Design studio through the subtle revelations of phenomenology

Author: Ross T. Smith Year: 2018 Source type: chapter (Ch. 21 of The Interior Architecture Reader, ed. Gregory Marinic, Routledge)

Raw file: raw/chapters/smith-2018-design-studio-phenomenology.md

Summary

Ross T. Smith (architect and educator, then teaching at Abdullah Gül University, Kayseri, Turkey) states the pedagogical register of interior architecture: the design studio taught through phenomenology — "wonder in the face of the world" (Eugen Fink) — as "an attitude of subtle revelation, of sensing by doing which permeates all aspects of working toward and through design." The chapter combines two "synergistic" modes: the "integration" of interior architecture with the "being" of phenomenology, making phenomenology "not simply a methodology, but an approach to being of the world." Its philosophical apparatus is Husserl's adumbrations (perception as conditioned, multisensory facet-accumulation), Heidegger's "showing itself from itself" (via Jean-Luc Marion's "phenomenology of the unapparent"), Merleau-Ponty's "the world is what we perceive," and Bachelard's "particularly interiorist" poetics; its pedagogical apparatus is experiential learning — "making by doing" — exercised through studio exercises ("Paper Play Things," detail photography, and first-week blind drawing) that train perception before formal skill. The chapter closes on empowerment: the teacher as "mentor, guide, and provocateur," and the claim that teaching interior architecture is "not only concerned with buildings, it is about the creative imagination of interior conditions."

