PROTHESES lecture series

Elizabeth Harvey_Title Options and Hypothesis

TITLES: 

Locate, Evaluate, Establish, Respond Through Spontaneous Disruption, Perception, and     Contradiction 

Spontaneous architecture: revealing the truths of the spaces we have learned to     understand.

It’s not what you see its what you feel: an architecture that brings light and identity to those issues that are unspoken.

Understand the spaces provided, challenge the forced understanding, and create spontaneous knowledge.  

HYPOTHESIS:

Architecture is a social art that has the potential to represent the spatial visions of the divested individuals and groups who seek symbols of identity. By challenging presumptions concerning the use of public spaces, architecture can become a means of reconceptualizing identity and personal expression, while giving a voice to those dispossessed by the cultural forces of the modern city. 

Ian Robinson title and hypothesis

title:
Prefabrication Advantage: Increasing the Efficiency of Change with Factory Made Components


Hypothesis:
My thesis is about a greater use of prefabricated architecture design in buildings that will cost less time and money, and therefore can provide space more efficiently to fit the growing needs of clients in a dense urban setting

Rebecca Medeiros_Potential Titles and Hypothesis

Potential Titles:

“Heroic Architecture: Bold and Ambitious yet Reverent to Community”

“Architecture as Provider to Society: Innovatively Strengthening and Inspiring Community”

“Reuniting the Built Form with the People: Creating Meaningful Spaces in Dialogue with the Everyday User”

Hypothesis:

Architecture should synthesize unique, ambitious qualities while striving for a sensitively humanistic character, evoking a “heroic” architecture of bold presence yet powerful in meaning, rich in tradition, and inspiring to the community. This thesis positions “heroic” architecture that creatively and courageously interconnects exterior and interior spaces, tectonics, and functional use with a specified community, identity, and spirit of a place.

Rebecca Medeiros_Assignment7b

What is lacking in architecture:

In my opinion, architecture has shifted from designing with the people and users in mind to the mentality of amplifying the economy of a city, representing the elite, and encouraging consumerism. Architects should become more critical of the sites they design in, especially focusing on the inhabitants of the place, their values, cultural traditions, and spatial, functional, and programmatic needs. My thesis wishes to exemplify the need of mending the relationship between architect, user, and site and how architecture should become more sensitive to the voice of the specific users. An increase in collaboration, communication, and participation is necessary within the design process as well as incorporating the architect’s imaginability and ambitious creativity to foster a holistic design that positively influences and inspires its specific site and context.

Precis:

This thesis posits that architecture should synthesize unique, ambitious qualities while striving for a sensitively humanistic character, evoking a “heroic” architecture of bold presence yet powerful in meaning, rich in tradition, and inspiring to the community. This thesis positions “heroic” architecture that creatively and courageously interconnects exterior and interior spaces, tectonics, and functional use with a specified community, identity, and spirit of a place. Delineating a balance between community participation and the creative vision of the designer is essential in mending the relationship between architect, user, and site in order for design to establish and strengthen integrity and character of a place. Approaching architecture as “heroic,” reverent of a specific site and people, will prove design’s capability to be sensitive to the values and lifestyles of a community, as well as a powerful and influential emblem of place and culture.

Jerilyn Hale Exercise 7

 Precis 3:

New and modern architecture must be juxtaposed and engaged through a dialogue of the old and degraded materials of abandoned structures. Support is found through the contrast of modern architecture materials to the weathering properties and characteristics of building materials along with precedents using repurposed materials. This approach to architecture is important as an alternative to adaptive re-use, which masks the new interventions behind ideas of historic shells and depletes the visual dynamics of time. This thesis addresses an audience interested in architecture with a focus in materiality and its connection to nature.

Annotated Bibliography: Fused Architecture and Its Material Language

The works selected are examples of texts that offer material investigations being critical of the modern approach to architectural materials. And the other books are collections of precedents regarding the re-use of buildings, preservation and additions. The two themes overlap with regards to the conditions of the existing and historical respect. The ideas developed in Moshen Mostafavi and David Leatherbarrow book On Weathering: Life of Buildings in Time are similar to the essay written by Max Levy with the beautification of weathering on buildings and how modern buildings lack this characteristic. Phoebe Crisman begins to discuss building weathering with a few primary case studies that are re-use projects that focus on the treatment of the material finishes. The precedent compilations include such a diverse spectrum of projects that engage and interact with existing buildings. The book published by Phi­lippe Robert. Adaptations: New Uses for Old Buildings has become more helpful then Kenneth Powell’s book, because of the way that the book is organized around how the buildings are integrated with their existing context. Both books are filled with numerous projects that support the ideas and relationships of old versus new material dialogues.

