RATIONAL IRREGULATION
RATIONAL IRREGULATION
Yu Chun Tsai
This book was formed in the context of Professor Raveevarn Choksombatchai’s seminar and studio (2015-16), Professor R. Gary Black’s structural seminar (2016), and Professor Paul Waddel’s seminar (2016) for the Master of Architecture degree at the University of California, Berkeley. This book is also part of Social Housing Research project for Taiwan Government (R.O.C) Advisors: Raveevarn Choksombatchai , Gary Black, and Tom Buresh Copyright 2016 Regents of the University of California All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-365-22057-9
To my lovely parents, relatives, and friends. Thank you. Without your endless support, love, and patience, I would never achieved my dream.
Contents Preface.............................................................................................................3 Constructive destroy S – Natural species M – Human being L– Architecture XL – City Architectural space in Programs re-framing Site – Context – Urban grid – Architectural grid Open structure City above city Topic: Architectural space in Programs re-framing...................................11 Experiment 1: Systematic super complex...................................................13 Site analysis / Background............................................................................17 Experiment 2: Systematic super complex....................................................29 Application - Taipei urbanism social housing..............................................35 Reference........................................................................................................69
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Preface Everything has its origin. It might be form, context, or experience. Like human nature itself. It might be partially realistic and partially idealistic. Both have the intentions to context. The intentions transform ideas into context, and build the new ones from them. The basic idea of habitation is about enclosure and security. This minimum requirement drives human to seek for places to settle down, for example, caves and riverside. For the places they live, Nature is their teacher. After some living skills, such as carving and making fire, are learned, human try to create based on their knowledge. Twigs are selected not only for lighting and heating but also for constructing. When the more they invent, group living types come out. Then interactions begins, and skills are exchanged and learned from each other. However, human still keep learning from Nature to increase knowledge. For instance, by learning from trees, they recognize different sections of natural creation work functionally. Like, root grows downward for supporting trunks and absorbing water. Outer layer of surface (xylem) is for water transportation. Inner one (phloem) is for nutrients transportation. Green leaves grow upward for photosynthesis. By improving their knowledge and cooperation, human create lots of tools for living and try to make best use of Nature. Village is the type how human live and cooperate together. Then it becomes country. Countries fight for resources so they sometimes merge as a big one, sometimes are separated as several smaller ones. However, even though these changes continually happen throughout the whole human history. Nature is still Nature. It evolves based on certain rules. Sometime it’s fragile as single, sometime it’s stable by diversity. This is the same logic for human being in fields of politic, nations, and friendship.
There are a lot of human creations in the world. They could be high-tech products such as cell phone, automobile, and robot. Or some virtual-object like Facebook (social network) and Paypal (online shopping). All of them seem to be invented by human knowledge and creativity. However, their forming logics are still based on basic rule of Nature. However, no matter how complicated relationship seems to be nowadays, they are still the same with what Nature has. The reason is: human, as one specie, is never separated from Nature. Everything human do for the whole biosphere is only part of Nature organization. The symbiosis system is both the explanation and adaption for how human treat the world. Site, in terms of space, represents three-dimensional prerequisite. Every creation seems to be the response for it. And then they become another layers of context themselves. Even, sometimes, they totally change their outer appearance to merge into environment. This change would influence how people read environmental context, and also the ways how to treat it. Natural environment creates its own response mostly based on climate conditions. Their responses are usually homogeneous. Different conditions dress topologies up differently. However, Earth is the same thing underneath coverages. It is the common site for the whole biosphere. Moreover, since human beings are assigned with creativities and desires, natural landscape has been shaped to urban landscape by human knowledge. Whenever human apply knowledge on Nature, they start to mimic and try to learn from it. As human-made constructions take over Natural environment. The things built become themselves as urban landscape. It’s created by human and come to be “City”. Because of climatic factors, like humidity, temperature, and pressure, there comes dramatic climate changes, as called disasters. There’re also human-made disasters happening in urban area. They counts wars, poverty, and selfishness. These factors all come from desires. Besides, desire to occupy more resources also cause house shortage and inequality. Natural (Camouflage)
Artificial - Natural (Camouflage)
Artificial (Mimic)
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Constructive destroy Wherever there is construction there is destroy. Natural destroy always comes with climatic change. The process is energy release and the response itself due to density, such as air pressure and temperature difference. After human intervention, Nature is treated as resources. Wood is hewed for housing. Land is excavated for construction material. Atmosphere become garbage can for industrial waste. Nevertheless, the responses from Nature are also threatening the lifestyle of human. Earthquake and tsunami damage living habitations. Eutrophication and sea-level rise are also the challenging issue how human getting along with water surface. Furthermore, when human-made Nature is created. The response could be political, economic or religious. The destructive process seems like a filter, which make selections for both Nature and Human societies. It’s a mechanism of instructive filter.
