FORMAL ANALYSIS II
JONAH RAPPAPORT YALE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE ARCH 1224: FORMAL ANALYSIS 2 | SPRING 2022 INSTRUCTOR: PETER EISENMAN TF: TAKUOMI SAMEJIMA
01
VILLA SAVOYE
3
| LE CORBUSIER
02 UNITÉ D’HABITATION | LE CORBUSIER
5
03 VILLA ALEXANDER MOISSI | ADOLF LOOS
7
04 TRISTAN TZARA HOUSE | ADOLF LOOS
9
05
VILLA TUGENDHAT
11
| MIES VAN DER ROHE
06
SEAGRAM BUILDING
13
| MIES VAN DER ROHE
07
SAINTE MARIE DE LA TOURETTE
15
| LE CORBUSIER
08
FLOREY BUILDING
17
| JAMES STIRLING
09
GALLARATESE HOUSING D BLOCK
19
| ALDO ROSSI
10
HOUSE WITHOUT QUALITIES
21
| OSWALD MATHIAS UNGERS
11
SAINSBURY WING
23
| ROBERT VENTURI/DENISE SCOTT BROWN
12
TEXAS HOUSE I | JOHN HEJDUK
25
01
VILLA SAVOYE (1928 -1931) LE CORBUSIER
Le Corbusier’s idea was to design a structural system composed of a grid of columns completely independent from the functions of the plan, purely intended to support the structure, such that you could place walls freely, without consideration for structure. In my drawing for Villa Savoye, I argue that the free plan is not entirely free, as many of the so-called non-structural walls have columns embedded into them that diverge from the grid. They are not independent from the functions of the plan. In bold, I highlight Le Corbusier’s columnar grid, and in red the structural columns which diverge from the grid, which are not part of the dom-ino system intended to free the walls. Most of them are embedded either fully or part-way into the so-called freely-placed walls. I also pull out the columns to the right along with the walls they’re embedded into to illustrate this point.
02
UNITÉ D’HABITATION (1947 -1952) LE CORBUSIER
In Unité d’Habitation, the program is heterogeneous, comprising a gym, club, health center, nursery, track, shopping center, restaurant, hotel and 337 apartments all incorporated into one block and roof. In my drawing, I demonstrate that each of these programmatic elements is treated differently/distinguished on the facade/exterior. In other words, heterogeneity in internal program = heterogeneity in outward appearance, which is something you cannot say for Mies, for example.
03
VILLA ALEXANDER MOISSI (1923) ADOLF LOOS
“My architecture is not conceived in plans, but in spaces. I do not design floor plans, facades, sections. I design spaces. For me, there is no ground floor, first floor etc.... For me, there is only contiguous, continual spaces, rooms, anterooms, terraces etc. Stories merge and spaces relate to each other. Every space requires a different height: the dining room is surely higher than the pantry, thus the ceilings are set at different levels. To join these spaces in such a way that the rise and fall are not only unobservable but also practical, in this I see what is for others the great secret, although for me a great matter of course.” - Adolf Loos Loos is quoted as saying that his architecture is not conceived as plans but in spaces, or cubes. Hence, raum-plan, space-plan. What I have done is visualized Villa Moissi as such. What appears to be a three-storey villa in plan is shown as an agglomeration of “spaces” exploded along six different-height planes.
04
TRISTAN TZARA HOUSE (1925 -1926) ADOLF LOOS
For this drawing, I have visualized both Tzara House and Villa Moissi from the previous week as agglomerations of “spaces” and argue that the terraces in both qualify equally as “spaces” even though they are not defined by literal walls on all four sides. I believe there is a clear bounding box around each building which creates these conceptual walls which bound each of the terraces as though the terraces were previously rooms that Loos subtracted from the overall mass of the building.
05
VILLA TUGENDHAT (1928 -1930) ADOLF LOOS
In Villa Tugendhat, I argue that Mies makes use of the three different plan typologies: 1) columnless, traditional load-bearing wall typology, 2) the free plan, and 3) the open plan. 1) Traditional load-bearing walls - no columns - clearly-defined rooms - not free or open (these parts of the house are embedded in the hill) 2) Free plan - columns follow orthogonal grid - thin, non-load-bearing walls independent from columns - architectural promenade - walls divide up space and are threaded through with a specific path to experience spaces in a scripted sequence - windows frame views throughout this promenade - there are still clearly rooms, even if not entirely closed off 3) Open plan - plan left largely unplanned (only about two interior partitions, both non-structural, despite 7-8 diffferent-functioning spaces) - free to roam and explore - frame dissolves at its edges, creating ambiguous delineations between inside and outside, unlike the framed views of the free plan
06
SEAGRAM BUILDING (1955 -1958) MIES VAN DER ROHE
The same way that the staff in sheet music acts as a datum through which to read the pitches of each musical note in a composition, I argue the columns and service core provide a datum for the occupants at Seagram, and for us to understand the building. Every single floor is arranged differently according to each tenant’s needs, and the elements highlighted in red are the only visual components that are carried through each floor of the main tower of Seagram. In addition to the columns that frame each floor from the Park Avenue side of each floor plate, the same planes of the service shaft are kept intact on each floor, providing another visual datum by which the building’s inhabitants can situate themselves in the building regardless of what floor they are on.
