97 Autonomy

97

5.11.11

The Autonomy of Architecture/ 'A Room with a View'  

The Autonomy of Architecture is the utter abandonment of all unnecessary decorative desires.  Autonomy comes from ‘autonomos' the Greek 17th Century word; 'to have its own laws'.  By this one means the very laws that come about from the reduction of designing-out unnecessary decoration.  The laws that govern 'making', the essence of architecture are far and few between, but it is the making of the interior that we are interested in: for that is the perspective we have from living in a building.  Therefore, it is the surface we ultimately are intrigued by in order to make the finished whole.  There is the word that describes 'making'.  The 'Whole'.  It is a holistic approach that makes 'making' so undefinably special.

The autonomy of Architecture can be described as simply 'having a roof over our heads'.  It is this act that we are ultimately interested in. Shelter. But it is the vista created by that roof that professes to give us destination.  And that destination takes us away from the here and now and sends us to a possibility in our minds of where we might be, where we could be, and ultimately where we should be.  Destination; looking out helps us to receive the credibility and self-assurance we entrust in the reflection of our vision.  Therefore, location is very important.  Therefore, the autonomy of our experience is governed by our view and hence our location.

Can Lis and Can Feliz, two houses in Mallorca, achieve this outcome very effectively; they are governed by their own simple tectonic and they create an undeniably valuable vista from the roof above, and by the walls and in some instances through the use of glass.  They are both houses, by Jan Utzon circa 1972 and 1994 respectively, famous for his Sydney Opera House.  It is this relative view that sites us some distance from the vanishing point of a perspective view that money cannot buy.  The views that frame our lives, from the ceiling first thing in the morning to the dimly lit garden at night help us to add narrative to our day.  However, without the space, light, flora and fauna of Mallorca we are struggling to gain much quality in that narrative.  In the everyday suburbia we rely on trees, plants, in some instances water, and an array of badly designed bulky window sashes.

Finally, we must learn to create our buildings with a vista in mind.  The autonomy of building stratifies the vista into: ground, view, ceiling, or roof.  And it is our reflection we are embracing in that view.  Therefore, if it is not inspiring enough, delicate or exacting then it may not be the end result you hoped to obtain.  Everything in that view must embellish and ameliorate our experience in order to give a thousand ends to an otherwise unknown destiny, and so the view depicts where we might be and where we might end up; in an hour's time, by tomorrow or next year.