Natural Disaster
Human to Nature
Nature to Human
Human - made disaster
S – Natural species Biological species adapt natural environment to live, and try to survive by different types of symbiosis: physical interaction (endosymbiosis and ectosymbiosis), mutualism, commensalism, parasitism, amensalism, synnecrosis and neutralism. The intensions for symbiosis are for resources, security, and predation reasons. Symbiosis sometimes is conceived as a state of primitive undifferentiation because symbiosis is established only with both existences of subject and object. Their existences support symbiosis. . For instance, normally, clownfish is subject, and sea anemone is object (mutualism). Flea is subject, and human body is object(parasitism). So types of symbiosis are the responses when subject meets object. Human being, normally no doubt, seems itself as subject, and consider surrounding environment as object. For here, subject is not just one thing but a set of things with their relations and field. There is no clear-cut boundaries for subject. They are ambiguous. So, how do subject recognize object as object it could get benefit from? Besides, symbiosis might be a structure, an organization having dynamic subject and object. Just like how metabolism functions to maintain organism life. All units are continually replaced based on their aging process. Evolutionary symbiosis Cooperation, interaction, and mutual dependence are the strong base for organisms’ evolution. Subject and object evolve for another by constantly exchanges their benefits. Sometimes subject transforms to object, sometimes object transforms to subject upon circumstances.
Parasitism
Mutualism
Commensalism
Competition
Antagonism
Neutralism
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M – Human being It is crystal clear to me that the body is an accumulation strategy in the deepest sense. - (Donna Haraway, Society and Space, 1995.501) Man is the measure of all things.
- (Protagoras, B.C. 420)
Human body is not just a biological structure but also a continuing project. Also, it is an open entity relating closely to all kinds of social processes (Internal and external), which means that human body is direct occupy to space and always being as subject. However, for furniture and accessory design, human body become object. All movements and scales are taken into consideration for subject to adapt on. So, as human evolve forward, the scale doesn’t change too much, but the functions vary based on needs change. Refer to space occupation, the moment human perceive space, the occupying begins. For example, shadow provides cooling micro-climate to pedestrians on the streets. Whenever people feel cool and refreshing, they already occupy this space and do it by physical perception. Human body itself is a non-stop occupying process because perception never cease until lives end. As for human-made space, human symbiosis seems also happen in every urban space, especially high-density population cities. Slum for India, iron house for Taiwan, ant-habitat for Beijing, and birdcage apartment for Hon Kong. The interest is how people perceive spatial potential to construct living-space, and how these new space created for re-shaping the whole urban space.
