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Ecstatic Architecture: The Surprising Link
Today there is a broad trend towards an architecture that could be called ecstatic - partly motivated by pure architectural ideas pushed to their limits and a shift from functional concerns to sensual ones. Ecstatic Architecture is stimulating, holistic and overpowering; its primary contemporary monument is Frank Gehry's New Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa.
Ecstatic Architecture has opened up architectural thought and made links with historic building. The term encompasses buildings widely distant in function and time, from cave art to the new cinema centre in Dresden, from explicitly erotic architecture to buildings which have a spiritual role, from conceptual and cybernetic artefacts to pure architecture. It suggests comparisons between the current practice of leading architects such as Hans Hollein, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Nigel Coates and Egyptian, Baroque and Art Nouveau architecture.
Essays examining the historic and philosophical implications are complemented by major projects in the genre by Frank Gehry, Will Alsop, Ron Arad, Odile Decq, Eric Owen Moss and Shin Takamatsu. Major rhetorical tropes of Ecstatic Architecture are clarified in two extensive photo essays by Charles Jencks. The surprise is that Ecstatic Architecture links such widely divergent strands and forces us to reconsider architecture in a new key.
Ecstatic Architecture has opened up architectural thought and made links with historic building. The term encompasses buildings widely distant in function and time, from cave art to the new cinema centre in Dresden, from explicitly erotic architecture to buildings which have a spiritual role, from conceptual and cybernetic artefacts to pure architecture. It suggests comparisons between the current practice of leading architects such as Hans Hollein, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Nigel Coates and Egyptian, Baroque and Art Nouveau architecture.
Essays examining the historic and philosophical implications are complemented by major projects in the genre by Frank Gehry, Will Alsop, Ron Arad, Odile Decq, Eric Owen Moss and Shin Takamatsu. Major rhetorical tropes of Ecstatic Architecture are clarified in two extensive photo essays by Charles Jencks. The surprise is that Ecstatic Architecture links such widely divergent strands and forces us to reconsider architecture in a new key.
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
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February 24, 2023
This is a compendium of essays about what various architectural people were doing or thinking in 1999, but that are still completely valid today, about the feelings and sensations that are experienced through architecture: Paolo Portoghesi, Neil Leach, Nigel Coates, Odile Decq, Maggie Toy, Ron Arad, with a number of papers by Charles Jencks, who gave the book its palimpsest constructed on the proposition that there is a component in architecture we can call "ecstatic".
Despite the quirkiness of his own architecture, which seems anything but ecstatic, Portoghesi is always reliable for a good analysis of Borromini, on whom he is an authority. Borromini is elaborately emotional but whether those emotions are ecstasy or just a mannered representation of them is debatable. The same is true of Balthasar Neumann (who is also mentioned). As for Frank Gehry, his gesticulations express all the spirituality of the cocktail party; beside Borromini, his clumsy pathos just looks ignorant.
There is ecstasy in 'high' modernism - one thinks of Erich Mendelsohn, or Ronchamp - but strangely there's no discussion of that here.
Nigel Coates, a child of Mendelsohn (see Coates's coffee houses project for the Strand) was once wildly ecstatic but has now acquired a quiet gravitas that pleased listeners at a Royal Academy symposium, from which the book is derived.
Distinction must be made between merely getting excited and the experience when the whole of one's being comes out on a high plateau of ecstasy. This may happen in bed, in church, by dancing and poetry or (for the foolhardy) using drugs. A religious philosopher like Mircea Eliade would say it is when we cross over between life and death. Architecture can lead there - one might say this is its highest purpose - but not by representing ecstasy, as with Borromini; we have to go ourselves. Leach's essay, which ranges from Bataille to St. Teresa, gets closest to understanding this.
In every spatial progression mapped out by an architect on a plan - say, a movement up some steps through a grand door into a building, along an entrance hall and then up a staircase, there is always the possibility of inducing particular moods: the thrill of arrival, the foreboding of descending a flight of steps.
At its most effective, spatial sequencing in architecture is neither exhibitionistic nor rhetorical, but quiet. In religious buildings, a long procession accompanied by anointings, incense, and incantations may eventually lead to ecstasy in the soul of whoever dares to pass through. But to do so should be difficult and approached in trepidation, trembling before the Divine.
