Sensorial interior landscapes

Author: Laura Garófalo-Khan Year: 2018 Source type: chapter (Ch. 19 of The Interior Architecture Reader, ed. Gregory Marinic, Routledge, 2018) Raw file: raw/chapters/garofalo-khan_2018-sensorial-interior-landscapes.md

Summary

Garófalo-Khan uses the artificial grotto as the touchstone for a contemporary conception of interior architecture: the proliferation of organic form through digital design and fabrication, coupled with ecologically sensitive design's desire to reconnect the human-made and the natural, make the grotto — the interior "literally formed from the landscape" — "a plausible model for interior architecture." The chapter frames "sensorial manifestations of ambient conditioning and performative ornamentation" in terms of biophilia (the thesis, after Kellert et al., that human evolution encoded a biological connection to the non-human environment, critical to psychological and physiological well-being), surveys the grotto's history from Greek sanctuaries through Roman nymphae, Renaissance water-theatres, and English shell follies to its modernist decline, and reads three contemporary projects — Philip Beesley's Hylozoic Soil, Rael San Fratello's SOL Grotto, and Aybar Mateos's unbuilt Bienvenidos al Sur — as "radical expressions of performative ornament" expressing the grotto's sensual nature "without being confined by formal, morphological, or material conditions."

Pagination note: the raw file carries no page numbers; quotations from Naomi Miller's Heavenly Caves and Kent Bloomer's "The Picture Window" carry the page numbers given in the chapter's own notes (Miller p. 7, p. 12; Bloomer pp. 256, 258, 260).

Key Claims

The artificial grotto is "above all, a metaphor of the cosmos" (Miller's epigraph): "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," with "nature versus art as the leitmotif" of its vast variety of forms and functions.
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" — the grotto has "inherent interiority."
Contemporary drivers make the grotto a viable model for interior architecture: digital fabrication, new materials, "a growing desire to integrate the greenscapes and natural flows of today's ecologically sensitive design philosophy" — and, above all, "the grotto defines an imperative to break down the nature/culture divide concretized by the modernist movement."
Biophilia proposes that through evolution "we were encoded with a biological connection to the landscape, systems, and ambient features of the non-human environment"; proponents hold this connection "critical to our psychological and physiological well-being," and studies credit exposure to vegetative/landscape patterns with improved hospital-recovery time, productivity, cognitive function, and even "positive social behaviors."
"Biophilia represents an attitude toward nature that does not separate the artifice of humans from the living forms of the natural world" (Kieran, via note 4); "the ornamental surface is recognized as a valuable ally in the 'biophilization' of the interior."
Kent Bloomer's diagnosis: the modern picture window's "visual distantiation, physical separation, and even a sense of supremacy over nature" is compounded by the "extreme sensual disconnection from nature" of the well-engineered deep interior; the remedy is small-scaled, repetitive, rhythmic ornament that "contests the material reality of the [modernist] box," layered over hard structure to subvert it (Bloomer, pp. 258–259).
The historical typology: natural Greek/Cretan grottoes as commons-sanctuaries exploiting the wet cave's "distinct thermal environment"; Roman nymphae as "constructed hydraulic marvels" expressing the desire to control nature; Renaissance grottoes (Villa d'Este's water organ, the Grotta Grande at the Boboli Gardens) reflecting not only control of nature but "his ability to redesign nature"; English grottoes as aboveground rooms "celebrat[ing] their interiority through organic surface appliques" — qualified "more … by the sensuality of surface treatment than morphological association to a cave."
The English garden grotto's surfaces "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" — "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"; the notable exception, Frederick Kiesler's unbuilt Grotto of Meditation for New Harmony (1964), is "the predecessor of the thin-shelled constructs popularized by multiple digital fabrication techniques today."
Peter Zumthor's Therme Baths at Vals is the contemporary subterranean-water descendant: "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."
Bloomer's three formal acts of biophilic ornament — "rhythmization (especially a driving syncopated formation of rhythm); … a spectacle of changefulness …; and … a composition of dynamic engagement or competition between different species of things" — convey "indefiniteness, temporality, impermanence, mystery, ambivalence, and growth" and "proclaim life, which is the subject of biophilia" (Bloomer, p. 260).
"Natural or artificial, sacred or profane, the grotto is an event space, not a place of quotidian habitation" — a place "outside the normal condition" that "envelops its occupants in its own cosmology"; ornament likewise "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."
Beesley's Hylozoic Soil (and series) is "a haptic wonderland" of "hundreds of feathery digitally fabricated units," microprocessors, proximity sensors and chemical-reaction globules on "a net of mechanical acrylic components"; its programmed activity "engages the occupant in a delicate dance, like the Italian fountain grottoes"; it accomplishes "the dissolution of the Cartesian bounding box obstructing biophilic integration of the natural and the human-made" and "delves into the uncanny nature of a sentient environment."
Rael San Fratello's SOL Grotto (Berkeley Botanical Gardens, 2012) 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'"; its thousand-plus glass tubes evoke Plato's cave, deliver cool air "provided by the Venturi effect, rather than the thermal sink of the moist earth," and "create an alternative image that dissolves the wall between the inside and the outside."
Aybar Mateos's Bienvenidos al Sur (Spanish Pavilion proposal, Milan Expo 2015) "takes the idea of a biophilic building to its ultimate conclusion by creating a building from a thick layering of plants" — "a literal garden room, an interior in the exterior" with "no continuous weather or thermal boundary, just a thicket"; its "diffused boundary modulates moisture, light, air, smell, and sound," and "the architecture dissolves; what remains is a porous floral poché."
The three projects 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."
Frank Lloyd Wright's dictum links nature and ornament: "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"; today's ordering system, "bound to the endless variety of parametric functions, expresses emergent orders" and "the wonder inherent in understanding the intricacy and variability of natural systems."
The culminating thesis: 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," and "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."

