An Everyday Practice: Explorations of An In-between Place

AN

E V E RY D AY PRACTICE EXPLORATIONS OF AN IN-BETWEEN PLACE

ACADEMIC PORTFOLIO hun pu

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an everyday practice: explorations of an in-between place ARC8067: Academic Portfolio 18/19 Newcastle University MArch Architecture Hun Pu

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now

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a third realm

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a transformational space

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[re]presenting value

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reinvention of the in-between

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“determination of value�

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managing value

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thesis project plan

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the sacred everyday

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a methodology: architecture as language

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a framework: sacred space

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an everyday ritual

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after

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selected bibliography

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Preface

Introduction

Stage 5: Tools For Thinking

Stage 5: Semester 1 Project

Stage 5: Linked Research

Stage 5: Semester 2 Project

Stage 6: Linked Research

Stage 6: Architecture and Construction: Process and Management

Stage 6: Architecture and Construction: Process and Management

Stage 6: Thesis Project Abstract

Stage 6: Thesis Project Part I

Stage 6: Thesis Project Part II

Stage 6: Thesis Project Part III

Closing Reflections

contents

ARB Criteria at Part 2.

before now

GC1 GC2 GC3 GC4 GC5 GC6 GC7 GC8 GC9 GC10 GC11

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PREFACE

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(opposite) Conceptual image of my final undergraduate project; The Join. (below) Herman Hertzberger’s Delft Montessori School’s entrance thresholf, 1960-1966.

before now

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y architectural interests have been borne out from a long and deep conviction about how my Christian faith engages with architecture as a moral framework and an approach to practice. This is rooted in my approach to faith, where my faith is not compartmentalised in a certain area of life, but where faith is life. Over the last decade, after I became consciously aware of a personal relationship with the living God through Jesus Christ, I became increasingly reflective of the impact this would have on my practice of architecture.

During my undergraduate years, a pivotal point of engaging my faith with architecture began by exploring projects underpinned by a social agenda; a desire to rejunvenate overlooked and neglected places and spaces. I became first aware of the often overlooked inbetween threshold spaces, as addressed by the architect Herman Hertzberger (1932 - present).

This was a notion that struck a chord with me, as it took seriously these undervalued spaces aside from the ‘useable’ areas of a building; highlighting the significance of an informal kind of inhabitation of space. With this approach, interaction between users can be fostered and encouraged, and help cater a sense of collective identity; creating a sense of place. The importance of creating this was explored through my final undergraduate year essay, Identity Place Childhood, where I argue for the significant role it plays in the development of identity, a sense of self, of belonging. Through working on the project, it became obvious that working on the building alone would only result in an empty container, itelf having no inherent value.

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PREFACE

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(opposite) Ground floor plan of my final undergraduate project; The Join. (below) Internal view of a nursery seat looing into a communal space.

Firstly, ‘place’ is not simply to be referred to as location. It exists at a whole host of varying scales, ranging from a room in a house, a street, a city, the wider countryside and nation. It is perceived as a holistic phenomenon, in which its components are irreducibly distinct but are inseparably interrelated. It comprises of the tangible, quantitative fundamentals including physical elements and spatial qualities. It encompasses the elusive, qualitative values as well: memory, character, atmosphere and principally, meaning. Simply put, ‘place’ is “the setting of the events of human living”: the location of human experience. It is locus of human activity. As Christian Norberg-Schulz suggests, “The places are goals or foci where we experience the meaningful events of our existence, but they are also points of departure from which we orient ourselves and take possession of the environment.”

Extract from my undergraduate essay, Identity, Place, Childhood.

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And the strength of the thread does not reside in the fact that some one fibre runs through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres. ...

“Something runs through the whole thread — namely the continuous overlapping of those fibres”.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosphical Investigations, No. 67.

INTRODUCTION

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ince arriving at Newcastle University to undertake the MArch Architecture course, I have continued in this search for an architecture, an architectural practice, that aimed at providing this sense of place.

The importance of catering for this in human society could not be overemphasised. In an age where we are becoming increasingly isolated with the rise of individualism, and concurrently, become more and more obsessed with the image as an instantaneous gratification of human desire, a return to appreciating the ordinary, the familiar has the potential to enable positive transformation of human interactions.

now

Being consciously reflective of my architectural convictions has meant that, though certainly not linear and straightforward, my journey has been a cumulative one in developing my understanding of the role that the everyday phenomenon and the in-between concept plays in architecture.

For me, it is precisely in the everyday that holds the capacity for a sense of renewal. As with other architects who are passionate about the everyday, I acknowledge “the everyday as a productive context for the making, occupation and criticism of architecture... In conventional architectural discourse these territories are overlooked precisely because they challenge the paradigms that discourse is founded upon.” This approach to architecture opposes the obsession of architects with ‘high architecture’.

By its definition, our experience of the everyday are the ordinary, habitual and banal events that “mark the passage of time.” Reflecting this attitude values the process over the final product; the present rather than the next novelty. It is rooted in the immediate context we find ourselves in, not some far-off place or ideal which we likely will never reach, simply because it doesn’t exist. So rather than dismissing the imperfections, the dirt, the residue of daily life as undesirable, an architectural practice derived from the everyday welcomes them as realities of architecture and poignantly, signs of human inhabitation. It is utopian in nature, a desire for something better.

It is within this framework that my interest in the concept of the in-between has developed, an idea primarily advanced by the Dutch architect, Aldo van Eyck. There is often a desire to shape and mould space as abstract, isolated entities, a reductive, inhumanising method that ofte leads to ignoring the space before the space, after it, between it. Physically speaking these can be articulated as thresholds, which are generally conceived as a “narrow borderline”. However, the in-between begins from an ambitious desire to reconcile polarised realities in the built environment, which van Eyck believe would ultimately lead to a healthy individual and collective’s sense of well-being. Developed from Henri Lefevre’s holistic conception of space as a social product, approaching architecture as a complex series of relational spaces establishes the importance of the in-between being an articulated spatial realm. Furthermore, it is a space where past memories and future anticipations co-exist in the present, allowing for a positive engagement with the built environment and each other.

Thus, this portfolio reflects my investigations of the in-between and the everyday. Each of the Stage 5 Architectural Design projects, including the Tools For Thinking essay are directly concerned with at least one of these, or indeed both of them. The linked research project investigates a fundamental issue of how we determine the value of architecture, which brings to attention how we perceive architecture and how it is represented to us. This reinforced my concern for undervalued aspects of architecture, and importantly, the need to engage with a wider audience.

The practice management essays allowed me to deal with the actual workings of professional practice as an architect, equipping me with the appropriate knowledge to engage with the current situation and hopefully enable a way to practice with integrity to my values. Finally, my design thesis project was an explicit means for me to critically explore the everyday in the context of my faith, developing a culminating mode of architectural production that brings my formal education in architecture to a fitting end.

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“This essay will examine the role of the third realm in the built environment; how a synthesis of the spatial in-between and temporal transitional space can enrich an individual’s relationship with the building and urban fabric of our cities.

As a means, it will prove crucial for the essay to investigate in-depth the original in-between concept which was first conceived by the Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck. We will start by first exploring the fundamental notions of space and time by considering the significance of Henri Lefebvre’s theories of the space-time continuum. We will then examine van Eyck’s ideas of space and time in terms of place and occasion, which will lead us to explore the in-between as a mediatory space, underpinned by the ontological concept of the twin phenomena.

Examples will be given using projects by Aldo van Eyck, Herman Hertzberger, Ash Sakula and O’Donnell + Tuomey.

Following a critique of van Eyck’s in-between concept, the essay will examine D. W. Winnicott’s concept of the transitional space as derived from his original ideas of transitional phenomena and the transitional object, in order to explore how the past and future can be reflected in a place.

This will involve looking at Christopher Bollas’ thoughts of the unconscious reality in architecture and contemporary interpretations of the inbetween as interstices. Consequently, the essay will suggest combining the transformational potential of transitional spaces with the mediatory role of relations of the in-between into a holistic third realm.

The essay will then by consider two specific urban conditions in Vienna’s 2nd District, a peri-urban landscape and built-up street. We will conclude by applying the ideas of this third realm to my semester one design project.

In his book, Home Is Where We Start From, Donald W. Winnicott (1896-1971) stipulates that ‘social health is dependent on individual health’ whilst the health of the individual is dependent on their ability to acquire a sense of being, ‘I AM’. This sense of being is intrinsically tied into our experience of our environment is an issue in architecture I am passionate about. Thus, I pursued an exploration

into the notions of humanised space and time, as realms for dwelling by individuals and communities.

This essay searches for a greater and more holistic appreciation of the built environment, to help us reach towards designing for relational experience; the realisation of place and occasion in the built environment.

We begin by exploring the revolutionary concepts of space and time by Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991), which transformed our understanding of the environment around us.”

Abstract and Preface from Tools For Thinking essay.

TOOLS FOR THINKING

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a third realm

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n my Tools For Thinking essay titled, A Third Realm: A Critical Exploration Of The In-between, I developed a comprehensive understanding of the in-between, as both a spatial concept as well as a philosophical concept, which were put forward by Aldo van Eyck (1918-1999) and Martin Buber (1878-1965) respectively. I came across key texts in this regard: van Eyck’s The Child, the City and the Artist: An Essay on Architecture: The in-between Realm and Buber’s I and Thou and Between Man and Man. These talked of the significance of conceiving the world of relation, of creating a sense of homecoming. Reinforcing this, I investigated the concept of transitional space, originally posited by D.W. Winnicott (1896-1971) as the transitional object, which conveyed to me the requirement of designing for a third realm that enabled meaningful relationships to take place, between oneself and the environment.

Underpinning all of this was Henri Lefebvre’s (1901-1991) The Production of Space. Here, I was introduced to the idea of space as a social product, where space was not just a static, physical object as a purely geometric phenomenon, but was a tangible product of culture; where the values of society are embodied in it, as well as its mode of production.

This wider, more holistic, humanised conception of space, and by that logic, of time, provided me with the tools to develop a design approach that reflected this.

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“Whatever space and time (still or not yet) mean, place and occasion mean more, since space in the image of man is place and time in the image of man is occasion.”

Aldo van Eyck, from ‘The Child, the City and the Artist: An Essay on Architecture: The in-between Realm’, p.49

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TOOLS FOR THINKING

(opposite) A photograph of one of Aldo van Eyck’s playgrounds (1947-1978).

...

With his book, The Production of Space, the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991), introduced a more holistic understanding of space, contrasting with the conventional modernist conceptualisation of space as a purely geometric phenomenon, empty and limitless. Challenging this mathematico-scientifically informed notion, Lefebvre described space as ‘the primary locus of lived experience in the world’; reconciling the gap between mental space and real space. This opened up the understanding of space as a tangible product of a culture, in the sense that ‘every society – and hence every mode of production . . . produces a space, its own space’.

of a place enables a transitional space to provide greater human association. As the location of cultural experience that allows an individual to engage meaningfully with the environment, it emphasises this third realm’s transformational capabilities.

Thus, by expanding upon the spatial and reconciliatory role of the in-between to include the temporal and transformational potential of transitional spaces, this results in a more holistic understanding of a third realm in the built environment. I believe an appreciation of this third realm can help to re-activate the typically neglected spaces in our buildings and cities; the creation of places and occasions in the thresholds, gaps, voids, cracks and residual spaces of our buildings and cities. In this way, a sense of belonging can be made possible, in areas that would otherwise have been ignored.

...

Extract from Tools For Thinking essay.

Aldo van Eyck took the humanisation of space and time further by rooting its experience in human association. His interrelated notions of place and occasion posited the role of architecture as the creation of places of belonging. Van Eyck expanded upon Martin Buber’s world of relation and the Smithson’s doorstep philosophy to argue for an inbetween as an articulated threshold between spaces where conflicting polarities could be reconciled as twin phenomena to create a sense of homecoming.

This allows people to interact positively with the built environment and with each other; evoking occasions to take place in them and subsequently, realise a sense of place. In this way, the in-between acts as a mediator and harmoniser of tensions that would otherwise remain in conflict.

Furthermore, exploration of the psychoanalytical theories of D. W. Winnicott’s transitional phenomena, together with Christopher Bollas’ writings on the unconscious, allows us to gain a deeper understanding of the temporal dimension of what was lacking in van Eyck’s conception of the inbetween. With the original transformational object enabling an awareness of the internal and external realities, revealing the hidden past and veiled future

“It is up to architecture to provide a built framework - to set the stage as it were - for the twin phenomenon of the individual and the collective without resorting to arbitrary accentuation of either one at the expense of the other, i.e. without warping the meaning of either, since no basic twin phenomenon can be split into incompatible polarities without the halves forfeiting whatever they stand for.”

