matthew godfrey the position of dwelling...366- housing by john macsai detiled 65 multifamily units,...

Matthew Godfrey The Position of Dwelling

Design Research Seminar : Prof. Barton & Prof. WaldmanFall 2011

Beginning with the level surface of the limestone block, I etched an image of origins, the massive quarry walls. The systematic removal of earth reveals time, layered in the depth of the earth. Key to the image of the quarry, spiring derrick cranes supported by wire lift the mate-rial to the surface, it is a spectacle of density: the heavy and the light. The work in lithograph raised an explora-tion of broader mark making techniques and overlying artistic ideals, between representation, the abstract, and even the autonomous. Traveling to Paris on the Nix Fel-lowship, I drew the ancient spaces in the City of Light, framing views with elements in 2-dimensional compo-sition. These windows to the city place the individual in a unique position of urban engagement. Every dwelling in the urban context has a high level of adjacency, and an opportunity to frame the inhabitant with the world beyond. My researched turned to architecture with a visit and study of Le Corbusier’s Swiss Pavilion at the The Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris. The building is a fascinating iteration in Le Corbusier’s continuous refinement design strategies regarding public and pri-vate space, structure, and light. The over-exposed south

face developed into the brise soleil at the Unite d’ Habi-tation, and the concrete piloti are developed for sup-port and service ducts. The piloti extend far below the surface to meet the limestone surface of the abandoned quarry on the site. Comparing a number of projects before and after Le Corbusier’s machines for living of-fer precedents, alternatives, and in some cases support for some of the strategies. Returning to the Cite Uni-versitaire de Paris, I propose to develop a new approach to dwelling, that incorporates the static and heavy ele-ments of brutalism with light and dynamic systems that support the functions of living at the scale of the human body. My designs are developing on two scales, at the in-dividual apartment, including the designated furniture that can transform a basic space into a multipurpose environment, and the level of the city, where a number of units must function on the urban scale of the street. The furniture at the living space could create many op-portunities to create a density at the scale of the room, and provide insight to the density and operation of the surrounding context.

Le Corbusier sees the house as machine, and at Unite d Habitation each component was imagined sliding into a structural framework.

Le Corbusier diagramed imagined spaces for living over a drawing of the ocean liner cross-section, taking direct inspiration from the machine of the sea : an exemplar of density living. The ”street in the sky” at Unite d Habitation reflects the halls or avenues of the ship. The building is lifted from the ground plane and floats like a vessel above the earth. Even the sculptural protrusions from the roof top terrace, in itself a constructed replacement of the ground, mimic the towering stacks of the steam era. Unite is the result of an iterative process, and characteristics of its form appear in earlier examples of dormatories. Le Corbusiers hous-ing at University of Paris, the location of not one but two attempts at the modular dwelling. The Suiss Pavillion and Brazil house embody a developing form with two distinct aspects. A mass of modular units on a primary orientation are elevated on piloti.

Direction of form : Le Corbusier developing a prototype

1 The Swiss Pavillion : Harsh sunlight on the Units lead to a sunshade retrofit that com-promised the design

2 The next version incorporates the concrete brise soleil to combat the earlier problem of direct sunlight

questioning the ventilation techniques at Unite d Habitation.

pairing active and passive strategies :

balancing energy consumption : excess generatated power is stored or used

SITE CONSIDERATION - accessing value : In the dwelling complex, the primary “site” becomes local relationships between neighboring spaces over the natural condition that would be more critical at the smaller scale of construction. The mega building creates an environment of its own. The primary considerations regarding site for the dwelling is orien-tation with the sun, and overall temperature ranges of the climate. Aside from these two governing factors, the adjacencies and relationships sur-rounding parts of the building

Impact on surrounding parcels vs. condition of the inhabitant

The Site-less construct -eliminating variables - isolating priorities: orientation to the sun

Principles of design for living :

Causal determinism: an idea known in physics as cause-and-effect. It is the concept that events within a given paradigm are bound by causality in such a way that any state (of an object or event) is completely, or at least to some large degree, determined by prior states.

Christopher Alexander’s ideas about space making assumes designed form has a rational and predictable effect on the user. To a varying degree the rules set in “A Pattern Language” are highly prescribed and specific, suggesting that all phenomena of the experience of life can be pinpointed and enhanced or supported through design.

Alexander’s ideas about the living space range from the obvious penefits of light and a vari-ety of spaces, to the sometime more obscure associations with the psycology and culture of living inherent to the individuall and society.

