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. 1 Pythagorean Cosmic Morphology? problem persistent to this day. The problem of universals is more easily understood as a problem of properties; that is, how numerically different particulars can have the same properties. This is best explained through an example:

I shape two balls of clay, I give one to you. Both of our balls share, amongst other attributes, the property of being spherical but neither can be perfectly round. For the word ‘Spherical’ to mean anything it must be based on something other than our particular lumps of clay because neither is actually a true sphere. The warmth of our hands dries the clay and they begin to shrink, harden and crack, no longer resembling spheres. We take some fresh clay and make two more balls. What is interesting is that both mine and your clay balls again achieve the property of sphericity but were 8 9 made independently of one another, without reference to the previous balls that had lost their essential property. Both of us must have had in mind the idea of a perfect sphere from which we where able to model the clay. Plato calls this the ideal form of the sphere, of which we both are able to understand intellectually but are unable to bring forth into the sensible world; thus our balls are imperfect particular copies of the universal ideal sphere.

Whether we believe that our universal sphere actually exists (Platonic Realism) or not, or is an idea of the mind (Idealism) does not detract from the powerful duality of ‘form’ that has at this point been established. Plato condemns the sensory world as illusory; all we may know is the appearance of appearance. Form has been sublimated to an intellectual category with its own autonomy outside of matter but in the fig. 2 The Roundest Sphere in the World. Used to define the international standard for the kilogramme, it is as close as we have ever got to a universal form. The most spherical natural object hands of his pupil Aristotle we are presented with just the is the sun. opposite: Form and matter as a necessary unity. is a purposeful organising principle in the organism that confers a togetherness between all of its parts to form a Initially Aristotle introduces ‘form’ as that which creates holistic unity:9 containment and boundary within undifferentiated matter. Form is the quality that enables us to recognise distinct “For if the eye was an animal, then sight would be its soul, ‘things’ within a formless sea of homogeneity. He tells us being the substance of the eye that is in accordance with the that “you are in a place that contains no more than you”6 account of it. And the eye is the matter of sight, so that when and that the “place of a thing is its form”,7 from this we sight leaves it it is no longer an eye except homonymously, might conclude that the form of the body is its shape as in the way of a stone or a painted eye. Now we should take defined by the boundary of its surface of containment/ that which applies to the part and apply it to the living body exclusion, though this is not what Aristotle is describing as a whole. For just as each part of perception stands to each when he writes about the soul. In his treatise De Anima part of the perceiving body, so does the whole of perception (On the Soul) he explains that the “soul is substance as the stand to the whole perceiving body as such.”10 form of a natural body which potentially has life.”,8 within this sentence we have the key terms of his proposition that I In the distinction between Plato and Aristotle we find the 10 11 will briefly expand upon in order to avoid misinterpretation seeds for all subsequent developments in the meaning from our modern perspective. and use of the word ‘form’. Here lies the origin of form in western thought illustrated by the first principles: form as Substances are fundamental things that exist; dualists immaterial idea and form as the generative force of matter. recognise two fundamentals, form and matter, monists Platonists can not help but dismiss particular objects as less recognise only one substance which is a composite of real than universals, whereas Aristotelians base reality in form and matter. A composite substance is irreducible the particular world as it appears, but struggle to explain when neither of its ingredients can exist separately and the problem of universals. Both describe form as something independently of one another - only intellectually are we more than shape or mass, more like the conferral of identity able to isolate them. Thus the ‘soul’ does not correspond to to an entity. the wondering lost souls we know from religion but is an abstraction of the qualities that living things exhibit. Being a These ideas show direct lineage in philosophical thought to naturalist Aristotle is ultimately trying to reach a definition the present day and I think can be detected more obliquely of the ‘life-force’ that organisms seem to have, this force in architectural thought. The morphology of shapes and the is an animals soul or ‘essence’. The soul seen as a force is language used by architects to describe them often betrays therefore a causal agent in any ‘thing’, ‘matter is potentiality, something of their understanding of form. Those that and form is actuality’, together they are substance. The soul describe their work as emergent, responsive, convergent etc. tend to see form as something organic that flows and develops from matter. Terms like limit, boundary, formal etc. tend towards the application or imposition of form to matter. Of course I am not suggesting for a moment that all contemporary architects are practicing with a conscious awareness of Ancient Greek metaphysics, rather I just want to suggest that the attitudes detectable in architecture can certainly be read through the distinction drawn here.

It should be noted that in this brief history of form I have not once needed to refer to architecture, this is because it is not until the 19th century that form is used in its full ‘extended’ sense, to refer to anything more than the shape of a particular building in common architectural discourse.11 The implication of forms emergence in architecture is where 12 13 we shall next turn.

1. Aureli, P.V. (2011). 30 2. Forty. 2004. 172 3. Russell, Bertrand. (1961). History of Western Philosophy, Oxford, Alden Press. 54 4. www.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carved_Stone_Balls 5. Russell,(1961). 51 6. Ibid. 178 7. Ibid. 8. Lawson-Tancred, Hugh. (1987). De Anima, Penguin Classics. 157 fig. 3 (above) A Grammar for the City, master plan for a new administrative capital, South Korea, 2005, 9. My description here is drawn from both the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Russell's OFFICE KGDVS in collaboration with Dogma. substancial entry on Aristotle in his ‘History of Western Philosophy’. 10. Lawson-Tancard. (1987). 158 fig. 4 (below) Kartal Pendik Master Plan, Istanbul, Turkey, 2006, Zaha Hadid Architects. 11. Forty. 2004. 149 It should at this point be clear that the term ‘form’ is best used at times when we wish to speak about abstract qualities that go beyond simply describing the shape, mass or appearance of a particular object, however as we know from experience this tends not to be what we actually do. Form does not refer to shape, but shape is one of the many properties form may refer through. Despite the breadth and incredible diversity of the English language we appear to be impoverished of the terminology necessary to disentangle this confusion. Germans have a slight advantage in this area, as Forty points out, “where English has only a single word, ‘form’, German has two, ‘Gestalt’ and ‘Form’: Gestalt generally refers to objects as they are perceived by the senses, whereas Form usually implies some degree of abstraction from the concrete particular.”1 Unfortunately 14 15 The Emergence of Form for us something was lost in the translation of gestalt into in Architecture English, so for now we must settle with form.

