N E W S C E N T R E: M E T A M O R P H O S I S AND M A N I P U L A T I O N
An Analogous City 1:5000
City of Morphosis A historical mapping of roads and other paths of movement through Lincoln’s Inn Fields highlights a cellular structure of the city. The transparency of time alludes to an autonomous nature, roads do not simply serve as connections from place to place, but it divides and sets boundaries for land - creating cells. These cells rejuvenate across time in groups or alone, morphing in form, function, meaning and memories. The morphosis of these individual cells collectively leads to the autonomous evolution of the city. What if architecture in its formulation anticipates the morphosis of cells? What if a single plot of land can inhabit several cells at once, composed of a disjunction of form, function, meaning and memories?
The Site: 44 Linconln’s Inn Fields
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The Site 44 Lincoln’s Inn Fields sits in a diverse part of London, on the edge of the London School of Economics campus, within proximity to culturally significant buildings; The British Museum, Sir John Soane’s Museum, Freemasons’ Hall, Royal Courts of Justice, Lincoln’s Inn, Somerset House, Royal College of Surgeons as well as the theatres of West End. Many of these buildings are interesting when seen across a time-line for their sustained lives and significance. This lead to a speculation of the future of 44 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, borrowing programs from these buildings in the context with the ambition enriching and celebrating the diversity of the area.
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Educational: LSE and Royal College of Surgeons Museums: The British Museum and Sir John Soane’s Museum Theatres - West End
Site programmatic injection 1:5000
Programmatic timeline speculates the future unto the site 1:10000
Library Gallery Theatre
Programmatic timeline 1:1000
If architecture could continuously go through major transformations, in the same way a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, in its infinite lifetime then the role of the architect becomes similar to that of a bricoleur. Leading to an architecture of disjunction, reflecting different periods of its past, becoming an archaeological artefact. A sole of authorship does not exist in this type of architecture.
The British Museum
Sir John Soane’s Museum
Linco
Freemasons’ Hall Royal College of Surgeons 44 Lincoln’s Inn Fields
Peacock Theatre
London School of Economics
DEPARTMENTS Accounting Anthropology Economics Economics History European Institute Finance Gender Studies Geography and The Environment Global Affairs Government Health Policy International Development International History Inequalities institute International Relations Language Centre Law Management Mathematics Media and Communications Methodology Philosophy, Logic & Scientific Method Psychological & Behavioural Science Public Policy Social Policy Sociology Statistics
Royal Opera House
Initially, I established a position to design a library, gallery and a theatre within the same complex as a way of testing out how architecture could morph in its lifetime. The idea of programs becoming inserted and changing across a timeline is influenced by Price’s Fun Palace, allowing architecture to have a social impact and avoid obsolescence by continuously renewing itself. This is further influenced by Constant’s New Babylon where in this case, growth happens only vertically upwards. This also inherently deals with sustainability in architecture. The project is treated not necessarily as a proposal in itself but rather as an experiment of processes and inventive methodologies to create questions and explore answers throughout the process. However, for the experiment to be legible, architecture in terms of its program, form, structure, practicality and use is treated from a reasonable realist perspective.
oln’s Inn
Royal Courts of Justice
As LSE already has a resourceful and impressive library, a typical library for its students, staff and the public is not suitable. So a library is abstracted to a collection of sources of information. This lead to questioning what information LSE as an institute needs that is not offered in its existing library... LSE needs a library of NEWS!
Listing specialist information that LSE needs Laws Financial Market Information Politics Statistics Human Behaviour Market Behaviour Current affairs... NEWS!
Translations from Painting to Drawing To image a library of news, I employed an abstract of mode of thought through painting. A Library of News, could within itself contain a newspaper production line, then a cafe is built in the same complex to allow people to read the news with their morning coffee. A cafe also is a Library of News as a place of socialising, so in this way the idea of news and a library was abstracted. The ideas from these paintings then were translated into tangible architectural elements from which the architecture of the project starts.
