Week 11

Skin Analysis

Taking a closer look at how some building envelopes perform as a skin, in this case as a protection from the sun, with high tech, low tech, and vernacular strategies.  The first is in the very hot, dry climate of Abu Dhabi where the intense sun is a dominant architectural concern.

The two buildings are extreme opposites of each other - the vernacular home where the screen has many functions and the occupant is very connected to the screen and how it affects the space, and the high rise, high tech tower where the screen performs one automatic function and is disconnected from the occupant.  There are other examples of buildings with high tech sun screens while still being connected with the users and the users being able to have some control of the screen.

The next is an example of skin and frame of a vernacular home in a hot, wet climate (Malaysia) and a low tech home in a cold/four season climate (Wisconsin).  This comparison illustrates how the strategies for dealing with sun, rain, and ventilation compare and contrast between the two climates.

I will also need to get vernacular examples from four season climates similar to the Treasure Valley/Idaho climate as well as more precedents of building envelope performing other skin functions.

I am also looking for examples/precedents of what I am envisioning wearing a building may look/function like.  This is one example that I like except that the shading louvers are automatic without the option of the occupant being able to control them.

More on program and site  
 A community school is a public school with a partnership with other community resources to bring together funding and support services and opportunities personalized to the needs of the students, the families, and the community.  The difference between a conventional school and a community school can be compared to the difference between a single function rotary telephone and a multi functional smart phone. (Coalition for Community Schools, http://www.communityschools.org)

An example of a community school in New York City. (retrieved from http://www.edelmansultan.com/projects)

Three possible community school sites that would service low income areas (a target for this school model) and include the adaptive reuse of older existing school buildings.

I will need to collect additional information about these school sites and communities as well as continue to look at other possible sites across the Treasure Valley. It was also suggested that I start looking at program and space requirements for the community school model and for the actual projected student needs for each school/neighborhood area.

Annotated Bibliography

Bressani, Martin. "Prosthetic Fantasies In The First Machine Age: Viollet-Le-Duc's Iron Architecture." AA Files 68 (2014): 43-49. Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals. Web. 11 Sept. 2015. 

The machine age of the 19^th century inspired the development of prosthetics such as ‘furniture of the engineer’ – mechanical chairs and beds adapted to the body and acted to assist a deficient body – and mechanically operated artificial limbs. Viollet-le-Duc, devastated by France’s loss in the Franco-Prussian War, looked to Medieval knights – ‘these men covered in iron’, as the model for the ‘hardened’, technologically assisted soldiers of the future. He illustrated metallic military clothing with parts adapted to human anatomy.  Le-Duc, following the Vitruvian body analogy, contended that the human body – the most complete of all organized beings - should be used as the model for building. He compared the human body to a cathedral and, in his speculative iron projects, he removed (amputated) the cathedrals large buttresses and replaced them with thin cast iron to support the masonry – a prosthetic strategy.

Crewe, Louise. "Wear:Where? The Convergent Geographies Of Architecture And Fashion." Environment & Planning A 42.9 (2010): 2093-2108. Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals. Web. 12 Oct. 2015.

There are obvious differences between fashion and architecture.  Fashion tends to move and change fast, is temporary and ephemeral, uses soft material, and is at the body scale.  Architecture is seen as slow, permanent, and solid, uses rigid materials, and is large in scale.  It can be more beneficial to look at the commonalities of the disciplines to discover at how their paths can cross, converge, and can inform one another.  Both deal with structure and form, use a process of design and construction,  and share an interest in design, display, color, materiality and space and both have the capacity to connect the body to the built form in thoughtful and intimate ways.  Together, fashion and architecture can help us understand how we inhabit and comprehend the built form.  They both focus on the body and its wrapping/envelope, mediate between the body, the environment, and other bodies, protect us, and engage in the creation and representation of the urban environment.  Simply, both are clothing and shelter – protection from the elements and society. 

