Fractured Narrative

Deconstructed storytelling in architecture through an investigation of optical physiology

by Daniel Alderman

a candidate for Master of Architecture from the School of Architecture and Community Design at the University of South Florida

May 2013

Committee chaired by Professor Steve Cooke

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements IV Foreword IV Abstract VII The Spark

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The Atheneum

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The Script

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The Story

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The Fracture

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Afterword 82 Bibliography 84 Index of Figures

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Appendix 90

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Acknowledgements | Foreword

Everything I have accomplished and produced in this book is the result of the Grace of Christ, who gave me the calling to build, and the family, friends, and colleagues who have supported me through my graduate studies, and showed tenacious loyalty during my days of isolation. I owe everything to you.

I was almost an English major before I resolved to pursue an education in architecture; and as much as I would say I moved beyond a study of language, it seems that this idea continued to manifest itself throughout my studies.

Poetry, narrative, and language offers a unique method of manipulation which seems to burrow its ideas deep into the psyche like an invisible worm. I grew up reading masters of language like Norton Juster, Carroll, and Twain.

Inspirations such as these taught me that language not only communicates ideas, but it can also augment them, shadow them, and encrypt them. Amazingly, language allows us to do so in such a dazzling array of diction and dialects, but, inherently, these are all simply sounds and gestures associated with instinctive human thought. The fact that narratives and fiction has kept my interest fixated for so long has, in recent years, led me to ask the questions of why and for what purpose. I refer, of course, to the purpose and motivations for which these stories are told. While the obvious answer would be that storytelling exists to convey ideas concurrently with emotion, but the greater question lies with how those stories achieve such emotional catharsis and empathy. Language and syntax gives us the means to communicate specific ideas, even highly complex ones within one’s own linguistic structure through the relatively simple means of associated

sounds, but the addition of narrative allows the communication of emotion, connotation and hidden meaning in these nearly identical language structures.

The freeing power of narrative is the unknown realities that stories can make tangible; whether through historical myth, or a fantastical landscape, narrative can liberate our perspective on what is possible and within one’s grasp. With all of its tragedies and flawed characters, narrative can introduce us to a new perfection; a perfection of sequence and plot. The suspension of disbelief allows us to accept a series of events which lead to a climax and a resolution that could only happen in the specific reality of the author’s invention; and storytelling allows us to see possible outcomes the common world would not, and sometimes could not, produce. Narrative is a beautiful epitome of language and thought; that which can envelope and project the sum of human desires, emotion, pain, and pleasure in a way which exposition like this will always fall short. I love stories because with them, authors can help us see a world in which our decisions and outcomes are not so politically and economically charged, but with a new set of rules and expectations, we can see the outcomes which are a product of more idealistic motivations, if only for a moment.

I will begin by saying that

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I am well aware that I am not the first interested in architecture theory to address the idea of language in architecture; in fact I would never have so many books to look up on the subject if I had been. Nor am I trying to revolutionize the theoretical subject, but I do hope to perhaps address the motivations and perspectives one undertakes when employing the idea of linguistics and narrative as a tool of communication in architecture, and perhaps patch a few theoretical holes in the process. Pardon the colloquialism, but after all, such nuances are the stuff that gives narration its thisness; I’ll get to that later. While I said I didn’t want to reinvent a theoretic stance in architecture, or revolutionize the theoretical spectrum, I have no illusions of my ability to do so, I had hoped for the opportunity to introduce a new element of dialogue which I feel has been horribly misplaced if not disregarded as of late in the theoretical realm. Theorists have popularly felt that the individual person ought not to be regarded in architecture, but I feel that without that individual person, architecture is nothing. Any space is only a void until a single person inhabits it much in the same way that colors can’t exist without light. Abandoned or forgotten spaces even have a metaphysical function once they are reinhabited, either permanently or by visiting occupants, because of the potential and latent energies that a

defunct space carries. How, then, can we argue for autonomous building? A literary architecture can open our minds to the kinds of reinventions an innovations the proponents of autonomous form seek, while addressing the perspective of the occupant by understanding the literary point of view. In all of its rhythms, its temporalities, and all the elegance of its disruptions, narrative can elevate us to the fantastical realm of building while anchoring its means to the perceptive and phenomenological human experience.

-From the Author

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VII

abstract

Storytelling and narration is a process by which authors help readers to see the world of the author’s invention.

Throughout times of antiquity until today, writers and storytellers must understand the fundamental processes of perception and comprehension the human brain uses to process and store information.

By using a system of groupings (schemas and scripts) the human brain filters information in order to store it through relationships to familiar and shared knowledge. Whether through the archaic narratives of Homer, or through contemporary literature today, authors use and understand these fundamental groupings and processes to communicate ideas at the brain’s intuitive level through storytelling. Architecture theory has attempted to use ideas of linguistics and narrative, but as it has polarized away from a habitation-oriented approach, language has merely been used as a metaphor or generative device. Fractured Narrative is a reaction to this method by observing the methods of storytelling, both written and visual, to design a methodology which employs the intuitive processes by which the brain understands and processes information.

The conducted research will allow me to translate literary techniques into architectural studies which will center around a both intuitive and cognitive understanding of language and space.

The language to which we respond need not be attached to any particular

architectural rhetoric, but rather, it should respond specifically and intentionally to the process by which the mind creates memories. By reacquainting ourselves with a humane habitative process of architecture theory, the economic necessities of practice can be resolved in tandem with theoretical ideas and concepts, not in place of them. A fusion of fundamental cognitive processes with architectural space can create a stronger link between architecture and its necessity within and among the community which inhabits it. While theorists such as Peter Eisenman propose an architecture which is not time, place, or scale specific, I posit that architecture’s relevance stands a much better chance if spatial design adheres rigidly to those specificities, because while a novel and alien form is not necessarily time, place, and scale specific, those who would exist in the space are.

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7

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The Spark 9

Left: (Fig. 1.1)Analytical axonometric - The Danteum

by Giuseppe Terragni, 1942. The drawing explores Terragni’s mapping of the three canticles of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Inferno, Pergatorio, and Paradiso.

Language and storytelling is both the oldest and most intuitive methods by which humanity conveys thought.

Language conveys not only ideas, but emotion, and is actively fixated on the deepest, most persistent intuitions of man1. Since this medium, so archaic and intuitive, timelessly persists throughout all of human history, it holds a grasp on the hierarchy of the many ineffable qualities which make us human. It makes sense, then, to adhere to these linguistic qualities in the process of experience. “Language thus becomes indispensable not only for the construction of the world of thought but also for the construction of the world of perception, both of which constitute the ultimate nexus of an intelligible communion...”2

The idea of this adherence is nothing new to architecture theory, however. Some architectural theorists make this comparison as an effective method to communicate spatial and visual ideas, which then generate an ordering system based on the syntax of whichever linguistic properties the architect adopts. The application of this theory typically takes one of two forms; the use of language as a narrative, or the use of language as syntax. Giusseppe Terragni exemplifies the first method with

his unbuilt translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy into a monument of Italian culture under fascism in the 1930’s.

Based on the lucid rhythm of the three canticles with thirty-three cantos each, the Danteum is filled with Italian political and religious metaphors which reflect the 100 cantos of the Divine Comedy and the ideals of fascist Italy. While certain expressions in the Danteum are slightly more vague, relating a mathematical rhythm between the poem and the building, the forest, Terragni’s entry piece, is a 1:1 analogy with the imagery of the opening scene of Dante’s epic.3

I will note this exception of Terragni’s work because this kind of literal metaphor can be successful with the goal of communicating a specific narrative, simply because the architectural imagery can so easily mimic the literary imagery, but Terragni’s metaphors are far less intelligible elsewhere in the program. The languages used in the three canticles reflect the basic rhetoric and tone of inferno, purgatory, and paradise, but “he relied on the observer’s knowledge of Dante to fill in the characters and allegories while traversing his abstract spaces.”4 Perhaps the most vague and empty of Terragni’s metaphors is the entry court which precedes the Forest.

1 Noam Chomsky, Language and Thought: preface (London, The Frick Collection, 1993), 10.

2 Noam Chomsky, Language and Thought: preface (London, The Frick Collection, 1993), 11.

3 Thomas L. Schumacher, The Danteum (New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 1985) 47.

4 Thomas L. Schumacher, The Danteum (New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 1985) 49.

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The Spark 11

Left: (Fig 1.2) Axonometric of House VI (1975) Below: (Fig 1.3) Iterative studies of House II (1969)

In order to represent the emptiness of Dante’s first thirty-five years, wasted in the moral and philosophical sense, Terragni programs a court space which occupies one quarter of the usable program, and is “intentionally wasted” from the point of view of building economy; a deep metaphor in Terragni’s opinion, but one entirely unreadable and post-rationalized without such exposition from the architect himself.

The second of these theoretical techniques is the use of the syntax of language itself as an analogy of architectural figures of language. Peter Eisenman attaches to this strategy in his early work, including his writings Houses of Cards, and embodies the epitome of this metaphorical weakness.