Aldo van Eyck, from ‘The Child, the City and the Artist: An Essay on Architecture: The in-between Realm’, p.60

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STAGE 5 SEMESTER 1

(opposite) An overview of The Exhibition Gallery at a busy street intersection, over which it stands and interacts with pedestrians, cyclists and drivers (below) A collage representing the notion of child-like curiosity in the design.

a transformational space

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imilar to my final undergaduate project, my Stage 5 semester one project was a social one, with a desire to transform, in the terms of Marc Augé, a non-place, the Praterstrasse in the 2nd District of Vienna.

Though this avenue connected the historic Innerestradt district and the new, expanding Donaustadt district in the North-east, it is ignored and overlooked as a site for investment and significance by the city.

With this project, I was introduced to a psychoanalytical framework, as specifically explained in Christopher Bollas’ (1943- ) Architecture and the Unconscious where he talks of the transformational object as a phenomenon relating to a moment, an event, a space that is sought after by an individual or society, which they believe will bring about radical transformation.

Here, it impressed upon me cities as “holding environments that offer inhabitants differing forms of psychic engagement with the object world.” With this framework in mind, I re-intepreted /re-imagined the Viennese coffeehouse culture, a space that was “intimately associated with the development of [Vienna’s] modern urban culture”, as an external intervention in the urban fabric.

In a similar way to Bernard Tschumi’s (1944 - ) Parc de la Villette (1982-1998), the project sought to disrupt and re-activate the street by embedding objects and platforms into the existing fabric; creating juxtapositions of thresholds and atypical spaces with a labyrinth of varying privacy and openness; which is to be expected of a large housesmall city.

Supported by my Tools For Thinking essay, I began to develop these interventions as an articulated in-between to re-activate a once historically significant thoroughfare into the city where place and occasion can once again take place. The ambition was to reveal this third realm as a space with unseen potential for transformation, itself becoming a new, contemporary transformational object for Vienna.

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(below) A plan axonometric drawing showing the full extent of The Exhibition.

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STAGE 5 SEMESTER 1

(overleaf-left) A Viennese fin-de-siècle style poster of The Exhibition Gallery, showing how the interior quality of the Viennese Coffehouse is brought into the exterior realm. Here the chandeliers that serve the coffee objects are brought down to the public level, and beyond is the extravagant chandelier stairwell that transports people up to the higher levels where the activity of coffee, art and music culture continues.

(overleaf-right) A Viennese fin-de-siècle style poster of The Member’s Club showing the coffee kiosk from where passerbys can purchase a coffee in a hybrid takeaway cup. The pressed and filtered coffee is passed through the brass pipes into the cups on an automated system. Here one can absorb the intensely rich smells of coffee.

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STAGE 5 SEMESTER 1

(opposite) An overview of The Member’s Club located at a busy intersection of pedestrians, cyclists and drivers. (above) A perspective showing the stair entrance into The Member’s Club

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“Architecture must extend the narrow borderline, persuade it to loop into a realm - into an articulated in-between realm. Its job is to provide this inbetween realm by means of construction, i.e. to provide, from house to city scale, a bunch of real places for real people and real things.”

Aldo van Eyck, from Collected Articles and Other Writings 1947-1998, p. 327.

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STAGE 5 SEMESTER 1

(opposite) A section line drawing depicting key spaces in The Member’s Club, its relation to 33 Praterstrasse and the street. (below) A detailed drawing study of a range of notable Viennese Coffeehouses. (right) Various objects and furniture from Viennese cafÊ.

On this project, I started to develop a design method that involved intense, precise drawing of existing elements, from which to re-imagine new arrangments and relationships.

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STAGE 5 SEMESTER 1

(opposite) A worms-eye drawing that reveals the intricacy and extravagance oft this private club for coffeehouse owners. (below) Various objects and furniture from Viennese café (right) 3D printed coffeehouse objects, exploring new relationships that blur the inclusive /exclusive boundaries. (bottom-right) “The Great Viennese Café: A Laboratory” Exhibition at the MAK, Vienna

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(below) A detailed axonometric drawing showing unconventional unencounters amongst the members. (opposite-top) My own reconstruction of a Viennese coffee set. (opposite-bottom) An axonometric drawing of a Viennese coffee set.

1. Marble table 2. Newspaper holder 3. Silver tray 4. Kaffe 5. Glass of water 6. Teaspoon (placed on top of the glass of water) 7. Sugar cubes 8. Jug of milk (for brauners)

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STAGE 5 SEMESTER 1

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For Colomina, she is concerned with how architecture can be propogated as either modern or otherwise, in the form of ‘photographic evidence’.

By comparing the legacy left behind by Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier in terms of representational material, i.e. ‘drawings, photographs, writings, films, or advertising’ made available to the wider public, Colomina argues that it was by architecture’s engagement with mass media that ‘modern architecture was produced’. Rather than the traditional, and perhaps incomplete reading of architecture as ‘an object, a bounded, unified entity’, our reading of [modern] architecture requires an acknowledgment of its entwined involvement with the ‘emerging systems of communication that came to define twentieth-century culture’. Even the absence and overabundance of traces left behind contribute to this re-reading, as epitomised by Loos and Le Corbusier. As a result, this makes one question the notion of an objective appreciation of modern architecture derived from its ‘object’ quality. ...

For Benjamin, he observed a tension between a mode of mechanical reproduction / representation and the sense of ‘genuineness’ / originality of a work of art. He argued that the former meant the loss of the latter. However, he goes on to say that through film, it achieves “the kind of spectacle that was never before conceivable, not at any time nor any place”, namely the portrayal of an event that is not fixed to a single viewpoint. The camera produces an ‘artificial’ reality. Sound film or photograph can deepen and enrich our observations / experiences of the world; bringing some into sharp, magnified focus whilst reducing other aspects into a blurred background. It also can provide us with an [over] abundance of detail and texture. However, it may be argued that this inevitably starts to distort and skew our perception of the ‘genuine’ artefact, such as a painting (an example which W. Benjamin use) or in our case, an architecture.

We see that ‘photographic evidence’ or ‘mechanical reproductions’ continues to dominate the sphere of mass culture; in public and private space, of the space of publications and the domestic. Increasingly apparent is the intrusion of film that shapes one’s perception of architecture, and subsequently influencing an individual/a society’s view of what is deemed valuable or not.

Extract from my blogpost, Architecture as Documentary.

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STAGE 5: LINKED RESEARCH

(below) Documentary film-making process.

[re]presenting value

“How does agency affect the conservation of buildings and the determination of value? Using Dunelm House as a live case study”

DEFINE RESEARCH TOPIC

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Define Sub-questions

pon developing a passion for spaces that seemed repeatedly undervalued and overlooked in their significance, it was extremely satisfying to carry out a year long research of a building that suffers the same treatment, namely, Dunelm House in Durham.

Identify Case Studies

Identify Experts Identify Agencies

Write questions Storyboard a narrative

Rough cut footage Reflect on content

Group review

Edit footage

Film Interviews

Reflect on content

Storyboard narrative

FINAL DOCUMENTARY FILM

Utilising documentary film as a creative research method, we were able to interview a wide range of individuals and groups as agencies concerning Dunelm House, gaining first hand knowledge of their perception of its value. This also involved in-depth research of wider issues regarding the Brutalist movement in the UK, its history and current reception by the public. As a group of three, we took shared the responsibility of skill-based tasks and translating the research into a blog format, which resulted in a thorough record of the entire process, ranging from video editing sessions, interview session de-briefs, iterations of the storyboard narrative, and engagment with various theoretical readings.

For me, it was particularly the use of film as representation that I found particularly engaging. Reading Beatriz Colomina’s (1952- ) Privacy and Publicity, revealed the capacity of mass media to determine society’s perception of architecture, so much so that it is on that basis, whether a building is viewed as valuable or not. This has implications bearing what Lefebvre describes as the mode of production, in that the role that media thus plays can be argued as (one of ) architecture’s mode of production.

This influence on my attitude towards architectural representation was further reinforced by my Stage 5 semester two design project.

Video link: https://vimeo.com/321510485 Password: DunelmHouse

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STAGE 5 SEMESTER 2

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(opposite) A collage of a drawing method, namely ‘free association’ and ‘drawing as thinking’, which I developed during the course of the project.

re-invention of the in-between M

y Stage 5 semester two project was very challenging, yet because of this, an especially fulfilling experience concerning the development of architectural ideas. Here, I was introduced to an alternative and radical practice of architecture, which was thoroughly embedded in architectural theory and rooted in a mode of production that engaged critically with architectural representation, and architecture itself.

The project was fundamentally utopian in its ambitions; imagining better ways of living and being. This conception of utopia was derived from Lefebvre’s observation of the “loss of a more directy lived and experienced life” as a result of the division and subseqeunt alienation caused by a capitalist system, along with David Harvey (1935- ) who argued for a dialectical utopianism; the recognition that in order to change society, both social (utopia of process) and spatial (utopia of spatial form) reform is necessary. Crucially, these new spatial forms must “analogise and support renewed social forms and processes”, a return to everyday life and its spaces by “reimagining pre-modern conditions that predate capitalism and alienation.” These “radical and generative” considerations of the past need to be “rooted in real possibilities for change, while pointing towards alternative human futures.” Anything other will inevitably become merely decorative and unable to bring about effective reform.

“I want to see, therefore I draw. I can see an image only if I draw it.”

Carlo Scarpa

Critical to this is the requirement of a radical, alternative mode of production, namely, to reinvent through architectural representation.

In the spirit of Adorno Bloch’s utopian conception of ‘anticipatory illumination’, drawing ‘involves both the ability to make the drawing (illumination) and the intellectural capacity to invent the design (anticipatory)’. They become both interactive and generative; a form of cosmopoeitic activity. So, rather than drawing becoming a picture of a distant architecture that is done after the architecture, the architecture emerges from the drawing; they are the project itself and are the direct and present representation of the architecture. As such, drawing becomes as intuitive as thinking and seeing, where drawing is thinking and seeing.

As the drawing grows, the architecture/project grows. Similarly, Paul Ricceour’s ideas of architecture as narrative helped me to view drawings as a pre-figurative process to creating realities. Only in this method of working, can a concrete alternative architecture be made possible.

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STAGE 5 SEMESTER 2

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(opposite) Detail cross-section through the intervention. (left) Axonometric drawing showing how the promenade’s finale ends in the experience of the repressed attic space via a reinvented attic room. Repressed Attic Destination; Level 4 (+18.70); Level 2 & 3 (+11.50); Level 1 (+5.90); Level 0 (+0.70). (below) A drawing by Lebbeus Woods, illustrating the principle of creating an unfamiliar new from the familiar old in order to provide for the new ways of living that will not/cannot be the same as the old. (bottom) Current condition of St. Michael’s Wing.

I was exposed to potent ideas such as Theodor W. Adorno’s (19031969) negative dialectics. Lebbeus Woods’ (1940-2012) method of reconstructing the new out of the old, laid out in War and Architecture, was particularly insightful in this regard. The new architecture resulting from this would be the other. Van Eyck’s conception of twin phenomena, the idea that entities relate reciprocally to each other and only in this do such entities have holistic meaning, required the building itself to be an in-between.

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STAGE 5 SEMESTER 2

(opposite) An axonometric drawing of an overview of the intervention as a reinvention through intervention; excavation of the repressed, for now. (left-top) Hadrian’s Villa, the summer administration complex of the Roman Empire. I highlight St. Michael’s Wing’s uncanny resemblanc: St. Michael’s Wing’s gateway as the Maritime Theatre (circular space), and the winter riding school as the Poecile, which was a huge garden surrounded by an arcade with a swimming pool. This reinforces the notion of the reinforces the notion of the intervention as in-between spaces of spectacle; a threshold between new uses for the winter riding school and gateway, which in turn sits within a larger complex. (left-centre) A conceptual drawing of the intervention as an in-between; spaces of spectacle, connecting the new spaces and new routes in St. Michael’s Wing, as part of the wider complex of the city as squares and streets, courtyards and passages. (left-bottom) Michaelerplatz ‘Archäologiefeld’, Hans Hollein 1991-92. ‘Making visible the archeological grounds on Michaelerplatz’. It both disrupts physically the previous movements within and through the square , as well as conveying a critique of the rise and fall of civilisations, suspiciously in front of St. Michael’s Wing.

At every level of the proposal, the intervention would manifest as an in-between, serving as a place potential for ‘built homecoming’. In each aspect, it would result in a reinvention.

Given the current function of St. Michael’s Wing as a folly, the archetypal example of Hadrian’s Villa helped reinforce the notion of spectacle for the project.

Hadrian’s Villa (117-138BC), the project of the Roman Emperor Hadrian during his reign, was designed as a city-like complex of the spectacle with an array of libraries, dining halls, living quarters, baths, gardens and fountains. As a representation of the power of Rome, it was perhaps unsurprising that there is an uncanny resemblance (if not even being used as a precedent) with the Horburg’s version.

