Building Analysis Assignment 2010

2^nd Year Architects,

Summer greetings.   I hope by now you’ve been able to rest up from the work of the school year, and have started your summer activities.

I have sent each of you an email with the summer building analysis sketch assignment that I had referenced earlier in the summer.  The assignment calls for you to do research on a series of 6-8 courtyard buildings, and to create a single page of freehand diagrams for each of the buildings.   It is due Aug. 23, at 1:30pm, the first day of studio.

Please email me with any and all questions and concerns.

Kai

Architecture of Recycled Infrastructure

In the quest to go green, and be eccentric, architects and clients are searching for new things to recycle, new materials for architecture.  The Tree Hugger blog has posted a house currently under construction in Malibu, CA made out of a jumbo jet.  Its use of infrastructure, the issue of scale and re-purposing of other-functional pieces, reminds of the “Big Dig House” made out of an old highway that was removed for the new highway in Boston.

Architects Build Small Spaces

The Victoria & Albert museum in London, which specializes in issues of craft, design, etc., is about to open a fun exhibit called “Architects Build Small Spaces.” The museum invited a bunch of young architects and architecture student groups to build 1:1 follies or “buildings” inside and around the museum in London.  One building is by Rural Studio (Andrew Freear came to speak at CMU on the school’s work this spring).  See top row of images below

It seems like a perfect 2nd year design project.  We’ve started the year off with a 1:1 project the last two years, in 2007 with an “Observation/Installation” on the front porch of CFA, and in 2009 with a “Light Transformer” interior installation.  See 2nd row of images below.

The idea of building 1:1 in a museum goes back to the houses that the MoMA in NYC has commissioned over the years, from architects like Marcel Breuer, Frank Lloyd Wright, and most recently a bunch of “Pre-Fab” experments.  Another important example are the follies built for the “Young Architects Program” (YAP) at PS1 (a MoMA extension in Queens) every summer, often highlighting avant-garde and radical design for fun and public interaction.

Architecture as “Pattern Interruption”

The psychologist Pavel Somov, in the Huffington Post, is calling for an architecture of “pattern-interruption.”   He cites the present trend in architecture away from conspicuous consumption, away from radical form “because we can,” away from “extravagant, eye-popping trophy buildings.”  But Somov also admonishes the merely functional or only green, calling for a synthesis of  functional architecture and one that is intellectually and emotionally more demanding.

Somov advocates something that is “both-and,” something that is “clean and green” as well as provocative, so that it is “functional” on both the physical as well as emotional and psychological plane.   This more challenging architecture, he claims, should be a “pattern-interruption architecture, i.e. an architecture of awakening.”  He claims the mind naturally seeks out, and falls back on, “clichés, patterns, stereotypes and schemas…  So, when the mind stumbles upon the unfamiliar, it chokes and wakes up.  Intentional pattern-interruption, as a method of therapy or architecture, surprises the mind-curmudgeon, and, in so doing, leverages presence and mindfulness.”

In a series of analogies to meditation, Somov goes on to analogize challenging architecture to a Zen Koan (a Koan is a story, the meaning of which cannot be understood by rational thinking, yet it may be accessible by intuition.  One widely known kōan is “Two hands clap and there is a sound; what is the sound of one hand?”).

The question remains, what does this “pattern interruption” architecture look like, and how “disruptive” it needs to be in order to be effective?  Do we need to be hit over the head with blinding novelty and architectural pandemonium?  Or might it be that this “disruption” is most powerful when it is most subtle, like a Zen Koan?

(All images of work by SANAA)

Architecture is Like a Dishwasher

I came across an article in a Columbus, OH business journal, describing how architecture students from Ohio State’s Knowlton School of Architecture were picketing and protesting in front of a recently completed campus union building.  They resented the mediocre, impoverished architecture that the architects had designed, and that the administration had settled on.  They were demanding a more demanding architecture, that raised the status of architecture, the university, and even the city.  (Note: Ohio State has a rich tradition of very provocative architecture by Peter Eisenmann and others).

The author quotes the students:  “Ohio State is progressive, the Union is unimpressive…  The 338,000-square-foot student center provides essential gathering spaces, but was a missed opportunity to create a campus icon… We want this conversation to start… We want people to be more critical of what’s being built and the status of the city… That’s how Columbus achieves its mediocrity… They want everything to look alike.”

The author then goes on to explain that architecture can elicit very different reactions in different people, saying the building instantly provoked “inspired” and “hate” discussions in Columbus.  But then he resigns to the position: “For such a large project, it proved impossible to please everyone where design was concerned.”  He seems to imply that architecture can either be functional OR demanding, but not both.  With a note of sarcasm, he compares architecture to a dishwasher: “With architecture, knowing whether a design is good or bad is as certain as knowing the single correct way to load a dishwasher.”

The building has some close ties to CMU: the building was originally designed by Michael Dennis & Assoc., the same firm that did our own U.C., Purnell Center, and stadium.  Dennis’ firm jumped ship half-way through the O.U. project, however, and it was finished by another firm.   (Dennis later disavowed the O.U. project, though as you can see from the rendering above from Dennis’ website, it’s very similar to the completed building at the top).   The similarities continue: in 1999 some 2nd year CMU architecture students created a provocative light installation that protested the recently completed Purnell Center by Michael Dennis, calling the building “fascist,” unmodern, and uninspired (see image below).  The student protest provoked a huge discussion on campus and even in the neighboring (Jewish) community.

What do you think?  Would you ever protest a building?  Which ones?  Why?  Doesn’t every architect and client have a right to build what they want?  Would you ever protest the design of a starchitect?   How about a classmate?  Where should our architectural values come from?  Should we always voice them boldly?  This goes to design AND criticism.  Is architecture like a dishwasher: everyone has their own idea, and everything is equally OK?

Isn’t there actually a “best way” to load a dishwasher, and it’s usually someone with a great deal of experience who can show the novice what that “best way” is?  Are some architects more qualified than others to determine “quality” or what is “demanding” architecture?  I’ve never known an architect who consciously set out to design a building that was “bad” or “ugly” or “uninspiring.”  So doesn’t that mean that all architecture is equally valid?

What do you think?