KYE LEE READS ARCH BOOKS

Kye Lee is a confused student of Architecture who really likes to read about stuff, but sometimes gets it all wrong. Currently going through the MArch curriculum and doing her homework. Early. I know, surprising. HKU BA(AS) '14 / MArch '17

[kyeleereads]

WK 3: PLASTICS

Week four will build upon the plastic situation and crisis encountered in week weeks two and three. Plastic will be looked at from the perspective of a hyperobject and various positions for design will be studied.

Plastics as a hyper object is already a redundant statement in our time and age. We know it transcends boundaries and time and space - it is everywhere (understatement of the year). The film ‘Plastic Ocean’ really shook all of us to the core - finding plastics even in our blood stream. 

There are two excerpts from Enduring Innocence by Keller Easterling. This book talks about 6 examples around the world of “spatial products” located in contexts of hybrid spaces that exist outside normal constituencies and jurisdictions.  Easterling indicates that these “real estate cocktails” provides a vivid evidence of the market’s’s weakness, resilience or violence

“But as Easterling shows, in reality these enclaves can become political pawns and objects of contention.” 

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/enduring-innocence

El Ejido - (Tomato Plastic Life?)

Because of one simple phenomenon - the climate in the southern province of Andalusia is perfect for farming. The sunshine and humidity is perfect for growing one of the most used ingredients for cooking - tomatoes. 

Due to this simple phenomenon - everything escalates into a larger narrative. Since the 1970s, the use of plastics has been used in recreating a natural climate - the greenhouse cultivation. From then on, agriculture found the domestication and modification of cultivating practices - creating your own ‘nature’. Here, Easterling expands how it can completely change Spain’s economy, migrational relationships, ethnic disputes, ethical labour laws, aquifer contentions etc. 

A cyclical number of events eventually affect the region. Impacts of one large scale practice is never singular - its creates a new plurality and new vocabulary of events. This is imperative to understand - how plastics is involved in the world is not simply input and output. 

To understand the above case study in several case studies, we also read the introductory chapters. I found her writing difficult to digest - it included many lists of what these spatial products are and how they function. Speaking about such phenomenons on a macro scale was also hard to contextualise. But here are some key terms I enjoy:

Urban Contagions

Real estate cocktails 

Orgman

Theater of activity

Imagined worlds

I also agree with her theories of how architecture is designed by spatial production - through organisational logistics and networking protocols. Architecture as a methodology of storing data processes - it encloses these processes through the formal relationships. 

“The information it stores, as both data and persuasion, is literally a product, property, or currency” - I find this conclusion very much related to our discussions of how information of for example temperature creates this space for a certain demand to grow - tomatoes or apples or freshwater. Architecture thus follows to harness this demand to create supply. 

Easterling also introduces imagined worlds - a term coined by Appdurai. He introduces scapes to categorise the phenomenon of this spread of information.

Ethnoscapes is the movement of people with the advent of readily available and more affordable transportation .

Mediascape is the movement of media around the world and how it allows distant cultures to view each other. Often, it creates an image of a distant culture that is skewed or narrow sighted.

Technoscapes is the flow of technology, mechanical goods, software goods, etc. in a boundaryless environment thanks to international corporations.

Financescapes is the movement of money. Now with its much larger scale of the World, money is even harder to follow than ever.

Ideoscapes is the movement of political ideas from one area to another.

From the World Cultural Foundations

From this line of investigation, we can understand that the world is a plural condition - processes are affected simultaneous. This macro scale of viewing spatial products must be understood. The multiple logic explored here can imply our understanding of nature - of course, we can view it as pristine, we can view it as man made - but there is a gray area in between, or a story behind each cultivation of ‘nature’. Relating back to the nature of plastic (haha), it transcends forms and identity. Plastic is within our windows (referring to the Wigley’s testimony to Buckminster Fuller), it exists in our world in many forms. This multiplicity must be understood that it is caused by various flows of information, and thus architecture emerges from these processes of complex cooperative engagements. 

Moving onto the Plastic Line by Mark Wrigley - I understood plastic to be not only tried and tested by the great Buckminster Fuller as a material for building, but it is integrated into many other materials we use today. Laminated glass includes to some degree plastics within the materials. As it can be melted and casted - plastic creates this level of fluidity other materials are less likely to adopt. It can also have many different properties - seemingly requiring new material engineering to truly identify all applicable methods of using plastics. I really only know it comes from oil (high school rudimentary level understanding of organic chemistry). Plastic can also be seen as architectural through the many uses - how it contains and how it too mediates between various conditions - electricity and our skin, water and our lips, our phone and the floor. 

Buckminster Fuller’s to create hemisphere is also a mediation between the natural world condition and our activities. Much like how we create conditions for plants - we can create one for all of us. 

Buckminster Fuller’s plan for NYC

The readings this week makes me consider the complexity of materials, our world and how we always aim to reorganise our condition. Balance is the key to ‘success’- a return to the initial condition. Must we deal with our problems as a step by step process? 

As an architecture student - I never believed that urban design would work - there are just too many factors. But these theories introduce creates a new perspective, or organisational outlook on how to maybe consider tackling these world issues. 

Plastic is going to persist - we can never remove it from our system. It is the creation of a cycle (ok, several cycles) which is needed. It is stuck to our made up world, anyway. 

[kyeleereads]

WK 3: WATER (OCEANIC)

Week three will focus on Oceanic research, environmental conditions, and recent efforts by cities to address sea level rise. Resilient by Design efforts will be studied and considered in the context of Hong Kong and Asian Cities. The film “Plastic Oceans” will be required.

The study of the ocean is vast, let alone the process of potentially controlling parts of the ebbs and flows of such large bodies of water. To try and design even a city-wide initiative will take incredible amounts of time, money and efforts - but what I find so intimidating is the unexpected, the 1 in 500 year weather events, just one event may overturn all efforts. 

Water seems to be a friend to most situations - we want to be close and live close to such a life sustaining resource. We must understand water is “everywhere before it is somewhere” (Design in terrain of water, preface). It blurs boundaries, crosses elements of cleanliness and changes form. To contain water, to use water is a skill or to even let water be is a large scale effort.

This week we observe recent efforts by cities and the conditions of our oceans at this moment. How and what we are trying to observe, prevent and solve is frighteningly complex.

I would like indicate a few keywords that I find relevant

·        Gyre - A gyre is a large-scale system of wind-driven surface currents in the ocean. The gyres referred to in the name of our organization are the five main subtropical gyres—located in the North and South Pacific, the North and South Atlantic, and the Indian Ocean—which are massive, circular current systems. (5gryes.org)

·        Thickening 

·        Soft / Hard Infrastructure 

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Marine debris have been collecting since we started dumping rubbish into the ocean, in particular, plastics. Due to the currents in the sea, they gather vortexes, bounded by the North Pacific subtropical Gyre. As plastics are light, debris sits near the surface of the ocean. This is where plankton and algae are situated, which leads to complications in the marine food web as tiny organisms are threatened. Whales, birds and other marine animals which rely on surface-level organisms as sustenance are therefore affected. 

There are several important processes to acknowledge - 

Ghost Fishing - Plastic fishing nets are constantly discarded into the ocean. Animals are stuck in complicated webbing. 

Consumption of Plastic particles - Plastic is not biodegradable. Many animals mistaken small broken off pieces of plastic as a source of food and thus toxic chemicals may leachate into their biological systems, or even just stuck in their digestive systems.