In this light, the intervention itself would reinvent the notion of spectacle. Where both the aims of Hadrian’s Villa and the Hofburg reduce the visitors/public as passive observers in subject to the spaces, the intervention would articulate reinvented spaces of spectacle where the public become active participants in the concinnity of an architectural promenade, a discontinous path and articulated thresholds.

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(above) The vertical promenade of continuity-discontinuity; Spectres of Vienna - Excavation of the Repressed.

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STAGE 5 SEMESTER 2

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“Arab architecture has much to teach us. It is appreciated while on the move, with one’s feet; it is while walking, moving from one place to another, that one sees how the arrangements of the architecture develop. This is a principle contrary to Baroque architecture which is conceived on paper, around a fixed theoretical point... [W]e are dealing with a true architectural promenade, offering constantly varied, unexpected, sometimes astonishing aspects.”

Le Corbusier

Given the host’s adoption of the Baroque style, as reference to Roman architecture (Hadrian’s Villa), and reflecting the method of reinvention, it was fundamental to the project that a critical reinvention of the Baroque was explored. Thus, Le Corbusier’s critique of the Baroque became an essential layer to the method of disruption and of creating a narrative rooted in context.

(opposite-top) Drawings showing the exploration of the architectural promenade as breaking through the facade of the host, and emergence of an interplay between the host’s loadbearing core and parts of the facade, and the insertion of a new column structure. (opposite-bottom) Drawings exploring the notion of the promenade and how elements used by Le Corbusier achieved this. (top-right) The approeach to the Carpenter Centre, revealing a way through; a break through the facade (above-right) Entrance into the intervention via the promenade ramp from the garden courtyard

Le Corbusier argued that whilst the Baroque was concerned with dynamism, it was focused on the movement of building elements to be observed by a person around a fixed position (expressed in the normative appreciation of St. Michael’s Wing). Instead, he argued for an architecture that could only be fully appreciated a person moving through the spaces; the movement of the person. In this sense, the body completes the architecture.

This led me to consider in-depth his designs of the Carpenter Centre for the Visual Arts (1963), which proved key in designing for: 1. The overarching narrative of the architectural promenade as an reinvention of the Baroque style, by designing the intervention for movement of the person along a path.

2. A dynamic threshold between both the external and internal public spaces, as well as sitting the intervention as part of a wider route through/ in the city.

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STAGE 5 SEMESTER 2

(opposite) A storyboard showing the journey of light moving through the intervention. (above) A 1:250 massing model helped me to understand the principled areas for strategically placed openings on the North and South side of the intervention to receive both naturally diffused and accent lighting. (top-right) The second state of The Drawbridge (plate VII) from The Imaginary Prisons, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, 1761. (above-right) An early drawing exploring the interplay of light with the composition of spaces and elements as the way that draws people through the spaces in the intervention.

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In my considerations of Le Corbusier’s architectural promenade, it became increasingly clear that it is the manipulation of light and its absence that draws people along this journey to an eventual destination.

The Dutch artist Pieter de Hooch’s (1629-1684) paintings of seemingly ordinary interiors cleverly reveals light in combination with spatial depth as to what draws people through spaces. One’s gaze is naturally drawn towards the brightest light source in the distance, which causes a noticing of the details illuminated by or near to the light as well as being drawn to other sources of light and their details, eventually leading to an examination of the whole painting. Ironically, the gaze finishes with the only human activity happening in the paintings, which are in fact depicted in the foreground. Arguably, this method is dialectical, where the near is revealed by the far. The use of darkness in ‘The Imaginary Prisons’ by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778), specifically its second reworked state, depicts a powerfully evocative atmosphere where the presence of darkness is explored as the method.

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STAGE 5 SEMESTER 2

(opposite) The horizontal promenade of continuity-discontinuity. The plan is composed of a 4.5x5.5m column grid as in-between the orientation of the existing winter riding school and gateway. The articulation of threshold rise from the collision of column and loadbearing brick structure. (left) Development of the ground condition. (below) Museum of Castelvecchio, Carlo Scarpa, 1958-1974. A sense of movement and spatial depth through external spaces, where light/shadow suggest a way of moving through the complex, i.e. the fall of striped shadows against a metal framed concrete wall attracts curiosity of what lies in that space. The concinnity of material and architectural elements enhance the sense of a route through, a discontinuous path. (bottom) At the Linen Closet, Pieter de Hooch, 1663.

Carlo Scarpa revealed light as being a fundamental way of drawing people through his spaces, and creating a path from them. In his case, this route can be conceptualised as a discontinous path, epitomised by his intervention at Castelvecchio. Even though each space is constructed in a way distinct from each other, there is such a deep familarity between them that an invisible common thread seems to tie them together into one path. However, this is not a one-directional promenade, but rather there is a hierachy of routes, with a multitude of multi-directional possible paths that can be taken. Though perhaps fragmentary in appearance, there is a peculiar kind of coherence, that only in walking along the path do past and future spaces make sense, a durational path.

In this case, delight is taken in the joruney itself as an end, rather than just the destination.

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STAGE 5 SEMESTER 2

(opposite) A storyboard showing the promenade of thresholds through the intervention. (right) Aldo van Eyck’s Hubertus House (1959), showing the articulation of different threshold experiences, enclosed by a ensemblage of different elements that relate to the human body and lived experience. Poignantly, it reveals a relationship between the old and the new, where the entrance into the complex is taken through the existing. From the entrance, one can see glimpses of a route through, and the clue of a vertical access through the building. These subtle clues were ones I wanted to express as part of the promenade. (right-bottom) Hubertus House, Aldo van Eyck. Along with the twin phenoemena of ‘point’ and ‘line’ in The Sonsebeek Pavilion, these precedents showed the ‘collision’ of opposing structural logics owrking together to give rise to a structural ‘other’

“Architecture must extend the narrow borderline, persuade it to loop into a realm - into an articulated in-between realm.”

Aldo van Eyck

Aldo van Eyck’s conception of the in-between, provided the primary method of humanising the scale of the intervention and relating it to the human body through the articulation of threshold spaces as thresholds (‘widening of the doorstep’) between spaces. This means that each space needed to embrace its relationship with each other and anticipate the movement of a person from one to another; providing as spaces for dwelling and not just as the conventional and limiting consequence of circulation as ‘non-place’. In particular, his Hubertus House (1959) and Sonsbeek Pavilion (1966) proved impactful precedents how this could be manifested in my intervention. The temporary pavilion proved to be a powerful driver for the extensive exploration of the muliplicity threshold conditions, and poignantly, as resulting from the collision of the lines and grid/points.

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(below) A Structural ‘other’ arising from the collision of opposing structural logics.

Retained existing loadbearing brick structure.

The intervention removes the majority of the facade walls in the ‘infill’, but retains most of the existing brick core (new lift shaft, fire stairs and toilets).

New concrete column and slab structure With an opposing logic of point loads, i.e. a column and slab construction, it breached the cracks of the host, and works together with the remaining brick wall and core to act as the primary structure.

New timber (larch) roof structure Expressing the reinventon of the attic space is a structural timber roof, that is held up by the hybrid concrete and brick sructure.

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STAGE 5 SEMESTER 2

(left) Concinnity of materials, both existing and new. (below) The Cangrande space as inventing new intepretations of history; creating new paths and views out of selective and violent destruction of the existing. But where theis process is not repressed but shown in its articulation/adoration of the joint. This could arguably be intepretaed as an ‘alien’ that inhabits and suffuses itself with the host , where the collision of new and architectural elements give rise to an entirely ‘new’ architecture that would otherwise have remain hidden.

Although, Scarpa is understood as being respectful of history and culture, it was not through conventional attitudes towards preservation and conservation. Rather than feeling the need to preserve and return a building to a presupposed original state, Scarpa was selective through an deep understanding of its history (like Adolf Loos). This is epitomised in his construction of the Cangrande space, and how the present space was achieved through extensive demolition of the 19th century Napoleonic addition to the castle, which had completely obstructed an ancient gateway. In doing so, Scarpa opened up new routes, and intepretations of historic elements and inevitably history could be re-read.

In order to excavate the repressed, the intervention sought to do this through the re-use/re-work/re-cut of the materials of repression (and role as a Potemkin): the timber attic space, the repression of brick as structure, the Potemkin nature of the stone skin as well as the copper cladding on the superimposed dome (whose spatial quality is nonexitstent in the existing). And in doing so, reinventing new uses and associations; reinvention through excavation. New materials such as the concrete form an opposing logic to both the tectonics of brick and stone (plastic vs modular) and the structural logic of the host (point vs shear).

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7.

STAGE 5 SEMESTER 2

(opposite) 1.The retained masonry walls provide ample thermal mass to help regulate a comfortable temperature in enclosed habitable spaces.

2. New concrete slab and column structure provides additional thermal mass to help regulate temperature 3. High ceiling levels allow air to rise above a person’s area of experience 4. The new breathable clad walls allow for a new insulation layer to help the enclosed spaces of the building to retain heat. Due to the innate issues of insulating existing historic buildings, the layer works with the existing’s thermal mass to create a comfortable environment.

5. The intervention creates new openings (manually and automatically openable windows/rooflights) to receive north-westerley prevailing winds allowing for natural cross ventilation and stack effect.

6. New openable windows/rooflights allow for cross ventilation in the top enclosed level.

7. Low and high level windows allows for adequate single-sided ventilation.

8. In the sheltered but open spaces of the building, hot air is allowed to rise and transfer through the retained hollow brick masonry core, thus allowing for the hot air to rise and escape through new clerestorey windows.

9. Leaving the ground and first level spaces semi-exposed (open but sheltered) allows for a gradual experience of threshold between the outside and inside.

10. New timber roof provides deep overhangs to shelter spaces from overheating in the summer, and maximise solar gains in the winter. (top-right) Exploration of material, light and openings. (right) Museum of Castelvecchio, 1956-1964. ‘Adoration of the joint’ the articulation of the joint between the new timber entity, the existing tower and rampart walls. My intervention selectively removed aspects of the host’s facade to both break its continuity and reveal the facade as a stone claded brick structure. The intervention’s timber appearance that both reveals the repressed timber roof space and forms a critique of cladding by suffusing itself with the host.

Reflecting the ‘collision’ of the new and the host, the environmental strategy depended on a dialectic twin phenomena strategy that is provided by both the host and intervention, working in tension together Appropriate strategies are utilised for both enclosed and non-enclosed spaces.

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(above) ‘Adoration of the Joint’. This ‘tell-the-tale’ detail reveals the joint of all three structural elements: timber, concrete and brick. The timber roof structure is supported by two larch beams which are conected to a 700mm deep concrete beam with darkened steel, which in turn sits directly on the retained brick core. The ‘collision’ of these elements is expressed through the ziggurat brick detailing, as well as constructing their joint as if they were floating. (opposite) 1:50 ‘Tell-the-tale’ details

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Clearestorey timber framed window (sheltered) 150x50mm burned spruce mullions Hardwood framed windows (inward opening)

Timber framed Glazed screen (with window and sheltered) 40mm tongue and groove burned pitch-pine boarding in steel angle frame fixed to mullions 180x50mm burned spruce mullions Hardwood framed glazed screen with manually operated windows (inward opening)

Typical Level 2 floor (external) 20mm timber floor boarding (R) 60mm concrete screed 60mm acoustic insulation 200mm concrete slab

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Typical timber wall build-up (in recess of existing brick wall) 20mm tongue and groove burned pitch-pine boards 50mm vertical battens 50m wood fibre insulation Breather membrane 120mm thermal insulation with studwork Vapour control membrane 15mm OSB 38mm service void 20mm tongue and groove burned pitch-pine boards 200x50mm timber mullions (behind glazing)

Copper cover build-up 3mm transverse seam copper cladding (R) (from removed copper dome) 18mm ply 18mm ply Breather membrane 180mm rigid thermal insulation Vapour control membrane 15mm OSB Studwork built off existing brick wall

Typical timber cladding (in line with existing stone cladding) 20mm tongue and groove burned pitch-pine boards 50mm vertical battens 50m wood fibre insulation Breather membrane 120mm thermal insulation with studwork Vapour control membrane 1300mm ‘Old Austrian’ brick (Dimensions: 290×140×65mm) (R)

Typical floor (internal/external) 20mm timber floor boarding (R) 60mm concrete screed 200mm concrete slab 60mm acoustic insulation Vapour control membrane 180mm thermal insulation 38mm service void 20mm tongue and groove burned pitch-pine boards

Typical stone cladding (reused and reshaped from existing stone facade) 75mm tongue and groove kaiserstein (R) (emperor’s stone) cladding 50mm vertical steel hanging frame system 20mm cavity Breather membrane 100mm high performance rigid thermal insulation Vapour control membrane 1300mm ‘Old Austrian’ brick (Dimensions: 290×140×65mm) (R)

Existing loadbearing masonry wall 200mm kaiserstein (emperor’s stone) (E) 1300mm ‘Old Austrian’ brick (Dimensions: 290×140×65mm) (E)

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STAGE 5 SEMESTER 2

(opposite, below) 1:50 ‘Tell-the-tale’ details (right) The Barnes Foundation, 2009-12, Todd Williams and Billie Tsien Architects. External and internal cladding.

