Architecture & Exchange by Harry Rosenbaum

ARCHITECTURE & EXCHANGE

Harry Rosenbaum

HOW MAY ARCHITECTURE ACT AS A CATALYST FOR SOCIAL EXCHANGE1?

exchange: “the purest

and most concentrated form of significant human interaction… the sum of values is greater afterwards than it was before, and this implies each party gives the other more than he had himself possessed.” - Georg Simmel

Harry Rosenbaum / Undergraduate Thesis / 2011-2012 / Advisor: Jim Bassett 1

Dedicated to Nicole. Thank you to: Amanda Fam Alex Jim The eels 16 4 5

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CONTEXTUAL RESPONSIVENESS

VITALITY STIMS / SNOOZE NETWORKS

INTENT

16 18 20

25 SOCIAL PHYSICALITIES HUMAN PRESENCE PERCEPTION AS ARCHITECTURE MAKING ACT / OPENNESS DYNAMIC ENGAGEMENT

CONTEXT + INTENT

26 28 30 32

35 NEGOTIATION PROPOSITION / EVALUATION NONHIERARCHICAL RELATIVE GRID

ARCHITECTURAL MEDIA

36 40 44 46

49 COOPERATION / TENSION INTERACTIONS

SPACIAL CONNOTATIONS

50 56

SECONDARY CHARACTERS SENSUAL LANDSCAPE ATMOSPHERE SCALING OF THESIS APPERCEPTIVE PROCESS

62 70 78 86 90

TRAJECTORIES

GLOSSARY

FIGURES

99 7

INTRODUCTION

1 / Wimala, Bhante Y. Lessons of the Lotus. Bantam, 1997.

Every person possesses certain humane capacities that make up his or her most essential existence. Empathy, compassion, emotion are inherent in being human, the traits are common to all people. Yet, each individual is also just that; a singular existence. Via each person’s unique history, upbringing, and culture, he or she possesses a distinct rendition of these humane traits.

This notion aligns with some Buddhist beliefs. In Lessons of the Lotus, monk Bhante Wimala uses a the lotus as a metaphor to express this inherent, universal human trait; “the lotus flower still blossoms, outshining everything around it. A lotus is a lotus…[there is] the potentiality for a selfless, loving heart, within every human being.”1 The Buddhist teachings in Wimala’s text continue to assert the importance this understanding holds for living a fulfilled life.

Good day at the office. He wishes he had rewarded himself with a cab ride home. New clothes. Been gaining weight though, and is self conscious about going up a size.

Sick of their boss. And the bad coffee brewed at the office.

Mets suck.

Just wants to get back home and watch Mets highlights from the afternoon’s game.

Loving her latest romance novel. Now, if only New York had men like the ones in the book.

Really disagrees with some of the tax policies the republicans are trying to push.

Thinks girls like guys who read on the subway.

Trying not to fall asleep. Worried about her baby daughter’s health.

Headed to dinner with wife and mother-in-law. Bored just thinking about it. About to head to the gym. Fifth day in a row.

Wondering if she can afford a better apartment with her new raise.

In the situation of the city, a great number of people are living in a very high density. Such population also carries an exceptional level of diversity - not always in terms of demographics, but unfailingly in variations of intangible, fundamental human traits. Thus, the carriers of both common and exceptional traits are continuously in the presence of other carriers throughout their day-today lives. This sort of happenstance proximity is highly determinative of every individual’s social experience. A person with a physical role in our environment inherently has the opportunity to meaningfully impact our state of being. The city is an extraordinary place because the context possesses such richness of opportunity for these impacts to occur. The spectacle of Times Square, New York City

Georg Simmel discusses the idea of exchange as “the purest and most concentrated form of significant human interaction…the sum of values is greater afterwards than it was before, and this implies each party gives the other more than he had himself possessed.”2 The exchange is a specific sort of interaction; in the net gains it brings to the participants, it may have a significant impact on each person. The fundamental, humane traits of people (both common and uncommon) are critical for exchange, as they hold great viability as the form of its manifestation. Thus, these traits, and their dense presence in the city, make the urban place abundant with the opportunity for meaningful exchange.