Cargo Ships - Once cargo is lost to the ocean, the products can be caught in these garbage patches. These plastics do not wear down, simply break into smaller pieces of debris. 

It is difficult to research or to resolve - as these spaces are large and expansive, sitting below the surface of the ocean and ranging in depth, the notion of documenting or collecting such data is difficult. The float and travel in depth - 70% of marine debris will eventually sink to the bottom of the ocean. It is also far away from land - no one country will fund any research or cleaning up of this phenomenon. International organisations have taken the task to prevent the patch from growing. 

There have been many initiatives, ranging from research expeditions to design ideas such as the Ocean Cleanup and large NGOs such as The 5 Gyres. Each organisation have a different perspective and role in this phenomenon:

5 Gyres: Promoting the reduced usage of plastics - Polystyrene bans,  

Hurricane Sandy Design Competition - REBUILD BY DESIGN in partnership with 100 resilient cities

A competition supported by numerous organisations was called for after Hurricane Sandy affected 13 different states in the United States of America. 13 different cities and states were awarded $1 billion USD which were funded by the federal government. They have 7 currently funded projects, most of them on the east coast. 

Flood Risk Assessment  in Hoboken - Hudson River Project: Resist, Delay, Store, Discharge - OMA with Royal HaskoningDHV; Balmori Associates; and HR&A Advisors. 

These projects promote a large scale interventions, from teaching communities and designing with a multitude of stakeholders. A lot of research has to be done - about the coastline and flood risk assessments, about the water management strategies, Financial analysis, stakeholder management etc.

It seems to take so much effort to even start to think about what to do with a situation - a landscape that will be devastated in the near future. Small moves such as creating permeable sidewalks can lead to even more larger systems of failure such as over saturation of the water table -> which leads to flooding -> require infrastructure to pump out the water table into the ocean -> or to find ways to store this excess freshwater. It seems to be a perpetual cycle of inability to find solutions which somehow leads me to think - is relocation a solution? Are we not meant to be in such places? Must we spend to build infrastructure for the inevitable? Can this overflow of water be used for other processes such as energy generation or also to create new jobs or boost the economy? 

Rising Currents

In collaboration with MoMA, rising currents reiterates the immediacy of the issue. The complex relationship between cities - human - water creates a connection that must be balanced. Currently, the rigidity of our cities prevents one from connecting to the natural processes - hence phenomenons such as freshwater flooding occur more and more frequently, affecting the cities more so.

This book documents an architects-in-residence program convened by MoMA and PS1 Contemporary Art Center about New York City’s Harbour. 5 interdisciplinary teams  to research, propose and design systems  to re-envision the coastlines of New York.

Very much the same site as the Hurricane Sandy Design Competition held by Rebuild by design x 100 resilient cities, the focus and deliverables are highly different.

The text briefly describes 5 projects x teams proposal, then leading into an Oppenheimer declaration of the world’s condition. There are international projects introduced, and each designer is encouraged to write feedback to the five proposals. 

Most of these projects provide an inbetween space - a frontier almost. Physically through forms but also on an ecosystem level. There is always talk of the thickening, the softening, the harnessing. I tend to imagine space of separation almost between the city and the water - a place where it seems untouchable - but humans should let this new ecosystem exist and work. It is the creation of systems which fascinates me and confuses me at the same time. Who are we to say that we can command these new heterotopias to exist? Can man truly define each step of the process or are they singular in use? Do we have the power to intervene to provide new processes for the next 100 years? 

New Urban Ground - Permeable ground which leads to the thickening of the harbourfront. 

Is there an extent to our interventions?

We also observed several potential projects referring to these large scale issues. They all seem optimistic- referring to nature as the giver, us as the manipulator. 

Wave Garden - Yusuke Obuchi 

Despite the scary rendering, Wave Garden by Yusuke Obuchi was a master thesis project at the Princeton University’s School of Architecture (2002). It is a prototype for a dual function - Power Plant and Public Park - using waves as a methodology of creating energy. 

It has a designed time aspect - Monday through Friday it is a energy plant. On the weekends it becomes a public garden. The form changes and allows boats to enter the space. 

LAGI

The Land Art Generator Initiative is a beautiful website, promoting inventive ways of utilising issues of renewable energy. In the annual competition - this year it deals with water shortage in California. Each proposal must include a site-specific artwork which harnesses energy from nature into electricity and/or provide drinking water for Santa Monica Pier, CA. 

All of the competition entries include some element of referring to the wind and wave - also making use of modern day technologies such as patented technology (WindBelt / Onyx Solar etc.) to be incorporated into the design. 

Here are a selection of the projects I enjoy- 

This was the second prize - Cetacea  The project uses wind harvesting technology, reverse osmosis, photovoltaic panels. It looks naturally embedded onto the seabed and shore front. 

Horizon Lines - The transparency of energy

This project uses transparent solar cell by Onyx Solar and has an annual capacity 625 MWh. It frames a certain view but provides translucency between. It tries to identify there is a separation between the elements, and somehow creates a monument for the sea. The intrusion into the water is obvious, but we see through this energy generator – creating a new sense of heterotopia – a thickening and an inbetween.

[kyeleereads]

WK2: WATER (FLOWING)

Week 2

This week we are investigating the Water in relation to flowing - perhaps in a river scale. Applying principles from our previous session, (which I am not sure if I totally understand, nor totally agree with the necessity to label such seemingly subtle occurrences) we will observe a case study of a river, and a few accompanying readings. 

Flood control Freakology expresses how the human intervention changes natural landscapes into a “No longer a natural, aqueous phenomenon” (p36p1). Topics like this is incredibly relevant to our current day situation, riddled with freak natural disasters causing the Bayou in south-east America to flood large expansive areas. Whether it is natural or incurred upon our doing is also in question. 

The idea of the river is multitude - it encompasses so many implications. It is now seen as a “jusrisdictional matrix of boundaries” or “rights-of-way” or even “liabilities” (p38p6). It is a complex system of ownership which overrides the natural flow and system. It must be reiterated that “no single agency controls the river”, exhibiting a complex system of even identifying with the river.  Also how these parties view the river is in a completely different context and different ideologies. 

The LA river is engulfed with waste - it encompasses a multitude of bacteria such as “fecal coliform bacteria, lead, ammonia” etc. (p42p1). It is also a place accommodating general urban trash. Is this a negative side effect of human activity? Does the ecosystem accommodates for these interventions? Questions like this pop into my brain relating back to last seminar - is nature as pristine as we understand it to be? 

Having studied the general forms of the river as well as man-made supportive forms such as channel stormbeds, dykes, bridges etc, these functions attempt to reconcile the ‘natural’, to allow the flow of a river to allow human activity as well as natural resolutions to exist. The LA river seem to be a complex system of human intervened natural wildlife as well as accommodating to the waste. It seems to organise itself, having come from international places. It seems as if “Large-scale artifical ecologies have replaced many of the historic ecologies in Southern California” (p46p1). Generally, we observe native as ‘good’ and international as ‘bad’- whereas the LA river is an example of an international ecoystem in relative harmony.

