BUFFER
Xinwei Chen, David | M.Arch Thesis 2021
BUFFER Xinwei Chen, David Master of Architecture Candidate 2021
University of California, Berkeley College of Environmental Design Department of Architecture
Advisor: Mark S. T. Anderson Co-Advisor: James Leng
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A STA TEMEN T BUFFER is a thesis exploring the
blurring regarding to the development
according to individuals’ will, after been
transitional spaces between the grids
of technology, one would never be
through the process of experiencing
from various references. It emphasizes
alone anymore.
physical buffers. This time, hopefully
the ceremonial meaning of the process
they figure out things they like or
of experiencing multiple layers of
Is there a way to escape? Are these just
dislike, they now can communicate with
buffers from a public realm to the
unavoidable scenarios? Are we just
others and just be themselves.
private space by voluntarily walking
voluntary social animals that gradually
through and getting lost in a multi-
losing our self identities? This is a
By keep reading this booklet, you will
referenced, labyrinth-like, sequential
world of paradox, we are controlled by
be able to see the result coming from a
spaces.
the wills which materialized as grids,
rather rational design thinking process,
separated; we are also almost forced
and presented in a more emotional
Reading the physical world that
to stay connected externally as well
way. I would take my position here,
we are situating, control happens
internally.
defining it to be a dystopian fantacy.
apartments, working at a spot that
An architecture with buffer tries to fix
Is this what you want?
enclosed by panels, shopping along
it, utilizing overlapped grids to create
the aisles with goods intentionally
a seemingly chaotic state to residents,
presented to the customers, having
attempting to help individuals detach
lunch in the wooden boxes along
from the public and find their own
streets, sitting in a comfy chair when
self, physically and psychologically. By
watching a movie in cinema...... All of
walking through the loosely defined
these are phenomenons of control,
walkways, the rotated circulation cores,
physicalizing through setting up
the transitional spaces with irregular
grids for individuals to guide people’s
shapes, one might be able to fully
behaviors.
disconnect to the outside world, safe
almost everywhere, living in cell-like
and unsupervised, and eventually focus Another layer of observation is that
back to his/her own self.
everyone is now staying connected
It is also a mental/social buffer along
virtually even physically detached, the
with the creation of spatial buffers,
boundary between public and private is
which can be broke down optionally 5
CONTENTS
1. CONTROL
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2. GRID OF CONTROL
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Order
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Grid, the Materialization of Intention
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Reference of Intention
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3. BUFFER OF GRIDS
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Physicality, Mentality and Sociality of Buffer
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A Buffer in San Francisco
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4. A DYSTOPIAN FANTASY
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5. SOURCES
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1. CONTROL
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// Soft City, Pushwagner //
SO F T CI T Y , P U SH W A G N E R “Where is the mind, when the body is here? ” Life in Soft City follows some simple rules: everyone’s happy, everyone drives, everything is regulated by the same rhythm (you’re late, you’re fired), the same routine and the same lifestyle. The innerscape is as much a prison as the outerscape. Such a technocratic society is regulated by the figure of “The Boss”, a bureaucrat who sits behind a massive desk of levers and switches and controls the world via a giant screen. Much more than the themes, which appear a little clichéd, and the critique of power and greed, a bit naive at its best, what intrigues us is the artist’s obsessive creation of an hyper-detailed world of factories, military death camps, square-shapedwindows-uniform architectures, and a general disenchanting view of modern life in the city through pop-art symbolism and Magrittian surrealism. - Texts from Fosco Lucarelli
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// Soft City, Pushwagner //
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// Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture, Rem Koolhaas //
E X O D U S, O R T H E VO L U N T A RY P RIS ON E RS OF A R CH I T E CT U R E , R E M K O OLHA A S After crossing the Wall, exhausted fugitives are received by attentive wardens in a lobby between the Reception Area and the Wall. The consoling atmosphere of this waiting room is an architectural sigh of relief. The first step in the indoctrination program of the other side of the Wall is realized: the newcomers enter the Reception Area. On arrival a spectacular welcome is given to all. The activities inside the Reception Area require minimal training for new arrivals, which is only accomplished by overwhelming previously undernourished senses. The training is administered under the most hedonistic conditions: luxury and well-being. The Reception Area is permanentIy crowded by amateurs who through their dealings exercise an inspired state of political inventiveness, which is echoed by the architecture. The senses are overwhelmed by thought.
