the

language
of
architecture

Dedication
To all of our students, from whom we have learned so much. And to Eva and Dax, who have not only
tolerated but innitely enriched our endless excursions in the interest of architecture.

2014 Rockport Publishers

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Simitch, Andrea, author.
The language of architecture : 26 principles every architect should know / Andrea Simitch + Val Warke.
pages cm
Summary: Learning a new discipline is similar to learning a new language; in order to master the
foundation of architecture, you must rst master the basic building blocks of its language - the denitions,
function, and usage. Language of Architecture provides students and professional architects with the
basic elements of architectural design, divided into twenty-six easy-to-comprehend chapters. -- Provided
by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-59253-858-4 (paperback)
1. Architecture. I. Warke, Val K., author. II. Title.
NA2550.S56 2014
720--dc23
2014008552
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN: 978-1-59253-858-4
Digital edition published in 2014
eISBN: 978-1-62788-048-0
Design: Poulin + Morris Inc.
Page layout and production: tabula rasa graphic design
Cover image: Pezo von Ellrichshausen/www.pezo.cl
Photo: Cristobal Palma
Printed in China

Andrea Simitch and Val Warke

With essays contributed by
Iaqui Carnicero
Steven Fong
K. Michael Hays
David J. Lewis
Richard Rosa II
Jenny Sabin
Jim Williamson

the
language
of
architecture
26 Principles Every
Architect Should Know

contents
Introduction

ELEMENTS

PHYSICAL SUBSTANCES

1 Analysis

7 Mass

2 Concept

18

8 Structure

3 Representation

9 Surface

72

82

10 Materials

GIVENS

4 Program

26

64

88

36
EPHEMERAL SUBSTANCES

5 Context

11 Space

48

6 Environment

58

100

12 Scale

108

13 Light

116

14 Movement

124

CONCEPTUAL DEVICES

CONSTRUCTIVE POSSIBILITIES

15 Dialogue
16 Tropes

24 Fabrication

132

196

25 Prefabrication

138

17 Defamiliarization

144

CONCLUDING

26 Presentation
18 Transformation

202

208

150

Glossary

216

ORGANIZATIONAL DEVICES

19 Infrastructure
20 Datum
21 Order
22 Grid

156

Bibliography

217

Contributor Directory

218

Photographer Credits

219

164

172

Index

180

23 Geometry

188

220

About the Authors

224

Acknowledgments

224

introduction
It is our hope to stimulate old and new interests in architecture, to share an enthusiasm for some venerable sheds
and evocative cathedrals, and to introduce the limitless poetics that can be composed in architectures language.

Tireless debate has always focused on the

qualities that could cause a building to be
described as architecture. Nikolaus Pevsner,
who famously declared that A bicycle shed
is a building; Lincoln Cathedral is a piece of
architecture, assumes that human habitation
is a characteristic of all buildings, while
architecture transcends building because of
its aesthetic aspirations. Other arguments
have been based on issues as indeterminate
as emotional resonance (in other words,
architecture, unlike building, stirs our
emotions), as reductive as professionalism
(architecture is by architects), as evaluative
as historical appraisal (architecture is what a
culture has deemed as significant, or what
has proven to be significant through time),
and as limitless as inclusivism (all constructions are architecture, perhaps even those by
other species, such as the hives of bees or
the dams of beavers).
Parallel to these discussions, analogies
to language have been frequent, varied, and
inevitable throughout the history of architecture. The fact is that every building, from
a bicycle shed to a bus stop, is capable of
meaning something to someone: Here, I can
protect my bike from the rain, or This is

the stop near my home. But it is clear that

those constructions we describe as works of
architecture tend to convey countless levels
of meaning to numerous unique observers
over an indefinite number of years. Perhaps,
then, architecture might be understood to
be comparable to a thick, poetic language.
One of the traits of any language is
that it provides a system that can convey
meaning. When being introduced to a new
languagewhen one first learns to speak as
an infant or when one attempts to learn a
second languagemeaning is generally
direct and singular. To the infant, a dog is
the furry four-legged beast in the room. To
the first-time speaker of Italian, cane is
directly associated with one among that
general group of animals we know as dogs.
However, after becoming familiar with more
complex levels of languagewith poetry,
slang, mythology, and allegory, for example
a more sophisticated notion of meaning is
required. For example, when Shakespeare
has Hamlet say:
Let Hercules himself do what he may,
The cat will mew and dog will have his day.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act V, Scene 1

our elementary concept of the meaning of

dog becomes complicated by the various
affects of context, by our knowledge of
dramatic genres, of precedent, of poetic
language, and, if heard during a performance, by the actors verbal and physical
inflections. Clearly, Shakespeares dog is
much more than that furry four-legged beast
once in the room.
Meaning in architecture is similarly
complex, both profound and open ended.
Such meaning is inevitably compounded by
architectures lengthy processes of production,
by the vast array of individuals responsible for
every stage of that production, by the final
constructions relationships with its various
contexts, by its interrelationships with other
known elements of architectural expression,
and by the unique pasts and presents of each
individual who observes the final construction. Architecture is further complicated by
the fact that each design is a testing ground
for a number of associated concepts drawn
from history, theory, technology, and even
representation. For this reason, many attempts
at defining a language of architecture have
necessarily been reductive. Like textbook
translations of elementary Italian, they

We address this book to several

different audiences. For those just commencing studies in architecture, we hope to
introduce the potential breadth and depth of
the field while showing some of the works
by both students and well-known practitionersthat might inspire or even provoke.
Those who have already embarked on one of
the various aspects of architectural practice
might find in the text a series of subtle
reminders, a mine of possibilities. Each
chapter includes a short essay that brings
greater depth to the chapters theme and
may suggest further inquiry for those
interested in architectural history, theory,
or criticism. And finally, for those of our
colleagues interested in developing a
curriculum in beginning design, we intend
each chapter to germinate an idea that
might foster its own design exercise or that
could suggest more elaborate problems
when combined with other themes.
In short, it is our hope to stimulate old
and new interests in architecture, to share
an enthusiasm for some venerable sheds and
evocative cathedrals, and to introduce the
limitless poetics that can be composed in
architectures language.

but more ephemeral substancesspace, scale,

light, and movementthat serve to make
the physical substances legible. Four chapters
on the conceptual devices that frequently
contribute to what might be understood as
the poetics of architecturedialogue, tropes,
defamiliarization, and transformationare
followed by five chapters that discuss the
operations of architectures diverse organizational devices: infrastructure, datum, order,
grid, and geometry. Finally, two chapters
concerning some of the considerations
an architect might have for the implicit
possibility of constructionfabrication
and prefabricationare followed by a final
chapter on what is usually the culmination
of the design process for most architects
and students of architecture: presentation.
And we illustrate these chapters
throughout with some of the more
distinctive and expressive examples of
architectures language. From the grandiloquent to the slang, from the epic to
the everyday, projects are culled from
the great masters of architecture, from
notable contemporary practitioners and
from students around the world who have
confronted these issues in their studies.

become simple exercises in decoding, with

no regard for syntax, idioms, voice, genre,
and so on.
For these reasons, this book is not
intended to be an exhaustive or definitive
lexicon of architectural ideas. Such an effort
would be futile. It is instead an introduction
to what we believeafter over sixty years
of combined experience in architectural
educationto be some of the more vital
fundamentals of architectural design. Just as
the English alphabet is arbitrarily limited to
twenty-six letters, we have limited ourselves
to just twenty-six elements, each described
in its own chapter.
We have organized the text so that we
begin with three chapters that introduce the
essential elements one needs to develop a
visual language and the skills for critical
thinking: analysis, concept, and representation. We follow with three of the elements
that are generally considered to be among
the givens of any design process: program,
context, and environment. Then, we turn to
what might be considered the substances of
architecture. After introducing the physical
substancesmass, structure, surface, and
materialwe consider the equally palpable,

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Analysis is the process of exploration and

discovery with which an architect develops
a familiarity with the assumptions,
expectations, and conditions that are
given and then establishes the conceptual
lens through which all design decisions
are subsequently made.

analysis
Analysis is an investigation organized to uncover what may have been the strategies for
a projects design.

8
9

Originality is a term often used to describe something

new or different, something that has never been done
before. In architecture, there is a firm belief that most
everything has already been done, to some extent and in
one manner or another, and that originality does not lie in
the discovery of something new but in the interpretation

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Aldo Rossi: Gallaratese II

Housing, Milan, Italy 1974
Aldo Rossis Gallaratese II
Housing block in Milan takes
not only certain formal cues
from Giorgio de Chiricos
trancelike metaphysical
painting, Mystery and
Melancholy of a Street, with a
giant loggia surmounted by a
cadence of square windows,
but there is also a similar
sensibility of urbanism, of
buildings as monumental
backdrops that impassively
modulate individual activity
while suggesting the
mysteries that might be
hidden in their shadowy
depths.

Giorgio de Chirico: Mystery

and Melancholy of a Street,
1914. Private collection.

and appropriation of something that

already exists. It is not that something that
is the subject of this chapter, but it is,
instead, the processes by which one
understands, abstracts, and interprets
the known or the given so that it can
meaningfully inform the design process.
In architecture, these processes of
abstraction are usually called analysis.
Project Givens
The design process is initiated by the intersection of two circumstances. One is the

givens of a project, which include program

(the functions that the project needs to
accommodate; these may include specific
material requirements, such as the use of
aluminum), site and context (where the
project is to be located), and conventions
(the cultural contexts of the project). The
other circumstance is what the architect
brings to the givens: how the architect
interprets or defines these givens. Analysis
is the process of exploration and discovery
with which an architect not only develops
a familiarity with the assumptions, expecta-

tions, and conditions that are given, but

subsequently establishes the critical
framework of the problem, the conceptual
lens through which all design decisions are
subsequently made.
Precedent
Fundamental to the educationand
continued developmentof an architect is an
awareness of what has come before. It is the
raw material that provides the basis for an
infinite inventory of architectural ideas: it is
the architects library, allowing the architect
(continued on page 13)

These plans show Giuseppe

Terragnis design for the
Congress Hall for the Rome
International Exposition
(E42) of 1937 (left) in relation
to the Oratory Complex of
Saint Phillip Neri (162050),
also in Rome, by Francesco
Borromini and others
(center). While the structures
are extraordinarily different
in their three-dimensional

development, it is clear that

the modern building derived
signicant inspiration from
the plans of the Oratory,
borrowing the older complexs
geometries as well as its basic
distribution of programmatic
spaces.

Luigi Moretti and the Evocative

Precedents of Architecture
In the 1950s, the austere architecture of
postwar Italydominated by that of the
increasingly industrial northwas constricted by a lingering classicism. The
Roman architect Luigi Moretti confronted
this world through his magazine Spazio, or
Space: Review of Arts and Architecture,
(19501953, with a few issues in the 1960s).
Spazio was dedicated to presenting select
contemporary architectureboth built and
unbuiltin the context of developments in
the fine arts, with provocative essays suggesting that architecture could derive
intensity from the arts, crafts, and buildings of past masters and unknown artisans.
For Moretti, this included especially the
architecture that was roundly condemned
as decadent by most European modernists:
that of the late Renaissance and baroque
periods.
The essays in Spazio would usually take
the form of an analysis: verbal, graphic,
and occasionally both. Moretti himself
would often analyze aspects of the arts in
their possible relationships to architecture.
For him, analysis was intimately tied to the
design process, not simply to understand
what may have transpired in the past, but
to advance what is and could be happening
in the present. Morettis analyses represented an active process: We read them not
as finished works but as unconstrained
ruminationsoften as brilliant as they
were recklessintended to draw the reader
into a speculative discourse.
In the first issue, Morettis Eclecticism
and Unity of Language finds modern
expressionism present in the brush strokes
of Rubens, and surrealism in the fabrics of
fifteenth-century paintings by Cossa.
Eclecticism, argued Moretti, is a necessity

Portion of page from

Structures and Sequences of
Space illustrating (from top
down): a model of the spaces
within Michelangelos San
Giovanni dei Fiorentini in
Rome; a plan of that church; a
model of the spaces within
Morettis Fencing Academy in
Rome; an interior view of the
Fencing Academy; and
diagrams of the plan of the
Tugendhat House in Brno, by
Mies van der Rohe,
illustrating perceived spatial
zones (heavy lines) and
intuited spatial zones
(shorter lines) from various
points within the house.

