This portfolio contains most of the work completed in my Master of Architecture program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. The work shown is primarily organized chronologically, split into sections by semester. All work completed between 2016 and 2019.
semester I | columbia gsapp
fall 2016
semester I | columbia gsapp
fall 2016
michael soderberg professor alfie koetter | fall 2016
action + reaction
Action and reaction is a project focusing on the concept of an object’s interaction with water. The idea came from studying the movement of jellyfish. As a jellyfish pushes itself through the water, it not only acts on the water by creating currents, but the tentacles of a jellyfish will swept up in those currents and show their influence. This back and forth relationship between the jellyfish and the water, both acting and reacting to eachother, was the driving influence in my project. I knew that I wanted to show an action on the water, and a reaction to the water, all in an object that would have no moving parts, in part due to direction from the instructor. In my material studies, I found that a particular shape of splash could be achieved by dropping a large surface with a small center hole on the surface of the water, which would re-direct the splash of the water up into a single spout. For the reaction, I would design the object to flip in the water because of an unbalance of material mass, showing the resistance of the water as the object pushed it’s way through. In testing the optimal shape of the object to acheive my intended splash, I found that the best language of the shape would be planar. So I found that I could add an off-balance weight by angling the planar shape and filling the result with cement. This would give the object a unified language of design, but also achieve the desired outcome. In presentation, the object was dropped from a height of about 4 feet above the surface of the water, and once it hit the water, the spout of water was successful. After submerging it in the water, the unbalanced weight of the object cut through the water, and the object spun around as it slowly decended to the bottom of the pool. In continuing with the development of the project, I would adjust the ratio of boyant and massive elements in the object, allowing the object to slowly rise back to the top once it had fuly sunk to the bottom. However, I feel that the project was successful in the presentation, and did speak to the design intent. [right] final model photo
michael soderberg professor alfie koetter | fall 2016
manipulated rotation
Manipulated Rotation is about reflecting and manipulating the surrounding enviornment to create space. The theoretical location of this project is on the southwest corner of 14th Street and 5th Ave in downtown Manhattan. In thinking about the idea of an intersection, I became interested in the idea of intersecting the geometry of these two unique facades and understanding the space that resulted from the two. I decided to design a system of operations to define space on a protocorner, using this corner as a case study. A one hundred foot by fifty foot void was cut from the existing structure, and a similar section of the two facing facades of the surrounding buildings were projected to the surface of the “void mass.� The resulting projected windows were cut four feet into the new mass, and these windows were projected to a theoretical cylindrical hinge, distorting the shapes of the windows. These distortions were again projected, this time in the direction perpendicular to their original projection, thus maintaining the deformation of the geometry. This last projection was cut out of the back of the new mass, again four feet in depth. The resulting mass, complete with voids created from pure and deformed geometry derived from opposing facades, was investigated and modified to allow for a single three foot wide pathway to wind it’s way through the form and to the top. The final result consisted of the new mass and inserted staircases and hallways that would allow a single person at a time to investigate the unique spaces created by the combining geometries. Unique views of the city resulted from the overlapping of geometry from front and back, creating voids that pushed through the entire mass. Finally, the new mass was split in two halves, and new paths were negotiated as the two halves were literally hinged into three different orientations, allowing for even more engagement and viewing opportunity throughout the structure. [right] site analysis diagram
The project is focused on circulation paths through an archive of lost items. I started this project by analyzing and attempting to understand circulation on a city scale. During this study, I found that most of the circulation that happens through a city underground happens in tubes, whether that be through subways, sewers, or other infrastructural systems. I decided to borrow from this circulation language already existing to both challenge and familiarize the spatial understanding of the passenger as they exit the subway.
michael soderberg professor alfie koetter | fall 2016
archive station
Using the language of tubes, I designed two main spaces, circulation space and archive space, to maximize the flow of people and items through as they exited. Eliminating any harsh angles and focusing on smooth transitions between different elevations spoke to the naturally optimized flow found in tubes as a language. Because the tubes were such a simple geometric form, I intersected them in such a way to create complex spatial and lighting conditions. These would help to create a moment of pause as passengers are exiting the station, and help them to understand their relationship to the space. Lost items from throughout the city would be brought to this location, and stored in a pneumatic tube archive, on display until one might find their items again. As a pneumatic pod is occupied, it activated a light that highlights the object, turning everyday items into interesting installations and changing the enviornment of the space. Using light greys and whites in materials, as objects that are lost are lit up, their material properties help to influence the space and create a new condition from day to day. I feel like this project accomplishes what I set out to do, which was to create interest in object and space by using a familiar and also foreign language, creating a new space unlike anything an average passenger had experienced before. [right] final model photos
michael soderberg professor alfie koetter | fall 2016
shifted pier
The concept for this project was shifting space. This project began with an analysis of the city grid. I found that Houston Street acts as a sort of axis on which the city grid shifts by about 10 degrees. I wanted to use this to define my building. I started with a bar of program, and then shifted that bar in plan and section to stack and overlap certain spaces. This allowed for a very unique set of spatial conditions inside and out. The interior was treated as a single whole space, rather than multiple spaces overlapping. This allowed for a uniform flow throughout the space while maintaining a sort of overlap to be read. As you enter the building, a large open gallery space lies directly in front of you, while two ramps cross and go to the lower event space or the cafe on the upper level. Each space, as treated as a program bar, has only openings at the ends, keeping the sides of the tubes solid. This allows for views through the building, as wel as connections to the outside world that result from the building’s placement. [right] final model photo
michael soderberg architectural drawing + representation | fall 2016
salk institute analysis
The project throughout ADR 1 was to represent another architect’s building through drawing, model, and animation. I was assigned to work on the Salk Institute by Louis Khan, in La Jolla, CA. Focusing on the symmetry of the building, as well as materiality and use of space, I created the following drawings and model. Please see tumblr.com/blog/mikesody for the animation. [top] isometric section [bottom] section perspective
Understanding Style Michael Soderberg, Questions in Architectural History I, Fall 2016 Professor Zeynep Celik Alexander Throughout history, the concept of architectural style has changed, informing a critical understanding of designers or architects of the day. This concept of style in many time periods was critical to the theory and design of the architect, and in some cases, was the main point of concern to some architects. Interestingly enough, that concept of style has become more of a history icon in our modern day and age, more or less delineating time periods, rather than being of any particular effect in many modern designs by architects. But just as it was critical in former time periods, I believe that an understanding of how different architects, historians, or theorists in the past understood and theorized their interpretations of style can be of great worth to us as architects and designers in the modern day, regardless of any modern idea of style. Without this understanding of how the idea of style has morphed and changed throughout time, we may incorrectly and inappropriately assess designs and intentions in the past, without truly understanding and learning from those that came before. Unfortunately, today we have lost the importance of style in our current design trends and theory. Rather than looking to style to understand current designs and their relationship to multiple factors, we see style only as a way to add aesthetics to a project, giving the design some kind of historical context made up in our current understanding of history. Regardless of the
reasons for style falling behind in modern theory or critique, we fail today to understand the importance of style throughout history and it’s many relationships to other factors of design. Throughout this paper, we will explore different interpretations of style, in order to gain context about the intentions of different designs or theories and hopefully provide insight for future exploration in architecture. Rather than taking the idea of style as a simple marker in time, we will look to specific theorists and authors to understand their intention behind style in their respective time periods. Style as Fundamentals in Architecture Only architecture has until now been left to the capricious whim of the artists who have offered precepts indiscriminately. They fixed rules at random, based only on the inspection of ancient buildings. They copied the faults as scrupulously as the beauty; lacking principles which would make them see the difference, they were bound to confound the two… Therefore it is to be hoped that some great architect will undertake to save architecture from eccentric opinions by disclosing its fixed and unchangeable laws… In all things there is only one way of doing it well. What is art, if not that mode of expression (manière) which is based on clear principles and is carried out with the help of unchanging precepts? (Laugier, 3).
The Jesuit priest and theorist Marc-Antoine Laugier starts us off with a fundamental understanding of style in architecture. In his writing “An Essay on Architecture,” Laugier attempts to give reason to a specific way of design, saying in essence that a specific style (what we would refer to today as the classical style) resembles all beauty as it relates to nature, and that all design that does not follow this style is unfounded. Rather than only relying on the attempts of previous theorists and authors to justify architectural style, he defines a primitive hut, which contains all of the elements of architecture that are necessary and that give beauty to a building. This primitive hut is made up of four columns, grown out of the ground as trees, on top of which are four large branches that span between two columns. On top of this stand branches that lean against each other to provide a protection from the rain, sloping in two directions. Each of the pieces of this primitive hut are essential, and each have their own purpose. It is this character about each element of the hut that give Laugier the evidence that each item has beauty and meaning in architecture. The image below further drives this idea home. Seen in the image is a representation of the primitive hut, as well as ruins of a very ornate building upon which a female character is sitting and pointing to the primitive hut. The idea here is that the architecture of Laugier’s day was only referencing other architecture, without having meaning behind it. The ornament and form of the buildings was in Laugier’s opinion starting to become outrageous, and was moving away from acceptable architecture. In order to be effective and appropriate architecture, it had to be built upon the principles of the primitive
hut, drawing all beauty from the elements in that hut. This concept has been debated throughout history, but the concept brings about a critical point about the understanding of Style in Laugier’s day, if not just to Laugier.
Figure 1. Essai Sur L’Architecture, Frontispiece
The concept of style expressed by Laugier is a very interesting one. Differing from the idea that style is a delineation of time, Laugier’s concept is the idea that style defines the fundamentals that all other architecture should be based on. Regardless of the building use or location, the building has to be built with the key elements found in the only acceptable style, being based on the original expression of architecture. Style then becomes absolutely fundamental to architecture, automatically legitimizing those buildings that adhere to the principles of the style, and denouncing all others that do not follow these standards. Laugier goes on further to explain that these elements must be used appropriately as well, meaning that
a column must always be self-supporting and decorated in a very organic manner. A specific example denounced by Laugier is the use of engaged columns with walls, which mock the importance of the column and render it useless as a merely ornamental object. In this way, style has a very limited scope as to what is actually understood as important and correct architecture. Style as Identity Moving to a different take on style, Goethe, Pugin, and other contemporaries in their time began to talk about a style in connection to nationality. In direct contrast to the Primitive Hut discussed by Laugier, Goethe said, “What does it profit us, O neo-french philosophizing connoisseurs, that the first man who sensed his needs, rammed in four tree-trunks, joined up four poles on top, and topped it all with branches and moss? From that thou dost decide what is proper for our needs today…” (Von Goethe, 81). Stating that the hut invented by Laugier completely disregards all buildings in the modern time, which clearly didn’t focus in dis-engaged columns and simple roofs. Rather he focuses on what we would call today the Gothic style, pointing to the fact that each of the components in Gothic architecture are literally built because of necessity. The Rose Window above the nave helps to end the space, but also allow daylight into the main part of the church. The large central entrance points to the space inside. Each of these items are necessary, and he says they were shaped into beauty (Von Goethe, 82). Pugin an English author, also focused on the Gothic as appropriate in his book “Contrasts.” In the book, he talks a medieval society as
being an ideal community, rather than the capitalist society of neighboring countries. In the conclusion of the book, he asks: Where, I ask, are the really fine monuments of the country to be found, but in those edifices erected centuries ago, during the often railed at and despised period of the Middle Ages? What would be the interest of the cities, or even towns and villages, of this country, were they deprived of their ancient gigantic structures, and the remains of their venerable buildings? Why, even in the metropolis itself, the abbey church and hall of Westminster still stand pre-eminent over every other ecclesiastical or regal structure that has since been raised (Pugin, 31). Here we see the key concept of the idea of style as identity. Rather than trying to bring all sorts of different styles from different parts of the world, Pugin states that the factor that makes England an interesting and united country is the ancient Medieval structures built in the Gothic tradition. It is precisely these structures that stand the test of time and still have all importance over any new structures built in his day and age. Other people like John Nash say that the Regent Style is appropriate for England, relaying something about the country to the public that helps instill unity. Regardless of the specific reasons brought up by contemporaries for their own idea of what represents a country, it is obvious that the concept of style used here is different from Laugier. Where Laugier had a very specific type of aesthetic in mind when discussing style, and refused to allow any other style to be accepted as appropriate, Goethe and Pugin are clearly talking about something different. Goethe and Pugin talk about style
as a national identity, implying that a certain building can express a certain character that would inherently be understood as a nationality or group of people. Pugin expresses that architects have tried to bring different styles to England, but they don’t work there. It is something inherent about the Gothic style that ties it to England. In this way, style becomes an indicator of place, rather than a correct or incorrect way to design or build architecture. Style as Design Tool Another interpretation of style is illustrated by Ruskin in his writing, “The Nature of Gothic.” In this writing, Ruskin expresses an idea of Style that is very connected to Gothic architecture. Again, in contrast to Laugier, Ruskin discusses specific elements of Gothic architecture, and notices that even though all Gothic buildings have different implementations of their elements, they all have a specific character or nature about them. They seem to all be tied together as one, pointing to the fact that all Gothic buildings must relate both in terms of their external forms and internal elements. For external forms, Ruskin points to elements like the pointed arch, gargoyles, flying buttresses, and vaulted ceilings. But talking about these elements in relation to Gothic, he says: “It is not enough that it has the Form, if it have not also the power and life” (Ruskin, 171). Therefore, the formal elements are not what make the style, or at least not the only thing that defines a style, which is different than what has been previously expressed by Laugier. In connection with these external forms are the internal elements, explained in great length in “The Nature of Gothic.” These characteristics give Gothic a character,
a feeling in the space. Specifically associated with Gothic, Ruskin outlines six of these characteristics as the following: Savageness, Changefulness, Naturalism, Grotesqueness, Rigidity, and Redundance. Savageness is not only defined as an expression of the character of the people that built a Gothic building, but also an index of religious principle. The idea here is that people that built the building are somehow identified with the same characteristics that are found in their work. Each element of the building had to of necessity be constructed individually by a large number of people over a large span of time. This made each element and detail individual, resembling in general a similar appearance, but also maintaining characteristics from each individual who carved or built or painted that detail. Ruskin speaks of this when he says: “and it is, perhaps, the principle admirableness of the Gothic Schools of Architecture, that they thus receive the results of the labour of inferior minds; and out of fragments full of imperfection, and betraying that imperfection in every touch, indulgently raise up a stately and unaccusable whole” (Ruskin, 177). This idea is interesting because it is not only the fact that people are identified by their work, but also that the religious doctrine taught in these large Christian buildings would be found in the architecture that houses the religious sermons and duties of its clergy. It is this characteristic of the space that gives the building it’s “Gothicness.” The second characteristic of Changefulness relates to this idea as well. Ruskin says that buildings with all of the column capitals looking exactly the same as each other, or unvaried moldings, are monotonous, and lend a sense of darkness and bondage to a building.
