(from The Interior Architecture Reader, edited by Gregory Marinic, 2018 Routledge)

Chapter 19

Sensorial interior landscapes

Laura Garófalo-Khan

This chapter uses the artificial grotto as the touchstone for an exploration of contemporary interior architecture. The proliferation of organic form made possible through digital design and fabrication techniques, coupled with a conscious interest in reconnecting the human-made and the natural, make this unique typology a plausible model for interior architecture. Framing sensorial manifestations of ambient conditioning and performative ornamentation with interior spatial design in terms of biophilia, this chapter discusses projects expressing the sensual nature of the grotto’s architecture without being confined by formal, morphological, or material conditions.

A relatively immutable element in the ephemeral world of the garden – a place of repose and reunion, of solitude, seclusion, and shade; a site of assemblages of learned discourse; a museum … a sanctuary of muses and an abode of nymphs; a locus of enlightenment and poetic inspiration: a harbor for springs and fountains – the grotto is above all, a metaphor of the cosmos. Variety of form is almost as vast as variety of functions, with nature versus art as the leitmotif.$^1$

The artificial grotto historically includes reworked, naturally formed caves, excavations, and architectural garden follies. An interior literally formed from the landscape – but intentionally disassociated from its context – does not index its exterior form or structure, making it a distinctively internal manifestation of form. In addition to its inherent interiority, there are several contemporary drivers that make the application of the grotto a viable model for a discussion of interior architecture. Digital fabrication, new materials, and a growing desire to integrate the greenscapes and natural flows of today’s ecologically sensitive design philosophy are important. Furthermore, the grotto defines an imperative to break down the nature/culture divide concretized by the modernist movement. It can be linked with the theory and science of biophilia, which proposes that through the course of human evolution we were encoded with a biological connection to the landscape, systems, and ambient features of the non-human environment. Proponents of biophilic design maintain that this connection is critical to our psychological and physiological well-being. This theory is supported by studies that attempt to quantify the benefits of being exposed to nature.$^2$ Among other benefits, these studies credit exposure to vegetative/landscape patterns and natural systems with improved recovery time for hospital patients, productivity levels, and cognitive functions. They even declare that such patterns, whether organic or human-made, stimulate positive social behaviors.$^3$

Biophilia represents an attitude toward nature that does not separate the artifice of humans from the living forms of the natural world.$^4$ Although much of this movement still focuses on conventional exterior and interior landscaping and views of vegetated grounds, the ornamental surface is recognized as a valuable ally in the “biophilization” of the interior. Architectural historian Kent Bloomer argues that despite the visual connection to landscape afforded by large picture windows of modern buildings, this relationship lacks an important haptic connection. The protective glazing keeps out all discomfort and danger, yet allows one to view the non-human environment while preventing people from engaging with nature. Bloomer finds that the “visual distantiation, physical

separation, and even a sense of supremacy over nature” inherent in the typical picture window is augmented by the “extreme sensual disconnection from nature” found in the deep interior space made possible through well-engineered environmental and structural systems.$^5$ He does not contest the necessity of either the window or the deep interior. Instead, he proposes that small-scaled, repetitive, or rhythmic ornament that “contests the material reality of the [modernist] box” be layered over the hard structure in order to subvert it, allowing for the multisensory experience necessary for effective biophilic design.$^6$

Art Nouveau interiors and Frank Lloyd Wright designs habitually represented interiors that adhere to the biophilic tenets that promoted designs with sensory richness, an expression of motion, serendipity, and perceptible variation on a theme.$^7$ Not so much a lived-in building as a living building, the grotto also represents these qualities. Its occupants accept a different level of contact with the ambient and physical “nature” of the envelope; plants may grow from its walls; water may trickle down its surfaces to produce a multisensory environment that expresses the guiding principles of biophilic design.

