"Full of merit, yet poetically, man dwells on this earth.”
This sentence first comes from the German poet Holderlin. Then after interpreted by the German philosopher Heidegger, this sentence becomes well-known. Heidegger thinks that poetic dwelling is the idealest living condition of human-being, and is also the most humanistic living condition. As a result, the poetic dwelling is the ultimate aim of contemporary people.
How can we achieve “poetic dwelling”? What kind of house and city can be considered as poetical?
In my aspect, The first aspect of “poetic dwelling” is that the house should have social significance and take environmental protection into account, thus have humane care.. From ancient times, people are yearning for a dwelling concept, that is, being coexistence with nature. The houses are scattered in the center of the green space. Each house is surrounded by red flowers and green grass. Living in the center of the nature like this is the real civilization.
In 2005, a rare hurricane hit New Orleans, making the most attractive and poetical city into a vast expanse of water. Hundreds of people have been confirmed dead, countless housed were destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of people were displaced. We have to ask why is this prosperous modern city so “fragile”? How is this poetic city reduced into ruin in such a short time? Leaving aside the strong hurricane “Katrina”, the major reason lies in the city itself: The city ignore the occurrence of disaster in its development, the planning of the city severely destroy the natural environment. New Orleans is an alluvial plain at the mouth of the city. There are lakes in the north, Mississippi River in the south, and Gulf of Mexico in the east. The city is surrounded by a large number of natural wetlands, these wetlands are like a sponge, which are able to absorb a lot of rainfall, so that they reduce the intensity of floods and protect the city. But the development of the city destroyed most of the wetlands. As a result, the sludge brought by Mississippi, can no longer be deposited in the mouth of the river.
The destruction in New Orleans set an alert to us that we must pay attention to all the factors influencing the existence and development of the city, especially to learn to achieve the harmonious relationship between human and nature. One of the specialist said, I hope people won’t ignore to protect the wetlands in future, won’t develop our city at the cost of the environment. These words should cause all the city constructors to think deeply.
Moreover, only when the house is set in natural surrounding and the relationship between house and space becomes a natural one can it be considered as poetic dwelling. The houses that are independent existent apart from natural environment are only the container of living, and doesn’t have poetic meaning at all. A high-rise residential building is the negative example of such type. As Bachelard mentioned in his book “the inhabitants of big city live in superimposed boxes; Elevators do away the heroism of star climbing so that there is no longer any virtue in living up near the sky; the relationship between house and space becomes an artificial one, everything about it is mechanical and, on every side, intimate living flees.” Because we are enclosed by the four walls and roofs, we lost the direct connection with the environment, so that once some natural phenomenon happen, such as hurricane, it “has not the same personal offensiveness towards the dreamer that it has towards the hermit’s house.”
The second aspect of “poetic dwelling” is that the house should contain emotion, which would evoke the emotion of the people, thus cause emotional resonance and meet the spiritual requirements of human-being. After Luis Barragan won the Plizter Prize, he said “It is alarming that publications devoted to architecture have banished from their pages the words Beauty, Inspiration, Magic, Spellbound, Enchantment as well as the concepts of Serenity, Silence, Intimacy and Amazement. All of these have nestled in my soul, and though I am fully aware that I have not done them complete justice in my work, they have never ceased to be my guiding light.” The reason why his work is so touching, and can be accepted and respected by almost everyone is that he create the space with his emotion to the world. From his words, we can generalize several emotional elements, which were pursued by him in his design, and are essential emotional requirements for perfect life.
“Beauty. The invincible difficulty that the philosophers have in defining the meaning of this word is unequivocal proof of its ineffable mystery. Beauty speaks like an oracle, and ever since man has heeded its message in an infinite number of ways. . . . Human life deprived of beauty is not worthy of being called so.”
“Silence. In the gardens and homes designed by me I have always endeavored to allow for the interior placid murmur of silence, and in my fountains, silence sings.”
“Solitude. Only in intimate communication with solitude can man find himself.”
“Serenity. Serenity is the great and true antidote against anguish and fear, and today, more than ever, it is the architect's duty to make of it a permanent guest in the home, no matter how sumptuous or how humble. Throughout my work, I have always strived to achieve serenity, but one must be on guard not to destroy it by the use of an indiscriminate palette.”
If a house can evoke our living experience and inner feeling, it can create an environment for us to think and feel, so it is our spiritual home in the material world. And what kind of house can evoke our thinking? Bachelard gives us his answer in this book. His ideal house should have two properties, first, vertical being and second, concentrated being. Vertical being means the house should have cellar, ground level, and garret. The cellar is dark and unconscious while the garret is clear and rational. In the cellar, fears present day and night while in garret, fears of the day are eased at night. When you go up, you achieve the transition from the irrationality to rationality, and when you finally go up near the roof, all the thoughts get clear. So such vertical being is essential to create people’s daydreams.
Many architects set an example to show their way in satisfying human’s emotional needs. In Stretto House, Steven hall take advantage of the water to create a poetical space. The site is adjacent to three ponds with existing dams, the house projects the character of the site through a series of concrete “spatial dams” with metal framed “aqueous space” flowing through them. The introduction of the water makes people feel like they can contact directly with nature.
