FURNISHING THE CITY
SOUNDINGS FOR ARCHITECTURE PRESENTATION. JYVÄSKYLÄ, FINLAND
The theme of the workshop Furnishing Public Space implies the introduction of secondary layer upon an existing context, not unlike how one would furnish an interior space based on one’s preference for the atmospheric qualities, such as the choice of colors and materials as well as the appropriate disposition of furniture and fittings. The word furnishing therefore creates an interesting bridge between collective experience of the city and that of the interior, private realm of the individual. It also allow a reading of the city at different scale and vice versa for the interior environment. Wasn’t it Louis Kahn who described the plan as a society of rooms? By extension, can the city be considered a gathering of many large rooms?
Consumption and Public Space (Desire)
“Nothing is made unless it is desirable” wrote George Kubler in the Shape of Time. The human desire for comfort, security, communication, entertainment, exploration, adventure, self -preservation and expressions has led to a development of a whole range of objects that came to be defined as the material culture of the 21st century. The cultural critic Federic Jameson described the phenomena as the third stage of capitalist development where consumer capitalism forms the core emphasis in the economy. Instead of producing goods, the focus is on the creation of needs and desires through creative marketing and selling. The project by Rem Koolhass for Prada is a good example where the boundary between consumption and life is blurred. Instead of moving through a conventional shop space, one participates in the diverse activities organized in the form of a theatrical experience. It is a seamless interface between body and product, lifestyle and life, nature and artifice. Is this a sign of emerging public spaces to come?
I like to propose that we extend the definition of desire in this workshop to encompass beyond the materialistic and mundane world of consumption. As an ally, I wish to use Wim Wender’s flim, Wings of Desire as a point of reference. The film traces the journey of an angel, Damiel, who chooses to give up his purely spiritual existence to become human- to see the world at eye level and be able to love like any human being. It is the surrender of an existence of eternal grace and perfection for a life of living in tension between the spiritual and the everyday. Therefore, desire is not only just a moving towards but the oscillation between one pole and another. This recognition of the tension is important, as architecture is that space between.
The Street- Mediated and Geographic Space (Experience)
Louis Kahn described the street as a room that is made possible by agreement and the first community place in the city. It is the space that first greets you as you step out from the private realm. A whole variety of things, activities and exchanges occur in the streets and they affect how we experience it. Experience is related to duration and therefore time. Experience is mediated and never pure. Experience is dialogical as it requires our active and continuing participation and engagement with the multiplicity and flux of inter-related events and phenomena. What emerging configurations and patterns of life will affect our experience of the street? What has persisted and endured through time? How can the street accommodate these differences?
Brand and Experience (Navigation)
The establishment of a brand is not unlike the forging of an identity- one which the public will recognize and remember. In one of the paragraphs of the introduction to Jyvasklya, it was noted that the workshop organizers have established a number of areas, which could potentially be developed as a strategic plan for the New Jyvasklya. However, unlike a product, which can be easily controlled, manipulated and marketed with a singular vision or identity, a city is not a can of soup or a sports shoe. It comprises of many participants and interests groups, each with very different sets of values and beliefs. It is therefore, very important that the inhabitants of Jyvaskyla, whether permanent or transient, feel that they have a voice in the decision making process through consultations, publications, exhibitions and conferences like these. Riots during the G8 summit in Genoa and the racial tensions between the Asian and local communities in the UK are manifestations of emerging disenchantments among marginalized groups in the city.
Concept
I like to propose that we look at the word VESSEL as a conceptual armature in furnishing the axis from the new modal station to the existing downtown shopping street.
Unlike the word Object or Thing, VESSEL/S can be read as both CONTAINER and as CONDUIT- both a body and a passage- the space in which a body fluid is conveyed or circulated.This duality of meaning offers an interesting way to look at material culture as objects become carriers of the manifold layers of meanings, symbolisms, associations and scale. In botany, vessels are the fluid-conducting tissues vital to the survival of flowering plants. While in physiological structure of our body, arteries and veins form the two main types of vessels. The street in the city is a vessel that invites participation, exchange and engagement.
As containers, cups are vessels for drinking in our everyday lives. They can, however, take on religious significance as liturgical vessels:
The Chalice - a cup used in the celebration of the Christian Eucharist.