Connections

Concepts: biophilia, artificial-grotto, performative-ornament, sensorial-interior-landscape, picture-window, event-space, interior-cosmology, ambient-conditioning, architectural-ornament, poche, interiority, inside-outside-dialectic, boundaries, interactive-architecture, digital-fabrication, heterogeneous-space, embodiment, lived-body, atmosphere, white-cube, optic-haptic-perception, olfaction, comfort, ecology, unnatural-nature, aromatopia, sublime, uncanny, parametricism, emergence, typology

Authors: garofalo-khan-laura · marinic-gregory (editor) · discussed in text: Kent Bloomer, Naomi Miller, Stephen Kellert, Philip Beesley, Rael San Fratello, Aybar Mateos, Peter Zumthor, Frederick Kiesler, Frank Lloyd Wright, Antoine Picon, Oleg Grabar, Georg Vrachliotis

Debates: ornament-vs-purity (the biophilic-ornament position) · nature-vs-culture (the grotto's dismissal of the art/nature dichotomy) · static-vs-dynamic-architecture (the performative antecedent of dynamism)

Related source notes: Transforming Interior Volumes (the digital-fabrication and biotic-input adjacency: The Gyroid's butterfly input vs. the grotto's biophilic programme) · Technologies (Carraher) (already cites Beesley's Hylozoic Veil as responsive environment) · Shape shifting (Taylor) (the dynamic interior the performative ornament extends) · Volatile Architectures (Drobnick) (the multisensory/sensorial framing against ocularcentrism) · Oceanic interiorities (Treadwell) (immersive, permeable-boundary interiority) · Fabricating interiority (Manack) (poché and ornament as the interior's character-makers)

Direct Quotes

"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." (Miller, Heavenly Caves, p. 7 — the chapter's epigraph, note 1)

"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."

"the grotto defines an imperative to break down the nature/culture divide concretized by the modernist movement."

