Kissing Architecture by Lavin Sylvia

Author:Lavin, Sylvia
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781400838387
Publisher: Princeton University Press

Current Kisses

From the perspective, or rather the feeling state, of contemporary architectural discourse, there is something thrilling about taking a walk on the wild side of video and lingering over obscure historical examples of quirky design. On the one hand, they provide an opportunity to commit disciplinary and historical tourism and to experience the momentary pleasures of dalliance without duration. But at the same time that such flirtation could be described as simply a means of giving architecture a breath of fresh air from outside the field, the fact that it feels fresh is symptomatic both of the nature and of the need for revitalizing the relationships between mediums in general. The effect of talking about video sculpture or store windows as though they were architecture is exactly, in discursive terms, the effect sought by the theory of kissing in material terms. Both rely on two things that seem to be the same—two surfaces, two spaces, two forms, two mouths—but that turn out to be different and to generate a difference that can only be experienced in the moment of their contact.

Writing about kissing might not be the best way to seduce architecture into a contemporary performance, but it is a good way to teach it to count to two. The most direct way for architecture to go beyond itself is to work with and through other mediums. Herzog and de Meuron and Jean Nouvel have been particularly adept at this kind of addition (fig. 24). A second way of counting is simply to call something that is not architecture by a new name, like superarchitecture, and then to try to put it back together with architecture as a proper name. The potential effects on architecture—whereby building ends up with more than it started with—made by the analysis of Rist’s and Aitken’s work belongs to this category. A third technique for counting past one is to radicalize the terms by which we understand—and generally limit and control—architecture itself. The moment that architecture is no longer required to perform as an organic unity, it can develop the combination of empirical distinctiveness and perceptual singularity that characterizes the kiss as event. If the interior ceases to be understood as simply the natural consequence of an envelope or if the exterior is no longer understood to be the passive result of a building mass, interiors and exteriors can assume enough identity of their own that their reimplantation in building constitutes the electric move from one to two.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.