THE BEAUTY BEYOND THE OTHERNESS

drd.arh. Codruţa Iana

kodruyana@gmail.com

4 RETHINKING ARCHITECTURE BY REDEFINITION-COMMUNICATING

ARCHITECTURE

Motto: „architecture must offer human beings that mysterious that tangible „other” which is
beauty. The intelligent kind of beauty that emanates from constructed ideas. This is something
else, much much more than construction in the normal sense.” 1

As architects, we got used to work the space with forms, we are working them hard putting them in
special compositions, colors, and textures, to obtain that unique beauty that characterize our vision
and talent. The visual part of life is maybe the most important one for us. However, there are some
architects who had another opinion on this matter, for whom the visual part is just a tool and not a
goal. A tool to extract the beauty from beyond. You will not see decorations or complicated
compositional architectural objects, or some special conformations of the facades, but you are sure
going to feel something beyond the visual part, you will feel emotional touched. Touched by a ray of
light that pours from a ceiling conceived like a cave of light, like Baeza liked to name his creation, Caja
Granada, a ray that illuminate in a special way some corner, you will feel the world of “otherness”
beyond the straight and heavy concrete walls. The same effect can be seen on an empty stage. And
than came an actor and tells his part, the man who humanize the scene with his poetry and you begin
to see an entire world there, where a moment ago was only an empty stage. „If you give people
nothingness, they can ponder what can be achieved from that nothingness 2”, said Tadao Ando on this
matter, giving birth spaces like Church of light for example.

Following the path drawn by the cubist artists, there goal is the game of emotions. Alberto Campo
Baeza defines life and architecture in a very clear way: "I feel emotion, therefore I exist, [...] but then,
isn't architecture all about emotion? We should tell the world that architecture is a synthesis of rational

construction and irrational emotion, precept and passion. This architecture, which is made of and
arouses emotion, will always be cultured architecture. Unlike today's erudite architecture, which more
often than not is unashamedly exhibitionist, cultured architecture speaks a silent language which can
sometimes be difficult to explain, but is always easy to understand." 3

Walking through these spaces you will go back into your memories only by seeing a rough material or
a drop of light, like one from your childhood. Again Peter Zumthor comments:”...There was a time
when I experienced architecture without thinking about it... That door handle still seems to me like a
special sign of entry into a world of different moods and smells. Memories like these contain the

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deepest architectural experience that I know. They are the reservoirs of the architectural atmospheres
and images that I explore in my work as an architect...”4

Paradigms like essential form, the beauty beyond, the emotion of the concrete wall, heterotopic
spaces are some of there’s.

Those are the minimalists and here are some of there values and lessons extracted from some of their
own declarations and works.

4.1 ARCHITECTURAL CREATION

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On his official website, Alberto Campo Baeza writes an essay manifest named „Essential” where he
declares his concepts: „I propose an essential architecture of idea, space and light. Of built idea,
materialized in essential spaces animated by the light” 6. After his opinion, the idea will be the
architectural vector and it will contain context, function, composition and structural issues and respond
to problems like where, why and how. The context problem has connection with the location (site) and
his geography, it practically respond to the question where. The function matter has the origin in the
response to the question “what for”? Composition will organize the space and is the geometric
response to how? He explains that the construction materialize the space, organizing it after the
gravity laws, respond in a physical field to the question how? She is that one, which gives value to the
space, is the primordial material in architecture, that which gives the space the emotional
connotations. It is sculpted by form, is that which transmit the idea, is the architecture tangible result. 7
The principal problems of the architecture, after Baeza, are how to control the gravitational force and
how to relation with the light. After his opinion, the gravity builds space and the light gives time a
meaning, a form: sun shadows plays a time watch role in perception of the architectural object.

In the introduction that he made in his lecture “La ideea construita. La architectura a la luz de las
palabras”8, Baeza defines architecture being „an idea expressed (constructed) in forms” and the
history of architecture like history of constructed idea. In addition, he explains, observing the forms are
destroyed by the passing time, remaining only the ideas. His philosophy is based on two key concepts:
gravitation (an invisible static force) and light (an invisible electromagnetic radiation) which makes
the object visible. He proves his concept by realizing buildings like office building BIT.

