Terroir, reinventing the ground of Thamesmead

Info & Intro Volume 1.

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Info & Intro

1

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Volume 1.

2

The Earth “The geometric ones could indicate the flow of water or be connected to rituals to summon water. The spiders, birds, and plants could be fertility symbols. Other possible explanations include irrigation schemes or giant astronomical calendars.� - Brown, Cynthia Stokes (2007). Big History. New York: The New Press. Pp. 167

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Info & Intro

3

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Volume 1.

4

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Info & Intro

Earth carving- Events and history.

The remain of human interaction to the ground. Mythical interpretation of these objects, as we mythically objectify modern day narrative of buildings and city. Association of the scene with imaginary concepts. In different cultures, the location of an object in association to the ground has specific meanings and reasoning.

Especially in the ancient cultures such as the Mayan who worship the sun and the east Asian, where ancestry is a huge factor.

Uffington White Horse.

5

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Volume 1.

6

Orpheus, Hellerau 1913.

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Info & Intro

Elevating the ground, Le Corbusier’s - Cleaning of the dwellings.

- Separation of traffic into pedestrian and car zones.

- Restitution of the build-up ground and public ground to the inhabitants.

- Awning that gives protection from sun and rain and also shelters children at play.

- Abolition of the façade: there is no longer front or back to the house.

Le Corbusier’s ideals of rising the street creates no front or back to the building, and provide better ventilations and visual path-ways.

Although many modernist architects attempts the same thing, but often separating the walkway and the facade, and the facade is still intact.

Le Corbusier’s, Villa Savoye à Poissy.

7

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Volume 1.

8

Info & Intro

“Ariadne discloses a close relationship, such as only the Minoan ‘mistress of the labyrinth’ could have had, to both aspects of the labyrinth: the home of the Minotaur and the scene of the winding and unwinding dance” p.99, Kerényi, op.cit.

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

The ground and the Labyrinth

9

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Volume 1.

10

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Info & Intro

The ideal city.

The ideal city created by Carnevale in symmetry, portraying the perfect proportion, of the ideal city. The ground plans of ideal cities are often based on grids (in imitation of Roman town planning) or other geometrical patterns. The ideal city is often an attempt to deploy Utopian ideals at the local level of urban configuration and living space and amenity rather than at the culture- or civilization-wide level of the classical Utopias such as St Thomas More’s.

The ideal city attributed to Luciano Laurana.

The Ideal City by Fra Carnevale, c. 1480-1484.

11

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Volume 1.

12

Orpheus, Hellerau 1913.

Adolphe Appia.

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Info & Intro

Appia maintained that two dimensional set painting and the performance dynamics it created, was the major cause of production disunity in his time. He advocated three elements as fundamental to creating a unified and effective mise en scene: -Dynamic and three dimensional movements by actors -Perpendicular scenery -Using depth and the horizontal dynamics of the performance space.

A step does not mean a step, perspective may not be perspective, as well as shadow may not be shadows. Appia considered light as the primary element which fused together all aspects of a production and he consistently attempted to unify musical and movement elements of the text and score to the more mystical and symbolic aspects of light.

Rhinegold, Basel 1924.

13

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Volume 1.

14

Info & Intro

The dancing ground and the labyrinth.

The Cretan labyrinth had been a dancing-ground and was made for Ariadne rather than for Minos was remembered by Homer in the Iliad where, in the pattern that Hephaestus inscribed on Achilles' shield, one incident pictured was a dancing-ground like the one that Daedalus de was depicted on the shield, where youths one another's wrists - circling as smoothly on their accomplished feet as the wheel of a potter and there they ran in lines to meet each other.

In the labyrinth of Crete, build by Daedalus under the oder of King Minos to capture the minotaur, the carpenter Daedalus represented both entrapment as well as freedom. Thamesmead is

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

and marriageable maidens were dancing on it with their hands on

the labyrinth of today, where it is build upon the dancing ground in which represented freedom and beauty, instead of the darkness associated with the labyrinth that is an enclosure of both prison as well as the hideous creature which is reflected by society.

Ariadne’s thread and Theseus.

“Ariadne gave him a ball of red thread, and Theseus unrolled it as he penetrated the labyrinth, which allowed him to find his way back out. He found the minotaur deep in the recesses of the labyrinth, killed it with his sword, and followed the thread back to the entrance.”

Theseus volunteered to join the band of youths who were to be sacrificed. He traveled to Crete, and as soon as he arrived Ariadne, King Minos’ daughter, fell in love with him. She offered to help him conquer the labyrinth and kill the minotaur if he would marry her and take her away from Crete.

Theseus slaying the Minotaur labyrinth.

15

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Volume 1.

Minotaur of the labyrinth.

16

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Info & Intro

Ariadne of the dancing ground

17

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Volume 1.

18

Climate de France, Alger, Fernand Pouillon “I work for the pedestrian, not for the airplane captain. . . . I walk around . . . imaginary spaces and I modify them if I do not get the sensations that I want.� - Fernand Pouillon

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Info & Intro

19

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Volume 1.

20

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Info & Intro

Facade of 200 Colonnade.

Plan, Elevations, of Climat de France 21

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Volume 1.

Aerial of Climat de France (1954-1957) in Algiers.