The essence of good architecture is not rooted in the aesthetic. Rather, architecture’s merit lies in its contribution to improve the lives of people. What does it mean to positively affect people’s lives? From a consequentialist perspective, the architecture ought to be contributing in a beneficial way to the aggregate happiness in the world. It should make people feel more positively about their lives. But, how may architecture do this?

2 / Simmel, Georg. On Individuality and Social Forms. Ed. Donald N Levine. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1971.

Ray Oldenburg. New York: Paragon House, 1989.

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CAPITALISM

an economic system based on private ownership of capital (princeton) A system for development, interaction, ambition - a product of the rules regarding the product of 2 plates coming together, 2 plates producing our entire society how we work, how we play, how we see, how we eat, how we think, how we treat others - it raises many questions about the way in which we are to live our lives; what does society tell us is important(?) what is the product of the system, the product is a society, what is that society?

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Unfortunately, due to the forces of contemporary society – the pace, expectations, and routines of everyday life – the opportunities for social exchange often go unacknowledged. People seem forced into a sort of contextual unconsciousness, brought on by a rote sort of living in which the spectacular particularities of context are unnoticed or dismissed as mundane. When approached passively, the city is never really seen - the density of humanity in the environment, and the opportunity for pleasure therein, is missed. People are perceived as obstacles to routine, to self-interested goals; they are not recognized for their humanity or the opportunity they present for exchange.

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3 / Fairlie, Henry. Epigraph.

Returning to the ideas of exchange in the city: Henry Fairlie comments on the important role of social exchanges, “the pleasure of our lives, for which the pain of our births and our deaths is acceptable, is in the ways of other men and our associations with them.”3 As discussed earlier, the potential for exchange (“the ways of other men and our associations with them”) in a given urban environment is very high, and thus there is a great potential to bring this pleasure to the people in a city. Activating this potential could bring such a great level of happiness to people in a city, through a remarkable enrichment of the urban social scape.

the focus of life is obsessively forwards.* always expecting the gratafication of our efforts; the reward.** a goal orientation becomes consuming.

$ * ironically we miss how we are really running in circles

**it’s really kind of pavlovian

AND SO, WE MOVE BLINDLY ABOUT - NOT seeing THE PEOPLE WITHIN THE PEOPLE. HAS THE “AMERICAN DREAM” WASHED AWAY OUR SIGHT?

see to perceive by sight or have the power to perceive by sight (princeton)

see to recognize and understand the underlying elements and subtle phenomena of a given context - seeing the significance of one’s surroundings and acknowledging its implications.

An exploration via writing and graphics of the apparent situation of the contemporary social landscape.

What if this social condition of the urban context were to shift? What if each day the many people of the city were having spontaneous and informal exchanges? Each person could meet someone new; perhaps someone with advice, someone with comfort to offer, or just someone that may expand one’s understanding of the world. The city would be acknowledged for its wealth of social opportunities – opportunities propitious for happiness.

Architecture is a means of manipulating context and mediating the relationship between the subject and the context. Each aforementioned feature – exchange, happiness, awareness – is in fact an aspect of context or a corollary directly related to factors of the context, as such, architecture provides a viable means to affect these elements.

This architectural pursuit explores architecture as a catalyst4* for social exchange. The study aspires to suggest a constitutional precedent for such socially active architecture.

4* / Catalyst seems an appropriate term. The architecture itself may not force people to act in a certain way, the built environment cannot force behavior – certain other components must be brought to the context. However, the architecture may provide the optimal physical framework for certain things to occur – it may provide space highly conducive to a particular occurrence, and thereby increase the likelihood of such a happening.

CONTEXTUAL RESPONSIVENESS

VITALITY

The site of the architectural study – First Park in Manhattan, New York – exemplifies the city’s vitality, as described in the introduction. It possesses a great amount of potential for positive social exchange in a high diversity of activity and visitors. Yet, the selected site is just an exemplification of the conditions potentiating social exchange - these qualities are certainly not constrained to this one place in the city, or even this one city.