On this matter, of making architecture, Ando think that architecture is an intimate relation between
material and form, and between volume and human life. He declares: “The aim of my design is, while
embodying my own architectural theories, to impart rich meaning to spaces through natural elements
and the many aspects of daily life. “ 9 He also gives importance to the phenomena of living the space,
by relating “the fixed form and compositional method to the kind of life that will be lived in the given
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space and to local regional society.” Responding on this problem, he finds the solution in simple
forms, from a vernacular way of Japanese living. His houses materialize this philosophy in a very
special way, I think keeping only the concept of basic forms and the idea of clusters, because the
material used, that well knew concrete wall, has no relations with wood and paper traditional Japanese
homes. He declares all the time that he is a traditional, but the only traditional thing that we can see in

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his constructions is the inner Japanese austerity and simplicity that is present in his creations. Alberto
Campo Baeza arrives to the same idea, of simplicity making, for example, Gaspar House, responding
on his concepts about architecture: „I propose an essential architecture of idea, space and light. Of
built idea, materialized in essential spaces animated by the light”. 11 Peter Zumthor finds the idea of
creating architecture like “Something that is about the form coming from the object itself coming from
the necessity of the object and what it is made of” 12. That’s why he prefers simple and rude materials
and his spaces are as complicated as the traditional ones are. His declarations seems like in the
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Levinas theory which formulates a basic definition of the house : “ it use to living like the hammer
driving a nail”(a.t.), putting in spot the specific aspect of architecture as a living tool. But that specific
and particular tool for living that is our home, has a huge amount of aspects, cultural, functional,
esthetical and it’s designing is far from being simple. That is why the not complicated Zumthor spaces
look like that ones from Thermal Baths Vals from Switzerland, an austerity elegance of the emotions
beyond the image.

Even they came from traditional or geometrical, the minimalist concepts led to the “essential” and
simplicity.

4.2 THE POWER OF LIGHT

The most common paradigm in minimalist architecture, after that one of essential, is the power of light.
„Architecture built of time and light is resistant to time and change, and aspires to classical
permanence”, ALBERTO CAMPO BAEZA said in one of his lecturers. His Benetton Nursery is an
example for that. It’s like a white boat, maybe a Noe’s arch which floats over the grass green see. The
white cylinder makes a protection, like an uterus sculpture, for the babies shelter. The minimalist white
color is perfect for the symbol of the purity of the children. In the inside, the white box for pupils is
perforated to let the rays of light in, for an emotional effect. That light pours into a almost white room,
reflected by a special designed floor, in contrast with the effect obtained by Peter Zumthor in Kolumba
Museum from Köln, where that rays of light enter a dark, sacred space and gives another effect.

Tadao Ando also said : “In all my works, light is an important controlling factor,” 14 and the most
evidence proof is one of his creations, so well named, Church of light. He works with light like if it were
some real material giving it consistence, and introduces it in the volumetric compositions. The contrast
gave by the heavy concrete wall composed with non gravitational light is that specific minimalist
signature of Tadao Ando’s most particular beautiful spaces.

Pizza names this aspect in Baeza’s architecture the “misticism of light” 15 and find an explanation in the
fact that the virgins places to build and the pure nature is very hard to find in our contemporary world,

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CAMPO BAEZA, The concept drawing for the
CAMPO BAEZA, TUREGANO HOUSE
Public School from Madrid, San Sebastian de
los Reyes

the only pure and natural placs being the sky. 16 The concept skech for the Public School from Madrid,
San Sebastian de los Reyes is a perfect example. The light, under all the aspects of it’s trails,
diagonal, vertical, horizontal, zenithal, is controlled through an certain positioning of the apertures and
the surfaces that receive that light which has specific proprieties of colors an reflection, from glass or
matte, shiny or rough. Another example would be the Turegano House of Baeza, where the traces of
light in the interior spaces become an important factor in geometrical and aesthetical visual impact,
and are taken in considerations at the beginning of the house study. The light is decontextualized
getting aesthetic connotations. For Campo Baeza „white is the symbol of permanence and universal in
space and the eternal in time.”17 „Hair became whiter in time, so the buildings”, he says. “A good
painter knows exactly how to use white surfaces to transmit light from the sun directly into inner space.
In architecture, white is much more than a pure abstraction. It provides a secure and effective base
from which to work with light: you can capture it, reflect it, etch with it, make it slide around. You control
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space by controlling light, by illuminating the white surfaces that give it shape." Even the
monolithically essence of the masses is not denied in his creations, the implications of gravity effect
are minimized due to the effects made by material reflecting light or by the voids positioning. Baeza
seeks the interior effect of the light like Rembrandt canvases where the window is suggested only by
light coming from it, light that glows and gives some shadows on the things that fill this space,
contrasts which take the character in the spotlight. Baeza’s windows of his homes increase the
dramatically effect due to there position and the shape outlined, they have an impact metaphorically,
as Pizza saying and became signs and dreams of an "alternative space" as in paintings. 19

