,
, Lindsey Stamps 13 January 2014 Architectural Association
comma break breath interim interlude interruption interval mark opening pause punctuation rest space
grid framework matrix mesh network grill lattice structure web
Alberti, L. (1988). On the Art of Building in Ten Books. MIT Press, London.
Evans, R. (1997). Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays. Architectural Association, London.
Foucault, M. (1989). The Archaeology of Knowledge. Routledge, Abingdon.
Kahn, A. (ed.) (1991). Drawing/Building/Text. Princeton Architectural Press, New York.
Krauss, R. (1985). Grids. The Originality of the Avant-Garde and other Modernist Myths. MIT Press, London. pp. 8-22
Kunze, D. (2007). “Minding the Gap” in Architectural Speculation. Journal of Architectural Education. Volume 61, Issue 1, pp. 54-61
Rowe, C. Slutzky, R. (1997). Transparency. Burkhäuser, Boston.
Tschumi, B. (1990). The Pleasure of Architecture. Tschumi, B. (ed.) Questions of Space. Architectural Association, London. pp. 47-60
Tschumi, B. (2012). Abstract Mediation and Strategy. In: Tschumi, B. (ed.) Architecture Concepts: Red in Not a Color. Rizzoli, New York. pp. 162-167
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Without structure Architecture would crumble. The ubiquitous network of steel columns and beams in contemporary building is the most basic edifice; however there are far more intricate, more complex systems which hold up our discipline. The drafting tools of Alberti, the Encyclopedia of Diderot, the diagrams of Durand: a regulated framework runs infinitely in all directions as the foundation of Architecture. Just as there is a grid that begins all building projects, a sheet of graph paper on which the first walls are erected, so there is an underlying taxonomy from which we construct the discourse of architectural theory. By framing a system of knowledge, theorists are able to classify the vast oeuvre of our discipline and present the categorized groupings for our comprehension. How do we construct a grid with which to frame architectural theory in order to consume and digest the knowledge of the discipline? How does this grid disseminate concepts? This is the deep structure of epistemology with which we are enthralled. Like a mirage, the vast grid spreads out before us as untouched landscape, to be quietly perceived, and contemplated, and built upon. An emblem of modernity, Grids, discovers orthogonal structure supporting conceptual works in modern art and art history. In the well published essay from 1987, Rosaline Krauss carefully organizes the points presented, ordering them within the framework on which fragments are articulated. Krauss thoroughly examines the function of grid in spatial and temporal realms of art, explores the relationship between form and understanding, and portrays grids as both a symbol and a myth of modernism citing examples of assemblage, De Stijl painting, and the physiology of optics. She meticulously crafts language to present us with every possible point of entry to cast off. Grids is constructed to allow the reader to pass through her text to the matrix below, understanding the specific instances presented and proposing a new set of circumstances to reframe the argument in the new context of comprehension. Contradictions, juxtapositions, and clarifications are used throughout Krauss’ piece to frame her words as referential rather than specific. The initial contradiction parallels the spatial aspect of grids with the temporal with respect to modernity. What she calls the “emblem of modernity� is a visual representation of the structure of modern art. There is an autonomous space implied in the lattice, flattened, as the geometricized art goes against the laws of nature.1
The suggestion of a specific location in time is
relevant, as it is in the label for the period, modern art, implied by the abrupt and forceful ascension of the grids presence as an emblem, and an integral part of the modern movement. Juxtapositions follow contrasting the sacred and secular, masking and revealing, emblems versus myths. Concepts are further elaborated upon, exploring the interpretation of simultaneous opposites. Rather than analyze specific instances within the text, it is more valuable to examine what Krauss is portraying as a totality. Through complex analogies the grid is revealed as a mechanism of perception, a tool with which one can comprehend the abstract content presented. Grids are understood through defining parameters rather than absolutes. The intricacies of the analysis are accessed as a result of this openness; the explanation of the many functions of the grid resides in the gap, the cavity between a noun and its qualifier. The hollow point between the contradictions clarifies how a grid represents data. It does not forcefully
1
Krauss, R. The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, Grids, pp. 09
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assert one method or outcome solely, but offers a frame of reference to be inferred upon. As carefully as this essay is crafted it is not the text which is most illustrative. Krauss builds her grid from punctuation letting the pauses communicate the language resting solidly around them. The content of her work is constantly reinforced through the methods of presentation, most importantly, the use of the comma. The comma, pause, or separation, offers curated moments of reflection when we are invited to expand on the presented material. The comma, as a form of punctuation, is itself a simultaneous contradiction. From the Greek komma, meaning piece to cut off, the mark separates short clauses. The comma breaks the two words it separates, giving them a degree of autonomy; however it also joins the words around it as part of a common thought. The presence of the comma indicates that there is a common thread in the text presented unlike the period, for example, which implies a more distinctive pause. This technique is most strongly employed for listing, qualifying one word with the next which, like the use of juxtapositions serves to define the grid within a range of descriptions. “Flattened, geometricized, ordered; it is antinatural, antimimetic, antireal.”2 The commas placed between each term reference the text as parts in a series, qualifying words adjacent to one another as though each inhabit one cell of a point grid. They are assembled in a structured sentence as the larger picture, framed within the perimeter of this particular grid which references its place within an infinitely more expansive framework.
