Standing on Eachother's Shoulders

There is a common cliché that states “practice makes perfect.” The idea of repeating a single step, over and over again. In this process, one learns their mistakes and can reconstitute themselves to moving faster, working harder, or simply doing better the next time. When we fall, we pick ourselves back up and wonder why we fell. If we realize the problem, we can correct it and no long fall in that same way or direction. This is the way of life. Design is similar to this theory. We begin not knowing what direction to take, what lines to draw, or even what we want to design. However, as we learn we are constantly bombarded by failure. It is with this failure that eventually comes success.

Architectural design is based on the history of failure. Those before us built structures, drew designs, and manifested space based on what they wanted to make better, or simply what failures they wanted to correct from the past. It is the work of failure that we are able to design better, more elaborate buildings. It is in the “repetition [that are] produced in the work of anyone who labours continuously as an artist” that create success from failure, life from death(Nesbitt, p.350). When making my self-sustaining box, I aimed to create a classic design that paid homage to the throwback styles of when I was a child. We created paper boxes by simply cutting out the sides and wrapping them so that they form a cube. However, when making my wrapped design, I wanted to create something that had more purpose. I wanted to incorporate the ideas of shelter, enclosure, and structure that the cube represented, but I wanted to introduce the ideas of comfort, simplicity, and space within the wrapping. My design became a culmination of these ideas, and became an almost dwelling for the object, with spaces designated by the colours and material design. The structure is erratic, yet self sustaining. The volumes are divided, yet one space. The shelter is provided, but not continuously. As designers, it is harder to create something completely on a whim, a completely original thought (which some speculate do not exist), than to take the ideas of another and twist it, conform it, and mould it into something better. When creating a design that is built upon past failures and concepts, one distinct project comes to mind. Located in Paddington, London, the Rolling Bridge by Thomas Heatherwick Studio is an adaptation on an old style of bridge design. At first appearance it appears to be an antiquated box suspension bridge. However, upon closer look, it is very much a contemporary design based on an old style. Then, just when you think that is all there is, the bridge begins to roll upon itself. The design required a temporary bridge for pedestrians that would allow traffic along the canal as well. The design incorporates the ideas of the old draw bridge, but reworked into a design that functioned within the specific landscape. He repeated the ideas and designs of the past, while trying to rework the mistakes of them, too. In repeating mistakes, we learn what paths not to take, we learn to differentiate between what works and what does not. However, if we do not learn from our mistakes, we can never move forward. By repeating our mistakes, we cannot see what to correct. By correcting our mistakes we can move forward and continue to become more enlightened in the field. In summation, simply put, by realizing our mistakes, it may “lead to a process of perfection,” however, if we do not realize those designs which fail “it can also produce total silence” (Nesbitt, p.350).

A Sense of Place: Building an Environment With Words

Street corner. Stop light. Dog on a leash. Woman with yellow boots. Umbrellas crowding the sidewalk. Green Light. The simple reading of a group of words can trigger thoughts and ideas in the mind that lets you imagine a particular place. By designating elements around an environment, a more detailed picture can be painted. At first, “street corner” puts an image in your head. Maybe it’s a corner in New York, or L.A., or maybe a small town in Kansas. “Stop light” then gives a detail of what is on the street corner, putting you in an urban area. “Dog on a leash” suggests other people around you. “Woman with yellow boots” is almost immediately connected with bad weather no matter who you ask. “Umbrellas crowding the sidewalk” is yet another concrete indication of bad weather, but more specifically rain. “Green light” suggests movement, a sense of moving through a space by simply reading a small group of words.

