ava architecture showcase 2009

Lives of Spaces 2

You should all be preparing your presentations and working on your portfolios. Your portfolio presentations should concentrate on the architectural ideas and intentions within your proposal. It should not consist of a walkthrough of the functional elements within your project. Reread the briefs and refamiliarize yourself with the themes of the unit: • The notion of the embodiment of light within built form and in particular the palpable presence of Venetian light referred to as Lume Materiale. • How architecture and light are co-existent and how the ‘material presence of a building ‘in’and ‘of’ light’ can encourage a richer understanding of materials. • Walter Benjamin’s description of ‘Buildings (that) are used as a popular stage. They are divided into innumerable, simultaneously animated theatres. Balcony, courtyard, window, gateway, staircase, roof are at the same time stage and boxes.’

Things to do:

1. Detail: A detail within the project that demonstrates the key ideas behind the proposal, integrated successfully within the overall design. The detail should be shown at a scale between 1:2 - 1:10, and demonstrate your material choices. This should be a key detail relating to people, or other piece if really key to the project. Make sure this detail is discussed with technical staff as well as us.

For Level 3 ONLY: chose a fragment of the building plan/section or axo drawn at 1:50/1:20 and annotated. Incorporating technical, environmental and material issues.

2. Film: continue to develop your film and use it to reveal the cinematic aspects of the project. Make sure it is outputted to your portfolio.

3. Plans and sections: Think of your plans as horizontal sections rather
than technical hardline drawings - they must enable a legible reading of your proposition by others, as well as yourself.
Draw vertical sections that show simultaneous spaces and adjacencies, between interior/exterior, different uses and territories etc.

All your drawings must show context - to show the resolution of the public (street/square) and private space, the nature of the ‘piece of the city’. Your
plans and sections should continue to explore themes of TIME, NARRATIVE, LIGHT, MATERIALITY, OCCUPANCY and USE.

"Architecture exists, like cinema, in the dimension of time and movement. One conceives and reads a building in terms of sequences. To erect a building is to predict and seek effects of contrast and linkage through which one passes... In the continuous shot/sequence that a building is, the architect works with cuts and edits, framings and openings...
I like to work with a depth of field, reading space in terms of its thickness. Hence the superimposition of different screens, planes legible from obligatory points of passage whichare to be found in all my buildings"
Jean Nouvel

Lives of Spaces

Lives of Spaces - Short Animated Film
Duration 5 minutes (7500 frames)

storyboard from the film Bladerunner, Director Ridley Scott

Your film will explore in detail: -how people live in your proposal. -the way the interior spaces interact. -your proposal’s relationship with other buildings and their internal and external spaces. -the views from and towards your proposal. -your proposal’s relationship with the context of the site, with the landscape and its environment. Week 1 - Storyboard Friday 03.04.09 - pin up in groups. On a single A1 or A2 sheet use considered hand drawing and/or collage techniques to produce a storyboard of your short film. You should identify 8-10 key moments within your proposal that you will explore further in your animation. Weeks 2-3 - Inhabit the Spaces Referencing the storyboard work, construct partial (set piece) or fully realised models of your proposal at 1:50 or 1:100. Weeks 4-5 - Capture and Edit Use the temporal nature of film to explore themes of TIME, NARRATIVE, LIGHT, MATERIALITY, OCCUPANCY and USE.

Peter Salter, Inami Woodcarving Museum

Projection in progress

E1 building, Giudecca, by Cino Zucchi Architetti

By now you should all have developed your site work and programme:

Programme:

Be able to state this simply and comprehensibly.
Don't describe it only as 'housing' and 'public space' - that is the brief.
What is the housing? What is the public space?

Site work:

Does it look like you've been to the site?
Do you understand how big the site is?
- how the levels work?
- what the existing buildings are like?
- what the neighbouring and nearby buildings are like?
- the direction of the sun?

Context:

Think about the setting of the proposal within your portfolio.
Is there work showing and investigating a particular problem, need or characteristic that you have identified?
What is your proposal responding to?

Corte Bottera, Castello, Venice, from A Guide to Venetian Domestic Architecture by Egle Trincanato

Now and next:

Clarify your aims - include SPATIAL and MATERIAL intentions in your text. Keep it simple!
Draw and model these ideas.
They must be visible in your portfolio.

Process:

Draw and model at the appropriate scale, in as much detail as you can. ie. Draw everything you know about the proposal.

Don't wait. The production of this work, your critical appraisal and reiteration of it, is the process by which the proposal develops and your portfolio is built up.

Produce hybrid drawings to describe and explore two or more ideas simultaneously.

Materiality:

What is your proposal made of?
How is it constructed?
How do people relate to the materials?
How do the materials and construction relate to the different spaces?
How are you dealing with the existing structures on site?
How are you dealing with the ground?
How do the materials change over time?
Remember the experience of being in Venice.
Remember the idea of Lume Materiale.

Tyneside Flats (two flats in a terraced house, each with front door and backyard),
Newcastle c.1880s, from The English Terraced House by S. Muthesius

Lives of Spaces:

Inhabit the spaces.
How do people live in Venice?
How do people live in your proposal?
Explore in detail
- the way the rooms interact,
- their relationship with other buildings and spaces,
- their relationship with the context of the site, with the landscape.
- the views

Your housing may be bespoke for particular occupants,
or you may develop a typology or model of housing for a particular way of life for many people.

What is the narrative contained within the spaces?
Explore the simultaneous spaces of the proposal.
Does the way the proposal is used and occuppied change over time? Can it accomodate change?

Remember the first project and the level of detail with which you studied a domestic space.

Zuecca housing on Giudecca, by l'Atelier Collaborative /Michael Carapetian