analysing architecture-s.unwin

analysing ARCHITECTURE ‘analysing ARCHITECTURE should become an essential partof all architectural education and an informative guide to thepowerful analytical tool of architectural drawing.’

Howard Ray Lawrence, Pennsylvania State University

analysing ARCHITECTURE offers a unique ‘notebook’ of ar-chitectural strategies to present an engaging introduction to ele-ments and concepts in architectural design. Beautifully illustratedthroughout with the author’s original drawings, examples fromacross architectural history, from primitive places to late twenti-eth-century structures, are used to illustrate a number of analyti-cal themes and to show how drawing can be used to studyarchitecture.

Simon Unwin clearly identifies the key elements of architectureand conceptual themes apparent in buildings. He describes ideasfor use in the active process of design. Breaking down the gram-mar of architecture into themes and ‘moves’, Unwin exposes itsunderlying patterns to reveal the organisational strategies thatlie beneath the superficial appearances of buildings.

Exploring buildings as results of the interaction of people withthe world around them, analysing ARCHITECTURE offers adefinition of architecture as ‘identification of place’, and pro-vides a greater understanding of architecture as a creative disci-pline. This book presents a powerful impetus for readers todevelop their own capacities for architectural design.

Simon Unwin is Lecturer in Architecture at The Welsh School ofArchitecture, University of Wales, Cardiff.

analysing ARCHITECTURE

Simon Unwin

London and New York

First published 1997by Routledge11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. Simultaneously published in the USA and Canadaby Routledge29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1997 Simon Unwin

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted orreproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,or other means, now known or hereafter invented, includingphotocopying and recording, or in any information storage orretrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication DataUnwin, Simon, 1952–Analysing Architecture/Simon Unwin.Includes bibliographical references and index.1. Architectural design. I. Title.NA2750.U58 96–34005720'.1–dc20 ISBN 0-203-43998-8 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-74822-0 (Adobe eReader Format)ISBN 0-415-14477-9 (Print Edition)ISBN 0-415-14478-7 (pbk)

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CONTENTS

Introduction 9Acknowledgements 11Architecture as Identification of Place 13Basic Elements of Architecture 19Modifying Elements of Architecture 25Elements Doing More Than One Thing 37Using Things That Are There 43Primitive Place Types 53Architecture as Making Frames 75Temples and Cottages 85Geometry in Architecture 99Space and Structure 129Parallel Walls 139Stratification 149Transition, Hierarchy, Heart 157Postscript 163Case Studies

Fitzwilliam College Chapel 169The Schminke House 175Merrist Wood 183The Vanna Venturi House 187The Woodland Chapel 193

Select Bibliography and References 197Index 203

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

For some years I have used anotebook to analyse architec-ture through drawing. I find thisexercise useful as an architect,and it helps to focus my teach-ing. My simple premise is thatone’s capacity for ‘doing’ archi-tecture can be developed bystudying the work of others. Inthis way one can discover some

of the powers of architecture,and, by looking at how otherarchitects have used them, seehow they might be managed inone’s own design.

For teaching I have organ-ised my notebook findings intothe beginnings of a thematicframework, which can be usedin analysing examples. The fol-lowing chapters illustrate someof the themes that have emergedso far. They make observationson architecture as a creative dis-cipline, its elements, the condi-tions that affect it, and attitudesthat may be adopted in doing it.

The first chapter offers aworking definition of architec-ture, as identification of place.This is put forward as the pri-mary concern of architecture,and as a theme underpins eve-rything that follows. Realisa-tion that the primitivemotivation of architecture is toidentify (to recognise, amplify,create the identity of) places hasbeen the key that has allowedaccess into the related areasexplored in this book.

A large part of the bookdeals with conceptual strategiesused in design. There are chap-ters which look at differentways of organising space, andat the various roles of geometryin architecture.

The poetic and philosophi-cal potential of architecture is,I think, evident throughout. Ifpoetry is a condensation of ex-perience of life, then architec-ture is poetic, essentially. But itcan be seen that some works ofarchitecture do more: they seemto provide a transcendent po-etry—a level of meaning andsignificance that overlays the

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immediate presentation ofplace, and which is to be inter-preted, as a complement to sen-sual perception and experience,for appreciation by the intellect.

The chapters deal withspecific themes. These themesare like analytical ‘filters’ orframes of reference. Each ab-stracts a particular aspect of thecomplexity of architecture—ar-chitecture as making frames,primitive place types, templesand cottages, stratification, ge-ometry….

In all the chapters there isan intimate connection betweenthe text, which is explanatory,and the drawings, which havebeen the principle medium ofanalysis. Some of the drawingsare diagrams of particular ele-ments or ideas, but many areplans or sections of exampleswhich illustrate the themes be-ing discussed.

Some works have been se-lected as appropriate examplesin more than one of the chap-ters, illustrating a differenttheme in each. Any work of ar-chitecture may of course be ex-amined through any or all of thefilters, though this will not nec-essarily produce interesting rev-elations in all instances.

Towards the end of the bookthere are some case studieswhich show how a fuller analy-sis of a particular work can beachieved by examining it undera number of themes.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many people have contributed,knowingly or unwittingly, tothe preparation of this book,not least the numerous studentarchitects who have been sub-jected to various forms of teach-ing related to its development.Some of them have said things,or done things in their designs,that have prompted thoughtswhich are included here.

The same is true of my col-leagues in architectural educa-tion, in particular those I workwith week by week in the WelshSchool of Architecture. Some ofthe examples were suggested byKieren Morgan, Colin Hockley,Rose Clements, John Carter,Claire Gibbons, Geoff Cheasonand Jeremy Dain.

I have benefitted frommany discussions with CharlesMacCallum, Head of theMackintosh School of Architec-ture in Glasgow, and from theencouragement of PatrickHodgkinson, of the BathSchool.

I am also grateful to theHead of Department at theWelsh School, RichardSilverman; and to various visi-tors to the school who have,unknowingly, stimulated ideaswhich are included in the fol-lowing pages.

Some of my colleagues inarchitectural education havecontributed to the evolution ofthis book by asserting things

with which I found I could notagree. My attempts to deter-mine why I did not agree haveaffected my thinking greatly; so,although I shall not name them,I must also thank my theoreti-cal antagonists as well as myfriends.

Some ideas have comefrom far afield, from friendsand opponents I rarely or neversee, but with whom I sometimesindulge in discussion across theInternet: in particular, HowardLawrence, together with othercontributors to the ‘listserv’g r o u p — D E S I G N [email protected].

Thanks are due too toGerallt Nash and EurwynWiliam at the Museum ofWelsh Life for kindly providingme with a survey of the cottageLlainfadyn, on which the draw-ings at the beginning of thechapter Space and Structure arebased.

I am especially grateful toDean Hawkes, Professor of De-sign at the Welsh School, whowas kind enough to read thematerial while in preparationand who made a number of use-ful comments.

And finally, as always, onemust thank those who are closeand who put up with havingsomeone around who is writ-ing a book. In my case theselong-suffering people are Gill,Mary, David and James.

Simon Unwin, Cardiff, December 1996

ARCHITECTURE ASIDENTIFICATION OF PLACE

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Children under a tree have, inthe most primitive way, madean architectural decision bychoosing it as a place to sit.

Before we can get on to look-ing at some of the conceptualstrategies of architecture in de-tail, it is necessary to lay outsome ground work with regardto the nature of architecture,and its purpose. Before we canget onto the ‘how?’, we need tolook briefly at the ‘what?’ and‘why?’; i.e. ‘what is architec-ture?’, and ‘why do we do it?’.

It is probably fair to saythat the matters of the defini-tion and the purpose of archi-tecture have never been settled.These are issues about whichthere is a great deal of confu-sion and debate, which isstrange considering that archi-tecture as a human activity isliterally older than the pyra-mids. The question ‘What is onedoing when one is doing archi-tecture?’ appears simple, but itis not an easy one to answer.

Various ways of framing ananswer to this question seem tohave contributed to the confusion;some of these relate to compari-son of architecture with otherforms of art. Is architecture merelysculpture—the three-dimensionalcomposition of forms in space? Isit the application of aesthetic con-siderations onto the form of build-ings—the art of making buildingsbeautiful? Is it the decoration ofbuildings? Is it the introductionof poetic meaning into buildings?Is it the ordering of buildings ac-cording to some intellectual sys-tem—classicism, functionalism,post-modernism…?

One might answer ‘yes’ toall these questions, but noneseems to constitute the rudimen-tary explanation of architecture

that we need. All of them seemto allude to a special character-istic, or a ‘superstructural’ con-cern, but they all seem to miss acentral point which one suspectsshould be more obvious. Whatis needed for the purposes of thisbook is a much more basic, andaccessible, understanding of thenature of architecture, one thatallows those who engage in it toknow what they are doing.

Perhaps the broadest defi-nition of architecture is thatwhich one often finds in dic-tionaries: ‘architecture is thedesign of buildings’. One can-not contradict this definition,but it doesn’t help very mucheither; in a way it actually di-minishes one’s conception of ar-chitecture, by limiting it to ‘thedesign of buildings’. Althoughit is not necessary to do so, onetends to think of ‘a building’ asan object (like a vase, or a ciga-rette lighter), and architectureinvolves rather more than thedesign of objects.

One more useful way ofunderstanding architecture canbe gleaned, ironically, from theway the word is used in regardto other art forms, music inparticular. In musicology thearchitecture of a symphony canbe said to be the conceptualorganisation of its parts into awhole, its intellectual structure.It is strange that the word israrely used in this sense withregard to architecture itself.

In this book this is theroot definition of architecturethat has been adopted. Here,the architecture of a building, agroup of buildings, a city, a

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garden…is considered to be itsconceptual organisation, its in-tellectual structure. This is adefinition of architecturewhich is applicable to all kindsof examples, from simple rus-tic buildings to formal urbansettings.

Though this is a useful wayof understanding architectureas an activity, it doesn’t addressthe question of purpose—the‘why’of architecture. This ap-pears to be another difficult‘big’ question, but again thereis an answer at the rudimentarylevel which is useful in estab-lishing something of what oneis striving to achieve when oneis doing architecture.

In looking for this answer,simply suggesting that the pur-pose of architecture is ‘to de-sign buildings’ is again anunsatisfactory dead end; partlybecause one suspects that archi-tecture involves rather morethan that, and partly because itmerely transfers the problem ofunderstanding from the wordarchitecture onto the wordbuilding.

The route to an answer liesin forgetting altogether, for themoment, about the word build-ing, and thinking about how ar-chitecture began in the distantprimeval past. (Archaeologicalexactitude is not necessary inthis, nor need we get embroiledin discussions about whetherthings were done better in thosedays than in today’s more com-plex world.)

Imagine a prehistoric fam-ily making its way through alandscape unaffected by humanactivity. They decide to stop,and as the evening draws on

they light a fire. By doing so,whether they intend to staythere permanently or just forone night, they have establisheda place. The fireplace is for thetime being the centre of theirlives. As they go about the busi-ness of living they make moreplaces, subsidiary to the fire: aplace to store fuel; a place tosit; a place to sleep; perhapsthey surround these places witha fence; perhaps they sheltertheir sleeping place with acanopy of leaves. From theirchoice of the site onwards theyhave begun the evolution of thehouse; they have begun to or-ganise the world around theminto places which they use fora variety of purposes. Theyhave begun to do architecture.

The idea that identificationof place lies at the generativecore of architecture can be ex-plored and illustrated further. Indoing this one can think of ar-chitecture, not as a language, butas being in some ways like one.

The architectural actions of aprehistoric family making its

dwelling place can be repli-cated and updated in a beach

camp. The fire is the focus,and also a place to cook. Awindshield protects the fire

from too much breeze, and asa wall begins to give some

privacy. There is a placewhere the fuel for the fire is

kept, and the back of the caracts as a food store. There are

places to sit, and if one wereto stay overnight, one would

need a bed. These are thebasic ‘places’ of a house; theycome before walls and a roof.

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Reference for Welsh farm-houses:Royal Commission on An-cient and Historical Monu-ments in Wales—Glamorgan:Farmhouses and Cottages,1988.

The inside of this Welsh farm-house can be compared with thebeach camp on the previouspage. The places of the beachcamp have been transposed intoa container which is the houseitself. Although such images canfeed our romantic ideas of thepast, the architecture itself was,before it became anything else,a product of life.

Place is to architecture, it maybe said, as meaning is to lan-guage. Learning to do architec-ture can seem to be like learningto use language. Like languagearchitecture has its patterns andarrangements, in different com-binations and compositions ascircumstances suggest. Signifi-cantly, architecture relates di-rectly to the things we do; itchanges and evolves as new, orreinterpreted, ways of identify-ing places are invented or re-fined.

Perhaps most important,thinking of architecture as iden-tification of place accommo-dates the idea that architectureis participated in by more thanthe individual. In any one ex-ample (a building for instance)

there will be places proposed bythe designer, and places createdby adoption by the users, (thesemay or may not match). Unlikea painting or a sculpture, whichmay be said to be the intellec-tual property of one mind, ar-chitecture depends uponcontributions from many. Theidea of architecture as identifi-cation of place asserts the in-dispensable part played inarchitecture by the user as wellas the designer; and for the de-signer who will listen, it assertsthat places proposed should ac-cord with places used, even if ittakes time for this to happen;

So called ‘traditional’ ar-chitecture is full of placeswhich, through familiarityand use, accord well with us-ers’ perceptions and expecta-tions. The illustration on thispage shows the interior of aWelsh farmhouse (the upperfloor has been cut through toshow some of the upstairsroom). The places that are evi-dent can be compared directlywith those in the beach campshown on the opposite page.

The fire remains the focusand a place to cook, thoughthere is now also an oven—thesmall arched opening in the sidewall of the fireplace. The ‘cup-board’ to the left of the pictureis actually a box-bed. There isanother bed upstairs, posi-tioned to enjoy the warm airrising from the fire. Under thatbed there is a place for storingand curing meat. There is a set-tle to the right of the fire (and amat for the cat). In this exam-ple, unlike the beach camp, allthese places are accommodatedwithin a container—the walls


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and roof of the house as a whole(which itself, seen from the out-side, becomes a place identifierin a different way).

Although nobody is shownin the drawing, every one of theplaces mentioned is perceived interms of how it relates to use,occupation, meaning. Oneprojects people, or oneself, intothe room, under the blankets ofthe bed, cooking on the fire,chatting by the fire-side…. Suchplaces are not abstractions suchas one finds in other arts; theyare an enmeshed part of the realworld. At its fundamental levelarchitecture does not deal inabstractions, but with life as itis lived, and its fundamentalpower is to identify place.

Conditions of architectureIn trying to understand the

powers of architecture one mustalso be aware of the conditionswithin which they are employed.

Though its limits cannotbe set, and should perhaps al-ways be under review, architec-ture is not a free art of the mind.Discounting for the momentthose architectural projects thatare designed never to be real-ised, as conceptual or polemicstatements, the processes of ar-chitecture are operated in (oron) a real world with real char-acteristics: gravity, the groundand the sky, solid and space, theprogress of time, and so on.

Also, architecture is oper-ated by and for people, whohave needs and desires, beliefsand aspirations; who have aes-thetic sensibilities which areaffected by warmth, touch,odour, sound, as well as byvisual stimuli; who do things,

and whose activities have prac-tical requirements; who seemeaning and significance in theworld around them.

Such is no more than a re-minder of the simple and basicconditions under which we alllive, and within which architec-ture must operate. There arehowever other general themesthat condition the operation ofarchitecture. Just as the lan-guages of the world have theircommon characteristics—a vo-cabulary, grammatical struc-tures, etc.—so too doesarchitecture have its elements,patterns, and structures (bothphysical and intellectual).

Though not as open toflights of imagination as otherarts, architecture has fewer lim-its. Painting does not have totake gravity into account; mu-sic is solely aural. Architectureis however not constrained bythe limits of a frame; nor is itconfined to one sense.

What is more, while mu-sic, painting and sculpture ex-ist in a way separate from life,in a transcendent special zone,architecture incorporates life.People and their activities arean indispensable component ofarchitecture, not merely as spec-tators to be entertained, but ascontributors and participants.

Painters, sculptors, com-posers of music, may complainabout how their viewers or au-dience never see or hear their artin quite the same way as it wasconceived, or that it is inter-preted or displayed in ways thataffect its innate character, butthey do have control over theessence of their work; and thatessence is, in a way, sealed

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hermetically within the object:the musical score, the covers ofa book, or the picture frame. Buteven the essence of architectureis penetrated by the peoplewhose activities it accommo-dates, which can change it.

[Architecture has also beencompared with film-making—an art form that incorporatespeople, place, and actionthrough time. But even in filmthe director is in control of theessence of the art object throughthe control of plot, sets, cam-era angles, script, etc., which isnot the case in architecture.]

The conditions withinwhich one can engage in archi-tecture are therefore complex,perhaps more so than for anyother art form. There are thephysical conditions imposed bythe natural world and how itworks: space and solid, time,gravity, weather, light…. Thereare also the more fickle politi-cal conditions provided by theinteractions of human beingsindividually and in society.

Architecture is inescap-ably a political field, in whichthere are no incontrovertiblerights and many arguablewrongs. The world aroundcan be conceptually organised

in infinite different ways. Andjust as there are many reli-gions and many political phi-losophies, there are manydivergent ways in which archi-tecture is used. The organisa-tion and disposition of placesis so central and important tothe ways in which people livethat it has through history be-come less and less a matter oflaissez faire, more and moresubject to political control.

People make places inwhich to do the things they doin their lives—places to eat, tosleep, to shop, to worship, toargue, to learn, to store, and soon and on. The way in whichpeople organise their places isrelated to their beliefs and theiraspirations, their world view.As world views vary, so does ar-chitecture: at the personal level;at the social and cultural level;and between different sub-cul-tures within a society.

Which use of architectureprevails in any situation isusually a matter of power—political, financial, or that ofassertion, argument, persua-sion. Launching design intoconditions like these is an ad-venture only to be undertakenby the brave-hearted.

BASIC ELEMENTSOF ARCHITECTURE

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Places can be identified by arange of basic elements:defined areas of ground,walls, platforms, columns,roof, door…

Now that we have sorted out aworking definition of architec-ture and its fundamental pur-pose—conceptual organisation,and identification of place—wecan begin to look at the ‘mate-rials’ that are available to us indoing architecture.

These are not the physicalmaterials of building—bricksand mortar, glass, timber, etc.—but the conceptual elements ofarchitecture. And they shouldbe considered not as objects inthemselves, but in the ways inwhich they contribute to theidentification (or making) ofplaces.

In physical terms the pri-mary elements of architectureare the conditions within whichit operates (which have alreadybeen mentioned). Principallythese include: the ground, whichis the datum to which most prod-ucts of architecture relate; thespace above that surface, whichis the medium that architecturemoulds into places; gravity;light; and time (few examples ofarchitecture can be experiencedas a whole all at one time; proc-esses of discovery, approach,entry, exploration, memory, etc.are usually involved).

Within these conditionsthe architect has a palette ofconceptual materials withwhich to work. It cannot be

said that the following list iscomplete, but at the most basiclevel this palette includes:

defined area of ground

The definition of an area ofground is fundamental to theidentification of many if notmost types of place. It may beno more than a clearing in theforest, or it may be a pitch laidout for a football game. It maybe small, or it may stretch to thehorizon. It need not be rectan-gular in shape, nor need it belevel. It need not have a preciseboundary but may, at its edges,blend into the surroundings.

raised area, or platform

A raised platform creates a levelhorizontal surface lifted abovethe natural ground. It may behigh or low. It may be large—a

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stage or terrace; it may be me-dium-sized—a table or altar; itmay be small—a step or shelf.

lowered area, or pit

A pit is formed by excavationof the ground’s surface. It cre-ates a place which is below thenatural level of the ground. Itmay be a grave, or a trap, oreven provide space for a sub-terranean house. It might be asunken garden, or perhaps aswimming pool.

marker

A marker identifies a particu-lar place in the most basic way.It does so by occupying the spotand by standing out from thesurroundings. It may be a tomb-stone, or a flag on a golf course;it might be a church steeple, ora multistorey office block.

focusThe word focus is the Latin forhearth. In architecture it canmean any element upon which

concentration is brought tobear. This might be a fireplace,but it could also be an altar, athrone, a work of art, even adistant mountain.

barrier

A barrier divides one place fromanother. It could be a wall; but itmight also be a fence, or a hedge.It could even be a dyke or a moat,or just the psychological barrierof a line on the floor.

roof, or canopy

The roof divides a place fromthe forces of the sky, shelteringit from sun or rain. In so doing,a roof also implies a definedarea of ground beneath it. Aroof can be as small as a beamover a doorway, or as big as avault over a football stadium.

Because of gravity a roof

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needs support. This could beprovided by walls, but it couldbe by…

supporting posts, or columns

Other basic architectural elementswhich identify places include:

path

…a place along which onemoves; which might be straight,or trace an irregular routeacross the ground surfaceavoiding obstacles.

A path might also be in-clined: as a ramp, a stair, oreven a ladder. It might be for-mally laid out, or merely de-fined by use—a line of wearacross the countryside.

openings

…doorways through which onemay pass from one place to an-other, but which are also placesin their own right; and windowsthrough which one can look,

and which allow passage oflight and air.

Historically, a more recentbasic element is the glass wall,which is a barrier physically butnot visually.

Another is the suspensionrod or cable, which can supporta platform or roof, but whichalso depends literally upon astructural support above.

Basic elements such as thesecan be combined to create rudi-mentary architectural forms.Sometimes these combined ele-ments have names of their own,for example:


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A bridge is a path, over a

barrier; a platform; it can alsobe a roof.

Barriers can be combinedto form an enclosure, which de-fines an area by putting a wallaround it.

Walls and a roof create acell, defining a place separatedfrom everywhere else.

And giving a roof thesupporting columns it needs,creates an aedicule (right).

These basic elements and ru-dimentary forms recur again andagain in the examples in this book.They are used in architecture ofall times and regions of the world.

An ancient Greek templeconsists of some of these basicelements, used in a clear and di-rect way to identify the placeof a god.

The building stands on aplatform, and consists of wallswhich define a cell, which is sur-rounded by columns. The col-umns together with the walls ofthe cell support the roof. Thecell is entered through a door-

References for Greek temples:

A.W.Lawrence—Greek Archi-tecture, 1957.

D.S.Robertson—Greek andRoman Architecture, 1971.

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way, outside of which is a smallplatform in the form of an al-tar. Such a temple, often sitedon a hill, as a whole acts as amarker, which can be seen fromfar away. Together, the platform,walls, columns, roof, altar, iden-tify the place of the god, who isrepresented by the carved statuewithin.

More complex and subtleworks of architecture are alsocomposed of basic elements.

This is the ground floorplan of the Villa Mairea, ahouse designed by the Finnisharchitects Alvar Aalto and hiswife Aino, and built in 1939.

Although it is not drawnin three dimensions, you can seethat the places which constitutethe house are defined by thebasic elements of wall, floor,roof, column, defined area, pit(the swimming pool), and soon. Some places—the approachto the main entrance (indicatedby an arrow) for example, andthe covered area between themain house and the sauna—areidentified by roofs (shown asdotted lines) supported by slen-der columns. Some places areidentified by particular floormaterials, timber, stone, grass,etc. Some places are divided bylow walls (not hatched), othersby full-height walls (hatched),or by glass walls.

Architecture is not just aseasy as knowing the basic ele-ments. A large portion of itssubtlety lies in how they are puttogether. In language, knowingall the words in the dictionarywouldn’t necessarily make onea great novelist. Having a goodvocabulary does however givegreater choice and accuracywhen one wants to say some-thing. In architecture knowingthe basic elements is only thevery first step, but knowingthem gives one a choice of howto give identity to places in ap-propriate ways.

References for Villa Mairea:

Richard Weston—VillaMairea, in the Buildings inDetail series, 1992.

Richard Weston—AlvarAalto, 1995.

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It is impossible to convey fullyin drawing, but the architec-ture of these steps consists inmore than just their visibleform. They are in theGeneralife, near the Alhambrain Granada, Spain. The placeshown in the drawing stimu-lates nearly all the senses: thedeep greens of the leaves, thecolours of the flowers and thepatterns of light and shadestimulate the sight; there is thesound of moving water innearby fountains; the smell ofwarm vegetation, and theperfume of oranges andbougainvillaea; the variationsin temperature between the hotsunny places and the coolershady places; the cold waterfor bathing hands and feet; thetextures of the cobbled path-ways; and, if one were to pickone of the oranges, or a grape,the taste would contribute tothe place too.

The basic elements of architec-ture as described in the previouschapter are abstract ideas. (Thatis why they were illustrated insuch a sparse way.) When, bybeing built, they are given physi-cal form, various additional fac-tors come into play.

In their physical realisationand our actual experience ofthem, basic elements and theplaces they identify are modified:by light, by colour, by sounds,by temperature, by air move-ments, by smells (and even pos-sibly by tastes), by the qualitiesand textures of the materialsused, by use, by scale, by the ef-fects and experience of time….

Such modifying forces arepart of the conditions of archi-tecture; they can also be elementsin the identification of place.

The possible configura-tions of basic and modifying el-ements are probably infinite.The inside of a cell might bedark, or bright; it might mufflesound, or have an echo; it mightbe warm, or cool; it might bedank, or fresh; it might smellof expensive perfume, or ofstale sweat, of fruit, or of freshcooking. A pavement may berough, or as smooth and slip-pery as ice. An enclosure (a gar-den) might be sunny, or shady.A platform (a seat) might be ashard as stone or metal, or soft,padded with foam or feathers.An aedicule may be shelteredfrom wind, or be exposed andbreezy. And so on.

As abstract ideas, basic el-ements are subject to completecontrol by the designing mind;modifying elements may be less

compliant. One might decideon the precise shape and pro-portions of a column, a cell, oran aedicule, but the matter ofhow it sounds, or is lit, orsmells, or changes with time,is a more subtle issue. Controlover modifying elements is acontinuing and evolving battle.For example: in primitivetimes, light would have beenthat provided by the sky, andnot subject to control; nowthere is electric light which canbe controlled precisely. In thedistant past, materials forbuilding, whether stone or tim-ber, were rough hewn; nowtheir textures and qualities canbe finely controlled.

Though use of the basic el-ements may be the primary wayin which a designing mind con-ceptually organises space intoplaces, modifying elements con-tribute a great deal to the expe-rience of those places.

Light

First amongst the modifying el-ements of architecture is light.

Light is a condition of ar-chitecture, but it can also beused as an element. Light fromthe sky is the pervasive mediumthrough which sighted peopleexperience the products of ar-chitecture; but light, both natu-ral and artificial, can bemanipulated by design to iden-tify particular places and to giveplaces particular character.

If one is thinking of archi-tecture as sculpture it is by lightthat it is seen and its modellingappreciated. If one is thinking

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of architecture as identificationof place, then one is aware thatthere can be light places and darkplaces, places with a soft evenlight and places with the strongbrightness and sharp shadows ofsunlight; places where the lightis dappled, or constantly butsubtly changing; places, such astheatres, where there is a starkcontrast between light (thestage—the place of the action)and dark (the auditorium—theplace of the audience).

Light can be related to theactivity in a place. Different kindsof light can be appropriate for dif-ferent kinds of activity. A jewel-ler at his workbench needs stronglight over a particular area. Anartist in her studio needs constantand even light by which to paint.Children in school need goodgeneral lighting for work andplay. In all instances light contrib-utes to the identification of place.

Light changes and can be al-tered. Light from the sky variesthrough the cycles of night andday, and during different timesof the year; sometimes it is shadedor defused by clouds. The varia-tions can be stimulating.

Daylight can be exploited inmaking places. Its qualities can

be changed by the ways in whichit is allowed into a building.

Some old houses have

broad chimney stacks. Open tothe sky they allow a dim ‘reli-gious’ light to illuminate thehearth (when there is no fire).Le Corbusier used a similar ef-fect in the side chapels of Notre-Dame du Haut at Ronchamp.Using light ‘scoops’ he identifiedthe places of the side altars withdaylight softened by its reflec-tion off white roughcast walls.

The way light is admittedinto the side chapels at

Ronchampis similar ineffectto that of light filteringdownan old broadchimney stack.

Modifying Elements of Architecture

27

The same sort of effect isused in this crematorium at Boras,Sweden, by Harald Ericson. It wasbuilt in 1957, three years after theRonchamp chapel. The drawingshows its long section.

In the same year, RalphErskine used a roof-light cumlight scoop to identify the placeof a small winter garden in themiddle of a single-storey villawhich he built at Storvik, alsoin Sweden.

Light from an electric bulbis more constant and control-lable than daylight: it can beswitched on and off, or pre-cisely varied in intensity, colourand direction. One of the mostintense uses of electric lightingis in the theatre; but any placecan be considered as a ‘theatre’and lit accordingly.

A spotlight can identify theplace of an actor, a singer, a paint-ing, an object…anything onwhich attention is to be focused.

Beams of light can alsowork in the opposite way, draw-ing attention to their source.

In identifying placesthrough architecture, light—both the varying light from thesky, and the precisely control-lable light from electric bulbs—can contribute in many ways.

The way in which lightcontributes to the identificationof place is part of architecture.Decisions about light play theirpart in the conceptual organi-sation of space, and affect theways in which basic elementsof architecture are used.

Light contributes to theambience of place. One is likelyto make the quality of light in aplace of contemplation or wor-ship different from that in a placefor playing basketball or one forperforming a surgical operation.

Without changing thephysical form of a place its char-acter can be radically altered bychanging the way in which it islit. Think of the dramatic changein the appearance of a friend’sface when you hold a flashlightunder his or her chin. The samechanges can occur in a roomwhen it is lit in different ways,at different intensities, and fromdifferent directions. A room’scharacter changes radicallywhen, in the evening, the electriclights are put on and the curtainsare drawn; the fading dusk lightis replaced with a constant

In this villa in Sweden, RalphErskine used a roof-light toidentify the place of a smallwinter garden at the heart of thehouse.

A spotlight can identify theplace of anything upon whichone wishes to focus attention.


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brightness. We are perhaps so fa-miliar with this event that we donot recognise its drama.

The device of reversing thelighting conditions in a theatre,when the house lights go outand the stage lights come on, isan important ingredient in themagic of theatre.

Light can make the fabricof a building seem todematerialise. A well lit, com-pletely smooth, surface (of awall, or a dome, for example),of which one perhaps cannotsee the edges, can appear to loseits substance and become likeair. The absence of light canhave a similar effect. The sur-faces in the distant recesses ofthe interior of a gothic churchcan seem to disappear in thegloom.

There are places wherelight is constant, and placeswhere light changes. In somebuildings (hypermarkets orshopping malls for example)electric bulbs supply light whichis exactly the same all the time,at 9.30 on a winter evening, andat 12 noon on a summer day.

Making a clearing in a for-est is an architectural act. It re-moves the obstruction of treetrunks, but it also changes gen-eral shade into a place withbright light from the sky. Theremoval of obstruction meansthat the place becomes a ‘danc-ing floor’; the admission of lightaccentuates the place, and al-lows it to be a garden ratherthan a forest.

Erecting a roof underdesert sun creates a patch ofshade. The creation of a placeof shade is essential to the ar-chitecture of a Bedouin tent.

A roof, which might insome climates be consideredprimarily as protection againstrain, is also a shade. Putting aroof-light in it can be like mak-ing a clearing in a forest, creat-ing a pool of light surroundedby shade.

A lone lamp in a darkstreet identifies a place; a redlight maybe identifies some-where more specific.

The doors of ancient Greek

temples faced the morning sun.The red light from the east musthave dramatically illuminated thefigure of the god within. Like acannon operating in reverse, thesun’s horizontal light, strikingdeep into the interior of the tem-ple helped to identify the placeof the image of the god at a par-ticularly significant time of day.

In the ceiling of the largechurch of the abbey of LaTourette in southern France, thearchitect Le Corbusier designed

A roof-light in a roomidentifies a place of light.

A tent in the desert identi-fies a place of shade.

Inside the tower ofBrockhampton Church,

designed by William RichardLethaby in 1902, the win-

dows cast shadows of theirtracery as a pattern of sun-

light on the white walls.


29

a relatively small rectangularroof-light. As the sun movesacross the sky, through the darkinterior a rectangle of its beamstracks like a slowly movingsearchlight.

In the side chapel of thesame church Le Corbusier useddeep circular roof-lights, likebroad gun barrels with brightlycoloured inner surfaces, to illu-minate the places of the altars.

In the crypt chapel of thechurch intended for the GüellColony in southern Spain, thearchitect Antonio Gaudi cre-ated a place of darkness inwhich columns and vaults meltinto shadow, lit only by thestained glass windows. Thischapel, rather than making aclearing, recreates the forest,with stone tree trunks and col-oured dappled light seepingunder a canopy of shade.

ColourIssues of colour are of courseinseparable from those oflight. Light itself can be anycolour; coloured glass changes

the colour of light whichpasses through it; the apparentcolours of material objects areaffected by the colour of thelight that falls on them.

Colour, with light, canplay apart in identifying place.A room painted a particularshade of green has a particularcharacter, and is likely to beknow as the ‘Green Room’; aroom lit only by a blue electriclamp has a particular character;a room lit by daylight passingthrough coloured glass win-dows has a particular charac-ter. Different colours andqualities of light may seem tosuggest different moods.

Colour is not only a mat-ter of decoration or the creationof places with particular moods.Colour plays a part in place rec-ognition. The importance ofcolour in place recognition isunderlined by camouflage,which conceals by destroying orobscuring colour differences.

Colour is also used in cod-ing. In directing someone to yourhouse, you might describe it asthe house with the red (or blue,or green, or whatever colour)door (or walls, or windows, orroof). A coloured line can indi-cate a place where you shouldwait (to have your passportchecked). A change in the col-our of paving slabs, or carpet,might indicate a particular path-way, giving it special importance(as when a red carpet is laiddown for an important person),or help people find their way.

TemperatureTemperature plays a part inthe identification of place too.The chief purpose in building

In this image you have toimagine the statue of the godilluminated by the goldenlight from the rising sun.

In the Aye Simon ReadingRoom (in the GuggenheimMuseum of Art designed byFrank Lloyd Wright) RichardMeier, who was remodellingthe room, used three existingrooflights to identify threespecific places (from left toright): the built in seat; thereading table; the reception-ist’s desk.


30

an igloo is to organise a smallplace of relative warmthamidst the snowfields of thearctic north.

A reason for the shadedpatios, full of plants, in thehouses of Cordoba, is that theycreate a relatively cool place asa respite from the heat of south-ern Spain.

Temperature has alwaysbeen a central consideration ofarchitecture when thought of asidentification of place.

Temperature may or maynot be associated with light. Inthe temperate zones of thenorthern hemisphere a southfacing wall can make a placewhich is both bright and warmfrom the light and heat of thesun. An air-conditioning outlet,however, which emits no light,can identify an attractivelywarm place on an icy day. Abright room can of course becold; a dark one warm.

The interiors of some build-ings (recent art galleries for ex-ample) have constant, unvaryingtemperature in all parts, care-fully controlled by air-condition-ing and computer systems.

In other buildings, a ram-bling old house for example,there may be places with differ-ent temperatures: a warm placeby a fire, a cool hallway, a warmattic, a cool cellar, a warm liv-ing room, a cool passageway, awarm courtyard, a cool pergolaor verandah, a warm conserva-tory, a cool larder, a hot kitchenoven, a cold ice-house…; mov-ing from place to place onepasses through zones of differ-ent temperatures, related to dif-ferent purposes and providingdifferent experiences.

VentilationTemperature is involved withventilation and humidity. To-gether they can identify placeswhich may be warm, dry, andstill; cold, damp, and draughty;warm, humid, and still; cold,dry, and draughty; and so on.

A fresh breezy place can berefreshing after a warm, humidone; a warm, still place is wel-come after a cold windy one.

In the ancient palaces of theMediterranean island of Crete,which has a hot, dry climate,royal apartments had open ter-races and tiny courtyards shadedfrom sun, and positioned tocatch or produce air movementto cool the interior spaces.

In the front elevation ofthe Altes Museum in Berlin,designed by Karl FriedrichSchinkel in the nineteenth cen-tury, there is a loggia, onceopen to the outdoor air, con-taining a pair of stairs fromground to first floor, and look-ing over the square (the

The residential quarters inthe palaces of ancient Crete

were well shaded. They werealso provided with many

openings and small light wellswhich, by providing ventila-tion, helped keep the rooms

cool in the severe Cretansummer heat. (This is part of

the palace of Knossos.)

The small courtyards(patios) of houses in southern

Spain are shaded by their highwalls and, when the sun is atits highest, by awnings. Theyare packed with many plants,and maybe a small fountain.

Evaporation from thesecreates cool air which flowsthrough the rooms and into

the narrow streets.

An air-conditioning outletcan identify a warm place to

stand on a cold day.


31

Lustgarten) in front of the mu-seum. Before it was enclosedwith a glass curtain wall (inthe early 1990s) this loggia,which is encountered duringone’s progression through themuseum as well as at the be-ginning and end of a visit, pro-vided a reminder of the freshair and the openness of theoutside, as a contrast to the en-closed interiors of the galleries.

SoundSound can be as powerful aslight in identifying place. Placescan be distinguished by thesounds they make, or by theways in which they affectsounds made in them.

Some religions use sound toidentify their places of worship:by bells, or gongs, or windchimes, or a priest calling froma minaret.

A place might be distin-guishable by the sound of thewind in the leaves of its trees,or by the sound of a stream orfountain of water. One’s expe-rience of a hotel room might bespoilt by the constant hum ofits air-conditioning. A particu-lar place in a city might be as-sociated with the music of aparticular busker. A place—anexamination room or a libraryor a monastery refectory—might be distinguished by itssilence; a restaurant by its tapedbackground music.

Places can be identified bysound, but they can also be

Above right is the groundfloor plan of the Altes Mu-seum in Berlin; above left ispart of the second floor plan,showing the loggia. Below is asketch of the loggia lookingout towards the Lustgarten,(there is a much better versionof this drawing in Schinkel’sown Collection of Architec-tural Designs, originallypublished in 1866 but repub-lished in facsimile in 1989).


32

identified by the ways in whichthey affect sounds made withinthem.