These pauses are the edifice through which
Krauss silently articulates her point, framing a set of ideas and giving each remark room to breathe. Pauses surround thoughts like parenthesis in order to let our questions seep in, creep up, and take form. Her argument is prefaced with the initial assertion that the grid exists both in space and in time. There is a duration implied with transitions, and varied punctuation slows the reader down to articulate the gradual buildup of layers of thought, and the slow accumulation of original notions stimulated by the written text. The punctuation here is autotelic, virtually autonomous, another layer in the edifice theories are erected upon. Modernist painting is used to illustrate the formal qualities and superficial intent of the grid. “Indeed, if it maps anything, it maps the surface of the painting itself. It is a transfer in which nothing changes places.”3 Here the surface grid is related to the perspective grid which is used to map volumes in space, where the planar grid can only address surface value. Like a drawing of Albrecht Durer we look out the window of a studio, see the landscape framed through the mullions and flattened onto the surface of the glass pane. All the information of the world is neatly classified into a cell, related to the cells next to and adjacent, and framed as part of a picture, bound neatly in a perimeter which separates that information from the ideas just beyond the boundary. In this way we understand the contradiction. The knowledge set within the frame, mapped out topographically onto a transparent glass surface, completes a set and is an idea itself. It also connects this knowledge, through separation, to the ideas surrounding it by implying that they are codependent enough to require a frame for 2 3
Krauss, R. Grids, pp. 09 Krauss, R. Grids, pp. 10
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articulation. Like the comma, this grid is a simultaneous contradiction; joining, splitting, enunciating. Furthermore, the graphed surface is indicative if the theory beyond, but is not in itself volumetric. There is a space, a gap, a phenomenal transparency, as in the façade of LeCorbusier’s villa at Garches, where we read this void between structure and surface as symptomatic of the weighty conceptual thought that occurs there. What occupies the void is always implied and never enunciated, and is the clearest invitation to project into the space between the surface and the area unfolding behind it. Bernard Tschumi, in The Pleasure of Architecture alludes to this relationship of space and ideas in architectural writings. “These fragments are all to be considered not only within the reality of ‘ideas’ but also within the reality of the reader’s spatial experience: a silent reality that cannot be put on paper.”4 The clearest way to implicate this spatial notion on paper is to employ the methods of Rosaline Krauss and both explore and utilize the grid to frame the infinite realms of space, theory, and knowledge. Like Alberti’s tool used to measure the city, the body, the letter, Krauss uses this framing of the boundless to separate and digest complex theories regarding the nature of learning. An architect of gridded text, Bernard Tscuhmi, writes in fragments and continuously re-frames his texts. His writing on the park at La Villette is one of the best examples of Tschumi’s use of the deep structural matrix where his ordered text simultaneously explains a project, its concept, and through the formation of language and silences, creates the space for the reader to expand upon the presented material. Like Krauss, Tschumi’s attention to layout is crucial. His writings are very accessible; they do not boast the density of Kant or Tafuri. The painstaking crafting of text, distilled in simple terms, causes the assertion of the gap between the structure and content and encourages deep contemplation. The transparent space, the mediating area between the grid and surface, one word and the next, is the space where knowledge grows. The grid frames the image beyond. Tracing and re-framing, continuous re-drawing of Tschumi’s text allows both the object and edifice to remain while we shift ourselves in relation to it. Tschumi fragments essays making the grid strong, the pauses immense, and the content visible, easily accessed through its structure like a large open mesh, and we project ourselves into that void accumulating bits of knowledge as we pass through. “It is not the clash between these contradictory fragments that counts, but the movement between them.”5 Tschumi understands architects “penetrating ability to visualize spatial relations”6 and exploits this talent to virtually project into physically inoccupiable spaces to his advantage. In his introduction to Abstract Mediation and Strategy, Tschumi lays out options as categories of four basic approaches, like a group of volumes on a specific subject, which were considered for the Parc de la Villette competition. Option B., “take what exists, fill in the gaps, complete the text, scribble in the margins (a complement)” is described as a literary approach to construction and could be taken as a description of his writings. Text is crafted using a regular underlying structure like the point grid 4
