made issue 5 by Janice Coyle

made at wsa

issue 5

made at the welsh school of architecture

Editorial

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A Pot for the Hand Swan Hung Hotz Icons and Placemaking Graham Morrison

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Lay-by Pleasures Kevin Hong Here & Hereabouts Richard Powell

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Bringing a Design to the Table Hannah Jones and William Jones Flat Packing to Eichstaett: An Introductory Studio Design Project Christopher Platt

38 40 made 5 2009 Editors: Allison Dutoit and Mhairi McVicar Publisher: Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff. CF10 3NB. Tel: +44 (0) 2920 874439 Web: www.cardiff.ac.uk/archi/made Orders: made, Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff. CF10 3NB. Mail: made@cardiff.ac.uk

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Jujitsu Urbanism David Kohn The Discipline of Digital Design:Ubiquity, Parameterization, and Tectonics Wassim Jabi Cultivating a Sustainable Generation – A New Approach to School Design in Wales Chris Wilkins Occupant Interactions with Low Energy Architecture: Exploring Usability Issues Chris Tweed

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How Green is Your Valley? Gethin Owens Analysis of the Structure & Form of Ornament Andrew Docherty

Public - Building - Space Kai Holtin

Measuring Place: Using Mind and Body to Record Experience Chloe Sambell

Contributors

ISSN 1742-416X £10 / €15 EUR / $18 USD / $24 AUD ¥2000 JPY / $23 CAD cover photo: Mhairi McVicar

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made is about materials and connections in architecture: physical making, joining and crafting; also the intellectual materials and connections of architecture: its science, histories, theories, practice and material culture.

made materials architecture design environment

made â&#x20AC;&#x153;bring into existence, cause to be, cause (something to happen), (MSw. maka construct, Da. mage manage, arrange) Gr. masseinâ&#x20AC;Ż(aorist pass. magenai) knead, magieros cook, mageus baker, Osl. mazati anoint, grease, sb. manner, style, form. Maker, manufacturer, creator; (arch.) poetâ&#x20AC;? Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology

Editorial In Eyes of the Skin, Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa wrote in favour of an architecture which engages simultaneously with the body and the world. Creative work, Pallasmaa suggested, begins with empathy.1 The papers in this issue of made explore the numerous ways in which architecture aims towards empathy between body and object, building and context, and inhabitant and environment. From direct physical engagement with an object or building, to collaborations between designers, builders and inhabitants, these papers focus upon a sympathetic fit within the processes and products of architecture.

whose 2008 film of a planning meeting identifies a ‘common language’ which emerges from separated languages within the building industry. Tackling collaborations in architectural education, Christopher Platt describes a short architectural studio project, conceived in Strathclyde University and transported to and constructed in Eichstaett, Germany, which employs tight constraints to free up creativity and encourage a flexible working process. A gentler approach to working processes is echoed by David Kohn’s appropriation of the ‘soft’ techniques of martial arts as an architectural and urban design strategy which displays subtlety, flexibility and adaptability.

A project aimed at changing resident’s perceptions of Welsh Valley towns is outlined by Gethin Owens, whose visual projections of surrounding landscapes aim to alter negative perceptions of run-down areas. The ways in which perceptions of built surfaces can be manipulated is developed through Andrew Docherty’s analytical studies of the form and structure of ornament, which uses an objective and systematic approach to determine how ornament and visual patterning can shape and alter perceptions of solidity, transparency, scale, and cultural context.

Digital design holds the potential to redefine the working processes by which architectural design is communicated and constructed. Focusing on ‘people, rules and things,’ Wassim Jabi writes that digital processes both free up and add rigor to design and construction, by encouraging participatory design with remote and dispersed technologies, by systematically employing parametric tools, and by developing digital manufacturing as a direct link between designer and artefact. Such processes, Jabi suggests, enhance the possibilities of interdisciplinary research and design.

Experiences of public space are altered by the manipulation of surfaces, suggests Kai Holtin, whose three studies of public space, presented at the WSA in 2008, focuses on perceptions of boundaries. Chloe Sambell returns to the intimacy of experience, and an sympathetic fit between body and environment, in her phenomenological studies of three Kyoto temples. Measured studies which focus upon the perception of the user could, she suggests, offer insights into a design strategy which begins with empathy through considerations of the inhabitant’s experience and perception.

The education of the user through sustainable design was a key theme in a jointly winning submission for the 2007 RSAW Sustainable School competition, writes Chris Wilkins. This theme is developed by Christopher Tweed’s study of occupant user interactions with sustainable design systems. Detailed studies of occupant behaviour and energy consumption carried out by WSA highlights the need to understand how individuals perceive and operate various devices and systems in the modern sustainable home. As such devices The complexity of collaborations in become more complicated but ubiquitous, architectural design is highlighted by design remains an important tool in Hannah Jones and Williams Jones, encouraging, or promoting, changes in

The process by which architecture is conceived, crafted, and inhabited are central to the ethos of made. The editors welcome further submissions on this theme, or others, for future issues. Long papers between 3000 and 5000 words are invited, as are short illustrated papers of around 800 words. For the next issue, we invite, in particular, papers which examine how the crafting of architecture responds to extreme conditions; demanding urban environments, exceptional climatic conditions, material and structural limits, or difficult organizational challenges. Architecture often draws inspiration from the most difficult of restrictions, and we welcome submissions on this topic.

Swan Hung Hotz considers the intimate relationship between a pot and a hand, suggesting that a sympathetic fit refers not simply to a physical relationship, but equally to an ideological empathy between concept and user. At an urban scale, Graham Morrison invokes the idea of empathy between a building and its surroundings. Referencing the work of Allies and Morrison Architects, Morrison’s paper, the basis of a 2008 lecture at WSA, argues that not all architecture need strive for iconicity, but that urban environments necessarily include ‘normative’ architecture which aims towards place-making through contextual understanding. Kevin Hong, in his study of the roadside lay-by, proposes that existing appropriations of even the ‘most mundane’ examples of built infrastructure may offer strategies for urban design. The inevitable appropriation of an urban environment by its inhabitants is taken up by Richard Powell’s analysis of Cardiff. Blocked up window and door openings, altered signage, and desire lines carved across urban landscapes signify an illegal form of collaboration, which the designer might anticipate, and, perhaps, welcome.

the user’s behaviour and perceptions of sustainable design.

Allison Dutoit and Mhairi McVicar 1 Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. (Chicester, John Wiley & Sons, 2005). p.13

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A Pot for the Hand Swan Hung Hotz Peter comes downstairs to meet us in the kitchen through his Duchamp door, wearing a broad grin. I give him the lens case containing the little parcel. He opens it and out pops the little pot wrapped in chamois. “Whoa!” he exclaims with an exaggerated gesture then takes it in his hands to examine it. The little unglazed pot fits comfortably in his palms. It looks like a well-polished pebble from the shingle beach, the armoured sedimentary rock with eroding potholes treasured by the child within us--reminds me of the manuport1 picked up by our ancestors. His fingers, playful and relaxed seem more youthful than most of the septuagenarians’. Feeling the pebble-like texture, he rotates the pot as if it has a life of its own.

not until the development of language to become articulated. As with the manuport, potters often associate ceramic pots with our physiognomy: a fleshylipped vase, a stubby-spout teapot, a long-necked bottle, a strong-shouldered pot, a round-bellied urn, a heavy-footed pitcher. A pot unglazed brings to mind a body undressed; we feel the texture of the skin, rough and scaly or smooth and silky. It delineates the surface of the structure; it holds the tension of the container; it tells the homogeneity of its substance. Touching a ‘naked’ pot recalls an intimacy slightly disarming as if unwittingly intruding into a personal territory, a flood of information pours in. As in a handshake, the nerve endings of our fingertips and palm receive a message, expression or sentiment. Yet unlike a Our finger bones are curved on the palm handshake where the social etiquettes side, though straight on the backside, so and mental purposefulness overpowers the inside roundness houses, cushions the aesthetic communication; the tactile and grips the object. Thanks to the dense knowledge and sensual experience nerve endings of the fingertips and to our transmitted from the hands of the maker unique ability to rotate the small and ring to the user express much more than a fingers across the palm to meet the thumb, mere handshake. It conveys the idea, there are subtle, silent pleasures for the knowledge and formation of a perceptible hands. Since the time of Lucy2 when tale, a tale contained in the pot, the pot our ancestors developed into bipeds, we housed and carried by the hands. The certainly made full use of the freed foreleg pot belongs to the hands, the hands that to manipulate our environment. The read the tale, the tale of crustal movement, muscles of our hands command around displacement, biosphere weathering, a quarter of the motor cortex in the brain harvesting and re-appropriating. making hands the best tool for making, working and manipulating. However, He shakes the pot to see why it is apart from their tactility and agility that deceivingly heavy. I know, the bottom is enhanced our survival, there are not that too thick--a happy mistake in making. It many activities devoted to their pleasure. is my first deformed pot. After working in a series of doughnut-shaped vessels for “By the ancients man has been called the nine months, I thought it challenging to world in miniature…” The Notebooks of punch a hole from outside of a bottle so Leonardo Da Vinci / XVI the hole simultaneously has an inside and an outside; the structure would have two Imagine the sense of wonder when our perpendicular axes. Instead of finishing ancestors picked up the first manuports the trimming before altering it, I altered around three million years ago. They and deformed it first. There is no going must have recognised how much they back once the shape is altered, as trimming resembled our face or body parts to muddles the idea of deformation, the collect them for enjoyment. Instinctively act of puncture manifests in the subtle also they must have sensed somehow the warping and bending of the whole body collector and the collected originated because of the external force, the piercing, from the same source though it was the squashing, the attack. This act of

The weightiness, a consciously unrepeatable accident, contributes to its pebble-like quality. Without craftsmanship one achieves only a gesture, yet it is difficult to keep the freshness of a beginner, mind of an amateur, when one becomes skilful; paradoxically one can only achieve it through discipline of mind and body, through un-learning. The 16th century Chinese literati believed in the idea of fresh clumsiness as the telltale sign of originality and character. Perhaps that was the beginning of the cult of accidentchasing tea ceramics. He places it close to his mouth and blows through the lip of the pot, which made a non-descriptive mid-pitched sound. “What tune does it play?” he asks. “Depends on your mood,” I say. He responds with a mischievous smile. I know it is in the right hands. Whistle Pot, 1998 buff stoneware, wheel thrown and altered, unglazed exterior, clear glaze interior and lip, 9.0cm (h.) x 6.3cm x 5.5 cm, photo © Thomas Aus der Au, collection: Peter Smithson 1 A manuport (Latin manus: ‘hand’, portare: ‘to carry’) is an unmodified object transported and deposited by pre-human hominids. Examples include stones or shells moved from coastal or riverine areas or pebbles found in alien geological contexts. Some have been accredited to the earliest evidence for aesthetic sense in the hominid line. 2 Lucy, common name of fossil AL 288-1, the forty percent complete skeleton of an Australopithecus afarensis specimen, was discovered in 1974 at Hadar in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia’s Afar Depression. Estimated to have lived 3.2 million years ago, the significant discovery shows evidence of small skull capacity akin to that of apes and of bipedal upright walk akin to that of humans, providing further evidence that bipedalism preceded increase in brain size in human evolution.

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destruction through a point changes the whole nature of the game; the striving for perfection becomes a passage from formation to deformation. It detaches from the utilitarian intent, from beauty as conception of form and from aesthetic harmony to the omnipresence of natural force, my hand being only the agent. The original shape has to be detectable; the process traceable, or there is no deformation, no event.

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©Nick Kane

Icons and Placemaking Graham Morrison the pool or the architectural arena without a splash is, I suspect, rather I want to start by taking a position. unappealing to them. Descriptions of the dives like ‘A flying forward double I am suspicious of architecture which somersault with twist’ bring the images makes pompous claims for itself. I think of several recent buildings to mind. a design that sets out with the conscious Add a ‘reverse take off with jackknife’ intention of being Iconic is unworthy. And, and you will have a spectacle that will I think a pre-requisite of a good design is simultaneously confuse the critics, one which contributes to its context. impress the students, and momentarily delights the public. The further addition There is a pattern for designs that think of a ‘half twist before entering the water’ well of themselves to be called names like will ensure that a wink and a smile will boats or dogs. The parallel to ‘Sea Princess’ be caught by the correct camera angle and ‘Rex’ are names like Spiral, Cocoon, for world wide publication. Apparently, Cloud, and Vortex. These names suggest in future competitions, extra points will volumes of poetic wonder. What they be added for style in ladder climbing have in common is, they are all ordinary [no problem here], and also for swimsuit buildings distorted into unnecessarily presentation but, I think, this is where complicated shapes, enclosing repeating the analogy begins to get out of hand. floors of prosaic space, but whose main purpose is to attract our attention. They I am not actually against Icons. I think all want to be Icons. we need them. The trouble with Icons

I think this fashion for Iconic design is like the sport of High Diving. For the diver, marks are awarded principally for the degree of difficulty. Each element of the dive must be clear for all to see, and the dive must complete with an entry into the water with a graceful minimum of splash. For the designers of our fashionable Icons, the task is very much the same. Making an easy task look sensationally difficult is often their speciality, although entering

treatment to every imaginable building type. The trouble with these new Icons is discriminating between those which are worthy from those which are not. We must be clear that their impact will be both lasting and beneficial. If they are going to be visible, they have to be good. So, what exactly is an Icon? Clearly, the modern architectural Icon has come a long way from the devotional paintings venerated in Byzantine churches. These were always anonymous, imbued with humility, and were regarded as windows to something greater; a meaning appropriated by the IT wizards for the symbol on our computer screens giving access to the infinite world beyond. The alternative meaning, ‘a person or thing, regarded as a representative symbol that is important and enduring’; is a meaning appropriated by our media attentive culture, for the phenomenon of the celebrity. This is the architectural Icon.

Although we live in a secular age, we still need familiar and reassuring reference points. With traditional Icons, such as temples or churches, no longer holding It is therefore a building that is highly the same significance, we need to replace visible, often provocative, and in its them with new forms which confirm physical form, emphatically carries the change in our values, continue to cultural signals far beyond its need to make our evolving cities more legible, accommodate space. It is intended to and to give us pleasure. In the rush to attract attention and, as a design, it is fill this void, designers have been falling easily reduced to a logo. over themselves to apply the Iconic These icons are becoming our new landmarks. St Martin’s Court, Paternoster Square London Clients: Paternoster Associates / Mitsubishi Estate Obvious examples are The Sydney Opera The design for the building is a response that seeks to reconcile the specific disciplines House, the Pompidou Centre, and even of an efficient internal arrangement with a series of facades that positively contribute the new Scottish Parliament Building. to both the scale and quality of the adjacent spaces outside. Each façade has its own This group of modern Icons, all mauled particular place in an urban hierarchy of passage, lane, busy street or public space. Its before they could be loved, have a real form, although carefully conforming to the rules concerning the views to St Paul’s value in their ability to simultaneously Cathedral, emphasises this response to the existing urban fabric. Approached from signal both their function and their Cheapside, a simple stone façade, with the scale of a palazzo, forms the backdrop to public importance. They convey the true the public space at the entrance to St Paul’s underground station. While taller receding spirit of their age. They are both useful layers align with this axis to give greater significance to the more distant view afforded and memorable. I have no trouble at all by the widening of Cheapside, the layers conclude in a limestone tower to give the with this type of Icon. building a presence on Paternoster Square beyond. This tower, with a corner pier inflected towards the dramatic angle of Newgate Street, marks the way to one of two There is, however, a second group, which entrances. The other, facing Newgate Street, connects the heart of the building to the try very hard to be like the first, but suffer from the fact their public importance is busy thoroughfare. made

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Royal Festival Hall London Client: Southbank Centre The Royal Festival Hall, designed by Leslie Martin and Peter Moro, was the centrepiece of the 1951 Festival of Britain. Allies and Morrison has been involved with the refurbishment since being appointed as house architects in 1992 and has been responsible for two successful Heritage Lottery Fund bids. Now, some 50 years later, this iconic building has been transformed by a project that has refocused the original design ideas while making significant changes. The scope of the work has been immense and has left few areas untouched. In the auditorium, the acoustics, audience comfort and production flexibility have been transformed. Foyer spaces have been expanded by clearing out clutter and moving the Southbank Centre offices into a new building. The external terraces have again become vibrant public spaces, recapturing the spirit of 1951.

ÂŠAllies and Morrison

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ÂŠDennis Gilbert/ VIEW

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ÂŠDennis Gilbert/ VIEW made

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less obvious. They are the less significant by ubiquity. How many landmarks does building types and may not always deserve one city need? the profile their sponsors demand. This is the group I wish to focus on. This is where, We remember the original presentations in my view, the trouble with Icons lies. for many of these buildings. With sophisticated computer imagery and Now here, I have to mention the very carefully lit models, they were all very significant effect of the Guggenheim seductive, but seeing their over-egged in Bilbao. Though I am not convinced claims realised, we are left disappointed it is a great work of architecture, it is and suspicious. Learning from this, I firmly in the first category as its public wonder if we shouldn’t ask ourselves credentials are clear. Its significance, to some simple questions before handing me, as a building however, is less in its out more approvals and plaudits to these extraordinary shape and surface, which ‘visionary’ auteurs. many now think to be formulaic, than in the general acceptability of its formal The first might be, abstraction. Here, we have an important building whose representation to the Within the order and balance of the city, outside worlds bears little obvious is there a value in the representation indication of its content, and while we of essentially prosaic accommodation are all now attuned to recognising such as Icons? The answer to this may well structures as cultural buildings, could be ‘Yes’, but we must be clear there is it be that this abstract formula, which a difference between something that disguises a building’s content, be further surprises and delights and the equivalent applied to more prosaic accommodation?. of the school show-off who, tediously, If so, any building at all could be an Icon. makes a lot of noise. With Bilbao, ‘celebrity architecture’ in all its low-cut and high-rise disguises had come of age. It was certain to be followed by a torrent of imitators. As it happened, the launching of the Guggenheim coincided with a new public appetite for the Bling-Bling architectural image. The investment in buildings by the Lottery and the consequential interest from the press provoked a demand for ‘finished’ images, often prepared rather too early in their design process. They encouraged the representation of a single uncomplicated idea, a ‘one-liner’, an architectural word-bite, that once in the public realm was considered sold and would be difficult to change. A competition developed for attention, and as this increased, each image had to be more extraordinary and shocking, in order to eclipse the last. Each new design had to be instantly memorable; more Iconic. It was, and is, a fatuous and self indulgent game.

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We only need to take a trip down the Thames and look at the buildings on the river bank from Southwark to Wandsworth to see its effect. On what I now call the ‘Costa del Icon’, we see an endless array of second-rate architecture all shrilly demanding individual attention and without any relationship to each other; celebrity misfits in a policy vacuum, their impact further diminished

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public realm, are more valuable to us than any individual building. It is the quiet strength of their normality which allows the Icon to be special. We need to look at the city as a whole and no Icon should leave it worse off. Too many Icons and the fabric of the city is distorted, but too few Icons and the city is dull. For Icons to have validity, they must positively contribute to their context. I would like to touch on two examples of ways in which, I think, Icons fail to do this and may end up working against us. The first deals with what I feel is the Icon’s illusory regenerative qualities, and the second deals with the Iconic form being used in an attempt to secure a lucrative planning approval.

Everyone talks about the Bilbao effect. About how one remarkable building can change the perception and boost the economy of a city. But, we are short of evidence for the claim that architecture Second and more obvious, in the form of a single gesture, however theatrical, can have such restorative ‘Why does it look the way it does?’ Why powers. Without Easy-Jet, it is far from does this proposal seem to have all the certain the small economic gains in Bilbao modesty of a party outfit belonging to would be measurable at all. But now every Elton John? I think an Icon can often failing town or institution has thoughts be a disguise for an alternative agenda. about some kind of architectural Icon Sometimes a design is little more than which they hope will be their salvation. a marketing strategy presented as a They are seeking an elixir. cultural flourish, and sometimes an Icon is used to elevate the design debate to an It is as if they were the gullible recipients unimpeachable artistic level simply to of those ‘medicines’ dispensed by the deflect criticism from its content. Victorian quack doctors whose drugs were spiked with alcohol and gave only Third, temporary and illusory comfort to the afflicted. As the elixir of the Icon is Is it simply trying too hard? Is its dispensed and its curative effect is seen to accommodation compromised by the be less than was hoped for, it is almost as need to project its Iconic image? If the if the very presence of an Icon is to shine ordinary is forced to look extraordinary, a grim spotlight indicating exactly the it may increasingly be at the expense of areas that are struggling. After all, the doing its ordinary task well. jolliest murals were always painted on the gable walls of the most disadvantaged And fourth, concerning the public realm, housing estates. ‘What contribution, other than the sense of itself does the Icon make to its context?’ The seductive images almost always focus on the building as an isolated object: an object that is often hermetic and usually self-referring. These images rarely look at the consequential space that is formed. Our cities are made of a tradition of normative buildings which form our streets and lanes, our squares and avenues. These familiar spaces, the 10

At the London Metropolitan University on the Holloway Road, the elixir has been dispensed by Daniel Libeskind. The new graduate centre, entitled ‘Orion’ [yet another name] and formed from three intersecting shards of grey metal, is a further development of the crumpled thinking seen earlier at the V&A. Despite the far-fetched claims of his web-site for the origin of his concept, the design is little more than a cultural

Bankside 123 London Client: Land Securities In 2000 Land Securities Properties Ltd appointed Allies and Morrison as architects for the full redevelopment of the site then occupied by St Christopher House and Tabard House and adjacent to Tate Modern. In contrast to the previous building, the new proposal reinstates a strong urban grain into the area with a series of streets and spaces relating back directly to Southwark Street to the south and to Tate Modern to the north. The new accommodation is divided into three buildings with a total of approximately 111500sqm (1.2msqft) gross. All the new buildings, which are primarily designated for office use, have shop, restaurant or leisure uses on the ground floor. This new streetscape, or public realm, will not only give the development a strong coherence and sense of place, it will also provide a much needed heart for Bankside.

©Hufton and Crow

©Andrew Putler

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ÂŠHufton and Crow

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ÂŠAllies and Morrison

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85 Southwark Street London Client: Allies and Morrison This building on Southwark Street has been designed by the practice for its own occupancy. The upper three floors house the studios which are linked by a stepped atrium. The ground floor contains the reception and a café, while the basement contains the library, printing and model making facilities.At ground level a new public route has been created through the building connecting Southwark Street to Farnham Place. The two facades of the building – on Southwark Street and Farnham Place – are radically different from each other. The elevation to Southwark Street is almost entirely flat and glazed, revealing the internal concrete structure and vertical yellow louvre screens which protect the interior against glare. The elevation to Farnham Place is rendered, with relatively small window openings, and folds and bends in response to the complex geometries of the site and the rights of light of the adjacent buildings. Civic Trust Award 2004 Winner: ‘Specialist Award’ for offices, The Royal Fine Art Commission Trust ‘Building of the Year Awards’ 2004 RIBA Award 2004 RIBA London, Building of the Year Award 2004 BCO Awards 2004, National and London winner for ‘Corporate workplace building’

©Dennis Gilbert/ VIEW

©Allies and Morrison

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©Dennis Gilbert/ VIEW

ÂŠDennis Gilbert/ VIEW

placebo, a distraction, that quite possibly, in failing to deal with the real organisational issues of the university, inherited from decades of poor estate management, may do more long term damage than good.

