10 Dec

How have the past fifteen weeks changed your outlook on architecture?

At the start of the program, it was recommended that we try and forget everything we have learned about architecture and all the famous buildings we have studied. At first this seemed a little strange but then we began visiting places we had heard lectures on in arch history or used as case studies, and seeing them and walking through them was completely different then seeing them in pictures. I begin to question the reason why but didn’t find an answer until I visited Peter Zumthor’s Thermal baths in Vals, Switzerland. I could recall a lecture in the Berg Gallery that Henry de Hahn gave on the building talking about Zumthor’s theories and drawings and ideas for the building, his descriptions sounded amazing and Zumthor’s symbolism of a rock piercing the snow on the mountain side fit in perfectly with the typography and surrounding site, but, once I was there I realized that none of those things were important. What was important was the experience of moving through the spaces and using them for what they were created for. Pictures can try to capture it and people can try and describe it, nothing beats seeing it and experiencing it on your own. I realize now that many of my teachers have tried to get me to think about the experience of the occupants through writing stories of how one might move through or use the space, and thinking about the space itself and perhaps even moods or emotions it may evoke, but I didn’t completely understand this until now.