אדריכלות ישראלית - גיליון 122

Invisible Vs. Invisible אדריכלותישראלית Architecture of Israel # 122 August 2020 14 | | Attempts to extend a building’s life in compliance with principles of sustainability create a planning discrepancy between form and content. And this is self-evident: If a structure is programmatically intended to meet a specific need, inter alia in terms of space division, then when needs are changed the original form becomes irrelevant, particularly when the wearying modernist slogan – form follows function - comes to mind. However, architecture has no obligation to slogans – if it did, it would have perished every time these changed. One way or another, the need to bridge gaps via creative solutions is one of architecture’s significant strengths and is, in fact, what distinguishes it from building engineering. While the architectural message is an abstract entity, engineering is the concrete tool for its realization. Hence, it is possible to define the act of architectural planning as an ongoing dialog between the visible concrete and the invisible abstract. And this is not as complicated as it seems. A poet uses words to write poems, their unique combinations enabling readers to connect to their inherent meaning (or not), whether they decipher the initial intention or not. And less delicately – the question "what did the poet mean" is the least relevant question in literature in particular, and in life in general. What is important is the meaning the reader attributes to a poem - and the more interpretations attributed to a poem, the longer its life. This is clearly evident in many of Alterman’s poems, quoted today as if they were written yesterday, though some of them were written 80 years ago. In this context, I’d like to relate to one of the most deceptive books I’ve encountered in recent years, both in terms of its irritating graphic presentation, but mainly due to its clumsy translation. I’m referring to Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, a book that brought him world fame in 1972, though it is merely a poor imitation of medieval dialogs (themselves an imitation of Plato’s dialogs), between the Venetian explorer, Marco Polo (1254-1324) and the Chinese food for thought concrete visible vs abstract invisible Architect Dr. Ami Ran Emperor, Kublai Khan. There are no sensational messages in this book, but there are several descriptions with humorous touches, which emphasize the urban value of pictures and memories. For instance: ״ (…) Pliers indicating a teeth pulling clinic; a jar indicating a pub; and an image of scales alluding to a vegetable store" (Cities and Signs 1). Also in the book: ״ (…) Mind you don’t tell a city- dweller that his city once belonged to someone else… (Cities and Memories 5). A far wiser book is no doubt The Little Prince by Antoine Saint-Exupéry – a Jewish , French pilot, who advocated US involvement in WWII due to his personal suffering from the Nazi invasion of France. Considered the most widely read book in the world, the little book was translated into more than 250 languages and sold more than 140 million copies. Over and above an undeniably touching hero, in my opinion it is subtly presented in one of the most enchanting Israeli songs written by Jonathan Geffen with lyrics composed by Shem-Tov Levi. There, "the Little Prince from Company B whose roses have turned to thorns, will never again see a sheep eating a flower". One of the illuminating messages of this book relates to the fact that "important things are seen through the heart, because they are hidden from the eye" - a sentence that brings me back to architecture. One of the problems of sustainability is the obvious conflict created between the dimensions, location, and space organization of an existing structure and the appropriate functioning of the new purpose. This is well exemplified in the case of an attempt to fit pants (best scenario) or shoes (worst scenario) of an older child on a younger brother. Here too, the space is either too large or too small. And practically speaking, on one hand there is a lack of space or, on the other, there is too much unexploited space. Needless to say, a pre-planned product has programmatic advantages since it attempts to accurately address an optimized space division as well as its relationship with the surroundings. For precisely this reason, when the structure’s purpose changes, it significantly disrupts all architectural features, from spatial references, orientation, natural light control, and maladjustment to the topography, building materials, etc. However, it is this architectural disruption stemming from a tension between a "tool" and its content, which essentially creates an architectural challenge that promotes creative thinking. In architecture as in poetry – the visible layers are made of concrete and physical details, while the abstract invisible is subjected to imaginative interpretation via thoughts and feelings. That is, while the former constitutes a situation whereby what you see is what you get, the latter… not at all. Accordingly, one could say that visible / invisible reciprocal relations are what give architecture its unique value. Thus for instance - there is unseen meaning to knowing that Herzl stood on a certain balcony, or that Ben Gurion lived on Kibbutz Sde Boker, or that Queen Elizabeth visited the King David Hotel. In other words - like the effort to extract hidden meaning in a poem, the invisible in architecture involves the user in the creation, attempting to imagine, for instance, past events at a hotel that once served as a jail for black slaves in South Africa; or a residential building from the theatre that was transformed into a boutique hotel; a cultural calm space at a museum that once served as a bustling train station; and, in fact, any transformed building, which evokes questions like "what did the young girl whisper to her lover …"? In this context, one of the most crucial solutions is to allocate an extra use to any space, sometimes with an utterly different meaning. One solution is the popular, electronically darkened glass, used in transparent public toilets, mainly in the far east. Here, again, the attraction of such devices is gained by what people, inside and out, imagine