“What is time? A secret — insubstantial and omnipotent? A prerequisite of the external world, a motion intermingled and fused with bodies existing and moving in space? But would there be no time, if there were no motion? No motion, if there were no time? What a question! Is time a function of space? Or vice versa? Or are the two identical? An even bigger question! Time is active, by nature it is much like a verb, it both “ripens” and “brings forth.” And what does it bring forth? Change! Now is not then, here is not there — for in both cases motion lies in between. But since we measure time by a circular motion closed in on itself, we could just as easily say that its motion and change are rest and stagnation — for the then is constantly repeated in the now, the there in the here. . . . Hans Castorp turned these sorts of questions over and over in his own mind.”

Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, p. 339. 1

Philosophies of Time

“What, then, is time? If nobody asks me, I know;

St. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, Book XI. 2

There is perhaps no quote more relevant than St. Augustine’s when commencing the task of trying to understand or even simply define what exactly ‘time’ is. As finite creatures we take for granted its omnipresence in all aspects of life and tend to ignore the somewhat abstract concept where possible. In a simplistic way we may accept that time refers to the procession (ostensibly irreversible) of one event after another in a seemingly infinite succession of change. Time becomes the absolute condition which all events are part of as comparison to the subjectivation of time which is the creation of memory. That such an intangible infinity permeates all aspects of our perceived reality is such a powerful concept that it has enticed philosophic inquiry since antiquity, the curious mind seeks what it does not know; by extension we can never really ‘know’ time. The task of trying to understand time has led to an ever-complex bifurcation of enquiry and differing ideas that cast a long shadow on the development of culture, religion and scientific endeavour.

To butcher a Donald Rumsfeld quote, we can see how it may fall to the realm of the philosopher to try to know the known unknown of time. As with most concepts explored (and constrained) in Western philosophy, the long arrow of history can trace ideations on time back to the Athenian schools. Of great interest and debate to the Greeks was the ‘Paradox of Time’ put forward by Zeno of Elea which related the change inherent in time to the illusion of motion, a claim strongly refuted in Aristotle’s Physics (350 B.C.E.). Aristotle directly differentiates between ‘movement’ and ‘change’ and gives his definition of time as: “The measure of change with respect to before and after.”3

Jumping forward almost two millennia to what we might consider the ‘modern’ hegemonic cannon of philosophical temporal inquiry, we see Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781) time comes to occupy a similar definition as that of space, with space being the pure form of ‘external intuition’ and time coming to be the universal condition of both immediate internal and mediate external phenomenon.4

In Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927) the nature of time is inherently existential and directly relates to the finite human. In this way time for Heidegger is the measure of what can be done by man regarding this finitude. Heidegger goes to lengths to show that time is always a directed concept, as is ‘it is time for’. To ‘dwell’ in time for Heidegger is to confront the finitude of existence.5 With Freud, as is almost always the case, the unconscious is defined by a notion of ‘timelessness’. The relation between Freuds ‘psychic apparatus’ of the unconscious, preconscious, conscious and topographic see time as the record of transportation or ‘registration’ of one notion from one system to another.6

Deleuze and Guattari see philosophical time in a ‘straitigraphic ’ sense, with before/after forming an order of superimposition on what they call ‘the plane of immanence’ which puts it in conflict with their notion of scientific time, that is, the bifurcating notion of scientific progress in a sequential order.7 The relationship between ‘time’ and ‘history’ is an equally nebulous topic as American art historian George Kubler summarises:

“Without change there is no history; without regularity there is no time. Time and history are related as rule and variation: time is the regular setting for the vagaries of history.” 8

British anthropologist Tim Ingold counters this:

“Let me begin, once again, by stating what temporality is not. It is not chronology (as opposed to history), and it is not history (as opposed to chronology). By chronology, I mean any regular system of dated time intervals, in which events are said to have taken place. By history, I mean any series of events which may be dated in time according to their occurrence in one or another chronological interval.” 9

The notion of the role of time with regards to modernity is of particular interest. Consider for instance American historian Lewis Mumford’s insistence within the seminal Technics and Civilization (1934) that the ushering in of modernity is directly tied to the invention of the clock and thus by extension the production of the ‘second and minute’ has become a quasi-tangible manifestation of time. This machine becomes the prototype which enables the creation of all machines to come to rely upon. For Mumford mankind:

“Could do without coal and iron and steam easier than it could do without the clock.” 10

In The Culture of Time and Space (1983), American historian Stephen Kern studies how the changes in thinking about abstract philosophical categories of time become manifested in a concrete historical situation. According to Kern:

“From around 1880 to the outbreak of World War I, a series of sweeping changes in technology and culture created distinctive new modes of thinking and experiencing time and space. Technological inventions including the telephone, wireless telegraph, x-ray, cinema, bicycle, automobile, and airplane established the material foundation for this reorientation; independent cultural developments such as the stream-of consciousness novel, psychoanalysis, Cubism, and the theory of relativity shaped consciousness directly. The result was a transformation of the dimensions of life and thought.” 11

Philosopher and architect Christian Hubert summarises this notion of history, modernity and time neatly:

“Modernity must be understood as an attitude about time, as a sense that the present differs qualitatively from the past, and that the future is what counts.” 12

These are but a few different philosophies of time, some are interlinked, some in complete opposition and antithesis to one another. It is but a small spattering of the multitude of ideas and frameworks for ‘time’ put forward by some of the greatest thinkers of history. Not to even mention the evolving nature of ‘scientific’ time, from antiquity through to today. From the Greek notion regarding time as an illusion to Copernicus’s heliocentrism, Newtons reversible Newtonian time, Einstein’s relative time and even to current theories of unified space-time.

It is not wrong to say that the referenced philosophies are in the majority from a surface level reading of the canon of Western philosophy, however, with the global proliferation of the modernist movement from the 18th century onwards and concreted by the homogenised architectural ‘supermodernity’ in our 21st century age of perpetual crisis, this understanding of ‘temporality’ has come to be the hegemonic conceptual in the architectural discourse of time. Although increasingly an acceptance and exploration of epistemologies related to philosophies of time have opened up great avenues and departures from the assumptions and preconditions of Western philosophy, there is still a great and perpetual endeavour to be undertaken by philosophers and laymen alike in trying to understand the fundamental question: What is Time?

On Kawara, ‘1966’, (1966)

Building Against Time

“Time conquers all things . . . all-conquering, all-ruining time….God help me, I sometimes cannot bear it..”

Leon Battista Alberti, De Re Aedificatoria
(“on the Art of Building”), Book I.13

An architect and theorist, Juhani Pallasmaa communicated in The Space of Time (1998) the overwhelming power that time has over us, and by extension our architecture:

“Time is the dimension of experience that is most frightening to us in its seemingly absolute power over us. We feel helpless in relation to time, and we find ourselves at its mercy. As human’s understanding of time lost its primordial cyclical nature, time became linear with an irrevocable beginning and end. We can shape matter and order space, but we cannot throw time of its predestined course. Human’s greatest desire, therefore, is to halt, suspend and reverse the flow of time. Architecture’s fundamental task, to provide us with our domicile in space, is recognized by most architects. However, the second task of architecture, to mediate human’s relation with the fleeting element of time, is usually disregarded.” 14

As with other phenomenologist practitioners Pallasmaa’s views on time and architecture are quickly read as humanist in nature. However, he hints that this second task, that of engaging with the nature of time and its relationship with both the human and their architecture is something which is not eagerly embraced or addressed by architects. The exaltation of an architecture that embraces duration and change is identified by Pallasmaa as lacking. Pallasmaa goes on to talk about the power of architecture of a time (in the Heideggerian sense) to communicate across the ages as a form of time-capsule of Zeitgeist:

