SCHØN - Conference

Anna Philipp gives a talk about beauty in architecture ...

"BEAUTY IS LIKE A PLACE YOU DO NOT WANT TO LEAVE"
Anna Philipp

To put beauty in words, to grasp or even to define it seems completely impossible to me. I can only try to describe my subjective feeling. For me personally, there are these precious moments when I am surprised by beauty and touched in my heart. These are overwhelming moments that often rob me of words and leave me speechless. Because of my profession as an architect, it is usually spaces that interact with light, music or art to create that innermost touch of true beauty. It then feels like time stops, like a gentle touch from eternity. Time and space lose their meaning in this place of beauty. In the Faustian sense, I long to dwell in the presence of this beauty; to be easy. One of those deep and unforgettable encounters with beauty came when I first entered the St. Moritz church in Augsburg, renovated by John Pawson. Equally overwhelming for me was the recent immersion in a designed by Jamess Turrell light space, which seemed to dissolve into infinity. In these moments, the deep longing for me to lose myself in this beauty, to dissolve myself in it, rises in me. To interpret these moments in words, comprehensible to others, seems so incredibly difficult to me. How I would like to take them by the hand and enter the beauty together with them. I can only emphasize once again that I really want to stay in this place of beauty forever. Fragments that describe my experience are: True beauty - deepest touch - transforming power - place of infinity. C.S Lewis, a master of words, describes it excellently: "We do not want to see beauty. We want to be united with beauty. To pass into it, to become part of it. "




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