A Pattern Language, part 2

K. The flow through rooms

1. "As far as possible, avoid the use of corridors and passages...Place the common rooms to form a chain, or loop...with views of fires and great windows." (630)

L. Zen view

1. "If there is a beautiful view, don't spoil it by building huge windows that gape incessantly at it.  People will see a glimpse of the distant view as they come up to the window or pass it." (643)
2. Place of transition

M. Bed clusters

N. Bulk storage

O. Light on two sides of every room

1. Wrinkle the edge

 P. Street windows

1. 2nd and 3rd storey windows = connectivity
2. Ground level = high, private windows

Q. Six-foot balcony

1. Minimum 6'
2. Recessed rather than cantilevered
3. Open towards south

R. Structure follows social spaces

1. Physical spaces congruent with social spaces
2. Engineering is independent from social needs
3. Buildings where the structure is hidden leave yet another gap in people's understanding
4. "Never modify the social spaces to conform to the engineering structure of the building." (945)
5. COLUMNS AT CORNERS

S. Efficient structure

1. Usually in straight lines
2. Ceiling heights vary

T. Good materials

1. Secondary materials = easy repair
2. Wood, bamboo, canvas, etc. = GOOD
3. Al, plate glass, etc. = BAD

U. Thickening the outer walls

V. Box columns

1. Warm to the touch
2. Proportionately thick/solid
3. Easy connectivity, nail-able, hand-cuttable

W. Floor surface

1. Service v. comfortable zone

X. Soft inside walls-->white gypsum plaster

Y. Windows

1. Filtered light
2. Open wide
3. Small panes

Z. Ornament

1. Warm colours-->colour of light
2. Pools of light

FIN

A Pattern Language, part 1

From A Pattern Language:
A. Household Mix

1. Corresponding areas of singles, couples, small families
2. Lack of diverse contact with different stages of life.
3. "Encourage growth towards a mix of household types in every neighbourhood, and every cluster so that one-person households, couples, families with children, and group houses are side-by-side.
4. OLD PEOPLE EVERYWHERE

B. Degrees of Publicness

1. Public, halfway, isolated
2. Row Houses

•  "...Typical row houses are dark inside, stamped form a n identical mould." (205)
• Windows only along the short side

           - The long, thin house

C. The Family

1. "The nuclear family is not by itself a viable social form." (377)
2. Balance of privacy and communality
3. Large family room-farmhouse kitchen (in the MIDDLE)

D. House for a Small Family

1. Common area, couple's realm, children's realm

E. House for a Couple

1. Ample opportunity for solitude/privacy
2. Room for Growth/change

F. House for One Person

1. "Once a household for one person is part of some larger group, the most critical problem which arises is the need for simplicity." (390)
2. Self-sufficiency/economy
3. Bare-bones necessity
4. "Nothing that is not needed, everything that is."
5. "Small size does not preclude richness of form."
6. "When it is well-done, a small house feels wonderfully continuous--cooking a bowl of soup fills the house; there is no rattling around." (391)

G. Your Own Home

1. "People cannot be genuinely comfortable and healthy in a house which is not theirs.  All forms of rental...work against the natural processes which allow people to form stable, self-healing communities." (393)
2. "People will only be able to feel comfortable in their houses, if they can change their houses to suit themselves...rearrange [the house] as they like it." (393)

• Not every house must be owned!
• CONTROL

H. Intimacy Gradient

1. Degrees of inticimacy-->hierarchy 
2. Front to back

I. Indoor Sunlight

1. Most important rooms are oriented to the SOUTH
2. E-W axis
3. Open up indoor sunny rooms to the outdoors
4. BDRMs get EAST exposure

J. Common Areas at the Heart

1. "No social group...can survive without constant informal contact among its members." (618)
2. At a tangent to the path of circulation
3. Kitchen/eating/sitting

Lazy Sunday: Rain, Jazz, Architecture

From Archetypes in Architecture: (con't)
C. The Frame

1. Columns (in rows) can be used to divide space.

D. Colours

1. "Plain drawing is an abstraction...because everything in nature contains colours."
2. Colours used to embody specific meanings.
3. "Does an individual colour have a given and unchangeable meaning?"

E. The Windows-->Openings

1. Windows of different sizes, according to spatial function.
2. Shapes as an expression of motion.

F.  Functionalism and Open Space

1. "The walls of functionalism were made white and thin like a skin that swathed the volumes underneath."
2. Overlapping and Technology

• Activities float in the "great space"
• Development of a structure surrounding empty space

G. Final Word

1. "We find that architects during any given period are influenced by a common architectural language...bound together by a common intention which is typical for the period."

