Reader Botin, L. Carter, A. Crowson, N. Palasmma, J, Roberts, J. Tyrrell, R. & other contributors. Published by: Jørn Utzon Research Network Funded by: Jørn Utzon Research Network Supported by: Portsmouth School of Architecture, UK & Aalborg University, Denamrk Photography by: Roger Tyrrell, Simon Batcheler, Nicola Crowson & Adrian Carter Cover image by: Created by Nicola Crowson from and photograph by Roger Tyrrell Copyright © 2012 Jørn Utzon Research Network.. All rights reserved. No images may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or media including photocopying without prior permission from the authors. www.utzonresearchnetwork.org A copy of this book is available from the British Library in London and the University Library in Portsmouth. ISBN 978 1 86137 629 9 FREE TO REGISTERED JURN MEMBERS Thanks to the following partners for their support, contribution and friendship: Dwelling, Landscape, Place & Making. Jørn Utzon Research Network Reader Contributions from: Juhani Pallasmaa John Roberts Adrian Carter Roger Tyrrell Dr Lars Botin Nicola Crowson Mathew Hindes Poppy Taylor Created for those attending the Inaugural JURN Workshop and the Third Utzon Symposium held in Morocco in April 2012. Shadows , Ben Youssef Medersa by S . Batcheler 2012 FOREWORD Welcome to the inaugural Jørn Utzon Research Network (JURN) Spring Workshop and the Third International Utzon Symposium; a tri-partite collaboration between the Utzon Research Center (Aalborg Denmark), l’Ecole Nationale d’Architecture of Rabat, Morocco and JURN. Jørn Utzon, the architect of the world renowned Sydney Opera House, is considered to be of unique international significance as an exemplar of a tectonic and humane modern architecture that is grounded in place, culture, community and that is, in the fullest sense of the term, sustainable. His particular design methodology holds significant potential to inform contemporary theory and practice. The aim of JURN is to instigate and develop a network of corresponding scholars, practitioners and students in diverse geographical locations that either Utzon drew inspiration from, or made projects in. The objective is to develop a range of research questions that will inform and underpin future research projects relating to Utzon’s archive and oeuvre. Utzon designed projects across the international stage; Denmark, Australia, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Morocco, Kuwait, Spain and the UK, provided locations through which his paradigm developed. These diverse locations are represented within the ambitions and structure of JURN. The Third International Symposium will provide a forum for discussion of Utzon’s paradigm led by academics and practitioners providing a diverse perspective of the oeuvre. The inaugural JURN Workshop will provide participants with the opportunity to test Utzon’s approach to making place within the rich and complex cultural and physical context of Morocco, from which Utzon drew significant inspiration. The outputs from each event will be published as a contribution to the understanding of Utzon’s work and the potential held by such understanding of potential influence upon contemporary architectural discourse. Adrian Carter Roger Tyrrell Co-Director Jørn Utzon Co-Director Jørn Utzon Research Network Research Network Central Pool , Ben Youssef Medersa by A. Carter 2012 INTRODUCTION This ‘Reader’ is designed to inform and provide a sense of expectation and anticipation for those attending the Inaugural JURN Workshop and the Third Utzon Symposium held in Morocco in April 2012. Within, are tastes of what is to come; a series of abstracts of Symposium contributions focused upon the theme of ‘Dwelling, Landscape, Place and Making’. These texts will be interspersed with readings of Morocco by others; writers, artists, photographers. The material combines to provide an insight of another world that inspired Utzon and resonated strongly within his work. The Reader represents a ‘drawing’ from and of Morocco, in the sense (as Richard Leplastrier describes) of drawing from a well or indeed any other source. In many ways Morocco still represents a source of all that sits at the core of Architecture. After the event, the Reader will be developed further using transcripts of Symposium contributions and process and outputs from the Workshop participants. This will provide not only a coherent record of the events, but also exemplars of architectural responses to that unique source. LANDSCAPE Ait Benhaddou : A Carter : 2011 THRILLS, VIEWS AND SHELTER: LANDSCAPE AESTHETICS IN UTZON’S ARCHITECTURE John Roberts University of Newcastle NSW Consider, if possible, three of Jørn Utzon’s buildings: the monumental Sydney Opera House, and his two Majorca houses, Can Lis and the later Can Feliz. Richard Weston calls