CEPHAD 2010 // The borderland between philosophy and design research // Copenhagen //
January 26th – 29th, 2010 // Master class session
Angelos Psilopoulos // Doctorate researcher // School of Architecture // National Technical University of Athens, Greece // angpsi[a]yahoo.com
The focus of the author’s line of research is the notion of “gesture” and its relation to the signification of architectural meaning. For one, this lies in the form of a narrative: a “genius sketch”, a “wise” hand conveying the mental synthetic process onto paper, or a spatial event expressive of the creative will of the architect. This “gesture – as – narrative” can be easily embraced as the “Arche” (the “commencement”, the “commandment”, or the “principle”, in Greek) in architecture, that is, a unique point of reference that distinguishes the “Archi-tect”
from the other “tektons”11. In this “literary”, so to speak, context, “gesture”, and the expressions that derive therefrom, can be studied as an archetype which can be traced in several instances in architectural history.
However, this may prove oversimplifying when one chooses to dig deeper into the linkage between “gesture” and architectural signification; the reference to the term can be equally introduced as a mechanism of metaphor, in the way of a contextual referent for the process of signification – see, e.g., Lakoff & Johnson, 1980 (2003) –, or it can be studied as an actual gesture on a cognitive level: McNeill (McNeill, 2005) has conducted such research on general discursive events, while Murphy (Murphy 2005) has focused towards architects in particular, with very interesting observations. However, these are all singularly defined realms of research, all taking gesture as a study subject, perhaps sometimes intersecting one another, but basically focusing on particular aspects of “gesture”. It is the author’s argument that the term, as it manifests in the context of architecture, is rather “multi-dimensional” and that in order to achieve any sort of understanding, no aspect should be disregarded.
How, then, may a highly cross-over discussion as such be performed, in order to move on to its relation with architectural meaning and signification? This research proposes to shift the
1 “Architecture comes from the Greek arche, the commencement, the commandment, or the [fundamental] principle, and tektonikos, the carpenter or the builder; and, as it often befalls, the encounter of the two words inflects the sense of the one onto the other to engender a meaning of the whole unhoped for: the arche makes of the “tecture” more than a simple construction. Arche is a supplement. This supplement implies, as Dennis Hollier in La Prise de la Concorde would have it, “that by which a construction breaks away from a purely utilitarian universe, that which she has inherently of esthetics”.” (Translated from the original French): Charles, « Architecture : Architecture et Philosophie », Encyclopædia Universalis, http://www.universalis.fr/imprim.php?nref=B921471, last visited September 2009.
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Copenhagen Working Papers on Design // 2010 // No. 1 // Psilopoulos focus from “gesture”, to the collective identities that are formed around it, and, may it be an actual gesture or a literary one, introduce the term as a quasi – objet (Serres, 1980 (2007), or Latour, 1991 (1993)), that “marks or designates a subject who, without it, would not be a subject”2, acting in a way as a catalyst for the development of individual collectives around it (« individuation collective autour d’un point de catalyse »3) (Brian Massumi, 1998). It is the hope of the author that this view will establish “gesture” rather as a platform, in all its virtuality, than a rigidly defined subject; a catalyst (through its particular characteristics) for architecture to formulate meaning within each particular context: it is not “gesture” that signifies architecture, but rather architecture forms identity around various manifestations of gesture. This understanding of gesture presents also an interesting affinity to the cognitive model McNeill4 uses to discuss it in the context of language and thought, and perhaps it may even inform a cognitive approach for architectural design.
As a PhD research though, this research simply aims to validate the question of gesture serving as a tool for the signification of meaning in architecture. Shifting the focus from the process of design to the formation of subject and identity may also extend towards the understanding of the fuzzy condition in the logic of design, as well as highly criticized theoretical schemes such as “thinking – in – action” (Schön, 1983), by. Introducing “gesture”
in the terms of Serres’ « quasi-objet » aims to provide us, at least, with a focus point for such an understanding, if not an actual tool to discuss the shifting condition of meaning in an architectural work.
