Concept Image Kirriemuir Childcare Centre Sketchup and Photoshop 1
Emma Louise McGuigan, Y4
Analytical Drawing Casa da Musica AutoCAD and Photoshop Daniel Gibson, Y5
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The Street of Terraced Houses Model
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Gavin Tong, Y2
The Still Point of the Turning World David Byrne, Y4
Dom Hans van der Laan (1983) describes “dwelling forms” as a “Reconciliation of man and nature”. That is to exist by adapting nature to ourselves. We do this through constructing space from a number of “architectonic datums”. The first datum is the horizontal and limitless datum of the earth. As we stand vertical in this space our experience is horizontal and with only the horizon as a false boundary it is difficult for us to come to terms with ourselves within this space. To adapt natural space we create a new space for ourselves by drawing the secondary architectonic datum, the wall from the earth. To delimit natural space we require another parallel wall mass to enclose the final datum, architectonic space. (Van Der Laan 1983) Now we know why and how we create an enclosed space it is still necessary to further examine how this space can reconcile man and nature through the defining characters of architectonic space. Experience and Surface The harmony between a person and their created space with nature is a fusion of two space images: Natural space image And Experience space image (Van Der Laan 1983). In terms of the created enclosed space I would describe the natural space image as a window to the natural space and the experience space image as the bounding surface of our created space. Window + Surface = experience space assimilated with nature. Van der Laan (1983) goes on to clarify the harmony between ‘architectonic space’ and the space of nature by defining our created space in two ways; shell space and core space or fullness surrounding emptiness and fullness standing in the midst of an emptiness. I would also suggest through the idea of core space that the enclosed space we make in the world is merely a symbol of potential space and does not exist until it is actually inhabited and experienced by a person. If space is bound by the mass of a wall and defined by our experience of it, it becomes evident that surface is an important character for that space.
It seems that our everyday experience of the world is mainly through the visual and haptic. Through movement we feel the ground beneath our feet and we see the obstacles or boundaries around us. (Rasmussen 1964) As we develope in life we rely a more on instincts rather than direct engagement. We experience hard and soft, rough and smooth, heavy and light, tension and slack. This is generally a visual experience first, affected by texture and colour and then becomes tactile through movement and intuition or direct physical exploration. (Rasmussen 1964) Our mind selects certain frames or details from the frames. Generally we pick out the familiar and through intuition and imagination we subconsciously create the scene which we think we perceive. (Rasmussen 1967) Due to our restricted field of vision we employ movement and the visual to fully take in a space. ‘walking space’ Van Der Laan (1983) says is part of our experience space. He therefore states that experience space is a “composite of progressively larger spaces; workspace, walking space and visual field” or intimate, intermediate and distant. This is Van der Laan’s (1983) threefold experience space idea and it further re-enforces the point that architectonic space is defined by our presence and experience of its boundaries, being surface. Any higher manifestation of our being must lean on a lower one in order to develop fully
- Van der Laan, 1983
We now begin to understand the importance of our presence to space. Through our experience we can also begin to see how we may begin to delight in some way to space. Poetically, Man Dwells At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; At the still point, there the dance is
- T.S. Eliot, 1943
The realisation of ourselves in nature, the realisation of the need for the subsequent shelter we make to allow nature back in and the realisation of our sensory experience of this space as its definer are in their own way poetic and to me profound. However, they are based more on commodity and firmness. A person may delight in the comfort of such a space but this may
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Study of Lewerentz Church in Klippan Pencil, chalk and watercolour on paper
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not result in a particular emotional or contemplative response. Heidegger’s thoughts on the connection of poetry and language give an insight into the feeling of these things on a poetic level. Language in its essence is a tool for a person to attempt to verbalise a things nature. To do this is to think about the thing and also to imagine and therefore create something by including this thing in language. Heidegger (1971) says that to think about the nature of a thing is to measure ourselves against it. Heidegger defines poetic measuring as listening. This occurs through emotional, instinctive sensory and reflective experience. These experiences involve an element of imagination and therefore making. (Sharr 2007) Heidegger refers again to Hölderlins poem to begin to define poetic measurement. It begins with a man’s “toil” this permits him to look up towards the “divinities.” A person dwelling on the earth and measuring himself to the sky is the first act of poetic measuring. (Heidegger 1971) This is important to Heidegger as it relates to his fourfold idea of earth, sky, divinities and mortals. (Scharr 2007) It can also be related to Van Der Laan’s (1983) threefold idea and therefore back to a person’s sensory experience. The intimate being a person on the earth, the intermediate being the tangible aspects of the dwelling that a person creates on the earth and beneath the measurable span of the space between the earth and sky. The distant being the thing that we begin to contemplate through poetic measuring.