ÂŠAllies and Morrison

A good building, therefore, is a building which will not only meet the needs of its carefully defined internal brief, but will also acknowledge its inevitable effect on the world outside. The complete urban matrix of a successful city is both shaped and constantly reinvigorated by its buildings, and our consequent enjoyment of the places we inhabit as a community, will depend as much on the depth of consideration given to the design of its buildings as it does on the planning of the places themselves.

safe and secure and available and accessible. In successful places, the public realm flows easily between the inside and outside, and buildings designed solely in response to the cautious single use requirements of an institutional investor will often fail to provide the richness of The second example is of a proposal interaction (particularly at street level) for a new office building. The question which contributes so much to why here is; Is being Iconic enough of a people want to be there. Buildings that justification, for what some see as a vast accommodate more than one use have and unwelcome structure? a greater possibility of such a healthy interaction with the city, and places The art of place making where people work, live and meet in the All places have a visual order and it is same location, are less likely to disappoint The essential business of cities is trade. If important that each building finds its and fail. A creative legal and financial through design the successful exchange place in its context. Not every building structure which allows buildings to be of ideas, business and culture is made needs to be extraordinary and very often, designed with such a rich mix of uses can difficult, a city will usually fail and it the success of places depends on the therefore, usefully contribute as much to is with the design of buildings and the calm (and reassuring) enjoyment of the place making as design itself. spaces they form that so much can be straightforward. Convention is easily contributed to help us to take advantage understood and makes our cities helpfully Successful place making depends of these essential opportunities which predictable and without the conventional, therefore on an understanding of context, the coming together in cities can give the extraordinary could not exist. history, scale and proportion as well as us. To make places that support this Equally, uniformity can be relentless and on the meeting of needs of the intricate healthy activity in a city, architecture disorientating and spaces need surprise to mercantile pressures which caused its must be grounded in how things are and test and extend our expectations. There being. If there is an art in place making, in an understanding of how cities work. is always a fine line, however, between it should be based as the understanding While much of what we do necessarily the provocative and the tasteless and of the complexities of both the economic happens inside buildings because we between the outrageous and the dull, as well as the visual order of the city can both modify the environment and and for cities to survive generations the and the confident control of its inherent make things safe, the spaces between making of places must be an art which is ambiguities and contradictions. With this our buildings (its streets, lanes, squares circumspect of fashion. in mind, the place makersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; skill could be and avenues) must make clear our similar to that of a Japanese calligrapher understanding of where we are and Places also have an economic and social who, as each bold brush stroke is placed encourage our participation in what the order and it is also important in the on the page, is in fact considering the city has to offer. design of buildings that the city becomes white space it defines. made

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Lay-by Pleasures Kevin Hong The heir apparent of ‘fast food’, the mobile burger van offers the service speed and convenience which can be expected from a cafe on wheels. Seemingly so successful, they have become ubiquitous in the UK by propagating car parks, high streets, and roadside lay-bys. The most mundane of built infrastructure, an extra patch of hard surfacing next to the road performs as host for these mobile entrepreneurs. Through their appropriation, do they add richness to our everyday experiences through their casual and intimate existence? Are they a colloquialism for the built environment; practising an appropriated strategy of infrastructure with landscape? Is this an outcome of how infrastructure and landscape collude to form ideas of potential accepting adaptation over time? One of the effects of environmentalism and our new found awareness of climate change is how landscape has entered society’s visual spectrum. As climatologists and environmentalists consider the global damaging effects of climate change, many contemporary architects and urban designers have moved towards the ‘green’ on society’s colour chart and embraced the resurgent interest in landscape. From green roofs, growing façades, and CO2 digesting asphalt, to large scale organisational structures, architects and designers have developed interest not only in planting schemes and site planning but using landscape as a critical strategy in designing the built environment through its capacity to approach projects through its territories, infrastructures and systems. In 1997, Charles Waldheim coined the term, ‘landscape urbanism’ at a symposium and exhibition to bring forth practitioners and projects reflecting upon landscape as ‘a lens through which the contemporary city can be thought of and a medium through which it can be constructed’.1 The symposium was to acknowledge the new found interests of post-industrial sites, artificial landscapes and infrastructure in which ‘landscape’ and ‘urbanism’ could form an ‘interstitial design discipline, operating in the spaces between buildings, infrastructural systems,

and natural ecologies’.2 This significant symposium brought to light practitioners and academics whose work responds to the real changes of the built environment where landscape and urbanity discover mutual ground. Among the participants were James Corner of Field Operations, Adriaan Geuze of West 8, and Joan Roig of Batlle-Roig to display these new interpretations of landscape and urbanity. The symposium didn’t go as far to signify ‘landscape urbanism’ as an approach but more as a shift in interests. Waldheim describes it as ‘a disciplinary realignment in which landscape replaces architecture as the basic building block of contemporary urbanism. For many, across a range of disciplines, landscape has become both the lens through which the contemporary city is represented and the medium through which it is constructed.’3 This slight ‘realignment’ does openly acknowledge those previous works and thoughts which have considered landscape with urbanism but they have done so with the traditional values of landscape as ‘nature’ and the benefits which that brings into urbanity.4 From the American works of landscape architects such as Fredrick Law Olmsted and Jens Jensen to Ian McHarg’s seminal book, Design with Nature, many have emphasised the essential difference between urban space and landscape. These previous works have been conditioned to bring forth the traditional values system of landscape and urbanity as opposing forces which condition their very differences. The complexities of today’s world brings forth this disciplinary realignment to neutralise preconceptions of what is ‘nature’ and further acknowledge the significance of infrastructures and environmental systems. This preconception can be tested in the roadside lay-by. If we go beyond the ordinariness of the lay-by, and think of it in the context of the larger road network and systems of lay-bys, these bits of tarmac form an important role. Not only do they act as lunch spots for many in the construction and building trade, they are, in many cases, the first point of contact with the countryside for those living in cities. In contrast to those

A recent article by Eelco Hooftman, a well regarded UK landscape architect, called out for architects to ‘look beyond the building and discover the marvels of the void’.6 His mantra was to maintain this new or rediscovered interest in landscape as a primer for ‘preparing the ground and sowing the seeds for future urbanisation’ But Hooftman’s cry is clear – ‘town and country has ended in divorce. Architecture and landscape architecture, under the umbrella of landscape urbanism, could create alternative concepts of co-habitation between man and nature’. If more designers and architects have been ‘looking beyond the building and discovering the void’ since the 1997 Landscape Urbanism symposium, we should expect to enjoy more of those landscapes and infrastructures through their potential and adaptation over time including more pleasurable experiences in stopping off to grab a burger in a roadside lay-by. 1 Grahame Shane, ‘The Emergence of Landscape Urbanism’ in The Landscape Urbanism Reader, ed. by Charles Waldheim (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006). Refer to the description of the symposium in the article. 2 Shane. This was further defined by Waldheim in Shane’s essay. 3 Charles Waldheim, ‘Landscape as Urbanism’ in The Landscape Urbanism Reader, ed. by Charles Waldheim (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006). 4 James Corner, ‘Terra Fluxus’ in The Landscape Urbanism Reader, ed. by Charles Waldheim (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006) Corner distinguishes the difference between traditional use of landscape and urbanism with contemporary idea of landscape. The examples used are also taken from Corner’s description. 5 Shane. The Idea ‘of becoming’ was articulated in this essay as Corner’s “performative” urbanism. 6 Eelco Hooftman, ‘Ground Force’. RIBA Journal, March 2009, p.21.

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traditional approaches which seek resolved solutions of pastoral landscapes and final manifestations of ‘nature’, promotion and acceptance of activities and change over time seem more appropriate when dealing with these complexities. Using landscape as form, strategy or otherwise brings about an idea ‘of becoming’ and perhaps it is this which formulates all those considerations of people, of everyday life into the design process in a generous way.5 The understanding and awareness that a layby and other mundane infrastructures like it can attract life and its everyday rituals.

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Here & Hereabouts Richard Powell It was, or so it seemed at the time, merely an informal exercise of better seeing the city less known. Of setting out some years ago without grand plan or thesis, with no programme to be announced, illustrated or accounted for, rather, a private matter of observing and recording details as I went. The book, Here & Hereabouts which contains the photographs taken during this period results from the need to satisfy two different conditions: first, to formalise and create an outlet for the stored digital material, and second, to answer the Reflecting Wales1 call for submissions. The introduction of this second and unforeseen deadline provided the necessary urgency for a new regime to be sought, and whether succeed or fail, any previous relationship with material and process was forever altered. The accepted proposal was to create three artist-proofed one off books, plus publish a short print run (150 in total) of selected photographic images taken from each of these one–off editions. With purpose and content established, much work was needed if the material – generated in a loosely structured and languid private process – was to be delivered for public scrutiny in coherent form.

phenomenon, and the defining practice within both the one-off version and short print-run, was the constant search for the books’ shape. This issue of shape, of finding the correct symmetry between intent, content and materials, is at the root of the book designer’s desire and art. Between the subject – in this instance, material in the urban landscape that rarely catches the eye and so goes unacknowledged – and finding the means and qualities needed for best delivery.

subject material as unadorned images in a page space, a space that has been ordered and shaped, but not explained.

The pattern of photo-taking used both here and on other occasions is founded on, (as far as it’s achievable) the removal of both self and others from the frame. As readers we know, or rather guess at the someone took the image. We know that someone, – and in all probabilities another than the photographer – with effort created and shaped the material Setting out into an unnamed but space contained within the image, but recognisable urban landscape on its their whereabouts and circumstances photographic odyssey, the book observes are withheld or unknown, their motive the unobserved, frequents the overlooked unproven. The images not only enjoy and enjoys moments of low civic visibility. this non-disclosure, but also make little Attention is drawn to actions that were attempt to satisfy a photographic expertise, perhaps never were part off, or have as if through the application of a little long since passed from architectures’ more technique, there lies the promise design, ambition or authority, but which that they may become made better, might nonetheless silently accompany us as we become more fulfilling, desirable or go about our daily lives. authentic objects. They are not wilfully constructed or to be heroically held apart From the moment the decision was from the world as might a Jeff Wall or made that the material was to become a Walker Evans; these images adhere to book, my task was to deliver the images the page without seeking a drama in the without glamorising, sentimentalising moment of capture, the golden hour, or or sanitising the venues on display. And creative personae, as a Cartier-Bresson just as daily life provides us with little in does. They appear mundane, lacking Our city of Cardiff, like many others, the way of explanation or instructional ambition, so non-photos, that if printed employs a Falstafian thesaurus of boastful accompaniment, no descriptive captions out as a corner shop enprint, they might terms when referring to its own self– announce the ‘who or why’ within the easily become helpfully ‘lost’ by a wellimage. Quarters, waterfronts and plazas book. I have no more knowledge of these meaning technician. The fact is, as we are splashed about, along with heritage, details then the reader. If we choose review their accumulative and dumb prestige and villages. And like many to venture beyond the front cover, to authority, it is their unity of purpose that other cities, Cardiff also possesses many enquire deeper into this landscape, we’ve holds the book together, and likewise it is unclaimed and less civic / civil features, got to trust the purpose and the route, to the book that stops the subject becoming back-alleys and nameless scrubland, be confident we’ll find a way through. lost once more. places to which people with softer soled A perplexing approach to take, perhaps, shoes rarely venture, but nonetheless but this method makes provision for the Often misidentified, the editing process, are visited and enjoyed by many. Here reader to access some of the problems a practice of making material concise, & Hereabouts, the trio of subjective and and enjoyment that I encountered when of condensing, actually occurs at the point of initial departure and capture. unofficial guide’s, focus on these latter travelling and observing within the city. Lodged in the computer, and for so long and less observed sites, on the doors, windows, street signs, desire lines which If the casual observer gains little from their resisting conclusion – as if conclusion lie within. A case as Flaubert put it, of glancing brush with their environment, a to the original undertaking could really similarly casual back to front thumbing be achieved, – the rogues gallery of unobserving those things unexplored.2 of Here & Hereabouts will also succeed in refined, un-sequenced images had an The new objective was to create a book missing the point. For the book to be read, identifiable, if ragged collective identity. that provides an overdue exposure into the purpose of image and composition In order to create a book that sought to a frequently un-witnessed architectural must be read. The reader comes to the satisfy my ambitions and expectations, made

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attention and resolution was now needed. Prior intent and material quality had to be examined, understood, evaluated, and established, either as of value to the result or be discarded. Into this process when all material is a provisional and unstable mix of possibilities and questions, come the first grains of certainty. Dispersed and disconnected at first, these certainties circle, gather and cohere, crystallising the intent within the material. The future self of the object is defined through understanding the reflective relationship it has with its materials, its needs, so becoming the sought after shape. The consequence of the new found ordering and rhythm growing ever stronger, is the alternatives – that have eddied about, providing a plethora of distracting cross-currents, themes and vocabularies – become weaker, and ultimately redundant. This is not a computer exclusive exercise; dialogue between the computer generated images and the tactile page is constant and critical. The, size, format, paper type and weight, font, point-size, kerning, leading, colour, page numbers, imposition, binding method, cover style, in fact everything concerning the book, its shape, is a physical and material event, and what is being sought is the intentcontent-material synthesis. And beneath these high and low conditioning factors, lurks a further and lower question, how much will it cost, – who’s paying? The answer – I was, with the support of an Arts Council of Wales grant – and for reasons of aesthetics and efficiency, the decision was to publish the material in a format close to the familiar A5 notebook. For those who use them, notebooks, if not the source, then at least containing, the highly valued first moments, thought

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drawn, or text sought, the cherished insights and private ideas, they become most prized, precious, most personal of objects. As one of the intended goals was to present the material with as little intervention between the raw material and the outcome as possible, this format provided the opportunity to order and edit without loosing sense of the informal origins. Ambitions clarified as theory was realised in the practice. The flow and pace of decisions was faced and dealt with; the task was to ensure that the process didn’t go astray. Sunblind To create a threshold and then to deny it, is surely to hold the future in odd contempt. To stop up a window in a climate in which sunlight is an asset, and not a burden, must be one of the cruellest blows a building must endure. (But in a land that continues to resonate to one of Tom Jones’s earlier anthems Delilah, what can be said, I just couldn’t take any more? Perhaps it was just, all too beautiful.) The first selection of photos in the book, under the heading Sunblind, provides an indication of just how much of this particular type of architectural rearrangement takes place. Unwittingly, the city plays host to an exhibition of unconnected acts of exclusion, of defensive enclosure, each taken to hold the troublesome outside world at bay, and all in full view of the passer-by. And while all buildings are in some way, on display, these rearranged elements display a particularly affecting presence within the urban landscape. Subtle, ambiguous and at times a fleetingly disruptive influence on our civic experience, the presence of

these non-doors, this anti-fenestration in the city fabric disturbs our equilibrium. A disturbance not of the dynamic pulsing kind as depicted in Blast3, the Vorticist’s manifesto, but more, an accumulating pressure, as found and exerted within the uninhabited silent cityscapes in an Antonioni4 film (L’Eclisse) or the contained and smoothed out temporal vacated-ness of a De Chirico5 landscape, (Mystery and Melancholy of a street) But unlike the artwork, – which carries a prior contract of understanding between observed and observer, – in the world beyond the frame, there is no such contract, no centre of attention here. We’re unsure of where or how to look, on what to focus. We dismiss and pass on by, move on to something more wholesome, something more immediate or appealingly positive. – The refrain of the bored there’s nothing there comes to mind. From city centre to outskirts, few areas are exempt from these barricaded moments. A corner shop changes hands and becomes a house, the shopwindow becomes a wall – perhaps with a picture hung on it, something to be looked at rather than through. Some rearrangements are undertaken with care, and reveal a precision and desire to blend in with the surroundings, a desire to appear to disappear, small acts of camouflage that go some way to placate neighbours, or perhaps settle an inner anxiety. Some are crudely stopped up in haste, block slapped on block, unforgiving, and sending out a low level visual message, don’t fuck with me. One is a Beuy’s6 felt lined sanctuary – his suit, – the other is Poes’7 pit. These were never really the belles of the ball within the

cityscape, and having sustained several changes of use, the tide of cash having risen and fallen and continued to fall, are left to fend for themselves. The book’s use of multiple images is the blunt means to reinforce the point of just how many there

are to be found in the outside world once you start looking. The image repetition ensnares the passing reader with both the banal and poetic, in the adaptations, variations, incidents, reclamations, the raw and unresolved, as it were ‘the quick

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and the dead’ of the city landscape. And whilst viewing we’ve an opportunity to interpret, select and make choices, to edit the edit, to build a new hierarchy where none existed. And possibly to consider what darkness lies behind that threshold.

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Signs Grangetown-sur-Mer. (an adjusted road sign in front of the local Ikea store.) The chapter dedicated to signs discloses if not the identity of individuals, then certainly evidence of other and in some cases highly personal statements, priorities and needs. Noun signs were selected as for the most part these have the most to say. Names are clustered: Roath is rather Scottish, Llanrumney has its writers, Riverside its engineers and, of course, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Splottâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s display of elements and cosmos. This naming can either reflect a truth with the circumstances, or create a mismatch that is utterly and some cases delightfully bogus. Likewise materials and fonts play a role; setting these factors alongside the effects of time and nature, together they generate a rich source of information regarding the original aspiration for, and the prevailing condition of, the immediate environment. And yet when unattended, these aids, designed to be purposefully visible and useful, slip from our daily view; they become un-visible. A quick test: ask someone you know who lives in the city for directions to a selected X, and in all likelihood they will give a highly idiosyncratic account of how to reach the destination. Names might occur, but are provided as secondary assurance, rather than the primary route understanding. Into the mix go personal landmarks, distance flex, twists and turns of perceptions, each helpful and accurate to its originator; and each reflecting the sometimes discontinuous rhythms and flux found in the city outside the imagination. A local has no need to observe, to read the street signs to confirm their whereabouts, as a visitor might. Who of us uses the naming signs once weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve secured the required resident knowledge?8 For the most part we are confident; the learnt skills allow us to know and register the important details as and when they occur. The continuity of our journey from one general area to the next, from one specific location to the next, takes place within a highly personalised and intuitive plan of paths through the landscape. Embedded within each plan, are locations and proximities, contexts and histories, which, if disturbed by others can feel like a personal affront. We rarely check made

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luck, a drive-by witnessing, snap, snap, something for later. And, all the while I was following these illicit amendments to the official line, I was complicit, was The irony of all this gathered knowledge adding to their number. Some flowed to is that official direction signage becomes straighten, some took the opposite course, increasingly invisible; and when some cut and pierced, some scratched circumstances are right the street sign and some evaporated in the heat of the becomes a wipe-board, a convenient day. Some are forced upon us when local surface to play some other game upon, to authority plans either fall short or loses stake a claim, to send a message, Some its way. The instances occur throughout years back, close to where I now live, some the city, where, for whatever reason, a unseen childish hand wrote ‘Gavins got new official improved footpath leads lush eyes’, a valentine in mid-October. the user to no particular place: a type Elsewhere, love’s no longer in the air, of pedestrian cul-de-sac. Each desirelighter flame has scorched away, leaving line reveals a common trait in the user, a blistered letters to curl from the base desire to be where we want to be without material, an act of boredom, of disgust, further hindrance. of anger, of possibly a soul corroding mix of all three and more. (An act that Frequently, when walking these rejections both eloquently surpasses, and fuels of the official formula, the same questions much of the easily promoted political came to mind. What’s the time difference vocabulary of daily life.) Somewhere in between the right and wrong way, to the city a comic hand reached up and walk those five, ten, fifteen extra paces? with felt-tip wit, ‘30’ accelerates to ‘80’, Answer, a difference of 6 steps or roughly a visual jest that many pranksters would 5 to 8 seconds. Is it the thought of having be proud of. And bulls-eyed in the to complete the officially demanded centre of this zero, ‘Liam is gay’. Why extra action that drives us to take these such effort – who’s going to read it? actions? Is it that we can see the better But it must have meant something to way; temporarily assuming control, we someone, and something else to someone cut out the extra? Or is the motive itch, else. A quick daub, a cancelled ‘c’ and that, no matter how long or short the ‘canal’ became a bottomless source for requirement, to shave off just that little offence for the prudish. These additions bit from every corner gives us a shiver of and subtractions are the actions of the satisfaction? Each desire line represents unseen. Meanwhile, and elsewhere, its own little battle won, a little saving there’s tagging, where various levels of made; time stored up, bonus time to be deliberately visible actions mark, make, redeemed at the end of the leisure rainbow. send a message within the shared if Or are these desire-lines an outward disputed landscape. In the battle for the demonstration, a challenge to the muchstreets, there’s likely to be only one victor between ‘Charlotte, Amy and Gabby’ and ’THUG LIFE’: luckily they weren’t found in the same neighbourhood. that this is our street with our home, by looking for a nametag on the corner to confirm it.

loved architectural right angle, to the sweep of the planners compass? Desire lines reveal the small, fleet of foot and almost furtive challenges to the sobriety of the 90° world. They challenge the right way, the way we know we’re meant to and have been taught to follow; but the beast in us distrusts. We’ve all done it, sometime, we’ve played along, followed another’s shortcut, and with the simpleminded dictum of, as soon as one rule is broken, the new one applies, we provide ourselves with the childlike safety clause of, ‘well they started it’. This collective licence provides us with an unspoken confidence – perhaps an urban version of the ‘right to roam’ – to continue growing these paths as it were, until the authorities see sense, relent, and have these traces of our way duly adopted as their way. In a city that is forever taking up the old and laying down the new paving, it’s hard for the processional process to reach a point of consolidation. However, there are places especially on the routes crossing softer more fertile ground where the repetition of footfalls become wonderfully and indelibly ingrained, where over the years as each footfall follows exactly in the last, the grass growing around these impacts joins in: where a line is comprised of dashes. Are these lines evidence of a lowgrade disruptive and urban tension; do they represent a seemingly endless scuffle between the gardeners and pavers on the one side, and the thoughtless everyone else on the other? Between those in and those out of power? It’s a battle the authorities are unlikely to win, or one in which the

Nature also plays its role: sun fades, ice penetrates, plant life colonises – it’s all to much for the authorities to keep up with. And so new layers of information are added, Alder Road, not only takes a hit, it’s also being slowly reclaimed by it’s surroundings; the first film of algae is already smudging the corners. How long before it topples over, or becomes illegible? The race is on. Desire Sometimes, it felt a little like small game hunting, tracking an unseen quarry to no particular lair. Click, click, another trophy photo captured for home consumption. Sometimes, it was made

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population prove decisive; all we can do is pass it on to the next generation, and for them to follow the leader.

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The book was produced in order to make a distinct and accessible contribution to a debate within architectural and planning circles. A debate, that asked a bigger if indirect question, ‘what is this place we call Wales?’ Not being an architect, or planner or builder, or being in a position to take on the whole of that debate, I produced a book that speaks of and about the specifics of locality, about things I had experienced. The book’s format can be closely replicated a hundred times, applied to a hundred locations around the country and beyond – a new breed of ‘Rough Guides’ to fill the already bulging shelves of the travel section, perhaps, but not very likely. Here &Hereabouts is to its home city what architectural modelling is to its full-scale counterpart. Each points towards something other and outside of itself; each has the intention as well as the potential of being a whole within itself, to succeed within its own rules and expectations. There are two common responses to the book. Either: I know that sign, that shortcut, that doorway that was.

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After which the speaker relates a story, shares a description of a door or window or sign that they’ve seen. In the fact of remembrance, the site is momentarily brought back to life, the path across the park is retraced, and wondered about: why was it the official path led somewhere else? Or, the reaction is: ‘how can this be? What a disgrace! The council should do something about it.’ Then, the speaker relates a story, shares a description of a door, a window… We’re divided in a common experience, the city divides us as much as it binds us together, we cleave to it and yet are divorced from it.

preference over ambition, I regard Here & Hereabouts as providing an account of how the life (of objects in a landscape) turns out, of how Cardiffians know and use their city: heedlessly, wittily, cruelly, and on occasion with heartfelt expression and feeling. The images capture and expose time’s erosive influence on ambition. They mark the loss of original certainties and control, of the increasing power of randomness over planned purpose and control. From out of these conditions, these causes and effects grow a particular quality of the romantic picturesque, a quality never intended in the material, but nonetheless now exists in both the original and image. Orhan Pamuk explores this subject in depth and throughout his book, Istanbul Memories And The City. In particular he writes of a special form of melancholy, ‘hüzän’, which Instanbullus have, and which he makes plain arises from the identity and relationship to their city.