A sound in a cathedralwhich is large and with hardsurfaces, will echo. A sound ina small room with a carpet, softupholstered furniture and cur-tained windows, will be muf-fled. A hall for the performanceof music, or one for drama, ora courtroom in which wit-nesses, lawyers and judges mustbe heard, has to be made withcareful consideration of thequality of sound it will allow.

In the large church whichis part of the monastery of LaTourette (the same churchwhich has the rectangular roof-light), Le Corbusier has createda space which seems to hum ofits own volition: its hard paral-lel concrete surfaces reflect, andeven seem to magnify, everysmall noise—someone’s shoescraping on the floor, someoneclearing their throat. When themonks sang in this space….

Sometimes odd acoustic ef-fects can be produced inadvert-ently. In the early 1960s theAmerican architect PhilipJohnson designed a small artgallery as an extension to ahouse. Its plan is based on ninecircles arranged in a square; thecentral circle is a small open

court; the other eight circlesform the galleries and entrancelobby. Each of the galleries hasa shallow domed roof. At thecentre of each gallery one’s voiceseems amplified, as the circularsurfaces of the walls, and thespherical surface of the domedceiling, reflect it directly back.

A related effect occurs inan amphitheatre. If one stampsat the central focus, the soundreflects back from each step inturn, producing a very rapid‘machine-gun’ sound.

Some composers have writ-ten music specially to exploit theacoustic effects of particularbuildings. The sixteenth-centurycomposer Andrea Gabrieliwrote music especially for thecathedral of St Mark’s in Ven-ice. For his Magnificat he wouldposition three choirs and an or-chestra in different parts of thechurch, producing a quadro-phonic effect.

There have also been oc-casions when the fabric of abuilding has been used as amusical instrument: this hap-pened apparently at the open-ing of an arts building at

Standing at the centre ofan amphitheatre, a sound is

reflected back from each tierin turn, extending it into a

string of echoes which soundlike a rapid machine-gun.

If you stand at the centre of oneof the galleries in this building

by Philip Johnson, your voice isreflected back to you by the

curved surfaces of the walls andthe ceiling, making it sound

louder than elsewhere.


33

Gothenberg University, Swe-den, in the early 1990s, whenthe balcony rails were used aspercussion instruments.

Smell

A place can be identified by itssmell; a smell can make a place.

A schoolboy’s stink bombidentifies a place to avoid. Apublic lavatory tends to smellone way, a ladies’ hairdresser’sanother, a perfume shop an-other, a fishmonger’s another.

The character of an old li-brary is partly due to the smellof polished wood and mustyleather book-bindings; that of anartist’s studio to the smell of oilpaint. Food halls in departmentstores cultivate odours of roastedcoffee, delicate cheeses, and fresh-baked bread. Chinese temples arepervaded by the perfume of burn-ing incense. The bedroom of anadolescent boy might be distin-guished by the smell of old socksor deodorant. The lounge in agentleman’s club might smell ofpolish and old leather armchairs.Different parts of a garden mightbe distinguishable by the perfumeof roses, honeysuckle, jasmine,lavender….

Texture

Texture is a characteristic whichone can see—in this it relatesto light and the sense of sight;but it is also a characteristicwhich one can feel—in this itrelates to the sense of touch. Inboth ways, texture contributesto the identification of place.

Texture can be achieved bysurface application, of paint orof polish or of fabric; but tex-ture is also intimately related to

the innate qualities of materi-als and the ways they can betreated and used.

We identify places bychanging their texture. We dothis inadvertently when, for ex-ample, by repeatedly walkingthe same route across a field ora yard, we (or some sheep) wearaway a smooth path. We do itconsciously when we define apathway with grit, or cobbles,or paviours, or tarmacadam.These changes are apparent toour eyes, but they are also ap-preciated by our sense of touch,through our feet, and provide aharder wearing surface than theearth.

On some roads the whitelines which mark the verges aretextured with rough ridges. If acar deviates from its lane it iscommunicated to the driver bythe vibration and the noise ofthe tyres on the ridges; the placeof the roadway is identified notonly by sight, but by vibration(and sound) also.

Changes of texture are use-ful in the dark, and for peoplewith partial sight. In someplaces road crossings are indi-cated by a change in the pave-ment texture.

In old houses, when themaking of hard pavements wasa laborious activity, the placesof hardest wear, around thedoorways, were often identifiedand protected by large slabs ofstone, or aprons of cobbles.

Floors and pavements fig-ure so prominently in discussionof the ways in which texturescan identify place because it isthrough our feet that we makeour main tactile contact withthe products of architecture.


34

Carpets change the texture offloors, making them warmerand more comfortable, particu-larly to bare feet. In some placesconsideration of bare feet ismore problematic; around aswimming pool there is conflictbetween the need for comfortfor feet and the need for a non-slippery texture.

Texture is important inother places where we comeinto contact with architecture.

If the top surface of a lowwall is also intended as a casualseat, then one might change itstexture from hard stone, brickor concrete, to soft fabric ortimber, thereby identifying it asa place to sit. The change isapparent to the eye, but also toanother part of the body.

Texture is also importantwhere our hands or upper bod-ies touch buildings: door han-dles, counters, sleeping places,and so on. Beds are essentiallymatters of changes of texture—making a place upon which itis comfortable to lie and sleep.

Scale

This drawing shows a manstanding on a rather small stage.

If however one is told thatthis man is only a piece of stagedressing, and that the real manon the stage is actually the dot

between its legs, one’s percep-tion of the size of the stage isdramatically changed.

Scale is about relativesizes. A scale on a map or draw-ing indicates the sizes of thingsshown on it relative to theirsizes in reality. On a drawingwhich is at 1:100 a doorwaywhich in reality might be onemetre wide would be shown asone centimetre wide.

In architecture scale hasanother meaning, still to dowith relative sizes. It refers tothe size of something relative tooneself.

The experience of a placeis radically affected by its Scale.A football pitch, and a smallpatch of grass in a back garden,though both defined areas ofgrass, present very different ex-periences because of their dif-ferent scales.

(Scale is also discussed inthe chapter on Geometry in Ar-chitecture, under ‘Measuring’.)

Time

If light is the first modifying el-ement of the products of archi-tecture, then time is perhaps thelast. Light provides instant stim-ulation; but time takes…time.

Time plays a part in archi-tecture in various ways. Al-though architecture produceslasting products, none of themis immune to the effects of time:materials change—develop apatina, or deteriorate; originaluses become more ingrained ina building, or are displaced byothers; people make places bet-ter, or alter them for new uses.

Sometimes the effects oftime are positive, sometimes


35

negative. They are usually con-sidered to be ‘natural’ in thatthey are not subject to controlby human decision; but thatdoes not mean that they can-not be anticipated and usedpositively. It is possible tochoose materials, or to designgenerally, with maturity ratherthan early use in mind.

Time is a modifying ele-ment of architecture in anothersense; one which is more underthe control of the designer,though not totally so.

Although it takes time toachieve a profound understand-ing of a great painting, one is ableto take in an initial impression lit-erally in the blink of an eye. Witha piece of music it takes the dura-tion to be able to get even this ini-tial impression; the achievementof a profound understandingprobably takes many listenings.

With a product of archi-tecture it takes time to get animpression too. Though wesee a great deal of architectureillustrated by photograph inbooks and journals, this is notof course the way in which itis intended to be experienced.

When we experience abuilding in its physical existencethere are many stages to theprocess. There is the discovery,the view of the outward appear-ance, the approach, the en-trance, the exploration of theinterior spaces (the last of whichprobably takes the greatestamount of the time).

Some architects con-sciously try to manipulate thetemporal experience of theproducts of their architecture.

All processional architec-ture encapsulates time. In an-cient Athens there wereprocessions which led fromthe agora, up the acropolis, tothe Parthenon. The route tooktime. Great cathedrals seem toencapsulate the time it takesto pass from the entrance,along the nave, to the altar; asin a wedding. The productionline in a car plant takes carsthrough a process of assembly,which takes time.

In the Villa Savoye(1929) Le Corbusier used timeas a modifying element of ar-chitecture. The three floorplans are shown on the left.Approaching it, entering it,and exploring within it, hecreated a route—an ‘architec-tural promenade’.

The approach workswhether one is on foot, or in acar. The ‘front’ entrance intothe house is on the left of theground floor plan (bottom);but one approaches from therear. In a car one passes underthe building following thesweep of the glass wall aroundthe hallway.

One enters the house, andthere is a ramp which takes one,slowly, up to the first floor,which is the main living floor.You can see the ramp on thesection (top).

At that level there is the sa-lon, and a roof terrace.

From the roof terrace theramp continues to an upperroof terrace, where there is asolarium, and a ‘window’ justabove the entrance, completingthe route.

ELEMENTS DOINGMORE THAN ONE THING

Opposite Page:

A window can ‘do’ manythings architecturally at thesame time. It lets light into aroom, or out. It provides aview out, or in. It might setup an axial relationship. Theformation of an openingcreates a cill, which can be ashelf for books or plants. Thewindow can be a place fordisplay…. All this withouteven considering its role in thepattern of an elevation.

In architecture elements oftenwork to identify place in morethan one way at a time.

A gable wall of a house,for example, which plays its

part in enclosing the interior ofthe dwelling, can also be amarker identifying a placewhere someone lives.

The top surface of a wallcan be a pathway, for a cat, oras in a pier or a castle wall.

And the side surface of awall can be a place for display,as in a cinema, or an art gallery;or in the way that any buildingpresents a ‘face’ to the world.

.This ability of an element to

identify different places in a va-riety of ways is an essential fea-ture, and one of the mostintriguing aspects, of architec-tural design. It involves the men-tal processes of both recognitionand creation in an interactiveway—creation of one place leadsto recognition of others—andcomes into operation at all scales.

Occurrences are innumer-able. This will be seen to be a

The front wall of the Alcazar,in Toledo, also displays thecredentials of its sixteenth-century owner, Charles V ofSpain, identifying the place ashis palace.

ELEMENTS DOING MORE THAN ONE THING


38

theme which recurs over andover again in the examples usedin this book.

Part of the reason for theimportance of this theme in ar-chitectural design is that archi-tecture does not (or should not)operate in its own hermeticworld. Its work is (almost) al-ways relating to other thingswhich already exist in the con-ditions around.

Any wall built in a land-scape creates at least twoplaces—one sunny, one shady.

If it forms an enclosure thenit divides an ‘inside’ from the‘outside’; giving something toand taking something from both.

The theme also reachesinto the work itself. A single‘party’ or dividing wall makestwo rooms.

A flat roof is also a plat-form.

A series of roofs which arealso floors creates a multi-sto-rey building.

Walls are often (thoughnot always) structural—theyhold up a roof; but their pri-mary architectural role is todefine the boundaries of place.Other structural elements canhave this role too. A line of col-umns can also define a pathway.In this apparently simple plan(examples of which can befound in the ancient Roman

agora, the medieval cloister,town squares, and the shop

In the Royal Festival Hall,London, the stepped floor of

the auditorium also provides adistinctive raked ceiling for

the foyer spaces. The buildingwas designed by RobertMatthew, Leslie Martin,

andothers, and was completedin 1951.

In this small apartment bythe Swedish architect Sven

Markelius, a number ofelements do more than onething at once. For example:

the one structural column(near the balcony door) helps

to suggest different placeswithin the generally open

plan; the bathroom andkitchen are grouped togetherand form a division between

the entrance lobby and therest of the apartment.

Elements Doing More Than One Thing

39

houses of Malaysia) a few basicarchitectural elements are com-posed to identify a number of dif-ferent places: the cells themselves;the street or square outside; andthe covered pathway, which alsomakes a transition space betweenthe outside and the insides. (Theconcept of ‘transition spaces’ isdiscussed in more detail later, un-der Transition, Hierarchy, Heart.)

One of the indispensableskills of an architect is to be con-scious of the consequences ofcomposing elements; beingaware that they are likely to domore than one thing. These con-sequences can be positive: cut awindow into a wall, and you cre-ate a window cill which is a shelffor books or for a vase of flow-ers; build two rows of housesand you also create the street be-tween them.But the consequences can alsobe negative: build two housestoo close together but not joinedand you might create anunpleasantunusable space be-

tween; build a wall for display,and you may also create a ‘non-place’ behind.

This is one of the most im-portant aspects of architecturaldesign. It is a matter in whichan architect can achieve greatsubtlety; but it is also one thatcan cause problems.

This is the plan of an Eng-lish house built in the early partof the twentieth century.

The forecourt is a squarewith cusps taken out of threeof the sides. The cusp whichbites into the house might helpto identify the place of the en-trance, but it also causes prob-lems with the internal planningof the house. In the awkwardspaces alongside the doorwaythe architect has placed the but-ler’s pantry (to the left) and thecloakroom and lavatory (to theright). A similar problem occursin the drawing room where thesame device is used to identifythe place of the fire; but here italso makes an odd shaped gar-den room (in the bottom rightcorner of the house).

Elements can often befound to be doing two thingsat once (it is actually difficultto find elements in architecturewhich are only doing one thingat once!), but one sometimes

In this small summerhouse,(shown here in section andplan), the four columns notonly hold up the roof, butalso help to define the bound-ary of the verandah—a placefor sitting and looking overthe nearby lake which is atMuuratsalo in Finland. It iscalled the Villa Flora, and wasdesigned by Alvar and AinoAalto in 1926.


40

finds elements which are doingmany things. (This might be oneof the measures of architecture.)

In this section through ahillside house—The WolfeHouse—designed by RudolfSchindler in 1928, you can seethat the simple thin horizontalconcrete slabs, tied back intothe hill, act not only as floorsand ceilings, but also as outdoorterraces and sunshades.

Their precipitous edges are pro-tected by balustrades which arealso planting boxes.

In the Falk Apartments of1943 (shown in plan, top right),by the same architect, it is notso much the element but theway it is positioned that doesmore than one thing at once.

The party walls betweenthe apartments have been angledso that the living rooms face alake. But this device has othereffects too. It allows the terracesoutside each apartment to belarger; it also gives these terracesmore privacy. Deeper into the

plan the angled walls open upa place for each staircase, whichwould otherwise be morecramped. The non-orthogonalgeometry also helps the endapartments to be larger and dif-ferent in plan from the interme-diate ones. Schindler has beencareful not to let the deviationfrom right-angles create awk-ward shaped rooms; it is as ifalmost all the problems whichmight have been caused by theshift from rectangular geometryhave been reduced down to onetiny triangular cupboard in theleft-hand end apartment.

As with the Wolfe House,these apartments were designedfor a hillside, though one whichis less steep. Their section isstepped, so that a roof can alsobe a terrace. In the section ofan individual apartment youcan see that the bedroom is al-most like an enclosed gallery in

In the plan of the Falk Apart-ments, it is the angle of theparty walls that does morethan one thing.

Reference for the architectureof Rudolf Schindler:

Lionel March and JudithScheine—R.M.Schindler, 1993.

Elements Doing More Than One Thing

41

the living room. This device toodoes more than one thing. Onecan see from the bedroom downinto the living room, and thusthe bedroom is less enclosed thanis traditionally the case. But alsothe position of the bedroom inthe section creates two differentceiling heights which relate tothe places they cover: a high ceil-ing over the living room mak-ing it more spacious; and a lowceiling over the entrance andkitchen. The line where the lowceiling changes to the high alsosuggests the division between theliving room and the dining area.The dining place is identified bythe lower ceiling.

One of the drawbackswith stepped sections is thatinside spaces close to the hillcan be dark. Notice that in theFalk Apartments Schindlercounters this problem by mak-ing ‘streets’ between the layersof apartments. These pathwaysdo at least three things at once:they give access into the apart-ments; they provide light intothe back spaces—the kitchens,hallways, and bathrooms; andthey allow cross-ventilationthrough the apartments.

There are many too manyinstances of elements doingmore than one thing at once inthe products of architecture tobe able to cover them ad-equately here. This is a charac-teristic of architecture at allscales and types, and from allperiods of history. When anancient Greek hung his shieldon the roof-post of his megaron,he was using an architectural el-ement to do two things at once;if that post was also a corner ofhis bed-place, then it was do-ing three.

The process of introducingone element to do a particularpurpose, and then seeing whatelse it does (and so on), is anessential part of the ‘organic’tradition in architecture. This ishow settlements have growninto villages, and villages intotowns, through history.

Reference for Swiss villages:

Werner Blaser—The Rock isMy Home, WEMA, Zurich,1976.

This plan is of a village in theTicino region of Switzerland.It shows cellular houses(hatched), walls, and someplatforms adjacent to houses.It is difficult to find an ele-ment which is not doing morethan one thing at once:mainly, defining private, semi-private, and public spaces—pathways and small ‘nodal’squares.

USING THINGSTHAT ARE THERE

In this small crevice in a hugerock face (in the CarnarvonGorge in Queensland, Aus-tralia), an aborigine family laidthe dead body of a small child,wrapped in bark. They marked

the place with silhouettes oftheir hands, made with pig-ment. This grave is as much apiece of architecture as is theGreat Pyramid of Giza (andmore poignant).

Although architecture isalways an activity of a mind,it does not follow that archi-tecture always entails buildingsomething physically. As iden-tification of place, architec-ture may be no more than amatter of recognising that a

particular location is distin-guishable as ‘a place’—theshade of a tree, the shelter of acave, the summit of a hill, themystery of a dark forest….

In daily life, one is con-stantly recognising places. Thisis how one knows where one is,where one has been, and whereone is going. With many of thesethousands of places one does notinteract; they are left unchangedexcept for the recognition itself,which may be fleeting and hardlyacknowledged.

Some places however stickin the mind. They are remem-bered because of some particu-lar distinction: a fine view,shelter from the wind, thewarmth of the sun; or becausethey are associated with a par-ticular event: falling off a bicy-cle, fighting with a friend,making love, witnessing a mira-cle, winning a battle….

The next significant step ina relationship with place is thatone might choose to use it forsomething—the shade of thattree for a brief rest on a long andarduous walk, the cave as a hid-ing place, the hill top to surveythe surrounding countryside, thedarkest part of the mysteriousforest for some spiritual ritual….

Maybe the recognition ofa place is shared with other peo-ple, the memory and use associ-ated with it becomes communal.

In these ways places ac-quire significance of manykinds—practical, social, histori-cal, mythical, religious….

The world has many,many such places: the cave in

Opposite Page:

A cave that is used as a dwell-ing is architecture, just as muchas is a built house, by reason ofhaving been chosen as a place.

USING THINGS THAT ARE THERE


44

Mount Dikti on the island ofCrete, believed to have been thebirthplace of the Greek godZeus; the route of the Muslimpilgrimage—the hajj—in andaround Mecca; the mount fromwhich Christ delivered his ser-mon; the stretch of boulevardin Dallas, Texas, where Presi-dent Kennedy was shot; theplaces in the Australian outbackwhich are identified and re-membered in the ‘songlines’ ofaborigine culture….

Recognition, memory,choice, sharing with others, theacquisition of significance; allthese contribute to the proc-esses of architecture.

Of course architecture alsoinvolves building—the physicalalteration of a part of the worldto enhance or reinforce its es-tablishment as a place. Recog-nition, memory, choice, sharing…operate at the rudimentarylevels of identification of place.Architecture makes more differ-ence when it proposes and putsinto effect physical changes tothe fabric of the world.

Architecture always de-pends on things that are alreadythere; it involves recognisingtheir potential or the problemsthey present; it involves, maybe,

remembering their associationsand significances; it involveschoice of site, and sharing withothers.

Fundamentally all terres-trial architecture depends uponthe ground for its base, some-thing that we perhaps tend totake for granted.

In a flat and completelyfeatureless landscape the estab-lishment of a place would haveto be an arbitrary decision;(once established however theplace would provide a catalystfor other places). The irregularshape of the ground, togetherwith the courses of the water

Simeon the Stylite lived in acave dwelling within one of

the volcanic cones of thevalley of Göreme in Anatolia.

The caves were extendedand refined by carving

into the rock.

Castle builders throughhistory have built their fortifi-cations on sites which, though

often powerfully dramatic,were chosen primarily fortheir defensibility. Even if

identically rebuilt somewhereelse, such buildings would notbe architecturally the same on

another site.

Using Things That Are There

45

that flows through it, the windthat blows across it, and thethings that grow on it, all un-der the sun, often suggestsplaces which are seeds of archi-tecture. Dealing with them, tak-ing advantage of them,mitigat-ing their effects, exploiting theircharacter…can be importantfactors in architecture.

In the untouched land-scape, doing architecture caninvolve using hills, trees, rivers,caves, cliffs, breezes from thesea: things said to be ‘providedby nature’.

Examples in which naturalfeatures or elements contributeto architecture are innumea-ble and can be aesthetically andintellectually engaging in theway they seem to symbolise asymbiotic relationship betweenpeople (and other creatures) andthe conditions in which they live.

People have lived in cavessince time immemorial; theyhave altered them, flattenedtheir floors, extended them byexcavation, enclosed their en-trances, built outwards fromthem… to make them morecommodious. It is said thatproto-people descended to the

ground from living in trees; peo-ple still make houses in trees.Since ancient times too peoplehave used the walls of caves andof cliff-faces as places for thedisplay of images—wall paint-ings and carvings. Through his-tory people have found ways tocool and dry their dwellingswith natural breezes, and warmthem with the sun. Domineer-ing or frightened people havechosen hills and craggy rocks asplac-es for fortresses or defen-sible villages. The constant needfor water and food has led peo-ple to build near rivers and ad-jacent to fertile land. And so on.

Each of the major build-ings on the acropolis in Athensidentifies a place that was al-ready there: the Parthenon iden-tifies the highest point, domina-ting the city around; theErectheion an ancient sacredsite; the Propylon the easiestaccess onto the summit; andeach of the theatres an accom-modating bowl of land wherespectators probably watchedperformances even before theywere provided with formal per-formance places and steppedseating.

References for architectureusing natural forms:

Bernard Rudofsky—Architec-ture Without Architects,1964.

Bernard Rudofsky—TheProdigious Builders, 1977.

African baobab trees havethick trunks and soft wood.With space carved out inside,they can be made into dwellings.

The Dome of the Rock inJerusalem is built over a rockwhich is sacred to Jews,Christians and Muslims.


46

At the base of Ayer’s Rockin central Australia there aresome natural alcoves, appar-ently carved out by wind ero-sion. Each provides a place ofshade, stones to sit on, and alsoa surface on which to draw.Some of them appear to havebeen used as schoolrooms.

This cottage in Leicester-shire (UK) was designed in the1890s by Ernest Gimson. It wasbuilt hard against a naturalrocky outcrop, which contrib-utes part of the enclosure of thehouse, and also affects the lev-els of its floors. The land, asfound and chosen, is an integralpart of the work of architecture.

In designing the Students’Union building at StockholmUniversity in Sweden, built in

the late 1970s, Ralph Erskineused a particularly fine tree, al-ready on the site, to determinethe position of an outside spacetaken like a bite out of the planof the building. The tree, withthe natural contours of theground, contributes to the iden-tity of the place, and to theviews from inside the building.

The drawing to the right isa section through part of a smalldwelling in Mexico, designed byAda Dewes and Sergio Puente.It was built in the mid-1980s.

Reference for StoneywellCottage:

W.R.Lethaby and others—Ernest Gimson, His Life and

Work, 1924.

Reference for the Student Centre by Ralph Erskine:

Peter Collymore—The Archi-tecture of Ralph Erskine,

1985.

Reference for Mexican house:

‘Maison à SantiagoTepetlapa’,in L’Architectured’Aujourd’hui,

June 1991, p.86.


47

The designers used basic ele-ments of architecture to make anumber of places; these are usedin concert with modifying ele-ments and things already on thesite to make the complete expe-rience of the house.

The house is built amongsttrees on the steep side of the val-ley of a fast-flowing river. Thefirst element of the house is ahorizontal platform built outfrom the slope. This is ap-proached from above by steps;and there is a stepped pathwaydown from it to the river below.This platform is further definedby a single screen wall on theupslope side through the middleof which it is entered. It also hasa roof over it supported by thescreen wall and by two columns.The other three sides of the plat-form, which is a bedroom, areenclosed only by mosquito net-ting, which keeps out biting in-sects but allows in the songs ofthe birds in the trees. Steps in theplatform lead to a shower roombelow. The roof of the bedroomis also the floor of the living roomabove. This ‘room’ has only one

wall, a vertical extension of thescreen wall below, through whichit too is entered; the other ‘walls’and its ‘roof are provided by thecanopy of trees around.

Using the natural things thatare already there is an ingredi-ent in what has been termed, byChristopher Alexander, the ‘time-less way of building’. As such itis as relevant today as ever,though in regions of the worldwhich have been inhabited formany centuries one is less likelyto have the opportunity to usenatural features and elements,and more to have to relate to pre-vious products of architecture.

On a crowded beach, ifthere is a small space leftamongst other people’s towels,wind breaks, barbecues, deck-chairs, sunshades, etc., youmake your own settlement, ac-commodating yourself to thespace available, the direction ofthe sun and wind, the route tothe sea, as best you can.

It’s a similar situation whenone does architecture amongstexisting products of architec-ture—in a village, a town, a city;one interacts with what is al-ready there.

In cities the task is oftento make places in spaces be-tween existing buildings, andrelate to the places around thatare already there.

When Foster Associatesdesigned a new Radio Centrefor the BBC (left, which has notbeen built) they took care to fitthe building into its site, andrelate to things around.

The building was to havestood at Langham Place in Lon-don, the junction between Re-gent Street and Portland Place,

The atrium of the proposedBBC Radio Centre atLangham Place in Londonwas to have been orientedtowards All Souls Church,using it as a visual focus forthe space.

Reference for the ‘timelessway of building’:

Christopher Alexander—TheTimeless Way of Building,1979.

Reference for BBC RadioCentre:

‘Foster Associates, BBC RadioCentre’, in ArchitecturalDesign 8, 1986, pp.20–27.


48

and on the urban route betweenRegent’s Park and PiccadillyCircus designed by John Nashin the early nineteenth century.Not only is the building’s planshaped to fit the site like a jig-saw piece, thus providing wallsto define the adjacent roads, butit also provides a pathway, pass-ing through the building, fromCavendish Square into LanghamPlace. The building has a six-sto-rey atrium at its heart; this isoriented towards Nash’s AllSouls Church across the road,which its large glass wall frameslike a picture, using it to addidentity to the place of the atriumwithin the building.

Sometimes architecture in-volves using the fabric of anexisting building, or its ruins.

When the Victorian archi-tect William Burges was giventhe commission to design a hunt-ing lodge, a few miles north of

Cardiff, for the Marquis of Bute,he was presented with the ruinsof a Norman castle as the start-ing point. His design grew fromlittle more than a ground plan,already there in stone.

Using these remains as abase, physically and creatively,Burges designed his own inter-

Reference for Castell Coch:

John Mordaunt Crook—William Burges and the High

Victorian Dream, 1981.


49

pretation of a medieval castle.The result is a collusion of thepast with Burges’s present.Castell Coch (The Red Castle)is not an accurate reconstruc-tion of the original castle. In the1870s when it was built, it wasa new building (except that isfor the foundations), but one inwhich Burges took promptsfrom what was already there.His imagination benefited fromworking on a base, and on a site(the castle overlooks the TaffValley running north from Car-diff), inherited from seven cen-turies earlier. His intention wasto make a romantic recreationof a medieval place, as an en-tertainment for his client and anornament in the landscape.

In the late 1950s and early1960s the Italian architect CarloScarpa was presented with acommission which similarly in-volved using an old building andmaking it into a new work ofarchitecture. His base (there wasmore remaining of it than Burges

had at Castell Coch), was a four-teenth-century castle in thenorthern Italian city of Verona—the Castelvecchio (Old Castle).

Scarpa’s attitude to thepast and how its built remainsmight be used architecturallywas different from that ofBurges. It was not his intentionto realise a romantic image ofthe past, but rather to use re-mains of the past as a stimulusto present aesthetic interest.

In dealing with, and remod-elling the Castelvecchio, Scarpacreated an architectural experi-ence which is one of the present,but which also exploits accidentsand collisions, juxtapositions andrelationships, spaces and theircharacter, that derive from ar-rangements which existed in thebuilding before he came to it. Tothese arrangements he has addedsome more, from his own respon-sive imagination, as one morelayer—belonging to the mid-twentieth century—on a build-ing which already had many,from various periods of history.

Perhaps the most impressiveplace in Scarpa’s Castelvecchiois the ‘Cangrande space’, namedafter the equestrian statue whichit frames. This is a place that had

Reference for Castelvecchio:

Richard Murphy—CarloScarpa and the Castelvecchio,1990.


50

not existed in the castle before,but it is one which is deeply con-ditioned both by the existing fab-ric of the old stone walls, and byan appreciation by Scarpa of thehistorical changes which hadoccurred in that particular partof the building.

When the Danish industri-alist Knud Jensen commissionedJørgen Bo and Vilhelm Wohlertto design the Louisiana ArtMuseum north of Copenhagen,there were various things that hewanted the architects to use intheir design—things that werealready there on the site:

First, the old house had to bepreserved as the entrance. No

matter how elaborate themuseum might become inlater years…. Second, Iwanted one room…to openout into that view, about twohundred metres to the northof the manor, overlookingour lush inland lake. Third,about another hundred me-tres farther on, in the rosegarden—on the bluff over-looking the strait and, in thedistance, Sweden—I wantedto have the cafeteria and itsterrace.

The first phase of the art

museum that was built in re-sponse to Jensen’s brief, whichoccupies the left two-thirds of

The ‘Cangrande’ space at theCastelvecchio in Verona, as

remodelled by Carlo Scarpa.Scarpa interpreted the history

of this particular corner of thecastle, to identify an impres-

sive place within which todisplay an equestrian statue.

Reference for Louisiana ArtMuseum:

Michael Brawne—JørgenBo, Vilhelm Wohlert, Louisi-

ana Museum, Humlebaek,1993.


51

this plan, uses all the innate fea-tures of the site which he iden-tified. The old house, at themiddle-bottom of the plan, isthe main entrance. The routethrough the museum thenmoves through some galleriesand then north along a steppedseries of walkways to a particu-lar gallery which has a largeglass wall looking out over thelake. The route continuesthrough more galleries to the

bluff, where there is a cafeterialooking out across the sea toSweden. The architects alsoused other features already onthe site, especially some of themature trees, and the contoursof the ground.

This building, the archi-tecture of which takes its visi-tors on a tour of its site, andof places that were alreadythere, could not be the sameanywhere else.

The ground plan of theLouisiana Art Museum inDenmark, designed by JørgenBo and Vilhelm Wohlert. Aold house is used as theentrance; the galleries and thecafeteria respond to otherplaces on the site.

PRIMITIVEPLACE TYPES

Opposite Page:

The ancient dolmen seems tohave been an architecturalmetaphor for a cave, con-structed as a place for thedeposition of the remains ofthe dead.

As time has passed the placespeople use have become morediverse, more sophisticated, andmore complex in their interre-lationships. Some types of placeare ancient: the hearth as theplace of the fire; the altar as aplace of sacrifice or a focus forworship; the tomb as a place forthe dead. Other place types aremore recent: the airport, themotorway service station, thecash-dispenser.

The most ancient types ofplace are those which are to dowith the fundamental aspects oflife: keeping warm and dry;moving from location to loca-tion; acquiring and keepingfood and water, fuel andwealth; cooking; sitting and eat-ing; socialising; defecating;sleeping and procreating; de-fending against enemies; wor-shipping and performing ritual;buying or exchanging goodsand services; story-telling andacting; teaching and learning;asserting military, political, andcommercial power; discussingand debating; fighting and com-peting; giving birth; suffering‘rites of passage’; dying.

It is the concept of placethat links architecture to life. Theplaces which people use are inintimate relation to their lives.Living necessarily involves theconceptual organisation andphysical arrangement of theworld into places: places towork, places to rest; places tobe seen, places to spectate; placeswhich are ‘mine’, places whichare ‘yours’; places which arepleasant, places which are nasty;places which are warm, places

which are cold; places which areawe-inspiring, places which areboring; places that protect,places for exhibition; and so on.

Like language, architectureis not stagnant. Both languageand architecture (as identifica-tion of place) exist through use,and are subject to historicalchanges and cultural variation.Social institutions evolve; beliefsdiffer about the relative impor-tance of particular facets of life,and hence so does the need forplaces to accommodate them.Aspirations become more, orless, sophisticated; some placesbecome redundant; needs fornew types of place become ap-parent; fashions come and go;linkages (physical and elec-tronic) between places becomemore sophisticated.

In language a particularmeaning can be conveyed indifferent ways, using differentwords in different construc-tions. The words and their pat-terns have to be in accord withthe intended meaning, other-wise it is lost in nonsense or adifferent, unintended, meaningemerges. The various ways ofsaying something may just bedifferent; but variations in vo-cabulary and construction canalso add subtlety, emphasis, sty-listic nuance, or aesthetic qual-ity. It is the same in architecture;places with similar purposescan be identified architecturallyin different ways.

Places are identified by theelements of architecture. Aplace for performance might beidentified in any of a numberof ways: by a platform, by a

PRIMITIVE PLACE TYPES


54

spotlight, by a circle of stones,by a number of marker polessetting out an area of ground; aplace of imprisonment might bea small dark cell, or an island,or a deep pit, or the corner of aclassroom.

The identity of a place alsodepends on the ability of some-one to recognise it as such. Aperson has to be able to recog-nise a place as a place; other-wise, for that person, that placedoes not exist.

A place might have manyinterpretations. A person mightsee a wall as a barrier, anothersee it as a seat, another see it asa path along which to walk; onemight see it as all three at thesame time.

Places can overlap withothers. A bedroom has a placeto sleep (the bed), but it alsohas places for getting out ofbed, for sitting and reading, fordressing and undressing, forlooking in a mirror, for stand-ing looking out of the window,maybe for doing press-ups;these places are not distinct,but intermingle within theroom, and perhaps changetheir identities from time totime. At a larger scale, a townsquare can be a market place, acar park, a place for perform-ance, a place for eating, a placefor meeting, for talking, forwandering…all at once.

Primitive place types

Amongst this complexity, someplace types have acquired theirown names—hearth, theatre,tomb, altar, fortress, throne—that reach far back into history.Their ancient names are testa-ment to their age-old roles in

the lives and architecture ofpeople through history.

Although such place typesare ancient, and have a consist-ent conceptual identity (a hearthis a place for a fire, a theatre forperformance, a tomb for thedead, an altar for worship, afortress for defence, a throne aseat of power), their architecture(their conceptual organisationby the use of basic and modify-ing elements) can vary greatly.A purpose does not necessarilydetermine the architecture of itsplace; many purposes, even themost ancient, have been accom-modated architecturally in verydifferent ways.

The relationship betweenarchitecture and the names ofplace types with ancient purposescan be confusing. The word tombmight evoke a particular exam-ple in one’s mind, but the archi-tecture of tombs through historyhas been very varied.

The names of place typesin architecture can seem clear,but be vague. If one says that aplace is ‘like a theatre’ onemight be exact in so far as itmay incorporate a place forperformance with a place forspectating, but architecturally itmight be an amphitheatre, acourtyard, a street, or have aproscenium arch.

There is often a rough andready relationship between archi-tecture and the words throughwhich it is discussed. Words thatare specific in one context maybe imprecise and analogical inanother. Words such as hearth,theatre, tomb, altar, fortress,throne are not necessarily specificin the architectural forms towhich they refer.

Primitive Place Types

55

Hearth—the place of the fireThe hearth has had a traditionalsignificance in many cultures, asthe heart of the home, or thefocus of a community—asource of warmth, for cooking,a point of reference aroundwhich life revolves.

Its essential component isthe fire itself; but the ways inwhich the place of the fire isidentified can vary greatly. Evena simple outdoor fireplace canbe formed of different configu-rations of basic architecturalelements.

In the most rudimentaryway a fire identifies its own place,creating a sphere of light andheat, a column of smoke andsparks, and a rough circle ofscorched earth. But often its placeis marked in other ways too.

A fire can be framed in variousways: the circle of scorchedearth may be contained with acircle of stones; the fire might

be set against a large stonewhich protects it from excessivedraught and stores some of its

heat; or it may be flanked bytwo parallel walls of stone thatchannel draughts and providea platform for cooking.

The place of a fire mightbe identified in more elaborateways too: maybe provided witha tripod from which a cookingpot is hung, but which alsoforms an aedicule emphasizingthe hearth; or perhaps set in a

Reference for hearth:

Gottfried Semper identifiedhearth as one of the fourfundamental elements ofarchitecture, along with theearthwork, the roof, and thescreen wall, in…

Gottfried Semper—The FourElements of Architecture,1851.

(With regard to these ‘FourElements’, in this book thehearth is categorised as a‘primitive place type’, theearthwork and the screen wallboth as the ‘basic element’ ofbarrier, and the roof as the‘basic element’ of roof.)


56

more sophisticated construc-tion, like a seat or table that liftsit off the ground for conven

ience; or perhaps provided withits own small building.

A fire not only has its ownplace, but also creates a placewhere people can occupy itssphere of light and warmth. Theextent of this sphere can vary.It might be defined by a tightcircle of people around a camp-fire on a cold night; or it mightbe the extensive circle of visibil-ity of a hill-top beacon seenacross miles of countryside.

Through history the archi-tectural role of the hearth as anidentifier of place of human oc-cupation has been to do withhow its sphere of light andwarmth has been defined, con-tained, or controlled.

In the countryside—thelandscape of the primitive fam-ily or the present-day camper—a fire makes its own place byits light and warmth. But whenone wants to make a fire, aplace for it has to be chosen. Indoing this various factors may

be taken into account; factorswhich are related to the purposeof the fire.

If there is a dell, protectedfrom the wind and providedwith rocks for seats, and if thepurpose of the fire is to providea cooking-place and a focus fora summer evening of eating andtalking, then it is likely to bechosen as a place for the hearth.In doing this the dell becomesa container of the sphere of lightand warmth from the fire. Italso becomes a room withinwhich friends may cook, eatand talk.

The fire is in the middle of asort of natural room; its light

and warmth seem bounded bythe rocks around and the

canopies of the trees above.


57

In many cultures, particu-larly in cool and cold regionsof the world, domestic architec-ture has been primarily con-cerned with enclosing the placeof the fire and containing itssphere of light and warmth.

An igloo contains thesphere (or hemisphere when thefire is on the flat surface of theearth) literally—with a dome.

Materials more difficult toshape than ice are not so easyto form into a dome…so a tee-pee limits the hemisphere witha cone.

