Architecturalisms by Julian Varas

ARCHITECTURALISMS Trans-scalar and Meta-programmatic Organizations edited by Juliรกn Varas

ARCHITECTURALISMS META-PROGRAMMATIC AND TRANS-SCALAR ORGANIZATIONS The Bi-Centenary Cultural Center in Buenos Aires

Edited by Juliรกn Varas

Thanks to

Paul Andersen Leyre Asensio Dana Cupkovรก-Myers Milton Curry Eric Goldemberg Branden Hookway Hiromi Hosoya Mohsen Mostafavi Ciro Najle David Salomon Imro Vasko v

for valuable feedback and criticism.

ARCHITECTURALISMS META-PROGRAMMATIC AND TRANS-SCALAR ORGANIZATIONS THE BICENTENARY CULTURAL CENTER IN BUENOS AIRES

COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE, ART AND PLANNING DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE Edited by JULIAN VARAS varas.julian@gmail.com ARCH 301 / FALL 2006

INDEX

Ackowledgments Studio Brief STRUCTURES: TOPOLOGICAL INVARIANTS Magnetoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Museum Nathan Friedman & Miriam R . Parera

Circulatory Duality Lester Perez & Joanna Tan

NARRATIVES: EXPERIENTIAL MULTIPLICITIES Extension + Convergence Mariela Alvarez & Weonyoung Joy Lee

Transcoding Orientation Catherine Meng & Joe DeSense

Circulatory Tri-fork Day Jimenez & Sheyen Ikeda

114

Visual Carving Machine Victor Chea

140

Miscellanea

166

cover image: Nathan Friedman and Miriam Roure Parera Previous spread: Victor Chea this spread: joanna Tan & Lester Perez

PLaza de Mayo area, Buenos Aires, Argentina Top left corner: Palacio de Congresos. Lower right corner: Plaza de Mayo. Photo: Google Earth

Palacio de Congresos, original project with elevated perimeter socle (not built)

Studio BRIEF Position The studio is dedicated to investigating the conditions and opportunities opened for architectural practice within the context of the contemporary modes of economic and geopolitical integration, an environment whose most recent cultural dynamics have been described as a fluctuating stagnation. The architectural discipline, in this context, seems to confront its own inability to generate conditions of true novelty. The incessant pulsation of its own production-consumption cycles appears to generate a paradoxical landscape where more and more variety locally stands for less and less difference globally. These newly perceived limitations have recently prompted critics to dismiss the idea of change itself, as being a constitutive fact of the current state of affairs. Yet, innovation and change â&#x20AC;&#x201C;i.e.: the invention of strategies, prototypes and techniques- are no longer a duty, or even a choice, of the avant garde, or a privilege of the cultural ĂŠlites, but an inalienable right of citizens and organizations at large. Opposing wholesale resistance to these conditions by dismissing the notion of change is untimely and dangerously retrograde, for it opens the doors to the reintroduction of essentialist, representational thinking. Unable to avoid the pitfalls of representationalism, said discourse looses its critical edge, ossifiying, and ultimately

domesticating practice. In the same way that cybernetics challenged the Lacanian image of the psyche by showing that there is no such thing in the unconscious as negativity, we will contend that architecture must exercise its complicity with the system, or it shall remain mere commentary. In the context of this positivity, this semesterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work will deal with the effects of capital flows and the attendant dynamics of city marketing, as they persistently call upon architecture to deploy its organizational capacities. Our field of experimentation will be a concrete instantiation of these processes: the Bicentenary Cultural Center in Buenos Aires. The ongoing competition to renovate a late XIXth Century neoclassical structure in central Buenos Aires -which used to house the central offices and distribution center of Argentinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s national mail services- is meant to articulate a complex set of cultural institutions to commemorate the second century of the 1810 May Revolution (which lead to the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s independence six years later) but, above all, it constitutes an attempt to signal the re-emergence of a consolidated and stabilized democratic state, after decades of political and economic turmoil. In addressing the project brief, we shall attempt to develop devices to integrate programs and

scales of operation across seemingly disparate or unrelated systems. We will delay the production not the concrete material assemblages that are called Architecture, identifying ways to move from, toward or around them. We will orbit around the discipline and its products, constantly gravitating toward it, yet always engaging the tangent of escape velocity: utilizing its diagonal attraction as a device to propel our research beyond the boundaries of what is already known.

