Place Space Object
Anecdote From an Old-Growth City
When you step inside of the Pantheon you have the curvature of the earth beneath your feet. You have the rings of the Heavens encircled and opening upward as a portal above your head. You stand in a space that recognizes you as man and reflects an understanding of your place in the world back to you, in the way only an intimate can gaze at you knowingly. It turns something that is abstractly known into an experience. The Pantheon is an image read phenomenologically and is therefore a piece of poetry living frozen in form.
One morning, back when I was living in Rome myself and three friends decided on a whim that we should go visit the Pantheon that day. On our walk from Piazza di Santa Maria Trastevere, through Campo de Fiori, we noticed a café that we had never been to before. Someone suggested we stop and get coffee. When we stepped inside I immediately noticed a handsome American at the bar. It’s strange how some people take hold of your attention for you. Our eyes crossed and as I ordered coffee he asked me about my accent. I told him I was Canadian and we chatted about what brought us to Rome. He had just been to Cordoba and I was due to go in a few week’s time. This seemed like a nice coincidence, then after we finished our espresso the four of us left.
We arrived at the Pantheon, we took photos, we sat and sketched, and after a while we decided we should make our way to the Church of The Four Fountains. But just as we had left the piazza, rain clouds cracked open wide. None of us had an umbrella, so we ran back to the Pantheon for shelter. Rain streamed in through the edges of the oculus and flowed outward along the marble floor, betraying its subtle slopes. We reasoned that the weather was too miserable to bother with the rest of our journey. The plan changed to head home and prepare lunch after the rain eased. As the high sun started to burn its way through the clouds there was an unearthly yellow light filling the space. There I saw the American again. He was happily heading straight for us and said something like, ‘hello stranger’ or, ‘longtime no see’, against the backdrop of dripping rain. After a bit of ‘funny to see you here’ chit chat, he asked what I was doing next, he had planned to go to the Church of the Four Fountains and he had an umbrella.
Buildings and squares, Cities, are for more than just their ‘function’. Over the last 2000 years the Pantheon has stood still, and has been so many different kinds of buildings while maintaining more or less the same form. rarely has it served a distinct function. Form does not follow function and often function does not follow anything. But in that moment we can see the Pantheon as it is, as so much greater than either of those things. Through story, it isn’t a thing, It isn’t an object, it isn’t a function, so much more than that, it is a place. I fear sometimes that Architects have forgotten about the excesses within this distinction. That what it means to create a place, is not therefore bound up in some prescription of requirements; it is always only an opportunity. And within a freely given, freely taken opportunity, affliction simply cannot abide.