III-6. Awe of anima

Revival of anima

    The principles of picturesque assume a picture, as the name suggests, like a mere timeless photo regardless of whether the object has life or not. This was a single means for aesthetically identifying complexity and chaos. In a picture in a frame, everything with any life must hold their breath. This was also the Achilles heel of the principles of picturesque. Although this concept was able to beautifully represent rotting ruins as if it started from the aesthetics of ruins, it was not able to express the liveliness of the phenomenon of life itself.   

    The idea of modern rationalism as is represented by the mechanistic world view eventually simulated the organic world including living organisms and non-living objects by rational mechanisms. Thus, for example, although it gave effort to attempt to replace people with robots, it could not only approach to the core of the phenomenon of life but also fell into a preconception as if machines were superior to life. Unfortunately, the human culture of rationalism started from the geometry of death as described earlier. Even if we view the phenomenon of life through the cool eyes of rationalism, the line of view merely passes through void space and we fail to grasp what we should focus on. In other words, rationalist culture follows a fate of being unable to directly face the phenomenon of life from its original starting point. As is widely known, the question of what kind of state is defined as to be alive cannot be resolved completely flawlessly even by medical scholars. For example, the definition of brain death as being the death of a human is only valid within the rationalist culture of humans, i.e. within the mechanistic view of living organisms, where each of the internal organs are understood as mechanical components.

    There are two things that are hard to understand, one is the chaotic state that has lost rational order, and the other is the organic phenomenon of life that surpasses rational order. People often confuse the two, highlighting pseudo-life in places where there is no life and falling into the fabrication of a mystic system of animism. This indicates that the former, namely the chaotic state, was mistaken for the latter, namely the organic phenomenon. In contradiction, the latter is often mistaken for the former, because the phenomenon of life is hardly explained by the rational thought. It seems often criticized by such standpoint that the academics of “New Science” show interest on this kind of mysticism. The phenomenon more than rational and the phenomenon less than rational surround and line up against rationality, and both of them become confused as being irrational. The current state that is alienated from modern rationalism takes hold of both of these aspects and collapses the independence of rationalism.

    The principles of picturesque had one aspect that attempted to justify the landscape of self-destruction of rationalist culture as beautiful. The “Abteiberg Museum” of Hollein can also be said to represent a landscape, where the geometrical system was washed out and dismantled by an irrational force. Then, the various manneristic phenomena of distortion of geometry eventually are going to wear mystic dresses which are felt as if having life or housing a supernatural force.

    Daniel Libeskind represented this kind of dismantled scene of geometrical system as imaginary architectural pictures. For example, the piece “Garden” from among the series of “Micromegas” (1979, Fig. 77) created a group by scattering various proportions of rectangles into empty space, and inserting spatial structures such as intersecting coordinates at various places. To the mental scene of Libeskind, who rendered continuously this kind of pseudo-architectural landscape while studying and teaching architecture, probably, the morphological concept of dismantling Modern Architecture was reflected strongly. Although this painting referenced the series of paintings titled “Prouns” by the Russian Constructivist El Lissitzky, there was a fundamental difference that, different from the artist at the start of the 20th century who began to open up Modernism, Libeskind was keeping the collapsing scene of Modernism in view and followed still more the Early Modernism.

    The paintings of Libeskind do not have the disposition of Lissitzky of entrusting dreams to the future, and sound as if the desperate modern rationalists complain that it should not be like this, and even display as if trying to restore a lost utopia. There can be found a spirit of Mannerism which is observed in the complicated facade designs like the collage of warped building forms and various architectural motifs of Renaissance that were developed in the late 16th century Italy and the northern Europe following Italian Renaissance with a time lag (for example, the drawings by Wendel Dietterlin, Fig. 78). There emerged merely a utopia of form where the individual form elements spat out their own words and kept dancing to form groups, and the existence of architecture as a place to envelope real life is forgotten. Each of the forms were given a kind of pseudo-life, i.e. animus.

