The unpredictable experience of emotions
It swirls around me. I’m discovering a new city and I have all these emotions tumbling out to tell me something that I do not understand. The organization of a city, its streets, its buildings and their spaces... The role and impact of architecture in all this...
Ideally*, architecture teaches us to live in space according to our culture. It teaches us to live together. And if we move away from what we know it invites us to take a different path, to have another look that will change our interpretation. It asks us to adapt, to be creative in front of the unknown, to see the potential of what could be called a lack or a flaw. That's the magic of architecture as a whole.
It is the imprint of a past that influences our present, and “La Cité Radieuse” (Marseille, France) tells me a story I did not experience first hand. I entered a cold concrete block whose history has marked generations for life. To me, it explains that after World War II, France had to rebuild itself. For Le Corbusier, it was necessary to rethink the space to transform ‘housing into a public service’ (1). It meant people lived in a building they did not need to leave: they also went to school, to the swimming pool, to the hairdresser or even shopping. An internal revolution of our way of living. And today readapted to our daily life, its nickname "Fada’s** House" laughed at its former unpopularity because it was deemed grotesque, abnormal, uninhabitable.
Yes, Architecture is an open book with invisible ink, indelible in the collective memory. Our history belongs to it as its history belongs to us. It divides or gathers but never leaves anyone indifferent when we really meet it.
Imperfect, intense, explosive, Architecture is a Narrative Beauty that cannot be explained with words. We gaze at it. We breathe it. We touch it. We experience it. It’s alive. We wander through it with our eyes and our whole body. Its ink is wood, metal, concrete... and emotions are everywhere to whom can feel them.
The Confluences Museum in Lyon invited me to travel with my head in the clouds and my feet firmly anchored in the ground of a city that I was still learning to know. Suddenly, between the meanders of stainless steel and bathed in light, I felt at home. A break in time created by a small group of individuals for generations of individuals. Yet this place that feels like a shelter for me, is a financial pit and a foul stain for others.
I don’t want to be told too much then, I would like to have the right to be intoxicated and charmed a little more. To dream like a child. Because architecture is also a gift that we offer to ourselves. It makes us feel accepted and understood as Frank Gehry once said (2). The Louis Vuitton Foundation is a moment of poetry, whose hidden message can only be guessed if we open our senses enough, beyond our eyes. I went through its curves and its loins; I interacted with the light, the colours, their reflections. I heard his intention through the harmony of materials. I read it. I learned that my senses are not used where they are expected. The unpredictable experience of emotions. That's also the magic of architecture.
*Ideal because we build architecture, thus we decide if it’s for the common good or not and how we interact with it. See http://eipcp.net/transversal/0507/weizman/en
** ‘Fada’ means crazy in south of France
(1) Words of Eugène Claudius-Petit, Minister of reconstruction https://www.architectes-conseils.fr/sites/default/files/publications/037_022_claudiuspetit.pdf
(2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v98ahM6mr-w
Musée des Confluences, Lyon.
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