[This review originally appeared in Impressions, vol. 13, 1988].
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Sir George Trevelyan. The Active Eye in Architecture: An Approach to Dynamic and Imaginative Seeing. Ross‑on‑Wye, Herefordshire: Wrekin Trust, 1977. |
In this small book, now out of print and difficult to obtain, educator Geroge Trevelyan works to apply Goethean seeing to the essential nature of architecture. The book has two main aims: First, to introduce the reader to a way of looking whereby seemingly static architectural forms are seen to shift and grow; Second, to use this way of seeing to identify basic aspects of architecture, particularly the dyadic tension between solid and space, earth and spirit. Trevelyan concludes that architecture exemplifies "the redemptive workings of light and life in the realm of inert matter" (p.72).
Less than 100 pages long, Active Eye begins with a discussion of the art of looking. Trevelyan explains that conventionally we look at architecture passively and see a building as a finished, inert thing. Instead, the need is to see the building in movement ‑‑ to look at "how forms come into being, change, and evolve" (p.1). A building and its parts may seem frozen, but with a deeper kind of looking, one might discover that these forms are "in a dynamic relationship to each other" (p.1). The need is "to release stone into movement as an imaginative experience" (p.1).
In the ten short chapters of Active Eye, Trevelyan specifies characteristics of this way of seeing, illustrates its lineage in Goethe's study of the metamorphsis of plants, and applies this way of seeing to several buildings and architectural elements, including the column, cube, and dome, which for Trevelyan have special roles in the reconciliation of matter and spirit. He says that his way of seeing architecture is essentially a teaching technique and may at first seem childlike and naive. Yet, he believes this way of architectural seeing was taken for granted right up until the Renaissance, but since then has been lost, especially in academic studies of architecture. Practically, this way of seeing is best done by experiencing actual buildings. Since such direct access is not possible in book form, Trevelyan provides a series of drawings which attempt to activate this way of seeing vicariously.
Trevelyan introduces the reader to active seeing through discussion of two propositions, the first of which is that seeing should be an active experience rather than a passive reception of images. Here, the student works to give active attention to the bond of energy linking the eye to the object seen‑‑the "eye‑beam," as Trevelyan calls it. As he explains, "We are not merely seeing but we are deliberately observing our seeing, which is usually an unconnected process" (p.15).
The aim is to use this active way of looking to touch experientially the building and its parts, for example, to run the eye‑ beam along the flutings of a column or around the arch above a door. This way of seeing can also explore planes and spaces, thus it can sense the way a pilaster projects from a wall, or the way in which a low entry space suddenly rises into the height of a central courtyard. Through this active vision, one can learn to experience the pressure and being of form, surface, and space. Trevelyan believes that this "finger of looking" can lead to "a real extension of consciousness far beyond the limits of the physical body" (p.2).
Trevelyan's second proposition involves the effort to activate the eye‑beam sequentially, in a way similar to the method that Goethe used to study changes in plant growth so as to demonstrate that all vegetative forms are in the process of becoming, either transforming themselves or fading away. Specifically, the second proposition says that the student must discover how to look at the images the eye makes and observe how they transform from one to another when the student makes an active effort to superimpose one image on the next. The need is to stand behind the eye and watch its movement, since Trevelyan claims that the eye's instinctive sense of how to move over a building provides the clues for identifying the building's transformative properties‑‑or lack of them.
In other words, Trevelyan's second proposition assumes that in looking at architectural form, the eye moves among kindred images, for example, from flat wall to pilaster to column to arch. Practice in active seeing, Trevelyan claims, can lead to awareness of movement among these related architectural images so that they seem to leap from one to the next, and "for a magical split second the image seems alive"(p. 3). Such use of sequential images, says Trevelyan, fosters genuine imagination‑‑i.e., "the faculty of receiving in picture image the truths of the archetypal realm behind the outward appearances. It is the first step toward initiation into knowledge of higher reality" (p. 58).
In this sense, successful architecture involves buildings which evoke a continuous metamorphosis of form, especially as this metamorphosis moves from substance to light, heaviness to ether, as in the upward surge of the Gothic Cathedral. The questions to keep in mind in regard to this second proposition are three: What are the architectural forms doing? In what direction are they changing? Into what are they transforming? Trevelyan summarizes the overall seeing process as follows:
This approach to architecture starts always from the strict observation of what the eye is drawn to do when it looks on a building. We are standing behind the eye and watching the movements which it is invited to make by the architectural forms. We watch how it selects certain key images and then likes to superimpose these on kindred images and see the 'movement' of merging and change that takes place through the revealing of differences. This can be a severe and accurate process of observation and has, as such, nothing to do with speculation or emotional sentiment. We inevitably find, however, that the process of active looking brings the building alive so that it speaks to us, and the secrets of the forms begin to reveal themselves. Then, to interpret the sensory experience to each other, we have first to speak of them in musical or rhythmic terms or in adjectives that express feeling. In a group studying a building this way, we shall hear of the "thrilling shaft of moving light sinking like a sword between columns," "the terrifying effect of circles cutting into each other," "the exciting movement" as a building is seen to swing, and so forth... Every building calls forth a different looking (p. 37).
