As someone who is interested in phenomenology, especially as it applies to architectural and urban design, I was recently trying to grasp the ideas presented in "Architectural Making: Between a "Space of Experience" and a "Horizon of Expectations"" recently published by Iris Aravot, an Israeli architecture and planning scholar.
As the title of the paper suggests, the idea it presents relates to the way the work of an architectural designer occupies the middle ground between the "space of experience," which consists of (1) the scope of the architectural problem to be solved, (2) the architect's professional knowledge and training, and (3) his or her personal experience, and the "horizon of expectations," which, if I understand it correctly, represents the range of architectural solutions that is considered "acceptable" to the architect personally and to the larger society. In past times, say through most of the 18th century, the "horizon of expectations" was pretty clearly defined, and usually made reference to classical forms and elements. But that has changed in more recent times, opening up a new world of possibilities and difficulties.
I am sure I have still not grasped all of what Ms. Aravot is trying to say in her paper, but I was taken by one statement that I think points out a danger of the neo-classicism that is promoted by a number of architectural organizations that have cropped up over the past decade or so, as well as the tendency of preservation societies in older cities. The statement is: "When all is already contained in experience, and the future is rendered in the image of the past, creativity stops. There is no space for creativity, if a wedge is not inserted between the "space of experience" and the "horizon of expectations.""
It can be comforting to fall back on familiar forms and familiar symbols, but we no longer live in an age seeking to represent itself as a rebirth of Greek democracy or Roman empire. There should be no expectation that our surroundings must repeat the architectural models of those past ages. The trick is still, as it has been since the arrival of "modern" architecture, to define the "horizon of expectations" in a way that allows creativity while pointing towards new forms that are not jarringly novel, but instead serve to complement our surroundings and help our cities grow comfortably into the future.
