ROOM
An architecture of perception, not predetermination
In this short essay Mariano Cuofano asks what if we re-imagine the concept of ‘room’ from defining a volume with a function towards marking the limits of an inhabitant’s perception? Cuofano is a current Master of Research in Architecture student at the Royal College of Art.
i. The Brittle City
The modern city has become brittle.
As a hard material, the city appears rigid, apparently strong, but with a closer eye it is possible to perceive that this is not the case. The city is full of micro lacerations. Its edges are impossible to manipulate. The edge itself is a material that is not able to be deformed. But the city as a hard material cannot be rearranged with a force applied to its surface, like a ductile material, and therefore it does not perform any other shape rather than its predetermined one. As Richard Sennett argues, It is a material that reveals to be easily breakable under an unsustainable force. This is a metaphor of how architecture, in this moment of history in geographies like London, appears unable to react to inhabitants’ needs and behaviour. Architecture is brittle.
A city, a closed city, appears to be a solid material, whose limits are boundaries, a wall without negotiation, boundaries not borders. In this context ‘rooms’ were already designed following a logic of predetermination, of functional certainty. Yet it is still possible to recognise signs, marks, objects, writings on the wall of our cities. Those marking are the evidence that people are appropriating spaces, are still describing and defining their own ‘rooms’ all over urban areas, especially in zones where the predetermination is strongest. So how can we mark, elect, or still ‘design’ spaces if the presumed urban reality is already determined and shaped as rigid closed systems, as rigid rooms?
ii. Room as an act of edges
This research begins with the definition of room from Pier Vittorio Aureli, in “The rooms of one’s own”. Aureli writes that ‘room’ comes from the archaic English rum, which is similar to the German world Raum (space). This in turn refers to the Latin derivation — rus — , which can be translated as the act of making space.
In this definition the room is not described as a space associated with a specific role in the context where it’s located, for example as a component of an apartment. Rather, ‘room’ here is meant as a volume where phenomena takes place. But what is this volume? How can we understand it or perceive it?
My assumption is that ‘room’ might be equally defined as the edges of inhabitants’ perception.
In this point of view the understanding of ‘room’ loses the value of being a volume. In this vision architecture does not appear anymore as a filter between an interior and an exterior, as a tool to frame the world outside my window. Neither is it a shelter or a nest to come back to at the end of the day. Instead it is both of them at the same time.
iii. Room as vibration
As part of this research I interviewed Rafael Aranda while visiting RCR Arquitectes in Barcelona on 30 January 2019 about their understanding of a room. Aranda described the ‘room’ as the process where an inhabitant elects a space and positions themselves in relation with the vibration of a surrounding reality (interview). In many RCR Arquitectes projects, buildings are not supposed to be a construction with the aim of a function — a room in which to sleep, a room in which to study — but rather a landscape of sleep, a landscape of study (interview). Architecture here generates an extraordinary interaction of vibration finding the perfect shape and position in dialogue with the landscape in which it is positioned.
In this investigation I am trying to capture those vibrations in a performative/ephemeral architecture. A Raum. A corridor. Two inclined asymmetric walls with an intrados vibrant metallic surface, of 50 metres length with a narrow distance between each other.
The walls create a homogeneous, dark surface to generate an indefinite perception, this indefinite perception aims to lower the impact of this installation in contexts it will located. This architecture allows the inhabitant to perceive the surrounding noise in a peculiar sound condition between echo and reverb. Due to its dimensions, this ‘room’ uses the wall as a large diaphragm of micro-vibration captured by the surroundings, allowing the inhabitant to encounter the condition of being deeply connected with the landscape around them even if at the same time not directly in contact.
In Mediterranean cities, or villages, like those in the south of Italy or Greece, it is still possible to recognise how density and diversity give life. In a semi-dark room, with the shutters lowered, to protect oneself from the sun, is usual to hear a noise coming from a square or a street nearby, children playing, a market.
In that moment we could analyse two separate conditions of dwelling, two separate functions and two separate environments, not in direct contact but deeply connected through the inhabitant’s perception.
iv. Room as imagination
Moreover, this perception is completed by the imagination. The phenomenon is not described by their sensorial discernment, a red object rather than blue, instead, in this condition it is generated by an imagination. It is not important to define the exact peculiarities of a phenomenon rather than to understand all those meanings that this phenomenon is generating in an inhabitant’s consciousness, according with Husser’s version of phenomenology.
My installation aims to bring inhabitants close to this condition of dwelling just described. This condition is described by Sennett as an example of ‘open city’, a city where limits are borders, membranes that allows exchange and negotiation, interaction. A membrane is not an open door, but an instrument that filters elements with the exterior to enter/interact with the interior. In the installation the walls filter only a portion of reality.
v. Towards an Architecture of Perception
An architecture based on perception rather then predetermination could represent an alternative to the current expressions of design, according with a negative dialectic . Moreover this research aims to investigate whether an architecture based on perception could enrich the engineering of fragmentation , emphasising phenomena, and describe a narrative of sign, that makes an urban environment alive and open overcoming the actual fragility of the city.
To conclude, this proposal of an installation represents an ephemeral, performative architecture far from common commercial logics of many of the buildings in our cities. Nevertheless, in those kinds of commercial construction modes it is still possible to recognise a value of engagement with the inhabitants that most cities or rooms, have lost. This investigation aims to describe another possible architecture starting from the smallest possible ideal volume, the room, the room of everyone’s own, the room everyone perceives.
Bibliography
Rafael Aranda. (2019) Interview 30th January 2019.
Marc Augè. (1992) Non-Places. Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. Available at : https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/122106/mod_resource/content/1/Marc%20Augé%20Non-Places-%20An%20Introduction%20to%20Supermodernity%20%202009.pdf
Pier Vittorio Aureli (2018 ). The rooms of one’s own, the architecture of the (private) room. Dogma. 18 December 2017.
Aldo Masullo (2018) “La frattura fenomenologica e la nuova antropologia” 9th april 2018 Available at :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHKw2IuL7Zo&t=2484s
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1945) Phenomenology of Perception Available at : http://alfa-omnia.com/resources/Phenomenology+of+Perception.pdf
Richard Sennett (2013). The Open City. 20th October 2013 Available at : https://www.richardsennett.com/site/senn/UploadedResources/The%20Open%20City.pdf
Richard Sennett (2013). Quant. 22nd July 2008 Available at : https://www.richardsennett.com/site/senn/templates/general2.aspx?pageid=16&cc=gb
