Light Extracts

A Way of Looking at Things

"When I think about architecture, images come into my mind."

"Some of the other images have to do with my childhood."

"I can hear the heavy front door closing behind me as I walk along the dark corridor and enter the kitchen, the only really brightly lit room in the house. Looking back, it seems as if this was the only room in the house in which the ceiling did not disappear into twilight."

"The atmosphere in this room is insolubly linked with my idea of a kitchen."

Page 7

"Memories like these contain the deepest architectural experience that I Know. They are the reservoirs of the architectural atmospheres and images that I explore in the work as an architect."

"I try to think how it could help me now to revive that vibrant atmosphere pervaded by the simple presence of things, in which everything had its own specific place and form. And although I cannot trace any special forms, there is a hint of fullness and of richness that makes me think: this I have seen before. Yet, at the same time, I know that it is all new and different, and that there is no direct reference to a former work of architecture which might divulge the secret of the memory-laden mood."

Page 8

"I try to use materials like this in my work. I believe that they can assume a poetic quality in the context of an architectural object, although only if the architect is able to generate meaningful situation for them, since materials in themselves are not poetic."

“Sense emerges when I succeed in bringing out the specific meanings of certain materials in my buildings, meanings that can only be perceived in just this way in this one building."

"If we succeed in this, materials in architecture can be made to shine and vibrate."

Page 10

"Construction is the art of making a meaningful whole out of many parts."

Page 11

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"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 is not distracted by inessential details. Every touch, every join, every joint is there in order to reinforce the idea of the quiet presence of the work."

"Details, when they are successful, are not mere decoration. They do not distract or entertain. They lead to an understanding of the whole of which they are an inherent part."

Page 15

“Postmodern life could be described as a state in which everything beyond our own personal biography seems vague, blurred, and some-how unreal. The world is full of signs and information, which stand for things that no one fully understands because they, too turn out to be mere signs for other things. Yet the real thing remains hidden. No one ever gets to see it. Nevertheless, I am convinced that real things do exist, however endangered they may be. There are earth and water, the light of the sun, landscapes and vegetation; and there are objects, made by man, such as machines, tools, or musical instruments, which are what they are not mere vehicles for an artistic message, and whose presence is self-evident.”

Page 16

“When we look at objects or buildings that seem to be at peace within themselves, our perception becomes calm and dulled.”

“There is a power in the ordinary things of everyday life, as Edward Hopper’s paintings seem to say. We only have to look at them long enough to see it.”

“These buildings appear to be anchored firmly in the ground. They give impression of being a self-evident part of their surroundings and they seem to be saying. ‘I am as you see me and I belong here.’”

Page 17

“We must construct a radial system of approach that enables us to see the work of architecture as a focal point from different angles simultaneously; historically, aesthetically, functionally, personally, passionately.”

“Working drawings are like anatomical drawings. They reveal some-thing of the secret inner tension that the finished architectural body is reluctant to divulge: the art of joining, hidden geometry, the friction of materials, the inner forces of bearing and holding, the human work that is inherent in man-made things.”

Page 19

“The building itself is never poetic. At most, it may possess subtle qualities, which, at certain moments, permit us to understand something that we were never able to understand in quite this way before.”

Feel before think

“The design process is based on a constant interplay of feeling and reason. The feelings, preferences, longings, and desires that emerge and demand to be given a form must be controlled by critical powers of reasoning, but it is our feelings that tell us whether abstract considerations really ring true. To a degree, designing is based on understanding and establishing systems of order. Yet I believe that the essential substance of the architecture we seek proceeds from feeling and insight. Precious moments of intuition result from patient work. With the sudden emergence of an inner image, a new line in a drawing, the whole design changes and is newly formulated within a fraction of a second. It is as if a powerful drug were suddenly taking effect. Everything I knew before about the thing I am creating is flooded by a bright new light. I experience joy and passion, and something deep inside me seems to affirm. “I want to build this house!”

“Geometry is about the laws of lines, plane surfaces, and three-dimensional bodies in space.”

