Abstract:

The ground is one of the most present conditions in architecture and exists way before the conception of the architectural project. There is no architecture without it inherently having a relationship to the ground. We find our sense of being grounded in this very ground embedded in architecture and the city. But in the immense flattening of the globe through design, it is an encounter with the unusual, inordinary surface that brings forth the human condition. This disheveled break on the striated surface results in interesting effects on the architecture of the grid and on human perception. This paper questions what it means to unground the subject and investigates the relevance of ungrounding as an effect in architectural theories and works of art and architecture.

ungrounding the architectural subject

2020
master thesis essay

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Tower of Babel, 1563.

The Ground

“One of the ways that architecture has been most effective at producing effects that we can argue are political, are in the degree to which it takes up the problem of the relationship of the building to the ground.”[1]

- Jeff Kipnis

[1] “‘Discrimination’ by Jeff Kipnis,” posted on YouTube, Harvard GSD, July 23, 2013, video, 01:07:25, https://youtu.be/vur3TRzFztQ

As soon as the first line is laid out in an architectural drawing, the architect is immediately negotiating with the ground that the building occupies and the politics it embodies. Every section/ elevation/ view of a building is drawn in reference to the ground line and every act of building, therefore, is an act of negotiating with the ground. Under this pretext, it is safe to state that architecture’s primary project has been and will always be the ground. A building is given its form by the volumetric introduction of program together with an intentional designing of the ground- either by stacking, folding, layering, embedding, floating, tilting, raising, submerging, dissolving, puncturing or twisting the ground plane. Many architects, through various canonical buildings, have taken on the problem of the ground in addition to other agendas prevalent in their time. Historically, various allegories have been presented through architectural forms resulting from ground operations: for example, the spiralling tower of Babel, the sloping sides of the great Pyramids of Giza and the stepped blocks of the Mesopotamian Ziggurats. Within the last century, architects, ranging from Le Corbusier to Tom Wiscombe, have taken up the idea of the ground to effectively abstract it into an autonomous, geometric and formal object of artifice. It is this abstraction that allows them to take on the ground as an architectural problem and establish new datums with complex relationships to the natural ground. It is through the establishment of these new grounds that architecture effectively begins to “unground” itself.

But what is this ungrounding of architecture? It definitely isn’t a literal ungrounding wherein buildings begin to float in the sky and gravity ceases to exist; neither is it an abstruse ungrounding that links the built object to some philosophical understanding of its being. When architects have dealt with this concept in the past, it has always been through a figurative ungrounding of architecture. This un-grounding characterises itself as a certain ‘lightness’ that is revealed through a set of relationships established between the built form and the ground. In Differential Gravities, Greg Lynn writes about ungrounding from the point of view of gravity and weight and elaborates on the concept of lightness by defining it as an effect that is linked to multiplication of orientations, positions and movements. “Lightness is not the elimination of gravity but an equalization of gravities. Immersion implies that boundaries between figures and grounds become blurred and envelopes become negotiable.”[2]

Two concepts stand out in Lynn’s essay. Firstly, lightness is linked to multiple orientations and positions in space. This means that it is most evident in a space that allows and embodies a high degree of movement. Secondly, ungrounding as an effect depends on an equalization or a flattening of relations. Therefore, in order to unground, one needs to collapse the concepts and forms of natural and artificial, real and abstract, figural and geometric, nature and architecture, subject and object onto a singular plane. In this metaphorical plane, there are no figure-ground relationships anymore; only figure-figure relationships or figure-field. It is here that the relationships between opposing terms/bodies can be understood in their adjacencies. The architectural subject is introduced as an equal contributor joining forces with mass, material, program and structure. This equalization results in the subject assuming a position as an object among the constellation of objects that define the architecture of the plane. Specific ideas of objects and planes from Graham Harman’s Object Oriented Ontology are intentionally avoided and instead an attempt is made at not reducing the subject as one of many. Consider this flattening as a way of bringing all the players (architecture, ground, subject, etc) onto one plane or a singular field of chaos. A plane which is not the ground plane and not necessarily horizontal, where a set of relations can be established by considering all players as equally important. To put it simply, it is a way of looking at architecture from the points of view of both subjectivity and formalism.

