1

[a paper published in a special 2007 issue of the German architectural journal Wolkenkuckuckshein devoted to
philosopher Karsten Harries’ writings on architecture]

Karsten Harries’ Natural Symbols as a Means for

Interpreting Architecture: Inside and Outside in
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater and Alvar Aalto’s
Villa Mairea
Enku Mulugeta Assefa and David Seamon

Abstract
This article uses two seminal 20th-century houses—Frank Lloyd Wright’s
Fallingwater and Alvar Aalto’s Villa Mairea—to examine the natural symbol of
inside and outside, which for Karsten Harries (1988, 1993, 1997) is one
important lived relationship sustaining successful architecture and place.

“[T]o hold that there is nothing that transcends human beings and speaks to
them, that reality itself is mute and meaningless, means nihilism. If there is to be
an alternative to nihilism, it must be possible to make some sense of and learn
to listen to the language of things.”
—Karsten Harries (1997, p. 133)

Introduction
Philosopher Karsten Harries writes that a key task of architecture is
“interpreting the world as a meaningful order in which the individual can find
his [or her] place in the midst of nature and in the midst of a community”
(Harries 1993, p. 51). Harries argues that, too often, buildings do not respond to
the needs of human dwelling because they are made arbitrarily in that they do
not arise from the real-world requirements of particular people, places and
landscapes. As an expression and interpretation of human life, a non-arbitrary
architecture involves design that both listens to and incorporates nature and
culture.

Harries claims that one need in creating a non-arbitrary architecture is

understanding what he calls natural symbols—qualities of experience that mark
essential human qualities as they relate to nature and society (Harries 1993, p.
53). In this article, we draw on two seminal 20th-century houses—Frank Lloyd
Wright’s Fallingwater and Alvar Aalto’s Villa Mairea—to examine the natural
symbol of inside and outside, which for Harries is one important lived
dimension of successful architecture and place (Harries 1988, pp. 46-47; 1997,
pp. 192-97; Seamon 1993, 2000, 2007; Thiis-Evensen 1987).1
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We choose these two houses because of their similarities in intention and

design. Both houses were conceived and implemented within the same
decade—the 1930s. Wright was sixty-eight years old when he built Fallingwater
and had already designed dozens of other remarkable residences when he began
the house in 1935. In contrast, when Alvar Aalto began Villa Mairea in 1938, he
was still fairly young and had not designed a single large residence.

Aalto’s client, Harry Gullichsen, admired Wright’s Fallingwater, which

provided a major inspiration for Aalto’s sketch phase of Villa Mairea—a fact
that is demonstrated by one of Aalto’s early drawings for the house, below.
Architect Juhani Pallasmaa (1998, p. 78) writes that “resemblances in [the]
ambience [of the two houses] are not so clear in the drawings or even the
photographs, but the actual experience of the two houses forces one to a
comparison.”
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Both architects shared a common creative ground in drawing on nature to

discover timeless patterns for their architectural designs. Wright professed that
he “could draw inspiration from nature herself” (Wright 1954, p. 22), while
Aalto claimed that “the profoundest feature of architecture is a variety and
growth reminiscent of natural life. I should like to say that in the end this is the
only real style in architecture” (Aalto 1998, p. 31).

An Architecture of Re-presentation
Before examining the two houses through the natural symbol of inside and
outside, it is important to delineate more fully Harries’ discussion of the role of
architecture in human life so that one understands why he gives considerable
attention to natural symbols.

In The Ethical Function of Architecture, Harries (1997, p. 291) argues that a

central value of good design is that it breaks us free from the everyday and
“beckons us toward a better life, a bit closer to the ideal.” He claims that, in
bringing us nearer to the better parts of ourselves, the best architecture has a re-
presentative function—in other words, it helps us to remember what a particular
mode of human being is about. For example, the successful house sustains and
replenishes a sense of at-homeness, just as a well designed church reminds
worshippers of their faith and offers, just in being what it is, a physical context
where that faith can be continuously renewed. In this sense, the successful
building “re-presents itself in such a way that it renders itself more visible in its
essence” (ibid., p. 136). Harries explains:

... to deserve to be called a work of architecture a house cannot just be a

house... [T]he house must represent a house, and by so doing, re-present
itself as a house... create the fiction of a house. The same can be said of a
church, a museum, a city hall, an airport. Representing other architecture,
the work of architecture re-presents itself in the image of the ideal, creating
a fiction about itself. By its choice of what to represent and of the form of
representation, it communicates a particular understanding of what is taken
to matter in architecture, signifying a particular ideal of building and thus of
dwelling (ibid., pp. 119-20).

