Hans Vander La An

Where Sky Rubs Against Soil: The Metaphorical Horizon in Dom. Hans van der Laan’s Architecture William T Willoughby, Louisiana Tech University “Where the bottom layer of the sky rubs up against the top horizon of the soil, all terrestrial life is found.” -- William Bryant Logan, Dirt: Logan, Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of t he Earth (New York: Riverhead Books, 1995) 178

Introduction The work and writings of Benedictine monk Dom. Hans van der Laan (1904-1991) are concerned with the origins of architecture. Hans van der Laan suggests architecture has lost touch with its origins. origins. Thirty years of attempts at rediscovering the primeval foundations of architecture led to the book Architectonic book Architectonic Space, Space , published in Dutch in 1977, and in English in 1983. His contributions to architecture in the twentieth century are still relatively unknown and overlooked; and yet Hans van der Laan’s lessons on architectural making are worthy of consideration. The purpose of this essay is to explore and extend the metaphorical themes of this t eacher/author/architect. Hans van der Laan was born in 1904, in Leiden, Holland to the ar chitect Leonard van der Laan; Hans was the ninth of eleven children. T wo of his brothers, t he oldest (Jan) and youngest (Nico), became architects as well. “It was in collaboration with his brother Nico that Hans would carry our most of his work as architect, t eacher, and 1 theorist.” After a year of therapy for tuberculosis, which required whole days outdoors on camp beds in the fresh air, Hans van der Laan began his studies at Delft in 1923. By 1927, and well into his third year of architectural studies, Hans van der Laan gave up architecture for the monastic life. He was critical of the teaching at the Technical University of Delft; he sensed an absence of fundamental principles and a lack of an internal, cumulative body of architectural knowledge. Thus, he entered as a novice in the Benedictine order. Between 1939 and 1972 he developed a summation of architectural research from a combination of research for his lecture course and buildings designed in collaboration with his brother Nico, and later Nico’s sons Hans and Rik. A group of for mer students and followers, the so-called Bossche School, formed around his teachings and buildings. He published two books from his lectures, The Plastic Number (1960) (1960) and Architectonic and Architectonic Space (1977). In 1982, he arranged an exhibition of his work, including demonstration-models of key concepts from his books. His final book, Het book, Het vormenspieil der liturgie, liturgie , was published in 1985. In 1989, he was awarded the Limburg th Architecture Prize. Dom. Hans van der Laan died August 19 1991.

The Importance of Origins An origin is a singular occurrence. A thing’s origin may take thousands of years, while other origins occur in a momentary flash of confluent circumstance and inspiration. There is a certainty to a time i n the historical past when a thing came into being. Yet origins share a subtle relationship to the r ecurrent nature of beginnings.2 Origins, when complete, can never be retained; thus, origins are unknowable. They are subject to theoretical speculation, shaped by current human understanding, and dependent on belief in a certain story or myth concerning how things began. A search for origins always touches on the metaphorical. According to Christian belief, the visible world has its origins when God the Creator drew it forth, in all its 3 diversity and order, out of nothingness. All that exists is owed to God. All of nature, including human history, is constituted by this original event. God creates out of nothing; but human creation relies on pre-existent matter. All 4 human making is a refashioning of nature by human action and intellect. 5 The natural universe can be understood as a miraculous “image of the invisible God,” destined for and and addressed to humanity. to humanity. Another gift of God, human intelligence, can understand what wisdom and order God puts forth through the natural universe. God’s wisdom and intelligence can be understood by humanity, though not without great effort, respect, and humility toward God and Creation. From the Wisdom of Solomon, Solomon, “For it is he who gave me unerring knowledge of what exists, to know the structure of the world and t he activity of the elements; . . . 6 for wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me.” Thus human making, when approached and completed in awe of the wisdom and goodness God’s creation, can serve to reveal God’s plan. As Dom. Hans van der Laan states, “The first question i n architecture is not t herefore, what we make of the house, or what kind of house we make, but the making as such.” For Hans van der Laan, architecture is always a rhapsodic matter of construction. construction. In this sense, construction does construction does not mean what we make from or from or what kind of thing we make, make, but what of making itself? What itself? What is basic t o, and inseparable from, human making? As Hans van der Laan states, “Human making is of great significance for creation as a whole, because it gives an image within nature, of

Where Sky Rubs Against Soil: The Metaphorical Horizon in Dom. Hans van der Laan’s Architecture William T Willoughby , Louisiana Tech University

2 nature’s own origin.”7 To paraphrase Hans van der Laan – architecture, as a form of human making, is a metaphor – an imitation – of the order of Creation.