In fact, after the eighteenth century establishment of aesthetics as a distinct branch of philosophical enquiry the Germans were extremely productive in the definition of a whole range of related terms invented in the pursuit of this new discipline. For the ancient Greeks, the as yet undifferentiated area of aesthetics revolved around the problem of how we perceive form (and its counterpart space), which as we have seen was accounted for using philosophical and physiological explanations. In its modern Germanic incarnation the central theme of aesthetics became the problem of how we are able to appreciate and take pleasure from the perception of form and space.2 This inherently emotional question could no longer be explained through reason alone or as purely a property of perception so it became necessary to base this new aesthetics Rather than this being a conscious decision, we seem to in psychology. Now liberated from the introspective be unconsciously compelled to seek unity (Ineinsfühlung) disposition of philosophical enquiry, modern aesthetic with the world through our personal identification with theorists were able to step outside the constraints of the it. Of course the feeling that Vischer is describing is the petulant body with its infallible senses, and explore the surprisingly modern concept of empathy, as distinct from psychological world of human emotion. sympathy: The crucial difference between these concepts being that in sympathy we feel for someone but in empathy It goes without saying that we have an emotional response we feel with someone; we are able to ‘put ourselves in when we experience form and space, but whether this is another’s shoes’ or more metaphysically speaking to due to form having any actual meaning is much harder embody ourselves in the other. The most striking thing to support. This is the contentious (and still profoundly about Vischer’s early concept of empathy is that rather than important) problem that divided German aesthetics and was using it to explain interpersonal human relationships as it is the driving force behind most theoretical developments most often employed today, he instead uses it to describe throughout the nineteenth century. The dominant position, the relationship between people and architectural form and held by the Formalists, was that form has no content, is space. The reason for this becomes clear when we frame 16 17 inherently meaningless but has the potential to evoke Vischer in the philosophical context of his time. emotion through the harmonious stimulation of the senses. For its critics, the formalist position provided only a very At this point I should explain that it is only recently that limited account of the complex and nuanced emotional emergence of empathy in relation to form and space has relationship that humans develop between both animate begun to be written about, and as such the account of and inanimate objects; the feeling of deep connectedness their history is not entirely settled. My knowledge of the and unity that is possible. When we experience buildings we subject is due to having read edited translations of the major seem to be able to reach outside of our selves, to identify essays in German psychological aesthetics that where only personally with their form and experience an emotional published as recently as 1994 by Harry Francis Mallgrave atmosphere in their spaces. and Eleftherios Ikonomou, upon which Adrian Forty’s account is based. The recent contribution by Jon Goodbun It was Friedrich Theodor Vischer who first used the term in his doctoral thesis has also been uniquely important in Einfühlen (literally feel-into) in his 1857 treatise Aesthetik to highlighting the importance of some of the more oblique describe our ability to feel ourselves into objects using our tendencies in German culture. As far as it concerns the imagination.3 He observed that we seem to relate to things development of my later arguments, I shall try to carve my in the world as if they are in some way a part of us and own narrative of events based on the knowledge gleaned share our emotions, whether with people or lifeless objects. from these various authors. To all accounts it is clear that the ideas contained and voluntary), and it was a symbolism that could not be in Immanuel Kant’s 1790 Critique of Judgment was aligned with any specific cultural stage. It was a symbolism instrumental in the development of modern aesthetics. As necessary or intrinsic to human aesthetic behavior in that far as it concerns this discussion, Kant’s most important we define our relation to the world, at least in part, through proposition is that “...we actively constitute form and the symbolic interjection of emotions into objective forms.”7 space in our schematization of the world. They are, in effect, mental constructions of the observer, the subjective What Vischer is doing here is to highlight the power of condition under which sense perception operates.”4, or as the symbolic form of physical matter over and above Forty explains in his typically epithetic fashion “’form’ lies immaterial ideas or poetic allusion. In so doing he is in the beholding, not the thing beholden.”5 This facilitated effectively inverting Hegel’s hierarchy of art-forms, in which the construction of the now familiar formalist mantra that unsurprisingly architecture finds itself at the bottom. In form has no content, for if the perception of beauty is with order to explain this I will need to briefly unpack some us alone then the object perceived must necessarily be of the key elements of Hegel’s philosophy because it devoid of any inherent meaning: a formidable logic though will become important to the developments of my later it is, the formalist position only served to fuel the ingenious arguments beyond this chapter. It is a philosophy that 18 19 counter argument by the empathy theorists, as I shall shortly holds a distinctly pantheistic theme, characterised by the explain. F.T. Vischer’s work should also be seen in the light notion that the whole (the Absolute) is all that exists and is of idealist philosophy, though his ideas are better placed in essence spiritual. Unusually though, the Absolute is not specifically within the Young Hegelian movement6, that substance but is the totality of the system that constitutes sought to critically respond to the legacy of Hegel’s idealism itself. Humans being just a small part of this system are through a distinctly ‘leftist’ interpretation. Mallgrave and disposed to recognise only its disunity but through self Ikononou explain that in the re-evaluation of his earlier reflection it is possible to transcend their subjectivity and idealist aesthetics Vischer began to expand his definition ultimately become fully self-conscious. When we engage in of symbolism beyond the narrow possibilities afforded by this process we understand ourselves to be part of a more Hegel: general consciousness that constitutes the single mind, this is the spirit (Geist) that is the essence of the Absolute Idea: “Vischer now argued that these readings of nature and Thought thinking about itself. As a process the Absolute architecture were examples of a “higher” symbolic process: is always in a state of becoming, or more precisely is Higher than the unconscious symbolism of Hindu art or Becoming. The progress of history can thus be accounted the mythological content of Greek art. Architecture in for by the development of the spirit towards greater degrees effect composed an internal symbolism of form that was of freedom. The spirit is manifest in art but its expression is freely practised (free in the sense of being conscious obscured by matter. Art-forms that are based in substance (matter) can only be symbolic of the idea and are therefore abstractions, the less art relies on substance the better; the height of art for Hegel is therefore poetry.8

When we understand Hegel’s aesthetics the basis of Vischer’s materialist critique becomes clear: humans, being both of mind and matter, are embodied entities in the material world. When we make physical forms we somehow always represent our own duality. Our emotional connection with objective form suggests its importance in our ability to overcome the sense of separation that we produce in order to remain individuals distinct from our environment. The abstract symbolism of architecture can therefore provide the means to enter into this relationship of separation - reunion - knowledge of spirit, that seems necessary to the human 20 21 condition. The role of empathy therefore is:

“...the overcoming of alienation, a progressive fusion of human consciousness with matter that was itself the meaning of history. Thus for Vischer aesthetics was the key to human development, for man fashions his own consciousness in historical forms so that he might know as an object the spirit inherent in himself.”9

