Theory // Concept as the Generator

I did some writing for studio the other day, not to fulfill a prescribed exercise but as a means of disengaging from the design process for a little while. I needed to clear my head of the building. Instead, I chose to address my weaknesses as a student of architecture - namely, understanding the building as a result of ideas and a basic conceptual ethos that is personal to each individual. The following writings and quotes, I feel, begin to offer support in terms of my own fundamental attitudes towards architecture that sometimes get lost in the process of creating technically-proficient buildings.

I am undertaking this process of exploration to better understand the ways in which architecture is generated. To this point, a narrow focus on program efficiency has constricted, rather than liberated, the effort to create architecture that is both functional and beautiful and which fully represents my aspirations as a student of design. Unfortunately, the circularity of a repetitive and continuous reworking of program, with no comprehensive formal result, has unearthed a deep, inner frustration that I am now seeking to purge through transcribed self-reflection. To state the matter simply, I need to breathe. I need to let the design breathe. The building needs space, time, light, and air, just as I do at this moment.

To engage this process, I must first accept that my aspirations are not wholly encompassed in the project’s final physical manifestation, and that there are ways to integrate these as-of-yet peripheral interests into my current project. I have, for example, a strong interest in the social qualities of contemporary architecture that begin to shape communities – specifically, those in and around American cities. To me, buildings establish, in any particular environment, a definitive visual character. To that end, they are real, tangible elements of place that evoke a sense of spatial identity. This character can be expressed through material, structure, color, shape, profile, type, use, or scale; it can consciously and conspicuously break away from the existing context to challenge long-held and/or misguided preconceptions, traditions, or habits, or it can blend in to maintain a successful, functioning status quo. It can be figural, interpretive or abstract. It can explore new technologies, improve on time-honored methods or defer to economy. There is an almost unlimited and ever-changing variety of choices that affect visual character.

The only consistent underlying element of this character, however, is the collection of people who absorb it. I do not mean consistent in terms of ethnicity, class, gender, age, etc., but rather in the faculties of perception and experience, and the possession of basic values. The users, who, in the case of our project, are indeed inclusive of every realm and strata of society, from the students to the teachers to the general public, define why the building exists. The why, in essence, precedes the how. As a result, it is critical to formulate a consistent conceptual framework that explains a project’s reasons for being in relation to the ways in which people will interact with it. Only with this guide can one begin to understand how the complex dynamic relationship between the building [the architecture] and the community, and to ensure that this relationship is symbiotic and self-perpetuating. I know, unfortunately, that this guide has been missing from my work up to this point, at least in a form that is cohesive and useful; I guess I have to ask, is it beneficial to reevaluate and even reform the conceptual basis for any of the decisions I have made thus far?

I believe so. My attitude has revolved almost exclusively around the idea of making a building. Make a good building, that is all the matters. But it’s about making a place, isn’t it? And if I’m not making a good place, I’m not making a good building. Bob Harris said – “If the rooms aren’t any good, then to hell with it.” I don’t think he was referring to the shape of the room, the placement, etc., but to its character. Does it serve the people well? Does it contribute to a sense of community? It’s clear to me that this attitude needs to change to accommodate the aspiration of community- and place-making I’ve outlined above.

TYPES OF GENERATORS

Having read through a number of various monographs and texts, each reflecting the process of an established designer or design firm, I have consolidated the most fundamental principles of their strategies into the following six categories. These principles are not isolated as polemical rhetoric, but directly encourage the changes in attitude I hope to undertake in my own design process.

1. Conceptual

“I like the idea that one’s work is a constant, even trajectory of development, but I think that’s a more romantic idea. I think it’s more realistic to think that there are periods when you work through a set of ideas or ambitions from a number of different directions and then those ideas start to become exhausted. What comes next is less clear but is infused with a feeling of restlessness with what you are doing. It’s not so comfortable, but it is necessary, because it will lead to the next thing.” – MM

“Architecture is a spatial art, as people always say. But architecture, like music, is also a temporal art. My experience of it is not limited to a single second. That means thinking about the way people move in a building…it was incredibly important for us to induce a sense of freedom of movement, a milieu for strolling, a mood that had less to do with directing people that seducing them. Hospital corridors are all about directing people, for example, but there is also the gentler art of seduction of getting people to let go.” - PZ

“Primal and spiritual forces affect our lives, and the belief that architecture can evoke those forces is central to our thinking. Humankind’s desires to defy or transcend those primal forces are also implicit. Gravity, the force that restrains us yet also keeps the planet from spinning out into infinite space, is a potent theme. Materiality (embodying earth) and transcendence (embodying sky) form a simple yet powerful duality. Architecture that anchors and architecture that flies, taken together, constitute a recurring theme in our work.” - OSKA

“We seek pleasure even as a tool in the design process, which in our view is comparable to design principles, sketches, and models. Isn’t architecture itself an equally improbable combination of something that works, something that is in a way a tool, and at the same time something that incorporates and brings pleasure? Shouldn’t one try to reach this paradoxical state in every phase of the process?” – B&K

