Towards a new poetics of architecture

Karsten Harries

Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation:

The Question of Creativity in the Shadow of Production
Dalibor Vesely
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, US, and London, UK, 2004; ISBN 0 262 22067 9

post-modern thoughtfulness: is not uncertainty the

other side of freedom? Less and less do nature and
culture determine what or who we have to be; new pos-
sibilities continue to be opened up by science and tech-
nology, which have brought with them not only an ever
increasing physical and spiritual mobility, but also
unsuspected possibilities of dwelling and building. Is
it still possible today to appeal to an essential self
that binds our freedom? To an essence of dwelling
robust enough to provide architectural theorizing
with a foundation? But such increase in freedom is sha-
dowed by a growing dread of arbitrariness: why do this
and not that? Kundera spoke of the unbearable light-
ness of being. In a similar vein I am tempted to speak
Todays architecture world has embraced theory as of the unbearable lightness of much recent architec-
never before. Dalibor Veselys Architecture in the ture. How many buildings strike us today as structures
Age of Divided Representation a book that, that could just as well have been otherwise: products of
although originating in the design studio, may at accident or caprice. Is this what creativity has come to?
first seem to have more to say to philosophers and But has architectures embrace of theory helped
historians of ideas than to architects is an matters?
especially thought-provoking example. This embrace
demands thoughtful consideration: what need does Vesely himself remarks that work on this book was
architecture have for theory? The question becomes hampered:
more difficult when theory is informed by or even
becomes philosophy: what do Plato and Aristotle,
by an uneasy feeling that too much is written
Grosseteste and Nicholas of Cusa, Heidegger and
today about architecture, which should after all
Merleau-Ponty they all figure importantly in these
communicate visually rather than through
meditations on the place of architecture in the
words.
modern world have to teach todays architects?
(p. 3)
In the past, architecture and philosophy would
seem to have done quite well, going their separate
ways. What has changed? It is to visual communication that he would recall
architecture. All too much theory today seems to lead
Presupposed is widespread dissatisfaction with the still architects away from such communication, away
dominant understanding of architecture as instrument from the incarnation of meaning in matter to a
or commodity, only ineffectively challenged by an hermetic architecture that provides a small group of
emphasis on subjective aesthetic vision. Architecture initiates with traces or markers pointing towards
has become uncertain of its way. Such uncertainty meanings that remain invisible and become accessible
need not be deplored; it can be welcomed as a sign of only in verbal constructions.
Building Research & Information ISSN 0961-3218 print ISSN 1466-4321 online # 2006 Taylor & Francis
http: www.tandf.co.uk journals
DOI: 10.1080/09613210600589969
Review

