Instrumentalization of Domestic Space in a Psychological Dimension of the Threshold Between Life and Death

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​Katarina Andjelkovic

Atelier AG Andjelkovic, Serbia

 

The starting point of the presentation is the contradictions in Adolf Loos’s attitudes that, I  will argue, provide the last chance for architects to adapt to the contents and life forms,  in favor of the devaluation of objective world. Although Loos (1870-1933) fiercely  opposes a possible combination of functionality of the building with excitement and  emotions, a contradiction comes to the surface in his statement: “Architecture excites  feelings in man.” This is particularly evident in the design of his house for the performer  Josephine Baker (1906-1975), for whom Loos constructed a pastiche of narratives that  relate his architecture to sensuality, voyeurism, pleasure and a site of imagination, but  also to alienation and opposing psychological drives such as introspection and despair  that encapsulate the complexities of the melancholic condition. By subverting the  objective use of Loos’s architectural elements, the presentation focuses on the  melancholic operation of ‘architectural psychological dimension’ in manipulating the  spatial organization inside the house. I look at the dancer as the soul and body-carrying  figure which affects space in multiple dimensions. The body and soul of Josephine  Baker is explored as metaphor for an interweaving of the psychological experience,  grounded in particular locales within the home such as walls and wall cuts, windows and  a pool. The hypothesis is that: if a turn of the century modern house was a reflection of  its inhabitants’ troubled psyches and repressed secrets then, with Loos, domestic space  becomes instrumentalized in a psychological dimension of the threshold between life  and death. Accordingly, the study will focus on Loos’s revolutionary design for the never  built Josephine Baker House (1927), by uncovering the potential for architecture to  embody the fluidity of human experience. I will operate in the gap between a ‘possibility’  and ‘spatial occupation’, when the house and its very physical parts and spaces  themselves become the agents of death. The aim is to disclose architectural scenario  as a means to expand human consciousness through some of the greatest questions of  humankind - life and death.