Synopsis Draft 2

This 2nd draft of my synopsis was written whilst in Mallorca, the Museum of Modern Art, Palma had a profound impact on my thinking and the direction of my thesis question changed.

RE-Architecture

This year I intend to enhance my own methodology for interacting with existing buildings. My manifesto states that to acheive a sensitive design a dialogue must be created with the existing fabric. Architecture which rejects contextual design serves only to shatter the surrounding urban fabric which will ultimately lead to its own‘destruction’.

For my thesis this year it seems appropriate to expand on this theory and look at re-working existing buildings and architects reactions to interventions.

Through reading I have identified two buildings which embody two different approaches to dealing with interventions. Sverre  Fehn in the Hamar Museum and Carlo Scarpa in the Castelvecchio.

These architects take two different approaches to strata, one is hollistic, one is fragmented, but most importantly the common element used to tranverse the barrier of new and old is a careful and informed choice of materiality.

Sverre Fehn uses a particular pallette of materials throughout his buildings and builds these as a language of materials throughout his career. This knowledge is applied to the Hamar museum as a appropriate and contextual response but Fehn uses a simplistic approach to materials which allow his intervention to exist as a whole. His approach to materials is embodied within the installation stands which are unique to the objects they are displaying, but retain all of the manufacturing marks.

Fehn’s approach is the “Poetics of the straight line”

Although deeply rooted in theory this approach represents a hollistic approach to intervention. This is very different to Carlo Scarpa’s methodology developed through practice.

Scarpa’s intervention in the Castelvecchio is conducted as a fragmented series of small details which eventually create a unified whole. Scarpa’s intricate knowledge of materiality and detailing is developed through 15 years of working and talking to contractors. This enables Scarpa to take an approach to dialouge with the existing building at a very localised and intimate scale.

If Fehn’s approach is the poetics of the straight line, Scarpa’s approach may be the poetics of how the line is drawn.

It is apparent Scarpa, Fehn and others are able to create poetic spaces firstly through a thorough understanding of materiality, approaching materials from their basic fabrication techniques will allow me to better understand the forementioned works.

So what is the most appropriate approach to intervention and how can materiality be used to alter its poetics? How is intervention approached today?

Mallorca Field Trip

Attached are some rough draft portfolio sheets from our Trip to Mallorca. We travelled as a studio group for a week and saw the following buildings; Museum of Modern Art; Miro Foundation; Museuo Molinos. We also conducted a charette in the Windmills.

Synopsis Draft 1

Synopsis

This year I intend to study materiality’s dialogue with creating a unified space.

My argument has been in part informed following a visit to the Castelvecchio in Verona designed by Carlo Scarpa. Scarpa’s interventions within existing buildings are done on a particularly intricate scale, which allows a dialogue between old and new to be created. This is accentuated typically by contrasting new and old, but more interestingly the dialogue of how a material is treated against traditional method of working a material help to achieve a complex series of interventions which appear fragmented but contribute to producing a holistic space.

Scarpa’s clearly modernist attitude to questioning how we work with materials arises from up to 15 years of working with his Stonemasons, Metalworkers & Joiners. Along with a creative background in working with materials it enabled him to establish a relationship with the contractors who were able to allow him to change the way in which the material was worked with and offer opportunities for fresh architectural detailing.

It is Scarpa’s in depth understanding of how materials are worked with which allows him to create intricate spaces.

I believe Scarpa’s ‘hands on’ approach makes his architecture utterly unique and almost impossible to experience through reading, taking the time to describe the small details to the complex resolution of fragmented space would be fruitless and can only be experienced realistically by having a understanding of the processes in which the building elements have been through to finished state.

This confrontation of materials break from traditionalistic methods is an attack on our preconception of building and an attack on our senses.

This I believe is overlooked today in modern architecture and ideally I would like to use my final year in education developing my understanding materiality through gaining access to a Forgery/Timber workshops/Stonemasons and interrogating the traditional forms of fabrications.

It shall also be informative to visit and study architects who are today attacking architecture with the same rigour of intelligent detailing.

This allow me to surpass today’s desensitised architecture.

Summer Reading List

My summer reading list largely influenced my first Synopsis draft, these contained a heavy emphasis on tectonics and poetics.

Castelvecchio Trip

Over the summer I visited the Castelvecchio in Verona and the Fondazione Querini Stampalia  in Venice designed by Carlo Scarpa...

Manifesto

My starting point for this blog is my manifesto which was written in my Diploma 1 and will inform my direction of study for Diploma 2.

Dialogue in Design

The urban fabric is a pattern in time, which has been woven by our actions. Any re-interpretations we make today should be calculated and informed as to not defragment this pattern we are intervening with.

I believe that the design process should be interpretative, any good design should identify and negotiate a dialogue with its surroundings and become nothing more than an impression in time, another layer of history.

Designing into an existing building I believe is the ultimate challenge of sensitivity that many of us fail to appreciate, Sola-Morales Rubio’s method of Analogy shows us that dialogue does not have to simply mean contrast and that highly unique solutions can be developed for each situation. Carlo Scarpa demonstrates this in Castelvecchio (1964), Sverre Fehn demonstrates this in Hamar (1979) and Peter Zumthor demonstrates this in the recently completed Museum of Modern Art in Cologne (2007). These are all exemplar architects with established design philosophies. The structure and ideals of analogy form the basis of the carefully implemented designs above and this ideology should be applied to all levels of design. By considering the imprint we make as designers at the smallest level, we can negotiate a sensitive response to its context.

Deconstructivism demonstrates a sharp contrast with these principles I have laid out before you, these timeless monuments enabled through Eisenman’s methodology. By refusing to establish a dialogue with the context I implore that these buildings do become a fixed point in time, as they refuse to negotiate with the surrounding context or be intervened with. These buildings hold no place in the dynamic of the urban fabric and thus will be reflected by the misinterpretations that will follow.

Dialogue is the real measurement of architecture.