 

Architecture and fashion are together questioning issues of temporality, space, form, fit, interactivity, and mobility.  Built form and interior retail space provide the frame work for the display and mobility of fashion, together creating spectacle.  Building and clothing can also be a sensory experience, particularly with color and texture.  There is a long history of fashion taking inspiration from architecture.  More recently architecture has begun referencing fashion design and the softer, sensory, emotional, and tactile characteristics associated with dress and can be informed by fashion designs and practices.  Issey Miyake’s designs focus on the empty space between the skin and fabric and on standardized manufacturing, mass production and construction.  Rei Kawakuba produces asymmetric, architectural and sculptural fashion objects as interventions in space and creates the individual garment, the collection’s conceptual theme, and the display space as a single expression.  Helmut Lang explores spatial connections across scales through the porous boundaries inside and outside the body and feelings /emotions embedded on the surface of clothing. Hussein Chalayan also explores the boundaries between bodies and buildings, seeing clothing as occupying an intimate zone around the body and architecture as a larger zone.  Everything relates to the body or the environment – clothing, architecture, and urban fabric are a part of each other in different scales and proportions.

 

  

 Frampton, Kenneth., Cava, John, and Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. Studies in Tectonic Culture : The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1995. Print.

 

Space.  The recognition of architectural space has evolved over time from Violet-le-Duc’s focus on structure without any reference to the modern sense of space to the primacy given to architectural space by August Schmarsow twenty years later and his identity of space as the driving principle behind architectural form.  Frampton’s study looks to reveal the ‘expressive potential’ of the construction and structural techniques used to create space.  A building is ‘tectonic and tactile’ and ‘scenographic and visual.’

Tectonic.  The term tectonic has also evolved from its Greek origin, meaning carpenter or builder – an artisan working in all hard materials but not clay or metal, to a general meaning of making, and then to a role of master builder or architekton.  Tectonic has also been understood to mean a complete system binding all parts together and eventually as an aesthetic in the art of joining.  Gottfreid Semper identified four basic elements of the primitive hut, the earthwork, the hearth, the framework/roof, and the lightweight enclosure.  From these he classified the building crafts into the tectonics of the frame – lightweight, linear elements assembled to enclose a space, and the stereotomics of the earthwork – heavyweight elements repeatedly piled up to form mass and volume for load bearing.

Body Experience/senses.  Dimitris Pikionis’ Philopapou hillside park is a ‘tapestry’ of course pavers in the ground and the body experiences (feels and hears) the earthwork as it crosses the uneven surface and changing ground conditions.  Luis Barragan’s San Cristobal horse farm is united as a whole by the reflecting pool and the sound of its water fountain.  Form impacts our being as we move through architectonic space and we engage form and articulate space as we feel/touch/move our way through. Alvar Alto’s Saynatsaio Town Hall provides a progression of contrasting body senses as one moves through the entry – stereotomic mass, darkness, enclosure, brick treads, to the council chamber – tectonic wood trusses, light, smell of polish, flex of floor, highly polished surface.

Design that considers only the needs and constraints of the body through behavior and ergonomic analysis fails to include the participation of the body and its experience in architecture.

Hanekom, Leigh. "The Body Tectonic: Anthropomorphism." Architecture South Africa: Journal Of The South African Institute Of Architects (2008): 70-73. Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals. Web. 21 Sept. 2015.

We tend to see our own body likeness in inanimate objects and transfer the object into a composition of body parts (anthropomorphism).  The ability to create this analogy of an association or empathetic relationship with an inanimate object (i.e. building) relies on abstraction (isolate our bodies as separate being from the world) and metaphoric activity (project bodily gesture onto an object).  Buildings as analogues of the human body can be used as a design strategy where the designed object can aid in understanding ourselves, our place in the world, and the nature of objects.

In Vitruvian theory (based on classical theory) the body represents ideal proportion and composition and the body’s physical attributes are used only as a pictorial representation in architecture.  Modernism (functional theory) architecture is technology dependent with no reference to the body.  Post-modernism (classical and functional theory combined) returned to the body metaphor of composition and proportion but also looks at what it is to be human.  Body form is not literal but gestural, projecting human values and feelings onto the building.

