Carved Space

Forward/ acknowledgements This book is a compilation of my sketches, photographs, collected clippings and writings from the last ten months.

Over that period I have visited and experienced many new places and journeys which have influenced and reinforced my ideas and stance on architecture.

I would like to thank Helen O’Connor, Fergus Purdie and the rest of the material unit for their support, inspiration and laughter throughout the masters year.

Doug

Dunnottar Castle September 06 I visited Dunnottar Castle on a rainy and windswept day in late September to learn about tower houses and their important architectural and sculptural qualities.

Early types of Scottish tower house, such as the keep at Dunnottar Castle exhibit some qualities of excavated or carved space.This defensive fortification stands like an eroded outcrop of rock on the landscape and appears to be solid and elementary from the outset.

The few irregularly placed openings, appear to follow no rules and conceal the internal layout behind the mass of stone. In fact, these seemingly immovable boulders are hollow with walls of varying size up to four metres thick on some elevations. The unusual, indeed incredible size of their walls is an obvious consequence of their task, to be ‘masonry armour’ protecting the grand living spaces within.

left Sketch of Dunnottar castle on its rocky perch. The rock on which Dunnottar Castle stands might have been designed specifically to permit the building of the most impregnable fortress in Scotland.

Sheer cliffs 160ft high almost completely surround a flat area over three acres in size. The rock itself was once joined by a narrow fin to the mainland, but even this was carved away to ensure access along it was not possible.

Right A Sketch on approach, its started raining. Unfortunately I was in a t- shirt and sandals and not really prepared for an exposed cliff top in September...

left View from the beach Right Quick sketches of the castle and views famed by its openings

Far left Image taken inside the eroding shell of the tower house Left The staircases through the tower house and other buildings at Dunnottar Castle were on the whole dark and disorientating however the journey often culminated in a view to the surrounding landscape which re-organised the experience. The openings at the top of the stairs to me became a device that pulled and enticed people through the enclosed dark spaces.

Right The most interesting spaces occur between the inside and the outside carved within the massive fortified walls. These hidden spaces ‘bore’ through mass allowing light into the interior and are often called ‘poché’ spaces or pocket spaces

Left Thinking about these carved cavity spaces of Dunnottar and how they were conceived in sculptural terms suggests a similar king of space making but the result of some sort of inverted casting process.

Floor plans of the tower house carved out of Polystyrene...

Right Sketches for tower house casts

“Interal volumes have a concrete presence on their own account.. as though they were formed out of a rarified substance lacking in energy but most sensitve to its reception�

(luigi Moretti)

“I maintain that some architects are ‘structure-minded’, and others ‘cavityminded;’ some architectural periods work preferably with solids, others with cavities.” (Rasmussen 1964) Left Images from inside the hollow positive tower house cast Right The captured solidity of space, the negative cast

Left Sketches for a enclosed staircase. To explore qualities of an enclosed staircase a a space was designed within the restrictions of a narrow gap site in Dundee. The idea was to cast the space of the site as solid to find its volume and mass, then recast the space with spatial inclusions and connections between the front and back.

Right Image through the completed cast

Cave Dwellings Brant么me- France December 06 On a recent trip to France I visited inhabited troglodyte dwellings in the Brant么me, a small market town in the north of the Dordogne. The town sits in a narrow steep sided valley between a limestone escarpment and the River Dronne. The limited space for expansion has forced some of the towns residents to carve their homes out of the rock and build within some of the local caves. The rock known as millarge, is a gritty limestone that is slightly harder than tufeau so there was considerably more effort applied in its extraction. However there are significant benefits of a harder stone, in that finer details can be carved and the finished dwellings are more resistant to frost weathering.

Left Sketch of the entrance to carved dwelling- Brantome. Dec 2006 Right Sketch of Brantome Overleaf The contrast of the light limestone and the dark excavated spaces.

Left Sketch of a house in Brantome. Shows the relationship some houses have with the escarpment. Dec. 2006 Right Photo showing the same relationship Overleaf Most obvious observation in Brantome was the successive darkening of space to the rear of the dwellings and the changing effects of light and the amplification of sound and smell. These changes and warmth of space created a safe, homely atmosphere.