Palacio de Congresos, Norbert Maillart, 1889 (initial project) - 1928 (end of construction Street Level plan

Theory The studio is inscribed in line of research that has been developed during the last fifteen years by architects of the second generation of late capitalism. Linked to different strands and derivations of advanced forms of materialism, such as cybernetics and systems theory, these experiences are associated to what could well be identified as the generation of 1989. The coincidence of the downfall of communist Europe and the end of postmodernism (and deconstruction as its last straw) goes far beyond a mere synchrony. In fact, it points to a profound historical fold where the failure of the project of May 1968 gives way to the emergence of a pragmatist Zeitgeist, one that distances itself both from modern utopianism and from the cynicism and criticality of post-modernity. The new disciplinary fabric is characterized by the reformulation of certain ideological alliances: from Robert Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction to FOA’s Complexity and Consistency, from Christopher Alexander’s diagrammatic representation to UN Studio’s diagrammatic production, from Aldo Rossi’s urban memory, to Rem Koolhaas’s . The new map displays ruptures and continuities in similar proportions, so there is no place in it for the modernist concept of avant-garde. Perhaps the deepest motivation for setting these processes into motion was the exhaustion of the regimes of signification on which architectural representation was grounded.

The signifying effects of form had taken control over the whole chain of production, thus obscuring architectureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s performance in the realm of what Marxist geographer David Harvey calls absolute space. The studio will work on the assumption that these recent alliances constitute a fertile ground for the construction of progressive positions in architecture. Yet, rather than working â&#x20AC;&#x201C;as many of those practices did- in a consciously generated disciplinary vacuum, the studio left aside the modernist pretence to tabula rasa in favor of disciplinary continuity: innovation by accretion.

Palacio de Congresos Longitudinal section

THE PROBLEM In 2010, 200 years will have passed since the Revolución de Mayo (May Revolution), which took place that month in 1810, the first step in a long process that led to the constitution of Argentina as an independent country. The following milestones of that process were the declaration of independence of the Provincias Unidas del Río de la Plata (United Provinces of the River Plate), made in Tucumán in 1816; the Constitution of the Argentine Nation, sanctioned in 1853, and the federalization of the City of Buenos Aires as the capital of the Republic, by law of 1880. It can be said that only then the institutional base for the consolidation of a new country was established. Just 30 years after the latter of these milestones, the first one’s centenary was celebrated in various ways. Today we advance towards another centenary (the second) of that initial step. Its arrival provides a good opportunity not only for a new celebration but, above all, to take advantage of the good will and optimism that such anniversaries generate among the people to tackle ambitious works, meeting long unsatisfied needs, and strengthening, at the same time, society’s confidence in its capability for reaching ambitious goals. The Bicentenary Cultural Centre aims at being one of those works. It will

Photo: Lea Rickenbacher

house a large-scale space satisfying modern technical standards for the temporary or permanent exhibition of works of art or other museographic objects. The Bicentenary Cultural Centre will include sundry other functions related to these with the purpose of becoming a first-class urban attraction for locals and visitors alike, and as a way of preserving and bringing new life to a building that is part of the country and Capitalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s history. To collectively undertake an initiative of this kind should also spur another inevitable activity in every anniversary: pondering on the past and the future. The 2010 Bicentenary is an appropriate time for a much more mature society than the one that celebrated the 1910 Centenary to reflect on its history and current challenges, as a starting point to establishing new agreements that would guide it well into its incipient third century of life.

