Six on Four: IE University Architecture - Culture and Theory V - 2011: Pt. 1

Six on Four Marina Carretero Beatriz Fernández Gómez Ana González Granja Fernando Jiménez Salmerón Candela Oliva Varier Blanca Pérez González Edited by David Goodman

Selected Texts from Culture and Theory V IE University - Bachelor of Architecture Program Prof. David Goodman 2011

Six on Four Selected Texts from Culture and Theory V IE University School of Architecture and Design Prof. David Goodman

Six on Four Selected Texts from Culture and Theory V IE University School of Architecture and Design Prof. David Goodman 2011

Marina Carretero Beatriz Fernández Gómez Ana González Granja Fernando Jiménez Salmerón Candela Oliva Varier Blanca Pérez González

FOREWORD The texts in this volume are the result of may weeks of hard work by students and faculty alike. The work illustrates the results of an ongoing experiment in how to teach history, and how to infuse it with the energy and sensibilities of studio design teaching.

I´d hoped to introduce students to several of the key questions facing the architect today, presenting key texts related to these issues, and placing them in context with pairings of contemporary and historical examples. In this way, the idea was to afford the student a solid base in these fundamental texts and case studies, but we can also make the case quite directly that these historical examples are directly related to problems and questions that they will face in practice and that are intimately related to any kind of contemporary cultural production, no matter the medium. The idea is to create a living, applied history by showing how the meanings of objects themselves are contestable, malleable, etc.

But there is also a secondary goal. The course was also a study in argumentation, rhetoric, and information design. It was my hope to make this a design course in a certain way. As you will see in what follows, students advanced their arguments with concise, focused writing, but also through drawings, graphics, collages, etc.

What you see here, then, is the collected effort to grapple with a few key questions. The dedication of the students included here makes this series of essays much more than a mere collection of opinion pieces, or essays on given topics. What we have here are explorations and questions. They are openings and provocations, not conclusions.

David Goodman Director of Undergraduate Studies in Architecture IE University

Marina Carretero

Chapter 1: Architecting Life/Living Architecture Chapter 2: Creating Language from Geometry: A Review of Alberti and Eisenman Chapter 3: The Question of Nature: Architecture Between Order and Messiness Chapter 4: Dubai: Between the Real and the Artifical

Chapter 1

//

architecting LIFE

living ARCHITECTURE Marina Carretero

Nowadays we live in a world of mess, movement, commuting. We do our best to achieve what we have always wanted. We dream about something, fight for it and hope that someday that dream comes true. As I said, it is all about a dream. This is something similar to what we understand today as “myth�, fake although based on reality and decorated with fantasy. From the point of view of each person most lives end up becoming a myth. We use to dream with something better to what we have, and -in best cases – we hope that dream will become true. We hope all these dreams sometime stop being so, and start being our real lives.

Marina Carretero

That is what this ad suggest. At first glance it is only a car with a background of a building in a day that is about to end.

But that is only the signifier, obviously the thing goes further.

It is an advertisement for a car, in which we see more than a car and a building. We can see that the car is not a simple car that by chance has been pictured, but a high-end one. The building is not a random building either, but an international airport.

This picture expresses somehow the reality that we have been talking about: the movement and commuting people are getting used to nowadays.

Architecting LIFE/ living ARCHITECTURE | Chapter 1

Barthes Myth Diagram

Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao

1. Signifier: -Image of a building.

2. Signified: Something that people inhabit

1. Signifier: -Image of a building.

2. Signified: Something that people inhabit

Mirador, Sanchinarro, Madrid

Marina Carretero

Bilbao World design Capital

Architecture as a symbol.Marketing of cities

Architecture as a symbol.Marketing of cities: WORKING??

Sanchinarro bird eye view

All this, and the meaning it has beneath it, is what we call the “signified”. This signified has different levels of meanings, from what is a car or an airport itself, to what the car company wanted to express with this advertisement. Somehow they are trying to attract costumers selling what they believe the client´s life is based on. There is not a common building as a background of the image, but a modern one. It serves not only to sell this car, but also to sell the city in which it is located. The airport expresses the way of life that the car company wants to sell: a lifestyle based on commuting, business capitalism and globalization.

Modern and high-tech buildings mean more than functionality and sustainability. They have a second connotation behind them which is marketing (the way to sell them, or the city they are representing). Nowadays politicians commission big architects not to design a common building that covers all the functions needed, but to sell a city, or even a country, with a building. We can see for example the Guggenheim Museum (signifier) in Bilbao by Frank Gehry, which has converted the city of industry into the city of contemporary architecture and culture. Bilbao is not anymore one of the most industrial cities of Spain. Bilbao nowadays is the Guggenheim, and the meaning implicit in it is the signified of this whole myth. The Guggenheim is not just a modern building. It means modernity, culture, and life. Through the media, the Guggenheim has become the reference point of Bilbao. Through marketing it has become in one of the cities worth visiting in Spain. Years ago, the myth of Bilbao, had a different signified. It meant a dirty seaside, cranes and containers. That was what we saw when we thought about Bilbao. Now because of the Guggenheim and the media and marketing surrounding it, we understand something different about Bilbao. Now we see clean squares, art and modern architecture.

From this point, politicians have believed that with contemporary architecture the problems of a city, or neighborhood can be solved, such as the Mirador, by MVDRV, where politicians in Madrid have invested millions of euros. It is located in one of the new extensions of the capital, Sanchinarro, which from its beginnings until now, has been a ghost neighborhood, a dormitory-city of Madrid that does not work by itself. It is here where this sign or myth of the “new architecture” has its end.

Architecture does not work by itself. It is not something that you “plant” somewhere and wait until people are aware of its existence. The media is needed to make a myth out of buildings and architecture.

As we can see in the previous page diagram, both myths (Bilbao´s and Sanchinarro´s myth) have the same signified at the first level, but if we take them to the second level, both signs are different. They are creating a different language.

Architecting LIFE/ living ARCHITECTURE | Chapter 1

The advertisement, as I have argued, has been thought for people of this new era. They want their clients to think this car is not designed for common people, but for special people, (something that many advertising agencies do). As a high-end car is supposed to, it is directed to people of the upper class, business man, who are used to travel, to commute.

This myth of the high-end car and the high tech airport is nothing but a dream, such as the dream of one´s life. It is nothing but an image for you to imagine who you want to be, who you want to become when you take that car.

While talking about car advertisement, they refer to two different aspects. On one hand, it refers to the car, to all the things that car is capable of doing, or all the different topographies or paths the car can go through. On the other hand, it refers to the buyer, and to what a person can become when buying the car, as in the case of this specific ad.

If the picture was taken in a different atmosphere, in a non “high-class” atmosphere, the meaning (signified) of the advertisement would be completely different, for example, if it was taken in a conflictive neighborhood, the meaning could be like “feel safe wherever you are with this car”, and if it was in a non-asphalted road of a poor country the meaning would end up being of the “first type ads”, type where your car can be anything.

This advertisement is thus seen as a dream, as this kind of myth that we wish can become real, as the development of one´s life, and in this case, this dream becomes true by buying this product. With the monumentality of the building and the signified of an international airport with its atmosphere is created the signifier of the car itself.

+ + Marina Carretero

= =

This is not the first time architecture is linked to the commuting and transportation to express a way of living. In the 19´s, architects of the Modern Movement started theories about this link. Le Corbusier started thinking about the house as a machine, and relating this concept to the car. How did houses needed to change with this revolutionary new vehicle? And what is more important, how was life affected by this change? We can see some pictures from Le Corbusier´s architecture, and how he related his projects to the car, to the machine, but not only to compare both “technologies” and their behavior, but also to manifest how different ways of living become related to something from the outside. The way Le Corbusier thought about his architecture is related to the airport and the advertisement; he designed high-tech buildings for his epoch, related to a society of the machine, of the car.

Nowadays cars are no longer a high technology, but airplanes are. Airplanes and high-tech airports are defining a way of life, such as the car and machine were in Le Corbusier´s time.

Le Corbusier was not taking into account his precise clients nor their hobbies or their specific ways or living, but he was instead relating his projects to a new era, and to a new society. The society of the machine, industry and mass production.

Here it is useful to refer to Alan Colquhoun, and his positions towards historicism.

Le Corbusier was taking into account one precise context, and as Colquhoun explained, making truth as something relative and determined by the context.

Architecting LIFE/ living ARCHITECTURE | Chapter 1

If we analyze his projects, we could affirm that from the plans (from the house), as a signifier we would obtain thesignified as “ways of living”. When Le Corbusier made architecture, he did not design houses as something “beautiful”, but as something to live in. Instead of referring to a specific lifestyle, he designed according to the lifestyle of asociety. In this case the society of the machine, the society of the car. Everything in his plans had repercussions in this lifestyle. Everything was around the space for the car. It is designed as a promenade around the car. This is what we see when talking about Le Corbusier, and so the signified of this myth about the house as a machine. But this is not the only way of making architecture. As said, Le Corbusier did architecture according to a society and not to a specific family or person who would inhabit his designs.

But there are architects that do this, and create architecture from a specific lifestyle. Let’s take in this case the example of Eileen Gray´s E-1027. This architect disagreed completely with the “living machine” of Le Corbusier, and for her, the specific ways of living were what determines architecture. She takes the social context as a background, and focuses into the experience of the user within the architecture, which at the same time, comes by the user way of living. In the case of this precise work, (E1027), Gray designed this house for herself and her husband, and the architecture reflects how they lived. It was a house to experience the architecture at the same time they were experiencing their own lives. It was so until Le Corbusier hunted the house and painted the walls following his own style, and it is in this point where the myth of E1027 was broken.

Here we can see two examples of creating mythical and successful architecture, and both are related to the experience and social context of the user. Architecture is thought as something to be inhabited by people. If while designing this basic concept is taken into account, we could create this myth that involves architecture and lifestyles, and create this language that should always appear while talking about designing architecture. There is no city without citizens, as there is no architecture without users.

Marina Carretero

Although these two architects had different theories and ways of seeing architecture, they both fit in this myth of life. They both –although in different scales- play with the experience. Somehow we could relate this myth to the one of Roland Barthes about the Eiffel Towel. It is about how this symbol is representing the city of Paris or the country of France. It is –as the work of both architects- incorporated with daily life. In all cases it is more than just a building, house or tower, there is something else behind it that is the myth around them.

It is not anymore –in the case of Le Corbusier and Eileen Gray- as Barthes said referring to the Eiffel Tower “an adventure of sight”, but an “adventure of living”, an adventure of experiencing. They are somehow architecting life and living architecture. In the case of Le Corbusier, and the way he creates architecture, he is introducing society, and a specific time into architecture, he would be architecting life in this sense, and reflecting this society´s lifestyle into his works. On the other hand, Eileen Gray is doing the opposite, she is making her inhabitants to live her architecture, and this is possible because she designed her works according to her inhabitants’ lifestyles. They are not forced but enjoying their architecture. They are living architecture.

The same way this myth can be applied to different disciplines, as we saw in the example of the car advertisement, in where the way of living was the first theme to convince the client. In this case architecture was also present, helping to understand one certain way of living.

So, everyone´s life is conditioned by something external that is somehow creating our way of living, and creating the myth of our life. As we have seen this can be extrapolated to architecture aswell. We as arcthitects should have this into account, and try to create the spaces we are responsible of, according to this myth, and not only design by design, but having “something else” behind all that. We need to transform life with architecture, or be able to transform the architecture we already know according to the changes our lifes are experiencing.

As we all know, architecture has changed through history, according to people´s needs, and this cannot stop. Architecture, like the individual, needs to change, to evolve. It is our responsibility, as architects, to make this happen. We cannot let architecture get stucked. We have to architect people´s lives.

Architecting LIFE/ living ARCHITECTURE | Chapter 1

CREATING LANGUAGE FROM GEOMETRY: A Review of Alberti and Eisenman.

Chapter 2

Leon Battista Alberti S. MARIA NOVELLA 1458-1470.

Leon Battista Alberti was a multifaceted figure of the Renaissance. He was mathematician, musician, poet‌ But what especially calls our interest is his theoretical and practical development of arts and architecture. He is known as a disciple of Vitruvius, and following his steps, Alberti wrote the Ten Books on Architecture in which he declared that the most important themes in architecture were Beauty and Ornament. These two concepts will be explained in this essay through one of his most remarkable works, S. Maria Novella.

Marina Carretero

This church is located in one of the most famous cities of Italy, Florence. Alberti was commissioned to finish the façade of this building, which had a Gothic interior and the same style for the already-constructed part of the façade. This façade seems to be separate from the actual church. If we look at the picture, it really seems to be pulled apart from the church.

When Alberti started designing this façade, he had the obstacle of maintaining the existing part of it, such as the basement, the pointed arches above the side doors, the tombs, and the blind arches of the first tier. Despite of all these problems, he was able to maintain the logical relationship between the entire body, and each of its pieces.

From the beginnings of this design, Alberti had something clear, maintaining the rhythm of Gothic and Renaissance styles that would be mixed in the façade of the building. He did not destroy the preexisting façade, but he restored it and added the second tier following a clear harmony between the two epochs.

Creating LANGUAGE from GEOMETRY | Chapter 2

Alberti defended the position of not combining arches and columns, because it was unaesthetic and lacking logic. This theorized idea is materialized in almost all of his works, but also in S. Maria Novella. As we can see in the front entrance, the big arch denotes the main entrance, but instead of resting on columns it is supported by two pilasters. As we can see in the diagram below, next to each pilaster there is a purely ornamental column denoting the axis of the building and continued by the pilasters of the second tier. The preexisting columns on the first floor do not correspond with the new ones on the second tier. Alberti tried to disrupt our attention with the horizontal axis.