    The landscapes drawn by Libeskind using axonometric projection realized the beauty of picturesque in terms of the dynamic balance of a group of forms. On the other hand, Zaha Hadid drew warped manneristic landscapes using perspective drawing method while taking the same picturesque idea as a foundation (Fig. 79). This formed groups of bizarrely long narrow shapes like Libeskind's and also produced a feeling of speed and motion in the picture plane by using an exaggerated perspective method. The winding sloped roads were eccentrically long and thin, and were drawn without structural support members, and in the same way as for Libeskind, it was as if each of the shapes that had been given a pseudo-life were dancing as a group. In the case of Zaha Hadid, this kind of picture was drawn as a project that should actually be built, which differs from the situation of Libeskind the drawer. Moreover, Zaha Hadid presented warped perspective drawing eccentrically as a vision that stimulates and activates the imagination not as realistic perspective drawing that foresees the completed building.

    In the case of Zaha Hadid also, Russian Constructivism, and the project of Melnikov in particular formed the basement and she added further a procedure that carried anima in each of the forms. The procedure of filling geometrical form elements, i.e. the forms of rationalism, with anima, and deforming them eccentrically that is common to both cannot be easily said to have completely stripped the realms of the mechanistic world view. Although this can be interpreted as a metaphorical expression that is critical of Modernism, it has not yet departed from the perverted state of manneristic hyperbole and deformity. Incidentally, the attempt to draw an eccentrically deformed space with “mechanical perspective”, which was completed in the Renaissance, can be found in the text book on perspective by Hans Vredeman de Vries in the Netherlands at the late 16th century (Fig. 80). It was also the production of the Mannerist time  from which Zaha Hadid can be considered to have adapted using recent expression techniques. In any case, here is represented that the rational mechanism began its automatic movement and was exceeding the control of humans, and it evokes the motif from science fiction novels as if computers were beginning to disobey the instructions of humans.

    In reality, even if a machine were to begin operating insanely due to some kind of abnormal reactions, this does not mean having independent will. Even if fifth generation computers, so called artificial intelligence (AI), were completed and able to perform an astonishing level of free choice and inference, these would ultimately be nothing more than programs provided by humans and could not exceed the overall capabilities of living organisms born from nature. Because of this, the pictures of Libeskind and Zaha Hadid cannot hold any meaning beyond metaphorical. However, human art is created within this metaphor. For this reason, it is only certain that there is a value in drawing attention to the thing those artists predicted through such methods. And that thing is the revival of anima that was stamped by modern rationalism.

    Although cultural creations obviously do not have the same life as biological entities, humans can view anima as pseudo-living because the feeling of pseudo-life like amoeba can be felt, for example, in the organic forms of medieval cities and the amorphous form made to invade the grid by Hollein. The concept of "Gaia", the global ecosystem, should also be considered as this kind of pseudo living organism. This is nothing more than a hypothesis because the globe is not yet made clear as an individual entity with life. Although the assignment of the female goddess of the globe named “Gaia” to this could probably be viewed as the revival of an aspect of animism found in ancient religions, the attempt is said to have begun actually to verify it scientifically as an actual unified phenomenon of life.

    Certainly, almost all of the various anima imagined by humans throughout history came to be dismissed as delusions after the age of Enlightenment. Although the concept of false anima must be rejected, natural phenomenon are complex and mysterious enough that they cannot be rejected as an abnormal function of the human brain that has the imaginative capacity to give birth to anima. That is, anima is like a predication toward the rich human culture.

Tendency to Baroque Interior

    The 16th century Mannerist age eventually shifted to the 17th and 18th century Baroque age. The image of sacred geometrical space of the high Renaissance that continued dissolution was smashed by modeling aspirations in the complete opposite direction upon entering the Baroque. The system of form that were revived and ordered during the Renaissance could no longer be highlighted merely as remaining fragments of traces. For example, the columns that expressed cheerfulness were twisted into spiral shapes, the beams that expressed horizontal stability were cut into fragments, bent jaggedly, and warped dynamically, and the semispherical domes changed into ellipse shapes, further into multiple ellipses and then gradually into a vague curved ceiling like the twisting of a wave. Then, in the end, the “Vierzehnheiligen (14 Saints)” pilgrimage church (Fig. 81) came into existence in central Germany around the middle of the 18th century.

