INNOCENT buildings
NOTE: In the interests of avoiding the reptition of information, this document contains ancillary material (written reflections, speculations, precedents, selected process sketchwork) to that contained within the presentation slides. Please refer to the presentation slide document for project drawings. Follow the below link to an associated project webpage: https://innocentbuildings.myportfolio.com This web page graphically collates the orbiting elements of the projects essence - partial moments, heritage sensibility
INNOCENT buildings
Author: Will Shaw
PRELUDE - ESTIMATIONS OF SORROW
1/ GARDENING, NOT ARCHITECTURE - WRITING 2/ MAJOR PROJECT
CONTENTS
i/ BRIEF + PROGRAM
ii/ CONTEXT
iii/ DESIGN RESPONSE
iv/ ATMOSPHERICS
350mm
1400mm
2400mm
2400mm
In the city, the traffic is drained of motion Miss Havisham watches from a window of the Coles Building
A man stands, weeping, in Ltl Collins St.
Only the smallest children
The dignity of his weeping Holds us back from his space,
+ such as look out of Paradise come near him + sit at his feet, with dogs and dusty pigeons.
The hollow he makes about him In the midday light, In his pentagram of sorrow.
AFFETTI
and when he stops, he simply walks between us mopping his face with the dignity of one man who has wept,  and now has finished weeping. ​ Evading believers, he hurries off down Bourke Street
GARDENING ,NOT ARCHITECTURE
“...the search for system, after all, is very like the old academic thing - platonic certainty in brave new disguise..." Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter, After the Millenium, in Collage City, pg. 38
Our response to human emotion is best when it is dynamic and contextual. When approaching buildings that connote ideas of community, we are at our best when deploying a similar approach. The sensibility explored in this project is by nature, open-ended and not declarative. It seeks the "gentleness" Robert Venturi scratched at in Complexity and Contradiction. Venturi's claim toward "gentleness" represented a desire to move away from the unified strictures of modernism and toward complex systems. Architecture's statements about itself have always been uncertain in their very certainty. When we talk about the history of manifestos in architecture, we talk about the way in which the discipline has transmuted intra-disciplinary knowledge. The professions of law and medicine utilise rational yet intrinsically adaptive cultural systems of disciplinary knowledge. The common law uses highly codified precedent enshrined in centuries of affirmation, critique, counter-critique and refinement, to arrive at a dynamic system that also maintains equitable cultural outcomes in the face of trend and the shifting tides of community morality. Architecture, one might provocatively postulate, lurches from one declarative, rigid position to the next. Architectural Logics are cultural and often derived from cultural axioms that have become pervasive through the dominance of certain individuals, i.e Le Corbusier's Five Points, and not on the basis of merit. Brian Eno's revered Oblique Strategies, presents an alternative mode of thinking about frames of practice. The Strategies are designed to allow open-ended discursive thought about the creative task at hand. While Eno's strategies are well known, the categorical shift they represent in terms of ways of doing, within the context of architecture, has been less discussed. Architectures attachment to studio-based verbal enculturation, taste, style, method and positioning leans naturally towards a vortexed framing of problems, rather than
GARDENING, NOT ARCHITECT [STANCE DOCUMENTATION]
The realisation that the hand and mind are one, working on first principles, and filling these principles with meaning through a juxtaposition of basic relationships such as point, line, plane, and volume, opened up the possibility of argumentation. The first groupings were arbitrary; but once the arbitrary beginning was committed, the organism necessarily went through its normal evolution – and whether the evolution of form continued or stopped depended on the use of the intellect not as an academic tool, but as a passionate living element. The problems of point-line plane-volume; the facts of square-circletriangle; the mysteries of central-peripheral, frontal-oblique-concave-convex; of right angle and perpendicular; of scale and position; the interest in post-lintel, wall-slab, verticalhorizontal; the arguments of two-dimensional and three-dimensional space; the extent of a limited field; the meaning of implied extension; the meaning of plan, of section, of spatial expansion-spatial contraction, spatial compression-spatial tension; the direction of regulating lines, of grids; the relationships of figure to ground, or number to proportion, of measurement to scale, of symmetry to asymmetry, of diamond to diagonal; the hidden forces, the ideas of configuration; the static, the dynamic: all these begin to take on the form of a vocabulary. The arguments and points of view are within the work, within the drawings; it is hoped that the conflicts of form in them will lead to a clarity which can be useful and perhaps transferable. Source: Kenneth Frampton (ed),John Hejduk: 7 Houses, Catalogue 12, Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (New York), 1980. ŠJohn Hejduk.