Vischer’s ideas cleared the way for his son Robert who took up the problem of emotional projection as the subject of his doctoral thesis, Uber das Optische Formgefuhl (On the Optical Sense of Form). Despite its seemingly erroneous title, Robert Vischer’s writing contains the brilliant thesis that “[if] there can be no form without content, then it must be shown that those forms devoid of emotional life to which that [formalist] school refers with some semblance of fig. 5 Freidrich Theodor Vischer plausibly are supplied with emotional content that we - the undifferentiated gaze that gathers a volume of sensations observers - unwittingly transfer to them.”10 In other words, without discrimination. If their overall effect is one if it is true that form has no content in and of itself, then we harmonious with the physiology of the sense organs (i.e. must explain our emotional relationship to form through light or sounds that correspond to the biological structure some kind of projection on our part. The significance of of the eyes and ears) then they trigger an immediately this essay is in its attempt to formally theorise empathy pleasurable nervous response through “a direct mental in relation to both the psychology and physiology of sublimation of the external sensation.”16 This is the first perception. In so doing Vischer officially coins the term stage of visual experience, the second stage is analytical and Einfühlung, known to us as empathy.11 requires that we “break up this dull mass of the impression and find our bearings amid its relationships”17, this is done The key distinction in Vischer’s empathy theory is that by the dialectical process of scanning with the eyes to bring drawn between sensation and feeling. The former roughly elements into ‘mechanical’ relationship. Through kinesthetic corresponds to the physiological properties of perception muscular effort the eyes labor to dissect the ensemble and the later to the psychological components of cognition, image so that its fragments may be material for the mind to although in practice there are degrees of overlap between interpret as it pleases. The world is literally brought forth 22 23 them. As one would expect from the essay’s title, Vischer’s by the creative act of the conscious subject through the primary concern is the construction of vision but this is alchemy of aesthetic experience. The Biblical inflection because he sees it as not a process reducible only to the to Vischer’s description should not be dismissed as mere eyes, he tells us that “visual experience is not so much with theatricality, his words are carefully chosen to invoke a sense our eyes as with a different sense in another part of our of divine genesis on the part of the subject: body.”12 It is an entanglement that appears to be reflected in our language when we talk about “loud colours” or ‘And now, once I have accomplished the process of “colourful sounds”.13 The senses can only work in relation scanning, the impression of seeing is repeated on a higher to one another; “If I were blind, I would lack the experience level. What I have seemingly separated I have reassembled of distance as well as of light and colour; without the sense into an ordered and restful unity. Again I have enclosed, a of touch, I would lack definite information about tangible complete image, but one developed and filled with emotion. form.”14 He goes on to explain how children actually have To chaotic “Being” I called “Become!” - and my summons to learn to see, citing the example of young children who brought Light and behold, it was Good.’18 “reach for the moon as we reach for a plate”15 because they are not yet able to grasp the sense of visual depth. Although providing a wonderfully prosaic description of visual experience, the physical components of his account Seeing for Vischer begins with a kind of unconscious, may strike us as a little spurious: I would argue that is precisely because they are, and the examples that he gives harmony (and disharmony) that we find in the world. are no better. For example we are told that the zigzag line is “initially experienced as offensive because it requires The human psychophysical self that Vischer describes is able uncomfortable [eye] movements.”19 The problem with his to imagine or feel its way into any form it make perceive. The assertion is that it assumes the possibility of smooth regular self is a plastic shape-shifting entity, giving him the ability to tracing motion of the eye along a line - we only have to try “...without difficulty place myself within its inner structure, this ourselves to realise the impossibility of anything other at its centre of gravity. I can think my way into it, mediate than achieving a series of incremental, erratic snapshots its size with my own, stretch and expand, bend and confine no matter what composition the line takes. Vischer also myself to it.”21 Thus when we experience small objects our thinks that we have an affinity with objects that share formal self is literally confined and so experiences a ‘contractive similarities with the human body, such as bilateral symmetry, feeling’ (Zusamenfühlung), in the case of buildings our self regularity or proportionality. For example, we are told inflates to the fill the large space and we experience an that our attraction to round, regular objects is due to the ‘expansive feeling’ (Ausfühlung). Finally Vischer takes the corresponding properties of the eyeball - I will let the reader possibilities of empathy beyond that of his father to the decide whether their appreciation of disco balls, dinner point where the self can actually be projected outside of the 24 25 plates and domes has anything to do with the shape of their physical body in order that it becomes the ‘other’, here he eyes. The argument that follows this however, does have betrays the pantheistic sentiment behind his theory: an element of validity. We are next told that it is because eyes are positioned horizontally that we tend to prefer the “We thus have the wonderful ability to project and horizontal line, the vertical line by contrast ‘contradicts’ our incorporate our own physical form into an objective form,’ binocular vision and so requires more work to perceive. (104) What can that form be other than the form of a content Whether this can really be said about a singular line is again identical with it?...Thus I project my own life into the lifeless problematic but if we take, for example, the silver screen the form...Only ostensibly do I keep my own identity although relationship is more clear. the object remains distinct. I seem merely to adapt and attach myself to it as one hand clasps another, and yet I am Vischer is right though. The point that he is trying to make, mysteriously transplanted and magically transformed into underlying all of his examples, is this, “laws of regularity, this Other.”22 symmetry, and proportion are nothing other than subjective laws of the normal human body and, as such, must have Enough - we have seen how the concept of empathy actually some value for aesthetics,”20 I repeat: the form of our arose out of nineteenth century German aesthetics in physical bodily properties structure the possibility of relation to architectural form and space. The consequence aesthetic appreciation and so are the source of the apparent being that, in reaction to the formalist position, ‘form’ is enriched and expanded upon so as to account for the emotional dimension of human experience.

Architectural form now takes on a key role in facilitating our relationship to the world and to ourselves as an entity of mediation and reflection. The ideas presented so far construct a convincing argument for what seems an irreducible triad of co-dependency between form, empathy and space. Astonishingly, recent developments in neuroscience have served to confirm exactly the apparent connection that the empathy theorists were describing, as Goodbun points out:

“Recent research into what have become known as mirror neurons...suggests that they play key roles in what are now 26 27 seen as three interrelated processes. Firstly, mirror neurons are involved in the cognitive mapping of the space of the body, and the body’s technological extensions through the use of tools. Secondly, mirror neurons are central to constructing our theories of mind regarding other people (i.e. recognising other minds). Thirdly, mirror neurons play key roles in language.”23

Empathy theory seems to describe exactly how we experience architecture, but how can space be defined? Mapped, named, extended and identified with a single type of neuron, but what is it? I am inclined to say that space is ‘nothing’ whereas form is ‘something’, but I know there is not a space where nothing exists, everywhere is full. Maybe then space is just the ‘something’ in-between me and the ‘something’ that I am interested in, a mass of ‘stuff’ that has no particular objectifiable part. This is no good either fig. 6 Mirror Neurones because when I am in a car park, space is the only thing I am interested in, and I am charged for the privilege of its use. In a city space is of great value and we are careful to keep it distinct from the sprawl. Is it then, a case of making a distinction? The definition of opposites; form in opposition to space - two poles. But can’t space have form, and if it can what happens to our opposition? The idea that space can, or in-fact be form is another concept to arise from nineteenth century German aesthetics: Spatial form, we talk about it all the time. Early modernism fed off it and sucked the matter out of architecture until it was lean and translucent, just a series of barely defined volumes. Both a productive and a destructive concept in architecture, it is first described as form in an essay by Adolph Hilebrand writing ‘On the problem of form in the fine arts’: 28 29