The ambition that started it all, of better seeing the city less known, has in part been satisfied, as was my attempt to avoid glamorising, sentimentalising or sanitising the material within the book. Given the dysfunctional subject matter – the unkempt parts of the city – the book was bound to acquire or express some aspect of a melancholic nature. The lack of something new in the images might be read as a desire to resist the Here & Hereabouts finishes with an image future, to erase the contemporary or of a scrubland, some would say a wasted raise the past to an elevated status, but space, a space waiting for something to it isn’t. Neither is it to give nostalgia a happen within. And lying within the 26

tangle of branches and brambles there’s a holed fence. Fail to take note of the image, to catch this barely visible detail, and you’ll be leaving without the final discrete coda. The hole doesn’t lead to somewhere visibly better or greener, or richer or more productive, but rather to somewhere much the same. The hole beckons to us, and we ask questions of the here as well of the there, of the myth and potentials we have here and

The act of turning my gaze away from the studio space and computer screen, and out towards the city’s landscape didn’t come to an end with the making of Here & Hereabouts. The observing continues, and with it grows new questions concerning the relationship Cardiff has with its civic spaces and architecture. Increasingly I’m

1 Reflecting Wales was an exhibition held in the Sennedd in Cardiff in October 2008, organized by Design Circle RSAW South, and sponsored by Stradform. <http://www. designcirclersawsouth.co.uk/reflectingwales/index.php> 2 Gustav Flaubert 1821-1880 as quoted by Guy de Maupassant 1850 – 1893. ‘There is a part of everything which is unexplored, because we are accustomed to using our eyes only in association with the memory of what people before us have thought of the thing we are looking at. Even the smallest thing has something in it which is unknown. We must find it.’ 3 Blast; there were only two editions of Blast 1st 1914, edited by Wyndham Lewis with contributions from Ezra Pound, Jacob Epstien, Rebecca West. Blast was the graphic declaration of the Vorticist group. 2nd, Blast War Number 1915. Again with design and graphics by Wyndham Lewis and contributions from T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and Gaudier – Brzeska.

4 L’eclisse, dir. by Michelangelo Antonioni (Eclipse, 1962) The filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni’s (1912 – 2007) use of cityscape and architecture mirrors the characters positions towards each other. Sparse and without explanation, the film examines the growing alienation between two lovers, who, in the final sequence fail to appear as the camera and audience watch on. 5 Georgio de Chirico, Mystery and Melancholy of a street. (1914) 6 Joseph Beuys, Felt suit/ Filzanzug (1970) As an aviator in WW11, the artist Joseph Beuys (19211986) was shot down, freezing and near to death he was found and rescued by Tartars who wrapped him in felt and fat to keep him warm. Felt suit Filzanzug is copied from one of Beuy’s own suits, an act which refers to this rescue, and speaks about warmth and material’s power to heal a damaged earth.

those that we’ll uncover in that already occupied there.

7 Edgar Allen Poe, The Pit and the Pendulum (1842) This short gothic horror story involves an unnamed narrator undergoing a series of torments for an unnamed crime: “Death’ I said ‘any death but that of the pit!” 8 Knowledge, Transport for London; As a licensed taxi driver in the capital (Green Badge) you must have detailed Knowledge of 320 routes and places of interest in London – known as the Knowledge. 9 Orhan Pamuk, Translated by Maureen Freely, Istanbul, Memories and the City (2005) See chapter 26, ‘The Hu¨za¨n of the Ruins: Tanpinur and Yahya Kemal in the City’s Poor Neighbourhoods’ and chapter 27, ‘The Picturesque and the Outlying Neighbourhoods’ ‘I have described Istanbul when describing myself and myself when describing Istanbul.’ Review by Nouritza Matossian Observer 17 April 2005.

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wondering if architecture – as opposed to building, to filling the space with something contingent, with something that plugs the gap – is a demand as well as a practice we can’t do without, but, would rather not encourage too much of? A pity if true, because given the importance of the question, ‘what is this place we call Wales?’, where else can our myths and imagination be located and take root; where else might they be translated into action?

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Constructing architect Structural engineer Client development officer

Mechanical and electrical engineer

Design architect 2

Design architect 1 Client clerk of works

Client user 1 Client user 2 Contractor

Cost consultant

Co-ordinator

Consultant Client - deputy chief executive

Bringing a Design to the Table Hannah Jones and William Jones vernacular n.1 the language or dialect spoken by the ordinary people of a country or region. >informal the specialized terminology of a group or activity. 2 vernacular architecture. adj. 1 spoken as or using one’s mother tongue rather than a second language. 2 (of architecture) concerned with domestic and functional rather than public buildings. (Concise Oxford English Dictionary) This writing reflects upon an artist and designer’s shared experience of making a film about a design and planning team’s collaborative process. The film, entitled ‘(Re)searching a Welsh Design Vernacular’ documents a meeting that took place at Grwp Gwalia, a social housing organisation based in Swansea, Wales. The film was exhibited as part of ‘Reflecting Wales: an architectural exhibition of innovative, speculative and built work in Wales’ held in October 2008 at the Senedd. Artist and designer collaborations are notoriously awkward. The stereotypically left-brain, right-brain encounter can lead to creative synergy or antagonism. This artist and designer took part in a research project at Goldsmiths, University of London (2007) that explored the synergies that occur between designers and other professionals working together in an interdisciplinary context. The project determined that the ‘creative abrasion’ that exists within a design team is an inherent part of the team’s collaborative experience and creative output. The purpose for making this film was to explore the experience of interdisciplinary collaboration, focusing on the use of dialogue within a group. This is the ‘spoken design’ that only exists as a whole when brought to the table before it becomes realised as a physical object. In the work of Maturana

and Varela the nature of communication between animals is explored. They describe how ‘we are constituted in language in a continuous becoming that we bring forth with others.’ (Maturana and Varela, 1987) The film offers the viewer a glimpse of the forming-process of a design vernacular as it becomes established within a design team. The video camera was positioned at one end of a conference table to capture a fixed shot for the entirety of the meeting, inviting the viewer to sit in on the discussion. As the meeting progresses, key words and sentences that are used by the participants are highlighted in yellow text on the screen. In Christopher Alexander’s book ‘The Timeless Way of Building’ he proposes the notion of creating a ‘common language’ from the ‘separate languages of building tasks’ to evolve a more joined-up way of envisioning scalable design projects (Alexander, 1979). These sentences provide a short hand narrative for the meeting but also represent the interweaving of a common language. There are fourteen different professionals in the meeting who represent a team of people working together on the planning and design of a care home. The meeting follows a tight agenda that is led by a chairperson. A wooden table fits in the space with room only to move around the outside. It is the early stages of the design’s development and there are a plethora of subjects being ticked off as the conversation unfolds. During the meeting, the colleagues individually exchange information, listening patiently to each other. Some participants take a more proactive role in facilitating this exchange, which allows for flexibility and adaptability within the conversations. The balance between coherency and discord that is achieved through their communication skills allow the group to become united, by being together and seeing together the design is allowed to unfold.

The experience of working as an artist and designer collaboration and the reflections drawn from making the film indicate that in order for a collaborative project to be successful the group members need to contribute a willingness to understand the different parts of the process. An awkward tension can build up within the group’s dynamics when trying to achieve a shared understanding that can open up a space where creativity can emerge and override the constraints of an agenda.

Alexander, C, A Timeless Way of Building. (New York: Oxford University Press, c1979) Dilnot, C, ‘Ethics? Design?’ The Archeworks Papers, 2, 1, (2005) Maturana, H, R and F. J. Varela, The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding (London: Shambhala Publications, Inc, c1987, c1992) Wood, J., ‘Win-Win-Win-Win: synergy tools for metadesigners’, in Designing for the 21st Century: interdisciplinary questions and insights, ed. by Tom Inns (London: Gower Publishing, 2007)

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In order to stick to the itinerary, there are moments when the flow becomes too constrained and inputs and important messages are deemed ill timed or misplaced. A professional prickliness creeps in to the discursive space. Members of the team are frustrated that the uncreative agenda has designed out possibilities. The design historian Professor Clive Dilnot notes how ‘Design is a process of negotiating incommensurability’ (Dilnot, 2005). The ‘negotiation of incommensurables’ are aspects of the design that are measurable by different standards and worked-through in the planning and design meeting. Different professionals are accountable for different parts of the process but everybody is present in this discussion about telecommunications, traffic management, sedum roofing, timber frames etc. This is a process of give and take that goes on until the project’s completion.

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Flat Packing to Eichstaett: An Introductory Studio Design Project Christopher Platt Glasgow is characterised by two complimentary design projects each ‘One could argue that the undergraduate lasting a full semester. Semester one’s design studio has been the “ ideas hothouse” project is a complex, multi functional that, certainly for the last 30 years has cultural building set in urban Glasgow extended the knowledge base and field of and developed to a scale of 1:100 and enquiry of architectural design.’ 1 1:50. Semester two’s project is set in an international context, has a much more Many architecture studio projects modest (though equally ambitious) commence with a research phase programme and is explored through involving precedent studies, brief analysis the themes of urban design and detail. and site investigation. Indeed, many While the first project explores the threeinvolve aspects of all three. The aim is to dimensional jigsaw puzzle aspect of a advance the student’s understanding of (spatially and technically complex) public the task ahead, in all its complexities. As building, the focus in semester two is design tutors, we have grown increasingly on the micro and the macro stages of unconvinced by how we have designed the design process- namely detail and such exercises as they have often resulted urban design. The more topics we try in work which remains shallow and and integrate into the design studio, the disconnected to the subsequent design greater the need for our design projects to activity. This paper examines a short have particular learning outcomes which project which tries to address this don’t try and cover all the (RIBA/ARB problem and which we implemented and criteria) bases each time. Our project developed over a period of three years was an attempt to avoid the design to 4th year students. Our aim was to project becoming yet another of those create a deeper student experience to the well-rounded, competent, ticking-all-the traditional research and analysis phase boxes-type. Detail here is understood of a design project by getting students to in its widest sense, i.e. as ‘a fragment of perform a variety of roles in a very handson way. The project involved the creation of an exhibition by students, which they transported to an international setting kick-starting two different semesterlong design projects. By linking role playing and physical making with the two projects’ themes of ‘display’ and ‘detail’ respectively, we were able to create activities which took students by surprise. These counteracted the risk of shallow and disconnected work by having at their core the ambition of ‘deep learning’. Breaking the Ice

something supporting a larger, more all-encompassing idea’. In this context, a student can then understand their building as a detail in the town as much as a window being a detail in their building or a frame being a detail of their window. Or as Jean Labatut put it, “The detail tells the tale”. The architectural experience is the experience of an architectural concept (the “plot”) through “the expression of the fragments” (the “tale”). For the semester two project, we choose a town to set the project in which has both a strong architectural character as well as a significant body of work by a contemporary architect. This allows students the opportunity to both study the existing morphology as well as react to a particular architect’s approach to that morphology. In this way we hope that they do not feel quite alone in their role as designer nor too inhibited by the historic setting. Few towns have both historic and contemporary work to a significant degree. Eichstaett, in Germany however, is one such place. It is a charming baroque town built on a mediaeval plan

‘Deep learning involves the critical analysis of new ideas, linking them to already known concepts and principles and leads to understanding and long-term retention of concepts so that they can be used for problem solving in unfamiliar contexts.’ 2 The 4th year studio at the Department of Architecture at Strathclyde University, Left: Constructed panels assembled in Eichstaett

Initial designs reviewed after one week’s work. made

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personal experience and reference to key theoreticians in this field such as Marco Frascari and Kenneth Frampton. His work also raises important issues about the nature of craft in the 21st century. ‘..In all the studio projects in the BSc Hons Architectural Studies (the first 4 years) we introduce the idea that at a fundamental level, architecture is born of human need and activity. We do this by using the notion of the verb as a design generator, as opposed to the noun. Thus ‘to shelter’, ‘to work’, etc. in comparison to ‘a shelter’, ‘an office’, etc is how we describe design briefs. This minimises the danger of a student jumping into a predetermined solution too early in the process.’ 3

Development of final scheme and opening reception at Strathclyde

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whilst containing almost the entire architectural oeuvre of the important post-war German architect, Karljosef Schattner. Schattner is part of the second generation of modern architects and has an international reputation for his exquisitely-detailed architecture and long involvement with the town where he was Diocesan architect. His work for the church and university can be read as both a love affair as well as a critique of this small university town, providing as it does a collection of contrasting and beautifully-built modern buildings set within a strong historic setting. Influenced significantly by Carlo Scarpa and Luigi Snozzi, (both of whom he was friends with), his work lends itself to both close study (sketches and measured drawings),

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more cheaply overseas […] the greatest economic and social value in the future will come from right-brain thinkers.’’ 4 Over the last few years, some of us had become critical of how we designed the early part of the design projects which we felt resulted often in a rather dry and fruitless period of research and precedent study, which students often tended to put to one side (mentally as well as physically) once they started designing. Invariably, the students’ analytical drawings would feature less and less (if at all) at interim presentations of developing design proposals. We observed that students had satisfied themselves that they had ‘completed’ that part and could move on without referring to their conclusions at any point. Our assumption that these early studies provided sufficient ‘deep learning’ of the issues at hand appeared overconfident. We were not aware how much had been written up on this pedagogical issue, but we brain-stormed and waded in with what we thought would be a very different type of experience for them as we redesigned the initial part of the project. We decided to introduce the experience of playing together. So, as an antidote to the traditional analysis phase and as an introduction to our gallery project, we developed a short ‘ice breaker’ project, designed to provide a more ‘hands-on’ research exercise in aspects of curation, display and design. We also wanted to address in some way issues related to ‘craft’ and ‘scale’ which we had begun to suspect were being glossed over by students’ extensive (and often uncritical) application of CAD.

The two projects aim for very different results but are seen as complimentary within the student’s overall portfolio. We have named them, ‘To Display’ and ‘To Delight’; verbs being more open-ended and less prescriptive than nouns in their creative prompts. ‘To delight’ is the overall theme of 4th year- the joy of an architectural experience, the welcome of a beautiful space, the care in a piece of construction which invites close attention and touch. The 4th year concentrates on the notion of the designer influencing the experience of architecture as well as the idea of architecture. Students are given a choice of sites in semester one, but are asked to find a site in semester two. We consider the act of choosing highly significant at this stage in a student’s development. The observation, acknowledgement and notation of quality in a place which lies at the heart of finding a site, we feel triggers the design process in a subconscious way. ‘..Computer-assisted design also impedes the designer in thinking about scale, as opposed Semester one’s project has recently to sheer size. Scale involves judgements of focussed on an art gallery and semester proportion; the sense of proportion on-screen two’s on a small university library. For appears to the designer as the relation of the last three years, the first project has clusters of pixels..’ taken a brief for a new picture gallery for the Burrell Collection and set it in ‘..Simulation is an imperfect substitute for a variety of city centre sites in Glasgow. accounting the sensation of light, wind and The Glasgow setting allows our incoming heat on site..’ 5 exchange students (some of whom remain for the first semester only) an involvement Over the three years we have run this in a design project in the city they have project, we have given the groups of chosen to visit. It also sets the tone for an students a ‘collection’ consisting of some in depth urban study of a large city before of the tutor’s own student drawings visiting and studying a much smaller town and some design material from their with a very different scale of urbanity and office or their personal lives. Students architectural character. are then asked to curate, design, make, launch and document an exhibition ‘Left-brain, analytical thinking will of each collection in designated spaces eventually be converted to software done in the architecture building. The result 32

has been five simultaneous exhibitions created and launched at the end of the initial fortnight. Hands on Research ‘Work and play appear as opposites if play itself seems just an escape from reality. On the contrary, play teaches children how to be sociable and channels cognitive development; play instills obedience to rules but counters this discipline by allowing children to create and experiment with rules they obey. These capacities serve people lifelong once they go to work…’ 6 Students got the chance to get to know each other (most returning from their first year out in practice), as well as getting involved in a very direct way with issues that they would encounter as designers of an art gallery over the course of the semester. We hoped that the dynamic of brain-storming and decision making within a peer group on a range of related topics, would allow those issues to be explored collaboratively, socially and we hoped playfully. Making decisions about how to physically make an exhibition as well as developing critical judgements about a collection, would be easier in conversation rather than individually. Subsequently, the project asked them to perform roles as curators, designers, makers, users, collaborators and events organisers. By having to perform these roles themselves, we anticipated they would learn quicker and more powerfully what significance those roles held and as a consequence reach a point of understanding on those issues as architects. They could then compare the Suitcases opened and panels sorted in Eichstaett architect’s responsibility of getting under the skin of all these different professionals (usually by the tool of consultation) with • Organising/purchasing/borrowing, etc. their own experience of performing the material needed for installations roles of those professionals personally and reflecting on the results. Issues which the • Mounting exhibition project was designed to explore included: team working, curatorial control, user • Documenting process and making a involvement, exhibition design and small booklet (suggested format A5) of display, circulation, events management, both that process and the content and the use of light, and atmosphere. design of the exhibition Each team was asked to organise itself into roles covering the following tasks:

• Arranging opening event and publicising (an inter-group task)

• Collecting and storing safely exhibition material

A two week deadline for the opening of the exhibition was set at the project’s launch. Students immersed themselves in the activity with great enthusiasm, enjoying the collaborative, open-ended working process as well as seeing (and

• Design of individual display • Processing information

Upping the Ante We have run this same programme for three years and we consider it a success. All five groups have consistently displayed critical judgement in selecting and curating the collection material to be exhibited; there has been a lively mix of ideas about what the exhibition experience should made

being given the chance to crit) their tutors’ own student work giving them a glimpse of a hitherto-unknown architectural background. We were available to answer questions, but it was generally a tutorialfree project. After a fortnight, there was an opening reception to which the whole school was invited and the semester got off with a real bang.

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Panels erected in their German setting in less than one hour

be; there has been effective and goodhumoured team working within tight timescales; there has been an ambition to build something which has tactile and experiential quality and all groups have displayed an understanding about qualities of our own architecture building by the way their installations react with it. At the end of the fortnight, there is also a palpable sense of a ‘year identity’ and an awareness of that within the overall school. Last year we decided to up the ante. Instead of each collection containing material belonging to the tutors, we decided that the collection would consist of design projects from the previous year’s libraries set in Eichstaett. A further demand on the amended brief was that the students were asked to design an exhibition which they themselves would take to Eichsteatt in semester 2 and erect in a yet-to-beconfirmed venue. A modest budget of £250 was offered by the Department. No assumptions could therefore be made by them that it would be wall-hung or that the space would have daylight or indeed be a bone fide exhibition venue. Extract from the Brief • Your group is asked to design an exhibition which will travel with us to Eichstaett next February as part of our semester 2 field trip.

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• The actual destination of the exhibition is unknown, i.e. we do not know in which building it will be mounted. Therefore the exhibition must be selfsupporting and no assumptions about

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available walls or ceilings, etc can be made at this stage. • The exhibition material will consist of drawings and models.

of 1:50 sectional models (one per scheme) and an overall site model locating each scheme. • The exhibition should not incur any major expense but the convener will make available £250 total towards the project on delivery of any receipts.

• Any structures and models that are proposed require to be easily built/ demounted without specialist tools and be able to be checked in as normal Seven groups of ten students had one luggage on a flight. Drawings will need week to collect the Eichstaett library to be rolled or taken in portable portfolios. design material which was in either digital format or physical models and • The exhibition needs to be clear and propose an idea for how they would legible to a lay audience whose first design and construct the exhibition. language is German, not English. We held a review after one week to choose a ‘winner’ to be thereafter fully • The exhibition should use visual means developed and built by all the year in above all else to communicate any the following week. Each group made messages, i.e. the exhibition is the a verbal presentation of their mockmedium, not some further explanation up and were assessed under 7 separate of the exhibition. criteria headings by the tutorial team. These were: • As curators and designers you are asked to take the students’ drawings and 1. Quality of idea in relation to edit them so that they are exhibition exhibition content. –ready. It should be clear from the exhibition, what the guiding idea for 2. Craft and portability. each project is (i.e. tell the story of the scheme) and the qualities of detail and 3. Budget. craft should permeate the exhibition. Site, architectural concept and overall 4. Ability to communicate quality. design and detail should be clear for each scheme. 5. Group working. • One group will be responsible for locating each scheme within its context and setting the overall scene and will not be preparing one specific project. • The exhibition should consist of quality copies of the drawings as well as a series 34

6. Model 7.

‘X-Factor’.

Category 7 was included to allow some opportunity for the stroke of genius type of idea (which didn’t satisfy the

stated criteria but was nevertheless imaginative) a chance to get a look-in. Each category was marked out of 10. Out of a possible 70 total, the group totals were 40, 42, 42, 44, 46, 47, 48. Two groups presented similar ideas which we as tutors felt contained the greatest potential for delivering an imaginative yet professional-looking exhibition in an international setting. There was after all, an unwritten departmental marketing agenda to the brief as well! One group proposed a series of interlocking ply panels onto which were adhered drawings and models. A second group proposed laser-cut acrylic panels in a variety of colours which also accommodated both transparencies and models. It was decided that a combination of these two should be developed as the final exhibition that would travel with us in February to Eichstaett. We felt the acrylic panels had an immediate ‘wow’ factor, were sharp and professional-looking in a way that the ply was not. They were also easily and relatively cheaply made and transported. They were also made with tools that suggested contemporary craft and production and we felt this was a positive quality for the student work and the Department to be associated with. ‘..Today craftsmen receive little or no artistic training, but they have overtaken architects on the technical front. They possess a complete spectrum of technical possibilities, and it is now our responsibility to work with them to develop details which are affordable, which can be easily manufactured and which are aesthetically pleasing. That means we architects must also change our ideas: we are no longer concerned with details in the traditional sense; we need to develop a new kind of detailing together with craftsmen..’ 7

Panels resonate with Behnisch’s architecture

exhibition design received a mark that evening in the presence of the Head of Department.

Nothing more was done to the exhibition. Students thereafter busied themselves with the task of designing their gallery The next week saw the entire year project while simultaneously writing an complete the exhibition. The final 8000 word dissertation and attending structure consisted of 30 no. A3 other classes as the semester progressed. interlocking coloured acrylic sheets onto After several weeks’ display, it was flat which was either laser-cut drawings packed and kept in a safe place. In the of the library designs, coloured course of the next 4 months as the plans transparancies or magnetically-held for the forthcoming trip to Eichstaett sectional card models. The sheets were finalised, we received permission were fabricated with the help of the to mount the exhibition in the foyer of university’s Product Design workshop. the Zentralbibliothek in Eichstaett, the The exhibition was erected in less than I main university library designed by hour. At the end of that week (beginning Gunther Behnisch. The opportunity of of October), a very well attended staging their work in a building of such opening was launched with many proud architectural significance added a further students adding bartending to their level of excitement to the student cohort rapidly-growing armoury of skills. Each as they prepared for their trip.