Desirability of waterbodies are also in question. We are conditioned to live by the waterfront, or view the waterfront as a desirable space to be. If the condition of water deteriorates - seemingy due to human intervention or because of various reasons. As a result - we prefer it to be a pleasant environment. An example of such undesirable spaces is the Salton Sea which was a “(result) from the failure of a water canal”(p46p1). “The diversion of water to the Salton sea has resulted in ecological devastation at the former outlet in Baja California” 

Then ultimately, it leads to questions of what to do? Do we keep the native plants alive although the ecosystem has changed? Do we aim in maintaining a clean ecology? it seems to be a game of balance. The term: “ecological succession” is used

Ecological succession is the process of change in the species structure of an ecological community over time. - wiki

“Recent approaches to ecology put forth the theory that "natural" disturbances-fire, flood, tornado, earthquake-are integral to ecological processes.” - This comment struck me as a new way of observation. Things change, what we understand as the everlasting nature, also changes as well as the processes of how we use these resources. It is imperative to understand the world is not simply native / international, nature . artificial? 

We were told to also introduce a case study - a River 

I chose the Perai River, or known as Sungai Prai in Malaysia. 

Sungai Prai is used as almost as a border, separating the counties of Prai and Butterworth (where I live). It was named Prai, as it is derived from the words berperai-perai  meaning “breaking up ini all directions”, a reference to the silt brought up to the esturary of the Prai River. Known as Pryre during the British Colonial Era, it encompasses a mangrove - swampy area. It was the historical border between the historical controlled state: Province Wellesley (north), and the Kedah (south). It is around 24 km long and is the longest river in the state of Penang. 

The Sungai Perai catchment has an area 505km2 which comprises 5 tributaries. There are Sg. Kulim, Sg. Jarak, Sg. Kereh, Sg. Pertama/ Derhaka and Sg. Maklom/ Tok Sani. The catchment area at the upstream are hilly and green area. While the downstream of the river are muted and muddy. This is because of rapid development in that area. The frequent flood causes damage properties, disruption of life and depreciation values of properties.

From the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Department of Irrigation and Drainage Malaysia

Sungai Perai also has one of the last remaining peat swamps in Penang. It is home to over 150 plant species, 125 bird species and 35 fish species. Over the years, the river also played an important role as docks were built for ship repairs and transporting of coal. Even the earliest factories such as rice and sugar mills were built along the river. The Mak Mandin Industrial Estate was established near the river in the 1960s and then more factories were built on the southern banks of the river mouth.

From the Malay Mail Online

The River quality is currently Class III (using the water quality index for monitoring Malaysian river water quality) which means it requires treatment. A Class III river is defined as so:

Class III (extensive treatment of water supply required; fish for common economic value, species tolerance, and for livestock drinking)  

Nurul-Ruhayu, Mohd-Rosli, et al. “Detection of River Pollution Using Water Quality Index: A Case Study of Tropical Rivers in Penang Island, Malaysia.” OALib, vol. 02, no. 03, 2015, pp. 1–8., doi:10.4236/oalib.1101209.

The two streams which form Sungai Prai - Sungai Air Hitam and Sungai Jarak - are linked to the Air Hitam Dalam rainforests (A wildlife sancturary) of Malaysia. The river ends at the Penang Channel (Between Butterworth and Penang Island).  Sungai Air Hitam also connects north to the Sungai Muda (which is the now the border between Kedah and Penang State). This is where the natural water catchment zones are, and thus flowing freshwater down to Sungai Prai. In this area, village settlements were located in this area due to the pristine water. 

Traditional Boats near the Bridge (found in Butterworth Guide) People traditionally used boats and rafts to cross the river before bridges were built. There was a chain ferry service near the esturary of the river for the public to use. Now, travellers use the Tunku Abdul Rahman Bridge (built in 1965) to cross the river. 

Tunku Abdul Rahman Bridge -  (found in Butterworth Guide)

When travelling back to my hometown, I will pass by this Sungai Perai, and my parents will always indicate “10 more minutes of driving”. It is always a constant symbol to say we are almost home. It has always been huge - almost as if crossing the sea. The government have a few research objectives

The role of local governments is equally important in river management and conservation. In Penang, the Seberang Prai Municipal Council actively involves residents' associations, rukun tetangga(community vigilance groups), and community development and security committees. These groups have been brought together to work closely with local authorities to keep the rivers in their areas clean. Council president Maimunah Mohd Sharif envisioned a more concerted effort between community-based organizations and government bodies to further improve the water quality in Seberang Prai rivers. The Penang state DOE and the council's Local Agenda 21 started a programme to periodically monitor rivers in residential and commercial areas (Majlis Perbandaran Seberang Perai, N.d.).

Chan, Ngai Weng. “Managing Urban Rivers and Water Quality in Malaysia for Sustainable Water Resources.” International Journal of Water Resources Development, vol. 28, no. 2, 2012, pp. 343–354., doi:10.1080/07900627.2012.668643.

The council also works closely with NGOs and local communities in managing river water quality via awareness and education efforts. Such as Seberang Perai Municipal Council (MPSP) collaborating with Think City, a federal government run research body, in preparing initiatives as such as the Celebrating Sungai Perai Programme. There is also research being done at USM to determine the health of the river. 

This river is usually taken for granted for it’s natural resources and what it provides for the community. 

Flicking through petrochemical America - it brings to light the how these factory spaces, spaces of work and generation can affect the life. The diagram on the p114, Landscape impacts of Petrochemistry really reinforces the ideologies of  ecosystem - cycles of impact. Due to the consumption of non-renewable resources, people supporting such businesses by working, creating new infrastruction, manipulating such resources results in a multitude of impacts such as space considerations (physical -> financial -> energy), the cycles of consumption etc. There are so many stakeholders in this world of the petrochemical. The book introduction already poses these challenges of such endless perpetual cycles, interstitial connections, and how ultimately money and consumption drives this industry. 

It is frightening, but the methodology of this explanation is beautiful and engaging as the graphics simplify statistics, but exemplify the intricate connections. 

I have also flipped through the River.Space.Design book which is a reference book on how to observe rivers - almost to design them. It reminds me of similar architectural guide books - how to design a residential, commercial, etc. Now that we can even adapt rivers to such an extent to present a guide is frightening how much we wish to even change the natural movements of water. Is there a gray area we can find? Is there some sort of negotation between wilderness and our creations? Or should we seek to think nonanthropocentrically where one is disconnected from such phenomenons - or generally see it as some sort of .. hyperobject? (I’m still conflicted by the term hyperobject - does one require such a term to exist? It seems so subtle! Maybe I need to be more sensitive to such phenomenons)

Anyway - This week: TL:DR -

What are really rivers? Are we ‘fixing’ them? Or our process of fixing makes a new world? - fun questions. 

[kyeleereads]

The unperceived: ‘nature’

Week 1: Context

This marks the first week of Master of Architecture 2 and the first week of readings assigned in my new elective: ARCH7375 - Design After Nature. Setting out the tone of each class in imperative to our understanding of topics discussed. This elective simply took the word, ‘nature’ and shone a bright spotlight on the implications of our understanding - what it means by nature. 

The readings from this week includes: 

William Cronon. “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.” Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995, 69-90)

A text redefining nature - two conflicting realms of human vs. nature and how we should alter this understanding 

Foucault, Michel. Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias. 1967.

Time space use and distinction through the introduction of new terminology: Heterotopias and the definition(s). 

Schwagrel, Christian. The Anthropocene. Reiman Verlag. 2014. pp. 31-69

A general overview of the development of the term, the Anthropocene and what the implications are on a larger scale. 

Morton, Timothy. Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. 2013. p 1-37; 99-133.

What hyperobjects are. That is all I will comment on for now.

Gissen, David. Subnature: Architecture’s Other Environments. Princeton Architectural Press. 2009. p 21-99. In terms of content, Subnature demonstrates a perception and appreciation our environment is as much a social construct as it is a part of ecological processes. 

