In Praise Of Shadows | JUNICHIRO TANIZAKI
“IF LIGHT IS SCARCE THEN LIGHT IS SCARCE; WE WILL IMMERSE OURSELVES IN THE DARKNESS, AND THERE DISCOVER ITS OWN PARTICULAR BEAUTY”
[08-09] York Timeline [10-13] Site Studies [14-15] Collage [16-21] Urban Element
[23-27] Mapping & Research [30-31] Emotions of Light & Dark [00-32] In Praise Of Shadows [33-35] Cube Experiment [36-37] Jewish Museum [38-39] Menil Collection [40-44] Field Diagrams
[46-52] Finding Form [54-61] My Event
[64-65] Site Plan [66-67] Basement Plan [68-69] Ground Floor Plan [70-73] Elevations [74-76] Sections [78-79] Construction Detail [80-81] Materials & Structure [82-97] Final Renders [00-98] The Labyrinth
In this project we must explore the notion of an ‘event’ and the relationship between activities created by an event and the ‘space’ encompassing it.
To explore the making of space and an architectural ‘form’ which responds to its notion, through developing the conceptual approach, celebrating the dynamic expressions of the Event, Space and Form.
LOCATION : YORK, UK [ 53°57′30′′N 1°4′49′′W]
York is a City located in North Yorkshire, England. It’s Roman origins sited the City on the rivers Ouse and Foss. York has a very long and rich history and has many historic buildings/structures such as the minster, castle and city walls. ROMANS 71-410
For more information on the events during each period, see [book 2].
Scale: 1:2500
The selected site is located on the historical grounds of York castle. The function of the site is currently Cliffords Tower car park.
The site area is approximately 6380m2 (according to digimaps). However, during this project, our task was to ‘go beyond’ the boarders of the site itself to allow our design to ‘bleed’ into the City.
Scale: 1:2500
I have selected to highlight the museums surrounding the site as York is a City with a long history.
These museums are events/landmarks of which this History is recorded and demonstrated for locals and tourists.
I have also highlighted the Historical buildings surrounding the site.
These are the buildings that have been the landmarks of events that have taken place throughout History. The most significant to the site being Cliffords Tower.
Scale: 1:2500
By recording the movement of pedestrians, I could understand how people walked around and through my site to build upon when overcoming design decisions.
People were gathering in different areas in and around the site area. I could use these zones as an anchor to create entry/exit points.
Study undertaken by ‘Visit York’ with a total of 463 participants. The Shambles is the top attraction in York with 9 out of 10 interviewed having visited.
My intention from this is to create a space where all attractions can ‘dissolve’ into one. To inherit York’s history and celebrate its top attractions within the city.
During a visit to the site, I collected images of different urban elements and constructed a collage. This would help me in understanding the context of the site in more detail and would allow me to choose one element from the site and explore it further.
After our main collage, I then broke it down into one urban element which would be my focus of study for my project.
The urban element I selected to study further was Lampposts.
To begin my researching & mapping studies, I first has to define a boundary to avoid mapping my urban element to an uncontrollable scale.
The points of boundary I selected was Ouse Bridge, Piccadilly Road Bridge, Tower Street Bridge and Skeldergate Bridge. I chose Bridges to define my boundary as they themselves cross a natural boundary (water).
Then, to begin mapping my urban element, I then developed a route to follow and record/map the position of each Lamppost.
This shows that my findings were not random and that my results where accurate to the best of my knowledge.
The first thing I did was pinpoint the position of my element on route. By following the route and recording the position of each Lamppost individually.
I call this ‘face value’ mapping. The basics of understanding where they are located on a map.
To categorize my urban element, I researched the most common ‘styles’ in lamppost design and highlighted specific characteristics of that style.
• Origins in the Art movement in the middle of the 20th century.
• Simplicity & minimizes unnecessary details.
• Inherits modern design lines & combines other design style features.
• Often made from cast iron, aluminium, copper.
■ Originated in the 20th Century
■ Lightness, simplicity & the imprint of time.
■ Curve elements in the lighting arm part, Nostalgic decorative lighting poles are distinctive to Vintage style.
■ Often made from Aluminium casting applied to manufacturing the curve element in the lighting arm part.
▲ Originated in the 19th Century by Queen Victoria.
▲ Soft, Elegant & Feminine.
▲ Highlight of the lighting post is the head part which features an ornament mounted on top to resemble the queens’ crowns.
▲ Often made from cast iron or aluminium material.
For my project, I decided to focus down into Victorian ‘style’ as one particular Lamppost that was located on Skeldergate Bridge featured the York Coat of arms, making my urban element specific and anchored down to York.
The Corporation minutes of 1st February 1587 note that the Lord Mayor had received the Coat of Arms of the City, drawn on parchment, from the Queen’s Herald of Arms. It contains the red cross of St George, suggesting the cities religious connections, and 5 gold lions of England emphasising its strong support of the English royal line.
Victorian street lighting was the first public street lighting to be introduced (using gas made from distilling coal).
It was first introduced in Pall Mall, London on January 28th, 1807. Gas street lighting was widely available until the mid-nineteenth century and as late as the 1930’s in London.
A gas street lamp only illuminated a few feet around its post and generally, darkness fell between each post.
Lights were used more as ‘beacons’ to aim for in the darkness and in parts of London, posts were more than 65 meters apart.
