Written Proposal Abstract

Research Assignment 7
Arch 510
Brandon Taylor
The Question
What is the nature of communal dwelling that promotes stewardship to provide a symbiotic relation-
ship between the environment and users?
The Idea
To encourage a new perspective for humans duty to manage the land on which they live using the
basic principles found in nature through a more responsible relationship between the natural and
built environments. The project will act as a part of the natural cycles. Up till now since the industrial
revolution architecture has been partly to blame for the issues of pollution and global warming. There
is now an opportunity for architecture to create an positive impact with both the environment and
neighborhood/city in which the project sits. The idea of communal dwelling is one that has not taken
off in The States. I will combine this idea of architectural stewardship as a way to redene the percep-
tion of the communal dwelling.
The Call for Architectural Stewardship
Stewardship is: the activity or job of protecting and being responsible for something (Webster). With
this in mind it has been the call of man to take care of the land. In both Abrahamic and Eastern Re-
ligious/Philosophic texts there is a call for taking care of the land and its inhabitants. Here are some
examples:
(Genesis 2:15) And the Lord God (Yahweh) took the man, and put him into the Garden of
Eden to dress it and to keep it.
(Muhammad) The world is green and beautiful, and Allah has appointed you his guardian
over it.
(14th Dali Lama) So if we have a genuine sense of universal responsibility, as the central
motivation and principle, then from that direction our relations with the environment will be
well balanced
ABSTRACT
INITIAL STUDIES
Synergy at Dockside Green
Victoria, British Columbia Busby Perkins+Will
Sussex, United Kingdom
One Brighton
Feilden Clegg Bradley
Bedzed
Hackbridge, United Kingdom ZEDfacto
1221 Broadway
San Antonio, Texas Lake Flato
Pruitt-Igoe
St. Louis, Missouri Minoru Yamasaki
Cherokee Studios
Los Angeles, CA BROOKS + SCARPA
THE SCHEDULE
WEEK 1
What impact does architecture have on private dwelling?
Psychological research into the impact of particular tectonic, existential, and spatial ideas found in precedents
looking specically at the structure of private dwelling.
Experimenting with the needs and expectations of private dwelling and how they impact users.
WEEK 2
What impact does architecture have on public space and it relation to private space?
This research will look at public/private space transition.
Exploring these ideas and how they could impact users.
WEEK 3
What type of sustainable strategies have been used in similar multifamily housing?
Research passive and active systems that have been used in the precedents I nd.
Looking at active and passive strategies to understand how they work and how they can be implemented into
current program, climate, and scale.
WEEK 4
What are some ways which a project can have a positive impact on the site ?
This will be an exploration into projects that have beneted the site in which it sits on.
The focus of these studies will be looking at architectures impact on issues like bioremediation, browneld,
etc.
WEEK 5
In what ways can an architectural project can help provide for a neighborhood
and/or city as a whole?
Looking into district level interventions(power, recycling, stormwater mitigation, etc.).
This could be either looking at the site to produce for the surrounding are it could be looking at how they
intervene with the inefciencies of other surrounding buildings.
WEEK 6
Synthesis and Renement of idea for production of nal proposal document
READINGS
Sylvia Lavins Open the Box: Richard Neutra and the Psychology of the Domestic Environment Assemblage,
No. 40 (Dec., 1999), pp. 6-25
Hauke, Chris. Jung and the Postmoderism. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2008. Print.
Wright, Frank Lloyd, and Patrick Joseph Meehan. Truth against the world: Frank Lloyd Wright speaks
for an organic architecture. New York: Wiley, 1987. Print.
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arendt, Hannah, Melvyn A. Hill, and Kenneth Frampton. The Status of Man and the Status of His Ob-
jects: A Reading of the Human Condition. Hannah Arendt, the Recovery of the Public World. New York:
St. Martins, 1979. N. pag. Print.
Frampton borrows some of Arendts nomenclature by which we interact with the world around us
(Work, Labor, and Action) to discuss how it relates to type of space which we inhabit (Public/Private/Civic). Work
as a sense of public, permanent, and a means to an end. How man imposes his will on the land. Labor as cycli-
cal and impermanent, as an end.
Edgerton, Samuel Y. Brunelleschis Mirror, Albertis Window, and Galileos perspective Tube. William-
stown: Williams College, 2006. Print.