Harries emphasizes that, practically, architecture's ability to re-present cannot be

expressed directly but presupposes a “natural language of space” (ibid., p. 125),
which, in turn, is founded in the ways in which we, as human beings, especially as
bodily beings, exist in and experience the world—for example, experiences of
moving or resting, getting up or lying down, recognizing light or dark,
encountering heaviness or lightness, feeling openness or closure, and so forth.
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Architecture, says Harries, can articulate and focus this natural language of space
through material expression. “Buildings speak to us,” he writes (ibid.) “because
our experience of space and therefore of particular spatial configurations cannot
but be charged with meaning. As a re-presentation of buildings, architecture re-
presents and lets us attend to that ‘speech’.” From one point of view, a classical
Doric column is an ordinary post sustaining weight. At the same time, however,
this column re-presents the essence of post in that the thick muscular swelling of
its fluted shaft suggests the post’s upward thrust countered by the weight of the
entablature bearing down—the two opposing motions brought together and
reconciled through the material form of the compact buttonlike capital. Here, the
Doric order expresses explicitly in physical form the reconciliation of upward and
downward forces that the simple post speaks of only implicitly.

Natural Symbols
In part three of Ethical Function and elsewhere in his writings, Harries (1988,
1993) investigates what he calls a “semantics of the natural language of space”
(1997, p. 180). The heart of this semantics is contained in the lived fact already
alluded to “that we exist in the world, not as disembodied spirits, nor as beings
who just happen to have bodies, but as essentially embodied selves, who by their
bodies are inevitably assigned their place in the world—on the earth and beneath
the giant hemisphere of the sky” (ibid.).

In developing this semantics of embodied spatiality practically, Harries draws on

the idea of natural symbols, by which he means the underlying patterns of
experience marking essential qualities of human nature and life—for example,
qualities of direction, of weight, of materiality, of temperature, of light, of
existence as an individual alone but also as an individual who is part of larger
human groups, and so forth. Harries explains:

By natural symbols, I understand symbols that can be derived simply from

an analysis of [human] being in the world. They are not tied to a particular
culture or region, although, inevitably, different cultures will appropriate
them differently (Harries, 1993, p. 53).

In Ethical Function, Harries explores such natural symbols as vertical and

horizontal, light and darkness, up and down, and inside and outside. For example,
he considers how the dialectical tension between vertical and horizontal arises
from the bodily relationship between the vertical axis of the upright human body
and the horizontal plane of the Earth surrounding that body in all directions. There
is the lure of open spaces and movement as they exist in tension with the wish to
have roots and a home. There is the vertical's skyward movement toward
spirituality and inwardness, which counters the horizon's expression of physical
expansion and material success. Different cultures and historical periods express
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the vertical-horizontal tension in different ways but, whatever the particular

manifestation, it “presupposes an understanding of the meaning of verticals and
horizontals inseparable from our being in the world” (Harries 1988, p. 45).
Harries (1997, pp. 192-97) also gives attention to the natural symbol of inside
and outside, which is “bound up with the awareness of our own bodies, with
their openings so much like the windows and doors of buildings” (ibid., p. 192).
The creation of an inside automatically shapes an outside, which then relates to
inside in a dialectic relationship. On one hand, inside establishes physical and
psychological security and safety and thus can facilitate a sense of identity for
the person or group (Jacobson et al. 1990; Relph 1976; Thiis-Evensen 1987).
On the other hand, inside can also involve “a suffocating darkness that our
imagination peoples with images that both fascinate and terrify” (Harries 1997,
p. 195).
These oppositional possibilities of inside and outside point toward an important
quality of natural symbols: their ambiguous nature—for example, verticality
reflects, on one hand, spirituality and religious humility but, on the other hand,
symbolizes human pride and assertiveness, as with the Tower of Babel. In regard
to the ambiguity of inside and outside, the example that Harries offers involves
windows, which provide a sense of interpenetration and exchange between outside
and inside but also shut insiders in or allow the inside to be overrun by the outside
(Harries, 1997, pp. 192-98; Thiis-Evensen 1987, pp. 251-82). How to reconcile
such seeming oppositions? Harries suggests a lived flexibility between secure
enclosure and openness to the outside—“sheltering walls and doors and
windows through which light and air [and the world] can enter” (ibid., p. 196).
Inside and Outside
We find such a lived flexibility in Fallingwater and the Villa Mairea. On one
hand, both houses evoke a powerful sense of insideness by opacity, which, in
Fallingwater, is expressed in roughly dressed stone masonry and concrete walls;
in Villa Mairea, by white-painted, solid walls. On the other hand, the
transparency of the houses’ glass windows opens inside to outside and thereby
connects the two. In both houses, the architects created a strong sense of
insideness yet, at the same time, devised masterly ways to connect inside and
outside and thereby create a robust continuity. This inside-outside relationship
translates into environmental and architectural experience in four different
ways: (1) in-betweeness; (2) interpenetration generated by inside; (3)
interpenetration generated by outside; and (4) intermingling. We consider each
of these relationships in turn.
In-Betweeness
In-betweeness involves a place neither inside nor out. It incorporates a threshold
whereby a strong dialogue between the inside and outside occurs with a unique
in-between experience as the result. For Wright, in-betweeness was an
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intentional aim: “We have no longer an outside and an inside as two separate
things. Now the outside may come inside and the inside may and does go
outside. They are of each other. Form and function thus become one in design
and execution if the nature of materials and method and purpose are all in
unison” (Wright 1954, p. 50).

