Arch 1016 - Freshman Studio
Jarrett Ely 1060 Final Book
Point Line Plane
Interactions & Relationships
Exploring the interactions & relationships between different architectural elements is a strong way to create an engaging design. These interactions can provide context, infrom movement, and define your design. They can enforce or disrupt structure, and they can help dictate the way someone perceives a space they enter.
Table of Contents Concept 1
Framing
Concept 2
Solid / Void
Concept 3
Grid
Concept 4
Plane
Concept 5
Movement
Concept 6
Light / Shadow
Concept 7
Context
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3
5
7
9
11
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Concept 8
Environment
Concept 9
Structure
Concept 10
Mass
Concept 11
Transformation
Concept 12
Abstraction
Concept 13
Analysis
Concept 14
Dialogue
Concept 15
Irony
Concept 16
Deconstruction
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Concept 17
Color
Concept 18
Heirarchy
Concept 19
Symmetry
Concept 20
Views
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Framing
Concept 1
Framing Framing puts an emphasis on how design elements will influence and interact with an observer’s line of sight and sense of space. The same moment, framed differently, can produce entirely different views and feelings.
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Framing
Castelgrande Museum by Aurelio Galfetti
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Solid / Void
Concept 2
Solid / Void Using the contrast between solid and void is a strong way to define a design. Concentrating on the interactions between individual masses allows for the creation of simulated or literal voids. Creating these voids can describe a sense of space, scale, or even emotion.
Takeshi Hosaka’s “Love house”
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Solid / Void
The contrasting solid and void in section of
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Grid
Tableau - Piet Mondrian
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Grid
Concept 3
Grid Grid is a datum used to emphasize uniform and ordered relationships. It can result in rigid organization of spaces, but can offer plenty of room for flexibility, if used creatively. This makes grids, historically, one of the most prevalent organizational strategies in architecture.
San Cataldo Cemetary
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Plane
Concept 4
Plane
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Plane
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s “Farnsworth House”, constructed almost entirely out of planes.
One concept that is commonly associated with the organizational structure of the grid is plane. The arrangement of 2 dimensional planes within a 3 dimensional space, whether along a grid or otherwise, is important in dictating circulation and line of sight. Adjusting the relationships between planes can help an architect change how one moves through a building and how one perceives the space.
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Movement
Concept 5
Movement
Like with planes, movement and circulation can be controlled by the arrangement of other architectural features. Adjusting the way in which different elements spacially interact with one another is one way to explore different ways to move throughout a space.
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Movement
The composition of different forms helps to suggest movement throughout the space.
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Light / Shadow
Concept 6
Light / Shadow
Peter Zumthor’s “Bruder Klaus Field Chapel”
Playing with the spacial relationships between your architectural elements can also help to dictate light and shadow. Regulating how light interacts with a space can bring a dynamic aspect to one’s design.
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Light / Shadow
Light can highlight a specific feature, lead the observer’s eye, and even change the feel of the space depending on the time of day. Architects can also utilize a structure’s orientation on a site to dictate the prominence, and even utility of a space.
In different lighting conditions, the same form hasv different emphases.
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Context
Concept 7
Context
Things like overhangs can provide context to structures with otherwise no real indication of scale
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Context
“Crematorium” by Axel Schultes Architeken only reveals its scale when given the context of an observer.
Light and shadow within a structure are highly dependent on the context of a site. A site can also give context to the utility, construction, and form of a building. And context within an interior space is just as important as the structure’s context with regards to the site. Architects will play with the scale of a space, while using doors, windows, and even people to provide context.
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Environment
More organic forms can suggest a site that is more rural and topographic.
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Environment
Concept 8
Environment
Wind towers to cool buildings in arid climates.
The environment is a large factor in contextualizing a project. The environment can dictate material, structure, form, and program. DIfferent environments may call for different features, and they may lend themselves better to certain forms.
Pueblo architecture in the SW United States demonstrates the way in which environment dictates materials and design factors, such as passive cooling.
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Structure
Concept 9
Structure Structure is something often determined by the characteristics of an architectural site. However, by looking at structure more figuratively, as an aspect which you can manipulate, you can highlight unique qualities and design visions in early models. Something as simple as deciding between a more massive and a more planar design can completely change the form of your building.
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Structure
These two massing models explore different structural ideas, with the top offering a more grounded construction, and the bottom a lifted construciton. Through they are both made from a combination of a handful of masses, the top suggest more structural strength, while the bottom has a more whimsical nature.
