Architecture Itself by Kyle Miller

ARCHITECTURE ITSELF

ARCHITECTURE ITSELF 2015

Kyle Miller Syracuse University School of Architecture

CONTENT William O’Brien Jr “Williamsborough” Jennifer Bonner “Flavored Atria” Erin Besler “Other Problems with the Corner Problem” Alex Maymind “Analyzing Analysis”

INTRODUCTION Architecture Itself is an occasion to draw out and highlight core issues within the discipline of architecture. Conceived of as a series of intensive design workshops, this course problematizes [the] fundamental elements of architecture - not doors, windows, walls, balconies and toilets, but form, space, and order. In scrutinizing architecture’s interrelationships, the output of these design workshops make explicit links between formal composition (part-to-whole), spatial relationships (typology), aesthetic qualities (affects and effects), tectonics (assembly and detail), and, ultimately, the continuity of architectural discourse across generations (precedent). Rather than widen the gap between competing identities of architecture - autonomous versus contingent, or selfsufficient versus reliant - these workshops seek to answer two questions: “What is architecture?” and “What can architecture do?” And rather than searching for justification for architecture by defining its relationship to politics, economics, social good, etc. these events will elucidate how architecture performs within its own critical context, operating on itself to strengthen its disciplinary legibility and define its cultural efficacy. In doing so, this series is comfortable with temporarily bracketing out extra-disciplinary territories and identifying architecture itself as the primary problem of architecture.

PARTICIPANTS Colin Hoover Toni Jones Yuchi Kuo Fengqi Li Junhui Li Yangluxi Li Nicholas Lo Cicero Wenhui Luo Carlos Restrepo Karina Roberts Yang Song Sai Vemulapalli Zhe Wang Hanger Wang Erik Yepez Reynaldo Tong Zhao

William O’Brien William O’Brien Jr., is an Associate Professor in the MIT Department of Architecture and one of the founding members of Collective–LOK. O’Brien graduated from Harvard University where he was the recipient of the M.Arch Faculty Design Award. In 2013 Architectural Record awarded him with the Design Vanguard Award and Wallpaper* named him one of the top twenty emerging architects in the world. He is the recipient of the 2012 - 2013 Rome Prize Fellowship in Architecture and was awarded the 2011 Architectural League Prize. At MIT O’Brien currently holds the Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Chair and teaches design studios in both the graduate and undergraduate programs.

WILLIAMSBOROUGH This workshop make-believes an architectural fiction—a new imagination of old architectures that tells the story of unlikely contemporary architectural objects and environments. This mode of exploration can be seen as a safeguarded form of play, one that provides a context within which initially suspect, implausible architectures can be conceived, scrutinized, and developed. We might say that the narrative that we create represents an alternative mode of architectural fabrication. In this context, such is a fabrication that produces contemporary forms for architecture not by means of formal exuberance, digital intricacy, and tectonic complexity, but rather through the distillation of forms and the construction of architectures of fantasy. Labyrinths, Totems, Temples, and Masks are the archetypes of our collective reverie. This workshop operates under a preoccupation with several formal attributes and/ or techniques; among them are figuration, thickness, platonic form, symmetry, blankness, anthropomorphism, unlikely-proportionality, archetypal-promiscuity, and flatness. This workshop manifests its research in the design and making of a large architectural model of a fantasy world—a city like Rome, a building like Sir John Soane’s museum, or an academy like Piranesi’s. Not unlike Nolli’s 1748 map of Rome, the model fully embraces the use of figure-ground, and is constituted by solid and void—paying particular attention to testing novel conceptions of part-to-whole relationships.

Above: Composite Township

Above: Composite Township Model Photo

Lacock ural, dense, protected, and tired is the tiny town of towns that sits isolated from the world beyond. Lacock is medieval and has been so since its beginning in 1086. The tightness of its streets and freedom of its fields characterize the lives of the five hundred or so who have come to sit beneath dripping roofs and squeeze through muddy alleys. Upon entering, people pass through an immense stone wall that shelters the town and its spirit for a modest life. Through the crops and the cows, a vision of the town rises from the plains and breath shortens as the walls begin to decend. Constricted, the townâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s people weave through narrow passages that force visitors and inhabitants to live as one among the blocks and squalor.Squares appear sporadically around corners for people to sell their wares while children hide behind carts waiting for friends and begging for food. Winters freeze the farmlands between the crowded network of homes and the great, impenetrable wall beyond. Summers burden the citizens with hard labor and unbearable heat, but with their struggle they are safe. Each man who rolls a cart, and woman who kneads bread is saved from the world beyond that differs so profoundly from what these humble people know. Fear is latent in the air. People only enter to stay. People only leave to go away forever.

