Moving Through Transparency, BOOK II: An Undergraduate Thesis by Cat Earley

MOVING THROUGH TRANSPARENCY: An Undergraduate Thesis

BOOK II Fluctuating Perception of Space

AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS: Contents

BOOK I: Ambiguity of the Order Moving Through Transparency Parti: Program as Limit Study: Modeling Program Study: A Transparent Order Parti: Punctured Thresholds Site: Washington, D.C. Ground Floor Plan Continuity of Thresholds Layered Stair Core Major Spaces within the Embassy Spatial Interactions within the Embassy:

A Section Model The Consulate: a Section The Consulate: Punctured Core Study: Actor/Audience Conditions Study: Introverted Transparency A Line of Gaze The Ambassador’s Conference Room The Prayer Room Bibliography Dedication

BOOK II: Fluctuating Perception of Space _01 _02 _03 _04 _05 _06 _07 _08 _08 _09 _09

Moving Through Transparency Study: The Theater Box The Façade The Corridor Study: The Stair The Stair Bibliography Dedication

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Two orders vie for dominance. Each diagram represents an occupant’s possible perception of the organization of the architecture. At different moments, one order dominates the other.

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MOVING THROUGH TRANSPARENCY: Defining transparency as a mediator between opposing conditions in architecture

Fluctuating Perception of Space

Ambiguity of the Order

A Turkish Embassy

The purpose of this thesis is to see beyond the traditional definition of “transparency” and reveal its larger architectural implications. Until Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky’s article, “Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal”, was published in 1964, transparency was considered to be only a material quality, secondary to form and structure; it was a way to bring in light. A building could invoke “feelings” of lightness or openness, but these were more general, subjective sensations, not a rigorous position on a transparent architecture.

What Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky contend is that transparency is not just a material quality, but also “an inherent quality of organization.”

A transparent architectural order is similarly ambiguous, but not [necessarily] chaotic. A transparent order fluctuates, allowing

As a program, an embassy is uniquely posed

Traditionally, the word “transparent” carries connotations like “clear”, or “unconcealed”. But if we perceive two or more [objects/planes/volumes/ spaces] interacting with one another, and “each of them claims for itself the overlapped part” [Gyorgy Kepes] then their physical relation to each other becomes ambiguous.

Phenomenal transparency challenges how a viewer perceives a space, which is based on how the viewer interprets the physical relation of a space relative to the elements (such as planes or volumes) that are within, behind, in front of, and next to it. If transparency is the simultaneous perception of the foreground and the background, “without optical destruction of each other” [Kepes], then the relation between the elements is open to interpretation. Transparency creates a condition wherein several spatial orders are possible.

If one crucial aspect within the larger definition of architecture is that architecture is the ordered interaction of spaces with one another, then transparency can move from being a secondary consideration to being the governing principle behind the decisions (at all scales) that organize an entire building.

two or more orders to occupy one space. At different points, one order may dominate the other, resulting in a moment of clarity that allows an occupant to feel as though they understand the order. But moving onwards, perception shifts, re-defining the order of the whole. It is the necessary movement of the viewing observer that activates this ambiguity.

The product of this transparent organization is not a wholly exposed, “open” building, but a series of layers and volumes that simultaneously obscure and reveal, preventing a single interpretation of the whole. Careful sequencing of how occupants traverse these layered spaces, both at the detail [material] scale and spatial [order] scale, allows them to catch images only partially indicative of the formal composition. In this way, the architecture will satisfy the dual conditions of [public/private] [secure/open] [inside/outside]

to explore the dual nature of transparency - it must be open and unconcealed to the public,

as fitting a representative of its country. But it must also house programs that require a very high level of security, places that are extremely private. Choosing a country to represent, instead of designing a building for “any country”, added another useful limit. The purpose of designing for a specific country was not to create a direct representation, but to use certain cultural aspects that would be interesting to explore within the thesis. Turkey, with its history of screens and certain religious requirements, was an ideal candidate.

Four spaces within the whole represent the publicto-private spectrum: the Consulate the Stair the Prayer Room the Ambassador’s Conference Room Their positioning and relation to one another are the shifting focal points around which the building is composed.

Limited to only a material quality, transparency is unable to achieve these opposing desires. Material transparency may create public, open spaces from which a person may observe their surroundings, but it sacrifices privacy and security. As well, while we like to observe the world around us, we do not always like to be watched in turn.

This thesis investigates the ambiguous nature of transparency, and seeks to demonstrate that transparency as a method of organization can primarily and successfully mediate the [public] and [private].

CATHERINE M. EARLEY Undergraduate Thesis: Spring 2013 Advisor: Hilary Bryon

STUDY: The Theater Box

A study of fluctuating transparency using shallow space and repeating elements

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“...their intersection, their overlapping, their interlocking, and their building up into larger and fluctuating configurations permits the genesis of the typically ambiguous cubist motif.”

–Rowe and Slutzky “If one see two or more figures overlapping one another, and each of them claims for itself the overlapped part, then one is confronted with a conflict of spatial dimensions.”

–Gyorgy Kepes In a two-dimensional drawing or painting, literal transparency is more difficult to achieve than phenomenal transparency. Literal transparency is a quality of material, and delineators and painters neither draw nor paint with see-through substances.

