Compositions/ Parti diagram

There has been a recurring theme through all my design work, right from day 1. 

It is the faultline, also my 'parti' diagram.

I am yet to establish whether these are plans or sections. They may be both.

At any rate, useful to identify, especially when looking ahead to the next two sites I'll be designing for and an over-riding methodology.

Lyndon, Donlyn, Moore, Charles W. Chambers for a Memory Palace

This text has been crucial to my thinking as of late... 

(88)
Walls, however, make the most definitive borders, whether to a courtyard, a building, or a city. One of the images that has always been helpful to us in discussing our work is that of walls that make layers of space, with views through openings that overlap layer upon layer into the darkness or out to a view.
Surely walls that layer must be included in this Memory Chamber. The image that stays in my mind is not that of a building, but of the drawing you did once for a show at the University of Maryland concerning “Metaphors of Habitation.” In that drawing you layered openings of various sizes and shapes…
(89)
…in elevation as if they were on successive surfaces. The juxtaposition of shapes and the suggestion that bands of space might lie between them made this single drawing suggest an architecture that would reward exploration.
What made this image so suggestive, when there are few places that are actually made with opening syncopated that way? I think the answer is fairly simple – the drawing brings out in a static image what happens to us all the time as we use and experience places. Whenever we look out a framed window we see larger parts of a larger visual field, traces of another order, arbitrarily cut off by the confines of the opening. Then, as we shift position just a little, the field of vision changes; what we can see is…
(90)
…altered and the juxtaposition of shapes is different. When there is a porch or a set of trees or a succession of rooms through which we can look, the dynamic shifting of views that takes place as we move can become quite pronounced – even, sometimes, thrilling.
What’s more, what we can see though such layers is distinctly affected by how we move and look, by our participation in the place. It places initiative in the hands (or feet) of the observer.
This is a large part of our fascination with orchards, I think…diagonal views across cathedrals, where rows of columns lining the nave and side aisles appear to intersect in syncopated intervals as you move along the aisle, then at the transept crossing lead off in several directions at once.
(91)
But buildings of smaller scope can also be suggestive in this way – provided they have some thickness. The dynamic shiftings and layerings of views and outlook that occur when we move through space simply do not normally show up in elevations, drawings constructed as abstractions. Such drawings purposefully discount the vagaries of perspective vision, dependent as it is on an observer’s specific position in space.
Alas, all too many architects have presumed that the abstractions of the elevation are the real thing, have produced buildings whose walls have no thickness – no overlappings are possible, and there is simply one plane of transition between inside and outside. By eliminating the nuances that make it fun to move from one place to another within a set of spaces, such buildings severely diminish the pleasure of choosing your own positions within the structure.
There’s another type of layered wall that must be noted, even though it may seem entirely different. In these it is time that is layered, not space. Streets in European cities, especially in Italy, are often bounded by such walls, masonry structures that show the traces of successive stages of construction, decay, reconstruction, and alteration.
In the walls of Rome fragments of ancient stone carving suddenly appear in the midst of freshly cast plaster, tapping out a rhythm wholly independent of the building’s present uses. In Italian cities built first in the Medieval period, then rebuilt during the Renaissance, large areas of wall are like superimposed game plans: sweeping relieving arches of masonry are interrupted disrespectfully by elegantly framed Renaissance…
(92)
…openings of later-day windows of convenience. Following the trace of disparate building campaigns through these walls can lead the mind back through layers of time to expand the evocative power of the place. Layers of this sort cannot, of course, be fabricated in an instant.     

A bit of Inspiration from Europe

For the last six weeks I 've been traveling about Germany, Austria, Czech Rep., Croatia and Italy, soaking up the architectural richness about me. Hopefully this means I can now bring what I've absorbed into my project, bring to it a fresh mind and clarity about what it is that I intend to do and execute it with precision and excellence. 


My photos seemed to be in several clear categories; openings/doorways, steps, ground, layering, surfaces or fragments


These are some notes and photos I jotted down during the trip:

07.06.12

Today I visited Daniel Libeskind’s Military Museum in Dresden. It took a while to find the entrance to it, but when I did I was amazed. Yes, part of it is an older building and Libeskind has renovated it, but the contrast between new and old totally transformed the experience of the building.

Voids slashed through all floors of the building and allowed views down to up and up to down. Sloped and slanted walls were unbalancing, but in a good way. It was like walking for the first time. Libeskind’s insertion, visible from the front, is a platform which you can walk out onto on the top floor to see a view of Dresden. This is pretty scary, as it was like being in a cage, you could even see through the floor

Everything was beautifully presented and laid out

-the most unnerving part of the museum is on the 2^nd floor, and appears at first to be just a black shape/volume in the room.  Walking around it, you discover an entrance-way, and a sign saying ‘in here there are human remains, we have tried to treat them with the utmost of respect…’, and inside there are black closers and shutters… you don’t know what one will unveil. One was a human face… I shut this one very quickly!

08.06.12

Dresden’s castle: lower than the rest of the city (as the city is so old, it has been built up over time, by approx. 1m. The fortress provides a reference for the old ground level of the city. It also references to where the fortress has been flooded up to.

