Concept

Carolin Stapenhorst

C O N C E P T:

A Dialogic Instrument in Architectural Design

CONTENTs

Introduction

9

0. A Notional Outline:

From Aesthetic Norms to Conceptual Strategies

11

PART 1

24

Interdisciplinarity in Architecture

1.1 The Need for a Transversal Language

25

1.2

Objectification through Collaboration

31

1.3

Adaptable Knowledge through Lifelong Learning

37

1.4 The Potential of Hospitality

45

1.5 Communicative Interfaces within an Interdisciplinary Field

55

1.6

Interdisciplinarity in Design Education

59

PART 2 An Instrumental Definition of the Concept

68

2.1 Decision-Making in Design Processes

69

2.2 Concept as Repository of Rules, Strategies, and Criteria

81

2.3 Concept as Generator and Communicator

87

2.4 Concept as Explorer of Non-architectural Knowledge

95

PART 3 Generators and Depictions of Concept

100

3.0 Concept as Result of and Guideline for an Ideational Process

101

3.1 Diagrams for the Organization of Information

and the Transmission of Ideas

107

3.2 Textual Generators and Communicators of Design Strategies

147

3.3 Cartography as Ground Analyzer and Rule Giver

167

3.4

189

A Conceptual Use of Architectural References

Apparatus Selection of Interdisciplinarily Conceptualized Designs

John Pawson: Monastery Novy Dvur, Dobrá Voda

22

Herzog & de Meuron: Studio Rémy Zaugg, Mulhouse

28

52

Étienne-Louis Boullée: Opéra au Carrousel, Paris

Steven Holl: Addition to the Cranbrook Institute

of Science, Bloomfield Hills, MI, and Whitney Waterworks Park, Hamden, CT

66

78

Alvar Aalto: Paimio Sanatorium, Patient Bedroom, Paimio

Gino Valle: Storage & Showroom Geatti, Udine

98

Jürg Conzett: Traversina Bridge II, Graubünden

104

Pier Luigi Nervi: Wool Factory Gatti, Rome

144

Bernard Tschumi: Parc de la Villette, Paris

186

O.M. Ungers: Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven

200

LIST OF FIGURES

203

“Finally, the most shameful moment came when computer science, marketing, design and advertising, all the disciplines of communication, seized hold of the word concept itself and said: ‘This is our concern, we are the creative ones, we are the ideas men! We are the friends of the concept, we put in our computers.”1 - Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari

“In arts, and particularly in architecture, imprecise definitions have caused many errors; they have generated prejudices and nurtured wrong notions. You give a word and instantly everybody is interpreting it with a different meaning.”2 - Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc

INTRODUCTION The quotes by Deleuze-Guattari and Violett-le-Duc delineate two key points for both the motivation and the objective of this text. Diverse disciplines, in particular those around the “ideas men,” appropriated the term “concept,” and quite often the meaning of this appropriation was vague or, still worse, banalizing. Therefore, the principal aim of this text is to give one possible definition of the term “concept,” and because it is thought to be useful for the ideas men in general and the architects in particular, this definition is an instrumental, operative, and productive one. The concept in architecture is investigated for its strategic potential in decision-making processes and it is illustrated as a dialogic interface between the different professional competences participating in architectural design.

This publication outlines the theoretical shifts in design history that induced the appearance of the term “concept” in common architectural discourse. It illustrates the designing architect’s changing professional field as increasingly characterized by the necessity of multidisciplinary collaboration—which is a challenge—but a field that nevertheless contains the potential for productive knowledge transfer leading to explorative and inventive design principles. This publication approaches the instrumental definition of the concept as a common repository of directions and rules for the design process, as a processor of heterogeneous requirements, and thus as a structuring element of teamwork. It illustrates a selection of possible manifestations of the concept, which function as efficient representations of selected information that enables a shared understanding and thus augments the quality of decision-making in architectural design.

The text is accompanied by an apparatus of design examples that differ widely in their architectural expression, but have in common being conceived via the strategic use of non-architectural knowledge—they are Interdisciplinarily Conceptualized Designs.

1 Gille Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What is philosophy? (London: Verso Press, 1994), 10; original edition: Qu’estce que la philosophie?

(Paris: Les éditions de Minuit, 1991).

2 Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc: Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle.

Style, 1856, (Paris: Morel editor, 1868); translation Carolin Stapenhorst (CS) from the German edition: M. Düttmann (ed.), Definitionen. Sieben Stichworte aus dem Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1993), 17.

