July 2013, Summer school Group project Tutors: Theodore Molley, Niklavs Paegle, Thomas Randall-Page Students: Artūrs Tols (LV), Christof Nichterlein (DE), Dumitru Eremciuc (MD), Natascha Häutle (DE), Rūta Austriņa (LV), Signe Pelne (LV), Tanja Diesterhof (DE), Ulkar Orujova (AZ), Zoe Katsamani (GR). My role was an active participation in design research, concept creation through individual sketches and discussions, initiative while deciding on the building form and resolution of details and finally the exciting teamwork while manifacturing the building components (in particular the structural frames) and asembling them on site.
Architecture Summer school Local Shift that took place in the town of Cēsis in Latvia explored the subject of local identity and the importance of belonging to a particular comunity. One of three groups of students set a task to create a contemporary monument for a relavant process in the town. In times when ever more people are leaving the regeons of Latvia, including Cēsis, in search for more lucrative job places, one active inhabitant of the town can make a large difference to the local social or economic atmosphere. Indeed we observed that few ambitious and enthusiastic newcomers and older successful businesses can easily liven up the quet town. Therefre, we want to selebrate the importance of the individual - both the new arriver and long survivor. The result, thaht a two week design and building process arived at is a book exchange tower for a free use of anyone who would like to give their old books away or have something new to read. Located in the station square just next to train and bus stations as well as our partner - the local library, it marks the doorstep to the town where locals meet with newcomers.
Reinventing the wheel
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First week’s idea of a movable tower that visits locations of individual success or positive change in the town
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TETRAPAK RESEARCH
FORMFINDING
MONUMENTUM Decision of a stable building that can be lit from inside to become a city scale lamp for reading. Clarifying the structural principles and form
Shin
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cove • book shelves r ma de o MONUMENTUM f Tet ra-Pa • local cladding patterns k • lightness • a welcoming nature Build i FORMFINDING timb ng shell e c
TETRAPAK RESEARCH
o me p mposed anel from s
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FORMFINDING
individual contribution the users - new arrivals and long survivors books as a medium for communal interaction
• book shelves • local cladding patterns • lightness • a welcoming nature
MONUMENTUM MONUMENTUM Loca
lly so
FUNCTION
Should it be weatherproof? Where are the books placed? Shingles on the outside or inside?
Recycled Tetra Pak juice cartons were folded, cut and mounted by hand to create the waterproof roof shingles. This drawing was created by Theodore Molley.
individual contribution the users - new arrivals and long survivors
Integrating function into the structure
urce d struc softwo o tura l fram d e
• book shelves • local cladding patterns • lightness • a welcoming nature
Shelv e walls s are inte gr and a re fill ated with ed w ith bo in the oks
integrating function into the structure
MONUMENTUM
books as a medium for communal interaction
MONUMENTUM MONUMENTUM
MONUMENTUM
MONUMENTUM
MONUMENTUM
This digital drawing was created by Nikalāvs Paegle
We used the locally established concept of a free book exchange to create
a dialogue between diverse groups and individuals of the town. A place where books can be deposited before making a journey, exchanged after finishing a journey or simply borrowed while waiting for a bus.
Above A spacious wooden workshop was used to size the timber Below Shingles were attached to per-fabricated panels...
Setting out the dimensions on the ground
...and carried to site.
Producing two large precise structural frames
Structural frames were put up using counterbalance
Teamwork makes things so easy...
... and put together with diagonal and perpendicular bracing
We cut and folded a total of 2250 shingles Prefabricated panels were set into place starting from the top
Opening day. It took less than a week from the start of manufacturing the components to finishing the building, with only two days spent on site.
An urban scale lamp, providing light and a place to read 24 hours a day.
During winter when day light is short the tower will acts as an illuminated external reading room.
No feeling of hard work was involved - to me it was simply pleasure to create and give as a part of a motivated team!