4.3 RELATION WITH THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT

“You cannot simply put something new into a place. You have to absorb what you see around you,
what exists on the land, and then use that knowledge along with contemporary thinking to interpret
what you see.”20 , Zumthor affirms. The image that he creates in Kolumba and Thermal Vals are very
suggestive for this. In Kolumba, he takes the image from the Gothic cathedral and he extended in his
new space. Extended image is made by keeping the same type of material, the type of cluster space

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but especially by how light falls. And this is made by controlling very carefully the voids that permits the
light to enter, there shape, position and composition. In Thermal Baths the mountain atmosphere itself
is taken and brought into inner space giving that cavity looks by usage of specific wall material and the
way the light is filtrated and combine with water reflexes. “...the power of everyday life and the...I don’t
say perception, because if you perceive something it is intellectually. More interesting is if you
emotionally... things are part of life. Architecture can be beautiful like a chair or like a tree...” 21 express
Zumthor his opinion on the matter.

Pointing out what is the importance of environment in the existence of the architectural object, Baeza
speaks about the possible closing of the bull’s eye in the roof of Parthenon: „And yet no trace would
remain of that miraculous sun-trap devised by human beings to ensure that light from their friends star
would rain down inside the building every single day of the year. The sun will mourn its passing and so
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would architecture, because they are more than just friends”. For the contest of the Copenhagen
Philharmonic, for example, Baeza imagine a cave which generate sounds, complete integrated
between the rocks, despite the simple-prismatic shape, as shown in his drawings. This particular
interest for integrating in the relief is shown also in the conception of the office building BIT.

Baeza explains his basic concepts of composing the architectural object: tectonic şi stereotomic.
Stereotomic is referring to that specific part of the building which feels the need to take part from
earth, and tectonic is about that part of the whole which emerges from the earth. The first tends to
darkness and the other to the light. The dialog between those two parts symbolizes the two poles
cosmogony obedience aspiring: heaven and earth. These two poles, says Baeza on his website are
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our limits, our experience of life, despite the techno-scientific times we are crossing.

Stereotomics derived from the Greek word for solid (stereos) and the verb cut (tomi). Stereotomic

architecture is when gravity is transmitted continuously though continuous structural system.

It is an architecture, which stands on earth as it was a part of it but searching the light, drilling
the walls to capture it. Caja Granada is over named „the box of light” a cause the effect of
kaleidoscope creates by boring the shell. Is the architecture of the podium, of the pedestal.

CAMPO BAEZA CAMPO BAEZA,

CAJA GRANADA DE BLAS HOUSE

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Tectonic architecture is where the gravity is sent in a syncopated way through a structured system of
nodes. It sits on the ground as though sitting on the tips. Is the architecture that defends himself of the
light which pours practically into it. Baeza names it like the architecture of the hut. A perfect example is
the House De Blas, where the dialog between that two opposite parts is very evident. The ground floor
is the formal expression of the base, which excavates the earth on which sits a glass box with the
upper roof a concrete. The symbolist of the pedestal is explained in another of his lecture, named „The
foundations of architecture”24. Baeza writes: „Man has always felt a special fascination for the horizon,
that line which joins or separates heaven and earth” 25. The line, which joints and separates the
stereotomics, bound to the gravity world, with the tectonic world, bound to the sky and the light. This
illusion line is the expression of the horizontal plane, the earth. On this particular plane, the oldest
impuls of the man, after he emerged the cave, is to put down a horizontal element as a base for what it
will be his shelter. This element could be a piece of rock, or a wooden plate and plays the role of
basement for the pilaster which sustain the roof. This specific element becomes in ancient greek
architecture very important in the formal composition. The Greek temple emerge his stereotomic pillars
toward the sky from the strong basement of the podium, making that specific dialogue that Baeza like
to comments.

