إسلااام
11-02-2005, 01:29 PM
Architectural Representation and Design
The term "virtual space" was first used by philosopher Susanne Langer in "Feeling and Form" (1956). In this first usage, the term did not refer to an intangible digital space, but to the symbolic and abstract idea of human built space. To each built form we attach meaning; metaphorical or symbolic content understood through experience and retained in memory. Louis Kahn referred to making architecture as originating in the immaterial, becoming material, then returning to the immaterial. In this he shares an idea of the Human as "symbol maker" rather than the "tool maker".
Philosopher David Hume (1711-76) created an experiment to explain the relationship between the abstract and physically tangible world. He asks us to imagine two marble spheres, one of black, one of white, and two marble cubes, similarly black and white. "Sphere", Cube", "black" or "white" are all abstractions from this collection of objects. While we know the sphere and cube are white, we cannot separate "whiteness" out. In architecture we would do well to remember that every "architectural idea" is anchored to physical form in the same way.
It is, therefor, because we "make" symbols of human thought by making physical buildings that I would firstly stress the importance of physical modeling in architectural education. If we are to understand that human ideas can become spatial through the building of walls, perforated with openings, by floors and ceilings, by tectonic structure, then a physical model allows a dialogue to develop about ideas and tangible form, intentions and means. The model is a vehicle for thinking about architectural ideas. My term for this process is making/thinking.
Categories of models might include, in approximate relationship to process:
metaphorical/conceptual
making/thinking ("working models")
process presentation
evaluation : constructional, formal
final presentation: realistic, abstracted
Of these it is the Making/thinking that I have mostly concentrated on in studio teaching. However, immediately questions arise concerning what methods and materials are best to explore which architectural ideas. This task is undertaken over and over again by many studio teachers by trial and error, and by precedent in teaching and architectural practice. These have includes sculptural practice leading to buildings, as well as conventional architectural practice. As an introduction I can cite a few examples of ongoing research and studio practice.
Precedent 1: Frank O Gehry
The model workshop of Frank Gehry is probably the single most widely known example of models in architectural practice. His so called "sculptural" forms, such as Bilbao Guggenheim, the most published architectural work of recent years, develop from a reworking in crude models, later to be transferred to computer for detailed design. For teaching it is probably most important to look at three particular aspects of this process.
the sequence of models, starting with simple blocks to organise program and site, then developing from mask-like applications to free form volume, and finally material studies.
the relationship between models and the "idea" drawings.
transfer of model to computer for quantifiable analysis and detail design.
Precedent 2: Siah Armajani
My own experience includes working with public artist Siah Armajani. In 1998 I designed an exhibition with him in Edinburgh, the first of three Making/Thinking exhibitions at the University of Edinburgh. The exhibit concentrated on the "Dictionary for Building" models, that assemble various elements, such as dolls house furniture, train model bridges and houses, card and balsa, to create a series of conceptual situations, leading eventually to gardens, rooms, and bridges. The process includes the making and breaking of models, mixing scales , and juxtaposition of elements. The ordinariness of the found objects re-integrates the thinking of public space as an inhabited, mundane forum for public life.
Precedent 3: Per Kirkeby
The second Making/thinking exhibition showed the terracotta works of Danish artist Per Kirkeby along side process drawings and photographs of his finished brick works. Although the final works are known for there hard edged geometry, the clay models manipulate clay (the same material as brick) to reveal a shifting, unstable earthiness, analogous to the shifting plate tectonics and geological processes of the Earth, while also revealing the intervention of the human mind (not least in thumb marks). When cast in bronze and exhibited in the Tate they might be art, but in there original material they reveal "thought caught in clay".
Precedent 4: Erwin Heerich
Known for his simple brick buildings at Museum Insel Hombroich, Heerich has been exploring the relationship between two dimensional geometrical drawings and three dimensional volumetric form, often quite literally folded out of a drawing. The building are far less literally related to any one of the cardboard or wooden construction, but reveal an exploration of these geometrical ideas; they are parallel studies, in no way sequentially related to the buildings.
Brief examples from teaching experience:
Application 1: Dundee Schools Chair Project
The school children arranged chairs both in real scale and small timber models to explore social seating arrangement. Incidentally issues of scale and plan projection could be revealed.
Application 2: CALA Summer '98 Pre-arch studio (University of Minnesota)
The studio is based on the principle of learning about design through a combined series of analysis and synthesis. In the first example an analysis of an existing building through two material, plastercine and card, eventually leading to a way of analysing the Whilly House by Frank Lloyd Wright, using layers of card to model the brick fireplace, and the design of a new brick structure.
Application 3: CALA : Summer '98 Pre-arch studio (University of Minnesota)
In the second example a place from memory is modeled, the reinterpreted through the analysis of a balloon framed house in 1:10 scale models, resulting in a series of development models for a new design.
Application 4: Fourth Year (BAHons) ECA
This first project began with a one day exercise to record ideas about singe person housing on a standard 300x300mm board. The ideas were then developed through a series of both conceptual and site specific models to create the final architectural proposition, relating to the idea of public city space and introverted park land.
Application 5: Fourth Year (BAHons) ECA
This example demonstrates again the evolution of an idea from quite bold contrasts, to a greater dialogue with site and program.
Conclusion:
These studio examples share certain principles in common:
They are crude, attempting to avoid a too fetishistic object.
the materials are cheap, but analogous in some way to construction.
the models invite further development, leading to a sequence of exploration addressing various architectural ideas.
the model leads the process, embodying thought and responding to changes throughout there making (making/thinking),
they are all metaphors for buildings, and open to further interpretation, rather than presentation of final design ideas.
interchangeable elements become like a three dimensional jig-saw, that can be put together in a variety of ways.