    The aechitectr Balthasar Neumann is known as a designer of complicated stucco decorations who, at the same time, absorbed new styles of architectural design and military technology as an intellectual engineer. He also worked on the fireworks displays that were held in abundance at that time and succeeded in merging technology and art as a spatial designer of the late Baroque. In the Vierzehnheiligen pilgrimage church, because the altar that formed the statues of fourteen saints was placed in the center of the long and tall space formed from a complex joining of circular and elliptic plans, this basic layout created a church space with a festive flavor using large spatial waving and small stucco decorations. The interior was filled with anima to the degree that it appeared like the inner space of a whale's stomach, and the inorganic construction materials were transformed as if an organic living organism.

    Although it is hard to find similar space of late Baroque in modern architecture, the interior of the “Palladium” discotheque in New York designed by Arata Isozaki (1985, Fig. 82) is predictive in some degree under the use of new technological and artistic methods. In the case of the "Palladium", formal elements from modern rationalism, i.e. squares and grid shapes, were combined with the existing 19th century eclectically styled theatre interior, and into this was mixed that latest modern lighting technology and sound technology to create a fantastical performance space. The walls, etc. were drawn with pictures by modern popular artists and the space formed a composition of diverse fields of art as if it were a "Gesamtkunstwerk" (total work of art). Isozaki himself explained that discotheque were like a kind of modern church and that he intentionally designed this discotheque associating what church architects thought to create. This is deeply interesting in considering the situation of modern architecture.

    The Vierzehnheiligen was also a "Gesamtkunstwerk" that added the works of stucco decorator, altar sculptor, and ceiling painter, and the “performance” named Mass in this interior space that also added the playing of the pipe organ could be said to be the superior "Gesamtkunstwerk" conceivable at the time. Speaking of "Gesamtkunstwerk", this must bring to mind the musical performance of Richard Wagner, the “Bühnen Festspiel" (stage festival play) which he espoused in particular. It combined also stage design, orchestra, and "music-drama", and further more added the ethnic religious feeling based on the myth of German to (Fig. 83). At that time, the architect Gottfried Semper designed a new style theater for him, and the stage of Wagner including his own performance method raised up the multiple technologies to the realm of fantastical art. Even if not perfect, this new style left traces in the famous Bayreuth Theater.

    The manneristic elements, namely, the formative method to deform naturally rational forms deliberately, that are often found in the architectural design of Arata Isozaki, produces individual attractiveness in each, but could leave behind only chaos through the overuse of excess. What could overcome this difficulty, is the intervention of irrational formal aspiration from a pole opposite to the rationalism that forms the other pole. This can be understood rather easily when recalling a path that the reformative rationalism of the Renaissance was deformed and dismantled by Mannerism and then eventually reorganized by the restorative catholic mysticism and Baroque church space was created.

    The manneristic element observed in the “Palladium” was a method to pour anima into the geometrical forms and to make something more than the mere technical creations, as found also in Zaha Hadid. This kind of architectural design perhaps belonged to a metaphorical dimension. Taking on anima as technique in the actual sense can probably be found more directly in the performance itself with sound and light using high technological electronics in the space of this discotheque.

    Then, the attempt to shift up from the level of Mannerism to the level of Baroque was the time when such diversified manneristic techniques are integrated into a unified body without mutually scattering, and the space of discotheque has the possibility to became the suitable stage for this. Therefore, if it is viewed as the synthetic architectural design without being limited to the building design by including the sound, light and operation of each of the equipment for the spatial performance, there rises the dimension of architect's design of animistic space.

    Of course, if we speak of whether or not the “Palladium” has reached the realm of a complete Baroque space, it is answered as doubtful and it has more strongly the factor of Mannerism. For example, although this contains a mixture of existing historicist design building with the geometrical rationalist and high tech elements of the newly created parts, this can be said to be an intentional formal contrast and can be thought to discard the feeling of uniformity. The attitude of Mannerism that think that lively art is created within a feeling of vacancy and anxiety evoked by fissures and misalignment is displayed here strongly.