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Mass
Concept 10
Mass
Mass is a distinct architectural concept because of its inate ability to take up space, and, subsequently, create spaces when arranged with other masses. Mass is crucial to the concept of solid / void, which was touched on earlier. This is because it is the mass that is able to define spaces.
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Mass
Relationships between multiple masses (or a mass and the ground) are what dictate movement, provide context, frame moments, and create space. It is because of this that mass is one of the most important concepts in architecture.
“Ruby City” by David Adjaye uses glass at the base to suggest that the building is almost floating off of the ground.
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Transformation
Concept 11
Transformation
Transformation is one method that you can use to explore different relationships between the same forms. Two different transformations can feel entirely different, spacially, even if they came from the same starting point. This is because the newly created forms each interact with one another in new and interesting ways, defining space differently.
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Transformation
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Abstraction
Concept 12 Abstraction
Although similar to transformation, abstraction is a different method of revitalizing an architectural idea / concept. Abstraction reveals simplified forms, shapes, and ideas, and it draws upon those to create a new design.
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Abstraction
An abstraction may or may not resemble what it is abstracting, as it can be an iterative process, slowly drifting further and further from the original.
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Analysis
Concept 13
Analysis
Analysis is a useful tool in abstraction as well as the general understanding of a a structure’s composition. Analysis draws out the geometry, simplifies shapes, and emphasizes the most important features of a building. Extending these geometries and simplifying form is how you are able to abstract from your analyses.
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Analysis
These analyses of “Haus Gables” by Jennifer Bonner / MALL show how geometry is simplified and extended.
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Dialogue
Concept 14
Dialogue Dialogue is almost synonymous with relationships / interaction, because it encompasses the manner in which a structure interacts with its past, its site, itself, and traditional architectural elements. Dialogue could be contrast between internal and exernal, a reflection on a prior work, addition to an original structure, or even the reprogramming of a building. All these are ways that architects are able to relate back to something important. A work centered around dialogue is always interacting with that thing of importance.
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Dialogue
Above is Hergog & de Meuron’s “CaxiaForum”, exploring the an additive take on restoration. Below is an example of dialogue between two masses that only reveals itself at one angle.
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Irony
Concept 15
Irony
One could call irony a sort of dialogue between what is expected and what is reality. Irony breaks away from what is expected. Irony in architecture often comes in the form of scale. An architect can alter scale while maintaining contextualizing features (doors, windows, furniture, etc.) in order to create irony in a space.
Nicholas Hawksmoor’s “St. George’s in the East” is an example of irony through scale. The size of the door is exagerated, and becomes ironic upon realization that the door is half the size of the frame.
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Irony
This analysis of Haus Gables” by Jennifer Bonner / MALL shows the building’s irony, as the external perimeter would suggest a gridded layout internally, yet there are no internal walls parallel or perpendicular to the perimeter.
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Deconstruction
Concept 16
Deconstruction Deconstruction helps to explain the construction and form of a structure, but it also provides the opportunity for recontextualization. Deconstructing and reassembling architectural works, whether digitally or physically, allows for the recontextualization of individual parts into a new whole. It reveals forms, shapes, and relationships that hadn’t previously been there.
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Deconstruction
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Color
Concept 17
Color
Although much of architecture can be explored through form alone, when you start to take into account aspects like color, you can bring a whole new life to your work. Color envokes emotion and engages an observer. Color schemes are a way to organize colors in order for them to have the most effect in your work. You can try using analogous, complementary, split complementary, along with many others.
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Color
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Heirarchy
Concept 18
Heirarchy
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Heirarchy
The Sydney Opera House displays heirarchy in the varying size of its shell-like roofs.
Heirarchy is crucial in every composition. It highlights the most important aspects of a design and integrates all the lesser parts. It is because of heirarchy that observes can recognize what is most important in a work of architecture. In this picture to the left, it is fairly easy to tell which structures are more dominant and which ones are less so. This is because of the relationship between the height and size of each mass suggests which are more important.
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Symmetry
Concept 19
Symmetry
Although symmetry is sometimes hated by architects, if used intentionally, it can help to bring uniformity to a design. Symmetry provides a sense of satisfaction, as everything is the constant relationship between left and right, top and bottom, etc. holds the work together.
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Symmetry
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Views
Concept 20
Views
Arguably one of the most important factors in the atmosphere of a structure are the views (or lack thereof) that it provides. Adressing and considering the relationship of a person to your structure is what creates the moments which define that structure.
This drawing of “Johnson Wax HQ” by Frank Lloyd Wright shows view being broken up by collumns.
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Views
These photos show what it would be like to me among the masses, and indicate the views and atmosphere of the compositions.
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