If architectural settings are rooted equally in the indefinable qualities of consciousness and yet subject to shared affordances, as argued above, it is hard not to side with skeptics about our prospects for making spaces perceivable as settings by all or most people. Affordances are invariant. Evolutionarily given. Consciousness is ephemeral, vague, perhaps unreal. To put the problem bluntly, we can’t readily conceive matter bridging these two realms either by design or by accident.
To gain perspective, imagine exploring another planet and discovering a single room constructed by an alien species of which we have no knowledge and for which no other evidence exists than the room itself. Our analysis would begin by projecting the names we carry with us: ‘ceiling,’ ‘floor,’ ‘walls,’ indeed ‘room’ itself. We would project our notions of completeness/incompleteness and note that it appears to be an intentionally designed single room structure and not a remnant of a once much larger construction or the tentative first phase of a much larger but abandoned project. From there, we would note the specificities: the room is tall, twice as tall as a typical human-made room, but small in footprint; we measure and find it to be 5 meters tall but only 2 meters in width and length. We would proceed from the known and quantifiable to the departures from our understanding: in this case, there are two openings on opposing walls, but we are torn between calling these windows or doors; both openings start at the ceiling but stop a meter from the floor; and both are a mere half meter wide. Other aspects of form are ultimately confounding: is the two-inch deep ledge that is approximately 2 meters above the floor on the otherwise uninterrupted walls for hanging things from or propping things upon? Is it an artifact of construction necessity or aesthetic intent? Could it be a bench for tall and oddly proportioned beings?
After a long day of exploring, we settle onto the red stone floor and decide to take shelter until morning. Sitting cross-legged across from one another, we begin to speculate. Eventually, two broad questions emerge: what can we know about the original occupants of this room, and how do we understand it as a setting for our own occupation?
The first question is unanswerable in any definitive sense. We can speculate based on the proportion of the room and its openings that the unknown species is/was very tall and slender. From the shape of the stone blocks used and tool marks found, an archaeological-like analysis might allow us to draw some analogical conclusions regarding species strength or technological advancement or both. Further speculation along with sifting through the detritus may support reasonable assertions about the room’s use – storage of resources, preparing of food, or cleansing of the body being the functions most likely to leave a detectable trace. But, in the absence of corroborating evidence, we could be very wrong on all counts. The room’s proportions could have been dictated by a sacred artifact or a specialized piece of equipment that have no relation to the alien species bodies. Even the construction technologies and materials used might be contingent on this location, or dictated by a myth or religious doctrine, or part of a traditional design aesthetic intended to recall their culture’s past (as we still occasionally build log cabins and stone temples).
Etc.
And etc.
While conjecture tells us nothing definitive about the species who built the room, every failure above and many more are answers to the second question: how do we understand the room as a setting (for us). The entire range of the individual-social continuum introduced in Meditation 52 “Choreographing Their Movements” can be brought to bear on this room and how it exists as a setting for humans even though it was not designed for us.
The moment we walk into the alien room as inhabitants, it is measured in relation to us individually and socially – and these are united in inhabitation. To truly understand this, it is important that we distance ourselves from Maurice Merleau-Ponty and others who argue that bodily awareness is not a form of perception, but a primitive given.[i] More recent studies of bodily awareness highlight, instead, the relation of body and environment and the mixing of perceptual and proprioceptive information necessary to understand ourselves as bodies in the environment.[ii] Individuals’ awareness of their bodies, of the world, and their relations to the world are inseparable.
The fragile-, ad hoc-, make-believe-supporting- nature of consciousness meets affordances halfway it seems.
If the moment we walk into the room as inhabitants it is measured in relation to us individually and socially united, it is also measured in terms of affordances and consciousness united. “Affordances are properties taken with reference to the observer. They are neither physical nor phenomenal.”[iii] When affordances are perceived correctly and in keeping with expectations, we say things look like what they are: that red stone is a floor, those are walls, and the ones above are a ceiling. Those that are commensurate with the bodies of observers are easier to identify than those detached from bodily measures: the ledge is not recognizable as a bench because it is too high and too shallow; but because we have some hooks and a map to hang, it is a picture rail. Of course, things may be misperceived, and some affordances may not match our expectations:[iv] the proportion of apertures on opposite walls are too narrow and too high from the floor to function comfortably as doorways (they are better windows) but our need for ingress and egress transforms them into doorways. The fragile-, ad hoc-, make-believe-supporting- nature of consciousness meets affordances halfway it seems. As Gibson said of affordances, perhaps consciousness is not physical or phenomenal but referential.
[i] Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, translated by Colin Smith, (London: Routledge, 1995).
[ii] Seeman, The Shared World, 107.
[iii] Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, 135.
[iv] Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, 134.
Architecture is Fiction 