Tidying up loose ends. 'Rewriting the Perception of Space in the City- Resetting the Rules of Context.'
Intro
'My approach to this unit's topic of context is at the scale of a city. I define context as 'a frame of reference to which we chose to experience the world around us'. This proposal wishes to challenge this frame of reference for viewing and experiencing the world, and rewrite the rules of context within a city. The project is told through a series of architectural interventions, read like an architectural fiction for architects. This follows the animated and richly described story telling by the architect Adolf Loos's when writing about his own architecture, with all the events, characters and dramas unfolding. An example of which is 'The Story of the Poor Little Rich Man' (1900). Sadly as you are about to find out this projects' tale of the city does not have a happy ending.
(1)Plate: Flower Pot Incident
"Architecture is defined by the actions it witnesses as much as by the enclosure of its walls"[1] .
[Point out the incident which is about to occur: flower pot and man]
(2)Plate: The House with One Wall'
In 1921, Adolf Loos designed 'The House with One Wall'. A house design where "in the interior any change (enlargement) of the rooms can easily be carried out", this was due to the load bearing and party walls being constructed as one wall. The house therefore "can be repeatedly extended" on the garden side[2]. (Number clarification). One can read that Adolf Loos is attempting to break, or at least challenge, the rules of occupying a city and a building. He devised a home which would mirror and re-enact the needs of occupants held within. If a family grew, the house could grow. The building became a puppet to be manipulated by its occupants.
(3)Plate: Vienna in Plan with spiral (vista) / flying facades (hills and valleys)/ pull & push (vista) plate
So what if the city moved with and worked with its inhabitants?
What if the city became a puppetry controlled by the inhabitants?
The city as we recognize it is flat in context. This means it lacks the means to show the depth of events, time and people it witnesses, including any architectural conflicts. Buildings rarely show the wrinkles or scars of architectural conflicts.
(4)Plate: Vienna in Plan
There may be many versions of the city in our world, but they all tend to have building footprints which remain fixed and largely unchanged. The city is a fixed container which takes time, money and effort; to knock down and rebuild. The city therefore remains still, as we the inhabitants are the moving and dynamic components.
(5)Plate: Site in the Round
It can be said with Loos' Ramplan, his Muller and (Mole)ler Houses have a theatre box inside the house overlooking the social spaces, with the family being both actors and spectators[3]. The context under scrutiny in this project is Michaelplatz, Vienna which is like a theatre in the round. It is a square which resembles a round table around which are seated its key cultural buildings. These are the Emperor's Imperial Palace, St. Michael's church, a gentleman's outfitter's, and an cultural cafe used by artists and thinkers.
[Point at each building]
(6)Plate: 180 degree view of square
The pivotal building in this square and the new insert which sparks the architectural conflict, and is the protagonist of all events about to be unraveled, is Goldman & Salatsch's Gentleman's Outfitter shop. This is designed by Adolf Loos, completed in 1911 and branded with the official name Looshaus.
Mocked as the 'the house with no eyebrows', this building was seen as inappropriate in its distinguished location, due to its blank facade of the upper four stories. It was a highly controversial building at the time of its creation. For example two effects of the conflicts with the building were the Emperor who lives across the square refusing to open his curtains or use the palace front entrance in disgust; and Adolf Loos developing a stomach ulcer caused by the stress of the construction of this building, a precursor of his eventual death. A poster on the building's completion in 1911 advertising a lecture by Adolf Loos on his recently completed Looshaus building, called it a "monster"[4].
Clearly this building was a glitch (or snag) in the traditionally styled and ornate square in Vienna, which caused ripples of conflict.
(7)Plate: Photo of Model
To define this project's key term, an architectural glitch is a defect or malfunction in the fabric of a machine or plan. This means a snag in the expected daily experiences of space. This may be a change in the daily scenery of the interior of the city. This forces the spectator to do a 'double take', a moment where the individual stops... breathes... looks around at the city, and sees it anew, re-evaluating their frame of reference. It is this moment of clarity looking at the glitch which provides a glimpse of spatial possibilities beyond the confines of what is expected. The glitch is an opportunity to look more deeply into the possible use of the city's spaces.
(8)Plate: Model exploring Flatness
The common thread through all these glitches is the challenging of the fixed flatness of context. The city is seen with a glaze of perfection, a veneer where just the flat surface is perceived. The glitches brutally expose and reveal hidden scars and violence behind the polite still veneer of the city, as the architectural conflicts of the square are drawn out.