What aspects of form- regarding the arrangement of space and the each component of the dwelling - are universal and cross - cultural. What is inherently vernacular.

A Pattern Language -

-determining material properties : ultra-light concrete is hailed as the bulk material of the future

-daily life and the mundane

URBAN PROCESS APPLIED TO THE BUILDING

are principles of design and human activity in relationship to form scalar, do micro rules govern the macro.

case 1: the street in the skyLe Corbusier positions an avenue of activity many floors above the ground in the Unite d Habitation. To what degree was this move successful? It effects may have to be evaluated by case. Alison and Peter Smithson’s Robin Hood Gardens was thought to be the ex-emplar of modern living at its time. It attempted to immitate Le Corbusier’s street in the sky, which failed the test of time, becoming a zone of the building associated with crime. - It would seem the activity of the urban street cannot be sustained at the scale of the building.

THE POSITION OF DWELLING

Matt Godfrey - Fall 2011 hh

Le corbusier and the Occult (304) -

“Andre Wogenscky recalled his days working for Lecorbusier in terms of one of Freemasonry’s most emblematic images that of humans’ never-ending con-struction of themselves in search of greater perfection: “Le Corbusiers’ greatest influence on me, beyond architecture, was his attitude to life and his view that our main task is to construct ourselves, to build ourselves as we build a house, stone upon stone, to make ourselves worthy of the fine name of human, the only differ-ence being that the human edifice is never finished.”

What is Lecorbusiers spiritual agenda for architecture

intended illegibility , deliberate obfuscation of the symbology

Enigma is aura, as Lecorbusier suggests in New World of Space: in a complete and successful work there are hidden masses of implications, a veritable world which reveals itself to those whom it may concern, which means: to those who deserve it. Then a boundless depth opens up, effaces the walls, drives away con-tingent presences, accomplishes the miracle of ineffable space

Lecorbusier mentions the harmonic geometries in writings on low-cost social housing , and concrete construction : (309-occult)

the little vestibule that frees your mind from the street

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Lane - Housing and Dwelling

The dream of the factory-made house - Walter Gropius and Konrad Wachsmann 240

“During the nineteenth century prefabrication ( the manufacture of buildings in component form in workshop for transport to and ultimate assembly on a remote building ) developed from modest beginnings into an industry of quite substantial proportions.”242- In his statement on the principles of Bauhaus production, Gropius affirmed his belief that “the creation of standard types for all practical commodities of ev-eryday use is a social necessity”. Standardization was essential, he maintained, in order to exploit the effectiveness of the machine as a device for mass production of products “that are cheaper and better than those manufactured by hand”. The drive toward standardization in the Bauhaus is expressed best by the attempt to crystallize a few, ideal, solutions to everyday problems. To this end the workshops of the Bauhaus were to be regarded, in Gropius’s phrase, as “laboratories in which prototypes of products suitable for mass production and typical of our time are carefully developed and constantly improved”.

There is no suggestion, at this stage, of regarding these industrially produced ele-ments as part of a comprehensive system. Within one subsystem, as in the case of unit furniture designed by Marcel Breuer, the interface between elements and the overall ordering principle of a modular grip governing standard sizes and vari-ants might be seriously studied, This study of unit furniture followed on earlier experiments to standardize furniture notably by the Deutsche Werkstatten of Karl Schmidt, who had produced as early as 1910. In the Bauhaus, at this stage, this principle of integration and order was not extended in any systematic study to the overall system of dwelling and contents.

366- Housing by John Macsai detiled 65 multifamily units, from low to moderate in-come , in which 12 were high-rise configurations. Virtually no vacancies, low turn-over, and willingness to replicate these developments, managers of 10 of these 12 indicated great success. The design, location, and care may easily account for the lack of significant difference in satisfaction levels.”

considerations for housing: turnover, vacancy loss, waiting lists, financial returns.

