University Press. MacArthur, Brian (ed.). 1999. The Penguin Book of Twentieth Century Speeches. London, Penguin Books. May, Kyle (ed.). 2012. National Mall. New York, Clog. Mull, Olivia. 2015. ‘Charles Pétillon fills abandoned spaces with white balloons’. Interview. Dezeen. Retrieved from www.dezeen.com [August 8, 2015]. Murdoch, James. 2016. ‘Media: Storytelling – Both Fiction and Nonfiction, for Good and for Ill – Will Continue to Define the World’, Time Magazine, The Year Ahead, 9. December 28, 2015, January 4, 2016. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2009. The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music (translation by Ian Johnston). Arlington,VA, Richer Resources Publications. Pearce, Lorraine. 1999. The White House. An Historic Guide. Washington, DC, White House Historical Association. Ricœur, Paul. 1991. ‘Life in Quest of Narrative’, in Wood, David (ed.), Narrative and Interpretation, 20–33. London and New York, Routledge. Ricœur, Paul. 1995. Figuring the Sacred. Religion, Narrative and Imagination. Minneapolis, MN, Augsburg Fortress Press. Ricœur, Paul. 2003. The Rule of Metaphor: The Creation of Meaning in Language. London, Routledge. Rorty, Richard. 1998. Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Savage, Kirk. 2011. Monument Wars.Washington, D.C., The National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape. Berkeley, University of California Press. Schätzke, Andreas and Warmburg, Joaquin Medina. 2009. Sep Ruf. Kanzlerbungalow, Bonn. Stuttgart and London, Axel Menges. Schmid, Carlo and Herles, Helmut. 1979. Der Deutsche Bundestag 1949–1979. Porträt eines Parlaments. Pfullingen, Günther Neske. Scott, Pamela. 2002. ‘“This Vast Empire”. The Iconography of the Mall, 1791–1848’, in Longstreth, Richard (ed.). The Mall in Washington, 1791–1991, 37–58. Washington, National Gallery of Art. Sloterdijk, Peter. 2004. Sphären III. Schäume. Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp Verlag. Talisse, Robert B. 2000. On Dewey. The Reconstruction of Philosophy. Belmont, CA, Wadsworth. Ujica, Andrei. 2011. L’autobiographie de Nicolae Ceauçescu. Film. Editions Mandragora International. Van Bruggen, Coosje. 1997. Frank O. Gehry. Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

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Vitruvii, 1991. De architectura libri decem. Zehn Bücher über Architektur. Übersetzt und mit Anmerkungen versehen von Dr. Curt Fensterbusch (Bibliothek Klassischer Texte). Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Whiffen, Marcus. 1996. American Architecture. Volume I: 1607–1860. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. Wilson, Richard Guy. 2008.‘American Renaissance. Charles Follen McKim and the Aesthetic Ideal’, in Glazer, Nathan and Field, R. Cynthia (eds.), The National Mall. Rethinking Washington’s Monumental Core, 27–40. Baltimore, MA, Johns Hopkins University Press. Žantovský, Michael. 2014. Havel. A Life. London, Atlantic Books.

3 EDUCATING

How would our world look like without any parents in homes and teachers in schools, without education? To be able to compose, play and sing ‘We don’t need no education’, like Pink Floyd did in ‘Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)’ on their concept album The Wall, you have to be educated. Every new generation builds up its thinking and imagining on the cornerstone of education. John Dewey argued that for the future of democratic society it was necessary to invest in the civil education of the next generation of free citizens (Dewey 1998, 227–269). Along our path of narrative architecture, we have reached the moment to reflect on the importance of education in the designer’s story. We ask what kind of role education plays in the process of becoming an architectural designer. Maybe education is just a necessary evil? Does the real work only start after education, after getting an academic degree? Or is education still decisive in the process of becoming an architect? If this is the case, then what central role might narratives play during the educational process of becoming an architect? And what about the main educating narratives in architecture schools?

The Narrative of Education Education is a universal human experience. In the light of the previous chapters, ‘Thinking’ and ‘Imagining’, we can guess that education creates the unique narrative identity of every human being and their life narrative. Saying and writing this in our postmodern times seems evident, but the contrary seems to be true. In fact, education is a relatively recent anthropological phenomenon with its own narrative in Western culture. The Athenians in ancient Greece developed the concept of education and school. The Greek word for education ‘paideia’ (παιδεία) refers to the word for a small child, ‘paidion’ (παιδίον). Even the modern word pedagogy reminds us of its roots in the ancient Athenian experience with the concern for the youngest

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generation to become honest and skillful grown-up citizens (Hansen 1991, 55–124). And even the word school refers to the Athenian experience of building up a democratic society. That kind of society wants to invest in its youth by giving them the freedom to develop their natural skills in thinking. Originally, the Greek ‘schole¯’ (σχολή) meant ‘leisure’. Most children in Western culture today can no longer see the link between school and leisure. And yet, that link always remains clear.Young children and even youths were exempt from labor in the fields in order to have time to learn to speak, write, argue, count, and behave as a citizen. The narrative of education in Western culture took a radical turn in modern times in the aftermath of the two great historical and political revolutions at the end of the eighteenth century: the American Revolution (1776) and the French Revolution (1789). German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was the genius who processed those historical events intellectually in a real paradigm shift. During his teachings at the new Berlin University in the first decades of the nineteenth century, he reflected on the impact of the modern revolutions on Western thinking and education. Before those revolutions, thinking was marked by ontology and the metaphysical study of natural theology, inspired by Plato and Aristotle, portrayed as heroes of Western thinking in Raphael’s School of Athens. In a centuries-old tradition of metaphysics, it focused on eternity as the main aspect of the immutable being. In this light, the realm of time was just some kind of illusion, and from Plato’s point of view, on which every monotheistic theology is based, a delusive element, alien to the nature of being. Hegel changed that metaphysical paradigm by valuing time as an ontological reality. He put time in the picture as a key realm, determining every existing being. By this paradigm shift, he smoothed the way for Husserl’s phenomenon and Ricœur’s narrativity. Evolution, development, process, history and narrativity became a new set of values in modern society, originating in the American and French political revolutions. From now on, time became the story teller; its stories provoked the imagination and changed the education of new citizens.

The Mental Constituent of Education The privileged domain where the impact of the realm of time is experienced, is the human mind or human spirit with its power to think phenomenologically (Husserl), develop stories and discover new horizons by imagining (Ricœur). The mind isn’t an unwavering fact, but a dynamic reality which is constantly in a state of development.This explains why education is a constitutional part of human being.We term it ‘the mental constitution’ of education. Hegel clarified once and for all in his The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) that within every newborn baby dwells a sleeping spirit. Only others, parents, family, know the baby’s name, but the newborn doesn’t know its own identity, because it’s not able to be with itself. French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan concretized this Hegelian insight in his 1949 lecture on ‘the mirror stage’ (Lacan 2006, 75–81). During complex interacting play with its parents in front of the mirror, the baby is

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gradually building up an awareness of its own reality.The mirror image of itself and the others is the medium through which the baby gains its own identity. Notably, the mirror image presents itself as the stage on which a new developing spirit gets access to the realm of its own personality and that of the outside world. Slowly, a spirit arises within the newborn child and its unique life narrative begins. The historical and anthropological example of the ‘Wild Child’ proves Hegel’s insights into the structural importance of education. François Truffaut based his great movie The Wild Child (1970) on a study of the French enfant sauvage. His movie tells the real story of a child who spent the first eleven or twelve years of his life with little or no human contact. In the nineteenth century, the Parisian doctor Jean Marc Itard and his housekeeper jointly tried to raise and educate the Wild Child. The adoptive parents only succeeded to a certain extent in equipping the child with self-confidence and the human power to think and imagine. Sadly, the Wild Child remained an immature human being, dying without ever having had access to his own identity and consciousness. This confirms that the structural phase called the mirror stage is central to becoming self-conscious, and therefore it cannot be omitted. The story of the Wild Child reveals the importance of education and how the process of education gives human beings access to their very own spirit and unique life-story. In the case of architectural designers, education gives access to one’s own personality through two media: image and word. The medium of the word represents language, grafting itself upon the mirror stage and the ability to imagine. This structural element analogically returns in architectural education. Image and word constitute two collaborative media, practiced by architects.

The Cultural Constituent of Education The mental constituent of education is a structural one. It is related to the human mind and its narrative structure. Human beings are always busy learning from the events of life, reflecting on them in their minds, and gradually making their own stories.Without that structural ability a human being would walk in a mist of ignorance. From the example of the Wild Child, it appears that seeing things does not automatically imply understanding things. The phenomenon of the family as the first school of a child, and thereafter the phenomenon of the school, where growing children are learning skills, spring from the first mental phase of education. This first constituent sets the foundations for the second one, the cultural constituent. It is through the cultural constituent of education that every human becomes a cultural being. Again it is Hegel who helps us to understand the cultural phase of education, through his concept of Zeitgeist (spirit of the time or spirit of the age) (Bertram 1998, 94–95). Hegel himself clarifies the impact of the Zeitgeist in relation to the individual, by stating that ‘no man can overleap his own time, for the spirit of his time is also his spirit’ (Magee 2010, 262).The human spirit develops and educates itself through different cultural periods following on one another: the Classical Age, the Middle Ages, the Modern and Postmodern Ages. Every historical period has

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its own Zeitgeist. History appears as His Story. It shows its presence through important cultural phenomena and their evolution: language, philosophy, art, architecture, religion, science and technology, politics, morals and habits. No one more than the singer-songwriter Bob Dylan knew how to express the realm of the Zeitgeist, when he wrote and sang his seminal ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’’. Decades later, during the concert ‘In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of Music for the Civil Rights Movement’ on February 9, 2010, the same Dylan again performed his classic sixties song while Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States, was sitting in the front row.

Architecture as Educator Seen in the perspective of the cultural constituent of education, the Zeitgeist, the educational role of architecture can hardly be ignored. Architecture – the home a child grows up in, the schools the child goes to, the cities they visit with their parents or teachers – has an impact on the way the teenager perceive the world. But, what happens when architecture is explicitly exhibited, hoping to change the architectural taste of the public? Geert Bekaert answers that ‘in fact, architecture is always exhibitionistic – it can’t help but exposing itself ’ (Van Gerrewey and Patteeuw 2012, 112).

Architecture’s Narrative of Architecture An important chapter of the story of architecture is told by thinking and designing architects who wanted to educate the public. Their preferred educational method was exhibitions. In the twentieth century, these played a crucial role in defining disciplinary histories, as they marked pivotal moments in time and documented the environment in which new narratives or arguments unfolded. In 1927, Mies van der Rohe, on the occasion of the Deutscher Werkbund exhibition, asked seventeen European architects to design and construct twenty-one buildings. Together they formed the famous Weissenhofsiedlung near Stuttgart. As a permanent architectural exhibition site, the Weissenhofsiedlung was advertised as how architects could grasp the modern Zeitgeist by designing prototypes for future workers’ housing (Kirsch 1989, 17–33). ‘It is often hailed as an exemplar of architectural display, invoking the full-scale building as a model for living still apparent today’ (Szacka 2012, 14). The buildings represent and teach the public about the social, aesthetic and technological changes in modern society, following the end of the First World War. Fortunately, initial plans during the Nazi period to demolish the buildings were prevented by the outbreak of the Second World War; however, ten houses in the center of the site were lost during an air raid in 1944. To be clear, it is possible to exhibit architecture without building real buildings. Indeed, there are many examples of temporary architectural exhibitions. One such exhibition worth mentioning is Modern Architecture: International Exhibition, curated by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson at the world’s first curatorial department of architecture and design, at the Museum of Modern Art

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(MOMA) in New York.The exhibition, which took place in 1932 – five years after Weissenhofsiedlung opened its doors – ultimately proved to be an important moment in architecture’s history, if only because of the controversy surrounding it. Johnson introduced the international style of modern architecture as ‘probably the first fundamentally original and widely distributed style since the Gothic’ (Merin 2013). The exhibition was critiqued by architects and writers for clumping everyone, from Frank Lloyd Wright to Walter Gropius, under the same definition of style and meanwhile overlooking crucial differences, and even crucial similarities, just for the sake of categorization. Similar to the Weissenhofsiedlung, the first architecture exhibition at MOMA aimed to educate its visitors by promoting a specific style, namely the international style of modernism that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, the formative decades of modernist architecture.The MOMA exhibition emphasized architectural style, form and aesthetics rather than the social aspects of the modern movement in Europe – such as Mies van der Rohe’s work near Stuttgart, but previously also at the 1923 Bauhaus exhibition in Weimar, under the lead of Walter Gropius (1883–1969). In 1988, Philip Johnson distanced himself from the style-obsessed approach of his first MOMA exhibition (Lewis 2002, 2–11). ‘I got bored with the boxes’, said Johnson (ibid.) – referring to buildings like the City Museum (Figure 3.1) – and, with Mark Wigley, he curated the new MOMA Deconstructivist Architecture exhibition. He introduced the new generation of postwar architects: Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, Bernard Tschumi. In their exhibition catalogue Johnson and Wigley explained that those architects disturbed the dream of pure form and that ‘the ability to disturb our thinking about form’ made the exhibited project deconstructive (Johnson and Wigley 1988). In both his MOMA exhibitions Philip Johnson tried to expose the changing Zeitgeist by means of architecture, from modernism to postmodernism, but he couldn’t transcend his reduction of architecture to form. The ability of

FIGURE 3.1  City

Museum (Ahmedabad, India), Le Corbusier. Photo: © Nizil Shah.

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postmodern architects to let people think through projects and buildings in the postwar era cannot be narrowed down to a discussion on form. But, the two Johnson MOMA exhibitions helped to develop the narrative of architecture on the scene of the twentieth century. In Europe, the Biennales in Venice provide another important international scene for the narrative of architecture. The history of the Venice Biennale dates back to 1895, when the first International Art Exhibition was organized. However, it was not until 1980 that the first International Architecture Exhibition took place. A first milestone in the history of the Architecture exhibitions in Venice was the third exhibition directed by Aldo Rossi. Over 1,500 applicants, including Peter Eisenman and Daniel Libeskind, took up Rossi’s challenge to reinvent or reimagine a selection of urban sites in Venice, the Veneto region, and Friuli. In recent years, the focus of the Biennales has shifted to the wider social, political and historical context of architectural practice (Steierhoffer 2012). That shift can be seen in the titles of the different exhibitions, including Out There: Architecture Beyond Building in 2008, People Meet in Architecture in 2010, and Common Ground in 2012. Definitely worthy of mention is also the 2014 Biennale, curated by Koolhaas and entitled Fundamentals. Koolhaas aimed to stay away from the usual Biennale format of displaying recent work by well-known architects. His focus was on architecture, not architects. In other words, Fundamentals focused on histories – on the inevitable elements of all architecture used by any architect, anywhere, anytime (the door, the floor, the ceiling, etc.), and on the evolution of national architectures in the last 100 years. It is especially the latter that interests us. For the first time, countries participating

FIGURE 3.2  German

Pavilion, 14th International Architecture Biennale (Venice, Italy), Ciriacidis Lehnerer Architekten. Photo: © Ciriacidis Lehnerer Architekten.

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in the 14th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia – were asked to engage with a shared theme. Artistic director Koolhaas asked each participating country to consider the development of their respective national architecture in response to the overarching theme, Absorbing Modernity: 1914–2014. Due to its turbulent history over the last 100 years, the German contribution was very challenging. In the German pavilion, curators Lehnerer and Ciriacidis reconstructed parts of the Chancellor’s Bungalow in Bonn, designed by Sep Ruf (Figures 3.2, 3.3).

FIGURE 3.3  German

Pavilion, 14th International Architecture Biennale (Venice, Italy), Ciriacidis Lehnerer Architekten. Photo: © Ciriacidis Lehnerer Architekten.

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Titled Bungalow Germania, the project sought to capture the spirit of an important building that became ubiquitous in the West German media during the tenure of the Bonn Republic. You will find out more about me if you look at this house than if you watch me deliver a political speech. (Erhard, quoted in Ciriacidis and Lehnerer 2014, 2) When Ludwig Erhard made this statement in 1964, he did not so much turn the Bungalow into a building as into a political character. In Venice, Lehnerer and Ciriacidis are confronted by a 1:1 model of the German Chancellor’s former official residence with the existing pavilion in the Giardini della Biennale. In this sense, the Bungalow is juxtaposed against the architecture of the German pavilion, which was extensively remodeled in 1938 in the spirit of the German Reich, officially coming under its ownership in 1943. Debates still flare up even today over whether such a politically charged building can represent the new German democratic nation on the international stage of the Venetian Giardini.The spatial and architectural qualities of the pavilion take a back seat in these debates to its perception as a ‘stone word’, articulating the culture of its Zeitgeist. ‘In Venice, we want to bring together the overlapping narrative strands of the nation and the architecture it has produced over the past century’, the curators said (Ciriacidis and Lehnerer 2014, 1). ‘We want to make these two opposing political buildings speak in Venice, and instigate a conversation where they are on an equal footing’ (ibid., 2). As architects, the curators used architectural means to grapple with history, through an architectural montage of these two buildings that connects narratives, moments in time, actual places, and spaces. Indeed, the two opposing political buildings related to each other, and instigated a conversation where they were on an equal footing. Each building told a different story and questioned the myth of the other. What meaning does the Bungalow’s transparent glass hold if it cannot fulfill its promise of looking out over wide vistas, instead framing the view on the cold, white pavilion walls? Of course, the answer belonged to the spectators. Seen in our perspective of narrative architecture, each exhibition is a composition or configuration and it can only come to life through the praxis of interpretation. Needless to say, each interpretation may lead to different answers. Architectural exhibitions deliver performances by telling stories and creating narratives.They are able to shed light on topics with more or less societal relevance. More than speeches, texts and even artworks, architecture exhibitions are able to make certain issues, both literally and figuratively, accessible to everyone and educate the public in the narrative power of architectural experience within a given society. The 1:1 model of the Chancellor’s Bungalow by Lehnerer and Ciriacidis showed this especially clearly. That such exhibitions can play a unique role in educating the public imagination and stimulating citizens to help build up their own society, is well demonstrated by one other exhibition, expressing the deeply human need for shelter in the form of a house, a dwelling.