Page 21

“In architecture, there are two basic possibilities of spatial composition: the closed architectural body that isolates space within itself, and the open body that embraces an area of space that is connected with the endless continuum.”

“Designing is inventing.”

“We looked for a new solution to every problem.”

Page 22

“As practicing architects, we do well to get acquainted with the enormous repository of knowledge and experience contained in the history of architecture. I believe that if we integrate this in our work, we have a better chance of making a genuine contribution of our own.”

“The creative act in which a work of architecture comes into being.”

“Its focus is on the dialogue with the issues of our time.”

Page 23

“I carefully observe the concrete appearance of the world, and in my buildings I try to enhance what seems to be valuable, to correct what is disturbing, and to create anew what we feel is missing.”

“Is it the people who endow the room with its particular mood? I ask this question because I am convince that a good building must be capable of absorbing the traces of human life and thus of taking on a specific richness.”

Page 24

Reflection in materials

“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.”

“Architecture is exposed to life. If its body is sensitive enough, it can assume a quality that bears witness to the reality of past life.”

“When I work on a design I allow myself to be guided by images and moods that I remember and can relate to the kind of architecture I am looking for. Most of the images that come to mind originate from my subjective experience and are only rarely accompanied by a remembered architectural commentary. While I am designing I try to find out what these images mean so that I can learn how to create a wealth of visual forms and atmospheres.”

“The object will assume a depth and richness.”

“Everything refers to everything.”

“In a society that celebrates the inessential, architecture can put up a resistance, counteract the waste of forms and meanings, and speak its own language.

“Every building is built for a specific use in a specific place and for a specific society. My buildings try to answer the questions that emerge from these simple facts as precisely and critically as they can.”

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Dwelling. Static/Dynamic 3D

“The machine is a thing that has no superfluous parts.”

“I have to shape, confident that if the building is conceived accurately enough for its place and its function, it will develop its own strength.”

Page 29

Ambiguity

“With no need for artistic additions. The hard core of beauty: concentrated substance.”

“’This, then, is what Leopardi demands of us so that we can enjoy the beauty of the indeterminate and vague! He calls for highly accurate and pedantic attention in the composition of each picture, in the meticulous definition of details, in the choice of objects, lighting, and atmosphere with the aim of attaining the desired vagueness.’ Calvino closes with the seemingly paradoxical proclamation: ‘The poet of the vague can only be the poet of precision!’”

Page 30

“John Cage said in one of his lectures that he is not a composer who hears music in his mind and then attempts to write it down. He has another way of operating. He works out concepts and structures and then has them performed to find out how they sound.”

“Occupying oneself with the inherent laws of concrete things such as mountains, rock, and water in connection with a building assignment offers a chance of apprehending and expressing some of the primal and as it were ‘culturally innocent’ attributes of these elements, and of developing an architecture that sets out from and returns to real things.”

Page 31

“Yes how are we to achieve this wholeness in architecture at a time when the divine, which once gave things a meaning, and even reality itself seem to be dissolving in the endless flux of transitory signs and images?”

“I believe that if artistic processes strive for wholeness, they always attempt to give their creations a presence akin to that found in the things of nature or in the natural environment.”

Page 33

“I frequently come across buildings that have been designed with a good deal of effort and a will to find a special form, and I find I am put off by them. The architect responsible for the building is not present, but he talks to me unceasingly from every detail, he keeps on saying the same thing, and I quickly lose interest. Good architecture should receive the human visitor, should enable him to experience it and live in it, but it should not constantly talk at him. Why, I often, wonder, is the obvious but difficult solution so rarely tried? Why do we have so little confidence in the basic things architecture is made from: material, structure, construction, bearing and being borne, earth and sky, and confidence in spaces that are really allowed to be spaces, spaces whose enclosing walls and constituent materials, concavity, emptiness, light, air, odor, receptivity, and resonance are handled with respect and care?”

“Can manage perfectly well without my personal rhetoric.”

“Say that it is a crude effect, black reds,

Pinks yellows, orange whites, too much as they are

To be anything else in the sunlight of the room.

