collage and architecture

Collage and ArchitectureJennifer Shields, University of North Carolina-Charlotte, NC, USA

Abstract: Pablo Picassos first act of collage-making in May of 1912, in its conceptual, material, andtechnical originality, has profoundly influenced numerous artists and architects throughout the twen-tieth century and into the twenty-first. Collage inherently emphasizes process over product, offeringthe potential for a multiplicity of readings while re-conceptualizing three-dimensional space. Thisambiguity creates opportunities for multivalence in the architectural design process and the resultantwork of architecture, responding to the richness and complexities extant in sites and cities. Collagecan be considered in the following ways in its relevance to the field of architecture: collage asautonomous work of art, collage as analytical and/or design tool, and architecture as collage. Therichness and potentiality of collage as a tool for analysis and design lies in the diversity of media andtechniques. This paper will address the efficacy of collage as a representational medium integratedinto the design process in the work of Le Corbusier and Eduardo Chillida, whose work proves a lineageof the Cubist conception of space through the translation from collage to built form. Considering collageas an instrument for analysis and design, drawing on decades of relevance in art and architecture,offers a diverse set of material, technical, and conceptual precedent for designers.

Keywords: Collage, Architecture, Representation, Cubism, Le Corbusier, Eduardo Chillida

ONE CENTURY AGO, collage entered the lexicon of the contemporary art world.Pablo Picasso, in May of 1912, first appropriated a found material into a work ofart. In his Still Life with Chair-Caning, Picasso affixed a piece of oil cloth printedwith the design of chair-caning into an oil painting, creating what would come to

be known as a papier coll 1. This was the first deliberately executed collagethe first workof fine artin which material appropriated from everyday life, relatively untransformed bythe artist, intrude upon the traditionally privileged domain of painting.2 [Figure 13] Thefounders of Cubism-Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Juan Gris-valued collage as a hy-bridization of painting and sculpture existing at the threshold of two and three dimensions.As a means of image-making in which to investigate the potentialities of three-dimensionalspace in a two-dimensional medium, collage facilitated a new conception of space. Thesefirst acts of collage-making in the Modernist canon, in their conceptual, material, and tech-nical originality, have profoundly influenced numerous artists and architects throughout thetwentieth century and into the twenty-first.

1 Papier-coll is a French phrase meaning glued paper.2 Poggi, Christine. In Defiance of Painting: Cubism, Futurism, and the Invention of Collage. New Haven: YaleUniversity, 1992, p. 1.3 Pablo Picasso. Still Life with Chair Caning. 1912. Artchive [online]. Available on World Wide Web:(www.artchive.com).

The International Journal of the ImageVolume 2, Issue 3, 2012, http://ontheimage.com/journal/, ISSN 2154-8560 Common Ground, Jennifer Shields, All Rights Reserved, Permissions:[email protected]

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Figure 1: Pablo Picasso, Still Life with Chair-Caning, 1912

Collage, as an art form unique to the modern era, emphasizes process over product. A collageas a work of art consists of the assembly of various fragments of materials, combined insuch a way that the composition has a new meaning, not inherent in any of the individualfragments. According to Diane Waldman in Collage, Assemblage, and the Found Object, acollage has several levels of meaning: the original identity of the fragment or object andall of the history it brings with it; the new meaning it gains in association with other objectsor elements; and the meaning it acquires as the result of its metamorphosis into a new entity.4

Simultaneity of spatial, material, and intellectual content is inherent in collage through asynthesis of unrelated fragments.

We might understand architectural experience in a similar way. In Questions of Perception,Steven Holl illuminates the nature of our perception of the built environment, saying:

A city is never seen as a totality, but as an aggregate of experiences, animated by use,by overlapping perspectives, changing light, sounds, and smells. Similarly, a singlework of architecture is rarely experienced in its totality (except in graphic or modelform) but as a series of partial views and synthesized experiences. Questions of meaningand understanding lie between the generating ideas, forms and the nature and qualityof perception.5

In our experience of the world, we perceive human artifacts as an amalgam of sensory phe-nomena understood through personal experience and memory, rather than completely andobjectively through a formal evaluation. Like a collage, revealing evidence of time and itsprocess of construction, a work of architecture contains accumulated history as it is livedand engaged rather than observed. Just as a work of architecture is only fully created and

4 Waldman, Diane. Collage, Assemblage, and the Found Object. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992, p. 11.5 Holl, Steven, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Alberto Perez-Gomez.Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Archi-tecture. San Francisco: William Stout Publishers, 2006, p. 130.

