Architectural Aesthetic Speculations E-Book

Jasper Michael

• Herausgeber: Spurbuchverlag
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: The Practice of Theory and the Theory of Practice
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 118

Beschreibung

Architectural Aesthetic Speculations expands our understanding of the role of formal aesthetic criteria in twentieth-century artistic practices and reveals potentially transformative aspects in the art of architectural composition. The book stages an encounter of philosopher Gilles Deleuze's (1925–1995) constructivist sensibility and architect Louis Kahn's (1901–1974) mode of architectural figuration. This book is of interest to architects, artists, historians and theorists and to those wishing to learn about contemporary aesthetic practice and theory.

Leseprobe

Contents

Introduction

Figures and Principles

Intensive PointsDemonstration: De Vore House

Lines of ForceDemonstration: Erdman Hall,Bryn Mawr College Dormitory

Conclusion

Introduction

This book stages an encounter of philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s (1925–1995) constructivist sensibility and architect Louis Kahn’s (1901– 1974) mode of creative figuration. It does this through a close reading of Deleuze’s late writing alongside the formal analysis of select projects by Kahn. Kahn’s project for the De Vore House is examined as a manifestation of Deleuze’s idea of intensive points, and Erdman Hall, Bryn Mawr College Dormitory is shown to render aspects of the notion of lines of force. In a future study I will consider Deleuze’s concept of surface event in relation to Kahn’s Meeting House, Salk Institute of Biological Studies, and explore the problem of shape in Kahn’s project for the Philadelphia College of Art.

Stated differently, this study is an experimental working out of an hypothesis concerning the relation between the aesthetic sensibility displayed in Deleuze’s writing and a manner of architectural figuration and creation. I do this by developing a preliminary demonstration of the productive potential contained in a systematic extension of a Deleuzian approach in the domain of architecture using projects by Kahn by way of illustration. The aim is to test the viability of a speculative and formal vocabulary when extended to interpreting the meaning and effect of dynamic and free systems of relations in architectural projects, relations of both a plastic and a conceptual nature. In other words, the buildings of Kahn are used to suggest how the generic properties of what is characterised as a Deleuzian sensibility toward works of art and aesthetic constructions generally, might manifest themselves as analytic frames and generative tools in architecture. To this end the conceptual developments include an emphasis on temporal and architectural space conceptions.

Two tendencies in the projects of Kahn are discussed in order to demonstrate the presence of a Deleuzian approach. The first is an emphasis on relations or connections as rendered in the De Vore House. The second tendency is an attempt to deal with architectural forces and not simply lines and is considered in relation to Erdman Hall, Bryn Mawr College. In a future study I plan to explore Kahn’s manipulation of the vertical surface to achieve architectural effects, and the manner in which he transforms a building or building group from a functional or module generated organism into an ambiguous entity demonstrating a doctrine of shape in place of a law of form.

The first proposition of this study thus concerns the relation between aesthetic constructions and Deleuze’s own theoretical project. For Deleuze modernist works of art and architecture function as models of a new manner of thinking, of thinking in a different, non classical manner, one which resists the faults he identifies in traditional, classical thought. There is a methodological relation between Deleuze’s philosophy and the composition techniques and effects of aesthetic constructions. A thematic reading is used to demonstrate the complicity between the treatment of the problematic of art, the image of thinking which Deleuze develops as a geo-philosophy, and his use of non-philosophical techniques and constructions.

Stated differently, Deleuze’s system of thought can be read as both an inversion and a completion of a modern pedagogy of aesthetic constructions. His writings complete a resumption of the historical avant-garde project on a new basis, with new concepts and new constructive principles. Even if he frequently makes use of modernism’s traditional artistic references, categories and terminology, Deleuze nonetheless deploys them in a new manner and with new effects. To this end his writings make a contribution to the historiography and theory of art and architecture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

In order to evaluate the potential of Deleuze’s contributions to the realm of plastic invention I make use of the spatial and temporal series of terms point, line, surface, and shape. I argue that these plastic elements have a correspondence with the conceptual and pragmatic elements of Deleuze’s philosophy as he formulates it in What is Philosophy? In this book there is a functioning system of terms Deleuze refers to as a geo-philosophy constructed with concepts, a plane of immanence, and conceptual personae all animated by a set of connections. This system of terms collects itself into a general methodology that shares two key characteristics of a geography, thus Deleuze’s use of the label geo-philosophy. The first characteristic is an emphasis on the irreducibility of contingency over deference to necessity. The second is sensitivity for the milieu in place of a fixation with origins. This tendency toward the geo-philosophical aligns with a theory of the work of art and architecture as an aggregate of sensation. The themes of point, line, surface, and shape can be used as major elements for interpreting the functioning of any aesthetic construction according to a logic of Deleuzian terms. Chart 1.a sets out these speculative correspondences.