The contemporary architects Todd Williams Billie Tsien Architects and their project, The Barnes Foundation (2009-12) were the primary architectural generator of the critical attitude I took towards material cladding. The details I made were intended to form a live critique of the stone facade of the host as a Potemkin. The intervention’s cladding would be expressed as cladding and as such, I re-used the existing stone in a modern way using contemporary technology. At their joints between stone and stone, and stone and timber, a gap would reveal the brick structure behind whilst the burned pitch pine cladding would layer over the stone cladding respectively. Each ‘joint’ in the intervention is articulated.

In this way, the mode of production/construction is revealed.

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With this project, as well as gaining a wider knowledge of theoretical references, I began to develop an in-depth understanding of the inbetween as a philosophical and architectural concept, as well as an appreciation of the potency of negative dialectics as an appropriate method to achieve this. Underpinning this, I started to develop a critical mode of architectural production, that seeks not to become merely decorative or a reproduction, but one that is “radical and generative” of a new, alternative future; a return to everyday life and spaces.

Adolf Loo’s critique of materials, which he puts forward in his essays, Furniture for Sitting, Building Materials, The Principle of Cladding (1898) and Ornament and crime (1908), impacted my attitude towards the idea of use and meaning/value. Such that the meaning and value of a chair, a material, a building, does not contain some inherent meaning. Rather it is in its use that it acquires meaning.

(above) A sectional perspective exploring the blending together of Le Corbusier’s architectural promenade, Carlo Scarpa’s discontinuous path and Aldo van Eyck’s articulated thresholds.

The concinnity of materials and elements create express the excavation of the repressed.

STAGE 5 SEMESTER 2

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“Similarly to Lefebvre, who believed in the potentiality of the extraordinary to be revealed in the ordinary, my reasons for choosing an ordinary object reflects a keeness to draw out findings that would otherwise be overlooked due to their perceived blandness. In this case, I wanted to explore the said object’s material structure, as well as the possibilities of simple interventions.”

An initial exercise to reveal otherwise concealed aspects of a found object (Stage 5 semester two project)

STAGE 5 SEMESTER 2

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Through the interrogation of an object as banal as a drink can, it challenges the paradigms of discourse. That something as familiar as a drink can can elicit new meaning and forms. The artist Rachel Whiteread’s (1963- ) casts, which take the negative of familiar forms inspired a way of concrecretising the overlooked void as the space between/within the object. In such a way, it represents a memoralisation of everyday moments of life.

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STAGE 6: LINKED RESEARCH

(opposite, top to bottom) Case studies and their representatives: Park Hill, Sheffield, 1961; UEA Ziggurats, Norwich, 1968; The David Attenborough Building, Cambridge, 1971; Broomhill Pool, Ipswich, 1938. (below) Dunelm House, Durham, 1966. (below-right) Diagram of key agencies relating to the case of Dunelm House, categorised as internal, external and statutory.

“determination of value” lism na

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Historians erts exp C

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Durham Un i

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exte rna l ag en cie s use Archite Ho

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City of Durham Trust

ga e Or nisati ag

Historic England

The Guardian

Local He rit

Twentieth Century Society

DUNELM HOUSE

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Durham University

Estates

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Durham County Council

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Centre for Visual Arts & Culture

Early Visitor

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Felicity Raines

DCMS Secretary of State Leade rs rsity ve

Academic Staff

Architects

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Save Dunelm House

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Durham County

It was extremely interesting in regards to this question of value that carrying out our Linked Research on the “determination of value” was especially meaningful.

In January 2018, we set out to investigate the different agencies involved in the ongoing Save Dunelm House campaign and how they would influence the determination of value and what is worth conserving or demolishing. The initial aim was to map the campaign as a live case study.

However, this evolved into a broader examination of Dunelm House as a whole, which we aligned against other case studies, their related agencies, value systems and subsequent conservation efforts.

This research aimed to cover a broad range of topics, focusing on the concept of ‘what is valuable’ in architecture, not simply from an aesthetic perspective, but from a deeper study of the contextual, historical, social and practical value of existing buildings and how different perceptions of the importance of these elements determines whether a building is worth saving.

“How does agency affect the conservation of buildings and the determination of value? Using Dunelm House as a live case study”

Over the course of the project, we developed a critical understanding of the definition of value in architecture (and how it’s constructed) from many different perspectives. Our case studies demonstrated that ‘buildings and places have different kinds of value to different stakeholders.’

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Build Quality The GCS strongly emphasises achieving a high standard of design quality, referring to a combination of functionality (purpose), impact (sense of place) and build quality (performance). The following discussion will focus on the management of risks in relation to achieving a high build quality of the project. This will result in to: - A reduction of whole-life costs - A flexible, durable and sustainable built environment that is safe to construct and use - Minimal waste materials, energy and pollution during and after construction - An aesthetically attractive building for users and the public ...

As a pioneering and complex design and construction, it will involve extensive demolition of the existing building, sufficient retention of the structural integrity of existing walls, and insertion of a large new structure that is attached to the existing structure. Several complications may arise concerning this: - Uncontrolled collapse of existing during demolition - Areas of demolition cannot be achieved accurately and/or precisely enough - Remaining existing structure not stable or strong enough for attachments of new structure - Existing ground conditions are not suitable for foundations of a new structure ...

Heritage status of St. Michael’s Wing We anticipate that discussions will likely concern St. Michael’s Wing’s status as a highly significant ‘heritage asset’, reflected by its listing and situation in a UNESCO World Heritage Site. NPPF regards these as an ‘irreplaceable resource’ which should be conserved accordingly. ...

The client’s intention for the building’s change of use is a pioneering example of several projects the government is spearheading which adopt socialist values. As such, the project could be framed as ‘sustainable development’ through achieving economic, social and environmental objectives according to NPPF. The provision of new highquality public spaces, could arguably outweigh the potential imposition to its historic significance.

Furthermore, according to the BS 7913: Guide to the Conservation of Historic Buildings, the project may also show how such changes can become a powerful catalyst for physical and economic regeneration in vitalising a new use for buildings, and provide a sense of national identity within the project’s radical socialist ambitions.

It will be critical for these positive contributions to be effectively expressed to the public. The project’s provision of new ‘safe, inclusive and accessible’ spaces and establishing a ‘strong sense of place’ in achieving ‘well-designed places’ should be emphasised. Public engagement, such as enabling participation, holding open days, public talks and coverage in local media, have the potential for the public to garner a greater sense of place, ownership and community identity.

Extract from Architecture and Construction: Practice and Management Submission 2.

ARCHITECTURE AND CONSTRUCTION: PROCESS AND MANAGEMENT

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(below) Cross-section of the proposal showing a new concrete frame attatched to the existing masonry walls and core.

managing value

In the ACPM assignment, I used the previous design project as a case study where I anticipated potentital issues that might arise if the project was to go ‘live’. Among these, I discussed client priorities & constraints, provision of services, site constraints, statutory approvals and requirement of other professional discipline inputs. In addition, I discussed in-depth ways in which ‘value’ could be achieved concerning the build quality of the intervention, including how ‘risk’ could be controlled. Due to the radical nature of the project, key issues regarding the heritage status of the existing building were expanded.

0

1

2

Review previous projects

1

Assess commitments

1

Calculate expenditure for year

1

Conduct initial research

2

Conduct intensive research

16

Develop narrative

3

Design and construct ‘peep-show’

10

Review feedback

2

Continue research and narrative

14

Develop drawings/models for review

9

Review feedback

2

Primer Review

01/11

Cross-Review

22/11

Research Christian Church

3

Draw up ‘dream house’ for review

11

Review feedback

2

Develop final project brief

46

Cross-Review

3

4

13/12

Finalise site choice

4

Develop ‘manifestation’ design

24

Develop technological aspects

10

Develop room installation design

7

Prepare Thesis Outline document

18

Finalise ‘manifestation’ design

25

Finalise installation design

14

Thesis Outline Submission

15/02

Cross-Review

07/03

Review feedback

2

Develop construction strategy

2

Develop final drawings/models

25

Technical Review

5

14

Research potential sites

Construct first room installation

29/03

7

01/04

25/03

18/03

11/03

MARCH

04/03

25/02

18/02

11/02

04/02

FEBRUARY

28/01

21/01

14/01

07/01

JANUARY

31/12

24/12

17/12

10/12

DECEMBER

03/12

26/11

19/11

12/11

NOVEMBER

05/11

29/10

22/10

15/10

OCTOBER

08/10

(with duration in days/date of milestones)

w/c

STAGES & KEY ACTIVITIES:

2018-19

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ARCHITECTURE AND CONSTRUCTION: PROCESS AND MANAGEMENT

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(opposite) Thesis Project Plan from Architecture and Construction: Practice and Management Submission 1.

thesis project plan

For the thesis project, I made a preliminary programme (gantt chart), showing key activities, milestones and any deliverables. I also organised the project in terms of the RIBA Plan of work stages, and included management of anticipated risks in carrying out the project.

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STAGE 6 THESIS

(opposite) Sharing of Scripture, living room. A drawing derived from the use of the space, the ritual.

the sacred everyday T

his is a critical project that proposes an alternative mode of architectural representation; the thesis aims to draw out, elevate the significance of everyday spaces by exploring their realities of use and movement through time, in architectural drawing, using the framework of my Christian faith.

In recent discourse on architectural representation, there has been a prevailing emphasis on presenting architecture as a perfect, frozen object or image in time, a stillness that is devoid of any traces of human inhabitation. Architectural imagery often omit the inevitable evidences of residue when spaces are used. The thesis critiques this approach of perceiving and subsequently conceiving space, situating itself instead in the lineage of architectural representation that aims to highlight a temporal reality to the inhabitation of space. The project develops an anti-formalist and anti-perspectival mode of drawing, choosing to maintain, whilst simultaneously subverting the traditional conventions of architectural drawing, i.e. orthographic/parallel projection.

“Given that the Utopian method appears to be underpinned by notions of ‘ought’, ‘hope’ ‘desire’, sentiments that point towards something beyond the now, by comparing with a critique of the idea of faith, I wonder whether there is the potential of developing an alternative architectural practice, perhaps as a thesis idea for Stage 6, by taking seriously and critically the concept of faith.”

My final reflections on my Stage 5 semester two project

“Ordinary things contain the deepest mysteries.”

Robin Evans

This critique is particularly radical in reintroducing notions of sacredness in architecture, especially given its widespread expulsion in a society confident in its historical materialism and secularism. In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, sociologist Émile Durkheim describes the significance of rituals in the construction of sacred spaces. For me, these rituals are situated in the everyday: in an office building in the city on Sundays and his own home on Thursdays. Such ordinary spaces of life, become enlivened, even sacralised, by its use and activity, and in doing so, strips the western tradition of church back to its etymological, ancient definition as ‘ekklesia’, simply meaning the gathering of believers.

The thesis culminates in three drawings that represent three sacred everyday rituals, which relate to the believer’s baptism, holy communion and sharing of scripture. These drawings, through an obsessive level of detail and precision, trace and map the temporal use and movement of objects specific to each space and ritual in a productive manner, translating into a new and almost unrecognisable, symbolic form. In this way, such banal objects that are often overlooked, are revealed, even reinvented to take on new significance and meaning; producing a complexity and richness derived from the temporal realities of everyday rituals.

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STAGE 6 THESIS: PART I

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(below) The drawing overlways and creates new routes and relationships derived from the original singular plan of Palais Stonborough.

Merging together with an axonometric version, it comveys the complexity and durational quality of experiences whilst walking through the house.

a methodology: architecture as language

T

he thesis began its investigations at a fundamental level, by reexamining architecture as language.

For Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), a Viennese-born philosopher, in his early philosophy, ‘Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’ (published in 1921), the ideal form of language was a logical syntax; a calculus-like structure that underpins our ordinary language and gives it its meaning.

The value of language was its ability to represent this pure structure in all its clarity and precision. The everyday language becomes a hindrance or that which needs to be refined to become pure.

This is poignantly reflected in first impressions of Palais Stonborough (1926-28), which he undertook as the primary architect for his sister.

