RHYTHMANALYSIS


MY EXPERIENCE OF RHYTHM KNOTS IN THE CLASSROOM, ELDON BUILDING

Fourth week (Friday, 18 OCTOBER, 2024

In this week of my academic year at Portsmouth University, students were required to study the first and second chapters of Henri Lefebvre's book named Rhythmanalysis. This book examines spatial and temporal rhythms and their impact on daily life. 



Rhythm..., I had heard this word before but this time as a spatial architecture student at Portsmouth university I experienced it in a different way, in a way that caused me to gaze my tutor, Oren, in wonder. I did not know how ubiquitous and influential Rhythm can be, how we as architects can organize it in our design for example to reach a much more peaceful place, something that in today's hectic and chaotic world is our urgent need...

What is Rhythm ?

According to this book: 
Everywhere where there is interaction between a place, a time and expenditure of energy, there is rhythm therefore:
a) repetition of movements, gestures, action, situations, differences
b)interferences of linear processes and cyclical processes 
c)birth, growth, peak, then decline and end.

Rhythm

1)deductive (comparing)
2)inductive (more philosophical method)

Repetition
1)cyclical which originates in cosmic, nature (days, nights, seasons, weaves, tides of the sea, monthly cycles) 
2)linear which originates in human activity (monotony of actions and movements, impose structures)
The antagonistic unity of relations between the cyclical and the linear sometimes gives rise to compromise, sometimes to disturbance. The circular course of the hands on traditional clock-faces and watches is accompanied by a linear tick-tock. And it is their relation that enables or rather constitutes the measure of time (which is to say, of rhythms).

Rational, numerical, quantitative and qualitative rhythms superimpose themselves on the multiple natural rhythms of the body (respiration, the heart, hunger and thirst, etc.) though not without changing them.

Our body consists of a bundle of rhythms, different but in tune.

No rhythm without repetition in time and in space, without reprise, without returns, in short without measure. 
As a general concept of rhythm, it is worth bearing in mind that everywhere where there is rhythm, there is measure. But we easily confuse rhythm with movement, speed, sequence of movement. 

NOTHING IS IMMOBILE. NOTHING IS INERT, a stone or a wall, a trunk has their own slowness, their own interminable rhythm; time is not set aside for the subject, it is only slow in relation to our time, to our body, the measure of rhythms.
An apparently immobile object, the forest, moves in multiple ways; the combined movements of the soil, the earth, the sun.

In the classroom, Oren asked us to write 10 words chosen from the Rhythmanalysis text which we resonated with more, then chose seven of them, after that three of them in verbs. 

We had to draw the rhythms and patterns of that ten words. Then Oren showed us too many various rhythms which could exist around us by placing two sheets on our drawings. In the class I was thinking how essential it is for us as architects to know various kinds of rhythms to control, reduce, amplify or organize them to leading to architectural designs being considered a suitable place to live, something that is being pursued relentlessly by human beings in all around the world. 





Thank you Oren 👍🙏
I really enjoyed your method of teaching...
You are the best...

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