Starting from the fusion with nature, the minimalist Tadao Ando or Campo Baeza, come to incorporate
elements of it in their built places, by giving those elements new connotations. Trees became symbols
of structural elements, which are holding a perpetual ceiling represented by the sky. The shining
glossy water surface mirrors the space, creating the strange space beyond... like Ando does in Church
of the water. “By placing a cross in a body of flowing water, I wanted to express the idea of God as
existing in one’s heart and mind. I also wanted to create a space where one can sit and meditate.” 26,
comments Ando his creations. Ando continues, “Such things as light and wind only have meaning
when they are introduced inside a house in a form cut off from the outside world. I create architectural
order on the basis of geometry squares, circles, triangles and rectangles. I try to use forces in the area
where I am building, to restore the unity between house and nature (light and wind) that was lost in the
process of modernizing Japanese houses during the rapid growth of the fifties and sixties.” 27

Certain chosen landscapes are framed by a rectangle simple window, keeping paintings place, like
those so photographed interiors from Gaspar Baeza’s house. The project of the cathedral from
Almeria plaza design, is one of most clarifying examples of recontextualizate natural elements. He
thinks about the sky that is the only untouched and pure places (virtual at least), very suitable for that
for the ceiling of a cathedral. So he extended the interior to the exterior creating a heterotopic space,
not outer and not inner, not natural but not completely constructed, with the sky as a ceiling and the
trees on post of the structure, taking the natural course of the gravitational force into the earth. The
sky, he says is there where „our physical world penetrates the world beyond”.28

4.4 HETEROTOPIC SPACES

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 LUIS BARAGAN, HOUSE, MEXICO JOHN PAWSON, NEUERDORF HOUSE
Heterotopic space is one of the marks of the minimalist architecture, after my opinion. It is created in
one of the most present spatial articulations of this style, the interior court, framed by high walls, which
is, like Baeza said, a room whose ceiling is the sky. It could be like a patio in building like the office
building BITT of Baeza, from Mallorca or Drago School from Cadiz, or an exterior court enclosed by
high walls, protecting the house like in Neuerdorf House of John Pawson or Baeza’s Gaspar House
and Baragn’s famous Mexican Hacienda. This space is more than a standard configuration of a
courtyard with his usual domestic functions, is a set of architectural elements semantic polarized for
creating an important threshold between public and private, between city and dwelling. It has a
traditional origin in the way it is configured and the symbol of protection but the contemporary symbolic
elements that is enclosed, the light control, the materials used and the final visual and physical impact
gives a total contemporary connotation making it a contemporary space and a traditional one in the
same time. On the other hand is a passing space from public to private. On one hand it surrounds and
protect the dwelling from exterior due the planimetric disposition and spatial configuration, on the
other hand he opens the interior to exterior through it’s special voids and opened sky-ceiling or
mirroring water surfaces. This duality between public and intimacy, modernity and vernacular, inner
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and exterior gives this space a heteterotopic connotation from Foucault’s theories. Heterotopic
spaces are the “other” spaces, which the juxtapose in the same place several types of aspects: public-
private, foreign-familiar, universal-local. Heterotopic spaces have with remaining space a rapport that
is developing between two poles: “creates an illusion space which reveals even more the illusory of
the real space”30. For Foucault, the walls has a double role of enclosure: the close the interior from
exterior and the exterior from the interior, Foucault’s opinion being that in modern society there are no
interiors. For Baeza and Baragan the wall, with it’s voids and colors and heterotopic configurations,
has double role of opening: the interior toward exterior and vice-versa. Speaking on this matter, Ando
declares: “At times walls manifest a power that borders on the violent. They have the power to divide
space, transfigure place, and create new domains. Walls are the most basic elements of architecture,
but they can also be the most enriching.” 31

