Author Archives: architectureisfiction

Flaubert said, “I have always done my utmost to get into the soul of things.”[i] The famed novelist was not interested in communicating his impressions or judgements of things. He aimed, instead, at metaphorical truth that, as Walker Percy argued, is the artist’s job to render visible. As should be clear by now, I do notContinue reading “Experience is informational”

If architectural theories driven by ideas of pure or direct or at least relatively unmediated relations of the senses to works of architecture aren’t necessary or particularly useful, what is? It is easy to disparage, but harder to discover or invent new ways of working. Most architectural theory and criticism can be classified in twoContinue reading “Aren’t necessary”

Juhani Pallasmaa imagines architecture as a beautiful thing with which we commune and form relationships. “A work of art functions as another person,” he writes, “with whom one unconsciously converses. When confronting a work of art we project our emotions and feeling on to the work.”[i] There is something comforting in this description. Perhaps it’s theContinue reading “Phenomenological approaches”

Placebos? Beliefs? Imagination? Yes. The shift toward the use of data in architectural research – manifest in gaze-tracking devices, fMRI scans, ArcGIS mapping, etc. – combined with the ongoing modernist faith in architecture as a tool of truth, justice, etc. (decried in the “Reading Between the Lines” essay under “More” on this blog’s header) blindContinue reading “The totality constituting experience”

Overt narratives, architecture of the postmodern era and Disney, and the heavy-handed conceptual overlays of the worst formalisms likely come to mind when the word information is used in connection to architecture. This is unfortunate as it blinds the discipline to its essential nature, if such a phrase as essential nature will be pardoned inContinue reading “But as mere stimuli”

Italo Calvino tells a story of emperor Charlemagne’s enchantment. The story follows Charlemagne’s abdication of responsibilities due to his overwhelming passion for and devotion to a young German girl. This blindering passion and devotion shift to the girl’s corpse after her untimely death. He has the body embalmed and placed in his bedchamber. Suspecting magic,Continue reading “Information not perceived as information”

Architects talk about experience in strange ways. Educating (indoctrinating?) students on (into) this special way of encountering the world is one of the first pedagogical missions of most architecture schools. It is rooted in at least two traditions. The older of these is the Beaux Arts’ concern for representing the world in precise and beautifullyContinue reading “Creating information”

It is worthwhile to get a little more specific about what is meant in these pages by “information.” The pithiest version is something like: information is a state of things that could have been different than it is/than they are and that specific difference has the potential to be understood. Computers, for example, can recordContinue reading “Structuring the environment”

There is an element of truth in every good lie. And in the most common errors. Does the moon radiate light? Thinkers going back at least to Parmenides in the early fifth century BCE understood that the moon was not a generator of light but merely reflected the light of the sun.[i] Still, whenever we doContinue reading “Surfaces can be rendered as radiant or ambient”

Italo Calvino celebrated poet Giacomo Leopardi’s evocation of the moon. Its light. Calvino states that Leopardi could “cast the light of the moon on the whole poem” in just a few lines, or “project upon it the shadow of its absence.”[i] This is powerful but mysterious description. More importantly, Calvino’s description evokes the magic of whichContinue reading “Radiating and illuminating”