November 2008 Archives

“Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees”_ Paul Valery

 

Today we live in the culture of the awesome.  Commercially; bigger and more is better, and there is a reliance on shock value to invoke this sense of looking.  Because of this brazen transparency, one is not invited or challenged to see, but need only look at the brash examples being forced upon them.  However,        whilst looking is passive, seeing is active; it that which happens when ones mind and other senses are triggered by sight.  Whilst seeing, one is entirely engaged with the visual, and the linguistic becomes irrelevant, the name of the thing is forgotten.

One must note that complete fiction is a bore, and plenary legibility somnolent, but some form of graphic intelligibility and suggestiveness is essential.  The reason for legibility is that a building is there to engage with its audience.  This participation can only happen when the devices that constitute the building are hidden, and their traces provide hints that entice the viewer to discover them. Simple intricacy becomes the quality that makes the building inherent.  Whilst, the obvious buildings that are looked at are imposing buildings, the iconic building evokes a yearning for discovery.  It is swollen with visual symbols that are readily intelligible whilst remaining illusive, and the action of seeing and trying to read is what makes the architecture of simple intricacy iconic.

The role of the implicit versus the explicit becomes a driving and controlling force for the level of intricacy.  The circles through rotation, scale tangent, and intersection create a new continuous curve that bears semblance to their parent shapes, but have a unique identity.  These curves define sections of the building which are not always co-planar, yet although the basic forms no longer exists in their perfect form, at certain vantage points they become more explicit.  Since direct comparison becomes difficult as holding two views is impossible, it is through recollection that one can begin to understand the visually implied remnants of the basic forms.

This seduction of the viewer happens through an elaborate assemblage of intricate spaces.  Intricacy defines the building at all scales, from the arrangement of the program, to the detail.  Through the shifts in scale, the experience of progression is that of unfolding and escalation.  This happens through simple operations.  When two circles are tangential or adjacent, the curve continues in the same direction, meaning that the arcs created always arc in the same way.  However, at points of intersection the direction changes and the new intersecting curve dictates the new path.  This creates an inherent sidedness that allows for an understanding of the relationship between the visitor and the building.  The more open the space the more peripheral it is, the greater the intricacy, the greater the importance of the space.  Escalation of rhythm is achieved through the intersection at the smaller scale.  The form becomes much more intricate and the eye is lead a wanton kind of chase. 

The architecture of simple intricacy provides a platform for the exploration of the simple geometric forms, such as the circle.  These forms provide for a readable space and the intricacy at once distorts and obfuscates its perception, yet from specific vantage points partially divulges its secret, by showing traces of its circular provenance.  It makes “more potent forms from less”, whilst the space is not circular, it is made entirely from it. 

 

Just finished a model I hope to have printed tomorrow.  It is exploring the difference between the very enclosed and the more open spaces.  The more open the space the less the intricacy, and procession inwards leads to more intricacy and more enclosed spaces.  To show the origins of every curve used to create the form, all the circles that created them are there.

I began to look at how the aggregation of intersecting, tangential, rotated and scaled circles can create new continuous curves that could start to define a space.  Below are a couple of tests.  The first was looking at the difference of un-intricate to the extremely intricate on the other side, and how at a given moment they could intersect.  The second was looking at very intricate curves to create varied types of enclosure; from more open to more enclosed.  In both cases the introduction of a 3D curve shifts the intricacy.

    Today when approaching a design brief we are aided by an infinite array of CAD programs.  One tends not to begin with the simple base elements anymore; they are too legible and obvious.  However fabrication has its limits and when we are happy with a design we spend time post rationalizing and re-crafting the geometry and breaking up the complex object into a series of relatively simpler ones.
    An icon is the symbolic representation of itself, a signifier making its signified object iconic.  Everywhere we look we are attacked by a barrage of icons, on a computer we are used to dealing with icons within icons; indexes of icons.  Architecture is at similar,  where the buildings become, referential.  For a work to be iconic, truly iconic it must be referential.  Just as with good works of literature their references plentiful, but they remain legible as autonomous, they are self referential.  This is the function of the icon; primarily pointing to itself, all secondary 'symbolic' references serve to strengthen its statement and create a dialogue with the spectator.  
    The way this translates into a formal proposal, is through simple intricacy.  Looking at simple base elements, that when compounded becomes formally very complex and intricate.  This component/unit or compunit, is generative at all scales, from the main layout, to the definition of discrete spaces.  This compunit, becomes the iconic building block of the icon.

Brett suggested during the Jury, to explore the possibility of the 'fictional circular proposal of the San Carlino Church'.  Everything known about the church, enforces that it plan is an eliptical arrangement.  However, after looking at the way ovals and elipses were dervived, one can make a fictitious claim, that since the plan is oval, it is truly circular