“The Greek temple, for instance, offers a closed spatial mass: the columns are placed so close to each other that they function as a perforated, frontal layer of space. What we perceive is not a spatial body fronted by columns: the columns form part of the spatial body and our ideal movement into depth passes between them.”24

Hilebrand was a sculptor and his description of architectural form should be read as such, he is describing the intercolumniation of the temple as a pattern of relief; solid, void, solid. Though for him the columns together with the space that they define constitute the total form of the temple. When we stand between the columns we are within the boundary of the temple and have entered

fig. 7 (above) The Parthenon, Greece into it, into its form. If the space of a building can be taken (as much as its mass) to be the form, how do we define it fig. 8 (below) Rachel Whiteread, House. 1993 as properly separate from ourselves. If I stand submersed within the spatial form of a building and am able to see it as an extension of myself, where do I draw the boundary of my body and my own identity?

30 31 1. Forty. 2004. 149 2. Mallgrave. et al. (1994) Introduction in Empathy, form and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics 1973-1893, Santa Monica, CA: Getty Center. 2 3. Ibid. 4. Quoted from Kant’s Aesthetics and Teleology, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato. stanford.edu/entries/kant-aesthetics/) 5. Forty. 2004. 154 6. Goodbun, J.C. (2011). The Architecture of the Extended Mind:Towards a Critical Urban Ecology. PhD Westminster University. 197, Quoting William J Brazill, 7. Mallgrave. 1994. 19 8. My description here again draws upon both the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Russells entry on Hegel in his ‘History of Western Philosophy’. 9. Goodbun. 2004. 199 10. Vischer, Robert. ‘On the Optical Sense of Form: A Contribution to Aesthetics’ in Mallgrave and Ikonomou (eds.) 1994. Empathy, Form and Space. 89 11. Ibid., As claimed by Robert Vischer Himself. 92 12. Ibid., 99 13. Ibid., 98 14. Ibid., 94 15. Ibid., 95 16. Ibid., 17. Ibid., 94 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., 97 20. Ibid., 98 21. Ibid., 104 22. Ibid. 23. Goodbun. 2004. 190 24. Hildebrand, Adolf. ‘The Problem fo Form in the Fine Arts’ in Mallgrave and Ikonomou (eds.) 1994. Empathy, Form and Space. 259 “a universe comes into being when a space is severed or taken apart. The skin of a living organism cuts off an outside from an inside. So does the circumference of a circle in a plane. By tracing the way we represent such a severance we can begin to reconstruct, with an accuracy and coverage that appear almost uncanny, the basic forms underlying linguistic, mathematical, physical and biological science, and can begin to see how the familiar laws of our own experience follow inexorably from the original act of severance. The act is itself already remembered, even if unconsciously, as our first attempt to distinguish different things in a world where, in the first place, the boundaries can be drawn anywhere we please.”1

I normally draw the boundary of my organism at the skin. It 32 33 The Meaning of Form neatly contains me and provides a recognisable outline that visually distinguishes me from my environment. If I was a beast of some sort I might say that my fur, shell, rind, husk, hair, crust, cuticle, feathers, scales, horns, hooves or claws were the most outermost part of my body: My integument, and everything that constitutes it, the final barrier between me and the world. I may find this useful but as a biological definition it would be fairly useless, and even misleading to a scientific analysis of any depth. Terms like superorganism, eusociality and extended organism have recently become widely accepted and indeed fundamental concepts in understanding, from a physiological and psychological perspective, the relationship between organisms and their environment. The permeability of the organism’s boundary to the perpetual flows of energy and matter (both in and out) make it a poor indicator of its total integrity. The fact that the organism ceases to exist when the flow of energy is taken away suggests that it must be structurally coupled definitely a thing with a distinct identity. Its process lies to processes greater than and irreducible to its ‘internal’ in consuming excess power from the river with which it physiology alone; that its corporeality is somehow only half does work to produce its body form, excreting heat as a the story of its existence. The physiologist J. Scott Turner result. Once it was formed it could react to changes in its describes the boundary of an organism, between living and environment in complex ways through twisting, stretching, nonliving as a “fuzzy” one, more useful to us as a verb than moving and even changing direction. It has managed to a noun: persist for so long because it has eroded a vast basin in the stone riverbed, like a parasitic growth to the rivers course. “It is not the boundary itself that makes an organism It has structurally modified its environment to support itself distinctive, but what that boundary does. In other words, the and has carved an edifice properly external to by making the boundary is not a thing, it is a process, conferring upon the riverbed integral to its process.3 organism a persistence that endures as long as its boundary can adaptively modify the flows of energy and matter Of course The Whirlpool is not an organism, and it is through it.”2 certainly not alive. It is used by Turner only to demonstrate what goes on at a greatly advanced level between organisms 34 35 The key to an organism’s identity therefore in its ability to and their environment, put simply Turners thesis is that manipulate flows through a boundary; to transform power “the edifices constructed by animals are properly external into work for the production of itself. In Turner’s book, organs of physiology.”4. Organisms live both internally and ‘The Extended Organism’, he points out that this process is externally to their skin, just as the organism’s morphology done not only internally but also externally to the perceived is formed by its life processes so to is the environment. boundary. This highlights the profoundly dialectical nature The consequence of this being that we can no longer of the organism for not only does it work to produce itself, simply define the boundary of an animal as its outermost it necessarily does work to produce its environment. It integument because it lives not within or without it but does this by structurally modifying its surroundings for the across it. To develop this argument Turner gives examples perpetuation of itself. This is not an inherently conscious of numerous so called extended organisms that build processes but an emergent phenomenon that seems to complex structures to modify their environment. These occur whenever energy is supplied to a self reflexive system. examples tend to focus on the construction of habitats A vortex in a flow of water is often used as an example of by the organism that facilitate the degree of homeostasis this and is the analogy used by Turner, who more specifically necessary to the survival of the whole, i.e. the ability to gives the example of a permanent eddy in the Niagara River. regulate temperature or atmospheric composition within a Despite its lack of a tangible boundary The Whirlpool (as given range. it is commonly known), having existed for 4,200 years is The ideas developed throughout the book are sound and build upon Richard Dawkin’s concept of ‘Extended Phenotype’, what is perplexing though is that the examples of extended organisms are not extended very far beyond insects. It does not require a great leap of the imagination to move to larger mammals - beavers, badgers or, dare I say it, humans. As Turner acknowledges, the analogies between social organisms and human societal and political structures are abundant (although most of the time the similarities are greatly abused) - so why can’t we make the reverse comparison? Thermal regulation and atmospheric control are both faculties of our body that we hand over to buildings, and that we in fact rely upon for our survival. Perhaps it is our assumption that the technology that we produce is somehow unnatural and incomparable to that of 36 37 animals that blinds us.5