Forde orde is a commercial and industrial town inclined precisely towards agriculture. Located next to the fortified land of Lacock and between lakes and mountains this small place is well known for its love to nature and respect to ancient ways of cultivation adapted into a more contemporary way. Indeed, Forde is for the people, for the development, and for the science making this town a viable part of the regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s economy. The town is structure in such way that all these important factors, represented as circular plazas, are surrounded by various program which are directly connected along a main avenue into the most central square to enforce unity. The program was strategically mirrored from the central plaza to give a sense of balance within its components and further reinforce the important role agriculture, horticulture, and science play into this society as one.

Llaneilian laneilian, a weird name, from an unknown culture. This town keep its hard-pounce name until today implies it also keeps the old thing going on with the new things, they overlap. For this reason, the little town become a puzzle-like plan today, with a lot of dead end roads lead you to a surprise. This phenomena seems be caused by no-planning but the fact is on the contrary. In Llaneilianâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s history, it was invaded by the Vikings in the 8th century. However, one benefit was the Vikings bring the skill of shipping and hurting for the seafood. Three centuries later, the Anglo Saxons, the ancestors of the British, expelled the rural Vikings, ruled here until the Middle Ages. One of the most important event at that time was the only church, which was built in the 5th A.D., be enlarged by triple, replacing the downtown port set by the Vikings and becoming the town center again.... Then after the Middle Ages ended by 15th century, the citizens here established a lighthouse in memory of â&#x20AC;&#x153;the dark days endâ&#x20AC;?.

Netley N

etley is a village which seems calm to the local residents. However, there is a secret military training base hidden beside this peaceful village. But astonishingly, the villagers have no idea about this training program even that the running paths for military distributed in the town which could lead the soldiers reach everywhere in this area. Even the residential areas in the village are connected to the fortress, ironically the villagers do not find any clue about what happened outside. The village was surround by an elliptical fortress which only had one main entrance in order to protect the people during the zombie war. After the war, the residential buildings in this village had been rebuilt. However, the buildings which were attached to the fortress created several triangular corners. Because of the dread experience in the war, the villagers in this town used to stay in the corner as group. This activity gradually became one of the common traditions in this town. Nowadays, the corner still is an important collective space for the villagers.

Brassington Brassington ndustry was once the lifeblood of Brassington, with two major ndustry was once the lifeblood of Brassington, with two major factories dominating the urban landscape and the economy. factories dominating the urban landscape and the economy. The Brass Smelter, for which the town was named, moved in The Brass Smelter, for which the town was named, moved in first followed soon after by the Harris Sticky Bun factory. Workers first followed soon after by the Harris Sticky Bun factory. Workers and owners alike prospered along side the factories, and the town and owners alike prospered along side the factories, and the town developed outside the factory complex walls. Both factories developed outside the factory complex walls. Both factories positioned themselves next to the entrances to town, once visitors positioned themselves next to the entrances to town, once visitors would have entered alongside streams of product bound for the would have entered alongside streams of product bound for the factories; piles of brass and icing. However hard times fell on the factories; piles of brass and icing. However hard times fell on the town, and now visitors walk into the vacant lots where the factories town, and now visitors walk into the vacant lots where the factories used to be, often cross the vast empty spaces and leaving on the other used to be, often cross the vast empty spaces and leaving on the other side without ever noticing the town that still clings to life outside the side without ever noticing the town that still clings to life outside the former factory walls. Closing one after the other, the smelter and former factory walls. Closing one after the other, the smelter and factory sat dormant for years before they were finally torn down factory sat dormant for years before they were finally torn down when Brassington realized that there would be no new tenants for the when Brassington realized that there would be no new tenants for the buildings. The remaining inhabitants struggle to get by, and some buildings. The remaining inhabitants struggle to get by, and some have turned to back ally muggings to get by. The divide between the have turned to back ally muggings to get by. The divide between the haves and the numerous have nots is felt keenly, and riots and unrest haves and the numerous have nots is felt keenly, and riots and unrest have become commonplace. There is little that can be done however have become commonplace. There is little that can be done however to stop the transformation from building to vacant lot, and life is not to stop the transformation from building to vacant lot, and life is not so sweet today in Brassington. so sweet today in Brassington.