“The temple of Karnak takes us back to the time of the pharaohs, whereas the Medieval cathedral presents us the full color of life in the Middle Ages. In the same way, great works of modernity preserve the Utopian time of optimism and hope; even after decades of trying faith they radiate an air of spring and promise. The Paimio Sanatorium by Alvar Aalto is heartbreaking in its radiant belief in a humane future and in the societal mission of architecture. Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye makes us believe in the union of reason and beauty, ethics and aesthetic. These works do not symbolize optimism and faith; they actually awaken the sprout of hope within us.” 15

Eduard Hildebrandt, ‘View of the Ruins of the Temple of Karnak’, (1852)

The notion that ‘time will tell’ is often the hallmark catch-cry of those who seek to judge the intrinsic value of a work of architecture. On one end of the spectrum this relates to what can be called ‘Timeless’ architecture, that which carries on a profound symbolic or cultural meaning much longer than intended. This however does not mean that it escapes or transcends time all together but rather as architectural critic Paul Goldberger states in Why Architecture Matters (2009):

“[Timeless architecture] may have qualities that transcend the immediacy of its moment, and it may communicate eloquently to people living in different times from the one in which it was created.” 16

Ostensibly, within architecture this is done by a seeming rejection of time, by manufacturing a façade of immortality. Timeless architecture does not explicitly position its perceived value through its tectonics yet they serve the purpose of emphasising a presumed infinite and immutable reality of the object, which we know can never actually be true of any artefact. If time is essentially a field of sequential change, then an object which does not seem affected by this state is assumed to be ‘outside’ of the grasp of time, a form of immortality that would be anathemic to any self describing neo-fluxist.

For Vitruvius the fundamental criteria for the judgement of architecture lay within his oft extolled ‘firmitas, utilitas, and venustas’. 17 For Vitruvius it was one matter to state how something can or should be built and another altogether on how he judged the quality of a singular work.

Quality for Vitruvius was not limited to rigid notions of structure, or purely based upon functionality. Rather, it also meant its intrinsic aesthetic quality; for lack of a better word, it’s beauty. Vitruvius listed the ways in which a piece of architecture in its own way comes to embody an aesthetic of timelessness, that being through order, arrangement, eurhythmy, symmetry, propriety and economy. These physical aspects of a design would stand in for those aesthetic abstractions related to the value of an architecture.18

If Vitruvius outlined a criteria for the judgement of the value of architecture, then it was the 15th century Italian architect and polymath Leon Battista Alberti that called for an architecture of permanence. Alberti’s role in the formation of the architect as author, and by extension architecture as its own profession separated from the notions of master-builder are well known. However, it is within his own response to Vitruvius' treatise on architecture that laid the foundation for what has been the dominant mindset for architecture for more than half a Millennia.

In Alberti’s habitus for architecture to be ‘truly great’ it must be complete and unalterable from inception and to the point of the original completion of drawings and models. That the construction which would follow would conform to every aspect of this ‘perfect’ design and every detail within. Building upon this he put forward the influential idea that a building’s perfection was directly tied to its immutability, and any change or revision would irreversibly undermine, alter or destroy that beauty. 19 He summarises this notion succinctly in one passage from his treatise On the Art of Building (1485):

“That reasoned harmony of all the parts within a body, so that nothing may be added, taken away, or altered, but for the worse. It is a great and holy matter; all our resources and skill and ingenuity will be taxed in achieving it, and rarely is it granted, even to Nature herself, to produce anything that is entirely complete and perfect-in-itself.” 20

Thomas Cole, ‘*Architects Dream*’, (1840)

American historian Marvin Trachtenberg discusses this as becoming the dominant mindset in Western Architecture:

“Alberti categorically rejected this ubiquitous method, opening an unbridgeable chasm between designing and building (the one, in fact, that we live with today). In his ideal architectural world, in absolute antithesis to contemporary practice (as well as his own eventual work as an architect rather than writer all of the learned, extended, redundant, and comprehensive planning and replanning preceded construction. Any changes during execution were ruled out.” 21

Indeed Alberti proposed (although contextually one could argue with some sense of irony):

“...We may determine in advance what is necessary and make preparations in order to avoid any hesitation, change, or revision after the commencement of the work...” 22

By casting ‘perfect’ architecture as necessarily immutable, Alberti arguably was successful in positioning architecture's opposition to time as the necessary foundation of the mindset of the architectural profession. This understanding of time as an inherently negative destructive force, ‘time the destroyer’, was a significant break from the long-dominant cultural construction of time as a positive, creative force that had been dominant in the ancient and mediaeval periods. Within which while the latter encompassed an expectation for a building to be modified whilst it was still being constructed and even after it was ‘finished’, the antithesis of Alberti’s ‘great building’ required no change once drawings were complete. 23 24 25

Alberti cast his architectural reasoning of the ‘great perfect building’ as being in step with nature’s ability to create fully formed ‘perfect’ assemblages. This contrasts strongly with the classical reasoning of nature that saw constant change as inherently ‘natural’ and as part of the ‘essence’ of things. Trachtenberg highlights this poignantly by comparison to Ovid’s epic poem Metamorphosis (8 CE) with the lines:

“My mind is bent to tell of bodies changed into new forms”... “Whatever is beneath the heavens change their forms, the earth and all that is within it.” 26

Architectural philosopher Karsten Harries contrasts the organic approach of the Baroque with the ‘classical’ approach also apparent in Modernism:

“The former invites metaphors that suggest absence, change, life, time; the latter invokes metaphors that suggest presence, stasis, death, eternity.” 27

According to Trachtenberg, Alberti’s reasoning for the denial of time in his architecture is seen as an attempt to create a humanistic power over time. That is, for the architect as an individual to shape and control it, rather than be subsumed by it. The ability for the expansion of the temporal through design, the compression of the temporal through the production of architectural artefact and finally a collapsing or reversal of time, or an architecture of duration through the apparent immutability of the final ‘perfect’ object granted the illusion of power to the author and in doing so Alberti presents what appeared to be a methodology for building against time. 28

What may be of interest here is that Alberti understands the need for a durational approach within the construction of ‘great buildings’. He states that for proper construction, time must be taken to ensure both the materials and the technique are of the ‘appropriate’ duration. This somewhat paradoxical view of the operation of building as durational has been linked by Trachtenberg to Alberti’s humanist tendencies; Alberti understands the negative force of time ‘on the lives and works of men.’

Indeed Alberti’s final book in the treatise talks about restoration, decay and ruin of works, and the irrevocable destruction of architecture. For Alberti the terror of time is that it negatively impacts every aspect of ‘great building’, and it is only in the careful and measured design of architecture that time can play any positive aspect before it is resisted at all costs. 29

With Alberti’s treatise and influence we see the abandonment of a durational reasoning that had lasted and served architecture from Antiquity through to the Renaissance. The reverberations of the desire for an ‘immutable architecture’ continued to be felt from Alberti’s time, through to the Modernist Bauhaus Movement and Gropius’s call for ‘the complete building’ which still manifests today with the deeply problematic notion of building ‘against’ time rather than ‘with time’. 30

The Terror of Time

“Architecture is not only about domesticating space, It is also a deep defence against the terror of time, The language of beauty is essentially the language of timeless reality.”

