Experiencing Architecture

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How should we look at buildings? Are they objects, a collection of materials joined together? Are they spaces, environments which their form carves out from space? Are they manifestations of social and cultural power structures indivisible from those cultures from which they come? Of course they are all these things but also these are only partial descriptions. These new conditions made possible a much more complicated music than could ever have been enjoyed in the early church. Bach’s fugues, with their many contrapuntal harmonies, which would be lost in vast basilicas, could be successfully performed in St. Thomas’s, just as the pure voices of the famous St. Thomas boys’ choir receive full justice there. Reading Rasmussen's view of how light influences our perception of buildings and interiors, it is clear that too few architects now control natural light with sufficient subtlety.

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Hope Bagenal figures the present reverberation at 2½ seconds as compared to from 6 to 8 seconds in the medieval church. The absence of a “note” or region of response in the church made it possible for Bach to write his works in a variety of keys. A stone cold classic with a small but almost fatal flaw and every Architect should read it but with that caveat. Further Reading:

There is also a way to understand buildings from their lived experience, how we actually perceive them from living in and around them, the total of their experiential effect on us. It has come to be known as architectural phenomenology and this book is an introduction of this way of thinking about buildings.

Experiencing Architecture by Steen Eiler Rasmussen | Goodreads

I rather enjoyed the chapter on light, and materiality, texture, hearing architecture, the last chapter was quite sweet as the conclusion which was less so strict in judgments on architecture and design. There is defended an origin story about Swedish red that it became associated with grander houses but the truth might at least be partly more mundane - it is a waste product of an early industrial process. (Think Falu red) and sermons could be very long at the end of the eighteenthcentury—they could close the windows in their pews and shut outall sound. This type of church was by no means unusual at thetime. In Copenhagen alone four churches of similar typeappeared during this period.Traditional system in Dutch Housing of 4 wooden shutters which allow you to variate and control the light developed a lot further than other European contemporary countries.