This week’s readings created a whirlwind of general knowledge, scientific knowledge, philosophy and commentary on nature for me to consume. It was repetitive, complex and mind bending content. I have, being a Geography major during Secondary school, understand the basic concepts on climate change (I refuse to adhere to global warming right now, as I believe it still holds urgency in the terminology, take that Christian Schwägerl), but to question to the very essence of the term, Nature, was almost unthinkable. Let me unpack this sudden change in ideology to my thinking further in this journal entry. 

Michel Foucault has always been difficult for me to read, let alone understand. This text has been much kinder to me, but the large scale of understanding and interpretation has always jarring and a slap-in-the face ordeal. 

Here he introduces the “ epoch of simultaneity, we are the epoch of juxtaposition”, where the world is now a bunch of technical connections between each component, where everything is riddled with accountability, series of complex processes, where “relations of proximity between points or elements” are calculate and situated on a site. This complexity has developed from a “hierarchic ensemble of places” to a new “form of relations among sites”. 

This leads to a larger scale labelling of a new phenomenon: heterotopias. It supposedly accommodates every human group, created for a “precise and determined function”, capable of juxtaposition, slices in time and somewhat opened and closed at the same time - penetrable. These places create an illusionary space that is either exposing of a reality or a space of meticulous re-creation of a real space. 

Examples of Heterotopias: 

Crisis heterotopias- Elderly Homes, adolescents, pregnant women

Heterotopias of deviation - rest homes, psychiatric hospitals, prisons 

Gardens

Cinema

Museums

Libraries 

What has this got to do with nature? 

Foucault questions the creation of human ‘communities’ - though he would never label it as so as the term has too much association with the cultural aspect of the human condition, but I must insist it is the creation of an almost new nature of the human. It attempts to explain our complex processes into a succinct term - the heterotopias. 

This reading ties into William Cronon’s “The trouble with wilderness; or, Getting back to the Wrong Nature” where he reveals how Nature is being seen - how to “rethink wilderness”. Nature has been for many years related to the “non-human”, to the biblical references, to the “pristine sanctuary” and the “sublime”. We must understand how nature has been correlated with the untouchable, with a certain closeness with the gods. In many cultural interpretations of our world, we refer to nature as the untouched. 

It is deeply embedded in our culture to separate man from nature, “wilderness embodies a dualistic vision in which the human is entirely outside the natural” (p11p3). It is a “cultural invention”. Tourism, country parks, forest reserves. Nature represents the “primitive living”(p7p2), it symbolises a “bold free spirit” to ”escape the confining strictures of civilised life” (p8p1).  

Cronon describes wilderness as “specific habits of thinking that flow from this complex cultural construction” - here lies a paradox - “if nature dies because we enter it, then the only way to save nature is to kill ourselves” (p13p4)

What I find fascinating in this text is the idea that there is a hidden network of nature which surround us, almost like a heterotopia where it is invisible. The humans have created environmental change, and we should aim to create a “balanced, sustainable relationship”(p16p1) with nature. 

In Schwägerl’s text, the Anthropocene, it takes the concept a step further in describing how “people see themselves as active, integrated participants in an emerging new nature” (p33p1). The texts explores the term, Anthropocene and the impacts humans have created on earth. It too agrees with how “wild nature no longer exists on land or out at sea”. (p37p2) The phenomenons Schwägerl describes are mostly common knowledge, but what was most intriguing was the formation of the ages. 

The Holocene is a term used frequently in the text - it refers to a time which encompasses the growth and impacts of the human species worldwide - from cultural written history and development of major civilisation.  This all encompassing term is now challenged by the term Anthropocene, when the “bio technologists are starting to control the forces of life” (p44p1). The lines blur between a phenomenon of nature or a phenomenon of man - “has the beautiful plant growing at the side of the road been cultivated in a bio-lab or is it wild? ... Do the clouds in the summer sky come from Mother Nature or are they jet plan vapour trails?” Such small day-to-day phenomenons are being questioned, and this challenges the fabric of reality. Must we make such a distinction? Must everything be connected too? 

In Chapter four, the term Anthropocene is explored through a historical perspective. How did it appear? Beginning with the measure of time, “terrestrial time keepers” (p49p4) through the investigation of rocks and stratas, here one starts to observe epochs in time. This term was used by the famous Paul Crutzen, of whom pushed it’s validity through political, scientific and also common knowledge transfers. It is now a common term in our in the past 10 years. 

Then the question of who takes responsibility - it is obvious that the largest, most advanced nations has caused harm unto those on the other end of the spectrum. Is it up to politicians to strive to undo all the consequences of the “Western wealth, power and consumerism?” (p65p1)

Hyperobjects is long, unsettling and challenging read. Unlike the kind, easily accessible tone Schwägerl text offered, Morten dives in with a multitude of references (many of which I have yet to explore further) and philosophical ideologies I have yet to understand. I turned to the peer review journals to explore summaries from others to aid me in my conquest to understand such an extensive well of a text, and I found these thoughts to continue upon:

Hyperobjects - things that the scale of which exceeds the human comprehension. They are dimensional, non-local entities. These objects are massively distributed in time and space, transcending the ideology of localisation. i.e. climate change. 

From this definition alone, it correlates with the idea of Heterotopia - although in a larger scale. It demands the implication of a new era, a new age almost. 

I believe I need to spend more time reading and thinking about Morten’s text - I can see it is referenced in later lectures and I wish to explore it further.

All these readings as a whole take the world by storm, creating new revelations, creating new perspectives to see the world. It was a wonderful introduction into nature and the Anthropocene. I can’t help but to think how these thoughts can be translated into action, into actual world impact, into the generation of a new ideology to observe nature through a mentality of being an integral part of humanity - of our existence. Co-existence may be the key. 

[kyeleereads]

Energy, Body, Building - Michelle Addington

Published in 2003, this text is an homage to the interdisciplinary world, a testament to light as energy, to light as atmosphere. Addington examines how both worlds, the scientific and the spatial, converse and coincide with one another.

Michelle Addington is a Professor of Sustainable Architectural Design at Yale University School of Architecture, and is both an architect and engineer. Her focus is on the world of energy systems and the relationship between energy, materials and new technologies. 

The text first appeared in the Harvard Design Magazine in 2003, and was also presented on the 2007 ARCC Spring Research Conference at the University of Oregon. Despite the technologies is representative of a world 10 years ago, it examines the further themes of how the built environment should implement solutions which are flexible and accommodating.

WORLD-STATE

“Most architects believe that the solutions are known and straightforwards”

indicates our industry’s unwillingness to change. Addington does highlight the naming of the new sectors of our industry, the “green” and the “sustainable design” are terms to “used to distinguish themselves from their competitors and few clients”. It is used in a capitalist society as a business term rather than actual change.  

In reality, the world’s green house gas emissions is growing exponentially and predicted to be the most imminent problem mankind has yet to solve. This coincides with “buildings are responsible for over one-third of the nations total energy use” indicates how our industry has to change.

THE HUMAN BODY

Energy use should also coincide with the processes of the human body. Since we are building larger than before, more energy is required for the human thermal comfort. 

“Our conventional systems, however, are designed to service the building. We heat and cool its entire volume...yet, the body’s heat exchanges occur within a zone of a few centimetres around it” 

What we truly require, is the attain a level of homoeostasis, that exchange should be “steady state”. 

LIGHT-STATE

Addington further examines how the human eye and materials interact with light. We must understand that different materials will react to light different, beit subtle or obvious ways. This should be accounted for when researching materials for our work spaces, surfaces, objects and details. In this case, we should observe materials around us rather than fulfilling certain building requirements.

