The idea of Interior Elevations

image: St. Vitus cathedral, Prague, Czech Republic

While traveling earlier this month, I revisited the St. Vitus cathedral in Prague. The last I visited St. Vitus was nearly 14 years ago, in 1996, before I started on my architectural education. The building must have looked the same; yet I suppose it was I, who was seeing it again with somewhat different eyes.

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I started my journey in architecture gawking at modern buildings. This journey took me through several stages of 'phenomenological spaces' and OMA-que and supermodernism, tossing and turning, before now coming to the Gothic 'style'.

But to define the gothic as a 'style' is grossly misrepresenting. After all, no one really knows who invented this 'style' (i.e., there is no known architect for the Gothic cathedral). It was likely built by trial and error--especially for St.Vitus which is still one of the larger cathedrals around--and it was most likely built by a community of master-builders comprising of masons and craftsmen of different specialties, and designed and built at the same time across generations. In contrast to our swiftly photoshoped, seasonal and ephemeral--faddish--definition of style for real estate today, the Gothic is Architecture.

I must admit this: it is hard to love Gothic architecture. But I attribute this challenge to our present lack of understanding on the construction of these spaces, and perhaps, also to our current estrangement to the divine awe and realities that the Gothic cathedrals embody and represent. Nonetheless, it is still possible to love without knowledge, even if it amounts to a lesser love.

I was just walking along the aisle of this cathedral with my family before I noticed this particular view, at my full standing height, just before the transept of the cathedral. Observe how each line within this composition seems to flow past each other fluidly, hinting of more richness beyond what was actually glimpsed. And each line capable of tying to different points, unifying the entire composition by adjusting one's position slightly...

The bizarre thing about this view is that there was likely no designer who decided that the interior space should look like this at this particular position. In other words, the dynamic composition here was completely un-orchestrated. This realization adds to the awe of gothic spaces: does any designer dare to capture this as an interior elevation in modern, insipid architectural drawings? And if we take this further into speculative territory: is what can be drawn and thus cognitively planned and orchestrated lesser than what cannot be? If the Gothic cathedral can no longer teach us, it continues to question us.

Walking out of a Gothic architecture is like going back into a brighter but a flatter world. In this brighter and flatter world, spaces are bordered by bland planes and wide roads, littered with neon symbols of another god, saying nothing and glittering to nothingness. Awe once again, quickly dissipates.

A quote from Emmanuel Levinas

"It is extremely important to know if society in the current sense of the term is the result of limitation of the principle that men are predators of one another, or if to the contrary it results from the limitation of the principle that men are for each other. Does the social, with its institutions, universal forms and laws, result from limiting the consequences of the war between men, or from limiting the infinity which opens in the ethical relationship of man to man?"

from Ethics and Infinity