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 4.5 THE BEAUTY BEYOND MINIMUM
About the beauty in architecture Zumthor writes:” Yeah, maybe this is a good example: nature, to me,
is never ugly... Never. No, I think nature is -- whether it rains or the sun shines, in the desert and the
mountains, or the North Pole or where ever. I would never be able to say this, that nature isn’t ugly, but
architecture can be ugly. Good architecture to me is architecture which is good all the time -- when it
rains, or when the sun shines. Have you noticed the fact that things start to look better, even ugly
things get sort of glorified, or bettered somehow by the sun, and then you see it in the rain and you
think, oh how terrible... I think to be natural, this is good. “32

TADAO ANDO, PETER ZUMTHOR,

CAMPO BAEZA, ASENCIO
CHURCH ON THE WATER Swiss Pavilion, Expo 2000, HOUSE
Hanover

And he respect his concepts in his work. Take for example Swiss Pavilion, Expo 2000, Hanover,
Germany, with his rough wood material set in that specific conformation gives the aspect of natural, or
the Vals volumetric configuration like the mounting emerging rocks. “I work partly in a classical kind of
manner”, explaining himself... “I think that a building can become beautiful if you are lucky and you are
talented. If things go together well, then the building should become beautiful, the spaces should be
beautiful to live in, and so on. ... I mean, in architecture, beauty... [It’s] sort of, when it touches you,
something about the space. I think it is pretty mysterious, you know...or maybe it is not mysterious.
Because really, when it happens, you know, it just happens.” 33 The same aspect of mysterious in the
matter of beauty comes in Baeza philosophy. He thinks that the creation process try to reveals the
values “beyond”... the logical geographic or temporal or chronological constraining, the beauty in

architecture being perceived like “another”, mysterious, barely tangible, beyond appearances of
actual construction. Baeza’s architecture forms volumetric introverted compositions saturated
white light shining through, conveying a feeling of total isolation due to the deployment of

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"rest". This simple composition and detachment gives them a special power. The plans, if are
not a square, like in the case of houses Gaspar, Turegano, Asencio, Caja Granada, are very
simple, even public buildings. The office building from Mallorca, BIT, for example, has the
plan in form of a triangle, which is in fact a half of a square. The volumetric expression of
those plans couldn’t be but simple which gives personality and a sentiment of solitude
because of the contrast effect made with the ribbed space of the city. Turegano house is a
perfect example for the expression of the sets of archetypal values in there primitive state,
without having complicated by the complicated configurations.

THERMAL VALS
4BY4 HOUSE BIT BUILDING ,
BATHS, PETER
TADAO ANDO CAMPO BAEZA ZUMTHOR

The simple cube gains importance by its dominant position, with shiny white and the proportion of full-
empty, dull-shining. Baeza names his architecture ‘essentialis” – a much more conceptualist term then
the simple “ism” name, “minimalism”- with a role of simplify but purifying in the same time, an
expression of the essence of living. About the essential architecture, he writes, in a manifest
published on his official site: simple, immaculate, open, free and liberator, in conclusion, for life.
Paraphrasing Mies van der Rohe’s „less is more”, Baeza affirms : „mas con menos” 34. Therefore, the
simplity of configurations, the courtyards presence, patio, or hacienda type, makes sense, given by
archetypal dwelling, the original one. Baeza writes in his book :” architecture must offer human beings
that mysterious yet tangyble „other” which is beauty. The intelligent kind of beauty that emanates from
constructed ideas. This is something else, much much more than construction in the normal sense..” 35

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 CAMPO BAEZA, MOLINER HOUSE

TADAO ANDO,

AZUMA HOUSE
JOHN PAWSON, MONASTERY NOVY DVUR

About the role of beauty in his works Ando said:” There is a role and function for beauty in our time. In
Japan it may be translated into the concept of Uskuji, which also means a beautiful life, that is, how a
person lives–his or her inner life. It’s something beyond appearance, or what only meets the eye. You
can’t really say what is beautiful about a place, but the image of the place will remain vividly with you.
People tend not to use this word beauty because it’s not intellectual—but there has to be an overlap
between beauty and intellect”.36 But is not the main issue that preoccupies the minimalist architects,
beauty is rather a corollary, a consequence of other more valuable paradigms. Like Peter Zumthor
writes: “I think a good building should be - and all pieces, all pieces of art - they should be like nature
more. And this I think you achieve if you stick to use. But if you start to think of architecture from the
other side - from the beauty side, or from the message side, or from the meaning side - this is
stupid.”37

We can jump the conclusion, therefore, that the beauty in this style is very bound to the concepts of
traditional, natural and simplicity, is the effect beyond the visual appearances, an interesting
experience lived with emotion and relaxation given by the genuine.