the 1971 Can Lis house ‘one of the finest houses built in the twentieth century’, while observing in the ‘breathtaking’ 1992 Can Feliz house a ‘unique, almost religious, intensity’. The considerable repute of the Sydney Opera House is well established. An investigation of a few aspects of these buildings might help explain something of their high renown. In his 2003 Pritzker Laureate essay on Jørn Utzon, Kenneth Frampton observes the ‘irreducible grounding’ of Utzon’s architecture ‘in the opposition of earthwork versus roofwork’, and cites Aldo van Eyck’s interest in ‘the unchanging condition of man’. Thus we can infer in Utzon’s work central questions of human accommodation, involving a triad of humankind, earth and sky. This ‘grounding’ might be a question of landscape as much as architecture, of negotiating ‘the ground plane of everyday life’, as Brit Andresen puts it in her 2003 essay ‘Ancient Gathering Forms’; it may also be part of a universal human problem, of shelter, survival, and symbolism or significance, faced by many cultures across many millennia. Frampton observes that Utzon ‘would challenge the assumed superiority of Eurocentric culture’; it could also be said, complementarily, that aspects of Utzon’s work challenge an assumed superiority of culture over nature, at least in architecture. This paper investigates aspects of Utzon’s buildings in Sydney and Majorca, and considers the significance of landscape-symbolic elements in his work. In The Experience of Landscape (1975) geographer Jay Appleton proposed his ‘prospect-refuge theory’ as a part answer to his own question, ‘what is it that we like about landscape, and why do we like it?’ Prospect-refuge theory has a diverse parentage, including geography, landscape painting, art history, literature, landscape architecture, landscape aesthetics, evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology. Prospect-refuge theory has been acknowledged and used in architecture to consider architectural aesthetics in landscape terms, in particular Grant Hildebrand, in The Wright Space (1991) used prospect-refuge theory to comment on the aesthetic appeal of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses. Wright’s enduring popular appeal is partly due, Hildebrand argues, to architectural elements symbolizing landscape features which once had survival value for archaic Homo sapiens: our ancestors made decisions, when choosing places to camp or raise families, and while hunting (and being hunted), which influenced where they lived, whether they ate, and how they survived against ‘hostile conspecifics’. Hildebrand uses Appleton’s theories to argue that the basis of architectural appeal in landscape is emotional, instinctual, heritable, and ultimately biological: the survival- related responses of early human ancestors to natural environments underpin how contemporary architectural elements can be perceived and evaluated as landscape South of the Atlas Mountains : A Carter: 2011 elements – good, beautiful, and beneficial, or menacing, frightening and dangerous. Early in his life Utzon, a hunter like his mentor Alvar Aalto, observed landform and vegetation, and the effects of winds, clouds and light on animals and people. These landscape insights guided Utzon’s creative decisions throughout his life, framing a larger sense of how fellow humans might respond to his architecture – itself formed of elements gathered across cultures and times. Appleton’s thinking on landscape aesthetics offers concepts and terms to open a landscape-based discussion as to why people like Utzon’s architecture. Appleton’s thinking includes his prospect-refuge theory – balancing (real and apparent) security and enclosure with (real and apparent) views and access – and his broader ‘habitat theory’ of aesthetics of site and setting. Appleton also proposed ‘hazard symbolism’, the thrilling sensation of being close to, but safe from, physical danger – cliffs and cliff edges, wild water or weather, animate danger, exposure to heat or cold – which people enjoy in both natural and built conditions, including exposed open spaces, steep walls, and high ledges and platforms. Appleton wrote in The Experience of Landscape: ‘Exposure to the hazard is matched by perception of the hazard and followed by refuge from it’, indicating the mix of action, perception and reaction to landscape implicit in his theoretical formations. Utzon’s Sydney Opera House seems to exhibit strong and significant quantities of hazard symbolism in its open outdoor terraces, its steep, shining roofs, and its precipitous artificial headland. By contrast, his Majorca houses, on their separate sites, balance symbolism of prospect – elevated platforms, terraces, viewing windows, and finely tuned relationships with ground, horizon and sky – with that