On the Instability of Objects in the Sacred-Profane Spectrum

A cartoon depiction of the god Thoth

“Blasphemy does not out survive religion. If one is in doubt, try blaspheme against Odin”
Throughout history, gods, objects, or even animals have shifted along the range of the sacred-profane spectrum. But first of all, what is profanity? Profanity is the act of taking away God, and changing perception, thereof, and putting objects or figures to man’s common use. However, it is notable that such status is extremely contingent as, have said by an anonymous author “The god of one religion is a joke to another”.



Take the highly fanciful and chimeric Egyptian Gods for example, their visually playful nature have now manifested into many forms of parody including cartoon, dolls and other media that might be deemed an act of extreme blasphemy by the Egyptian thousand of years ago. Architecture also does not survive this, as can be seen by the many photos of the Great Sphinx  the tourists take today.

A blaspheme acts towards the Great Sphinx

The Mokele-Mbembe

Mushhushshu Dragon of the Ishtar Gate

Another factor which contributes to the instability of something in the sacred-profane spectrum is anonymity and mystery. One of the field which heavily deals with such adjectives is cryptozoology - cripto, meaning hidden and zoology, meaning the study of  animals. It is a branch of pseudo-science which tries to look for living example of animals that are considered to be extinct and animals whose lack of physical evidence but which appear frequently in myths. Back in the ancient past, and even to today, Mokele Mbembe of the Congo forests have long beeb a subject of cryptozoology, often described by the tribesmen as a long-necked gigantic creature. Such sighting identifies closely with a Sumerian texts which documented a visit to African and how they had captured a ‘dragon’ from the forest. Described in the ancient Babylonian text as a “behemoth... which feeds on grass like an ox... his tail sways like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are close-knit. His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like rods of iron... Under the lotus plants he lies, hidden among the reeds in the marsh”, the description are very similar, if not identical to that of the Congo tribesmen and several cryptozoologists, including Mackal, Willy Ley, and Bernard Heuvelmans, believed that the ancient Babylonian may have heard stories of, sighted, or even captured a specimen or two of Mokele-Mbembe, the Congo "dragon. Evidence of this can be found all over the kingdom, but most notably on the wall of the Ishtar Gate. Because the animals were a mystery to the King and its people, the ‘dragon’ were idolized as being a sacred creature and to be an animal of herald. However, if they knew of the animal before, it would not be treated as ‘sacred’. This is another example of how mystery can create ‘sacredness’.



One last thing that contributes to this shifts in the spectrum is the creation, and thus, the decline of ‘play’. One should remember whenever playing profane rubber-ball games that its predecessor is of sacred status. Pelota was the Meso-american forerunner of all present-day games of this kind. It was played on a large, H-shaped court. The ball was extremely hard, so hard that the players had to wear padded clothing for protection. They were allowed to hit the ball only with their elbows, hips, and knees. The object of the game was to knock the ball through a stone ring at either end of the court. The team of the first person to succeed in doing this win the game and those that are lost are sacrificed, thus, the game acts as a mediator between profane activity and the reach for the gods (sacrifice). In today’s world, the game manifests itself in the most profane ways, being played as football, volleyball, basketball, and many others by every people of every status across the world.

The Dangers of Parametricism

Wealthy Chinese Family with 'bounded feet'

Zaha Hadid's Istanbul city plan

It is said that parametricism has emerged, after the era of modernism and its many successive waves, as a new form of erotic ornamentation, one that have grasped upon the world as the new trend, the contemporary style. However, such overpowering aesthetics acts as a double-edged sword to its user, as the rigidity of such system meant that people are controlled unwillingly and unknowingly. The affect of the power of aesthetic of ornamentation can be seen in the ancient Chinese era, most notably in the Song dynasty, where middle to high-class citizen adopted a trend of feet binding as a mean of displaying status. The action results in a lifelong disability for its subjects, and yet, everything is done in the name of aesthetics.


