Thesis Research Vol.2

Thesis

max dehne

Research Vol. 2

Thesis

max dehne

Research Vol. 2

Content

Right Side of Page: Aesthetics of the Mundane

Left Side of Page: Empathetic Mundane

Wondering tries to find examples that relate to my written musings of architecture and design.

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This is not a research of content, nor is it an expanded discourse. The thoughts here within are sited within my own internalization with the content of my wanderings both physical and mental. My empathic longings are born of my own reconciliation of my past and momenta.

Empathetic Mundane

Part 2a

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Part 2b

Aesthetics of the Mundane explores a parallel tensions between Kantian disinterested distance and personal proximity. This exploration of personal referencing of sensorial information is developed through a philosophical thesis paper.

Aesthetics of the Mundane: Proximity & Distance

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Introduction

It is my assertion that architecture, in response to and in

conflict with the mundane is able to manifest magnificence.

This is obtainable if designers are able to appropriately pay

attention to the details that are formalized as a byproduct of

“meaning” derived from a rational understanding of form,

structure, and beauty. Through this attention or interest, there

can be an investigation of the reality or the real of an object.

This separation between architecture and the user allows both

to obtain subjective and objective realization that elevates

the intricacies of the mundane. This adherence to human

“facts (that) reverberate with meanings that run deep into our

personal yet common interests,” allows for meaning to be

divorced from its lofty importance and instead root it in what

is largely experienced through the mundane of the everyday.

This common history manifests itself within and upon the

mundane events of our lives and retrieves beauty from the

edge of perception when the mundane comes into conflict

with context of site. Thus, architecture cannot dispense of

the mundane of everyday life. Instead it should reconcile the

conflicts with routine, regularity, and the datum of life that

is traversed by humanity through, within, around, and upon

architectural form. As designers we must peel away space,

place, and site from meaning to expose the reality there within.

This reality is the substance, the meat of a project and should

not be veiled.

“The surface of the everyday is covered by a surface, that of

modernity.”

It is my conclusion that the everyday (the mundane) is

the foundation of architecture as an object defined by human

time and bound by the commonality of repetition. This friction

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Thesis Research Vol. 2

Architectural Mediation

Architecture, as an aesthetic object, bridges a dialogue

between Kantian disinterested distance and personal proximity.

Buildings are object that is often placed somewhere between

art and inhabitation. Architecture should be defined by, bound

by, and inclusive of both aesthetic distancing and proximity

in relationship to aesthetic judgment. This inclusion will

assist in allowing architecture a means to grapple with the

complications of aesthetics and pair it with the sensuality of

proximity. Architecture as a product bound in the immediacy

of our sensual body fractures the conversation when aesthetic

theory is used as the single mediator of beauty. Translating

architecture through a dual dialectic allows a conversation or

a narrative to arise from the philosophical encroachment that

each stance places on the other due to fundamental theoretical

concepts. However, when placed in parallel tension, they

are able to lend to one another characteristics that assist

architecture to become a mediator of personal engagement

with the world. Through this mediation, architecture within

the built environment is capable of bringing a user into an

intimate proximity to place or locality while simultaneously

transporting them conceptually beyond the bounds of the

users own experiences.

Disinterest and Distance

Aesthetics in the traditional Western formulation is

bound in a visually dominant world of objective understanding

that separates the sensual into distinct hierarchical parts.

Aesthetics, rooted in Platonic understanding, allows us

to conceptually contemplate an object of our interest by

separating our lower senses (taste, touch, and smell) from our

higher senses (sight and hearing). Born from this separation

and distinction of sensual understanding, Kant suggests

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with becoming mundane within architectural form places

a demand upon designers to engage with this tension and

determine its relevance to beauty by exposing or rupturing the

surface of modernity.

Tangent:

The rupture of modernity demands that we do not take

for granted the need for sited particularity. Each thread stitched

into a blanket holds itself in place by the strength of its neighbors.

By rupturing this surface we alter the mundane continuance of

the fabric and expose new realities. Thus, the mundane allows

for upheaval of a new mundane.

However, by objectification and repetition the

conversation of what and how to approach architecture as either

art or craft should be reconciled and conversely rationalized

through the understanding of the mundane as a mediation

of human and environmental considerations. Delving into

meaning (what is told to architecture) and extracting the reality

(how it is used) that is bound within architecture exposes the

mundane impositions upon architecture that strive for useful

meaning over conceptual meaning.

What is the nature of this conflict?

How do we construct it, and can it be ethical?

What is ethical?

Conflicting Definitions

When approaching the mundane it is essential that we

understand and dissect its meaning. The definition of the

mundane:

“Belonging to the earthly world, as contrasted with heaven;

worldly, earthly”

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that the viewers must place themselves at both a mental and

physical distance to be able to fully perceive the totality of an

object. This placement of our mental and physical selves

allows us to become disinterested emotionally to what we are

attempting to place judgment upon. Disinterest permits us to

see the object of our judgment as not something we desire,

but instead as an object with definable properties that make it

beautiful or good This state of disinterest is at the core of how

we are expected to approach the judgment of beauty. Beauty

and more specifically universal beauty can only be obtainable

through this act of disinterested judgment. This placement of

our cognitive selves allows the object to be perceived correctly

and without subjective input or input born of our lower senses.

Our lower senses, according to Kant, create a distraction

to truth and do not permit us to dissociate from the sensual

experience. This is defined by our dual nature of mind and

body. This duality, one that exists here in the terrestrial and the

other, which is boundless through conceptual thinking, must

be separated to see universal beauty clearly.

Thus an argument for prohibiting the use of our subjective

lower senses is defensible due to the burden placed upon our

judgments of beauty. Distances must be engaged through

conceptual separation to understand beauty so our judgment

is not diluted with the subjectivity of sensual input. The mind,

as a Platonic extension of the heavens, allows us to be both part

of and detached from the immediacy of the object. However,

through this detachment we separate and divide the senses

into a hierarchical pyramid with the visual at the pinnacle.

