Arquitectura   y   Humanidades

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A letter from labyrinth          
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Eduardo Pérez González   Correo Electrónico

 

The labyrinth is one of the richest and most enigmatic figures of our culture. The origin of the labyrinth is mythical and its form has marveled many. History's first labyrinth could be traced back to the island of Crete where only an impression of it can be found on a stone. What we know about that first labyrinth comes from Greek mythology. Daedalus constructed it to imprison the Minotaur. Theseus then entered it to kill the Minotaur helped by Ariadne who guided him with a thread that would help him find his way back out.

Both in literature and painting we frequently find works that make allusion to the labyrinth. Picasso, for example, found inspiration on this myth for one of his series of engravings; Borges wrote several short stories taking the labyrinth in Crete as a reference; and let us not forget Octavio Paz. The labyrinth is a myth to be interpreted and its meaning goes beyond simple form. It is an imaginary space, an intellectual space, it is a concept, an image, a spatial form, and in its form, an architectonic space.

 

The labyrinth

If we are confronted with a real labyrinth, a constructed one, our first impression will be that of a wall for it cannot be grasped completely from its base. What makes a labyrinth is the wall that separates the outside from the inside.

A labyrinth invites in, a labyrinth is not such if one is outside. The action happens inside, the labyrinth stimulates action, movement, movement that implies a course of time and space, thus a narrative. If we think of a labyrinth we do not only think of a wall, we think of a serpent, of a garden or a drawing of spirals with one way in and one way out, we imagine it from a bird's eye point of view. This means that we always think of a labyrinth from the outside and above. And it is natural if we want to solve its secret for the best position to do so is from where we can contemplate the whole.

A trace in the labyrinth seems to show us the way and invites us or makes us walk through it. This makes it a narrative space, a sequence. For architect Rem Koolhas architecture is a negative space, in it things happen, life goes on in its absences, in them we expect something to happen; the non-built space signifies and gives value to the architectonic.

 

Two labyrinths

We can find a very important difference between the labyrinth in Crete and the mediaeval one. On the one hand the mediaeval labyrinth is essentially a garden created for the amusement of people (the English have a different word for it: maze). One would enter it and try to find the way out as soon as possible. Its intentions were to mislead, to make one loose his way and his bearings. Whoever walks through the labyrinth follows either the right path or the wrong one for there is one good path and one bad one. The idea is to find the way out as soon as possible, to optimize. The sooner the better, that is effectiveness. Effectiveness, or the optimal way, would be a straight line. Is it not in this same way that modern culture thinks, where the idea of progress is marked by the effectiveness of the straight line which, taken to the extreme, moves our society and gives meaning to our life?

On the other hand, the labyrinth in Crete makes you walk through the whole in order to get to the center. There is only one door out and it is the same one that gets you in. The center positions you and makes you change your bearing. There is only one way. Where is the confusion that we thought was intrinsic to the labyrinth? We are faced once again by the enigma of the labyrinth. This labyrinth is more metaphorical. We cannot get lost on a road that leads to only one place, with only one option to choose from, forward or backward, inside or out, unless, we don't know if we are walking towards the center or away from it. This time the labyrinth seems to have more sense. Where does good lie and where does evil? The purpose is not only about finding our way in or our way out but to question ourselves as to why are we heading in or out. Thus it is a more reflective figure than the contemporary labyrinth.



The concept

The pleasure of a labyrinth - paraphrasing Roland Barthes - lies in moving through it. The labyrinth is not only the center but also the whole, walls shape its form but the space that has any sense to us is the space we can move in, the negative space. And this negative space, is it not the one that interests architecture?

