Baroque Space

This essay was started in 2016 and considers questions of experience and meaning while in Rome and Seattle. The current context gives me the time to complete this thought.

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Fluid surfaces in a fluid world. The first time I visited Rome was in 1995 as part of the University of Washington Rome Program (Astra Zarina). This was a meaningful and deep experience in my growth as a designer and person. I soaked in the contemporary urban life and the deep layers of roman history. I found during this first experience that the Baroque did not resonate with me as I drifted more toward the deep roman layers of culture and space. During the interim years prior to my next visit I took the Performance of our Interiors & Exteriors course at Parsons The New School for Design in 2009. (Mark Rakatansky) Part of this course investigated the Baroque and how it informs contemporary theory providing me with critical connections and insight. An academic study which focused attention on design in which:

The experience of bodies in space results in and from the performative interiority of design - The way design is interior to physical space and interior to social culture - and the ways, just as with actors, that those social and psychological interior states are drawn forth and made evident and vivid through their reactions to various other interior and exterior characters and characteristics. (Rakatansky)

I also think fourteen years of practice and further study provided a more fertile place within my body for this study to resonate.

My return to Rome in 2016 provided me the opportunity to (re)visit the Baroque city of Rome. If I am being honest with myself, I was truly visiting these spaces and works for the first time even though I experienced them back in 1995. On this trip, I dedicated time and attention in each space to experience the various interior and exterior characters and characteristics. In short, I was fully present in the the space and within myself.

A series of thoughts on Light, Surface and Threshold were generated from these experiences. Some were not experienced in ‘classically’ defined Baroque spaces, however, they work as way points along the thread of this experience and insight into the performative interiority of design.

Aperture

The connection between light and surface is intrinsic to our experience of the world and can be argued as the key definition of architecture and space. As I walk into the domes of Rome important questions of light are ever present. I find a quiet spot within the body of the space and breathe. In time with this breathing my mind began to quiet with my body becoming more prominent. The touch of cool stone and air. An oasis from the summer heat emerged. A falling heart rate matching a calming mind. Closing my eyes to aid the (re)calibration of my vision to the new light conditions foregrounded my other senses and reduced the primacy of visual perception. These moments of visual and mental calm provided needed white space. When I did (re)open my eyes I was prepared to see. I spent the next moments in the space breathing it all in. A key characteristic of the Baroque was observed. The fluid geometry and surfaces of the Baroque were evident and well comprehended through my theoretical base. The aspect that I now experienced was how the direction and the calibration of the light source influenced the experience and gathered in me a deeper understanding of Baroque space.

The antiquity example I experienced was the Pantheon. The single aperture in the dome apex defines the visual experience. The singular aspect of the light is architecturally responded to through crisp form and shape. There is nothing subtle about the light and the architecture and geometric volumes follow with sharp and repetitive forms. With the directional nature and continual motion of light the formal geometry does not remain static. On the contrary the moving direct light produces a fluidity of space and surface through the direct motion of light relative to the fixed concrete geometries.

The consciously designed Baroque spaces of Bernini and Borromini approach light with a distinctly different strategy. Sitting and breathing in San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (Borromini) and Sant’Andrea al Quirinale (Bernini) I experienced the undulating surface geometry that epitomizes Baroque design. The longer I rested in my oasis new ways of seeing the space and how light was designed to render these surfaces was revealed. Both Bernini and Borromini used clearly defined sources of light to define surfaces similar to the Pantheon, however, with a distinctly different result. The aperture was set to cast a field of light across the directly adjacent surfaces to effectively fill a secondary space with light. This developed a clear field of differentiated bright and shaded surfaces that modeled the fluid geometric surfaces. Second, this configuration established primary, secondary, and tertiary lit spaces across the focal length of the vertical space to establish a depth of immense beauty and height. Yes, there is direct light cast across the dome at particular moments, however, the principle effect of the aperture is to illuminate the direct adjacent surfaces of a secondary vault or the drum of the cupola to generate legible fluid surfaces in a field of contrasted vaults. This foregrounds the dynamic fluid movement of the concrete form with the light as the source of stability and calm.