The primitive round housedoes similarly.

And an orthogonal roomconverts the hemisphere into arectangular volume of space.

The architecture of thefireplace within a dwelling cellis stimulated by the organisationof the space around it into sub-sidiary places. As a source ofwarmth and light the fire is afocus for life; but it can also bean obstacle.

In the remains of someearly dwellings archaeologistshave found hearths located ar-bitrarily on the floor, with littleclear organisational relationshipbetween their position and thespace enclosed around them.

Other ancient remains sug-gest tidier, more formal arrange-ments. In the megaron of thepalace of Mycenae (c.1500 BC;far left) there is a clear relation-ship between the hearth and thethrone, the entrance, and thestructure of the room. Sittinghere, Agamemnon, the king ofancient Mycenae, was enthronedwithin his own ‘fireplace’.

In an ancient Mycenaeanmegaron (here shown in plan)the place of the fire wasidentified by a circle on theground, by the four columnswhich held up the roof, andalso by the rectangular formof the room itself, which wasthe place of the king.


58

The consequences ofchanging the location of thefireplace from a central positionto a peripheral one is shown inthese two Norwegian tradi-tional timber houses. Theirplans are similar, except for theposition of the hearth.

In the upper plan the spaceof the living room is dominatedby the central hearth. Subsidi-ary places—for sitting and eat-ing, for storage—are arrangedaround this central focus. Mov-ing around the room is a mat-ter of moving around the fire.

In the lower plan the fire-place is situated in the corner ofthe room, and built as a smallcell of stone, non-combustibleto protect the timber of the outerwalls. The consequence of thischange is that, although the fireno longer occupies its centralsymbolically important position,movement within the room isless constrained. The floor be-comes more open for humanoccupation—a ‘dancing floor’.

The decentralised fireplaceneed not be positioned in thecorner of its room. In this smallWelsh cottage the hearth takesup almost all of one wall.

A consequence of puttinga fireplace on the periphery of aroom is that the fabric of thehearth (and of the chimney stackit acquires) contributes to theenclosure and structure of theroom; it assumes another archi-tectural role, as wall. In thisWelsh example it is the fireplacethat divides the cell of the houseinto two rooms.

In fact the fireplace stack inthis example does more than that.Each of its four sides contributesa wall to four places: the tworooms already mentioned, plusan entrance lobby; and a stair tothe upper floor, which the stacksimilarly divides into two.

In another Welsh example(right) the space defining role ofthe hearth and its massive chim-ney stack is taken further, witheach of its four sides playing apart in the composition of eachof four sections of the house—three wings of accommodationplus an entrance porch. Here the

Reference for Welsh ruralhouses:

Peter Smith—Houses of the Welsh Countryside, 1975.

In this summer cottage,designed and built in 1940,Walter Gropius and Marcel

Breuer used the chimney stackto separate the living area

from the dining.


59

fireplace is once more central tothe house, but in a wayarchitecturally different to thatof the open hearth in the centreof a room. The central stack gen-erates four spaces like spokes ra-diating from a hub.

The same architectural ideais taken a step further in the nextexample, and formalised into asquare plan by enclosing the four

corner spaces as rooms. Theserooms don’t have fireplaces; andthe circumambulatory routefrom room to room reintroducesthe sort of circulation problemsof the hearth in the centre of thefloor, though of a different order.

In this house (below), an-other building by RudolfSchindler, designed (but neverbuilt) when he was an appren-

tice fellow of Frank LloydWright, the fireplace plays anumber of the roles alreadymentioned. It provides the fo-cus of the house, and is its mainstructural anchorage. It dividesthe living room from the workroom. It also contributes a wallto the entrance lobby. Its fourthside is however more curious.The fire itself is not set beneaththe chimney stack, but on a lowplatform between the stack andthe outer wall. It seems the ideawas that one fire could warmboth rooms.

In large rooms a fire canonly warm a fraction of thespace; its sphere of warmth doesnot extend to the walls. In thesecircumstances the fire, like anoutdoor fire, identifies its ownsmall place within a larger one.

Sometimes this is recog-nised architecturally too. This is

In the Ward Willits House, de-signed by Frank Lloyd Wrightin 1901, the central chimneystack plays a pivotal role in theorganisation of the accommo-dation into four wings.


60

a plan of two of a number of ‘co-operative dwellings’ whichBarry Parker and RaymondUnwin designed (in about 1902)for ‘a Yorkshire town’ (right). Ifthey had ever been built theywould have formed part of aquadrangle of similar houses,also provided with commonrooms for social activities. In theright hand plan you can see thatthe place around the fire is iden-tified architecturally as an ‘ingle-nook’. Notice too how Parkerand Unwin architecturally iden-tified other ‘sub-places’ withinthe living room: a place to sit bythe window; a place at the tableto eat; a place to play the piano;a place to study at a desk.

In houses with central heat-ing the hearth is less importantas a source of warmth; but it canretain its role as the focus of aparticular place, for sitting andreading, or knitting, or talking,or going to sleep. Rather thanthe hemisphere of warmth hav-ing to fill the interior of the cell,it can be used merely to heat, andmore importantly provide a vi-tal focus for, a small portion ofthe space within the cell, leav-ing the rest of the space to beheated by the background cen-tral heating system.

In Le Corbusier’s design fora Citrohan House (1920, right)the fireplace is the focus of a smallpart of the living room, under the‘boudoir’ balcony and rather likea simplified ingle-nook. The restof the house was to be heated byradiators fed from a boiler posi-tioned under the outside steps tothe roof, which therefore did notcontribute to the conceptual or-ganisation of the living spaces ofthe house.

With central heating thehearth in a dwelling is practi-cally redundant, or at least notrequired to heat the wholespace. In these circumstances itsrole in spatial organisation canchange. It can become more likea fire in an internal landscape.

In this design for a houseby Hugo Häring (1946, right)the fireplace is almost com-pletely detached from the rest

second floor

first floor

ground floor

In this house designed byHugo Häring, which is deter-minedly not orthogonal, thehearth is separated from thewalls in a irregular pattern.


61

of the fabric of the house. Fromits central position other places,defined by the activities they ac-commodate, radiate with an ir-regularity more associated withthe natural landscape.

This plan is of a pair ofhouses designed by RudolfSchindler, in 1922, for himselfand his wife, and another cou-ple. Set in the reasonably com-fortable climate of southern

California, the gardens aretreated as outdoor roomsbounded by hedges rather thanconstructed walls. These out-door rooms, as well as smallparts of the inside spaces, wereprovided with their own fire-places. There is not one centralchimney stack, but three, posi-tioned between the rooms withroofs over them and thosewithout.

Below is a plan of Fallingwater, by Frank Lloyd Wright(1935). This house is built abovea waterfall. Its floor platformsand flat roofs echo the horizon-tal strata of the surroundingrocks. The symbolic power ofthe hearth was important inmany of Wright’s designs forhouses. Though it does not pro-vide all the heating, it is the so-cial focus and heart of the house.Set against, and on, the rock ofthe waterfall itself, it is as if thehearth has escaped from the con-tainment of the cell and returnedto its place in the natural land-scape.


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Bed—a place for sleep, sex,sicknessA bed is not just a piece of furni-ture; conceptually it is a place. Itmight be argued that the most fun-damental purpose of a house isas a secure place for sleep. Thebedroom is the innermost, mostprivate, most protected part of ahouse. It is a place where one mustfeel safe enough to sleep, or to beill, and private enough for sex.

The earliest houses were,and the most primitive housesare, little more than bedrooms,with most other activities asso-ciated with dwelling takingplace outside.

The development of thehouse through history includesthe invention of the separatebed chamber, and its progres-sive segregation from other in-ternal living places in theinterests of increasing privacyand security.

The bedroom has becomea room on the conceptual, andoften also the physical, periph-ery of a house—upstairs or setaside from the living rooms,private to its owner, and oftenconsidered less important thanthe reception rooms.

A bed can be a separatepiece of furniture, with its ownself-contained form, or it can befixed into the architecture of itshouse.

Like a hearth, a bed maybe no more than the patch ofground which a sleeping crea-ture occupies.

Or it might be identified asa defined area by a materialwhich makes it more comfort-able—leaves, soft grass, aground sheet, a foam mattress,a towel, a rug….

A bed may be a plat-form, lifting the sleeping surfaceoff the ground…

…and fitted with one, two,three or four walls.

A bed might be fitted witha roof, supported on its own col-umns, making it into a bed-aedicule.

In Powis Castle in Wales thereis a state bedroom which is

spatially organised like aproscenium arch theatre: thebed is the stage, and is set in

an alcove framed by a pro-scenium arch, outside of

which is an area for thoseseeking an audience.


63

It might even be a com-plete room in itself—a bed-cell.

Not only do beds have ar-chitecture in themselves, theycontribute to the compositionof places in larger works of ar-chitecture.

A hiking tent, like a primi-tive bivouac made of branchesand leaves, is a bed-roof—asmall building.

In more complex buildingsthe bed does not occupy thewhole internal space, but it doesplay its part in the organisationof spaces into places.

According to accounts inthe writings of Homer, somethree thousand years ago, an-cient Greek kings slept in bedsin their megarons, and their visi-tors slept in the porches, as

someone nowadays might, on ahot night, sleep on a verandah.

Some small old houses hadsleeping floors built betweenthe side walls at the end of anopen hall, lifting the bed up intothe warmer air that collects inthe upper levels of any heatedspace, and freeing more spaceon the ground floor. This is along section through a tinyWelsh cottage.

Some had box-beds—sleeping-cells like cupboardsbuilt alongside the hearth. Thisis the plan of a house the insideof which is illustrated earlier inthis book (in the chapter onArchitecture as Identification ofPlace). It also has a bed up

stairs, formed of a box in theceiling below which was usedto store and smoke joints ofmeat. Both beds are near thehearth for warmth.

A bed may be an aedicule, pro-vided with its own roof sup-ported on columns, or walls.

It may even be completely en-closed within in its own ‘cup-board’.


64

In this small woodlandhouse which Ralph Erskinebuilt for himself when he wentto live in Sweden during theSecond World War, the bedcould be lifted into the ceilingduring the day, to save space.

In some of the houses thatCharles Moore has designed,the bed is a platform on top ofan aedicule, with the space de-fined beneath used as a sittingplace, with its own hearth.

Even an ‘ordinary’ bed—a movable piece of furniture—contributes to the architectureof its room. The Victorian ar-chitect Robert Kerr, in his bookThe English Gentleman’sHouse (1865), used four-and-a-half pages discussing the rela-tive positions of windows,doors, hearth, and bed in asleeping-room, and comparingtypical English arrangements,where the bed stood as a free-standing piece of furniture po-sitioned to avoid draughts, withFrench bedrooms where the bedwas sheltered in its own alcove.

Reference for RalphErskine:

Peter Collymore—TheArchitecture of Ralph

Erskine, 1985.

According to Robert Kerr, theEnglish Victorian architect,

the English gentleman’sbedroom should be arranged

so that the bed avoideddraughts; one should be ableto draw a straight line fromthe door to the hearth with-out it cutting across the bed.In French examples, he said,

beds were protected fromdraughts by being provided

with their own alcovesplanned into the bedrooms.

Reference for CharlesMoore:

Charles Moore andothers—The Place of Houses,

1974.

In this tiny house whichRalph Erskine built for

himself when he went to livein Sweden, space is saved by

having furniture which can bestowed away; the bed lifts

into the ceiling space.


65

Hill House was built in1903 at Helensburgh, Scotland,designed by the architectCharles Rennie Mackintosh.The main bedroom is at the bot-tom left of this plan, whichshows the first floor of thehouse. Though apparently verysimple, Mackintosh subtly di-vided the room into variousplaces for particular purposes.There is a hearth with a seat.The washstand is just inside thedoor. There is a dressing placeby the pair of windows, betweenwhich stands a tall mirror. Thebed lies in its own generous al-cove, which has a vaulted ceil-ing; originally Mackintoshintended to define the bed-al-cove even more with two deco-rated side-screens making anentrance, but these were notbuilt. The lower drawing showsthese screens, the bed, the wash-stand, and the decorativescheme for the bedroom walls.

In the Farnsworth House(below) by Mies van der Rohe,the places of the two beds arenot as definitely identified by thearchitecture. Though their po-sitions are hinted at by the or-ganisation of space in the house,they take their own places ratherthan have them given to themby the architecture.

In the main bedroom in HillHouse, the architect CharlesRennie Mackintosh placed thebed in its own alcove, with anarched ceiling.

Reference for Mackintosh:

Robert Macleod—CharlesRennie Mackintosh, Architectand Artist, 1968.

Reference for Mies van derRohe:

Philip Johnson—Mies van derRohe, 1978.


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Altar—a table for sacrificeor worshipThe architecture of an altar maybe more consistent than that ofa hearth or of a bed—it is al-most always a table (a plat-form) for ritual or symbolicsacrifice, or which plays the roleof focus for worship.

In ancient Egypt altars weretables on which nourishment forthe dead pharaoh was placed.Altars were hidden away in thedeepest recesses of the mortuarytemples that were attached to thebases of the pyramids. Thoughthey were concealed from pub-lic view, and attended only by thepriests, they were usually posi-tioned on the east-west axis ofthe pyramid, and the long axisof the temple.

This is a small early exam-ple from the pyramid ofMeidum:

The same principles of ar-rangement apply in the muchlarger and more complex exam-ple at the pyramid of Chephren(which is one of the well-knowngroup at Giza, far right). Themortuary temple lies at the baseof the pyramid (at the top ofthe drawing); the altar is in asmall chamber close to thepyramid; the spirit of the phar-aoh would reach the foodthrough the image of a door-way, which appeared to leadfrom inside the pyramid.

At Stonehenge the placeof the altar is identified by a

circle, and a horseshoe, ofstanding stones. The altar ispositioned not quite at thegeometric centre of the circle,offset in response to the ap-proach to the circle and theopen end of the horseshoe.

In ancient Greece altarswere positioned outside thetemples. The image of the godwas housed within. This is thetemple of Athena Polias atPriene. The altar and the godinside the temple are linked bythe long axis which they share.As in Egyptian pyramids, thiswas often the east-west axis.

In the pyramid temple ofChephren, the altar is hiddenaway in the deepest recesses.The god king would come to

collect the food through animitation doorway which

‘connected’ the chamber withthe inside of the pyramid.


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In medieval churches andcathedrals the altar is inside.

This is the church of S.Maria delMar in Barcelona. Still, the al-tar relates to an east-west axisthat provides the backbone forthe whole building. The princi-pal purpose of all Christianchurches is to identify the placeof the altar. In this example theway that the building focuses onthe altar is clear.

During the Renaissance,some architects and theologianswondered whether the altarshould be positioned at the cen-tre of the church, rather thanat one end.

In the church of St Peterin Rome the high altar is placedat the centre of the main partof the building. An extension to

the nave stops the building be-ing a fully centralised church.

Some twentieth-centurychurches have centralised planstoo. This is the plan of one inLe Havre, France, designed byAuguste Perret, and built in

1959. This church is a largespire (far left), which, like spireson traditional medieval churc-hes, also identifies the place ofthe altar. In Perret’s church thealtar is placed on three axes: thetwo horizontal axes, and thevertical.

The spire of a traditionalchurch acts as a marker,identifying the place of thealtar in a way that can be seenfor miles around.

This church designed byAuguste Perret is one bigspire. The altar is positionedcentrally, directly under thespire.


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This church too has a cen-tralised plan, with the altar at thefocus of a square, and with its pres-ence emphasised from the outsideby a spire supported on the eighttimber columns around the oc-tagonal platform. It is a chapel

dedicated to St James the Fisher-man, and was designed by AlbertChrist-Janer and Mary Mix Foley.It was built in Wellfleet, Massa-chusetts, in 1956.

Another way in which theplace of the altar can be identi-

fied by a church building is bythe effect of the perspective ofa long space. This effect worksbecause the altar is on the longaxis of the building. This axisis so powerful, symbolically aswell as architecturally, that en-trances into churches oftenavoid aligning with it.

By the twentieth centurythe symmetrical arrangementhad become so orthodox that

The axis of a church createsperspective which focuses on

the altar.

The place of the altar in atraditional church is identified

by the axes of the building.


69

architects were keen to exploreother ways of positioning an al-tar in a church.

The Cemetery Chapel atTurku in Finland (above), de-signed by Erik Bryggman, andbuilt in 1941, has an asymmetri-cal plan, but the altar remainsthe focus of the building. Atten-tion is drawn to it by the axis ofthe entrance and the pathwayleading to it (as in more tradi-tional church plans), but in mak-ing an asymmetrical layout thearchitect recognised the relation-ship between the inside of thechurch and the outside. The con-text of the church is not sym-metrical; Bryggman’s layout

allows the sun in to illuminatethe altar alcove, and the congre-gation to look out through theglass south wall.

Some things in architec-ture, without being altars, canbe like them. This is a part ofsketch ‘ideal’ plan for the Ab-bey of St Gall in France. It datesfrom the 9th century AD, andshows the intended infirmary.

The operating table (at thetop left) has the same sort ofarchitectural relationship withits room, as the altars in theirchapels (bottom).

Many ordinary everydaythings can be like altars. When

Alvar Aalto’s design for theVuoksenniska Church atImatra in Finland is asym-metrical in its plan. But stillthe building, by variousmeans, focuses on the altar.

Christ Church, Spitalfields,has a symmetrical plan, andits altar lies on the long axis(in this case sharing that axiswith the entrance). ThisLondon church was designedby Nicholas Hawksmoor inthe mid-1720s.


70

someone, in their room, devotesa table to memorabilia of a fa-vourite football club, it can belike an altar.

A museum curator mayplace precious objects on theirown altars.

A grandmother might

make a piano into an ‘altar’ toher family.

A bar might be consid-ered by some to be an altar todrinking.

A kitchen stove might belike an altar to cooking.

A mantelpiece can be an al-tar to the fire.

A dressing table may be analtar to one’s self.

A dining table can be analtar to a family eating together.

An operating table might beinterpreted as an altar, asmight a mortuary table.


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Performance place

A performance requires space;whether religious ritual, dance,music, drama, football…it is notas focused a place as a hearth oran altar. A performance placealso requires protection from en-croachment by those not in-volved in it, who may bespectators.

When a clown performs ina field it becomes a stage. He de-fines its area by his movement

and by positioning his props. Heprotects it from encroachmentby force of his presence and pre-tend personality. The ring ofspectators that he attracts alsocontribute to the identificationof place, to the architecture ofthis impromptu theatre.

In primitive times a placefor the performance of ritualmay have been no more thana clearing in a forest, or atrampled piece of grassland.But by the powers of architec-ture performance places can

be made more formal andmore permanent.

In Minoan and Mycenae-an times (about 3500 years ago)the ‘dancing floor’—orkestra—was a specific place.

This is an example from the

Palace of Knossos on the Medi-terranean island of Crete. It isthought to have been built byDaedalos, architect to KingMinos, as a place for his daugh-ter to dance; but it might havebeen a place for displaying bullsbefore they went into the court-yard of the palace to be foughtby young Minoans. This smalldancing floor is a flat, almostrectangular, paved area, withlow sitting steps on two sides.The rake of the steps takes ad-vantage of the natural slope ofthe ground.

By a thousand or so yearslater, architects had formalisedthe outdoor theatre into thegrand amphitheatre, which was

When a clown performs on apatch of ground it becomes astage.


72

much larger and more geometri-cally organised, but which alsomade use of the lie of the land.

Behind the orkestra in aGreek amphitheatre there wasa building—the skene—whichin Greek drama was a back-ground to the action. ThroughRoman and into modern timesthis building came to be usedas a performance place in itsown right—a stage. It was also,like the altar, brought inside.

The stage became framedby a proscenium arch. In theGreek amphitheatre the magicof the place of performance hadbeen defined by the circle of theorkestra; in this type of theatrethe separation of the specialworld of the actors and the or-dinary world of the audiencewas defined by the platform of

the stage, and by this rectangu-lar opening—a window into amake-believe world.

With the development ofcinema and television the win-dow into other worlds becamemore far-reaching, and en-croachment impossible:

Some architects have triedto design performance places inwhich the separation betweenperformers and spectators isreduced.

In the Philharmonie, a concerthall in Berlin designed by

Hans Scharoun, the perform-ers are surrounded by their

audience.


73

The plan at the bottom ofthe previous page shows theauditorium of the Philharmoniein Berlin (1956). As in his de-signs for houses, HansScharoun, the architect of thePhilharmonie, was determinedto be non-orthogonal. In thisplan, he has placed the perform-ers on their stage, not in oppo-sition to the audience, butsurrounded by them. Listenerssit in tiers as if on the slopes ofa small valley. The sanctity ofthe performance place is pre-served, by the platform, but theseparation between audienceand players is reduced.

Whether or not there isthe illusion of separation be-tween audience and performersit is often thought necessary toprotect performance placesfrom the encroachment ofthings that have nothing to dowith them—traffic noise, thesounds of the weather, sun-light, and so on. This sectionthrough a theatre designed byFrank Gehry shows how per-formance places are often de-signed to be isolated in the coreof their building, insulatedfrom outside distractions byancillary accommodationwrapped around them.

Reference for The AmericanCenter in Paris, by FrankGehry:

Lotus International 84,February 1995, pp.74–85.

This section shows howtheatres are often designed tobe insulated against outsidenoises by their ancillaryaccommodation.

ARCHITECTURE ASMAKING FRAMES

Opposite Page:

In this carving the image of aperson (called Rhodia) isframed by the representation ofa building. It is a pictorial com-position, and a memorial, butit also illustrates a recognitionthat buildings are ‘frames’within which people live, andthat buildings can be identifiedby the people that inhabit them.(The carving is a grave stelefrom Egypt, and is about 1200years old.)

Architecture is more to do withmaking frames than paintingpictures; more a matter of pro-viding an accompaniment to lifethan the dance itself.

Certainly it is within the ca-pacity of architecture to frame‘pictures’—as the rectangle of awindow frames a view, or adoorway the figure of a person.

It is also possible to com-pose the products of architec-ture, in town- or landscape, asif they themselves were objectsin a picture, perhaps to be seenfrom a particular point of view.

But architecture is notprimarily about contriving ‘pic-

turesque’ compositions; nor isthe power to frame limited todistant hills or someone stand-ing in a doorway.

The dimensions of archi-tecture include more than thetwo of a picture-frame. It isobvious that they include thethird spatial dimension, butthere is also the dimension oftime—which accommodates

movement and change—andthose more abstract and subtledimensions—patterns of life,of work, of ritual. The prod-ucts of architecture can frameimages of gods; they can framethe remains of dead people;they can even frame the familypet. But perhaps their noblestpurpose is to frame the lives ofpeople.

Thinking about architec-ture as frame-making is part ofconceiving it as identification ofplace. Frames define bounda-ries. Places in which things hap-pen or are kept are made by themeans of architecture. Products

of architecture are frames: therooms within which we work,the pitches on which games areplayed, the streets along whichwe drive, the table where a fam-ily eats, the gardens in which wesit, the floors on which wedance…are all ‘frames’; and to-gether they constitute a complexand extensive framework withinwhich we live (which though

ARCHITECTURE AS MAKING FRAMES


76

vast can be like the musical ac-companiment which sets themetre of a song).

This plan illustrates how awork of architecture frames life.It is a house in Colombo, SriLanka, designed by the architectGeoffrey Bawa, and built in1962. The house as a whole isframed by the outer boundarywall, but it contains many otherframes too: the living and bed-rooms frame social activities andsleeping; the dining table framesdinner parties; the courtyardsframe the trees, plants, fountains,and large stones they contain;even the bath is a frame, and thegarage frames the car.

Apparently, the word‘frame’ comes from the old Eng-lish word framian, which means‘to be helpful’. A frame is ‘help-ful’ in that it provides support.The physical frame of some-thing—a loom, a body, a build-ing—is its structure, withoutwhich it would be formless. A

frame also ‘helps’ by definingspace: creating demarcationsand an ordered relationship be-tween ‘insides’ and ‘outsides’.

A frame is a principle of or-ganisation. Whether it is a pic-ture frame, or a sheep pen, or aroom, it is rarely (if ever) suffi-cient by itself (except perhaps inthe poetic device of the ‘vacantframe’); it has a relationship withwhat it frames (actually or po-tentially) and with what is ‘out-side’, setting something in itsplace, mediating between it andthe rest of the world. That some-thing may be a picture, or anobject, but it might also be a per-son (the hermit in his cave, or‘Mrs Clark’ in her house, StJerome in his study, or one’s selfin a room), an activity (tennison a court, or car manufacturein a factory), an animal (a pig inits sty, or a bird in its cage), agod (Athena in the Parthenon,or Vishnu in his temple).

This drawing is based onthe painting of St Jerome in HisStudy by the fifteenth-centuryItalian painter Antonello daMessina. As a picture it has aframe; but within the picture St

Photographs often portraybuildings not as frames but asobjects. This is a consequenceof the process of photography,which is one of placing a two-

dimensional frame aroundsomething. This process

deprives us of our experienceof buildings as frames, turning

them into objects which arethemselves framed.

We are used to looking at theworld through frames: the

frames of pictures, the framesof television screens, the

frames and sub-frames ofcomputer screens. It might beargued that since these frame

remote places that they consti-tute an abstract, supra-real

architecture: that the WorldWide Web, for example, is a

form of architecture whichreinterprets or overlays the

physical world.

This image portrays thebuilding as an object, and is

unable to let us experience itas a frame.

Architecture as Making Frames

77

Jerome is framed, physically andsymbolically, by the architectureof the building in which he sits.

A frame can be a structureand a boundary; but its help-fulness also comes from beinga frame of reference, accordingto which one develops an un-derstanding of where one is.The squares on a chessboard,or the floors of an apartmentblock, or the streets of a city,make frames that conditionhow pieces, people, or vehicles

move, and by reference towhich their locations can bedescribed.

In an abstract sense, aframe can be a theory. (The in-tention of this book, for exam-ple, is to be ‘helpful’ by offeringa framework of concepts forunderstanding architecture.)Architecture involves consider-ing how things should beframed, theoretically as well asphysically: designing a museuminvolves thinking about howobjects should be exhibited andthe routes people might takethrough its galleries, but it alsoinvolves taking a theoreticalstance on the notion of a mu-seum and its role in culture;designing an opera house in-volves thinking about how thespectacle of an opera, and thedressed-up people who come tosee it, might be displayed,which depends on a theory ofthe culture of opera; even thedesign of a kennel poses theproblem of how a dog shouldbe framed.

In more complex cases, thedesign of a house involves theo-rising on how the lives it will ac-commodate might be lived andproducing an appropriateframe; the design of a churchinvolves understanding the lit-urgy—the theory of how it is tobe used for worship and ritual.

Architecture, in all thesecases, involves the responsibil-ity of proposing a physical, anda theoretical, framework withinwhich art can be viewed, operawatched, dances danced, godsworshipped, meals eaten, pro-duce sold, or whatever.

A picture frame, or a mu-seum exhibition case, or an

Not only is the plan of thisAfrican village a diagram ofthe communal life it accom-modates, but the village itselfis a conceptual frame whichresponds to the order in thelives of its inhabitants.


78

ancient Greek temple, holdssomething which is static,something for which time hasbeen halted. Through archi-tecture, however, people alsomake frames for movementand for change: a footballfield is a frame on which anartificial battle is fought; astreet frames its traffic; thetrack of a fairground ride de-scribes the passage of its car-riages; a church frames aceremonial route, fromlychgate to altar.

Frames (physical and theo-retical) are used to give theworld, or part of it, some sortof order. These pages (which arethemselves frames) have beenorganised into two-dimensionalrectangles, (the graphic ‘archi-tecture’ of the page); some com-puter programmes are based onthe use of frames for differenttasks. The range of types offrames in architecture is greater;and they are not always simpleor rectangular.

* *A conceptual requirement

of a frame is that it must havesomething to frame, whether ornot that something is temporar-ily or even permanently absent.(A chair is not always occupied.A cenotaph is, literally, an emptytomb; though permanentlyempty it is a frame for the ‘idea’of the dead.) It is not necessarythat a frame always containssomething, but its relationshipwith content is essential.

One usually assumes that apicture frame is of lesser impor-tance than the work of art whichit contains. One similarly as-sumes that the glass case which

protects, for example, the bustof Nefertiti in the Egyptian Mu-seum in Berlin is less importantthan the bust itself. But the ques-tion whether the products of ar-chitecture are of lesser, or greater,importance than the things theyframe is more difficult.

The answer of moderationis that the two are in a symbioticrelationship; it may be that aframe is secondary to its con-tents; but the contents also ben-efit from their frame—in theprotection it gives, in the accom-modation it provides, in the am-plification which it gives to theirexistence. A room provides aservice as a frame; as does a chair,

Salisbury Cathedral is com-posed of a number of frames

for different purposes: theporch frames the entrance; thecathedral frames the altar; the

altar frames the ceremony ofpreparation for communion;

the square cloister frames aplace of contemplation; the

octagonal chapter houseframes a place for communal

discussion.


79

a bookcase, a pulpit, an aircrafthangar, even a bus shelter. Eachprotects, accommodates, and re-inforces the existence of its con-tents (or its inhabitants). Therelationship between contentsand frame is pivotal.

Architecture is most oftena matter of framing the ordinaryand the everyday, but famous in-stances make the point and arememorable: the simple blue ga-rage in Laugharne on the SouthWales coast is the frame withinwhich Dylan Thomas wrote hispoetry; the new palace in Bucha-rest, Romania, was intended toframe and amplify the politicalpower of the dictator NicolaeCeausescu; the Dome of theRock in Jerusalem frames a sa-cred place; the concentrationcamp at Auschwitz framed thedeaths of a million people.

Thinking in this way, onerealises that human beings sur-round themselves with frames,by which they organise theworld architecturally. Sittingwriting this I am surrounded bymany frames: the frame ofstreets of the planned village inwhich I live; the frame of ourpiece of ground, our house, mystudy. In the study there are:

shelves which frame books(themselves frames of ideas andfacts); a table which frames asurface for work; a drawingboard; windows; a door; a fire-place; lights; pictures; cup-boards; and computers, whichframe lots of things from allover the world.

Architectural frames, andthe ways in which they can beused, are innumerable. Thereare simple frames (an aedicularporch), and complex (the net-work of routes in a modern airterminal). There are smallframes (a keyhole), and large (acity square). There are two-di-mensional (a snooker or pooltable), three-dimensional (amulti-storey structure), andfour-dimensional (a labyrinth),and many dimensional (theInternet).

Frames need not be con-structed of tangible material—a spotlight can frame an actoron a stage—and can apply tosenses other than the visual: abeautiful woman might beframed by an aura of scent; thewarm air from an air vent mightframe a group of people tryingto keep warm on a cold day; amosque is in a way framed by

A table, in its space, framesthe life of a meal.

The aedicule of the AlbertMemorial in London frames astatue of Prince Albert, but indeath it also frames hismemory.


80

the sound of the muezzin call-ing Muslims to prayer.

Russian DollsFrames often overlap one an-other in architecture, or fit onewithin another. Frames can belike Russian Dolls, each ofwhich has an inside into whichfits a slightly smaller doll, to thelimits of practicability.

Some works of architec-ture can be like this. The planof Beaumaris Castle on the is-land of Anglesey off the coastof North Wales shows five con-centric layers: the moat; the

outer defensive wall; the outerward; the inner defensive wall;and the inner ward.

In architecture frames arerarely simply concentric likeRussian Dolls; frames overlap,combine in complex ways, in-trude one on another, and op-erate at vastly variable scales.

Imagine a walled town.The ‘first’ frame is the wall it

self; there are the gatewaysthrough the walls; then there isthe network of streets, geomet-ric or organic; each of thehouses or church or civic build-ings is a frame itself, but to-

Beaumaris Castle on theisland of Anglesey off the

coast of North Wales, consistsof a concentric series of

defensive barriers.


81

gether they might define a mar-ket place or town square; in thesquare there might be a foun-tain set in its own frame of wa-ter; inside each of the housesthere are a number of rooms,each of which contain framesof different kinds—tables,chairs, fireplaces, cupboards,chests, beds, a bath, a sink, evena carpet can frame a place; atable might be set for a meal,each person having their ownplace framed by a chair andsome cutlery; the table is maybeframed in a pool of light; a deskmight frame work in progress;a television frames views of theoutside world; and so on.

Buildings can be framesstructurally, but architecturemakes frames conceptually too.This is a diagram of a smallhouse which the American ar-chitect Charles Moore designedfor him-self and which was builtin California in 1961. It is not alarge house, but it contains twoaedicules, like small temples.Each of these frames its ownplace: the larger, a living area;the smaller, the bath and shower.Both aedicules are lit byrooflights, so both places arealso framed by light. The houseas a whole is framed by the en-velope shown dotted on the dia-gram. Other places within the

Reference for Moore House:

Charles Moore, Gerald Allen,and Donlyn Lyndon—ThePlace of Houses, 1974.

A condominium frames anumber of apartments, thatframe rooms, each of whichcontains a number of smallerframes.


82

house are framed by a combi-nation of the aedicules and theouter envelope, together withpieces of furniture. Taken alto-gether the house is a complexmatrix of overlapping frames.

This is another building inwhich aedicules of differentscales are used to frame places.In this case the places are not todo with dwelling, but with deathand bereavement. The Chapel ofthe Resurrection, designed bySigurd Lewerentz, was built in

the extensive grounds of theWoodland Crematorium inStockholm in 1925.

In the plan one can see anumber of aedicules and othertypes of architectural frames.The entrance, from the north,is framed by a large porch oftwelve columns supporting apediment; this porch is not ac-tually attached to the main partof the building. Then there isthe body of the chapel itself: onthe outside this is very plain,rather like an austere tomb; onthe inside surfaces of the wallsthere are shallow relief col-umns, so that this cell is also atemple-like aedicule.

Within the chapel, andvery carefully positioned, is asmaller, more elaborate

The Chapel of the Resurrection,designed by Sigurd Lewerentz iscomposed of many architectural

frames.

Reference for Chapel of theResurrection:

Janne Ahlin—SigurdLewerentz, architect 1885–

1975, 1987.


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aedicule, which identifies theplace of the altar and frames thecross (both of which themselvesare symbolic frames); and infront of this aedicule there is thecatafalque, which provides aframe for the coffin during fu-neral ceremonies. The coffin, ofcourse, frames the dead person.All together, the coffin and themourners, with the altar andcross in their own aedicule, are

framed by the chapel itself.The Chapel of the Resur-

rection is composed of many ar-chitectural frames. The windowin the south facing wall is in theform of an aedicule. Its primaryarchitectural role is not to framea view of the outside but, as thesole source of daylight in thechapel, to allow the sun into thecell, to frame both the altar andthe coffin on the catafalque.

Reference for First Church ofChrist, Scientist:

Edward Bosley—First Churchof Christ, Scientist, Berkeley,1994.

The First Church of Christ,Scientist, in Berkeley, Califor-nia, is an aggregation of manyaedicules. It was designed byBernard Maybeck, and builtin 1910.

TEMPLESAND

COTTAGES

In dealing with the world, peo-ple sometimes accept what theworld provides or does, and atothers, they try to change it toachieve a view of how it shouldbe—how the world might bemore comfortable, more beauti-ful, or in better order than it is.

Our interaction with theworld can be thought of as amixture of these two responses:to accept or to change. Hamletwas not the only one to be af-flicted with this quandary; it isparticularly alive in architecture,where the designing mind has toengage directly with the world.

It is not possible to changeeverything by the powers of ar-chitecture; but neither is it fea-sible to leave everything as it is;merely by lighting their camp-fire our prehistoric familychanged the world. Architec-ture therefore involves both ac-ceptance and change. Thedesigning mind is faced with thedouble question, ‘What shouldone try to change; and whatshould one accept as it is?’.

In this question, architec-ture is philosophy; it is to dowith how the world works, andwhat the response should be.There is no single correct an-swer, but a mixture of wonder-ing and assertion.

The following two quota-tions, both by writers concernedwith architecture, illustrate dif-ferent philosophical positionson how the designing mindshould relate to the world. Thefirst is taken from The TenBooks on Architecture writtenby the Roman architect Vitru-vius in the first century BC; (he

is paraphrasing an earlier,Greek writer, The ophrast- us):

The man of learning…canfearlessly look down uponthe troublesome accidents offortune. But he who thinkshimself entrenched in de-fences not of learning but ofluck, moves in slippery paths,struggling through life un-steadily and insecurely.

The second quotation is fromThe Poetry of Architecture, bythe nineteenth-century Britishcritic, John Ruskin. He is im-agining the quintessentialmountain cottage:

Everything about it should benatural, and should appear asif the influences and forceswhich were in operationaround it had been too strongto be resisted, and had ren-dered all efforts of art tocheck their power, or concealthe evidence of their action,entirely unavailing… it cannever lie too humbly in thepastures of the valley, norshrink too submissively intothe hollows of the hills; itshould seem to be asking thestorm for mercy, and themountain for protection: andshould appear to owe to itsweakness, rather than to itsstrength, that it is neitheroverwhelmed by the one, norcrushed by the other.

The attitudes which these twowriters express are poles apart.Vitruvius puts forward the ideathat architecture is about chang-ing the world for the benefit ofpeople, and that such change is

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to be achieved by the applica-tion of human intellect and theassertion of human will. Ruskin,on the other hand, unsteadiesthis simple idea by suggestingthat it is not the role of humanbeings to contend against naturefor their own benefit, but to rec-ognise that they are part of (notseparate from) nature, and to ac-cept its authority, in the faiththat nature ‘knows best’ andwill provide. (Ruskin first pub-lished the above passage underthe nom de plume ‘KATAPHUSIN’ which is Greek for‘according to nature’.)

It would not be fair to sug-gest that these two quotationsrepresent the full bodies ofthought that Ruskin andVitruvius offered in their writ-ings. Nor do the attitudes pre-sented belong only to these twowriters; they have been echoedby many others through history.These two passages do howeveridentify the horns of an abid-ing dilemma for architects.

In a previous section of thisbook it was suggested that to un-derstand the powers of architec-ture one should be aware of theconditions within which theymay be employed. The conditionswhich the world presents can becategorised in various ways; hereis one way which seems appro-priate for discussing architecture.

