1st year_SCI-Arc_HU by vermouth Hu

Yunxin Hu

M.arch2 1st year

2014 fall/2015 spring acedemic works at SCI-Arc

contents

2gax 1

Design studio

Visual studies

Applied studies

1 2 9

3 4

FormMorphology F a c e t e d D i s t i n t e g r at i o n

T a b l e a u V i va n t TheCloud

Culture studies EventArchitecture

2gbx 5

Design studio

Visual studies

6 7

35 37

51 55

D e g r at e d M o n o l i t h Processing

Applied studies T e n s e g r i t y 2.0 W a l k i n g C i t y 1.0

Applied studies GroupAssignment

Culture studies MidtermPaper FinalPaper

2gax

Design studio

I n s t r u c t o r | M a r c e ly n G o w P a rt n e r | M a j e d a A l h i n a i

FormMorphology

‘Faceted Disintegration’ refers to the fragmented element of the design that acted as a strong influence in determining the structure of the building as a whole. A mass that has a good balance between porosity and heavy weight is later developed into a more complex body by voxelization and texturalization. The interest in preserving the disintegrated aspects of the mass help to transform them into glazed elements in design process. These act as a display of the design concept, as well as help reflect light into the interior spaces. Overall, the project makes reference to a mixture of genres as well as the grotesque and illegible. It challenges the idea of figure and brings new meaning to a traditional setting.

Materiality and Color

Interior and Exterior

Site & Context

The voxels were derived from the Japanese painting “The Great Wave”; resulting in a pointillist quality. The aim was to blur the boundary between where the voxels end and the mass starts. In order to achieve this, the physical object (voxel) and the graphic (color) should be slightly misregistered. The neutral tones of the blue and beige harmonize together with the materiality of the main mass. Although the color scheme does not come from any of the adjacent buildings, it helps blur the threshold between the mass and the natural scene (the water and the sky).

Various “threshold” spaces are introduced within the project where there is not a definitive boundary between exterior and interior. In certain areas of the building, the exterior indexes the interior because they coherently exist in terms of colors, voxelization, and the scale of spaces. Voxelization is created specifically to not only appear on the exterior facade, but also to integrate into the internal building structure and to create habitable programmatic spaces.

The project aims to address the larger context of the adjacent site. This relationship does not exist by literally imprinting the cityscapes onto the building facade, but rather by orienting the building according to the site. Formally, the building acts as a transition piece between the adjacent massive brick building on the north side and the open public park on the south. The building’s porous quality allows for a flux of human traffic adjacent to the promenade by the water and the public garden. The building addresses “weird contextualism” by keeping some degree of visual trace of the original adjacent building typologies, colors, or materials.

FacetedDisintegration

3DCoat | Contextualizing

3DCoat | Mass Producing

3DCoat | Sculpting

3DCoat | Subtracting

FacetedDisintegration

Atium Light Well Individual Study Room

Auditorium Event Space Oblique Grand Entry

Public Cafe

Vertical Circulation Individual Office + Classroom

FacetedDisintegration

2gax

Visual studies

Instructor | Elena Manferdini P a rt n e r | M a j e d a A l h i n a i

TableauVivant

TableauVivant 10

2gax

Applied studies Instructor | Marcelo Spina

P a rt n e r | H o n g ya n g L i n | C u n h a o L i

Case Sudy | Ceramic Tiles

Case Sudy | Skeleton Structure

Case Sudy | Roof Geometry

11 TheCloud

John Nouvel’s Tokyo Opera House is constructed of a new ceramic tile system which learns from the Museum der Kulturen Basel. The tiles adopt original hexogonal geometry and color palette, composed of six colors varying from dark blue to reflective white. Besides variation in geometry and color, there is also rotation applying on the facade varying from negative 50 degrees to positive 50 degrees. Furthermore, the system has a “cloud-like“ relief pattern that is adopted from the original building facade gradient.

Each hexongonal ceramic tile is either concave or convex in shape and it stands on a specially orientated stand/post, where the rotations happen. Varied rotations and reflectivity allow people to preceive different phenomenological effects on the building facade. From far, the front building facade is perceived to achieve a “cloud“ effect. The supporting structure of the new Tokyo Opera House is metal frame structure with oblique metal bracings. The metal bracings are constructed in a way to help firmly hold the ceramic tiles.

The design challenges the technological application to achieve variation in a monolithic system. Different from the traditional panel system where panels are constructed in a repetitious way, no two panels look the same/similar. The design pushes a new way of making architectural system using new softwares and technology.

