WANDERING CONTEXTUALITIES

By the twentieth century the world witnesses an accelerated change in pace and variety of spatial experiences. The invention and spread of transportation vehicles our perception of space transformed in a way that shaped our relations with our spaces. Most crucial vehicles affecting our modes of perceiving architecture and city are namely trains, cars, airplanes and camera. I preferred to mention camera as listing the transportation vehicles because it also provides a kind of transportation different than other, that I will mention later. Those means of transportation changed our cognition of space, time, distance as well as our physical and social boundaries in relation to inhabiting a space.
In his book ‘zoomscape’ Mitchell Schwarzer discusses each of these items in a detailed way. Zoomscape is a concept that is defined by Schwarzer as ‘ a largely optical mode of perception characterized by speed and surface’. As it is clearly understood from his definition, in recent times our perception of spaces mostly depends on speed and surface. For instance as train or car introduces the concept of speed and motion to our cognition of space, airplane or cinema provides a new two dimensional way of perception. All those items mentioned brought up their own modes of experiences and their own architectural viewpoints. Rather than following Schwarzer’s titles directly I will discuss those new spatial perceptions in another division considering particular criteria namely pace, motion, degree of hapticness etc.
First it is crucial to mention the experience of space based on walking as it is the oldest mode of perception of architecture and city. Walking is the most natural and familiar way that we experience our spaces. No matter how much the transportation vehicles are advanced, we will always somehow experience the space on foot. With its slow pace it is maybe the most haptic way of spatial perception. Also wandering around on foot provides us more flexibility as the control of our path completely depends to us. It is freer than following the defined path of a highway, or railroad or a pre-edited camera shot sequence. But it is also restricted with our existing physical and social boundaries. Not like in a movie that we can experience any kind of space without the consideration of social or bodily limits. For instance we can’t experience a detective chase in the backstreets of a city as watching a film-noir. Still, especially for our interior experiences, walking is an irreplaceable experience of architecture or city.
Public transportation vehicles namely buses or trains have many common points in terms of the experience they provide to the wanderer. Although bus and train offer different paces, their most important similarity lays in the limits of freedom they can provide. The wanderer is not a free one as traveling by bus or train. He/she is more close to the experience in Eisenstein’s defined path then Bruno’s site-seer. The same and defined shots and montages through following a route on a highway or a railroad is the only possible experience of that passenger. So he/she is limited with a steady view from the window of a train or a bus and has little chance to arrange own spatial sequence.
However wanderer in an automobile has the freedom to choose the route of the travel and to create a personalized way of seeing. Car travel offers an alluring combination of the freedom of walking and the velocity of train as Schwarzer mentions in ‘automobile’ chapter of his book. Automobile provides variety of viewing angles and orientations; and as a result wandering by car opens up many different and new perspectives of architecture and city. Another contribution of automobile to our perception of space is that by an effect of sequence of film shots, it creates a unified image in our minds. So as driving, we edit our own path of wandering and then we choose the viewpoints through the orientation of the car, and we constitute an image, an experience of the city in our own cognitive maps. In that unified, continuous image of city architecture becomes an inseparable part of our sequence, so it is not perceived as an isolated object. From that point of view, Schwarzer compares the driver to the movie spectator and the images viewed by driver to the moving frames, shots. According to him another similarity between film and automobile is the freedom they both offer as a passage to a new world.
The last transportation vehicle that I will mention as a manipulator of our spatial perception is the movie camera. Cinema offers its spectator an experience that is not bounded with bodily or social boundaries. Although it may display similarities with wandering by car, it allows us to experience spaces that are inaccessible for a car. We may be wandering in a space that belongs to centuries ago, we may be going deep undersea, we may be in a futuristic city or even we may be sitting on the same seat in the movie house. So the spatial experience offered by movie camera enables us to extend beyond our physical boundaries and takes us to ‘elsewhere’ by giving the ‘sensation of displacement’ as mentioned by Kaja Silverman in his article ‘Political Ecstasy’. Silverman defines filmic sounds and images as perceptions rather than representations. As film, itself, is a perception and it inhabits in time, it becomes possible to mediate and identify the spectators through the narration of the film. So the spectator will start to see from the eyes of the camera lens. He/she will be ‘transported’ from himself/herself to the surface of the movie screen, in Silverman’s words; ‘the spectator disappears forever into the cinematic experience.’ Just like the Chinese painter lost in the landscape painting he painted. So the experience will be on the surface of the screen detached from the boundaries of actual space and time.
The concept of zoomscape aroused by Mitchell Schwarzer is a melting pot of various modes of perception of and existing in architecture and space in 20th and 21st centuries. Every mode of transportation defines its own spatial cognition and also its own architectural language. Our conception of time and space is freer than our ancestors with multiple choices provided by different ways of physically and mentally wandering. As a result of this freedom architecture and city is also set free from rigid boundaries. Although architecture seems to become ‘placeless’, it gains a different ‘sense of place’ defined by how we see and experience it. So every perception structures its own understanding of place. ‘The cartographic perspectives and quantitative analyses of the planning profession had little relevance for the myriad ways in which people actually inhabit and regard landscapes’ claims Schwarzer with reference to William H. Whyte. So through ‘the geography of lived and living space’ and our own perceptions and experiences by various vehicles we construct our own maps as Guiliano Bruno’s example of film as a modern cartography. Through all these concepts architecture find a new context which is detached from the usual understanding of place based on ground relation; a new context which is contextualized according to each wandering and experience.
References:

1.Bruno, Guiliano, “ Atlas of Emotions” ,pp.2-71
2.Schwarzer, Mitchell, “ Zoomscape”, “Introduction” pp. 9-29
3.Schwarzer, Mitchell, “ Zoomscape”, “Chapter 2: Automobile”, pp. 71-116
4.Silverman, Kaja, “The Threshold of the Visible World”, “Chapter 3: Political Ecstasy”, pp. 83-121
5.Eisenstein, Sergei M., “Montage and Architecture”, Assemblage, 10 (1989), pp.111-115

AN ARCHITECTURE OF ONE’S OWN

One of the most crucial issues to discuss in the history of architecture is its relation with gender. The social construction of gender has mutual relations with the construction of the architectural space. Woman as she is socially ‘other’, she is also considered as architecturally other. As a male dominant field of study, architecture plays an important role in constructing the feminity as the subject of its product, which is the space. Throughout the history both the production and inhabitation of space contains deep gender codes. As Jane Rendell discusses in the ‘Gender, Space: Introduction’ from the edited book “Gender, Space and Architecture” there is a biased approach of assigning public and private spaces to male and female figures. According to that theory of Separate Spheres man is linked with the city whereas woman with the home. Many feminist theoreticians tries to overcome this biased and limited binary opposition through opening different viewpoints, but still the architectural practice seems to promote this boundary between home and city as it is producing gendered spaces. Rendell states, with a quotation from David Harvey and Edward Soja, that ‘space is socially produced, but space is also a condition of social production. From this point it is crucial to understand the space with its producers, architects, and also the theoretical background that those architectures are based on.
As very well stated in Mary McLeod’s article “Everyday and ‘Other’ Spaces” the gendered ness of architecture is deeply related with the architectural practice itself and the philosophical background it stems from. She discusses different approaches to the issue of otherness, especially through the perspective of philosophers. It is crucial to understand the way such philosophers handled the concept of the other in terms of understanding the impact of their discourses on architecture and gender. McLeod points out the ‘absence’ of women in Foucault’s ‘des Espaces Autres’ as he is ignoring the feminine spaces from his ‘other spaces’ and mention only brothel as a space of women. As it is stated above ‘home’ is very strongly associated with the female and it is one of the most important spaces in terms of construction of the gendered space. The woman was responsible with the creation of the boundary between home and the city as it is stated by Joyce Henri Robinson in her article “Hi Honey, I’m Home: Weary( Neurasthenic) Businessmen and the Formation of a Serenely Modern Aesthetic”. This duty of woman excluded her from the public sphere and made home the heath of the production of otherness of women. So not mentioning home as an ‘other’ space is another way that white Western male ignores the existence of women as McLeod also mentions. As one of the most influential figure on contemporary architecture Foucault, like many other male theroticians, can’t achieve to approach to the issue of otherness and gender through the eyes of the other. In such conditions can it possible for male architects to construct an architectural stand point that doesn’t condemned woman with ‘absence’? McLeod refers architecture as boys’ club and she asks whether an other can play Eisenman’s game or can the other create a different game in a condition that she is not counted as a potential player or even her very existence is denied. So McLeod searches the gender and its spatial representations in the discourse of architectures and philosophies that influence the formation of space. She demonstrates irony of those, mostly strong male figures, architects and philosophers speculating about being other and making an architecture that is totally other as they have nothing to do with being ‘other’. She mentions ‘Anyone’ conference at Getty Center that twenty-five speaker with only two women and the rest is white American, white European and Japanese males discussing multiplicity, diversity and fluidity. This attitude is the crucial reason for architecture to produce gendered spaces.
The almost same approach exists in the modern era of architecture that architects of time were searching for a universal subject of architecture. Although discursively it seems that modern architecture will produce neutral spaces that are gender free, the reflection of this thought of universal subject didn’t come out so neutrally. Even modernism couldn’t achieve to be at the same distance to both genders. Adolf Loos as pioneer figure in modern architecture produced probably the most gendered spaces of his era. His ‘Zimmer der Dame’-lady’s room- is placed at the heart of the house and other spaces are arranged in ‘an erotic system of gaze’ as Beatriz Colomina defines. First of all, placing the lady’s room in the heart of the house implicitly reveals the association of women with home. Then the issue of gaze is a mystifying attitude towards women and very much related of her otherness. The second feature of the house is more relevant for Adolf Loos to understand his theatrical box from the perspective of gender. Mystification of women is another common way of emphasizing her gender and her otherness. In this house architecture of Loos made woman the subject of the male gaze but not exposed her view in a direct manner. By plays of light and also by the help of the Raumplan this system of gaze became erotic and woman becomes the eroticized other just as in the traditional object of desire in the boudoir as it is also stated by Anne Troutman in her article “the Modernist Boudoir and the Erotics of Space”.