Too much as they are to be changed by metaphor;

Too actual, things that in being real

Make any imaginings of them lesser things.”

“This is the beginning of the poem bouquet of Roses in Sunlight by the American poet of quiet contemplation, Wallace Stevens.”

Page 34

“And that I also sense in the paintings of Edward Hopper: it is only between the reality of things and the imagination that the spark of the work of art is kindled.”

“In an essay entitled ‘Building Dwelling Thinking,’ Martin Heidegger wrote: ‘Living among things is the basic principle of human existence,’ which I understand to mean that we are never in an abstract world but always in a world of things, even when we think. And, once again Heidegger: ‘The Relationship of man to places and through places to spaces is based on his dwelling in them.’ The concept of dwelling, understood in Heidegger’s wide sense of living and thinking in places and spaces, contains an exact reference to what reality means to me as an architect.”

“There are no ideas except in things.”

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“As soon as I begin to think about this question, I realize that my work has been influence by many places.”

“So I immerse myself in the place and try to inhabit it in my imagination, and at the same time I look beyond it at the world of my other places.”

Page 41

“It seems to be part of the essence of its place, and at the same time it speaks of the world as a whole. When an architectural design draws solely from tradition and only repeats the dictates of its site, I sense a lack of a genuine concern with the world and the emanations of contemporary life. If a work of architecture speaks only of contemporary trends and sophisticated visions without triggering vibrations in its place, this work is not anchored in its site, and I miss the specific gravity of the ground it stands on.”

Page 43

“On sunny mornings there was usually someone already sitting there, reading.”

Page 44

“Protection from the sun, shelter from the wind and rain, an intelligent approach to the issue of lighting, I thought, and I was aware that I had by no means gasped all the specific qualities of this architecture, the straightforward simplicity of its structure, for example, which was reminiscent of industrial precast concrete constructions, or its spaciousness, or its lack of the pedantic refinements that abound in schools in Switzerland.”

Page 47

“When I look back like this it seems impossible to distinguish between architecture and life, between spatial situations and the way I experience them. Even when I concentrate exclusively on the architecture and try to understand what I have seen, my perception of it resonates in what I have experience and thus colours what I have observed.”

“Now I have fallen back into my role as an architect, and I realize once more how much I enjoy working with my old passions and images, and how they help to find what I am looking for.”

Page 51

“Abundant muted light.”

Page 53

“Christopher Alexander, who speaks in Pattern Language of spatial situations in which people instinctively feel good, would have been pleased.”

“She had seen a small house by frank LloydWright that made a great impression on her, said H. Its rooms were so small and intimate, the ceilings so low. There was a tiny library with special lighting and a lot of decorative architectural elements, and the whole house made a strong horizontal impression which she had never experience before. The old lady was still living there. There was no need for me to go and see the house, I thought. I knew just what she meant, and I knew the feeling of ‘home’ that she described.”

“The new parts of the house did not seem to be saying “I am new,” but rather “I am part of the new whole,”

Like it’s always been that way

Page 54

“The strength of a good design lies in ourselves and in our ability to perceive the world with both emotion and reason. A good architectural design is sensuous. A good architectural design is intelligent.

“The roots of our understanding­ of architecture lie in our childhood, in our youth; they lie in our biography.”

Page 65

Shine

“How did the light strike the facades, what was the shine on the walls like? Was there a feeling of narrowness or width, of intimacy or vastness?”

“Architecture is not abstract, but concrete. A plan, a project drawn on paper is not architecture but merely a more or less inadequate representation of architecture, comparable to sheet music. Music needs to be performed. Architecture needs to be executed.”­

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“Thinking in images, in architectural, spatial, colourful, and sensuous pictures, this is my favourite definition of design.”

Page 69

“A painting by Rothko, vibrant fields of colour, pure abstraction. To me it’s only a question of seeing, a purely visual experience, she says. Other sensual impressions like smell or sound, materials or the sense of touch don’t play a role. You enter the picture you’re looking at. The process has something to do with concentration and meditation. It is like meditation, but not with an empty mind. You’re fully alert and aware. Concentration on the picture sets you free, she says. You reach another level of perception.”

