SAGD

an ideal discipline without the decisive contribution of conceptual thinking that relies on a highly differentiated language and on idealizing reflec- tions48_{(figure 2.10).}

The role of gesture and language in the operations of geometry is hidden behind the apparently neutral and silent results. Yet in design and in the process of building, we do not find it difficult to use geometry ana- lytically or as a visual representation, to discuss it in ordinary language, or to employ it as a practical tool in construction. Today we are largely un- aware that each of these possibilities represents a different aspect of geom- etry, related to a different mode of its articulation and embodiment. That geometry can represent the essential structure of so broad a spectrum of reality, together with its position on the boundary between visible and in- visible realities, made it in the past a decisive paradigm of symbolic repre- sentation; until the eighteenth century, it was a dominant manifestation of order. Rather than discuss the history or the paradigmatic nature of geom- etry, I shall here simply refer to a text that may serve as the introduction to such a discussion.

In his commentary on the first book of Euclid’s Elements,Proclus ex- pounds on the meaning of geometry:

Let us now turn back for another look at the science of geometry as a whole, to see what its starting-point is and how far it ranges from it, so as to get a view of the ordered cosmos of its ideas. Let us note that it is co-extensive with all existing things, applies its reasonings to them all, and includes all their kinds in itself. At the upper and most intellectual height it looks around upon the region of genuine being, teaching us through images the special properties of the divine orders and the powers of the intellectual forms, for it contains even the ideas of these beings within its range of vision. Here it shows us what figures are appropriate to the gods, which ones belong to primary beings and which ones to the substance of souls. In the middle regions of knowledge it unfolds and develops the ideas that are in the understand- ing; it investigates their variety, exhibiting their modes of existence and their properties, their similarities and differences; and the forms of figures shaped from them in imagination it comprehends within fixed boundaries and refers back to the essential being of the ideas. At the

third level of mental exploration it examines nature, that is, the species of elementary perceptible bodies and the powers associated with them, and explains how their causes are contained in advance in its own ideas. It contains likenesses of all intelligible kinds and paradigms of sensible ones; but the forms of the understanding constitute its essence, and through this middle region it ranges upwards and downwards to everything that is or comes to be. Always philosophizing about being in the manner of geometry, it has not only ideas but pictures of all the virtues—intellectual, moral, and physical.49

Geometry is the paradigm of symbolic representation but does not exhaus- tively describe it. As we have seen, representation takes place in language, understood in the broadest sense as a linguistic structuring of culture.50

So far we have been trying to understand the conditions under which representation takes place. Among our main discoveries are the complex nature of human space, the importance of the continuity between the pos- sible and the actual level of reality, the reciprocity between articulation and embodiment, and the situational character of representation. Perhaps most crucial is the recognition of the universal role of language in the articula- tion of culture, which includes architecture. What we have accomplished is a kind of outline of the problem of representation. We have thought little as yet about representation as a process and how the different levels of reality involved in representation are actually related and how they communicate. Traditionally, the question of representation is described as “symboliza- tion.” I have no difficulty with the term, but feel that because primary rep- resentation is already symbolic by definition, the description adds nothing.

THE ROLE OF COMMUNICATIVE MOVEMENT

What makes primary representation and symbolization interchangeable is a communicative movement common to both. Communicative movement is neither physical, physiological, nor subjective; it is ontological and situa- tional because it animates and transforms human circumstances as a whole. For example, it enabled Helen Keller, though early in her life deaf and blind, to acquire verbal language. We may recall the critical moment when the movement of writing on her hand, together with the movement of the water

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in the garden fountain, produced a miraculous understanding of the mean- ing of a word.51_{We may also recall that the understanding of a number of}

other words quickly followed, all in the same setting. However, learning in a different setting was not immediately successful.

Does this suggest the possibility that a situation and its spatial set- ting are as important a background for learning as it is for memory, imagi- nation, and thought? Such a conclusion would not be surprising. To the extent that all these processes depend on some form of communicative movement, they also depend on the ground that serves as a reference for such movement. Their reliance on background is closely analogous to that observed in examining the transformation of space in inverted vision and the problem of orientation in zero gravity.

Studies of sensory deprivation seem to throw some light on this little-understood phenomenon.52_{Participants in these experiments expect}

that they will find the state of almost complete isolation from the outside world conducive to concentration and clear thinking. However, such ex- pectations are fulfilled only at first and briefly; there soon follows an inabil- ity to keep one’s thought focused on a particular subject and finally a gradual disintegration of thinking into fragments—similar to daydreams or hallucinations.