L– Architecture The building we were attracted to were ones giving a priority to stubborn honesty in response to their surroundings and programmatic requirements, without insisting on architectural aesthetic and form. We decided to call them’ Da-me Architecture’ (no good architecture), with all our love and distain. - (Momoyo Kaijima, Junzo Kuroda, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, Made in Tokyo, 2001) Illegal architecture is a kind of self-constructed building related to the sense of existence. - (Wang Shu, Illegal architecture, 2010) Whenever human perceive a place, what to be responded on it is the realistic projection of fulfilling needs. No matter what to be built, they become part of the city. That means, architecture become response from subject (creator) first, then transfer to object (context) when the time it is completed. It is a metabolic process that everything perceived could be response ever in a short time, then it merges into a symbiosis structure as undifferentiation. In this condition, the relations between “built” and “to be built” are the replies to the sites. The roles of subject and object become unstable and switch frequently. The question: How can space cohabit with other space? The attitude of fitting architectural programs into context is based on intention and way of how to interpret the site. That is to say, how to show the sense existence when something is constructed in context, either the way of merge-into or pop-up. Human always provide context with programmatic-spatial programs, which could also called intentions, and always be the role of subject to dominate object(site, environment). Is there chance human could be object and context could be the subject to perceive human needs? Instead of designing from up-to-down, is it possible space could grow out for users to adapt?
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XL – City City is a concept of co-habitants. However, cities also have similar relationship that biosphere has, such as mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism. Each Satellite cities function for other cities. However, these relationship only happen on horizontal plan. This horizontal relationship cause separation and un-efficiency on transportation. Is there possible way that cities could communicate or travel vertically, and provide much more efficient functions? In ancient time, human own the desire to build vertically. Tower of Babel is an icon of it. Nowadays, skyscraper is still the unfinished plan for reaching the unknown destination, which is the way, the truth, and the life. Besides, “Vertical cities”, as a projection for future urban lifestyle, seems like a solution for population explosion and improving living quality. Skyscrapers intend to sustain all needs and programs inside. However, inevitably, the sense of separation has been created because of the disconnection between functions and context due to its vertical dimension and limited plot size. In order to eliminate these problems, some horizontal elements, such as skywalk, are added on vertical components, which is influenced by 1960s Archigram and 1898 Garden city. Or big roof-ramp concept is adapted for connecting all buildings together. Nevertheless, either of them is still making buildings so isolated within city.
“I believe that some medicinal “magic” can and should be applied to cities, as many are sick and some nearly terminal. As with the medicine needed in the interaction between doctor and patient, in urban planning it is also necessary to make the city react; to poke an area in such a way that it is able to help heal, improve, and create positive chain reactions. It is indispensable in revitalizing interventions to make the organism work in a different way.” - (Jaime Lerner, Urban Acupuncture, 2007)
Lighter gesture, such as Urban Acupuncture, might be applied to public space. It treats urban space as organism, and try to relieve stress in the built environment based on theory of traditional Chinese acupuncture. Besides, it tries to use small-scale interventions to transform the larger urban context. The methodology works through Participatory planning process, which make citizens more getting involved into the process of making space. Nevertheless, this theory challenges the conventions of design process, which is binding strongly with urban fabric. In the end, the ownership of land should be partially reclaimed to public, and the importance of community development need to be highlighted as small interventions in design of urban space. Context, urban fabric, and site, are the products from human perception to space. Human, as natural intervention, already create a lot of urbanism habitation, and also lots of social problems made by human. Now, facing these problem with crowed cities, people are seeking space three-dimensionally to live for their human right. So, how to balance the vertical requirement for habitation and horizontal involvement into context, by the research how space co-habitat together, is a challenging issue for my concern of thesis.
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Topic: Architectural space in Programs re-framing Site – Context – Urban grid – Architectural grid. Based on historical reasons, every city produces different forms of urban grid. These grids forms context interwoven with users living experiences. They could be the systems that reflecting surrounding conditions, or the receivers that absorbing information.
Open structure City above city These transformed grids then become new types of basic for performing spatial flexibility, such as grape vine. The interest is to explore the possible diversity within gridded, and how to utilize these systems to generate architectural programs which could fulfill the needs of surrounding conditions.
Methodology In order to make use of original urban context, the method is to apply open-structure 3D-grid on top of existing buildings, and extend the grid system into buildings, streets, and urban space. Camouflage, mimic, and graft are the attitudes in space-making process responding to surrounding conditions. The intention is to make another layer covering the existing city. The programs include social housing tower (residential/ mimic), sky-park (public urban space/ camouflage), and retail store (commercial/ graft).
