Composition

Slutzky's phenomenal transparency is certainly something to talk about, and he does so at great length. When it's pointed out to me I can see it in the buildings he discusses. However, it seems to some extent to be less valuable in architecture than in other arts. In painting, it can create quite a satisfying ambiguity, and in speech and literature the double entendre, which I would consider the verbal equivalent of phenomenal transparency, can be very entertaining.

In architecture, though, it seems to me that it loses something. Certainly it can be done. Slutzky made quite a convincing case for this. I don't think that it would be appreciated the same way in architecture the same way it is in other arts. I think that at best, a small fraction of occupants and passers-by would notice such a transparency, and few or none would derive any particular meaning from it. I'm reminded of something David Heymann said last year in Site Design: "People don't like to think about architecture." He went on to give a few exceptions, and perhaps in these exceptions such transparency would be noticed and enjoyed. For the most part, though, it would be a waste of time and effort.

Even beyond the question of whether or not this phenomenal transparency is noticed is the question of whether or not it is desirable. This is a more difficult question to answer, and one that is dependent on personal preference. Slutzky's opinion was clearly that phenomenal transparency was desirable in design, no matter how much he tried to appear impartial. I can't speak for others, but my own opinion is primarily one of indifference. I'm neither bothered nor excited by the idea of ambiguous transparency. I was more interested in what Slutzky had to say when he spoke more generally about figure and field. The idea that an object is inextricably linked to its context is a far more powerful and meaningful one to me than the visual trick of creating an ambiguous layering of planes.

The idea of figure and field also seems much closer to what I would think of as composition. The one part of the article where I thought Slutzky really gave a convincing description of composition was when he walked the reader through the approach to the Palace of the League of Nations. I was unconvinced by his portrayal of transparency as the thing that draws one into the building, but his sequence of the various scenes on approach was excellent, and elaborated on something I think too little of: the way buildings guide people through them. This is typically regarded as reaching its height in English landscape gardening, but it can still be very powerful in buildings of any shape or size today. To me, this is a much more important compositional goal than a simple overlapping of planes.