Platonically, our higher senses, sight and hearing, allow us to

transcend the concrete and elevate our minds to a state that

perceives not of an object as beautiful, but to conceptualize

beauty itself as an ephemeral idea in and of itself. This

conceptualization then becomes the object, and can propagate

in the minds of those that can perceive it. This elevated state,

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“In weakened sense: ordinary, commonplace. Hence: prosaic,

dull, humdrum; lacking interest or excitement.”

If we are to hold both definitions as true, then that which

is of the earth must be humdrum. The ordinary commonality

placed upon that which is earthly or terrestrial precludes that

the events that are of the earth lack interest. Being ordinary

and common suggests that these events bound by the earth or

earthly are specifically habitual and engage our “lower human

nature”.

Tangent: Lower Human Nature

When I began to think about lower human nature I am

reminded of the platonic separation of the senses and how

those related to our animistic nature are “lower senses”. This

seems an interesting parallel as mundane relates to our lower

nature when you explore its intersection with the earthly and its

corresponding definition.

It is this relationship to the mundane that events like rain,

wind, and sun become perceived as banal, boring, humdrum,

in western culture. The terrestrial world, being perceived as

down or below foot as opposed to upward or sky bound frames

how we approach the earthly body. Architecture, as a means

of protection and inhabitation removes human form from

the intrusion of mundane events and places humanity out

of reach and in a detached state. Through this relationship

architecture creates an internal environment constructed

through inhabitation and an external relationship to the

terrestrial. Walls, windows, doors, thresholds, columns, and

beams restrain the mundane and inversely are enveloped by it.

Placement of human form, in context to the implied

banality of the environment, manifests a division between

architecture and the natural world. This tension bound within

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in the context of our contemporary lives, has become over-

emphasized as the primary means of managing sensual input

and subjugates our “lower senses” to mere animalistic impulse.

Kant, building on the principles of Platonic beauty, furthers

this argument by creating a perceptible distance that must be

obtained to perceive beauty. This distance, as suggested by

Edward Bullough in “Physical Distance as a Factor in Art and an

Aesthetic Principle” asks us to divorce ourselves emotionally

from the moment and by “putting the phenomena, so to speak,

out of gear with our practical, actual self; by allowing it to stand

outside the context of our personal needs and ends”.

Introduction of Proximity

This removal of oneself from the phenomena does not

take into account the multiplicity of contextual, experiential,

and environmental factors that can weigh one’s judgment when

attempting to define what is “universally beautiful”. Beauty, as

something to be seen at distance, dominates our contemporary

understanding of space and identity. Distancing, detaching,

and quantifying the world around us is creating a dangerous

aesthetic divide between what we believe is real and what is

reality. Digital media only exasperates the hyper consumptive

articulation of visual stimulus and further propagates this divide

between our senses.. This exasperated state elevates ocular

sense , which becomes the primary sensual input in mitigating

what we see in contrast to what is real. However, through a

physical engagement (taste, touch, and smell) we are able to

form a conception of our reality that is verified from multiple

personal sources. Thus proximity, in opposition to distance,

allows us to engage with the reality of the world. It allows us

to experience clarity, through direct experience, of what is real.

This direct connection to our understanding is vital to seeing

the greater context of our distanced perceptions.

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buildings physically denies the entrance of the mundane, but

is inversely unable to stop its inclusion there within. I assert

that this division between architecture and the mundane is due

to the environmental placement of architecture that disrupts

and impregnates site with space. This act of imposition is

not mundane or humdrum, but violent and intercedes the

neutrality of the earthly world. However, as a parasitic inclusion,

architecture transforms and mutates space as an inclusive

exclusion (objects in space that include earthly elements, thus

are utilized to deny there inclusion) physically constructs this

violence between earth and architecture.

Architecture is the parallel intersection of two forms of

the earthly body, one mundane or earthly, and the other human.

This separation of humanity from the natural world from the

earthly does not divorce completely, but does reinforce this

parallel tension. This relationship to the human and to the earth

asks architecture to reach beyond its constructed immediacy

and enact upon space an ethos that can bridge between

definitions. Like sutures across a laceration architecture

can be the location of regional overlap. As a purely human

construction, we have the opportunity to take the many forces

of the earthly and include them in our constructed boundaries.

When the mundane comes in conflict with humanity, we

must utilize its banality as an object of regularity. Through this

utilization of the mundane and earthly, architecture of regularity

can be expressed as undercurrents of useful meaning.

Empathetic Introductions

Our relationships to the mundane builds an empathetic

response that is constructed through a shared history of use.

The tedium of our daily lives, through micro interactions molds

how we construct a greater understanding of place, space, and

site.

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Distance and Proximity

To understand this relationship I reference my own

experience occupying Le Corbusier’s Legislative Building in

Chandigarh India. The building, separated by a twenty-minute

tuk tuk ride from the heart of the sprawling city is isolated and

only accessible with written permission from the tourist board.

It is in this, that the first experiential presence of the building

is altered. Instead of a large expansive project allowing for free

movement and use, it is inversely experienced as isolating

and inaccessible. The calm reflecting pool surrounding the

building is in actuality on the back of the structure and is nearly

impassable by foot. Only by walking along a concrete edge is

one able to maneuver past the pool to the “view” often seen

through documented representations. It is this illusion that

separates the reality of the building with the imagery often

presented. As an object it is quite beautiful, but as something to

be experienced it is domineering, heavy, and unapproachable.