Subjectivity brings a wholly different (almost opposing) and dense dimension to an architecture of formal attributes. The past contains endless examples of how architects have worked with the problem of relating architectural form to the human body. From the Vitruvian man (and all the other “men”- modulor or not) to Lynn’s multiplicitous, alien and indeterminate bodies he calls Blobs[3], many attempts have been made at fusing the qualities possessed by human bodies to form. Ionic column capitals, for example, are believed to be transpositions of the hairstyles of Ionian women.[4]In the same way, Gottfried Semper in 1860 linked Egyptian column capitals to the headdress worn by Egyptian women at the time.[5] In her essay titled, ‘The Medical Body in Modern Architecture,’ Beatriz Colomina links the prevalence of tuberculosis and the drive to redesign the human in the early 20th century to the birth and evolution of modernism.[6]Similarly, the Bauhaus also invested in paralleling the design of architecture and products with a design of the human body and lifestyle.[7] But these examples are limited in an attempt to explain architectural subjectivity because they all consider bodily form for architectural form and the human body to be limited by its skin. The subject- different from the body- in some rare cases ends up being a terminal consideration in design- the eventual inhabitant of the built form whose arms remain twisted until they make peace with the architect’s design.

Changes and evolutions in technology, have led to the blurring and expansion of the limits of our bodies and subjectivity. This blurring has resulted in new politics of gender, race, sex, identity, skin, borders, boundaries, etc.. Today’s human subject (or cyborg[8]) is one that thrives on multiplicities in presence (both bodily and virtual) and ideologies. Architecture, which always finds itself unable to resist these leaps in technology, also cannot remove itself from the concerns of the body and the subject. The importance of studying architectural creation with respect to the (neglected) subject is far more challenging and urgent than it has been in the 19th century. Colomina ends her essay with the following sentences- “People are becoming physically allergic to architecture. New bodies will probably have to be designed. A new theory of architecture is likely to follow.” While she talks about changes in the definition of bodies, changes in subjectivity, no doubt, go hand in hand with it.

This consideration of the human subject adds a layer of complexity to the understanding of ungrounding which uptil this point was strictly concerned with architectural form and not the spatial perception of the subject. With human subjectivity comes feelings, memories, intellect, experiences, expectations, information and beliefs. The subject is never isolated in a self-contained environment and their subjectivity is always going to result from endless interactions with the surrounding world. With regards to the subject’s interaction with architecture, Juhanni Pallasmaa, in his book ‘The Architecture of Image: Existential Space in Cinema’, says: “...buildings are devoid of emotion; a work of architecture obliges us- in the same way as literature and cinema- to lend our emotions and place them in it.”[9]He demonstrates this with an example:

“A person who is afraid of the dark has no factual reason to fear darkness as such; he is afraid of his own imagination, or more precisely of the contents that his repressed fantasy may project into the darkness.”[10]

The subject’s presence in space is inseparable from the idea of space itself. In other words, there is no definition of space without a subjective attribute in it. Do not confuse my highlighting of the subject’s position with phenomenological ideologies- that the subject is at the centre of the model. As stated earlier, I consider the subject’s position equivalent to the plethora of actors in the field that influence space. Therefore, in this essay, an attempt is made at understanding formal architectural operationsand gestures from an empathic point of view informed by the subject’s spatial and perceptual relations. But how does one perceive space?

[2] Greg Lynn, “Differential Gravities,” ANY: Architecture New York, No. 5, Lightness, Anyone Corporation, MIT Press, New York (March/April 1994): 20-23. [3] Greg Lynn, “From Body to Blobs,” ANY: Architecture New York, No. 6, Anybody, Anyone Corporation, MIT Press, New York (1997): 154-161. [4] Antoine Picon, Ornament: the Politics of Architecture and Subjectivity (Wiley, 2013), 95. [5] Gottfried Semper, Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts; or, Practical Aesthetics (Frankfurt, Munich, 1860-1863, English translation, Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2004), 238. [6] Beatriz Colomina, “The Medical Body in Modern Architecture,” ANY: Architecture New York, No. 6, Anybody, 228-239. [7] Magdalena Droste, The Bauhaus: 1919-1933: Reform and Avant-Garde, ed. Gössel Peter (Köln: Taschen, 2019) [8] Donna J. Harraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991) [9] Juhani Pallasmaa, The Architecture of Image: Existential Space in Cinema (Rakennustieto Oy, 2001), 32. [10] Pallasmaa, Architecture of Image, 31.

