senses
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The inhumanity of contemporary architecture
The inhumanity of contemporary architecture and cities can be understood as the consequence of the neglect of the body and the senses, and an imbalance in our sensory system.
The art of the eye has certainly produced imposing and thought-provoking structures, but it has not facilitated human rootedness in the world.
Modernist design at large has housed the intellect and the eye, but it has left the body and the other senses, as well as our memories, imagination and dreams, homeless.
Art as art
If modern painting is "art as art," this means, to paraphrase Reinhardt, that is represents nothing and exists only in and for itself. If this has created an "art language, with an art communication," this is because this kind of art has implied all along a form of intimate contact with its viewer, in which the viewing of "art as art" becomes "sensation as sensation" or "perception as perception." This distinguishes "modern painting" from representational painting, which exhibits duality, that is, it uses imagery to refer to "past experiences and feeling," and to "color and reconstruct in the mind" associations that are meaningful, but that take the viewer far away from the specifics of the encounter with the painting before them.
Substitutes for the thermal experience
Such clues from other senses can become so strongly associated with a sense of coolness or warmth that they can occasionally substitute for the thermal experience itself. For example, the taste of mint seems refreshing and cool regardless of what temperature it is. Similarly, the pressure of heavy blankets conveys a feeling of warmth quite independent of their actual thermal qualities.
A hierarchical system of sense
During the Renaissance, the five senses were understood to form a hierarchical system from the highest sense of vision down to touch. Vision was correlated to fire and light, hearing to air, smell to vapour, taste to water, and touch to earth.
Extensions of the tactile sense
"Touch is the parent of our eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. It is the sense which became differentiated into the others." — Ashley Montagu
All the senses, including vision, are extensions of the tactile sense; the senses are specializations of skin tissue, and all sensory experiences are modes of touching, and thus related to tactility.
The totality of its sensory stimulation
Perhaps the human fascination with fire stems from the totality of its sensory stimulation. The fire gives a flickering and glowing light, ever moving, ever changing. It crackles and hisses and fills the room with the smells of smoke and wood and perhaps even food. It penetrates us with its warmth. Every sense is stimulated and all of their associated modes of perception, such as memory and an awareness of time, are also brought into play, focused on the one experience of the fire. Together they create such an intense feeling of reality, of the "here and nowness" of the moment, that the fire becomes completely captivating.
A simple pleasure that comes from just using it
People have a sense of warmth and coolness, a thermal sense like sight or smell, although it is not normally counted in the traditional list of our five senses.
As with all our other senses, there seems to be a simple pleasure that comes from just using it, letting it provide us with bits of information about the world around, using it to explore and learn, or just to notice.
There is a basic difference, however, between our thermal sense and all of our other senses. When our thermal sensors tell us an object is cold, that object is already making us colder. If, on the other hand, I look at a red object it won't make me grow redder, nor will touching a bump object make me bumpy.
Beauty and compression
An Article by Scott AlexanderThe Buddha discusses states of extreme bliss attainable through meditation:
Secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, a bhikkhu enters and dwells in the first jhāna, which is accompanied by thought and examination, with rapture and happiness born of seclusion.
...If you could really concentrate on a metronome, it would be more blissful than a symphony. The jhāna is also a strong contender as a theory of beauty: beauty is that which is compressible but has not already been compressed.
The primacy of interpretation over sensation
A Fragment by Mark LibermanOur memory of exact word sequences usually fades more quickly than our memory of (contextually interpreted) meanings.
More broadly, the exact auditory sensations normally fade very quickly; the corresponding word sequences fade a bit more slowly; and the interpreted meanings last longest.
These generalizations can be overcome to some extent if the sound or the text has especially memorable characteristics. (And the question of what "memorable" means in this context is interesting.)
Suburban Nation
A system for living
Unlike the traditional neighborhood model, which evolved organically as a response to human needs, suburban sprawl is an idealized artificial system. It is not without a certain beauty: it is rational, consistent, and comprehensive. Its performance is largely predictable. It is an outgrowth of modern problem solving: a system for living. Unfortunately, this system is already showing itself to be unsustainable.
The five components of sprawl
The dominant characteristic of sprawl is that each component is strictly segregated from the others.
- Housing subdivisions, also called clusters and pods
- Shopping centers, also called strip centers, shopping malls, and big-box retail
- Office parks and business parks
- Civic institutions
- Roadways
Subdivisions
Subdivisions can be identified as such by their contrived names, which tend toward the romantic—Pheasant Mill Crossing—and often pay tribute to the natural or historic resource they have displaced.