Karsten Harries, Building and the Terror of Time, 68. 31

When we consider Alberti’s approach to foster an ‘immutable architecture’ or to build ‘against’ time, we know that he is reacting with fear to the durational finitude of not only architecture as artefact but also the mortality of man. German architectural philosopher Karsten Harries elaborates on this point in his seminal work Building and the Terror of Time (1982), in which he advocates for an architecture in tune with the temporal. For Harries, mankind’s utilisation of architecture as a tool to defy the psychological effects of time are apparent. Harries traces shelter as the most fundamental way to provide a protection from times of terror, to banish those feelings of vulnerability and mortality.32 Harries elucidates:

“Building has been understood to be a domestication of space. To domesticate space is to tame it, to construct boundaries that wrest place from space. Such construction receives its measure from our need to control the environment. Control should not be understood here too narrowly: it is not just a matter of creating an artificial environment that offers protection against an often unfriendly world; as important as physical control is psychological control.” 33

Furthermore, Harries goes on to state the innate relationship between man, architecture and time:

“Talk of architecture establishing place by the construction of boundaries in space suggests a quite traditional distinction between arts of space and arts of time, between formative and expressive arts. The distinction has a certain obviousness; yet our experience of space and our experience of time are too intertwined to allow us simply to accept it. Thus, if we can speak of architecture as a defense against the terror of space, we must also recognize that from the very beginning it has provided defenses against the terror of time.” 34

We see here a connection to French philosopher Gaston Bachelard on the primitiveness of refuge in The Poetics of Space (1958):

“Well-being takes us back to the primitiveness of the refuge. Physically, the creature endowed with a sense of refuge huddles up to itself, takes to cover, hides away, lies snug, concealed.” 35

Harries ties this instinctive desire for shelter against time, with Bachelard’s notions of comfort derived from memories of protection. Here we link ideas of shelter to memories of stasis, safety and control. The enclosure becomes the psychological protection from change. Nostalgia and memory replace the uncertainty of external existence. 36

Harries explains that the symbolism inherit to the temple, church or house creates a repetition of ‘divine archetypes’. Through the act of worship or dwelling, man is able, albeit illusionary, to become atemporal and escape the terror of time. Indeed of all the typologies, the house comes to signify a unique position in the lives of its inhabitants. 37 Romanian historian Mircea Eliade states the fundamentally natalist view of the house

“A ‘new era’ opens with the building of every house. Every construction is an absolute beginning; that is, tends to restore the instant, the plenitude of a present that contains no trace of history.” 38

One of the ever-returning concepts in relation to architecture and time is the notion that as architecture continues to develop, it is consistently cast in opposition or resistance to what seems the changing state of ‘nature’ or in less secular-times ‘the divine’. The notion that architecture can provide an escape from the flux and chaos of the natural world is not new.

Pieter Bruegel, ‘*The Tower of Babel*’, (1563).

For Harries the greatest mythical analogy is that of The Tower of Babel. Here we have an artifice born of man's pride that seeks to challenge the divine and in doing so extol their mastery over both the physical and spiritual world. Harries points to Bruegel's painting as showing man trying to dominate not only space but also time, and in doing so revealing his total inability to do either. 39 The building continues ever forward as previous iterations crumble, decay and return to the landscape. On the small dwellings built into the side of the tower Harries has this to say:

“Against the tower itself modest shelters nestle much as buildings may nestle against some city wall or church in a mediaeval city.
Here we have, not monuments, but buildings that speak of a very different, less antagonistic relationship to time. They hint at possibilities of dwelling born of a trust deeper than pride. Such trust demands determinations of beauty and building that do not place them in essential opposition to time.” 40

It’s potentially here that an antidote might be found for the antagonistic building ‘against’ the terror of time, architectural historian Karen Franck interprets Harries view particularly in relation to Babel:

“For Karsten Harries, Bruegel’s painting illustrates the prideful desire to resist time by constructing monumental buildings that dominate time and space, but also another human desire: to create modest, human-scaled structures that are responsive to their neighbours, as shown nestled against the tower and making up the city below.” 41

The Lives of Buildings

“A building lost is never regained.
That is perhaps the strongest argument for proceeding cautiously and assuring that the difficult decisions about what to save are not made in response to the short cycles of taste and fashion.”

Paul Goldberger, Why Architecture Matters, 2009. 42

There is a view that architecture is inheritably ‘natalist’, fixated on the ever-increasing production and eventual discarding of built artefacts and edifices. This notion of a genealogy of architecture that in fact only has the binary existence of ‘alive or dead’ before issuing a plethora of offspring is problematic. As Charles Jencks would formulate and formulate time and time again, architecture may develop over time and bifurcate due to cultural or technological change, however this in and of itself is not the same as biological reproduction. Reacting against Alberti’s dominant ‘immutable architecture’, there are a multitude of ways architecture can be a process that reacts to and with change, evolving and extending over time rather than being artificially encapsulated by what appears a perpetual moment, a stasis in time.43

In a practical sense ‘The Lives of Buildings’ does not merely refer to a binary state of ‘alive or dead’ but rather the multitude of differing existential states. From a tectonic sense there is little reason why architecture can’t be infinitesimally mutable and changing, as Arup researcher Steven Groák describes as:

“An open and unstable system composed of flows of energy and matter.” 44

Or perhaps more fatalistically as Stephen Cairns and J.M. Jacobs put forward in their work Buildings Must Die: A Perverse View of Architecture (2014):

“[On Architecture] It has lives as well as a death – an ending that can also be designed in advance.” 4

Architectural theorist Jill Stoner has set out in her text The Nine Lives of Buildings (2016) possible definitions for the varying states of ‘architectural lives’ and how these affect the temporal nature of all architecture, they are as follows. 46

i) Abandonment

Stoner argues that abandonment becomes the oldest and most ‘natural’ state for a building once it has outlived its intended purpose. The power of the site of abandonment is tied not only to what architectural form or ruin remains but rather the echo back of a collective memory of place. The act of separation of place from a time of use is significant. As Stoner elaborates:

“Sites of abandonment tend to embody the stories that rendered them obsolete, whether from failing economies, political upheavals or nuclear disasters...These buildings acquire character [and by extension a new form of place]; they become witnesses to the slow motions of time, and prophecies of possible futures.”

ii) Demolition

The power and the fury of the wrecking ball: demolition reflects a more wasteful enterprise of the built environment. As architecture has become a mass commodity that proliferates the landscape, Stoner sees a classical example of demolition in the urban renewal and slum clearance of the 1950’s-60’s within the United States. Consecutive post-war waves of demolition and new building were seen as ‘the bell that cannot be unrung’. For stoner the rupture caused by demolishment ‘removes potential and revokes any future; a demolished building’s second act as landfill offers little possibility for any life beyond its first.’

Author Unknown, ‘Demolition of Pruitt-Igoe’, (1972). Pruitt-Igoe, St. Louis, USA. Minoru Yamasaki 1951-1972/76

iii) Deconstruction

In comparison to demolition, deconstruction comes as the systematic dismantling and salvage of a building’s components, thus keeping them, as Stoner says, ‘alive for future use’. Not purely an outcome of Anthropocene age economics, deconstruction is an ancient method for interacting with architecture. The removal and replacement of materials to create entirely new architectures has been prevalent for as long as man has been building.

iv) Preservation, Conservation, Restoration

The act of preservation, conservation and restoration places an inherent value judgement on any particular piece of architecture. This represents an echo of Alberti’s perfect building. However, all three methods speak directly to combating (or in the case of restoration) attempting to revert the mark of time on physical form. This protection against time is generally tied to cultural understandings of an architecture of a particular time or related to a particular event. As Stoner puts forth, ‘as a strictly material art, preservation and restoration are independent of use.’

v) Renovation and Rehabilitation

Remaking what is seen to be a dilapidated building, renovation and rehabilitation occupy a space of differentiation from Stoner’s definition of preservation, conservation and restoration. The cultural or architectural significance may play no part in the reasoning for rehabilitation. Rather the act is to make the architecture fit to purpose, whatever that may be. Here we see not necessarily an attempt to reverse time but rather to reset the clock all together in what can become nothing more than a facsimile of what once stood in its place.

vi) Adaptive Reuse

The increasing trend of adaptive reuse sees a building or site redesigned and modified to suit another purpose altogether. As with conservation the cultural significance of a building may be retained even if the original function is drastically altered. However for Stoner, adaptive reuse is often an act of economically motivated rather than done in the name of nostalgia or cultural preservation of place.

vii) Reoccupation

As with adaptive reuse, reoccupation looks at the recovery of abandoned architecture. This can be done in a much more informal nature, rather than with what Stoner calls ‘preservationist pretence’. A significant determinant of whether something is ‘reoccupation’ is its inherent unsanctioned and provisional or ‘socially fragile’ nature. Stoner points to this perhaps being the oldest form of recovery of abandoned architecture.

viii) Pure Expression:

For Stoner ‘Pure Expression’ comes to be the artistic expression or intervention either ‘aggressively temporary’ or ‘enduring for a millennia’. In this way, the physical act of transformation acts as a ‘call to attention’ of a ‘transformative moment in time.’ Appropriation, and totally discarding architectural and convention, becomes a powerful artistic tool of commentary.

