Movement in Architecture

These reading definitely resonated with a much deeper sense of meaning than the previous ones in our series.

The articles highlighted the aspect of movement in architecture, which I treasure to a great degree. The idea of moving planes and geometries is a strong one in architectural terms. Lissitzky’s idea of pulling the square to lend a sense of three-dimensionality showcases his efforts to emphasis art as a living entity that emanates a sense of existence. It’s apparent that the architects, even at that time, stressed on changing the view of people towards existing buildings – they wanted the buildings to be not just objects set in place, but as 3d forms that move in space. The idea of involving the spectator was great, and even better was toying with their minds. Reversing the horizontal with the vertical, and vice versa, brings in a new level of complexity of thought and forces you to actually think about the infinite possibilities.

I was sort of lost in ’Montage and Architecture’. I understand the core idea is to encompass motion in art and architecture, but the techniques depicted stir a few skeptic thoughts. Perhaps this can be viewed as the foundation work for our modern day cinemarchitecture. The idea of movement is depicted very boldly in the designs of the Cubo-Futurists, who go a step ahead, and project the entire building into infinity – a very powerful juxtaposition for an object that is very strongly limited by gravity.

I enjoyed these readings more than most of the previous ones. Since they were primarily architectural in subject, they were easier to read through a one-to-one architectural lens, without the awkward translation required to convert artistic or literary ideas into an architectural framework. They also gave me a much clearer idea of what the Formalists were about.

In the discussion about El Lissitzky’s treatment of axonometry, the author described a preoccupation with uncertainty. His opinion on axonometry being the only true means of representing three dimensions, whether true or not, can be discarded, because architecture has never had a problem expression three-dimensionality. However, the concept of infinity, and the ideas of skewing perspective and creating ambiguity can be quite powerful. Nothing is quite so jarring as to see something that should not be and seems impossible, but is real, or at least appears so.

I was even more intrigued by discussion of the picturesque in the Eisenstein reading, and later in the discussion of the proposal for the Palace of Labor. I too rarely think about design in terms of movement throughout space. Instead, I tend to become absorbed in looking at a project in its totality, typically from the godlike perspective of looking down on a model or plan. No one would ever experience a building this way in reality, and the filmmaker’s technique of storyboarding a building seems in many ways the best method for truly understanding the experience of a real human in an architectural setting.

Finally, I was interested to read about how the Vesnin brothers deliberately altered their rationalist plan in order to create a picturesque scene, in defiance of the functionalist belief that form would take care of itself. This interested me, because I often waver in my own designs between doing something that seems intriguing and doing something that seems sensible. This article by no means decided me on what the correct approach might be or what mixture of intrigue and sense would be most appropriate, but it was entertaining to read about other designers with the same problem.

Cinema

The success in "Man With a Movie Camera" lies in the timing: of the duration of shots and the speed at which they are played. A truly cinematic experience is achieved when the camera, whose greatest potential lies in its ability to manipulate time, is employed in such a way. In cinematic film we view series of real events that happen in unreal order and time. This is largely achieved by shots placed in sequence devoid of transitional phases, and it is here that we begin to adjust the relationships between objects. With this sort of grasp on the relationship of objects, Lissitsky makes an analogy to mathematics. Numbers are abstract figures in themselves as undefinable quantities (you cannot use a word in its own definition); but their interaction is significant and the relationships between them establish a legible order. Likewise, painting can be an abstract figure given meaning by the relationships between constituent parts. The projection of these relationships beyond the picture plane creates three dimensional space, and what could be architecture. The Acropolis is a cinema of its own right: the views presupposed by Greeks are distinguished from the time its takes to move between them.

Thoughts on the Formal Method

El Lissitzky wanted to eliminate the concept of perspective from his art as a way of eliminating the natural sense of depth perception of a human being. Normally, the human eye uses the vanishing of lines and the extension to their intersections to judge distance. This is done without any thought. He theorized about the unsettling nature of the axonometric, a drawing where the lines will never vanish. He believed that such a drawing would allow the human mind to grasp the infinite nature of space. There is an ambiguity to parallel lines, and to perspectives without clarifying figures, that makes it impossible for one to truly grasp the space. While this is an interesting theory, axonometric drawings rarely appear to by anything more than a little unsettling. The viewer may have an unconscious understanding that this is not how the world works, but rarely does it help in the understanding of infinite space. It typically does more to isolate the drawing as an object that could never exist in reality. This is what it has in common with infinite space; objects that do not vanish even slightly and infinite space are both impossible. As far as grasping the impossible and portraying it on canvas, El Lissitzky was successful. As far as attaining a representation of infinite space, he appears to be much less successful.

The more successful attempt of his is to eliminate the third dimensional axis in the drawing while making it appear that the objects are still three-dimensional. Many of his Prouns have objects all drawn with different techniques. Some are perspective and some are axonometric. This combination is much more successful at being unsettling. There is no fundamental orientation and no clear location for the observer. He wished his Prouns to be displayed horizontally to disconnect the viewer from the typical relationship to a work. When the Formalists attempted to incorporate these concepts into architecture, such as the Palace of Labor by the Vesnin brothers, they showed that such strong ideas about art could be translated into an architecture that fundamentally reflected the nature of the regime.

