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Parallax by Steven Holl, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2000 384
pp, 110 colour and 290 mono illus ISBN 1-56898-261-5 Price \$40 (hb).
Event-Cities 2 by Bernard Tschumi The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000
692 pp, 500 mono illus ISBN 0-262-70074-3 Price £23.95, \$35 (pb). Glass
Ramps/Glass Wall: Deviations from the Normative by Bernard Tschumi,
Hugh Dutton and Jesse Reiser Architectural Association, London, 2001 96
pp, 18 colour illus and 80 mono illus ISBN 1-902902-00-9 Price £16 (pb)

John Morris Dixon

Architectural Research Quarterly / Volume 6 / Issue 01 / March 2002, pp 89 - 93

DOI: 10.1017/S1359135502221508, Published online: 17 October 2002

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1359135502221508

How to cite this article:

John Morris Dixon (2002). Architectural Research Quarterly, 6, pp 89-93 doi:10.1017/S1359135502221508

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‘… to add a fourth ideal – of restitution – to the
triad of firmness, commodity and delight …’
Jeffrey Cook on extending Vitruvius
A Green Vitruvius
By committee
James and James, London, 1999
145 pp, many colour and mono illus
isbn 1-873936-94-X
Price £25, $40 (pb)
Energy and Climate in the Urban
Built Environment
Edited by Mat Santamouris
James & James, London, 2001
402 pp, many diagrams and mono illus
plus an interactive CD-Rom
isbn 1-873936-90-7
Price £45, $70 (hb)
Reviewed by Jeffrey Cook
The original Vitruvius is an
eccentric 10 book, or chapter, affair
written by a patronizing and
comfortably retired architect of the
Roman emperors. Hardly more
than half deals directly with
architecture. The other topics
include the education of architects,
technical devices like sundials and
water clocks, mechanical devices
for war, and the ethnography of
various peoples. Sometimes
http://journals.cambridge.org
plus two other reviews
anecdotal, sometimes prescriptive,
and sometimes theoretical or
technical (such as when discussing
music harmonies), the writing is
irregular, cryptic, and sometimes
abruptly disconnected. One gets
the impression of a collection of
first draft essays developed over
several isolated seasons, suddenly
cobbled together by a
knowledgeable, eccentric
personality. It is a camel produced
by an authoritative individual.
The newest extender of the
Vitruvian codex, A Green Vitruvius, is
a homogenous, nondescript
animal produced by a committee.
Although ‘intended to be a single-
point general reference’, it lacks
vision and is fuzzy about
definitions. In its own words:
Environmentally friendly,
environmentally conscious,
energy conscious, sustainable,
greener, or simply green
architecture? Identifying our
subject was not straightforward…
however much research is yet to
be done on the environmental
aspects of building materials,
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arq reviews
and this book is a product of its
time.
The book’s five sections are all
presented well. Technical
accessibility and proficiency are
good. The materials are selected
from well-tried techniques. The
sparse, carefully pruned and
balanced text is an admirable lean
exemplar of the holistic thinking it
advocates. But there is no index. Its
neutral generalist quality misses
the aesthetic and technical
possibilities that could be
stimulated by shifts of culture,
contrasts of climate, and variations
of the building brief. Its even-
handedness, especially with the
building examples, lacks the
critical depth found in more
personal works.
The reasonable assumption is
that we already know ‘why’ we
should practise this way. So this is a
primer on ‘how’, popularizing the
well-accepted and adding some
legitimacy to the fringe. ‘Green
design’ as ‘an architectural quality’
is recommended. The differences
between ‘green’, ‘sustainable’,
‘environmentally informed’,
‘ecological’, and post-Rio mandates
suggested in the Preface are not
articulated. Are they too academic a
challenge for a practitioner?
Technical rigour is lacking, too –
there is no map or diagram of
climates, for example – and,
although a particular strength is
the list of supporting texts, there
are only three non-European
references, and the building
illustrations are sparse.
This attempt to be the 11th book
of Vitruvius, to add a fourth ideal –
of restitution – to the triad of
firmness, commodity and delight,
has produced a reasonably
reviews arq . vol 6 . no 1 . 2002 89
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90 arq . vol 6 . no 1 . 2002 reviews
informed, intelligently organized
reference on how to design
buildings of a certain middling
environmental sensitivity. But it is a
committee-tamed beast, hard to
rank above other similar texts
offered to the middle-market every
day, and quite unlike its spiky
namesake of two millennia ago.
