Procession (Processional Element)

Definition

The experience of architecture as a sequence of spatial events unfolding in time as the body moves toward and through a building. Goldberger adopts Philip Johnson's strong claim from the essay "Whence and Whither: The Processional Element in Architecture" — "Architecture is surely not the design of space, certainly not the massing or organizing of volumes. These are auxiliary to the main point, which is the organization of procession. Architecture exists only in time" — while noting that Johnson exaggerated for effect. The concept adds the fourth dimension to architecture's object (two-dimensional facade) and space (three-dimensional volume): movement through space, and movement toward a building, are constitutive of the experience rather than incidental to it. Chartres exists in three distinct forms — mass seen from the Beauce wheat fields, stone and detail at village scale, and the nave's light and vaults from within — and "all are necessary to understand it, and they need to be seen one after the other." A building's plan is the guide to its procession, which is why the plan was the basis of Beaux-Arts design and why Wright's plans reveal an experience no photograph can show.

Key Thinkers

• Paul Goldberger — adopts the processional thesis and reads Wright, Meigs, and Chartres through it.
• Philip Johnson — the "organization of procession" as architecture's main point; "Architecture exists only in time." (PAGE NEEDED — see log.)
• Christopher Wren and Frank Lloyd Wright — Wright's low entrances and compressed vestibules as designed sequence; the Guggenheim entered through a low vestibule before the rotunda.
• Steen Eiler Rasmussen — the visual rhythms that procession activates.

Related Concepts

• architecture-as-space — procession is space experienced in time.
• ineffable-space — the affect procession can produce at its culmination.
• temporality — procession is architecture's temporal dimension.
• architecture-as-object — the static object that procession animates.
• practiced-place — movement as the user's production of space.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• source-notes/goldberger-2009-why-architecture-matters — ch. 4 (pp. 97–103) sets out the processional element from Johnson, Chartres, Wright, and the Beaux-Arts plan.

Open Questions

• Does the processional account privilege the able pedestrian, excluding other modes of access and movement?
• If "architecture exists only in time," how is a building's architectural quality to be judged from photographs and drawings — the very media through which most architecture is actually experienced?