Jencks recognises the importance of ritual for the attainment of such effects; but when he goes back to the Pharaohs he finds no magic in the amazing sequences of their architecture. To walk up the ramps or cross the terraces of the Temple of Hatshepsut, or to stand in the Great Hypostyle Hall of the Temple of Amon in Karnak, leaves him cold. He thinks these arrangements were for "militaristic" rituals that were not sensual or even interesting. It is surprising that he is unable to feel those spaces for what they are. He does, however, express interest in the symbolic power of various Egyptian decorations and objects - even though these were mere accessories.
Rem Koolhaas is the last architect one would think of in a debate like this - but Jencks wants us to try. Agitated, disorientating, brilliant and intrusive, is there is anything spiritual there ?
This interesting but uneven publication opens up themes that deserve very extended debate, to which some useful pointers are given in a transcript of the Academy symposium (included). The essay by Leach is the best thing in the book and significantly, needs no illustrations.
The irksome "magazine" format adopted by Academy presents serious ideas in a commercial format that suggests they are just a bit of fun. Don't be fooled.
Despite the quirkiness of his own architecture, which seems anything but ecstatic, Portoghesi is always reliable for a good analysis of Borromini, on whom he is an authority. Borromini is elaborately emotional but whether those emotions are ecstasy or just a mannered representation of them is debatable. The same is true of Balthasar Neumann (who is also mentioned). As for Frank Gehry, his gesticulations express all the spirituality of the cocktail party; beside Borromini, his clumsy pathos just looks ignorant.
There is ecstasy in 'high' modernism - one thinks of Erich Mendelsohn, or Ronchamp - but strangely there's no discussion of that here.
Nigel Coates, a child of Mendelsohn (see Coates's coffee houses project for the Strand) was once wildly ecstatic but has now acquired a quiet gravitas that pleased listeners at a Royal Academy symposium, from which the book is derived.
Distinction must be made between merely getting excited and the experience when the whole of one's being comes out on a high plateau of ecstasy. This may happen in bed, in church, by dancing and poetry or (for the foolhardy) using drugs. A religious philosopher like Mircea Eliade would say it is when we cross over between life and death. Architecture can lead there - one might say this is its highest purpose - but not by representing ecstasy, as with Borromini; we have to go ourselves. Leach's essay, which ranges from Bataille to St. Teresa, gets closest to understanding this.
In every spatial progression mapped out by an architect on a plan - say, a movement up some steps through a grand door into a building, along an entrance hall and then up a staircase, there is always the possibility of inducing particular moods: the thrill of arrival, the foreboding of descending a flight of steps.
At its most effective, spatial sequencing in architecture is neither exhibitionistic nor rhetorical, but quiet. In religious buildings, a long procession accompanied by anointings, incense, and incantations may eventually lead to ecstasy in the soul of whoever dares to pass through. But to do so should be difficult and approached in trepidation, trembling before the Divine.
Jencks recognises the importance of ritual for the attainment of such effects; but when he goes back to the Pharaohs he finds no magic in the amazing sequences of their architecture. To walk up the ramps or cross the terraces of the Temple of Hatshepsut, or to stand in the Great Hypostyle Hall of the Temple of Amon in Karnak, leaves him cold. He thinks these arrangements were for "militaristic" rituals that were not sensual or even interesting. It is surprising that he is unable to feel those spaces for what they are. He does, however, express interest in the symbolic power of various Egyptian decorations and objects - even though these were mere accessories.
Rem Koolhaas is the last architect one would think of in a debate like this - but Jencks wants us to try. Agitated, disorientating, brilliant and intrusive, is there is anything spiritual there ?
This interesting but uneven publication opens up themes that deserve very extended debate, to which some useful pointers are given in a transcript of the Academy symposium (included). The essay by Leach is the best thing in the book and significantly, needs no illustrations.
The irksome "magazine" format adopted by Academy presents serious ideas in a commercial format that suggests they are just a bit of fun. Don't be fooled.
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