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(Published in the elhAlln65 HC03, December 2002)
0. The conference
For those who have chosen writing as a means of communication, conferences are usually a little martyrdom because patience with which we are looking for words or tacking phrases in our writing little or nothing to do with the skill of someone who knows stand before an audience and a microphone for an hour followed, talking nonstop. The superiority of the art of speaking about the writing is absolute because while this is a ghostly activity in which the author moves away and hides in the solitude of pencil and paper, that always offers us the strength proper physical presence . The writing, as well as film, builds upon the trick of working hours, giving the dessert a picture of their authors far beyond their real value. So when the writer must face the challenge of saying things in a direct and real-time, realizes the limitations and passes it really bad (just the opposite of the one who just never had anything to say and they put a microphone in front, "it must be said).
conferences are cures for writer genuine humility, why should accept without question.
Fortunately, to date I have not been "invited" to many of these therapies, and who have done so have almost always been friends. But that is even worse because in this case it happens that the very inconvenience of humiliation there is also the fear of disappointing your hosts.
However, despite the painful throes of the therapeutic session and feeling of guilt fraud causes you to those who put their trust in you calling you to give a talk, it turns out, all out with a good material for phrases and words, and no little energy for writing them again, starting the cycle all over again . With notes and diagrams together and think before the conference, with the crush and sweat of the meeting of this body, and the questions and comments that arise then collect a dossier in any case can not let them perish without put it in writing soon. Contrary to what may seem sensible, lately I have been for writing conferences after giving them: just as, by way of memorandum, and some also go back to how low you have fallen.
I write below the originally titled "Delcoración" and finally "Architecture and crime", held in Palma de Mallorca on October 24, 2002 at the invitation of Professor decoration decorator and Francisco Romero, in the framework of the second edition MODEC the regional fair. Be dedicated to him these lines as gratitude for their trust and as reparation for my oratorical shortcomings.
1.
architecture architecture's voice has worn so that to make sense again or put in place have to rethink everything in origin.
Construction own habitat by man could be seen as a continuity with nests that are birds, rabbit holes or bee hives, a "make" innocent men do not often call dry architecture but construction . However, William Morris, a thinker little suspicious of pulling his sardine Ember (it was not an architect), defined architecture as any changes in the Earth's surface designed to meet your needs, so regardless of union issues, we could understand this definition, "or perhaps with an addendum which explicitly said that it needs to meet the man with the architecture are those of the habitat. That is, the same as the rabbit or the bee.
Architecture is human activity that makes its habitat on the surface of the earth (... and now a little beyond the surface, space stations ...). A habitat that begins with the construction of the nest or home, but given the complexity of man, soon extending to other territories as the connections between the houses, or small tools that make them more livable.
The use of the word architecture can therefore be extended to fields in what is now understood as civil engineering or design objects, and thus begin to feel all our habitat on earth as a continuum smoothly. As habitat is the highway or the airport that arrived in the city of Palma, as the chair where I sit now. All things made by human hands or accommodating changing nature to your room may deserve the name of "architecture" because, among other things there seems to be a more appropriate, and that in all three cases always used the same method think what you will do, "project", before taking it.
And so, the architect, which is the arch tectum etymology, that is, the first mason, one who thinks what is going to do with the land and the land to suit your needs best room, and the same when to build a bridge over the river and giving the tracks to make a table. Since man is a complex and hierarchical organization, its habitat is so, and the construction of it, having to organize themselves in an equally complex, requires a hierarchy in the making begins in the making of the architect. It would seem that the best reason to use the word architecture to the business of building the human habitat is in the shape of a director of the process, the architect. Even in the world of construction of objects where the initial complexity may be lower, with the industrialization process of the figure of a prime architect or architect (who is being called designer) is as or more necessary than in the construction of the bridge or house.
