Steven Holl Discussing the Practical

Steven Holl

Discussing the practical application of a phenomenological theory of architecture can present an initial challenge, because the basic tenets of the theory of phenomenology, as first articulated by Christian Norberg-Schulz and others, are deceptively simple. Phenomenology favors simplicity above all else, but not the kind of simplicity that results in a single identifiable aesthetic; rather the ideal simplicity as conceived of in phenomenological theory has to do with the use of a few essential colors and motifs within any given piece in order to generate a complexity of experience out a few simple ideas. A perfect example of this is Steven Holl's Linked Hybrid in Beijing, which uses a few primary colors and shapes in order to construct a visual and tactile representation of the life which inhabits any given architectural space, mirroring the kind of structured yet nonetheless objective experience of inhabiting and moving through the design. By examining Linked Hybrid in conjunction with relevant theories of phenomenological architecture, one is able to see how architectural theory intersects with actual architectural practice such that the building itself offers a kind of commentary on that theory.

Before addressing the design Linked Hybrid in particular, it will be useful to discuss some relevant phenomenological theory regarding shape, color, and the individual experience of a place in general in order to see how Linked Hybrid actually embodies and is in conversation with this theory. Practically any discussion of phenomenological theory begins with Christian Norberg-Schulz, who first proposed the concept over the course of over thirty years, finally condensing his thoughts in to his 1980 book Genius loci: towards a phenomenology of architecture.. In addition to this seminal text, however, it will be useful to consult an earlier essay of his regarding the particular notion of the "place," an essay by architect and theorist Juhani Pallasma discussing the particular use of geometry in phenomenological practice, and even some Steven Holl's theoretical writings. As mentioned above, the key tenet of phenomenological architecture is a particular simplicity, and examining this phenomenological theory with an eye towards it discussion of shape, color, and individual experience will serve to inform the subsequent description and analysis of Linked Hybrid itself.

The most crucial portion of Norberg-Schulz' theory for this investigation is his discussion of place as having an "atmosphere," such that it "is therefor a qualitative, "total" phenomenon, which we cannot reduce to any of its properties, such as spatial relationships, without losing its concrete nature" (Norberg-Schulz 1980, 8). This concrete nature is what arises out of the meeting between objective reality and a human being's individual experience, so that "the concrete things which constitute our given world are interrelated in complex and perhaps contradictory ways," but these interrelations nonetheless work in conjunction in order generate the sense of place, which is merely those phenomena which "form an 'environment' to others" (Norberg-Schulz 1996, 414). Thus, the phenomenon that is a particular place is nothing more than the structure in which other phenomena may occur, and realizing this allows one to understand the role of architecture itself in phenomenological theory. The actual physical structures of buildings serve to provide the visitor with certain meaningful cues that structure the individual experience of the building in order to generate meaningful emotional and intellectual phenomena.

This leads to the first tenet of phenomenology, which is simplicity. Because "everyday experience […] tells us that different actions need different environments to take place in a satisfactory way," each design must begin with an eye towards these different actions in their immediate social, historical, and geographic context (Norberg-Schulz 1996, 415). As Norberg-Schulz notes, "similar' functions, even the most basic ones such as sleeping and eating, take place in very different ways, and demand places with different properties, in accordance with different cultural traditions and different environmental conditions" (Norberg-Schulz 1996, 415).

This may seem like an obvious consideration for any architect to make when designing a particular piece, but in the phenomenological architecture the immediate context of the building is far more central than any other, to the point that it serves as the organizing theme of any phenomenological design, because "if a building does not fulfill the basic conditions formulated for it phenomenologically as a symbol of human existence it is unable to influence the emotional feelings linked in our souls with the images a building creates" (Pallasma 1996, 351). Thus, the seed of any phenomenological practice is "a conceptual stratagem in response to the special conditions of every project" (Mascheck & Holl 2002, 26). Because the design of a building is guided by the visual and emotional experience of both the surrounding context and the intended use, phenomenological practice requires simplicity in order to ensure that the experience is open-ended enough to allow for the variety of uses which may occur while nonetheless suggesting to the viewer the particular actions and functions which will find themselves ideally suited to the place.