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comprehended through bodily, sensory engagement, collage offers a counterpart, providingthe medium to interrogate spatial and material possibilities. [Figure 26]

Figure 2: Max Ernst, La Puberte Proche ou Les Pleiades, 1921

Collage can be practiced not only to capture spatial and material characteristics of the builtenvironment, as an analytical and interpretive mechanismthrough this understanding, wecan also build with a consciousness and intentionality to respond to the multivalence extantin sites and cities. The dialogue between collage and architecture can be evaluated in thefollowing ways:

1. Collage as autonomous work of art2. Collage as a tool for analysis and design3. Architecture as collage

Beginning with an overview of collage as an investigatory tool for spatial analysis, we mustconsider the evolution of collage throughout the past century. The Cubists, for the first timein 450 years, had rejected the Renaissance approach to representation in which visual exper-ience was privileged. The Cubists instead represented aspects of daily life through abstraction,

6 Max Ernst. La pubert proche ou Les Pliades. 1921. Artchive [online]. Available on World Wide Web:(www.artchive.com).

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material juxtapositions, and fragmentation and synthesis of form, capturing spatial and ma-terial qualities. The genealogy of collage and the influences of Synthetic Cubism on art andarchitecture are illustrated in the Collage Genealogy Map, demonstrating the conceptual ortechnical affiliations between various artists and architects throughout the past century.[Figure 37]

7 The legacy of Cubism as demonstrated in this genealogy has its foundation in Alfred Barrs chart for the MoMAexhibition in 1936, Cubism and Abstract Art, in which he illustrated the movements that influenced Cubism andthe movements that were subsequently informed by Cubism.

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Figure 3: Jennifer Shields, Collage Genealogy, 2012

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The Analytical Premise of Collage

Tracking the diffusion of the Cubists reconception of space both geographically and ideo-logically, we find that the bold geometric forms of the Cubist collage were quickly adoptedby artists outside France, while political unrest in Europe leading up to World War I sawthe appropriation of collage for political and cultural purposes. The work of the Italian Fu-turists and the Russian Avant-Garde was highly politicized, the goal being to direct art towardsa social purpose and demonstrate the ideals of a modern society. Formally, they emphasizedmateriality and typically focused on the two-dimensional plane of the canvas. Artists of theRussian Avant-Garde were often architects as well, using collage, a two-dimensional medium,as a means of generating concepts for three-dimensional architectural forms. [Figure 48]

Figure 4: Kazimir Malevich, Private of the First Division, 1914

Dadaism was founded in Zurich at the outbreak of World War I in protest and considereditself anti-art, Dadaists seeing their work as a rejection of existing cultural and aestheticvalues through their adoption of collage. Most Dadaists eliminated painting and drawing intheir collages, and instead used photos and catalogues almost exclusively. Their use ofphotomontage was due to their desire to be seen as engineers or mechanics rather than artists.9

The social commentary of the Dadaists was represented formally through changing perspect-ives, sharp diagonals, and contrasting materials and images, using rich textures and repres-entations of the human body. Surrealism developed in the period of peace following WorldWar One, an outgrowth of Dadaism in Paris that become more internally focused. The Sur-realists opposed the formal and rational order of Cubism, seeking to unify the inner worldof the imagination with the outer world of reality, a synthesis termed surreality by Surreal-isms founder, Andr Breton. This dreamlike quality was often achieved through photomont-age and the juxtaposition of unrelated objectsthe often fluid and indistinguishable boundaries

8 Kasimir Malevich, Private of the First Division, 1914. ARTStor [online]. New York: New York. Available fromWorld Wide Web: (http://www.artstor.org).9 There is debate over the birth of photomontage, as both the Russian Constructivists and the Dadaist Raoul Hausmannclaim to have invented it.

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between layers magnifies this effect. At the same time in Germany, the Bauhaus designschool was founded, intending to integrate all of the design disciplines, greatly influencedby De Stijl and Constructivism: professors including Lszl Moholy-Nagy employed pho-tomontage in their own research and pedagogical pursuits.

