Sense then (maybe) form

In waters warm and cold,
I hear the sounds of distant places,
And distant memories embedded in stone,
come to life in ripples of water.

Peter Zumthor's Thermal Baths. There is more to seeing and believing than just 'understanding' architecture as a mind map of an architect. What I find really amazing about Zumthor is his ability to make buildings which 'desire' to be 'felt'. It is not an idea which will touch us, but a sensory experience that strikes a chord in our psyche, knocking perhaps; asking us where these emotions will take us.

But this is nothing new. I suspect even Zumthor thinks there is nothing new in what he is doing. And there is nothing brilliant, nothing poignant about it that makes us awestruck by a compositional idea. In his words, Zumthor has said that it's the composition of real materials that comes first, before the drawing of a plan. Also, one has to imagine the places which these 'forces' are conversing first, to sense their arrival before deliberating about form-making.

Perhaps, this is what impressed me most about this 'kind' of architecture. It departs from the intensity of making architecture into pure form, a spectacle of the stark eidetic form to the diminution of the body as mere vessel of objectivity. It made you feel the walls, the cold, the warmth the soft and the hard. One could smell the dew, the mildew perhaps, the pine wood etc, etc. which were not ends in itself but a 'door' that allowed you to step into another world.

So while these things awake a peculiar response from our bodies, they are not idolatrous structures, but are keys to our imagination. Hence, perhaps there is much to 'think' about the way we design places and the way we feel for them. Often, there is an obsession to make corners, elements and dimensions 'match' mathematically. There must be an encompassing 'idea' that needs to get across! In short, the client and user will know that they are in the centre of the building and will know how to interpret it, because everything will be designed for them to know it. They will get it!

But where can the soul meander beyond that? In a place like Malaysia, the sensory possibilities are immense because of our humid climate. I have always favoured the description of Nusantara as the land below watercoloured skies, because one can sense the art of 'life' breathing everywhere. And yet our architecture falls short, to the point that it repels the artistry of this wet 'belt' of the world; a mythical and real presence of sun, water and land.

(Top 4 pictures are courtesy of Darren Yoon / The rest are from olll gallery )