Architecture and Citizenship

1. Architecture and Citizenship Old Fredrikstad, Norway About the impact of architecture on man by Svein Sando Aker Brygge, Oslo, Norway

4. Prologue Sister Hanne-Maria in Ordo Cisterciensium Strictioris Observantiae : “We experienced the wholeness from the very first day in the new convent buildings. The building is a part in making wholeness.”

5. Tautra Convent Tautra convent (Monasterium sancta Maria de Tuta insula) located in the middle of the Trondheimsfjord in Norway.

6. Monastery and Convent • The old monastery • Consecrated 1207 • Abandoned 1537 • The new convent • Consecrated 2007

7. Wishes of the Building Masters at Tautra Wishes: • Closeness to the fjord • Feminine rounded forms Results: • One wall made of glass • Masculine square forms

8. Buildings are Effecting Us • Nuns on an isolated island • Citizen of a large town • Both experience that buildings and surroundings are affecting us Valencia, Spain

9. Three Scholars - Hans Sedlmayr(1896-1984) professor in art history in Austria - Christian Norberg-Schulz(1926-2000) professor in architecture in Oslo, Norway - Knud Ejler Løgstrup(1905-1982) professor in philosophy and theology in Aarhus, Denmark

10. Hans Sedlmayr (1896-1984) • Verlust der Mitte (Loss of the centre) 1948 • Claims against architecture of Modernity: • has forgotten its cultural task to collect and create wholeness • serves an abstraction that is not firmly grounded on the earth Filipstad Brygge, Oslo

11. Sedlmayr - 2 • Ledoux’s spherical house from the 1770s • Ledoux: All the geometrical basic forms should be the main forms for buildings Dronningens gt 14, Team 3, 2005, Trondheim, Norway Drawing by Ledoux of spherical house

12. Sedlmayr’s Dogmas of Modernism • The geometrical basic shapes are also the basic shapes for architecture, and each of these shapes is able to be the basic shape for an entire building • Every building is to be considered as a machine (“Jeder Bau is eine Maschine”) Mechanical machinery becomes symbol and model. Golia Cinema, Klingeberg & Klingeberg 1938, Oslo

13. Sedlmayr on Le Corbusier • The first temptation from the spirit of abstraction: • Le Corbusier: «In freedom people seeks the pure geometry» Lysholm Building, by Vesterlid, Trondheim Sundt Building, by P.Grieg 1938, Bergen

14. Critique of Sedlmayr Like Nazi’s ”Heimat”-ideology • ”Pure form” and ”purity” • ”Verlust der Mitte” -> ”degenerate” • Member of Nazi party since 1932 • Lost professorship 1945, but not prosecuted any further • More ideology than science? Berliner Dom / Berlin Cathedral, 1895-1905

15. Modernism / International Style / Funkis • Connect architecture to the human living world • Get rid of outwardly decoration • The house of common man in centre • Le Corbusier (1887-1966) • Rationalisation and standardisation • Traditional streets replaced by parks with separate buildings Odd Fellow-building, Blakstad & Munthe-Kaas 1931-34, Oslo Christian Fredriks gt, Trondheim

16. My Home is Still My Castle • Travelling man needs a safe and comfortable home, a base • Much attention on the home to day • Man is not freezing in their homes, but charging their batteries for a life in a divided society • Thus the architecture of the dwellings are important Huitfeldts gt, Oslo

17. Traditional Church Buildings • Attacked by Le Corbusier: tear down and replace by skyscrapers • Horizontal rectangular nave: the human • Vertical spires or half domes above the altars: the divine Uppsala Cathedral, 1270+, Sweden San Marco, 1071, Venezia

18. Modernism • Opaque in vertical view • Transparent in horizontal view Aker Brygge, Oslo Tønsberg, Norway

19. A Study of Modern Churches Will Probably Show .. • neither a complete flight from the old symbol system Eystein’s church (Poulsen 1969) at Hjerkinn on the Dovre Mountains in Norway

20. Modern Churches - 2 • nor a complete transition to the transparent horizontal and the opaque vertical St Michael's Cathedral, Spence&Arup1956-62, Coventry, England

21. Modern Churches - 3 Rather a greater variety in ways of expressing the Christian gospel Søreide church, Hjertholm1973, Bergen Hoeggen church, Madsø & Sveen 1997, Trondheim. Finished to the 1000 years jubilee of Trondheim.