Eisenman uses an analogous comparison of architecture and the rhetorical figure as a generative device to create novel formal arrangements which in effect disassociates architectural language from the contexts and scales with which humans are familiar. Eisenman gives this example of a reinvention of rhetorical figures based on language: Let us go back to our words ‘cat’ and ‘act’ and suggest another relationship. If we add a third term, the verb ‘is,’ we have the forms ‘cat is’ and ‘act is.’ Now if we superpose them and produce a third form ‘cactis,’ it is a sign which does not mean anything in itself. While it is similar to ‘cactus,’ it does not in itself

represent or suggest the plant or the desert.5

This shows a completely esoteric invention which give the viewer the illusion of similarity and context, but it is an affected one. Eisenman uses language and its syntax as a toolkit of metaphors, which, by his theoretical exercise, give him artistic license to manipulate these syntactical rules however he wishes in his Houses of Cards.6

To create a building with autonomous form, Eisenman not only rejects the formal contexts of architectural language (in his House VI, he floats an exterior column inches above the foundation, as to forcefully state that the column is his linguistic device, not a piece of structure, as one would assume based on preconception) but he also rejects standards of human habitation, and allows the architecture to dominate so thoroughly that it in effect interrupts the client’s use of the space. By use of an abstract design process, Eisenman created an abstract house of which “the interior area is simply what was left over 5 Peter Eisenman, “Architecture and the Problem of the Rhetorical Figure,” Architecture and Urbanism (July 1987), 178.

6 For a full reference of Eisenman’s experimental houses, and the free-floating design process he used with respect to the house’s elements as “rhetorical figures,” see Eisenman, Houses of Cards (New York, Oxford University Press), 1987.

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“To dislocate dwel ling, architecture must continually reinvent itself. Arc hitecture accomp lishes this out of itself, out of the stuff that holds it together.�

The Spark 13

Left:

Peter Eisenman, Architecture and the Problem of the Rhetorical Figure, 177.

after Eisenman finished creating the structure”7 This technique seems to be a hyperbole of a modern architectural process of design stripped of decoration; this work, however, not only sacrifices spatial definition by rejecting partitions, scaler, or textural variation, but it also relies on structure so much that the house actively uses extraneous structural elements as decoration. In an attempt to rigidly follow his mathematical rhythm, Eisenman uses superfluous structural elements as items of consciousness; an element which exists for the sake of awareness of that element. These items of consciousness act so deliberately in the name of awareness that they keep the house from a sphere of reality architecture is traditionally expected to occupy.8

literary translation through an analogous comparison of architecture to linguistic syntax, he digresses this proposition by suggesting that these “rhetorical figures” must be disassociated from the meanings which accumulated history has attached to them. Eisenman imagines a reinvention of Rome which is not time, place, and scale specific, and imagines an architectural language reinvented out of an esoteric set of rules which do not apply to the associations we can already make and perceive.9 The result of this exercise is a fantasized reality which rejects the very specificities human comprehension requires.

The problem with this technique thus far is its application; the use of narrative and language as a metaphorical generator of form merely displays the architect’s artistic finesse without providing a tangible relationship with occupants who cannot possibly read a metaphor into a formal language unless the metaphor is presented explicitly. While Eisenman proposes a positive alternative to the metaphorical emptiness of a 7 Suzanne Frank, Peter Eisenman’s House VI: The Client’s Response (New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1994), 38.

8 Paul Goldberger, “The house as sculptural Object,” New York Times Magazine (March 1977).

9 Peter Eisenman.“Architecture and the Problem of the Rhetorical Figure,” Architecture and Urbanism (July 1987):176.

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The Spark 15

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The Atheneum 17

Previous Page: (Fig 2.1) Extruded section model - The Interval of Dissemination Left: (Fig 2.2) Facade Study Touching the street edge

Mapping Archetypes

How, then, do we communicate with specificity? This communication must occur at every architectural scale, but must not lose harmony with the very specific human scale. In this introductory scenario to an examination of storytelling, a point to embark will be a house of stories; an architecture of the unfinished.

An infill within an urban street contains the skeleton of an architectural project left undone. The domino house-like skeleton sits with an infinite canvas of potential energy, and as is the unintended consequence of every city, it sits among many vacant projects like it. This concrete locale of immaterial space houses the Conjectural Atheneum, an archive of unpublished manuscripts. The poetic weight of such a site is obvious, but this scenario contains many possibilities to introduce solutions to the glaring reminders of economic failure. Adaptive reuse will become a paramount strategy of sustainable cities, and sites which require minimal excavation and foundation work provide an ample opportunity for humble entities to have a voice in an urban scale, full of urban noise and urbane egos. The niche market of unpublished manuscripts would be one such humble entity, and building off of the strength of existing, yet abandoned structure provides the fabric needed to establish the stasis of setting.

To tell the story to the occupant of an archive housing the unfinished and unrealized, one must ask a series of questions: What story do I tell? And

provided the story, how do I tell it? To preface these questions, I acknowledge that any creative discipline involves Gregotti’s “decent into the netherworld”1 in the creative process, and I could not possibly do authors the disservice of reducing the honed skill of narration to a scientific series of steps. But in lieu of this abstraction, I can only present one process and scenario in order to introduce the criteria of discussion.

With this, can we communicate with specificity?

Since Terragni uses the translation of a specific story, and Eisenman employs the generic syntax of language, a hybrid of the strengths of these techniques would be the generic structure of a narrative in which the building’s purpose is the story. The story of the Conjectural Atheneum is told through the South American Robleto, which consists of five components, which generate the hierarchy of the promenade.

Although this particular typology of plot is not readily familiar in a western culture, the rhythm and expectation of narrative is a cultural constant. The scales at which the narration must communicate are that of the urban or aerial scale, the street room, the common space, and the intimate space of the individual.

While this provides a challenge of holisticity within the complex network of language, it provides the same depth of 1 Vittorio Gregotti, “On Procedure,” Ways and Instruments (Boston, MIT Press, 1996), 89-94.

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The Atheneum 19

Left: (Fig 2.3) Cantilevered Balcony and light well Touching the street edge

an author’s constructed reality, and thus multiple opportunities to expound on the dynamics and time signatures required of successful narration.

The narrative archetype presents a framework of interaction which follows a set of rules which, once established, contain a fixed arrangement of points - plot points, we may call them - and a number of potential vectors in between these points. These points may also be modified in scale and complexity, so much so that the boundaries begin to overlap; at which point the vectors, which intertwine the plot points, become immediately relevant to both or all thresholds of the narrative. In the process of building programming, this framework can potentially intertwine the elements of program through a hierarchy of function which is juxtaposed with a contextual framework, the enactment of a setting, which creates these connecting vectors.

If the scale of these building plot-points grow to the point of overlap, the building vectors do more than guide episodic movement; vectors intertwined within plot points define a “character� role in the story. Any story can contain an indefinite number of characters, depending on the intent of the author and the complexity of the story itself.

While certain characters will intersect and interact in a narrative framework, indeed the greatest moments of interaction would be indicative of a larger plot point in scale, the vectors of different characters do not need to intersect

necessarily. This amalgamation of vectors and points shows a mapping of the narrative archetype which, when used in building, is a programmatic framework which allows discourse on the specific nature of an architectural sequence. For this purpose, the archetype produces clarity of sequence in order to elucidate the program for the occupant. With elucidation, can we communicate with specificity?

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Narrative Mapping: “There is a part of everything which is unexplored, because we are accustomed to using our eyes only in association with the memory of what people before us have thought of the thing we are looking at.�

-Maupassant, The Novel Left: (Fig 2.4) Constructed mapping of the robleto narrative Right: (Fig 2.5) Constructed mapping of archetypes

The Atheneum 21

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Left: (Fig 2.6) The Conjectural Atheneum; Light wells pierce through existing slabs to maintain natural lighting in the user interface.

Right: (Fig 2.7) The Conjectural Atheneum; Iterative studies on an unfinished architecture.

The Atheneum 23

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The Atheneum 25

Left: (Fig 2.8) The Conjectural Atheneum; the datum from the circulation core out to the cantilevered shelter.

Speculations on a Motif

The street room easily provides the criteria for the robleto’s introduction, or an establishment of a static setting. In all of a city’s hyperactivity, the constant hum of street life creates a sense of ambient energy on which one can rely within the density of an urban setting, which ebbs and flows as consistently as ocean tides throughout a daily clock. As with any story, the sense of stasis and a life-as-usual is vital to both the plot and the characters who enact it. This introduction happens at the facade, and the way in which the architecture touches the boundaries of the street room. In an urban setting, this approach must be considered as a pedestrian act, in which the introduction of the facade happens at an acute diagonal based on the sidewalk and the street setback. Taking advantage of an open setback of the existing slab, the Atheneum touches the street edge with a cantilevered balcony which pinpoints an introductory moment through a narrow and suspended point of shelter constructed as an exterior light well during conditions of ample sunlight, but this suspended shelter also acts as a downspout scupper on rainy days, which activates the pedestrian pathway on two climatic extremes on the street edge. The suspended shelter is an initial introduction, a constructed foreshadow, of a contrasting and disrupted language which communicates hierarchy and sequence through contrast. I refer to this suspended system hereafter as the fracture. This is an optical indication of an impending disruption of the urban stasis, a venture

into the Atheneum. With disruption, can we communicate with specificity?