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Rethinking Social Issues In a wider context, beyond architectural and historical research, the role of the exhibition is worth considering in relation to the discipline at large. Representation and the limitations of the display of the architectural object contribute to a larger and less bounded conception of architecture as not primarily concerned with objects in the built environment, but as a way of thinking imaginatively about living in the world (Steierhoffer 2012, 6–7). Due to social shifts and important demographic changes, such as the growing number of single people and ‘greying’ societies, housing is at the top of the social agenda in many parts of the Western world. The architectural exhibition can play a unique educational role in dealing with current social issues. The exhibition Wohnungsfrage at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin, at the end of 2015, told about recent social and demographic shifts and the tangible consequences for all of us. The title of the project at the HKW harkened back to Friedrich Engels’ pamphlet Zur Wohnungsfrage published in 1872, which criticized the discourse surrounding housing at the time and, more generally, the moralistic approach of nineteenth-century bourgeois socialism. The housing issue (Wohnungsfrage) encompasses a number of crucial problems in the world today, such as population growth, a greying society as part of demographic change, a tendency towards individualization, the immigration crisis in Western countries, and unrestrained speculative capitalism. Wohnungsfrage didn’t approach the housing issue from the point of view of urban planners and city administrators, but deliberately from the perspective of the users (Scherer 2015). Even with regard to global housing issues, Berlin proved to be an interesting laboratory in which new participatory approaches were developed and tested. Thus, Berlin initiatives cooperated with international architectural practices from Brussels,Tokyo and London. Dialogically, they designed housing models.These 1:1 models were the focal point of the exhibition.They were placed within a larger historical and global context by means of wide-scale research projects and artistic works. Approaching the HKW by foot, the incongruous white lines printed on the ground by artist Maria Eichhorn were immediately recognizable (Figure 3.4).These lines retraced the footprints of residential buildings destroyed during the Second World War. Through the praxis of imagination, the visitor to the exhibition was catapulted into the past while staying in the present. Before the Second World War, the area in which the HKW now stands – literally steps away from the German Reichstag – used to be a lively neighborhood. What was once a residential area for thousands of people is now an open green area, home to the HKW, formerly known as the Kongresshalle, a conference hall and a gift from the United States, designed in 1957 by the American architect Hugh Asher Stubbins (1912–2006) as a part of the International Building Exhibition. Among other housing-related artworks and archival displays of existing alternative housing practices, mainly in Europe and North America, four 1:1 (life-size) models, constructed for the exhibition, provided examples of housing concepts developed in

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FIGURE 3.4  In

den Zelten 4 / 5 / 5a / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 9a / 10, Kronprinzenufer 29 / 30, Beethovenstraße 1 / 2 / 3 (1832 bis 1959), John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10 (seit 1959), Berlin at Wohnungsfrage Exhibition (Berlin, Germany), Maria Eichhorn. Photo: © Jens Liebchen.

collaboration with social protagonists. The multidisciplinary Wohnungsfrage project focused on the socio-cultural practice of architecture, which comes to life in an exchange between designers and clients/users. Berlin-based initiatives committed to the effects of gentrification became the clients of renowned international architects. In a dialogic process, they developed 1:1 residential models. The Stille Straße 10 Senior Center, for example, collaborated with the designers of London-based Assemble. Student group Kooperatives Labor Studierender (Kolabs) collaborated with Atelier Bow-Wow from Tokyo; while Dogma, from Brussels, cooperated with the Realism Working Group from Frankfurt as well as with Florian Schmidt, Studio Commissioner of Kulturwerk bbk berlins. According to the curators, Fezer, Hirsch, Kuehn and Peleg, ‘the purpose of the 1:1 models, the outcome of pairing designers and social activists has been to interrogate new forms of management and progressive legislation and new design practices and sustainable structures; all intrinsic to a contemporary inquiry into alternative ways of living’. And they add, ‘to think through these manifold considerations is an architectural challenge’ (Fezer et al. 2015, 6). London’s Assemble along with the Stille Straße 10 community developed a potential residential type that guarantees use of the center’s communal spaces and creates permeability between residential and recreational spaces (Figures 3.5, 3.6). An essential part of their design is the development process of the building and an ownership model whereby individual units are divided between an owned and a

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at Wohnungsfrage Exhibition (Berlin, Germany), Assemble Studios. Sketch: © Assemble Studios.

FIGURE 3.5  Teilwohnung

at Wohnungsfrage Exhibition (Berlin, Germany), Assemble Studios. 1:1 model: Assemble Studios / Photo: © Jens Liebchen.

FIGURE 3.6  Teilwohnung

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rented section that – according to the changing life needs of the inhabitants – could be used as private space or could be returned to the cooperative that owns and operates the building. Atelier Bow-Wow and Kooperatives Labor Studierender, a collective of university students from the Faculty of Architecture of TU Berlin, presented Urban Forest, a new residential type for students (Figures 3.7, 3.8). The project responds to the needs of young Berliners in terms of housing costs – which have risen substantially in recent years – and the quality of shared, communal spaces. In Urban Forest, the bedrooms, on the first floor, are minimal in size and consist of cells overlooking a larger communal space on the ground floor. According to the architects, the design favors space for encounters and relationships, creating a weak hierarchy between private and collective. Whereas Assemble teaches us to rethink issues such as renting and ownership by means of architecture, Atelier Bow-Wow’s design encourages us to rethink the architecture of the buildings themselves. Through their model, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kajima treat the transition between private and communal use of space as a shifting line in the sand.They teach us that architecture is not about isolating things but connecting them. DOGMA with the Realism Working Group presented Communal Villa: Production and Reproduction in Artists’ Housing, a prototype residence for artists that addresses the conflict between private and collective, embracing today’s need to overlap living and working spaces (Figures 3.9, 3.10). Communal Villa contains approximately fifty housing units, called cells, each designed for just one person.

Forest at Wohnungsfrage Exhibition (Berlin, Germany), Atelier BowWow. Model: © Atelier Bow-Wow.

FIGURE 3.7  Urban

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Forest at Wohnungsfrage Exhibition (Berlin, Germany), Atelier BowWow. 1:1 model: Atelier Bow-Wow / Photo: © Jens Liebchen.

FIGURE 3.8  Urban

Wohnungsfrage Exhibition (Berlin, Germany), DOGMA. Drawing: © DOGMA.

FIGURE 3.9  Communal Villa,

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Communal Villa, Wohnungsfrage Exhibition (Berlin, Germany), DOGMA. 1:1 model: © DOGMA / Photo: © Jens Liebchen. Greenaway.

Every cell consists of a large, private, dual-height work space. It also contains a private living space. This space appears as an inhabited wall which also functions as a buffer between the private spaces and collective space at the back of the wall. The service spaces are on the ground floor and the bedrooms or alcoves on the upper floor. For the practice of architecture, the format of the exhibition provided a rare opportunity (Mueller 2012). Assemble, Atelier Bow-Wow and DOGMA fully embraced the opportunity to test ideas in their purest form and on a 1:1 scale in the setup of an exhibition, outside functional and statutory requirements, with minimal means and an audience to connect with. Social ideas especially require testing, as their development often depends on experience, which can only be gained through real-life situations. The nature of the building project can make this a lengthy undertaking, allowing evaluation only when it is too late. Exhibitions with their short life span and intense population therefore provide a valuable site for architecture research into social issues. (Mueller 2012, 90)

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The curators of Wohnungsfrage introduced a designer’s story in which the architect doesn’t act as a demiurge. The exhibition clearly advocated for architects as team players, able to translate bottom-up initiatives into built form.Yet, the unique capacities designers have were not overlooked. On the contrary, they were asked to build 1:1 models. In the context of the exhibition, the architects became educators. They acted as designers who are able to respond to the specific problems of Berlin housing initiatives and make them accessible for a wider audience. It seems architects have the tools to hand to translate the moral imagination of social groups about a new future for housing into accessible 1:1 models and of course real buildings. As a result, the creative work of designers educates spatial awareness in a society dealing with important issues like dwelling.

Educating the Architect One of the side-effects of the architectural exhibitions is that they show a new generation of architects the way to the discipline and the schools of architecture. Nearly every architect in the world learned their discipline in a school of architecture. Certainly, this is true of Western-formed architects. Ever since Vitruvius wrote The Ten Books on Architecture, every cultural period has developed its own architectural discourse. And each one mirrors its own Zeitgeist. Architecture schools are prominent places where a Zeitgeist learns to manifest itself in architectural concepts and designs; they all tell the story of architecture with its own historical narrative.

The Plea of Schön Most schools of architecture have the same noble ambition: designing the perfect architect. Donald Schön was the first to draw attention to the educational process in design schools in general and architectural schools in particular. His work, Educating the Reflective Practitioner. Towards a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions, clarified that the educational aspect in schools for architecture cannot be taken for granted. It certainly isn’t an automatism which can be passed from one generation to the next. Schön drew attention to the inherent problem of educational automatism which too often takes the educational process for granted. In the subtitle of his book, Schön uses the term design in relation to teaching and learning architecture. This is appropriate, because every educational process indeed has its own design. Seen in the narrative light of the mental and cultural phases of education, Schön’s approach only focuses on the mental phase.This focus is important because it emphasizes the learning relationship between the student and the studio master. Indeed, this relationship shapes a substantial aspect of architectural education in the design studio. It develops the mental phase of educating designers to a professional level. The student and the design master build up their own story. Schön rightly refers to John Dewey’s pragmatic approach to education, and fights against the time-old dualism between theory in the classroom and practice in the design studio.

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In that context Schön advocates for ‘the reflective practicum’ (Schön 1986, 313), without dealing with the impediments to introducing this reflective practicum. And here, we’re reaching the critical limit of Schön’s approach. It brings us back to the relevance of the cultural phase of education in relation to the issue of ‘designing the architect’.

The Narrative of the Demiurge Similar to Hegel’s finding that individual identity is defined by a certain Zeitgeist, the educational relationship between student and studio master is much more than a communicative relationship between two individuals. Both individuals are part of a dominating Zeitgeist ruling the Western culture of architecture.This cultural tradition hampers reshaping the educational process in the design studio into a reflective practicum. Indeed, that architectural Zeitgeist has a very definite identity: the narrative of the demiurge. What demiurge means and how the demiurge operates as an educational model in designing the architect in Western tradition, can be seen in the mirror of three cultural images which cover the narrative of the architectural demiurge. The first picture is a unique medieval miniature from the French Bible moralisée (Figure 3.11). This masterpiece from the French Gothic dates back to the first half of the thirteenth century (Haussherr 1998, 3). It belongs to a precious and very rare original manuscript, kept in the Austrian National Library under the number Codex Vindobonensis 2554. It looks like a comic book. In fact, it shows that the Bible is a great and old storybook. The image we discuss here is the only one that fills a whole page in the Bible moralisée. This underlines the importance of what is shown. The image evokes the biblical story of the divine Creator, described in Genesis 1. The French text above the image tells us that God created heaven and earth, the sun and the moon and all the elements (ibid., 49). The image introduces God as the great and perfect Architect. Haussherr demonstrates that this presentation was realized in the same period during which the first Gothic cathedrals of Ile-de-France were built (ibid., 3). He elucidates: ‘“God as Architect of the Universe”, so said the caption when the miniature was depicted in a work on the Gothic cathedrals’ (ibid.). It is undeniable that this medieval miniature portrays God as the Great Architect. But those who look carefully will see that in this Christian image something more is happening. The anonymous painter only keeps the great scheme of the Creation in the Book of Genesis. There’s the big ocean with the earth and the sun and the moon above it. Moreover, compared to the rest of the image, the whole cosmos with the earth and sky is limited to a small ball. The miniaturist reduces the image of the Creation of the World, but clearly not without having a certain motivation. He interprets the biblical story from Plato’s Greek and cosmological point of view, explained in the often read Timaeus (Manis 2013). We learn this from the painter’s decision to use compasses and the shape of a circle in his image, elements which cannot be found in Genesis 1. Seen in this light, the anonymous painter of this

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moralisée, Genesis (Codex Vindobonensis 2554) (Vienna, Austria). Image: Unknown. © Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek.

FIGURE 3.11  Bible

miniature portrayed a big human being as God, the Supreme Being, as described in Greek philosopher Plato’s metaphysical study of the cosmos. He calls this being the metaphysical Demiurge.This is an English word from a Latinized form of the Greek de¯miourgos (δημιουργός), literally meaning ‘public worker’, and which was originally

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a common noun meaning ‘craftsman’ or ‘creator’. Indeed,‘dèmos’ means ‘the people’, which originally meant ‘the place and space where people meet, stay and live’. God is the first Tradesman, and the cosmos He created is the place where everything, especially the people, stay. Therefore his name: the Demiurge, the Architect of the Big Space where all humans live (De Bleeckere 2015, 104). The anonymous artist who drew the portrait of the Demiurge paid a lot of attention to the actions of the divine Architect. The figure is clearly moving and acting. But, it is not just an act, it is the act par excellence, an animated action.The Demiurge is drawing, but definitely not discretionally. Drawing becomes measuring. Between his hand and the cosmos, he holds a measuring instrument.This indicates the guiding role of divine Reason which leads the hand to draw a pure geometrical line. The curved position of the Demiurge underlines his concentration. The nearness of his eye and hand marks his gesture. His keen look and the aureole around his head suggest the invisible Reason behind what is happening. Thinking directs the eye; in its turn the eye leads the hand which holds the compasses which produce the rational drawing. The miniature shows the narrative of the divine Architect. The Demiurge produces the plan He imagined beforehand. His Plan contains the perfect and invisible model which the Demiurge imitates in the material world. The dynamism of the Demiurge’s action lies in copying the ideal Plan. In fact, this medieval biblical illustration could have been the cover page for an edition of Timaeus.The image clearly incorporates the metaphysical tradition and its Platonic signature. Looking in the mirror of the Bible moralisée, we learn how Western culture works with the image of the divine Architect or Demiurge, an image which was transferred from one generation to the next, from master to student, within one small elite of educated architects. Our second image reinforces the impact of that prevailing culture and its demiurgic narrative. The Italian painter Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, better known as Raphael, drew the fresco The School of Athens (Figure 1.4) between 1509 and 1510, in the rooms now known as the Stanze di Raffaello in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. Within this important fresco, Raphael mirrors the Golden Age of Athens with its prominent representatives Plato and Aristotle. In the center of the fresco, at its architectural central vanishing point, these two men become the undisputed main subjects. Both figures hold modern, bound copies of their books in their left hands, while gesturing with their right. Plato holds his Timaeus, Aristotle his Nicomachean Ethics. Raphael makes the figure on the left, Plato, look like his admired mentor Leonardo da Vinci. The fresco can also be read as a virtual manifest of the Renaissance. The Greek Golden Age seems to be the starting point and inspirational source for the ideal future city, pictured here as futuristic, utopian architecture. Reference to a new era of demiurgic architecture is not only present in the architectural image, but also in the book Plato is holding, his Timaeus. We can see that, without any hesitation, the Renaissance picked up what we have already learned about the medieval demiurge. Additionally, Raphael gives it a future performance. Indeed, utopian thinking in Western culture goes back to Plato in general, and more particularly to his ideas of the ideal city as described in his Timaeus

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(Manis 2013, 11–13).To demiurgically design a future Atlantis realized an inevitable magnetism or intellectual attraction in modern times. It became a main narrative in modern, Western culture. In fact, this concept of a utopian society, designed by the enlightened Demiurge, became characteristic for a modern Zeitgeist and the demiurgic narrative of the architect. Our third image confirms this point of view. The British painter, poet and printmaker William Blake designed and printed twelve color prints of Newton between 1795 and 1805 (Figure 3.12). For Blake, Newton represents modern society and the Age of Enlightenment with its utopian dream of realizing, in a demiurgic way, a new ideal world. Blake was one of the first European thinkers and artists to criticize and move away from the demiurgic model, especially in its modern shape. This print of Newton by Blake presents an unconventionally negative image of the scientist. Blake shows the rationalist, preoccupied with his calculations. When Newton’s supreme achievement, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy was first published in English in 1729, it had a frontispiece showing the author enthroned in Heaven with Truth holding her compasses beside him. Here, Newton’s compasses are the same as the instrument used by God the Divine Geometer in creating the world . . .  (Hamlyn and Philips 2000, 212)

FIGURE 3.12  Newton, William

Blake. 

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Blake’s image suggests a link to Plato’s Timaeus and the divine Demiurge which practices the geometry of perfect forms like the circle, the square and the triangle. According to Plato, these geometrical figures are intellectual instruments the divine Architect uses to design and realize the perfect cosmos. Even in the image of the Bible moralisée the compasses are the privileged instrument of the demiurge. The only difference between the demiurgic, metaphysical Zeitgeist of the Middle Ages and modern times is the enlightened, modern human being, portrayed as Newton himself who wants to act like a divine Demiurge. Out of his own rational brain, he wants to realize a new world order, a new master plan.The immaculate white linen with the compasses shows how the modern demiurge designs his master plan, by obliterating every existing element in a tabula rasa gesture.The concept of tabula rasa thinking goes back to René Descartes, the pioneer of modern thinking (Newby and Newby 2008). He wanted to realize autonomous thinking through the method of tabula rasa: the ‘clean slate’ or ‘blank tablet’ on which the static design of pure geometrical forms can emerge. William Blake didn’t accept this kind of modern thinking; from his point of view it was too destructive towards Earth’s nature. ‘Blake brings Newton down to earth’ (Hamlyn and Philips 2000, 212). However, this didn’t hinder members of the modern architecture movement CIAM – Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (1928–1959) – from continuing to work with the demiurgic image of the architect. According to architecture theorist Charles Jencks, Pruitt-Igoe (1954–1956), St. Louis, MI, by architect Minoru Yamasaki, is the perfect example of a demiurgic tabula rasa method, and, due to the total failure of the project, a clear symptom of ‘the death of modern architecture’ (Jencks 1977, 9). This statement can be understood as the end of the demiurgic narrative in architecture (Figure 3.13). The failure of Pruitt-Igoe is shown in movies like Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance (1982) by Godfrey Reggio (1940), and the documentary The Pruitt-Igoe Myth: An Urban History (2011) by Chad Friedrichs. At the end of the last century Greg Lynn wrote in his contribution to the issue on ‘Architecture after Geometry’ in Architectural Design: Architecture is perhaps the last discipline which not only uses Cartesianism for the expedient simplicity, but, more reprehensibly, holds on to a reactionary belief in the ethics of statics. (Lynn 1997, 54) In his movie The Tree of Life (2011), awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, the American director Terrence Malick tells a postmodern designer’s story. The film is the audio-visual response to the appeal in voice-off of one of the three children, to the mother: ‘Tell us a story from before we can remember’ (De Bleeckere 2012, 58–115).The main character is Jack O’Brien, one of the three boys, who became a well-established architect in the state of Texas. One of the locations Malick uses to portray his main character is the pair of glass towers, Pennzoil Place, in Houston. Malick also slightly associates his main character with Philip Johnson who worked together with John Burgee to design the praised Houston building.