Coming back to architecture, parametricism have been taking upon the world with the same level of forcefulness of foot binding to the ancient Chinese. The style is all encompassing, as have been said by Patrick Schumacher in his manifesto: “We pursue the parametric design paradigm all the way, penetrating into all corners of the discipline.
Systematic, adaptive variation, continuous differentiation (rather than mere variety), and dynamic, parametric figuration concerns all design tasks from urbanism to the level of tectonic detail, interior furnishings and the world of products.”

Computer-generated shortest tree diagram

One of the most well-know field that applies parametricism to its design is Zaha Hadid’s city planning. Adopting the aesthetics of a heavily controlled parametric spatial distribution and organisation, the plans are generated by computers using the most advanced computation technology to build cities that, for example, have its main nodes connected to each other by the shortest-path tree algorithm. Such system ensures the most efficient urban planning theoretically through the use of form-finding programs such as Galapagos which uses gene theory to calculate a certain set of statistics based on numerical inputs. Such system, however, ignores the human side of architecture, for example, Martin Heidegger’s Four Fold theory of Earth, Sky, Divine and Mortal. This means that residents in such city would be consumed by the dictatorial synchronisity of their environment while having their basic human qualities and needs ignored. Also, one should question whether the mimicry of natural system is an authentic one. The architect mimic nature as he/she understands it (with robotics and computational technology in its construct), therefore, the architect’s mimicry is taken as is of nature, and therefore, the architecture have the right to impose upon nature as much as the nature have the right to impose upon itself. One must be aware of such claims and to be cautious of believing it as the truth. Whatever it will be, if such system persists in the current fashion, it might collapse upon itself in a way similar to the destruction of modernism’s Pruitt-Igoe.

The demolition of Pruitt-Igoe representing the fall of modernism

Natural Systems and Architecture

Throughout the ages, the aesthetics of ornamentation have always been contingent, but ones that have withstand the test of time are those that are of classical or ancient period, such as the Islamic facades of the Al’hambra or the structural layering of Japanese temples. One of the reason of why these architectural ornamentations are beautiful to us lies in its qualities - repetition and variation. For us, the repetition of elements defines laws that , to us, governs how each parts is to be, helping us to recognize the pattern and therefore understand it. Variation, on the other hand, gives a sense of change and so makes the pattern more interesting to look at. Take the Japanese temple as an example, each roof unit decreases in size as it multiplies around and down from its original unit. Because such aesthetics are not learned, we can say that this is an innate quality that everyone of us is born with. 

These ‘innate’ beauty can be found in nature, most predominantly in plant phyllotaxis - the arrangement of plant leaves or seeds on the stem.  Most common are the opposite, alternate (spiral) and whorled arrangements, all of which give a variated but understandable pattern that share similar characteristic as the Japanese temple - repetition and variation. The structure of plant phyllotaxis is widely used in contemporary architecture, with application ranging from infrastructural systems to detail arrangements of  architectural components. In a case study which applies the natural systems to parametric urbanism, the architect have distributed each housing unit according to a phyllotaxis model that refers to the distribution of seeds on the surface of the plants, with each seed seed-sphere corresponding to one housing unit. In another example, the shadow pavilion by PLY architects, the surface of the pavilion is based on the geodesic arrangement of spores on plant surface which is converted into apertures (thus the name “shadow pavilion”) patterns.

By using natural systems as a basis for architectural design, the designer can tap into our instinct of what is or what is not pleasant, and therefore will be able to phenomenologically and empirically control the spaces that he or she creates.

The Dystopian World of The Hunger Games Universe and the Nazi Germany

        Built upon themes like excessive consumerism, inequality of people and post-war world, The Hunger Games presents itself as a dystopic view of the world in the near future. The story is set in a nation know as Panem with its center of power- the “Capitol” lying in the rocky mountain surround by the 12 oppressed districts. The Capitol is home to wealthy and influential people including the dictator of the nation, President Coriolanus Snow, and the for the 12 districts- the rest of the nation’s citizens who are poor and oppressed, living in a lifestyle in contrary to those in the Capitol that is sumptuous and extravagant. As a punishment for a past rebellion against the Capitol, the Hunger Games is established as a form of control by induce fear in the people and also to provide entertainment to the people of the city in the form of a reality show. Many elements of the storyline can be seen as being in parallel with the common constituent of a dystopia.