820 Belle Plaines, 24 story , 265-unit project built in 1969, a neighborhood of en-try,

Mass - high density housing: the harshest criticisms relate to the harsh antihuman character that tends to come with scale. Wolf von Eckhardt revolts against the high rises’s architectural barren-ness, stating, High rises work against nature, against man, and against society by eliminating all spiritual values which existed in the past. Human symbols such as churches, which towered above the city are below the skyscraper.”One resident responds to the notion, “From my 20th floor apartment I can see sail-boats on Lake Michigan, a green stretch of Lincoln Park, and lights twinkling from the top of Sears Tower. My high-rise experience has extended my environment and given me perspective”Planning critics attribute human isolation to high-rises. Tenants at 820 Belle Plaines counter by saying, “people regardless of where they live, isolate them-selves everyday. Buildings, houses, town houses do not cause isolation. There is a far deeper cause and it occurs in suburbs as well as in cities, in low-rises as well as in high-rises” (367)

390- a prefab utopia -”what happens when a furniture company builds a commu-nity

Complexity in the experience of living in houses - 395

“ in modern housing in general, much of the complexity of dwellings has been lost. the free plan. advocated since the 1920s by architects of the modern move-ment and adopted by builders because it reduced costs makes tighter living areas seem more spacious by eliminating partitions between rooms. But the free plan also requires combining functions and accepting an informality which may not always be desired.” It is suggested that the attic and the basement also were critical to the larger com-plexity of the traditional dwelling, and the the free plan modern form eliminates the need for a lofty attic and the dark mysterious basement, which ultimately removes the unintended activities and meanings

A home is not a house - Reyner Banham 1965

“Left to their own devices , Americans do not monumentalize or make architecture. From the cape cod cottage through the balloon frame, they have tended to build a brick chimney and lean a collection of shacks against it. When Groff Conklin wrote ( in “The Weather-Conditioned House”) that “a house is nothing but a hollow shell///a shell is all a house or any structure in which human beings live and work really is. And most shells in nature are extraordinarily inefficient barriers to cold and heat...”j he was expressing an extremely American view, backed by a long-established grass-roots tradition”

Birksted, Jan. Le Corbusier and the Occult. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2009. Print.

Alexander, Christopher, Sara Ishikawa, and Murray Silverstein. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. New York: Oxford UP, 1977. Print.

Collins, George R. Visionary Drawings of Architecture and Planning. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1980. Print.

Lane, Barbara Miller. Housing and Dwelling: Perspectives on Modern Domestic Architecture. London: Routledge, 2007. Print.

Morrish, William R. Civilizing Terrains: Mountains, Mounds and Mesas. San Francisco, CA: William Stout, 2010. Print.

Rowe, Colin, and Fred Koetter. Collage City. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1978. Print.

Petherbridge, Deanna. The Primacy of Drawing: Histories and Theories of Practice. New Haven: Yale UP, 2010. Print.

Correa, Charles. Housing and Urbanization. Bombay: Urban Design Research Institute, 1999. Print.

Teige, Karel, and Eric Dluhosch. The Minimum Dwelling. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT, 2002. Print.

Joan Miro : 1893-1983 - painter and sculptor who channels the un-conscious mind and a recreation of the child-like. He joins the surre-alist group, which involved dream-like automatism in the creation of art.

The surrealists practiced autonomous drawing as a outlet for the un-conscious mind. Various movements ranging from the rapid sketch to slow meditative lines attempt to follow a spontaneous path. The unex-pected results may then be curated by the mind, and associations and connections will be made with otherwise neutral forms on the paper.

Gesture Drawing : is work of art defined by rapid execution. Typical situations involve an artist drawing a series of poses taken by a model in a short amount of time, often as little as 30 seconds, or as long as 2 minutes. The technique is often used to capture the likeness of the human figure in motion.

Autonomous Drawing: drafting line and tone through spontaneous movements , reversing the direction of control, where the process of delineating form starts at the hand and is then interpreted by the mind’s eye.

Polargraph: Scottish designer/craftsman Sandy Noble has devised the polargraph, an autonomous drawing machine that creates purposeful

pictures using a pen, motors and string.

Blind Contour Drawing: a method of sketching the contour of an ob-ject, focusing the eye on the subject without looking at the progress on the paper. The technique reveals the nature of memory in the action of drawing, as well as a division between observation and rendering. This method is the reverse of drawing from memory, where a subject only exists in the mind’s eye. Blind contour drawing isolates the progress of the work in the imagination, and allocates the entire focus of the eye to the analysis of the subject.

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Furniture at the Bauhaus ( Dessau 1930) Portable storage closet contains clothes and personal items, placed in the corner of the room like a suitcase

Jean Badovici & Eileen Gray 1928 - 1929 Built-in clothes closet and guest room of vil-la on Cap-Martin-Roquebrune, French Riviera. Modular construction and movable panels and surfaces formed an entirely unique approach to furnishing, storage, and inhabiting space.