Marina Carretero

This façade is also related with Classical buildings, such as the Pantheon in Rome, as we can see in the image above both pediments, Sta Maria Novella and Pantheon, that besides being different, they both share the triangular shape, pointing to god, and the entablature. So, Alberti is not only mixing the Renaissance and the Gothic style, but as a disciple of Classical architecture he is denoting so in this building. This is said because of the entablature above the second tier, in which the name of the client -Romani Rucellai- and the date -1470- are written, and also because of the classical pediment that is “closing” this work in the upper side.

The first and second tiers have a big difference in width, being the second one, half of the first. We can appreciate in the façade, how Alberti was able to solve this problem and maintain the harmony of the work by using scrolls, helping to allow us to understand the building as a usingle entity. This detail solving the width difference will be used by architects following Alberti.

Above all, and denoting the concept of beauty that Alberti introduced in his Ten Books on Architecture, is the geometrical relationship in which the design has been thought. The entire façade can be circumscribed in a square, where the half of its length is forming three different squares in which different parts of the façade are circumscribed. This golden relationship is repeated creating the harmony and beauty of the façade.

Creating LANGUAGE from GEOMETRY | Chapter 2

Alberti was able to create this beautiful work despite all obstacles and mixing his characteristic style and the existing one. Creating an entity between the pilasters, scrolls, and pediment and the circular window, pointed arches and lateral doors already erected in the façade. He was able to create a harmony between the different parts and with those parts referring to the whole piece of art, the façade of S. Maria Novella.

This harmony Alberti was able to create, is part of his speech, it is part of this language he is creating, and that has served us throughout history. We now can appreciate beauty in its full meaning, knowing the complete relationship it has with proportion.

(1)

(2)

Alberti uses the Classical language to create his own architecture.

Throught the basis of Vietruvius, Alberti was able to create this mixture between Gothic and Renaissance architecture. In these images (1), (2) and (3) we can see how Alberti took care about this part of the Classical language, proportion. Everything fits perfectly in this square, but as we have seen, there are some things that do not correspond with Alberti´s new design. But this does not seem to be a problem for him. Eventhough the new upper tier does not match with the lower columns, he tries to deceive our eye, in order for his language (act of speech) not to be disturbed, and he is able to do it. We perceive this work as a single piece. He uses all these techniques and materials

(colored marble) to unify the two period´s façades into a beautiful and proportioned sigle work of architecture.

Alberti is talking about the classical orders, about perfection and beauty as something that is part of architecture. For him, there is no architecture without proportion, and there cannot be non beautiful architecure.

Marina Carretero

The Classical language is something that has been there for centuries, and it has some rules that we are still using today. The proportion between human body, different floors, façades. It is something implicit in architecture. Nowadays things have changed. If we take a look to Vitruvius´ On Architecture, we realize that, from the 6 principles he uses to describe architecture (Order, Arrangement, Eurythmy, Symmetry, Propriety and Economy), which are creating his own language, we have lost most of them in our way through history. Is this related with the first chapter, and the way our lives have changed architecture and the way we think?

(3)

Creating LANGUAGE from GEOMETRY | Chapter 2

Peter Eisenman -NUNOTANI HEADQUARTERS 1989-1992.

-HOUSE VI It is worth to comparing the work of Alberti with the work of one of the best well known contemporary architects, Peter Eisenman, and the differences between them, talking about language in architecture.

On one hand, Alberti used his theories as described in the Ten Books on Architecture, based on Vitruvius, and according to that, following classicism.

He studied beauty in architecture, which from his point of view was related with proportion and geometry and supported by ornament.

On the other hand, Eisenman introduces in his designs something that goes further, and that can be opposed to Alberti´s work. Eisenman works with contexts, and according to the time he is living, and he introduces this into his designs. As Alberti was taking into account to keep the harmony in the whole work, Eisenman tries to keep an order as well, but this time is not about the geometrical order, but about breaking geometries to achieve the order in different levels.

Eisenman in his essay Inside-out declares that architecture has been repressed all along history, he argues that architecture has suffered of “unconscious repressions” from the very beginning of its existence. So we could define Eisenman as an “activist of architecture”.

Marina Carretero

In all his projects he is fighting against this repression and trying to avoid it. He is no longer centered so much in the form or the function of his buildings. his works go further than that. The function of his buildings is not related with what is happening inside, the program of them, but as in the case of Nunotani, the function is related with the context. The building is expressing what is happening in the surroundings. . He is making people, architects, users and citizens, analyze his works and to think about what he is declaring.

He always starts his designs with simple thoughts, simple in the sense they remind us about the fixed language of architecture, and it is from that point he starts to create his own speech, to communicate something diffrent. while designing in two dimensions he starts with a simple grid, and goes to a different level, a level where this repression is no longer present. While Alberti tried to optimize the square and compose his design with a golden relationship, Eisenman tries to do the opposite. When he works with cubes we can no longer read a cube itself, but the “deconstruction” of it. He does not just break those grids or those cubes, but rather he modifies them in such a way that everybody can read what he is doing. There is always time and space to criticize and to discover the language of Eisenman. It is interiority, which he tries to explain in his essay “Inside Out”. Eisenman makes a new “dictionary” for architecture, a new way or reading architecture. It is a new language that has different meanings.

Creating LANGUAGE from GEOMETRY | Chapter 2

Alberti´s Golden Proportion of S. Maria Novella.

Marina Carretero

Nunotani Headquarters Building, Peter Eisenman.

Creating LANGUAGE from GEOMETRY | Chapter 2

As the firm describes their work, Eisenman does not just focus on the “obvious contexts and programs of a building. Rather than pursuing a particular building type, Eisenman Architects specializes in a particular problem type: projects with difficult sitting, programmatic and /or budgetary constraints, and of strategic importance to their environment”. Taking all this into account he tries to exteriorize his feelings and thoughts about architecture in his buildings, just as the artist does in his works.

All this theory about Eisenman work can be studied through one of his works, the Nunotani Headquarters Building, in Tokyo, Japan.

Eisenman tries to talk about several issues with this building. The most obvious from my point of view, is the fact of the location of the building and its implications. Japan is one of the countries with the highest risk of earthquakes. From the formalist point of view of this act of speech Eisenman creates, this building is creating a simulation of the movement of the tectonic plates. The building seems already devastated by an avent of these characteristics. It is a movement in history what Eisenman is doing in here.

He is not waiting for an earthquake to destroy his building, but it is the building who is “playing” with it. Eisenman is declaring something obvious with this building, something that everybody understands and is conscious of, and that from now on can be also read in an architectural work.

Marina Carretero

This reading is possible, because Eisenman works with a presetted language of architecture that most everybody is aware of. Looking at the image below, this language is created by the horizontal slabs and round columns that can be read in between this devastated façade Eisenman uses to create an act of speech.

Another different reading of this building is the difference between itself and the surrounding office buildings in the city of Tokyo. They are normally high dense and tall buildings, with strong structure, giving the obvious reading of power. In this case Eisenman is doing the opposite. He is creating a building that is no longer high or thing, but the opposite. This building is vertically compressed and giving an image, in Eisenman´s words “between erect and flaccid”.

In sum, Eisenman ends up with with the already exploted language of repressions, and he starts a new one, with no social or historical restrictions, just designing inside out. From his represions and feelings to the design.

Creating LANGUAGE from GEOMETRY | Chapter 2

Another example from Eisenman´s work will be the one which diagrams are shown in the right page, House VI. In this house we can see the different phases that the project has passed through. From the first image to the last one, we can see the evolution of the project. It is easy to understand how the design ends up being what it is, not because of the diagrams, but because od how Eisenman took the preexisting language of architecture, and modified it.

One can see this evolution, from the very begining where he takes a square and four orthogonal lines. From this point, which is a predefined language easy to understand from any point of view, and through different operations, Eisenman is able to create his own act of speech. It would be difficult to understand it if this predefined language were not there.

From the basic cube, the architect starts to develop the basics of deconstructivism through this project, where a series of orthogonal lines and cubes seem to overlap and work together in order to achieve this new speech, to tell us something different about architecture, but always related to the preexisting language of it. Through these specific movements and operations, Eisenman achives his goal of designing new spaces that tell a new story.

Marina Carretero

Eisenman´s Diagrams for House VI. Creating LANGUAGE from GEOMETRY | Chapter 2

In both examples (Alberti and Eisenman´s) we have seen how language in architecture can be developed. In these two works, architectural language is a main tool to create new speeches and to express the meaning of architecture.

I believe that in architecture there is always implicit this language, in one or another way. Each architectural work should be thought not only as something that needs to be built but as something that needs to express something, that is this act of speech that each architect should create along his/her career.

This “concept� from where we start designing should, at the end of the project, be expressed in the building. Architecture should transmit something.

It can be more or less obvious, but if we start to analyze it, it should mean something and it should have a language. I see architecture as I see other kind of arts such as painting or music. A painter always expresses something in his works. As in architecture, it can be read by anyone easily, or maybe the only one with the answer is the painter himself, but we all know that there is some reason why he painted that image, and how he did it. Alberti expressed the meaning of geometry, and he created his own language trying to mix two different styles in one building. He resolved several problems that this implied and created something else that was taken by the architects following him.

There are several ways to read S. Maria Novella´s façade, but is easy to recognize the presence of geometry, and how the author created a new language from it. Same thing happens in Eisenman´s work. He is again creating a language but, as we have seen, different from the language of Alberti.

There is an already set language for architecture, but each designer is capable of creating his own act of speech according and related to this language.

Eisenman´s buildings can be recognized by anyone while looking at them.

They express something that the rest of buildings do not express. Eisenman, as we have seen before is creating this act of speech from himself. It is his own language. He has created his own architecture.

So in this essay we have seen how from the Renaissance to Deconstruction, architecture has an implicit language. It expresses an identity for each building. From my point of view every single piece of architecture should have a “personal speech”, should express something to be a real architectural work. The role of language is one part of architecture, as it is drawing or the construction process. Language and acts of speech have to be there to create successful architecture, meaning that we all have to be able to understand a shared language in order to recognize the individuality of the new speech act.

Creating LANGUAGE from GEOMETRY | Chapter 2

THE QUESTION OF NATURE: Architecture Between Order and Messiness

Chapter 3

From ancient times, Nature has long been known as a reference point for many disciplines, and architecture is one of them. Architecture emerged out of the need to shelter the human being. As Vitruvius analyzes in his second book of “On Architecture” men passed from living isolated in caves, to creating their own architecture as a way of sheltering and gathering. But from its beginnings, architecture has been in conflict with nature. This conflict comes from the different points of view that nature gives us. Nature can be understood as something merely pure, describing the basics of the purity the classical orders, but it also can be understood as the opposite, the organic, impurity and messiness.

If nature is analyzed from a theoretical point of view, such as physics or mathematics, it arrives at the classical orders or platonic geometries. Something that we can see in Mies van der Rohe´s architecture, for instance, where the use of platonic elements, axes, symmetry and proportion is constantly present. In this case, he follows the principles of Vitruvius, where all these small things make good architecture. He explains the classical buildings from the figure of a man (Vitruvian man), and in turn, from nature. He adopts these human proportions as the basics of the classical orders.

On the other hand, nature can be perceived as something impure, something that comes from a process, something imperfectly proportioned.

We can see these kind of thoughts reflected in parametric architecture, or organic architecture. While referring to organic architecture, we can cite Gaudi´s work as an example. He is not using the orthogonal pure forms or the symmetry axes described in classical times. But besides that, he as nowadays architects using parametric architecture, is using architecture as a reference but from a different perspective, keeping the pure geometries, such as parabola, hyperbolic paraboloid, and rotated hyperbola, but erasing the orthogonality and proportion of Classical Orders.

At the same time, there is something else about nature intrinsic in architecture, and it is the fact of the “naturalness of architecture” itself.

Marina Carretero

Is architecture something natural? Besides being inspired by natural elements architecture has not always been a natural process, in fact, most of the time it has been artificial, created by men. Architecture can exist in nature as something that is part of it, as something natural, but would that be architecture as we see it now? Architecture is a science, and an art. This means that it is done by men and it is therefore artificial. As we said before it began from the wish of men to gather and to provide shelter. It started from a necessity, and it has become an art. Early man, in needing architecture, was not conscious about it, he was creating architecture without knowing it, and it is what we consider today architecture without architects. That architecture was part of a process, an evolution, and it was changing according to the necessities of the users, who were architects of their times. Nowadays we can analyze that architecture and create our conclusions, such as what Laugier and Viollet le Duc did with their visions of the “primitive hut”. Here we can see that difference between the two types of “natural architecture”. On one hand, the “primitive hut” that Laugier is referring is obviously related to Vitruvian ideas of classical order and proportion, while Viollet le Duc, one century later, referred to the opposite with his primitive hut, making a Gothic point of view.

Primitive Hut, Laugier

Primitive Hut, Viollet Le Duc

The Question of NATURE| Chapter 3

So in this reflexion, architecture itself can never be something natural.

We are talking about nature in a science, and of course there are many natural concepts that relate to architecture, but we have to be aware that architecture has always been something artificial. It can be designed from natural materials, from a more or less pure point of view, it can be organic, but above all architecture is a science, it manipulates nature, it is artificial, created by men.

We can argue therefore that science and artificiallity, (in this precise context) can be synonymous.

As we have seen so far, architecture can refer to nature in different ways, where it always has something natural implicit. It can be part of an evolution, following forces over time and a natural process, or it can be part of the natural order. From here we extract two main concepts, purity as order (ideal) and purity as vitality (informed).

As described before, in the case of Vitruvius, he was taking purity as order, he was part of the ideal, reflecting all these in his writings “On Architecture” he makes proportion, symmetry, economy, and order something completely inside architecture. From that point is from where all designs should be started and finished with those concepts. Architecture has to show that in order to reflect beauty, to refer order. In the image below we can see “architecture”/shelter in the most pure sense of nature, therefore informed.

Marina Carretero

Tension between nature as purity (Vetruvian man) and impure nature (parametric architecture).