According to Kengo Kuma, “The practice of gardening provides us with many hints [towards the practice of architecture] and gives us the courage.” “[The gardener] is forever occupied with watering, ridding plants of bugs, weeding and replanting, and the garden would cease to exist if he stopped ... There is no temporal point where a goal is reached and completion is achieved. There is no completion for a garden. “ Likewise, there is no declaration in “Gardening, Not Architecture”, only a continual shifting of idea streams across circumstances of different scales: massing, a door knob, circulation, a bathroom vanity, the treatment of plaster, a public/semi-public threshold..... Gardening, rather than architecture seeks this kind of partial approach to heritage architecture. Like the Oblique Strategies [c.1975] of Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt, it seeks a non-declarative position[ing], over the formulation of dogma, through the quasi-aphoristic or koan-like listing of stances. It is Dionysian as opposed to Apollonian. The adoption of any specific stance, many of which conflict, becomes a matter of circum[stance]. This building, this material, this orientation....etc A situational ethic evolves. The taking of a position, in a context, does not indicate a total stance or a resolved position.
GARDENING, NOT ARCHITECT [STANCE DOCUMENTATION]
Rather, a moment, a stitching of things found; are, together, a disclosure of one way of doing.
- Dignify the building, through documentation, in its naked truth - Dignify the context, through documentation, in its naked truth - What extends beyond the limits of what can be documented is more important than that within the limits - Context is key - Context is nothing - Flatten existing value hierarchies - Preserve everything, and then begin to add - Only subtract. - Don’t argue with the building - The building, in its innocence, is a a retro-active Building Proposition - coterminous: having the same boundaries or extent in space, time, or meaning. - Assist Unity - Ignore a tendency to unification - If the buildings fabric signifies something, bad or good, dont repress it. - Make-up is not required. - Make-up is essential - How does the building sound? - Existing elements present a logic that interferes. - Decay corrupts - Gimmicks decay - Listen - If a building component cannot be replaced, leave it in place - If decay defeats functionality, identity or other - restore or remove - Let it Rot - Remove and recycle rotten fruit - How does it smell? - Dont hide from the building. - Let the Building hide - Sight, is most like free speech - Sound, is most like liberation - The White House - Valerio Olgiati - Invert - Undermine the power structure - Let it bleed - Reinforce existing dynamics - Have empathy
GARDENING, NOT ARCHITECT [STANCE DOCUMENTATION]
The Gordion Knot Dilemma When Alexander the Great reached the city of Gordium in Phyrgia, he was reputedly presented with the intractable problem of the Gordion knot no one had been able to untie it for centuries. The myth relates that Alexander took a sword and cut through the knot, thereby undoing it. This narrative presents two approaches to design as relevant here: 1. The direct and totalising coherent solution 2. The partial yet direct solution, without concern for the outcome in relation to the whole.
Notes on Colin Rowe
Colin Rowe’s description of the term "transparency" in architecture enables the comprehension of multiple entities simultaneously, in a way that does not destroy them. To use Rowe's terminology, I conceive of this project as a layering of variant transparencies: atmosphere, emotion, historical narrative and ephemera, architectural precedent, literary resonances, program, client and context. Architecture juggles diverse demands. Rowe’s adoption of bricolage as a formal tactic for establishing meaningful unity of disparate elements was always a pertinent one in Architecture, if contested. This project attempts to make sense of the site condition, through the collection of both mundane and architectonic debris in the landscape of the heritage building. The identification and re-framing of these elements provides an immediate and straightforward scaffold for meaningful intervention and dialogue. A formal operation simultaneously connects and denatures the debris, neuters it from its autochthonous function, yet the element is thrust into contemporary discourse. Such elements function to perturb the primacy of the new and establish a discourse with layers of history and atmosphere on site and new programs.
