Ton Verstegen

Tropisms
Metaphoric Animation and Architecture

Sewn Paperback, colour and b/w illustrations, 112 pages
text in English, ISBN 90-5662-206-4, € 16.00
Also available in a Dutch edition

From the notion of tropism - the directional movements of growth (turning) made by organisms under the influence of external forces - Ton Verstegen tries to connect language and architecture. After an exploration of the figure of the turn in a variety of fields such as biology, aesthetics and literature, the author confronts this figure with (computer)architecture, in which movement and dynamics play a central role. Verstegen argues that spatial animation always entails metaphoric animation, but the designers of computer-generated architecture deny the existence of metaphors and symbols. They want their architecture to speak to the senses directly.

Verstegen aims to be one of the first to establish a link between the physical and the metaphorical space. The emphasis on the direct sensory experience while moving in space that is advocated by architects brings with it the danger that everything is reduced to a consumptive approach. Writings about this experience often degenerate into a tedious diatribe. A poetics of the movement in space could furnish a necessary complement and counterbalance.