Originating from the Greek word δυσ-, meaning bad/hard, and τόπος (-topia) meaning place/landscape, the term is defined as an imaginary place that represents the worst human fear of what the world could be in its worst state, environmentally and socially. Perhaps, one of the most well-known past social states that is very similar to this dystopian value, and the Hunger Games environment itself, is Hitler’s fascist Germany. The environment of The Hunger Games can thus, be interpreted as basing of its details, in some portion, to this totalitarian order. Firstly, the structure of the system, the totalitarian order, is present in both Fascist Germany and in Panem, where President Coriolanus controls its wealthy population through excessive indoctrination of certain ‘aesthetics’ such as fashion that is described as “exotic and ostentatious, with citizens dyeing their skin and hair vivid colors, adopting tattoos and undergoing extensive surgical alteration in the name of style”. The aesthetics of the capital even expanded to affect how people communicate as well, as the dialects of the Capitols are “high-pitched with clipped tones and odd vowels [while] the letter S is a hiss with clipped tones and odd vowels”.

Furthermore, the architecture of the Nazi and the Capitol are very similar as well. Where those of the Nazi are characteristically know to be of Neo-Greco-Roman style with some Art Deco decorations, the architecture of the Capitols are said to be distinctively “Roman”. Roman elements of the Capitols goes on to also include the first name of the citizens as well, which is said to be of “ancient Greco-Roman Derivation”

The Iron Eagle of the Nazi Germany is very similar to the symbol of the Panem capital

Lastly, the social structure of Panem very closely mimics that of the German people and its Jews population. In The Hunger Games, the people of the Districts are shown to be heavily oppressed and controlled. When a citizen turns 12 years old, his or her name is automatically entered into the "reaping," a lottery from which the tributes are drawn to be participated in the hunger games. This is quite similar to the way Jews are oppressed such as being segregated into special areas to live or being prohibited to  buy or sell things. The jews are also kept out of the German economy, remaining very poor in many cases, much like how the people in the capitol are extremely rich while those in the Districts are extremely poor.

 Such parallels to the Nazi Germany can be seen to serve as a hetertopia to our present world, a physical space which shows us what another space-our world- is, and is not. It, like many contemporary post-apocalyptic fictions serves to warn us about the impending state of the society if we do not look after it well- and the result can be very similar to that of our sorrowful past. As Rufius Historie (1953) put it in the infamous quote: “History repeats itself”.

Architecture Which Pays Respect to the Natural Environment in Which It Is in.

Resting upon the clay-abundant floodplain of the Bani River flood plain in Djenne, Mal, the Great Mosque of Djenne- or at least its architects - designed the structure to be made up of the materials drawn directly from underneath their feet - sun-baked earth bricks called ferey. The end product inevitably look like a building that literally rose from the ground, therefore making it very specific to the area that it was built in - the mosque would surely look absurd if it were to be placed in the British grasslands. It can be said that the building have acheived the 4 folds of architecture - sky, earth. dwelling, and people. The sky is from the many punctures that are made on the facade, the earth is, of course, its building material, the people is the religiousness of the place (a mosque) which draws people in, and lastly, the dwelling - a place for people to rest in. The Great Pyramids at Giza, Egypt is also another example of how building something out of the local material (in this case, lime stone blocks which are believed to be transported from nearby quarries) can attach the architecture to its context (the desert) very  tightly.

Contemporary architecture, with its aim of expressing the function and the context through form, is beginning to embrace this quality again, thereby paying respect to the place on which it sits on. The unbuilt Stonehenge Visitor centre and Interpretive Museum by Denton does this by sinking into the ground nearly all of its exhibition spaces and in doing so avoiding the disruption a normal building might cause to the flat plain of Salisbury. The curving form of the architecture also accentuate the relationship between the universe and men that is so important to the design of the stonehenge.