Corbusier’s 'acoustic phenomenon', in which the surrounding landscape was said to inspire architectural form, can also be traced back to L’Espace indicible: The infinite horizon from which radiating waves emerge, and the architectural walls disposed to create an echo, bring to life this acoustic phenomenon of time-space […].33
Where physical heritage debris or elements do not exist, the architect might begin to shadow box with cultural phantoms not readily apparent in the spatial proximity to the site. So doing, the physical tabula rasa falls away to reveal transparencies and confluences that sculpt the behaviour of building form. The building presented here brings in the diverse cacophony of the city through the saloon with its fulcrum staircase, which pivots the atmospheric condition of the building into one of refuge in the eyries above, providing prospect over the city. The clientele, accustomed to the tough open conditions of the street have both sanctuary and exposure to street life in equal measure. The building does not overly cocoon.
Defect Immunity Period + the difficult whole
Defect Immunity Period + the difficult whole A cracked ceramic repaired with gold jointing, the useless, defective parts transported into a more lucid parti Egregious accumulations, a fanatical city enfolding itself – dulux, the insignia of psychedelia, builder’s markings, a Donald Duck figurine resting against a window pane electrical conduits scanning walls in the manner of Lewerentz’ flower shop _______________________ The sanitisation of Rome + it’s frigid sanity _______________________ A tea cup with a patina of stained use Tuning the machine head of the cities inherent ambiances, latent narratives Errata of the city taking on moments of poesis, like a boat taking on water, beautiful or dull some how a difficult whole immune
MAJOR PROJECT
BRIEF + PROGRAM
Long term Bourke Street Resident the Salvation Army has purchased the Job Warehouse site from the Zeimer Family. The Salvation Army intend to retain the building heritage fabric but seek to extend its social outreach programs through the establishment of a mixed-used hostel building that can house persons needing long, mid, temporary and short term accomodation. The Salvation Army is conscious of the presence of established business, traders + the districts rich history of post-war immigration. - Pelligrinis - Florentinos - Meyer’s Place Bar - The Melbourne Supper Club - China Town - The Windsor Hotel - etc The Salvation Army sees itself as an integral component in the complex social fabric that exists here but acknowledges the existence of tension between some traders and its clientele, many of whom currently live on the street. The Salvation Army recognises the Job Warehouse is considered an eyesore by traders, and those who run businesses in the area. An area characterised by its proximity to international hotels, Parliament and Melbourne’s theatre district. As such, the Salvation Army is keenly aware of a tension between the desire of traders to “clean” the street, and its own perogative to care for those who come from it. It is not uncommon for the Salvation Army’s Lighthouse 61 Cafe, directly across Bourke Street, to house as many as 125 person a night on the floor out of 400 people sleeping rough in CBD The Victorian Council of Social Services states that 30,000 dwellings will be required in the next 10 years. It costs $100,000 to house a woman in prison. 35 of the 36 women housed by the Gatwick enter ed prison facilities after its closure. This equates to a public cost of 3.5 million per year. The Job Warehouse site is worth 10 million. This equates to less than three years of prison expenses. Not wishing to cause a radical disruption to traders, but in the end providing somewhere safe, clean and hospitable to those in need, the Salvation Army are keen to juggle and re-synthesise competing social requirements in the area.
