Qualitative Understanding - cont'd

Qualitative Understanding

2.0 Imaging, Compositing and Mapping – qualitative understanding

Interpreting the landscape is the essence of this thesis proposal. My own investigation of the site over the past several months is the primary component of my design premise. Through my own investigation of the physical and metaphysical conditions present at the site, I have discovered a means for making an architecture of place - one that seeks a presence and is capable of conveying meaning in its expression.

I have made an extensive photographic survey of the canal interpretive trail (See Fig. 6, Page 21), from the diversion dam and guard lock to the lifting lock at the river ford. The photo-survey was a way for me to become familiar with the site as an explorer, and make the discoveries necessary to raise my awareness of the phenomenological dimension of the site. I realized that one becomes aware of certain objects, vista’s, sounds, and other visual stimulus while walking along the canal trail and examining the artifacts. The presence of the river, the lock artifacts, canal depression, lily pods and ford all affect the experience of the viewer. Thus, I have become aware of opportunities to construct architecture to convey meaning. The photographs document perceptions of the reality of my experience and the relevance of that place.

Plate 1
The river crossing as a distant view where the viewer can understand the position of the architecture as an object in the field and survey the broad scope of elements that make up the site. The fore-shore is a gateway to the object in a distant field.

The resulting photographs were used to begin a process of documenting perceptions in a qualitative manner by establishing a set of “image moments.” A series of photo-realistic vignettes were created using imaging software and the digital manipulation of multiple images. The resulting composition was made from multiple photographs overlaid to form a new image of a perceived experience. The new image was a re-creation or representation of the site that conveys the qualitative parameters of an experience, and the notion of a potential architecture. The vignettes in Plate 1 and 2 are composites that depict the river crossing. Plate 1 depicts a distant view of the island with a building rising gracefully above the tree line. Plate 2 depicts the same crossing at the threshold of the island. Plate 3 is a composite of a panoramic “river walk” gallery that would stretch along the shoreline of the Catawba River adjacent to an axial ordered main gallery space and bind the river with the canal. Plate 4 is suggestive of a pavilion space that is terminated as an aperture focusing the viewer on an object or vista in the distance. These images were refined to reflect a specific perception and phenomenological aspect of the site. The images and qualitative spatial information they convey were overlaid on the site and mapped into a specific geometry on the site.

Methodology - cont'd

Donald Judd

In the early 1960’s, Donald Judd quit painting. He recognized that “actual space
is intrinsically more powerful and specific than paint on a flat surface.”
His move to three-dimensions was an acknowledgement that the physical environment was an integral aspect of an artwork. Minimalist sculpture broke with the conventions of illusion and translated compositional concerns into three-dimensions. The work became a product of the exchange between the object, the viewer, and the environment.

Judd championed the work of a diverse range of contemporary artists. He endorsed the, “thing as a whole,” rather than “a composition of parts.” This stemmed from what he saw as the strength and clarity asserted by singular forms. Singular forms had the unity of character of which resulted from the combination of color, image, shape, and surface.

Judd’s oeuvres of rectilinear shapes in rows and in serial progression are legible systems that incorporate space as one of its materials – creating a play between positive and negative that coheres as a totality. Progression is often expressed in a Fibonacci system (i.e. sequence in which each number is the sum of the two previous two: 0,1,1,2,3,5,…)

Spatial concerns were foremost of Judd, but color and materials always remained central to his conception of art. He sustained a rigorous investigation of space and form. His work is tempered by a rich palette of industrial materials.[i]

Judd’s work has informed this project in terms of building form. I am compelled
by the abstract and contrasting quality of his simple rectangular objects placed
within a landscape, and the overall form of his fabricated sculpture. How multiple
parts are assembled into a whole. The interpretive center program spaces are distributed
along an axial ramped gallery. The spaces are a series of rectilinear formed concretewalls and slabs that enclose spaces bound together by a ramping gallery.

