Two Postmodernists

Charles W. Moore

&

Robert Venturi

Moore & Venturi

• Both Postmodernists

• Contemporary

• In the Gray Group (Historic Oriented)

• Educators

• Published Theorists

• Practicing Architects

Postmodern Architect

Charles W. Moore

Charles W. Moore (1925-1993)

• Background• Written Works• Selected Design Works

Charles Willard Moore (1925-1993)

• Architect• Theorist and Author• Educator• Received many awards

for Contribution and Building Design

Bibliography • 1947: graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in

architecture • Worked in San Francisco, served two years in the Army Corps of

Engineers• Received Master’s Degree and a Ph.D in architectural history

from Princeton University • Taught at Princeton, University of California at Berkeley, Yale,

University of California Los Angeles and University of Texas, Austin

• Practiced architecture under the firm identification "MLTW" – Moore, Lyndon, Turnbull, Whitaker; Centerbrook; Urban Innovations Group; Moore, Ruble, Yudell; Moore/Anderson Architects

Moore’s Books

12 Co-authored Books including:• (1974) The Place of Houses (with Gerald Allen and Donlyn

Lyndon) • (1976) Dimensions. Space, Shape and Scale in Architecture

(with Gerald Allen)• (1977) Body, Memory and Architecture (with Kent C. Bloomer) • (1988) The Poetics of Gardens (with William J. Mitchell and

William Turnbull, Jr.) • (1994) Chambers for a Memory Palace (with Donlyn Lyndon)• You Have to Pay for the Public Life: Selected Essays of Charles

W. Moore (2001)

Moore’s Roles and Interests

• Post-Modernist Architect (one of the Gray) • Knowledgeable in Architectural History • Inclusive Design (like Venturi)• Public Life and Public Spaces• Pop Architecture (reject pure Modern)• Prefers Wonder and Excitement of Everyday

Environments

“Santa Barbara” in The Place of Houses (1974)

• Sense of place– Relaxed air of Mediterranean dream – The common imagery give a sense of “being in

the same place” • The application and preservation of

Mediterranean style architecture

Santa Barbara

Santa Barbara as a Unique Place

• Relationships between people and enclosures (white stucco walls, tile roofs, iron grills, arcades, columns, balconies, hedges, trees and mountain)

• Public realm to live in as much as the private• Encouraging and dramatizing the act of public habitation

a stage for daily action• So much cares and agreements were spent on it• Physical embodiment of the shared dream

Body Memory and Architecture (1977)

• Introductory lecture on basic problem in architecture• About how buildings are experienced before [more than]

how they are built• Anthropological conception of architecture• Architecture is measured by the way it is experienced

by the human body in space • Basic elements as objects of human perception– space,

site, walls, roof, etc., especially orders

Body Memory and Architecture (1977)

• Architecture as the projection of human experience (house or city)

• Architecture is physical and psychological, possession of place by inhabitant who confirms his own identity in the symbols of individual and historic memory (สถาปั�ตยกรรมเปั�นการย�ดครองสถานที่��ที่างกายภาพและที่างจิ�ตวิ�ที่ยาของผู้ !อย " ที่��ได!ย%นย&นอ&ตล&กษณ์)ของตนเองด!วิยส&ญล&กษณ์)ส"วินต&วิ และควิามที่รงจิ+าต"อปัระวิ&ต�ศาสตร))

Problems with Modernism

• Architectural beliefs became severely “rational” • Architecture as a highly specialized system with a set of

prescribed technical goals rather than a sensual social art responsive to real human desires and feeling

• Relied more on 2D diagram and quantifiable features than colorful 3D qualities of the whole architectural experience

• Cartesian notion of space and measurement• Human body has not been a central concern in the

understanding of architectural form

Moore’s Intentions

• Re-examine the significance of the human body in architecture

• Examine some post-Cartesian philosophical and psychological thoughts as they pertain to changing views of architecture

• Review some models of perception that have been influential in the 20th century

• Discuss vocabulary of architectural forms and their relationships

Beyond the Body Boundary

• We used to measure and order the world out from our own bodies (we don’t anymore)

• Cartesian spatial relationship of thing and coordinates (x, y, z)

• No connection with the body-centered, value charged sense of space

• Except single-family house

Cartesian Coordinates and Order

Single Family House • Free standing • Based on our sense of ourselves extended beyond the

boundaries of our bodies to the world around • With a face and a back– up and down • With a hearth (a heart)• Looks like face (door like a mouth, windows like eyes, a

roof like forehead)• Detail outside tells a story about the interior • This house façade is not a billboard, a simple sign, but

rather the complex intimation of much more within • The lawn as personal envelop or personal space

Single Family House

The Lawn

Extensions from the Body

• Basic enclosure (womb)