Generally speaking, in do-ing architecture, one has to dealwith all or some of the follow-ing, which are extrinsic to theconscious designing mind:

• the ground, with itsearth,rock, trees; its stability, orinstability; its changes inlevel; itsdampness; its flator unevenness;

• gravity: its constantverticality;

• the weather: sun,breeze, rain,wind, snow, light-ning;

• the materials availablefor building: stone, clay,wood,steel, glass, plastic, con-crete, aluminium;

• the size of people, andof other creatures: their reach,their movement, their eyes, howthey sit;

• the bodily needs andfunctions of people, and maybeother creatures, for warmth, se-curity, air, food;

• the behaviour of people,individually, or in groups; so-cial patterns, and political struc-tures;

• other products of archi-tecture (other buildings, places)that already exist;

• pragmatic require-ments: the space needed forvarious activities;

• the past: history, tradi-tion;

• the future: visions of‘Utopia’, or of ‘Apocalypse’;

• the processes of time:change, wear, patination, dete-rioration, erosion, ruin.

To each or all of these the design-ing mind may adopt differentattitudes, maybe in differing cir-cumstances, for example: tomake shelter against a cold wind,or to enjoy the benefits of a cool-ing breeze; to try to control pat-terns of behaviour, or to allow(or accept, or cultivate, or con-cede to) their contribution to theidentity of places; to submit ma-terials to carving and polishing,or to accept their innate finish,or the finish they are given by the

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processes of their acquisition(such as that of stone broken byquarrying); to fight (or disregard)the effects of time, or to antici-pate (or exploit) the patinationof materials by sun, wind andwear; to provide for bodily needsand functions, or to dismiss themas beneath architectural consid-eration; to accept human size asa basis of architectural scale, orto create a hermetic rule for pro-portion, one which does not re-fer to anything outside itself; tofollow the precedents of history(even to submit to the ‘author-ity’ of history), or to seek thenew—making the future differ-ent from the past.

Any product of architecture(e.g. a building, a garden, a city,a playground, a sacred grove…)is informed by, and hence ex-presses, such attitudes. If an ar-chitect wishes to fight against theforce of gravity, then it will showin the form of the building pro-duced (for examples, a Gothiccathedral vault, or one of the can-tilevers of Frank Lloyd Wright’sdesign for the house called‘Fallingwater’). If an architectseeks to control the behaviour ofpeople, then it will show in theform of the building (for exam-ple in a ‘panopticon’ Victorianprison, in which all cells couldbe watched from a single centralview-point). If an architect wantsto cool the interior of a housewith breezes, then this too willaffect the form of the building.

Products of architecturecombine acceptance of some as-pects with change of others.There is, however, no generalrule to dictate which aspects areaccepted, and which should bechanged or controlled. This

fundamental uncertainty lies atthe heart of many of the greatdebates about architecture, inhistory and in the present:should architects follow tradi-tion, or should they strive fornovelty and originality; shouldmaterials be used in the statein which they are found, or besubject to processes of manu-facture that change their innatecharacter; should architects dic-tate the layout of the placeswhere people live, or shouldcities grow organically, withouta master plan? People find dif-ferent answers to these andmany other similarly difficultquestions.

Designing minds combinechange and acceptance in vary-ing degrees. In some productsof architecture the attitude ofchange and control seems todominate; in others it is the at-titude of acceptance and re-sponsiveness which appears toprevail. The archetypal ‘temple’and the archetypal ‘cottage’ il-lustrate these differences.

The archetypal ‘temple’

The archetypal ‘temple’ is nota real temple, but an idea. Theillustration on the next pageshows a building which lookslike an ancient Greek temple,but as we shall see later thereare other buildings which canbe classified as ‘temples’, in thephilosophical sense.

The ‘temple’ can be char-acterised in terms of the waysits architect dealt with variousaspects of the world. It is notnecessary to look at the templein terms of all the aspects of theworld listed above; seeing the


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treatment of some of them willillustrate the point.

The ‘temple’ stands on aplatform which replaces the un-even ground with a controlledsurface as a foundation for bu-ilding. This flat platform (or insome historical examples subtlycurved—as that of the Parthe-non on the acropolis in Athens)is a starting level (a datum) forthe geometric discipline of the‘temple’ itself, and detaches itfrom the found world. Even ifthe platform had no ‘temple’, itwould define a special place,distinct because of its flatnessand its separation by heightabove the landscape around.

The ‘temple’ provides shelteragainst the weather, to protectits content (the image of a god).Its form concedes little to the forcesof climate; it stands prominentlyin an exposed location.

Its materials are carved into

abstract or geometric shapes, andcarefully finished—smooth, painted,and with precise mouldings. Thestone is probably not that whichis readily available at the site, buthas been brought some distance,with the expenditure of substantialeffort and money, because of itsquality.

The scale of the ‘temple’doesn’t relate to the usual sizeof human beings, but to the in-determinately larger stature ofthe god to whom it is dedicated.The module on which the sizeof the ‘temple’ is based existsonly in the dimensions of thebuilding; the ‘temple’ has itsown ideal system of propor-tions within its own fabric; thischaracteristic contributes to itsdetachment from the foundworld.

As a house of a god the‘temple’ does not provide forthe bodily needs or functions ofmortals.


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The ‘temple’ is complete in it-self, and does not respond toother architecture. It is morelikely that other architecturewill relate to it, as a focus andpoint of reference. The ‘temple’represents a stable centre.Though not responding to otherbuildings around it, the ‘temple’probably does relate, by axis,to something distant and above

the ordinary: a sacred place onthe peak of a distant mountain,a star, or the rising sun.

As a shrine the ‘temple’ hasa simple function, which is notcomplicated by messy prag-matic requirements. Its form isideal, dictated by geometry andaxial symmetry rather than bythe spaces needed for a mixtureof activities.

The form of the classicGreek temples was the product ofrefinements made over a numberof centuries, but as an idea the‘temple’ is timeless—belongingequally to the past and the future.Though ancient temples arenow in ruins, they were not

built with this fate in mind, butto stand against the processesof time, rather than submit tothem. (For the later Romanticmind the reduction to ruin ofthese icons of human self-con-fidence—or maybe hubris—isfilled with poetic significance.)

The archetypal ‘cottage’

Like the ‘temple’, the archetypal

‘cottage’ is not a real buildingbut an idea. Whereas the ‘tem-ple’ manifests humanist detach-ment from the found world, the‘cottage’ fits in with its sur-roundings. The drawing aboveshows what appears to be a Brit-ish cottage (of somewhat vagueorigin), but there are many otherbuildings (and gardens) whichillustrate the ‘cottage’ idea.

Unlike the ‘temple’, thearchetypal ‘cottage’ sits on theground. The unevenness of siteis incorporated into its form.Not detached from the land-scape, its walls may extend intothe surroundings as field walls.


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Like the ‘temple’ the ‘cot-tage’ provides shelter againstthe weather, but for people andanimals rather than the imageof a god. Its architect has re-sponded to climate: it has asteeply pitched roof to shed therain, and is located to find whatprotection there is from trees,and from the lie of the land. Itsrelationship with the sun is notone of setting up a significantaxis, but maybe a matter (in acool climate) of taking advan-tage of its warmth, or (in a hotclimate) of providing shadefrom its heat.

The ‘cottage’ is built of ma-terials that are ready to hand.Though necessarily subject tosome shaping and finishing,they are used in a rough state.

The scale of the ‘cottage’relates directly to the actual sizeof people, and perhaps also live-stock. This is particularly evi-dent at doorways, where heightcorresponds to human stature,and width, if the door is givingaccess to a cowshed, maybe tothe span of cattle’s horns.

The ‘cottage’ provides forbodily needs and functions. Itsmain purpose is to house peo-ple who spend their time work-ing to keep themselves alive.There is a hearth for warmth;there are places to sit, to pre-pare food, to eat, to sleep.

The ‘cottage’ and theplaces around it accommodatemany different pragmatic re-quirements. In response to thesethe layout is not formal, butcomplex and irregular.

The ‘cottage’ is mutable,and accepts the processes oftime—wear and age. It is prob-ably never complete; additions

are added as more space isneeded, or removed when re-dundant. Its fabric acquires apatina which deepens with age;lichens grow on its stones; andplants grow in their own way,establishing themselves in thecrevices of the walls.

Attitude

Though the above descriptionsare analyses of the images of ap-parently real and plausiblebuildings—a ‘temple’ and a‘cottage’—the issue for the de-signing mind is the underlyingone of attitude. The mind thatis engaged in architecture musthave an attitude, or a permuta-tion of attitudes, to the condi-tions which impinge. Attitudesmay be held unthinkingly, orasserted consciously, but theyalways affect the character ofthe work produced. There is notone attitude which informs allarchitecture; in this, variety inworks of architecture is the re-sult of variety in the philosophi-cal approaches of architects.

Broadly, the attitudeswhich designing minds adoptexist on a dimension whichstretches from submission,through symbiosis, to domina-tion; one may submit to the con-ditions that prevail, seek towork in harmony with them, orseek to dominate them. But theyalso include many, more subtle,nuances of attitude: ignorance,disregard, acceptance, resigna-tion, response, change, mitiga-tion, amelioration, exploitation,contention, subjugation, con-trol; all of which can combinein a variety of ways in dealingwith the many different aspects


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of the world perceived as con-ditioning the production ofworks of architecture.

With regard to climate forexample: on a particular siteyou, as an architect, might beignorant of some wind thatblows with potential destructiveforce in the same month eachyear; you might know about thewind and yet disregard it; youmight seek to mitigate, or evenexploit its effects for the envi-ronmental benefit of the users;or you might perhaps suggest awindbreak to deflect or controlit. Some of the options may benegligent, reckless, or down-right stupid; others may be sub-tle, poetic, and intelligent; somemight exist in a grey zone be-tween the two; but the optionsin attitude are always there, tobe adopted with regard to dif-ferent aspects of the conditions,according to your judgement.

Attitudes, consciously orunselfconsciously adopted, aremanifest in the character of thework of architecture which isproduced. If an attitude ofdomination is adopted, it willbe there in the work; if submis-sion, it too will be there.

Attitudes may be person-ally asserted by architects, or in-herited by them from theirculture, in which case theirworks manifest not just theirpersonal attitudes but those oftheir culture or sub-culture.

The representation of atti-tude in works of architecture isalso open to manipulation: bythose who wish to use architec-ture as a means of poetic expres-sion; or by those who wish touse it as a medium of propa-ganda, or symbol of national,

personal, commercial status.When architects of the ThirdReich in Germany during the1930s wanted to use architec-ture to symbolise the power theReich asserted, they used a styleof architecture (based on Clas-sical architecture and its ‘tem-ples’) which evokes an attitudeof control. When the Naziswanted to suggest that their poli-tics were of those ‘of the peo-ple’ they insisted on a folk style(based on ‘cottages’) whichseemed to suggest acceptanceand celebration of national tra-ditions with roots deep in his-tory. Neither the Classical styleof architecture, nor the tradi-tional, was, in these instances,born of an attitude of accept-ance; both were imbued with aspirit of control.

Manipulation of the ap-pearance of works of architec-ture to suggest that they are bornof particular attitudes is not al-ways associated with dark orpolitical propaganda. It is alsoa facet of the poetic potential ofarchitecture. The other face ofpropaganda, in this regard, isromance; whether it is the ro-mance of the heroism of ancientRome, or of idyllic rural life, orof high technology, or of eco-logical harmony, works of archi-tecture can be made to appearto have been born of the appro-priate attitudes.

It may seem cynical to sayso, but sometimes the attitudesuperficially suggested by theappearance of a work of archi-tecture may not be the same asthe one which actually underlayits conception and realisation.

One attitude which is notcompatible with being an


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architect is abdication. As an ar-chitect one may accept, respondto, or change (the lie of the landfor example), but if one abdi-cates from decision, or tries tosuggest that the driving attitudelies elsewhere (in nature, nation,history, climate), then, in thefine grain of things, one is nolonger an architect. It is not na-ture, society, or history, nor cli-mate, gravity, or human scale,that determines the way a workof architecture comes about, butan architect’s attitude to themand to other aspects of condi-tions which appear to prevail.

‘Cottage’ and ‘temple’ asideas

‘Cottage’ and ‘temple’ are ar-chitectural ideas that are not re-stricted to cottages and temples.

Confusingly, it is quite easyto find cottages (i.e. small dwell-ings) that are to some degree‘temples’ (architecturally, thatis), and temples (i.e. religiousbuildings, loosely speaking) thatarchitecturally are ‘cottages’.The architectural ideas are notrestricted to their nominal roles

as ‘grand shrine for a god’ and‘humble home of man’. Archi-tectural ideas are not necessar-ily specific to purpose.

In its irregular composi-tion of forms this church onCorfu (bottom of page), thoughfunctionally a temple, isarchitecturally a ‘cottage’…

…while this cottage (right),with its geometric order andaxial symmetry, standing on asmall plinth is architecturally a‘temple’.

The ‘cottage’ and ‘temple’ideas can equally well be ap-plied to garden design. In thetraditional English cottage, and‘cottage’, garden (right) plantsin irregular groups are appar-ently allowed to grow in theirinnate ways, with no formalorganisation…

…whereas in the ornamen-tal garden of a French chateau,for example, the plants are ar-ranged in geometric patterns andclipped into unnatural shapes.

The English cottage gar-den implies acceptance of theprovidence of nature, apprecia-tion of the innate characters ofthe different species of plant,


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and enjoyment of an aestheticeffect which appears independ-ent of human decision and con-trol. By contrast, the geometricgarden of the French chateaucelebrates human control overnature; the plants do not growinto their natural shapes, butare clipped into regular forms.

Many products of archi-tecture are neither pure ‘cot-tage’ nor pure ‘temple’, but amixture of both. Parts of a ram-bling house may be little ‘tem-ples’: such as the porch, thefireplace, the four-poster bed,the door-case, the bay-window,and the dormer window, in thiscutaway drawing.

The architectural ideas of ‘tem-ple’ and ‘cottage’ are evident inthe plans of works of architec-ture, as well as in their outwardappearances.

This is the plan of the an-cient Greek temple of Aphaiaat Aegina. It illustrates ab-stract characteristics of axial

symmetry and regular geom-etry associated with the archi-tectural idea of ‘temple’.

While the irregularity and absenceof strictly orthogonal geometry inthe plan of this Welsh farmhouse


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(Llanddewi Castle Farm, Glamor-gan) is typical of the ‘cottage’ idea:its plan is not complete within it-self; some of its walls enclosepatches of outside space, and oth-ers stretch out into the landscape;the rooms are not laid out for-mally, but more as an accretionof places for different purposes.

Where the ‘temple’ planimposes, the ‘cottage’ plan re-sponds.

The Erectheion, a temple onthe acropolis in Athens, has anirregular asymmetrical plan…

…and relates to the lie of theland by responding to varyingground levels.

The Erectheion is com-posed of parts of three ‘temples’put together, but in its relationto the ground, it also has some‘cottage’ characteristics.

This Welsh farmhouse, bycontrast, exhibits some of the ar-chitectural characteristics of a

‘temple’.It has a regular plan…

…is symmetrical in sec-tion…

…and stands clear of the un-even ground on a level plat-form.

So far in this discussion ofthe ‘temple’ and the ‘cottage’ asarchitectural ideas we have

In some of its characteristics,this Welsh cottage is,

architecturally, a ‘temple’. It issymmetrical in plan andsection, and stands on a

platform, separated from thenatural lie of the ground.


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looked only at examples from thedistant past. These ideas are an-cient in the production of archi-tecture, but they have been usedin the twentieth century too.

This is the Nationalgaleriein Berlin, built to the designs ofMies van der Rohe in the1960s. This is the entrance levelof the building; the majority ofthe galleries are within theplinth on which it stands. Thestructure of this large pavilionis steel, and its walls are almostcompletely of glass. By its planand overall form it is clearly a‘temple’: it stands on a platformclear of the natural groundlevel; its plan is a perfect square;and it is axially symmetrical. Itis a reinterpretation in steel ofthe architecture of ancientGreek stone temples.

This house by Hans

Scharoun, of 1939, with its ir-regular plan which directly re-sponds to the accommodationof different purposes, appearsto be architecturally a ‘cottage’.

The Einstein Tower (1919)by Erich Mendelsohn is, evenwith its curved forms, a ‘temple’.


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Whereas the civic centre atSäynätsalo, Finland (right), de-signed by Alvar Aalto (1952),with its careful but irregularplanning, response to changingground levels, and incorpora-tion of external places, tendsmore towards the architectural‘cottage’.

Philip Johnson and JohnBurgee’s AT&T Building inNew York, built in 1982 (be-low), is a tall ‘temple’.

And the Inmos ResearchCentre near Newport, Gwent,designed by Richard Rogers isa wide ‘temple’.

There are also twentieth-century buildings that combine‘temple’ with ‘cottage’ charac-teristics.

From the outside, LeCorbusier’s Villa Savoye (1929)appears to be a ‘temple’ (thoughit is a house). Its main livingspaces are lifted clear of thenatural ground, not on a solidplatform, but on a series of col-umns. Its outer form is gener-ally symmetrical but with smalldeviations; and it is orderedaccording to geometric propor-tions. But its plans, though


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based on a regular structuralgrid, are an irregular composi-tion of spaces arranged withoutreference to axial symmetry.

The dichotomy of atti-tudes and related architecturalideas associated with ‘temple’and ‘cottage’ run through all di-mensions of architecture. An ar-chitect can impose an abstractorder onto the world, or re-spond to what the world pro-vides. Often architectureinvolves both at the same time.

The attitudes apply to themodifying elements of architec-

ture as well as to the formal. Inenvironmental design (whichdeals with warmth, light,sound, ventilation) a distinctionhas been drawn between ‘selec-tive’ and ‘exclusive’ design: inselective mode a building is con-ceived to respond to and exploitthe environment around; in ex-clusive mode the internal envi-ronment of a building isartificial, hermetically sepa-rated from the outside climate.In the terms discussed here, theselective mode accords with the‘cottage’ idea, and the exclusivewith the ‘temple’.

‘Temple’ and ‘cottage’ ex-ist conceptually on a philo-sophical dimension which ispertinent to all stages of design.Their application is not subjectto rules, but to judgement andopinion, and can be influencedby prevailing trends of the time.

Some works of architec-ture are not easy to analyse inthese terms. One is GerritRietveld’s Schroeder House(left), built in Utrecht in 1923.Its form is irregular; it has noaxial symmetry; and it does notsit on a platform. Yet it has anabstract, idealised, unrespon-sive character which seems toseparate it from the world asfound, and which suggests it isa ‘temple’.

Reference for ‘exclusive’ and‘selective’ modes of environ-mental design:

Dean Hawkes—The Environ-mental Tradition, 1996.

GEOMETRY INARCHITECTURE

There are many different waysin which geometry plays a partin architecture.

The previous chapter,Temples and Cottages, dis-cussed some of the different at-titudes that a designing mindcan adopt towards the condi-tions within which architectureis done. In particular it identi-fied the attitudes of control andacceptance as they can be ex-emplified in an archetypal ‘tem-ple’ and an archetypal ‘cottage’.

The architectural uses ofgeometry can be discussed inthese terms too. There are waysto use geometry that emerge outof the conditions of being, andthere are others that may beimposed or overlaid upon theworld. The latter, termed ‘ideal’geometries, are the subject ofthe last section of this chapter;the chapter begins with some ofthe geometries ‘of being’.

The word geometry, as asubject in school for example,suggests circles, squares, trian-gles, pyramids, cones, spheres,diameters, radii, and so on.These play an important part inarchitecture; as abstract ideasthey belong in the category ofideal geometries—their perfec-tion can be imposed on thephysical fabric of the world asa means for identifying place.

But geometries emergefrom our dealings with the worldtoo; geometry can derive froman attitude of acceptance asmuch as it can be associated withan attitude of control. Geometr-ies of being are inherent to theidentification of places.

Circles of presence

People and objects introduce ge-ometry into the world just bybeing.

Every body has around itwhat might be called a ‘circleof presence’, which contributesto its own identification ofplace. When a body is in rela-tionship with others, their cir-cles of presence affect eachother. When a body is put intoan enclosure or cell its circle ofpresence is also contained andperhaps moulded.

An object standing on aflat landscape occupies its ownspace, but it also exerts concen-tric circles of presence, to whichwe can relate.

If one discounts electronicand radio presence, the broadestof these circles of presence is thevisual, described by the distanceat which the object is visible. Thiscircle may stretch as far as thehorizon, or it might be containedby a forest, or a wall.

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In terms of sound this largecircle of presence would be thedistance at which a sound ema-nating from a body is audible;smell, smellable; radio waves,receivable.

The smallest circle of pres-ence, physically, is described bythe distance within which oneis able to touch, and perhapsembrace, the body.

The most difficult circle ofpresence to determine rationallyis the intermediate, the onewithin which one feels that oneis ‘in the presence’ of the body.It might be said that it is thiscircle of presence that delimitsthe place of the body.

Architecture uses allthree: the extensive circle ofvisibility; the intimate circleof touchability; and the in-termediate circle of place.Much architecture, from pre-historic times to the present,has been concerned with as-serting, defining, amplifying,moulding, or controlling cir-cles of presence.

A tree defines one of its cir-cles of presence by the extentof its canopy of branches.

A candle, or a lighthouse,describes its circle of presenceby the light that it emits.

A fire, as suggested in thechapter on Primitive PlaceTypes, identifies a place by itssphere of light and warmth.

A standing stone exerts itspresence in the landscape, as anassertion of the presence ofthose who put it there.

It is perhaps in the han-dling of circles of place that ar-chitecture can be at its richestand most subtle.

Circles of presence are

rarely perfect circles; they arealmost always affected by lo-cal conditions and topography.The world is generally so full

A tree defines one of its circlesof presence by the extent of its

canopy of branches.

A candle or a lighthousedescribe their circle of pres-

ence by the brightness of thelight they emit.

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of bodies that their many cir-cles of presence overlap, inter-fere, or maybe reinforce oneanother in complex ways whichare sometimes too difficult toanalyse fully.

Circles of place have beenmanipulated by architecturesince ancient times, for variouspurposes.

Most of the buildings onthe acropolis in Athens werebuilt during the classical age ofancient Greek culture, aroundthe fifth century BC. The topof this rocky hill in the plain ofAttica had been a place sacredto the goddess since time imme-

morial. Such elevated placeswere sacred partly because theyhad a clear identity; they wereelevated and sanctuaries intimes of trouble; they also pos-sessed extensive circles of pres-ence—they could be seen (andfrom them one could see) forlong distances across the land-scape. The hill of the acropolisretains this circle of presenceover modern Athens.

By their architecture theancient Greeks manipulated thecircles of presence of the sacredplace of Athena. The extent ofthe circle of place around thesacred site was defined partly

The circle of presence of asignificant object can becontained and distorted by theenclosure or cell within whichit stands.

The statue of AthenaPromachos asserted the circleof presence of the goddessover the ancient city ofAthens.

A standing stone asserts itscircle of presence in thelandscape, and establishes theplace of those who put itthere.


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by the reasonably level area ofland on top of the hill, but thiswas extended and establishedmore firmly by the huge retain-ing walls which still define thesacred precinct—the temenos—around the temples. The shapeof this temenos in plan is notcircular, but represents an inter-action between the circle ofpresence of the sacred site andthe topography of the hill.

There were two importantstatues of Athena on the Athe-nian acropolis. The giantAthena Promachos stood in theopen air near to the entranceinto the temenos, projecting itsown circles of presence over thecity, even to ships on the seasome miles away. The otherstatue was enclosed within themain temple, the Parthenon,which had (and maintains) itsown circle of visibility acrossthe city, and which amplifiedthe hidden presence of the im-age whilst controlling its circleof place and protecting its inti-mate circle of touchability, bothof which were probably onlyever penetrated by priests.

In these ways the acropo-lis illustrates some of the waysin which circles of presence playtheir parts in architecture: theretaining walls of the temenosdefine the ‘circle’ of the sacredsite; the Parthenon amplifies thepresence of the statue it con-tains, and its cella controls andprotects the statue’s circles ofplace and touchability.

Lines of sight

We human beings seem fasci-nated by the fact that we see instraight lines. This fascination is

evident in the way one mightvacantly line up the toe of one’sshoe with a spot on the carpet,or more purposefully when onesights a distant object with theend of a finger to point it out. Thefascination with lines of sight isevident in architecture too.

An alignment of three ormore things, one of which isone’s eye, seems to possesssome peculiar significance. Theprecise alignment of the sun, themoon and the earth, at a solaror lunar eclipse, has alwaysbeen considered a significantevent. The builders of Stone-henge appear to have erectedthe Hele Stone to align the cen-tre of the henge with the sunrising over the horizon on theSummer Solstice. Standing ona pier, we notice when a shipcrosses the line projected by thepier out into the sea. Drivingthrough the countryside we re-mark when a distant feature isexactly aligned with the roadalong which we are moving.

Alignment imparts signifi-cance, to both the distant object

We are intrigued when thelandscape appears to contain

alignments.

The Hele stone aligned thecentre of Stonehenge with the

sun rising on the SummerSolstice.


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and the viewer. The ‘sight’—thefinger tip or the Hele Stone—isa medium, a fulcrum betweenthe two, a catalyst whichprojects a line between theviewer and the object. Align-ment implies a line of contact—an axis—between oneself andthe distant object, exciting inthe viewer a thrill of recogni-tion of the linkage (which iseven stronger when ‘eyes meetacross a crowded room’).

Thinking of architecture asidentification of place, a line ofsight establishes contact be-tween places. In the ancientworld it was one of the ways inwhich architects tied places intothe world around them, estab-lishing them as fragments ofmatrices which centred on par-ticular sacred sites. It is a powerwhich is important in the designof places for performance,where engagement between ac-tors and spectators depends onsight. It can also be importantin designing art museums,where lines of sight can influ-ence the positioning of exhibits.

Lines of passage

In the physical sciences, one ofthe laws of motion is that abody remains in a state of rest,or moves in a straight line withuniform speed, unless com-pelled by a force to change thatstate. This is often a presump-tion in architecture too.

Lines of passage are usu-ally considered to be straight,unless diverted by some ‘force’.A sensible person usually movesin a straight line between astarting point and a goal, un-less there is some obstaclewhich makes this unwise or

When he was remodelling theCastelvecchio in Vicenza,Carlo Scarpa would drawlines of sight onto his plans.Emanating from particularlyimportant points in the build-ing—the entrance, or a door-way—these would influencehis deliberations on the posi-tions of exhibits, or pieces oflandscaping.

Reference for Carlo Scarpa atthe Castelvecchio:

Richard Murphy—CarloScarpa and the Castelvecchio,1990.

It appears that sometimesbuildings were aligned withsacred mountains.


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impossible. In organising theworld into places, architecturealso establishes lines of passagebetween those places, usingthem as ingredients of serialexperiences.

The ancient pyramids ofEgypt were connected to valleybuildings on the river Nile bylong causeways. Sometimesthese were straight; sometimesthey had to take account of lo-cal land conditions, or perhapschanges in plans during con-struction, and deviated from thedirect line.

The line of a pathway inthe landscape is often a resultof people’s and animals’ ten-dency to move in straight linesbeing diverted by changes in thesurface of the ground.

Lines of passage are oftenrelated to lines of sight; but theyare not necessarily congruent.

A line of passage can setup or reinforce a line of sight,as when a road aligns with adistant feature in the landscape;but they might not coincide.Sometimes architecture canmake a play of aligning a lineof passage with a line of sight(as in the nave of a church); butsometimes the line of passagedeviates from the line of sight,so that a pathway does not takethe most direct route betweenstarting point and goal.

In this drawing the goal (theentrance) is clear, but the

approach is diverted from theline of sight.

Reference for ancient Egyp-tian pyramids:

I.E.S.Edwards—The Pyramidsof Egypt, 1971.


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The Carpenter Center forthe Visual Arts in Harvard Uni-versity (1964, by Le Corbusier)can be approached from two di-agonally opposite corners of thesite. The ramps that rise to theentrances are curved. At thestart of either ramp the line ofpassage to the entrance does notfollow the line of sight.

Sometimes a line of pas-sage does not have an obvious

goal which can be seen. Inter-play between lines of sight andlines of passage can create asense of mystery in the experi-ence of a work of architecture.

Sometimes a work of ar-chitecture presents a choice oflines of passage, each of whichhas to be assessed by sight.

Measuring

The word geometry derivesfrom two Greek words, forearth (ge) and measure(metron). Measuring the worldis essential to life; people meas-ure their environment all thetime, and in lots of differentways. Measuring with a ruleror tape measure is only one ofthose ways, and an artificialone. The more immediate waysin which people measure theworld is with their own bodies.

People measure distanceby walking. They may do itconsciously by counting theirpaces; but they also do it sub-consciously, merely by walkingfrom one place to another. Inconnection with walking, peo-ple estimate distance or theheight of a step with their eyes,and assess the amount of effortneeded to cover the distance orclimb the step.

People estimate the widthof doorways and passageways,estimating whether there isspace to pass others.

People estimate the heightof openings to assess whetheror not they must stoop to passthrough.

People are conscious of thesize of a room, and can estimatewhat it will accommodate.They do this primarily by

Approaching the entrances tothe Carpenter Center, lines ofpassage are not congruentwith lines of sight.


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means of sight, but the acous-tic of a space can also indicateits size. People also subcon-sciously calculate how the sizeof a room, and the distancesbetween pieces of furniture init, can influence social interre-lationships within it.

People might estimate theheight of a wall to assesswhether it may serve as a seat;or of a table to assess its use asa work bench.

People literally measureout the lengths of their ownbodies on the beds in whichthey sleep.

A person stands by a win-dow conscious of the heights ofthe cill and of the head, and ofwhether the horizon can be seen.

People set the scale of awork of architecture in compari-son with their own stature as hu-man beings, and with the waysin which their bodies may move.

These are all transactionsbetween people and works ofarchitecture. People set themeasure of the buildings theyuse; but buildings also set themeasure of the lives they ac-commodate. People take meas-ure from the works architecturethey inhabit, and use theirmeasurements to make differ-ent types of assessment.

In the late fifteenth centuryLeonardo da Vinci constructedthis drawing illustrating therelative proportions of an ideal

People measure the worldwith their movement, theirbodies, and their senses. Astair measures a difference

between levels in equal steps.


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human frame as set down bythe Roman writer on architec-ture, Vitruvius. It suggests thatin its ideal form the humanframe conforms to geometricproportions; it also suggeststhat the measurements of thehuman frame are tied in withthose of nature, and the uni-verse.

In the middle of the twen-tieth century Le Corbusier con-trived a more complex systemof proportions relating the hu-man frame to those of othernatural creations. He used aspecial proportion called theGolden Section. His system,called The Modular, allowed for

Reference for The Modular:

Le Corbusier (translated by deFrancia and Bostock)—TheModulor, 1961.

A large doorway exaggeratesthe status of the occupant,and diminishes the status ofthe visitor.

A small doorway diminishesthe status of the occupant,and enhances the status of thevisitor.

A human-scale doorway putsthe occupant and visitor atequal status.

the different postures that thehuman frame adopts: sitting,leaning, working at a table….

Earlier in the twentiethcentury, however, the Germanartist and dramatist, OskarSchlemmer, had recognised thatthe human frame also measuresthe world in its movement andprojects its measure into thespace around it.


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Six-directions-plus-centre

A human being has a front, aback, and two sides; generallyspeaking, the ground is below,and above is the sky. Eachstands (or sits, or lies) at thecentre of its own set of these sixdirections.

These observations seemalmost too obvious to botherstating, but they are simpletruths that have fundamentalramifications for architecture.Six directions condition our re-lationship with the world, inwhich each of us is our own mo-bile centre. They condition ourperception of architecture—how we find and occupy places,how we relate ourselves toother places—and play into theconception of architecture, pre-senting a matrix for design.

One way in which architec-ture can relate to the six-direc-tions-plus-centre is by theevocation of resonance betweenan enclosure and its occupant, bymaking it a place which responds

to (or deals with in some way)each of the six directions. An or-dinary cell, with its four walls,ceiling and floor, conforms tothis. In such places each of uscan compare the orientation ofour own six directions, and theposition of our own centre,

with those of the room, findingplaces where our six directionsare in either formal accord or re-laxed interplay with those of theroom. By its six sides a place (aroom, a building, a garden) canset out a two- or three-dimen-sional orthogonal framework,the power of which lies in itsprovocation in us of a sense ofrelationship.

In relating to a place that hasa front (an in front), a back (abehind), two sides (a left and a


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right), a top (the above), and sitson the ground (the below) we feelthat in some way we are relatingto something which is like our-selves, and which, to this extent,is created in our own image, andto which we can respond throughcomparison with our own six-di-rections-plus-centre.

The suggestion of accordbetween sets of six-directions-plus-centre can be a powerfulidentifier of place, especiallywhen architecture sets up a cen-tre which a person, or the rep-resentation of a god in humanform, or a significant object, canoccupy.

Often in such cases one ofthe six directions is dominant,usually the forward: as in thecase of a soldier’s sentry boxwhich allows vision to the frontwhile protecting his back andsides from attack, his top fromrain or sun, and his feet frommud or the cold of the ground;or as in the case of a throneroom, where the position of thethrone against one of the fourwalls, rather than at the geo-metric centre of the room, al-lows the monarch’s forward

direction to dominate the space.Such a manifestation of direc-tion might be reinforced inother ways, maybe by position-ing the throne opposite the en-trance, or by setting out apath—a red carpet perhaps—which identifies the monarch’sroute to and from the throne aswell as emphasizing the for-ward direction from the throne.

The six directions are evi-dent in human bodies, and thesecan be responded to in the archi-tecture of spaces and rooms. Thesix directions are also manifest in

the conditions within which crea-tures live on the surface of theearth. The sky is above and theearth below; but each of the four

The tank in Damien Hirst’sAway from the Flock forms athree-dimensional orthogonalframe around the sheep. Eachface of the tank implies anelevational view of theanimal.


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horizontal directions has its owncharacter. Each of the four cardi-nal points of the compass relatesto the movement of the sun. Inthe northern hemisphere the sunrises in the east and sets in thewest, it is at its highest in thesouth, and never enters the north-ern quarter. Works of architecturecan be oriented to these terrestrialdirections as well as to those ofanthropomorphic form. In thisway buildings mediate geometri-cally between human beings andtheir conditions on earth. Anyfour-sided building on the surfaceof the earth relates in some way,roughly or exactly, to these fourcardinal points of the compass.Any four-sided building is likelyto have a side which receivesmorning sun, a side which re-ceives midday sun, and a side tothe setting sun; it will also have aside to the north which receiveslittle or no sun. These four hori-zontal directions have conse-quences in the environmentaldesign of buildings, but they alsotie architecture into the matrix ofdirections which cover the surfaceof the earth (and which are for-mally recognised in the grids of

longitude and latitude by whichany position on the surface of theearth is defined).

The four-sided building isdirectly related to the directionson the surface of the earth as itspins through time; and eachside has a different character atdifferent times of day. But sucha building can be significant inanother way too; for if its sixdirections are considered to bein congruence with those of theearth—its four sides face eachof the four terrestrial directionsimplied by the movement of thesun, and its verticality accordswith the axis of gravity whichruns to the centre of the earth—then the building itself can beconsidered to identify a centre—a significant place that seems togather the six directions of theearth into its own, and providea centre which the surface of theearth does not.In these ways the geometry of thesix-directions-plus-centre can beseen to be inherent at three lev-els of being: in ourselves as hu-man beings; in the original natureof the world on which we live;and in the places that we make


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trough architecture, which me-diate between us and the world.

The six-directions-plus-centre are a condition of archi-tecture, and as such aresusceptible to the attitudes ofacceptance and control men-tioned in the chapter on Tem-ples and Cottages: one canaccept their pertinence and in-fluence; or attempt to transcendthem by exploring abstract andmore complex geometries, or bytackling difficult concepts suchas non-Euclidean, or more-than-three-dimensional space. Somemight also argue that the sub-mission of the world’s surfaceto the rule of four directions, orthree dimensions, is simplistic;that the movement of the sunthrough the sky is more complexthan the cardinal directions sug-gest; and therefore that architec-ture either should not necessarilypay heed exactly to the matrixthat the six-directions imply, orshould look for more subtle in-dicators for the positioning andorientation of buildings.

Nevertheless, the notion ofsix-directions-plus-centre is use-ful in analysing examples of ar-chitecture of many kinds andcharacters. Its power is found inexamples that range from theways in which directions, axesand grids can be introduced intolandscapes to make it easier toknow where one is, and how onemight get from one place to an-other…

…through the vast stock oforthogonal works of architec-ture, to attempts to escape ortest the boundaries of rectilin-ear architecture, as in the worksof Hans Scharoun, or of ZahaHadid. Even though distorted,as if by the force of some warpin the gravitational field, thefour horizontal directions retaintheir power in the plan ofHadid’s Vitra Fire Station.

Many works of architec-ture relate to the four horizon-tal directions, to the above andthe below, and to the conceptof centre, in simple and directways. The Greek temple is aparticularly clear example.The six-directions-plus-centre

Reference for the Vitra FireStation:

Vitra Fire Station’, in Lotus85, 1995, p.94.

Even a fairly rough stone can,like a person, introduce thesix-directions-plus-centre intothe landscape.


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operate at various conceptuallevels, even in a building whoseform is as apparently simple asthis.

First, as an object in thelandscape, the building has sixfaces: one to the ground; one(the roof) to the sky; and foursides, each facing one of thefour horizontal directions. Inthis regard the temple estab-lishes itself as a centre.

Second, as an internalplace, the cella of the temple hasa floor and a ceiling, and fourwalls that relate directly to thefour horizontal directions im-plied by the image of the godor goddess who was its essen-tial reason for being.

Third, in the relationshipbetween the inside space andthe outside world, the doorway(the prime link between thetwo) allows one of the fourhorizontal directions (that ofthe face of the deity, which isreinforced by the longitudinalaxis of the temple) to strike outfrom the inside and relate to anexternal altar, and maybe also(as a line of sight) to some re-mote object of significance—the rising sun, or the sacredpeak of a distant mountain.

These three ways in whichthe six-directions-plus-centreare inherent to the architecture

of the temple collaborate to re-inforce the role of the templeas an identifier of place. Thetemple itself is a cell and amarker, but its orthogonal formchannels the ways in which itidentifies the place of the sacredimage, making it also a centre.

But there is also a fourthway in which this essentiallysimple building type relates tothe six-directions-plus-centre,one that is of special importancein thinking of architecture asidentification of place. This is todo with the way that the direc-tions of the building relate tothose of a visitor or worshipper.