Fallingwater’s deep doorway located at the east main entrance is one in-
between place as are the projecting terraces that, as extensions of the rooms
within, are neither in nor out. The depth created by the terraces and the
overhanging volumes above give the balconies a quality of outdoor rooms. As
in-between spaces, they become thresholds mediating the contrasting domains
of insideness and outsideness. The trellis-like openings projecting from the
guest bedroom to the south and the trellis stretching to relate the house to the
north driveway are other important elements transforming inside and outside to
an in-between.

For Aalto’s Villa Mairea, in-between places include the deep, projecting main
entrance canopy, the covered terraces below the studio, the west side of the
flower room, and the terrace that leads to the sauna. Perhaps the most powerful
in-between experience is fostered by the entrance canopy, which works as a
threshold to mediate the lived-transition between outside and inside. Exposure
gradually decreases from the wide-open outside to the entrance canopy and then
to a tight passageway that gives an impression of entering a narrow cave.

The wide transparent glass openings used in both houses, particularly in

Fallingwater, play a crucial role in facilitating in-betweeness. Wright often
omitted walls and vertical frames from window corners to dematerialize solid
walls. The absence of walls and frames opens a new opportunity to see the
outside. More importantly, these glass corners bring attention to the fragility of
the wall, thus dissolving its presence and merging inside with outside.

Interpenetration
Interpenetration is another way in which the continuity between inside and
outside can be expressed and works in two different ways (see drawings,
below), depending on the relative strength of inside or outside (Thiis-Evensen
1987, pp. 19-20). On one hand, the inside can project itself into the outside—for
example, the projecting terraces of Fallingwater. Here, we call this situation the
interpenetration of the inside. On the other hand, the outside can be brought
inside through some sort of enclosure shaped by the building—for example,
Villa Mairea’s wrapping around an inner courtyard. We call this situation the
interpenetration of the outside.
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In both situations, inside and outside are brought together in a more intimate
relationship—in the first instance, through an architectural element that
becomes a physical link with outside; in the second instance, through a spatial
link whereby outside space is cradled and contained.

Interpenetration of the Inside

Fallingwater expresses interpenetration of the inside through physically fusing
with the landscape on the house’s north side through a projecting trellis; on the
east side, through a projecting stone masonry wall; and on the west side,
through a balcony that glides over rock outcropping. On the house’s south side,
a plunge pool—part of the building and only separated from the stream, Bear
Run, by a low wall—creates interpenetration between the building and water.
As another mode of interpenetration of the inside, the horizontal stone masonry
wall at Fallingwater’s east main entrance extends outside to subtly usher visitors
toward entry. In a similar way, Villa Mairea’s unusually curved entrance
canopy stretches out to meet visitors and invites them inside. In this sense, by
projecting inside out, the entry designs of both houses strongly weave the
buildings with their surroundings by leading visitors in.
Another example from Villa Mairea is the curved entrance canopy’s swinging
toward the the access road and connecting with its line of movement. Similarly,
a covered terrace leading to the sauna behind the house penetrates into the forest
to weave the building tightly with the landscape, a connection also
accomplished by rustic stone masonry on the east side of the house.
Interpenetration of the Outside
If interpenetration of the inside out involves physical form extending outward,
interpenetration of the outside involves surrounding space intermingling with
the inside through the enclosure and cradling of physical form.
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On its south side facing Bear Run, Fallingwater interpenetrates the outside by
projecting balconies reaching into space and endowing that space with a sense
of vertical presence. The projecting balconies, by penetrating into the outside
space, allow that space to penetrate back into the building mass (drawing,
below). As a result, the interpenetration creates defined spaces that belong
simultaneously to inside and outside. Because of Fallingwater’s precarious
placement on the rock embankment above the stream, the dominant spatial
expression of these spaces is vertical—between above and below.