For its seriousness, the building is not fully understandable till

you enter inside. The interior is cool, quiet, and calm. The

concrete that seemed so austere on the exterior softens and

stretches above your head. The low light of the interior, in

contrast to the beating sun outside is enlivening and allows

the interior to move and dance through the use of shadow. It

is through this direct experience that I was able to both see the

fallacy and inability of the visual to appropriately demonstrate

the totality of the project.

However, to judge the building solely through physical

appreciation I would be unable to step back from my physical

self to see it as something that transcends its immediate

surroundings. The project delicately uses concrete as a plastic

building material at a time when it was inconceivable. The

open plan on the exterior may come under the burdensome

reality of time, but it is majestic in its occupation of space.

In a country so densely populated it demands relevance by

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Place: A space that is the site of an action.

Space: An opening that can be occupied by an action.

Site: The fixed place of an action.

Architecture, as a shell of socially constructed interactions

has the opportunity to guide perception through the articulations

and accumulation of built language. Walls, windows, doors,

are banal elements of architectural construction that allow an

architect to make simple adjustments to the world around us.

The reconsidering of formal arrangements in context to the

physical environment is a discovery that unearths mundane

events, defining use and responding to its presence, allowing

the passage of the everyday to be a critical good. As we separate

the “meaning” in architecture from the “reality” of architecture

we are able to engage with the mundane and its generative

parallel tensions.

What is the routine of architectural interaction and is it mundane?

What is architectural ritual?

What is empathetic architecture?

What is empathy?

Where and how do these questions relate to architecture?

Empathy

Empathy as a derivative of ‘em’, a prefix denoting

“the placement upon or within” and pathos relating to “the

emotional in comparison to the permanent” allows us to

approach and connect to subjective matter as an objective

through compounded personal perception. Through this

self-referential relationship the empathic response binds

object to person, person to person, person to object, by placing

upon and within one another an emotional infrastructure.

It is my assertion that empathy, as a placement within and

in relationship to architecture animates and articulates the

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the sheer weight of its perimeter and when you are able to

divorce yourself from its cultural implications for a moment

the procession of time that is eclipse on the grounds embeds

itself in our common history both in India and throughout the

world.

It is by this inclusion of proximity and distance the

building becomes more than inhabitation while still holding

onto its majestic use of space and material. The meaning is

wound through the concrete like rebar and embeds a message

in the occupant.

Proximity of our Senses

When we interact with architecture, it is an experience

of substance. Concrete, brick, steel, glass, and wood construct

the foundation of our physical reality. Buildings, bound by

the earth exist in the real, in the “here” and “now” of our lives.

This is in contradiction to Platonic and Hegelian theory, which

places architecture at the bottom of the hierarchy of art that

we are unable to deny our physical selves. Thus proximity,

the condition or position of being near or closeby in space,

nearness, allows us to interact with site, space, and place directly

through sensorial engagement directs interaction, manifested

through the immediacy of our senses, and allows us to create

definable experience bound by the reality of inhabitation.

These experiences are not isolated to the extraordinary, but

extend themselves into our daily lives and places we inhabit.

Home, as a manifestation of an extraordinary architectural

experience, holds in its perimeter a truth an experience that

is articulated through the non-extraordinary. This proximity

to home and our awareness of home is framed by the time

that is required for a gradual definition of inhabitation through

our sensual experience. Thus, our senses: sight, sound, taste,

smell, and touch, allow for connections between our empirical

self and our physical form that inhabits a space. Senses allow

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architect’s interested approach to the design of inhabitation.

Inhabitation also exposes the mundane and allows for its

augmentation as it relates to human emotional connectivity.

Modification of the Mundane

The following passages are an attempt to alter the reality

or the dialogue of what is mundane and what can be beautiful.

The subtleties of everyday life are so rich that to forget them, to

ignore them seems to diminish moments of wonder. We need

banality if we are to revel in its inverse. However, I find that in

the smallest moments of our lives, if we are able to appreciate

them we can see the beauty tied to the mundanity of our lives.

The Door:

The door knob in hand is cold. Shaking the handle, it’s locked

and the exterior of place is exaggerated as we wish only to be

inside. Keys shake from a pocket and there is a short game of

hide and seek as the correct key is located on the ring. The

familiar sound and sensation of the key sliding into the lock

focuses our attention to the handle. Its form and function in

perfect harmony.

Turning the key in unison with the knob the latch clears the

cavity and the door swings open. Taking a step your inside, the

door is closed. The comforting security of the latch clicking back

into position and the deadlock spun into the locked alignment

ends the sequence. Once again, inside, clothed, disengaged

from the exterior.

The Window:

Its transparency leaves the interior exposed, to the exterior.

White shades pull to a side, exterior framing sequence; fall,

winter, spring playing out like live television. Within the frame

the exterior penetrates and illuminates the interior. Together

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individuals to organize their personal reality and act as a

mediator between the individual and the group. This mediation

through the sensuous connects and grounds those involved

within a culture or subculture to the locality , which is defined

as home. Home, through our physical inhabitation grows

from the slow knowledge of verifiable personal information.

Like Le Corbusier’s Legislative Assemble, my inability to

experience the structure slowly and entirely removes it from

the implications of home, but illustrates the problematic

reference of our immediate senses. This problem inversely

justifies proximity by its ability to transport us through time by

direct sensual input.

Senses of Aesthetics

The key to my front door sticks. Once inside the lock

resists, contorts, and torques the key out of plane until finally,

moving the pins the key spins and turns the lock. The doorknob,

exposed to the winter chill is cold, crisp against my hand. It

stimulates the activity of entrance and reconnects me to the

cold. I open the door; pull the metal cord hanging from the

foyer ceiling, the small vestibule is illuminated. Walls, stairs, the

torn wall paper all come into focus. I am home.

