8/9/2019 THE LIVED METAPHOR by Juhani Pallasmaa

1/2

1(2)

Macintosh HD:Users:patricklallemand:Dropbox:SH_web:Architecte:MOS:PEZO by J.Pallasmaa.doc

LIBRIA Publication, Italy(Houses by Pezo von Ellrichshausen)

THE LIVED METAPHOR

In addition to facilitating practicalities and conveniences of dwelling,every profound house is a metaphysical device, a constructedmetaphor of the world and the human condition. As Gaston

Bachelard, the philosopher of poetic imagery, maintains, It [thehouse] is an instrument with which to confront the cosmos.1In fact,every meaningful house or piece of art is in itself also a world, acomplete microcosm. As the ultimate poet of cinema, AndreiTarkovsky remarks: In a word, the [cinematic] image is not a certainmeaning, expressed by the director, but an entire world reflected asin a drop of water.2 Buildings are similarly spatial and materialimages that reflect epic narratives.

In our time, architecture is usually thought of in terms of the visualimage, but the true task of the art of building is beyond visuality andaesthetics; it is fundamentally existential. The encounter of beautyopens up channels to the very essence of things as well as truths.Aesthetics is the mother of ethics, as Joseph Brodsky, the poet,argues.3Every meaningful building poses questions and providesanswers about the nature of human existence. Instead of drawingattention to itself, it turns our awareness back to the world and ourown life. It makes us see the majesty of the mountain, thepersistence and dignity of the tree, the enigma of a shadow on thewall, and the smile on the face of the stranger. In short, the task ofarchitecture is to create frames and horizons of perception,

experience and understanding. A great building always makes usaware of our very humanity, and of our role and responsibility in thereality and continuum of culture.

The houses of Mauricio Pezo and Sofia von Ellrichshausen exudemeaning through their authoritative presence. These structuresorganize the acts of life effortlessly, but beyond their practicalusefulness, they are devices of meditation on landscape and nature,horizon and gravity, space and light, silence and intimacy. Theirrepeated strategy to contain the service functions of practicalitywithin a thick faade, gives a double benefit: on the one hand, the

spaces are purified, celebrated and re-mythicized, while on the

8/9/2019 THE LIVED METAPHOR by Juhani Pallasmaa

2/2

2(2)

Macintosh HD:Users:patricklallemand:Dropbox:SH_web:Architecte:MOS:PEZO by J.Pallasmaa.doc

other, the strengthened wall enhances the sense of protection and ofheightened intimacy and privacy. These spaces turn into distinct andfinite rooms instead of being practically mere rationed space in thestandard modernist manner.

The determined and meticulous reduction of details serves thepurpose of focusing and condensation. Regardless of their restraint,these spaces are not abstract in the sense of distance or absenceof meaning. On the contrary, they are compressions of experienceand signification. In the art and architecture, the strategies ofdistancing and embracing, weight and flight, mass and immateriality,uninhibitedness and discipline, authority and intimacy, are bound toco-exist.

The characteristic drawings of the architect couple emphasize the

systems of organization and construction, instead of the directexperiential reading of spaces, and volumes. The houses are shownin isolation from their settings in order to emphasize their essence asartifacts and devices of perception and experience, reminiscent of atelescope or camera obscura. Their cut axonometric drawings,recalling Auguste Choisys famous architectural drawings,underscore the systemic and anatomic aspects of the design whilesuppressing a naturalistic or experiential reading. Yet, in theircontexts, the houses of Mauricio Pezo and Sofia von Ellrichshausenenter into a vivid dialogue with their natural or built settings, in theway of the jar in Wallace Stevens poem4:

I placed a jar in TennesseeAnd round it was, upon a hill The wilderness rose up to it,And sprawled around, no longer wild.

Helsinki, 14 January, 2010

Juhani Pallasmaa

Architect, Professor, Helsinki

1 Gaston Bachelard, Poetics of Space(Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), 46.

2 Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in time Reflections on the cinema(London:The Bodley Head, 1986), 110.

3 Joseph Brodsky, On Grief and Reason: Essays (New York: Farrar, Strausand Giroux, 1997), 49.

4 Wallace Stevens, Anecdote of the Jar, The Collected Poems(New York:

Vintage Books, 1990), 76.