(10)Plate: Plan with Elevation
(11)Plate: Haunting Michaelplatz, Vienna
The Project explores the testing of context through the design and implementation of a series of glitches designed for the Vienna City Planner to produce a new plan for Vienna, which liberates us from architectural spatial rules. The Vienna City Planner's architectural experiment for which I am their designer, takes place on the outskirts of the city in the new planner's office. It is the experiments in the planner's office which haunt the current Vienna, as the planners experiment and then insert the glitches into the real Vienna.
All drawings of the glitches are drawings of the effect not the literal workings.
Glitch One: Vista
The first glitch violently disorientates the inhabitant by working on the vistas created by the five streets leaving the square. Using the north side of Herregasse street as an example, a duplication of the flat and white upper four stories of the Looshaus is rigorously drawn out over the streets facades, suffocating the language of the original elevations and spreading the simple and plain language instilled in the Looshaus.
Then the marbled lower half of the Looshaus are duplicated along the lower part of the street. This resembles a 'cage' on the Looshaus as the depth added by the marble columns create a threshold between the street and interior of the shop. As this cage spreads itself in front of the existing facades, the city appears fortified.
By this action, the Looshaus once seen as the 'odd one out' within a traditional square is suddenly seen as the norm.
Next a large piece of façade pulls out of the streets elevations suddenly blocking and cutting the street of, forcing the square to look in on itself as a self contained interior.
Glitch Two: The Monster of a Building Reacts
Having duplicated itself the Looshaus without warning charges at its enemy the Emperor's Palace opposite. A loud noise vibrates through the square as the elevations duplicate and catapult themselves across the square to collide and make battle with the Palace.
The square's space is now inflated and absorbed by the attention grapping Looshaus.
The once open square is now littered with a forest of marble columns as inhabitants are forced to either face the daunting task of making their way through the dark forest or walking around the outer facades of the square away from the Looshaus, just as they did in disgust at its creation. The duplication of the Looshaus building's facades means the building has a deep mask protecting the secret ornate feminine interiors.
Glitch Three: Unpeeling of the City
While the charging of the Looshaus occurs this rips up the square's pavement, rumble is then thrown around the square, causing the strata of the ground to rip and erupt, unleashing the many subterranean levels of the city below.
The city once orientated with one ground plain now has many layers of ground plane below it's feet, as the ground dropped away. A whole new underbelly of the city is exposed. The strata of times past are exposed, displaying each past generation's additions. This causes the person on the street to see the city-scape from much lower points of view. The city now has many more layers to be inhabited.
Today at the centre of the Michealplatz on display are ruins of the foundation walls of the Hofburg Theatre built in 1776 .
Glitch Four: Murder, Ornament is Crime
After the initial burst of activity the Looshaus deflates slightly relieving the square slightly and at 5am the inhabitants of Vienna emerge to find the square reshaped and anew. The first person on the scene at 5am finds to their horror a dead body.
(Plate & show on its set-up on model)
A man's body was found lying in a heap leaning on one of the marble pillars of the Looshaus building. One of the lanterns normally adorned on the front facade of Looshaus, was beside the body. The skull of the man was cracked open. The body was laid bare, except for a pair of cufflinks.
(Take Jurors to Recon Site Model)
With this serious incident the square changes dramatically into a murder scene, with its occupants, objects and scenes dissected out and labeled as murder suspects, weapons and possible locations. An investigation is undertaken as to who the murderer could be.
The suspects are; the client Herr Leopold Goldman; the emperor, Franz Josef; the planning councilor Herr Schneider; and the architect Adolf Loos. Each of these had a very different view of what the Michaelplatz and Looshaus should look like.
(Show characters and their badges)
The weapons are; The Looshaus lantern, Council Planning Document package and Flower Box, pushed from above. The possible sites of the crime are; outside the Imperial Palace, cafe or Looshaus.
In the end it was found the building of the Looshaus was the killer when it exploded with rage and attacked the palace, it murdered an innocent bystander.
Therefore:
"Architecture is defined by the actions it witnesses as much as by the enclosure of its walls" "To really appreciate architecture you may even need to commit a murder"[5] .
Conclusion
From these glitches you can see context can create context. Each glitch is created in response to the architectural conflict within its own context.
Occurring within the Michealplatz with the architectural conflict around the Looshaus building as the protagonist, the glitches de-contextualize the Looshaus building but not Adolf Loos, seeking to contextualize the building not just by its surface appearance but by the characters and the architectural conflicts the building witnesses.
This project hoped to un-veneer the surface veneer of context.
Architecture is a protagonist not just a flat backdrop.