In the context of the proposed presentation for the CEPHAD conference, the author would like to follow this idea through the case of the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The notion of
“gesture” will be introduced, at first, as a narrative, that of the “geste architectural”, which develops both in terms of a formalist argument, as well as a political and architectural feat.
In our story, the “formalist argument” becomes the epicenter of an intense conflict between the verdict of the Jury and the architects opposing it and it will establish the architecture’s literary connection to the term “gesture”. The political and intellectual management of the project itself, on the other hand, will provide us with a contextual reference for discussing the term in its current use, the « geste architectural », letting us develop from a notion of “feat”
to a “quality referent” and from there to the introduction of the « quasi-objet » as it was described earlier.
Reference Bibliography
1. BANHAM (Reyner), “Enigma of the Rue du Renard”, The Architectural Review, vol.
CLXI, no. 963, London, 1977, p.277-278.
2. BAUDRILLARD (Jean), L’effet Beaubourg : Implosion et dissuasion, éditions Galilée, Paris 1977
3. CHARLES (Daniel), « Architecture : Architecture et Philosophie », Encyclopædia Universalis France S.A., 2009, http://www.universalis.fr/imprim.php?nref=B921471, last visited September 2009
2 Serres, 2007, p.225
3 Massumi, “Léconomie politique de l’appartenance et la logique de la relation”, http://www.brianmassumi.com/english/essays.html, p.4
4 For McNeill see McNeill Lab; Centre for Gesture and Speech research, http://mcneilllab.uchicago.edu/, last visited September 2009. The key concept for McNeill is that Gesture and Language codevelop through a dialectic, the former being global and synthetic, occuring in an event – like manner, and the latter being analytical and extending through time.
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Copenhagen Working Papers on Design // 2010 // No. 1 // Psilopoulos 4. DUFRENE (Bernadette), dir, Centre Pompidou, Trente Ans d’Histoire, éditions du
Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2007
5. FLEURY (Laurent), Le cas Beaubourg ; Mécénat et démocratisation de la culture, Armand Colin, Paris, 2007
6. GROSHENS (Jean-Claude) & SIRINELLI (Jean-François), dirs, Culture et Action chez Georges Pompidou ; Actes du colloque Paris ; 3 et 4 décembre 1998, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 2000
7. LAKOFF (George), JOHNSON (Mark), Metaphors we live by, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1980 (2003).
8. LATOUR (Bruno), Nous n’avons jamais été modernes: Essais d’anthropologie symétrique, La Découverte, Paris 1991; We have never been modern / Bruno Latour:
translated by Catherine Porter, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 1993 9. LENGEREAU (Eric), L’Etat et l’architecture ; 1958 – 1981 Une politique publique ?,
Paris, Editions A. et J. Picard, 2001
10. LEROY (Marie), Le phénomène Beaubourg, éditions Syros, Paris, 1977
11. MASSUMI (Brian), “Léconomie politique de l’appartenance et la logique de la relation”, Gilles Deleuze, éditions Vrin, Paris 1998, available online at
http://www.brianmassumi.com/english/essays.html, last visited in October 2009.
12. MCNEILL (David), Gesture and Thought, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2005
13. MURPHY (Keith M.), “Collaborative imagining: The interactive use of gestures, talk, and graphic representation in architectural practice”, Semiotica, 156 1/4, 2005, p. 113-145 14. SCHÖN (Donald), The Reflective Practitioner: How professionals think in action, Basic
Books Inc., USA, 1983
15. SERRES (Michel), Le Parasite, Grasset & Fasquelle, Paris 1980; translation copyright 1982 by The Johns Hopkins University Press; The parasite: translated by Lawrence R.
Schehr, University of Minessota Press, 2007
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Copenhagen Working Papers on Design // 2010 // No. 1 // Sadd Strandboulevarden 47 Tel +45 35 27 75 00 DK- 2100 Copenhagen Ø Fax +45 35 77 76 00
Denmark mail@dkds.dk