REPETITION

PROF.DR. AYŞE ŞENTÜRERYRD.DOÇ.DR. FUNDA UZ

MAHSA SAFAEI PHD STUDENT IN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

ADT – ARCHITECTUREDESIGNANDTHEORY

2013 – 2014

Abstract

This research is an attempt to make a clear understanding of the term “repetition” and to consider its different dimensions. To achieve this aim, in the first part, the link between repetition concept with difference and rhythm concepts is investigated, subsequently, different ideas of the great thinkers and philosophers identifying repetition studied and its role has been completely depicted. Later on, its relation with architecture has been taken into consideration.Lastly, the role of repetition in the contemporary architecture is defined.

Definition

Repetition is a word with many meanings. In an immediate sense it points backward, because that which is repeated has already been. Repetition is that the same thing happens again. Repetition is something which is to happen.

The Significance of Repetition – The modern view

Repetition has a very important role in modem philosophy.

Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Gilles Deleuze are four great thinkers of repetition in the modern era; this attention shows the importance of the term. Modernity's principle is repetition. It targets to make everything similar and eradicate uniquness. Le Corbusier remarks that, `Repetition dominates everything. In the scope of architecture, repetition has a crucial role in economy and speed of construction which is also the representation of industrialization (mass production). Le Corbusier (1987), emphasizes that it is not possible to produce industrially at normal prices without mass production; it is impossible to solve the housing problem without it'.

Modern architecture

Modernists came into a suggestion that the architect’s task was to simply emulate his predecessors, or even recombine their styles in novel ways. All the same, they accepted repeatability in the form of standardization in their designs.Only by designing repeatable models could their buildings be mass-produced. Mass production, mass repetition, was of course one of the unshakeable foundations of Modern Architecture.

Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus, in his 1925 book The New Architecture, compares the buildings of the modern with modern attire in the social life. He asserted that the repetition of standardized parts, and the use of identical materials in different buildings, will have the same effect on the aspect of our towns as uniformity in modern attire has in social life.

Fig1. Left to right: Yugo-Zapadniy Okryg—Moscow, 2008., Ghatkopar Wadi—Mumbai, India, 2009. Sanatorium i Szpital Uzdrowiskowy “Równica” in Ustron, Poland was built between 1971-1973., Santa Teresa, Rio de Janeiro, 2008.Photo: Marcus Lyon [IV]

Repetition and Difference

Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Gilles Deleuze are four great thinkers of repetition in the modern era. All of them believe that repetition does not mean to return to the previous thing or issue completely. There always changes that makes the new thing different, thus it is a new event or thing with specific properties.Repetition only makes simulation of the past thing or event possible, so its effectiveness and elegance process are new and different. Repetition revives the existence possibility of the thing that had existed before and

simulates it again; yet this claim is a bit paradoxical. Repeating something means to revive it again and possible. Thus, this is the creation of difference which is repeated. Every time that we think and keep some thing in the mind, some parts of its information drop, it is not completely kept like its original. However, the memory helps to remember past events and images with some changes and differences. During the course of repetitions, meanings are transitory, emerging, dissolving and being altered.Deleuzean difference, is itself generated through the process of repetition: “Difference inhabits repetition,” or rather, “Difference lies between two repetitions”.

Referring to Deleuze’s difference and repetition, there is an attempt to show how art actualizes becoming in many forms.Kierkegaard emphasizes that repetition is a becoming.Duchamp’s Fountain began as a rather readymade object—a urinal—showing that everything can be an art piece. His unique action stunned every one but, later on it was placed into the realm of art where it became an ongoing event. According to Deleuze, copies of the urinal are continually repeating time through the mode of representation.

Repetition and Rhythm

Regular repetition is accomplished by repeating a visual element at regular intervals. By repeating an element multiple times, one can create a relaxed piece. Rhythm can be achieved through the arrangement of similar elements in a kind of varied repetition.  Each element might be a slightly different size or color so as to lead the eye. Rhythm is a concept of systematic repetition where there is a sense of continuity, recurrence or organization of movement in space and time. In architecture, rhythm is in

the building elements – columns, windows, walls, doors, lines, shapes, forms, or colors.. In the scope of sociology, Henri Lefebvre uses the term “rhythm” to identify “everyday life”; he shows interralation between time and space in the realm of everyday life. Asserting that movement through space in the cities with the timescale represents the rhythm of our body and the society which provides and insight to everyday life. For him, rhythm is to think time and space together which cause movement in the everyday life; there is no rhythm without repetition in time and in space and without returns. He uses rhythm as a tool to listen to a house, a street and a town. In the modern era, (social) time and

(social) space of the cities constituting rhythm enter into the everyday life. Rhythm reunite time as a quantitative element and space as a qualitative and results from them.

Repetition in Art

“Repetition is a powerful means of intensifying inner emotion and at the same time creating a primitive rhythm which is in turn a means of attaining a primitive harmony in every form of art.” (Kandinsky,1923)

Francis bacon is a expresiyonist modern painter that tries to emphasize sensation. He declares sensation in several orders, levels and domains. Each painting is a moving

sequence within a series asserting repetition difference. Trying to paint different orders of the same sensation creates repetition which holds difference each time it is painted.

Repetition in Architecture

Repetition is one of the basic principles of design that can be demonstrated through points repeated in a variety of ways.Repetition as “rhythm” suggests a musical analogy. In architecture, however, rhythm is realized in space.

Static repetition include three dimensions of space, excluding the dimension of time.

Repetition and Contemporary Architecture

Repetition stirs a different kind of discomfort in contemporary architects. For the contemporary architects, repetitive appearance of the modern architecture was so problematic.Solving the problem, to hybridize elements of modernism with classicism. Besides the postmodernists, however, hoped to depart from the modern movement. They looks for continuous programmatic variations rather than the

repetition of strict function types, writes Patrik Schumacher in “the Autopoiesis of Architecture”.

References

I. Deleuze, Giles, Difference and Repetition, Translated by Paul Patton, London: Continuum 2004.

II. Neil Maycroft, 2002. Repetition and Difference: Lefebvre, Le Corbusier and Modernity's (Im)moral Landscape, History of Art & Material Culture, University of Lincoln

III. Janet Henriksen, An Investigation of Rhythm and Repetition in Architectural Theory and Precedent

IV. Ross Wolfe, Repetition-Compulsion: World-Historical Rhythms in Architecture, e-flux journal #54. April 2014.

V. Ame Gren, "Repetition" and the Concept of Repetition

VI. Gregory Minissale, Duchamp’s Fountain and Deleuze’s Repetition and Difference, Drain Magazine, 2014.

VII. Patrik Schumacher, The Autopoiesis of Architecture, Vol.2: A New Agenda for Architecture, John Wiley & Sons Ltd., London 2012

VIII. http://designinthevisualarts.blogspot.com.tr/p/repetition-and-rhythm.html