140915 Jeff Kipnis Architectural Window

Distinctions in the field of architecture

- Disciplinary (theoretical, experimental) vs Professional
- Everything that is now professional started in the disciplinary

Professional: window is only for light, air

Ex. Libeskind Jewish Holocaust Museum
Framing of views: artificial ground

1572: glass structure
Stone behaving as a frame structure
people who live in glass houses shouldnt throw stones

Corbusier ribbon window
Possible bc of structural reln
Sky/ground disconnect redefining mans reln to environment

Venturis mothers house

Hejduk Wall House
Everytime you walk through this wall, you change where you are in history
Work from inside out and outside/in
Cartoon-y experience of int windows
Architects talking to each other about windows

Rem Koolhaas
Not a window because
Direct quote of a house
Corb Savoye vs Glass House Johnson vs Farnsworth House Mies

Seattle Library
Garden/planter carpet into oz

Casa del Fascio Terragni
Peter Eisenmann
Windows previously thought to be composed, compositional
Eisenmann saw it as something moving

Gehry personal house
Rauchenberg

Dialog between drawings and built work

140917_robin evans_translation from drawing to building

architects dont make buildings, they make drawings for buildings - evans
- using abstract techniques to project, imagine, describe buildings that
are built by someone else

tony smith sculpture
- trained as an architect
- model is a scalar reproduction of the building that maintains 3d
- limit to the info that a model can provide: no interior/exterior

robin evans unpacking the essay
- pliny: projection story making tracing of profile
- drawing is the subsitute: not yet there, absent
- projective quality of projection: into the future
- in drawing: not paying attention to the actual person but the shadow
- shinkel neoclassical architect: another version of the painting
o lightsource is sun, not lamp
o pointsource light: perspectival
o sun: spread light: orthographic projection
o for shinkel: drawing had to be invented before architecture
thats why its set outdoors
o stylus rests on the eye
- albert duhrer
o perspectival projection
o lacan: conventions of perspective legible to the blind
o projection and perspective since the renaissance dont have to
do with vision and visuality (the experiential question of vision):
they are actually self referential codes that refer to a system of
projection

plan
- generator of architecture
- is both noun and verb
- shows reln btwn the parts: proportion etc diagrammatic, no
thicknesses to the wall
- language of plan able to describe complex arch space
- plan as a section cut that reveals the
- john soane bank of England (end of 18c)
- the abstraction of the plan allows for the overlay of info that is not
necessarily experienced
- program unfolds in plan
- before the 17c: houses didnt have corridors changing social moirs
elevation
- how the bldg appears to the public: a media faade
- the building elevation becomes a kind of drawing
- wu: slippage of the window

section
- structural info is depicted

axo
- preserves measurements of the bldg
- also interested in structure
- schuaze engineer reln btwn space, structure, plan, section

perspective
- storytelling, narrative

diagram
- simplification, can take many forms


140922_

faade: steel structure that underlies brick curtain wall, that wants to look like 18c
construction

functioning as a representation of an 18c townhouse but there is the modern
tectonic, functions as a DISJUNCTION

Temple of Hera ex of pure tectonic: what you see is what you get

Even numbered caryatid Michael Graves & Disney/7 Dwarves

Three Spatial Conceptions Gideon
+ v large overview of the history of architecture
+ looking at 1
st
2 this week:
1. First space conception: stones piled up as monument
o have no interior space: sculpture in space
o reln btwn site and landscape
o natural to taper as you pile up
o interesting q: w Greek arc, have the intro of post and beam
structure: begins to open up the space
o creates reln btwn inside and outside
o debate btwn archeologists about temple construction: potentially
temples are a stone version of wood houses
o concerned w emanating power of the arc:
o both Egyptian arc and greek arc lack windows: the simplest
communication btwn interior and exterior
o their space conception had to do w the sculptural object in
space
o greek temple is like a crystal in space
o when we look at the greek temple: sense of
o v simple tectonics: reduced to beams and columns, continuous
w the landscape, appropriate to function of cemetery
o tectonic has
2. Second space conception
o what are the limitations of post and beam? Esp w stone? Stone
is good in compression, not tension (T at bottom, C at top)
will crack
o the struc sys thus limited the spatial possibilities of the greek
temple
o with roman arc: vault is perfected
o vault: all the elements are working in compression vertical
forces of weight down into keystone
o Romans also developed a form of cement: able to form complex
bearing wall sys w bricks which allowed for arches, which
allowed for more complex spaces btwn int and ext
o Allowed for much bigger spaces that could be social
o Pantheon: the paradigmatic example of the section spatial
concept: HOLLOWED OUT INTERIOR SPACE
Signifies complete breakthrough of 2
nd
spatial concept
Architectural space = hollowed out interior space
Problem of window arises from interior space
Relieving arches in pantheon: lock the building in place,
lighten up the walls (needing to have lighter top)
Play between representation and tectonic: coffering is a
voiding out that allows for a lighter dome, but also has a
decorative quality
Columnades in interior
Temple front stuck onto the bldg: a representational
piece
Though it appears monolithic: multiple structural systems
are in place
o Schinkels Altes Museum
His coffers are made out of plaster: more as
representation than tectonic
19c: John Soanes Bank of Englande
-
3. Third space conception: complex interpenetrating forms of modern arch
- Altes Museum
- Gunder Asplund: Stockholm Library
- reference to dome of Pantheon

Moneo
Rendering traditional forms in modern concrete
Use of color: by painting inside of vaults blue, dematerializes the wall

PRECEPT DEBATE: is this kind of architecture appropriate for the 21
st
c program
of an airport?

140924 LOUIS KAHN

b. Astonia, 1901, moved to Philly as a kid
was scarred by coal burns lifelong fascination w material and light
15 years younger than Mies
was not interested in the minimalist/modernism of Mies

modern architecture = continuous flowing space
Kahn = wanted defined spaces: the room
The plan as a society of rooms, to create a larger collective entity
Paul Phillipe Craig: classically trained architect who taught at UPenn &
influenced Kahn
Absorbs lessons of materiality and structure of Modernism, but overlays his love
of a weightier architecture
Fellow at American Academy in Rome
- studied in Rome, saw ruins
- material broken down into basic geometric forms
Fisher House (1967)
- two cubes that touch at corner: plan as a society of rooms
Convent
Sketch of Acropolis
Reln btwn bldg and landscape
Play of light
Obsession w form of ruins
First Unitarian Church Rochester, PA
Glass is all recessed: needs to be protected, timeless quality where only
the hard parts of the bldg are left
Carefully detailed
Play of light
Salk Institute
A kind of Acropolis Mediterranean setting
Collective realm (lab) vs indiv space (office)
Served vs servant spaces
Exeter Library
Collective study
Large central space for central organization, feeling part of a collective
Structure at perimeter
Diagonal condition
Use structure as a decorative element
Reading struc forces in concrete
Creating smaller scale spaces, but double height: occupying the
thickness of the wall
Masonry struc: more material at top, less at top subtly dimishing
the size of the pier as we move up

Dhaka
Love of geometry, diagonal
Dormitory units
buildings have to have bad spaces and good spaces
Parliament in Dhaka
Collective institution: centralized hierarchical geometry
Indiv parties in emerging democracy
Complex interpenetrating spaces
Roosevelt Memorial in NY