Part 2: BODY Richard Meier_Atheneum

Talicia Wagner

“We do not merely behold as spectators the relations between the parts of our body and the correlations between the visual and tactile body: we are ourselves the unifier of these arms and legs…”( M. Merleau-Ponty ,150).

“Body is not an object for ‘I think but, it is a grouping of lived through-meanings which moves towards its equilibrium” (M. Merleau-Ponty, 153).

Throughout the historical discourse of architecture, the theme of body has been considered in a multiplicity of ways. From the earliest writings of Vitruvius and Venturi, to the mid-twentieth century theories of Le Corbusier and M. Merleau-Ponty, to the contemporary critique of Eisenman, the concept of the body in architecture has taken on a range of different meanings in

ranging from representation to phenomenological. The Atheneum, by Richard Meier is an example of a modern style building, built in the post-modern era, deals with body in “not (simply) a single body, but a multiplicity of bodies” (Columina, 235).

In The Medical Body in Modern Architecture, Beatriz Columina states that architecture has a historical relationship with medicine. She likens the modern building to bodily fitness as she states, “The buildings became unconsciously identified with the healthy body” (ibid, 232), free of rotting and expired Victorian architectural ideals.

As mentioned in section one [form}, the town of New Harmony, Indiana was established as a utopian community in 1814 by a group of separatists from the German Lutheran Church. In 1829 Robert Owen, a Welsh-born industrialist and social philosopher, purchased the town. He brought a group of scientists and intellectuals, or a “boatload of knowledge”(191) as Meier refers, as the founding citizens for his communitarian experiment. Even though the social experiment failed, the community still embodies a cultural and cerebral wealth. New Harmony is the site of the early headquarters of the U.S. Geological Survey and provided the earliest geological and natural science collections for the Smithsonian Institute. This history was deliberately embedded in the Meier’s Atheneum.

“In its formal structure the Atheneum recalls the 1920s work of French architect Le Corbusier (1887-1965) of the "International Style" school, by its use of ramps, glass walls, columns and graceful curving lines.”(JAF, 1998). The modern form of the building, the pristine quality of the white porcelain panels helps enhance the building’s legibility “as a kind of medical equipment, a mechanism for protecting and enhancing the body” (Colomina 232). Meier describes the interior as also having effect as he says, “the white interior and gray carpeted floors and seating enhance the stark simplicity of the theatre” (Meier, 1984, 212). This statement also alludes to the building as being a body “naked in the sun, washed, muscled, supple” (Columina, 235).

The skin component of this naked body is represented in as a modern and ordered grid that can be likened to the cells of the epidermis.

The continuous circulation can be directly related to the human circulatory system, which makes the interior ramp, which Meier says is the “chief mediator and armature” (Meier, 199) the heart.

Columina also discusses Charles and Ray Eames. Charles Eames describes the architect is as a surgeon, as he states, “The preoccupation with self-expression is no more appropriate to the world of art than it is to the world of surgery” (235).

In The Building in Pain Anthony Vidler also talks about the transformation the body has undergone in regards to architecture. The Atheneum, arguably fits most closely with the ideas of “the building as body”(Vidler, 4), where it is closely tied to classical architecture, geometry and the Vitruvian man, as well as the “building epitomizing bodily states, or, more importantly, states of mind based on bodily sensation” (ibid).

In regards to the latter, the plan of the Atheneum is an honest and obvious correlation. The plan consists of two orthogonal grids, one, which responds to the grid of the town of New Harmony, and one that is shifted five degrees which takes its cue from the nearby river. While it seems Meier has rationalized his form based on adjacencies, the proportion and disposition of these two intertwining grids closely resembles the Vitruvian Man.

Relating to the former, The Athenium demonstrates the modern move of abstracting the human form. It is not difficult to see how the geometric arrangement of shapes could be directly viewed as a physical deconstruction of the human form. What is less visible, but

still present, is the relative projected mental state or psyche of the building. He describes it in terms of “a moment of opportunities, allowing for a universalizing abstraction and a psychology of sensation and movement, epitomized in architecture that mirrored all the states of a regenerated and healthy body, but also corresponded to a similarly healthy mind” (ibid, 6).

This idea of a healthy mind is especially fitting in connection with this building, as it is a place for orientation and learning. The auditorium inside the Athenium functions almost as the brain of the building as it is the first stop inside the building where a visitor becomes oriented. A specially made 17-minute film titled “The New Harmony Experience” is screened there for every tour. This film also functions as the first interface between the people of the New Harmony, who helped make the film, and the visitor. If this auditorium is the brain, then it seems Meier has also adopted Le Corbusier’s regard for the psyche, more than just his concern with form and body.

The building also operates relative to Michael Feher’s concerns for the modes of construction and moves on the axis of history (Feher,

1989). Vertically, Meier has strived to find a proximity to the divine. On the top end, the building is literally built on a podium of earth, as so to protect it from the flooding river, and to give it a sense of grandeur on the landscape. The vertical axis is also exploited in terms of circulation with the climax of the journey being the arrival at the roof terrace. Here they can become completely oriented with the town as well as enjoy an expansive 360-degree view of the natural landscape. On the other hand, the building acts as a kind of machine-interface. The specified circulation path and program forces the user to engage in the building in a particular way, and frames certain specific views (like the river from the river shaped window). The Atheneum also engages the transversal axis in the way that the circulation continuously flows from the inside to the outside of the building. Meier explicitly states that his circulation is designed for the user to have, upon arrival of the exhibition space on the third level “the visitor can look back on the internal route he has traveled, through staggered interior slots and windows framing the essential spaces, as well as forward to what is to come” (Meier, 199). As the visitor exits the building, they are left walking straight towards the town, where they will engage in a now informed social interaction.

work cited

Colomina, Beatriz. “The Medical Body in Modern Architecture” in Anybody, MIT PRESS, 1997. 232-235.

Feher M, ed. Fragments for a History of the Human Body 3. New York: Zone Books, 1989

Meier, R. Richard Meier Architect. 1976, Oxford University Press, New York. 196-203.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. "The Synthesis of One's Own Body", in Phenomenology of Perception, 1962, 148-153.

The Athenuem/ Visitors Centre. 2009.Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, University Library. 21 September 1998, JAF. Web http://www.ulib.iupui.edu/kade/newharmony/atheneum.html. http://liberalarts.iupui.edu/maxkade/newharmony/home.htmlAccessed 11-01-10

Vidler, Anthony. “The Building in Pain: The Body in Architecture” in AA Files 19, Architectural Association. 3-10