The TheQuestion Questionof ofNATURE NATURE|| Chapter 3

Marina Carretero

Although most architects refer to one or another point of view, Sullivan is an example of both, ideal and informed. While his intentions are merely pure, his projects are informed. In “Kindergaten Chats” he explains the problems he faced during the development of the skyscraper. It comes –he says- “from the process analogous to the evolution of the solution, […] the essence of every problem suggests its own solution”. He used the statement “form follows function” but not in a functional way but in a suprafunctionalist manner. He wanted to do a tall building and for that reason the building had to express the fact that it IS tall. It expresses the essence of the building.

In this kind of argument one can also detect ideas of contingency that seems to be inevitable and permanent, because, despite being a tall building it could express something else, or focus in the mere functionalist part of architecture, instead of express so hardly the height of the building. He solves the problem also creating a law for tall buildings, a solution that is going to be the same for all tall buildings, an ideal solution. In this example, the truth is extrinsic to the object, it means, it gives importance to the process and not to the object itself. This process that has to do with the problem solved. This system that Sullivan creates is working “as is has to work” there is no other truth, and the is no other possibility. He is giving a solution for his era that solves all the problems they had.

The Question of NATURE| Chapter 3

On the other hand, and opposite to Vitruvius we can find contemporary architects working with parametric architecture. This is a completely new concept. New technologies have made this new architecture possible. It uses mathematical algorithms to create architecture, and these algorithms that, as most of mathematics basics, are related to nature. They have a mathematical foundation beneath them even though the final result will be normally informed. We can see examples of this parametric architecture in the work of Iwamoto Scott Architects. They work “through a speculative form-finding”.

There is not a concept for each project, were a relationship between site, function and form is missing. They project architecture as an experiment. The truth in this case will be intrinsic to each work, although it keeps a relationship with the process between nature and the algorithm that creates architecture. The final result of the project will reflect a “cool image” that has nothing to do with what is happening inside or around the building, but that is in all senses related to nature.

In this essay different possibilities to implement nature into architecture have been discussed, and all of them are valid, it is the architect who has to decide in with parameters wants to focus, what does he want to communicate with his building (if there is something to communicate), but from my point of view architecture has to communicate something, each building must express something, architecture is about creating spaces to inhabit, to be occupied by people, and for that reason it needs to keep in touch with its surroundings, program, and budget. These three things, among others create arcchitecture, natural, in the sense that it is created for and to people. It is for that reason that has to take into account all the daily life issues that people is constrained and worried for nowadays. Probably, this state will be different in a near future, when all this issues will be different, as they were in the past, where one of the main issues was to express power through proportion, scale and symmetries, that for them were representing human being.

Marina Carretero

The Question of NATURE| Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Dubai has experienced a tremendous growth over the last 30 years. It started with the oil industry, but today oil only accounts for 6% of its total revenues. The rest is built on tourism and business. From the 1970´s until 2008 Dubai was growing unconsciously, creating new buildings, hotels, luxury apartments, etc. The discovery of oil in the area of the Emirates made this possible.

Dubai became a theme park city until today when nobody wants to miss the opportunity to enjoy that theme park, which has made Dubai one of the greatest tourist destinations. Nowadays the city is no longer about oil, but about what the world is expecting.

The world economic crisis has made Dubai step back in its growth and rethink its expansion. Today Dubai is a city in the middle of the desert with extreme temperatures and some skyscrapers in the seaside. Something like this is what the developers planned for Dubai, the only change is that every single building in Dubai has something else.

Aereal Image of Dubai, 1950

Marina Carretero

In the urban plan for Dubai a city that has passed from being a port city of 40,000 inhabitants in 1970, to a global city of almost 2,000,000 inhabitants in 2011. It has become a city in which each building has to be the best in one or another way. This urban planning competes with the existing city of Dubai, the city of the 1950´s. It was a typical Arab city, with mixed uses, working classes and majority of local inhabitants.

The new urban development has become encouraged the opposite.

Today Dubai is a fake city, the city of consumption and show. In Dubai, the one that seems to be the best wins and this of course is related to money, the best car, the best clothes. But all of this comes from what we have seen before, it comes from the people in charge of the city. The urban planning of the city is nothing but artificial, it is creating a new society that has nothing to do with the society that used to live Dubai as it was. It is a Guinness Book of World Records city. It appeals to the image, to the picture of the city and to its meaning

Aereal Image of Dubai´s urban plan.

The Question of the ARTIFICIAL | Chapter 4

There are several examples of this, such as the the highest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa building, with 890m high, or the most luxury hotel the Burj Al Arab, with 7 stars, or the biggest indoor ski center, the biggest aquarium… Everything in Dubai ends with –st. They are creating a city for –st people from scratch, and above all, arguing the sustainability in all their construction development. How can a fake island be sustainable? How can the construction of a 890m high building –in the middle of the desertbe sustainable?

But the real question is: What is behind all that big façade? People from the rest of the world are destined to Dubai by their companies in exchange of lots of money. The truth is that these people after a couple of years begin to feel the pressure of the city, to live it and they start to notice the “behind the scenes” part of the city.

Tenis court at Burj Al Arab building, 7* Hotel

Marina Carretero

Burj Khalifa, 828m high building

All that theme-park architecture has an end. And it is not only denoted by the geographical issues but also by other trends that go further than that.

In the end, the palm islands are nothing but concrete filling the sea, and the Burj Khalifa a mega-structure designed to catch the attention of potential tourists all around the world. From our point of view, all those things may be interesting, but what happens inside all that?

There are three main types of inhabitants living the daily life of Dubai: locals, expatriates, and construction workers. Between the first two and the third, there is a big difference, not only socially but also geographically. While the rest of the people live in “the heart” of Dubai, construction workers from India and other poor neighboring countries live in the “dark side”. This part of the city is nothing but the preexisting city. Nowadays it has become the shadow of the city. Working camps and markets are “built” in this part of the city, where people come from their countries to work in very poor conditions.

Comparison between old and new Dubai.

The Question of the ARTIFICIAL | Chapter 4

On the other side, the “new city” is inhabited by locals and other foreign people focused on their business. The distinction here is not about money, or bad conditions, but about mixture of cultures and laws. While local people are having all the rights possible in their country, foreign people have nothing. There is a continuous fight between these two parts of Dubai´s inhabitants. Locals are proud of having reached that point, while foreign people starts to get annoyed by the artificiality of the city. I would describe this point with Koolhaas´s words, while talking about Junkspace: “is like being condemned to a perpetual Jacuzzi with millions of your best friends”. It can be nice at first, but you cannot stay there forever. There is a point where the Jacuzzi stops being something amazing and relaxing and starts to be something annoying and dirty. The same happens with luxury in Dubai. It is somehow like being in the Cavern once you know that the objects are nothing but shadows. It is an artificial reality in where –knowing the real life- it is impossible to stay.

It is interesting to observe Dubai´s change over the last 50 years, and get to know the different modes of artificiality they have used. Today is still present the “old” city we talked about before, and the difference is huge.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...

Dubai is a pathetic excuse for a "develop-

you bunch of losers, instead of thanking god that you

ing country"; it takes two steps forward

are living in our land you post those silly comments and

and one step back!!! Dsicrimination is at

stories, please guys get a life and use your brains for

its peak here along with the lastest

once in your life. We got the cash and you got to work

development of disregard for expatriate

otherwise get the hell out of Dubai and go back to your

labor rights.

country and start begging you rotten creatures. You

3:37 AM

people could've been homeless without Dubai. Dubai made you. Dubai fed you. Dubai made you look like

Blog Debate between locals and expatriates

Marina Carretero

humans.

11:48 PM

Today the “old” city we duscussed before is still present, and the difference is huge. It is interesting to observe Dubai´s change over the last 50 years, and get to know the different modes of artificiality they have used. Today is still present the “old” city we talked about before, and the difference is huge.

We could say that through a generative mode of artificiality, they have generated what we know today as Dubai. They have created something completely new for the rest of the world. The entire city has become a monument that everybody would like to experience, but hard to live. Fake environments and buildings create this parade in the middle of the desert.

To sum up, I will finish with two questions from Koolhass´ “Theory of Bigness” applied to the urban plan and city of Dubai: “Is it what you see what you finally get?

Is Dubai´s impact independent to its quality?”

For the first question the asnwer will be NO. as we have seen so far, Dubai is a city made for the rest of the world, for the opinion of different people, and to attract tourists and workers all around the world. But the truth is that when these working people are there, they enjoy it the first months, but what happens next?

People start getting bored of all that showness and pretendings of the city of Dubai, that ends up not being a city, but a theme park. Could anyone imagine to live in a theme park? It is impossible because it is not a city, but an accumulation of shows and parades, that at some point people end bored of all that.

For the second question the answer is YES, the impact is completely independent to the quality of Dubai´s city.

Besides having invested a huge amount of billions in those buildings, the question now will be: what will be left after 100 years? From my point of view it will be the old Dubai, the real city.

The Question of the ARTIFICIAL | Chapter 4

Beatriz Fern谩ndez G贸mez

Chapter 1: Space as a Myth: Myth in the Media Chapter 2: Behind the Image Chapter 3: Nature and Beauty Through Time Chapter 4: Where is Artificality

SPACE AS A MYTH myth in the media

Myths are found anywhere. e best places Th for finding them are all kinds of advertisements because people pay attention to them although they are not conscious about that. Th is essay is an explanation of architectural myth fi ltered in media: an IKEA billboard. It is simple and it uses just a room and the logo of the company. Th e most important point of the image is to transmit the idea of something that people already know.

The image is a modified version of a very famous painting by Vincent van Gogh: Bedroom in Arles (1888). Th is adaptation of the painting shows an empty room with a window, two doors and a hook with some kind of clothes on it.

The myth for this advertisement is the use of something that people already known (the original painting) and change it in order to get the feeling that something is missing in the room. What will people miss in the room? Th e furniture. This idea is reinforced because of the use of the painting as itself and not just a modern copy of it (as could happen with a photography). The goal of the advertisement is to look for the chairs, the bed in the right side of the room and the paintings and images in the walls.

Photo of real room that Vincent van Gogh used for inspiration

As it could be appreciated, the bedroom is filled up in a very ‘homely’ way. The bed is not well made, there are a lot of things spread on the table, it is decorated with some paintings, there are clothes hanging from the walls‌ Th is is the idea that IKEA wants to emphasize with the advertisement. People will see the empty picture in the same way as they can see their just-bought house: empty and with a lot of possibilities.

IKEA, as one of the most powerful companies nowadays, is dedicated to sell products to fill up this emptiness in the room with its own designed ready-to-assemble furniture.

People’s imagination can decide if they prefer to decorate their house as in the painting or another way, but always having in mind this idea of home created by the advertisement.

The original composition is composed by different elements that are common in the houses in the XIX century and nowadays (like a bed, chairs and a tables) and, as they are so common and not tied to any particular time, you can imagine them in your house too.

Original painting

Bedroom in Arles is a representation of Van Gogh’s room in Bouches-du-Rhône.

There are three versions of the painting, each one smaller than the previous one. This creates, with the IKEA advertisement a sequence of the same bedroom that people tries to figure out how it ends.

IKEA wants people to understand where they live in the same way as Van Gogh understood it in his time. Th e company gives you the chance to decorate your own bedroom and create this new “Bedroom in ‘your house’� just by giving you the chance to choose the furniture and the decoration you prefer for your empty space.

The original paintings consist in a series of three pictures, the three of them representing the same space: his room in Arles.

The first, 72 x 90 cm, was released in September 1888 and suffered a severe deterioration in a fl ood that occurred during his hospital stay in Arles. It is currently located in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

The second one, in equal measure, is preserved at the Art Institute of Chicago.

The third version is smaller than the previous ones 57.5 x74 cm and it was done as a copy of the fi rst one, sent to a Dutch family. This work is found here in the Orsay Museum.

The three pictures are well described in Van Gogh’s letters and are distinguishable by the pictures on the wall on the right. In a first there are two portraits of his friends Eugne Bosch and Paul-Eugène Milliet. Th is version was deteriorated and Van Gogh sent to his brother a “repetitionâ€? maintaining the same technical features but with some variations. And in the third version he did “a reductionâ€?, a copy in a smaller scale.

From the analysis of the last picture, even more than many of his self-portraits, Vincent’s Bedroom in Arles invites us into the intimate dimension of the artist’s private space.

Van Gogh furnished his room with simplicity, like a monastic bedroom. For him, the bedroom is a haven of peace. It shows the contrast between the his peacefull home with his messy interior life. However, the spatial representation shows a slight defect in perspective that gives an impression of imbalance: the head of the bed is not orthogonal to the wall.

The floor is not straight.

Those images create a new fact in the history of painting, the strange perspective from which Van Gogh shows the objects in the picture: the foot of the bed are shown from below, while the chair, pillow or table are seen from above. Th is personal conception and unique use of color gives this work a symbolic content so characteristic of the style of Van Gogh. Sure of himself, the painter has been included in the scene through the picture with his portrait on the wall.

In his work, Van Gogh leaves behind texture and traditional forms. This creates a flat surface so clearly inspired by Eastern European tradition mixed with Japanese simplification that he liked so much. To define the objects used thick lines, dark, thereby achieving a higher volumetric effect. Forms are profiled. The artist returns to drawing and expression through color and drawing. The outlines are hard and angular. The brushwork is extremely thick, short and strong (sometimes Van Gogh applied paint directly from the tube without mixing colors)

“This time it is just my bedroom, therefore, only the color should do everything ... to suggest rest or sleep in general.