I do not need to prove that buildings are properly physiological organs to my body, that is not my point, I just wish to highlight the fact that they could very easily be thought of as such. My aim is to question the boundary between myself and the environment that surrounds me (usually man made) and is generally taken to be my form. Another related way of thinking about this is to see the built environment as prosthesis to my body. Lets return to my naked outer integument for a moment, I may decide that it is the boundary of my organism but in reality it is a boundary that only I (and a select few others) am familiar with. More correctly then my outermost part must be my clothes. If I wear clothes that deviate from the pattern of that which I normally wear, I would appear in some way unfamiliar to the people that know me - they might even fig. 9 I am a Vortex. suggest that I have changed or that they didn’t recognise body and I am more than capable of feeling myself into its me. If this is the case then my identity is not alone conferred form. I can’t survive without my clothes, I would freeze, by the morphological form of my body but by the prosthesis but when it gets really cold I seek shelter because they of my clothing as well, an identity that I construct. When I are no longer adequate to my needs. I seek life support in wear clothes I assume their form. I wear my leather jacket architecture, shelter from the storm, I made the city into one and I feel as big and as tough as the jacket, but when I take big room that could help me maintain a core temperature it off I shrink back to my skin. I have to wear shoes to walk of 37.5 degrees and keep me fed and watered without too on the streets that we made. We made pavement prosthesis much physical effort. Now I live in a supermarket. Suddenly to facilitate our advanced, yet inferior bipedal mode of I realise that none of these prosthesis are mine until I own locomotion6, so as to elevate the mind from the mundane them so I buy my way back with a money, perhaps the task of coordinating the body over varied terrain, I rarely ultimate prosthesis for human value. look down, my interface is the indifferent sole of my shoe. After we did this we build road prosthesis because our In the production of the city I have alienated part of myself bipedal form was still found to be inadequate, my interface in its form. It provides a framework for the extension of my became the automotive prosthesis to which I adapted easily. body because each of its facets contains a fragment of my 38 39 Despite its size I can sit in my car and extend my senses to faculty, expelled and embedded in its matter. In order to its outermost integument, beyond the sole of my shoe to augment my body I must distinguish that which augments the tires of the car, and to the ground; my skin metallic and as external to myself so that we may relate: it takes two to perfectly formed. I get angry when that other car is driving have a relationship so I form the distinction; a boundary that too fast, I breath in as it zooms past me, as if I can make cleaves an inside from an outside. I enter a contract with the myself small again, and am amazed by the agility of the bus city every time I objectify its form, separating it from me. But driver with his eyes on each corner. what I build I simultaneously breach because no boundary can exist as a singularity and so I must know both of its sides This is empathy in its most mundane and essential form, in order to know myself. it is inescapable and indispensable, I can no longer use my environment without it, I never could. Auto motion Where are we now? Regardless of whether the environment soon became inadequate and we needed to be instantly is part of my organism or is a prosthesis it has become everywhere; now my prosthesis is a mastery over obvious that we are in some way estranged, not only that electromagnetism. I am everywhere on the internet and but I myself am the antagonist of every thing. It is my senses nowhere, though it almost seems a natural, even nomadic that carve an exterior world, and it is through my senses existence. I need not go on, it is clearly apparent that every alone that I may know what I have made. I form (meaning artefact in my environment is a potential prosthesis to my both am and make) the boundary. Form essentially is always a distinction between states, the cognition of difference in an environment. All and everything that form can be is a process of relationships, this is written deep within empathy theory and is the foundation of human experience. I can distinguish the start of the building from the end of me, I attribute this distinction simultaneously to both the form of the building and the form of my self. Whether I confer form to the space or the mass of the building is a judgment of value between its states. I extend myself into the building when I form the boundary - so that I may know both states. It is my will to distinguish value that forms the relationship: Here lies the possibility of meaning.

We must reduce form to its absolute essence to discover its meaning, to purge it of our misinterpretation and confusion. 40 41 I am trying to hack though the complexity of the concepts introduced so far so that we can construct something. At their essence it is clear that Empathy, form and space are only meaningful in relation to one another, to take one away would be to take all three away. This should be clear now, though I must confess that I have got slightly ahead of myself in the language I am using to describe this trinity so I will backtrack slightly to unravel some of what has been said. In substituting the term ‘distinction’ for ‘boundary’ I have been hinting at what I perceive as a convergence between Brownian algebra, and 19th century empathy theory. I am drawing on the language used by George Spencer-Brown to describe his system so that we may more clearly see what appears to be a direct correspondence between the mathematical relationship of form to space, and the experience of form and space that I have discussed so far. My reading of empathy theory has been eluding fig. 10 George Spencer-Brown, passport photograph 1973. to the possibility of this mathematical reading so as to that follow. Just as Genesis describes a series of distinctions facilitate direct comparison. I hope the placing of empathy, between heaven and earth, light and dark, firmament a form and space in mathematical relationship may serve to midst the water, the original act is infinitely recursive and further elucidate their fundamental nature in the pursuit thus sees the birth of a universe. The implication of the Laws of meaning. The mathematics I am appealing to is not one of Form is that something has to come from nothing, that purely of number, but is best defined as an arithmetic of creation can never be the result of something. Boolean algebra written in Spencer-Brown’s ‘Laws of Form’. It may also, appropriately enough, be described as boundary The minimum properties that mathematically describe a algebra. Of course at its roots mathematics is not about distinction can be represented by a closed circle drawn on number or logic, these are only some of its applications, as a plane that creates containment, so that we cannot move Spencer-Brown explains: between inside and outside without crossing the boundary. The circumference divides two sides or faces but is itself “Mathematics is, in fact, about space and relationships. neither one side or the other. Thus every distinction has A number comes into mathematics only as a measure of no less than three aspects; two states plus the ‘line’ of space and/or relationships. And the earliest mathematics is distinction that comprise the triad.10 Whenever we have a 42 43 not about number. The most fundamental relationships in distinction we are able to indicate one of its states, without mathematics, the most fundamental laws of mathematics, a distinction between states we cannot make an indication, are not numerical. Boolean mathematics is more important therefore the we can take the form of distinction for the than numerical mathematics simply in the technical sense form. The indication can be represented as a mark, or ‘m’. of the word “important.” It is inner, prior to, numerical When the contents of states are seen to differ in value there mathematics--it is deeper.”7 can be motive to draw a distinction, all distinctions have motive. We may name a state when it is of value, thus the The fundamental question at the center of Laws of Form is, identity of the name is equivalent to the value of its content. How does nothing become everything?, how can a universe There are two axiomatic laws that define all operations: The appear from a place “without form, and void”8 - or time, or law of calling and the law of crossing. The first says that “the space or any other quality we can think of? What was that value of a call made again is the value of the call.”11 This first most essential act that gave rise to every thing? The means that if I were, for example, to call your name twice answer is due to the act of distinction, the first division of what is indicated is no more than the value of your content the infinite latent potential in chaos: “a universe comes on both occasions and therefore to recall your name is the into being when a space is severed or taken apart.”9 The same as to call. This can be expressed as 00 = 0. The second separation of this from that is all that is required to describe law states that “The value of a crossing made again is not what must take place in the first instance and all instances the value of the crossing.”12 Which is to say that if I cross a boundary, for example a road, and then re-cross it I would find myself in the same position that I had started in so in effect to re-cross is not to cross. This can be expressed as (0) = . These are the basic principles of Brownian algebra.