Tschumi, B. Questions of Space, The Pleasure of Architecture, pp. 49 Tschumi, B. The Pleasure of Architecture, pp. 58 6 Evans, R. Translations from Drawing to Building, pp. 180 5
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of la Villette. In this way he allows for the leap to be made, we are able to enter the void, the transparent gap between the concepts offered and matrix upon which he lays it out, by scribbling in the margins and inserting our projections in between his lines of text. We would be remiss if we did not address Tschumi’s practice of continuously republishing his texts. Abstract Mediation was published most recently in Architecture Concepts: Red is Not a Color in 2013. It was first written, in French7 in 1987, and has been extracted from his larger text, Cinegramme Folie: Le Parc de la Villette.
His
habitual tracing, re-drawing, re-framing of his work allows ideas to shift in relation to contemporary theory and praxis emphasizing the relevance of the space between the structure and the content. While the text remains constant it is recreated against a new grid. New ideas are grown through the understanding of existing knowledge and the re-interpretation with reference to a new frame. “Deconstruct what exists by critically analyzing the historical layers that preceded it, even adding other layers derived from elsewhere-“8 In this way writing is approached in the same manner as an architectural project. “Search for an intermediary- an abstract system to mediate between the site (as well as all given constraints) and some other concept, beyond a city or program.”9 This is how we continuously reinterpret such accessible texts and why we are able to glean new information repeatedly. In the tradition of great artisans works are repeatedly copied. While there is admittedly a distinction between a young painter copying a master as a way of practicing and learning, there is a consistent appreciation for the insight gained through replication in this manner as well as the republication of theoretical texts. Monet repainted the Rouen Cathedral in Paris dozens of times from the same vantage point reassessing the light each time. He examined the affect the air between himself and his subject had on one another. The consistency of subject and object articulate the shift in the atmosphere between and the accumulation of truths through this continuous study. In this way re-printing theory traces text, like a drawing, addressing the same subject from the same vantage point each time, understanding that the light and the cast shadows will always vary and will have an altered effect of the viewer. Deconstruction, superimposition, surfaces, and frames are used to build and fragment Abstract Mediation. “Each of these frames can be turned into a single piece of work.”10 Separation between cells of text highlights the importance of the gap, and the articulation of the fragment asserts its importance in and relation to the framed construct. Text re-frames the intent and the concept of a project to aide in the transmutation- to exist where there is neither frame nor structure, “while the transmutation that occurs between drawing and building remains to a large extent an enigma.”11
Creation of memory, a mental construct, is the goal of the configuration. A
new version of the language, a reinterpretation formed in the space between the
7
The fact that this text has been extracted and then translated from its original French is significant, and this significance is not lost on me. However for the sake of clarity and cohesion of my text, I will leave this fact as an interesting aside to be further explored in a subsequent text. The work has also been published in Spanish. 8 Tschumi, B. Abstract Mediation and Strategy, pp. 162 9 Tschumi, B. Abstract Mediation and Strategy, pp. 162 10 Tschumi, B. Abstract Mediation and Strategy, pp. 167 11 Evans, R. Translation from Drawing to Building, pp.160
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reading of the words and comprehension in the mind, is the ultimate outcome of this exercise. “All sequences are cumulative. Their “frames” derive significance from juxtaposition. They establish memory- of the preceding frames.”12 The library as a center of learning is a tangible location which illustrates this discussion. A library by definition is a site where literary and artistic materials are kept for reading, reference, or lending, especially when arranged systematically. Charged with the task of ordering thousands of volumes the structure of a library is grid like. Areas are framed to separate categories of information from others, acknowledging both their correlation and their autonomy. Within areas works are sorted by relevancy so when choosing an item, one piece of text, it is related to its category and yet occupies its own cell within the