Gottfried Semper, Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts; or, Practical Aesthetics

Sensing Ground

“Experiencing architecture involves our whole being in a dense immersive weave in which the line between the inside and the outside cannot be clearly drawn. Where you stop and the world begins is an open question.”[1]

- Sarah Robinson

[1] Sarah Robinson, “Foreword: Architects Make Culture,” in From Object to Experience: the New Culture of Architectural Design, Harry Francis Mallgrave (Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2018), x.

In order to understand how we perceive architecture and the ever present residue of formal compositions- space- let’s take a small detour in following the evolution of these concepts in history. During the second half of the 19th century in Germany, a deep interest took root in examining the processes of perception in the natural sciences and philosophy. German philosopher Robert Vischer coined the term Einfühlung (empathy) in his 1872 dissertation titled ‘Über das optische Formgefühl’ (‘On the optical sense of Form’). Architectural theorist Harry F. Mallgrave who has an extensive body of work on these theories of Aesthetics points out that Einfühlungtranslated to English as empathy stands as a signifier of compassion or sympathy which the German word does not always mean. He writes, “For Vischer, at least, empathy was not simply an emotional expression but rather the psychophysiological process by which we relate to or find pleasure in artistic forms.”[1]

According to Vischer, the subject “unconsciously projects its own bodily form- and with this also the soul- into the form of the object.”[2] Through this understanding, he derives the concept of empathy and grounds the human subject central to aesthetic perception. He describes empathy as a way of linking our feelings to visual impressions. Vischer also distinguishes this visual activity into an unconscious ‘seeing’ (a linear identification of contours) and a conscious ‘scanning’ (a mapping of masses through hapticality- coupling movement of the eyes with muscular activity).[3] It is in the latter process that he situates the concept of empathy.

A few years later, architectural theorist Heinrich Wölfflin uses Vischer’s empathy theory, in his 1886 dissertation titled ‘Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur’ (‘Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture’), and applies them to an art historical reading of architectural form. In doing so, he superimposes the subject’s body with architectural form and reads feelings, actions and emotions into these forms. Wölfflin, therefore, looked at aesthetic perception through a formal understanding- a reading in which the subject develops a relationship with architectural forms by self-projecting their bodily form into the form of the object. Much like Semper’s analogy of the Egyptian column capital, Wölfflin too describes his analogy of the column by relating it to the human body. In his ‘Principles of Art History’ (1915), still comparing form to bodily actions, he writes, “Of course, all architecture and decoration reckons with certain suggestions of movement; the column rises, in the wall, living forces are at work, the dome swells upwards, and the humblest curve in the decoration has its share of movement, now more languid, now more lively.”[4]But this way of limiting Aesthetic theory to formal relations didn’t still solve the questions of spatial perception.

In 1893, a radical way of approaching these theories was proposed by another German architectural theorist August Schmarsow with his seminal lecture titled, ‘The Essence of Architectural Creation,’ in which he describes architecture as the “creatress of space.”[5]By insisting on a spatial reading of Vischer’s empathy theory, Schmarsow was the first to point at the sensitivity of the human body to both movement and spatial depth. Unlike Vischer and Wölfflin, who limited movement to the actions of seeing and scanning forms- i.e, movement of the eyes and head only, Schmarsow insisted that actual bodily movement in space was at the core of his theories. This brought forth a unique understanding of aesthetic perception as an active and engaging process which not only relies on the movement of the eyes and head but also the movement of the subject’s body in space. This later developed into the concept of Kinaesthetics and “Kinaesthetic knowing”[6], which implied bodily movement coupled with visual impressions as the keys to perceiving space. In other words, to be spatial meant to embody movement. When we look at the ways in which we describe our presence in space, we see how movement is an essential part of it. We don’t see space; we experience and explore it, we transition in it, we feel it around us. In all of these actions, it is the movement of our bodies that resides as an explosive force in the construction and perception of space- movement from one volume to another, inside to outside, below to above. It is safe to say that in the presence of the subject, movement is to space as space is to form.

