Place and Occasion Mean More

“. . . place and occasion mean more.” -- Contested Divisions between the Inside of Occasion and the Tempo of Place

William T Willoughby Louisiana Tech University

“Space has no room, time not a moment for us. We are excluded. “In order to be included -- to help our homecoming -- we must be gathered into their meaning (we are the subject as well as the object of architecture). “Whatever space and time mean, place and occasion mean more. “For space in our image is place, and time in our image is occasion.” – Aldo van Eyck

INTRODUCTION

Space and time are interrelated facts; they are extensive and infinite and yet, if taken in small sections, they can be measurable. Scientific knowledge of these two conditions has changed considerably over the last 400 years. Natural science has connected time and space at the profoundly disparate scales of the atom and the universe. As inheritors of the twentieth century, we have witnessed the atom split only to discover the power of stars. Awesome in some ways and impoverished in others, the scientific approach considers the definition of, the extent to, and the attributes of time and space – yet excludes their meanings. Long before Einstein, space and time were bound together in mysterious, relative ways; basic to our human origins is a poetic and artistic sense of space and time, humanized as place and occasion, and ordered by architecture. As Aldo van Eyck wrote, “Whatever space and time mean, place and occasion mean more.”1

This essay expounds on Aldo van Eyck’s contesting of divisions between place and occasion. Aldo van Eyck purported a world-view that runs counter to the rational systematization of traditional Western thinking – especially evident in Post-World War II Modern architecture (CIAM). This essay explores the distinctions, relations, and interdependencies between space and place, time and occasion, and place and occasion. Also, the paper explores and extends Aldo van Eyck’s thoughts concerning paradox, continuum, in-between, looped borders, and architecture as microcosm – architecture, understood to be a receptacle for well-being, an encompassing interior realm that provides humanity with a welcome and life-affirming place in the world.

PART ONE: Born of Paradox

The roots of Western thought are rife with paradoxical relations. Early Greek philosophers stood in wonder at the repeated miracle of motion and change. Western thought manifested around the attempt to discover the basic and unchanging matter out of which the universe is made; phenomena was regarded as transient modification of this solid, permanent reality. The thoughts of Heracleitus are born of this basic paradoxy, between transience and permanence. Observation of basic phenomena in nature reveals these fundamental opposites that form paradoxical pairs, inseparably co-joined -- earth and sky, fire and water, day and night, light and dark. For Heracleitus, truth was found in paradox – opposites paired in harmonious unity. As Heracleitus says, “The attunement of the world is of opposite tensions [the strife of opposites]. . . Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things.”2 The Neo-Platonists of the Renaissance described nature as discordia concors (discordant concord). The division between opposites is

This paper was written for the 2001 ACSA West Regional Conference October 11-13, 2001 in Bozeman, Montana and sponsored by Montana State University, School of Architecture Copyright 2001 William T Willoughby


William T Willoughby , Louisiana Tech University

2

not a strict demarcation; no borderline exists between these opposing realms. Also, incremental differences between opposites (measurable degrees of change) is never discussed by Heracleitus. He describes an attunement between opposites, better described as a continuum of eternal flux; “all things are forever passing into something else.”3 Heracleitus, to our contemporary ears, describes the continual flux of physical matter and its relative duration in time (the phenomenon of change) – a calculus of infinite difference. “Cold things become warm, warmth cools, moisture dries, the parched gets wet . . . It scatters and gathers, it comes and goes. . . [and his most famous words] “You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.”4

Heracleitus describes the combination of a fundamental pair of opposites within a third phenomenon -- space and matter as coincident to the eternal and binding [or is it disintegrating?] fire; he associates fire with flux and the changing states of matter – rarefaction (space) and condensation (matter).5

