The object is again under scrutiny in the realm of architecture. As educators and designers we have made it the “object of focus” as we help others, and ourselves, decipher how to observe, interpret, analyze, write, and design. As architects we are drawn to the object’s power to attract and repulse, to inspire the sublime or to inflict alternate conditions by influence. From Luis Buñuel’s tragically romantic “obscure object of desire” to Heidegger’s rumination on the nature of “things,” the fetish of objects continues to lie squarely in the path of architecture.

Exercises by Peter Eisenman brought us to appreciate the internalization of the architectural object, an attractive play of form and syntax on architecture’s own terms – perhaps the closest definition of autonomy that we have. The response: an era of design when architecture, landscape, and urbanism aspired to find sources in localities, contextual clues, existing practices, and interdisciplinary concerns, as in the work of Ian McHarg, Jane Jacobs, Kenneth Frampton and Vittorio Gregotti.

Our current situation, in the undertow of computational tools, promises an alternative view of objects: an appreciation of nucleic things, particulate matter composed of simple forms with rules that generate, randomize, mutate, and/or optimize architectural space. In this instance objects, like cells, are semi-autonomous, adapting in either positive or negative ways as they populate specific contexts or environments. Absent of hierarchy, these objects present themselves as elements, primitives or pixels. They steer clear of ranked order and privilege local interactions, accretions, or filling voids to meet the needs of a system of emerging form. Any claim to orders of importance may be taken as a sign of autonomous malevolence or a view that favors top-down measures.

The question of architecture’s objecthood is a tricky one. Indeed, what often starts as a movement of rootedness and contingent goodwill can grow to be redundant, over-used, or worse, over-valued – all signs of growing autonomy. As new interpretations take to the stage, the debate is certain to continue.

Whiteread’s objects leave impressions on us in three ways: 1) her castings maintain close affinity with the use and function of the original object, 2) the resulting sculpture often draws our attention to unseen traits of the original object, and 3) the work of art can be rhetorical, asking us to make sense of it within the context that it is situated or to form an opinion about a specific cultural condition.

The first impression of Whiteread’s sculpture involves its operation within the capacities of the original object. The instrumentality of the object’s function is transferred to the casting: the space from the underside of a table becomes a table surface or plinth; the complementary casting of a four-legged stool becomes a seat. The casting of a clawfoot bathtub results in a similar vessel that may contain water (e.g., the volume of the tub becomes the bath). There thus remains a double function to the artistic object, which retains a shadow of its use. We see this also in the design of furniture by Charles and Ray Eames. For example Ray Eames’s 1960 solid walnut stool for the Time-Life Building lobby in New York is a monolithic piece spun on a lathe from a single piece of wood and, like Whiteread’s work, is marked by strong Gestalt lines between the profile of its shape and the space that surrounds it. On first balance these objects cast doubt over what their original uses might be. Are they art or furniture, a machine part removed from its context, or …? In what way do these objects come to our consciousness as useful things, and is this playful state of recognition part of Whiteread’s intention for us as viewers? Our first impression of an autonomous sculptural object becomes a recognition then of a useful piece of furniture, a latent meaning of the object that emerges after a debate about its use.

In contrast to the traditional art piece, Whiteread’s Embankment project in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern operates on a different rhetorical level. As part of a temporary art program, the 2005 installation challenged the artist to control the 35-meter high x 152-meter long space by installing space itself. An array of cardboard boxes of differing sizes were used to cast 14,000 polyethylene forms that alter the light and density of the vast hall. Whiteread’s study of luminance of the vast 115 foot high space also remarks on how she thought simple paper boxes symbolize the use of natural resources, global and economic trade, as well as improvised shelters for the homeless amongst other commentaries (Fig. 4).

In the 1952 essay, “The Structure and Sequence of Space,” Luigi Moretti argued that “empty space” in buildings, in contrast to their constructive and formal perperties, is central to understanding the nascent and full impact of the architectural experience. ⁵ In making this claim for complementarity between space and object, Moretti relied on the idea of space as a hollow that not only contains but houses dynamic elements that alter our interpretation and use of the spatial realm. This, Moretti claimed, is accomplished by the use of movements, compressions, entries, and exits. He assigned four principles upon which we might judge the effectiveness of the spatial interior: (1) “dimension,” or the physical quantity of the absolute volume, (2) “density,” the perceived effects based on the quantity of light entering a spatial volume, (3) “pressure” or “energetic charge,” pertaining to the relative ways that various points in space are influenced by the bounding enclosure, and (4) “quality,” which he described as analogous to the fluidity of space embodying energies that are restricted or released as they move freely within the interior.

Moretti’s notion of “empty space,” along with his description of volume as a stage for kinetic experience, can be applied to the energies in Whiteread’s castings. We see this “energetic charge” of space in context to her choice of “ready-mades,” although in Moretti’s case the environments are the ruins of Rome and the weathered surfaces of the Italian Baroque. His creation of figure/ground model reversals in plaster of Hadrian’s Villa and Guarino Guarini’s project for Santa Maria Divina Providenza in Lisbon in the 1950s were some of the first modern studies of architecture and space. With these, along with his dense prose, Moretti characterized an autonomous spatial reading of architecture not unlike Eisenman’s argument for pure architectural syntax in the 1960s and 1970s.

In order to understand figural space in conjunction with the architectural promenade, a team of students and myself studied and fabricated a series of Whiteread-like castings. Choosing several built and unbuilt houses by Adolf Loos, we investigated the entry sequences and social patterns of four interrelated spaces typical of his domestic work: foyer, washroom and coat alcoves, living/music rooms, and formal meal areas. The raumplan organization of the Loosian interior was chosen specifically to understand transitions through the house that occur not only as door/threshold conditions but also by way of stair ascensions and subtle floor level changes ( Figs. 6, 7, 8).

The arrangement of Loos’s rooms reflects codes and etiquettes of the social structure of the times. Many of these houses were serviced by domestic help, therefore the arrangement of interior spaces reflect strict lines of public and private. From the earliest houses to the more recent shared arrangements, demonstrate a regard for the entry sequence. Foyer spaces were frequently not grand. These opened onto larger, light-filled rooms for dispensing heavy outerwear. The equipment in these spaces tell the story of intimate domestic rituals matched to the architecture – the removal of damp coats to be hung on brass metal hooks, built-in mirror glass so guests could check their appearance before engaging the pleasantries of social exchange with hosts, etc. Often there were simple porcelain sinks to wash up at, plumbing fixtures that Loos favored and openly exhibited in these introductory spaces of the house. ⁶

The value of Whiteread’s artistic technique may, in the end, not be directly transferable to architecture or architectural space. Rather, the influence of her method could be thought of as semi-autonomous, a contingent pause that enables a reflexive view of space, and a reminder that architecture as object is often taken for granted. Our discipline’s continued obsession with overt and aggressive form making is not entirely without precedent however. Each generation of new design thinking has turned to architecture’s formal expressiveness. New means of architectural production have driven this trend and our current explorations with complex and exciting formal play are influenced significantly by such innovation. The question of how to remain mindful of space (artistic, cultural, or otherwise) during these changing conditions is critical. A perspective from all sides is required even though it is not always clear.

Could we think of Rachel Whiteread’s process as a sort of double-agency in the architectural design, moving back and forth between allegiances of objects and space, autonomy and contingency, form and culture while also negotiating a bigger picture? Michael Hays’s reminder that architecture must remain critical for this to occur, and that a designer’s responsibility for representing the working knowledge of the discipline runs parallel to its production.⁷ With this insight we should consider Whiteread’s artistic technique as a potential instrument for this mode of practice.