ourselves and thought becomes much more instinctive. To recognise this beauty our method is to measure it to ourselves, a poetic measuring. That means we determine the familiar and the un-familiar and this way we recognise some truth. As Keats recognises that this truth is not based on any intellectual thought it is also not consistent from person to person. It is a sort of plastic truth moulded by each person’s imagination. Plastic truth can also be related back to architecture through the idea of core space. Just as we define space from within ourselves we also define Keats beauty and truth from within ourselves. If as architects we begin with the origins of our need for shelter on the earth and beneath the sky, we recognise our sensory experience and existence, we use all our tools and knowledge to create space and surface layered with substance and we understand the poetic potential of architecture. If we can create a “still point of the turning world” is that enough to allow a person to “dance” within it? Eliot, T.S. (1943)
Therefore to dwell poetically is to not know. This poses two questions: How does it feel to not know, does it give a feeling of delight? And How may architecture attempt to instil such a feeling? The poet John Keats investigated this idea of not knowing when he coined the phrase “negative capability” (Emsley 2002) I mean negative capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason
- John Keats
Does this contradict a sensory experience and poetic measurement? We use phrases like “to be stuck for words” or “astounded” in relation to beautiful moments. When Heidegger talks about contemplating the divine we don’t normally stop and think methodically about that notion, in such sublime moments we normally lose
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Westernisation and Japanese Architecture Lewis Prenty, Y3
With the westernisation of Japan many traditional family houses were divided between family members creating irregular small plots throughout Japan. These plots unsuitable for mass house builders are now being developed by Japanese architects. The irregularity created by these plots manifests as varied and contrasting tapestry of urban design. During the late 20th century many of these buildings turned inwards and ‘homes isolated from the urban context were no longer the exception’ (Nuijsink, 2012). With this isolation the cohesive nature of the street and the community it supported was lost. This seems removed from traditional architecture, but Nuijsink notes ‘contemporary architecture in Japan may seem quite removed from the past, but it contains traces of traditional aesthetics and values- even if they emerge unconsciously’ (Szita, 2012). The use of traditional design elements by the latest generation of Japanese architects grounds projects firmly in the context of Japan and is encouraging the communities of urban areas to redevelop. Many contemporary Japanese architects are working on small scale ‘ground up’ projects to create small pockets of communities. Riken Yamamoto is one such architect who feels that the system of single family homes is outdated. He notes (2013) that ‘there is an urgent need to consider an alternative system which would eventually replace the outdated ‘one house=one family’ system’. Yamamoto is developing a prototype housing scheme. His proposal features multiple closely linked dwellings and commercial spaces that share several communal areas to break the current isolation. These proposals feel like a development of the traditional house of Japan, creating a community around the home. Tsukamoto has a similar view. He states (2012) ‘…a house should include certain spaces that accept people from outside the family’ (Tsukamoto, 2012). House and Atelier, or workshop, by Tsukamoto of Atelier BowWow fits this new building approach. Built in 2005 the project combines an architect’s office with a family home over a split level design. The design relies on the use of split floor plates with glazing to keep the connection found in traditional Japanese design. With the office, or Atelier, the architects overlap the programme into the same volume as the house to
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promote a more efficient use of space throughout the day ‘The solution is space-time-sharing…what’s important is that the space is inhabited twenty four hours a day’ (Tsukamoto, 2012). This ideal is achieved by changing the programme boundaries at different times of the day. During the working day the office expands upwards occupying two thirds of the building, but at the weekend the house programme expands to fill the building. This blurred division unites the building into a flowing space and aligns with the architects view that ‘If the scheme assumes that living and working should be disconnected, then it is better to build them separately on different sites’ (Tsukamoto, 2012). The