TheCloud 12

Prototype

13 TheCloud

Conv

Conx

Multi

Void

METALIC COATED CERAMIC PANEL

PANEL SUPPORTS

8” HORIZONTAL FRAME 1’ VERTICAL FRAME

VENTILATION GAP

4” TRUSSES PANEL OVERLAY

TheCloud 14

15 TheCloud

TheCloud 16

2gax

Cultural studies I n s t r u c t o r | M a r c e ly n G o w

New “Events” in Architecture Final Paper

“Event” in Architecture often refers to the use, or program. The definition of Bernard Tschumi’s events in architecture involves six concepts including the mediated “shock” factor, superimposition, cross programming, and the turning point . His article “6 Concepts” recognizes the mediated image shock as an important factor in creating “events” in Architecture, due to the explosion of information in the contemporary world. Also, he believes that this mediated shock defamiliarizes the architectural curriculum from the general public, - which challenges the historical idea that architecture is a form of power and authority. Program, he argues, has no affiliation with form in the traditional sense. In contemporary architecture, neither form follows function nor function follows form, but all structure, form, function, and body superimpose and interrelate to each other. This concept applies to a lot of his own work such as “The Manhattan Transcript”, National library of France, and Parc de la Villette. A new definition of events in contemporary architecture which this essay argues is engendered based on Tschumi’s concepts of mediated shock and de-familiarization. However, it has less to do with superimposition of programs and structure, but more about an innovative way that architecture challenges new thinking of the space through perception and affect, - like a 17 EventArchitecture

turning point. Also, the new definition changes the relationship between space and events, - moving away from both the hierarchical relations between the two in the historic convention and Tschumi’s definition through different modes of representation. In another word, projects that create the true “events in architecture” are those that mark turning points in the architectural history. “The Manhattan Transcript” is an example how notations and imagery create new ways to transcribe and define event spaces. The word transcript/ transcribing is literally defined as a form of something as rendered from one alphabet or language into another. In Tschumi’s book, this word can be best used to describe the internal relationships within Architecture. For him, Architecture “is a means of communication, defined by the movement as well as by the walls. Because architecture is an intertextual experience, semantic analysis can be applied to it.” The notion of intertextuality in Architecture means that the ideas are not directly transferred from creators/writers to readers, but are instead mediated through diagrammatic triptychs, photographs, and texts. What readers understand is a mediated world that is transcribed or filtered by the creator. The MT 1 (figure 1) episode illustrates a murder by 24 triptychs consisted of an image of a photograph

(of an action), an image of the central park’s map (architecture), and an image of a diagram (of a movement). The first image always exposes the body, describes the action, and tells the story. The second image always locates the body, places the action and stages the story. While the last image always relates the action and the physical site by indicating the movements according to the landscape and architecture. The straight lines with arrow often describes the direction of movement, while the dash lines implies the architecture. Only when the three images interrelate to each other can truly represent the “park”, just as what Tschumi describes in the book, “The reality of its sequences does not lie in the accurate transposition of the outside world, but in the internal logic these sequences display.” “With the dramatic sense that pervades much of the work, cinematic devices replace conventional description. Architecture becomes the discourse of events as much as the discourse of spaces.” In his “Spaces and Events”, Tschumi concludes that contemporary architecture possesses its own “dramatic” characters instead of staging drama. Thus, architecture and events are inseparable. Architecture, therefore, also possesses a cinematic character. In MT 4 of “The Manhattan Transcript”, in “the block”, Tschumi adapts the film metaphor to transcribe architecture. Frames align in a series

of five to illustrate a continuous movie scene of contradictory events that happened at the five inner courtyards of a simple city block. He uses axonometric in his drawings attempting to offer a multidimensional view of space. Plus, the use of continuous square frames that resembles film rolls and structural arches (doors at bottom and small window openings around) reinforces the analogy with the movement timeline along an architecture appearing as animation frames. At the same time, unnecessary actions happen at its peak here: tightrope walking, ice-skating, dancing, marching and playing football are all rather unlikely activities to take place within an urban Manhattan block. The collapse of contradictory activities and scenes allows the audience another reading of “event space”. The work on The Transcripts was a notation experiment, with the intention to arrive at new tools and methods of representation. The modes of representations and media used create a new transcript that juxtaposed on the original drawing, offering the audience another reading of the architectural spaces. The book is neither a work of reality, nor pure imagination. The book is full of death and love, of drama and fantasy, but the fact that the site maps match the proportions of real space emphasizes a “weird” coexisted reality. The superimposition of “virtual reality” and “real fictitious” provides multidimensional readings of the space.

EventArchitecture 18

Similar superimposition also happens in his famous work Parc de la Villette which his concept of cross-programming is fully manifested. The design scheme is composed of construction of over 25 buildings, promenades, covered walkways, bridges, and landscaped gardens. It offers programs such as workshop, gym, bath facilities, playgrounds, exhibits, concerts, science experiments, and cafes. The programs disperse into different “follies” and are all somehow relate to one another. Each folly scatters on the site and presents itself as an independent identity. However, they all superimpose to a structural grid and are painted red. Thus the superimposition happens on both form and program. Furthermore, body is the trigger that turns the passive natural scenery into an active cultural space of event. So the body at the foreground is as important as the nature at the background. The overlap of cultural space on natural space allows another reading of superimposition. Programs, forms, and human interaction, at least three layers of superimposition present in the project. This stratification of programs and structure as well as circulation also happens in his design entry for National library of France, which five interrelated sets of circuits including athletes’ running track, visitors and administrators’ circulations can be identified. Again, Tschumi designs a space of movements and cross programming, - the movements of scholars, visitors, and athletes, and