Beyond the traditional visually dominated aesthetic

discourse, our other senses allow for experiential completion

of knowledge that includes verifiable personal information

(sensual input). Experiential information enacts upon us a

conceptual shift that mitigates the transference of space to

place. Thus, when it becomes a site (a place enacted upon), we

are emotionally moved in response to the action taken upon

it. Thus, humanizing architecture is inherently emotional and

is the vitality of great places. Our empathy with architectural

form and the places they define for us is tethered to our

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they play a subtle dance between their respective realities. In

front of the window we become participants to an exchange

as we mitigate their introversion. Time lapses through this

frame, delineation of exposure. Through our eyes we see the

world with new perspective and we are asked to assuage our

reality with that of the place we inhabit. The glass, the curtain

of transparency is but a filter through which a new formation of

truth can be determined. A window is a pause in time where

the user is affixed to site of possible prophetic experience.

The Opening:

Exposure illustrates enclosure, as an opening is a fissure in

the body of structure. Architecture forms inhabitation and an

opening allows for the reconciliation of interior and exterior.

It forces the form to balance, that which is enclosed, and that

which is open. Inhabitation of the opening is one of sidedness.

Deciding to occupy enclosure or exposure. Inside or out. Thus

the opening is a dialectic language that allows for transference

of embedded locality.

The Stair:

We traverse the stair. A step, a riser, a run, a slide of the foot

across a surface. Elevation, rest, rise, step, rise, pattern and

repetition of form transform two planes into one. The banality

of the tread denotes change of space and time. Sole makes

contact, the leg presses foot to floor, and we are lifted. The stair

is an instigator for change; it demands we reconcile sequence

through elevation and sight. Perspectives of the room move

and transfigure. Here, in the step, in the stairwell, we are able to

actively manipulate form.

The Floor:

My foot touches the carpet. Its tan fabric is soft, soothing, and

reminiscent of my childhood. Thus, in a house nearly two

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consciousness by our sensual experiences. Connecting to

architecture through our senses must be realized as a defining

characteristic that cannot be realized without experience when

approached from a purely aesthetically disinterested attitude.

Touch

Touch allows for us to verify information and orient

ourselves in space. The visual is but one determinant of

input, and when coordinated with touch, it connects the two

and allows for a complete understanding of an object. Touch

allows us to sense the world around us by direct experience,

and verifies the inclusion of our connected senses. Without

touch, without verification of source, vision is dangerously

susceptible to the intrusion of subjective understanding.

Without the ability to ground us through tactile information

the optic is in essence unverified truth . So much so that

when we distance ourselves from an object to understand it

“completely” we lose that which exists between the tension of

art, object, and culture. This tension is bound in the finger tips

and the realization of solidity. When we are able to sensually

interact with an object, coupling it with cultural importance

we construct a network stitch artistic representation to object

to a specific culture. This contact allows us to come closer

to understanding these conflicts as materializations of form,

structure, and beauty. Immediacy of touch forces us to place

ourselves in contact with an object bound by our vision.

Hearing

What do we hear? How do we hear? Reverberations,

fluctuations of voice bounce and come into contact with our

physical body and are translated through our cognitive senses.

This translation is susceptible to subjective understanding, and

as such should be recognized like vision, as a fallible sense. Like

all senses, hearing requires a second form of verification. The

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thousand miles from my childhood home I am transported.

The carpet, the floor, the elevation of my physical form allows

me to balance between both the heavens and the earthly. I am

perched, somewhere between here and there, like a scarecrow,

the field my home, the stick under arm the floor, and I am able to

see from edge to edge. These walls are my walls, those walls are

there walls, but both are enveloped by visionary recollections.

The Mantel:

Purpose eludes this timber log. History laden protuberance it

carries now only the weight of knickknacks and picture frames.

Once, so essential it is now but decoration. The mantel above

the flame. Relegated to parody, a well endowed shelf. What

of its purpose, what of its form? Why do we ask so little of the

mantel when it is worth so much?

Crumbling

The plaster is cracking, shedding like dried elbow skin off the

building. Inside the walls are growths. Mold rich drywall is

piled in a corner and the studs are bare, the rooms divided

now by only bone. Home has eroded back to space, to mere

occupancy. Inhabitation is now only a residual context of an

old pot still on the stove.

The Plaza

The brick underfoot shakes wit my steps. The density is

unmistakable. The loose weight of clay resonates through the

public square as feet traverse its wet surface. The dull sound

of falling water echoes from the fountain below a strategically

placed Starbucks. The light rail line hums to a red light and the

#12 bus rumbles through a green. Between sips of coffee a

couple huddles under an awning, building courage to step into

the rain. The cascading brick steps down to the large open plaza

where the public cuts the corner between 6th and Broadway.

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subordination to the other senses should not be understood

as a negative implication. Hearing is an essential component

to our personal ability to orient ourselves within culture.

Language, as primarily act of audio frequency, allows us to

manage our actions when placed in social settings that require

interpersonal communication. Thus hearing is essential to

orienting ourselves in physical space in conjunction with

socio-cultural context.

Smell

Smell is considered within Platonic philosophy to be

one of the lowest forms of sensory input. Thus, it is considered

a subjective sense due to its role within emotive memory.

However, I would contest that this correlation to a specific

smell, something that is rooted in the purity of the natural world,

is far more objective than that of visual realization. Fall leaves

will always smell like leaves. A chocolate cake will always smell

like a chocolate cake . These smells in their ability to engage

both an emotional and physical recording are incredibly

important to how we engage the physical world. Smell allows

us to transcend time with the shared connectivity of place that

is experienced individually. A sensuous connectivity between

people, is formed through an intimate habitation of a space.

Taste

Taste as a means of orientation within our proximate

world is lined with conflicting outcomes. Of the five senses

taste, oral sensation is often considered the most barbaric or

animalistic. I find this animalism comforting, however. The

connection of food, the connection to others through a shared

experience allows taste, more than its sensual counterparts, to

place us in direct connection with others without physicality.