[1] Harry Francis Mallgrave, “Feeling-for-form… Feeling-for-space,” in From Object to Experience, 106. [2] Robert Vischer, “On the Optical Sense of Form: A Contribution to Aesthetics” (1872), in Empathy, Form, and Space. Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873–1893, trans. Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou (Santa Monica, CA: The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994), 92. [3] Rainer Schützeichel, “Architecture as Bodily and Spatial Art: The Idea of Einfühlung in Early Theoretical Contributions by Heinrich Wölfflin and August Schmarsow,” Architectural Theory Review, 18:3, 296, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13264826.2014.890007 [4] Heinrich Wölfflin, Principles of Art History. The Problem of the Development of Style in Later Art (1915), trans. M. D. Hottinger (New York: Dover Publications, 1950) 63. [5] August Schmarsow, “The Essence of Architectural Creation” (1893), in Empathy, Form, and Space, 288. [6] Zeynep Çelik Alexander, Kinaesthetic Knowing: Aesthetics, Epistemology, Modern Design (The University of Chicago Press, 2017)

Cosmas Damian Asam und Egid Quirin Asam, Asamkirche (St.-Johann-Nepomuk-Kirche), Munich, 1746.

Baroque Ground

In the past, architecture's concern with movement was most evident in the Baroque period. The play of light and shadow and the blurring of edges or the diffusion of the figure into the ground characterised as primary ingredients in achieving picturesque effects in baroque paintings. With the arts influencing forms, ornamentation and the resulting spatiality of buildings, architecture too invested itself in representing the baroque qualities of nature. Prominent examples of buildings in this style include Bernini’s Baldaquin in the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome, Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, the Margravial Opera House in Bayreuth and the Asamkirche in Munich. The Asamkirche, with its relatively small and compressed volume and intelligent use of natural light illuminating the immersive ornaments and frescoes, is one of the most important late-Baroque buildings in southern Germany. It is possible that the impressive qualities of this church seduced the young scholar from the University of Munich, our very own Heinrich Wölfflin, to embark on a journey after his dissertation through Italy and write one of his most influential books titled, ‘Renaissance and Baroque’ (1888).

In this book, Wölfflin characterises baroque architecture as ‘painterly’, a term which is most ambiguous and indefinite. Movement, the shift in center of gravity and elusiveness or lack of definition form the essential elements of the painterly.

“To gain an even greater sense of movement, all or most of the composition is placed obliquely to the beholder… The center of gravity is transferred to one side, giving the composition a peculiar tension… The painterly style thinks only in masses, and its elements are light and shade… (which) contain by nature a very strong element of movement.”[1]

It is noteworthy that Wölfflin’s descriptions of the ‘painterly’ match two ideas previously discussed- that movement is an inherent part of this style and that the immersion of masses in the material context is essential in blurring figure-ground relations. Both these concepts are also present in Lynn’s descriptions of ‘lightness’ in Differential Gravities where he doesn’t once mention either Wölfflin or Baroque architecture.

[1] Heinrich Wölfflin, Renaissance and Baroque, trans. Kathrin Simon (Cornell University Press, 1992), 32-33.

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970.

Wölfflin used baroque paintings and sculpture to arrive at his thesis of the painterly style. In the same way, we will now consider a well-known, recent example from the arts in order to discuss it as being architectural and baroque by nature. Let us look at the Spiral Jetty, an earthwork completed fifty years ago, in 1970, by Robert Smithson at the Great Salt Lake in Utah. This earthwork, made of the materials found on site (rocks, earth, water and salt), offshoots from the banks of the lake forming a 460 meters long spiral. The area of the lake that the Jetty occupies is pretty shallow and therefore, the spiral sits almost as an etching on the 2-dimensional surface of the lake. As is the case with any spiral, space is sandwiched and squeezed out as one begins to approach the center. Smithson describes the Jetty as a “fluttering stillness”, or “spinning sensations without movement.”[1]In Earth Mapping: Artists Reshaping Landscape, Edward S. Casey considers the Spiral Jetty to be the most exemplary earthwork and comments on these descriptions of the work provided by Smithson:

“Most crucial of these descriptions is "a rotary that enclosed itself in an immense roundness": where rotary signifies the circular motion of rotation; and immense roundness, a settled stolid earth-figure. Indeed, the prime figure of the spiral itself bears the same double-sided destiny: stable as a set form, ...yet suggesting incessant motion... Reinforcing this double identity of essence and counteressence is the paradox that a spiral at once circulates—and thus entails a center around which to circle—and yet has no precise center.”[2]