God’s Creation – The Human in Nature As Hans van der Laan states in his first l esson, “The house is among the first things a person needs to maintain their existence in nature.” He supports this statement with a quote from the Bible that concerns home and hospitality, “The essentials for li fe are water and bread and clothing and a house to cover ones nakedness.” (Sirach 8 29:21) These human necessities – potable water, bread, clothing and housing – are refined and reshaped from nature and made suitable by human intellect and action. According to Hans van der Laan, the world we humans create for ourselves is an addition to the natural world; a completion of the natural world made habitable by us. Much like a pair a sandals crafted to protect the feet, this human world has dual purpose: to confront nature outside with an according toughness, and inside with the opposite, to create an environment fitted to human comfort.9 A monk of the Benedictine order, Hans van der Laan obviously shared belief in the existence and authority of God. And thus the natural world and all things within it are a creation of God’s order and intellect. Hans van der Laan made a distinction between a “limited, created i ntelligence” (that belonging to humanity) and an “unlimited, 10 creating intelligence” (that belonging to God). Hans van der Laan’s position begins with an image of the limited human creating within the unlimited creation of nature. All forms and spaces created by humans are extracted from the vast and extended space and mass of nature – brought about by a creating and unlimited intelligence. Our human existence forms limits within the limitless; we construct definable horizons of our own making. Interestingly, Hans van der Laan defines two actions the human undertakes in the making of architecture – humans extract from and add to the natural world through the creation of architecture. Obviously, material is extracted from nature in order to build; but human intellect and action are added to nature by human making. In a limited way, human making (always in imitation of the Creator) transforms the natural world. For Hans van der Laan, human making must always resonate back to the origin of nature, God’s Creation. God’s intelligence and intervention creates and sustains the infinitude of Cr eation; and within it, human intelligence and intervention creates and sustains a limited human creation. T hus, it is the manner by which humans create that reflects, by analogy, the image of God as Creator. According to Hans van der Laan, it is through the similarities and differences conjured by the above analogy that we begin to see the placement of human making as within nature. As he states, “For our making is not, like nature, an independent phenomenon, but dependent on natural creation. We do not make a space, but extract it from the space of nature, and moreover, this extraction is br ought about by solid elements which are themselves drawn from the masses of the earth.” 11

The Origins of Architecture – Vitruvius, Laugier, and van der Laan When we speak of architectural origins, we must consult the i dea and myth of the primitive hut. T he account by Vitruvius concerning the emergence of architecture, according to Rykwert, appears to be “elliptical, and 12 references are made to various other writings.” The Vitruvian account was assembled from observation of existent primitive (or barbaric) examples of his time and literary sources that comment on the origins of art and civilization (Seneca and Lucretius). Yet Vitruvius makes us aware (and assuages criticism) of his conscious decision to place his origin of the building art in his second book and not his first. Vitruvius is skeptical of the completeness of origins. For him, origins do not show perfection, since all the branches of learning and study are not yet repr esented, and neither are all qualities yet in evidence. He concludes that architecture’s origin commences the discussion of his second book, leading to a treatment of “how it [the building art] was fostered. And how it made progress, step by step, until it 13 reached its present perfection.” Laugier imagined an original architecture, a litt le hut, which combines human invention with a natural model. Both Rykwert and Summerson drive home the point that Laugier saw three elements as original and thus 14 constituent to the ideal building – columns carrying the entablature, which in turn carries t he pediment or roof. Architecture becomes allegorical myth, a representational “retelling” of archaic practices in permanent form; a monument to an ideal past. Unlike Vit ruvius, Laugier securely embraces architecture’s ideal origins; he sees t he original parts (column, entablature, and pediment) as essential “to the cause of beauty.” He excludes all other elements (vault, pedestal, attic, door, window, etc.) as secondary and consequential -- added by necessity or capri ce. Thus, Laugier dictates, “Let us never lose sight of our little hut.”15