OFFICE VOLUME (TBC)
VERTICAL TRANSPORT
SOCIAL
SLEEP
OUTSIDE
WASHING
ADMIN
PROGRAMMATIC AXONOMETRIC STUDY
STORAGE
KITCHEN
WC
150 beds (One third private with assumed reductions) Specific Zone Dormitory 1 (Bunks) Dormitory 2 (Private) Dormitory 3 (Private) Storage 1 Storage 2 Storage 3 Storage 4 Storage 5 Storage - Clothing 1 Storage - Clothing 2 Undercroft - Semi-Public Courtyard - Private Meeting Space Open Living Space Kitchen Wash Up Café WC + Laundry Lounge Reception Counsellor Showers WC DDA WC Circulation Total
SQM 131 112.5 116 15 11.25 12.375 12.375 8.625 10.875 4.5 112.5 116.25 40.875 363.75 50 18 24 88.125 25 30 48.75 36 13.125 51 1451.88
Consolidated Washing Storage Sleeping Social/Relax Outside WC Admin Private Public Semi Public Kitchen
SQM 90.75 75 359.5 680.625 228.75 49.125 95.875 120 730.625 444.25 75
40 BED GFA: 404SQM 100 BED GFA: 1011SQM 150 BED GFA: 1452SQM 200 BED GFA: 1888SQM
SOCIAL
SLEEP
OUTSIDE
HYGINE
ADMIN
PRECEDENT AREA/VOLUME STUDY [3.2M CEILINGS]
STORAGE
KITCHEN
WC
PROGRAMMATIC PRECEDENTS The plan for the contemporary homeless shelter in London repurposes a disused supermarket. The Plan orients all key functions around a central social space, connected to the outdoors. Supervision by, but also connection with, staff appears crucial here with kitchen located toward the main street entrance, functioning as a form of secondary reception. The sleeping quarters are generously proportioned and subdivided into three different rooms contaiing 16 beds each. The above area/program diagrams were developed from extrapolating this scheme.
SHELTER FROM THE STORM, HOLLAND HARVEY ARCHITECTS ISLINGTON, NORTH LONDON
PROGRAMMATIC PRECEDENTS This shelter concept in California appears to have responded to an extensive brief, with detailed outlay of specific program for the client group. Notably the sleeping quarters range from small apartment units for singles, couples or families to a large male sleeping dormitory for temporary stay. My design distinctly attempts to avoid the provision of this single-room dormitory type.
GWYNNE PUGH URBAN DESIGN STUDIO/GARCIA ARCHITECTURE + DESIGN- CAPSLO HOMELESS SERVICES CENTER, SAN LUIS OBISPO, CALIFORNIA.
CONTEXT
“Building transcends physical and functional requirements by fusing with a place, by gathering the meaning of a situation. Architecture does not so much intrude on a landscape as it serves to explain it. Illumination of a site is not a simplistic replication of its ‘context’; to reveal an aspect of place may not confirm its ‘appearance’. Hence the habitual ways of seeing may well be interupted. Architecture and site should have an experiential connection, a metaphysical link, a poetic link. When a work of architecture successfully fuses a building and situation, a third condition emerges. In this third entity, denotation and connotation merge; expression is linked to idea which is joined to site. The suggestive and implicit are manifold aspects of an intention . . .” Steven Holl, ANCHORING, 1989
GATWICK TO JOBWAREHOUSE
THE FORMER GATWICK HOTEL
HOMELESSNESS SERVICES IN THE CBD + INNER NORTH
A' B
A
A STUDY OF THE CROSSLEY STREET PRECINCT GROUND FLOOR PLANS This study and the subsequent diagram represent an initial mapping of the context. Both describe variant degrees of openness to the street in the extant built fabric. The eventual design directs its attention to Liverpool St, compounding and enhancing its already extant street engagement.