In short, the vision of the table should head to rest, or rather, imagination ... the square of the furniture must express the rest still. “ Letter from Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo

Van Gogh description talked about colors, shapes and atmospheres: “the walls, pale lilac, red soil of a worn-off, chairs and yellow bed, pillow and blanket of a very pale lime green, blood red blanket, toilet table orange , the basin blue and green window. “ This work is clearly influenced by Japanese prints and also said so in his letters: “The Japanese have lived in very simple interiors.�

What Van Gogh wanted to achieve while painting this picture is the emotion it arouses in the viewer. The use of the color as a means of expression, but a symbolic color, which will influence the Fauves and at the same time it will be an essential reference in expressionist art.The room is trapezoidal in shape with the back wall where the window stands a door on the right (which is accessed by the staircase that rises to the top floor). The left door gives access to the guest room. Is the room prepared for Gauguin. As accommodation it is modest, with rustic furniture made of pine: a bed, a rack, two chairs, a wooden table in the corner and some pictures on the walls. Van Gogh enhances color depth, replacing the white color of the walls by a light blue, orange and yellow complementary predominant object.

When you see IKEA’s ad, you can recognize most of these things in the image. Th e colors of the walls, the shape of the room... you can imagine yourself in the picture, inside the room. More than that, you can feel at home because of the disposition of things on the top of the table, the bed now made, the irregular arragement of the furniture‌ all those things, so common in every house, are not usually represented in pictures. When you see the empty room, as in the add, you imagine immediately the rest of the furniture, although they are not exactly as in the original, but you know the disposition of which pieces are in each part of the room. Images of the real room (pg. 4) confirm how did it looks like and confirm each one’s mental image of how it is.

The reiterative use of famous paintings occurred since those objects became important for society. Who would not like to have his own Van Gogh painting in his house? Th e reality was that any of those artist were criticized during their entire life and now are the best clear way of look like an important person.

Van Gogh’s lifetime was hard.

He was born in Groot-Zundert, Netherlands in 1853 and he was the eldest of six children of a Protestant pastor. His relationship with his brother, Theo, would be decisive in his life and carrer. Th e correspondence they exchanged over a lifetime is a testament to the strength of their relationship.

Van Gogh moved to London in 1873 highlighting the beginning of the fi rst creative stage. After a love rejection, he became lonely, until in 1878 he was driven by the need to surrender to their peers.

By 1880 he found in painting his passion, considering it as a way to comfort the entire humanity. His rapid evolution and knowledge of the Impressionists led him to leave formal education and to meet with Theo in Paris in 1876. His brother introduced him to Pissarro, Seurat and Gauguin. His palette became colorful, less traditional, shaping his personal vision of postimpressionism. His interest in capturing color and nature led him to move to Arles, where his work was progressively more clearly expressing his feelings about what is represented and his own mental state.

The fi rst mental crisis he had, in which he cut off part of his left ear, took place at Christmas in 1888. In April the following year, fearing to lose his ability to work, asked to be admitted to the psychiatric hospital in SaintRemy-de-Provence where he remained twelve months. After suffering several attacks and the impossibility to go outside to paint, made works related to the hospital, medical portraits and reinterpretations of works by Rembrandt, Delacroix and Millet.

The loss of contact with reality and a progressive sense of sadness are the keys to this period that Van Gogh developed a style based on dynamic forms and strong use of line, which was a most daring and visionary painting that the one of Arles.

Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear

“It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to.... Th e feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.�

How important are brands when buying? What is the difference from one ad to another one? The only difference is how people look at them.

Now, brand it means power, it means money, it means social status, means everything. People don’t pay attention just to the object but also to the references they have from advertisements, from other people.

The most powerfull opportunity for selling is advertisement. You see adds everywhere, you hear things about them, and this creates a need in you: the need of having one of those advertised things you see and you heard about.

IKEA knows how to use this tool. Th ey don’t sell just the producds because, in fact, there is any object in this empty room, but sell you the idea of need, the feeling that you will be so important as a Van Gogh picture just buying the correct furniture to decorate your bedroom.

This is a very powerful tool because it is focused to the kind of people they want to but in their shops: people with culture, the kind of people that, looking at the ad can recognize Van Gogh’s room, the kind of people that, in fact, can figure out how is the rest of the room: where is the bed, where is the table, how many chairs are in the room.

In the end, what people buy is this idea of IKEA’s high-standing people, the ones that already knows everything about Van Gogh, the ones that try to be a new Van Gogh’s by buying standard furniture but placing them in the best way they know how, in the way everyone has to put them. In the end, people want to be this new personality that will be known in the future, the one who everyone copies, the one everyone will want to be.

A name could be the only source need for implant into people this feeling of need.

“To do good work one must eat well, be well housed, have one’s fling from time to time, smoke one’s pipe, and drink one’s coffee in peace.�

Van Gogh’s quote about life

BEHIND THE IMAGE

Florence’s Duomo The Cathedral of S. Maria del Fiore

From the analysis of the complexity of the different views of Fiorence’s Cathedral, one of the most important symbols of Florence we can extract some ideas: The current façade of the cathedral is the second façade of the building. Th e fi rst one, designed by Arnolfo di Cambrio was just half-completed and then demolished in 1587 by the Medicis’ architect, Bernardo Buontalenti, because it did not harmonized with the rest of Renaissance buildings in its surroundings. Th ere was a competition for the new façade, won by Emilo de Fabris. This work toke place in 1876 until 1887 with the construction of a neogothic cathedral in white, pink and green marble conforming an unity with the whole Cathedral, the Campanile and the Baptistery.

Distribution of spaces in the façade

Façade

Th e construction of the three doors wasn’t finished until 1903. Th ey are decorated with scenes from the Virgin’s life. Th ere are some mosaics in the windows over the doors. On the top of the façade, there are some niches, each one devoted to one Apostol; in the center there is another one, a little bit bigger with a Virgin and the Child. The decoration of the front façade is used to understand the whole building: the main spaces are dedicated to the Virgin because the whole building was constructed in her honor.

The composition of the façade is distributed in order to recognize all the characters in the front part of the building according also to the importance of each one of them. Th at happens because during the Reanissance Christianism is trying to be merged with the classical ideas to avoid some of the censorship of the church.

Detail of the façade

The structure is very simple: a main strip in the middle with two small ones by its sides. Th e main one is crowned with a pediment. Pediments were used during the Renaissance, but they came from Greek times, where pediments were commonly used in the construction of temples, reinforcing in this way the temple as a symbol of power. Usually, the triangle that forms the pediment has a proportions also relaed to the golden ratio, which contributes to reinforce the idea of power just by the beauty that it emanates. Th e different offsets of those triangles were used to reinforce the idea of the power of the building.

Dome

Lantern

The most important part of the Cathedral, even more than the faรงade, is the dome, which represents the starting point of Renaissance architecture.

The project develped by Filippo Brunelleschi in 1418 gives the Cathedral with an interior height of 100m which provides the city its main richness and power symbol during its history.

Brunelleschi’s design was choosen in a competition because his idea was conceived to be made without formwork, which could be considered reckless because of the nonexistence of a single building made without formwork since roman times. For being choosen he had to build a model on brick to demonstrate his theory and method.

Interior view of the dome

Brunelleschi inspiration for the dome was the two-layer dome in the Pantheon, in Rome. Instead of a regular circle for the base, he chose an octogonal disposition. The dome was made of bricks (in the same was a the previous model he did). Th is idea was based on the buildability of the dome, because in this way, with eight bases, the dome could be constructed without the formwork, which will ellevate the budget of an already expense dome. Th e construction process was developed while the construction itself because Brunelleschi had to configure new machines to elevate the pieces to their fi nal position.

For the construction he designed stone or iron reinforcement in the edges of each side of the octagon as well in some of the interior parts of the double layer to provide more resistence to the whole construction but also to improve the stability of the construction, which could have more problems than a circular dome. The pointed dome was crowned by a lantern with a cross on the top.

St. Peter’s Basilica Dome

Entering the square makes the whole performance begin. It is like going back to another era. Th e three buildings that comprise the complex of the square: the Cathedral, Campanile and Baptistery do transport you to another time. The entrance to the cathedral itself is amazing, the human greatness of the cathedral and the elevation god gives it. The huge scale of the Cathedral evoques the renaissance times, when architects looked for the beauty and the magnificence of buildings and the intention of being dominated by the space.

In such big and tall buildings people tend to look to the upper part of the building, where imagery is placed: this is the way to connect with god.

Baptistry of St. John

Campanile

Cathedral’s interior

Cidade da Cultura, 1999, Santiago de compostela Peter Eisenmann

Peter Eisenman is an architect recognized for his use of three-dimensional tools to get ieeregular patterns. In this three dimensional field, Eisenman is the master of blending and holding, as he always tries to reconnect with the tectonics of his projects. Most of the times those holding processes provides his projects with a sense of lightness that the construction by itself doesn’t have because of the different shapes that he get with hidden structures. He looks for an architecture that creates different feelings for the users, not only good but also exhausting them with those geometrical forms without orthogonal angles or the absence of horizontal and vertical surfaces (just oblique ones) Eisenman’s work as designer is acompanied by his work as theorists, a fi eld where he based his projects on in Business as topology in the intermediate spaces, the interior-exterior relationship. He is sometimes considered a deconstructivist architect characterized by the fragmentation of the space and the process of non-linear designs. His theoretical work was somehow related with the metaphysics and the necessity of show through language of architecture a sense of this deconstructive philosophy.

Cidade da Cultura: exterior view

From 2003-2004, in the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, Peter Eisenman is getting away from his first deconstructive ideas and getting closer to a more tectonic (more related with the ground) ones, where his works are not just placed on top of the ground but they are being part of the terrain and the landscape. Th is monument represents this idea of blend with the landscape by creating an artificial one out of concrete blocks while trying to produce an uncomfortable and confusing atmosphere that represents a coordinate system, that has lost the connection with human reason.

Layer 1: Vieira: Santiago de Compostela peregrination symbol

Layer 2: Old Medieval Santiagoplan

Layer 3: Monte Gaiรกs topography trhee-dimensional grid

Eisenman tectonics

The Project of Cidade da Cultura was selected in a competition in 1999 to create a new cultural complex in Santiago de Compostela. The project presented by Peter Eisenman reproduces three superimposition of information: the fi rst one is the actual plan of the center of Santiago de Compostela, the second one is a Cartesian grid on top of the medieval streets and the third and last one is a topography of the slope. Th rough this mapping operation the project is solved as a mixture between the terrain and a new complex of buildings but any of them by its own. The medieval distribution of the streets is found again in the new terrain and in a new location, which provides it a different perspective from the center streets.

The Cidade da Cultura buildings, connected by streets and squares, create a place for reflexion, debate and discussion about the future of Galicia and the decision to put the city into the global atmosphere. Th e spaces are conceived as areas for preservation of patrimony and other activities such as research, study, music, dance and other arts. The Project divides the six buildings in pairs: the Museum and Art Center, the Music and Theater building and the service center, and the Library and Storage building. The physical connection between those pairs also affects the experience of visiting them. The buildings are organized around a plaza but the opposite side of all of them is blended with the terrain reconstructing the Monte Gaiรกs that was taken away for the new construction.

For me it is a way of working today: using history and combining it with the present to shape the future Eisenman coment about architecture

Eisenman used informatics tools to help him to create these new shapes: taking into account the physical aspects and cultural and archeological factors playing with the topography and the holding shapes he was looping for.

His idea of being integrated in the landscape instead of creating a new object on top of it is a very sensitive way of transforming the landscape he is creating into an inhabitable object. He reinvented the positive-negative dialogue between building and void.

NATURE AND BEAUTY THROUGH TIME

From the ancient construction of temples and huge monuments, such as the Egyptian pyramids or the Mayan temples, humans have searched for symmetry. Apart from the function that all those elements had in their times, such as ritual, astronomical, or funereal in form of huge tombs, this perfect proportion meant to be footprints of the architect from the past. Th is architecture is trying to remain over time and nature in order to be part of future culture as it was in its time. Although the cultures and beliefs have changed from this ancient period and the temples had change their appearance, Vituvius symmetry and proportion (eurythmy and symmetry) can be appreciated in most of the constructions, older or newer to his essay, such as the Greek Parthenon or Roman Coliseums to the Romanic churches distribution plans and gothic cathedrals designs. The different designs were clear and the proportions were used in some similar ways in all the constructions in order to represent the same conceptual aspects, independently of the size or the function of the construction.

Parthenon

Vitruvian man to the Gothic Church plan

There are three main ideas behind these ideas. The first one is the idea of equilibrium, the second one is about beauty and the change of its perception through time and the last one is about nature and how to approach it.

These aspects are related because of human thoughts, which are trying to merge natural approaches with symmetry.

THE IDEA OF EQUILIBRIUM As Vitruvius said, in a composition, equilibrium could be achieved by the use of lines and forms in the correct way, having all the forces distributed in the correct way to maintain this ideal equilibrium. Later studies on Vitruvius theory about design and composition(1), exaplained that there are two kinds of equilibrium: symmetric and asymmetric.

Symmetric and asymmetric equilibrium

Symmetric equilibrium is achieved when dividing a piece in two equal parts; there is weight equity in both sides. There aren’t any elements disturbing the composition. Symmetric equilibrium is hard to be found in nature (in big scale, because all kinds of crystallization are achieved by perfect symmetry) and it transmits a sense of order and proportion.

In the other hand, asymmetric equilibrium is achieved when dividing a piece in to unequal parts, there is no dimension, color or weight equity but it exists in equilibrium between both elements. Th e effect achieved depends on the relationship between the relationships between the two sides. It transmits nervous tension, dynamism, and vitality. In this kind of equilibrium a big mass is close to the center and equilibrated with a small mass far from it, as it could happen in the growth of trees.

The main point is that symmetry is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Perfect symmetry is hard to find in pure shapes because this order achieved with the symmetry is fighting with the natural chaos.

(1) http://www.mailxmail.com/curso-diseno-composicion-tipografia/tipos-equilibrio

The Sistine Chapel provides an example: the regularity and perfect shapes of the building are contraposed with Michelangelo’s pictoric asymmetrical composition (where is included another attempt of symmetry with Adan’s hand almost symmetric to God’s hand, as image and similarity of his creator.

