[arch] Paspels lecture
Went to a cArch lecture today.
The architect presented his work process on a single project, a high school at Paspels. The town has a distributed typology; the buildings are situated in liberal relations with each other. There exists no grid or any other such strict urban organizations; rather, the buildings are phenomenally scattered such that a manifold of pathways can be imagined in a journey between any two points.
In order for the building to maintain consistency with the emergent urban typology, the architect conceived of a "box" and placed it into the site accordingly. The "box" is a three level volume, with a sloped roof. He presents this as a small red box in the town-scale figure-ground plan.
Presenting the conceptual phase of the design process, he shows eight volumes for the eight classrooms, and two (or four?) volumes for another function. These regular volumes are then fit into the regular plan on two floors. Dropping this configuration of volumes into the box, the architect renders an "outside" and an "inside", for which an external, or an envelope, is clearly delineneable from the internal content. The internal content is dropped into the container. The dichotomy between inside and outside is resolved with the use of the same materials, especially concrete.
And skewed, slightly, by 86 and 94 degrees. The volumes, enveloped by the skewed walls, read as regular forms on cursory glance. The user's discovery of false perspectives and the reading of regular perspectives are simultaneously possible, depending on vantage points. The subtlety of this architectural gesture, the ambiguous perspective, exists to the user as a puzzle to be discovered, and suggest that this architecture may be a system of possibilities to be opened up. The subtlety with which such possible puzzles become part of the composition, here at the scale of wall, contrasts the substantial material of concrete.
Moving on, the architect shows the various precise details in materials and construction that contribute to the phenomenal readings by the user. He showed window construction details that utilize massive brass that can flush with the concrete plane, and the door details, including the hinge that fits into the concrete.
He then talked about including the extension of an edge from the roof that creates a waterfall to the ground such that no pipes would interfere with the unity of the exterior.
He also addresses and emphasizes the issue of water slippages, its effects on the concrete, and its drainage. Concrete, both the issues and design considerations in its uses, are also emphasized in this presentation. Other materials include wood for the interior definitions of classrooms, and brass for window and roof details. The details he presented were consistent with the original formal expression, which is a logic of forms inside a simple envelope.
In summary, the architect's presentation of the project reveals how the various details of the building integrally contribute to the piece of architecture's identity. Its identity, manifesting through the various scales of consideration, reflexively addresses the phenomenal sense that was originally prescribed in the conceptual model. That the forms at different scales work integrally, with the same underlying precision, and all respecting the original formal ideas, which were first expressed at the scale of the building as a whole, goes towards the unified expression of the architecture's identity. The expression of the architecture's identity, correlated with the architect expressing an architectural idea, naturally occurs in the consistent and continual making of gestures contributing to it at different scales.
The architect presented his work process on a single project, a high school at Paspels. The town has a distributed typology; the buildings are situated in liberal relations with each other. There exists no grid or any other such strict urban organizations; rather, the buildings are phenomenally scattered such that a manifold of pathways can be imagined in a journey between any two points.
In order for the building to maintain consistency with the emergent urban typology, the architect conceived of a "box" and placed it into the site accordingly. The "box" is a three level volume, with a sloped roof. He presents this as a small red box in the town-scale figure-ground plan.
Presenting the conceptual phase of the design process, he shows eight volumes for the eight classrooms, and two (or four?) volumes for another function. These regular volumes are then fit into the regular plan on two floors. Dropping this configuration of volumes into the box, the architect renders an "outside" and an "inside", for which an external, or an envelope, is clearly delineneable from the internal content. The internal content is dropped into the container. The dichotomy between inside and outside is resolved with the use of the same materials, especially concrete.
And skewed, slightly, by 86 and 94 degrees. The volumes, enveloped by the skewed walls, read as regular forms on cursory glance. The user's discovery of false perspectives and the reading of regular perspectives are simultaneously possible, depending on vantage points. The subtlety of this architectural gesture, the ambiguous perspective, exists to the user as a puzzle to be discovered, and suggest that this architecture may be a system of possibilities to be opened up. The subtlety with which such possible puzzles become part of the composition, here at the scale of wall, contrasts the substantial material of concrete.
Moving on, the architect shows the various precise details in materials and construction that contribute to the phenomenal readings by the user. He showed window construction details that utilize massive brass that can flush with the concrete plane, and the door details, including the hinge that fits into the concrete.
He then talked about including the extension of an edge from the roof that creates a waterfall to the ground such that no pipes would interfere with the unity of the exterior.
He also addresses and emphasizes the issue of water slippages, its effects on the concrete, and its drainage. Concrete, both the issues and design considerations in its uses, are also emphasized in this presentation. Other materials include wood for the interior definitions of classrooms, and brass for window and roof details. The details he presented were consistent with the original formal expression, which is a logic of forms inside a simple envelope.
In summary, the architect's presentation of the project reveals how the various details of the building integrally contribute to the piece of architecture's identity. Its identity, manifesting through the various scales of consideration, reflexively addresses the phenomenal sense that was originally prescribed in the conceptual model. That the forms at different scales work integrally, with the same underlying precision, and all respecting the original formal ideas, which were first expressed at the scale of the building as a whole, goes towards the unified expression of the architecture's identity. The expression of the architecture's identity, correlated with the architect expressing an architectural idea, naturally occurs in the consistent and continual making of gestures contributing to it at different scales.
posted by ati at August 31, 2005
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