A useful way I have found of thinking about this is with an analogy given by Gregory Bateson, who in comparing our sense of touch to that of vision touches upon what we have been talking about here. He describes how if we are to deposit a dot of chalk on a black board we have the potential to make a distinction. However, in simply lowering our finger directly onto the dot we cannot feel the difference between the chalk and the board. We must move our finger across the dot in order to feel the change in sensation. Until this happens the dot and the board are 44 45 just a duality of states that have neither time nor space, it is only by virtue of the observer who crosses between these states that they exist at that time when the finger meets the edge of the dot in that place at the end of the finger. What we do with the fingertip is exactly what we do with the eye, this is the purpose of the eyes continuous tremor known as micronystagmus.13 Now if we return to the distinction formed by the circle, we find the exact same thing happening because not only is it a representation of a distinction but it is, in itself a distinction. Look to the circle and your eyes will continually flick between the inside and outside of its circumference, each time crossing the boundary that is the form: the self sustaining boundary. You have drawn the distinction by cognitive event, it was literally brought forth into existence by your motive to distinguish between states. Each time you crossed into a state you fig. 11 Black board, Spencer-Brown collaborated with Wittgenstein as well as Russell. marked the value of its contents, simultaneously defining I can’t help but compare the terse austerity of the Tractatus to Laws of Form. the form of the distinction. The implications of this, followed to their logical conclusion, are profound. Their mathematical demonstration can be followed in the appendix, here I quote the conclusion to Spencer-Browns experiment:

“An observer, since he distinguishes the space he occupies, is also the mark. In the experiments..., imagine the circles to be forms and their circumferences to be the distinctions shaping the spaces of these forms. In this conception a distinction drawn in any space is a mark distinguishing the space. Equally and conversely, any mark in a space draws a distinction. We see now that the first distinction, the mark and the 46 47 observer are not only interchangeable, but, in the form, identical.”14

To restate this in the context of what I have said before, what I distinguish as not my organism is exactly identical to that which I have claimed to be myself because they share the same boundary - a boundary defined by crossing between states by the observer (self-other relation) who marks an ‘inside’ (self) from an ‘outside’ (other), which draws a distinction, that is the form (boundary). There is no ‘inside’ except that which I mark through the attribution of value to a content. I am the distinction, the mark and the form but I can only know myself by looking at myself in recursion, or as we can now say, crossing. In order for any whole to know itself it must cut itself into pieces - not only that but it can never see both sides at once because it can only ever occupy (mark) what it has dismembered. The universe has fig. 12 A distinction. been half blinded by the form because if there is one state rather than ‘matter’) at a molecular level its behaviour is there is always another: If one, then two, but if two; three. not only altered but it is as if we are forcing the universe to If time then tick/tock, but its states are meaningless without make a decision over which state it should take. Watching it measure. Thus anything that is, is self-recursive by necessity. oscillating in and out of existence we enter into its game of The fact that the universe must watch itself in order to exist hide and seek and become the eyes of the universe doubled is the violent tragedy of the universe and the birth of every back on itself, trapped in its theatre. thing. But how does the half-blind cracked actor in his twisted The obvious implication of this, although it is never explicitly theatre give rise to emotion and meaning? Well, he said by Spencer-Brown, is that epistemology and ontology does this by deceiving himself, he is a lunatic endlessly are at their root inseparable because to know a distinction rehearsing before a mirror in which he does not recognise is to be the distinction15. The first distinction brings forth his reflection. That said he enjoys the performance because an epistemology and an ontology instantaneously, one although he does not recognise himself, he is able to see an does not precede the other and neither can exist alone, uncanny resemblance between himself and the reflection. thus there can be no a priori knowledge. They are two It seems to yield to his gestures almost as if they were 48 49 parts of a whole only separable in the mind. When I see, communicating at some level by copying one another. There the saccadic motion of my eyes combs the field of noise is such a familiarity that he even feels a sense of kinship and chaos for information of difference. When a difference to the other and imagines it to be looking back at him, is found it is searched, scanned and specified as an entity appreciating his masterful showmanship. Sometimes though (epistemologically) distinct from the field from which the he has a moment of lucidity and all of the glass is dissolved entity is (ontologically) distinguished - so we can say, what leaving only himself, and the show is over. End of event. is found to be distinct is always at once distinguished. Nothing to see here. Therefore knowledge from sensory perception is always an ontology of being, or in other words, the world that I know We are the actors: what were the empathy theorists is the one that I make. describing if not these exact symptoms of madness? Schizophrenia leading to multiple personality disorder, This may sound far fetched but it is exactly what science hallucinations and extreme isolation (alienation). And the has been telling us for the last century. We are all taught at cure? Realisation of the self as a unity (empathy) - and the school that when we look closely at matter we can find it relief that brings. This is surely the ultimate paradox that to be both of waves and of particles, that matter is a duality, we can know; that in order to be the universe must be and its appearance is dependent on the way that we look at divided, that in order to know ourselves we must banish it. When we measure matter (I should really say ‘properties’ part of ourselves to a relationship of recursion that we call 50 51