"Biophilia represents an attitude toward nature that does not separate the artifice of humans from the living forms of the natural world." (Kieran, "Evolving an Environmental Aesthetic," 2008 — quoted, note 4)

"the ornamental surface is recognized as a valuable ally in the 'biophilization' of the interior."

"visual distantiation, physical separation, and even a sense of supremacy over nature" (Bloomer, "The Picture Window," p. 258 — on the picture window)

"extreme sensual disconnection from nature" (Bloomer, p. 258 — on the well-engineered deep interior)

small-scaled, repetitive, or rhythmic ornament that "contests the material reality of the [modernist] box" (Bloomer, p. 258)

"Not so much a lived-in building as a living building, the grotto also represents these qualities."

"The Renaissance grotto was not simply an expression of man's control of nature, but also reflected his ability to redesign nature."

"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."

"the interior was designed to appear like a ruinous incarnation of Roman antiquity, displacing the viewer both physically and temporally."

"What qualifies these English follies as grottoes has more to do with the sensuality of surface treatment than morphological association to a cave."

"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 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."

"This unbuilt structure can be seen as the predecessor of the thin-shelled constructs popularized by multiple digital fabrication techniques today." (on Kiesler's Grotto of Meditation for New Harmony, 1964)

"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." (on Zumthor's Therme Baths at Vals)

"Light streaks though minimal apertures making it a third, more ephemeral visible volume that the body can engage." (on Vals)

"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." (Bloomer, "The Picture Window," p. 260)

"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."

"This set of luminous, cave-like spaces that have been deployed across the globe over the past five years is a haptic wonderland." (on Beesley's Hylozoic Soil series)

"The dissolution of the Cartesian bounding box obstructing biophilic integration of the natural and the human-made is accomplished through this shimmery interior landscape."

"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." (on Hylozoic Soil)

"its focus on an interior redefined by the articulation of a performative boundary that presents a 'mediated experience of water, coolness, and light.'" (on SOL Grotto, quoting the architects)

"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." (Rael San Fratello, quoted)

"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."

"They simultaneously transport the observer to an alternative, and perhaps otherworldly, landscape."

"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." (on Bienvenidos al Sur)

"The diffused boundary modulates moisture, light, air, smell, and sound."

"The architecture dissolves; what remains is a porous floral poché."

"These three projects 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."

"Frank Lloyd Wright … 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."

"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."

"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."

Open Questions

Does "biophilization of the interior" name a design programme that interior architecture can own, or an application of environmental psychology that will remain a building-services discipline (wellness metrics, LEED-style credit) rather than a spatial theory?
The chapter's three exemplars are "free from the conventional constraints of architecture" — they "do not address the environmental envelope, the structure that holds them up, or the exigencies of program." Can a biophilic-ornamental interior architecture exist inside program, envelope, and structure — or is the sensorial interior landscape definitionally an event architecture (grottoes, baths, pavilions, installations)?
Miller's history charts changing attitudes toward nature (sanctuary → control → redesign → manipulation of human nature). What attitude toward nature do the contemporary projects express — and is the Anthropocene footnote ("the word natural is no longer applicable once we acknowledge we have entered the Anthropocene") the chapter's buried admission that biophilia's "nature" is already a design category?
Bloomer's ornament "proclaims life" by conveying "indefiniteness, temporality, impermanence, mystery, ambivalence, and growth" — is this a third position in the ornament debate beyond purity and symbol, or Riegl's Wollen restated ecologically?
If ornament is "an index of the prevalent ordering systems" (Picon, Grabar, Vrachliotis), what cultural order does parametric ornament index — and does "the wonder inherent in understanding the intricacy and variability of natural systems" make emergent computation the grotto's true heir (cf. emergence, autogenic-design)?
Hylozoic Soil "delves into the uncanny nature of a sentient environment" — is the biophilic interior's horizon the companionable nature of the garden or the uncanny nature of the sentient envelope, and can one typology hold both?