Surface

My time with two Bernini sculptures illustrated the mutual definition of light and surface while taking my breath away. Both works are situated in side chapels with singular diffused sources of natural daylight. Either through a cupola with a deep drum or a side window set in a deep surround, a singular reflected light source to illuminate the stone was produced. Looking at the figures one can comprehend the nature of the light and through the design of the light one is able to comprehend the body. This is not a sharp definition of light and surface but both working to hone and remove sharp contrast to reveal subtle character and characteristics.

A fold. A breath. A touch. A moment held - prior to a new reality borne by us all.

Blessed Ludovica Albertoni (Bernini) in Chiesa di San Francesco a Ripa

Ecstasy of Santa Teresa of Ávila, (Bernini) in Santa Maria della Vittoria

Threshold

A visit to Skyspace - Light Reign (Turrell) in 2016 at The Henry Art Gallery (University of Washington) brought me back to the small domes of Rome. Crossing the bridge I entered a space I thought I knew. A space where I thought I knew what to expect. A jewel of a contemplation space. Crossing into the elliptical space on a bright clear day my eyes struggled to adapt to the crisp and clear space. Sitting down on the wood bench I took a deep breath. My body adjusting. A moment of disappointment flowed through me. After thinking so much about the depth of light and surface from my time in Rome a month ago the sharp line between ceiling and sky was disorientating. The edge acting as a knife between the ceiling and sky resulting in a stark binary experience. I remained. My body temperature began to rise and my eyes continued to adjust to the increased temperature and light. The space began to distort and gain depth the more my body adjusted. I resisted thoughts to move throughout the space to gain understanding and held my position. A baroque space began to materialize. An abstract space fully within the rules of geometry and proportion but presenting a new fluid reality that raised questions of stability and order. Rationally, I know the wood bench surface that I am sitting on is level and that I am sitting in an ellipse in the strictest geometric sense. The lines still begin to flow and distort. To trace a line around the space is a study in a shift in depth and perception not dissimilar to San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane. The line is there. The static relationships exist fixed by materials, however, the space within my grasp is one of movement not stasis. This is why I found the sharp line between ceiling and sky plane to be so harsh. That boundary line is never in question while all other surfaces and and materials form a more nuanced relationship to my body and experience. I decide to move. I moved to the other end of the space to experience the space distort and shift. A stunning transformation. It was while sitting back down that I realized I was questioning the wrong boundary. It is not the boundary of ceiling and sky I should be questioning it should be the boundary with the ground. This new perspective shifted my concept of where I was. I was not on the ground looking up, as I was in Rome. I was sitting in the oculus. I was inside the same type of space far above my head I was so fascinated with in Rome but could not occupy. I was in the threshold between surface and sky so important to Bernini and Borromini as they modeled their fluid surfaces. The proportions of the cupola I was sitting in felt about right. Instead of focusing on the sharp line above I was able to experience sitting at the moment of inflection between two opening spaces. A Camera Obscura? Light Reign became a lens through which space distorted and became inverted, amplified, and projected into a new experience. Much to my surprise, on a bright sunny day in Seattle I arrived into the Baroque space I could only observe and speculate upon from a far while in Rome.

These experiences reinforce the need to continually question how I inhabit my surroundings as an act of defining how my surroundings inhabit me. Insight and creativity emerges from occupying the spaces between the limits of our body and senses toward the expanse of imagination and the possible.

Thoughts from walks through Rome and Seattle.

All images by author

Establishing a Surface

A set of temporary and needed boundaries in society are providing time for a return to writing. While hopefully temporary, these surfaces are all too real. The first set of surfaces are the ones which have always existed in my everyday but now take on added meaning. The walls of my apartment now act as a healthcare tool while continuing to define what I call home. The second set of surfaces is the ever morphing six-foot social distance established by emergency declaration. A sanctioned adjustment to my ‘field of self’ (Evernden - The Natural Alien) that redefines aspects of my everyday which I continue to come to terms with to understand my value and agency.