The historical grotto

The Western tradition of the grotto emerged from the Mediterranean region where caves, often containing a natural water source, are plentiful. Ancient Roman sites, Italian Renaissance villa gardens, and British landscape garden follies display resplendent examples of artificial grottoes.$^8$ In her book, Naomi Miller addresses the classical grotto by identifying the changing aspects of its design. She points to the changing cultural conditions in politics and patronage, but more importantly in this discussion of biophilic design, to changing attitudes toward nature.$^9$

Natural grottoes and their sheltered springs dotted the landscape of ancient Greece and Crete and were consecrated as sanctuaries. A gift of nature, they were a shared part of the commons. They were representative of a culture integrated with and responsive to the natural habitat. The found

grotto developed from a sanctuary into a constructed place of refuge that exploited the wet cave’s ability to fabricate a distinct thermal environment. The combination of flowing water, earth as a thermal sink, and deep shadows that maintained the space cool and fresh made it a most desirable space in the Mediterranean climate.

The artificial grottoes found in the gardens of majestic Roman villas exhibited a radically different attitude toward nature. No longer bound to a natural spring or cave formation, it was a constructed architectural space whose location depended on its patron’s desires. The desire to control nature, manifested in the Cartesian order of the legion town, is evident in the nymphae (sanctuaries devoted to nymphs) which were complex, constructed hydraulic marvels reveling in the pneumatics of water. While still a religious sanctuary, the grotto was also a component of a constructed landscape infrastructure; refuge for sensorial delights and leisure indicative of its patron’s wealth.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the ancient Roman models of the architectonic nymphae and the rusticated cave were appropriated as places of refuge and revelry in Renaissance and mannerist village gardens. These constructions usually represented the main aspects of the natural grotto: they were (at least partially) embedded in the ground, they integrated a water feature, and the interior surface was articulated and distinct from its exterior. The water systems found in the model of the nymphae were often surpassed by new techniques that represented the evolving humanist relationship with nature as one of servant and served. Neptune’s Grotto in the Villa d’Este had a complex water infrastructure that moved the performative water works supporting physical comfort and visual interest of less ambitious projects to the fabrication of an aural and visual event. Recently restored, the water organ associated with the fountain engages visitors in a daily ritual of play, unlike earlier versions whose rituals were defined by the worship of natural forces. The Renaissance grotto was not simply an expression of man’s control of nature, but also reflected his ability to redesign nature.

Like those of their Roman predecessors, Renaissance models depicted landscape or natural motifs on interior surfaces. Painted Arcadian landscapes, sculptural stone, and shell work covered the walls. In some cases, such as the Grotta Grande at the Boboli Gardens in Florence, the rooms were populated with allegorical sculptures that intended to draw the visitor into an alternative reality. These narrative spaces expressed the morphology of the cave with its earthen enclosure. Interior and exterior could be separated by two inches or two hundred feet. The immeasurable depth of the poché between the inside and outside enhanced the separation between the two worlds. While this boundary’s physical presence implies great thickness, it undoes itself through the greater perspectival depth of its inner caparison. In the Grotta Grande, this layer was alternatively painted with Arcadian landscape views that distanced the visitor from the exterior reality, or it was covered in fantastical stone narratives, live plants, and trickling water which took the visitor into an allegorical world. The interior was designed to appear like a ruinous incarnation of Roman antiquity, displacing the viewer both physically and temporally. Adding to the nebulous nature of the boundary condition, the entry to the fabricated naturalistic interior was covered with an architectural façade.11

Due to the popularity of Italianate architectural motifs in England in the seventeenth century, the grotto proliferated in the picturesque landscape gardens of country estates. Although complex excavations abound, many English grottoes were actually interior rooms, cellars, or aboveground pavilions. This is due in part to the cool climate, which does not make the cooling properties of the subterranean version very appealing. Proponents of neoclassical architecture with abundant funding, like poet Alexander Pope and landscape designer William Kent, built them to pay homage to the classical tradition rather than to make a comfortable refuge.12

Although the naturalistic cavern came into fashion in the mid-1700s, there was a broader predilection for grottoes modeled after the fourteenth century example in the Villa Pietra near Florence, where every surface was covered in shells, pebbles, crystals, and glittery stone in geometric configurations, ornate patterns, or menageries of human and non-

human characters. One of the earliest existing examples, the complex shell mosaic room at Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire, sits within a building rather than an excavation.\textsuperscript{13} The grottoes at Margate (Kent) and Goodwood House (Sussex) are prime examples of the eighteenth century box-like spaces that celebrated their interiority through organic surface appliques. What qualifies these English follies as grottoes has more to do with the sensuality of surface treatment than morphological association to a cave.

