Architecture Inside - article.pdf

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Why is architecture so often represented only from theoutside? Do architects just pay more attention to the out-side? Or is it perhaps because the external view of a build-ing provides the image of a totality, an image that in itsflatness is easier to comprehend than one of the interior?Photographs of the interior can require more attention.They are frequently fragments of a larger entity, like aroom, with the added complexities of spatial depth and variations in light and color, materials, and surfaces.Along with the particularities of the occupation of space,they often record the ordinariness of the everyday. To seethe interior through the camera is to see it once removedan artifice that says as much about our attitude towardsthe conditions surrounding the subject as it does about

the subject being depicted.In contrast to architects emphasis on physical descrip-tion, artists have given more attention to the interior as asituation, a site of events and affects. The filmmakerChantal Akerman, for example, often focuses on everydaysituations of the interior: washing and cleaning, conversa-tions with her mother about their family history, or theunlit, silent corridors of a cheap institutional builidinglike Hotel Monterey in her 1972 film of that title. In herwork, the interior is the site of routines. Through theduration and repetition of these routines, the interiorassumes an order, albeit one that coexists with chaos, dis-order, and trauma. As Maurice Blanchot wrote in

Everyday Speech, The everyday is platitude, but thisbanality is also what is most important if it brings us backto existence in its very spontaneity and as it is livedatthe moment when, lived, it escapes every speculative for-mulation, perhaps all coherence and all regularity.1

The artists approach may ironically reveal more aboutan interiors physical characteristics than does the archi-tects. In 1927, Marcel Duchamp modified the door to hisstudio in Paris so that it operated between two adjacentopenings; when it opened in one direction, it closed inanother. Duchamps door leads to the condition of the

1 H A RVA R D D E S I G N M A G A Z I N E

Architectures Inside

by Mohsen Mostafavi

This article appeared in Harvard Design Magazine , Fall/Winter 2008--09, Number 29. To order this issue or

a subscription, visit the HDM homepage at .

2008 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Not to be reproduced without the permission of

the publisher: [email protected].


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room never being fully enclosed or independent of theadjoining spaces. It constructs a set of alternating andambiguous relations between the various seen andunseen spaces of the apartment. Manipulating the opera-tion of simple elements of architecturedoors, windows,and corridorsis an important factor in our imagining of

new forms of architectural and spatial relationships.Other examples of this can be found in the works of Gordon Matta-Clark, with his revelatory extractions in analmost surgical cutting away of disused buildings andtheir interiors, or the work of L.A.-based artist PaulMcCarthy in such projects as his Bang Bang Room instal-lation (1992), or the pavilions of Dan Graham, where dif-ferent types of glass are used to explore issues of dis-placement and delay, transparency and reflection, so thatour perceptual bodies entangle with the ephemeral andsite-specific performances of his constructions.

A recent installation at Londons Camden Arts Center,That Open Space Within , creates another kind of shift in

the visual relation of the viewer to the outside. The artistAnya Gallaccio, whose work often deals with decay,moved a dead horse-chestnut tree from the grounds intoone of the galleries. This meticulous displacement of anatural element was planned with the help of a treesurgeon, who cut and then re-assembled the tree withsteel bolts. The mode of reassembly heightens our senseof the trees fragility, in the same way that we wouldbecome aware of the fragility of our own body after suffer-ing a fracture.

Extracted from the outside, the dead tree acquires amore factual, immediate, and tactile presence inside. Andperhaps as important as this inversion (though it may beunplanned) is how the tree, in the way it occupies thegallery, reveals so much about the space it is filling. Thetree becomes a measure of the room, of its width, length,and height, of the recessed window facing the garden,and of the walls and floors that support its weight. Thetree helps us see the space and its specific attributesmuch more precisely, as if with a sharper sensibility.