In the rest of Active Eye, Trevelyan applies active looking to a series of buildings and architectural styles with the eventual aim of identifying integral elements of architecture and demonstrating how their metamorphosis evokes particular kinds of emotional and aesthetic experiences. Here, I want to present some illustrations which I found personally useful and then to suggest weaknesses and strengths of Trevelyan's approach, especially as it has relevance to systematics.
One of the first seeing exercises Trevelyan presents is the facade of the Doge's Palace, the Gothic‑styled city hall of Venice. The aim is to observe what one's eye does: it begins with the black round arches, moves up through the circular holes above, then attaches itself to the pointed arches of the second story and the circular decorations in their spandrels. Trevelyan claims that this eye movement reflects a metamorphosis in which the rounded arches of the first story are transformed into the pointed arches of the second story. The circular holes of the first story work as a kind of preparation for the metamorphosized pointed arches above. The round ornament of the spandrels becomes "nothing other than the used‑up husk of the powerful circular hole, disregarded since it has done its work" (p.5).
Having presented several buildings as he has understood them through active looking, Trevelyan then examines particular architectural elements, of which he says, each has its "own inner life and intention" (p. 21). The first architectural form that Trevelyan discusses is the column, which he says is the first architectural feature to arrest the eye. The essence of the column is "wall matter endowed with the nearest thing to life and being" (p.29).
One's eye‑beam can make contact with a classical column's entasis‑‑i.e., the subtle swelling of the column shaft from bottom to top. Tevelyan argues that entasis expresses bodily strength and endows the column with a sense of life‑‑"the swell of lifter muscles and power of back and thigh" (p. 10). Trevelyan argues that the column is wall transformed, thus a flat wall is both the source out of which all possible columns are born and an original set of columns now dissolved back into a plain surface.
One can construct mental images whereby the column is born from the sensitized wall or dies back into it. The pillaster‑‑a column still attached to a wall‑‑is the transition image in this imaginative sequence. Every section of wall holds the potentiality of a pilaster, which in turn can break lose from the wall and become an independent column. In this sense, "columns are struggling to come to birth... out of solid chunks of masonry" (p. 21). The free column, therefore, is wall metamorphosized.
Further, through the swelling of entasis, the column takes on life and expresses the vitality and strength of a living body. In this sense, the column manifests being and therefore individuality: "it is nearly a creature. It approaches the attributes of a man ‑‑ or a God"(p. 26). The three classical orders of Doric, Ionic and Corinthian further articulate the column's meaning. In its stubbiness and thickness, the Doric column expresses physical strength and therefore evokes the human limb‑system, center of will. In contrast, the thinner, more fragile Corinthian column expresses, especially in its leafed capital, the human head and therefore speaks of the complexity of thinking.
This point, says Trevelyan explains why the Corinthian column is often called the "philosopher's column." Yet again, the scrolled capital of the Ionic column expresses a swinging, rhythmic movement from one whorl back to the other. Trevelyan suggests that this visual rhythm represents the regular action of heart and lungs, which in turn are linked with feeling. In short, the threefold classical orders reflect the threefold nature of man. Tevelyan points out that particularly in Renaissance building, this threefoldness was expressed architecturally by a three‑floor facade whose first story was Doric, second story Ionic, and third story Corinthian. Here, one is reminded of Gurdjieff's picture of three‑storied man and how this human arrangement might be reflected in a building facade.
Walls joined together create the cube, which to Trevelyan is the simplest kind of architectural space and an expression of "sheer substance delivered over to gravity"(p. 39). The cube is an expression of gravity, earth, and darkness. Powerful architecture involves counter forces of light and life which work to "attack and eat away and transmute the cube" (p. 39).
Especially significant in the metamorphosis of the cube are the circle and sphere, which Trevelyan sees as forms of life and light. Roundness expresses the energy of the sun, and, therefore, the circle and sphere represent higher forces and the cube their embodiment in matter.