Contemporary art10 has witnessed the use of collage by numerous artists, including theAbstract Expressionists originating in New York and Pop Artists in New York and London.Abstract Expressionism derived directly from Synthetic Cubism with influences of Futurism,the Bauhaus, and Surrealism. This movement began in the 1930s in the US, drawing fromSurrealisms concept of automatism, or the power of the subconscious. These artists intendedto merge the real and the imaginary by combining the familiar with the unknown, the personalwith the universal. The process of collage-making in its manual engagement with the media,reflected both process and product, the same way the Abstract Expressionists paintingssimultaneously represented the creative act and the final image.11 Pop Art developed in the1950s as a response to Abstract Expressionism, employing found objects and images likethe Dadaists, with a desire to capture the complexities of contemporary culture. Collageartists today have appropriated found physical artifacts as well as virtual image fragments,expanding the palette of collage-making materials into the digital realm. [Figure 512] Reflect-ing on the genealogy of collage, the value and meaning of collage intertwining art and archi-tecture has transformed throughout the past century as the conception of space has evolved.Materially, the choice of fragments is also distinctive, revealing evidence of the time andplace in which the collages were constructed as the artists incorporate readily available ma-terials from everyday life into their collage compositions. The interconnectivity and overlapof collage methodologies in art movements of the twentieth century provide a diversity ofideologies, techniques, and materials from which architects have drawn, and will continueto draw, inspiration.

10 Contemporary art in this paper refers to art movements after World War II.11 Waldman, p. 231.12 Jennifer Shields, Spatio-Temporal Thresholds digital collage, 2009.

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Figure 5: Jennifer Shields, Spatio-temporal Thresholds, Digital Collage, 2009

The Generative Potential of Collage

Shifting from the analytical to the generative, collage has been implicated in the architecturaldesign process in a range of scales and conceptual and technical collage methodologies inthe field of architecture over the past century. Though collage as a theoretical concept in ar-chitecture only became widely discussed after the publication of Collage City 13 by ColinRowe and Fred Koetter in 1987, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and other early 20th

century architects made use of collage in their design process to experiment with spatial andmaterial juxtapositions. Architects have since exploited collage for both its conceptual pos-sibilities and its material, formal, and representational potential. [Figure 614]

13 In Collage City, the authors were interested in collage for its metaphorical value, a means of understanding thepotentialities in the rich layering and complexity of the built environment.14 Nicholson, Ben. The Appliance House. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1990.

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Figure 6: Ben Nicholson, The Appliance House, 1990

Considering collage as an instrument for design, drawing on decades of relevance in art andarchitecture, offers a diverse set of material, technical, and conceptual precedent from whichto draw inspiration. Collage, as it has evolved, brings with it a number of dialectics, includingrepresentational/abstract, gestural/precise, texture/image, surface/depth, and literal/metaphor-ical, all of which are considered within the methodologies of art and architecture. The varietyof methods can be hybridized and tailored to suit the conceptual framework within which awork of architecture resides. The multivalence and synthesis of spatial and material conditionsinherent in collage-making creates the potential for a multiplicity of interpretations and ex-periences in the design process and the resultant work of architecture.

As we consider the role of collage in design, we must consider the legacy of the Cubistsand proximate movements in modern art, and their adoption of collage as a means of syn-thesizing unrelated fragments. Themes of figure/ground reversal, phenomenal transparency,and simultaneity are significant in architectural works in the Modernist canon. As thesethemes are translated into the realm of architecture, it becomes evident that the recognitionof spatial as well as temporal conditions and the value of process play a crucial role. In ourexperience of space and site, [The fragment] cannot be grasped in a single intuition; it relieson a sequence of stages bringing together individual phenomena and the universal groundin a process that may be described as the restorative mapping and articulation of the world.15

This simultaneity is what the Cubists were attempting to capture in their collage-making.

15 Vesely, Dalibor. Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation: The Question of Creativity in the Shadowof Production. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2004, p. 334.

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Time finds expression through architecture both spatially and materially, while collage, asa two-dimensional medium, must express time materially, implying spatial conditions.