    In the design methods of the Baroque period, a generally integrated aspiration was at work so large that such individual techniques of deformation lost effectiveness. Indeed, mannerist methods of lighting technology of, for example, using lighting tricks to illuminate an alter from above and behind to give a fantastical and mysterious performance were used together with diverse formal methods. But this is at the most merely one means of presenting religious space and the intent was not to use this kind of presentation technique to merely surprise people, induce a spiritual state, or give a hallucination.

    Although Baroque attempted to break down all kinds of formalism and gave rise to a state of chaos, the final goal was to reflect the common aspirations in all of the artistic methods placed in a state of chaos and realize a unified form of artistic presentation. Incidentally, Wagner designed a stage where the orchestra that was the source of sound was out of sight, as if to give the music an anonymous sound effect like ignoring the personalities of the individual performers. And further, instead of treating the actors as individual stars and opera singers, he employed the devices that obscured the human silhouettes absorbing them into fantastical yet mysterious space, while also making the customers feel a detachment from reality and making their hearts integrated into the theater space. Both of them show similarity.

    This kind of fantastical visual scene could not be realized unless any realistic or worldly things could be kept out of sight such as the interior design within a closed building or outdoors at night. This was at most because it was something virtual and transient. And when speaking of the work of the human brain, it is because of the need to put to sleep the part of the brain that is usually active and unusually activate another particular part. This could be said to be some kind of abnormal state, but it is also a fact that this was a driving force for the creation of human culture. The completely unified state and the state of intoxication towards it signify the artistically excited state, and it is given there a state of unreality, i.e. a state where regular sensibilities are suspended.

    Being looked at from the western dualistic way of thinking of Apollonian and Dionysian, this fantastical space is obviously the irrational, emotional, Dionysian. However, it is natural today the Dionysian to have a widely different way of expression form that of the Baroque age or what Nietzsche advocated. Furthermore, many of the parts that were once thought of as irrational can now be analyzed through the eyes of rationality, and the things that are irrational today are the unknown darkness that remains yet outside of the reach of the scientific eyes.

    The similarity between religious space and discotheque is perhaps currently held to the level of forms. Conversely speaking, the overall mental and emotional space including content or spirituality of the festive form of religious space, even if it becomes subject to emulation and referencing, is not easy to create from within the standard spiritual state of modern people. This is because the mental structure of modern people is touched as deep as that by materialism and mechanistic world view.

Evolving animism

    Rudolf Steiner, the philosopher and esoterist of the “Anthroposophy,” created the base facility for evangelism in Dornach (Switzerland), of which the central hall of wooden structure was titled “Goetheanum”. Even though the “First Goetheanum” (1913 to 1920) was lost to fire, the “Second Goetheanum” (1924 to 1928) that was subsequently built with concrete construction still exists, and its majestic appearance is well known. Although this building appears to have the form of a theater on first glance, it also has the character of a chapel. This strange form reflected the architectural theory and view of form of Steiner himself, became dynamic, and advocating something at some subconscious level. Within the history of Modern Architecture, the "Second Goetheanum,” which is taken as belonging to German Expressionism, is comparable to the “Einstein Tower” (1917 to 1921) by E. Mendelsohn due to its sculptural expression. The charm of this building that surpasses everyday sensibilities still draws the eyes of people and continues to make feel awesome for its designer and builder.

    “Anthroposophy” was reformed by Steiner himself form the mystical idea of “theosophy”, and appeared like a modern cult. As the theosophy aspired the Dutch architects like Lauweriks and Berlage and let them create their own mystical methods of geometrical design, Steiner filled the design of “Goetheanum” with his own equivalent ideas. The name of this building borrowed from the name of the polymath and great writer Goethe who was active around 100 years prior, and the theory of metamorphosis that Goethe had espoused was incorporated into the making process of architectural form. Although Steiner’s idea was so peculiar as taken for a heretical mysticism in the eyes of people today, his thought appeared so lively that it attracted many supporters and seems to continue active movements still today.