Phase one - Incubator
Source of ideas and principals Performance space for my individual client and collaborator
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areal dancer Mona McCarthy
Incubator structure allows the audience to understand the dynamics of areal dance performance through their own bodily experience and requires active participation.
The large spring on a steel beam compacts as more people step on the staircase and lets it touch the ground at the bottom.
Site location
By pushing a sliding panel open at top or bottom, the other connected panel moves as well giving acess to pepole at the other side.
An ispiring book talks about a prototype that stimulates urban change through pure play of the public
The heavyness of this plastercast incubator site model lead to the building’s design concept.
Areal Dancer hosted by a stone arch of the railway viaduct
Audience stepping on a dynamic, slightly unstabile staircase
Bypassers access the staircase by moving an interdependent system of sliding panels
Collaborators and institute workers hosted by the stable defensive walls like the castle hill itself
Public functions hosted by dynamic laminated timber structural beams
Visitors access to the main events space from bottom and top through an interdependant sliding door system
Phase two - Site analisis and synthesis Use of the hill for defensive purposes dates from Roman times, when it housed a fort guarding a bridge over the River Tyne.
The aim of design -
dynamic inclusion of the local inhabitants in the stable institute’s environment, thus stimulating innovation. Finnish collaborators + UK collaborators + LOCAL INHABITANTS
Looking at dynamic flows on the stabile castle hill site and creating design responses:
The brutal, big scale
invasion of the railway
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2
viaduct divides the castle hill in two parts
A natural flow of water
used to run down the Side street. The curved shape of the nearby building still reflects the natural shape of the stream.
Defensive response
Defensive response
A solid sheltering boundary protects from railway intrusion in the building
A solid, sheltering boundary protects the activities in building from the glances from the curved building.
3
The narrow, secret, service entry in the castle walls was through the East Postern. The remains of the secret flow are the Dog Leep Stairs.
Response Vertical circulation of the building is
hidden inside the defensive walls
4
Main historic entry flow into the castle walls through the Black Gate. The dynamics of draw bridges and guillotine gates is
actively controlled to give access.
Response in the institute building
Visitors access to the main events space from bottom and top through an actively
controlled sliding door system.
Performers are hosted by defensive concrete walls and rigid timber frame while visitors are dynamically invited by curved laminated timber bridges In good weather sliding doors’ system is open and invites people inside from the street creating an outside public space
View to one of performance platforms in the vertical space. from courtyard on a sunnythe day. public inside The doors are open in niceEntering weather and invite
A design aim was to let light in from above and not block it with staircases.
Sketch of the structure revealed to articulate important places in the building. Here indentation next to staff lounge and meeting room is used as a balcony.
Beams in the courtyard host an informal cafe terrace
Sectional perspective BB
View from foyer inside the seminar room, timber beams seem to ‘‘daringly’’ hold the auditorium above See section AA.
Mechanism in action
View from the street entrance foyer. Timber beams seem to be holding the auditorium above
Sectional perspective AA
One of the landings allows to look down on to the auditorium stage.
Exit from the lift on the upper floor looks down on the journey just experienced.
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3. 5.
3. 3. 1. 1.
Fragment of laminated timber beam walkways 1. steal plate running between two laminated, curved timber beams 2. Steal plate that is thicker continues inside reinforced concrete wall. 3. Timber pieces are sealed with a shadow gap that allows for imperfections 4. concrete wall 5. Groove to support perforated steel deck 6. Perforated steel deck in between the beams
1. 2. 4.
2. 2.
4. 4.
Entrance lobby / exhibition space
Parallax - the anxiety to see what is around the corner is inviting further
Inside the inhabited library walls Visual connection
1. 1.
Library in two levels with reading rooms inside one of the defensive walls 2. 2.
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3. 5.
Exploded Timber frame joint detail (visible in the interior) 1. primary timber beams 2. secondary timber beam with a cut 3.Steal plate 4. Bolt piercing the timber and steal plates 2. 5. Steal plates that are joint with the steal fletch inside the beam. Insterted from above.
3. 4.
3. 4. 4.
