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.
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.
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