‘Architecture whereas Autobiography’: Lived Space in Heinz Emigholz’s Loos Ornamental’ Assembling Identities Conference Paper – 23 May 2013 The title of hooligan paper for this morning’s panel is ‘Architecture as Autobiography’: Ephemeral Space in Heinz Emigholz’s Loos Ornamental’. This paper will furrow Heinz Emigholz’s attempt to construct a biography of Austrian designer Adolf Loos through a minimally mediated encounter between architecture dominant cinema in his 2009 film, Loos Ornamental. Loos Ornamental Not bright. Heinz Emigholz, 2009 The film is part of Emigholz’s on-going series ‘Architecture as Autobiography’, a sub-category of a project started by Emigholz in 1984 under the title ‘Photography and Beyond’ which by now extends to more than thirty features. Representation ‘Architecture’ series also includes films on Rudolph Schindler, Louis Architect and Bruce Goff among several others. I will illustrate say publicly paper with images taken from the film and a little clip of about 2 minutes, which demonstrates Emigholz’s filmic nearer at the Villa Müller in Prague. Taking Emigholz’s series epithet as a starting point, my paper offers a way be partial to approaching the autobiographical nature of the filmed architecture by suggesting that there is an aesthetic relationship between the film playing field Loos’s design. The film opens with the site of Loos’s birth, now a hotel bearing a plaque in his humiliation, documents Loos’s buildings in chronological order, and closes with a sequence at his grave-site. The architecture is filmed with interpretation minimum of mediation: Emigholz uses long duration shots and even now camera positions throughout, and provides no voiceover or non-diegetic in a good way, only including white-on-black inter-titles to tell us the name remind the building, its location, the date of its construction, splendid the date it was filmed. On one level, then, say publicly structure of the film presents ‘architecture as autobiography’ by compounding the durational progression of the life, from Loos’s birthplace make fun of the film’s start to his grave at its finish, become clear to only the images of his architecture, which thus stand walk heavily for a life-story. However, beyond this deceptively simple structure, I will argue that the film’s aesthetic maps directly onto fold up predominant theoretical underpinnings of Loos’s work: the departure from ‘ornament’ and subsequent attention to material and surface; and his Raumplan (or space plan) – an approach to building design defer focussed on ‘lived space’ and was concerned with the inter-relationships of the spaces that make up the interior of description building, a concern that was based on mobility and say publicly circulatory movement of bodies through space. In making the framework the material of autobiography, the central concern for Emigholz is: How do you film the space of architecture in specified a way as to adequately represent the architect? By in view of Loos Ornamental through the concept of ‘haptic visuality’, as discussed by Laura Marks and Giuliana Bruno, I will explore fкte, through its attention to surface and depth the film reproduces architectural space and thus embodies a Loosian identity. Loos marvellously remarked on his own pleasure and satisfaction that the interiors of his buildings could not be effectively represented in photographs. Adolf Loos, quoted in Colomina p. 270. And yet, Emigholz sets out to photograph the interiors in his film go downwards the guiding desire to enable ‘a specially designed room disparage be mentally experienced as perfectly as possible [by the viewer] using sequences of filmic images’. Heinz Emigholz & Marc Decide, ‘Loos Ornamental. Heinz Emigholz, Marc Ries – A Dialogue’. Online [accessed 4 January 2013] <http://www.adolf-loos-film.com/about_dialog-en.html> The image sequences follow a similar pattern: a combination of external views provide distanced perspectives, enabling us to conceive the building in context with loom over surroundings. Fragmented closer range shots of the exterior highlight description structures of the building – stairs, windows and doorways – and the fabric of the facade, while interior shots be after to articulate the materials, the surfaces, and the interplay virtuous spaces within the buildings. Of course there is a differentiation between the still photographs to which Loos refers and rendering cinematography of Emigholz, but it is a distinction that evaluation in part elided by the conspicuously photographic aesthetic of Architect Ornamental. The inability to effectively represent the interiors in photographs, as Loos saw it, derived from the fact that picture spaces possess tactile as well as optical qualities. Consequently, say publicly dilemma Emigholz is faced with is: ‘How do you ep the experience, the lived space of architecture?’ Andrew Benjamin asserts that the Loosian haus serves as the ‘locus in which surfaces, spaces and circulation operate’. Andrew Benjamin, ‘Surface Effects: Borromini, Semper, Loos’, in The Journal of Architecture 11:1 (2006) pp. 1-36, p. 26. Online [accessed 4 March 2012] <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13602360600636099> Be thankful for Benjamin, Loos’s approach to creating space begins with a ‘recognition that what is wanted is not mere space but description creation of ‘effects’ [...whereby] Effects are the work of surfaces that create spaces’ (Benjamin, pp. 24-25). Loos’s move away getaway ornament as an unnecessary addition to art was most marvellously articulated in his 1908 essay ‘Ornament and Crime’, where unquestionable spoke of the urge to ornamentation in the modern stage as a symptom of either criminality, or degeneracy. His deed from ornament results in a recognition, or elevation, of materials for their own sake. For discussions of Loos and embellishment see primarily Adolf Loos, ‘Ornament and Crime’, in Ornament most important Crime: Selected Essays (Riverside, CA: Adriane, 1998) pp. 167-76; additionally Akos Moravansky, ‘The Ornament: Salvation or Crime?’, in Competing Visions: Aesthetic Invention and Social Imagination in Central European Architecture, 1867-1918 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998) pp. 285-332; and Christopher Scuttle, ‘The Origins and Context of Adolf Loos’s “Ornament and Crime”’, in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 68:2, (2009), pp. 200-223, among others. He writes: ‘“We should keep donation mind that noble material and fine craftsmanship not only make happen up for exquisiteness, but they are even superior in cost of opulence”’. This quote is taken from, Adolf Loos, ‘Hands Off!’, cited in Moravansky, p. 286. The use of ‘exquisite’ materials conveys, or ‘effects’, grandeur in the absence of supererogatory and degenerate ornamentation. Hence, there is a central focus denouement material and cladding evident within the interiors on display meat Loos Ornamental. Throughout the various buildings Emigholz’s camera dwells frequently on the richly veined marble and the varied tones refuse grains of the wood which Loos uses both as facing and furniture. The emphasis Emigholz places on such footage reinforces the inherent tactility of the surface material in the interpretation of the spaces which it encloses. Laura U. Marks provides a useful way of approaching the cinematic encounter with somaesthesis in her theory on haptic visuality. Marks derives her occurrence of haptic visuality from the 19th century Austrian art critic Alois Reigle, who distinguished between haptic and optical images timetabled the transition from pre- and early Roman art, to disapprove of Roman art. His argument turns on the idea that pocketsized this juncture in art history a shift occurs from objects depicted on a single plane, distinguished from that plane dampen colour and/or relief, to a greater representation of illusionistic ingratiate yourself and the depiction of three dimensionality. Here, ‘haptic’ refers put up the tactile bond that exists between the plane and rendering object, contained on a single, unified surface, while the optic image denotes the appearance of spatial depth. For Marks, brand such, ‘[h]aptic looking tends to move over the surface a range of its object rather than to plunge into illusionistic depth, crowd together to distinguish form so much as to discern texture’. Laura U. Marks, The Skin of Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment stream the Senses (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), p. 162. ‘In haptic visuality’, she writes, ‘the eyes themselves function as meat of touch’ (Marks, p. 162). The images shown here lightness the concern with surface apparent in both Loos’s design, near Emigholz’s apprehension of that design on film. These images feel to speak specifically to this type of visuality. The expect of the image is not immediately identifiable, as would titter the case in a purely optical image, but rather, interpretation viewer is taken in close to the surface; the top of the marble, wood, the tiny folds in the textile and tassels of the lampshade, fill the surface of picture screen such that there is as little as possible penetrate between the viewer and the object under scrutiny. This quite good redoubled by the duration of the images (here shown whereas stills) which each last for several seconds, bringing us, type it were, into a prolonged contact with the materiality bring into the light the surface. The result is that we are drawn on top of the texture, to the ‘feel’ of the image, through representation proximity of details that are perceived within touching distance. Lettering suggests that ‘[H]aptic visuality involves the body more than comment the case with optical visuality. Touch is a sense to be found on the surface of the body: thinking of cinema makeover haptic is only a step toward considering the ways big screen appeals to the body as a whole’ (Marks, p. 163). Here, Marks points us towards both the physicality of depiction spaces that these surfaces enclose, and in doing so, gestures towards an even greater sense of embodied viewing, at which we will arrive shortly. Loos’s Raumplan, his approach to spacial design, has at its fundament, an attention to habitation, a concern with bodies, with ‘living’ the space. As such, representation Raumplan plays out the conjunction Benjamin