This shared empathetic experience, as a product of human

repetition is essential to how we manage perception beyond

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Architectural Routine

Architecture is a ritual of routine. It reveals destinations

bound by our unconscious empathy of place. Doors open,

windows slide, shutters close, the foundation rest, lights

illuminate. These are mundane, banal, boring, in most spaces.

In some they are brilliant, exalting, inspiring, and elevate the

user into a new understanding of the place they inhabit. It is

within the everyday that I hope to expose architectural routine

as containing embedded beauty and brilliance. Architecture,

in its capacity to regulate our lives has an important role as

objects tied to the surface of the earth. The routine that is

framed by a building enables architects to shift regularity with

incremental change.

Architectural Ritual

By exposing the mundane, beautiful utility is brought

forth through the language and articulation of their sequential

merit. The rituals of architecture and more specifically, that,

which are universally true, (openings, windows, steps, floors)

must be interrogated to objectively understand their role. It is

also of vital importance to determine if these elements can or

should be perceived as beautiful in their simplicity.

Is a door necessary? Is it merely an opening? What are the

essential components of architectural form? These questions

resonate with earthly inhabitation and humanities need for

comfort, for security. When we compartmentalize form,

function, and beauty we are manifesting our fear of banality

and our need to objectify the reality of an object. Stairs there,

door there, beautiful lobby there. However, it is my concern

that there be a balance of these scaled arms between form,

function, and beauty that allows the aggregation of use to

be understood as meaningful. That through the utilization

of form, structure can be born and through structure beauty

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the confines of our empirical selves .

Sensual Immediacy

The brick underfoot can be felt. The density is

unmistakable. The loose weight of clay resonates through the

public square as feet traverse its wet surface. The dull sound

of falling water echoes from the fountain below a strategically

placed Starbucks. The light rail line hums to a red light and the

#12 bus rumbles through a green. Between sips of coffee a

couple huddles under an awning, building courage to step

into the rain. The cascading brick steps down to the large

open plaza where the public cuts the corner between 6th and

Broadway.

As we manage our personal reality we take sensuous

input and place it against our empirical persona. This stimulus

is immediate, instantaneous, and specific to us. We imbue

that knowledge with emotional context and ground it in our

personal conception of space. The outcomes are both personal

and universal. They allow us to attach to place, to a site and

engage with what it means to be an inhabitant of space that

is larger than ourselves both physically and conceptually.

Sensuous input of information can be perceived as quantifiable

data that, when becoming a participant, connects us to a

larger understanding of inhabitance. This connection is a

realization of time. Each experience of a locality allows us to

define it sensually and incrementally. Unlike the tourist traps

throughout the world, local inhabitation is not simply defined

by snap shots, or “I have been there” experiences. It is the slow

growth of personal experience that connects us beyond our

own physical self to the greater populous. In this, our sensuous

understanding is capable of eliciting beauty derived in itself as

an act of artful humanity. As we traverse the gorge between

ourselves, our community, our city, there forms a network and

an extension of what it means to be home. This extension

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can be found and form can be inspired by beauty. The

interrelationships of the mundane and the inspirational are

manifested through the same lens. Can architecture be seen

differently after the first time, the tenth, and the hundredth?

When does the extraordinary move into the ordinary? To what

level must we understand context to see these abstractions?

If we can understand architectural ritual as universal

truth of inhabitation we may be able to tease out a language

that can translate previous iterations of the mundane and

join them with augmentation and exposure. The opening

of the door, the peak through the window, or traversing of

the stair are actions, set within the body of architecture that

allow a building to transform from object to physicality. It

gives life to the inanimate, activating space as something that

can reach farther as a conglomeration of rituals. The beauty

of architecture, the understanding of its aesthetic function,

allows it to break the bounds of its material state and move us

emotionally. We are able to empathetically maneuver through

the rituals of architecture and know intuitively the needed

occupancy of a space.

We are tactile beings, ones grounded in the physical

world around us. We maneuver between empathic, empirical,

and physical states of understanding in an attempt to piece

together truth for ourselves. Architecture, as an actor in

this play, must find ways in which to facilitate this search of

truth. Thus architectural ritual, one formulated by routine and

adherence of relatable parts must become a realization of the

mundane latent within an action. That as animals constrained

to the earth we are intrinsically also bound to the mundane

events of our daily lives. Routine, regularity and unoriginality

need not be seen as perversions of our individuality, but as

commonalities that stitch one another together through a

common unconsciousness of constructed interactions. As

formal arrangement, architecture has the opportunity to

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allows space, the vacuous area bounded by architecture, to be

enlivened to place, to sites of exchange. This act of distance,

of expansion by inhabitation is much like that of disinterested

appreciation of beauty that allows for an understanding of and

appreciation for the implications that determine beauty. When

we detach from the physical world through learned experience

we are able to manage ourselves within the context of others

by differentiating the conceptual home versus our immediate

home. Placed upon one another, the combination allows for

us to reveal humanity as something that exists in the fringe

between conflicting realities. This sensuous immediacy

demands a counter agent to reconcile its haste with a slow

understanding of place, space, site, and time. Thus, personal,

communal, metropolitan distancing not only allows us to

see the greater beauty found in the network of place, but also

engenders proximity by cohabitation. Here, the problems that

arise from the parallel tension between distance and proximity

(loss of objectivity, detachment from place, and loss of personal

responsibility) are transformed into positive positions. Thus,

disinterest and distancing, as an aesthetic act, must take into

account the realities that span the proximate and global. By

subverting the traditional act of distance with one entwined

with our sensual being, we are able to approach problems of

beauty as virtuous solutions.