Here, the aesthetic purity, atmospheric quality, detail precision and material clarity altogether create an overwhelming transcendent aura upon entering the house. Even the literal image of the text of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, insinuates thisthrough its hierarchical and precisely structured series of propositions ordered by a numbering system calibrated to five decimal places. He wanted to define a completely clarified form of expression of language, and subsequently, for architecture.

This leads to further insight when analysing the hierarchical sequence of key spaces in the house; spaces of localised symmetries designed to an engineering precision. Yet through critical analysis of its construction and spatial logic, the cracks of this purity starts to be extracted. By seeking to locate the limits of meaningful use of language by modelling the functioning of all language on logic, it in fact imposed a limit. This way of understanding language in fact depends on the impossible construction of a view from above, looking downward on language. Instead, it flattens the complexity of life in all it’s everyday uses. Remarkably, it was through the practice of architecture, by facing the inevitable challenges and dilemmas that arises, the contradictions that were embedded in the fabric of the house, that provided a catalyst for Wittgenstein to reconsider his philosophy of language.

This leads Wittgenstein to make a dramatic and decisive shift from his early philosophical thoughts.

In his ‘Philosophical Investigations’ (published posthumously in 1953), he proposes an understanding of language that is completely rooted in its everyday use. ‘Practice of Everyday Life’, closely complements this view, where French Jesuit and scholar Michel de Certeau (1925-86) points to the otherwise overlooked relevance and importance of the ordinary.

Even by the literal image of the text, ‘Philosophical Investigations’ rejects a clear, hierarchical structure like that of the Tractatus. Instead, it is viewed as a open-ended seriality. This opposes the previous view of language, of experience, as independent, restrictive and meaningless if it did not have an absolute determinate sense. Rather, it is through the very use of language that gives it its meaning.

Indeed, the everyday is involved in the construction of our world; reality is to some degree constituted by and takes its shape from ordinary language. Whereas before, the final irreducible basis of language was a logic elementary proposition, it is now the activity and ordinary use of language in and of itself, expressed in a ‘form of life’.

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STAGE 6 THESIS: PART I

(opposite) Ground floor plan of the Palais Stonborough. (below) Extract from ‘Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’.

1*

The world is all that is the case.

1.1

The world is the totality of facts, not of things.

1.11

The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts.

1.12

For the totality of facts determines what is the case, and also whatever is not the case.

1.13

The facts in logical space are the world.

1.2

The world divides into facts.

1.21

Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same.

2

What is the case—a fact—is the existence of states of affairs.

2.01

A state of affairs (a state of things) is a combination of objects (things).

* The decimal numbers assigned to the individual propositions indicate the logical importance of the propositions, the stress laid on them in my exposition. The propositions n.1, n.2, n.3, etc. are comments on proposition no. n; the propositions n.m1, n.m2, etc. are comments on proposition no. n.m; and so on.

5

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(below) Bird’s eye view of the house’s localised symmetrical rooms. (opposite) This drawing begins highlighting the elements of each room where the walls were fasely built up and doors added and adjusted to create a symmetrical impression and perfect order.

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STAGE 6 THESIS: PART I

2.061

States of affairs are independent of one another.

6.54

My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them—as steps—to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright.

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STAGE 6 THESIS: PART I

(opposite)1:50 peepshow model (below) Interim Review. 1:50 peepshow model and presentation using animation; highlighting the seen and unseen qualities of Palais Stonborough.

“The philosophical remarks in this book are, as it were, a number of sketches of landscapes which were made in the course of these long and involved journeyings... For since beginning to occupy myself with philosophy again, sixteen years ago [1939], I have been forced to recognize grave mistakes in what I wrote in that first book.�

Philosphical Investigations, Preface

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STAGE 6 THESIS: PART I

(opposite) Experimentation of light on the house, revealing new projections and experiences. (below) Two realities of the house; one pure and pristine, the other complex and ambiguous.

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STAGE 6 THESIS: PART I

(opposite) An overview mapping of the complexities of the house. (below-right) Interim review presentation. (bottom-right) A 3D printed model creates a new unexpected architecture from the collision of orthographic projections of the house, between conventional and anamorphic projections.

The everyday means that language is far from being simple and linear; rather it’s like “a complicated network of similarities overlapping and crisscrossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.”

Philosphical Investigations, No. 66.

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STAGE 6 THESIS PART II

a framework: sacred space

“The sacred always manifests itself as a reality of a wholly different order from ‘natural’ realities... the sacred is that which is the opposite of the profane.”

Mircea Eliade, The Sacred & The Profane: The Nature of Religion

T

hough Wittgenstein’s work was concerned with philosophical problems, it quickly becomes apparent the significance and impact it has on architecture. I became concerned with revealing the complexity and richness of spaces analogous to language, as opposed to adhering to a view of architecture as hierarchically linear and pure with inherent meaning, whether imposed or logical.

As a Christian, the implications of Wittgenstein’s philosophy were potentially radical for conceptions of spaces and their meaning, specifically of meanings relating to sacrality. As the French sociologist Émile Durkheim posited, one’s faith is dependent on their relationship with the sacred, around which a community of believers are united. I sought to explore the church’s conception of the sacred; the relationship between the sacred and profane. As such, the project developed to critically explore notions of sacrality in my faith, bearing in mind and utilising the conceptual and representational methodologies I was introduced to in my studies of Wittgenstein.

William Blake’s painting, Jacob’s Dream, illustrates the general approach to sacredness; a sacred phenomena that is analogous to Wittgenstein’s early philosophies of inherent meaning and hierarchy: The sacred is high above, far from the profane world below, which is only accessible via a hierarchical ‘ladder’ of steps. It is a diachotomous relationship, one which Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) puts forward in The Sacred & The Profane: The Nature of Religion. The story of Jacob’s dream is in fact used as an example of how the sacred is manifested: at such a point in time and space, the place is consecrated and becomes a ‘paradoxical point of passage from one mode of being to another.

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Most Holy Place

Holy Place

Courtyard

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STAGE 6 THESIS PART II

(opposite) Plan of the Tabernacle according to description in Leviticus.

According to the Biblical narrative, in the old convenant, each iteration of the Jewish temple building acted as both a symbolic representation of the divine plan of reconciliation for mankind, as well as the dwelling place of God. Due to the breaking of the relationship between God and Man, given rituals and places were required to allow for mediation. It was the belief that mankind could not enter into the presence of God without a sacrifice, due to their sinfulness.

The original archetypal place as a sacred threshold was ‘the tent of meeting’, the Tabernacle, which was given to the Israelites whilst they wandered in the desert between Egypt and Canaan (modern-day Israel and Palestine).

There were four hierarchical spaces: 1. The Camp; outside the Tabernacle where the Israelite lived.

2. The Courtyard; the ordinary Israelite worshipper could enter here once a sacrifice(s) was made.

3. The Holy Place; only the priests (Levites) could enter here. This was technically seen as the house of God and was internally lined with gold.

4. The Most Holy Place; only the High Priest could enter here, once a year. This was the most sacred, perfect space, represented by its square dimensions.

The principles of this model continued throughout the Old Testament times. The threshold between the sacred and mundane was restricted to a specific place or building which was always infused with intense symbolism.

“But will God indeed dwell with man on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, how much less this house [first temple of Jerusalem] that I [King Solomon] have built!” - 2 Chronicles 6:18 However, it is revealed in the Bible that all this symbolism was to point to the idea of God actually dwelling among his people, more and more intimately and not constrained to a specific physical place.

“I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you.

And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people. - Leviticus 26:11-12 Almost 900 years later, this promise was reiterated when the Israelites were in exile: “And I will set them in their land and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore. My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” - Ezekial 37:26-27 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.

And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. - Ezekial 36:26-27 A theological reading of sacrality.

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For the Roman Catholic Church, this is epitomised in the city of Rome.

St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican City provides one of the most powerful symbols of Christianity. Its current renaissance site and structure (completed in 1626) acts symbolically to create a transition from the mundane to the glorious. As the largest church in the world, it displays a grandiosity and monumentality that is unequivocal. Though not the Pope’s official seat, it is where the pope carries out the majority of papal litgurgies and ceremonies, acting as the Pope’s principle church in terms of use. Attracting over 10 million visitors a year, it is a site of intense sacredness for Roman Catholics.

(opposite) Present-day map of Roman with the major Papal Basilicas marked on. (above) Present-day Papal Basilica of St. Peter in the Vatican. (overleaf ) Plan and elevation drawings of the high altar in St. Peter’s Basilica, St. Peter’s Baldachin.

This can be symbolised by St. Peter’s Baldachin, the high altar of St. Peter’s Basilica, which is situated directly underneath the great dome, at the centre of a cross-shaped plan. Designed and built in 1623-34 by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), it was intended to mark the location of Saint Peter’s tomb underneath. From a Roman Catholic perspective, it is Christianity’s ‘holy of holies’.

However, this was not always the case. The questions needs to be asked, where then did such significance originate from?

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After Christianity was legalised as a religion in 313, the Emperor Constantine (306-337) took the role of patron and started an extensive church building program over his reign, including three of the major Papal Basilicas in Rome.

- Papal Archbasilica of St. John in Lateran, 324 - Papal Basilica of St. Peter in the Vatican, 319-333 - Papal Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, 324 - (Papal Basilica of St. Mary Major was not built until 432) These churches were built using the typology of ancient Rome’s law courts, the basilica. Large and lavishly ornamented, the Christian basilicas of the Constantinian period served, in art historian Richard Krautheimer’s words, as ‘‘political-architectural propaganda’’ that reflected ‘‘the splendor of the Empire and its divine ruler.’ In Constantine’s churches, efforts to mark imperial, social, religious, and supernatural power were mutually reinforcing, supporting each other and often becoming inextricably linked. As the new buildings conveyed power and grandeur through both scale and rich decor, they articulated the new official standing of Christianity during Constantine’s reign.

The basilica church had a strict hierarchical arrangement, with the axis running from the narthex up through the nave to the altar in the apse.

This dictated a linear and spectatorial relationship between the clergy and layman, who inhabited the sanctuary and nave respectively. The long nave not only accommodated but profoundly encouraged an elaborate procession from the profane exterior to the “holy of holies” in the interior.

Only the clergy could enter the sanctuary, whilst the emperor who was called Pontifex Maximus (title gievn to popes), was elevated on the loge (a dais and throne), whose position rivalled the sanctuary.

(opposite-left) Constantinian Basilica of St. Peter (opposite-right) Constantinian Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls. (right) Persepctive of Constantinian Basilica of St. Peter

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Following the First Council of Nicea in 325, Constantine’s church building program reached the ‘Holy Land’, with basilicas built over the supposed birth place and burial site of Jesus: Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem (started in 327) and Church of the Holy Sepulchre (consecrated in 335) in Jerusalem respectively.

In each place, there is respectively a grotto or aedicule, situated directly over the said events of Jesus’ life, and so seen as the most sacred places of Christianity by Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians.

(opposite) Present-day Basilica of the Nativity, later re-built

by Byzantine Emperor Justianian I in 565. (top-right) ‘Door of Humility’, main entrance into the church. (centre-right) Nave looking towards the entrance of the Nativity Grotto. (right) Entrance into the Nativity Grotto.

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As the site of Jesus’ cruxifiction, burial and resurrection, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre has huge symbolic significance, representing the foundations of the Christian faith. Millions of pilgrims visit the church and its various artefacts. The aedicule, the centrepiece of the church, is viewed as the ‘holy of holies’, Christianity’s most sacred space.

All these churches hold a high place in the views of the institutional church, notably the Roman Catholic Church. These churches enjoy a status of significance and sacredness, set apart, made separate from the profane, the everyday.

(opposite) Section and plan drawings of present-day Aedicule. (top-right) Elevation of the entrance. (centre-right) Courtyard looking towards the entrance of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. (right) The aedicule sits in the rotunda in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre called the Anastasis (Resurrection).

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(above) Present-day interior of Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls.

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The architecture of the basilican church, which as mentioned previously was orginally a political space, epitomises this kind of sacred space as made separate from the profane. It is a space distinguished by its monumentality. Fundamentally, it is a space charged with direction. A direction that is linear and hierarchical, which frames a presumed and specific vantage point.

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The image ‘implies’ an infinite point, but it is inaccessible to the human viewer because it is antithetical to the human condition.

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This is analogous to the conception of linear perspective, an artificial construction to give the illusion of reality, of truth. In Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge, Alberto Pérez-Gómez (1949 present) retraces the history of perspective, including its theological connotations regarding God, the sacred. In medieval times, it was recognised that only God had exclusive access to ‘absolute sight’, as stipulated in Nicholas of Cusa’s De Visione Dei (1453). However, an artificial construction of perspective began to develop that enabled more and more convincing illusions of reality to be made.

Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge,

(opposite and above-right) A device that represents a schematic of linear perspective. (top) Perspective Machine, published in Albrecht Dürer’s The Painter’s Manual, 1525.

Durer’s famous machine acts as an appropriate metaphor for the objectification of reality; ‘the world is now in [man’s] cone of vision, making it difficult to acknowledge the reciprocity of perception by the Other (originally God)’. With such a device however, requires the ‘world’ to be still, static, as well as replacing it with the ‘image’. Fundamentally, it requires ‘man’ to be still, and fixed, reducing him to a passive spectator rather than an active participant.

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(above) Hans Holbein the Younger’s painting, The Ambassadors, 1533. (opposite-bottom-right) The skull as viewed from its oblique vantage point. (opposite-top) Anamorphic projection appears in view through the hole. Only upon leaving the fixed vantage point does the anamorphosis become apparent.

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Anmorphosis further manifests the trappings of linear perspective.

Hans Holbein’s notorious painting, The Ambassadors, highlights this. The painting depicts two figures leaning on a table in the background, littered with symbolic items. However in the foreground a blur, a smudge, interrupts the space. This leads to the psychanalyst Jacques Lacan’s (1901-1981) famous reading of the painting in his Session VII, entitled ‘Anamorphosis,’ of The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1964).

Here, Lacan highlights the phenomena of vision from a psychoanalytical perspective.

In order to decipher the blur as a skull, one needs to adopt an oblique side-view. However, in doing so, turns the rest of the painting into a blur, as the ‘main’ image requires a canonical front-view. Displacing from either point, results in a blurring of the other; one is trapped with parallax view. This shows thegaze as objet petit a, simply put, the gaze is an object; gaze, the mind’s eye, holds a subjective standpoint. That holding an objective perspective is impossible and any claims prove problematic.

As such, the paradox of anamorphic view can be used to explore claims of sacred space as inherent.

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(from left to right) A supposition of the arches marking the entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre onto the doorway of an everyday entrance threshold. The image represents the illusion of symbolic objects, opposed to the reality of everyday life.

A computer generated anamorphic projection of the arches onto the threshold.

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(all) I applied an anamorphic distortion even to the Aedicule of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, representing its illusonary nature that contradicts the presence of everyday reality.

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“And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts...�

Acts 2:44-46

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However, it becomes apparent, as the scholar of religion Jonathan Z. Smith suggested, that sacred spaces are not inherently holy, rather, sacred spaces are created by human beings. To clarify, believers create ‘holy’ places by investing certain places or spaces with religious meanings and then acting upon those meanings, such as St. Peter’s Basilica, Canterbury Cathedral, even the Basilica of the Nativity and The Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Indeed, the memorialisation of certain places in Jesus Christ’s life demonstrates this, when spaces and places are ascribed sacred meanings where no such meanings had been ascribed.

It is interesting to go even further back to Christianity’s ancient origins, prior to its legalisation. A time when it was viewed as a Jewish cult, where we find that earliest archaeological findings of a church building was an ordinary courtyard house, dated between 233-256 AD, in the ancient border city of Dura Europos, Syria. Its domestic environment was maintained, and the only amendments to its structure was the enlargment of the tricilium to allow for larger gatherings. This reflects the church as described in the New Testament, where Christians met in each other’s homes.

Its ordinariness is reinforced by the church’s survival during the city’s capture and abandonment after a siege in 256–57 by the Sassanians, in contrast to the utter destruction of the temples and civic buildings that were located in prominent positions in the city.

(opposite) Plan of the Dura Europos church. (top-right) City plan of Dura Europos, including the church labeled as a ‘Christian building’. (right) Axonometric of Dura Europos church.

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‘[W]e are forced to admit ‘that churches [church buildings] are not really necessary to Christianity...’

Turner, H.W., From Temple to Meeting House

The Dura Europos church represents a conception of sacredness that opposes the diachotomous version as embodied by the institutional church. It returns church to its etymological definition as ekklesia, which literally means the gathering of the faithful. It refers to the act of gathering, to the use, as opposed to attributing the sacredness derived from the ‘shell’. Thus it also opposes the linear, fixed view of sacredness as static.

(opposite) Concept site plan church sited in the everyday, hidden, in opposition to the establishment whose structures occupy prominent positions in the world.

It returns the site of the sacred to the everyday. As a Christian, from a theological standpoint, it represents “the belief in the reality of Christ as God incarnated in a mortal body” as shared by Michelangelo, whose belief influenced his work “intent on dissolving the opposition between life and death”. Furthermore, it makes manifest the conceptual harmony of the sacred and profane.

It highlights that the distinction, holiness, sacredness of spaces lies not with an inherent sense of sacredness or meaning, but that it is in the use, the ritual of gathering that sets apart the space. Importantly, there is a finitude to the space, a temporal limit, though it is carried through in memory.

The ‘space of exception’ lies not with an architecture of monumentality, nor of a fixed, linear direction, but residing and remaining in the everyday.

Essentially modern, it strips church back to the ritual of gathering and sharing in fellowship, reminiscent of Adolf Loos’ idea of use, where it is the act of sitting that makes the chair, not the chair that makes the sitting.

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Heaton Gospel Community

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Bamburgh House (Sunday congregation service)

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Newcastle West Gospel Community

Fenham Gospel Community

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Gateshead Gospel Community

Aerial Map of Newcastle Upon Tyne marking all of Cornerstone’s gospel communities (GC) across the city.

Heaton Gospel Community

Andy’s home, Jesmond Vale

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George’s home, Heaton I

Rachel’s home, Spital Tongues d

Author’s home, Heaton II

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Bamburgh House (Sunday service), City-centre Natasha’s home, City-centre

Aerial Map of Newcastle Upon Tyne marking one of Cornerstone’s gospel communities (GC), Heaton GC.

Back in Newcastle Upon Tyne, I am part of a church that meets every Sunday in a rented office space in the city centre. Previously, we met in another rented space as part of a coffee shop in the city.

(opposite) A plan of Necwcastle Upon Tyne showing the locations of churches, including my church, Cornerstone Newcastle. (above) An aerial showing the locations of the five houses we meet as Heaton Gospel Community.

As well as this, every Thursday, we meet in each other’s houses across the city, split across different areas. We call these Gospel Communities, numbering between 10-20 people.

I am part of Heaton Gospel Community (GC), with around 18 regular people coming. My home is one of 5 houses that we meet. Such spaces are part of the everyday, in which our rituals are practised.

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The New Covenant In the New Testament, this ‘dwelling place’ was finally made explicit in what and where it was. It is no exaggeration to declare that the entire premise of the Christian faith fully depends on how the relationship between God and Man was permanently reconciled.

‘So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.’ - Genesis 1:27 ‘He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.’ Colossians 1:15 ‘[T]he Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory...’ - John 1:14 In the Bible, Jesus Christ was described as the God incarnate, the ‘God-Man’; both fully God and fully Man. Jesus as the mediator was the ultimate embodiment of: • ‘the inbetween’ (van Eyck) • the ‘between’ (Buber) • transgressing principium tertii exclusi, the ‘Law of the Excluded Third’ (Derrida) ‘But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption... Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant...’ - Hebrews 9:11,15 Jesus was the new tabernacle. In Jesus, the relationship between God and Man was fully reconciled, opening up the way to experience who God is and his love; to know life to its fullness.

“I [Jesus] came that they [mankind] may have life and have it abundantly.” - John 10:10 “And this is eternal life, that they [mankind] know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” - John 17:3 Jesus became not only the new tabernacle but ushered anyone who believed to be united to him and God in love through the indwelling of God himself, the Holy Spirit, as being one with the triune God himself.

“Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” - 1 John 4:15-16 “[T]hat they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”

“If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” - Romans 8:11 “And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain... your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.” - 1 Corinthians 15:14,17 This undertaking could only have been and was emphatically achieved in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who was fully God fully Man, and perfectly fulfilled the righteous requirement of God’s law. ‘“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he [Jesus] said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”’ - Matthew 22:36-40 “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” - Hebrews 4:15 By this, the Church, the ‘catholic’ united body of believers, became the one body of Christ, who is its head.

“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. - Ephesians 2:19-22 “Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior...” Ephesians 5:23 “[T]he hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father... But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” - John 4:21,2324 “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I [Jesus] among them.” - Matthew 18:20 As such the ‘dwelling place’ of God was now explicitly shown to be within believers, not in a place. No one place was to be seen as more sacred in and of itself. Believers were no longer restricted to worshipping God in the ‘temple’, for they were the ‘temple’. It is in the activty of worshipping or gathering that wherever believers congregated became sacred. The sacred and ordinary can meet anywhere and everywhere now. In effect, a place becomes ‘sacred’, comes ‘alive’, only because of its use by the people of God. My theological reading of sacrality.

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... the Word [the Son] became flesh [ Jesus Christ] and dwelt among us [Man], and we have seen his glory [God] ...

John 1:14

“For we are the temple of the living God...”

2 Corinthians 6:16

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(opposite) Final installation of the thesis project. The space is yet to be used.

an everyday ritual Something hidden is revealed.

The installation is stripped back The drawings are elevated and protected Moments, movements, use, ritual are drawn out Time is adored The subject is ordinary The site is the everyday Their significance is sacred.

W

ith the Wittgenstein studies, I developed a method of drawing out aspects in architecture that are not at all obvious at first glance, namely the complexities and contradictions that lie behind even the apparent purity of the Palais Stonborough.

With the study of the Christian church, I sought to strip it back to a conception of sacredness derived, not from the ornateness, splendour and grandeur of the institutional church, but from the very act, the ritual of gathering of believers, of ekklesia.

At the end of my thesis journal: part ii, I was set to study my own practices in the church I am part of, where we do not meet in a church building as such, but in everyday settings: in an office space on Sundays, and each other’s homes during the week. In a sense, such gatherings strip the concept of sacredness back to the use, the ritual, without which the space ceases to have ‘life’.

The thesis is an architectural representation project that aims to draw out the significance, the sacredness of the such rituals by examining and mapping out these in the everyday. Such that, it is in the everyday, through these everyday practices construct sacredness. Part iii follows the final stages of the process of the thesis, developing a representation that reveals this through architectural drawing and modelling.

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(opposite) Sarah Wriggesworth’s drawings of a dining table, before (top), during (centre), and after (bottom) a meal. (below) Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), 1912.

Wrigglesworth’s drawing of the interactions between people over a meal inspired a method of drawing out the life of a space. Through mapping the activity of the objects in the ritual of a meal, not only does it convey a sense of the temporal nature of spatial experiences, but it draws attention to otherwise mundane objects which are normally ignored. Poignantly, though the human is absent in these drawings, they are made present through the movement of the chair, the plates, the cutlery. This is reminscent of Derrida’s concept of the absent-prensence.

In The Agency of Mapping, James Corner highlights mapping as a creative practice, one about “uncovering realities previously unseen or unimagined”. I anticipate that as I pursue this way of drawing, it has the potential to encourage a new way of perceiving space, of architecture, that is not dependent on the physical space itself, but its animation.

My drawings will aim to explore this kind of animation through the movement of objects, where the presence of humans are necessarily implicit.

In Marcel Dunchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, the meaning of the painting is poignant as the name of the painting would potentially have been the only clue to the subject. Immediately, the painting is elevated to a meaning previously hidden. Due to its absraction and deconstructed appearance, without the title, it would have been almost impossible to ascertain what the painting was about. Yet also, because of its abstraction making it become unrecognisable from a more traditional representation, it allows constant new intepretations to be made by viewers.

In both Duchamp’s and Wrigglesworth’s painting and drawing repsectively, time is implicit and even necessary for them to have been conceived. The temporal nature to architectural space is often ignored or not treated as a priority, causing spaces to ironically become reductive themselves. The architect, Aldo van Eyck speaks about the importance of time, of duration, as required in order to create for place. He stressed the essential nature of designing for the in-between, a concept that relies upon the use of the space by humans for a space to become place. Van Eyck argues for the awareness of memory and anticipation as key to this.

Henri Lefebvre speaks similarly about time in terms of rhythmn, where the concept of time is not a cartesian notion of abstract time that is constant, but which changes in tempo derived from human experience.

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(right) A drawing of my home, showing the movement on a Thursday evening when we have Heaton Gospel Community.

The kitchen table is shown to be set-up for the meal, seats are re-arranged, cushions are placed on the floor as places for people to sit when we share from Scripture. Only the spaces shared by the community is shown: the kitchen, landing and living room.

This was a key drawing that allowed me to start examining the richness of these everyday rituals, from which I can reveal the hidden moments of significance (below) A drawing showing the intensity of ritual on a Thursday evening, with the kitchen on the right and the living room on the left as the key spaces of communion and a scriptural based time.