The main precedents that have been supporting this thesis are Peter Zumthor and his Gugalun House in Switzerland and David Chipperfield’s Neues Museum in Berlin. These two buildings deal with the insertion of modern interventions into ruins by juxtaposing them with means of materiality. The translation of modern techniques in the materials and how they fuse with the existing conditions of the weathered materials not only juxtaposes the old and new, but also creates a balance in the architecture not present before when the building was in a ruined state. The remaining precedents are strong examples of additions made to existing and old buildings. While, these too deal with materials these remaining precedents do not have the focus on this factor. The projects like Carlo Scarpa’s Catlevecchio Museum and Sveren Fehn: Hamar Bispegard Museum explore techniques in joinery as in the Scapra’s project or with circulation as in Fehn’s project. The way that these two projects engage the existing building is with a mentality to hover over it, and have little disruption to the ruins themselves. Scarpa sets many of the artwork on platforms will the circulation through Hamar Bispegard Museum is all done on top ramps above the archeological site. These ideas of hovering juxtapose the grounding suspected with ruins.

Mostafavi, Mohsen, and David Leatherbarrow. On Weathering: the Life of Buildings

              in Time. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1993.

The book On Weathering by Moshen Mostafavi and David Leatherbarrow discusses the ideas that weathering of a building is when it has reached its final “finishes” and that the weathering of a material adds architectural meaning opposed to detracting it. The “natural finishes” challenges the notions of a building’s completeness and is a continual process creating a dynamic building. The authors choose a number of precedents exemplifying how buildings materials have weathered well and where others like Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoy did not. The book is directed to create new theories and outlooks on finishes and completeness of buildings through weathering. The book serves as a primary resource for the thesis topic of natural progression of material decomposition. Weathering expedites and promotes decay, so learning which materials stand well after being exposed to natural elements will be important in a later design application.

Crisman, Phoebe. 2007. From Industry to Culture: Leftovers, Time and Material

Transformation in Four Contemporary Museums. Journal of Architecture 12 (4) (09): 405-21,

http://ezproxywit.flo.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bvh&AN=609227&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

The essay “From Industry to Culture: Leftovers, Time and Material Transformation in Four Contemporary Museums” by Phoebe Crisman discusses the approach to re-using industrial buildings for new functions, particularly in museums. Crisman picks four museums based on set criteria to guide her argument. All the museums chosen opened with a six-year period from 1997-2003, but original buildings were built between 1860 and 1947. The buildings were picked more specifically for their importance of memory, openness, sensory delight and material weathering. The intended audience are architectural scholars interested in preservation, re-use and in architectural palimpsest. The work is helpful as it provided four precedents that engaged an old building in different ways. Two specifically are the Mass MOCA and the Design Zentrum, which both emphasize the current state of the old materials. One method is through implying tension and the other through more sensory delight.

Levy, Max. "The Grace and Disgrace of Weathering." Texas architect 56, no. 3 (May 2006): 20-21. Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, EBSCOhost (accessed October 18, 2011).

The article “The Grace and Disgrace of Weathering” by Max Levy discusses the architects need to design buildings that entail the “forever young” ideals. These developing back from the great modernist masters like Le Corbusier and Alvar Aalto. However, the article argues these modern buildings designed to be timeless when weathered become the most fragile and broken of their design. Levy believes that building with weathering involved is a better alternative because as the buildings weather they connect us better to nature. Levy claims we should not build thinking about “forever young”, but about “forever.” This article is written for professionals interested in the comparison and relationships of modern architecture and weathering. This piece of writing is most helpful because it offers a critique of the ineffective and the solution of weathering as the alternative. It provides relevant evidence to support the ideas of material decomposition and abandoned buildings as generative tools.

Robert, Phi­lippe. Adaptations: New Uses for Old Buildings. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, Inc., 1941.

The book Adaptations: New Uses for Old Buildings by Philippe Robert is a compilation of precedents that respect an existing and historic building within its immediate context. The book does not just use precedents of adaptive re-use, but also projects that are considered historic preservation and projects that are of new additions. All of the projects share a respect for history and “constructive consistency.” The precedents are organized through the book into these categories such as: Building Within, Building Over, Building Around, Building Alongside, Recycling Materials or Vestiges and lastly the category of Adapting to a New Function. The book also gives a brief description of these categories according to the author. The particular part of this book that is most relevant are the precedents that fall into the categories of “Building Around” and “Building Alongside,” because they demonstrate more clearly the ideas of engaging the old. The section regarding material recycling will also be helpful with regards to the reuse of already weathered materials.