“Essentially, the focus on an absolute rather than the relative level of light has resulted in an unending spiral of increasing lighting demands”

“If we can begin to think about lighting at the small scale - what the eye sees- and not the large scale- the building space- we could drop lighting levels quite dramatically while enhancing the visual experience.” 

We also have to observe lighting as a receptive process, where it should change in relation to our use of space - automatic sensors or design to “optimise between day lighting and artificial lighting to determine the most suitable materials”

A keyword Addington uses repeatedly is “relative contrast”. 

CONCLUSIVE THOUGHTS

Architecture is a field which endeavours in further our craft in a multitude of specialisations, resulting in the creation of an “ever-growing database of strategies”. We should focus on definitive “artifactual”, creating solutions. We should also rethink our attitude and definitions of green energy. 

One beautiful thought is how light can bring two different fields - physicists and architects together, but they view this subject in different ways. 

“One wants to produce an artefact, a solution, the other wants to understand a phenomenon” 

There is also the issue on how to penetrate the ideologies brought up in the text to privatised residential areas, or houses? What connecting factor will be the crux of this issue? What incentives can be used to intervene in these larger complex systems?

This text brings to light (haha) how we can design for the truly energy efficient. It is concise, precise and applies to today, although we have made leaps and bounds in the energy-efficient industry. It is looking at one particular problem, to create visually clear worlds around us. We must tie this into other energy consuming systems, such as the issue of heat. 

Examining how architecture ties into various fields has always been a topic of discussion, but to build in such a detailed approach is never feasible in our commercial society. 

[kyeleereads]

Chemical Architecture - Greg Lynn

First published in Log Fall 2011 ‘Observations on architecture and the contemporary city’. 

Background of Author: 

Greg Lynn (born 1964) teaches in Angewandte (University of applied arts, Vienna), a studio professor at UCLA School of Arts and Architecture, Davenport Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Architecture. 

He is distinguished for using CAD to produce biomorphic, irregular architectural forms through the use of mathematical equations. He pioneered the realm of blobitecture and has written extensively on the subject. 

Chemical Architecture 

This text starts by indicating a need for a shift of architectural thinking by:

“A rejection of the logic of tectonics that celebrates details between structure and building envelope” 

“new spatial sensibilities related to surfaces and sandwiches constructed of plastics”

rather than occupying oneself with joints and connections - a mechanical way of thinking, it should holistic. Architecture can be and will be created by one composite material through a certain creating process. 

He introduces new terms:

Plasticity

“The term plasticity was used by Heinrich Woelfflin to describe the spatial and sculptural flow of baroque space”

“ later, by Sigfried Giedion to describe the modernist free-plan space around sculptural form”

His ultimate conclusion of what interests him in plasticity:“Of particular interest are the characteristics of formal, material and spatial continuity” and “lack of redundancy between form and its regulating lines and structure.”

Lynn describes his ideas about plasticity and “composite surfaces” and how can this shift be achieved. 

“shift to a finite element analysis (FEA) description of surfaces rather than a parametric modelling of components. ... the problem of structure is addressed by a fused, layered surface with a gradient pattern corresponding to plastic stresses” 

how does this work? See the examples below - 

Seattle Public Library - OMA  “additional layers of structure are bonded as a laminate-grid skin” 

CCTV - OMA “additional members are added to reduce spans in high-stress regions” 

Composite Materials & Other Industries

“A Plastic sensibility rejects discrete, freestanding, detachable elements altogether” 

“reject tectonic sensibilities in favor of composite shells and surfaces.” 

Car Chassis

Aircraft Frame “Now commercial aircraft bodies are three-dimensionally woven fibers and tapes on mandrels ...” 

Pre-preg 

is a term for "pre-impregnated" composite fibers where a matrix material, such as epoxy, is already present. The fibers often take the form of a weave and the matrix is used to bond them together and to other components during manufacture.

Lynn continues to name various composite materials .

Architecture as a guide

“architecture is expected to make connections and relationships between a sensibility of assembly and composition and broader cultural practices and significance ... aesthetics”

Lynn indicates that architecture as as a guide, a role model in the built environment to hold cultural and engineering factors. When compared to other fields of design: Technology comes first (i.e. transportation). so how to find balance?

“An architectural focus on composites is not a chase toward new materials but toward a new aesthetic sensibility that has material,formal typological, and spatial implications.” 

seems like a super daunting task for dem architects

[kyeleereads]

Overcoming the Problematics of Art - The writings of Yves Klein

For this set of readings (as we move onto week 3, slowly but surely) I would like to push the pace a bit! Will be completing these by next week. 

lets do this

Background of Author:

Yves Klein (1928-1960 died prematurely) was a french nouveau realisme artist who pioneered performance art, minimal art and pop art. Among his friends, he chose the route of manipulating ethereal space:

“With this famous symbolic gesture of singing the sky, Klein had foreseen, as in a reverie, the thrust of his art from the time onwards - a quest to reach the far side of the infinite” 

His works includes the investigation of color - “The Blue Epoch”. He invented this famous blue color. 

Before this choosing this blue, he created simple palates of color and assembled an exhibition - however he was disappointed with the result:

‘[Klein] realized that ...viewers thought his various, uniformly colored canvases amounted to a new kind of bright abstract interior decoration...shocked by this misunderstanding...from that time onwards he would concentrate on a single, primary color alone: blue” 

Another one of his works included a music piece (Monotone Silence Symphony) featuring one note for 20 minutes. He also did a Aeroworks, a series of photomontage where Klein leaped into the sky. It was a criticism on NASA’s exploration into space - defiling the idea of ‘god’. 

Project for an architecture of air

This extract is called “XIX. Project for an Architecture of Air” written in partnership with a german architect Werner Ruhnau. It is split into two sections: The first one is a manifesto for architecture to be hypothetically built in the air with two aims:

Finding means of climatization

Protection of a city by means of a floating roof of air. - Immaterial Architecture

Everything is transparent as it is made of glass. 

So how does it all work?

Klein aims to solve the mechanical problems by creating a “mechanical support zone” and separate “service zones” 

Social constructs of privacy?

“a new atmosphere of human intimacy prevails”, Klein wishes everything to be connected, body x nature. We have no ties to work or family any longer. “leisure” is the aim of living. 

Key Quotes:

“human sensibility has merged with the cosmos” - one with ‘nature’, the world around us. 

“a new human dimension, guided by the soul” 

He ends with a quote:

“He who does not believe in miracles is not a realist.” by David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973) He was a minister of Israel. This referred to Israel when he was rebuilding the country. 

Lecture at the Sorbonne

The second part is description of the manifesto. It was lecture at Sorbenne, France. 

Klein indicates the major problem of current architectural methods: “he (man) will live in a state of absolute concord with a nature that is invisible and imperceptible by the sense...abstraction effected through psychological nature”

There are two major aims of architecture of air: 

“To protect against the elements”

“And the function of thermal conditioning”

The ultimate result is the “immaterialization of the cities of the future”. Through the use of “the three classic elements of fire. air and water, tomorrow’s city will be built and will at last be flexible, spiritual and immaterial”. 

He cites Frei Otto’s work in suspended roofs  

The 2015 Pritzker prize winner. He was an advocate for research in form and engineering techniques:

"The ability to build assumes the knowledge of all architecture and construction forms, as well as their development. To build means to advance this process, to investigate, and to make. The development of buildings began over ten thousand years ago and has reached an extremely high level, but is in no way a closed process. There are still an infinite number of open possibilities, infinite discoveries to make."

