Anthropological view of wooden constructions

Anthropological vision of wooden constructions
By Jacinto Rodrigues
Coming from Philosophy, Jacinto Rodrigues has a transdisciplinary background, which touches on Architecture and Urban Ecology. It is from this philosophical root that he reflects on the need to interconnect different areas of knowledge to better respond to the challenges of science and humanity.
(Note: Transcript of the speech by Prof. Dr. Jacinto Rodrigues at the 1st Iberian Technical Seminar "Wood as a Building Element".
Text revised by Dr. M. Estela Dantas, sociologist, and by Rusticasa, Lda)



The three great paradigms

We can refer to three great paradigms: the pre-industrial paradigm, the industrial paradigm and the post-industrial paradigm which, for some, is considered an emerging paradigm, but in any case, a third paradigm. In fact, the moment we are currently living in can no longer be included in the industrial paradigm, although we also do not yet know exactly what it will be, but it will be something that is approaching and that will have to be truly new.



The pre-industrial paradigm

In general terms, let us recall what characterized the pre-industrial paradigm. About this paradigm we can say that Man, in his anthropological relationship with Nature, established such a close connection with Nature that, from the point of view of mythology, in myths, we find a kind of theogony in which God and the Forest, God and the Tree, appear in an extremely interconnected way.

For example, in the Bible, which everyone knows and is an important reference for Western thought, the Tree of Paradise is par excellence the theogonic place, the fundamental place where Man has a privileged relationship.

In Islamic philosophy we detect curious things that show us a relationship between the world of trees and the Divinity. For example, in Muslim tradition, God is The Great Gardener. In the Muslim world, God is seen as The Great Gardener, insofar as He is the one who takes care of Nature. In the West, however, God is thought of as The Great Architect.

But also in Hinduism, in Brahmanic philosophy, we find a kind of birth of the world through the Great Lotus Flower that is born on the bosom of Vishnu.

These theogonic ideas, which have always linked Man to the Forest, Man to the Tree, are particularly striking in Northern Europe. In the world of Germania we find the idea of the Camba, which is a sacred tree, a divine tree, to which people pay great reverence and, curiously, in children’s stories, in that tree, the hollows of its trunk are referred to as a kind of womb where children are born.

Also in Scandinavia, Higdrazile summarizes the same idea of the cosmogonic Tree. For them it is considered the Mother from whom women receive their fertile power.

Here, in Southern Europe, we are more anthropogonic, the Sacred Forest gradually loses its theogonic characteristics. However, it is also true that the Portuguese people, in their tradition, claimed that children were born in the middle of cabbages. Here too is present the idea that the world of Nature is the bearer of the power of fertility: Mother Nature is perceived as an essential element.

It can be said, roughly, that what anthropologically characterizes the first pre-industrial stage refers to a paradigm in which Man’s House is a niche-house, where his relationship with Nature is so strong, so dependent, that Man lives in survival, entrusted to that Mother Nature that takes care of him.

Nature is present and Man has to adapt to that ecological niche, and to that extent he preserves it in a passive way, living in Nature.
Man adapts fully to Nature.



The industrial paradigm

Of course, the pre-industrial paradigm evolved into a new phase: the industrial paradigm. Anthropologists, historians and sociologists characterize this paradigm by the appearance of a hegemonic new form of Man’s relationship with Nature, a form linked to the Renaissance movement. There, religious theogonies began to be defined in cosmological terms. Notably, Newton’s theories changed the way of looking at Nature. It became a Nature governed by physical laws, seen as a machine, acting mechanically: the machina mundi.
This paradigmatic vision of the industrial phase developed and became more complex up to the present day.
Nature adapts to Man.

Paradigmatically, in this new stage of Society, Nature is no longer the Mother of everything but, on the contrary, it is Nature that must adapt to Man, submit to him.
Man advances over Nature, generating a kind of violation, so to speak, towards that Mother to whom he had passively submitted in the past.

This process of domination of the industrial paradigm, which advances over the pre-industrial paradigm, gave rise to a Disenchantment in the relationship between men and Nature. Mythology and the relationship of love for the forest and trees, because of the mechanistic vision of Nature, in the fact of it being seen as a system of rational laws, translated into a certain disenchantment.
Indeed, Nature ceased to be perceived as a place of magical, unknown, uncontrollable forces and came to be observed through an objective gaze, more objective and less “lyrical”: a rational, scientific gaze.

In the articulation and implications established between a paradigm advancing over the other, there are negative aspects but also positive aspects.
Man lost that “poetic lyricism” in relation to Nature, but developed the objective and scientific apprehension that is characteristic of his own revolution as human consciousness.

In this duality, which is on the one hand the Disenchantment of the world, and on the other hand the discovery that Man can and should intervene for the so-called progress of Humanity, lies an ethical difficulty in reconciling both things, because progress may mean the development of Humanity, but it may also mean pollution, destruction of Nature and of Humanity itself.
From this twilight between light and darkness contradictory aspects are born, among which I would like to highlight three general points.

Wooden houses, “natural houses”, more related to that pre-industrial paradigm, now appear, especially from the 19th century onwards, as a disparaging element, not to say with a certain hostility. Natural things do not have as much value as things made mechanically by Man. From this attitude, which can be thought of as prejudice, a kind of mis-education towards Nature has taken root, although that mis-education also promoted other positive aspects. But within it three essential questions arise in people’s mentality, and which are still present today in many areas of our cultural activity, consisting in the reaction that each one has in relation to wooden houses: wooden houses are made of a material without prestige; wooden houses have very little durability; the wooden house is ugly.