It is with this view of how we perceive the world around us that Heidegger tries to explain his theories of building and dwellings. Heidegger sees each space, each environment as a collection of words. We interpret the space around us in our minds based on words. It has been ingrained in our minds to think this way. Our earliest memories are forgotten, they have no bearing of concept, no subject to relate to. Everything we perceive in our younger years is a new experience. It is only later in life that we apply meaning to experiences linked directly to a word. For example, when you first learned what the stove was. Did you know the stove was going to hurt you when you touched it? No, but you did. It hurt, you started crying, and what did your mother say when she came to your aid? “No! Hot! Hot!” From then on, you associate the word “hot” with touching the stove. It is this take on language that leads us to how we perceive literature, why a book can be so transforming. Reading a book can take you into another place. You instantly transform your surroundings after reading just a few words. A good author can evoke the most basic human instincts, send you into an imaginary realm, or even make your emotions run wild. An architect is the author of a building. Our interpretation of space is how we perceive it in our minds.

In an attempt to reverse the idea, we were given a sketch problem. We were to imagine a space, and use words to describe how we would want it to look. This is different because it is not standing in a space and describing it, but imagining how we would interpret a space. The sketch associated here is based on explanation of how I would see the space through the use of words. More specifically, a hotel in which you I would be staying. The words used to describe the space are what I would want the environment to be. The lines created show linkage between different elements, and explanations of why they are linked. Visually, you can understand which elements are most important based on the number of lines extended from it. The more of the lines that extend off, the more important it is. I see a space that is mainly comfortable. A place I can go, that feels as much like home as possible. I also see a place that lets me have fun. Whether its at the hotel restaurant or bar, or a hot tub, or the nightlife around the area.

In relation to other, already built designs, it is hard to associate this overall theory to their spaces. Since seeing a picture of a building does not have any words. Your mind cannot imagine what the place looks like based on words since it is already interpreted into a visual context. To try and illustrate this point and expand on the pre-mentioned theory, I have chosen a building by the firm PLOT, here in Copenhagen. The building is a youth centre on the island of Amager. For the purpose of this exercise, I tried to not look at any pictures, but focus on the description of the design to help me see what the building looked like, and how the spaces were arranged.

Amager is the big, often rather messy island in the Copenhagen complex. It is where traffic from the bridge over the Sound to Sweden arrives in Denmark. Østamager (East Amager) is a strange area in which run-down industry is mixed with thriving sailing clubs, the latest of which is the maritime youth centre on Sundby harbour.
In the haphazard tatterdemalion surroundings of sheds and abandoned industrial buildings, the new centre stands out as an organized oasis. It is not so much a building as a landscape, a wooden one that undulates between harbour and Sound. Since Foreign Office Architects completed their pier in Yokohama (AR January 2003), such artificial landscapes have become common on the drawing boards of students and young architects, but few of them are based on anything more than fashion and delight in being able to manipulate non-Euclidean geometry. At Østamager, there are reasons for the strategy. The ground is heavily polluted with heavy metals, and the cost of excavating the site and removing the toxic material would have been beyond the means of the client (the Copenhagen Commune), so the architects decided to cover the plot with a 2100m2 deck. Its undulations both shelter dinghies and provide an eventful play surface.
Two separate single-storey buildings are enfolded by the deck. The L-shaped eastern one has social facilities such as the sailing club room and a general purpose space complete with a kitchen. In the opposite corner of the rectangular wooden landscape is a block that contains workshops, locker rooms and boat hall. Both buildings have vertical glass walls through which they are entered, but their other faces are formed of curving, sloping wood over which the users run, sit and play. Clearly, there is a danger that people involved in energetic activities could fall off the roof down the glass cliffs. To avoid this, balustrades top the potentially dangerous places; they are one of the most successful parts of the whole design, with widely-spaced thin stainless-steel balusters joined by stainless-steel mesh. In some countries, and in other hands, the balustrades could have been extremely visually heavy and the death of the project, but at Sundby, the metal rails are not obtrusive and from some angles they almost disappear. Not all the details are so felicitous, for instance detailing of the vertical walls is a bit clumsy in places, but it has to be remembered that this project (part of the commune’s Østamager improvement project) had to be created on a small budget so it was necessary to use off-the-shelf components.
The jury was most impressed by the architects’ imaginative response to limited resources and their ingenious command of new geometries.
--Taken from Architectural Review, ar+d prize winner article

After reading this article, you can immediately get a sense of how the building’s spaces can visually be perceived. Once done with the article, looking at the photos was a similar experience, yet I was intrigued to see those details which were not depicted and did not imagine.