Belsay elsay village, whose history can be traced back to hundreds of years ago, is home to two significant constructions, a 14th-century Castle and a 19th-century Hall. The younger hall was built to supersede the elder castle, the situation of the Castle and the Hall is a binary and metabolic existence, it reveals the relation between obsolete and emerging objects, that is the process how the new one replaces the old one, and how they influence each other during the transformation. Therefore, either building and its context is not a pure figure anymore, either building gets certain character from the other one, culturally, programmatically, or from a style perspective. The history of Belsay is a history about transition, but it was not transiting from A to B, it was a story about metabolism and fusion.

Appleby ppleby is a village and civil parish. The total population in here is about 1,000. Historically Appleby was one of the largest and wealthiest parishes. The name Appleby is often mistakenly believed to refer to apple trees; it is in fact derived from “Apa”, meaning water, and “by”, meaning settlement. In Appleby, there is a Church, which is an important place for not only the locals but also the people from nearby cities. And there were couple famous families had their own houses, which are now left as landmarks and private mansions. The most important economic income in here is agriculture; the farm fields are placed half of Appleby’s site. Apple is the largest agriculture assortment in here. In this case, the locals in Appleby have followed the misunderstanding of the first impression by referring the town’s name to apple trees, and hold four apple festivals in each season, which produce different products upon the seasons. Now they are having the summer festival in the town, offers apple cider, pie, fresh fruit tart, etc. The festivals attract the tourists to travel during the year that brings up the economic simultaneously.

Jennifer Bonner

Jennifer Bonner was born in Alabama and received a Bachelor of Architecture from Auburn University and a Master of Architecture from Harvard University where she was awarded the James Templeton Kelley Prize. Bonner is an Assistant Professor at Harvard University and has previously taught graduate studios, seminars, and workshops at Georgia Tech, Woodbury University, Auburn University, the Architectural Association, and Lund University. Her professional experience includes work at Foster+Partners and David Chipperfield Architects in London. Her design and research work has been published and exhibited in several international publications and institutions. Jennifer Bonner is also registered as LEED Accredited Professional.

FLAVORED ATRIA Art critic, Dave Hickey discusses the differences between taste and desire in “Pirates and Farmers: Essays on Taste”: Warhol began with his soup-can paintings and his “Flavored Marilyns”—trademark desires produced in individual flavors to suit your taste . . . But we all have personal kinks, so Andy painted fifty-two Campbell soup-can paintings, each slightly different in its configuration and one painting for every flavor of soup: Cheese, Mushroom, Tomato, Clam Chowder, Bean and Bacon, etc. He painted about a dozen Flavored Marilyns—or Lifesaver Marilyns, as they were called at the Factory, since the candy provided the colors. All the Marilyns are identical in these paintings, but the backgrounds come in lime, orange, lemon, strawberry, pineapple, and licorice, to suit your taste while fulfilling your desires.

Aimed at borrowing representational techniques from Warhol’s Flavored Marilyns and soup-can paintings, this workshop develops and sharpens architectural convictions in regards to the atrium typology. By also working on the problem of seriality in architecture, the atria project is a search for authorship and taste when working with multiples. Ranging from John Portman’s Hyatt Regency to Foster + Partners Palace of Peace and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim to Preston Scott Cohen’s Tel Aviv Museum of Art, this workshop begins with a pile of atrium projects—studied for their spatial and geometrical particularities. New atrium typologies are developed through clever combinations of seemingly unrelated originals. This combinatory act forces three or more buildings together regardless of scale, history, or geographic location. A range of work emerges— figural projection, false symmetries, revolution of profiles, and obsessive halving. The resultant Flavored Atria are extremely formal, bright, and optimistic.

Mercedes-Benz Museum UNStudio, 2006

Seattle Public Library OMA, 2008

Exeter Library Louis Kahn, 1972

Hyatt Regency John Portman, 1973

Tres Grande Bibliotheque OMA, 1989

Palace of Peace and Reconciliation Foster + Partners, 2006

Marriott Marquis John Portman, 1985

Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Headquarters Foster+Partners, 1986

FALSE SYMMETRIES Colin Hoover Nick Lo Cicero

ELOQUENT DERIVATION Erik Yepez Reynaldo Hanger Wang

FOLDING + PROJECTION Tong Zhao Yangluxi Li

HALF & HALF Fengqi Li Zhe Wang

LAYERED INTRUSIONS Toni Jones Sai Vemulapalli

MIXED LOFT Junhui Li Wenhui Luo

STEPPED SUBTRACTIONS Karina Roberts Carlos Restrepo

UNTOUCHED ONE-FOURTH Yang Song Yuchi Kuo

Erin Besler

Erin Besler was born in Chicago, Illinois. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from Yale University and a Master of Architecture with Distinction from the Southern California Institute of Architecture . She is Faculty at the UCLA where she was the 2013-2014 Teaching Fellow. She is the recipient of the AIA Henry Adams Medal and a Thesis Award for her project Low Fidelity. She has worked for Tigerman McCurry Architects and VOA Associates in Chicago and for First Office and Zago Architecture in Los Angeles. Erinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work has been presented and exhibited in Beijing, Los Angeles, Paris, New York and San Francisco with publications in Future Anterior, San Rocco, Project Journal and Pidgin.