Contrasting the typical western dramatic arc, which sets the plot in motion by action of an initial conflict, the robleto typology places the audience directly into the climax of the plot, in which the protagonist confronts the nexus of conflict, the motivations and reasoning of which the reader/audience is not necessarily sure. This method not only allows a more visceral experience of the story through the mystery of the circumstances behind the climax, but it also allows a more visceral association between the audience and the characters.

Since the climax is the point of interruption at which ripples both forward and backward in time occur, it is obviously the active element of the plot. This must correspond to the center of activity in the promenade as well. An archive which houses a rare collection, such as manuscripts or out-of-print materials, is typically considered a close-stack library.

A close-stack system means that the print materials do not leave the facility, which places emphasis on the patrons’ space in the reading room. This type of archive must rely much more heavily on the reading room than a standard open-stack library, which often uses the reading room as an atrium or common space.

Instead, the close stack Atheneum employs a Cantle of Reverie for individual patrons to research from the manuscripts. This is the active space

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The Atheneum 27

(Fig 2.9) The Cantle of Reverie.

Suspended light wells draw a dividing datum between the study modules (right) and the archive(left).

within the promenade and as is dictated by the robleto type, occurs early in the spatial sequence before the occupant actually makes use of the space, but the occupant would experience the Cantle of Reverie on his or her path towards procuring manuscripts. This interjects the space of highest use with the space of the most capacity and movement so the hierarchy of space corresponds mentally with the use of space and density of spatial articulation. Upon entering the Cantle of Reverie, the axis dividing the study spaces from the threshold of circulation is drawn by a substantial presence of the fracture, which punctures from the roof-level slab of the existing skeleton down through the second-story slab to hover overhead of the occupant, which not only communicates the scale and length of the study spaces, but provides natural light throughout the Cantle of Reverie. Several thinner light wells also protrude from the inner wall of the study spaces to provide natural light at the individual scale, on a side which otherwise faces a blank party wall of a neighboring building. These study spaces sit on the occupant’s right upon entrance to the Cantle of Reverie, but to the left, the occupant can continue through another threshold to the archive. With illumination, can we communicate with specificity?

The robleto will often interrupt the climactic scene, because thus far, the constituent events, the motivations, and the beginnings which led to the moment

of conflict are left untold. At which point, the author uses this typology to explain the events leading up to the moment of crisis, or the acme of change. A fictional journey often includes supporting characters who aid the protagonist and in the case of the robleto, the journey may consist of several short stories which expound on the assistance these supplementary characters give, or the complexities in those relationships. While the occupant passes briefly through the environmental energy of the Cantle of Reverie, he or she must first acquire the needed manuscripts to participate themselves. The wonderful benefit of a close-stack archive is the communication security concerns of the institution facilitates between the librarian and staff with patrons and researchers. An important junction for the patron’s journey of discovery in the archive is the Interval of Dissemination.

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02

1

Conjectural Atheneum Plan @ 12’-0” Scale: 3/16” = 1’-0”

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(Fig 2.10) The Conjectural Atheneum; Plan at second level

The Atheneum 29

03 02

03

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Left: (Fig 2.11) Illuminated view of the Conjectural Atheneum Right: (Fig 2.12) Illuminated aerial of the Conjectural Atheneum (top) with views of modeled lighting in the Cantle of Reverie (middle) and puncturing lightwells above the Cantle (bottom)

The Atheneum 31

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The Atheneum 33

Left: (Fig 2.13) View Towards the Interval of Dissemination Right: (Fig 2.14) Location diagrams in ascending order: The Cantle of Reverie The Interval of Dissemination The Peregrinate Anthology

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The Atheneum 35

Left: (Fig 2.15) The Conjectural Atheneum; extruded section model of The Interval of Dissemination

While maintaining security through a circulation point between patrons and staff, the Interval of Dissemination provides the librarians opportunities to assist and optimize the research of the patrons, not only by procuring the manuscripts more efficiently than the average patron can himself, but the circulation staff also has the liberty to suggest alternative and additional research materials, which can help build a rapport among all participants which many houses of literature sorely lack. To maintain this rapport along with security through the stages of this journey into the archive and in the transition back into the Cantle of Reverie, all partitions are glass, to allow the Atheneum to be a fluid space from the Cantle, past the Interval, and into the Peregrinate Anthology.

Since security and preservation are paramount concerns in a close-stack archive, the Anthology must occupy separate space from the Interval, but a fluid space in the Atheneum is just as vital for an ambulatory reading of the space. So, then, the Interval and Anthology occupy the same volume built out of the side of the existing skeleton. New columns built upon the contextual rhythm of the existing column grid suspend the archive above the landscape which passes through the lot.

While having some material difference to the fracture as it exists elsewhere in the program, the archive relies on this motif to communicate a hierarchy of the manuscripts to the patrons, and as a

wayfinding mechanism for the staff who navigate the Anthology. A central stacks unit pierces through two levels of the Anthology, and appears to float in the space; an additional floor below a plenum space in the floor carries the load of this central stack, and is stabilized at the ceiling of the double-height space. Cuts in the ceiling adjacent to the central stack unit allow small amounts of natural light to maintain the language of the fracture, as well as provide some lighting in the case of electrical failure. The transparency and continuity of the archive must reinforce the communion of the patrons, the staff, and study. With communion, can we communicate with specificity?

Patrons will not leave this archive with the bound pages housing the potential of discovery as so many of us do, holding a surplus of materials stacked liberally in our arms to peruse later. Through careful, intentional, and guided research, the patron leaves the Conjectural Atheneum with one’s own collection of discovery scratched and sketched on a note pad in graphite. The robleto uses a stage of conclusion to resolve the issues of the narrative, and to reflect on their meaning. While the linear progression of the narrative does not follow the closing script after the climax, we can easily surmise this in the chronology of the narrative itself. The patron who enacts the plot within the Atheneum must pass again through the Interval of Dissemination to return the manuscripts she used for the time in the

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“Life, then, will alw ays contain an inmit able surplus, a mar gin of the gratuit ous, a realm in which there is always more than we need: more things, more impre ssions, more memor ies, more habits, more words, more happiness, more un happiness.�

The Atheneum 37

Left: (Fig 2.16) Cross section model of the Conjectural Atheneum James Wood, The Surplus of Reality, How Fiction Works, p86.

Cantle of Reverie, but this may be seen as a threshold out of the Atheneum and out into the urban setting. The resolution back into stasis is not without an effect on the patron, however.

The stark environmental differences between the Atheneum and the city are harsh on the senses, and a period of time in a cloister of literature may warrant rest to mentally transition from study to scuttle. The closing promenade of the Atheneum cantilevers over the street edge opposite the entry street to both mirror the language of the entry, and to slowly reintegrate the occupant into the city through vistas of the street room. The visual journey intersects through both the intervention and the urban context to allow a visual association of both. The promenade empties into a plaza sunken below grade to provide a hybrid of secluded publicity. This space allows patrons to readjust to the outside environment, while examining and digesting his or her notes and possibly solidifying them in ink. Such associations allows a dialog about an extended context in which other abandoned sites can serve similarly as satellite locations for proxy research.

The adaptive reuse of these neglected skeletons can facilitate gentrifying injections into a suffering urban context.

These proxy stations, once symbols for failed venture capital, can become a catalyst for growth in a marred fabric.

With renewal, can we communicate with specificity?

The singular element of importance in the robleto narrative is the line of repetition, the fifth component, which creates continuity within a seemingly disconnected and fragmented plot. The line of repetition acts as a threshold between incongruous elements, while it simultaneously makes them explanatory of the motif itself.

The programmatic elements and the narrative language are engaged in a symbiotic dialogue which informs each of the other, making them not only justified, but also inseparable. The line of repetition provides an ideal opportunity to introduce the inception of new languages and contrasting languages.

The emergence of the line of repetition between each parameter of the robleto typology predetermines space for these languages to be enforced. These spaces are fractured spaces which disrupts the regularity of scale, surface, material, or geometry. While the fracture is a very tempting opportunity for autonomy, the line of repetition in the robleto exists to reconnect each microcosm of the plot to the macrocosm of the story’s message.

The macrocosm of any building is its use, and the reason occupants should inhabit it. With repetition, can we communicate with specificity?

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Climax The climax is not only the most substantial part of the story in scale, but it also occurs early in the plot typology.

Journey The journey may consist of a single story of journey, or multiple short stories including numerous characters, all of which establish the logic of events leading to the climax.