Defining the Character of Space_ Essay #1

Sit quietly. Close your eyes. Do not move. Imagine the space you are in. The things surrounding the environment seem to come alive with sound. The tick-tock of the clock, or the hum of the fan, or the drip of the faucet. Things that are normally taken for granted as sounds in our environment seem to leap out and ring in your ear. The subtraction of one sense is said to heighten those remaining. I believe this is true. For instance, I have chosen to illustrate this point with the sketch drawing of a small pool during a rain as well as . If you were standing in the water, what would the sensory feeling be? With your eyes open, you may not see anything with the rain falling so hard. Close your eyes though, and you can almost see the tiny droplets of rain bouncing off the surface of the water beneath you. The entire landscape becomes a barrage of pitter patter. You can feel the rain hitting your head, dripping down your face, off of your figertips. The ripples in the water nestle against your skin. Turn your face towards the sky, taste the rain as it pours down. Breathe in and smell the fresh scent of a newly fallen rain. You are immursed in the environment around you. It is calming, refreshing, and exhilarating all at the same time. Now open your eyes. What can you see that was not in your mind already? Sight is simply the recognition and true definition of what the mind has already imagined. In my sketch, I portrayed the feeling of opening your eyes for that first time. You will see a landscape of falling rain, beating down on the surface, leaving a trace of itself as it dissipates and blends into the next. In the text, a character is a defining element to a space. A space cannot have a character without elements combining to create a whole. When standing in the pool, you are in a space. But what defines that space? What elements within it let you know you are standing in water, inside a pool? How do you know those elements are there? You can see it, yes, but if you close your eyes what lets your mind know? "Any real presence is intimately linked with a character" and the character is defined by those few elements within the space(Genius Loci, Norburg-Shultz,p. 14). It is those basic senses that together combine to paint an image in your mind. The smell, taste, touch, and voice of the environment around you.

How does this thought process apply to architecture? It applies in an infinite way, actually. Everything about architecture that we perceive as being either modern or classical, light or heavy, clean or dirty, is simply a character we associate with the elements within the composition. Lets take, for example, the landscape created by Pierre Thibault, creator of the world renowned Ice Palace. In a rather unusual yet creative way, Thibault was able to capture the raw character of the landscape. In his piece, Winter Gardens, just outside of Quebec, Canada, he created a space mixed with two of the purest elements, Fire and Ice. Thibault cut a trench down the center of a frozen lake, and inside he placed 1000 candles. The placing of these two elements next to each other was simply breathtaking. It created a sense of character from a combination of elements: ice, light, and fire. Imagine being on the lake during a snowfall, your only sense is sight. You see the ice illuminated, burning almost from the candles lit from below. The mountains in the distance ground you, and give a place of being instead of arbitrarily standing on a random lake. The snow is slowly drifting towards the surface of the ice, and when it lands all motion halts. Everything is still. Your mind can imagine the sounds, the feelings, the smells around you. You imagine the snow falling on your head, lightly landing on the tip of your nose. You can smell the ice, that pure almost non existent remnant of odor wafting up out of the crevice of light. The fire that burns in the ice seems to billow and send familiar sounds of a crackling campfire. All of this your mind perceives without the use of other senses. Now imagine closing your eyes, and letting those other senses guide you. You may experience a completely different landscape. The awesome power that is created with the visual effect of fire emerging from an otherwise desolate landscape is all that you need to understand the character of the space. In this instance, sight is all you need to understand the smell, taste, touch, and voice of the environment around you.

