Utzon - The Essence of Architecture
What is the essence of architecture? This question will be the topic of the second part in this little series about Danish architect J?rn Utzon’s work philosophies. It is quite the question but being one of the biggest architects in the world the late J?rn Utzon should be able to give a good answer.
For Utzon, the essence became a perception and understanding of one's surroundings. As he said,
“We relate everything around us to ourselves. Our surroundings affect us by their size, light, shadow, colour, etc. How we feel depends very much on whether we are in the city or in the country, in big spaces or in small ones.”
At first, our reactions to the surroundings are unconscious. But we should strive for turning these unconscious reactions into a consciousness. We learn about the essence of architecture when we train decipher and capture these differences and how they influence us. This also requires an awareness of how the solutions and the details are dependent on the time in which they are created.
Experimenting with materials
To become a true master at something, the well-known “10.000 hours” often comes to mind. For J?rn Utzon, it is also v
ery important to master the means of expression as an architect. “He must practice like the musician does, experiment with masses, with rhythmic forms made up of masses grouped together, combinations of colour, light, and shadow, etc. He must use his senses intensely and by all this train his ability to create new forms.”
Utzon also mentions the importance of an intimate knowledge of the materials. “He must become one with his materials and be able to form and use them in harmony with their nature. When he understands the nature of a material, then its potentials are much more real to him than by means of mathematical formulas and arts. For the architect, mathematics is a means to ascertain that his assumptions were true.”
Creating harmony
An architect must be able to create a harmony out of all the demands that are raised in connection with a project. J?rn Utzon talks about nature which possesses “the ability make all these demands melt together and form a novel entity”. “Compromises are not known in nature; all difficulties are accepted, not as difficulties but just as new factors which, without conflict, grow to a unified whole.”
“An urge for comfort must be the basis for all architecture if a harmony shall be achieved between the spaces that are made and the activities that will take place in them.”
One can use the human body as a measuring point instead of basing architecture on statistical norms and rules formed on the principle of averages. “This is the road to a varied and human architecture.”
We conclude this second piece with Utzon's description of a proper architect, "the architect must possess the ability to give his imagination free rein, this ability that is sometimes called creativity, sometimes daydreaming.”
Want to learn more about Utzon's understanding of the essence of architecture visit www.utzonphotos.com. Have you read the article about platforms and plateaus or about the additive principle?