Close The story resolves with the characters finding closure and meaning behind the conflict, as well as a final reinforcement of the line of repitition to end the story.

Left: (Fig 2.17) The Conjectural Atheneum; analysis of the robleto typology in the program Right: (Fig 2.18) The Conjectural Atheneum; articulated pathways of the resolution.

Moments of active and passive interaction

The Atheneum 39

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Left: (Fig 2.19) The Conjectural Atheneum; cross- section model through the Cantle of Reverie, showing suspended light wells which communicate the fracture.

Right: (Fig 2.20) The Conjectural Atheneum; process images of modelling components, including the fracture (top) and image of the programmatic datum in the Conjectural Atheneum (bottom).

The Atheneum 41

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The Advent

The Threshold

The Atheneum 43

(Fig 2.21) The Conjectural Atheneum; Transverse Section See callouts in appendix

The Constituents The Semblance

The Reversion

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Fractured Language: Suspension and natural light

(Fig 2.22) The Conjectural Atheneum; Cross Section See callouts in appendix

The Atheneum 45

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The Script 47

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The Script 49

Left: (Fig 3.1) The blanket typology.

“Cutting this relationship would produce what might be called free floating signs without necessary meanings or the necessary relationship to their object cut from cultural, historical, accumulated meaning.”

-Peter Eisenman, Architecture and the Problem of the Rhetorical Figure, 177.

Architecture is at a crisis of progression; moving on from the modern and post-modern ideologies, practitioners and theorists search for ways to invent a contemporary architecture in the face of the media age, but quite often, these new inventions emerge through evolutions in form: a play and juxtaposition of scale, a complexity and mathematical inception of shapes, or a lack thereof, all of which can potentially alter one’s experience through, of, and within space, although most often, these inventions focus on the commodity of perception and the architectural image.

These evolutions all create a dynamic dialogue with style and artistic finesse, but rarely with the humane possibilities embodied in the sequence of program.

Elizabeth Minchin describes the sequence of everyday events our memory packages together as scripts which define the progression of a social construct.

Even from birth, as we experience various event sequences as part of our daily routines, we store these experiences in our memories as sequential units. These episodic memories are what Schank and Abelson have called scripts.1

I will identify a generic spatial script that is true in the case of most architectural programmes; while other spatial 1 Elizabeth Minchin, Homer and the Resources of Memory: Introduction (New York, Oxford University Press, 2001), 37.

arrangements exist, I will consider this a “blanket typology” of most architectural arrangements: The Advent The Threshold The Semblance The Constituents The Reversion

This progression envelopes the blanket typology of building, and is a common solution for meeting programmatic requirements. To be clear on this procession, I will quickly define these elements.

[The Advent] is the approach, generally from an urban fabric or a rural roadway, which passes through some landscaping the architect either address or rejects. [The Threshold] is the transition into the spatial promenade, which can happen either into enclosed space, or onto an exterior surface. This is the point at which the subject passes from the outside context into the space of the Work.

[The Semblance] is the point at which the architect sets the tone for the entire spatial arrangement, the overarching gesture which should carry through the rest of the promenade in some manner. Often, this embodies some larger scale common space which will feed into [The Constituents]. This is the series of spaces in which the architect fulfills the programmatic requirements which

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Program and Script: “Reference to knowledge stored in episodic form is fundamental to our habit of narration and to our ability to comprehend what we [perceive].�

-Elizabeth Minchin, Homer and the Resources of Memory: Introduction, 16.

(Fig 3.2) The idea of script in the process of programming introduces the idea of a userbased programming process, in contrast to a formally based, or predetermined envelope, which then falls back on the blanket typology.

The Script 51

supplement the interior space.

[The Reversion] is the end of the spatial sequence at which the subject finds himself at a crossroads; the architect can either send his or her subjects through a reversal of the progression of the promenade, or the architect can send occupants through a separate, retrospective journey out of the architecture and back into the world.

“If we express in sequence the details of any script, the outcome is a narrative of sorts, in which one routine event follows another. A scripted sequence does not, however, make a story; at the most, it may render an element within a story.”2

While I recognize variations in this framework, the model of a blanket typology demonstrates the use of a common promenade with variations in form and use. Inventions and innovations in stylistic design make for an aesthetic exercise, but do little to amplify the occupant’s experiential use of the space.

If a building’s program, or sequencing thereof, does not help generate formal uses of the building, then we will achieve little more than hollow sculptures of autonomous form which occupants only experience through spatial awareness and not through any method of spatial interaction. In practice, architecture stagnates and replicates into this blanket typology with a few exceptions driven 2 Elizabeth Minchin, Homer and the Resources of Memory: Introduction (New York, Oxford University Press, 2001), 15.

by capitalistic ideologies and inflated egos. While in theory, architecture soars into the fantastical and formally surreal.

This dichotomy seems to be commonly driven by a lack of regard for program and habitation, and rather left to formal or economic decisions. Architecture once relied on the occupant, and based the kinds of formal inventions popular among theorists on the body. As many architects obsess over new technologies and novel tools and techniques, theoretical exercises in architecture have rolled into a new stage of adolescence, which focuses on facades and structures, technology and sustainability, and every other aesthetic distraction from the realm which the person occupies. Instead of perpetuating an aesthetic exercise, what if we use language to re-affiliate the continuity of architecture and its occupants in a much more humane way?

While Eisenman and Terragni develop empty metaphors at the aesthetic level, I do agree with the value in a spatial language which allows architecture to speak intentionally about pregnant subjects. These messages need not be attached to any particular rhetoric, in fact the rhetoric itself can be quite free within a proper framework; these observations led me to the question of architectural language, not within a specific story or rhetorical syntax, but through the diagram and typology of storytelling.

Authors use various narrative

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“There is a part of everything which is unexplored, because we are accustomed to using our eyes only in association with the memory of what people before us have thought of the thing we are looking at.�

The Script 53

-Maupassant, The Novel How Fiction Works, p.73 (Fig 3.3) The script is the infrastructure of the story, the story is the medium of the message

techniques to dramatically convey a message, using the narrative as the medium. These techniques are rooted in the most archaic and intuitive processes by which the human brain understands and processes information. I believe the mental faculties involved in storytelling can, and in many cases, are employed in the physical, visual field. If we use the same techniques present in fiction and storytelling, architecture can recapture a spatial language which commands the concept of guided experience, thus opening a new realm of possibilities which can ameliorate architecture’s status and relevance. Spatial experiences are not limited to formal inventions. By observing the methods by which authors tell stories, we, as architects, can respond to the faculties by which the brain perceives and processes information in order to generate experiential memory. This allows us to use a sequential narrative beyond a method one uses to retrospectively justify a design, but rather as a generative tool to deliver a specific message and tone which reacts to human habitation.

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The Story 55

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Narrative typologies: (Fig 4.1) The Dramatic Arc (Fig 4.2) Kishotenketsu (Fig 4.3) Hero’s Journey

The Story 57

While the blanket typology represents a common sequential solution in architectural models, the following five narrative typologies present in cultures around the world demonstrate alternatives. Each typology carries a distinct style which authors use both for specific purposes and in cultural contexts.

A literary architecture will employ both the structures of these narrative typologies and narration techniques authors use to tell them as the linguistic method to convey these structures: Dramatic Arc The Dramatic Arc is one of the most popular and recognizable narrative structures in Western culture. Also referred to as a classical dramatic structure, this arc has its roots in classical Greek drama. Aristotle declared that plays have a consistent structure of “a beginning, middle, and end”. Centuries later, Gustav Freytag, a German dramatist and novelist, expanded Aristotle’s structure. Freytag’s pyramidlike diagram of five main tragic stages evolved into a broadly applicable structure directed toward narratives.

Kishotenketsu Kishotenketsu reflects the structure and development of Chinese and Japanese narratives. The Kishotenketsu model looks similar to the

Dramatic Arc, but consists of just four basic stages: Introduction, Development, Twist, and Conclusion. Stories using the Kishotenketsu structure convey seemingly disconnected events that are tied together by the conclusion of the story.

The distinguishing feature of Kishotenketsu is the element of surprise brought on by the twist.

The twist seems disconnected from the introduction and development of the story until the conclusion, at which point the audience begins to make connections to the crux of the story, often reframing earlier interpretations of the events.

The narrative is typically left open-ended, with partial resolution. Good examples are the films Rashomon(1950) and Inception (2010).

Hero’s Journey Hero’s Journey is a universal story motif first identified and named by Joseph Campbell.

Campbell’s studies (1991, 2008) in comparative mythology and cross-discipline interests helped him recognize commonalities between stories told in diverse cultures (e.g., Native American, Catholicism). Campbell’s structure is quite detailed, but basically charts the story of an individual who leaves home to venture into the unknown on a quest, is tested by hardship

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Narrative Typologies: (Fig 4.4) Hollywood Model (Fig 4.5) Robleto (Fig 4.6) Blanket Typology

The Story 59

or ordeals on the journey, and returns home triumphant and with a gift to help his community.

