To the problem of corporeality in design: the experience of "phenomenological" architecture

Filonenko Nadezhda Sergeevna ORCID: 0000-0003-1459-9272 PhD in Art History Associate Professor, Department of Graphic Design, Ural State University of Architecture and Art named for N. S. Alferov Karl Liebknecht str., 23, Sverdlovsk region, Yekaterinburg, 620075, Russia philonenkonadezhda@mail.ru Other publications by this author     Tretyakova Mariya Sergeevna ORCID: 0000-0001-7385-6609 PhD in Art History Associate Professor, Department of Graphic Design, Ural State University of Architecture and Art named for N. S. Alferov Karl Liebknecht str., 23, Sverdlovsk region, Yekaterinburg, 620075, Russia mashanadya@gmail.com

Kazakova Natalya Yurevna ORCID: 0000-0003-0006-1412 Doctor of Art History Professor of the Department of System Design, Kosygin Russian State University 35 Sadovnicheskaya str., Moscow, 119071, Russia kazakova-nu@rguk.ru

Over the past ten years, the connection between aesthetic experience and the human body has been actively discussed in English-language literature, which cannot but influence the development of design thought. In 2013, the first and so far the only collection of essays by reputable philosophers and theorists of architecture and design from around the world “Rethinking Aesthetics" was published.: The Role of Body in Design”, dedicated to rethinking the role of the body in design ^[1]. Unfortunately, when reading the book, one gets the impression that completely different texts were put together so that the reader would certainly find certain similarities in them (such an attitude, in our opinion, is quite common in English-language literature devoted to intercultural dialogue).

Thus, the collection begins with R. Shusterman's "somaesthetic reflection" on his experience of meditation in a Japanese Buddhist temple and ends with Yu. Pallasmaa on the meaning of architecture in the spirit of existential phenomenology. Although the collection includes both somaesthetics and phenomenological reasoning, it is actually difficult to conceptually combine these two areas: several years ago, an attempt was already made by philosophers and architectural theorists developing the concept of somaesthetics to link somaesthetics with phenomenology in the framework of a thematic issue of the Danish journal The Journal of Somaesthetics.”However, in our opinion, it turned out to be ineffective.

The collection of essays also contains the philosophical text of Saito Yuriko, which may seem consonant with the concept of "somaesthetics" by R. Shusterman to a native of Western culture, although, in fact, Saito Yuriko relies on a completely different philosophy and cultural and historical context (she writes that the enjoyment of lightness, comfort and aesthetic qualities of design objects forms "the feeling of belonging" of people to each other and the world around them, they have a feeling that they are being taken care of ^{[1, p. 175]}).

We believe that this "false universalism" only complicates the intercultural dialogue, rather than facilitating it. Therefore, today it is necessary to form a "multidimensional understanding space" in order to see the advantages of one or another "body-oriented" approach in terms of the development of design theory and practice. As part of the research, we will be primarily interested in understanding physicality, since culturally determined differences in its understanding can lead designers to completely different design solutions.

In this article, we do not set ourselves the task of describing all existing approaches to "body-oriented" design. We will turn only to the most influential of them – the phenomenological "theory" of architecture, which the Hungarian philosopher B. Veres even proclaims (albeit in a greatly simplified form) as a new "paradigm" of modern aesthetics ^[2]. We emphasize that in our choice we are guided not by the pragmatic idea that the architectural environment determines the daily experience of a person, as B. Veres does, but by the fact that it is in architectural science that the "theory" of design has been formulated today, based on phenomenology, which, unlike other philosophical trends, represents a "possible knowledge" is a "project philosophy" ^[3].

Let's start with the concept of "physicality", which in the phenomenological "theory" of architecture, according to S. V. Petrushikhina, is understood as "a set of kinesthetic sensations in muscles, joints and skin" ^{[4, p. 674]}. Accordingly, arcs, according to her, seem more pleasant to the observer than zigzags, since they "echo the smooth movements of muscles" ^{[4, p. 675]}. M. R. Nevlyutov, a researcher of phenomenological concepts in architecture, somewhat expands the understanding of physicality (including the action of the human subconscious mind as a whole), saying, for example, that the spire of a tower inspires the body with the experience of vertical movement ^{[5, p. 47]}.