Phase I – September 6th – 15th

GENOTYPE: SAMPLING AND TRANSCODING The question posed by desire is not „What does it mean?“ but rather „How does it work?“. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 1972

The goal of this first exercise is to extract circulation information from the project you are studying, and to find the conceptual categories and the graphic means to accurately describe your findings. The circulatory systems in museums and exhibition halls tend be increasingly complex, involving several circuits that should not interact, or whose interaction has to be carefully calibrated. The successful completion of this exercise will involve the production of a set of diagrams (2d or 3d), that contain enough information to describe the functioning of the museum, with special emphasis on its specific features (i.e.: that which makes it different from other museums that might otherwise be considered equivalent). The circulation studies should contemplate the larger context of the building, focusing on the relationships between public and private spaces. The diagrams should start by isolating circulation types (public, services, scholars, employees, artworks. Officers, etc), and then grow increasingly complex by juxtaposing the different systems that coexist in the building.

It is important in this phase to understand the possibility of artificially discriminating between topologic and geometric features. This does not mean that the diagrams won’t have their own form and geometry, but that this geometry, at least initially, will not resemble the building. Rather, they will preserve some of the building’s topological features, such

as programmatic adjacencies, continuities, discontinuities, bifurcations, overlaps, etc. These features should be retained by the diagrams, all else can be re-interpreted. Furthermore, the diagrams can hold additional information pertaining to experiential registers, including visual, auditory and tactile information. The submission materials for this exercise will consist of a comprehensive description of the case study building, including original photos and sections, plans and other relevant material, plus a detailed description of the diagramming process, that is, the process by which the information is read, extracted and re-deployed as a diagram that no longer holds the specific geometric organization of the building.

Phase I – September 6th – 15th

GENOTYPE: SAMPLING AND TRANSCODING

A) Case studies: Museum of unlimited growth- Le Corbusier Guggenheim Museum, New York - F. L. Wright Neue Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart - James Stirling Kunsthal, Rotterdam - OMA Tate Modern, London - H&dM MASP, Sao Paulo - Lina Bo Bardi Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinatti - Zaha Hadid Pompidou Centre, Paris – Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers Jewish Museum, Berlin – Daniel Libeskind

B) Analytic categories: Attractors, bypasses, switches, bottlenecks, bifurcations, speed controllers, density controllers, checkpoints, etc.

C) Graphic & theory sources Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Also, Envisioning Information. http://zeus.cs.hartford.edu/~anderson/ www.visualcompplexity.com www.smartmoney.com/marketmap

Phase II â&#x20AC;&#x201C; September 18th â&#x20AC;&#x201C; October 20th

GRAFT: IMPORTATION OF QUALITY Agenda Departing the last remnants of Creationist thought -still latent today in many highbrow architectural discourses- we assume that there can never be a condition of absolute originality in the processes of material organization. Instead, the dynamics of these processes can more adequately be accounted for in terms of the Genetic Paradigm. In such model, organization is regarded neither as the representation of a ideal essence nor as the embodiment or consequence of subjective will, but rather as an emergent Phenotype -a concept borrowed from evolutionary biology which designates the organism resulting from the interaction between an organization that contains scripted information about the physical constitution of an individual (i.e: Genotype) and the conditions of the environment where it develops its unique characteristics. During this phase the projects should demonstrate the possibility of consciously and effectively handling the material information extracted from the reference buildings, and of creating the adequate conditions for its transfer and grafting on the site in Buenos Aires.

Method This transfer of information between projects implies a modus operandi where innovation is the result of a successfully conducted R&D process (not an instantaneous illumination). The importation of material quality will thus be conducted as a process of actualization of coded potentials, rather than as the collaging of actual material fragments. To this extent, it will imply the construction of a system of description that can account for selected features of the CCB in a manner that is coherent with those produced on the previous exercise.

Deliverables 1) A one-sentence statement, describing a desirable performative condition of the reference building studied in Phase I, that focuses the efforts and intentions of the work thereafter. What is it, in your view, that is interesting about the project and why? Describe your interest less in terms of what it looks like, and more in terms of what it does. 2) Phase I re-worked diagrams. These should now indicate with precision the ways and degrees in which the features described by your statement (I) are accomplished in the reference project.

