An Architecture of PresenceA manifesto for the reinvigorated experience of our built and natural environment

Abstract

This critical manifesto explores a response to some of the current issues relating to the production and understanding of architecture across the United Kingdom and around the world.

It will begin by introducing some of the main concepts that will be discussed, before setting out a series of points that build on these ideas and explaining them in more depth.

Where possible the position of the author will be set out in relation to major critical, theoretical and literary sources, enforcing the main ideas that are being developed and grounding them within a contemporary context.

The manifesto is also complemented with photographs taken by the author, expressing situations concurrent with a personal feeling of presence.

“...a presence in architecture which is so silent and self evident, not a pretentious form that talks to you, but something which glows from inside... not meaning but being, something

should be and not mean”

(Zumthor, 2013)

Introduction

Architecture, the built environment and public spaces are becoming indecipherable, not just across the U.K, but all over the world.

As a product of globalization, this process, which is partly a response to the question of architectural style, exists for the gain of political, economic and social purposes, acting for the benefit of the collective human race.

However, as a result, something is lost at the level of the individual.

What is missing is the grounding that comes with the knowledge of a particular place and the experience of being in the world that this creates, a sense of presence. Instead of architecture that exists for our experience and on our terms, we are now bombarded with buildings that scream “look at me!” and “what am I?”

This will not do.

What we need is an architecture of the self, not an architecture of the selfie. Buildings should not beg to be photographed or baffle us over their meaning and use, only to become redundant at the next socio-political shift.

Instead architecture should help form the backdrop to the stage-set of our life’s complexities, where buildings are intrinsic to the environment as a whole, providing moments of existential contemplation and making us more aware of our presence in the world.

This manifesto is based around the philosophical notions of phenomenology, described by Merleau-Ponty (2002) as: “an inalienable presence; ...all its efforts are concentrated upon re-achieving a direct and primitive contact with the world.”

It is this ‘direct and primitive contact with the world’ which must be restored.

Hypothesis

The presence making power of architecture is essential to fostering unity and collaboration towards a common good, as well as vital to understanding the ecology of our existence, at the individual scale and collectively.

This manifesto builds on the belief that the ability of architecture to create this sense of presence has been eroded by three interlinking developments, between the interaction of people and society and the buildings around them. These are;

• the dominance of the visual sense above all other senses, leading to an architecture of distancing concepts and convoluted meanings and metaphors;

• the loss of the passage of time being expressed on our buildings, and the reduction of material sensuousness and tactility;

• the belief that nature and architecture are separate entities, which objectifies buildings further and forcing them to exist in idiosyncratic realms, isolated and de-contextualised.

These issues create a continuum of decline, distancing ourselves, buildings and nature from each other, at a time when their unity is more important than ever.

To remedy these problems, we need a radical shift in our understanding of what architecture is, and could be, pushing aside the current misgivings of the profession and its pandering towards imagery. Instead, what is needed is an architecture that is:

• ‘Easy on the Eyes’

• Expressive of the Passage of Time

• Part of Nature, Not Separate to It

Easy on the Eyes

- part of the background, acting as a backdrop to the complexity of life.- ignoring the battle of forms and instead focusing on surface and materiality.

Expressive of the Passage of Time

- accepting that weathered surfaces are beautiful, expressing a connection to nature.- understanding the need for old buildings to help build our collective memory and sense of place. Part of Nature, Not Separate to It

- that we as a species, are a product of the evolution of the planet and therefore, the built environment is a product of the natural environment.- buildings are a physical and experiential ecosystem, touching and affecting us beyond levels that we can conceive.

Aims

This manifesto is aimed at architects, designers and construction professionals, as well as the general public, to act as a rallying call to be more rigorous about the places we design and accept in our lives. The main aims can be summarised into three points:

To make people more aware of the simple pleasures of the built environment, enhancing the enjoyment of physically being in the world, and the spaces around them.

To accept that the majority of architecture is a backdrop to life, not the lead role.

That our experience of the natural/built environment emanates from sensuous, tactile and bodily beginnings. These aims will be highlighted through the next sections, each of which critically focuses on the three key points set out in the hypothesis.

An Architecture that is Easy on the Eyes

“As a consequence of the power of the eye over the other sensory realms, architecture has turned into an art form of instant visual image. Instead of creating existential microcosms, embodied representations of the world, architecture projects retinal images for the purpose of immediate persuasion.”

