Nature's unpredictability into built environment

 Sou Fujimoto - Serpentine Gallery Pavillion 2013

The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, is a very good example of how built environment can borrow several qualities of the natural environment in order to improve spatial experience.

Human beings have evolved in the unpredictability of natural environment, constantly interacting with it. Experiencing the movement of light, experiencing space from several positions. Static built spaces resemble the least to our natural surroundings as they create no expectation. 

If some characteristics of the natural environment were transferred into the built environment, a new spatial experience would be possible. 

Built and Natural Environment

Part of the landscape

  

Resemblance to trees

Experience space from various levels

Key words and issues

Adjustment of space to the user's needs instead of user's needs being suppressed by a static space.

 - Flexible space limits

 - Adjustment/flexibility when the user requires it

 - Three axis motion

 - Spatial liquidity

 - Objects combining more than one use

 - Non material objects that can replace material objects (light, sound, colour, symbolization)

 - Re-using/transforming existing materials

 - Energy saving
  

How can all the above mentioned issues be combined in order to be applied to as many spaces of our everyday lives as possible?

 
 

Experience routes as ''threads''

A space experienced by different people, creating different experience routes that look like invisible threads. These threads connect people to spaces as time goes by. They are an inevitable and sometimes unpredictable trace we live behind.

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Different users' routes through a certain space

User's route through a certain space

Installation/Sculpture - ''Untitled 1989'', Donald Judd

''Untitled 1989''

 The space surrounding the sculpture, is part of the sculpture itself. The parts in between that appear as ''empty'', form the sculpture all the same. Space is being formed beyond ''drawn'' limits and is being conceived as an active part of a larger and greater spatial total.

''Minimal Myth''

''Untitled 1987''

Architectural Sequence - ''Garden of Exile'' Jewish Museum, Daniel Libeskind

Looking up.

Walk through.

View from outside.

One of the most intense areas of the museum. Visitors are lead to an outdoor sunlit area. A garden appears a lot higher than the ground surface, unreachable. This a place for longing. Longing for the trees of homeland and familiar grounds. They can be seen in a distance but they cannot be reached. 

Experiences  run throughout this building like threads connecting people to it. A building seems naked without memories or experiences. Each experience is a new route created by each user, each time. This unique route, forms a new unique space every time. This new space may not be only visible but also felt in several ways by people occupying it as time goes by. 

Painting - ''Meryon'' ,Franz Kline

''Meryon'', 1960

Depth of space is being manifested here by the dark colour in the front, contrasting the bright backround.  These paintings set a limit with no volume, as the dark part appears like a barrier and at the same time viewer's eye wanders behind it, past it in order to discover the bright area. Yet there is no limit actually there, just colours and lines.

''Monitor'', 1956

                                                         

''Mahoning'', 1956

                                                       

Novel Sequence - ''In praise of shadows'', Junichiro Tanizaki

   ''A Japanese room might be likened to an inkwash painting, the paper paneled shoji being the expanse where the ink is thinnest, and the alcove where it is the darkest. Whenever I see the alcove of a tastefully built Japanese room, I marvel at our comprehension of the secrets of shadows, our sensitive use of shadow and light. For the beauty of the alcove is not the work of some clever device. An empty space is marked off with plain wood and plain walls, so that the light drawn into its forms dim shadows within emptiness. There is nothing more. And yet, when we gaze into the darkness that gathers behind the crossbeam, around the flower vase, beneath the shelves, though we know perfectly well it is mere shadow, we are overcome with the feeling that in this small corner of the atmosphere there reigns complete and utter silence; that here in the darkness immutable tranquility holds sway. The “mysterious Orient” of which Westerners speak probably refers to the uncanny silence of these dark places.

   And even we as children would feel an inexpressible chill as we peered into the depths of an alcove to which the sunlight had never penetrated. Where lies the key to this mystery?Ultimately it is the magic of shadows. Were the shadows to be banished from its corners, the alcove would in that instant revert to mere void. This was the genius of our ancestors, that by cutting off the light from this empty space they imparted to the world of shadows that formed there a quality of mystery and depth superior to that of any wall painting or ornament. The technique seems simple, but was by no means so simply achieved. We can imagine with little difficulty what extraordinary pains were taken with each invisible detail the placement of the window in the shelving recess, the depth of the crossbeam, the height of the threshold. But for me the most exquisite touch is the pale white glow of the shoji in the sturdy bay; I need only pause before it and I forget the passage of time.''

Space shaped by light, shadow and darkness creating limits with no volume that can change at any time. Shedding light or darkness on the same space, can be a way of activating or inactivating it. ''Open/Closed'' - ''Light/Darkness''. Shadow, when cast, can create an in-between state of space or a threshold. 

Film Sequence - DOGVILLE by Lars Von Trier

In this film sequence, one can observe people moving around insinuated space limits. Barriers and spatial restrictions based upon their beliefs, notions, prejudice. The walls are not really there.

Spatial limits with no material presence.

   
What if there was a reversion of all beliefs, notions, prejudice upon our ''spatial habits''?

Perhaps this is a way that will lead us to a new space formation, based upon our real needs, free from fixed beliefs, notions and prejudice.