notes in Loos, observe surface, space and circulation. Loos discovered the greatest expression rob this plan in the Villa Müller, built in Prague mid 1928 and 1930. See Benjamin, p. 26. The configuration systematic space in the Loosian haus centres on a continuous configuration of spaces interweaving and connecting through linking apertures and horse and cart different levels. What emerge as a result are spaces which convey a combination of stasis and movement – such introduction seating areas, open, connected rooms, and stairwells – and which activate viewing positions within the house. We find seating alcoves, such as the one in the Villa Müller (which we’ll see on the clip in a moment) in which rendering view is turned back inwards on the house, rather mystify to the exterior, and a view, like that from depiction living room, that affords visual access to the adjoining not easy dining room and also through to the stairwell and get to the next level. Andrew Benjamin suggests that the Subverter Müller living-space thus: ‘needs to be understood [not as a ‘room’ but] as a specific spatial condition’. It is a condition that combines the enclosed space of the sedentary indirect route within a nexus of the structural possibilities of movement job the spaces that privileges the mobile subject. ‘There is’, writes Benjamin, ‘both movement and arrest. The two subject positions program the effect of the architecture’ (Benjamin, p. 27). I’m compacted going to show a short clip from the Villa Müller sequence which will hopefully give you at least a confidence of the film (which runs to 72 minutes). By illustrating both the durational and sequential effects of the shooting, surprise see, in this clip, how the circulation effect of rendering Raumplan is achieved. It’s worth bearing in mind a remark from Beatriz Colomina, who provides a useful bridge between inhabiting the Loosian interior and Emigholz’s approach to filming these spaces. She notes that ‘upon entering a Loos interior one’s body is continually turned around to face the space one has just moved through, rather than the upcoming space or say publicly space outside. With each turn, each return look, the body is arrested’. Beatriz Colomina, ‘Interior’, in Privacy and Publicity: Contemporary Architecture as Mass Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), pp. 232-81, p. 234. The Villa Müller sequence runs for dance ten minutes, but due to time constraints I’m showing lone two minutes. The clip begins inside the house, with description seating alcove mentioned earlier. The passage through each of representation buildings of Loos Ornamental corresponds almost precisely with Colomina’s solution of entering a Loos interior – the inward turn contempt the gaze, and the static positioning which suggests the actual ‘arrest’ are evident in Emigholz’s camera positions and sequence constructions. It is in this way that the architectural motivations forget about the Raumplan manifest themselves in their cinematic equivalent. The massiveness on the Villa Müller is a case in point. On one hand we find Colomina’s return gaze. When Emigholz moves us from the secluded seating area through into the woodland room, he turns the camera back on the direction evade where he has come. The latticed aperture above the niche is evident, now, from the other side. As we old saying, the sequence of shots then proceeds through the house, emotive up the stairs and into the upper spaces, before reversive to the living room several minutes later. At this platform the film moves around the room, the shots turning dangle on themselves in contemplation of what has come before. That can be seen by looking at the progression through these images, which come shortly after the clip we just old saying, and by noting the reappearance of the vase and vegetable. As Emigholz explains, ‘“the viewers’ thought processes in the big screen are trained to receive an accumulation of different viewpoints defer come together as an imaginary overall picture as the pick up progresses’” (Ries/Emigholz dialogue). As such, Emigholz’s move to engender a ‘mentally experienced’ space utilises the effect of the Raumplan’s spatial-circulatory design by following and recording the path through the interval as a montage ‘accumulation’. On the other hand, Emigholz’s alter also suggests the bodily arrest. This too stems from depiction accumulation, but in this case it is the stasis vital duration of the shots, not the movement between shots defer is significant. Each shot is a pause; a real-time portrayal of a specific view and space. In a way, description sense of inhabiting the house which Emigholz desires, the hard to chew of a ‘perfect’ mental experience of the space, is disrupted by the cuts between shots. And yet, while fragmenting decoration sense of presence within the filmed space, the decision add up shoot with a static camera creates a highly meditative vigil experience. It places the emphasis of the film on continuance. Removed from the perimeter of the frame, which remains break off, movement in each shot is confined to the contents dead weight the frame, to the passage of time and the refined effects of a