Transporting the exhibition was arranged by flat-packing the panels in three normal sized suitcases which were checked in at the airport along with students’ other luggage. The panels were tightly packed with additional clothing as padding. We arrived in various groups in Eichstaett and as students had handed in their 8000 word dissertations the previous day in Glasgow, they proceeded to take full advantage of their sudden release and the offer of cut-price cocktails in a neighbouring bar. However, despite the evening’s festivities, every single student was up for breakfast the next day and the entire cohort was present in the Zentralbibliothek as the suitcases were opened and the exhibition erected. Some panels suffered minor cracking in made

Displays, designs, suitcases and shortbread

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their stay progressed, this project turned them into ‘performers’- a group which arrived on day one and ‘delivered’. The town was theirs! Despite its modest size and short timescale, the project managed to kick start two significant design projects in the year; the picture gallery in semester one and the library in semester two. Conclusion Why has this project produced such good results in such a short time? As a short group project coming at the beginning of a semester, it no doubt capitalises on incoming students’ enthusiasm and need for a certain amount of social contact. It may also build on some skills that students have recently acquired (e.g. collaborative working in professional offices, taking initiatives, etc). It may be also that the simple fact of being left alone to get on with it, with only the briefest words of encouragement and support brings out the best in them for that short period. It may be that the absence of significant critical discussions allows them to ‘run with things’ in an enthusiastic ‘let’s-do-the –show-righthere’ kind of a way. I deliberately tell them that nobody has failed this project so far and wonder if that releases a certain inhibition and lets the ideas flow ‘..allowing students to make mistakes without penalty and rewarding effort..’. 8

...deconstructed, translucent…

transit but otherwise, the transportation was a success.

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Within an hour, the panels were up, cleaned and a table of publicity leaflets, shortbread and other Scottish delicacies set out for visitors to sample. The exhibition was then formally opened by the Director of the Library with great enthusiasm and students were invited to all sign the guest book. Students were radiant when they saw how the exhibition sat in the library foyer. The translucent coloured acrylic made a wonderful compliment to Behnisch’s top lit space, itself full of angular, overlapping planes, some opaque, some glass, some delicately coloured. Students were astonished just how at home it looked standing free among Behnisch’s surfaces. Given that this was a design project with ‘no context’

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The project is small enough that no big risk is being taken by staff by making such a claim. In schools of architecture, to react to, students were surprised to we debate and critique students’ work so see how ‘contextual’ their design turned much and so relentlessly there is a serious out to be. The quality of the exhibition question to be asked about how much structure seemed to be magnified by students’ creativity is in fact inhibited being set within Behnisch’s architecture. rather than fired up by our tutorials and design reviews. This small event on day one in a completely new town, gave the students In any event, a huge amount of work is a real sense of confidence and purpose carried out in that short period which for the remaining week. One sensed a students feel proud of. In short, they get bit of ‘we’ve arrived and made our mark’ to show off to the Department at the about their mood and although they beginning of the semester and, like their had walked just twenty minutes from sense of ownership of Eichstaett within hostel to library and did not know the hours of their arrival, the message at town at all, there was a palpable sense of the beginning of the semester is, ‘this is ownership of this small Baroque enclave. going to be a fun year and look at what It was almost like students had anxiously we can produce!’ We see this project as brought a house-warming gift to the an interesting model capable of further town only to discover that it ‘fitted’ in development. This year, we have set the a beautiful and totally unexpected way. library project in Monte Carasso and are Instead of them remaining like tourists studying the work of Luigi Snozzi. We who would become better informed as hope a similar exhibition ice breaker 36

…and utterly memorable.

project will result in students exhibiting their work in this part of Ticino. For the last three successive years, one of the 4th year students has won the Royal Scottish Academy architecture prize for the best architectural project at a Part 2 level in Scotland. Given that they are competing with 4th and 5th year students from all six Scottish schools of architecture, this is a considerable achievement. Each of the students has won the prize with their design for a picture gallery for The Burrell Collection (the ‘To Display’ project in semester 1). Whether this modest, two week ‘ice-breaker’ project has had a fundamental influence on that run of success is impossible to ascertain. What is clear however, is that a combination of

factors releases energy and creativity in students for a short period of time and the quality of the results is high. Clear also is the lasting influence this small project

has had on both the students’ subsequent studio work, their own confidence and on the atmosphere in the design studio for the year.

1 J. Moloney, ‘Studio based research in architecture: the legacy and new horizons offered by digital technology’ Working Papers in Art and Design, 1,(2000) <http:// www.herts.ac.uk/artdes/research/papers/wpades/vol1/ moloney2.html> ISSN 146-4917. 2 Warren Houghton, Engineering Subject Centre Guide: learning and Teaching for Engineering Academics. (Loughborough: HEA Engineering Subject Centre, 2004) 3 C. Platt, ‘Studying and the Dying Art of Wasting Time’, ‘ICAE 2007’ Conference Proceedings, (Beijing: 2007) 4 Daniel H. Pink, A Whole New Mind; Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age, (Riverhead, 2005). 5 Richard Sennet, The Craftsman, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008) pp 41- 43.

6 Richard Sennet, The Craftsman, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008) p. 269. 7 KJ Schattner in conversation 1994, ‘New Into Old’ Exhibition leaflet. 8 Encouraged by Teachers, compiled by Biggs (1999), Entwhistle (1988) and Ramsden (1992).

Tutorial team: Christopher Platt Michael Angus Stacey Philips Chris Malcolm Karen Nugent Kirsty Lees

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All Illustrations © University of Strathclyde.

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Jujitsu Urbanism David Kohn The academic Peter Carl, in a recent article about the work of David Kohn Architects, described our approach to the city as a ‘species of architectural jujitsu, whereby subtle interventions activate the rich thematics and history of a site’.1 Enjoying the analogy, I have taken the opportunity to expand upon its possible implications for a contemporary urban practice. Martial arts employ two groups of techniques, the hard and the soft. Hard techniques involve striking an opponent head-on with maximum force and are improved by physical strength and conditioning. Hard responses to hard attacks involve blocks and diagonal cuts across the path of the oncoming assault. Soft techniques, on the other hand, are concerned with harnessing and redirecting the energy of an opponent to both disarm and attack and require flexibility and skill. Jujitsu, amongst all of the martial arts, elevates softness (Ju) to the level of an art (Jitsu). For its adherents, Jujitsu is seen as superior to all hard techniques because of a familiar philosophical inversion – the greatest hardness can only be achieved through its opposite. “The word flexible never means weakness but something more akin to adaptability and open-mindedness. Gentleness always overcomes strength.” Rather than an expectation of ever increasing levels of energy to overcome a given situation, Jujitsu requires a willingness to redirect energy and to therefore invent a response that will fit the form of the attack. In a 21st century mature city like London, urbanity is the existing condition. Vast amounts of energy have been expended over centuries to create the dense structures in which the city’s inhabitants go about their daily business. In this context, 19th century railway lines represent an extreme of hard technique. Cutting across streets, squares, parks and rivers they achieve their goal with brutal muscularity. The problem of mass

access into the hearts of dense populations was realised with a violence that 150 years on, there is neither the political nor the economic appetite to match. Jujitsu Urbanism might describe a 21st century approach to contending with the potential energy of the contemporary city. Rather than meeting problems of migration, densification, contraction, transportation and poverty with the kinetic energy of wrecking balls, piling, formwork and heavy lifting, an art of gentle energy redeployment could be adopted. The strength of the Jujitsu analogy lies precisely in its violent origins. Too often in urban debates any notion of subtlety, flexibility, or adaptability of technique, is perceived as ultimately weak, confirmation of the Victorians’ greatness alongside our relative lack of backbone, and ultimately an acquiescence to the inevitable decline of cities. Jujitsu Urbanism on the other hand, having been informed by centuries of Samurai warriors, is battleproven to defeat head-on onslaughts. Principle of Leverage In April 2008 our practice completed its first built project, a new gallery for Stuart Shave Modern Art. The site was the ground floor of a 1950’s office building six stories tall, concrete frame, brick infill, strip windows - an essay in utilitarian and anonymous post-war construction. The pleasures of the architecture were however limited to a contemplation of the structure’s rigorous economy and simple plan. In contrast, the ground floor street frontage could only be described as mean. The wide brick-clad columns of the upper floors resolved themselves in narrow concrete posts, the shopfront was set back from the street and up two steps the width of the building, while the entrance to the floors above was to one side and read more like a fire exit than entrance. In order to give the ground floor gallery a significant presence on the street we

Pushing Hands [Sun, Lu-Tang] (left) and student pushing hands, Shanghai’, circa 1930, uncredited. Sourced from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pushing_hands.jpg, 21 August 2009.

Principle of Balance In July 2008 we were invited to participate in the Kings Cross Charrette, a one day urban design workshop. The brief was to prepare a ‘mini-masterplan’ for an area behind the Kings Cross Central development currently being realised by developer Argent. We read the site as a disparate array of urban fragments, social housing, warehouses, car-breakers yards, each brought about by different marginal economies over decades. In order to bring the area into greater and more pleasurable use it would first need to be more readily legible as a piece of the city. Our response therefore was to identify those fragments that gave the area its clearest sense of character and then to pair them up: open ground either side of the canal, tree-lined avenues to the north and south of the site, doubling the density of light industrial uses at the centre of the site. Pairing, mirroring and dividing are processes that make both parts and wholes legible simultaneously and could therefore exponentially increase the relationship between urbanites and their surroundings bringing about a coherence and balance the area sorely needed. These principles underlie a desire to find continuity in the city by layering, extending, reconfiguring what is already there. The city worked upon by a jujitsu urbanist remains legible even while it changes so that the possibility of multiple interpretations and contradictions can grow exponentially. 1 Peter Carl, ‘David Kohn’s ‘Hedgehog and the Fox’ lecture and exhibition at the London Met’, The Architects Journal, 10, 229, (19 March 2009), p.48-49

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decided to co-opt the whole building façade in the service of our project. Where the shopfront had been recessed it was now brought flush with the street; where the brick-clad piers narrowed, they were now widened to create a strong base; in contrast to the poor post-war stock bricks we clad the columns in grey clay engineering bricks. Through these modest measures the ground floor gallery was given pride of place in the building, and the building gained in stature on the street.

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The Discipline of Digital Design: Ubiquity, Parameterization, and Tectonics Wassim Jabi This paper posits that a discipline of digital design requires further definition and refinement. Furthermore, it asserts that this can be effectively achieved through a focus on three themes consisting of: 1) Ubiquity, 2) Parameterization, and 3) Tectonics. In simpler terms, it is suggested that a discipline of digital design should concern itself with people, rules, and things. Designers (people) create and follow design methods (rules) that affect the processes of creating design artifacts (things). These three themes are explained and illustrated with examples. Through a clarification of these processes, as they are followed using digital tools, it is hoped that architects and designers can better communicate what they do to their colleagues, students, and those in other disciplines so that they can engage in interdisciplinary research and professional practice more effectively. Introduction Architects and designers are rarely able to explain their processes in a manner easily understood by others. The advent of digital tools and the use of complex algorithmic and computational techniques have served to further mystify the design process to those not intimately involved in it. Yet, the discipline and practice of creative design is increasingly seen as a valuable cognitive skill, to be emulated, tapped, and understood by other disciplines in various settings. Fields outside of architecture and governmental granting agencies have shown strong interest in understanding, rationalising and importing the creative design process that architects engage in. The aim of this paper is to advocate the definition a discipline of collaborative digital design with clear conceptual frameworks, methodologies, and epistemologies. The long-term goal is to formulate a discipline of digital design based on sound theoretical and pragmatic underpinnings, and to clarify the processes of digital design so that architects and designers can better communicate them to their colleagues,

students, and those in other disciplines so that they can engage in interdisciplinary research more effectively. I posit that a discipline of digital design requires further definition and refinement; this can be achieved through a focus on three themes consisting of: 1) Ubiquity, 2) Parameterization, and 3) Tectonics. In simpler terms, I suggest that a discipline of digital design should concern itself with people, rules, and things. These three themes will be explained below and illustrated with examples. Ubiquity and Casual Interactions Architects frequently understand and experience design and creativity as a personal and lonely activity. However, there is, increasingly, a need to collaborate with others in the design and construction of buildings and to have ubiquitous access to and sharing of design information. Digital technology has become intricately intertwined with the creative and social aspects of the emerging practice world. A prime example is the use of building information models and digital fabrication technology to directly transfer information among architects, consultants, contractors, and fabricators. Thus, the first foundation, ubiquity, refers to the fact that digital information is rapidly becoming embedded in our daily lives. It enables collaborative interactions and design actions that can take place at any time and at any place. Collaboration starts with simple casual interactions such as asking a question. It develops further within an organisation through intra-disciplinary work – such as a team of architects and designers working together on a project. For larger and more complex projects, we often witness inter-disciplinary collaborative and coordinative processes among individuals with various backgrounds and training. Especially in the field of architecture and urban design, we also witness the users of and stakeholders in these projects get involved in what is usually called

participatory design. Ron Wakkary, for example, has emphasised this aspect in his research by using the term everyday designers.1 He argues that all of us contain innate design abilities that allow us to participate collaboratively in the formation of a project that affects our daily lives. Ubiquity enables synchronous and asynchronous collaboration. It can take place in the same location (co-located) or at different locations (dispersed) – aided by real-time communication technologies and persistent databases. The physical, ergonomic, and social settings of collaborative work have a direct relationship to the type of work being done. Lastly, in a collaborative process, it is useful to analyse the individuals/players involved, the tasks they perform, and the artifacts they produce and study. One of the failures of previous collaborative systems is their preoccupation with formalising the process of collaboration that designers use. A more recent development, triggered by the proliferation of internetconnected smart devices and social networking software, is the emphasis on the role of casual interaction in creative processes. The literature on the subject is limited. In the discipline of design, casual interactions have been observed to help designers solve problems collaboratively.2 However, few researchers have experimented with the use of lightweight and informal interaction encouraged by location-aware social matching systems and interactive public displays. Researchers from MIT have used group, location and event information to bridge online and offline activities of learning groups.3 They developed a system titled StudioBRIDGE based on Instant Messaging to help students initiate online and offline interactions by allowing them to be aware of nearby people, groups, and community events. Interestingly StudioBRIDGE was tested in MIT’s Architecture Department using students working in open studio spaces. Yee and Park report that while this was only a

Left: Figure 1. A student’s digital construction illustrating the combination of physical and digital tectonics. made

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“pilot study with a small number of users” 75% of the students felt more connected to other people using the system and that 80% of the students indicated that they had, or anticipated having online conversations with someone they have frequent face-to-face conversations with. Elizabeth Churchill reports on the use of plasma posters designed to facilitate informal content sharing and provide guidelines on their design and deployment such as: i) Participatory design, ownership, ii) Low effort to use, fit with existing practice, iii) Means not ends, iv) Maintain infrequently used functionality, v) Continuity of service, vi) Simplicity of form and function, clear identity, vii) social (Inter)faces, viii) Neutral digital spaces, and ix) Synergestic (networked) displays.4 I, with colleagues from various departments, have explored how computing science design studios supported by ubiquitous social computing cyberinfrastructure can enable in- and out-of-studio learning and interaction and that can be used to better prepare the next generation of computer scientists and technology designers.5 We developed a poster kiosk application that aims to support freeform annotation of freeform content (Figure 2). The strategy we have adopted is to allow designers to submit posters as HTML web pages with minimal restrictions on their structure or layout. A poster may contain live links to multiple pages of content as well as embedded interactive media such as video

clips, Flash animations, QuickTime VR panoramas, or VRML models. When a passerby chooses to annotate a poster with feedback, the application captures a bitmap “snapshot” of its current state and uses that as the background of a “digital ink” canvas upon which the user can fingerpaint. When the feedback is complete, the application e-mails the inked-over bitmap to the designer. The interactive poster kiosk attracted significant and generally useful design feedback during its deployment. Passersby initially showed some hesitancy in interacting with it. Once they understood its purpose and operation, they were attracted by the novelty of the system perhaps as much as by the posters themselves. Future development will allow users to view and annotate posters displayed on their own portable smart devices thus becoming even more ubiquitous. The goal of such ubiquitous systems is to allow designers to conduct their work anywhere and anytime thus releasing the design activity from the spatial and temporal constraints of the design studio. Parameterization The second foundation, parametrization, concerns itself with the rules governing design processes and products. While traditional CAD software used to emphasise the description of a proposed artifact, parametric systems describe the geometric and structural parameters and their inter-association. A useful analogy is to think of traditional CAD systems as

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Figure 2. An Interactive Poster Kiosk.

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if they are a food critic’s description of a recipe he or she has tasted. The description is as good as the person writing it and does not tell you how to cook that particular recipe. Parametric design systems are similar to cook books that explain how to prepare a certain plate of food and even adapt it to more than one situation (such as a larger number of portions, or compliance with a low-salt diet). A parametric system, much similar to a recipe, allows you to communicate the rules to others and construct an associative system that maintains its internal logic as new input parameters are specified. Starting from George Stiny’s Shape Grammars research and evolving through the newly found interest in parametric design and generative algorithmic processes, parameterization is increasingly becoming not only a method, but a design philosophy. A parametric understanding of the design problem has opened the possibility of investigating the deeper conceptual as well as tectonic structures of design proposals and has offered users and clients a realm of possibilities rather than a dictated solution. The field of parameterization has also allowed researchers to re-visit and discover the geometries of previously built works and more rigorously understand their design and construction rules. As part of a design studio that I conducted, students Damian Wentzel and Frank Mascoli used Bentley’s Generative Components to construct a fully parametric model that constituted their design proposal for a system of covered pathways that they termed GC Connective Tissue. They started with connecting the main entrances of building on the site and creating a mesh of connected lines (Figure 3). Next, they allowed the building corners to exert a distortion force on the lines thus repelling and diverting them. After that, the students built a parametric model that ensured a 1:12 inclination for ramps that were needed to bridge over roads and other obstacles (Figure 4). Given that the system was completely parametric, any design changes made to the location of the pathways and ramps maintained the specified 1:12 inclination ration (Figure 5). Finally, the students built the cover for the system parametrically as well by specifying larger openings for areas that needed to admit more sun (Figure 6). As the surface developed and shifted, the apertures in it would vary and open more or less depending on their new location.

Figure 3. Connecting all building entrances.

Figure 4. Parameterized significant locations. made

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Figure 5. Basic design structure.

Digital Tectonics

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Several researchers, educators and architects have converged on the term digital tectonics to symbolise the poetics of digitally conceived, structurally and materially clarified and directly manufactured architecture.6 The shift to digital tectonics is a direct result of the ubiquity of digital tools. Until recently, those who were experts in the use of digital tools were not always the most innovative architects. Similarly, architects resisted the use of digital tools because they could not see its potential. Instead, they only saw either the experimental and sometimes awkward images of simulated spaces or the overly photo-realistic renderings of commercial and non-imaginative architecture. The shift to digital tectonics took place once students trained in the use of digital tools graduated and established their architectural firms. In an interview with George Rand at UCLA.7 Greg Lynn puts it this way: “The problem is

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that the technology has built-in biases. It often prevents the designer from asking the right kinds of questions … very little attention has been paid to the technical, economic, and cultural transformations of the creative process. Mine is the first generation to treat digital techniques as a given medium in a manner that transcends any builtin cultural paradigm.” In reflecting on the shift caused by digital tools and computer-controlled cutting machines, he replies: “We now work in digital environments where dimensions are no longer sacred. In the past it was critical to work with whole and prime numbers to avoid the complexity of fractions. With new design and building techniques like robotic cutting machines and welders, we have been released from the constraints of ‘numerical purity’ and are free to design based on rhythmic patterns.” (Figure 7). Branko Kolarevic also echoes the sentiment of being released from old constraints when he writes: “The predictable relationships 44

between the design and representations are abandoned … The topological, curvilinear geometries are produced with the same ease as Euclidean geometries of planar shapes and cylindrical, spherical, or conical forms.”8 Yet, Kolarevic’s thinking about this issue evolves into an emphasis on the translation process: “It is this newfound ability to generate construction information directly from design information, and not the complex curving forms, that defines the most profound aspect of much of the (sic) contemporary architecture.”9 Thus, one can see how the shift to digital tectonics is a direct result of the fusion of the architect and the CAD expert. It is not until the architects’ level of comfort and expertise with the tools reached a critical threshold that digital environments and methods became a natural medium for the conception and manufacture of architecture and allowed for a letting go of old methods of design and a freedom to explore new ways of exploring form, space, and structure.

Figure 6. Parameterized roof-scape.

Figure 7. A computer study for the Embryological Housing, Greg Lynn. made

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Figure 8. A studentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s physical construction illustrating an interest in assembly, materiality, opacity and connection.

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Figure 9. The digital manufacturing design process: Scanning, rationalizing, and manufacturing.

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To investigate the area of digital tectonics, I conducted a series of digital/ analog workshops in an academic course setting with approximately fifteen students. Students were asked to construct and collaboratively inter-connect physical objects (cubes) without the aid of computers (Figure 8). Then, they were asked to re-create the same artifact using 3D modeling software, incorporate a new virtual component to it that is not meant to be manufactured, and transform the resulting composition into an interactive and dynamic virtual reality world (Figure 1). Again, the virtual composition was to contain virtual connections to the constructions of other students. The interfaces and linkages were collaboratively decided upon in a peer-to-peer fashion. The resulting physical cubes illustrate an interest in geometry, assemblies of material, opacity, and connections. The cubes varied in fit and trim quality due to the varying degrees of student skills and familiarity with the chosen material. The second project asked the students to find a household or similar object that is the. They were then asked to

This material is based in part upon work supported by the National Science Foundation IIS-ITR CreativeIT Division. Grant Number 0714158. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Portions of this paper have appeared in previous publications by the author. 1 R. Wakkary. and L. Maestri, ‘The Resourcefulness of Everyday Design’, Creativity and Cognition, (Washington, D.C. 2007), 163-172. 2 Wassim Jabi, ‘An Outline of the Requirements for a Computer-Supported Collaborative Design System’, Open House International, 21[1], (March 1996), 22-30. B. Lawson, How Designers Think. (London: Architectural Press, 1980). 3 S. Yee and K. S. Park, ‘StudioBRIDGE: Using group, location, and event information to bridge online and offline encounters for co-located learning groups’, Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors

choose a portion of the object that they find intriguing and look for repetition, pattern, and rhythm. Next, they were asked to invent a method to scan this object or trace its dimensions, create a 3D model of the object, and re-interpret this object as a rhythmic entity that can be understood as architecture. Finally, they were asked to rationalise the 3D object through segmentation, triangulation, slicing or other similar processes, subdivide the object into multiple 2D surfaces that can later be re-assembled, and use the laser cutter to cut those surfaces (Figure 9).

Conclusions

The use of a laser cutter allowed students to rationalise and segment their design into flattened components that needed to be assembled. The use of the laser cutter brought forth the possibility of exploring a digital tectonic: the poetics of digitally conceived, structurally clarified and directly manufactured architecture. The process illustrated how digital tectonics challenge architects to explore new ways of conceiving, analysing, and manufacturing structures that remain true to the tectonic tradition while addressing the shifts in culture and media towards the digital.

This paper posited that a discipline of digital design requires further definition and refinement. Furthermore, it asserted that this definition can be effectively achieved through a focus on three themes consisting of: 1) Ubiquity, 2) Parameterization, and 3) Tectonics. In simpler terms, with people, rules, and things. Designers want to design in various settings and at any time. Ubiquitous technologies such as smart devices, sensors and context-aware displays are paving the way for that ability. Designers also want to specify, with rigor, the rules governing their designs. Parametric systems allow them to create associations among parameters and rules that maintain the internal consistency and logic of their designed artifacts. Finally, designers come from a tradition of materiality and construction. Digital manufacturing technologies allow them to maintain the focus on constructability and tectonics. Through a clarification of these processes, as they are followed using digital tools, architects and designers can better communicate what they do to their colleagues, students, and those in other disciplines so that they can engage in interdisciplinary research and professional practice more effectively.