But in a Gothic building, with slightly varied and individual elements, the building comes alive. The third aspect of Naturalism speaks to an idea that the style has developed its own representation of nature. Rather than copying nature, the interpretation of nature developed a whole new nature that doesn’t exist in physical form. It only adds to the feeling of the space, rather than attempting to represent exactly nature as it exists in the world. The fifth characteristic is one of the most interesting in this understanding of style as a design tool. By Rigidity, Ruskin does not mean simply steady and sturdy, but rather a character of the building, being active or tense. He expounds on this idea of tension further when he says, “…the peculiar energy which gives tension to movement, and stiffness to resistance, which makes the fiercest lightning forked rather than curved, and the stoutest oak-branch angular rather than bending, and is as much seen in the quivering of the lance as in the glittering of the icicle” (Ruskin 193-194). There is as he explains an elastic tension and communication of force between elements of the structure between each other. This is achieved as a specific characteristic of Gothic, whereas other traditions do not have this same quality. This brings us back to the idea that Style can be understood as a design tool, as opposed to a specific way of building. The way that Ruskin talks about the buildings containing an amount of “Gothicness” infers that he is thinking about the space of the building rather than the elements or form of the building. This is much closer to how we might think about architecture today than other ideas of style. Rather than a particular time period or location, a style can be deployed as a tool to
achieve certain qualities of space. Completely removed from the idea of style defining a correct design intention, style as associated with space opens the door to our modern design efforts. Style as Time Specific It is important to point out the understanding of style in terms of its relation to time periods and epochs. But more than just a style delineating a specific time period in history, the relationship between style and time is somewhat complex and starts to inform one or the other. This concept was phrased by Otto Wagner as Zeitgeist, or the spirit of the time. According to Wagner, each style is really just a metamorphosis of the style before, enhanced by advances in modern technology and taste. In his book “Modern Architecture, Wagner says, “each new style gradually emerged from the earlier one when new methods of construction, new materials, new human tasks and viewpoints demanded a change or reconstitution of existing forms” (Wagner, 74). Later in the same chapter, he says, “…the task of art, and therefore also of modern art, has remained what it has been in all times. Modern art must offer us modern forms that are created by us and that represent our abilities and actions” (Wagner, 75). Wagner proposed that styles as we think of them in historical terms began with the style previous, referring to hard evidence that the Classical or Greek style was influenced by the Egyptian style, and the same for the Romans to the Greeks. However, this link may not have been so obvious to people of that time. But slowly, as designers, artists, and architects
continued to create and design based on those that came before, their intentions eventually fell flat, making the future designers and architects look for meaning and purpose to their design, and using what was currently available or pushing innovation forward to create new means to “invent” new styles. This idea of a continuous style implies a view where style or taste in art and architecture drives the development of technology or materials, and vice versa. The two here are inseparable, one informing the other. This idea is brought up by Wagner when he said “…art must offer us modern forms that are created by us that represent our abilities and actions” (Wagner, 75). In order for us to find interest in design, it must be representative of our current abilities, but also our current taste or style will have to push innovation and technology forward in order to represent our desires. In this way, style becomes less about referencing a specific time, and more about changing our current way of life. Style is less retrospective and more progressive. Heinrich Hubsch also spoke to the idea of style in relation to time periods when he talked about style and its relationship to antiquity: Painting and Sculpture have long since abandoned the lifeless imitation of antiquity. Architecture alone has yet to come of age and continues to imitate the antique style. Although nearly everybody recognizes the inadequacy of that style in meeting today’s needs and is dissatisfied with the buildings recently erected in it, almost all architects still adhere to it. Most of them really believe that the beauty of architectural forms is something absolute, which can remain unchanged for all times and under all circumstances, and that the antique style alone presents these forms in ideal perfection (Hubsch, 63-64).
Here Hubsch was complaining about architects who continued to build buildings in a classical or antique style, just because it is somehow always beautiful. But later, Hubsch goes on to explain that even though some people tried to justify the classical style with reason and rules, they eventually always failed because their logic was too close to the final result. Rather, the real reason some styles persisted in areas of the world and not others was due to their conditions and technologies. Some areas with large amounts of stone would build buildings with stone, forfeiting some control over the aesthetics of the building to the characteristics of stone, that it must stand tall and straight, and have large supports, whereas wood buildings could have more slender columns and more ornate shapes. As we have seen from Hubsch and Wagner, the idea that style is simply an indicator of time periods is simply not enough. Style has a much stronger relationship to time, working in hand to represent man’s current abilities and interests, while also pushing toward innovation. The spirit of the time is captured by architecture and displayed to us today as style, but at the time was an ever changing and progressing concept, pushing to new innovations like iron and steel construction, glazing technologies, and other aspects of design that today have become iconic of specific styles as seen from our historical vantage point. Conclusion Style can be seen as very influential in historical design and theory, regardless of how we see it today. Style has had many interpretations and relationships with different concepts or theories throughout time. We can see that
style in one respect could be understood as a way to qualify acceptable or inacceptable architecture of the day, or how style could be understood as a way to achieve certain qualities of space. Style was at one time understood to be representative of a specific group of people, or of nations and regions. Similarly, style was seen as irrevocably connected to innovation and current technologies, the one driving the other and each representing one another. Each of these interpretations of style is lost in our current day and age, as we struggle to understand and recognize the importance of style in our modern design intentions. May we continue to look toward the past, and their intentions behind incorporating style into their works, in order to progress and influence our design intention and understanding in the future.
Bibliography Hubsch, Heinrich. In What Style Should We Build. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Laugier, Marc-Antoine. Essai Sur L’Architecture. Translated by Woflgang Herrmann and Anni Herrmann. Los Angeles: Hennessey & Ingalls, 1977. Pugin, A. Welby. Contrasts: Or, A Parallel Between the Noble Edifices of the Middle Ages and Similar Buildings of the Present Day. Edinburgh: John Grant, 1898. Print. Ruskin, John. The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings. Edited by J. D. Rosenberg. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1998. Von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. On German Architecture. London: Phaidon Press, 1995. Wagner, Otto. Modern Architecture - A Guidebook for His Students to This Field of Art. Translated by Harry Francis Mallgrave. Santa Monica, CA: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1988.
Modular Housing: An Answer to Mass Customization? Michael Soderberg, Technology in Transition, Fall 2016 Professor Craig Schwitter The housing situation in the United States, and many other countries for that matter, is in dire need of intervention and rethinking on behalf of many groups of people. For Architects, the problems with modern housing trends and situations produce very different reactions than for instance ecologists or realtors. But the negative effects are far reaching, and find their way into affecting everyone, regardless of their outlook on professional practice. Since the beginning of the post war era, the idea of the average American home can be found in one of many identical suburbs throughout the country. The “American Dream” is often referred to as a single-family house located on a distinct piece of land, where one owns their own kingdom. This ideal life was the main goal for many Americans in the 1960’s and 1970’s, as millions flocked out of the city and into the suburbs. But following this ideal, many problems have come up. Many authors have written about the problems and struggles that suburban housing can cause for us in today’s society. From ideas about segregation and perpetuation of racist, sexist, or homophobic outlooks, to concerns for environmental factors caused by transportation and infrastructural needs brought about by these suburban neighborhoods, you don’t have to go far to uncover another nasty fault of the supposed post war dream. And yet, at least in my experience, these negative impacts can simply be overlooked by the vast majority of
suburban home dwellers as they look toward their own fantasies of that great American dream. The point is, even though it has been said by many that suburbia is killing us, it isn’t going away any time soon. So, to this author, the important thing to do is help correct major issues with the current way that homes are designed and built in order to improve the impact that these neighborhoods can have on our society and environment. This sentiment was also brought up in a recent article by Aron Chang, titled “Beyond Foreclosure.” In this article, Chang looks to opportunities to rethink how we are inhabiting current suburban environments in the wake of large economic failures that plagued the Nation since 2009. He said: I believe that as designers we cannot accept as inevitable the decline of suburban neighborhoods, even if these neighborhoods exist, as Leinberger puts it, ‘on the fringes, in towns far away from the central city, not served by rail transit, and lacking any real core.’ To do so will be to overlook important opportunities, and maybe also obligations. These neighborhoods embody major investments of energy and material resources… (Chang, 2011). There are obviously some major problems with modern housing techniques in both construction and design that have great impacts on social and economic factors for
our current day. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like things will be changing very quickly. Like Chang said above, it is irresponsible to ignore and overlook the current trends of housing in the United States as designers, and rather I would like to offer some suggestions for how housing might be improved through new and interesting implementations of technology and theories behind modular housing. To do this, I would like to focus on 2 questions about current housing trends or situations, and propose solutions to these questions from leaders in the industry looking for ways to combat these problems with modular technologies and theories. Why Are Suburban Homes All the Same?
Figure 1. Suburban Development, San Jose, CA, 2006. Sean O’Flaherty, Wikimedia Commons
First, why do all of the houses in a typical suburban housing development look exactly the same? More importantly, why are they all the same in floorplan and construction? This is a big problem for many reasons, but particularly it causes big problems with climatic conditions. Little thought is given to how the design of the house can impact the interior or exterior conditions of the site. Rather, in order to provide comfort for the people inside the home, builders and developers look toward air conditioning and heating technologies to condition the space. This has been proven to be a huge impact
on the environment, yet nothing is being done to change that fact by most large home developers. Similarly, the material choices are often simply an aesthetic choice, resulting in a larger reliance on technologies to make up the difference for losses due to materiality. Also, material choice often looks over supply, and may have a large impact on the source of the material even if the house is built in a completely different region of the world. Why haven’t we found a better way of being site specific in the design and execution of housing today? These frustrations are echoed by Allison Arieff in her article “Shifting the Suburban Paradigm.” She says: Not so long ago homes were designed to make the most of their surrounding climate and terrain. Vernacular forms like the shotgun, in places like New Orleans, served a purpose that went far beyond aesthetics – they encouraged natural cooling by improving cross-ventilation. In Texas and New Mexico, thick adobe walls similarly kept heat in during the winter, and out during the summer. Houses were sited and windows placed to maximize or minimize sun exposure as needed. No longer. Today, it’s essentially the same floor plan, sheetrock and construction that’s used coast to coast. Glossy brochures with stock images of smiling families advertise ‘Spanish Gothic’ or ‘Tuscan Villa,’ but what’s really on offer is the same dumb box with a stage set of a façade tacked onto the front. The reasons behind the advertised vernacular styles have long since disappeared, their function surrendered to ornament (Arieff, 2011). Why is this simply the norm today? One simple answer is that there isn’t enough time or funding for architects to design every house
to make the best of their site conditions. In reality, architects are only able to actually design a very small percentage of all houses throughout the country, leaving the vast majority to be designed by construction companies and engineers, only looking to fill an order that was advertised as the best (and only) option for new home buyers. So, in order to fix this, we need to find a quicker and more automated way to incorporate needs and design into new construction, which can assure the best use of material and site conditions. This would allow for drastic changes in a positive direction as the amount of time devoted to a single project would be drastically reduced from the current typical design time for architects or design firms. This is exactly the aim of a program currently at the University of New Mexico. ecoMOD is a project originally started at the University of Virginia, but has since moved to the University of New Mexico as the head of the project, John Quale, recently became the director and professor of architecture at the School of Architecture and Planning at UNM. The project was focused on developing a prototype that could be produced and deployed throughout the country and world as an affordable and energy efficient alternative to modern housing options. But rather than developing one unit that would be the same anywhere in the world, the project continues to look at variants that could potentially be developed as model options to fit different needs. But of particular interest to the question of how to bring in site conditions and personal interest into the project, the team developed an analytical model that would be used to look at each element of the design and
quickly understand it’s impact in a variety of conditions, such as aesthetic, social, and environmental parameters, in order to quickly and efficiently choose the right option for that particular context. As seen in Figure 2, any material used in the final construction and design of the unit could be compared with one another, in order to quickly make a decision about which option to use.
Figure 2. Image of DAT Analysis, Courtesy of ecomod.unm.edu/blog
The potential for a system like this is extremely promising as we look for ways to improve design and construction times in comparison to the typical amount of time in current design processes by architects and design firms. By taking each material, and potentially each aspect of the design, and comparing them one against the other, we can find the best fit in regard to many different conditions such as climatic, aesthetic, environmental, etc. When applied to a large development of houses, this can potentially create multiple situations that not only benefit the environment, and take advantage of each unit in relation to its site, but also allow for individual home buyers to create a personal preference in terms of aesthetics and function for their own homes. The system developed by ecoMOD at UNM shows us a potential answer that could satisfy
the problem of similar construction methods and ineffective conditioning techniques throughout the country, but would need continued improvement to be an effective implementation to answer aspects of the design such as personal taste of inhabitants in aesthetic and function. Rather, this system shows that a modular approach in both method and thinking can be an answer to the issue of the “same dumb box” as referred to above by Arieff.
alarming to me. If we don’t design homes that fit one’s needs, they will need to look toward another home to fit their needs. This results in a large number of homes that are no longer needed, and continues the need to expand out into new land and build new homes, further driving the nation into the negative effects in all respects toward the modern suburban condition. Isn’t there something that can be done about this instead of more and more building?
Why Don’t Suburban Homes Focus on Individual Needs?
A New-York-based design firm attempts to answer some of these concerns using modular thinking and technology. Resolution: 4 Architecture uses an approach to designing homes they call the Modern Modular. They explain this concept as follows:
Similar to the problems with conditioning a space without care for the environment, houses today are “designed” as a one-off solution that is supposed to answer specific needs of the general population. But do they really focus on the needs of people? Often, I argue that it is rather the opposite that is true; people are told what to expect from their homes and they find a way to deal with it. Much too much importance is placed on the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, the square footage of the kitchen and the number of intercom locations throughout the house, without the consideration of how those spaces interact with each other. Often this leads to an ineffective use of space, placing too much significance on the amount of space and disregarding the quality of the space. In the current mode of designing the typical American house, the design intent is focused on how to satisfy the largest number of people, resulting in the largest number of units sold, instead of how a particular home buyer’s needs might dictate a particular organization of spaces. This has many problems associated with it, but one is very
Our concept, the Modern Modular, is a systematic methodology of design that attempts to leverage existing methods of prefabrication to produce custom modern homes, specific to each client and site. It is based on Conceptual Building Blocks we call Modules of Use. These modules have been derived predominantly from our urban residential work, which attempts not only to accommodate, but also to articulate and organize the essential elements of utility in contemporary domestic life. Our explorations have resulted in a series of freestanding domestic typologies that embody this essence of utility… The Modern Modular is a method of design – a theory really – with its roots reaching beyond the history of just our office (Resolution: 4 Architecture) These modules of use are specific units that can be prebuilt and shipped to locations throughout the world, which makes the construction phase much faster. But most importantly, they use this system to provide the home owners full customization of their
home, in order to individually fit their needs. The design takes units designed to have a particular use, and is able to organize them with other adjacent units in order to produce limitless customization possibilities. In this way, the time required for the design is greatly reduced, allowing for potentially more homes to be designed by a particular design firm than is now typically possible within a year. These units can also be organized to take full advantage of their position on the site, allowing for even more benefit from a prebuilt system like this.
Figure 3. Modules of Use, Courtesy of www.re4a.com
Ironically, this system depends on a set number of units that are pre-designed and deployed in multiple houses, similar to the current means of construction. But whereas current construction looks to design the whole house the same every time, the modules of use are only parts of the building, designed in such a way as to allow for any other unit needed to be connected. This is the secret to modular housing, and shows that more than just technology leading to the solution that modular housing provides, the innovation is the mindset of modular design. These units still have their downfalls, and potentially can’t solve every need that arises by home buyers, but continued exploration and investigation into this idea of modular thinking can in my opinion lead us to answer the concern of designing for individual needs.
In response to our current position with regard to suburban housing and its effect on our way of life today, Aron Chang said the following: Right now we have an opportunity to rethink suburban housing: to make it responsive not to dated demographics and whiful economics but rather to the actual needs of a diversifying and dynamic population – not only to the so-called traditional households but also to their growing ranks of those who prefer to rent rather than buy, who either can’t afford or don’t want a 2,000 square-foot-plus detached house, who are retired and living on fixed incomes and maybe driving less, who want granny or nanny flats, who want to pay less for utilities and reduce their carbon footprint, and so on (Chang, 2011). These two examples of ecoMOD and Resolution: 4 Architecture are just the starting point for explorations in modular housing. It is simple techniques and technologies that can speed up the process of design and construction in order to give each home buyer an opportunity to work with designers and architects to design their homes. Rather than attempting to solve the problems associated with modern suburban housing by removing suburban conditions altogether, we can use modular technology and a modular design sense to improve these conditions and rethink the way that we continue to build and design suburban homes in the future. These technologies aren’t just a possibility for the future, but are available now, and we need to do all we can to implement them to redefine what suburban housing looks like throughout the country. I believe that Modular techniques has the power to be a way to mass customize our housing needs, rather than mass produce as is currently our way of life.