OTHER PROBLEMS WITH THE CORNER PROBLEM “The other big thing was, as far as I was concerned, that they almost all seemed to get in trouble in the corners.” – Frank Stella No recent topic in architecture has carried less discursive weight than the Corner Problem. Why is it that the meeting of two surfaces has caused such a perpetual problem? Might we point fingers at issues of material thickness, or accuracy and tolerance? Despite claims that the Corner Problem is nothing more than a clumsy Roman invention, some have argued that it has already been solved in a variety of ways (as problems often are). Perhaps only in architecture has the term problem, not come to be something that requires solution, but rather something to be worked on - a project. And if it is a problem, if it has reached a point where the discipline can call it that, then clearly we all agree that there is something repetitively happening in the corner.

WORKSHOP SU S15-ARC-600 GROUP 1 SLOCUM HALL, SU SYRACUSE, NY 13210

ROOM CONSTRUCTION FOR

SLOCUM HALL ATRIUM

PROJECT TITLE SU S15-ARC-600 PROJECT ADDRESS SLOCUM HALL, SU SYRACUSE, NY 13210

ARCHITECTURAL

ARCHITECTURAL SLOCUM HALL ATRIUM A-00 A-01 A-02 A-03 A-04 A-05 A-06 A-07 A-08 A-09 A-10 A-11

COVER PAGE SITE PLAN TEMPLATE BASE PLAN FRAMING PLAN GYPSUM PLAN MOULDING PLAN EXTERIOR ELEVATION EXTERIOR ELEVATION INTERIOR ELEVATION INTERIOR ELEVATION CORNER DETAIL CORNER DETAIL

PROJECT SITE

03 ISSUE FOR COORDINATION 6-19-2015 02 ISSUE FOR MOCKUP 01 ISSUE FOR PLAN SU S15-ARC-600 GROUP 1 SLOCUM HALL, SU SYRACUSE, NY 13210

STUDIO SU S15-ARC-600 GROUP 1 SLOCUM HALL, SU SYRACUSE, NY 13210

6-18-2015 6-17-2015

GENERAL NOTES

OTHER PROBLEMS WITH THE CORNER PROBLEM

TEMPLATE AND FRAMING PLAN

SHEET NO.:

A-02

CORNERED, LLC SLOCUM HALL 201 COLLEGE PLACE SYRACUSE, NY, 13210

ROOM 003 SLOCUM HALL PROJECT ADDRESS SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY 201 COLLEGE PLACE SYRACUSE, NY, 13210

02 FINAL ISSUE

6.19.2014

01 MOCKUP ISSUE

6.17.2014

GENERAL NOTES OTHER PROBLEMS WITH THE CORNER PROBLEM

MOULDING PLAN

SHEET NO.:

A-04

CORNERED, LLC SLOCUM HALL 201 COLLEGE PLACE SYRACUSE, NY, 13210

ROOM 003 SLOCUM HALL PROJECT ADDRESS SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY 201 COLLEGE PLACE SYRACUSE, NY, 13210

02 FINAL ISSUE

6.19.2014

01 MOCKUP ISSUE

6.17.2014

GENERAL NOTES OTHER PROBLEMS WITH THE CORNER PROBLEM

EXTERIOR ELEVATION

SHEET NO.:

A-06

CORNERE SLOCUM 201 COLLEG SYRACUSE, N

ROOM SLOCUM

PROJECT AD

SYRACUSE UN 201 COLLEGE SYRACUSE, N

02 FINAL ISSUE

01 MOCKUP ISSUE

GENERAL N

OTHER PRO WITH T CORNER PR

COVER P

SHEET NO.:

Alex Maymind

Alex Maymind was born in Riga, Latvia. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in history and theory of architecture at the University of California Los Angeles. He has taught architecture in various capacities at UCLA, University of Michigan, Cornell University, and Yale University; previously he studied architecture at Yale University where he earned his Masters of Architecture degree and The Ohio State University where he earned a Bachelors of Science degree in Architecture. Since 2002, he has been studying, writing, talking, drawing, thinking, perusing, observing, making, performing, and engaging architecture in a variety of formats, venues, and mediums.