Kem Weber’s design for the “airline chair” in the early 1930’s incorporated modular pieces that could be flat packed, shipped, and easily assembled.

CITY PROCESS APPLIED TO THE BUILDING

case 1: the street in the skyLe Corbusier positions an avenue of activity many floors above the ground in the Unite d Habitation. To what degree was this move successful? The effects may have to be evaluated by case. Alison and Peter Smithson’s Robin Hood Gardens was thought to be the exemplar of modern living at its time. It attempted to immitate Le Corbusier’s street in the sky, which failed the test of time, becoming a zone of the building associated with crime. - It would seem the activity of the urban street cannot be sustained at the scale of the building.

At Unite d’ Habitation, Le Cor-busier’s street in the sky fea-tured an independent staircase from the ground, and intend-ed to replicate a city process at the scale of the building.

Charles and Ray Eames’ ECS unit was an assemblage of furniture with a folding bed and cabinetry intended for use in dorma-tories. Despite the space saving mecha-nism, the ECS never saw mainstream use.

Other designs from the Bauhaus, a flexible futon and a desk composed of sliding panels. Though these forms might appear common today, they were avante garde at the time of their design in the 1930’s.

Le Corbusier’s Swiss Pavilion at the The Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris. A peri-od photograph of the entrance shows a roundabout for the car, and an open site that was in-tended for ventilation and good health. The dormatory overlooked the athletic fields and was viewed as a machine for modern living and well being. The underside of the building acts as public space and a transition between the campus and the private dwelling of the student.

The Origins of the ground level passage has its origins in the existing fabric of Paris in the 1930s. The section (above right) shows the internal street at the ground for the public to move through the site. Le Corbusier transforms this notion of the ground, and emulates the section of the ship to compose living spaces and adjacent corridors. The underside of Unite d’ Habitation resembles the hull of the ship, and Le Corbusier even reused the poster of the ocean liner (left) to demonstrate his ideas about collective living.

The view of the living room at the Unite d’ Habitation clearly frames the inhabitant to the world through an multistory compound window. The sec-tion above of Le Corbusier’s Villa at Carthage features an overlapping form, similar to the form developed at Unite ( modeled above ) allow-ing a variety of outdoor spaces adjacent to the dwelling and opening a double height window, framing views to several levels of the house.

Beginning with the level surface of the limestone block, I etched an image of origins, the massive quarry walls. The systematic re-moval of earth reveals time, layered in the depth of the earth. Key to the image of the quarry, spiring derrick cranes supported by wire lift the material to the surface, it is a spectacle of density: the heavy and the light. The work in lithograph raised an explo-ration of broader mark making techniques and overlying artis-tic ideals, between representation, the abstract, and even the au-tonomous. Traveling to Paris on the Nix Fellowship, I drew the ancient spaces in the City of Light, framing views with elements in 2-dimensional composition. These windows to the city place the individual in a unique position of urban engagement. Every dwelling in the urban context has a high level of adjacency, and an opportunity to frame the inhabitant with the world beyond. My researched turned to architecture with a visit and study of Le Corbusier’s Swiss Pavilion at the The Cité Internationale Uni-versitaire de Paris. The building is a fascinating iteration in Le Cor-busier’s continuous refinement design strategies regarding public and private space, structure, and light. The over-exposed south face developed into the brise soleil at the Unite d’ Habitation, and the concrete piloti are developed for support and service ducts. The piloti extend far below the surface to meet the limestone sur-face of the abandoned quarry on the site. Comparing a number of projects before and after Le Corbusier’s machines for living offer precedents, alternatives, and in some cases support for some of the strategies. Returning to the Cite Universitaire de Paris, I propose to develop a new approach to dwelling, that incorporates the static and heavy elements of brutalism with light and dynamic systems that support the functions of living at the scale of the human body. My designs are developing on two scales, at the individual apartment, including the designated furniture that can transform a basic space into a multipurpose environment, and the level of the city, where a number of units must function on the urban scale of the street. The furniture at the living space could create many op-portunities to create a density at the scale of the room, and provide insight to the density and operation of the surrounding context.

THE POSITION OF DWELLINGMatt Godfrey

Advisor : Peter Waldman

matthew godfrey the position of dwelling...366- housing by john macsai detiled 65 multifamily units,...

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