Marco Frascari's Dream House

A Theory of Imagination

Marco Frascari, Federica Goffi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317280149
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architektur
• Subtopic: Architektur Allgemein

This previously unpublished work is essential reading for anyone who has followed Marco Frascari's scholarship and teachings over the last three decades. It also provides the perfect introduction for anyone new to his writings. As ever, Frascari does not offer prescriptive tools and frameworks to enact his theories of drawing and imagination; instead, he teaches how to build one's own through individual practice. An illuminating introduction places the text in a wider context, providing the reader with a fascinating and important context and understanding to this posthumous work. Frascari's sketchbooks are reproduced faithfully in full colour to provide the reader with a remarkable insight into the design process of this influential mind.

1
A Congenial Inauguration

Marco Frascari

We are such a stuffe
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleepe.

William Shakespeare¹

I'm Lost, Lost! Mama! I'M LOST! OH! I AM LOST!
You are not lost, NEMO. Go to sleep and Behave! Hear?

Winsor McCay²

Our life is not a dream—but it shall,
and maybe will, become one.

Novalis³

This is an ambiguous book, not intended for a linear reading, but is not indigestible; nor is it merely the story and description of a design using fine and ornate words. It is constructed to follow the rhizomatic path from which relevant architectural design can be contrived. It is an edifice that includes vistas and secret gardens. It is an assembly of open and closed rooms that house verbal and visual icons for architectural edification. Being a dwelling in wonder within the dreamland of design, this text should be grasped as architectural drawings are scanned; by injecting yourself in them and wandering from room to room, from detail to detail, from plan to section, from section to elevation. This work consists of, in the order in which they were made, first, dreamed images, second, drawings, and, finally, words. The drawings were done following the dreamed images, and then the narrative was written to emulate the drawings.

My suggestion for the reader is to wait until after dinner to interpret the riddle I offer in this book. Having drafted most of this book and drawn the majority of its images before dinner, I was forced by my longing to be concise. Readers may delight and even indulge in this verbal and visual medley, by using their post-prandium,⁴ active imagination, that is, by taking advantage of mental images elaborated during lull moments of reverie. The drawings and the companion text, proffered here, are neither about simulation nor dissimulation in architecture, but about assimilation. Assimilation is an act of proper cognitive musing. Cognitive assimilation is a form of incorporation, whereby we ingest the outside world into ourselves. Simulation and dissimulation predominate amid both academic likings and professional kitsch. The idea of assimilation is proposed as a novel and venerable approach to counteract the current degraded state of theoretic sentimentality and visual vulgarity that dominate the ostentatious and pretentious architecture of today. Cognitive assimilation is an illumination. It is a productive inference based on instinct, just as oral tasting during childhood is an instinctive part of cognitive appropriation.

Behind the words, behind the lines and colors composing this text, there is the same experiential knowledge that can be found beneath the architecture of well-conceived haute cuisine plates, properly paired with a correct selection of wines: a perfect way to begin a daydream.⁵ As Novalis (Georg Friedrich Philipp von Hardenberg, 1772-1801) suggested in his Allgemeine Brouillon, dreams instruct on the facility of our spirit to penetrate every object and to transform itself into every object.⁶ In his Scientific-Natural Studies of Freiberg (1799), Novalis indicated that the peristaltic movement of the brain originates dreams and, furthermore, he defined daydreaming as a beatific circumstance.⁷

An inner light generated by gourmet activity illuminates our dreams. An active member of the Neoplatonic School of Chartres and a follower of the sensible dietetic principles of the School of Salerno,⁸ William of Conches, a Norman scholar, born toward the end of the eleventh century, gives us a great description of the metabolic nature of the light of imagination. Conches took from Galen the conception that food transforms from matter into light through a sequence of transformations. The first transformation occurs in the liver where digested matter becomes natural virtue, which then trickles through the heart and is transmuted into spiritual virtue and, finally, it is exuded in the brain where it is changed into a luminous wind.⁹ This wind is a pneumatic light; it is the imagination that edifies our minds and provides visions of past, present and future edifices. It works through the dual act of constructing images and construing meanings within a tectonic environment.