- Texts from Rem Koolhaas
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// Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture, Rem Koolhaas //
// Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture, Rem Koolhaas //
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N E VE R B E A L O N E A dystopian society is becoming almost real, behind the repetition and the order of physical patterns is the fact of individual controlled by each other. Everyone looks similar to each other, everyone tries to present their hypocritical side, everyone hides behind their public images. You’ll never be alone any more, even your private bedroom is now public, you work and live in it, you keep connecting with the rest of the world.
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2. GRID OF CONTROL
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ORDER
Order could only be found in the repetition of a set of uniformed, pure geometrical architectural elements at the beginning of the modern architecture era: column, wall, floor plate…...all were pushed to the extreme of simplification for efficiency as well as flexibility. This started to separate order from the meaning of spaces that reading of order only resulted in structural honesty — an evenly distributed grid in both horizontal and vertical directions. Order, structures here specifically, no longer contributed to forming the atmosphere of spaces like it did as flying buttresses in Gothic architecture. Though failed to be expressive, order of these abstractions still gained great potential of being flexible: it could be easily transformed and adapted to an existing order. In an area with dense urban fabric, orders were revealed and defined by the continuous boundaries of private and public territories, which clearly stated the readable directions. Here the abstracted grid as the new order could fit in by lining the entrances and structures up with the urban fabric so that the existing order with directionality extended into the new order, guiding users to circulate between the two. This evolved order stepped away from total abstraction that it started to help users understand the spaces better. Architecture became much more complex with more and more systems applied to it. As a result, the reading of order could be from more perspectives other than structures. All mechanical systems, though mostly ignored, are physical elements that influence spaces. Ducts and pipes which are all linear components that connect the majority of spaces in a building, and they even have larger dimensions compared to beams and columns. Another role of them — controlling the environment for human comfort — is also an implication of defining spaces. Reading of these complex, multi-layer systems as orders and having them instruct users become beneficial to approach spaces correctly. With all of the above as strong, physical orders that guide users to better understand a building, there is a weak relationship that can be read as a type of order: Sequences of defined programs. A set of empty box-like spaces make no contribution to help understanding spaces, while when one sees one occupied as a reading area, assumptions can be easily made by human
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// Richard Medical Center, Louis Kahn //
instinct that rooms with bookshelves should be right next to it. Rationality of programs is an optimization of sequencing spaces, and the complete weak order of it can be conceived easily by the perceptions of certain portions of it. The negotiation of hiding or exposing, simplifying or complicating orders always exist. There is no doubt, especially for those types of architectures often unfamiliar to the users, orders help not just in aesthetics but in perceiving and conceiving spaces. The idea of exposing and even exaggerating orders — like the grids guiding pedestrians and the translucent domes defining circulations and programs — creates a new sense of spatial experience.
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// Office 171, KGDVS //
G R I D , T H E M A T E R I A L I Z A T ION OF IN TE N TION The contemporary making of architecture has been transformed from constructing boundaries to griding of spaces that treats spaces as manufactured products instead of crafted portions of nature: from a cave as living space, primitive hub, to domino house, and contemporary architectures…… The logic underlying is a pursuit of a higher level of control in spaces. Grid is an expression of design intention: it is applied almost everywhere of an architecture so that the design intention is transferred to physicality and construction then to the experience. A grid, no matter if it’s visible or sensual, is informational - dimensions can be determined depending on programs, site contexts, even culture - which users can sense the logic behind so that the design intention can be read. Such well organized state presents the strong intention of control.