In the end I will live Peter Zumthor the final word about the essence of beauty in architecture: “Still
there is this aim that a building in its context would maybe be beautiful or would contribute to the
beauty of the place. Like somebody once said that this building here is like a declaration of love to this

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village; where you can see this in this building that I like the surrounding and the houses and the
gardens and this rural kind of place. So this would be an example of how something contributes to
something else” 38

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REFERENCES

12
1
ALBERTO CAMPO BAEZA,” WORKS AND PROJECTS”, EDITORIAL GUSTAVO GILI, BARCELONA, 1999
2
Tadao Ando1995 Laureate, Biographypublished on Pritzker Architecture Prize official site
3
ALBERTO CAMPO BAEZA Interview in A+C magazine (iuly 1985);
4
Peter Zumthor, Thinking architecture, Birkhauser, 1999, Basel, pp.9-27
5
ALBERTO CAMPO BAEZA, Extras from an aticol publicated in Munchen, editor Baumeister, în 1991.
6
„Essentiality”, manifest on pe http://www.campobaeza.com/index_en.html, 1991,
7
Ideas from ALBERTO CAMPO BAEZA,” WORKS AND PROJECTS”, EDITORIAL GUSTAVO GILI,
BARCELONA, 1999, pp.15-19
8
ALBERTO CAMPO BAEZA, „La idea construida. La architectura a la luz de las palabras” ,Colegio Oficial de
Arquitectos, Madrid, 1998
9
Tadao Ando, interview in Architectural Record, may 2002,
10
Tadao Ando, loc.cit
11
Baeza, „Essentiality”, manifest publicated on http://www.campobaeza.com/index_en.html,
12
Peter Zumthor, Thinking architecture, Birkhauser, 1999, Basel, pp.9-27
13
Emanuel Levinas, Totalitate Si Infinit, Polirom, Bucuresti, 2001, P 129
14
Tadao Ando 1995 Laureate, Biographypublished on Pritzker Architecture Prize official site
15
PIZZA, op. Cit. p13
16
ALBERTO CAMPO BAEZA op.cit.,p 17
17
CAMPO BAEZA, op. Cit. p21

18
CAMPO BAEZA, loc. cit. , p 17

19
CAMPO BAEZA, op cit, p 19
20
„The spirit of modernism”, interview gave by Peter Zumthor in Architectural Record,
21
Peter Zumthor, Thinking architecture, Birkhauser, 1999, Basel, pp.9-27
22
ALBERTO CAMPO BAEZA op.cit., p15
23
Extrass from the article „From the cave to the hut”, http://www.campobaeza.com/index_en.html, 2004
24
http://www.campobaeza.com/index_en.html, 2004
25
Baeza, Loc. Cit.
26
Tadao Ando 1995 Laureate, Biographypublished on Pritzker Architecture Prize official site
27
Tadao Ando Loc.cit.
28
Baeza, op cit, p 19

29
Michel Foucault, Dits et écrits 1984 , Des espaces autres (conférence au Cercle d'études
architecturales, 14 mars 1967), in Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, n°5, octobre 1984, pp. 46-
49.
30
Michel Foucault, loc.cit
31
Tadao Ando1995 Laureate, Biographypublished on Pritzker Architecture Prize official site
32
Peter Zumthor, Thinking architecture, Birkhauser, 1999, Basel, pp.9-27

33
Interview of Peter Zumthor, by Susan Perkins at University’s Center for European Studies and Architecture in
1999.
34
T.a.” less with more”, Baeza, 1999, P 13
35
Baeza, 1999, P 13 ”
36
Tadao Ando, interview in Architectural Record, mai 2002,
http://archrecord.construction.com/people/interviews/archives/0205Ando.asp
37
, Interview of Peter Zumthor token by Susan Perkins at University’s Center for European Studies and
Architecture in 1999

38
. Zumthor, Loc. cit