Eastern architects understand physicality differently, and they are usually put on the same level as Western phenomenological architects. For example, in Japan, the importance of bodily perception of architecture was recognized by Arata Isozaki, who saw in rubble the "last stage before the disappearance" of the building's body and the appearance of a "productive void" physically lived by a person, similar to a cleared place for a meeting with Shinto gods ^[6]. Another step in the same direction was taken by the modern Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, who began designing buildings as if from a multitude of repeating "particles". According to him, these "particles" are psychological landmarks for moving a person in space, that is, they allow a person to feel their connection with the world. He writes: "The world is not something that consists of dots, lines and planes, it is textures consisting of dots, lines and planes" ^[7]. That is, based on the understanding of the world as "one-bodied", where everything is connected to everything, the architect does not divide the world into matter and spirit (texture is both concrete and abstract for him). In other words, physicality is understood by Eastern architects as the communication of everything with everything, therefore, the material aspect of the world for them always indicates its otherness (the non-materiality of the world).

The different understanding of physicality by Western and Eastern architects leads to the formation of essentially different design approaches. The most obvious differences are in architects' understanding of the movement of the body in space and touching the material, so we will focus in detail on these aspects of the perception of architecture.

1. "Architecture of the promenade" as a source of bodily experience

1.1. S. Hall: the study of the connection of the human body with the environment through its movement through the architectural space

Being a revolutionary in spirit and a proponent of the formation of a "dynamic" architecture, S. Hall criticized deconstructivism for its essentially static depiction of movement, calling it a "caricature of dynamics" ^{[8, p. 230]}. Only the passage of a person through space, according to S. Hall, allows architecture to dynamically unfold.

It is no coincidence that researchers draw an analogy between the projects of S. Hall and the paintings of P. Klee ^{[9, p. 79]}, whose creative process is characterized by the Russian phenomenologist V. A. Podoroga as follows: "Something warms up, then gets colder, then unfolds and makes the path difficult, suddenly breaks off or, on the contrary, slides" ^{[10, p. 198]}. Similarly, for S. Hall, architecture is defined by "a flowing, watery, luminous space that is most strongly felt at night in the city" ^{[9, p. 81]}.

Since, according to S. Hall, only the human body is capable of spatially perceiving the architectural environment, the interior of the building turns out to be more important for him than the exterior. It is no coincidence that his first watercolor sketches "most often represent spaces seen from the inside from the point of view of the layman," rather than from the outside ^{[9, p. 329]}. Accordingly, externally, the architectural objects of S. Hall usually resemble curved bridges or passages between buildings.

Let's add that in his projects, S. Hall seeks to overcome the perspective-horizontal perception of space in order to create a space with an "indefinite flow of perspectives" (this concept was named "parallax" by him) ^{[8, p. 13]}. It is important for him that the human body in the formed spaces turns, twists, moves up and down ^{[8, p. 26]}, that is, space for a person was a source of intense proprioceptive experience. To do this, the architect uses ramps, stairs and experiments with vertically elongated spaces. He even comes to the concept of a "porous" space with interconnected public spaces at different levels, which open up the possibility for a person to move in different directions ^{[8, p. 303]}.

An example of a "porous" space is the University of Iowa Fine Arts Building (2016) (Figure 1). The concept of S. Hall is for the architectural environment to facilitate the interaction of people with each other, because even if people are in different parts of the building, they have the opportunity to see each other through the atrium spaces.

Let's add that the central atrium space of the building, which offers a view of the sky, is a conceptual "reflection" of the neighboring building, built by S. Hall in 2006, next to a deep reservoir and a small sheer cliff formed as a result of limestone mining. It should be noted that S. Hall, in principle, often uses water surfaces in his projects, which act as "phenomenal lenses" that change space, refract rays of light and return the viewer to the "poetic unpredictability of constantly changing weather" ^{[9, p. 82]}.

As a small generalization, we note that when S. Hall strives to "reveal the invisible" in his projects, he turns to the potential of a particular place, creating conditions for the formation of a diverse proprioceptive experience in humans, as well as a rich experience of living the resulting spatial "flow". It can be said that the architecture of S. Hall is architecture, as if turned outwards, formed based on the inner experience of a person moving freely in space.

1.2. Wang Shu: the bodily experience of wandering through architectural "mountains" as an impulse for a person to realize the spiritual path

The modern Chinese architect Wang Shu develops the concept of dynamic architectural space in a different way. He is not interested in the three-dimensional "flow of space", not in the feeling of three-dimensionality of architecture through passing through it, but in the experience of the path itself, or, more precisely, the experience of a person walking through the mountains.

