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Floor
The floor is the customary technology for negotiating between gravity and the upright body. Every step is magnetized to its surface. It is the architectural element that is almost always touching the body. Floors can fall away or out from under, but they are usually there, idling beneath us.
Throughout most of its history, the floor has been a basic assumption, often a starting point. Occasionally, it has been a place to display elaborate patterns and graphic story telling, or a surface reflecting mathematical fascinations like tessellation. But for eons, the floor was simply the surface of the earth or a technical, architectural response to make that surface more habitable or useful. It has also sometimes been a muted registration of cultural practices and construction technologies. From prayer rugs to tatami grids to basketball courts, the floor has established a few presumed, if unspoken, rules of the game.
A contemplation of architectural elements does not assemble an encyclopedia or reinforce a canon. It does the opposite. A prolonged look at each element presents puzzles about cultural habituation—something like architectural why-stories that defamiliarize, even upset, conventions. It may also expose a fatal error when a set of limited cultural habits have stiffened around the element, eliminating a whole range of techniques for making space. A contemplation of the floor returns to these forks in the road—territories sidelined in history that can become fresh projects for the discipline.
Throughout most of its history, the floor has been a basic assumption, often a starting point. Occasionally, it has been a place to display elaborate patterns and graphic story telling, or a surface reflecting mathematical fascinations like tessellation. But for eons, the floor was simply the surface of the earth or a technical, architectural response to make that surface more habitable or useful. It has also sometimes been a muted registration of cultural practices and construction technologies. From prayer rugs to tatami grids to basketball courts, the floor has established a few presumed, if unspoken, rules of the game.
A contemplation of architectural elements does not assemble an encyclopedia or reinforce a canon. It does the opposite. A prolonged look at each element presents puzzles about cultural habituation—something like architectural why-stories that defamiliarize, even upset, conventions. It may also expose a fatal error when a set of limited cultural habits have stiffened around the element, eliminating a whole range of techniques for making space. A contemplation of the floor returns to these forks in the road—territories sidelined in history that can become fresh projects for the discipline.
88 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2014
15 people want to read
About the author
Keller Easterling
28 books53 followersKeller Easterling is an architect, writer and professor at Yale University. Her most recent book, Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space (Verso, 2014), examines global infrastructure networks as a medium of polity. Another recent book, Subtraction (Sternberg Press, 2014), considers building removal or how to put the development machine into reverse. An ebook essay, The Action is the Form: Victor Hugo’s TED Talk (Strelka Press, 2012) previews some of the arguments in Extrastatecraft.
Other books include: Enduring Innocence: Global Architecture and its Political Masquerades (MIT, 2005) which researched familiar spatial products in difficult or hyperbolic political situations around the world and Organization Space: Landscapes, Highways and Houses in America (MIT, 1999) which applied network theory to a discussion of American infrastructure.
Easterling is also the co-author (with Richard Prelinger) of Call it Home: The House that Private Enterprise Built, a laserdisc/DVD history of US suburbia from 1934–1960. She has published web installations including: Extrastatecraft, Wildcards: a Game of Orgman and Highline: Plotting NYC. Easterling’s research and writing was included in the 2014 Venice Biennale, and she has been exhibited at Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, the Rotterdam Biennale, and the Architectural League in New York. Easterling has lectured and published widely in the United States and abroad. The journals to which she has contributed include Domus, Artforum, Grey Room, Cabinet, Volume, Assemblage, e-flux, Log, Praxis, Harvard Design Magazine, Perspecta, and ANY.
Other books include: Enduring Innocence: Global Architecture and its Political Masquerades (MIT, 2005) which researched familiar spatial products in difficult or hyperbolic political situations around the world and Organization Space: Landscapes, Highways and Houses in America (MIT, 1999) which applied network theory to a discussion of American infrastructure.
Easterling is also the co-author (with Richard Prelinger) of Call it Home: The House that Private Enterprise Built, a laserdisc/DVD history of US suburbia from 1934–1960. She has published web installations including: Extrastatecraft, Wildcards: a Game of Orgman and Highline: Plotting NYC. Easterling’s research and writing was included in the 2014 Venice Biennale, and she has been exhibited at Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, the Rotterdam Biennale, and the Architectural League in New York. Easterling has lectured and published widely in the United States and abroad. The journals to which she has contributed include Domus, Artforum, Grey Room, Cabinet, Volume, Assemblage, e-flux, Log, Praxis, Harvard Design Magazine, Perspecta, and ANY.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 9, 2017
I just finished the first book of the series. It is a very different categorization of subjects in the field of architecture. I enjoyed the mythological/religious roots of the concept the most. It is full of inspiring ideas and fun facts. The only analytical outcome after all of the recurrences in the history of architecture is to bring the floor into the attention of architects.
Displaying 1 of 1 review