The most fundamental problem with contemporary architecture is what Pallasmaa (2005) calls “ocularcentrism”, the over-reliance of the visual sense as a way of perceiving architecture. This is in part a result of the surge in architectural media during the last half of the century, which has in many instances reduced architecture to a visual representation, altering its purpose within the public realm.

This ignores, and to a certain extent erodes, the basic function of architecture; creating a place to dwell and physically manifest ourselves in the world, connecting us however temporarily with a space and time which belongs to us, forming a sense of existence and presence (Moore, see Tanizaki, 2001, p.1).

Key to this manifesto is an understanding of the word presence and its meaning in relation to an architectural context. By exploring its definition and etymological roots, architecture will be able to develop more critical methods of discernment,

taking us beyond the visual and allowing people to experience the built environment more holistically and sensuously.

Beyond the widely accepted definition of “existing or being present” (Oed.com, 2015), the notion of “things existing or present in a place but are not seen” (ibid), suggests, in the context of this manifesto, that buildings have an aspect to their existence that cannot be visually perceived, and that more is needed than just our ocular perception of space.

The etymology of the word is also revealing, suggesting notions of “essence” (ibid) and in its more recent Latin root, the concept of “being at hand” (ibid). Presence becomes a physical and tactile grounding in the world, found in proximity and through the concept of “nearness” (see Sharr, 2007).

‘Nearness’ as developed by Heidegger, can be described as a fundamental aspect of the human experience and “appreciated

(Pallasmaa, 2000, p.78)

presence

/’prėz(∂)ns/

noun

noun: presence

the state or fact of existing, occurring, or being present.

“my presence in the flat made her happy”synonyms: existence, being thereantonyms: absence

a person or thing that exists or is present in a place but is not seen.

“the monks became aware of a strange presence”synonyms: ghost, spirit, spectre, phantom, vision, wraith, shadow, poltergeist, manifestation,

LATIN

praebefore

LATIN

essebe

LATINpraeesse

LATINpraesentbeing at hand

MIDDLE ENGLISHpresent

through the tactile, cognitive and sociological familiarity of things... enmeshed in existence, bound with intricacies of life’s daily experiences” (Sharr, 2007, p.35).

With this in mind, it can be argued that architecture designed for a primarily visual function creates a distancing of the viewer, removing all notions of presence. If it is only ever experienced through visual media, then fundamental questions are raised about the nature of its and our existence. This is already being seen in the ability to create photo-realistic representations of projects yet to be built.

An architecture based on “instant visual images” (Pallasmaa, 2000, p.78), evolving as a result of the unrivalled dominance of the eye, has led to a ‘false presence’ where people feel connected to buildings only as a result of the ability to visually read them. This reduces, in the eye of the public, the task of designing to a formal and abstract exercise, which no longer allows us to create the physical and emotional connections to places we so desperately need.

More alarmingly it suggests that architecture is becoming a visual tool, a gestural symbol of globalization and political, social and economic aspirations. The growth of ‘iconic’ architecture, running in parallel to the growth of mass media coverage, is a prime example of this. Here the reliance on form and symbolic gestures has reduced

the building to a mental exercise, an icon that has to be decoded and interpreted to create a better understanding of its function. Jonathan Meades (2013) explains this shift when he states that for much of contemporary architecture, “form has become the function.”

By becoming a mental exercise, there is a severe eroding of the basic essence of contact amongst humans and the places they inhabit. Ursprung is correct when he claims that; “iconic buildings now seem to separate rather than unite people” (see Goodwin, 2014, p.47). Their geometry and allusions to conceptual meanings only works to divide opinion and create tension amongst designers and surrounding communities.

The Japanese art movement of Wabi Sabi, and its associated Zen philosophy, teaches us much in the way we should experience architectures role in the world. Our relationship with architecture should be focussed more on the direct experience of perception that it has to offer, rather than ideas that can be drawn from those experiences, (Juniper, p.27), for example the conceptual narratives underwritten into much overtly formal geometry.

Further questioning of the interpretation of abstract forms of iconic architecture only enhances the eroding sense of presence. Susan Sontag, in her seminal text Against Interpretation, explores the notion that as art developed

into ideas of content, concept and subtle meaning, so grew the need to continually defend and rigorously interpret it, removing the simple pleasure of just experiencing it for what it is (1994, p.5).