By using the three elements of the ‘painterly’ as deduced by Wölfflin, we shall attempt to define three ways in which Smithson’s Spiral Jetty has baroque sensibilities.
1.                  The illusion of movement- Embedded in the form of the spiral is a force that draws the subject inwards. The changing spatiality is observed as one progresses along the path and experiences both the centripetal and centrifugal forces of the spiral at the same time. “...it swirls in upon itself, and it flungs itself outward.”[3]Movement embodied in the static earthwork becomes an ungrounding effect only experienced through bodily motion.
2.                 A shift in the center of gravity- In the apparent non-mass, non-site condition of the Jetty, the shift in the center of gravity literally translates into the shift (or absence) of a center in the spiral form.
3.                 Elusiveness or the lack of definition- The edges of the 4.6 meter wide Jetty, built with basalt rocks and earth found on site, were always rough in definition. Fifty years since its completion, the rocks have salt deposits on their surfaces from the repeated sinking in and the edges have mostly eroded into the lake from fluctuations in water levels and weather conditions. The spiralling form remains visible today mostly due to the smoothness in the water surface that surrounds it or when the water recedes.

By employing the above stated qualities in the very structure that makes the spiral, the Jetty completely embodies the concept of the painterly. Furthermore, Smithson describes the Jetty as a map that relies on the mapping procedure itself; in other words, a place that comes into being through the actions of mapping. Comparing this idea of mapping to Deleuze’s concepts of smooth space, Casey elaborates: “… the irregularity of the grid is realized by the movingness of a map- a map that puts the body in motion: that... “takes the body with it.” Body and motion constitute mapping in a place: they constitute a place as a map. A given place is always at once spatial and temporal; or better, it trumps the putative priority of space or time, those modernist megaliths, by combining both in a scene of motion (which is itself inherently spatiotemporal). The dialectic of place is an intensified dialectic of space and time, brought together in motion.”[4] Casey, here, introduces the concept of ‘place’ which can be thought of as a field or event (or a field of events.)

The field, in this context, can alternatively be thought of as a system- non-linear, non-metric, non-striated.[5]But we will not go into this train of thought as that opens up a whole Deleuzian universe onto us. Rather, let’s take these understandings of form, space and perception and apply it to an understanding of the architectural operation of ‘ungrounding’. With the investigation into the concepts of Einfühlung and painterly, we have arrived at some sort of an understanding of spatial perception and subjectivity and the resulting relations between forms and the architectural subject. Thus, ungrounding in this context can be defined as an abstract concept of effects defined by the relations between architectural form and subjectivity that are both visual and perceptual. But some questions arise when one looks at ungrounding the subject through architectural operations. Can the subject be ungrounded through formal architectural operations pertaining to the ground? How does the subject relate to the ground- the often unseen part of architectural experience?

The human being has an incessant need to relate itself with everything it sees, touches and interacts with. When we go into nature, we are overwhelmed by the sheer size of mountains or the intensity of forests because we compare it to the limits and extents of our own bodies and to our emotions, feelings, memories and imaginations. “This animating force of our imagination obviously extends not only to all living beings but also to the whole of nature. Through it, we are able to relate everything to ourselves and to infuse it with our own bodily feeling.”[6] Such corporeal comparison allows us to have/build intimate relationships with our surroundings. This intimacy is also characteristic of our relationship with the ground. As we make our way through any space, we are in constant negotiation with the ground through the actions of walking, standing, sitting or lying. Thus, every technique/ device employed in dealing with the ‘ground’ problem in architecture is an ‘ungrounding’ technique/ device that not only ungrounds the form but often ungrounds the subject as well.

[1] Edward S. Casey, Earth-Mapping: Artists Reshaping Landscape (University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 18.

[2] Casey, Earth-Mapping, 19.

[3] Casey, Earth-Mapping, 19.

[4] Casey, Earth-Mapping, 24.

[5] Sanford Kwinter and Umberto Boccioni, “Landscapes of Change,” Assemblage, No. 19, The MIT Press (Dec 1992): 50-65.

[6] Adolf Hildebrand, “The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts,” in Empathy, Form, and Space, 261.

Claude Parent, French Pavilion, 35th Venice Biennale, 1970

Oblique Ground

“A ramp can be a device that changes political systems, triggers revolution. Ramps can announce a new age, a new man (flâneur), a new art, a new lifestyle without furniture, even a new relationship between humans and animals… ramps liberate architecture and people”[1]

- Rem Koolhaas

[1] Rem Koolhaas and Irma Boom, Ramp, (Venezia: Marsilio, 2014), 1-3.