Page 72

“The beauty of nature touches us as something great that goes beyond us.”

“We feel sheltered, humble and proud at once.”

“I look out into the landscape; I gaze at the sea on the horizon, look at the masses of water; I walk across the fields to the acacias; I look at the elder blossoms, at the juniper tree and become still. She is bathing in the Sicilian Sea and dives under water. Her heart misses a beat. A huge fish passes close by, silent and infinitely slow. Its movements are untroubled and powerful and elegant. They have the self-evidence of millennia.”

“She loves beautiful shoes. She admires the craftsmanship, the material and above all their shape, their lines. She likes looking at shoes, not when people wear them but as objects whose shape is strictly defined by use and whose beauty transcends practical demands until they come full circled and say to her: ‘Use me, wear me.’ The beauty of a utilitarian object is the highest form of beauty, she adds.”

Page 73 - 74

“She is standing with a group of younger people, mostly architects. It’s drizzling; the air is warm. The men and women are standing in the courtyard of a villa. Their open umbrellas and sweeping, unbuttoned raincoats lend them an air of cosmopolitan elegance. The daylight around the group is mild. Light from above shines through a soft grey ceiling of clouds that could be interpreted as a thick layer of fog. It transforms the minute raindrops into particles of light. The landscape is filled with gentle radiance.”

Pages 75

Light

“The picture that I see has the effect of a composition that appears extremely natural to me and at the same time extremely artful in its naturalness.”

Page 76

Makes filter Shine through

“Our perception is visceral. Reason plays a secondary role.”

Feel before think

Page 77

“Now it comes back to me: there is an intimate relationship between our emotions and the things around us.”

Fondest memories (mine or others) of human activity in incredible light

Page 85

“I try to make sure that the materials are attuned to each other, that they radiate; I take a certain amount of oak and a different amount of pietra serena and add something to them; three grams of silver or a handle that turns or maybe surfaces of gleaming glass, so that every combination of materials yields a unique composition, becomes an original.

“Architecture is the art of space and it is the art of time as well, between order and freedom, between following a path and discovering a path of our own, wandering, strolling, being seduced. I give thought to careful and conscious staging of tension between inside and outside, public and intimate, and to thresholds, transitions, and borders. And to the play of scale in architecture. My dedication to finding the right size of things is motivated by the desire to create degrees of intimacy, of closeness and distance. I love placing materials, surfaces, and edges, shiny and mat, in the light of the sun, and generating deep solids and gradations of shading and darkness for the magic of light falling on things. Until everything is right.

Page 87

“I have always wanted to write a book about light. I can think of nothing that reminds me more of eternity, says Andrzej Statsiuk in his book The World behind Dukla.”

“It is only because they refract light.”

Page 89

“But how much light do people need in order to live? And how much darkness?”

Page 90

“Small objects of light that radiate or reflect”

“Darkness lives in the earth. It rises up out of it and returns to it like a strong breath. I read in Andrzej Stasiuk’s Dukla.”

Page 91

“Is it even possible to imagine things without light?”

“And shadows praise light.”

“Shadowless modernism”

Page 92

“Look hard at the landscape.”

“Secondly, I have to take care.”

“Thirdly, I must try to find the right measure, the right quantity, the right size and the right shape for the desired object in its beloved surroundings. The outcome is attunement, harmony or possibly even tension.”

Page 98

“First of all, I have to love the earth and the topography. I love the movement of the landscape.”

“Even if I have to modify the topography, it should look as if it was always that way.”

Page 99

“Hurts me to see how shabby the surfaces look in the light of the sun.”

Page 100

“I must try to let an appreciation of the landscape swell inside me if I want to create a new place of concentration that yields a new up and down, a new left and right, a new front and back. New landmarks. Sometimes the synthesis succeeds: structure and landscape fuse, grow together and establish an inimitable place. The aura of such places means home.”

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