Envelope of the house, a result of the Japanese planning laws, conforms to minimum distances (Yoshimura, 2006) and results in the slope of the south facing wall. Internally this creates a vertical space that draws the eye upwards the resulting space is similar of the Sukiya style of double height spaces. These interior spaces and are very bright and airy contrasting this the tight urban context (Atelier BowWow, 2010). This feeling of openness resonates well with traditional architecture centred on spaces flowing though each other but the brightness is. The exterior condition of House and Atelier is heavily influenced by the close building boundary; however three exterior spaces have been carved out. The entrance to the scheme is along a narrow-paththis gap space has been reincorporated into the programme. This space has been given back to the street and been welcomed by the neighbours, ‘Our access route alley has become a little garden for them’ (Tsukamoto, 2012). Creating links between the private and the public helps to add more overlapping spaces and seeks to establish a stronger sense of community. Two private exterior spaces are also included in the house. The first, a small balcony from the time space share living room, provides a space for connection with the exterior available to both uses of the building. The second exterior space is a small turfed roof garden allowing a connection to the natural world and allows a small collection of plants to be cared for as well, Tsukamoto notes (2012) that ‘vegetation enriches gap spaces in an unexpected way’. With the newest generation of Japans architects responding to the problems found in urban areas with solutions that work to solve the greater problems, rather than turning their backs, the care and delicacy of traditional design is remerging. This shift is vitally important in Japan as the newest generation of architects have had little experience of living in the traditional Japanese buildings, yet have still translated these values to the modern day.
Internal Space Structural Exercise Paper model Dino Cambanos, Y1
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Aerial View Morro de Se Teatro, Porto Sketchup and Photoshop 9
Hannah Beatty, Y5
Classroom Exterior Product Design Studio 3DS Max and Photoshop Matt McCallum, Y2
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The Former Nairn Works, Kirkcaldy Industrial Freespace Card and balsa 11
Scott Harrison, Y5
Nomadic Machine Cities Fueled on Desire and Consumerism Slaveya Moneva, Y3
Man is a curious being. He is an inhabitant, he is not a creator. He has populated this world, which is not specifically designed for him. This is a world not always hostile, a world not entirely explored yet. A world not always forgiving, not easily providing. A small world in comparison with other worlds, but vast and somehow endless for the man himself. A world full of obstacles and challenges that he needs to overcome. And this is a task too big. In the span of millions of years he has evolved; thousands of changes have modified his body, his posture, physiology, reflexes, instincts, reactions, making them suitable for the world around him. And even this is still not enough for him to guarantee the survival of his species. He tries finding the solution to his problems back where the basics of his nature are. He knows that he is curious, he has always relied on this. He is an inhabitant, this is a given. But who told him that he is not a creator? Where did that one come from? He knows his weaknesses, he is aware of what has to be improved in order to guarantee his better existence. Now it is solely up to him to perform those modifications. In order to do this, men invent tools and machines that help with the activities the human body is not capable of doing itself. Those men gather in large communities, where everyone has a specific role and make the whole scheme operate smoothly. This is how the fantastic futuristic worlds from the middle of XX century were invented. Architectural experiments based on already existing technologies; conglomerations of machines wandering from place to place, ‘stuffed’ with humans, exploring new possibilities, new worlds, always travelling, always moving. The world of architecture will eventually move away from the idea of buildings as something fixed, monumental, great and edifying, into a situation where buildings take their rightful place among the hardware of the world. - Waren Chalk
