Essay
Ana Araujo
This article analyses Alois Riegl’s (1858–1905) notion of an aesthetics of proximity (Nahsicht), to which he associates the dimension of the tactile and the haptic. Opposed to ‘Nahsicht’ is what Riegl calls the ‘optical-fernsichtig’: an aesthetics of spatial distance that in his view responds more satisfactorily to the essence of architecture. While Riegl’s optical dimension relates to linear perspective, evoking a particular model of spatial construction, the haptic, on the other hand, alludes to planarity and to the drawing of profiles and details, promising to engender alternative modes of vision and spatiality. I intend to challenge Riegl’s proposed correspondence between the ‘optical-fernsichtig’ and the logic of architecture, connecting the later instead with his aesthetics of proximity: as already suggested by Walter Benjamin’s own reading of Riegl in the text The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936). Drawing from that connection, I will argue that some procedures typically associated to the haptic might be productively employed to interrogate and reinvigorate current architectural practice. […]
House of Dust
To conclude this discussion, I will point to some aspects of a recently completed interior design scheme by the Sicilian architect Antonino Cardillo. This is a project modest in size that nonetheless illustrates well in my view how the dimension of the haptic may be integrated to architecture. The work is entitled House of Dust, and it consists of a domestic space in the centre of Rome, Italy. The intriguing title refers to the coarse texture applied to the ceiling of the living room, a rustic volume made of brownish-yellow cement mixed with aggregate, which in its materiality evokes the image of a cave or of a grotto in a picturesque garden. Dust is, of course, minuscule, and, alluding to it, the scheme relates to the miniature world of Seasons [Ivan Petrovič Ivanov-Vano, 1969], as well as to other protuberant surfaces previously illustrated here. The ceiling of the House of Dust is haptic in the conventional sense Riegl understood this term: it communicates a strong sense of tactility; it calls for the near look, but then it blurs the vision. Dust also has a temporal dimension—the dimension of time passing, to be more precise—and this adds to this ceiling a somewhat archaic feel.
Antonino Cardillo, House of Dust, Rome, 2013. Photography: Antonino Cardillo
Another notable feature of the House of Dust is a series of openings framed as arches: sometimes connecting the rooms, sometimes acting simply as cabinet doors. In their proportion as well as in their chromatic scale, these arches call to mind some religious paintings of the fourteenth century (Duccio and Giotto, more specifically). In their unlikely arrangement (for if they all led to different rooms those would be too small to be inhabited) the arches follow a spatial logic akin to the one of the picturesque garden. They trick your expectations; they “point to another world” (to the representations in the fourteenth-century paintings, for example; Cardillo also mentions Alice in the Wonderland as an inspiration). They are, perceptually, ‘excessive’: tenaciously repetitive; uncanny, almost.
In connecting architecture to the realm of the haptic, both on a more tactile, micro scale (ceiling) and on a more visual, macro scale (arches), Cardillo’s architecture promotes the sensorial mobilisation envisioned by Benjamin as a potential force for social / political transformation. It also responds to Rilke’s call for an intensification of the senses as the only possible antidote to human suffering and violence. It is a hopeful piece that suggests that architecture still holds the power to awaken our senses and emotions for a deeper, more intimate and fulfilling engagement with the world.
Antonino Cardillo, House of Dust, Rome, 2013. Photography: Antonino Cardillo