Key Claims

Phenomenology is "wonder in the face of the world" (Fink) and "an attitude of subtle revelation, of sensing by doing" — an attitude, not a method: "This makes phenomenology not simply a methodology, but an approach to being of the world." See subtle-revelation, design-studio-pedagogy.
The disciplinary premise: "Architecture does not stand in isolation from its surroundings or humanity; its integration of interiority makes it valuable to our existential circumstance" — interiority as what makes architecture existentially valuable. See interiority, interior-architecture.
The phenomenological studio redefines the teacher: "the teacher becomes mentor, guide, and provocateur," whose task is "to transform the ways in which [students] perceive the world and themselves in it, as object, material, atmosphere, and states of transition and ephemerality." See design-studio-pedagogy.
Human existence is temporal-becoming: "We exist, as do all substantive things, in a time-based condition of becoming, transformation, and dissolution… one of constant change and impermanence" — the experiential ground the studio must teach perception of.
The existential risk of heightened perception: the newly revealed world "can be wondrous, but it can also be one of panic and insecurity, as evidenced by some students"; students report they have never "seen" the world like this before — and "with a heightened level of perception, we can no longer ignore fleeting moments of delicacy, beauty, or pain."
Phenomenology needs a poetic language: "one needs a poetic language to bring life to the phenomena, sensation, and interpretation"; Bachelard's poetics is "particularly interiorist" — "With a single poetic detail, the imagination confronts us with a new world. From then on, the detail takes precedence over the panorama" (via Smith quoting The Poetics of Space, p. 134). See poetic-image, bachelard-gaston.
Marion's distinction gives subtle revelation its spectrum: phenomena can be "saturated spectacular events… or more often be revealed as unsaturated phenomena which are subtle and restrained as faint outlines, vague traces, peripheral glimpses, wafts of breeze, shimmers of light, nuances of color, overlapping soundscapes, or delicate whiffs of scent" — the unsaturated as the ordinary register of revelation. See subtle-revelation, atmosphere.
Adumbrations (Husserl's Abschattungen): "facets of an object in space as it presents itself to you; they are often multilayered and multisensory. Husserl considered adumbrations as 'conditional,' in that our perception of an object is conditioned on how we approach it or what it offers us" (via Cerbone's "relations of 'motivation'": "if I turn my head, then I will see the corner of the table…"). "It is the multiplication of the facets of single perceptions that become an additive perception of the object itself"; "Adumbrations are not just a list of perceivables but gather to produce physical and psychological qualities." See adumbration, perception, lived-body.
Stop-motion filmmaking as an adumbration exercise: "We can comprehend adumbrations as moments of time activated in relation to each other."
The interior's intimate privilege: "interior space offers a retreat from the vastness of the exterior. It brings us back to the intimate scale of oneself as an individual; a body within a body" — with Pallasmaa: "A building is encountered; it is approached, confronted, related to one's body, moved through, utilized as a condition for other things. Architecture directs, scales, and frames actions, perceptions, and thoughts." See lived-body, embodiment.
The visible/invisible dialectic: via Marion, Heidegger "legitimates the possibility of a phenomenology of the unapparent in general"; "Heidegger's terminology of 'showing itself' 'from itself' is the announcement of subtle revelation"; "Invisibility maintains potential, excitement, and expectation of our oneiric sensibility. The hidden becomes an equally valid phenomenal experience, as is the revealed… Expectation, therefore, preempts revelation." See visible-invisible.
Absence as spatial positivity — the chapter's most striking thesis: "Absence, then, is not nothingness or emptiness, but a place of portent, a space available for action, and a space which exists of and for itself. In interior architecture, space is definable yet exists as the presence of absence." Design choices re-spatialize it: "open space, closed space, surface space, material space, furniture space, object space, sound space, time space, or light and shadow space… Everything which is introduced or removed reconfigures and redefines spatiality."
Experiential learning: "the physical experience of making and doing which translates thought into action… reasserts the physicality of the teaching and learning experience through embodying design concepts in physical, project-based work"; its mode combines "active experimentation, risk-taking, and reflective observation" with "abstract and conceptual thought and research"; the preferred studio "encourages the holistic engagement of body and mind as the integration of a psychosomatic partnership." See experiential-learning, praxis.
Language as complement to drawing: "The language we need to express our newfound awareness has to be poetic, elegant, sophisticated, and at times, raw and direct. Language becomes the necessary complement to drawing by adding the descriptive and poetic details that drawings merely allude to."
Phenomenography defined (Smith's note 9): "Phenomenology is the apprehension and comprehension of phenomena, whereas phenomenography is the expression of that experience graphically or physically as documentation and outward expression of experiential learning. The former could be considered an internalized process whilst the latter an externalized manifestation of the phenomenological process." Its media: "movement, writing, drawing, making, photography, and performance." See phenomenography.
The named studio exercises: "Paper Play Things" (first-year pairs make a body attachment using only paper — "a few hours of fun and play"); detail photography on the foci "Body" and "interior" ("we do not always see what we are looking at"); and "Blind drawing" — a two-hour, first-week exercise in which blindfolded students draw with soft charcoal on large paper "a variety of sensory perceptions of reality, not objects, but feelings of a thing." "The blind drawing exercise frees students from visually judging their drawing abilities. It acts as a significant turning point in the studio." See blind-drawing, play.
The anti-digital pole: "the headlong rush into formalizing and rationalizing human experiences through the strict linearity of computer programs and their seductive operational values"; "There has become an addictive fascination with what happens on a screen to the neglect and detriment of hand drawing, model making, and other physical forms of material experimentation (exploration, the happy accident, and wonderment of the diverse influences)." The remedy: "A reemergence of a phenomenological and experiential approach to learning… shifts students to focus on acts of the body existing in reality." (Pallasmaa-aligned.)
Bognar's disciplinary frame (note 11): architecture is a discipline which "guides and creates the person-environment relationship" — the design studio as the site where that relationship is introduced and shaped.
Pedagogical empowerment as spatial-agency language: "The commitment of a teacher is to empower students to be freethinkers and questioners, to contribute meaningfully in the architecture of this rapidly changing world, and to be better equipped to tackle the difficult questions of our future environment." See spatial-agency.
Bachelard's maxim as pedagogy: "By solving small problems, we teach ourselves to solve large ones" — with Smith's gloss: "Architecture and interiority are often mediators of small problems."
The Calvino coda on interiority's undecidability (Marco Polo to Kublai Khan): "It is our eyelids that separate … but we cannot know which is inside and which is outside." See inside-outside-dialectic, interiority.
The closing conception of space: "We comprehend space not only as a volume to inhabit but also as moments of physical and psychological presence. These are qualities which return us to our own body and mind, relinquishing us to drift into reverie and connect with our lived moments of intimacy." See interiority, dwelling.