“You can judge how bad the seventies were by looking at its uptight architecture. A democracy of opinion polls and complacency thrives behind Biedermeier facades. We have no desire to build Biedermeier. Not now or no other time. We are tired of seeing Palladio and other historical masks. Because with architecture, we don’t want to exclude everything that is disquieting….we want architecture that has more. Architecture that bleeds, exhausts, whirls, and even breaks. Architecture that lights up, strings, rips, and tears under stress. Architecture has to be cavernous, fiery, smooth, hard, angular, brutal, round, delicate, colorful, obscene, lustful, dreamy, attracting, repelling, wet, dry, and throbbing. Alive or dead. If cold, then cold as a block of ice. If hot, then hot as a blazing wing. Architecture must blaze.” - CH

2. Contextual

“Architecture is always an amalgamation of complexities – program, site, budget, culture – and the context of the work itself is another factor. I think you need to be careful that you don’t presuppose too much in approaching a project in a place that you have never worked before, because inevitably you are wrong, or your interpretation is colored too much by your initial reading of the place. I am always fascinated by how your first impressions change so much through the duration of the design process, or maybe not change so much as broaden.” - MM

3. Procedural

“We are so invested in physical models because they are the best way to hold a series of developing spaces simultaneously in view.” – MM

“A collage is a document that fixes a though in a place, but it fixes it in a vague way, deformed and deformable; it fixes a reality in order to be able to work with it…A project is always made up of these different moments, of different fragments that are contradictory at times. These collages, like a puzzle, representing a space in a way that repeats the process of making a project itself. They are like a surprise, continually offering new definitions of limits and contours.” - EM

“The diagram is a graphic representation of the evolution of a phenomenon. There are lines, a structure and a form; it works by reduction, abstraction, and representation. As a medium, the diagram serves a dual function. It is a form of notation, analytical and reflexive, which sums up; but it is also a model for thinking, synthesizing, and production, which engenders….It is defined by its informal functions and matter and in terms of form makes no distinction between content and expression, a discursive formation and a non-discursive formation. It is a machine that is almost blind and mute, even though it makes others see and speak.” – B+K

“We work with large series of models which not only allow us to think and work in three dimensions from the beginning, but also give hints for structural solutions while constantly enabling communication on spatial and organizational issues in every phase of the design process…when they are reductions of reality on a smaller scale, models can move us. Usually they look clumsier than the real thing, as in order to make the model the builder has to improvise with materials that are relatively thicker than those in reality. Somehow they are more innocent than the real thing, like children’s toys, and they challenge our imagination as we can easily move them around and alter them – perhaps by simply giving them different names." - B+K

4. Formal

“I am interested in pattern and repetition for their cognitive and ambient qualities, but I also think that comes from something more personal, from having grown up in the suburbs of Levittown, New York, a landscape of repetition and pattern. If one is open to it, what often seems like a repetitive and undifferentiated low-frequency background can become an intense place of resonance and complex overlapping patterns that creates real foreground.” – MM

“We strongly surmise that self-confident forms, made available to use and shape freely – not repressively administrated, but run in a friendly way – must have consequences for an occupant’s development of a creative selfconcept.” - CH

5. Typological

“Our analysis led us to producing a kit of parts with three basic forms of accommodation: learning clusters, central facilities, all linked by an agora or common spaces. Learning clusters are intended to give pupils a sense of individual place, communality and security. These clusters can be used to accommodate learning villages, departmental specialisms, house groups or year groups. These look out onto the surrounding landscape and are reached through central double height, top-lit volumes that contain learning resources. At the apex of each cluster there is an outdoor terrace for teaching and recreation, or a double-height space for other activities such as art. The staff room is positioned to survey both the entrance and the central space; stairs, lift and lavatories are also adjacent to the entrance…..The agora is the tissue that binds all the elements together. Unlike the learning clusters and central facilities, the agora has no predetermined shape. Its shape is determined by the nature of the site and possibilities of extension.” – WE, Schools for the Future

“In post World War II Los Angeles, schools were built on the suburban model, typified by single story buildings on sprawling, grass-covered, five-acre sites. High urban real estate prices, combined with a dearth of large empty parcels of land, have rendered this model obsolete for most American cities today. Our stacking strategy, which locates the playground and other open areas of the program above the classroom spaces, cut the land requirements in half and allowed us to allocate resources to a higher quality building. Multifunctional playgrounds and outdoor athletic facilities are carved into the roof planes; children literally play on top of their world, safely above and out of sight of the school’s urban context.” – Morph.

6. Material

“The structure, which supports the street facade, is made of round pillars and beams shaped like fragments of trees and standing as a metaphor for the trees outside of this building. Another important element is the inner concrete wall which is cladded for acoustic reasons with panels painted in different colours with a similar idea of stripes in the outside façade. Introducing colour to the facades could bring joy to the school.

The whole of these elements – colour and light – connecting landscape to structure expresses within a building the energy and youth of children and music.” – EM

“The material presence of things in a piece of architecture, its frame. Here we are sitting in a barn, there are these rows of beams and they in turn are covered, etc. etc. That kind of thing has a sensual effect on me .And that is what I would call the first and the greatest secret of architecture, that it collects different things in the world, different materials, and combines them to create a space like this. To me it’s a kind of anatomy we’re talking about.” – PZ

“Most of the materials we use are primal by nature. We seek to make them transcendent by how we use them in combination, and by how we shape and define them. Using strong walls to frame delicate natural views or playing an ordered geometry of materials against the more random structure of nature creates powerful juxtapositions. Materials used in a way that expressed their organic qualities can foster a sense of spiritual calm and link the architecture to its natural context.” – OKSA