Paradigms and design

Does the appropriator shape space or does space shape the appropriator?


As the values were formed to set the parameters for architecture, the human was used as the basis for it. If we look at all the paradigms individually you can find the basic human in all of them. Is the basic human a universal man as Le Corbusier designed for or the human with its specific needs?

The Rational paradigm where the architect needs to resolve problem, analyze and dissect the brief. In these instants the architect is questioning and investigating and dissecting the functional needs. The human in these instant needs to be found in the brief, the list of wants. This human does not need to be the appropriator and in the majority of cases the human that sets the rational parameters is not the appropriator.

The creative paradigm looks at the architect as the human and the manner in which the riddle will be answered. As there is never a right answer, every architect will come up with a different interpretation of the dissected brief. The architect should have the appropriator in mind when the creative process is taking place. But does the architect know the appropriator? In some instances the architect will never meet the appropriator and relies on their own common knowledge or the advice given by a third party.

The political paradigm is where the external influences will come in, such as client’s needs, economics and society. This is a difficult paradigm as the client can not be confused with the appropriator (end user) and decisions made by the client are not always in the best interest of the appropriator. And there are cases where the client can not foresee what the appropriators needs are as they are not known.

The typological paradigm is based around the culture the space needs to inhabit. This is based on history of art and architecture, human science, gender studies, cinema and also on religion. This paradigm is a consequence of political paradigm, where the economic status and political persuasion has formed the cultural background of each particular town or area. It is there for interesting to see how different cultures participate and anticipate differently to their given environment. The climate has influence on this particular appropriation of the citizen in their environments.

As every culture has different habits, are these habits created due to their human history or has it been shaped by the spaces that were formed for them to inhabit and a pattern of live that emerged from it? As an example we can look at a Spanish square where every evening around seven the inhabitants will take a stroll around with their families to meet and greet the other locals. The square in Dutch culture will be filled twice a week for the local market to take place. Two similar space description but due to cultures differently used.

The individual paradigm comes to the closest to the appropriators needs. Here the architect looks at the individual and their perception of reality. It looks at the identity of each individual. This particular paradigm seems apply when the appropriator is also the client. You will also come across this when you are dealing with a physical impairment, and the architect needs to make a appropriator specific space.

Looking at the digital paradigm, which has been enabled by the progress of technology and material development, can this be the answer to the individual appropriator? The digital paradigm is a mathematical approach to design, where by the aid of computers a 3 dimensional shapes can be translated into coordinates, lengths and angles. The information produced on the computer allows the manufacturer to use accurate data to process and manufacture a complex shape. Even though this is a very exciting development in the design process allowing for any shape to be manufactured, does it answer the question if it allows the specific appropriator to get the specific space they are looking for?

It rarely occurs that a space is designed to answer the needs and requirements of the specific person. Is it possible to design and mass-produce to enable individuality?

I want to look into our most private space, our homes and see if they are designed to answer what we need or do we shape our life to suite the living environment given. The area where the appropriator is not the client and where mass production is used to make the system financially viable is in public housing.

Public housing has a valid and integer concept behind the system. After the Second World War, many countries experienced the need for affordable housing, which could be developed in a short time span. These housing developments have gone through sever criticism. And every culture or nation has moved on from the first concepts of mass produced public housing, and each culture has interpreted their revised housing requirements by the lessons learned.

If we look at the Dutch venex locations, the latest idea by the government to resolve the housing shortage, we see completely new village being created, with a diverse housing stock and a masterplan of different amenities that should satisfy any appropriator. Does it answer the needs of the appropriator, or do they feel isolated like with the garden cities in the United Kingdom, where beautiful village were created in beautiful greenery but the women that stayed behind when the men went to work in the towns, felt very isolated, due to the lack of social contact.
The difference between the garden cities and the venex locations is that the family pattern has changed and often households have a double income, but also the family structure has changed.

If you look at the Million Projects in Sweden, where mass produced apartments block were constructed, based around the two parent and two children household, the living environment would not work for single parents or joint families.

As we look at mass-produced housing we see the uniformity and the way the appropriators start to mould there given surroundings to suite their taste and needs. This is especially visible in social housing that has been sold and is now an owned property. The moment the appropriator feels ownership over the living environment they will make changes.

It is interesting to see, that a lot of houses are now sold of plan allowing new owners to still have an option on the configuration of the spaces they are going to appropriate. Also increasingly popular in the Netherlands, like the in Spangen, Rotterdam where the local government gave away their old social housing stock to any one that would invest and live in the properties. The properties were striped back and a bear shell, with the only fixed points being the soil pipe and water inlet. This gives the appropriator a blank canvas. This scheme has proven very popular and has allowed for a deprived area to be reinstated into the housing market.

Does this tell us that the space initially designed was only the basic answer to their housing needs and as soon as the appropriator gets the opportunity they will try and adapt the space to suite their taste and needs.

Can the architect design a space that allows for the growth of time and adapt itself to the specific appropriators needs? Can the answer be found in the digital paradigm, with its morphing spaces? Does the space provided to the appropriator trigger behaviour? Can we link social behaviour in deprived areas to the space they have been given to live in?

First Ideas from the texts

One of the main ideas that we could extract from Michel Foucault’s Of Other Spaces is the fact that our time actually is represented by the spaces, and all the information that came with this concept.

And we could be more agreed to that, because our times have created many contradictions between the ideas of spaces and places. Turning back in time at the beginnings, in Middle Ages, Foucault observe that the concept of space has a clear duality and hierarchy We have there the sacred places and the urban places, we have protected places and unprotected places, and the examples may continue.

But in our times, the spaces have new interpretations and connotations. Today we have private spaces and public spaces, social spaces and family spaces, and we could go on. But even we describe today these spaces as spaces of modernity, in these spaces we still have the sensation of sacredness, as Foucault says.

Our life is lived in this social relations and connections between this spaces. But in this network of connections and spaces, Foucault recognize the Utopias, the perfect imaginary space. This space has an opposite spaces called Heterotopias. Interesting about these two concepts is the link that connects them… The Mirror… an object of perceptions, false and true perceptions of reality, an object that has also many connotations in the past. The mirror is the portal to the other worlds, a symbolic doorway, which is also found in Renaissance period.

Foucault sort into two classes these Heterotopias (Crises heterotopias - colleges and Heterotopias of deviations - prisons, mental hospitals etc), two heterothopic places for certain categories of citizens). and sixth principles of them.

All these principles defines the concept that these heterotrophic places are found elsewhere, outside the common living places. Cemeteries, cinemas, motel rooms, colonies, ships etc.

These places creates, we can say, a parallel world, a simultaneous world, which exists with the ordinary world and where we can escape and start the act of creation.

But with all of these concepts, we don’t know that if we can submit the fact that we are fugitives, and we can create only if we step into this parallel world or places. Our society is based on experiences of the past, and the concept of learning is rooted from our ancestors, from our history.