The geometry of an ancientGreek temple responds to the

six-directions-plus-centre…


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Regarding its external form

as a body, we are aware (if weknow the building, and are in itspresence) when we are at theback, at the front, or at either ofits sides. Relative to the building,we know where we are. But inaddition to that relationship, weare also aware that there are sig-nificant places created by thepower of the orthogonal geom-etry of the building; places thatmaybe draw us to them. Themost important of these is thatprominent direction whichemerges from the god’s statuethrough the door and strikes outinto the landscape; we knowwhen we are standing on this axisand perceive it as special; it ex-cites in us a thrill of connectionbetween our own directions andthose of the god.

This powerful axis is estab-lished by the architecture of thetemple. We are not left as de-tached spectators, but broughtinto involvement with the archi-tecture of the building, madepart of it. It is exactly the same

power, that of the dominantaxis, which prompts the prac-tice of nodding reverently as onecrosses the axis of the altar in aChristian church or a Buddhistshrine. It is the same power thatdraws us to stand at the exactcentre of a circular space (thePantheon in Rome, or under thedome in St Paul’s Cathedral inLondon, or the amphitheatre atEpidavros in Greece).

These simple uses of the six-directions-plus-centre are basic,rudimentary, and seemingly uni-versally recognised as constitut-ing a power of architecture.

Social geometry

The geometry of social interac-tion between people is perhapsa function of the six-directions-plus-centre that each possesses.

When people congregatethey identify their own places, inparticular ways. In doing so theyoverlay a social geometry wherethey come together. As a processof identification of place, this isarchitecture in its own right, butwhile it consists only of peopleits existence is transient. Worksof architecture can respond tosocial geometri-es, order them,and make their physical realisa-tion more permanent.

When schoolboys spectateat a playground brawl betweentwo of their number, they forma circle. When there is a formal-ised bout between two boxers,the area of their battle is definedby a rectangular platform withrope barriers around the edge.Though square it is called aring, and the boxers’ confron-tation is represented by theirpossession of opposite corners.

…as does the geometry of atraditional church.


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People may sit in a roughcircle around a fire in the land-scape. In the ingle-nook of anArts and Crafts house that so-cial geometry is transformedinto a rectangle, accommodatedwithin the structure of the fab-ric of the house.

The radial arrangement ofspectators on the slopes of a val-ley, watching sports or dramaticperformances,was architectura-lly translated by the ancientGreeks into the amphitheatre,with its (more than semi-) cir-cular plan, consisting of manytiers of concentric sitting steps.

It may not be an exampleof social geometry, but the gridlayout of graves in a cemeteryis a function of the geometry ofthe human frame and the wayin which the rectangular shapeof the space it needs can be tes-sellated across the land.

People arguing stand op-posite each other; when they arefriends, they sit next to eachother. Both can have architec-tural manifestations.

In British politics, the con-frontation of the Governmentand the Opposition is physicallyrepresented in the benches of

An ingle-nook formalises thegeometry of social interactionaround a fire. This imaginaryexample was drawn by Barry

Parker, and is illustrated inthe book he produced with his

partner in architecture,Raymond Unwin—The Art of

Building a Home, 1901.

There is a social geometry tothe space of togetherness…

A stone circle makes a peoplepattern permanent.


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the House of Commons, whichface each other across thechamber, with the Speaker (orchairman of the debate) sittingon the axis between them.

Some chambers for discus-sion are designed not for argu-ment and opposition but forcollective debate. This is some-times manifested in their archi-tecture. Chapter houses aremeeting rooms attached to ca-thedrals and monasteries. Of-ten they have a circular, orperhaps polygonal, plan which,architecturally at least, is non-confrontational and non-hierar-chical. Even the central column,

which supports the vaultedceiling, seems to block direct,

diametrical, opposition acrossthe chamber.

It is a moot point whethersuch architectural arrangementsaffect the behaviour of membersof parliament or of chapters.Some countries, nevertheless, havechosen to accommodate their par-liamentary debates in circularrather than confrontational de-bating chambers, if only forsymbolic reasons. This, as oneexample, is the debating cham-ber of the Finnish parliament inHelsinki, which was designed byJ.S. Siren and built in 1931.

The circle is one of themost powerful symbols of hu-man community; architectural-ly it seems to speak of peoplebeing equal and together in ashared experience of the world.It is the pattern made, loosely,by the people around theircampfire; it is the pattern madeby people sitting around a pic-nic; it is a pattern associatedwith conversation; and it is apattern associated withspectating at some dramatic orceremonial event.

Though he avoided manyother types of geometry in hisdesigns, even the German archi-tect Hans Scharoun accepted

The social geometry of theBritish House of Commons isa manifestation of the proce-dural relationship between theGovernment and theOpposition.

…and to the space of confron-tation.


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the aptness of the circle as aframe for the social event of ameal. In the Mohrmann House,built in 1939, the dining area isthe only place in the plan which

has a regular geometric shape:a circular table is accommo-dated centrally in a semi-circu-lar bay window between thekitchen and living room.

Geometry of making

Many everyday objects have ageometry that is derived fromthe way they are made. A clay

vase is circular because it isthrown on a potter’s wheel; awooden bowl is circular because

it is turned on a woodturner’slathe; a table is rectangular be-cause it is made of regular-shaped pieces of timber.

The same is true of build-ing. Often the materials andthe way in which they are puttogether impose or suggestgeometry.

When put together intowalls, bricks, as rectangularobjects themselves, tend to pro-duce rectangular walls, and rec-tangular openings andenclosures. When using suchmaterials it requires a definitedecision to deviate from the rec-tangular.

There is geometry to layingslates on a roof…

The geometry of bricks condi-tions the geometry of thingsthat are made from them.


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The geometry of making isessential to the construction ofbuildings. In this traditionalNorwegian timber house, as inmany traditional houses fromaround the world, there is aninterplay of social geometry andthe geometry of making. Socialgeometry conditions the sizesand the layout of the spaces. Butthe shapes of those spaces arealso conditioned by the materi-als available and their intrinsicqualities, and by current build-ing practice.

The building is infused withthe geometry of making, eventhough that geometry is not al-ways exact and regular. The fab-ric of the walls and the structure

of the roof is influenced by thesizes of timbers available, andtheir innate strength. The sizesof roofing tiles influence the de-sign of the roof. The small panesof the window are conditionedby the sizes of pieces of glass.Even the small portions of ma-sonry are conditioned by theshape of the bricks and the sub-tle and complex geometries ofthe stones available. And thebracket which holds the cook-ing pot has its own structural ge-ometry, and describes a locuswhich is part of a circle as it isswung across the fire.

The geometry of making isnot so much a power of archi-tecture as a force which condi-tions building. The force is notactive, but lies latent in materi-als that are available for build-ing, and in plausible strategiesfor bringing materials togetherinto building under the influ-ence of gravity. As such the ge-ometry of making is subject, inarchitecture, to the range of

This drawing is based on one in:Drange, Aanensen &Brænne—Gamle Trehus,(Oslo) 1980.

…and to the ways in whichpieces of timber can be joinedtogether.


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attitudes mentioned in the chap-ter on Temples and Cottages. Inproducing an archetypal ‘cot-tage’, it may be said, the geom-etry of making is accepted,whereas in an archetypal ‘tem-ple’ it is transcended. Within thisdimension architects can adoptany of a range of attitudes to thegeometry of making.

The Scottish architectCharles Rennie Mackintoshdesigned many pieces of furni-ture; in some of them he ex-ploited the geometry of making,refining it according to his aes-thetic sensibility. This, for ex-ample, is a waitress’s stool he

designed in 1911; it follows thegeometry of making, but thishas been refined into a matrixof perfect cubes.

There is a constructionalgeometry too in the shingle andtimber buildings designed bythe American architect HerbGreene; but it is stretched al-most to its limit, and distortedinto animal-like forms. Thisdrawing (right) shows part ofhis Prairie House, built in 1962,on which the shingles are likethe feathers of a hen.

The geometry of makingincludes the geometry of struc-ture, whether it is the timberstructure of a medieval tithebarn, or the steel structure of amicro-electronics factory. Thegeometry of structure is said tobe susceptible to mathematicalcalculation, though there seemsto be an infinite variety of ways

Reference for Mackintosh fur-niture:

Charles Rennie Mackintoshand Glasgow School of Art: 2,Furniture in the School Col-lection, 1978.

Reference for the architectureof Herb Greene:

Herb Greene—Mind andImage, 1976.


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of arranging a structure to spana particular space. Some are saidto be efficient if they use mate-rial economically and withoutredundant members; some havean added quality called elegance.Whether there is a direct corre-lation between efficiency and el-egance is a point of debate.

The geometry of makingdoes not only apply to traditionalmaterials such as brick, stone andtimber; it applies just as much tobuildings with steel or concretestructures, and to buildings withlarge areas of glass walls.

It is also the disciplinewhich controls industrialisedbuilding systems. Systems con-sist of standard componentsthat can be put together as a kitof parts. These parts includestructural components, andvarious types of non-structuralcladding panels which form the

envelope of the building. Thedimensional co-ordination thatallows standard components tobe manufactured in a factory,transported to a site, and thenput together to make a build-ing depends on careful and dis-ciplined appreciation of thegeometry of making.

Ideal geometry

The circle and the square mayemerge out of social geometryor from the geometry of mak-ing, but they are also pure, ab-stract, figures. As such, they aresometimes thought to have anaesthetic or symbolic power (orboth) in their own right. Somearchitects use them to instiltheir work with a discipline thatis independent of (but perhapsalso related to) the variousgeometries of being.

The three-dimensional geom-etry of some medieval carpen-try is quite complex. This ispart of the scaffold of thespire of Salisbury CathedralThe drawing is based on oneby Cecil Hewett in his bookEnglish Cathedral and Mo-nastic Carpentry, 1985.

The structure of a nativeAmerican teepee has an innateconical geometry, whichproduces a circular plan.


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Ideal geometry does notonly include the circle and thesquare and their three-dimen-sional forms—the cube and thesphere. It also includes specialproportions, such as the simpleratios of 1:2, 1:3, 2:3 or morecomplex ratios such as 1:!2,and that known as the GoldenSection which is about 1:1.618.

In his book, ArchitecturalPrinciples in the Age of Human-ism (1952), Rudolf Wittkowerexplored the ways in which Ren-aissance architects used idealgeometric figures and ratios intheir designs. He also discussedwhy they believed that such fig-ures and ratios were powerful.

One argument was thatnatural creations, such as theproportions of the humanframe, or the relationships be-tween the planets, or the inter-vals of musical harmony,seemed to follow geometric ra-tios, and that if the products ofarchitecture were to possess thesame conceptual integrity theytoo should be designed usingperfect figures and harmonicmathematical proportions. An-other argument was thatthrough architecture a geo-metrical perfection could beachieved that was only hintedat in natural creations.

The application of geom-etry was seen as one way inwhich human beings could im-prove the imperfect world inwhich they found themselves.Geometric purity was thus seenas a touchstone of the humanability, or perhaps duty, to makethe world better. It is in this sensethat ideal geometry, as a way ofimposing order on the world, isa characteristic of the ‘temple’.

The result was that archi-tects produced designs forbuildings which were composedusing perfect figures and geo-metric ratios.

This, for example, is a copyof Wittkower’s diagrams of thegeometric composition of thefaçade of the church of S.MariaNovella in Florence, designed byLeon Battista Alberti and builtin the fifteenth century. They

show that the façade of thebuilding may be analysed as acomposition of squares. Thesehave a role in the design whichis independent of the building’sgeometry of making; the geom-etry is displayed on the front wallof the church, as on a screen.

Many architects have de-signed buildings in which theaccommodation is enclosedwithin a square plan. This isdifferent from composing thedesign of a façade as a two-di-mensional pattern of squares,because it involves the third di-mension, and perhaps also thefourth—time.

A square plan is not usu-ally a result of accepting the ge-ometry of making; a squarespace is not the easiest to framewith a structure; it requires pur-poseful intent, derived from


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something other than mere prac-ticality, to make a plan square.

Architects may design asquare plan for various reasons:maybe for the philosophicalreasons outlined above; maybebecause a square can seem toidentify a still centre which re-lates to the six directions men-tioned above; maybe as a kindof game—a challenge to fit ac-commodation within this rigidshape.

Architects are always look-ing for ideas which will giveform to their work and directionto their design. Geometric ideasare some of the most seductive.To design within a square planis an easy idea to grasp (and away to break through the prob-lem of getting started). But al-though it may seem a limitation,the square plan is also open toinfinite variation.

There are many examplesof square plans. They are rarein ancient and medieval archi-tecture, but became more partof the repertoire of design ideasin the Renaissance.

One very ancient exampleis of course the Egyptian pyra-mid. These tombs were gener-ally built on land to the west ofthe Nile, between the river andthe desert, and carefully ori-ented to what we know as thecardinal points of the compass.They are clear examples of ar-chitecture responding to the six-directions-plus-centre.

Below is the plan of thepyramid complex of Pepi II, atSaqqara in Egypt. The phar-aoh’s pyramid has been cutthrough to show the burialchamber at its centre. There arethree smaller pyramids for hiswives. The building to the rightof the drawing is the valley tem-ple, which was the ceremonialentrance to the complex andlinked to the pyramid temple bya causeway which is too longto be included in the drawingin its full length.

Each side of the pyramidfaces a direction with a differ-ent character. The temple build

ings and the ceremonial ap-proach are to the east and linkthe pyramid to the river and thelife of Egypt. The opposite sidefaces the desert. The south facesthe sun when it is at its highest.The north side seems to have less


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symbolic significance, and wasused for the physical access tothe burial chamber, which wasperhaps less important than theceremonial entrance from theeast. The pyramid is a centrewhere these directions meet, andthe burial chamber lies at thecentre of its geometric form. Itis in this way that the ancientEgyptian pyramid was a pow-erful identifier of place.

Below are the plans of theprincipal floors of two squareplan houses built in England inthe 1720s. On the left isMereworth Castle in Kent de-signed by Colen Campbell; onthe right Chiswick Villa by LordBurlington. Both architectswere influenced in the choice ofa square plan by the design onthe right, which is of the VillaRotonda designed by the Ital-ian architect Andrea Palladio,and built some one-hundred-and-fifty or so years before thetwo English examples.

Palladio’s plan is the mostconsistent of the three. As in theancient pyramid, it gathers thefour horizontal directions intoa centre—the focus of the circu-lar hall at the heart of the plan,from which the villa gets itsname. (Unlike the pyramid, the

sides of the Villa Rotonda do notface north, south, east, and west,


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but northeast, southeast, south-west, and northwest.) The planis not just one square, but a con-centric series of five; the size ofeach successive one is deter-mined by the radius of a circlecircumscribed about the nextsmallest. The smallest circle isthe rotonda itself; and eachsquare (except for the secondsmallest) determines the posi-tion of some substantial part ofthe building. The largest squaregives the extent of the stepswhich lead up to the porticoeson each side; their depth is de-termined by the second largestsquare; and the main walls ofthe villa are determined by themiddle-sized square.

The cross-section throughthe Villa Rotonda is also a com-position of circles and squares,though not such a simple oneas in the plan.

Square plans have beenused by architects designing inthe twentieth century.

Charles Moore used thesquare as the basis of his planfor the Rudolf House II. As inthe Renaissance examplesMoore created a central place,which is here the living room,surrounded by subsidiaryplaces: kitchen, dining room,bedroom, and so on. Perhapsfor practical reasons, the planis not so neatly arranged as thatby Palladio.

The Swiss architect MarioBotta bases many of his designson geometric figures. He hasdesigned a number of privatehouses in Switzerland; these areoften composed of squares andcircles, cubes and cylinders.

Reference for the VillaRotonda:

Camillo Semenzato—TheRotonda of Andrea Palladio,1968.

p20003118g123002.tif


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Botta’s design for a familyhouse at Origlio, which wasbuilt in 1981, is a compositionof rectangles and circles fittedinto a notional square. On each

floor he uses the square in a dif-ferent way. On this floor, themiddle of three, the plan isnearly symmetrical, with theliving room and fireplace at itsheart.

The plan of this house atRiva San Vitale is also based ona square. The house is a tower

of five floors built on the slop-ing bank of Lake Lugano. It isentered across a bridge to thetop floor (which is the oneshown in the drawing).

In both these houses Bottaalso appears to have used an-other geometric figure—theGolden Rectangle—to help himin deciding the layout of theplans. The Golden Rectangle isone which has a particular

proportional relationship be-tween its two dimensions: theratio of the short dimension tothe long is equal to that betweenthe long dimension and the sumof the two dimensions. Thismeans that if one subtracts asquare from a Golden Rectan-gle, one is left with another,smaller, Golden Rectangle. Thisratio, known as the GoldenMean, is not a whole number,but approximately 1.618:1.

In the house at Origlio itappears that Botta used theGolden Mean to give the pro-portion between the central sec-tion and the side sections of the

house. In the Riva San Vitalehouse he seems to have usedGolden Rectangles in a waysimilar to that in which Palladioused circles and squares in theVilla Rotonda, that is like Rus-sian Dolls. The square near themiddle of the plan accommo-dates the stair which connectsthe floors.

Le Corbusier also used theGolden Mean to give geometricintegrity to his work. In his book

Reference for Botta houses:

Pierluigi Nicolin—MarioBotta: Buildings and Projects

1961–1982, 1984.


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Vers Une Architecture (1923),translated as Towards a NewArchitecture (1927), he illus-trated his geometric analyses ofsome well-known buildings andthe geometric framework onwhich he had built some of hisown designs. He did not only us-e the Golden Mean, and some-times his ‘regulating lines’ (hecalled them ‘traces regulateurs’),make a complex web of lines.This is a copy of his diagram ofthe geometric composition ofone of the elevations of the stu-dio house which he designed forhis friend Amedee Ozenfant; itwas built in a southern suburbof Paris in 1923. Rather like inAlberti’s S.Maria Novella(shown above), the geometry isdisplayed on the elevation of thehouse, as on a screen.

Complex and overlaidgeometries

Many twentieth-century archi-tects have used ideal geometryto lend rationality or integrityto their plans, sections and el-evations. Some, seeminglybored with simple relationships,have experimented with com-plex arrangements in which onegeometry is overlaid on another.

In some of the house de-signs by the American architectRichard Meier, the places ofdwelling are identified by thespaces which result from a com-plex interplay of orthogonalgeometries.

This, for example, isMeier’s design for the HoffmanHouse, built in East Hampton,New York State, in 1967. Theidea for the plan seems to havebeen generated from the shape

of the site, which is an almostperfect square. The diagonalacross the square determinesthe angle of one of the eleva-tions of one of the two mainrectangles on which the plan ofthe house is based.

Each of these two rectan-gles is a double-square. One isset on the diagonal of the site;the other is parallel to the sides

of the site. They share one cor-ner. Their geometric interrela-tionship determines the positionof almost everything in the plan.

Places—living room, kitc-hen, dining area, and so on—areallocated zones which are de-fined by the interaction of theoverlaid geometries. The posi-tions of basic elements—walls,

Le Corbusier ordered theelevation of this studio housewith ‘regulating lines’.


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glass walls, defined areas, col-umns—are determined in accordwith the complex armature oflines which the geometries of therectangles create. To help in thisgame the squares are sometimessubdivided to make the geometryeven more complex, and thusidentify a greater range of differ-ent places within the armature.

One interpretation of thegeometry which provides the ar-mature of the ground floor ofthis house is shown in the draw-ing on the right. The actual planis below.

In this version one of thesquares is divided into thirds inboth directions, giving ninesmaller squares. The intersec-tions of the third-lines give thepositions of the columns set inthe glass wall which lights theliving room and dining area.The fireplace is positioned onthe one corner which the tworectangles share. The en-trance—itself a square—seemsto be generated by an interac-tion of the centre line of one ofthe double-squares with the sideof the other, and sits in an axialrelationship with the fireplaceand the seating in the livingroom. An alcove in the livingroom is created by a projectionof the middle third of the di-vided square to meet the cor-ner of the other double-square.And so on.

This may seem compli-cated, and is certainly difficultto follow when explained ver-bally. If this is the way thatMeier progressed his design forthis house, which seems plausi-ble, then he was using geometryas the framework for design de-cision, a hybrid of that used by

Reference for the HoffmanHouse by Richard Meier:

Joseph Rykwert (Introduc-tion)—Richard Meier Archi-tect 1964/1984, 1984,pp.34–37.


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Alberti and Palladio. Geometryis used in this way to suggestformal and perhaps also aes-thetic integrity. In the overlay-ing of geometries Meier adds afurther dimension—intricacy inthe quality of the spaces whichare created.

Meier’s geometric overlaysmay seem complex, but someother architects have used geo-metric frameworks more com-plex than that in the HoffmanHouse.

On the left and below, asone example, are the section andplan of an apartment buildingin the Tel Aviv suburb of RamatGan in Israel. The architect ofthis complicated building wasZvi Hecker, and it was built in1991. It is formed of a spiral offragmented circles and rectan-gles, with dwelling places dis-posed in the spaces which resultfrom the geometric over lays.

This apartment building in asuburb of Tel Aviv is a com-plicated spiral composition offragmented circles and rectan-gles. The places of dwellingare dispersed amongst thespaces which result from theoverlaid geometries.

Reference for Tel Aviv apart-ments by Zvi Hecker:

L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui,June 1991, p.12.

SPACEAND STRUCTURE

Both structure and spaceare media of architecture. It isby reason of its structure that abuilding stands. Structure alsoplays a part in organising spaceinto places. The relationshipbetween space and structure isnot always simple and straight-forward; it is subject to differ-ent approaches.

In terms of attitudes, onecan either choose and allow astructural strategy to define theplaces one wishes to create, orone can decide on the placesand, in a way, force structureto cope with them.

There are thus three broadcategories of the relationship be-tween space and structure: thedominant structural order; thedominant spatial order; and theharmonic relationship betweenthe two, in which spatial andstructural order seem in agree-ment. In the history of architec-ture, there have been championsof all three relationships, as evi-dent in the examples below.

There have also been pro-tagonists for a fourth categoryof relationship, in which spatialorganisation is said to be sepa-rated from structural, so thatthey may coexist, each obeyingits own logic free of the con-straints associated with theother.

As we have seen in thechapter on Geometry in Archi-tecture, regarding ‘the geometryof making’, structure tends to itsown geometries. In the sectionsof that chapter regarding ‘thegeometry of being’ and ‘socialgeometry’ we have seen that

objects and people, individuallyand in groups, can evoke theirown geometries. In architecturethere are vital relationships bet-ween these geometries: some ti-mes they are in tension; some ti-mes they can be resolved intoharmony; sometimes they canbe overlaid but remain concep-tually separate.

An extra complication isthat once a structural strategyis established it can influenc e(not merely respond to) spatialorganisation.

An important aspect of theart of architecture is to choosea structural strategy that will bein some sort of accord with theintended spatial organisation.

The way in which ancientGreek architects evolved indoortheatric places is a good illustra-tion of how spatial organisa-tion can conflict with structura-l, and how this can be resolvedby compromises of differenttypes, in both.

The classic Greek amphi-theatre was a geometric formali-sation of the social geometry ofpeople sitting on the slopes of ahill watching a performance. Itsthree-dimensional form was afusion of social geometry, idealgeometry, and the lie of the land.With no roof it did not have totake account of the geometry ofstructure.

Opposite Page:

In this cottage, calledLlainfadyn, the purpose of thestructure of the building is toorganise a portion of space,identifying it as a place fordwelling. Structure and spaceare in ‘symbiosis’—a mutuallyaffective relationship.

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In some cases howeverGreeks wished to create an in-side place where lots of peoplecould watch something. Thismeant having to take accountof the geometry of the structurewhich would hold up the roof.

The structures which theGreeks used tended to createspaces which were rectangularin plan; and they could notachieve large spans. Both thesecharacteristics conflicted withthe shape of an amphitheatre,which was circular, and neededan uninterrupted large space.

In some instances theGreeks’ solution was merely toput the ‘round peg’ into the‘square hole’; this is the coun-cil chamber at Miletus.

The amphitheatre is en-closed in a quadrilateral cell,leaving corner spaces unusedexcept for stairs back down toground level. The columnsneeded as intermediate supports

for the roof have been kept to aminimum; the two at the frontare to some extent used to helpframe the focal space of thechamber, but the other two areawkwardly intrusive. A minorconcession to the geometry ofthe seating is made in the waythe column bases take theiralignment from the seats ratherthan from the orthogonal ge-ometry of the structure.

Almost exactly the same re-lationship between spatial andstructural organisation, but ona smaller scale, is found in the‘new’ (late fifth-century BC)council chamber built in Athens(right). Presumably the twopairs of columns, together withthe external walls, supportedprincipal structural beams alongthe lines shown in the plan,which then divided the long di-mension of the roof into threesmaller, manageable, spans.

In other examples theshape of the seating is made tofit the rectangular geometry de-termined by the structure. Thisis the ecclesiasterion at Priene.

Here the seating has beenmutated to the closest rectan-gular equivalent of the segmen-tal amphitheatre. There iscompromise in the structuretoo, in that the intermediate

In the council chamber atAthens an amphitheatre of

seating was enclosed within arectangular cell The columns

needed to support the roofwere kept to a minimum andcarefully positioned to createthe least obstruction to view.

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supports—the columns intro-duced into the space to reducethe spans of the roof timbers—are not positioned at the ‘thirdpoints’ where they would dividethe width of the hall into threeequal spans, but have beenplaced much nearer to the out-side walls so that they do notobstruct views from the seats.

In early buildings that triedto create large roofed spacescolumns were indispensable.This is an ancient Egyptian‘hypostyle’ hall, from the tem-ple of Ammon at Karnak dat-ing from the late fourteenth

century BC. Whatever the spacewas used for, it would have hadto contend with the forest ofhuge columns, the smaller ofwhich had a diameter of morethan three metres.

The ancient Egyptiansmay have just been impressedby a space filled with huge col-umns, but the same arrange-ment would be a problem inspaces for performance.

This is the case in thetelesterion at Eleusis, built inthe sixth century BC as a placefor the performance of the se-cret ‘Mysteries’. It has seats forspectators around the periphery

of a square space. Over the per-formance area is a regular grid

of columns to support the roof.These obstructed everyone’sview of what was happening onthe floor.

The next plan—of thethersilion at Megalopolis(fourth century BC)—appearsto have a similar profusion ofobstructive columns, exceptthat at first sight they seem tobe scattered irregularly acrossthe floor.

If however one superim-poses an interpretation of thegrid of the roof structure, one cansee that the columns were ar-ranged with a particular spatial

The Renaissance architectAndrea Palladio, wishing toevoke the spirit of the ancienttheatres, had to use ingenuityto contrive this oval amphi-theatre inside the TeatroOlimpico (AD 1584). In theauditorium the mismatchbetween the curved seatingand the outside walls ismasked by an arcade of non-structural columns. The stagesetting includes a sophisti-cated scene incorporatingfalse perspectives.


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intent, one that responds to thelines of sight which radiate froma point of focus under the fourcolumns which do make asquare on plan. This appears tohave identified the place wherea speaker would stand; and thedistortion of the grid of columnswas a compromise in favour ofa spatial arrangement thatwould allow him to be seen aswell as heard.

Through history, manyworks of architecture have beencreated under the power of aconviction that structure is thefundamental form-giving forcein architecture, and that the geo-metric order inherent in re-solved structure is the mostappropriate order for space too.This conviction is perhaps mostapparent in the religious archi-tecture of the Romanesque andGothic periods, but it has beenthe impetus behind many nine-teenth- and twentieth-centurybuildings too, both religious andsecular.

In the Hagia Sophia in Istan-bul, built as S.Sophia in the sixthcentury AD, the structure is thearchitecture: the spaces it containsare ordered by the pattern of the

structure; the places within thebuilding are identified by thestructure; the sacred place itselfis identified from the outside bythe structure of the dome.

This intimate relationshipbetween space and structure isillustrated in medieval churchesand cathedrals too. Theirplaces—the sanctuary, chapels,nave, etc., are all identifiedstructurally, by resolved stonevaults.

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The Hagia Sophia and themedieval cathedrals were builtin stone, but the intimate rela-tionship between structure andspatial organisation that theyexhibit occurs in structures ofother materials too.

The French architect andpioneer in the use of reinforcedconcrete, Auguste Perret, trans-lated the structural and spatialclarity of the medieval churchesinto concrete structure. This is

his church of Notre Dame at LeRaincy just outside Paris, whichwas built in 1922. It is a smallerbuilding than Rheims cathedral,but even so the proportion ofthe floor area taken up by thestructural supports is much less,because reinforced concrete ismuch stronger, structurally,

than stone. The relative dis-tance between the columns inLe Raincy is much greater thanin Rheims for the same reason.The structural and spatial clar-ity in both churches is howeverthe same. In Perret’s church allthe places are identified by thestructure: the position of themain altar, the positions of thesecondary altars, the pulpit, thefont, and so on, are all deter-mined by the spaces defined bythe structure.

The space planning re-quirements of religious build-ings are usually fairly simple:the places to be identified canbe easily accommodated in thegeometric order of structurewhich also seems to reinforcethe spiritual order offered byreligion. But in domestic archi-tecture the relationship betweenstructural order and spatial or-ganisation can be more fraught.

The relationship betweenspace and structure in a simplesingle cell house is straightfor-ward: all the places to be ac-commodated happen under the

shelter of the roof and withinthe enclosure of the walls.There may be some principalroof timbers, like the simpletruss in the example above, but

Reference for the work ofAuguste Perret:

Peter Collins—Concrete,1959.

In Rheims cathedral space isordered by structure.


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this is unlikely to influence spa-tial organisation in the roombelow. This room is defined bywalls which clearly and insepa-rably perform the dual func-tions of enclosure and structuralsupport simultaneously.

At the other end of thescale of complexity, largehouses built of load-bearingwall structures tend to havetheir spaces organised intomany cellular rooms. Probablythe heyday for this type ofhouse was during the Victorianage when many people withnewly acquired wealth hadlarge houses built for them.

There are many types oftraditional house in which thetwo functions of enclosure andstructural support of the roof aredistinguished from each other.In these the roof is supported ona frame of timber, and the spaces

are enclosed by non-loadbearingscreen walls. These framedbuildings may be simple singlecell houses, or they may consistof a number of rooms. In tradi-tional examples the rooms orplaces within the houses tend tobe organised according to thegeometric order suggested by thestructural frame.

In this house there aresmall rooms on two storeys setin the two end structural bays,and a larger hall occupying thecentral two structural bays. Thewalls are filled in with lightwattle and daub panels.

The plan of this house is arectangle, but timber-framestructures can also have morecomplex plans.

Traditional Malay housesare built using a simple timber-frame structure. By processes ofaddition, they can become quiteextensive, and composed ofmany spaces. The places theyaccommodate tend to be de-fined by the structural bays,which are sometimes accompa-nied by changes in levels.

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In the examples given sofar, the geometry of structurehas suggested that space be or-ganised into rectangles. As wehave seen in the section on ‘thegeometry of making’, structurecan tend to make circles as wellas rectangles. Some houses of allages have their space organisedaccording to the circular orderof a conical roof structure.

Some architects, particu-larly in the twentieth century,have argued, through their de-signs for houses, that the spacesassociated with life are not nec-essarily rectangular or circular,and that dwelling places shouldnot be forced into the geomet-ric plan forms suggested by re-solved structures.

During the 1930s in Ger-many, Hans Scharoun designeda number of private houses inwhich the disposition of placestook precedence over the geo-metric order of structure. Hereagain is the Mohrmann house,

which stands in a southern sub-urb of Berlin. There are places:for sitting by the fire looking

out through a glazed wall intothe garden; for playing the pi-ano; for eating; for growingdecorative plants…. The dispo-sition of these takes priorityover the structural organisationof the house.

This house too has a com-plex plan. It is the CasaRomanelli, designed by the Ital-

In this traditional Malayhouse, spaces are defined bythe rectangular grid of thetimber-frame structure.

Reference for Malay houses:

Lim Jee Yuan—The MalayHouse, (Malaysia) 1987.

Reference for Casa Romanelli:

Architectural Review, August1983, p.64.


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ian architect Angelo Masieriand executed by Carlo Scarpain the north Italian town ofUdine in 1955. Though, as in theScharoun plan, the geometry ofthis house is complex, its spa-tial organisation is more a resultof the overlay of differentgeometries to create complexity.The disposition of places doesnot direct the design, but ratheraccommodation is found forthem amongst the walls and col-umns. Though the structuralpattern is complex, it leads andspatial organisation follows.

Some architects have triedto separate structural orderfrom spatial organisation andplace making.

There is a small house onLong Island, New York, de-signed by the architects Kocherand Frey and built in 1935. Allits accommodation is on the firstfloor, which stands some two-and-a-half metres above theground on six columns, and isreached by a spiral stair; on topis a roof terrace. This is a planof the structural layout of the

main living floor. Although theliving place is defined by theextent of the platform, the struc-ture of six columns positionedregularly across the plan makes

no suggestion of how the floorshould be laid out to makeplaces. The drawing alongsideshows how it was laid out; thewalls are not load bearing. Themovable screens which givethe bed space some privacyare wrapped around, not an-other column, but the waterdownpipe.

This Kocher and Freyhouse is an example which fol-lows the principle set by LeCorbusier some twenty years

earlier in the ‘Dom-Ino’ idea. Hesuggested that the planning ofbuildings could be freed of therestrictions of structural geom-etry by the use of columns sup-porting horizontal platforms.

Le Corbusier designed anumber of houses using theDom-Ino idea. Mies van der

Rohe also experimented withdetaching spatial organisationfrom structural order. Both how-ever tended to allow structure apart in place identification. Both

Reference for house on LongIsland:

F.R.S.Yorke—The ModernHouse, (6th edition)

1948, p.218.

This is one of Le Corbusier’sdiagrams arguing the benefits

of the Dom-Ino idea in thearchitecture of house design.

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experimented with space be-tween horizontal planes.

This is the structural dia-gram of the Villa Savoye atPoissy, near Paris, built in 1929.Clearly, as in the thersilion atMegalopolis, the structural gridhas been distorted. Althoughthe structure does not deter-mine places within the plan, LeCorbusier does use it to help in

the identification of places, asone can see, for example, in thedrawing alongside: where thecolumns define the space occu-pied by the central ramp; wherea column picks up the cornerof the stair; and where two col-umns frame the main entrance.

In the Tugendhat House atBrno, (1931), Mies van der

Rohe preserved the geometricorder of the structural grid ofcruciform columns, but he tooused the columns to help iden-tify places: two of the columns,together with the curved screenwall, frame the dining area; twoothers help define the livingarea; and another column sug-gests the boundary of the studyarea, at the top right on the plan.

In the Barcelona Pavilion(1929), however, in which Miesvan der Rohe was almost totallyfree of the need to identifyplaces for particular purposes,he managed to create a build-ing in which space is liberated,almost completely, from the dis-cipline of structure, and chan-nelled only by solid, translucentand transparent walls.

PARALLEL WALLS

One of the simplest, oldest, andyet most enduring of architec-tural strategies is based on twostraight parallel walls.

This strategy is found inprehistoric architecture, and itcontinues to be useful. Archi-tects have explored its possibili-ties right into the twentiethcentury, developing variantsand hybrids. It is unlikely thatits potential has yet been ex-hausted.

The obvious attraction ofthis most uncomplicated ar-rangement is its structural sim-plicity—it is easier to span aroof between two parallel wallsthan any other form.

But although it is simple,the parallel wall strategy is not

without its subtleties. As withmany ancient forms of architec-ture these subtleties may havecaused a sense of wonder in theminds of those who first usedthem; a wonder that we haveonly lost through familiarity.The causes of that wonder arestill available for rediscoveryand use in design.

In the chapter on Geom-etry in Architecture, and in par-ticular the section on the‘six-directions-plus-centre’, itwas said that terrestrial archi-tecture relates, in some way oranother, to the earth, the sky,the four horizontal directions,and the idea of centre. Thestrategy of parallel walls relatesparticularly to the four horizon-tal directions. Its power lies inits control over these directions,in definite ways which can beused to create a sense of secu-rity, direction, and focus.

Protection is provided bythe roof which shelters the ‘in-side’ from the rain or the sun,but also by the side walls whichlimit the directions of approachto two—‘front’ and ‘back’—or,with the addition of a non-structural rear wall, to one—‘front’—making this simplebuilding like a cave.

The sense of direction, ordynamic, is created by the long

PARALLEL WALLS

Opposite Page:

In many buildings, space is or-ganised using parallel walls.


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shape of the space between thewalls. The line of direction canrun either way, straight throughbetween the walls

…or culminate within the build-ing, terminated by a back wall.

These characteristics of theparallel wall strategy are to befound in some of the most an-cient buildings on earth.

In the nineteenth centurythe archaeologist HeinrichSchliemann discovered a citythought to be the ancient cityof Troy, made famous by thestories of Homer. Some of thehouses he found there werebased on the simple form of twoparallel walls.

The gateway, or propylon,was formed of two parallelwalls too, extending the expe-rience of transition from out-side the city wall to inside.

Although the houses ofTroy would have had focuses intheir hearths, they do not appear

to have taken advantage of thefocusing power of parallel walls.This comes about by combina-tion of the line of direction, theconvergence of perspectivelines, and the frame created bythe walls with the roof aboveand the ground below.

Vincent Scully, in his bookThe Earth, the Temple, and theGods, suggested that the an-cient Greeks used the sense ofdirection and focus (or framing)created by parallel walls to re-late their buildings to sacredsites on the peaks of distantmountains.

The evolution of ancientdolmens (right) shows the dis-covery of parallel walls as astructural and a spatial strategy.It seems a particularly humandevelopment from the amor-phous cave; born of structuralorder, and producing ‘magical’

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architectural effects that add tothe ways in which places can beidentified.

This strategy also under-lies the architecture of: the

Greek temple, from which theaxis set up by the parallel wallsstrikes out into the landscape;the Romanesque basilica, inwhich the perspective of thewalls focuses the axis on an al-

tar; and the Gothic church,which identifies the place of thealtar in a similar way but witha more sophisticated vaultedroof structure.


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In the twentieth centurysome architects have experi-mented with parallel walls as abasis for spatial organisation.

When Michael Scott de-signed a new church at Knocka-nure in Ireland in the 1960s hereduced the parallel wall strat-egy to its most basic form.