Connections

Concepts: subtle-revelation · adumbration · phenomenography · experiential-learning · blind-drawing · design-studio-pedagogy · visible-invisible · interiority · interior-architecture · embodiment · lived-body · atmosphere · perception · presence · inside-outside-dialectic · poetic-image · praxis · spatial-agency · play · liminality Authors: Ross T. Smith · Gregory Marinic (ed.) · Juhani Pallasmaa (quoted on education and on the encountered building) · Gaston Bachelard (quoted on the poetic detail) · Maurice Merleau-Ponty (quoted: "the world is what we perceive") · Edmund Husserl (adumbrations/conditionals, via Cerbone) · Martin Heidegger ("showing itself from itself," via Marion) Debates: interior-design-vs-architecture (Position W: the pedagogical answer to the "philosophical base of knowledge" charge) · static-vs-dynamic-architecture (experiential-becoming temporality) · truth-and-illusion (blind drawing: perception trained through non-visual mark-making) Related source notes: Hedges — The waiting room — the Reader's other drawing-register chapter: Hedges's waiting drawing "marks time," Smith's blind drawing "expresses feelings of a thing"; both make drawing a phenomenographic act of the body rather than an instrument of visual accuracy. Pallasmaa — The Thinking Hand — the shared anti-digital, pro-hand pole: Smith's "addictive fascination with what happens on a screen" restates Pallasmaa's "device for a bodiless observer" as studio diagnosis. Carraher — Technologies: The spatial agency of digital praxis — the empowerment vocabulary transferred to pedagogy (teacher → student as Carraher's designer → public). Bachelard — The Dialectics of Outside and Inside — the "particularly interiorist" poetics Smith names as phenomenology's poetic language. Qureshi — Spatial therapies — the Reader's other future-facing chapter: Qureshi's therapy operates on the building stock, Smith's on the perceiving student.

Direct Quotes

Page numbers are not available in the chapter text; quotes are located by section. Page numbers given in parentheses are those of Smith's own endnotes.

"Architecture does not stand in isolation from its surroundings or humanity; its integration of interiority makes it valuable to our existential circumstance." (opening)

"In the words of Eugen Fink, phenomenology is 'wonder in the face of the world.' It is an attitude of subtle revelation, of sensing by doing which permeates all aspects of working toward and through design." (opening)

"This makes phenomenology not simply a methodology, but an approach to being of the world." (opening)

"In the phenomenological and experiential approach to design studio, the teacher becomes mentor, guide, and provocateur." (opening)

"We exist, as do all substantive things, in a time-based condition of becoming, transformation, and dissolution. Our human condition, therefore, is a reflection of the natural and constructed world – one of constant change and impermanence." (opening)

"Teaching and learning architecture is not only concerned with buildings, it is about the creative imagination of interior conditions." (opening)

"Aspects of a newly revealed world can be wondrous, but it can also be one of panic and insecurity, as evidenced by some students. Some students express these discoveries by saying they have never 'seen' the world like this before and are shocked at how they could not have noticed the many subtle aspects of sensory experience." (opening)

"With a heightened level of perception, we can no longer ignore fleeting moments of delicacy, beauty, or pain." (opening)

"The duty of education is to cultivate and support the human abilities of imagination and empathy… The main object of artistic education is not the principles of making art, but the personality of the students and their image of themselves and the world." (Juhani Pallasmaa, "Lived Space" (2002), quoted)

"We must not … wonder whether we perceive a world truly, we must instead say: the world is what we perceive." (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Merleau-Ponty Reader, p. 63, quoted)

"Phenomena can present as saturated spectacular events, according to Jean-Luc Marion, or more often be revealed as unsaturated phenomena which are subtle and restrained as faint outlines, vague traces, peripheral glimpses, wafts of breeze, shimmers of light, nuances of color, overlapping soundscapes, or delicate whiffs of scent." (Subtle revelation and phenomenology)

"With a single poetic detail, the imagination confronts us with a new world. From then on, the detail takes precedence over the panorama, and a simple image, if it is new, will open up an entire world." (Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, p. 134, quoted)

"By solving small problems, we teach ourselves to solve large ones." (Bachelard, quoted)

"Adumbrations are facets of an object in space as it presents itself to you; they are often multilayered and multisensory. Husserl considered adumbrations as 'conditional,' in that our perception of an object is conditioned on how we approach it or what it offers us." (Sensing and perceiving)

"It is the multiplication of the facets of single perceptions that become an additive perception of the object itself." (Sensing and perceiving)

"Adumbrations are not just a list of perceivables but gather to produce physical and psychological qualities." (Sensing and perceiving)

"In particular, interior space offers a retreat from the vastness of the exterior. It brings us back to the intimate scale of oneself as an individual; a body within a body." (Sensing and perceiving)