9

0

A Notional Outline: From Aesthetic Norms to Conceptual Strategies

“If, however, the physical reality is understood and conceptualized as an analogy to our imagination of that reality, then we pursue a morphological design concept, turning it into real phenomena, which like all real concepts, can be expanded or condensed.”1 - Oswald Mathias Ungers

In order to trace the first declared necessity of strategic non-standardized approaches within the design process and the occurrence of the term “concept” in architectural discourse, the following briefly and selectively outlines a series of theoretical shifts in Western design theory. It is not the aim of this notional introduction to investigate the origin of the concept within architectural design history, because such an investigation would inevitably be fragmentary and, more importantly, not useful for the instrumentally oriented objectives of this publication. Thus, it will illustrate the appearance of the term “concept”, intended as an instrument of design, and describe its specific characteristics as it emerges from the theory construction in architecture.

De Re Aedificatoria: A Process- and Problem-oriented Treatise of Design Theory One would expect to find the departure from the exclusive orientation towards aesthetic, historically approved norms applied to architectural design decisions within the scientification and

Fig 01 O.M. Ungers‘ compilation of images for the exhibition “MAN transFORMS”

1 O.M. Ungers, “Designing and thinking with images, metaphors and analogies,” in MAN transFORMS. An International Exhibition on Aspects of Design, ed. H. Hollein (New York: Cooper-Hewitt Museum, 1976), reprint in archplus: Lernen von O.M. Ungers no. 181/182 (December 2006): 170.

11

thus develop their common projects within a dialogic situation.

Therefore, even if the formation of these types of unstable associations arises from a difficult occupational situation, their flexibility, which is somehow unintentional, their highly developed communication skills, and their lack of commissions produce innovative approaches to work. They are open to external specialists and accumulate knowledge in permanently changing constellations.31

31 A description of these loose collaborative networks that proliferated, particularly in the two-thousands, can be found in N. Kuhnert and Schindler, eds., “OffArchitektur,� archplus (October 2003): 14ff.

36

1.3

Adaptable Knowledge through Lifelong Learning

“100 years ago you had to have a Baumeister if you wanted to build a house. Nowadays, you need a geodesist for the site measuring, an engineer for the structure, and a building physicist (for the details)…. You need a building economist …, a marketing expert, a project manager, a quantity surveyor…. You need, of course, a developer. You do not need an architect.”32

- Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani

The Perpetual Problem of Legitimization Architectural theorist Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani’s provocation about architects’ professional marginalization, caused by the weight of the technical and economical competences involved in the project development, introduces an essay that goes on to ask: What should architects be capable of doing? Once, the answer was designing, planning, and attending to the construction site. However, nowadays the construction site … is exclusively attended to by experts, the planning is transferred to the specialized engineers … and the design … certainly cannot be called a growth market.33

32 Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani cited in G. de Bruyn, H. Mauler, and S. Trüby, “Vers une Architektengeneration.

Zur Entwurfslehre am Institut Grundlagen Moderner Architektur,” archplus: “Architekten, ihr Anfänger!”

Pop, Ökonomie, Aufmerksamkeit no.

171 (June 2004): 20.

Translation CS. 33 Ibid., 21. Translation CS.

37

Étienne-Louis Boullée: Opéra au Carrousel, Paris (France), 1781

1 E.L. Boullée, Architettura. Saggio sull’arte, ed. A. Ferlenga, (Turin, Einaudi, 2005), 29.

Translation CS. 2 Ibid., 57.

Étienne-Louis Boullée dedicates a great deal of consideration to the origins of architecture. One term that he introduces in this context is the “character,” which he explains as follows: “Let us look to an object! The first sensation we feel is obviously caused by the way the object impresses us. I call the effect produced by the object and that causes any kind of impression in us ‘character.’”1 The design application of the conceptual instrument of the “character” illustrates the modernity of Boullée’s way of thinking. He describes his project for an opera theater as such: “I have aimed to represent in depth the aspect of seduction that vaudeville has.

Therefore, I surrounded my theater hall with a portico construction, which forms a kind of carousel.”2 When Boullée does this design, the architectural conventions in France are exclusively oriented to classical architecture. The reference to an object belonging to the sphere of popular entertainment—such as a carousel or an amusement park—is quite provocative, if not scandalous. Indeed, there is something revolutionary in Boullée’s idea: he uses a kind of freedom allowing him to search his very own working rules and principles—beyond those

already accepted and adopted. The equestrian statues, which decorate the four pedestals outside the OpĂŠra au Carrousel, strengthen the correspondence between conceptual reference and architectural design.

process. They immediately relate everything they see to their design work.�89 The mechanisms that characterize this kind of attitude are generated through the application of instruments that were mentioned before, as those that permit communication between the parties involved in the design process. The same instruments that build up the communicative interface between the disciplines transfer the specialist knowledge from non-architectural fields into generative principles that can induce architectural forms.