Deleuze’s system(geo-philosophy)

Aesthetic constructions(problem of shapes)

concepts

connection points

conceptual personae

force lines

plane of immanence

surfaces

Chart 1.a – Parts of geo-philosophy and aesthetic constructions

Along with the analysis of Deleuze’s aesthetic thinking, I extend the analysis to consider motor or transformational principles that affect aesthetic elements. In order to give coherence to this aspect I adopt, in part, the classifications of Heinrich Wölfflin’s Principles of Art History. Wölfflin lays out a set of criteria for classifying the aesthetic manifestations of two different modes of what he calls imaginative processes or modes of beholding.1 These processes of creation and sensing, according to Wölfflin, relate specifically to classical and Baroque styles with their respective formal and constructive principles. Adopting the terminology of Wölfflin, the principles align themselves into a set of dynamic oppositions: unity vs. multiplicity; linear vs. painterly; planar vs. recessional; closed vs. open; clearness vs. unclearness. Deleuze’s thinking tends to fall on the side of the second of each and thus on the side of the Baroque. These principles can contribute to mapping primary conditions in Deleuze’s philosophy and together chart a new diagram of thinking as creation. Thus positioned, the formal and conceptual principles can contribute to an interpretive and creative strategy for deploying Deleuze’s manner of thinking in the creation of new works of architecture and art. These primary conditions are manifest in Deleuze’s philosophy in the operative notions of singularity, force, event, and fold. Their interpretation, classification, and use as aesthetic principles contribute to theorising a practice that allows the new to appear in the realm of aesthetic constructions. The claim that modernist artworks serve as models for Deleuze of a new image of thought is my second proposition.

This emphasis on the new in Deleuze’s philosophy appears in his call for ‘the creation of a future new earth’ and ‘a future form [of the present] for a new earth and people that do not yet exist.’2 In his preface to the English language edition of Difference and Repetition, Deleuze explicitly aligns this general aim of his philosophical work with his self description as an empiricist: the empiricist is the one who adopts a style of working which opens the way for the new to emerge. ‘I have always felt that I am an empiricist, that is, a pluralist,’ Deleuze writes. ‘But [he continues] what does this equivalence between empiricism and pluralism mean? It derives from the two characteristics by which [Alfred North] Whitehead defined empiricism: the abstract does not explain, but must itself be explained; and the aim is not to rediscover the eternal or the universal, but to find the conditions under which something new is produced.’3 This theme emerges equally in Deleuze’s Cinema: ‘There is no other truth than the creation of the New…’4

If we now extend the initial table that charts the parallels between philosophical and aesthetic elements to include the ordering principles of Baroque imaginative processes adopted from Wölfflin, the breadth of the proposed speculative development can be suggested. (Chart 1.b)

Concepts(philosophical)

Principles(aesthetic)

singularity

multiplicity

force

painterly

event

recessional

fold(ing)

open, unclear shape

Chart 1.b – Conditions and principles

It should be noted that there is constant sliding or diagonality at work in the imagined engagement of philosophical concepts and aesthetic principles set out in Chart 1.b. There is a force of transversality, that is, a force that shifts alignments between the two categories. In this way, the concept of force may appear, for example, as a principle of multiplicity in a composition of Pierre Boulez, or the recessional principle in one of Donald Judd’s boxes. Equally, the architectural effect produced by the open shape of Kahn’s preliminary studies for the Philadelphia College of Art corresponds closely to that of the line of force as developed in Deleuze’s Francis Bacon.