2. The decor
The man's habitat needs of architecture and it starts but the architecture, and that is the heart of this conference is not enough. The architecture is a cause leading to the emergence of new objects in the world, bridges, houses, candle holders, "that relate directly to the living. But the image and likeness of man, the objects that man does always unfold between essence and presence, a being of the thing and the thing being there. A split that can occur in two distinct acts or at two different times, but may also occur simultaneously without this fold disappears.
The split between "being" and a "being-there" (or be) the difference between "ie" and "that's right" seem to have been expressed in words with the following dec diz or later would rise to terms like honor or decoration. And just as that man is "but his" figure "is transformed or adapted according to their actions, depending on the circumstances, depending on who is ahead and so on. etc. in the same way that humans dress for a wedding, is tempered to an authority or lipstick to call the attention of the opposite sex, their presence also takes changing room in terms of which are to be occupied by a baby or for a kitchen, the walls are dressed differently if they are to withstand the rains from the north or if they will give inside the house, its columns adjust their reception decorations to the porch or the rear façade, and so on.
would seem that the accommodation of the circumstances architecture gives it a more ephemeral and circumstantial aspect and in that sense, more closely linked also to the human condition. So it should state that address the aspirations of eternity in which the architecture tends to run (and man), the Shopping comes to remembering it (and him) his finitude. Decorating is, in the most beautiful and profound, humane architecture: the return to man's fleeting time.
And while the architecture is not only everything that is related to the building but also the great public works or small objects, the decor is just a place in all of them. The desolation of major airports, highways, dams or bridges, they tend to soften when I have to spend a great head of state and appear adorned with flags, carpets, vegetation or lanterns. The arrival of Christmas or the holidays is usually also a good opportunity sad to decorate everyday spaces, but in general it should be noted that little attention is paid to the humanization of all the great works that technological progress has to do in the late twentieth century. We may all be because some architects' fundamentalists of being "banned decoration in their manifestos theoretical and wanted to bring to court as if it were a crime. It is time therefore that the new century has begun setting the score once and for all those preachers who argued that architecture itself was already the habitat of man. In contrast to the celebrated title of the article of Adolf Loos in which criminalized ornament, I remember this conference would propose the name of "Architecture and Crime" as owner of what has been the architecture of the twentieth century.
As regards the territory of industrial objects, the decoration appears again as a humanizing activity the same as that seeks rescue of uniformity that are seeking the production chain. The staff upholstered chair, the craft on the door handle as standard, the sticker on the glass, or the initials on the cover are the new traces of humanization with indistinct that new objects are incorporated into human habitat. Footprints that somehow come to replace or restore such other traces of imperfection that artisans left in the pre-industrial objects that now so much appreciated. It is said that the decoration
sometimes it is not decency but concealment, deception and lies. The split between "being" and "present" could be to give some continuity or relationship, but both events occur Puder little or nothing had to do and that this lack of relationship between the self and the present could read as falsity. Of the three types of decoration of the architecture that I learned from professors and Ustarroz Iñiguez, that is, symbolic decoration, the analog and ornamental, the requirement for continuity between the first and second do not always enforceable. For example, the presence of Quranic verses on the spandrels of the Church of Santa Sophia in Constantinople instead of Christian icons not only affects the spatial reading of the place and only alludes to its present worship and property. The shields, banners or logos that mean human habitats in this first type of decoration rarely have to do with the construction and architectural language so the gap between architecture and symbolic decoration is almost a constant. The room in which I give this lecture has been decorated for the occasion with the poster of the show that welcomes us and nobody would say that we are fooling with that architecture the room, but quite the opposite.