First Park E. Houston St and 1st Ave. Lower East Side Manhattan, NY, NY

Aldo Van Eyck designed hundreds of playgrounds for the city of Amsterdam. These playgrounds became the centers of communities in the city â&#x20AC;&#x201C; places to meet, gather, play, and exchange. Their success was borne largely out of Van Eyckâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ability to develop designs that responded very specifically to the genius loci of their situation. In their precise address of site conditions, Van Eyckâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s playgrounds were able to capitalize on the existing energy and social forces of the city. The playgrounds account for the nuances of place, producing an

architecture that does not act counter to the positive energies of the site. Rather, the architecture enhances the qualities of the place and embeds itself within the context as a place specially appropriate for that community. This approach is highly pertinent to the design of architecture conducive to social exchange. Each energized site in the city already has some degree of success as a place, providing it with its social potential. The architecture hopes to channel this energy, and activate its potential for the occurrence of social exchange.

fig 17.1 Aldo Van Eyck

Previously at the site was the BMW Guggenheim Lab, a public forum-like space for people to meet and discuss issues of the city. As it has departed for another metropolis, it has left a physical and social void at the site.

STIMS / SNOOZE

1 / Lerup, Lars. After the City. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000. 2 / Studio Sputnik. Snooze. Rotterdam: Nai Publishers, 2003.

Throughout the city, place is animated and provided with its vitality by moments of intense human activity and exuberance, termed stims by Lars Lerup. “The metropolis,” describes Lerup, “is bombarded by a million stims that flicker on and off during the city’s cycles,” 1 he continues to discuss how each stim draws a particular audience. As such, a place with a great diversity of stims would likely attract a large range of audiences.

In the wake of these stims, removed from their more specified activity, is another type of urban energy that contributes to the liveliness of the place: snooze. Studio Sputnik, in their analysis of some of Lerup’s ideas, proposed snooze as an uncertain and shifting urban condition, in an energized state of transformation where it may become anything and everything. 2

The city’s vitality (via stim and snooze) provides the human energy, the human presence in a place that the architecture hopes to capitalize on. The undefined energies of snooze may be channeled towards a social interaction.

fig 19.1 Peter Zumthorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work exemplifies a silent architecture. In his shelters for the Roman ruins in Chur, Switzerland, the spacial configuration of the design emphasize the conditions already established by the ruins and fosters a closer relationship between the elements of context - ruins, city, subject, etc.

stim

snooze 19

NETWORKS

These stims, and their corresponding snooze, may be seen as an opportunity to develop a network. They are a set of seemingly disparate parts that may be brought together to form a fluctuating field of relationships. These connections offer the opportunity to capitalize on the generative, ambiguous energy of the place, and the unexpected exchanges that may occur within such relationships.

Diagram of architectural intervention/contextual response.

fig 21.1 In OMAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Seattle Public Library, each architectural question is approached with an optimal response. The relationships between these implemented solutions are left indefinite, allowing the unanticipated to arise in the network between.

It is undeniable, in the vitality of certain places, that many sites in the city provide very favorable social conditions. This architectural study hopes to take such a component to the next level, in conditions for exchange, but it is essential to first understand what aspects of the place are bringing about the initial potentials of the site.

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Such a responsiveness to the site develops an architecture that may tap into the existing energies of the place – capitalizing on the forces at play, as oppose to an architecture that may be (unintentionally) detrimental.

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views into site - opportunity for intervention to engage and take a presence at a greater scale than physical footprint. fig 22.1 Doug Aitken film, Sleepwalkers, projected onto the MoMA, emanates out into the city, taking a presence that exceeds the receptive surface, “the building becomes mashed up in the vibrancy of the urban...the film multiplies its audience...Buildings need not develop massive footprints to have an impact on the contemporary city, but use [architecture] to emanate broadly... achieve urbanity for the building and its multiple audiences.” - Sylvia Lavin 3

3 / Lavin, Sylvia. Kissing Architecture. Princeton:

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Princeton University Press,

2011.