The British design group Archigram discovers its niche during that period. The standing questions about the machine cities concept during the time could effectively be summarized in whether they are utopian or dystopian visions. The group decides on a bright future. They are fascinated by the possibilities the machine has to offer. For Archigram, the machine is not an enemy, it is no longer just a necessary evil, a supporting element needed to wrap us all together. It is a voluntary choice, almost a living matter, an organic continuation of the evolutionary process. Archigram are not angrily dismissing the modernist concept of the house as ‘a machine for living in’ (Le Corbusier, 1924), on the contrary, they develop it. Having seen the potential within the concept, they are the first to make a significant attempt in expanding it and making it contemporary adequate. Archigram are mesmerized. Technology has advanced greatly, mechanics are further explored, chemistry and electronics develop to a level never seen before, aerodynamics has made a significant step forward. The machine evolves from being kept within the housing unit, even from being that unit itself. The machine becomes a whole series of units, it becomes the conglomeration of structures and supporting technologies, but furthermore, of the people that inhabit it. The machine transforms into a megalopolis. Cities, being more than mere functional organizations of space and function, are the life-support system of a culture in perpetual change. Just like their fantasy cities, Archigram’s style is in a process of a constant progress and improvement, and then again, just like cities, Archigram’s style is a hybrid of many others. It is based on actual evidence and research of ‘nineteenth-century industrial architecture, twentieth-century technology, manufacturing, military apparatus, science fiction, biology, technology, electronics, constructivism, pop art, cutaway technical illustration psychedelia, and the English seaside’. Their style aims for a large public, not only architecture and design enthusiasts. It is illustrated with the means of the group’s distinctive images – as if taken from comic novels, with narrative ensuring an effortless communication between the designers and the public. The Walking City is the project that contains one of the most iconic images, associated with Archigram. It is debatable what makes the concept so intriguing – whether it is the zoomorphic reptile appearance of the megastructures, or the fact that for a first time they seem as self-sufficient organisms. It could be within the absence of background once again, the fact that one could only guess what the natural habitat of the machines is. 12
It is almost impossible to guess whether the soil, the landschaft would be able to carry its load, or maybe it is the aircraft underneath that turns the matters and makes it plausible? Could those systems inhabit the water resources? Maybe even connect to one of the modules of Underwater City and become a living part of it, or just exchange resources and continue on its own way? Would it not simply collapse under its own weight? The drawings are remarkably detailed; yet they do not give an answer even to a miniscule part of the questions standing. What kinds of people occupy those spaces? Do they communicate with the other cities? How many of them are existent? Are they connected? What surrounds the cities? Is there a choice other than this? Another option, a different reality? Does a man necessarily have to be a part of this system? Are the Machines coming in peace? Where are they headed to? Having been positioned into a vast abstract space to inhabit, one deprived from topography, neighbours, the city has no historical memory. It accustoms itself according to the surrounding environment, it evolves from it. Based on the idea of servicing and systems, the city is in fact an ‘enormous range of functions being simultaneously monitored in the effort to maintain an urban homeostasis: temperature, transport, goods supply, craneways, levels of self-sufficiency, population, plug-in infrastructure, birth rate/death rate, food supply consumption, recreation, and power supply among others’. As indicated in their collages, this is a city about movement, ‘a city for happening’, interactive, moldable, it is not services by networks, the city is a network itself. A certain harmony of movement becomes apparent. This world of nomadic machine tribes has a gigantic liberating power. It frees the man from the constrain of needing to inhabit one particular environment throughout his whole life, or from the need to separate territory between people, races or nations. The universal language of the Machine, of its identical, standard parts deprives the everyday life from the inconvenience of the cultural differences. The building materials - particles and units are made with a matrix, duplicated, produced periodically and methodically – all the same, always. People have always been fascinated by machines, by technology, by different ways their own inventions are powerful enough to change the surrounding world. The radical groups design only the beginning of an intriguing fantasy, thus giving the people a vast empty canvas to imagine a world of their own. This is a world dominated by man himself with the means of his own creations.
