literature exists on the subject, and our attitude remains condescending. The exhibition is frankly polemic, comparing the serenity of architecture in under-developed countries with the architectural blight in industrial countries. The accent is on communal enterprise and we have much to learn from it. It demonstrates an admirable talent for fitting buildings into natural surroun-dings, welcoming the vagaries of climate and the challenge of topography. The tendency to build on sites of difficult access can be traced no doubt to a desire for security but perhaps even more to the need of defining a com-munity’s borders. Walls help to thwart undesirable urban expansion. Innocent as we are of this sort of urbanistics, we exhaust ourselves in architectural proliferation. We ascribe to ail specialists exceptional insight into problems of living when in truth most of them are concerned with problems of business and prestige. Besides the art of living is now neither taught nor encouraged. This situation came about through the diligence of the historian, who empha-sizes the part played by architects and their patrons, but obscured the talents and achievements of anonymous builders. The beauty of this architecture has long been dismissed as accidentel but now we should be able to recognise it as a result of rare good sense in the handling of practical problems. Trans-mitted through a hundred generations the shapes of houses seem eternally valid like those of their tools. IN DIGENOUS ARCHITECTURE. Varenka Marc. Indigenous architecture attracts, moves4 reassures. Its perfect integration into the landscape has never been surpassed by the great contemporary archi-tects. It is a direct translation of the spirit of the people now only subsisting in regions which have remained pure of ail foreign influence. These craftsmen builders never studied architecture, they create it by instinct. They improvise but their improvisation is Iogical. It is the perfect example of functionai archi-tecture since the form is elaborated from the elected function. The native house blends perfectly with its surroundings, to become cooperation between nature and man. Rigorous, without concessions it has influenced Wright and Le Corbusier. But new machine age means now make a return to popular architecture impossible, the forms we believe similar have no real link. Now we must admire indigenous architecture and accept its example, its respect for the site, the materials but not be carried away by the sole pleasure of the eye. Contemporary society is searching for functional architectural which must be authentic — it cannot accept imitation. 111 FONCTION-PROVOCATION. 26 Gunther Feuerstein. At first functional architecture is liberation from confusion and the birth of new conceptions of thought; later, it becomes excuse and constraint. Func-tionalistic architecture brings comfort, banishes fantasy, vision, intuition. When it conforme with function, architecture works; here we eat, here we sleep, but where can we laugh and cry? It must provide space for ail human activities, therefore we must free it from material function (the functions of Rheims cathedral call only for a quarter of its built space, the Guggenheim picture gallery by F.L. Wright could be used or many other activities, Louis Kahn’s labo-ratories have many functional drawbacks but remain one of our strongest present-day designs). Architecture freed of function, becomes a function itself and this function is provocation which includes scandai, encouragement, excite-ment. Man feels its contact, reads its message since the function and true mission of architecture it to reflect in a provocative way spiritual and social factors and fictions. We must build monuments to reflect our force, use build-ings for anything or nothing, construct witnesses for society since we meet our fellow men in architecture. Place must be left in buildings for illusion, change, wandering. Sculpture is the symbol of man, whereas architecture is the symbol of human coexistence, of faith, of power. They are both space, which is the relationship of mysterious volume under tension to the tensions of human community. Space—the room, the house, the city, the universe are regulated by it; architecture is provocation, proof, space. • HERMANN FINSTERLIN. 28 INTERIOR SPACE DESIGN. It is an amazing omission that the study of the acoustics of the soul (the echo produced by the solid forms which surround us) should be so neglected in present day design. The human being is constantly exposed to the assaults of his environment, against which he fights consciously, unconsciously or subcons-ciously. In the refuge of his home he could neutralise these attacks to find equilibrium and harmony. If up to present the majority of humans live in the bowels of the cubic Trojan horses they build themselves, a few inspired beings breathe into the liveless stone a new spirit, that is the freed human spirit, to transform it into a new cristalline fluid state. We do not understand, we do not appreciate sufficiently the force of life, the essentiel character of art seen under its aspect of prolonging Nature, of a cosmic and mystic phenomenum. A machine, a building, a painting are wholes directly attached to the various forms of life included. The author would like under the totem of ”Heraldic Architecture-, to open the door leading to mate-rialisation on earth, to the evolutions and variations of these elements. Between this new architecture and conventional architecture, there is the same kind of relationship as between an orchid and a daisy. in art as in nature a purely telealogic is a kind of restraint, it is the divine smile blurred with tears. However Finsterlein wishes it to laugh heartily if only with fleeting joys, condemned perhaps to disappear but meanwhile under the brilliant appearance of a crysalis, proclaiming the victory of its kind beyond the darkest nights towards the dazzling dawn of future centuries. If the overpersonal tone of these schemes were to shock the population’s fellings, we can reassure them with the information that a basic variation of this new architecture lends itself perfectly to its development in a community and popular type of character. In church building this new conception offers numerous possi-bilities. Its culminating point, the new city, designed as a homogeneous and well defined organisation would express with more dignity the spiritual programme of the population than any of the cyclopean lairs we have been offered up to now. The new conception also influences the smallest ele-ments of an architectural whole. In the new kind of dwelling the occupier will feel himself in the centre of a fairy-like cristal druse, an inhabitant of a living organism. The trace of interlocking transitional structures are to be found in the series going from the town, to house, to furniture, to container. One is born from the other, but they cannot be dispersed haphazardly. If our present day furniture were placed in space modeled on a new design, it would become incongruous, encumbersome and destructive. In the future bedroom, the furniture will be built-in, inseparable from