Architecture has always had devices that produce effects of ungrounding. Apart from formal devices, color, volume, light, texture, scale, reflection, transparency, and so forth contribute to the way we perceive space. We have already seen a few instances of ungrounding effects achieved by tweaking these devices. To further illustrate this, let us take the example of a commonly used device that has grown in popularity over the last century as a universal and most functional architectural element: the ramp. In the beginning of the twentieth century, Le Corbusier, with his ‘Five Points of a New Architecture’ sets out his intentions of working on a system for a universal architecture. In this system, he stressed on the relationship of the building to the ground or rather its distinction from the ground by setting up a new datum supported by pilotis. In Villa Savoye, a perfect embodiment of the five points, he employed the ramp as a means of graduating from the ground to the newly established datum. The ramp was undoubtedly one of his favourite elements- and an obsession[1]- as it appeared in almost all of his buildings. With Corbusier’s extensive use of ramps, it unfailingly went on to become the symbol of universal architecture.“...it is an effective device for confronting exclusion, an agent of democratic access for all… the ramp reminds us of gravity and friction. It can be a device to overcome limitations.”[2]

“Throughout history, architecture has always served as a backdrop for the arrival or departure of important visitors or guests. From Palladio up to the chateaux of the 17th and 18th centuries, that role in the stagecraft of power has been best served by exposed stairs. Where access to these mansions occured by horses or horse-drawn carriages, stairs were either accompanied by laterally arranged ramps or were themselves redefined as ramps. With Le Corbusier, these structures of reception have primarily become means of celebrating the industrial sublime. Motorised traffic with its roadways in the form of bridges, ramps and loops inspired this symbol of modernity.”[3]

But the functionality of the ramp is not the only reason it was a much preferred tool for architects to use it in the composition of entrances to or within their buildings. The ramp is also a means to engage with the subject’s consciousness. “The ramp assigns a simple walk on the roof terrace the aura of a ceremonial ascent.”[4]The ramp not only heightens the subject’s awareness of the ground, but it also exemplifies the newness of the datum by bringing a newness in the experience of the subject and their relationship to the ground. This is the role of the ramp in the architecture of Villa Savoye. The horizontal flatness of the ground that one experiences while approaching the building is disturbed by the introduction of the ramp, driving the subject to focus on balancing themselves on this new ground and negotiate with gravity. As compared to the groundedness the subject experiences on the flat ground that surrounds the villa, the ramp ungrounds the subject and makes them more aware of their presence in the architecture and therefore making the architecture more present through corporeal comparison.

Years later, Frank Lloyd Wright, who in his career predominantly chose to build as close to the ground as possible, makes an important exception with the verticality of the Guggenheim Museum in New York by employing the ramp in it’s exaggerated form of a spiral and creating vertigo-inducing effects. While it was still on paper, the spiral attracted violent rejection publicly by New Yorkers including prominent artists at the time. But Wright insisted on having it built. This, along with several other unbuilt projects dating back to the 1920s, made him “the first modern architect with a preoccupation with the spiral ramp.”[5]The unbroken, spiritless ground is taken from the street and rolled into a spirited spiral that rises above, overlooking and containing the central atrium of the museum, swooping the visitors up with it. At all points, the spiral draws the people in towards the central void and also to the art hung on the walls away from the center. The slope forces the visitor to shift weight and be aware not only of one’s bodily balance and composure but also of the people viewing the artworks and the people passing by. The ramp in the case of this museum has such a strong presence and effect in ungrounding the visitor that, along with the atrium, it begins to act as the prime object of the museum demanding endless attention from the visitor.

Stairs, escalators and elevators also perform a similar function as the ramp by connecting different levels of a building. But rarely do they possess qualities to unground the subject. Few stairs such as the rail-free spiral in Oscar Neimeyer’s Itamaraty Palace, Brazil, invoke the subject’s presence in the experience they offer. Dimensions of stairs worldwide are governed by building codes that also regulate the experience of our encounter. Stairs are but only variegated planes of flat ground. There is barely any disturbance in the equilibrium of the body or its relation with gravity. An ascent is different from a descent only by the direction of motion and energy spent performing the graduation from one flat plane to another. Even though they essentially form an oblique trajectory of movement in space, theirs is an oblique broken by a stepped flatness unlike the ramp. “... the oblique was born from a purely sensory perspective. When you’re standing on a flat plane, nothing happens. No brain activity. On the oblique, you have feelings; you feel a force when climbing and euphoria during descent. This is the basis. The oblique creates shapes that displease people because they don't like to feel off balance,” says Claude Parent, the architect and theoretician obsessed with the oblique function, in conversation with Rem Koolhaas.[6]