Space and Place

Building from Heracleitus’ early thoughts on space and time, the philosophers and poets who followed attempted to describe the nature of the universe for themselves. Heracleitus’ musings relate to Lucretius’ simple dyad (two things, joined as opposites that together form a unity), as the distinction between body (or substance) and void (without which substance could not move).6 Plato’s Timeaus distinguishes the nature of the universe in three parts: forms, unchanging and from which are derived all simulacra, the sensible things themselves (simulacra or semblance), and the third thing, which is the better stating point, the “receptacle” or “matrix” within which sensible things exist (space); “the nurse – of all Becoming.” In view of the Platonic definition, space is a receptacle with no initial qualities of its own. Space, the receptacle of sensible form (or a copy, perpetually in motion and derived from unchanging, eternal Form which exists as thought or idea only), is characterless, everlasting, and supposed as infinite. Space only becomes featured with the reception of all perceptual bodies, and thus appears to have different qualities.7

Two notions of space can exist: as distinguished from matter, space remains a neutral container. If we continue to categorize space as distinct from matter, we arrive at the Aristotelian view of space: a neutral container in which contents can move about independently.8 However, for Plato, whenever space and matter meet (as during the original motive of creation), space and matter become mutually featured by each other. As Plato more or less puts it, in order for anything to possess ‘qualities’ it “. . . needs to be in some place and occupy some room, and that what is not somewhere in earth or heaven is nothing [author’s italics].”9 Plato continues to describe the characteristics of place: first, in order for things to exist, they must be in something else (all things exist in place; therefore, place cannot exist inside itself or in nothing); and second, the uniqueness of a thing is confirmed by the inherent difference of space; meaning the inability of two things to occupy the same space. Thus, place is as unique and singular as matter. Space must be distinguished from place. Space is homogeneous, abstract, and isotropic. Place is composed of unique locations; place is heterogeneous, sensible, and temporary (timebound). “To be is to be in place.”10



3

Time and Occasion

Just as place and matter are uniquely bound together, time is bound to them both. Just as place is the medium in which all matter exists, time as well, serves as a container of sorts. As Edward Casey points out, place and time are siblings, but not identical twins.11 Moreover, they are like fraternal twins that share certain traits but differ in gender. In Plato’s Timaeus, time is particular to the dyad between being and becoming (consider also unity and diversity or stasis and change). For something to be it must remain unchanging, and therefore reflect eternity. In the case of its opposite, for a thing to be temporal, it must be mutable and therefore be in a state of change or becoming. For Plato, time is the moving semblance of eternity; humanity ‘experiences’ time by perceiving its existence in the uniform motion of heavenly bodies (Sun, Moon, and firmament).12 In a more earthbound manner, the unexpected shards of time we humans experience constitute a loose collection of occasions – the marking of time’s passage to the tempo of human life.

We tend to estimate space in terms of time (a ‘long’ or ‘short’ journey). We also tend to estimate time in terms of place (‘back’ in the past, right ‘here’ in the present, or ‘ahead’ in the future). We perceive the passage of time by the passage of heavenly bodies across the arc of the sky. Thus, the ‘movement’ of time is perceived in space. As Edward Casey aptly and succinctly puts it,

“There is no (grasping of) time without place; and this is so precisely by virtue of place’s

actively delimiting and creatively conditioning capacities. Place situates time by giving it a local habitation. Time arises from places and passes (away) between them. It also vanishes into places at its edges and as its edges. For the “positions” of time are its effective limits, without which it would not appear as time at all – indeed, without which time itself would not be able to present itself to us, would not be timelike or temporal in the first place.”13

Aldo van Eyck conceives of time in human terms – as it exists in the human mind. He

states, “It seems to me that past, present and future must be active in the mind’s interior as a continuum. . . The time has come to reconcile them [past, present, future]; to gather the essential human meaning divided among them.”14 Time, in human terms, is a dreamlike awareness of a continuum, a past projected into the future by way of the present in which we live now. For humanity the occasion is never a divided instance; the occasion exists for humanity in light of things remembered and things anticipated.