19 EventArchitecture

the uncanny crash of the programs of the reading rooms and running tracks. Starting with the era of postmodernism till now, the ways of inventing and representing architecture has advanced exponentially in many aspects due to the rapid growth in digital technology. In the contemporary world, since technology and media can do so much and so rapidly for people in terms of representing, archiving, and creating. It is now a good time to ask whether these blasts of mediated information are truly presenting and catching the “events” for the architectural world, which questions how much of the mediated representations actually outcomes the thoughtful creative process, not purely “shocks” factors. Here, the idea of invention is emphasized. Jacques Derrida’s quote “…that ’event’ shared roots with ‘invention’, hence the notion of event, of the action-in-space, of the turning point, the invention” is interpreted by Tschumi by establishing a close association with the notion of shock, a shock to be effective in our mediated culture. On the contrary, I would interpret the quote differently. I would argue that the “event” here suggests significant innovations that overturn or influence new relationships between the body and space due to factors such as advancing technologies, and innovative spatial logics etc. And they have to push the architectural boundaries and invent future path.

(Left) Figure 1. MT. 1 The Park B. Tschumi, “The Manhattan Transcript” (1981) Pg. 17 (Up 1) Figure 2. Pterodactyl construction site (on site, March.2014) (Up 2) Figure 3. Pterodactyl construction site (on site, Oct.2014) (Right) Figure 4. The High Line, NYC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/)

Eric Owen Moss’s Pterodactyl in Culver City experiments new structural possibilities that engender new potential readings of the interior programmatic spaces. Hence it is also an architecture of events. “The Pterodactyl name came from us, simply because the form, particularly the structure (much of which is visible) relates (in my head anyway) to that of a prehistoric bird about to take off from its perch on the parking garage roof” This action of “taking off” creates a feeling of instability, which does not only appear on the building form, but also employs at interior spaces. The scheme

is designed in parametric software BIM (Building Information Modeling) which determines the building’s formal quality and its construction method. Each of the steel framings, columns, I-beams, bracings, and steel connecting pieces is customized into specific size and shape on site, and none is assembled in any conventional orthogonal orientations. Walking through the main corridor on the second floor, diagonal bracings poke into the interior space and exposed I-beams hang less than a foot overhead. There are always structural members “dis-located” or “mis-placed” in the space. Light diffuses and suffuses the EventArchitecture 20

suffuses the space through oblique skylights that follow the “box” form, and changes the tone and affect of the building interior according to the time of a day. The moving body constantly fluctuates (physically) between obstacles and open space, while the mood constantly fluctuates (psychologically) between mental stability and instability. This constant action by the occupants wakes their mind to be aware of the office space as a true “place”, a place with character, thus make the building a space of events. Furthermore, Pterodactyl employs innovative structural “language” that is different from the modernist and postmodernist era. It was a perfect example of how a design that is generated by BIM on the digital screen translates in the reality. The inaccuracy in the translation such as mis-alignments of structural members on site creates new potential spaces that drives new activities and events. Pterodactyl invents a turning point that changes the way people perceive the space, thus is truly a space of event. Different from the stratification of programming of Tschumi’s Parc de la Villette, the program of Pterodactyl is simple and straight forward. However, it is considered an event space according to new definitions. People often distinguish contemporary architecture from the historical precedents by its non-hierarchical characteristics, - in both form and

21 EventArchitecture

program. Event spaces share the same qualities. Nevertheless, in contrast to the formal scattering quality of projects such as Parc de la Villette, event space can also be formally monolithic at the same time nonhierarchical. SCI-Arc’s ¼ mile-longbuilding is a good example in this case. Situated in the middle of the Art district of downtown LA, this simple two-storey bar shape stages a simple program: architectural school. Followed by its simple exterior shell, the interior spaces truly provoke actions and events. More fluid programs such as open gallery and studio spaces are series connected by circulation while more static programs of seminar rooms, the library and woodshop locate at building’s two ends. All spaces except those at the ends are entirely open and interpenetrating to each other. Lecture auditorium, classrooms, exhibition space share the same space and are interchangeable to achieve the concept of “no wall/boundary school”. Habitants of the building, the body, constantly engages with on-going events that happen everywhere, anytime, in the space by actions of seeing, hearing, and participating. The pulse of the building is active 24-7, the habitants of the building are busy 24-7, due to the nature of the program, also due to the openness and fluidity of the spaces. SCI-Arc building certainly is a successful retro-fitting invention that turns the scrap piece (an old train station) into a new generator/engine of

more event spaces. The new opened Santa Fe apartment across the street, another barshaped-building that is derived from SCI-Arc, responds to the existing building and activates more on the site and surrounding. SCI-Arc building exemplifies a homogenous building form of an event space that is very different from those by Tschumi, while the High Line in New York City by James Corner Field Operations presents another appearance of architecture/urban project that is very eventful in its formal language and impact on the city scape. The High Line is a 1.45-mile-long New York City linear park built on an elevated section of a disused New York Central Railroad spur called the West Side Line. It contains almost all public programs that a conventional park can provide but challenges a new perception of the habitable space. It creates different “stage