Distance as a stretching of conceptual understanding

has many forms, but one particular example I found nearly

everyday while living in Portland, Oregon. Every morning I

walked the two blocks to Barbur Boulevard where I waited for

the #12 bus to come to a stop at the bus stop at the top of the

stair. I would take the two steps into the cab and be transported

to work. This simple act, although so experientially contextual,

leaves little to see beauty within. However, as I continually rode

the bus, felt the persistent timing, and saw familiar faces riding

with me, the network of this single bus stretched beyond myself

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recognize unconscious commons. Defining these events,

architecture should attempt to augment and expose these

rituals to the user as moments of mundane revelation. These

exposures, as a ritual of habitation, become habits of living

and thus become engrained within the context of our lives. If

architecture is a construction of the conflict between humanity

and nature, then the inclusion of both can allow architecture

to define form that manifests beauty in accordance to the

convergence between human and natural environments.

Empathetic Architecture

As briefly discussed in The Mundane, empathy in

architecture is an augmentation upon it as a mundane object.

What I mean by this is that empathetic architecture is that space

through repetitive use and inclusive acceptance has become

place by sharing its useful meaning with those inhabiting its

belly. Set within the context of our daily lives, architecture

quickly becomes banal, but to this effect we are unconsciously

aware of the structures imposing an ethical presence. When

placed inside the framework of regularity we share with it

a sense of place that animates its existence. Through this

connection to the mundane, regular use of architectural form

can engender an experience with the historical knowledge

embroiled within. It is however, only through personal use over

the course of the transition from new to banal that we are able to

absorb the full body of architectural form. Framed against our

own preconceptions, architecture, allows constructed space

to bridge personal histories through shared spatial experience.

When looking for examples of this empathetic mundane I

look to the many coffee shops and cafes strew through out the

world. Here, connected through a shared experience there

is a connective tissue that binds a group to a specific place.

Whether it is the morning coffee with the paper, or conversing

about politics, these places of social interest, coupled with

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and traversed into a state of detached wonder. The complexity

(comma here?) the timings, and? the faith in something so

menial as the bus, became an organizer for my entire day. The

regularity of the network and the understanding that it would

be there when I needed it became beautiful. I was drawn to the

intricacies of my route and its implications for the entirety of

the Portland Tri Met Public Transportation network. As a piece

of artful humanity it was gorgeous, but it required me to see

it from a bird’s eye. I had to detach myself from the moment.

Like Bullough’s fog, I too let the experience out of gear with my

practical self. The efficiency of this system was so meticulously

planned that it became something more than a simple bus

ride to work. It gave me a sense of connection to others, to

my neighborhood, to my city. These are the moments where

distance, as a means of appreciation, as a result of disinterest

allows for a new revel of personal wonder. Unlike Corbusier’s

legislative house, it does not have to be extraordinary; it

simply must allow us to see beyond ourselves to a wider set

of implications that manifest meaningful connectivity. Like

our senses connect us personally to place, our collective

imaginations connect us to whole countries.

Distanced Proximity

Artist Rirkrit Tiravanija defines meaning to his work

“Rucksack” as a creation that “through the use meaning

arrives”. Meaning, something that is derived from the author

and given to the user, is traditionally inherent to architecture. It

is found in every doorknob and frame of a window. However,

architecture is practically defined as a functional and useful

object. This usefulness places the built environment on the

fringe of traditional aesthetic theory. I would contend that the

immediacy of use, one bound in the practicality of usefulness,

should be seen as aesthetically beautiful.

This beauty is extracted from Architecture as an object

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commodified space allow people to register their reality with

those around them. Personal investment thus creates an

empathetic response to a particular site as a result of those

interactions.

Tangent: Iconic Architecture

Iconic architecture often times is perceived as something

that is not mundane, but what does it mean to see iconography

a thousand times? Stop signs are iconic. A red hexagon, white

edge. We don’t even have to know what it says; we know as a

collective what it means. So, architecture built as an icon must

have relative importance. It is in the collision between the iconic

and the mundane that this collective regularity that stitches a

city together when architecture becomes a thread. One thread

among many that allows for definition to arise. All great places

include defining patterns, and like a blanket the threads are lost

to the totality of form.

Tangent: Ethical Restraint

Before I can return to the above question of application I

see it critical to venture into a conversation of ethical restraint.

I find it a social imperative that architects as initiators of lasting

physical change take into consideration the impacts manifested

in a site, but also the site material extraction. This topic is

discussed in the Aesthetics of Elsewhere as an understanding

and critical aesthetic response to the material extraction

as impacting the aesthetic merit of the greater “site” of the

world. The article concludes that through an understanding

of the aesthetic destruction of elsewhere, and in turn our

understanding of that destruction we could, as consumers

make better decisions when we buy a product. Understanding

the aesthetics of elsewhere asks us to deny the impulsive nature

rooted in consumerism.

It asks the user, or the consumer to pose ethical questions.

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that roots us conceptually and intimately to a particular place.

Through this connective tissue it has the ability to transcend

disinterested beauty and traverse between two states of distance.

This intimacy with the fringe of architectural aesthetics is

where the cloud between distance and proximity comes to a

confluence. Hiding in the opacity between form, function, and

beauty we are able to intertwine a variety of concepts within the

singularity of a building while still considering the implications

of distance both proximately and globally. Architecture, if

seen through singular act of disinterest, is often relegated to

simply a surface, and through our slow understanding of place

architecture reaches far beyond the bounds of its perimeter

form . Architecture’s proximity to our physical form articulates

its capacity to isolate moments in our everyday life that give

clarity to a global aesthetic confluence. Thus, it is able to

express new realities of what distance means to aesthetics

and transform into a connective fiber between personal and

communal space that allows us to unwind sensual immediacy

into empathetic global.