    The thing to focus on here is that this type of mysticism differs from shallow occultism and searched for its original truth at the time of conception. The religious organization of mysticism is viewed as a scary or stupid group for people other than the believers and evokes a feeling of disharmony. But this kind of enlightened view was not always necessarily valid if we consider the limits exposed by the modern rationalism. For example, excellent architects use words and employ symbolic expressions that only that person themselves can understand, when deciding the layout and architectural forms of each space. It could be said that the same basic attitude can be found here as the such mysticism.

    The “First Goetheanum” (Fig. 84, 85) that Steiner built by borrowing the skills of building specialists formed a shape of two adjoined spheres with a spherical for stage and a larger sphere for the audience. The stage enacted the dance called “Eurythmy” and the theater drawn by Steiner. Therefore, although the lower edge of the audience touched the floor level, the sphere for stage floated slightly above this. And each of them is said to be created to symbolize “material” and “spiritual extrasensory” spaces respectively.* The “First Goetheanum” was completed by incorporating several types of this kind of symbolic spatial design. Of course, also a Gothic cathedral, for example, had indeed a kind of mysticism design incorporating various symbolic layouts and spatial designs as a house of god. But, the thing to focus on here is the fact that Steiner made fresh attempts to grasp enthusiastically the unknowable things, while he focused rather on humans than the god revising the dogma newly and renaming such as "Anthroposophy", tried to develop the new dimension of human physical movements through the new type of dance named “Eurythmy”, and incorporated rather the method for observation of nature by Goethe than the religious thinking. And also, the fact that the process of architectural design became the stage for such inquiry.

    From Steiner’s point of view, the shapes of architectural spaces indeed already included anima. Or perhaps, it is better to say that he attempted to give form to invisible anima through architectural design. The modernists of the 1910s and 1920s actually viewed the problem of how to give form to anima as an important question the same as Steiner, as can be found in the Expressionist architecture flavored by the utopian thought. The rationalism and functionalism of the 1920s to 1930s that followed were the result of that work. Today, only these are supposed to be the achievement of Modernism and blamed for its cold rationalism, but it is actually not reasonable when observed in broader view. Indeed, it appeared happy from the perspective of the followers of Functionalism, who could rationally process and organize form without fear to the unknowable anima, that the action of design was simplified and processed only with the intellectual handling, but it was unhappy in terms of the loss of opportunity for contact with anima.

    The revival of animism among scientists as was seen earlier and the omen of this in architectural design can be said to be an evidence of again pursuing contact with the unknowable wholeness of anima. From the standpoint of this kind of person, the attempts of Steiner were probably viewed as historical like-minded effort more than the mystical ideas left far behind in the history. Of course, in the eyes of today, Steiner’s method itself appears as an old, rotten method, yet also primitive. This is because the modern people in the second half of the century were taking on completely new design methods and technologies. The difference from Steiner who himself engraved using a chisel following the theory of metamorphosis of Goethe is that modern people use electronics, which is where the gap lies. Although at the technological level, there is nothing that can be learnt from Steiner, the thing to learn is what should be called the “way of design”.

    The “Eurythmy” created by Steiner attempts to unify body and mind through a dance with a unique rhythm, and rejects the basic idea of separation of the mental and the physical, subject and object which is a foundation of modern rationalism. The introduction of this rhythm, i.e. the introduction of the dimension of time was essential when investigating the phenomenon of life. Certainly architecture, where the structures are frozen in time, is isolated from the phenomenon of life in terms of this. Although S. Giedion referenced Einstein’s special theory of relativity and attempted to incorporate the dimension of time into architecture by taking architecture as four-dimensional structure,* this idea had the weakness of being tinted with the mechanistic world view. When architecture is unified with various other arts, for example, being absorbed into a Gesamtkunstwerk like Wagner’s stage, it certainly holds a relationship with time and rhythm. While Wagner took the idea of the virtual fantasy for integration that gathered together and unified the effects created by a variety of different arts, by comparison, Steiner produced all his art from inside of his own body, and from the start this embodied the spiritual totality.