This is an image of the Winter Gardens by Thibault

Genius Loci: "The Phenomenology of Place and Architecture"

This week was my first jump into the realm of true architectural theory. When I say jump, I mean leap, and when I say leap I mean off of a cliff. I was bombarded by such a barrage of information and theoretical jargon that it was hard to keep on task and remember certain elements to the conversation. Fortunetly, I took very good notes not only of the reading but on the class discussion as well. Here are some of the ideas that were brought up. I have included my own thoughts on the subject in brackets( [like this] ).

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My first steps into theory were based on the notion of Genius Loci, which is Latin for "The Spirit of Place." It was explained that we must define a character of architecture. Everything is given a character, not by choice but rather by instinct and the way the brain interprets certain surroundings. The character is not created by the building, but rather by those people that see and experience the true nature of the building. In other words, the character is not simply the elements in the space, but rather the collective whole of the experience.

You cannot define character with a single trait, however. A character is defined by the singular elements that combine to make a whole. Still, with this in mind, a single element cannot define an entire character. A single paint stroke does not define a beautiful painting, but rather the combination of strokes are what we use to define a more complex pattern which we then interpret as a painting. A single form cannot describe a place, nor can it describe the character of said place.
For Example: "Snow sitting on a window sill" This singular phrase does not define any wholistic character of a place. A person can not decifer a location based on just this one phrase, but one can get a sense of the general time and temperature. Obviously with snow being present, its both cold and in winter.
Now if I were to say, "Looking out the window at snow falling on the window sill," it has a completely new meaning. By adding just a few words, one can now recognize a location, a temperature, a time of year, and a general ambience of the setting. Looking out the window implies an indoor setting, as "only inside can look outside, and only outside can look in." Adding the word "falling" gives an added sense of somber to the picture. The meloncholie is only heightened by the sense of cold temperature and winter time.

As words in a sentence can paint a more detailed mental picture, so do elements in an architectural design. The addition and combination of elements in a design can create a given character and style to a building, courtesy of the architect. The architect is in complete control over what their audience percieves when they see or experience their building.

Whereas "character" denotes a general atmosphere, a collaboration of every element within a space, the word "space" itself denotes an even more general three dimensional place. As mentioned earlier, space has two counterparts: An inside and an outside, and one can only look at the other(or so the text says). From there, space can be divided into other categories. A landscape is a varied extension of space along a given plane. Settlements are enclosed entities of space that lie amongst a landscape. Both of these exibit a figure to ground relationship.

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In terms of arranging elements in space, one must have a form of organization and form to follow. Organizing spaces within a settlement is a direct link to creating the character of the spaces and building as a whole. Such organization can be defined by a set of boundaries.

"A boundary is not where something abruptly stops, but rather where another begins." --Heiddeger

Common boundaries of the built environment around us are floors, ceilings, walls, etc. However, the landscape that is the world has its own set of boundaries. The ground itself, the horizon, and the infinite sky are all boundaries that set the landscape space around us. The similarity between both the built environment and the natural landscape must be blurred. A way to blur the line is to add openings to a building out to the landscape. Openings define an enclosure's boundary while allowing a blend out onto the landscape.

[A wall creates a concrete boundary between landscape and the built environment. Windows make a boundary disappear, while still forming a definite interior and exterior. An opeing neither defines an interior or exterior, but blends perfect the relationship between the two.]

A boundaries definition depends upon its articulation. The articultion relies on how the structure is built. A designer must know how the building will rest on the ground, and how it will rise to the sky.[Place describes a noun, character describes an adjective]

What This is and What I Plan to Do

"Go out and share your architectural ideas. Build off one another's shoulders. Reference other's work to you own, because no one design stands alone. Celebrate those who have inspired you."

--Morten Lund

I have arranged this blog as a personal diary for what I learn. A sythesis of all my knowledge over the next 4 months will be posted here. However, this will not only serve my personal endevours, but rather help to generate discussion, entrigue others with my ideas, and possibly lead to others designing off of my shoulders. This is to be used as an architectural reference, not only for myself but for those who read it. I hope we all learn something in the process.