Architecture is Not Something You Can Understand Just by Looking at the Apparent - I

H. CENK DERELI

I stayed in Stockholm for three months as part of an international program organized by the Swedish Arts Grants Committee. With an official population of more than 900,000, and hosting around 1.5 million people in total, Stockholm is a seashore city where walking through the city center always ends by reaching the wilderness of nature.

stockholm, H. Cenk Dereli, urban culture

When the visible things in cites are abstracted from the invisible relations, we lose the deep perspective with regards to the meaning of the place. What makes us a town-dweller is our position among those invisible relations: relations that extend from multiple escape points, before being caught by our capable sensory organs through the power of our imagination and the deepness of our sensory skills, and finally turn into emotions.

Such an urban experience is not possible through information taken from guides or tourism agencies. It is a kind of experience that can be reached by not with the sense of a fleeting visit driven by the consumer’s hunger of a tourist, but with the consciousness of a home owner who resides in life’s unbreakable integrity, knowing that you are living in “the moment”, which is the realest piece of your life. Unfortunately, such awareness requires an excruciating amount of effort.

The Method
Just stop while you are drifting in the middle of the crowd, under the reign of the images, and close your eyes; and explore how you can sharpen your sensory organs including your skin, tongue, nose, ears, and all your unnamed sensors. Consider that there will be more people as the so-called “impossible” approaches to “the world of possibilities,” so persistently keep trying. Increase the number of the times you stop in order to sense as much as you can. Acknowledge that you will better understand yourself and your city as the borders of the areas contained by the depth of senses intertwine.

I have tried to sense Stockholm when I was awake through the method described above, which can be modified depending on personal skills. Along with my personal experience, I tried to incorporate the information I learned from the people I met, and the sources I read, into what I understood from the city, collecting it under four topics: Sunlight, Water, Life Style and the State. I will try to re-build my Stockholm experience as a city narrative by using these concepts.

Sunlight
To understand that life is ruled by sunlight is really hard for someone who hasn’t been sufficiently close to the polar circles. You have a bizarre physical experience you cannot put into words when the sun rises at around 8 a.m. after the longest night, and vanishes from the sky at around 2 p.m. This phenomenon that makes the streets melancholic and quiet during the winter, also allows the town-dwellers to rejoice with the sun until the midnight hours when the spring comes, accompanying the awakening nature.

The feelings generated by the sense of sight are quite different in a place where the angle of the rays of sunlight hitting Earth radically changes according to seasons. What is experienced with the sunlight—the most essential power that creates the spatial and visual aesthetic of the Nordic culture-is a rough wrestle that repeats itself every year. The well-trained visual artists and designers play with sunlight in peaceful and humble ways in the fields of photography, textile patterns, light designs, spatial arrangements and more. The entirety of this production is reflected on the character of the city center streets and the style of the town-dwellers who walk them, and on the destinations at the end of the walk.

Public places are illuminated with the use of specific scenarios designed to create certain desired feelings. The offices use high levels of sunlight-colored lights. Houses however use indirect lighting structures that give off a feeling of thorough consideration prior, and direct spotlights: I do not know if this is because of the existent experience with the sunlight or due to some an instinctive elegancy. There are colorful flash lights on the streets and at the parks so children, adults and dogs can safely spend time after dark. An adaptation of the effects of sunlight is found in every use of the city.

Walking towards the sun, with sunlight always hitting you in the eye almost horizontally, everything around you becomes brighter. Even if you turn your back to the sun, or take it to your side, that oblique angle forces dozens of reflected rays into your eyes when you look at the horizon. The shadows emerging from these lights bring to mind the role shadows play in perceiving the environment. The all-day lingering shadows on the vertical and horizontal surfaces blur the lines of the inflexibility of the physical environment.

The second part: Water and Lifestyle

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