We learn from the past, and continuously try to improve our society but it is in human nature to act in this way. The act of learning is based on former experiences, from the past.

References:

Foucault, Michel: Of Other Spaces , Heterotopias

Spiridonidas, Constantin: Researching the Other in Value-Based

My first thoughts on “(Re)Searching the Other”

The presented texts for this semester opening debate could not fail to bring my thoughts down to initial, essential and everlasting questions of humans’ minds, guiding me through a set of respective issues. Ancient need of self-conscious beings to comprehend the purpose of their existence, to overcome the mortality and to find a way to last through centuries by means of the deeds realized in the course of lifetime is deeply penetrated in human nature. Isn’t this necessity evident in architects’ efforts not only to create a tangible enduring structure but also to lay down a set of universal building postulates, to archi-tecture, to reach The Other?

Philosophers, architects, researchers have been constantly striving to discover general key for solving all the concerns of society in order to reach the highest quality of living. Enormous number of ideas, thoughts and dreams were shaped and experimented with during the course of time, but sometimes the fact that new does not always stand for better was forgotten. Following, another dilemma arises: how do we judge/weigh what is better? How do we define it? By what criteria of judgment? As it is said in introductory text, the values steering the act of creation have been constantly changing as well as the understanding and comprehension of architecture and its’ meaning. So, what set of values and principles is to be translated in spatial forms? Understanding this question as an initial point for architect’s work and creativity brings us to diverse architectural paradigms prearranged on different ideals.

Nowadays, when the time is measured in seconds and distance in hundreds of kilometers, the speed of overall changes is increasing rapidly. One of the consequences of rapid technological development certainly is emergence of a great number of different worldviews and comprehensions of architectural design. Therefore, at present time we witness coexistence of various structures of standards corresponding to different architectural patterns, contrasting Thomas Kuhn’s philosophy of paradigm as incommensurable. According to Kuhn, purposeful putting two paradigms side by side is not possible without elementary modification of the essential features of the two paradigms. At present time, it is visible that the competing paradigms are regularly measured by one another and that they even originate from one or another, so they are comprehended as models, exemplars or conceptual frameworks.

Investigation and perception of these assorted systems of values should give us a better insight in reasons standing behind the architects’ decisions and help us to understand their creations as well as their aim to identify the principles of contemporary architecture and find the way to express themselves. Namely, in last years of the twentieth century, underestimation of history and cultural heritage meaning due to exceptional urban and capitalist development, has led to questioning the status of the individual and his/her place in the metropolis.

Consequently, the issue identified in the period of Deutsche Werkbund becomes actual again. At that time, beginning of the twentieth century, architects influenced by theories of various philosophers and sociologists, primarily wanted to discover the principles of the new architecture in the industrial environment, to find the answer to the question of relations between artists, intellectuals and metropolis. The fact was that the metropolis, as the achievement of industrial epoch, constantly growing and rapidly changing, canceled any individualism and free will, terminated the organic impulses of man to nature and erased traditional legacy. Individual’s life in the metropolis, deprived of quality, was reduced only to reconciliation with its own contradictory position in the crowd and concerns of everyday existence. Therefore, architects wanted to find a universal key to overcome this dark state, to create a new, clean, simple environment that may be closer to the original organic life of primitive communities than to characteristics of organized industrial society.

Similarly, the architecture of the late twentieth century has come into a post-humanistic era, where "the place" and "the tradition" were of a less significance and the dismemberment of the city and the landscape becomes part of the expected "atopia" - a modern "lack of places". Architectural answer to this set of circumstances manifests through the attempt to set new coordinates of architecture by liberating architectural expression of simplified consideration of usability and context. Architects, through the design, express their personal views on more and more confused world and the chaos of Megalopolis, delighted by artificiality of a city and its many manifestations and layers of reality and illusion. Isn’t the attempt of architects stated as deconstructivists to be critical towards directions of development of advanced industrialization by formal expression without deeper social and cultural meaning only contribute to the consolidation of modernism quick sensation and ironic turn away? Maybe this is one of evidences for architects’ attempts to build by decomposing, to create by destroying and to question the relation of non-place and one of the fundamental purposes of architecture to provide shelter and create a sense of belonging.

It is noticeable that depending on era, social and economical circumstances and a wide range of further factors very different states of human minds’ regarding architecture and its understanding are generated. On the contrary, each of formed doctrines has the challenge to find the precise values and exact conception of an individual in common. So, we could question if the essences of atopias and heterotopias are conflicting to the extent to which their opinions were opposed by Derrida and Foucault. Furthermore, we could question should human beings seek to locate their right place encroaching upon the substance of non-place or network of juxtaposed places; does one’s firmness or instability fluctuates among "lack of places” and "placeless place”. With the intention to find an answer, is it possible to combine the accomplishments of all previous great architects, philosophers, sociologists with the intention to emerge one universal set of postulates for better understanding and discovering one’s needs? Finally, is it feasible to lay down comprehensive regulations and causes for architec¬tural assumptions when it comes to expanding and improving built-up territories maybe in a form of one great paradigm which would comprise all identified so far?


References and inspiration:
- Foucault, Michel : Of Other Spaces (1967), Heterotopias
- Kuhn, Thomas: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1996.
- Spiridonidas, Constantin : Researching the Other in Value-Based Architectural Paradigms, blog (Re)Searching the Other, 2009
- / : Lectures of subject “Contemporary Architecture and Urbanism”, Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade, led by dr Ljiljana Blagojevic, 2007
- / : Writings and views from previous versions of the module TH01, blog (Re)Searching the Other, 2009

’(re)searching the other’ and heterotopias

Having read ’(re)searching the other’ and the text about Heterotopias I would like to give the following comments to the texts and the questions asked:

In the first question we were asked if it is needed to understand the values and do we need to investigate the values to created better architecture? Architecture without values is an object without any use, a sculpture that becomes the reflection of what the creator wants to convey. Architecture is not centred around what the architect wants to convey but around answering the need and improving the use if the spaces created.

In Foucault’s description of the Heterotopias he mentions ‘escape’ is a condition of the architectural creative process, it questions the purpose of the ‘other’. The ‘other ‘described in the text is the source of inspiration. Could the ‘other’ also be the values, the paradigms. The architect creates by constantly questioning its surroundings. I do not think that it is a form of escapism, but more a form of nomadic, the quizitive and travelling mind, curious. Architecture can be nomadic, but often due to its physical construction a snippet in time. If architecture is created to react and change during its live, to accommodate the ever changing demands on the function, you might say the space can become nomadic. The ‘other’ allows us to constantly create.

Architecture always needs to be in a state of flux ( maybe this is part of the ‘other’) that is part of our human behaviour to endeavour to change for the better. But as architecture is often constrained by its form, it used to be a slow moving learning curve, now that technology has changed the learning curve is speeding up and getting taper.