In order to reveal his idea, the architect uses a term from Chinese traditional art "guanxiang" (lit. "to see and reflect"), which he defines as meditative contemplation of the image of mountains, or rather, living through contemplation of a pictorial scroll of the artist's personal experience of meditative wandering through the mountains ^[11]. It is no coincidence that the architect draws inspiration from traditional Chinese gardens and Shangshui landscape painting. "mountains and waters") ^[12].

In the Chinese tradition, a walk in the garden "evokes the experience of "incessant renewal", the constant rediscovery of the world" ^{[13, p. 187]} or, in the words of the Hong Kong philosopher Yuka Hui, fosters sensitivity in a person at the level of the body and psyche, which, in his words, can only save his mind "from illusion [omniscience]" ^{[14, p. 281]}.

As for the painting "shangshui", in an effort to explain its meaning to the Western reader, Yuk Hui relies on the idea of "key points" by the French philosopher G. Simondon, who wrote that "the lighthouse on the edge of the reef overlooking the sea is beautiful because it is inserted into a key point of the geographical and human world" ^{[15, p. 13]}. In other words, Shangshui painting, as well as the organization of the Chinese garden, is based on the intuitive search by the master for the appropriate position ("resonance points") for each element (often unlike one another) in the "single body" of the world space. This is probably what Wang Shu is talking about when he points out that an architectural drawing may seem "clumsy and awkward", but in reality it must correspond exactly to a specific place ^{[11, p. 71]}.

According to Wang Shu, mountains symbolize the place where we came from ^{[11, p. 38]} (obviously, we are talking about the archetype of the harmonious unity of Heaven and Earth), which means that walking in the mountains is understood by him as the practice of returning a person to the original harmony, a physical way to realize the spiritual path.

The Xiangshan Campus of the Chinese Academy of Arts in Hangzhou (2007) can be cited as an example of how this idea is reflected in architectural practice (Figure 2). As is customary in the Chinese tradition, the campus is located in a mountainous area far from cities, since it is believed that such an arrangement forms the tendency of students to contemplation and reflection ^[16]. Also, in accordance with tradition, when "the building is surrounded by galleries and verandas that soften the transition from the interior of the house to the open space" ^{[13, p. 168]}, the campus structures are connected to each other by passages, some of the houses have stairs and ramps extending outside and stretching along the facades, as well as triangular roofs with walking paths. It is important for us that a person's movement along these crossings and ramps forms his experience of walking through the "mountains", during which he "views the mountains beyond the mountains" ^[12], that is, he can gain a "spiritualizing" bodily experience, as if in a "pure" form.

According to Wang Shu, when developing the project of this campus, he was inspired by the scroll of the Sung artist Li Gonglin "Mountain Village" (c. XI century). With a vertical size of an album sheet, the length of this scroll exceeds 3.5 m. According to the architect, such proportions of the scroll do not allow it to be perceived entirely without loss of image details, however, its proportions make the viewer think that "the world cannot be described in simple ways" ^{[11, p. 30]}. That is, in order to perceive the world as a whole, a person needs to see it in all its diversity.

One of the traditional ways for China to create a "diverse" environment, which has been applied on campus, is the use of reservoirs. Revealing the meaning of water in the context of the Chinese garden, V. V. Malyavin writes that, on the one hand, water is "a mirror of the world, the embodiment of the peace of emptiness and the unknown twin of all images, preserved by the play of reflections," and on the other hand, water is "a sign of perpetual motion, pure fluidity," it fills the space with life ^{[13, p. 160]} (it is no coincidence that Wang Shu launches "red fish" with a "whimsical tail shape" into the pond, the contemplation of which in China is traditionally associated with the development of "lively" human sensitivity ^{[13, p. 161]}).

If we compare Wang Shu's design approach with that of S. Hall, it becomes obvious that his projects are not about intensifying the proprioceptive experience (the source of which, in an extremely simplified form, can be, for example, a roller coaster), but about creating conditions for a person to experience the path itself. Wang Shu has no desire to "turn" architecture inside out, thereby proclaiming a return to personal human experience (it is no coincidence that S. Hall even lifts many buildings off the ground, thereby showing that they are in the plane "above" the world, that is, they are "manifest buildings" expressing the idea of freedom). Wang Shu architecture is, in essence, an extension of nature, a living "landscape", that is, it is no longer architecture, or rather, the "shadow" of architecture, allowing you to see its root natural image. It is also an architecture that promotes the development of human sensitivity, and it completely lacks the Western spirit of freedom and heroism.