Klein wanted his efforts in recreating architecture involved with his manifesto.

Concluding thoughts

Klein indicates a new way of living - going back to nature and the senses. How we do this? Is really up to us. He does not provide such guidelines, such details but instead strive for an overall, macro scale change. He indicates several areas of the human conciousness:

1.Social aspect

Architecture should act as a facilitator of social relationships - We should rethink our constructs within society from the realms of privacy, to the social norm, to the working class.

2. Materiality

Solving everything through creating mechanical support zones appears to be Kleins argument.He also indicated a service quarter / region. Engineering is to solve the human processes of eating, sanitary purposes and functions of the human body

On the thermal conditioning, Klein indicated the use of passive architecture - where materials are dynamic and flexible. We strive to accommodate nature, rather than the fight we have right now. 

Overall

His manifesto is clear and succinct. I enjoy the grandeur he brings. 

[kyeleereads]

In Praise of Shadows - Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

I adore the flow of this short novel, it moved gracefully from the topic of toilets to women to food, encapsulating Tanizakis love for the shadows, for the depth, for the obscurity it brings to our everyday happenings. 

Tanizaki, Jun'ichirō (2001) In Praise of Shadows 

Publisher: Vintage, Random House 

Translated by: Harper, Thomas J and Seidensticker, Edward G

Junichiro Tanizaki b. 1886 Tokyo d. 1965

“Tanizaki's relish in the world and its ordinary pleasures offers a sharp contrast to the functional, plastic, disposable aesthetic of modern western life. Although his aesthetic is associated with a cultural perspective markedly different from western varieties, there is nevertheless something essentially familiar about it. “ -  AC Grayling

I absolutely adore Graylings interpretation of the text, it is very true that one feels at home, some level of closeness when reading Tanizaki’s text. He directs your senses and encapsulates each feeling through long, elaborate sentences. The ordinary is turned into extraordinary through his descriptions such as, “we do prefer a pensive luster to a shallow brilliance, a murky light that, whether in a stone or an artefact, bespeaks a sheen of antiquity”. He directs our attention to the unknown, the aged, to the normal. This, I find quite beautiful.   

"What it offers now, I think, is a phenomenological reading of space, an alternative to mere material or technical interpretations , or even “design thinking” that emphasizes innovation. It is theoretical for sure, but also grounded in the subjective experience of an extremely sensitive and articulate author." 

Archdaily, Sebastien Jordana

Jordana here indicates a level of phenomenology. So what is this?

Wikipedia describes it as so:  

Phenomenology (from Greek phainómenon "that which appears" and lógos "study") is the philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness. As a philosophical movement it was founded in the early years of the 20th century by Edmund Husserl and was later expanded upon by a circle of his followers at the universities of Göttingen and Munich in Germany.

“A unique and final definition of phenomenology is dangerous and perhaps even paradoxical as it lacks a thematic focus. In fact, it is not a doctrine, nor a philosophical school, but rather a style of thought, a method, an open and ever-renewed experience having different results, and this may disorient anyone wishing to define the meaning of phenomenology”.

so it is deemed undefinable by Gabriella Farina from the University of Roma (see more here) 

Applied to space and architecture, phenomenology is described in various readings such as Martin Heidegger’s “Building Dwelling Thinking”.  

He links dwelling to what he refers as the "gathering of the fourfold," namely the regions of being as entailed by the phenomena of: "the saving of earth, the reception of sky (heavens), the initiation of mortals into their death, and the awaiting/remembering of divinities." The essence of dwelling is not architectural, per se, in the same manner that the essence of technology for him is not technological per se. 

Nader El-Bizri, “Being at home among things: Heidegger’s Reflections on Dwelling”

I will definitely comment more about this when I read more into phenomenology. 

Back to Tanizaki, he describes the spaces as the cultivator of emotions, feelings and promotes these ideas to the reader. It is because these spaces occur therefore he reads them as so, despite how ordinary they are. When he describes the Japanese traditional toilet, the space is “phyiological(ly) delight(ful)”. One experiences the “tranquil walls and finely grained wood...long, narrow windows at floor level; there one can listen with such a sense of intimacy to the raindrops falling from the eaves and the trees, seeping into the earth as they wash over the base of a stone lantern and freshen the moss about the stepping stones”. Tanizaki is simply connected with sound, texture and nature. These feelings are so pure and simple, usually not brought to light. Tanizaki is not afraid to describe these simple phenomenons. 

Being a huge fan of Japanese modern literature and culture, I adored his method of description, intimacy of reading and his confidence in describing such simple ideas. From the toilet, to the lacquer bowl to the kabuki and no traditional theatre, Tanizaki describes how one culture reads phenomenons which happen everyday in vastly different ways. Through space and time, he brings a level of description in scales which were unknown. 

[kyeleereads]

Towards a New Architecture - Le Corbusier

BACKGROUND OF AUTHOR:

Le Corbusier is truly one of the pioneers of Modern Architecture. The biggest fan of the automobile to developing one glass x concrete tower for 3 million. There have been many many (too many) investigations, analysis and biographies of Corbu, so I don’t think I am nearly near well read enough to do so. 

Rather, I will insert a few documentaries I have watched as a summary. 

This adorable documentary was found in a yard sale, so we do not know much about the origins. 

Le Corbusier Documentary Part 1 - Unite d’Habitation

Topics talked about:

Ville Radiuse - How fragments are built, but a whole scheme of machine serves the man was never built. 

Unite D’Habitation in Marseille

Time frame of the text 

Le Corbusier is a traveler. He moves quickly and constantly sketching architecture and urban planning from various countries, many of which inspired his seven articles for his avant-garde magazine, L ‘Esprit Nouveau. He eventually compiled them this very book. 

Just finishing up writing this book, Le Corbusier did not build (1918-1922) and concentrated on his Purist Theory which he started with Amedee Ozenfant (eventually, he built a house for!). Together, they wrote several books ( Après le cubisme 1917,  La Peinture moderne 1925 ) , started a journal (L’Esprit nouveau ) and eventually constructed his studio / home

So what is this Purist theory? Together, they constructed a manifesto:

Purism does not intend to be a scientific art, which it is in no sense.

Cubism has become a decorative art of romantic ornamentism.

There is a hierarchy in the arts: decorative art is at the base, the human figure at the summit.

Painting is as good as the intrinsic qualities of its plastic elements, not their representative or narrative possibilities.

Purism wants to conceive clearly, execute loyally, exactly without deceits; it abandons troubled conceptions, summary or bristling executions. A serious art must banish all techniques not faithful to the real value of the conception.

Art consists in the conception before anything else.

Technique is only a tool, humbly at the service of the conception.

Purism fears the bizarre and the original. It seeks the pure element in order to reconstruct organized paintings that seem to be facts from nature herself.

The method must be sure enough not to hinder the conception.

Purism does not believe that returning to nature signifies the copying of nature.

It admits all deformation is justified by the search for the invariant.

All liberties are accepted in art except those that are unclear.

The Engineer’s Aesthetic and Architecture

Much like his purist theories - “lack of truth is intolerable”. This indicates how seeing pure elements, pure processes using the tool is vital. This is linked to “morale” is adjusting our ways to develop through most efficient, most truthful manner. 

The Tool (pp13) He compares architecture to the tool. Much like a tool which “are the result of successive improvement” Architecture should do the same. 