I think architecture always needs to look back and re- examine the statements it has made, values and principles made in the past help to make an educated statement of progress. Deconstruction of the existing paradigms to learn, to innovate and create new principles. By doing so you are having a discussion with the paradigms and will always need to contradict or struggle with them. The possibility of creating architecture that responds with the same integrity to all paradigms is near impossible. If you would succeed in answering al values , here are new values and paradigms to be create, questioned and answered. Again this is the constant state of flux architecture exists in.

The breakdown of design into the different paradigms is clear. Paradigms as guideline, a list of questions the design needs to respond to. The concept of adding paradigms as design develops, the need to add a paradigm is the drive to improve and innovate. I am not sure I agree with the digital paradigm. I understand it is part of design, which is enabled by the improvement of technology. The tools we work with has improved to enable us to create these shapes and complex spaces. I understand the other paradigms are also tool, guidelines, but the source of there existence is related to the human, and its needs and opinions. The digital paradigm looks at the human DNA, which I do not see as a response to a need or opinion, question or answer. Are we not looking at a style?
Reading the text about Heterotopias, which to my understanding means to be the reflection of space, a realistic reflection of space. Heterotopias seems to be a space we are not part of, a non participating space. I found it very interesting and made me think of the gated communities. Mike Davies described these in ‘City of Quartz’. He describes these communities as voluntary self incarceration, to protect themselves from the ‘Real world’. I seems these communities are creating a Heterotopias.

Writings and views from previous versions of the module TH01

THE BEAUTY BEYOND THE OTHER...

Motto: „architecture must offer human beings that mysterious that tangible „other” which is beauty. The intelligent kind of beauty that emanates from constructed ideas. This is something else, much much more than construction in the normal sense.” (ALBERTO CAMPO BAEZA)

As architects, we are trained to work with forms, we are working them a lot putting them in special compositions, with colors, and textures, to obtain that unique beauty that characterize our vision and talent. Final visual product, the image obtained is maybe the most important one. However, there are some architects who had another opinion on this matter, for whom the visual is just a tool and not a goal. A tool to extract the beauty from beyond. You will not see decorations or complicated compositional architectural objects, or some special conformations of the facades, but you are sure going to feel something beyond the image, you will feel emotional touched. Touched by a ray of light

that pours from a ceiling conceived like a cave of light, like Baeza liked to name his creations, a ray that illuminate in a special way some corner; you will feel the world of “otherness” beyond the straight and heavy concrete walls. The same effect can be seen on an empty stage: an actor came and tells his part, the man who humanize the scene with his poetry and you begin to see an entire world where a moment ago was only an empty stage.

„If you give people nothingness, they can ponder what can be achieved from that nothingness”, said Tadao Ando on this matter. There goal is the game of emotions obtained from the game of forms in the light. Alberto Campo Baeza defines life and architecture in a very clear way: "I feel emotion, therefore I exist, [...] but then, isn't architecture all about emotion? We should tell the world that architecture is a synthesis of rational construction and irrational emotion, precept and passion. This architecture, which is made of and arouses emotion, will always be cultured architecture. Unlike today's erudite architecture, which more often than not is unashamedly exhibitionist, cultured architecture speaks a silent language which can sometimes be difficult to explain, but is always easy to understand."

Paradigms like essential form, the beauty beyond, the emotion of a concrete wall, heterotopic spaces

are some of there’s.

Those are the minimalists and here are some of there values and lessons extracted from some of

their own declarations and works....

my final essay

Hello again!
I want to be sure that my final essay has arrived well to destination.
Best regard to all.
kodrutza

HETEROTOPIAS AND THE ‘FAMILIAR-UNCANNY’ DIPOLE

INTRODUCTION
This research attempts a critical assessment on cases of spatial uncanniness detected in the heterotopias of Michel Foucault. The approach of the heterotopias as collectors of ‘heterous’ emotions, operates as the focal point. The objective of the research is to justify the above mentioned approach and to document the interaction of heterotopias with humans through the investigation of the ‘familiar-uncanny’ dipole considering it as a residue of the incomplete desanctification of contemporary space.
Initially, a review of preceding academic projects, in which the first contact with ‘heterotopic’ places takes place, is attempted. The drawn conclusions form the thematic framework of the research. Afterwards, the heterotopias of Michel Foucault are presented and an interrelation with the aforementioned conclusions is documented. The Freudian term ‘uncanny’ and the issue of contemporary space’s desanctification are analysed. Finally, their connection is attempted.

REVIEW OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCE WITH THE ‘HETEROTOPIAS’
The first contact with ‘heterotopias’ takes place during the 4th year of architectural studies. Within a composition course, an island-adjunct of Pagasitikos Gulf is to be drawn, which shall host activities not accommodated in a contemporary city. The idea of the cemetery – death monument for the ones lost in the sea emerges intuitively.
During the design process, emotion is the determining parameter of the decisions. It derives from the space’s function as much as it constitutes the element intended to be included in the composition. The process is conceived as the composition of emotions. The hierarchy of spaces results from the hierarchy of emotions that the space is aiming to generate. Everything is integrated in a narration creating a course of two substances: territorial and sentimental.
Within the special research topic during the final year, the interest is focused on the connection between water and architecture and on the investigation of the reasons for its frequent appearance in the built environment. The architectural literature is limited at presenting the presence and operation of water in space in a journalistic style. Therefore, the research is extended in fields less or more familiar such as philosophy, psychoanalysis, religious studies, mythology, physics and art. Traces of water are found everywhere. They are collected and constitute a pool of data and ideas entitled “Aquatic readings. Water as means of space interpretation”.
The number of the sensory and notional stimulants of water enriches the built environment morphologically and notionally and underlines its experience. The water is a mechanism to generate ideas, a mechanism to create and interpret space.
Finally, in order to select the subject for the final design project, places and operations are set in preceding order, having as criterion their sentimental overload. The procedure leads to the lighthouses. Lighthouses are buildings with special character and extreme conditions of dwelling that constitute matrices of narrations.

CONCLUSIONS – THEMATIC FRAMEWORK
All the above mentioned architectural proposals and considerations belong to a common thematic framework. They aim at the sentimental overload of the visitor. This interaction with space is reinforced by the construction of narration and meaning in space. The semiology of space, the transformation of spatial elements into means of notions, emotions and ideas comprise the thematic framework of the research interest.
The interventions are focused on the determination and the creation of those conditions in space that contribute to its enrichment with sentimental and semantic content. Initially, the way in which environment radiates optical, acoustical, odorous and tactile information is examined. Afterwards, the interpretation procedures are explored. The way in which the relevant mechanisms become activated is also explored. These mechanisms contribute to the transformation of sensory stimulants into intellectual and psychological connections between the visitor and the environment. All these research quests aim at the creation of experiential space.