Having recognized the importance of "place" and the way in which the notion of place serves to suggest a kind of inherently-complex simplicity that offers itself as a liminal space where structure and freedom of experience meet, one may discuss the ways in which the essential elements of design, namely color and shape, are deployed in phenomenological practice in order to produce a unique architectural character and experience. In his essay "The Geometry of Feeling: A Look at the Phenomenology of Architecture," Juhani Pallasma discusses how phenomenological theory suggests a way of looking at architectural practice not as "a kind of game with form [which overlook] the reality of how a building is experienced," but rather as an exploration of the way "forms or geometry in general can give rise to architectural feeling" (Pallasma 1996, 449). In particular, phenomenological theory attempts to demonstrate how "the meanings of an artistic work are born out of the whole, from a vision that integrates the parts, and are in no way the sum of the elements," because the human experience of architecture, and indeed, all art, stems first and foremost from the symbolic meaning generated from these essential elements, a meaning that is wholly indiscernible from the individual parts themselves (Pallasma 1996, 449).

Pallasma is describing how buildings, far from being merely "a concrete composition built up out of a selection of basic given elements but no longer in touch with the reality of experience outside itself," actually serves as one constituent element of the phenomena of a place, with the "selection of basic given elements" working together with human experience in order to generate meaning far more complex that the constituent formal elements which generate it (Pallasma 1996, 449). Thus, the use of a few repeating shapes and colors in phenomenological practice is not simplicity for simplicity's sake, but rather an attempt at simplifying the individual formal elements of a structure as a means of almost paradoxically multiplying the meanings generated from the interaction of those formal elements with human consciousness.

It is important to note the centrality of the subjective experience in phenomenological theory, because this is what separates the simplicity of phenomenological practice from other architectural styles which elevate a relative simplicity but only through the proscription of certain general motifs which must be included in order to be considered of that style, such as the International and Prairie styles. Phenomenological practice almost never demonstrates this same homogeneity, because every design is dictated by immediate context, rather than a focus on any particular material or formal element.

Thus, when Steven Holl discusses the application of phenomenological theory to the practice of urban architectural design, he begins not by discussing what elements any successful urban building must have, but rather by highlighting the fact that "spatial perception and development in an urban setting require a three-dimensional, sectional approach that gives primary importance to the views of perambulating residents who traverse shifting ground planes, experiencing the city from multiple frames of reference" (Holl 1988, 5). The use of simple colors and shapes actually aids in this effort, because one is able to use relatively simply constituent parts in order to create a number of different views and perceptions of a single structure, thus providing the means for ever-multiplying phenomenological meaning to be produced. A building, and especially a building in an urban setting, is not experienced solely by walking through the front doors, but rather from every possible angle at every possible height, so while a given building will mean different things for someone living in it and someone living next to it, those vastly different meanings are generated by the same concrete elements which form the actual physical structure of the building. In this way, phenomenological practice is essentially the practice of structuring physical material and space in such a way as to encourage meaning-making, almost like placing old train cars in the ocean in order to provide the structure necessary for the emergence of a coral reef. Meaning grows on the concrete elements of a building alongside the people moving through it, so that "perception and the sense are intertwined with the material, space and light of urban form" (Holl 1988, 6). Imagining architecture as the structure upon which meaning grows and contributes to the phenomenon of a place is particularly helpful when investigating Holl's Linked Hybrid, because the design expresses a desire to meld the objective, concrete of the building itself to the experience of the residents living and moving within.

Construction on Linked Hybrid began in 2003 and completed in 2009, when Holl's design won the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat's award for Best Tall Building (CTBUH 2009). Part of a slew of new developments born out of Beijing's revitalization as a result of its hosting of the 2008 Olympic games, Linked Hybrid is a mixed-use development consisting of "a ring of eight 21-story towers, linked at the 20th floor by gentling sloping public sky bridges, lined with galleries, cafes, restaurants, bars and shops" (Busari 2008). Each tower is rectangular, with some towers being additionally linked at the bottom with horizontal extensions. The face of the buildings is nearly uniform, with square windows breaking up the concrete walls except for where diagonal likes of concrete cut across multiple squares, thus giving the outside of each tower the appearance of kind of fence or netting held rigid by the diagonal reinforcements, giving the complex a lightness not otherwise possible.