Ezra Orion, ‘Tribute in Lights’, (2010).

viii) Resurrection

The final category given by Stoner relates to the recreation either as piece or in total replication of an architecture that has all disappeared. Here is an echo of that call for immortality of architecture, often in a symbolic simulacrum rather than facsimile. A powerful example Stoner gives is the ‘Tribute in Light’ which occurs every year on the anniversary of the 11th September destruction of New York’s Twin Towers and entails two beams of light that act to replicate the since-disappeared silhouettes of the iconic buildings.

The removal of a building can have profound consequences. As is the apparent nature of time, once gone, they can never truly be recovered. If as theorist Paul Virilio once wrote ‘the invention of the ship was also the invention of shipwreck’, surely the invention of an architectural work is also the invention of its eventual architectural ruin. 47 Along these lines, it should come as no surprise that the image of ruin is such a powerful motif for architects and laypeople alike. The American sculptor Robert Morris stated the power of the ruin in The Present Tense of Space (1978) as such:

“Approached with no reverence or historical awe, ruins are frequently exceptional spaces of unusual complexity, which offer unique relations between access and barrier, the open and the closed, the diagonal and the horizontal ground plane and wall. Such are not to be found in structures that have escaped the twin entropic assaults of nature and the vandal.” 48

Andreas Huyssen in her text Nostalgia for Ruins (2006) traces the ‘cult of ruins’ in dominant Western discourse from the time of the enlightenment up until contemporary times. More powerfully she speaks of the language of ruins in recent times and their relationship to evolving ideas surrounding modernity:

“The cult of ruins has accompanied Western modernity in waves since the eighteenth century. But over the past decade and a half, a strange obsession with ruins has developed in the countries of the northern transatlantic as part of a much broader discourse about memory and trauma, genocide and war. This contemporary obsession with ruins hides a nostalgia for an earlier age that had not yet lost its power to imagine other futures. At stake is a nostalgia for modernity that dare not speak its name after acknowledging the catastrophes of the twentieth century and the lingering injuries of inner and outer colonization. Yet this nostalgia persists, straining for something lost with the ending of an earlier form of modernity. The cipher for this nostalgia is the ruin.” 49

Arata Isozaki, ‘Tsukuba Center’, (1979).

Returning to Karsten Harris’s notion of architecture as attempting to placate ‘the terror of time’, he puts forth the ruin as the most obvious ‘counterimage’ to this form of architecture. Here the comforting images of permeance and the nostalgic memory of refuge are replaced with a physical artefact which acts as a testament of the failure of the architect to stave off this terror. However, the silver lining in the image of the ruin for Harris is the notion that it can call for reflections on the vanity of human building and the sublime power of nature. Human construction here appears to surrender itself to space and time.’ 50

The humanistic aspect of the ruin can become a powerful architectural device that speaks with the past, present and future. As a recurring example in the oeuvre of a single prominent architect, architect-theorist Juhani Pallasmaa in Hapticity and Time – Notes on Fragile Architecture (2000) explains how the architectural language of fellow Finnish architect Alvar Aalto’s mid and late period work works in a humanistic way to deal with the temporality of the ruin:

‘An explicit device of Aalto’s for capturing a sense of time is the image of a ruin. He utilizes explicit or subliminal images of ruins to evoke a melancholic experience of the past, and of the inevitability of erosion, decay, and death. Aalto juxtaposes images of permanence (stone, brick) with images of transitoriness and loss (erosion, climbing plants and the patina of mold).

Even the changing of light concretizes the passing of time. Opposed to the mechanical imagery of a machine process, the materials that Aalto uses express a humanizing touch of a skilled hand. Aalto’s attitude reverses the modernist ideal, which sought to give a machine appearance even to components produced by hand.” 51

For Pallasmaa the way Aalto utilises architectural gestures throughout his oeuvre is an exemplar for a successful methodology of transcending the negative aspects of time and instead utilising them as positive architectural drivers. Here the utilisation of the passage of time as a manifested architectural aesthetic across a multitude of durational tectonics enlivens the architecture so that in return it may come to live its many lives.

Etienne-Louis Boullée, ‘Cénotaphe à Newton’, (1784).

On Geometry, Cosmos and ‘Timeless Architecture’

“Form is nothing else but a concentrated wish for everlasting life on earth.”
Alvar Aalto, Alvar Aalto, the Early Years, 192. 52

The power of geometry lies in its ability to generate powerful emotional responses in those who perceive it. Whether this is an innate as that of an archetype, purely perceptual as with gestalt theory or a learned response is not entirely relevant. Geometry has the ability through simplicity or complexity to seem ‘true’ or ‘sacred’. It has been described this way since before the time of Plato. Naturally within architecture it also presumes a dominant position as a tool for use by the architect. Geometry’s seemingly memetic ability to generate its own mysterious mythology in regard to time; take for example Le Corbusier’s fable of the origin of building, his primitive builder insists on simple geometric forms, as they are to endow what he builds with that aura of reliability that seems to protect against time. 53 Karsten Harries utilises the example of two lines in relating the power of geometry against his concept of ‘the terror of time’ as such:

“Take two lines: one dashed off, restless, resembling handwriting; the other a circle, constructed with the aid of a compass. The two stand in very different relationships to time. The former has directionality; we can speak of a beginning and an end. The latter gestures beyond time; in its self-sufficient presence it comes as close as a visible form can to the timeless realm of the spirit.” 54

Karen Franck interprets this as an attempt to cope with Harries ‘terror of time’ by ‘spiritualising the environment.’ She goes on to state:

‘Simple geometric forms, straight lines, right angles, regular polygons, such as a circle drawn with a compass, come ‘as close as a visual statement can to the timeless realm of the spirit, while an ‘expressive squiggle’ has an organic look and seems to embrace time.’ 55

This utilisation of geometry to generate form comes to be a tool for the interpretation of the value of architecture and particularly its aesthetic characteristics. Take this foundational extract on geometry, form and beauty from Plato’s Philebus (360-347 BC):

“I do not mean by beauty of form such beauty as that of animals or pictures, which the many would supposed to be my meaning; but, says the argument, understand me to mean straight lines and circles, and the plane or solid figures which are formed out of them by turning-lathes and rulers and measurers of angles; for these I affirm to be not only relatively beautiful, other things, but they are eternally and absolutely beautiful, and they peculiar pleasures, quite unlike the pleasure of scratching. And there are colours which are of the same character and have similar pleasures.” 56