The model process itself contributes to ideas about the material form of the proposal.
The term "virtual space" was first used by philosopher Susanne Langer in "Feeling and Form" (1956). In this first usage, the term did not refer to an intangible digital space, but to the symbolic and abstract idea of human built space. To each built form we attach meaning; metaphorical or symbolic content understood through experience and retained in memory. Louis Kahn referred to making architecture as originating in the immaterial, becoming material, then returning to the immaterial. In this he shares an idea of the Human as "symbol maker" rather than the "tool maker".
Philosopher David Hume (1711-76) created an experiment to explain the relationship between the abstract and physically tangible world. He asks us to imagine two marble spheres, one of black, one of white, and two marble cubes, similarly black and white. "Sphere", Cube", "black" or "white" are all abstractions from this collection of objects. While we know the sphere and cube are white, we cannot separate "whiteness" out. In architecture we would do well to remember that every "architectural idea" is anchored to physical form in the same way.
It is, therefor, because we "make" symbols of human thought by making physical buildings that I would firstly stress the importance of physical modeling in architectural education. If we are to understand that human ideas can become spatial through the building of walls, perforated with openings, by floors and ceilings, by tectonic structure, then a physical model allows a dialogue to develop about ideas and tangible form, intentions and means. The model is a vehicle for thinking about architectural ideas. My term for this process is making/thinking.
Categories of models might include, in approximate relationship to process:
metaphorical/conceptual
making/thinking ("working models")
process presentation
evaluation : constructional, formal
final presentation: realistic, abstracted
Of these it is the Making/thinking that I have mostly concentrated on in studio teaching. However, immediately questions arise concerning what methods and materials are best to explore which architectural ideas. This task is undertaken over and over again by many studio teachers by trial and error, and by precedent in teaching and architectural practice. These have includes sculptural practice leading to buildings, as well as conventional architectural practice. As an introduction I can cite a few examples of ongoing research and studio practice.
Precedent 1: Frank O Gehry
The model workshop of Frank Gehry is probably the single most widely known example of models in architectural practice. His so called "sculptural" forms, such as Bilbao Guggenheim, the most published architectural work of recent years, develop from a reworking in crude models, later to be transferred to computer for detailed design. For teaching it is probably most important to look at three particular aspects of this process.
the sequence of models, starting with simple blocks to organise program and site, then developing from mask-like applications to free form volume, and finally material studies.
the relationship between models and the "idea" drawings.
transfer of model to computer for quantifiable analysis and detail design.
Precedent 2: Siah Armajani
My own experience includes working with public artist Siah Armajani. In 1998 I designed an exhibition with him in Edinburgh, the first of three Making/Thinking exhibitions at the University of Edinburgh. The exhibit concentrated on the "Dictionary for Building" models, that assemble various elements, such as dolls house furniture, train model bridges and houses, card and balsa, to create a series of conceptual situations, leading eventually to gardens, rooms, and bridges. The process includes the making and breaking of models, mixing scales , and juxtaposition of elements. The ordinariness of the found objects re-integrates the thinking of public space as an inhabited, mundane forum for public life.
Precedent 3: Per Kirkeby
The second Making/thinking exhibition showed the terracotta works of Danish artist Per Kirkeby along side process drawings and photographs of his finished brick works. Although the final works are known for there hard edged geometry, the clay models manipulate clay (the same material as brick) to reveal a shifting, unstable earthiness, analogous to the shifting plate tectonics and geological processes of the Earth, while also revealing the intervention of the human mind (not least in thumb marks). When cast in bronze and exhibited in the Tate they might be art, but in there original material they reveal "thought caught in clay".
Precedent 4: Erwin Heerich
Known for his simple brick buildings at Museum Insel Hombroich, Heerich has been exploring the relationship between two dimensional geometrical drawings and three dimensional volumetric form, often quite literally folded out of a drawing. The building are far less literally related to any one of the cardboard or wooden construction, but reveal an exploration of these geometrical ideas; they are parallel studies, in no way sequentially related to the buildings.
Brief examples from teaching experience:
Application 1: Dundee Schools Chair Project
The school children arranged chairs both in real scale and small timber models to explore social seating arrangement. Incidentally issues of scale and plan projection could be revealed.
Application 2: CALA Summer '98 Pre-arch studio (University of Minnesota)
The studio is based on the principle of learning about design through a combined series of analysis and synthesis. In the first example an analysis of an existing building through two material, plastercine and card, eventually leading to a way of analysing the Whilly House by Frank Lloyd Wright, using layers of card to model the brick fireplace, and the design of a new brick structure.
Application 3: CALA : Summer '98 Pre-arch studio (University of Minnesota)
In the second example a place from memory is modeled, the reinterpreted through the analysis of a balloon framed house in 1:10 scale models, resulting in a series of development models for a new design.
Application 4: Fourth Year (BAHons) ECA
This first project began with a one day exercise to record ideas about singe person housing on a standard 300x300mm board. The ideas were then developed through a series of both conceptual and site specific models to create the final architectural proposition, relating to the idea of public city space and introverted park land.
Application 5: Fourth Year (BAHons) ECA
This example demonstrates again the evolution of an idea from quite bold contrasts, to a greater dialogue with site and program.
Conclusion:
These studio examples share certain principles in common:
They are crude, attempting to avoid a too fetishistic object.
the materials are cheap, but analogous in some way to construction.
the models invite further development, leading to a sequence of exploration addressing various architectural ideas.
the model leads the process, embodying thought and responding to changes throughout there making (making/thinking),
they are all metaphors for buildings, and open to further interpretation, rather than presentation of final design ideas.
interchangeable elements become like a three dimensional jig-saw, that can be put together in a variety of ways.
The model process itself contributes to ideas about the material form of the proposal.