Space, according to philosopher Martin Heidegger, is parceled into places by humanactivity and experience.16 Heidegger postulates that the identification of place is not logicalor systematic, but rather subjective and personal. Edges and boundaries are critical to anunderstanding of space: the boundary is that from which something begins its presencing.17

Concepts of edge and boundary are critical to architectural design and similarly, to collage.Boundaries (in our lived experience and images) are created in our minds: they can bephysical and defined, such as by a wall or a row of trees, or vague and imprecise, like a ho-rizon. Although a threshold, a horizon cannot be marked or precisely located. These impreciseboundaries are evidence of the ambiguous relationship between architecture and context, aswell as between architectural spaces. The implied boundaries and spatial overlap defined byphenomenal transparency are demonstrated in the work of designers throughout the pastcentury who employ collage. In this analysis, the works of Le Corbusier and Eduardo Chillidaprove a lineage of the Cubist conception of space through the translation from collage tobuilt form.

The following interpretation of work by Le Corbusier and Eduardo Chillida considers thefragmentation and synthesis of spatio-temporal conditions as a physical manifestation ofplace, intertwining built form and context. Le Corbusier, as a contemporary of the Cubistartists in Paris, was significantly influenced by their work both conceptually and technically.Both Corb and Chillida acknowledge an underlying order that is manipulated or disruptedby conditions of site, program, or perceptual intent, creating an ambiguity between figureand field. In the words of Steven Holl, When a work of architecture successfully fuses abuilding and situation, a third condition emerges.18 These considerations have been capturedthrough the collage-making process, drawing on themes and techniques of the Cubists andsubsequent art movements.

Le Corbusier and Collage

Influences

Le Corbusier, as a seminal figure in the development of Modern Architecture, was greatlyinfluenced by the Cubists re-conception of space and form. When the Swiss architect settledin Paris in 1917, Cubism was in its seventh year following its first written account in TheArchitectural Record. As an artist working in painting, sculpture, and collage in conjunctionwith his architectural practice, Le Corbusier was clearly influenced by the work of Juan Grisin the superimposition of regulating lines and grids, reducing objects to simple geometricforms mediated by the established order. Le Corbusier formed a response to Cubism in hisexhibition with Amde Ozenfant entitled After Cubism. Though they investigated the con-nection between Cubism and architecture, they sought a more rigorous geometric analysis

16 The scientific revolution of the 17th century created a disconnect between measurement and human experience,as the mathematical rationalization of spatial dimensionsthe equality of value in the x, y, and z dimensionsdevaluesthe human experience of space.17 Heidegger, Martin. Building Dwelling Thinking. Poetry, Language, Thought. Translated by Albert Hofstadter.New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1971.18 Holl, Steven. Anchoring. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1989, p. 9.

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in the deconstruction of form, a respect for the inherent properties of the objects (specificallyweight), and opposed decorative elements in Cubist works.

Figure 7: Le Corbusier, Icone, 1961

In conjunction with issues of space and measure, Corbs interest in temporal conditions ofsimultaneity and the value of relationships/context over individual figures as investigatedby the Cubists is revealed in his artistic and architectural work. This theme was also reinter-preted in the collages of the Dada, Bauhaus, and Constructivist movements after World WarI, serving as precedent for Corbs artistic endeavors. [Figure 719]

Content, Materials and Techniques

Corbs collages (like his architectural projects) are evidence of a collage mindset in whichhe sought a synthesis of forms. These collages were often papiers-colls, constructed in thedesign process as a prelude to the final fabrication of his tapestries. He primarily worked inpainted newspaper, gouache, and ink, employing collage at two scales: first, in the initialmaquettes, and second, in the full-scale cartoons.20 According to Cristopher Green, Thetapestries share their rough clat, and indeed, even when working on the scale of the cartoons,Le Corbusier kept intact the open-ended immediacy of his approach to papier-coll,21

While documentation primarily points to Corbs use of collage in the design process fortwo-dimensional media, the formal content of his collages has clear ties to his architecturalwork. His collages include an underlying order juxtaposed against fluid lines and forms,employing phenomenal transparency as a means of implying depth in the composition. There

19 Le Corbusier. Icone. 1961. Collage, gouache, and ink on paper, 22 1/4 x 18 in. Modernism Inc. [online]. SanFrancisco: CA. Available from World Wide Web:(www.modernisminc.com).20 Green, Cristopher. The architect as artist. Le Corbusier Architect of the Century. London: Arts Council ofGreat Britain, 1987, p. 130.21 Green, p. 130.