Analyses of profile elements

of Baldassarre Perruzzis
Palazzo Ossoli in Rome,
tracing the lines in
perspective as well as with
views of projections

in a complex, multicultural world. In the

third issue, Moretti treats the work of Bernini and Borromini compositionally in
Abstract Forms in Baroque Sculpture, in

shadows consume the inconsequential

elements of nonloadbearing surfaces.

which exuberant draperies and angels

wings supply the plasticity that defines
Roman baroque architecture. Rather than
encourage a stationary viewer, he argues,
these fluid forms draw the eyes from one
center to anotherfrom one perspectival
system to anotherin works composed of
multiple focal points, simulating an architectural promenade.

that cornices and profiles (three-dimensional moldings) are ancient architectures

truly abstract components: nonrepresentative and formally derived. Profiles,
according to Moretti, have been architectures means of orchestrating light and
dark, thereby bringing focus to a buildings
components and reinforcing its primary
formal organization. Moretti demonstrates
how moldings enable a building to alter its
appearance throughout the day with continuously changing shadows, and in
relation to a viewers position in the street
below: a genuinely dynamic architecture.

Moretti reveals a fascination with movement, sequence, and time as modifiers of

space and form. In Discontinuity of Space
in Caravaggio, Moretti speculates that this
painter from the early seventeenth-century
was depicting the effects of Romes noonday
light upon elements in baroque faades,
when columns appear as figures and

In The Values of Profiles, Moretti argues

In perhaps his most famous essay, Structures and Sequences of Spaces, Moretti
analyzes spatiality in architecture in four

aspects, both empirical and psychological:

as a measurable sequence of volumes represented through plaster models with
spaces constructed as solids; as density
defined by the penetration of light as modeled with light boxes; as the foci of ones
senses on the masses that shape a structure; and as the expansive and compressive
interrelationships within the fluidity of a
spatial sequence. Always eclectic, Moretti
cites nineteenth-century paintings, the
spatial reactions of characters in a film, the
cathartic escapes in Melvilles Typee, and
fluid dynamics.
In his Spazio essays, Luigi Moretti offers
evocative analyses framed by juxtapositions and generous speculation, arguing
that every type of artistic work can be
absorbed into an architectural production.

Left: Machado and Silvetti:

House in Djerba, Tunisia,
1976, plan
Right: Castle Hedingham,
Essex, England, c. 1133, plan
It is possible to derive basic
organizational strategies
from ones understanding of
precedents. The occupiable
wall that wrapped the
primary rooms of the
medieval English castle is
combined with the typical
Tunisian troglodyte house in

which an excavated courtyard

is surrounded by its primary
living spaces, to provide
inspiration for a project
designed by Machado and
Silvetti in Djerba, Tunisia.
Here, the exterior wall of
rooms that enclose the
houses central volumes is
transformed into an exterior
staircase, and as it begins to
peel away, the central
volumes of the house are
revealed.

to quickly identify works that have evolved in

response to similar programmatic, contextual, or cultural circumstances, or that may
offer a repertoire of formal solutions that can
inspire solutions to problems that may at first
seem unrelated. As lvaro Siza Vieira has
said, Architects dont invent anything; they
transform reality. They work continuously
with models that they transform in response
to the problems that they encounter.
This knowledge can be made useful only if it
undergoes a series of thoughtful transformations that increasingly abstract and distill
those fundamental characteristics of a source
that are relevant to the problem at hand. It is
only then that a simple imitation can be
replaced by the genuine generative potential
of the precedent.

12

In his design for a building in

Apeldoorn, the Netherlands,
completed in 1972, architect
Hermann Hertzberger cast in
concrete and masonry his
theories that a building
should be a communal
structure, in effect, a small
village, containing streets,
plazas, and gathering spaces
both formal and informal.

Hertzberger is able to recast

his analytic understanding of
traditional, canalized Dutch
towns into the scale of a
modern building where the
villages density that serves
to create its cultural vitality
is interpreted as a series of
densely packed miniature
office towers peering out
over interior streets.

13

Precedents can originate from within or

outside of architecture. They can inform a
projects form or its organization, its structure
or its circulation, its internal operations or its
outer membranes. They can be buildings or
cities, films, or paintings. They can be
animals or machines, biological behaviors or
fictional narratives. Designs often have more
than one precedent.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

ABSTRACTION
Just as an artist sees a painting through the
eyes of someone intending to produce
another painting, and a musician might hear
music with the ears of someone intending to
produce more music, an architect sees a
buildingultimately, analyzes itwith the
goal of designing another work of architecture. For the architect, the role of analysis is
not to uncover the fundamental intentions
that may have been behind a designs origin,
but to uncover the values a design may have
in inspiring more designs.
Analysis is a process whereby one draws from
a precedent or from a programmatic given
its distinguishable characteristics, what makes
one work different from any other work.
Analysis, as Cornell University Professor
Jerry Wells would say, is designing
backwards. It is breaking down a work into
parts in order to examine a subject from
multiple perspectives, to investigate a project
in order to uncover what may have been the
strategies for its design. While these parts
are often formless, they are the precursors of
the concepts and forms that have produced
the final work.

Components, or breaking down into parts

Most works of architecture are composed of
a series of overlapping and bypassing systems
that, together, form the complete work. It is
the unpacking of these systems into a series
of discrete diagrams that can offer insights
into a precedents unique characteristics, and
it is the distillation of these systems into
idealized components that can provide an
inventory of systems that can subsequently
be redeployed in other projects.
The most common systems separated during
an analysis are structure, circulation, exterior
envelope or membrane, major versus minor
spaces, public versus private spaces, solids
versus voids, repetitive versus unique,
supportive spaces, and the geometric and
proportional orders that often hold these
systems together.
While each system on its own is important in
understanding a work, the ways in which they
are transformed, merged, or overlaid is what
ultimately leads to an understanding of the
unique qualities of the greater whole.

Richard Meier: House in

Pound Ridge, NY, 1969
In these iconic diagrams by
the architect Richard Meier,
site, program, structure,
entrance, circulation, and
enclosure are independently
represented in order to
present the projects basic

organizational strategies.
While describable as a series
of autonomous systems, each
following an internal
logic, together they form a
constellation of systems that
intersect, engage, and often
deform one another in
producing the final work.

1
Analysis

Diagramming
Diagramming is the process of abstracting
and simplifying an idea so that it can be
easily understood. It is the recording of the
physical and spatial characteristics that
identify the unique and recognizable
characteristics of a building, site, or program.
It is the process by which familiarity with a
specific set of programmatic and contextual
circumstances can be achieved. Much like a
childs sketch, a diagram is not concerned
with developing nuance but, instead, with
clarity: it is a reductiona boiling downof
an idea. The diagram cannot only analyze
the physical, it can also reveal the ephemeral,
the historical, the infrastructural. Diagrams
allow one to gain an understanding of a
particular project by revisiting it again and
again through a series of distinct lenses.
They also facilitate an understanding of how
several seemingly unrelated works might in
fact be brought together as an inventory of
thematically related conditions. And, finally,
diagramming can also facilitate the quick
exploration of alternate solutions to a
problem in its initial stages of development.
The diagram not only maps the identity of a
given project, but points the way to the
conception of a new project. And it is in
these reductive, abstract states that diagrams
often resemble more universal conditions.
INTERPRETATION
It is the simplicity of the analytical diagram
that allows for its subsequent interpretation
and transformation when introduced to a
new set of parameters.

Design Center that students

were asked to design in a
2006 freshman design studio
at Cornell University.

15

A series of analytical models

demonstrates alternate
formal and material
strategies for a Danish

14

Intermediary Device
The synthesis of an analysis often leads to
the production of an intermediary device, an
artifact that is subsequently open to multiple
interpretations. This device is, in effect, a
prearchitectural moment. It can take the
form of a drawing or model, and it is a
suggestive and interpretable representation
that has the ability to shift in both scale and

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

orientation so that it can be conceptually

mined in multiple ways. It is the testing of
these interpretations within the parameters
of the design problemthe what-ifsthat
motivates the development of an architectural concept.
For example, a diagram might isolate the
circulation of a building as the unfolding of
a spatial sequence, one that might collect a
series of views. And, yet, while the specificity
of the views or the modes of circulation
such as stair, ramp, bridge, and so onmay
be important to the original project being
analyzed, an analytical diagram might record
a more generic condition of an armature that
collects a series of things (such as views,
programs, experiences, or scales). It is this
diagram that has the ability to sponsor the
production of an intermediary deviceperhaps a miniature construction or a composite

drawingwhere the specificity of the

precedent gives way to an instrument that
subsequently motivates the final work.

designers and makers, and those of the new

architect. Therefore, whenever one analyzes a
work, one is essentially coauthoring that work.

Embedded in the intermediary device are the

potential concepts of the new work. It operates
as an in-between artice that retains the
concept of the precedent yet leaves behind
the specic attributes with which the original
work is associated. In reinterpreting diagrams
with an intermediary device, issues of scale and
proportion, even of material and enclosure,
may be insignicant. The value of the
intermediary device is precisely located in its
intermediate condition, on the threshold of
interpretation and innovation.

Analysis does not necessarily attempt to

solve a work, to resolve its hidden schemas,
or to penetrate the deepest mysteries of its
authorship. Instead, analysis brings to a work
a type of deep reading, whereby probing
and questioning reveal the potentials and
significances of a precedent. Ultimately, with
practice and awareness, analysis becomes for
the architect a mode of seeing and understanding a work, of absorbing the work into
a creative memory where objects and ideas
become the raw materials for the authorship
of new designs.

Coauthorship
An analysis always represents the encounter
of at least two spheres of awareness:
the minds and cultures of a works original

In a 1998 introductory design

studio at Cornell taught by
Professors D. Lewis and A.
Simitch, students were each
asked to analyze a prosaic
tool and then construct a
container that would not only
house the tool but that would
register the tools formal,
operative, and material

characteristics as were
discovered and demonstrated
through their analysis.
This steel container for a
holepunch served as the
intermediary device for the
design of a showroom whose
spatial characteristics were to
reference the original tool for
which it was now a showcase.

1
Analysis

Kimberly Chew developed a

series of paper models that
recorded the continuous
unfolding of perspectival
space as experienced within
an existing site. These
models became the

intermediary devices for the

construction of volumetric
studies that became the
source for programmatic
development. Cornell
University B.Arch. Thesis
2010

16
17

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

A concept is often at the nucleus of a

design, to be gradually refined and subtly
reconsidered as a process proceeds.

concept
A concept is rooted in simple abstractions, yet it initiates a process that usually ends with
a complex design.

