Worth a watch

neoliberalism as water balloon

Some Influences

PPS Projects for Public Spaces

Lots of current projects, articles and information on urban design and practice. How to build sustainable communities through the implementation of basic principles with some particular references to theories of Christopher Alexander, information relating to this architect can be found on these pages.

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A pattern language: towns, buildings, construction

- Christopher Alexander,

Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein.

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The fourteen pattern elements (for garden design) are:

• Scale, which relates the garden to the environment;
• Garden rooms, which divide and connect the garden;
• Pathways, which define what we see in the garden;
• Bridges, which differentiate garden spaces and create compelling focal points;
• Gates, which are the portal to the garden;
• Shelters, which anchor the garden in space;
• Borders, which separate and make distinct garden sections;
• Patios, which tie the house to the landscape;
• Sheds, which add texture;
• Focal points, which create destinations in the garden;
• Water, which fully engages the senses;
• Ornamentation, which creates mood;
• Containers, which allow artistic flexibility; and,
• Materials, which add bulk, solidity, and softness to the garden.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_Garden previous link page here accessed on 30/05/10

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The Eyes of the Skin - Juhuani Pallasamaa

"The Taste of Stone"

"In his writings, Adrian Stokes was particularly sensitive to the realms of the tactile oral sensations: ‘In employing smooth and rough as generic terms of architectural dichotomy I am better able to preserve both the oral and the tactile notions that underlie the visual. There is a hunger of the eyes, and doubtless there has been some permeation of the visual sense, as of touch, by the once all - embracing oral impulse.’ Stokes writes about the oral invitation of the Veronese marble’, and he quotes a letter of John Ruskin: ‘I should like to eat up the Verona touch by touch.’

There is a subtle transference between tactile and taste experiences. Vision becomes transferred to taste as well; certain colours and detail evoke oral sensations. A delicately coloured polished stone surface is subliminally sensed by the tongue. Our sensory experience of the world originates in the interior of the mouth, and the world tends to return to it’s oral origins. The most archaic origin of architectural space is in the cavity of the mouth."

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The Pattern of Language and the nature of order of places. – Nili Portugali

Elements of design that provide a feeling of spirituality experienced from the buildings – Phenomenology is closely related to the teachings of Buddhism, everything is about relational design, things must work in harmony respective of universal codes.

Ego removed can create harmony in design, when political aims are channelled through architecture then the what results is an aggressive threatening type of architecture that creates emotional disharmony within the mind of the onlooker.

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Kenneth Frampton Studies in Tectonic Culture

Etymology

"Greek in Origin, the term tectonic derives from the word tekton, signifying carpenter or builder. The corresponding verb is tektainomai. This is turn is related to the Sanskrit taksan, referring to the craft of carpentry and the use of the axe. Remnants of a similar term can be found in Vedic poetry, where it again refers to carpentry. In Greek it appears in Homer, where it alludes to the art of construction in general. The poetic connotation of the term first appears in Sappho, where the tecton, the carpenter, assumes the role of the poet... Needless to say the role of the tecton leads eventually to the emergence of the master builder or architekton."

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Bernard Tschumi – Questions of Space pg 34

1.0 Is space a material thing in which all material things are to be located?

2.2 If space consciousness is based on one's respective experience, then does the perception of space involve a gradual construction rather than a ready made schema?

2.81 Are objective social space and subjective inner space then inextricably bound together?

"Fragment 1 – A double pleasure"

"Typical statements on architecture often read like the one in the first edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica of 1773: ‘architecture being governed by proportion, requires to be guided by rule and compass.’ That is Architecture is a ‘thing of the mind’, a geometrical rather than a pictorial or experimental art; so the problem of architecture becomes a problem of ordinance – Doric or Corinthian order axes or hierarchies, grids or regulating lines, types or models, walls or slabs – and of course the grammar of syntax of the architectural sign become pretext for sophisticated and pleasurable manipulation. Taken to its extreme, such manipulation leans towards a poetics of frozen signs, detached from reality, into a subtle and frozen pleasure of the mind.

Neither the pleasure of space or the pleasure of geometry is (on it’s own) a pleasure of architecture."

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The timeless way of building

- Christopher Alexander pg 143

"Finally, in this last chapter of part I, we shall see what happens geometrically, when a building or a town is made entirely of patterns which are living, we can always recognise its life-not only in the obvious happiness which happens there, not only in it’s freedom and relaxedness-but in its purely physical appearance too. It always has a certain geometric character.

What happens in a world-a building or a town-in which the patterns have a quality without a name, and are alive?

The most important thing that happens is that every part of it, at every level, becomes unique. The patterns which control a portion of the world, are themselves fairly simple. But when they interact, they create slightly different overall configurations at every place. This happens because no two places on earth are perfectly alike in their conditions which the other patterns face.

This is the character of nature.

“The character of nature” is no mere poetic metaphor. It is a specific morphological character, a geometric character, which happens to be common to all those things in the world which are not man-made.