EXISTING CONDITION - PRIVATE/ SEMI-PUBLIC/PUBLIC SPACE 5000
BOURKE STREET’S DEMOCRATIC AXIS 40m
DEDICATIONS TO SISTO
INSIDE THE FORMER JOB WAREHOUSE
REFLECTIONS ON CERTAIN ARCHITECTURAL REFERENCES
HE CAME OUT INTO CLEARER AIR AND TURNED BACK TOWARDS GRAFTON STREET. EAT OR BE EATEN. KILL! KILL! SUPPOSE THAT COMMUNAL KITCHEN YEARS TO COME PERHAPS. ALL TROTTING DOWN WITH PORRINGERS AND TOMMYCANS TO BE FILLED. DEVOUR CONTENTS IN THE STREET. MY PLATE’S EMPTY. AFTER YOU WITH OUR INCORPORATED DRINKINGCUP. LIKE SIR PHILIP CRAMPTON’S FOUNTAIN. RUB OFF THE MICROBES WITH YOUR HANDKERCHIEF. NEXT CHAP RUBS ON A NEW BATCH WITH HIS. FATHER O’FLYNN WOULD MAKE HARES OF THEM ALL. HAVE ROWS ALL THE SAME. ALL FOR NUMBER ONE. CHILDREN FIGHTING FOR THE SCRAPINGS OF THE POT. WANT A SOUPPOT AS BIG AS THE PHOENIX PARK. HARPOONING FLITCHES AND HINDQUARTERS OUT OF IT. HATE PEOPLE ALL ROUND YOU. CITY ARMS HOTEL TABLE D’HÔTE SHE CALLED IT. SOUP, JOINT AND SWEET. NEVER KNOW WHOSE THOUGHTS YOU’RE CHEWING. THEN WHO’D WASH UP ALL THE PLATES AND FORKS? MIGHT BE ALL FEEDING ON TABLOIDS THAT TIME. TEETH GETTING WORSE AND WORSE. Excerpt - Ulysses, James Joyce
David Ireland’s Glass Canoe presents the reader with an detailed conception of the Australian saloon bar. Whilst in Ireland’s novel this is associated with 20th Century Anglo-Australian drunkeness, the novel also slyly points to the front bar saloon as an opaque cultural space where in the intellectual cultural life of 20th Century Australia was both constructed and constrained by anti-intellectual prejudices. As such, I want to propose the typology of the saloon bar as one worthy of consideration and reframing. Re-framed in this context: neutered of alcohol. Extracted here: A long space running along a street, culminating on a street corner wherein the energy pulses.
ON HOT DAYS WE JUMPED FULLY CLOTHED INTO OUR BOTTOMLESS BEER GLASSES AND PUSHED OFF FROM SHORE WITHOUT A BACKWARD LOOK. HEADING FOR THE DEEP, WHERE IT WAS CALM AND COOL. AFTER YOU HAVE A FA IR BIT TO DRINK OF AN AFTERNOON THE FUTURE IS SORT OF BLANK; THE PRESENT IS ALL THERE IS. SOMETIMES YOU WONDER. WHERE WILL I BE WHEN. NOT OFTEN, THOUGH. NEXT MOMENT YOU SEE A SPLASH OF RUST ON THE TI LES ABOUT BELT LEVEL. RUST? WET A FINGER, TOUCH IT. TEN TO ONE IT’S STICKY. IT BRINGS YOUR WONDERINGS SMARTLY BACK TO THE PRESENT. OUT THE DOOR YOU SEE, AROUND FOUR O’CLOCK, MEN COMING FROM ALL DIRECTIONS, WALKING LIGHTLY BETWEEN FLYING TRAFFIC, FLITTERING AND DARTING TOWARDS THE SOUTHERN CROSS, MOTHS TOWARDS THE LIGHT. BY FIVE THE PLACE IS CROWDED. THE NOISE. I HAD THIS JOB IN AN OFFICE FOR A WHILE AND WHAT THE PUB NOISEREMINDED ME OF WAS GOING DOWN TO THE FACTORY. AS SOON AS YOU OPENED THE DOOR THE BLAST HIT YOU. IT WAS EVERYWHERE. THERE WAS SO MUCH OF IT THAT ONE OF THE OLD HANDS WAS TAKEN SICK ONE DAY AND TRYING TO TELL SOMEONE WHAT WAS THE MATTER, BUT THIS GUY COULDN’T HEAR AND THOUGHT HE WAS JUST RAVING ON, AND TURNED AWAY AND THE OLD JOKER KICKED THE BUCKET RIGHT THERE ON THE CONCRETE FLOOR. T DIDN’T LIKE THAT NOISE, IT TRIED TO TAKE YOU OVER, LEAVING NO ROOM FOR ANYTHING ELSE. YOU COULDN’T THINK. UNREAL, IT WAS. I GOT OUT OF THAT JOB QUICK. THE NOISE AT THE PUB WAS JUST AS LOUD, BUT QUITE DIFFERENT. YOU COULD SORT OF SWIM IN IT AFTER A WHILE. BY THE TIME YOU GOT FOUR OR FIVE SCHOONERS INTO YOU THERE SEEMED TO BE A CUSHION IN YOUR HEAD, ANYWAY. BUT THAT’S NOT WHY R LOVED TO LET IT WASH OVER ME AND CARRY ME ALONG. IT’S BECAUSE IT WAS PEOPLE-NOISE, NOT MACHINE-NOISE. WHAT SILENCES THERE WERE - NOT MANY - WERE SHALLOW. LIKE A FEW INCHES OF WATER OVER SANDFLATS. TBE FIRST TIME I DRANK ANY DECENT AMOUNT I GOT BACK HOME AND WROTE DOWN ON A BIT OF PAPER WBAT I FELT, LIKE THE FEELING ON THE BACKS OF YOUR HANDS, YOUR LIPS, THE WAY YOUR EYES FEEL. WHERE THAT PAPER IS NOW I HAVEN’T GOT A CLUE. I WAS VERY YOUNG.