Educating   121 FIGURE 3.13  April

1972. The second, widely televised demolition of a Pruitt-Igoe building that followed the March 16 demolition (Saint Louis, Missouri, USA). Stills: © U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

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Johnson won the Pritzker Prize for his design in 1979. Malick doesn’t tell a traditional story. The Tree of Life has a postmodern narrative, being a mixture of memories and thoughts.The architect Jack O’Brien suspends his work and begins to meditate about his life after a phone call from his mother telling him his younger brother has taken his own life. Architect Jack’s meditation is existential. His thinking evolves to a praxis of moral imagination regarding not only his life but also the meaning of the existing culture as expressed in its buildings. To the fluid rhythm of nature sounds, music, words and images, The Tree of Life questions the sense of demiurgic culture as represented by the metropolitan skylines of office towers. Malick confronts that demiurgic culture with the life-metaphor of the family house. Through his selfreflection, architect Jack, the alter ego of Malick himself, tries to reconnect with the stream of real life, the mother planet Earth, visible in the memories of his parental home and in his strong awareness of nature’s force and Earth’s beauty. Malick concludes his film-poem with Jack’s final gesture. He leaves his office in the glass tower, enters the elevator, descends to the ground floor, goes outside and watches the river flow, with the bridge spanning the streaming water. The open-ended film story departs from the univocal narrative of the demiurge tradition in classical and modernist culture and architecture, looking for a narrative that reconnects with the realm of Life.

Reconnecting with Life in the Design Studio When it comes to educating architects, the force of the impact of the cultural phase is impressive. The age-long paradigm, the narrative of the divine Demiurge and its human equivalent, the master architect, has dominated the design studio in architecture schools. Architects have kept on handing this narrative down from generation to generation. In the analysis of chapter six of the book, Schön questions ‘How the Teaching and Learning Processes Can Go Wrong’. Sadly, he seems to neglect the factor of the cultural paradigm of the demiurgic architect (Schön 1986, 119–156). By focusing on the one-to-one relationship between student and studio master, he overlooks the dominant factor of the cultural phase of education and its compulsory narrative of the demiurge. This leads to an educational process characterized by imitation. Even Schön had to admit that a learning process as ‘reflective imitation’ within the design studio must go wrong (Schön 1986, 120). But still, the demiurgic model has been transferred from one generation to the next. As Schön rightly remarks, the design studio leaves little or no space to think for oneself. Schön quotes a student who summarizes the problem very well: No time to think . . . just time to prepare projects, keep up with the reading and get to class and keep from falling asleep. The pace always killed me. (Schön 1986, 339–340) The demiurgic narrative reduces thinking and imagining to imitating. First, the human architect tries to imitate the divine Demiurge, and then, in modern times,

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the human master architect acts out of a demiurgic position. He considered his position in the master studio as guaranteed just by the fact that he is a trained architect. Therefore, Schön argues that ‘some studio masters feel a need to protect their special artistry’ (Schön 1986, 119).

Education in a Democratic Zeitgeist The key to understanding the impact of the demiurgic model in the design studio is its hierarchic structure. The demiurgic paradigm is no longer appropriate to enrich architectural education in times of a democratic Zeitgeist. How can architects think and act out of a demiurgic model and design for and inside a democratic society? Reflecting about the first generation of modern architects (Le Corbusier, Mies van de Rohe, Erich Mendelsohn), Daniel Libeskind remarked in his autobiography Breaking Ground: This earlier generation of architects – like those who now try to follow in their footsteps – felt that the true architectural spirit is an authoritarian spirit. It is elitist. [. . .] What is called for in the twenty-first century is a new philosophy for architecture, one based on democratic ideals. (Libeskind 2004, 42–43) At the heart of a necessary shift in architectural education in general, and the design studio more specifically, we find the realm of a democratic Zeitgeist or narrative. This implies the praxis of complex thinking. In the democratic Zeitgeist of the twenty-first century, architectural thinking became complex thinking. This implies that thinking is more than just remembering and imitating things from the past. Architectural thinking doesn’t stop with imitating and implementing the learned model. The architect practices thinking as a unique way to approach reality, not by reducing it to so-called universal principles which can be repeated over and over again, but rather by being concerned with a complex reality, reflected in a democratic society. Charles Jencks introduced the notion of complexity in architectural discourse with his work entitled The Architecture of the Jumping Universe. A Polemic: How Complexity Science Is Changing Architecture and Culture (1997). Complexity, which is present in scientific post-Newtonian knowledge, had previously been the cornerstone of a democratic society. Gradually, this democratic complexity has started to penetrate science. As a result, the demiurgic paradigm of Western knowledge is beginning to change. One first step towards a shift in the educational process in the design studio is breaking the one-dimensional, authoritarian code.

The Empowerment of Clients/Users Several observational studies have been made of how designers work (Lawson 2006). A general finding is that designers solve problems which are ill-defined, illstructured or ‘wicked’ (Cross 2006). Designers use a pattern language, or codes, to

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control the design process. Their ways of knowing are embodied in those ‘codes’, which guide the process towards a final design product (Cross 2006). Of course, there is no correct ‘method of designing’, and there is no one route through the process. Nonetheless, we observe that most design process models, especially within the field of architecture, tend to exclude the client/user from the process (Parnell 2003). In most cases, their role is limited to the provision of basic constraints. Consequently, it may be argued that collaborations between architectural designers and clients/ users tend to be nothing more than pseudo-participation (Till 2005). The basis for a general denial of the user/client by architects is formed during their education, modeled on the demiurgic paradigm. In particular, the development of empathy and cooperation among students of architecture is recognized as most lacking in the traditional model of education (Parnell 2003). According to Sara (2000), the involvement of clients/users in the design studio and the education process currently challenges the traditional model which generally tends to exclude these people. Collaboration and communication skills are not, apparently, strengths of the architecture profession (Parnell 2003). But, perhaps of greatest concern is that architects are described as arrogant, poor listeners, and their education is seen to be to blame (Sara 2000). Lack of communication brings a lack of understanding, and where there is a lack of understanding, relationships tend to break down. From this perspective, one can see how easily a non-professional might arrive at a negative impression of the professional designer. Recently, Brett Steele, director of the AA School in London, remarked that ‘the key project of the architectural school today is the making of audiences, not architects’ (2013, 90). Parnell therefore urges us to introduce the client/user into the design studio. Studying people and communicating with clients/users from day one in the design studio would help architecture students to see their perspective on design and architecture and learn to respect their viewpoint (Parnell 2003, 68).This should breed respect and ultimately avoid the public view of architects as arrogant and out of touch with reality. Undeniably, the empowerment of clients/users demands that their dynamic role affects the final design in a real and sustainable way. By encouraging students to develop and use participatory methods, they are effectively being asked to reject a paternalistic model of practicing architecture and instead design with people. If this were to happen in architecture schools, it would clearly communicate to students that the discipline of architecture values people within the design process.

The Ultimate Question Despite the considerable differences in the process of educating future architects around the world, there is one remarkable similarity – the overriding primacy given to the design studio as the main forum for creative exploration, interaction and assimilation. Indeed, ‘the design studio is the kiln where the future architects are modeled’ (Salama 1995, 1) and learn to think, imagine and design.That brings us to

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the ultimate question. What does the act of designing itself include after renouncing the old-school paradigm of the divine Demiurge? In other words, how can we profile the praxis of designing itself in a renewed connection with the life-world in general and with the social and spatial challenges and opportunities in shaping the future of a democratically oriented society in particular?

References Bertram, Mathias (ed.). 1998. ‘Hegel: Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie’, in Geschichte der Philosophie. CD-Rom. Digitale Bibliothek. Berlin, Directmedia Publishing. Ciriacidis, Savvas and Lehnerer, Alex. Bungalow Germania: Curatorial Statement. Retrieved from http://bungalowgermania.de. [September 23, 2014]. Cross, Nigel. 2006. Designerly Ways of Knowing. London, Springer. De Bleeckere, Sylvain. 2012. Het aards paradijs als zinnebeeld. Beschouwingen bij The New World and The Tree of Life van Terrence Malick. Hasselt, Men(S)tis. De Bleeckere, Sylvain. 2015. Levensbeschouwing democratisch belicht. Kalmthout, Pelckmans. Dewey, John. 1998. The Essential Dewey. Edited by Larry A. Hickman and Thomas M. Alexander. Vol. I. Pragmatism, Education, Democracy. Vol. II. Ethics, Logic, Psychology. Bloomington, Indiana University Press. Fezer, Jesko, Hiller, Christian, Hirsch, Nikolaus, Kuehn, Wilfried, and Peleg, Hila (eds.). 2015. Wohnungsfrage: Exhibition Guide. Leipzig, Spector Books. Friedrichs, Chad. 2011. The Pruitt-Igoe Myth: An Urban History. Film. Unicorn Stencil. Hamlyn, Robin and Philips, Michael. 2000. William Blake. London, Tate Publishing. Hansen, Mogens Herman. 1991. The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes. Cambridge, MA, Blackwell. Haussherr, Reiner. 1998. ‘Kommentar zur Handschrift der Buchtyp “Bible moralisée”’, in Bible moralisée. Codex Vindobonensis 2554 der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, 1–46. Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Jencks, Charles. 1977. The Language of Post-Modern Architecture. London, Academy Editions. Jencks, Charles. 1997. The Architecture of the Jumping Universe.A Polemic: How Complexity Science Is Changing Architecture and Culture. London, Academy Editions. Johnson, Philip and Wigley, Mark. 1988. Deconstructivist Architecture.The Museum of Modern Art. New York, Little Brown and Company. Kirsch, Karin. 1989. The Weissenhofsiedlung. Experimental Housing Built for the Deutscher Werkbund. Stuttgart, 1927. New York, Rizzoli. Lacan, Jacques. 2006. Ecrits. The first complete edition in English (translation by Bruce Fink). New York, W.W. Norton & Company. Lawson, Bryan. 2006. How Designers Think:The Design Process Demystified. Oxford, Elsevier. Lewis, Hilary. 2002.‘No Rules, No Art’, in Lewis, Hilary, Johnson, Philip, and Payne, Richard. The Architecture of Philip Johnson, 2–11. New York, Bullfinch Press. Libeskind, Daniel. 2004. Breaking Ground. Adventures in Life and Architecture. London, John Murray. Lynn, Greg. 1997. ‘An Advanced Form of Movement’, Architectural Design 67, 54–55. Magee, Glenn Alexander. 2010. The Hegel Dictionary. London, Continuum International Publishing Group. Malick,Terrence. 2011. The Tree of Life. Film. River Road Entertainment, Plan B Entertainment. Manis, Jim (ed.). 2013. Plato’s ‘Timaeus’. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. The Electronic Classics Series. PA 18202. Hazleton: PSU-Hazleton, 1999–2013. Retrieved from www2. hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/plato/timaeus.pdf [January 31, 2013].

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Merin, Gili. 2013. AD Classics: Modern Architecture International Exhibition / Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock. ArchDaily. Retrieved from www.archdaily.com [November 23, 2015]. Mueller, Marianne. 2012. ‘The Exhibition as Social Ground’, OASE 88, 90–93. Newby, Ilana and Newby, Greg (eds.). René Descartes’ A Discourse on Method. The Project Gutenberg, eBook # 59, 2008. Retrieved from www.gutenberg.org/files/59/59-h/59-h. htm [November 23, 2015]. Parnell, Rosie. 2003.‘Knowledge Skills and Arrogance: Educating for Collaborative Practice’, in Harder, Ebbe (ed.), Writings in Architectural Education: EAAE Transactions on Architectural Education No 15. Copenhagen, 58–71. Leuven, EAAE. Reggio, Godfrey. 1982. Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance. Film. Institute for Regional Education. Salama, Ashraf. 1995. New Trends in Architectural Education: Designing the Design Studio. Raleigh, Tailored Text. Sara, Rachel. 2000. Feminising Architectural Education: A Review of Current Trends in the UK Architecture Studio. Cardiff, Centre for Education in the Built Environment. Scherer, Bernard. 2015. ‘Preface’, in Fezer, Jesko, Hiller, Christian, Hirsch, Nikolaus, Kuehn, Wilfried, and Peleg, Hila (eds.), Wohnungsfrage: Exhibition Guide, 1–3. Leipzig, Spector Books. Schön, Donald A. 1986. Educating the Reflective Practitioner. Towards a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass Publishers. Steele, Brett. 2013. ‘The Key Project of the Architectural School Today Is the Making of Audiences, Not Architects’, Log 28, 87–98. Steierhoffer, Eszter. 2012. ‘The Exhibitionary Complex of Architecture’, OASE 88, 5–11. Szacka, Léa-Catherine. 2012. ‘The 1980 Architecture Biennale: The Street as a Spatial and Representational Curating Device’, OASE 88, 14–25. Till, Jeremy. 2005. ‘Architecture and Participation’, in Blundell Jones, Peter, Petrescu, Doina and Till, Jeremy (eds.), Architecture and Participation, 25–44. London, Routledge. Truffaut, François. 1970. The Wild Child (L’Enfant Sauvage). Film. Les Films de Carrosse. Van Gerrewey, Christophe and Patteeuw,Véronique. 2012.‘Architecture Can’t Help Exposing Itself ’, in Conversation with Geert Bekaert. OASE 88, 108–112.

4 DESIGNING

In the end, the designer’s story finds its own plot after finishing training in the school of architecture. Then, young architects begin to write their own story by designing in the democratic society in which they live and work. Architects practice their citizenship by designing, investing the capital of thinking and imagining they have acquired in real projects. It’s an illusion to expect the practice of designing to follow a smooth path. The real world of realized buildings is a clear demonstration of that, as can be seen in the narrative of architecture, told in chapters like ‘The Fate of Modernism’ dealing with Pruitt-Igoe scenarios, or told by two dedicated architects, Gehry and Behnisch. In the documentary Imagine . . . Frank Gehry:The Architect Says “Why Can’t I?”, mentioned earlier, Gehry makes a very provoking statement: Most buildings have no sense of humanity. They’re very cold and lifeless. They’re not welcoming to people. In the world we live in nearly ninety-eight per cent of the buildings built are pure shit. There’s no sense of design or respect for humanity. They’re dumb buildings. Gehry isn’t the first architect to condemn so strongly most of the built environment. In the same way, Behnisch sharply criticized most of the realized designs of trained architects. In the last decade of the twentieth century, he asked us to look around and pay close attention to the ugliness and coldness of ‘university buildings, apartment blocks, social housing areas, industrial zones’ (Behnisch 1992, 71). Seeing this makes us ask the uneasy question why powerful people, together with architects, have built them. Such observations challenge both architectural schools and qualified architects around the world. Positively interpreting that challenge from the perspective of narrative architecture, designing can be valued as an outstanding, intellectual praxis of shaping a livable humane environment in homes, neighborhoods, streets, villages, districts, cities, metropolises. This postmodern narrative of architecture, elaborated

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beyond style differences and immoral speculation in the real estate market, demands an appropriate scope as well as special skills and methods.

Scope Empathy Towards Life Stories It was in September 2008 that Singletown appeared on the scene of the Architectural Biennale in Venice (Figure 4.1). It was an impressive manifestation of one of the essential attitudes within the scope of narrative architecture, here termed ‘empathy towards life stories’. Its strength comes from a strong will to connect with human issues in the surrounding world. This narrative attitude is grounded in phenomenological thinking with its moral imagination at work in an architectural exhibition known as Singletown, a project by Dutch design company Droog and communication agency KesselsKramer. Living alone, once the fate of a pitiable few, has become the norm in Western societies. ‘Who are they all?’, Droog & KesselsKramer ask with their exhibition. They give a very clear answer: ‘Well, they are us!’ (De Bleeckere and Gerards 2014). They expose visually several social tendencies. One is the fact that at various points in our lives, almost all of us will live alone, whether permanently or temporarily. Even allowing for the fact that we are marrying later, if at all, and getting divorced more easily and with less stigma than ever before, the pace of change is staggering. What has caused this explosion in single households? For many young people the answer is

FIGURE 4.1  Singletown

at 11th Architecture Biennale (Venice, Italy). Droog & KesselsKramer. Photo: © Droog & KesselsKramer.

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wealth and personal freedom: they live alone just because they are able to.Yet, while many live alone by choice, a large number do so unwillingly. An important factor is the size of the baby boom generation. As the population ages, the number of senior citizens who have lost partners through divorce or bereavement grows too. With their exhibition Droog & KesselsKramer tell us that in the USA, more women than men live alone. Many of them are over 55 years old.The implications of this weighty demographic shift might be as influential as those of globalization or the network society, but governments and businesses continue to act through the standard household as if it has not changed in fifty years. Of course, this goes hand-in-hand with a challenge for architects, designers and urban planners to reconsider how people living alone might operate differently in cities, or in their own homes. The Singletown exhibition was part of the 2008 Venice Biennale Out There: Architecture Beyond Building. The designers of the exhibition wanted to introduce visitors to the variety of contemporary singles, people who both confirm and disconfirm stereotypes. At the heart of the exhibition is a story about a fictive town for singles the curators have designed. Droog & KesselsKramer locate their singles in an abstract interpretation of possible future habitation.We find the solitary citizens surrounded by the products and services that (help) shape their lives. These things range from the feasible to the fanciful and ironic: mobile balconies for one, inflatable pets, a pharmacy that doubles as a café/meeting point for singles, and a restaurant called ‘Table-For-One’. Incidentally, less than five years after the exhibition the world’s first one-person restaurant ‘Eenmaal’ opened in Amsterdam. If not these, then which products might improve the lives of people living alone? – Droog & KesselsKramer seem to ask during the 11th Architecture Biennale in Venice. Other questions turn up as well. What forms of housing might be appropriate for our singles? How will public space be used? And what is the cost of the desire to be alone? In this sense the exhibition reminds us that the story about the present and future for singles can only come to life through the praxis of interpretation by the spectator.Taken together, the town, its citizens and their products try to stimulate a debate about singles and how we should respond to this social evolution. Obviously, one of the many audiences the exhibition is oriented towards is (practicing) architects. Whenever there is a paradigm shift in society, architecture must be there. Right now, we are experiencing such a shift. According to recent statistics tracking demographic trends, more and more people are living alone – as much as a third of the population of the developed world could be single by 2026. [. . .] Architecture should synthesize these demographic shifts – it should embed the changing ways in which we people live and relate to one another into the makeup of its buildings. (Droog & KesselsKramer 2008, 37) The exhibition inside the historic Arsenale in Venice described a social phenomenon, and presented the inhabitants of a sterile city. To meet their needs, visions of products that might fit their living conditions are shown. Similar to the singles

130 Designing FIGURE 4.2  Singletown at 11th Architecture Biennale (Venice, Italy). Droog & KesselsKramer. Photo: © Droog & KesselsKramer.

captured within the archetypal house they show that ‘the challenge of the architect [and other designers] is to be found in a difficult balance between autonomy and contact – in going beyond building’ (Droog & KesselsKramer 2008, 38). Similar to Sloterdijk’s appeal in Schäume/Foams, designers, architects and product developers are encouraged to create spatial conditions that enable both the isolation of individuals, and the concentration of isolated entities into collective ensembles of cooperation. The exhibition taught its visitors that in addressing big shifts, architecture needs to look at how dynamics of change trickle down to the bottom – to explore the many nuances, often contradictory, to be found here. Only in approaching a paradigm shift through its manifestation on an individual level will projections ring true. Within the shift towards living alone, the individual reasons for living alone, and the ways of living alone, are diverse. Indeed, as Droog & KesselsKramer show, even singles are diverse (Figure 4.2). It seems Droog & KesselsKramer use moral imagination as a capacity to see the actual in light of the possible. ’Imagination expands our focus beyond a confused and dizzying present so that we can reflect and act in ways that may eventually bring about more desirable conditions’ (Fesmire 2003, 146). The status quo is studied and used as a step towards a possible future for singles in the Western world. What is interesting – and this links back to the 2015 Wohnungsfrage Exhibition in Berlin discussed earlier – is the fact that imagination is not only used as a key step during the establishment of the exhibition as an important story to be told, but that it is also at the heart of its objectives. The goal is to trigger the imagination of

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visitors, architects included. By doing so Droog & KesselsKramer tried to educate the spectators to be designers with an open mind and awareness of phenomena like loneliness in the real world of Western civilization, and to free up their empathy towards life stories. A few years later, on January 28, 2016, BBC Two broadcast a documentary program, The Age of Loneliness, showing different life stories.