Methodology - cont'd

Morphosis






The Crawford House in Montecito, California by Morphosis is used extensively as a reference in this thesis. It was not chosen as a precedent prior to my initial conceptual work, but as my first drawings were developed, the association with the project became clear.
The Crawford House is described as organic sculpture - an interruption in the landscape. The house employs a hierarchal ordering system using the circle - delineated as massive arching walls that engage the landform - as the controlling element. This thesis project seeks a similar vocabulary and means of tectonic assembly and materiality.

The Crawford House is an architecture driven by conviction - driven by a dialogue between architect and client based on a theory that building is influenced by the contingencies of site. The house is reconfigured by programmatic experimentation in response to the conflicts of site associated with topography and design ideology.

The house is located on a stretch of U.S. 1 between Los Angeles and Santa Monica. The highway runs the edge between the horizontal expanse of the Pacific and the steep vertical of the hills that rise to the east. The visual and sequential approaches to the Crawford House site use the physical landscape to mediate the architecture between what is obvious and what is implied to the viewer.

The driveway is a great arch that sweeps along the side of the hill. The base of the hill provides a panoramic view of the rear façade. A score of contrasting materials and tectonic systems comprise the façade. The uninterrupted axial geometry, that usually draws the eyes in a single direction, is discontinuous and eccentric in the Crawford House. The arch that inscribes the site suggests expansiveness and access to the home. Paradoxically, the public, “official” entrance is secretive and repressed. The visual composition of elements suggests that the house has multiple identities. Thick concrete walls emerge from the driveway. Overlapping planes and volumes anchor the building to the rugged site.

The interiors are revealed through a process of investigation. Circulation through the spaces is orchestrated. Window openings are framed apertures to capture specific views. A lap pool extends towards the ocean, is perpendicular to the structural spine of the house, and is the symbolic fulcrum of the design.

The Crawford House is a series of cartographic strategies (mapped geometry) that define abstract and figurative ideas relative to specific site concerns. A north-south axis was established as part of the site analysis and is the main ordering element. Perpendicular to the main axis is the second organizing element – a series of megalithic pylons that hold the site tightly. In plan they look like vertebrae and evoke solidity and energy. Another element is a fragmented, semicircular wall that follows the curved driveway. The wall acknowledges public and private spatial divides. The wall, in its fragmented parts, functions as an idea more than as a tangible, architectonic form.

The Crawford House is a powerful investigation into architectural improvisation. The house begins to address architecture less as an object and more as performance, whereby the script is revised continually by investigations and perceptions. The house represents the interface of ideas and occupancy, where transitional conditions of habitation and provocative spaces, enable art to occur, recur – and endure.[i]

The Crawford House is relevant to this project for its linear organization along an axis of influence and aperture openings that define and frame views. My project is also similar in compositional nature of the design and use of a great as an organizing and gathering device to bind elements on the site.
[i] Phillips, Patricia C. Morphosis: The Crawford House. New York: Rizzoli International, 1998. (Para-phrased)
20 Website: http://d-sites.net/english/judd.htm.
21 Website: www.gsaa.com/recreation/landsfordcanal.html.

Methodology - cont'd

Steven Holl








In his book, Intertwining, Holl presents architecture as a symbolic or metaphorical hermeneutical concept that comes from poeticizing phenomena rooted in human experience. Everyday perception and the pleasure of living are what constitute our metaphorical experience of the world. In practice, Holl employs the natural phenomenon of light as one medium for conveying or inducing metaphorical experience into his work.

Holl uses the term “enmeshing” as a merging of object and field, where the resultant is an architectural experience. This experience is an interaction that is part of a shifting foreground, middle ground and background – part of a shifting context and necessary to continue experience and discovery. Space is defined in terms of perspectival or parallax – that the shifting movement between objects makes for a visually tectonic landscape.

Holl’s phenomenological architecture calls for overt mass and the perception of its gravity as a tectonic. The weight of low, thick walls conveys power. Expression of mass and material, within their tectonic properties, is dynamic in contrast to what is lightweight. Parti, form and geometry are not fixed by meaning. Individual constructs are as much a part of themselves, as they are in relation to the whole. As an abstract, no geometry is inferior or superior to another, the idea that drives the architecture is inherent in the whole expression.