sets” that enable better views towards the city. It also elevates human bodies on the obsolete train tracks, moves them between metropolitan constructs, allowing the viewers a perception of a new horizon that is different from the ones on the ground. Playground, garden, cafe, book stop, art exhibition space, etc. the High Line has many programs of identity. Each is carefully-designed and intentionally decorated by elongated plantations and well-executed public utilities (water fountains and chairs that formally derived from the ground etc.). The body sits and views the movements of the cars on the stairs of an elevated platform like in a “theatrical” play, while the elevated platform stages a new play to the viewers on the ground that changes the previous “audience” to “actors”, viewers at the same times are being viewed. Thus there is an interchangeable role-play between being an observer and a player, between

actively participating an event and passively perceiving one. The High Line ingeniously transforms the perception of the human body and the city scape, - the body activates the park through variety of physical activities, also activates the city through varied ways of perception. Hence, the project innovatively purposes a successful event space.

EventArchitecture 22

In conclusion, the essay re-defines new “event” in Architecture in the contemporary world based on Bernard Tschumi’s six concepts of Architecture, particularly focuses on the presence of the last factor, - the turning point. “Event” does not only represent programs but more inventions. No matter structural innovation, new modes of representation, or new ways of spatial interaction, architecture has to offer the curriculum an innovative breakthrough for the future to become a true architecture of event. The contemporary world of information explosion offers Architecture benign opportunities to engage with broader technological, cultural and intellectual issues that are not yet been fully manifested/solved in architecture, which include big-datadriven design, and the relationship between digital software design and human interaction. Architecture of events has always been dealing with human interaction and new ways of representation, which both issues can be addressed and developed further under the new contemporary technological and intellectual context. Eventually, “event architecture” could become ar architectural type that addresses variety of broader social issues and moves forward the future of the architectural curriculum’s.

23 EventArchitecture

References Bernard Tschumi, “Spaces and Events,” and “6 Concepts”, in Architecture and Disjunction (1996), Page 139-150 Bernard Tschumi, “The Manhattan Transcript”, Academy Editions/St. Martin’s Press, (1981) Bernard Tschumi Architects, 2010. Bernard Tschumi Architects > Projects [online] <http://www.tschumi.com/projects/> Selena Savic “Event and Movement in Architecture” (2013) Architizer: “Eric Owen Moss Plunks A Nine-Winged “Pterodactyl” Atop An LA Parking Garage” [online]<http://architizer.com/blog/eric-owen-mosspterodactyl> (Jan. 2013)

EventArchitecture 24

2gbx

Design studio

Instructor | Marcelo Spina P a rt n e r | A n t h o n y S t o ff e l l a

original

roof types 1A

mutation 01 1A 2A

1A 2A 3A

1A 1A 1B

1A 2B

2A 3A

mutation 04 add roof line

mutation 02 compile

mutation 04 add roof line

mutation 03 outline

mutation 05 outcome

25 DegradedMonolith

Degraded Monolith sets up a dialect of loose network vs. vernacular autonomy, and a parallel between forms that are iconic mute and degrading monolith. Buildings are created in groups of collective masses that connect to each other at the same time yet preserves their distinct characteristics. The idea of “loose network” is reflected at the early stage of master planning. Taking precedents from both classical and modern concepts, we created a combination of “loose network” paths inspired by Constant’s

new Babylon, and the picturesque quality of the classical village. The partto-whole relationship is reflected by the design of small variable clusters forming the whole campus. The buildings maintain a sense of “whole” through incorporating the vernacular roof typologies that derived from the catalunya region. From far away, they maintain a solid monolithic identity with areas of relief that carve the skin to produce a natural yet grotesque presence in the landscape; From a closer distance,

the degrading skin reveals tectonic elements of fenestrations and facade systems. The representation as well as the construction allows for a misinterpretation of the true scale of the buildings. The foreground and background relationship of the rendered images aid the uncanny yet picturesque qualities of the monolithic forms.

DegradedMonolith 26

27 DegradedMonolith

DegradedMonolith 28

29 DegradedMonolith

DegradedMonolith 30

31 DegradedMonolith

DegradedMonolith 32

2gbx

Visual studies Instructor | Casey Rehm

P a rt n e r | K e L i | H o n g ya n g L i n | S u n g Yoon Jeong | Zhengxuanzi Shang

33 Processing

The main challenge of this project is to interact the two agents which created the foreground “mesh-weaving“ and the background healer effect. The script can be used very effectively when the “captures“ are close to the camera. The weaving of horizontal and vertical lines under 2-dimensional plane creates this 3-dimensional portraits of the human characters. The background “healer“ uses the command called “noise“ in order to trace the background image randomly. The two agents interact well with each other creating a strong overlaying and pixelblending effect. Processing 34

2gbx

Applied studies Instructor | Greg Otto

P a rt n e r | C u n h a o L i | H o n g ya n g L i n | Junjie Guo | Majeda Alhinai

The tensegrity model involves two

bows made from piano wire, held in tension.

The

fabric membrane forms a

geometry that depicts the tensegrity frame.