Deep deep windows

In, out

Up, down

Around and back through (movement)

10.06.12

Prague’s Jewish memorial. An entire building with walls covered in names, when they were born and when they died, from ceiling to floor. It is too much to absorb.

On the top floor are children’s drawings (of those who lived in the concentration camp). Some are shocking, others bright and happy – surprising.

Jewish graveyard. Up to 11 layers of bodies buried on top of each other because of lack of space within the confines of the Jewish quarter. Absolutely crammed fiull of gravestones. Estimates are up to 100,000 bodies

The entire Jewish quarter is lower than the rest of Prague because of its age. The Nazis decided to preserve it to keep it as an example/reference point of Jewish culture. That is why it still exists

11.06.12

Memorial to those who died fighting against communism

Large, sloping stairs, statues disappearing into distance -> like burning?

13.06.12

Whiteread’s memorial, Vienna: feel like there needed to be more space around it. Are the books too regular?

Cut into the ground to old foundations in central Vienna. Imagine depth, into depths

18.06.12

Fraunekirche, ceiling restored after bombing. There are photos in the foyer, but you can’t really tell otherwise

History of Hitler in city

Golden brick lines a memorial to those who used to use a particular lane to avoid haling hitler at a series of plaques

Plaques now gone, only outline traces remain. Idea that people are intrigued by the subtle memorials and then go to do their own research about them, not able to disrespect them (unlike in Berlin, for example). Do people actually do this, though? No one really seems to see them.

19.06.12

Links to the ground (subway system)

Connection/disconnection (a type of connection too)

Collective, outside, vertical/horizontal cuts through layers. Individual/outside.

20.06.12

Dachau. Things like this need witnesses. They need people to say ‘this cannot happen again’

It is unbelievable how much of Munich is seeped in this history

‘the dead, a reminder and a warning to the living’

Footprints of the bunkers

Herzog and de Mueron’s football stadium: semi-transparent, wonderfully detailed cladding

23.06.12

I like the peepholes in the Nuremburg castle walls. You look back and catch glimpses through something you hadn’t seen before

24.06.12

Typography of terrors. Slight ramps parallel to the wall.

 Footprints of old buildings/ prison highlighted and left visible underground. These buildings became/ were discovered later in the ‘80s, only through excavation: ‘lets dig!’

‘it happened, therefore, it can happen again. This is the core of what we have to say.’ – Primo Levi

www.memorial museums.org <-database

layers, like the cities built up by layers

-there seems to be something very significant about being able to say

-> ‘this was here’

-> this happened at this particular time, date

It puts a certainty on the memories, they are then substantiated, validated, and provoke them

-use of ground, layers, revealing and concealing is evident throughout these memorials

+ Berlin walls looking like my plaster models

Eisenman: deliberately walking to it, but it took me by surprise. It was just suddenly there… and it was so grey.

It wasn’t as disorientating as I thought it would be. It was all in a grid, so you always knew the way out. The undulating ground and staggered blocks did suddenly mean you were deep down, then high up

-it is as though the revealing occurred when going underground. Outside, upwards, the concrete blocks were all the same, you became part of it. Underground, in the museum area, the blocks became identifiable.. reach one represented a photograph, a story, an event, a family, a place.

Ceiling, information volumes, varying heights from ground, but never touching it

Gedenkstatte Berlin Wall. Location of remaining Berlin wall and another memorial set-up, to the victims of the wall

It is good and strange how throughout Berlin there are tiny pieces of the wall are left in certain locations

25.06.12

Daneil Libeskind’s memorial museum. Subterranousely connected – because that is history, it is disconnected?

Not very much material evidence of the Jews in Berlin: just objects, that’s why there are void spaces in the museum on every floor

It was very confusing inside

I think the art work “Fallen leaves” was the most striking. The sound of steel echoing in the tall empty void.

Catching glimpses through windows was also especially effective

Similarities between two Jewish museums: attempt to individualise and personalize history. They also show WWII in context

It is clear that what we do today is a continuation of history

Bebelplatz/ Rachel Whiteread: no explamnation, a bit ambiguous for onlookers? AGAIN: the ground!

Neue Wache: a building badly damaged in the b0ombings, reconstructed, the new in brick. Dedicated to soldiers who lost their lives, within it are the remains of one unknown soldier. Opening to the sky. AGAIN, openings.

02.07.12

San Michelle Island. A lot of people buried here, a lot of them vertically. The complex has developed over time, consisting of open spaces with headstones, gridded, vertical volumes (8 feet high, people buried 6 x 12 on each side of the blocks), and churches. The last addition by Chipperfield: light/water corners.

05.07.12

The Colosseum. Once inside, it is clear how much of it has been reconstructed, though it is still amazing that this ancient structure exists! The grand scale is one thing, I am transfixed by all the layers and opening, the different materials and views through to different walls, to outside. It is exactly my language.

06.07.12

Crypts of popes underneath St Peter’s church

08.07.12

I am amazed by all the vents, grated ones, but depths beneath the ground still visible as we walk along the footpaths

09.07.12

Scarpa castle, Verona. Layers, views, cuts everywhere… but so subtle, so elegantly done to become part of the original building. The new/old is obvious, but neither take away from the other. They compliment, and do not compete despite their different styles and materials