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directionality of adjacent open space - potential of site as focal point 22

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and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Vintage,

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4 / Jacobs, Jane. The Death

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pedestrian paths and in/out-flow of site - potentials for movement of people in city to animate, activate, engage the site. ST

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moments of pause

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sky - a measure of time, device of orientation, and commodity in the city

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moments of intensity

facade - eye contact between building and street/ public space; provide security fig 23.1 “People in buildings along the street to watch the sidewalks in sufficient numbers...Large numbers of people entertain themselves, off and on, by watching street activity.” - Jane Jacobs 4 23

INTENT

SOCIAL PHYSICALITIES In providing the opportunity for exchange, the architecture is playing an active role in the manipulation of context. The architecture, while not directive or defined, still holds certain spacial connotations inclined towards the occurrence of social exchange. Based on various aspects of the city a series of architectural conditions could be formulated that lend themselves well to the occurrence of social exchange. It cannot force social exchange, nor does it try to, but it puts a number of conditions into place that provide a favorable framework for social exchange. This may be thought of as a nudge to the energies for engagement at the site. Via the physical conditions imbued with certain connotations, the behaviors initiated on the site may be nudged towards some sort of action engaging of the social opportunities of the site, or exchange.

An architectural act with social consequence

jointâ&#x20AC;? would move the chairs and their occupants

was developed in the form of an architectural

to a state of closer proximity. People are nearer

intervention during a presentation of work.

to one another, thus more aware of one anotherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s presence, and more aware of the opportunity

Generally, the presentation is made to an

to interact with that person. The intervention

audience in rows of chairs, each chair distanced

immediately lightened the mood in the room

from adjacent persons by a socially acceptable

and led to some new acknowledgements and

amount. However, the introduction of a â&#x20AC;&#x153;social

exchanges amongst the persons paired.

This close proximity of people is one of a number of conditions (or moments) with architectural implications lending themselves well

A qualitative, rather than quantitative assessment of time.

to the occurrence of social exchange. Such social/spacial moments imply the physical conditions for the development of various spacial connotations and exchange opportunity infrastructure. There exists some common aspects to these moments. Some involve a temporally significant situation, where the pace of the city is broken. Other moments provide distinct visual or physical opportunities for engagements of the siteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s occupants. Additionally, conditions are developed favorable to the occurrence of event or ritual.

fig 27.1 David Michalekâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Portraits in Dramatic Time, displayed at the Lincoln Center in Manhattan, distort time (breaking from the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pace) and depict somewhat exaggerated drama to call attention to human behavior and emotion.

moments to watch

moments to be watched

moments of social catalysm

moments of self awareness

moments of pause

moments of spectacle

moments of close physical proximity

moments of slowed pace

moments of translation

moments of common behavior

moments of recurrence

moments of eye contact 27

HUMAN PRESENCE As it serves the existing context, the architecture does not take a boisterous voice in itself. However, this silence is not the same as a complete lack of presence. The architecture is another layer upon the context, cooperative with the properties of the place, but instilled with intent. In its mediation of the relationship between subject and context, it provides a cognitive filter to the perceptive processes of the subject - there is still an active component to the architecture as it manipulates the context.

In the study of architecture and exchange, the way in which the architecture addresses the presence of people is critical. Each person may take a heightened presence in the place; their role in the presented context is augmented via the design. The elements of the place are massaged, and the people are brought to the forefront. In doing so, within this place people are presented in a way differentiated from the regular condition found in the city. This shift, this distortion of the presentation,

fig 28.1 Sanaaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Serpentine Pavilion dissolves into its context while adding an architectural layer to the place.

sets up an environment in which each person is far more likely to be noticed, and to be seen actively. The subject is engaged by the architecture, and in turn may potentially be reciprocally engaging of that context. This experience reaches a level beyond passive looking; it adjusts perceptive processes, encourages a deeper questioning and an orientation by the subject to the new cognitive experience. The architecture is, in fact, the first exchange.