18
19

The process of architectural design is much like a

voyage. At the start of this voyage, it is the development
of a coherent architectural concept that not only suggests
a possible destination, but that also supplies the traveler
with both an oar and a rudder.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

What It Is and What It Does

A concept represents more than a solution;
it poses a way of thinking about a design
problem while proposing a set of objectives
while implying potential exclusions. It is a route
to be taken while excluding potential detours.
The concept initiates the action of design.
Versus Ideas
While a concept might originate with an idea
or set of ideas, an observation, or a prejudice
that is personal to the designer, these ideas
alone rarely motivate a production. In order
to have a productive value, an architectural
concept should eventually result in an
observation that can be shared with a larger
audience. And, while intrinsically an
abstraction, a concept also differs from an
idea in that it has an obligation to suggest an
image or a thing, since it must inevitably lead
to a constructive proposition.
For example, using light wells to bring
additional light into a building might be an
idea. However, on its own, the notion of
including light wells does little to limit a
designs range of unique possibilities. That
the building might be like a sponge, with
light wells penetrating in an organic, irregular
manner throughout (as with Steven Holls
Simmons Hall at MIT), or that light wells

might simultaneously provide tubular

structural and mechanical supports for the
building (as with Toyo Itos Sendai Mediatheque), represent ideas elevated to the
level of architectural concepts.
And Flexibility
However, while it might be the nucleus of a
design, the concept may become gradually
refined and subtly reconsidered as a process
proceeds. Far from being a fixed idea, a
concept must remain flexible, roomy enough
to permit the inevitable adjustments as a
design evolves.
(continued on page 23)

Steven Holls original watercolors for Simmons Hall,

a dormitory for MIT in
Cambridge, Massachusetts
(completed in 2002), propose
that the concept of sponge
would give this building its
identity. The concept conveys

numerous attributes: a regular

exterior form is penetrated
by organically shaped tubes
providing light and ventilation
while linking the more public
spaces through various levels
with contrasting formal
vocabularies.

Sverre Fehn
Projecting the Line
Sverre Fehns body of work is concerned
with the metaphysical relationship of man
to his world and his buildings become the
devices for reconciling the vastness of that
world and the human experience within it.
His work is a complex conversation
between the natural and the constructed,
between light and dark. The projects operate as conceptual lines that simultaneously
measure the landscape while locating the
human being within it.
A three-dimensional line is struck amongst
and within the ruins of an existing barn at
Hamarand it is ones movement along and

Norwegian Glacier Museum

Fjaerland, Norway, 1989-1991
view and perspective

occupation of this line that constructs

ones relationship to both the stone ruins
and the archeological artifacts that have
been retrieved from the earth. In a 1992
interview with Maija Karkkainen, Sverre
Fehn explains: ... I conceived Hamar
Museum as a kind of theater, where the
movement is in specific routes around
smaller objects, around bigger objects, and
around the whole space, which in turn
winds around historical excavations ...
The essence of the project lies in the dialogue that is established between the
carefully calibrated and precisely constructed present as it is juxtaposed onto

concrete ramps and walkways that tiptoe

through the ruins occupy this constructed
space between earth and sky. They not only

its own voice, and tells its own story, yet

like a repertory theater, continuously
engages and responds to the other mem-

the irregular archeological ground of history. This present is manifest as a series of

materially, spatially, and structurally distinct elements that occasionally align
themselves with the existing ruin and then
caper off to their own material and geometric tune. This fundamental concept of a
series of independent layers, of which the
present is but one, provides the conceptual
lens through which all architectural decisions are subsequently filtered and at all
scales. The wooden structure that shelters
the three-dimensional path descends from
the sky and alights onto the ruined walls
that are solidly grounded by the earth. The

provide the access through which the visi-

bers of its material troupe.

tor navigates this suspended museum but

they register the architectural concept
through their material and geometric difference. These ramps swell to become
volumes within which special collections
are displayedeach artifact mediated with
enormous precision by a material that
again negotiates between the present layer
and its cultural past. A hand knife rests on
a soft leather cloth that is inlaid into a
wooden surface that bears the imprint of
its weight; a wooden plow deforms a steel
plate that suspends it from the concrete
wall. Each material has its own behavior,

The architect has often described the 1989

91 Norwegian Glacier Museum in the
Fjaerland district of Norway as a stone that
rolled off the glacier and settled into the
valley below. As the vastness of the site
makes any building structure inconsequential, the architects ambition was to create
a place between sky and ground. Thus, the
concept for the museum was developed as
a concrete plinth sitting on the earthen oor,
from which the visitor could experience this
spatial panorama. The primary space of the
museum is therefore not its interior but the

Nordic Biennale Pavilion,

Venice, Italy 19581962
conceptual sketchsection,
and view of roof structure

outdoor room of the valley in which the

hollow rock has settled. The stair leading
up to the plinth aligns with the glacier
beyond: here the projected line is an instrument that orients and locates the visitor in
the space of the landscape.
It is often the framing of the problem that
leads to the development of the architectural concept and with the 19581962
Nordic Pavilion at Venice Biennale the
problem that Sverre Fehn identified here
was quite simple: how to protect and display the artifacts within a context that
simulates the Nordic light in which they
had been produced. The concept for the
project then emerged as the construction
of light, a three-dimensional brise soleil
that is rotated horizontally to simultaneously protect the artifacts and, through its
layers of stacked concrete beams, produce
the shadowless light that is so typical of
the Nordic landscape. The geometry of the
system allows it to adjust its dimensions as
necessary to accommodate the magnificent
trees that occupied the site. It serves to
measure, to locate, the landscape, the light
and the artifacts within its Venetian site.
The Hedmark Cathedral Museum
Hamar, Norway 196888
conceptual sketch, view of interior

England, under the sponsorship of Living Architecture

magazine, the ambitions of
the thumbnail sketch are
accomplished with a glazed
ground oor with minimal
structure above which an
irregularly dormered upper
oor appears to oat.

While most drawings tend to communicate to

others, a sketch may be a more private form
of drawinga personal ideogramintended as
a note to oneself or as a succinct communication between the designers within a team.

23

The Thumbnail Sketch

Among conceptual sketches, the thumbnail
sketch is a drawing thataided by its small
sizeis necessarily a caricature of the
concept: that is, it represents the reduction of
the concept to its most identifiable characteristics, inevitably exaggerating those
characteristics for the purpose of clear
recognition. For this reason, the thumbnail
sketch remains throughout the design process
a valuable representation of a designs
essential objectives as well as a constant
reminder of the latent ambitions within the
concept, as a baseline measurement of a
designs development, and as a litmus test for
any design that might lose its way.

22

Toyo Itos early conceptual

sketch of his Sendai
Mediatheque, located in
Sendai-shi (the City of
Trees), Japan (completed
2001), shows large, hollow
tubes formed by a network of
latticelike surfaces, growing
like tree trunks through a
series of floor slabs. These
tubes serve as light wells
while contributing to the
buildings structural stability.
Although some are primarily
structural, others enclose
elevators, with the smaller,
twisted trunks containing
electrical and air handling
systems. This innovative
structural system, designed
with the engineer Matsuro
Sasaki, incurred only minor
damage in the magnitude 9.0
earthquake that struck Japan
in March of 2011.

Concept

The Sketch
In architecture, the first articulation of a
concept is usually in the form of a drawing or
a sketch model. Conceptual sketches and
models indicate that a position has been
taken, while providing a measure against
which design decisions can be evaluated and
alternatives weighed. As generative tools,
sketches provide the visual language with
which architects test conceptual notions in
their relationships to a set of goals or
parameters. Embedded within the conceptual
sketch is the seed for the development of the
project: it is, in a sense, the pregnant drawing.

The original concept sketch

by Jarmund/Vigns
Arkitekter of Norway for a
house on the dunes shows a
crownlike object hovering
above an incision in a hill. The
dashed line suggests a ramp
or cut in the hillside for entry.
Built in 2010 in Thorpeness,

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Conceptual sketches facilitate a continuous

critical conversation between abstract
concept and the form that the concept can
embody. While thumbnail sketches and early
conceptual drawings are initially loose and
open ended, often without scale, proportion,
or specificity, it is through the reiterative
process of enactment, critical response,
evaluation, and modification that a sketch
and its latent designbecomes increasingly
more specific.
Ultimately, the collection of conceptual
sketches throughout the design process
forms the diary of a project, recording an
architects creative process in terms of the
formal ruminations that reveal the evolution
of the conceptual idea.
The Overlay
Perhaps one of the most valuable techniques
in developing a concept is through the use of
the overlay. From the time that Michelangelo
used the subtle translucency of his paper to
generate alternative designs on the backs of
previous drawings, the notion of the overlay
has played an important role in the development of architectural sketching. With the
development of inexpensive, mass-market
tracing paper in the early 1800s, architects
could easily transform designs through a
process of revision, reaccentuation, and
reorganization. As older drawings fade
beneath cloudy layers of tracing paper,
newer layers are kept in sharp clarity on top.
Not only did tracing paper decrease the
necessity for tedious redrawing, but the
layering of information facilitated a
designers ability to view constantly renewed
images of the project while providing a
frequent shift of focus.
While some contemporary computer graphic
programs attempt to duplicate the flexibility
of tracing paper, this is accomplished without
the tangible, recorded debris of numerous
intermediate stages. It is often in these
intermediate stages that an intuition can be
rediscovered and reemployed.

Using paper models,

architects ARX of Lisbon can
quickly study a number of
volumetric concepts for a
high school in Caneas,
Portugal, each reinforcing a

different concept of
education. These projects
integrate classroomsthe
spaces of traditional, formal
learningwith the more fluid
spaces of informal,

communal learning.
Three-dimensional models
permit the simultaneous
testing of the concept in
terms of site, program, light,
space, and human habitation.

The Sketch Model

Supplementing the basic conceptual sketch,
and often equally important in the elaboration of a concept, are three-dimensional
sketches, in particular relief and concept
models.

such as density, transparency, reection,

erosion, stretching, bending, and cracking.
These models do not attempt to represent a
realistic representation of a design, but
instead to suggest ways in which a designs
components might act and interact.

Relief Models
A low-relief model is often cut from paper
that is then folded, twisted, or warped, often
while retaining much of the surface of the
original paper. Relief models suggest aspects
of potential three-dimensional forms as they
might relate to the plane of the ground or to
a specific viewpoint as in a perspective image.
Especially when illuminated from an oblique
angle, these models suggest a possible
composition of masses, a strategy of
landscape engagement, a potential perspective view, or patterns of light and shadow.

And Otherwise
An extension of the architectural concept is
the parti, or parti pris, which had its origin in
nineteenth-century France and in the phrase
prendre parti, which means to take a
position. Just as a position might be taken
only after all of the options are weighed, the
parti is typically derived only after the
concept has been determined; it relates to
the disposition of elements within the totality
of the project. The parti diagram is
generally a succinct diagramin plan,
section, or three dimensionsof the strategy
the designer will use in the development of
the concept. While a concept is largely
rooted in abstraction, the parti is rooted in
practical application, a knowledge of
precedents, a strategy of programmatic
distribution, and the sense of an eventual
necessity to explain a project to others.

Material Models
A concept model might use cardboard, metal,
clay, plastics, or other materials to suggest the
physical relationships that various volumes
might have to each other or to model possible
forms based on material textures or behaviors,

2
Concept

Zaha Hadid used numerous

media in developing her
design for the MAXXI
Museum of XXI Century Arts
in Rome, Italy (completed
2009). Sketches indicate the
fluidity of paths, basic formal
organizations, light control
systems, and relationships to
the site. Relief models
maintain a flexible
interpretation of dimension
while facilitating studies of
light and shadow. Hadids
famous paintings study the
effects that luminosity,
kinetic motion, the
integration of contextual
networks and forces, and
parallax vision can all have on
the designs development.

24

pipe organs, violins, and

sonorous chasms located
throughout North America.
While the early concept
sketches suggested chambers
within vertical tubesas with
pipe organsthe concept
models evolved to incorporate
the behaviors of materials
and methods of fabrication in
shaping the chambers so that
they mimic aspects of natural
erosion and ssures.

25

In developing the National

Music Centre of Canada
(Calgary, Alberta), Allied
Works Architecture (Portland,
Oregon and New York City)
used musical instruments to
motivate a concept founded
on the principle that a
building for music should
itself be reverberant and alive
with sound. Their formal
concept is derived from
investigations that included

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Representation facilitates the examination

and expression of architectural thought,
filtered through the unique conventions
that are embedded within each specific
mode and technique of depiction.

representation
The final architectural work inevitably bears the traces of its representational origins.