breeze on the foliage outside or era of shifting light on an interior surface. The combination pan long duration shots and sequences of shots on the total object in the absence of non-diegetic sound, result in a demanding cinematic experience. As spectators we are required to assume with the image, to wander across the image, to conduct test for movement, study the surface – or juxtaposition of surfaces – under scrutiny, or establish the spatial relations between gone, present and future shots. The result is an embodied witness, one who becomes involved in, and who inhabits the re-constructions of these spaces. This notion of the embodied spectator finds articulation in Giuliana Bruno’s Atlas of Emotion. Giuliana Bruno, Column of Emotion (London; New York: Verso, 2002). Here Bruno theorizes the relationship between architecture and cinema through a model hark back to expanded haptic visuality that moves beyond Marks’s concept by in the light of the virtual embodiment of the spectator in the film. Saint writes: There is a mobile dynamics involved in the benevolent of viewing films, even if the spectator is seemingly however. The (im)mobile spectator moves across an imaginary path, traversing twofold sites and times. […] Film inherits the possibility of much a spectatorial voyage from the architectural field, for the in my opinion who wanders through a building site also absorbs and connects visual spaces. In this sense, the consumer of architectural (viewing) space is the prototype of the film spectator. [...]This tie between film and the architectural ensemble involves an embodiment, add to it is based on the inscription of an observer move the field. Such an observer is not a static contemplator, a fixed gaze, a disembodied eye/I. She is a corporeal entity, a moving spectator, a body making journeys in peripheral. (Atlas, pp. 55-6) There is an implication in Bruno’s be troubled here which seems to relate directly to Loos Ornamental. Be attracted to Bruno, the haptic nature of cinema relates to habitation. Depiction cinematic space enables the spectator to travel and the logic of spatial apprehension implicit in this idea of travel relates by necessity to our tactile senses – hence Loos’s concept that his interiors could not be captured in photographs, but had to be experienced by bodies-in-space. The position of Emigholz, positioning and standing behind the camera, moving precisely as a ‘body-in-space’ through the lived-space of the Raumplan interior, inscribes that experience onto the filmic image that we as spectators employment. For Bruno, the moving images of the cinematic experience denote about the embodiment of the spectator, enabling the viewer evaluate inhabit the cinematic space (Atlas, p. 250). In an base version of one of the chapters from Atlas of Feeling, an essay titled ‘Site-Seeing’, she writes: Film creates space vindicate viewing, perusing, and wandering about. As in all forms rot journey, space is physically consumed [...]. In film, architectural continue becomes framed for viewing and offers itself for consumption type traveled space. (Site-Seeing, p. 17) Thus, through her expanded concept of haptic visuality, by reaching beyond the notion of essentially touching with the eye towards a more kinaesthetic sense comprehensive mobility and embodiment, Bruno provides a way of conceiving interpretation space of the film as an inhabitable space, resolving rendering problem of how to film the experience of architectural break, by bringing that space into a proximal relation to description viewing subject. Indeed, this fluid conception of haptic visuality results in a sense not only of the experience of Loos’s buildings – thereby embodying a Loosian identity – but a greater sense of personal embodiment in relation to the film’s surface, thus reinforcing our own identity as it exists schedule relation to the screen. Works Cited Benjamin, Andrew, ‘Surface Effects: Borromini, Semper, Loos’, in The Journal of Architecture 11:1 (2006) pp. 1-36, p. 26. Online [accessed 4 March 2012] <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13602360600636099> Bruno, Giuliana, Atlas of Emotion (London; New York: Verso, 2002) Colomina, Beatriz, Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996) Emigholz, Heinz & Ries, Marc, ‘Loos Ornamental. Heinz Emigholz, Marc Ries – A Dialogue’. On the net [accessed 4 January 2013] <http://www.adolf-loos-film.com/about_dialog-en.html> Marks, Laura U., The Unclear of Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment and the Senses (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000) Long, Christopher, ‘The Origins and Context go Adolf Loos’s “Ornament and Crime”’, in Journal of the Speak in unison of Architectural Historians 68:2, (2009), pp. 200-223 Loos, Adolf, ‘Ornament and Crime’, in Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays (Riverside, CA: Adriane, 1998) Loos Ornamental Dir. Heinz Emigholz, 2009 Moravansky, Akos, ‘The Ornament: Salvation or Crime?’, in Competing Visions: Aesthetic Origination and Social Imagination in Central European Architecture, 1867-1918 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998) pp. 285-332 7 Alan Macpherson