WISDOM AND DOUBT / JUHANI PALLASMAA

The theme of this year's Helsinki Design Week is Wisdom. To do this subject honor, HDW's team decided to make sure that the attendants come to the event charged and updated - they are gifting their audience a series of columns that tackle the subject of wisdom written by selected thinkers, designers and creatives that will be published during the following nine months before the event starts.

The first column in the series comes from Juhani Pallasmaa -  Finnish architect, professor emeritus and writer:

// Wisdom is not identical with intelligence or knowledge. It is a hidden mode of creative vision, arising from certain outsideness and distance, combined with an empathic identification with the situation. While knowledge aims at certainty, wisdom is grounded on the acceptance of doubt, uncertainty and the possibility of failure. Wisdom is not necessarily a result of specific education; a fisherman, hunter, farmer or a traditional craftsman can possess remarkable wisdom in his/her work. Knowledge and skills are facts, whereas wisdom calls for relatedness and a distinct humanistic and life supporting perspective. In the post-industrial cultures, broken into countless specializations, we are especially in need of the unifying visions of wisdom. Yet, in our current quasi-rational culture of persuation, insistance and manipulation, wisdom is a disappearing quality.

A wise person keeps him/herself outside of the center of action, as wisdom arises from internalizing and grasping simultaneously large entities and the merging of peripheral and focused attentions. The technologized societies are split into countless domains of expertise, individuals who are assumed to know and master a specific area of knowledge or activity. However, expertise is a focused capacity, whereas wisdom arises from an unfocused and comprehensive understanding. Expertise is valid only within its limited and constrained area, whereas wisdom is the capacity of grasping complex entities, often consisting of conflicting aspects, requirements or dimensions. Most of the seminal societal tasks, such as political decision making, planning and  architecture characteristically consist of conflicting realities, intentions and interests. Situations in real cultural and societal activities merge numerous dimensions of reality and, consequently, they cannot be resolved with intellect, reason and logic. In his inaugural lecture as Member of the Academy of Finland in 1955, Alvar Aalto pointed out the irreconcilable inner structure of design tasks: ”In every case one must achieve the simultaneous solution of opposites. Nearly every design task involves tens, often hundreds, sometimes thousands of different contradictory elements, which are forced into a functional harmony only by man’s will. This harmony cannot be achieved by any other means than those of art”.[1] Aalto´s statement could well terminate in the word , ”… wisdom”.

In the modern world, architecture is usually seen as problem solving; architectural projects are even commonly called ”solutions”. The use of this notion reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of architecture; it does not solve problems, as it mediates our relationship (movements, physical and sensory conditions and mental experiences) with the world, both natural and man-made. It is an irreplaceable mental mediation between us and the world, not a problem to be solved by intelligence and expertise. Indeed, philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty argues: ”We come to see not the work of art, but the world according to the work”[2]. This argument reveals the mediating and dialogical essence of artistic works, including architecture.

Joseph Brodsky is critical of our culture of expertise : ”In the business of writing what one accumulates is not expertise but uncertainties”[3]. In the poet’s view, even master craftsmen are engaged in uncertainties rather than expertise. Wisdom acknowledges evolution, processes and change, and contains a temporal judgement that fuses the time perspective in its judgement.  

Knowledge and skills can be taught, studied and learned, but wisdom grows and matures by itself through lived experience. Wisdom is contextual; the wise individual sees the phenomenon in its total context and dynamics. In traditional societies wisdom relied on mythical and symbolic knowledge and magic, while in our self-claimed age of reason, it is an exceptional human gift. It is not a conceptualized and structured mental construction; it is a natural ability to sense the essences and interactions of things. 

Wisdom is usually related with age, as only rich experiences of authentic life and culture can prepare a person or group for the required diffuse attention and judgement. The common view suggests that responsible decisions in demanding situations call for intelligence, but emotive and empathic capacities are more essential. Choices of wisdom are usually based on emotive, not rational certainties. Mark Johnson, another philosopher, claims: ”Emotions are not second-rate cognitions; rather they are affective patterns of our encounter with our world, by which we take the meaning of things at a primordial level [… ] Emotions are a fundamental part of human meaning”.[4]  Wisdom fuses knowledge and emotion, intelligence and memory, reason and vision, certainty and doubt. It also calls for imagination, and, in fact,  it is fundamentally an imaginative skill. But wisdom has also an ethical component, as there is no wisdom without ethical judgement and responsibility. Wisdom is an existential gift, and it is undoubtedly the highest of human qualities. //

[ Source: Helsinki Design Week ]

OCTOSPIDER / EXPOSURE ARCHITECTS

Breaks can be very beneficial to our workflow and productivity. When done properly, they prevent "decision fatigue", help consolidate memories, replenish attention, restore motivation and consequently help us in achieving our highest level of performance.