To make this character of nature clear, let me contrast it with the character of buildings being built today. One of the most pervasive features of these buildings is the fact that they are “modular.” They are full of identical concrete blocks, identical rooms, in identical apartment buildings. The idea that a building can-and ought-to be made of modular units is one of the most pervasive assumptions of twentieth century architecture.

Nature is never modular. Nature is full of almost similar units (waves, raindrops, blades of grass)-but though the units of one kind are all alike in their broad structure, no two are ever alike in detail.

1. The same broad features keep recurring over and over again.
2. In their detailed appearance these broad features are never twice the same.

On the other hand all oak trees have the same overall shape, the same thickened twisted trunk, the same crinkled bark, the same shaped leaves, the same proportion of limbs to branches to twigs. On the other hand, no two trees are quite the same. The exact combination of height and width and curvature never repeats itself; we cannot even find two leaves which are the same.

The ocean waves all have this character."

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Christian Norberg-Shulz - Genus Loci iii Place pg116

Alienation in our opinion is first of all due to man’s loss of identification with the natural and man-made things which constitute his environment. This loss also hinders the process of gathering, and is therefore at the root of our actual “loss of place”. Things have become mere objects of consumption which are thrown away after use, and nature in general is treated as a “resource”. Only if man regains his ability of identification and gathering, we may stop this destructive development. The first step to take is to arrive at a full understanding of the objects of identification and gathering, that is an understanding of the concept of thing. Thereby we shall also be able to define the nature of man-made meanings and their relation to natural meanings. Again we have to ask Heidegger for help in his essay The Thing, he uses a jug as an example, and asks for the “jugness” of the jug. “The jug’s jug-character consists of the poured gift of the pouring out… The giving of the outpouring can be a drink. The spring stays on in the water of the gift. In the spring the rock dwells, and in the rock dwells the dark slumbers of the earth, which receives the rain and the dew of the sky. In the water of the spring dwells the marriage of the water and the earth… In the gift of water, in the gift of wine, sky and earth dwell…” “The jug’s essential nature, its presencing… is what we call a thing.” Heidegger takes the function of the jug, the pouring as, his point of departure. He defines the pouring as a gift and asks what is here “given”. Water and wine are given and with them the earth and the sky. The jug is understood as an artifact which serves a purpose. Its function, however, forms a part of life which takes place between earth and sky. The jug participates in this taking place; yes, it is part of the place in which life is concretised. The function of real things is therefore to concretise or “reveal” life in it’s various aspects. If a thing does not do that, it is not a thing but a mere commodity. We dwell poetically when we are able to “read” the revealing things which make up our environment. Things are made with the purpose of revealing; they gather world. And may themselves be gathered to form a microcosmos…

Man is part of a living world and does not perceive meanings in a vacuum. Meaning necessarily form part of a totality, which comprises natural components. Everything created by man is in the world, it is between earth and sky, and has to make this state of affairs manifest. In doing this the created thing gets routes in locality or at least in nature in general.

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An essay by Matthew Watts Gaston Bachelard and the poetic imagination

Tatiana Bilboa

Playing around on the internet, looking for inspiration I found a great lecture by Tatiana Bilboa, who runs an acclaimed mexican architectural practice, set up in 2004 and employs a total 32 architects. She also opened a research studio called MXDF along with architects Derek Dellekamp, Arturo Ortiz and Michel Rojkind an interdisciplinary think tank to work collaboratively with her practice.

In the lecture she outlines several of their works, focussing on two projects; Sinaloa and Pilgrimage Route in Jalisco and the Botanical Garden in Culiacan and also introduces her ideas relating to 'responsive urbanism'.

She compares London and Mexico City, saying that they geographically similar in size and height. Then goes on to describe the way in Mexico City grew. From above the city looks as though is built on in grid form and is well organized not dissimilar to New York.

But in fact the majority of the city is a slum, the land which the slums were built on was mostly agricultural land and the lines that can be seen in the picture above are the remnants of plot lines facilitating crop growing. This land was illegally purchased by the public from farmers and used to build on, therefore their are no government regulations and most of the homes have been build by the homeowners. This means that no planning has taken place and in places the city lacks typical amenities, for example sewerage systems, electricity supplies and so-on.

This factor she recognises as one of her primary concerns when considering the problems of Mexico City, taking also into account other issues relating to crime and drugs, all of which add to the complexity involved in master planning. The government are providing new homes that she deems insufficient for the peoples needs.

One of her aims is to change the way space is used in the city by providing safer and more welcoming locations, removing the danger element and in turn improving the quality of life for the public, she describes this approach as 'Acupuncture Architecture,' an example of this type of intervention, would be a community centre and park created in Ciudad Juarez, one of Mexico's most dangerous cities.

Moving from these projects onto the Pilgrimage Route in Jalisco - 'La Ruta del Peregrino' . This route is travelled by over two million people during the holy week in mid april and covers a distance of 117 km. The route begins in a town called Ameca and travels over the mountain range of Jalisco and onto the final destination, the village of Talpa de Allende to see the Rosario Virgin. This pilgrimage is traditional and very renowned for the catholics of Mexico some of whom travel it every year, even so their are no facilities for the pilgrims, shelters, toilets, eating places, only the handmade signs and insubstantial temporary shelters give reference to the route.