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is simultaneously a frontality and collapse of space in his work (like the Cubist compositions)while movement of the viewer is suggested. According to Colin Rowe, The figure is simul-taneously static and set in motion. There is the primary surface of attack, the frontal pictureplane, and then, there is the convoluted and serpentine territory which lies behind.22 Thedynamic spatial conditions captured in two-dimensional collage compositions are evidentin Le Corbusiers built works of architecture, including Casa Curutchet and the UnitdHabitation.

Interpretation

In Sigfried Giedions Space, Time and Architecture published in 1941 in the midst of LeCorbusiers career, Giedion states, the interpenetration of inner and outer spaces in modernarchitecture corresponds to the simultaneous presentation of the inside and outside of objectsin cubism.23 The spatial overlap identified by Giedion was subsequently characterized byRowe and Slutzky as phenomenal transparency, referring to the stratification and densifyingof space in Le Corbusiers work and thus its relationship to twentieth-century cubism.24

While there are clear correlations between the architecture of Le Corbusier and the two-di-mensional work of his Cubist contemporaries, Corbs collage-making serves as a formal andconceptual bridge between the two.

Two late-career projects of Le Corbusier demonstrate the translation of these themes fromtwo to three dimensions. Slutzky described the exploration of metaphor and collage in LeCorbusiers urban projects and buildings of the late twenties and after.25 Both Casa Curutchetin La Plata, Argentina and the Unit dHabitation in Marseilles, France were completed underthe design supervision of the young Swiss architect Bernhard Hoesli, a seminal figure inarchitectural education in the US and an ardent collage-maker himself.26 Casa Curutchet(1948-53), incorporates the free plan with the overlapping L-section, with evidence of phe-nomenal transparency in its spatial configuration. This ambiguity of spatial definition occursin the overlap of interior spaces as well as in the overlap of interior and exterior spaces, asrecognized by Giedion.

The frontality of the composition in Casa Curutchet creates a density of spatial overlap,varying conditions revealed through temporal and spatial progression. Considering CasaCurutchet planimetrically, identifying a geometric order superimposed with organic formsspeaks to the spatial organization of the canvas and the plan as generator of architecturalspace27 A regular grid establishes a structural metering for the house while sculptural

22 Rowe, Colin. The provocative faade: frontality and contrapposto. Le Corbusier Architect of the Century.London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1987, p. 26.23 Gideon, Sigfried. Space, Time, and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition. Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 1941, p. 432.24 Caragonne, Alexander. The Texas Rangers: Notes from the Architectural Underground. Cambridge: The MITPress, 1995, p. 167.25 Blau, Eve and Nancy J. Troy. Architecture and Cubism. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002, p. 4.26 A protg of Corb, Bernhard Hoesli, further abstracted and geometricized his collage compositions, contributingto the articulation of phenomenal transparency as a condition of overlap in his work with Colin Rowe and RobertSlutzky at the University of Texas at Austin in the 1950s.27 Caragonne, p. 167.

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forms, both built and natural, disrupt the grid, creating a dynamic spatial experience. [Figure828]

Figure 8: Phenomenal Transparency in Le Corbusiers Casa Curutchet, 1948-53, and TaureauXVIII, 1960

After Hoeslis work on Casa Curutchet, Corb appointed him project architect for the UnitdHabitation in Marseilles. Like Casa Curutchet but on a much larger scale, the UnitdHabitation shows the influence of Corbs artistic investigations, testing systems of propor-tion juxtaposed against sculptural forms. The multivalence of space and form is most evidentin the roof terrace, a surface populated with and interpenetrated by numerous sculpturalfigures. [Figure 929] According to Maurice Besset,

28 1. Casa Curutchet. Le Corbusier and Bernhard Hoesli. 1890. New York Times [online]. New York: New York.Available from World Wide Web:(http://www.nytimes.com); 2. Taureau XVIII. Le Corbusier. 1960. Modernism[online]. San Francisco: CA. Available from World Wide Web:(www.modernisminc.com); diagrams by author.29 1. Le Corbusier, Picasso, and Bernhard Hoesli at the Unit dHabitation, 1952. Le Corbusier, Oeuvre Complte1946-52. 2. Le Corbusier and Bernhard Hoesli, Unit dHabitation, Marseille, France, 1947-52. Photograph byEzra Stoller, 1952. ARTStor [online]. New York: New York. Available from World Wide Web:(http://www.artstor.org).