22. The Differentiation after the Enlightenment • The church became one of many • Secular competitors: railway stations, universities, shopping centres etc. • Religious competitors: mosques and temples Trondheim: Cathedral and university. Competing buildings?

23. Christian Norberg-Schulz (1926-2000) Relationshipto Sedlmayr: • Quotes Sedlmayr • Focuses on the relation between the buildings and their surroundings, • more than on the details and style of a building. • The details, or the presence of a building, must be subordinated to the wholeness. Olavskvartalet, Trondheim

24. Crisis in the Surrounding World • Significant changes in towns and densely populated areas, especially after World War II. • Towns and villages used to be well defined and representative elements in the landscape • Diluted by means of bragging highways and styles of buildings that neither pay respect to the character of the place nor to the buildings next door. Morella, Spain Morella, Spain

25. The Place • Not the sum of all buildings, • but the interplay between them and the surrounding landscape. • The landscape is the large room, with • the sky as ceiling • the ground as floor • the horizons as walls Saksvik near Trondheim

26. To Dwell ”To dwell means, or ought to mean, that one considers the place to be a friend, and the dwellings achieve meaning by expressing this friendship. To be friends with a place is to spare it so that it remains itself and can develop its distinctive character.” Norberg-Schulz (1992) Stedskunst. p.36 Jegerveien, Oslo

27. More than Science ”Science is certainly a very important one, but I have suggested that other types of symbol-systems are equally important. The more complex and different the environment becomes, the more we need a large number of different symbol-systems.” Norberg-Schulz (1988) Architecture: Meaning and Place. Selected Essays. p.20 Near Zweisimmen, Switzerland

28. Heidegger’s Double Understanding of Space • Space has to do with opening up and then collecting together what belongs together. • Space becomes corporal by sculptural forms Bergen, Norway

29. The Presence of a Building • The shape and look of a building is how that building presents itself and thus come into being • The things that will produce a positive recognition, can be very different • Gerhard Kallmann’s recognition was triggered by the pavement Bergen, Norway

30. Knud Ejler Løgstrup (1905-82) Interesting essay “Architecture, sensing and identity” (Arkitektur, sansing, identitet) in Solidarity and love (Solidaritet og kærlighed) 1993 (posthumous) • ”What kind of view on our existence is supporting our inclination to overlook the landscape and the residences impact on our existence?” p.87 Sandefjord, Norway Near Wengen, Switzerland

31. Dividing and Uniting Differences Dividing differences are true opponents • One of them must yield the other • Hatred and love • Antipathy and sympathy Tarnok U. Budapest

32. Uniting Differences • Enrich each other • Balance each other • Don’t destroy each other Bem Rakpart and the Castle Hills, Budapest

33. Sensation without Distance • Sensation is without distance to the object sensed • Comprehension is making distance between the subject and the object • Criticises I. Kant’s epistemology Tancsics U., Budapest

34. Common Understanding of Sensation • By means of our body placed at a particular place in space • we receive an impression by our senses, • which our understanding computes so that we can understand what we sense. • Both sensation and understanding are according to this theory at distance with the object sensed • Løgstrup: ok for understanding, but not for the sensation. St Gallen, Switzerland

35. Sensation and Understanding are Uniting Differences • The distance of the understanding has fooled us to believe that also the sensation exists at a distance • The sensation lacks distance and is omnipresent • The body is located, the sensation is not • The transformation by the understanding together with the knowledge of my body’s location that make us think that the sensation is something that happens within my body. Motecka, Praha

36. ”The seen and heard are at a distance from our body but not at a distance from our sensation. The ship we see out on the ocean, the dog’s bark down in the village are far away from our body but not from our vision and hearing. Our understanding is the opposite. We are at a distance to the understood ...” (Metaphysics Vol II, p.6) Wittenberg, Germany