Bibliography Arieff, Allison. “Shifting the Suburban Paradigm.” Opinionator. The New York Times, 2 Oct. 2011. Web. 12 Dec. 2016. Chang, Aron. “Beyond Foreclosure.” Places Journal. N.p., Sept. 2011. Web. 12 Dec. 2016. “ecoMOD5Shift.” ecoMOD. University of New Mexico, n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2016. Lu, Wanda. “The Path to Designing EcoMod, and Affordable and Energy-Efficient Housing Module.” The Journal of the American Institute of Architects. Architect Magazine, 27 Mar. 2015. Web. 12 Dec. 2016. Resolution: 4 Architecture. “The Modern Modular.” Res4. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2016. Shapiro, Gideon Fink. “2013 R D Awards Winner: EcoMod.” The Journal of the American Institute of Architects. Architect Magazine, 6 Aug. 2013. Web. 12 Dec. 2016.
semester II | columbia gsapp
spring 2017
semester II | columbia gsapp
spring 2017
michael soderberg professor gordon kipping | spring 2017
library of interference
This project was developed as an idea to create a library to encourage data sharing between people through various media. In the age of technological advancement, the ability to share ideas and data has been exponentially increased with respect to former time periods. This requires that we rethink how libraries interact with that data sharing paradigm. Library of interference includes a gradient of spaces that shift from large public programs focused on groups sharing ideas openly to smaller spaces where individuals can upload and download data and study independently to share ideas and data. The concept grew from understanding site conditions, especially public and private wifi signals, and how they interact and cause interference with eachother. Spaces are organized so as to provide a gradient from public to individual space, while shifting each volume vertically to connect and seperate the spaces to and from one another. A series of trusses allow for large cantelevers, and complex space relationships form interesting space inside the library. [top] interference diagram [bottom] space organization diagram
Automation in Architecture Michael Soderberg, Questions in Architectural History II, Spring 2017 Professor Mark Wigley In the face of autonomous architectural design processes taking control of the everyday practice of architecture, we have to ask the question: What will the role of the future architect be as a profession? How will we theorize and practice architecture in a future dominated by the abstract rationalization and optimization that is preferred by computer systems? Can we maintain an aspect of human intuition in future architectural projects, or will we have to completely change our current responsibility in the design process? These questions and others about the future of architecture have been theorized and thought through by many architects and historians of the past, each giving their own interpretation of what the future could hold based on their current state of technology and theory. Some of these assumptions and theories have turned out to be far-fetched, or outlandish when compared to the reality of the present. But others have contained elements that have played out in our current day and age, perhaps because they helped to influence those that came after to realize the concepts dreamed of in the past. By looking at a past viewpoint or take on history, we can respect and understand an architects’ theory and in turn influence the future of architecture. Through this paper, I hope to examine theories belonging to architects such as Hannes Meyer and Kisho Kurokawa, analyzing their understanding of the future of architecture in an effort to explore what the future of architecture might
be as we rapidly approach a system-dominated reality. The concern of many that architecture as a profession will be lost to us in the future as it now stands is not a new concern, but one shared by almost every theorist at the beginning of a new epic or era. Those such as William Morris were apprehensive about new technology taking over the craft of architects, and rejected the use of new technology in favor of a hearkening back to older traditions. This has a sort of relevance as a viewpoint for some, but cannot be an effective strategy for defining architecture in a new world. We live in a day and age where computer systems can calculate and orchestrate processes on a scale impossible to us before. Many industries and ways of life depend entirely on these systems, and require us to continue to advance and understand where to go in the future. But the field of architecture has so far not entirely embraced these systems, yearning especially in school to a manual, hand-made approach to design. Strategies and systems exist that can start to explore and define architecture in a new way and responding to our current general mindset, but these are a far minority compared to all of those in the architectural profession that maintain this “old� way of design. For now, the demand of architecture is such that a manual, individual approach to design can be entertained and implemented in an
effective way. But moving into the future, architecture can be the answer to many problems it currently resists answering. One such question is that of housing; architecture usually doesn’t answer the question of housing for large scale implementations. Single family housing designed by architecture as a profession is priced too high because of the effort that goes into the design and implementation. So often, the answer is to ignore the design phase and use a pre-built design, building houses on demand for large numbers of clients, which leads to all sorts of problems for the neighborhoods and cities these dwellings inhabit. But using automation in architecture, it is possible that this would no longer be the case. It is this problem and others that I hope to understand and question through an interrogation of historical viewpoints. Ideas born in the past may be able to save our future, if only they were appreciated and interpreted in our current day.
than ever, with speed records signifying indirect winnings for all… Our dwelling become more mobile than ever: mass apartment blocks, sleeping cars, residential yachts, and the Transatlantique undermine the local concept of the homeland. The fatherland fades away. We learn Esperanto. We become citizens of the world (Meyer 1926, 446).
Hannes Meyer begins to question the future of architecture in his 1926 article, “The New World.” He begins by describing the immediate future as he saw it, which today reads even clearer as our immediate future. He said:
Every epoch demands its own form. Our task is to lend new form to our world by modern means. However, the burden of our knowledge of the past weighs upon us, and our institutions of higher education betray the tragedy of obstacles strewn along our path to the new. The unrestrained affirmation of the modern leads to a reckless denial of the past… Freed of the ballast of classical airs, artistic conceptual confusion, or the need for a decorative wrapping, the witnesses of a new epoch rise in their place: trade fair, grain silo, music hall, airport, office chair, standard ware. All of these things are products of the formula, function times economy. They are not artworks; art is composition, while purpose is function (Meyer 1926, 447).
Ford and Rolls-Royce burst the confines of the city center, nullify distance, and efface the boundaries between city and countryside. Airplanes glide through the air: ‘Fokker’ and ‘Farman’ increase our mobility and distance us from earth; disrespectful of national borders, they overcome the separation between one people and another. Neon lights glow, loudspeakers screech, sirens scream, billboards advertise, display windows shine: the simultaneity of events expands our concepts of time and space out of all proportion; it enriches our lives. We live faster and therefore longer. Our sense of speed is sharper
One of the impacts of this ever moving and interconnected world described by Meyer is interestingly the dwelling, as it is constantly being redefined by its mobility and form. Meyer mentions many elements from modern life, such as hair styles, cultural customs, designed products, building what he calls a ‘polymorphic landscape,’ which informs new ideas and creation. The tone of his writing is such that these elements of life are side effects of each other; the elements of life feed off of each other as they evolve. But building for some reason is resistant in this exchange of identity and ideas. He further states:
The trouble that architecture finds itself in is in Meyer’s interpretation too much emphasis on hearkening to the past and losing control
of the design process. Architecture does not in Meyer’s opinion need to be respectful of the past, but needs to respond to its current time and function. He further describes building as, “a technical not an aesthetic process, and the purposeful function of a building always contradicts artistic composition,” (Meyer 1926, 447). What Meyer is talking about here is important in terms of understanding a design process dominated by procedures and relationships, rather than relying on an abstract concept and the even more abstract representation or realization by an architect’s attempt to manifest that concept. Rather, architecture should be the outcome of a set of predefined variables, such as light conditions, climate and weather, convenience, etc. This is the ‘residence machine’ that he mentions as well in this text. These elements of architecture are what makes architecture modern in Meyer’s opinion, and this viewpoint has been perpetuated in our current ideas of design and architecture. Today many resources are being put into developing systems that will allow us to design with these conditions in mind. But more important than the system is the mindset of the designers of the future. According to Meyer, it is a requirement to think of architecture as a technical process, rather than focusing on the composition of the building. This is a very heavy criticism of the Modern and Post Modern movements, as these were completely obsessed with form and composition, defining architecture as the mother of the arts. According to Meyer’s interpretation of architecture, to think this way is to ignore our current age, and does not leave an impact to drive the future of architecture.
A few years after his article “The New World,” Meyer continues his train of thought and describes further the process of design in his new paradigm: All art is composition and hence unsuited to a particular end. All life is function and therefore not artistic. The idea of the “composition of a dock” is enough to make a cat laugh! But how is a town plan designed? Or a plan of a dwelling? Composition or function? Art or life?... Building is a biological process. Building is not an aesthetic process. In its basic design the new dwelling house becomes not only a piece of machinery for living in but also a biological apparatus serving the needs of body and mind. – The modern age provides new building materials for the new way of building houses… We organize these building materials on economic principles into a constructive whole. Thus the individual shape, the body of the structure, the colour of the material and the texture of the surface come automatically into being and are determined by life (Meyer 1928, 95). Meyer speaks of architectural design as a system of economic decisions that brings out a building because of its relationship to people. Rather than focusing on the aesthetics of a space, how it looks or the relationships of the forms on paper or in model, a successful building has a defined and specific relationship to its inhabitants. Each condition defines a problem and solution. A type of climate for example dictates certain humidity, precipitation, and temperature extremes that have to be dealt with. These conditions invite very specific solutions in terms of the material properties that would combat these conditions. Design decisions are based on parameters rather than on a specific concept. As architects, we must move our focus from the concept and form of the building to the
way that a building is defined and generated, by defining the parameters that drive the building’s design. The computer will have to take the heavy load of computing the way that a building has to be in order to work with its parameters, but the architect will have to take on the ability to conceive of the parameters, and set up situations for the computer to succeed. Looking at Meyer’s writings with the context of the future of architecture brings on a new understanding of our responsibilities as architects, but another viewpoint stands to completely redefine the responsibility of architecture in the future world. Kisho Kurokawa and other Metabolists were focused on capsules for living, an entirely new view on architecture as a supportive structure for human life. In his text “Capsule Declaration,” he defines his view on the new form of architecture: The capsule is cyborg architecture. Man, machine and space build a new organic body which transcends confrontation. As a human being equipped with a man-made internal organ becomes a new species which is neither machine nor human, so the capsule transcends man and equipment. Architecture from now on will increasingly take on the character of equipment. This new elaborate device is not a ‘facility’, like a tool, but is a part to be integrated into a life pattern and has, in itself, an objective existence (Kurokawa, 75). Kurokawa is detailing here a new relationship between people and the structures they inhabit. Until the time of this writing, people in Kurokawa’s opinion thought of architecture as something beautiful, an art work that one could inhabit. But in opposition to this, future architecture would be designed as a tool to
aid humans in their singular goal of survival. Architecture should be formed around a ‘life pattern’ as he put it, not the other way around. This idea is similar to the idea expressed by Meyer, but moves past the similar function of architecture to the past that Meyer had proposed, and looks to an entirely new form of architecture for the future. Rather than human beings and architecture being separate entities, Kurokawa suggests that architecture and man will combine to accomplish tasks beyond the abilities of either on their own. In a cooperative arrangement, people will harness architecture to “…perform complicated roles which are beyond their capabilities as living creatures” (Kurokawa, 75-76). It isn’t possible to achieve their full potential in society in Kurokawa’s opinion without this cooperation between architecture and mankind. Critical to Kurokawa’s view of the future of architecture is the idea of transportable architecture. With so many people living away from city centers and commuting to and from the city for work, the day- and nighttime populations of the city become defining characteristics of the quality of life there. To address this and other concerns, the future of architecture will automatically shift to being mobile. Speaking to this idea, Kurokawa stated, “The disintegration of a community and the unusual upsurge in migration indicate the advent of capsule space as the new form of dwelling, in the shape, for example, of the mobile home,” (Kurokawa, 76). Similar to the arguments of Meyer before, the situations and realities created by life dictate a change in the underlying framework of architecture as a whole. Kurokawa also said, “If we assume that the capsule is a moving house of Homo movens, it need not necessarily be a wheeled home like a mobile home. We should think,
rather, in terms of what was considered a tool in the past being converted into architecture,” (Kurokawa, 77). This idea of automation in architecture is here expressed as an outside force driving the development of architecture in the future as something new and inconceivable based on our current standards of the word ‘architecture’. But interestingly enough, in Kurokawa’s arguments, there is a hint of the architecture changing our lives as well as we inhabit it. He speaks of the definition of the week changing to spend less time at work and more time exploring the world, thanks to the new mobility of architecture. Surely the invention of the internet, and connection nodes to other parts of the world becoming much more prevalent in our current age would aid in this idea as well. But not only our work schedules will be affected, but also our relationships with others. He stated, “The capsule is intended to institute an entirely new family system centered on individuals. The housing unit based on married couple will disintegrate, and the family relationships between a couple, parents and children will be expressed in terms of the state of docking of many capsules of individuals’ spaces,” (Kurokawa, 79-80). The ideas presented in Kurokawa’s text further explain a vision of the future, as not only architecture is automated, but also our relationships are developed and realized as the architecture of our individual space connects with other spaces in varied ways. Entire societies are defined by the connections between individual spaces, and communal spaces are derived by the interconnected space between them. Technology and architecture merge together to allow people to live in the
way that best fits them. The city is a framework for individual units to be fed resources, but the definition and quality of space is defined by individuals. Still further investigating the future of architecture in this world of codependency, Kurokawa envisions the formal realization of what this type of architecture may become: A mobile home or something like that will therefore fit the need. It need not necessarily be a motor home moulded as one piece. It may be a paneltype home which can be assembled on the spot by putting together twenty or thirty panels, like sliding doors, by simply tightening nuts and bolts. It can be considered a capsule of a technologically different category (Kurokawa, 78).
Figure 1. An illustration of possible realizations of the mobile home of the future (Kurokawa, 78)
Important to Kurokawa is the ability to simply construct these capsules in a way that may be different from all other forms of transportable architecture known today. The ideas expressed by Kurokawa in his writing seem to be asking for mass customization, allowing individuals to each express their own ideas of style and form. Again, building on the idea that people and space define each other, the needs and desires of the individual dictating and requiring certain realizations of space. This would only be possible if we change our current process for design, allowing computers to
design spaces based on users input, and having architects to design the process for design, overseeing the development and realization for each individual’s space, rather than directly deciding on layouts and aesthetics for each unit. This questioning of the role of the architect is further examined by Yona Friedman in his article “The Flatwriter: choice by computer.” He begins by looking toward a future of design, similar to a view expressed by Kurokawa, by identifying the problem of the future architect: Because the architect of the past served a single client, he was able to become thoroughly acquainted with the client’s individual tastes and way of life— he could make the client’s decisions for him. The majority of architects designing housing today do not work for millionaires, but for millions of individuals who will work or live in the architects’ projects. The architect cannot study the behavior of each user; instead, he constructs an ideal user— usually a mirror image of himself—and plans for this ideal. Since he designs to a common standard of perfections, none of the individually imperfect users is satisfied. The architect cannot possibly ascertain their preferences and, therefore, should not presume to choose for them. He should, instead, devise methods of promoting choice among the users themselves (Friedman, 98-99). Key to Friedman’s idea of the future is the ability to ascertain individual needs and preferences in the process of design. Building on the view of the future held by Kurokawa, this role of architects in the future seems plausible, moving from individually designing for one client, and rather designing large systems of spaces for multiple users that each need different things. Further explaining the
role of the architect, Friedman said: The task of the architect is to warn each user of the effect of each individual act of choice. For example, the location of a new building will affect all of the city’s inhabitants. The public, instead of being told only of the form of the building, has the right to know the repercussions the project will have on its way of life. This foreknowledge of possible results, whether accepted, rejected or ignored, allows the exercise of a popular vote for or against any project by the individual and the group (Friedman, 99). Looking at this new role of the architect as a bastion of the collective interest, architecture moves from focusing on individual spaces to a group of spaces that affect and rely on each other. Similar to Kurokawa’s idea of the future, the city in Friedman’s mind is an interconnected web of individuals, defining and relying on one another. The concept of automation in architecture is taken to a new level as user and space define each other. Such a realization in the future would entirely rely on a system that could interpret and coordinate spaces on a massive scale, beyond the ability of the architect. Friedman proposes a system he calls the ‘Flatwriter’, which he defined as, “…[a] keyboard consist[ing] of 53 keys, each printing the figure shown upon it. They represent configurations possible within three volumes as well as the different forms that can be assumed by each volume” (Friedman, 99). Simplifying the possibilities of the realization of space to a set of discrete elements, as well as a set of transformations that can be imposed on those elements, allows for spaces to work together in support and continuity, but also develops space that can be implemented anywhere in the system. Defining this system becomes the responsibility of the architect, whereas the responsibility of designing the
space quality and function lies with the end user, and ultimately the system providing these decisions. Speaking to this new paradigm in architectural practice, Friedman says, “the Flatwriter is thus an application of a new information process between the future user and the object he wants to use; it makes individual decision possible within very wide boundaries, and it provides a direct way for anybody to correct his own errors without the help of intermediary professionals” (Friedman, 100).
dominated by the abstract rationalization and optimization of computer systems. They redefine architecture and architect, focusing on collaboration between system and user, rather than controlled by one or the other. Autonomy in architecture is seen by some as a problem, but to others, including myself, seems to be the answer the future is asking for.