The infamous design of this style features a horizontal bar approximately two thirds up the post to provide a secure resting point for a lamplighters’ ladder.
Many gas lanterns are still used today, although their gas mantels have been replaced and converted to use electricity.
To begin my ‘mapping’ studies into Victorian lighting, I used my previous research (lamppost locations) to inform the next process of mapping.
I then ‘sub-divided’ the element into three separate ‘groupings’ in an attempt to find patterns or repeating elements, breaking down the Lampposts into their ‘base, post and head’ (bottom, middle, top)
There were a total of 7 Lampposts in this group. This grouping consisted of two ‘separate’ styles that were repeated, one being a post with three heads and another consisting of just a single head (more traditional).
There was only one single Victorian lamppost that was located close to the site, of which was a much more traditional and classic design.
There were a total of 6 lampposts located on the river banking, each of which was a ‘duplication’ of the last following a traditional style again.
At this stage, I began to look at the function of the Lamppost instead of looking at the Lamppost as an element of itself. This took me down a much more interesting path of research and exploration into my element.
The overall (main) function of a Lamppost is to provide a source of light, which leads me to my concept word to begin testing and exploring further.
To provide light to the application area.
To beautify the Landscape.
To allow cars, pedestrians and cyclists to find a way in the darkness.
To attach signs such as road signs.
To increase security and protect property.
To advertise to the public.
I began to measure/research ‘the emotion of light’. I did this by developing simple diagrams that ‘record’ how a person may feel when in a certain types of light or dark spaces.
DARK = NEGATIVE
LIGHT = POSITIVE
In this book by the Japanese author he ranges from Architecture, food, lacquerware, puppet shows, Shoji, Gold and more and writes about his appreciation towards light and shadows.
He writes in a sense of real emotion towards light and dark and how the perfect balance is where one can find true beauty.
This would help me in creating spaces in my building that capture a specific emotion for the ‘event’ it is hosting.
“In such a dark place, gold draws so much light to itself is a mystery to me”
“Rich in shadows is the viscous sheen of the liquid, how beautifully it blends with the darkness”
To understand how light enters a space and how ‘dark & light spaces’ are formed, I used a 5x5 cube using Rhino3D and created a grid that would wrap around my object to extract smaller cubes from.
This study could consist of infinite variations and therefore I had to make a set of rules that would allow me to explore my concept word:
Have 1 light variable. The point of light never moves and is static
Have 1 camera angle
Only remove cubes from two faces of the overall volume
Extract 3 cubes maximum for each phase of study to keep testing minimal/fair
Do this 10 times
In 1988, Libeskind’s design was chosen the winner of an anonymous competition for an extension to the original museum.
Libeskind’s design was the only design that implemented a radical, formal design as a conceptually expressive tool to represent the Jewish lifestyle before, during and after the Holocaust.
Libeskind aimed for an expression of absence, emptiness, invisibility and expressions of the disappearance of the Jewish culture.
The project derived from an abstracted Jewish star of David that was stretched around the site and its context.
The materialtity of this project was concrete, which gives an impression of ‘silver light’. Using concrete can help control and capture specific emotions in spaces.
The only Entrance to the building was through a tunnel from the existing museum. Resulting in a ‘loss of direction’ and a ‘sense of anxiety.
This precedent heavily influenced what I was attempting to achieve with this project. To create spaces that ‘relate’ to the events happening within them. Capturing the emotions of the stories told with the emotions of how people feel stood in that space.
In 1981, Dominique De Menil approached architect Renzo Piano about building a museum for her family’s collection of Art.
The design drivers was to have the greatest extent of natural light possible. With this in mind, Piano carefully studied influences of light within the exhibition spaces.
To control the lighting in these spaces, Piano designed cast ductile iron ‘leaves’ that controlled the extents of direct sunlight into a space.
Native cypress wood panelling around the exterior of the building, helped in connecting the building to its location.
This precedent made me evermore conscious about material selection when designing my building. To be able to choose a material (exterior or interior) that would help in connecting my building to its surrounding context.
Authors own drawing
Using the formation of Victorian lampposts established earlier in the project, I applied the formation onto the ‘boundary’ of the site ensuring that it extended fully over the boundary to allow my design to ‘bleed’ into the City.
Then I extracted only the lines that fully crossed over the boundary line of the site to form my final field diagram [next page].
When I combine all lines extracted from the original field diagrams, the output is my final field diagram. I used this in inform my ‘landscape design’.
At his point in the project, using research in information gathered from studies, I could begin to find the form of my building and conceptually think about habitable spaces.
The first step into my form finding process was to ‘unfold’ the cube net grid into a 2D plane.
From this, I could ‘map’ the cubes that were extracted from the volume during my cube test.
Each cube representing a 5x5m space.
I achieved this by making a physical paper cube and drawing on the cubes that were extracted in the light study, then unfolded the cube.
(Image above shows)
Unfolded net to reveal extracted cubes.
Using Rhino, I then separated the revealed ‘volume’ into separate volumes to then break down individually.
Number of volumes: 13
I then selected 13 separate lines from my field diagrams to match with the 13 different volumes.
Using operative design based on the books by Anthony Di Mari and Nora Yoo, I used operation fracture to fracture the individual volumes with the lines taken from field diagrams.
