UPPLEVELSEARITEKTUR
ARCHITECTURE AS EXPERIENCES
The book is in Swedish but should be translated and sold worldwide.
Not that it is so good, but because the theme is so important.
As an architect you plan rooms. So you have to define the room so people will
experience the "room" as a room. That means you have to make the three axis of
a room visible. The not visible will not be experienced.
Here you have the cantilever in the ceiling going from south to north, the long
double bed at the back going east to west and the oven and chimney define
a vertical line.
The example is my summerhouse that I bult for my parents on Halsö.
A dark an low ceiling generates a depressing mood.
This sauna I planned for Halsö.At left you undress and at right is the hot room.
The "gate" opens the view to a vide heaven and a view at a large ocean.
It gives the feeling of freedom and ultimate purity. And that is the basic
meaning with a Finnish sauna.
Why are old houses so cosy. May be because nothing is too exact.
When an architect tries to make something important and worthy, he can use a
lot of decorations. Also furniture and dresses can generate this feeling.
What is a door?
A door can be the item that you know is hiding a lot of trobles.
Anyhow the door is very important. And every door leads to
different experiences. How do you design the door?
Here are only some items from the book.
There can be within a house some space where nobody can go. But when you know
that this space exists, then you might have fantasies about what there is. Such things give a feeling about the house.
The visual experiences are important to man. Like looking at a face.
Somebody in Denmark studied how colors are experienced. They found that man will see totally different colors in strong light than in twilight. And in the light betwen man will also see different colors.
So the standard color circle is wrong. In the picture are shown the colors seen in
normal light. In strong light people prefer light blue, light brownish yellow and white. In twilight colors often used in pullowers are prefered. Like violet, dark red, clear blue and others. Houses in Norway are painted this way.
These findings are all based on scientific studies.
An opening with light is expresses happiness and a dark opening expresses sorrow.
Architecture is either creating rooms, closing around spaces.
Or architecture is an item in a landscape. Two totally different
ways to make it.
Man is not good at differentiating moore than foreground, main scenery and background. So concentrate your efforts on these three.
Man has several sensory organs and they all are combined. In what kind of
surroundings do you drink koffe. What is essential and how will architecture
adapt to de essential senses.
