November 2009 Archives

Summary The pilgrimage is a long spiralled path, dotted with several rooms, called the palaces of ideas. in which different ideas or way of seeing mankind's relationship with his external perception of the world (universe, nature, time, god) can be experienced spatially through the architecture. 

The spaces

The corridoors of rising and collapsing vaults. 

This floor of this  corridoor rises slowly upward, but the roof tells another story, the roof begins to rise creating more and more vertical space, at a point reaches a peak and begins to come down almost to the level of the ground. at this point the ground and makes a steep downward stair allowing just barely enough clearing to move through, albeit uncomfortably and almost crawling, past the dip. where the cieling begins to lift again, and repeat its process, Parallel corridoors emerge of a similar nature along side each other, eah with rising and collapsing vaults, some falling completely to the ground creating a dead end - and visitors must side step into another to continue moving foreward. In this way visitors

The Palace of mysterious origins

A Space cluttered with different and contradictory objects, each magnificent in its own right, lights creeps in through gaps and surfaces offering various and interesting sources of light from unknown origins, which cannot be understood. There is no oder or hierarchy to the space, and one must navigate his own path through the various objects and outcrops, the room is crowded with a mixture of symbols, sculpted forms of various influences of nature, humans, animals or hybrids, giving the place a surreal feeling.

The Palace of Sacrifice (Shalechet or Fallen Leaves)

A place where where all the walls and floors are made up of the shapes of human bodies who hold up the cieling, and the visitors with their bodies

where the visitors must step on and climb over these shapes and faces to get through to the next stretch of corridoor. This is a place that enstills a sense of guilt but also thanks to the figures which have been sacrificed so that we may move through to the higher levels.

"history has shown us we are at best the heirs of many ruthless victories, and at worst the heirs of genocide"

The Palace of Heirarchy and reincarnation

To enter this chamber you must choose between four identical doorways from which you cannot return. From there you enter a large hall divided into sections which terrace upwards, on each level is a labyrinth. Your choice of door will determine at which level you enter. At the highest level is visible a staircase leading out of the room, which you can see but cannot access, nor can you access any of the other levels. Visitors are forced to go walk through the tedious labyrinthine path on your level to a door at the end, this door does not lead out, but to the next level above it. The complexity of the maze is higher the lower the level one goes. Those that have chosen the lowest level, have an arduous and frsutrating journey to the top, those who chose the highest, need only to walk toward the staircase, and see the hords of unluckier masses navigating the labyrynths below.

Palace of perfect order

A complety symmetrical space, everything is organized in perfect orthographic relationships. ONly pure forms exist, in perfect proportions and relationshiups, with a clear hierarcy of forms. 

The palace of duality. 

To enter this space there is a division of male and female entrances. 

In this room every thing has its opposite polarity - light and dark, hard and soft, male and female, earth and heaven. The Partition which divides the room is a thin shell scultpure wher from one side one can expereince the positive forms, and the the other the negative form. Each sex can peer into the space of the other via small spy holes but cannot experience these spaces. Each half offers a wonderful experince in its own right. 

Palace of Innovation

This is a small chapel where the path that has been followed suddenly ends in a brick wall.  To some this may seem like the end, but there is a spatial riddle. The faithful can no longer  continue on the assumption that the path will lead them to the next space, they have to change their way of thinking about the concept of what is a path, and what is a doorway in order to use the room to allow them to gain pasage into the next space. Having done this, the pilgrims know that the ways in which to proceed may not be straightforward anymore.

Palace of the Absolute.  (Pantheon).

Here there is only one light source at the center of the space from above. All the artifacts are designed to accentuate this one light source with light and shadow. 

The palace of infinite dimensions

A mirrored room where a person sees himself and the space mirrored in infinite similar rooms each equal to the one they are in. in perception they are in but one of a million similar rooms - similar to the buddshist view of time. 

The hall of nothingness ( jewish museum) 

An empty space - devoid of any object, even light except for the the tiniest crack that allows people to become aware of their nothingness. 

The palace of relativity. 