Often the hero goes through a period of hopelessness. The story may be truncated by the hero’s failure or death, but even then a gift is given in the form of a warning or message. The hero may be aided by real or supernatural beings.

In Campbell’s narrative structure, symbolic, spiritual, and psychological elements are critical. Symbolic meanings often complement the physicality of the story. Understanding the hero’s inner journey as it changes in tandem with the physical journey is necessary to grasp the depth of the narrative.

Recently, Hero’s Journey has been adapted to illustrate other more contemporary life journeys, such as students making their way through school while seeking knowledge and people working their way through life’s hardships, such as loss of a loved one or a diagnosis of cancer. Traditionally Hero’s Journey was viewed as a masculine narrative structure but has been applied to and recast for real life and fairytale heroines.

The feminine retelling often includes leaving comfortable but problematic domesticity or escape from domestic abuse and eventual recognition of assets, skills, and courage. The kindness

of other women or helpful supernatural animals often aids the heroine’s journey.

Hollywood Model The Classic Hollywood structure supports a simple but compelling narrative first articulated by the screenwriter and film professor Bill Idelson. The three most significant components are a hero, a goal, and an obstacle separating them. Most of the action involves how the hero overcomes the obstacle to reach the goal. The hero is usually helped by supporting characters who take on the hero’s goal as their own. For the story to be engaging, the obstacle must be compelling. The obstacle could be nature, other people, or characteristics of the hero.

Robleto The Robleto structure, based on traditional Nicaraguan storytelling, was conceptualized

by Cheryl Diermyer during a 2010 trip from the southern tip of San Juan Del Sur to the northern parts of Santa Lucia. Diermyer noticed a shared narrative structure when Nicaraguan community members told stories about their lives and culture. The structure is named after Robert Robleto, a cattle farmer and doctor of medicine in Nicaragua.

The Robleto structure consists of five stages: Line of Repetition,

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Peripheral cone of vision: approx. 130째

Focus cone of vision: approx. 2째

The Story 61

Left: (Fig 4.7) Narrative typologies; mapping of possible programming solutions based on the structure of storytelling (above).

(Fig 4.8) Human field of view (FOV) showing both the peripheral and the detailed cone of vision.

Introduction, Climax, Journey(ies), and Close. The Line of Repetition distinguishes this structure from other narrative arcs. The narrative starts with a defining statement that is repeated throughout the narrative, often marking the end of one stage and the beginning of the next. After a short introduction by the narrator, the narrative quickly moves into the climax, which describes the character’s challenge.

The journey stage begins by introducing other people, places, and events. Unlike other story structures, the Robleto structure may tell of several short journeys in one story. At the end of each short journey, the narrator repeats the defining statement.

The defining statement is sometimes repeated at the end, after the close, as well.1

While these typologies present a framework for storytelling, both written and experiential, the narration and use of linguistic technique is the driver which allows these structures to be effective.

While narrative typologies can inform a spatial sequence, this promenade is only beneficial if the architect can narrate the sequence through textural and contextual sensitivity. For the purpose of this argument, I will propose that these sensitivities and languages which compose contemporary architecture are analogous to the selection of detail 1 Dr. David Reinhart, Narrative Structures, http://narrativestructures. wisc.edu/ (September 2012).

an author uses in a narrative. Narration serves two purposes in fiction: to develop characters and to progress the story.2 Similarly, the selection and exclusion of architectural details, the joining of material, the revelation of spatial moments, and the scaler variations within these languages accomplish one of two things; these details either develop and emphasize the use of the program, or they serve to progress the promenade of spaces throughout the architectural sequence.

Just as details vary in tempo, tone, and scale in narrative, Marco Frascari describes details in architecture similarly: Details are much more than subordinate elements... These units have been singled out in spatial cells or in elements of composition, in modules or in measures, in the alternating of void and solid, or in the relationship between inside and outside.3

There is a direct comparison between the definition of detail Wood and Minchin describe in fiction and the range of architectural detail Frascari describes.

Detail is not limited to a representation of a minute element in a building at a large scale, as modern definition dictates, but it is a selection the author of the work wishes to guide the viewer to see or 2 James Wood, How Fiction Works (New York, FSGBooks, 2008), 56.

3 Marco Frascari, “The Tell-the-Tale-Detail,� Building Architecture (1984), 23.

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experience.4 4

For a detailed analysis of architectural detail, see Frascari’s deconstruction of detail in the work of Carlo Scarpa in “The

Tell-the-Tale-Detail,” Building Architecture (1984), 28-36.

Gel of Chosenness Authors use the description of detail in narration to help the reader to see.

Whether it be persons, the environment, or events, the details excluded are just as significant as those included. This selection of detail is the method the author uses to articulate the sequence of the narrative, and to punctuate the message of the medium. In architecture, the use and selection of detail can become a catalystic tool to visually narrate the occupant’s progression through a spatial narrative; to help the occupant see the message of the built medium. “We no longer notice what [the author] chooses not to notice. And we no longer notice that what he has selected is not of course casually scanned but quite savagely chosen... each detail is almost frozen in its gel of chosenness.”1 In much the same way that an author will carefully select a sampling of observations by the protagonist, a lens through which the reader sees this gel of chosenness, the architect must also dictate the elements and details which accomplish the goals of narration: to develop the program, or to progress the sequence. James Wood makes a careful note, while discussing the narrative techniques of Flaubert, of the details the narrator chooses not to notice.

The author’s judicious selection of details annotate the exceptions, the 5

James Wood, 14 How Fiction Works: Flaubert and Sentimental Education (New York, FSGBooks, 2008), 14.

deviations from the context of the setting.

While details often carry connotations and symbolism, in a successful work, they still fulfill the basic two requirements of narration by creating a focus for the reader’s mental image while allowing the reader to assume the remaining context.

This observation gives equal credence to the omission of detail in space, which by virtue, help the occupant to see the language of the details the architect includes through a restraint by exclusion.

Through a careful and judicious selection of details, be it a joining of contrasting materials, a juxtaposition of form, or a jarring adjustment of scale within a relatively quiet field, the architect can intentionally guide one’s perception of space through a contextual understanding of the human field of view.

In order to do so, we must understand how the eye sees, then how the brain interprets those images, so an architect’s comprehension of the spatial is as adept as the author’s comprehension of the written.

“The artifice lies in the selection of detail. In life, we can swivel our heads and eyes, but in fact we are like helpless cameras. We have a wide lens, and must take in whatever comes before us.

Our memory selects for us, but not so much like the way literary narrative selects. Our memories are aesthetically untalented”2 6James Wood, How Fiction Works: The Paradox of Flaubertian Style (New York, FSGBooks, 2008), 57.

The Story 63

Thisness, and the Visual Field

In order to use visual detail effectively, one must understand the use of detail, both in literature and in visual circumstances. The key use of detail is that which feels real, and that which feels otherworldly. While neither form of detail is inherently correct or incorrect, both must be used with discretion. The intuitive nature of storytelling lies with the intuitive, naturalizing form of thisness. Wood defines thisness, first coined by medieval theologian Duns Scotus, as any detail which draws abstraction toward itself and kills that abstraction with its concretion.1 A narrative’s inclusion and exclusion of detail presents an analogy of two layers of the visual field; that which we see, and that which we assume. Thisness, however, adds a third layer to this dynamic; the visual field now consists of that which we assume, that which we see, and that which we see concretely. To translate this comparison physically, think of the human eye’s field of view; the eye can perceive two layers of physical details, while the brain perceives that which is assumed.

The field of view consists of both peripheral images, the abstraction, and the focus, which, when used intentionally and effectively, can embody a scene’s thisness.

1 Thisness: (n) 1) a detail that draws abstraction toward itself and seems to kill that abstraction with a puff of palpability;

2) a detail that centers our attention with its concretion. See Wood, How Fiction Works: Thisness (New York, FSGBooks, 2008), 67.

Within the frame of the visual field, the eye physically must perceive many components through the focus view, and allow the peripheral vision to retain an abstract knowledge of previous information. The dance which the focus view undertakes in order to perceive an entire scene within the field of view is referred to as saccades.2 In this way, our eyes work very much in the same way as Wood’s helpless camera simile.

Unlike a camera, however, we have a very powerful storage device and processor which takes the thousands of saccades the eye ingests and processes them into a patchwork of information which our memory compiles into an image with an enormous amount of detail which regards color, texture, composition, and light. This phenomena physically differs from Wood’s comparison in that our memories are extremely talented with regards to a single scene in which the brain remembers the huge amount of information saccades produce, but where he is correct is in the observation that our memories are much less adept at differentiating concrete, significant detail from the superfluous details which cloud our perception. This shortcoming necessitates an enormous responsibility 2 Saccade: (n) A rapid intermittent eye movement, as that which occurs when the eyes fix on one point after another in the visual field. The American Heritage® Medical Dictionary Copyright © 2007, 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company

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Above: (Fig 4.9) HDR exposures at -2.0, 0.0, and +2.0 in descending order.