Bibliography Figure 2. An illustration of the output from the Flatwriter machine (Friedman, 101)
Envisioning the future role of the architect is difficult, as the future may hold circumstances or situations that are beyond our comprehension. But looking to the past, and using the ideas presented as a way to inform the future practice and implementation of architecture can be a beneficial answer to some of the problems we face today. Meyer suggests a design process that builds on the needs and situations defined by context and user. Kurokawa envisions a world of co-dependent structures, space, and users. Friedman suggests a system that would allow for users to define their own spaces. Each of these ideas work together to inform a future where human intuition and desire are maintained in a world
Friedman, Yona. “The Flatwriter: Choice by Computer.” Progressive Architecture Mar. 1971: 98-101. Print. Kurokawa, Kisho. “Capsule Declaration.” Metabolism in Architecture. London: Studio Vista, 1977. 75-85. Print. Meyer, Hannes. “The New World.” Trans. Don Reneau. The Weimar Republic Sourcebook. Ed. Martin Jay, Edward Dimendberg, and Anton Kaes. Berkeley: U of California Press, 1994. 445-49. Print. Meyer, Hannes. Trans. D. Q. Stephenson. Hannes Meyer, Buildings, Projects and Writings. By Hannes Meyer. No. 4. Vol. 2. Teufen AR: Arthur Niggli Ltd., 1965. 95-97. Print.
Agent-Based Systems Analysis
An Investigation into Ant Colony Algorithms and Simulation Systems Michael Soderberg + Michael Hoehn, Advanced Models in Architectural Simulation, Spring 2017 Professors Mark Collins and Toru Hasegawa Ant Systems as observed and tested by Marco Dorigo and Alberto Colorni supposed that optimization of various hypothetical scenarios could be achieved with use of a colony of cooperating agents. This colony of cooperative agents is manifest with the use of ant colonies. Ant colony agent-based systems provide valuable results as the method can be used to generate a “general-purpose heuristic algorithm”, which can theoretically be applied to several scenarios (Colorni, Dorigo). This system achieves its ultimate relevance by meaningful application to a diverse set of problems. As observed by Dorigo and Colorni, these systems prove their value by means of its versatility, its robustness, and the fact that it is population based. Versatile, because not only can it be applied and analyzed through a variety of problems, but it can also be applied to extensions of the same problems (For example, the same system can be easily applied to the problem of the traveling salesman and the asymmetric traveling salesman). As a robust system, it can be applied to said various problems with only minimal adjustments. As a population based model, feedback loops provide critical adjustments over time to solve these problems. A similar understanding to “ants” and their respective behaviors will be proliferated throughout this paper, it must be noted,
however, that the extension of these behaviors will be addressed later within this paper. It is first necessary to briefly outline the basic system behaviors. Because the basic role of ants can be understood as agents whose sole purpose is to forage and return results to their colony for future expansion, we can understand the system model to emulate these same characteristics. Search activities are distributed over the “ants”, or agents. These search activities imbue agents with behaviors which mimic, to some extent, the behavior of real ants. In this model, success is determined by the finding of a food source. As ant agents begin their foraging they set out on seemingly arbitrary paths and at each step lay a trail of pheromone. This pheromone trail has been found to be the main medium through which communication between the ant agents occur. As ants move, various amounts of pheromone are placed on the ground which highlight the historic location of previous agents. As this pheromone trail builds up over time the trail is more likely to be followed because there is a higher probability for the ant to find a successful outcome (food source). As these trails become more attractive (a greater amount of pheromone) to the ant agents they become more traveled, typically yielding a result of the shortest (and most optimized) path, explained in the following example.
Dorigo and Colorni establish a basic theoretical example in which there are a series of ants, whose initial population numbers thirty, is released within an enclosed area (See Fig. 1). Initially, because there are no strong pheromone trails established it is assumed that the ants would wander until they find a food source. As this straight, initial trail is intersected by an asymmetrical obstacle it is assumed that an equal amount of ants would explore both sides, creating two distinct pathways, both of which ultimately lead to food. Over time the results would demonstrate that the shortest path was the most “successful� one because the ratio of time traveled to food acquisition is the most desirable.
Figure 1.
Critical to the successful acquisition of food the ant must ultimately decide at points of diversion (Points B, D) as to their course of travel. The analysis of these decisions and behaviors express a form of autocatalytic behavior, in which the more ants following a trail, the more attractive the trail becomes for those following it.
algorithm was found superior in terms of more desirable results, but here all three will be briefly summarized. Ant-Cycle: The Traveling Salesman Dorigo and Colorni reference a popular problem known as the traveling salesman problem, to which the ant colony optimization solution may be applied to find desirable results. The traveling salesman problem setup requires a set of n towns, of which the TSP is desiring to find the minimal length, closed tour that visits each town once. To ensure the visitation of each of the n towns, a tabu list is associated with each ant as a data structure. This forbids the ants to visit previously visited towns before a certain number of iterations is achieved. Ants begin finding solutions as their respective tabu lists are initially set as their starting town. After this initial setup, each ant/agent moves from town to town analyzing probability data pertaining to the desirability of two parameters; the trail, how many ants have chosen the same edge, and the visibility, or the closer the town, the more desirable it is. The test is complete as the agents tabu lists reach capacity and the shortest path is found by the ants is saved. This process is then repeated until the tour counter reaches the maximum number of cycles (as defined by test generator). Results from these tests can be further visually analyzed in the graphs below (see Fig. 2).
Ant System Tests Three main algorithms were developed through research completed by Dorigo and Colorni being, Ant-cycle, Ant-density, and Ant-quantity. Ultimately the ant-cycle
Figure 2. a)Trail distribution at the beginning of search b) Trail distribution after 100 cycles
Ant-density and Ant-quantity These algorithms differ from the Ant-cycle algorithm in the way the trail is updated. In each of these tests, the ants lay their trail of pheromone at each step without waiting for the end of the testing cycle or tour. As discovered through testing and analysis, Dorigo and Colorni have stated that both the ant-density and the ant-quantity models yield worse results than the ant-cycle model. This can be directly attributed to feedback information, as ant-cycle uses global information in which case ants lay a proportional amount of pheromone to the desirability of the solution. Both ant-quantity and ant-density models utilize local information, meaning that their search is ultimately uniformed by the final results achieved by the colony. Advanced Properties: An Exploration of Synergistic Effects Further experimentation was required if additional applications were to be attempted. Utilizing the most successful model of the ant systems, the ant-cycle algorithm, Dorigo and Colorni ran a series of experiments to assess the impacts of the number of ants and the importance of communication throughout the trail on the efficiency of the solution. The test layout featured a 4x4 grid of equally distributed points (food sources), in which the ideal solution would resemble a boxed letter H. By deploying a series of distinct stratum, subsequent tests could further expand the possibilities of ant-based optimization. Initialization tests sought to explore the importance of the initial setup. Would results
vary if all ant started in the same city versus random distribution? Elitist strategy (most commonly referenced in genetic algorithms) would analyze the “bestof-tour� results and cull all suboptimal results, in turn yielding the most optimum and vetted solutions. Increasing the problem dimensions, by increasing the city count from 16 to 64 it was verified that the algorithm always found the optimal results. This test measures efficiency of solution-finding in broader testing fields. Exploring System Manipulations To better understand the ant colony algorithm and its many uses, a testing scenario was built in javascript to initiate and understand the basic elements of the algorithm; namely the ant as agent, the food as goal, and the movement as a characteristic of the ants. Multiple analyses were done on this scratch build to explain and understand the aforementioned elements and their impact on the system as a whole. This testing scenario was purposely built differently from the systems designed and implemented by Dorigo and Colorni, as no real world problem needed to be solved with this implementation. Beginning with the environment for this scratch build, it was decided to give the entire environment an overlay of a grid, with each cell of the grid containing certain properties. This would allow each cell to know it’s neighbors, and contain some inherent bias toward a pheromone that would be perpetuated by the ants over time. As an ant would move to a new cell in the grid, it would lay down a pheromone, contained in a variable for
the cell. Each ant could then look to the cell and check its biased direction to move to based on pheromone levels in its immediate neighborhood. This information was then passed to the ant’s movement function, explained later. As ants left each cell, the cell would update itself and slowly decrease its pheromone amount over each cycle of the animation loop. With the ant as an agent, it was decided to design them as a constructor function within javascript. This would allow each ant to have properties that could be assigned and more importantly changed and measured by different elements throughout the system. Each ant was given a position within the environment, with a function to automatically adjust this position with each cycle of the animation loop. Allowing the ant to contain it’s own movement function allowed each ant to be individual, without an overseeing function to interpret each ant and decide where to move it. This movement function provided options for random movement or movement dictated by pheromone levels as influenced by the current cell of the environment, as explained earlier. The decision on which movement strategy to pursue used a weighted random value. It was found that if each ant would only follow the trail of pheromone exactly, the intended target, or food, may never be found as ants would get stuck in an unoptimized path. The random movement was added to allow each ant to vary its own path and diversify the paths initially explored in the early cycles of the animation loop.
Figure 3. Simple random walk result after 1800 cycles
Other movement strategies were tested, to understand what control one was given over the ants’ paths, and how this might affect the outcome of the analysis. One strategy was to remove the pheromone completely from the system, using the ants’ random movement as the only means of finding and foraging the food (see Fig. 3). As this did give a wider range of accessibility to the environment early in the animation loop, the paths taken by individual ants were completely useless as an optimization strategy. Another strategy was to weight the frequency a specific direction was selected by the ants in their movement function (see Fig. 4). Surprisingly, just changing the odds of the right direction selection from 1 in 6 options to 2 in 7, the ants almost immediately shot to the right of the environment , seemingly ignoring the three other directions making up 3 in the remaining 5 options. As this strategy could be helpful in the initial stages of the animation cycle, the effect of this initial burst of movement would not produce reliably the optimized paths between food source and hive. However, this may be the desired outcome of a particular system, and as such should be given note as a plausible algorithm interpretation.
Figure 4. Programmed direction bias movement strategy after 1800 cycles
Similarly, another strategy was implemented that would give another target for the ants to work toward as one of the weighted options for movement (see Fig. 5). Each ant was given a chance to move in the current direction of the mouse pointer as controlled through the simulation by the user. So now each ant had the ability to move randomly, to follow the biased direction of pheromone as dictated by the environment cells, or to move directly toward the mouse location on the screen. This seemed to be more advantageous for the outcome of the system, as it would also allow for an initial bias to be baked into the system like the biased direction before, but instead of skewing the results throughout the simulation, this would allow the results to be nudged in a desired direction as dictated by the user. However, if this option were to be enforced throughout the duration of the simulation, the user would need to constantly change and direct the ants throughout thousands if not millions of animation cycles, as to not allow the ants to become stuck in one position as the mouse stayed motionless on the screen. If this option were to be investigated further for implementation in other algorithms, the option for toggling this new target on and off would provide for better results at the conclusion of the simulation. Interestingly, this would bring up the question of the desired outcome of the simulation. If a true optimized path were desired, this option may not provide the optimized path as the user would skew the results by interfering with the natural decision making of the ants. However, if the desired outcome was to move toward specific food first, and allow a second wave to get the remaining food, this may be a plausible interpretation of the algorithm.
Figure 5. Target manipulation movement strategy after 1800 cycles
A final manipulation element explored was the food in both size and amount. Each food object was designed as a constructor function within javascript, specifically so properties of size and amount could be changed at any time. However, the draw size of the food would stay constant, so that images of the separate analyses can be compared with each other. Food was drawn randomly within the environment, but could have been designed to be placed by the user before the simulation was started to simulate an actual situation. It was found that with the size of the food at a large radius, the ants would more easily find and return the food, but with food at close proximity to each other, there was a problem where the ants didn’t know which food source they were retrieving from. A smaller size would solve this problem, but would be harder for some ants to find and begin returning. The amount was also an important factor to get right, as too small an amount would not produce a substantial path of ants, but too large would result in other food sources not being found, and extraordinarily long simulation times. Through these explored elements, it was discovered that for future success in ant colony simulations, the careful manipulation of each step of the process should be given to the user. To search for a system that would allow for this, the development program of Grasshopper would be explored as a discrete
programming environment. Specifically, the agent-based plugin Physarealm was investigated. Physarealm - Agent-based simulations for designers Physarealm is an algorithmic modeling tool utilized within the matrix of Grasshopper. It was created to mimic and observe behaviors of the natural phenomena found within Physarum Polycephalum. Physarum Polycephalum is a biological organism whose behavior has been noted to produce networks of efficiency between between food placement. This behavior can be greatly conducive to solving certain spatial questions when trying to span between defined locations (from emitter to food source). By mimicking P. Polycephalum biological processes, Physarealm functions mainly as a tool for spatial analysis, but also has capabilities of rapid form production. These capabilities will be analyzed further throughout this paper through various experiments. The plugin first works within an established environment (BREP, box, or surface) and places agents throughout seeking to reach the food source in the most efficient way possible (see Fig. 6). Several output visualization options are available to the designer to help translate varied agent behavior. Physarealm utilizes a stigmergic algorithmic process which essentially generates either a 2D or 3D latticework grid system, giving agents locations to move within the system. Various amounts of chemo-attractor is then embedded throughout the lattice system, thus providing the means and method of communication between various agents, thus also simulating certain processes found within the ant colony optimization algorithm.
Trails and agents, over time, seek out the most efficient pathway possible in order to locate food sources. It is important to note that although the Physarealm algorithm was created to mimic P. Polycephalum processes, it can be further modified to function as an ant-based behavior analyzer. Meaning success is not necessarily contributed to finding the shortest possible route initially, but overtime to highlight more desirable passageways.
Figure 6. All Physarealm components and typical workflow
Architectural Relevance Conventional P. Polycephalum, and Ant Colony Optimization tests have been best tested and understood within the 2D realm. Typical 2D testing situations involve finding the best pathway for specific circumstances. Physarealm adds much needed strength to these tests by expanding testing options into the third dimension. As can be seen in the previous image, options are available to explore box, BREP, or surface environments. These options add incredible value to spatial designers seeking to solve unique 3D problems. As a tool for designers, Physarealm provides a powerful framework for massive amounts of exploration for diverse design solutions. Explored in this paper are the possibilities merited by Physarealm to solve architectural problems such as circulation patterns, egress solutions, form finding strategies, and
structural optimization. It is important to note, although Physarealm contains a series of powerful tools for designers, it ultimately lacks supporting structure for ease of use and integration within preexisting designer workflow. All needed improvements will be discussed following the provided examples. 2D Agent Deployment Typical urban and architectural spatial problems emerge early on in the design process. By utilizing Physarealm to simulate possible circulation procedures, the designer can access unique design solutions. Design possibilities are virtually unlimited as the placement of emitter(s) (public entrances) and food source(s) (points of spatial priority) are up to the designers discretion (see Fig. 7). The following example shows a hypothetical situation in which there is an open floor plan with one emitter and one food source. Initially the colony spreads at an equal rate toward the food source. As the pathways spread, seemingly random, some pathways become more populated due to the level of chemoattractor values placed within the system. As contact is made with the food source, the particular successful pathway is then laden with additional chemo-attractor values, thus contributing to the further expansion of the 2D system.