Twinness

Space and time, place and occasion can be defined separately, but their separate definitions reveal their interdependencies. Thus, there is dependency along side distinction. This dyad sets the stage for a balanced tension between opposites. Like force vectors traveling back and forth across a distance – between dependency and distinction – relative relation is set in motion – as this interplay between other transcendent paradoxy occurs, we encounter architectural expression without rationalized signs and symbols.15 Something Aldo van Eyck aptly describes as a kaleidoscope (a beautiful and changing pattern to view).

Rationality is ineffective – in fact, it limits the diversity of experience to mere bias, categories, or reconciliation. Paradox, though non-rational, is a positive inclusion of opposites – not, as with reason, a negative exclusion. Paradox pairs opposites into a conjunct truth, as Janus-like twin siblings, possessing opposite characters that somehow relate through intuition. Aldo



4

van Eyck is against categories and bias. For him, timeless architecture finds its flexibility of expression inside of the relativity that exists between opposites.

Aldo van Eyck is “deeply concerned with twin-phenomena, the principle of twinness – gemelliparite.”16 As he states here, concerning the use of twin-phenomena:

“A dialectic based on reciprocity and equality is a nimble and penetrating one -- because it

makes cross-alliances between diverse twin phenomena possible, which affects (alters without distortion) their assumed meanings, imparting an added -- often unexpected -- dimension. Only in each other's light are binary aspects rendered tangible, can they be assessed and the meaning within each dichotomy clarified.

“A wealth of such cross-alliances comes into play when making a building. To name some obvious ones: open-outside, closed-inside, closed-outside, (i.e. open, closed, small, large, many, few, outside, inside, in any combination).

“The spectral colors, in spectral sequence, form a single phenomenon. Feeding them into the thought process, the dialectic just described, was very hard at first but then after a while, they started to oil the works, increasing the intricacy and luster of the binary fabric upon which all equipoise depends.”17

PART TWO: Le Monde dans un homme/The World in a person18

Aldo van Eyck attributed more of his insight in architecture to artists than architects.19 Aldo van Eyck’s famous drawing for his Sculpture pavilion in Arnheim, Holland from 1966 contains a subtle, didactic statement concerning architecture. Aldo van Eyck lets us know that “[t]he light shining through the glass roof of Brancusi’s atelier was in my mind when I made the pavilion.” The drawing is laden with notes, locating and commenting on each artwork. One note, pulled out from the rest, recollects an occasion in Aldo van Eyck’s life with the artist. “Ah! Brancusi . . . always Brancusi, now in paradise talking with Henri Rousseau of whom he once said – inclining his head towards the light coming through the glass roof of his atelier – ‘Ah Henri – le seul qui attrappa la gloire.’”20

Aldo van Eyck, in my opinion, makes this statement didactically . . . he intentionally associates Brancusi’s comment about Rousseau with light from the skylight. Just as a skylight directly captures light, Rousseau captures effulgence (glory). The purposes for both window and person coincide simultaneously – the artist is what the window aspires to be/ the artist aspires to be a window – both capturing and transfiguring light into something transcendent.

So, what of the architect’s duty in the creation of the window? The window must be made as both a place and occasion for captured radiance. The window and the aspirations of the artist/person are coincident; the making of the window should imbue it with human aspiration. Therefore the window, when poetically imbued with human qualities, becomes an instance of place and occasion. “For space in our image is place, and time in our image is occasion.”

Basic to Aldo van Eyck’s view is architecture’s fulfillment with human traits. In another instance, Aldo van Eyck cites the poet Thomas Campion, “There is a garden in her face.”21 Again, Aldo van Eyck alludes to human qualities inserted poetically into architecture. He asks us to, “Make/ a welcome of each door/ a countenance of each window.”22 The door is a welcoming; the window is a countenance – Aldo van Eyck isn’t interested in simile or reference – for architecture, he requires metaphor for it to become fully human.

I argue that Aldo van Eyck saw the necessity for the emotional traits of humanity (appreciation, affirmation, aspiration) to be included the creation of the built environment. In other words, the environment we create for ourselves must completely and entirely represent us for us to feel at home in the world – this is the challenge of the architect. If the environment mirrors only meager aspects of our humanity (sustenance, shelter, hygiene), it diminishes those



5

generous aspects (love, wonder, and grace) for which we call ourselves ‘human’ in the first place. In order to be truly generous, our environment should sustain the extremes of both – being meager and generous at the same time (so much from so little23)!

