Prolegomena to the Root of Form and the Possibility of Meaning
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PROLEGOMENA TO THE ROOT OF FORM AND THE POSSIBILITY OF 1 MEANING Francis Field PROLEGOMENA TO THE ROOT OF FORM AND THE POSSIBILITY OF MEANING 2013 Francis Field Word Count 11,759 List of Illustrations: Contents fig. 1 Pythagorean Cosmic Morphology? - www. http://missionignition.net/bethe/rings_of_gaia.php fig. 2 The Roundest Sphere in the World -http://www.australiaunlimited.com/science/sphere-eternity fig. 3 A Grammar for the City - Kung, Moritz. (2010). Office Kersten Geers David Van Severen: Seven Rooms, Hatje Cantz; 2 edition 1. Introduction fig. 4 Kartal Pendik Master Plan - http://www.zaha-hadid.com/masterplans/kartal-pendik-masterplan/ fig. 5 Friedrich Theodor Vischer -http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/Vischer.jpg 4. The Origin of Form fig. 6 Mirror Neurones -http://www.pc.rhul.ac.uk/staff/j.zanker/teach/ps2080/l4/ps2080_4.htm fig. 7 The Parthenon - Hitching, Francis. (1980). The World Atlas of Msteries, Book Club Assosiates 14. The Emergence of Form in Architecture fig. 8 Rachel Whiteread - http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2580/4183984903_e1088fc5ff_o.jpg 32. The Meaning of Form fig. 9 I am a Vortex. -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex fig. 10 George Spencer-Brown - Spencer-Brown, G. (2011). Laws of Form, Spencer-Brown Press 56. Conclusion fig. 11 Black board - http://thisrecording.com/storage/wittgenstein1-big.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_ CACHEVERSION=1316126889850 62. Bibliography fig. 12 A distinction. - Spencer-Brown, G. (2011). Laws of Form, Spencer-Brown Press fig. 13 Oroboros - http://www.stephenlinsteadtstudio.com/Images/ouroborus/Ouroboros.png 65. Appendix fig. 14 Perpetual Motion - Sculpture and Photograph by the author. 2008 fig 15 A part of the foundations of the theatre of Marcellus. - Ficcaci, L. (2000). Piranesi - The Complete Works, Taschen Inside front and back cover - Reliquiae Theatri Pompejani, photographs by the author. The present work was prompted by my infuriation at not being able to talk directly of form without it being confused or misinterpreted as gratuitous formalism. It is very hard to talk about form without the conversation collapsing into matters of programme or function. In most cases my attempts were met with blank looks, though I admit this was a least partly my fault due to my inability to fully articulate the matter. Form is not shape, let us first make this clear - we have the word ‘shape’ to describe shape. Most people seem to be completely comfortable talking about the form of a particular object, or the more general form of, say for example, cities - but are incapable of talking between the two. It seems clear to me that we have an innate understanding of the universal and the particular that we draw on unconsciously, but rarely do we pause to consider 1 Introduction the nature of their relationship in form. The problem of form is that it encapsulates both of these concepts simultaneously in one neat package: 'Form', we can not help but use it all of the time and do so without sufficient recourse to its meaning. This is because it is difficult. The architectural historian Adrian Forty describes it as “the most important, but also the most difficult concept within the architecture of this century.”1 Form, like space is always at the centre of any architectural question but woe betide us if we know what either of those most essential terms actually mean. Despite this we seem content to recklessly describe forms as flowing, emergent, responsive, formal, pure, platonic, symbolic or even spatial, without pausing for a moment to think through the implication (usually contradictory) of the language we use so flippantly. Compounding the issue is the distinct lack of contemporary in active development, and with little curiosity as to what literature on the subject of form. That which purports to be, purposes it may serve.”3 lacks direct critical engagement because it generally fails to define what form actually is and remains dancing inanely Of course he is completely right, having summed up around the great precipice of meaning. Some appeal to exactly what I had observed in practice I could not agree formalism in one way or another to avoid confusion, but more. Though, now having witnessed the death of a term formalism being another complex term tends to present so central to my discipline I could not help but feel a sense its own problems: best understood by what it excludes, of indignation. It is all very well to analyse and dissect, i.e. considerations perceived as beyond and outside of a indeed architecture without its critical faculty is no more particular object, it tends to deny the possibility of meaning. than building, but being a practical, constructive art-form I Peter Eisenman takes this position although still seems felt it was equally possible that