Małgorzata Mizia architektura twarzą kultury Kraków 2020 ISBN 976-83-66531-44-4 1 PRZEWODNICZĄCY KOLEGIUM REDAKCYJNEGO WYDAWNICTW NAUKOWYCH Jacek Pietraszek REDAKTOR SERII Mateusz Gyurkovich REDAKTOR PROWADZĄCY Anna Agata Kantarek RECENZENCI Klaudiusz Fross Marek Pabich SEKRETARZ SEKCJI Marta Wlazło OPRACOWANIE REDAKCYJNE Ilona Turowska SKŁAD, ŁAMANIE Małgorzata Murat-Drożyńska PROJEKT OKŁADKI Małgorzata Mizia Obraz na okładce: Małgorzata Mizia, Implosive, 2016 oil/canvas 60×70 orcid.org/ 0000-0002-1417-3805 © Copyright by Politechnika Krakowska ISBN 978-83-66531-44-4 Wydawnictwo PK, ul. Skarżyńskiego 1, 31-866 Kraków; tel. 12 628 37 25, fax 12 628 37 60 e-mail: [email protected] www.wydawnictwo.pk.edu.pl Adres do korespondencji: ul. Warszawska 24, 31-155 Kraków Druk i oprawę wykonano w Dziale Poligrafii Politechniki Krakowskiej. Ark. wyd. 10,0 Zam. 113/2020 Nakład 100 egz. 2 Małgorzata Mizia The Architectural Face of Culture (original title: architektura twarzą kultury) Translation: Krzysztof Barnaś Proofreading: Piotr Mizia 3 Preface This text intentionally has the form of an essay, for its content concerns matters that go beyond universal and specialist research methods. It encompasses the digital records of technical devices and digital software and paintings by Rembrandt or the record-breaking achievements of the Paralympics, or a cosmic black hole. The subject discussed here concerns problems customarily qualified as belonging to scientific, technical issues, which concern measurable problems and phenomena. However, it also refers to essential problems of man, who is the model and subject of humanist explorations. Architecture pertains to the art of building and shaping space, and therefore its very name indicates discrepancies and oppositions, for the pendulum that swings towards the most technical measure, that is construction, swings equally far towards aestheticization, artistry and art, while also dealing with such indefinable matter as space can only present. Designers need standards and models. Architects are expected to possess knowledge, vision, creative innovation, and responsibility. Consistency, drive, but also righteousness, tact and sensitivity, combined with talent and ethical conduct, are strengths and assets that cannot be applied in a measurable manner. This range of values is best presented in a comparative analysis of phenomena that revolve around architecture. 4 A word of introduction The essence of architecture is building. Its goal is to bring into existence a construct, appropriate to the comfortable safeguarding of man. The essence of art is to touch the deepest reaches of feeling, to stimulate thoughts and emotions. The essence of culture is to maintain balance. It is not difficult to see the unity that connects these spheres, both human presence/being and psyche, which condition the existence of human life. The human body uses sensors to establish cognitive experience and direct psychological needs to in pursuit of joy and pleasure—that is the place for culture, art and architecture. And insofar as the first two (culture and art) concern the sphere of spirituality, architecture likewise stands firmly grounded in these concepts. Architecture is tied with art by ideational and technical bounds that are as strong as its tangibility is associated with construction technology. All human actions are linked with culture, for the dimension of man’s survival depends on respecting its precepts. Art as a free thought, bound by nothing save for the imagined possibilities of its recordation, is ahead of all other forms of creation. The more material in its form a branch of art is (painting, sculpture), the closer it is to architectural art (in conceptual work). Materialising a concept in the form of a bronze cast or a structure is already a work with an engineering dimension. However, it is not possible to delineate a clear-cut border that separates the two scopes. Undoubtedly, artistic fleetingness, which guarantees a boundless freedom of movement, shall always remain ahead of the increasingly measurable and demanding scopes of this movement, culminating with the total stability of architecture. However, both architecture and culture require cooperation with art—as the vanguard of all creative measures—and depend on it entirely in their shape and everything that is attached to them in the spheres of reception, reaction and human behaviour. 5 In the first phase of formulating an architectural proposal, both architecture and art demonstrate parallel creative efforts. They diverge only in the phase of the concept’s materialisation: first in recording the proposal, then in preparations for execution and the execution itself. To be precise, one should define the scope, level of complexity and cost of this process (including the size and profile of the teams of people who engage in it) as dependant on the project scale, since large artistic projects can equal or even supersede the buildings and groups thereof in scale. The artistic dimension of a work, namely good quality, introduced into a multi- dimensional value, the ultimately positive undertone of a work concerns all artistic endeavours as an overarching goal. Culture is the product of civilisation. The level of development of each discipline, and the dominance in the development of the humanities or engineering, economy and politics, define its shape and hierarchy of values. However, it is culture that always maintains the status quo within a community. Yet it is architecture that is the most visible mark, the symbol of every consecutive epoch, an all-visible sign of its time, since it is size that is seen as its immanent characteristic—an observable, identifiable and image-forming shape of the culture of every period. This is what this book discusses. 6 Introduction ‘I think that one of the motivations for my essays was a feeling of inconsistency between the considerable limits of the significance and reach of my professional work and my continual striving to make philosophy an important matter in my life and my outlook on the world. Most probably, one of the reasons why I have gradually limited this work was that this gap in my philosophical personality […] began to narrow’.1 Georg Henrik von Wright The author of this quote, the Belgian humanist philosopher G.H. von Wright who is considered to be the successor of Ludwig Wittgenstein, has been cited here due to his interdisciplinary pursuit of humanist values, which also underscore an analogous original argument in this text concerning the message of architecture as art, one that is comparable and equal to that of the humanities. Apart from its obvious classification as an autonomous branch of science, philosophy organises knowledge; it constitutes the structure of everyday knowledge. However, in fact philosophy is not a science—it is knowledge and a language of interdisciplinary concordance. In turn, a humanist, from a broad perspective—searches for truth about life, in its holistic view outside of religion and politics. Humanism concerns the essence of man, right to the boundaries of transhumanism, yet excluding anthropomorphism (angels, beasts, artificial intelligence). Similarly to art, an academic essay, a philosophical critical outline, while being a type of manifesto, is an autonomous formal method of popularising one’s views, also for polemic reasons. Even if this book goes beyond the scholarly comfort accepted in technical disciplines, it is the fact of using a more affective perception of reality that should bestow more refreshing characteristics upon research methodologies. In the visual assessment of architecture— similarly to other arts—it is the completeness of sensual experience that brings the fullest intellectual satisfaction. Thus, the architect’s research toolkit should be extended to include the assets of empathy. 1 Georg Henrik von Wright, quote in: Jürgen Habermas Od wrażenia zmysłowego do symbolicznego wyrazu, transl. Krystyna Krzemieniowa, wyd. Oficyna Naukowa, Warszawa 2004, ISBN 83-88164-81-3, 160 pages, from a laudatio for the quote’s author – p.52. 7 Contents Preface ................................................................................................................................... 4 A word of introduction ............................................................................................................. 5 Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 7 PART I: ARCHITECTURE IN THE SPACE OF CULTURE .................................................... 9 1. Architecture as the face of culture .............................................................................. 10 2. The face of architecture ............................................................................................. 13 3. The image of architecture .......................................................................................... 14 4. Architecture and culture ............................................................................................. 15 5. Searching for beauty .................................................................................................. 17 6. The Skłudzewo phenomenon ..................................................................................... 18 7. Artistry of perception .................................................................................................. 21 8. The case of Barlinek .................................................................................................