"A building is encountered; it is approached, confronted, related to one's body, moved through, utilized as a condition for other things. Architecture directs, scales, and frames actions, perceptions, and thoughts." (Juhani Pallasmaa, "Stairways of the Mind" (2005), p. 60, quoted)

"The world is not a 'lake of nothingness' but a place to be explored and discovered in its depths and differences." (Visible/Invisible, citing Lingis's preface to The Visible and the Invisible, p. xliii)

"Heidegger's terminology of 'showing itself' 'from itself' is the announcement of subtle revelation. With all that is visible, there must be other things that remain invisible. Invisibility maintains potential, excitement, and expectation of our oneiric sensibility. The hidden becomes an equally valid phenomenal experience, as is the revealed… Expectation, therefore, preempts revelation." (Visible/Invisible)

"Absence, then, is not nothingness or emptiness, but a place of portent, a space available for action, and a space which exists of and for itself. In interior architecture, space is definable yet exists as the presence of absence." (Visible/Invisible)

"Experiential learning is the physical experience of making and doing which translates thought into action." (Experiential learning)

"The preference is an intimate and experiential design studio which encourages the holistic engagement of body and mind as the integration of a psychosomatic partnership." (Experiential learning)

"The language we need to express our newfound awareness has to be poetic, elegant, sophisticated, and at times, raw and direct." (Experiential learning)

"The students sit, stand, move about, crush the charcoal, or smash it into the paper, and draw with their hands… Life is a messy business; we do not live in a world of perfections and absolutes – it is one of errors and humorous mistakes." (Experiential learning)

"The blind drawing exercise frees students from visually judging their drawing abilities. It acts as a significant turning point in the studio." (Experiential learning)

"Architecture, says Botond Bognor, is a discipline which 'guides and creates the person-environment relationship.'" (Experiential learning; Bognar 1985, p. 183)

"There has become an addictive fascination with what happens on a screen to the neglect and detriment of hand drawing, model making, and other physical forms of material experimentation (exploration, the happy accident, and wonderment of the diverse influences) which could be used in the architectural design processes." (Experiential learning)

"A reemergence of a phenomenological and experiential approach to learning, therefore, shifts students to focus on acts of the body existing in reality." (Experiential learning)

"The commitment of a teacher is to empower students to be freethinkers and questioners, to contribute meaningfully in the architecture of this rapidly changing world, and to be better equipped to tackle the difficult questions of our future environment." (Empowering students)

"Architecture and interiority are often mediators of small problems." (Empowering students)

"It is our eyelids that separate … but we cannot know which is inside and which is outside." (Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, p. 103, quoted)

"We comprehend space not only as a volume to inhabit but also as moments of physical and psychological presence. These are qualities which return us to our own body and mind, relinquishing us to drift into reverie and connect with our lived moments of intimacy." (Empowering students, closing)

Open Questions

Smith states that phenomenology combined with "constructivist and phenomenographic methods in education" gives students "the independence and confidence to approach the subjective and often indeterminate process of design" — but the chapter does not specify how phenomenographic documentation is assessed. Can a pedagogy of subjective revelation be evaluated without re-importing the "perfection and accuracy" standards the blind drawing dismantles?
The chapter reports students' "panic and insecurity" at heightened perception but does not describe the recovery. Is the panic a stage of the phenomenological reduction (Husserl's epoché as loss of the natural attitude), and what studio structure carries a student through it?
Smith's absence-thesis ("space… exists as the presence of absence") is asserted for interior architecture generally: is "the presence of absence" a design program (design the withheld), a phenomenological description (Husserl's empty adumbrations), or an ethics of restraint — and how would a studio test the difference?
The chapter's exercises train perception of the existing world (photography, blind drawing of "feelings of a thing," adumbration films). How does trained perception convert into design propositions — "imagined propositions for living" — without collapsing back into representation? The chapter's own gloss ("the phenomenographic manifestation… in written, drawn, photographed, or modeled form") names the conversion but not its method.
Smith teaches the body's acts "existing in reality" against "the strict linearity of computer programs" — can his experiential exercises survive the studio's digital normalization, or do they function (as with Pallasmaa's hand) as a permanent minority report within a computational curriculum?
The chapter names no theorists of experiential learning. Its "active experimentation, risk-taking, and reflective observation" evokes Kolb's cycle and its "learning by doing" Dewey — what is the pedagogical genealogy behind the chapter's practice, and how does it relate to constructivist learning theory (the education sense, distinct from the Russian avant-garde)?