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// A City Park, O.M. Ungers //
// House I, Peter Eisenman //
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// City-village in Shenzhen //
R E F E R E N CE O F I N T E N T I O N A grid requires references to determine the dimension, orientation, ratio, gradient etc. Physicalizing spaces through grid is a process of translating intentions into space conditions. It should always be representing something, transferring these information into various forms of grids. The overlay of grids is the juxtaposition and even confrontation of information or intention. Such confrontation of the external and internal is the nature of architecture. Though most of the time forgotten, the quality presented by this “conflict” juxtaposition is valued in both helping the building of the outer image of the architecture as the respect of context, and the making of self- consistent spatial quality. The echo of the external reference is an act of respect, while the intentional shift of internal logic is an attitude of defiance.
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// Cannagerio Town Square, Peter Eisenman //
// Hospital in Venice, Le Corbusier //
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3. BUFFER OF GRID
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P H Y SI CA L I T Y , M E N T A L I T Y A N D S OCIA LITY OF B U FFE R Buffer, noun, often attributive 1. any of various devices or pieces of materials for reducing shock or damage due to contact. 2. a means or device used as a cushion against the shock of fluctuations in business of financial activity. 3. something that serves as a protetive barrier: buffer state/a person who shields another especially from annoying routine matters/mediator 4. a substance capable in solution of neutralizing both acids and bases and thereby maintaining the original acidity or basicity of the solution 5. a section of computer memory for temporarily storing information - Definition of buffer by Merrian-Webster
Buffers appears from all these grid intersections and collisions. Though neglected most of the time, these buffers become the transitional spaces from one reference to the other, help emphasizing the process of shift from one environment to another. They are separations, while they are also connections among spaces, that help one understand the change of references. The power of these spatial buffers is underestimated, especially under the circumstance of the blur between self and conformity. Walking through buffers becomes a ceremonial process that help detach one from the public realm to a private state physically and psychologically.
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// Half Moon Theater, Florian Beigel //
// British Castle Floor Plan Sketches, Louis Kahn //
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Architecture is a result of confrontation between references, while the inbetween buffers reveal more significantly the transitions, especially given by the public-private crisis.
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A B U F F E R I N SA N F R A N CIS CO The expansion of the urban territory is physicalized through gridding - the extension of grids, representing that an order is applied and the unused land is transformed to be well-organized. Through the reading of urban fabric or the grids, the context, like history, sequence of development, natural factors, even cultures, reveals. We’ve been through two periods of urban development: one horizontal and one vertical. The horizontal one expands the urban area in quantities and quality, the other in efficiency. However, due to multiple factors, these developments would never be perfect: the development in vertical pursuing higher efficiency and imperfection of horizontal grid distribution leave certain amounts of areas to be less continuous. Situated at the intersection of two main grids in the Bay Area peninsula, the site remains almost detached from the context - the triangular shape influenced by Market St and Van Ness Ave, newly developed skyscrapers and historic buildings at the perimeters, junction of commercial, industrial and residential areas…... Therefore the site is visually as well as experientially an island. Currently, as an event venue, it is a large space divided to be a 20-feet/28-feet grid with a fully enclosed facade facing out, leaving no dialogue between the context and the site itself.
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// Site Location //
// Context, Intersection of Market St & Van Ness Ave //
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// Intersection //
D I SO R I E N T A T I O N Market street and all these triangular blocks along, are already unique buffers in urban scale. The sense of disorientation walking between these urban grids emphasizes the differentiation of the experiences. Multiple references are identified, including the larger, more public one related to the skyscraper layout at the mission area, a residential grid response to the orientation of van ness ave, and one referencing the pattern across market st to the north.
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// Grid, Buffer //
// Grid, Buffer //
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// 1446 Market St //
// Grid, buffer//
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// 1242 Market St //
// Grid, buffer//
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// 532 Market St //
// Grid, buffer//
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// 8437 Market St //
// Grid, buffer//
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4. A DYSTOPIAN FANTASY
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This is a housing project. It’s a slice of the infinite confrontation .
