人如其食，屋如其工

張利/ZHANG Li

人如其食，屋如其工

You Are What You Eat, Your Building Is What It Is Made From

張利/ZHANG Li

在網(wǎng)絡(luò)呈現(xiàn)最新信息的今天，世博會也許不再重要了。但本屆米蘭世博會還是提出了一個發(fā)人深省的話題：食物與人類的生存。在氣候變化不可逆、人口膨脹加劇的現(xiàn)實(shí)面前，這一問題對文明的挑戰(zhàn)是不言而喻的。

食物與建筑之間的共性在于，它們都強(qiáng)有力地參與構(gòu)成或作用于人的身體。前者決定了我們身體基本構(gòu)成單元的蛋白鏈結(jié)構(gòu)，后者則不僅通過空間、也通過其構(gòu)件的連接方式——工法，來記錄或暗示對我們身體的回應(yīng)。如果在此借用梅洛龐蒂的論斷——我們的世界與我們的身體是同質(zhì)的——那么食物的構(gòu)成與建筑的工法之間就有了某種類比的可能。

關(guān)于食物決定我們身體的判斷，當(dāng)然最廣為人知的就是“人如其食”了。歷史上抵達(dá)這一簡單的字面表達(dá)的路徑并不簡單。食物被長期認(rèn)為僅僅是生存的必需品——因而是低層級的——所以并不能在決定人的本質(zhì)方面起到多大的作用。1826年，布里拉-薩瓦蘭在《關(guān)于口味的生理學(xué)——對美食的思考》中寫道“告訴我你吃什么，我就能說出你是什么樣的人”。1863-1864年，費(fèi)厄巴赫在《關(guān)于精神主義與物質(zhì)主義》中提出“人是由他吃的食物決定的”。這些19世紀(jì)的論斷實(shí)際上都是基于生理上的觀察，也沒有任何在科學(xué)領(lǐng)域之外產(chǎn)生公眾影響的圖謀。把“人如其食”的概念變成膾炙人口的日常語言的是林德拉爾在1942年所著的《你即你所食：如何通過飲食獲得健康》。這位醫(yī)生的論點(diǎn)恰恰符合了當(dāng)時中產(chǎn)階級的個體意識的興起，使對食物的關(guān)注開始具有了生理之外的社會意義。在隨后1960年代的嬉皮士運(yùn)動與1990年代的有機(jī)食物運(yùn)動中，食物的問題開始變得愈發(fā)意識形態(tài)化，這一趨勢一直延續(xù)至今。

至于“屋如其工”或者說建筑即是其材料與工法的這一直白的判斷，其走過的道路也一點(diǎn)也不比前面的“人如其食”簡單。在幾乎所有前工業(yè)時期的建筑理論著作當(dāng)中，材料與工法都被當(dāng)做是最基本的物質(zhì)技能——因而是形而下的——所以不會在決定建筑的品格上起到?jīng)Q定性的作用。在西方的維特魯威及其在文藝復(fù)興前后的所有復(fù)述者的文獻(xiàn)中，幾何、比例等知識性的內(nèi)容顯然被認(rèn)為是更高級的。對我國的宋《營造法式》究竟是“施工標(biāo)準(zhǔn)”還是“結(jié)算標(biāo)準(zhǔn)”的討論亦有類似之處。直至森佩爾在1861-1863年間的《技術(shù)與工藝的風(fēng)格，抑或?qū)嵱玫拿缹W(xué)》把材料與工法，或者說建筑的物質(zhì)過程，直接提升到建筑美學(xué)的核心地位，“屋如其工”才逐漸為人們所認(rèn)知。或許應(yīng)當(dāng)感激這位放逐的德國人在對現(xiàn)蘇黎世高工建筑系所做的開創(chuàng)性工作，使“屋如其工”在20世紀(jì)的種種形而上思潮的沖擊中至少有了一條不間斷的線索。其下一個被多數(shù)人聽到的關(guān)于“屋如其工”的聲音是20世紀(jì)末的弗蘭姆普敦的《工法文化研究：建造的詩學(xué)》，在這里，一個代表性的現(xiàn)代建筑評論家放下20世紀(jì)最典型的新馬克思主義的“上層建筑”敘事，以猶抱琵琶半遮面的方式關(guān)注起工法這一建筑的“底層結(jié)構(gòu)”問題。