Peter Zumthor’s Kunsthaus Bregenz

fig 29.1 Diller, Scofidio, and Renfro’s renovation to Alice Tully Hall focused on exposing the interior of the building and fostering the exhibitionistic/voyeuristic relationships embraced in today’s city.

Elizabeth Diller discusses today’s society as one that is “omni-optic;” our primary cognitive tool is the visual. Marshall McLuhan affirms this assessment in The Medium is the Massage, as he describes the advent of the printing press, and the shift of communication to something visually engaged, as the trigger of a shift of our chief sense for perception. It seems necessary therefore, to carefully address the visual presentation of context by the architecture and the corresponding visual engagement by the subject.

The work of Peter Zumthor is noteworthy in its attention to visual engagement by the subject, particularly with regard to the visual role of each person. The form of each person becomes prominent both visually and spacially; there is an architectural consequence to human occupation of the space. The significant contribution to the architecture brings the person to the forefront of the elements of the place.

PERCEPTION AS ARCHITECTURE MAKING ACT / OPENNESS

1* / open-minded space: â&#x20AC;&#x153;places

Each visitor to the site is a participant in the determination of the architecture. Perception and engagement are an architecturemaking act. The architecture embraces subjective engagement. It is a non-totality; an incomplete physical framework whose primary character is borne out of perception by the subject. This perceiver-dependant existence develops a greater potential for impact and inclusivity for the architecture; as it holds equivocality to enable the subjective desires and unique readings and traits of each visitor. It is an openminded1* place.

where a wide variety of people can coexist, places where a wide variety of functions encourage unexpected activities.â&#x20AC;? - Michael Walzer

Walzer, Michael. Notes on Public Space

fig 30.1 Remagine, by Olafur Eliasson, obfuscates the actuality of a space via projected shapes of light - instead creating ambiguous conditions whereby the viewer may perceive and define the space subjectively.

This role of the subject as determinate of the architecture also arises from the non-directive qualities of the architecture. The architecture holds an indefiniteness in order to embrace the potential for subjective engagement. It is the architectural substrate for formation by the perception of the subject. This openness to the architecture expands the inclusivity developed via responsiveness to the place. The architecture will yield to the subjective desires and readings of each visitor to the site. A child may read the architecture in one way, and see a place for play. The businessman may see an ideal spot to bring his lunch that afternoon. The divorcee support group may recognize it as a nice place to meet outdoors on a sunny day.

In this ambiguous existence, the architecture is more engaging. Even the person who passes the site, with only the intention to leave - to not be there - will negotiate secondary characteristics with his or her perception; orienting to his or her surroundings to determine a path.

fig 31.1 Richard Serra’s Pacific Judson Murphy, distorts depth and within its plane of existence seems to provide a shifting depth and space dependant on the positioning of the viewer.

fig 31.2 Sou Fujimoto’s Wooden House is unprogrammed and lacks explicitly defined spaces. Instead it provides a landscape, or “cave,” 2 for the subject to

2 / Fujimoto, Sou. Primitive

engage and inhabit however he or she wishes.

Future. Tokyo: Inax, 2008.

“The properties of the object and the intentions of the subject...are not only intermingled; they also constitute a new whole...” - Maurice Merleau-Ponty 31

DYNAMIC ENGAGEMENT Out of the role of people, a highly dynamic architecture is formed. Each personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s engagement of the architecture will cause a shift in the architecture. If a person stands in a tight path, the path may now be seen as a small, long room. A congregation of people at a location, may denote that location as a place to meet. As time passes, the engagement of the architecture will continuously shift, and thus the characteristics of the architecture itself will be in a state of flux. (social catalysm)

The architecture is made in real time - responsive to the physical, temporal, and subject situation.

CONTEXT + INTENT

NEGOTIATION Contextual response and social intent are negotiated to inform the development of the architectural intervention.

A collection of planes provide a set of spacial implications. There remains an equivocality to the reading and engagement of the spaces - in alignment with the development of

architecture formed via perception. The planes exist as an architectural move that does not define space, but suggests it.

