Architecture Design

My weekly page update:

Universita Luigi Bocconi in Milan, Italy by Grafton Architects.

This week’s book review is Global Housing Projects: 25 buildings since 1980, edited by Josep Lluís Mateo & Ramias Steinemann.

Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

Die Gläserne Kette
A new blog on architectural theory, in Spanish. (added to sidebar under blogs::architecture)

Esto
“Images of Architecture & the Built Environment.” (thanks to Damian for the head’s up; added to sidebar under architectural links::photography)

LEAP
“Landscape Environment Architecture Progress, connecting audiences.” (added to sidebar under blogs::landscape)

[Photo by shadowless09]

Henderson Waves in Telok Blangah Hill Park, Singapore by IJP Corporation, 2008.

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Exit-Architecture: Design Between War and Peace (2008) by Stephan Trüby
Springer
Paperback, 113 pages

The notion that architects design spaces so they can be escaped from (Exit-Architecture) is an intriguing one, which architect and professor Steven Trüby from Karlsruhe, Germany theorizes in this provoking essay on war, stress and culture. He starts by dissecting one of the most famous quotes on architecture, Winston Churchill’s statement that, “We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.” Churchill uttered the phrase when pushing for the reconstruction of a space in House of Commons to its pre-WWII state, even though it would be too cramped for its purpose, something the British leader was aware of. While references to this quote disassociate it from this original context, Trüby wonders if dysfunctional cultural transmission like this is the norm, if decisions made under stress (the stress of war, in particular) shapes the spaces we inhabit. The way spaces facilitate people fleeing them is but one example of this.

Trüby’s premise is predicated on the notion that culture is what is transmitted, a value-free definition that focuses on the fact something is carried down in time, not if it is dictated as culture by an elite via monuments, artifacts and the like. Regardless transmission obviously occurs via architecture, with the author focusing on the codes, conventions, rules and laws which shape architecture, particularly those related to war. As Trüby explains, “war becomes the fulcrum on which evolutionary observations of architectonic culture are based,” a paradoxical assertion that links architecture to the innovations of war, from modern standardization to “the aesthetics of stealth and camouflage.”

Three case studies look at how culture is transmitted, each rooted in war. These include the Temple of Janus from Roman antiquity, the Pentagon and the Jamarat Bridge near Mecca. These diverse examples, like the book itself, raises more questions than it does provide answers. More importantly, the book as a whole provides a lens for looking at architecture, in which one peels back the layers of accretion that find their impetus in conflicts distant and long resolved. Surely not all architectural creations have this lineage, but in a world with constant warring and leaders set on keeping it that way, the separation between war and its effect on various aspects of society seems smaller every day.

or

Strasbourg Médiathèque Malraux #7, originally uploaded by hororo.

André Malraux Library in Strasbourg, France by Jean Marc Ibos Myrto Vitart, 2008.

Architect’s description:

Here, everything obeys the logic of the waterway: linearity of embankments, extent of the pier, alignment of trees. Even the buildings, set in profile from one end the other, are in perfect continuity parallel to the embankments, with their silos, like prows, vertically punctuating the extremities.

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When Tod Williams and Billie Tsien talk about their working process, their architecture, they say more about personal experience and preference, and how it influences their work, much more than other architects. This perhaps owes to the duo’s diverse background and their working and personal relationship, though whatever the reason it’s a refreshing antidote to architectural jargon focused more on form than experience. Their occasional quips in the lecture the other night that situated the two as near polar opposites of each other reminded me of a conversation with Peter Zumthor published in a 2G monograph on the firm. Here’s a relevant snippet.

Peter Zumthor: I try to makes something as whole and complete and simple as possible in expectation of the future life of the building, or the use of the building to come. What would you say is different in the way you work?

Billie Tsien: We’re looking for wholeness, too, but when we work on a project, it feels like a lot of stitches or different threads that come together, balancing the different pieces that are part of it. [...]

Tod Williams: [...] We take many of these stitches with a desire for wholeness but realizing, I think, that it won’t come. And I’m not sure we want it to come.

Peter Zumthor: [...] How do you find out more about wanting or not wanting wholeness? Could it be connected with the relationship between the landscape and the piece of architecture? I know that I feel this passion for containment and space, a contained space, the intimacy of being protected by architecture.

Tod Williams: I’m never interested in that, although it’s interesting when I see it in your work and desire it through your work. I would want a feeling that comes and goes, almost as if you could slide in and out of it. When it’s very limited I feel alarmed.

Billie Tsien: I think, if I imagine a box, I’m looking for quiet and movement. But you, Tod, I think you’re looking for the way out. The box would have corners that are not complete so that it contains you but you can always leave. I think even physically you feel trapped if you don’t have a way out.

Tod Williams: I want multiple ways out, in fact.

Previously:
Tod & Billie Musing #1

A lecture by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien last night at the Center for Architecture was not only inspiring, it was enlightening, as they presented a bunch of projects I wasn’t familiar with, and I thought I knew pretty much all of them. One of the projects I am familiar with is the American Folk Art Museum in Midtown. The architects spoke briefly about its narrow stair, one of three ornamental (non-fire) stairs in the building. Not really thinking about that stair since I walked it in 2001, I was struck by its similarity to the New Museum’s narrow stair when an image of it flashed on the wall (not the image below, the only one I could find on the web).

[L: New Museum (image source), R: American Folk Art Museum (image source)]

Each is obviously quite narrow, each is tucked to one side of the building, and each provides a distant vista of the floor from which one is descending. While SANAA’s “unformed” and Tod & Billie’s “formed” designs (more on this distinction in a later musing on the lecture) couldn’t be more diverse, both offices acknowledge the appeal of each stair’s secrecy, the fact one either comes upon it by surprise or by exploring and searching out the various spaces of the respective museum. So even though the white boxes of the New Museum are the polar opposite of the Folk Art Museum’s “idiosyncratic and personal” galleries, they apparently do have something in common. It’s hard to say if SANAA was influenced by the earlier work, or if — more likely — a combination of site restrictions, function, and other factors pointed to the design decision in each case. Both stairs (and museums) are worth searching out.

[This is the first of a series of posts about, and inspired by, the aforementioned lecture by Tod & Billie.]

IMG_8817, originally uploaded by iceman882.

The Lacey at 11th & Florida in Washington, DC by Division One Architects, under construction.

Related: Today’s archidose #207

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08.10.11 133, originally uploaded by kriss69.

The Cité du Design in Saint-Étienne, France Lin Finn Geipel Giulia Andi Architects Urbanists, now under construction.

Related: Half Dose #44: Saint- Nazaire Alvéole 14

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ArchitektInnen planen ja bekanntlich nicht nur Häuser. Unsere LieblingsarchitektIn Frau Hadid aus London macht ja auch…

NASA/, wikipedia, and once again bigpicture