There came about in the minds of Choisy, Eisenstein, and the like, an obsession with the relationship between cinema and architecture. These theorists wanted to have architecture be central to the plot of a movie. They believed that the representation of a work was as important as the work itself. For instance, Choisy agreed that the axonometric drawing was the most powerful, and he felt that it communicated the agitation and animation of the building itself. Personally, it is hard to see such characteristics in axonometric drawings, but this was the common belief of the day. It was used as a means of gaining a new understanding of their surroundings. Eisenstein also helped to introduce the idea of contextualism, which has since fallen from popularity but was once a grave concern of architecture.

Furthermore, Eisenstein did not believe that elements of architecture had to be literal in order to be present. For instance, he believed that symmetry did not have to be exact if the visual symmetry made up for it. His example is the Acropolis. This appears true even today. When one looks at the plan of the Acropolis, one rarely sees a horribly disorderly composition. The buildings are not symmetrical but the composition is balanced, and this was what Eisenstein thought was the better means of design. The basis of all of this design is memory. Designing with memory is something that Eisenman has clearly undertaken as well. In his buildings, though much more modern, memory is the key to the design. The buildings are designed to evoke certain memories, and the understanding of many of his spaces hinges on the observer’s memory of what he has seen before. All of these ideas form montage because they are multiple frames that have been superimposed not in the physical reality, but in the mind. This architectural theory is most interesting because it does relate almost entirely to the mental effects of architecture. Such intellectual concepts were key to the Formal Method.

The Formal Method II

I think the idea of montage as individual elements which are brought into context only when juxtaposed or viewed together is a very powerful idea and tool. Though I view the story of Bernini’s heroic act against the papacy with some skepticism, I don’t doubt the method and effectiveness of those eight reliefs. That method applied to architecture, as shown by the progression through the Acropolis, is also powerful and tantalizing. However, I strongly agree that sometimes the overall plan doesn’t make sense unless viewed with respect to what the planners were trying to achieve. I don’t think that it decreases the merit of the work even if it’s not understood immediately. However, when the true progression is shown it is very powerful. However, I am more dubious of works which are not understood and still are not understood even when explained. Personally I think if a work has merit, it could be explained, but the power of a piece of architecture should be experiential, which is also why I can appreciate detail in architecture more as viewed when in it and when inhabiting it than just looking at it as a whole, like a sculpture which has force only through outward appearance. That is also the difference between most sculpture and architecture, though of course there are exceptions (Serra’s work comes to mind).
I also find that the last article was so much a categorization of the new movement which eventually broke away into individual and competing ideas that the force of its idea as a whole is not as powerful. Certainly such background information is useful, and I vigorously support such information in conjunction with reading works which are theoretical. However, I feel that the information could have been presented in a way which can communicate more forcefully the thesis. In a way it’s like designing a paper to best communicate an idea.

Formal Method 3

It's quite interesting how drawing and movies can make people think of everything. I agree that some drawings do show more things than other, however, it depends on the person drawing them and how skillful the execution is. Bois' article about axonometry makes a good case for the use of that type of drawing, going so far as to explain why it was big in suprematist circles. But I think that it really depends on what you are trying to convey. For suprematist, since they were really worried about simplicity, axonometry is perfect. It shows what it needs to show and that is pretty much it. I feel that sometimes they were rather successful, in our architectural projects, especially when the building contained some simple and clean elements. But they also failed miserably at showing various concepts of a design, especially if the building has a rather complex design. They tend to crowd up the place and look very bland. I understand that suprematist took things out of the norm and did things that they considered to be a more genuine form of art. I can relate axons to the modern movement as well as I can relate perspective drawings to classical teachings of art. It's very interesting to see how people developed these ideas and how they stuck to them during the developmental process. Should we be drawing inspiration from these ideas? Sure, why not see what everyone was doing in the past and obtain ideas for the future.

Maybe I just don't get it.....

These articles focus on what seems to be a technical analysis of Suprematist work. They analyze how the perspective lines are drawn (parallel, not to a vanishing point), which points out an almost childlike drawing style. Axonometric drawings are used because of their perfect geometries that are not convoluted by reality. Plan and elevation coexist to give a more complete understanding of an object (i.e. seeing a pyramid from all angles rather than simply from the top). I don’t understand what extravision or intravision are. The Acropolis provides an interesting look into the duality of path and perspective. An observer sees the various buildings in 3-D rather than head on. The Greeks paid a lot of attention to path and perspective, an apparently modern thought. This also brings up the point about cinematic path. As I understand it, this is about what an observer sees on a given path. Cinemarchitecture? The Vesnin “Palace of Labor” contest entry deals with planes and volumes in perspective. The building looks completely different depending on which angle you view it from. This is pretty amazing for an early 20th century project. So after all of this, I’m getting to the conclusion that the formal method is an amalgamation of path and perspective, materiality, and volumes versus planes.

Quote: “you don’t admire Russian poetry because you don’t understand it.”

Maybe I don’t admire any of this because I don’t really understand it.