Celebration and Eloquent Expression

Roosevelt Middle School – An example of a celebrated and eloquent stairway (design by Mahlum Architects with Robertson/Sherwood/Architects)

The following excerpt from Bill Kleinsasser’s 1981 edition of his self-published textbook Synthesis further illustrates the emphasis he placed upon how people experience architecture. Beyond merely attending to the important task of addressing functional needs, he wanted his students to appreciate the potential of places to dramatize peoples’ lives. Connections between places and spaces were of particular interest to him. Like his Princeton classmate Charles Moore, Bill recognized the promise inherent in movement through spaces, so elements such as stairs, doors, and passageways became means to intensify the significance of entry, arrival, and departure. Additionally, he taught us to regard the act of building itself as rife with meaning and worthy of celebration. 

Though brief, this passage is packed with substance, a useful reminder for architects today who sometimes forget people actually live in, work in, and experience the buildings and places they design. Architecture is not an abstract pursuit. 

Making Things that Are “More"

When places are arranged precisely in regard to the intentions they embody, we are apt to understand those intentions. That precise arrangement may be called celebration or eloquent expression. It communicates essential information about places: the ideas, purposes, priorities, and relationships with and among those places. 

Celebration and eloquent expression in the making of places expands experience, clarifying and intensifying it. In so doing, it gives people a better chance to understand the opportunities and supports that have been provided. 

Celebrated, eloquent spaces are always vivid. Their parts are strong in themselves and precisely juxtaposed. In this sense, celebration and eloquent expression as a frame of reference is more inclusive than the frame of reference, CLEAR SUB-PARTS. 

Conversely, it is likely that connected spaces will become a celebration. Our feelings and senses depend upon deliberately and clearly established links with contextual characteristics; upon reinforcement, celebration, and dramatization of those characteristics. Without these responsive links, a supportive space is apt to lack the expressive eloquence that would cause it to be powerful, meaningful, and poetic. 

It is possible to develop elements of the built-environment to be more than they need to be in the most utilitarian sense. The result is that those elements will be more useful over time and, because of the extra concerns that went into their making, more meaningful. 

Some examples:

• Stairways that are more
• Corridors that are more
• Porches that are more
• Entries/lobbies that are more
• Walls that are more
• Columns, etc. that are MORE.