Developing Thought Experiments Alongside a much needed empathy towards life stories, actual and future architects and other designers benefit from developing – or participating in – thought experiments. Thought experiments in designing are necessary ways of developing moral imagination. This resonates with Ricœur, who argues that it is the function of poetry in its narrative and dramatic form, to propose to the imagination and to its mediation various figures that constitute so many thought experiments by which we learn to think together the ethical aspects of human conduct and happiness and misfortune. (Ricœur 1991, 23) Why do we emphasize that designers especially should engage in the development of thought experiments? Indeed, every human being is able to escape from the hustle and bustle of everyday life and imagine another world. However, designers are the ones to bring thought experiments to life. First of all, ‘as creators of models, prototypes, and propositions, designers occupy a dialectical space between the world that is and the world that could be’ (Margolin 2007, 4). They operate in situations that call for interventions, and they have the unique ability to turn these interventions into material and immaterial forms. In this sense, thought experiments come to life.They can be developed through imaginative thinking as a praxis of designing. Designs are prospective, because they have the capacity to formulate possibilities which go beyond the bounds of current practice. To illustrate our argument, we make a small journey to Flanders in Belgium and tell our own designer’s story (Figure 4.3). Here, the daily praxis of dwelling is under increased pressure. Phenomena such as the rising number of singles, mentioned above, as well as the drastic aging of our society result in an urgent need for more dwellings. Providing more traditional houses – in the case of Flanders, detached houses with a large garden, far away from the city center – does not solve the problem. In this sense, both policy and practice as well as academia are – often desperately – searching for answers to this growing problem. From our point of view, thought experiments might help. Designers are capable of imagining future scenarios, testing these scenarios in practice, and communicating the advantages to a wider audience. And it is just this awareness which is at the heart of two thought experiments, situated in both research and the design studio, at our faculty. In both cases, we put forward multigenerational dwelling as a renewed housing concept for Flanders.

132 Designing FIGURE 4.3  Model made in the graduate seminar Culture, Hasselt University (Diepenbeek, Belgium). Photo: © Iwert Bernakiewicz.

The first thought experiment has its roots in the design studio of our architecture program in Hasselt, Belgium. More than ten years ago, the 3G-Dwelling – one house for three different generations (3G) – was introduced as an answer to already vaguely perceptible shifts in our postmodern society (Gerards, De Bleeckere, and De Ridder 2015). Over the years, this modest thought experiment gained shape within an extensive design assignment. First, the idea of multigenerational dwelling as a response to an ever more dynamic society was viewed with caution. Gradually, however, the students made the concept their own and succeeded in envisioning what the theoretical concept ‘multigenerational dwelling’ might look like in practice. The results are in no way reminiscent of the historic idea of multigenerational dwelling in farmhouses in agrarian Flanders (De Bleeckere and Gerards 2013). The 3G-Dwellings are rather rhizomatic structures, whereby communal and private use of space blend seamlessly into one another and result in what could be called – to borrow a term from Ivan Illich – a convivial dwelling space. In the second chapter of his Tools for Conviviality, Illich talks about the growing destructive impact of dominant tools in modern, industrial societies on the life of citizens. He suggests: People need not only to obtain things, they need above all the freedom to make things among which they can live, to give shape to them according to their own tastes, and to put them to use in caring for and about others. (Illich 1973/1975, 24) He reminds us that in a real democratic society ‘individuals need tools to move and to dwell’ (Illich 1973/1975, 23). Illich considers the implications of the convivial

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perspective as indispensable ‘to the survival of a democratic order’ (Cayley 2005, 223). To a certain extent, the student work – still a thought experiment of course – confirms that cohabitation of different households and different generations under one roof can be perceived as an exercise in convivial living in a larger community. One might go so far as to say that postmodern dwelling concepts such as multigenerational dwelling might be a more appropriate cornerstone for our postmodern society than the traditional nuclear family. In small communities – in a state of coisolation and co-fragility – human beings realize what democracy in essence means. That even the smallest thought experiments can bear fruit is confirmed through two international symposia and the publication of a Dutch book on dwelling and the cornerstones for a new habitology (De Bleeckere and Windmolders 2015). Additionally, the thought experiment in the design studio described here is the basis for doctoral research at our Faculty of Architecture and Arts. What started as a thought experiment unfolds in scientific research about the actual implementation of multigenerational dwelling as a renewed dwelling concept for a shifting Flemish society. One central moment in this doctoral research is again a thought experiment that clearly benefits from work with the students in the design studio. This time, we worked with practicing architects. They were asked to run through the same exercise of designing a multigenerational dwelling, now in the form of a short workshop (Figure 4.4). Our main focus, however, shifted. In contrast to the first thought experiment, this second one was more concerned with the introduction of multigenerational dwelling in a realistic setting. By working with practicing architects, we were able to investigate whether multigenerational dwelling is possible inside a traditional Flemish terraced house. We selected this particular type of dwelling because although it receives little attention from an academic and policy perspective, as much as 29 percent of the Flemish housing stock consists of terraced houses, and they are considered as more space-saving and sustainable than detached

FIGURE 4.4  Multigenerational dwelling (Hasselt, Belgium), Stramien. Image: © Stramien. 

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housing (Canfyn 2014). Within the framework of the communal thought experiment with practicing architects, we were able to anchor our story in the hard reality of the built environment. In summary, we can therefore state that the unique capability to imagine, develop and present thought experiments is a unique competence each designer should activate to stimulate important societal debates, whether they be about the future of housing or other issues of urgency to us all.

Configuring Collective Memories How does it feel to enter a museum after searching for and finding the hidden entrance on the side of the building? It feels that you’re not being welcomed, just like Jewish painter Felix Nussbaum must have felt in Germany and Belgium. Born in Osnabrück, Germany, in 1904, and educated and trained as a painter in Berlin and Rome, Felix Nussbaum and his wife Felka Platek fled to Ostend and Brussels in Belgium, out of fear of the Nazis (Figure 4.5). In the end, the couple had to hide in an attic, always fearing being found by the Germans, who occupied Belgium, or their Belgian collaborators. In the summer of 1944, Felix and Felka were found and sent to Auschwitz, where they were murdered as numbers XXVI/284 and XXVI/285 (Kaster 1997, 381–442). The paintings of Felix Nussbaum survived the Second World War and they were brought to the city of Osnabrück. Today, Nussbaum’s paintings are displayed in a new museum, called Das Felix-Nussbaum-Haus des Kulturgeschichtlichen Museums Osnabrück, an addition to the existing Cultural History Museum. The competition to design the museum, in which there were almost 300 contending architects, was won by Jewish architect Daniel Libeskind. It became Libeskind’s first completed project (Figure 4.6). The museum opened in 1998 and an extension was added in 2011, which retained the basic concept of the museum. ‘The integration of the new extension with the present symbolizes that the memory of Nussbaum will have a vibrant and ongoing narration’ (Libeskind 2011). The Nussbaum-Haus was the starting point of Libeskind’s designer’s story as a practicing architect with a vision. He made himself known as an excellent designer of collective memories, resisting the fate of time and the oblivion of humans, as an act of faith in a democratic society. The Jewish Museum in Berlin and the World Trade Center Master Plan for rebuilding Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan, New York, are outstanding chapters in the drama of human history of the last fifty years, from the apocalypse of the Second World War to the terrorist destruction of the Twin Towers of the Word Trade Center. The experience of Libeskind’s masterpieces helps to widen the scope of designing narrative architecture in postmodern, democratic times. In that perspective, Libeskind can be considered as a master for students in architecture as well as practicing architects in designing places and buildings that shape inspiring and educating collective memories. In contrast with despotic states, victims are not forgotten by citizens of a democratic society. The National Mall in Washington, DC gives space

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Nussbaum mit Judenpass, Felix Nussbaum. © Felix-Nussbaum-Haus Osnabrück, item on loan from Niedersächsischen Sparkassenstiftung.

FIGURE 4.5  Felix

to the National Museum of the American Indian, created by a design team of native Americans with Douglas Cardinal from the Blackfoot tribe as the initial architect and project designer, and to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, designed by the principal African American architects Phillip Freelon and African British architect David Adjaye. Seen in the mirror of Libeskind’s Nussbaum-Haus, designing collective memories can be anchored not only in the life story of a people or a whole race, but also in the story of an individual victim.The design of the Nussbaum-Haus succeeds in telling the story of the Holocaust by focusing on the tragic destiny of one artist

136 Designing FIGURE 4.6 

Felix-Nussbaum-Haus (Osnabrück, Germany), Daniel Libeskind. Photo: © Gert Westdörp.

and his wife. What spoken and written words cannot realize, narrative architecture can. In this case, through connecting the visitor with the existential drama of the victim Nussbaum. His paintings and drawings are closely interwoven with his life story during the fateful decades of Nazi racism. In his most claustrophobic years of hiding in a Brussels attic, Felix Nussbaum created his masterpieces by trying to find a meaning in his life, fighting against constant fear and despair. Libeskind’s design guides the visitor in an architectural experience that activates their imagination and helps in finding the right attitude to explore Nussbaum’s paintings. One of the highlights of this Holocaust museum of one victim is the entrance which introduces the visitor at the beginning of the story (Figures 4.7, 4.8, 4.9).The design of the entrance helps the visitor to step out of their habitual consciousness of everyday life. To realize this experience, Libeskind integrates spatial and sound elements. After leaving the ticket desk, the visitor follows a side path walking on metal floor grids. That brings the visitor to a very heavy metal door. It takes much effort to gain access to the darkness of the entrance space with its prisonlike sound aura (De Bleeckere 2012a, 45–55). Hearing the deep metal sound in a mostly dark and cold room displaces the visitor into the life story of one who has to live and work in a confined hiding place. Crossing this mental threshold, the building guides the visitor deeper and deeper into the narrative, told by the artwork of Felix Nussbaum (Figures 4.10, 4.11). Thanks to the museum, Felix Nussbaum’s artistic testimony against an inhuman political and social regime can forever be a life story worth telling to future generations. Here, the scope of narrative architecture shows how designing appears to be a praxis that produces space by transcending the designer’s own ego.This kind of narrative designing leaves no trace of any kind of demiurgic thinking, shaping spatial collective memories and identities.

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FIGURE 4.7  (top left) Felix-NussbaumHaus (Osnabrück, Germany), Daniel Libeskind. Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.  FIGURE 4.8  (top right) Felix-NussbaumHaus (Osnabrück, Germany), Daniel Libeskind. Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere. 

FIGURE 4.9  (left) Felix-Nussbaum-Haus (Osnabrück, Germany), Daniel Libeskind. Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

138 Designing FIGURE 4.10  Felix-Nussbaum-

Haus (Osnabrück, Germany), Daniel Libeskind. Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

FIGURE 4.11  Felix-Nussbaum-Haus (Osnabrück, Germany), Daniel Libeskind. Photo: ©

Referat Medien und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit.

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Creating Micro-Scale Urban Narratives It is summer 2015. The sun is shining brightly the day Vincent and Sara are getting married in Bruges, Belgium, well known as the ‘Venice of the North’ (Figure 4.12). In the early afternoon, they have their photo shoot on the platform of the Canal Swimmer’s Club on the Langerei at Carmers bridge. It’s their lucky day. As part of the art exhibition Triennale Brugge 2015, the Canal Swimmer’s Club is a temporary feature in the city (Figure 4.13). That location turns their photo shoot into a once in a lifetime occasion. Their wedding photos, taken on the platform beneath the bridge, will always capture their imagination and delineate their common narrative as long as they live together. Done in collaboration with Bruges’ Architectuuratelier Dertien 12, Atelier BowWow’s design of the Canal Swimmer’s Club generates unique micro-scale urban narratives for locals like Vincent and Sara as well as for the many tourists. Atelier Bow-Wow’s praxis of moral imagination outlines the scope of narrative architecture with the postmodern perspective of micro-scale urban scenery. Unlike the sustainable megaforms Frampton (2011) advocates, heritage cities such as Bruges, and even districts in metropolises such as Tokyo and the like, need micro-scale spaces which make a positive difference in the neighborhood (Figures 4.14, 4.15). Seen in this perspective, the exemplary Canal Swimmer’s Club shows more substance than any pure theorization about urban spaces. The narrative power of the Bruges project reveals the phenomenon of micro-scale urban designs to neighborhoods, local politicians, civil servants, designers and all national and international tourists. In the mirror of the Canal Swimmer’s Club, they can all explore the added value of such narrative designs for individual citizens, children and adults alike, as well as

FIGURE 4.12  Canal

Swimmer’s Club (Brugge, Belgium), Atelier Bow-Wow. Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

FIGURE 4.13  Canal

Swimmer’s Club (Brugge, Belgium), Atelier Bow-Wow. Image: © Atelier-Bow-Wow.

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FIGURE 4.14  Canal

Swimmer’s Club (Brugge, Belgium), Atelier Bow-Wow. Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

FIGURE 4.15  Canal

Swimmer’s Club (Brugge, Belgium), Atelier Bow-Wow. Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

for the city community. With its own educational vibrancy, the design project, even in its intrinsic impermanence, enlightens everyone who’s involved, on the narrative essence of urban space which transcends its pure functional and commercial use. One aspect of that narrative nature is the decentralized location. Atelier BowWow deliberately chose a location within the city’s old fabric, but away from the busy historic and commercial center, visited every year by five million tourists from

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Western and Asian countries.The project at Carmers bridge is surrounded by streets, with terraced houses owned by citizens of Bruges. They cross the bridge every day, walking, cycling or by car. The Canal Swimmer’s Club makes a well-defined critical statement to the city government on not forgetting the primary importance of the citizens and the livability of their city. Tourists are a crucial economic source of income, needed to save the built heritage. On the other hand, tourists consume the heritage city, they don’t make the city their home. What the Canal Swimmer’s Club project realizes, is shaping the outside of a living urban neighborhood into a convivial home.The Club provides a kind of lounge for the neighborhood and tourists alike (Figure 4.16). The neighbors get a new meeting place, discover their urban environment from a new perspective, while the tourists, whether by walking or by having a boat trip on the canal, learn to experience and respect the city as a living place for real people with whom they can make acquaintance.The Club can also be valued as an ecological performance by bringing people closer to the canal waters, just to watch and relax by the changing reflections on the water, or to have a swimming party with friends, now that the canal water is no longer polluted (Figure 4.17). The convivial core of the Club experience is even more marked in light of the difference with two other artworks also exhibited in the urban fabric of Bruges during the Triennale Brugge 2015. Two other Asian artists were invited to respond to the historical city.The Japanese Tadashi Kawamata designed his Tree Huts in the historic Beguinage with its courtyard of trees growing on a central lawn, surrounded by a private church and ancient houses formerly for beguines, today inhabited by nuns

FIGURE 4.16  Canal

Swimmer’s Club (Brugge, Belgium), Atelier Bow-Wow. Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

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(Figures 4.18, 4.19). The Chinese Song Dong created the monumental installation Wu Wei Er Wei (Doing Nothing Doing) beside Saint Salvator Cathedral (Figures 4.20, 4.21). Both works are micro-spatial architectural designs.

FIGURE 4.17  Yoshiharu Tsukamoto at Canal Swimmer’s Club (Brugge, Belgium), Atelier

Bow-Wow. Photo: © Triënnale Brugge, Photo: Ellen De Meulemeester.

FIGURE 4.18  Tree

Huts (Brugge, Belgium), Tadashi Kawamata. Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

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FIGURE 4.19  Tree

Huts (Brugge, Belgium), Tadashi Kawamata. Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

FIGURE 4.20 

Wu Wei Er Wei (Brugge, Belgium), Song Dong. Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

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Wei Er Wei (Brugge, Belgium), Song Dong. Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

FIGURE 4.21  Wu

The dozen tree huts of Kawamata are constructed high in the trees and appear like esthetic objects, commenting loosely on the old houses of the Beguinage where nuns still live a spiritual life of religious transcendence. The huts create an unattainable space, like the houses of the religious women which are still inaccessible to outsiders. One can imagine that guardians of the heritage site reside in the huts and keep an eye out to make sure that tourists behave themselves quietly and respectfully in that green and peaceful courtyard. As for the two-part installation of Song Dong, the visitor discovers the large neon letters Wu Wei. These Chinese words evoke Chinese Taoism with its attitude of ‘inaction’ – doing by not doing while focusing on the flow of things. The artist has built his two architectural bonsai with old Chinese windows, which he saved from heritage neighborhoods of his home town of Beijing which, together with historic palaces and temples, have been demolished to make way for the ongoing construction of an urban megaform with skyscrapers and shopping centers. Each window represents a life story and, in the hands of Song Dong, they become short chapters of a new critical story of a metropolis built on the ruins of its heritage. But, situated in Bruges, the installation acts as a very closed esthetic object, to be looked at and admired. Neither the huts of Kawamata nor the window-structures of Song Dong connect with the people. Their performances are isolated gestures in contrast with the urban performance of the Canal Swimmer’s Club. Here, the local citizens as well as tourists become the main actors on the scene of the architectural platform on the canal, and they can express themselves as the authors of their own urban stories, just like Vincent and Sara on their wedding day.

