Architecture Studio
Weitzman School of Design
University of Pennsylvania
Everything Flows - Towards a Processual Philosophy of Ecology or Emancipatory Process Mapping – SOME (additional)
ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
Kevin Cannon, Instructor Penghui Zhang, TA
The built environment that surrounds us is…the physical representation of its history, and the way in which it has accumulated different levels of meaning to form the specific quality of the site, not just for what it appears to be, in perceptual terms, but for what it is in structural terms. Geography is the description of how the signs of history have become forms, therefore the architectural project is charged with the task of revealing the essence of the geo-environmental context through the transformation of forms. - Vittorio Gregotti (lecture New York Architecture League)
I draw in order to see – Carlo Scarpa
On PLACE
Our studio will focus on a site on the Eastern edge of Fairmont Park, designed by Olmsted and Vaux in 1911. The park itself is a manufactured landscape, designed and constructed on farmland co-opted for the good of the larger community The exercise of building the park was a mapping at full scale of Olmsted’s ideas for a restorative and visionary landscape Olmsted’s pastoral landscapes in numerous cities were intended to provide rural tranquility and escape within the city. His landscape designs are particularly notable as constructs not merely due to their beauty but the intent behind their designs. Over 100 years before the Environmental Justice Movement emerged, Olmsted’s parks were constructed to address the fundamental social psychological needs of urban residents. He believed that the connection to nature was restorative and conductive to mental and physical well-being. His landscapes were intended as democratic spaces, designed for people of all backgrounds.
A reservoir was incorporated into The Park in 1891 as the industrial pollution of Philadelphia threatened the supply of clean water taken in directly from the Schuylkill at the Water Works. Over the years, poisoned inner city streams were converted to sewers that fed into the river . It was considered impractical to attempt to decontaminate industry or police the pollution. The simpler solution was to draw clean “phenomenally pure water” from 15 miles upstream through an engineered construct of dam, pumping stations, underground aqueduct and finally a bridge over the Schuylkill River. A berm was constructed in the park to hold the water in reserve.
Today portions of the reservoir are being converted to provide opportunities for leisure activities such as the viewing of migratory birds that are drawn to the park However, a large section of the old reservoir has been drained and transformed to a more “secure” series of water tanks. These tanks have a more industrial and less picturesque aesthetic. These water tanks lie partially concealed behind the remaining buttressed sections of earth, with their trees, that had previously held back the water.
ON PROPOGATION
Ecology is a process, there is meaning in process. To begin we will uncover unique opportunities to anchor our projects within an ecology of the site. We will look to the sites ecology and program to create a physical and metaphysical foundation of the project. To engage in this process, we will consider the technique of grafting.
Grafting is a horticultural technique whereby tissues of divergent plants are joined to continue their growth together. This technique involves special ways of cutting into an existing, well-established host or Rootstock and splicing on a new upper half, or Scion, that is selected for its fruit, stem, leaves, or flowers.
We will consider the project to combine Rootstock and Scion to develop a strategy and new idea of place Consider the site as the Rootstock, a careful incision in the landscape is required (a work of land art). Imagine the program as the Scion.
ON MAPPING
First, to begin, generate a series of 3 abstract site maps to test strategies for cutting and reshaping the land. Consider aspects of the site research and your observations gained from time on the site.
In this case, mapping should not be considered as an exercise in tracing but an experimental exploration. This exercise should extract a meaningful relationship to anchor the project. Maps are explorations and speculations; they tell us about the nature of the project to come and its transformational capacity, they can plot the history of the site. Make the map to see as Carlo Scarpa would say. Models work better at presenting opportunities, but drawings can also have a capacity to work in the Z axis through acts of cutting, transparency,, layering and folding.
A number of Methodologies for mapping can be found in the work of Christo and Jean Claude, Agnes Denes, James Corner, The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention or the work of Anuradha Mathur and Dilip de Cunha such as Anchoring Terrain, Philadelphia among other projects.
ON ASSEMBLY
Next occupy the landscape of each of your maps with a Scion, or an assembly not of the site The form of the assembly may establish and clarify programmatic elements, but its primary purpose is to assist in the reading or definition of the place. At various scales consider the shape of a cloud, insect or flower or a fragment of a car or machine, and its relationship to the wind or water and how as a realized form it might occupy and define the site. In a way the project itself will re-present the place as it defines the territory. Develop your Scion considering the scale of the site, functions, and ideas such as threshold, joint, hinge, deflection, bridge, flexibility, gateway, porosity, and/or hierarchy. This is a critical discussion on the language or tectonics of architecture and the legibility of our projects. Project components can be used to signify connections between assemblies or between the project and the city (or landscape) that surrounds it.
The Scion should focus the intention of the project to shelter, define experience and atmosphere and provide for emancipatory territories. Investigate typological shapes and technologies both programmatic and atmospheric Ask questions, can the Scion create a microclimate or realize a battery? What else might it do? Projects should be net zero.
ON (de)SIGN
Remember, map makers have biases and agendas, they do not merely trace seen conditions. Your conjectural maps should explore and redefined the nature and parameters of the surroundings. Invest in the rich metaphors of the site and program, the geometry of the site and speak to current and future changes in the environment, to find the form of the project.
As an example, consider Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. First, the house is situated above the waterfall Next, stones gathered from the site rise from the exposed bedrock of the river and anchor the project. Then balconies of light ochre float carefully in the defined space,, grafted from the international style, a memory of the horizontal expression of the Prairie House. We will call this an idea of place. This is the real program it is always to reveal the place. Let us assume it is architectures task to reveal these things.
Weitzman School of Design | University of Pennsylvania
