Traveling through stations

This past week I have come across some photos of old stations. I guess there is often something very magic with old photos. They have captured something that you could never, as much as you would want to, be a part of. A moment that can never be relived but is forever captured so that we can get a glimpse of it.
Stations Especially fascinates me. There are so many people passing every day, all the emotional or still rendrez-vous, both joyful and sad.

I really like the time during traveling, you find yourself in a non-place, a vacuum in time, to just be. Maybe there is something sublime in that feeling in itself for me, although that feeling is also associated to the grand spaces that often house our traveling situations.
The sounds, the atmosphere of excitement, the fluidity.
Big stations provides us with the safety of direction, it herds us in the way to go.
You are surrounded by many people, more than you are probably used to. Stations have directions and destinations, with your eyes you can follow the (track / train / boat / airplane) until they disappear out of your sight.
Of corse there are awful stations, but then there are some amazing ones that have the ability to stun.

I think these photos of The old Grand central station in New York are stunning. Not only because the exposure makes the light almost surreal, as if it is coming down in cascades from the walls, but they tell me something about the richness of being there. The atmosphere, once again, the grandeur.
The continuity of the space, the little island in the middle, the feeling of almost being in a big bunker, people moving around you.
Is there something that we do there, that we don't do anywhere else (besides traveling)? Reading a newspaper to pass the time, trying to remember just how a person looks in that moment, looking at strangers, getting lost in thoughts. The transit is a very exciting instance and so a station is what takes you there an leads the first little part-, or last.
I am not going to define what I think makes a good station, what I am thinking is, that the sublime is probably there if the station just is and with all diligence lifts all of these things.
People are on their way on these photos, but the Grand central is place very hard to forget. It gets to be the beginning and the end.

The Grand Central station, c.1930 photographed by Hal Morey

People on the move

The rail yard

The Pantheon memory

I would like to share with you one of the strongest architecture experiences I have ever had.
It was in Rome, traveling with one of my architect friends. We went around looking at sites, the sun was gazing hot in september and we went to the little square in front of Pantheon where we sat down and looked at people. The light was warm and the shadows long at Piazza della rotonda. It is one of those perfect smaller sized squares that surrounds you.
Once entering Pantheon me and my friend decided to split up. It was my first time visiting and expectations where both low and high, as they get when you are visiting one of the great ones for yourself.

I don't know how long we stayed there. The afternoon sun formed a perfect beam from the never ending, dissolving vault above. The light was just...magic. The the noise and steps from the tourist crowd altered and dissolved in space. I could hear the sound of birds wings slowly flapping and raising up in the ample space above me. The sense of space was incredible, I walked slowly around alternately absorbed by the different niches in the walls and the acoustics.
It was all so beautiful, I felt completely enclosed in this atmosphere, very small and amazed to be a part of it. The experience completely overwhelmed me and when I finally found my friend I had tears in my eyes from the strong experience that took me by surprise.
My friend also had a similar experience and we decided to sit by one of the extraordinary big pillars by the entrance. Under the high ceiling arranged with corinthian columns we talked a bit about how fantastic it was and how it was a very good idea to have walked around alone. The sun created a razor sharp edge between the cool shadow we where sitting in and the outside.
We talked about how it was definitely a lot in the acoustics, the light, the proportions, space and the sensation of being belitteled. Elements that someone sometime over 2 000 years ago created, that still stands and that enriched our lives and maybe strengthened our future experiences of space by adding to our minds library. I have had many experiences since, but this one will forever remain in my memory.

Photo, Emelie Nielson, 2009

Isle of the dead, Arnold Böcklin

Isle of the dead (first version), Arnold Böcklin, 1880

Sublime in architecture and function

I got an email from my friend last week who works in the art world. The reflections we shared had to do with the way art and design are separated by use. Essentially that architecture has a use or function, which renders it hard to classify as sublime.

I think that the sublime is outside of our made up parameters and it is not hindered by definitions.
If the sublime can appear in things created (such as art and literature) what would prevent it from existing in architecture?

A teacup does not know that it is a teacup. I could argue that there is such a thing as 'useless' architecture. It is architecture just for architecture's sake (a sort of fetish where the purpose is the experience) or architecture that holds great architectonic quality but is not user-friendly or fulfilling it's original purpose in a logical way, let's say it is not functional.
Although, it was traditionally agreed for a very long time that good architecture should be able to accomplish 'the three attributes' firmitas, utilitas, venustas (stability, utility, beauty).

Axel Schultes and Charlotte Frank’s Crematory in Berlin

Man vs. Nature

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, Caspar David Friedrich, 1817

Purpose

I am an architect who in the quest of exploring what drives me created this blog for purely selfish reasons. I am fascinated by atmospheres, by sacral architecture; or rather 'the spirited'. Architecture that does not have to have been built with those values in mind, but inherent these (to me) qualities, that often takes one by surprise. 

As in Ashley-Cooper, third earl of Shaftesbury, Dennis and Addison's journey to the alps in the 18th century I intend to, with this blog as my notebook, explore the (purely subjective) sublime in architecture and beyond.

Sublime, to me is the awe of the great, it can bring both pleasure/delight and fear/horror at the same time. 

It often comes with a melancholia for me for what does not last or has a beauty hard to grasp. The sublime I recognise as lofty and poetic, it creates emotions and speak to me. It is the magic of the real and the beauty it can possess.

Because, to me the sublime is not beauty, it is something else although the sublime can possess beauty beyond the bounds of beauty as a concept.

Maybe I will be able to put my finger on the great fascination that I have when I find the sublime in architecture, what is it that creates it and what it is to me. Maybe I will never be able to put my finger on anything other than the outcome it brings. Nevertheless, it is the journey of exploring I am after and what it can bring outside of this blog.