Multiples

Notes on a Methodological Education about Formal and Geometric Logics

The emphasis on elemental form based on singles and multiples represented in this book came about through dissatisfaction. In 2008, in a moment of frustration with the pedagogical directions of design studios with which I had been involved, I recalibrated my methods of teaching design. My frustration only peaked as I perceived my students’ inability to tackle design issues and problems seriously. They often resorted to solving design problems by providing a sampling of current formal experiments in the architectural community at large, however fanciful. In examples that bordered on almost blatant plagiarism, I was continually confronted by project after project where the copying of pre-existing aesthetics and formal orders were the modus operandi. And more often than not, students had little clear understanding of why particular geometry was developed for a referenced scheme, never mind why cutting and pasting was an invalid technique for the production of architecture.

What resulted was a calibrated and yet thorough reconsideration of the early education of an architect, where the studio engaged discussions of the very ideas of methodology for design, and where the autonomous ideas of geometry, formal order and logic became instrumental.

Ideas produced by students that were originally free-formed became restricted, what was conceptual became operational, and what was a belief that original aesthetics would later emerge from student work became directed. At the threat of being labeled prescriptive or—worse—dogmatic, the pendulum within the studio swung from extreme individual expression to a rigid pedagogy of instilling specific operations on discrete formal problems. Restriction, rules and logic came first and innovation followed.

Students balked, as they often do, for the design studio is viewed as the place where they establish their individual artistic identities. The design studio represented, or so students came to believe, the space for extreme expression, asserting their will onto architectural problems as they saw fit. The design studio symbolized a place for individual autonomy and pure creation where difference was celebrated, where artistic virtuosity privileged the innately talented, and where a culture of mimicry sufficed for the remainder. And yet, those very students had completed a mere 18 months of education, had understood little of the descriptive, historical or operational devices that shape our built environment. For most students, their own awareness of the world around them had only just begun. Geometry, formal order, informal organization and compositional understanding had little importance in a culture where sampling precedents and half-hearted attempts at tracing over the “masters” ruled.

Through a series of discrete steps titled “probes”, I presented elemental formal challenges to the students. One challenge was based on the creation of internal logics within a singular volume. Constructed of planar and linear elements, the students were expected to produce a logical organization of line, plane, mesh and volume within the perimeters of a simple cube form. The formal research is primarily architectural: the logical application of form within and about the singular architectural body.

The first challenge began with a single cuboid 150mm by 150mm by 300mm, fabricated in greyboard and designed as inflexible in any visible manner. Through a series of probes, operations are made to the cuboid, adding and subtracting, altering and modifying. A second step impaled the volume onto a field of 20mm on center dowels, encapsulating a volume of 300mm by 300mm by 300mm. New logics emerged out of the interpenetration, yet the primary focus was the legibility of the operations being performed interior to the single volume. Perforations, screenings and displacements, along with subtractions, erosions and bifurcations were implemented as a means to produce coherence. The first challenge, being singular, was primarily architectural; the second, one of multiples, was principally urban.

The second vector deployed multiple cellular elements to create variegated envelopes, organizations of overhangs and recesses, and varieties of spatial configurations relevant to the tropics. That formal research is primarily urban, where cellular construction is positioned in space to produce urban constructs of figure and void, square and block, fabric and urban landscape.

This study of the multiple began with a similar-sized volume. Through a series of probes, the greyboard volume of 150mm by 150mm by 300mm was modified with the introduction of a wax or plaster mass constituting 25 percent of the entire volume. The total volume was then duplicated, quadrupled, and intersected with itself.

The strategies for arrangements and position of the multiple units created organizational logics. The combination of individual cellular elements created larger meta-organizations. Each student examined the external logics created by their cellular deployments oscillating between the informal pile and formal meta-cuboid. Position, distance, proximity, intersection, superimposition and collision set the terminology for understanding how geometry created rules of organization for a proto-urban configuration.

The aggregation was then inserted into an existing urban context. Scaled changes to the geometry accommodated forms of inhabitation, while the designs are reconfigured to imagine structure, ventilation, atmosphere and materiality. Aggregations transformed into space, geometry became functional, and modes of re-organizing exteriors impacted interiors.

What emerged from those operative methodologies were formal configurations that represent aspects of pre-design, calibrated to specifics of architecture, in this case, in a tropical atmosphere. That is form created for the realities of natural ventilation as well as the contemporary demands of air conditioning. In another words, the designs are situated between the permeable and the sealed. The configurations that result are a product of merging both an intuitive sense of geometry and logical demands. Utilizing drawings and models, representations described how the respective geometries are created and how they are read.