26
27

Architects do not build buildings, they make the

drawings and models from which buildings are made.
Take for instance a Scottish waller and a Native
American basket weaverwhat do they share?
The medium in which each works is intimately tied
to the thing that is producedthey are inseparable.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Michelangelos Study of
Fortifications Number 27
model the walls as sculpted
surfaces. Regulating lines
that suggest cones of vision
(and angles of gunfire)
provide the geometric
underpinning for the overlay
of thickened lines whose
bistre infill registers the

Here, too, then is the argument that for

the architect, the representational tools (a
drawing, a modelbe they analog or digital),
and the typologies (be they, say, a plan or a
section, a drawing or a model) that are used
in the development of a concept are to be
understood as accomplices to that concept
and that the final work will inevitably bear
traces of their influence.
Tools
Let us begin with a discussion of the tools of
the tradethe media with which architects
work. Paper was the ground of the
Renaissance architect where pen and ink
drawing for, perhaps, the first time served to
represent ideas for buildings. Drawings at
multiple scales and views were often
superimposed one upon the other to serve as
traces of a creative stream of consciousness.
These permanent ink marks operated much
like handwriting and often served as a
binding contract between architect and
client. And while the tools have evolved and
expanded considerably since the Renaissance, drawings and models remain the
primary media of the architect in both
developing, representing, and executing
architectural concepts.

massiveness of the walls. For

Michelangelo it was this
blurring of representational
boundaries that allowed his
sculptural sensibilities to
translate into architectural
form while simultaneously
fulfilling the fortifications
defensive requirements

The plan of Enric Miralles

and Carme Pinss 198990
Olympic archery training
range in Barcelona is
saturated with lines that
mark both visible and
invisible geometries. These
geometries are motivated by
programmatic, structural,
experiential and contextual
relationships, establishing
architectural form as the
tangible trace of an
archeology of the seen and
the unseen, the static and
the animate, the above and
the below.

Analog
Just as a building is composed of a series of
independent systems that together construct
the structure, the analog drawing can be
understood as an archaeology of linesa
registration of multiple layers and ideas within
a surfacethat together register and imply
the third dimension. Unique to the pencil
drawing is the use of line weight that allows
the line to take on hierarchical significance in
relation to the various systems that construct

architectural space. If one were to imagine a

conversation, one might argue a correspondence exists between the volume of speech
and the significance of its content. Now, a
scream is not always more effective than a
whisper, and so too with the line. In an
architectural drawing, the weight of the line
establishes a link to its role in constructing
architectural space. A very light line might
reference an underlying geometry or set of
dimensional relationships. A darker, heavier
(continued on page 31)

Morphosis and the Representation

of the Indescribable
Despite their ultimate and obvious solidity
and despite their concrete presence, works
of architecture begin and then persist as
ephemeral constructions. Architecture is
born from our remembrance of the architectures we have known and resonate with
our expertise in using the tools we are
given to produce further architectures.
Even after construction, our perceptions
of a building are influenced by weather,
light, sound, other occupants, the events
of our day, our thoughts and memories
dodging and feinting through our
mindsall affect how and what we
comprehend.
Recognizing this, the work of Thom Mayne
and Morphosis proceeds from a commitment to the ubiquitous complexities of our
world. It is instigated by the complexities
they observe beyond the workin the site,
in the program, in history, in human behavioras well as forming a parallel to the
complexities that are always to be found in
every type of discourse.
Layers of complexity influence each project from its inception, as Mayne and
Morphosis seek to infuse the projects with
compound forms, forms that collide, shear,
bend, warp, rotate, and that are as often
subtracted from each other as added, generally articulated by numerous materials
and textures. Just as in the early twentieth
century the cubists, futurists, and constructivists attempted works that, despite
their essentially static states, represented
the increased dynamism of their societiespresent in speed, movement,
mechanical and industrial devicesthe

Sixth Street: Serigraph, 1988

Thom Mayne with Selwyn Ting and John Nichols Printmakers

Above: Penang Turf Club Masterplan, 2004

Study Model, Morphosis

Perot Museum of Nature and Science: Gicle Print, 2009

Thom Mayne with Kerenza Harris; Jack Duganne (Printmaker)
and Jeff Wasserman (Serigrapher)

works of Morphosis supplement these

influences with each building serving as a
record of the dynamism of the process of
its production in anticipation of the dynamism of its eventual usage and reception.
In the earlier days of the office, the compounding of forms was achieved largely
through the transparency of paper and
Mylar: drawings were layered, occasionally
even combining various formats of drawings (such as axonometrics, plans, and
sections) leaving remnants of an oblique
in plan, of a plan in elevation, just as the
components of a building might be merged
into a larger complex. Occasionally, the
materials comprising the drawing, such as
copper ink, would be used to evoke a sense
of the material entropy that would normally occur only in a completed construction. The drawing, just as a building, was a
construction with all of the attributes one
might find in a building.

Eventually, the computer with its considerable capacity for storing, replicating, and
transforming visual information, enhanced
the ability for Morphosis to use representation in a productive, experimental way. The
subtraction of complex, three-dimensional
voids from equally complex, three-dimensional solidscomplexities that were
previously almost indescribablebecame
relatively effortless. Not only does the
computer permit the generation of these
indescribable forms, but it facilitates the
specific description of these forms directly
to engineers and fabricators. The generation of actual three-dimensional models
from many of these computer programs
became an invaluable resource for the
investigation of what Thom Mayne
describes as combinatory form, a

strategy of design that relates not only to

the architecture of a building, but brings
to the architecture of a city the intricacies
of aggregate forms that normally accrue
only over time.
Often, after its design process has ended,
Morphosis would rerepresent a project in
a type of critical autopsy, an attempt to
identify and further mine the potentials of
its strategies. In other words, representation in various media becomes a creative,
vital, and organic process that leads both
to the development of a design and the
speculative exploration of a projects
extended possibilities. For Morphosis, representation is the architects principal
experience of a building.

Left: Mies van der Rohes drawing of 192021

project for a glass skyscraper uses charcoal to
study the primary architecture concept of a
tower that celebrates the reflective properties
of glass. The strong, almost primitive, thrusts
of charcoal produce the distinct vertical
patterns of light created by the towers
faceted surface.

Right: This series of Herzog & de Meurons

model studies for the 2000 Prada Tokyo
project in Aoyama, Tokyo, explores the
perceptual relationship between the form
and material. The relentless repetition of a
standard form whose single variation is the
material with which it is constructed facilitates the immediate testing of alternative
material concepts.

Representation

line might establish the importance of a

primary wall in defining the limits of the space
or the surface of the ground from which
a volume is emerging. It is the range and
relationships of these lines within a drawing
that can establish the complex contextual,
spatial, proportional, and dimensional
relationships that are embedded within the
development of an architectural concept.

This conceptual model for

Diller Scofidios 1991 Slow
House is an apparatus for
vision. Building sections are
drawn onto glass slides that
are incrementally inscribed
into the body of the house.
Here, the reverse perspective
form of the wooden mass that
connects the carport to the

ocean beyond is interrupted

by a series of flattened glass
layers. Two distinct forms of
vision are simultaneously
demonstrated: one a series of
reiterative and flattened
spatial layers, the other a
perspectival (albeit reverse)
cone of vision.

31

Models constructed of more permanent

materials such as plaster, wood, metal, or
glass can explore both the perceptual and
physical behaviors unique to a particular
materials composition and fabrication
practices. Plaster castings privilege the study
of architectural space as the models
necessitate the literal construction of the
space as formwork for the actual production
of the model. A steel model, on the other
hand, might be more concerned with
exploring the qualities of a concept that is
informed by a component systemone that
is additive or layeredwhere repetition
and jointure becomes a critical part of the
development of the concept.

30

Physical models made from paper or cardboard have the ability to explore volumetric
and spatial relationships and depending
on their scale focus on one or two salient
concepts with which the work is being
developed. Due to the ease with which
they are constructed, they can be rapidly
transformed, and even intentionally misread.
They can infer materiality through the
dimension and deployment of their componentsthick suggesting material massive
(i.e., concrete or stone) and frame suggesting
repetitive thin (i.e., steel or wood) but remain
abstract representations of three-dimensional

constructions. Freed from material specificity,

they can suggest fluid conceptual associations between unlike materials but whose
properties encompass similar characteristics
as a buildings walls are an extension of the
ground on which it sits.

Digital
The computer enables alternate modes of
representation through 2-D and 3-D CAD
software programs. And as with analog,
digital drawings are constructedbut unlike
the analog, the construction of the digital
image does not evolve as a continuous
operation. Instead, it is a process of
introducing layers of information that, as
with a cadaver, are subsequently operated
onoperations that might include dissection
or accretion, addition or subtraction,
repetition and variation, forming and
deforming, lofting or booleaning, and so on.
More sophisticated computational processes
deploy the computer as a generative tool
shifting its role from representing and/or
transforming existing form to making form.
Establishing a set of specific constraints and
behaviors can generate complex forms and
performative behaviors and relationships that
subsequently allow for the interactive testing
of alternatives within a context of both
physical and behavioral environments.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

In Ben van Berkel and Caroline

Bos of UNStudios drawings for
the 19982008 Music Faculty
in Graz, Austria, surface
continuity is overlaid with
serial repetition to provide
the fundamental spatial and
structural tools that can be
subsequently morphed and
transformed to produce
spatial composition as a
function of programmatic
specificity.

Software programs such as AutoCAD require

the use of an inventory of line weights to
create hierarchical differentiation. If this
differentiation in the analog is developed
through the processes of drawing, with the
computer the weight (i.e., significance)
assigned to each line must be determined a
priori. In other words, a certain knowledge or
intention is required.

J. Mayer H.s Metropol Parasol

in Seville, Spain, (20042011),
is an archaeological museum,
a farmers market, an elevated
plaza, multiple bars and
restaurants, and a panoramic
terracespaces that are all
derived from what appears to

be a single primitive increment

that is subsequently multiplied,
informed, and transformed by
the parameters established by
the fusing of a bonded timber
structure with extreme ranges
of programs, scales, and
relationships to gravity.

Computational processes often deploy

geometric primitives that are subsequently
iterated, repeated, transformed, informed,
deformed, and reformed to produce
architectural form. The data that motivates
these procedural transformations of the
primitive can be informed by a broad range
of criteria (structural, performative,
ecological, and so on). The resulting
architectural vocabulary is one that often
registers these aggregations of morphing,
transforming, and accreting primitives. Here,
the architect is no longer the maker, per se,
but the choreographer of processes that
result in architectural form.

forms. These models give the

designer the freedom to
study form from a virtually
infinite number of perspectives and facilitate the study
of form as a function of its
environmental, perceptual,
and physical contexts.

Computer applications can be directed to

program a wide range of machinery that
operates in very distinctive ways. Some use a
laser to cut thin layers of material that can
subsequently be assembled into threedimensional models (laser cutter). Others
use drills to remove or excavate material
from an existing material mass (CNC mill),
and still others aggregate lightweight
granular material via a series of successive
layers to produce an essentially homogenous
three-dimensional object (3-D printer). Each
of these fabrication processes is allied to
conceptual strategies that can be uniquely
explored through the technological
constraints of the machine and its corresponding software.

33

exceed the normal graphic

and modeling capabilities of
standard analog techniques.
Digital programs, such as
Rhino, facilitate both the
addition and subtraction of
compound forms, and then
instruct the 3-D printer to
generate models of these

D. Quesada Lombo, D. Wake)

is designed as an interdependent garden wall/gray
water filtration system/
shading system/ventilator,
one that provides expanded
space for the building to
which it is attached.