“The oblique function allows for travel. Architecture becomes the support of displacement; movement is freed from the constraint and precision of distance travelled, and the choice of the itinerary is left open… An incessant flow coming up against architecture in its unpredictable but sustained ebb, perhaps out in search of a new discipline.”[7]

Together with Paul Virilio, Claude Parent formed Architecture Principe under which they published 10 books including ‘The Function of the Oblique: The Architecture of Claude Parent and Paul Virilio from 1963-1969’ which served as their manifesto for a world conceived of oblique surfaces. “Claude Parent saw in it [the ramp] the self-evident next step in the evolution of mankind… his ramps create conscious bodies accepting resistance, and therefore existence: living as a permanent process of dealing with gravity- the stress of going up, the relief of going down. Parent’s ramps for living on would attempt to create hierarchy, destabilize relationships, change how we make love, read, eat.”[8]Neither Parent, nor Virilio were distant from the concepts of Kinaesthetics as we have discussed before. Indeed, as John Rajchman points out: “Virilio was drawn to Gestalt theory and the attempt to derive figure/ ground relations from upright posture and frontal vision, thus rediscovering a topic central to Wölfflin- the relations between ground and form, gravity and vision.”[9]It is the coming together of these relations that drove the partners of Architecture Principe to invest in the oblique function, undoubtedly hailing the ramp as architecture’s greatest ungrounding device.

The ramp is undoubtedly a baroque device in its very essence; not classical baroque (ramps were also seldom used in that period), but baroque as an effect contained in its experience. The same immersive melancholy is present in Wright’s Guggenheim as well. Even though the museum is denuded of any ornamentation and set in the International style, it still abstracts all the signifiers of baroque forces in its form and structure producing ungrounding effects.

Ascending or descending a ramp is akin to cinematic journeys- the world reveals itself slowly, frame by frame as one moves along the ramp. The subject forms new relations with the built environment with every step they take. A ramp directs the subject much like a flat spiral does- movement is embodied in both forms. Bodily movement is an essential part of the ramp highlighting the spatial and temporal qualities in it- to move on the ramp is to form physical relationships with the ground and time. A journey along the ramp is an exploration of space, in which the ramp and subject coexist, generating in the subject a heightened sense of being in the world. The effects and forces of the ramp exist so long as the subject exists on the architecture of the oblique plane.

“The ramp is an instant creator of scenography. It strives towards architectural infinity. It generates mythical proportion. It leads to the epicenter of triumph… But the ramp is still often an architectural afterthought"[10]

[1] Stanislaus von Moos, Le Corbusier: Elements of a Synthesis (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2009), 109.

[2] Koolhaas, Rem, and Irma Boom. Ramp. Venezia: Marsilio, 2014. p. 3.

[3] Moos, Le Corbusier, 109.

[4] Moos, Le Corbusier, 109.

[5] Koolhaas and Boom, Ramp, 3.

[6] Koolhaas and Boom, Ramp, 3.

[7] Claude Parent, “Drives,” Architecture Principe: Habitable Circulation, No. 5 (July 1966); in Claude Parent and Paul Virilio, Architecture Principe 1966 and 1996, trans. George Collins (Besançon: Les éditions de l’imprimeur, 1997), xiv.

[8] Koolhaas and Boom, Ramp, 3.

[9] John Rajchman, “Some senses of “Ground”,” ANY: Architecture New York, No. 6, Anybody, 158.

[10] Koolhaas and Boom, Ramp, 3.

J. M. W. Turner, Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway, 1844.

Possible Grounds

“What is it but the poetics of space that governs the charm of perspectival vistas or spatial development in a real building, which has a serene and liberating effect on our soul, expanding and elevating it; and does not space still exert a part of its charm when we view it in painted architectural scenery?”[1]

- August Schmarsow

[1] August Schmarsow, “The Essence of Architectural Creation,” in Empathy, Form, and Space, 293.

One fact emerges from everything discussed up to this point- architecture can never divorce itself from the ground. Even if/when it floats in space, it still has a relationship to the ground- of being detached from it, being above it. An architecture that embraces the ground also embraces abstraction and illusion. It presents the ground as a protagonist in the story of its effects. The ground assumes the role of an artist, the protagonist on the stage of architecture where the drama of life unfolds. When looking at architecture as a process of crafting scenes, many relations can be made with scenography and cinema. Especially in the case of scenography, scene-making relies on the atmospheric transformation of relations between actors, stage and spectator achieved via light, sound, costume and scenery directed towards “how encounters of ‘world’ are conceptualized and rendered attentive.”[1] Both scenography and cinema are art forms grounded in their reliance on images. Cinema is only different from theatre as the engagement in consumption of images is different.