Energy and Climate in the Urban Built
Environment, also from the
publishers James and James, is a
different story. A new compendium
of international research, it
provides a readable new
perspective on built climates,
indoors and out. It is not a very
glamorous package but the
unmemorable title precisely
describes the ambitious content.
The past decade has brought an
intense interest and exploration of
urban climatology – how outdoor
spaces can be designed to be both
more comfortable and healthy.
Simultaneously, these urban
microclimates are the context of
buildings whose passive interior
conditions and active mechanical
systems interface with their
immediate outdoor environments.
The book is a self-defining
assembly of surprising integrity in
17 chapters, each by a single author.
There is no preface, dedication or
summary, but the overview on the
back cover identifies that the work
is derived from the SAVE
programme of the European
Commission. An appendix provides
a user’s manual for ‘POLISTUDIES: a
multimedia tool for studying the
energy efficiency of buildings in
urban environments’, this in the
form of a CD-Rom that is included.
The accessible shorthand style of
the whole is reflected in the
abbreviated index where, for
instance, such words as ‘carbon
dioxide’, ‘comfort’, ‘health’,
‘human’, ‘humidity’ and
‘luminous’ do not appear,
although conceptually they are
ever-present. There is no glossary
and at best, terms are self-defined.
Thus, on page 20, one must bring
the word, the sign and dimensions
of ‘nanometer’ from another
source. Occasionally different
authors are not in concert, such as
with the conflicting values of the
‘solar constant’: on page 20 it is
1365-1372 Wm–2, but on page 110 it is
either 1353 or 1367 Wm–2. For
architects, this may be good
enough, but the variation without
qualification might irritate certain
physicists. Inevitably in such a
digest some topics get short-
changed. ‘Roof Pond’ gets three
Author Title
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Timely knowledge: examples of daylighting
strategies
A truly urban case study: cross section of flats
constructed in Athens (also shown on CD)
sentences and a diagram without
any references to the substantial
integrated cooling and heating
such passive systems have
demonstrated since the 1940s in
commercial buildings in Texas –
heavily documented since 1968.
As a comprehensive text, it moves
from first principles of physics to
design applications and case study
examples with a surprising balance
and lack of redundancy. Although
the applications have a pan-
European location, the resources
are global. And so should be the
usefulness of the whole package.
Often extensive references
terminate each chapter. For
instance, the many references to
the American work of T. R. Oke as
well as to H. E. Landsberg and
Baruch Givoni are balanced by
quotations from urban
instrumentation in Tokyo,
Singapore, and Rio, as well as the
impressive recent European work
on urban microclimates.
Especially interesting to those of
us who live in predominantly
overheated climates in white-
roofed houses as part of inversion-
dominated cities, is Chapter 11,
‘Appropriate materials for the
urban environments’. Here the
American analytical work at
Laurence Berkeley Lab, published a
decade ago by Akbari, Taha,
Rosenfeld, etc, has been confirmed
by more recent papers by
Santamouris and many others
documented by 49 references. The
bottom line is that ‘the use of white
roofs and shade trees in Los Angeles
would lower the need for air
conditioning by 18%, or 1.04 billion
kWh, for the buildings directly
affected by the roofs and shaded by
trees … indirect annual savings
would be an additional 12% or 0.7
billion kWh’. But many of the
assumptions and calculation
procedures are at best relative
because the references are trusted,
and not challenged. Although the
energy aspects of transportation
are little discussed, they are
identified and would make a much-
needed complement to this
definitive text.
The differences in various
authors’ styles and degree of depth
add texture and believability, but
do not confuse the topic. For some,
the longest chapter, ‘Guidelines for
integrating energy conservation
techniques in urban buildings’,
may seem a simple-minded tutorial
on the shape and organization of
multi-storey urban buildings. But
this lesson is hard to find in either
textbooks or studio exercises.
Although the guidelines appear
based on Mediterranean office and
apartment buildings, they also
provide a checklist for other
climates and functional typologies.
For example, the final chapter, has
seven ‘Examples of Urban
Buildings’ (including four from
Greece and one from Nice on the
French Riviera), and all except a
German two-storey primary school
and gymnasium are truly urban,
with a minimum of four storeys,
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located in constricted built-up sites.