32

In these study modelsfor an

addition to the Stockholm
Public Library (by student
Natalie Kwee in Val Warkes
2011 design studio at
Cornell)the 3-D printer uses
digital information to
produce highly complex
combinations of forms that

responses generate complex

geometries that are
subsequently fabricated
by digitally controlled tools.
The resulting aggregated
forms express the performance parameters. The
EatMe Wall project, shown
here, (D. Cupkova, M. Freundt,
A. Heumann, W. Jewell,

Representation

Professor Dana Cupkovas

2009 Adaptive Component
Seminar at Cornell University
asks students to explore the
development of a component
system whose individual
parts adapt to localized
programmatic, structural
and climatic criteria. These
incrementally adaptive

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Referred to as the classic

Carthage section, Le
Corbusiers section for the
1927 Villa at Carthage shows
a series of interlocking
spaces. It is perhaps the
clearest example of Le
Corbusiers concept of the
long dimension, the notion
of expanding spaces by

always opening up diagonal

vistas in plan and, in this
case, in section. Within each
space, one is simultaneously
occupying at least three
spaces: the space that one is
physically occupying is
spatially overlapping with
those above and below.

Gio Pontis view diagrams for

his 195357 Villa Planchart in
Caracas, Venezuela, generate
the three-dimensional concept
for the house as a series
of intersecting perspectives.
As Ponti wrote in the his

February 1961 article in

Domus, #375: it is a
machine or, if you will, an
abstract sculpture on a
massive scale, not to be
viewed from outside but
[experienced] from within,

Typologies of Representation
Architectural representation facilitates the
examination and expression of architectural
thought as filtered through the unique
conventions that are embedded within a
particular type of representation.

Sections
Sections are vertical cuts taken through
space. They primarily concern themselves
with establishing a spaces relationship to
both ground plane and to other spaces, and
infer movement between those spaces.

Plans
Plans are drawings that reveal the relationship
of surfaces and volumes in space. They are
horizontal cuts through space, typically taken
at eye level looking down into the space. In a
series of essays originally published in LEsprit
Nouveau in 1921 and subsequently collected in
Toward an Architecture, Le Corbusier writes:
The plan is the generator. Without a plan, you
have lack of order, and willfulness. The plan
holds in itself the essence of sensation For
with Le Corbusier, one arrived at the third
dimension not through the construction of an
image but as the result of the transformation
of the plan into mass, space, and surface. The
plan is an architectural abstraction within which
are embedded the geometric principles of the
structure that rises above it.

Elevations
Elevations allow one to describe the vertical
surface. They are useful for studying the
interface between two unlike conditions (as
between an inside and an outside, or a public
and a private, or a large space and series of
smaller spaces).

penetrating it and moving

through it. It is made to be
observed by a continuously
moving eye. But this building
is not made only for the eye;
it is made for the life of its
inhabitants

The underlying frame of the

front entry elevation of
Giuseppe Terragnis 1932
Casa del Fascio (now Casa
del Popolo) in Como, Italy,
undergoes a series of
transformations that mediate
the divergent scales and

Axonometrics
Axonometrics are drawings that represent
the third dimension. They are measurable
drawings that allow one to study multiple
surfaces of a volume simultaneously. They
are often used to represent architecture as a
single object or as a collection of objects.

programs on either side of it.

The frame is suppressed as it
is transformed into billboard
for projected texts and
images viewed from the
adjacent cathedral square.
It is transformed into deep
portico as it expresses the

transparency of entry and

the primary interior gathering
space beyond. And it becomes
a more intimately scaled
balcony as it slides in front of
the slightly recessed offices
and meeting rooms within.

Aldo Rossis 1971 competition

drawing (with G. Braghieri)
for the cemetery of San
Cataldo in Modena, Italy,
is a frontal axonometric/
perspective. Here, the
combining and flattening of
both walls and roof surfaces
within the drawing produces
a series of spatial layers that
reinforce the processional
nature of the complex,
emphasizing the status of the
iconic objects that populate
the interstitial layers. The
density of the drawing
presents the cemetery as an
extension of the city
beyonda city of the dead.

wall in New York City. A series

of view cones becomes
the operational device that
is registered onto and
subsequently excavated
within the mass of the wall.

Representation

Vision is the generator of the

design concept as is
demonstrated in this
axonometric study of LTLs
Memorial Sloane-Kettering
Cancer Center Lobby 2005

Perspectives
Perspective drawings tend to privilege the
eye of the observer and what her or his
experience might actually be from a
particular point of view. While they create
the illusion of three-dimensional depth, they
can also be used to exaggerate the significance of a certain object or space through
the convergence of lines toward one or more
common vanishing points.
Steven Holls drawings for
the 1988 Cleveland House in
Cleveland, Ohio, literally

and of surface and mass are

blurred into a folded volume
that constantly shifts
between two and three
dimensions.

Animations
Animations explore the temporal aspects of
an architectural concept and the potential of
a space or material to undergo transformation. They tend to be iterative drawings that
can isolate a spatial sequence through which
one is moving or a more ephemeral
condition of light as it moves across a room.
Hybrids
Hybrid drawings and models sample multiple
representational typologies (plans, sections,
or elevations) to superimpose concepts,
materials, contexts, and scales that might
otherwise be embodied by singular representational strategies. Through the combining of
multiple representational typologies, the
characteristics that are elucidated by one are
combined with the other, facilitating an
aggregate conceptual richness.

35

by a continuous representational loop as perspectival

drawings of the volume are
re-embedded within it, which
is subsequently redrawn as a
fused entity. The distinctions
between drawing and model

the vertical sequence as a

series of interconnected
perspective views.

34

Preston Scott Cohens 1994

model for a competition
proposal for a Head Start
Facility emerges from a
two-dimensional field of
perspective drawings. An
initial volume is transformed

unwrap the experience of

ascending the stair that lines
the entry vestibule, inscribing

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Accommodating a program is more

than solving a puzzle: It requires
three-dimensional strategizing, an
understanding of space, the addition
of missing elements, and a concept.

program
Programs begin with measurements and expectations but mature with thoughtfulness and
understanding, anticipation, and empathy.

36
37

An architectural program is, in its most basic form, the

list of requirements that initiates a project. Outlined by
the client, often with the assistance of either an architect
or a special consultant, this type of program generally
represents a compromise between desire and budget.
And although determined by the client, the client is not

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Beginning with the Roman

Empire, the freestanding
arch conveyed a message of
memorialized triumph. The
Arch of Augustus outside
Aosta, for example, connotes
a first-century BCE victory
over a Gaulish tribe. The
nineteenth-century Arc de
Triomphe in Paris, although
originally programmed to
commemorate Napoleons
victory at Austerlitz, has

continued to evolve in
meaning and interpretation
as a monument of wartime
victory (alternately by the
French, the Germans, and the
Allied troops), and as a monument to achieved peace. Its
attic stories have been
programmed to include
associated museums, most
recently one dedicated to the
iconography of the arch itself.

necessarily the user. Even in the case of a

house, it is unlikely that a client would
forever be the only occupant.
In schools of architecture, the program may
resemble a client-generated program, but it
inevitably encompasses specific pedagogic
objectives. The studio instructor usually
generates such programs, with stated
requirements serving as vehicles for
achieving these objectives.
But despite the apparent clarity a program
suggests, accommodating a program is more
than solving a puzzle: It requires threedimensional strategizing, an understanding
of space, the addition of missing elements,
and a concept. Further, many programs tend
to include contradictory requirements that
need to be resolved through some form of
negotiation or innovation.

The Empirical Program

The empirical aspect of a program can be
derived from charts, tables, and direct
measurements: in general, observations of
the way things are. The data that contributes
to the empirical program are basically
dimensional, functional, relational, and
measurements determined by building
and safety codes.
Dimensional
There are certain dimensions that can
be taken for granted and that must be
recognized when compiling a program.
The most fundamental of these dimensional
imperatives is the accommodation of
the human body.
The architect should be aware of the kinds
of bodies that will occupy a building. The
average adult tends to conform to a range

of dimensions concerning height, grasp, eye

level, and the variable dimensions related to
the body while sitting, leaning, or reclining.
These dimensions differ considerably in the
case of children from infancy toward
adulthood. Additional dimensions should be
taken into account for the accommodation
of those in wheelchairs, those with special
physical requirements, and the innumerable
nonaverage adults.
Foremost in all of these cases are those
dimensions that permit someone to move
comfortably through space: hall and aisle
widths, ceiling heights, the angles and
lengths of stairs and ramps, as well as the
suitable arcs and angles that permit the
unimpeded operation of doors, windows,
and other moving elements.
(continued on page 41)

Program as Tactical Device: Rem Koolhaas

and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture

Bordeaux House, exploded axiometric sketch

It can be argued that the fundamental motivations guiding the work of OMA include a
relentless reconceptualization of the mod-

The Bordeaux House addresses a unique

domestic program assignment by producing a courtyard house on a sloping site,

userwith specific practical and customary needs: His program centers on a

piston-driven elevator that serves a verti-

ernist project, an opportunistic attentiveness to the intricacies and forces of formal

and cultural-political contexts, and persistent exploration of the grammar-syntaxlanguage intersection. However, the most
essential act of invention and intellectual
rigor is asserted through OMAs description,
organization, distribution, and theorization
of what we call program. With program, Rem
Koolhaasand earlier, Elia Zenghelisconstruct a conceptual framework for making
function and use architectural, and against
which all context-based and culture-specic
experimentation is understood.

organized into three horizontal slabs of

associated functions. The result is a layered
sandwich of program elements manifesting
as a heavy floating house for sleeping in the
sky, a light house carved in the ground for
cooking and access, and an invisible glass
house for living and leisure compressed
between the twoeach element self-sufficient and composed according to its own
programmatic logic. Within this structured
subdivision of program are rituals and
sequences that penetrate and actuate the
horizontal separations. The first is the
domestic realm of the fathera wheelchair

cal house comprising an office, library,

living, dining, sleeping, and wine cellar.
This elevator is a moving room, providing
access while fusing with the functional conditions it engages on each floor, producing
a temporal alteration of activity that conflates functions with users. The three
daughters occupy a private sanctum within
the compounds levitated red box, achieved
by slicing the entire composition along the
longitudinal axis, bifurcating the house
into two halves: parents and daughters. The
fathers elevator is countered by a spiraling
stair in a mirrored cylinder that serves only

the girls bedrooms, linking them from the

entry cave in the ground to pinwheeling
bedrooms in the sky.
In their project for the Kunsthal in Rotterdam (1992), OMA was challenged to satisfy
a complex set of functional requirements
including three independently accessible
galleries, an auditorium, external caf,
administration, storage, smaller galleries,
and service components. The scheme
assumes the form of a square penetrated by
a continuous exterior ramp facilitating the
connection between the boulevard and
Museum Park. A second passage, positioned below and perpendicular to the
public passage, allows for vehicular service
access. These crossing paths produce a
square cut into four distinct, disconnected
volumes. The resulting circulatory experience is conceived as a circuit of sloping
floors and ramps crafted into episodic
twists, turns, and counterintuitive movements that ultimately connect each part of
the complicated sequence, suturing parts
fragmented by their initial functional
assignments, producing access and orientation along the way.
OMA understands the inherent value of
addressing architectural program, of
embracing functional requirements to help
advance the intellectual and performative
basis for their work. They consistently perform complex acts of functional elasticity
whereby the edges, names, and restrictions
associated with typical functional limits
are tested and teased, allowing for the
intermingling and co-occupation of otherwise disparate programmatic elements.
Richard Rosa II (Syracuse University)

Kunsthal, north-south and east-west sections

Rotterdam, 1992

4
Program

The dimensions required of certain furnishings

must also be considered when developing a
program. This is true not only of the obvious
furnishings one might encounterfor example,
a single bed not only occupies a very different
amount of floor area than a king-size bed,
but the requisite areas surrounding each type
of bed vary substantiallybut also relates to
specialized furnishings. A trophy collection,
a library of 10,000 volumes, a classroom with
thirty desks, or various medical treatment
and imaging machines, to name a few, all
have specific requirements for accommodation, access, and occasionally for security or
safety enclosures.