People can hear the leaves rustle, the sound of waves and birds singing. These sounds make the whole place even more silent. Integrated with nature, people can face themselves. The water bring us the peaceful, relaxed felling, it can evoke the fantasy of distant world. That’s the essence of the water. The most fantastic part of Barragan’s work comes from the use of sunlight. The sunlight is brought into our sight, mixed with the colorful walls, forming a bizarred view.
In Barragan House, for example, the reading room is on the top floor of the building, and the windows are in the top level of the wall. So the reading room can have soft sunlight but won’t let you look through. The floor is yellow, and the whole atmosphere is in calm tone. The ceiling of the living room is made of pieces of beams, when it shines upon the pink walls, the whole living room is surrounded by an atmosphere filled with tranquility. The space look elegant and pleasantin contrast with the fine furnishings. The use of light and color in Casa Gilardi is also classic. In the corner of the indoor swimming pool, light, color, space, walls, water, ground intertwine, giving the people the fantastic sense of beauty, and attracts them addicted into his poetic space.
The third aspect of “poetic dwelling” is realized when every corner of house is filled with consciousness rather than the mere objects. In the poetics of space, by using imagination to the house, nests, shells, corners, miniature, Bachelard develop his opinion of “poetic dwelling”, that is house is not a container of living, it's the place where your consciousness lives in. Bachelard does research on the simple image of happiness space, he aims to explore the humanistic value of space. The space has both the practical value as an object, and the spiritual value connected with imagination. When the space is mastered by imagination, it is no longer a dull geometrical box, but a space that can bring pleasant feeling to people. When a house is lived by a person, it’s connected to the particular event happened in this house and the particular people in this event. Every time if the old house of celebrities are to be removed, there will be a heated argument towards it. Why do we need to protect the old house of celebrities? In the superficial level, the answers could be that these houses are a holder of historical culture and information. The value of them lies in the objects that have been used by the celebrities. They are our spiritual fortune.
However, this answer stays only in the superficial level. I paid a visit to the old house of a Chinese poet and I saw an old jukebox at the head of the bed. At that moment, I understood why his poems can be such elegant, like a beautiful rhythm. It came from his ardently love in western classical music. At that time I even had a kind of illusion, the young poet sat on the bed, along with the sound music came the exquisite pathos of the story.
A famous person passed away, his past story, special temperament, spirit and soul, still exist in his old house and they have powerful influence to the future generation. I think this is the real value of the old house of celebrities. The key point lies in “people” rather than the “house”. And it’s the imagination from the objects that make the objects more meaningful.
The fourth aspect of “poetic dwelling” is that the space should be able to create imagination. A space that really attracts you is not straightforward, but it's the place which has a sense of mystery. How can we achieve this sense of mystery in our house? The vertical being is one way. Living in a single detached house with several floors is more mysterious than in the apartment. Imagine you are playing hide-and-seek game with other children in a single house. Everyone is ready and the seeker starts to look for you. When he is going upstairs to find you, you may go downstairs with another stair without being noticed by him. However, the game becomes less interesting in an apartment which has no vertical connection. The vertical being provides the house with unknown elements and uncertainty, and this will attract people’s attention because people are more interesting about what they don’t know rather than what they already know. Imagine that you are studying in the second floor, and you hear some wired sound coming from somewhere in the house. You think it is supposed to be in the cellar, and then you go downstairs but don’t find anything at all. Then you go upstairs to check the garret, but find nobody’s there neither. These places create your imagination because of the sense of mystery. When you stand at one point of the house, you can see what’s going on in every room, it would be dull and boring. The same thing happens in the street. If you stand in the start of the road, you can see through the end of it, it is boring and dull. On the contrary, if the path is curve or polyline, your view would be changing all the way along. And at each step of the path, you can only see just part of the view, and that part of view will attract your attention and stimulate you to imagine what it looks like as a whole.
I found there is one architectural type that conforms to the requirements of “poetic dwelling”, which is the Suzhou Garden. The main concept of the garden is showing the respect to the nature. It emphasizse that people should experience the nature, adjust to nature and keep the nature as what it originally is. They are consistent to the local architectural form and style.
In the garden, the designer tries to meet the esthetic sentiment of human being, and try to contain hundreds of possibilities in limited space. All the design concepts start with the feeling of residents. By triggering the intuition experience, it achieves the aesthetic meaning. The spatial arrangement and the architectural dimension are not based on rational figures and methods, but based on the perception and experience of the people. In addition, the landscape of the garden has the feature of simple and ancient, and all the elements are trying to evoke people’s subjective feelings and Arouse people's emotional memory, through which can they achieve the release of the spirit and the aesthetic experience.
In addition, in Suzhou Garden, wherever you stand, the view will be different. When you are walking along the road, the view is changing all the way. So every portion of the space sequence can be identified and distinguished. At the same time, the change of the space forms a rhythm. Sometimes it’s smooth and sometimes it’s urgent. With the contrast of large and small, curve and straight, solid and void, people have rich spatial experience, and these create a sense of infinity in the limited area.
As I discussed above, the “poetical dwelling” should contain several element. First, the house must have a harmonious relationship with the environment; Secondly, the house should satisfy the emotional needs of human-being. Thirdly, it should be connected to the memory of human; Finally, it can created people’s imagination. The Chinese traditional garden set a good example of achieving “poetical dwelling”. It creates poetic living space in metropolis. It doesn’t take up much area, but creates another world isolated from the outside world, which is enlightening in contemporary society.