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Having started solely as an abstract idea, the dream of man being in control of his own world and modifying it according to his own will, develops. It has never seized to exist and to provoke inspiration. Archigram themselves describe the purpose of those projects: ‘Simply to excite the public about the future’ Because man is a curious being. And nothing gives him more satisfaction than being a creator.
Brutalism of Modernity Plaster and wax model Asya Ivanova, Y4
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Measured Drawing St. John’s College, Cambridge AutoCAD 15
Fennella Nkansah, Claire Souliman and Stelian Stefanos, Y3
Embodied History through Repair Steel chair repaired with salvaged timber Mark Johnston, Y4
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Facade Study Continuity and Hierarchy AutoCAD and Photoshop 17
Colin Baillie, Y5
Notes on Architecture as Cultural Production Cameron McEwan, PhD
While it is clear that architecture is not autonomous from culture, it is possible to understand architecture as autonomous in relation to culture because architecture is a discipline with its own rules, values, formal and conceptual principles which are put forward in theories, drawings, built and unbuilt examples. Yet architecture gives concrete form to culture and came into being with the first traces of the city. Architecture is rooted in the formation of culture and civilisation so that the history of architecture, which is the city, is also the history of culture. Architecture, culture and the city are therefore relational and co-determinate. The purpose of the following notes will be to briefly reflect on these points. “Mind takes form in the city;” said Lewis Mumford in The Culture of Cities “and in turn, urban forms condition mind.” Mumford’s words remind us of architecture’s formal condition and that the city embodies the sensibility, attitude, and dominant worldview of any given culture. Then, urban forms – architecture as such – condition the sensibility of any given culture because the architecture of the city is both a human creation of manual as well as mental labour and the willed expression of power, whether in the name of the state, religion, corporate patronage or some other authority such as a single figure. The city thus embodies private passions and desires, shared beliefs and needs, as well as the conflicts of a people, which always results in both the construction and destruction of the city. Think of the construction of great arches during the Roman Empire to celebrate war victories; or infrastructural projects like Haussmann’s Paris boulevards that destroyed vast areas of the city to represent an affluent Paris as a crucial centre of Europe; or the production of “iconic” buildings in the 1990s and 2000s that attempted to turn relatively unimpressive cities into global tourist attractions. By understanding architecture and the city as the embodiment of culture – of shared beliefs and needs as well as common sensibilities and attitudes – we can ask what is the culture of our current condition and how is this formalised in architecture? There has been considerable recent discussion by commentators who describe culture today as a “crisis of social imagination.” Let us note two examples. According to Paul Virilio, “Progress has become excess.” In the past, progress was the shared improvement of living, working, and education conditions. As Virilio states in The Administration of Fear progress is now
excess. For Virilio, excess means the proliferation of unnecessary objects so that we are saturated with images, sounds and words. These are produced at an excessive speed with the purpose of feeding our desire for immediate satisfaction. The excessive speed of contemporary culture and the constant speed of post-industrial society has caused the fragmentation of rhythm, whether daily and habitual, seasonal, or something other. Virilio extrapolates this to various scales including human, city, and military. He comments that society accelerates at all times and without pause for reflecting on our desire for new things. The planned obsolescence of technologies such as phones and computers (as well as cars and new homes) is an example. We dispose of them at a quicker rate because they are produced at a quicker rate so we endlessly consume. Virilio reminds us that the need to constantly update our Facebook and our Email is another example of the acceleration of reality. The implication of the desire to “update” is that we are always behind where we need to be: behind on work, family, and friends. Because of its banality the sense of “being behind” goes unnoticed as a way of controlling our sensibility that results in deep feelings of anxiety. Lastly, Virilio reminds us that modern culture equates progress with economic expansion and the