Returning once more to Harries we see a contrast between the appeal of organic geometry as being ‘in step’ with time against inorganic geometric forms that belong rather to the sacred realm of the spirit rather than the body. For Harries a defining feature of sacred geometry is the difficulty of recreating without tools (the example of utilising a compass to draw a circle is given) to show how such simple, yet complex to generate, geometry is literally out of reach of the corporeality of the body. 57 This recurring theme that links geometry to sacred space and therefore the repudiation of time in place of the eternal also has strong architectural links to the development of a language of modernity. French Enlightenment architect Claude Nicholas Ledoux was seemingly fascinated with the power of simple geometric forms. In his refusal to submit to what could ostensibly be called Vitruvian doctrine of ‘the art of building’, he rather claimed that:

“The first principles of architecture are to be discerned in symmetrical solids, such as cubes, pyramids, and, most of all spheres, which are the only perfect architectural shapes which can be devised.” 58

For some prominent architectural historians such as Emil Kaufmann the ideas and hyperreal designs of Ledoux and Boullée alongside others such Violette-Le-Duc became a fundamental foundation for the later development and acceptance of Modernist Architecture. 59 Returning to Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, we see how he located geometry and form as part of the mental task of architecture in relation to Harris’s ‘terror of time’, Aalto concluded early in his career that:

“Form is nothing else but a concentrated wish for everlasting life on earth.” 60

A similar vein of reasoning is carried on by Austrian postmodern architect Hans Hollein, who reiterated in Absolute Architecture (1968):

“Architecture if a spiritual order, realised through building. Architecture - an idea built into infinite space, manifesting man’s spiritual energy and power, the material form and expression of his destiny, of his life. From its origins until today the essence and meaning of architecture have not changed. To build is a basic human need. It is first manifested not in the putting up of protective roofs, but in the erection of sacred structures.” 61

This notion of cosmogony and ‘divine building’ alongside sacred geometry and form seeks to cast the architect and by extension man as the promethean creator of tangible timeless ‘spiritual space’. Through the act of construction this ‘cosmic’ manifestation can take place. Harris sees this as a self-fulfilling prophecy in relation to this ‘timeless’ aspect:

“Building can help to establish or to reinforce such interpretation; a building that presents itself as an imitation of divine building can claim to give temporal existence its proper measure and foundation.” 62

Despite this highly spiritualised notion of architectural space there have been significant attempts to create a form of taxonomy towards those factors that create ‘sacred space’. One such classification is known as ‘Brills Approach’ which sets out the following fourteen methods for the creation of ‘sacred space’. 63

i) Making a Location and Center

The creation or acknowledgment of a centre symbolises a reality, versus the non-reality of uninterrupted, homogenous, and formless space. Spaces of quality are, therefore, the physical embodiment of centre on the earth – it is substantial and expressed as a fixed location.

ii) Making Orientation and Direction

Timeless place has an orientation and direction with relation to the centre and each of these directions express qualitative differences. The directions can be expressive of different meanings such as the pleasure of sunrise, the terror of sunset, forward and backward movement, left and right movement, levity towards heaven or downward movement into the chaos.

iii) Spatial Order

The creation of center with subsequent orientation and direction results in the generation of spatial order that is highly valued. When embodied in a sacred place, it signifies victory over the chaotic space. Sacred places, therefore, reveal the spatial order, suggesting our need for it.

iv) Celestial Order

Celestial order expresses the play of celestial rhythms in space. This order in a sacred place could also be created and based upon celestial references such as the locations and cycles of the sun, moon, stars and winds.

v) Differentiating Boundaries

Each of the boundaries related with the four directions is fixed, clear, distinct, and equidistant to the centre. These boundaries reveal different qualities when compared with each other suggesting symmetry but not sameness.

vi) Reaching Upwards

Spaces of Value are expressive of verticality, signifying a path to the heavens. Verticality is embodied in sacred spaces to subsequently come closer to what is divine. Verticality is articulated in a place by opening it to the sky, or providing soaring walls, columns and the like that reach upward toward the heavens.

vii) Triumph over the Underworld

It is the counter property of reaching downward towards the watery chaos of the underworld. Such a property of reaching downward is conquered through the process of place making. Examples of such situations include sparse water under our control, for example; a water fountain, shallow still pool or cistern, an ordered garden that is bordered and controlled.

viii) Bounding

Bounding expresses differentiation and defines the distinct domain of an ordered cosmos from the chaos. Boundaries are, therefore, distinct, and articulated in three-dimensional space in the form of walls, floors, and roofs. Of these three, the roof is most expressive of our desire to reach the divine.

ix) Passage

Passage is achieved through dematerialisation of staunch wall boundaries and is embodied in such a manner that one is able to enter and leave a certain space; it forms a continuity and means of communication between the two opposing domains present inside and outside the space. It is typically large in size to accommodate the divine and godly enhancement that occurs on exit from sacred place.

x) Ordered Views

The importance and significance of passage is maintained by restricting views between two realms of space that can be called sacred and secular, divine and ordinary, valuable and ordinary. This enables a sacred space to sustain and reinforce its sacristy and keeps it distinct from the outer world. Direct views between the two types of spaces are avoided. This characteristic is observed through the limited use and specific location of openings such as windows and doorways.

xi) Light

The daily cycles of day and night, being light and darkness, signify an unending cosmic struggle. Light signifies hope with the rising of the sun each day and enables us to experience the changing world. In certain spaces it is symbolic of the passage of time and is typically serving to provide orientation and contrast from the surrounding darkness.

xii) Materials

Light reveals the texture and form of materials in a sacred place. The materials that make up valuable spaces are symbolic of the cosmic struggle and victory over the chaos. Therefore, building materials used suggest a certain quality of expression, the selection and placement of materials indicate the presence of this quality. These materials are resistant to erosion brought about by natural forces and maintain their formal integrity and physical order.

xiii) Nature in Our Places

An important feature of quality in a space is that it contrasts with the disordered vastness of nature surrounding it. Nature maintains its natural spirit, but is subdued, controlled, bordered, ordered and tamed. In this sense, nature is constantly cared for, controlled and ordered, signifying the image of balance and taming the chaos.

xiv) Finishing a Place

The act of creating an architectural space signifies an absolute beginning – it is a divine repetition of the creation myth or the creation of the world. Therefore, ritualistic and consecrate acts and ceremonial celebrations mark the act of completion of the building. Such ceremonies signify the reality and enduringness of our efforts in finishing the place for habitation or any other function.

In contrast to the aforementioned intersections between time, architecture, geometry and sacred space there is the viewpoint of Japanese architect Toyo Ito who attempts to bridge the perceived gap between nature and architecture. The benefit of man through the acknowledgement of the profound power as well as the flaws in classical or pure geometry and the orthogonal grid which Ito see’s as being antagonistic to the ‘world of natural phenomena’. Rather than the classical order, Ito utilises an organic-fluid order of change which is ‘relative, flexible and soft’. Rather than the rigidity of immutability, such an architecture can be influenced by external factors and reacts to change and flux rather than outwardly resisting it through artifice. 64

Tadao Ando, ‘The Hill of the Buddha’, Sapporo, Japan. (2015).

On Timeless Architecture

“What was, has always been. What is, has always been, and what will be, has always been. Such is the nature of beginning.”

Louis I. Kahn, What Will Be Has Always Been: The Words of Louis I. Kahn, 1986.65

The notion of ‘timeless’ architecture is a nebulous and somewhat deceptive descriptor. In definition, architecture which is considered ‘timeless’ is of a calibre that seems to remove it from any singular time, in a way transcending style and taste. We know that this is an impossibility, for all architecture regardless of how far reaching its effect may be is a product of not only it’s time and place but also of the rich genealogy of cultural and architectural development that preceded it.

