Buildings vs architecture

Architecture is a gesture. Not every purposive movement of the human body is a gesture. Just as
little as every functional building is architecture – Wittgenstein

What we think of as architecture at any given time will depend on our perspective, and what our
culture has prepared us to expect.

Architecture “designed with a view to aesthetic appeal” may exclude the vernacular, which while
may not have been “designed with concerns for aesthetic appeal firmly in mind”, still “do have
aesthetic appeal”.

Culturally significant (special and remarkable), or typical and give a general idea of the ordinary
buildings in a culture: valuably ordinary / characteristic of a culture

Architecture is not something inherent in the buildings by themselves, but is a cultural matter which
involves the buildings

If the category of architecture includes everything, it becomes meaningless

It is not a pigeonhole to categorise, but a point of view from which we can see a certain aspect of
anything

Nest vs pillar of fire

Nest = modest comforting home
Fire = extravagant, consumes vast resources, fills us with awe – stand back to admire; guidance not
from circumstances close to the everyday, but a visionary guide

Architecture = building + life inhabiting it

What then is just “the building” apart and separate from the perceptions imposed on them?

Place is the physical fabric of the land and the building, whereas the space involves activity (including
mental activity)

The idea of dwelling being a perception (with the possibility of learning to dwell) and mental frame,
rather than a physical occupation of space
Intellectual nomadism as not changing physical position but rather living with ever-changing
concepts, as opposed to adhering immovably to a permanent core of dogmata
Mobility between cultures and identities

The daily routines between people are different, but this is not made apparent due to the nature of
the ‘everyday’ that leads to assumptions of a similar practice across households; it is only when
visiting a household other than our own

Humans as habits / routines, remember the extraordinary but not the routine, except where they
are suspended or disrupted

Strictest rules can be most liberating because one does not spend time thinking about whether or
not they might be obeyed – they obeyed, there is no question of it
Home as oasis from mentally exhausting work outside dwelling
Neurasthenia – businessman’s rest = medical condition, wife nurse him via appropriate constitution
of home
Seek calming = elimination of visual clutter in domestic archi (minimalist)
Domestic serenity achieved otherwise by visual incident being completely predictable and hence
achieving invisibility in the way that a habit becomes an unthinking pattern of behaviour
Indiv buildings vs collective cultural significance – persistence gives rise to terming of “style”

Object does not influence the observer’s mood by way of the picture itself, but what it has come to
mean – diff people diff interpretation/symbolism, represent diff things to them

Porphyrios: buildings to show traces of the way in which they were built – either by literally making
visible the means of building or by a playful use of ornament which signals a cultural memory of an
earlier practice
Representational tectonic: ornamental signification of construction
Ontological tectonic: display of actual construction

Lack of embellishment = abode of the very poor who cannot afford decoration, and the very
cultivated who have learnt not to want it

Monumental architecture: sacrifice of personal wealth for public good?

Domestic archi guided by comforting idea of nest, monumental guided by pillar of fire through
gloom?

House VI peter Eisenman – attacked head-on the usual routines of living

Dining table has a column running through middle of it, impossible to have a usual sort of dinner
party
Instead of losing meaning, it signalled meaninglessness

Architecture is body as microcosm – instead of harmonious numbers, now made of

blood/nerves/membranes/sex/gender/actions/passions

Distinctive signs, full signs, never seduce us. Seduction only comes through empty, illegible,
insoluble, arbitrary, fortuitous signs, which glide by lightly, modifying the index of the refraction of
space…as such the signs of seduction do not signify; they are of the order of the ellipse, of the short
circuit, of the flash of wit ---- Baudrillard

Discotheque / shopping malls are replete with these seductive signs, which are also temporary signs:
they cease to be so seductive when they become familiar
Stimulating and immediately engaging, but does not last, leaving us enervated rather than restored
– uses resources and from which we go home to recover

Authenticity: with the banishment of the real world we have abolished the unreal world
Question then is not “what is the world” but what can I make of the world / what is it FOR ME?”

Buildings are objects and never in themselves architecture; architecture is dependent on the
observer’s culture and the ideas that are brought to bear on the building, so that we either recognise
it as gestural or else we don’t

Steel poles grid – lightning field by walter de maria

Poles are more or less invisible in sunlight
But in stormy conditions, steel rods tend to induce lightning strikes
The installation does not make thunderstorms, but makes it likely that if there is a storm, the
lightning will strike one of the rods rather than an arbitrary point elsewhere in the vicinity
Like architecture: we control the form of buildings (rods) but we cannot control the culture of people
who come into contact with the buildings (the atmospheric conditions)
Lightning: moment of recognition of architecture or the aesthetic charge: NOT in the rod, NOT in the
cloud, but when the two come into proximity
But both are not tethered together: culture can shift and recompose itself, like a cloud