Water, light, wind and gravity are key elements in the story of architecture. But how often do we even notice them, how often do we think about them when designing? Do we protect ourselves from them, or do we invite them into the structures we create? We are invited to a sensual experience and observation of ephemeral phenomena by Malgorzata Kuciewicz and Simone De Iacobis of the Centrala Design Group. It is worth taking this journey, instead of isolating ourselves from what surrounds us try to feel what is cyclical: the rhythms of day and night, seasons, atmospheric and astronomical phenomena in order to practice mindfulness and consciously inhabit the world. Immersion in the landscape will be helped by free workbooks: Water, Light, Wind and Gravity.
The exercise books consist of four parts: Water, Light, Wind and Gravity
© Foundation Bęc Zmiana
Ola Kloc: In the four exercise books (Water, Gravity, Wind, Light) you encourage observation of ephemeral phenomena, experimentation and attentiveness - is this an important point in architectural education?
Malgorzata Kuciewicz: We try to talk about certain emotions that affect us, not only by conducting our own architectural practice, but mainly during workshop meetings, primarily with people from the Kharkiv School of Architecture - these are also very formative experiences for us. This cultivation of a sense of awe, which we mention a few times in the notebooks, and the celebration of attentive embedding in the elements, is for us a recipe for not giving in to frowning, for abiding in appreciation of the power of architecture.
Simone De Iacobis: We agree with Juhani Pallasma, who says that architecture is not a noun, but a verb. It is not static, it models flows, so it is always in motion and all these elements - water, light, gravity, wind - work with it. Architecture is all the time in relationship with the forces of nature, understanding this is crucial in architectural education. When you design anything, from a piece of furniture to a building, it should always be created in dialogue with the forces of nature.
Ola Kloc: You mentioned Pallasma's words, and you also write that "architecture is a verb, and the elements and natural phenomena are its components". Tomasz Konior recently said a similar thing to me, according to whom good architecture is a place that can be defined precisely by verbs. What do you mean by that?
Malgorzata Kuciewicz: We were shaped by the experience of the Szumin space, the home of Oskar and Zofia Hansen. For them, architecture was a frame for the phenomenon of life, its materiality was less important than the place it framed. Architecture is not the shell itself, but the place, as Tomasz Konior mentions, the acoustic or microclimatic bubble created in its interspace. Therefore, looking at the airflows or the diurnal change of temperatures in such a place surrounded by building materiality, one reads it through verbs, imagining planetary metabolism, eternal change, relation to other forms of life or duration.
Ola Kloc: Does the shell in the face of this not matter?
Malgorzata Kuciewicz: It does matter when it comes to building relationships with broader phenomena. For years we have been advocating for an architecture that embeds us in phenomena. We even have a slogan that its scale is not signified by the size of the object, but by the breadth of the phenomena it embeds us in. It's how this shell can frame, amplify, tunnel our attention. It can be responsive to change and the elements, it can overgrow, reveal helioplasty, it can be a mechanostructure that responds to solar heating. It can negotiate our participation in broader registers. And this is the kind of architecture we like. On the other hand, the one that operates with the notion of separation, separation, control - we don't like.
The notebooks are the result of workshops conducted at the Kharkiv School of Architecture
© Foundation Bęc Zmiana
Ola Kloc: Is this perception of architecture starting to become more popular in Poland?
Simone De Iacobis: I see in the consciousness or sensibility of different studios thinking about the materiality of architectural shells, understanding the metabolism of materials. The need to transform, to revitalize existing buildings, to open up to bioactivity, and this is important. We need to evaluate what we have, where the materials come from, what their sustainability is. I see this kind of thinking in the architectural debate, and it makes me very happy.
Malgorzata Kuciewicz: If we think about natural materials as building blocks of architecture, we don't think only in pragmatic terms, such as carbon footprint, but whether such architecture allows us to enjoy the senses - we notice its haptics, its effect on air circulation, humidity, acoustics or smell. We notice the variation in terms of thermal properties, thermal efficiency allowing the architecture to tune differently with the diurnal cycle of the environment.
Simone De Iacobis: I don't see this kind of thinking yet in the architectural community, analyzing the coupling of the shell with the human story, the sensory experience.
Malgorzata Kuciewicz: There are still three generations ahead of us - everyone slept on mattresses, for thousands of years! People who are making pillows from different grains today are just invoking centuries-old traditions.
Ola Kloc: I love sleeping on emmer!
Malgorzata Kuciewicz: If I hadn't been presented with such a pillow, I wouldn't know what I'm missing by sleeping on a responsive sponge. Most of us grew up with architecture made of artificial, synthetic materials, so we don't know how our bodies resonate with the truly natural matter of architecture, such as old wooden logs or stone blows. I decided to myself that next summer I would sleep in a cave of some sort to see what it was like. When analyzing issues of gravity and stereotomy, we talked about the fact that we have coded some ancient usages of sleeping in undefined spaces, but I don't know that, because I've always slept in boxes.
Simone De Iacobis: It's also worth trying very simple things, such as standing barefoot on the ground, on stones. The contact of our skin with stone, with wood, with straw is very important for well-being.
