It is an afternoon in late July, and I am on a walk. The fields spread out under an endless sky spanning the Lakeland of the Duchy of Lauenburg. The sun is about to break through a dramatically rugged cover of clouds, which slowly drifts above the land, dividing the world in light and shadow. In the distance, I discover a pure white heap of lime and next to it another, but significantly smaller one. They are connected through a trace of lime which results from removing part of it to fertilise the fields. The two heaps seem to form a compositional unity in the midst of the vast green of the grass. The white of the lime is all white. It is almost blinding you, as soon as a sunbeam hits its surface. I am walking towards the two heaps, which serve as a context to one another like duomo and battistero. They kind of create a centre of gravity in the endless expanse of the fields and the sky.
While getting closer, it seems to me, as if I could feel the presence of
the material with my own body. Its weight seems to rest in itself. Past
rainfalls have transformed the outer layers of the lime into a coherent
surface and gave the heaps a monolithic appearance. The two „lime bodies”
are no bigger than you. I sit down in the grass and watch them.
Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses
brought together in light.
Le Corbusier
Vers une Architecture
From this angle, I see the clouds dramatically burst above the
greater heap. As if clouds overflow a mountain’s peak they stream above
the little massif. The natural forces project a show of light and shadow
onto the surface of this massive body, by shoving the clouds against the
sun, which is breaking through the clouds.
It appears to me as if I could inhabit this mountain and I get very close
to it and I take perspectives which intensify this impression.
From this close, little lumps leached out from the surface appear like
huge rocks. One area with a rough terrain expands to a large boulder
field, and the clouds stream above the mountain and me.
I am on a completely white mountain amidst the Lakeland of the Duchy of
Lauenburg.
*
If you go for a walk in the park of the Charlottenburg Palace, you can
experience nature on various levels of organisation. Starting at the
palace and moving northwards, you travel through a continuum of slowly
dissolving order, until the park resembles a seemingly untouched natural
environment. Here, it is most likely that you will run into a squirrel,
heron or sometimes even a fox. Alongside the initially orthogonal, slowly
more and more meandering paths, the trees are standing, as if it was the
most usual thing.
Actually, however, life begins less by reaching upward, than by
turning upon itself. But what a marvellously insidious, subtle image of
life a coiling vital principle would be!
Gaston Bachelard
The Poetics of Space
If you go for a walk in the park of the Charlottenburg Palace, you can
experience nature on various levels of organisation. Starting at the
palace and moving northwards, you travel through a continuum of slowly
dissolving order, until the park resembles a seemingly untouched natural
environment. Here, it is most likely that you will run into a squirrel,
heron or sometimes even a fox. Alongside the initially orthogonal, slowly
more and more meandering paths, the trees are standing, as if it was the
most usual thing.
It is a prejudice of the one-sided constructive understanding of
architecture if you take roof and ceiling for the main elements instead
of already recognising the “Umwandung” (walling) as spatial design by
itself.
August Schmarsow
Der Werth der Dimensionen im Menschlichen Raumgebilde
At first, they are simply trees to you, at best, defining the area in
which you are supposed to walk in. Focused on the point at the very end of
the trail where all lines meet, you perceive the trees only as a
peripheral phenomenon. But it is almost certain that due to a particular
phenomenon one of these innocent bystanders will attract your attention at
some point. You start to look for this phenomenon also at the other trees.
What you don’t notice, while investigating this one phenomenon, is that
you compare it with a lot of others at the same time. And while you
compare this one with others you incorporate them all. Maybe you are
impressed by a massive trunk or the way one tree is joined with the
ground. You survey its surface - the bark. You discover that it is
elaborately structured by following some kind of principle. You discover
that the trunk is not uniform, not an ordinary pillar in a shopping mall,
a differentiated body part, evolving in thick strands from the ground.
Something seems to pull on it. And as you look at the whole tree again,
you are not so sure anymore, if it stands heavy on the ground or if it is
clinging to it in order to not be ripped off.
The matter is heavy, it is pushing downward and wants to spread over
the ground without any form. We know the violence of gravity from our
own bodies. What keeps us upright, prevents us from a collapse into
shapeless form? The counteracting force, which we may call will, life or
whatever. I call it “Formkraft” (Shapeforce). The contrast between mater
and form, which moves the entire organic world, is the basic theme of
architecture [. . .]. We find the will to take shape and to overcome the
resistance of a shapeless material in every-Thing. [. . .] Everywhere we
find this upward pull counteracting the weight, usually finding its
ultimate expression in a conoid shape.
Heinrich Wölfflin
Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur
And now you see that even if the trunk of the tree is almost vertical it
is not growing straight upward. Using all its strength, pulling on the
inner fabric of its material, while pushing against the forces of gravity,
it winds up around itself towards the sky. And while looking at the other
trees around, you realise that it is only one tree among many clockwise
and counterclockwise twirling trees.