Importance of Distance

The plaster is cracking, shedding like dried elbow skin off

the building. Inside the walls are growths. Mold rich drywall

is piled in a corner and the studs are bare, the rooms divided

now by only bone. Home has eroded back to space, to mere

occupancy. Inhabitation is now only a residual context of an

old pot still on the stove.

Despite its elevation of visual judgment of beauty,

distance is necessary to properly see architecture as well as

proximity. Like the short narrative above, without distance,

without stepping away from the conception of a project

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Alleviating this pressure, architecture has the opportunity to

take into consideration this new aesthetic for the user. Allowing

the user to have an empathetic trust that the architects have

taken on more than simple construction and have embedded

knowledge of the aesthetics of elsewhere into a project. Like a

new t-shirt, architects and clients are drawn to fashion, trend,

and the newness of technological advancement as a veil for

good design. However, projects rooted in newness, often

successful in their ability to generate news are unable to sustain

newness as repeated image quickly becomes banal. This trend

towards objects, buildings, icons, become mundane must be

understood as implications of sustainability. Economics will

always play a role in the creation of architecture, to deny this

is to deny reality, but it does not mean we have to succumb

to the rationalities of the now. We must investigate the past,

illustrates its strengths and garner strength from the truths

found there. So to apply ethical restraint we must come

to terms with the restrictions upon ourselves as designers

and find, in the mundane a truth of historical habitation in a

place to better understand what is implicitly associated to our

site. This could be seen as defaulting to vernacularism, but I

do not preclude form but use as the foundation for meaning.

That if we approach architecture as an object that is ethically

restrained from its onset, architects must realign a project with

the particularities of site.

Ethical Empathy

Like a scab over a wound the traces of the past are bound

in the surface of the built environment. Our collective past is

tied to the places we inhabit and as we expose those places

to the newness of renovation their potency is weakened. It

is this reference and adherence to sympathetic memory that

architecture must root itself. In this same vein I would argue

that architecture does not need to be explicit in its infliction

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we are unable to determine critical flaws in our creations.

Architecture thus has the opportunity to position itself as a

material representation of ethical and conceptual growth.

By locating architecture as an object that can be viewed by

distancing ourselves from its physical form we are able to

insert it into an ethical infrastructure. In his The Nature of

Design, David Orr illustrates how through a thoughtful and

critical design process architecture has the ability to create a

“curriculum embedded in any building that instructs as fully

and as powerfully as any course taught in it” with an analysis

of the reconstruction of the Oberlin College Environmental

Sciences building. This usefulness of architecture as teacher

has to be pursued as both a societal good, and in the moment

of pause as an object of beauty. As illustrated in the narrative,

without a distanced approach to designing and implementing

architecture, we are doomed to constructing functionally ugly

buildings. The apartments described above are the result of

the architect not considering the rain-laden environment

of Oregon. The rain, as it seeped through the plaster siding,

infiltrated the walls causing the rooms to be cold. When

the temperature was increased to counter environmental

infiltration mold was able to grow between the interior and

exterior finishes. As an approach to distance, architecture must

manage expectations that result in solutions that are born from

a critical understanding of a building’s siting. Balancing a new

duality of beauty, one inspecting both the proximate and the

distanced, we must assume the inherent good of design and

designate it beautiful as an ethical imperative.

This ethical distancing is a needed step to bridge between

established concepts of beauty and move architecture into a

realm between art as non-emotive mental construct and the

real or physical inhabitable object. Inhabitation, however,

places a heavier burden on the act of distancing oneself from the

object and asks the user to decipher a building into experiential

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of iconography. I do not want to reduce the importance of

iconic architecture, but want to recognize that architects,

given limited design flexibility and restricted by client, budget,

or desire still have societal effect. Through shear critical

mass of mundane architecture an infrastructure speaks to us.

This conversation is one of silent resonance that we are not

expected to respond or even acknowledge. This form of the

mundane, having the potential for ethical empathy allows us

to traverse the everyday. Without the mundane there could

not and cannot be the extraordinary. The two are intrinsically

fused in the completion of place. As long as we are able to step

far enough from the epicenter of our own experience there is a

moment, on the fringe of preconception, where the mundane

becomes exotic. Here, on this edge, ethical empathy finds a

home.

Between the known and unknown we must grapple with

the impositions that the unusual plays on our preconceptions

of the mundane. Thus, ethical empathy, a condition of moral

rightness, asks us to share with the specificity of context and

submerge ourselves to understand there corresponding duality.

Ethical empathetic design aligns us with the practicalities of

living in a particular location. It allows architecture to breathe

with place. When we are able to engender a project with

an empathetic resonance it lives beyond walls, doors, and

windows. It becomes something personified by usefulness and

through its functionality is both mundane and magnificent.

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parts. These fragments of a building, when amalgamated by

gradual inhabitation, allow the user to see the totality of both

useful meaning and form. This construct, when coupled with

an understanding of architecture’s ability to enact moral good,

can begin to alter ethical perceptions of how to interact with

both space and the larger societal context.

Aesthetics of Elsewhere

Reconstructing the conceptual framework for beauty

we must consider the ethical and moral considerations as

fragments within the philosophical discourse of beauty. Ethical

fragmentation, like the gradual inhabitation of architecture,

allows for a slow uniting of partitioned knowledge. To this effect,

in “The Aesthetics of Elsewhere: An Environmental Everyday

Aesthetics” Jonathan Maskit confronts the environmental

destruction associated with a high consumption lifestyle.