As the British style evolved, the chosen materials exploited the potential of the surface to reflect and refract dim light coming from candles, hand-held lanterns, and small window slits. Bridging the geometric and the organic, the pictorial, and the exotic, these surfaces pulsated, shimmered, and flowed. They were not attempting to replicate nature, but to create a new cosmology, a hidden world in the tranquil English countryside, a space of emotional exaltation and even horror to match the sublime bent of contemporary literature and art. The English landscape garden grottoes did not stop at the redesign of nature, but created extravagant psychological experiences that represented license to manipulate human nature as well.

The grotto lost favor, morphologically and conceptually, with the advent of modernism and its coupled desire to separate non-human nature from the human-made and eliminate superfluous embellishment. There are few instances of constructs calling themselves grottoes in recent architectural history. A notable exception is the Grotto of Meditation for New Harmony (1964) by Frederick Kiesler. This unbuilt structure can be seen as the predecessor of the thin-shelled constructs popularized by multiple digital fabrication techniques today. Like Kiesler’s proposal, the current shells have an important distinction from grotto morphology: their internal form is expressed as a sculptural object. Another marked difference is that these fluid spaces most often do not engage the sumptuousness, tactility, and rhythmic sequencing of ornate pattern previously exhibited.

As the Classical structure is partially defined by the presence of a water feature, we can easily connect the historic grotto to contemporary subterranean water spaces programmed for relaxation and sensorial awakening, such as Peter Zumthor’s Therme Baths at Vals. While

superficially it relies on siting (a local hot spring and a mountainside for its historical connection), more poignantly, it also emphasizes the sensuality of immersion into a material condition. Both the earth and the water that occupants submerge themselves in define a corporeal engagement with a mass. Emphasizing the immutable mass of the ground, passage between inside and outside is extended, as are internal thresholds. Light streaks though minimal apertures making it a third, more ephemeral visible volume that the body can engage. The occupation of the mass has a sensual resonance employing a site strategy and thermal conditioning of the entire building, rather than an architecture focused on its own interiority.

Biophilia of the ornamental surface: a new imaginary for deep interiors

Focusing on interior architecture rather than whole building design, the next examples address the sensorial articulation and “programming” of the ornamental interior surface. Kent Bloomer advises that to develop biophilic interiors for modern boxes, the box needs to be dissolved from inside by what he calls the “dynamic line work of ornament.” This embodies three formal acts:

First is rhythmization (especially a driving syncopated formation of rhythm); second is a spectacle of changefulness …; and third is a composition of dynamic engagement or competition between different species of things. All of these … convey measures of indefiniteness, temporality, impermanence, mystery, ambivalence, and growth. None of them necessarily assert the order and harmony that is generally assumed to be a positive emblematic property of basic architecture, but all of them proclaim life, which is the subject of biophilia.$^{14}$

This understanding of the relation of biophilic design to ornament, and in turn to the model of the grotto, indexes contemporaneous projects

expressing the sensual nature of its architecture without being confined to the morphological or material expression of the historical model. The three examples – a small built work, an installation, and an unbuilt project – are radical expressions of performative ornament.

Responsive ornament

Natural or artificial, sacred or profane, the grotto is an event space, not a place of quotidian habitation. It is not only a place outside the normal condition, but also a place that envelops its occupants in its own cosmology. Ornament, much like the grottoes it populates, is a way of defining a self- contained cosmology that does not need to reflect the local conditions in which the decorated object (or building) is made. Like the flowers of a garden, these components are free to fabricate an alternative ecology in a physical sense, which in turn engenders an alternative cosmology in a conceptual sense.

The installation Hylozoic Soil (Figure 19.1) by Philip Beesley is part of a series of site-specific installations that employ a visual language that defines fully immersive cosmology as otherworldly as the fanciful grotto in its original conception. Components of these sensuous installations respond to the visitor’s presence, while others are programmed with global or rhythmic actions encouraging visitors to interact with the space. In his article, Bloomer explains that touching and the possibility of touching are critical to establishing the connection with nature that biophilia promotes.