The Nationale-Nederlanden Building in Prague (Frank Gehry) is a static form with the dynamic gesture of two human bodies in motion (dancing).  Gehry relies on our ability to form an analogy in our mind by drawing on something familiar – bodies dancing together – and projecting that onto an inanimate object – the building – thereby animating it and evoking an emotional response.

Ostwald, Michael J., and Raeana Henderson. “The Modern Interior and the Excitation Response: Richard Neutra’s Ocular-centric Phenomenology.” (2012). Scientific and Academic Publishing. Web. 3 Nov. 2015.

Richard Neutra ‘described his architecture as serving to choreograph the sensory and emotional responses of the human body’ and claimed ‘the most important purpose of design was to control the senses to clarify the body’s position in space.’  Neutra based his theory on the theories of psychologist Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt.  In Neutra’s theory, the eye is central and can activate involuntary, predictable responses in the body (excitation response – reflex).  Wundt proposed that the eye’s reflex muscles are connected with the contraction of the muscles for head movement.  Neutra interpreted this as sight being a precursor of movement – ‘if the eye is involuntarily drawn to see something, this will trigger the head to turn towards that visual stimuli, which will in turn change the direction the entire body is moving.’  Neutra used the interiors of his domestic work as laboratories to apply his theory of the eye as surrogate body. Two examples of this application of his vision and movement theory are illustrated in diagrams of the Kaufman Desert House.

Reinhardt, Dagmar. "Elastic Space: Latent Formations In Fashion And Architecture." Architectural Theory Review: Journal Of The Department Of Architecture, The University Of Sydney 12.2 (2007): 181-194. Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals. Web. 13 Oct. 2015.
           

The form of architectural space is usually fixed unless provision is made in the design process and the built form to provide space that is adaptable, flexible, or responsive to change or unexpected and unforeseen uses beyond the original or intended uses.  Spatial change can be enabled by degrees from static space, through compressed and flexible space, to elastic space.  A static condition is designed for a limited use that cannot be altered (ball gown, standard house).  A compressed condition consists of a programmed core, an area of ambiguity and a boundary (‘little black dress’, open plan modernist architecture – Farnsworth House).  Flexible space has no ambiguity but two or more predetermined switch conditions (kimono, traditional Japanese house).  Elastic space is made in unexpected ways in non-linear dynamic processes which are highly responsive to the impact of the occupant.  It is experimental and exploratory (Sartorial fashion, Wall-less house by Shigeru Ban).  

Reinhardt, Dagmar. Prosthetic Surface - Design models for a Dynamic Architecture. Web. 11 Sept 2015.

Architecture is a prosthetic device and, like other expressions of culture such as language, fashion, or art, is subject to continuous transformation.  Successful prosthetics respond to change conditions and, in functioning as ‘technologies of the body,’ range from ‘restorative (replacing lost functions), over normalizing (imposing new social or aesthetic norms) to reconfiguring (changing the contextual relations) and enhancing (increasing functions or properties) aspects.’ 

Fashion and architecture designers share some of the same methods, techniques, and effects.  Both start with an idea, work out the practical construction, and translate the idea from flat materials into a 3-dimensional form.  They also share structure and material concepts that can be used to produce surfaces that are able to change.  Examples of some sartorial fashion projects demonstrate dynamic surface formations that are ‘unfinished’, requiring the final form to be determined by the wearer.  The different prosthetic surface concepts can be applied to the architectural design process.

 ‘A-Poc’ (Issey Miyake):  “a thread goes into a machine that, in turn, generates complete clothing…”  This coded elastic mesh fabric has lines of demarcation (structural seams) and frames the blueprints for potential forms and number of clothing items from which one is selected by the customer and cut free.  The garment is ‘ready-made, ready to be remade’, and shapeless until worn, being shaped/changed by use and body contour.  This model can suggest design options such as perpetual connections, size and scaling operations, differentiation of programmatic zones, and stable fields between nodal points.

