Material Thought: Siah Armajani and the Half-Open Door

Abstract

The theoretical consideration of architecture is a rich vein of cultural theory, but too often with the problem of being disembodied and abstract, and limited by interpretations solely through text. This paper suggests that we reconsider the relationship of the theoretical and the architectural by observing how architecture manipulates intrinsically material ideas. One example can be found in the work of artist Siah Armajani, whose Dictionary for Building (1974-5) explores the arrangement of ordinary things. The work is discussed here with reference to Gaston Bachelard’s study of the spatial imagination in poetry and Susanne Langer’s theory of aesthetics. Armajani allows the made-thing and made-thought to coexist in a state of reverie, revealing the contemplative mode of architectural ideas. While other disciplines and practices undoubtedly contribute to an expanded field of architectural theory, the theoretical-of-the-architectural originates in these tangible thoughts: sensual theories of material thought. An architectural idea might be considered as an emergent property of inhabited spatial–material constructions.

Keywords:

• architecture
• models
• things
• ideas
• Siah Armajani
• Gaston Bachelard

Notes

¹ Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas (Boston: Beacon, 1969), 222.

² Ziba Ardalan, ed., Siah Armajani: An Ingenious World (London: Parasol Unit, 2013), 114–25. Also see Siah Armajani and Christian Bernard, Siah Armajani: Anarchistics Contributions 1962–1994 (Nice: Villa Arson, 1994), 21–2.

³ Bachelard, Poetics of Space, 3–36.

⁴ David Leatherbarrow, “Showing What Otherwise Hides Itself,” Harvard Design Magazine no. 6 (Fall 1998), 50.

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ Susanne K. Langer, Feeling and Form (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953), 40.

⁷ Ibid., 27.

⁸ Bachelard, The Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language and the Cosmos (Boston: Beacon, 1971), 6.

⁹ Siah Armajani, “The Essence of Architectural Space,” Domus, 724 (February 1991): 21–8; revised from the original in Design Quarterly (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis), 122 (1984).