The Ciboriums - a vessel fabricated to contain the consecrated Eucharistic bread of the Christian Church.
Trains, Airplanes, Ships and Cars are also vessels, although of a different scale. Moving vessels that carry bodies and things.
Musical instruments are vessels that produce sound which we organize and compose to form melodies or tunes.
Whether they are containers or conduits, vessels are spatial. Reading objects as vessels offers a resistant to the reduction of our everyday lives to pure production and consumption of the world as images. Vessels possess depth, thickness and duration.
Alchemical Vessels
While navigating the depth of cyberspace with the word vessel, I came across a series of alchemical vessels that were used for various purposes like distillation, calcinations and dissolution. Although alchemy is commonly perceived to be attempts to transform base materials into more elevated forms like gold in the 14th and 15th century, the practice is also concerned with the inner development of the self- a process of individuation, which aims to provide an anchor amidst unpredictable emotional and environmental conflict.
However, I am not suggesting that we revert to such practices but to constantly remind ourselves that as architects and designers, we have to strive and maintain a consciousness that sees relationships between all levels of existence, the connectivity of lives and the tensional relationship between the profane and the spiritual, animate and inanimate worlds. The vessels that were used by the alchemist become a springboard for possibilities of locating vessels in space. Despite their rather intriguing forms, the individual vessel is part of a larger network of connections and configurations. The manner which one vessel connects with the other or in the modern term interface with each other suggest complementary of function and purpose. The vessels are not isolated entities although they have distinct forms.
What various levels of connectivity and exchange exist in modern vessels of our time and how will they contribute to the experience and navigation of our own body, which is another vessel among the many drifting in the field of Jyvasklya?
What are the modes of control and channeling?
Proposal
Situated along the street/axis are a number of vessels that have corresponding manifestations in emotive, tensional and associative qualities. These vessels are linked at various levels to form a connective network that may contribute to the overall cultural aspirations of Jyvaskyla.
Vessels of Imagination: Possible Certainties and Certain Possibilities
Vessels of Hope: Belief and Desire
Vessels of Contemplation: Reflection and Quietude
Vessels of Rest: Anchoring and Moving Vessels (Animate/Inanimate)
Vessels of Knowledge: Wisdom and Information
SOUNDINGS FOR ARCHITECTURE PRESENTATION. JYVÄSKYLÄ, FINLAND
The theme of the workshop Furnishing Public Space implies the introduction of secondary layer upon an existing context, not unlike how one would furnish an interior space based on one’s preference for the atmospheric qualities, such as the choice of colors and materials as well as the appropriate disposition of furniture and fittings. The word furnishing therefore creates an interesting bridge between collective experience of the city and that of the interior, private realm of the individual. It also allow a reading of the city at different scale and vice versa for the interior environment. Wasn’t it Louis Kahn who described the plan as a society of rooms? By extension, can the city be considered a gathering of many large rooms?
Consumption and Public Space (Desire)
“Nothing is made unless it is desirable” wrote George Kubler in the Shape of Time. The human desire for comfort, security, communication, entertainment, exploration, adventure, self -preservation and expressions has led to a development of a whole range of objects that came to be defined as the material culture of the 21st century. The cultural critic Federic Jameson described the phenomena as the third stage of capitalist development where consumer capitalism forms the core emphasis in the economy. Instead of producing goods, the focus is on the creation of needs and desires through creative marketing and selling. The project by Rem Koolhass for Prada is a good example where the boundary between consumption and life is blurred. Instead of moving through a conventional shop space, one participates in the diverse activities organized in the form of a theatrical experience. It is a seamless interface between body and product, lifestyle and life, nature and artifice. Is this a sign of emerging public spaces to come?
I like to propose that we extend the definition of desire in this workshop to encompass beyond the materialistic and mundane world of consumption. As an ally, I wish to use Wim Wender’s flim, Wings of Desire as a point of reference. The film traces the journey of an angel, Damiel, who chooses to give up his purely spiritual existence to become human- to see the world at eye level and be able to love like any human being. It is the surrender of an existence of eternal grace and perfection for a life of living in tension between the spiritual and the everyday. Therefore, desire is not only just a moving towards but the oscillation between one pole and another. This recognition of the tension is important, as architecture is that space between.