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Collaborating in Designing a Community’s Narrative Identity In the spring of 2013, many thousands of civilians of Istanbul started their peaceful sit-ins against the planned urban development of the Taksim Gezi Park, one of the last green zones in the city. Without any centralized leadership, the protesters expressed their collective story in their engagement for the preservation of an open urban space. It crystalized their uneasiness about the government’s undemocratic control over the lives of citizens. There are many stories to tell about how people experience a specific place or building as the representation of their collective identity. That existential experience has a clear narrative nature. ‘Individual and community are constituted in their identity by taking up narratives that become for them their actual history’ (Ricœur 1990, 247). Reflecting on that phenomenon, the scope of narrative architecture shows a new perspective for designers. Collaborating in designing a community’s narrative identity can be an encouraging praxis for both students in architecture as well as practicing architects. Of course, such a praxis appears to be very unusual, but not utopian. German architect Günter Behnisch created an inspirational example. As the designer of the Federal House in Bonn, the seat of the postwar German democratic parliament, he engaged his students at the TH Darmstadt in the design process. He refused to act as a star architect or even as a demiurge. During the design process of the Federal House, he involved his students in the design of the stairs in the entrance hall and the stairs to the working areas. In both cases, the parliament members made complaints about the radical openness and transparency. In both cases, Behnisch and his students designed an accepted compromise between the demands of the users and the desire to maintain the original democratic spirit of the building. The

FIGURE 4.22  Federal

House (Bonn, Germany), Günter Behnisch. Photo: © Alexander Massouls.

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FIGURE 4.23  Federal

House (Bonn, Germany), Günter Behnisch. Photo: © Yentl Bielen.

collaboration resulted in the artwork integrated in the entrance stairs (Figure 4.22). Bright and colorful elements underline the separation between the entrance stairs for the parliament members and the ones for the public, without disrupting the open connection between the two staircases. As for the stairs to the working areas which distracted the parliament members in the Plenary Room, Behnisch and his students designed the Bird’s Nest, a wooden structure that transforms the view of the functional stairs into the image of a tree with a bird’s nest (Figure 4.23). This architectural narrative is a significant postmodern gesture by dealing subtly with boundaries without separating or dividing. Alexander von Salmuth, one of the followers of Günter Behnisch, testified how close the collaboration between Behnisch and his students was. During the 2015 mini-seminar held by the authors in the Stuttgart office of Behnisch Architecten, led by Behnisch’s son Stefan and his partners, von Salmuth underlined that the postwar circumstances in West Germany (FRG) were unique (De Bleeckere and Collectief 2015a, 125). Nowhere else in Europe other than in the FRG were architects dealing with the issue of rebuilding a democratic consciousness. In that respect, Behnisch acted as a true master by involving his students in his own designing work. He held discussions on the democratic value of every element of the design. Such an open and free design method whereby there is no ‘master sketch’ determining every step of the design process is still implemented today in the office of Behnisch Architekten. The Behnisch method guarantees the uniqueness of every new design and ensures there is no one dominant style. A successful historic case of co-designing via group discussions is the social phenomenon of the kibbutz in Israel. As a community member, the architect supports

148 Designing FIGURE 4.24  Meeting

and discussion at Kibbutz Yagur (Yagur, Israel). Photo: © Erich Glas. 

FIGURE 4.25  Meeting

and discussion at Kibbutz Yagur (Yagur, Israel). Photo: © Erich Glas.

the process of shaping the community’s narrative identity. Kibbutz Yagur, founded in 1922 on the slopes of Mount Carmel near the city of Haifa, is an excellent example (Figures 4.24, 4.25). The collective design process is just one part of the ongoing story about how the kibbutz community organizes the daily praxis of its communal dwelling and working. In his autobiography Daniel Libeskind writes: ‘For the most part, architects aren’t democratically minded people’ (Libeskind 2004, 276). Behnisch belongs to the small group of architects for whom the narrative of architecture defines the very soul of their praxis of designing. Their works shape the community’s narrative identity in

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collaborating with everyone involved in the design process.Thinking of Turkey and many other countries, narrative architecture still has a very long way to go.

Skills and Methods Sketching In the history of architecture, the narrative of line acted out its own drama (Figure 4.26). The clue to that drama is the struggle between the geometry-line and the life-line. In the wake of the paradigmatic Timaeus of Plato and its legitimation by Vitruvius, the geometry-line defined the canon of architectural design. That style canon dictated that architects work exclusively with pure and straight lines. Imagining perfect geometrical figures such as squares, rectangles, triangles and circles, the designer’s story was told by the demiurge and his divine obsession with rationality. The canon of rationality, translated into the geometrical language of the straight and pure line, grew to be the lever of civilization.The monopoly of the rational controlled line claimed the label humanitas. But doubts grew over such an esthetic dictatorship. Gothic culture and architecture as well as the Baroque period created another story line. The curved line in Gothic architecture and sculpture of, for instance, Claus Sluter’s Mourners, and the fold line in Baroque style, as in Bernini’s Ecstasy

FIGURE 4.26  Multigenerational

Rycker.

dwelling, Aarnoud De Rycker. Sketch: © Aarnoud De

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of Saint Teresa, opened a new register of sketching. The drama in the narrative of line started with the tension between the masculinity of the straight line and the femininity of the curved line, or the tension between the geometry-line and the life-line. At the beginning of the last century, sketching with the life-line reached its first peak in the Art Nouveau movement, also known as Jugendstil (Germany), Sezession (Austria), Stile Floreale (Italy), or even Modern Style (England). It became the forerunner of the postmodern chapter of the narrative of line, in which Gehry’s sketches play a significant role. In one of the first sequences of Sydney Pollack ‘s documentary film Sketches of Frank Gehry, Pollack tries to describe what he saw: ‘I look at him as a writer, a director. Someone who sits down, conceives of something, thinks it up [. . .] and then has the ability to execute it into a visual image.’ And if you take a close look at the first drawings Gehry makes for his projects – think of them as scribbles, made without taking the pen off the page – it jumps out how close they are to the finished building. The life-line of Gehry’s sketches has a rhizomatic nature that can also be recognized in the line-installation Outline in House AST 77 (Figure 4.27).

FIGURE 4.27 

Outline in House AST 77 (Tienen, Belgium), Jo Foulon. Photo: © Steven Massart.

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The sketched figure, the atomic architectural design, exudes a dynamic and figurative power that contains the realized building in a nucleated way. It works like a cell in live creatures, inhabited by a life force which wants to develop itself. The rhizomatic life-line appears as a real phenomenon, creating its own narrative in the realm of time. The narrative of that sketched life-line is no longer directed by the self-assured ratio. Imaginative thinking becomes a part of the body; the hand practices its own designing intelligence. In the postmodern life-line, the strict barrier between ratio and hand, between idea and image, so typical of classical and even modernistic dualism, has lost its hardness (Foucault 1983, 36–54). The narrativity of sketching the life-line is a corporal anchored practice, led by a freed hand and inspired by moral imagination. Philip Johnson confirms this when he states that we humans ‘haven’t any straight line’ in our bodies, and asks: ‘Why should we have straight lines in our architecture? You’d be surprised when you go into a room that has no straight line – how marvelous it is that you can feel the walls talking back to you, as it were’ (Johnson 2016). In 1996 Austrian architect Hans Hollein was the first non-Italian curator of the Architecture Biennale in Venice. The title Sensing the Future: The Architect as Seismograph contained both a faint echo of Porthoghesi’s title, The Presence of the Past, and a significant reference to a mythifying phrase of Laszlo Moholo-Nagy’s about the artist as a seismograph that can sense future developments in the dynamics of the present (Liefooghe 2012, 56). In the catalogue of Hollein’s Biennale, the curator himself and the participating architects are portrayed via their hands. Most of them are sketching, others are playing the piano, working at the computer or just explaining something. Even in our digital age of software programs taking over many rational operations, the corporal ensemble of hands, thinking and imagining still guarantees that the act of designing stays focused on contributing towards a world worth living in.

Modeling As is apparent from the catalogue of Hollein’s Biennale, sketching is not the only skill linked to the hand of the designer. In addition to the actions displayed in the 1996 catalogue, we would like to draw attention to modeling as another essential designing method for narrative architecture (Figure 4.28). Standing in front of a model in the architectural office of Gehry Partners, director Sydney Pollack asks architect Frank Gehry ‘What are you thinking?’ Gehry answers: ‘I don’t know, this is something I don’t know how to put in words.’ And Pollack reacts: ‘Well then it is the most important part.’ Since imagination cannot always be transferred into words, the designer’s hands produce sketches and models to evoke their imaginative thinking. According to Van Gerrewey (2011, 31), ‘in the traditional practice of architecture, which is focused on the realization of three-dimensional objects on the human scale for ordinary use, the architectural model is a surrogate for the building – as an experiment, a means of communication [. . .]’.The difference between models and buildings seems

152 Designing FIGURE 4.28  Office

(Stuttgart, Germany), Behnisch Architekten. Photo: © Alexander Massouls.

obvious (Topalovic 2011). A model is made on a scale necessary to get something (an idea) across, while a building is by definition the 1:1 reality of the architectural idea. There are, however, spaces that escape this distinction and for which the scale is not the distinguishing factor, such as the 1:1 installations at the Wohnungsfrage Exhibition in Berlin (Figure 4.29). And according to Charles Jencks, Frank Gehry even goes one step further. In Sketches of Frank Gehry Jencks tells an anecdote of how Gehry finished his own house (Figure 4.30). ‘One day he went up to shave himself in the bathroom, and there was no light to shave by, and so he picked up a hammer and knocked a hole in the ceiling to the California sun and get shaved by it.’ Even though this example might go a bit far, it explains how models are changeable and how this drives on the ongoing flux of gestures, imaginative associations in words and images, memories of visited places and buildings, reinterpretations of earlier designs and so on. The place of models in the designing process is crucial, situated somewhere between incorporation, representation, tool and sculpture. During the Vienna Architecture Conference in 1992, Coop Himmelb(l)au described what role models play in the designing process the team is going through: ‘It works like this . . . While we draw, architecture is expressed in words; the drawing is then narrated in the three-dimensional model’ (Coop Himmelb(l)au 1993, 18).

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Forest at Wohnungsfrage Exhibition (Berlin, Germany), Atelier BowWow. 1:1 model: Atelier Bow-Wow / Photo: © Jens Liebchen.

FIGURE 4.29  Urban

FIGURE 4.30  Gehry

Trip.

residence (Santa Monica, CA), Frank Gehry. Photo: © IK’s World

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Based on our own designer’s story, we want to add that a model can have its own narrative with different episodes. Those episodes help to bridge the gap between imaginative thinking and the finished model. Without direct reference to the shape or program of the final design, an initial model can also reflect and synthesize the concept of the design project. In this case, we term the model that carries the nucleus of the growing design, the three-dimensional mother-image (Figure 4.31). Similar to Bollnow who links the human experience of dwelling to a consciousness of being in the safe shelter of the mother’s womb, we see the three-dimensional mother-image as the basis of the initial phase of the model, in which the future growth of the design is secure. With a mother-image, the designer simultaneously protects and shelters as well as communicates the very core of the story he is going to tell with the final design of the project. During the whole designing process, the model as mother-image works as the three-dimensional representation of the project coming to life. The narrativity of models has the capacity to represent a diversity of intentions in a very direct manner. And it is especially this direct manner that helps designers to communicate with others, colleagues or clients. In that way, Gehry’s models of the Dr Chau Chak Wing Building, a Business School building of the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in Australia, persuaded the university members to choose Gehry as their architect (Figures 4.32, 4.33, 4.34). Gehry’s models convinced them that they would get a building that could perform as an impetus for change. Indeed, the university directors wanted a building that could motivate students and professors to think differently about business. In the BBC documentary Imagine . . . Frank Gehry: The Artist Says “Why Can’t I?”, dean Roy Green explains

FIGURE 4.31  Model, Mother-Image, Sibe

Duijsters.

Designing   155 FIGURE 4.32 

Dr Chau Chak Wing Building (Sydney, Australia), Frank Gehry. Model: © Frank Gehry.

FIGURE 4.33 

Dr Chau Chak Wing Building (Sydney, Australia), Frank Gehry. Model: © Frank Gehry.

FIGURE 4.34 

Dr Chau Chak Wing Building (Sydney, Australia), Frank Gehry. Model: © Frank Gehry.

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that the university wanted a building that could stimulate ‘the people in this country to think more creatively’ (Aitken 2015).

Playing Jazz Is it worth looking and listening to jazz music, in order to shed light on the method of designing stories that matter for humans and their society? The answer to that question is a long story that begins with Pythagoras. The ancient sources on this famous Greek intellectual agree on his aural vision about the Music of the Spheres, also called Musica universalis in Latin (Iamblichus and Taylor 1987). According to this tradition, Pythagoras could hear perfectly the celestial music originating from the proportioned movements of the Sun, Moon and planets. It was said that Pythagoras was able to translate that music for his pupils into human sounds, full of mathematically based harmonies and symmetries. Medieval monks and even Renaissance musicians tried to find a true imitation of the so-called celestial or divine cosmological music (Strohmeier and Westbrook 1999). Architects designing in the classical canon of geometrical harmonies and symmetries were motivated by their strong ambition to create a perfect three-dimensional mimesis of that ideal music. In such a vision, the conductor of a symphonic orchestra and the demiurgic architect mirror each other. In his inspirational film Prova d’orchestra (Orchestra Rehearsal), the maestro of Italian postwar cinema, Federico Fellini, chose a documentary storytelling approach to focus on an orchestra rehearsal in a heritage church, praised for its acoustics.With his portrait of the conductor and his musicians, Fellini created a cinematographic metaphor of an authoritarian society, which, in the end, provokes disorder, destruction of culture and demolition of heritage (Figure 4.35). Under the director, the

against the dictatorship of the conductor. Still: Prova d’orchestra (Orchestra Rehearsal) (Federico Fellini).

FIGURE 4.35  Revolt

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symphonic orchestra rehearsal evolved into an impressive audiovisual reflection on music, society and even architecture. Fellini shows how the authoritarian behavior of the conductor leads to an explosion of frustration and aggression among the musicians. The crescendo of the story does not lead up to the expected symphonic climax, but to the destruction of music culture itself as well as the heritage church. In his great metaphor of music and society, Fellini establishes the paradigmatic shift towards a democratic society in postwar Europe. That shift also has an impact on the narrative of designing and its method. It transforms itself. Seen in the mirror of the music metaphor, the demiurgic approach dissolves into a jazzy method. It moves between the state of unchangeable order and the state of anarchic chaos, which are dependent on each other, as Fellini has shown. For the attentive ear, playing jazz as a creative method transcends both total order and complete chaos. Fesmire captured the unique spirit of the nature of playing jazz when he wrote: A jazz musician – also consider bluegrass, blues, drum circles and the like – takes up the attitude of others by catching a cadence from the group’s signals while anticipating the group’s response to her own signals. Drawing on the resources of tradition, memory, and long exercise, she plays into the past tone to discover the possibilities for future tones in the way moral imagination enables us to see the old in terms of the possible. This is not simply casual drifting into the next note, but movement towards an emerging sonorous image that is felt to unify the composition. (Fesmire 2003, 94) In order to understand designing in and for a democratic community, the method of jazz playing holds the key to narrative architecture and the designer’s story. That complex method combines improvisation, jockeying for a solo, empathic listing and skillful responding, imagining unforeseen opportunities, finding social harmony and attaining a common good. That jazzy method, closely linked with moral imagination, is not as easy as it seems. ‘Coordinated impromptu thinking is difficult’ (ibid.). Only by following the path of practicing and acquiring experience can the jazzy designing method achieve its goal. Therefore, giving the process the time it needs is essential, and antagonistic to the adage ‘time is money’. For instance, the praised acoustics of Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles were established in a close jazzy interplay between Gehry and Yasuhisa Toyota of Nagata Acoustics from Tokyo. Instead of submitting a finished design for the concert hall to the Japanese engineer, Gehry invited him to develop the form of the auditorium together. ‘The final form of the hall emerged out of a genuine synthesis’ of the architect and the acoustician, ‘playing’ together in a large and precise model (Goldberger 2015, 320–321). The method of designing as understood by the metaphor of playing jazz implies that the praxis of designing must be understood as an enjoyable process. In that sense, the American architect Charles Moore said that designing should be ‘a pleasure for the people who do it and the people who inhabit it’ (Moore 2001, 324). In this

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context, he told about his students at Yale who quit and went to Harvard because to learn designing at Yale was ‘too pleasurable and they wanted to suffer some. At Harvard they were good at whipping them. I just don’t get it’ (ibid.). As for architecture schools and architecture offices, the design method of playing jazz challenges their common habits. It questions their usual time management and appeals to them to consider their existing ways of thinking and their current praxis of moral imagination. It invites them to rewrite their own designer’s stories.

Filming Without a doubt, the main character on the cultural scene of the past century is film. The power of film was so great that it was exploited for political ends. It fueled people’s aspirations, changing the way thousands of people thought about the world, and bringing new experiences, desires and ambitions to men and women whose horizons had previously been limited to their local communities. (Hodgson 1995, 171) In our postmodern age, the art of cinematography changed the relation between image and real life fundamentally in the domain of the arts, but also in that of the designing disciplines. The overwhelming impact of film upon society and culture has put architecture on the postmodern stage. As designers, narrative architects are imaginative thinkers and therefore they are natural neighbors of film directors. At least, that’s the experience of Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and French architect Jean Nouvel. In the documentary Rem Koolhaas. A Kind of Architect, Koolhaas talks about the important inputs into his work as an architect. He mentions that the first input ‘he could control himself ’ was the contemporary art of Yves Klein and film, especially the movies of the Italian postwar directors Pier Paulo Pasolini and Michelangelo Antonioni, which had, ‘in terms of my overall sensibility’, the greatest impact (Heidingsfelder and Tesch 2005). In his turn, Jean Nouvel also speaks about film as a source for his design method. In what I call the architectural substratum we experience the influence on time and space of the filmic aspect. The camera moves through a series of tableaus, puts a frame round the action, sheds various sorts of light on it. All things help me in designing a building, when I am thinking of how one enters it and moves from one room to another, the meetings that take place and how one leaves it. (Bouman and van Toorn 1994, 322) The art of filming opens an original chapter in the designer’s story. Indeed, filming can be an inspirational muse for the designer’s imagination in more ways than one when designing narrative architecture. In that perspective, there are some interesting

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core elements in filming to glean for designing three-dimensional narratives. The scenario is one of those.