3 For Hans van der Laan, origins are more prosaic. His “origins” are derived from simple observation of the natural world around him. They exist as easily in the present as they might have in the primordial past. The writings of Hans van der Laan can be read with an air of dismissive obviousness. A reader might assume his writings are the naive voice of a believer of the sacred, and thus lack effect in a predominantly secular world. As he puts it , “A few 16 natural pebbles and a few squared pieces of stone have helped us arrive at these i nsights . . .” Yet his simple and unsophisticated observations accumulate and later develop into a metaphor t hat relates architecture and human intelligence to the cosmos.

The Origins of Construction -- Number, Measure, Proportional Order and the Trilithon Hans van der Laan’s attempt to rediscover the o rigins of architecture have led him t o observe the natural world with a simple intensity similar to that of the ancient Greeks. Inquiry into Pythagoras’ number doctrine produces a remarkable similarity to Hans van der Laan’s revelation of how the first qualities of form, when originally liberated from surface, includes size. Size connotes an intellectual distinction between the continuous quantity of surface and the discrete quantity of form. The outline of form can be understood by the intellect through measure (the appraisal of size). [See figure 1] As Hans van der Laan states, “ . . . the intellect has need of an i nstrument. This is because it only has direct access to “discrete quantity,” the ‘how-many-ness’ of things we count on the basis of their unity. Each number then expresses the quantity by its relation to this unit and we can give this relation a name: two, three, four . . . We can hold only a limited number of these relations in our mind, but by means of an established number-system we can extend them into infinity . . . We can translate this grasp of number into a certain grasp of size, that is, of continuous quantity or ‘how-muchness.’”17 What Hans van der Laan discusses is the establishment of a unit of measure – which is connected to discrete, continuous quantities: numbers – which represent, to the intellect, a quantity with relation to a basic unit or size-interval. For Hans van der Laan number , and by extension, measure are basic instruments of induction – the passage from certain qualities within the natural world, in this case size – into a quantity (a measure) which can be understood by the human intellect. [See figure 2] Hans van der Laan’s origin of architecture extends from the initial measuring-out of form as distinguished from surface – “Where a piece of stone is removed from the earth there arises automatically a spatial form that corresponds like a matrix to the solid form of the stone.”18 Hans van der Laan’s view of architecture’s origin is echoed by Sverre Fehn in his essay “How our Dimensions are Born:” “In the beginning the cave and the earth itself were the dimensions of the cave. The floor had its own thickness of earth and the dimensions of the wall of the cave stopped at the beginning of the sea. [ a definition of the continuity of surface – author’s insert ] “In reality there was no defined dimension when your comprehension of the world carried infinity within it. The only ultimate was the killed animal outside the cave mouth, the only thing that kept you firmly in the universe. And that animal corpse was resurrected on the walls of the cave. An abode was sought in the nature of the animal. “I have no idea how many years went by before “the autonomous” dimension was born in front of the cave mouth . . . t he stone, hacked in one rectangular volume. Height. Length. Width. How incomprehensible the work of creation in a limited malleable quantity must have been. The greatest poetic manifestation in limited form. The first security, the first written sign in the landscape resting secretively in the hewn stone. The story of you and I again standing on the plain. Time was given a 19 dimension . . .” Furthermore, in Plato’s Timaeus, numeric proportions remain fundamental to the origins of form. In the body of the text, Plato’s mythic Demiurge assembles the body of the universe – tangibility is observably impossible without something solid, “and nothing solid without earth.” The subsequent premise suggests the principle of proportion implicit in the three-dimensionality of solids: “And of all the bonds the best is that which makes itself and the terms it connects a unity in the fullest sense; and it is of the nature of a continued geometrical proportion to effect this most perfectly. For whenever, of three numbers, the middle one between any two that are either soli ds (cubes?) or squares is Where Sky Rubs Against Soil: The Metaphorical Horizon in Dom. Hans van der Laan’s Architecture William T Willoughby , Louisiana Tech University