Left Me within in the vast shell of a former dwelling Right The carved spaces have various uses

Collected clippings and Precedents This part of the book takes the form of images capturing the essential qualities of carved space, that over the last year have appealed to me.

Throughout history, primitive peoples have made use of caves for shelter, burial, or as religious sites. These are most notable in the deserts of eastern Turkey, Eithopia and North America where whole communities moved into natural rock formations. With little alterations to the natural spaces they found that they could live comfortably, sheltered from harsh winds and extreme temperatures found outside

Carved spaces are an extreme expression of the merging of architecture and place.

The tuff cone dwellings of the Goreme in the cappadocia region of Turkey are an interesting example of this relationship between inhabitation and landscape. The cones were originally sculpted by nature and range in size from the size of a tent to that of a small skyscraper. The tuff cones are riddled with natural spaces but were subsequently worked into by the inhabitants. The example shown is the appartment of Simeon the Stylite in the fifth century AD. The lowest floor contained his oratory, above it were his living quarters with a carved fireplace and furniture made of stone. Some of the larger tuff cones have up to sixteen floors arranged within the one rock with connecting stairways and ramps between levels. (Rudofsky 1977)

Left Photo showing the relationship of the tuff cone to the surrounding landscape.

Right Horizontal slices of a tuff cone Far right interior of tuff cone

The Church of St George in Eithopia is another interesting example however unlike other sites this was not a naturally created volume but hewn from solid rock of a sandstone cliff. The main mass of the church was initially carved straight down creating a sunken courtyard, then residual mass was carefully hollowed out creating internal spaces with intricate details Far Left Aerial shot of church.

Left Image showing the scale an intricacy of the church Right view from site

“It is possible to plan a building as a composition of cavities alone but in carrying it out the walls will inevitably have certain convexities which will intrude on the obsever in the same way the pillars in the Carli Temple do� (Rasmussen 1964) Left Cave temple at carli India. the temple was hollowed out of rock Right Horizontal slice through temple

Left/Right

Dalyan Temple, Turkey

Left lycian tombs, Myra, Turkey.

Right Foxholes, Taiwan 1940

Wemyss Caves- March 07 Paul and myself took a drive around Fife one day in March visiting his site and places he used to kick around as a kid. The impressive caves and carved spaces at Wemyss were the highlight of the trip.

These Caves have two large entrances and two passageways, one a short one through the end of which was an opening so that the ladies from Wemyss who gutted the herring in Buckhaven could walk home safely when the tide was high. The space was really interesting with shafts of light piercing the interior dramatically, animating the space.

My journeys to the isle of Portland 2006 I visited The isle of Portland twice last year the first to take part in a sculpture course for three weeks over the summer to learn how to stone carve and secondly to chose a site for the design project in November. I travelled by train from Dundee, which took the best part of a day from door to door. The journey itself was really exciting from passing through unfamiliar towns and desolate landscapes to the gritty urban sprawl of London.

“All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept, For miles inland, A slow stopping curve southwards we kept.

Wide farms went by, short shaddowed cattle, and canals with floatings of industrial froth, a hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped, And rose: and now and then the smell of grass displaced the reek of buttoned carriage cloth.

Until the next town, new and nondescript.

Approached with acres of dismantled cars.� (extract from Whitsun Weddings by Phillip Larkin)

The Site -isle of Portland 2006 My intention at the start of the year was to develop a design project as a means of testing and contextualising ideas of carved space. I now also want to further explore the associated sculptural processes, carving/casting/ moulding and how they effect and inform my design process for a building that has a brief and programme. This section draws together photographs, sketches, writings and collected postcards of the island. “Something in the air, in the sea and above all in the stone of Portland inspires people to build, to make art, to write, to live. The place seems to have to power to lay bare the processes of creation� ( Bill Hicks, Writer and Stone Carver, in Revell 2005 p20)

“Carved by time out of a single stone� was how Thomas Hardy described the Isle of Portland, a rock outcrop four miles wide by one and a half that juts out from the Dorset coast into the English Channel linked to the mainland only by the great sweep of Chisel Bank.