In contrast, Villa Mairea’s interpenetration of the outside much more involves a

horizontal expression; as with Fallingwater, the reason relates to topography.
Though Villa Mairea is located at the crest of a gently rising hill, the actual site
on which the house stands is relatively flat. Aalto used this generous expanse as
a space with which the house could engage spatially. The u-shaped plan cradles
the outside by forming a partial courtyard, which belongs to both inside and
outside drawing, below). The worlds of house and nature can meet as equals in
this space.
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Intermingling
In intermingling, architectural and environmental elements are used
metaphorically to bring the meaning of outside in, and inside out. For example,
the interior presence of natural elements reminds us of the outside, which we
then experience vicariously. By echoing features of the natural site,
intermingling enables experiencers to be aware of the outside as they remain
inside. In the opposite way, interior elements brought outside invite the safety,
comfort, and culture of the inside. Intermingling allows one domain to assert
itself in the other, thereby establishing another kind of kinship and relationship
between inside and outside.

In Fallingwater, Wright used the rock boulder protruding in front of the living
room fireplace as one means to bring nature in. The association of the boulder
with the fireplace powerfully expresses the phenomenon of the ground, which is
particularly a feature of the outside. The outcropping evokes a feeling that one
is literally living with a primordial force of nature but in a secure, protected way
(Thiis-Evensen 1987, pp. 53-55). Similarly, Aalto used roughly cut, natural
stones in the Villa Mairea’s living room fireplace, though this use is not as
unusual as Wright’s, since these stones do not have the literal earth-sourced
connectedness with site as Fallingwater’s boulder does.

Both architects use inside and outside elements in a more metaphorical way. For
example, Fallingwater’s waxed flagstone floor appears as wet ground, thus
reminding one of the running water outside. In addition, the waxed flagstone
conveys safety and hazard simultaneously—safety, because of the strong
attachment and anchorage the stone floor has with the natural ground; hazard,
because of the impression the floor gives of water.

Aalto’s effort to simulate a sense of the surrounding forest inside Villa Mairea
is another example of intermingling at this more metaphorical level. The outside
forest surrounding the house is echoed in the rhythm of columns and poles in
living room, music room, library, entrance hall and staircase. Arranged in
irregular groups of one, two, or three, these columns suggest a deliberate
intention to minimize any regular geometry and to remind one of the natural
world outside. In an opposite way, Villa Mairea’s covered outdoor terrace is an
outside space given a quality of the inside by treatments peculiar to inside
space. The terrace’s clean, tidy, white-painted posts and beams suggest the
inside, as does a rustic fireplace, which speaks to comfort and warmth.

In Fallingwater, Wright intermingles outside elements inside but, other than

introducing pieces of sculpture, does little with intermingling inside elements
outside. In contrast, Villa Mairea exhibits as much presence of inside elements
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in the outside as outside elements inside. One could argue that the intermingling
of inside and outside is more balanced in Mairea than Fallingwater.

A Non-Arbitrary, Revitalized Architecture

In claiming that architects today faces a crisis in knowing what constitutes
successful building, Harries points out that there is no one dominant
representational paradigm (like Abbot Suger's vision of the Gothic church, for
example) that has been powerful enough to establish a shared architectural
language. In turn, Harries links this lack of representation at least partly to an
obliviousness of natural symbols: "What architecture lacks today is what the great
styles of the past provide: a developed system of symbols that architects could
presuppose and therefore did not have to invent...." (Harries 1997, p. 133).

We to not wish to imply here that Harries's solution to current architectural

difficulties is some single grand representational paradigm grounded in natural
symbols. Instead, Harries emphasizes that, in this postmodern era of diversity and
multivocity, the need is a series of creative efforts and experiments that might
establish new representational types—for example, he mentions as possibilities
the theater, museum, public plaza, and landscape garden—that have today the
equivalent power that, for example, the Christian church had in earlier times in the
West (ibid., part IV).

