Building perceptions

by 1978- Parks, Andrew Michael

A building is conceived for people. They look at it from the outside and just see it as a box. Then they come inside and say: “this room with its view to the garden is lovely.” Compared with modern music or painting, architecture has a far greater potential for drawing in normal people; because something that functions well is practical and beautiful. People are then far more prepared to accept a new form, because they sense the link between form and content. Peter Zumthor. ii Throughout the histories of modern architecture and modern landscape design, two distinct yet broad schools of thought have existed: the intellectual, or rational, and the experiential, or empirical. Intellectual works require a previously aquired knowledge of the analogy, symbol or representation which was used to rationalize each design move. By contrast, in experiential works, human emotions and senses are realized and are given heirarchical precedence in the thought processes of design. The current growth of both techniques of presentation and representation via digital technology as a generative means of creating architecture has taken the inhabitants out of the design process in order for the architect to achieve his or her own personal agendas. Such works represent the pursuit of an “architecture of autonomy” whose target audience is the architectural elite. These intellectually and technologically driven processes produce architecture for architecture’s sake resulting in the creation of inhabitable sculpture alien to everyday human activity. Yet architecture has always possessed the capacity to engage the senses of its users, visitors and inhabitants in order to promote a heightened sense of awareness of the immediate architctural milieu. One’s built surroundings can bring forth the realization that the work of architecture itself is conceived and built according to how a person might perceive, interact with and circulate through the spaces. Thermal baths source: Peter Zumthor’s Works iii