In the three-dimensional world of architecture and sculpture, the opposite is true. Architects and sculptors frequently work with transparent materials, and so literal transparency is easily achieved. Phenomenal transparency, however, is a quality of organization. The overlapping figures Gyorgy Kepes describes can conflict visually in a painting, where the painter may confuse a viewer’s depth perception and create a space beyond the canvas. In architecture, figures cannot physically overlap (“spatial conflicts” are actually quite problematic) and disturbing a viewer’s depth perception is considerably more difficult. As Rowe and Slutzky state succinctly, “..while painting can only imply the third dimension, architecture cannot suppress it.” For this reason, the spatial ambiguity that two-dimensional art can achieve through depth-suppression and the “building up of fluctuating configurations” is often lost in the arts of the third dimension.

The Theater Box studies bring this ambiguity into the third dimension by suppressing the viewers depth perception through the use of shallow space, stratification, and a defined grid.

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The Theater Box is not a drawing or a model, nor is it a model of a drawing.

Using three visually interacting layers, it builds (an inherently three-dimensional act) an implied space (an inherently two-dimensional concept). The Box hints at a space behind the foreground, and sometimes, depending on how a viewer perceives the visually fluctuating layers, a narrow corridor extending back an unknown distance.

“Deep space is contrived in similar coulisse fashion with the façade cut open and depth inserted in the ensuing slot.”

- Rowe and Slutzky on Le Corbusier’s Villa Stein

The Faรงade

Walking along the front, South elevation, the Faรงade reveals and obscures at different moments, activated by the movement of people along the street. From afar, at a direct elevation view, the Faรงade is a colonnade, with the space between the columns partially obscured by angled fins of printed glass.

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It is easier to see through the faรงade from afar, but as viewers approach to enter, their own movement towards the entrance closes off the view through to the interior. If a viewer approaches the building parallel to the front elevation, the Faรงade becomes a wall.

The Corridor

Corridors create a shallow threshold space between the exterior and the more intimate interior spaces. The horizontal, regimented lines of the corridors register through the faรงade, implying that the interior spaces are open floor plans running parallel to, and back from, the exterior.

But the corridor conceals the second axis of the building, an axis angled not quite perpendicularly to the East-West axis of the corridors. The corridors are revealed on the exterior, but they conceal a triple-height, angled space just beyond, in the background.

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STUDY: The Stair

model deliberately engages and orchestrates the foreground and background This

planes of a three-dimensional object. Based off of sketches that were an interpretation of a view through the Theater Box, the Stair was designed to hint at a courtyard space beyond the semitransparent foreground layer. The foreground and background fluctuate as a viewer moves around the Stair, making it difficult to accurately assess where the layers of the object are in relation to one another. Only when the viewer is able to see between the two layers is he able to perceive the composition of the courtyard and faรงade.

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The Stair

A

B

View A and View B of the Stair

The Stair is simultaneously [public] and [private].

Stairs weave between four walls of screen-printed glass and steel members, forming the core of the embassy. The vertical circulation is utilized by the entire spectrum of people who occupy the embassy: a visitor takes the stairs down to the public cafe, while on other side of the glass, the Stair goes up to the Consulate offices. The stairway takes officials from their entrance on the second floor up to the Conference Room while it also forms the approach to the Prayer Room on the third floor.

Stairs are the stage where the movement of the embassy is acted out. Yet, the people using the Stair do not feel watched, which is the case (and frequently the purpose) of a grand stair. Instead, as the inhabitants traverse the embassy, weaving between the glass and steel, they feel as though they are being allowed behind the curtain.

View A, above, shows the entry to the Stair down to the cafe and a large exhibition space, which are the wholly [public] functions of the embassy.

View B, to the right, is directly opposite View A and on the other side of the Stair. It shows the entry to the Stair from the Consulate, up to more [private] offices.

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Bibliography

Base Text

Follow-Up Texts

Rowe, Colin, and Robert Slutzky. “Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal.” Perspecta, Vol. 8.

(1963): 45-54.

Atelier Bow-Wow, Terunobu Fujimori, Washida Menruro, Yoshikazu Nango, and Enrique Walker.

Behaviorology. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 2010.

Colomina, Beatriz. “The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism.” Sexuality and Space. 4th Edition. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. 73-128.

Print.

Giedion, Sigfried. Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferroconcrete. 1st ed edition. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 1996. Print.

Loos, Adolf, and Le Corbusier. Raumplan vs. Plan Libre: Adolf Loof and Le Corbusier, 1919 - 1930.

Ed. Max Risselada and Beatriz Colomina. New York: Rizzoli, 1988.

Mead, Christopher Curtis. Charles Garnier’s Paris Opera: Architectural Empathy and the Renaissance of French Classicism. New York: The Architectural History Foundation; Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991.

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Dedication

I thank my family, friends, and professors, all of whose respect I cherish and who make me strive towards a better self.

My profoundest gratitude in seeing me through the most interesting period of my life...so far.

CONTACT: Catherine M. Earley

c.earley13@gmail.com

410.504.9631

B.Arch. Virginia Tech CAUS