PROPOSITION / EVALUATION Iterative process continues exploration and evaluation of architectural propositions. The dialogue between constraint and intent is further developed - steeping the architecture in its intent and fully intertwining it with its context. Additionally, this provides a rigorous consideration of the relationships amongst the implied spaces.

NONHIERARCHICAL The architecture remains hierarchy free. In itself, the architecture is a field - hierarchy and foci arise from perception and engagement of the architecture by people. These traits remain in flux, shifting in response to the subject. Different times of day, different weather will bring various engagements of the intervention and thus manifest multiple existences of the architecture. This develops the dynamic qualities of the place.

fig 44.1 “A net-like quality they assume... conceived as a constellation, a scheme made up of situationally arising units - the playgrounds - bound to time, accident and circumstance. ...Mondrian’s so-called ‘Starry Sky’ paintings, in which the artist decidedly moved away from the classical, closed, monocentric composition towards an open, anti-classical compositional strategy based on a distributed, 1 / Lefaivre, Liane. Space,

polycentric galaxy of nodal points” 1

place and play. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers.

fig 44.2 Steven Holl develops parallax effect in the Kiasma museum. Such an effect creates a dynamic architecture; shifting with respect to the subject and his or her engagement.

RELATIVE GRID Out of the variety conditions generated by architectural manipulations and contextual traits, an order to the relationships arises. The relative grid maps these aspects and aids in the generation of conditions fortifying the architectureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s implications. Each move responds and exists in a considered relation to each other architectural manipulation.

ARCHITECTURAL MEDIA

COOPERATION / TENSION The various architectural media (plane, canopy, ground, structure) generate spacial connotations and tensions/contradictions - embedding architectural character and further enabling subjective use of the place.

INTERACTIONS The multiplicity of the architectural media brings a layering of interactions - amongst media, environment, and subject. Each interaction develops a measured gap - openness for an reciprocity to occur where environment and subject may re-create the architecture; augmenting its aptitude to perform for context and subject.

It cedes to these forces of environment and engagement to be enlivened and enhanced by them, rather than forcefully opposing them. These interactive qualities of the architecture and the layering of these interactions for secondary interactions intently open the architecture.

SPACIAL CONNOTATION

SECONDARY CHARACTERS The architecture is a physical framework of spacial connotations and secondary characters. Each connotation is generated out of the architectural implications, and conducive architectural form, for a particular intent. These connotations are implemented in such a way that the existing context and related architectural manipulations (and connotations) may be empowering of the potential impact.

The presence of these spacial connotations saturates the site with the potential for catalysm of exchange.

path Architectural elements focus a series of spaces to develop a suggestion of linearity. Proportion and implied threshold support such intent.

superorder “An opportunity to get a sense of other-dimensional space, a linking space in which one understands the connection with possible beings. Scale - how it seems to be in relation to how we seem to be...Alteration of scale happens in such a way that our whole inner orientation shifts with respect to the ‘world’ around, challenging the relative ontological status of the viewer and the viewed.” - George Quasha and Charles Stein 1

contemplation An opportunity for pause temporal (or pace) distortion. To look back - to isolate but interact to have a tacit exchange. Intimate space is set aside. “This ecstatically sustained moment of being inside the state of ‘continuous wave’ now contextualizes the whole of the activity of surfing.” - George Quasha and Charles Stein 1

1 / Quasha, George, and Charles Stein. Hand Heard/ Liminal Object. Barrytown:

fig 65.1

Barrytown/Station Hill Press, Inc., 1997.

interactive space Oriented towards a center, and placed in close physical proximity - a physical infrastructure is developed supportive of direct exchange.

The 8 Tallet, a housing project by Bjarke Ingels Group, the building enables the typical and most convenient movement, the bicycle, as a means to go to and from apartments. A bicycle path ascends the face of the dense housing complex, passing each townhouse style unit. It seems the most straightforward and convenient solution (based on constraints of culture and architecture) to a question of movement, but in fact Ingels has set up a great social opportunity; each home passed on this path is a chance to pause and meet a neighbor, join a barbeque, etc. These potential moments are metaphorical objects placed into the typical flows of movement in a high-density environment. 66

enter At the edges of the intervention, the architecture suggests an entry and invitation for engagement. A receiver of the visitor to the site.

spectacle “...reforge conceptual and intellectual links with the community. To experience being part of a common pattern.” - Mario Botta 2 The space is directed; people united in visual engagement.