An unmade omelet
The successes of turn-of-the-century planning, represented in America by the City Beautiful movement, became the foundation of a new profession, and ever since, planners have repeatedly attempted to relive that moment of glory by separating everything from everything else. This segregation, once applied only to incompatible uses, is now applied to every use. A typical contemporary zoning code has several dozen land-use designations; not only is housing separated from industry but low-density housing is separated from medium-density housing, which is separated from high-density housing. Medical offices are separated from general offices, which are in turn separated from restaurants and shopping.
As a result, the new American city has been likened to an unmade omelet: eggs, cheese, vegetables, a pinch of salt, but each consumed in turn, raw.
Beauty and function
In truth, a lot of sprawl—primarily affluent areas—could be considered beautiful. This raises a fundamental point: the problem with suburbia is not that it is ugly. The problem with suburbia is that, in spite of all its regulatory controls, it is not functional: it simply does not efficiently serve society or preserve the environment.
Six qualities of traditional neighborhoods
- The center
- The five-minute walk
- The street network
- Narrow, versatile streets
- Mixed use
- Special sites for special buildings
Market segments
The segregation of housing by “market segment” is a phenomenon that was invented by developers who, lacking a meaningful way to distinguish their mass-produced merchandise, began selling the concept of exclusivity: If you live within these gates, you can consider yourself a success.
Cookie cutter
One term that gets a lot of play these days is “cookie cutter.” Developers are mortified about the way this term is used to describe their subdivisions, and they expend a good deal of energy—and money—avoiding it. As much as 20 percent of their construction budget goes toward the application of superficial variety—different shapes, colors, window types, different styles of tack-on ornament, French Provincial next door to California Contemporary. But these efforts are in vain, because beneath the surface articulation is a relentless repetition of the same building. The best way to create real variety is to vary not the architectural style but the building type. Indeed, in places like Georgetown, styles vary only slightly, but one never hears the term cookie cutter, thanks to the wide range of building types.
Worthwhile destinations
Pedestrian life cannot exist in the absence of worthwhile destinations that are easily accessible on foot. This is a condition that modern suburbia fails to satisfy, since it strives to keep all commercial activity well separated from housing.
The twenty-minute house
Despite the way that it sounds, the “twenty-minute house” is not a derogatory label. Quite the opposite—it refers to the fact that a house has only twenty minutes to win the affection of a potential buyer, since that is the average length of a realtor visit. The building industry has responded to this phenomenon by creating a product that is at its best for the first twenty minutes that one is in it.
Like trying to cure obesity by loosening your belt
“Trying to cure traffic congestion by adding more capacity is like trying to cure obesity by loosening your belt.”
Homebuilders
The term homebuilder describes the house as a product that exists independent of its context. This approach would be appropriate if houses floated freely in space, or in some other environment where actual interaction between neighbors was neither possible nor desired. But houses are not meant to exist in isolation, so to think of the individual house as the ultimate outcome of the builder’s craft robs that craft of its broader significance.
The cul-de-sac kid
In this environment where all activities are segregated and distances are measured on the odometer, a child’s personal mobility extends no farther than the edge of the subdivision. Even the local softball field often exists beyond the child’s independent reach.
The result is a new phenomenon: the “cul-de-sac kid,” the child who lives as a prisoner of a thoroughly safe and unchallenging environment.
This “isolation and boredom” is the outcome of an environment that fails to provide teenagers with the ordinary challenges of maturing, developing useful skills, and gaining a sense of self.
On-site parking
Most cities require new and renovated buildings to provide their own parking on site. This is probably the single greatest killer of urbanism in the United States today. It prevents the renovation of old buildings, since there is inadequate room on their sites for new parking; it encourages the construction of anti-pedestrian building types in which the building sits behind or hovers above a parking lot; it eliminates street life, since everyone parks immediately adjacent to their destination and has no reason to use the sidewalk; finally, it results in a low density of development that can keep a downtown from achieving critical mass.
Architectural mysticism
In response to their growing sense of insignificance, some architects have tried to regain a sense of power through what can best be described as mysticism. By importing arcane ideas from unrelated disciplines—such as contemporary French literary theory (now outdated) —by developing illegible techniques of representation, and by shrouding their work in inscrutable jargon, designers are creating increasingly smaller realms of communication, in order that they might inhabit a domain in which they possess some degree of control. Nowhere is this crisis more evident than in the most prestigious architecture schools.
Globally, locally, regionally
Think globally, act locally, but plan regionally.