4 such that, as the first is to it, so is it to the last, and conversely as the last is to the middle, so is the middle to the first, then since the middle becomes first and last, and again the last and first become middle, in that way all will necessarily come to play the same part toward one another, and by so doing they will all 20 make a unity.” For Hans van der Laan, form is inductively understood by means of measure. Measure leads by consequence to the sorting of sizes into a system. We begin with the proportional relation of the measures of one form (eurhythmy), which leads to the relation between different forms (symmetry). Hans van der Laan’s “primitive hut,” or original architecture, is the trilithon (his physical model, image, and precedent is Stonehenge). For this he quotes Auguste Choisy, “One block of stone laid across two blocks 21 standing upright, behold the original type of monumental construction that humans realized.” Hans van der Laan’s original architecture is not a simple shelter born of human necessity that requires further refinement (Vitruvius). Nor is his original architecture a hypothetical “little hut” which presents an image of essential architectural elements to be imitated and monumentalized by all subsequent architecture (Laugier). Hans van der Laan origins are intellectual tools, derived through inductive observation of nature and presented in a simple construction of three stone-forms that make up an elementary wall; Hans van der Laan proposes an architecture of wall construction. [See figure 3]

The Origins of Architectonic Space – Constructed Walls and the Metaphorical Horizon Hans van der Laan’s architecture exists as wall construction – almost t o the exclusion of roof/ceiling and floor/platform. As he states, “The essence of architecture consists in the bringing together of limited solid elements so that limited living spaces can arise between them.”22 And on another occasion, “ . . . our space lies not upon the earth but between walls.”23 God, and for that matter the universe (God’s Creation), is creating, unlimited, and infinite. Infinity operates in two directions. We can speak of infinite extension, as in the l imitlessness of the universe; and we can speak of infinite division, as in t he universe of elements consists of infinite variety, size, and intervals t o its parts. Humans, as creatures within the universe, are created, l imited, and finite. Humans create finite instruments to bring measure to and gauge their universe. Thus, our intelli gence requires the finitude of number, unit, and measure to observe, intellectualize, and subsequently make an artificial world (art) for ourselves within the Creation, modeled after our understanding of nature’s innate order. As Hans van der Laan states, “ The primary dyad art-nature flows from the very [constit ution] of our being . . . However, the t hings we make ourselves and the created things of nature there is not only a complimentary, but also a parallel relation – an analogy . . . Within the primary relation between creator and creature there thus arises a secondary relation between ourselves and the things we make. In this sense art can be said to imitate nature: the things made by art are related to the limited, created intelligence, created nature to the unlimited creating intelligence . . . The difference between the things of nature and of art is as great as that between the intelligences from which they spring: in one case an infinite, creating i ntelligence, in the other our own finite, created intellect, incapable of pure creation. Our making is more like re-shaping of 24 natural things.” Limit is innate to the human; in fact, our existence is bound to a horizon. We can imagine God’s intellect as omniscient and everlasting; human intelligence is bound to a single body of experience and the limits of finite time. Human intellect is analogous to our position on the earth. St anding upright, our eyes see forward, at a distance above the earth’s surface. Limited patches of both earth and sky become visible to us. Wit h little exception, our human existence is limited to the surface (or near the surface) of the earth. As the earth, due to its innate curvature falls away from our view, a line takes shape, where the earth meets with the dome of the sky, and an observable horizon, or limited boundary, takes place. The horizontal line, circumscribing our view, becomes the scope of human space. 25 Of course the earth and sky extend beyond the observable horizon, yet our view remains limited. The horizon suggests a reality in relation to humanity, a limited reality, and the expression of ourselves in nature. Thus the metaphysical, the infinite, and the absolute exist i n a state of detachment, a hidden beyond that r eaches the sensible. Yet the horizon-bound and finite reality of humanity is penetrated by the infinite. As Hans van der Laan states, “Our experience-space is necessarily in conflict with the space of nature. The space that nature offers us rises above the ground and is oriented enti rely towards the earth’s surface. The contrast between the mass Where Sky Rubs Against Soil: The Metaphorical Horizon in Dom. Hans van der Laan’s Architecture William T Willoughby , Louisiana Tech University