excessive proliferation of facts, figures, percentages, profits, and statistics, which is what Virilio calls the “mathematicisation of reality.” Let us recall another example. In Factories of Knowledge, Industries of Creativity Gerald Raunig says the following: “Knowledge economy, knowledge age, knowledge-based economy, knowledge management, cognitive capitalism – these terms for the current social situation speak volumes. Knowledge becomes commodity, which is manufactured, fabricated and traded like material commodities.” Here, contradictory keywords are conjoined: knowledge and economy, knowledge and management, cognition and capitalism. Knowledge is understood as collectively produced shared thinking and is founded on human cognition which is immeasurable and cannot be controlled nor quantified. By contrast economy, management, and capitalism represent mass-individualisation, extreme competition, and hierarchical control. In Raunig’s reflections, we can read the struggle between the human value of knowledge versus its gradual commodification by dominant power. The points made by Virilio and Raunig on the quantification of life and knowledge help frame the following architectural examples which can be read as symptomatic of a deeper cultural pathology that increasingly rejects the human sensibility for critical and creative imagination. Mutations, although now
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a dated text, is worthwhile recalling because it is the model of numerous recent texts. It surveys contemporary global urbanisation from cities and city-regions in Europe, America, and Asia. The text measures cities through statistics and indexes, and is illustrated by countless charts. Significantly, Mutations opens with a series of page spreads that comment on global population trends. The first reads: “At the outset of the twentieth century, 10% of the population lived in cities. In 2000, around 50% of the world population lives in cities.” This is a tiring statistic which is constantly repeated.
photomontages, ideograms, advertisements, essays, interviews and statistics about global culture. It is an analogical reflection of the loud consumerist ethos of our age. Yet, to qualify this, Content still asserts the role of culture and understanding the city as a prerequisite for the production of architecture. While these are only two examples, we can cite many others to indicate the recent emphasis on quantifying the city, architecture and culture via technological-scientific language. For brevity, a few book titles should suffice: Weak and Diffuse Modernity, Recombinant Urbanism, The Endless City, A New Urban Metabolism.
Another text, Content, is a history of OMA/AMO since S,M,L,XL of 1995 and situates Koolhaas’ practice within the scope of global culture. In the chapter entitled “An Autopsy” global culture between 1989 to 2003 is charted in relation to the production of “iconic” buildings and the Dow Jones Financial index. It makes clear the link between architecture and its commodification within the framework of economic markets. In the photomontage that illustrates the chapter, we see buildings by Zumthor, Gehry, Foster, and SOM amongst many others. We also see photographs of Kofi Annan, Princess Diana, Bill Clinton, and images of nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, as well as art exhibitions such as Damien Hirst’s in MOMA, New York. Comment should also be made on the objecthood of the book: a small, thick, glossy paperback magazine, saturated with images,
The preceding examples – from the critical reflections by Virilio and Raunig on the implications of “mathematicisation of reality” and social imagination, to the quantitative analyses of Koolhaas and others – serve as illustrations of our current cultural condition and its interplay with architecture in general. To end, here is the crucial point: instead of constructing complex mathematical models to “measure” architecture or endlessly analysing the city through “data,” we should remember that architecture is a form of cultural production and based on human sensibility, which is of immeasurable importance. Let us remember that architecture is an intellectual inquiry that questions urban life as such by putting forward alternative ways of living and critical interpretations of existing conditions.
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Central Atrium Kirriemuir Cultural and Educational Centre Card and printed textures Ivars Kalvans, Y4
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The Historical Context of Dundee Photoshop collage
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Aleksandra Belitskaja , Y2
The Articulated Prop Will Hayward, Y5
Additions to the place may be acceptable where it does not distort or obscure the cultural significance of the place or detract from its interpretation and appreciation.