Figure 7. Open floor plan circculation possibilities
Additionally, this process becomes more architecturally relevant with the imposition of obstacles within the system. Obstacles here could represent walls, or programmatic requirements which possibly limit the flow of people within a space. Utilizing Physarealm as a colony simulator one can begin to see the implications of spatial restrictions in plan (see Fig. 8). Observe as the colony emerges from the emitter, it passes the first obstacle along its left side, its wider opening, instead of the right. Continuing throughout the space, the simulation then reaches the second obstacle. Instead of passing through the smaller space, even though it was encountered first, it instead passes through the wider gap on the right in order to reach the food source more efficiently. By implementing a similar spatial analysis method, a designer can study egress and circulation issues at a rapid and dynamic level. The designer can include additional complexities and alter the method of infiltration, ultimately yielding vastly unique spatial analysis results. Further implementation of these results into architectural solutions could vastly restructure conventional spaces and methods of spatial navigation.
Figure 8. Floor plan obstacles analyze circulation flow patterns
3D Agent Deployment As previously mentioned, Physarealm contributes even greater value when expanding into 3D space. The following example demonstrates a simple box environment (symbolizing site constraints) and a single emitter and food source respectively (see Fig. 9). Again, the image series produces a timeline of snapshots through a number of algorithm iterations. As the simulation begins, agents spread out, seemingly at random, then begin to coagulate along more desirable routes headed to the food source. The resulting form reveals several potential architectural components ranging from circulation corridors to structural members. Again the designer is free to rapidly iterate to find desirable outcomes and solutions.
Figure 9. Floor plan with obstacles analyze circulation flow patterns
Similar to the previously explored 2D examples, the designer can begin to impose obstacles within the 3D environment. These obstacles again become placeholders for programmatic requirements throughout the space. These obstacles could physically represent site context, spatial restrictions, or specific programmatic elements all representing a diverse range of parameters that can be potentially considered while designing. The following example, seen in Fig. 10, visualizes a 3D environment with
embedded obstacles. Observe how even the simplest of environments/obstructions yields a stimulating result as agents wrap around the obstacle to find the food source.
Figure 10. 3D Environment with obstacle
Creative Possibilities | Studies in Form The following example demonstrates the possibilities of formal generation (see Fig. 11). This process of design can be quite compelling to the architectural profession as the possibility for rapid iteration and visual output make it a useful and efficient tool. By simply readjusting the emitter and food source locations one can achieve vastly unique visual outputs. Additionally one could adjust one of the many setting components available within the Physarealm plugin. This example showcases the potential formal possibilities available to the designer with adjusting very minimal settings. By adjusting the sensor settings, one can begin to alter the behavior of the agents within the environment. Studies expressed here highlight the simple change of Sensor Angle (SA), Rotation Angle (RA), and Radius Offset (RO). Behavioral modifications afforded by the Physrealm algorithm make it a powerful tool for designers to quickly tweak settings to yield their desired outcome. More specific structural studies can be conducted with the further adjustment
of certain settings within the Physarealm framework. As seen in Fig. 12, by simply adjusting the initial velocity of the agents, an upward momentum propels the agents vertically toward the food source, in turn creating a column-like structure. As more parameters are added and further settings to determine life duration and agent behavior even more refined and idealized columnlike structures can be obtained through this method of optimization.
capabilities available through Physarealm (see Fig. 13). Visual output possibilities include: a. Display of agent vectors b. Locations of individual agents c. Interconnectivity of agents based on proximity and probability to connect d. Sectional analysis of varying chemoattractor levels (as colored mesh output) e. Tracery of individual agent pathways
a
b
c
Figure 11. Form generation possibilities, changing settings SA, RA, RO
d
e
Figure 13. Visualization output options
Figure 12. Column generation, initial velocity in the Z direction
Understanding Outputs and Algorithm Limitations Testing with the Physarealm algorithm can be rewarding in terms of rapid design visualization and output. Although this method can be rapidly rewarding, its true value lies in the ability to translate the sketchlike output into useful, and interpretable data for modeling. The following examples demonstrate the current visual output
By utilizing the vast array of settings available to the designer through Physrealm, one can certainly achieve uniquely satisfying design solutions. Because this algorithm functions primarily as a tool for modeling the biomimetic behaviors of the P. Polycephalum process, it begins to express its limitations as a tool for accurately modeling ant colony behaviors. Certainly the two possess certain commonalities as they each attempt to find food sources as efficiently as possible, but it is incorrect to assume that there is a direct and exact translation from one application to the other. This distinction can be best observed as the designer seeks to further optimize the resultant curved pathways (see Fig. 14), as
it is requisite the designer employ further implementations to cull non optimized results from the desired outcome. Another area in which the algorithm may not produce desired ant colony optimized results lies in its agent reproduction processes. The current processes force the agents to divide themselves based on neighborhood counts, this method when applied to ant colony optimization implies that the ants simply split into two distinct agents at any given point instead of emerging from the specified emitter.
more rapidly be achieved through procedurally based editing of output, therefore Physarealm specifically, and other agent-based systems generally, could potentially boost overall production by adding iteration-based editing capabilities to assist in form generation and analysis.
Figure 14. Trail optimization, image courtesy of Ma Yidong
Conclusion Agent-based systems such as the ant colony algorithm should be used for many situations, but a careful understanding of the discrete elements of such a system must be maintained by those in control of the simulation. Such an understanding has been defined here, and may be further used to investigate multiple solutions to a single problem, thus enriching the result outcome of some project. This understanding can then be applied to specific systems, such as the Pysarealm plugin for Grasshopper. In order to more effectively produce accurate results which emulate ant colony optimization results, there must be an extensive analysis of the code framework which creates this algorithm. Useful architectural results can
Bibliography Dorigo, M., V. Maniezzo, and A. Colorni. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Ant system: optimization by a colony of cooperating agents.â&#x20AC;? IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Part B (Cybernetics) 26.1 (1996): 1-13. Web. Yidong, Ma. Trail Optimization Stages. Digital image, Figure 14. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Apr. 2017. <https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=dKbz2hcemXU&t=44s>.
semester III | columbia gsapp
fall 2017
semester III | columbia gsapp
fall 2017
michael soderberg + michael hoehn professor emmett zeifman | fall 2017
vertical neighborhoods
Our project directly challenges the traditional understanding and implementation of the tower as an architectural typology by providing not only places for business, but for living and thriving communities. It aims to provide housing, public/private amenities, and a framework in which neighborhood spaces and uses can freely develop over time. These priorities synthesize an interest in understanding communities at various scales - urban, tower, floor. To achieve this, we begin by exploring several architectural limitations. By fully complying with current zoning, setback, and density requirements, an organization of 14 independent micro towers combine to form a unique micro urbanism. Each tower is formed through a series of stacked â&#x20AC;&#x153;neighborhood quadsâ&#x20AC;? comprised of four individual, yet connected floors. These neighborhoods in the sky share their own unique spaces in which the residents can fully explore their own collective interests. The units themselves range in size - small, medium, large. Each unit type forms its own neighborhood quad throughout the project and mix in arrangement where connected horizontally to other towers. [right] site model
michael soderberg + sky achitoff + graham nicols + john sanchez integrated systems | fall 2017
greenpoint theater
Our project was a theater that utilized an exterior louver system and a rainscreen system as elements of the envelope. The building was organized as a set of 3 main bars, shifting in plan and section to define unique programs. The focus of this project was to understand the basics of construction documents and the systems integrated within the building. I primarily focused on the exterior elements of the building, developing the envelope systems and exterior wall section details. [top] interior view [bottom] south elevation
An Exploration of the term “Space” Michael Soderberg, History of Architectural Theory, Fall 2017 Professor Mark Wigley Architectural theorists have been exploring the concepts of form, space, decoration, and all other aspects of Architecture for hundreds if not thousands of years, searching for what Architecture is, and what it’s effect really is in the lives of those impacted by it. In his book “Architecture Depends,” Jeremy Till argues that Architecture as a discipline is dependent on many intertwining factors such as time, space, agency and ethics, but also that Architecture as a profession seems to resist acknowledging these factors as fundamental in practice (Till, 117). Though the book as a whole raises many intriguing questions about how we as architects handle these dependencies, the chapter exploring consequences of Space is what I would like to focus on throughout this paper. In the seventh chapter of his book, Till begins by saying, “Space and Time. Time and Space. Inescapably dependent, (Till, 117).” Before getting to this point in the book, the reader has gone through 3 chapters about the concept of time in Architecture. Supposedly because of this preparation, Till is suggesting to the reader that he is the authority to trust in regard to this statement, and that there is no need to question the fantastic declaration he has just made in the first three sentences of this chapter. But obviously this cannot be taken as pure fact, especially by one practicing the field Till is claiming to be the authority on. To me, it isn’t so much the combination of Time and Space that is troubling in this
statement, but really puzzling is the use of the word inescapably. Surely there must be some way that Space and Time could be understood as separate from one another; if not, how could we have just read through 3 other chapters about only the topic of time? The beginning of this chapter is obviously very carefully considered by Till. Nowhere else that I have found does he use simple twoword statements as complete sentences in this chapter, so here he is trying to make a point. We as the reader have to begin asking ourselves if there could be any truth to this statement, any past experience or other evidence that the opposite is true. The genius of this set of 3 simple statements is that Till instantly gets the reader to either agree with his authority, or to disagree with him and to look for ways to prove him wrong. Normally this would be a bad idea, but specifically in this instance Till is proposing a sort of Space that isn’t conforming to the norm. The chapter is titled Slack Space, and throughout the chapter Till finds ways to redefine Space in its relationship to Architecture; so in either case, whether the reader is for or against Till, he still comes out ahead. Continuing on, he says, “It is only [emphasis added] in their intertwining that we can understand the world around us, (Till, 117).” Perhaps intentionally, the absurdity of the confidence in the statement forces the reader to look for confirmation that this statement is true. Till follows this forceful beginning by
quoting Anthony Giddens to back up what he has just said: Inevitably, given the dynamics of time, the relationship between the two is unstable; indeed, for some commentators it is exactly their changing relationship that is the defining feature of the various states of modernity. Thus Anthony Giddens contrasts the premodern era, “in which ‘when’ was almost universally connected with either ‘where’ or identified with regular natural occurrences,” with the modern era, in which time and space are routinely disconnected. The result is that the very dynamism of modernity derives from the uncoupling of time and space from their previously stable relationship and their recombination into various new forms, most obviously the ability to make connections between global and local networks that were simply unavailable in traditional societies. (Till, 117) It is interesting that Till uses this logic to back up his claim that time and space are inseparably connected. Though they cannot be thought of apart from each other, their relationship is unstable, and can completely change in different contexts, such as the premodern and modern eras. Because of their inseparable relationship, those part of the modern era specifically try to redefine their boundaries and relationships. Reading this tells me that Till is not trying to dictate the way in which Space and Time relate, but instead illustrate some of the ways in which they do relate (or are opposed to each other). In order to do this, he needs to clarify what he means by Space. The first definition he provides is found at the end of the first paragraph, when he talks about connections between global and local networks that were not possible before. This is clearly making the Space a geographical location, and time being a specific age or era.
Making comparisons between a group of people practicing Architecture in 8th century China and those practicing Architecture at the same time in Greece or South America may result in interesting discoveries about the theory of the time, but may not provide an accurate understanding of what specific people were thinking about when they built a specific structure. This could be considered a win for those that accepted that Space and Time are “inescapably dependent,” because he is suggesting that this ability to disconnect the two can’t be justified, but for the side that was against this statement from the beginning, this is also an interesting thing to bring up, because obviously people have been disconnecting the two in precisely this way. Many history courses take this exact approach in exploring the past, specifically looking into various cultures around the world and comparing them against each other. So clearly Space and Time can be considered individually, but it seems that Till is suggesting that they should not be individually considered in this case. The definition of specific types of Space is essential in this argument about the relationship between spaces and times, and throughout the rest of the chapter Till sets about defining what Space is, and what makes a space a certain type of Space. At the same time, one of the key aspects that defines Space is precisely its relationship to Time. He says, “expelled from time, space becomes a completely different matter -- matter here being the operative word. In the hands and minds of architects, space is generally emptied, and with this is made available as something that can be directly manipulated as some kind of stuff,” (Till, 118). This further complicates the definition of the space that he wants to explore in this chapter. Presumably,
space is only Space when it is directly tied to Time, but when unassociated with time Space becomes a type of matter, something that architects can manipulate and control. Furthermore, he quotes many architects and theorists talking about space; “‘Architecture is the thoughtful making of spaces’ (Louis Khan). ‘We separate, limit and bring into a human scale a part of unlimited space’ (Gerrit Rietveld). ‘I AM SPACE’ (the wonderfully immodest Theo van Doesburg). ‘Boundaries become fluid; space is conceived as flowing’ (Laszlo Moholy-Nagy). ‘The purpose of architecture is to create space’ (Hendrik Petrus Berlage),” (Till, 118). Each of these quoted speaks of space in a different way than the others, and none seem to specifically support what he claims when he says that space can be matter. Actually, the quotes seem to be about producing space in some way, but it is unclear if any of the other theorists or designers he has quoted are speaking about producing a physical space or some other kind of space, at least from the quotes he has included. This tendency of Till to say something quite clearly but seem to be saying something different is becoming normal, albeit this is the third full paragraph of the chapter, but at the very least it seems that the reader is supposed to begin questioning what they had initially thought at the beginning. Here Till is expertly getting the reader to a state of unsteadiness in terms of their stance on the idea of Space and Time, setting himself up to answer the questions he has undoubtedly placed in the minds of the readers. But it is not just simply a mental image that makes up space, it is a physical material, as he said before. How could this be, when Architecture as a profession is literally the production of a representation of a
building, whereas the physical construction of a building is done traditionally by the building trades (at least in our modern age)? He attempts to clarify this contradiction later on the same page when he says, “this presumed production conflates two aspects of space: first space as a ‘physical property of dimension and extent,’ and second space as a ‘mental construct through which the mind knows the world,” (Till, 118). Rather than space being both physical and theoretical at the same time, it seems to have properties that are both physical and theoretical. This is quite a confusing understanding of space, as he admits further on. He talks about architecture school reviews, where many times the students will present their projects suggesting that they are manipulating space in some way, such as extending it, multiplying it, or allowing it to flow. They do so with lines on a page and by talking those observing their projects through their process. But he says of this practice, “sometimes these terms confuse physical description with conceptual analogy, so one is not sure whether the words are describing actual spatial conditions or just their metaphorical intent. Either way, it does not take long to find fault with these terms as portrayals of either physical or mental space. How does one fold space—like a shirt? If space can flow, does it assume some ectoplasmic presence? Isn’t it one of the commonplaces of late modernity that the boundaries of private and public are continually blurred?” (Till, 118). Having taken the reader from their position at the beginning of the chapter to this point, Till is preparing to get everyone on the same page. Those that agreed with him, and those that disagreed, seem to both have reason to be unsure of Till’s authority at this point. With many of those reading this book probably experiencing similar things in their
past, Till is finally beginning to lay down a common ground that will be comfortable to every reader. The next paragraph really begins to enforce to all readers that Till is justified in exploring this concept of space. He says, “the architectural drawing ties form to space in a symbiotic relationship. Thicker lines: more form, less space. Curvy lines: free form, flowing space. Straight lines: simple form; pure space. Overlapping lines: complex form, layered space. The architectural drawing thus provides compelling evidence that architects do indeed ‘make’ space. The drawing of lines sets in train a production line out of the end of which comes space. ‘Look,’ says the student, pointing at the white stuff, ‘there is the public space.’ And then touches the drawing, just to reinforce the reality of that space,” (Till, 118 - 119). Here Till is getting the reader to question everyone else’s authority to talk about space, instead of his. The clearly ludicrous example of a student pointing to a blank piece of paper and claiming that it is the space they have created is actually how many if not all architectural reviews go in a school of Architecture. But how could that be? All of the brilliant minds that have taught in architectural schools have supported this method for many years, and indeed support students as they make these claims, sometimes scolding the students if they don’t make such claims. But the way in which this experience was described assures that the reader begins to question everyone but Till in their understanding and use of the term space. This statement also further complicates the definition of Space that Till is baking up early in this chapter. Space as we the reader know is something that is naturally and wholly
tied to the concept of time, whether they work together or against each other. Space also has physical attributes that are manifest in the real world, but also has theoretical or mental constructs that either intentionally or unintentionally affect the understanding of that space to a person. Lastly, Till has said that form and space are separate constructs. In a drawing, the space is understood to be the leftovers that aren’t drawn by the architect. A thicker and straighter line both defines a certain quality of form as a physical representation, but also informs the qualities of space that are not form. Architecture then produces form as a direct result of process, as the architect draws that which is form, but at the same time architects also produce or create space as a byproduct of their production of form. Architecture is then a fine balance between Form, Time, and Space both as a physical realization and a theoretical creation. After defining space in this way, Till gets into really understanding the types of space as they relate to these properties. He begins by attempting to describe a Hard Space. He talks about space in this section of the chapter as it relates to form in a physical way. He says, “because its genesis lies in the production of form, the space ‘made’ retains physical associations. Architectural space may not be physical in the scientific sense of the word, but as long as it is conceived in the shadow of form [emphasis added], the objectlike qualities will stick around space,” (Till, 119). Hard space then is to be understood as the space directly relating to form, ‘retain[ing] physical associations’ as he says, but always conceived as the result of form. The form clearly comes first and then the space follows, perhaps like many today think of a figure ground diagram; traditionally a solid black
figure or figures sit on a field of white. But is this really true? Is space really only a shadow, a result of form, or can it be something else? The figure ground diagram could be used to argue that space is as much an object as the form is, the diagram could as easily be seen as solid white figures standing on a black field. This argument is exactly what Till brings up next, talking about Descartes and his view of inert bodies standing in extensio, saying that the inert bodies in this situation would be the form, but the space in between those bodies or form can also be “measured, divided, shaped, and moved,” (Till, 120). To summarize, Space is something that is connected to time, with this connection sometimes acknowledged and sometimes willfully ignored. It has physical and theoretical properties and is also directly connected to form. Hard space seems to be a type of space that is focused on its physical properties and relationships to other physical features, like form. Hard space is the type of space that can be measured, compared against other spaces. Till acknowledges that this type of space is perhaps not the best type of space for all situations. He warns that when using the measurement of space as the main description of that space, its impact and power are lost. This is evident in many traditional guidebooks on space planning in traditional homes. A bedroom is defined as a room large enough for a bed, a dresser, and clear space to move around. He says, “the determinations on use lead to typical furniture layouts, which in turn prescribe the size and shape of the rooms, which when built fix the patterns of use as initially proposed,” (Till, 121). The problem is that space when reduced to its dimensions only removes the possibility that the space had before. But in a way, this goes against what Till