2. "Material" architecture as a source of bodily experience

2.1. Y. Pallasmaa: the human body as the semantic core of architecture

The Finnish architect Yu. Pallasmaa is best known as an author of books and essays on architecture. His textbook theoretical and philosophical work is the book “The eyes of the skin” (1996), in which the author considers architecture as an extension of the human body and focuses on the importance of tactile sensations in its perception. According to him, touch "unites our perception of the world with our own perception of ourselves" ^{[17, p. 10]}, that is, architecture, in essence, is the "flesh of the world", to use the term M. Merleau-Ponty.

Yu. Pallasmaa is interested in the material aspect of architecture, or rather, its material "honesty". Natural materials (stone, brick and wood), according to Yu. Pallasmaa, "allow our vision to penetrate their surfaces and allow us to verify the truthfulness of matter." He adds: "Natural materials express their age and history, as well as the history of their origin and human use" ^{[17, p. 31]}. In other words, Y. Pallasmaa sees beauty in the susceptibility of natural materials to natural aging. The architect writes that "the fear of signs of wear and age is associated with our fear of death" ^{[17, p. 33]}, however, he does not emphasize that architecture is "mortal", as, for example, Wang Shu does: architecture, according to Yu. Pallasmaa is meant to promise eternity.

Let's add to the above that, according to Yu. According to Pallasmaa, the material side of architecture is inseparable from its spiritual side, since architecture for him is both a craft, referring to tradition as an evolutionary process, and an art that allows a person to develop as a person, to "build" himself. He writes: "When working, both the artist and the craftsman directly interact with their body and their existential experience..." ^{[17, p. 12]}. Under the existential experience of Yu. Pallasmaa understands the experience that allows a person to "penetrate into the very mystery of human existence" ^{[1, p. 218]}.

The man, according to Yu. Pallasmaa perceives the world around him (and, accordingly, creates a new world of architecture) as if by touch, because, according to scientific data, all senses, including vision, "are a continuation of tactile sensations" ^{[17, p. 10]}. That's why Yu. Pallasmaa does not consider it important to strive for realistic images in design sketches: he writes that buildings "may appear vague, fragmentary or incomplete in drawings, since [their] appearance is aimed solely at qualities arising in a situation of life experience" ^[18].

Tactile sensations for Yu. Pallasmaa are not just the most important way of perceiving the world, but they are the key to the "mind" of the body. J. Pallasmaa cites the example of writing a poem by hand, when the poet feels that the poem in the process of writing "strives for some understanding of himself" ^[19]. We can say that architecture partly builds itself as soon as concrete material appears in the architect's hands.

It is not by chance that Yu is an "inspiring example" of good architecture. Pallasmaa cites the architectural environment of the Japanese garden with its "subtle combination of natural and artificial morphology" ^[18]. He probably sees in this not just the co–creation of man and nature, but the consistent unity of the material level of being and the spiritual, because, if we recall Japanese rock gardens, they work on two levels: the first, representative, on which time-affected stones focus human attention on specific features of the landscape, and the second, abstract, - when stones are perceived as hollow, they open up a world of spiritual joy to a person ^{[20, p. 79]}. One way or another, the consistency of the material and spiritual levels, according to Yu. Pallasmaa is provided by a "reasonable" human body.

We add that, since Yu. Pallasmaa turns to the "mind" of the body, for him the contemplation of architecture and the design itself become "slow" processes. In one of his essays, he writes: "Architecture should slow down experience, stop time and protect the natural slowness of our embodied perception..." ^{[1, p. 228]}. And in his earlier book “The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture" (2009), specifically devoted to the description of an intuitive design method, J. Pallasmaa cites the example of A. Aalto, who for five years made "naive drawings" of fantastic landscapes, as if unrelated to the project, but then based on these drawings he designed the building. Pallasmaa also emphasizes that A. Aalto always carried with him a roll of tracing paper, which allowed him to engage in "thinking" on paper according to the principle of "automatic writing" ^[19]. In other words, for Yu. Pallasmaa, the most important role in the process of architectural and artistic creation is played not only by the muscle memory of the body, but also by the work of the human subconscious mind in general.