Scenario Narrativity is always thinking and imagining in the realm of time. In metaphysical terms, narrativity exists by refusing any self-denial of time. It doesn’t look for any kind of eternity and doesn’t succumb to the illusion of transcending time once and for all. Therefore, time is the main director of film, changing the self-awareness of narrative arts like theater, opera, the novel, poetry and even music (De Bleeckere 2012b, 471–486).The Russian maestro of film, Andre Tarkovsky, working in the second half of the last century, developed a very strong conception of the filmic fusion of time and art:‘Film fixes reality in the sense of time – it’s a way of conserving time. Film is a mosaic made up of time. Cinema is the only art that literally imprints time’ (Tarkovksy 2006, 77, 133). But film is not just a pure mimesis of time.Time is indeed not a solid object that can be reproduced in one way or another. Film always results from the close connection between a human mind and the triadic realm of time (past, present, future). Film humanizes time by means of a scenario that modulates time to the key of narrativity. The scenario or narrated time stems from imagining a series of different scenes. The scenario does more than just visualize time; it’s a genuine creation of a humanized time segment. At first sight, film and architecture seem to be opposites. Time versus space. For ages, architects were indeed seduced by the idea of escaping time and designing for eternity. Overwhelmed by the art of filming, postmodern architects began to break free from that eternity-seduction.They discovered that designing space is analogous to filming and also essentially embedded in the realm of time. From a postmodern or narrative perspective, the close correlation between film and architecture stems from the interlaced relation between time and space. Each scenario creates scenes of located actions and the film camera moves always within some defined setting. Filmed or narrated time indeed always has a spatial identity, as the word ‘movie’ suggests. And even a frame, fixed by the position of the camera, is spatial because ‘the frame must be taken quite literally as the visual field cut out by the camera, creating both the seen and “hors champ”’ (Ehrat 2005, 426). As for the designer, when considering the entwining of time and space, he always found himself on the side of space and experienced time more as an enemy to be conquered. But, after getting a deep insight into the art of film, the designer’s story swirled and found a new direction. Charles Moore evokes how he discovered that after reading the words of playwright T.S. Eliot about art, order and reality: Our predecessors in the modern movement were very concerned about order and tried to expunge chaos from the system. But by the 1950s this effort had brought about an order whose life was not apparent. I used to quote T. S. Eliot to the effect that it was the function of the playwright (read architect) by giving a perception of order in reality, to let us develop a sense of the order of

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reality. I keep insisting that Eliot was right and that architects were forgetting about the reality part as they paid attention only to the order. (Moore 2001, 383) A screenplay is a mode of stage play, written by a playwright. Moore adopts a filmic vision using ‘the lively’ as synonym for ‘the real’ (ibid.). Indeed, film as anchored in the rhizome of time and space is a life-art in the real sense. In Dutch, the cinema or movie theater is called a ‘bioscoop’, derived from the Greek words ‘bios’ (life) and ‘skopein’ (see), meaning ‘the space where people gather to watch (scenes of) life itself ’ (De Bleeckere 2015b, 98–99). Atelier Bow-Wow practices the filmic art of scenario to design architecture as a narrative art. The exciting drawing for their ‘House and Atelier Bow-Wow’ represents accurately as well as originally what we can term scenario-based designing (Figure 4.36). The elaborate drawing shows a lived space, a true scenario directed

FIGURE 4.36  House

and Atelier Bow-Wow (Tokyo, Japan), Atelier Bow-Wow. Drawing: © Atelier Bow-Wow.

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by moral imagination. The cross-section shows not just lines and measures, but existential actions and situations of future inhabitants. Here, the designer’s story gets its plot from the stories of the residents, just as the script designs the life of its characters not just by measuring and calculating, but by imagining possible situations and connecting them to the realm of life.

Performance Alongside the scenario, character is another core element of film that’s inspirational for designing narrative architecture. A character has more narrative radiance in film than in theater. In film, the character can be identified through a whole range of spaces, something that cannot be realized on the stage of a theatre or opera house. Consider for instance what the famous film studio Cinecittà in Rome did for the television historical drama series Rome. The film architecture that was built reconstructed the Roman Forum in the first century BCE (Figures 4.37, 4.38). The human characters would not have come to life without the design of the different spaces in which their life stories happen. At the same time, film architecture reveals the unique character of architecture itself, as has already been clearly demonstrated, ‘from Metropolis to Blade Runner’ (Neumann 1996). It was the German thinker, poet and playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who introduced architecture as the art of designing characters. Early in his career, he published his essay On German Architecture (Vom deutscher Baukunst), in 1773. In his

FIGURE 4.37  Film

set of Roman Forum at Studio Cinecittà (Rome, Italy). Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

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FIGURE 4.38  Film

set of Roman Forum at Studio Cinecittà (Rome, Italy). Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

FIGURE 4.39  The

Cathedral of Our Lady (Strasbourg, France). Photo: © Diliff.

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text, Goethe praised the German architect Erwin von Steinbach, the main designer of the Cathedral of Our Lady in Strasbourg (Figure 4.39). In his laudatio for the Catholic architect, the Protestant Goethe, prejudiced against the ‘distasteful’ Gothic style, evokes how the building and its performance blew his mind. His mesmerizing discovery of the cathedral taught him to see the building as the main character on the urban scene. The performance of the architectural character was so intense that it opened Goethe’s eyes and helped liberate him from the ‘meaningless insipidities’ on style and artistic taste he had cultivated before (Goethe 1921, 11). Not style prescriptions, but the creative will and imagination, which Goethe called ‘the creative disposition’, had built the genuine character of the building. ‘This characteristic art is the only genuine art. If only it comes fresh from the inner soul, unique sensibilities, untroubled, indeed unconscious of any external element [. . .] it will always be complete and alive’ (ibid., 11–12). In Goethe’s powerful experience of architectural performance, we can read the dramatic energy of narrative architecture, transcending any style-thinking. Philip Johnson had a similar experience while visiting Chartres Cathedral and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao: ‘Chartres is the first building I visited that made me cry. I thought all good architecture could do that. Bilbao is the most recent building I have seen that has brought me to tears’ (Johnson 2002, 3). The German film director Wim Wenders contributed a lot to understanding narrative architecture by filming the performance of architecture with a strong character. His poetic 3D video installation, entitled If Buildings Could Talk . . ., was shown at the 12th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice which had as its theme People Meet in Architecture.Wenders filmed on location at the Rolex Learning Center on the Suisse EPFL campus, designed by the architecture office SANAA (Kazuyo Sejuma and Ryue Nishizawa).The main character, the building, welcomes the visitors/spectators and speaks to them, using a contemplative voice-over narration. In his masterpiece Der Himmel über Berlin/Wings of Desire, Wenders succeeded in developing a filmic narrative with the city of Berlin, still divided by the Wall, as the main character. In the audiovisual poetic story about guardian angels who look like men and women but are invisible to adult humans – only children can see them – Wenders chose the Berlin State Library, Haus Potsdamer Strasse, designed by Hans Sharoun, as the gathering place for the guardian angels (Figures 4.40, 4.41, 4.42, 4.43). In his film, Wenders depicts the characterful building as the urban expression of the collective imagination of the free people, living a few steps away from the communist dictatorship of Erich Honecker. The narrative drive in Wenders’ film is the spatial drama performed by two buildings, Sharoun’s State Library and Honecker’s Berlin Wall.

Sequences Another core element of filming is the montage of sequences. Only by passing through different sequences, does the filmed time attain its narrated wholeness. Understood in a semiotic sense, this wholeness of sequences or episodes differs from

164 Designing FIGURE 4.40 

Berlin State Library (Berlin, Germany), Hans Sharoun. Photo: © Khalid Mahmood.

FIGURE 4.41 

Reading room of the Berlin State Library (Berlin, Germany), Hans Sharoun. Photo: © Maarten Thewissen.

FIGURE 4.42 

Guardian angel Cassiel in the Berlin State Library. Still: Der Himmel über Berlin (Wim Wenders).

Designing   165 FIGURE 4.43 

Guardian angel Damiel in the Berlin State Library. Still: Der Himmel über Berlin (Wim Wenders).

any idea of totality. Ehrat affirms that the wholeness of a narration remains esthetic and can be admired; that wholeness can never be reduced to or be replaced by a total cognition coming from the desire to transcend narration itself and reach timeless knowledge (Ehrat 2005, 319). Designing the narrative character of architecture comes from the filmic awareness of time sequences. This same awareness also motivated Eun Young Yi’s design for the library in Stuttgart. His City Library presents itself as a monolithic nine-story construction, acting as an architectural character in a new city center near the central station (Figures 4.44, 4.45). It deliberately detached itself from the urban scenery, inspired by the monolith as the architectural main character in Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). This self-isolating gesture defines the first inside sequence (Figure 4.46).

FIGURE 4.44  City

Library (Stuttgart, Germany), Eun Young Yi. Model: © Eun Young Yi.

166 Designing FIGURE 4.45  City

Library (Stuttgart, Germany), Eun Young Yi. Photo: © Eun Young Yi.

FIGURE 4.46  City

Library (Stuttgart, Germany), Eun Young Yi. Photo: © Eun Young Yi.

The spatial expectation of the entering visitors to see and find books is disoriented.The visitors find themselves enveloped by a four-story 14-meter cubed void, reminiscent of the Roman Pantheon. The Stuttgart Pantheon has a square oculus illuminated by natural light from the reading room above, supplemented by blue

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LEDs. It’s a perfectly detailed and executed pure geometrical white cube. Relocated in some Zen-moment, the readers find themselves standing on an empty terrazzo floor looking at a tiny square pool with a small fountain.This opening scene invites the entering readers to clear their minds, to turn their backs on the urban sounds and impressions. The first architectural sequence prepares the readers for reaching a contemplative mindset, needed for their encounters with the books and their

FIGURE 4.47  City

Library (Stuttgart, Germany), Eun Young Yi. Photo: © Eun Young Yi.

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meanings. After this first opening sequence, the visitors are prepared to discover the other architectural sequences and unfold their own mental stories in connection with the books they want to find and read. The architectural narrative extends the performance of contemplation while the visiting readers climb the stairs to the bookshelves in the upper floors (Figure 4.47). Following small stairways – with square windows looking into the Void Room – the readers can go straight to the upper levels.There, the narrative of the building unfolds a mesmerizing scene (Figure 4.48). The readers experience the apotheosis of the gallery hall: a five-story space, square and surrounded by a shell of books, the final destination for each visitor searching for educational knowledge or literary discoveries. In the beautifully designed open reading hall, readers can freely develop their own stories, the building blocks of their own imagination. Yi’s City Library structures its spatial story with a narrative arc that reaches its climax in the bright reading hall in the shape of an inverted pyramid. That spatial climax acts as very welcoming. In contrast with such a joyful ending, Libeskind deconstructs the narrative arc in his Jewish Museum in Berlin with the design of a staircase which leads nowhere (Figure 4.49). In his design, the Jewish architect refuses the happy ending, just as he did in the Felix-Nussbaum-Haus in Osnabrück, characterized as a museum without an exit.

FIGURE 4.48  City

Library (Stuttgart, Germany), Eun Young Yi. Photo: © Sebastiaan Gerards.

Designing   169 FIGURE 4.49  Jewish

Museum (Berlin, Germany), Daniel Libeskind. Photo: © Deror avi.

Lighting Maybe the most significant constituent of filming is lighting. Film directors such as Tarkovsky as well as film theoreticians like Gilles Deleuze and Johannes Ehrat, rightly stress the constituent of time. But, time remains an abstract concept without the realm of earthly light. If there were no light at all, not only would the film camera be blind, but humanity itself wouldn’t even exist. The nature of lighting in filming has been well demonstrated by two masters of cinematography. Henri Alekan was awarded for his work on The Beauty and the Beast (1946), directed by Jean Cocteau, and Emmanuel Lubezki was awarded for The Tree of Life (2011), directed by Terence Malick, and The Revenant (2015), directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. Alekan (1984) showed how the esthetic play of shadows can be experienced as the narrator of a sublime film. In his turn, Lubezki confronted the age of computer-generated imagery (CGI) with the everlasting marvel of sunlight and its unique performance. For the camera of Lubezki, natural light is the first and last performer of the film. Architects are colleagues of cinematographers such as Alekan and Lubezki. In that cinematographic spirit, Richard Meier & Partners Architects designed the Pritzker Prize-awarded High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. At the junction of Peachtree and Sixteenth Street, Meier created an art museum in which the narrative of art, shown in the exhibition rooms, is connected with its earthly origin, the sunlight (Figures 4.50, 4.51). The monumental atrium and the internal, circular ramp, with windows towards the street and connecting with the reception area,

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FIGURE 4.50  High

Museum of Art (Atlanta, GA), Richard Meier. Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

FIGURE 4.51  High

Museum of Art (Atlanta, GA), Richard Meier. Photo: © Sylvain De Bleeckere.

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create a celebration of light. The building performs an interplay of moving shadow lines and changing illuminated spaces. The cinematic performance of light is not a prerogative of great public buildings. The Belgian architecture office Ectv (Els Claessens, Tania Vandenbussche) designs renovations of older houses and also new dwellings from the perspective of ‘unexpected light’ (Figures 4.52, 4.53, 4.54). They succeed in creating houses in which light narrates its ever changing story of life. Unexpected light creates an enjoyable scenery along the circulation paths, creating spatial sequences directed by the life-realm of light itself.

FIGURE 4.52  House

1 (Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, Belgium), Ectv (Els Claessens, Tania Vandenbussche). Photo: © Hilde D’haeyere.

172 Designing FIGURE 4.53  House

2 (Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, Belgium), Ectv (Els Claessens, Tania Vandenbussche). Photo: © Hilde D’haeyere.

FIGURE 4.54  House

(Borgerhout, Belgium), Ectv (Els Claessens, Tania Vandenbussche). Photo: © Van Eetveldt + Nyhuis.

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References Aitken, Sally. 2015. Imagine . . . Frank Gehry: The Artist Says “Why Can’t I?”, Documentary. London, BBC Arts. www.youtube.com/watch?v=34tJ7JAjSW0. Alekan, Henri. 1984. Des lumières et des ombres. Paris, Centre National des Lettres, La Cinémathèque Française. Behnisch, Günter. 1992. ‘Bauen für die Demokratie’, in Flagge, Ingeborg and Stock,Wolfgang Jeasn (eds.), Architektur und Demokratie. Bauen für die Politik von der amerikanischen Revolution bis zur Gegenwart, 66–75. Ostfildern-Ruit bei Stuttgart, Gerd Hatje. Bouman, Ole and van Toorn, Roemer. 1994. ‘Tomorrow Can Take Care of Itself. A Conversation with Jean Nouvel’, in Bouman, Ole and van Toorn, Roemer (eds.), Invisible in Architecture, 312–325. London, Academic Editions; Berlin, Ernst & Sohn. Canfyn, Filip. 2014. Het syndroom van verkavelingsvlaanderen: een radicaal pleidooi voor stedelijk wonen. Brussels,VUBPRESS. Cayley David. 2005. The Rivers North of the Future. The Testament of Ivan Illich as Told to David Cayley. Toronto, House of Anasi Press. Coop Himmelblau, et al., The End of Architecture? Documents and Manifestos.Vienna Architecture Conference. Munich, Prestel, 1993. De Bleeckere, Sylvain. 2012a. ‘Aural Architecture and Its Phenomenological Roots’, in Jacquet, Benoît and Giraud, Vincent (eds.), From the Things Themselves. Architecture and Phenomenology. Kyoto, Kyoto University Press. De Bleeckere, Sylvain. 2012b. ‘“Beyond” Immanence and Transcendence: Reflections in the Mirror of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Roublev and Solaris’, in Stoker, Wessel and van der Merwe, Willem Lodewikus (eds.), Looking Beyond. Shifting Views of Transcendence in Philosophy,Theology, Art and Politics, 471–486. Amsterdam and New York, Rodopi. De Bleeckere, Sylvain. 2015a. Het Collectief. Demo . . . Hasselt, RedAR. De Bleeckere, Sylvain. 2015b. Levensbeschouwing democratisch belicht. Kalmthout, Pelckmans. De Bleeckere, Sylvain and Gerards, Sebastiaan. 2013.‘Communal Housing: A Critical Review of Flemish Habitat’, MONU, 18, 64–69. De Bleeckere, Sylvain and Gerards, Sebastiaan. 2014. ‘The Convivial Housing Modus for Singletown’, in Bovati, Marco, Caja, Michele, Floridi, Giancarlo, and Landsberger, Martina (eds.), Cities in Transformation: Research & Design, 158–165. Padova, Il Poligrafo. De Bleeckere, Sylvain and Windmolders, Danny. 2015. Wonen. Bouwstenen voor een habitologie. Leuven, Acco. Deleuze, Giles. 1989. Cinéma 2. The Time-Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press. Droog & KesselsKramer. 2008. ‘Singletown’, in Out There: Architecture Beyond Building, Manifestos, Vol. 5, 36–39. Venice, Marsilio. Ehrat, Johannes. 2005. Cinema and Semiotic. Peirce and Film Aesthetics, Narration and Representation. Toronto, University of Toronto Press. Fellini, Federico. 1978. Prova d’orchestra. Film. Dalmo Cinematografica, RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana. www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhIrWW4eH5Y. Fesmire, Steven. 2003. John Dewey and Moral Imagination. Bloomington, Indiana University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1983. This Is Not a Pipe. Translated and edited by James Harkness. Berkeley, CA and London, University of California Press. Frampton, Kenneth. 2011.‘Urbanisation and Discontents: Megaform and Sustainability’, in Lee, Sang (ed.), Aesthetics of Sustainable Architecture, 97–108. Rotterdam, 010 Publishers. Gerards, Sebastiaan, De Bleeckere, Sylvain, and De Ridder, Roel. 2015. ‘Designing Multigenerational Dwelling:A Workshop with Four Flemish Architecture Firms’, International Journal of Architectural Research 9(2), 20–30.