Another pioneer architect of modern movement, Le Corbusier, produced relatively neutral spaces, but still he was also a male architect and he also had gendered opinions. His film l’architecture d’aujourd’hui that the woman is associated with the interior and man is with outer world, this ‘male’ side of him revealed itself. The woman was voyeured by the camera and she was the subject of the gaze. Also in a series of photographs Le Corbusier by using male objects as the trace of the moving figure in the house, he denies the existence of women in space. Still the work of Le Corbusier is different than other gendered spaces mentioned above. The architecture itself and the scenario of the house don’t contain gender codes and it achieves to stand at the same distance to both genders. Woman in Villa Savoye is not condemned to the gaze of the male as she is in the lady’s room of Adolf Loos. She can choose to enjoy this very open and transparent architecture of Le Corbusier as he didn’t assign her a specific place to inhabit.
Although Le Corbusier produced a neutral space free from gender biases, his approaches in the film and photograph series gives a clue about the danger of leaving the issue of women or the other to the hands of male architects. This dangerous relation between the woman-inhabitant-, architect-producer- and architecture is clearly demonstrated in the article People who live in Glass Houses. The women as the client, Edith Farnsworth was already other in the eyes of the society as she is not married in the 1940s America, when marriage and being good housewife was encouraged. This status of her was the reason that she decided to have a custom made weekend house, so that she would be able to escape from the eyes of the society and be free from their biased opinions about her living alone. The architect she hired, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, was also searching for client that will provide him to realize his dreams. Farnsworth was just the client he was looking for. She was rich to provide necessary budget and also as she was leaving alone van der Rohe could be able to design a flexible program. As she was searching for her freedom of being other in the city she was now the other of the male architect. The end product was not a room of her own as Virginia Woolf stated and also she had been benefited economically by the architect.
In another example that is discussed in detail in the article “Family Matters: The Schröder House, by Gerit Rietvield abd Truus Schröder”. This house is almost a visual and spatial manifesto of a woman who is deeply conscious about the way that she wants to live. She had her scenario of life in her mind very clearly and she is aware of the power of space. Every detail of the house is designed by her to provide the life style she aims for and the architect applied her thoughts. The house was their laboratory of a new kind of living and the success of the house stems from the clients active participation in the design process. Maybe for the very first time woman was not the subject of architecture and she was the object. She didn’t passively inhabit the space letting the male gaze vouyering her but she was constructing her own life style, she was getting her space for her own.
Although it seems there are many different approaches to the relation of gender and architecture, for me there is strong conclusion from all articles covered on that subject, which is the ‘lack’ of woman in the production of space. If writings of women made so much influence on their readers than wouldn’t it be more influential to have more women-produced spaces. It is so striking to see that a woman achieved to produce her own house by opposing all the social codes associated with her. I believe that the contribution of ‘other’ to the discussions about other is a must to be able to have solution. And as the other of both society and architecture women should have a strong stand and should manifest her in the field of architecture. The production of Schröder House, the meetings of Zeyneb and Melek Hanum with Pier Lotti and the writings of all the female writers we read… The moment when women will become the object of her history rather than being the subject as Nancy Harsock stated will be the moment that the relation of architecture and gender will be free from all biases, binary oppositions and male gazes.

Burcu Arıkan'2007