structure, adjacent to associated knowledge fragments. Systematic ordering plays a specific role in this discussion of void and gridded theory. Like the texts of Krauss and Tschumi, the fragmenting and ordering and of ideas makes the absorption of concepts simpler and therefore the transparency is more easily accessed. The grid allows us to define relations of ideas highlighting the cavities we may enter. In Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge he describes, “history proper was concerned to define relations (of simple causality, of circular determination, of antagonism, of expression) between facts or dated events: the series being known, it was simply a question of defining the position of each element in relation to the other elements in the series. The problem now is to constitute a series: define the elements proper to each series, to fix its boundaries, to reveal its own specific type of relations, to formulate its laws, and, beyond this, to describe the relations between different series... “13 The penetrable construct offers a means to distill the information at hand separating it from other ideas. The library is the local, immediate, physical structure where translation from abstract to the defendable takes place and the grid is the arrangement which makes this conceivable. An architectural manifestation of the grid through which knowledge propagates, the library allows us to occupy the structure physically, as we read from the texts literally. The high concentration of mental projections makes the library crucial. The grid expands infinitely. The information framed by its structure is either underlying as in the case of carefully crafted texts or overlying as in the mullions of a window; information is inexhaustible. Limitations are implied by the edifice, but through the implication of boundaries we understand there is further knowledge from which we are presently separated for the sake of more local or immediate comprehension. The Architectural Association library is a limited library. It cannot hold the volumes of the famed Library in Alexandria. There has been a pre-selection process; the literature of the world has been partially digested so as to display for us the most relevant texts for the specific types of learning the AA offers. Within the library, there is a further reduction if texts based on what is displayed in the cabinets versus what is on reserve or in archives. Again fragmented, the volumes are sorted based on categories, and numbered to fit neatly into a 19th century cabinet, spine facing outward, so that we can read the meticulous categorization through the graph in front of us. This serial process of editing, sorting, and displaying the fragments of the world’s knowledge allows
12 13
Tschumi, B. Abstract Mediation and Strategy, pp. 167 Foucault, M. Archaeology of Knowledge, pp.08
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us to play archaeologist, digging into the earthen layers of 36 Bedford Square, and projecting ourselves into the transparent space between the present system of organization and the words we read in the spines. Then further we go, as only architects can, projecting in our minds a visualization of space manifested from the interpretation of the words on a page, the spaces between the lines, and the punctuation separating one thought from the next. We insert ourselves between a comma and a space, and hatch our ideas there. The transition between one letter and the next is where theorists, historians, and philosophers exist. We create there, writhing in the small space allowed, until the crack becomes slightly more open and can accommodate our imposition. The structure of the grid, the careful ordering and systematizing allows us to understand what exists and where the gaps lay. The library is the construct in which knowledge is sorted, consumed, and digested, re-traced, reframed, and ultimately re-born. The moment of conception occurs between the stacks in the infinite space between a boundless structure of epistemology and the surface of the mind. The grid is a tool for framing knowledge to make theory understandable however it is the space between the organizing grid and the surface it frames which is richest. The comma, transition, pause, between two infinities gives birth to new theories. We fix our attention on the space between content and underlying structure which is crucial for the learning process, more than either component individually. The transparency which mediates between signifier and signified deserves our energy. As much as we require precedents and a way of accessing the vast history of our discipline, we require space. Architects build structures, solid and concrete, but life exists in the voids we create not in the physicality of what we have built. What is presented is crucial, but it is posthumous, and what we crave is embryonic. Understanding the need for void, transparency, gaps, and encouraging the occupation of this space is the genius of grids. The instrument of knowledge is the medium of experience.