REDEFINING BOUNDARIES PAUL EGAN EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
With culture defined as communication between people and scale and edge determined as key factors in enabling this the architecture of variously scaled boundaries became crucial to this thesis. Colin Rowe asks in ‘Collage City’ (1978), “How can man withdraw himself from the fields? Where will he go, since the earth is one huge unbound field? Quite Simple: he will mark off a portion of this field by means of walls, which set up an enclosed finite space over against this amorphous limitless space” In this, Rowe talks of early man’s movement into cities, now it is argued that we must retreat from our cities to bounded off natural spaces. Thus the intent of this thesis is to use boundaries to mark off a series of scaled spaces within Dublin City. However it is necessary for the purpose of this study to shed the current, perhaps negative, connotations that the word boundary evokes as a restrictive element and endow it with a alternative definition. Frampton talks of Martin Heidegger’s essay ‘Building, Dwelling Thinking’ (1954) in which he defines boundary in such a way, stating that: “Heidegger argues that the phenomenological essence of such a space/place depends upon the concrete, clearly defined nature of its boundary, for, as he puts it, ’a boundary is not that at which something stops, but, as the Greeks recognised, the boundary is that from which something begins its presencing’”
Build up of Morocco - One fabric from a collection of smaller pieces
By this definition we give our bounded parks the ability to be places within which people can start to ‘be’, shedding their city baggage to be ‘definitely’ in a green space. The effect of an ambiguous boundary with blurred lines can be found in houses by Scharoun and Mattern which are described thus: “The passage from smooth to rough marks the transition from culture to nature… one cannot decide where the house begins and garden begins.” By using these explanations of the effects of boundaries it is hoped that the ability of the boundary to blur the limits of an area, an ‘intimate territory’ as Scharoun’s house is described, is made clear. A method he used to do this was in specifying that his “ordered brick walls terminate on the garden side into crumbling serrated edges. This suggests the building going from order to chaos” Blurred boundary on house by Scharoun
It is the aim of this thesis to explore the relationship between a clearly defined boundary and its effect on creating culture in a place. Public space has been chosen for this as they are the largest spaces for people to gather in our cities.
Café Plan 1:100
Egyptian Temple of Horus - Scaled + movement
Overhanging roofs and ground textures that extend beyond the boundaries of the space extend the presencing of each space.Thus you may start to enter a space before you have passed between its walls.
Concept Diagram - boundaries inhabited
BOUNDARY CREATING CULTURE - IDEA PAUL EGAN EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The genesis for this project was when the theme of CULTURE was investigated at the beginning of the year. This thesis argues that communication is the cornerstone of culture and that it is through interaction with each other that culture is created. Theorists such as Jan Gehl, Pierre Bourdieu, and Edward T. Hall stress that people go out in public to fulfill a need to be around other people. Kenny Smith et al. (2008) claim that “Humans learn from other humans in a wide variety of domains. Consequently, systems of knowledge and behavior are culturally transmitted in human populations.” Culture is transmitted through communication. And to quote Bourdieu “first, there are individual, agents. They are intentional and reflexive: they have wants needs, desires and goals, and they can reflect on these and alter their actions at will… every agent lives in some sort of relationship to other agents, and every society is therefore constructed of relationships. The patterns of these relationships tend to be reproduced through time, enduring beyond the lifetime of any individual.”
William H. Whyte’s analysis of the Seagram plaza, NYC
In ‘Life Between Buildings’ (1987) Gehl writes of how the design of good public space allows for a range of necessary interactions of varying intensities, from low intensity people-watching to the high intensity of an intimate conversation with a close friend or loved one. He argues that there are 3 core needs humans have ‘knowledge contact and stimulation’. and he posits that shopping and going for coffee are pretexts for contact and stimulation. In ‘Cities for People’ (2010) Gehl writes that coffee is now the “ostensible reason for someone to be seated at a sidewalk cafe, but it is also an excuse to watch city life go by” Author Anne Morrow Lindbergh writes in ‘Gift from the Sea’ that “Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after” further reinforcing the point.
