Conceptual sketch model

[Tuesday 4 November]

This first conceptual sketch model (apologies for the quality of these late-night-at-home images) tries to convey the following three ideas:

 

IDEA_01

 

[corners/casa guardiola]

 

Architecture is a matter of life and death.

 

Space is born. Space dies. Space is born again.

 

Where is space born? Where does space die?

 

In the corner.

 

This is a lesson from Philip Johnson, who learnt it from Mies.

 

The intersection of lines, the seam between surfaces, the opening and closing of volumes. The points of no return, the point where you leave one space and enter the next.

 

Whether sharp or oblique or blurred, the corner defines the beginning and the end - the life and death of space.

 

By manipulating the corner - opening and closing it in different ways - space can come alive, or die, or be suspended in a tension in between the two.

 

Invisible, or suggested, corners demarcate transparent Chinese boxes, spaces within spaces. The corners of the rug in the Glass House demarcate a space that Johnson calls "a raft". By rotating the corners in plan, we can create successions of spaces (processions). By tilting the planes, we can reach alternative effects, animating the spaces by slowing them down or speeding them up, or having them shoot through each other.

 

What is it like to be in three transparent spaces at the same time?

 

The key is to stick with the corner, a collection of centres. If the corners turn into a grid, we lose the iconicity - or do we? Writes Peter Eisenman:

 

"In architecture when one draws the crossing of two lines, it produces a cross which is an obvious icon of point, centre, focus, etc. The repetition of this crossing produces a grid, which is no longer concerned with centre and focus but rather with surface, texture, etc. The grid is no longer primarily iconic but rather is also an index. As an index the grid is used in many conditions of mapping as well as in making certain reference tables where the horizontal columns are used for one kind of information and the vertical columns are used as a cross reference for other information. But in architecture when the grid becomes the plan of a city or a real building, its abstract co-ordinates become literal intersections for the simple extrusion of three-dimensional space. When this happens the secondary or relational aspects of the grid as an index becomes transformed into a primary, direct one-to-one relationship between abstraction and reality, space and three-dimensional volume, form and function. So most grid-drawn lines in architecture become iconic because of the priority of extruded three-dimensional space."

 

(Peter Eisenman, "Indicencies: In the Drawing Lines of Tadao Ando," in Tadao Ando: Complete Works. London: Phaidon, 1995, p.497. First appeared in: in Tadao Ando Details. Tokyo, Japan: A.D.A. Edita Tokyo, 1991.)

 

Can we draw convex corners, concave corners? Can we draw the crossing of two lines and produce a cross without allowing it to become a grid?

 

 

IDEA_02

 

[eusapia/isomorphic]

 

Architecture is a matter of life and death.

 

Italo Calvino knew this when he described Eusapia:

 

"...to make the leap from life to death less abrupt, the inhabitants have constructed an identical copy of their city, underground. All corpses, dried in such a way that the skeleton remains sheathed in yellow skin, are carried down there, to continue their former activities.

...

From one year to the next, they say, the Eusapia of the dead becomes unrecognizable. (...) So the Eusapia of the living has taken to copying its underground copy.

They say that this has not just now begun to happen: actually it was the dead who built the upper Eusapia, in the image of their city. They say that in the twin cities there is no longer any way of knowing who is alive and who is dead."

 

(Italo Calvino, "The Invisible Cities")

 

A symmetrical isomorphic mirroring of that which is above and that which is below a datum level is not necessarily the most interesting formal take on this idea (though it could pose interesting design problems and possibilities). But through radial mirroring, through flipping, through tilting and then mirroring, through axial symmetries, a wide range of manipulations can be carried out that might open up for truly interesting geometries.

 

A side effect might be the restriction of viewpoints, the splintering and hiding of the iconic form, the transformation from a passive to an active user. An review of Eisenman:

 

"However challenged or troubled by the work, visitors are never overwhelmed nor reduced to anxious impotence. Nothing affects them without their active, willed participation. By avoiding an iconic design, Eisenman has ensured that the whole cannot be apprehended from any single vantage point. There is no center, no resting spot for the eye or the body, no therapeutic catharsis."

 

And the man himself, in discussion with Charles Jencks:

 

"I think that the real problem with architecture today is the question of the optical. If there's one thing that the iconic building relies on it's "opticality" - you have to see it, you've got to get it quick, it's an instant imagery. And I think that opticality is the problem with the buildings in this book, that they rely too much on a first impression, an image, a form, a shape. I think iconic buildings destroy, because of their need for opticality, the possibility of multiply coded enigmatic meanings. For me, iconic buildings cause the individual to become a spectator toward seeing a spectacle, becoming passive. And I think there's nothing worse that a person or an audience that is passive.

 

And then Rem, on what seems to be the same topic:

 

"Nevertheless, we try to build structures with unstable identities - that is, buildings with depth. Take the CCTV complex, for example. Now that it's almost complete, the way it functions becomes clear. It looks different from every angle, no matter where you stand. Foreground and background are constantly shifting. We didn't create a single identity, but 400 identities. That was what we wanted: To create ambiguity and complexity, so as to escape the constraints of the explicit."

 

 

IDEA_03

 

[cutting corners/fissures]

 

Architecture is a matter of life and death.

 

This shows clearly in the crack, the natural formation of a corner.

 

One thing coming to an end so that another can begin.

 

The multiplicitous division: an entity breaking up into several entities.

 

The crack is where something splits, where one line turns into (at least) two. This division is the symbol of something decaying, but also of something new coming alive: the cell splitting, the light shining through the cracks. One becoming two. Something dying, something being born.

 

The light shines through the cracks in the wall. The grass grows through the cracks in the pavement.

 

The fissure is different from the crack in that it doesn't compromise the structure of the material. The fissure, in our formal discussion, is a planned crack, a controlled crack.

 

The most common cracks and fissures are surface phenomena, but what happens if we allow the material to be cracked in three dimensions? We get light shining through along the crack, we get openings that we can use for formal/geometrical manipulations, or to carry air into or out of the building. We get new potentials for circulatory paths, a system for manipulating the ground tectonics.

 

The crack, even in its controlled fissure state, being a spontaneous corner, is iconic: it does what it is, there is a resemblance between form and meaning, between words and world, between sign and reality.

 

The crack could also change the gestalt reading of the geometry it is applied to, by mediating between iconic forms and the surrounding ground context, dissipating the hard edge between figure and ground. The crack lifts and lowers the ground, allows it to become a rolling canvas that could carry many different effects (wrinkling, folding, pleating, shifting, slipping, etc), and articulates the contrast between the icon and the urban fabric background.