[1] B. Tschumi (1994) Architecture and Disjunction. London: MIT Press. p. 100.
[2] A. Loos (1995) On Architecture. California: Adiadine. p. 144
[3] B. Colomina (1992) The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. p.76
[4] A. Loos (1982) Spoken into the Void, collected essay 1897- 1900. New York: MIT Press. p. 49
[5] B. Tschumi (1994) Architecture and Disjunction. London: MIT Press. p. 100.
WorkInProcess_ Glitch 1: Charging
This drawing in plan I intend to be the project's orientation point. At every designed glitch it will be documented in this drawing, so you could simply explain the project by just this series of the same drawing.
Again, currently weeding (out line work)
WorkInProcess_The 'CHARGING' Drawing...
... illustarting where the charging of glitch one at the Palace opposite tears up the ground so much so that this causes the next glitch to occur where the ground ruptures like an earthquake and a once contained square is exposed to it's layers below ground level.
Method: It is intended this is a complex detailed line drawing, like Adolf Loos axometric of the Muller House. Ideally I'd like to put some line people in with expressions of shock and ore, such as Adolf Loos architectural fictions illustrate strong emotions or like te Looshaus Lecture poster. Currently weeding out the line work...
SQUASH & a squeeze
"What can you do if your house is too small? The wise old man knows: bring in a flappy, scratchy, noisy crowd of farmyard animals. When you push them all out again, you'll be amazed at how big your house feels!"
(Donaldson, 1993)
I find Children's picture books fascinating purely due to their brilliant skill of communicating an idea in the most simple manner. I think their technique of communication (a fine art between image and text) is cleverly composed but equally the ideas they often hold, sometimes when translated to an architectural context, can be quite powerful.
Stories rather than just purely children's illustrated books, has been a key component in this years project thinking, by the reading of Adolf Loos wonderful descriptive articles and 'architectural' stories like the The Poor Little Rich Man (1900). A story I believe could easily be a children's story.
Equally I also think of other architectural fictions like; 'Invisible Cities' (1972) by Calvino Italio, 'The Poetics of Space' (1958) by Gaston Bachelard and 'The grey cloth and ten percent of white' (1914) by Paul Scheerbart.
Within A Squash and a Squeeze, (a reference which was suggested to me), embodies the essence of the designed glitches within the Michaelplatz square. This designed glitches deal with the feeling of space specifically with the thresholds between; packed full to empty, contained to opened, vista lines perpendicular to lines screwed.
Within this children's book entitled, A Squash & a squeeze (1993) by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler, a little old lady complains her house is too small. An wise old man tells her to place her chicken, goat, pig and then cow into her house and live with this for a while. He then tells her to take the animals out, and suddenly the little old lady finds her house not so small after all. Rather the house seems larger. (Refer to the three images above showing the three stages, house too small, house packed with farmyard animals, house seems bigger)
Wylde's Terrestial Globe
This scaled model of the world was constructed as part of the World Exhibition in London and placed in Leicester Square in 1851. It is called Wylde's Terrestial Globe with a radius of 30 feet in radius. I see this as an interesting reference for two reasons;
1. It's unique way of viewing the world (context), from inside - out
2. Placed in Leicester Square, today's square was not laid until after this model was de-constructed in 1873. The dynamics of the city's space changed.
Side Exploration.
Last week I experimented with the camera I acquired on our field trip. Early this week I picked up the developed photographs with the negatives. The eight photographs are the same scene due to this being the first film, and I was changing the settings while jointing what I did down, so to see what the device can achieve (what its boundaries are). I particularly like the negatives.
SCALE: The elevations are drawn in one-point perspective with a 420mm square end. Therefore the scale used is initially 1:100 and then 0.89689368 is used to scale every elevation. All the elevations are scaled the same so to keep, each buildings relation to each other accurate to today.
DIMENSION: 1550 mm in length X 420mm in height X 840mm in depth
MATERIALS USED: Birch Plywood 3mm for the structure with rough grain torchon white water colour paper 300g/m2 and normal white 80g/m2 printing paper for the clouds, viewing frame and accordion elevations.
FABRICATION TECHNIQUE: Laser cutting for; cuts, drawing of elevations and scours for folding
DEVELOPMENT OF CONCEPT: This model will illustrate by demonstration the intent of Glitch Three: Seeing context through the Vista. The aim is it will re-enact the glitch to the audience. The modelling of this model, aided in thinking how the councillor building will need to be designed to fit and play-out (to test) these glitches. It will used as a vehicle to output the techniccal drawings of how this glitch works.