On a smaller scale, the Medition House in Lenbanon by MZ Architects did a similar thing by continuing the slope of the rocky hill onto the stone roof of the house. Many point out to the fact that the house resembles a giant fallen rock nestled on the edge of the hill. 

Both architecture shows how contemporary architecture can embrace the notion of the ‘sense of place’ that once give rise to majestic architecture such as the Great Mosque or the Great Pyramids.

The Erotics of Architecture

In a traditional sense, eroticism refers to the quality of a quality that causes sexual feelings, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire and sensuality. However, when applied to the area of environmental design, the erotic refer to objects that are sensually affective in nature in term of how they can provoke or affect the audience/user’s senses and feelings. One of the more interesting parts of the erotics that I would like to talk about the the erotics of the sublime – a phenomenological quality evoking an overwhelming emotion, which can be caused by several factors such repetitions of the infinite or exaggeration of scale. Many of these sublime qualities are incorporated into the design of architectural environments such as the Leviathan by Anish Kapoor. Installed in a 13,500 m2 space of the Grand Palais in Paris, the sculpture, which can be entered, took the form of a giant four-armed balloon. What makes this sculpture sublime is simply its majestic scale, its solid blood red colour, and its infinite smoothness which runs throughout its surface. Once inside the sculpture, the audience can get a feeling of awe, and therefore get affected by it erotically. 

The interior of the Volkshalle

Similarly, Hitler has planned a huge domed building, the Volkshalle, with a similar quality which were to evoke a high level of eroticised grandeur which reflects the immense power of the furer.

Speaking of power, buildings that are devoted to the sacred are also eroticised in a similarly sublime fashion, a notable example of which, include Ernesto Neto’s Leviathan Thot- a “ulle-and-polystyrene creature suspended under the dome of the Pantheon” in Paris, France. The work is erotic in how it plays with the notion of the untouchable quality of sacred architecture and how it brings into the space a fluid and sac-like form that becomes a vulgar language when placed in such a highly-sculpted and finely designed environment.

On Reinhold's Empty Forms

In his manifesto on the ‘Empty Forms’ Reinhold discuss how modern architecture attempts to be empty in its developmental process, devoid of programmatic or other ‘extra-architectural factors’ in its attempt to turn itself into a product of purist formalism movement. He proves this futile by going on to say that the program itself are contingent, demonstrated by modern day architectures in which programs are interchangeable or left very open.

However, Reinhold does say that an empty form is a utopian category, meaning we can only approach it so close, but to reach the actual point of being an ‘empty form’ itself is impossible. 

Many contemporary architecture have claimed itself that it is, in fact, an empty form, unaffected by any other governing bodies. Parametric design is a very good example of this. By manipulating the algorithms of shapes and forms, the form of the building is conceived of. However, the architect can not still dismiss the fact that he/she have manipulated the form to accommodate for a certain program, for example many of Zaha Hadid design, though claimed to be computer generated, is a result of human tampering with the original models to suit the building’s programmatic needs.

Hyper Reality in Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat

In semiotics, hyper-reality is a state in which the unreal, usually a simulation of reality, is indistinguishable from the real - and in the case of Borat - fiction from non-fiction. Starring Sacha Baron Cohen, the film portrays a Kazakh journalist traveling through the United States recording what is seemingly real life interaction with the American public. The film presents itself in a mockumentary style - the first set of juxtaposing quality of this film. As is common, a documentary is a film intended to document some aspect of the reality. By turning it into a mockery, the film will always in it contain a sense of irony - for example, when there is a hilarious event happening in what would otherwise be a serious circumstances.

Throughout the movie, we have a blend of fiction (Cohen and his script) and non-fiction (the public reaction) so that we are not sure which is which and so is in a state of hyper reality. Because this state of hyper reality causes everything for us to become real, we see the movie as an observer, so that whenever a character do something stupid, we can relate to and feel funny with it.

The Architectural Sign of 'Plearn Waan': A Dissection

According to Pierce, a sign is anything that is determined by something else, called its Object. The interpretant is what recognizes the sign and is affected by it. The importance of these three structure lies in its interconnectivity –the triad forms a triangle in which the object determines the sign, and the sign determines the effect on the interpretant, and so on and so forth.