37. Engulfed by the Universe in Sensation ”… distancelessness means that in sensation, we are totally powerless in the face of the universe, We have not the least possibility of guarding against or correcting the universe’s reflection and unlimited rule in our sensation. In sensation, the universe recedes before the sensed, totally. So engulfed are we by the universe in sensation that there is noting left in us that is not universe. Sensing, we exist in the most complete loss of independence before the universe.” (Metaphysics Vol II, p.6) Huitfeldtsgt, Oslo

38. The Senses Attune the Mind • ”… our relationship to the world is attuned, not occasionally, but always. …The mind does not exist without being in tune, without being a sounding board for everything that exists and occurs in the world and nature in which the human beings with their senses, eyes and ears are embedded. And unless there is attunement, nourished by things in nature, there would be no zest and energy for a single life-manifestation.”(Art and Knowledge , p.297 and 298) Observatoriegt, Oslo

39. Understanding Architecture by Løgstrup’s Tools • Uniting differences, where the two differences enrich each other and keep each other sound so that none of them runs into absurdity. • Sensation as the primary in our existence, both as objects for understanding and what attunes us into having zest and energy for life. Tancsics U., Budapest

40. Sensation is attuned, not only by the surroundings but also with the surroundings ”… we [must] belong to the landscape before the landscape belongs to us. We must – in the sensation – be a function of the landscape before we – with our understanding – bring ourselves at distance of it. ”Solidaritet og kærlighed p.91 My home in my landscape17 May 2007

41. The House as Interpreter ”The house has not only a number of functions, summed up in giving us a roof over our heads, as if the shape of the house was not important as long as the house served our needs. The house has a second task to fulfil, too. Norberg-Schulz says one place that the task is to give our existence meaning. He also says that the understanding of the world in which we live is not a product of the subject, but an interpretation of the world. The task of the house is to make this interpretation visible.”Solidaritet og kærlighed p.91 Tarnok U. Budapest

42. Utility and Meaning of a House • Not only fulfil some necessary tasks • Also a greater vocation, which exceeds any rationality of utility, (Løgstrup refers here to the German word “Zweckrationalität”). • The house should give the existence meaning Old Fredrikstad, Norway

43. Identification • Our identity is mainly ”deposited in our surroundings” • Identity is to some extent to be found in all that I have sensed so far in life • Dynamic identity • Architecture is important and not only decoration • And the most important architecture is that of your home and your place of working Old Fredrikstad, Norway

44. More than Purpose ”Purpose is not required to achieve meaning. Impulse [Danish: indfald] is enough. Impulse is in fact the better. Impulse is of higher rank than end and purpose. The dizzy richness of forms and shapes that constitutes the universe, is impulse which the power that put all together has done out of the coincidences of the variability.”Kunst og erkendelse p.101 St. Vitus, Praha

45. Hegel on Architecture • The first art • Architecture bridges nature and human culture • Architecture has to combine artistic freedom with contemporary construction techniques Valencia, Spain

46. Impulse of Higher Rank than Purpose? • Richness of forms and shapes in the universe • Jesus makes wine out of water in Kana • Jesus feeds 5000 men in the desert with a large surplus Tancsics U., Budapest

47. What Is an Impulse? • Nothing more than a coincident? • Inspiration is creation, spontaneity, imagination - and play • Play and utility as uniting differences • If play just remains play, then the impulses remain just thought, ideas, and nothing more. • If the rationality ruled by utility is the only thing that counts for architects and city planners, then we will receive buildings and cities that give nothing more than shelter against bad weather and time-efficient infrastructure to transport ourselves on. Bank in Arany Janos U. Budapest

48. If impulse and Utility Could Balance • Not ”yes!” to any artistic impulse • But to those who at the same time have some degree of usefulness Hotel in Fiath Janos U., Budapest

49. Epilogue • The nuns at Tautra got their building where impulse and utility have been combined • The building could have been more simple and cheaper • The nuns had disposed some of their identity in the fjord outside • Easy access through their omnipresent senses to the fjord from the new convent • Got impulse that one wall ought to be of transparent glass • The slate on the walls however was the impulse of the architect. Not necessary to keep rain and frost outside • Purpose was not enough for the nuns, so impulse and utility could co-operate in united differences. Tautra convent

50. Thank you for listening!