Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999 | Page 7

Spaces of Seduction and Desire:
Temples of Pleasure
“There is no doubt that architecture has a sensual, an erotic com
ponent, like life itself and people inhabiting space. The last de
cades of contemporary, sterile conceptions of archi-ecture have
had the effect of negating what for us human beings is such an
important aspect”'

What if architecture was that which continually lured, tempted, seduced
and transformed? What if architecture was not a building but a making, a sexy
seduction into possible, dangerously delightful worlds? What if architecture could
stimulate the imagination and offer the prospect of pleasure, thereby uniting the
head and the belly, fantasy and reality.
For many generations any architect who aimed for, or attempted to expe
rience pleasure in architecture, was considered decadent. Insisting on elementary
forms, grids, and axis was a deliberate regression to a secure order. A male order.
When we walk through the clean, empty, official but soulless office build
ings, shopping malls, parking garages or airports, we are in environments that are
meant to reflect a science of efficiency that has determined that there should be
only as much building as strictly needed to perform a particular task, instead of
representing the possibility of places where we could build new relationships —
places of contemplation, absorption or interaction.
The contemporary city with its sensory deprivation, dullness, monotony
and tactile sterility, the world of the straight streets, proud erections and rational
relationships is largely a man made world. Most of us, however, see our world as
alien, uncomfortable, visually and physically depriving and even dangerous. There
are grand structures, impressive palaces and skyscrapers displaying human ambi
tion and power. They are cold, oppressive and inhuman. Women’s interior spaces
are warm, sheltering, rich and comfortable, an almost scary contrast to logic and
basic need from an intellectual point of view. However, from a psychological
point of view, these spaces are so desperately desired and spiritually comforting.
Louis Sullivan attached “feminine” qualities as inappropriate to public buildings,
as well as for public life. True architecture was to be virile, forceful and straight
forward. “Women have wombs and men have penises: ergo women protect and
men project. Men rule the outside, women rule the inside..
However, the dan
ger or reality of female nature threatens to pervert, seduce or even destroy the
clear-cut and clean structures that men create.