The importance of the relation between an event andits setting is particularly evident in films. The late RainerWerner Fassbinder was a master of capturing the mood of an interior and often framed the view of a room where theaction was unfolding through an open doorway, present-ing the space in its stillness as a denatured setting. Morerecently, Hong Kong-based director Wong Kar-wai hasexplored the connections between character, plot, andphysical space in films such as the melodrama In the Mood for Love . The action is slowed down, and thisheightens the effect. At the same time, every element of the interior, every piece of clothing or furniture, lightingor fabric, seems to be choreographed as part of the mise en scne . (Even on the few occasions when the actors areout in the city, the scenes are shot close up, giving themthe intimacy of a large interior.) We can imagine thespaces, understand the proximity of the rooms in these

small apartments occupied by multiple families, andalmost smell the food being cooked in the communalkitchenin other words we understand the correspon-dence between physical space and potential events. Theapartment performs spatially in a very different way whenused by multiple families than when occupied by a single

family. The sense of privacy is highly dependent on therelations between the social and the physical.In architecture, the combination of different programs

or uses is one way the articulation of such relations canbe made more explicit. Chareau and Bijvoets Maison de Verre , one of the icons of Modern architecture, is a case inpoint. Combining a doctors office and home, the projectwas both conceived and constructed as a pure inside. Thenew structure was inserted in place of the lower floors of an existing building, leaving the tenant-occupied atticintact. Continuing the tradition of the htel particulier while also offering advanced ideas in handicraft/fabrica-tion and suggesting the future potentials of prefabrica-

tion, the house pays unusual attention to the qualitiesand relations of the spaces and materials of the interior.The staircase is a mechanism of arrival, a hinge pointlinking the doctors rooms on the ground floor with thedouble-volume living room above. The houses physicalmaterials, its bookcases, handrails, and floor finishes, aswell as its ephemeral characteristics, such as the qualityof the light coming through the translucent glass-blockexterior, emphasize its haptic and sensual interiority. TheMaison de Verre has little visual relationship to the out-side, unlike much of the work of Le Corbusier, in whichthe house is a machine for viewing the outside (as in thefamous Petit Maison , with its horizontal window), orMiess Farnsworth House , with its simultaneous sense of protection from the elements and dissolution of theboundary between inside and outside. Much has alreadybeen written about the Maison de Verre and the corre-spondence between the clinic on the ground floor and theattention to health and hygiene demonstrated by thearrangement and number of bathrooms in the rest of thebuilding. Yet it is in the attention given to the tensionbetween handicraft and the possibilities for industrialmanufacturingthe tension between uniqueness and rep-etitionthat the house achieves its most radical qualities.Because of this, it is hard to make a distinction betweenthe rooms and their furniture; there is continuity and flu-idity between its spaces and the design of elements suchas staircases, bookshelves, and bathroom fittings, whichare more akin to pieces of equipment than furniture.These elementsmany of them presumably the work of the metalworker Louis Dalbetare intertwined with thephysical envelope of the building, providing a more com-plex sense of the interior as a setting. Like ChantalAkerman, Chareau pays attention to the everyday, buthere the everyday is the site of innovative speculationabout the nature of habitation.

Just a few years before the Maison de Verre was built in

MOSTAFAVI ARCHITECTURES INSIDE

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Paris, the artist and craftsman Wharton Esherick beganthe construction of his own studio in Paoli, Pennsylvania.For Esherick this was an opportunity to celebrate thesculptural qualities of his craft. The studios key feature isa solid wood staircase that twists through the center of the space. Carved by hand, as were other elements of the

interior, it makes the studio a singular artifact, unsuited,indeed averse, to technological repetition or replication.Climbing the staircase, which has no real handrail or pro-tection, one succumbs to a sense of danger that ironicallymakes it even safer than a conventional one. The juxta-posing of the colors and textures of the wooden elementswith the solidity of the bare walls creates a rich intimacy.

The idea of the interior as a form of conceptual carvingis perhaps best demonstrated by Francesco Borrominislittle church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane in Rome.This 17th-century masterpiece has an intricate plan with acomplex geometrical arrangement of intersecting ovals.Yet the overall effect of the plan, with the resultant thick

poch walls, suggests more a collection of spaces carvedfrom a solid than a building constructed according to geo-metrical principles. This is especially the case with thespaces adjacent to the cross-shaped plan, where the senseof the hollowing out of space, like excavations for mining,is most prominent. The diversity of spaces and geometrieson such a small corner site produces a highly ornamentalinterior that is also consistent with the plasticity of theconcave and convex treatment of the buildings faade.