In Computing Systems, (New York: ACM Press 2005), 551-560. 4 E. F. Churchill, L. Nelson, L. Denoue, J. Helfman, and P. Murphy, ‘Sharing Multimedia Content with Interactive Public Displays: A Case study’, Proceedings of the 2004 conference on Designing interactive systems: processes, practices, methods, and techniques. (New York: ACM Press, 2004), 7-16. 5 Theodore W Hall, W. Jabi; K. Passerini, C. Borcea, Q. Jones, ‘An Interactive Poster System to Solicit Casual Design Feedback’, Proceedings of the 28th Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA), (Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA 16-19 October 2008), 438-445. Wassim Jabi, Theodore W. Hall, ‘An Interactive Poster Kiosk for Public Engagement in Cultural Heritage Displays’ in VSMM 2008: Digital Heritage. 14th International Conference on Virtual Systems and Multimedia, Limassol, Cyprus, ed. by M. Ioannides, A. Addison, A. Georgopoulos, L. Kalisperis, (Budapest, Hungary: Archaeolingua, 2008), 287-291.

6 P. Beesley and T. Seebohm, ‘Digital Tectonic Design. In Promise and Reality: State of the art versus state of practice in computing for the design and planning process’, Proceedings of the 18th eCAADe Conference, (Weimar, Germany, 22-24 June 2000), 287 – 290. Digital Tectonics, ed. By N. Leach, D. Turnbull and C. Williams. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Academy Press 2004). 7 G. Rand. ‘Architecture: Three Views’, Los Angeles: University of California <http://www.arts.ucla.edu/ press/2000winter/arch_three.htm>, [accessed 21 June 2000]. 8 B. Kolarevic, ‘Digital Fabrication: Manufacturing Architecture in the Information Age’, Reinventing the Discourse Proceedings of the 21st Annual Conference of the Association for Computer-Aided Design in Architecture, (Buffalo, New York 2001), 268-278. 9 B. Kolarevic,. ‘Digital Fabrication: From Digital to Material’, Connecting Crossroads of Digital Discourse, Proceedings of the 2003 Annual Conference of the Association for Computer-Aided Design in Architecture, (Indianapolis, Indiana, 2003) 54-55.

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Cultivating a Sustainable Generation – A New Approach to School Design in Wales Chris Wilkins In the autumn of 2007 the Royal Society of Architects in Wales and the Welsh Assembly Government held a competition seeking an exemplary design for an archetypal primary school in Wales. The brief set a challenging demand for both functional excellence and a strong sustainable ethos, a response to a level of Government investment into our school’s building stock not seen since the benevolence of the Victorian era or post war developments. Aside from the usual exhaustive spatial requirements of housing 360 pupils from nursery to age eleven, competitors were asked to respond to the Welsh Assembly Government’s demand for zero-carbon development by 2011. Proposals were to be replicable throughout Wales yet offer a design applicable to the particular site, located on the outskirts of Williamstown – a small community located in the Rhondda valley. Our first reaction to the ‘sustainable’ intention objective word was to deviate from the current accepted response of imposing ‘high-technologies’ onto a design. TheOur proposal presents an ideal situation whereby the users are ‘educated’ to live in a more environmentally sound manner with passive techniques and design. Instilling this ethic in the children from an early age allows sustainable living to infuse everyday life rather than becoming an additional unwelcome chore. ationwereSelfsufficiency provides a perfectly playful way to encourage children and community into the ethics of sustainability. Children wouldwill be introduced to the origins of their food, to see and be involved with how it is produced by means of small areas designed for the children to rear their own animals and grow their own produce. Local farmers, smallholders and allotment owners will be encouraged to work with the school and community assisting in the up-keep of the landscape. The proposal works with the existing topography and ecology and vegetation on site. Hard landscaping is kept to a minimum to reduce surface run-off and the impact on the existing habitats. A natural woodland buffer is preserved on

the boundary with the main road. An solution suggested in the brief. We suggest attitude of impermanence is adopted that every design for any given site should be towards the built fabric – an acceptance inextricably linked to the conditions present, of change. Lightweight structures can be but all designs would be approached with altered and adapted to differing priorities the same ethos. Clustered along timber over time. Material choices are local or walkways, each classroom would have a vernacular – stone, timber, corrugated steel porch for pupils to store their belongings, – and designed to weather, wear and mellow. a monitor of energy consumption and its own allotment patch. The glazed porch The spatial morphology is a hilltop town would be a rough and ready kind of place – a self contained community. At the – wellies allowed – where seedlings can be northeast extremity, the entrance is within planted and nurtured. Harvested goods a close clustering of buildings housing are stored or preserved in the produce barn reception, administration spaces and staff to, or used in the school kitchen where accommodation. Weighty in character, pupils can be involved in the production the cluster offers the perception of a secure of school meals. Thus children follow the threshold to breach for unwelcome visitors process from sowing to dealing with the and commands views over the entrance and by-products of the growing, cooking and to the rest of the site. Beyond these ‘town eating process. Elsewhere on site two biogates’ timber walkways traverse the site. gas silos generate electricity for the school Wellington boots will be the footwear of using organic waste from the school, the choice – even through a Welsh summer. The local community and surrounding farms. main thoroughfare across the site roughly Following decomposition the waste is follows the path of an existing stream – a returned to the allotments as a natural natural course to follow. The social heart fertiliser. Rainwater is harvested from the of the initiative for both the schoolchildren roofs of the school buildings and used in and the community is the ‘town square’ the lavatories and on the allotments. located in the natural enclosure offered by the slope to the West and surrounded by As childhood accelerates, we encourage a the dining hall, kitchens and the assembly return to playfulness. To put our collective hall to the North, East and South. During dreams of tree-houses to good use, reading the school day the square is the centre of rooms are hidden amongst the tree canopy, formal social activities for the children; scaled to fit children – – not teachers – – out of hours it becomes the focus for the and are accessed by an improbably steep community with access to common space. and seemingly dangerous timber ladder. Rooms can be rented out by community Intending to satisfy both the need for groups for local theatre, music events or the adventure that children have and act as a weekly farmers market. sanctuary amongst the trees, the reading rooms would appear as small satellites Classrooms are spread across the highest around the larger library building. parts of the site, maximimising solar gains and benefiting from the views offered by We considered it important for each cohort the hillside location. In a breezy valley to have a spaces which they could appropriate location, a natural ventilation strategy and take ownership of, thus giving children ensures fresh airflow through teaching pride in their built environment. As we spaces. The ‘bell tower’ to the North side enter a new era of parsimony, rebuilding of the classrooms will draw air through a more frugal attitude to resource use from the south facing porch. The bell tower and waste will hopefully result in greater also provides a secondary, more intimate environmental sustainability and economic teaching space and retreat for children. prudence in future. Our approach to site was one of specificity rather than a generic ‘one-size-fits-all’

Henshaw,

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Competition entry designed by Philip Rob Thomas, Gareth Roach and Chris Wilkins.

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Occupant Interactions with Low Energy Architecture: Exploring Usability Issues Chris Tweed Introduction

The development of the computing industry in the 1990s suggests a move away from the “stupid user” attitude— which attributes all system failures to the ignorance of users2 —towards recognising the validity of multiple, different perspectives on technology.3 Users are viewed less as passive recipients who should instantly adjust their lives to follow the dictates of the new technology and more like active individuals with legitimate goals, aspirations, needs and emotions. As in product design and computing, it is no longer acceptable to place all of the blame for malfunction on users. The example of a contemporary approach to washing ‘efficiency’ shown in Figure 1 reminds us that system designers can get it wrong too. So, it is misleading to blame occupants for all failures in the energy performance of buildings if the interface between people and buildings, and the systems they contain, has been poorly conceived and executed. Furthermore, meanings of designed artefacts also depends on their physical, temporal, geospatial and social contexts. Many user activities only make sense against the backdrop of specific situations.

Dwellings are becoming more complicated as designers seek to cut heat losses through the building envelope, wring the last drop of efficiency out of the heating system and eliminate unintended air flow between outside and inside. However, advances in technical design on their own do not guarantee reductions in energy consumption or carbon dioxide emissions resulting from the operation of the building. To achieve a high level of performance, occupants will need to operate buildings in very specific ways. Future homes, therefore, may be less like machines for living in, and more like complex systems of interconnected equipment that place significant cognitive, physical and psychological demands on those who inhabit them. Adapting to low carbon technologies will require changes to existing practices, new skills, and will offer new experiences— both good and bad—that will influence or even determine their adoption by users. The purpose of this paper is to consider how designers of low carbon buildings can increase their understanding of how occupants might interact with these buildings. The paper will draw parallels The paper has three main objectives: with the co-evolution of technology and users in the computing industry during • To review the advances in technical systems developed to reduce carbon the 1980s and examine the changing dioxide emissions in dwellings. attitudes to ‘the user’ and the methods developed through usability studies to offer a better interactive experience. In • To briefly review previous studies of people’s interaction with energy fact, a description of the relations between systems in dwellings. designers, the computers they produce and the users who use them would not look out of place in a discussion about • To summarise some methods and models emerging from usability architects, buildings and occupants: studies that might fruitfully be applied to architecture “… insiders know the machine, whereas users have a configured relationship to it, such that only certain forms of access/use The paper begins by considering new are encouraged. This never guarantees that technologies that are being installed in some users will not find unexpected and low carbon and Passivhaus designs in uninvited uses for the machine. But such the UK. This is followed by a discussion behaviour will be categorised as bizarre, of some issues emerging from previous studies of occupants’ interaction with foreign, perhaps typical of mere users.”1

heating systems and controls. The paper then shifts its attention to usability studies and a discussion of some concepts that have been used to characterise and explain users’ interactions with devices and computer systems. Finally, the paper introduces the concept of affordance and argues that it can help us understand how to design dwellings and systems that will achieve a better fit between occupants’ comfort goals and carbon emissions reduction targets. The technology of low carbon buildings Global, European and national targets have established ambitious timescales for reducing carbon dioxide emissions resulting from the operation of buildings. To meet these there are essentially two broad strategies: either decarbonise the energy supply; or reduce the demand for energy to the point where it is negligible or capable of being met by current carbon neutral technologies. Built environment professionals are focusing on the latter, seeking to design buildings that minimise energy demands for heating, cooling, lighting and power by preventing unwanted heat losses (and summer heat gains) through high levels of insulation, low ventilation rates and heat recovery. Existing approaches, however, have tended to treat the problem of reducing demand in buildings as a straightforward engineering exercise with well-defined inputs and outputs. The resulting designs, however, in seeking to advertise their green credentials may be far removed from what is familiar to many people, as shown in Figure 2. The German Passivhaus standard is emerging as a popular standard for new low energy buildings and is attracting much interest in the UK and elsewhere. While Passivhaus is, strictly speaking, not necessarily a low carbon standard—it is oblivious to the source of the energy it requires—it is seen as a fruitful starting

Left: Figure 1: automatic for the people? On/off and temperature control has been removed from users, so that a simple tap now needs warnings made

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Figure 2: The Stewart Milne Group’s Sigma Home at the BRE Innovation Park, Garston—low energy design introduces new appearances and ways of operating a home.

As noted above, there is a further requirement: the peak heating demand must not exceed 10 W/m 2 if the temperature of the incoming air is to kept below a practical maximum of 40°C.To meet these requirements, a building typically must achieve wall U-values of 0.15 W/m 2 K or lower. Window U-values will normally be less than 0.8 W/m 2 K, although there is some evidence to suggest that this figure may be relaxed upwards in milder climates.4 With this level of super-insulation, is safe to say the high temperature, point heat source which has been part of domestic interiors for many years is likely to disappear in the Passivhaus dwelling as it would always supply too • the total energy demand for space much heat. More critically for this heating and cooling should be less discussion, the building must achieve than 15 kWh/m2/yr of treated floor high levels of air tightness and rely area; and on controlled mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR). Whilst • the total primary energy use for all technically desirable, the absence of appliances, domestic hot water and ‘unwanted’ air leakage around openings, space heating and cooling should be as indicated in Figure 3, will represent a less than 120 kWh/m2/yr new experience for many occupants and

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point for low carbon design, on the assumption that a suitably decarbonised energy supply can be found to meet the residual energy demand. Passivhaus is interesting because it is derived from the fundamental principle that it should be possible to meet the heating requirement from the air required to satisfy fresh air requirements alone. The incoming air, therefore, is heated to the temperature needed to meet the demand, which places an upper limit on the peak heating load, since there is a practical maximum temperature for the incoming air, for comfort and safety reasons. More formally, Passivhaus establishes two main requirements:

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will require adjustment. The Passivhaus standard is roughly equivalent to the energy requirements of Level 4 of the Code for Sustainable Homes. Levels 5 (zero energy for heating, cooling, and lighting) and 6 (like 5 but including zero energy for appliances) are likely to require even greater sophistication. On paper, these measures are unremarkable, but they suggest quite a different thermal environment for the home, introducing significant technological perturbations to existing systems and practices for achieving thermal comfort. These changes are also likely to impinge on other aspects of life in the home. Unfortunately, the everyday operation of these systems is rarely considered, mainly because those who advocate their use are ‘converts’ who have the expertise, skills and motivation to operate them to achieve optimal energy performance. However, there is strong evidence to suggest that the interpretation of even such simple devices as the room thermostat is not obvious, as we shall see in the following section.

Occupant interactions with energy systems in dwellings Interest in how people use buildings, and especially how that correlates with energy consumption, is growing. Until recently, studies of buildings in use were rare and, when they have been carried out, they are often a form of post-occupancy evaluation, which rarely aims to inform future design. Longitudinal studies carried out over years, months or even a complete heating season are less common. However, there are a few important studies that lay the groundwork for more detailed investigation. The Abertridwr monitoring project The Welsh School of Architecture carried out one of the earliest detailed studies of occupant behaviour and energy consumption in the early 1980s.5 Although others had carried out detailed physical monitoring of unoccupied buildings, this three-year study of 39 houses in Abertridwr, South Wales, combined social and physical monitoring and paid careful attention to the impact that occupant behaviour had on internal environmental conditions and energy consumption. In a paper based on analysis of how people actively pursue thermal comfort, McGeevor contrasts results from laboratory based, climate-controlled studies with in situ observations of how people create and judge the quality of their thermal environments.6 The paper notes that the three components of an implicit theory of human action embedded in energy policy of the time were that the goal of human action in this context was to achieve thermal comfort as determined by laboratory studies, that comfort had an economic cost which obeyed the normal ‘laws’ of economics and that to achieve comfort economically the individual needs information and knowledge. The paper subsequently questions all three of these assumptions about human action and suggests how they might be revised. Firstly, thermal conditions measured in the field were often widely different from those suggested by laboratory studies and by existing theory. A key observation is that people judged thermal environments relative to their habitual experience of thermal conditions

Figure 3: testing uncontrolled air leakage around a door frame using a smoke pencil. The strict control of air movement into and out of a dwelling represents a new experience for many builders and occupants, and is not always seen as a self-evident gain.

such that overheating was considered acceptable because it exceeded the crucial requirement of keeping warm during the cold British winter. One individual judged his heating system to be “marvellous” because it was capable of creating “sweltering” conditions.7 Second, the influence of the cost of energy on consumption in these homes was complex. Although residents were generally keen to reduce their fuel bills, in some cases, cost was ignored in favour of creating conditions that were in excess of what would normally be predicted as comfortable. This is explained by “short term hedonism and passive acceptance of fate” which suggests pricing of fuel to deter wastage and reduce consumption may not work. Finally, the study revealed an acute lack of understanding of how heating systems and controls worked but a welldeveloped body of folk wisdom about heating and fuel bills constructed and maintained by a local social network.

Drawing on this work and supplementing it with his own observations and measurements, Kempton suggests two folk theories of room thermostat behaviour that people rely on when operating their heating systems.8 The first is the feedback theory, which is largely consistent with the engineering definition of thermostatic control, in which the thermostat shuts down the heat supply when the monitored room temperature reaches a value (the set point) indicated by the thermostat setting (though not necessarily identical to it) and switches it on again when the temperature drops below a lower specified temperature. The second folk theory describing thermostat behaviour is the valve theory, which assumes that the thermostat controls the flow of heat from the boiler made

Occupants understanding of room thermostats

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Mechanical ventilation and heat recovery (MVHR)

Figure 4: new types of ‘smart’ electricity and gas meters are intended to give occupants greater information about their consumption and thus encourage them to adjust their usage accordingly. (Source: PRI, www.pri.co.uk. All rights reserved.)

by narrowing and widening an opening in the heat supply pipes or ducts. The valve theory is the more interesting precisely because it is at odds with the internal workings of the heating system which is only capable of supplying heat at a constant flow rate. The valve theory leads occupants to adjust the thermostat setting frequently to respond to changing conditions and requirements. Occupants, for example, will often turn the thermostat down before going to bed, thereby providing their own night setback for the heating system. However, when coupled with observations of operations normally performed in the home to control heating, the valve theory may be most effective for occupants because it offers the flexibility of a warmer than ‘normal’ house for people coming in from the cold outdoors, which a house at a uniform temperature would not. So, while the valve theory may be ‘wrong’ from the designers point of view, from the occupants’ it can be more efficacious (and possibly energy efficient): “A theory that is useful for designing thermostats is not guaranteed to be a good theory for using them.”.9

As noted above, the exacting constraints of minimising heat loss through uncontrolled air infiltration and excessive ventilation is usually addressed using mechanical ventilation and heat recovery (MVHR). However, the novelty of this technology causes confusion about how it should be operated, even among those with a keen interest in low carbon design, as the following entry on the Green Building web-based forum suggests: “HRV is best used in the heating season and in hot summer weather. In the spring and autumn opening the windows is better as no energy is used. During the summer in a well insulated building keeping the doors and windows closed for as long as possible and using HRV for ventilation is a viable strategy as it will improve thermal comfort. It should be cooler inside than outside and you want to keep it this way. Many come with a summer bypass but you don’t really want this as during the summer you want to cool the incoming air as the internal temperature should be lower than the external air temperature.”.10 Furthermore, there is anecdotal evidence to suggest occupants do not always accept MVHR technology. Occupants have been known to switch off ‘unnecessary’ fans and block air vents. It is important to emphasise that these components of the low energy house are part of a much larger network of equipment that occupants must grapple with in the pursuit of their comfort and other goals. Any analysis of occupantcomponent interaction, therefore, should look beyond the immediate interface between an individual and the device to follow the connections to other parts of the building. For example, occupants will also need to get accustomed to unfamiliar heat distribution networks and appliances from using heat pumps and underfloor heating instead of high temperature boilers. New forms of metering and monitoring, as shown in Figure 4, will inevitably change the way people operate their homes in unpredictable ways.

human-technology interactions. But in principle, occupants may choose to operate any easily configured part of a building to effect changes to the internal environment, and there is renewed interest in making more of the building fabric configurable. Figure 5 shows traditional and contemporary versions of shutters. In the second example, the ‘simple’ window offers four separate control elements: curtains, shutter, blinds and opening light. These operable elements and their possible configuration by occupants open up new areas for study and underline the assertion that buildings can be seen as equipment rather than as static objects. Even for such seemingly intuitive devices there is abundant evidence that occupants entertain very different ideas about how these should be operated. This can be confirmed by counting the number of occupied rooms in dwellings in which the curtains are open long after dark during the winter. Similarly, occupants frequently open windows during daytime on hot days to try to cool the building and close them at night, when the building could benefit from the cooler night time temperatures. Studies of human-technology relations

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There is an established body of literature addressing spatial and topological aspects of human interaction with and experience of architecture and the built environment—most notably in the field of environmental psychology11, but also in critical and phenomenological studies of architecture.12 However, in these the occupant or observer is treated mainly as a passive receptor of sensor information and so there is very little research that considers buildings and their systems as operable equipment with which occupants interact to The study at Abertridwr was mainly modify internal conditions, apart from concerned with occupants’ operation the work on thermostats discussed of and understanding of room above. There are interesting accounts of thermostats and thermostatic radiator thermal comfort as a social and cultural phenomenon and how technologies valves (TRVs). Similarly, Kempton’s help to disrupt established comfort work focuses on the lowly thermostat, practices and thereby define new ones.13 which is still a vital component of any heating system. Since then, there Such studies reveal a rich history of have been significant increases in the social and technological change and level of technology used in buildings provide an important perspective and other electro- on many of the contemporary issues to monitor and control heating and Thermostats ventilation systems, buoyed by a strong mechanical components of the heating designers and technology developers belief in the ability of technology to and ventilating system in buildings currently face. What is missing, alleviate environmental problems. are obvious candidates for studying however, is the detailed understanding

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Figure 5: traditional shutter over (a) a window in Venice; and (b) a contemporary example of a window at BRE Innovation Park.

of how individuals perceive and operate devices, components and systems as part of a nexus of equipment that constitutes the modern home. Thus, while edifying, these accounts of historical social trends rarely delve into individuals’ experiences of using these technologies and as McCarthy and Wright suggest: “the individual experiencing subject has largely been lost. As a consequence, the dialectical tension is minimized and the social reified to the point where individual experience is rendered irrelevant. … in traditional theorizing about practice the richness and messiness of experience becomes subordinated to the technical in both technology and theory.”.14 There can be little doubt that an individual’s interaction with a technology is in large measure shaped by social and cultural forces, but to omit his or her direct experience from the account leaves many questions about the nature of the technology unanswered. The absence of detailed studies of individuals’ interactions with built

environment technologies may be mitigated by research on usability aimed at improving user experience of manufactured goods, consumer devices and software. Over the past twenty years there has been much research into how people perceive and interact with computer systems and other forms of technology. There are possibilities for transferring methods and results developed in these areas and applying these to architecture. For example, the field of human-computer interaction highlights the need for extensive testing of designs with potential users during the development of a software system.15 This has given rise to novel methodologies such as the Wizard-of-Oz method, in which the computer is simulated by a hidden person, and “synthesis by analysis” which uses three methods to inform the design process: • failure analysis: systematic observations of where the technology or people “go wrong;” individual difference analysis: characteristics of people who find various systems

• time profiling: measuring the parts of tasks to which people devote the most time may reveal difficulties. Failure analysis in particular looks as though it could be developed to understand what happens when interaction between people and buildings breakdown. Possible directions emerge from studying similar accounts of breakdown in Heidegger, Leontev and Dewey.16 This will be investigated in a future paper. There is a wealth of experience in developing methods and tools with which to investigate users’ experiences with software, hardware and related technologies—for example, between designing systems that are easy-to-learn and those that are easy-to-use. Too much to summarise here. However, there is one key concept that can offer a useful approach to designing for multiple, diverse users: J.J. Gibson’s concept of affordance. made

or features easy and hard to learn or use are investigated;

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Affordances Donald Norman, one of the pioneers of usability studies, popularised the concept of affordance in usability studies17 but it was introduced by the ecological psychologist, J.J. Gibson: “An affordance is neither an objective property nor a subjective property. It is both. An affordance cuts across the subjective-objective dichotomy and in doing so highlights the inadequacy of this dualistic thinking. It is equally a fact of the environment and a fact of nature. It is both physical and psychical, yet neither. An affordance points both ways, to the environment and to the observer.”18 The concept has subsequently been developed to describe an organism’s skill acquisition by Dreyfus and Ingold.19 Briefly, an affordance is an emergent property of interactions between organisms and their environments. The concept recognises that the potential uses of an object or tool are not independent of its different users or the context in which it is to be used. An example provided by Dreyfus may clarify this: a chair ‘affords’ sitting because “we have the sort of bodies that get tired and that bend backwards at the knees … [and because] Western Europeans are brought up in a culture where one sits on chairs.”