Excerpt - David Ireland, The Glass Canoe
KAZUYO SEJIMA // SAISHUNKAN SEIYAKU WOMEN’S DORMITORY, KUMAMOTO CITY, JAPAN
Kazuyo Sejima’s women’s dormitory, designed for female nurses, represents a pertinent precedent for this project despites its variant clientele. The organisation of sleeping quarters on the second floor terrace around a central void /atrium enables distinct objects to drift in the space creating zones and clusters of activity. Sight lines through the building are thus diverse and encourage interaction within the community. Whilst this design is useful in its application of a central void and the compositional logic of its distinct objects, its dormitory arrangement reinforces its institutional function, perhaps acceptable in the context. It must be said however, that the rational organisation of sleeping quarters is robustly countered by the fluid shared space.
RYUE NISHIZAWA, MORIYAMA HOUSE, 2005
By contrast, Seijima’s partner Ryue Nishizawa’s widely acknowledged Moriyama House presents an opposite to the women’s dormitory, the interstitial space between the blocks forming small courtayrds and private spaces wherein “the corner” obstructs sightlines and contrains fluidity.
LE CORBUSIER, VILLA SCHWOB, 1916
Le Corbusier’s early Villa Schwob, which thrusts outward from a central axis void, has a peculiar relationship to the street. The framed blank wall both invites and subverts the viewers gaze, suggesting internality and privacy whilst indicating an apparent publicness to that activity. The design I have undertaken in this project ponders the use of this exaggerated square form, as an exaggerated protrusion, bringing the occupants into the street condition whilst announcing their presence.
BORROMINI, SAN CARLO ALLE QUATTRO FONTANE, ROME
My interest in Borromini’s San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane is, in this instance, concerned with its engagement with the street corner, a condition of my project. In retreating from its boundary, the sculpted corner talks directly to the bystander and the city. The boundary retreat is simultaneously an act of civic generosity and a display of wealth and power. The impact this gesture has urbanistically is however a profound one, the severely chamfered corner then morphing into the undulating facade, inflecting the street with a geometric order that unravels the prosaic directional logic of the street. A locus of attention is formed in the city, in what might otherwise be a non-descript parcel of fabric.
WOODLAND CEMETERY, SIGURD LEWERENTZ/GUNNAR ASPLUND
Erasures imply former existences – John Hejduk Having recently visited his IBA housing scheme in Berlin, I have lately been considering the work of John Hejduk with keener interest. I am particularly intrigued its suggestion that architectural form can connote an idiosynchratic, poetic world. His buildings/drawings become receptacles of the human imagination, a fundamentally social and urbanistic conception of the built fabric. As Hejduk has stated, he subscribes to the “social contract�, the idea that we must engage with one another in society in good faith in order to establish cohesion. The role of the architect as party to the social contract thus becomes a interesting question. Community projects such as that which this project engages with then have the potential to be both social and idiosynchratic - communicating diverse ideas to the community.