Historically, the rationale for the arrangement of archi-tectural spaces has been made manifest through thestructuring of the plan. But the thick walls of Borrominischurch create an experiential disjunction between theadjacent spaces of the building, partly because of the waythe interior is planned in response to the sites boundaryconditions. Borrominis plan bears attributes similar tothose of a buildings section: a description of a set of rela-tions that the building performs through the users expe-rience of the space, relations that are not made visible asa whole. The section as a drawing is a key device for theorganization and description of a buildings inside: both atool for seeing the hidden, like an X-ray, and a blueprintfor construction.

In projects from Frank Lloyd Wrights Guggenheim toLe Corbusiers Carpenter Center (or, more recently, OMAsDutch Embassy in Berlin and Casa da Musica in Porto, UNStudios Mbius House and Mercedes-Benz Museum , orZaha Hadids Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati,among many others), the section is used as both a con-cept and a drawing tool for choreographing the buildingsinternal and even external vertical trajectories. In theprocess, the section becomes a means of incorporatingthe experiential movement of the user within the architec-tures inside.

These examples demonstrate that architecturesengagement with the interior has been varied, experi-mental, and productive. However, this important issue

has not received much focused intellectual attention with-in the academy, in contrast to the enormous popularinterest demonstrated by the global success of televisionprograms focusing on lifestyle. Today, many architects,along with interior and industrial designers, deal withprojects broadly called interior architecture, but even

this title cannot be legitimately used by academic institu-tions and practitioners in parts of the world where theword architect is protected. Despite these hurdles, design-ers such as Antonio Citterio, Jrgen Bey, Philippe Starck,Jasper Morrison, the Bouroullec brothers, TokujinYoshioka, Ron Arad, Konstantin Grcic, MasamichiKatayama, Ross Lovegrove, and Droog Design, to namebut a few, have created objects and interiors that considerour everyday environments with fresh eyes. New materialsand new techniques of production have led to excitingand innovative products, especially in industrial designand furniture manu-facturing, as well as projects for fash-ion companies. But much of the work being done under

the heading of interior has little or no connection to theoutsidethe architecture.

The current proliferation of large-scale projects, fromairports to office buildings, calls for interiors that canundergo a succession of rapid transformations. In thesebuildings, where architecture merely defines the organiz-ing structure and the envelope, the temporal conditionsand needs of the interior cannot be too rigidly fixed.However, rather than understanding these contingenciesas the basis for a different type of app-roach towards theinterior, the majority of contemporary large-scale projectscontinue to rely on conventional and formulaic solutions.This has not always been the case. The 19th-centuryarcades of Paris, for example, were a manifestation of theinternalization of public life. Louis Aragons surrealistnovel Paris Peasant contains a beautiful description of thePassage de lOpra long since demolishedas a humanaquarium. But such places, unlike contemporary malls,were also the sites of unexpected discoveries and encoun-ters.

Computation and technology more generally havemade it easier for us to imagine the interior of buildingsthrough dynamic renderings that simulate the character-istics of interactive and ambient environ-ments. Fromkinematics to atmospheres, the future of the interior isbound to rely more and more on the development of newforms of responsive environments attuned to the nuancesof our sensory pleasures. The works of artists such asOlafur Eliasson or James Turrell (still constructing theRoden Crater in the Painted Desert of Arizona) are mani-festations of this tendency. But how can the everyday ben-efit from this research, the amal-gam of the past and thepresent? It is no coincidence that some of the most excit-ing discoveries related to sensory qualities have occurredat the intersection of architecture, art, and design.According to Jrgen Bey, the Dutch designer known forhis unorthodox settings and furniture, we need to create




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a symbiosis between intuition and intellect. For Bey,good art is like scientific research. Investigating theworld in search of new answers without the question of direct use. An unrestrained research that makes us experi-ence reality differently over and over again. And in design you sometimes find art.2 Perhaps it is irresponsible of us

to think of the inside without the functional realities of the everyday. But it is precisely in the provisional post-ponement of the routine, and in questioning whether itshould be otherwise, that we may find answers. It is timeonce again for architecture, in collaboration with otherdisciplines, to consider the inside with the wit, serious-ness, and curiosity it deserves.

Notes

1. Everyday Speech, Yale French Studies 73 (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1987), 13.2. vividormgeving.nl/vormgeverpagina/bey.htm



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Architecture Inside - article.pdf