- The Burra Charter, 1999
The idea of the articulated prop is to combine the practical need for support and protection with an architectural intent. It would be a strategy for staving of decay with an elegant yet practical design solution. It must facilitate the habitation that ultimately provides a long term solution to a ruins’ preservation. There of course is no definitive solution for this. In 1968, an earthquake in western Sicily caused wide scale destruction of the town of Salemi. The main church was nearly totally destroyed along with considerable damage to the streets and houses of the historic centre. In 1982, Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza’s design reorganised the streetscape with a series of routes through the town culminating in a main town square upon the site of the now ruined church. The approach taken was what we might call an interpolation; the new streets, alleys and staircases appear as a crisp concrete carpet laid gently over the destruction. Where bracing was required, simple steel inserts have been crafted. New street lamps illuminate the routes; they too are a utilitarian gesture. The main square is raised over the footprint of the church and is cut-out around what remains.
reinstated rather than the old one. It has taken a ruin and used it for a new purpose without overwhelming the existing or underplaying the new. One might easily agree with Ruskin and Morris, but also be attracted by the prop, and expect of it an integrity and distinction of its own… [The pleasure] is added to by the self-effacing and direct design of the armature.
- Scott, 2008
In considering the allure of the articulated prop as a device of preservation Fred Scott makes a valuable contribution. His argument is twofold, firstly of an honest and non-rhetorical nature; a palatable necessity. Secondly, it is an indication, a measure of what is missing. Of the second point he makes a comparison with Bunraku puppeteers who perform on stage dressed in black as if they are not there. They must perform dynamically just as the building prop does statically… They achieve their goal through an absence of self-expression. We appreciate the prop because of its absence of self-expression, paradoxically, endearing it to us.
Do not care about the unsightliness of the aid; Better a crutch than a lost limb.
- Ruskin, 184
The simplicity of this solution is extremely elegant. The consideration given to surface and detail implies respect for the old and new alike. The appearance of simplicity here should not be taken for granted it is highly considered. The choice of concrete is unassuming yet its measured implementation appears crafted. The bracing, primitive but tailored, as with the street lamps; little material has been wasted. In treating the main square, limited funds have perhaps been its salvation. A more affluent town would perhaps have built a new church, or reconstructed the old one. Instead, a new civic function has been
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Abbey Church Section Pencil on paper, Photoshop and AutoCAD
UCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT
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Light Studies Cook School Card and perspex Jacob Scoular, Y1
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Performance Platforms Filmhaus AutoCAD and Illustrator 25
Aimee Mackenzie, Y4
Vertical Legibility Filmhaus Photoshop Stephanie Else, Y4
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Exploded Product Design Studio SketchUp and Photoshop
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Shaun McCallum, Y2
Architecture and Order in the Urban Block Andrew Ng, Y5
Buildings are complex artifacts. Most are unique. Generalisations about buildings are not easy to make. It may help instead to look at built forms which are not buildings. Built forms are mathematical or quasi-mathematical models which are used to represent buildings to any required degree of complexity in theoretical studies.
- Martin and March, 1972
Since the Industrial Revolution the external pressures on architecture have increased and ‘necessitated a change in architectural rules’ (Colquhoun, 1981). These pressures have impacted not only architecture but also the creation and development of cities. Context however, ‘is neither permanent nor passive, nor is it purely physical, and design decisions must be made within cultural, social and economic contexts’ (Scott Brown, 2011) and the emergence of digital infrastructures have once again caused a shift in the context in which architecture is created. Where context is in a constant state of flux cities and buildings have a longevity, they are a constant, and must accommodate these changes. It is not enough for the urban block to accommodate only residential or only commercial inhabitation, it must have the adaptability to accommodate both. Establishing an order for the urban block The Plan is the generator. Without a plan, you have a lack of order, and willfullness.
- Le Corbusier, 1986
Through bisection of a rectangular or square block, and imposing certain restricting factors, it is possible to geometrically generate, analyse, and catalogue every possible functional configuration of rooms for the layout of a building. As Bloch (1979) recognised however, there is a limited functional use when the number of rooms in a layout reaches beyond a certain number – there are simply too many variations to be of use in the design process. Despite significant advances in the development of computational approaches to space layout planning this restriction has prevented the approaches moving beyond the research stages (Homayouni, 2006).