The architecture of one corporate canteen in Bangkok supports some concepts of quality "downtime" by giving its users a change of environment, connection with nature and by provoking movement. 

Designed by Exposure Architects, this canteen sits in the center of Satin Textile manufacturing plant’s ‘campus’, elevated with slim concrete and steel legs 8m above a shallow artificial pool made from the factory's cooling system drainage water. 

The canteen is accessed by a long pedestrian ramp that climbs up, tangents the building, and then leads back to the ground finishing a semicircle. Three long dining hall arms radiate from the central elongated body of the cafeteria. They are clad in glass offering the diners a calming view of the surrounding nature and taking them briefly away from the work environment. 

// Eating has always been a social event, a need transformed into a ritual for all social classes”, writes Exposure of their inspiration behind the design. “Today’s life has endangered this act, has brought it back to mere functional activity. In designing a factory cafeteria, it has been therefore of paramount importance to give some nobility to the moment of eating, while keeping always in mind the notions of efficiency, timing and economy. //

// Based on the strength of its guiding concept (the web of a spider or the tentacles of an octopus, if we are to be led by the compound name that the project has been given), Octospider is also an intelligent revisiting of the architectural promenade concept and a study on centrality in the relationship between volume and space. It originates in the obvious pleasure of organizing a neo-constructivist pathway along which one encounters a curved generator with four interpenetrating, resolute, sharp lines. It is finalized in the contrast between the opposite principles of the weightiness of matter and the lightness of an upward thrust that is made possible by 12-centimetre diameter poles up to 8 metres long, nearly at the limit of their tensile strength. //

[ Sources: Domus, Inhabitat, Archilovers, Archidose, Exposure architects ]

5 LESSONS / NORMAN FOSTER

A few quotes I picked up from "5 Lessons From Norman Foster’s Lecture at the Barbican", an article I read at ArchDaily:

1. Architecture is more than a building

As obvious as this may sound, it is easy to fixate on a facade or roof, the most ego-driven aspect of any project. But what we can lose in the quest for Instagram perfection is the true purpose of architecture: designing a space to be used by a community. 

2. Research is king

If a decision is well researched then it can rarely be wrong, avoiding the awkward silence after a client (or college reviewer) asks “but... why?”

3. “We all gravitate to what we do best”

He claimed that he was far more useful as a designer, leading by example, than he would ever be as a politician arguing day after day. Taken at face value, this sentiment is key to the effective communication of ideas. Improving holistically is still important, but our skills are naturally weighted in certain areas; be it model-making, drawing, pitching or detailing; and in focusing on your strengths you can help maximize a project’s success. In Foster's case, it's also probably the reason why the former RAF man has designed no less than 7 airports—he's good at it.

4. Bold solutions

To be bold in architecture is difficult, as the hundreds of constraints and regulations try their best to maintain a palatable level of status quo. However, it is often in seemingly crazy ideas that change is facilitated. Creating something new—even if it means swimming against the tide—is critical for positive change within architecture, and as George Bernard Shaw once said: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

5. “Doing more with less”

Foster frequently referred back to conversations he had with "Bucky," using him as a touchstone in what he was trying to achieve and how he wanted to achieve it. The famous Fuller quote “doing more with less” is usually attributed to the performance of a project: using technological advancements in order to create a more efficient input (less) with a larger output (more). This is seen first hand in his geodesic dome, and later the Dymaxion House, and the relatively simple mantra mimics the sustainable agenda we face, reducing global reliance on finite supplies, something Foster addressed in the new Bloomburg European HQ. You can also apply this to the time you spend at work, maximizing output and leaving space to live—something essential for general well-being.

[ Source: ArchDaily ]

WHAT IS ARCHITECTURE?

// One day an artist was going on at length about all he did to purify and perfect his colors. M. Chardin, annoyed at hearing such talk from a man whom he knew to be no more than a cold and careful technician, said to him; "But who told you that painting was done with color?" "What is it done with, then?" the other artist asked in surprise. "Colors are employed," said M. Chardin, "but painting is done with emotions." //

[ Cochin, Charles-Nicolai, Essay on the Life of M. Chardin ]

WHAT IS ARCHITECTURE?

// For Alberti, architecture appears to have been an eminently political activity, since he considered architects to be the providers and safe-keapers of culture, who could offer a civic community ("civitas") security and protection, thus creating the conditions for social and intellectual progress. //

[ Evers, B., Thoenes, C., Architectural Theory: From the Renaissance to the Present, Taschen, 2006. / p.12, Biermann, V., Leon Battista Alberti ]