was arguing for before, that space has a very specific impact in the way that people view the space mentally or theoretically. If for example a bedroom sized space gives the dweller a sense that this is a space for sleeping, specifically because its size is similar to rooms that they have slept in before, is that considered a successful implementation of space? I believe that Till here is trying to argue that we can’t simply reduce a space to a textbook of paired dimensions that one might use when looking to create a specific type of space. Rather, the form of the space or spaces around a space, the materiality of a wall or window, number of entrances, the period of time in which a person dwells in that space, and the dimension should all work together to define a space. He says, “the supposed neutrality of metric space provides a comfort zone in which dimensions can be shared as uncontested values, but it does so at the expense of suppressing other aspects of the human occupation of space whose social dynamics are less easy to deal with and accommodate,” (Till, 122). By removing the concepts of materiality, entrance, time, and form from the definition of space, we lose the aspects that make that space life supporting. He brings up the point that this is very difficult to define in a space, how is it life supporting, and to what extent is the architect in charge of defining space to meet that demand? After all, architects only have control of the form, the space is the result of that form. But obviously here Till is again suggesting by not suggesting that architects have more to do with the conception of space than the physical measurements. Surely, he is arguing here for space to be accepted as more than just measurements. But he brings up the question, “why then has ‘physical’ space so dominated architectural discourse, and why
does it still persist,” (Till, 122). Here he is talking about space as defined by the design guides he has mentioned and presumably codes of building that set specific numbers and requirements to specific kinds of space. He follows this question up by saying, “the answer to this question lies in the argument of this book: the perpetuation of physical space as an architectural paradigm is about the denial, and subsequent ridding, of those dependencies and presences that lie outside the direct control of the architect. However, the specific treatment of space in this context suggests that this denial is not a trivial matter of pushing aside inconveniences, but part of a rather more grave charge that can be brought against architects,” (Till, 122-123). This gives a weight to the concept of space that until now hasn’t existed. We as the reader surely now understand that architects are the ones creating space, either as a direct result of their design and intention or as a byproduct of form. But now we understand that space must be stewarded over by architects, as an ethical position rather than a bystander. Hard space is that type of space that is perhaps the easiest to see, whether it is by its relationship with the form around it, or because of its impact on the life inside of it. Perhaps Till is trying to suggest here that architects have a very particular way of affecting the lives of those that live in their designed spaces. This would support the fact that Till seems very negative toward the types of design guides that specifically simplify space to dimension. Space as understood by the reader has a very direct impact on everyday life, and this type of statement is exactly what Till needs to assure that the reader continues to welcome Till’s authority on the topic as he explores other types of space.
Another interesting point Till observes about hard space is that it is a particular kind of space used as a commodity in a current market. He says, “voided of explicit political or social content, hard space is reduced to those aspects of architecture that are easy to commodify (aesthetics and technique) or those aspects of space that are to do with control (efficiency and visibility). In this way the architects of hard space are indeed complicit in providing a velvet glove of seductive surface to cover the hard fist of economic expediency,” (Till, 123). Hard space is the type of space that is brought to the market as a commodity to be sold. Because others can reduce it to dimensions and interactions between forms, it can be placed on a spreadsheet and compared to many other spaces, and assigned a price the fits other similar prices that people desired to pay for it. Till suggests in this quote that this might not be the necessary path for all space, as he makes the distinction that this space is designed by specific architects, rather than all architects. By this I believe that he is pleading for a new kind of space that would be thought of as an alternative to hard space, and he continues the chapter by defining a second type of space as social space. He begins this section by quoting Lefebvre and then explaining the genius behind the specific way in which that quotation is written: “(Social) space is a (social) product.” …the brackets gently savage one of the founding assumptions of an Enlightenment understanding of space, namely that space is made, and that in the case of architectural space, the maker is the individual architect. The brackets let us read this claim – space is a product – at the same time as exposing its poverty. They draw attention to the repeated word social, giving it a pervasive presence without
crudely emphasizing it, (Till, 125). He argues through this specific way of emphasizing the word ‘social’ in the quote, it allows people to simultaneously understand that space is a product, but also that space cannot be divorced from its social ramifications. This means that social space to Till really isn’t about a separate space that is reserved for being social, but rather that all space has a social component to it that cannot be ignored or removed. This is going to lead architects in general to begin to understand their impact on space as a designer. He gives encouragement to architects that they have the power to understand the space they develop, and that space should be understood from multiple points of view, as a social solution to a social problem that always exists. This again adds to the definition of space, revealing that space has an unavoidable connection with social contexts as well as physical and mental constructs. What isn’t made clear is whether social space and hard space can coexist in one space, or whether they are merely attempts to term and isolate space to make it easier for one to design for a particular intent instead of trying to tackle all of the implications of space. If the structure of the chapter is understood to have a preference with regard to this, then Social Space is separate from Hard Space. But it seems that there was a conceded effort by Till to make the reader aware of the negative qualities of Hard Space and to suggest that there should be a social or ethical piece to Hard Space. As such, Social Space seems to be already half defined when the section officially begins on page 125. But regardless of whether Hard Space and Social Space are linked or separate, the overall definition of the term space that has been expressed to the reader up until this point seems to have
the physical elements of Hard Space and the social ramifications of Social Space. To make the definition even more complex, Till moves to the most complicated type of space in the chapter, the inauthentic space. Till begins by quoting Heidegger and Kant trying to identify a quality of space that is not physical or really even expressible. Can space really be measured or quantified? He talks about a way in which we might begin to understand space in a way that is not focused on dimensions. “As an example, Heidegger notes that when ‘a man wears a pair of spectacles which are so close to him distancially that they are sitting on his nose, they are environmentally more remote from him than the picture on the opposite wall.’ The glasses, as mere tools, are of no real concern to us, whereas the picture as the object of our attention is revealed as spatially closer. The look across the room between two lovers collapses the distance that separates them,” (Till, 128). This is where the concept of space becomes theoretical or mental completely, as he puts it a phenomenological space that is completely informed by situations outside of mere physical and formal relationships. As a dweller in a space, that space is going to be defined as different because of the phenomenological influences on you particularly that won’t have the same effect on me. This quality of space is definitely something that is pushed aside and perhaps even run away from by architects and designers in the current age, because it is so difficult to measure and produce or explain. Till urges for this not to be the case, as he says, “…space can no longer be seen as an abstract and geometric category intuited by the worldless subject, but has to
be understood through our lived engagement with the world as spatial, ‘space-ish’ humans. So, if my call for architects to remember their humanity is to go heeded, then in relation to space this means starting with that essential human spatiality… Architectural design here becomes a matter not of pushing bits of space around as abstract stuff, but of spatiality as a shared cultural and human condition, with an awareness that what we make physically affects that conditions spatially,” (Till, 128). Till argues that there has to be a balance between the types of space that should be the goal of architects that are aware of their impact on the design of spaces inhabited by people. He calls this space slack space. Of slack space, Till writes, In the unraveling of hard space through the twin agents of social space and (inauthentic) phenomenology, a new kind of space emerges. It is by implication a space that is ‘softer’ than what it has replaced, insofar as it is not founded on the principles of abstraction, normalization, and order that underpin hard space. It does not presume to control or divide in the same way that hard space does. It is no longer possible, which an awareness of the bodies that will perceive and occupy this space, to abrogate responsibility for their phenomenal and political presences, or to ignore their potential vulnerability, (Till, 133). So finally, we come to a type of space that is a correct balance for Till between all the types of space that supposedly are determined by current designers or thinkers. By defining this space, Till has not only given the definition of what space is, but also what is important to focus on. Space is physical and phenomenological, is defined both by its effects in the lives of those who inhabit it,
as well as its dimensions and characteristics that make it a commodity. It is connected to form and time, but those connections can be manipulated and reframed to give space variation in its properties. But the way that space is handled is balanced between these factors. By using the term slack, Till seems to acknowledge that space can’t be perfectly designed by people, or potentially at all. The characteristics that define a space may in some cases tend toward the hard aspects of space, and at other times tend toward the phenomenological aspects. But in general, each characteristic should be given a chance at defining a space in a certain context. The third sentence of this chapter rings true at the end of the chapter, at least in Till’s eyes. Time and Space, and the other aspects of space such as physical and phenomenological factors that have been thoroughly discussed, are inescapably dependent. Till argues that it is wrong to attempt to separate one aspect of space from the others. However, we don’t need to worry about getting everything figured out completely, rather have an understanding that Space should be considered when being designed. At the end of this chapter, Till seems to have returned the reader to a place of surety when it comes to the concept of space. Instead of proposing a new type of space or new way to conceive of space, he has explored aspects of space that retroactively seem to be obvious when contemplating the definition of space. Quickly the reader forgets the moments of absurdity as Till made vast claims about Space and its relationship to Time, and replaces those memories with the calm and collected definition of space that Till so expertly crafted. In the end, the reader is left without definitive evidence that space has accurately been described, but instead
leaves with a new common-sense definition of a very complex and hotly debated topic in architectural discourse, namely Space.
Bibliography Till, Jeremy. Architecture Depends. MIT Press, 2013.
semester IV | columbia gsapp
spring 2018
semester IV | columbia gsapp
spring 2018
michael soderberg professor david benjamin | spring 2018
a system for potential
Located in the Brooklyn Navy Yards, the project is a job training center focused on Computer Science, Robotics, Industrial Design and Systems Integration for New York City. Automation has the potential to improve productivity and workplace environments, but will also potentially replace many jobs in varied ways. My project seeks to provide a design for training centers to help retrain those displaced by automation practices in the work field. Because it is unknown what the future workplace will look like, I am implementing a system of design to adapt to the future, defining an algorithm and architectural system to adapt over time to changing programmatic needs. My project uses generative design to define the form of the building, and afterward analyzes the programmatic relationships that result from the form. The project understands automation as a tool to prepare for an unknown future, using automated design practices to theoretically design a system for developing a network of similar buildings to address job training. [top] jobs lost to automation [bottom] potential for automation in US jobs
Innovation in Low Income Housing Development Michael Soderberg, Designing for Zero, Spring 2018 Professor Michael Bell Affordable and Low-Income housing has been seen over the years with varied levels of success. On one hand, the creation and execution of the plan to replace poor living conditions for families throughout the country with modern, clean and safe homes was somewhat successful; many of the poor living conditions were eradicated, but there were some that were previously living in those conditions that could not live in the new accommodations, due to lack of funds, policy, or other reasons. At the same time, these new housing projects were seen with a negative stigma, as representing people that could not provide for themselves and were to some degree outcasts from society. Although these views were biased and untrue, affordable and low-income housing projects continued to perpetuate negative ideologies such as racism throughout the communities in which they were built, and in an effort to remove these ideologies from the figurative game field, the traditionally federal and local government controlled projects for affordable and low-income housing were turned over to market-rate housing developers to design and construct, hopefully using innovative design and funding strategies to disguise affordable and low-income housing projects as traditional housing. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be working the way it was initially intended. Rather, affordable and low-income housing has become very recognizable throughout the country as a specific aesthetic architecture that
is re-used from project to project regardless of the climate or place of a site. There are many reasons for this, and through this paper I hope to explore these reasons and propose some ideas that could change the way the affordable and low-income housing is developed and designed throughout the country. On September 1, 1937, the United States Housing Act was enacted and essentially created government-controlled housing for those in need. The act declared the following: It is hereby declared to be the policy of the United States to promote the general welfare of the Nation by employing its funds and credit, as provided in this Act, to assist the several States and their political subdivisions to alleviate present and recurring unemployment and to remedy the unsafe and insanitary housing conditions and the acute shortage of decent, safe, and sanitary dwellings for families of low income, in rural or urban communities, that are injurious to the health, safety, and morals of the citizens of the Nation. (United States Housing Act, 1937) At first glance this act seems to be noble in itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mission to help those in need, specifically to decrease unemployment and to provide clean and safe housing to those that did not have it. But a closer examination of this act reveals that this unfortunate wording allows the United States to define what is morally acceptable as a living condition for anyone
living within the country, and if any condition does not meet the standard defined by the government, it can be forcibly removed in an effort of “slum clearance,” defined by the act to be “the demolition and removal of buildings from any slum area,” (United States Housing Act, 1937). Furthermore, the term “slum” is defined by the act as, “any area where dwellings predominate which, by reason of dilapidation, overcrowding, faulty arrangement or design, lack of ventilation, light or sanitation facilities, or any combination of these factors, are detrimental to safety, health, or morals,” (United States Housing Act, 1937). Again “morals” is used as a reason for declaring any area of the country a slum, which would then need to be demolished and rebuilt as a clean, safe and conforming space for people to live moral lives. Obviously, this type of classification, whether intentional in the implementation of the act or not, can and unfortunately did lead to a perpetuation of racism throughout the country, as an effort to clear people out of an area and to consolidate them in one area where the conditions were seen as appropriate. These housing projects were initially designated for “families of low-income,” defined by the act as, “families who are in the lowest income group and who cannot afford to pay enough to cause private enterprise in their locality or metropolitan area to build an adequate supply of decent, safe, and sanitary dwellings for their use,” (United States Housing Act, 1937). These target families are described further as the act defines the term “low-rent housing” in the following way: The term ‘low-rent housing’ means decent, safe, and sanitary dwellings within the financial reach of families of low income, and developed and
administered to promote serviceability, efficiency, economy, and stability, and embraces all necessary appurtenances thereto. The dwellings in low-rent housing as defined in this Act shall be available solely for families whose net income at the time of admission does not exceed five times the rental (including the value or cost to them of heat, light, water, and cooking fuel) of the dwellings to be furnished such families, except that in the case of families with three or more minor dependents, such ratio shall not exceed six to one. (United States Housing Act, 1937) The people that would be allowed to live in these new housing projects would be those that fit the profile defined here, specifically those that do not make five or six times more than the rent in income. These rents are later defined in the act to be, “the amounts necessary to pay all management, operation, and maintenance costs, together with payments, if any, in lieu of taxes, plus such additional amounts as the Authority shall determine are consistent with maintaining the low-rent character of such project,” (United States Housing Act, 1937). By defining the rents and those people that would be allowed to live in the new housing projects, the Act provides a level of assurance that the conditions of safety, cleanliness, and ‘morality’ would be maintained over time. Later in the act, we find the root of the specific problem of lack of innovation in design when the standards for what can qualify as low-rent housing and furthermore qualify for federal funding are explained: With respect to housing projects on which construction is hereafter initiated, the Authority shall make loans, grants, and annual contributions only for such low-rent-housing projects as it finds are to be undertaken in such a manner (a) that such projects will not be of elaborate or expensive
design or materials, and economy will be promoted both in construction and administration, and (b) that the average construction cost of the dwelling units (excluding land, demolition, and nondwelling facilities) in any such project is not greater than the average construction cost of dwelling units currently produced by private enterprise, in the locality or metropolitan area concerned, under the legal building requirements applicable to the proposed site, and under labor standards not lower than those prescribed in this Act. (United States Housing Act, 1937) Very specifically the act forbids that funding be applied to projects that are deemed to have “elaborate or expensive design or materials,” and that funding should favor projects that promote economy. Obviously, this must be the position taken by the act, as the funds from taxes are to be treated as a precious resource that has limits, many of which are described in great detail in this act, and presumably the limited funds need to be shared throughout the country to aid those found in all of the states that need help. But again, the wording here means that the authority to judge whether or not the design and materiality of the building is elaborate is held by the government. The problem then is to determine the goals of the government as opposed to designers and architects. For the government, presumably the goal is to house people in safe and health environments, as expressed in the opening of the act. But in terms of the quality of life, the qualities of space both inside and outside of the homes in these housing projects, the government has little to no expertise. Low-rent housing was not invented as a humanitarian endeavor, but rather as an answer to allow people to be better contributing parts of the society in which they lived, reducing unemployment and cleaning
the streets of ‘bad’ conditions. Right here at the very beginning of low-income housing as a part of the American City, we find the root of the problem that has lead to such a negative view of these projects today. The act was attempting to provide for people what it itself defined as necessities of life, but in doing so also severely stunted the potential that such a project could have had for the lives of those that lived in poor conditions. For better or for worse, the Housing Act of 1937 began the production of low-income housing throughout the country, and also began the displacement of thousands of people that were living then in poor conditions. Ideally, these projects would house those that they displaced, but in reality, the availability of housing was too low to meet the demand of those that needed it. At the same time, World War II was fought and won, and those that came home from the war effort were in desperate need of housing, many of whom would qualify for low-income housing. So, to help address this need, another Housing Act was enacted in July of 1949. The purpose of this new act was declared as such: The declaration states that the general welfare and security of the Nation and the health and living standards of its people require housing production and related community development sufficient to remedy the serious housing shortage, the elimination of substandard and other inadequate housing through the clearance of slums and blighted areas, and the realization as soon as feasible of the goal of a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family, thus contributing to the development and redevelopment of communities and to the advancement of the growth, wealth, and security of the Nation. (United States Housing Act, 1949)
The Housing Act of 1949 was specifically targeted at two problems, the shortage of housing throughout the country for all people, and the continued removal and replacement of slum conditions in cities. The act encouraged that new residential neighborhoods and communities be developed to provide new housing for every American family, allowing private enterprise to develop as much as possible. This led to a major problem we are facing today, namely urban sprawl, and the major issues of power consumption and distribution, emissions, and global warming that are directly related to it. But in addition to essentially creating the problem of urban sprawl, the act also accelerates and expands the efforts previously started in 1937 to remove areas of cities deemed as immoral or unsanitary and replace them with low-income housing projects.