In the Student Chapel atthe University of Otaniemi nearHelsinki in Finland, two paral-lel walls are used to channel aprogression from a secular to aspiritual view of nature. Thechapel was designed by Kaijaand Hiekki Siren and built in1956–7 on a low hill amongstpine and birch trees. The spe-cial place of the church in thewoods is identified by the two

flank walls, and the impliedmovement through the buildingis from right to left on the planand section. Progress throughthe church is controlled by crosswalls. The plan defines fivezones along this route.

The first of these is theworld through which one ap-proaches the church. The sec-ond is the courtyard, enteredfrom the side and partially en-closed by walls and screens likebasket work woven from twigs.Inside the courtyard there is abell tower which acts like amarker. From the courtyard onepasses through to the chapel it-self, which is the fourth zone,past the third which is aclubroom and overspill spacefor the chapel. The fifth zone,into which one cannot progress,is the transformed nature whichone sees through the totallyglazed end wall of the chapel.The focal cross stands outsidethe building amongst the trees.

Reference for Knockanurechurch:

World Architecture 2, 1965,p.74.

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The ‘nib’ which housesthe vestry helps to separate thenature through which one ap-proached the chapel from thenature one sees from one’s pew,the setting of the cross.

A number of Scandinavianarchitects in the late 1950s seemto have experimented with theparallel wall strategy. The nextexample is a cemetery chapel atKemi (also in Finland) designedby Osmo Sipari and built in1960. Here the two parallel

walls are triangular in section,and the ceremonial axis of thecross and catafalque has beenturned through 90 degrees torun across rather than with thelongitudinal grain of the paral-lel walls. The entrance too,which relates to the cross, is inone of the walls rather thanthrough one of the open endsof the parallel wall plan. Thereare two other significant wallsin the plan: a third parallel wallwhich runs from within thechapel out into the garden; andone at right angles to the paral-lel walls, which connects thegate into the cemetery to themain door of the chapel.

The parallel wall strategyhas been used in house design

too. Because it allows extendedrepetition it is the basis of theterrace house, in which theplace of each family is identi-fied between two party walls.

The American architectCraig Ellwood put two dwell-ings between each pair of partywalls in this group of fourcourtyard apartments in Hol-lywood (1952).

Reference for Finnishchurches:

Egon Tempel—Finnish Archi-tecture Today, 1968.

Reference for terraced houses:

Stefan Muthesius—TheEnglish Terraced House,1982.


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This low-cost house (right)was designed by Charles Correafor a hot climate. The use ofparallel walls means that it canbe almost endlessly repeated.The irregular section allowssome more private upstairssleeping accommodation, butwith the openings in the roof,it also allows ventilationthrough the house.

In these examples of housesusing parallel walls each dwell-ing unit has been accommo-dated between its own pair ofwalls. In the next two examplesa single house occupies anumber of intramural spaces.

The diagrams and draw-ings along the bottom of this andthe opposite page illustrate ahouse in Switzerland designedby Dolf Schnebli, built in theearly 1960s. The section throu-gh the house shows that itsstructure is composed of fivebarrel vaults supported on sixwalls. These walls form thestructural order and the basis ofthe spatial organisation of thehouse.

In the ancient tradition,each of the spaces between thewalls is given a single direc-tional emphasis by one end be-ing closed with a cross wall.The other end is visually open,but sealed against the weatherby a glass wall.

The places of the house aredisposed within this armature ofparallel walls. Some are accom-modated between walls (thebedrooms for example); somestretch across more than one bayof space, necessitating the re-moval of some portions of thewalls from the structural dia-gram. The hearth is positionedas an additional place identifier,across the structural grain.There is a terrace, also definedby the walls.

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This house too uses morethan one bay of space in a par-allel wall plan. It is a summerhouse on a Greek island, de-signed by Aris Konstantinidis.

In this plan the implied di-rection runs across the grain ofthe parallel walls, that is fromtop to bottom on the drawing.The three walls are used to cre-ate four zones. The house standson the coast. First there is theapproach zone; then the livingzone which accommodates theliving room, dining room,kitchen, bedroom, and also thecar port; then a shaded terrace;and finally the fourth zonewhich is open to the sea. In thishouse a reinforced concrete roofis supported on rough stonepiers. The hearth divides the liv-ing from the dining places; andthe pier by the entrance has beenturned through 90 degrees toallow access for the car.

Some architects have ex-perimented with parallel wallsthat are not straight, or withlayouts in which a parallel wallstrategy has been distorted.

The drawing to the rightshows the plan of the groundfloor of a student residentialbuilding in the City Universitywhich lies in the southern sub-urbs of Paris. It was designedfor Swiss students by Le

Corbusier, and built in 1931. Itis called the Pavilion Suisse.

The rectangle of dottedlines indicates the block of ac-commodation which is lifted offthe ground on massive columns.This block thus also forms alarge ‘porch’ which protects theentrance into the building.

As one goes in there is areception desk in front and tothe right. Behind that there arethe private quarters of the di-rector, and an office. Past thereception desk is the commonroom. And to the left there is alift, and the stair which leadsup to the student rooms.

The plan of this part of thebuilding is not rectangular. Itsfurthest extent is defined by aconvex curved wall; and thestair seems to wriggle its wayupwards rather than having astraight flight. At first the plandoes not appear to conform tothe parallel wall strategy.

Reference for Greek summerhouse:


This parallel wall house wasdesigned by Norman andWendy Foster with RichardRogers. In it the sense ofmovement from entrance toterrace is with the grain of thewalls, which run down asloping site. Here there arethree zones created by thefour walls: the zone for meet-ing people, which includes thestudy, dining room and livingroom; an intermediate zonefor the conservatory, kitchenand playroom; and a privatezone for the bedrooms.

Reference for Lichtenhan houseby Dolf Schnebli:



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One can however reinter-pret the plan as an orthogonallayout; this shows that the sub-tleties of Le Corbusier’s planseem to have derived from a dis-tortion of a parallel wall layout.The drawing below shows theground floor of the PavillonSuisse ‘straightened out’. In thisversion the block of student ac-commodation forms one of theparallel walls, and the wall atthe left of the plan the other.Between them are other walls,framing the stair and the en-trance, and dividing the roomsof the director’s flat and office.

By comparing this straigh-tened version with Le Corbusie-r’s own plan, one can see whathe gained by deviating from theparallel grain. This is an exam-ple of a subtlety of layout do-ing more than one thing at once.One effect is that there is morespace for the private accommo-dation. Also the curve of the

wall tends to turn the lines ofsight of the private accommo-dation, and of the commonroom, away from the block ofstudent rooms. In addition thereception desk is turned moretowards the entrance, and thestair is given a more sculpturalcurved form in which lines ofpassage interact with lines ofsight. Finally, Le Corbusiertakes advantage of the curve tomake a bench seat, along theglass wall of the entrance of thecommon room, more sociable.

Le Corbusier experi-mented with concave as well asconvex deviations from the par-allel. Earlier than the PavillonSuisse, in the early 1920s, hedesigned a house for a MonsieurLa Roche. It stands at the endof a cul de sac in northwestParis. On its first floor, sup-ported above the ground on ashort wall and three columns, hedesigned a gallery (left), in

In this plan for a small houseat the Bristol building exhibi-

tion in 1936, the architectsMarcel Breuer and

F.R.S.Yorke curved one of aset of parallel walls, in a waysimilar to Le Corbusier in the

Pavillon Suisse (but maybewithout the subtlety).

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which Monsieur La Rochecould display his collection ofpaintings. This room has onestraight wall and one which is,from the inside, concave. Alongthe curved wall there is a rampwhich leads up to the next floor.The curve of the wall and theramp make the room more of aplace to stop; it lies on a route—an ‘architectural promenade’—which begins outside the houseand finishes on a roof terrace,passing through the triple heighthallway, up the stairs, into thegallery, up the ramp, to the li-brary on the second floor, andout onto the roof terrace. Thecurved wall also plays a part onthe outside, tacitly guiding visi-tors to the front door.

Richard MacCormac, inhis design for a new librarybuilding at Lancaster Univer-sity, dedicated to John Ruskin,has adapted the parallel wallstrategy by curving the walls to-gether at the ends to exagger-ate their effect of enclosure andprotection. Inside, more paral-lel walls channel movementthrough the building.

In a temporary sculpturepavilion in Sonsbeek Park nearArnhem in the Netherlands,built in 1966, Aldo van Eyckdistorted the parallel wall strat-egy in another way.

Conceptually, he beganwith six simple parallel walls ona defined area of ground. Builtof simple blockwork they wereabout 3.5 metres high and 2metres apart, supporting a flattranslucent roof. These walls setup a pattern of movementthrough the pavilion.

He disrupted this planwith openings and semi-circu-lar niches, to create places forthe exhibits, to allow moreroutes through the pavilion, andto open up lines of sight acrossthe grain of parallel walls. Theresult is a complex frame forsculpture and people.

STRATIFICATION

Human architecture would nodoubt be different if we could flyfreely in three dimensions. Be-cause we walk and are held downby gravity, our lives mainly takeplace on flat surfaces, and archi-tecture is concerned with theplanning of floors. With this limi-tation in movement, human lifeand architecture have a particu-lar emphasis in the two horizon-tal dimensions.

Some architects have ac-cepted, or even celebrated, thisemphasis by designing buildingsin which movement and placesare organised between strictlyhorizontal planes of platformand roof.

The German architectMies van der Rohe celebratedthe horizontal emphasis of hu-man life in many of his projects.This is the plan of a ‘Fifty-by-fifty’ (foot) house which he de-signed in 1951, but which hasnot been built. The house con-sists of a square flat roof over apaved area.

The roof is supported inthe most minimal way possible,on four columns, one in themiddle of each side of thesquare. The walls are com-pletely of glass.

All the spaces of thehouse are contained betweenthese two horizontal planes;and the glass walls do not ob-struct lines of sight in the hori-zontal dimensions.

It may be said that theFifty-by-fifty house is a buildingof one stratum. It controls andorganises a particular portion ofthe land’s surface at groundlevel; it has no changes of level—no pits or platforms; there areno upper floors, or cellars exca-vated out of the earth.

In 1922 Mies van der Rohedesigned a skyscraper which,though the plan was irregular,was composed of manyhorizontal slices of space.

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This is the section througha part of a small house designedby the Italian architect MarcoZanuso, and built near LakeComo in 1981.

It has three strata, eachwith its own character. Thereis the ground level stratum,which has easy access to theoutside; it has a stratum un-der—a cellar which is exca-vated from the earth and whichprobably has particular charac-teristics of darkness and cool-ness; and it has a stratumabove—a sleeping gallery,which is secluded away fromthe ground floor, and has a slop-ing ceiling because it is directlyunder the pitched roof.

Stratification plays a partin the identification of place.

Below is a much granderhouse, in Kent; it too has threestrata. This is a section throughMereworth Castle, designed byColen Campbell, and built in1725. (The plan of its mainfloor is on page 122.)

It has a lowest level ofrooms which are partly aboveground level, but this has someof the characteristics of a cel-lar—its ceilings are vaulted tocarry the weight of the floorsand walls above, and it is cooland not well lit.

The most important levelis the one above, with thegrandest rooms. This is knownas a piano nobile—a ‘noblefloor’—which suggests thatsome sense of nobility was at-tached to its being above thelevel of the ground.

There is a strata of roomsabove the noble floor, but youcan see that this layer is pen-etrated to allow a dome over thespace at the centre of the house.

The strata of a building canoften be seen in its elevation,but their different characters

can also be experienced insidethe building. The ground flooris accessible from outside; the

upper floors are separate fromthe ground, perhaps morealoof; the character of the

top-most floor is affected bythe geometry of the roof, andperhaps by the availability of

light from the sky.

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Many buildings are strati-fied in similar ways. This is anagricultural laboratory de-signed by a Swedish architect—Fredrik Blom—in 1837.

It has a ground floor withits entrance, (and which at thefar side becomes a first floor be-cause of a change in groundlevel); it has a cellar, which seemsexcavated from the ground, andwhich has a structure appropri-ate to carrying the weight of thebuilding above; it has a middlefloor which has its own particu-lar character—separated fromthe ground but not in the roof;and it has an attic where theshape of the space is affected bythe geometry of the roof struc-ture—in this case the triangularsection of the roof has beentranslated into a curved ceiling.

There is similar stratifica-tion in this Italian farmhouse(right) designed by GiovanniSimonis. Each level has its owncharacter: the vaulted lowestlevel; two middle levels, the up-per with a jettied window seatunder the eaves of the roof; andan attic within the roof. The lev-els are linked by the series ofstairs, the angle of which seemsto relate to the pitch of the roof,allowing the close relationship

between the roof and the stairto the attic.

In the 1920s Le Corbusierradically re-evaluated the strati-fication of buildings. In his ‘Fivepoints towards a new architec

ture’ (1926) he said that build-ings could have gardens on theirroofs, and open ground floors.

Le Corbusier used theseideas in some of his house de-signs, and in other buildingtypes. In place of a garret wouldbe a terrace open to the sky forsunbathing; in place of a cellar,or ground floor, a space open forfree movement under the house.

In Ernest Gimson’sStoneywell Cottage, there arealmost two storeys within thestructure of the roof Hewanted to reduce the scale ofthe house from the outside,and emphasize the importanceof the sheltering roof.

In this part of the library ofUppsala University, there is alecture theatre on the topmostlevel. In masonry structures itis easier to support largespaces over small ones thanvice versa; the walls or col-umns of the smaller spacescan support the floor of thelarge.


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Le Corbusier also experi-mented with the interrelation-ships between the levels inbuildings. In this small house fora site in Carthage, Greece, de-signed in the 1930s, he made thelayers interlink. The roof terraceis shaded against the strongGreek sun.

And in the Unités d’Habit-ation, some large apartmentblocks he designed after WorldWar II, the dwellings interlockwith each other across the sec-tion of the building, and arounda central access corridor. Thisdrawing is through only a smallportion of a block, which wasdesigned to accommodate some1600 people, together withcommunity services.

Le Corbusier also recog-nised the greater freedom in themanipulation of space that anarchitect has on the top floorof a building. A lower level isrestricted in that its ‘roof’ is of-ten also the floor of the levelabove, and in that the possibili-ties of allowing light in directlyfrom above are severely limited.On the top floor these restric-tions do not exist (the ‘above’is no longer hampered by the‘below’ of a floor above); thereis more opportunity for mould-ing space in the vertical dimen-sion and using light from above.

In the Millowners’ Associa-tion Building for Ahmedab-ad(1954) Le Corbusier follows thestructurally sensible conventionthat a large space is supported onsmaller spaces below. This alsoallows the large space—the dis-cussion chamber) to be lit from

By using rooflights and open-ings in floors, John Soane

created spaces where light fromthe sky could penetrate into the

lowest stratum. In some partsheavy glass floors allow light to

filter down through the levels.This is a section through part

of his own house; a placewhere kept his large collectionof sculpture and architectural

fragments.

Reference for John Soane:

John Summerson and others—John Soane (Architectural

Monographs), 1983.

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above, through a convex roof(with the same freedom from therestrictions of floor above as thedome over the central hall ofMereworth Castle).

Associated with the ‘tem-ple’ attitude to the identifica-tion of place (discussed in thechapter Temples and Cottages),is the idea of creating levelsabove the ground—worldsabove the mundane. The stagefor performance is an exampleof this; so is the piano nobile.

At the Schloss Charlotten-hof, a villa built in 1827 in theextensive grounds of the Sanss-ouci Palace at Potsdam (nearBerlin), Schinkel designed a ter-raced garden raised approxi-mately three metres above theflat landscape around.

The garden is at the samelevel as the piano nobile of thehouse. The lower levels of the

house were for the servants. Theascent from the mundane to thenoble level is by a pair of stair-cases in the entrance hall.

In the Villa Savoye, LeCorbusier created three mainstrata: a ground floor accommo-dating the entrance hall, theservants quarters and the garage;the first floor with the living and

sleeping rooms, and with anopen terrace enclosed within thealmost square enclosure ofwalls; and a level above with asolarium for sunbathing. Allthree levels are linked by theramp at the core of the house.

The library is a buildingtype which in many instanceshas a particular stratification.Traditionally, for various rea-sons, libraries were built on afloor above ground level: toavoid damp (in days beforedamp proofing of walls); to in-crease security for the valuablebooks; and possibly also be-cause their large spaces couldbe built over cellular rooms.

The library of Trinity Col-lege in Cambridge was designedby Christopher Wren and builtby 1684. Wren followed theprecedent of earlier college li-braries by putting the library onthe first floor, in this case overan open loggia.

Reference for Venturi:

Papadakis and others,Venturi, Scott Brown andAssociates, on houses andhousing, 1992.

Reference for Schinkel:

Karl Friedrich Schinkel,Collection of ArchitecturalDesigns, (in facsimile, 1989).

Sometimes the usual stratifica-tion can be inverted. In thishouse by Robert Venturi theattic is vaulted, as if it issupporting weight above, andthe lowest floor follows theirregular geometry of theground. The main entrance isat mid-level, over a bridge.


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The Bibliotheque SteGenevieve in Paris, designed byHenri Labrouste, and built by1850, is also on the first floor.The library has a steel vaultedceiling, and is supported on col-umns and cellular rooms be-neath. The library hall itself isreached by passing through thecolumned ground floor hall,under the books, to a pair ofstaircases at the rear of thebuilding where one turns to facethe opposite direction and thenenter.

There is a sense, in ap-proaching both these libraries(and the many other examples),that physically rising to a levelabove the ground is equivalentalso to rising to a higher intel-lectual level. The sense seems tohave been consciously intendedby Gunnar Asplund, the Swed-ish architect, when he designedthe Stockholm City Library,which was built in 1927.

Here one enters up a stair-case that emerges almost in thecentre of the circular, and veryhigh, library hall. The hall is litby a ring of high windows whichcreate rectangles of sunlightwhich slowly track across thewhite walls. The bookstacks areon three tiers around the circum-ference, each with its own walk-

way. The administration ofbook issues and returns takesplace at the centre of the floor.

In the Viipuri Library, Fin-land, designed by Alvar Aalto,and built in 1935, one risesthrough various levels ofbookstacks. The children’s li

brary is on the ground floor, andthe main bookstacks on threehigher levels that gradually as-cend under the high ceilings.

The upper floors are lit byan even pattern of circular roof-lights, with deep conical sidesthat reflect the light evenlythrough the spaces.

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The Cranfield Institute Li-brary was designed by NormanFoster and built in 1992. It toohas the bookstacks on the up-per floors, with the smallerspaces—a lecture theatre andsome seminar rooms—on theground floor.

Like Labrouste’s library,this is a metal-framed buildingwith vaulted ceilings. LikeAsplund’s it has a staircasewhich rises through each floor.Like Aalto’s it has a means ofdiffusing daylight through roof-lights to illuminate the spacesevenly. The number of columnsis doubled on each of the lowerfloors to take the extra weightof the books.

The new National Archivein Paris was built in the early1990s, designed by StanislausFiszer. Its section shows a numberof aspects of stratification. It hasthree principal strata, each ofwhich has two levels. The entrancelevel has a central atrium, with aramped stair which takes libraryusers up to the higher levels. Theoffices and administration are alsoin this stratum. The lowest stra-tum, below ground, contains stor-age rooms. The upper floors arelarge, and take advantage of thepossibility of being lit through theroof. On various levels Fiszer hasused changes in ceiling height tohelp to identify different places,especially to suggest a separationbetween peripheral and centralzones (this is done by suspendedceilings which conceal services),but it is only in the top stratumthat he has the freedom to varythe sizes of the volumes of spacesignificantly. The central readingroom, lit by the sloping roof-light,is flanked by two levels whichaccommodate bookstac-ks, com-puter facilities, and so on.

The National Archives build-ing in Paris has three strata,each of two floors. Thelowest is below ground, andhouses the stores. The middlestratum accommodates theentrance concourse andoffices. The reading rooms,book stacks, and computerfacilities are in the top stra-tum, where ceilings are freefrom the constraints of afloor above, and light can beadmitted from the sky.

TRANSITION,HIERARCHY,

HEART

Experiencing products of archi-tecture involves movement. Onepasses from outside to inside, orthrough the serial stages of aroute. Even in a simple enclosedspace it is not possible to lookin all directions simultaneously,so one moves around.

One might tend to think ofa place as somewhere onestops—a market square, a liv-ing room, an operating table.These may be called staticplaces, or perhaps nodes. But thepathway one takes to get fromone static place to another is aplace too. One might call this adynamic place. Dynamic placesplay an essential part in the con-ceptual organisation of space.

Dynamic and static placeshave characters that derivefrom the basic and modifyingelements by which they areidentified. The character of astatic place might be affected bythat of the dynamic places thatlead to it; and the character ofa dynamic place might be af-fected by that of the static placeto which it leads. The experi-ence of a corridor that leads to

a cell in which there is an elec-tric chair is affected by one’sawareness of the place to whichit leads. The experience of theburial chamber at the heart ofone of the ancient Egyptianpyramids is affected by the na-ture of the route by which youreach it—penetrating the massof the pyramid.

Even in quite mundane ex-amples, transitions form part ofthe experience of works of ar-chitecture. The door of a houseis a significant interface betweenthe public and the private realm.Many religious sites have someform of gateway which marksthe entrance: the lych gate of anEnglish churchyard; thepropylon through which oneenters the temenos of a Greektemple; the gates and forecourtof a Chinese temple. All contrib-ute to the effect that a staticplace—the hearth of a house,the altar of a temple—is setapart from the rest of the world.

Transition places are im-portant in the ways that staticplaces relate to each other. Theyplay a part in the relationship

Opposite Page:

An ancient Egyptian pyramidcomplex can be interpreted asa transition from life intodeath. There is a hierarchy ofplaces from the river to thedesert. The heart of the com-plex is the tomb of the phar-aoh. The point of symbolictransition is the place wherethe mortuary temple meets thebase of the pyramid.

The propylon is a buildingthrough which one must passto reach the temenos of aGreek temple. This is thepropylon on the acropolis inAthens; it marks the transitionfrom the everyday world intothe sacred area of the temples.

A porch not only marks anentrance, it also identifies aplace of transition betweenoutside and inside.

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158

between a place and its context.Often there is a sequence, orhierarchy of stages between onestatic place and another. Whenentering dwellings, for example,one usually has to pass througha number of different zones ofincreasing privacy. Sometimesthis hierarchy or serial experi-ence of places culminates in aplace which is conceptually atthe core of the work of archi-tecture—its heart.

This is the plan of the pal-ace of Tiryns in Greece. It wasa hilltop citadel built more than3000 years ago. If one beginsat the top of the drawing onecan trace a path through a hier-archy of places leading up to themost important, the king’sthrone room—the megaron.

From the entrance court,itself surrounded with thickwalls, one would have passedinto a long and narrow passage,through a couple of gateways,and then to a smaller courtwhere there was the first of twoformal propylons. Passingthrough this, one would haveentered another courtyard, andthen through the secondpropylon into the innermostcourtyard, which seems to havebeen cloistered. Off this court-yard was the megaron itself; butto reach its hearth and thethrone one still had to passthrough a porch or portico, andthen an anteroom.

This was not the shortestpossible route from the entranceto the throne—one changes di-rection twice during the courseof it. Perhaps it was made tor-tuous like this to lessen the slopeof the climb up the hill; but italso made the heart of the pal-

Reference for Greek architecture:

A.W.Lawrence—Greek Architecture, 1967.

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159

ace seem much more deeply em-bedded in its body, and allowedthe creation of a number of tran-sitions, each of which could suc-cessively be defended in theevent of enemy intrusion.

Transitions, hierarchies,and hearts can be found in lessdramatic works of architecturetoo. The drawing on the left isthe ground floor plan of a housethat Ernest Gimson designed forhimself at the end of the nine-teenth century. It was built in theCotswold village of Sapperton.

The main entrance into thehouse is from the right hand sideof the drawing, from a villagelane. The heart of the house maybe said to be the hearth in thehall (living room), which is thelargest room in the plan. Toreach the hearth from the laneone passes first between twobushes (like sentinels), througha gate which is set in a waist-height wall, into a small en-trance court, along a stone pathwhich is flanked by flower beds,through an arch into the stoneporch (there are some stepsdown into the garden alongside

it), through the front door whichis set in a very thick wall (thatactually supports a fireplace onthe floor above), and into theliving room. If the lane is ‘pub-lic’, then the entrance court is‘semi-public’; the porch is ‘semi-private’, and the living room is‘private’. This sequence ofplaces and transitions creates ahierarchy from the public realmto the privacy of the interior.Each stage in this hierarchy isaccounted for in the architecturethat Gimson gave his house.

[One passes through a se-quence of places when enteringby the back door too: througha wall into a back courtyardwhere there is an open-sidedshed whose roof is supported bytwo columns; the back door istucked under this shed roof]

At around the same time,Frank Lloyd Wright was design-ing the Ward Willits House,built in Highland Park, Illinoisin 1902. As in the Gimsonhouse, the heart is the hearththat in Wright’s design lies rightat the core of the plan. In thisexample the hierarchy of placesbetween the public realm andthe private includes the motorcar. The route begins in the bot-tom righthand corner of theplan. The car drives up to andunder the porte corchère whichprojects out from the house overthe driveway. Emerging fromthe car, under the shelter of theroof, one climbs three steps ontoa small platform which leads tothe front door; passing diago-nally across the small hallwayone climbs some more steps, andthen turns sharp left into themain living room. The hearth,in a sort of ingle-nook, is behind

Reference for Gimson’shouse:

Lawrence Weaver—SmallCountry Houses of To-day,1912, p.54.


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a screen which hides it from theentrance.

Transitions, and the hier-archy of places, draw out thepassage from the public realmto the private. Often, as in thecase of the Ward Willitshouse, the architect avoids themost direct route, so that theperson approaching and enter-ing the house can be ‘led’ thro-ugh a progressive sequence ofexperiences.

Transitions also provide abuffer between one place andanother, particularly between‘an inside’ and ‘the outside’.This may have practical ben-efits, such as when a draughtlobby helps to insulate the in-side of a building from a coldoutside; but they may also havea psychological effect too, suchas that between a busy street andthe quiet interior of a church.

In 1953 Alvar Aalto builta summer house on the islandof Muuratsalo.

Its plan is a square enclosed byhigh walls. The living accom-modation is ranged along twosides of the square, leaving asquare courtyard. This court-

yard creates a transition be-tween the interior of the humandwelling and the nature thatsurrounds it. The opening in thecourtyard sets up a line of sightalong the shore of the lake inwhich the island sits.

The ideas of transition, hi-erarchy, and heart do not onlyapply in the architecture of dwell-ings. They are used in works ofarchitecture with different pur-poses. They may be very simple,or grand and complex.

This is the chapel of thePresident’s Palace in Brasilia,Brazil, designed by OscarNiemeyer, and built in 1958.

Its plan is very simple, butalso subtle. The first basic ele-ment of the architecture of thechapel is a flat platform sup-ported on stilts; this defines thecircle of place of the chapel. Onthis simple platform, which isapproached across a flat bridge,stands the altar. The altar is hid-den from view and protected bya simple white wall that curvesaround it and rises to a pinna-cle surmounted by a cross. This

Reference for President’sChapel, Brasilia:

Albert Christ-Janer and MaryMix

Foley—Modern ChurchArchitecture, 1962, p.77.

Reference for Aalto summerhouse:

Richard Weston—Alvar Aalto,1995.

In his plan for LiverpoolCathedral, Sir Giles GilbertScott created a hierarchy ofspaces between the outside

and the sanctuary, designed toset the altar well apart fromthe everyday world. Like all

medieval cathedrals, thisbuilding is a manifestation of

transition from the secularworld to the sacred.

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161

defines a more intimate circle ofpresence of the altar. The tran-sition from the ‘outside’ to the‘inside’ of the chapel is simple,but it includes various stages:crossing the bridge onto the plat-form; approaching the chapel;and going in, which must be likeentering a shell—entry is pro-gressive rather than immediate,and the modifying element oflight, which enters through thedoor too, washes progressivelymore dimly on the curving wall.

The Opéra in Paris is agrander example. It was designedby Charles Garnier, and built in,1875. The section has been sim-plified to show only the major in-ternal spaces. The heart of theOpéra is of course the audito-rium—the tiers of seating, and

the stage. The transition is fromthe everyday world of the cityoutside to a place where one isin the presence of the magic, ormake believe, of opera or ballet.

The first stage in this tran-sition is the flight of steps at theentrance which immediatelyraises one onto a plane abovethe mundane. The second is theentrance through the thickwalls into the first lobby. Fromhere one can see through to thesecond lobby where there is thegrand staircase. This space isrichly ornamented and brightlylit. It is like a stage itself, onwhich the audience can displaythemselves before going into theauditorium for the perform-ance. The proscenium arch isthe ultimate transition.

Reference for Paris Opéra:

Nikolaus Pevsner—A Historyof Building Types, 1976, p.85.

In the Paris Opéra there is asequence of transitions fromthe street to the make-believeworld of the stage.

POSTSCRIPT

The framework of themes inthis book is not complete. Thereare many still to be identified;and probably an unlimitedamount to be invented.

I am aware of some that Ihave not had space to include:the theme of ‘datum place’—aplace by reference to which oneknows where one is; the themeof ‘places made by excavation’,rather than by building; thetheme (related to transition, hi-erarchy, heart) of ‘places be-tween’—places within walls—zones between inside and out-side which are not quite either;the theme of ‘implied place’—that place is not always clearlydefined by basic and modifyingelements of architecture, butcan be implied in minimal andsubtle ways; and then there isthe theme of ‘non-orthogonalarchitecture’ (which has only betouched upon here)—whereorthogonality and the six-direc-tions-plus-centre are denied orsubverted.

There is more work thatcould be done on those themesthat have been included in thisbook; each of them could be thesubject of its own full-lengthstudy. There is more to do onthe ways in which geometrycontributes to identification ofplace; the subtleties of the par-allel wall strategy have not beenexhausted here; the philosophi-cal and poetic ramifications ofthe ‘temple-cottage’ dimensionneed to be more fully explored.

One intention of this bookhas been to help to open this fieldof research, rather than to pro-vide a comprehensive survey of

it. The latter would be impossi-ble anyway, because the bounda-ries of architecture are notknown and there may not be any.

The key that let me intothis field was the realisationthat architecture is, before allelse, identification of place.This is discussed in detail in thefirst chapter but, although it isnot always mentioned, it can beseen to underpin all the otherstoo: the purpose of basic ele-ments is not just to be them-selves, but to identify place; theeffect of the different attitudesassociated with the ‘temple’ andthe ‘cottage’ is to identify placein different ways; the power ofthe six-directions-plus-centre isthat they identify place; the pur-pose of organising space—bystructure, by parallel walls, intostratified layers, or into hierar-chies with transitions andhearts—is to identify place.

This is a key into architec-tural design as well as analysis.If one thinks of architecture asdesigning ‘buildings’, one de-signs in one way; if one thinksof it as identifying places, thenone designs in another. The fo-cus of attention shifts from tan-gible form to include inhabitedspace. In the latter, a ‘building’is seen not as an end in itself,but as a means to an end.

This is not a new thought,but it remains a significant one.It can be found, in varying de-grees of clarity, in most of thetexts included in the list of sup-plementary reading given at theend of this book.

It is a thought that seemsto require restatement from

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time to time, because it can beelusive, and also because it canbe easily lost beneath a moundof seemingly more pressing con-cerns. The practise of architec-ture is so beset by construction-al, contractual and commercialpressures that this silent andseemingly undemanding core ofits ‘reason for being’ can easilybe ignored.

Through history, other fac-tors have helped push ‘architec-ture as identification of place’down the list of priorities forconcern. (These are in additionto the common tendency thatpeople find it easier to think interms of the tangible—i.e.buildings—rather than the in-tangible—e.g. places.)

First is the suggestion, im-plicit in a lot of architecturalwriting, that the word architec-ture can be reserved for a spe-cial class of building. This iscontained in Nikolaus Pevsner’sfamous assertion, ‘A bicycleshed is a building; Lincoln Ca-thedral is a piece of architec-ture’. To think like this mightbe satisfactory for an architec-tural historian, because it re-lates to a quality of buildingsas perceived, but it throws defi-nition of the activity of archi-tecture into turmoil.

In thinking of architectureas identification of place one ison firmer ground: both the bicy-cle shed and the cathedral are ar-chitecture, though of differentcharacter and quality; the shedidentifies a place for storing bi-cycles, the cathedral a place forworship. The people responsiblefor both are architects, thoughone of them may be better at itin some ways than the other.

Thinking of architectureas identification of place, eve-ryone is to some degree an ar-chitect. Setting out thefurniture in a living room isarchitecture; so too is layingout a city. The difference isonly a matter of degree, and atdifferent scales there are differ-ent levels of responsibility.

The legislative bodies insome countries rule that the re-sponsibilities of building—inthat they involve contractualproblems and spending largesums of money—should only behandled by people with particu-lar qualifications which makethem professionals. In somecases, the United Kingdom in-cluded, the title ‘architect’ isprotected by law. But there isanother justification for archi-tecture being a profession,which can be understood bythinking of it as identificationof place. It is architects who, bydefinition (whether or not theyare legally entitled to the name),organise the world into placesfor life and work. This is a re-sponsibility which is on a parwith medicine, law, religion.There is a level where everyonedeals with their own concerns(as in health, dispute, and spir-itual belief), but there are alsolevels where matters can becomplex and require the edu-cation, experience and commit-ment of people who acceptprofessional responsibility.

A second factor which haspushed ‘architecture as identi-fication of place’ down, has beena conscious fascination, in somestrands of architectural theory,with its contrary—the idea of‘placeless’ architecture. There is

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not space here to follow thisstrand in detail, but it was rec-ognised and described byOswald Spengler in his book TheDecline of the West (1918), as apreoccupation with ‘the infinite’;it was evident too in Mies vander Rohe’s interest in ‘universalspace’; and it has been broughtto realisation in many ‘anti-street’ urban developments. In1931, the Swedish architect ErikGunnar Asplund gave a lecturein which he illustrated one suchdevelopment, declaring trium-phantly that ‘PLACE GIVESWAY TO SPACE!’

The third factor which hasworked against ‘architecture asidentification of place’ has beentechnology, partly because peo-ple tend to focus more on howbuildings are built rather thanon what they do in identifyingplaces, but also because manyprimitive place types have beenmade redundant.

The ‘hearth’ is no longer anessential place in a home; heat-ing is provided by a boiler per-haps kept in a cupboard andheat distributed through pipesand radiators. From its heydayin the time of the pharaohs, the‘tomb’ has plummeted to almosttotal irrelevance in the reper-toire of architecture. The ‘mar-ket-place’ was superseded by theshop, but even that is underthreat from telemarketi-ng andthe Internet. Most significantlyperhaps, the pulpit, the look-outand the stage have been over-taken by television, which al-lows politicians to preach intopeople’s living rooms, viewersto see great distances (even to themoon and outer planets of thesolar system), and performances

to be watched from almost any-where.

Related to this is the enor-mous increase in the prevalenceof the framed image. As hasbeen said in the chapter Archi-tecture as Making Frames thetwo-dimensional image of awork of architecture, set as itusually is within the four sidesof a frame, does not allow oneto experience it as a place or se-ries of places. This is true of apainting, or a photograph, afilm, or a television image. Evenif the picture presents the illu-sion of three dimensions, evenif it includes movement, it di-minishes the experience ofplace. Even so, these images areperhaps the most common waysin which the products of archi-tecture are viewed; there areonly a limited number of build-ings that each of us can actuallyexperience; the vast majority—especially those which architectsare urged to emulate, by criticsin the press—are seen as framedimages. This has the effect of re-inforcing the perceived impor-tance of visual appearance inworks of architecture (and evenpictorial composition), furtherundermining the importance ofplace identification.

It is probably true to saytoo, that architects involved withlarge projects worry more aboutwhether the roof will leak (orsimilar matters to do with theperformance of the fabric of abuilding), or whether they willlead their client into some ex-pensive legal battle (againstthemselves perhaps), than aboutwhether they are making goodplaces; at the least such worriesmust seem more immediate, and


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have more potential to give ar-chitects personal problems orspoil their lives. Concerns aboutconstruction, about perform-ance, about legal and contrac-tual matters, can easily occupyall of an architect’s time, leav-ing none for issues, which caneasily (but wrongly) be disre-garded as worthless, of identifi-cation of place.

Hearths, tombs, shops,schools, libraries, museums, artgalleries, meeting rooms, placesof work, offices…all are chal-lenged by developments in tech-nology which complicate andconfuse issues of place. But thisis not to say that the idea ofplace is no longer relevant.

Architecture, like lan-guage, is always changing; newtypes of place emerge while oth-ers become redundant. Archi-tecture now has to take accountof: places for televisions, forcomputers, for skate-boarding;airports, cash-dispensing ma-chines, motorways; none ofwhich existed in ancient times.And there are still many primi-tive place types that are still rel-evant: places to sleep, to cook,to eat, to walk, to grow plants,to meet people, and so on.

* * *

These are all points whichindicate something of the natureof the theoretical ground onwhich the present book stands.But its main purpose has been toshow that architecture, its prod-ucts and its strategies, can be sub-ject to analysis within a consistentconceptual framework.

This is not to say that thewhole framework is understood,nor even that the framework is

finite in its extent. Nor is it to saythat all the themes that have beendescribed and discussed in thisbook are relevant to every workof architecture that has beenachieved, or applicable to everynew work of architecture thatwill be proposed.

Indeed it is apparent thatdifferent movements in architec-ture through history, and differ-ent individual architects, havehad different preoccupations intheir works. Within the creativefield of architecture differentthemes may be given differentweights, independently and rela-tively. One architect or move-ment may concentrate on therelationship between space andstructure; another might stressthe ways in which social geom-etry influences the organisationof buildings, and give the order-ing power of structure a lowerpriority; one might exploit thepowers of the six-directions-plus-centre, where anothermight see them as best subverted;one might seek to concentrateon the modifying elements ofarchitecture—light, sound,touch, where another might bemore interested in the formalpowers of the basic elements—wall, column, roof. The varietyof permutations is endless.

Architecture is not a mat-ter of system, but of judgement.Architecture, like play-writing,composing music, law-making,or even scientific investigation,is subject to drive, vision, andinterest. It is a creative disci-pline that accommodates vary-ing views on the interactiverelationship between peopleand the world around.