fig. 13 Oroboros. Laws of Form holds that something has to come out of nothing and that paradox is not only useful but necessary. fig. 14 Perpetual Motion. Kinetic sculpture by the author. 2008 empathy. ‘I’ is infinite order and the source of all recursion - its original context. Vischer’s writing is based in Hegel’s what am I? I must be the observed relation between myself, writing and Hegel, writing in the early 19th century, is based and observing myself. I am being knowing. I am neither in a society that saw secular philosophy as a form of heresy. mind nor body but the observed relation between them; To write a philosophy that excluded the possibility of God the narrator with an acerbic commentary on existence. I was to commit professional suicide, and so Hegel, being dwell in empathy because I am always somehow external to a man of greater than average intelligence is likely to have events: Not the pilot but the copilot. As Mark Wigley points chosen his words wisely. Lets return to Hegel’s Geist, a out, quoting a letter from Lou Andreas-Salome to Lucian contentious term because it translates to both ‘spirit’ and Freud, the body could either be seen as a prosthesis to ‘mind’ in German, and no doubt Hegel was acutely aware of consciousness or consciousness a prosthesis to the body: this ambiguity. I do not need to take the spirit out of Hegel or even Vischer, I just wish to point out that the religious “For that is after all the most quintessentially human thing dimension is not at all necessary to their interpretation. A in man, that he is both and is not his own body - that his physiomonistic reading or these writers will easily fit, and body despite everything is a piece of external reality like any releases us from the colouring of our modern perspective, other, which can be identified by him with the help of his from which they might be easily dismissed. 52 53 sense organs from outside himself.”16 Now if we transpose Vischer’s words into the universe So form is the stuff that I have identified (marked/ we have described, we can interpret the Geist as the distinguished) as my body, space is the stuff that is not motive to make a distinction, the force or the will towards (unmarked, or no value), and empathy is the place in which value. And it becomes clear now; architecture is a facet my consciousness resides: If this is the case then what is of the mirror mosaic through which the universe watches the meaning of architecture? To answer this let us return to itself. Architecture is the embodiment form in matter; Friedrich Theodor Vischer: man’s duality expelled and wrought as objective entity, so that he might know by nature the force that is at “...the overcoming of alienation, a progressive fusion work within himself. The force of form is the unfolding, of human consciousness with matter that was itself the tearing, wrenching and bunching of the cosmos. When it meaning of history. Thus for Vischer aesthetics was the is channeled through our consciousness it is the source, key to human development, for man fashions his own simultaneously, of great violence and extreme beauty. The consciousness in historical forms so that he might know as form I hold in my mind has the potential to bore deep into an object the spirit inherent in himself.’17 the ground and throw matter high in the air, what I draw will be brandished on the face of the earth, each of my lines Now before we go any further lets place this idea back in adding to its scars. Let us not forget this point, we must learn to see the war zone played out on the stage of the building site. We savage forests, blast and pillage the ground, and shoot through the air, but when the billowing plumes settle and coagulate we have constructed something. Construction is always an act of destruction as it follows from the laws of the universe that, in the beginning, cut itself in two. It is only when we realise the extent of our sadomasochism that we can learn to live with it and act within our laws.

Whenever I make any thing I embed a piece of myself so deep in matter that they become one. It is only in virtue of the mysterious duality of man that I am able to again 1. Spencer-Brown, G. (2011). Laws of Form, Spencer-Brown Press. xxii separate the form from the substance of what I have made 2. Turner, J.S. (2002) The Extended Organism: The Physiology of Animal Built Structures, Harvard and understand the binding force of intent. Thus whenever I University Press; New Ed. 5 3. Ibid., 4-5 experience a work of architecture I enter into that empathic 4. Ibid., 1 54 55 5. The comparison is easier between the vernacular architecture of ‘primitive’ societies and animal relationship of recursion that simultaneously divides and built structures, this presumably is because we perceive these cultures as more ‘natural’. The reason I think that we find it so difficult to reconcile modern technology with the environment is due to it unifies what is before me to reveals the motive, agenda having no ‘natural norm’ - technology not only looks different to nature but it also looks different to or idea crystalised and edified in its walls. The meaning of itself. Beavers build dams and they build the same dams every year, we build different dams. Their dams take the same form each year because the environmental envelope in which they exist is a architecture therefore is to capture the motive of its time limited one, they do not try to build dams where it is too hot or where there is no water so their dams need not change. Humans live within a large environmental envelope, they live in the deserts though the overcoming of alienation, to hold this fleeting and on glaciers so the forms they make are different; there is no organic norm. This I think is what differentiates us more than anything, our nomadic nature, we can live anywhere but we seem belong spirit prisoner so that it may be judged. How else can it be nowhere. 6. See Tim Ingold Being Alive for an insightful account of walking and the ground. that every object I see bears the indelible marks of its time? 7. American University of Masters Conference: Transcript of session one. (1973, March 19). AUM This is the reason for the perpetual style change, and indeed Conference. (www.lawsofform.org/aum/sessions1.html) 8. The Holy Bible, King James Edition. Genesis 1:2 every change. Change is always a self-reflective process of 9. Spencer-Brown. Laws of Form. xxii 10. Keys, James. (1972). Only Two Can Play This Game, Julian Press; First Edition. 126 (James Keys alias constant critical evaluation. A plant grows towards the light George Spencer-Brown) 11. Spencer-Brown. Laws of Form. 2 because it constantly watches itself, evaluating its ability to 12. Ibid photosynthesis as it fights to resist the formless collapse 13. Bateson, Gregory (2002) Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, Hampton Press. 96-97. Bateson was in fact a contemporary of Spencer-Brown and was familiar with his work and it is likely that he was that gravity threatens. A plant is the beautiful expression of consciously or unconsciously writing in reference to Laws of Form. 14. Spencer-Brown. Laws of Form. 63 (italics added by author) this conflict between the heaven and the earth. We too have 15. Though not explicitly said, it is hinted at in various stages during his 1973 conference series. See particularly the transcipt on 'Time and Space' Session One. (www.lawsofform.org/aum/sessions1. our battle, but the question is, what is the light that we are html) 16. Wigley, Mark. (1991). Prosthetic Theory: The Disciplining of Architecture, Assemblage, No. 15, pp. growing towards? 6-29, The MIT Press. 8 17. Goodbun, J.C. (2011). The Architecture of the Extended Mind:Towards a Critical Urban Ecology. PhD Westminster University. 197, Quoting William J Brazill. (Italics added by author) The problem of form is not yet settled. I still have not directly addressed the distinction that I drew in the first place by highlighting the opposition between Aristotle and Plato. Yes we have form, space and empathy set in perfect harmony but where does that metaphysical problem of universals sit within this? Is there universal form, and if so how can we know it? How do we account for the appearance of particular forms? What should the word ‘form’ be used to describe?