These southern examples from
overheated and under-ventilated
dense cities offer tougher
challenges than more northern or
less urban locations.
This tight package of timely
knowledge is valuable globally, but
especially where European climates
and culture prevail. A hidden
dimension that projects this
summary book well into the
concerns and practices of the
twenty-first century is the
inclusion of the CD-Rom. This is not
only a partial reproduction of the
text in digital format, but also an
application tool for energy and
environmental analysis using the
now usual interactive computer
mode. It brings a passive body of
information into electronic
immediacy with seven ‘knowledge
blocks’, each with cross hyperlinks.
Key words are coloured as hypertext
to get more information, to go to a
related topic, or to enlarge the
picture. Several computerized
evaluation tools are included and
integrated. The analogy is that each
block is a three-dimensional book
capitalizing on interactive learning
and providing easy application
methods. The CD-Rom then
multiplies the usefulness and
effectiveness of this EC investment
in the future of the built
environment.
Accommodating present and
near future populations is a
challenge of resources that can best
be met economically and socially
within the built environments of
cities. By 2000, at least 170 global
cities had more than one million
inhabitants. In the USA, 90% of the
population was estimated to live in
urban areas while in Europe the
estimate is more than 70%. Yet the
relative efficiencies of the two
populations demonstrate the effect
of differing cultural priorities, as
well as professional application of
design knowledge. The fantasy of
the autonomous suburban or rural
house where many of us cut our
teeth in understanding resource
flows must be replaced by urban
realities where there is the greatest
opportunity for value through
knowledgeable design. This text
and its CD represent the new
Vitruvius for that responsibility.
Jeffrey Cook is Regents’ Professor of
Architecture at Arizona State University,
founding editor of Passive Solar
Journal, and an international
proponent of sustainability through
passive and low energy architecture
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Parallax
by Steven Holl
Princeton Architectural Press, New
York, 2000
384 pp, 110 colour and 290 mono illus
isbn 1-56898-261-5
Price $40 (hb)
Event-Cities 2
by Bernard Tschumi
The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000
692 pp, 500 mono illus
isbn 0-262-70074-3
Price £23.95, $35 (pb)
Glass Ramps/Glass Wall:
Deviations from the Normative
by Bernard Tschumi, Hugh Dutton
and Jesse Reiser
Architectural Association, London,
2001
96 pp, 18 colour illus and 80 mono
illus
isbn 1-902902-00-9
Price £16 (pb)
Reviewed by John Morris Dixon
Here we have monographs on and
by two architects who have much in
common. Both could be said to
straddle the avant-garde and the
Establishment, incorporating their
advanced ideas into high-budget
projects. Both based in New York
(and on the Columbia University
faculty), they help the city
maintain its claim to serious
architectural thinking. Yet they
present opposing views on design:
Tschumi focuses on concept, Holl
on perception. As often happens
these days, the formats of Parallax
and Event-Cities 2 do much to
proclaim their authors’
contrasting concerns.
Tschumi tells us in his first
sentence that ‘the book makes
intentional use of rough,
photocopy-quality documents’ on
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reviews arq . vol 6 . no 1 . 2002 91
its 692 mat, textured pages, all
printed in black and white except
for 32 of them in red and white. But
the legibility of just about every
line and note indicates that
considerable care was taken; we’re
not seeing material just scooped
out of files. Black-and-white
sketches and technical drawings
are best, says Tschumi, for
‘emphasizing concepts, notations,
and strategies’. And concept is what
he dwells on in his concise text
passages. Two inches thick, with
conventional page dimensions (six
inches by nine), the book
approaches the size and weight of a
paving stone.
Holl, on the other hand, is
thinking from day one about
perception, about
phenomenological effect. He does
his conceptualizing with
watercolour sketches and with
models photographed under
anticipated lighting conditions. His
book, accordingly, includes
handsome photographs in colour
and black-and-white of models,
finished buildings, scientific
phenomena, and landscapes. Its
blocks of text are in a small, elegant
font, set off by ample white paper
with a lush, pearly sheen. Reference
drawings of key buildings are
arrayed on fold-out pages. This
book is smaller, but still relatively
thick (five by seven by one inch),
with over 350 pages. Designed by
the firm 2  4, it is in itself a
consciously sensuous object, like a
modern-day book of hours.