“Cult of the House”(pp14) This refers to how we live the same way as for centuries- we need to develop a new moral and truthful way of living. 

RISE OF THE ENGINEER

“Engineer fabricate the tools of their time” (pp14)

The engineer is the innovators of their time, they are “happy and virile, active and useful”. 

Corbusier proceeds to describe our architects as “disillusioned”.

Engineers > Architects

“Our engineers produce architecture,.. mathematical calculation...feeling of harmony” (pp15)

Relates to the “morale” - description of true mathematics is used when engineers design. Architecture should find a “certain path” to intervene the mathematical problem.

“It is the engineer who knows...the best way to construct, to heat, to ventilate” The purpose of a home is to generate the best space using the best tools - beit tools of the mind or tools of the physical fabrication realm. An engineer will utilize materials which are “capable of affecting our senses”. Architecture should be morale in affecting our body. 

“The purpose of construction is o make things hold together; of architecture is to move us” (pp19)

“Plastic forms”(pp 16) These forms create “certain relationships are thus born which work upon our perceptions and put us into a state of satisfaction”. They are also “elementary and subtle” 

The Machine > Styles (pp17)

Mass - which is the element which our senses perceive and measure and are most fully affected.

Surface - which is the envelope of the mass and which can diminish or enlarge the sensation the latter gives us.

Plan - which is the generator both of mass and surface ... irrevocably fixed.

“regulating lines” (pp 18) created in architecture through mathematics and create “grateful perception of order”.  We only know the truth. 

client - “eyes which do not see” (pp18)- One of the purveyor of evils in architecture. 

At the end of this essay, he wrote a few main points:

“mass production ... definite results have been achieved in both detail and in mass”

“Steel and concrete have brought new conquests”

“Styles no longer exist for us”

“new needs have arisen, consciously or unconsciously” 

“architecture or revolution”

Architecture or Revolution

AGE OF THE TOOLS

“These tools in the past were always in man’s hands; to-day they have been entirely and formidable refashioned and for the time being are out of our grasp.” (pp271)

Shows how before, we alter tools to our liking and use - now we are servants of the tools. 

Le Corbusier goes on to comment on during the past age - man would “(live) like a snail in its shell, in a lodging made exactly to his measure”. Now, it is the “mass produced article” and the age of the “Industry”. We are now tied to “machines; an absolute precision”. Everything must be in “order”. (pp274)

He concludes, “The spirit of the worker’s booth no longer exists, but certainly these does exist a more collective spirit” (pp275). This is because each human is a small cog in the bigger achievement - collective achievement of the inventing new tools. i.e. a Car

SERVANT OF THE HOME AND SYSTEM

Le Corbusier comments on the living condition - the architecture of the home. If the workplace also acts like a machine, the home should be too. - we should generate a machine which facilitates the 8 hours where we do not work, to connect meaningless activities such as “factory, the office, the bank”. 

“men’s minds (are) demoralized in servitude to anachronisms” (pp277)

An anachronism (from the Greek ἀνά ana, "against" and χρόνος khronos, "time") is a chronological inconsistency in some arrangement, especially a juxtaposition of person(s), events, objects, or customs from different periods of time. 

This indicates how servants to ridiculous academies - Work / Monetary / Family which have no connection to one another. We are servants to societies way of organizing their own life. - “A mass of demands” (pp278)

“since remuneration bears no real relation to the quality of their work” (pp279)- A home is a place to live easily, simply. There is no real quality of living.

COMMENTARY ON THE ACT OF BUILDING

“human enterprise is subject to the... warfare of competition, ...landlord..he is a king...” (pp281) The system of building today - how we create architecture does not allow for improvement:

“On the existing principle of property, it is impossible to establish a constructional program which will hold it together. And so the necessary building is not done”  - “There would be a enthusiasm for building, and we should avoid Revolution”  (pp281)

AGE OF CONSTRUCTION

“Architecture finds itself confronted with new laws” (pp 286) 

“Construction has undergone innovations so great that the old “styles” ...can no longer clothe it.... no longer close our minds... which are established on mass, rhythm and proportion” “there has been revolution in the conception of what Architecture is”(pp286)

The role of the engineer and the development of buildings are now based on engineering - how much concrete we need and how we bend materials to our functions. 

END OF FAMILY

Logic of work -> Confusion of Lodging -> “hinder him from...creat(ing) a family to live” -> “destruction of the family” (pp288)

“The problem is one for adaption, in which the realities of our life are in question” - How do we push ourselves to go back to reality, organic processes (pp288)

MY CONCLUSION.

Le Corbusier is a writer to traverses across a large variety of topics - it is hard to conclude his ideas due to the sheer mastermind of his words. Each one has a specific thesis and conclusion. I think he is trying to say - how the human spirit can capture architecture to work for us. To work for our organic human adaptation and to establish a new order which adapts for the machine of the home.We are to forget the past and grasp the Industrial and the Engineer to create morale and truth in our machines. 

[kyeleereads]

DISSECT IN DETAIL 1. Atlas of Novel Tectonics - overview

Jesse Reiser, Nanako Umemoto (2006) Atlas of Novel Tectonics 

Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press 

This atlas is a little book ( 12.7 x 19.1 cm ) of several categories regarding, yes, tectonics. Tectonics is a rather big word, referring to a large variety in the world of architecture:

Tectonics in architecture is defined as "the science or art of construction, both in relation to use and artistic design." It refers not just to the "activity of making the materially requisite construction that answers certain needs, but rather to the activity that raises this construction to an art form."

Quoted from the first few lines of Robert Maulden’s Master of Architecture Thesis paper:

  If I refer to the famed dictionary, Archispeak: An Illustrated Guide to Architectural Terms by Tom Porter

“The term tectonics refers to the art and science of construction. It comes from the Greek word tekton, meaning builder or carpenter, from which architekton, or master builder evolved.Kenneth Frampton considers tectonics one of the three sources of legitimacy for architecture. The other two are topos (site) and typos (type). Tectonics has been associated with the artistic expression of construction since the time of Homer. In keeping with its earliest association with carpentry, Gottfried Semper, in Die vier Elemente der Baukunst (Four Elements of Architecture, 1851), uses tectonics to refer to the lightweight spatial frame of a building reaching into the sky, contrasting it to the stereotomics of the massive form of load-bearing masonry rooted in the earth.Today tectonics, and its derivative, technology, apply to all forms of architectural construction, and to human production in general

Since the end of the nineteenth century the primacy of tectonics in establishing the poetic basis or architecture has been challenged by an increased emphasis on architecture as space, and on art and literature as sources of inspiration. Consequently, there is now a diversity of attitudes toward the making and critique of architecture in relation to poetic expression generally, and tectonic expression in particular. Approaches range from the suppression of tectonic form and the Logic of assembly in favour of scenographic and iconographic imagery (post-modernism, for example) to an overriding emphasis on tectonic expression (Santiago Calatrava, for example). Pierre von Meiss argues convincingly for a balanced approach to the competing demands of technology, the natural environment, and human physical and social needs. He cites Wright, Kahn, Scarpa and Botta as examples of architects who have sought to achieve this balance in their work. In the US the parts of architecture practice most closely related to construction have been co-opted in many cases by developers and construction managers, partly as a result of liability concerns on the part of architects and partly because of their lack of interest in the art of construction. However, there is still a strong tradition for architects to be involved with construction in Britain and Europe. Throughout the world there is increasing concern that the pervasiveness of human technology is overwhelming the natural environment to the ultimate detriment of both human and non-human life. (PDS) “ 

My simple definition is: “How things are put together” (Do not quote me on that)

Never mind the complicated definition of tectonics, I am currently enjoying the book very much. It is full of hilarious comments, or at least I read the text then suddenly burst into laughter. Many of the descriptions draw strange relationships from deviously simple items to complex architectural relationships. 