Powell, Kenneth. Architecture Reborn: The Conversion and Reconstruction of Old

Buildings. London: Laurence King, 1999.

In Kenneth Powell’s book Architecture Reborn: The Conversion and Reconstruction of Old Buildings he discusses an investigation into the adaptation and conversion of existing buildings. He supports his findings with forty-four precedent studies ranging from work, leisure and museum programmatic buildings, that all demonstrated reuse as a forward thinking design process. The purpose of this book is to educate rehabilitation and the positive environmental sense and it is a more economic process than a new-build project. The book is directed to those that have an interest in architecture specifically in the field of preservation or relevant courses, as the tone of the essay is more professional. This book offers many precedents that re-use materials and has buildings that are additions that compliment their existing conditions and context.  The fact that the book is divided into programmatic functions will be helpful upcoming development of this thesis. Providing a guide as to a multitude of functions and variety of design solutions that respect old and new integrations.

Notes and Precedents for Fused Architecture:

Peter Zumthor: Gugalun House, Versam, Switzerland (1994)

Peter Zumthor’s project in Switzerland is a precedent for my thesis ideas because the project takes a house built in the 1709 and modernizes it. His approach to the design is to create an addition that shares the same roof as the existing. The

extension would respect the memory and historic culture of the old building by considering the methods of Grison construction and the knitting of the massive wooden beams. Zumthor chooses to juxtapose the new addition with that of the old out of respect to the characteristics of the original materials. With time and weathering the extension will have darkened the wooden beams and make them appear visually knitted to the old beams. This project not only compliments my ideas of fusing modern buildings with old structures, it also uses weathering as a means to do so.

David Chipperfield: Neues Museum, Berlin, Germany (2009)

The Neues Museum recompletes the volumes of the old building that were destroyed in World War II and left unrepaired. Chipperfield maintains the existing sequence of spaces to the museum as to create continuity. The project was steered by the idea “that the original structure should be emphasized in its spatial context and original materiality- the new reflect the lost without imitating it.” The building uses the same materials to connect the ruins and new. The façade of the new wing is stripped of all decoration but respecting the original massing and window proportions. Their external elevations are in reclaimed brick but finished in thin mortar slurry rather than the render that covers the older fabric.

WTArchitecture: The White House, Isle of Coll, Bebrides, Argyll (2010)

WTArchitecture’s project in Argyll is a building that takes the cleft ruins and builds upon them. The building is designed to respect perforations and wall heights of the ruin. Juxtaposing of this new construction in the old shelter is demonstrated by finished wood, glass and sleek black coated steel running alongside the aged stonework walls. Stonewall ruins with their crevices and cracks are left revealed in areas that can be easily touched. This project focuses on balancing the new intervention with the old historic ruins. The architects did not occupy the entire ruins, the intervention sits only in half of it and an addition is made with a glass corridor connecting the two structures. This precedent is important to my thesis because it was did not occupy the entire ruin site. It has left elements untouched and then respecting the characteristics of the house created a contrasting addition.

Carlo Scarpa: Catlevecchio Museum, Verona, Italy (1973)

Scarpa’s describes the project upon his arrival and intervention, as being “fake.” The building in this state could not be restored, because that would have meant inventing the pieces missing and further falsifying the building. As an alternative, Scarpa set the building to act as a stage. The façade was now a gray rough concrete, so to replicate a stage. On the other side, the facade is detached from the opposite wall giving the impression of being just a screen placed in front of the real museum. This building is valuable to the ideas of this thesis, because it takes a different approach to the engagement of ruins. Scarpa’s project is redefining them from the exterior, while on the interior glorifying the history of the art and making them the focus. With the implications of craft and detail he allows the artwork and statues to sit on platforms so they appear to be floating and unconnected to their sitting. The only tie to their original setting is natural light, coming from one side of the room as if inside an old gothic cathedral. The work Scarpa has done to the building holds a respect for the place’s social and political history more so then its architectural history.

 

Sveren Fehn: Hamar Bispegard Museum, Hamar, Norway (1979)

Fehn’s project is an archeology museum as an intervention into an old farm, which was, in turn, built on top of a ruined Bishops house. Fehn uses elevated circulation through the building to emphasize the archeological site. The modern circulation through the building juxtaposes the digging and placidness in archeology. The construction in turn creates a suspended museum. The precedent uses many modern details in conjunction with the old structure to create these elevated walkways.