Attunement of the Basket: Vast Microcosm/Tiny Macrocosm

The built environment should serve as a complete expression of us to ourselves; as Aldo van Eyck declared, “By ‘Us,’ For Us.”24 About the same time he made this declaration, Aldo van Eyck was researching and compiling what would later become a collection of essays in Meaning in Architecture authored by Aldo van Eyck, Fritz Morgenthaler, and Paul Parin. These essays constitute research on the Dogon people of West Africa. The Dogon live in villages scattered throughout the irregular ledges and cliffs that mark the region’s rocky plateau.

Fritz Morgenthaler recounts the daily life of the Dogon in a story where “Dommo, a man of forty from the village of Andiumbolo,” led Morgenthaler to his village entrance: “This is my village,” he said, “I want to show you my house.” Morgenthaler writes the following after an hour-long journey through the small village; a brief journey that circled back to its beginning:

“Dommo’s wish to show me his house took us in turn to the council-place of the elders, to the

village chief’s place, to the priest’s, then to the place of the family elder, and just at last to his own dwelling. To each of these places he is bound by a quite definite part of his sense of ‘being home.’ So it is in this culture that a house is never sold, for one calls a house the people living there.”25

Aldo van Eyck reiterates this in his companion essay, “Some Comments on a Significant

Detour.” Dommo’s manner of reciprocally identifying the village and the people that live there with his house dislodges the rational and abstract divisions of nature, human artifice, self, others, and the spiritual. So, house, village, and bunches of villages within a region are conflated with personal feelings of belonging to a place and a people, which when taken together, constitute a “home.” Aldo van Eyck describes the act of building both house and village as “inaugurating a microcosm in which life is perpetuated.” For the Dogon, “the natural and the supernatural, or the material and the spiritual, do not constitute impregnable or conflicting categories.”26 Consider this statement by Aldo van Eyck:

“In order to be at home in the universe we humans tend to fashion it in our own image,

accommodate it to our own dimension. Constructed enclosure as such were indeed seldom sufficient, for there was always a limitless exterior beyond -- the incomprehensible, intangible, and unpredictable -- harassing our right composure, shaking whatever ‘ground of certainty,’ to use Rykwert's phrase, we were able to find. So our cities, villages and houses -- even our baskets -- were persuaded by means of symbolic form and complex ritual to contain within our measurable confines that which exists beyond and is immeasurable: to represent it symbolically. The artifact, whether large or small, basket or city, was identified with the universe or with the power or deity representing the cosmic order. It thus became a 'habitable' place, comprehensible from corner to corner.”27

I like to call this quote, "Basket-House-Village-Universe,"28 referring to the small human

artifact of the basket and its connection to the cosmos. Aldo van Eyck furthers his point by describing the basket’s relation to the Dogon:

“There is no limit to what the Dogon basket can hold, for with its circular rim and square base, it

is at once basket and granary; at once sun, firmament, and cosmic system; at once millet and the forces that cause millet to grow . . . It seems to me that people for whom all things are so much one thing that one thing can also be all things carry this essential unity within themselves.”29



6

Oswald Spengler, in Volume Two of The Decline of the West writes of the human, or animal, reality as being -- “the little world in another great world.” The relation between these two worlds, that of the microcosm and its relation to the cosmic is this: the microcosm is the free and individuated self, the small whole which is part of a greater and overwhelming whole; the cosmic, the overwhelming whole – is time, rhythm, destiny, longing. The cosmic beat follows an enduring and ordered cycle of which we are made aware through patient observation, perseverance, feeling, and thought.30 A microcosm constitutes a twinning of opposites, a basic paradox – being itself a little-universe.