Of the three decorations, the architects preferred the decor is certainly as it applies to analog voice or expand not only the fate or circumstance of the room but his own architectural forms: the opening of the door which is reproduced in molding that surrounds it, the groove of the column that echoes their own vertical or laying mortar on a wall that expresses their character sheet. But is this true at all? Do not we know that the wall is a continuous sheet but an aggregate of small pieces that might be more sincere expression mendiante rhythmic texture of a surface ornament? Are they sincere and not misleading the grooves of a Roman column marble which is just outside the shell of a brick columns?
ornamental decoration, the most reviled of all for his apparent disconnection from architecture to decorating, decoration of the Alhambra in Granada or the wallpapers from our room, can you send us, to the annoyance of the architects fundamentalists purity, to the depths of constructive development, that is, the beat and repetition of small parts to be built. Very silly
had to be modern architects of the twentieth century not to notice the difference between a dress and costume, including a makeup or a mask. And very ridiculous are all who take the architectural nudity as a manifestation of the real thing when we all know that human nakedness is one of the most elaborate and expensive presentations.
3.La word
But even with all doing the architecture and the humanizing of the decor is not yet sufficient for their achievements come to be the habitat of man. Hölderlin says in one of the deepest and most beautiful poems ever written on
habitat that has experienced many things
man and has given many celestial
name and since we are Word-in-dialogue
and we can hear each the other is Full
(...) Man merit;
but not by them but by the Poetry
making this land their home. What
explained in prose is to say that, if for things of the world are our home is that poetry should name them, not least the need to have those things that men do with the architecture and decoration . For large concrete constructions or small vases are part of our habitat must first be passed by word, and only when they find the right word or name right, that is, when poetry among them, form part of our dwelling. Hence
the need for criticism in principle is nothing that word and that if given the right word may be called poetry. Soil
have to illustrate this third do in the process of setting up our habitat a very simple human story home My wife gets up in the morning haggard and disheveled, then locks herself in the bathroom for a while and combed out, painted and with a beaming face, returns to the room and dressed in clean clothes and neat, and finally says goodbye to me before leaving for work while I am astonished by the transformation. When asked back at noon if no one has said how beautiful she has gone to work today, and I answered no, that his work is an inhospitable place where you and put what you put anyone ever tell you anything. Since then he's right: no more inhospitable than a place where there is nothing about the beauty of being and the beauty of its presentation.
In the same sense of say about the habitat, Jorge Luis Borges wrote: "How nice to be inhabitants of a city that has been discussed by a great verse" . And so, elms Soria or ride between San Polo and San Saturio Machado sung by the same courts of Buenos Aires or defined by Borges ( "courtyard is the slope down which the sky flows into the house" ) get the quality of being permanently parts of man's habitation.
But the word just and proper times can also cause great harm. Note that when the Emperor Maximilian Joseph opened the Opera House in Vienna, said to dislike the mistake of a really small floor and out of scale to comply with dignity the role of their relationship with the street. The next day one of the two architects who designed the building overwhelmed by the humiliation of the emperor (and its critical success) took his own life. Everything had been arranged if the emperor had seen the plans prior to construction of the building, since both in architecture and decoration should be on projects be discussed and commented on before running.
Criticism is both poetic endeavor to find the right word to name things, but the criticism is also, unfortunately for him, I critical manifest trial that gives life to the objects or the death sentence.
To make poetry criticism and not opinion or view, I recommend avoiding where possible the term "like" and delay everything to the "value judgments." It is not easy, I know, but that's the secret of criticism. Story in my "Manual Criticism of Architecture" is the remarkable difference between the English expression "I like it" and the Latin expression "I like that" because the order is reversed and the subjects while the first is clear that we speak of the self, the latter seems to us to be talking about the thing. In the mixture of languages \u200b\u200bthat we face in this case we should accept the English mode to understand that with that kind of expression do not only criticism of the description of the subject. When we talk about our likes about the things we are describing ourselves without shame, so it should be taken carefully into account. But if the expression of personal taste runs to the gates of criticism, the final trial moves to the other extreme, it once issued, the entire argument is provides the service of trial and not the thing. Having said that one thing is bad or good, the aim then is to justify the trial and not give the names of the thing.