Beyond the clear messages
conveyed by format and graphics,
what do these two opposite-minded
architect-authors have to tell us?
Holl includes capsular lessons on
astronomy, atomic physics, biology,
and philosophy, then relates them
to the underlying principles of his
work. He wants to bridge ‘the gap
between the scientific and the
phenomenological’. We encounter
some Zenic statements such as ‘The
ultimate violence is paralysis’ and
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92 arq . vol 6 . no 1 . 2002 reviews
‘Existence and non-existence are
not different aspects of the thing –
they are the thing’. Along the way
he describes and illustrates 27 of
his projects, delineating the
bridges he makes from science to
building. He sees his art museum in
Bellevue, Washington, which is
composed of three blocks, as a
manifestation of ‘tripleness, or
non-dialectical ways of seeing and
thinking’. He links the design of his
visually porous undergraduate
residence now under construction
at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology to the writings of the
philosopher Maurice Merleau-
Ponty. There is no doubt that Holl is
totally convinced of these
interdisciplinary connections. He
never shows any glibness or irony,
either in his writing or in his work.
The reader whose brain gets over-
taxed has ample opportunity to
savour the seductive – and
informative – illustrations.
Tschumi is no less earnest. He
explains how his ‘projects always
begin from an urban condition and
a program’. Unlike some
conceptual designers, Tschumi
usually makes exposure of
construction technology a key part
of his ‘materialization of concept’.
And though Tschumi does not
design for a series of user vantage-
points or for calculated sun angles,
as Holl does, he is always thinking
about his spaces as incomplete
without people and of how his
concepts will be revealed to them.
Event-Cities 2 makes his points by
presenting 14 projects that his
office has handled since the 15
presented in the first Event-Cities
(The MIT Press, 1994).
Glass Ramps/Glass Wall explicates
Tschumi’s thinking by examining
the design process and the
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realization of his student union at
Columbia University. Brief essays by
Tschumi and collaborating
engineer Hugh Dutton are set
among ample drawings and
photographs. Here Tschumi has
responded to the straitened ‘urban
condition’ of the 1890s campus
design by McKim Mead & White.
The resulting concept includes two
masonry-walled blocks, filling
spaces designated on the original
plan. Bridging between the two
solids is a transparent element
criss-crossed by long-span ramps,
from which students enjoy
panoramic views of the campus
and can in turn be seen from
outside. Even with the most high-
tech frameless glazing, the
envelope of this portion isn’t really
transparent from outside except at
night. While many of the
components are elegant in
themselves, the array of exposed
steel required to support the glass –
ramps, railings, etc – distracts from
the view out. As for the walls of the
building’s solid portions, they look
flat and diagrammatic, as if the
architects were conceding only
grudgingly to the context.
Fortunately, we don’t all have to
choose between concepts and
phenomena, and these books can
expand our thinking about both of
these critical architectural
concerns. They also fulfil the
traditional function of explaining
some important design efforts of
our time.
John Morris Dixon was chief editor of
Progressive Architecture from
1972–1995
Architecture of Truth: the
Cistercian Abbey of Le Thoronet
photographs by Lucien Hervé
introduced by Le Corbusier and with
an afterword by John Pawson
Phaidon Press, London, 2000
160 pp, 67 mono illus
isbn 0-7148-4003-3
Price £35 (hb)
Reviewed by Antoine Lion
This is the story of two chefs
d’oeuvre: on the one hand, the
work of a great photographer of his
times, Lucien Hervé; on the other,
what John Pawson, in his Afterword
– and I am tempted to agree – calls
‘the most beautiful building in the
world’: the Cistercian Abbey of Le
Thoronet. The reader is invited to
admire forms, materials, lights and
shadows of unparalleled
perfection, over the course of a day
in this monastery in Provence,
from the light of dawn to that of
dusk.
It would be good to be left with
this pleasure and to add nothing
more. However we must go further.
First, to give the reader notice of
the surprises which await him or
her. Immediately following the
concise table of contents there’s a
text – undated – by Le Corbusier, a
superb page which begins: ‘The
pictures in this book are witnesses
to the truth’, and which, further
on, formulates the phrase used as
the title: ‘architecture of truth’. It
takes one by surprise. Did
Corbusier know this book, then?