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By multiplying the number of views taken of an object in order to acquire fuller cog-nizance of it, Cubism at the same time introduced a factor of relativity. By superimposingnon-concordant, discontinuous images, it stripped the object of its opacity, its density,rendering it at once transparent and permeable to the medium which surrounds it, andwith which it then engages in an interplay of unstable, shifting relations.30

The value of the relational qualities over those of individual objects was recognized andtested by the Cubists in their collage-making and shortly thereafter by Le Corbusier. Hisartistic and architectural work, like that of the Cubists, experimented with themes of phenom-enal transparency, ambiguity of figure and field, distillation and synthesis which subsequentlyimpacted the collage-making and design and pedagogy of Bernhard Hoesli and many others.

Figure 9: Le Corbusier, Picasso, and Bernhard Hoesli shown during Picassos Visit to theUnite dHabitation, 1952; Roof Terrace of the Unite, 1952

30 Besset, Maurice. Le Corbusier: To Live with the Light. New York: Rizzoli International, 1987, p. 41.

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Eduardo Chillida and Collage

Figure 10: Eduardo Chillida, Lithographic Collages for Heideggers Die Kunst und derRaum, 1969

Influences

Chillida began an architectural education at Colegio Mayor Jimnez de Cisneros in Madridin 1943. An interest in sculpture took him to Paris in 1948 where he began working in clay,then carving in stone and plaster. Chillida returned to the Basque region in Spain in 1951 towork with a blacksmith, a traditional trade of the region. After returning to the Basquecountry, Chillida wanted above all to capture and penetrate space rather than occupy it, andprimarily for that reason he rejected working with massive blocks of stone or plaster andturned to a ductile material, iron, which when heated sufficiently can be bent to shoot andcurve into space.31 Chillidas architectural education clearly influenced his conception ofspace, augmenting a fascination with the dialogue between solid and void.

Martin Heidegger and Chillida met in 1968, finding common ground in their work.Heidegger subsequently wrote Die Kunst und der Raum [Art and Space] in relation to thework of Chillida in 1969. In this essay, Heidegger asserts, In plastic embodiment the voidacts like the searching and projecting establishment of place.32 Chillida created a series ofseven lithographic collages to accompany Heideggers essay, in which the compositionsplay with a reversal of figure and field. [Figure 1033] As for Heidegger, boundaries were asignificant consideration in Chillidas work, evidenced in these collages and by his statementthat Limit is the true protagonist of space, just as the present, another limit, is the trueprotagonist of time.34 Chillidas focus on space and boundary was further refined by hismaterial investigations, interrogating the potentialities inherent in plaster, alabaster, and iron,to delimit space.

31 Selz, p. 11.32 Selz, p. 116.33 Eduardo Chillida, lithographic collages for Die Kunst und der Raum with Martin Heidegger, 1969. Availablefrom World Wide Web:(www.arcadja.com).34 Selz, p. 116.

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Content, Materials and Techniques

Tactility as a consideration in spatial perception is evident in the translation from collage tosculpture to architectural intervention. Chillidas collages include lithographic collages, asseen in Die Kunst und der Raum, as well as subtractive paper collages, in which voids areinscribed in the top-most surface, revealing layers beneath. The spatial implications of thismethod of collage reveal themselves in his three-dimensional work. Three of Chillidas largescale works demonstrate the value of the void: two works in collaboration with architectLuis Pea Ganchegui Peine de Viento [Wind Comb] and a plaza in Vitoria-Gasteiz, as wellas a proposal for the Canary Islands. Each project reveals an evolution from collage to three-dimensional sculpture to full-scale work, investigating the ambiguity of boundaries and themeaning of the void.