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Experiment 1: Systematic super complex _ Social Housing _ Taipei
Building continually
Building above
Building on old foundation
Building in old shell
Extension
Reconstructing
Seefahrtschule, Hamburg
Le Fresnoy Art Center, France
National Stadium, Warsaw
Plaza Sotomayor, Chile
Kunsthalle Mannheim, Germany
Louvre Museum, Paris
Sainsbury Wing, National Gallery, London
Museum of Hamburg History, Hamburg
BASF building, Berlin
National Museum of China, Beijing
TU Delft Department of Architecture, Delft
Mechaelsen Country House, Germany
Building in-between
City Hall Harelbeke, Belgium
Technical University, Hamburg
Building on parts
Building on old ideas
Speicherstadt boiler house, Germany
Reichstag building, Berlin
Wing Luke Asian Museum, Seattle
Neues Museum, Berlin
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Site analysis / Background A. House-pricing analysis and affordability strategies of Taipei metropolitan area.
Introduction : Having houses in Taipei become more difficult for now than 10 years ago. Along with steady decline in GDP, over 50% of family-incomes are paid for monthly payment. Loan payment ratio (Loan payment / incomes ) (%)
However, rentals, highly related with salary-index, are stably low during past 20 years, which means living in Taipei isn’t really challenging. Price of rental
Besides, provided with very low mortgage rate by banks (2%), people are much more willing to get into housing market with very high Loan-payment ratio (15 times) than bank with low interest rate(< 1%).
Sale-price / annual family income (%)
Sale-price / annual family income (%)
This made housing supply is way more than demand. However, more supplies of housing don’t mean there are equal demands. People still couldn’t afford them. In addition, private developers provide lots of pre-sale housing in real-estate market because it’s easy to get loans from banks before things are built, with low loan-interest, on behalf of developmental projects. The more transactions happened, the higher housing prices increases.
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Mortgage rates for houses (%)
Pre-sale Housing prices in Taipei city
Both people and developers make loans easily from banks. On the developersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; side, banks believe housing developments making profits. On people side, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also easy to get loans from banks(mostly, 80% loan). Free market and bankers dominate housing market. Beside, since land price rise dramatically in 15 years. Land cost-to-total cost is almost 70% high. These factors cause housing market extremely unstable. Once the housing market collapse one day in the future, serious social problems must appear.
Taipei housing policies: a.Supply: Increase the number of public housing & improve rental service system -long-term goal: 5% = 400,000 housing units (now until 2014, 0.6%) -rental system -preserve public land for public housing b. Demand: lighten citizensâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; burden by subsidy -rent subsidy for low- and middle income families in rental market. - rent subsidy for disables and aborigines c. improvement of existing housing -urban renewal -improvement of facilities Criteria 1. Housing AffordabilityIndex, HAI 2. HousingOpportunity Index, HOI
Due to laisser-faire development policies after WW II, most public lands were sold to developers in Taiwan. Government has not much land to execute public housing projects nowadays. So BOT(Build by developers-operate for years â&#x20AC;&#x201C;transfer back to government) was adopt. Since developers still needed to recover investment cost, public housing prices and rents were mainly based on market-rates (50%-80%). Besides, the design and housing types were for considered for maximum sales, not for low-incomes and disables. Eventually, these disadvantaged minorities moved out and policies failed. 20
Social Housing in Taiwan? 1. Housing affordability and demand
Refer to the data, Taiwan has high housing vacancy, high ownership rate, and low house-rent rate with barely no social housing storage. Besides, normal workman need to save money for sixty-four years for an apartment. This phenomena is kind of wasting social labor force. Moreover, high ownership and high vacancy imply disparity between rich and poor because some families own more than two houses but some donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even have one. However, the rental rate is relatively lower than other countries. So, where do these families who unable to afford housing live? a. Buildings on hills
b. Buildings on buildings
c. Buildings besides rivers
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Aging population and low fertility
Population aging is a serious issue, especially in east Asia. Along with the lowest fertility rate 0.9 % (2010) in the world for Taiwan. It means young people will need to bear huge burden of raising elder people. In the near future 2050, the majority age-level will be sixty- five years old. Then, the facilities for old people will be very important. So, the caring needs will bring up the old-people industries, such as hospitals, senior centers, and urban health agriculture. Moreover, if young people spend too much resources (money, time) in caring parents, less willing they would have to form families and children, which is a vicious circle.