5 of the earth below and the space of the air above, which meet at the surface of the earth, is the primary datum of this space On account of their weight all material beings are drawn into t his spatial order, and we live as it were against the earth. “Through intellect and upright stance the human can detach himself [or herself] fr om this order and r elate to himself [or herself] t he piece of space he [or she] needs for action and movement. The human is conscious of a horizontal orientation centered upon the earth – of a space around him [or her ] in the midst of the space above the earth.” For Hans van der Laan, the primal and unbridgeable difference between the unlimited natural space (the vertical) and the limited artificial space (the horizontal) is what architecture venerates and reconciles. The stratum between the horizon-bound against the vertical distance of the sky becomes the backdrop for human activity (and the subject of human contemplation). He continues, “Architecture is born of this original discrepancy between the two spaces – the horizontally oriented space of our experience and the vertically ori ented space of nature; it begins when we add vertical walls to the horizontal surface of the earth.”26 [See figure 4] This is Dom. Hans van der Laan’s metaphor for architecture: Human space is bound to a limited horizontal, a space that extends to the visible horizon. Our upright posture reveals to us a sensible world that can be reduced to the coincidence of a vast and extended sky space which meets at a circumscribed horizon with t he continuous mass of the earth’s surface. Hans van der Laan clearly pr esents the earth as constituting a surface, to which bodily weight binds us. Differences in the surface, such as mountains and valleys are dismissed as folds in a surface and not 27 genuine forms. Architecture is always a matter of composing solid elements to make a space for humanity – a construction. Solid elements are extracted fr om the earth and shaped to coincide with a form, having a particular size, measure (quantity), and proportion. The shaping of the unlimited qualiti es of nature to the l imited quantities of human measure is how humans employ their intellect to be included in harmony with nature. It is from the combination of these forms, extracted not as a whole but in pieces that walls are composed. This vertical construction of architecture conflicts with the horizon of our experience space; it limits our horizon with the introduction of composed, vertical 28 elements, walls. A single wall is insufficient in order to separate and bound space. When set upon t he earth the wall reverts back to being part of the earth’s surface. The more vertical the wall, in the form of an upright slab, the more it distinguishes itself from the surface of the earth. And yet a single wall only bisects space. The intr oduction of a second wall, placed at an interval and located parallel and opposite the initial wall, cuts off a piece of space. In this manner, architectonic space is formed, separated fr om natural space.

Concinnitas as a Conclusion The metaphorical relationship between earth (soil/matter), wall (extracted matter/form), and sky (vertical space) serve to generate Dom Hans van der Laan’s architecture. From t hese simple relations architecture is brought into being. Hans van der Laan attempts to return to the source and rediscover what the ancients learned though inductive observation of nature and, by contemplation, applied to making architecture. Alberti has a term for this understanding of the imitative origins of architecture, concinnitas; which means the perfect and rhapsodic relation of parts within a body such as is found in nature. As Alberti states, “Beauty is a form of sympathy and consonance of the parts within a body, according to definite number, outline, and position, as dictated by concinnitas, the absolute and fundamental rule in Nature. This is the main object of the art of building, and the source of her dignity, charm, 29 authority, and worth.” Alberti and Laugier alternately suggest that the principles of architecture should be derived inductively from nature; both take such comments for granted and for ego elaboration. As Laugier suggests, “It is the same with architecture as with all the other arts: its principles are founded on nature itself, and in the processes of nature are 30 found to be clearly indicated all the rules of architecture.” Alberti writes in Book Nine of On the Art of Building concerning concinnitas: “All that has been said our ancestors learned t hrough observation of Nature herself; so they had no doubt that if they neglected these things, they would be unable to attain all that contributes to the praise and honor of the work; not without r eason they declared that Nature, as the perfect generator of forms, should be their model. And so, with the utmost industry, they searched out the rules that she employed in 31 producing things, and translated them into methods of building.”