the organs of the house, and made of the same or very similar material. Beds will be majolica blossoming from the floor lined with down, craters will be scooped out to invite tired bodies to repose, feet will walk on transparent floors which no longer hinder the sensorial perception of relief as a whole, abolishing the horizontal plan. If this horizontal were massive and opaque, it would cut closed space by a new kind of building like a pathological skin. The transparent floor helps the space impression to disperse freely in ail directions and insure a sense of balance to the inhabitant. It will be decorated with carpets of new shapes and tints on which the light, penetrating through the organic windows, will play. These windows are the thinnest parts of the walls, areas devoid of furniture where the material becomes as transparent as glass. Again bare feet will gilde over relief patterns on the floor to revive the sense of touch so neglected at the present time. The home could then become a living experience, protecting us with tenderness and not tombs for rag dolls. For those who nurture the sense of reality, the author realises that he may seem mad or the creator of an architectural glory-hole which would have set up the ”carrus navalis- on this good, simple earth or of a fairy-tale which face away as soon as it is separated from its Utopia. But is not the fairy-tale the expression of our constant nos-talgie, an aubade which History offers to the future our greatest incentive to create the image of the coming epoch? It includes ail the prototype of the superman. But since we constantly rub the magic lamp to establish contact which will assure us the services of the mighty spirits of the powers of the earth, why shut our homes to the spring breeze of the fairy-tale which is ready to materialise? FREDERICK KIESLER. 30 Kiesler, painter, sculptor, architect, was born in Vienne and studied at the Fine Arts school there between 1910 and 1914. All his research centres on a unique aim—the pursuit of continuity, implying action, movement, correlation-ship between the elements, life and space. To be valid, he proclaims, esthe-tics must not only evolve in relation to the structure, .but the structure must have been designed from the contents which are the uriner force coordinating the continuum of colours, forms, structures of space. Contents-continuity, these concepts sum up his basic principles, driven to their culmination in the i lest design of the Endless house, a ribbon wound around itself. Kiesler’s aim was to create a people’s architecture, no longer copied on the Renaissance and Greece, no more feudalism, no more pseudo-functionalisme and no return to nature, but homes whose elasticity is equal to that of the vital functions they conta in. P. Goulet. In an interview with Thomas H. Creighton in Progressive Architecture published July 1961. Kiesler explains that his ideas for the Endless House date from around 1922. It was a double-shell building to have a capacity of 10,000 people, where spectators and actors could mix anywhere in space, and is a first attempt at an architectural expression of spatial integration, using the construction principle of continous tension without a single column. Asked if there was such a thing as intuitive design in engineering, Kiesler agreed there was, but it called for an artist ot execute it, otherwise there is no structural continuity and integration. lnterest in outer space has connected our existence to everything around us, awakening in us a new sense for active continuity beyond the grasp of our five senses. But it will grow to become the most positive new sense we will develop and explains the present day interest in the Endless House which was already designed when Kiesler arrived in the U.S.A. in 1926. The only person who paid real attention to it was Harvey Wiley Corett, who took Kiesler into his firm. Among the De Stijl group it became known that Kiesler had deviated, but van Doesburg and Mondrian stood by him, while the others were doubtful. The Endless was never built, it looked like an egg and not the usuel box, therefore was outside the mode of the International Style. But now sudden awareness of the conquest of outer space lias brought fear, created a new emotional climate. Humanity wants to save its small life and live in emotional peace in a balanced psychic state. When beliefs break down, we turn to our own security source, which is Instinct. Animais faced with danger seek connection with earth, the sun and the sky. This is our present reaction as far as art and architecture are concerned. Our brain can no longer give us the answer, but meditation is the state where questions are answered because the mind has reached a standstill. Emotion engulfs us like the turbulence of outer space and creates a counterpart, the peace within, and this is the best description of the Endless House. Asked what could be done about the multiplicity of ideas and present day chaos in design forms, Kiesler contends that a Glue t.) it is continuity and the multiplicity of an idea. The central idea lies in the artist who cannot know when it will break into the open, but he can learn to recognise it by corollary happenings. To conclude Kiesler exposed his opinion on rectangular space as opposed to continuity. Rectangular space implies confinement, but this is not bad, since we need to be protected from the outer world. Tempo-rary confinement is more important because it is when we want to push out a wall or lift a ceiling that we understand the advantage of the Endless House where the interior can expand or contract in a illusionary way. This cannot be done with boxes. However the Endless is not just a sculptural form. It is a co-ordinate of strictly dimensional areas, ail different in height. width, shape and textures. P. 32. The Endless House 1960—the form of the Endless is elaborated from a way of living directed more on fundamental truths than the mechanics of house equipment. Its proportions and size are regulated by the activity it must contain. P. 34. The Universel Theater 1962, a projet for a large urban theater for 2,000 spectators. Built in continued tension it includes a large multi-purpose theater, a smaller hall, a shopping centre and a 30-story office and studio building. P. 36. The Shrine of the Book to become the sanctuary of manuscripts of the Bible, is an experiment in ideological architecture, including 16 units ail in complete contrast of volume. • PAOLO SOLERI. 38 TAKEN AT RANDOM FROM SKETCHBOOKS. Born in Turin in 1920 where he later studied engineering. Soleri now lives in the Arizona desert. He devotes considerable time to handicrafts but his main occupation is research on a scholarship from the « Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in Fine Arts», for a tuturist world «Me Foundation and Babel II. In the jottings in his sketchbook he contends that to fin actions we try to recede towards the « second cause» which c the statistical structure of matter». Any living thing is a batt fate, the statistical structure of materiality and the will towar ART DOC
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