Because the damned shop was closed...

Weekly Response #3

Quotes I liked:
The wall is where architecture “takes place.”
“Familiar things seen in an unfamiliar context become perceptually new as well as old.”
“…It is asserted that the modern movement above all was interested in utility and efficiency.” 
“Loss of place.”
“Everything in the world is a product of the formula function times economy.”

“Functionalism.”  Art or science.  Why either/or?  Venturi takes a “both/and” stance when it comes to architecture, and yet the controversy surrounding “functionalism” seems to be staunchly black and white.  Why can’t a building be functional AND beautiful?  Louis Sullivan seemed to think it was possible.  But his definition of functionalism also limits the use of decoration on a building.  Essentially, functional architecture would just consist of giant box-buildings.  And sometimes, that’s okay!  Warehouses don’t need to masquerade as Craftsman-style homes (SLO Costco, I’m looking at you).  Their function is to provide a simple shelter on a large scale, without all of the frippery that comes with the idea of “architecture as art.”  Moreover, the idea of beauty is totally subjective.  Mies van der Rohe and Gropius sought to address the artistic side of architecture, yet designed buildings that look very boxy, which were then found to be “aesthetically satisfying.”  How can this style of architecture, which looks to be devoid of anything but rational expression, convey the “emotional content of the period?” 
I suppose in terms of art, I’ve always leaned more towards Raphael, rather than Mondrian.  So it follows that I am more pleased with ornamented architecture than with most designs that came out of the “modern” movement.  Conversely, I am also a fan of Calatrava’s designs.  For the most part, his buildings are balanced between functional minimalism and gracefully organic lines.

“The [modern] movement simply recognized that it is an illusion to believe that real improvements may be obtained through rationalistic planning.”  This opinion seems almost absurd.  Of course problems can be solved by rationalism!  The whole idea of “architecture as a science” is based on that idea.  The movement also stresses that “improvements have to grow out of life itself, that is, from a deepened sense of being in the world.”  And yet out of this movement come the buildings of le Corbusier, Gropius, and Mies van der Rohe—buildings that symbolize the separation of man from the world.  Out of “observation, emotion, and fantasy,” only the first is objective.  The latter two have more relevance in the whimsical designs of Gothic or Moorish architecture (or most religious building types between the 14th-16th centuries).  But again, the whole concept is subjective, a zeitgeist in taste.  The texture and detail of Gothic architecture and classical paintings from the 1500s is up against the geometric compositions of “modern” architecture and art from the early-mid 1900s.

“In general, the ‘open plan’ should make room for ‘modern life.’”  Emphasize the structure, and let the space get sorted out.  This is where I feel the movement wants to start to come together.  Louis Kahn said that this was the way for a building to know “what it wants to be.”  But this kind of honesty in architecture seems to contradict the fact that the Modernists frowned on rational planning.  In terms of functionality, what could be more so than an open floor plan, adaptable to the complex and contradictory needs of man?  I do agree that the movement resulted in a “loss of place.”  The challenge, then, is to find an architectural style that is contextual as well as expressive.  Here’s a hint: there’s more than one right answer!

Oops! Better late than never!

Envision, if you will, a jungle.  Hot and dense, reaching as far as you can imagine.  Now instead of massive tree trunks all around, there were buildings.  Concrete and steel monstrosities, stretching ever skyward into infinity.  And those thick groves of foliage you are hacking through with a finely-crafted blade?  Really, they are thick crowds of pedestrians, streaming to or from work.  They would trample you before they even looked at you, and their apathy does not even compare to the predatory attitude of taxi cabs, roaring along the rivers of pavement.

If you happened to seek shelter in one of the aforementioned buildings, and it also happened to be an apartment building, what would you find?  A jumble.  A maze of hallways, where each doorway leads to a room that looks not unlike the one you stumbled into a few seconds earlier.  The only evidence that it is in fact NOT the same room is that the color of the decorative vase by your hand is red instead of copper.  But the identical walls and doors, all flat, crisp drywall painted that lovely shade of “frosted alabaster,” serve only to direct spatial flow.  You move, hit a barrier, change direction, repeat.  Nothing about these stamped out dwellings invites a feeling of free will, or of having a choice.