6 Thus the basic rules for building extend, in an imitative manner, from observation of Nature. As Alberti claims of “all Arts we begot by Chance and Observation, and nursed by Use and Experience, and improved and 32 perfected by Reason and Study.” According to Hans van der Laan, the relationship between induction (which he likens to inspiration) and deduction (which he likens to expiration) is like that of observation and making. He places emphasis, not on spontaneity (an action without context), but on a deep observational consideration of nature. Essentially, Hans van der Laan’s method, when it concerns making, develops by trial and error , an active making that is measured in relation our capacity to observe and measure the result. And finally, about concinnitas: Francesco Giorgi’s regard for harmonious proportions led him to explain how “rules and consonances” fit together in mysterious harmony by a relation between God, divine number, proportion, and observation of patterns within the visible universe. He cites God’s instructions to “Moses concerning the form and proportion of the tabernacle which had to be built, He gave him as model the fabric of the world . . . (Exodus 25). ” Thus for Giorgi, music, building, body, nature, God, and number form a harmonic unity.33 From observation of nature, and humble observation of God’s creation, order can be discerned by the human intellect and fashioned by the hands. Though our horizon is limited, we can stretch our bounded insights and peer into the face of infinity.

Endnotes 1

Richard Padovan, Dom Hans van der Laan: Modern Primitive (Amsterdam: Architectura & Natura Press, 1994) 28 2

The recurrent theme of beginnings in the words, transcripti ons, and writings of Louis I. Kahn begs comparison with Hans van der Laan’s interest in origins. Kahn states, “I love beginnings. I marvel at beginnings.” (Louis I. Kahn, What Will Be Always Has Been: The Words of Louis I. Kahn, edited by Saul W urman (New York: Access Press Ltd. 1986) 150). Beginnings are perennial; they hearken back to origins but are a matter of renewal. The recurrence of beginnings is an act of conscious imitation, an “eternal confirmation.” The beginning of architecture for Kahn is the di scovery of the nature of a space where it is good for a certain human activity. Thus, the room and its inspiration, in concinnity, become the beginning of architecture. Later, in Kahn’s mature statement on architecture, he seems to leave the adorat ion of beginnings and attempts construe a mythic origin, or fundamental inspiration to all making. In the end, Hans van der Laan and Louis Kahn are not so distinct – b oth link the making of architecture back to the coming into bei ng of all that exists. K ahn is interested in what precedes a thing’s coming into being – what precedes a thing’s creation. Kahn speaks of a threshold between silence and light. Kahn characterizes silence as what precedes light (or aura); it is non-material and unmeasurable, “the aura of joy, the desire to be”(that precedes being), and what precedes and then becomes the verb “to express.” Light, for Kahn, is the giver of presences (all material is spent light, according to Kahn); the natural materials from which all things are made (and therefore measurable). 3

Compare the Christian belief to Plato’s Timaeus, where the first causes which brought forth the visible universe are shown; Plato’s demiurge desired, “that all things should be good and, so far as might be, nothing imperfect, the god took over all that is visible, not at rest, but in discordant and unordered motion – and brought it from disorder into order, since he judged that order was in every way the better.” Plato’s Timaeus continues to explain the motive of creation as the product of a great, deductive intelli gence. Plato concluded than that the “supreme good” of the visible universe, the divine persona that fashioned “reason within soul and soul within body,” made the work naturally as “excellent and perfect as possible.” See P lato’s Timaeus, translated by Francis M. Cornford (New York: The Liberal Arts Press Inc., 1959) 19 4

Paraphrased from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Section Two: The Profession of the Christian Faith (prepared after the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, published 1992); available on the World Wide Web [http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc/index.htm] 5

Colossians 1:15; Revised Standard Version of the Bible; text from the University of Virginia’s Electronic Text Center [http://etext.virginia.edu/rsv.browse.html] 6

The Wisdom of Solomon 7:17-22; Revised Standard Version of the Bible – part of the Apocrypha (meaning “hidden”) included in Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian Bibles. The authority of the apocryphal books was challenged during the Reformation, and eventually their inclusion in Prot estant Bibles was ceased. The entire Where Sky Rubs Against Soil: The Metaphorical Horizon in Dom. Hans van der Laan’s Architecture William T Willoughby , Louisiana Tech University

7

Chapter 7 of The Wisdom of Solomon (7:1-30) is worthy of perusal, for believer and non-believer alike, if just for the concise beauty of its prose. Text from the University of Virginia’s Electronic Text Center [http://etext.virginia.edu/rsv.browse.html] 7