2 / Botta, Mario. Ethics of Building. Basel: Birkhäuser, 1997.

SENSUAL LANDSCAPE The ground is directly engaged by the visitor to the site. Given this aspect, it has the potential to leap the other architectural media to situate itself at the top of a hierarchy - sculpted ground suggesting what is space and what is edge. However, in this situation, the ground is developed to be active in another way. It becomes a sensual landscape with a variety of materials and small, subtle shifts in grade. These materials produce unique tactile qualities, and characters of light and sound, placed in relation to the other architectural media. They may reinforce spacial connotations

black gravel

or architectural effect; but they often show up in tension with the other components - providing a contrasting implication for another potential reading and thus greater openness. For example, the relationship of one portion of material has with two seemingly unrelated spaces begins to implicate a connection, a notion of spacial continuity between the two. Perhaps the occupants of one space begin to perceive they are in fact sharing the space with more people than they initially realized.

fig 70.1 Peter Zumthor

light wood

dark wood

grass

reflective, white concrete

ATMOSPHERE The spacial connotations of the architecture provide a diversity of spacial conditions. In turn, this diversity, and the various relationships within the design, provide a great variety of atmospheres. Each visitor to the site, via perception, will project him or herself onto the architecture. Out of this atmospheric variation and subjective reading, the architecture may provide, and the subject may find, a place particularly suited to his or her traits and desires.

Determination of architectural medium:columns and study of spacial implications. 85

SCALING OF THESIS Detailed structural consideration further empowers the aspirations of the architectural components. A hip roof maximizes parallax effect, developing propensity for more subjective, shifting, dynamic readings of the place. Heightened perceptiveness may come about as one orients to the multiplicity of messages received through movement. Beneath the composite hip roof is a stretched, translucent, scrim fabric. Light plays beneath the volume of the white roof while the scrim may further distort this presentation of space and light. Additionally, the beam below

the roof takes a distinct existence via a slight separation from the scrim they may be read separately or based on the presented - yet difficult to unequivocally read - relationship. Considered intersections maintain the gestural integrity of the elements. A beam and column intersect without truncating each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s spacial implication - they are allowed to each exist as their own medium, without hierarchy. Subsequently, the perception of the interaction is allowed to develop openly and complexly via the subjectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s unique reading.

fig 86.1 The Noh Stage in the Forest by Kengo Kuma has a hip roof to provide the architecture with a lightness in its thin visual presence allowing the architecture to dissolve into its environment.

APPERCEPTIVE PROCESS

3 / Wigley, Mark. "AD

“The special beauty of the architect is to create some kind of hesitation in everyday life. Something changes in the normal conditions…and at that moment you can see your life differently.” 3

Interviews: Mark Wigley." Interview by David Basulto. Archdaily. 18 Mar. 2009. <http://www.archdaily. com/17252/ad-interviewsmark-wigley/>.

Here, Mark Wigley speaks on architecture’s ability to develop a more active relationship between context and subject. The hesitation arises from architecture’s presentation of the context in a way highly deviated from the normative in the city. As such, the processes of perception and engagement are adjusted. The adjustment may be considered in three primary stages:

Atmosphere study

Distortion The existing context is maintained but the architecture has in some way distorted the context, or the perception of that context, from its regular state. This distortion may take a great variety of forms, informed by aspects of the intent and the particularities of the context it addresses. This distortion provides, to some degree an isolation from the general state of things. This isolation condition allows the subject to look back to the context in a new way, with the opportunity to re-perceive it through a new lens. The distortion, here architecturally explored, offers the opportunity to re-see people in the city. Distortion is a function of the architecture upon the subject.