Property right /public land / construction cost/ business model Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever on a finite planet is either a madman or an economist. - (Kenneth Boulding, 1973) We are not going to save the planet by putting our country out of business. - (George Osborne, 2011)
Current situation Most lands properties are owned by private in Taiwan. The government only have very little land properties for developing public uses, such as social housings and senior centers. So the government need to co-operate with private developers on most projects. Since private companies need profitable business model to recover acquisition costs for sure, if there is seldom space to lowering cost, the rental need to be increased for balancing the budget. As a result, business model is the key. But how to transfer benefit-cost concept into design process is the challenge. It is about material, use, construction, and maintenance. All these factors are highly related to sustainability either before or after the buildings are completed.
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Experiment 2: Systematic super complex _ Housing Complec _ Berlin
Enclosure is the main factor creating security for human habitation. When seeing the refugee camps in Berlin Temperhof airport, I find that there are so many identical tents arrayed on the ground. It seems these refugees finally get a safe and secure space to settle down, but it does not. All the tents are in the hanger. There is almost no public space. These refugees are just staying there and totally separated with the city of Berlin. This crowed space makes these people even worse situation than their dangerous hometown, Syria.
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Why they have to live in this negative situation? What if there are more refugees come into this city, where do they stay? Even though they live in the hangar, the space is still not enough. Why not build housings on top of this existing structure? Or attach housing units on the walls? Besides, insufficient public space is also a problem. These refugees couldn’t have social activities as others living in the city. Moreover, there is no professional- skill programs there. Everyone feels helpless for the future. They needs several professional training for their lives.
Architectural projects are usually known by their intentions. For examples, school buildings provide users with classrooms, dining halls, dormitories, and any relevant programs. It is very seldom that they could be transferred to other purposes due to the properties of size and schedule. Nevertheless, these incompatibilities are reasonable because these spaces derive from programs. Spaces are created for serving their intentions, which are decided by clients. The design process is for clients’ desires, which are autocracy and conditioning to users. Is it possible that space could be respond to events not just by providing wide and vacant but really forming eventful and flexible space? If it is assumed that space is defined by boundaries, events, which are the meanings of space, are also generated by boundaries.
Modularity is somehow just the tool for design process, but not for fulfilling users’ unfixed spatial usage. It always seems modular units could create lots of potential for different kinds of space. However, these programs and locations are only dynamic and alive in the periods of design process. Once they are constructed, they are inflexible and unmovable. For users’ aspect, they lose the opportunities to participate in space making. For designer’s aspect, the completion means the end of ecstasy.
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Application - Taipei urbanism social housing Modularity, Adaptability, and Sustainability represent different kinds of openness in this structural system. Modularity represents the openness of the units themselves. Adaptability represents how the system is open to existing conditions. Sustainability represents how the system is open to nature. In addition, this dynamic structure is open to different kinds of events and uses, for example, religious worship, educational workshops, conferences, or farmersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; markets (these all being types of social activities). This structural system is a container for diverse possibilities, and it also allows its residents to participate in creating the use of the spaces with a participatory design process.
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Introduction
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I am interested in how a structure can be dynamic, in order to create spatial flexibility for different kinds of programs. open-form architecture provides spatial adaptability, allowing it to be used for diverse activities. However, closed-form architecture is limited by its fixed structure. Therefore, the goal of my thesis is to design a structural system, using open-form architecture, that can be movable, deployable, portable, and habitable to in order to create a flexible space for its users.
