Arch 716 Rough Draft

A Personal Experience of Architecture

A superficial experience of architecture is created by lack of attention to detail and materiality. Contemporary superficial society is largely based on imagery which is mostly meaningless. The question that needs to be raised then is what provides meaning and content in our society and, by extension, our architecture.
Capitalist society requires a large commitment to mass market advertisements which is trending more and more towards imagery and less and less towards written or spoken language. This imagery intends to manipulate the emotions and feelings of the viewer in order to achieve a task which could be either selling something or persuading someone to do something. It is not a matter of imagery being meaningless, but rather what meaning is the imagery portraying? A blank sheet of paper still portrays meaning in some sense.
Architecture also conveys meaning through imagery and through materiality. Superficial imagery in architecture could be as simple as the cultural meanings placed on a decorative column for example. Meaning is associated with the column through historical association. In a typical suburban house for example, the column is merely a covering over a much simpler post which is doing the structural work. Superficial. In some way this intends to manipulate our feelings and emotions and convince us of a certain social standing of the people living in the house. Superficial.
The IIT student center in Chicago plays the same game. Walking into the student center there is an immediate reaction to the space through your senses.

Coffee is brewing at the coffee shop to the right and the smell is wafting through the space making me want to buy one. Superficial.

The space is exceptionally noisy, not from the elevated train passing above, but from the abundance of activity occurring under the low ceiling height and all of it adds up to meaningless background noise. Superficial.

Visually the compilation of materials (unfinished green board on the ceiling, aluminum tile on the floor, glass, concrete, oddly painted stucco) confuses the composition of the building and makes a person feel lost. Superficial.

Contrast this to Crown Hall just one block away.

Visually the building is a blank canvas allowing the exterior to with the interior yet still clearly defining an interior space.

There is limited noise within the space which in turn encourages you to reduce your own noise; it is self-perpetuating.

The ambient smell is largely unnoticeable causing you to realize your own smell (good or bad) or that of your immediate surroundings.

The texture of the materials is extremely smooth and causes you to realize the landscape of your own hand; for instance where the calluses are.

The subject of this argument is experience. Specifically, the subject of the experience is the subject of the argument. The IIT student center imposes an experience on you. A heroic image of Mies Van Der Rohe covers one entryway to the building. IIT clothing is displayed in the storefronts of the bookstore; not the books which are the basis for the educational experience. Everywhere you turn there is something to buy. The building could not serve as anything other than a shopping center in today’s society. Crown Hall however, could be anything. The power of the building is in the ability to draw attention to the individual person. It is an introspective and personal experience. I am more aware of myself and my feelings through the interaction of the five senses. The materials are the medium through which this happens.

San Francisco Emotion Map

This is on display at the Graham Foundation.
http://sf.biomapping.net/map.htm