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(above) A conceptual drawing of Heaton Gospel Community in my home, with the array of objects moving being conveyed.The domestic house alsmost becomes unrecognisable and particularly, the traditional elements that we associate with space appears irrelevant. So much so, that the space is defined by the movement of objects, by the use of the space. (opposite) A comprehensive mapping of Thursday evening from my perspective. The drawing implies a cyclical nature of the evening.

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(above) A drawing showing twhe different movements during a Sunday service in Bamburgh House, including tables being set-up, chairs being taken from the back for late arrivees, a lecturn being pulling out for the sermon, and notably when we have communion taken from two tables to the side of the front, and when we have baptism.

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(opposite-top) A drawing showing my primary movements on a Sunday, form when I enter into the building, into the lift, sit in my usual seat to the side at the front, converse with people after the service, and leave via the fire staircase. (opposite-bottom) A drawing showing the movement of objects. (above) A drawing showing the intensity/importance of the ritual, with significance of the spaces increasing as I arrive into the main space, where communion, worship, sermon teaching and baptism take place. (right) The elevation of Bamburgh House, the location of our Sunday service. The blandness and sameness of such an elevation drawing is intriguing, given the significance of the rituals taking place within. Almost because of its ordinariness, the presence of the sacred space (due to the sacred ritual) takes on a hidden quality. This hidden yet significantly rich quality is something that my drawings want to reveal concerning our everyday practcies, our everyday drawings.

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(opposite) Parallel projections of an anamorphic projection onto a cartesian model. (right) Suggested plan for the tracery of the dome of the Royal Chapel, Anet, drawn by Robin Mark. (right-below) Plan and perspective section of the Royal Chapel, Anet. Engraving by J.-A du Cerceau.

In my earlier experimentations, I had used anamorphosis to uncover the illusionary nature of symbolic architecture, by attempting to superimpose these elements of symbolic Christian sacred spaces onto my house. At a couple reviews, this method infact undermined the aims of the thesis, as well as running the risk of taking things out of context.

However, the techniques I began to experiment with provides productive ways of challenging the traditional drawing conventions architectural representation.

In Robin Evans’ Translations from Drawing to Building (1986), it traces the important role that parallel/ orthographic projection takes in architectural representation. Though a tradition that as architects we adhere to resolutely, Evans speaks of the potential of subversion, as exemplified by Philibert de l’Orme’s drawings of and subsequent design of the Royal Chapel at Anet.

Noticeably, the plan of the tracery of the dome contradict the seeming projection tracery on the floor, though the impression is that there is a direct relationship between them. In fact, the real plan, if using parallel projection, is an “annular envelope of circles”. The “ingenious, regulated distortion” of the circle resulted in a space far more potent then if being derived from a more conventional means, with the latter being rather impossible to have translated through simple projection. This reinforces the capacity of working within the architectural drawing convention, but with imagination produce things that become unrecognisable. This reinforces an anti-perspective approach that the thesis takes, having been inspired by Massimo Scolari’s Oblique Drawing: A History of Antiperspective.

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From examining the rituals on a Thursday and Sunday, three key rituals are drawn out: 1. Holy Communion This symbolises the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as well as our participation in that by following his example.

2. Sharing of Scripture This forms a foundation of the Christian faith, as we believe through The Bible, God speaks and his truth can be known and understood.

3. Believer’s Baptism This is an essential rite that every Christian takes once he trusts in Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. It is by this act that Christians can be held to account of their subsequent actions and attitude.

(opposite, from top to bottom) Holy Communion in the kitchen, 8 Stannington Grove.

Sharing of Scripture in the living room, 8 Stannington Grove.

Believer’s Baptism on the 1st floor of Bamburgh House.

Needless to say, three rituals are ones that have huge symbolic significance to Christians, including myself and the community of believers I am part of. As such, it is specifically the movements that relate specifically to these three rituals and on which the thesis focuses on to explore how architectural representation can bring out the significance of such sacred rituals, through drawing out these in the context of the everyday.

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(opposite) Stills from a recording of Heaton GC on a Thursday evening at our home. From this film, I managed to create a timeline of the rituals. (below) Stills from a recording of o baptism after a Sunday service on the 1st floor, Bamburgh House. From this film, I managed to create a timeline in relation to this ritual. (right) Extract from a transcript of Heaton GC.

19:31:48 19:31:51 19:31:52 19:31:55 19:31:58 19:32:12 19:32:23 19:32:26 19:32:29 19:32:29 19:32:30 19:32:37 19:32:47 19:33:01 19:33:05 19:32:11 19:40:48

19:41:06 19:41:32 19:45:15 19:50:23 20:14:34 20:15:41 20:16:13 20:16:52 20:17:12 20:17:17 20:18:29 20:18:37 20:20:56 20:21:52

Table set-up begins Table-top is lifted up Table legs start being pulled out Table legs are set in final position Table-top is set down into final position IKEA chairs start being moved for the meal First IKEA chair is in final position Second IKEA chair is in final position Third IKEA chair is in final position Study stool is picked up Fourth IKEA chair is in final position Study stool is put down in kitchen doorway First Bed stool is picked up First Bed stool is put down Second Bed stool is picked up Second Bed stool is put down Prayer Yeah, thank you Lord Thank you for bringing us here together Thank you for the food err Thank you for the fellowship I pray that you’d just bless this time umm Bless everyone here I pray that, yeah, we’d get to encourage one another And also hear What you have to say to each of our hearts In Jesus’ name we pray Amen First person is served food Person sits on the kitchen chair Last person is served food Plates begin to be gathered Glasses are fetched for Holy Communion Bread is broken prior to being shared out Glasses are placed down on the table More glasses are needed Wine bottle is placed down Wine bottle is opened Wine is first poured Last glass is poured Holy Communion begins We want to talk about why we do communion …[Name] is going to share something with us ...

A quick little thing I was reading from Kevin deYoung and Tim Chester’s book and it was just talking about Union and Communion Our union cannot be broken because our union with God is God’s grace to us But this communion is a constant communion I always saw communion as, we take the bread and drink the wine, and that’s communion But communion should be every single day we wake up Every single moment we talk with God That should be our communion But this is a good reminder for us that we’re able to have this communion, An encouragement for us to have this every single day

20:23:29 20:24:00 20:24:19 20:25:31 20:26:00

Communion is symbolic of the union with Christ and points to the communion that She was talking about ...

Glasses of wine are passsed around Last glass of wine is given Bread first broken and shared around Last piece of bread is broken Prayers Father We thank you so much that we get to come here and gather together In your Name We thank you for the opportunity to do communion together as a way of remembering what your son Did

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(clockwise from top-left) Objects (3D printed) in relation to the three rituals. These becomes a kind of reliquaries, as embodied objects, holding the memory of these rituals.

Portable baptistry IKEA chairs Cushions Baptistery water Coffee table Kitchen table

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Holy Communion

(above) This is a collage-like drawing of the ritual relating to the communion we take in the kitchen as Heaton GC.

- A kitchen table as the surface on which a meal and communion is taken - An eclectic range of seats as seating - A variety of glasses as communion vessels - A wine bottle as communion wine - A loaf of bread bought locally as communion bread

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(above) This is a collage-like drawing of the ritual relating to the time we share from scripture in the living room, after the meal and communion.

Sharing of Scripture

(opposite) A taxanomy of the the state of cushions upon being sat on in various positions during the ritual.

- A coffee table rearranged to provide additional space - Cushions as seating

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(opposite) This is a collage-like drawing of the ritual relating to when we have baptism on a Sunday. (below) 3D water model simulation using 3ds Max. Timestamps of person being immersed into the water.

Believer’s Baptism - A portable, timber baptistery - Furniture in the church rearranged to accomodate for baptism - Water

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(opposite-top) Specification of 20mm steel square hollow sections required to make the vitrines’ frame. (opposite-bottom) CAD drawing of 15mm birch ply for CNC router. (below) Final installation of my thesis project.

Following the collages that I made in response to the intensity, complexity and richness of mapping the rituals, I developed the final exhibition of the thesis that incoporated three drawings representing the three rituals, and three documents in respect to the Wittgenstein studies, investigation of the sacred in Christianity and finally the process of mapping the sacred in the everyday.

The vitrines were made in a way that was stripped back to a simplicity reflective the modern aims of the thesis to strip the construction of sacredness back to ritual. For such an appearance of simplicity required careful and efficient planning. It also required to work with an arc welder to fix the frames together which was very satisfying to us. The gritiness, sweat and craft required for the atmosphere of simplicity is reminiscent of Loo’s attitude to the manipulation of cladding and building materials.

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(opposite and above) The ritual of Holy Communion translates into a familiar, yet ambiguous ‘form’.

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Yeah, thank you Lord Thank you for bringing us here together Thank you for the food Err Thank you for the fellowship I pray that you’d just bless this time Umm Bless everyone here I pray that, yeah, we’d get to encourage one another And also hear What you have to say to each of our hearts In Jesus’ name we pray Amen

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Father We thank you so much that we get to come here and gather together In your Name We thank you for the opportunity to do communion together as a way of remembering what your son Did On the cross Thank you father that you sent Christ Umm Loving, for us Thank you Lord Jesus that you came obediently And in love So that the world would not be judged But that we would know this relationship with the Father Know this communion Umm With you Thank you Holy Spirit for empowering Jesus to, to To die on the cross And enabling him to be so obedient And to loves us so much in that way even though it was hard to do that We remember as a group of Christians that this did not come easy to Jesus just because he’s God We remember that in the garden of Gethsemane He begged that it wouldn’t have to come to this But he also said It’s your will not mine Even Jesus who had all right to kinda Throw his toys out of the pram Submitted to the Father And through this Lord we submit to you as well

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Father thank you That Through sending your Son You have made yourself manifest You have Your body is broken for us And as we chew on this very real bread Remind us that our sin cause your body to be broken And it caused blood to flow When the roman soldier pierced you You died God You died A very hard death We thank you that there is life in that That even in death you are most glorified because you overcame death Because you have solved our problem of sin God It is washed away by the blood of Jesus And as we think on that as well Let us take up the wine as well

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20:21:52 We want to talk about why we do communion … Sha’s going to share something with us ...

A quick little thing I was reading from Kevin deYoung and Tim Chester’s book and it was just talking about Union and Communion Our union cannot be broken because our union with God is God’s grace to us But this communion is a constant communion I always saw communion as, we take the bread and drink the wine, and that’s communion But communion should be every single day we wake up Every single moment we talk with God That should be our communion But this is a good reminder for us that we’re able to have this communion, An encouragement for us to have this every single day Communion is symbolic of the union with Christ and points to the communion that She was talking about ...

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(above) Final drawing of ‘Holy Communion, kitchen, Stannington Grove’. (left-all) Photographs of the ‘drawing’ (a vitrine, 2D drawing and 3D models)

His body bound and drenched in tears They laid him down in Josephs’ tomb The entrance sealed by heavy stone Messiah still and all alone O praise the name of the Lord Our God O praise his name forevermore For endless days we will sing your praise O Lord O Lord our God Then on the third at break of dawn, The Son of heaven rose again.

O trampled death where is your sting?

The angels roar for Christ the King O praise the name of the Lord our God O praise His name forever more For endless days we will sing Your praise Oh Lord, oh Lord our God He shall return in robes of white, The blazing Son shall pierce the night.

And I will rise among the saints, My gaze transfixed on Jesus' face 200mm

O praise the name of the Lord our God O praise His name forever more For endless days we will sing Your praise Oh Lord, oh Lord our God

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Yeah Father God Thank you so much again for this reminder And as a reminder that As your Son said Man does not live on bread alone But by every word that comes from the mouth of God Father God please be reminding us of that Of the life your Son has given us The life that your Spirit continues to gives us Your Son being the Word of God And of how he gave us this life in the very first place And the Spirit who continues to sustain us on this earth Father God I just pray that you’d be invigorating Umm Everyone here No matter Umm Where they are at in their faith Whatever stage of phase they’re at Whether they’re feeling more kinda depreciated than usual Or happy Or feeling more stressed More easy More relaxed Whatever wherever everyone in this room is at Father would you be speaking to us through your Spirit And reminding us That our very lives are dependent on you Our very life that you’ve given us now is only because of what your Son has done Father Please be shaking that to the very core of who we are

I cast mind mind to Calvary Where Jesus bled and died for me I see his wounds his hands his feet My Saviour on that cursed tree

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Dad I thank you that your presence is so so real right now That we know that you are constantly with us Lord That whatever our feelings may lie to us Will we know completely that this union will never be broken And thank you Lord that you’ve sent us the Holy Spirit and your Son Lord That it’s all done though your Son Jesus help us to pick up our cross and to follow you Lord Because so many times we forget that That we completely take our eyes off of you Lord But please just remind us Daily Of the impact of what you’ve done Lord Humble us every single morning of why we need you Of why we need to keep our eyes on you Lord Yeah

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Father God We thank you for this time just to able to stop And just reflect on what you have done Again It’s something which we can always carry with us And we can always remember God But I thank you for these moments when we can just stop and be Umm And just stop and come back To the most beautiful moment in history The most Broken but glorious moment God Yeah Jesus God We just thank you for that sacrifice you made even though we don’t understand Anywhere near the depth of it We can’t imagine what it cost We can’t imagine what it was But we live in that freedom Umm We live in that knowledge Umm That because of that we can have that communion with you We can have that beautiful union we’ve heard I pray that we’d know that

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We love you Lord And We know that we’re only able to love you You first loved us Remind us of this today Umm What’ve you done All that you’re doing Remind us tomorrow And the day after that As we seek Communion with you For Jesus’ sake

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20:37:19 The next part of the evening is introduced

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It may be a very formal I mean informal thing that we do But the The belief behind it and the theology behind it is very Formal Umm It’s a really powerful thing if you start to think about Why is it we do communion in such a ritualistic and in such a formal setting Umm When you think about what Jesus did with the disciples It was not in a formal setting at all, you know?