of well-planned, residential neighborhoods and the development and redevelopment of communities; and (5) the stabilization of the housing industry at a high annual volume of residential construction. (United States Housing Act, 1949)
Regarding the design and materiality of these projects, the act tries to begin undoing what the act of 1937 did in respect to the almost mandated design and materiality that were purely determined by cost. The act summarizes this attempt with the following:
Here is a nice attempt to utilize new design practices and standards to build these housing projects, stating that the Government should do all it can to use new design, materials, and techniques to develop housing. But again, it is seen that the Government can’t be focused on the quality of life and space that come out of a particular design, but rather that these new designs and techniques should lower the cost of producing the same product. Here it is clearly stated that the Government is looking for the same projects to be built but is looking for ways to produce them for less money. The description of what is considered acceptable for these houses is too broad, perhaps intentionally, stating that the housing should meet standards for “adequate family life.” Again, the Government is placed in the position to judge whether or not a person’s particular life is adequate, without regard for their quality of life.
The act requires the Housing and Home Finance Agency, and any other departments or agencies of the Federal Government having functions with respect to housing to exercise their functions consistently with these national housing objectives and policies and in such manner as will encourage and assist (1) the production of housing of sound standards of design, construction, livability, and size for adequate family life; (2) the reduction of the costs of housing without sacrifice of such sounds standards; (3) the use of new designs, materials, techniques, and methods in residential construction and the increase of efficiency in residential construction and maintenance; (4) the development
In addition to providing as much housing as possible, the act goes on to further identify who can or cannot live in these housing projects. The number of people that were in need of these prices for housing was far in excess of the availability of the housing, and this act aimed to lessen the burden of housing on those that lived there while being more descriptive of those that could apply for the new housing that was to be created from this act. In an effort to provide the housing available to those that most needed it, the act further explained who should or should not live in these projects:
As in the past, annual incomes of families on admission may not exceed five times the rent, including utilities, but the act recognizes the needs of larger families by exempting from income $100 per year for each minor dependent. The title further requires local authorities (1) to establish upper rental limits for admission to projects at least 20 percent below the lowest rents at which private enterprise unaided by public subsidy is providing an adequate supply of decent housing in the respective localities, (2) to provide maximum income limits for admission and continued occupancy, (3) to require the removal of families found to be ineligible as the result of periodic reexaminations of tenant incomes, (4) not to discriminate against welfare cases, and (5), subject to specific preferences stated below, to give preference to families having the most urgent needs. In determining the eligibility of families for continued occupancy, the local housing authorities may exempt $100 for each minor or any part of the income received by minor members of the families (since such income normally will be available to the tenant families only for a short period). (United States Housing Act, 1949) One of the major problems with the above statement is that it declares that the public low-income housing would be available to those in the most desperate need. It did so by lowering the maximum income of those that could live there and required that these people that no longer qualified for housing would be removed. Presumably these people would then be forced to move out of the city, as the area rents were by definition out of reach for those in the low-income housing projects to begin with, which further exacerbated the problem of urban sprawl. This also became a major problem because the low-income housing projects became the only option for those in poverty, and in essence the poverty of a city was directly concentrated in these
housing developments. Problems were further complicated when the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1969 was enacted, when rents in public housing were caped at 25 percent of a tenant’s income, which was later raised to 30 percent in 1981 (United States Housing and Urban Development Act, 1969). This time period seems to be completely backward in thinking with respect to the mission of low-income housing. In 1937, rents were set as low as possible, meaning that rents would only consist of the cost to manage, maintain, and operate the housing, allowing for some small additional cost to “maintain the lowrent character” of the projects (United States Housing Act, 1937). Initially, the act was to also lower the unemployment rate, allowing for people to take lower income jobs and continue to provide for their families. But in the acts of 1969 and 1981, making rents specific to an individual families’ income actually directly encourages the income to be as low as possible, meaning that rent would be equally as low. The funds that originally were secured by the rents to maintain and manage the projects quickly vanished, and conditions very quickly became similar to the slums that the projects were meant to replace. In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, poor living conditions in public low-income housing projects and concentrations of poverty in cities prompted the implementation of Low Income Housing Tax Credits, or LIHTC’s, and the HOPE VI plan by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. These new policies, along with others, were an attempt to lessen the burden of low-income housing on local and federal governments, improve living conditions for low-income families, and decentralize poverty throughout cities.
HOPE VI was proposed as a program that would provide local Public Housing Authorities federal funding for maintenance and construction in exchange for the demolition of a certain percentage of poor quality public housing. To be built in it’s place was housing founded on the principles of new urbanism, promoting more connected neighborhoods with direct access to the street and transportation. These new housing developments were aimed at low- to midmarket rates for rent and were intended to appear as a mix of housing typologies. Typically, these new developments were low-rise multi-family row houses or singlefamily houses, as they seemed to encourage more activity and connectivity to the street. Although they prefer a mix of housing typologies, the need to keep costs low in the design and implementation of these projects meant that these are often just a façade change, keeping the same typical layout and structure from house to house. These practices laugh in the face of architectural innovation, again putting the wrong people in charge of the design and development of these housing projects, particularly people that would not be interested in the qualities of space and life that come from the housing development’s design. LIHTC’s were developed to replace the efforts of federal and local governments in solely funding and operating low-income housing throughout the country. Private developers could obtain Tax Credits for projects for low-income and affordable housing which could then be sold to investors for the capital needed to realize the project. In this way, the funding from the local and federal Housing Authorities could be removed from the hard assets of public housing units and could instead benefit private business in their
efforts to reduce costs and lower rents. This was seen as an opportunity to truly inject ingenuity and innovation into low-income and affordable housing design, allowing for those competing in market-rate housing to apply their practices and experience into the design of low-income and affordable housing. However, I would argue that this has not been the case, as modern housing design and development seems today to be even more homogenous and less concerned with a sense of place than ever before. One of the major reasons for this is the current practices and standards of market-rate housing are biased toward homogeneity, attempting to offer the same experience of high-class high rent housing to mid- to low-class rents, inevitably driving costs higher and potential profits further from low-income and affordable housing development. The developers have less interest in low-income housing as a source of profit, and have less responsibility in terms of design quality, which will eventually cause the system started by HOPE VI and LIHTC’s to fail, leaving behind a need for housing that can’t be fulfilled. Market-rate housing is extremely competitive as demands for higher quality conditions and lower costs rise. Housing in general is very volatile in terms of price as the current price of a housing unit varies sometimes from hour to hour. In order to normalize the housing market, markets and developers rely on ratings and classifications to in large part create pricing tiers that would represent a particular unit. These ratings and classes are defined on regional and national scales, by actors such as CoStar, BOMA and NAIOP. CoStar’s Building Rating System is the industry standard for national building ratings, focusing on multiple building types.
Each building type uses specific components to score a property in areas that relate to that building types’ use. For multi-family buildings, these areas of focus are architectural design, structure and systems, amenities, site, landscaping, and other exterior spaces, and certifications. Understanding the way that CoStar understands and scores these areas of focus is extremely important. Explaining the scores on architectural design, CoStar writes the following: The overall design of a multi-family building can be a key factor in attracting tenants and establishing the prestige of a property. In multifamily buildings, this ranges from buildings that exhibit the most current trends in apartment design and construction to the long lasting aesthetic of classic early 20th century buildings. These characteristics range from the exterior materials selection, the quality of interior finishes and the level of landscaping and exterior spaces. Additionally, unlike office and industrial buildings, regional and vernacular trends can play a role in the design of multi-family buildings (CoStar, 10). Each of the things mentioned in this section illustrate that the score of the design is focused on quantifiable data, comparing the designs to other similar projects and understanding the source and cost of materials and finishes used. Again, the reference to vernacular trends is used, but presumably references the exterior appearance of the building. These scores cannot relate to the more qualitative aspects of design such as the quality of interior spaces, and the quality of life that can be had within a particular dwelling. Other explanatory sections of the report describe the physical dimensions of a space as higher or lower quality, removing the descriptions of a place from it’s context. For example, a vaulted broom closet
may score higher than a traditional 8-foot ceiling height in an average bedroom, simply for the height of the ceiling. A more focused comparison of qualities between 5-star and 2-star multi-family building ratings shows that market rate housing is biased toward a very particular building design. Describing a 5-star score, CoStar defines that the typical location for this rating of building would be “located in a prime retail district with high purchasing power area based on local demographics,” and that there would be a “high concentration of retail tenants in its proximity.” Of exterior materials and façade, CoStar defines a 5-star building as one with “high quality materials that are durable, well maintained, clean, and seemingly appropriate to the use. Upscale shops should incorporate higher quality materials like natural stone, metal, and glass.” With respect to a 2-star rating, CoStar defines the location as a “low concentration of retail tenants in its proximity.” The only thing mentioned by CoStar relating to the exterior materials and façade is that is uses “lower cost materials,” (CoStar, 14). This tendency toward a very specific condition for highly rated buildings and a very broad and general description for lower rated buildings shows that the system is extremely biased toward one particular building type, prompting private developers and investors to design that one building over and over, regardless of the place. It should be noted that CoStar’s rating system is the industry standard on a national scale, while regional and local ratings can further be scored by companies like NAIOP, which uses a 3-tiered score to rate buildings in relation to their rents, location, building systems, finishes, and services. Again, these biases toward high-end developments can be seen
when comparing a summary of NAIOP’s Class A and Class C ratings on building finish. Class A buildings are those with “High quality design and materials. Buildings must continue to remain competitive with new construction.” Class C buildings are those with a “dated appearance,” (NAIOP). It is important to note that these ratings do not reflect low-income and affordable housing projects, as they only deal with housing that is considered market rate. However, with the creation of LIHTC’s and the policies toward lessening the local and federal government control over hard assets of public housing units, the developers that are holding to these standards upheld by CoStar, NAIOP and other similar ratings systems are the same developers that are asked to design and develop housing for low-income families today. The practices they use to design and develop market-rate housing are the very same practices that were hopefully going to introduce innovation into low-income and affordable housing projects, yet unfortunately those practices are most successful by today’s standards when they produce the same repetitive project everywhere, disregarding the sense of place and qualities of space that accompany every building. Unfortunately, I do not believe that this will be the answer to introducing innovation in design into low-income and affordable housing. It does however open the gate to allowing for innovation to take place. New ideas are being explored and implemented now, which could not have been explored in the era of federally-controlled housing, that are shifting the focus of these projects toward design and innovation. One of these projects is David Adjaye’s Sugar Hill Development in New York City.
As described by the architect, Sugar Hill is a new way of thinking about affordable housing. Adjaye described the project as the following: Sugar Hill is a new mixed-use development in Manhattan’s historic Sugar Hill district of Harlem that [ features] affordable housing, early education programs and a new cultural institution. Initiated by a non-profit developer of supportive housing, Broadway Housing Communities (BHC), and generated by a tight budget as well as the exacting parameters of the site, the concept challenges the traditional typology. Unusually, the scheme incorporates a public program, with a children’s center, which resonates with Adjaye Associates’ commitment to a wider urban and cultural responsibility… The practice worked closely with the client and local community to ensure the design is tied to its history, practical and aesthetic requirements, through a series of workshops and planning meetings. The brief required a modern design complementary to its surrounding environment of Gothic revival rowhouses. (Adjaye) The project utilizes public program to offset some of the cost of the building. The rest of the building is made of typical 1-, 2- and 3-bedroom apartments of similar quality and finish. By traditional building rating standards, the attention to design and materiality of the building would probably necessitate a high rating, yet these apartments are by design for affordable housing needs. Twenty-five of the apartments are for people that were homeless before, and the other ninety-eight are divided up between residents that fit into income ranges of 30, 50, 60 and 80 percent of the average median income for the area. The rents are supported through non-traditional means to allow for these families to afford them, relying on policy to
determine who can live there. This is a very interesting case study as it proposes a change from the traditional building built to one who can afford to inhabit it, and instead proposes that architectural design be officially divorced from the cost of the building. Adjaye’s project may not make sense everywhere, it has a very strong connection to the site and community that surround it and relies on that community to support it. But this is the beauty of the idea, that perhaps affordable housing design could be pioneered by local communities who can understand and support the designs for those in their area. Decentralizing the design and development of low-income and affordable housing could have large benefits to a community and would potentially address poverty and housing in ways we might not know yet. Funding for these projects should continue to be partially provided by the government as low-income and affordable housing is an inherently public agenda, but other sources for the remaining funding should be explored as they were in Adjaye’s project, rather than relying on the traditional system of relying on private investors interested only in profits, pushing for a global comparison point such as ratings to secure an investment. To truly innovate in low-income and affordable housing design, we need to decentralize and take an interest in our communities, focusing on quality of life and space over quality of rating. If we don’t, I fear that low-income and affordable housing will not be possible in the future, and we will need an answer for why we didn’t fix it in time.