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Inquiry My inquiry is what is the status in-between solid and void. How does space(void) be aware by different kinds structure(solid)? If solid structures are flexible and movable, how the functions of void space change? How to use void to define solid? It seems easier to have solid objects and then use them to create voids. Is it possible to have void first for defining solid?
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Modularity: Single; Double; Small Family; Medium-Sized Family; Big Family; Community;
The modularity of this system consists of the following elements: columns, beams, floo patible, allowing them to form flexible shared spaces. Each modular unit could be com single person. A two-unit combination would be formed by attaching two single units t of community, which would include shared space and public space. Individual units w to accommodate, for example, a growing family.
Challenge (program types diagram; conceptual models)
ors, roofs, and ceilings. The construction of all of these elements would be mutually commbined with others to form different housing types. For example, one unit would house a together, comprising a neighborhood. A group of three or four units would form a type would have the capacity to expand by building and attaching additional units, in order
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Adaptability: Grafting onto Existing Buildings, In-Between Spaces, Occupying Interior Spaces(invented grafting models and diagrams) These aggregations of modular units need to have relationships with existing conditions, such as rooftops (outside), interior spaces (inside), and courtyards (in-between). Different kinds of spatial interventions have different ways of grafting onto existing conditions. The purpose of adaptability is to take advantage of the benefits of existing buildings, though these buildings also present limitations to aggregation. For example, only a few more stories can be safely built onto a four-story building, but an eighty-foot-tall building can tolerate a ten-story addition. The height of a possible aggregation is lower when building onto a big courtyard than a smaller one, but a potential horizontal expansion is much wider for a big courtyard than a smaller one. The existing conditions dictate the kinds of aggregations that are possible in a given situation. The structural modular units of my system could graft not only onto existing buildings, but they could also graft onto their aggregations.
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Application The site I choose is a void space in the city of Taipei. I try to identify first where is void and where is solid structure for defining space. And then try to re-form the spatial relationship between void and solid. As for site analysis, I call out all the columns from the apartments and analysis the grid system of each building. Then I try to give the void space grid system as well from existing buildings. The formation of new grid system is the extension line intersection from existing building grids. The purpose is to make use of existing structure for transferring loading vertically and horizontally.
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Sustainability and public green space: water system, green space, urban agricultural
Furthermore, each unit would have abilities in collecting natural resources, and produc figurations could also be part of landscape. The green public space could also be th space together.
cing food. Then, the whole aggregation could be sustained itself. Moreover, these conhe joint between this aggregation and its neighborhood. The joint connects these two
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Modularity, Adaptability, and Sustainability represent different kinds of openness in struc Sustainability is open to Nature. In addition, the dynamic structure is open to different ki ference meeting, and farmersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; market (these all kinds of social activities). This structure to participate in arranging spatial usages. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s participatory design process.
ctural system. Modularity is open for unit itself. Adaptability is open to existing conditions. inds of event and moment, for example, religious worship, educational workshop, cone system is a container of diverse possibilities, and it also keep the chances for residents
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REFERENCE
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Works cited Oskar Hansen, (2014) Openning Modernism. Museum of modern art in Warsaw Press. John Doling and Richard Ronald (2013) â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Housing East Asia, Socioeconomic and Demographic Challenges. Palgrave Macmillan. Klaus Domer, Hans Drexlexr, and Joachim Schultz- Granberg(2014) Housing for everyone- Affordable Living. Deutsche Nationalbibligrafie . Wang Shu and Hsieh Ying-Chun (2012) Illegal Architecture. Garden city Publications. Momoyo Kajima, Junzo Kuroda, and Yoshiharo Tsukamoto (2014) Made in Tokyo. Kajima Institute press. Suikuan Tiunn, Chen Chien-Chung, and Chiang Wen- Jing(2013) â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Metabolism_ The city of the future. JUT Foundation for Arts and Architecture Press.
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