City of Ambiguity

STUDIO 22 CAPPRICCIO, FOLLY, CITY

ELHAM ESLAHI 1257378

Contents Prologue 3 Site 4 CITY 8 Gallery of Ambiguity 9 Epilogue 24 Cappricco 1 25 Cappricco 2 26 Folly 1 29 Folly 2 50 Folly 3 68 Bibliography 86 Archigram 120

Prologue

Site

The Chosen Site: 150 words elaborate why this site, not others + necessary drawings The Site Project: 1 perspective + site plan + plans + section

Gallery of the ambiguity is located inside the business district of Shin-juku Tokyo close to the Existing Townhall building. the site is limited to three architectural significance and the station: Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, Cocoon Tower and Shinjuku Rurikoin Byakurengedo. These four building have been selected as they already are representing the phenomenon transparency and ambiguity of the form with their specific geometries, orientations and voids. The gallery runs alongside of these buildings beging with the townhall and ending with Shinjuku train station.

Tokyo is a very crowded and dense city and Gallery of the ambiguity is an attempt to re-juvenate the phenomena of architecture through the tectonic of framings and perspectives. The aim is isolating the city as an object from and its context or the realm of immediate experience. Inorder to showcase this matter the selected site including the Shinjuku train station as the busiest area is addressing all the points.

Cocoon Tower

by Kenzo Tange

Shinjuku Rurikoin Byakurengedo

Tokyo Metropolitan Goverment Building

by Kenzo Tange

CITY

Gallery of Ambiguity The idea of building a gallery in a scale of the city is a way to separate the city as an object inside the gallery.

Shinjuku is already a dense and very crowded city as the empire of signs, Having void is said to indicate the presence of the Japanese emperor and imperial court as zero cipher as implicit in the context of dark-ness at the heart of the forest. So I decided to create the infinite of voids and perspectives throught the lense of transparency showcasing the new horizon.

In isozaki’s view the creation of the new city is essentially the process of assembly of dittached fragments, the idea of the new layers being built on top of the existing layers of the city. The aim is creating another layer to the city using literal and phenomenal transparency. A long platform is running along this part in the higher level to remind the language of the festival plaza by Kenzo Tange.

By creating multi layered framing skin to Town Hall, I am trying to address redirection of the gaze of Japanese from within to without as well as making the hidden forms clear. With its participation in this process of reorientation of boxes. The continuous infinite perspectives draw the observer into each space by giving the priority to diagonal point of view. The observer is denied the possibility of experiencing the conflict between a space which is explicit and another which is implied. This contradiction of special dimensions creates a sense of monumentality together with having the vertical movement between real and ideal space. The platform highlights the importance of the height limit in the city and how it has been disregarded during time.

Reading of space by layers also reminds the traditional Japanese culture: screens and sliding doors, wood, verandas, Tatami and Genkan.

This simultaneous perception of the spaces with boxes of the space fluctuating within the meaningful complexities Creates a depth through contracting of foreground, middle ground, and background. The autonomy of such is no longer assured by a dialectic of internal and external gaze, let alone any physical boundary.

PLAN 0 10m

50m

100m

ELEVATION 0 10m

50m

100m

PLAN 0 10m

50m

ELEVATION 0 10m

50m

100m

Epilogue

Cappricco 1 Peripendicular Architect: Aldo Rossi

Valerio-Recchioni_2017-Siza

Cappricco 2 The Void Architect: Arata Isozaki

Piranesi_1743-Ancient Capitol ascended by approximately one hundred steps

Folly 1 Chaos

" I am afraid of peace more than anything else. To me it seems that it's only an outer shell and that hell is hiding behind. We should learn to love each other so much to live outside of time, detached. Detached. "

Plan

Floor Plan L1

Floor Plan L15

Sectional Detail

Sectional Detail

Perspective

Perspective

Perspective

Perspective

Folly 1 - Studies

- Imagery created from the floating city is remincent of Buddist symbolism of the tree of life.

VOID Isozaki’s first experience of Architecture was the void of Architecture post WWII

- Detachment of the city from the world > Dream of a utopian city created by this desire for and alternative future. looking ahead but respecting the past - A new city rising from the rubble - Ambivalence urban planning - Isozaki : “If we have avoid any activities can be contaminated inside” his interview in Italy - he talkes about Gunma museum design process and how he used the void to create the space.

- Consisting of elevated layer of buildings, residence and transportation suspended above the aging city below.

- Each individual is experiencing differently attached to each other

CORE / CLADDING / MODULE Isozaki’s basic geometries. he expresses his poetic through cladding in which the reiteration of a module creates a continous sculptural wrapper.

- Capsulated units = Mass production of prefabrication - Core as the Japanese tradition verses Concrete shell units noting the fragile outshel with heavy strong external shell - Metabolism Movement looked at untidy cities as a cancer in society - Fear of natural disaster - Time of lost cultural identity - Nationalism Architecture - A city so flexible in its connections, one part could be adapted, grow, transform themselves and die while the whole animals went on living.

Folly 2 Floated

“ Beauty is now an enemy, life is bearable only when imagine the golden pavilion has been destroyed. “

Plan

Floor plan l8

Floor plan l6

Floor plan l1

isometric

sectional detail

sectional detail

Perspective

Perspective

Perspective

Perspective

Folly 3 Nostalgia

“ Give the people what they want... old-fashioned apocalyptic porn... You are larger than life, man. You save people from their boring, miserable lives. You make them jump, laugh, shit their pants. All you have to do is..”

plan

Floor plan l3

Floor plan l10

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Bibliography

Katsura Villa

“Transparency means a simultaneous perception of different spatial locations.

Space not only recedes but fluctuates in a continuous activity” Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky

Literal - Space is systematic - one point perspective makes things very obvious for us Mies van der Rohe Farnsworth House , space is clear and unified indivisual area is connected to each other elements Phenomenon - sth is in your imagination - cubist paintings - flat canvas but feeling of the space in the background | Picaso and Barak - Consecptual transparency - llusion of the city - adjusted with the environment - City as a Gallery - Soft Flactualting Frames with overwhelming perspectives - Sequence of an event through hanging frame

Villa Stein Le Corbusier

Brick House Mies Van der rohe

Barcelona Pavilion Mies van der rohe

Archigram

How to translate the Literal and Phenomena Transparency into Geometries

Elevation

Isometric

Elevation

Isometric

THANK YOU