Image: Catherine Meng / Joe DeSense

3) A series of abstract diagrams of the existing CCB structure in Buenos Aires, including its immediate urban context, in which the building is described in relation to the goals set forth by your statement (I). 4) A series of measured 2D and 3D circulatory diagrams that will show the incorporation of the new spatial features on the CCB structure. The diagrams will deal with how the sensorial and/or performative registers from the reference projects are regenerated through both topologic relations and geometric conﬁgurations. You will probably need to go through a couple of iterations of this process, in order to reﬁne the results. You should be able to make your own judgements and present all your attemtps at once, explaining which are the most successful ones, and why this is so. 5) A paper, wood and/or cardboard model of the circulation system at scale 1:500. (approximately: ¼” = 10’ ).

Dates Monday, October 7th 1:00 pm - Desk crits. Saturday, October 14th 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm – Desk crits (please make an appointment with me via email) Monday, Ocotober 16Th 1:00 pm - Internal Pin-up / Studio space Saturday, October 20th – MID TERM REVIEW / 10:00 am - 120 Rand Hall

Reference: Aljosa Dekleva, Manuela Gatto, et alt. Negotiate my Boundary! Mass-Customisation and Responsive Environments. With Essays by Chistopher Hight, Patrik Schumacher and Brett Steele. Architectural Association, London, 2002. (See especially pages 36 onward)

Phase III – October 16th – December 3rd

DIFFERENTIATION: PROGRAM BREEDING “A systemic ecology is established in the relationships of exchanges among structure, effects, ornament and program” R+U, Atlas of Novel Tectonics, p. 104.

Agenda Having deferred the utilization of programmatic constraints in the process of organization, this phase will gradually bring back those pieces of information, in an attempt to generate further differentiation between systems and components. By determining potential programmatic configurations as an extension of the circulatory system, the projects will seek challenge the established museum typologies.

Method During this phase we will continue to develop the circulatory system of the building, but we will gradually move into the development of program-specific spatial types. Whereas the building’s circulation system connotes the idea of a graded continuity, programmatic differentiation implies the need to articulate partition systems, whereby otherwise incompatible activities can be accomodated in close proximity. The process of programmatic differentiation will be tied to the creation of material systems, able to perform the necessary spatial conections, disjunctions or separations.

Deliverables At the end of the semester the projects will be expected to reach a level of development between pre-schematic and schematic design. The conceptual aspects will be emphasized through a progression of diagrams that move from the specific to the generic (as a process of extraction of information from the reference projects) and then from that generic condition back to a specific, context sensitive configuration. All the projects will have to be presented through elaborate digital models, from which sections and images shall be produced. Projects will have to be described both materially and programmatically. The production of a precise physical model is also mandatory. Students are encouraged to use the 3d printer to manufacture the models.

Dates Friday, November 17th – Last internal pin-up / 1:00 pm – room tba Saturday, December 2nd – FINAL REVIEW / 10:00 am – room tba Mariela Alvarez / Weonyoung Lee

EXHIBITION

circulatory/public

circulatory /public program/private

program/private

circulatory /public program /private

circulatory /public

"/5.#% EFFECT REPETITION OF CIRCULATION

RESTAURANT

circulatory /public

circulatory/public program/private

program/private

circulatory /public

circulatory /public program /private

"/5.#% EFFECT REPETITION OF CIRCULATION

Fri

Week 2 Mon Tue

28 29

Wed Thu

30 31

Fri

Unless otherwise noted, all Wednesday crits are by appointment only. Appointments to be scheduled two days in advance of the requested date.

First day of classes

Seipp Competition

23 24

Week 3

01:00 12:30

STUDIO LECTURE 1: METHOD

12:30

Mon

02:00

Tue

06:00

Lecture: Michelle Howard

Competition is due

Wed

12:30 16:00

Competition Jury Phase 1: Launch

Thu

Fri

12:30

Desk crits

Tue

Wed

Thu

Fri

Sampling & Transcoding (1 1/2 weeks)

Week 4 Mon

EXERCISE 1

Studio phase 1case studies handed out