Ola Kloc: Is this what you mean when you write that: "Architecture, which usually protects us from atmospheric phenomena, can also open us to experience them more fully"?
Malgorzata Kuciewicz: Yes. We're not just talking about, for example, turning off the apparatus that artificially controls the microclimate inside the building and opening a window, taking in the air after the rain. We are also talking about seeing a new luxury in architecture that requires certain rituals. It is a luxury to be able to dress our space seasonally, just as we dress ourselves seasonally. You can have one carpet, but you can also have a carpet for each of the twelve seasons. And that is the new luxury! You have to unroll that carpet, roll it up, shuffle it around, but for certain people this kind of celebration of the seasons is very regenerative.
Ola Kloc: As in "House Clothed"?
Malgorzata Kuciewicz: After "House Clothed" we know that no new things are needed for this. You can pull out from the closet some textiles that used to function in a particular family, and now they have been displaced by some automation. Sometimes it's nice to be able to just think about these nuances and enjoy the rituals. It is a matter of consciously immersing oneself in the processes. Going out into the city, into the countryside, is part of the process of calibrating the architectural sense, of observing how everything is in perpetual motion. Seemingly we all know these natural laws, but then when we want to turn them into design tools and weave them into our spatial proposal, it turns out that these elements somehow elude us. That things are not quite as we assumed, that wind blows differently and water flows differently.
The free exercise books are available in hard copy and online
© Bęc Zmiana Foundation
Ola Kloc: How do you train or calibrate these senses to consciously design and invite nature into architecture?
Malgorzata Kuciewicz: To experience as many such spaces as possible, projects in which these aspects are coupled. Simone during the holidays, for example, was in the garden of Villa Lante, where in the 16th century, without electricity or electric pumps , water systems were designed by gravity to create pleasant microclimates. This kind of experience is something you carry with you later. For me, such experiences were the spaces created by César Manrique on the island of Lanzarote. This is architecture that does not look, it is hollowed out, they are mainly cavities and caves. My body, however, remembers these microclimates, these dewy curtains through which one walks, where overhead hang plants that create spray with their root system, underground balconies that are exposed to the ocean waves - standing on a stone balcony, one is constantly in a plume of water. These experiences blossomed in me. Sitting in the Pantheon, too, one can stare endlessly at the sunspot that moves across the walls.
Simone De Iacobis: It is worthwhile to experience architecture that is embedded in its ecosystem and landscape, such as a wooden hut in the mountains, or a stone and limestone Greek house. These are two very different experiences - in the first you feel the presence of snow and mountains, the proximity of the forest, the smell of the trees, and in the second you feel the sea air, the humidity and the microclimate that this architecture creates or - in the contact of its shell with the environment - amplifies this experience. These are sensitizing relationships.
Malgorzata Kuciewicz: What things did you find intriguing about the notebooks?
Ola Kloc: The notebooks first of all encouraged me to observe ephemeral phenomena that I hadn't paid much attention to before, like walking in accordance with the direction of the wind blowing. I also jotted down some sentences that were both obvious and extremely revealing to me, such as: "Soil is a space, not a plane."
Malgorzata Kuciewicz: We had been collecting these reflections for some time, but the moment when we realized that soil is a space and air is a mass to be shaped was revealing. I myself only last year saw what was under the surface of the water. We had always said that the Vistula was not a line on a map, that all the wetlands around it and soaking areas belonged to it. Then it occurred to us that it was also the water cycle in the air, that we had to think about the whole river ecosystem three-dimensionally, noticing the air mass and underground water as well.
Simone De Iacobis: The river is an infinite organism.
Malgorzata Kuciewicz: Just as the soil is not a plane, the same is true of the surface of a gliding river. The formation of the bottom makes it not a uniformly moving mass of water, but streams that weave differently, have different speeds. Experiencing them, you can learn about the nine types of currents, enjoy the diversity of water space.
Ola Kloc: Who would you like the workbooks to go to, and how would you like them to be worked with?
Malgorzata Kuciewicz: We have included in them our identifications, experiences from various meetings with student people, but I know that the workbooks resonate with younger people as well. For people who haven't yet acquired a project routine, these things may be more natural and obvious, because they are, for example, after the experience of forest school, scouting or sightseeing field games. We don't have a specific target group - we target people who would like to seek inspiration for themselves and their creative path in partnership with natural phenomena. This is our proposal for how architecture can be practiced - you don't necessarily have to design new things, but to transform flows, amplify environmental signals or nurture something on a micro-scale knowing that these relationships are not a matter of one pot, for example, but have much broader repercussions.
Simone De Iacobis: Recently we were at an architectural workshop related to the reconstruction of Ukraine, we met there with many international tutors, well-known architects....
Malgorzata Kuciewicz: ... they were tearing out the notebooks! [Laughs]
Simone De Iacobis: Some just happened to be doing some research or projects with students related to water, so they wanted to take notebooks about water. They don't have to work as a package, everyone can choose one theme, an element that resonates with them.
Ola Kloc: After all, each of us can study the geometry of soap bubbles! Thank you very much for the interview.
interviewed: Ola Kloc
You can download the workbooks for free here: Workbooks: Designing with the Elements