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Newspaper production line Cafe, a place to read and converse
Books
Information (current affairs) tunnels
Circulation
Organised by site geometry
This part of the process deals with how to imagine a library of news, where sources of information become people and newspapers. These activities and events are initially organised within the site geometry in painted plans, the paintings are only useful to the author, so to establish this as a legitimate methodology beyond abstraction, a process of translation into traditional architectural drawings occur. Although the paintings are perhaps more seductive and tantalising, this translation process is very significant as it begins to deal with issues of scale and spatial organisation in a more resolved way. Robin Evans argues that during the process of translation “things can get bent, broken or lost on the way”, however in this type of translation from painting to drawing things can get fixed, resolved or re-arranged on the way.
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Newspaper production line Cafe, a place to read and converse
Books
Whispering tunnels
Announcement stage
Organised by square grid
Translations from Drawing to Painting
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Ground Level 1:1000
Factory 1:1000
Gallery 1:1000
Library 1:1000
Ground Level 1:1000
Gallery 1:1000
Factory 1:1000
The Library 1:500
As the iterative plans were translated into abstract forms, I used phenomenal transparency through overlapping the paintings together, this liberated the plan from a rectilinear organisation but allowed the different floors to have relationships, which allowed me to design atriums which penetrate the floors at key moments allowing for the different programs of each floor to integrate through voids. Furthermore, through phenomenal transparency floor plates could shift as the tower grows higher in relation to the floors below and above. This is an important development as it addresses temporal aspects; where future levels added unto the existing can develop complicated relationships whilst being independent in its own way.
Verticality 1:500
Painting in a vertical plane unlocked the next stage in the process where questions of the facade, circulation and atriums began to arise. The painting leads to three different gradients of movements; the yellow representing elevators and the other two gradients showing stairs and a ramp throughout the whole building. Circulation is emphasised in bright yellow to enforce a strong sense of verticality, to further push the agenda of a growing tower perhaps to a skyscraper height. As I rotated the planes of the paintings to a vertical perspective, the ‘Cubist’ style plans changed in style into something ‘Mondrianesque’. By interpreting Piet Mondrian’s Composition paintings as a cut out from a bigger canvas, I began to separate my paintings to create ambiguity in the high of the tower, allowing the viewer to imagine the distance separating the two paintings. This is to reflect that the project aims to grow through a process of metamorphosis in its lifetime growing taller for a possibly hundreds of years. In some ways, the interpretation of the height of the tower is a way to assess the success of the project’s narrative to each viewer, as higher the tower is imagined to be, the more legible the design argument is. It is also important to note that heights of buildings are significant in capitalist cities in terms of their value. A project like New Babylon was in rejection of a capitalist system however there is irony in that the architecture of Constant’s project would thrive better and is more suited to a capitalist system. This project addresses and works with the capitalist state where growth in the tower comes from needs of the context, as is the case with Fun Palace, suggesting opportunities for capitalist gain, where this relationship is bipartite and is in mutual benefit.
2 Levels of Transparency 1:500 From overlaying the plans, the transparent material (glass) are extruded unto the facade, these are chosen to distort and create snippets into the activities inside the building from the outside. This leads to moments such as the production line being seen only from a certain point or the landings of the ramps are hidden to suggest a constant flow of movement.
Lost and found facades 1:2000 Automatism through Chance Operations: A Game of Facades 1. Start at the site. 2. Spin a pencil, note the direction. 3. Set a timer for 90* seconds. 4. Start cycling* towards the direction of the pencil. 5. Choose an element of facade from the direction you are facing when the timer stops. 6. The elements you choose from your view will then inform your site ‘appropriate’ facade. *Keep time relative to the speed of transport.
The surrealist idea of automatism was used to address the facade of the building. As the architect becomes a bricoleur when designing a morphing building, chance operations could be a way to collect materiality from the immediate context, the architect surrenders control over materiality to some extent allowing the building to reflect its context and its time at which the intervention happens. This allows the architecture to act as an archaeological artefact, where a skyscraper loosely becomes a physical timeline. It is also interesting that this is a very typical trend in contemporary architecture, especially in London where architects justify the materiality of their project as being appropriate and sensitive to the surrounding area. My methodology neither praises nor criticises this but perhaps sheds a new perspective on this mode of practice. The collected materials are placed in the gaps of the structural grid where it is deemed appropriate.
