A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
Smooth and Rough: Tactile Brutalism
This chapter constructs personal eccentricities of several writers who had used their obsession to describe the sensations provoked by a building. The aspect of smooth and rough surfaces of the building conceived as a body stimulated analogies with hunger, the openings ‘torn’ by ‘vengeful teeth’, attacked sadistically, yet healed and smoothed over as an ‘indispensable’ shelter. Adrian Stokes published a reflection on the architectural surface entitled Smooth and Rough. Concentrating more on the visual effects of apparent tactility than on the effect of touch itself, Stokes transformed Melanie Klein's theory on opticality to describe the sensations provoked by a building. Klein's metaphor was that of stroking (the smooth ‘shining breast’) and biting (the ‘feeding nipple of that breast’). Indeed, distancing ourselves from the personal eccentricities of Stoke's Kleinian view, we might extend his insights on the abstract forms of architecture to Brutalist work, its delight in the transformations of concrete surfaces, polished smooth, roughened with aggregate, coloured with sands, bush‐hammered, striated, marked with the grains of multiple woods, pressed by the cold flanks of steel sheets, and always striving to match the impeccable calculated effects of Stokes's own beloved exemplars of smooth and rough – the polished marbles and deeply carved rough edges that ‘bite’ the eyes, and grate the teeth of the observer, if not physically grazing his skin.
Smooth and Rough: Tactile Brutalism
This chapter constructs personal eccentricities of several writers who had used their obsession to describe the sensations provoked by a building. The aspect of smooth and rough surfaces of the building conceived as a body stimulated analogies with hunger, the openings ‘torn’ by ‘vengeful teeth’, attacked sadistically, yet healed and smoothed over as an ‘indispensable’ shelter. Adrian Stokes published a reflection on the architectural surface entitled Smooth and Rough. Concentrating more on the visual effects of apparent tactility than on the effect of touch itself, Stokes transformed Melanie Klein's theory on opticality to describe the sensations provoked by a building. Klein's metaphor was that of stroking (the smooth ‘shining breast’) and biting (the ‘feeding nipple of that breast’). Indeed, distancing ourselves from the personal eccentricities of Stoke's Kleinian view, we might extend his insights on the abstract forms of architecture to Brutalist work, its delight in the transformations of concrete surfaces, polished smooth, roughened with aggregate, coloured with sands, bush‐hammered, striated, marked with the grains of multiple woods, pressed by the cold flanks of steel sheets, and always striving to match the impeccable calculated effects of Stokes's own beloved exemplars of smooth and rough – the polished marbles and deeply carved rough edges that ‘bite’ the eyes, and grate the teeth of the observer, if not physically grazing his skin.
Smooth and Rough: Tactile Brutalism
Borden, Iain (editor) / Fraser, Murray (editor) / Penner, Barbara (editor) / Vidler, Anthony (author)
2015-03-24
5 pages
Article/Chapter (Book)
Electronic Resource
English
| Taylor & Francis Verlag | 2006
| Taylor & Francis Verlag | 2019
| Online Contents | 1994
| TIBKAT | 2013
British Library Online Contents | 2019