Orientation The distortion may be thought of as a nudge. A subject, passive in his or her daily engagement of the city, merely looks at the environment, he or she is unconscious to the richness of many of the city’s subtle phenomena. The distortion provides a nudge, shifting the subject towards an active perceptive state, a more awakened state. The nudge has removed the subject from the conventional state of things, and so the typical processes of visual intake will not produce the same cognitive results. Thus, the architectural situation suggests a need to orient, to shift to a different mental engagement. The human presence within the context is the connotation of the nudge, there is some distortion to a person’s presented existence, and thus this presence is questioned and oriented to. Architecture and subject exchange, orientation is a dialogue between the two.

Exchange As the result of the process, some form of exchange occurs. This exchange may be direct or indirect. Direct Exchange The subject actively realizes the social potentials within the people of the place, and chooses to engage in an exchange that is some way physically manifest. The exchange is an explicit occurrence. Indirect Exchange While the exchange is not spoken, it is understood. The subject may come to the same realization of opportunity in the context, but the registration and initial effectuation is internalized, confined to the realm of the mental rather than physical. The exchange occurs in form of the introduction of new conceptualization of the world. It is a tacit exchange. The intermixing of the architecture and the perceptive process of the subject, may effect greater awareness of the significant value within the elements of a context, particularly the human elements. Although the display of such understanding may differ subjectively, the realization via an exchange with the architecture is the final and critical stage to the developed process. 91

TRAJECTORIES The core concepts of this project hold an applicability that ought to be explored. The potentials for architecture to bring happiness, to activate social energies and catalyze social exchange, extend far beyond this programless pavilion in First Park. This exploration has suggested a certain approach to architecture (in context, intent, openness) that could be explored and pushed further through a study in other typologies. An office building, a residential complex, could be developed with a similar social intent enabled by the central ideas here. The role of each subject, each potential member of an exchange, was heightened via an embrace of subjective engagement, and the intentional enabling and intensification of perception as an architecture-making act. Perception is the tool by which people continually construct their world, and inevitably there is some sort of subjectivity to

that construction. But, this study has been concerned with architecture that intentionally deals with this perception/construction â&#x20AC;&#x201C; an architecture that is primarily formed out of, and changes drastically in response to, perception. In the First Park study, this opens the architecture to subjective use, makes it inclusive, and develops a place that is entirely created out of human engagement and presence â&#x20AC;&#x201C; setting the conditions for exchange to occur. Perception as an architecture-making act seems to be a concept that could be further developed in its implications for architecture, context, and the relationships between subject, architecture, and context.

connotations provided a way of getting at atmosphere with this study. But, this atmospheric manipulation is a primary active means of subjectbased architecture (providing a nudge or secondary character), and the relationships of atmosphere to architect and architecture can be further questioned. Each of these studies will push the exploration of socially active architecture pursued here. They will enable the continued development of an understanding of architecture for the pleasures to be found in the ways of other people, architecture for social exchange.

A degree of control over atmosphere, or some measured understanding of the development of atmosphere is architecture, could also be pursued moving forward with this thesis. Architecture with openness but with a social inclination through social 95

GLOSSARY exchange

stim

snooze

“The purest and most concentrated form of significant human interaction…the sum of values is greater afterwards than it was before, and this implies each party gives the other more than he had himself possessed.” - Georg Simmel

Moments of intense human activity and exuberance. Provider of energy and vitality to the city.

An uncertain and shifting urban condition, in an energized state of transformation where it may become anything and everything.

open-minded place

nudge

“Places where a wide variety of people can coexist, places where a wide variety of functions encourage unexpected activities.” - Michael Walzer

Via the physical conditions imbued with certain connotations, the behaviors initiated on the site may be nudged towards some sort of action engaging of the social opportunities of the site, or exchange.

spacial connotation Conditions generated out of the architectural implications, and conducive architectural form, for a particular (social) intent.

FIGURES 17.1 19.1 21.1 22.1 23.1 28.1 29.1 30.1 31.1 31.2

44.1 44.2 65.1 70.1 86.1

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