To exercise criticism and poetry, to name the presentation architecture and not a few textbooks have been written throughout history and have set a bunch of words that act as references. Vitruvius gave us utilitas, Firmitas and flower. Alberti turned them into need, and Voluptas Oportunitas. Then came Sicurezza and Commodités, and so on. A laboratory has thrown another handful of names to approach architecture, such as shape, color, light, game volumes, areas, sections, texture, proportion, sign, expression, style, trend, composition, complexity and contradiction, quality without name,. etc. All of them can guide us in the poetic work, that is, in the search for adequate expression to the object you are asking him to speak into our home. The difference between a good critic who makes the world habitable and bad critic who only speaks of himself or judge is very easy to see. Since it is very easy to be the second and quite difficult at first, because it always requires training and discipline. Rarely is anyone and after the movie that just say that you liked or not the movie, and even more inept critic makes his first steps and saying the story was bad but the players did well, not music accompanying the action or that the picture was very impressive. Receives the worst treatment human habitation critical that an entertainment product should be cause for shame.
4.
dialogue
But Hölderlin's verse speaks not only to give names to things celestial and man-made things to make them our home, but the man who gives names defined as word-in-dialogue. The word of man
naming things is not so fixed and conclusive but, as the man himself, open, ephemeral and changeable. The word that names the architecture and decorative presentation must be themselves the subject of new words in dialogue so that the world is finally habitable. Man's word is as word-in-dialogue, so as to close the cycle, the criticism of criticism is, therefore, make the fourth and final set of activities that build our home.
We said in the previous point that there are many opinions and much trial instead of criticism, but in this fourth point is to say that there is less criticism of criticism. Rarely these days the word critical of arquitctura is answered and placed on your site so I'll finish this talk by mentioning allow what is and what can be done.
The critical language of our time is mediated by the overabundance of information and business needs of the newspaper business and provides an overview clearly bipolar.
On the one hand, the architecture critic, exercised mostly by men in journals of small circulation but very expensive, is expressed in a pseudo-abstract language in which all the saints is usually understood by architects that slowly takes shape for elevation to the altars of a history that remains after, or even could say that almost immediately. History on the heels of criticism and function as both the hunter and his dog getting parts for Art. Luis Fernandez Galiano is in this sense one of the pointers most workers in this country. Clear that given the newspaper business and the major studios is to be expected that not everything is a religion of Art and History service but all that production of proper names and photographs of architecture also conceals a desire for notoriety of the artists and a turnover of favors, invitations, jury awards and commissions. The current architecture critic is not concerned so noventaynueve percent of the things that makes the man but only of that one percent that feeds religions or business history and Art. And so the people has come to confuse architecture with the one percent made by artists and understand that the other noventaynueve percent done by men is not architecture, "which falls clearly in contradiction with the definition given Morris at first. Furthermore
criticism of decoration, carried out mostly by women in trade magazines of wide circulation and low price, expressed in a language of cocktails and flirting, far from leading to the altar to the second to the habitat, cut to nowhere more sinsustancial. The type of publication in which this criticism comes (to call it somehow) to be much more tied to mass consumption the architectural magazines, shows much more boldly the economic and advertising component of much of its contents. And as in the case of sweetened drinks instead of quenching thirst, what they do is lead to keep buying more and more magazines of this type so that I could not understand what the complexion and nature of the human habitat.
avant-garde styles and will take shape through the abstract language of worship and architectural critics, while fashions and trends come and go through the scintillating gossip magazines "delcoración." The first feed the chapters of the books of art history and by the way, ambitions of politicians who want to jump on the bandwagon, and the latter serve as accelerators of the chains of production and consumption.
The need to inhabit the land of dignity and harmony underlies all this verbiage without address and name their circumstances and tasks. And so, the world moves rapidly, with the help of a technical power desvocado, towards desolation, if not destruction. Serve
for the words to make a little more liveable world through the reminder of the definition of architecture, the claim of the nature of decency, consideration poetic criticism, criticism and critique as no, the dialog start their own content and expression.
Juan Diez del Corral