The results of the probes, though not fully architectural or urban in their complexity, nevertheless impart a foundation for students to develop original, thoughtful and rigorous solutions in formal understanding. These proto architectural and proto urban lessons remain as fundamental and important basics informing the students’ repertoire of geometric and formal operations. As the students add more complexity and care to their capabilities over time, it is the foundation of probing deeply, thinking carefully, and producing original thought that I trust stays with them. For me, this is a powerful and robust antidote to a culture of sampling existing architecture and relegating architecture to mere problem-solving. The work represented in these pages offers proof of this methodology, proof that rigorous thinking and experimentation in form remains a valuable body of knowledge for the very formation of architectural ideas.

Erik G. L’Heureux, AIA LEED AP BD+C Assistant Professor Department of Architecture School of Design and Environment, NUS

Contributors

Erik G. L’Heureux AIA, LEED AP BD+C Assistant Professor

Department of Architecture

National University of Singapore

Born in USA in 1973

Lives and work in Singapore

Erik G. L’Heureux AIA, LEED AP BD+C is an architect and educator. He is an Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore where he researches utopian visions of the city, hydrology and density. A former boat builder, he practiced architecture in New York City while teaching at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union. Erik received a Master of Architecture from Princeton University, where he received the Susan K. Underwood Design Award. He studied as a Fitzgibbon Scholar at Washington University in St Louis, where he received his Bachelor of Arts in Architecture and was recently honored with a Distinguished Alumni Award.

Erik is a registered architect in the USA, American Institute of Architect Member, NCARB certified, and a LEED accredited professional. He has won several international awards including a 2012 AIA NewYork Design Award, a 2011 President Design Award from Singapore, and twoAIA NewYork State Design Awards, among many others. His work has been published in internally and he lectures widely.

Anirudh Chandar

B.A.Arch Candidate

Department of Architecture

National University of Singapore

Driven towards the understanding, appreciation and pursuit of an expanding sphere of interests, Anirudh’s focus in architecture is an attempt to pry open the current affectations of architecture and to develop a critical methodology for himself. This idealistic goal is reflective of a struggle between a humanist practice and a selfindulgent discourse within his architecture. Punitive in his approach to most subjects, his curiosity acts as a significant motivator. With an almost pedantic taste in music and films, his pursuit of architecture arose from an internal obsession with geometry and puzzles.

Sherylin Lim

B.A.Arch Candidate

Department of Architecture

National University of Singapore

A great lover of film, literature and music, Sherilyn constantly draws inspiration from different places in designing. Architecture is, according to Sherylin, very much about the tangible experience as it is visually appraised. Whether through architectural design, writing or photography, she is most excited when creating something that conveys new ideas and different ways of viewing the world, and making it her own.

Selected StudentWork Exhibited

Year 2, Design Level 4

2011

Anirudh Chandar

Chong KaiYi CongWen Jin

Chau ShiYi Fiona

LimYan Ling Sherilyn

Peh Sze Kiat Iven

Ri Berd

StephanieWong Qing Ling

Wynn Lei Phyu

Zhang Xiao

2009

Chen Huihua

Chen Shunann

LiamYuexin, Jolene

Low Zhu Ping

Ng Zuemin, Shermin

Seow Cong Ming, Shawn

Tan Kim Leng, Nicholas

Quek See Hong

Credits and Acknowledgements

Appreciation is extended to the Department of Architecture, School of Design and Environment at the National University of Singapore. Thanks goes to Head of the Department,WongYunn Chii, and the teaching staff of the Year 2 Design curriculum, all of whom encourage serious and thoughtful debate on architecture, design and pedagogy.

Concept & Design: Erik G. L’Heureux

Design Editing:Anirudh Chandar

Type Set: Perpetua

Perpetua is a serif typeface designed by the English sculptor and typeface designer Eric Gill (1882-140). Designed between 1925 and 1929 at the request of Stanley Morison, advisor to Monotype, Perpetua Roman was issued as Monotype Series 239.

Paper: 120gsm Diva Prima Smooth Cream

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Every effort has been made by the author, contributors, and editorial staff to contact holders of copyright to obtain permission to reproduce copyright material. However, if any permissions have been inadvertently overlooked, we will be pleased to make the necessary and reasonable arrangements on the next printing.

Other books by the Author:

Additions + Subtractions: Studies in Form

Publisher: Centre for Advanced Studies in Architecture (CASA), National University of Singapore

ISBN: 978-981-08-3748-8

SingaporeTranscripts

Publisher: Centre for Advanced Studies in Architecture (CASA), National University of Singapore

ISBN: 978-981-08-6672-3

Probing Hydrological Urbanism: Cambodia/Singapore

Publisher: Centre for Advanced Studies in Architecture (CASA), National University of Singapore

ISBN: 978-981-08-6722-5