Frankl & Schwarzer

As someone whose background is not in architecture, I found the Frankl article quite helpful. It was clearly laid out, and I agreed with some of his ideas, particularly that the definition of space is ordered through activity and purpose, what happens in the space is important. I'm not sure I agree, but a quote that
stood out was   "A building dies as soon as the life within it has vanished." Since I am taking Dr. Junkerman's Baroque art class, I was particularly interested in the history lesson offered here - that in the Renaissance, Humanistic ideals prevailed over the Christian, that patronage was as much about personal glory as piety, conceived as a house for God, with little regard for the congregation. The Baroque of course was all about the Reformation & Counter-Reformation; Catholic buildings became grandiose, and Protestant buildings became much more utilitarian. In the 18th century, in secular France at least, it was all about a grand setting, with mirrors everywhere to reflect the glory of the patron/owner (Frankl is mostly referring to Versailles, I think). Real, gritty every day life, of course goes on behind the scenes. In all of these first 3 phases, there is the stamp of an individual personality on the architecture, and what happens in the 19th century is that buildings become much more specialized in function, and more public. Public buildings belong to everyone, and therefore no one, and so are much more impersonal.

I am writing this in the King Library, looking out the window at a sea of functional, impersonal buildings. To my eye, there is little that is beautiful, or what I would describe as graceful, and especially hideous are two giant gray concrete cubes whose surface is perforated by black, blank windows. Frankl is mostly addressing the idea of architecture enclosing interior space, but a building has a big impact on the space it takes up in the exterior world. In Schwarzer's article, empathy theory is borough up again, Lipp's idea that empathy is a state of pleasure enduced by a feeling of consciousness of mutual longing between the soul and the thing it perceives". And further, that in the act of perceiving an object, we experience its form as if we were one with it. I must admit, I do not find my soul flying out to become one with the massive concrete blocks I am perceiving right now.