As opposites are paired, every assertion leads to the revelation of its complimentary assertion; the pairing of assertions do not ‘negate’ each other but form a continuum of possibilities where the right tension can be tuned (Heracleitus’ attunement) as appropriate to the occasion (Aldo van Eyck’s “wheels of reciprocity”). Inside the overlap of these competing cross-alliances, as the architect uses them in tandem (and in conflict), a small image of the perceptible world appears. This is Aldo van Eyck’s “in-between realm” and the universe of Heracleitus – a microcosm of intersecting, paradoxical continuums appears, crossing over each other in contrapuntal reciprocity and offering a rich and vibrant range to the phenomena of a building and the universe.

In isolation, twin-phenomena is a minor example of the inner workings of the whole world – an example of dynamic flux between related, yet opposing, conditions. When placed up against a woven tapestry of multiple and variable twin-phenomena, the architect ‘persuades’ the complex macrocosm to enter architecture – the world, as represented by diverse and opposing phenomena (light/dark, large/small, open/closed, fixed/moveable) is attuned in harmonic counterpoint. Each ‘pair’ can be attuned with the other to form a balanced in-between realm where crisscrossing opposites are brought in equipoise. In this way, place is formed inside the paradoxy of phenomena, and attuned in appropriate and meaningful accord with the occasion.

CONCLUSION: Thresholds and Looping Borders/Endings that relate to Beginnings

Architecture harmonizes our humanity with the surrounding world. Architecture exists between our aspirations as a people and the laws of nature. Architecture establishes the social context of our lives. Architecture is a physical and emotional expression of how humans relate to the natural world – and how humans relate to one another. A place should fit its occasion – being both physically (quantitatively) and emotionally (qualitatively) appropriate.

One of our higher faculties as human beings is our capacity for love. Although typically neglected in contemporary scholarship (in lieu of rationality), love was once the subject of religious study. In the realm of the human spirit – faith, love, hope, and trust were all considered (in one way or another) linked in a higher union.

The delicate intricacies of love were once explored, and our language reflected the differences in names for various kinds of love. Love is a feeling of relation – relatedness to something other than ourselves. The language of the Greeks has influenced our English tongue, giving us the words (and the parts of words) to describe different kinds of love – agape, philos, and eros. Agape – God’s love (spiritual). Philos – Fraternal love (psychical). Eros – Physical love (physical).

The generic use of the word ‘love’ denigrates the complexities of meanings inherent in the feeling itself. Love extends from feelings of relation – a closeness, a mutual possession, and a synthesis of being. Thus love is the countering force to individuation – love is a “binding”



7

force – a dreamlike state of combination, integration, and lyric. I include the word ‘lyric’ – or lyrical, because the archaic use of this word suggests the synthetic combination of a musical instrument (lyre), music, rhyme (the combination of words and meanings), poetry, song, and emotion. In the Bible, King David wrote psalms (the psaltery was a musical instrument similar to the lyre) – songs to glorify God (praise).

According to Martin Buber, a Jewish religious thinker (from his book I and Thou), our lives begin in relation – a oneness with the Universe, the mutual relation of grace and love. A feeling of relation is inborn to us. According to Buber, there are three unified spheres in which the world of relation (love) is built. First, our life with nature; second, our life with other people; and third, our life with spiritual beings. He lights up the spheres with their Greek names – Cosmos, Eros, and Logos. But these three spheres of relation only become full of meaning through, patience, sacrifice, work, and grace.31

To quote Buber, “For actually there is Cosmos for us only when the universe becomes our home, with its holy hearth whereon we offer sacrifice; there is Eros for us only when beings become for us pictures of the eternal, and community is revealed along with them; and there is Logos for us only when we address the mystery with work and service for the spirit.”32 Love transforms the universe from something immense and unfathomable into a microcosm -- a ‘little-universe’ made visible by means of art (including the art of place-making) -- and though which humanity can discover the relation between ourselves and the infinite.33

