A COLLECTION OF ROOMS A SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AND REPRESENTATION

ALSTON, MASSACHUSSETS

Harvard GSD - Fall 2020 Option Studio

‘ Form as knowledge: What can a school of Architecture be? ’

Instructors: Eric Lapierre

The idea of Marvellous Architecture navigates the contradictions and agreements between reason and imagination. Rationalism suggest a careful and curated selection of an non-complex system that performs efficiently on the articulation of space. Imagination claims for the specificities of design to alter with grace the reason.

The studio addresses new ideas for a School of Archiecture as an addition to Harvard Campus. Concealing reason and imagination, ‘A Collection of rooms’ seeks for a system of connected rooms, of multiple proportions in coherence with the school‘s function and a new pedagogy.

From Zeno’s paradox, an abstract perception of space -as subject to infinite subdivisionsis taken as a departure point. A gradual grid serves to manage the assemblage of diverse rooms in accordance with an urban response, spatial needs, and structural exhibit. The grid conditions a formal and spatial composition of ad hoc proportions suggesting infinity.

No Hierarchies

From the entrance point, the grid proportions will increase in a Fibonacci sequence.

This modulation argues for a non-hierarchical distribution of space, where furniture, divisions and forum can be allocated according to the semester needs. In addition, it allows a equitative intrusion of green spaces within the boundaries of the school.

The external form of the building expresses the modulation of the grid through its fenestrations and structure. Interiors, instead, gather s the complexity of the school. From the outside the building is a simple cast of concrete. Fenestrations have the same height. A whole concrete texture covers the building.

Internally, the pedagogical system goes in a sequence from small rooms dedicated to individual and intelectual activities to large rooms dedicated to collaborative and making-based learning. In between, there is a variety of intermediate categories.

Devices

Fixed furiture, curtains and moving panells will be the main devices that will assist activities and reinforce privacy and character among rooms.

Physical Differs From Visual

Physical paths happen through lateral fenestrations that depend on the size of the walls. While visual connections happen in perpendicular or diagonal axis to the rooms, not every case of visual continuity means transit. The continious repetition of frames suggests infinity.

Visual axis that are perpendicular offer a regular visual sequence of planes, sometimes disrupted by the presence of walls or gardens.

The only non-crossing walls are the ones of the diagonal axis from the entrance. This axis layers the same perspective along several rooms, suggesting infinity.

Structure

The structure is composed by walls and beams. The size of the beam proportionally increases to the size of the room considering the larger spam between wall to wall. In these sense the structure performs as an exhibition of an engineering coherence and economy of means.

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