Architecture, too, is a production facility of images; it is an art form that relies on image making. The biggest concern in architecture is composition- how it looks, how different forms come together, what it frames and how it is enframed. Commonly used terms such as perspectives, vistas, views, scenes, landscape, cityscape, towncape, scenery, spectacle, panorama, setting, outlook and lookout all form part of an architectural vocabulary that relies on visual impetus. In Art as Technique, Viktor Schlovsky calls poetry as a way of thinking in images. “Poetic imagery is a means of creating the strongest possible impression.”[2]Words are composed in sentences to emphasize the emotional effect to the reader. Similarly, formal devices are used in an architectural composition that dwells in the poetics of imagery or a poetics of space, conveying affects.

All the way back in 1893, Adolf Hildebrand was already concerned about the powers invested in form to inflict affects in the subject. In highlighting the role of the artist as a mediator of empathy he writes: “Through the narrow confines of the image and the sparse and stabile means by which it makes a visual effect, the artist must be clear in his own mind about what kind of relationships within the appearance most unfailingly and most forcefully induces this sense of space in the observer- this most elementary effect of nature. The more emphatically he makes evident the spatial content and fullness of the image and the more positively he nurtures the idea of space in the appearance, the stronger will be the experience represented in the image and the more characteristically does the image compare with nature.”[3]In relation to architecture (more specifically, ornament) and its ability to produce affects, Antoine Picon writes:

“Architecture does not necessarily ‘speak’... Rather it possesses an expressive character; it conveys affects, emotions and thoughts. In contrast to nature, architectural form is entirely intentional and its effects purposefully created... affects are not attached to a subject’s mind in the way personal feelings are. Of a much more physical nature, they denote a change in intensity that concerns both the body and its surrounding space and time.”[4]

With the recent studies in the neurosciences with respect to aesthetic perception proving right the predictions of 19th century Aesthetic theories, the relevance and urgency of reclaiming the subject in architecture and theory has never been higher. By investigating the effects of ungrounding on the subject, this essay attempts to understand and bring these theories together in contemporary discourse. Ungrounding the subject means activating the subject’s presence/ spectatorship by shifting their role from casual flaneur drifting through the space to one that consciously occupies, shapes and shifts the given space with their presence. Ungrounding architecture is different from ungrounding the subject insomuch as the former most often utilises crude techniques to generate compositional/ figurative effects of ungrounding and the latter relies on a complex set of relations between objects and the subject, masquerading as subtle effects and delayed revelations. Ungrounding of the subject occurs as a result of effects generated by formal architectural devices that present a new reality (not necessarily the truth) to the subject immersed in that space. By being and moving within the space, the subject is led to experience a subtle surprise/shock that reveals the reality of the work as inseparable from the subject. The impact of this effect can be compared to the impact of Baroque architecture as assumed by Wölfflin:

“It does not convey a state of present happiness, but a feeling of anticipation, of something yet to come, of dissatisfaction and restlessness rather than fulfilment. We have no sense of release, but rather of having been drawn into the tension of an emotional condition.”[5]

As an effect, ungrounding does not insist on being extreme or dramatic. It is a subtle perceptual effect that brings forth a stronger engagement between the built form and its inhabitant. Ungrounding only aims at actuating affects through spatial effects. Many ways of understanding this ungrounding have been arrived at from various angles and viewpoints. Needless to say, there is not a single formula to effectively employ this effect. A ramp can only unground the subject so long as the setting (or field) in which the ramp exists also participates in this ungrounding. Therefore, to design this perceptual effect of ungrounding calls for a design based on intuition- to rely on feeling; a design in which the irrational, illogical, instinctive, absurd, arbitrary, implausible, silly, senseless, baseless and even groundless forces trump over the ingrained logical, rational, well reasoned, pragmatic and astute mindset of the architect.

[1] Rachel Hann, Beyond Scenography(New York: Routledge, 2019), 2.

[2] Viktor Shklovsky, Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays, trans. Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis (University of Nebraska Press, 1965), 8.

[3] Hildebrand, “The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts,” 239.

[4] Picon, Ornament, 59.

[5] Wölfflin, Renaissance and Baroque, 38.

a search or an escape within dirtiness