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Exploded facade build up fragment: 1. Conickel wowen metal mesh 2. triple glazing 3. glass finns supporting the weatherproof glass envelope 4. stainless steetl spider connectors 5. Glass finn supports attached to timber structure 6. Steel plates in between timber columns to hold those togeather and provide a base for steel rods - as lateral bracing 7. Flethed beam 8. Fletched timber column
Beam junction with a cut as seen from below
1. 1. 1.
From the library research room one can see a steaming smoke sauna upstairs on the terrace
Facade visually inspired by the rigidness of log saunas’ construction. Logs are cut into each other to join.
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Third floor plan Second floor plan First floor plan
Ground floor plan Basement plan
The process of design and making
Modelmaking:
Vertical space from above
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a design tool a representation toll a tool to understand materials through craft
1:50 sectional model of the central vertical space
The concrete base cast in one piece
expresses the heaviness of Alternative spatial concepts
Incubator model
Response to site
Spatial design
Defining defensive and dynamic elements.
Cast in plaster
Defensive response to the brutal railway invasion.
The dynamic, active element in the building.
Sliding door mechanism
Building the mold
the castle hill, as opposed to the lightness of the copper that represents the flows around the site
The pleasure of working with timber
Third year dissertation. Fragment. Individual work.
Lessons from the use of architectural detail as a connector to intangible meanings in the work of Carlo Scarpa A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the degree of BA in Architecture, 2012/2013
Rūta Austriņa 104708462 2013
Chapter six Why small?
Despite the long term mission of an architect to embed significant values in 50 buildings, nowadays such ‘’storytelling’’ tend to be easily forgotten and embodying meaning has become something outside the common. A great part of new buildings are merely means of gaining profit by satisfying the users’ functional need for space. Therefore in this section I would like to point out the qualities of the small that are so appropriate for carrying meanings and stories. What makes detail a very suitable media to convey a message even when today one might not be expecting it?
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Chapter two - Detail - connector to a poetic whole Chapter three – Detail – connector to the locality – nature, culture and history
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Chapter four - Detail sustaining conversation through time
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Chapter five – Intangible meaning in detail today
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Chapter six - Why small?
- 37 -
Bibliography
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List of Illustrations
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Appendix
- 47 -
office, I tell him about the history of the building, about my aims accompanied The power of the small becomes visible when a delicate meaning needs to be by precedent examples, I show the detailed model of the building. At the site an expressed. The delicacy activates a more attentive, intrigued view to architect should remember to praise the craftsman or builder, rather than just understand a fine statement. The smallness of detail in relation to the searching for faults. It becomes apparent that these people are inspired. For surrounding elements plays a vital role in the small wheel supporting the stone example, we had to hurry to finish the Lipke memorial. We came with my and glass gate at the entrance to the Architecture faculty in Venice suggesting a husband in the morning of John’s day (the biggest celebration in Latvian folklore fine balance to be found between conflicting theories. Likewise, the fine almost at the summer solstice) to the building and found a carpenter working there. He invisible nature of pencil lines in the sukkah of Zanis Lipke memorial in Riga had come on a free day to work, happy to be involved with the project, able to express the vulnerable, almost fading position of some of Latvia’s oldest and 53 take pride in the work we do as a team.” richest treasures found in the wisdom of folklore and traditions, that simultaneously can still be a refuge for the soul and source of strength. After seeing this standard of professionalism and passion there is no doubt that
Why Small? The benefit of detail is firstly hidden in its ability to seduce. The small scale 51 A person intricacy possesses the perceptual property of affordance. instinctively senses that a detailed environment is appropriate for the human inhabitation because the small scale of details act as a mediator between the bigger scale of the building. Additionally, involvement of vision, smell and sense of temperature and texture affirms that the unconscious expectations from an inhabitable space are met. This is how the bridge of the Querini Stampalia Foundation invites one even across the campo to evaluate its tectonic qualities; from here one has a bigger chance of noticing the intangible value of the building (fig. 6.1).
these people put an effort to pass a message through the detail, through their The two architects looked at in the essay have proved the necessity to give work and shared belief in the values they embed in the physicality. more than one expects to see in a building and have revealed some of detail’s potentials as an amazingly suited tool of expression. When the code of the whole building is enclosed in each detail, as Zaiga Gaile 54
stresses in our conversation, it means that the opportunity of signification is used in all levels of architectural expression. This allows further strengthen the character of the whole building. John Soane points out in one of his lectures on architecture that “too much attention cannot be given to produce a distinct character in every building, not only in great features, but in minor 55 detail likewise.”