Sistine Chapel ceiling

Adan and God’s hands

“Eurythmy is beauty and fitness in the adjustments of the members. This is found when members of a work are of a height suited to their breadth, of a breath suited to their length [‌] Symmetry is a proper agreement between the members of the work itself, and relation between the different parts and the whole general scheme. [‌].â€?

Vitruvius, on architecture, book 1, c.25 BC

Vitruvius found beauty in pure forms, in formal symmetry, but formal symmetry (that he found, for example, in the human body) in the end is not the equilibrium, but the asymmetric one, because the human body, in its interior is not symmetric: the heart is on one side of the chest, two lobes, the pulmonary lobes, stomach, appendix‌ and the absolute asymmetry between the front and back sides of the body are not other thing that proves that we are asymmetrical.

With this simple example, I am arguing that, although we can fi nd natural symmetries, most of them are not so symmetrical as we thought and that we can extrapolate some concepts to achieve this perfection or beauty but this can be applied in some determined shapes (as platonic solids, perhaps).

Occasionally, we find in nature perfect crystalline mineral formations. Quartz or pyrite, most of the time growing in small grains, with the same form as large but invaluable to the naked eye. Even small ice crystals that form a snowflake, however, are as beautiful as a diamond. Examined microscopically each of these crystals is different from the rest and yet the hexagonal symmetry is apparently common to all.

Ice crystaline structure

THE IDEA OF BEAUTY From the ancient Egyptian times, beauty was related to proportions and to mathematics. Th e fi rst mention they made about beauty was in the instructions for wall decorations when explaining about the Edphu temple.

The Egyptians were the first civilization that created a canon for ideal beauty, before all the Greek studies about this matter. Th ey elaborated some general concepts for this beauty: the human body had to be divided in 18 (for woman) or19 (for men) fists. This division could also be done by cubits, which was, in fact, the fi rst division they did. Th e regular cubit was of 45 cm, which allows dividing the human body in three different parts. These measures were considered a canon of proportions, not a canon of measures; this means that, for being beauty, a human being h has to have those proportions independently of his height.

Egyptian proportions

Egyptian ideas of beauty in construction were also related to proportions. Nowadays, there are two theories about the construction of the Great Pyramid in Egypt: the first one talks about the π number (half of the perimeter divided by the height is similar to π); the other one talks about the golden ratio (φ) involved in the 3:4:5 triangle. Th is second theory is more related with all the information we have about Ancient Egypt because this 3:4:5 triangles were conceived as the Egyptian triangle (the Sacred Egyptian Triangle), which was used in more than one opportunity in their constructions.

φ proportions in the Great Pyramid

Although there is some information about star systems in Babilonia and Asiria ages, there are no formal studies about the golden ratio until 300 B.C., when Euclides wrote about it in his essay Th e Elements. In 1509, Luca Pacioli wrote De Divina Proportione, where he fi xed the proportions for the ideal beauty, inspired by Vituvius essays. Following from Vitruvius’ De Architectura, Leonardo da Vinci drew the Vitruvian Man, a drawing which is also

called The Canon of Proportions. The drawing has two texts explaining all the proportions: in the upper text are the measures of a man (a man is 24 palms, a pace is four cubits, a cubit is six palms a foot is four palms, a palm is four fingers and four cubits makes a man). The lower text refers to other proportions that can be achieved in the human body. Leonardo did the illustrator work for Pacioli book but his work, convined with other drawings he did (as the Vituvian Man) were used as a tool for future generations when talking about beauty and proportions.

Luca Pacioli study

Vitruvian Man drawn by Leonardo

The ideal human proportions were described before Vitruvius’ De Architectura, during the Greek times, and developed as an artistic canon for representing the ideal man. Th ose proportions were: total height equal to an armful, an armful is eight palms, equal to six foots, equal to eight faces equal to 1,618 by the distance from the ground to the navel. Th is number, 1,618 is an approximation of the φ number, the golden ratio. They also use the golden ratio in construction. The best example is the Parthenon, a temple in which its exterior dimensions form a perfect golden rectangle.

Parthenon as a golden rectangle

The search for the golden ratio in relation with architecture has been a study icon through time. From Vitruvius’ book and Pacioli’s reflections about geometry to Alberti, Palladio and other renaissance architects, all of them had being looking for the perfect proportions in their buildings, although some of them found it unconsciously. Th e main façade of Salamanca’s University, the oldest university in Spain, maintains the golden proportions. Most contemporary architects continued with this searching, some of them as well knowns as Frank Lloyd Wright, who designed in his Guggenheim Museum in New York a golden spiral in both interior and exterior of the building. Other examples are the Zvi Hecker schools, which their plan is inspired in the sunflower petals collocation, that means, in the φ disposition.

Guggenheim Museum, NY

Heinz-Galinski school by Zvi Hecker

Last important achievements in searching for the perfect proportions came from the Swiss architect Le Corbusier, who criticized the Metric System for being unrelated to the human scale. He created his own scale based in the golden ratio based on Vitruvius ideas, the Modulor. He toke the proportions from the plexus to pave up to the head and the arm: the golden ratio.

Le Corbusier designed the Mundaneum, a project of the International Museum, in Geneva. He described the Mundaneum as a rectangular city where the ratio between the length and the depth is the φ number. The rhythm of buildings also follows this ratio, creating the harmony that most of buildings have unconsciously.

The Mundaneum

World War II stopped the construction of this singular place, a time that Le Corbusier occupied himself with theories and researching. He published Le Modulor in 1948, followed by Modulor2 in 1955. Modulor 2 is describing Latin proportions 1.72 (a little bit smaller that Saxon culture, 1.82m).

Le Corbusier also designed Ville Savoye and the UnitÊ d’Habitacion with the φ number: in the exterior and also in the interior according with the modulor proportions. He also designed another museum, the Unlimited Growth Museum, which, based on the problems of the Mundaneum pyramid, which has to stop its growth when arriving to the street level, in order to improve it by creating a new space in a snail shape that allows all the growth needed.

The Mundaneum

THE IDEA OF NATURE For Vituvius, as I have mentioned earlier, the idea of beauty comes from symmetry, which comes from the proportions. As opposed to this ideal statement of beauty as senti

mentality, Wright looked for this beauty from a more informal idea, from the neutral, as a sentiment. He is trying to talk about the messiness of nature and life, how we have to be honest with the raw materials because they have to be the way they are and we do not have to change it, from him and following this idea, Reansissance (which is meant to be a very pure period) is not honest.

His idea of organicism as something following natural laws is something much more pure than any preconceptualised form. Things had to follow natural laws in order to be natural, but not just because of this symmetry of Vitruvius. He also argued againt the use of ornament because for him decoration has to be part of a piece itself, not for covering the piece with some ornamentation.

The Water Cube structure and skin

The Water Cube Project (2003-2007, CSCEC, PTW Architects and ARUP Associates), for Beijing Olympic Games of 2008 is an example of how to play with nature. It is, somehow, an expression of the ideal of nature because of the perfect box constraining the messiness of the water bubbles. Th e building is thought to show its function (and this is one of the most important thesies of Sullivan). It is a swimming pool full of water, so, what has to be the exterior envelope of the building to show what is inside it? The concept was to reflect

what was going on in the interior of the building, water. For the concept they used a structure based on the bubbles created by the water mixed with soap.

They used EFTE as the soft amorphous exterior of the soap bubbles and the whole building seems to be made of this. Th e achieved feeling is that a glass box fi lled up with water. It is a frozen stage of bubbles f water constrained by this cube. The final result is influenced by many factors.

Detail of the façade: EFTE bubbles

As opposed to this, Taichung Convention Center, in Taiwan, (concept design by MAD Architects) is the expression of the informed nature. It is an expression of how nature grows shaped as buildings. “It is conceived as a continuous weave of architecture and landscape that blurs the boundary between architecture, public space and city landscape� ( Jordan Kanter, part of the design group). It is thought to be a living art, a place where you can experience this idea of nature (although it was created artificially), it is nature ‘contaminated’ by life. Th e complex exists in a mixture of wind, light, air, nature and human beings. It is sustainability in the sense of sustenance, in the nourishing potential of architecture to connect people to nature and to each other.

Taichung Convention Center natural shapes

Plan view of the natural spaces

WHERE IS ARTIFICIALITY?

The term ‘aura’ for Walter Benjamin is defined as the an aesthetic phenomenon thar occurs when a person is in contact with an original work of art. In his essay ‘Th e Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ he explains how the aura of a piece of art is eliminated by its reproduction.

Following Benjamin instructions about architecture and his thesis about how iron constructions were the first one using an artificial construction material, the chosen building for the analysis is the Bird’s Nest Stadium, by Herzog and de Meuron.

Bird’s Nest Stadium, Beijing, China

The Bird’s Nest Stadium could be studied in the same way as if it were a copy of a piece of natural art (considering bird’s nests as small pieces of art).

Using his theories, the building is a manipulated copy of the real work of art, a copy that people can experience and feel free to have a close relationship with.

Somehow, this copy is changing the act of contemplating to experiencing.

The reproduction of copies eliminates the ‘far location’ of objects that you experiment when you just admire a bird getting into his nest (in the same way as when you look to the mountains in the horizon) and brings them closer to people, spatially and humanly.

Buildings, as explained by Benjamin, are received in distraction, as opposed to art, which is trying to get people concentrated. But nowadays, art and architecture are not as differentiated as they were when Benjamin wrote his essay. In that time, art (painting and sculpture) were autonomous from the architecture, they are objects located in different places and are created as something that you have to pay attention in order to understand it. On the other hand, architecture is appropriated by the use that people give them or by perception (understood as sight and touch) and that just mean reception of information, not the process behind it.

The Bird’s Nest Stadium was conceived to look like a nest. Th rough the irregular composition of the net structure was developed a complex structure made out of steel which recreates in an organized shape, the same idea of the bird’s nest: being used by more than one entity and provide protection to the interior activities, following, in that way one of Benjamin’s ideas about architecture where he explained that architecture was conceived as a prototype of art, absent-mindedly used by a group.

Nest shape of the building

The design and the chosen shape enhance the main principles of the nature of bird’s nests. Those are being constructions to refuge to hold animals (the Stadium is thought to provide refuge people during matches). The whole design tries to reinforce the idea of nest by the exterior skin and the chosen material: the disposal of steel beams recreates the original structure of a nest.

This use of steel continuous also with Benjamin’s fi rst ideas about fi rst iron construction in architecture, in a more advanced way thanks to the technological development, but in the same line of work.

Primitive hut, Viollet-le-Duc

Shelter-nest

Bird’s Nest

Top view of the stadium

The building also uses some sources from the past times, when people used to gather around trees, and branches where the main material in construction, creating huts, which are human abstractions of the animal nests: just

a gathering of branches and leaves to provide refuge. Somehow, all constructions are recreating this idea of the primitive shelter, a simple construction to be protected against the exterior.

Light bulbs in the pathway to the stadium

But, in the same way that a bird’s nest fallen in the ground is not its natural location, the construction of such a big structure with a natural composition out from what it is natural is creating a disconnection between what the building represents and the represented object. This link, which was supposed to be natural, is interrupted by copying it in a different way than the natural entity. The use of small light bulbs covered by the same steel structure all along the path is reinforcing this whole idea of broken links between coping nature and the real natural object in order to reinforce the continuity of the shape and the abstraction of what it means.

Ana Gonzรกlez Granja

Chapter 1: 59,99 to Buy the Myth of the Modern Movement Chapter 2: The Wavelike Surface Chapter 3: Natural, So What? The Tension Between Ideal and Informed Chapter 4: Does the Artificial Exist?

59’99€ To buy the Myth of Modern Movement

Lego Production

Ana Gonzรกlez Granja

CONSTRUCTION TOYS are no longer just for child´s play, according to Fermín González Blanco, the design of construction toys, like Lego or Mecano, is a process that goes architecture and gets pedagogy, sociology and marketing. What he says is reflected today in toy industries as Lego which wants to explore the greatest iconic buildings in the world through their Lego brick, as an innovative project to inculcate the culture of architecture in minds of all ages, a simple and effective way of learning. Just paying a small amount of money you are able to build mini-master-pieces to spread as monuments all over your flat, but why they have chosen buildings such as The Empire State Building, Fallingwater, or Farnsworth House? Most of them are designed by famous architects, others have been designed to be icons in cities, icons of power, icons of politics and economy (transformed today in products of media, using them to sell an image and make a statment). But, what is the meaning contained in those small black boxes of Lego Architecture? What’s the meaning of having a 6,6 cm Farnsworth House materialized on your shelf?

The cyclical process of construction and destruction that is allowed by construction toys is destroyed in the new line of products Lego architecture has commercialized. The disadvantage is that children’s creativity is reduced, as it is not as developed as it was when having a box with thousands of pieces that gives them the chance to imagine and build different forms. The advantage is that here they get the experience of one final answer, one shape that has a real history behind it, a cultural background. The first time a kid opens this convectional box of LEGO, hundreds of pieces appear in front of him, simple and small rectangles, colourful, made out of plastic and light materials easy to handle and move, but this new box also gives children instructions to help them in a straightforward construction. In the moment these 546 pieces are all perfectly placed one on top of another, in that moment, the new object materialized is the culmination of the International Style. That object is a replica of the last house by Mies van der Rohe, the Farnsworth House (1951), it is no longer a group of simple toys, it now is something consistent that describes a specific and critical moment in the history of architecture, focused on the Modern Movement and un Mies van der Rohe’s life.

59.99€ To buy the Myth of Modern Movement | Chapter 1

“Architecture starts when you carefully put bricks together” Ludwing Mies van der Rohe.