HETEROTOPIAS
The heterotopias of Michel Foucault act also as matrices of experiences and sentiments. Heterotopias are places where activities critical for the human existence are carried out that fluctuate between lambent invocation of the imaginery up to the loss of human life.
The sentimental accumulation in heterotopias derives from the special operations accomodated there. Etymologically, these spaces undertake the role of gathering the `heterous' activities. And the term ‘heterous’, according to the condition of modernity, is translated as immoral, absurd, dark and ugly. The ‘heterous' sentiments are consequently displaced there and, as stagnating, they absorb the visitor. If the ‘tauto’ is translated as ‘familiar' the ‘heterous' will be identified as ‘uncanny'.

THE ‘UNCANNY’
Freud defines the ‘uncanny’ as the familiar that has been repelled and comes back violently. It considers it to be the ‘from the inside threat of the self: when part of the self threatens the self’1. In this definition the transformation of what once was familiar into something uncanny is detected.
Applying the bipolarity ‘familiar-uncanny' in the case of heterotopias, it can be observed that this double contribution, the wish for the familiar and the fear of the ‘uncanny’ is essential in order for these spaces to cover a big breadth of anthropological experience.

DESANCTIFICATION
The beliefs and the activities of the religious man have been exceeded in the profane era, in a society free from its religious character. However their residues survive in our days shaping the everyday life and our existence. The profane man consciously or unconsciously maintains traces of the behavior of the religious man, free however from their religious aspect. In this way, a series of myths and many decadent rituals with the form of unconscious historical memory accompany the modern life.
The symbolisms, even if they are forgotten, degraded or rationalised, preserve their principal structure and are inherent in the subconscious activity of man. The comprehension and the conscious perception of symbolisms are not of a great importance. Rather the fact that their presence in the depth of the man’s mentality evokes emotions when in contact with them.
“While believing he was totally constituted as the subject of a modern ideology (materialism, atheism), suddenly he discovers inside of him powerful pre-modern ideological elements”2.



1. Freud, Sigmund. The uncanny. Page 79
2. Freud, Sigmund. The uncanny. Page 72




REFERENCES

1. Freud, Sigmund. The uncanny (1919), trsl. Ε. Vaikousi. Athens: Plethron, 2009
2. Vidler, Anthony. The architectural uncanny. Essays in the modern unhomely, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1992
3. Bachelard, Gaston. Water and dreams. trsl. Ε. Tsouti. Athens: Hatzinikoli, 2002.
4. Bachelard, Gaston. The poetics of space, trsl. Ε. Veltsou. Αthens: Hatzinikoli, 1992.
5. Eliade, Mircea. The sacred and the profane, trsl Ν. Delivorias. Αthens: Arsenidis, 2002.

Contemporary architecture - a complex of paradigms

The paradigms theory seems to me to generalize, on the one hand, architecture stages in becoming what it is today, on the other, guiding rules of certain types (models) of architecture. The fact that Bauhaus practiced functional architecture (generalizing man by modules) was not to the detriment of man as cultural entity, and being subordinate by a certain contemporary policies but not denying creativity and aesthetics values. I think architecture is the “complex and magnificent play of volumes” (Le Corbusier) the result of a complex dialogue between the beneficiary (or as he is man or society) and the architect, in which everyone comes with a set of “paradigms“ to put in the game. That the one of them is more powerful do not remove the rest of them. In general architecture seems the most complex of artistic expression, and I can, superficial, picture the landscape of a city, for example, where one can see a few movies, some magnificent paintings, listen to people vibrating music from everywhere, so all forms of art are combined. It is normal to be so. Beyond the materialized forms we are energy bodies that live in certain spaces whose geometry is just an energetic pattern for us, so everything express us. Therefore, we cannot say about architectural space that has only political or cultural or psychological component. For example, political architecture, the construction of which I witnessed since I was a child, in all it’s raising, has a strong aesthetic component that represents visual the coordinator-political ideas, a strong-psychological outlook that conduct the mental of people through certain forms and compositions and a cultural ones, existed of any form of art.
One of the values that increases his influence more and more is the ecological one. We hear in the media more and more professional terms as "green buildings", eco-city, ecological and sustainable architecture. Those are the terms that define the ecological paradigm in contemporary architecture. We can see that are representative during the history two forms by which society evolves: the cycle and the curve of Gauss. Therefore, it will be natural that the human kind will turn face to nature, after an intense period of industrialization. The man is more aware about the environment,and more and more close to it. That means to rationalize more the building land, to use less polluting materials, and build more energy passive houses, and more integrated in the landscape, to bring the nature into the architectural sites. Major cities such as Vancouver have made such statements for planning eco-towns, after researches made on pollution and even psychological relationship with nature. Materials and usage methods wanted to be environmentally friendly and it started to be put problems like saving and reuse energy, cleaning and decreise the polution.
There are already companies that make the audit by such criteria, companies that are supported and used by local administrations such as those in London or New-York (like BREEAM for example). It is increasingly clear that ecological paradigm, which is in the man-part of nature in a harmonious relationship with it, is one of the most important contemporaneousness one.
The philosopher Gilles Lipovetsky develop a new concept: hypermodernity, an exacerbation of the fundamental principles, congenital, of modernity. Hypermodernity can get different figures and relief. We thought, for example, to consumerism. "We live in a hiperconsumerist society, but - as you know - excessive use of resources has devastating effects on the environment. We need to invent cleaner technology, environmental, will have to produce more renewable energy. Remain in hiperconsumerism, but we seek a planet balance”, affirm he in an interview. The contemporary man is an information hiperconsumer. Contemporary man is besieged with information. Neil Leach elaborated the theories of man intoxicated of information, as a result of a consumer society that sells through images that becomes a drug. The exposure to that permanent and huge stream of information from all kind of forms and fields grows up his assimilating capacity a lot, comparing to other anterior historical generations. So if this is the beneficiary and the one that make the ask for the contemporary architecture, the spaces will be complex, and the significance being multiple. The offer, as being "hyper" as all things from the consumer society, the result could be only a complex architecture with many mix paradigms: aesthetic and social representation will be the staple without minimizing the functionality and comfort, which involve a powerful psycho-social mark.
The house, for example, is a complex space, a refuge for privacy and space for social relations, a sort of Foucault heterotopy. So all the paradigms discussed must be involved. In his book "Totality and Infinity" Emanuel Lévinas defines the dwelling, in a heideggerian way: "house would serve for dwelling like the hammer thrusting the nail or the feather to writing”. Heideggerian idea of the home as a tool may be a little strange for a contemporary architect, at first sight. Especially since Lévinas, following the phenomenology line, emphasizes the utility of dwelling not the intrinsic pleasure of using it, is closer to the idea of a linving-mashine utopian modernists at the beginning of last century. So the answer to questions put in discussion about architectural creation is simple, after the philosopher, and can contract in a single word: the tool. But what complex is this word...how meanings can have it, suitable for all human aspects: social, cultural, psychological, dimensional, for a lot of issues: suitable, functional, usable, comfortable.
That is what we are doing when we create the architecture, we answer to a social order that comes with a bag of values, using our own good values, as architects, residents and social beings. We create the ‘tool” for living.
Why we do what we do when we are creating architecture? To answer in general terms, because in the society chain the demand has created, so the place for those who can meet this lack( need). But in terms of personal, individual, if the spot the architect, he makes it in many reasons. My personal view is that the architect, as an artist, needs to do that to satisfy some very deep and intimate needs . Architect expresses himself by his creation, communicates and loves the world, leads it by his materialized ideas, expect to infinity, impose himself like human being. These ancient human needs: to love, to dominate, to communicate, to be immortal, are artists manifestations who are like sensitive strings that sings the music of there coevals.
How we do what we do when we are creating architecture?
The architect express all of the vibrations of the times we live in, through universal visual sings but in his own way. There are conventional (or not) visual representation that decode the inner images created by the architect mind.
The example I can use for response to the discussed matters is the minimalism. My theory is that the minimalist architecture is the response for the demanding of an information-intoxicated beneficiary, member of the contemporary consumer society.
The response to first question in queue is that minimalism offers the pause from continuous and vibrant flux from outer space. From the point of view of “why we are doing this” we can say that is been created a need of that kind of space, which made the corbusianist purist architecture to be actual and a perfect solution to the certain need.
How does this architect? Learning to put the stop information, speed, disorder, variations. Getting the visual expression methods from the painters and sculptors: express the life and world through statically images, using light in volumes composition, placing the landscape from outside in the inner pictures. Minimalist space offers only static frames and immutable that you look and live completely broken away from the world outside.