Below: (Fig 4.10) Composite HDR image of multiple exposures; this amalgamation demonstrates the level of stored information the brain uses with saccades to reconstruct the memory of a place or image.

The Story 65

on the architect, the author of the spatial narrative, to make his or her selection and exclusion of detail so pungent and judicious that it takes advantage of the eye’s intuitive understanding of detail.

To illustrate the power of the eye’s lens in comparison to an actual camera lens, one need only to describe any scene of contrasting textures, tones, and colors in comparison of any one photograph which captures that scene, only to disappoint a renewed viewing of this scene by producing a photograph which displays distinct limits in contrast between the brightest tints of the sun and the darkest shades behind a shadow.

Since our eyes perform thousands of saccades which can focus on each of these tonal varieties and properly expose them in our brains, we can store the information of all extremes, while a photograph can only capture a small range at any one time. Hermann Von Helmholtz describes this as the phenomenon of indirect vision: The eye represents an optical instrument of a very large field of vision, but only a small very narrowly confined part of that field of vision produces clear images. The whole field corresponds to a drawing in which the most important part of the whole is carefully rendered but the surrounding is merely sketched, and sketched the more roughly the further it is removed from the main object. Thanks to the mobility of the eye, however,

it is possible to examine carefully every point of the visual field in succession.3

A singular photograph is insufficient to capture the relationships among multiple saccades as an amalgamated whole. Fortunately, modern photography techniques provide a closer possibility of this comparison. Using HDR imaging one can capture this information much more closely to the way our brains interpret such information by merging several photographs of the same scene at different exposures to capture these tonal ranges. “HDR is short for High Dynamic Range. It is a post-processing method of taking either one image or a series of images, combining them, and adjusting the contrast ratios to do things that are virtually impossible with a single aperture and shutter speed.”4 Even though the expression must be somewhat exaggerated, this post-processing method can demonstrate the singular exposure of a saccade, when combined with several others, as a production of an image which demonstrates the immense amount of detail our brains can perceive and store. Far more ineffable, images with this range of tonal contrast and detail also possess the potential to capture and convey many emotions our memory associates with a particular scene.

These evocative photos

3 Hernann Von Helmholtz, Ueber Geometrie (Darmstadt, 1968), 218.

4 Trey Ratcliff, What is HDR? http://www.stuckincustoms.com/ hdr-tutorial/ (October 2012).

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“Reality is not only com plex, but paradoxical. Es pecially at the fracture line between what we think we know and what we actually know.�

The Story 67

Left: (Fig 4.11) Narrative mapping.

Lebbeus Woods, Introduction, Ambiguous Spaces

demonstrate the urgent need for both authors and architects to practice a skilled selection of detail in the imagery one uses in a narrative. While architects like Peter Eisenman tend to ignore this responsibility toward his occupants, authors have recognized the importance of detail since the antiquity of the oral tradition. The urgency of an exclusion of detail was somewhat necessitated by an inability to actually record these archaic narratives, instead the stories had to be transcribed and handed down orally to posterity. The depth and length of the Homeric epics required detail and description to be used only when necessary to fulfill one of Wood’s two parameters of detail. This selective process relied on what Elizabeth Minchin describes as schemas; a repository in the brain of past experience.5

Since these schemas compose a context of what we already know from experience, the brain filters all new information it receives through these schemas. Authors in the oral tradition used this process of past experience to their advantage: by providing a mental queue, authors could contextualize a plot point within the narrative structure very quickly by relying on the audience’s shared schema. “Scripted knowledge becomes increasingly important to us as we develop, for it enables us, by a mental process akin to pattern matching, readily to comprehend and to make 5 Schema (n): the organization of experience in the mind or brain that includes a particular organized way of perceiving cognitively and responding to a complex situation or set of stimuli. Merriam-Webster Online Medical Dictionary

predictions about what is happening in the real world or in a story world.”6 Since then, adept authors have mastered the skill of narration which punctuates details by relying on the reader’s assumption of context. Terragni’s method, while too bold in its reliance, directly translates the kind of assumptions authors make while crafting a narrative. Eisenman’s method doesn’t work because he is rejecting and actively opposing the brain’s fundamental process of perception.

Not only does he reject the idea of subtlety in his works, but he also insists on presenting his ideas in opposition to the contexts one uses to interpret signs.

“Cutting this relationship would produce what might be called free-floating signs without necessary meanings or necessary relationship to their object – cut from cultural, historical, accumulated meaning”7 In architecture, too, expressive and sometimes radical gestures can only communicate to those who dwell in them when such gestures allow the inhabitants to read this gesture in context with an assumption of what the building is; a unique corner is only unique when its neighbors can easily be recognized as a “corner,” as Eisenman’s so called accumulated meaning prescribes through common experience.

6 Elizabeth Minchin, Homer and the Resources of Memory (New York, Oxford University Press, 2001), 37.

For a detailed analysis of the selective use of detail in the oral tradition, reference Homer and the Resources of Memory: Chapter 3; Homer’s Descriptive Segments, 100.

7 Peter Eisenman.“Architecture and the Problem of the Rhetorical Figure,” Post Structuralism and Deconstruction pg.177.

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The Fracture 69

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The Fracture 71

Previous: (Fig 5.1) Speculative building section exploring the possible placements of fractured space, and the visual connections which can occur.

Left: (Fig 5.2) The fracture as a disruption of stasis.

To recall the narrative typologies mentioned previously,1 note that while each structure follows the protagonist through varying means of progression, what all the structures share in common is a beginning which establishes stasis.

The setting is an expression of the status quo within the realm of the narrative. In the dramatic arc, for example, the climax may read as the moment which sets the tale onto its path towards resolution, but the most important moment within the microcosm of the story is the inciting incident.2 This is the first point at which the status quo is interrupted; through a convention of storytelling, the reader of the story knows immediately that the protagonist will never be the same from his or her life prior to the inciting incident.

Similar to The Threshold, this is the revelation of the microcosm of the plot.

While the dramatic arc is the only typology which expresses this moment explicitly, each form of narrative uses this convention in some way. In a spatial translation, this moment in time-place is the fracture. In architectural space, this is the point at which the architect chooses to interrupt the status quo of space and experience. This is the application of judiciously chosen detail which relies on a spatial schema which the architect allows the occupant to use.

A spatial schema, in this case, would be 1 Refer to “The Story,” p. 32 2 Inciting Incident (n): The precipitating event which introduces a conflict that creates increasing tension

an attention to contextual information so as to introduce the status quo into the promenade; a non-architecture, in the popular contemporary or deconstructivist sense. The introduction of such a schema would most easily be accomplished through a material and scaler continuity into the architectural intervention; then, using this palate, the establishment of a recognizable typology allows the architect to interrupt the occupants perception of this typology with a detail which introduces conflict into the spatial scene. “Conflict,” in this sense, refers to the content of the program. While a building’s program would not intuitively seem as a conflicting element, in this case, the program is an interruption of the contextual world outside the building’s microcosm. It is important to emphasize this contrast because of the use of the fracture as a dividing line between the contextual world and the new spatial dialog the architect incites with the occupant. While this sort of conflict and narrative device will be represented formally, all physical representations must be, after all, this contrasting language must fulfill an equivalent of Wood’s conditions of detail in narration: the development of character, or the progression of plot.

A simple overview of these spatial rules of detail would comparatively relate to the arrangement of spaces; “character,” in this case, corresponds to programmatic elements which necessitate the use of the building, and “plot”

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The Fracture 73

Left: (Fig 5.3) Fractures I; environmental study of the fracture in the visual field.

corresponds to the spatial promenade.

The goal of both of these languages of details is the enhancement of, never the distraction from, the subject of these details. Wood contests that detail and description can have different “time signatures” which help embody both the periphery of the scene, and the precise elements which develop the plot.

We have seen that [the author’s] method of different temporalities requires a combination of details, some of which are relevant, some studiedly irrelevant.

Studiedly irrelevant, we concede that there really is no such thing as irrelevant detail in fiction, even in realism which tends to use such detail as a kind of padding, to make verisimilitude seem nice and comfy.3 3 James Wood, How Fiction Works (New York, FSGBooks, 2008), 88.

Minchin also describes varying scales of detail used in oral narrative to develop the context of a scene:

Sometimes the singer’s perspective on the action will be panoramic. In the case of the Iliad, the poet might visualize mass fighting and strive to convey to his audience the confused scene that he sees. Sometimes - indeed, in Homeric epic, more often - he will focus quite closely on intimate scenes: a duel, a discussion in midbattlefield, a quiet moment of regret and sorrow... At other times he will narrow his focus further, to recreate for us an item in the possession of one of his characters: a sword, a shield, a finely-worked robe, [et al]. See Minchin, Homer and the

These kinds of dueling temporalities play an equally relevant role in a visual, experiential scenario as well.