The third and final proposition of this study proposes to demonstrate the productive potential contained in a systematic extension of a Deleuzian manner into the domain of architecture. Deleuze develops more or less extended readings of aesthetic works in the domains of literature, painting, cinema, music and sculpture in his late writings, in particular in those after A Thousand Plateaus.5 Other commentators in interpreting the effect of his writing have discerned the swerve Deleuze performs by means of a creative and open use of the notions of multiplicity, force, and event in the domain of philosophy. Daniel Smith, for example, traces the profile and potential impact within contemporary philosophy of Deleuze’s differential concept when let loose on the Kantian project.6 I propose a similar move in relation to architectural projects by means of a series of formal analyses using the buildings and projects of Kahn.

It is appropriate to turn to the architecture of Kahn as his projects have long been regarded as offering a substantial transformation of the (classical) modern mode of the historic avant-garde. In a particularly insightful essay, the French painter and theorist Christian Bonnefoi formulated the possible advance contained in Kahn’s projects. ‘Kahn’s reevaluation of spatial properties,’ Bonnefoi writes, ‘is the path by which, perhaps for the first time in twentieth-century architecture, a formal and plastic problematic is once again called forth in the field of architecture.’7

As Deleuze himself suggests the turn to architecture is appropriate and perhaps necessary for it is ‘the first of the arts.’8 Using projects of Kahn as case studies I show in Chapters 3 and 4 how the generic properties of a Deleuzian style can manifest themselves as creative tools and analytical frames in architecture and the fine arts more generally. To this end I suggest how the architectural projects under examination constitute syntactical explorations of the domain of thought in problematising, in turn and simultaneously, the notions of multiplicity and force. In a subsequent study, I will consider the Deleuzian ideas of event and fold and in so doing further show how the architectural experiments of Kahn resonate with Deleuze’s experiments in the realm of thought.

In the plastic art of architecture there is a distancing at work that is more than the self delimitation that occurs in painting, music, literature, and sculpture. It is more than a reaffirmation of an independence of means and ends (from colour, sound, word, form). The challenge for the interpretation and theorisation of architecture is to see its singular mode and the potential strategies for the creation of the new that arises. I want to suggest that the architectural construction is an exemplary case of Deleuzian performance in that it is always in a state of simultaneity, different from the kinds of presentness in painting and sculpture for example. The specific presentness of an architectural construction is such that it is experienced as always in the process of beginnning over. In this sense, it is a work that contains simultaneously an origin and an evolution.

In what follows I am also concerned with the classification of different modes of imaginative processes displayed in the writings of Deleuze in relation to the techniques and effects of aesthetic constructions more generally. These styles or systems of figuration in turn are linked up as a series of formal, spatial, and temporal possibilities in the domain of aesthetic constructions generally, and in the realm of architecture specifically. I rely on the themes of intensive point and line of force to order the reading. Using examples from the work of Kahn, the formal analyses provide empirical demonstration of the assumptions contained in the argument, indicating the nature of its conceptual and compositional potential for architecture according to a set of generic elements and constructive principles. In the conclusion, I allude to the potential of further architectural elaborations around the concept of pure time.

Notes

1 Heinrich Wölfflin, Principles of Art History. The Problem of the Development of Style in Later Art, trans. M. D. Hottinger (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, s.d.), 11–16.

2 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy?, trans. H. Tomlinson and G. Burchill (London: Verso, 1994), 88, 108; Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1991), 85, 104. References to Deleuze’s writings are given first to the English translation and then to the French.

3 Gilles Deleuze, “Preface to the English Language Edition,” in Dialogues, Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, trans. H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), vii – x, vii.

4 Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2. The Time-Image, trans. H. Tomlinson and R. Galeta (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 146 –147; Cinéma 2. L’Image-temps (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1985), 191.

5 Publications after A Thousand Plateaus (1981) include Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation (1981), Cinema 1. The Movement-Image (1983), Cinema 2. The Time-Image (1985), Foucault (1986), The Fold. Leibniz and the Baroque (1988), Negotiations (1990), and with Félix Guattari What is Philosophy? (1991).

6 Daniel Smith, “Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of Difference: Toward a Transcendental Empiricism” (PhD diss., Department of Philosophy, University of Chicago, 1997).

7 Christian Bonnefoi, “Louis Kahn and Minimalism,” October 24 (October 1981): 2–25, 3.

8 Deleuze, What is Philosophy?, 186; Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?, 177.

Figures and Principles