Designs for a site-specific installation in his hometown of San Sebastian, Spain began in1952 but Peine de Viento wasnt realized until 1975-77. The sculpture consists of three ironsculptural components in dialogue: two horizontal-one extending from the cliff towards theocean, the other extending from a rocky outcropping towards the cliff-and one vertical, oc-cupying the middle ground. The two horizontal sculptures are positioned, according toChillida, as if in colonization of the horizon,35 while the third is placed on the edge of thetown boundary. Martin Heidegger considered sculpture a thing occupying a place andshowing forth in space,36 and Peine de Viento defines this place through sculptural insertionswhich imply boundaries to the vast context of the ocean, framing the visitors experience ofthe void. [Figure 1137]

Figure 11: Eduardo Chillida, Around the Void 1, 1964, and Peine de Viento, San Sebastian,Spain, 1977

Another work by Chillida and Ganchegui that asks similar questions is a plaza in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain. Chillidas lithographic collages, particularly those using only two tones, in-terrogate the perception of solid and void. This investigation continues in his subtractivealabaster sculptures such as Gasteiz, a study for the spatial configuration of the plaza. Ac-cording to Mexican poet Octavio Paz, The alabaster sculptures do not try to enclose innerspace; neither do they claim to delimit or define it: they are blocks of transparencies in which

35 Selz, p. 120.36 Selz, p. 89.37 1. Eduardo Chillida. Around the Void I. 1964. Museo Bilbao [online]. Bilbao: Spain. Available from World WideWeb:(www.museobilbao.com); 2. Chillida and Ganchegui. Peine de Viento. 1977. Inigo.txg [online]. Availablefrom World Wide Web:(www.panoramio.com).

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form becomes space, and space dissolves in luminous vibrations that are echoes and rhymes,thought.38 The resultant form in the full-scale plaza construct embodies similar qualities,at this scale permitting the human occupation and full, bodily experience and perception ofthe void. Subtleties of scale, perceived boundaries and spatial overlap offer potentialities formultivalent experience within the plaza. [Figure 1239]

The third project, a controversial work proposed by Chillida before his death in 2002 tobe constructed in Tindaya Fuerteventura, Canary Islands, has been moving forward thanksto his widow, Pilar Belzunce, and Canary Island authorities. In Chillidas Tindaya, he pro-posed to excavate a 40m cube of rock from inside Tindaya Mountain: this space would beconnected to the surface via two 25m high vertical shafts for light and a 15m x 15m entrancetunnel. Although the vast scale of the proposal is unique amongst Chillidas built work,concepts of spatial overlap and the value of the void continue to be the conceptual motivation.Studies beginning in a subtractive collage process and extending to alabaster sculptures testthe subtractive methodology. Similar to his completed large-scale sculptures, the dialoguebetween Chillidas intervention and its context is vital. He states, The large space createdwithin it would not be visible from outside, but the men who broke into his heart would seethe light of the sun, the moon, inside a mountain facing the sea, and the horizon, unreachable,necessary, non-existent 40

38 Selz, p. 42.39 1. Eduardo Chillida, Untitled collage, 1966. Terminartors [online]. Available from World Wide Web:(www.terminartors.com); 2. Eduardo Chillida, Gasteiz, 1975. Museo Bilbao [online]. Bilbao: Spain. Availablefrom World Wide Web:(www.museobilbao.com); 3. Eduardo Chillida and Luis Pea Ganchegui, Plaza in Vitoria-Gasteiz, 1979. Wikispaces [online]. Available from World Wide Web:(http://arteplastikoak.wikispaces.com/Eduardo+Chillida).40 Eduardo Chillida, Tindaya Project website. Available from World Wide Web:(www.tindaya.org).

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Figure 12: Eduardo Chillida, Untitled Collage, 1966, Gasteiz, 1975, and Plaza in Vitoria-Gasteiz, 1979

In this poetic language we see a complement to the writing of colleagues Martin Heideggerand Gaston Bachelard. [Figure 1341]

41 1. Eduardo Chillida, Gravitacin, date unknown. Artfacts [online]. Available from World Wide Web:(www.artfacts.net); 2. Eduardo Chillida, Mendi Huts (HollowMountain), 1985. Photograph in Chillida, Peter Selz;3. Rendering of space and light in Chillidas proposal for Tindaya, unbuilt. Available from World Wide Web:(http://cup2013.wordpress.com/tag/eduardo-chillida/).