Question about deadline

Hello

Because this Course is a real challenge for me and for my colleagues, please tell us which is the deadline to which we can send you our papers for the final evaluation.

Thank you
Sincerely, Liviu Ghituleasa

Session 2: Architecture and the human

The studies texts for this session refer to the contemporary conception of the human being, more precisely to the human body. If in old theories have opposed the body to the spirit, now the human is opposed to his own body, in a way that the human body is no longer the incarnation of his own destiny; now people became the builders of their own bodies [Le Breton, Imaginaires de la fin du corps, 2002].

Some characteristics of the contemporary human body can be envisaged from the studies texts, such as the transparency, the total visibility of the body due to modern technology [Lutz, The body: its uses and representations in the modernity]. “Architects” of their own bodies, humans from the 21^st century use bio-control techniques for retarding the symptoms of aging.

The conceptions on the human body are organized using comparisons. For example Le Breton [De l’éfficacité symbolique, 2004] refers to the conceptions regarding the human being, human body and medicine, by bringing in parallel the contemporary and the traditional trends; the author makes a vast discussion on the traditional medicine and its “holistic” principle, as established by C. Levi-Strauss.

Another example is offered by Boutinet [La figure du projet au regard du corps+machine], that presents the body (organism/nature) versus machine (mechanism/culture); from extensions of the body, nowadays machines tend to become its substitutes.

The image of the human body seems to have an important role in the contemporary culture and mentality. The body became an image of the society through the historic process of materialization of the values and reification of the social relations [Lutz].

More, as Le Breton [2004] noticed, each community has its own representation of the world and of the humans populating it; humans make the world, in the same way as the world makes the humans; human societies work with symbols, the human body makes no exception to this; its representations vary in time and space within different communities.

The relation between human and architecture can be translated in the anthropomorphic form of architecture. This relation seems to be very old, as in ancient times even the universe had an anthropomorphic form; for example, in the Mesopotamian mythology the cosmos was created from the body of goddess (divine being) Tiamat. This ancestral conception is preserved even today, for example the Dogon communities in Africa still have an anthropomorphic form of their village according with their mythology [M. Bussaghli, Understanding Architecture, Bucharest, 2005]. In this way, architecture can be viewed as the projection of the human thinking and of human’s role in the world.

Architecture and the Human Being

According to Le Breton, the human being in contemporary society is divided in body and soul. These are not seen as a unity, but different.

The division of body and soul is expressed in modern society through e.g. very specialised medicine. One distinguishes between doctors for the body and doctors for the soul. Even those "departments" are subdivided into radiology, surgery, dentistry, etc.
Le Breton continues and concludes that trough the division between body and soul, the distance between humans grew. In the beginning this was expressed through more hygiene, but finally lead to the individualistic society as we know it nowadays.

Characteristics of the individualistic society are:
Displacement from communities and religion; solitude and singleness; the fear of aging, combined with practice of fashionable sports (entertainment of the body); division between young and old; reduction of the capability of the senses.

The influence of the individualistic society on architecture can be seen through:

- The demand for more privacy:
E.g. Victorian style homes in the US in the 19th century had porches to sit on, facing the streets, allowing a chat with the neighbour or someone who was passing by.
Whereas walking through an area with 21st century style single family homes, you will hardly ever see someone on the streets. The porches on the front got substituted by big garages. The houses seem repellent to the public. Life is lived in the houses and the backyard. The garden itself is enclosed with high fences that do not allow to see or communicate with neighbours. The neighbour becomes unknown, becomes a stranger.

- Encapsulation trough less communication (with strangers):
E.g. markets for food are getting substituted / have been substituted by supermarkets.
Whereas at a market stand one has to talk to the sells-person in order to get the product one wants to buy, in a supermarket one picks the desired products out of a shelf and places them in the shopping basket, at the end one checks out at the cashier. No talking is necessary.
Modern supermarkets go even further, the persons sitting at the cashier get replaced by check out machines that the customer operates himself. Human interaction gets obsolete.

Le Breton says that a de-modernisation in health care has started. Eastern medicines that see body and soul as a unity are becoming popular.

Does this mean that the individualistic society reached its peak and starts to dissolve? Turns into something new?
The division between body and soul led to the individual. Will the reunification of both lead to the re-unification of the community?

Society is always changing therefore architecture needs to change as well to be able to meet the actual societies needs.
Interesting is, if architecture only displays the current status of society or if architecture is a driving cultural force.

concerning the Skype meeting

Except this Wednesday's afternoon all afternoons would be fine for me.That doesn't mean that I won't adjust to any other time.

Looking forward to meet you online

“I plan a skype meeting for the week 19-24 January. Which are your favorite hours for such a teleconference?”

Good morning

If you asked and if we have the opportunity to get involved in setting the hours for the classes through Skype meeting, I must say you that it will be very difficult [ but not impossible] for me to participate in online session in day of Tuesday 20.01.2008, between 16,00 and 20,00.[Greece hour].

