Elegance

In this contribution we want to argue that, since avant garde, elegance and beauty are too often

neglected in judgements of interiors. It was a valid criterium up to the 19th century that deserves a

revaluation. We will describe two types of elegance:

° objective – visual, formalistic, harmonious proportions (Leon Battista Alberti, Palladio, Le

Corbusier), Platonic and orientated towards an ideal world;

° subjective wonder and emotions/senses, relationship between interior space and

happiness: Louis Kahn, Peter Zumthor, Alain De Botton, Gaston Bachelard), orientated

towards personal subject.

Elegance and beauty are often used to describe interiors, or parts of it that please, enchant or

fascinate its users or visitors. It expresses wonder, respect and admiration. Vitruvius’ concept of

venustas, alongside firmitas and utilitas, is translated in contemporary English as beautiful, and delight

in Sir Henry Wotton’s Elements of Architecture of 1624. We all value its essential character, but

sometimes fail to pronounce it in our curricula of interior architecture. When evaluating project work, it

is usually not on our list of criteria to qualify the design of a student; it is perhaps even advised to

avoid this scheme of considerations in order to be more ‘objective’. Yet in 19th century vocabulary on

interiors there is no hesitation; in Robert Kerr’s description of The gentleman’s House of 1864, for

example: “The character to be always aimed at in a Drawing-room is especial cheerfulness,

refinement of elegance, and what is called lightness as opposed to massiveness” (in Millar Lane,

2007: 158). Indeed, “beauty is not a word readily found in the indexes of recent books on architecture,

although it is a topic that seems to fascinate architects.” (Johnson 1994: 408).

Do we still suffer from the functionalist paradigm of modernism and are we really failing to catch up

with venustas when we left it at the dawn of the avant-garde? Charles Jencks argues in What is

beauty? that “Beauty is back. Architects are designing harmonious skyscrapers for London, artists are

producing works on the subject, and evolutionary psychologists are presenting evidence that canons

of beauty are hard-wired into the nervous system.” (Prospect Magazine online 2001). Jenks opposes

the idea that ‘beauty is objective’ and puts excessive sensual pattern-apprehension, through one of

our five senses as a foundation for the experience of beauty. This contribution will not enter the
discussion of defining elegance and beauty, but will rather dwell on its notion and the relation to

interior architecture.

Despite the valuable momentum to move interior architecture closer to academia and to infuse it with

research, an important competence will still be the creation of elegant interior spaces. The coveted

theoretical basis of our discipline may partly rest in the exploration of this concept of elegantia. In the

humanistic tradition, one was encouraged to use Latin in a correct and ‘elegant’ manner, e.g. in Valla’s

De elegantiis Latinae linguae, 1471. A similar formalistic interpretation was common to define and

interpret venustas. Most famously in this respect is Alberti’s attempt to describe the concept of

concinnitas or beauty in book 9 of De re aedificatoria (1452): “Beauty is a form of sympathy and

consonance of the parts within a body, according to definite number, outline and position, as dictated

by concinnitas …. This is the main object of the art of building, and the source of her dignity, charm,

authority, and worth”. His emphasis on harmonic scale and proportion clearly inspired Palladio’s

concept of beauty, obtained, in his view with a set of seven harmonic proportions for desiging rooms –

three of which he links to Pythagoras. (Malnar, 1992: 91). In addition to this classical legitimation, so

characteristic for humanist argumentation, Palladio also links beauty with nature and its countless

examples of embedded proportions and harmony. This is echoed centuries later in 1973 by L. Kahn in

a lecture at Pratt University: “When sight came, the first moment of sight was the realization of beauty.

I don’t mean beautiful or very beautiful or extremely beautiful – just beauty, which is stronger than any

of the adjectives you may put to it. ... It is like meeting your maker, in a way, because nature, the

maker, is the maker all that is made. You cannot design anything without nature helping you” (Latour,

1991: 321).

The concept of geometry and proportion as a condition for beautiful architecture, revives also –

including its neoplatonic connotation – with Le Corbusier’s modular, stating that “Genius is personal,

decided by fate, but it expresses itself by means of system. There is no work of art without system.” or

“‘Regulating Lines’ showing by these one of the means by which architecture achieves that tangible

form of mathematics which gives us such a grateful perception of order.” (Le Corbusier 1948: 21 and

64). Another, less well known, proportion system of the same epoch is ‘le nombre plastique’ by Dom

Hans Van der Laan (1960). Different from the Modular and its classical precedents, this system is

more akin to the spatial character of interior architecture because of its 3D character. By implementing

his model, the monk-architect generated fascinating, mostly sacred, spaces. In these interiors “the
visual beauty refers to the invisible beauty, the odor representing the spiritual enlightment … what are

these but natural forms obtaining a spiritual meaning?” (Van der Laan 1985: 99, my translation).