Wood’s “time signatures” refer to the details which the author may mention in passing, but happen continuously, such as a tumbleweed blowing through the street, over an extended period of time, versus the instantaneous details the narrator notices at once, such as a certain dishevelment in an otherwise well-groomed man. This speaks of the multiplicity of scales on which a “detail” can occur.

This dialog is analogous to the foundational languages of the promenade in contrast with the details that fracture those languages. The poignancy of the fracture only works when applied in contrast to a recognizable context, not in place of it, as Eisenman would desire. “There is a part of everything which is unexplored, because we are accustomed to using our eyes only in association with the memory of what people before us have thought of the thing we are looking at.”4 Architects often play off of the untrained vision of the laypeople to demonstrate one’s ego; often in large commissions with monumental demonstrations of stylistic finesse. Buildings that attempt to address the preconceptions of those laypeople do so by proposing encroaching installations which are alien to the accumulated Resources of Memory: Introduction (New York, Oxford University Press, 2001), 26.

4 Maupassant, The Novel.

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The Fracture 75

Left: (Fig 5.4) Fractures II; environmental study of the fracture in the visual field.

meaning our perceptive memory and schemas use to understand new experiences. Autonomous form is equal to superfluous form, unless the goal of architecture is to produce occupiable sculptures. A pavilion is a singular circumstance in which this process is sometimes successful; namely because the building or installation is made simply to be occupied. In the rare instance in which the medium truly is the message, buildings can be appreciated enough as “idiosyncratic works of art”5 which experiment with the very idea of what architectural space is. To introduce new spatial languages, however, the occupant needs guidance. Architects have a duty to narrate this experiential frontier; they must help the occupant to see the moments which fracture our conventional understanding for a humane purpose, not for an egotistical one. “…reality is not only complex but paradoxical, especially at the fracture line between what we think we know and what we actually know.”6

5 Lebbeus Woods, “Architecture is an Embodiment of Knowledge,” War and Architecture (New York, Princeton Architectural Press), 6.

6 Lebbeus Woods, “Introduction,” Ambiguous Spaces by Naja & DeOstos (New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), 5.

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The Fracture 77

Left: The artifice lies in the selection of detail.

Transformation through a reductive technique offers a greater opportunity for guided perception.

(Fig 5.5) Cluster VIII by Richard Galpin (Fig 5.6) Freestate II by Richard Galpin Before and after images courtesy of the artist

Transcending the Visceral

Since the repository of what we think we know is generated through memory of experience, visual memory will be aided by more senses than our eyes. Given the exceptionally small area one’s eyes can perceive at a time, our brains hybridize tactile knowledge with visual details as a means to construct the spatial understanding our memories grant.

“The visual components of perception are analyzed for a detail and not for the whole, whereas the tactile perceptions are verified for the whole”7 The brain perceives the time signatures of detail on two different levels, the visual and the tactile; the visual understands the instantaneous and minute, while the tactile understands the textures of context and continuity. Donald Norman describes this relationship between perception and memory as the three levels of reaction.8 Imagery and the perception of detail result from the visceral stem of reaction; an immediate and intuitive response. Since the visceral perception is so instantaneous, the fracture must contain a contrast distinct enough that it immediately registers through the brains filters. A controlled visceral reaction is only possible through a mastery of the behavioral response, however; this is the schema in space, the reaction to a thing through the knowledge of experiential 7 Marco Frascari, “The Tell-the-Tale-Detail,” Building Architecture (1984), 26.

8 Donald Norman, Emotional Design: Why we love (or Hate) Everyday Things (New York, Basic Books, 2004).

use. “Behavioral design emphasizes the use of objects; in this case, the sensual feel [of objects]; a key, often overlooked component of good behavioral design.”9 The behavioral response doesn’t take visual reactions into account, but focuses on a subject’s experience, or how it’s used. The symbiotic relationship between the behavioral and visceral responses allow the occupant to create a spatial awareness which constructs the elements outside the visual cone of focus. As the eye undergoes a series of saccades, the tactile, behavioral senses take over as a bonding agent of the series of snapshots which would otherwise be a collection of free-floating mental images.

While small-scale objects in industrial design can emphasize one level of reaction above others, the sense of spatial awareness required by buildings necessitates a dialog between the first two levels of response in order to produce the results of the fracture, a level Norman refers to as the reflective level of response.

“The problem of perception of details within the sphere of architectural appropriation is stated by Walter Benjamin: ‘Buildings are appropriated in a twofold manner: by use and by perception or rather by touch and sight... Tactile appropriation 9 Donald Norman, Emotional Design: Why we love (or Hate) Everyday Things (New York, Basic Books, 2004), 69.

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“Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him�

The Fracture 79

Left: (Fig 5.7) The Conjectural Atheneum; model C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York, Harper Collins, 2001).

Following page: (5.8) Fractures III; a reevaluation of guided perception in the visual field.

is accomplished not so much by attention as by habit. As regards to architecture, habit determines to a larger extent even optical reception.’”10

Architecture must address this two-fold appropriation in order to use the fracture at the reflective level. The reflective level of design and response corresponds to what a system evokes for the user/occupant. While the experience of the fracture may seem jarring at the visceral level, a disruption of a context the occupant experiences with regularity, the building tells the story of this disruption in retrospect, after the occupant experiences the whole. While the fracture is experienced instantaneously and visually, the story is only experienced as a macrocosm of the levels of response.

Frascari describes this association as the tale, and the details as the telling.11 Due to the individual nature of schemas, the behavioral interpretation of space will undergo different systems of filtration for every occupant, but the fracture provides a moment where this behavioral stasis can be altered; a message of conflict, when inserted into a judicious selection of detail, not only introduces a new architectural language in the same way a narrative imparts new experiences on the protagonist, but it also introduces these 10 Marco Frascari, “The Tell-the-Tale-Detail,” Building Architecture (1984), 28.

11 Marco Frascari, “The Tell-the-Tale-Detail,” Building Architecture (1984), 26.

experiences with a certain maturity. The same manner in which a hero returns from a journey with a gift for his home, or the way the protagonist shows in the falling action that conflict has endowed her with a new strength, the reflective experience of the fracture teaches the occupant not only how to see such languages, but how to experience them, and take them into the world so that, in time, the schema of a new architecture can take shape.

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The Fracture 81

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Afterword 83

Afterword

Going into this project of the building which tells a story, I did not plan to use Eisenman or Terragni as straw men to burn and push over in order to aggrandize my own solution. Linguistics in architecture currently uses two methods I feel are epitomized by these two architects. This proposal aims to hybridize these two techniques, along with a more scientific approach towards optic physiology, in order to propose a third literary architecture which can be more sympathetic towards the occupant, while introducing opportunities for the creative innovation architecture desires.

I hypothesized that if we work within the brains mechanisms for comprehension, we can find opportunities to improve the experience of buildings in as close to an empirical way as is possible, given that experience is so deeply subjective. One of my critics asked me to qualify how this proposal accomplishes more than the projects I identified. I believe the closest evaluation I can give is in the use of the ideology.

Terragni uses Dante as an end, and his adept skill as the means for an excellent architecture. Eisenman uses language and syntax as means to an esoteric end which rejects all accumulated meaning of buildings and space. In the Conjectural Atheneum, I am attempting to use narrative as a means to a more humane and sympathetic end to form an architecture based on the principles of perception and memory. While I see glaring problems with Eisenman’s and

Terragni’s projects, I was drawn to them originally for their merits. This project is my attempt to convolute and hybridize them in a way which addresses issues I see in architecture’s present and future; I don’t think this method can be accurately judged against Terragni unless someone takes these lessons after me and learns from them. My answer to Eisenman’s project is that his process and skill is stunningly beautiful, but as long as the process I propose yields a building which the occupant can use, then I have hopefully taken Eisenman’s use of language to a more refined step. I hope to refine my own linguistic ideas in the future, and hopefully someone else who reads this can take lessons and new ideas toward a more humane architecture which is sensitive to both the user and the building’s needs.

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Annotated Bibliography Alemdar, Z. Y. 2013. The Role of Image in Understanding Environment. Vol. 2.

Chomsky, Noam. 1993. Language and Thought Wakefield, R.I. : Moyer Bell, c1993; 1st ed.

Eisenman, Peter, Manfredo Tafuri, and Rosalind E. Krauss. 1987. Houses of Cards / Peter Eisenman ; Critical Essays by Peter Eisenman, Rosalind Krauss, and Manfredo Tafuri New York : Oxford University Press, 1987.

Eisenman, Peter.“Architecture and the Problem of the Rhetorical Figure,” Post Structuralism and Deconstruction, 176-181.

Frank, Suzanne S. and Peter Eisenman. 1994. Peter Eisenman’s House VI : The Client’s Response / Suzanne Frank ; [Preface by Kenneth Frampton] New York : Whitney Library of Design, 1994.

Frascari, Marco. 1984. “The Tell-the-Tale-Detail,” Building Architecture. 23-37.

Gregotti, Vittorio. 1996. “On Procedure,” Ways and Instruments Boston: MIT Press, 89-94.

