Is this 'How to enjoy architecture'?
April 2024
When I prepared a paper on architecture tourism for a congress on cultural tourism last February in Córdoba (Spain), I saw during my literature search the announcement of the book How to enjoy architecture, by Charles Holland, Yale University Press, to appear mid-April. For less than €20 the 180-page hard cover book was delivered two weeks ago.
I guess my expectations were a bit too high. I hoped to read about architecture experience, the relationships between architecture and the visitors or users. About different sensations and emotions. Perhaps about affordances – a concept that helps to understand buildings not as objects, but as environments that afford us possibilities, so-called actionable properties the environment offers. Affordances invite or guide behaviour, what people do in and around buildings. Think of Centro Botín in Santander as an example – this building is not just for expositions; it has a lot of affordances.
Experience as I understand it is not what Holland’s book is about. Holland uses the term experience a few times in his introduction, but his aim is (p. 20) “the main point, the ambition of the book, is to open up an experience of architecture as something enlightening and educational but also enjoyable: to communicate some of the please I get from looking at architecture and good buildings.” And (p. 5) “It is about looking: about learning how to look, and what to look for.” How to look and what to look for is discussed in six chapters: on style, composition, space, materials, structure, and use of buildings.
The book discusses experience as visual experience – what to look for. And you may look at style, composition, etc. Holland stresses how to look at buildings (less judgemental and more interested, irrespective of the whether a building is classicist or modern (well explained in chapter 1). And he tells background stories of buildings.
What the book fails to do is entering buildings and exploring the environment of buildings. The main focus is the visual experience of the exterior. Although the book is ‘a guide for everyone,’ as the subtitle tells us, I think the audience of the book will consist of ‘afficionados’, architects and other seriously interested professionals. Not the laypeople who likes nice architecture, who conceives modern architecture as part of a cultural trip. I will not evaluate the merits on the book for the professional, I am not an architect but ‘just’ a user and interested visitor of architecture.
How is the book from a photography point of view? Photography is about looking (and other things), and the book How to enjoy architecture is about how to look and what to look for and could therefore be helpful. But I think that Holland’s message about approaching architecture in a less judgemental and more interested manner, irrespective of whether a building is classicist or modern, is for architects and not for laypersons.
The well-known architecture photographer Iwan Baan had a major exposition in Vitra Design Museum. Vitra published an almost 600-page catalogue. Baan says (p. 294) “It is a strange thing. I’m not an architect myself and I know, basically, little about architecture, but I’ve been always fascinated with space, what people do in space, how the spaces are used and sometimes taken over by their users.” One of the reasons Iwan Baan is appreciated, the book tells us, is that he is not an architect, not very much interested in the typical features of style, materials, and composition of buildings. Iwan Baan’s book is for me far more rewarding and enjoyable than Holland’s book.