After that, without any
introduction, comes a series of
photographs, punctuated by
quotations from the Bible or from
Cistercian authors, arranged
according to the canonical hours
from the Divine Office. It’s not until
page 154 that one finds brief
explanations. A feeling of
incoherence remains, and the
descriptive loose leaf included in
the work adds little more. There is a
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clear need for further information.
Everything here is based on a
work by Francois Cali and it is
shocking that there is no mention
of his name anywhere in the
present publication. He was the
author of a number of sumptuous,
radical books including La plus
grande aventure du monde (Editions
Arthaud, now out of print),
originally published in 1956.
Introduced by a comprehensive
contribution by Cali, the
photographs are those which, for
the most part, are used in the
present edition, sometimes framed
differently. They were interlaced
with ancient quotations (some of
which are repeated here), creating a
model structure and a work which
John Pawson calls: ‘the most
important book on my shelves’. The
notes of the new work largely
reproduce those of Cali.
In 1956, Le Corbusier was
engaged in the project for the
Dominican abbey of La Tourette. In
1953, his friend, Father Couturier
(to whom this book is dedicated),
had sent him to Le Thoronet to look
for inspiration. Decisively for La
Le Thoronet Abbey: entrance to the amarium (library) and the south stairs to the church
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Tourette, the visit revealed to Le
Corbusier the deep affinities –
hitherto ignored – between the
Cistercian aesthetic and his own
clear architectural partis: rigorous
functionalism, eschewal of
decoration, mastery of light. That
his friend Lucien Hervé had taken a
series of photos of Le Thoronet was
perhaps not just chance. Writing
the preface of Cali’s work gave Le
Corbusier the chance to express the
shock of his discovery and deliver
an unexpected eulogy on stone,
‘man’s best friend . . . In these days
of ‘crude concrete’, let us greet,
bless and salute, as we go on our
way, so wonderful an encounter’.
Not every reader of this Phaidon
edition will be lucky enough, like
John Pawson or me, to have the
1956 work to hand. Luck or
misfortune? – because the
comparison is painful. Cali’s
example made manifest a spiritual
affinity between the texts and the
images, conveyed in magnificent
typography (Plantin, 12, 18 and 24
point): there is nothing of that
now. The work was conceived by
people who knew the Cistercian
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reviews arq . vol 6 . no 1 . 2002 93
world: it is no longer the same. A
detail: structuring the book
according to the hours of the
monastic office did not permit the
suppression of prime (a name so
beautiful when one conjures up
the rhythms of light) or the
modification of the computation
of the other hours. Errors suggest
that the English edition of Cali’s
work has been consulted, resulting
in a distortion of names (the
historian of medieval philosophy,
Etienne Gilson, is found re-
christened as Stephen Gilson) and
architectural misinterpretations (a
note of Cali’s, talking of ‘the terrace
which covers the gallery of the
chapterhouse’ becomes ‘the roof of
the flat over the chapterhouse’.
And so on.)
There is worse. The photos of
Hervé, the real substance of the
book, do not stand comparison.
Reproduced in photogravure in
1956, today they are ‘printed in
China’. Each one is beautiful, but
the movement which went from
the clarity of dawn to the burning
of dusk is completely lost. The
result is flattened, the blacks are no
longer black, the evening sun gives
the same illumination as that of
the morning, the grain of the stone
has disappeared. The photo of the
roof of the church provides an
example. Illustrating the hour of
sext, it clearly inspired Le Corbusier
in his preface: ‘roofs and their
baked tiles (the same tile endlessly
multiplied, male and female – a
population of tiles)’. In 1956, in a
subtle scale of pale greys, it
reflected the dazzling light of the
Provençal sun, under the crushing
heat of high noon. A verse from
Psalms accompanied it: ‘vous vous
êtes couvert de la lumière comme d’un
manteau’ (you are covered with light
like a mantle). Of that sublime page
all that remains today is a dark
print, drowning everything in the
dirty greys of an image blurred by
too much enlargement.
So what conclusion can be
drawn? For the happy few who have
the Cali, leave this new edition well
alone. But for all other readers, it is
still a beautiful book, despite
everything; an evocation of a major
era in western architecture and a
reflection of a great love of Le
Corbusier, which was a source of
inspiration for his later work. For
that reason, it’s worth consulting.
Antoine Lion is a Dominican. He lives at
the convent of La Tourette. His review of
the French edition was translated by
Charles Rattray
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