The Fourth Wall of Architecture

Bart L. Decroos

This work is an attempt to combine the fields of architecture, critical theory, and literature. It deals with the question of how an architectural artefact develops its meaning within a larger discourse through its image, and how this relates to the everyday life of the physical space of the artefact. The work has been developed by translating certain theoretical ideas to a fictional setting in order to explore these ideas through the medium of literature. The theoretical starting point thus takes on the form of characters, dialogues, and events within a specific architectural environment in an attempt to relate these diverse ideas to one another and to the physical space. The resulting short stories have then been translated to images of physical spaces, which try to detect these theoretical ideas on the level of the space itself. The complete work comprises three short stories, each dealing with a different type of architecture: the single-family house, the hotel room, and the office space.

3. The homeliness of hotel rooms

The long corridor, which connects the different rooms with one another, resembles a quiet street, with numbered rooms instead of numbered houses. During your stay your address is substituted for your room number, which is given to you upon registration at the reception.

Room 403. The key opens the door to the room indicated by the number: the door gets unlocked and swings open, the suitcases are hastily pushed inside, clumsily you step across them; behind you, you hear the door slamming in the lock. Finally home.[1]

The central window on the opposite side of the room illuminates the space. A room with a view – perfect. Before the suitcases are unpacked, and the room really becomes a home, you walk to the window to admire the view.

The view opens up to the city, the sea or the green landscape, just as expected. It is exactly what you wanted, what you asked for and what was promised: the idyllic view as image and preview of the perfect, sunny, safe, and planned holiday. The first photograph is already history.[2]

The separately wrapped pieces of soap and different bottles of shampoo, together with the freshly washed towels, create the illusion of a brand-new and never-before-used bathroom. The soap and shampoo are available to refresh yourself immediately after the tiring trip, in this private, intimate space: just like home.[3]

Now that you refreshed yourself, it is time to unpack and appropriate the room completely. The unpacking calls to mind a vague feeling of moving in: the presence of clothes in the wardrobe becomes a sign that the room is inhabited, that someone has settled there.[4]

The atmosphere of homeliness is enforced by the presence of the framed pictures on the wall. Because it is impossibile to frame family pictures of the guest, the frames are filled with those other clichéd images: soothing pictures of nature, replicas of picturesque landscapes or abstract colours, emphasised by the soft lighting in the room.

Lying down on the bed, you can see the television screen. The presence of the television set establishes the illusion of homeliness completely. Regardless of the brand, type, or size, every television set offers the same pastime as home: the familiar sofa is replaced by the alien double bed, but the atmosphere of homeliness stays.

Freed from all household chores, which are a necessary inconvenience back home, the hotel room only offers physical rest on the double bed and mental peace by watching television. The hotel room becomes the pinnacle of homeliness: to come home, the tourist apparently needs to go on holiday.

Postscript >

[1] The doors to the rooms have been installed on the wrong side, causing them to swing outward, instead of inward. This mirroring also causes the peephole to look into the room, instead of into the hallway. The safe, homely hotel room where the tourist tries to isolate him- or herself is now exposed to the stranger on the outside. (00:13, 00:30)

[2] The framing of the window is done in the same way as the framing of a triptych: the two outer windows swing open inward (or, rather, close inward). The framing calls to mind the image of a painting: the view becomes a painted view. The outer glass sheet in the window is produced as cast glass, instead of float glass, causing the window to give a slightly distorted image of the view. The promised view is transformed: it is exposed as an artificial image. (00:46)

[3] An indoor window is placed inside the bathroom. In the corner, up against the ceiling, a part of the wall is executed in glass blocks, which is reminiscent of the indoor windows of old townhouses. There they were used to draw light inside dark rooms through other rooms lit by daylight; here, they are used to draw the presence of the other into the most private space of the room. (01:15, 01:26)

[4] The wall between the two wardrobes is removed, or, rather, not built, which places the wardrobes back to back. In addition, the wardrobes are just too small for the opening in which they are placed, causing a small crack between the wall and the side of the wardrobe, allowing a look into the other room when the doors of both wardrobes are open. The wardrobe, which is the place where the tourist appropriates the room the most, becomes thus a place where the boundary between the rooms disintegrates. The sound of the neighbour opening his wardrobe in the morning, echoes through the room and disturbs the peaceful sleep of the tourist. (01:42)

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