89 K. Dorst, Understanding Design: 175 Reflections on Being a Designer (Amsterdam: BIS Publisher, 2003), 101.

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1.6

Interdisciplinarity in Design Education

“The architect after modernism is now readying him- or herself via research to clarify the architect’s role in the production process of the individual object and of urban spaces, and thus to regain control of the lost center. Design research informs him or her about strategically indispensable alliances and tactical options.”90

-Angelus Eisinger

The Interdisciplinary Method of Lapa The strategic and methodical use of non-architectural contents in design can be taught. The Laboratoire de la production d’architecture (Lapa),91 established in 2005 by architect and teacher Harry Gugger at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, is a significant example of the development of interdisciplinary working models in architectural education.

Lapa’s didactical approach is explorative, as the students are strongly invited to apply scientific, research-like methods to address and enrich their design processes. This is motivated by the tailspin of the architect’s role, the need to “regain control of the lost center,” just like historian Angelus Eisinger explains in his essay for the Explorations catalogue for the Swiss Pavilion’s exhibition at the Venice Biennale d’Architettura in 2008, which included Lapa’s work as one of four examples of Swiss design didactics. Lapa’s methodology booklet states, “It is the primary goal of Lapa to ensure the architect’s continued role in the planning and building process and to reinforce the architect’s position as a central, integrating and coordinating force.”92 This

90 A. Eisinger, Stop making sense, 21.

91 Since 2011, Laboratory Basel (Laba).

92 H. Gugger, ed., Lapa Methodology Booklet (Lausanne: EPFL/ENAC/ LAPA, 2007), 3.

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design: Eckhart Reissinger

Weekly Exercise no. 3 24. - 30 06.1964 Thematic binding Given: 1 Program of a residential unit entrance, wardrobe + WC, access to the cellar living room study dining room kitchen storage room bedroom bedroom bedroom shower bathroom guest room

8-10 sqm 30 sqm 15 sqm 16 sqm 10 sqm 2 sqm 20 sqm 12 sqm 12 sqm 3 sqm 8 sqm 12 sqm

2. The external walls should not have any openings.

Sought-after: The design of a residential unit. The layout of the walls is allowed to have any form, but the walls must be continous, without any interruption apart from the entrance.

Required: The entrance should be 4.75 meters above the ground.

2.2

Concept as Repository of Rules, Strategies, and Criteria

Fig 03 Wochenaufgabe

by O. M. Ungers; summer term 1964 at TU Berlin

“If the artist wishes to explore his idea thoroughly, then arbitrary or chance decisions would be kept to a minimum, while caprice, taste and other whimsies would be eliminated … If the artist carries through his idea and makes it into visible form, then all the steps in the process are of importance.

The idea itself, even if not made visual, is as much a work of art as any finished product.”32 - Sol LeWitt, Paragraphs on Conceptual Art

Judgment Criteria The description of the act of designing as a sequence of ongo­ ing decisions that is far from linear due to the complexity of tasks and the necessity of integrative procedures, leads to the question of how this process can be structured, how its decisions can be evaluated and legitimated, how Kwinter’s “efficacity” may be obtained. With regard to this, the conceptual artist Sol LeWitt individuates a guiding idea as the element that can confer significance to every step of a creative procedure and thus value to the process as a whole. He further underlines the generative and regulative function of guiding idea when he states that “no matter what form it may finally have it must begin with an idea.”33 Christian Norberg-Schulz indicates the capacity for judgment as the basis for every kind of decision we may make and therefore fundamental to design activity.34 This means that every design process needs a set of criteria that defines its very specific parameters of wrong and right, which help to make the decisions leading to a design solution. From the mid-nineteenth

32 S. LeWitt, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” Artforum International Magazine (New York: 1967). Quoted in C. Harrison and P. Wood (eds.), Art in Theory.

1900–1990 (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992), 835.

33 LeWitt’s conviction is connected to another one, which he expresses in “Sentences on Conceptual Art” a year later: “It is difficult to bungle a good idea” – “Sentences on Conceptual Art,” 0–9 Magazine (New York, 1969). Quoted in Ibid., 839.