Thenk you !
Liviu Ghituleasa, 12.01.2008

2nd session

Like Breton says the man’s reality is not only a materialistic one but also one of senses and values. With his senses man relates to his environment and with his values makes room for his thinking, manipulating his primal instincts and allowing himself to live in societies.

We left behind the era where every man has the same needs and in the next one we celebrated everyone’s cultural social political differences, until we focused on the individual. The fast advances in technology and emerging values like connectivity, access or even consumability made him loose grip of himself. Technology and the effect on the environment deprived the human from his senses, so he couldn’t relate to the environment (in general). The misscohesion and misinterpretation in his own society’s emerging values made him loose his identity.

The individual we are focused now has already mutated. At the same time he experiences the loss of his identity he evolves. The ongoing technology expands his physical limits through fast mobility and worldwide networks. At the same time the massive information circulation expands his awareness of the cosmos. He has a broaden consciousness yet lacks identity and he going fast into the future attached to his car and phone and computer and technological gadgets and the information they provide. He is more of a hybrid of the man we had in mind.

As for loosing ones identity in the globalized current context there is already an answer to it: customization -mass-customization. It is rather ironic that the new trend in an extreme consuming era with mass production of goods is mass customization. So we might all wear “Nike” shoes yet the characteristics of them can be unique for each individual, if wanted. It seems like a desperate effort to relate with ourselves. The need to relate and at the same time differentiate our hybrid new self in a global semi-physical semi-virtual context is rather schizophrenic.

The individual nowadays is different. His environment, his entity and their relationship are in constant change. There are missing links and new links but there is the acknowledgment that it is a dynamic alive relationship. Maybe that is why he is focused on “interaction” and “processes” as a symbol of a new dialogue we are engaging in. Maybe we are finally open to communicate in new ways so to reinvent links if not to reestablish them. Though there is one structural difference. Except for the physical context and the socio-cultural in quest or even “lived” one, there is the virtual to define the relationship with. That is a new dimension which opens a whole new chapter.

In this context, when it comes to architecture we are urged to perceive and invent processes. Through them we can filter the massive amount of row data and produce architecture in our hybrid context of hidden virtual extensions. That is, designing virtual, latent, non places, ready to engage interaction thus become meaningful.

Paper for session number two

As we have seen since the first texts that I studied in the first part of this course, the contemporary concept about the human being is one of a very complex nature.
Because you said on the blog in your further comments that we should have in mind that we can not talk about a single architecture, I continue and say, that also we can not talk about one type of human being.
Human being, as we all perceive today, has developed over the period, was polished by browsing modernity, caused the influences of post-modernity, and in the final it has reached in our days in a very advanced stage of its comprehensivity.
However, we are still entitled to correlate and present our actual vision through the Heidegger’s question released before the introduction of Chapter I of his book “Sein und Zeit”. He brought then into discussion, making reference to a quote from “Sophist“ of Plato, the question about the human being meaning, and especially and most important question “what is human being“ and what mean “to be“.
Thus, Heidegger said that, in the time that elapsed from the moment when the question was set for the first time [the moment when Plato and Aristotle have thought that at Athena] until today, the question about being fell into oblivion “vergessenheit“. [Martin Heidegger – “Sein und Zeit”]
Even now, after so many years when it was written “Sein und Zeit”, we agree that the question about the existence of the human being and the idea of being, is covered by the generality area, the human being still being “the most general and at the same time the vacuum.“Because the human being definition is so general in this point of view, and if we accept the idea of human multiplicity, we realize that it must be related with an infinity of possibilities to create architecture, as a response of the being ways.
To understand the modern human beig feature and how it assumes representative architecture, Hundertwasser said that any man has the right to build as he wants, and finally to identify with this responsibility. The building must also develop as the skin around the body.
The image of the contemporary human being is like a kaleidoscope picture, in infinite possibilities and facets. To answer the question about the main characteristics of the human being and about the references that govern these concepts, taking as a starting point for this text the David le Breton’s fragments, the being concept founded in contemporanity can be expressed somewhere as an average by browsing through the texts of Neil Leach, Baudrillard and Gilles Deleuze.
Leach illustrates the current human condition as an ecstasy of communication, in which the world was multiplied into an infinity of copies, so Jean Baudrillard warn us that “we live in a world where there is increasingly more information and increasingly less understood. “ [Neil Leach - The Anesthetics of Architecture]
The man that Breton reminded, now are experiencing a culture of gloss and simulation, in a culture of hyper-reality, in which the image has become a new reality. In these conditions, as it emerges from some of the texts on blog, aesthetics came to dominate all other aspects of contemporary life – everything is self- aesthetic “policy is aesthetising transforming in a show, sex in advertising and pornography, domain totally different of the art area, enter into a process of studying signs used in the social life of the ad and the media.“
In these conditions, we can talk about architecture that satisfies this type of individual needs, as an architecture seduction who deal with the risk of term extinction, because of this lack of substance and meaning. Even if the origins of the seduction were in ritual before its transit through aesthetic stage, now it has become a game of superficial appearances, the next phase will be the “policy“ one, which means “infinite reproduction of a form without content. “ [Jean Baudrillard - Seduction]
Due the kaleidoscope effect that we were talking in the beginning of this paper, the multiplication of architecture, in front of the contemporary human being position, is represented by the infinite multiplicity of unique architecture objects and its de-materialisation.
The transformation of reality and his secventiality, that request the perception of sensitivity, facilitate the transition from substance into spiritual matters, is a notion that contemporary architecture need for assumption.
All those factors, make us to remember the concept of desirable-machine of Deleuze, in which there is no distinction between human and nature, so that “the essence of human nature and essence of natural human nature identifiesin nature as production and / or industry, meaning as well as in generic human life.“ [Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari - The Anti-Oedipe]

I wish you all a Merry Christmas !

Dear colleagues

I wish you all a Merry Christmas !

Values guiding architecture

I don’t know about the others, but I feel I am being in a continuous race with time. Hours seem to be going faster than a few decades ago and, as I try to keep up with solving tasks, more problems seem to appear. I somehow believe this is a general feeling.
The human being today is pressed with time. Technology advances so fast that we can hardly keep up with it. Perhaps it is a matter of competition with the purpose of being the best on the market and remaining on top. But the main problem resulting is the lack of reflection time. We have to build fast and the conception period is shortened. We don’t have time to find a true meaning to the spaces we create and we give them a shallow signification, that fades in time.
The most repeated words or syntagmas nowadays are: financial, market, consumers, economy, efficiency, crisis, emergency - along with: experience, live the moment, feel, taste, escape. In architectural language we talk a lot about image, technology, experiencing the space, reproducing situations from past or from other domains, nature, a sort of mimetism, of amnetic recollection. The architectural market is dominated by financial interests, but, in spite of that, its personality sometimes appears stronger than expected, as manifestation.