The answer lies in the link that we saw between ontology and epistemology. In the understanding that every distinction of epistemology, distinguishes an ontology simultaneously. We also have seen that the form of the distinction is identical to the form, so an ontology of being 56 57 Conclusion is necessarily all ontology of being. Thus, what is particular is always universal and what is universal is always particular. Plato and Aristotle are really just on opposite sides of a line orbiting infinity. Both are right but neither can cross the boundary for they would simply cease to exist. The circumference is a form, the form and ‘form’ - that is to say, the word ‘form’ always signifies a duality because we are a duality. Form means exactly what it means, any less and we limit ourselves to half of the story. Whenever we make an object it not only signifies an approach to that particular thing, but to all things. What we make defines our relationship to the world, which is the meaning of form. But still we may wonder, why is it that you and I can both recognise one form to be the same? Spencer-Brown has a brilliant answer to this:

‘Insofar as you and I see the same moon, we do so because it is an illusion that we are separate. We are the same being. the crystalline fossils it leaves behind the clue? Maybe this We only appear separate for the convenience of filling is the wrong question - I suspect that our insistence on space.’1 temporality is clouding our judgment, let form be taken outside of time (since it is not required by form) and we can Still maybe you feel in some-way cheated because every imagine forms omnidirectional structure in every iteration question seems to have led irreducibly to paradox built on as tick and tock stand side by side idly waiting. Then the recursion, served with an obligation to accept that one is force of form must be the universe searching itself, we think actually always three - that is unless it is nothing. Infuriating. there is change but this is only because we are at the tip of There is a reason that the big questions all end in paradox, the cosmic finger dragged across a blackboard. And when it is because they signify the end of something, the limit to it tires of mapping the blackboard what will happen? Well a particular form of knowledge. The worlds major religions nothing, absolute nothing. have been aware of this since the beginning, what is the Christian Bible but a series of paradoxes? Receiving through I must confess that I am not the first to coin the force of giving (Acts 20:35), strength through weakness (II Cor.12:10), form, I have stolen it, or rather confiscated it from the 19th freedom through servitude (Rom. 6:18). Man is paradoxical century art historian Heinrich Wolfflin, who once elegantly 58 59 by his very nature and until he confronts this he remains described ornament as “an expression of excessive force in the dark. Christianity too has known the necessity of the of form”2 working its way out of matter. Corinthian capitals trinity, for if God (self) was ever to know mankind (other - were for him literally bursting with the force that remained whom he had cut from heaven) he had to send his son Jesus after the column’s victory over gravity. This battle he said was (self-other relation) - both a particular man and God. The the “principal theme of architecture”3 - gravity versus form, answer is encrypted in religion but it does not require that with matter the medium. Though if this is the case, how do we be religious, this is why I appeal to mathematics because we explain the incredibly diverse morphology of forms? as Spencer-Brown points out it is a practical art-form Gravity is a constant so cannot be the source of change, that speaks to us through injunctions rather than though there has to be another factor to the equation. That factor description. It is not the description of heaven that leads us is of course people. We may decide that our architecture to its experience but the commandments or injunctions that is about the defiance of gravity but only for as long as we we follow. build above the ground. We can use the non-iconographic elements of architecture to express any abstract theme or Form is a force like any other. As spectral as light and as idea we please, though it is a mistake to think that we are pervasive as gravity it is inescapable, though its biggest ever fully conscious of this process. mystery must be the intent and purpose it serves. If it is the driving force of history then what is our trajectory? Are The principle theme of architecture could be to capture the spirit of its time, or to reify the zeitgeist if you like. But this presents a problem for architects because architecture is a lumbering, reluctant beast that will always lag behind the ineffable progress of the spirit. The architect then must be a time traveler, who not only projects himself into the world of objects, but beyond them. With the power of empathy he can see the future but always from the vantage point of the past. He both is, and is not the present - as he oscillates about its infinitesimal boundary, making - knowing, knowing - making...

But what of beauty? All architecture expresses an attitude or something we could call an idea, though this has nothing to do with true beauty. An idea always contains both the potential for beauty and ugliness. In the form of Albert 60 61 Speer’s architecture different societies at different times have seen either imperious beauty or abhorrent fascism. Every form has both an ethics a politics, that leave no room for absolute beauty - this must lie deeper still. What is absolute can only be what is simultaneously at the center of everything, the essence that allows you and I so see the same moon, the form of the form. Though to attempt to describe this absolute beauty in words could only ever result in vulgarity and abuse. Our only hope is to make a vessel that can take us there, to construct in objective form an architecture that even after it has been purged of its programme, savaged by people and by time, stands defiant: an immutable force of distinction waiting to take us into fig 15 A part of the foundations of the theatre of Marcellus. inner objective space. “What is remarkable about Piranesi’s engravings is that he worked on them rather in the way a painter works with canvas and paint, or a sculptor with chisel and stone...The objects depicted in 1. American University of Masters Conference: Transcript of session two. (1973, March 19). AUM Piranesi’s engravings are characterised by a feeling of vivid material presence, they look like textures Conference. (www.lawsofform.org/aum/sessions2.html) of tangible matter.” 2. Wolfflin, H. ‘Prolegnomena to a Psychology of Architecture’ in Mallgrave and Ikonomou (eds.) 1994. Empathy, Form and Space. 179 Watson, Victoria. (2012). 21 3. Ibid. Bibliography: Books and Printed Articles John Wiley & Sons

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Lakoff, George. Johnson, Mark (1981) Metaphors We Live By, University of Chicago Press Woodman, E. et al (2012) 2G N.63 Office Kersten Geers David Van Severen, Gustavo Gili; 1ª ed., 1ª imp. edition Lawson-Tancred, Hugh. (1987). De Anima, Penguin Classics Zaera Polo, A. The Politics of the Envelope: A Political Critique of Materialism Menges, Achim. (March 2012). Higher Integration in Morphogenetic Design Architectural Design, Bibliography: Online Media and Websites Appendix:

http://www.iep.utm.edu/kantaest/ http://www.mindstructures.com/2010/10/beauty-is-not-just-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aesthetics-18th-german/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/empathy/ http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/religion/blrel_theism_pan.htm http://cultureofempathy.com/References/History.htm http://www.patrikschumacher.com/Texts/Parametricism%20-%20A%20New%20Global%20Style%20for%20 Architecture%20and%20Urban%20Design.html http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/201107/does-my-dog-recognize-himself-in-mirror http://getwiki.net/-Laws_of_Form http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2095335/Underground-ant-city-Brazil-rivals-Great-Wall-China- labyrinth-highways.html http://www.markability.net/index.htm http://www.lawsofform.org/aum/index.html 64 65

Spencer-Brown, G. (2011). Laws of Form, Spencer-Brown Press. 57 Appendix: Appendix:

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Spencer-Brown, G. (2011). Laws of Form, Spencer-Brown Press. 58 Spencer-Brown, G. (2011). Laws of Form, Spencer-Brown Press. 59 Appendix: Appendix:

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Spencer-Brown, G. (2011). Laws of Form, Spencer-Brown Press. 60 Spencer-Brown, G. (2011). Laws of Form, Spencer-Brown Press. 61 Appendix: Appendix:

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Spencer-Brown, G. (2011). Laws of Form, Spencer-Brown Press. 62 Spencer-Brown, G. (2011). Laws of Form, Spencer-Brown Press. 63 Acknowledgements:

I am greatly in debt to Jon Goodbun and Victoria Watson - Particularly to Jon for his help and encouragement in taking on this subject matter. 72 73

Thanks also to Joe Kerr, Steve Field, Cathryn Ryall, Juan Oyarbide and Aïda. 74

2013 • RCA