ABSTRACT
The dea of a refuge from the world, the monk’s cell, even the garden shed as a place of escape for a ppe and medtaton, has an ancent and venerable hertage. The cell – an enclosed (small) volume of space, separated by ts walls and roof from everywhere else, s one of the fundamental and most powerful elements of archtecture. Its power derves from ts phenomenologcal effects. Steppng from the open ar nto a cell, and closng the door, you are transported nto a radcally dfferent stuaton, one that can take a
nfused wth the perfume of tmber. There are obvous metaphors wth the womb, and wth the skull – the nteror of one’s own head. Gong nto a small cell has a psychologcal effect. Insde, you can relax, take a breath, thnk, reflect, perhaps pray. At the begnnng of her book The Private Life of the Brain (2002) Susan Greenfield wrtes of the powerful effect just a few words can have on our emotonal state. Our experence of archtecture can have emotonal effects too. Antono Damaso refers to them at the begnnng of hs book, The
T W E N T Y B U I L D I N G S e v e r y a r c h i t e c t s h o u l d u n d e r s t a n d
‘I have always been intrigued by the specific moment when, as we sit waiting in the audience, the door to the stage opens and a performer steps into the light; or, to take the other perspective, the moment when a performer who waits in semi-darkness sees the same door open, revealing the lights, the stage, and the audience. I realized some years ago that the moving quality of this moment, whichever point of view one takes, comes from its embodiment of an instance of birth, of passage through a threshold that separates a protected but limiting shelter from the possibility and risk of a world beyond and ahead.’