Aldo van Eyck presents the task for us as architects. Borderlands needn’t constitute divisions. Different terrain, rationally divided, are often crossed over, looped, and associated together, the one with the life of the other. Aldo van Eyck, in his hallmark, paradoxical manner, described architecture, more or less – not as the art of enclosure, but as the art of openness. Aldo van Eyck challenges the contemporary architect to “provide spaces with the kind of openness that makes enclosure possible . . . this time the meaning of openness embraces the meaning of enclosure, instead of negating it. It includes what it cannot exclude without impunity.” He continues to explain, “The reciprocity such a reversal suggests could easily lead to a misunderstanding in spite of the fact that spaces, like people, breath both in and out – or not at all, in which case they are not spaces in any architectural sense.”34

It is the open co-mingling of opposites that Aldo van Eyck sees as the antidote to rational divisions, and to borderlands of exclusion. As Aldo van Eyck states, “Architecture must extend those narrow borderlines, persuade them to loop generously into articulated in-between realms.”35

Although speaking of two neighbors mutually participating in a gesture of greeting, Martin Buber’s words reflect the generosity of inclusion and affirmation: “The one gives the other to understand that each affirms the other's presence. This is the indispensable minimum of humanity.”36 Architecture actualizes desire; it facilitates life. A building includes us by facilitating the event; thus, every occasion finds its place. As a microcosm that reflects the ways in which we humans perceive our world, architecture greets us like Martin Buber’s neighbors. We require an architecture that affirms our presence – this is the indispensable minimum we must expect of architecture, hence also of humanity.



8

ENDNOTES 1 This entire piece of prose called “place and occasion” can be found repeatedly in many of Aldo van Eyck’s published material; for instance, look to Team 10 Primer, edited by Alis on Smithson (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968) 101 2 Heracleitus, On the Universe, translated by W. H. S. Jones (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1931) 489 3 W. H. S. Jones, “Introduction” to Heracleitus’ On the Universe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1931) 453 4 Heracleitus, On the Universe, translated by W. H. S. Jones (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1931) 483. Also cited by Aldo van Eyck, undoubtedly as a ‘clue’ to further support his view of things in his essay, “Building a House” Aldo van Eyck: Hubertus House (Amsterdam: Stichting Wonen, 1982) 45. I suspect Aldo van Eyck’s choice of Heracleitus, a Pre-Socratic philosopher, was meant to further emphasize his avoidance of the root of Western rationalism, certainty, and categorization. Heracleitus appeals to Twentieth Century art and science. Look to the sculptural dynamism of Umberto Boccioni. Notice the similarity of Heracleitus’ famous phrase to the discoveries Werner Heisenberg (Principle of Uncertainty), that we cannot ask the world to repeat itself exactly as it had before – and thus, we can only be ‘certain’ within an area of tolerance. 5 W. H. S. Jones, “Life of Heracleitus” from Heracleitus’ On the Universe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1931) 463. Fire, a phenomenal expression of flux, causes matter to be both created and destroyed, and sometimes simultaneously. 6 Lucretius, Book One, On the Nature of Things: De Rerum Natura (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982) lines 146-482 7 Plato, Timaeus, translated by Francis Cornford (Indianapolis: The Liberal Arts Press, Inc., 1959) 51 8 E. V. Walter, Placeways (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988) 12. Walter’s book is a delightful read, and I feel a bit ungrateful arguing with his premise; but nonetheless, he tends to disconcertingly castigate Aristotle and lionize Plato . . . much unlike Edward Casey, who evenhandedly presents Aristotle uncertainty of Plato’s differentiation of specific places from general regions. See Casey’s endnotes, note #72 to “Part I: Finding Place, 1. Implacement” Getting Back into Place (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993) 322. Oh well, as pieces of scholarship, both Casey’s and Walter’s books respectively offer certain merits of explanation and insight! 9 Plato, Timaeus, translated by Francis Cornford (Indianapolis: The Liberal Arts Press, Inc., 1959) 53 10 An ‘old’ bit of knowledge, according to and passed on by Edward Casey in his book, Getting Back into Place (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993) 14 11 Edward Casey, Getting Back into Place (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993) 13 12 Plato, Timaeus, translated by Francis Cornford (Indianapolis: The Liberal Arts Press, Inc., 1959) 29-32 13 Edward Casey, Getting Back into Place (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993) 21 14 Aldo van Eyck “The Interior of Time” from Meaning in Architecture, edited by Charles Jencks and George Baird (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1970) 171 15 See Aldo Van Eyck’s “Wasted Gain”, (Sixty- third Commencement Address of the New Jersey Institute of Technology, 1979). In it he states, “It is in the nature of the human species, you see, to be able to deal with environment, hence also to fashion the spaces they require adequately and beautifully -- the way all people are given to communicate both adequately and beautifully through language -- that other gift, which, like making spaces, belongs to our primordial equipment. . .