This is entirely relevant to much of contemporary architecture, which raises multiple questions over its meaning and requires multiple interpretations to connect with it. Sontag argues that: “To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world – in order to set up a shadow world of meaning... Interpretation takes the sensory experience of the work for granted, and proceeds from there.” (1994, p.12).

The lack of sensory experience beyond the visual can be seen to be eroding our presence in, and the existence of, tangible architecture. Therefore what we need is an architecture not of abstract form and ‘high-level’ concepts, but of grounded experience and materiality. One that enables us to connect with our place in the world in the present, not just through an image but through all the senses.

Ursprung states that “we are so used to seeing architecture by means of photography that we almost automatically look for the camera angle when we are confronted with a building” (see Goodwin, 2014, p.47). However, we need to remember that information that is conveyed about a building through visual means should always be considered a secondary, minor aspect. What is more fundamental is the architectural experience, the

feeling that is created within us, a sense of dwelling and a connection to nature (Bloomer and Moore p.36). This feeling of presence, can only be created with:

‘An architecture of the self, not an architecture of the selfie.’

An Architecture that Expresses Time

The expression of time in architecture is essential to reflecting our own understanding of our presence and existence in the world. This has become particularly important in a world of rapidly evolving technology and virtual environments. This section will explore two fundamental ways that this is achieved and should be enhanced to further explore our connections with the world around us and our response to the places we inhabit.

In “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” Jane Jacobs states that aged buildings are essential for the success of neighbourhoods and districts (p.187). She argues; that not only should these be set pieces, such as museums and other attraction buildings that are in a refined state of up-keeping, but also “...ordinary, low-value old buildings, including some run down old buildings” (ibid).

Much of Jacobs’ writing on the need for these old buildings

is developed from an economic standpoint, expressing how they are essential to enable diversity and mixed uses within certain parts of the city. However, they are also essential to developing the necessary sense of presence that this manifesto calls for.

It is the buildings of the ‘everyday’, the domestic scale of architecture, that each and everyone of us lives in and works in, which are key. Our reliance on them to give us a connection to the physical world and the “existential microcosm” (Pallasmaa, 2000, p.78) is what we are slowly losing.

The evidence that we yearn for places that resonate within us at a deeper level, that place us in space and time and allow us to escape the type of discordant architectural spaces discussed in the first section could not be clearer:

“...there is a good deal of irony in the fact that to stave off physical

“Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of process and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be, rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent [...]. And in all things that live there are certain irregularities and deficiencies, which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty.” (Ruskin, 1851)

and mental deterioration the urban dweller periodically escapes his splendidly appointed lair to seek bliss in what he thinks are primitive surroundings: a cabin, a tent, or, if he is less hidebound, a fishing village or hill town abroad. Despite his mania for mechanical comfort, his chances for finding relaxation hinge on its very absence.” (Rudofsky, 1987) Parts of the city that have a mixture of old buildings and new buildings have the ability to ground the city-dweller in the present, enabling them to understand the rich history of the place they inhabit, whilst at the same time allowing them to project themselves and their city into the future, creating a continuum.

Part of the problem is that it has become too easy to knock down and demolish old and redundant buildings that do not suit the current trend for preservation. This is in part because it has become too easy to build new ones in their place.

Our ability to build new buildings quickly and easily doesn’t mean we have too. We should relish the fact that there is something honourable, and in a world of shortening resource supplies, vitally important, in enabling an existing building to work for our changing needs, rather than giving up at the start and building a new one.

The expression of weathering on the surfaces of buildings

displays the ‘touch’ of nature. Pallasmaa, paraphrasing Merleau-Ponty, expresses how this is in fact one of the fundamental tasks of architecture; “to make visible ‘how the world touches us” (2000, p.79). Yet in much contemporary architecture, the construction of buildings has been altered to counter this, making them much more efficient in their resistance to deterioration (Mostafavi and Leatherbarrow, 1993, p.23).

This is detrimental to our position as mortal beings, who like the world around us degrade, weather and eventually die. If architecture is to be a reflection of us, mirroring our presence in the world, it should grow old with us.

By using materials that are resistant to weathering, buildings are ignoring their location. Mostafavi and Leatherbarrow (1993, p.29) argue that “the use of the same technologies throughout the world does not always take the uniqueness of places into account”, arguably much of contemporary architecture expresses a non-contextual universality, which hinders our appreciation of unique places and locations.