1. Wooden houses are made of a material without prestige

The first type of reaction that usually appears is that wooden houses are made of a material without prestige, or else, when they do have prestige, they are very expensive. I will leave the answer to this question to my friend Jacques Overhoff, who will present a certain number of documents proving that wooden houses can indeed be of great prestige, and that depending on the technical capacity and the needs of the users, they can be either cheap or expensive.

2. Wooden houses have very little durability

Another issue that is often raised, and is part of the mis-education I referred to, is that wooden houses have very little durability, are susceptible to fire and are very limited in their possibilities of expression. I will leave to the engineer and technical colleagues, who will hold their seminars and workshops, the possibility of responding to the great technological potentialities of wood.

3. The wooden house is ugly

Lastly, the third point refers to the idea that the wooden house is ugly, standardized, that the language does not allow great flights, and therefore aesthetically has great limits. I will also leave it to the great architects present here, and whose works can be seen in the exhibitions, to Imre Makovecz, Juhanni Pallasmaa, Jan Söderlund, Miguel Nevado, and Angel Garcia, the opportunity to show how wood can provide extraordinary plastic responses and how, and this is extremely interesting, wood allows different languages. We can see an organicist language, a kind of empathic, sculptural form as in the case of Imre Makovecz, but we also see purified forms, abstract lines, a lightness of language. This means that wood allows several possibilities of aesthetic language.



The post-industrial paradigm

After this Disenchantment I referred to, in the passage from the pre-industrial to the industrial paradigm, in which Nature must fully adapt to Man, and to that extent Man must impose his point of view, I believe that it is necessary to give birth to a new sensibility, a new poetics if you will, a new “enchantment”.
Of course, this enchantment can no longer be mythological, as in the past. There is no possibility for Man to return to the past, and it is just as well. There is a new stage that we must accomplish, and the emerging paradigm has to be something we innovate and invent. Probably we will also seek in the old lyricism and the enchantment of the past, forces to feed our future.

I will tell a story which is a kind of rich metaphor for our times, also because we need a certain enchantment given the moment we are living in society. It is a story that appeared in the Byzantine world, became a medieval legend that came down to our days and tells the following:

Adam was dying, about to pass away. In his final wish he wanted to return to the past and eat an apple again. He asked his son to go to Paradise to find the apple he longed for. Adam wanted to relive that time of his past. The son then went to Paradise to see if he could find the apple for his father. He searched, but found no apple. When he returned to his father, he said desolately:
      – Father, I did not find any apple, but I found a stick, a rod that seems to be the rod with which God struck you to expel you from Paradise. Adam was a little sad and said:
      – What will this rod be good for? After all, it was I who created the situation for this rod to be used to strike me. Perhaps this stick will be useful, I don’t know. I will make an effort, I am dying...
Adam then broke the stick into three pieces, placed them on his head tied with a thread, and then died. The son buried the father and the family came to mourn him. After some time, an olive tree grew from the first piece, an oak grew from the second, and an ebony grew from the third piece of the stick.

This metaphor tells us that three trees were born perhaps thanks to Adam’s punishment. And these three trees signify three fundamental forces:
  The olive tree that answered Man’s basic material needs for food.
  The oak that can be read as a metaphor for the construction of Community. With oak we make houses, which allows the community to build a shelter.
  And finally the ebony, which in ancient tradition is the wood with which we make aesthetic objects, refined objects, plastic languages, subtle aesthetic expressions.



That story teaches us that we probably have to combine these three forces: a more metabolic response, a more rhythmic response, and a more aesthetic, more subtle response, as should be the language of contemporary architecture.

In this post-industrial paradigm we are living in, there was an attempt to create something new and sometimes, in that attempt to create something new, we still do not know what we are going to do, which leads us to seek answers linked to the past.
It is, so to speak, the search for the natural house.

Many people today still seek in the wooden house the paradigm of the old natural house which is the basic house. But that basic house can no longer respond to the needs of contemporary Man.
In recent years there has been a search for something that goes beyond the niche located in the natural house, beyond the search for the wild world we are losing. That something more refers to the house integrated in an eco-systemic perspective.

Another idea emerges that implies a more scientific understanding of ecological issues and, we could say, includes the knowledge of the house integrated in an eco-systemic perspective. The house in the passage from the niche to the biotope is still a very local biotope. The houses that have been built in recent decades present a new perspective that, to conclude, is the house we must build: a house integrated in an eco-systemic perspective. They may not be only of wood, but wood is a key element.
In any case, I believe that house construction must be inserted in a broader organic planning, from a global vision, taking ecological issues into account, in a perspective of eco-development. In summary, considered from an integral planning. But they must also be made with beauty, conceived as the creation of a world of beauty for people.

I believe that through these concerns a new plastic language arises, a kind of new enchantment through Art, an enchantment that must be sought in art and carried out through a science with conscience.

The use of wood materials in house construction allows the possibility of responding to that science with conscience, to technology with ethics, also responding to the creative need.

This attitude requires a new vision of Nature, of looking at the world as a living thing. It does not need to be divine (magical), but to have life and therefore a spiritual force that can enchant us.



For that, it is necessary to remodel many things. It is necessary to remodel the education of our sons, of our children. It is necessary to remodel the curriculæ of our universities, to remodel the courses of the schools of architecture of which I am a professor, and where wood technology is absolutely forgotten.
It is necessary, in my view, a general reorganization, to make an ecological management of the planet, which here in Portugal is fundamental.
I was very touched by my friend Eng. Braga da Cruz, who understood this extraordinary thing that is our country, where there is forest, but it is necessary that this forest ceases to be seen as the industrial forest, a eucalyptus plantation, and be treated as a forest in the true sense. That is, it should not be a monoculture, a forest of economic wealth, but a social and also creative response.
In short, we must treat the forest so that it can place Portugal in an enriching perspective, whether from the aesthetic point of view, from the technical point of view, or from the ethical point of view.