This set of luminous, cave-like spaces that have been deployed across the globe over the past five years is a haptic wonderland. The responsive surface is covered by hundreds of feathery digitally fabricated units that take on different shapes due to their placement and activity. Microprocessors, proximity sensors, and globules housing chemical reactions are deployed with them on a net of mechanical acrylic components whose materiality augments the ethereal and fragile quality of the vaults that envelop the visitor. Its programmed activity engages the occupant in a delicate dance, like the Italian fountain grottoes with their orchestrated sprays and splashes.

As in the grotto, the geometry of the armature is undermined by the organic nature of the units and their relation to one another. More critically, the structure that actually makes the interior possible is inconsequential. There is no desire to refer to the way that the vaulted space is structured or how the elements are kept out. The dissolution of the Cartesian bounding box obstructing biophilic integration of the natural and the human-made is accomplished through this shimmery interior landscape. It alludes to aquatic colonies of organisms that respond in unison to local and global stimuli. Described as an artificial forest by its designer, it awakens not only the senses, but also the imagination, as it delves into the uncanny nature of a sentient environment.

Geometry undone

A contemporary project that actually takes on the term is the SOL Grotto (Figure 19.2) by Rael San Fratello Architects. It deviates from traditional examples as it is not embedded in the earth but is a freestanding box. The SOL Grotto adheres to the grotto model in four ways: its association to water, its sensorial provocation, its intent as a place of rest in a garden/park, and its focus on an interior redefined by the articulation of a performative boundary that presents a “mediated experience of water, coolness, and light.” Inside the small space is a discontinuous surface made of luminescent points and lines. Composed of over one thousand glass tubes of varied size embedded into a simple grid pattern, the resulting pattern is distorted by its own three-dimensionality. The conceived pattern changes as the point of view changes. The dynamic effect of the geometric aggregation of tubes resembles the flow of dancing shells arrayed in geometric patterns in historic shell houses.

Figure 19.2 SOL Grotto at the Berkeley Botanical Gardens by Rael San Fratello (2012)

The architects playfully deliver the requisite water feature of the classical grotto through visual and aural manipulation of the tube wall. They propose that “collectively, the tubes take on the form of a cave wall or a waterfall, evoking Plato’s Allegory of the Cave where shadows, light, and sounds call reality into question.” The play of bluish light and the sound transference from a nearby waterfall alludes to the spring and the luminous quality of crystals and gems embedded in the grotto’s surfaces. Paradoxically, the tubes also behave like the thick earthen boundary of the subterranean space, providing refreshment as they infuse the space with cool air, provided by the Venturi effect, rather than the thermal sink of the moist earth. Finally, the tubes also deliver unrecognizable images of the garden outside that, like the landscapes painted in the artificial grotto surface, create an alternative image that dissolves the wall between the inside and the outside. They simultaneously transport the observer to an alternative, and perhaps otherworldly, landscape. As in the historical examples, this interior architectural landscape functions not only on the physical senses, but also on the imagination, as the occupant cobbles together the disparate components of this sensorial experience.

Porous Poché Bienvenidos al Sur, a proposed exhibition hall for the Spanish Pavilion of the 2015 Milan Expo by Aybar Mateos Arquitectos (Figure 19.3), takes the idea of a biophilic building to its ultimate conclusion by creating a building from a thick layering of plants. Like the grotto, it is a literal garden room, an interior in the exterior; its set of connected rooms is formed by the landscape that provides an infrastructure for verdant growth. Unlike the grotto, it is made of the tectonic frame system espoused by modern architecture, rather than the stereotomic system of the earth mound.

The architects consciously sought to work against the traditional enclosure that isolates the interior from the exterior. There is no continuous weather or thermal boundary, just a thicket composed of Spain’s agricultural products forming domed spaces of varied size. Containers holding the root balls hang from the frames in a rational pattern determined by farming metrics, but the foliage engulfs them and creates an organic discontinuous surface. From the exterior, this structure looks like a stack of flowering plants. Once inside, the porosity of the boundary becomes apparent. The diffused boundary modulates moisture, light, air, smell, and sound. Light pours through the pores, but the layers of leaves, like those of a tree canopy, keep the interior dry. The spaces progress gradually from the tight, humid, and dark entry space toward brighter and drier ceremonial space. Embedding the visitor in changing qualities of light and sound, the density of the air within is verdant. This literal manifestation of biophilic design aims to embrace nature in design for all the senses. The architecture dissolves; what remains is a porous floral poché.