The second charge of ‘timeless’ architecture is that it manages to evoke an eternal, everlasting, permanent state. In effect ‘timeless’ architecture is called that for its apparent rejection and domination of time itself. On the face of it, calling a work of architecture ‘timeless’ is in fact placing high value on architecture by associating it with the impossible architecture, Alberti’s ‘immutable architecture’ that will persist and remain in some respect seemingly forever. 66

In architect and theorist Sally Essawy’s analysis ‘The Timelessness Quality in Architecture’ (2017) she highlights the following aspects that contribute to the perception of ‘Timeless Architecture’: 67

i) Darkness and Light

The presence of both darkness and light in an architectural space adds a quality of depth to the space, which is not possible with one and not the other. In many examples of ancient architecture, it is sunlight that is utilised to create the timeless qualities; it is the dominant use of natural light and variable darkness that creates the sense of timelessness.

‘Above all else, the beautiful in architecture is enhanced by the favor of light, and through it even the most insignificant thing becomes a beautiful object. Now if in the depth of winter, when the whole of nature is frozen and stiff, we see the rays of the setting sun reflected in masses of stone, where they illuminate without warming, and are thus favorable only to the purest kind of knowledge, not to the will, then the contemplation of the beautiful effect of light on these masses moves us into a state of pure knowing, as all beauty does.’ 68

Louis Kahn on the subject of darkness and light:

‘I would say that dark spaces are also very essential. But to be true to the argument that an architectural space must have natural light,
I would say that it must be dark, but that there must be an opening big enough, so that light can come in and tell you how dark it really is –
that’s how important it is to have natural light in an architectural space.’ 69

ii) Signs of Wear

Signs of wear emerge in defined formalities being broken down leading to a heightened intimacy. This intimacy is achieved when the function of the space and its environment begin to define its texture and form. At a fundamental level, the signs of wear become of primary importance when considering a work of architecture as a functioning process. It is the signs of wear that form a connection with one‘s experience in the present moment as well as an earlier presence and the behaviour of the individuals before that time.

iii) Traces of Workmanship

Traces of workmanship reveal the process of exposing how the space came into being and further our appreciation for is detail. In contrast, the slight error or variance in finish created during construction can impart a sense of authenticity to the architecture, relating it to the human condition, as if it is aware of imperfection. Without this presence of human error the richness of life could not be expressed in architecture.

iv) Haptic Intimacy

One has an increased awareness of the fabric and nature of a space when an intimately haptic relationship is formed with it. This is most likely to occur when it is required due to the function of a space. Thus the fabric of the space requiring one to be intimately aware of it evokes the timeless quality. This first causes us to make more astute observations, considering the relationship of the fabric and oneself, which then results in one reflecting their own nature.

v) Sense of the whole

A defined sense of the whole of a work of architecture leads to an understanding of it and to a psychological acceptance of what it is without ambiguities of its measure. Sense of the whole should not also be depleted by the presence of inconsequential details. When the finite measure of each part of a work of architecture is understood, the whole of the architecture can be accepted or processed.

vi) Monumentality

Monumental architecture captures our attention and focuses our thoughts. It is the clarity of a grand gesture that results in a monument like the Sultan Hassan Mosque and the Pantheon both possessing this clarity and indeed having a monumental presence. The fabric of a monumental building is a physical manifestation of human aspirations. When the monumentality of a space captures our attention it can instil within us feelings associated with pride or purpose, and thus this feeling of timelessness, or of eternity, which cannot be added to or subtracted.

Louis Kahn on the subject of monumentality:

“Monumentality in architecture may defined as a quality, a spiritual quality inherent in a structure which conveys the feeling of it’s eternity, that it cannot be added to or changed.” 70

vii) Human Scale:

When architecture is derived from a human scale the resulting fabric relates to the body of the user allowing them to gain physical understanding of the fabric through their relationship with it. Comfort, found in the whole composition as well as the many increments that contribute to the whole, encourages the use of a building. Hence, the connection that is made is deep, as in one’s mind the whole can be understood from the logic of its smaller parts.

viii) Water:

The presence of water in architecture provides relief as its softness contrasts with the otherwise hard surfaces of architecture and reinforces the impression of the experience on the mind. Water has the ability to bring the mind from ideological thought down to the ground level of reality, thus anchoring the mind in the present moment.

ix) Cohesion:

Architecture that is informed by the logic of its place forms a cohesive unity with its physical surrounds while drawing from the area’s cultural history. The cohesion with the physical surrounds integrates the architecture into the place while building on an understanding of the living patterns ensures its relevant significance to people of both the past and future. As Peter Zumthor has stated, some buildings fit into their places in such a way that they themselves become part of their surroundings and appear firmly anchored in there. In this relation, it is important to remember that:

“It is worth noting that the timeless quality is not dependent on the presence of a particular aspect, or a combination of a number of them, though it is believed that when experiencing a work of architecture, the greater the number of these aspects that are perceived, the more potent the quality of timelessness will be. We can then conclude that through a practice of architecture which considers this insight, as well as others like it, and which is pursued with a heightened awareness of the senses, the timeless quality is achievable.” 71

Alvar Aalto - Finland Säynätsalo Town Hall Parviaisentie 9, Säynätsalo (1949-52)

On Humanistic Approaches to Time

“We can say that architecture always contains a human error, and in a deeper view, it is necessary; without it the richness of life and its positive qualities cannot be expressed.”

Alvar Aalto, ‘Inhimillinen virhe’ (The Human Error). 72

When we take a humanistic approach to time in architecture we must consider the origins of architecture Kent Bloomer and Charles Moore discussed this in their seminal Body, Memory, and Architecture (1977), exploring how architecture was in essence a human-centric disciple, that it was a ‘body-centred’ art form. 73 Writer Robert Lamb expresses what he perceives as the Humanist instinct as such:

“The humanist instinct looks in the world for physical conditions that are related to our own. For movements which are like those we enjoy, for resistances that resemble those that can support us, for a setting where we should be neither lost nor thwarted. It looks, therefore, for certain masses, lines and spaces, and tends to create them and recognize their fitness when created. And, by our instinctive imitation of what we see, their seeming fitness becomes our real delight.” 74

In architecture, this notion of the humanist instinct that tries to understand the haptic world through sensory input, that is between the interaction of the body and the architecture. This provides for the possibility of an ongoing experiential, and as Lamb puts it ‘intelligible, usable order’, which allows us to consistently experience a changing perception of architecture.75 Bloomer and Moore relate how “The centre of that architecture was the human body,” we feel an arch “spring,” a line “soar,” or a dome “swell,” the body responds long before we understand the richly coded cultural messages and symbolic meanings. 76

A fundamental notion of this body-centred architecture is tied to the notion of change. For Bloomer and Moore buildings change over time because we as humans change over time. A lack of consistency breeds a plurality of variation in our day to day lives, our thoughts, feelings and actions. The power of architecture is to operate within this human condition but also potentially to react and create unique moments of delight in this ongoing fluctuating field of variation. 77 Here to we might consider the following passage from Christopher Alexander in regards to both humanism and timeless building in his work The Timeless Way of Building (1979):

“There is one timeless way of building. It is thousands of years old, and the same today as it has always been. The great traditional buildings of the past, the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at home, have always been made by people who were very close to the center of this way. It is not possible to make great buildings, or great towns, beautiful places, places where you feel yourself, places where you feel alive, except by following this way. And, as you will see, this way will lead anyone who looks for it to buildings which are themselves as ancient in their form, as the trees and hills, and as our faces are. It is so powerful and fundamental that with its help you can make any building in the world as beautiful as any place that you have ever seen.”

When we consider Heidegger’s philosophy of ‘dwelling in time’ we would consider the humanistic notion that in creating architecture we are attempting to create, as architectural theorist Randall Teal describes, a ‘microcosm of human existence’. The building alone does not create the architecture, it requires the inhabitation of the space by man, both in terms of the maker in the case of architect and those who come to dwell within. In Teal’s analysis of Heidegger’s ‘dwelling in time’ we find this positions the act of making humanistic architecture as of a greater concern than the role of the architect as author. 78

Charles Moore , ‘Piazza d’Italia’, New Orleans, USA. (1976-79).