But, architecture transcends geometry; it is a link between concept and form. For Holl, meaning is a fusion of site, its phenomena and idea. Architecture can be an expressive gesture, but also carries with it, responsibility for ontological mapping. Concepts define a field of inquiry and that investigation helps form meaning. “…the idea is the force that drives the design. The field of inquiry sets the focus and the limit and the rigor of the work.”[i]

Holl’s closing statement is one of optimism;

“Architecture must remain experimental and open to new ideas and aspirations. In the face of tremendous conservative forces that constantly push it towards the already proven, already built, and already thought, architecture must explore the not-yet felt. Only in an aspiring mode can the visions of our lives be concretized and the joy shared with future generations.”

Holl’s writings support the notion that meaning is a fusion of site and idea, and that object and field are in shifting dialogue with each other. Architecture is composed as a canvas or frame over which the landscape can be imprinted for view. Movement is associated with a changing context, and thus changing experience.



[i] Holl, Steven. Intertwinning. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. pg. 15.

Methodology in Architecture

…beginning of a process

METHODOLOGY IN ARCHITECTURE


“…you need proper attitudes, proper intentions. A concept can easily become merely a mode of defensive intellectualization, or a visual sales argument, an enticing image. Of course, every decent building needs an idea. It has to be based on clear thinking.” – Juhani Pallasmaa[i]

My initial investigations have relied on two main modes of “preparatory” understanding for an interpretive architecture. The first mode encompasses discourse and precedent studies from architects working within the realm of phenomenology. I call this mode, “qualitative meaning.” The second mode was to subject myself to a personal discovery of the site. I made numerous site explorations and surveys over several months and a change of season to photo-document the physical site and artifacts. I describe this mode as “qualitative understanding.” Using the data developed from these two modes, a conceptual understanding of the project emerged and preliminary design studies for the proposed interpretive center were made.


1.0 Architectural Discourse – qualitative meaning
Precedent study and theoretical discourse from selected architects influence conceptual ideas.



Juhani Pallasmaa

My initial research led me to a 1999 interview between Juhani Pallasmaa and an architecture student, in which Pallasmaa was asked about the “essence of architecture.” He describes the current state of architecture as one of duality. One view is an architecture of commodity conceived as visual image. The other, is an architecture that is the recollection of an image or experience that is multi-sensory and changes over time. Pallasmaa favors an architecture derived through cultural and human phenomena, rather than, a visual and formalist architecture.[ii]

To quote Pallasmaa, “…architecture is an art form, but it is a special art form because it is very silent and its ethical task is to remain silent most of the time, its power comes from its continuous presence.”[iii] I think this is a beautiful statement about the permanence of architecture as human artifact. Pallasmaa also states that today’s technological evolution tends to strengthen the hegemony of the eyes over the other senses. But, he concedes there is a possibility that the overexposure to images can eventually liberate the traditional focus on images.

Sketch – Juhani Pallasmaa
Internet searchPallasmaa speaks about the tectonic reality of construction in architecture today. He describes how hard it is to find an honestly constructed building. The elements convey solidity (as implied by gypsum wallboard and simulated concrete), but is constructed “hollow to the touch.” He faults the contractor-driven economics of building construction and a subordinate architect who specifies form, but not the tectonic conditions of execution. Pallasmaa uses the example of a Japanese landscape garden and how it represents an attitude about architecture. The garden is not a singular shape or singular concept in its reading, but presents the viewer with a multiplicity of readings - a narrative with no particular overall shape. The narrative implied in the design can be experienced and read in any number of ways. An architecture that is separate, episodic, and multi-faceted. I think this last statement about how architecture conveys meaning and can offer multiple points of view is most compelling to bring forth in this thesis project.[iv]