something could be made incapable of escaping the metaphysical implications of his from the worthless husk left to me by Forty. If I could just own theory. Pier Vittorio Aureli has written widely on the define what form is, and space too since it seems to be co- politics of form in the city and has a better understanding incident, I would at least have the raw materials required than most in the contradictions inherent in its use, though for my practice. The most essential components of every 2 3 he too is forced into using the term ‘formal’ to avoid any thing, how could I work in their medium without at least exact definition.2 a basic understanding of what they are? And once I have found out what they are I can tell you what they mean: what The most insightful and important critical evaluation of architecture means. form I have found is Forty’s entry on ‘form’ in his recently published book ‘Words and Buildings’. He guides us though a history of form in architecture through terse commentary. Taking form from the ancient Greeks, it is dragged all the way through to modernism, but not before having been poked, probed and mauled over the preceding pages. Form is laid bare and found to be wanting, no longer suitable for use in architecture we are left to pick up the pieces. The final nails are drawn in his closing remarks: “In a sense, ‘form’ is a concept that has outlived its 1. Forty, Adrian. (2004). Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture, Thames & usefulness. People talk of form all the time but they rarely Hudson. 149 talk about it; as a term it has become frozen, no longer 2. Aureli, P.V. (2011). The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture, MIT Press. 30 3. Forty. 2004. 172 “The Latin forma stands for two Greek words with quite different meanings: eidos, or abstract form, and morphe, or visible form. In its very origin the word form seems to contain the dispute between those who give priority to the visibility of things as a fundamental datum of experience and those who give priority to the inner structure of experience itself as the factor that determines how visible things are.”1 According to Adrian Forty “The principle originator of the concept of ‘form’ in antiquity was Plato...Against Pythagoras’s earlier theory that all things could in essence be described as numbers or ratios of numbers, Plato proposed that geometrical figures, triangles and solids underlay the world.”2 This is not strictly true: Plato may have become the namesake of the Platonic forms, but the origin of these 4 5 The Origin of Form five geometric solids has been attributed to various Greek philosophers, conceptually too his use of form is by no means his own. Forty is right in asserting that Plato’s theory is based in Pythagorianism but the credit given does not go far enough. The concept of the supra sensory world constituted of geometrical forms belongs solely to the great mystic and mathematician Pythagoras. Bertrand Russell explains: “He thought of numbers as shapes, as they appear as dice or playing cards. We still speak of squares and cube numbers that are terms we owe to him. He also spoke of oblong numbers, triangular numbers, pyramidal numbers, and so on. These were the numbers of pebbles (or, as we shall more naturally say, shot) required to make the shapes in question.”3 In other words he gave form to the numerical relationships that lay beyond the world as it appears to us. The harmonies he discovered were evidence of a perfect and ideal world that lay beyond our own woven in a fabric of pure geometrical relationships. It has been argued that the first examples of the Platonic solids date back as far as the Neolithic period after the discovery of a number of carved stone polyhedral forms dating to around 2000 BC.4 The purpose of these enigmatic objects remains unknown and whether they constitute proof of an early understanding of mathematics or merely something more banal cannot be said. Irrespective of this it is the persistent influence of Pythagoreanism on western thought that we are interested in here, not the origin of the Platonic solids per se. 6 7 If we recognise Pythagoras, the man who preached to animals, as the principle originator of an expanded concept of form we are better equipped to understand the mystical dimension inherent in mathematics that continues to hold resonance today. It was Pythagoras who first rejected the sensible world on favor of mathematics as the only source of true knowledge. It should be remembered that Greek philosophy actually emerged out of early religions (Orphism) and belief systems (the worship of Dionysus), not separately to them. This is why, says Russell quoting Cornford, all subsequent systems inspired by Pythagoreanism “tend to be other worldly, putting all value in God and condemning the visible world as false and illusive.”5 Plato’s contribution was to use ‘form’ in his theory of universals and thus to implicate it in a philosophical fig.