This acted as a concept driver â&#x20AC;&#x153;Walking City1.0â&#x20AC;&#x153;

for the body of the

35 Tensegrity 2.0

Tensegrity 2.0 36

Walking proposal

city

1.0

inspired

is a structural

archigram’s

walking city, which combines both

forces at the “body“ while compression forces at its connections and “legs“.

37 WalkingCity 1.0

WalkingCity 1.0 38

f2 + f3 (tension)

F2 (tension)

F3 (tension)

F1 (tension)

G + f1 (tension)

F(compression)

39 WalkingCity 1.0

F(compression)

WalkingCity 1.0 40

41 WalkingCity 1.0

WalkingCity 1.0 42

43 WalkingCity 1.0

WalkingCity 1.0 44

45 WalkingCity 1.0

WalkingCity 1.0 46

2gbx

Applied studies

I n s t r u c t o r | I l a r i a M a z z o l e n i | J e ff e ry L a n d r e t h P a rt n e r | E m r e T u r a n | J a k e J o h n s o n

The potential design possibilites are visually easier to locate when an overall radiation analysis is calculated on the building mass. Design decisions at an early stage in development are better for the architect and engineers in order to know the potential problems and solutions that are given in a specific site. The Grasshopper tool, Ladybug, is a comprehensive enemble of algorithms that inform the designer of thermal and radiation solutions through the use of Rhino geometry. Buildings cannot be simply analyzed because of the complex geometries but a simplified model has the ability to give an intuition rather than specific results on an overall mass.

47 GroupAssignment

Winter: January 21 12:00 Peak Cycle Analysis Using Galapagos, the peak Winter and Summer calculations are permutated in order to maximize the efficency of the parametric louvers that shade the atrium and office glazing locations.

SOUTH January 21 Noon

East January 21 Noon

Winter: Spring 21 March Noon-3:00

SOUTH March 21 Noon

East March 21 Noon

Peak Cycle Analysis Using Galapagos, the peak Winter and Summer calculations are permutated in order to maximize the efficency of the parametric louvers that shade the atrium and office glazing locations. GroupAssignment 48

Office Calculations VERSION 1: 09 September 15:00 85% Glazing 10 Square Meter Base Angled Louvers Parametric Shading Devices Natural Mechanized Ventilation Diffused Light Considerations Transmitted Light=SHGC*Incident Light SHGC for Sapphire Glass 3/8â&#x20AC;?=0.88 Trasnmitted=0.88*0.12=0.105

49 GroupAssignment

Office Calculations VERSION 2: 09 September 15:00 85% Glazing 10 Square Meter Base Angled Louvers Parametric Shading Devices Natural Mechanized Ventilation Diffused Light Considerations Transmitted Light=SHGC*Incident Light SHGC for Sapphire Glass 3/8â&#x20AC;?=0.88 Trasnmitted=0.88*0.12=0.105

GroupAssignment 50

2gbx

Cultural studies Instructor | Todd Gannon

Midterm Paper

Among all the texts I have read, one rhetorical technique that has been most frequently used is to compare and contrast between pairs of definitions and concepts that are mostly in the form of oppositions in order to establish a specific argument. Although all the authors who adapt this technique have set up dialectical relationships as large framework to begin the conversation of “Arts and Forms” in their texts, whether they argue for one side over the other and their attitudes to hold their positions vary greatly due to their personal political stands and logical reasoning. In this essay, these different mechanisms of how each author develops their arguments will be demonstrated with specific examples. Michael Fried and Clement Greenberg, for example, represent a group of writers who expresses their strong personal beliefs by favoring “the positive” over “the negative” in their dialects. One side is always better than the other, supported by every evidence the author raises, and in every word the author chooses to use to set up the oppositions. For instance, Fried in his “Art and Objecthood” argues for the good of art over the bad of the objecthood, for the transcendental of classical art over the contemporary of literalist/ minimalist art: “The literalist espousal of objecthood amounts to nothing other than a plea for a new genre of theatre, and theatre is now the negation of art” 1. He uses words such as

51 MidtermPaper

“transcendental” and “meaningful” which are clearly positive to describe art, and “literalist” and “duration” which apparently suggest negative meanings to describe the non-art, the theater. Greenberg in “Avant-garde and Kitsch” argues for keeping the originals, the avant-garde, and spurning the “crappy copy”, the kitsch, in the exact same way Fried does his. Both articles were written during the time when modern technology kicks in and affects the mainstream society. Fried represent the conservative religious group at that specific time while Greenberg stands for his belief in Marxism.“I cannot hope to prove or substantiate but that I believe nevertheless to be ture: viz., that theatre and theatricality are at war today”2, says Fried, just like a priest, to judge under the religious canopy. Similarly, Greenberg brings up his political view by saying “Today we no longer look toward socialism for a new culture - … today we look to socialism simply for the preservation of whatever living culture we have right now.” 3The reason that both authors play either the role of a priest or the role of a political leader in their texts has to do with the desire to consolidate the power of the party or group that they represent. Clearly, “the war today” indicates Fried’s unnegotiable belief, which is a very different attitude towards the dialectics from some of the other writers.