We can observe different types of architectural immages depending on the general flow of ideas that generate them .
In “architectures” that embrace art’s direction (as, sometimes, the path of architecture was going followed the path of art) I find weird, dark expressions, ermetic shapes. Or, as photography is a very popular domain, pictural buildings result – in the sense that the building in itself is a model, or the people inside the posers.
Other types of architecture make use of the highest technology and the resulted buildings go sometimes further than the images we had about Star Trek cities. There is an enormous amount of background studying the human being in relation to technology and I will limit my comment in this direction to saying that Jules Verne’s immagination became reality to us. Therefore, I think everything is possible, and maybe architecture will become a part of high technology and digital evolution. I somehow hope that, in the not very far future, there will still be someone to like and ask for a house made of stone.

There are different examples of directions architecture is taking. But only one of them I favour the most. That would be swiss contemporary architecture.
In my former examples, the human being has been perceived as a meer consumer of space, an actor in an artistic shot, a unity module for digital space, or a collector of immages capable of transcending time and becoming at times a little bit classic, renaissance, baroque, ’60-ies, ’80-ies and so on, a sad recaller who cannot find his place in time.
In swiss contemporary architecture, and not only, I found a little bit of the honestity Louis Kahn had in his projects and theory, a honestity I so much liked. I found the questions and not the answers; I re-found the interest in the pure material and in the research for the human scale. I found again the natural light, spaces that I can describe and not finnish talking about. I found the light and the silence. I found buildings that I am sure will last in time (as phisical presence and not only).
Feeling so close to this kind of spaces I choose to underline more of the aspects that define their values in the becoming of architecture.
Analizing the projects of Zumthor, Snozzi, and more swiss architects, I am impressed with the respect they have for the human being. The person is invited to smell, to taste, to hear and touch architecture. Is invited to remember the essential gestures, to get out of thoughts and to feel. This approach is, on one hand, a manifesto, but on the other, a statement, a research for the essence.
They regard the person as having been alienated (dragged) from his true nature by technology, media, economy and other factors. Evolution cannot be stopped, but in its process, the human being needs to be recalled of his more sensitive part. Architecture’s purpose would be to signal missing links to reality and to underline the essence of actions and things. The person is a central figure and all directions of perception are emphasised because of him. The path is conceived especially for the viewer, not for the outsider. This person is an explorer and he is being given so many situations to explore that one could never get bored. The explorer is in search of stimuli to make him question himself, to make him wonder; probably in search of light, in search for truth.
The human being inside this architecture is a complex one in search for truth and, at the same time, for sensible, discreet and not obvious, intelligent gestures. The real value of this designing manner is that the individual and his complexity are respected. This is the reason why I think it will and should contribute with an important percentage to the becoming of architecture.
The above-mentioned respect is only one of the important values for our future in architecture, and maybe it will be forgotten in some manifestations. In spite of that, I am convinced that its strength as argument will not fade and, in different times and places will be re-taken as a leading concept.
Every region’s architecture will evolve in its own way – as it was and still is obvious nowadays. An european city will, most probably, never look like a japanese one. Sometimes that is a relief to acknowledge that history cannot be globalized, nor erased. and that the human being will always be regarded to have its unique personality in different places of the world, even if the differences will not be as obvious as before (due to glabalization).

RESPONSE TO COMMENTS

MINIMALIST SPACE - OTHER CHOICE

My theory is based on that aspect of the contemporary world as a consumer society intoxicated by image, so well exposed by proff. Neil Leach. This theory of intoxicated city appears before Leach along with the development of the industrial towns.
According to Simmel’s theory “the individual who lives in a modern metropolis is continuously bombarded by the city’s stimuli.” He has to intensify non stop his emotional life because of the speed of change. He has to change non stop within (psychic) and without (behavior). In such a way he gets an abstract being, sick of everything and depressed. For Simmel that sickness is just the result of excessive nervous stimulation, to the point of exhaustion. In the minimalist space the law of continuous circulation imposed by the actual state of things is interrupted. The rest is the result of that space. A rest in movement, a rest in changing, a resistance to change, that still didn’t result in a void. That rest is manifested thorough subtle changes of forms and interplay of spaces. That is in opposition to the street images, the riot of colors, etc, so that system offers a serene, calm, subtle interplay of forms, in the light. O homogenous description of minimalist architecture can be considered part of a cult, a bizarre one, making simplicity a reaction against intoxication through images in the architectural spaces of industrialized culture in the capitalist society. From the beginning of the modern architecture the artist denounced the degradation of the urbane image, which became merchandising of a decadent society, repeating classical styles at infinitum. The minimalist space, as a heterotopy of des-intoxication rebels less against convention and more against the false newness of merchandise, ment to blind the client by the dazzling emptiness of the product’s lack of usefulness. People are really bewitched by the idea of getting new things, discarding everything else of value, material or spiritual.
Kandinsky and other artists understood the realistic expressionism as a triumph of capitalism. “What else can replace the object?” he asked in his search for a so called pure form. Also C. Brancusi is perhaps the best example of minimalist philosophy in art. Matisse also achieved the same thing in sculpture and painting. The simplified form is easier to be received and stored in the brain. Lets think about the simplicity of an African hut, a Bedouin tent, an Eskimo igloo.
A minimalist approach is a return to basics, lack of clutter, a demise of baroque, rococo, of everything opulent, crowded, overdressed, ostentatious. It is in fact a revolutionary approach in which less is better than too much, creating spaces aloof from the uniformity of contemporary urbanity, spaces that can be called deviant. Simplicity is the key to many doors. A return to simplicity, to minimalist spaces, can extend the very life of the person, or even of the planet. Simplicity means equilibrium. The minimalist design helps to retain easier the shape, the outer lines, forgetting the details. In art, the trend “cubism” did just that. In fact architecture is just an interplay of simple forms structured creatively by the architect, and after dressed inside by the interior decorator, in a desire to reach perfection—which is nothing than equilibrium, a perfect symbiosis between exterior and interior, achieving the goal of functionality as well.
The birds have perfect nest, and animals perfect burrows that suit their needs. They are perfect in their sphere. We humans should achieve the same results in our sphere. That’s why a minimalist approach can have ecological answers, can help build with nature, not against it. Minimalism is freedom from the fetters of conventionalism and contriving.
On this general background I made , using the value of contrast, the interior minimalist theory as heterotopy of desintoxication. I must point out that the paradigms analyzed I, as an architect practitioner, match the creative paradigm. So, being at the beginning of my research I did the combination of the two notions intuitively. I think is not hard to observe the contrast of the common city scene and one of Tadao Ando’s minimalist interiors. It comes out that the minimalist interior is the other space, other choice to live in it, other image to watch, other form to be surrounded with, others that the usual provide us. It is the mission of my doctoral these to prove with scientific methods that theory.
If we raising the issue of contradiction-as contrast-, as value in architecture, can bring on both, the principles of composition, among which the concept of contrast and his values is located, and how that Deconstructivism understand the knowledge and find new ways of express and design the architectural space.