Maskit tries to stitch together the western consumption patterns

with the aesthetic considerations that frame our purchasing

decisions and the modern demand for newness. The

aesthetics of newness when married with aesthetic incentive

manifests a culture in search of what is only temporary. This,

compounded with our obsession with visual representation,

constructs an ideology of the world that is outside time. The

expediency of transportation goods and services only aid in

this conceptual fallacy as our purchasing power allows us

to obtain this fleeting moment and derive pleasure from the

aesthetic of the purchase faster at farther distances. However,

we must include in our understanding of this aesthetic that

our purchase, although fulfilling our immediate need, places

an equal aesthetic pressure upon its point of origin. Thus, to

ethically consider aesthetics, we must first be able to distance

ourselves at multiple scales to fully see the implications of a

singular purchase. Like experiencing space over an extended

period of time, we must see aesthetics of elsewhere as

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external pressures on both time and site. Stemming from an

understanding of our proximate selves we are able to step back

at greater intervals to see the network that moves outside the

boundary of our city and connects us nationally and globally.

Applied Elsewhere

It has become more common in modern buildings to

source products as close to the site as possible. This locality

oftentimes limits the use of certain materials. However, this

challenge, when presented to architects, should not be seen

as a disadvantage. Instead these limitations should be seen

as a problem that calls for virtuous solutions. In Ladakh India,

just outside of Leh is a small school tucked into the hills of the

Himalayas which has become an innovator in local building

practices. The buildings, constructed of either compacted

earth block or granite stone, use traditional building techniques

and combine them with modern innovations like passive

solar heated trom walls. Through this careful planning and

intertwining of past and present, the campus has become a

beautiful representation of how these problems of accessibility,

sustainability, and program can manifest into truly virtuous

solutions. Led by ARUP engineering and architecture, the

campus has been able to build a facility that encourages growth

of the community, a school, and its students. Through the use

of local labor, materials, and building practices, the architecture

has not submitted itself to the locality and instead reinvigorated

it with new possibilities. This exchange between the past and

the present is essential if we are to understand the aesthetics of

elsewhere in relationship to contemporary architecture.

Contemporary architecture, when discussed as

beautiful, must be reconstructed conceptually to bring about

by an understanding of distance and ethical discourse.

Architecture, as a physical manifestation of ethical propriety,

has the opportunity to build on this conversation by means

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of making, materials used, labor practices, and understanding

that the world we build today is intertwined with an ethical

code of tomorrow. Ethical architecture that is concerned with

both moral placement and aesthetic beauty will have the

opportunity to implement incremental ethical change over

time.

Return to Proximity

Through this extension of the aesthetics to architectural

experience we return back to the place of its origination.

Distance may allow us to conceive of other realities, but our

physical body remains. We remain. We still touch, taste, and

see the world. Architecture’s ability to house experience,

to connect individuals to the physicality of the world, and

design that interaction has the singular goal of manifesting

beauty whenever possible. Defining beauty as a cyclic

feature of proximity to distance and back to proximity allows

the user and the architect to engage in a conversation. This

conversation now has the chance to span lifetimes, and like our

understanding of place, is born from personal time and critical

awareness. When we are able to enter into this conversation as

designers, it is our job to reconcile site, space, and create places

that house function. We are not imposing our meaningful will

upon a site, but instead reacting to the realities placed upon us

to create a beautiful object. However, by understanding the

possibilities of proximate distance, architecture can expand its

influence beyond functionality and accept our need for beauty

as an inherent good. By ethically approaching the local and

global of the forms we create, while accepting the need for

beauty, architecture can hold onto its virtuous intent while

still crafting beautiful places. If we accept our functionality

as constructors of fringe conditions between proximity and

distanced experiences, we can mitigate a multiplicity of

realities that contract and extend the surface of a building.

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The sensuous birth of function is at the base of allowing for

an ethically constructed act of disinterested beauty. Instead of

denying beauty we should redefine its parameters and how it

is approached.

Aesthetics and Ethics of Care

Careful, caress, care come to mind when we begin to

build this ethical discourse into the fabric of use. To bring

my thoughts to a tentative end I have found that more than

anything, we must care. We must care to inhabit careful places.

We must care to purchase carefully considered products that

in turn care about their origins. It has taken the length of this

paper to abstractly define what seems so apparent in these

concluding words. That without care, without consideration,

without the caress of hope, none of this is possible. The finitude

“I don’t care” is so completely devastating that it manifests the

worst in people and places. It allows for use to be coopted and

people to be coarsened. As architects, as designers, as citizens

we must care about our placement in the world, and what we

place there within. Through care, the infinitude of growth is

possible. Not just within architecture, or aesthetics, or design,

but in life. But without care, without its consideration in our

daily lives we degrade the experience of what it means to be

human. Instead, care is replaced it with cliché, trendy, the

modern, the contemporary, the now, the new and hope that it

fulfills the care we have lost in our everyday lives. Care can only

be derived from an understanding of the sensual proximity of

our daily lives and a distanced realization of our actions within

a greater societal context.

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The next several pages are a meandering of thoughts put into a collection of images taken or found by me.

Wondering

Part 2c

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Through the use, meaning arrives.-Rirkrit Tiravanija

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“I always had this idea that doing art was just a masturbatory activity, and didn’t really help anybody. I was teaching kids in the California Youth Au-thority, an honor camp where they send kids instead of sending them to prison. One kid came to me one day and asked if I would open up the arts and crafts building at night so they could work. I said, “If all of you guys will cool it in the classes, then I’ll baby-sit you.” Worked like a charm. Here were these kids that had no values I could embrace, that cared about art more than I. So, I said, “Well, I guess art has some function in society,” and I haven’t gotten beyond that yet, but it was enough to convince me that art did some good somehow. I just needed a reason that wasn’t all about myself.”

- John Baldessari

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So what becomes of all the little boys, who run away from home, well the world just keeps gettin’ bigger, once you get out on your own, so here’s to all the little boys, the sandman takes you where, you’ll be sleepin’ with a pillow-man, on the nickel over there.-Tom Waits from “On the Nickle”

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Documents

Thesis Research Vol.2