“What is myth, today?[…] myth is a type of speech” Roland Barthes, “Mythologies: Myth today”

As Roland Barthes establishes, any image or context can be deciphered in a way to reveal the myth that it contains. The speech that contains this example here is a particular house and its background. It is an iconic building of the 20th century that has been transformed into an object of media. As the Eiffel Tower is a symbol in Paris, today the Farnsworth house is a symbol for all architects, is symbol of Modernity. This building is perhaps the most iconic of Mies´s career, it is friendly., simple, it is a white and crystal rectangle, a primary shape, symbol of well done architecture, is taking the maxim “less is more”. It is like a Lego piece, one simple rigid rectangle, but why? Simple as the shape itself, Mies gave this answer “For most things we do need space. […] a rectangle space is a good space, maybe much better than a fluid space.”(Conversations with Mies van der Rohe, 2006:39).

Ana González Granja

But what we see today as one of the major symbols of the International Style, that purity and dreamed house was harshly criticized in America during the 50’s. It was believed that the house was an insult to American country houses, and articles were published in American architectural magazines which began toaccuse Mies of threatening the traditional American style, and why the Modern Movement was being so spread in housing. House Beautiful defined the Farnsworth house as the example of “bad modern architecture”, and while Mies was almost compared with a dictator the International Style was understood as kind of a dictatorship, defined with common features and shared by different architects. Orthogonal pure shapes, smooth surfaces, no ornament, materials as concrete and steel structures, characteristics that they thought they were used to “guide” people on how they should live their home space, but Modern architecture has never been as much liked as its creators pretended it was.

How the Americans could understand the Farnsworth House as an attack, as an alien?

I (I love Modern Movement)

I

(I love Paris)

59.99€ To buy the Myth of Modern Movement | Chapter 1

“I believe that the Farnsworth house has never been completely understood” Mies van der Rohe.

The problem came with the expansion of the Modern Movement, instead of looking at it as an evolution, as the new shelter of a created utopian society, Americans saw it as the destruction and violation of the rules of traditional houses. But, music is not mere soothing background noise, painting is not mere wall decoration, and architecture is not mere shelter.

The result of the Farnsworth House was not just a pure work of art set in the middle of a landscape. There is a tension coming from the balance between the practical points, aesthetic concerns, political and social issues that Mies had to handle. It took six years of design and construction and $74.000, but today you can spend just one afternoon and have an accurate replica of the myth of the Farnsworth House for just 59.90€.

Ana González Granja

In 1951 the total amount of money Dr. Edith had to pay raised to US 74,000, from an initial budget of US 58,400. The LEGO imitation of the Farnsworth House for most of the people is just something to let the others see, a new sculpture-figure for the shelf, something to have fun with while you construct once and then to be proud of shown. But what this replica is hiding is the controversial and difficult process of elaboration, the design thinking process, the construction evolution the change of budget and techniques. What the house today communicates is the critical perception that society and Mies had of the original client, Edith Farnsworth. Those LEGO constructions are an absurd toy (if they can be defined as toy), in one way, they don’t let the use of people’s creativity, as there is just one final result there is not flexibility in the process of construction and destruction, and in the other hand after spending a couple of hours building it you see the house, true, but is it really explaining and letting people know about the story of how the house was conceived?

About what happened between the client and the architect? About why is the house a glass box instead of a simple concrete box?

Edith Farnsworth

Mies van der Rohe

59.99€ To buy the Myth of Modern Movement | Chapter 1

It is worthwhile to stop and think why there is no reference of the name of such an architect as Mies, on the box that contains the myth of the Modern Movement, the LEGO Architecture box. Mies somehow always wanted to get rid of his name that reminded him of his family craftsman’s roots, in 1922 he was able to finally change it to Mies van der Rohe. But the negative connotation from the German word Mies, meaning something rotten or spoiled, was not going to make things easier, so for that reason he decided to put on airs of aristocracy introducing the false graft “van der”. Despite his attempts after finishing the Farnsworth house in 1951, some small errors in the construction opened the mockery and the word game between critics and his name. “La casa mies-conception (error, idea falsa; a popular misconception, error común o generalizado)” (Beatriz Preciado, Mies-conception: La casa Farnsworth y el misterio del armario transparente), it was the first appellant mock between Mies and mis-. Why is the name of the LEGO model designer (Adam Reed Tucker) in the box and not Mies’s one? Is this a contemporary mockery of Mies? Now they removed his name completely from the iconic house, hiding his name to the spectator of the model, as in the replica you just can read “Farnsworth House”.

Farnswo

Model de Adam Re

Ana González Granja

rth House

esigned by eed Tucker

59.99â‚Ź To buy the Myth of Modern Movement | Chapter 1

Edith the Farnsworth

Ana Gonzรกlez Granja

Mies and Edith Farnsworth had a lot of problems regarding the budget, he denounced her claiming for the total sum of money, and she sued him and accused him of fraud. But parallel to money conflicts, others arose when Edith became lovesick and spiteful after their love affair. They had a hidden-public relationship, the same relationship Mies created in the house, the same atmosphere of a hidden-public relationship of her with society. Because during the 50’s was very much described by American critics with malice. Although she was very independent and successful in her professional life, she was a self-conscious woman because of her height and ugliness, and her commitment to feminist groups. This was reason enough for her to be "accused" in some writings of homosexuality, because she liked the company of other women. Here is where LEGO is hiding the truth of the house, a hidden relationship that was public at that moment, the direct translation of a woman becoming the skin and bones of her house, her temple. A reflection that Mies made about Edith materialized in a glass box, and today in a LEGO piece. But the today object of media, the 6.6 cm Farnsworth house the story and judgments about Edith. Beatriz Preciado explains in her writing Mies-conception: La casa Farnsworth y el misterio del armario transparente, that the house was perceived as a way of coming out of the closet, as it was a transparent and glass rectangle, every movement she made would came to light and undressed her in the malicious and critic as society of the 50’s.

The problem is that LEGO just displays an object, but it doesn’t make proof of the mystery the first client had, the one that defined the concept of the house.

Set in the middle of this landscape in Plano (Illinois, Chicago) surrounded by nature and aligned with the Fox River, the meaning of this monument is a reciprocal conversation between house and landscape. Barthes explains that the Eiffel Tower is playing two functions seeing and being seen, Citizens see the tower from every point of the city and it is only from the Tower that you stop seeing it. This conversation is public and universal in the city of Paris. In our example Edith Farnsworth (the first owner) is the reincarnation of the house, the object house is her reflection, is the 59.99€ To buy the Myth of Modern Movement | Chapter 1

perception Mies had of her, Edith as a human body is translated into a livable space, into an architectural construction that has a soul itself, the house is structured as a human body. Mies is trying to reach to the point of being in harmony between nature, living space and the human. A naked landscape is seeing and is seen by a naked Edith, there is a reciprocal total appreciation of the pure beauties. Since the house is made out of huge pieces of glass, light and landscape come through it into the interior area, violating in a way the inside space, and breaking with the idea and association of inside meaning private. The limit between private and public is an optical effect, it is a game of hidden and shown elements, through an association of operations, there is a reading of the transparency as a phenomena of living, a way of eliminating the boundaries between closed and opened, between freedom and prison.

The house is an explanation of coming out of the convectional understanding of housing, breaking apart that idea of privacy by an inevitable dialogue inside-outside, there are no limits between them, it is a fluid conversation. The same idea is seen in Philip Johnson’s house (in New Canaan, Connecticut). The house was designed as a viewing platform, and again there is a conversation with nature and landscape. Directly connected with the ground but hidden from the bystander´s gaze. Even if both houses were placed in the middle of a natural landscape the colors used were totally opposite, while Johnson used a dark hue, and the exterior appearance was black. Mies, on the contrary, decided to paint everything in white because of the surrounding area was green and open, so no color was deserved for the house. “I myself” Mies recalled, “have been in this house from morning to nightfall. Until then, I had never realized how colourful nature could be. Inside, neutral colours have to be carefully used since all colours exist outside. These colours change continuously and completely, and I’d like to say that it is simply glorious”.

Ana González Granja

59.99â‚Ź To buy the Myth of Modern Movement | Chapter 1

Farnsworth House, Mies van der Rohe

Ana Gonzรกlez Granja

Glass House, Philip Johnson

The Modern Movement served the needs for our senses, for our conception of evolution. It was architecture that was not seen as good one, where the Farnsworth House was considered as an aberration for American traditional houses, the point is that the International Style has no boundaries in terms of cultures (seeing the example of the glass box of Philip Johnson compared to the Farnsworth, following the same principles), and it is architecture that has succeeded and survived to critics because the architecture’s basics are well handled. In 1949 Johnson built his shelter, taking Mies’s concept of the Glass House, following the maxim “less is more” of their shared minimalism, Johnson made this house as a tribute to his mentor, Mies. It is also seen as one of the landmarks houses of the International Style, a symbol that was as much criticized as the Farnsworth house at that moment. David Whitney (an American art curator, collector, gallerist and critic) said once, “I became close to these people who are now all gods. But they weren’t then”. Architects and architecture at that moment because of society, belonged more to the field of questioning, they were assumed to give answer to society’s reactions, than to solve and give answer to architecture itself, they weren’t gods at that time because they were innovative, bold and clever on their movements, challenging what people considered good architecture (the traditional one), but they were walking next by the slow process of evolution, being part of it.

The myth that both houses contain is extrapolated from the object as a media element, they are myths about architectural icons of a movement as key as the Modern Movement. Over the years the glass houses are no longer functional, they are not using anymore the space for housing, they are now monuments of universal education. As Mies said, “a building should live as long as it can live. There is no reason to make it provisional.”(Conversations with Mies van der Rohe, 2006:35), today the houses serve both as museum, and the Farnsworth as a LEGO object of study.

59.99€ To buy the Myth of Modern Movement | Chapter 1

Skin-and-Bones

Ana Gonzรกlez Granja

Mies van der Rohe defined his architecture as is skin-and-bones architecture, and Theo Van Doesburg called him anatomical architect. He totally belongs to the Modern Movement, when he started the designing of the Farnsworth House it was totally opposite of what was being built in America, because American architects were following the principles of vernacular and traditional architecture, and continuing to work on the ideas of Frank Lloyd Wright, living a popular American culture. For this reason Mies and his International Style were not welcome at all. This house is a perfection and pure magnificence, with a perfect precision in detailing.

Image of Modernism because of its flat roof, composed by surrounding horizontal windows giving the feeling of being just one, light and transparent materials instead of the heaviness and opacity of the traditionalist architects.

A house that is floating in nature, not directly anchored to the ground, hold by light pillars that seem to be camouflaged as trunk’s trees. Purity is in terms of lacking ornamentation, that whiteness and thinness, something that F.L.Wright always used to hate. Modernist because the furniture is what gives the definition of a room, there are no walls, is a free plan that allows different configurations of one space, where furniture is minimalist and rare. The house is a singular monument, “what sees being mythically linked to what remains hidden” (Barthes´s Eiffel Tower essay) that what is supposed to happen in the LEGO Farnsworth element, revealing the hidden meaning, the proper signifier and signified of what is behind the model.

59.99€ To buy the Myth of Modern Movement | Chapter 1

“Clearing every form to the point where it has dismissed and left only what is modern” Rudolf Schwarz

The Role of the Critic “An architecture that is constantly aware of its own history, but constantly critical of the seductions of history, is what we should aim for today” Alan Colquhoun Three Kinds of Historicism:209

Ana González Granja

To explain a myth we do look past, we have to analyze and object we already know with the new meaning and values that has been given to it. To be able to understand what the myth behind the Lego Farnsworth House is we should have a previous knowledge about Mies and the house. To describe and decipher new values in this object, we have to look back in a deep search of historical references that might give you the clue of what you are seeing. As thousands of critics exist, thousands ways of understanding history derives from this. As Mies once obseved, “Architecture must not be subjective. It must be objective- that’s what it is”. The role of the critic is subjective and relative as it is just one person’s opinion, but it is an informed opinion, is shaping another way of understanding architecture with the same complexity of having lots of attitudes you can follow and be positioned towards history.

There is not an Absolute Truth. We write to questioning about history and thus acquire more knowledge about something we already know, we use our knowledge to criticize and continue the evolution of history. The human being is free of thought and live experiences, but every human is highly conditioned by a society that determines his behaviour, a culture, politics, religion… factors that are reflected in his idea of truth and history. The Farnsworth House has been determined over the history of architecture, told from different perspectives, and now as a construction toy that develops the idea of the myth of the modern movement, one of the most famous icons of Modern architecture is becoming object of media.

59.99€ To buy the Myth of Modern Movement | Chapter 1

The Wavelike Surface Language

Baroque & Borromini In order to understand Borromini’s work we should first introduce the Baroque in order to understand Sant Carlo alle Quattro Fontane The etymology of the word Baroque comes from the Portuguese Baroque, “perola barroca”, meaning rough or imperfect pearl. It suggests the idea of irregularity and anomaly, which is later used in some works of art and architecture. The etymological origins of the word “Baroque” points to irregularities, pathologies, anomalies, strangeness, imperfect shapes. Baroque was understood and explained as an adjective in the 19th C, and it was in that century when it started to be identified as the historical period we know today. But before that, it began to be framed during the 17th and 18th C entry in Western Europe. Baroque is a term identified with shapes of architecture that did not follow the rules of the perfect classical period. It is used to describe forms as somehow exaggerated, producing drama, and it was applied in architecture with a pejorative meaning, as in that moment art and architecture were focused and trying to return to the rules of Classicism. Baroque is identified with works that pushed the classical to its limits; it was free and picturesque, evolved from the rigorous art of the Renaissance.

Francesco Borromini was in a period considered as the degeneration of the principles of the Renaissance, Baroque was rejected, and defined as degenerative. In this period, the things that were shown were more important than the identification of the elements, the main point was the expression of the shapes. He used the same architectural language in most of his works, his buildings follow the same features, playing with the colossal order, considering big masses Ana González Granja

and dimensions to magnify architecture; the use of the called “chiaroscuro”, shaping with light and shadow to reinforce the idea of spatial dynamism and movement in contrast with Renaissance principles.