On Contextual and Vernacular Approaches to Time

“All building has its origin in a confrontation with nature, that is never free of violence.”

Karsten Harries, Context, Confrontation, Folly, 12. 79

“Temporal mixing characterizes the buildings called vernacular.”

Henry Glassic, Vernacular Architecture, 70. 80

When we talk about contextual approaches to architecture in regards to a shifting frame of temporality we reflect upon what could be perceived as the regular division of ‘context’ by architecture. At the forefront and in common parlance we consider the immediate surrounding of a site as its context, although this is normally related to the design stage of architecture.

In reality the ‘context’ is the ever-changing setting for both place and architecture. A natural division (mind the pun) is between what is commonly conceived as ‘man-made’, that is built-environment and that of ‘nature’ and the surrounding ecology. In terms of a contextual approach to time in relation to built environment notions of the vernacular come to mind. Although another nebulous and often ill-defined term, vernacular in a way reveals itself as a patchwork ermine coat of ever changing features. The definition as set out by Bernard Rudofsky in The Prodigious Builders (1977) seems appropriate for what we are trying to describe:

As a rule, it [vernacular architecture] is tailored to human dimensions and human needs, without frills, without the hysteria of the designer.
Once a life style has been established and habit has begotten a habitation, change for change’s sake is shunned. 81

Again, the humanistic notions previously discussed come to bear on notions related to the temporality of habitation. Rudofsky is not positioning the vernacular as being oppositional to change, but rather change comes through interaction and necessity rather than from a vacuum. A critical awareness of context is enacted through changes in vernacular architecture of any particular place. ernacular architecture is affected by what Robert Hart Lamb refers to as the:

“…Unconscious mimetic instinct; to mirror – to reflect – the movements and feelings we sense in both the people and places around us.” 82

A similar mimicry becomes ingrained in a contextual approach to place and temporality, and again we can quote Rudofsky to exemplify this:

“The untutored builders in space and time-the protagonists of this show demonstrate an admirable talent for fitting their buildings into the natural surroundings.
Instead of trying to ‘conquer’ nature, as we do, they welcome the vagaries of climate and the challenge of topography. Ephemeral as some of these structures may be, “the shapes of these houses, sometimes transmitted through a hundred generations, seem eternally valid, like those of their tools.”83

A recurring thematic of architecture which is contextually sympathetic and by extension with time rather than against time, is a holistic approach which sees the temporality of landscape not as a separate element for the architecture to resist or dominate but rather to be sympathetic as to mutually benefit one another over time. One particular ethos is that which is communicated by Japanese architect Tadao Ando in writer Kate Nesbitt’s Towards New Horizons in Architecture (1996), where Ando is quoted as stating:

“I compose architecture by seeking an essential logic inherent in the place. The architectural pursuit implies a responsibility to find and draw out a site’s formal characteristics, along with it’s cultural traditions, climate and natural environmental features, the city structure that forms a backdrop, and the living patterns and age-old customs people will carry into the future.” 84

Unknown Author, ‘Traditional Norwegian House’, Ninnerdalen, Norway. (n.d.).

In relation to the cyclical nature of the natural landscape as to man and to architecture, Tim Ingold concludes in The Temporality of the Landscape (1993):

“The rhythms of human activities resonate not only with those of other living things but also with a whole host of other rhythmic phenomena - the cycles of day and night and of the seasons, the winds, the tides, and so on... In many cases these natural rhythmic phenomena find their ultimate cause in the mechanics of planetary motion, but it is not of course to these that we resonate. Thus we resonate to the cycles of light and darkness, not to the rotation of the earth, even though the diurnal cycle is caused by the earth’s axial rotation. And we resonate to the cycles of vegetative growth and decay, not to the earth’s revolutions around the sun, even though the latter cause the cycle of the seasons. Moreover these resonances are embodied, in the sense that they are not only historically incorporated into the enduring features of the landscape but also develop-mentally incorporated into our very constitution as biological organisms.” 85

For Pallasmaa, the works of Alvar Aalto react to their context and history in a highly humanistic and experiential manner that fully engages with the temporal in architecture:

“The surfaces of Aalto’s buildings wrap around their volumes like a skin, enhancing an organic cohesion and an animistic feeling. Aalto’s buildings are a sort of architectural organism, not abstract compositions. Surfaces are richly textured and they exhibit a variety of tactile experiences. Instead of an abstracted gestalt, Aalto creates conglomerate images that evoke associations and recollections. The Villa Mairea, for instance, is suspended between imageries of contemporary modernity and ageless peasant traditions, between refinement and primitivism, the future and the past. The powerfully emotive image of the Saynatsalo Town Hall is a condensed image of a hill town, reminiscent of familiar childlike images in Medieval paintings. This minute civic building, conceived as the image of a miniaturised town, possesses an extraordinary suggestiveness, richness and sense of mystery; the image of a town projects a greater wealth of narratives and emotions than that of a single building.” 86

Architectures of Permanence

“Monumentality in architecture may defined as a quality, a spiritual quality inherent in a structure, which conveys the feeling of it’s eternity, that it cannot be added to or changed.”

Louis Kahn, Louis Kahn Essential Texts, 21. 87

The research so far has led to a series of conclusions regarding the application of temporality within architecture. From this we can conceive of three dominant modes of architectural-temporality, the first of which takes its place within the thus far much-discussed architecture of ‘timelessness’.

This architecture which speaks to Alberti’s ‘Immutable Architecture’ as well as Karsten Harries ‘Terror of Time’ is perhaps the most readily describable and paradoxically the most tangible. In drawing down from the language of pure geometry and sacred space an architecture of permanence attempts to not only distance itself from a perception of the passage of time but to try and remove itself from this field of changing events all together.

In its strong reliance on Euclidean space and tectonics of massing and weight an architecture of ‘Permanence’ is easily imagined as a bulwark against the manifestations and interactions of change inherent to time. Here we have the accumulation of matter into monumental form as a manifestation of the eternally-unchanging. As previously discussed, this architecture of permanence relies on a multiplicity of links, motifs and suggestions which try to locate its architectural language in the realm of the eternal. This is done through a sense of otherness caused by cosmic, crystalline and sacred spatial symbols to invoke a sense of perpetuity.

Through this connection to infinity the architecture may attempt to deny the entropic nature of all architecture and matter. This is a strongly object-oriented and seemingly self-referential architecture which not only repudiates change but also through its sheer existence may attempt to deny its own contextual nature through the language of architectonic dominance.

Antón García Abril, ‘Musical Studies Centre’, Santiago di Compostella, Spain. (2002)

Architectures of Duration

“When water, wind, light, rain, and other elements of nature are abstracted within architecture, the architecture becomes a place where people and nature confront each other under a sustained sense of tension.
I believe it is this feeling of tension that will awaken the spiritual sensibilities latent in contemporary humanity.”

