Feeling blue? Blame the building

Halfway through his lecture, Alberto Pérez-Gómez explained how little differences can change the way people interpret and interact with their surroundings.
The Design Building Auditorium at LSU was nearly full as McGill University’s history of architecture professor went through examples. The room was also dimly lit for his presentation.
“Light a few candles in here and it may become romantic,” said Pérez-Gómez.
The presentation, part of the Paula G. Manship Endowed Lecture Series, called on historians and teachers of architecture to recognize how the field can contribute to well-being. Over the last two centuries, he said, architecture has engaged in a misguided dedication to a scientific or technical approach to design.
“The tragic result is meaninglessness,” he said.
Pérez-Gómez illustrated the way architecture has inched toward meaninglessness by contrasting two designs. Étienne-Louis Boullée drew his concept of a monument in the shape of a sphere as a symbol intended to evoke, among other things, God, he said. The 18th century design allows light to pass through the vaulting in a way that resembles stars or reflects light to resemble the sun, depending on outside lighting.
By the 19th century, the advent of the Industrial Revolution, geometry began to be “instrumentalized” and used as a method for efficiency, said Pérez-Gómez. He added that even Boullée’s student, Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand, used the circle because it was the most efficient way to create a church using the least amount of space.
There is a problem with that approach, said Pérez-Gómez: the environment affects the way people come to understand and interpret the world. Everything from the atmosphere on Earth to the human ability to walk upright on two legs are elements in the way humans come to gain knowledge explained Pérez-Gómez.
“The world of the fly and the world of the monkey have very little in common,” said Pérez-Gómez.
Despite being more hygienic than past centuries, Perez-Gomez argued cities are alienating environments.
After his Monday lecture, Pérez-Gómez admitted to a greater amount of questions arising from this philosophy than answers. One of his answers calls on architects to analyze how people interact with their surroundings using the German concept of stimmung, or attunement.
Harmony, a component of stimmung, according to Pérez-Gómez, involves adapting to what is already there; fitting, rather than erasing. “We need the human imagination. Architects and the public do not understand the connection with art.”
Pérez-Gómez argued for the historical understanding of architecture to build a narrative that relies on many disciplines, including theology, science and philosophy.