2.2. Tadao Ando: "meeting" with the materiality of architecture to comprehend the spirituality of the world

Tadao Ando belongs to the post-war generation of Japanese architects, who enthusiastically discovered the Western world. In his own words, when he first started self-education, architecture for him meant exclusively "Western architecture" ^{[21, p. 220]}. Tadao Ando's desire to discover Western culture in general is indicated by the fact that he interacted with Japanese artists of the Gutai group (Japanese for "concrete" as opposed to "abstract"), who sought to contribute to the development of Western contemporary art in their bold experiments. Following the artists of "Gutai" (Japanese "gutai" 具体 can be literally translated as "the use of the body"), who sought to "concretely [with the help of the body] comprehend abstract art" [Gutai Art Manifesto // http://web.guggenheim.org/exhibitions / gutai/data/manifesto.html ], Tadao Ando began to create "physically" understandable abstractions that generate an attitude towards the building as a living body ^{[21, p. 24]}.

The architect's calling card is rectangular concrete walls with a fine texture, reminiscent, according to him, of the paper of traditional Japanese partitions, which in Japan is commonly compared with the delicate surface of the skin. At the same time, unlike most contemporary architects, Tadao Ando began his career with residential architecture, creating a maze-like space in a small area, which he himself called "the fundamental space of emotions", emphasizing his interest in the internal structure of experience ^{[21, p. 24]}.

Theoretically, following the Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitaro, in the late 1980s, the architect turned to the Japanese word "shintai" (Japanese for "human body"), indicating an empty body, a body as a "place of non-being" or "as a predisposition, as just a resonance, a receptacle." active intuition interacting with the world" ^{[21, p. 25]}.

In shintai, for Tadao Ando, the "material" aspect is associated with the "spiritual," he writes: "When [with the help of the body] "I" perceive concrete as something cold and hard, "I" recognize the body as something warm and soft" ^{[22, p. 21]}. In other words, the material allows a person to feel his feeling self ^{[23, p. 22]}, as well as to discover a connection with other people through the unity of the experience lived with them (Nisida's idea of transubjectivity).

According to the architect, it is through "syntai" that the Western and Eastern worldviews, which differ from each other, are connected – "geometric, three-dimensional and vertical" forms with "natural, horizontal and spatial forms" ^{[22, p. 21]}. Actually, it was through bodily experience that the young Tadao Ando, who did not yet have sufficient knowledge of architecture, realized that mathematics "rules the Parthenon" ^{[21, p. 220]}.

As far as we can tell, even Tadao Ando understands the dialectic of Western thinking "concretely", through the body, turning it into the practice of asceticism (probably influenced by his personal experience of boxing). Thus, according to the architect, a person's "spiritual sensitivity" should be developed through a "sense of tension" inside the buildings he designed. Accordingly, "houses should be spaces that can be described as animalistic, even violent, where a person must fight for survival" ^{[21, p. 92]}. We are talking about the openness of the interior of architecture, for example, to the wind due to the lack of glass in the window openings or rain - when, in order to get from the living room to the kitchen, a person is forced to walk through an open space, risking falling into the rain.

Asceticism in the Japanese tradition is something that a person cannot achieve enlightenment without. The famous Japanese Buddhist scholar D. Suzuki wrote: "Satori usually breaks out when a person exhausts all their resources" ^{[24, p. 251]}. According to him, Zen Buddhism was from the very beginning a "religion of the will" and was closely connected with the life of the samurai class ^{[24, p. 68]}.

One of Tadao Ando's most austere projects is the Azuma Building in Osaka, known as Row House (1976) (Figure 4). It is "the result of minimizing points of contact with the outside world" (since, according to the architect, urban space is chaos), while in its shaded spaces there is light penetrating through an open courtyard, which, according to Tadao Ando, is perceived as "a plea directed to the sky" (the light protrudes for him, "the source of all things" ^{[23, p. 24]}). According to the architect, simple geometry gives such buildings an "independent character", "strength", and a sense of materiality – "depth", it allows you to create "a rich space that enters into a dialogue with nature" ^{[21, p. 226]}.

Understanding "xingtai" as a "significant [empty] space" ^{[21, p. 45]}, leads Tadao Ando to use the philosophical category "ma", which, according to the architect, is not just a pause, but a "space for reflection" ^{[21, p. 46]}. He adds: "Ma should not be thought of as a peaceful, moderate phenomenon, but rather as a place of fierce struggle. My goal is to penetrate people's souls with this deeply disturbing concept of ma" ^{[21, p. 95]}.