This essay is an examination of how we have altered our perspective and how we perceive space with
the introduction of Brunelleschis mirror with the one point perspective, Albertis Window with the focus on
a grid, and Galileos Perspective Tube which was basically adding magnifying glasses to Albertis window. It
discusses how these build on each other and how they altered the perception of what we examined.
Frampton, Kenneth Introduction: Reections on the Scope of the Tectonic, from Studies in Tectonic
Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture, MIT Press, 1995
It is a reection upon architectures evolution as a progression of interplay between topos, typos, and
the tectonic. The topos being the relation to the site, typos as a relation in time, and tectonic as space being
dened. He takes us through basic constructs of tectonics of Sempers primordial dwelling and through ver-
nacular examples which explore some basic ordering techniques.
Georg Simmel, Bridge and Door (1909), trans. Mark Ritter, Theory, Culture and Society 11(February
1994): 5-10; Bruke und Tur, in Simmel, Das Individuum und die freiheit: Essais (Frankfurt am Main:
Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1994), 2-12.
Simmel examines the point of connection and separation of spaces. He looks at this connection in par-
ticular to the condition of bridges and doors. How they connect in the case of the bridge as an example of our
will over space. Also how they can both disconnect and connect in the case of the door. This is an examination
of mans power over nature, which is does not contain individual space.
Heynen, Hilde. Architecture Facing Modernity. Architecture and Modernity: A Critique. Cambridge,
MA: MIT, 1999. N. pag. Print.
This article looks criticality of architecture as to the 20th century problematized notion of home. She
examines the place of dwelling in modernity, as younger generations progress towards a notion of homeless-
ness. Heynen also tracks the back and forth battle between modernity and dwelling, and past roles of architec-
ture in negotiating this turning of tides.
Holl, Steven. Steven Holl: idea and phenomena. Baden, Switzerland: Lars M ller, 2002. Print.
Steven Holl takes us through his thinking on idea and phenomena. Asking the question of how archi-
tecture comes to an idea to create phenomena and how we can think about phenomena and idea in different
scenarios. By doing this he is asking to disregard traditional thinking in architecture for a more pure expression
of both phenomena and idea.

Koolhaas, Rem. Life in the Metropolis or the Culture of Congestions. Architecture Theory since 1968.
By K. Michael. Hays. Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 1998. N. page. Print.
This is an examination of what urban is and where it comes from. In some respects refutes any involve-
ment of architects to the formation of metropolitan life. In particular he looks at the creation of the skyscraper
and its potential as an duplication of site over many oors. With the inventions of the elevator the skyscraper
potential is to be devoid of any considerate spatial juxtaposition.
Kwinter, Sanford, The Complex and the Singular, from Architectures of Time: Toward a Theory of the
Event in Modern Culture, MIT Press, 2001
-As a reection of culture or representation of culture. Can we modify the timescale and materials? Re-
understand architecture to make it relevant.
McDonough, William, and Michael Braungart. The Upcycle. New York, NY: North Point Press, 2013.
Print.
Reiser, Umemoto Matter, from Atlas of Novel Tectonics, Princeton Architectural Press, 2006
This reading was an representation that ideas are diagrams. It relates ideas of duality, such as intensive
and extensive, and the synthesis of those ideas in diagrammatic form. Ultimately this is a study into relation of
diagrams as a means to explain/explore ideas. And how that idea evolves through diagramming.
Teyssot, Georges. A topology of everyday constellations. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press,
2013. Print.
In this chapter, Windows and Screens, Teyssot explores the ability of the modern world to help discern
between public and private space. He examines this by the boundaries from which they share. This in-be-
tween space is the frame that connects and how that boundary sets a perspective for which we see the world
around us.
Tschumi, Bernard, and Irene Cheng. The State of Architecture at the Beginning of the 21st Century. New
York: Monacelli Press, 2003. Print.
This was a collection of various architects on a particular subject (ex. Form + Inuence). I looked at in
particular Envelope + Public/Private as I am interested in that negotiation between these two boundary condi-
tions. Exploring concepts like envelopes as a mediator, and how to think about movement in terms of porosity.
Vidler, Anthony Diagrams of Diagrams: Architectural Abstraction and Modern Representation, Repre-
sentations, no. 72, 2000
This articles examines the nature of diagrams and the term diagrammatic as it has progressed through-
out history. Examining their role in establishing tectonics, perspective, spatial organization, proportion, form,
and order. Also looking at how people have used the diagram and to what ends, this article examines the con-
nection between reality and representation.