9

“. . . Architecture can do no more, nor should it do less, than accommodate people well; assist their homecoming. The rest, those signs and symbols one is worrying about too much -- will either take care of themselves or they just don't matter.” Aldo van Eyck’s statement about “those signs and symbols” can be considered a critique of historical postmodernism’s penchant for quotation and reference of historical architectural form; as though the symbolic recovery (nostalgia) of those past forms could invoke meaning to the environment once again. The easy and limited signs and symbols of post-modernism do not match the challenging and unlimited strategy of inaugurating a world though architecture. 16 Aldo van Eyck, “Basket-House-Village-Universe,” from Meaning in Architecture, edited by Charles Jencks and George Baird (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1970) 190 17 Aldo van Eyck, “Building a House” Aldo van Eyck: Hubertus House (Amsterdam: Stichting Wonen, 1982) 45 18 Said by Max Jacob and cited by Aldo van Eyck in “Rats Posts and Pests” RIBA Journal, April 1981 (Vol. 88, No. 4, 1981) 50 19 An obvious reference to Aldo van Eyck’s “Great Gang.” Let’s run the statistics: he mentions 16 individuals, of which only two are architects – the rest: poets, novelists, painters, sculptors. 20 This phrase seems to translate roughly as, “Ah Henri, the only one who caught the glory (radiance, effulgence).” Translation by author. 21 This and the above citation can be found in Aldo van Eyck’s prose piece “place and occasion” – the whole poem from which this citation is only part can be found in Thomas Campion, Campion’s Works, edited by Percival Vivian (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909) 178. Interestingly, Campion was a composer of music, and in 1613 he wrote a book entitled A New Way of Making Fowre Parts in Counter-point; this is interesting to note since Aldo van Eyck advocates cross-alliances and counterpoint in his architecture. 22 This quote to be found in many locations, most notable is Team 10 Primer, edited by Alison Smithson (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968) 101 23 a reference to Aldo van Eyck, “The Enigma of Vast Multiplicity” from Projekten 1962-1976/Aldo v. Eyck , compiled by J. van de Beek (Groningen: Akademie van Bouwkunst, 1983) 24-35 24 This is from Aldo van Eyck’s diagram, dubbed his “Otterlo circles” presented at the 1959 CIAM congress held in Otterlo. It can be found in many sources; a recent source is Francis Strauven, Aldo van Eyck’s Orphanage (Netherlands: NAI Publishers, 1996) 13 25 Fritz Morgenthaler, “The Dogon People: 2” from , Meaning in Architecture, edited by Charles Jencks and George Baird (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1970) 203 26 Both quotes from Aldo van Eyck, “Basket-House-Village-Universe,” from Meaning in Architecture, edited by Charles Jencks and George Baird (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1970) 190 27 The quotation was originally from 1963 and can be found in various sources; this came from both Aldo van Eyck, “Building a House” Aldo van Eyck: Hubertus House (Amsterdam: Stichting Wonen, 1982) 65; and Aldo van Eyck “Design Only Grace; Open Norm; Disturb Order Gracefully; Outmatch Need,” from “A Miracle of Moderation,” Meaning in Architecture, edited by Charles Jencks and George Baird (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1970) 183. Aldo van Eyck’s statement here is surprisingly similar and worthy of comparison to statements made by both Oswald Spengler and J. B. Jackson. For further inquiry see: Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West: Volume Two (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1939) 89-90 (the section beginning with “Primeval man is a ranging animal . . .”) and also, J.B. Jackson, “Human, All Too Human, Geography: Notes and Comments” reprinted excerpts from Landscape in Sight, edited by Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997) 333-334 (the line beginning with “Man is the only creature that makes who deliberately makes his own habitat –”). Both of these