An international team of Architects including Titian Bilboa were asked to design a series of lookout points and services along the route all of which were to be in keeping with the religious nature of the pilgrimage. Below is the first intervention, symbolic of a cross, the extents of the cross are marked with four walls, placed so that the shadows created by the midday sun provide a cool place to rest and view the mountains from.

Look Out Point by Elemental Architects in Chile. The architects aim was create a tension between the natural beauty of the mountains and the manmade structure of the lookout, playing on the idea of balance.

Look out point, by the Swiss HHF architects based in Brazil

Sanctuary - Aiweiwei, Fake Design

Concept - Aiweiwei

All of the aspects contained within the project for Tiatania Bilboa can be brought back to four main points, which she uses as a guide for her work and 'La Ruta del Peregrino' now contains an infrastructure benefitting the pilgrims and celebrating their journey.

Botanical Garden in Culiacan

The second project she talks about is the Botanical Garden in Culiacan. These gardens are again of historical importance in Mexico, they are freely used by the Mexicans as a cultural and recreational facility not viewed upon as being only for the elite.

Her client for the Botanical gardens was an art collector, who suggested donating 35 art peices to be displayed in the gardens. A later decision was made to commission 35 new art works that would be site specific and therefore work much more successfully in their surroundings.

The Master Plan could then start to take shape, and still working with the current scheme of the gardens a new design was made that would be able to harmoniously complement the needs of the people and layout required for the artworks. The idea for Tiatania Bilboa was to work as spontaneously possible and not to close the gardens whist the work took place.

Using the imprint of veins on a leaf they came to a decision about how the layout of the gardens should look, this image was then overlaid onto the existing map of the gardens and altered according, using the phrase 'Architecture Tectonics' to describe the undualting landscape and also the style of the buildings within the park.

Images below are from the artist work as mentioned earlier all of the works are site specific and somehow are referent to Mexico, displaying the works of Julian Opie, Ricard Long, Dan Graham, James Turrell and others.

The garden took over 5 years to construct and is now a place of national importance for Mexico. The idea of bringing art and education into a public arena that becomes accessible for the whole population whilst also providing entertainment within a safe environment is complicatied and varied problem which has been successfully executed in this instance. As well as this the homogeny that was achieved through calibration with different disciplines enabled for a more complete and polished outcome.

Weather Permitting

Just found this amazing entry for the summer instillation competition 2010 held by MoMA and the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centre on Arch Daily website, this competition is a platform for young architects.

Weathers Permitting by William O’Brien Jr looks like an architectural hybrid of nature and technology, using manipulated timber to create a dramatic terrain, reflecting nature in it's ability to change and evolve according to the weather.

The site location of the piece (in the rendering) gives a great understanding of how it could look in a built up environment. Clearly their is nothing natural about it given that it is a 'made' object, but with the material used and the close relationship which it has to the elements, Weather Permitting can be identified as a quasi natural object, compared to it's rather stark surroundings of concrete buildings and walls. The polarities of the materials of concrete and wood provides a strong visual identity for the piece also. All these elements make for a piece which could be neither described as architecture or art, but maybe both.

Weather permitting was designed as an 'elevated boardwalk with unconventional properties including malleability and water retention.' (Arch Daily) as well as taking inspiration from coastal topography.

Also on the post there is a free download this great little slideshow book thing, which describes the making and design of the object.

P.S.1 Field Guide / © William O'brien Jr

Below is an image of the installation from above.

Solar Panels

This is a great concept and should be used by builders and architects routinely. Solar panels are so ugly.

http://www.srsenergy.com/Home.aspx

Musical Art

This is called, 'The Singing Ringing Tree', a public Art work commissioned by Burnley CC, overlooking the Pennines in Lancashire.

I think that this is a beautiful example of a land sculpture,making the environment integral to the work - in this instance the wind. Designed by architects Mike Tonkin and Anna Liu of Tonkin Liu.

There is another one which I came across, where the wind is used to create sound and this is equally as beautiful.

This one is called 'The Sea organ of Zadar, created by award winning architect Nikola Basic in 2005.

Solarium, Landform

These images are really interesting to me because they are much more innovative than some designs for public spaces. The using of the gradient in the hill - or building of earth to create a gradient. Both of the pieces below seem to be making a feature of the angles.

a+t Espacios Colectivos in common III, Solarium La Chappelle St-Luc, 2006 pg 26

In the 'Solarium' group, the bench, is created with strange angles in it and more obviously the scale, promoting different types of usage - for instance sunbathing, meeting with larger groups of people. Again this is much more unusual then the norm, and very aesthetically pleasing in my opinion.

http://www.civic.org.uk/burnley1.html

In PASW image the designer seems to have created a hill from flat land through adding earth, which I think is an interesting use of the space, creating a small amphitheatre with steps into the earth.