Architecture is, because

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of this, a political and a com-mercial field too. It is politicalin that there are no ‘right’ an-swers and ‘wrong’, but an-swers which find favour, andthose which do not; ‘favour’lies with those who have themost powerful voice. It is com-mercial in that the products ofarchitecture have to survive ina consumer market—a newbuilding is like a newlylaunched product; whether itsucceeds or not depends onwhether or not its ‘customers’‘like it’. And this leads into thedebate about who architec-ture’s ‘customers’ are.

Despite the unnervingcomplexity and uncertainty ofthe conditions within which itis done, architecture as a crea-tive discipline is susceptible toreasoned understanding.

If one considers architec-ture not in terms of materialthings (objects, buildings)—notas a catalogue of formal types,

or a classification of styles ortechnologies of construction—but in terms of frames of refer-ence for doing, (which isanother term for the themes or‘filters’ in this book), then it ispossible to build a frameworkfor analysis which is consistentyet not restricting; one that al-lows the creative mind to learnfrom the works of architectureof the past, and to generateideas for the future.

Architecture should not belimited by classifications thatdeal only with what is or hasbeen; there will always be po-tential for new ways of identi-fying places. Architecture’svitality depends upon inventionand adventure, but any field ofhuman endeavour—music, law,science—needs a base in knowl-edge that can be presented tostudents of the subject as afoundation upon which theycan build and develop. Archi-tecture is no different.

CASE STUDIES

The small chapel at FitzwilliamCollege in Cambridge, UK, wasdesigned by the British practiceMacCormac Jamieson Prichard, and built in 1991. It is a clearand understandable buildingwhich illustrates a number of thethemes discussed in this book.

Identification of place

The chapel has been attachedto the end of a wing of the ex-isting college accommodation(designed by Denys Lasdun inthe 1960s). It faces a large tree(which was already there) al-most in the centre of the rec-tangular college grounds. Thecircle which outlines the planof the chapel identifies a placewhich enjoys a particular rela-tionship with this tree.

The fundamental purposeof the building was to establishthis place as a place of worship.It has done this ‘first’ by cup-ping the place between twobrick walls curved around likeprotecting hands; these form acylinder which contains thechapel.

Basic and combined elements

The principal architectural ele-ments of the chapel are wall,platform, aedicule, focus, cell,column and glass wall.

The platform is the mainfloor of the chapel (see the Sec-tion, on the next page). Beingraised it makes the chapel inte-rior feel apart but, because of theglass wall that faces the tree, notseparate from the land outside.

On this platform is theaedicule—apparently composedof four pairs of columns arrangedat the corners of a square. Thecolumns in each pair are struc-turally separate: the inner fourcolumns support a central squareflat roof; the outer four supporta secondary pitched roof whichspans between the outer wallsand the roof of the aedicule.

The focus of the aediculeis the altar, a simple table cov-ered with a red cloth.

Below the platform thereis the cell—a crypt-like meetingroom totally secluded from theoutside world. Its floor level isslightly lower than that outside.

CASE STUDY ONE—FITZWILLIAM COLLEGE CHAPELReferences

Peter Blundell Jones—‘HolyVessel’, in Architects’ Journal,1 July 1992, p.25.

Dreams in Light’,in Architectural Review, April1992, p.26.

Elevation

Plan of main floor

Site plan


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Within this meeting room, andenhancing its crypt-like quality,the structural supports of itsceiling, which align with thecolumns of the aedicule in thechapel above, appear as heavymasonry piers—battered as if tosuggest they need to spread aheavy load—providing a strongand visible foundation.

The platform, the aediculeabove with its altar, and the cellbeneath, are all enclosed andprotected by the two curved sidewalls, arcs of the circular plan.The open end, between thesetwo walls, is the large clear glasswall through which the tree canbe seen.

Though there are manysubtleties, the building makessimple and direct use of these el-ements. Each seems to fulfil itstimeless purpose: the walls en-close and protect; the platformraises a special place aboveground level; the aedicule framesa specific place—that of the al-tar which is the focus and heartof the building; the cell separatesa place from everywhere else; thecolumns act structurally bearingthe loads of floor and roof, butalso help to define space; and theglass wall allows in light and iscertainly for looking through.

Modifying elements

• light

In the morning sunlightstreams into the chapel from theeast through the branches of thetree and the large window.

In both the chapel and the‘crypt’ there are narrow perim-eter rooflights that allow lightto wash down the walls: softlyon overcast days, and with a

pattern of sharp shadows whenthe sun shines. With the chang-ing light and slowly moving sunpatterns the interior is neverquite the same twice. At nightthe lights inside turn the chapelinto a lantern or lighthouse.

• colour

By contrast with the harshpurple brick on the outside, theinside colours are soft andwarm. This image of a warminterior is further reinforced atnight when the inside light andcolour contrasts with the dark-ness. The altar cloth has thewarmest colour.

Elements doing more thanone thing

The platform is a floor and aroof; and the glass wall allowsboth a view out and makes alantern at night.

The aedicule defines themain chapel space and the placeof the altar, but it also helps to

This section is drawn facingthe tree. You can see the

platform (which has a curvedunder surface) supporting theaedicule in the chapel above,and supported by the piers inthe meeting room below. The

altar stands on the platform infront of the large east-facingglass wall. You can also seethe gaps at the perimeter of

the roof and around the edgeof the platform floor, which

allow light to wash down thewalls of the chapel and the

meeting room.

The Fitzwilliam College Chapel

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create four subsidiary spaces: theplace of the organ (at the rear ofthe chapel); the places of the twostairs which curve up from theentrance below; and the place ofthe priest’s stair up from the‘crypt’.

The inner walls which arethe boundaries of the crypt, andwhich define all three stairs,also form the bases of circum-ferential seating in the chapel.

As in any building there aremany other things doing more

than one thing at once: thespaces between each pair of col-umns accommodate the verticalradiators; the organ is housed ina wall which also contributes tothe enclosure of the chapel, anddefines the place of another stair.

Using things that are there

The chapel uses the end of theexisting wing as an anchor; ituses the tree as a companion.But it also uses, and exploits,the place between the twowhich previously lay dormant.


The chapel identifies a place ofan altar together with its asso-ciated place for worshippers.There are many precedents forsuch ‘primitive’ places beingbounded by a circle or aedicule;here it is both.

Architecture as makingframes

• ‘outside-in’ framing

The chapel sits in theframe made by the other col-lege buildings and their gardens.The circle of the building itselfis a frame for worship. Within,the seating on the circumferenceis a frame within that frame; theaedicule is a frame within aframe within a frame; the altaris a frame within a frame withina frame within a frame…like‘Russian Dolls’.

• ‘inside-out’ framing

The glass wall frames aparticular view of the tree, as anabstract picture, but also mak-ing a link between the internalspace and nature outside,

Plan at chapel level, showingthe square aedicule and thefour subsidiary spaces it helpsto make: the place of the twostairs from the entrance; theplace of the priest’s stair risingunder the glass wall from themeeting room beneath; andthe place of the organ at therear of the chapel.

Plan at ‘crypt’ level, showingthe entrance, and the fourpiers which support the floorof the chapel.


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(rather like the Student Chapelat Otaniemi, where the cross isan external focus).

Temples and cottages

Architecturally as well as in pur-pose the chapel is a ‘temple’. Theaedicule stands on a platformabove the natural ground level.The form of the chapel is geo-metrically disciplined; its mate-rials are carefully finished. Andalthough it is attached to an ex-isting building and relates to thetree, it does not submit to either.The building’s one submissivecharacteristic is perhaps its useof bricks which match those ofthe older building.

Circles of presence

The chapel creates its own cir-cle of presence, which housesthe altar with its circle of pres-ence, and which responds to,and exists within, the circle ofpresence of the tree. Throughthese overlapping circles onemay carry one’s own.

Six-directions-plus-centre

Inside the chapel the six direc-tions are defined by the six sidesof the cubic geometry of theaedicule.

The lateral directions areblocked by the side walls. Thedirection to the rear loses itselfin the area of the organ; thedown direction is the floor andthe ‘crypt’ beneath (see the VillaRotonda by Palladio), the pres-ence of which one is remindedof by the stair-wells.

The two directions whichhold greatest importance in thischapel, as in most traditional re-ligious buildings, are the up and

the forward: the forward passesthrough the altar and the glasswall to the tree and the rising sunbeyond; the vertical—the axismundi—though not stronglyemphasised by the architectureof the building (there is no spire,or vault, or cupola), is simplyimplied by the coincidental axesof the cylinder of the outer wallsand the cube of the aedicule; thiscentre, together with the fourhorizontal directions, is recog-nised, but undem-onstratively in-dicated, by a faint cross of pairsof parallel lines inscribed acrossthe ceiling of the aedicule.

Social geometry

Like the Woodland Chapel byAsplund in Stockholm (CaseStudy Five) the internal shapesof both the chapel and the meet-ing room recognise and estab-lish the social circle.

Space and structure

The principle structural ele-ments of the chapel—the frameof the aedicule and the flank

This is a simplified three-dimensional drawing of the

chapel space; it does not showthe staircases up from below.It does show the position of

the aedicule between the twocurved side walls, and the two

main directions: the up andthe forward.

The Fitzwilliam College Chapel

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walls—are also the principlespace defining elements.

In the ‘crypt’ the space isdefined by the four structuralpiers. The space is also definedby the curved walls of the threesets of stairs, which are not roofsupporting.

Ideal geometry

Although it is sometimes diffi-cult to establish exactly which

ideal geometric shapes and vol-umes an architect used in deter-mining the form and dispositionof a building, it is clear that theFitzwilliam Chapel is organisedon a conceptual armature of cir-cles and squares, cylinders andcubes.

The aedicule is a centralcube, which is extended by halfa cube towards the tree, and afull cube to the rear, making theorgan place. On plan, the cen-tral square of the aedicule (whichlaterally is measured to the cen-tre-lines of the columns, and lon-gitudinally to their outer faces)sits within another squar- e, one-third larger, which determinesthe radius of the curved walls;and a circle subscribed within itseems to determine the positionsof the four outer columns of theaedicule and the radius of the cir-cumferential seating and rail be-hind the altar.

(As in the Villa Rotonda),the geometry of the section isnot as clear and simple as thatof the plan. The central cube ofthe aedicule is there, but it isnot a purely spatial cube—itsheight is measured from theplatform floor to the top of theupstands around the flat roof.

The square of the aediculein section is extended down-wards as half a square to deter-mine the height of the ‘crypt’,though again this includes thedepth of its roof—the platform.

There appear to be someother alignments: the angles ofthe batters on the piers in thecrypt seem to align with the topsof the outer columns in the chapelabove; and the angle of the slopeof the capstones on the side wallsseems to derive from a long di-

The form of the chapel seemsto hang on an armature ofgeometric shapes and volumes.In the plan you can see apattern of squares and circles.

The geometric arrangement ofthe section is not so simple,but you can still extract lineswhich appear to regulate theshapes and positions of ele-ments.


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agonal line through the section,from the notional bottom corner,through the base of the inneraedicule columns on one side, andthrough the top of the aediculecolumns on the other.

Transition, hierarchy, heart

For such a small building thetransition from outside to insideis elaborate. This accords withthe idea that holy spaces shouldbe reached through ‘layers ofaccess’ (as suggested byChristopher Alexander in ‘Pat-tern 66’ of A Pattern Language).

The route follows an archi-tectural promenade through ahierarchical arrangement ofspaces, and culminates in thechapel itself, where there is aview of the outside from whichone has come; (comparable withthe ‘window’ on the upper roofterrace which is the terminus ofthe architectural promenadethrough the Villa Savoye).

To get into the chapel onefirst goes under the link betweenit and the existing wing of col-lege accommodation. Thus theway in is provided with an inte-gral protective ‘porch’. (Thiswas intended to have been partof a covered walkway, follow-ing the line of the innermostpathway on the site plan, creat-ing an inner courtyard gardenfor the college. The walkwayhas not been built.) Through theentrance there is a vestibule withthe door to the meeting roomopposite. One rises into thechapel up either of the two stair-ways which run just inside thecurved walls. In this way oneemerges into the chapel, not onits main axis, but at either side.

Parallel walls

Notwithstanding the circularplan and the related arcs of theside walls, the chapel has someof the characteristics of the ar-chitecture of parallel walls.

A comparison has alreadybeen made with the StudentChapel by Siren and Siren atOtaniemi. In both it is the sidewalls that identify and protect theplace of the chapel; in both, theseact like blinkers blocking the lat-eral directions and framing a par-ticular view; in both, one’spassage through and into thechapel transforms one’s view ofthe outside world. But whereasin the Otaniemi chapel (where thechapel is not lifted on a platform)the drift of movement runs lon-gitudinally along one of the walls,here the dynamic is an upwardspiral—or rather a pair of spiralsrunningin counter directions, upeach of the staircases onto theraised platform.

The Schminke House was de-signed by Hans Scharoun, andbuilt for the German industri-alist Fritz Schminke in 1933.Schminke owned a noodle fac-tory in Löbau, close to the bor-der with Czechoslovakia. Thehouse was built on land to thenorth of his factory.

Conditions

The site available for the housewas generous in size. The adja-cent factory lay to the south, andthe best views were to the northand northeast. (This of courseset up a conflict between sunand views.) The land had aslope, though not a dramaticone, from the southwest downto the northeast.

Scharoun was designing ata time when the new architecturepromoted by Le Corbu-sier andothers in the aftermath of theFirst World War was an excitingprospect. In 1923 Le Corbusierhad published Vers Une Archi-tecture, in which he celebrated(amongst other things) thebeauty and adventure associatedwith ocean-going liners.

Scharoun had been a con-tributor to the Weissenhofhousing exhibition in Stuttgartin 1927, alongside LeCorbusier, Mies van der Rohe,Walter Gropius, and others.

The use of large areas ofglass and of steel as a structuralmaterial were well-established,and some architects—Le Corb-usier in particular—had beenexperimenting with the free-planning that framed structuresmade possible (for example in

the ‘Dom-Ino’ idea of 1914 andin the Villa Savoye of 1929),and the reduced division be-tween inside and outside whichlarge areas of glass allowed.The development of centralheating had also made planningless centred on the hearth; andelectric lighting had been avail-able for some years.

Scharoun had an adventur-ous and wealthy client whoseemingly wanted a housewhich manifested his forward-looking, ‘modern’ mentality.Mr Schminke would have hadone or two resident servants.

Identification of place

Scharoun’s task was to identifyplaces for all the mixed activi-ties of dwelling: eating, sleep-ing, sitting being sociable,bathing, cooking, playing,growing plants, and so on.

Basic elements

The basic elements which Scha-roun employed were, primarily:the platform, the roof, the wall,the glass wall, and the column.Most important of these are thetwo horizontal platforms andthe roof, between which all theinternal spaces of the house arecontained, and which also formthe terraces at the eastern end.

CASE STUDY TWO—THE SCHMINKE HOUSE

Reference

Peter Blundell Jones—HansScharoun, 1995, pp.74–81.


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Other basic elements usedinclude: the path, only clearlydefined when in the form ofstaircases and in the landing onthe upper floor; the pit, whichidentifies the area of the con-servatory; and the canopywhich identifies the place of themain entrance. There is a hearthwhich is a focus, though not aparticularly imposing one, inthe living area. Also, the chim-ney stack to the central heatingboiler, at the western end of thehouse, acts as something of amarker, though possiblyScharoun wanted to play thisvertical element down, againstthe prevailing horizontality ofthe platforms and roof.

Although these basic ele-ments combine to form thehouse in its setting, Scharounseems to have tried, for the mostpart, to avoid the traditionalcombined elements of enclosureand cell. These are found onlywhere unavoidable: in themaid’s bedroom, the sanitaryprovisions, and in the children’sbedrooms. Elsewhere, in themain living spaces, and in themaster bedroom at the easternend of the house, the cell is notused; such enclosure being ne-gated by the use of glass walls.

Modifying elements

The most important modifyingelement in the Schminke Houseis light. It has been carefullyplanned with sunlight andviews uppermost in the mind ofthe designer. Also, the provisionof electric light has been verycarefully thought about, andused precisely to identify differ-ent places in the house.

The views and the sunlightexert opposing forces on thehouse. To the south of the site,in the direction from which thesun shines, is the less attractiveprospect—the factory. The bet-ter views are to the north andnortheast. Schar-oun tackledthis dilemma by allowing thesun’s light into the buildingthrough the south -facing walls,part of which is formed into aconservatory, but also orienting

The Schminke House

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the living spaces towards theviews, through glass walls on thenorthern face of the house. Onboth of the main living levels ofthe house he projected decks outto the north (the pointed deckon the upper level is particularlydistinctive), seemingly designedto catch the summer evening sunfrom the west.

The lighting plan showsthe care with which Scharounused different kinds of electriclight to help identify differentplaces within the house. He de-

signed light fittings especially toachieve a variety of effects; someof them he actually calledPlatzleuchte—place-lights.(Two photographs, reproducedin the book on Scharoun by Pe-ter Blundell Jones, show thegreat difference in the characterof the living spaces in sunlightand at night, and the dramaticeffect of the different kinds ofelectric light used by Scharoun.)

Elements doing more than onething

The house contains the livingplaces, but it also acts to divide

the site. Its angle creates an en-trance area off the access road;and its mass separates the fac-tory from the garden.

Inside, the main internalstair and the hearth in the liv-ing space are two distinctive ex-amples of elements used byScharoun to do more than onething at once.

The stair between the en-trance level and the upper levelof the house is situated just op-

posite the main entrance. It hasa slight change of direction, curv-ing on the bottom three steps.The primary purpose of the stairis obviously to make a pathway,a link for moving between thetwo levels. It is also used as themain part of the physical sepa-ration between the service end ofthe house (1) and the living partsof the house (2). The stair alsodoes a third, more subtle, thing:its precise position and its angleon plan work to ‘nudge’ peopleentering the house to the right—i.e. towards the living places.

The hearth in the livingspace performs its timeless pur-pose as a focus, but it also acts


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as a divider between the pianoplace (2) and the living area (1).


Scharoun used the views to thenorth and northeast to help in theorganisation of his plan. Butprobably the most effective thinghe used that was already therewas the slope of the land. Theeffect of this is most apparent at

the important east end, whichaccommodates the principal liv-ing spaces. The slope allowedentrance into the house not at thelowest level (the traditionalground floor), but at the inter-mediate level, rather like board-ing a boat. It also meant that,although one enters at groundlevel, without rising up steps ora ramp one finds oneself, onceone has reached the eastern endof the house, a storey aboveground. This effect is further ex-aggerated on the upper level—on the ‘prow’ outside the masterbedroom, where one may surveythe rolling land from a command-ing height. The most frequentlyencountered photographs of thishouse show it like a small mod-ern pleasure boat at its moorings.


The house contains, but doesnot seem to celebrate in tradi-tional fashion, the usual primi-tive place types one finds in anydwelling.

There is a hearth in the liv-ing area (which plays the vari-ous roles mentioned above) butit does not seem to be the raisond’etre of the living spaces; thereare other, more interesting ar-chitectural things going on.

Architecture as making frames

Like any house, the SchminkeHouse frames the lives of its in-habitants. It does this in par-ticular ways.

It emphasizes the horizon-tality of those lives, with its di-vision into three pronouncedhorizontal levels which relate tothe landscape around.

It doesn’t enclose thoselives in a protective carapace;its platforms and roof protectthem from the sky, but thetransparent sides make themopen to the horizon.

And its allusion to shipsand sailing seems to suggest thatthe house is a vessel rather thana cell; accommodating adven-ture and change through timeand space, rather than securityin enclosure and stasis.


Three particular characteristicsof the Schminke House belongto the ‘temple’: its separation ofthe living spaces from theground level at the eastern endof the house; its use of highlyfinished materials; and its ap-parent arrogance in the face ofclimatic forces (Scharoun wasno doubt depending on the cen-tral heating to make up for theheat lost through the large ar-eas of glass, and on modernmaterials to prevent the flatroof from leaking).

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Otherwise the house exhi-bits some ‘cottage’ characterist-ics: its responsiveness to site—sun and ground; and its thor-ough relation of planning topurposes.

Although in this house thereis an underlying armature oforthogonal geometry (a ‘temple’characteristic) it is Scharoun’s re-sponsive attitude—to sun, to site,to views, to function—that twiststhis geometry into an irregularplan form. Though this results ina sculpturally interesting form,particularly at the picturesque

east end of the house, Scharounwas not motivated solely by adesire to make form or paint pic-tures with his architecture.

Thus Scharoun’s plans ex-hibit subtle conflicts betweendifferent kinds of geometry.

Geometry

First, there appear to be no in-stances where Scharoun has al-lowed the shapes of his spacesto be determined by ideal geo-metric figures, no circles, nosquares, no rectangles with par-ticular harmonic proportions.

Dismissing ideal geometryas a way of making decisionsabout the positions of things, hisconflicts seem to have been be-tween the geometries of beingand of making. To these wereadded his perception that thesite had within it two differentgrains.

One of the most obviouscharacteristics of the house isthat it is not a simple, orthogon-al form. The geometry of mak-ing is not given the highestpriority, but is allowed to be dis-torted by other pressures.

These other pressures be-gin with the circles of presence,distorted as they are in most in-stances into rectangles of pres-ence, and with the socialgeometries which constitute thevarious places in the house: thedining place, the place aroundthe hearth, the place around thetable in the solarium (at the ex-treme east end of the main liv-ing floor).

Next there are the lines ofsight, within the building, andalso from the inside to the out-side. Scharoun seems to haveseen the latter—the views—as

In the lower of these twodrawings you can see (readingfrom left to right) the distortedcircles of presence of thedining table, the hearth, thepiano, and the table in thesolarium. It also shows thelines of passage which threadbetween and through them.The upper drawing shows theprincipal lines of sight in theplan. Notice that they followthree principal directions: oneset up by the main entrance;another by the living area; anda third, at an angle, by themain stair and the solarium.


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being at an angle to the lie of theland which set the datum for thegeneral grain of the house.

This overlaying of the dif-ferent geometries, with a refusalto submit to the geometry ofmaking, produced a distinctiveresponse to the six-directions-plus-centre. The plans of thehouse have two overlappinggrains. The ‘up’ and the ‘down’direction are, at most positions,contained by the horizontalplatforms and the roof. But withthe four horizontal directions,the situation is more complex.

Taking the entrance as thestarting point one is aware ofthe ‘forward’ and of the ‘rear-ward’; one is also, as one en-ters, very much aware of the‘right’, but the ‘left’ is dimin-ished, being replaced by thedeflection of the stair, (in theway already mentioned,) to re-inforce the ‘right’ direction.

At the other end of thehouse, at the solarium, some-thing different happens with thefour horizontal directions. Hereit is the ‘forward’ (roughly tothe north) which is deflected, tofocus the space more on the bet-ter views.

The house has no one cen-tre, but a number: the hearth,the dining table, the table in thesolarium,…. It seems that forScharoun the most importantcentre was the mobile person.

Space and structure

The structure of the house is askeleton of steel frame. Its col-umns are not laid out on a regu-lar grid, but respond to thecomplex attitude to the six-di-rections mentioned above.

At the east end of the housethe vertical structure—the col-umns—are reduced to a mini-mum to increase the opennessof the spaces. Even so they stillcontribute to the identificationof places.

There is a column in the so-larium which seems to help toidentify its extreme corner; thereis another on the deck outsidewhich supports the prow above,and which also makes a ‘door-way’ between the deck at the topof the steps down to the gardenand the narrower deck outsidethe solarium; and there is a thirdcolumn in the conservatory,

In this drawing you can seethe complementary grains of

the house. They distort thesimple geometry of making totake account of the alternative

grains suggested by the lie ofthe land, the views, and the

direction of the sun.

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about which Scharoun seemsperhaps to have been lesshappy—it looks as if he tried tocamouflage its structural identityby painting it with small squaresof different colours, making itinto an elemental sculpture (asdistinct from a place identifier)amongst the cacti.

At the other end of theplan the spaces are more defi-nitely enclosed by walls andwindows. The boiler chimneystack, at the extreme west endof the house is built of brick—a weighty contrast to the appar-ent levitation of the decks at theother end of the house.

The static places in the plantend to be at the extremities: thedining area; the solarium; theconservatory; the bedroom andthe prow of the deck on the up-per floor. The heart of the house

is probably the living area, withits static focus the hearth. In somecircumstances however, thisheart also works as a dynamicspace, a route from the hallway,which is the datum place of thehouse, to the solarium. Other,clearer dynamic spaces are thestairs, the deck outside the pianoplace, and the corridor landingon the upper floor.

The canopy over the mainentrance begins a process oftransition from outside to insidethe building. This process offairly abrupt enclosure is re-versed by the progressive open-ness of the rest of the house.

Scharoun was adept atmaking zones between the in-side and outside. There are thevarious decks on both levels,which create an intermediatezone which is neither inside norwholly outside. There is the con-servatory too, an inside spacewhich also, unlike the majorityof spaces in the house, has con-tact with the sky. And there isthe solarium itself, which is aspace more open than the livingroom but less so than thedecks—a zone between the two.

The dining area, not quitea zone between, is defined bythe overhang of the landingabove. It is at one end of whatlooks to be the remnants of aparallel wall space, which setsup an axis into the countrysidethrough the broad window overthe dining table.

On the upper floor the lay-out is more cellular, until onecomes to the master bedroomwhich insinuates itself amongsta composition of planar walls,mostly arranged orthogonally,

but with one wall slightly skewedto broaden the view to the north-east. This one piece of wall obeys


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neither of the two grains set upon the main living floor beneath;its ‘freedom’ is due to the inde-pendence of the two floors al-lowed by the ‘Dom-Ino’ idea.

The house is clearly strati-fied. There is an undercroftdedicated to the services of thehouse—the boiler room etc.The entrance floor, in the mid-dle, is at one end a piano no-bile. The upper living floor,further from the ground, is thesleeping floor, its contact withthe sky manifest in the deckprow outside the master bed-room which, in the summer,basks in evening sun.

Postscript

The Schminke House was thelast house that Scharoun de-signed before the Nazis in Ger-many imposed restrictions onthe styles in which architectscould work. Unlike some of hisModern contemporariesScharoun chose not to leaveGermany. He designed anumber of houses during theNazi years, each with the out-ward appearance of traditionalcottages. Scharoun expressedhis rebellion against Nazi con-straints covertly, by continuingto explore the potential of thenon-orthogonal organisation ofspace into places. These are theplans of his Baensch House,which dates from 1935, twoyears after the Schminke.

Reference for the BaenschHouse:

Peter Blundell Jones—HansScharoun, 1995, p.13.

Merrist Wood is an English Vic-torian house, designed by Rich-ard Norman Shaw, and built atWorplesdon in Surrey, in themid-1870s.

I shall not look at everyaspect of this house, nor evenat the house as it was built, butat an early version of the floorplan of the house, for a com-parison can be made betweenthis and the floor plan of theSchminke House (Case StudyTwo) which illustrates somecrucial differences betweennineteenth-century and twenti-eth-century ‘Modern’ organisa-tion of space.

Merrist Wood was built inthe Old English style for CharlesPeyto Shrubb, who would havehad a body of servants.

In designing it Shaw thou-ght primarily in terms of load-bearing walls; as distinct fromthe ‘Dom-Ino’ idea which wasavailable to Scharoun fifty years

later. Shaw did not have centralheating available as an option.

The plan of the house asbuilt clearly shows the conse-quences of these conditions. Therooms are mostly cellular. Thehall, which is at an angle to therest of the plan, is a double-height space, with a tall bay win-dow looking down a slope intothe garden and across the land-scape. All internal space iscompartmentalised into thesecells, and apart from at theporch to the main entrance thereis, on this ground floor, very lit-tle exploration of the zone be-tween inside and outside.

A small courtyard allowslight into the centre of whatwould otherwise be a deep anddark plan.

Windows are generallymullioned holes-in-walls. Thenearest Shaw comes to creatinga glass wall is the large bay win-dow in the hall.

CASE STUDY THREE—MERRIST WOODReference for Merrist Wood:

Andrew Saint—RichardNorman Shaw, 1976, pp.112–113.


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The plan of a previous ver-sion of this house is additionallyinteresting because it shows thewhole of the front portion of thehouse set at an angle. It is thisversion that can be comparedwith the plan of Scharo-un’sSchminke House. (This is not tosuggest that there is a direct his-torical connection between thetwo designs; though MerristWood was mentioned in Herm-ann Mutthesius’s book DasEnglische Haus, 1904, which p-ublicised in Germany the virtuesof late nineteenth-century Eng-lish house design, of which Sch-aroun would have been aware.)

In both plans the servants’accommodation is set to theleft, with its own entrance, andseparated from the living spacesby the main stair to the upperfloors and the ablutions. InMerrist Wood the servants’ ac-commodation is larger, occupy-ing at least fifty per cent of theground floor area.

The most notable com-parison between the two planshowever is the juxtaposition oftwo grains set at an angle toeach other. In the Scharoun planthe angle between the two mainsections of the house is about26 degrees; in the Shaw planabout 29 degrees. Rather likethe Schindler plan (The FalkApartments, 1943) discussed inthe chapter on Elements DoingMore Than One Thing, Shawmanages to condense all the dif-ficulties which might arise fromusing two orthogonal grids atan angle to each other, into anodd-shaped servants’ stairwell,the non-rectangular light court-yard, and a small link betweenthe hall and the drawing room.

The orientation of theShaw plan, with the sun and theview in the same direction, isapproximately the opposite ofthat of the Scharoun plan.

Though both used twoorthogonal grains or grids asthe bases of their plans, the dis-tinct difference between theways in which these were usedis that whereas Scharoun over-laid them, Shaw kept them

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separate. Partly, if not mainly,this difference is a consequenceof the greater planning freedomallowed to Scharoun by theframe structure, and of thegreater flexibility in lines ofsight allowed by the glass wall.Shaw, by contrast, working fiftyor so years earlier, was re-stricted to using the cell, win-dow, and load-bearing wall.

The comparison betweenthese two plans illustrates agreat deal about the differencebetween Modern and Victorianspace planning. Both houseshad similar though not identi-cal briefs. Their site conditionswere similar, even though theorientation was opposite. Theplaces that the two architectshad to identify were more orless the same: servant accom-modation; living space; morn-ing space; eating space. Botharchitects were concernedabout light and views.

The differences betweenthe ways in which they plannedtheir houses were influenced bydifferences in the technologiesavailable—frame structure ver-sus load-bearing masonry; cen-tral heating versus hearth; glasswall versus hole-in-wall win-dow—and by a more adventur-ous attitude (on the part ofScharoun) to the use of the vari-ous kinds of geometry.

This is not to suggest thatShaw was always content to ac-cept the constraints of load bear-ing masonry structure on hisorganisation of space. Here is

the ground floor of a house hedesigned for Kate Greenaw-ay,the Victorian children’s author.


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On this floor, and the floorabove, the house is fairly con-ventional in its structural layout.

But on the top floor, wherehe wanted to provide his clientwith a studio lit from the north-east, Shaw allowed his spaceplanning to contradict the struc-tural geometry of the lowerfloors.

Even though diagonally setagainst the orthogonal grain es-tablished on the floors below,this studio remained largely acell, closely bounded by its ownfour walls.

In other houses, however,Shaw explored how the struc-tural authority of the load-bear-ing wall might be breached toallow a more flexible mouldingof space.

On the right is part of theground floor plan of an unbuilthouse designed for F.W.Fison.Linking the main entrance withthe grand hall of the house thereis a structural wall (double-hatched in the drawing) whichalong its length changes its char-acter a number of times. It startsas a barrier between the en-trance passage and the butler’sroom—an interface betweenthe staff quarters and the hall-way; then it crosses the stairhall, adding to the sculpturedquality of that space; after be-coming an orthodox wall withtwo mullioned windows, andthen an arch-way to a rectan-gular bay window, it terminatesas an external buttress.

And at Dawpool (1882,below) Shaw repeatedly al-lowed ‘bubbles’ of space to pen-etrate the structural walls of therooms, breaking their rectan-gles, and inhabiting the zonebetween inside and out.

Reference for Vanna VenturiHouse:

(Venturi)—Venturi ScottBrown & Associates, onhouses and housing (Architec-tural Monographs No. 21),1992, pp.24–29.

Robert Venturi designed thishouse for his mother. It was built

at Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania,in 1962. At about the same time,he was writing a book calledComplexity and Contradictionin Architecture, which was pub-lished in 1966. The design of thehouse is related to the argumentof the book.

Conditions

At the time of both the houseand the book the teaching andpractice of architecture weredominated by Modernism.Venturi, rather than acceptingthe prevailing orthodoxies of

the Modern Movement, ques-tioned them, and rebelled

against them. His argumentsare set out in detail in his book.In general he rejected the questfor simplicity and resolutionassociated with Modernism (ar-guments for which are foundparticularly in the writings andworks of Frank Lloyd Wright,

Mies van der Rohe and of LouisKahn), in favour of complexityand contradiction, which heargued made products of archi-tecture more witty and less bor-ing; more appropriate (poetic)reflections of the complexities

CASE STUDY FOUR—VANNA VENTURI HOUSE

The site of the Vanna VenturiHouse is flat. Around itsboundaries it is enclosed bytrees and fences. It is enteredthrough a neck of land, andthe house is positioned topresent its gable elevation tothe approach.


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and contradictions of life, andmore stimulating, intellectuallyand aesthetically.

Venturi used the design ofhis mother’s house to expressthrough architecture his reac-tion against the orthodoxiesand seriousness of Modernism.In it he consciously avoidedwhat might be considered ‘rightanswers’, and contrived con-flicts in the arrangement offorms and the organisation ofspace.

Basic elements

Even in his choice of basic ele-ments Venturi expressed his re-action against Modernism.

The distinctive palette ofelements used by orthodoxModernist architects included:the flat roof; emphasis (exter-nally) of the horizontal floor; thecolumn (piloti), allowing theopening up of the ground leveland ‘free planning’; and the glasswall, which reduced (visually)the cellular division of space in-ternally and between inside andoutside. Modernist architectsalso tended to play down theformal importance of the hearth, and of its external expressionin the chimney stack. (Scharounused this palette in his design forthe Schminke House, CaseStudy Two.)

In his mother’s houseVenturi directly contravenedevery one of these ‘rules’ ofModernism. The roof ispitched; the horizontality of thefloors is not expressed exter-nally; there are no columns (ex-cept one—an expedient to holdup the roof over the dining area,and which is omitted in some

published plans of the house),and the house is firmly set onthe ground; there is a glass wall(between the dining area and acovered terrace) but in the mainelevations Venturi prefers tomake windows (almost carica-tures of traditional windows) inthe walls; he also gives signifi-cant emphasis internally to thecentral hearth, and externally toits chimney.

Space organisation andgeometry

There are quirks in Venturi’s de-sign which are well-discussedelsewhere in critiques of thishouse: his ‘mannerist’ touches(the broken pediment of thefront elevation for example); his(counter-Modern) use of orna-ment (the appliqué ‘arch’ super-imposed on the clearlystructural lintol over the en-trance); the ‘ingrowing’ bay-windows in the downstairsbedrooms, and verandah off thedining area; the stair going upto nowhere from the upstairsbedroom; and so on. ButVenturi’s attitude of complicat-ing and contradicting orthodoxways of doing things is perhapsmost architectural (in the terms

In this early version of theVanna Venturi House, the

chimney stack is even moreprominent than in the builtversion. In his architecture

Venturi borrowed ideas fromhistorical examples; he tookthe idea of prominent chim-neys from British domestic

architecture (of the Arts andCrafts and Edwardian period,

and from the eighteenth-century work of John

Vanbrugh) and from similarhouses in the United States.

Venturi was also interested inconflicts of scale: in this

version the chimney is ‘toobig’ for the house; in the finalversion (on the previous page)

the chimney appears to beboth ‘too big’ and ‘too small’.

The Vanna Venturi House

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set out in this book) in his spa-tial organisation of the houseand in the ways in which hedeals with various of the sortsof geometry.

The design of the house‘begins’ with two parallel walls,which define the area of groundof the inside of the house.

As discussed in the Par-allel Walls chapter, these tendto establish a longitudinal axiswhich sets up a dominant di-

rection within the plan and alsobegins to order relationshipsbetween ‘inside’ and ‘outside’.But Venturi contradicts the or-thodox architecture of parallelwalls in a number of ways.

First he positions the wallsperpendicular to, rather thanparallel with, the principal axisof the site, which is the axis ofentrance (left).

Then he contradicts the ar-rangement of gables found inancient parallel wall buildings

In positioning the house,Venturi lays the parallel wallsacross the main axis of thesite.

(temples), by placing the gablesof his complex roof on the longsides of the rectangular plan. Inancient temples it was the geom-etry of making that influencedthe three-dimensional geometryof the roof, resulting in triangu-lar pediments at each end.Venturi’s contradictory arrange-ment, together with his avoid-ance of columns, results in the‘front’ of his mother’s housebeing like a pediment on one ofthe ‘wrong’ sides of the rectan-gular plan, and resting directlyon the ground.

As can be seen in the sec-tions (below), the geometry of


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Venturi’s roof is complex: thereare slopes in three different di-rections; it doesn’t always reachthe walls that ‘should be’ its sup-port. (This happens over theentrance, and at the ‘ingrown’balcony outside the upstairsbedroom, and reinforces thesense that these very two-dimen-sional walls are ‘masks’, screen-ing rather than expressing theinside—another counter to theModernist suggestion that bar-riers between inside and outsideshould be broken down.)

Venturi’s contradiction oforthodoxy informs his plan too.

In his own explanation ofthe house in Complexity andContradiction in Architecture,Venruri describes his plan asderiving from, but a distortionof, ‘Palladian rigidity andsymmetry’.

As Rudolf Wittkower hasshown in Architectural Princi-ples in the Age of Humanism,Palladio’s villa plans, whethersquare or rectangular, were gen-erally arranged according to adivision into three in both di-rections; they were given adominant central space, sur-rounded by subsidiary rooms.(Bottom left, for example, isPalladio’s Villa Foscari.)

If Venturi’s design had fol-lowed these Palladian arrange-ments, it might have turned outsomething like this:

with a large room in the mid-dle, and secondary rooms ar-ranged symmetrically at thesides. There might have been a

If he had adhered to Palladianprinciples, the plan of Venturi’shouse might have been like this.