[i]Interview with Juhani Pallasmaa (www.stud.ntnu.no/groups/a/mar99/juhani.html).
[ii] Interview with Juhani Pallasmaa (www.stud.ntnu.no/groups/a/mar99/juhani.html).
[iii] Interview with Juhani Pallasmaa (www.stud.ntnu.no/groups/a/mar99/juhani.html).
[iv]Interview with Juhani Pallasmaa (www.stud.ntnu.no/groups/a/mar99/juhani.html). (Summarized and Para-phrased)

Historical Analysis

HISTORICAL ANALYSIS

in-ter-pre-ta-tion (in tur’pre ta’shen) n.[i]
1. the act or result of interpreting; explanation, meaning, translation, exposition, etc.
2. the expression of a person’s conception of a work of art, subject, etc. through acting, playing, writing, criticizing, etc.

Precedent examples of interpretive architecture (an architecture that functions to direct or contain an experience, it also may convey knowledge or awareness of something) are few and far between. I have been able to find some examples of contemporary interpretive centers or studies for experience-based, hands-on learning centers. But, the majority of the historical paradigms I was able to find in my research are based on the typology of a nature center. The ideas for phenomenological interpretation in this thesis project is less a product of static exhibits, but rather to provide a canvas or container in which the viewer can observe or experience the natural landscape directly. It is the landscape which becomes the exhibit and the architecture that brings it into focus.

In my research of interpretive architecture, and more specifically, the design and planning of an interpretive center, I have found several guidelines published by the National Park Service that set forth a protocol for comprehensive interpretive planning. The guidelines are rather rigid and written in a form commensurate with the bureaucratic nature of a governmental agency. While the guidelines lack the qualitative description of what interpretive architecture means in this project, they do describe the goals that are important to interpretive architecture, and that provide a pragmatic framework with which to develop the project.

The following statements are excerpts from the “Comprehensive Interpretive Planning Guide,” published by the National Park Service, Department of the Interior, Fall 2000: www.nps.gov/hfc/pdf/ip/cip-guidlines.pdf

Interpretive planning is a strategic process which achieves objectives for interpretation and education by facilitating meaningful connections between visitors and park resources.

Interpretation is about choices; interpretive planning is a goal-driven process that determines the appropriate means to achieve desired visitor experiences. The planning strategy provides opportunities for audiences to form their own intellectual and emotional connections with meanings inherent in the park’s resources.[ii]

Visitor experience is everything that visitors do, sense and learn; it includes knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and values; it is affected by experience prior to the visit and affects behavior after the visit. Interpretive planning determines appropriate interpretive services, facilities, programs, and media to communicate in the most effective way the park’s purpose, significance, compelling stories, themes and values, while protecting and preserving park resources.[iii]

Interpretive planning defines desirable and diverse experiences, recommends ways to facilitate those experiences, and assures they are accessible. The outcome is effectiveness in communicating the park’s story in a larger context, ideas, meanings and in values associated with the resources themselves, and achieving the balance between resource protection and visitor use and enjoyment.[iv]

Interpretive planning seeks to answer many questions:
Why is this area set aside and made accessible to the public?
What are the likely and desired visitor experiences?
What will visitors want to do, learn, experience, discover, etc.?
What are the current conditions affecting visitor experience and interpretation – what are the essential stories and experiences to make available to visitors? What are the significant relationships between resources and visitors?[v]
Images from website: www.aldrichpears.com/planstud6.html
[i] Webster’s New World College Dictionary. New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan, 1997.
[ii]Comprehensive Interpretive Planning Guide. National Park Service. Dept. of the Interior, Fall 2000. pg. 3
[iii]Comprehensive Interpretive Planning Guide. National Park Service. Dept. of the Interior, Fall 2000. pg. 6
[iv]Comprehensive Interpretive Planning Guide. National Park Service. Dept. of the Interior, Fall 2000. pg. 6
[v]Planning For Interpretation and Visitor Experience. Div. of Interpretive Planning, Harpers Ferry Center. Harpers Ferry: 1998