Left and Right Postcards circa 1920’s. The name Portland is synonymous with the stone that has provided material for fine architecture, carving and sculpture in cities throughout the world. Both man and nature have formed the contours of the island’s coastline;

the

geomorphology

and

geol-

ogy have informed how the landscape has been worked. Once there were eighty working quarries on the island now there are just four. The skills and understanding of working with stone by hand, have been passed down through generations of Portland families in the tradition of ‘Quarry gangs’ but this knowledge is now being lost as technology advances

“Each boy was a member of a quarry gang with almost fanatical

and

loyalty fought boys

from other streets. Laboriously we toiled to build a cabin of stone, usually carved out of the old quarry banks. A fireplace was essential for our many failed attempts to cook jacket potatoes it too hewn out of the rockface. As the long dark days of winter came along the cabin was used more and more and often shared with a goat to shelter from the bitter eastern winds.” (Extract from ‘Life and Times of a Portland Quarry boy’. Revell 2005 p24)

Left Loading Portland stone on to railway wagons at quarry sidings. Postcard circa 1921.

Right Quarry gang extracting Portland stone

More than 400 shipwrecks have been recorded in the waters off Portland since the 17th Century and was one of the most treacherous parts of the British coast during the days of sail. this was mainly to due to the strong prevailing south westerly winds which drove ships into the bay. (Revell 2005) This page The wreck of the SS Preveza on Chesil Beach Jan 15th 1930

There are many examples of hybrid built/carved spaces built by quarrymen on Portland, which all have their own idiosyncrasies but all relate to the landscape in a similar way. The first space was most rudimentary of all , a hollowed-out bowl surrounded on three sides by large stone blocks and roofed with one large stone plinth. The entrance was small like an igloo and opened up into one small space which was warm and offered good protection from its exposed cliff-top location.

Overleaf storm sketches from Chessil Beach Left view out to sea from the stone shelter Right sketch and external shot of cabin

The second space, slightly more complex, was partially carved into a rock face. Enclosure of the carved volume was created by the addition of four carefully placed boulders which also supported a large stone lintel for the narrow entrance to the space. To each side of the entrance stone nooks provided seating for a quarry gang and in the centre a fireplace

Overleaf Panoramic view of the English Channel from Church Ope Cove Left view out from the stone enclosure Right sketch and external shot of enclosure

The Third and most modern space creates a similar experience to the first two spaces but was constructed in a modern way using insitu concrete.

Portland’s central location on the south coast and the sheltered bay which it creates made the island a good location for military installations during the Second World War (Revell 2005). Many of the defensive fortifications such as bunkers and gun loops still survive today and due to their nature are rooted to the rocky landscape of the coastline quite illusively

Left Entrance to bunker Right view out to sea

Design To get a better idea of the spaces that could potentially inform the experience of this site, the clay was used to create larger mock up environments to explore light and texture. The initial spaces were derived from the analysed small scale stone-built dwellings existing in Portland but also by my wider experiences and observations of carved and built space. The level change on site and the interest to explore the potential of the mass lead me to define main experiences that I wanted a visitor to experience.

The experience of being within a carved space. The relationship between the inside and out as experienced in a tower house, and the in between spaces that are found or not. The feeling of big and underneath a mass of rock in a small space that is safe and warm juxtaposed to voluminous spaces that swallow up human scale.

Left/ right

Internal shots of clay model

The openness and expansiveness of the view to the east of the site. There was an opportunity to present an expansive vista from the site to the quarried landscape and beyond that to the to the fields then further to the flat expanse of the channel. This would result in creating a roofscape at road level that would receive people and carve out the rest of the programme underneath Left external shot of clay model

The journey down into the quarry was also important; getting from the view to the place would need to be an experience. the changing effect of the light with the increasing enclosure, the forced perspectives with narrowing passages. This journey was conceived through the initial clay massing site model, where a horizontal gash was sliced down through the site. The slice would become a ramp down into the retreat dealing with the entrance enclosure and revealing the different rock strata along a journey to the quarry floor.

Left/right Journey through mass, clay model