ustus Dahinden's reflections on architecture Felt spaces

"Mensch und Raum. Man and Space" is the title of Justus Dahinden's new book, recently published by the ETH Library. In it, the Swiss architect pleads for a better understanding of space–or room, one that grasps man in his multifarious aspects of a thinking and feeling being. It is a question of understanding both the challenging character of space, as well as its philosophical components.

Christoph Meier

"Come in!“ When a building or a room welcomes a person in this way, then that is good architecture. This is the opinion architect Justus Dahinden puts forward. In his new book, "Mensch und Raum. Man and Space", published last year by the ETH Library, Dahinden, who earned his doctorate from ETH Zurich, illustrates how important it is in architecture to take into accound that space alters the human behavour(1). In order to do this the architect e must bear in mind, that the well-being of an occupant does not depend on a mere transitory aesthetic trend. According to Dahinden, one should rather seek out the fundamental perceptional qualities of a designed space and ask oneself what feeling it sends forth. The gestalt psychological aspects can't just be ignored.

During his teaching years in the Faculty of Architecture at Vienna's Technical University and the adjoining space laboratory he had carried out numerous experiments with students on the influence of spaces, recounted the architect in an interview. He observed that various spaces continue to develop and expand the impression they produce on human beings. There were places, for example, where everyone is silent. He also speaks of the differentiated materialisation of one of his students who only used one stair if there were two. On the basis of this research, in his book Dahinden arrives at a type-casting of spaces and talks about places that are either imposing or relaxed.

"A mistaken sensibility quality in rooms generates feelings of stress in the user", believes architect Justus Dahinden. Among other subjects, his recently published book "Mensch und Raum. Man and Space", tackles that of the "sensitivity of space". large

Church with a drum tower

The Nurdachhaus on the Rigi, built for his father, was the first house Dahinden built. It is a place that arouses strong feelings of well-being, says the architect. It was fundamental when one started to work on any design that one first came to grips with existing tradition. This had been one of the biggest challenges to him when he started work on churches in Africa. Because to some extent western building traditions were adopted very rapidly. He had to overcome a fair amount of opposition when he built a tower with drums instead of bells for the Mityana Cathedral in Uganda. Dahinden devotes an extensive chapter of his book, complete with text, sketches and photos, to the bold venture of building churches. The reader learns how Dahinden attempts to unite his own concept of a sacred building with the various demands placed on a church.

Building for body and soul

Not a union, but an attempt to explain a building with the use of carrying and supported structural elements is what Dahinden sets out to achieve in the chapter entitled "On Architectural Thinking“. Starting

High-rise houses problematic as a building form

As it is not the use of a room that takes centre stage, but rather how a room influences the self-awareness of the occupant. Dahinden thus turns the adage "form follows function" on its head. The quality of sensations emanating from the room strongly suggests its use to the occupant; in other words, "function follows form". A lack of awareness of the invitation character explained, for example, the failure of functionally optimised rooms for living, such as kitchens. A mistaken quality of sensation in built rooms generated feelings of stress in the user. This was the case, for instance, in high-rise houses, because the further one was from the ground, the greater the decline in the sense of living quality, reasons this Zurich architect.

The architect, who often experiments with his own buildings, does not limit himself to observing behaviour in order to arrive at an appropriate building plan. He tackles very fundamental, even philosophical questions. For him, oblique lines–in contrast to the ubiquitous vertical lines that often dominate the lives of human beings–are liberating. In pyramids, for instance, this special arrangement of oblique surfaces serves as a mediator between heaven and earth. Dahinden explored the oblique with the building of the Ferrohaus on Lake Zurich, in designs for a "urban moundy"–a new kind of city, shaped like a mound, with public spaces and infrastructure buildings inside and terraced apartments on the outside–or the Nurdachhaus (a building that merely consists of a roof). All of these examples are documented in the book.

with two fundamental principles of design, he believes to identify a wave-like movement in the history of architecture. There were times when the gravitational forces clearly discernible during construction. By contrast, in other phases it was precisely the tectonics that were concealed. Prototypes of the two forms were the "Lion's Gate" of Mycenae and the Villa Savoye in Poissy from Le Corbusier, respectively. According to Dahinden, eminent constructions built by earlier advanced cultures mirror clear systems of thought and avoid weak, hybrid forms.

Although the Zurich architect has a high regard for Le Corbusier and makes no value judgement when he puts these two design principles into two different categories, he still thinks it is possible that with his design for "plan voisin“ in Paris his famous colleague might have provided the spark plug for today's highly-praised anonymous"modular architecture". Such architects, according to Dahinden, had not given sufficient thought to what built rooms were supposed to achieve: Health for man's body and soul.

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