The essay below was started in 2017 and considers questions of surface and meaning through art and installation. The current context gives me the time to complete this thought.

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In 2016 and 2017 I visited exhibits in Rome and Mexico City which caused me to reflect on installation design. The question which intrigued me was how each exhibit was required to ask - how is a surface established for the art to be exhibited. The curators did not, or in cases could not, take the gallery walls for granted. This is not a new question within architectural and art theory. In someways it is a classic architectural question. The formulation of enclosure through the built environment relative to the social formation of space. The foregrounding of enclosure as art, object, and message versus the back-grounding of enclosure as container, mundane, and neutral meaning. A main line theory of this question can be viewed through a series of seminal museums. The Guggenheim in New York City as galleries which define the works. The Guggenheim in Bilbao as gallery defined by art, with a room designed for the eventual installation of a specific work of art - Guernica. A work which to this day still awaits a political solution to fully resolve the architectural argument put forward. Remaining in western theory, the Centre Pompidou approaches the discussion from the perspective of adaptability. The reflection below does not intend to re-argue this main line debate. The question which focused my thoughts during these recent trips was how the curator and installation design team were required to address this question beyond a theoretical discussion but as a design iteration of the space and architecture itself. The architectural team established the context and milieu surfaces. The artists establish the art surface. The curator and installation design team is left to ultimately establish the surface on which the art is experienced. One approaches the art as produced through these three layers and voices.

My experience lead to a reflection on how each architectural statement resulted in curatorial teams and museum goers needing to take a clear position in space and establish surfaces which generated meaning beyond the voice of the artist toward a meaning of place and experience. With little opportunity to default to a neutral standard, a given, a type, the artistic and viewer position was continually questioned.
Thoughts from my walks through the MAXXI (Rome), The Museum of Modern Art (Mexico City), The Trotsky Museum (Mexico City), The Secretariat of Education (Mexico City), and Parson MFA Studios (New York City).

Rome

MAXXI, 2016

How one relates to the other is an act of defining oneself. The MAXXI in general is one continual question of how one is defined by the other. The building is difficult to comprehend outside of context or the manner by which it is defined through a relationship with context. Yes, one can argue that everything and everyone is always in relationship to a context and is defined by such a relationship. There is a difference between acknowledging context as important versus taking the critical position that to define me is to also define the other. By putting oneself or the people within a design in a continual place to question how this relationship the MAXXI engages in a formal response to the question of our current time. How do my actions impact others and how do their actions define me.

When I was at the MAXXI there were three concurrent shows. Each show answered in different ways the question of how enclosure and surface define the means by which I understood the art as well as the context of the museum and the context of the city.

Extraordinary Visions, L’Italia ci guarda

The Extraordinary Visions show developed a clear primary secondary and tertiary environment. The secondary architectural plywood surfaces set within the primary museum container worked to reduce the scale of the space and brought the works into a more intimate relationship with the viewer. This secondary surface became the primary experience in the show. The wood grain surface and the diffusion of the focused light fixtures worked to use the resources of the larger museum space while constructing an environment within the larger architectural context.

Permanent Collection

The display of the permanent collection worked to define a space within the larger gallery through the use of suspended horizontal surfaces. The added surface allows the flow of the walls and the floor to continue unimpeded through the exhibit. The frames operate as self contained exhibit platforms that provide a means for horizontal, vertical, and description at any point within the flow of the gallery. A Cartesian rigor and adaptability suspended into the fixed undulating flow of the gallery. Both work in relationship to define the space of human flow.