*
I am in the north of Italy. It is summertime. Travelling by car heading to
the Valstrona close to the Lago d’Orta. On my way to Omegna, a city at the
northern tip of the lake, I first pass through another relatively vast
valley, driving on a broad highway. The road finally leads right through
the small city. In the centre, I turn right and cross a bridge in the west
of the city, which takes me beyond the Strona river and out of Omegna
again. Right after crossing the bridge I have the feeling that this bridge
was the eye of the needle for the thin thread on which all the villages of
Valstrona are strung one after another. While driving further into the
valley the mountain ridges seem to sneak up to the road until it gets
pushed upwards under the enormous pressure. The weather in this valley is
different from the one down by the lake. While looking through the rear
window where the sun is dancing on the lake’s surface, thick, wet clouds
are sinking down the mountain ridges in front of me, like old men in their
armchairs. I have the impression to immerse into a different, mystic
world. From time to time the vegetation reaches far above the street and
forms natural tunnels. I pass some seemingly abandoned sawmills, pass
through tiny villages which never consist of more than ten houses. I am
meeting Nobody. Sometimes, alongside the narrow road, rusty electricity
pylons appear from the depths of the valley and after the next curve, they
dive down again, to a ground which I am not able to see. Along the
roadside, in front of a shed rests a wooden boat on a wooden scaffold. It
seems strangely out of context in front of the backdrop of the valley and
adds a surreal touch to the whole scenery. The Valstrona is an enchanted
valley.
[. . .], and by changing the space, by leaving the space of one’s
usual sensibilities, one enters into communication with a space that is
psychically innovating.
Gaston Bachelard
The Poetics of Space
I am arriving in the small mountain village of Marmo. Here I am meeting
with the geologist Enrico Zanoletti, who will guide me into the Grotta
delle Streghe - the cave of witches. After a short introduction about the
history of the cave, which was found by accident during the excavation of
marble in the 19th century, we walk down a narrow path on the slope down
to the bottom of the valley. We cross the Strona on a bridge which
convinces through its simple construction of two steel beams and
rectangular grating panels. On the other side of the river, we walk up a
slope again until we are finally standing in front of the break-off edge
of the marble quarry. The entrance is covered by vegetation. Holding on to
a rope we descend into the cave on its ground a small trickle ripples. The
cave walls are humpy but very smooth, ground by the water. While
descending we have to be careful to not slip on the wet surfaces. In the
first chamber, I can stand upright, but from here we will have to move on
mostly crawling. We slip through openings which are barely big enough for
our bodies. Actually, it isn’t a really uncomfortable way of locomotion,
because the cave - although from marble - gives you the impression one
could lie down to sleep anywhere. We arrive at a small chamber in with we
can sit. The cave’s ceiling which is vaulting us is covered with a fine
dust which is sparkling in the light of our headlights. Like a starry sky
at a clear night and the cave encloses us save and soft under this
peaceful “night sky”.
It also has a vaulted ceiling, which is a great principle of the dream
of intimacy. For it constantly reflects intimacy at its centre.
Gaston Bachelard
The Poetics of Space
Often it is from the very fact of concentration in the most
restricted intimate space that the dialectics of inside and outside
draws its strength. One feels this elasticity in the following passage
by [Rainer Maria] Rilke: „And there is almost no space here; and you
feel almost calm at the thought that it is impossible for anything very
large to hold in this narrowness.“
Gaston Bachelard
The Poetics of Space
The light is falling through the entrance of the cave, like through an
oculus of a cupola.
And when I find myself later that day in Como, inside the cathedral of
Santa Maria Assunta, with its high-rise vaultings, the massive and slick
stone- piers, the huge opening of its portal which is only covered by a
curtain softly floating in the warm winds, directing my eyes into the
blinding light, then I find myself back inside the slick, humpy and safe
cave.
*
On the Via della Conciliazione
... thoughts towards an Architekturnatur.
To my left and my right facades of homogeneous colour tones rising steeply
like rock faces of a small canyon. The window openings are closed with the
typical Italian brown or green wooden shutters which you can open like a
wing door while the lower part can be flipped outward.
In the distance the enormous silhouette of Basilica di San Pietro. The sun
is burning mercilessly down on me and a group of pilgrims in neon yellow
safety vests. Only the small obelisks alongside the road are casting
narrow shadows in which people seek shelter from the brutal heat. The
scenery almost appears like a desert landscape to me where withered trees
represent the last refuge from the piercing beams of the sun. At the end
of this canyon of buildings, I am finding myself in the centre of a great
glade, surrounded by Berninis gigantic petrified trees.
The sacred grove was by no means a substitute for the temple: the wood
was the temple, its trees the columns and the firmament its roof. The
word „templum“ signifies a ... piece of land dedicated to godhead, a
holy precinct. Most houses of god betray their vegetable origins by
being oriented, and opening up to the sun. Thus what we call a temple is
actually an abstraction of a grove, the thicket of columns recalls the
thicket of trees.
Bernard Rudofsky
The Prodigious Builders
On each side of the oval plaza life-giving water wells up from stone
fountains. But to my disappointment, they are out of reach behind several
fences. In the centre of the plaza stands the great obelisk, which was
erected under the supervision of Domenico Fontana like a giant dead tree.