The Street- Mediated and Geographic Space (Experience)
Louis Kahn described the street as a room that is made possible by agreement and the first community place in the city. It is the space that first greets you as you step out from the private realm. A whole variety of things, activities and exchanges occur in the streets and they affect how we experience it. Experience is related to duration and therefore time. Experience is mediated and never pure. Experience is dialogical as it requires our active and continuing participation and engagement with the multiplicity and flux of inter-related events and phenomena. What emerging configurations and patterns of life will affect our experience of the street? What has persisted and endured through time? How can the street accommodate these differences?
Brand and Experience (Navigation)
The establishment of a brand is not unlike the forging of an identity- one which the public will recognize and remember. In one of the paragraphs of the introduction to Jyvasklya, it was noted that the workshop organizers have established a number of areas, which could potentially be developed as a strategic plan for the New Jyvasklya. However, unlike a product, which can be easily controlled, manipulated and marketed with a singular vision or identity, a city is not a can of soup or a sports shoe. It comprises of many participants and interests groups, each with very different sets of values and beliefs. It is therefore, very important that the inhabitants of Jyvaskyla, whether permanent or transient, feel that they have a voice in the decision making process through consultations, publications, exhibitions and conferences like these. Riots during the G8 summit in Genoa and the racial tensions between the Asian and local communities in the UK are manifestations of emerging disenchantments among marginalized groups in the city.
Concept
I like to propose that we look at the word VESSEL as a conceptual armature in furnishing the axis from the new modal station to the existing downtown shopping street.
Unlike the word Object or Thing, VESSEL/S can be read as both CONTAINER and as CONDUIT- both a body and a passage- the space in which a body fluid is conveyed or circulated.This duality of meaning offers an interesting way to look at material culture as objects become carriers of the manifold layers of meanings, symbolisms, associations and scale. In botany, vessels are the fluid-conducting tissues vital to the survival of flowering plants. While in physiological structure of our body, arteries and veins form the two main types of vessels. The street in the city is a vessel that invites participation, exchange and engagement.
As containers, cups are vessels for drinking in our everyday lives. They can, however, take on religious significance as liturgical vessels:
The Chalice - a cup used in the celebration of the Christian Eucharist.
The Ciboriums - a vessel fabricated to contain the consecrated Eucharistic bread of the Christian Church.
Trains, Airplanes, Ships and Cars are also vessels, although of a different scale. Moving vessels that carry bodies and things.
Musical instruments are vessels that produce sound which we organize and compose to form melodies or tunes.
Whether they are containers or conduits, vessels are spatial. Reading objects as vessels offers a resistant to the reduction of our everyday lives to pure production and consumption of the world as images. Vessels possess depth, thickness and duration.
Alchemical Vessels
While navigating the depth of cyberspace with the word vessel, I came across a series of alchemical vessels that were used for various purposes like distillation, calcinations and dissolution. Although alchemy is commonly perceived to be attempts to transform base materials into more elevated forms like gold in the 14th and 15th century, the practice is also concerned with the inner development of the self- a process of individuation, which aims to provide an anchor amidst unpredictable emotional and environmental conflict.
However, I am not suggesting that we revert to such practices but to constantly remind ourselves that as architects and designers, we have to strive and maintain a consciousness that sees relationships between all levels of existence, the connectivity of lives and the tensional relationship between the profane and the spiritual, animate and inanimate worlds. The vessels that were used by the alchemist become a springboard for possibilities of locating vessels in space. Despite their rather intriguing forms, the individual vessel is part of a larger network of connections and configurations. The manner which one vessel connects with the other or in the modern term interface with each other suggest complementary of function and purpose. The vessels are not isolated entities although they have distinct forms.
What various levels of connectivity and exchange exist in modern vessels of our time and how will they contribute to the experience and navigation of our own body, which is another vessel among the many drifting in the field of Jyvasklya?
What are the modes of control and channeling?
Proposal
Situated along the street/axis are a number of vessels that have corresponding manifestations in emotive, tensional and associative qualities. These vessels are linked at various levels to form a connective network that may contribute to the overall cultural aspirations of Jyvaskyla.
Vessels of Imagination: Possible Certainties and Certain Possibilities
Vessels of Hope: Belief and Desire
Vessels of Contemplation: Reflection and Quietude
Vessels of Rest: Anchoring and Moving Vessels (Animate/Inanimate)
Vessels of Knowledge: Wisdom and Information