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Gibson was adamant that his ideas could benefit the discipline of architecture and he lamented the lack of any serious attempt to develop this or similar ideas in architecture:”… a glass wall affords seeing through but not walking through, whereas a cloth curtain affords going through but not seeing through. Architects and designers know such facts, but they lack a theory of affordances to encompass them in a system.”20 The potential for developing such a theory is hinted at by Ingold in his discussion of affordance, perception and skills. Ingold argues that it requires specific skills to release affordances from an environment. Thus the relational links between an organism and its environment are reinforced. The affordances afforded by an environment can only be released to an organism which possesses the knowledge and skills to be able to exploit them. Again, this is less intuitive at the scale of environments but more so when we consider devices or tools.

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The use of any tool, therefore, requires Concluding remarks a set of skills. Individuals will be more or less adept at using these tools, and This paper has addressed the issues their skill level will vary depending with surrounding the increasing technical time and, for most, with the training sophistication of buildings, which is they receive and how much practice they set to increase as designers recommend get. Some people will display a ‘natural’ technological solutions to problems of carbon dioxide emissions and energy talent for using specific tools. consumption. It has been argued here that The connection between affordance, technical solutions alone will not deliver skill and cultural context is explained the savings their designers seek unless by Dreyfus, who enlists support from there is a good fit between the technology and occupants. It is also argued that it is Merleau-Ponty: no longer acceptable to place the ‘blame’ “J.J. Gibson, like Merleau-Ponty, sees for poor environmental and energy that characteristics of the human world, performance on occupants. Just as the e.g. what affords walking on, squeezing computing industry slowly learned to through, reaching, etc. are correlative develop a more holistic, research-driven with our bodily capacities and acquired approach to developing hardware and skills, but he then goes on, in one of his software, so architects and others engaged papers, to add that mail boxes afford in designing the next generation of low mailing letters. This kind of affordance carbon buildings need to consider and calls attention to a third aspect of involve the occupants from the outset. The embodiment. Affords-mailing-letters is user is not the problem. clearly not a cross-cultural phenomenon based solely on body structure, nor a body The brief review of approaches suggests structure plus a skill all normal human architecture might fruitfully adopt beings acquire. It is an affordance that methods pioneered in human-computer comes from experience with mail boxes interaction research and in product design. and the acquisition of letter-mailing The notion of affordance is of particular skills. The cultural world is thus also relevance to design.22 It encourages correlative with our body; this time with designers to adopt a more ecological approach that recognises the multiple our acquired cultural skills.”21 perceptions of what an environment Affordances are realised through the affords and the skills and understanding effectivities of organisms. As noted need to liberate the potential of tools and above, the affordance of providing a environments. In this view, people are seat can only be achieved by organisms seen as organisms with cultural as well as who have the capability to exploit the physical and psychological characters and shape of a chair. An effectivity can be needs. Buildings become more like habitats a physical property of an organism in which some people thrive and some, with or a psychological propensity, a skill different effectivities, do not. Designed or even a cultural norm to which environments are places where people seek out, perceive and exploit affordances a person adheres. according to their individual effectivities. The concept of affordance can be applied An ecological approach, therefore, is a to such tools as room thermostats, reminder to treat architecture as part of thermostatic radiator valves, timer a larger whole, recognising that the outer controls and even shutters and blinds. skin of the building envelope is often not Treating a blind, for example, as a set the most natural boundary for considering of potential affordances rather than the social life of buildings. The parallels as performing a self-evident function between architecture and computer system entails the effectivities and competences design are illuminating but it would be of those who are seeking to regulate wrong to give the impression that everyone their environments in the blind plays on the computing industry shares the view an important but complex part in that system development needs to become shading and ventilating enclosed space. more user-focused. Woolgar’s record of Affordance, therefore, reminds us to discussion with technical support in a treat the purpose of buildings and their computer company suggests otherwise: components more abstractly as offering tools and equipment that occupants “It is in this light that we might best appropriate to achieve their goals, understand the occurrence of ‘atrocity comfort-related or otherwise. stories’ – tales about the nasty things 56

that users have to done to our machines. Such tales portray nastiness in terms of users’ disregard for instructions (violation of the configured relationship users are encouraged to enter into) and their disregard for the case (violation of the machine’s boundary).”23

“It is not a question of whether users are capable of overcoming complexity and learning an advanced user interface. It is a question of whether they are willing to do so.”24

1 S. Woolgar, ‘Configuring the user: the case of usability trials.’ A Sociology of Monsters ed. by J. Law (London: Routledge, 1991). 2 K. Kuutti, ‘Hunting for the lost user: From sources of errors to active actors – and beyond.’ Cultural Usability, (2001). <http://mlab.taik.fi/culturalusability/papers/ Kuutti_paper.html > [accessed May 2009]. 3 J. Nielsen, (2001) ‘Are users stupid?’ Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox. <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010204. html> [accessed May 2009]; and T. Winograd, and F. Flores, Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design (Reading, Massachusetts: AddisonWesley, 1987). 4 Chris Tweed, and R. McLeod, ‘Meeting the 2011 zero carbon buildings target for Wales using the Passivhaus standard.’ Keynote presentation at PLEA 2008. http:// architecture.ucd.ie/Paul/PLEA2008/content/ papers_2. html. [accessed May 2009] 5 P. O’Sullivan, and P. A. McGeevor, ‘The effects of occupants on energy use in housing.’ Energy conservation in the built environment. Proceedings of CIB W67 Third International Symposium. Dublin, Ireland: An Foras Forbartha, (1982). pp. 5.96-5.107; and Phil Jones, P.A. McGeevor, and P.E. O’Sullivan, Better Insulated Houses: Abertridwr Monitoring of Domestic Heating System, Final Report on SRC GRA/46903. (1980). 6 P.A. McGeevor, ‘The Active Pursuit of Comfort: Its Consequences for Energy Use in the Home.’ Energy and

Buildings 5, (1982) 103-107. 7 ibid, p.104. 8 Kempton, W. ‘Two theories of home heat control.’ Cognitive Science, 10, (1986) 75-90. 9 ibid, p. 87 10 Green Building Forum (2007). Contribution by “nigel” to discussion forum on Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery (MVHR). Available <http://www. greenbuildingforum.co.uk/ newforum/comments. php?DiscussionID=393> [accessed 21 May 2009]. 11 T. Lee, Psychology and the environment (London: Methuen and Co Ltd, 1976). 12 Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses (London: Polemics, Academy Editions, 1996); Steen Eiler Rasmussen, Experiencing Architecture, 2nd US edn (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1962); Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space: the classic look at how we experience intimate places trans. by Maria Jolas, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964; new edition 1994). 13 E. Shove, Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience: The Social Organization of Normality. (Oxford / New York: Berg, 2003). 14 J. McCarthy, and P. Wright, Technology as Experience. (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2004) p 46. 15 T.K. Landauer, ‘Psychology as a mother of invention.’ Proceedings of the SIGCHIGI conference on Human factors in computing systems and graphics interface. ACM. New York. (1987) 333-335.

Similar problems are likely to emerge in debates about whether occupants will There will always be a core of technical choose the “right” course of action at designers who perceive the end-users as critical junctures in operating their homes. obstacles to achieving their goals. History, This opens up a new area for debate—the however, suggests that it is generally less extent to which design should seek to expensive in the long wrong to work encourage or promote particular courses with users at an early stage rather than of action, which is highly topical now.25 It accommodate their unmet needs at a is perhaps no coincidence that politicians are showing interest in this new field later stage. of behavioural economics26 as western It is important to remember too that society enters a new phase in which making systems easier to understand and design is seen as an important tool for the to use is not the only issue in encouraging impending massive social change required users to follow a preferred course of action. to meet environmental and energy targets. But that is for another paper. As Nielsen notes:

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16 T. Koschmann, K. Kuutti, L. Hickman, “The Concept of Breakdown in Heidegger, Leont’ev, and Dewey and Its Implications for Education.” Mind 5, (1998). 25-41. 17 D.A. Norman, The Psychology of Everyday Things, (New York: Basic Books, 1988). 18 J.J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979) p. 129. 19 H.L. Dreyfus, ‘The Current Relevance of MerleauPonty’s Phenomenology of Embodiment’ The Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy, 4 (Spring 1996); and Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill, (London: Routledge, 2007). 20 Gibson, p. 137. 21 Dreyfus, p. 8. 22 B.S. Zaff, ‘Designing with affordances in mind’ Global perspectives on the ecology of human-machine system, ed. by J. Flach, P. Hancock, J. Caird and K.J. Vicente (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995). 23 Woolgar, p. 89. 24 Nielsen, npn 25 R.H. Thaler, and C.R.Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008). 26 C. Lewis, ‘Why Barack Obama and David Cameron are keen to ‘nudge’ you.’ Times Online, <http://business. timesonline.co.uk/tol/ business/career_and_jobs/ article4330267.ece> [accessed July 14, 2008].

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How Green is Your Valley? Gethin Owens The landscape of the South Wales valleys community empowerment to instantly clings to its rich industrial heritage by connect with the local residents and its black boot laces. Whilst coal is no furthermore provide a creative and longer king it takes only a light scratch novel method to highlight regeneration beneath the grass to uncover what once initiatives. It was specifically designed was black gold and to ask the question to create a shared involvement in the - How successful have the regeneration regeneration process and subsequently initiatives of the South Wales valleys enhance community cohesion. been. Richard Llewellyn’s 1939 imaginative novel ‘How green was my In the 1980’s criminologists James Q. valley’1 portrayed a somewhat nostalgic Wilson and George Kelling proposed view, however today the question is still a theory of criminal behaviour called possibly “How black is my valley.” ‘Broken Window Theory.’2 It was based on research that identified in situations Without doubt the landscape itself where you have a broken window that is truly inspiring. Despite this, is not repaired, more vandalism and the streetscape within the urban criminal activity is likely to occur. settlements is an honest mirror of the They argued that people who see a apathy that has dogged these societies broken window assume that the area is for too long. Long-term regeneration neglected and run down. Subsequently projects that aimed to stabilise and more windows are broken, more rubbish create sustainable opportunities, in dropped, eventually leading to an the author’s opinion have not fulfilled increase in vandalism and crime. The their intended aims. We are still left relevance of this today and coherence with poorly designed and uninspiring with this work is that there is a clear surroundings with ‘quick win’ ideas not visual link between the streetscape and contributing towards lasting design and people’s perception of an area. Hence quality standards for the area. if we were to reverse this and utilise the available streetscape to highlight ‘How Green is Your Valley’ is a positive change we can hopefully project that aimed to plug a gap in connect with the local community in a the regeneration process that without, beneficial manner. the author feels has resulted in many regeneration initiatives not reaching At the outset of the project, the a willing community. Community question was asked – can the immediate engagement in the regeneration and landscape be brought into the town, development process is vital to the into the streetscape, onto the facades overall success and receptiveness of any and cause a positive reflection on the initiative. ‘How Green is Your Valley’ character and identity of a space? aimed to address this with a technique of After all we need look no further than

the local landscape for inspiration and resolution of its cultural and historic significance to the people it surrounds. It was proposed to use specialist projections on local buildings, structures & facades, projecting aspirational and historic images to nurture a positive sense of place and identity. The selection of images reflect the past, present and future regeneration within a community. Utilising both aspirational and images also echo the evolution of communities in the South Wales valleys and acknowledges the changes that have occurred. Fundamental to the project is active community involvement in the selection and refinement of images, sharing of ideas through community workshops and ultimately communication (via projections) of local initiatives. These initiatives can linked to community regeneration strategies, sustainable development plans, neighborhood renewal and / or where apt, broader regional strategies. In addition this approach also allows for the promotion of any regeneration progress made by a local authority or associated regeneration agency in recent times. This can be a key element for regions currently going through a regeneration transition and making the link to past, present, and any future initiatives. Ultimately, the success of the project will be judged by the community and if it can make a positive difference in areas where it is needed most.

1 Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley, (London: Penguin Group, 1939) 2 J.Q. Wilson & G. L. Kelling, ‘Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety’, The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 249, No.3, (March 1982): 29-38

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Analysis of the Structure & Form of Ornament Andrew Docherty Introduction

In analysing the visual qualities of ornament, I have found it useful to divide its composition into two separate areas. My interest in ornament is primarily The first of these relates to the purely visual practical. Whilst there is plenty of and physical appearance of ornament and theoretical writing and discussion I refer to this as the ornament’s structure. dedicated to the appropriateness of The other quality highlighted is that of the ornament in architecture, there is very little relating to the practical design Day sees ornament as the product of associative qualities of ornament that are and implementation of ornament in design; ornament, he suggests, can be produced by the use of familiar styles or structured and formed in the same way motifs within the design, and I refer to building today. as any element of a building. Because of this as the ornament’s form. By separating I am interested not so much in what the this, its aims and purpose can be stated, out these qualities and analysing them use of ornament ‘means’ for a building allowing it to have a ‘function’ within independently, we can begin to develop but in what it actually looks like. The the design. Whereas modernism typically an understanding of how ornamental legacy of Modernism has been to restrict aimed to disguise or remove functional patterns are composed, and what effect the use of Ornament in architecture, by elements such as windowsills and gutters, their varying patterns and styles may have the stripping down of surfaces to their ornamentation presents the opportunity on our perception of form. functional geometry. In doing so, we have to celebrate these and include them as lost a primary mode of expression from visual, decorative elements within the Construction and analysis of the design of buildings. I believe that building. The choice of ornament for a illustrative box models the loss of ornament from architecture building can tell us about when and how has reduced the legibility and variety of it was made, and what it aspires to. If we As a tool to help understand these ideas I the built environment, and that it has were to construct a modern ornamented have explored the physical qualities of the removed a key set of elements from the building today, what form would this take, structure and form or ornament through architectural palette of materials and and how would we go about designing the construction of a series of illustrative techniques. These qualities are vital in it? To answer this question, I argue that box models, shown below. defining a range of ideas in building such we have to develop an understanding of how ornament works; we must begin to The 60mm card cubes are decorated with as scale, legibility and identity. understand what its underlying qualities a range of patterns to simulate a variety This paper argues that the role of are and how these are communicated of ornamental qualities. These have been ornament in architecture has two both visually and culturally. In this essay, developed to explore the effect that the important qualities, both visual (beauty) I explore the composition of ornamental decoration has on our perception of the and functional (communication). patterns through the analysis of a range of underlying shape of the cube. Ornament is primarily a visual tool of architectural examples and the theoretical communication. It is the elaboration of ideas associated with them, and use The examples below show how the functional objects to make them more this as a starting point to suggest how application of different patterns to beautiful, but it is also fundamentally contemporary ornament might be designed the surface of the box can modify our perception of it in a variety of ways. From connected with identity. What ornament and constructed in buildings today. adds to an object is the ability to go beyond the purely visual in order to communicate suggestive qualities, such as cultural outlook and belonging. Ornament describes not only the form of an object, but also its intended function and use, and it can locate an object culturally and historically within a particular style. “He (the ornamentalist) has every time to strike the balance between use and beauty. Ornamental design is not, at its most personal, the purely spontaneous expression of the artist. It is his answer to a given question” 1

This practical interpretation of ornament can be summed up by the Late Victorian Architect Lewis Day, who published a number of books dedicated to the design of ornamentation; made

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architecture is a good example of this, as it had a system of scale directly linked to the natural growth of plants and trees . Broadly speaking, the scale of ornament in a large church, like the leaves of a tree, is the same as that of a small one, but in a large church it is repeated many times over to fill the available space. This is in contrast to Romanesque building, where key architectural elements are typically enlarged rather than multiplied as the building increases in size. These two approaches to the use of scale show how the use of ornament can be used to create different types of effects. Romanesque detailing impresses through the use of well placed monolithic features, whereas the Gothic achieves this through the bewildering proliferation of detail.

an initial set of box models, a range of different examples have been developed to explore and illustrate a variety of qualities of the structure and form of ornament, looking at the properties of the structure of ornament in terms of scale, mass, porosity, movement, and the form of ornament in relation to identity, complexity and hierarchy. By investigating these as separate and independent elements, an understanding of the make up and composition of ornamental designs, and the effects that these can have on our perception of form, can be developed. These principles can then be used to suggest how ornamentation could be applied to modern design in a structured and controlled way.

The Structure of Ornament

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The primary characteristic of the structure of ornament is that it is interpreted visually. The structure of ornament affects our perception of the physical qualities, such as the scale and mass, of a building or space and thus influences our perception of form.

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To illustrate the effect of ornament on our perception of form, specific visual qualities in built examples can be identified, such as the disintegration of mass in an Islamic ceiling or the vertical detailing of gothic architecture (as above). These properties are illustrated by abstracting the pattern of the ornament, and applying them to box models. By isolating the underlying physical and visual characteristics of the ornament and reducing the pattern to geometric units, the effect that a variety of pattern types can have on the form of the box can then be identified and analysed. Four main physical qualities of an object that can be affected by ornament are here identified and categorised as scale, mass, porosity and movement (direction). By careful use of these properties through surface decoration, our perception of the underlying shape of an object can be altered. Scale Scale is a relative value, and our perception of it is based largely on the varying sizes of objects in relation to ourselves. Gothic

A set of models investigating scale (bottom) uses horizontal bands of equal widths to simulate relative changes in scale of the box. As the number of bands multiplies the box appears to be composed of increasing numbers of elements. Layering gives the box a more delicate and fragmented appearance, or of appearing rendered at increasingly large scales. A similar effect can be seen in the design of the Bankside Power Station (below) in London. The use of standard

bricks in such a large building enables us to make a relative judgement of its size in the absence of other familiar points of reference such as windows or doors. This is in contrast to large projects rendered in concrete such as dams, which offer few points of reference and appear strangely scale-less in spite of their enormous size. Mass Mass concerns the perceived distribution of weight in an object. Domestic Georgian and Victorian architecture prioritised detailing of buildings at street level, leaving them plainer at upper levels in order to emphasise the functional and visible elements. Modernist buildings often attempted to invert this to give the impression of an unsupported mass floating above the ground. In the examples studying mass (above), a strip of colour has been used to divide the box into two halves. We perceive bright colours to be physically lighter than dark ones; this perception has been used here to suggest changes in the distribution of weight.

preoccupied architects, and ornament has traditionally been one way of achieving this. This is generally the approach taken by preindustrial architecture, where the careful detailing of surface finishes has been used to give the impression of transparency, as at Bristol Cathedral (below left).

openings in gothic architecture, where large areas of glazing are achieved by grouping many small panes within a skeletal frame.

In the set of models studying porosity (bottom), coloured blocks of increasing density have been added to the surface The modern movement, by contrast, of the box. As the number of blocks looked to technology and new materials increases, the cube appears increasingly such as steel and glass to provide it with fragmented. As the pattern begins to open, transparent spaces as at the Great wrap around the faces of the cube in box Court Dome British Museum, Foster four, the edges of the underlying shape & Partners 2000 (below right). It is, appear to become less clear and the form however, an interesting contradiction that of the box seems to disintegrate. transparent materials do not necessarily produce a transparent effect. To increase In faceted Islamic domes, or murqarnas, the feeling of transparency in the glazing solid stone is made to appear to dissolve for The Sydney Opera House (Australia through careful surface detailing and 1957-33)3 Utzon inserted additional the use of light. Whereas the plain box glazing bars and staggered the panes to (bottom left) feels solid, the addition break up the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;flatnessâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; of the glass. The of ornamental structure increases the impression is not unlike the treatment of perception of transparency.

In the Ville Savoye (France 1930), Corbusier sets the ground floor back from the main volume to conceal it and draw attention to the plain faĂ§ade of the house. The omission of detail to the base introduces a feeling of weightlessness at ground level and focuses our attention to the mass of housing above. Porosity (Lightness) Porosity could be described as the opposite of mass, representing the appearance of an object as perforated, disintegrating or transparent. The attempt to make solid material appear light or weightless has long

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Movement (Direction) A feeling of movement is created when the strong linear elements of a building guide your eye across then in a controlled manner. This can be used to reinforce the structure of the building where the ornament works with the form, or to subvert it when the pattern goes against the underlying structure. The next two sets of boxes illustrate how direction, following the shape of the box, can be suggested and re-orientated. Systems of construction that emphasise or expose the structure of a building, like the forces themselves, are often directional, suggesting that structure can act in an inherently linear way. Movement One (Direction) Supporting the underlying shape In these examples (left), ornament has been used not to support form, but to subvert it and extend it by the creation of illusionistic and theatrical detailing. These effects can be seen most clearly, for example, at the Parthenon (above left) and in Baroque and Rococo design, where movement and illusionistic space was created through the careful use of elaborate ornamentation. The effect of this type of ornament is to transform our appreciation of the object that it is applied to and the space around it. Movement Two (Illusionistic) Distorting the underlying shape These boxes (bottom left) illustrate how the extension of space can be suggested within a flat plane, and demonstratehow our view can be led across a surface in a controlled way. Diagonal and other non orthogonal structural solutions can be seen in the recent work of architects such as Hertzog & de Meuron (left) and Toyo Ito, who create a continuous, or â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;wrappedâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ornamental effect in their buildings. By setting the line of the ornament off axis from the box beneath, a feeling of continuity is created between the facades, subverting the edges of the structure beneath. This is reinforced by the lack of apparent structure along the buildings edges, making the smooth envelope appear less solid. Summary: The Structure of Ornament

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The structure of Ornament can be described as the underlying visual

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qualities of a pattern and is separate from any cultural or historical associations that the pattern might have. This structure influences how we understand and interpret our perception of the underlying form of a decorated object or surface. The four primary qualities of form that can be influenced by ornament have been discussed here as scale, mass, porosity and movement, as illustrated by the boxes (right). Using the results of this analysis, these independent qualities can be combined into more complex, composite patterns that contain a number of structural elements. The boxes might be described as containing elements of mass and scale, direction and mass, and porosity and direction. Developing an understanding of the individual components of ornamental patterns and how they work on a visual level can now suggest how ornamental patterns might be constructed that are able to respond to the specific requirements of a design. An example of this might be the application of a detailed pattern to a large expanse of wall to give it a feeling of relative scale within its environment. This sort of effect is often achieved through the choice of material and how it is detailed; however, the use of an ornamental pattern could also be designed to describe a range of additional qualities, such as the building’s use or identity. How the specific structure of the pattern might be formed and elaborated to achieve this will be discussed in the following section.