In his interpretation, the architect seems to bring "ma" closer to the most important Zen concept of "kufu", which D. Suzuki understands as a state of struggle that allows a person to "break through hopelessness", to get out of the deadlock of contradictory thoughts. The Buddhist writes: "If the intellect is powerless, you can rely on the will, but willpower will not be able to overcome the impasse. /.../ No teaching, no outside help will help. The solution can come only from the innermost, only from within." According to him, kufu is something that awakens spirituality. He also adds that kufu is "a state where the whole body participates in solving a problem" ^[25]. It can be said that with the help of the empty space enclosed between concrete walls, Tadao Ando makes it possible for a person to comprehend the meaning of his existence through the body.

According to Masao Furuyama's subtle remark, Tadao Ando creates the conditions for "experiencing [us] the exact moment when an object or form firmly rooted in reality is transformed into an abstraction, which we call [empty] space" ^{[21, p. 136]}. It is no coincidence that Tadao Ando "conceives all the work in an instant after a relatively short period of gestation", then his staff "develop and test a number of preliminary schemes proposed by the architect almost in passing" ^{[22, p. 20]}.

His approach can be compared to writing haiku, the brevity of which D. Suzuki associates with the sincerity of expressing feelings. He's writing: "So, at a crucial moment, being on the verge of life and death, we just let out a scream or commit some act, but we never argue, we never go into long arguments" ^{[24, p. 257]}. The Buddhist scholar also emphasizes that haiku is "an expression of temporary enlightenment when we penetrate into the essence of things" ^{[24, p. 258]}.

Before proceeding to the conclusion, we add that R. Shusterman, in an effort to combine the tradition of American pragmatism with the Chinese way of thinking, also refers to the word "xingtai" (Chinese "shenti") as a synonym for the word "soma" ^{[26, p. 23]}. He is only interested in the "Westernized" meaning of this word, since he focuses on the task of increasing a person's bodily awareness, while turning the person himself into a "bodily consumer." By "shanti" R. Shusterman means a way of perceiving the world in which bodily sensations and rational reflection are combined (accordingly, human life for R. Shusterman acts only as a "source of rich and useful aesthetic experience [for reflection]" ^{[1, p. 25]}).

Conclusion

The difference in the understanding of physicality as the "embodiment" of a person (in the West) and as the "communication" of a person with the world (in the East), indicated at the beginning of the study, leads to the formation of two different design approaches.

As far as we can tell, the "Western" approach to "phenomenological" architecture is realized in the architect's desire to overcome the speculative perception of architecture through the formation of a rich proprioceptive-kinesthetic experience of the recipient. As a result, the need for the recipient to understand the architect's design concept fades into the background – it becomes more important for him to fill the architectural environment with personal content, although in accordance with the capabilities of a particular "body" of architecture. At the same time, the process of constructing meaning stretches over time, requiring a person to immerse himself in various sensations of his own body (as well as personality development in intellectual and emotional terms).

The "Eastern" approach, in turn, is aimed at forming the experience of a person's "one–bodyedness" with the world, when a person's consciousness opens up simultaneously to a multitude of scenarios - we can say that consciousness "thinks" through the body in the "space between" (this "ambiguity" of "thinking" is the famous French sinologist F. Julien even proclaims the modern mission of Western thought ^[27]). It is assumed that a person at the level of bodily consciousness enters into resonance with the world, which means that he is able to react instantly, ideally anticipating any changes in it.

The "Eastern" approach looks very attractive due to the high pace of modern life, however, we emphasize that the flip side of its rapidity is the transformation of design practice into a way of life, if not into a way of spiritual asceticism (it is no coincidence, for example, Wang Shu considers himself an intellectual "wen–ren" and calls himself an "architect-an amateur," that is, in the Chinese tradition, an architect who designs to develop his spiritual sensitivity ^[28]). Although it opens up a space that is difficult to scientifically reflect on, we must admit that it is Oriental architects who naturally manage to minimize their presence in an architectural object (in order to allow the world to "manifest itself"): the world-famous Japanese minimalism, in our opinion, is nothing more than a way for the architect to unobtrusively conceal his "I" a specific person and place.