Full-scale Architectural Detail Eric Peterson Master Project Studio
For more than ten thousand years we have been building things. Some of the oldest known written word deals with the construction of buildings. What can the things that we as individual designers want to build tell us about our own ambitions and desires to enter into this ten-thousand-year-old discussion? The studio course centers around three primary activities: reading, discussing, and making full-scale architectural details. We have read a series of essays, chapters, and selections from pieces of text loosely associated with phenomenology. In the discussions we have attempted to relate ideas from the readings to our own critical practice as designers and active agents in the production of physical culture. We have used reading and design work to explore our own means of approaching the meta-project that is sometimes called civilization, urbanity, culture, or humanity. Ultimately, our aim is to begin to know where we stand in relation to this larger project. Each student has proposed an architectural detail that is part of a wall and has built it at full scale. Typical programs include a means of passage, a means of viewing out, a means of viewing in, a means of sitting or resting, a means of working, a means of rising up – i.e. a door, a window, a seat, a desk, a stair. The architectural detail should be justifi ed with careful excerpts from specifi c texts. Final proposals include both architectural drawings and a written discussion of how the ideas expressed through architectural detail are related to those texts. Eric Peterson
Whats’s the most resilent parasite?
an idea
METROPIA
“An utopian city under the metrorail”
Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa, in his book “The eye of the skin”, states “The world is reflected in the body, and the body is projected onto the world. I experience myself in the city and the city exists through my embodied experience, they supplement each other. I dwell in the city and the city dwells in me” In other words, the author tries to detail our unconscious perception of the world and how it shape values, feelings, identity and ultimately culture. Pallasmaa also explains how architecture plays a vital part in our conception of the world when he states that “Architecture is essentially an extension of nature into the man-made realm, providing the ground for perception and the horizon of experiencing and understanding the world” Cities in this case, are the major cultural center specially those which design enhances human interaction such as Paris, New York, Barcelona, etc. For example, all the social, intellectual and cultural revolutions or movements have always occurred in places where the context by its nature facilitates the grouping of individuals with the same interest providing somehow the necessary infrastructure for the development of ideas and consequently cultural identity. Conversely, in a place like Miami it will be almost impossible that any social phenomenon can occur because the way the city is organized segregates so awkwardly its citizens that social interaction is almost zero. Therefore is no sense of citizenship and no centers that group people with similar or different interest in a natural urban way.
In addition, Metropia provides an exciting ground for perception. The feeling of being suspended erases our attachment to ground consequently exploiting the three dimensionality experience of moving through space. Now every angle of the city moves. User experiment the existence of the above me – under me, left side – right side, front – back and the product of the projection of the user to those elements when moving through space. Moreover, to enhance this experience, all spaces inside Metropia should be intercalated to produce a dynamic environment minimizing the sense of linear monotony. Juhani Pallasmaa refers to this effect staying that “Homogenization of spaces weakens the experience of being, paralyses the imagination and wipes away the sense of place”. Moreover, Pallasmaa remarks the importance of the multisensory experience in order to develop memory and attachment to places when he wrote “Every place that we remembered, partly because it is unique, but partly because it has affected our bodies and generated enough associations to hold it in our personal memory. Every city has its echoes which depend on the pattern and scale of its streets and the prevailing architectural styles and materials. The wide and open spaces of contemporary streets do not return sound, and in the interiors of today’s buildings echoes are absorbed and censored” In this case, Metropia tries to project user to the smell and sound of their living city so there can be a more accurate reading of the place they are part of.
“ Every place that we remembered, partly because it is unique, but partly because it has affected our bodies and generated enough associations to hold it in our personal work. “
Juhani Pallasmaa
“ The eyes of the skin ”
” Every city has its echoes which depend on the pattern and scale of its streets and the prevailing architectural styles and materials. The wide and open spaces of contemporary streets do not return sound, and in the interiors of today’s buildings echoes are absorbed and censored “
Juhani Pallasmaa
“ The eyes of the skin ”
Metropia proposes a free multisensory experience of the city were people meet under the Metrorail. Based on the every touching experience of architecture as a multi-sensory experiment where our mind is constantly evaluating the quality of matter, scale and space, Metropia tries to put human interaction as the center projecting them to the city and projecting the city to them. “It is like a dynamic street in the air” The idea was to maximize and celebrate the beauty of movement. People could go for entertainment but they could also go to watch people, to meet people, to experience the city with it sound, smell, light and shadow, where people could come together to develop their ideas, where accidental phenomenon could occur and where young people could be consistent with their time and strengthen their identity with the city. A place which brings people together creating an environment for human interaction, for the exchange and development of ideas, a place that react to the exiting condition becoming a catalyst of continuous change and evolution. But most importantly, a place where users have total control of the place rather than the city controlling or programing the daily life of its citizens; a place to influence, to educate and inspiring people.
“ Great cities are remembered in all their vivacity. The memory re-evokes the delightful city with all its sounds and smells and variations of light and shade. “
Juhani Pallasmaa
“ The eyes of the skin ”
Metropia aims to be an exciting manifesto that only exists in the atmosphere of speculative thoughts without trespassing the real of verifiable facts. Like it is expressed in the essay “The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man” Chapter 1 “Myth and Reality” by John A. Wilson, on the fragment that states “Speculative thoughts transcends experience but only because it attempts to explain, to unify, to order experience. It achieves this end by means of hypotheses which its main concern is with man, his nature and his problem, his values and his destiny” Public spaces should be the physical manifestation of human values. Metropia tries to encourage that humanism where there is no difference between outside and inside, enclosed and open; it is only the way and order to intermingle people in a fare way where everybody is represented as a community but also individualism could be expressed. Also where the division between programs are erased, everything is part of everything and everybody is part of everybody in order to generated enough associations to affect our embodied experience and therefore strengthening the existential experience, the sense of being part of place, of a community, of a society, of a city, of a culture and at the same time enhancing the experience of self.
” Speculation is an intuitive, an almost visionary mode of apprehension. Speculative thoughts transcends experience but only because it attempts to explain, to unify, to order experience. It achieves this end by means of hypotheses “
John A. Wilson “The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man”
“breaking the logic”
“ The human mind is so constructed that it cannot begin to understand the new until it has done everything in its power to relate to the old. “ Henri Bergson
ENLARGED DETAIL
ENLARGED DETAIL N.T.S.
PROCESS MODEL model scale: 1”=1’-0”
ENLARGED CASE DETAIL N.T.S
“DETAIL A”
“DETAIL A” N.T.S.
ENLARGED CASE DETAIL N.T.S
SIDE ELEVATION FULL SCALE MODEL ON SITE
FRONT ELEVATION FULL SCALE MODEL ON SITE
RENDERING FULL SCALE MODEL ON SITE
Building the full scale
model
Jorge Fabregat
Master Project Studio April, 24th. 2015