07
SAINTE MARIE DE LA TOURETTE (1956 -1960) LE CORBUSIER
Comparing La Tourette and Villa Savoye, I found that VIlla Savoye is inherently a vertical experience while La Tourette was conceived horizontally. Both of these works of Le Corbusier were designed around the architectural promenade, which in the case of Villa Savoye, is an almost exclusively sloped ramp that carries the individual upward through the spaces from the ground level to the roof terrace along one continuous path. We even see that the secondary staircase, which is independent from the promenade carries the user through each level along a single path. By contrast, if we look at La Tourette, we see the building employs almost exclusively flat promenades on each level which are not connected nor relate to one another in the vertical direction, except via the service staircases, which are on the periphery and even themselves are often not continuous through each level.
08
FLOREY BUILDING (1968 -1971) JAMES STIRLING
In his design for the Florey Building at University of Oxford, James Stirling takes an ambiguous position with respect to the site, the ground and how a vertical building should meet it. This is revealed in his decision to conceive the Florey Building as both on piloti as well as a plinth, prompting the question of where the building truly begins. This decision also situates this building chronologically somewhere between the modern and Postmodern.
09
GALLARATESE HOUSING D BLOCK (1967 -1972) ALDO ROSSI
While Rossi’s design appears to be one contiguous block, my analysis reveals that it is actually two buildings, one almost double the length of the other, separated by a narrow slot, highlighted in red. The reason they should be treated as separate is that Rossi uses a separate grid and spacings for each building. My analysis of the longitudinal section of his housing block examines the spacings between each bay, the open-air staircases between them and the spacing between the buildings themselves. The red dashed lines reveal the verticals which are misaligned with the rest of the building logic, but more importantly, the narrow slot highlighted in red marks where Rossi shifts his grid and begins his spacings anew.
10
HOUSE WITHOUT QUALITIES (1995) OSWALD MATHIAS UNGERS
In the ‘House Without Qualities,’ a reference to the modernist novel, ‘The Man Without Qualities’ by Robert Musil, O.M. Ungers deploys a cartesian grid to which he strictly adheres both in his designs of the plan as well as the elevation, with the exception of a few key misalignments, noted by the vertical red dashed lines. My drawing is a comparison between the relationship between the partitions, furniture and window placements with the underlying cartesian grid of the facade and plan, revealing that the plan and elevation follow slightly different logics with respect to the underlying grid, both misaligning down the center, but with different centerpoints between the different bays on the periphery.
11
SAINSBUR Y WING (1989 - 1991) ROBERT VENTURI DENISE SCOTT BROWN
One of the characteristics of Postmodernism was the reintroduction of context as an important element of the building, and the Sainsbury Wing at the National Gallery exemplifies this. My analysis examines the unwrapped facade of the Wing, revealing it takes on many of the characteristics of the buildings in its surroundings, not simply the front facade of the National Gallery facing Trafalgar Square which is fairly obvious even to the apathetic observer. Of course, on the entrance facade, the Sainsbury Wing emulates the ballustrade, cornice, Corinthian columns, sham windows and use of Portland limestone on the central building, but as we begin to move to the left of the building, we see these features dissolve until we reach a blank wall, turn the corner and suddenly the Portland limestone becomes a brick facade full of windows, reflecting the brick facade of the residential buildings directly across the street. Finally, on the rear facade, we find that this is clearly inspired by the rear of the northwest gallery facade of the National Gallery, with its vertical decorative indents, and specifically, when we look at the big billboard that says ‘National Gallery’ in a serif font, we see it is in the same Portland limestone, and carries the exact same horizontal string courses as the Gallery facade, which is also otherwise a blank, windowless facade.
12
TEXAS HOUSE I (1954 - 1963) JOHN HEJDUK
In Texas House I, the cruciform and the nine-square grid are in constant play. Through my analysis, I argue that neither one is more dominant overall, but rather at different points, perhaps Hejduk was more inspired by one over the other. I reveal this in a quadriptych examining the underlying geometry at four plan cuts from the ground up, shown from left to right. Beginning by looking at the foundations (leftmost drawing), whose structure is carried up throughout the whole house, the grid of columns reveals a cruciform interpolated with the nine-square grid, and I would argue here that they are in equilibrium, neither is dominant over the other in the building’s structure, but they are clearly both there. In other words, this acts as a starting point from which Hejduk could pull from for the rest of the design. If we isolate the floor plate (middle-left drawing) and observe its overall geometry, both the cruciform and nine-square grid disappear. Without the columns to delineate, it is difficult to pull out either geometry. Looking at a typical plan cut (middle-right drawing), it is clear the dominant geometry takes the form of the nine-square grid. While it has the long axis down the middle, the two walls on either side break the cross and the thick, structural, square columns punch out of the walls, marking each intersection of the nine-square. Finally, in the exterior axonometric of the building (rightmost drawing), we observe the walls forming the cruciform are carried past the roofline of the rest of the nine-square. In fact, the nine-square is not recognizable at all in this view.
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