These ‘formalist’ approaches – albeit with a metaphorical dimension – suggest that beauty depends

on lines, proportions or patterns and that its perception is partly cognitive: one has to ‘understand’ the

rational behind a certain design. But can seeing and knowing be separated to experience beauty,

opposed to what Ernst Gombrich claimed? Louis Kahn and Peter Zumthor enrich the discussion by

introducing, respectively, the concept of wonder and the link between spatial experience and one’s

emotional state. They want to argue that there can be strong experiences of beauty without knowledge

or hermeneutics. Kahn in the same 1973 Pratt lecture: “Now from beauty came wonder. Wonder has

nothing to do with knowledge. It’s just a kind of first response to the intuitive being the odysee…”

(Latour, 1991: 322). Zumthor believes that beauty lies in natural, grown things that do not carry any

signs or messages or that beauty manifests itself in vagueness, openness and indeterminacy because

it leaves the form open for many different meanings (1999: 27-28). He invites us to examine his

spaces with our senses and our intellect: “we may wonder what it was we liked about this house, what

was it that impressed and touched us – and why. What was the room like, what did it really look like,

what smell was in the air, what did my footsteps sound like in it and my voice, how did the floor feel

under my feet, the door handle in my hand, how did the light strike the facades, what was the shine on

the walls like? Was there a feeling of narrowness of width, of intimacy or vastness?” (1999: 57). The

elegant combination of a contemporary addition (1990-94) to an early 18th century Swiss wooden

farmhouse, known as Gugalun House, shows well his intention to create a sensuous space to give its

users memorable experiences.

Indeed, in his phenomenological discourse on materials and perception the Swiss architect opens the

architectural experience to all of our senses and he links it with our moods: “spatial situations in which

people instinctively feel good” (1999:49). This is also one of the conclusions in John Armstrong’s The

Secret Power of Beauty, (2004), when he links the experience of beauty with finding spiritual value,

such as happiness, in material settings, such as interior space. The French novelist Marie-Henri Beyle

(1783-1842), known as Stendhal, coined it as beauty being the only promise of happiness. This

paradigm forms the cornerstone of Alain De Botton’s Architecture of Happiness (2006), who traces the

link between beautiful interiors and moral status to early Christian and Islamic theologians who would
argue that beautiful surroundings make us good as they reveal us something of the Creator’s

intelligence, good taste and sense of harmony. It is the task of the architect to design spaces that

contribute to happiness by incorporating values. As such we are able to communicate via our interiors,

which can become projections of our – desired – self.

Absent in the Botton’s quest for materialized happiness in spatial language, is a reference to Gaston

Bachelard’s Poetics of Space (1958). Yet, in his introduction the French philosopher develops a

scheme of thoughts to frame his central concept on the phenomenology of dwelling and poetics. He

explicitly refers to the love for felicitous spaces, which he likes to call topophilia: “they seek to

determine the human value if the sorts of space that may be grasped, that may be defended against

adverse force, the spaces we love. For diverse reasons, and with the differences entailed by poetic

shadings, this is eulogized space” (1994: xxxv). Refering to Carl Jung, Bachelard then develops the

notion that the interior of a house can become a tool for analysis of the human soul. It would be

worthwhile to explore this further in the context of the Japanese notion of beauty where elements as

the imperfection, impermanence (wabi-sabi), asymmetry and patina are essential ingredients, just as

the bond between beauty and memory and the imperfection of one personal body. Tanizaki’s Praise of

Shadows (1933) would be a good guide to contextualize the discussion on beauty in western vs

eastern tradition and how both blend in the work and discourse of various architects.

Elegance and beauty are complex notions without clear definitions, but we have tried to argue that it

limits our schemes of reference if we would exclude them from our criteria to judge interiors. To make

it more complex, the historical link between moral values, such as happiness and elegant interiors

confronts us with even more subjective aspects of our disciplines. If interiors are expressions, or

projections, of ourselves (cfr. Jung supra) they are also becoming images of our desired felicity. But

can we still talk of topophofilia in our age and contemporary interiors, especially after post-

structuralism? The increased attention in popular magazines – but also from students – for concepts

like Fen Shui, cocooning or healing spaces, seems to suggest an affirmative answer.

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Jencks Ch. 2001. What is beauty? (online available, accessed 3 May 2010)

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