In other words, one should not put too much

faith in the dimensional data one gathers while
programming, to aim for the tightest t. A
loose t is more likely to satisfy the vicissitudes that accompany the life of a building.

irregular oor plates (irregular

in plan and section, with some
ceilings exceptionally high for
a typical parking facility),
discontinuous structure, and a
number of intermittently
placed supplemental functions
(such as shops, restaurants,
and an event space often
used for product unveilings
and weddings) to produce a
continuously changing
sequence of episodes
connected by a grand,
cascading pedestrian stair.

41

Paradoxically, regardless of the people,

furnishings, or vehicles one anticipates in a
program, it is inevitable that other people,
furnishings, or vehicles will need to be
housed. People have children, age, develop
permanent or temporary infirmities; there
may be more or fewer of them to be
accommodated during the buildings
lifespan. The motorcycle may be traded for a
minivan. New medical advancements will
require different equipment. A high schools
athletic team might become exceptionally
victorious, needing more room for practices
and trophies; or the number of desks in each
classroom may need to double or halve.

Parking garages have been

among the most inflexible in
their programming and
functions, invariably optimized
for the accommodation of
automobiles: access ramps,
turning radii, dimensional
parking spaces, lack of
obstructions, utilitarian
pedestrian sequences, and
vertical structure that is burly
and repetitive. One of a new
series of parking structures in
Miami, the garage at 1111
Lincoln Road by Herzog and
de Meuron (200508) uses

40

In addition to the empirical data determined

by the human body and by furnishings, one
must also consider the accommodation of
other specialized dimensions, such as those
of various vehicles. Automobiles have a
clear range of length, width, and height
dimensions as well as ideal turning radii.
Delivery trucks, however, inevitably require
a completely different range of such
dimensions, as well as suitable dimensions
for loading docks or mechanical lifts.

Occasionally, even boats of various types

must be accommodated, each with its own
dimensions and docking requirements.
Moreover, vehicles usually require special
ventilation and fire enclosures.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Functional
There are few reasons for an architectural
design to fail to meet its basic functional
requirementsto perform as it is required
as long as those requirements are clearly
defined and there are the technical, material,
and budgetary means to accomplish them.
Functionality is the extent to which the
design is able to perform its tasks. Thoughtful programmatic development can enhance
the functionality of a design.
A musical rehearsal room, for example,
might require specific acoustic characteristicsdepending on the instruments that
use the space,as well as be isolated from
other performance spaces. Most classrooms
benefit from significant exposure to regulated
daylight and some even with direct access
to an exterior space. Other rooms, however,
especially those that deal with various
controlled mediasuch as projections and
computingor light sensitive materials may
require an easily darkened space, or one
with no direct sunlight.
Often, a program will require a multifunctional space, or the designer may decide
that several requirements can be simultaneously accommodated by merging spaces and
their functions, especially if these usages
might occur at different times of the day or
different seasons of the year. In designing
multi-functional spaces, however, the
architect must be certain that the space is
ideal for each of the separate functions. It is
often the case that such spaces, in their
aspirations for flexibility, eventually serve no
function very well.
Relational
A program should also note those elements
that usually require direct proximity, such as
pantries and kitchens or kitchens and dining
spaces. Lobbies tend to be near entries, for
example, which should in turn be near

The program for Alexander

Brodskys Pavilion for Vodka
Ceremonies (2004) at the
Klyazma Reservoir near
Moscow required the design
of both a pavilion and a
ceremony. Just as the
reservoir is a retreat for
Muscovites, the pavilion is
constructed of windows
salvaged from a factory in
the city. The whitewashed
mlange of windows suggests
a typical rural shed. In single
file, two people mount the

precipitous stairs and pass

through the narrow doors.
Within the unheated pavilion
(vodka should be near
frozen), the participants
stand on opposite sides of a
simple wooden table and dip
tin cupsattached to the
table with very short
chainsinto a basin of vodka.
They toast each other with
modest, slightly stooped
postures. The ceremonys
conclusion is indeterminate.

4
Program

vehicular access. While loading docks

inevitably require proximity to a road or
driveway, they are rarely positioned in the
most publicly viewed faces of a building.
The notion of arranging elements by proximity
is based on the optimization of usage or,
occasionally, of expense. For example, spaces
requiring plumbing are famously arranged
close to each other, often back to back and
vertically stacked, so that the expenses of
construction and repair are minimized.

laboratory for his architectural investigations as well an

educational environment for
his sons, for whom he hoped
architectural careers.
Unfortunately, his surviving
sons developed apathy for
architecture and a distaste
for their fathers architecture,
in particular. He willed his
house to the nation, and it
is now known as Sir John
Soanes Museum.

43

Codes
Building codes, including safety, zoning,
construction, and even esthetic codes,
can have a major influence on a program.
These codes are generally determined by
municipal, state, and national bodies. Codes
can determine everything from the required
distances from property lines to the maximum
building volume with setbacks, from the
widths of corridors to the numbers of fire
exits, from the types of materials that can be
used between spaces to the percentage of a
wall that is permitted to have windows, from
the types of steel that can be used to the
performance requirements of that steel.
Some codes even determine the color, style,
and exterior materials that are permitted
when building in a specific location.

In 1792, John Soane began

purchasing and then heavily
renovating a row of
townhouses and stables on
Lincolns Inn Fields in
London. While the program
for his manipulations was
ostensibly that of a large
urban residence, Soane,
architect of the Bank of
England and other great
structures, saw his house as
serving a didactic function: it
was a continuously evolving

42

Orientation is also important in determining

programmatic relations. A painting studio may
prefer north light, whereas a breakfast room is
best complemented with light from the east.
One may decide that public spaces, such as
living and dining spaces, or waiting rooms and
theater lobbies, should be oriented toward a
preferred view. Obviously, solar collectors
inevitably have a preferred orientation, and so
their location must be determined by the

maximum availability of sunlight. Prevailing

winds might be considered for the sake of
passive ventilation.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Building codes can guard the safety and the

living qualities of those who use a building
as well as those neighbors who might be
affected by the effects of a construction as
it alters an environment: its shadows, its
emissions, its traffic patterns, and so on.
The designer who understands these codes
during the programming stage will immediately know the range of a projects possibilities,
and will be able to make decisions that
benefit from the accumulated knowledge of
experiments, experiences, and examples.
(Overly restrictive codes, however, may
permit only predetermined design solutions,
a replication of set ideas, and prevent
innovations that may be benecial to a group
of users, a society, or an environment.)

When Le Corbusier was

brought in to design the
Carpenter Center for the
Visual Arts at Harvard
University, the program called
for exhibition spaces, studios,
a lecture/theater space,
offices, and, later, an apartment for a visiting artist. The

building, completed in 1963,

introduced a ramp that
drew pedestrians from the
bounding streets and upward
through the heart of the
building. With the ramp and
its accompanying spaces,
Le Corbusier introduces a
significant addition to the

program: the public is

invited to observe both the
artworks and their production
in what is essentially an
academic building turned
inside out, inaugurating a
new academic program in
the midst of a traditional
campus environment.

The Innovative Program

Jerzy Soltan, once a colleague of Le Corbusier,
and later a professor at Harvards Graduate
School of Design, succinctly observed, It
seems the concept of the program is so often,
too often, accepted by the designer passively.
The relations between programming and
designing constitute often the most painful
part of the process in the birth of a building.
Le Corbusier coined the famous phrase:
to design well, you need talent; to make
a beautiful program, you need genius.
(Architecture 19671974, in Harvard GSDs
Student Works 5)
Great works of architecture inevitably
transcend the simple empirical data
of a program, introducing elements and
relationships that can bring more to a
building than a simple resolution of its
fundamental requirements: it can inspire
its users and address audiences beyond
its boundaries, accommodate unimagined
futures, and improve its environment both
physically and experientially.

A municipal orphanage on
the outskirts of Amsterdam
provided the ideal program
for Aldo van Eyck, whose
interests involved the
relationship of architecture
to community and of the

of concrete modules
containing interior public
spaces while encircling a
sequence of exterior
courtyards. From above, the
building reveals its villagelike organization, with

Program

neighborhoods centered on
domed volumes accommodating residential, living, and
classroom spaces for each age
and gender group. Despite its
overall diagrammatic
precision, its components

humanist aspects of the

citymarkets, streets, and
squaresas they might
correspond to the design of a
building. The building,
completed in 1961, is
composed of an aggregation

An architect should be able to grasp cultural

and economic differences, to discover the
techniques with which a blind man senses his
environment, the ways a child with mental
disabilities perceives her daily rituals, the
conditions in which a senior citizen might
wish to engage a community, or the
importance of the family dinner within certain
cultural groups. All of these understandings
can lead to modifications of a program. No
two individuals can have the same experiences, but the architect is obliged to try to
understand the best means of empathizing
with a user, in order to initiate a productive
and gratifying dialogue.

benches, door stoops,

archways, and ledges
respond to the scale of its
young residents, with mirrors
and windows placed in
unexpected places and nearly
invisible to adults. Van Eycks

orphanage introduced open,

unassigned, semiurban
spaces as well as transitional
niches and nooks to a
building program that usually
values efficiency over vitality.

45

cafeteria workers and janitors. The architect

must be able to empathize with those
potential users of a work, to try to see
through the eyes of others.

44

Empathy
The eighteenth-century architect ClaudeNicolas Ledoux, wrote in his treatise on
architecture that the role of the client is to
express his needs, often badly. The role of
the architect is to rectify those needs. While
this may seem to be somewhat dismissive of
the role of the client, Ledoux underscores
the fact that, unlike the client who may be
aware of only a confined set of forms and
ideas, the architect must be aware of the
world beyond that of the client, of the
potential users and of the conceivable future
of a project. Ledoux often had the French
monarchy as his client, but in the case of his
Royal Saltworks, for example, the users were
an entire city of managers, workers, and their
families. Today, when designing a school, a
school district may be the client, but the
users are the teachers and students, the

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

The Spanish Steps were

designed by the architect
Francesco de Sanctis,
possibly in collaboration with
the papal architect
Alessandro Specchi after
more than 125 years of
debate over how to connect
the Piazza di Spagna to the
church of the Trinit dei
Monti, located at the top of
a steep slope. While
programmed as just a stair,
the Spanish Steps function as
a vertical urban garden, a
market, a place to rest, a
viewing platform, and seating
for spectators.

Hybridization
Some of the more innovative programmatic
manipulations come from the combination of
customarily isolated programmatic elements.
For example, while shopkeepers often lived
above or behind their shops, this tradition
has been abandoned in favor of planning
that separates commercial from residential
programs, especially in modern cities. This
results in districts that exhibit little life
outside a few circumscribed hours each day.
The hybridization of programmatic elements
can lead to a constantly reinvigorated
environment, where unanticipated juxtapositions can inspire unexpected and unimagined
thoughts and activities. The combinations of
a childrens library with a secret garden, an
art school with a public passageway, an
advertising agency with a billiard parlor, a

senior citizens center with a cooking school,

maybe even of a bowling alley with an art
gallery, all serve to bring the potential for
provocative experiences to normally
restricted programs.
When human behavior is unconstrained
by singular and proscribed roles, when a
program blurs the distinctions between one
or more functions, humans tend to expand
the range of their observations and to
innovate new behaviors.
Limitations as Advantages
Every program establishes a set of limits. Far
from being deterrents to the design process,
these limits are occasionally the sites of
genuine architectural innovation. For
example, the necessity for using only locally
available materialspine, bamboo, or

claymay initiate an inventive use of these

materials that can have implications well
beyond the development of a single project.
The unique cultural composition of a
neighborhood may suggest relationships
between previously ignored programmatic
elements, like the use of a garage as an
exterior dining space.