It was just in the upper room you know, Just casual almost So it’s amazing yeah When you think about it.

20:44:10 This reminds me about when I was in Israel So after we visited the tomb Where they believe that Jesus was buried in the tomb And then we had communion outside It was a beautiful place And yeah We had communion, and when we see the tomb We can see that the tomb was empty.

Yeah so that’s Umm 20:44:38 It really is I think Because I’ve grown up doing communion in a very formal way So where it’s always done on a Sunday And it’s always done in a very kind of like Silent no talking no laughing and everything is very sombre And it should be to an extent because of what we are doing it’s Something so sacred We’re remembering the Son of God and what he’s done for us But in other ways you know it’s a celebration A celebration of what Jesus did do It’s not like what Jesus is going to do It’s all done Umm, so it’s so apt that they did it outside of the tomb I think When I was just there praying And I was just thinking about what we are doing here as brothers and sisters in Christ I was just like It was just It was so powerful That’s what I felt when I was just praying in that corner And I was just seeing Seeing what in terms of like appreciating what we we’re doing here as brothers and sisters And as Christians And as believers It’s just so powerful what we’re doing.

Umm, yeah, I don’t know if that’s what If you guys can relate to that or if it still feels a bit too If it still feels quite ritualistic or feels quite alien, you know?

20:45:25 Not at all Umm growing up in a church I would say like I’d say two years back That’s when I actually became Christian From the start we were just introduced to this Umm Having bread and wine as a sort of remembrance And yeah I feel like my opinion that that sometimes Christians can think that They only want to read the good parts of the bible The happy parts and err you know Sometimes you’ve got to remember the point behind of all of this And I think communion is a really great part of that and you know Just realign what Jesus really did for us Cos sometimes we just take that for granted Because we are just so focused about Umm on what Jesus can do for us rather than on what he has done for us So communion and all this just brings me back and that’s when I remember.

20:47:19 Yeah I think like Because I was kind of growing up Obviously in the Anglian church and everything is like very Very like say the Book of Common Prayer Everything is very like to the thing and sometimes Even like doing something like confession before communion it can set you up to seem like I remember this one time Just thinking this is so structured You can’t even think outside of that You kind of just say the same thing every time it’s like When you pray You don’t just pray the same thing every time like you just pray like so So then I went to the Chinese church where’s it was like just so opposite So informal with the kids just coming up to their parents like “can I have a grape please?”

Like its just like completely different So it think there’s place for both In one sense you don’t want to be so informal that you lose the sense of actually the Magnitude of what happened But you don’t want to be so structured that there’s no room for like For your own journey with God in that as well If that makes sense.

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I think like ever since coming to Cornerstone Like it’s so exposed me to Umm like Communion doesn’t always have to be in a formal setting So in like in my church back home You pretty much do it because like Pretty much the whole church is doing it Obviously, like you say that, if you’re not a Christian you don’t do it Umm but then coming to cornerstone then We do it after the service so there’s kind of like more of a response rather than just being left to it.

So you can actually think through why Why you’re doing it Umm yeah.

Third seating is prepared

20:49:32 Yeah, since I’ve come to Cornerstone I’ve learnt a lot as well Its been I think 5 months now?

And I’m glad I’m really glad I came to this church and I chose to grow in this church In this community Because I get to meet and witness loads of people who are soaking their mind for the cross And not for Not just for the people I think it’s very important And my pastor at home told me Lots of people they are just church minded and not kingdom minded And that’s why people get Offended so so many times and they just leave the church and Hop to another and it’s a vicious cycle So I think like Umm Cornerstone The people in Cornerstone and the community just really Encourages me and reminds me to be kingdom minded And not just church minded And I can see it by, not just by virtue of their words But by their actions 20:50:33 Can you articulate for me what you mean by being church minded and kingdom minded?

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Right Church minded would be In the layman terms I would say Umm Someone who is just looking to take people into church That everything has to be so structured Everything has to go according to his plan So much to the extent that he forgets why he is doing it in the first place For what purpose So that’s sort of church minded As if church is just a building where people needs to go into that building And people lose the heart of why they have to go to that building So that is how my pastor just to describe church minded But people who are kingdom minded knows that They’re doing it for It’s not about the number of people It’s about like what you are actually doing in that church What you are doing in that space that really matters Yeah Cos like God is like not really Umm looking towards like the biggest church The best church, the You know The church with the best music I think God really wants to see a church where people have a heart for him A heart to really yearn for him in praise and worship That’s what God is looking for The people Not the amount of people.

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(above) Final drawing of ‘Sharing of Scripture, living room, Stannington Grove’. (left to right) Photographs of the ‘drawing’ (a vitrine, 2D drawing and 3D models)

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Dear Lord Thank you for the gift of your Word Lord Thank you for speaking to us That your Spirit would reveal your will to us I pray for [name] That he’d really seek to know more about your heart And who you are Lord That he would just walk with you day by day Lord I pray that he would continue to read the Word And that that would reveal to him these things of the world When they come When they come to distract him That he would focus on you Lord He would focus on your Word and focus on what you have to say to him Lord Thank you for who you are And That we can pray these things And umm You do listen You do answer prayer …

Amen

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Umm Amen I’m a bit nervous so wrote some names to help So I grew up in Hong Kong during the first half of my life My mum was a buddist and my dad is an aetheist So I have really not thought about religion I was constantly pressured to do well in academics As my parents expected me to give 110% effort Every summer I go to this camp called YMCA Which was like an escape for me from the competitive world Where I receieved this t-shirt with 4 words written inside Honesty Respect Responsibility And Caring To today I still hold them dear to my heart When I was 12 my parents separated Which resulted in me going to boarding school in England I found out later that this was a Christian based school We had to go to chapel 4 times a week Which felt like a bit like a chore It took me several years for me to finally not sleep in the chapel Throughout the services As these few years went by I had a basic knoweldge about Christianity As I started listening to the sermons And this higher being On results day I did not achieve my ideal results in A-levels And ended up in clearing And I felt guilty and disappointed for my mum However an opportunity arose And on the same day Into Newcastle accepted me Which gave me new hope and direction When I came to Newcastle I barely met any friends When I first in freshers’ week It was probably the worst week of my experience at uni That Sunday I prayed for the first time Not knowing how to pray I had this image in my mind of this scene in Lilo and Stitch Where Lilo was praying next to her bed Umm Praying for a friend And Stitch in a green ball flew down to earth Who was Stitch then?

On the following day On a Monday I went to a movie night But it was cancelled because of the small turnout And it was raining as I was walking back to my accommodation I waited underneath a shelter And a person emerges form the dark And it was Ben And she approached me and asked if I wanted to go to Globe Cafe My first thought was How much are the drinks? Where it is? Was it a bar?

And I don’t know what I was thinking I just went with it So I braced myself Against the strong winds And went down to the venue And when I arrived to the cafe I suddenly felt this warm feeling of everyone weloming and being friendly And before I realised it I had begun chatting to a couple And it led to more and more And at the end of the night I thought this higher being had answered my prayer Just like givign me so many Stitches And that was only the beginning It led me to hallgroup Christian Union and eventually to Cornerstone I still remember vividly The time when I prayed to God to teach me about how to pray And God answered almost immediately As the next week as that Sunday we were talking about how to pray And this happened again when I was trying to asnwer my friend’s question about suffering And it’s incredible to see how God cares and how evident he is in our lives Umm Being a Christian My identity is now not identified by my achievements Or by grades Or praises that I receive from others But my identity is through Christ And being more like him Being a Christian I learned that serving God is a blessing Because he served us first I now know that I have a community of people who actually cares so much Like Shasha and Joseph Nick And Heaton GC Just to name a few because the list is endless I don’t think I’ve ever so felt so loved or cared for in a family of a community of Christ I’m not saying being a Christian is all fluffy candy and easy white clouds A very wise person taught me this Easter That life has many moments when it feels like the end Like a full stop to everything Just like how the disciples felt when Jesus was nailed to a cross Seeing their saviour and king dying But in fact those full stops are actually commas When the sentence continues Despite the hardship such as not being good enough Parents separating Not being enrolled to ideal university Relationship breakup And more These setbacks were then followed by something brighter and greater By what God has planned So when Jesus arose from the dead That was the line that completed the sentence after death

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Do you confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour?

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We baptise you now in the name of The Father The Son And the Holy Spirit.

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Holy Spirit Fill him with the fulness of who you are We bless you in the name of Jesus Christ

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(above) Final drawing of ‘Believer’s Baptism, 1st floor, Bamburgh House’. (below) 3D water model simulation using 3ds Max. Timestamps of person emerging from the water. (below-right) Photographs of the ‘drawing’ (a vitrine, 2D drawing and 3D models)

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CLOSING REFLECTIONS

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s I look back over the last two years, my conception of architecture and architectural practice has taken a radical development. On the course I have been provided the opportunity to investigate my own architectural practice on a critical basis; gaining a deeper awareness of cultural, political, sociological as well as ethical issues that influence architecture. My knowledge of architectural history and theory has vastly expanded, of which, Henri Lefebvre’s critique of space as a social product and the vitality of the everyday, Aldo van Eyck’s idea of twinphenomena and the in-between, Adolf Loo’s critique of materials and use, and Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language will have lasting impact on my architectural practice.

Something I did not anticipate aupon arriving at Newcastle, has been the development of a critical stance on architectural representation. I believe I have developed a much wider attitude towards architectural representation than I did previously, viewing it as a reflective and generative activity. Viewing architectural drawing (modelling) as a mode of production, as disegno, has been paramount to this, and has enabled me to work through projects in an experimental manner with optimism and purpose. The thesis’ engagement with architectural representation has been most productive in developing new methods, as well as at a basic level to enjoy a greater appreciation of the direct relevance of the arts.

These have been crucial in gaining a deeper grasp of an approach that relates directly to the everyday and its potency as the site for the in-between; a place for radical transformation and “built homecoming”. I would like to build on this in my future practice as an architect, and fundamentally, perhaps a way of living. And it is in relation to this that I found the accumulation of my experience on the MArch course personally fulfilling. As a human who believes in the immediacy of God’s presence among mankind, the direct relevance of my faith with my architectural practice could not be underplayed. Engaging my faith in an explicit way in my thesis project was especially exciting and meaningful for me, which I hope will generate a wider conversation about notions of sacrality in architecture. A direct, constructive dialogue between architecture and theology is yet to take place.

In closing, the next steps towards qualifying as an architect will continue.

However, I imagine that my choices will be significantly shaped by my experiences here.

after

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Selected Bibliography Holy Bible. English Standard Version.

Ashby, C., Gronberg, T., Shaw-Miller, S. (2015) The Viennese Cafe and Fin-de-siecle Culture. New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books.

Augé, M. (1995) Non-Places : Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity London: Verso.

Aureli, P.V. (2016) Rituals and Walls: The Architecture of Sacred Space. London: AA Publications.

Biddle, M. (1999) The Tomb of Christ. Stroud: Sutton Publishing.

Bollas, C. (2000) Architecture and the Unconscious. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 9, 28-42.

Bollas, C. (1987) The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Known. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 13-29.

Berleant, A. (2003) ‘The aesthetic in place.’ in Menin, S. (ed.) Constructing Place: Mind and Matter. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 41-54.

Buber, M. (1947) Between Man and Man. Translated by Gregor-Smith, R. London: Routledge. [Accessed January 15 2018].

Buber, M. (1959) I and Thou. 2d ed. Edinburgh : T. & T. Clark.

Caputo, J.D. (2007) What would Jesus deconstruct? The Good News of Postmodernity for the Church. The church and postemodern culture). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Acedemic.

Certeau, M. (1988) The practice of everyday life. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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