Sunday, September 22, 2013

PRIVACY/HIDDEN/IMGAINATION

THE HIDDEN - implication of privacy?

There was a commonplace analogy in 17 century literature that compared a man's soul to a privy chamber, then the significance of the separation of public and private space is arguably analogous to the containment of inner spirituality.

Dividing the house into two domains, an inner sanctuary of inhabited, sometimes disconnected rooms, and unoccupied circulation space, it came a recognizably modern definition of privacy. Kerr made diagrams that reduced house plans to these two categories of 1) trajectory 2) position, proposing that their proper arrangement was the substratum upon which both architecture and domesticity were to be raised.

In 19 century,  the matrix of connected rooms (Rafael's lineage) is replaced by the corridor plan (Kerr), which is not carnal, and sees the body as a vessel of mind and spirit, and in which privacy is habitual.  The architecture in the last two centuries incidentally reduced daily life to a private shadow-play and might need a kick-back of such passionate architecture that recognizes passion, carnality and sociality.

THE HIDDEN - to escape observation/ to create variation - challenge the principle presumed/ imagination versus rationalization




THE RECHERCHE

What is it to illustrate the concept of the hidden, then?

Thoughts 1: The truth of reality is hidden in imagination - “The material world abounds with very strict analogies to the immaterial; and thus some color of truth has been given to the rhetorical dogma, that metaphor, or simile, may be made to strengthen an argument, as well as to embellish a description. Maybe the truth lies in the rhetoric metaphor rather than the material reality? And the truth is hidden within the material realm but could be revealed in a spiritual rhetoric?

This reminds me of Hegel saying that art in some sense is more true than reality itself. It is to allow us to contemplate and enjoy created images of our own spiritual freedom—images that are beautiful precisely because they give expression to our freedom. Art's purpose, in other words, is to enable us to bring to mind the truth about ourselves, and so to become aware of who we truly are. Art is there not just for art's sake, but for beauty's sake, that is, for the sake of a distinctively sensuous form of human self-expression and self-understanding.

Thoughts 2: The hidden will translated into the retainment of privacy in space.

Thoughts 3: Negation of expectation

I would try out the first concept first and try to translate such intangible idea into manipulable architectural language. To be more explicit, for instance, a book has its material implication of being readable, but also immaterial implication as the carrier of knowledge or associations with reading experience. To disappear the material while giving out its immaterial implication is what hidden means to me.

HOW TO TRANSLATE the concept into architecture then? The implied space? To hint that the space was there and its enclosure, and then remove the actual wall and imply the space - like the figure ground relationship; in three dimensional space, the volumetric spaces shaped or implied by the placement of solid objects are as important as, or more important than, the objects themselves.

Then the first four rooms should provide the enclosure experience as a primer and simultaneously imply the contour of the fifth room.

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