34 C. Norberg-Schulz, Intentions in Architecture, 27.

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Generators and Depictions of Concept

PART 3

3.0

Concept as Result of and Guideline for an Ideational Process

“For me there is quality if your concept is able to assemble a whole lot of different requirements… .

The more lines you can draw, the better the concept is. Of course, these lines are not of equal thickness. You have to decide sometimes, when they are contradictory, what is more and what is less important. For me it is a good method to think: ‘let’s take this influence for a while as the most important. What could be the result? Afterwards, let’s take another influence to be the most important one.’ And sometimes, finally, the contradictions disappear.”1 - Jürg Conzett

Visualize to Communicate Part 2 outlined those definitions relevant to the concept intended as effective instruments to structure the design process— such as its accompanying role within the decisional sequence of the design process, its function as generator and communicator of a set of regulative strategies, and its correlation with the contents from the external fields of knowledge. It gave a theoretical configuration, which Part 3 specifies via a selection of the concept’s manifestations that underline its instrumental potential.

The introductory quote by structural engineer Jürg Conzett refers to a diagram describing a general consideration he is making about designing—it explains his personal notion of concept (figure 01). Conzett describes the concept as an instrument capable of “assembling the requirements,” and he represents these requirements on the left. Still more interesting about his diagram is something that he does not mention. The concept, placed in the center of the diagram depicting the design proc­ ess, is informed by a series of requirements (site, function, con-

1 J. Conzett, “Looking at my desk,” The Harvard GSD Lectures.

Engineering Design series, transcription from the video registration of the lecture on October 25, 2011.

101

Fig 13 (left page) Alexander’s diagrams for the Notes: each of them is the diagrammatical solution to a group of requirements

Fig 14 Detail of the Smithsons’s UrbanRe-Identification Grid

of mathematics are abstract, of course, and the shapes of architecture concrete and human. But that difference is inessential”57—turns out to be erroneous. The diagram as an instrument of design thinking structures problems and generates strategies for their solution, and not for the physical expression—that is, the architectural form—of the solution. Still, Alexander’s identification of the diagram’s essential importance as an instrument of environmental planning and as medium through which scientific contents can be introduced into the design process is extraordinarily relevant for theories about rational designing.

In order to substantiate their contextual planning approach, the Team 10 group introduces a number of representation modalities that differ from the conventional set of architectural drawings—for example, photographs, collages, and diagrams. In addition to conventional drawings, the Smithsons’ “Urban-Re-Identification Grid” (figure 14) contains a compilation of photos of playing children, parts of collages, and a series of diagrams referring to the Smithsons’ “Golden Lane” design. Eventually, the whole grid becomes a kind of collage, which strikingly typifies an associative, absorbing, open design attitude. Furthermore, some of Team 10’s most characteristic, original ideas are presented via diagrams—such as the “scales of human association” (figure 15) created for the CIAM X at Dubrovnik and intended to replace the four functions of the Athens

57 C. Alexander, Notes on the Synthesis of Form, 134.

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for the self-confrontation Ulrich Beck requests. In this respect, the communicative power of the diagrams for the Villa KBWW design at Utrecht (figure 33), which are used in a long process of negotiating between the involved parties, and in particular between the two families who would become the inhabitants of the semidetached house, is evident.

During the same period, MVRDV claims to use a multitude of statistical data to be able to manage the architectural field’s apparently chaotic working conditions. They aim to base their designs on research-like investigations, in order to legitimize their self-conception as generalists and to succeed “in preserving a certain measure of control over the project, not in a visionary or authoritarian manner, but as a manager who keeps the process on the track.”88 The diagrammatical visualization of the processed information points towards the so-called datascapes, which MVRDV explains as follows: “Under maximized circumstances, every demand, rule or logic is manifested in pure and unexpected forms that can go beyond artistic intuition or known geometry and replace it with ‘research.’”89 Thus, as one of many “datascape” examples, they combine the Dutch regulations regarding light exposure with sun diagrams to calculate light cones, thereby generating the figure of the “Meteorite,” a virtual building volume containing “light” and “dark” programs (figure 34). In a certain sense, the firm chooses the building legislation apparatus as one of its favorite creative catalysts.