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Goethe, Johan Wolfgang von. 1921. Literary Essays. A selection in English arranged by J.E. Spingarn. New York, Harcourt, Brace and Company. Goldberger, Paul. 2015. Building Art. The Life and Work of Frank Gehry. New York, Alfred A. Knopf. Heidingsfelder, Markus and Tesch, Min. 2005. Rem Koolhaas. A Kind of Architect. Film. Germany, MTP, Markus Heidingsfelder, ZDF/ARTE. Hodgson, Godfrey. 1995. People’s Century. From the Dawn of the Century to the Start of the Cold War,Vol. 1. London, BBC Books. Iamblichus and Taylor, Thomas. 1987. Life of Pythagoras. Vermont, Inner Traditions Bear and Company. Illich, Ivan. 1973/1975. Tools for Conviviality. Glasgow, Fontana/Collins. Johnson, Philip. 2002. The Architecture of Philip Johnson. New York, Bullfinch Press. Johnson, Philip. 2016. Quote on straight lines. Retrieved from www.brainyquote.com/ quotes/quotes/p/philipjohn540635.html [March 10, 2016]. Kaster, Karl Georg (ed.). 1997. Felix Nussbaum. Art Defamed, Art in Exile, Art in Resistance. Bramsche, Rasch Verlag. Libeskind, Daniel. 2004. Breaking Ground. London, John Murray. Libeskind, Daniel. 2011. The Extension of the Nussbaum Haus. Retrieved from www. osnabrueck.de/fnh/architektur/anbau-2011/daniel-libeskind-zum-anbau.html [March 17, 2016]. Liefooghe, Maarten. 2012. ‘The 1996 Biennale. The Unfulfilled Promise of Hans Hollein’s Exhibition Concept’, OASE 88, 54–60. Margolin,Victor. 2007. ‘Design, the Future and the Human Spirit’, Design Issues 23 (3), 4–15. Moore, Charles M. 2001. You Have to Pay for the Public Life. Selected Essays of Charles W. Moore. Edited by Kevin Keim. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. Neumann, Dietrich (ed.). 1996. Film Architecture: Set Designs from Metropolis to Blade Runner. Munich and New York, Prestel. Pollack, Sydney. 2006. Sketches of Frank Gehry. Film. American Masters, Eagle Rock Entertainment. www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0amON0l_1o. Ricœur, Paul. 1990. Time and Narrative,Vol. 3. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Ricœur, Paul. 1991. ‘Life in Quest of Narrative’, in Wood, David (ed.), Narrative and Interpretation, 20–33. London and New York, Routledge. Strohmeier, John and Westbrook, Peter. 1999. Divine Harmony: The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras. Berkeley, CA, Berkeley Hills. Tarkovsky, Andrei. 2006. Interviews. Edited by John Gianvito. Jackson, University Press of Mississippi. Topalovic, Milica. 2011. ‘Models and Other Spaces’, OASE, 84, 37–52. Van Gerrewey, Christoph. 2011. ‘What Are Men to Rocks and Mountains?’ De maquettes van OMA/Rem Koolhaas, OASE 84, 31–48. Wenders, Wim. 1987. Der Himmel über Berlin/Wings of Desire. Road Movies Filmproduktion, Argos Film. Wenders, Wim. 2010. If Buildings Could Talk . . . Video Installation. Berlin, Road Movies.

OPEN-ENDED STORIES

Now that we are nearing the end of our story, we have to make one last visit. In the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin, we want to look at The Monk by the Sea by German painter Caspar David Friedrich (Figure 5.1).We see that the monk has walked from his abbey to the beach. At that point, a strange effect comes into play.The end of the monk’s path transforms into a new beginning.The monk starts a new journey while gazing at the horizon, sculpted by the immense water mass of the sea, the ephemeral cloud curtain and the disappearing light. It seems that the monk has found his new abbey. In his old one, the rooms are clearly defined and the abbey itself is a closed space. Standing on the beach, he is now contemplating the ever changing view of what is happening in nature at the point where heaven and earth, sea and land meet. Maybe the monk has had enough of living behind closed doors. Now he seeks a new beginning by meditating on the openness of the scenery, directed by the earthly elements themselves, not knowing in what direction his next step will take him. In the abbey, his daily life was devoted to eternity; now his thinking and imagining have fallen under the spell of time. So, Friedrich’s monk guides us to awareness of the open-ending of our story, anchored in the realm of time. ‘The book ends, but life is open-ended’ (Ricœur 1995, 309). Entering the domain of narrativity, as we did in our book, always implies acceptance of an ending that opens a new beginning. The domain of narrativity, with its multitude of stories, and the realm of life itself relate to each other like the low tide and high tide of the sea. Ricœur very acutely explained that in stories as well as in life the phenomenon of open-ending is pivotal. The open-endedness places us in a situation where we can bring ourselves together narratively only by superimposing in some way a configuration with a beginning, a middle, and an ending. But at the same time, we are always in the process of revising the text, the narrative of our lives. In this sense,

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Monk by the Sea, Caspar David Friedrich (Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany).

FIGURE 5.1  The

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178  Open-Ended Stories

we may construct several narratives about ourselves, told from several points of view. (Ricœur 1995, 309) In the same sense, we can conclude that narrative architecture finds its roots of thinking and imagining in the realm of time, and therefore represents a collective consciousness of open-ended stories. Designing, educating, imagining, thinking circumscribe the narrativity of architecture and reveal that the designer’s story is always the story of many.Therefore, narrative architecture transcends the sterile debates on style purism that for ages divided architects among themselves and cultivated the Ego of Architecture, proclaiming itself as an autonomous discipline. In that perspective, Zaha Hadid and Steven Holl distanced themselves from the self-indulgence ‘imposed on the students by teachers’ in architecture schools (Freiman 1993, 122). We don’t fully agree with Charles Jencks who designated our postmodern era in general and postmodern architecture in particular as being marked by ‘pluriformity and relativity’ (Jencks 2006, 9). From our point of view, Jencks’s characterization is not fully appropriate and in some ways too facile to cover the meaning and consequences of the open-endedness of narrative architecture. Pluriformity and relativity had already been practiced in the democratic experiment in ancient Athens, the birthplace of what we now consider as classical architecture and arts. Looking back to the tradition of Western culture and architecture, the classical style was cut off from its democratic roots, then it was promoted to the state of art, and was awarded a divine status, associated with absolute, anti-democratic political power. The new classic of modernism and its ideologies claimed to be the legal heir of the classic canon of architecture and its stylistic idiosyncrasies, missing the coming of age of the global democratic movement and its open-ended story during the twentieth century. Narrative architecture is more than just producing pluriformity and relativity, which can easily degenerate into simplistic esthetic schemes and methods. One can even imagine that those so-called postmodern categories are easily integrated into a discourse of architecture for architecture’s sake. Narrative architecture and its positive postmodern essence express themselves more through their real engagement with creating the open and continuing story of building up a human environment for every person born on earth.The designer is one character in that story, together with a lot of other characters, including all citizens of a democratic society, each of them being free to dream about how the earth can become a place worth calling home. In that respect the Spanish architect Carme Pinós shares her experience of the narrative character of the Phillips Exeter Academy Library in Exeter, New Hampshire, designed by Louis I. Kahn:‘It’s fantastic. It’s like a movie.The movement of people inside – this is the architecture, not the volume’ (Freiman 1993, 125). Open-endedness as the core of narrative architecture and its postmodern age has far-reaching implications. Our journey in the domain of narrative architecture has taught us that architectural education in architectural schools, and in the public domain as well, cannot be overlooked when discussing how to move forward in the democratization process in the future of humanity. What we mean is putting

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the issue of dwelling on the public agenda and, consequently, on the educational agenda of architecture schools. Designing housing while reflecting on dwelling as a life-metaphor in the design studio as well as in the architectural office, which is in a broader sense a permanent school of architecture, can develop into a necessary laboratory for the narrative of a democratic society. Our statement echoes the words of Zaha Hadid, spoken to her architect colleagues gathered in Vienna in 1992, in a self-critical reflection on her experience of the architectural school in London: I think we have to shut our egos and maybe form an agency that deals with housing. I look at London . . . at the Architectural Association. They have those programs at school that deal with housing, energy . . . and they do it in the most banal, awful way . . . I say, take these very basic programs and look at them . . .  (ibid., 113) The consequences of refusing to put designing housing on the agenda of architectural education are very predictable.The agenda of architecture will be preoccupied with managing and engineering efficiency, in combination with image-production as a department of the advertisement business, controlled by real estate companies and their investors. In contrast to such a tendency, we advocate designing dwelling as a praxis of moral imagination, culminating in thinking about the phenomenological essence of dwelling as life-metaphor. Everybody lives somewhere and everybody has a mental picture of what dwelling should look like. Based on this universal human experience, we believe, designing dwelling should be a cornerstone of the design studio of architectural education. By that same reasoning, we also understand Charles Moore’s answer to Leon Luxemburg’s question about how public education on architecture in the United States could be improved: ‘I think one thing that will make architecture more interesting is to be more open and to work with people, and have them involved in the design of buildings’ (Moore 2001, 125). The conclusion of our open-ended story is an invitation to our readers, be they members of architecture schools or architecture offices or even residents living somewhere on the planet today, to try writing or visualizing in one way or another their own designer’s story. Our story is just such an exercise. For nearly every building we have mentioned, another better or lesser known realized project can be found. We are pretty sure that narrative architecture happens everywhere, as for instance in the designs of the Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena and his office Elemental, especially in his Quinta Monroy housing project for which he was awarded the 2016 Pritzker Architecture Prize (Figure 5.2).The houses are designed and experienced as open-ended stories.

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FIGURE 5.2  Quinta

Monroy residential development (Iquique, Chile), ELEMENTAL. Photos: Tadeuz Jalocha (before) / ELEMENTAL (after).

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182  Open-Ended Stories

References Freiman, Ziva. 1993. ‘Vienna Architecture Conference. Roundtable’, in Noever, Peter (ed.), The End of Architecture? Documents and Manifestos. Vienna Architecture Conference, 99–127. Munich, Prestel. Jencks, Charles. 2006. ‘Cathedral and Bike Shed: Icons and the City’, The Architectural Review, September, 9–35. Moore, Charles M. 2001. You Have to Pay for the Public Life. Selected Essays of Charles W. Moore. Edited by Kevin Keim. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. Ricœur, Paul. 1995. Figuring the Sacred. Religion, Narrative and Imagination. Minneapolis, MN, Augsburg Fortress Press.

INDEX

Page references in italic refer to relevant illustrations. Adjaye, David 135 Age of Enlightenment/Reason 16, 119–120 Alberti, Leon Battista 44, 45 Alekan, Henri 169 American Civil War (1861–1865) 69 ‘American Dream, The’ 62–63 ‘American Renaissance’ 71 American Revolution (1776) 66, 102 ancient Greece see Greece, ancient Aravena, Alejandro 179, 180–181 Architecture and Utopia (Tafuri) 13 architecture parlante 1–2 Aristotle 9, 50, 52, 102, 118 Art Nouveau movement 150 Assemble 110–112, 111, 114 Atelier Bow-Wow 114, 160–161, 160; Canal Swimmer’s Club, Bruges 139–142, 139–143; Urban Forest, Berlin 112, 112–113, 152, 153 At the End of the Century exhibition (1998) 14 ‘Attrappenarchitektur’ (façade architecture), Germany 73 Aureli, Pier Vittorio 11 Auschwitz 19–20, 20, 134 avant-garde artists 53–54 ‘Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest’ (Dylan) 28–29 balloons, use by Pétillon 60–62, 61

Baroque style 149–150 Bauen Wohnen Denken (Heidegger) 12–13, 28 Bauhaus 3, 33, 75, 105 Beaux-Arts tradition 71 Beethoven–Schiller, ‘Ode to Joy’ 16 Behnisch, Günter 127, 148–149, 152; Federal House, Bonn 74, 82–83, 84–87, 86–87, 90, 146–147, 146–147 Belfort, Jordan 17 Belly of an Architect,The (film) 1, 2 Berlin Wall 73, 79, 80–82, 163 Bernini, Gian Lorenzo 149–150 Bible moralisée 116–118, 117 Biennales see Venice Biennales Binoculars Building, Los Angeles (Gehry) 42, 43 Blake, William 119–120, 119 Bollnow, Otto Friedrich 28–31, 32–33, 154 Brandenburg Gate, Berlin 81 Bridge of Spies (film) 52 bridges in Gehry’s work 58 Bruggen, Coosje van 42, 43 Brunelleschi, Filippo 9 Bulfinch, Charles 65, 68 Bungalow Germania (Ciriacidis) 106–107, 107–108 Burnham, Daniel H. 70–72 Canal Swimmer’s Club, Bruges (Atelier Bow-Wow) 139–142, 139–143 capitalism 13, 109 Capitol, Washington, DC 34, 65, 66, 68, 69, 72

184 Index

Cardinal, Douglas 135 Casa da Música, Porto, Portugal (Koolhaas & OMA) 34, 35 Casey, Thomas Lincoln Sr. 69 Cathedral of Our Lady, Strasbourg 162, 163 Ceaus.escu, Nicolae 67, 67–68 Chancellery Building (Bundeskanzleramt), Berlin (Schultes Frank) 92, 93 Chancellor’s Bungalow (Kanzlerbungalow), Bonn (Ruf) 33, 74–80, 75–80, 106–107, 107–108 characters, designing 161–163, 161–162, 164–165 Chartres Cathedral, France 163 Chiat/Day Building, Los Angeles (Gehry) 42, 43 Choay, Françoise 45 CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne) 10, 120 cinematography see filming Ciriacidis, Savvas 106–107, 107–108 City Library, Stuttgart, Germany (Yi) 165–168, 165–168 City Museum, Ahmedabad, India (Le Corbusier) 105 Civil Rights Movement 62–63, 63, 72 classicism 71, 178 clients/users, empowerment of 123–124 ‘Cogito ergo sum’ 10, 12 Cold War 46, 52; Berlin Wall 73, 79, 80–82, 163 collective memories 67, 134–136, 135–138 ‘common ground’ 70 communal living: Communal Villa (DOGMA) 112, 113–114, 114; conditions of cohabitation 62; multigenerational (3G) dwellings 131–134, 132–133, 149 communicability 51 communism 13, 14, 67 communities’ narrative identities 146–149, 146–148 compasses, use of 116–118, 117, 119–120, 119 complexity, democratic 123 Comte, Auguste 16 consciousness see human consciousness ‘convivial’ dwelling spaces 132–133 Coop Himmelb(l)au 105, 152 Corbusier, Le 105 correlative types of consciousness 24 ‘creative ontology’ 27 creativity see imagination Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Husserl) 15, 25 criticism, operative 12–14

Dancing House (‘Fred and Ginger’), Prague (Gehry and Milunic´) 47, 48–49, 55 De Architecture (Vitruvius) 44 Deconstructivist Architecture exhibition, MOMA (1988) 105–106 Delirious New York (Koolhaas) 5 demiurgic narrative 116–125, 117, 119, 121, 149 Democracy and America (On Thomas Jefferson) (Dewey) 97 democratic society 62, 178–179; and collective memories 67, 134–136, 135–138; and ‘convivial’ dwelling spaces 132–133; democratic Zeitgeist and complexity 123; humanitas 83, 97, 149; humanization of the state 96–97; music and society metaphor 156–157, 156; see also education; Government Districts, Germany; imagination, moral demographics see social and demographic shifts De re aedificatoria (Alberti) 44, 45 De Rycker, Aarnoud 149 Descartes, René 1, 10, 120 design skills and methods: jazzy designing method 156–158, 156; modeling 151–156, 152–155; sketching 149–151, 149–150; see also filming; scope of narrative architecture design studios 115–116; and demiurgic narrative 116–125, 117, 119, 121, 149 Dewey, John 63–64, 96–97, 101, 115 dialectical materialism 13 Dickens, Charles 69 Dionysus 54; the designer’s Dionysian imagination 54–62, 55–57, 59, 61 Djuisters, Sibe 154 DOGMA 112–114, 113–114 Domus Dei, ‘House of God’, Holy Heart Church, Brussels 34, 35 Dr Chau Chak Wing Building, Sydney (Gehry) 154–156, 155 Droog & KesselsKramer 128–131, 128, 130 dwelling/housing 29–31, 179; consciousness of 25–27, 25–26, 28–29, 29, 32–34, 34–35; ‘convivial’ dwelling spaces 132–133; housing issue (Wohnungsfrage) 109–115, 110–114, 130, 152, 153; see also communal living Dylan, Bob 28–29, 38, 54, 104 Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (Bernini) 149–150 Ectv 171, 171–172 education 101–102; demiurgic narrative 116–125, 117, 119, 121, 149; mental/

Index  185

cultural constituents 102–104; the plea of Schön 115–116; see also exhibitions as education Ego of Architecture 178 Ehrat, Johannes 165 Eichhorn, Maria 109, 110 Eiermann, Egon 82 Eisenman, Peter 93, 94–95, 105 Elemental 179, 180–181 Eliot, T.S. 159–160 empathy towards life stories 128–131, 128, 130 emplotment, storytelling 49–50 enfant sauvage 103 Engels, Friedrich 109 Enlightenment, Age of 16, 119–120 Erhard, Ludwig 75–76, 75–76, 78, 108 ethical sense of thinking 25–27, 25–26 Etudes d’architecture en France (Kaufmann) 1 etymology of words 30 European sciences, crisis of 14–20, 19–20 European spirit (Geist), crisis of 15–16 European Union (EU) 16 exhibitions as education 104–108, 105–107; and rethinking social issues 109–115, 110–114 ‘eye’ and ‘mind’ 9–10, 9 Federal House (Bundeshaus), Bonn (Behnisch) 74, 82–83, 84–87, 86–87, 90, 146–147, 146–147 Felin, Sverre 97 Felix-Nussbaum-Haus, Osnabrück (Libeskind) 134–136, 136–138 Fellini, Federico 156–157, 156 Fesmire, Steven 157 filming: 158–159; lighting 169–171, 170–172; performance and character 161–163, 161–162, 164–165; relation between time and space 159–161, 160; scenario-based designing 159–161, 160; sequences 163, 165–168, 165–169 firmitas (firmness) 44 Fishdance Restaurant, Kobe, Japan (Gehry) 57–58 fish in Gehry’s work 57 foam metaphor 60–62, 61, 130 folds in Gehry’s work 54–60, 55–57, 59 Foster, Norman 39–40, 40; Reichstag, Berlin 89, 90, 90–91 Founding Fathers, USA 64–72, 71 Franklin, Benjamin 65 Franklin Delano Roosevelt memorial, Washington, DC 33, 34 ‘Fred and Ginger’ see Dancing House, Prague

Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis (Gehry) 58 Freelon, Phillip 135 French Revolution (1789) 102 Friedrich, Caspar David 175, 176–177 Fundamentals Biennale (2014) 106–108, 106–107 Geborgenheit 30 Gehry, Frank 42, 43, 53, 105, 127, 150, 151–152, 153; Chiat/Day Building, Los Angeles 42, 43; Dancing House, Prague 47, 48–49, 55; Dr Chau Chak Wing Building, Sydney 154–156, 155; Guggenheim Museum Bilbao 56–60, 56–57, 59, 97, 163; use of folds, water, fish, and bridges 54–60, 55–57, 59; Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles 60, 157 Genesis, Bible moralisée 116–118, 117 geometric forms 116–118, 117, 119–120, 119; and celestial music 156; geometry-line versus life-line 149–151, 149–150 German Pavilion (Ciriacidis Lehnerer) 106–107, 107–108 Germany: postwar architecture 12–13, 27–28, 33, 73, 147; Nazism 15–16, 73, 86–87, 90, 93, 134, 135, 136; see also Government Districts, Germany; Holocaust Global Home concept 32–34, 34–35 ‘God as Architect of the Universe’ 116–118, 117 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 161–163, 162 Goldberger, Paul 53, 60 Golden Fish Sculpture, Barcelona (Gehry) 57 Gorbachev, Mikhail 79, 82 Gothic architecture 149–150, 162, 163 Government Districts, Germany 72–74, 74; Berlin 87, 88–89, 90, 90–92, 93, 93–96; Bonn 75–80, 75–80, 82–83, 84–87, 86–87 Great Motherhood (Grosse Maternitas) (Koenig) 79 Greece, ancient 17–18, 44–45, 46, 52, 101–102, 118; theater and spectatorship 50, 51, 54 Greenaway, Peter 1, 2 Greenberg, Allan 68 Gropius, Walter 105 Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain (Gehry) 56–60, 56–57, 59, 97, 163