22

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Info & Intro

Climat de France (1954-1957) in Algiers, Fernand Pouillon Also known as 200 Colonnade. Harchouche Boulevard Mohamed Climat de France is an incredible urban complex of 5,000 homes located on the heights of Algiers, Oued Koriche above Bab-El-Oued.

Designed to house the poorest and most deprived slums around, the city offers an exceptional urban quality. All buildings, although built economically, are built massive stone: one from the quarries of Provence (Fontvieille), which was also used in the same period by Fernand Pouillon to build cities Diar el Mahรงoul and Diar es Saada .Climat de France facades have been repainted ... now all in white, and gables of the buildings, mounted bricks were repainted red. Fernand Pouillon.

Pouillon thus designed his housing projects with direct reference to cities. He understood the city as a network of public spaces, each public space bearing a different character that could not be explained by clear-cut typologies

23

Volume 1.

8m 3m

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

10m

8.5m

2.5m

1m

15.5m

8m

9.5m

The piazza of Alger.

24

Climat de France, Isometric.

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Info & Intro

The Datum.

Climat de France was build on a slop, therefore to produce a datum that is flat, the ground was craved to make way for building of this size. This creates a dynamic relationship between the building and the landscape.

The Columns.

The the element strongest and most monumental area is the large central square, known as the “Two hundred columns�. Its size is set by the stone module which built blocks of 1 m x 1 m x 1 m.

The Entrance.

The piazza is level in comparison to the landscape it is situated on, therefore to access 3 sides of the complex there are stairs and on one side there is access for vehicles.

The Piazza.

Today, the Piazza is very dynamic, trade, shops, playground, parking space. Its very interactive, its public within the private, while it is being separated by the colonnade to produce this separation, therefore the columns is very important in the establishment of the ground spaces.

25

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Volume 1.

6

6

6

1

6

1 4

3

1

4

3

3

3

5

5

5

5

2

2

2

2

Key. (1) living room, (2) bedroom, (3) water closet, (4) kitchenette, (5) entry, (6) patio, (7) public hallway

Internal access plan.

26

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Info & Intro

The interior.

The interior of 200 Colonnade is as generic as it could get, it provides the framework for the inhabitant to produce life, which is a principle in which Fernand Pouillon treasures. Each apartment has an internal staircase on the facade side to gain access to the upper floors, where on the roof, there are now self-constructed houses where there were spaces. Cherished by Pouillon is the unintentionally to an atmosphere of “authenticity�.

27

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Volume 1.

Plinthed infrastructural integrated residential derived from Fernand Pouillon

28

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Info & Intro

Wright says there is no distinction between earth and building.

He advises to build with and not above the earth, because the ground “is a component basic part of the building itself.�

29

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Volume 1.

Plinthed infrastructural integrated residential derived from Fernand Pouillon

30

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Info & Intro

Plinthed infrastructural integrated residential derived from Fernand Pouillon

31

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Volume 1.

32

Cretto di Burri, Italy, Antonio Burri “The city as a work of art�... synthesizing the most complex and stimulating material from studies on the city; “the city is a fact in nature, like a cave, a run of mackerel or an ant-heap. But it is also a conscious work of art, and it holds within its communal framework many simpler and more personal forms of art.

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Info & Intro

33

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Volume 1.

3500m

Case study - Cretto di Burri

34

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Info & Intro

Case study - Cretto di Burri

Cretto di Burri A town that was level during an earth quake, was memorialized by artist Antonio Burri, this town was also his birth place. This is a very poetic way of persevering a town and or a place of no more. In a sort of a plinth, raising the importance of that very ground. Burri’s birthplace of Città di Castello has memorialized him with a large permanent museum of his works. The first museum opened in the 15th-century Palazzo Albizzini in 1981 with a representative collection of paintings that Burri arranged and hung. In 1990, a much larger museum displaying some of Burri’s later, more monumental pieces opened in a former tobacco-processing factory

35

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Volume 1.

OS map of Venice.

36

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Info & Intro

Historic map of Venice.

Venezia.

Venice is made up 117 islands, it is the home of Shakespeare’s Shylock, as well as the destination of the Art and Architectural Biennial.

The islands of Venice is separated by rivers and canals, and connected through bridges. It is build upon a marshy lagoon, Venice is the capital of the Veneto region. In 2009, there were 270,098 people residing in Venice’s commune. Venice is the “City of Water” and also known as “La Dominante”.

37

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Volume 1.

Venice around St mark’s square.

38

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Info & Intro

St mark’s square.

39

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Volume 1.

40

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Info & Intro

Ground texture of Italian pizzas and chambers

41

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Volume 1.

42

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Info & Intro

Ground texture of Italian pizzas and chambers

43

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Volume 1.

44

Subterranean Terroir Architecture as tiled objects.

Info & Intro

The link between Ariadne, the city of Alger, Venice and Thamesmead are tide on the preciousness of ground, and the essence in which was lost during the transformation of vernacular or destruction for a purpose.

This project then follows these notion of lost ground, as well the very preciousness of the ground. Also in reference to the Thamesmead condition and the dysfunctional of which the ground and it’s purpose is lost.

The next booklet explores the current condition and start to look at the potential of which it offers as a project, in intimate relations to ground, submerged ground, plinth, crust in composition of a mosaic much a like Burri’s projects.

45