Our experience of time is a reflection of the temporal nature of buildings and so should be encouraged and enhanced at every opportunity. Our presence in the world is made up of our combined experiences of the past, as well of those in the present. It is not possible to experience the world without

the collected memory of all of our individual pasts brought with us, and these are never cut off from the traditions of the cultures that we have grown up in (Mostafavi and Leatherbarrow, 1993, p.112).

Reigl (see Mostafavi and Leatherbarrow, 1993) discusses the term ‘age value’, conveying the idea that ageing is an enhancement. Markings and layers on the surfaces of a building record its earlier stages of history and human interaction, bringing “the virtual future of a building into dialogue with its actual present, as both are entangled in its past” (ibid, p.112).

An independence from the local environment and its climatic conditions has detrimentally removed the need for buildings to place their users in space and time, separating and distancing them from the natural environment and the physical world.

A return to the expression of weathering on our buildings shows that nature is re-forming and adjusting the building. It makes us aware of its presence and its interconnections with architecture. However, it is more than a mere connection, it is the expression of itself, it is the building expressing how it is a part of the natural world and not an abstract concept exempt from it.

For this to occurr, we need to renew our interest in the natural

materials of the world, avoiding the use of synthetic and plastic finishes, which do nothing more than preserve buildings with their inevitably outdated fashions and concepts.

“If architecture is to be a reflection of us, mirroring our presence in the world, it should grow old with us.”

Part of Nature, Not Separate to It

“...our relationship to space is not that of a pure disembodied subject to a distant object, but rather that of a being which dwells in space relating to its natural habitat”

The separation of humans, as something other than part of the natural evolution of the planet has a highly damaging affect on the way architecture is both conceived and experienced.

Part of the problem is the distancing of architecture from the natural environment and the western concept that the world is made and composed of a series of objects existing in space. This runs counter to the ideology in the East, particularly China, where there is no differentiation between the subject and the object (Xiaodong, see Goodwin, 2014, p.97).

It is no longer sustainable to produce an architecture that eliminates micro-climatic differences (Pallasmaa, 2000, p.79) of locality, site and region. Instead we need to embrace and enhance them, to allow us to become more aware of the changing environment.

The experience of architecture should be in a constant state

of flux, not just mimicking the changing nature of the world around us, but actually being that changing nature. This range of temporal scales, from day to day and season to season can be expressed, as discussed in the previous section, through the use of tactile materiality and a direct response to place/site.

The desire to locate our bodies within the environment (Ursprung, 2014, p.50) does not differentiate between that of the natural and built, they are one entity that we exist within. The changing nature of the environment is mirrored in a “building’s regeneration and degeneration emphasiz[ing] the temporality of nature as an order of beginning and ending or, more broadly, life and death.” (Mostafavi and Leatherbarrow, 1993, p.47).

In the same way that buildings are wrongly used as symbols of conceptual thinking and high level concepts, so the human race wrongly sees itself as separate to the natural world. By

(Merleau-Ponty, 2008, p.42)

shutting it out and seeing it as secondary to the way we develop and dwell in architecture, in favour of technology and science, we are worsening our mind-body split, distancing ourselves further from the physicality of the world and the consequences we have upon it and it can have upon us.

Vernacular buildings are a typical example of an architecture that reinforces its connection and oneness with nature, demonstrating how buildings can appear to be an inhabited part of the landscape and an extension of the topography (Rudofsky, 1987).

It is not being stated here that we should return to living in huts or nomadic systems of living. Instead, it highlights that there are inherent presence making aspects to those forms of living, developing a proximity to their respective environments, which we must learn from. Rudofsky states that; “instead of trying to conquer nature, as we do, they [vernacular buildings] welcome the vagaries of climate and the challenge of topography” (ibid), seeing nature as a partner to the way we situate and construct our buildings, and place ourselves in the world.

In this scenario architecture can become a vessel of life, a microcosm of the wider world brought down to the human scale. Xiaodong (see Goodwin, 2014, p.101) explains that “what is important is what is contained, not the container”, suggesting that architecture is primarily about creating an

embodiment of the natural world, and that symbolic and conceptual ideologies that shape it are ancillary.

In the essay Presence: The Light Touch of Architecture, Phillip Ursprung describes a visit to the Flisvos Sculptured Quay, Athens, where he felt a sense of being ‘present’. He goes on to describe the difficulty found in defining not only what caused that sense of presence, but also in defining the place that it occurred, “...was this architecture? was it a sculpture? was it a piece of infrastructure? was it scenogrpahy? Was it landscape architecture?....we found it difficult to describe its size” (see Goodwin, 2014 p.39).

