Читать книгу Architecture. Dialectic. Synthesis - - Страница 13

The basic functional typology of buildings and premises is derived by us on the basis of the triune hierarchical structure of human nature. In accordance with the triad of spirit, soul and body, we will distinguish:

1)

the architecture of the spirit

(sacred, temple architecture)

2)

architecture of the soul

(museums, theaters, universities, libraries, cultural and community centers, etc.)

3)

the architecture of the body

(restaurants, hotels, industrial buildings and structures, etc.)

Further, the same triple division can be carried out in the interior system inside a residential building. After all, a residential building is a type of building that accommodates almost all human functions. The design and realization of bodily needs include rooms such as a kitchen, dining room, bedroom, bathroom, etc. Hierarchically higher are rooms such as the living room, study, workshop, related to the mental organs and their functions (communication, cognition, creativity, etc.). Even higher is the area of the spirit, the room where a person realizes his religious faith, for example, the room where he prays. Inside a palace or university, it is a temple that is a part of it. Inside a separate room in a Russian hut, there was traditionally a "red corner" with icons. It was in this corner that K. Malevich hung his symbolic black square, which thereby proclaimed the formation of a black hole in the human soul, expelling God from his life.

Thus, the first functional antithesis arises – sacred, consecrated and ordinary premises both in the general structure of the building and as a special type of buildings. Juri Lotman writes about this as follows: "The house (residential) and the temple oppose each other in a certain respect as profane to sacred. Their juxtaposition is obvious from the point of view of cultural function and does not require further reasoning. It is more important to note the common feature: the semiotic function of each of them is gradual and increases as it approaches the place of its highest manifestation (the semiotic center). Thus, sanctity increases as one moves from the entrance to the altar. Accordingly, the persons admitted to a particular space and the actions performed there are positioned gradually. The same gradation is characteristic of residential premises. Names such as "red" and "black corner" in a peasant hut or "black staircase" in an apartment building of the 18th and 19th centuries clearly indicate this. The function of a dwelling is not sanctity, but security, although these two functions can overlap: the temple becomes a refuge, a place where protection is sought, and a "holy space" is devoted in the house (hearth, red corner, the role of the threshold, walls protecting from dark forces etc.)31.

We have identified the antithesis of ideal (spiritual and mental) and material (bodily) functions. Is their synthesis possible?

If the concept of a material function includes the function of protection from the enemy (fortification), then one of the clearest examples of synthesis is the Athenian Acropolis. The acropolis, a fortified part of an ancient Greek city, by definition, performs a twofold function – it contains temples of the deities under whose protection the city is located, and serves as a shelter for the townspeople during attacks32.

Another example of synthesis is a medieval monastery. This is a place of residence for monks, a defensive fortress, and a crossroads of trade routes, the goal of pilgrims, not to mention the self-evident main function of promoting the salvation of the soul.

According to the functions of communication (socially given identity), privacy (socially given difference) and their complex conjugation, one distinguishes between communication spaces (living room, kitchen, etc.), privacy spaces (study, bedroom, etc.), and mixed types of spaces. It should be noted that the oppositions of ideal – material functions and communication—privacy functions are not correlative and therefore overlap each other in the system of living spaces. Thus, the study and the bedroom, which are opposite in the first of these antitheses, are identical in the second function (privacy).

The next, equally important antithesis of the functional sphere is the opposite of living space, recreation space and work space. In megacities, this antithesis causes discomfort to many people from the spatial separation of "sleeping areas" and institutions, enterprises, offices clustered in the central part of the city.

The synthesis of dwelling and work functions at the level of individual houses is interesting. Here again, we recall the tradition that lived in the Middle Ages as well of placing living quarters and work premises (on the ground floor) in the same building. There are examples of such a synthesis in modern architecture. Thus, a complex of villas has been built in Berlin, each of which "performs, in addition to the residential function, the tasks of an infrastructure element. This is achieved by the fact that each villa is inhabited by an entrepreneur whose company is engaged in public service and it is located in the same house <…>. Such an unusual for modern urban planning method of performing "social, cultural and residential function" essentially revives the traditions that were forgotten today, when a merchant lived above his shop… Combining dwelling and a place of work in one building acts on the one hand as an effective method of saving urban land, and on the other hand allows you to erect significant construction volumes that carry a representative essence, important for the owner and ensuring the urban significance of the building.33"

There are two more important antitheses inside a separate building:

1) The main premises are service, connecting premises (communications – elevators, stairs, corridors, etc.). The synthesis between them takes place at the aesthetic level, when communications are not hidden in the thickness of the building, but are brought out, participating in the creation of the artistic image of the building and giving the opportunity to feel its inner life from the outside34.

The project of the new city by architect A. Sant’Elia in 1914, brought this principle to its ultimate state: the basis of spatial composition is determined by the communication system. Examples of a "moderate" synthesis are the theater building in Rostov-on-Don (architects: V. Shchuko and V. Gelfreich, 1930-1936), the Gosprom (Derzhprom) building in Kharkiv (S. Serafimov, M. Felger, S. Kravets, 1925-1928).

2) Servant vs. served spaces. This antithesis was of particular importance in the work of L. Kahn. The American architect developed the thesis about the separation of these types of rooms. "Working on a small facility, a swimming pool, led me to the theory that the servant spaces and the servant ones should be separated. This distinction has become the basis of all my plans.35"

The opposite approach to the solution of the internal functional space is presented in the concept of another famous American architect, F. L. Wright. He put forward the thesis of "the unity of the internal space.36"

From a dialectical point of view, an approach is possible that does not place a separate emphasis on either the unity or the separateness of the building spaces, but follows the principle of single separable integrity. In addition to pure dialectics, such a teaching has deep foundations in the modern understanding of the physical structure of space. Space is created by light, which is characterized by wave-particle "wave-particle "duality" (one can say "synthetism"). Depending on the specific circumstances, light behaves either as a particle or as a wave. The physical world turns out to be a school of dialectics. After all, a particle is nothing but a materially given identity (as a point is the identity of the beginning and the end), while a wave is a difference in the quality of extension (as a line is the difference of the beginning and the end). Thus, physical space is a single separable whole. This is an additional basis for formulating a similar doctrine in relation to the functional space of architecture.

Let's list the main antitheses of the architectural and functional environment:

1) sacred – ordinary;

2) communication spaces – privacy spaces;

3) working and residential spaces;

4) connected – connecting rooms (communications).

5) served (main) – servant (subordinate).

These antitheses reveal the dialectic of function in general terms. So far, we have considered architecture primarily as one or another organization of space. But space is inseparable from time and from history. Taken from the point of view of temporal formation, architecture reveals to us the whole complexity of the historical relationship between the old and the new, the past and the future. The second part of the work is devoted to the historical formation of the architectural form.