However, people like Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze and Dave Hickey uses a different ironic approach to develop their arguments under the same rhetorical technique. This irony occurs when a total shift happens which overturns the audience’s “assumptions” on the argument. One side (usually the defeated side) usually overthrows the other (the winning side). Walter Benjamin in his “Work of Art” argues that the rise of the mechanical art reproduction in the twentieth century has caused the loss in aura, which is the authenticity and uniqueness in the art work. At first appearance, the text seems to advocate for the originality and accuse “the copy”, but it in fact applauds this new technological and scientific invention in the filming industry because new technology, for example: the cameraman, allows the audience an entirely new perception. This drastic shift in arguments also obviously exist in Deleuze’s “Plato and the Simulacrum” where he uses Plato’s own logic to defeat Plato. Deleuze traces Plato’s hierarchical triad “the same”, “the like”, and “the different” and states that it seems like that the world has always preferred the former: “the same” or “the like” over the latter: “the different”, 4 however, he argues, it has always been choosing “the different” since the very beginning. Likely, Hickey also adopts similar patterns in his “Enter the Dragon”: King’s savage justice appears to be a more ruthless and antihuman way to

train people than Bentham’s bureaucratic discipline, but what Hickey really argues is to undervalue Bentham’s warden. “Whether our standards for the pleasures of art are well founded in the glamorous tristesse we feel in the presence of these institutionalized warhorse, and whether contemporary images are really enhanced by being institutionalized in their infancy.”5 Hickey advocates to not institute or neutralize art, instead to let the free voices expressed in the discipline. Almost two decades later, Patrik Schumacher and Eric Moss took on the same theme of whether discipline of Art and Architecture should be institutionalized, and develop it into a further debate under the contemporary Parametricism. Schumacher establishes “an autonomous network or autopoetic system of communications” to guide architects as a whole.6 Eric Moss, on the other hand, accuses him for institutionalizing Architecture, and advocates for “the personal” and “the particular”.7 In this case, both together completes a dialectical conversation and sets up a very strong oppositions which are similar to the previous texts. In the same way as the texts mentioned above, Colin Rowe, Richard Rorty, and Rosalind Krauss also establish sets of dialectical relationships to organize and define MidtermPaper 52

formal and philosophical concepts in their texts. However, none of them support firmly on one side of their dialects. Rowe in his “Mathematics of the ideal villa” seems to linger between Palladio’s designs for free elevation and Le Corbusier’s designs for free plan. And there is certainly a very ambiguous “favor” between the two towards the end: “The neoPalladian villa, at its best, became the picturesque object in the English park and Le Corbusier has become the source of innumerable pastiches and of tediously amusing exhibition techniques; but it is the magnificently realized quality of the originals which one rarely finds in the works of neo-Palladians and exponents of ‘le style Corbu.’”8 On the other hand, Rorty identifies pairs of underlying oppositions between reality and beliefs/ desires; between the ideologies of Platonist’s reductionists and that of Romancist’s expansionists; between beliefs that language are to “represent hidden reality outside human being” and that language are to “express hidden reality within human being”. 9 However, he argues for neither beliefs as truth or reality as truth at the end. In fact, Rorty denies the whole tradition of finding truth, argues for no real existence of “the truth” in the world10. Thus, neither A nor B position is supported, and in fact, none of them exists in the contemporary world according to Rorty. He seems to move away from winning one over the

53 MidtermPaper

other, instead to establish a rather stable conclusion which Krauss uses the similar technique to establish her “Sculpture in the Expanded Field”. She fills the quadrant by setting up pairs of oppositions: “architecture” and “nonarchitecture”, “landscape” and “nonlandscape”, and daringly pushes for a full expanded field with purely logic. She takes a different route, the route of logic, to avoid initiating fights between people who believe in opposite ideas. She solves problems instead of creating problems, and stabilizes the system instead of interrupting it. Rorty and Krauss clearly do something very different in their articles from what Fried and Greenberg do. They identify the problem and then try to solve it by establishing another system and a set of new definitions or concepts, which those will incubate new problems and generate new dialects. Fried and Greenberg, on the other hand, identify the problem and then judge or choose one over the other. The way that Fried speaks as a religious figure, for example, demonstrates that they do not always offer reasonable solutions to the problem, but stand firmly on their beliefs. The former group stabilizes the order and the discipline in the field, while the latter destabilizes it. One ceases fights while the other provokes fights. In this sense, what Schumacher does and Moss does fall under the exact opposite categories. One tries to institute the Architecture curriculum,

establish the rules, and stabilize the system; while the other tries to release Architecture from institution, suspect the rules, and destabilize the system. If I set up an axis which two ends are marked stabilization (+) and destabilization (-). Almost all the articles I mentioned find their place on this axis. Where they position on the axis, how close they position towards each end, depends on how strongly the author supports for one side of the dialectical relationship. Thus, the mechanisms and techniques that each article uses are most likely organized in a gradient map, a scale, instead of a point-to-point line segment. If we create a ranking that arranges the person who stabilizes the disciplines for Arts and Architecture the most, to the person who interferes the establishment of the disciplines the most, Krauss, Schumacher, Rorty, Rowe, Deleuze, Benjamin, Hickey, Moss, Greenberg, and Fried all fall into this order in the ranking.

