Introduction

Identity, Place and Human Experience

Paul Brislin
london july 2012

Casagrande & Rintala, Land(e)scape, Finland, 1999 top: Finnish architect-artists Marco Casagrande and Sami Rintala spoke of the powerful emotion displayed during the final moments of their Land(e)scape work. The burning of the abandoned barns of Finland spontaneously evoked tears in the witnessing crowd.

Peter Zumthor, Bruder Klaus Chapel, Wachendorf, Germany, 2007 above: To come from a place, I think, is a very basic human thing. Peter Zumthors architecture valorises the human spirit through its focus on place, the senses and memory.

Identity and Spatiality What is identity, that ephemeral and quixotic thing? Draw it too tightly and it is a noose: a boundary marker that defines the separation between individuals or between one group and another; a blunt weapon of differentiation that fuels rippling scales of dispute from neighbourhood argument through to xenophobia and war. And yet draw identity too loosely and we no longer feel the connection between people and place. We become alienated and disassociated from our surroundings and from one another, as an endless Babel of sounds and signs washes around us and some parts of our souls are washed away with it too. Ironically, that which sustains us might also destroy us. But there is no doubt that a sense of identity is essential to survival of individual, family, group and neighbourhood. Few have any doubt either that the making of space has an inseparable and complex place in the making and sustaining of human identity. Michel Foucault, Henri Lefebvre, Edward Soja and others have defined how spatiality manmade geographies, urban planning and place is complicit in the localisation of a network of power relationships that operate on societies and individuals and on the human body, conditioning their and our behaviour.1 From another, more interiorised perspective, Maurice Merleau-Ponty has argued that our understanding of the world is inextricable from the space around us. We are constituted by an intricate, intertwined interplay between our body, our consciousness and the space we live in we live in it, and it lives in us. We are nothing but a view of the world, writes Merleau-Ponty, inside and outside are inseparable.2 In its widest sense architecture and the space we make inhabits us; it conditions how we feel and respond to our surroundings. We, our identity and the physical world, are intimately and inseparably connected by the way we create space, and the way we exist in it.

The Issues of Homogenisation Architect and philosopher Juhani Pallasmaa comments that cultural identity, a sense of rootedness and belonging is an irreplaceable ground of our very humanity.3 Today many hold the intuition that this feeling of belonging is being eroded by homogenising processes that are flattening and equalising and neutralising the delicate, productive scales of difference between people across various geographies. The sense of identity that nurtures us is being lost. It would be naive to imagine that change is not an inevitable consequence of the relentless (and often productive) interplay of social, economic and institutional forces that are mapped across the globe. Ways of living will continue to change, as they have for centuries. The world will witness the loss of fishing communities in the Arctic Circle as they are quietly eroded by mechanised shipping processes; with only the old timber drying racks left as vanishing mementos.4 Barns will be left behind in Finland as farming methods change, and worlds once known slip away, unmourned. And yet the human response to this loss, often unspoken, is profound when galvanised. Finnish architect-artists Marco Casagrande and Sami Rintala have spoken of their surprise at the powerful emotion displayed during the final moments of their work Land(e)scape (1999), where abandoned barns of Finland were set on spindly legs to follow their farmers to the cities in the south, and then burned violently to the ground. The flames spontaneously evoked tears in the witnessing crowd, in an atmosphere they described as strangely shamanistic; a return to the primitive self.5 These were not simply the tears of nostalgia. This very human response is symbolic of a deep desire to find the balance between anomie and rootedness in the flux of change; to find a place where we feel at home. I like to travel the world, says Peter Zumthor. But its important for me that Im anchored here. To come from a place, I think, is a very basic human thing.6 Architecture of Place, the Senses and Memory The question is one of balance. If identity is essential to our survival, if spatialisation has an implicit and essential part in the making of identity, and if this sense of identity is being eroded, then what are the qualities of an architecture that can nurture people and provide an equilibrium between rootedness and alienation? In a series of events in London over the last four years, Juhani Pallasmaa and I have gathered together groups of architects, theorists and designers whose work is focused on a revitalisation of the connection between people and the space around them.7 The focus is on an architecture that is resistant to ubiquitous homogenisation; that sustains people and communities too. This is an architecture that valorises the human spirit through its focus on place, the senses and memory. And it is this same essence that unites the architects gathered in this publication.

Finnish architect-artists Marco Casagrande and Sami Rintala have spoken of their surprise at the powerful emotion displayed during the final moments of their work Land(e)scape (1999), where abandoned barns of Finland were set on spindly legs to follow their farmers to the cities in the south, and then burned violently to the ground.

Arup Associates, Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) HQ, Bedminster Down, Bristol, 1973 top: Human touch and sensate tactility: a sense of place-making and human scale in the detail.

Arup Associates, Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Snape, Suffolk, 1967 bottom: Architecture that demonstrates a responsiveness to context and place and the senses: the acoustical properties of this space are renowned.