Sant Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (in Rome, 1662-1667) expanded on the idea of the movement of the wall, its undulating shape creating a dramatic architecture. Simple and economic materials gave shape to more architectural criteria than Borromini created, as the geometrical modulate scheme, going further from the arithmetical order of the Classicism; or the incorporation of the sculpture. The last feature described is shown in the main façade, the figure of San Carlo Borromeo stands on the central position of the church, above the central porch in the main door, to both sides of the sculpture two angels are protecting him, as discussed in class that “Language is superimposed on Structure”, applied here because is the inside space that forces the exterior wall, the front elevation, to flex and bend. Borromini streamlines the language of Baroque. His work is a total detonation of Reinassance and the Classical order, but he is not dismissing it. Borromini was focused on the sculptural aspect and that is why that issue was more obvious on the main façade, but experimenting and showing the structural elements.

His concept, articulated membrane, defined where all the structural elements meet and act with complexity.

The Wavelike Surface | Chapter 2

Sant Carlo alle Quattro F concave -concave -concave

concave -convex- concave

concave -convex -concave

symmetry. pushing up the oval image which breaks the culminaion of the building

Ana Gonzรกlez Granja

Fontane Baroque can be explained as a search for the great style, represented directly to impress, searching for the pathos and extravagant shapes to show. As Christian Norberg- Schulz defined Baroque, in Sant Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, here the author is creating a unity, he is communicating an entity by a whole, a unified space that can not be decomposed into its elements itself, it is one body, understood by its viewers as one building block, one object, one powerful entity unbroken. The church asks for attention; two narrow streets of Rome allow a small space in between buildings to hold this masterpiece of the Baroque. The façade, which is what you first see, is deceived by its wavelike surface to create a sense of massiveness and amplitude, creating a flow of concave-convex-concave curves that produces a new conception of a great space that does not exist.

Borromini is breaking the symmetry of the streets, because of adaptation issues he has to play with an architecture capable compensating that for lack of space and visibility, to make powerful a fault and to transform it into the main reason for its existence, to change the look of a place.

Sant Carlino’s facade is fragmented, monumental and discontinuous, because of the shape it seems that is going to break and fall. It is divided in three parts, where all the elements are playing to push up to the top cornice the oval image that breaks the composition concaveconvex- concave in the upper level, that is created by the game between the main and secondary columns (which are place offset into the rectangle niche) empowered with the sculptures and images. Two different compositions with similar readings are done in the building, The Wavelike Surface | Chapter 2

the façade and the interior space. The inside has movement and life itself, Borronimi decomposed it altering all the relationships that may exist between elements. Their layout is fragmented and isolated, but symmetrical and somehow looking for a harmonic legibility that he is able to achieve by a game of curvatures.

The composition of the elements is the ornamental expression obtained by the architect, “Francesco Borromini succeeded in creating, through purely architectonic means, and in the open air, something which is equivalent to the mild chiaroscuro of his contemporary, Rembrandt, at work on his own last painting at this same time” (Sigfried Giedion in Space, Time and Architecture, 2008: 111). There is a communication through out the materiality and the way its astonishing form is shaped and changed through its own movement and by the changing conversation light allows. The ornamentation is purely the contrast and mixture of the architectural shapes. Borromini is not taking advantage of the ornament and decoration inside and outside the church, he is pure in his way of shaping architecture, and making powerful statements by powerful strategies from the use of the materials. He is taking the most of the main material, the stone, giving a new value to it, flexibility and elasticity by shaping an undulating wall, while communicating the same atmosphere in a flexible ground plan, which makes dynamic a space due to the out-curving edges on the walls. The architectural language of Sant Carlo alle Quattro Fontane is purely Baroque, the tension created by the light effect, that sense of monumentality is never far from a system that is showing the program and what parameters and characterises that program implies: one unity with a great sense of mobility.

Ana González Granja

analysis 1 columns relationship

analysis 2 pure geometries

The Wavelike Surface | Chapter 2

Idea of Monument NE D E S IG M E D N ECA B EE I’VE HEN, I B T

Sant Carlo alle Quattro Fontane Borromini

ED SIGN E E D N TO B BEE I’VE

Cidade da Cultura Eisenman

Ana González Granja

Sant Carlo alle Quattro Fontane is playing the role of a monument, but a natural one, it is the kind of monument that has gained meaning and importance without having that aim, contrary to the classical definition of monument which is the one that describes A Cidade da Cultura by Peter Eisenman. This complex of buildings has been designed with the aim of being a well-known monument all over the world. It has been thought to commemorate the city of Santiago and all Galician citizens; a group of buildings that wants to manifest the power of a specific culture. But are the buildings really creating an icon in a city that is already full of meanings and symbols? The two buildings selected have in common that unique legibility that should be known a priori visiting the building in order to understand the unique experience the building is offering, the language of the building. Because for Borromini and Eisenman, function follows form. Borromini creates a language that goes even further than Baroque, taking its concepts to its limits to distort that reality that he is undulating the walls with stone, superimposing columns and basic geometrical shapes, creating a language for his architecture. “Sant Carlino” is absorbing all the energy around the area to concentrate it on its wavelike surface. Eisenman goes further from the Modern Movement, he has the necessity of creating problems in his architecture, creating an unresolved architecture where people should be involved in a process of adaptation with the space he designed, and they should adapt oneself to the shapes of the building. Eisenman belongs to a movement he defined as Post-Functionalism, an attitude which derives from a non-humanistic approach toward the relationship between a physical environment and an individual. The architectural language derives from the opposition between function and form. In his book, Reworking Eisenman he says, “Post functionalism does not mean that a building should not function; rather the form should not necessarily represent that function”.

The Wavelike Surface | Chapter 2

Decorated shed/ Duck

“Where systems of space and structure are directly at the services of program, and ornament is applied independently of them. This is what we call the decorated shed.” (in Learning from Las Vegas: The forgotten symbolism of Architectural Form,:87 by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour) As every cathedral or church Sant Carlo alle Quattro Fontane can be understood and explained as a decorated shed. Architecture is always full of meaning and symbolism, for centuries, architecture has been used as a manipulation tool, and as a way to enhance power in totalitarian regimes and as the element of connection between people and God. That is why it is a decorated shed, because what it could just be a shelter for people to pray, a white pure box, it is a piece of art full of icons, symbols, sculptures, which are creating a new monumentality to show and enhance the power of that religious entity. In contrast, A Cidade da Cultura was a duck at the beginning when developing the main concept: “Where the architectural systems of space, structure, and program are submerged and distorted by an overall symbolic form. This kind of buildingbecoming-sculpture we call the duck” (Learning from Las Vegas: The forgotten symbolism of Architectural Form,:87 by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour). With three operations, Eisenman was able to spread all the energy an icon has all over a place, showing as a final result an abstract duck that could be seen from an helicopter.

(1)The first movement was to cut and remove the top of the hillside Monte Gaias, (2)the second step was to recreate that space that had disappeared, reconstructing the materiality of the hill with a complex of six buildings. (3)The third and final step was to recreate the shape of a scallop shell (which is symbol and icon of the religious and catholic pilgrimage in Santiago city) on the top of the hill, so A Cidade da Cultura would be transformed in a pure duck.

Ana González Granja

Monte Gaias 2000

(1) Monte Gaias 2003

(2) Cidade da Cultura 2009

(3) Symbolism 2011

The Wavelike Surface | Chapter 2

Santiago city plan city centre plan- city of culture

Cidade da Cultura, plan superimposition of layers

Ana Gonzรกlez Granja

In parallel with its condition as a “duck”, Eisenman adds the idea of “genetic codification” to create a new social logic. Eiseman is creating links between old and contemporary Santiago, by superimposing the shape of Santiago’s symbol, the scallop shell, directly on the top of historical centre plan of the city. The orthogonal mesh becomes distorted to produce what today is A Cidade da Cultura. Everything here is confused as you cannot recognize directly the duck, although it hides in the subconscious of the people who know about it. Eisenman creates an urbanism where buildings and topography are one.

Here he is defining an architectural language that emerges from the combination of random objects, where tradition is mixed with topography and plus iconic references taken from a city full of culture and history. It is a language of power that wants to take the path of tradition, is a complex of buildings that want to be a monument, but everything is thought to be as much as it can be integrated with the city.

The language of the new hill is purely monumental; it is a system designed with no specific function, this why you need to learn how to read the construction to be able to understand its geometry and the irregularity of its shapes. The architectural language Eisenman uses in his buildings is just indexical, “traces of operations and working method not only visible in the work, but the content of the work itself.

An operation as vocabulary, the discipline itself is the subject. Work is autonomous, hermetic”. To understand Eisenamn works you should previously know his architectural language, which is constantly in evolution. Eisenman’s architecture develops a system of communication, his architecture is talking by itself, he believes architecture is a tool of expression, to develop the imagination, where everything in the designing, building, and experience process is a matter of experiment. Everything is related here with visual and sensorial language.

The Wavelike Surface | Chapter 2

Role of LANGUAGE in Architecture cannot exist without a meaning; it cannot be real without significance. Architectural language is always present in the process of design, construction or building. There is always the need for a reason of being, architecture cannot just be a mere “box” in the middle of nowhere, it has to be though and develop in a way that shows the skills, interest or experience of the architect, because even if it is a box in the middle of nowhere it has a meaning behind. Aarchitecture is conceived as a way of communication, layered in different categories, modes, manifests... there is a language, a code of symbols, icons, systems that define and put together a group of people in the same work methodology, they create a unity of common features in designing, a way of thinking, or mode of communication. History is framed by facts, and that issues are the ones that define history, facts happened because of external or internal changes, talking about any kind of history; everything is linked and related with the previous phase. The same happens the architectural language, apart from the chronological groups that grow inevitable; links and connections can be made taking common features that buildings may share even if they haven’t grown in the same epoch. Some classifications are made by the performance of a building ( made out of sensations, atmosphere); archaeological connections ( refers to content outside the work itself); textual ( elements meant to be read according to a grammatical system of laws and convections).

Ana González Granja

n architecture There is a direct relationship between architectural language and meaning but it is abstract, not-temporal and subjective; the same building can be understood and analyzed completely different from two different points o view with totally different perceptions. It is not temporal because depending on the classification you want to make would not be able to start linking completely different buildings by means of physical appearance, but maybe they share an architectural language that is the soul of those projects, maybe the link is how they are connected even if it seems to be impossible. Being less banal, language has been the tool from the very beginning to explain architecture through the use of a proper architectural vocabulary, something that can be understood and applied to different fields. During centuries architecture has been working together with different arts, sharing values, concepts, and aims... Literary theorists used to interchange terms of significance, reinforcing the same qualities in different disciplines. Metaphors and rhetoric are also very much used in architecture to enhance the beauties of a project, to magnify the strengths. Language apart from drawing is what defines a good architecture, the meaning you are able to communicate, is the value of your work, and language in architecture should be a tool to make it more powerful. “Don’t try to be original, just try to be good�- Paul Rand

The Wavelike Surface | Chapter 2

NATURAL, so what?

the tension between ideal & informed

Natura and Architecture

Ana Gonzรกlez Granja

The etymology of the word Nature comes from the Latin natura which means “essential qualities” or “innate disposition”. Nature is identified with something innate, inborn, rather than acquired, something that seems to be inevitable and permanent. It also can be defined as a biological phenomena in accordance with the usual course of nature. It is used to describe the physical world that might can be related with the human nature. The words natural and organic have been always used in architecture, sometimes giving them the same meaning, or as explanation for different concepts. These terms, depending on the context, can be applied in many different arts.

The Roman architect Vituvius (1st century B.C.) was illustrated 1500 years after by Leonardo da Vinci (15 C) with his drawing of the Vitruvian Man to explain the natural order that the perfect human body contains. He was using the word natural to describe why the human proportions are like they are. He believed in an architecture that should be organized, natural, and well-proportioned, concepts reflected in the human body drawn by da Vinci. However, he believed in a proportioned body that does not exist, he was using the body as his architectural myth, trying to project that naturalness, meaning perfection which does not belong to men, in architecture, responding in the most primitive way to order. But there are many more theories about what “natural” means in architecture. A natural shape unconsciously is though as one entity, as a construction (like a cottage or a cave) that had happened by it, that was not though and seems to be a priori of a design. Although to achieve that formal informality that seems unexpected we find there is always a natural process behind, a change produced from the very beginning in the creation process, there is movement created by external or internal forces that is shaping that apparently purity, sometimes reflected in architecture.

But what does “natural” have to do with architecture? How is the natural understood in the contemporary world? Does natural mean innocent, pure and ideal? Or on the contrary, is it being informed, not pure, contaminated? What does it mean for architecture to be “honest”, is this concept related with the question of the “natural”?

NATURAL, so what? | Chapter 3

from LOUIS H. SULLIVAN

ideal that is informed

to FRANK O. GEHRY

Ana Gonzรกlez Granja

form follows function LUOIS H. SULLIVAN

DIFFERENT UNDERSTANDING ?

function follows form FRANK O. GEHRY

Louis Sullivan wrote in 1896 that where there is a confrontation, a problem in resolving things in architecture, and that the best way to decide it is to shape the solution in the simplest way possible, it is the natural law that defines the best answer. Conditioned by logic, sensibility and culture that is concerned with what a building demands. Frank Gehry , his learnt how to be innocent over many years, sharing with Sullivan the concept behind the sentence “the hand of the architect”, shaped by a non-trained architect, that has learnt from his innocence, he follows a path to solve architecture from the problem to solution, a strong and natural liking for buildings.

When a problem appears they consider their own understanding of building natural, but both expressing them from the function they want to achieve and show.

