Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Volume 19 Number 2/3 August/December 2018
(Final Issue)
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Alberto Perez-Gomez: Attunement. Architectural Meaning after the Crisis of Modern Science. Cambridge (Ma) and London: The MIT Press, 2016
Reviewed by
This book lays out a theory of architecture, spanning diverse theoretical perspectives on space and linking these firmly within the possibilities that spatial reality may offer for perception, experience, and ultimately – the formulation of meaning. Focusing on ‘atmosphere’ through a constellation of related concepts, it seeks to recover the spiritual significance of space to architectural aesthetics, as well as to restore the aesthetic to its essential existential value in human experience.
Elaborating complex and intricate notions and ideas towards the potentialities that created space may actualize – i.e. bridging theory and design – the book presents a rich resource not only for consciousness studies, but also for the broader field of artistic practice, relevant to both academic, and professional pursuits. The argument skillfully traverses key conceptions pertinent to created space in historical perspective, as well as across disciplinary boundaries: from philosophy to design theory and spatial reality, from phenomenology through to enactive cognitive theory, from literature, through poetic imagination, to the communicative and linguistic dimensions of art, and ultimately to humanly created space – architecture. Furthermore, it takes the issue of consciousness foreground and offers a profound study of our intimate and consequential correlations with architectural space: it deliberates space in its manifold modes of operation, highlighting affective dimensions in terms of the embodied consciousness rooted therein.
As the title suggests, the book is set in opposition to the recent (Cartesian) shift in understanding space and the impoverishing consequences of this shift for architectural theory, and design. These have come to abandon the notion of ‘place’ with distinct qualitative elements and the ‘hierarchies of places’ that structure life. Instead approaches to architecture appear to celebrate formal experimentation, and ultimately arrive at a universality of architectural design based on the notion of neutral homogeneous space and urban networks.
In order to augment the true potential and wealth lying in our correlations with architectural space, the author lays out a comprehensive framework, and follows up changes in the understanding of key-conceptions – existence, perception, experience, self, space, atmosphere, mood. Along this backbone, Perez-Gomez pulls together philosophy, cognitive science and architectural theory in a richly textured and integrative argument, disclosing such wealth in conceptual, affective, and spatial detail. In this he not only revisits these conceptions, he opens them up in further depth setting each within a suggestive and systematic pattern of related notions. Thereby he (re)captures their aptitude for understanding, explaining and envisioning the worth embedded in space beyond functional necessities, and explores the possibilities and paths for architectural design that may enable more meaningful, and full engagement with space.
In explaining and envisioning the formative possibilities embedded in our correlations with architectural space, Perez-Gomez explores several crucial conceptions that would lead to the acknowledgement of the radical dependence of the human condition on the (natural) environment. In this, overcoming the body-mind split is a central issue – i.e. the shift away from the Cartesian ‘I think therefore I am’ towards enclosing also the Aristotelian ‘I feel therefore I am’. In questioning dualism and insisting on the deep continuities between mind, life, world, the argument draws on various philosophers in the lineage of American pragmatism (Dewey, W. James), of phenomenology (E. Husserl, Merleau-Ponty), as well as on recent cognitive science and neuro-phenomenology (Varella, Thompson, Rauch). Hence, as first suggested in phenomenology, ‘perception’ is established as something we do, not something that happens to us – it is not only reactive but proactive. Analogously ‘subjectivity’ is inter-subjective, ‘consciousness’ is to be seen in the dialectics of milieu and action, ‘action’ modifies the field, and generates lines of force and hence alters the phenomenal field as well. As disclosed in Merleau-Ponty’s work, our ‘embodied consciousness’ is always in a double engagement with the world: at primary level our body ‘knows’ inhabited by motility and desire, a body whose foundational knowledge then becomes stabilized by habits. The conception of ‘the embodied mind’ is, then, also confirmed by the ‘enactive theory of perception’ rooted in cognitive science (Fr. Varela), which also presents a theory of co-dependence. In this, the embodied mind and world are not separate but interdependent, the perceiver/subject, and the perceived thing/object are always co-emergent. The perception is not about processing information, but rather is always affective and cognitive, and about creating meaning.
‘Atmosphere’ becomes the pivot to build up on these conceptions linked with architecture as part of the life world, and orient these towards the aesthetic. Denoting perceived qualities of space, atmosphere is difficult to define: it extends into perception in terms of the intimacies of feeling. In order to articulate some of these dimensions, Perez-Gomes draws on the notions of ‘tempered architecture’, of ‘Stimmung’ referring to ‘tone’ or mood (Bohme), which have been linked to human well-being and spirituality, and seen as essential for artistic communication and architectural theory as early as in the 18th century. However, such recognition of character and atmosphere as visual aesthetic categories appear to have lost import in contemporary thought, an omission which the author sees as a vital, and rooted in the confusion of ‘aesthetic emotion’ with that of ‘aesthetic judgment’.
In order to restore the proper notion and role of the ‘aesthetic emotion’, and thereby the ‘aesthetic’ in its original meaning, Perez-Gomez turns to the perceiving mind. He argues that we need to consider the perceiving mind not in terms of discerning power residing inside the head. Rather it is to be construed as ‘awareness of mind’ that depends on qualities it itself is inside of – i.e. the perceiving mind is both emotional and cognitive, and involves the pre-reflective body as well as the reflective body. The ‘psyche’ is ‘pneuma’ and ‘anima’ all in one – coming forth as the state of being alive, breath and consciousness. ‘Aesthesis’ in its original sense (Greek) suggests the primacy of perception to human understanding. It refers not only to visual perception, but to apprehension by all senses – an act that enables understanding through non-representative concepts of that which is perceived by ‘embodied consciousness’.
