Architecture’s subliminal languages

For my last semester at the University of Michigan, I decided to enroll in an architecture class through the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. I’m an English major, but every so often I would hear the word architecture and my mind would light up. If I had another life, I thought.

The first time I stepped into the Art & Architecture Building, my body was engulfed with a scene of creativity and wonder: the white walls of the entranceway seemed to fade into the background, illuminating pieces of student art like billboards in the dark. The building, having been designed for artists, almost immediately elevated the notion of artist I had in myself. The third floor contains the largest academic studio in the country; sitting up there, awash in that continuous workspace, I felt empowered to create.

My initial sensation was no mistake. Since I enrolled in the class, I’ve begun to understand how architecture is a language — how it speaks to our subconscious, without words. I’ve begun noticing how buildings and spaces act upon me. And I’ve been trying hard to hear what they’ve been trying to say.

To explore this language further, I talked to Mireille Roddier, my professor and enlightened guru-of-architecture.

I remember the first time I showed up to her office hours, she was busy, so I explored the Taubman College building for a while. Moving up its trademark sawtooth ceiling, I arrived at a studio space for undergraduates, where each individual is huddled within their own personal slice of a communal area. There was something about the space that made me feel at once welcomed and ablaze, but the only word I could come up with was: awesome. I couldn’t put my finger on why. (The question stayed with me until I spoke to her again, weeks later).

“It’s the open floor plan,” Professor Roddier insisted, on a video call, live from her home country of France. “As a freshman, sophomore, junior, you’re exposed to graduate student work every day. You don’t have to pretend that you’re trespassing into another space. It’s all part of your space, so your learning is exponentially better.”

Professor Roddier’s class has shown me how this architectural lens can be applied to any building on campus. For example: today, I’m doing my work in a coffee shop. I don’t drink coffee, but I’ve been leaning toward these kinds of spots because of their “cozy vibe,” which is to say, they make me feel like I’m inside someone’s home. 

Once I exhausted the coffee shop’s coziness, I went looking for a change of pace. I decided to stop into the new School of Kinesiology Building. Here, I feel especially awake. The exposed atmosphere — mostly white, with a spacious atrium — gives studying a clean and sanitized sensation, almost alien but not quite. The uncanniness of the surroundings directs me toward my work, toward the people in the room.

It keeps going: Upon entering the Law Library’s Reading Room, we’re suddenly filled with a quiet focus. The feeling magically arises, like how when a camera appears, we know to smile.

Those emotions are produced within us, in a way, by the building itself. The library was designed in a Gothic style — reminiscent of a long tradition of study and prayer. A design that is almost monastic, like a chapel. And we students, by upholding similar traditions, continuously define the law school’s library as a place that demands silence.

The Ross School of Business is a classic example of a space that produces a business-like behavior in its inhabitants. Professor Roddier likens the building to a classic “corporate” design, with its signature open spaces and neutral, black furniture.

“When you’re down in those chairs, in the common space, I could be at Heathrow Airport,” Roddier said. “I could be at DTW, or I could be in some corporate headquarters lobby space. It would look the same.”

Ross’ multi-purposed design serves it well to include other elements, such as a cafeteria, a Starbucks and even an exclusive hotel suite (just like an airport!). The sleekness of its walls suggests speed and refinement, and a sense of efficiency fills the mind.

In this way, by going to places, we’re acting upon them, too. The Art & Architecture Building generates a sensation of expressive energy, perhaps, because its inhabitants are constantly engaged in expression. The people using buildings tend to be the ones who produce the building’s design, who are then produced by the building’s design, and so on.

Buildings are also produced as a response to the world around them. According to Professor Roddier, the old Student Administration Building, located beside the Michigan Union and the Cube, was long-thought to have been designed in order to prevent student protests during the 1960s. There’s no actual proof, but the legend makes sense: that the windows were designed as thin, intersecting lines, so that students wouldn’t be able to climb through them; that the building’s ground level was cramped and narrow so it couldn’t be easily occupied.

As architecture continues to remind us, we only see what’s there, not what’s been removed. After the Student Administration Building was demolished in 2022, that signifier of history has faded, along with its significance (same with every building that’s been demolished). Their histories have not entirely vanished, but our reminders are gone.

***

Every building enters us before we step inside it. The classic “University of Michigan” look, with its stout red bricks and square edges, came from a longstanding tradition of American universities. Think of the archaic walls of Ivy League campuses — designs which, according to Professor Roddier, came from British universities, which were modeled after Jesuit monasteries.

Elements inherent in buildings, like the locations of various facilities, ceiling height and room purpose, can also influence how we experience a space. If the stairs are a focal point of a room, we’re probably going to trek it by foot more often than looking for an elevator.

“If there were only one kind of bathroom … the building wouldn’t impose a gender distinction,” Professor Roddier told me. “Therefore, we may not recognize it in ourselves. As soon as you end up having two kinds of bathrooms, automatically, it imposes upon you to make a choice of one of two identities.”

Because buildings are public spaces in which we identify, they also can influence how we see ourselves. I associate my status as a U-M student with one of rigor and prestige, part of some legacy of intellectual promise. I wonder how much of this identity comes from the “Ivy League” present in our architecture.

And yet there are many aspects of the University’s campus that seem to be distinctly unique. Professor Roddier explained how many buildings on campus have been improvised and retrofitted over time. The new wing of the LSA building, which opened in 2020, with its semi-floating staircase and tall windows, was literally glued onto the outside of the previous exterior shell. The old metal ornaments are still there, revised into interior art pieces. 

In the same way, the Hatcher Graduate Library feels like a labyrinth, with sections of different elevations colliding, pasted together. Going through the library, one walks through portions from different decades, additions included as the University grew. The Mason-Angel-Haven-Tisch Hall complex, too, has had multiple revisions over the years, combining different, new designs while keeping the old ones.

When we walk into these buildings, both past and present converge. We’re subconsciously affirmed in our belief that we belong to something larger than ourselves: at once historical, creative and ever-changing.

Throughout my time at the University, I’ve had classes in many different halls and buildings. Most of the time, no matter where you go, the classrooms look the same. I used to think this was sort of a bummer — the result of architects who lacked creativity. But because the classrooms look so interchangeable — by design — they don’t impose any sort of hierarchy, or expectation upon the students. A graduate classroom could be the same as an undergraduate’s, and vice versa. When we can envision ourselves in the same setting as more advanced students, advancement feels distinctly possible. Nothing feels off limits.

I remember, as a freshman, not knowing how big Ann Arbor was. Or campus, for that matter. Each building seemed like a maze; classrooms and restrooms would appear in places I wasn’t expecting them to be. Eventually, without my knowing, I started to learn my way around. The buildings entered my body and mind. They became part of who I am.

Statement Correspondent Steve Liu can be reached at liuste@umich.edu.