‘Remote Control Dress’ (Husseyin Chalayan):  composite materials cast in a preformed, specially designed mold.  Remotely controlled hinges, gears and wheels change the formation of the pieces and reveal secondary textural layers or body zones.  It is a composite system with skin connected mechanically and via data streams creating a surface with performative capability.  The design model is adaptable, flexible, modular and mobile with limited, predictable change conditions.  The shell is a set tectonic frame but it operates in a territory of virtual information and alternate realities.  The data streams transferred from the mechanics to the surface offers other prosthetic surface possibilities/territories – a screen, a door to an alternate reality.

‘Dress Becomes Body’ (Rei Kawakubo):  inserted ‘lumps’ create a deformation of the overall body shape and experience – ‘on her dress she wears a body.’  One form uses elastic fabric that reverts to its original position when the insertion is removed – alterations of form, size, location, and duration are reversed.  Another form retains the frame of the deformation when the insertion is removed – allowing alternative space and program uses without altering the exterior shape.  Architectural design options may include unoccupied zones for later insertions/uses or surface formations with movable layers that divide sections along control lines.

Wigley, Mark. "Prosthetic Theory: The Disciplining Of Architecture." Assemblage 15 (1991): 6-29. Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals. Web. 11 Sept. 2015.

A discussion of modern architecture as a prosthesis.  Buildings are technological extensions of the body, ‘human-limb objects’ worn like clothing to supplement natural abilities.  The relationship between structure and ornament was classically seen as between a body and its clothing.  Modern architecture changed the relationship to between body and building with ornament removed and the building becomes the ornament worn by the occupant.  A prosthesis is introduced because a body is, in Freud’s terms, “deficient” or “defective,” or “insufficient” according to Le Corbusier and is not just to extend the body but to be a “supporting limb”.  A prosthesis is always architectural – the supplement of a structure that repairs a flaw and cannot just be removed. A prosthesis is always structural.

Velikov, Kathy and Geoffrey Thun. “Responsive Building Envelopes.” Web. 3 Nov. 2015.

The building envelope has become the primary focus for research and development of innovation in high-performance buildings.  Building envelopes are becoming complex systems of material assemblies which not only protect the interior from the exterior but also need to respond to many forces such as climate, energy, information, and occupants.  The skin can assist and even replace some of the traditional building system functions and can provide effective energy savings and alternate energy.  The move from the physical design of building envelope to an expanded process of how it behaves has resulted in increased collaboration between the architect and mechanical and electrical engineers, computing, and physical and social sciences.  This has also led to the need to better define the terms ‘smart,’ ‘intelligent,’ ‘interactive,’ ‘adaptive,’ and ‘responsive’ envelope.  

Smart:  Usually refers to materials and surfaces with embedded technological functions and a specific environmental response.  The characteristics of smart materials include the ability to respond promptly and to more than one environmental condition, internal intelligence to respond predictably to isolated activating events.  Smart materials can change their physical properties and/or shape or function without external energy sources.  They are usually limited to a specific range of climate conditions and predictable responses.

Intelligent:  A higher order of organization or performance than smart, the design of intelligent buildings seeks to optimize the building control system by balancing climate, energy use, and occupant comfort.  Elements such as louvers, sunshades, operable vents, and smart material assemblies are controlled by sensors and automation or respond to occupant request.

Interactive:  Requires human input to initiate response.  The interactive envelope learns over time and anticipates occupant preferences.

Responsive:  Describes “how natural and artificial systems can interact and adapt.” Rather than the designer deciding the envelope responses to user inputs, the system learns from occupant reactions to output and modifies its responses.  Other characteristics of responsive building skins include real-time response, movable climate control elements, smart materials, and allows occupants to manually control building elements.  Both the building and the occupants are educated for energy optimization and reduction of resources.