有趣的是，在此次以“食”為題的米蘭世博會上，其規(guī)劃本身一開始似乎就在約束建筑過于形而上或浪漫主義的表達(dá)，以緊湊、嚴(yán)格的網(wǎng)格試圖把每一個展館的建筑師拉回到更“簡單”、更“底層”的建筑問題的探討，為“人如其食”的主題和“屋如其工”的表達(dá)之間建立了橋梁。本期《世界建筑》正是從這個角度來觀察此次米蘭世博會的建筑的，不論是對有機(jī)材料的刻意追求（中國館、法國館、愛沙尼亞館），對基本建造細(xì)胞的累加（萬科館、英國館），對“雜食性”材料與空間的引入（美國館、巴西館），還是對生物肌理的人工再造（意大利館、巴林館）等，都是令人感到饒有興味的?！?/p>

At a time when the newest always comes from internet, the Expo is no longer as relevant as it used to be. That said, there is a very relevant question raised by the Expo Milano: food and the survival of the mankind. The climate is changing irreversibly. The world population is growing exponentially. The challenge of feeding the world has never been tougher.

One thing that is shared by food and architecture is that, they are all closely related to the human body. While food defines the protein structure of the building blocks of our bodies, architecture modulates and interacts with our bodies not only by space, but also by tectonics - ways in which materials are joined. If we borrow Merleau-Ponty's famous argument–the world is made by the same stuff as our bodies–then there is an analogical link between the composition of food and the tectonics of our buildings.

The best known phrase concerning food and the human body is of course "you are what you eat". Yet the route to such a phrase is much more difficult than its wording. Food has been long regarded as mere necessities for survival–therefore inferior–not to be expected to have any significant effect on character-building. One of the early notions concerning food and human body came from Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's Physiologie du Gout, ou Meditations de Gastronomie Transcendante, in which he wrote "Tell me what you eat and I can tell what you are". In his 1863/64 book Concerning Spiritualism and Materialism, Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach wrote "Man is what he eats". Although these 19th century quotes looked familiar enough to us, they didn't bear any meaning other than scientific ones. The vehicle of carrying the message to the mass is Victor H. Lindlahr's 1942 best seller You Are What You Eat: How to Win and Keep Health with Diet. Doctor Lindlahr's point coincided with the growing self-body-awareness of the middle class and started to be more than scientific. With the hippies of the 1960s and the organic movement of 1990s, the link between food and ourselves has become more and more ideological.

As for buildings and its tectonic, the point "your building is what it is made from" has taken a similar winding path. Almost all pre-industrial treatises treated tectonics as mere physical skills - therefore inferior - not to be expected to have serious effects on the character of the building. In the West, from Vitruvius to his re-iterators of the Renaissance and beyond, put knowledge of geometry and proportion above tectonics. Similar things happened in the East, where Ying Zao Fa Shi met with comparable fate. It was Gottfried Semper's Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Künsten oder Praktische ?sthetik that gave architecture tectonics a worthy new look, a core position in architecture. Thanks to his founding work in what is ETH Architecture now, the notion on tectonics remained a continuous line in 20th century architecture, and survived all the dominating discourses on ideology, high art and cultural criticism. The next heard-by-the-mass voice came from the Kenneth Frampton, his Studies of Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction returned a decent role to tectonics which is at least as significant as all Neo-Marxism narratives, although reluctantly.

Interestingly, in this Expo Milano featuring food as the topic, the plan tried to limit all metaphysical or romantic expressions of buildings in the first place. A rigid, compact grid generates the pull to each architect, bringing them back to the simpler, more basic problems of architecture. It sets up a bridge between "you are what you eat" and "your building is what it is made from". It is of course, the exact subject of this issue of World Architecture.□

清華大學(xué)建筑學(xué)院/《世界建筑》

2015-12-06