In this space what seems to be true from one angle, is not true from another.  where pilgrims delight in the joy of seeing something new from a different point of view. The exit also can only be seen from a particular angle which allows the pilgrims to move forward. 

The chapel of Simultaneous Existence - The Library of Babel

At the end of the long procession visitors enter an enormous vertical space spiralling downward hundreds of meters to the floor. Here a series of elevators allow the visitors of the library to have access of all floors of knowledge easily, jumping from any area of history to any other with ease. Jutting out of the walls of the library are the chapels of the procession which led to it, which can be seen all at once. The rest of the wall is filled with imperishable slates of knowledge in its original languages. In order to access the library circulation space one must move through the hall of languages, in which every known written language is written the same text which covers all words etched into a titanium plate.  

At the centre of the space is a massive sphere around which smaller spheres rotate. It is an astrological clock, plotting time from the creation of the earth until a future date 10,000 years from now. 

The space itself is made up of rotating layers which start out as square and end in the circle of a great occulous which gives light to the entire space. 

The platform of reflection

Above the library there is another spiraling ramp which leads into the oculus itself.  The ramp leads to a viewing platform at the top where viewers can see the fruits of civilization, which at first will be a view of the entire city, or - they may look out only upon a ruined world, full of devastation and ruined steel skeletons of skyscrapers. 

Summary

The Temple of civilization, where believers in civilization come to make the long pilgramige to the top. Where there is a library containing all knowledge. The pilgrimage is a long spiralled path, dotted with several rooms, called the palaces of ideas. in which different ideas or way of seeing mankind's relationship with his external perception of the world (universe, nature, time, god) can be experienced spatially through the architecture.  Each visitor must go through each one of these thresholds in order to reach the library

The new temple - is about knowledge - and knowledge about everything

Instead of experiencing one idea - the temple is about inhabiting a multiplicity of ideas. 

Architectural concept : The experience of ideas

I feel that Architecture has lost an important role in culture - its meaning - or rather its power to embody meaning. Throughout the History of Architecture, Architecture has been used for more than providing the space for particular program, or as an ornamental piece within the city. Architecture, in particular sacred architecture, has been the vehicle though which meaning was expressed to a culture. It has manifested, through its space, the experience of an idea of the way in which mankind see itself in relation the world they perceived around them.  A "world" that could be experienced with the body, with the eyes and with the mind. By "world" i do not mean the earth, but the larger "other" against which mankind defines itself - be it god, or nature, or the universe or even time.  I think that architecture has ceased to create the experience of an idea, not an architectural idea, about space or structure or program, but the metaphysical idea which defines how we see the world.  Take the Pantheon in Rome,  'with its curved floor like the earth, upon which man walks under the sun, with the mighty cosmos surrounding - the realm of the gods', creates not a representation of the idea of the roman view of the world - but the experience of it felt by the viewer who, he himself, completes the design.  What greater role could architecture engage than this, to be the built fabric of a culture's mental or spiritual existence?

Architectural Sub-theme: Time and the choreography of architecture.

All buildings engage with time, though almost none do so deliberately. 

Understanding the forces of change, an architecture can begin to be designed as dynamic, having multiple existences, using the forces to animate itself poetically beautifully, and deliberately.

The world is changing, and it is doing so at increasing speed. The moment a building is built it engages with both its landscape but also its period of existence within time its timescape. Both of these can change the way a building can respond to its context, though only the former is considered in design. The increased speed of change is allowing us to see the world as a dynamic flow of forces, forces which act upon the city, upon the building. It is no longer a static world, we cannot rely on static skills, static cities, or static ideas,  yet design is still conceived as a static object, like the church or the castle - built in a context that was stable and to which it would always relate. Contemporary architecture considers only the site of the present, and merely degrades from there.  This is as poor a designing a building as if it were in a uniform landscape, when the site is not. Timescapes are also not always even things. As such, our architecture is poorly resolved with its timescape.  Like people - buildings have a life - and it must understand that it affects and is affected by the forces which flow through the city and it is our job to choreograph the way in which architecture dances with the forces of change.