PETER CORRIGAN’S RADICAL DEMOCRACY
Concurrent with Hejduk’s social contract is Peter Corrigan’s interest in architecture as a tool for social democracy and for “cities of hope”. Clearly Hejduk and Corrigans thinking testifies to the modernist utopian generation they emerged from and reacted to. The notion that architecture might cultivate social cohesion appears suspect today. I have been reflecting on the above image, the Newman College Library under construction. To me this image represents an analog for Laclau and Mouffe’s notion of radical democracy the whole scaffolded by partial players, representing diverse interests, seemingly in a state of precipitous dissolution, manifest in factional warfare and partisan struggle. However, (ala Laclau and Mouffe) an architecture that accepts competing interests, accepts its tacit involvement in the the very fractured game, and engages in this splintered “garden”, rather than in the gordion knot solution of utopianism, perhaps is a way forward.
THE ANATOMICAL THEATRE
The saloon room in this project has a perverse connection to the Anatomical Theatre’s of Padua and, depicted here, Leiden. In the saloon, clientele are able to dissect the discussion below, to interject into debates they might usually be excluded from.
THE RUSH HOUSE, 1970, CHARLES MOORE AND WILLIAM TURNBULL, JR., SEA RANCH, SONOMA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA
O’DONNELL + TUOMEY
The above named Irish practice are a particular touch point on this project, the projects engaging with context through sculptural form and the expression of internal complexity.
DAS GELBE HAUS (THE WHITE HOUSE), FLIMS, SWITZERLAND, ARCHITECT: VALERIO OLGIATI VALERIO OLGIATI
Valerio Olgiati’s White House in Switzerland takes the existing logic of the buildings apertures whilst stripping the façade of its plasterwork back to its original stone. At the same time the building avoids fetishizing the older building materials and the stone work is painted a unifying white, the rationalised, archaic form maintaining an eerily obstinate and contemporaneous image. Olgiati presents an interesting contemporaneous practice, deeply symbolic, whilst formally austere. Essentially engaging in facadism in the above project, Olgiati purifies the built object, clarify and expanding its extant logic.
Plan for the refurbishment of Mercader street Appartment by Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue: includes various floor finishes and bespoke pieces of furniture. From El Croquis 19832000
TENNIS COURT OATH - JACQUES LOUIS DAVID
ATSUSHI KITAGAWARA - 1983
“This house was an attempt to bring together the meanings that I found in St Kilda – a really very self-conscious attempt. He explains his intentions to ‘confuse the intellect and to force a reliance on the senses’. I like the metaphysical idea that it’s not building-like – that you’re forced into something more abstract. Allan Powell
Tarrawarra Art Museum, Victoria - Alan Powell
DAVID CHIPPERFIELD MODEL - RAVELINS OF CASTELLO SFORZESCO, MILAN, 2005-09
DRAWING FOR THE NEUES MUSEUM - DAVID CHIPPERFILED
PETER ZUMTHOR - KOLUMBA MUSEUM, KOLN
SELECTED SKETCHWORK
The following selected sketches reflect an iterative process of exploring spatial order through thinking/drawing. I consider this work to be of central significance to the project and reflects a grappling with multitudious concerns at once. In conceiving the manner in which clientele would be housed in sleeping quarters, the initial response utilised linear organisations of the zone. Whilst Rossi’s Gallaratese may have been in mind, the result scarcely presented a compelling architecture. With this typical dormitory condition becoming a straightjacket, disruptive, closed geometries were introduced to obstruct linearity, causing circulation to flow around them. The resultant negative space from the disjuncture of the blocks could then become casual spaces for socialising and relaxation.
PERSPECTIVE SKETCH, CORNER
SECTIONAL PERSPECTIVE SKETCH, DOUBLE HEIGHT CAFE TO LIVERPOOL LANE CORNER
INITIAL SKETCHING