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Figure 13: Eduardo Chillida, Gravitation, 1988, Mendi Huts (Hollow Mountain), 1985, andRendering of Proposed Space in Tindaya

Interpretation

It is evident from this analysis of Chillidas work and the transformation from collage tosmall sculptures to large-scale architectonic form that Chillida, like Corb, tested the dialoguebetween solid and void while inverting the normative value system and hierarchy. Chillidahas said,

My whole Work is a journey of discovery in Space. Space is the liveliest of all, theone that surrounds us...I do not believe so much in experience. I think it is conservative.I believe in perception, which is something else. It is riskier and more progressive.There is something that still wants to progress and grow. Also, this is what I think makesyou perceive, and perceiving directly acts upon the present, but with one foot firmlyplanted in the future. Experience, on the other hand, does the contrary: you are in thepresent, but with one foot in the past. In other words, I prefer the position of percep-tion.42

In considering this question of perception, we again reference Heidegger who asserts thatwe understand things in the context of other things, not as separate self-contained objects.Conscious of these interrelationships, weak Gestalt in a work of architecture allows formultiple readings and manipulations, offering new relationships: much like the collages of

42 Eduardo Chillida, Wikipedia [online]. Available from World Wide Web: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduardo_Chillida).

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the Cubists.43 The ambiguity of space resulting from the dialogue between the intimacy ofindividual space and the immensity of the landscape44 offers a wealth of potential in thefragmentary relationships. The occlusion or revelation of these spatial and temporal conditionscan be understood through collage: there is an inherent ability for collage to capture qualitiesof time and a potential for collaged fragments to identify relationships within architectureand between architecture and site.

Synthesis

Thematically consistent across the work of Le Corbusier and Eduardo Chillida are conditionsof simultaneity, phenomenal transparency, spatial and material overlap/interpenetration,juxtaposition of figure/field, background/foreground, and order/disorder in both their collage-making and three-dimensional constructs. In the resultant architecture, Architectural syn-thesis of changing background, middle ground, and foreground with all the subjective qual-ities of material and light forms the basis for an intertwining perception.45 Both designersacknowledge value in the thickened thresholds, the liminal spaces. Fragmentation and syn-thesis offer meaning that is imbued as a result of context, as the relationships between ele-ments are more important than the objects themselves. Le Corbusiers connections to Cubismare clear: and although Chillida was not associated with a particular art movement, his workis central to the modernist tradition in sculpture, which is based on the dialectic of solid andvoid, of inside and out. His work would not have been feasible without the Cubist articulationof space46

Collage is valued by these designers in their analysis and design, as tangible qualities ofspace and form are heightened and revealed through collage-making. Juhani Pallasmaaproclaims that Collage and assemblage are favoured techniques of artistic representationin our time; these media enable an archaeological density and a non-linear narrative throughthe juxtaposition of fragmented images deriving from irreconcilable origins. Collage invig-orates the experience of tactility and time.47 The partial transference, transparency, andlayering of materials serves to incite a haptic engagement with the work, provoking a visceralresponse and a multiplicity of ways in which to interpret this response. The works of archi-tecture resulting from the implication of collage in the design process offer potentialities inthe rich and varied ways the inhabitant might perceive the spatial and material experienceof the architecture and landscape.

43 Pallasmaa, Hapticity and Time: Notes on Fragile Architecture. The Architectural Review, May 2000: 78-84.44 Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space, Boston: Beacon Press, 1969, p. 8.45 Holl, Steven. Intertwining. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996, p. 12.46 Selz, p. 115.47 Pallasmaa, p. 78-84.

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JENNIFER SHIELDS

About the Author

Jennifer ShieldsJennifer A. E. Shields, a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Architecture, is apracticing architect with flux in Charlotte, NC, and a visiting assistant professor at the Uni-versity of North Carolina-Charlotte School of Architecture. In addition to studio instruction,she pursues research, teaching, and practice that investigate the multi-sensory experience ofplace as revealed through collage. Her work has been published and presented in academicand cultural institutions in the US, Sweden, and Spain. Collage and Architecture, a bookdocumenting the lineage of collage in art and architecture over the past century, will bepublished by Routledge in spring of 2013.

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