ANALYZING ANALYSIS “Compared to Palladio, we are all muppets.”

– Harry Weese

History and design are odd bedfellows; curiously dependent on one another yet openly antagonistic at times. This workshop studies the collapse of distinction between history and design, and therefore asks: what would be the implications for collapsing the distinction between these two factions? What exactly is precedent and how can the cliché of precedent be re-animated? By reasserting history as a means to construct the present, to put history to work, the role of the architect is reanimated. One particular place to approach this collapse of distinction is formal analysis, an ambiguous terrain that lies somewhere between history and design, or between acts of writing and acts of drawing. The tradition of formal analysis took a left turn when Rudolf Wittkower collapsed the disciplinary space between historian and architect with a seemingly innocent gesture of drawing in his 1949 book Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism. By analyzing analysis we see that history is used as a design tool; through a seemingly innocent gesture the art historian emerges as a designer. The various tasks performed by Wittkower not only foreground the common underlying structures of these disparate projects, but produce a situation where the historian transforms the drawing into an abstract, immutable format - in other words, a diagram. Following in Wittkower’s footsteps, this workshop begins with a variety of architects–some from the Renaissance and some from modern architecture–that will be subjected to Wittkower’s analytic process. The tools of analysis are not intended to simply produce knowledge about the artifacts under examination; instead the goal is to analyze in order to create, invent, discover, and fabricate versions of those architectural authors and their specific plans by thinking explicitly about how these two disparate languages can be made into a third.

FRANK GEHRY Carlos Restrepo Erik Yepez Reynaldo

40 60

LOUIS KAHN Karina Roberts Hanger Wang

MIES VAN DER ROHE Toni Jones Wenhui Luo Sai Vemulapalli

LE CORBUSIER Fengqi Li Junhui Li Yang Song

PETER EISENMAN Yangluxi Li Zhe Wang Tong Zhao

Palladio-Eisenman Compositive Plan Peter Eisenman

JOHN HEJDUK Colin Hoover Nicholas Lo Cicero

CONCLUSION The Architecture Itself workshop series supplements recent inquires into the legibility and location of a discipline of architecture. These inquiries often result in binary oppositions – either, or over both, and; encouraging architects to either retreat into the interstice of dialectical opposition or to eschew the disciplinary project in favor of engaged cultural, social, or political correspondence. Rather than making distinctions and fueling debates between ideology and intelligence, theory and design, critical and projective, and autonomous and contingent this collection of design exercises devises new ways of producing architectural knowledge through educational events that promote a more jovial partnership among the aforementioned opposing positions. The Architecture Itself series demonstrates the ability of the design workshop to problematize and develop convictions about the most salient issues in contemporary discourse - formal composition, spatial relationships, aesthetic qualities, and the continuity and evolution of architectural discourse across generations. Intellectual narratives and theoretical tales—the corner problem and the problem of precedent, to name a few—partnered with both conventional and experimental modes of making, construct new architectural knowledge, be it an unprecedented spatial experience that results from a clever combination of aweinspiring interior volumes or a novel plan composition born from the overlay of competing formal sensibilities associated with different architectural authority figures. Cumulatively, the development of convictions within and across the individual workshops yields design principles that seek to formalize many of the diverse, burgeoning trajectories of contemporary architecture represented by these four designers. These diverse trajectories and the equally diverse modes of operation that characterize the four workshop leaders make a case for an alternative construction of architectural knowledge through the intensive design workshop – an event that blurs the boundaries, not only between thinking and doing, design and fabrication, and prototype and final product, but also between history, theory, representation, technology, and design.

SPECIAL THANKS WORKSHOP LEADERS

William Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Brien Jr., MIT Department of Architecture Jennifer Bonner, Harvard University Graduate School of Design Erin Besler, UCLA Architecture and Urban Design Alex Maymind, UCLA Architecture and Urban Design

SUPPORT

Innovative Program Development Fund, Syracuse University Michael Speaks, Dean, Syracuse University School of Architecture Julia Czerniak, Associate Dean, Syracuse University School of Architecture John Bryant, Fabrication Technician, Syracuse University School of Architecture Gamze Kahya, Publication Production

GUEST CRITICS Ted Brown Benjamin Farnsworth Joseph Godlewski Terrance Goode Liz Kamell Jonathan Louie David Salomon David Shanks