Both citations in this paragraph are from Hans van der Laan, “Strumenti di Ordine: Instruments of Order,” Casabella: Monthly Magazine, Number 633, April 1996 (Milano: Elemond Spa, 1996) 71 8

Hans van der Laan, Architectonic Space, translated by Richard Padovan (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1983) 1; and Sirach 29:21-28; ; Revised Standard Version of the Bible (Apocrypha); text from the University of Virginia’s Electronic Text Center [http://etext.virginia.edu/rsv.browse.html] 9

Hans van der Laan, Architectonic Space, translated by Richard Padovan (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1983) 2

10

Hans van der Laan, “Strumenti di Ordine: Instruments of Order,” Casabella: Monthly Magazine, Number 633, April 1996 (Milano: Elemond Spa, 1996) 71 11

Ibidem, 71

12

Joseph Rykwert, On Adam’s House in Paradise (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1972) 110

13

Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, translated by Morris Morgan (New York: Dover Publications, 1960) 41

14

John Summerson, The Classical Language of Architecture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1963) 35-36

15

All citations of Laugier extracted from, Joseph Rykwert’s On Adam’s House in Paradise (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1972) 44; I prefer this particular translation, which I assume to be Rykwert’s own as derived from the original text published in 1753. For full comprehension and comparison, I did consult an English translation of the original text, which I cite here: Marc-Antoine Laugier, An Essay on Architecture, translated by Wolfgang and Anni Herrmann (Los Angeles: Hennessy & Ingalls Inc., 1977) 11-12 16

Hans van der Laan “Strumenti di Ordine: Instruments of Order,” Casabella: Monthly Magazine, Number 633, April 1996 (Milano: Elemond Spa, 1996) 76 17

Ibidem, 72

18

Hans van der Laan, Architectonic Space, translated by Richard Padovan (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1983) 7; this also relates to the simple dyad ( two things, joined as opposites that to gether form a unity) supposed by Lucretius in Book One, On the Nature of Things: De Rerum Natura (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982) lines 146-482, as the distinction between body (or substance) and void (without which substance could not move). Plato’s Timeaus distinguishes the nature of the universe in three parts: forms, of which all sensible things are simulacra, the sensible things themselves, and the third thing, which is the better stating point, the “receptacle” or “matrix” within which sensible things exist (space); “the nurse – of al l Becoming.” Interestingly, Hans van der Laan considers only observable dyads while deriving his system, such as: of continuous surface-discrete form, inside-outside, solid-void, and art-nature. His book doesn’t address a metaphysical realm or a speculative “third” condition. He remains rooted in the observable aspects brought fort h by what he sees of God’s Creation; in some ways, this closely allies him with the Epicureans. He sticks with induction and foregoes speculation. Hans van der Laan humbly considers the intellect as sustained by continuous contact with the observable world (a breathing in) that precedes and remains more vital than speculation (or a deductive br eathing out). Thus architecture exists as a metaphor, though imitation of the natural Creation. See Chapter 3 of Richard Padovan’s Dom Hans van der Laan: Modern Primitive (Amsterdam: Architectura & Natura Press, 1994) 19

Sverre Fehn, Sverre Fehn: The Poetry of the Straight Line (Helsinki: The Museum of Finnish Architecture, 1992) . The coincidence between H. van der Laan and S. Fehn as seen in this quotation is so great that I cannot imagine at least one of the two being aware of the other’s work. Sverre Fehn is an architect and teacher whose skills in both areas demands respect (he was recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1997). He is an architectural Where Sky Rubs Against Soil: The Metaphorical Horizon in Dom. Hans van der Laan’s Architecture William T Willoughby , Louisiana Tech University

8

mythmaker, storyteller, and creator of instructive poetry in the tradition of Louis Kahn. It would be doubtful that Sverre Fehn would be unaware of the work of Hans van der Laan or the influence of the Bossche School of architects. If one r eads Fehn’s writings or transcripts of his discussions, the persona that emerges is a thinker who collects (or scavenges) threads of meaning and poetry about ar chitecture and construction. He reconnects and weaves together these threads into a personal tapestry of archit ectural myth. 20

Plato, Timaeus, translated by Francis M. Cornford (New York: The Liberal Arts Press Inc., 1959) 21