To insist that architecture communicate visually rather God, nature and society, as a world emerged, most
than through words is to presuppose that communi- strikingly in Florence, that in important ways antici-
cation should not to be reduced to a matter of words. pated our own. But if the threshold is familiar I
Vesely thus insists that a: devoted my Infinity and Perspective (Harries, 2001)
to it Vesely presents it in an unfamiliar light. His
preliminary articulation of the world that pre- description of the formation of the modern world
cedes the acquisition of verbal language provides as a process characterized as a slow perspectivization
vital background to the life and meaning of of culture as a whole recalls Heideggers understand-
language. ing of the modern age as the age of the world
(p. 70). picture. Heidegger, to be sure, associated that
picture with Descartes, while Vesely highlights the
Only when we attend to that background do we importance of perspective to its construction and
begin to understand why light and the incarnation of looks to Alberti and to the rise of perspectiva artifi-
geometric forms in architecture speak to us as they cialis, which in important ways prefigures Cartesian
do analyses of Guarino Guarinis SS. Sindone and method by two centuries. This leaves the question:
Johann Michael Fischers Zwiefalten make a particu- how are we to understand the progressive pictoriali-
larly convincing case for the communicative nature zation of reality? In what is perhaps the most
of space (p. 217). thought-provoking part of this chapter, Vesely
points to medieval optics, to a tradition going back
Vesely speaks of the silent language of architecture (pp. to Plato that thinks space as structured by light,
7596). In The Ethical Function of Architecture light as mediating between the sensible and the intel-
(Harries, 1997), I had appealed in the same spirit to ligible, a tradition that culminated with Grosseteste
the natural language of space. That language has its and Roger Bacon in a synthesis that directly influ-
foundation in the structure of the world, understood enced the development of Renaissance perspective.
not as the totality of facts, but as a historically mediated, The geometric representation of light promised
always already meaningful space of meanings that con- figures of the intelligibility of the cosmos. In the
stitutes as much as it is constituted by our embodied 13th century, optics, understood as the philosophy
being. To the extent that architects have come to of light, thus became the key discipline of natural
believe that a scientific technical rationality suffices to philosophy.
arrive at an objective determination of the problems
they should address, they have lost sight of the dimen- The dependence of Brunelleschis and Albertis per-
sion that alone can give weight and genuine meaning spectival method on this tradition has long been recog-
to their work. And it is vain to expect the solitary nized. But the mere fact of dependence casts little light
genius to restore to architecture, by the strength of his on the transformation of medieval optics into pictorial
or her subjective vision, what has been lost. Veselys perspective. Vesely points to:
examination of communicative movement and shared
communicative space seeks to recall us to a distinctly a strong desire to recognize the presence of light,
architectural common sense, a first step towards addres- intelligibility, and order that is, the divine
sing what Vesely calls the twentieth centurys inability reality in the human world and to make it
to create a genuinely public space (p. 34). accessible to finite human understanding.
(pp. 133134)
As its title hints, a sense that architecture has lost its
way is a presupposition of this important book.
Those who share this conviction that not just our The perspectival method, he argues, is only inade-
architecture, but the world that shapes and is quately understood as a tool serving the correct rep-
shaped by that architecture has lost its way will resentation of reality. We may not forget that it was
want to join Vesely in his retracing of the road that also an attempt to bring into measurable visibility
got us to where we are now, in his explorations of (p. 166) the divine order of the cosmos. As already
roads not taken that might perhaps have led us to with Plato, geometry builds a bridge between the
very different places, of important thresholds. human and the divine, where Vesely emphasizes the
Perhaps the most important such threshold separates close link between linear perspective and the geometry
the theocentric Middle Ages from anthropocentric of architecture. The ideal architecture of the Urbinate
modernity. There is nothing surprizing about panels can thus:
Veselys decision to focus in Chapter 3, The Perspec-
tival Transformation of the Medieval World, on the be seen as an idealized representation of a world
15th century, when growing awareness of the import- articulated by the most sublime humanistic
ance of the position of the spectator led not just to ideas the cultivation of civic virtues and the
a changed approach to pictorial, architectural and creation of ideal society here on earth.
urban space, but to a changed understanding of (p. 168)
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The tension between a still theocentric understanding he calls a critical dimension of modern culture is only
of linear perspective as a symbolic expression of the that, one dimension, and that means that attempts to
divine order of the cosmos and the anthropocentric look beyond it, to put it in its proper place by taking
understanding of perspective as an illusionistic mode a more comprehensive approach, are not condemned