Ha! Lunchtime!

To dissect this concept further, the sign must contain a signifying element. Strictly speaking, it is the signifying element in a sign that do the job of signifying – not the sign as a whole. For example, if a whole in the apple that shows us that a squirrels has bitten into it, it is not the size of the hole that shows us that it is caused by a squirrel, neither is its depth. It is, however, the teeth mark which we can see that might tell us that the animal which did this is a squirrel. Therefore, the teeth-mark is the signifier.

Now, to distillate Pierce’s work to its essential, he proposes that everything we experience in this world is a sign – including to, most obviously, the architectural environment. One such environment is Plearn Wan ‘Market’ in Huahin, Thaiand. The name itself signifies what is inside – “Plearn”, meaning to relax so that one is lost in time, and “Waan”, derived from the Thai word meaning ‘yesterday’. The two combined means a place where people can relax in an environment of the old times. However, upon a careful dissection, one can see that these signs that made up the environment only contains some essential signifying element that converts what would otherwise be a flamboyant artificial world into one where the visitors actually believe that they really are immersed in the old atmosphere.

Can you imagine such setup in real life?

[Top-right] Plearn Waan Sign

Upon entry, one can see a huge sign hanging overhead spelling out its name. The font, however, is where the vintage-ness really sets in – a rigid handwriting style with small alphabetical ‘heads’ (the part where the alphabet curves to make a complete circle)conveys the feeling of traditional formality. Though the feeling of traditional formality that is elicited in the interpretant might be accurate in conveying what the old times might be like, the graphical interpretation, sadly, isn’t, as most proper writing in old times would be done in a beautiful cursive style. Looking around, the façade (both inside and outside the complex) is seen to be made up of multi-coloured wood panels that is arranged somewhat, similar to the old times.  However, this style is seen as being those of pop-vintage, where most of the time, the colour of the material is the only thing- a single signifying element- that is a true manifest of past eras.

 How the shops inside are set up is also unrealistic- as most of them are very extravagant, fully decorated with all sorts of posters and old keep-sakes that would, otherwise, not be present in such density in real old shops. Again, it is not the shop and its arrangement as a whole that points to the past, but rather, in the individual objects themselves. Lastly, the time of operation of this ‘market‘ in itself, is deceptive.  Opening from 11 am to 12 pm, the night portion of its business time (approx. 7 to 12 pm) is not true to the workings of the old markets, as by 7 or 8 pm, most Thai market would have been closed down for the day already.

As have been shown, very little of this ‘Plearn Waan’ sign environment is really what it would have been in the past. It is the very little amount of signifying element that really holds up the illusion that so many people wants to go see and believe for themselves that they are actually in ‘Plearn Waan’. The same applies to the environment around us – that they really are just signs that we experience through the motions of our everyday lives

.

Phenomenology and Design

Over a few billion millennia, the human body have evolved the senses for which to recognize the environment, elicit a response, and therefore survives to be who we are today. However, such senses are only our psychological interpretation of things, processed by the brain. Such concept of phenomenology would then not be too hard to grasp considering that we are only a creature of thoughts and feelings - processors of the qualities of our surrounding that is perceptible to us, oh which is coined the word “phenomena”. “Noumena” is on the other hand, objects as things-in-themselves, out-of-grasp of human experience. In terms of design, it might then be logical to agree on the fact that design is done to bring out a particular response or experience from the users, and therefore, does not require a rigid control of the “noumena”, as long as the required “phenomena” is acheived. 

Sensorial Deprivation Chamber

How design can elicit a very different experience can be exemplified by the invention of the armed forces of NATO - the sensory deprivation tank. A device for interrogating prisoners within international treaty obligations, the tank is filled with liquid perflurocarbon - dubbed “breathable liquid”, and the subject are submerged inside - deprived of all sensorial stimuli. Such device can give a feeling similar to a near-death experience, where a person feels that he/she have drowned and has entered a different world, normally described as those that is a tunnel ending with bright-lighted ending. This experience is very real - yet, is a complete phenomenological process.