In this series, I will research further to the many references and quotations cited by Reiser and Umemoto. My own personal thoughts will be sprinkled throughout my analysis. It will be separated into the different chapters of the book: 

Geometry / Matter / Operating / Common Errors to Avoid / The World 

[kyeleereads]

Books To Read

Make Room - Architectural Papers Vol. 3 On Marginal Spaces: Artefacts of the Mundane - Peter Benz The Big Rethink - Peter Buchanan WeOwnTheCity - CITIES & HKU The Architecture of Happiness - Alain de Botton Flexible Fixation - Jos Van Eldonk & Helga Fassbinder Irregular Structures, A Manual - Yona Friedman  Another Scale of Architecture - Junya Ishigami  Project Japan - Rem Koolhaas & Hans Ulrich Obrist   Atlas of Novel Tectonics - Jesse Reiser & Nanako Umemoto In Praise of Shadows - Junichiro Tanizaki  The Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture by Robert Venturi  Thinking Architecture - Peter Zumthor 

[kyeleereads]

Architecture As An Art - An Interview with Professor Liang Ssu-ch’eng

BACKGROUND OF AUTHOR:

Also known as Liang Sicheng ( 梁思成), he was often cited as the “father” of Modern Chinese Architecture. His partner in life, Lin Huiyin was also a trained architect and distinguished poet. Together they pursued the measured drawing of ancient Chinese architecture. They developed the term “grammar” in Chinese architecture.

In 1931, he became a member of a newly developed organisation in Beijing called : Society of Research in Chinese Architecture.

TIME FRAME OF TEXT 

This was an interview conducted on July 1961, during the Cultural Revolution. Unfortunately, I do not really know much about it. There were many key ideals brought by Chairman Mao’s communist ideology explored in this text:

Hundred Flowers Campaign (百花运动 ) :"The policy of letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend is designed to promote the flourishing of the arts and the progress of science."  

Proletarian Politics: The term proletariat refers to the class of wage-earners in a capitalist society whose only possession of significant material value is their labour-power (their ability to work) . Of course, to refer it to politics indicates a laws in reference to such individuals. During Maos Cultural revolution I believe many individuals fall into this category. Professor Liang referred to this term when gesturing to the ‘public’ as a general whole - gives an insight to how the society was categorized in mainland China. 

Feudal Dross: I am still confused by this term, but dross is the waste / foreign matter of precious metals. This can refer to various architectural elements that appear foreign or wasteful - which Professor Liang criticized. He indicated when questioning such individual architectural elements, these questions “cannot be put forward so naively. ... We should not... take it apart and analyse each architectural element as if it were an independent thing.” 

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

PART I - ARCHITECTURE AS AN ART

In the second paragraph of this text, Liang demonstrates his theory: “This knowledge of building houses is a technological science in which art is also embodied”. He explains further how currently there appears to be“diverse schools, each of which has its own definition of architecture”. He identifies 2 interpretations:

“Architecture is the art of building beautifully”

“A house is a machine for living”

to further elaborate on the 2 interpretation, Liang identified these individuals as functionalist:

These individuals believe that “covering up of any structural element were ‘artificial’ or ‘dishonest’. ...beauty is intrinsic in a structure that rationally achieves function.” 

SO HOW DO WE BALANCE FUNCTION / ART 

A combination of both schools is the true solution -  “architecture has the twofold role of being both a work of engineering and an art; aesthetic consideration is given a structure subject”. This blend is achieved by inputting what he calls “spiritual demands” and “artistic demands”. This is the first time he mentioned these two realms - it will be further elaborated on the Spirit of the Times section

Architecture must also promote “Good content”. This is achieved by understanding: “Utility is the content of architectural structure - a building’s content is its usefulness. Beauty is the emotional response produced by the form embodying that content”.  

Architecture is then unified by three requirements - Beauty / Practicality / Economical. A solution must combine all these three elements. We will look at each on in depth:

BEAUTY / AESTHETIC

Liang belives that when designing, we must understand that “different social classes react differently to the same set of aesthetic principles.” These principles are then “constantly being modified as social ideology, science and technology develop.”

TECHNOLOGY / PRACTICALITY

Architecture is still an art to Liang, but when compared to other forms, “Architecture is restricted by building materials and structural technique, and is subordinate to the demands of utility and economy” This indicates that architecture is a tangible form, connoting a sense of permanence and record within our society. Liang comments that “It will stay there for decades or even centuries”.

ECONOMY

Architecture is a servant of the economy. The expression of ideology through architecture is directly connected the current condition of the environment. This control is constant and will thrive through time.

STYLE IN ARCHITECTURE

Similar to the last definition of architecture, when style is involved it is a “reflection of a whole social ideology”. Liang separates the views into 2 points:

One view holds that materials and structures determine the style of architecture 

Social Ideology > structure 

Liang is inclined to believe in the second view - architectural style is the “result of the unity of technology and social ideology”. Rather than materials dictating the style. He gave the example of England vs. China where both use timber as an architectural medium, but different styles of architecture appeared, this is due to the use of space, difference in cultural climates, ultimately differing social ideologies. 

Liang concludes: “it is mans ideology that determines architectural style”

SPIRIT OF THE TIMES

“man should be the master, not servant of them”. ‘Them’ refers to materials and structure. In Architecture we should strive to understand materials in that we use them as tools, rather than restrictions due to their technological qualities. 

Liang here cites several projects which depict China under the “three red banners”:

Yang Tze River Bridge, Wuhan, China 

Lu Xun Memorial Hall, Hong kou, Shanghai 

all these structures coveyed a “bright, joyous and vigorous spirit”

TRADITION AND INNOVATION

To analyse tradition, we must not i. We must understand tradition from a historical perspective - we must not compare each element to the standards of today. 

Here Liang comments on how politics have changed drastically in the country. Tiananmen Square was only for the kings, for the royal. Now it is liberated for the people. It has also been adapted and rebuilt to sensitively address the changes in politics and circulation in the city. 

It appears as if the balance between the traditional and the modern is difficult to gauge from what Liang is noting. He enjoys “colored glazed-tile roofs” and he also encourages us to “absorb...foreign architecture” 

But what he truly despise is the “indiscriminate reproduction... nothing more than imita(tion)” of traditional, historical architecture. One has to “understand the essence of legacy and tradition” 

This text has been a fun read, a snapshot into socialist China during the hundred flower bloom, where they were able to fund ways to further Mao’s vision. To see how the intellectual manage to understand the world and to implement these ideas into a ‘utopian’ regressive society. Liang was interviewed during the age where socialist architectural style was developing, and he had a say. One can see through this holistic understanding of “masses of people” ultimately is to find ways the Communist party policies can be exemplified through architecture. It also questioned the how architecture, like other texts have told me before -  that there is only so much you can do with space. 

Then I questioned, if unifying the identity of people in the age of the cultural revolution in China, much like current North Korea, can we design buildings which "satisfy the masses”? Or is there no difference to how we utilize architecture today? Does architecture, like art play a role in aligning minds through propaganda?  

This text piqued my interest in getting to know architecture as an aid to contributing to communist regimes. We always see buildings and representation of power, greatness. Sometimes, fear is also raised.