The Form of Ornament The term form is used here to describe the ability of ornament to communicate symbolic qualities of a design or pattern that are independent of their physical structure. I have illustrated these qualities through a series of box models based on how theorists have interpreted the use of ornament historically and how this has been applied to a range of buildings. Applying these designs to the surface of the boxes illustrates how changing the style that a pattern is rendered in can alter our perception and understanding of the underlying object. The key nature of the form of ornament is its ability to communicate and I have identified three main

qualities through which this is achieved. invisible structure, hidden behind the true These could be referred to as identity, and legitimate representatives of the wall, complexity and hierarchy. the colourful, woven carpets.” 5 In the development of architecture, Semper believed that it was the façade Ornamentation of objects is an essential and decoration upon it that represented part of how cultures understand and family, community and culture. control the world around them, and Ornament, far from being a superficial this is expressed visually through the element applied to the surface of styles and designs that we choose to architecture, actually constitutes the construct and decorate our objects and architecture itself. Because of the buildings. In his “Principles of Dressing” ability of ornament to communicate the Victorian anthropologist Gottfried visually and emotionally to the viewer, Semper (1803-1897) describes how our flat, applied designs have the ability buildings express our cultural identity to take on symbolism and meanings not through the solid walls that hold that transform our understanding of them up, but by the ornamented surfaces the objects that they are applied to through association. An initial set of of cloth or paint that cover them; boxes (below) demonstrates Semper’s “Hanging carpets remained the true principles by the application of a flat walls, the visible boundaries of space […] textile pattern, transforming not just Even where building solid walls became the visual qualities of the underlying necessary, the latter were only the inner, object, but also our interpretation of it. Identity

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The ability of ornament to communicate identity is demonstrated through the application of cultural or historical styles to a standard pattern (above). Slight variation in the pattern identifies the boxes as Greek, Roman, Islamic or Gothic. Associating the boxes with a recognisable cultural style gives them a range of qualities that will vary depending on the viewer’s knowledge and experience; this allows us to interpret them as cultural or historical objects. This use of cultural styles and motifs to communicate ideas can be clearly seen in Victorian buildings, where Gothic detailing was favoured as a symbolic medium of expression for an underlying Christian European world view and values. Two recent building projects in Nottingham and Paris also demonstrate how this use of ornamentation is being applied today to locate buildings within a historical or cultural context. Caruso St. John’s extension to the Angel Row Gallery in Nottingham uses a patterned façade based on lacework previously produced in the city to suggest continuity with Nottingham’s industrial heritage and to promote a sense of identity. In a similar project in France, Francis Soler’s renovation of the Ministry of Culture in Paris uses a decorated façade to transform both the physical appearance of the buildings band our interpretation of them. In his influential essay “Ornament and Crime” Loos criticised this type of use of historical ornament. He wrote;

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“As there is no longer any organic connection between ornament and our culture,

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ornament is no longer an expression of our culture. The ornament being created now bears no relationship to us, nor to any human being, or to the system governing the world today. It has no potential for development”. 6

windings and crossings, as one might solve a difficult maze.” 7

Trilling sees the complicated visual design of knot patterns as directly representative of complex intellectual of It would appear, however, that in an physical problems. Whilst ornamental increasingly globalised society the need designs are no longer believed to retain for means to express a feeling of belonging genuine magical properties, extremely even on an apparently superficial level may detailed objects still retain powerful be perceived as increasingly important, visual and symbolic properties. Interest and the use of ornamentation may be one in complex patterns and structures way of achieving this. is today being explored by architects through ‘emergent’ design principles Complexity and computer controlled manufacture. In these processes, simple repeating Complexity as a component of ornament rules, multiplied many times over, are could be described as representing the used to simulate the complex patterning spiritual or emotional power that is of growth in the natural world. perceived to reside in certain complex patterns or designs. This might be In the boxes (below), a simple rule generated purely by the visual qualities of has been used to generate the pattern an extremely intricate pattern, or by the at increasing densities. The pattern belief that certain patterns, such as those develops in an organic way producing used in ceremonial objects or buildings, related, but independent, forms are inherently magical. The cathedrals analogous to the way organic life grows. and churches of medieval Europe were Software based on these principles laid out and proportioned according to has been used to produce the complex ‘sacred geometry,’ and Islamic architecture geometric solutions of new building historically connects mathematics and elements such as the roof of the Great the complex structures of its buildings Court at the British Museum, Gaudi’s with magical properties. The architectural unfinished Segrada Familia and Zaha historian James Trilling identifies the Hadid’s sculptural structures. origin of these types of ‘interlace’ patterns in the perceived magical properties of I believe that this emotional quality that we experience through complex patterns knots; has a great deal to offer the contemporary “Knots have a long established place in the design in returning a level of detail to lore of supernatural attack and defence. A architecture normally associated only curse or spell was often ‘secured’ with a knot, with historical buildings. and could only be disarmed by physically untying it[...]It is very likely that over and Hierarchy above the decorative value, interlace was magically protective (defying) the evil- Hierarchy describes how ornament can doer to untie it mentally by tracing out its be used to place buildings within a

structure of social organisation. We use our architecture as a way of expressing wealth, power or status, and this is reflected in the size of spaces, choice of materials and how they are detailed. In the next set of examples (below right), our perceived value of material, detail and workmanship position the boxes within a relative hierarchy. The material and form of the ornament is communicating the idea of status, wealth and value. In this example of two doorways in Madrid (bottom right) the design, material and construction of the different doorways make a clear statement about the identity and function of the buildings or institutions that they belong to. Summary: The Form of Ornament The form of ornament can be described as the quality of ornament that is able to communicate associative properties not directly represented by the structural design of a pattern. Interpretation of the form of an ornamental pattern is subjective and will very depending on the viewer’s knowledge of the design and their associative experiences of it. The three main qualities of the form of ornament can, then, be summarised as its ability to communicate cultural or historical identity, complexity and hierarchy. It is difficult to suggest how various forms, or styles of ornament, may be applied to modern construction given that, by definition, style is open to multiple cultural and historical interpretations. Loos may have identified our dislocation from historical styles, but that does not mean that these are no longer able to provide a useful function in architecture in reinforcing culture, identity or belonging. In his book “The Dilema of Style” J. Crook discusses the changes in style over the last four hundred years and how these have effected the design of the built environment. He writes; “Today the wheel of taste has turned full circle. The twentieth century has had to rediscover what the nineteenth century learned so painfully: eclecticism is the vernacular of sophisticated societies; architecture begins where function ends” 8 Crook is stating what the ornamentalist Day would have understood. Whilst the structure of an ornamental pattern may made

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be analysed and controlled, the form that this is rendered in is a question of design, and the success of this relies on the skill and judgement of the designer.

Conclusion This analysis of the structure and form of ornament (above) has outlined how ornamental patterns are composed, and suggests that the varying styles that these are rendered in may be used to direct our interpretation and understanding of them. In understanding how ornament works and is communicated on a visual and symbolic level, we may compose ornamental patterns and structures for architecture that have a specific and integrated role within the design of the building.

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The underlying structure of an ornamental pattern may be used to alter our perception of the surface that it is

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applied to. These principles could be used in a variety of ways to make a building stand out, change shape, or integrate better within its surroundings. Francis Soler’s Ministry of Culture in Paris is a good example of this. The new façade, on a purely practical level, serves to unify two adjacent buildings of different styles, and integrates the previously plain modern structure within the more detailed streetscape. How the form or style of an ornamental design might be used is harder to define, but there is the potential here to make architecture more legible through cultural or graphic association. Soler’s façade describes the funcion and activity within the building by linking the design of the screen to a rich period in Parisian design. This project represents a well structured reinterpretation of a historical motif, where the design is working in a controlled way on a number of levels to describe and explain the building.

One area that might be successfully re-explored through ornament is in the elaboration of functional building elements to make them more legible. Whereas modern design has often attempted to conceal practical features such as pitched roofs, window sills and gutters, ornamentation offers the opportunity to accentuate these elements and describe the functional role they play in the design. This, in many ways, is similar to vernacular architectures, where local materials and a climactically sensitive approach to design are clearly reflected in the form of the building, and in its detailing and components. A good example of this would be the accentuated sculpting of traditional Japanese roofs (below), which have developed stylistically from the practical requirement of a large overhang to protect the buildings from heavy rain. Enlarged beyond purely practical requirements, ornamentation is here used to celebrate

the required functionality of the roof by a recognisable configuration of parts or turning it into a sculptural device. The aesthetic that is in many ways similar ornament describes the design’s purpose, to elements of vernacular building. whilst lending a specific cultural and This can be seen in the increased geographical identity to the building. functionality of elements such as roofs and gutters, which must now harvest A direct parallel which is particularly and store water as well as discharging it, relevant to this today is the increasing or windows that may now also be part requirement for sustainable features in of a sophisticated ventilation strategy, as buildings. The practical requirements in the vent cowls at Bedzed (above left), of environmental design often produce and the School of Slavonic and East

1 Lewis Day, Nature and Ornament : Ornament the Finished Product of Design (London: B. T. Batesford,1909), p.18 2 John Harvey, The Mediaeval Architect (London: Wayland Publishers, 1972), p.45-137 3 R. Weston, Utzon (Denmark: Edition Blondal, 2002), p.112-201 4 Robert Harbison, Reflections on Baroque (London: Reaktion Books, 2000) 5 Mark Wigley, White Walls and Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1995) 6 Adolf Loos, trans. Michael Mitchell, Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays (California: Ariadne Press, 1998), p.176 7 James Trilling, The Language of Ornament (London: Thames & Hudson, 2001) 8 J. Morduant Crook, The Dilemma of Style: Architectural Ideas From the Picturesque to the Post Modern, (London: John Murray, 1987)

European Studies at UCL (above right). Ornamentation could be integrated into the design process as a strategy to better describe and form these elements. As the use of ornamentation in modern design becomes increasingly common, and better understood, architecture, this research suggests, may be able to reclaim ornament as the lost material of building design.

Bibliography Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, trans. by John Rodker (France: Edition Cres, 1923) Crook, J. Morduant, The Dilemma of Style: Architectural Ideas From the Picturesque to the Post Modern, (London: John Murry, 1987) Day, Lewis, Nature and Ornament: Ornament the Finished Product of Design (London, B. T. Batesford, 1909) Forty, Adrian, Words and Buildings (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000) Hale, Jonathan, The Old Ways of Seeing (Boston, Richard Todd, 1994) Harbison, Robert, Reflections on Baroque (London: Reaktion Books, 2000) Harvey, John, The Mediaeval Architect (London: Wayland Publishers, 1972) Jencks, Charles, What is Post Modernism?(London: Academy Editions, 1989) Johnson, Steven, Emergence (London: Penguin Books, 2001) Loos, Adolf, trans. by Jane Newman, Spoken Into the Void: Collected Essays 1897-1900 (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1982) Loos, Adolf, trans. Michael Mitchell, Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays (California: Ariadne Press, 1998), p.166-176 Weston, R., Utzon (Denmark: Edition Blondal, 2002) Schafter, Debra, The Order of Ornament, the Structure of Style: Theoretical Foundations of Modern Art and Architecture (England: Cambridge University Press, 2003) Trilling, James, The Language of Ornament (London: Thames & Hudson, 2001) Wigley, Mark, White Walls and Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1995)

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Public – Building – Space Kai Holtin One of the specific and fascinating characters Juridicum, Vienna of “space” is its disembodied existence. It cannot be touched, but is perceivable and The Juridicum, the building of the juridical present. The built space, whether interior faculty of the University of Vienna, or exterior, is easily observable, yet it is planned and realised in 1970-1984 by perceivable only indirectly via bounding Ernst Hiesmayr2, replaced a historical surfaces, like light which becomes visible perimeter block within the Viennese through a reflecting surface. In what ways “Ring”. The spatial narrowness of the street can these bounding surfaces transform grid in the period of promoterism and the into buildings, in order to create specific need to emphasise the significance of a relationships between a building and the university building determined the concept public space? Three examples shall give an of creating a significant public space within idea of the possibilities. the building. Widening the public space at street level by partly offsetting the Schinkel Altes Museum, Berlin building line highlighted the significance of the faculty building and offered the Carl Friedrich Schinkel’s Museum (1823- opportunity of a continuous flow of public 1830) at the “Lustgarten” in Berlin was space for pedestrians. built in order to merge the royal sculpture and painting collections and to make them The ground floor serves as a generous “useful for the education of the nation and public foyer. It maintains the level of the of public utility through accessibility”1. street and follows the gradient of the As a public museum, it supplements the street with a slight inclination. The extent ensemble of castle and dome – symbols of of the ground floor is also kept entirely political and clerical power – with a symbol free of structure, other than two pairs of of rationality. Together, these representative structural towers. Both means generate an individual buildings form an open spatial almost continuous space. Large openings structure rather than bounding surfaces in the floor establish a spatial relationship around the “Lustgarten”. to the lecture halls at the basement; a ramp connects basement, ground floor and a The building of the museum receives – mezzanine cafeteria, which hangs over the according to this spatial structure and the foyer. Here the conceptual principle of the significance of the museum – a public public space becomes most apparent. Six portico with 18 columns ranging over the floors, with decreasing public accessibility entire façade, constrained with antae and from the base to the top are suspended accessible via a flight of steps. This long, high from a space frame nine meter in height but narrow space is characterised by the line which spans almost fifty-three meters of columns. They open this space towards between the structural towers. A wide the Lustgarten and close in the perspective public indoor space becomes the basis of view along the long axes. The back wall is a vertical, urban type of university and its closed except for a gateway almost aligned to bounding surfaces are the facades of the the flight of steps. It gives access to a second existing buildings along the old streets. hall with entrances to the ground floor and to two half-landing on the stairs, which lead Supermarket, Kirchpark, Lustenau up – from the dark to the light - to a balcony, culminating in a view back through the The new development of a supermarket portico, over the Lustgarten to the castle, to – strictly speaking, not a public building the Friedrichswerder church and over the – with a parking space and smaller city. This example shows how a relationship storefronts in the township of Lustenau, between the interior and exterior public Austria was used by the architects Marques space is created by a sequence of contrasting and Zurkirchen3 to accentuate an existing spaces, bounded by the surfaces of walls or public space. Although there were public opened by the rhythm of columns. buildings, there was no adequate spatial

Three different concepts can be extracted: The museum presents a concept of opposition between the interior and exterior public spaces. It separates these spaces by elevating the public floors on a massive pedestal/platform but at the same time providing a sequence of clearly bounded spaces partly opened for precisely calculated views on the city. Uninterrupted spatial flow forms the concept of the Juridicum. It maximised the area of contact between the two public spheres by adjusting their levels and creating transparency by removing structural interruptions. The view is extended to the façades of the surrounding buildings. In Lustenau the horizontal bounding surfaces of the continuing blue pavement and of the cantilevering roof with its highly associative significance covering almost half of the Square create the unique spatial qualities. In each case the bounding surfaces, both horizontal and vertical, are manipulated to provide specific definitions of public space. 1 Schinkel, Carl Friedrich: Sammlung architectonischer Entwürfe, Heft 6. (Berlin: Wittich, 1828). 2 Hiesmayr, Ernst: Juridicum Wien. (Wien: Löcker, 1996) 3 Adam, Hubertus ; Kapfinger, Otto ; Zbinden, Ueli: Daniele Marques. (Zürich: Gta Verlag, 2003) 4 Chramosta, Walter: Blau aus der Dorfzentrifuge. (In: Spectrum / DiePresse 05.12.1998)

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situation4. A twenty meter cantilever of the supermarket roof creates a significant spatial situation, producing a generous, covered free space while acting as largescale signage. Polycarbonate panels wrap the structure of the supermarket without hiding it. This simple, self-explanatory construction is reminiscent of market stalls and stands, while the overhanging roof evokes traditionally covered market places. The former weak significance of the public space becomes restructured in a covered yet open space while the space is coalesced by a bright blue uninterrupted surface which offers no distinction between traffic or pedestrian use.

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Measuring Place: Using Mind and Body to Record Experience Chloe Sambell The Earth is full of places: large, small, intimate, memorable, real, imagined. They surround us, and yet the notion of place is elusive, defying the strictures of a rational mindset. Place is more than abstract space; it is a location experienced by the body and set apart in the mind. From out of nowhere, there becomes a ‘somewhere’ which has a specific identity and unique character. Intrinsic to the activity of people, places exist not only in the physical, but also in the mind and memories of those who have experienced them. They comprise a complex totality of touchable and intangible elements – a meshing of material, form and objects, with atmosphere, character and mood. But how might place be understood better? Can a place be studied or measured?

experience of three temple gardens in verbs ‘to build’ and ‘to dwell’ came from Japan. In doing so, scales of measurement, the same origin in the German language not the conventionally mathematical and and this suggested to him that should scientific sort, contribute toward a fuller be understood as the same activity: understanding of place. ‘[b] uilding isn’t merely a means and a way towards dwelling - to build is in itself Measuring already to dwell.’1 For Heidegger, man’s interaction with his environment would Measuring is normally associated with help him to make sense of his existence; precise objective words like ‘weight’, by measuring places, man would dwell ‘quantity’, ‘extent’, and often employs meaningfully. exact methods using ‘calculations’, ‘standards’ and ‘scales’. Measuring is Heidegger explained dwelling and also associated with subjective words ‘measuring’ in relation to what he called like ‘gauge’, ‘evaluate’, ‘estimate’ and ‘the fourfold’: earth, sky, divinities ‘approximate’ which allow for personal and mortals. By measuring things judgement and differences of opinion. against these basic preconditions of These seem imprecise and we tend to man’s existence, he believed man could grant them less authority. Although gain an appreciation of their qualities ‘calculate’ and ‘estimate’ can appear to be and characteristics. Similarities and This paper draws on the philosophy of polar opposites, they are both terms that differences would emerge and two things phenomenology to explore a practical define a form of measuring. ‘co-present’ with one another might method of measuring. By questioning achieve a mutual definition. Tadao Ando scientific systems of study and by giving Martin Heidegger claimed that it is puts this more plainly: credence instead to subjective perception, instinctive for people to measure places it attempts to accurately describe the through their personal bodily experience. The body articulates the world. At the same complex relationship between person He believed that building and dwelling time the body is articulated by the world. and environment without reduction took place through ‘measuring’. By When ‘I’ perceive the concrete surface is cold or abstraction. I propose to use the measuring, a dwelling came to be, and and hard, ‘I’ recognise the body as something human mind and body as measuring through measuring, it was understood warm and soft.2 instruments to record the subjective by its inhabitants. He identified that the This relative understanding contrasts with the definitive, authoritative definition of things that is offered by a scientific approach. Recently, architecture has increasingly become analysed in abstract mathematical and scientific terms; a trend that is reflected in the two-dimensional representation of designed places through scaled drawings, models and computer simulations. Heidegger however, stressed the limitations of science, which he believed was alien to human experience and inadequate because it failed to address complex variables such as human emotion. Above science, Heidegger advocated a more poetic approach to measuring. He perceived poetry as more than a means to express language, but instead as ‘deep human involvement in the world.’3 He claimed the Greek word for ‘making’ – poiesis – connected poetry with dwelling made

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STUDY 1: NANZEN-JI Sanmon [Thursday 19th July, 9:00 until 17:30, conditions: bright and sunny, 31 ˚C] Sublime the way a black mass hovers between star-shaped leaves Unconsciously ancient stones burst at the seams with gentle moss Sheltered from the sun pillars still grow pale with the touch of ages Funny that at the gate people should linger…

At 9 o’clock, the sun is already hot and unrelenting and the air is close and sticky. It is a serene scene except that it is intruded by sudden bursts of motors as bikes and taxis arrive. Vendors are setting up and my thoughts are also punctured by the harsh scraping noise made by a caretaker who is sweeping the rough gravel. A paved trail eventually disappears out of sight into trees at the foot of the mountainside. I step into the cool shade and enchanting views are unveiled before me. A sense of relief… The sounds of the city (sirens and engines) fade. There appears a heavy black mass amongst the trees. The forms sit as horizontal slabs of dark timber, in layers that hover above one another. The building is beautiful and grand and mysterious. It is completely imposing and dominates the view. A very powerful and compelling sense of direction draws you closer. The path approaching the structure is on a perfect axis with the central opening at the top of the steps. It is an unmistakably natural and organic place. Nature is focused and framed and meditated upon. Yet completely man made – ordered. It is carefully calculated – beauty is orchestrated then allowed to become wild. Thousands of tiny star-shaped leaves are delicately silhouetted against the sky. The rough-cut, stone steps rise up to a solid stone plinth upon which the structure is set: elevated and sturdy. The stone is coarse and pitted; each crack is crammed and over-flowing with soft spongy moss. The elevated platform is paved; diagonal lines are set at a counter-axis to the main structure. Tiles are smooth and hard concrete (slightly cool and sandy to touch), leaving residue on my fingers. To my amazement, this extravagant, massive structure is merely a second gateway (another threshold) on a route that approaches to the temple further in. Pillars:

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Set a rhythm, create an enclosure. Large enough that it would take myself and a second person to link arms around them. Massive rounded barrels of timber – single, whole pieces that shoulder the heavy roof above. Set on square bases of stone that are rough and broken. The dark wood is a deep, rich reddy-brown with enormous markings that form a messy pattern – the grain. (A bit like swirling smoke or fluids mixed together)

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The timber has faded to a soft, pale orange part way up – where thousands of hands have stroked their surface. I notice one lady stop and hug one of the columns – her hands made it only half way around. People seem to talk in hushed tones and pass by with careful steps. It is a place where people pause (often to flash cameras), but also to sit and drink in the view. One man is stretched out across the threshold beam of one of the side openings - he is fast asleep. A child approaches the gate threshold – it is tall, up to his waist and he needs help to climb over it. As he gets halfway, he spreads himself out and lies across it - an intuitive response unhindered and simply expressed. He then walks up and down its length, arms stretched out sideways to keep balance. peaceful calm meditative focused

…and flash! (camera)

Colours Grey patchy floor, a pattern of diagonal lines. Dark wood with variation where hands have touched – brown/black fades through pale orange/ochre. Dark shadows in the recesses of the ceiling under croft – dull, musty blackgrey that obscures details from view. The Sky is cloudy and the sun disappears for moments at a time and bright hues transform to duller greys, echoed in the silvery bark of the trees. Sounds Birds chatter continually. Gentle muttering of people. Occasional squawk of a large black crow. If you concentrate, there is the faint rumble of city and traffic – but this seems so removed from here, your ears don’t really believe it. Worn away and weathered. Warmed by the morning sun. Coarse and deeply pitted. Brittle and sandy but hard and enduring. Dry and dusty. My hand comes away black.