Minchin, Elizabeth. 2001. Homer and the Resources of Memory : Some Applications of Cognitive Theory to the Iliad and the Odyssey / Elizabeth Minchin Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2001.

Norman, Donald A. 2004. Emotional Design : Why we Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things. N.p.]: Basic Books.

Schumacher, Thomas L. 1985. The Danteum : A Study in the Architecture of Literature / Thomas L. Schumacher Princeton, N.J. : Princeton Architectural Press, c1985.

Smith, Adam and J. C. Bryce. 1983. Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres / Adam Smith ; Edited by J.C. Bryce Oxford Oxfordshire] : Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1983.

Radcliffe, Trey. “What is HDR?” Stuck in Customs, accessed October 2012, http://www.stuckincustoms.com/hdr-tutorial/ Dr. Reinhart, David. “Narrative Structures,” accessed September 2012, http://narrativestructures.wisc.edu/

Afterword 85

Wood, James. 2008. How Fiction Works / James Wood New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008; 1st ed.

Woods, Lebbeus. 1993. “Architecture is an Embodiment of Knowledge,�

War and Architecture New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

Woods, Lebbeus. 2008. Introduction to Ambiguous Spaces by Naja & DeOstos. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 5.

Von Helmholtz, Hermann. 1968. Ueber Geometrie Darmstadt. 218.

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Index of Figures (Fig. 1.1)Analytical axonometric - The Danteum by Giuseppe Terragni, 1942.

(Fig 1.2) Axonometric of House VI (1975) 11 (Fig 1.3) Iterative studies of House II (1969) 11

(Fig 2.1) Extruded section model - The Interval of Dissemination

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(Fig 2.2) Facade Study - Touching the street edge 17

(Fig 2.3) Cantilevered Balcony and light well - Touching the street edge 19 Narrative Mapping: 21 (Fig 2.4) Constructed mapping of the robleto narrative 21 (Fig 2.5) Constructed mapping of archetypes 21 (Fig 2.6) The Conjectural Atheneum; Light wells pierce through existing slabs to maintain natural lighting in the user interface.

23 (Fig 2.7) The Conjectural Atheneum; Iterative studies on an unfinished architecture.

23 (Fig 2.8) The Conjectural Atheneum; the datum from the circulation core out to the cantilevered shelter.

25 (Fig 2.9) The Cantle of Reverie.

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(Fig 2.10) The Conjectural Atheneum; Plan at second level

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(Fig 2.11) Illuminated view of the Conjectural Atheneum

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(Fig 2.12) Illuminated aerial of the Conjectural Atheneum (top) with views of modeled lighting in the Cantle of Reverie (middle) and puncturing lightwells above the Cantle (bottom) 31 (Fig 2.13) View Towards the Interval of Dissemination 33 (Fig 2.14) Location diagrams in ascending order: The Cantle of Reverie The Interval of Dissemination The Peregrinate Anthology

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(Fig 2.15) The Conjectural Atheneum; extruded section model of The Interval of Dissemination 35 (Fig 2.16) Cross section model of the Conjectural Atheneum 37 James Wood, The Surplus of Reality, How Fiction Works, p86. 37 (Fig 2.17) The Conjectural Atheneum; analysis of the robleto typology in the program 39 (Fig 2.18) The Conjectural Atheneum; articulated pathways of the resolution. Moments of active and passive interaction 39 (Fig 2.19) The Conjectural Atheneum; cross- section model through the Cantle of Reverie 41 (Fig 2.20) The Conjectural Atheneum; process images of modelling components, including the fracture (top) and image of the programmatic datum in the Conjectural Atheneum (bottom).

41 (Fig 2.21) The Conjectural Atheneum; Transverse Section

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(Fig 2.22) The Conjectural Atheneum; Cross Section 45 (Fig 3.1) The blanket typology.

Program and Script:

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(Fig 3.2) The idea of script in the process of programming introduces the idea of a user-based programming process, in contrast to a formally based, or predetermined envelope, which then falls back on the blanket typology.

(Fig 4.1) The Dramatic Arc 56 (Fig 4.2) Kishotenketsu 56 (Fig 4.3) Hero’s Journey 56 (Fig 4.4) Hollywood Model 58 (Fig 4.5) Robleto 58 (Fig 4.6) Blanket Typology 58 Cone of vision: 60 (Fig 4.7) Narrative typologies; mapping of possible programming solutions based on the structure of storytelling 61

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Afterword 89

(Fig 4.8) Human field of view (FOV) showing both the peripheral and the detailed cone of vision.

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(Fig 4.9) HDR exposures at -2.0, 0.0, and +2.0 in descending order.

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(Fig 4.10) Composite HDR image of multiple exposures; this amalgamation demonstrates the level of stored information the brain uses with saccades to reconstruct the memory of a place or image.

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(Fig 4.11) Narrative mapping.

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(Fig 5.1) Speculative building section exploring the possible placements of fractured space, and the visual connections which can occur.

71 (Fig 5.2) The fracture as a disruption of stasis.

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Refer to “The Story,” p. 32 71

Inciting Incident (n): The precipitating event which introduces a conflict that creates increasing tension 71

Minchin also describes varying scales of detail used in oral narrative to develop the context of a scene: 73

Sometimes the singer’s perspective on the action will be panoramic. In the case of the Iliad, the poet might visualize mass fighting and strive to convey to his audience the confused scene that he sees. Sometimes - indeed, in Homeric epic, more often - he will focus quite closely on intimate scenes: a duel, a discussion in mid-battlefield, a quiet moment of regret and sorrow... At other times he will narrow his focus further, to recreate for us an item in the possession of one of his characters: a sword, a shield, a finely-worked robe, [et al]. See Minchin, Homer and the Resources of Memory: Introduction (New York, Oxford University Press, 2001), 26. 73

(Fig 5.7) The Conjectural Atheneum; model 79 (Fig 5.8) Fractures III; a reevaluation of guided perception in the visual field.

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Appendix: on Elements in the Atheneum See the transverse section of the Conjectural Atheneum

The Advent: The initial moment of visual and experiential dialog with the atheneum begins with a protrusion into the street wall. The occupiable cantilever also acts as a drainage scupper to move water flowing through the existing slabs, which carries draining water to grade level through a constructed funnel which acts as an initial light well on the street edge.

The cantilever acts as the opening line of the robleto, which introduces the line of repetition used throughout the atheneum.

The Threshold: Researchers pass under the cantilever through a datum which guides circulation within the atheneum. Narration of the robleto is strongly guided by the speaker, often in first person, and so each element within the narrative is centrally linked to the orchestration of the speaker. The program branches off of the narrative datum, and relies on close visual connections within the field of view to show elements which branch off of the datum.

The Semblance: The semblance establishes the tone of an architectural composition; this typically takes form of a common space or central dispersion point of the building program.

In the atheneum, this is an opportune position to implement the strongest language in the narrative, and occupies the climax of the robleto plot. The climax

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occurs early in the narrative sequence, and allows explanation of this nexus of conflict later in the plot.

The Constituents: The constituents compose the functional requirements of the space en masse.

This allows for repetition and modularity to express the compartmentalization of functional requirements on both the interior and exterior. The robleto uses a series of short stories to expatiate the climax and how the protagonist arrives at a particular point of conflict. The archive delineates volumes of the book stacks based on the existing column grid module.

The Reversion: As the researcher makes his or her way out of the atheneum, a serpentine ramp system allows a visual journey of both the intervention inside the existing slabs and the urban context. The opportunity for visual associations allows a dialog about an extended context in which other abandoned projects within a city can be reused as an adaptive space for proxy research. This extended association can eventually produce a network of research satellites which in turn can gentrify and renourish suffering urban spaces.

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See the cross section of the Conjectural Atheneum

Fractured Language: Suspension and Natural Light Although the framework of the plot shows through the sequence and number of spaces in the Conjectural Atheneum, and these sequences may be matched with the Blanket Typology of building, the robleto archetype also transitions and links these spaces with the line of repetition. The author employs this line to reinforce the conflict of the story with the results and possibilities of the resolution early in the plot. One might compare the light of repetition to the what of the story, while the climax could comparatively be the why, and the journeys the how.

In the Conjectural Atheneum, the idea of the line of repetition allows the opportunity to reinforce the fracture through an architectural language which both presents a unique moment of articulation, and accentuates functional moments in the space. The fracture is a hybrid language of suspended sources of natural light. Since the archive must minimize ultraviolet rays for preservation purposes, a central stack appears suspended through the center of the Anthology, with incisions in the ceiling to maintain a minimal flow of natural light above the stack.

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A Special Thanks To my thesis committee: Brandon Hicks Kuebler Perry Nancy Sanders and my advisor, Steve Cooke My support group: my wife Melinda Krista Bennett Diana Duran Andrew Loper Ken Williams And to the Brain Trust: Jonathon Anderson Matthew Johnson Brennan Huller Kendall Ahlberg see you at RJs