52
“Nothing is a coincidence here. Everything has a reason”, Zaiga Gaile says about her working method during our conversation. If a team of professionals have invested their time and effort to create a detail of a particular appearance, which could have as well be functional without its peculiar characteristics, an instant curiosity appears. Why is it like this? This ‘why’ provokes a chain of questions. Thus the well expressed small leads to cognition.
Details can offer disclosure of nuanced hues about the common theme. This is possible because the relatively small scale is welcoming to manipulation in peculiar ways. Detail is a safe tool that is not limited by the functional requirements and responsibility of the bigger features of a building. The
Frascari, op. cit., p. 68
51
James J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach To Visual Perception (New Jersey : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1986), p.138 52 Zaiga Gaile, Interview , op. cit.
Introduction Chapter one – Detail – connector to one’s own interpretations
It is instantly apparent when care and thought is invested to create a sincere building as a whole, thus, gains a varied, richer story to be read. The nuances piece from human to human as thinking and feeling individuals. In her were clearly apparent in the details of Querini Stampalia Foundation where interview with me Zaiga Gaile described the corporation with craftsmen: Scarpa disclosed aspects of life in Venice such as insecurity, delusion, vulnerability, proudness of tradition, and coexistence with forces of nature. “Motivating every craftsman is essential. He is being involved by coming to the
Chapter six - Why small?
50
Contents
53
Ibid
54
Ibid John Soane, Lectures on Architecture (London, 1929), p.177
55
38 37
Can Ricart Textile Factory, Barcelona An ambitious city plan for Barcelona was designed by Ildefons Cerda at the second half of the 19th century. Cerda’s square grid plan is a fast and convenient system for transport and had the ambition to crate a very green and healthy city. Can Ricart textile factory was, however, built already in the middle of the 19th century, thus later becoming an obstacle in the way of
the grid.
This conflict is still there today: gaining fast and convenient vehicle
access through the city versus retaining the listed Can Ricart factory as a whole historic ensemble as a testimony of the industrial past that so many local families are tied to. This design proposal suggests taking the assets from the two systems and uniting them for a mutual benefit.
Year 3 - Autumn 2013 Individual work
Factory of synergies is a project following a study trip to Barcelona, which
concentrated on finding the best functional and artistic uses for a 19th century textile factory. As the brief was focused on developing two extremes in scale - the master-planing and detail scales, I found it a great opportunity to develop and test my interest in architectural detail - in particular its’ potential to tectonically express the whole scheme’s architectural concept or even a poetic idea. The method of model-making using building materials with strong intrinsic qualities lead me closer to this aim. Here Cerda’s dream of the green city becomes alive where the grid meets the factory site. Greenery penetrates the site and buildings as if tearing them apart. As a counter response to this expressive greenery rectangular
steel pathways rigidly brace the existing buildings back together.
In addition - in the big scale the paths give access straight through the factory, thus allowing to perceive it as a whole welcoming complex where locals can experience culture on their way. The conversation between the rigid, bracing paths and the penetrating greenery are present in the small scale architec-
tural expressions.
Initial intention of Cerda - to have large green inner courtyards in every building block
Building functions are mixed to bring creators together with functional service providers, office workers and retailers, etc. Functions at the heart of the site - art, cooking and performing - ensure social interaction and involvement in new activities.
The factory is in a beneficial location as the local residents can enjoy it’s cultural and services offers while on their daily route.