Although their architecture is completely opposite and has nothing to do regarding appearance and construction their design process and goal is quite similar. Both are looking for the ideal solution which will lead them to what they consider truth and pure, getting to being informed without even care about that. Both manipulate the “object” up to they obtain the truth, that truth is intrinsic to the object itself. If Sullivan wanted a tall office building that building should be tall, although the final result might come from illogical steps, the point is just to look tall, so it is natural itself because it is shaped the way it should be to remain high, he uses tricks in a natural way to beguile the eye of the observer. Meanwhile Gehry focuses his point of being ideal, on looking informal and great, which is not bad, he is ideal in the sense he tries to be functionally direct and “organic”. He cares about the final result, so his methodology is quite simple, going back and forth between plans and models to experiment about shapes, surfaces, textures and colours, he manipulates the objects to find its own natural rules, is the project telling him the answers and solutions.

NATURAL, so what? | Chapter 3

A 3 PART THEORY. compared with a classical colum

3. capital attic

2. shaft monotonous

1. base lower stories

Ana González Granja

The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (1197) has purity because it is shaped by perceptions, sensitivity of sensuali-ty, musical shape, on expressing feeling and sentiments in a three dimensional way. That perverse and monumental scale is shaped naturally, because that wave like surface is what he defines as natural, that shape is natural to the place because is the one that fits on that space, as the ships built in Bilbao, is like a bridge connecting areas.

“That is so stupid that makes it look great” Frank O. Gehry in Sketches from Frank Gehry, directed by Sydney Pollack.

Buildings are surfaces that seek for what Sullivan or Gehry independently consider the true normal type. The natural process has a beginning and an end is defined in those theories Sullivan describes, in a tall office building you can always find 3 parts, shaped following the classical rules for a classical column, 3 parts as a logical statement a beginning, middle and an end. That process lead us to the idea of the living object, created by Gehry in the Guggenheim, the way light heats the material, those reflections, make a building a living thing. Those spaces are constantly changing in a biological way as the day time goes by, there is always a beginning, a middle and an end in the building facade. A building has to be optimistic and has to respond and change to be related with the surroundings, this building is shaped in a way that today seem to be something that has been there always, it has gained the power of being symbol and image for Bilbao, is something that has happened “naturally”.

Guggenheim Bilbao MIDDLE

biological colour changing. BEGINNING - MIDDLE - ENDING

Guggenheim Bilbao BEGINNING

Guggenheim Bilbao ENDING

NATURAL, so what? | Chapter 3

from FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

informed that is ideal Frank Lloyd Wright in 1908 wrote about how architecture should be, how nature comes to design and how organic architecture can define spaces. He said that architecture should have a natural appearance, an architecture that should come out of the landscape, as a natural feature, and if it doesn’t come the architect should handle the situation in order to give the impression that it is “growing from the landscape”. Buildings, Wright argues should be pure as vitality, responding in an organic way to the precise needs, being formally irregular.

But he fights with his own definition and ends up with an internal contradiction on his architecture, as he believes that to HERZOG and DE MEURON there should be as many architecture as way of life and people, Ana González Granja

nature of the object FRANK Ll. WRIGHT

LIVELY ORGANISM

nature of the object HERZOG and de MEURON

although that architecture might be worthless. He framed himself as his doing informed architecture but he is not, he is being ideal, because he is using the repetition of platonic shapes to make something pure, coming out of Vitruvius principles even if his reacting against him, like the Larkin Company Building that is made out of the repetition of cubes and rectangles shaping its exterior faรงade and interior distribution, everything in a perfect symmetry.

Herzog & de Meuron on their building The Institute Hospital Pharmaceuticals, known as the Rossetti building (1995-1998), makes references to nature and they seem to follow the pure classical rules that Vitruvius talked about, is a pure rectangular shape on elevation where the openings are defined in such a way that, as Wright said, occurred as integral features of the structure and form, is a natural ornamentation almost following the divine proportions. The faรงade is designed as a specific space, in which solidification and dissolution of the building unnoticeably merge, and not only where the sunlight seem to break away its glazed edges. There is a competition of reflections of the surrounding culture, nature, buildings and lively movements shaped always on the faรงade, produced by an entirely glass shell that gives shelter to the building hold a filigree grid. The treatment of the material is another natural feature of the project, it is all about imprinted dots which seem to be an illogical decision, but behind that unknown appearance, the colour reminds of the poison of the medication, the old pharmacy glasses and the plants that treat the illness. The reference to nature is informing a strip of artificial and natural ivy, which replaces the glass layer as one element with density spatiality and light qualities. The green here becomes the interface between natural plants and the glass of the quartz sand. Rossetti reflects what Wright said about bringing out the nature of the building in all of its points, where materials should develop their natural texture and the forms should grow from the natural changed conditions, they must be true forms.

NATURAL, so what? | Chapter 3

is a natural ornamentation almost following the divine proportions HERZOG and de MEURON

Ana Gonzรกlez Granja

“A building has a person” (F.Ll. Wright in “The essential Frank Lloyd Wright, Critical Writings on Architecture”:40), and that person is the function and the ability the architects have to handle a specific situation.

Herzog & de Meuron most of the time use this kind of textile materiality that is directly related to some aspects of the function of the building. The glass shell here keeps the pharmacy as a container, as one organism where it determines the shape. An organism as the Prairie Houses, designed to blend with the flat prairie landscape, design to create an organic architecture and integration of structural and aesthetic beauty and sensitivity to human life.

But what does organic architecture means? What has nature to do with a building? What are that features that defined if a building is pure or not? Why this continuous obsession of framing architects, periods, styles? Why should we decide if an architect designs being ideal or informed? Which are the criteria that lead us to pick out a building as honest, as pure or ideal?

How can we relate these questions to the ones posed at the beginning?

What does “natural” have to do with architecture? How is the natural understood in the contemporary world? Does natural mean innocent, pure and ideal? Or on the contrary, is it being informed, not pure, contaminated? What does it mean for architecture to be “honest”, is this concept related with the question of the “natural”?

The role of the critic is the one that gives answer and shapes every discussion here, although every answer is just subjective, as it is the informed perception someone has. It is said to guide people and help them to describe a style, a period or to define the kind of architecture someone does. The confrontation that appears when there is a discussion is what allow us to be able to create links between past architecture and current architecture, to connect the dots in between and to realize how the same term can be shaped through history in different ways but always going back and for in between the same ideas and perceptions. “Natural” has been defined differently depending on the purpose but there has always existed an evolution of the topic and a moment of reflection and reinterpretation of how nature has been applied in architecture.

NATURAL, so what? | Chapter 3

Exist? the tension between

t

The question of the Artificial How can you define artificiality if everything that surrounds us is artificial itself?

Where is the limit that breaks the apparent barrier of a natural element? How can we explain when something transcends the terms “pure” and “natural” to become fictional and artificial? There are no boundaries in this topic as everything is simultaneously both, one can consider an art work to be pure and natural, in time and space because it has been designed with a purpose in a current moment. But, it is actually something questionable that wants to elude and that represents something real, a concern, is a reflection of a true act, of a moment. It is a fact of reality and it is false because it has been made with technology, or hand-made work which also has use objects that are already made objects. It has used material that is not raw, and even if it is raw material is already discovered, analyzed, explained, searched, reinvented, reused, recycled. So, is there such an explanation for what is true and false?

Ana González Granja

There is a loop in which everything is contradictory, superimposed, correlated, and where one statement merges with another. I do see artificial and natural as something opposed and related, they are, of course, contrary terms, and one is necessarily opposed to the other, defining its meaning. But their reason of being is that each justification is explained by the other concept itself. For example, black is contrary to white, white appears when you combine the three primary colours, (white means light, purity, perfection, security).

Opposite black is the absence of colours, (meaning darkness, unknown, fear), just with two colours you may define different characteristics of an space, not just how a space looks even what an space wants to transmit. We make classifications because it is easier to remember, it is easier to learn, but the truth is that although elements may perform alone, as isolated objects, they are always related, creating links between them, and avoiding that loneliness of being one, that apparent artificially or purity.

But artificiality is defined in many different ways and theories of artificial. The concept is related to “representation”, something which is handmade, is sign, symbol, and image, everything that is used as substitute of reality. The concept is “pastiche”, a plagiarism, that consists of an uncontrolled and messy union of different elements of different art works, that merge together to create something new, and that pretends to be exclusive and original. The concept is “prosthetic”, artificiality also interpreted as an addition, an exchange of elements, a substitution or replacement from natural to artificial, like surgery. The concept means “simulacrum” where simulacrum is real, the truth masks that there is no real truth, as Baudrillard established. Finally, the concept is “generative”, something created from another element, the evolution of what already exists. Is generative because it comes from the already made.

Does The Artificial Exist? | Chapter 4

Architecture is generative, is not artificial, because artificiality most of the times evokes pejorative terms.

Negative assumptions, because people always want that naturalness and freshness of something that have not been transformed, something that is just how it is and that do not have any kind of addition or change on it, (we prefer a face that has not passed trough a process of aesthetic surgery). Just because of preconceptions naturally made, or the mere term “natural” in this society we live in, it evokes something better than just saying “this it artificially done” or that something is just “artificial”. Architecture can be defined as natural although it always has an artificial process.

What about the operation made out by Peter Eisenman on his project, Cidade da Cultura in Monte Gaias (Galicia)? He had cut the top of a mountain to do it again through building. Why is he doing something artificial (a set of buildings) to recreate the natural environment he decided to remove? I am sure the explanation of this project never says “an artificial construction that has destroyed the real natural environment to recreate that purity again through out the construction of the death environment, a group of buildings”. Why? Because, artificial is not a selling term. Eisenman would say that his project is “a series of friendly and natural buildings in terms of their blending condition, of being able to create a smooth surface that has the quality of linking the nature around and the local materials, which shape through architecture the top of that mountain”. People would be amazed about how a project can be resolved in a way that is purely natural, and how those buildings take care about the nature, the culture and the surroundings. We believe without proof that “natural” is better than “artificial”, but is that true at all?

Ana González Granja

Does The Artificial Exist? | Chapter 4

Artificial heart

Ana Gonzรกlez Granja

A pure artificial environment, a city in a house, a container of the energy a city detaches, everything reduced and condensed to a machine, Masion Bordeaux (1993-1998 by Rem Koolhaas). This house is a network of the same isolated elements that creates a natural connection between them, the purpose and the connection are not artificial, but its mode of creation is, a creation that is possible trough technology, through artificial mechanisms. Masion Bordeaux is an instrument, is a high technology machine reinterpreted as a house, all about artificial advantages that allow a new type of dwelling and lifestyle, there is here a mechanism that produces an artificial environment. The story of how the house has been conceived comes from the unexpected and natural incidents of life. The client had a car accident that sentenced him to live in a wheelchair the rest of his life, so the house was his opportunity to recover his freedom and to define his new world. There is a prosthetic artificiality in the client’s life, from the naturalness of the city to the artificial world of the house. A machine is the new heart, regarding the house-machine and the wheelchair-machine, two simulacra of real life, the wheelchair is simulacrum of being able to walk, and the house is simulacrum of a natural and friendly environment where to move around.

Does The Artificial Exist? | Chapter 4

The main circulation of the house is purely artificially forced, because it is related through a platform elevator which connects the three levels. It is a continuous space that makes the most architectural and cinematographic part of the house, there is a single wall intersecting all the floors, next to the elevator, full of books and works of art, a technological machine that allows pure and natural spaces, that changes the perception of the house every moment by locking floors or floating above them. The house frames specific points and natural views through artificial holes in the upper floor container, elements that depending on the user’s position connect the human with the exterior or with strategic objects around. Revealing holes, relative holes or dynamic holes creates a non physical connection between the user, the house and exterior.

The main artificial part is created by this element that floats in between one floor and the other, it can be physical or not, it can be just the mere and simple movement of the elevator creating new experiences, or it can be the new lifestyle the client has to life because of his new natural condition. We find here a new conception of the world due to technology and machinery, due to the recreation of real life by artificiality and technology.

Ana GonzĂĄlez Granja

holes in plan and elevation

Does The Artificial Exist? | Chapter 4

Artificial that kills. junk-s In contrast with the small and controlled Bordeaux artificiality, where everything is intentionality done, there are other kinds of artificial spaces that are done in a way that they seem to be the same everywhere, with no variation, they are like a repetition all over.

Rem Koolhaas’s concept of junk-space transcends the physical space that belongs to history, human relationships, the material connections, and culture. Junk-space is interior you rarely perceive where the limits of the space are. Is junk-space generative and natural? Of course it is. It is a system of connecting factors and elements that do not create boundaries in the total space, “If space-junk is the human debris that litters the universe, junk-space is the residue mankind leaves on the planet.”(Constructing a New Agenda. Architectural Theory 1193-2009, edited by A.Krista Sykes). So that is why junkspace raises new possibilities of understanding architecture, but not in a negative way and not translating this concept into fictional and unreal spaces, it is a new space possible because of natural and artificial living together.

Ana González Granja

space A desert is a natural feature but it is also junk-space no boundaries or limits to define, a space that may happened in different parts of the world where you feel as lost as in an airport, or a hotel, or that spaces that want to recreate an atmosphere that is not natural at all.

So something natural may be able to be also junk-space. But, what happened with that artificiality you find when you enter in a hotel?

Why that feeling of knowing a space you have never gone before?

How is that easy to be lost in an airport but to fast know all of it?

You leave a city from a cold space, wide enough in height, huge distances to walk, that is totally disconnected from the culture and of the city where it is, completely different from the city you are travelling to. But, when you land, you arrive to the same place, to that repetition of the same experience, you can do exactly the same and in the same order, having the same perceptions and feelings, although you are in a completely different city with different culture, architecture, ways of living. There is a globalization of architecture where no limits exist inside that place, where you pretend to live freely. Junk-space is a new artificiality spread all over. Spaces you are there for first time but you get the feeling of being there before. A new artificiality that can remove your memories, here is where artificial architecture is used with pejorative background, where it crosses the line of being well-thought artificial architecture and it happens as dangerous containers for people to flow.

Artificial architecture changes live.

Does The Artificial Exist? | Chapter 4