    “Rhythm” is also highlightened as an important theme of modern biology. The cells that make up the heart have separate rhythms of contract and relax when separated. But, when put together to form the shape of the heart, all of the cells exhibit the cooperative motion, integrating into a single powerful rhythm. The cells with faster rhythms and the cells with slower rhythms become attuned to a single rhythm by the phenomenon of the “entrainment”**. Altough the rhythm of Eurythmy is created by artificial motion, not by the autonomous motion of body and it is a different dimension from the rhythm used by biology, the appearance of dancing where all of the muscles in the body move in a single rhythm indicates a fundamental similarity in both of the rhythm concepts. This kind of phenomena of “rhythm” and “entrainment” is also recognized in the phenomenon that a school of fish changes direction together marvelously in a moment without being noticed which fish gives a signal to move. In other words, the overall behavior at a larger scale when individual living units form a group forms some kind of uniform rhythm.

    For the idea of creating a larger living organism by using rhythm, part of this could probably be said to be visible in the discotheque. In terms of uniform group behavior, this can be observed relatively clearly in religious communities, fascist groups like Nazi demonstrations, etc. But there is a fundamental structure of the relationship between a leader and the group being led, and the rhythm should be said to be externally applied. The rhythm that we are focusing on here is the rhythm that is thought to form some unknowable foundation of living life when individual people try to follow their own rhythm, i.e. the basic rhythm of the “entrainment” at the subconscious level. Of course, although the music at a discotheque is an artificial rhythm and must be said to be an externally applied rhythm, we should at least consider it as a simulated rhythm.

    For example, if we take the “Palladium” to be another space of Eurythmy, then it can be called a new mystical space replacing Steiner’s “Goetheanum”. Thus, when matter and spirit are felt to unify through dance, the feeling of life is probably felt more strongly. Thus, if we look from nearby this scenery, people feel as if they have seen something mystical, i.e. anima. Buildings, such as theaters and chapels that envelope spaces filled with this kind of rhythm, appear as if filled with anima, and finally the attempt to design this kind of building turns into the design idea of a new animism. Of course, the discotheques of today cannot be thought to have reached that realm yet, and whether or not they will produce that kind of space in the near future depends on how deep the inquiry into the human mental behavior is put forward that is beginning by today's leading scientists.

    Since the ancient past, people have recognized anima in some kind of form. As far as the history teaches, it is recognized that temples and chapels represented the ways how the anima was interpreted in respective times. Neumann's church, Wagner's theater and Steiner's “Goetheanum” can also be thought to represent the ways of interpreting anima of the respective times. If modern people feel all of them as old, then this is because that modern people have changed their view of anima. Generally, the thought of rationalism does not recognize the existence of unknowable anima. The modern rationalism embodied by Modernism rejected even the newest views of anima, and thus modern people have become isolated from animism. However, people are actually incapable of complete perfectionism and modern people actually take on various ancient animisms. Then anti-modernism and anti-rationalism in turn search for new anima that is unparalleled through history. This looks directly at unknowable things exceeding the realms of rational understanding, and highlights new anima in the gap between the things clarified by the leading science and the not yet clarified wonders in the natural world.

    “E.T.”, which was made as a movie with the theme of the existence of alien life, differed from other entertaining science fiction movies and can be said to have contributed to the birth of a new animism. In the same way, the continually evolving animism gave birth to modern animism through various ways, such as the microscopic world of elementary particles, the world of DNA as the basic foundation of the phenomenon of life, the world of brain cells working mysteriously information transmission, and the superior spiritual phenomenon exceeding the rational thinking which is assumed to be disclosed through meditation, etc. Although science has rejected animism, this has in fact promoted it.

    Under these circumstances, it is fully conceivable for the emergence of earnest animism in the world of architecture. Although this cannot yet be unveiled as a prediction, the manneristic situation of today could already be thought to be an omen of the revival of anima, and the strengthening trend towards spiritualism among the modern younger generation is a sign that supports this prediction. In spite of such, a forcible advance towards spiritualism is wrong and only the scientific approach to the unknowable creates a new situation. Also in the world of architecture, it is brought in by the mind of inquiry or the curiosity searching endlessly something more than physical buildings. What appears taking architectural form can be thought of as all kind of structures at various scales which is integrated with “Gaia” instead of mere standalone buildings.