Materials and Meaning in Architecture : Essays on the Bodily Experience of Buildings

"Interweaving architecture, philosophy and cultural history, Materials and Meaning in Architecture develops a rich and multi-dimensional exploration of materials and materiality, in an age when architectural practice seems otherwise preoccupied with image and visual representation. Arguing that architecture is primarily experienced by the whole body, rather than chiefly with the eyes, this broad-ranging study shows how the most engaging built works are as tactile as they are sensuous, communicating directly with the bodily senses, especially touch. It explores the theme of 'material imagination' and the power of establishing 'place identity' in an architect's work, to consider the enduring expressive possibilities of material use in architecture. The book's chapters can be dipped into, each individual chapter providing close readings of built works by selected modern masters (Scarpa, Zumthor, Williams and Tsien), insights into key texts and theories (Ruskin, Loos, Bachelard), or short cultural histories of materials (wood, brick, concrete, steel, and glass). And yet, taken together, the chapters build to a powerful book-length argument about how meaning accrues to materials through time, and about the need to reinsert the bodily experience of materiality into architectural design. It is thus also, in part, a manifesto: arguing for architecture to act as a bulwark against the tide of an increasingly depersonalised built environment. With insights for a wide range of readers, ranging from students through to researchers and professional designers, Materials and Meaning in Architecture will cause theorists to rethink their assumptions and designers to see new potential for their projects."-- Provided by publisher Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Page Contents Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction: Reading Material Chapter 1 Material as Reality Preserve: History, Theory, Design Material imagination Practising theory Non-places and beyond Material as reality preserve Material and meaning Material matters, depending Structure Chapter 2 John Ruskin (1819–1900): Stones of Architecture Architecture as building Aims and objectives Recuperating Ruskin Chapter 3 Loos (1870–1933): Not the Material But What Is Done with It Workmen-craftsmen Sublimating ornament Ornament and illusion Ornament classical Meaning and material Architects and farmers Authentic culture? Into the void Creative destruction Part I Stones, Architecture, Land and Interiors Chapter 4 Time Silted Up: Scarpa at the Gipsoteca Canoviano (1955–57) and Museo di Castelvecchio (1957–75) Scarpa and locality Venetian clues Accounting for otherness Revolutionary act of new space Scarpa’s canny achievement Supra real Drawing, detailing, resisting The joint Tactility of vision Scarpa’s museums Gipsoteca Canoviano Castelvecchio Museum Emplotment Castelvecchio magic Displaying machines Flying horses Art, architecture, experience Close the museums? Scarpa and after Chapter 5 Pool and Cave: Zumthor’s Thermal Baths at Vals (1996) Producing place Atmospheric roots Producing atmosphere Zumthor’s method7 Stone and concrete Water Cave Perfection? A jargon of authenticity? Chapter 6 Terminal Jewel: Williams and Tsien’s Folk Art Museum (2001) American Folk Art Museum in New York City Facade Fibreglass Incompleting relationships Open work Piranesi Stairs Epilogue: Mourning a terminal jewel Chapter 7 Tectonic Shifts: Miralles’s Arts and Crafts Ecstasy at the Scottish Parliament (2004) Reconstruction memory (Re)Presentation Politics of the future Future imaginaries Use Something missing Constructing difference Part II The Long View of Materials in Play Chapter 8 Human Touch: The Enduring Warmth of Wood Wood and stone Vitruvius, Laugier, Semper Natural symbols: wood Wood in architecture Mathematical Bridge Querini Stampalia Bridge Yale Center for British Art Hubertus House Barbican Tjibaou Cultural Centre Saint Benedict Chapel Barnes Foundation Chapter 9 Fire and Wind: The Appeal of Baking Bricks Firing the imagination Brick Thinking with brick Vitruvius Filarete Alberti Fire and home Brick and the fireplace Palladio Alberti Francesco di Giorgio Baking bread and brick Chapter 10 Wild at Heart: Concrete as Liquid Stone? Concrete: Connotative/denotative Concrete dialectic Opus caementicium Concrete expression Arches, vaults, domes and shells Column, beam, frame, wall Chapter 11 Imaging Rationality: The Resolute Modernity of Steel Wrought modern Modern metal Metallic ends Using steel On rust Angel Solidarity Paradoxes of Deere Steel and concrete Stainlessness and rust Chapter 12 Transparency: A Darker Shade of Glass Transparency of reason Suger Van Nelle factory A glass city Dostoevsky and the Crystal Palace We Scheerbart and Taut ‘Fascism is a glass house’50 Transparency = Democracy? Other stories Chapter 13 Forms of a Conclusion Shaping reality Language reality architecture Relativity Social hieroglyphs Architectural writing Select Bibliography Index