186 Index

Hadid, Zaha 105, 179 Hall of Glory (Ruhmeshalle), Berlin (Speer) 73 Hamilton, Alexander 65 Hauptmann, Christine 83 Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin 109–115, 110–114 Havel,Václav 48 Hearst Tower, Manhattan, New York 39–40, 40 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 102–104 Heidegger, Martin 12–13, 28 Heraclitus of Ephesus 54 High Museum of Art, Atlanta (Meier) 169–171, 170 Hilberseimer, Ludwig 10–12, 11, 13 Himmel über Berlin, Der/Wings of Desire (Wenders) 163, 164–165 Hitchcock, Henry-Russell 104–105 Hitler, Adolf 73, 75 Hoban, James 33, 66, 67 Hodgson, Godfrey 158 Hollein, Hans 151 Hollywood, California 49 Holocaust: Felix-Nussbaum-Haus, Osnabrück 134–136, 136–138; irrationalism of 19–20, 20, 134 homelessness 28 homeliness (‘Wohnlichkeit’) 30–31, 32–33 Homer 52 Honecker, Erich 163 horizon-consciousness 24 House, Borgerhout, Belgium (Ectv) 172 House and Atelier Bow-Wow, Tokyo 160–161, 160 house and home, difference between 28–29 House AST 77, Tienen, Belgium (Impe) 6–8, 6, 25, 27, 29, 32, 36, 150–151, 150 House of Representatives, United States 34 Houses of Parliament, London 34 Houses 1 and 2, Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, Belgium (Ectv) 171–172 housing see dwelling/housing human consciousness 21–22, 22, 24, 38; of dwelling/housing 25–27, 25–26, 28–29, 29, 32–34, 34–35; and the life-world 25–27, 25–26, 29, 30, 32–33, 63; and the ‘mirror stage’ 102–103; ‘stream of consciousness’ 54 humanitas 83, 97, 149 humanization of the state 96–97 ‘Human Space’ colloquium, Darmstadt (1951) 27–28 Human Space (Mensch und Raum, Bollnow) 28–31

Husserl, Edmund 8, 9, 14, 15, 19, 23, 24, 25, 46, 51, 102; see also phenomenology identity: communities’ narrative identities 146–149, 146–148; and the ‘mirror stage’ 102–103 ideology 13, 14; see also Nazism If Buildings Could Talk . . . (Wenders) 163 ‘I Have a Dream’ speech (King) 62–63, 63, 72 Illich, Ivan 132–133 image and personality 103 imagination 42–46, 43, 45; the designer’s Dionysian imagination 54–62, 55–57, 59, 61; the heart of storytelling 49–51; reimagining imagination 46–49, 47; see also imagination, moral; metaphors imagination, moral 130–131; humanization of the state 96–97; and jazzy designing method 156–158, 156; moral force of imagination 62–64, 63; National Mall, Washington, DC 64–72, 64–66, 70–71, 96, 134–135; and sketching the life-line 151; see also filming; Government Districts, Germany; imagination ‘Imagine’ (Lennon) 46 Imagine . . . Frank Gehry (documentary) 42, 154 imitation, educational process as 122–123 Impe, Peter van, House AST 77, Tienen 6–8, 6, 25, 27, 29, 32, 36, 150–151, 150 Itard, Jean Marc 103 ‘I think, therefore I am’ (Cogito ergo sum) 10, 12 Ito, Toyo 5–6, 7, 26, 27 jazzy designing method 156–158, 156 Jefferson, Thomas 65–67, 68 Jencks, Charles 3, 120, 123, 152, 178 Jewish Museum, Berlin (Libeskind) 134, 168, 169 Johnson, Philip 55, 104–106, 151, 163 Kahn, Louis I. 178 Kajima, Momoyo 112 Karavan, Dani 93, 96 Kaufmann, Emil 1–3 Kawamata, Tadashi 142, 143–144, 145 Kibbutz Yagur, Israel 147–148, 148 King, Dr. Martin Luther Jr. 62–63, 63, 72 Koenig, Fritz 79 Kohl, Helmut 79–82, 81 Koolhaas, Rem 5–6, 34, 35, 105, 106–108, 158 Krenz, Thomas 58

Index  187

Lacan, Jacques 102 ‘“Lager” Germania’ 73 language 30, 31, 103; metaphors as meaning bearers 51–54, 57–58 La Salve Bridge, Bilbao, Spain 58 Latrobe, Benjamin Henry 65, 68 Ledoux, Claude-Nicolas 1–2 Lehnerer, Alex 106–107, 107–108 leisure and school, link between 102 L’Enfant, Pierre ‘Peter’ Charles 64, 65–72, 70 Lennon, John 46 Leonardo da Vinci 44, 45 Lewis, Peter 42 Libeskind, Daniel 105, 123, 148; Felix-Nussbaum-Haus, Osnabrück 134–136, 136–138; Jewish Museum, Berlin 134, 168, 169 life-line, tension with geometry-line 149–151, 149–150 life stories, empathy towards 128–131, 128, 130 life-world concept 25–27, 25–26, 29, 30, 32–33, 63 lighting in film 169–171, 170–172 Lincoln, Abraham 83 Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC 72 line 149–151, 149–150 lived space 28–29, 29 Lubezki, Emmanuel 169 Lynn, Greg 120 Lyotard, Jean-François 2–3 McKim, Charles Follen 70–72 McMillan Plan (1901), DC 70–72 Malick, Terrence 120, 122 Manhattan, New York 5, 39–40, 40, 79, 134 Maria, Nicola de 87, 87 Marxism 13, 14 materialism, dialectical 13 meaning creation, and metaphors 51–54, 57–58 Meier, Richard 169–171, 170 Memorial of the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin (Eisenman) 93, 94–95 Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism, Berlin (Karavan) 93, 96 memories, collective 67, 134–136, 135–138 Mensch und Raum (Bollnow) 28–31 Mensch und Raum colloquium, Darmstadt (1951) 12, 27–28 metanarratives 2–3 metapherein 52

metaphors: folds, water, fish, and bridges in Gehry’s work 54–60, 55–57, 59; as meaning bearers 51–54, 57–58; music and society metaphor 156–158, 156; Pétillon’s and Sloterdijk’s foam 60–62, 61, 130 ‘metaphysical’ (philosophical) questions 17–19 Metropolisarchitecture (Hilberseimer) 10–12, 11 micro-scale urban narratives 139–145, 139–145 Mills, Robert 69 Milunic´,Vlado 47, 48–49 ‘mind’ and ‘eye’ 9–10, 9 ‘mirror stage’, child development 102–103 modeling 151–156, 152–155 Modern Architecture exhibition, MOMA (1932) 104–105 modernism 3, 14–15, 27, 31; crisis of (modern) thinking 15–16; Hilberseimer’s utopian metropolis 10–12, 11; and phenomenology’s narrative of thinking 17–20, 19–20; ‘technization’ of science and knowledge 16–17 MOMA (Museum of Modern Art), New York 104–106 Monk by the Sea,The (Friedrich) 175, 176–177 Moore, Charles 157–158, 159–160, 179; Rodes House, Los Angeles 6–8, 7, 26, 27, 32, 37 Moss, Eric Owen 3–4 mother-images, three-dimensional 154, 154 Mourners of Dijon, France (Sluter) 55–56, 55, 149 Mueller, Marianne 114 multigenerational (3G) dwellings 131–134, 132–133, 149 Murdoch, James 51–52 Muschamp, Hubert 60 Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York 104–106 music and society metaphor 156–158, 156 Music of the Spheres (Musica universalis) 156 National Mall, Washington, DC 64–72, 64–66, 70–71, 96, 134–135 Nazism 15–16, 73, 86–87, 90, 93, 134, 135, 136; see also Holocaust Newton (Blake) 119–120, 119 Nietzsche, Friedrich 53–54 Nouvel, Jean 158 Nussbaum, Felix 134–136, 135–138

188 Index

Obama, Michelle 33 ‘Ode to Joy’ (Beethoven–Schiller) 16 Oldenburg, Claes 42, 43 OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture) 34, 35 one-point perspective 8–12, 8–9, 11 ‘one-sided rationality’ 19 On German Architecture (Goethe) 161, 163 ‘operative criticism’ 12–14 Palace of the Republic, Bucharest 67, 67–68 Palace of Westminster, London 34 Pallasmaa, Juhani 29 ‘panta rhei’ (‘everything flows’) 54 Pantheon, Rome 1, 2, 73, 166 Peets, Elbert 70 Pelt, Robert Jan van 20 People’s Hall (Volkshalle), Berlin (Speer) 73 performance, architectural 1, 161–163, 161–162, 164–165 personality and image 103 perspective, one-point 8–12, 8–9, 11 Pétillon, Charles 60–62, 61 phenomenology: and the crisis of European sciences 14–20, 19–20; Husserl 8, 9, 14, 15, 19, 23, 24, 25, 46, 51, 102; the phenomenon 8, 9, 13, 14, 15, 20–25, 22, 25–26, 27–34, 29, 34–35; relevance for architecture 31–32 Phenomenology of Spirit,The (Hegel) 102–103 Phillips Exeter Academy Library, New Hampshire (Kahn) 178 philosophical (‘metaphysical’) questions 17–19 ‘Philosophy and the Crisis of European Humanity’ (Husserl) 19 Pinós, Carme 178 Plato 8–9, 44, 50, 52, 102, 116–118, 120, 149 pluriformity and relativity 178 Poetics (Aristotle) 50 Pollack, Sydney 150, 151 Pope, John Russell 71, 72 positivism 16–17 Postmodern Condition,The (Lyotard) 2 postmodernism 3, 13–14; Bollnow 28–31, 32–33, 154; and the foam metaphor 61–62, 61, 130; phenomenology as postmodern movement 15; Ricœur 38–39, 44, 46, 48, 49–51, 53, 102, 131, 146, 175, 178; and ‘stream of consciousness’ 54; The Tree of Life 120, 122; see also filming; modernism; social and demographic shifts

postwar architecture 13–14, 39–40; Germany 12–13, 27–28, 33, 73, 147; see also Government Districts, Germany postwar artworks, Federal House, Bonn 86 Prova d’orchestra (film) 156–157, 156 Pruitt-Igoe project, Saint Louis (Yamasaki) 3, 120, 121 psychotherapy 30 ‘pure critic, the’ 13 Pythagoras 156 Quinta Monroy housing project, Iquique, Chile (Aravena) 179, 180–181 Raphael 8–9, 8, 10, 44, 102, 118 rationality/reason 10, 12, 18, 31, 46, 53, 151; and the demiurge narrative 117, 118, 119–120, 119, 149; irrationality of the Holocaust 19–20, 20, 134; ‘one-sided’ 19 ‘rationalization’ 17 Reason, Age of 16, 119–120 referentiality 51 Reichstag, Berlin: Foster 89, 90, 90–9; Wallot 87, 88 relativity and pluriformity 178 Renaissance 8–9, 8, 10, 18, 44–46, 45, 102, 118 Ricœur, Paul 38–39, 44, 46, 48, 49–51, 53, 102, 131, 146, 175, 178 ‘rigorous criticism’ 14 Rodes House, Brentwood, Los Angeles (Moore Ruble Yudell) 6–8, 7, 26, 27, 32, 37 Rohe, Mies van der 104, 105, 123 Roman Forum set, Studio Cinecittà 161, 161–162 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano 33, 34 Rorty, Richard 97 Rossi, Aldo 106 Ruf, Sep 74, 82; Chancellor’s Bungalow, Bonn 33, 74–80, 75–80, 106–107, 107–108 ‘Rule and Model’ concept 45, 46 Rule of Metaphor,The (Ricœur) 53 Saint-Gaudens, Augustine 70–72 Salmuth, Alexander von 147 SANAA 163 scenario-based designing 159–161, 160 Schäume/Foams (Sloterdijk) 61–62, 130 Schmid, Carlo 83 Schön, Donald 115–116, 122–123 school and leisure, link between 102 School of Athens,The (Raphael) 8–9, 8, 44, 102, 118

Index  189

schools of architecture see design studios Schultes Frank Architekten 92, 93 science and knowledge, ‘technization’ of 16–17 sciences, crisis of 14–20, 19–20 scope of narrative architecture: and collective memories 67, 134–136, 135–138; and communities’ narrative identities 146–149, 146–148; and empathy towards life stories 128–131, 128, 130; and micro-scale urban narratives 139–145, 139–145; and thought experiments 131–134, 132–133; see also design skills and methods Second World War 16, 109; Nazism 15–16, 73, 86–87, 90, 93, 134, 135, 136; see also Holocaust; postwar architecture seismograph, architect as 151 self-consciousness, and the ‘mirror stage’ 102–103 self-understanding 51 Sensing the Future Biennale (1996) 151 sequences in film 163, 165–168, 165–169 Sharoun, Hans 163, 164–165 Singletown (Droog & KesselsKramer) 128–131, 128, 130 Sketches of Frank Gehry (Pollack) 150 sketching 149–151, 149–150 slave trade, USA 69 Sloterdijk, Peter 61–62, 130 Sluter, Claus 55–56, 55, 149 Smith, Elizabeth A.T. 14 social and demographic shifts 109–115, 110–114; multigenerational (3G) dwellings 131–134, 132–133, 149; Singletown 128–131, 128, 130 society see democratic society Socrates 50 Song Dong 143, 144–145, 145 Souvenirs de famille (Invasions) (Pétillon) 60–62, 61 space: lived space 28–29, 29; relation between time and space 159–161, 160; spatial flow 70 spectatorship and theater 50, 51, 54 Speer, Albert 73, 75 Sphere,The (Koenig) 79 Spielberg, Steven 52 Standing Glass Fish, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (Gehry) 57 Star Wars (film) 62 State Library, Berlin (Sharoun) 163, 164–165 steam, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao 57 Steele, Brett 124

Steinbach, Erwin von 162, 163 storytelling: and emplotment 49–50; and metaphor 51–54 ‘stream of consciousness’ 54 Stubbins, Hugh Asher 109 Studio Cinecittà, Rome 161, 161–162 Stuttgart City Library (Yi) 165–168, 165–168 Surrealism 53–54 tabula rasa thinking 120 Tafuri, Manfredo 12–14 Taksim Gezi Park, Istanbul 146 ‘technization’ of science and knowledge 16–17 Teilwohnung (Assemble) 110–112, 111 termini, Greek architecture 44–45 Thales of Miletus 54 theater and spectatorship 50, 51, 54 Theories and History of Architecture (Tafuri) 12 thinking and architecture 5–6, 47–49, 47; ‘Cogito ergo sum’ 10, 12; crisis of (modern) thinking 15–16; ethical sense of thinking 25–27, 25–26; and Hilberseimer’s utopian metropolis 10–12, 11, 13; and Raphael’s The School of Athens 8–9, 8; in the school of time 36–40, 36–37, 39–40; and Tafuri’s crisis of ‘operative criticism’ 12–14; and the Third Eye 9–10, 9; thought experiments 131–134, 132–133; and three houses 6–8, 6–7; see also phenomenology Third Eye 9–10, 9 Thomas Jefferson Memorial, Washington, DC (Pope) 71, 72 Thornton, Dr. William 65, 68 thought experiments 131–134, 132–133 three-dimensional mother-images 154, 154 3G-Dwellings, Hasselt, Belgium 131–134, 132–133 ‘Three Revolutionary Architects, Boullée, Ledoux, and Lequeu’ (Kaufmann) 2 Timaeus (Plato) 116–118, 120, 149 time, realm of 36–40, 36–37, 39–40, 175, 176–177, 178; and mental/cultural constituents of education 102–104; relation between time and space 159–161, 160; sequences in film 163, 165–168, 165–169; Zeitgeist 103–104, 105, 108, 115, 116, 119, 120, 123 ‘Times They Are a-Changin’’ (Dylan) 38, 104 titanium, use of 56–57, 56–57

190 Index

Toyota,Yasuhisa 157 tradition 51 transcendental phenomenology 21, 24, 27–28, 31–32 Tree Huts, Bruges (Kawamata) 142, 143–144, 145 Tree of Life,The (film) 120, 122 Triennale Brugge 2015, Bruges 139–145, 139–145 Truffaut, François 103 Tschumi, Bernard 105 Tsukamoto,Yoshiharu 112, 143 Urban, Joseph 39–40, 40 urban design 10–12, 11; Hilberseimer’s utopian metropolis 10–12, 11, 13; micro-scale urban narratives 139–145, 139–145 Urban Forest, Berlin (Atelier Bow-Wow) 112, 112–113, 152, 153 utilitas (commodity) 44 utopian thinking 10–11, 11, 13, 38, 118–120, 119 Van Gerrewey, Christoph 151 Velvet Revolution (1989), Czechoslovakia 48 Venice Biennales: Fundamentals 106–108, 106–107; Sensing the Future 151; Singletown 128–131, 128, 130 venustas (delight) 44 Versailles, Palace of 66 Vitruvian Man (Leonardo) 44, 45 Vitruvius, Marcus 44, 46, 149 Vom deutscher Baukunst (Goethe) 161, 163 Vom Mauerfall zur Wiedervereinigung (Kohl) 79–80

Wallot, Paul 87, 88 Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles (Gehry) 60, 157 Washington, DC 34; National Mall 64–72, 64–66, 70–71, 96, 134–135; Washington Monument 67, 69–70, 72; White House 33, 65, 66, 67 Washington, George 64–65, 68 water in Gehry’s work 56–57, 56–57 Way of Democracy (Der Weg der Demokratie), Bonn 76, 82, 93 Weissenhofsiedlung, Stuttgart 104 Wenders, Wim 163, 164–165 White House,Washington, DC 33, 65, 66, 67 White U House, Tokyo 6–8, 7, 26, 27, 32, 37 Wigley, Mark 105 ‘Wild Child’ 103 Wilson, Richard Guy 71 wohnen, etymology of 30 Wohnlichkeit (‘homeliness’) 30–31, 32–33 Wohnungsfrage Exhibition, Berlin (2015) 109–115, 110–114, 130, 152, 153 Wolf of Wall Street (film) 17 ‘World Capital Germania’ (Welthauptstadt Germania), Berlin 73, 74 World Trade Center, New York 134 ‘world view/vision’ 9 Wu Wei Er Wei (Doing Nothing Doing), Bruges (Song Dong) 143, 144–145, 145 Yamasaki, Minoru 120, 121 Yi, Eun Young 165–168, 165–168 Zeitgeist (spirit of the time/age) 103–104, 105, 108, 115, 116, 119, 120, 123 Zur Wohnungsfrage (Engels) 109