Architecturally incorrect ?

Upside down house - Teferns, Austria

If it’s true that every architecture is to address a functional, esthetic, representative function - and hopefully a mix of them all – and if it’s true as well that those who make use of it are people – and not the designers that much – it has a fundamental importance their judgment, from minds to word of mouth, which rebounds on the piece of architecture. It seems quite fair though, if we admit that designing is a real job! There has to be a dealing with the real design results in terms of more or less approvals. Nevertheless, I believe it is a designer’s job always adding a fair amount of innovation as it can benefit both the experience and the usability of every building work. 

How then does the architectural innovation meet and clashe with the public judgment and how is it more or less understood by people ? How do we react to the unusual made up of new spaces, technologies and materials? 

In a provocative way, I want to take as example the “Upside down house” designed by the two polish architects Irek Glowacki and Marek Rozhansk, that surely has a provocative appearance. Located in Teferns Austria, this tourist attraction makes you experiment a small upside down world. Both from the outside and the inside, the house is backwards: it seems it’s just fallen from above, it stands on the roof, ceilings are floors and all the furnishings firmly anchored in the air. As absurd as fun, the Upside down house surely makes its job of attracting visitors! I wanted to take this design as a “literally” provocation of subversion, more outer subversion than conceptual one, given that this house is clearly neither usable as a real house at all nor it is never intended to be. Though there are some other real examples of architectures which indeed show both a provocative appearance and concept. 

Upside down house, interiors - Teferns, Austria

There is no doubt this is a worthwhile topic which deserves a careful development and obviously I don’t claim to sum it up in few rows of writing. My choice is just to pick three famous architectures which, in my opinion, are example of quite a daring design, not to mention their innovative capacity and their level of acceptance by the public. 

I would like to chose three examples belonging to clearly different ages: 

1. Gothic Architecture: the Reims Cathedral (1211 – 1475) probably by Jean d’Orbais and Jean le Loup; 

2. Modern Architecture: the Rochamp Chapelle (1950) by Le Corbusier; 

3. Contemporary architecture: Jewish Museum of Berlin (2001) by Daniel Libeskind. 

Lights, colors, ornaments and verticality to rise towards the afterlife. For us today, even though it does appear massive and majestic, it is not difficult to understand the pursuit of lightness thus the extraordinary innovation that the Reims Cathedral and yet the gothic style itself were bringing among the western architecture of that time and to the previous one as well. Abolition of the frontality – so typical of romanic churches – for the benefit of a three dimensional lightened and diaphanous structure, soaring lines which apparently challenge the gravity force, diagonals which innervate new spaces stretched up to the sky whose light becomes soft while passing through the colorful glazing shining in the dark. Example of mature gothic style, the Reims Cathedral meant the pick of a new way of designing religious building: from the box spaces of archaic architecture and the additive ones of romanic architecture, we thereby get to a quite articulate system in which strength guidelines and force joints make up vaults. 

Notre-Dame de Reims -  interiors

Notre-Dame de Reims - exterior main  façade

Many things had happened up until the 50s years of the XX century that lead us to the second example that I want to introduce, again a church (first coincidence) in particular the chapel dedicated to Notre-Dame du Haut upon the hill of Bourlémont in Ronchamp, again in France (second coincidence). Between the Middle ages and 1950, the importance given to religious architectures had been significantly decreased, the Churched had stop being the major client and building design had mostly oriented to the civil sector. Therefore, if gothic by and large had produced churches, the Modern Movement – which one of the representative is Le Corbusier – surely tried a wider range type of architectures. Besides that, I believe the Rochamp Chapel is still a fascinating example of modern religious architecture and of making use of the most experimented material by that time, reinforced concrete, is an emotional way, to emphasize sacredness and mystery. It was consecrated in 1955 and it stands upon a former church site which had been heavily damaged during the Second World War and Le Corbusier has been asked to rebuild it. The chapel itself can reasonably be defined as an object, given that it looks like a sculpture form the outside indeed, in fact its plasticity is not a surprise considering how vary is Le Corbusier’s professional background as architect, urban planner, designer and painter. It is a building that have been surprising, even negatively, visitors and criticism, yet it does surprise now for its apparently provocative sacredness. If we think of a church, its appearance is way more than unusual: from the outside it looks compact and impenetrable, its floor plan is squared but its walls are concave and convex, its openings are randomly placed just like slits of a massive wall cage and that black concrete sail roofing, resembling a nail in shape, actually lets a blade of light pass inside, whereas outside it seems it releases its weight on the walls. Light effects are unpredictable, evocative, enhanced by the roughness of white and dirty grey concrete, thus the light and shades model the interiors. The nearby space is sacred too, as we find another altar outside and generally the Chapel itself, so organic and sculptured, inspires a sense of mysticism to the surrounding area too.

Notre-Dame du Haut, Rochamp

Notre-Dame du Haut, Rochamp - interiors

The emotional component turns into dramatic in the design for the Jewish Museum of Berlin, by Daniel Libeskind, opened in 2001. It have defined new criteria for museum design as it is shaped out not uniquely to exhibit items, but in order to meditate, to participate, to follow an emotional path. As a matter of fact, the design for this museum based upon what it has to tells people, namely the two thousand years of Jewish history in Germany: the entry is intentionally made arduous and indirect, in order to evocate a sense of challenge and difficulty that sticks with Jewish history; the cellar leads to three axes – the Holocaust axes, the Exile axes and the Continuity axes – which symbolize Jewish people destinies; certain rooms, whether silenced or noisy resounding, are just to communicate shock, alienation, discomfort; from the top view, the museum resembles a lightning, symbol that comes back again on the façade with such a remarkable meaning, as if those signs are wounds, gashes. The exhibition path wants to be an emotional path indeed, as long as I’m concerned it definitively makes is job. 

Jewish museum of Berlin

Jewish museum of Berlin - top view

Jewish museum of Berlin - interior space

In summary, I think that those three architectures have provoked more than one critic and put upside down more than one design concept. Personally, I think that the judgment everyone has while visiting an architecture mostly depends on how that architecture manages to convey its innovation, its solution to problems/needs it has been designed for, and the way it represents an improvement regarding both the previous conditions as well as similar other cases. Probably, having the chance to know the leading reasons to a specific design would help understanding it correctly, but as the majority of people who will be using it are not trained designers but general people (fortunately, I say!) all in all, every judgment is legitimate because is subjective. Those who see the Rochamp Chapel and say “that cannot be a church, at all!” or those who define it “such an amazing church!” are expressing contrasting opinions that are equally worthy and useful to develop next, upcoming designs.