SUPERSTUDIO 50

The SUPERSTUDIO exhibit used many strategies. The one which most intrigued me was the one which spanned from the human body to the city beyond. Fitting for a SUPERSTUDIO retrospective. A series of movable reading nooks provide a space to focus on the books of the exhibit and allow the body to develop a more comfortable posture and space off the main flow. This body defined space also held a corollary urban relationship by developing a segmented enclosure wall. It provides scale and a daylight filter into the interior and becomes the defining urban identity of the show as the panels spell out SUPERSTUDIO to the piazza and city beyond. A sign which is not static but one continually adjusting the exterior reading of message throughout the particular usage and engagement by the museum goers on the inside.

Mexico City

Walking Mexico City in 2017, I returned to the question of how the relationship between art and context is defined and experienced.

Museum of Modern Art, Permanent Collection, 2017

The center defined and focused by warm light.

Architectural orientation to the center with curated walls released from the geometry of the circle. The perimeter released to the park and diffused cool light.

Captured space along the radials create secondary spaces.

Enclosure achieved with curated walls set to relate to the perimeter of the circle.

The children’s area engaging the diffused cool light curtain wall as a working surface.

The Museum of Modern Art, similar to the MAXXI, requires curators to ask the question of how the art relates to the formal architectural context of the building. The geometry and form of the MAXXI was defined in relationship to a historic building, the roman neighborhood context, and natural light from above. The Museum of Modern Art relates not to an urban context but to a modernist abstract geometric context of the circle and the path of the sun. The circular main galleries are rigorously organized in reference to the circle. All structure, enclosure, views, systems, and daylight are organized and oriented in relationship to the center and radials. The distinct designed relationship to daylight and view is an aspect the Museum of Modern Art has in common with the MAXXI. The MAXXI calibrates the relationship to view and daylight through defined spatial apertures and fully diffused top light. A distinctly architectural response which removes the installation team from a need to consider daylight except for a few limited moments as seen with Superstudio 50.The Museum of Modern Art uses uninterrupted floor to ceiling curtain wall at the perimeter of the gallery to fully engage the surrounding tree canopy of the park in which it is situated. The gallery balances this light with an intense pool of warm daylight which emanates from central skylights throughout the gallery. This provides the curators and installation design team with the agency (some would claim requirement) to define the relationship the art and viewer has to daylight and view. This act subsequently designs a relationship to the abstract and natural context. During my time in the museum this was accomplished with a series of wall planes that stop just short of the ceilings. If the MAXXI is a linear flow through various surface strategies the Museum of Modern Art is a walk defined by an ebb and flow from center to edge. Between a warm centralized light to a cool expansive light with surfaces of art shifting attention and focus.

Trotsky Museum, Permanent Collection, 2017

The photo collection in the Trotsky Museum is a more subtle response to the question which I found fitting to the subject at hand and the scale of the body being considered. By downsizing the space and primary wall surface to a tertiary space I was able to focus and appreciate the character and nuance of this larger than life historic person. The raised red wall plane placed the individual photos of Trotsky in a distinctly singular environment but one which remained in relationship to the scenic and contextual photos adjacent.

Secretariat of Public Education, Courtyard Murals, 2017

A canvas supports a stair. Repeatedly walking this stair in the Secretariat of Public Education moments shift to define three different experiences. The building framing the work. The stair defining meaning by segmenting the canvas and orienting the viewer through a series of 90 degree turns. Finally, a few compelling moments where the canvas is whole and visually supports or negates the surrounding architecture. The architecture provides a direct canvas but ultimately is defined by the art. They become mutually defined and co-created.

New York City

Parsons MFA Open Studio Show, 2012

How secure is our connection to our surroundings? A slight and continuous breeze reveals tenuous pins holding a vision and voice. The canvas and voice supported through the movement of air while being constrained by connections typically minimized or hidden. The wall surface is no longer the primary context of the work. Connecting a voice in harmony with the breeze comes to define the experience and meaning.

A full consideration of surfaces cannot be complete without a view toward how we are connected to the surfaces, people, and environment around us. Environments which have the potential to define us not through separation but through a more thoughtful exploration of how we connect and it is through connection regardless of distance that strength and support is produced.