Circus / Theatre
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Square grid plan overlaps the factory building plan
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Greener y p through enetrating the old s tone wa lls
re k a ac ys s b wa ll th wa pa e al th et ng r M aci the br gea to
The proposal develops a pedestrian route straight through the factory site following the Cerda grid m, thus letting the locals explore the historic site and giving access to a mix of cultural disciplines.
/ G
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Di pe scov on rfor er th ma e w nc ay e
Conflict between element of wild destruction and bracing control. A current access route does not lead the visitors through the heart of the site, this way not allowing to understand it as a whole in one’s mind.
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The structure of the path splits when encountering a corner - the vertical part wraps around the masonry structure almost as a system of safety or insurance. Handrail supports use the opportunity to wrap around the timber structural beam underneath the deck as well as the handrail, however, there is always a gap between the brace and its subject. Timber is essential for engaging with its warmth as opposed to the cool factory walls and steel pathway bases.
Tension applied at the middle of each cable.
The character of the tensile structures that appear mostly on the lines where the Cerda grid crosses the site is in contrast with that of the paths. These are is weathered steel cables joined by robust, simple details dominated by a round form. The intended impression is a ‘‘wilder’’ look suitable to penetrate the gaps of ruined walls.
Primary structure - existing wall with extruding steel supports, that connect to steel beams internally, new foundations supporting reinforced concrete columns and steel supports
The structure works by providing tensile force at the tree end points. Additionally tensile force is applied at the middle parts of the cables thus creating their round form.
The user has two options to engage with the detailed way of holding the ramp together - walking on or under it. The intricate scale of detail acts as a mediator between the large scale of a building and user. It is important to have an inviting element as a threshold to the building, this steped ramp aims to welcome with detail as well as the opportunity to sit and view a show. Just as one of the aims of the whole master plan is to tie the old factory together with the use of paths, the detail of the stepped ramp supports express the urge to lock the elements together in a unity. The metal braces wrap around the edge of the deck.
Steel plates at either side of the masonry wall are bolted together for support at the ends of the structure.
Secondary structure - continuous steel plate supports that form the base of the ramp The cafe and events space is linked to the downstairs cookery school through a garden located where the line of Cerda grid overlaps the factory. Here the bar area is also serving as a balcony accessible from the clock tower and used by acrobats in the circus amphitheatre space. The steel shelter for the bar further extends towards the garden and folds in to ‘‘brace’’ the existing structure together.
Tertiary structure - timber decking and its steel braces
1.
Structural analysis
2. End plate beam to beam connection. Top flange of the icoming beam has to be notched
16. 3.
Primary structure of the cafe area - existing masonry walls, existing columns and inserted beams
Secondary structure - concrete panels
Asymmetric slim-floor beams Pre-cast hollow-core slabs are placed on a wider bottom flange thus does not clash with the top flange
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7. 8. 11. 9. 10. 13. 12. 14.
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Tertiary structure - floor cover, including the inserted pathway, bar and balcony structure, stairs.
Insertion of tensile structure plant holders that are supported on primary and secondary structures.
Detail of connection between inhabitable roof of the cafe and the stepped ramp 1. Stepped ramp timber deck 2. Existing masonry wall 3. Timber plank pathway 4. Longitudal steel support 5. Steel T beam without bottom flange, but with increased debth 6. stainless steel gutter 7. battens addapted to the slope of insulation to provide a leveled pathway
8. Damp proof membrane 9. sloppedinsulation to allow for water drainage 10. Vapour control layer 11. ABS steel beam 12. ABS hollowcore cable 13. Steel plate to distribute load bellow T shaped beam 14. Concrete block in the existing wall to distribute the load from beam support
Detail of the edge of gutter 1. timber batten ensuring water drainage off the gutter edge 2. Flashing Detail of concrete block reinforcement in existing masonry wall 1. Steel plate to distribute load bellow T shaped beam 2. Concrete block in the existing wall to distribute the load from beam support
1. 2.