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and therefore reasoned that any form of authentic making, building or dwelling was poetic, helping man to make sense of his existence. Looking at spatial types within the house such as the attic, cellar, (even nests), Gaston Bachelard explored the way we understand places, and how they become imprinted in our imaginations. He suggested that experiences of place - such as the recollection of a kitchen cupboard and the ‘odour of raisins drying on a wicker tray’ - are ‘so deeply rooted in our unconscious’ that they can be ‘recaptured through a mere mention.’ 4 In pursuit of my own method of measuring, I recognized that abstract scientific description would tend to leave the reader cold and uninvolved. However, a poet’s word that ‘strikes true’5 might better convey to others the experience of place because it sparks in them the activity of daydreaming. This reflects what Heidegger meant when he spoke of a ‘nearness’ to things. For him, nearness was not about physical proximity or understanding objects mentally in ideal terms, but about engaging emotionally with things or places. My exploration of phenomenology and the ways in which people subjectively ‘measure’ the world around them, prompted further questions: Can the experience of place be quantified? How should it be recorded? Furthermore, is it helpful to study places in this way? Gathering Measuring Instruments In adopting a phenomenological approach to measuring of place it was inappropriate

to employ scientific methods of recording. Instead, I explored a method that used body and mind as instruments to gauge the subjective experience of places and their sensory-emotional qualities. When Heidegger spoke of ‘measuring’ (in relation to the ‘fourfold’), he was advocating a relative understanding of things. He found that although ‘messen’ (measuring) referred to mathematics, it also implied the practice of comparing like-with-like. For him, it was ‘in the carrying out and settling of differences that the gathering nature of sameness [came] to light.’6 The principle measuring tool offered here was the use of comparison according to personal judgement. Norberg-Schulz offers a more structured approach to measuring, identifying terminology by which one might assess the strength of a place’s unique identity - its Genius Loci. This idea reflects the ancient Roman belief that each living being or place had a genius (guardian spirit) that gives it life, and determined its character or essence.7 Coincidently, the notion of Genius Loci corresponds well to an understanding of traditional Japanese architecture. Early inhabitants of Japan assigned gods to all natural phenomena and physical objects, and Shinto shrines were located in places of grandeur or mystery, paying homage to places where the ‘nearness of the gods was felt.’8 Norberg-Schulz described places using two broad categories: ‘space’ comprised of topographic, physical descriptions and ‘character’ referred to more subjective,

perceived qualities of an environment such as atmosphere, the ‘presence’ and the ‘how’ of things.9 For him, space and character were inextricably connected, and only together could provide an understanding of lived place. It is Juhani Pallasmaa who suggests using the body as a measuring instrument. He puts great emphasis on using human senses to understand architectural environments: I confront the city with my body; my legs measure the length of the arcade and the width of the square; my gaze unconsciously projects my body onto the façade of the cathedral, where it roams over the mouldings and contours, sensing the size of recesses and projections; my body weight meets the mass of the cathedral door, and my hand clasps the door pull as I enter the dark void behind. I experience myself in the city, and the city exists through my embodied experience. The city and my body supplement and define each other.10 This bodily approach to measuring is adopted by Peter Zumthor who writes anecdotes that capture the sensory and emotional qualities of architectural environments he has experienced. When he designs new buildings, he works outward from these remembered atmospheres, using his experiences and emotions as a source of inspiration. He explains: When I design a building, I frequently find myself sinking into old, half-forgotten memories, and then I try to recollect what the remembered architectural situation was really like, what it had meant to me at the time, and I try to think how it could help me now to revive that vibrant atmosphere.11

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Steven Holl’s interest lies in the occurrence of phenomena such as light, colours and sounds, and the way they affect people’s experience of place. He uses watercolours as an intuitive act to capture the crux of an architectural experience, deliberately painting in perspective because this requires a more complex understanding of space, form and the fall of light. Holl’s demonstration of ‘poesis’ (making) and Zumthor’s use of Bachelardian prose resonate with an ancient method of recording place in Japan. Buddhist haiku masters from the 17th Century journeyed many times across Japan, recording by anecdote, haiku poetry and by sketching with ink, their experiences of the ordinary

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STUDY 2: KENNIN-JI Hōjō [Saturday 21st July, 10:30 until 16:00, conditions: grey and overcast but very hot, 32 ˚C] Worn out and tired few hold in esteem this jewel of Gion Faded majesty with broken teeth a black frame rises Empty veranda boards squeak and twang like the music of Gion Dilapidated and worn out. The ground is scruffy and water gullies are dried up and silent. Bald. Though moss covers the garden landscape it is not like the treasured moss at Nanzen-ji; here it is carelessly defaced by ugly footprints of workmen. Bits of lattice are broken and timbers in the roof undercroft are split and splinter away. To enter the house I must remove my shoes. The ridges of the wood grain are deeply pronounced and leave an imprint on my skin. The soft thud of footsteps follows me everywhere I go. It is unlike any house I have known. No wall is solid. I can gaze right through a maze of ‘rooms’ – demarked only by tatami mat floors that are bordered on all sides by timber walkways. From one spot my eyes can roam through rooms, beyond small enclosed gardens to yet more rooms further in. Views cut through the building. Slices of vibrant nature burst out between humble, restrained empty rooms. The plan is rectangular and on a grid but punctured all over with small gardens. The garden, as promised, is deserted. I can enjoy the veranda to myself. I now understand why Eiji was so insistent. Once inside these walls, shielded by the pine trees and sheltered under the overhanging roof of the veranda, I feel worlds away from the hot heaving city outside. Gravel: raked in large sweeping arcs to give the symbolic impression of water. Clusters of moss like miniature forests cradle large stones that look like mountains (or single volcanoes). There’s Something about recreating beauty on a miniature scale that captures the imagination. You wonder at it because it appears before you perfect, un-spoilt; not a trace of human life - a world undiscovered – out of reach - can only be perceived from afar. Surface of timber veranda is worn smooth. Long term weathering has created deep ridges and colours that have surfaced in the timber cause a striking stripy effect along the length of the walkway. Occasionally, a deep creaking sound as someone walks past behind me [hollow sound of heavy heels vibrates through my body]. I can sense people approaching, passing and moving away without turning to see them. It is oppressively sticky. Feet stick to the timber boards. A rail marks the back edge of the veranda – here begins the soft, spongy surface of tatami matting. Dark wood lattice screens are slid open sideways, allowing light to pour into the dark gloomy interiors. Some diffuse light glows softly through the thick paper that is adhered to the back side of the lattice shoji – illuminating silhouettes of the vertical timber. The light from these screens is delicate and soft. In another room: objectionable garish electric lights – exposed bulbs with ugly excesses of wire illuminate the fine painted paper screens, but leaves them overexposed and startling. made

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and extraordinary that they encountered along the way.

1. Gathering words: my impressions of place, descriptions of tangible or intangible qualities, my emotional responses and memories, my interpretation of character and sense of atmosphere.

Though much has been written about measuring places, there is little evidence of a practiced methodology. This suggests there is a need to bridge the gap between a macro-philosophical stance and the 2. An Active consciousness of the practical application of research into senses: observing phenomena such the lived experience of place. A more as sounds, light and shadow, the ‘hands-on’ approach to measuring can be evidence of time and use, reflections found in the practises of the avant-garde or refraction in water, the touch of situationist group: the Psychogeographers. surfaces.)

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Guy Debord developed the notion of 3. Making: various kinds of visual ‘psychogeography’ as an interpretive material (sketches and paintings that means of reading the city. Out of this, convey detail or a broader impression the derive emerged as an activity in of ambiance.) wandering and seeing. Debord’s vision was for people to ‘drop the usual motives 4. Capturing: sound clips and video for movement and action, their relations, sequences, taking photographs their work and leisure activities, and let (the conscious framing of views / themselves be drawn by the attractions of capturing of evocative atmospheres.) the terrain and the encounters they find there.”12 This was not merely a stroll, but 5. Observing People: the way they was an activity in analysing what affects inhabit and identify places. mood, behaviour and the choice of route. 6. Use my own body to gauge the Iain Sinclair’s Liquid City is a collection relative proportion and scale of of short stories and poems drawn elements. from his experiences of walking routes through depressed areas of London. He I conducted three studies of Japanese gathers photographs, recordings of sound temple gardens in Kyoto, giving myself and sketches that he builds upon to time to explore without prior agenda or write evocative prose that convey vivid direction, and record the character of impressions of place. Though his interest place as it occurred to me to do so. Once is not specifically in architecture, he I had gathered a body of raw material, exemplifies the use of dérive to record his I wanted a means to draw fragmented experience of place: data together to represent what was, in reality, an enmeshed whole experience. I thrived on movement, drift, being out in Sinclair used his raw material to create the weather. I wanted a single sentence to short stories or poems. I considered it an contain everything I knew. I suffered from interesting venture to adopt a Japanese that impulse to sketch, note, improvise, form of creative writing to represent my revise, double back, bifurcate, split like findings. Haiku poetry offers a means to an amoeba. My rampant schizophrenia distil in a simple but memorable verse, expressed itself in the act of transcribing the enduring impression of place. For the speech of dogs, watching cloud-streets instance, this haiku written by Bashō: advance across the mouth of the Medway, listening to the shapeless buzz of cafes, trains, on the water supermarkets.13 the reflection of a wanderer 14 A Method Of Measuring A system of rules governs the form of Wanting to avoid the pitfalls of a scientific haiku poetry in Japan; the seventeen approach I resolved that my measuring syllable links are usually divided into studies in Japan should not replicate sections of five, seven and five syllables. a standardised system of recording. In Western literature the restriction Cautious of being too prescriptive, I on syllables is generally relaxed; what gathered a collection of strategies that remains is an emphasis on directness, formed a ‘kit’ of measuring ‘tools’ to truthfulness and a light touch. I wrote be used in accordance with personal haiku to capture the essence of my judgement: architectural experiences.

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STUDY 1: NANZEN-JI Sanmon Nanzen-ji temple is removed from the bustle of traffic and people on the northeastern edge of Kyoto. The Sanmon is an enormous gateway on the processional route to Nanzen-ji (the temple itself ). It exemplifies the Zen style with its gabled, baked tile roof with five pillars and three entrances. I found this place particularly evocative because the visitor is drawn along a dramatic route through gateways and temples to a waterfall that is tucked away in a forest glade some way up the hillside. This first study at Nanzen-ji was fairly systematic and chronologically records my experiences along a route. I was anxious to not neglect any aspect of place, so I followed a loose system of noting my initial impressions, followed by a more detailed descriptions, turning my attention lastly to the sensory experience of place. However, this was unhelpful because my recording of physical elements became divorced from their sensual qualities, when in reality, they existed as an enmeshed whole. This study highlighted to me the importance of allowing intuition to guide my recording methods. This way, things would be accredited importance according to the degree of attention to which I paid them. STUDY 2: KENNIN-JI Hōjō Kennin-ji is the oldest Zen temple in Kyoto. Located near the centre of the city, its main entrance is found in the heart of the traditional Geisha entertainment district of Gion. Despite its prestigious location, the temple seems overlooked and rarely visited. The complex of gardens and buildings is small and looks tattered and uninviting. During my stay in Kyoto, I walked through these gardens every day on my way to the city centre but I had barely noticed them. It was only upon the insistence of Eiji that I decided to conduct a measuring study of Kennin-ji ‘Hōjō’ (the superior’s quarters and zen garden), adjacent to the main temple. On this occasion, I tried to use fewer words and record things in more varied ways, allowing intuition to guide my choice of methods. By focusing on a smaller area, I was freed from all agenda to record things as it occurred to me to do so. While recording my experience of the Hōjō, I felt limited in the expression of my experiences because I lacked a wider understanding

of the building’s cultural and social context. I feared my observations might seem superficial and naive. STUDY 3: RYOAN-JI Zen Garden Ryoan-ji temple and garden complex is located on the north-western outskirts of Kyoto. It is world-renowned as a ‘quintessential’ Zen rock garden and a masterpiece of Japanese culture. I ‘measured’ my encounter of the main temple, adjoined by its famous Karesansui (‘dry landscape’) garden. I considered Ryoan-ji Zen garden to be my most successful study. It represented an accumulation of understanding built upon my experience of the previous two temples. I gave an entire day to study a small area which enabled me to explore the subtle details of place as well as its essential character. I believe this study was more successful because I had progressively learned to operate more naturally as a phenomenologist. Reflections on measuring By measuring place, I learned a much about traditional architecture in Japan. I perceived that the temple gardens offered a coherent multi-sensory experience that was different to the assault on the senses that I encountered in the city – where aggressive traffic noises competed with shop stereos and the chiming bells of shrines sandwiched between them. While each sound, smell or image of the city seemed to be divorced from the next, my sensory experience of the temples was subtle and coherent. In my recollections of Nanzen-ji Sanmon, the textures of traditionally crafted timber are intrinsically related to the subtle aroma of incense, the delicate colours and gentle movement of greenery; rather than competing with one another, these sensory elements combined to produce a cohesive whole. In the temple gardens I observed a cherishing of the signs of aging. The elegance of Kennin-ji Hōjō owed much to the patina of wear on timber walkways, the way walls had become stained by moss, and how the veranda edges had become gnarled by exposure to the rain. In my experience, I found restraint, refinement and quietness characterized the aesthetic of the temple gardens. Walls tended to be blank. There were no bold, artificial colours; rather, all surfaces remained in their natural state. made

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STUDY 3: RYOAN-JI Zen Garden [Tuesday 24th July, 11:30 until 16:30, conditions: hot and bright, 32 ˚C] Removing my shoes I ascend and leave the city behind Fluttering the crowd watch motionless desert of parched sea From the heat throbbing circada hide in the moss and shadow Entrance Sign: “…Internationally recognised as a place of exceptional and universal value; a cultural heritage site worthy of preservation for the benefit of all mankind…” The sun is intensely hot and the light so bright that you must squint; flag stones reflect dazzlingly white and the silver-grey baked tiles flash brightly as you pass by. Cicada surround on all sides and are working themselves into an excited racket. Dark. As I step into the entrance, it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dimness. I slowly realise there is a lady sat immediately next to me in a tiny ticket booth – waiting. I am directed to remove my shoes – they join maybe thirty other pairs. A Westerner marches straight up onto the polished temple floor without removing his shoes. (Maybe his eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the dark) A commotion. The poor man eventually disappears into the temple in his socks... Further in. Light streams in from the side where a wall might have been [it’s a small enclosed garden]. The light causes a white shimmering reflection across the polished floor – a bit like lights reflected on the surface of a calm sea – slightly wavy with board edges and wood grain. The air is warm as I step out onto the veranda. Outside yet inside: exposed with no enclosing wall, yet sheltered under an extended overhanging roof. Part of the garden and part of the temple. The garden is large and rectangular, enclosed by earthen walls.

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Festive, carnival atmosphere – bustling with people wearing all different colour clothing, chattering, flashing cameras, posing for self portraits, laughing… the jangle of digital cameras loading up and switching on. Some sit quietly and contemplate the garden scene but most seem distracted. Intensive flapping of fans and guide brochures; the crowd flutters and shifts about like a crowd

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of insects. We are like an audience in anticipation of a performance before the lights have been dimmed and voices hushed; waiting for something to happen – a change, some drama… But the scene never changes. No breeze. Not a flicker of movement From the platform where I sit (snugly between strangers), the scene reaches outwards, layer upon layer of pebbles – edge stone – gravel ‘sea’ – moss covered sill – upon which a stout earthen wall lies as a horizontal band – then a layer of roof that casts a long horizontal shadow – a ridge line… Beyond this enclosure a jungle of dense foliage arches upwards (broadly spread maple leaves then towering tall pines). Finally a layer of cloudless sky vaults above this ‘borrowed scenery’ of life-sized trees and eventually my view is hemmed in by a top border of overhanging eaves and exposed rafters. Sun blazing down on the gravel turns it more to a desert than a sea – blinding and dazzling. Reflected heat emanates from its surface. The small ‘ islands’ of this miniature landscape look cool and inviting; soft moss is lush and green. The gravel here is raked absolutely straight. No breach in the lines at all - no waver – as if it had always been. The enclosing boundary walls are cast in deep shadow by the elegant shingle roofs that crown their entire length. The shadows are so dark that the earth walls are shrouded in mystery – depth and infinity at the edges of the gravel sea. Under foot the floor boards of the veranda are much rougher and weathered than those inside. Faded in the sun. Scratched and marked as if thousands of people had etched their names into the floor over hundreds of years – unintelligible though and of course, unthinkable here. It’s the patina of age, bearing the imprint of sitting, standing, walking. Turning the corner away from the hot busy south veranda (leaving glare, heat and a flapping cramped crowd) I find an exquisite place: Green and lush. The veranda looks upon shady grove of trees and shrubs - I think can feel a cool breeze. Moss is everywhere; it coats the ground beneath the trees like a soft rich green velvet carpet. The sun is dropping and rays of light sparkle between starshaped maple leaves. In the absence of people, birds sing. Cicada buzz and throb in rising waves. Too soon, it is time to leave.

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I found the architecture to be sombre Reflections of a ‘Measurer’ which, for me, accentuated the bright variety of the natural scene outside. Learning to operate in a truly A harmony seemed to exist between phenomenological way required me to nature and man-made construction: dispense with the idea that scientific verandas provided an indefinite analytical study somehow conveys more boundary between inside and outside truth or holds more authorityAdopting and rooms were organised to frame this approach proved more fruitful as elements of the natural scene outside. I I progressively learned to operate more came to understand that a relationship naturally as a phenomenologist and with nature was fundamental to the allow intuition to guide my methods of dwelling of the people who built these recording. temples. Since the Enlightenment, the West Though there is value in reflecting on has traditionally been regarded as what I learned about the temples and a technocratic, scientific society. the people who built them, the purpose Furthermore, British education of my study was to evaluate a method of seems, generally, to be founded on measuring. It is difficult to ascertain the gathering knowledge that is testable ‘success’ of my method. Should success and verifiable by scientific systems. As be gauged according to the quality of a result, knowledge is valued if it is seen writing or drawings produced, or by to be reliable, accurate and universally the breadth and variety of impressions true. This is not the sort of knowledge recorded? that a phenomenological approach produces. Instead it gives credence to In a scientific context the studies personal judgement and understanding might be assessed according to their through ones emotional sensibility and reliability or accuracy; whether they are intuition. These things, by their nature representative of an experience shared defy rationality and logic. Heidegger by the majority, and can therefore argued that the world is first-andidentify universal truths about Japanese foremost perceived by how it seems to temple gardens. However, to evaluate each individual. success in this way would contradict the aims of a phenomenological approach. Central to this debate is the question: I considered my study of Ryoan-ji what gives knowledge its ‘authority’? Zen garden to be the most successful For scientists, it is the ability for because it represented an accumulated information to be ‘proved’. Knowledge understanding of place and I had ample pertaining to a certain standard receives time to record a relatively small place a qualification. Phenomenology suggests in more varied and creative ways. The there are limitations to an approach that studies conducted at Nanzen-ji and separates things out for investigation Kennin-ji were not unsuccessful, but my and maintains that things can only be recording of Ryoan-ji achieved a richer understood while properly enmeshed in and fuller amount of data. the context in which they are found. It believes that ‘authoritative’ knowledge The temple gardens were unfamiliar then comes from the gathered sum of to me and my recording of them was an individual’s experiences and from inevitably coloured by the fact that moments of understanding or revelation, I am a British-educated individual which Heidegger likened to arriving at a experiencing places that belong to a forest clearing.15 different culture. The things that I noted were things that ‘stood out’ to A phenomenological approach is not me personally – to some degree because without its drawbacks. When the of my foreignness to the environment. findings of a study are so subjective and I often felt limited in my expression personal, it is difficult to understand because I lacked a deeper understanding how they might be of benefit to others. of the building’s history or cultural One cannot experience a place on context. I was able to describe physical another’s behalf, nor can one claim to form and character, or the feelings understand places in the way that others associated with sitting sheltered on the do. A phenomenological approach veranda, but I could not convey the to measuring does not arrive at a cultural significance of these things, or comprehensive understanding of place their reason for being the way they were. in its entirety – nor does it intend to. The

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method I have developed to measure the I have come to understand that a experiential qualities of environments, multi-sensory understanding of places can be offered to others as an approach through direct, personal exposure they might wish to take in the pursuit of and interaction is essential to the their own holistic appreciation of place. design of humane and meaningful built environments. Such experiences Evidence for the value of a form ‘the reservoir of architectural phenomenological approach can be atmospheres’16 from which I might find found in the lessons I have learned, the answers to architectural problems. personally, as a designer through the Therefore, I have resolved to position process of measuring places in Japan. myself as an activist of consciousness. 17

1 Martin Heidegger, ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’ in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. A Hofstadter (London: Harper and Row, 1971), p. 146 2 Kenneth Frampton, Tadao Ando (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1991), p. 21 3 Adam Sharr, Heidegger for Architects (London: Routledge, 2007), p. 68 4 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), p. 13 5 Ibid., p. 13

6 Heidegger, p. 219 7 Christian Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1980), p. 18 8 William Alex, Japanese Architecture (London: PrenticeHall International, 1963), p. 11 9 Norberg-Schulz, pp. 6-23 10 Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses (Chichester: Wiley-Academy, 2005), p. 40 11 Peter Zumthor, Thinking Architecture 2nd edn (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2006), p. 8

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12 Guy Debord, ‘The Theory of the Dérive’ <http:// library.nothingness.org/articles/all/en/display/314> [accessed 28 May 2007] 13 Iain Sinclair, Liquid City (London: Reaktion Books, 1999), p. 8 14 David Cobb, The British Museum Haiku, ed. David Cobb (London: The British Museum Press, 2002), p. 7 15 Sharr, p. 74 16 Peter Zumthor, p. 8 17 Pallasmaa, p. 30

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Contributors Kai Holtin has taught and researched at the TU Graz since 2001. His research field is the interaction between architecture and landscape, especially concerning infrastructure and agricultural buildings. He practised as an architect in Berlin, studied architecture in Berlin and Aarhus, and is trained as a stonemason and sculptor. In 2009, Kai lectured on ‘Public - Building - Space’ at the Welsh School of Architecture during a twoweek visit as an Erasmus exchange Lecturer.

External Editorial Board: Hilde Heynen (Katholieke Universitaet Leuven) Marc Treib (University of California, Berkeley) Simon Unwin (Dundee School of Architecture) Pierre Von Meiss (EPFL Lausanne) Internal Editorial Board: Wayne Forster Richard Weston Art Director: Janice Coyle Editors: Allison Dutoit Mhairi McVicar made is published annually Printed on ecologically friendly paper

Views expressed in made are those of the author alone, and not necessarily of the editors, editorial board, Welsh School of Architecture or Cardiff University.

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All illustrations by author unless noted otherwise. Every possible effort has been made to trace copyright holders of images and photographs used. made welcomes any information concerning copyright holders that viewers may provide.

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Kevin Hong is co-director of Collaborative Design Studio, a young UK based architecture and urban design studio. Educated in London and Chicago, he is an US licensed architect with professional experience both in the US and UK. His specific interests involve the exploration of infrastructure, landscape and architecture. He is currently a part-time tutor with the Welsh School of Architecture. Swan Hung Hotz is a potter and studied at the Bartlett and the Architectural Association (AA) a decade after finishing her MFA in Houston, Texas. She is currently working as a teaching scholar and on her MPhil research on Deformation. Dr. Waasim Jabi is a Senior Lecturer at the Welsh School of Architecture. He received his M.Arch. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. Dr. Jabi has published extensively on the topics of computer-supported collaborative design, parametric design, and digital tectonics. He recently concluded work on a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Dr. Jabi is a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Architectural Computing (IJAC) and a member of the steering committee of the Association for Computer-Aided Design In Architecture (ACADIA). Hannah Jones is a tutor and a metadesign researcher in the department of design at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her doctoral research focuses on awkward space in cities. William Jones is an artist whose work focuses on different aspects of the creative process. David Kohn is principal of David Kohn Architects and a Diploma Unit leader at London Metropolitan University. Graham Morrison is a partner of Allies and Morrison. It has recently completed the restoration of the Royal Festival Hall and the transformation of Arsenal’s Highbury stadium and is working on the masterplan for the

Call for Papers

London 2012 Olympics and its legacy. He is a member of the London Advisory Committee, chairs Southwark’s design review panel and has lectured to a number of architecture schools both in the UK and abroad. Gethin Owens is a practicing landscape architect whose research interests lie in industrial regeneration. Gethin completed his PhD at Durham University and has provided guest lectures at the landscape architecture department at the University of Gloucestershire. He acted as a panel judge for the Homes & Communities Academy Future Vision Awards and recently won a Landscape Institute Award. Christopher Platt was apprentice, student and design tutor at the Mackintosh Schools of Architecture, Glasgow under Professors Andy MacMillan and Isi Metzstein and has held senior positions in architectural practices in Scotland, England, Germany and Ethiopia. He is the founding partner (with Roderick Kemsley) of the award-winning practice studio KAP architects and senior lecturer and Director of Graduations Studies in the Department of Architecture at Strathclyde University, Glasgow. Richard Powell. Born in London, Richard studied fine art (sculpture) at Chelsea and Cardiff, taught sculpture/fine art at various art collages around the UK, and has worked and researched internationally. In 1989, Richard won the Prix Gitanes, Paris. With support from National Museum and Galleries Wales, Richard produced and launched the collaborative publication Bubble a Byrlymu’, an artists view of St Fagans : Museum of Welsh Life. Chloe Sambell graduated with an MArch from the Welsh School of Architecture in 2008, and practiced as a research assistant in the Design Research Unit (DRU) at the school from 2008-2009. Professor Chris Tweed is Director of the BRE Centre for Sustainable Design of the Built Environment (SuDoBE) in the Welsh School of Architecture. He is currently researching how people interact with technologies in the built environment to inform the design of more sustainable neighbourhoods, buildings and comfort systems. Chris Wilkins is a recent M.Arch graduate of the Welsh School of Architecture. He is studying for an MPhil at the school whilst establishing his own practice.

We invite papers for made 6, 2010. We are happy to consider papers relating to architecture and its making, within or beyond the orthodox ‘fields’ of design, history, theory, science or professional practice. We invite submissions in one of two possible categories: first, papers of 800-850 words with images, for which expressions of interest should be sent to the editor; second, full papers, for which abstracts of 300-500 words are invited, to include a full title and the author’s name, contact details and affiliation. These should be submitted by 15th December 2009.