The issue is introduced by Pallasmaa, a central figure in the architecture of authentic human experience. Here his discussion evokes the power of the continuity of memory. We create in the present for the future, from the essence of the past; not from its superficial signs and motifs, but from a deep understanding of its richness, from which can be derived meaning, inspiration and emotional rooting. While all of the architects collected here are united in their focus on place and human experience, the three thematic components that follow Pallasmaas introduction draw out different responses to the fields of locality, economy and scale. The first of the themed sections focuses on Identity and Locality. Here, Director of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, Farrokh Derakhshani, speculates on the methods through which identity can be achieved in changing societies: through recreation, invention and appropriation. Four practitioners from separate continents and geographies then exemplify exceptional architecture that is uniquely rooted in its context architecture that celebrates the variety of human experience, the senses and memory, in order to generate a spirit of local identity.

The second section addresses Identity and Economy. Here, the response of architects to contrasting economies is examined; from fragile economies in central Africa through to the emerging markets of China; to the established but subdued economies of the West. In his introductory essay, Murray Fraser, Professor of Architecture and Global Culture at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, argues that global economic systems have far more fluidity than might immediately be recognised. If we are freed from the notion that economic systems are of necessity homogeneous and unassailable, the fluidity of social and economic relations offers opportunities for innovative local architectural intervention to act as a catalyst for societal change, where small change can create large change, from the ground upwards. The final thematic section focuses on Identity and Scale. Theorist Paul Virilio has argued that speed is the most important product in contemporary culture.8 Contemporary international practice focuses on delivery, without respite or opportunity for reflection, in ever decreasing cost and timeframes, and at ever increasing scale; in locations which are frequently not in the same geography as the designer. While many works of architecture demonstrate that it is possible to generate sensitive, responsive architecture at domestic scale, here five practitioners show that even under the relentless pressures of contemporary architectural production it is also possible to create enduring, locally responsive works of the highest quality at the size of campuses and high-rise buildings. Ricky Burdett, Professor of Urban Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Studies, introduces the section by exploring the spatial specificities that lie behind the generic concept of cityness, examining on the ground initiatives that connect the spatial DNA of a city at a macro and micro scale with its sense of identity. The volume closes with architectural historian and critic Jayne Merkels investigation of the teaching that has influenced the exemplary practitioners gathered here, in the way that they make their works; and ends with a reflection from the considered perspective of the leading UK architectural critic, Peter Buchanan.

Arup Associates, Arup Campus, Solihull, West Midlands, 2001 The weathered timber cladding melds the building into its landscape. The section, with its giant roof pods, defines the ethos of an environmentally responsible and responsive architecture a gentle, sustainable office building, designed for people.

Arup Associates, Coventry University Engineering and Computing Faculty, Coventry, West Midlands, 2012 opposite: Mathematician, architect and engineer unite to give layers of meaning to a built work. Here, the engineers hand-worked algebraic calculations define the footprint of an engineering faculty building in terms of Ptolemys theorem and harmonic ratios, following a system of proportioning and mathematical beauty in use since antiquity.

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A Working Method Is there a method, an underlying sensibility to the making of architecture that might be useful in creating works that achieve a sense of place? Each of the practices in this issue has its own unique starting point; each with its own validity. But this volume, and the series of events that Juhani Pallasmaa and I have curated, have been made possible by a particularly supportive approach to the creation of architecture fostered by Arup Associates: a liberal, collaborative and open-minded approach that brings together talented individuals in the belief that laterality and communal thinking is an extraordinarily productive process. The method is worth expanding in a little more detail.

While all of the architects collected here are united in their focus on place and human experience, the three thematic components that follow Pallasmaas introduction draw out different responses to the fields of locality, economy and scale.

Arup Associates, founded in 1963, has always had a Nordic sensitisation to place, work and the human, encouraged by Ove Arups own approach to design. This is reflected in the sense of place-making and human-scaled detail of early projects such as the CEGB Headquarters (1973), and the sensitisation to context and place reflected in the Maltings Concert Hall, Snape (1967) or the Arup Campus project (2001). Of particular interest is the unusual working method, a radicalisation of multidisciplinary thinking called unified design, which does not accept that there should be any boundaries between the contributors to an aesthetic work; be they artist, psychologist, scientist, architect or engineer. Arup Associates believes that the starting point for creativity is a new sense of openness in the relationship between contributors. Radical collaboration is a relationship of intimacy. Intimate relations lead to creative alchemy. The practice looks for the magic that emerges from multilayered communication and parallel methods of working where the aim is an elixir that could not have been anticipated at the outset. By breaking down the barriers between disciplines, by allowing individuals to learn to know each other personally, rather than competing, the method allows a creative interplay where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Absolutely essential to our process is the notion of sustainability. But more important than the conservation of energy is the notion that people and communities must be nurtured through the creation of architecture: a whole-life sustainability. Through this open-minded working method, we believe that it is possible to provide a balance, where the combination of a radically holistic multidisciplinary thinking and a sensitisation to people, place and local culture can offer an antidote to homogenisation.

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There is a sense that the time is now for an architecture of resistance; a spirited architecture of place. And that architecture exists today: a great architecture that belongs to the soil within which it is sited, and which belongs to its people too. These earth-bound spaces are the footholds of the senses.