This reinforces the idea that architecture and the natural environment are the same entity. They move into and out of each other, unified without boundaries or borders, but as extended habitats of our existence. This is expressed best by Mostafavi and Leatherbarrow, (1993, p.106):

“The building was seen not as an object placed on a site, but as one that ‘grew from’ its site....Architecture, then, was conceived not as the building alone but in terms of its relationship to its surroundings, whether natural or man-made....a total environment, which does not imply the surrendering of the building to its place, but instead the enhancement of place.”

The notion that buildings are part of the natural world will

help reinvigorate the sense of connection we have to our environment, rebuilding the sense of presence which has been eroded though technological and digital developments through the last century.

Architecture can reflect the natural world, indiginous communities around the world have been doing it for millennia, allowing the spaces they create and inhabit to act as a microcosm of their understanding and relationship to the environment.

“What is important is what is contained, not the container.”

Summary

The need to re-introduce the individual experience of architecture is essential. It will allow us to overcome many of the hurdles that the profession is facing today, such as banality, extreme egotism/capitalism and the destruction of the environment.

Technology and the digital age has changed the way we view the world. As a result it has distorted architecture and its human-borne purpose, to provide environments within which we can dwell and experience the world, through our multiple senses and memory. We must return to this.

As speculated by Urspring (2014, p.49) we are trapped in an eternal present, where the dimensions of the past and the future are shrinking, making it more difficult than ever to learn from history and speculate about things to come. As architecture looks ever harder to fill these voids with daring new forms and pastiche reproductions of historical motifs, so we begin to lose our sense of the real present.

By not perceiving architecture as a message or a symbol, but as an envelope and background for the life which

occurs in and around it (Zumthor, 2010, p.12) we will be able to free ourselves of the need for constant visual and mental stimulation, instead creating opportunities for us to experience the present for what it really is.

By allowing our cities and places of inhabitation to exist as a mixture of old and new buildings, that express the passage of time and environmental processes, we will be able to situate ourselves in the rich tapestry of history and the natural environment.

By considering ourselves and our architecture as an extension of this natural environment, we will be able to successfully respect our place in it, creating a legacy of continued presence for future generations.

‘We are changing, of course, but that does not necessarily mean we

are progressing.’(Alain Ehrenberg, 2009)

References / Bibliography

Benjamin, W., 1936, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’. In Illuminations. Benjamin, W. 1999, London: Pimlico, 211-244

Bloomer, K., and Moore, C. (1977). Body, memory, and architecture. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Goodwin, K., (2014). Sensing spaces. London: Royal Academy of Arts.

Jacobs, J., (1992).The death and life of great American cities. New York: Vintage Books.

Juniper, A., (2003). Wabi sabi. Boston: Tuttle Pub.

Merleau-Ponty, M., (2008). The world of perception. London: Routledge.

Merleau-Ponty, M., (2002). Phenomenology of perception. London: Routledge.

Mostafavi, M. and Leatherbarrow, D., (1993). On weathering. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Oed.com., (2015). presence, n. : Oxford English Dictionary. [online] Available at: http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/150669?redirectedFrom=presence#eid [Accessed 10 April 2015].

Pallasma, J., Hapticity and Time: Notes on a Fragile Architecture, 2000. The Architectural Review (May), pp. 78-84

Pallasmaa, J., (2005). The eyes of the skin. Chichester: Wiley-Academy.

Rudofsky, B., (1987). Architecture without architects. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Ruskin, J. and Morris, J., (1981). The Stones of Venice. London: Faber and Faber.

Sharr, A., 2007, Heidegger for Architects, Routledge,

Sontag, S., 1994, Against Interpretation, Reading, Vintage,

Tanizaki, J., (2001). In praise of shadows. London: Vintage.

Zumthor, P., 2010,Thinking Architecture, Basel, Birkhauser,

Zumthor, P., (2013). Royal Gold Medal 2013 Lecture - Presence in Architecture. [online]Available from: https://vimeo.com/60017470[Accessed 23 February 2015]

All images are taken by the author and reflect the ‘ironic’ (Rudofsky) desire to seek bliss whilst on holiday. As such they are a collection of instances where the author has felt their own spine tingling sense of presence in the world.

Images