collective space

form
living
Atelier Grafton
Accademia di Architettura - Mendrisio

Spring Semester 2013

collective space

Alfred Hitchcock: Rear Window 1954

Above: Albertis Window

Right: Hitchcock Rear Window

Rear Window is a wonderful evocation of the way the spatial organisation of the city determines the lives of its residents....the story takes place in this kind of semi-public
courtyard in the midst of the metropolis.
Hitchcock realises that some inhabitants would hesitate to
perform the same acts behind the front side or the street
side of the building.
The Wrong House: The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock,
Steven Jacobs.

The sudden change of ambiance in a street within the space

of a few meters; the evident division of a city into zones of
distinct psychic atmospheres, the appealing or repelling
character of certain places, these phenomena all seem to be
neglected.
Guy Debord, Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography

Scenes from Rear Window:

The semi-public realm involves numerous gradations from public to private.

Typologies of collective space

1. The Street

The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to
place, and in any once place is always replete with new improvisations.
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

Image: Jan Vermeer: Street in Delft, 1657-58

Patterns of association in the street:

The street is not only a means of access, but also an arena for social expression.
Alison and Peter Smithson: The Charged Void: Urbanism.

2. Courtyards

Courtyards in Sevilla:
Left: Traditional adalucian courtyard typology
Right: Cruz/Ortiz Architects, Donna Maria Housing

3. Balconies and Terraces

Walter Gropius: Bauhaus, Desssau

Left: Kandinsky on his terrace. Right: Balcony, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Le Corbusier:
Roof terrace, Unite DHabitation, Marseilles

4. Streets in the Sky

Top: Spangen Housing, Rotterdam, Michiel Brinkman, 1918

Bottom: A&P Smithson, Golden Lane competition entry

5. Staircases

Left: Harlem Brownstone Stairs.

Above: Giancarlo De Carlo, Urbino

collective form

The Nineteeth Century City: Gustave Dore, View of London

Ideologies of twentieth century urbanism: The Garden City, Ebeneezer Howard (left), The Ville Radieuse, Le Corbusier (right)

Rediscovery of the vernacular:

Bernard Rudofsy, Architecture without Architects

The urban artifact / city as a work of art

In this way the urban artifact and its architecture are one and
the same, together constituting a work of art. To speak of a
beautiful city is to speak of good architecture.
Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City

Urban structure based on the introverted courtyard typology,

Marrakesh, Morroco,
Image: Bernard Rudofsy, Architecture without Architects

Alison and Peter Smithson: The Cluster

The search for meaningful groupings began almost as soon as we arrived

in London, in the winter of 1947-48....Any coming together is a cluster
Patterns of Growth
The Cluster
Conglomerate Ordering
Alison and Peter Smithson: The Charged Void: Urbanism.

Christopher Alexander

House for one person:

Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language

The Old Town

Henri Lefebvre: Notes on the New Town (April 1960)

A few kilometres away from the tower blocks of the new town lies the
sleepy old village where I live
The anaolgy of the sea-shell: A living creature has slowly secreted a
structure...it is precisely that link, between the animal and its shell, that
one must try to understand.
History and civilisation in a sea-shell, this town embodies the forms and
actions of a thousand-year-old community, which was itself part of a
wider society and culture, ever more distant from us a the years pass.
This community has shaped its shell, building and re-building it, modifying
it again and again according to its needs.

Each village is a construct in its own right, and so is each

house. Everything about them forms a kind of unity...there are
no residential areas separated from the places where people
work or enjoy themselves. There is no clear-cut difference,
yet no confusion between the countryside, the streets and the
houses.

But none of this really obtains any more...this small town is

vegetating and emptying, like so many other dying villages and
towns. The expiring sea-shell lies shattered and open to the
skies. The surviving shopkeepers are little more than managers. The craftsmen? You could count them on the fingers of one
hand.

Image: Streetscape in the town of Bre, Lugano

The New Town

The New Town: Mourenx.

Whenever I set foot in Mourenx I am filled with dread...everytime I see
these machines for living in I feel terrified...Mourenx has taught me
many things. Every object has its use, and declares it. Every object has
a distinct and specific function. The text of the town is totally legible, as
impoverished as it is clear.
And here we are facing the same problem as before: how to reproduce
what was once created spontaneously, how to create it from the abstract.
Possible? Impossible?
Henri Lefebvre: Notes on the New Town (April 1960)

Re-programming the Old Town

Giancarlo De Carlo
Restructuring of Coletta di Castelbianca, 1993-1995
Re-programming of historic town based on discovering genetic code
of the structure (De Carlo). Cluster structure of similar size cells allows
for flexible programme.

Giancarlo Di Carlo in Urbino

Giancarlo De Carlo
Insertions into historic city of Urbino based on studies of urban morphology.
Modern university conceived as analogous to Italian hill town.

Alvaro Siza & Roberto Collova:

Reconstruction and landscaping, Salemi, Sicilia 1991-1998

collective living

The Social Condenser

Narkomfin Building: Mosei Ginsburg, Moscow, 1932

The Social Condenser: The organisation of the project is designed to
encourage and facilitate new forms of social life.
Architecture - and domestic architecture in particluar - coincides in
almost iconic fashion with the basic units of social organisation, such as
the household.
Victor Buchli: An archaeology of socialism

Communal functions such as kitchen and laundry organised in a seperate block.

Feminist liberation of traditional domestic space.

Circulation as Collective Space

Peter Zumthor
House for senior citizens, Chur, 1993.

Jorn Utzon:
Housing at Fredensborg, Denmark, 1963

Walls step to express changes in function (above)

Development of L-shaped courtyard type (left)

Landscape image and section:

Repetitive unit transforms according to topography.

Chimney detail and Site Plan

Free Collective Space

Kazuyo Sejima: Seijo Townhouses: 20 Volumes, 20 Units

Atelier 5: Diversity within Regularity

Artificial Landscape

No one has the right to put himself in someone elses place, to claim they
think this way, to say they like this or that Jean Renaudie (1976)

Jean Renaudie, Housing at Ivry sur Seine, Paris, 1969-75

fine