Atmosphere is difficult to define because it is neither something ‘objective’ to be found in the qualities that things possess – it does not lie with ‘what is presented’. Nor is it something subjective. It is rather to be felt in terms of ‘how something is present’ – i.e. in the making possible the qualitative presence of things. Hence, although atmosphere is a spatial phenomenon, it is impossible to ‘objectify’ – it lies aside of the standard tools of representation. Such standard tools, then, are inadequate, unless the process of design is opened up and intended as a process towards the generation of atmosphere.
Tracing out possible openings towards the generation of atmosphere requires rethinking of the nature of architectural space, and shifting design intent towards its fundamental purposes. As a form of art, architecture shares certain characteristics and attributes with other art forms which include temporality as an aspect of their configurations, such as literature or cinematography. In regard of the creation of moods, the techniques of montage, framing, collage that these art forms employ are profoundly instructive. Architecture shares with painting and sculpture – also media of emotions – the lasting presence as object. However, architecture is also radically different from all other forms of art: the nature of architectural space is in framing human action, and in its capacity to sustain resonant moods. Hence, as atmosphere is perceived through emotional sensibility – a form of perception that works quickly, in architecture this requires design strategies that exceed the pictorial image and allow for other modes of understanding.
Multiple factors that can be ‘designed’ contribute to the generation of atmosphere:
forms and their geometries, dimensions and proportions
colors and textures of surfaces, weight and origin of materials
care or lack of care in detailed execution
relative permanence
rate and nature of change
characteristics of varying sorts of light
sound and acoustic reverberation, absorbency…
Yet, the qualities of atmosphere are not entirely complete by any of these strategies. Not primarily intended for a voyeuristic or touristic gaze, atmosphere is not met by design strategies aiming at a ‘construction of events’, where emotions and affect are sought in forms that assume the role of décor. Different from such approaches, deliberating atmosphere is intended to support the emergence of architectural meaning in performance – i.e. in terms of ‘perceptual events’. Architectural quality also differs from formal ‘style’: it does not obey semiotics and signifying pairs. When seen simply as result of novelty, architectural quality precludes style, as well as reduction to formal categories such as simplicity versus complexity.
Hence, Perez-Gomez insists, it is urgent to acknowledge that the generation of atmosphere is fundamental and integral to architectural design intent. This roots the aesthetic role of architectural space in its capacity to be conductive of appropriately tuned moods for human situations, so as to reveal affective purpose in and through the human actions they frame. Considering that emotionality is a constant aspect of our milieu, and that existence is always ‘mooded’, ‘proper’ architecture should be expected to reveal that we ‘belong’ and experience ‘purpose’, that we may be ‘at home’ in a social space for embodied communication aided by the tools of atmosphere. Having been established as a primary mode and medium in ‘presencing’, emotionality and communication, the generation of atmosphere thus belongs to the essential intent in the creation of architectural space. Moods are communicative and bear on perception and cognition, especially so as they involve embodied experience which is primarily synthetic and enactive and therefore allows extracting meaning that appears. The meanings that appear are potent tools for integration, and in architecture the ‘presence’, embedded in nature of the poetic image, operates through different temporalities: the phenomenological ‘thick present’ of pre-reflective experience in and through our actions, and as reflective representation through memory and imagination.
Therefore, creating environments with intent towards atmosphere offers possibilities for atonement only when it points beyond formal refinement and the experience of the harmony of an object. ‘Lived experience’ is not picture-like, geometric or photographic. Rather, if the environment is to work as ‘equipment of consciousness’, it needs to work through atmospheres appropriate for focal actions that allow for dwelling. Architectural space need be construed as an event not in formal composition, but in the sense of being resonant, and allowing for ‘empathy’ – for the events of correlation with the embodied mind, and the reciprocity of perception (Merleau-Ponty, Lakoff). It should offer room for imaginative mimetic projection which is a vital cognitive faculty that works both ways – outwards and as self-knowledge. It is to lead towards the experience of beauty as harmony deeply felt as psychomatic health, allowing us to attain spiritual wholeness. These then appear as the proper foundations and functions of the aesthetic.
Consciousness, both pre-reflective and reflective, works in continuity with the world – i.e. the properties of mind such as moods and feelings are not primarily internal. They are shaped by the psychology of the brain, but more importantly – they are shaped by the living body and its actions in the world. Hence architecture does present a primary and essential milieu and potential for attunement of being – an attunement that is always operative beneath conventional consciousness. Architectural space may attain its aesthetic purpose by giving resonance to situations as events, ‘accounting for their familiarity while disclosing poetic options in the manner of linguistic, semantic innovation’. Atmosphere emerges as a vital quality and path for attunement, gathering into ‘the body of the present’. In architecture pre-reflective transformative atmospheres can give place to reflective poetic images, completing (architecture’s) cognitive and communicative function – the affective and intellectual – which is, in essence, the spiritual function of architecture.
With ‘Attunement’ Perez-Gomez presents a book which elaborates the conceptions of the aesthetic, poetic, of perception, ‘dwelling’, and becoming in correlation, and shifts them into focus within the concreteness of architectural space. Hence, while theoretical in nature, this book assists in penetrating and making tangible the subtle facets borne in and by our correlations with space, subtleties pertaining to spatial qualities, as well as to consciousness. It renders explicit a whole range of perceptual capacities, modes, affects, and sensitivities that, generated in lived experience, are difficult to grasp, tend to remain felt and unspoken, and hence under-explored, but are, nevertheless, vital, fundamental, and formative. It, thereby, renders the foundational concepts that underlie theories and practices in architecture – ‘space’ and ‘design’ – open for critical exploration.
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