The aforementioned sky bridges extend outward from corners and edges, so that they punctuate the sharp rectangles with slopes and curves, giving the impression of biological filaments growing in between the concrete structure of the towers themselves. These perform the "linking" and hybridity hinted at in the name, because they serve to connect each tower while simultaneously providing a visual departure from the monotony of the towers.

The eight towers and linking sky bridges form a rough elliptical around a massive water feature and green space in the center of the site, and provide a kind of intimacy while nonetheless remaining a "porous urban space" (Holl 2009). The sky bridges as well as the frames of the inset windows feature blue, red, yellow, and green details and lighting, the only color except for the green of the rooftop garden spaces.

One may see the hallmarks of phenomenological theory firstly in the shape of the overall design itself. The buildings form a ring around the central area, thus creating a "city within a city" while remaining porous enough that "all public functions on the ground level, - including a restaurant, hotel, Montessori school, kindergarten, and cinema - have connections with the green spaces surrounding and penetrating the project" (Holl 2009). The green spaces serve to disrupt the wall of concrete created by towers, and is the most obvious example of the design's overarching theme, which is the emergence of novel, biological meanings around, on top of, and through the concrete structure of the building itself. The water and green space functions as a way of suturing the development into the larger city, because the greenery serves as a kind of amorphous glue, by which the clearly related towers of Linked Hybrid may be further linked to the architecture of the surrounding city. In turn, the green space serves to funnel people into and out of the complex so that residents and visitors themselves become this connective tissue, with their individual experiences providing the means by which the phenomenological experience of Link Hybrid and the city of Beijing as a whole are integrated and synthesized.

Before continuing on to analyze the finer details of Linked Hybrid's design, it will be useful to briefly consider a few of the more common negative criticisms of the complex, because even these criticisms can help demonstrate how Linked Hybrid serves to exemplify phenomenological practice. The most importance negative criticism leveled at Linked Hybrid is the way in which its towers form a kind of wall, which according to some reviewers cuts off the complex from the city, "reminiscent of gated communities that are becoming increasingly popular around the world" (Busari 2008). While the previous discussion of the green space should help to reveal why this criticism is perhaps not particularly valid if one examines the entirety of the complex and not just the towers, it nonetheless helps to reveal how Linked Hybrid attempts to enact a phenomenological practice by creating a particular place conducive to certain experiences. The ring of towers serves to isolate the central space of the complex from the rest of the city while the green space functions as corridors to that interior, so the combination of the two can be seen as representative of the underlying tension between objective nature and the intentional structuring of physical reality by human beings. Far from portraying an impermeable wall, the ring of towers demonstrates the ultimate inability to prohibit the free flow of nature and life, and instead embraces the relationship between structure and emergent phenomenon.

This is integrated into the actual functioning of the building itself, because just as the towers and the surrounding green space function intimately, the buildings and the underlying geological formations are integrated so that "geothermal wells 100m below the foundations provide heating in the winter and aid cooling during the summer" (De Zeen Magazine 2009). Thus, aside from the "green" appeal provided by energy efficiency, the actual functional processes of the design are so incorporated into its immediate context that the building literally represents the meeting of nature and man-made structure.

This blending of emergent, natural, organic outgrowths and the concrete structures of man-made objects continues even as a motif within the concrete structures themselves, and nowhere is this more clear than in the sky bridges. The sky bridges, as they remain aesthetically consistent with the towers, are not "organic" or "biological" in any usual sense, and they maintain the sharp edges of the rectangular towers even as the slope into more complex shapes. The effect is to give the entire structure the appearance of something in a simply rendered visualization of a digital world, with the sky bridges serving as bizarre, digital lifeforms attaching themselves to the rigid structures of the tower system. However, this is not to suggest that Linked Hybrid is "the stuff of dystopic science fiction," to which it has been compared, but rather a way of noting how the rigidity of the concrete structure, far from presenting a kind of stark dichotomy between the green space around it, actually attempts to reify the relationship between the concrete and amorphous in the structure itself (Busari 2008).