Room after room flashes before you, until the images blur together into a kind of grotesque animation, where the foreground shifts like a time-lapsed tour through a modern art gallery, and the background is constant.  The whole world swims before your eyes, and then suddenly...

You grasp a door handle, and something changes. 

Right away, this door tells you that the room behind it is not like anything you have ever experienced.  The tooled metal of the handle is cool to the touch, and yet there is warmth in knowing that the carved details have been worn almost smooth after a millennia of fingers have passed over its surface. 

Exhale, close your eyes, and open the door.  Already, the quality of light that passes behind your eyelids is of a softer kind.  Open your eyes, and although the large window on the opposite wall is the same as before, the soft amber brilliance is reflected and refracted off the oak paneled walls and hardwood floor.  But there are only four walls!  The whole room is an open floor plan, like the temples of the ancient Greeks.  Four concrete columns, one in each corner, support the ceiling. Upon closer inspection, you notice that the walls are not flat, and that there seems to be some kind of regular interval where the surface protrudes slightly to the interior. 

You cautiously step over the threshold, and reach out to the closest adjacent wall.  Your fingers graze the panel, and then it’s gone!  It has swung away from the pressure by means of a vertical pivot. More confident now, after the initial shock has worn off, you grasp the corner of the panel and pull it towards the interior.  But now, instead of just rotating, the whole section of wall glides away from the wall.  You lean against one side and are carried around like a revolving door.  Now the patterns make sense.  Each extruded section is another bit of movable wall, stored against the main shell to open up space.  You walk around, tentatively pulling and pushing at panels. 

After a while, you have configured several interior spaces within the large room.  As you surround yourself with the paneled walls, you can smell the richness of the materials: the dusty, mineral scent of concrete mingled with the heady aura of timber.  It is calming and refreshing.  The sounds of the outside world are absorbed by the walls, and the soft echoes of your footsteps on the smooth floor inspire tranquility. 

You know that you will eventually have to leave, and that once you do, your perspective will be forever changed.  You know that you will have to face those static, empty spaces again at some point, but not just yet...

Updating!  UPDATING!

No content today.  Busy in the wood shop!

Small Fish in a Large Bowl

We had a class trip to San Francisco this weekend.  I took extreme delight is seeing many details which hadn't caught my attention on previous trips. 

And now, back to the studio.

A little segment I like to call "research."  (Basically, I take quick notes I think are relevant to my thesis and transcribe them here for easy (digital) reference later!)

From Steven Holl's Parallax:
- Space is perceived only when a subject describes it.
- Space is linked to a perceived duration.
- The body is at the very essence.
- Spatial flow...creates exhilaration, which nourishes the emergence of tentative meanings from the inside.
- It is precisely at the level of spatial perception that the most powerful architectural meanings come to the fore.
- Space is the essential medium of architecture.
- "For a building to be motionless is the exception.  Our pleasure comes form moving about so as to make the building move in turn, while we enjoy all these combinations of its parts." -- Paul Valéry, The Method of Leonardo
- The 'apparent horizon' is a determining factor in the moving body's interpretation of space; yet the true modern metropolis often lacks this horizon.
- "Parallax" = the apparent displacement of an observed object due to a change in the position of the viewer.
- Mere geometry or the idea of 'façade' is too limiting.
- Phenomenology...puts essences into experience.
- Haptic realm
- Like artificially flavored foods, artificially constituted surroundings impose themselves in architecture today.
- Indifference to quality of life is the norm.
- Engaging time and seasons
- A spatial arrangement, a smell, and a musical phrase may be imagined simultaneously...We could speak of the sounds implied by an array of brittle forms, or the way a view smells.
- Beyond autonomous, room-by-room space is interactive space, where 'participating walls' reorder domestic environments.
- A space of movement and dynamism

From Thomas Thiis-Evensen's Archetypes in Architecture
- 3 motions of mass: rising, planar, falling
- The separated part of the floor emerges as a clearly defined figure against a larger neutral background.
- Sinking, rising, edge/borders
- "The more geometric and prepared the floor surface is, the more it stands out as a constructed level separated from the ground beneath."
- Nature's carpet v. soft carpet
- Reflective floor expands space downward
- Downward sloping = speed, upward slopes = impede
- Narrow stairs (greater than or equal to 2x body width)
- Steep v. shallow
- The Wall delimits a space and supports the roof
- Round v. square columns: Round = freedom of movement, released from its surroundings.  Square = directs movement, four sides for attachment.
- The Frame: Proportion!