Harries (ibid., pp. 130-32) also emphasizes that natural symbols are only one
aspect of an invigorated architecture—one must also take into account
conventional symbols (symbols only understood by an awareness of cultural and
historical significances—e.g., the cross as a symbol of Christ's crucifixion) and
metasymbols (symbols drawn from past traditions in a playful but arbitrary way—
e.g., the postmodernist use of Classical motifs). Ultimately, however, natural
symbols may be the core of a revitalized architecture because they sustain and
reflect “an origin that does not lose its power with the passage of time because it
has its foundation in the very nature of human dwelling” (ibid., p. 109).

At the same time, Harries emphasizes that natural symbols can never tell us how
to build but, instead, can only help us to think about how our buildings might be
made more thoughtfully (Harries 1997, p. 11). To create a non-arbitrary
architecture grounded in human being-in-the-world requires a deep
understanding of what human beings and nature are. With this understanding in
hand, architects might have a powerful tool to envision architecture enabling
people to find their place in the world.

In creating two houses that speak to the natural symbol of inside and outside (as
well as to other natural symbols like light-dark, horizontal-vertical, up-down,
and center-periphery—see Assefa 2002), Wright and Aalto could be said to
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demonstrate the kind of revitalized, non-arbitrary architecture that Harries

envisions. In this sense, Fallingwater and Villa Mairea provide invaluable
models for current design education by demonstrating an architecture that arises
from and speaks to human being-in-the-world.

Note
1. The interpretation of inside and outside presented in this article is drawn from
the first author’s master’s thesis in Architecture—see Assefa 2002. A shorter
version of this article was published in Environmental and Architectural
Phenomenology Newsletter, vol. 14, no. 2 (spring 2003), pp. 11-15.
Photographs are from the authors’ collections; all drawings are by Enku
Mulugeta Assefa, other than the Aalto sketch, which is from Pallasmaa 1998, p.
78.

References
Aalto, A., 1998 [originally 1939]. Mariea [Project Description]. In J. Pallasmaa
[see below], p. 31.
Assefa, E. M., 2002. Interpreting Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater and Alvar
Aalto’s Villa Mairea Using Karsten Harries’ Natural Symbols and
Thomas Thiis-Evensen’s Architectural Archetypes. Master’s thesis,
Department of Architecture, Kansas State University, Manhattan.
Harries, 1988. Voices of Space, Center, 4, pp. 34-39.
_____, 1997. The Ethical Function of Architecture. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
_____, 1993 [originally 1983]. Thoughts on a Non-Arbitrary Architecture. In D.
Seamon, ed., Dwelling, Seeing and Designing. Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press, pp. 41-60.
Jacobson, M., Silverstein, M., & Winslow, B., 1990. The Good House: Contrast
as a Design Tool. Newtown, CT: Taunton Press.
Pallasmaa, J., 1996. The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. London:
Academy Editions.
Pallasmaa, J., ed., 1998. Alvar Aalto: Villa Mairea. Helsinki: Alvar Aalto
Foundation.
Relph, E., 1976. Place and Placelessness. London: Pion.
Seamon, D., ed., 1993. Dwelling, Seeing, and Designing: Toward a
Phenomenological Ecology. Albany, NY: State University of New York
Press.
Seamon, D., 2000. A Way of Seeing People and Place: Phenomenology in
Environment-Behavior Research. In Wapner, S., Demick, J., Yamamoto, T.
et al., eds., Theoretical Perspectives in Environment-Behavior Research,
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A Phenomenological Ecology of Natural and Built Worlds, pp. 53-86 in
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M. Geib, ed. Phenomenology and Ecology. Pittsburgh: Duquesne

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Enku Mulugeta Assefa is an architect with Boice Raidl Rhea Architecture in

Merriam, Kansas. He received a Master’s in Architecture from Kansas State
University in 2002, and this article is drawn from his master’s thesis. David
Seamon is Professor of Architecture at Kansas State University. His teaching
and research emphasize a phenomenological approach to place, architecture,
environmental experience, and environmental design as place making. He has
edited or co-edited Dwelling, Place and Environment: Toward a
Phenomenology of Person and World (New York: Columbia University Press,
1989); Dwelling, Seeing, and Designing: Toward a Phenomenological Ecology
(Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1993); and Goethe’s
Way of Science: A Phenomenology of Nature (Albany, New York: State
University of New York Press, 1998). He is editor of the Environmental and
Architectural Phenomenology Newsletter.