21

Author’s translation from the French, which reads, “Une pierre a plat sur duex pierres debout, viola le premire type d’une construction monumentale que l’homme ait realisee.” Taken from Hans van der Laan’s essay “Strumenti di Ordine: Instruments of Order,” Casabella: Monthly Magazine, Number 633, April 1996 (Milano: Elemond Spa, 1996) 74 22

Ibidem, 71

23

Hans van der Laan, Architectonic Space, translated by Richard Padovan (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1983) 5

24

Ibidem, 173-174

25

An excellent essay concerning the horizon is Cornelius van Peursen’s essay “The Horizon” from Husserl: Expositions and Appraisals, edited by F. A. Elliston and P. Mc Cormick (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977) 182-201; it is a grand example of phenomenological method. 26

This and the above quote from Hans van der Laan, Architectonic Space, translated by Richard Padovan (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1983) 5 27

Ibidem, 6

28

Basic to this countering of the horizon with the vertical of human construction is a reference to Jacob’s dream at Bethel (Genesis 28). Jacob takes a stone of the place and uses it as a p illow. He awakes from a holy dream where he envisions angels ascending and descending a great ladder connecting earth and heaven; in the dream God speaks to Jacob. When he awakes he venerates the place where he slept. He takes the stone which he used as a pillow and sets it upright and pours oil on the top of it. Jacob called the place Bethel, meaning “The house of God.” Hans van der Laan refers to this passage from Genesis, b ut not in this context ( in “Instruments of Order”). I was compelled t o connect this passage to Hans van der Laan’s and demonstrate its connection to Mircea Eliade use in his book The Sacred and the Profane, where Eliade di stinguishes between homogenous space and heirophany. In Eliade’s case, Jacob’s stone distinguishes space, forming an irruption of t he sacred and separating a space from its surrounds. Jacob’s stone marks an occurrence of the sacred. It is not clear to me how Hans van der Laan perceives space. Is his view commiserate with Plato, that space has no qualities o f its own, remaining characterless, until it receives qualities as granted from things visible (geometrical space)? Or are his views with Eliade, and that space has sacred and profane distinctions, epiphanies that require a special form of consecration (r eligious space)? Humans withdraw space (inside) from natural space ( outside) by means of the construction of walls, and in this way, confound the homogeneity of space. As well, the construction of the wall by means of human intellect and action is imitative of God’s Creation. Thus two spaces exist in conflict ; but the sacral nature of one over and above the other is unclear. In his lessons, Hans van der Laan provides us with the dyadic image of the bubble and the water dr op, which oppose emptiness with fullness in alternation. Thus each analogy counters the other. To my mind, Hans van der Laan remains mute on this point concerning qualitative distinctions of space. 29

Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, translated by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988) 303; also consult this text’s very helpful glossary, where concinnitas is described, along with a bibliography. Contemporary use of t he term concinnity [ad. L. concinnitas, -tat-em, f. concinn-us skilfully put together, well-adjusted] means: skillful and harmonious adaptation or fitting together of parts; harmony, congruity, consistency -- from the Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989)


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30

First found in Richard Padovan’s essay “Laugier to van der Laan” Architectural Design 49 , n. 12 (London: St. Martin’s Press, 1979) 324 31

Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, translated by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988) 303 32

Ibidem, 157

33

Francesco Giorgi, “Memorandum for S. Fr ancesco della Vigna”, ( Promemoria per San Francesco della Vigna [1535]) from Appendix I of Rudolf Wittkower’s Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc., 1971) 155-157. Giorgi, was a Venetian scholar/monk, born 1466 and author of De Harmonia Mundi Totius (Venice, 1525). In his De Harmonia Mundi Totius, he declares the Cabbala ( mystical interpretation of the Old Testament) and Pythagoreanism to be parallel systems. A more fundamental example of the order and harmony that exists within the diversity of things, and the discoverable relationships between them is Sir Thomas Browne’s The Gardens of Cyrus; or The Quincuncial Lozenge, or Network Plantations of the Ancients, Artificially, Naturally, and Mystically Considered (originally published 1658); from The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, Volume II (London: George Bell and Sons, 1883)


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Hans Vander La An

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