1 Michael Fried, “Art and Objecthood”, June 1967 (P125, Line 18) 2 Michael Fried, “Art and Objecthood”, June 1967 (P139, Line 24) 3 Clement Greenberg, “Avantgarde and Kitsch”, Perceptions and Judgements, 1939-1944 (P22, Line 9) 4 “But from this arises the famous neoPlatonic triad: the unsharable, the shared, …. The foundation, the object of the claim, the claimat….” Gilles Deleuze and Rosalind Krauss, “Plato and the Simulacrum”, (P46, paragraph 3) 5 Dave Hickey, “Enter the Dragon: On the Vernacular of Beauty”, 1993 6 Patrik Schumacher, Lecture: “Parametricism and the Autopoiesis of Architeture”, Sept, 2010 7 Colin Rowe, “Character and Composition”,Cambridge: MIT Press, 1976 (P80) 8 Colin Rowe, “The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa”, Architectural Review, 1947 9 Richard Rorty, “The contingency of language“, Contingency, irony, and solidarity, 1989 10 “… or getting rid of the correspondence theory of truth, is not a discovery about the nature of a preexistent entity called ‘philosophy’ or ‘truth’.” Richard Rorty, “The contingency of language” (P20, line 7)

References Michael Fried, “Art and Objecthood”, June 1967; Clement Greenberg, “Avantgarde and Kitsch”, Perceptions and Judgements, 1939-1944; Gilles Deleuze and Rosalind Krauss, “Plato and the Simulacrum”, The MIT Press, Oct, Vol.27, Winter 1983; Dave Hickey, “Enter the Dragon: On the Vernacular of Beauty”, 1993; Patrik Schumacher, Lecture: “Parametricism and the Autopoiesis of Architeture”, Sept, 2010; Colin Rowe, “Character and Composition”,Cambridge: MIT Press, 1976; Colin Rowe, “The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa”, Architectural Review, 1947; Richard Rorty, “The contingency of language“, Contingency, irony, and solidarity, 1989. MidtermPaper 54

Final Paper

The formalist movement New Criticism in the mid decades of the 20th century prompted a fundamental discussion about a critical-narrative and criticalontological double dichotomies among the contemporary literary critics. If the analogy of language to architecture is valid, can we ask the same exact “double dichotomous” questions to address contemporary architecture? I call the questions “double dichotomous” because this over-arching discussion involves two slightly different questions: one differentiates “narrative discourse” (“what does it do”) from “critical theory” (“what is it”)1 between the prescriptivist camp and the descriptivist camp. The other question differentiates the questions of quality (“is it good or bad”) from the questions of ontology (“what is it”), in the field of philosophy and language. Both questions are answered in the texts to some degree, and the war was fought and still going. On one hand, we have the descriptivist, a new generation leaded by political advocate groups, who claims the importance of easy and more democratic usage of language and avoids being judgmental at any degree and in any aspects of life. On the other hand, we have figures like Hickey, Wallace, and Cavell who argue for maintaining a lexicographical usage of language and are not afraid of being critically judgmental. As a representative figure of the prescriptivist, David Wallace

55 FinalPaper

in his “Authority and American Usage” claims that “not all utterance is the language”, and “I don’t shy away from making judgements.”2 He advocates to establish a common understanding among the audience like lexicography, to maintain the authority, and refutes the idea that authority only exists in techniques of particular science as “so stupid it practically drools.” 3 Similar position is taken by Stanley Cavell where he denies the validity of the analogy between an aesthetic judgement and a philosophical judgement because one deals with qualitative questions while the other deals with ontological ones. “The something more there judgements must do is to ‘demand’ or ‘impute’ or ‘claim’ general validity, universal agreement with them.”4 Like Wallace, Cavell is also trying to establish a common ground across for all audience in the field of aesthetics, which essentially is the “good or bad” question. He also touches on the issue of authority by stating that “paraphrase does not equal to a poem”. In another word, the authority, the real author, is not someone making “easy copies” of the language or aesthetics, but have to be the one who really makes high-leveled critical judgments.

Although both authors take the same side and share many similarities, one note-worthy difference is that they respectively answer the two separate questions from the beginning. One discussion concerns more between the utility vs. art of the language while the other discussion, which addresses philosophy and aesthetics, is already in the realm of art. Architecture, has always been seen as a combination of ideological theory and scientific practice, that of art and engineering. Art guides the discourse while engineering achieves the built. In this sense, the very nature of this field which can be seen as the combination of discourse and profession drives the fundamental discussion. The fact that the profession takes on a major proportion in the field while the discipline takes on much smaller proportion5 seems to let the first discussion (responds to the first question) on utility and art dominate the latter one in architecture. And inside the discourse of architecture, the big “A” Architecture, there is the other set of critical discussions (responds to the second question) which relates Architecture more closely to Art. This is when all the critics, different judgmental types and the question of quality vs. that of ontology come in. Up to this point, language and architecture seem to operate identically