Whereas the dimensionless dissections produced by Bloch (1979) were deemed to be of limited usefulness in the creation of building plans; using a similar dissection approach, dimensioned at an appropriate scale, creates an exhaustive two dimensional enumeration of spatial organisations that may be used to generate the form of the urban block. The obsession of Viollet-le-Duc with the Gothic style arose from his reasoning that it was the synthesis of Roman functional organisation and Greek structural principles, believing Roman architecture to be the pinnacle of spatial layout and Greek architecture to be the pinnacle of structural efficiency (Viollet-le-Duc and Hearn, 1990). Indeed his theoretical position for making architecture had ‘nothing to do with Gothic architecture’ (Summerson, 1963). It was instead a process of analysis involving understanding of the past and the conditions in which historical architecture was created, generating a reasoned argument for design, and applying those principles to the creation of new architecture. While Balmond in Informal (2002) demonstrates that it is possible to produce unusual structural systems that are both efficient and rationally-driven, the rectangular nature of the urban block suggests a much more straightforward structural grid would be appropriate. In pursuit of longevity, the structural system of the urban block must be capable of adapting to accommodate multiple functions including retail, residential, and commercial. Several equilibriums coexists. Simultaneity matters; not hierarchy.
- Balmond, 2002
The flexibility afforded by the relationship between a 6m and 12m structural grid for both internal and external spaces (shown in grey). Where the minimum dimension of an external space within the block is equal to the maximum dimension of the structural grid, the relationship between space and structure is in an equilibrium. This maximum size of grid may be divided further to reduce spanning distances and increase economic viability. The inhabitation of the urban block, the functions supported by the spatial and structural arrangements, require access, servicing, and connectivity. The Metabolists of Japan proposed an architecture of constant renewal where the vertical core was proposed as the eternal unchanging element, enabling the accommodation around it to be adapted or rebuilt as the situation of the time dictated:
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I imagine that the trunk elements can remain and that a new city can grow up.
- Kawazoe, 1970 (quoted in Lin, 2010)
The possibility for a renewing architecture is in many ways a natural, technologically more advanced, extension of the modular architecture advocated by Le Corbusier (1986). In advocating a regularity of construction, and hence dimensioning of internal spaces, Le Corbusier laid the foundations for the possibility of replacing the internal layouts of a building within the constraints of the structure and servicing. Where structure has been designed for adaptability, the layout of cores become the primary constraining element to the inhabitation of the urban block. In many ways they are a rationalised manifestation of the ideas advocated by the Metabolism movement. Within the constraint of the city grid and within the constraint of the spatial layout as dictated by a
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density or floor area ratio requirement, the cores are vertical spines from which the inhabitation of the block may evolve naturally. The architecture of the urban block has a function both as an organising element within the city and as an enabler for inhabitation and community. Wallenstein (2009) writes that ‘architecture is the art of carving out, separating, and joining spaces with reference to man as a sentient being’. At the scale of the city, a large number of blocks create spaces that are arranged to become streets, squares, and gardens. At the scale of the block itself, the spatial layout supported by structural systems and servicing creates spaces that may be inhabited in different ways. Rossi (1982) writes that, ‘the city is composed of many people seeking a general order that is consistent with their own particular environment’. A rational, modularised architecture for the urban block, consistent in its regularity and accommodating in its adaptability, can achieve precisely that. Order for the city, disorder within the block – and architecture of eternal continuity through constant change.
Symmetry and Historic Representation in Sao Bento Train Station Porto Room Study AutoCAD and Photoshop Daniel Struthers, Y5
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Quay 4 The Street of Terraced Houses Card and balsa 31
Drew Hopper, Y2
Ornament Sketch Study Pen and pencil on paper Peixin Li, Y4
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