Jerzy Soltan, in the essay cited previously,

goes on to add his own interpretation to Le
Corbusiers words, But good programming is
related to a broad and deep attitude toward
the whole world, and life, real and dreamed.
Programs may begin with measurements and
expectations but will mature only with
thoughtfulness and understanding, anticipation and empathy.

4
Program

Some of the most inventive architectural

works are originating from studies of areas
with very limited material and economic
resources, such as some of the informal
cities that have grown surreptitiously (and,
often, illegally) in the almost inaccessible
centers and edges of many of the worlds
most dense urban environments. The design

of public transportation, day care, community, and educational facilities in these

neighborhoods has provided designers with
considerable challenges but has resulted in
some of the more inspirational productions
in contemporary architecture.

In Urubo, a small village in

Bolivia, Jae Cha designed a
small building to be
composed of locally
harvested wood and
translucent polycarbonate
sheets. Once designed, the
community built the
structure in just ten days.
Although programmatically a
church, the buildings plan
a circle within a circleis a
form that fundamentally
evokes the notion of
gathering, indicating its
capacity to function as a more
general type of communal
gathering space. With its
luminous wall surfaces
lending the structure a sense
of lightness and spirituality,
the church at Urubo (2000) is
a beacon of assembly and
both the religious and civic
nucleus of the village.

46
47

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Every architectural work exists in the

presence of a chorus of contexts that can
impart meanings to and, in turn, derive
meanings from their associations with
the work.

context
While a context can be measurable, it is also always malleable.

48
49

A work never exists in isolation. There is always a

context in which it is situated, and in which a relationship to that context is established. And while that
relationship can be platonic, casual, symbiotic, or
detrimental, it is the specifics of that context and the
ways in which it is interpreted that establish the terms

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

A composite building that

evolved and expanded over
600 years, the Vienna
Hofburg had an extended
conversation with its
surrounding context. It not
only alternates between

forming streets and squares

as it sidles up to existing
linear edges and as it
completes fragmented urban
spaces, but creates a
previously illegible axis as it
constructs backdrops that

terminate them. It fuses

itself with its context, it is an
architectural chameleon that
appropriates, blurs, and
produces its urban
boundaries.

Through its single columned

portico the Einar Jonsson
House (Reykjavk, Iceland,
1916) establishes a
monumental presence when

of dialogue. For one project, it might be the

physical context that emerges as the most
pressing voice to engage, for another it might
be the infrastructural, for yet another it might
be the ephemeral or the environmental. The
dialogue can be one of friendship or of foe,
one of accomplice or of exploitation, one of
exaggeration or of disregard, one of exposure
or of obfuscation. Yet, ultimately, a work has
the ability to give meaning to a context, to
encompass all that already exists within that
context and the opportunity to inect
previously unknown contexts.
At the Center for the
Advancement of Public
Action completed in 2011 for
Bennington College in
Bennington, Vermont, Tod
Williams and Billie Tsien used
reclaimed marble from now

extinct local quarries to

develop a material dialogue
with many of the civic
structures that populate
the villages and towns of
Vermont.

Physical Context
Within any site there are the physical givens
that bring unique identity to the context in
which a work is to be situated. They can also
be strong factors in motivating the concept of
that work. Existing structures have specic
dimensional and spatial characteristics (heights,
widths, openings, volumes), and material and
construction methodologies. Natural and
articial topographies (at or sloped, soft or
hard) can be powerful determinants in
establishing a buildings relationship to its site,
and views from and to the site bring an
expanded identity to a specic context. Yet,
while these givens are measurable, they are
often malleable, as a work can either emphasize
or deemphasize their signicance through what
it chooses to call attention to.

viewed from the city below.

However, its opposite side
addresses what was planned
to be an intimately scaled
public space embedded

within a residential
neighborhood. The design of
the house thus inspired the
scales and proportions of the
city as it developed around it.

Material
Material can establish a context for a work.
If one is to build a house in a town of wooden
houses, perhaps one might build it out of
wood. Or perhaps the material context might
be a particular species of wood in a local
forest, or the granite of a nearby quarry.
Or, inversely it might be thought of as an
extension of the ground on which it is
constructedas in a stone house situated on
a rocky outcropping. Or perhaps it will be
made out of brick to refer to an abandoned
brick factory whose very existence created
the town. In other words, a material context
is an expansive one.
Scale
Within a context there are two aspects of
scale that need to be addressed. One is the
scale of the site: a building in the middle of
the city will be affected by the scale of the
neighborhoodwhether it is embedded in a
block or surround by skyscrapersor by the
scale of the landscape in which it is situated (a
vast plain or a dense forest). Then there is the
scale of perceptionthe distant views from
which one will perceive the building and the
views that will be perceived from the building.
(continued on page 53)

lvaro Siza, Site-Seeing

If the engagement of a context is one of a

works most powerful forms of dialogue
the intimate, meaningful contact between
a condition and a propositionthe works
of the Portuguese architect lvaro Siza
Vieira are some of architectures most
articulate communications. Siza has developed a practice in which his buildings
seem to gather both natural and man-made
contexts into virtuoso compositions that
suggest they have always been integral
features of their environments, even
as those environments are constantly
changing.
For example, the horizon is a recurring
theme in Sizas earliest project, the Boa
Nova Tea House in Lea da Palmeira. Highly
controlled views define the buildings various relationships to its contexts. The steps
leading to the front door tell us of our proximity to the sea, of our position within the
rocks, of the nature of the large, hovering
roof that shelters the tea house. A long, low
horizontal dormer in the entryway reiterates the oceans always calm horizon while
a tilted skylight directly above shows a
piece of the sky, and another window below
frames a contrasting view to the turbulent,
rocky shore.
Later, the Galician Center of Contemporary
Art is surrounded by important baroque
structures, most notably a former monastery with its cascading gardens. While the
museums stone cladding recalls the granite of its neighbors, this stone is clearly
cladding rather than stacked masonry,
appearing at times to be suspended in the
air and surprisingly thin. On its most
public side, the museums masses follow
the edge of the street, their profiles subtly
deforming, causing the building to continuously reshape itself, based on ones position

Boa Nova Tea House,

Lea da Palmeira, Portugal, 1963

in the surrounding spaces. When approached

from the neighboring school, the angled
soffit and ramp seem to elongate the distance toward the monastery, making the
historic structure appear to loom larger
than it is. From the monastery, these same
angles distort perspective in the opposite
way, shortening the apparent length of the
street and reducing the scale of the museums volume. The regular grid of the stone
cladding underscores the distortion of the
surface. On the garden side, the museums
mass seems to be reduced, adapting to the
scale of the former gardeners shed, and
stepping downward until it becomes itself
a garden wall.
The works of lvaro Siza Vieira do not
simply denote their contexts, but they
observe, analyze, and even explain their
surrounding conditionsconnecting contexts that have dissolved into a past with
those being discovered in an ever-new
present. As Siza has said, Architects dont
invent anything; they transform reality.
Working with the layers of realities found
in a site, Siza manages to produce works
that elaborate, expand, test, and inevitably
alter our perceptions, demonstrating that
even finished buildings are capable of continuously renewed and expanded dialogues
with their contexts.

Galician Center of Contemporary Art,

Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 198893

Space
There are primarily two scales of spaces.
A building exists within a network of public
spaces, and how a building relates to these
spaces can establish conditions of entry and
orientation. And then there is the buildings
internal and sometimes private spatial
network, whose circulation and access to air,
light, and view are equally dependent on its
relationship to those public spaces.

lvaro Leite Sizas Tolo House

in Lugar das Carvalhinhas
Alvite, Portugal (200005)
amplifies the steepness of
site by hugging its surface as
it cascades down its extreme
embankment, a staircase that
connects upper and lower
circulation networks. The
dwelling becomes a surrogate
landscape within which and
on which the occupants reside.

Site
The natural site will have specic physical
attributes as in impenetrable or porous,
sloped or at, irregular or even, permanent or
temporary. It can also be a constructed site
that operates as a surrogate ground (a block
of buildings, a retaining wall). It can be a visual
oneas in the views that are seen from the
site. The dialogue established with these site
conditions can initiate spatial complexities.
Infrastructural Context
There are aspects of contexts that already
have elaborate networks and systems
embedded within them, some of which may
be tapped into whereas others simply may
have to be contended with. These can take
the form of physical traces, as in archaeological or geological layers, or more formalized
transportation and service infrastructures. It
is the dialogue with these infrastructures that
can locate a work within a specific context.

52

The form of the View House

by Johnston Marklee and
Diego Arraigada Architects in
Rosario, Argentina, develops
in response to a perceptual
and environmental engagement with context. A series
of formal distortions solve

apparently contradictory
desires to have privacy within
a suburban context and yet
establish framed views of the
distant landscape. Direction
of prevailing winds and angles
of sunlight situate the house
in its more ephemeral context.

53

Layers
Occasionally, a site has been previously
occupiedan archeological palimpsest,
layered with traces of what was once there
over an extended period of time. One has to
decide how, if at all, these sometimes physical
and other times implied, traces of previous
occupations are going to inform a subsequent
layer. A museum built over a great roman ruin
might be considered differently than a house
built over an old ice shed. Similarly, the
structure of a site can be the result of an even
more distant set of geologic events that can
subsequently provide insights as to its future
evolution. The nature of this transformation
and movement over time can inform an
architecture that anticipates potential disasters.

Context

Peter Eisenmans City of

Culture of Galicia (200111)
references the city plan of
nearby Santiago de
Compostela, Spain, in
producing a surrogate
landscape that connects the
rural topography with the
urban center. The landscape
is metaphorically inscribed
by pedestrian rivulets that
define the volumes of the
complexs eight buildings.

Referencing their Roman

ancestors, Rafael Moneos
1986 Museum for Roman
Artifacts in Merida, Spain,
overlays a series of loadbearing masonry walls onto
the ruins of a first-century
BCE Roman town and
subsequently becomes the

new site for the display of the

towns excavated objects. As
with an archeological site, the
geometry of the parallel walls
registers the location of the
excavated ruins onto which
they are overlaid and through
which they pass with
abandon.

Networks
A buildings relation to existing circulation
and service networks has to do with suturing
the various systems that would make a
building a vital component of a larger
network. Existing paths at multiple scales
(pedestrian, automotive, bicycle, public
transportation) may be pulled into the
building to not only provide access but to be
part of a larger whole. Access to various
service elements such as water, air, sewage,
and electricity can also provide parameters
that inform a projects engagement with this
expanded context.
Ephemeral Context
The idea of a Grand Prix being held in
the city of Monaco or the Spirit Path at the
Jongmyo Shrine in Seoul Korea where only
spirits are allowed to walk are but two
examples of the many invisible contexts that
require a different form of investigation.
Cultural traditions, narratives, and local
histories are often embodied in the physical
constructs that a culture produces.

In manufacturing a new site

on the lake, Studio Grandas
1992 Town Hall in Reykjavk,
Iceland, both collects existing
paths and manufactures new
ones that were previously
unseen. Its resulting form
becomes a civic collector, one
that is reinvented seasonally
and at multiple scales and

The stepped water structures

as documented by Klaus
Herdeg in his portfolio of
drawings that accompanied
his 1967 exhibition Formal
Structure in Indian
Architecture are examples of
how the rituals and customs
embedded within a particular
culture find expression in
their architectural constructs.

narratives. Its moss walls

recall the flora and fauna of
the sagas, its volumetric
porosity an extension of its
urban context, its circulation
a walking route between two
distinct neighborhoods and
in winter it operates as
staircase to the frozen lake.