Some people are seeking shelter from the sun in its not to opulent shadow.
St. Peters Cathedral raises in front of me like a sandstone massif. At
this moment I urge to reach it as soon as possible, mostly because of the
heat. Finally arrived inside the cool walls I see the great vaults which
are spanning above my own and the heads of the many people visiting the
sight. The interior appears like an enormous cave to me. A cave with
painted walls and vaults, an image we know from the very beginning and
which had seemingly been stored in our collective memory.
A canyon, a glade, a mountain, a cave. Nothing extraordinary in the first place but it is not a piece of land occupied for a particular purpose. Everything is built by people at a location of their own choice. And what the sounds are to Bachelard, are the shapes and materials to me.
When insomnia, which is the philosopher’s ailment, is increased
through irritation caused by city noises; or when, late at night, the
hum of automobiles and trucks rumbling through the Place Maubert causes
me to curse my city-dweller’s fate, I can recover my calm by living the
metaphors of the ocean. [. . .] In fact, everything corroborates my view
that the image of the city’s ocean-roar is in the very „nature of
things,“ and that it is a true image. It is also a salutary thing to
naturalize sound in order to make it less hostile.
Gaston Bachelard
The Poetics of Space
*
In a valley in Switzerland - called Valle Verzasca - exists a small
restaurant. A narrow stone staircase leads the way from the terrace up on
a small slope. At the end of the staircase, a narrow trail is pushing past
a bunch of grapevines. Following the trail, you reach a tiny grove. On the
left hand, the rock falls steeply into a canyon. To the right, a forest is
covering the mountainside. Down in the canyon runs a cold, blue-green
creek nourished by a small waterfall which cuts off the trail. A small
mountain village is sitting on a rock on the other side of the canyon. And
on the edge of the slope, alongside the trail, there is just now a little
fragile whim of nature to observe. A little phenomenon, banal but
astonishing at the same time. On top of a small boulder, a structure has
been formed by a tiny landslide and the magnificent creativity of water.
The water has washed away parts of the soil and left behind a collection
of small clay towers on top of the boulder. If you squat you get the right
perspective. A small city all from clay on a boulder. And opposite to it a
mountain village all from stone on a rock.
For with an „exaggerated“ image we are sure to be in the direct line
of an autonomous imagination.
Gaston Bachelard
The Poetics of Space
A tiny casual natural phenomenon can transport us from one distant country
to another even more distant country only through inspiration, triggered
by formal analogies. And because I know that image of that city from clay
in Morocco and because I have to imagine its interior it is happening very
naturally to me that I also can imagine an interior of this miniature of a
city made from clay. And I can almost see me walking in the street of this
city which is winding up the hill. I can vividly imagine myself into the
miniature and leave Switzerland for a moment without leaving Switzerland.
It is as though the miniaturist challenged the intuitionist
philosopher’s lazy contemplation, as though he said to him:
„You would not have seen that! Take the time needed to see all these
little things that cannot be seen all together.“ In looking at a
miniature, unflagging attention is required to integrate all the detail.
Gaston Bachelard
The Poetics of Space
And so there is, beyond the river, in opposition to the small mountain
village in Switzerland a far distant Moroccan city made all from clay. And
the scale increases the distance.
*
During my journey throughout the world, I have never made a categorisation
of what is looked at. I always looked at all buildings, pillars, spaces,
vaults, caves, columns, mountains, stumps, and heaps with the same
attention and the same sincerity. All these things aroused my interest in
the same spontaneous, impulsive way. However, as I looked at things with
constant indifference, I did not give them any definitions and no truth
about what they are. I just looked and in result, I could concentrate on
how they were, the things I looked at. I stayed with them in that moment
of enduring the being. It is a kind of looking at things which can maybe
be described as a mixture of platonic excitement and stoicism in the sense
of a Democritus, without the amazement about seemingly extraordinary
things. A kind of indifferent amazement about the ordinary as well as
about the extraordinary.
To say a column is a tree is only possible for me, if I accept
this as one truth among many others, without questioning it further on. It
is a reversed abstraction and therefore multiplication of phenomena. Every
time while looking at architecture this idea brings me back to the
mountain, the tree and the cave. It brings me back to very original and
natural spaces and spacial structures.
I think that the natural phenomena causing very direct, immediate and
original emotions inside us humans. A look on architecture inspired by the
tree, the mountain and the cave can have a positive effect on
architectural practice, as well as on the reception of architecture and
most important of all on the human mind, soul and body. That is why I
consider natural phenomena as the basis of my designs.
*
I imagine myself being in metaphysical space.
This space has no fixed dimensions.
It exists and it does not exist.
On the one hand, the sphere of architecture,
On the other hand, the sphere of nature.
They are engaged in a dialogue.
I listen to them.
•
Metaphysics Of Architecture, Experiences of an architecture student.
Alexander Johannes Heil, Berlin 2017.
© 2021 Alexander Johannes Heil