The magic meal

Dreaming architecture is like a gourmet craft that, when carefully translated into constructed artifacts, promotes a beatific life. The analogy between food and architecture is an old one. Isidore of Seville (560-636), in his etymological and truly macaronic studies, postulated the origin of architecture in the dining hall, rather than in the primal hut.¹⁰ One of the most powerful concepts developed by Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) in his architectural theory is the application of the Latin concept of concinnitas to the production of a harmonious architecture.¹¹ The ontological origin of the concept of concinnitas records the figurative transposition of the harmony of taste present in a well-cooked dish, where the dosing of the components is properly calibrated.¹² In the De Re Aedificatoria (1443-1452), Alberti states that concinnitas is "vim et quasi succum" (energy and almost a sauce).¹³

The analogy between gastronomy and architecture is not solely Isidore's fanciful etymological interpretation, it has been invoked many times. Ben Jonson (1572-1637), an English playwright who disliked architects, used the analogy to craftily criticize Inigo Jones' belief in the cultural predominance of architects in one of his Masques. In the Masque entitled "Neptune's Triumph for the Return of Albion" (1624), Jonson described the master-builder as a preposterous master-cook.¹⁴ Nevertheless, to be a master-cook is not a contrary circumstance for an architect, nor is to be an architect a negative condition for a great chef of cuisine. The first, and, in many ways, the most important of all French chefs, was Marie-Antonin Carême (1784-1833), who was called the "architect of French cuisine."¹⁵ This label is a metaphor used to point out Carême's dominant role in the rise of French gastronomy. It also indicates his interest in architecture and his search for the common ground between the two disciplines. Architecture was one of Carême's main interests. He carefully studied the architectural monuments of the past and he designed elaborate table decorations called pièces montées (mounted pieces) as an outlet for his architectural passion. Those pieces were rotundas, temples, columns, and arches, constructed with sugar, icing, and pastry dough. Each of these was carefully designed with the eye of an architect, for Carême considered confectionery to be the main branch of architecture.

To further the discussion and to keep it within this edifying edible analogy, I should forewarn the reader that the structure and theories presented in this book are products of a gourmet manner of thinking that, in its critical form, is called a macaronic art.¹⁶ Macaronic thinking is a monstrous way of thinking¹⁷ that I am using to fashion a constructive dream to demonstrate that the architectural discipline is, and will always be, sustainable, flexible and fertile.¹⁸ As already mentioned, this macaronic achievement was conceived before my meals—my favorite dinner being maccheroni al sugo—and the thoughtful reader should sample it with their after-dinner macaroon.

Macaronic undertakings are autobiographical in nature and display the other as self. Non-macaronic theories are like maccheroni senza sugo (macaroni without sauce), they lack taste and concinnitas. As I recently came to realize, I am a macaronic thinker. As the progenitor of all the macaronics, Merlinus Cocaius,¹⁹ and like all other macaronic persons, I am not a revolutionary. My point of view is incompatible with any great program for the reordering of the world. I consider critical thinking beyond politics, religion, or morals: it is a critique of the imaginal foundation of our comprehension and representation of the world. The aim of a truly macaronic person is not revolution but demonstration: a permanent presentation of monstrous evidences. The macaronic art is a special way to investigate the non-empirical, by making analogies resonate in the mind and on the tongue.

Macaronic persons know the power of edible expressions that, instead of being simulated or dissimulated, can be assimilated by an audience. To digest these resonating and analogical utterances, the audience is compelled to carry out phenomenological readings. The importance of a phenomenological reading lies in the enlightenment of a person's awareness, wonderstruck by the possibility of associations built through images.

We live in a civilization and culture where scientific thinking is extending its control over the production of images. Contrary to tradition, images no longer reveal culture. They mostly result from acritical production. It is commonplace to speak of a civilization of the image, nevertheless, this commonplace conceals a radical misunderstanding. Our Macs and PCs are controlled by the use of icons, but we no longer know what an "icon" really is beyond its functional or logistic reference. Images are reduced to the level of primary, rational, sensory perception. The result is a complete degradation of the images that are supposed to feed our thinking processes. The cognitive power of images is lost to the power of pretentious expectations or fictional fulfilling. Architectural images suffer unfortunately the same fate. Architectural drawings and buildings no longer yield to cognitive power, they have become mere instruments of the building industry, real estate investments, and not-so-commodious habitations.

Dreams are the way in which myths are created.²⁰ The macaronic art is employed as a playful technique to access daydreaming to ascertain the power of architectural images. Oneiric images show the possibility of translation: a conversion that makes visible the invisible. A dream is a mode of production whereby images can be manipulated through dimensional combinations, scale changes, and analogical relationships that result in the creation of new forms and new understandings.

In dreams, visual images are dominant and a monstrous semiosis takes place. While dreaming, everybody learns the subtle art of representation, because a dream is always a representation of either being awake or asleep. Dreams are not irrational instruments; they are efficacious visual tools for penetrating the rigor of reason; they enlighten the imaginal aspects of human thinking. Through dreaming, a person can enter any building. Dreams are a non-verbal structure. They are a way of thinking by using images (see Figures 30, 47 in the Portfolio).²¹

Daydreaming is the only proper way to read drawings of architecture. No other procedure allows the transmutation of the composition of lines describing a future building into an assembly of meaningful rooms and details. Architectural practice (the art of construction) and architectural theory (the art of drawing) have been separated from each other. These two arts are no longer mutually correspondent. They are no longer alchemic twins.²² Predictive drawings are a parched basis for construction, and construction is no longer a ...