Bibliography Adjaye, David. “Residential.” Adjaye Associates, www.adjaye.com/projects/residential/sugarhill-housing/. Accessed 05/05/2018 CoStar. CoStar Building Rating System. CoStar Building Rating System. p. 1-17 NAIOP. “Terms and Definitions.” NAIOP Commercial Real Estate Development Association, www.naiop.org/en/Research/Our-Research/ Reports/Terms-and-Definitions. Accessed 05/05/2018 United States Housing Act of 1937 United Stated Housing Act of 1949 “What Is the Building Rating System?” CoStar Building Rating System, CoStar, www.buildingratingsystem.com/. Accessed 05/05/2018. References HUD.gov / U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), www.hud.gov/. Accessed 05/05/2018. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. “Low-Income Housing Tax Credits: Affordable Housing Investment Opportunities for Banks.” Community Developments Insights, Mar. 2014, pp. 1–35. Turbov, Mindy. HOPE VI and Mixed-Finance Redevelopments: A Catalyst for Neighborhood Renewal. 2005. “Urbanism Principles.” New Urbanism, www. newurbanism.org/newurbanism/principles. html. Accessed 05/05/2018.
semester V | columbia gsapp
fall 2018
semester V | columbia gsapp
fall 2018
michael soderberg professor michael bell | fall 2018
experiential infrastructure
The typical experience of pulling up to a fuel pump, refilling your gas tank for 5 minutes, and then rushing inside to use the restroom, find a snack and pay--is an experience that can occur almost anywhere in the country. The missing piece of the experience, I believe, is the place you are in. At the fuel pump we are divorced from the landscape, encircled by an entirely inward-focused place. This project seeks to put the user back into the landscape, re-centering them on the place they are in. Sited on the edge of a bluff overlooking the Northern Desert of Nevada, each building is placed below ground, exposing the truck driver to the world and allowing them to experience the landscape, rather than simply allowing them to view it. The project overlooks TRIC from the other side of I-80, and utilizes a large system of solar panels to provide power to the trucks and also to nearby Reno and Sparks NV. Trucks exit the freeway and travel around and up the hill to the fuel stations above ground. Underground restrooms, hotel rooms, and a convenience store are accessed through slices in the ground, allowing the user to descend from an experience of exposure to a protected environment, framing the landscape through these slices. This truck stop is thought to be included in a network of truck stops that work to redefine the country in terms of energy production, environmental emissions, and distribution. Transitioning from a system of distributing fuel throughout the country by truck, the truck stop of the future will produce its own fuel in the forms of electricity and hydrogen through renewable energy sources. This distributed network of renewable power production facilities will allow us to redevelop the centralized power network of today, reducing carbon emissions by up to 30% throughout the country while increasing the production potential and efficiency of the power grid. The project also seeks to analyze the country to understand how the future truck stop will address these issues of energy production and emissions, and provides an algorithmic system to assist designers in understanding the needs and potentials of an individual truck stop site. Algorithms and data will allow us to see the country in a new way, understanding potentials for energy production and potentials for cleaner environments. The future truck stop becomes an integral piece in a distributed network of power production and distribution, but also becomes a destination point rather than a rest stop, emphasizing the sense of place where it resides. I think that the project still has many interesting questions to explore, such as what the future country looks like, but I am excited about the future truck stop as a tool to allow us to understand our relationship to the country both individually and as a new unified network. [opposite] experiential collage
semester VI | columbia gsapp
spring 2019
semester VI | columbia gsapp
spring 2019
michael soderberg professor michael bell | spring 2019
physical || digital
What is the function of physical space in a digital world? This project investigates the home in an entirely digital world, where physical possessions are replaced by digital possessions, in person dialogues are replaced with instant messaging and video chats, and basic functions of the post-war suburban house are outsourced through the internet. Traditionally, the home has been a physical center of life, serving as the storage center for food, belongings, and bodies. The home also serves as the beginning and end point of any trip to the store, the doctorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s office, the deli. But in the age of the digital home, these trips shift from the physical sphere to the digital one. The home remains the physical center of life, but life has become digital, and errands are run with light through satellites and fiber optics. Thus the project, and I believe architecture in general, needs to be less interested in form and concept, and more interested in the function of physical space in a digital world. [opposite] translation from ip space to physical space
michael soderberg + michael hoehn virtual architecture | spring 2019
interior exploration
This project was initially designed as an experiement with Unreal Engine 4, developing an atmospheric environment to explore in virtual reality. The user is allowed to move freely within the virtual space, encountering light and sound experiences hidden throughout the world. The user also has access to a lightcube that can be launched to illuminate spaces and also acts as a climbable object that can help the user reach inaccessible areas. The experience can also be launched in a traditional pc environment to play with keyboard and mouse without vr equipment. [opposite] screenshot from vr experience
The Sublime Character of Duomo di Como and Chiesa di Santa Maria Della Vittoria Michael Soderberg, Structural Daring and the Sublime, Spring 2019 Professor Rory Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Neill The Sublime is a sensation closely related to wonder and fear. In Architecture, this sense is often related directly to a sense of daring through structure or other qualities of space. The Sublime is a difficult sensation to describe through any one piece of architecture, because in each case the sublime character can change due to the relationships of elements and spaces in each case. The sublime character imbued in a building such as Falling Water by Frank Lloyd Wright might be defined by the relationship to massive and solid overhangs in close proximity to the river running below the house. But the sublime character of a building such as the Burj Khalifa by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill comes not from overhang, but extreme slenderness and height in a comparatively flat landscape. But one thing that both cases donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t take full advantage of is extreme ornamental detailing, which can be another aspect of sublime character in many buildings, especially in classical structures built around the Gothic age and afterward. In this paper, I wish to discuss two historic buildings: the Duomo di Como in Como, Italy, and Chiesa di Santa Maria Della Vittoria in Rome, Italy. Both of these buildings incorporate fascinating elements of structural daring, but also use amazing ornamentation and effects to create unique Sublime characters that draw visitors from around the world.
In order to successfully compare these unique buildings, the paper will be broken into four main sections: Slenderness, Span, Overhang, and Ornamentation. The goal of the paper is to understand the effectiveness of each technique in achieving a sense of sublime character, which will be accomplished by understanding the execution of each technique in each building, benefitting from the multiple perspectives that each building affords. The conclusions of the paper are not meant to be universal truths, but rather observations I have made in visiting both of these buildings that may become helpful to those wishing to understand more fully the concepts of the Sublime. Slenderness Traditionally, the concept of slenderness as it relates to architectural structure refers to vertical structural supports. A slender support may increase the sense that a massive structure overhead is hardly supported, creating a sense of fear or uneasiness in dwelling in that space. Simultaneously a smaller support is harder to detect, allowing the visitor to feel that they are existing in an undefined space, perhaps floating in a void rather than in a building. These types of experiences are helpful when building a place of worship, allowing the visitor to both feel the power and greatness
of God, while also feeling separated from the world outside. These feelings are definitely present at Duomo di Como, as the nearly 100-foot-tall Nave is supported by slender piers on each side, as seen in Figure 1.
Figure 1. View of Nave, Duomo di Como
The feeling of slenderness is further accentuated by visually breaking up each pier into a series of rounded pilasters joined to the sides of a square pier. Continuing off of the rounded pilasters are the main supporting arches that carry the vaults above. These arches are tapered to make them feel even more slender than they really are, and each element of the vaults in rounded or tapered to accentuate their slenderness in relation to the broad vaults they are supporting. The large structure placed in such a small town also helps accentuate the feeling of slenderness, as the area for congregation seating is much smaller than the full nave, which leaves most of the space empty and open, isolating the piers and making them feel even more slender. Standing at the center of the Nave on a day when the seating is pushed to the side, the space feels quite grand and awesome, and the scale of the
architectural elements surrounding you makes you feel like you are in a space outside the everyday world. At the same time, the solid mass of the vaults overhead and proportionally small clerestory windows create a sense of fear as the only supports keeping it from falling around you are so proportionally small. At Chiesa di Santa Maria Della Vittoria, the slenderness has to be handled differently. The church is considerably smaller than the Cathedral in Como, and as such does not need such massive piers to support the roof. The materials and period of construction are different from Duomo di Como, nevertheless the building uses similar techniques to achieve a feeling of slenderness and awe from the space. One major technique used throughout the building is the highlighting of edges of structure to make them appear slenderer. The church uses quite thick arches over the side chapels to allow for painting and sculpture to be applied to each space, but the outer edges are often left bare or highlighted by very detailed trim or material changes, making them appear very thin. This technique relies heavily on the ornamentation of the space, which will be covered later in the paper, but this clever technique makes the space feel more mysterious at first glance. Another moment of slender elements is the pipe organ and supporting balustrade, which use thin vertical elements to accentuate the verticality of the space, and make it appear higher than it really is.
feel the impressive span of the space, and again add to the sense of floating inside an out-ofscale space. Another element that improves the sense of wonder is the difference in height from the side aisles and the main nave, making the span appear larger than it really is. Using rectangular bays, the cathedral nave seems to be an even larger span than it truly is, adding to the sense of wonder that comes from such a grand scale.
Figure 2. View of Dome, Chiesa di Santa Maria Della Vittoria
Even though this building is very different in character than Duomo di Como, the same feeling of separation from the outside world and mystery can be felt here, as well as a precarious feeling from a disguise of the structure. Span Duomo di Como definitely takes advantage of large open spans of structure, specifically in the arches that support the vaults above, along with the ribs and arches between bays. Because the building was built over such a long period of time, between 1396 and 1770, the arches vary in style with shallow pointed arches on the entrance end, and rounded renaissance arches in the transept and apse. The shallow nature of these arches is obviously a difficult feat to accomplish successfully, as the forces trying to kick out the base of the arch is much higher when the arch is shallow. These forces are trying to be counter-acted by large tie bars that hold the base of the arches and create more of a truss than a true arch. However, the tie bars do not take away from the sense of span in the structure, allowing the visitor to
Chiesa di Santa Maria Della Vittoria again uses similar techniques to give a sense of awe at the scale of the space. Because the space is much smaller that the cathedral, the church creates a contrast to emphasize the span of the main nave. The side aisles are proportionally small, and are divided into individual chapels at each bay. But by separating the arches and columns from the main nave with a large trim course, and by unifying vault into one member, the span is accentuated and visually extended. Also, of note here is the seemingly floating dome, supported by visually nonexisting pendentives. The edges of the dome are highlighted, but the edges are noticeably separate from the rest of the structure, creating a precarious feeling, especially when standing directly beneath it. Overhang Duomo di Como is very limited in its use of overhang, limiting its use to specific moments like the pulpit or organ pipes. In these cases, the overhang is used to promote a sense of power over the person below, instilling a sense of worship at the grandeur of the music or priest speaking. Another interesting example of overhang is the sculptures and light fixtures hanging from the piers in the cathedral. These sculptures seem to be overhanging the space
below specifically for emphasis, seeming to be important figures in the religion.
Figure 3. View of Organ and Entrance, Chiesa di Santa Maria Della Vittoria
Chiesa di Santa Maria Della Vittoria uses a great deal of overhang to create a sense of the Sublime. The most obvious element of overhang is above the entrance, the large organ pipe set is supported by an overhanging ornamented balcony that extends well into the space. This helps to compress the space as you enter the church, and then reveals the rest of the space, allowing it to feel higher and grander than it truly is. Another impressive example of overhang is the large trim course or cornice that separates the aisle and chapels from the clerestory and ceiling. These help to compress and reveal the space, making the observer feel that the space is very large and grand, when in reality it is much more compressed than similar churches in the area.
style, different portions of the cathedral use unique elements of ornamentation to make this cathedral unique from others in the region in its sublime character. The faรงade is quite sparing in terms of its ornamentations, using finely cut stone blocks of a similar color and character, and engraving proportionally small sections of sculpture above and around the portals. The vaults are where the ornamentation adds to the sublime character of the building the most. In the older portions of the cathedral, those of the nave and aisles, the vaults are ornamented with relief carvings of saints and deities, as well as geometric designs and striking blue and gold accents. The apparent symmetry of these ornaments helps to disguise the mass of the vaults, concealing their true size and breadth. There is also a slight relief where the ribs and arches meet the vaults, creating a sense that the vaults are floating above the supports. In this way, the sense of floating in an out-of-scale space is amplified, and the visitor is allowed to experience a unique sense of sublimity.
Ornamentation Duomo di Como is a very interesting case in terms of its ornamentation. Being the product of multiple centuries of work and
Figure 4. Older Bay Ornament, Duomo di Como
Figure 5. Cupola Ornament, Duomo di Como By Wodehousefan - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons. wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31646671
The newer portions of the cathedral, namely the transept, cupola, and apse, use a geometric coffer pattern that is repeated at various scales throughout the space, creating a sense of infinity. This portion of the cathedral is often used as a liturgical space, and sitting in this portion of the cathedral instills a different feeling than the other portions of the cathedral. Perhaps the intent of this portion was to inspire individuals in their worship, to remind them of the infinite grandeur of God, whereas the rest of the cathedral was to invoke a sense of awe in the common public. Regardless of the intent, the execution of the ornamentation is successful in accentuating the structural elements and improving the sublime character of the cathedral. Chiesa di Santa Maria Della Vittoria is overrun with ornamentation. Everything from the materials to the painted flat portions to the relief or stand-alone sculpture is highly ornate, and each element adds to the success of this building. One of the most interesting things about the ubiquitous ornamentation is
the portions of the church that use different types of ornament. At eye level, individual sculptures or displays stand apart from each other, creating individual chapels and altars to worship at. Materials are often contrasting the others immediately around them, using different colors and patterns of marble and other stone to line the columns and arches on the lower portions of the church. As spaces get higher, the material becomes more uniform, but more sculpture mixes with painting to tell larger stories and unify the spaces. Often sculptural figures are placed on the arches or other structural members to disguise their actual size, and other pieces such as the large unified vault or dome are entirely painted in a contrasting color from the surrounding structure, which makes the ceiling appear to be missing as the visitor looks up into heaven. The sublime character in this church is different from the cathedral, obviously trying to transport the visitor to a new realm and disguise the structure of a building. But even though the execution is different in each space, the cathedral and church both create a sublime sense of being transported to a different world from the one outside. The sublime character of both Duomo di Como and Chiesa di Santa Maria Della Vittoria are unique, as are most other buildings that create a sense of the Sublime, but in an interesting way, both teach us that the Sublime is related to both architectural elements and the material and ornamentation of the space. A space can feel sublime in its attempts at structural daring, but a simple and seemingly normal space in terms of its structure can also feel sublime because of the way that the designer of the space handles the structural elements and ornamentation of the space. The Sublime seems to be both
individually understood, but also universally shared. Perhaps as one visits more and more places that feel sublime or daring, they begin to relate features or elements from one space to another, and only by visiting as many spaces as possible can one begin to understand what the definition of the Sublime is. But surely, the definitions of sublimity and daring contain the varied use of slenderness, span, overhang, and ornamentation.