Near-Death Experience

Architectural, the Hogwarts Castle in the new “Wizarding World of Harry Potter” at the Universal Studio Orlando poses a very interesting question- whether the castle is real or not. Bricks and stone wise- the volume is real and touchable. However, the “noumena” of being the Hogwarts castle is very questionable, as on the ride inside, visitors experience some interior castle architecture scenes that are very real but yet a product of state-of-the-art 3D projection technology. Is it, then, adequate to build a facade and to use other means of construction to create an interior that would elicit the same response from the users as would the real physical interior do?

Virtual Architecture of the Hogwarts Castle

Albert Durer's 'Cone of Vision'

Such concept is utilised in Sira Shafiei’s conceptual work “The Magician’s Theatre, Rome”. Governed by her research on Harry’s Houdini’s Elephant trick and how it can be manifested within Albert Durer’s cone of vision, the design addresses the sensorial interaction of the users between user-object and user-user without actually building anything ‘solid’. Text - and cone- anamorphosis, along with dispersed perspectival illusion, are used to create landscapes and tectonics that are revealed only to dynamic users. The architecture is described by the architect as “constructed, choreographed...sacred and sublime”. Such works raises the question whether architecture must be real, or whether or not it can be designed as a device that can bring out the same experience without actually being what it appears to be.

The Planes of the Architecture, based on Durer's 'Cone of Vision'

"The Magician's Theatre in Rome"

On Turning a Preconceived Space into a Gelatinous Volume: A Response to the Lethal Theory

Eyal Weizman’s writing on the Lethal Theory have shed light upon the how we could redesign our interpretation of built-space through construction of negative space. In a nutshell, the component that makes up the city, namely intersections and buildings, and in it windows, door, or sewage lines, have with them a certain ‘rules’ that we all obey - we walkthrough doors, hide in wall corners and walk around tables and chairs. Such rules is obliged by the Nablus defense force. In order for the Israeli Defense Force to tackle their enemy’s preparation, they seek instead, to surprise them by giving up all the syntax attached to all these architectural features and instead treat the city as a “medium of war” by traveling in straight lines to their destinations, through walls, ceilings and floors. Such is this tactic is derived from the many architectural theory developed by  notable figures such as Deleuze and Guattari.

The application of the theory to this construction of negative space in the urban fabric can be inversed and used in a constructive architectural manner. In the same way that the IDF treat the city space as having a jelly-like quality, where the void is not simply a void but is actually a body of substance (a cross over to physics would make this conception of ‘space’ easier to understand, check out http://what-is-space.info ), the fictional city of Columbia, so to speak on a fantastic level, builds and arranges itself in the substantial void that is the ‘air’ and to break all preconceptions of the relationship between the two. Set on the American sky, the levitating city of Columbia treats space as being a medium for construction. Unlike in traditional city where gravity allows building to be only on one plane, the buildings of Columbia, with the help of quantum physics which allows it to supersede the rule of physics, is place wherever the designer chooses. 

However, to down-scale and getting back down to Earth, the UN studio is an example of how this type of thinking can be applied to the real world to create new definitions of space. Their exhibition, “Retreat”, is an intervention to an art exhibition in a fort whereby the concentric organization of the KunstFort Asparen fort in Netherlands was interrupted with the installation of ribbon-like sculpture which winds through the interior in an unexpected manner. The result is a element which binds, in three-dimensional space instead of two, various artworks throughout the three levels of the fort. Such work turns the volume of the fort from a void into substance, a ‘substantial volume’.

Artistically, it is also worth to point out that Christo-Jeanne Claude’s interventions on architecture has created the same effect, of turning a building that contains in it a million  interpretations and norms (ie. corridors as a place to walkthrough) into a voluminous object much in the same way that the IDF has interpreted the urban fabric. Such object would then be ambiguous in its configuration and use and might therefore, presents itself in new ways depending on who is interpreting it.