Serivce lift Charge pods Service pipes
Basement 1:500
Urban passage strategy Serivce lift Charge pods Service pipes
Ground Level 1:500
Ramp box connecting outdoor to indoor Newpaper production line Factory monitoring station Cafe bar Serivce lift Service pipes
Factory 1:500
Gallery partition Serivce lift Service pipes
Gallery 1:500
Service lift Service pipes
Void Level 1:500
North facing reading platform Books Ramp box transitioning outdoor to indoor Encolsed void below for weather protection Service lift Service pipes
Library 1:500
2070 Proposal
Holborn programmatic organisation
An Evaluation As stated before, this project is an exploration of methodologies of designing a building that does not remain stationary in its position across a timeline, so it seems appropriate to end the project with an evaluation. The project narrative starts at an urban scale addressing how multiples of activities and events which are typically separated into different buildings can be inhabited within a single architectural entity. Though this is different from skyscraper but perhaps closer to a shopping centre or a high street, in that programs and activities change when they become obsolete but in this case, these interchange programs are not exclusive to shops and programs are not only interchangeable but grow literally on top of each other. So the project narrative establishes three programs: a library, a gallery and a theatre. A summary of the methodology: Painting If in some ways the project is an attempt at a manifesto for a new type of architecture, then painting is separate from this methodology even though it dominates this project’s creative process, it is a personal element. Though the idea of abstraction is very important especially in the early stages to be able to question things down to its essence, painting is not the only option. The abstraction of programs and events The project in details questions one of three chosen programs, what is a library for LSE? This was an integral step in the process as it legitimised an architectural and social intervention in its context, this line of thought from a social aspect is influenced by Cedric Price but from a programmatic point is more on the line of Bernard Tschumi. Where a library for LSE is a Library of News but a Library of News is a cafe? Though the following two other programs are not explored nor architecturally resolved at the same level, the example of the library can be used as a precedent. Translation/Iterative design Phenomenal Transparency Although perhaps a rather backwards technique in architecture today, the use of Phenonmal Transparency addresses a key issue of growth over time. When plans start to build phenomenal relationships it somehow organises elements of architecture by allowing freedom to a new floor being built 20 years apart from the last, where it is allowed to have its independence and fulfil its practical, structural and other needs, whilst still being a part of something else. Phenomenal Transparency in art addresses the temporal dimension in a similar way where time is represented as non-linear. Though in reality, time appears to be linear at least terms in constructing architecture, phenomenal transparency allows a bricoleur to be retrospective. Automatism Through chance operations, I collected materiality from the site context, as a way of preserving history in a building where these operations could be performed every five or twenty years whilst growing taller. Though as stated before this is not so different from how contemporary architects work in a city like London, where ‘bricks’ are still used heavily mostly to gain planning permission. My project does not seek to criticise or praise this mode of practice but somehow works along the same line. Conclusion The main proposal is resolved to a somewhat realistic level and beyond that, the project speculates the future growth fantastically. I would criticise my work that the process and construction of growth were not explored enough in my methodology nor the architecture itself given its significance when looking at the reality of contemporary architecture. However, I believe it is important to fundamentally think about sustainability in architecture from a capitalist perspective, which in essence is how the project could be interpreted, similar to that of a skyscraper with a complex collection of activities within. However, this project begins to question how can skyscraper-like objects interact within the context of a place where skyscrapers aren’t built? How can skyscraper-like objects have social impacts like it is imagined in Price’s Fun Palace whilst co-operating and benefiting from a capitalist system of growth? Beyond this I explored questions of authorship in architecture, to develop a method of automatism and phenomenal transparency where different architects’ interventions act as catalysts for processes of metamorphosis without the demolition of everything before.
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Mathews. S., From Agit-Prop to Free Space: The Architecture of Cedric Price, Black Dog Publishing, 2007.
Barthes. R., ‘The Death of The Author’, trans. R. Howard, 1867.
Stamps. L., ‘Constant’s New Babylon’ in Constant New Babylon, To Us, Liberty, Amsterdam, Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2016.
Rowe. C. and R. Slutzky., ‘Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal’, Perspecta, 1963.
Stokvis. W., ‘Constant’s New Babylon and De Stijl’ in Babylon’ in Constant New Babylon, To Us, Liberty, Amsterdam, Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2016.
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