10

citations are too long to quote here; and comparison and contrast between all three citations must wait for another day. 28 Actually, this is the title of an essay by Aldo van Eyck in Meaning in Architecture, edited by Charles Jencks and George Baird (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1970) 190. Gaston Bachelard, in his book Poetics of Space (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969) on page 90, insightfully (and comparably) presents a linkage between an object (cathedral) and the universe brought in relation by emotional attachment. In this quote, Bachelard cites Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris, “In one short sentence, Victor Hugo associates the images and beings of the functions of inhabiting. For Quasimodo, he says, the cathedral has been successively ‘egg, nest, house, country, and universe.’” 29 Aldo van Eyck “Design Only Grace; Open Norm; Disturb Order Gracefully; Outmatch Need,” from “A Miracle of Moderation,” Meaning in Architecture, edited by Charles Jencks and George Baird (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1970) 183 30 Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West: Volume Two (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1939) 3-19 31 A short essay by Liane Lefaivre entitled “Rebel With a Cause” led me to incorporate certain elements of Martin Buber’s thoughts into this essay (Architecture, September 1999 – available online, http://www.architecturemag.com/sep99/spec/history/history.asp – the essay serves as a sort of obituary for Aldo van Eyck, who died in January 1999, as well a ‘plug’ for the book Aldo van Eyck: Humanist Rebel by Lefaivre and Tzonis). In the essay, she sketchily connects Aldo van Eyck and Martin Buber. Certainly, there is a correlation between Buber’s “I-It” and van Eyck’s “abstract antonyms,” as well as between Buber’s “I-Thou” (love as a feeling of relation) and van Eyck’s “emotional attachment” (as in a continuous homecoming). I would like to propose a more elaborate connection between the ideas of Buber and van Eyck concerning art and grace. Both see art as a means of connecting divergent pieces into a personal unity – a relation that streams forth from grace (“Design Only Grace – un dessin ne s’ordonne que sur la grace” – van Eyck). Grace is kindness, goodwill, and a manifestation of quality (sanctity). 32 Martin Buber, I and Thou (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1987) 102 33 Gaston Bachelard notes as well how a microcosm (linking the infinitesimal with the immense) is brought forth through love. He cites the author/poet Milosz who looked inside himself to discover the universe, “My heart burst into singing with the song of grace of the universe. All these constellations are yours, they exist in you; outside your love they have no reality!” and simply, “My love enveloped the universe.” From Poetics of Space (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969) 189-190 34 Aldo van Eyck, “Transparency” Aldo van Eyck: Hubertus House (Amsterdam: Stichting Wonen, 1982) 83 35 Aldo van Eyck, “Building a House” Aldo van Eyck: Hubertus House (Amsterdam: Stichting Wonen, 1982) 50 36 Martin Buber, Gleanings (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969). Here is the full citation, so that its context may be become clear: “The unavowed secret of humanity is that we want to be confirmed in our being and our existence by our companions and that we wish to make it possible for us to confirm them, and . . . not merely in the family, in the group assembly or in the public house, but also in the course of neighborly encounters, perhaps when we or a neighbor steps out of the door of their house or to the window of their house and the greeting with which they greet each other will be accompanied by a glance of well-wishing, a glance in which curiosity, mistrust, and routine will have been overcome by a mutual sympathy: the one gives the other to understand that each affirms the other's presence. This is the indispensable minimum of humanity.”

Place and Occasion Mean More

Documents

Transcript of Place and Occasion Mean More