Doctoral thesis
Title: THE TRANSPARENCY OF THE FLUID PLANE
Subtitle: APPEARANCE AND SYSTEMS IN CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE
Author: Ricardo Guasch
The director: Txatxo Sabater
_____________________________________________________________________________________
SUMMARY
From post analytic cubism transparency as a way to manage space, to modern material filters of light, which make or even define the image of a building. Or, said another way, from transparency and lightness and their double meaning. We can detect various forms of transparency in the architecture of our time: from the literal meaning to the phenomenal condition, notions of obstruction, delay, and the dichotomy between crystal transparency and flowing image- crystal plane vs fluid plane.
The central theme of this thesis deals with the notion of transparency in modern architecture and its derivatives: the vibration of light, phenomenology of perception, suspension of the sign, and material transformation. All of these guide our way of comprehending architecture in the last two decades and also, to some extent, the field of art and design, with which it interacts.
Structure of the work.
Paragraphs (-) and authors of texts of reference (*):
PART I. OBJECTIVITY
- Dematerialization and two-dimensional record. The reference of the plane protagonizes a progressive dematerialization that leads to the dismemberment of the architectural corpus tradition at the start of the 20th century.
*Reichlin
- Transparent Organization of forms. Reflections; Rowe’s phenomenal transparency, and other 'derivatives'.
*Rowe and Slutzky
- Light and transformation. Review of the 'heteroxa' Chareau’s Maison de Verre, today’s model of the new architecture.
*Frampton
PART II. DIFFERENTIATION
- New sensibility. In contrast to the air space of modernity, now a conceptual change to a 'dense' space, that uses as its metaphor, the cloud, the chrysalis, and the veil.
*Riley
- Japan. This sensibility is in the Japanese tradition of enigmatic shades and illuminated darkness.
*Plummer
- Flowing Image. As opposed to the crystal transparency, now a conceptual change to the transparency of the fluid or cosmic plane. Manet vs Monet.
*Glucksmann
- Events of light. The flow image finds its best reflection in the vibrations of light. The experience of light’s phenomena in nature from a 'moderate empiricism'.
*Zajonc
- Qualities of light. Contrast between the direct experience in search of light events of architectural character, and the work of some artists and architects: Turrell, Flavin, Rothko, Libeskind, Zumthor, and others.
*Calvino
- The visible vs. the invisible. Phenomenology of perception and phenomenology in architecture. The essence of material, memory and place.
*Holl
- The textures of another side. Confrontation and corrosion of the signs assigned to the material. Recycling and vibration of the luminous.
*Steinmann
- Optical coverings. Given its exposure to light, the matter in transformation becomes an optical interface. It joins the technologies of environmental control, and structure.
*Ábalos and Herreros
ADDENDA
- Appearance and system. The entire building understood as matter in transformation implies a reflection about the genesis of form, autosimilarity, structures of minimal energy, and the intimate implication of structure in form.
*Beukers and van Hinte
EPILOGUE
- Sensitive and metaphorical record of materials and systems. Verification of the content expressed in the present work, and its connection to the notion of transparency, by means of experimental execution of model interfaces in which light and matter interact.
Note: The authors of texts of reference (*) for every chapter, are clearly not the only ones, but their mention highlights the fact that this thesis is understood by its author, as a processing of those texts which are available as study material.