Referring to the Dutch legislation on light exposure, MVRDV outline the relations between light levels, building density and functional programs: “If we want to reach more competitive densities and maintain the byelaws, we will have to mix housing with other programs … The almost historical plea for ‘mixed use’ has been translated into an obligation!”90 Based on the given restrictions, they explore diverse “light formulas” (figure 35) and design a series of densification scenarios. The information contained in the textual legislation documents is transferred into diagrammatical representation, because the medium of the diagram is necessary to make the textual contents operative as a potential design strategy.

In summary, the common architectural discourse of the nineteen-nineties identifies the diagram as a prolific instrument to

Fig 35 MVRDV’s exploration of light formulas

88 B. Lootsma, Superdutch, 24.

89 W. Maas, J. van Rijs with R. Koek, farmax (Rotterdam: nai010, 1999), 99.

90 Ibid., 195.

141

Maps-of-Rules: A Case Study The different representations, the infinity of layers into which the map can be broken down, recognize a figurative multiplicity of the object, thereby arriving at its explosion in a plurality of meanings and shapes. Furthermore, thanks to its particular spatiality, its layered nature, its capacity to weave together figures and backgrounds, the coexistence of differently scaled shapes—the diagrammatical nature of its figures—the map has the potential to represent a scientific basis for architectural design, capable of guiding its decisions. A map, as historian Axel John Wieder points out, “helps to define our position and to recognize what is happening and thus actually to decide what to do.”165 He specifies that cartography, a non-architectural discipline, can essentially be understood as an architectural proceeding intending to describe spatiality in a “sharpened way.”166 The operations of analysis, synthesis, and design rarely overlap so strongly as in the elaboration of cartographic maps in the field of architecture, and it is often difficult to determine which maps are analytical and preparative, and which are already precise indications for the planning. Giancarlo Motta explains this close-knit relationship between map and architectural project as follows: “A map … is not an object but … an entity of devices structured each by its own logic. As in the architectural project, a map is always an answer to a multitude of problems which find their equation within a single representation.”167 In the end, the decisive difference between map and project is the diagrammatical nature of the first, which does not indicate computed forms, but rules and guidelines for their definition. It is due to this fact that cartographic elaborations can be defined as a conceptual instrument.

Since the late nineteen-nineties, a research group directed

by Giancarlo Motta has carried out extensive work on the “cartographic machine.”168 Within this work, three types of maps were defined: the basic map, the thematic map, and the “map-of-rules” (carta delle regole). The basic map is still focused on “pure” analysis and constitutes the most neutral representation of specific cartographic facts (figure 54), while the thematic map is already characterized by a high degree of intentional subjectivity, which is still dedicated to the existing

Fig 54 Basic Map on the savannah of Bogotá highlighting its lagoonlike conformation, Politecnico di Torino, DAD

165 A.J. Wieder, “Methode Kartographie,” in archplus: “Architekten, ihr Anfänger!”

Pop, Ökonomie, Aufmerksamkeit no. 171 (2004): 9. Translation CS. 166 Ibid. Translation CS. 167 G. Motta, “La cartografia come ‘forma simbolica,’” in Cartografia e Progetto (Bergamo: Tecnograph, 2003), 16.

Translation CS. 168 The cartographic research was directed by Giancarlo Motta at the Polytechnic School of Turin, 1999–2014.

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Fig 61 (left page) Unger’s Baukasten, closed Fig 62 Baukasten and developmental trajectories of roomgenerating structures

nisms of productive abstraction and his personal definition of “type,” which he illustrates in the chapter “What Abstraction Is”: “A container concept is the set of attributes by which a kind of entity can be identified. A type is the structural essence of such a kind of entity. The abstraction characteristic of productive thinking are rather types than containers.”185 Donald Schön defines “types” similarly and adds more detail to their generative function: Types should be seen as particulars that function in a general way, or as general categories that have the “fullness” of particulars … Because of their “fullness”—the richness of imagery, ideas, and commonplaces associated with them—types such as these can generate sequences of moves and guide designs.186 This specific conception of “type” recalls the didactical device of the Baukasten that Oswald Mathias Ungers employs in his first series of lectures in Berlin. Ungers defines diverse categories of buildings—for example, the “directionless one-roombuilding”—which are compared using morphological sequences in order to distill the compositional rules of each of them and ultimately convert them into a structured developmental trajectory.187 Each developmental trajectory of this encyclopedic process is introduced by the constructive manipulation of

185 R. Arnheim, Visual Thinking, 174.

186 D. Schön, “Designing. Rules, Types and Worlds,” 144.

187 E. Mühltaler, ed., archplus: Lernen von O.M. Ungers, 20ff.

197