Louis Kahn, National Assembly Building, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 1974 In his introductory essay to this issue of 3, Juhani Pallasmaa writes that Kahns architecture in Bangladesh gives cultural identity for a new state with ancient traditions: not through a regressive traditionalism, but through an acknowledgement of the essence of the past as a source of meaning, inspiration and emotional rooting.

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The projects in this publication are a small sample of an architecture that is prevalent today and which has been woven across the earth during the last half-century and more. Louis Kahn in Bangladesh, Gabriel Fagan in South Africa, Glenn Murcutt in Australia; engineers such as Eladio Dieste in Uruguay; the clear, strong voice of Peter Zumthor: there are many threads in this fabric of built works that are uniquely of their place, of their moment and yet deeply enduring. The prominence of this responsive design may vary with the tides of economy and cultural valorisation, but its essential nature does not diminish. Today Wang Shus award of the Pritzker Prize and Dibdo Francis Krs receipt of the global Holcim Award Gold shows a desire for a newly sensitised spatialisation by people who are disappointed with excess and economic failure; frustrated by institutions and financial instruments that have not created better opportunities and quality of life, and by the loss of person and place and community in a self-levelling and homogenising world. There is a sense that the time is now for an architecture of resistance; a spirited architecture of place. And that architecture exists today: a great architecture that belongs to the soil within which it is sited, and which belongs to its people too. These earth-bound spaces are the footholds of the senses. They are grasping points that resist neutralising tendencies, that stand fast against sweeping forces that are greater than individuals. From the changing Finnish countryside to the discovery of place in the Himalayas, this volume celebrates architecture that can create points of sustenance for human beings; uniquely rooted places of nurturing for the future of us all. 2

Notes 1. In respect of Foucault, refer to, for example, Questions on Geography, translated by Colin Gordon; reprinted from Colin Gordon (ed), Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 19721977, Pantheon (New York), 1980, pp 6377. Elsewhere, Lefebvre writes that (Social) space is a (social) product the space thus produced also serves as a tool of thought and of action in addition to being a means of production it is also a means of control, and hence of domination, of power. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Blackwell (Oxford), 1991, p 26. Refer also to Sojas Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory, Verso (London), 1989, and Edward W Soja, Seeking Spatial Justice, University of Minnesota Press (Minneapolis, MN), 2010. 2. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans Colin Smith, Routledge & Kegan Paul (London), 1962, translation revised by Forrest Williams, 1981; reprinted, 2002, pp 4067. 3. Juhani Pallasmaa, Newness, Tradition and Identity: Existential Content and Meaning in Architecture, pp 1421 of this issue. 4. Peter Zumthors evocative Steilneset Memorial to people executed for witchcraft in 17th-century Norway (and to all who are stigmatised, scapegoated and defined as the other) is a poetic memento of the timber fish-drying structures once common in this coastal area. 5. Marco Casegrande, Urban Acupuncture, December 2008, as posted on Marco Casegrandes blogspot: http://casagrandetext. blogspot.co.uk/search?updated-min=200801-01T00:00:00-08:00&updatedmax=2009-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&maxresults=1. 6. Peter Zumthor in conversation with Juhani Pallasmaa, Haldenstein, Switzerland, 7 May 2012, filmed and edited by Michael Asgaard Andersen during the preparation of the exhibition New Nordic Architecture & Identity at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. See pp 225 of this issue. 7. The Sustaining Identity symposia, curated by Juhani Pallasmaa and Paul Brislin, bring together architects, designers and theorists whose work is united by a sensitisation to place and human experience. The symposia of 20 May 2008, 11 November 2010 and 29 November 2012 were created in collaboration with the Victoria and Albert Museum, Arup Associates, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and 3. 8. Refer, for example, to Paul Virilio, Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromology, Semiotext(e), 1977 [1986].

Eladio Dieste, Port Warehouse, Montevideo, Uruguay, 1979 The extraordinary Uruguayan engineer-architect Eladio Dieste describes the integration of materials, structure and architecture as an essential communion. He writes that for architecture to be truly constructed, the materials must be used with profound respect for their essence and possibilities only then can they have that authority that so astounds us in the great works of the past. See William Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, Phaidon (Oxford), 1996, p 575.

Arup Associates with artist Simon Patterson, Plantation Lane, City of London, 2004 A collaborative and open-minded approach brings together talented individuals in the belief that laterality and communal thinking is an extraordinarily productive process. There should be no boundaries between the contributors to an aesthetic work; be they artist, psychologist, scientist, architect or engineer.

Text 2012 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: p 8(t) Casagrande Laboratory; p 8(b) Samuel Ludwig; pp 9, 10(b), 11 Arup Associates; p 10(t) Peter Cook/ View Pictures; p 12 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ File:National_Assembly_of_Bangladesh,_ Jatiyo_Sangsad_Bhaban,_2008,_6.JPG; p 13(l) Dieste Y Montaez; p 13(r) Christian Richters

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