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Surfaces considered as I walked Rome, New York, and Mexico City…

Space Through Touch

We were – Zoe Scofield & Juniper Shuey
Work No. 360: Half the Air in a Given Space, - Martin Creed
Horizon Field Hamburg – Antony Gormley

Walking through “We were” by Zoe Scofield and Juniper Shuey this past fall at the Frye Art Museum foregrounded in my mind two other exhibits in recent years which invigorated my spirit and compelled me to reflect on how space is produced and known through touch.  A great origin point for this workingsurface_footnote.

Boundary

We Were

Fine white lines of string cross from the outer black walls to then fall to the floor into a collection of discrete illuminated cylinders fit to the size of an individual. This organized the gallery into collective and individual space defined by light and string. The lines traced a surface to hold illuminated figures and establish boundary lines which when I touched them felt more solid then the reflected ephemeral dancing figures led me to believe. Was the surface material or light? Entering the gallery my first inclination was to reach out and touch the fine white boundary lines which shaped the room.  My hands passed along the lines allowing my body to pass through the surface. My hand comprehending the material.  My eyes comprehending the light.  Now inside one of the string cylinders, I had a distinct feeling that I was now outside of the gallery.  Touching the boundary line and passing through had inverted the space.  Passing through the boundary line enabled me to - “relax into my body’s, a body’s, physical intelligence.” These words written on the wall by Zoe and Juniper struck deep and resonated with my understanding of this world and the world in general. A world of authenticity through touch and contact. One can intellectualize this in social theory by engaging the ideas of contact zones (Mary Louise Pratt). One can philosophize touch in theories of phenomenology and how through our senses we experience the phenomenon of the world around us (Juhani Pallasmaa). Or, as I did on this day,  open up into this space my physical intelligence and memory. In Zoe and Juniper’s words I did - “hand it over to [my] body’s memory.”  What memories arrived at my fingertips as my hand passed through this boundary line? At first it was a loss. The loss of the ability to contact and interact with one of the most authentic experiences imaginable which occurred over the past 6 months. A relationship based on an immediacy that collapsed space and time into a profound and authentic touch. A reality I could contemplate as eternity but a reality which was released by the other struggling with the same.  Contact lost.  Take a Breath.  Feel the air.  Touch the surface.

Enclosure

Work No. 360: Half the Air in a Given Space

Walking through Work No. 360: Half the Air in a Given Space” by Martin Creed this past summer at The Henry Art Gallery I questioned not just the position of my hand but the position of every aspect of my body and skin. The air became surface.  To feel the air did not rely on the act of breathing, it relied on the act of moving.  I approached the door to the gallery with some trepidation.  As with any encounter with someone or someplace new there is trepidation resting inside our bodies.  How present this trepidation is in our experience in many ways correlates to issues of familiarity, comprehension, and habit.  Arriving at the door, I asked the museum docent hesitantly “Are we allowed to go in?”  A question to initiate a response.  A negative response would indicate if my understanding of the world would remain unchallenged, unexplored.  The door remaining closed.  A positive response would invite me to challenge my comprehension and familiarity of the here and the now.  The door being opened.  A question asking for a reciprocal.  Not all questions require this.  But if your question inherently engages touch then a reciprocal is required.  The answer to this question at hand and a question earlier in the summer involving a cup coffee were both yes.  I was about to learn something new about space and myself because the answer to my question, asked with a sense of trepidation was yes, you are welcome here.  You are welcome to enter this space, to enter this world.  My nerves were not settled with the placement of a temporary bracelet around my wrist for safety and a clear direct look into my eyes by the museum docent to verify that I had read the relevant legal and safety information before entering the room.  A clear acknowledgement of risk was shared.  I shed all pretense that I knew what experience was beyond that set of doors.  I was cleansed of my assumed knowledge. My body and the world became profoundly present and explicit. The door opened and a frenetic dance commenced to open the door wide enough to squeeze my body across the threshold while also stemming the cascade of balloons starting to flow out of the gallery and into the hallway. This dance ends with an abrupt slam of the door against the jamb a click of the latch, then silence. I walked the gallery alone for 20 minutes.  I did not really walk the gallery.  I walked a continually morphing 4 foot radius of air and space.  My body became the gallery.  My body became the work.  The work became me.  A relationship was established.  Slowly my initial trepidation receded and any fear of intimacy within myself, in this space, and in contact with all that surrounded and supported me turned to joy.  A joy in a new found experience that my body and skin are not a source of fear but a source of nourishment.