For cabalists the image of the rose was important because it was seen as a metaphor for the cognitive process. We don't know the rose while loosing its petals because the rose is not the sum of its parts nor the center of it. To know what the rose is we must understand that it is a whole and only then will we know it. The labyrinth is like the rose; we don't grasp the labyrinth while in it; we know the labyrinth from the outside but we must go through it. The labyrinth is a whole. From the moment that we see the labyrinth as being able to represent a more abstract concept than form, we can also see it as a representation of a way of thinking. If we're no longer on the right path and we see that even progress is not marked by the straight line, we can believe in the circularity of biological processes or even philosophical, and build a different reality from the one we live in. It is possible that our inability to understand other cultures is due to this simple difference between one labyrinth and other, or to clarify, to the conception of one metaphor or other.





The city as a labyrinth

The underground philosophies, no other than different conceptions of the world, are opposed to western mental constructions. In our societies there still persists underground streams of thought in which architecture is sub ministers itself for its spaces. The labyrinth is a form that we interpret. Or, we can also say that it is the form that tells us: interpret for the world is made for that. And if you are stubborn, understand it.

Architecture, as a human activity, is unnatural and thus aggresses the environment. "…each architectural vision involves a wave of violence…the potential for delinquency is present in every architect…" The architectural act implies destruction, for each building superposes itself either to an existing one or to nature. But building is also an act of cultural continuity, the city represents its society's culture, it is the way in which the city communicates with its people, with its own language. The city is also a labyrinth. It is that negative space that we see from a bird's eye point of view. But it is down there and once in it we don't see but its walls. But we know that it is there because we live in it. But to understand it we have to visualize it from above. The city is not the buildings on the main square. The city is each square, each street and each garden that makes it up.

Our cities have characteristics of both types of labyrinth. We have the effective way to get to an appointment as soon as possible or, the long way if we want to get to know the city. The city keeps its labyrinthical spaces for our pleasure, our confusion or for the most profound reflections from its center.

 


The word as labyrinth

The Jewish religion has based the secret of its faith, to a great extent, on the analysis of its sacred book: the Torah. What interests us from their reflections is that for them writing is the space of the labyrinth. The labyrinth is a hermeneutic practice that leads to knowledge and, on a more mystical sense, closer to God. For He expressed Himself by the way of words with the 10 divine emanations (sefirot) pronounced with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Thus the answers are to be found in the texts. The text is a divine representation that explains the fact that every element of the writings is significant, being a punctuation sign, a blank space, etc. Everything that is written exists for a divine reason and that is what the mystic is destined to decipher.

There are four levels of interpretation that coincide with those of the Christian mediaeval exegetic: the literal, the allegoric, the ethical or moral and the mystical.

For scholars one cannot reach the deep level of the text (understanding) without first going through the literal one (superficial). Interpretation implies movement, the journey to the center of the labyrinth. The one that is able to go through the labyrinth and come back is the one who has understood and deciphered it.

The rules of interpretation that cabalists used were mainly three. Gematria, a very rigorous and specialized form of interpretation, consisted on assigning numerical values to words which in its turn represented religious values. Temurah consisted on the permutation of the letters in a word allowing different meanings to be found in the text. And the acrostic or notarikon consisted on "the interpretation of the letters of a word as abbreviations of words or phrases". The composition of the acrostics could be made in different ways. Generally the first letter of each word was taken to form words or phrases. Certain dispositions within each word were also used to form other words.

For cabalists the interpretation of a text is also a creative act for they create it, reproduce it and decode it. This could be the thread of Ariadna that keep us getting lost inside the construction, mental or real, of space.

Seeing the labyrinth as a great figure of knowledge, we find that each activity involving knowledge implies also a labyrinth. The space of architecture is a labyrinth built by each and every building made. The architect who wants to get to know his profession gets on his way towards the Promised Land, deep into the labyrinth. In the same way Dedalus constructed a significant micro-universe, the architect creates labyrinths of meaning in which each element is declaration of its own secret. For each one of us the labyrinth could present itself in different figures, it could represent something subjective or concrete. But above all the labyrinth is an imaginary space, open to interpretations but closed in its secret.

 

Bibliography
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Eduardo Pérez González Correo Electrónico

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