• Toward the public

Identity of the Body

Body of Christ, Body of Politic

Body of the King

The Sense of Beauty

• Laws and priorities governing our sense of beauty

• Aesthetics comes from the Greek aesthetikos = of sense perception

• Reason and Thought vs. Sense and Emotion

Different Philosophical Standpoints

Beauty, Sense and Thought

“One must deduce the meaning of buildings, not sense them” (Descartes)

“Sensible knowledge is of course inferior to knowledge developed by the mind alone” (Baumgarten)

The Aesthetic Feeling Compared with Measurement

• Mechanical measurement (actual bigness)

• Visual measurement (the bigness it appears to have)

• Bodily measurement (the feeling of bigness)

• Only the last has aesthetic value

Sense Perception

• Five Basic Senses as Perceptual Systems, aggressively seeking information (J. J. Gibson)– Visual system– Auditory system– Taste-smell system– Basic-orienting system– Haptic system

• The last two contribute the most to our understanding of 3Ds and architectural experience

The Sense of Dwelling

• We do not aggressively seek architectural form • We experience satisfaction in architecture by

desiring it and dwelling in it, not seeking it • We require a measure of possession and

surrounding to feel the impact and the beauty of a building

The Sense of Dwelling

Body-Image Theory

• We have unconscious and changing images of our bodies (separate from our knowledge)

• We unconsciously locate our bodies inside a 3-dimensional boundary (changing according to internal and external events and strength)

• The body boundary can be modified by clothes, badges, weapons, an automobile or an airplane that connect directly to the body and is subject to body-reflex actions

Body Movement

• The Spatiality of Movement– Awareness of gravity and maintenance of a center– Directions (up, down, left, right)

• The Building as a Stimulus for Movement – Architecture functions as a potential stimulus for movement,

real or imagined • The Building as a Stage for Movement

– Awareness of our own movements in relation to the boundaries as well as our spatial relationship to one another

The Stage for Movement

The Stage for Movement

Vocabulary of Architectural Forms

The inhabited world within boundaries that can be identify as a syntax of:

• Place: distinguishable from the world around them • Path: limited variety, going one point to another or

returning to the same point again • Pattern: composed mostly with paths and places (with

recognizable system as bounded space) • Edge: the end of domain with walls, façades, parapets,

walls, face out, and the fold in the system or face out from it

Place

Path

Pattern

Edge

Human Identity in Memorable Places

• What missing from our dwellings are the potential transactions between body, imagination and environment

• We will care increasingly for our buildings if: – There is some meaningful order in them – There is definite boundaries to contain our concerns – We can inhabit them– We can establish connection with what we know, believe and

think – We can share with others – Some sense of human drama, of transport, of tension, or of

collision of forces

The Real [memorable] Place

They are memorable because • They are unique• They affect our bodies and generate enough

associations to hold it in our personal worlds• They are susceptible to continuous readings–

complex and ambiguous ones • Changeability

Moore’s Preferences and Styles

• Neo-Vernacular • Historic References • Pseudo Public Space and Historic Elements• Movements• Analogy of Water (flexible arrangement– out of,

go in pass through, up and down, etc.) • Dramatic Experiences/ Choreographic Work

Examples of Architectural Design: Moore and Others

Moore House (1962)

"Its forms admittedly derive from primitive huts and from Mayan or Hindu temples…and Moore makes it clear that he was thinking in broad and recollective terms when he made the design." Gerald Allen

Sea Ranch Condominium (1965) California

Kresge College, University of California (1973)

• Promote feeling of community

• Shopping mall concept• Paths • Bodies moving through

planes or stage• Trivial monuments

Kresge College (1973)

Burns House (1974) California

"The Burns House was designed for an urban planner...and he brought at least two specific requirements to it. The building should reflect the patterns and traditions of life in southern California, and it also had to house a fine baroque pipe organ... The result is a series of sheds and towers,… but here clothed in more regionally apposite stucco in many shades of ochre, orange, and mauve…” Gerald Allen

Burns House (1974)

Piazza d’Italia (1977) New Orleans

Hood Museum of Art (1983) New Hampshire

Hood Museum of Art

Beverly Hills Civic Center (1988-90)California

Urban architecture, which enriches public life Old City Hall from 1939

Beverly Hills Civic Center

Plaza

Beverly Hills Civic Center Movements

Beverly Hills Civic Center Details

Afterwards

• There are no schemes for multifamily housing or large-scale urban reconstruction that satisfy all the senses of the body and nurture the memory as well

• The design of the environment is a choreography of the familiar and the surprising, in which the familiar has the central role, and a major function of the surprising is to render the familiar afresh

Comparison: Venturi and Moore(both apply historic elements—the grey)

Venturi• Emphasize message• Symbol in the environment• View from outside• Ambiguity• More superficial • Use historic elements

unconventionally

Moore• Emphasize body sense• Body experience extended• View (feel) from within • Dramatic• More philosophical • Use unconventional

elements to achieve historic memory

Architecture as…

Venturi: Symbol Moore: Experience