Surface

Horizon Field Hamburg

Walking on Horizon Field Hamburg by Antony Gormley in 2012 at the Hall for Contemporary Art of the Deichtorhallen, I struggled to comprehend what I was experiencing and just what space I had entered. I visited the show by invitation of two close friends while in Hamburg.  We entered the show in the midst of a vibrant conversation.  This ended abruptly when we were presented with a otherworldly suspended surface that was Horizon Field Hamburg. Before fully engaging the surface we were required to get situated. Shoes, coat, and bag all came off and into a locker they went. I feel that I removed much of my outer shell. My toes wiggled. My heels now fell on the concrete floor directly. I was present. While not ritualistic or a very thoughtfully designed transition, the hectic shoe locker area and hurried attempt to balance on my left foot while removing my right shoe then balance on my right foot to remove my left shoe acted to prepare me for the surface.  I would not approach the surface with the baggage of the city through which I had just arrived.  How much baggage should one carry forward into any experience, any relationship?  The intent of Horizon Field Hamburg was to be an experience of the city, an experience that required a shift in how we were situated.  Just as the door slamming shut at the Henry created a distinct threshold of experience, this harried exchange of clothing did important work to situate me in the space and prepare my body by opening an important receptor - my feet. (Tim Ingold) We climbed the scaffold stairs, turned 90 degrees and walked out to the end of a short platform suspended over the highly polished black surface.  My foot fell to the suspended surface and I was released. I found myself continually moving in an attempt to understand and respond to the layers of vibrations caused by all the other people on the surface. This “community” (term used by Gormley to define the collection of people on the surface during his lecture that evening) all created reverberations through the surface which disoriented me.  My body was confused.  My mind was confused.  This confusion was not troubling but more of a palpable excitement and wonderment.  Confusion, in me, has a tendency to either cause frustration toward anxiety or on the other hand wonderment toward pleasure.  This surface supported wonder.  Regardless of wonder or fear, my body when confused seeks to find ground.  A firm point from which to explore, learn, and relate to others.  So I laid down on the surface with as much of my skin in contact with the ‘ground’ as possible.  Given that this ‘ground’ was suspended by cables over 20 feet in the air presented my body with a ground I did not know could exist.  I laid as still as possible for as long as possible, just breathing.  After what felt like 5 minutes on the ground I clearly understood the surface to hold two distinct patterns of movement. A high tempo, high pitched vibration which traveled with quick feet, fast moves, shouts of adult laughter, and the sound of children’s screams as their feet landed on the surface. A low tempo, low pitched vibration coming from the slow oscillation of the surface back and forth. This slow oscillation resulted from the accumulation of the high tempo being translated through the inertial weight and structural system of the surface.  The slow oscillation was the ground I sought.  The collection of vigorous small movements of various individuals developed a deep seeded vital movement that affected all.  I got up from the ‘ground’ and stretched, skipped, and laughed with my friends as we explored the community that was the surface that made up Hamburg to us that afternoon.  I was present in the fact that for a relationship to develop, a community to emerge, care to be brought forward, a complementary resonance of high pitched and low pitched engagement is needed to sustain mutual contact.

All three of these works remind me of the importance of contact and how I touch my surroundings and how the people I am surrounded with touch me.  I continue to find myself exploring design, learning, relationships, and various other aspects of life through a struggle to know this world through contact and touch.  My body is central to this exploration and how I shape my world. These three works inspire me to continue this beautiful struggle to comprehend and develop my physical intelligence.