As an example of roundness in architecture, Trevelyan describes the centralized churches of the Renaissance such as S. Maria della Consoliagione in Todi, Italy, illustrated in the second drawing. The design of this church is a cube with four symmetrical apses and a raised dome. Trevelyan says that as one passes his eye‑beam over this church, one senses a cube out of which in five directions an inner pressure has burst forth in roundness, so powerful at the top that the roof has been lifted an extra tier and blown upward in dome form. This example, says Trevelyan, shows the primary polarity in architecture: the heaviness of the earth‑bound cube versus the levity of light and life, which open and transform the cube.
Trevelyan believes that the dome is the most powerful instance of roundness, the "supreme constructional and aesthetic achievement in architecture" (p.44), especially in the Renaissance's ideal of the centralized church based on the plan of a Greek cross with altar directly beneath the dome's center.
Trevelyan says that if one can see actively and experience a dome as a single gesture, one can feel its roundness as a kind of pressure in the head. In this sense, the roundedness reflects the dome of the head and therefore expresses thinking man.
Further, in a centralized church like Christopher Wren's St. Paul's Cathedral, the entire structure is a three‑fold image of man, with the dome expressing the head; the great drum below the dome, the heart and soul; and the church structure below, the body and will. The centralized church, says Trevelyan, "is a point of contact with the Divinity"(p. 47).
Other chapters in Active Eye examine such topics as Gothic Architecture, steeples, the arch, and the architecture of Sir John Vanbrugh. Some of Trevelyan's interpretations‑‑for example, of Vanbrugh's country houses Seaton Delaval and Castle Howard‑‑seem arbitrary and questionable, yet overall Active Eye is significant because it helps one to look in a new way, first, by using the eye‑beam to "touch" buildings; second, by introducing a way in which static forms can be seen in a more living, dynamic way.
For architectural phenomenology, Trevelyan's method of seeing into form offers one innovative way for looking at phenomena and perhaps better seeing them in terms of their essential dimensions.
Trevelyan's work implies that a phenomenology of architecture-as-experienced must first of all focus on the the tension between solid and space, gravity and levity, substance and light. Effective architecture reconciles these tensions through particular architectural forms and structures which express different aspects of man: for example, the column, action and will; the dome, thinking; the arch, resistance and levity.
Trevelyan argues that the history of building can be understood in terms of three phrases and associated modes of consciousness. First, classical architecture is associated with the static form of pillar and lintel, whose horizontal lines give a sense of spaciousness and dignity, fitting for an age of idealism and philosophical thought: "The pillar and lintel are static and restful. Whether it be the rugged grandeur of Stonehedge or the intellectural refinement of the Parthenon the experience is the same. The lintel sleeps" (p. 73).
Set against pillar and lintel is the upward striving of Gothic architecture, which is marked by the pointed arch and vault surging in an vertical drive to overcome gravity and thus symbolizing idealism translated into action. Trevelyan argues that the Gothic cathedral is a material expression of the struggle between 'diabolical' and 'angelic' powers‑‑the downward force working to pull the building to the ground versus an upward force that keeps the building upright: "When an arch is built something new is given the world which was not there berfore‑‑a lateral and downward thrust, struggling to push the pillars apart. Energy is created. The arch never sleeps" (p. 73).
Though Trevelyan offers only passing comments on the state of modern architecture, he does not so much condemn it as suggest that it has become minimal, expressing harried activity no longer in touch with any deeper needs or aims. For example, he points out that today's unadorned skyscrapers, in their emphasis on verticality and height, reflect action alone without any deeper spiritual sense to express metamorphosis in architectural form: The skyscraper "does not admit the reality of the heavenly world and is a splendid but quite materialistic expression of the vertical impulse of action" (p. 80).
Trevelyan's hope is that an education of active seeing might make us more aware of the built world around us and provide one basis for an architecture more in touch with the full range of human nature. Trevelyan's work reminds one of other current design efforts‑‑such as Christopher Alexander's "Pattern Language" or John Wilke's fountain‑like vessels called "flowforms"‑‑which work to understand how buildings and landscapes can be more in touch with human and environmental needs.
Ultimately, it is the architect who creates buildings, and Trevelyan suggests implicitly that until the end of the Renaissance, many architects unself‑consciously participated in active seeing and created buildings which spoke and moved. Active Eye also implies that modern designers are not able to see actively and the result is less thorough, evocative design.
Trevelyan's method offers one means to sensitize designers and interested laypeople to the language and speaking of architecture. In turn, such renewed awareness might lead to more sensitive, expressive design which could help invigorate and beautify our physical world.