Tadao Ando, Towards New Horizons in Architecture, 460. 88

The second dominant mode of architectural temporality comes to be expressed as an architecture of duration. Here we see a definition of architecture which instead of opposing time embraces it in order to enrich its meaning and create a deeply humanistic and existential form of architecture. If it is true what art historian Joel Smith claims that “buildings embody durational time” 89 an architecture of duration not only seeks to relate to the human scale, it seeks to connect deeply to its context. Through its variation, materiality and sheer sensory and haptic nature it draws attention to the passing of time. Architect Peter Zumthor in his text Thinking Architecture (2010) summarises the effect of such a phenomenological architecture on human experience through the durational nature of materiality:

“Naturally, in this context I think of the patina of age on materials, of innumerable small scratches on surfaces, of varnish that has grown dull and brittle, and of edges polished by use. But when I close my eyes and try to forget both these physical traces and my own first associations, what remains is a different impression, a deeper feeling – a consciousness of time passing and an awareness of the human lives that have been acted out in these places and rooms and charged them with a special aura. At these moments, architecture’s aesthetic and practical values, stylistic and historical significance are of secondary importance.’ 91

An architecture of duration relies upon a frame of reference in relation to changing circumstance. This could translate to an architecture that re-acts to its contextual environment and natural phenomenon such as the weather, a materiality of change (such as timber or exposed metal), the utilisation of circulation and procession to create a rhythmic measurement of time or finally spatial programming that allows for constant change dependent upon utilisation. This alongside an embrace of not stasis but constant cyclical renewal and remaking of architectural space see a celebration of the passage of time, the movement of nature, the weather and cultural ritual and tradition. To quote Tadao Ando once more:

“The elements of nature-water, wind, light and sky-bring architecture derived from ideological thought down to the ground level of reality and awaken man-made life within it.” 92

It is in this way through a durational mode of architectural temporality that we may truly create buildings that embody durational time.

Ryue Nishizawa, ‘Multi Family Home’, An Giang, Vietnam. (2017)

Architectures of Ephemera

“[Architecture] longing for permanence, which reacts against uncertainty, against continual change, and against the value given to the instantaneous, the immaterial, and the temporary.”

Gregotti Vittorio, Inside Architecture, 64. 93

The third dominant architectural temporality mode we can identify is that of ‘Ephemera architecture’ and we can consider it as being more than just oppositional to architectures of permeance. Ephemeral (from the Greek ‘ephemeros’, meaning ‘lasting only one day, short-lived’) architecture is that which subverts the expectations of an architecture through a sense of impermanence somewhere between appearance and disappearance of matter and therefore appears ‘frozen’ in time momentarily.

This could mean impossible or an architecture ‘in tension’ such as that which appears to defy laws of gravity or massing. Architecture whose tectonic components are spatially separated yet retain their form or an architecture of unexpected ethereal materiality (such as dominant utilisation of glass or light).

Ephemeral architecture in this way can become a synecdoche for a larger function or message. Ephemeral architecture challenges the assumed nature of buildings and architecture as products and signifiers of stability, and as purely a background for ‘sites of collective memory’. Ephemeral architecture has gained particular relevance in relation to modernity, when we consider cultural artefacts of mass-media and production are referred to as ‘Ephemera’ the utilisation of ephemeral architecture has become a particularly useful critical tool for contemporary practitioners.94

“Yet despite this longstanding association, many buildings are built to be temporary: tents, refugee camps, theatrical stages. Indeed, in modernity, temporary construction has become the norm thanks to cheap materials and an appetite for the new. We construct certain architecture to be ephemeral, Feeting, in a similar fashion to other forms of disposable mass media, from newspapers to demonstration posters. This taste for ephemeral buildings was inaugurated by technological innovation of the World Fairs, where monuments were erected for a season. The ephemerality of an apparently solid constructed world enabled a fantasy for spectators of control over their monuments, an ability to dismiss their presence that augurs the possibility of being freed from the burden of visible traces of the past. Furthermore, the periodic creation of an artifical environment made for spectators from the man-made materials of iron and glass suggests a new rhythm for technology, whose anticipated (and often spectacular) obsolescence mimics natural cycles of biological growth and decay.” 95

Thomas Heatherwick, ‘SEED: UK Pavilion Shanghai Expo’, Shanghai, China. (2010)

The Synthesis: Experiential Architectures of Place

“Contemporary architectural settings are usually experienced as having their origin in singular moments of time.
They evoke an experience of flattened or rejected temporality. Yet, the existential task of architecture is to relate us to time as much as to space.”

Juhani Pallasmaa, The Space of Time, 54. 96

The three architectural temporalities outlined here (Architectures of permanence, duration and ephemera) react to time and space in very different ways. Permanence attempts to resist time, duration attempts to inhabit it and ephemera attempts to momentarily freeze it. Although such a positivist classification is inherently limited it does create the potential for the formulation of differing temporal methods of architectural praxis. There is no ‘correct’ method for architecture to react to time but it is through the layering of these three different architectural temporalities that we may be able to generate a multiplicity of both space and time, what can be termed an ‘experiential architecture of place.’ That which utilises the phenomenological ‘lived’ and sensory experience of place to communicate temporal architectural aspects alongside acts of permeance, duration and ephemera.

“There is no interruption of the overall impression by small parts that have nothing to do with the object’s statement. Our perception of the whole in not distracted by inessential details. Every touch, every join, every joint is there to reinforce the idea of the quiet presence of the work.” 97

“All the techniques of representation and all the paths to architecture which do not include direct experience are pedagogically useful, of practical necessity and intellectually fruitful; but their function is no more than allusive and preparatory to that moment in which we, with everything in us that is physical and spiritual and, above all, human, enter and experience the spaces we have been studying. That is the moment of architecture.” 98

This may also include concrete or abstract reference which creates a memory or simulacrum of place or the history of a particular context, site, architecture and its associated past or future ritual or event. The result is an architecture of shifting currents, at times harmonious with time, at times disregarding time and at times deliberately trying to bring attention to a moment. These shifting perceptions enrich the architecture.

‘…haptic and multi-sensory architecture makes the experience of time healing and pleasurable. This architecture does not struggle against time, it concretizes the course of time and makes it acceptable…A distinct “weakening” of the architectural image takes place through the processes of weathering and ruination. Erosion wipes away the layers of utility, ration logic and detail articulation, and pushes the structure into the realm of uselessness, nostalgia and melancholy. The language of matter takes over from the visual and formal effect, and the structure attains a heightened intimacy. The arrogance of perfection is replaced by a humanising vulnerability.’ 99

“After his passionate but short-lived phase of modernist orthodoxy, the mature works of Aalto engage the entire human sensory and emotional realm, and they aspire for a foothold in the flow of time. Aalto developed his emotionally charged architecture of natural materials-red brick, copper, stone and wood which evokes a wealth of imageries, associations and recollections. While seeking to touch human experiential reality, Aalto’s buildings express gravity and permanence, and they radiate a rare sense of authority.” 100

“My perception is not a sum of visual, tactile and audible givens: I perceive in a total way with my whole being: I grasp a unique structure of the thing, a unique way of being, which speaks to all my senses at once.” 101

Peter Zumthor, ‘Kolumba Art Museum’, Cologne, Germany. (2010)

Conclusions

“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”

Henry David Thoreau, Walden.

This thesis has sought to explore the relationship between temporality and architecture. The great contradiction is that as spatial practitioners it is both immediately apparent and yet difficult to fully understand how architecture and temporality are intertwined. The research presented in this thesis has shown the fundamental shift in architecture that has cast its role as being ‘against’ or ‘apart’ from time, however it has also pointed to ways in which rather than flee from the supposed ‘terror of time’ we may actively utilise temporality within spatial practice to create deeply significant architectures of place, people and memory.

Although it is difficult to say anything is ‘certain’ in relation to even the concept of time, we can as architects choose the way in which we anticipate, embrace and respond to its constant flux. There is great scope to utilise a varied language of temporality in our architectural works. This may mean an evolved architectural language that actively combines notions of permeance, duration and ephemera as attempted in this project or it may be undertaken in a multitude of other undefined or presently unknown ways. In doing so we can not only enrich the meaning and cultural value of design works, rather we can also seek to enact an architecture that forms part of a greater experiential, innately humanistic and perhaps most optimistically of all, meaningful architectural dialogue.

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An Exploration of Architectural Temporality