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portico protruding at the front.Windows would, as far as pos-sible, have been arranged sym-metrically within rooms. Thestaircase and fireplace mighthave occupied equivalent posi-tions in the two halves of theplan.

Venturi broke this Palladi-an discipline in various ways,establishing and then destroy-ing symmetry; creating thendenying axes.

The contradictory ‘move’that he appears to make first(above), is to bring the stair andthe fireplace together, and toposition them centrally so thatthey block the axis of entrance.In the Palladian plan that axiswould be open, as a line of pas-sage leading into the main cen-tral space (and maybe also as aline of sight out into the sur-roundings). Venturi, having set

up the axis, denies it with solid.This ‘move’ does other th-

ings too. It creates a porch, butone that recedes into the build-ing rather than projecting outfrom it.

It also gives Venturi an-other opportunity for complex-ity by setting up a situation inwhich entrance, stair and fireall vie to occupy the same partof the plan. The orthodox formof each is changed in some wayin response to this (contrived)‘competition’ for space: the fire-place is moved off axis to al-low room for the stair; the stairis narrowed half-way up con-ceding to the chimney stack;and Venturi makes the entrancedoorway, which itself has beenusurped from its axial position,‘push’ the adjacent wall to anangle that nudges into the stair.

The angle of this wall seemsintended to acknowledge the lineof passage into the house, nowmade diagonal, mitigatingslightly the blocking effect of thestair and fireplace. The line ofpassage is further managed bythe quadrant curve of the closetwall, turning an axial Palladianline of entry, into a chicane.

Elsewhere in the plan (left)partition walls are positionedboth to accord with and to dis-tort Palladian orthogonality.The wall between the livingroom and the bedroom (to theleft on the plan) is at a right an-gle to the parallel walls, whereasthe walls which run across theplan, which help delineate thesmall bedroom, the bathroom,entrance, and kitchen, are af-flicted by a spatial warp, seem-ingly caused by the position ofthe stair and fireplace.

The fireplace and the staircompete for space with theentrance…

…and partition walls distortPalladian geometry to accom-modate different-sized spaces.


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Finally, the positioningand nature of the window anddoor openings presents Venturiwith more opportunities forarchitectural contradiction.

A Modernist use of the par-allel wall strategy would prob-ably make a clear differentiationbetween the characters of the‘ends’ and the ‘sides’. In CraigEllwood’s design for example,

(below) the end of each apart-ment is fully glazed, and thereare no openings in the side walls.In the Maisons Jaoul (bottom)by Le Corbusier openings in theside walls are clearly such, whilethe end walls are screens.

Venturi refuses such clar-ity, putting a mix of types ofopening in each elevation of thehouse.

Venturi breaks a classical ruleof architecture by positioning

a window so that its edge,rather than its centre-line,aligns with the axis of the

house. Another window hasthe end of a partition wall

intruding into it.

In these apartments designedby Craig Ellwood (above),

and in the Maisons Jaoul byLe Corbusier (one of which is

shown below), the nature ofthe interface between inside

and outside is very different atthe ends of their parallel-wall

plans from the sides. The endstend to be glass walls, and the

sides walls with windows inthem. Venturi, in contrast,

mixes the two types of wallon all four faces of his moth-

er’s house.

The Woodland Chapel stands inthe extensive grounds of theWoodland Crematorium, onthe outskirts of Stockholm.Designed by Erik GunnarAsplund, just after the FirstWorld War, it was intended forthe funerals of children.

At first sight the chapel ap-pears simple and without pre-tensions to being anything morethan a rudimentary hut in thewoods. But Asplund managedto imbue this unassuming, el-emental building with a re-markable range of apt poeticideas. The underlying subject ofthe ‘poem’ is, of course, death.

Conditions

Asplund designed the Wood-land Chapel at a time beforeModernism had become thedominant movement in Swed-ish architecture. The prevail-ing interest was in the power

of traditional forms and meth-ods of building—a movementwhich has been called ‘Na-tional Romanticism’.

The chapel is reachedthrough the grounds of theWoodland Crematorium. Arou-und the main crematorium—a

later building also by Asplund—the landscape is open, undulat-ing, and with a ‘big’ sky. Bycontrast, the Woodland Chapelis hidden away, in a dark woodof pine trees.

Identification of placeAsplund’s task was to identifya place for funeral services;where family and friends couldcome together to mourn.

Basic elementsBasic elements are used in clearand straightforward ways.There are defined areas ofground, columns, walls, and a

Reference for The WoodlandChapel:

Caroline Constant—TheWoodland Cemetery: towardsa spiritual landscape, 1994.

CASE STUDY FIVE—THE WOODLAND CHAPEL


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roof. There is a pathway lead-ing to the building, a platformon which the coffin is placed,and another used as the lectern.The floor, walls and roof forma simple cell, in which there is adoorway on the line of the ap-proach, and a small domesticwindow in one corner. Thefloor around the perimeter ofthe inside of the chapel is raisedby two steps, suggesting thatthe main place is a shallow pit.

Modifying elements

The chapel stands in the dappledlight of the wood. There is thefaint smell of pine. Walking to-wards the building, one’s foot-steps are muffled by the carpetof pine needles, except on thestone paving which defines thearea of the chapel floor, insideand under the porch.

Inside, the main place is litby a roof-light at the highest partof its domed ceiling. Sounds arereflected by the hard surfaces.

Elements doing more thanone thing

As one approaches, the roof ap-pears as a pyramid, and acts asa marker. The porch columnssupport the roof, but also chan-nel the route into the building.The returns of the walls along-side the entrance help to createsmall subsidiary places off themain chapel space, but they alsomake the cell walls appear muchthicker than they are, increasingits cave-like quality. This effectis reinforced by the deep revealsof the small window, and theniche in which the lectern stands.The internal columns appear tosupport the dome above, but

also define the main place.


Asplund uses the woods to givethe chapel a particular setting.The pathway to the building,which begins at a gateway somedistance from it, strikes astraight line through the irregu-larly spaced trees. The porchcolumns are themselves liketrees, though regularly posi-tioned, bringing something ofthe character of the surround-ing woods in under the roof.


The niche in which the lecternstands is not a hearth, but like

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195

one. (Externally there is a chim-ney stack in the same position,but this leads from the base-ment.) The lectern itself is like analtar. The catafalque, on whichthe coffin rests, is both a bed andan altar. It is also the focus of theperformance place—like a clear-ing in the woods—defined by theshallow pit, surrounding col-umns and domed ceiling.

Architecture as makingframes

The building is a temporaryframe for the body of a deadchild, and for the ceremony as-sociated with its funeral.

In its outer form the chapelis like a house, framed by thesurrounding woods. The porchframes the gathering mourners,who mingle with the columns(which have a presence like an-cestors come to the funeral).

Under the roof there is alsothe cell which separates the spe-cial place of the ceremony fromeverywhere else, and inside thatthere is the pit and the ring ofcolumns like a primitive henge.

This circle, lit from the sky above,frames the catafalque, whichframes the coffin, which is itselfa frame for the body. The lecternis framed in its own niche. Thehenge, catafalque, lectern, coffin,and the mourners are all framed,pictorially, by the entrance door-way, but architecturally by thewomb-like interior.


The chapel is a ‘temple’ in ‘cot-tage’ clothing; the unquestion-able authority of death is cloakedin the appearance of domesticsimplicity. The building, thoughnot raised on a platform, is for-mal and symmetrical. It has nopragmatic irregularity, though itsmaterials are simple and natural.Its scale is small; it is a buildingfor human beings.

Geometry

Asplund employs many of thevarious kinds of architecturalgeometry.

The circle of columns—again like ancestors standingaround the shallow pit—define,


196

literally, the circle of presence ofthe catafalque and coffin; it iswithin the social geometry of thiscircle that the mourners sit.

The line of passage and theline of sight from the entrancegateway coincide. In experienceand symbolically the building—the pyramid—terminates thisaxis. It establishes two of thesix directions inherent in thechapel—stretching from thesymbolic hearth to the westernhorizon and the setting sun.

The circle of eight columnsset up the cross axis—the othertwo horizontal directions block-ed by the side walls—and thusestablish a centre. Below is thebasement; and above is lightcoming through the ‘sky’ of thedome, (the ideal geometry ofwhich disrupts the geometry ofmaking of the roof). Through thecentre is the vertical axis—theaxis mundi (axis of the earth).

The catafalque is posi-tioned, not at the centre of thecircle on the axis mundi, butbetween the symbolic hearth andthat vertical axis—suspended forthe duration of the ceremonybetween home and eternity.

Alexander, Christopher and others—A Pattern Language:Towns, Buildings, Construction, Oxford UP, New York,1977.

Alexander, Christopher—The Timeless Way of Building,Oxford UP, New York, 1979.

Atkinson, Robert and Bagenal, Hope—Theory and Elements ofArchitecture, Ernest Benn, London, 1926.

Bachelard, Gaston, translated by Maria Jolas—The Poetics ofSpace (1958), Beacon Press, Boston, 1964.

Eliade, Mircea, translated by Sheed—Patterns in ComparativeReligion, Sheed and Ward, London, 1958.

Frankl, Paul, translated by O’Gorman—Principles of Architec-tural History (1914), MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1968.

Heidegger, Martin, translated by Hofstader—‘Building Dwell-ing Thinking’ and ‘…poetically man dwells…’, in PoetryLanguage and Thought (1971), Harper and Row, Londonand New York, 1975.

Hertzberger, Herman—Lessons for Students in Architecture,Uitgeverij Publishers, Amsterdam, 1991.

Hussey, Christopher—The Picturesque, studies in a point ofview, G.P.Putnam’s Sons, London and New York, 1927.

Lawlor, Anthony—The Temple in the House, G.P.Putnam’sSons, London and New York, 1994.

Select Bibliography

The following may seem at firstsight a disparate set of books,but the principles by whichthey have been selected areconsistent. All contain discus-sion of architecture either as(what I have termed) identifi-cation of place, or put forwardways of analysing architectureaccording to conceptualthemes, or discuss related theo-retical issues. As such they deal

with architecture in ways towhich architects, concernedwith design generation, can re-late. No particular one canhowever be said to be the au-thority for the present book.

Some of the authors citedhave produced other relatedworks; only those most imme-diately pertinent to the argu-ments in this book are includedhere.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES

A n a l y s i n g A r c h i t e c t u r e

198

Le Corbusier, translated by de Francia and Bostock—TheModular, a harmonious measure to the human scaleuniversally applicable to architecture and mechanics,Faber and Faber, London, 1961.

Lethaby, William Richard—Architecture: an introduction tothe history and theory of the art of building, Williams andNorgate, London, 1911.

Lynch, Kevin—The Image of the City, MIT Press, Cambridge,Mass., 1960.

Martienssen, R.D.—The Idea of Space in Greek Architecture,Witwatersrand UP, Johannesburg, 1968.

Moore, Charles and others—The Place of Houses, HoltRinehart and Winston, New York, 1974.

Norberg-Schulz, Christian—Existence, Space and Architecture,Studio Vista, London, 1971.

Parker, Barry and Unwin, Raymond—The Art of Building aHome, Longman, London, New York and Bombay, 1901.

Rapoport, Amos—House Form and Culture, Prentice Hall,New Jersey, 1969.

Rasmussen, Steen Eiler—Experiencing Architecture, MITPress, Cambridge, Mass., 1959.

Relph, Edward—Place and Placelessness, Pion, London, 1976.

Rowe, Colin—‘The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa’ (1947), inThe Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and other essays, MITPress, Cambridge, Mass., 1976.

Ruskin, John—The Poetry of Architecture, George Allen,London, 1893.

Schmarsow, August, translated by Mallgrave and Ikonomou—‘The Essence of Architectural Creation’ (1893), inMallgrave and Ikonomou (editors)—Empathy, Form, andSpace, The Getty Center for the History of Art and theHumanities, Santa Monica, Calif, 1994.

Scott, Geoffrey—The Architecture of Humanism, Constable,London, 1924.

Scully, Vincent—The Earth, the Temple, and the Gods; GreekSacred Architecture, Yale UP, New Haven and London, 1962.

Semper, Gottfried, translated by Mallgrave and Hermann—TheFour Elements of Architecture (1851), MIT Press, Cam-bridge, Mass., 1989.

Spengler, Oswald, translated by Atkinson—The Decline of theWest (1918), Allen and Unwin, London, 1934.

S e l e c t B i b l i o g r a p h y A n d R e f e r e n c e s

199

Sucher, David—City Comforts, City Comforts Press, Seattle,1995.

van der Laan, Dom H., translated by Padovan—ArchitectonicSpace: fifteen lessons on the disposition of the humanhabitat, E.J.Brill, Leiden, 1983.

van Eyck, Aldo—‘Labyrinthian Clarity’, in Donat (editor)—World Architecture 3, Studio Vista, London, 1966.

van Eyck, Aldo—‘Place and Occasion’ (1962), in Hertzbergerand others—Aldo van Eyck, Stichting Wonen, Amster-dam, 1982.

Venturi, Robert—Complexity and Contradiction in Architec-ture, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1966.

Vitruvius, translated by Hickey Morgan—The Ten Books onArchitecture (first century BC), Dover, New York, 1960.

Wittkower, Rudolf—Architectural Principles in the Age ofHumanism, Tiranti, London, 1952.

Zevi, Bruno, translated by Gendel—Architecture as Space: howto look at architecture, Horizon, New York, 1957.

Zevi, Bruno—‘History as a Method of Teaching Architecture’,in Whiffen (editor)—The History, Theory and Criticism ofArchitecture, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1965.

Zevi, Bruno—The Modern Language of Architecture, Univer-sity of Washington Press, Seattle and London, 1978.

Ahlin, Janne—Sigurd Lewerentz, architect 1885–1975, MITPress, Cambridge, Mass., 1987.

Blaser, Werner—The Rock is My Home, WEMA, Zurich,1976.

Blundell Jones, Peter—‘Dreams in Light’, in The ArchitecturalReview, April 1992, p.26.

Blundell Jones, Peter—‘Holy Vessel’, in The Architects’ Jour-nal, 1 July 1992, p.25.

References in the text

The following is a list of thereferences given in the main textof this book, and in the mar-gins. Most of these are refer-ences to publications where

more information can be foundon the particular examplesused. More general texts citedare included in the Select Bibli-ography.


200

Blundell Jones, Peter—Hans Scharoun, Phaidon, London,1995.

Bosley, Edward—First Church of Christ, Scientist, Berkeley,Phaidon, London, 1994.

Brawne, Michael—Jørgen Bo, Vilhelm Wohlert, LouisianaMuseum, Humlebaek, Wasmuth, Tubingen, 1993.

Christ-Janer, Albert and Mix Foley, Mary—Modern ChurchArchitecture, McGraw Hill, New York, 1962.

Collins, Peter—Concrete, the vision of a new architecture,Faber and Faber, London, 1959.

Collymore, Peter—The Architecture of Ralph Erskine,Architext, London, 1985.

Constant, Caroline—The Woodland Cemetery: towards aspiritual landscape, Byggforlaget, Stockholm, 1994.

Crook, John Mordaunt—William Burges and the High Victo-rian Dream, John Murray, London, 1981.

(Dewes and Puente)—‘Maison à Santiago Tepetlapa’, inL’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, June 1991, p.86.

Drange, Aanensen and Brænne—Gamle Trehus, Universitets-forlaget, Oslo, 1980.

Edwards, I.E.S.—The Pyramids of Egypt, Penguin, London, 1971.

(Foster, Norman)—‘Foster Associates, BBC Radio Centre’, inArchitectural Design 8, 1986, pp.20–27.

(Gehry, Frank)—‘The American Center’, in Lotus International84, February 1995, pp.74–85.

Greene, Herb—Mind and Image, Granada, London, 1976.

Hawkes, Dean—The Environmental Tradition, Spon, London,1996.

(Hecker, Zvi)—(Apartments in Tel Aviv), in L’Architectured’Aujourd’hui, June 1991, p.12.

Hewett, Cecil—English Cathedral and Monastic Carpentry,Phillimore, Chichester, 1985.

Johnson, Philip—Mies van der Rohe, Seeker and Warburg,London, 1978.

(Kocher and Frey)—(House on Long Island), in Yorke, F.R.S.—The Modern House, Architectural Press, London, 1948.

(Konstantinidis, Aris)—(Summer House), in Donat, John(editor)—World Architecture 2, Studio Vista, London,1965, p.128.

S e l e c t B i b l i o g r a p h y A n d R e f e r e n c e s

201

Lawrence, A.W.—Greek Architecture, Penguin Books, London,1957.

Le Corbusier, translated by Etchells—Towards a New Architec-ture (1923), John Rodker, London, 1927.

Lethaby, W.R. and others—Ernest Gimson, his life and work,Ernest Benn Ltd, London, 1924.

Lim Jee Yuan—The Malay House, Institut Masyarakat, Malay-sia, 1987.

(MacCormac, Richard)—(Ruskin Library), in Royal Instituteof British Architects Journal, January 1994, pp.24–29.

Macleod, Robert—Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Architect andArtist, Collins, London, 1968.

March, Lionel and Scheine, Judith—R.M.Schindler, AcademyEditions, London, 1993.

(Masieri, Angelo)—(Casa Romanelli), in The ArchitecturalReview, August 1983, p.64.

Murphy, Richard—Carlo Scarpa and the Castelvecchio,Butterworth Architecture, London, 1990.

Muthesius, Stefan—The English Terraced House, Yale UP,New Haven and London, 1982.

Nicolin, Pierluigi—Mario Botta: Buildings and Projects 1961–1982, Architectural Press, London, 1984.

Pevsner, Nikolaus—A History of Building Types, Thames andHudson, London, 1976.

Pevsner, Nikolaus—An Outline of European Architecture,Penguin, London, 1945.

Robertson, D.S.—Greek and Roman Architecture, CambridgeUP, Cambridge, 1971.

Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments inWales—An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments inGlamorgan, Volume IV: Domestic Architecture from theReformation to the Industrial Revolution, Part II: Farm-houses and Cottages, H.M.S.O., London, 1988.

Rudofsky, Bernard—Architecture Without Architects, Acad-emy Editions, London, 1964.

Rudofsky, Bernard—The Prodigious Builders, Seeker andWarburg, London, 1977.

Rykwert, Joseph (Introduction)—Richard Meier Architect1964/84, Rizzoli, New York, 1984.

Saint, Andrew—Richard Norman Shaw, Yale UP, New Havenand London, 1976.


202

Schinkel, Karl Friedrich—Collection of Architectural Designs(1866), Butterworth, Guildford, 1989.

(Schnebli, Dolf)—(Lichtenhan House), in Donat, John (edi-tor)—World Architecture 3, Studio Vista, London, 1966,p.112.

(Scott, Michael)—(Knockanure Church), in Donat, John(editor)—World Architecture 2, Studio Vista, London,1965, p.74.

Semenzato, Camillo—The Rotonda of Andrea Palladio, Penn-sylvania State UP, University Park, Penn.,1968.

Smith, Peter—Houses of the Welsh Countryside, H.M.S.O.,London, 1975.

Summerson, John and others—John Soane (ArchitecturalMonographs), Academy Editions, London, 1983.

Tempel, Egon—Finnish Architecture Today, Otava, Helsinki,1968.

(Venturi, Robert)—Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, onhouses and housing, Academy Editions, London, 1992.

Weaver, Lawrence—Small Country Houses of To-day, CountryLife, London, 1912.

Weston, Richard—Alvar Aalto, Phaidon, London, 1995.

Weston, Richard—Villa Mairea (in the Buildings in DetailSeries), Phaidon, London, 1992.

Yorke, F.R.S.—The Modern House, Architectural Press, Lon-don, 1948.


203

Aalto, Alvar 23, 39, 69, 96, 154,160

Abbey of St Gall 69abdication, of responsibility 91aborigine (grave) 43, (songlines) 44acceptance, attitude of 85, 87, 99,

111accident 49acropolis, Athens 35, 45, 88, 94,

101, 102aedicule 22, 25, 55, 62, 64, 79, 81,

82, 83, 169, 172African village 77Agamemnon 57agora 38airport 53Albert Memorial 79Alberti, Gian Battista 120, 126Alcazar, The 37Alexander, Christopher 47, 174Alhambra, Granada 25altar 20, 22, 29, 53, 54, 66, 67,

68, 69, 70, 78, 82, 112, 157,160, 169, 171, 195

Altes Museum (Schinkel) 30amphitheatre 32, 54, 71, 72, 113,

114, 129, 130Antonello da Messina 76apocalypse 86architectural promenade 35, 147,

174architecture as identification of

place 13, 15, 25, 53, 75, 103,163, 164

architecture as making frames 75,165, 171, 178, 195

architecture as philosophy 85architecture as sculpture 25architecture related to life 53area of ground 19, 22, 54, 71, 194Asplund, Gunnar 154, 165, 172,

193AT&T Building (Johnson and

Burgee) 96Athena Promachos 101, 102atrium 48, 155attic 151

attitude 86, 90, 91, 92, 97, 99,117, 129, 163

Auschwitz 79axis 68, 69, 89, 90, 103, 110, 112,

113, 115, 143, 174, 189, 191,196

axis mundi 172, 196Aye Simon Reading Room (Meier) 29Ayer’s Rock 46 Baensch House (Scharoun) 182baobab tree 45bar 70Barcelona Pavilion (Mies van der

Rohe) 137barrier 20, 21, 22, 54basic elements 19, 23, 25, 27, 55,

163, 166, 169, 175, 188, 193Bawa, Geoffrey 76BBC Radio Centre (Foster) 47beach 47beach camp 14beacon 56Beaumaris Castle 80bed 15, 41, 47, 54, 62, 65, 106,

195Bedouin tent 28behaviour 86Bibliotheque Ste Genevieve

(Labrouste) 154bicycle shed 164Blom, Fredrick 151Bo, Jørgen and Wohlert, Vilhelm 50Botta, Mario 123boudoir 60Breuer, Marcel and Yorke, F.R.S.

146brick 116bridge 22Brockhampton Church (Lethaby)

28Bryggman, Erik 69Burges, William 48Burlington, Lord 122Bute, Marquis of 48 camouflage 29

INDEX


204

campfire 56Campbell, Colen 122, 150Cangrande space (Scarpa) 49canopy 20car park 54Cardiff 48Carnarvon Gorge 43Carpenter Center for the Visual

Arts (Le Corbusier) 105carpet 81Casa Romanelli (Masieri) 135cash-dispenser 53Castell Coch (Burges) 48Castelvecchio (Scarpa) 49, 103castle 44, 48catafalque 83, 195cathedral 35, 67, 78, 87, 132, 164cave 43, 45, 53, 139, 140, 194Ceausescu, Nicolae 79cell 22, 25, 39, 54, 57, 58, 60, 63,

83, 99, 101, 108, 112, 130,133, 157, 169, 183, 185, 194

cella 112cellar 150cemetery chapel at Kemi (Sipari) 143cemetery chapel at Turku

(Bryggman) 69central heating 60, 175, 183centre 67, 89, 108, 109, 112, 121,

122, 139, 196change 85, 87chapel 29, 82, 83, 142, 169, 193chapel of the President’s Palace in

Brasilia (Niemeyer) 160Chapel of the Resurrection

(Lewerentz) 82, 83chapter house 78, 115chessboard 77Chiswick Villa (Burlington) 122choice 44Christ Church, Spitalfields

(Hawksmoor) 69Christ-Janer, Albert and Foley,

Mary Mix 68church 28, 67, 68, 78, 113, 132,

141church at Knockanure (Scott) 142church on Corfu 92church steeple 20

cinema 72circle 55, 56, 57, 66, 72, 113, 114,

115, 116, 123, 135, 169, 173,195

circle of place 100, 101, 160circle of presence 99, 100, 102,

161, 172, 179, 195circle of stones 54circle of touchability 100, 102circle of visibility 100, 102Citrohan House (Le Corbusier) 60city 47clearing 71climate 88, 90, 91, 97cloister 38, 78clown 71coding 29colour 29, 170column 21, 22, 25, 38, 57, 62, 82,

115, 130, 131, 136, 137, 169,175, 180, 194

combined elements 21complex and overlaid geometries

125computer 79, 166conditions of architecture 16, 19,

25, 45, 90, 92, 99, 104, 109,110, 117, 175, 193

condominium 81control, attitude of 91, 99, 111Cordoba, patio houses 30corner 54Correa, Charles 144cottage 85, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94,

96, 97, 99, 163, 172, 178, 195council chamber at Athens 130council chamber at Miletus 130Cranfield Institute Library (Foster)

155cross 82, 161, 172, 196crypt 169cube 173culture 91 Daedalos 71Dallas 44dancing floor 28, 58, 71datum place 163Dawpool (Shaw) 186

dell 56designing mind 85, 87, 90Dewes, Ada and Puente, Sergio 46dilemma for architects 86dining table 70display 45dolmen 53, 140‘Dom-Ino’ (Le Corbusier) 136,

175, 183Dome of the Rock (Jerusalem) 45,

79domination (attitude of) 90door 21, 22, 72, 79, 107, 194dressing table 70dwelling 14, 45, 175dyke 20dynamic places 139, 157 ecclesiasterion at Priene 130Egyptian pyramid 104, 121, 122,

157Einstein Tower (Mendelsohn) 95electric light 27, 176elements doing more than one

thing 37, 170, 177, 184, 194elements of architecture 19Ellwood, Craig 143, 192enclosure 22, 38, 99, 101, 108entrance 58Erectheion, Athens 45, 94Ericson, Harald 27Erskine, Ralph 27, 46, 64excavation 163exclusive design 97 Falk Apartments (Schindler) 40, 184Fallingwater (Wright) 61, 87Farnsworth House (Mies van der

Rohe) 65‘Fifty-by-fifty’ house (Mies van der

Rohe) 149fireplace 14, 15, 20, 53, 55, 56,

57, 58, 59, 79, 100, 114, 124,126, 191

First Church of Christ, Scientist(Maybeck) 83

Fiszer, Stanislaus 155Fitzwilliam College Chapel

(MacCormac) 169


205

‘Five points towards a new archi-tecture’, (Le Corbusier) 151

focus 20, 27, 53, 55, 57, 61, 66,69, 139, 140, 169, 176, 177

Foster, Norman 47, 145, 155frame 48, 49, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79,

80, 82, 83, 116, 134, 147, 165,171, 178, 195

framework for analysis 163, 166,167

French bedroom 64future, the 86, 89 Gabrieli, Andrea 32garden 20, 28Garnier, Charles 161Gaudi, Antonio 29Gehry, Frank 73Generalife (Granada) 25geometry of being 99geometry 99, 105, 110, 113, 114,

115, 125, 126, 163, 179, 188,189, 195

geometry of making 116, 117,118, 119, 120, 179, 189

geometry of structure 133, 135Gimson, Ernest 46, 151, 159glass wall 21, 69, 144, 149, 169,

175, 183Golden Section 107, 120, 124grave 20, 43, 114grave stele 75gravity 19, 21, 86, 110, 117, 149Greek temple 22, 28, 77, 87, 93,

111, 141, 157Greenaway, Kate, house of (Shaw)

185Greene, Herb 118grid 131, 180, 184Gropius, Walter 175ground 19, 20, 86, 87, 89Güell Colony crypt (Gaudi) 29Guggenheim Museum of Art

(Wright) 29 Hadid, Zaha 111Hagia Sophia, Istanbul 132Hajj, The 44Hamlet 85

Häring, Hugo 60Hawksmoor, Nicholas 69heart 61, 122, 124, 157, 158, 160,

161, 174, 181hearth 20, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59,

61, 63, 64, 90, 140, 157, 158,159, 165, 175, 176, 177, 178,179, 188, 194, 196

heat 55Hecker, Zvi 127hedge 20henge 195Hewett, Cecil 119hierarchy 157, 158, 160, 174Hill House (Mackintosh) 65Hirst, Damien 109history 49, 54, 56, 86, 87, 164,

166Hoffman House (Meier) 125Homer 63, 140house at Origlio (Botta) 124house at Carthage (Le Corbusier)

152House of Commons 115house on Long Island (Kocher and

Frey) 136hubris 89humanism 89humidity 30hypostyle hall 131 ideal geometry 99, 119, 120, 173identification of place 14, 19, 25,

27, 169, 175, 193igloo 29, 57industrialised building systems 119infinity 165ingle-nook 60, 114, 159Inmos Research Centre (Rogers) 96Internet 79, 165island 54 Jensen, Knut 50Johnson, Philip 32 (and John

Burgee) 96 Kennedy, John F. 44Kerr, Robert 64Knockanure church 142

Knossos 30, 71Kocher and Frey 136Konstantinidis, Aris 145 La Tourette (Le Corbusier) 28, 32Labrouste, Henri 154, 155labyrinth 79language 15, 16, 23, 53, 166Lasdun, Denys 169layers of access 174Le Corbusier 26, 28, 29, 32, 35,

60, 96, 105, 107, 124, 136,137, 145, 146, 151, 152, 153,175, 192

Le Havre (Perret) 67Leonardo da Vinci 107Lethaby, William Richard 28Lewerentz, Sigurd 82library 153library of Uppsala University 151light 19, 25, 41, 54, 55, 56, 57, 79,

81, 161, 170, 183, 194light ‘scoops’ 26lighthouse 100Lincoln Cathedral 164lines of passage 103, 196lines of sight 102, 103, 104, 160,

196Liverpool Cathedral (Scott) 160Llainfadyn 129Llanddewi Castle Farm 93load-bearing wall 134, 183, 185Louisiana Art Museum (Bo and

Wohlert) 50 MacCormac, Richard 147, 169Mackintosh, Charles Rennie 65, 118Maison à Santiago Tepetlapa

(Dewes and Puente) 46Maison La Roche (Le Corbusier)

146Maisons Jaoul (Le Corbusier) 192make-believe world 72Malay houses 134mantelpiece 70marker 20, 23, 37, 54, 67, 112,

142, 194marketplace 54, 80, 165Martin, Leslie 38


206

Masieri, Angelo 136material 19, 86, 87, 90Matthew, Robert 38Maybeck, Bernard 83measure 105, 106, 107Mecca 44megaron 41, 57, 63, 158Meier, Richard 29, 125, 126, 127memory 43, 44Mendelsohn, Erich 95Mereworth Castle (Campbell) 122,

150Merrist Wood 183Mies van der Rohe 65, 95, 136,

137, 149, 175, 187Millowners’ Association Building

(Le Corbusier) 152Minos 71moat 20, 80Modernism 188, 193modifying elements of architecture

25, 97, 166, 170, 176, 194Modulor, The (Le Corbusier) 107Mohrmann house (Scharoun) 135Moore, Charles 64, 81, 123mortuary temple 66mosque 79Mount Dikti 43mountain cottage (Ruskin) 85Muezzin 79Mutthesius, Hermann 184Muuratsalo summer house (Aalto)

160Mycenae 57 Nash, John 48National Archive in Paris (Fiszer) 155National Romanticism 193Nationalgalerie (Berlin; Mies van

der Rohe) 95nature 86nave 67Nazis 91Nefertiti, bust of 78Niemeyer, Oscar 160non-place 39Norwegian timber houses 58, 117Notre Dame at Le Raincy (Perret)

133

Notre-Dame du Haut (LeCorbusier) 26

operating table 69, 70organic 41orkestra 71, 72outdoor room 61Ozenfant, Amedee 125 Palladio, Andrea 122, 126, 131,

172, 190panopticon 87Pantheon (Rome) 113parallel walls 55, 139, 140, 142,

143, 144, 147, 163, 174, 189Paris Opéra (Garnier) 161Parker, Barry and Raymond Unwin

60, 114Parthenon 35, 45, 88, 102past, the 86, 89Pattern Language, A (Alexander)

174path 21, 22, 33, 37, 38, 41, 48, 54,

176patio (Cordoba) 30Pavillon Suisse (Le Corbusier) 145,

146people 87Pepi II, pyramid complex of 121performance place 45, 53, 54, 71,

72, 73, 103, 114, 131, 165, 195Perret, Auguste 67, 133perspective 140, 141Pevsner, Nikolaus 164Philharmonie (Scharoun) 72, 73piano 70piano nobile 150, 153, 182picture 75pit 20, 54, 176, 194placeless 164platform 19, 21, 22, 38, 47, 53,

55, 62, 64, 72, 87, 94, 113,136, 149, 160, 169, 175, 194

Platzleuchte 177poetry in architecture 85, 89, 91,

193political conditions 17, 166porch 63, 78, 79, 82, 145, 158,

174, 191, 194

porte corchère 159powers of architecture 85Powis Castle 62Prairie House (Greene) 118Priene 66primitive place types 53, 166, 171,

178, 194prison 87private 159propaganda 91propylon 45, 140, 157, 158proscenium arch 54, 72, 161public 159pulpit 165pyramid 43, 66, 104, 121, 157,

194, 196pyramid of Chephren 66pyramid of Meidum 66 rain 20ramp 21recognition 43recognition and creation 37remember 43Rheims cathedral 133Rhodia, grave stele of 75Rietveld, Gerrit 97Rogers, Richard 96, 145Romanesque basilica 141Ronchamp, chapel (Le Corbusier) 26roof 20, 21, 22, 28, 38, 47, 62,

130, 133, 139, 149, 175, 194rooflight 29route 142, 157, 194Royal Festival Hall (Martin) 38Rudofsky, Bernard 87ruin 48Ruskin, John 85, 86Ruskin Library (MacCormac) 147Russian Dolls 80, 124, 171 S.Maria del Mar, Barcelona 67S.Maria Novella (Alberti) 120Salisbury Cathedral 78, 119Säynätsalo Town Hall (Aalto) 96scale 34, 87, 88, 90, 106, 107, 195Scarpa, Carlo 49, 103Scharoun, Hans 73, 95, 115, 135,

175, 183, 184


207

Schindler, Rudolf 40, 59, 61, 184Schinkel, Karl Friedrich 30, 153Schlemmer, Oskar 107Schliemann, Heinrich 140Schloss Charlottenhof (Schinkel)

153Schminke House (Scharoun) 175,

184, 188Schnebli, Dolf 144school 46Schroeder House (Rietveld) 97Scott, Michael 142Scott, Giles Gilbert 160Scully, Vincent 140sculpture pavilion in Sonsbeek

Park (van Eyck) 147seat 54, 56selective design 97Semper, Gottfried 55sentry box 109serial experience 158service station 53shade 28, 30, 40, 43, 46Shaw, Richard Norman 183shelf 20shop houses of Malaysia 38Simeon the Stylite 44Simonis, Giovanni 151Sipari, Osmo 143Siren, J.S. 115Siren, Kaija and Siren, Hiekki 142,

174sitting steps 71six-directions-plus-centre 108, 109,

110, 111, 112, 113, 121, 139,163, 166, 172, 180

size of people 86sky 20, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 109,

196smell 33, 79, 194Soane, John 152social circle 172social geometry 113, 117, 129,

166, 172, 196songlines 44sound 31, 194space and structure 129, 172, 180Spengler, Oswald 165sphere of light 100

spire 67, 68square 120, 121, 123, 124, 125,

126, 149, 160, 173St Jerome in his Study 76St Mark’s, Venice 32St Peter’s, Rome 67St Paul’s, London 113stage 19, 26, 72, 79, 161stair 21standing stone 66, 100, 101static place 181, 157step 20Stockholm City Library (Asplund)

154Stonehenge 66, 102Stoneywell Cottage (Gimson) 46, 151stratification 149street 39, 41, 54structure 118, 129, 130, 132, 133,

134, 163, 166, 180Student Chapel at Otaniemi (Siren

and Siren) 142, 171, 174Students’ Union at Stockholm

University (Erskine) 46submission, attitude of 90sun 20, 90suspension rod 21symbiosis 90 table 20, 56, 79Teatro Olimpico (Palladio) 131technology 165, 166teepee 57, 119telesterion at Eleusis 131television 72, 76, 81, 165, 166temenos 102temperature 29temple 81, 87, 88, 89, 91, 92, 93, 94,

96, 97, 99, 112, 113, 120, 189temple of Ammon at Karnak 131temple of Aphaia at Aegina 93temple of Athena Polias 66temples and cottages 85, 163, 172,

178, 195tent 63terrace 19, 40texture 33theatre 27, 28, 45, 54Theophrastus 85

thersilion at Megalopolis 131, 137Third Reich 91Thomas, Dylan 79throne 20, 109, 158Ticino, village 41tiers 73time 19, 34, 75, 86, 89, 90timeless way of building 47Tiryns 158tomb 53, 54, 82, 165town 47tradition 86, 87traditional architecture 15transition 39, 157, 159, 160, 161transition, hierarchy, heart 157, 174tree 45, 46, 100, 169Trinity College Library, Cambridge

(Wren) 153Troy, houses 140Tugendhat House (Mies van der

Rohe) 137 Unités d’Habitation (Le Corbusier)

152universal space 165using thing that are there 43, 171,

178, 194Utopia 86 valley 73van Eyck, Aldo 147Vanna Venturi House (Venturi)

187ventilation 30Venturi, Robert 153, 187verandah 63Viipuri Library (Aalto) 154Villa Flora (Aalto) 39Villa Foscari (Palladio) 190Villa Mairea (Aalto) 23Villa Rotonda (Palladio) 122, 124,

172Villa Savoye (Le Corbusier) 35, 96,

137, 153, 174, 175village 41, 47Vitra Fire Station (Hadid) 111Vitruvius 85, 86, 107Vuoksenniska Church at Imatra

(Aalto) 69


208

wall 20, 21, 22, 37, 39, 40, 45, 47,48, 54, 58, 80, 99, 136, 160,169, 175, 186, 190, 194

Ward Willits House (Wright) 59,159

warmth 29, 79, 90water 45weather 86, 90Weissenhof, Stuttgart 175Welsh cottages 58, 63Welsh farmhouses 15, 94window 21, 37, 39, 54, 72, 78, 79,

106, 185windscoops 87

Wittkower, Rudolf 120, 190Wolfe House (Schindler) 40womb 195Woodland Chapel (Asplund) 172,

193Woodland Crematorium (Asplund)

82, 193words 54World Wide Web 76Wren, Christopher 153Wright, Frank Lloyd 29, 59, 61,

87, 159, 187 Zanuso, Marco 150

analysing architecture-s.unwin

Documents

adefinition of architecture

basic elements of architecture

architectural design

architectural education

isbn isbn

british library cataloguing

new york

identification of place