Why does our thinking disintegrate under these conditions? What is the power of the situational background that gives our articulated life its in- tegrity, vitality, and meaning? A case of profound amnesia well documented by A. R. Luria may help us to an answer. The conscious life of a university student who lost his memory after being wounded during the Second World War disintegrated to a state of fragmentation that “affected all aspects of his life. He suffered intolerable, constantly shifting visual confusion. Objects in his visual field were unstable and got displaced so that everything appeared in a state of flux.” His sense of space and of his own body was severely im- paired: “Sometimes he thought his leg is above his shoulder, possibly above his head.” But even more serious was the fragmentation of his memory, lan- guage, and thought. He could neither read properly nor remember what he had written; he could only—with great difficulty and very slowly—write down fragments of memories and thoughts as they occurred to him at ran- dom. However, through perseverance he managed to write several thou- sand pages over a period of twenty years and then “to arrange them and

order them and thus recover and reconstruct his lost life, making a mean- ingful whole from the fragments.”53

By painfully interpreting the discontinuous fragments of experience, the patient succeeded in reappropriating the continuity and sense of the natural world needed to restore the sense of his own life. The slow con- struction of the narrative proved to be a decisive step, bringing together el- ements that in isolation were almost meaningless. The text itself was not the missing ground, but it was a mode of embodiment in which the tempo- rality and spatiality of the natural world were directly related. In the life of the patient, the text played the role of a bridge between the communicative power of language and the communicative nature of everyday circum- stances, which were thus reintegrated into the continuity of the real world. As a result, the restored memory was not just a memory of the text but a memory of life in its setting—the natural world.

I have from the outset used the term “natural world,” but it is only now that I can more explicitly outline its characteristics and meaning. The term itself overlaps with “lived world” (Lebenswelt), a concept developed in the phenomenological tradition.54_{To speak about a lived world became nec-}

essary in a world increasingly dominated by a scientistic vision of reality, as awareness of the limits of such a vision grew. There is no need to describe here the history of this development, which has already received consider- able attention.55_{It is more important instead to comprehend the depth of}

the problem of the natural world and how architecture may not only bene- fit from but also contribute to an understanding of it.

Making any discussion of the lived or natural world exceptionally dif- ficult is the fact that we are always situated within it. The world is not a thing or plurality of things that can be explicitly seen or studied. It is more like an articulated continuum to which we all belong. The main character- istic of the natural world is its continuity in time and space and its perma- nent presence, as can be seen most clearly in language. In language we can move into the past or future, survey different regions of reality, refer to al- most anything in our experience, and translate the experience into specific languages. Broadly speaking, these include the languages of painting, mu- sic, dance, and architecture and ultimately that of the visible reality itself.56

What is revealed in language points to a deeper level of articulated background, the result of our involvement in the structuring of the natural

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world. I am using the term “natural” here to emphasize the importance of the domain where language meets the natural conditions, the given reality of embodiment in its most elementary form.57_{The structure of the natural}

world is very often described as a totality of references.58_{I am trying to go}

a step further by emphasizing how the continuity of references and their communicative nature relate directly to our involvement as corporeal be- ings. In this view, the natural world appears less as a revelation through language and more as an embodiment of the reciprocity of language and the otherness of the given natural conditions. These background references which enable continuity and communication are potentially present even in situations in which we may not expect them.

Consider a staircase and its space, designed for efficient movement between two levels of a building. What is in one sense a pure object, in- tended to serve a clearly defined purpose, is at the same time a field of rela- tionships—not always visible and obvious, but permanently available. These relationships are available in all our preliminary design decisions, includ- ing those about the staircase’s general character and overall spatial arrange- ment. When we speak about the character of the staircase as being domestic or public, simple or monumental, we have in mind a quite precise relation- ship between the space, the light, the size and material of the staircase, and the movement that occurs on it. There is a striking contrast between the in- exhaustible richness of possible interpretations and the limited number of plausible or optimal solutions. This limitation is even more puzzling in more complex designs such as those of residences, libraries, theaters, and concert halls. Most spatial situations show a remarkable level of identity that cannot be derived from simple characteristics alone; it is something more complex and enigmatic.

If we look closely at a concrete example—a French café, for in- stance—it is obvious that its essential nature is only partly revealed in its visible appearance; for the most part that essence is hidden in the field of references to the social and cultural life related to the place (figure 2.11). Any attempt to understand its character, identity, or meaning and its spa- tial setting that uses conventional typologies, relying solely on appearance, is futile. Its representational, ontological structure can be grasped through a preunderstanding that is based on our familiarity with what is being stud- ied and with the segment of world to which it belongs. Preunderstanding in

this case is a layered experience of the world, acquired through our in- volvement in the events of everyday life.59_{The identity of the French café}

is to a great extent defined by the café’s institutional nature, rooted in the habits, customs, and rituals of French life.60_{Its identity is formed in a long}

process during which the invisible aspects of culture and the way of life are embodied in the café’s visible fabric, as if they were a language conveyed in written text. The visible “text” of the café reveals certain common, deep characteristics, such as its location, its relation to the life of the street, its

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