in terms of the categorizations of questions they address. However, the interesting difference exists in the roles the critics and authors play in each field. In language, despite which position you take, critics and authors seem to be able to talk about all scope of work on the same level where I see a high level of interactive feedback loops happening. Nevertheless in architecture, critics scarcely target work that drops outside the architecture discourse, meaning only the “art-disciplinary” aspect of architecture draws critics’ attentions thus the critics and authors, who are architects in this case, have not been able to successfully engage an on-going complete back and forth discussion. At some point, critics and architects “detach” from each other at certain degree. One main reason I think is that critics do writing (in this sense writing includes lecturing/ speaking) and writers do writing too, and that is all. However, architectural critics does writing but not build while architects usually build but does not write. I am not neglecting the fact that some theorists/architects do both, which explains why “…the discipline lies partially outside it (the profession circle), and has a porous boundary” 6 but everyone has to admit that there are not many. Furthermore, this detachment does not only exist because the two parties often do different jobs to the field, but also because the architects are often the critics to their work themselves. Architects have been trained

FinalPaper 56

to think critically about their work and reflect it back to the form of architectural creations (constant jurors/reviews since entryleveled education like other art disciplines), and have a long history of “intentionally doing things in a hard way”. One historical example of architecture doing hard things on purpose is Le petit trianon by AngeJacques Gabriel, where he boldly experimented a great amount of “strangeness” in plan configuration and programmatic arrangements. The uncommon plan is a seemingly square geometry but a switch in short and long side where the window openings on west-east facades slightly offcentered. Programmatically, the oversized kitchen, the sunken dining room, the asymmetrical geometrical relationship, and the secrete mezzanine between two floors that leaves no trace at the elevations, all contribute to this extremely sophisticated and innovative design. Given the much more interdisciplinary ideological influence and the greatly advanced building technology, the contemporary architects experiment much provocatively in both ideological and constructional aspects. They are never afraid of trying difficult things because the noises their work provoke, the simulacrum, actually pushes the discipline moving forward. Thus, the fact that architects attach both jobs of critics and creations to the work

57 FinalPaper

themselves in fact is the reason why they and the critics (in conventional sense, those who writes about comments and theories) detach. In another word, the architectural discipline and profession can hardly progress only by writings but not creating drawings or buildings unless we do not define critics according to the conventional sense. Also, once there is no definite separation between disciplinary architects and professional architects, it is very hard to evaluate a piece of architecture as good or bad. This is because categorization happens more in science and engineering, while value judgement happens more in art. We often evaluate a piece of art good or bad, but never heard anyone saying good science or bad science. The close dependency architectural work has on their authors/ architects and the fact that we cannot judge science but to categorize them is why we hear critics ask “what is it” and “where does it come from” but not “how is it?” “Is it good” for most times in architecture. Here the two questions from the beginning come across each other again. In addition, critics connect more with audience in literature than in architecture. The fact that the audience always see the one-line commentaries on the cover and always at least one introductory passage by another writer or critic prior entering to the actual body of the book, the fact that I have

read three texts on Kafka in this class prior to actually reading one piece by Kafka claims that in the world of literature, voices of somebody else’s intrudes before the authors’ for most of the time. Critics play crucial roles in helping constructing an indirect image of the work in audience’s head, which guide them to understand the text while the similar guidance is lost for most of time in architecture due to the audience’s very immediate and direct experience of the architectural work. Namely, the public audience does not need nor rely on the critics to help shaping opinions on architecture, they do it themselves. Their opinions/ feedbacks have less to do with the interaction between the critics, but more to do with a more direct interaction with the work itself. Thus, quality questions are less frequently mentioned in architecture than in language because the audience’s opinions are not as influenced as in literature, which is another reason why the two fields should be examined differently. To conclude, architecture involves more complexities than language. The same story happens in the field of language cannot be iterated in the same way with architecture. Wallace and Cavell have made very successful cases in language in their texts but I find that not convincing enough when shifting to the discourse of architecture. I cannot quite see the exact same analogy between the two either. Thus, I would

rather not hold an opinion on whether we should ask more qualitative questions than ontological ones, but to deny my opening question with an answer of “no” because the two fields need to be separately-discussed according to the above reasons.

FinalPaper 58

1 Todd Gannon, “The Five Points of Thesis”, Feb 2014. 2 David Foster Wallace, “Authority and American Usage” 3 David Foster Wallace, “Authority and American Usage”, Page 89, Line 4 4 Stanley Cavell, “Aesthetic Problems of Modern Philosophy”, Page 89, Line 1 5 Todd Gannon, Andrew Zago, “Tabloid Transparency”, April 2015, diagram illustration 6 Todd Gannon, Andrew Zago, “Tabloid Transparency”, April 2015, Page 5, line 5

References: Todd Gannon, “The Five Points of Thesis”, (Feb 2014); David Foster Wallace, “Authority and American Usage” “ Consider the Lobster and Other Essays”, Back Bay Books, (July 2, 2007); Stanley Cavell, “Aesthetic Problems of Modern Philosophy” “Must We Mean What We Say?” Cambridge University Press, (2002); Todd Gannon and Andrew Zago, “Tabloid Transparency, or looking through legibility, abstraction, and the discipline of architecture”, (April 2015); 59 FinalPaper