Freedoms and constraints

The three projects discussed in this chapter are distinguished by their freedom from the conventional constraints of architecture. They do not address the environmental envelope, the structure that holds them up, or the exigencies of program. Their tactile, deep surfaces form part of a performative system that, like the grotto itself, is defined by dynamism and exuberance conscripted to create delight. These examples embody extreme attitudes toward our relationship to the non-human environment, specifically in their exploration of the “ornamental” surface. Like nature, they rely on the divergence of the unit from its pseudo-mechanical repetition to create a sensual interior layer like the grotto. Frank Lloyd Wright, whose work is often cited by proponents of biophilic design, states that nature is excessive in its design. Like ornament, it fulfills a purpose through repetition, redundancy, and articulation of small performative parts. Architectural historians and theoreticians like Antoine Picon, Oleg Grabar, and Georg Vrachliotis tout ornament as an index of the prevalent ordering systems relevant to a given culture. The ordering system of today, bound to the endless variety of parametric functions, expresses emergent orders. It also expresses the wonder inherent in understanding the intricacy and variability of natural systems.

Such projects offer the potential to redefine an interior environmental aesthetic – in particular, one that defines a sensorial interior landscape and bridges the disconnect between the constructed shelter and the natural environment. As with the historical references, the ingredients of these interior architectures may be appropriated from nature, however the result is far removed.[21] These contemporary grotto-esque structures dismiss the dichotomy of art and nature. They are both art and nature, both utterly artificial and full of life.

Notes

1. Naomi Miller, Heavenly Caves: Reflections on the Garden Grotto (New York: George Brasilier, Inc., 1982), p. 7.
2. Although the word natural is no longer applicable once we acknowledge we have entered the Anthropocene, a proposed new geological epoch that recognizes humanity’s impact on our planet, for the purposes of this short text the term will be synonymous with the non-human ecological, geological, ambient, and environmental features that are generally seen as “nature.”
3. Stephen Kellert, “Dimensions, Elements, and Attributes of Biophilic Design”, in Biophilic Design, the Theory, Science, and Practice of Bringing Buildings to Life, ed. Stephen Kellert, Judith Heerwagen, and Martin Mador (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2008), pp. 3–7.
4. Stephen Kieran, “Evolving an Environmental Aesthetic”, in Biophilic Design, the Theory, Science, and Practice of Bringing Buildings to Life, ed. Stephen Kellert, Judith Heerwagen, and Martin Mador (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2008), pp. 243–246.
5. Kent Bloomer, “The Picture Window”, in Biophilic Design, the Theory, Science, and Practice of Bringing Buildings to Life, ed. Stephen Kellert, Judith Heerwagen, and Martin Mador (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2008), p. 258.
6. Ibid.
7. Judith Heerwagen and Bert Gregory, “Biophilia and Sensory Aesthetics”, in Biophilic Design, the Theory, Science, and Practice of Bringing Buildings to Life, ed. Stephen Kellert, Judith Heerwagen, and Martin Mador (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2008), pp. 227–233.
8. Christopher Thacker, The History of Gardens (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1979).
9. Miller, Heavenly Caves, p. 7.
10. Ibid., pp. 20–36.
11. Ibid., pp. 34–50.
12. Hazel Jackson, Shell Houses and Grottoes (Oxford: Shire Publications Ltd., 2001), pp. 4–23.
13. Built in 1627 by Isaac de Caus, a leading garden designer in seventeenth-century England.
14. Bloomer, “The Picture Window”, p. 260.
15. Bloomer, “Ornament”.
16. Kent Bloomer and John Kresten Jespersen, “Ornament as Distinct From Decoration”, 2014, http://ornament-scholar.blogspot.com/2014/02/ornament-as-distinct-from-decoration_5274.html
17. Kent Bloomer, “The Picture Window”, p. 256.
18. Project Team: Ronald Rael, Virginia San Fratello, Kent Wilson, Bryan Allen, Chase Lunt, Dustin Moon, Bridget Basham.

19 “Sol Grotto”, Rael San Fratello, September 2012, www.rael-sanfratello.com/?p=1466 (accessed 10 December 2014).

20 Ibid.

21 Miller, Heavenly Caves, p. 12.