People occupying the edge of the Seagram plaza, NYC
People watching
Seats carved into the rammed earth wall to inhabit the boundary
The contact and stimulation Gehl talks of is not always direct verbal communication and Hall talks of various other types of communication in ‘The Hidden Dimension’ (1966). He investigates how we may also interact through olfactory, thermal and visual communication. He speaks of proxemics and how they differ in different cultures, for example he remarks that in Western culture if you are stationary in a public space you can create a small area that is semi private. But in Arab culture there is no right to space if one is stationary and that the Arab man would have no qualms about standing awkwardly close to the westerner. Hall notes that there is no word in Arabic for ‘privacy’. Despite these differences he is of the belief that “the senses are the physiological base that is shared by all human beings and that it is culture that gives them “structure and meaning”. Hall also reinforces that it is “a synthesis of many sensory inputs; visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory and thermal” through which we experience space. As the PLACE for this project is Parnell square in North Inner City Dublin it will be necessary to accommodate a variety of cultures whose perception of space will differ as the area currently has more than 50% of its population comprised of people born outside of ireland. And so this thesis will use the techniques Gehl out lines of enlivening the edge and Halls studies of different cultural proxemics will play a roll in scaling spaces for different multi-cultual groups of people.
The Hugh Lane Gallery’s new under croft - communication through various levels
CULTURE AS COMMUNICATION -THEME PAUL EGAN EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
PAST
It is the intention of this project to reintroduce a vibrant public space into the heart of North Dublin City. Therefore it proposes a public park situated on Parnell Square. This was due to the nature of the project, the current condition of the Parnell Square site and the possibility of this site to respond to the needs of the community. It is also apt in that there were historic pleasure gardens here in the 18th and 19th Centuries.
PROPOSED
This project seeks to define boundaries as potent and positive zones of presencing. Currently Parnell square is quite a restricted location in Inner City Dublin. The Georgian Buildings currently define the square, but where once it was the green open grounds of a pleasure garden, now it has black metal fences erected to keep people out. Along with the sunken plaza of the Garden of Remembrance at the north end, which W.H.Whtye would argue is a dead space, these are elements which are boundary defined in a negative sense. With regard to movement, the site currently operates as a veritable roundabout where the traffic cuts off the center of the square from easy pedestrian access and adds a layer of boundary in the negative sense. To tackle this all buses will be re-routed to the east side allowing the west side to become a shared surface with the speed of cars severely reduced.
Parnell Square 1797
Programmatically, the Rotunda Hospital, looking to double in size will vacate the site. And all non-historic buildings are to be removed. The Hugh Lane which is currently displaying 20% of its collection will expand into the Cholasite Mhuire buildings and the DCC library will be located in the vacant Rotunda building. Along with the proposed Metro North on the east side of the square the Hugh Lane and Rotunda are anchor points from which the rest of the park takes its shape. Reinstating the historic axis between these two buildings was an integral part of operating on this site. The area directly outside the Hugh Lane is a civic plaza which has a more formal language than the more agrestic park below. This plaza reads as a solid element from which the program is cut from a solid mass. These cuts accomodate artists’ studios, an extension of the Hugh lane to the park and public bathrooms embedded in the plaza. These two languages aim to set the two elements apart from each other allowing a clear definition between them.
Historic painting of Rotunda North & Pleasure Gardens
PRESENT
Main axis through park facing the Hugh Lane The park sits subtly into Parnell Square West
Parnell Square 2014
Hugh Lane Present Day
Canopy Plan 1:500
PARNELL SQUARE -PLACE PAUL EGAN EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This thesis explores the theme of boundary and territory through a public park on the site of Parnell Square. The methods of building the design are reflective of the themes of the project. As such the wall is a major element in this thesis. However in this instance the wall is used as a positive element in the creation of space rather than something that negatively impacts on the urban environment. As the boundary is to be emphasised a solid material was chosen to embody this mass. Rammed earth fulfills this function; it is a solid material which allows walls of substantial depth to be erected. Following from this the depth of the walls only increases the strength of them. The rammed earth for the structure will come from the site itself. Most of Dublin sits on boullder clay which is an ideal soil type for creating Rammed Earth. As the spaces for the park are carved from the ground the earth that is dug up can in turn can be used to construct the walls that bound the program of the park. So these rammed earth walls form the spaces of the park, some of which are open to the air and some of which are roofed. The indoor spaces are roofed by precast reinforced concrete beam and plate roofs. This material has the capacity to span as the earth does not.
Rammed earth form work being constructed
Rammed Earth Interior
Due to the weathering nature of Rammed Earth, concrete is used as a lintel and cap for the rammed earth walls. This protects them from water pooling on the earth. Where the rammed earth walls enclose interior spaces the concrete roof plates extend outwards to keep rain off these more integral walls. Further to this the concrete roof plates extend at all points of entry to the park to form portals through which the park is entered.
RAMMED EARTH AND CONCRETE-BUILDING PAUL EGAN EXECUTIVE SUMMARY