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Buffers appear and function as the interface between public and private, mediating the external forces and internal forces, blocking the outside and protecting the inside.
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It’s a chaotic result from strong, well organized references.
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It’s also an emotional state within the rationale.
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The image it presents to the public is a seemingly banal object responding to every side of the site.
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The underground is totally public. Getting down from the escalator, everything remains the same orientation. Though unseen, you can still feel its strong connection to the outside world.
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The grid starts to dissolve on ground. You walk in seamlessly from one side, you walk in seamlessly from another side, but you feel the same confusion of losing your sense of orientation.
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Going up, you see the juxtaposition of grids while no matter which one you follow, it never leads you to face the outside perpendicularly. You’ve lost yourself even you are in the center of the urban environment, maybe just wander around and get some food.
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Keep going up, it’s a shared workspace mostly controlled by one grid from inside. You don’t care about the outside any more, just work here if you want.
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Arriving at the residential level, getting out from the rotated circulation core, walking through buffers generated by collisions of references, a well disconnected private space is provided to any resident, while after that, individuals are able to share their lives back to the community through the internal cell-like lightwell and balconies.
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Here, everyone is lost, everyone stays in the gaps, everyone is well protected, disconnected, everyone reacts back.
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Finally, you arrive at your own space, welcome back.
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It’s a workaholic’s apartment right next to the shared workspace. Protected by the buffer, the bedroom is connected back to the working area. Open the door, and get back to work.
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It’s a plant fanatic’s apartment. She finds this place to steal water, right next to the exposed water supply tubes, with a large balcony for all her plants collections within the buffers. “I’ll live with my plants” she says. She brings a hammock and lives in the large balcony of her unit.
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It’s an insomniac’s apartment. At the end of a zig-zag route walking through the sequential rooms is his soundproofing bedroom. He moves in, exhausted, he hopes to have a nice dream without getting bothered.
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It’s a rock star’s apartment. Well enclosed rooms are her rehearsal studios, open deck is her stage. She eagers to express through her songs. She couldn’t wait. She breaks the buffers.
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It’s an OCD patient’s apartment. The buffer that functions as his woodshop help neighbors understand his personality. He couldn’t stand the irregularities of the rooms, He makes all these panels from his woodshop to form a perfect rectangular space.
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Now, utopian or dystopian?
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SO U R CE S
1. The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture, Peter Eisenman. Lars Muller Publishers, 2006. 2. The Grid Meets the Hills, Florence Lipsky. Editions Parentheses, 1999. 3. Elements of Architecture, Rem Koolhaas. Taschen Gmbh, 2018. 4. Exodus, or the voluntary prisoners of architecture, Rem Koolhaas. 5. Soft City, Pushwagner. 2017. 6. Architecture and Order Approaches to Social Space, Michael Parker Pearson & Colin Richards. Routledge, 1994. 7. The Social Functions of Utopian Architecture, Ernest J. Green. Penn State University Press, 1993. 8. From Formalism to Weak Form: The Architecture and Philosophy of Peter Eisenman, Stefeno Corbo. Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2014. 9. The Fun Palace as Virtual Architecture: Cedric Price and the Practices of Indeterminacy, Stanley Mathews. Journal of Architecture Education (1984-), Feb 2006. 10. Utopian Architecture Part 2: Beyond Modernism, James Bartolacci. Architizer.com 11. The Building is the City: Le Corbusier’s Unbuilt Hospital in Venice, Mariabruna Fabrizi. Socks-studio.com 12. Robert Venturi, The Obligation Toward the Difficult Whole, Fosco Lucarelli. Socks-studio.com 13. THIS WAS OUR UTOPIANISM! : An Interview with Peter Cook, Zawia. Archdaily.com
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BUFFER
Xinwei Chen, David | M.Arch Thesis 2021