of representation marks the threshold that separates to failure. Vesely would have us look both to the Aris-
the Middle Ages from modernity. That threshold has totelian understanding of praxis, mimesis and poesis,
been crossed when preoccupation with the latter lets and to a hermeneutic phenomenology for a better
the former be forgotten: understanding of that shared communicative space
that is presupposed by human dwelling, building and
The development of perspective into an illusionis- speaking.
tic mode of representation is the main source of
modern relativism, beginning the process that In 1699, Bernard de Fontenelle pointed to the way the
led to the emergence of divided representation. order, the clarity, the precision, and the accuracy of
(p. 173) the mathematical method associated with Descartes
and Newton was transforming the age (p. 230). As
The expression The age of divided representation in Vesely observes, that included its architecture:
the books title also the title of Chapter 4, which is
a thoughtful reflection on the Baroque period has In the new epoch, architecture was treated as a
to invite, as Vesely points out, thoughts of the Carte- discipline emancipated from the cosmology and
sian dualism of man and world, of subject and metaphysics of the European tradition. It
object (p. 178) and of dualisms such as that of became an introverted domain, with buildings
reason and feeling, classicism and romanticism, designed either according to criteria of personal
rationalism and organicism (p. 178) that followed judgment and taste or as anonymous construc-
from it. But more fundamental is said to be the: tions fulfilling only the most elementary require-
ments or strict technical specifications.
historically constituted tension between the sym- (p. 236)
bolic-communicative and the instrumental non-
communicative representation of reality. Ultimately, the instrumental representation of
(p. 178) reality is part of the essence of modern technol-
ogy. For that reason, symbolic and instrumental
The Baroque is still ruled by that tension but, as the representation are inevitably deeply opposed.
reference to Descartes hints, that age came to an end (p. 241)
with the Enlightenment and its faith in reason, which
brought with it the privileging of the latter, which is
a presupposition of our science. Technology, and one In this conflict Vesely locates the:
can include modern architecture, has carried this
tension into our everyday world. The uneasiness that the main source of the contemporary crisis of
pervades todays architecture world is linked to a suspi- meaning and of the general crisis in contempor-
cion that the Enlightenments dream that reason suf- ary culture.
fices to establish what is needed to live a meaningful (p. 242)
life and, based on this, to articulate principles for archi-
tecture is over. Following such thinkers as Nietzsche The aesthetic dressing up of the products of a funda-
and Heidegger, Vesely, too, recognizes that the techni- mentally instrumental thinking cannot offer adequate
cal rationality that has shaped modernity tends compensation for lost symbolic content. Architecture,
towards nihilism: he insists, should not be reduced to a branch of technol-
ogy, or of aesthetics, or a hybrid of the two. Especially
That nihilism is a critical dimension of modern in this age of information and telepresence, one should
culture is recognized only indirectly, through sec- not forget the inescapable conditions of our earth-
ondary phenomena such as alienation, meaning- bound cultural existence (p. 308). Here, Vesely
lessness, inauthenticity, and the like. Our suggests, lies the key to understanding the restorative
difficulty in understanding the nature of nature of the fragment (p. 334), which, even if all
modern nihilism is related to the general uncer- too often just another aesthetic gesture, can recall crea-
tainty about the nature of a technologically tivity to the thingness of things and lead it to confront
oriented culture. the concrete reality of space (p. 346). Thus, it can
(p. 278) contribute to the formation of the practical world of
communication (p. 352).
But, despite many misgivings, Vesely remains an opti-
mist. As the expression the age of divided represen- Vesely remains confident that his attempt to contribute
tation suggests, he remains aware that the nihilism towards a new poetics of architecture is not rendered
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vain by the hegemony of objectifying reason. He points today. Precisely when this book gets entangled in
to those: details of, say, medieval optics or of Guarinis architec-
tural interpretation of the mystery of the incarnation it
many areas of contemporary culture that are not seems to me to make its most telling contribution to a
directly affected by instrumental thinking. This is poetics of architecture that may lead towards a more
certainly true for the large part of poetry, litera- robust architectural common sense.
ture, philosophy, music and other arts, as well
as for the deeper strata of everyday life. It is in Karsten Harries
these areas that we encounter the continuum of Yale University, New Haven, CT, US
the latent world, which we all share without [email protected]
being fully aware of it.
(p. 378)

I would add that greater awareness of that world is also

References
Harries, K. (1997) The Ethical Function of Architecture, MIT
a reward granted to those willing to make the effort to Press, Cambridge, MA.
join Vesely in his demanding, but always illuminating, Harries, K. (2001) Infinity and Perspective, MIT Press,
explorations of the path that got us to where we are Cambridge, MA.

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