Of other(‘s) values.
Every culture has had its own way of understanding the world, has dreamt its own dreams, and has built its own cathedrals and brothels. And if we look at history we can see that each society was built upon a set of values, and values have never stopped changing ever since man became aware of his self-consciousness.
Traditional societies considered the world as the creation of gods, and it was them who imposed a set of values to the people. Values were then a matter of religious belief. With Renaissance (or the Reform) man started seeing himself as a rational being, its world view changed; he started setting his own values and his own personal interpretation of these ones. And it was by rejecting the existing that revolutions occurred, whether we talk about politics or art. When Baudelaire said he could make beauty out of mud, the French bourgeoisie was outraged, but this reject changed then the entire concept of beauty.

But what about today? What about our values? Ever since truth is no longer considered to be pre-established (ever since Post-Modernity has put an end to the search of progress and other Positivist ideals of Modernity), and any statement might be right and wrong at the same time, how do values work in this type of context? In fact maybe that is why values started to be the first step towards a building attitude now-a-days.
The question is now:” why?” (and no longer how), in the name of what values does one take a certain decision, how does one justify its acts, since there is no longer an universal ideal? If we take into consideration the six paradigms and their specific sets of values, we may notice that they can all be true at the same time. Neither one is false; man is indeed a biological being, as well as a psychological being. He is a social being, zoon politikon as Aristotle had said long before, but also a cultural one, without any doubt. And he is an individual with a unique identity and well alive with its unique DNA at the same time. Both the one and the other are true at the same time. If heterotopia is, as Foucault defines it, “a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted “, then each starts by acting as a heterotopia, each one rejects the other in order to impose itself, and finishes by being rejected and replaced by another. Postmodernism wanted to escape the functionalist world for its lack of meaning and emotion, and created Las Vegas, an accumulation of images and symbols with a consumerist aim which has been, in turn, criticized and rejected by minimalism, and in a similar way so did Frampton’s critical regionalism come against international style, and against globalization as uniformisation process, and so on. And yet they all live together in the same place, one next to another, in our cities, in our memory or in our imagination, as a consequence of the Post-Modern rejection of the universal subject, and the acceptation of the multiplicity of values, and the differences between them. Which is the way out of this uncertain context where everything can be good and bad at the same time, depending upon the relativity of the system of reference?

Cultural products embody a certain worldview, and express certain values, and their creation, as any creation, supposes something new. Ever since man started to produce art, it was a fight for giving shape to the dream, to the unborn, to the other. Whether we see creation as “creation ex nihilo”, as Christians understand God’s creation of the world, or as a matter of creativity (and imagination) as western societies have considered it by the Age of the Enlightenment, creation has always been about producing a new statement. The difference with architecture and space is that even if they are cultural products too, unlike art, they have a strong impact upon people’s lives. And happily not all the dreams for the other, not every fight against the existing are materialized, when it comes to the city, its space and politics too. Happily Le Corbusier did not have the chance to see his plan Voisin for Paris become reality.
Sometimes looking for other values must not only be a means towards creation of new ideas, as not always new stands for better, but it must also be a process of decision making, a choice between different options, things to reject and things to accept. It is the radical decision of total rejection of the existing that can be very harmful sometimes, the city is not a work of art, it is the environment where we live, and if architectural intervention is about creating and giving life to the other, it must also be about dealing with the existing, everything is in the way one chooses the values, and the way he gives shape to these values.
If values can provide inspiration as well as a working method, one should be careful about the way one uses these values. One has to be careful when taking decisions in the name of values, let’s not forget that many crimes have been committed in the name of certain values, and unjustifiable acts were justified in the name of these values, so maybe one should take into consideration also whose values are those in the name of which we intend to act: the architect’s? The power’s values, or the institution’s? The people who will be using and inhabiting those spaces? And which people are we talking about? Everybody, as modernist planning considered? Or specific people, in specific places? It seems to be difficult to talk about values without referring also at other’s values, as living in society is always about dealing with the other.

To which extend the investigation of values as the energy of architectural design can construct a better understanding of architecture? Do we really need this understanding? How can we use this understanding creatively? What is the operational value of such an investigation?

- from architecture understanding to city construction- what is missing?

Space and architecture, architecture and city, space and city are concepts strictly related between. What I think it is still missing in this relation is the understanding of the city, not as sum of architecture acts (good or bad, feasible or not, utopia or real), not as sum of spaces, but as a living organism, sum of relation created between its elements (humans, spaces, architecture objects). That understanding makes at least the difference between a successful or not architecture act, between a functional or bad functional architectural object. That understanding is based on a system of values…historical, political, evolution, social, economical… Space, at a smaller scale than a city is the resultant of all human, social, cultural, traditional values that characterized a period of existence. Foucault refers at this kind of space, as a resultant of relation; refer at city, as resultant of spaces interconnected (Foucault, 1967).
“The space in which we live, which draws us out of ourselves, in which the erosion of our lives, out time and history occurs, the space that claws and gnaws at us, is also, in itself, a heterogenous space. In other words, we do not live in a kind of void, inside of which we could place individuals and things. We do not live inside a voide that could be colored with diverse shades of light, we live inside a set of relations that delineates sites which are irreductible to one another and absolutely not superimposable on one another.”[1]
From that extend of understanding release at least the success of architecture act. Even if a construction is adapted and created in accordance with its unique user value system, even if it is right from artistic or compositional or functional point of view, it can simply not work inside the big city. That is the drama which marks the Romanian architecture in the last two decades. The building is understood like a creation act in accordance with all the paradigms known: values, ration, creative, typological, individualistic, digital…but it has to be more than that. First of all, architecture must be understood like a resultant of space, not only space like an empty and unused plot in the city, but like space interconnected and living in the city, like part of a system with inputs and outputs. I think this is the only way in which architecture can defined the user, not one, the all users, the inhabitants of an area or a city. The most appropriate example is Bucharest city- great contemporary architecture which doesn’t have the place there. Why? Because the act of creation began like un act of affirmation and filling empty spots in city. In the latest part of this period, this creation process started to be oriented to the user and to the space like empty plot defined by edges (or neighbors). The results are still far from a coherent insertion operation inside the city. They still don’t have the force to transform it or to integrate. That’s because architecture act still doesn’t take into account the city as system, the structure of this system. The function of a building must be dictated not only of the desire of its user but also of the city necessity and structure, the height or appearance of a building must be correlated with more issues than the immediate neighborhood, the functionality of the building must be correlated with all the components part of the system, which at least define it.


[1] M. Foucault, Of other spaces (1967), Hetereotopias.