The fourteen chapels of the

Sacro Monte located near
Varese, Italy, and completed
in 1623 contain scenes of the
life of Christ, the Virgin Mary,
and the saints. The chapel
pavilions construct a
pilgrimage path up the now
sacred mountain that
terminates in the church of
Madonna del Monte. Each

pavilion establishes the

spatial context for one of the
important events of the life
of Christ, and like the
chapters in a narrative, each
pavilion is situated in relation
to its adjacent pavilions to
produce a seamless spatial
journey through the landscape.

It is through the geometry

of Ben van Berkels 1993
Mbius House in Het Gooi,
Netherlands, designed for a
couple with two children, that
the two independent and yet

intersecting domestic rituals

of sleep, work and domestic
life of the couple that inhabit
it are spatially mapped within
the volume of the house.

55

Narrative
Architecture has the ability to illustrate a
story, one of legends and of wars or one of
loves and of obsessions. A translation inevitably
has to occur and it is in perceiving that
translation that the work is able to address a
user, and then it tells a story.

54

Tradition
Rituals and traditions specific to a culture
can be inscribed within a context. They can
produce specific buildings or landmarks that
mark an extended route along which the
ritual occurs, or they can produce spaces
within which cultural practices can be
performed.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

The red, pyramid-topped

cones of Souto Mouras 2008
Casa das Historias Paula
Rego in Cascais, Portugal,
reference both religious and
secular contexts. By evoking
both the kitchen chimney of
the monastery at Alcobaca
and the pointed turrets that
dot the cityscape of nearby
Sintras National Palace, it
situates and interprets the
museum within multiple
histories and contexts.

Historical
The reading of a historical context reveals
what might have happened before on a
particular site. It can connect a series of
events that might have occurred in vastly
different time periods. And even though it
may not be physically present, a historical
context continues to be alive in the
memories of the citizens.
Environmental Context
One of the most important and pressing
aspects of the design of a structure is its
environmental context, a context that can
either affect the building positively (as
provide warmth or shade) or extremely
negatively (as in erosion or collapse). Most
characteristic of this context is that it is
continuously transforming, either in
predictable or unanticipated ways. And the
building in turn has a responsibility toward
that context: perhaps at worst it will coexist,
but at best it will enhance it.

Extreme Variability
Architecture has a responsibility to anticipate
that the environment in which it is situated
will change, and often in quite unpredictable
ways. Extreme weatherfloods, earthquakes,
hurricanes, and avalanchesintroduce design
parameters that situate a work in a specific
environmental context. A building erected in
a flood plain might be raised on stilts while
one in a frequent avalanche zone might be
wedge shaped and embedded into the
mountainside.
Weather
Rates of environmental change can be more
predictable, from a twenty-four-hour cycle to
seasonal variations. A buildings anticipation
of the behaviors of basic yet constantly
changing environmental elements of sun,
rain, and wind cannot only be traced in the
placement and dimension of apertures, the
slopes of roofs, and the materials used, but
in the more fundamental placement of a
building within its actual physical site.

Constructed over 4,000 years

ago, sunken courtyards dot
the landscape of Henan
province. These ingenious
dwellings not only take
advantage of the relative
constant temperature of the
earth to keep them cool in
the summer and warm in the
winter but free up the ground
plane for agricultural fields.

Atelier Bow Wows 2008

Double Chimney House in
Nagano, Japan, reflects the
firms belief that architecture
should express the behaviors
of its occupants and the
inherent elements of the
environment in which it is
constructed. Here the house
is split open into two halves,
permanently registering both
its program (one side for
guests, the other for the
owner) and its environment,
as the house carefully
situates itself amongst the
trees, opening itself up to the
southern light.

Context

The Global Seed Vault in the

Svalbard Mountains of
Norway (2008), designed by
Peter W. Sderman of
Barlindhaug Consult, is a
highly secure facility
containing up to 4.5 million
seeds from around the world,
partially carved into a
mountain for protection from
variable temperatures,
earthquakes, climate change,
and other potentially
devastating environmental
impacts. Its entrance is
designed in both shape and
material to avoid the risks of

avalanches and major storms.

The roof and front of this
concrete and steel entry is a
beacon signaling the
presence of the structure
while suggesting its function
as a potential source of life
rediscovered. This sculpture,
entitled Perpetual
Repercussion by its artist,
Dyveke Sanne, consists of
prisms, mirrors, and steel
shards that combine with
turquoise fiber optics to
alternately reflect the subtle
arctic light and to glow with
its own luminosity.

56
57

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Architecture can be considered an

instrument that, either through passive
or dynamic means, actively engages
or takes advantage of environmental
elements.

environment
Architecture exists as just one part of a total environment, engaged in an intricate balance
between exploitation and enhancement.

58
59

A building exists in, and interacts with, the environment at various scalesfrom the cellular to the infrastructuraland the definition of that environment is
important in framing its relationship and engagement
with a design. Every design should anticipate not only
its impact on the environment but also the changes in

Rahul Mehrotra Associates

2004 Rural Campus for the
Tata Institute of Social
Sciences (TISS) located in
Tuljapur, India, builds on an
ancient ventilation practice
by introducing wind towers in
all its buildings. These wind
towers catch the wind that
exists at higher elevations
and draws it into the
building, facilitating the
integration of passive cooling
to its interior spaces.

the environment that will subsequently

impact it. Variable conditions that include
seasonal change, temperature, precipitation,
wind, solar exposure, as well as potentials
for extreme weather that can be responsible
for fires, flooding, avalanches, and so on,
can be powerful conditions that inform
architectural form.

The Icelandic turf house

emerged as a response to the
northern climates harsh
temperatures. A roof covered
with thick turf and walls
made from double rows of
earthen bricks cut directly
from the surrounding
landscape form an insulating
cover around the timber
structure. Grenjadarstadur,
Iceland, nineteenth century.

Architecture can be considered an instrument that, both through passive or dynamic

means, actively engages and takes advantage
of environmental elements. Defining the
terms of the environmental boundaries within
which a building exists is critical to establishing the nature of its interaction. And the
awareness that a building impacts not just its
immediate environment, but that it exists
within an expanded environmental cycle can
influence such aspects as choice of materials
and its subsequent ability to be an active
participant in improving the environment.
Instrumentation
As with any kind of instrument, architecture
too can be an opportunistic device that
exploits, passively, and/or actively, environmental conditions and contexts to benefit
the comfort and rituals of its inhabitants.
Static, Passive
Form, orientation, siting, and material
choices can use or even amplify existing

environmental conditions to a buildings

benefit. Taking advantage of the natural
insulation and thermal properties of earth,
for example, can suggest embedding houses
within the ground or making walls out of
adobe bricks or rammed earth.
A buildings orientation can take advantage of
prevailing winds by allowing cooling breezes to
move through apertures specically designed
to capture and facilitate airow. It can harness
sunlight to warm its interiors through the
addition of a plane of glass layered proud of its
exterior walls, making what is called a Trombe
wall. Daytime heat, captured between these
two surfaces is subsequently absorbed through
the walls to its interior at night. The Trombe
wall effect greatly minimizes temperature
variations and reduces the need for
supplementary heating systems.
Responsive
Architecture can be performative at multiple
scales as it engages the environment. Whether
it is a material that is embedded with an
environmental intelligence (a form of genetic
engineering, where materials are altered to
serve architecture), an individual manipulating
a vent, or a mechanism that rotates an entire
house, a dynamic architecture is one that
actively interacts with a continuously
changing environment.

6
Environment

Jenny Sabin and her

collaborators, spanning
across the fields of cell
biology, materials science,
electrical and systems
engineering, and architecture,
search to understand how
context or environment can
specify form, function, and
structure. Dynamic biological
processes offer unique
insights into generative and
ecological design and inform

their speculative e-Skin

projecta responsive wall
assembly of biomimetic
surfaces composed of
sensors, signals, and
responses. (Cell-matrix
interface by Ihida-Stansbury
and Yang, responsive wall
assembly by Sabin, Lucia,
and Nicol)

The bamboo folding screens

that enclose FOAs (Foreign
Office Architects) 2007
Carabanchel housing project
in the periphery of Madrid
allow the occupants to

control the amount of

harsh sunlight filtered
into their individual
units, working together
to create a continuously
transforming faade.

60
61

Controlled by a three-button
panel, Angelo Ivernizzis
192934 Casa Girasole (or
Sunflower House) in northern
Italy rotates so that it can
follow the position of the
Sun. Borrowing its revolving
technology from railroad
turntables, the wheels tracks
are subsequently traced
within the gardens plantings.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Sustainable Environments
Architecture inuences the planet in which we
live, and the question one should ask is: How
does this sensibility affect architectural form?

Epi-phyte Labs Green

Negligee proposes an
environmental armature for
an existing housing block in
Bratislava, Slovakia. The
performative veil, part
building part landscape,
finds its form through

environmental analysis. The

screen hosts a range of biodiverse systems, species, and
energy-capturing devices
that together address the
inefficiencies of the existing
building and create new
spaces for social interaction.

Building envelopes for example, can be

engineered to breathe or sweat to repel
moisture or to become more opaque as
they acoustically mediate inside and out.
A responsive architecture is one that undergoes transformation as motivated by its
engagement with environmental stimuli. It
is one that is often embedded with scales
of programmatic responses from the cellular
to the mechanical.
Composite materials can be engineered to
combine behaviors and characteristics that
were previously identified with individual
materials. The study of natures models
increasingly serves as inspiration for the
development of material systems that mimic
natures ability to adapt to a continuously
changing environment, where performance
is often directly related to form.

Siobhan Rockcastles 2008

Bachelor of Architecture
thesis at Cornell University
proposes a series of artificial
groundscapes that draws
contaminated water up from
the water table and filters it
through a canopy of live
material before reintroducing

it back into the water. A

component system of
triangulated forms of various
dimensions and densities
constructs a system of
elevated walkways, bridges,
and follies, allowing the
pedestrian to experience the
remediated landscape.

Vegetationlocal and infrastructural benefits

Earth-covered roofs can both insulate and
manage runoff erosion by absorbing
rainwater. Green walls planted with native
vegetation can provide habitats for natural
species, improve air quality, absorb rainfall,
as well as provide building insulation and
noise reduction.
Materials
The effect of depleting the Earths resources
in the choice of building materials can be
minimized if they themselves are replaceable.
It is well known, for instance, that bamboo
forests are replenished every ve to seven years.
Remediation
Buildings and landscapes can contribute to
the cleaning of polluted environments.
Contaminated soil and water often found in
abandoned industrial wastelands can be
remediated through introducing frameworks
that support plant growths that absorb
existing pollutants or earthworks that isolate
and contain contaminated earth.

Energy
Solar panels and geothermal systems are just
two examples of how the environment can be
used to provide the necessary energy to
enhance a structures heating, cooling,
ventilation, and power needs.
One Mans Trash Is another Mans Treasure
An opportunistic architecture is one that
reuses material that has either been discarded
or considered spent. Tires, discarded soda
cans, material salvaged from building
demolition, and so on, can be appropriated
for new constructions. Manufacturing
processes that reuse already used products to
produce recycled building materials reduce
postconsumer waste. Material fabrication
processes that use biodegradable materials
can also insert themselves into this cyclical
concept of regeneration.
Holistic View
Architecture exists as part of a total
environment. Environmental economies can
begin to emerge as a result of considering
the potentially dynamic reciprocity between
multiple species and the environments that
sustain them. As with the cell, where half of
what defines its behavior is what exists
outside of it, complimentary systems feed
each other and build on symbiotic and
cyclical relationships to construct sustainable
and fluid environmental ecologies.

MINIWIZ uses recycled PET

bottles to form its POLLI-Bricks,
an architectural brick capable
of cladding entire buildings.
The 2010 EcoARK constructed
as the main exhibition hall of
the Taipei International Flora
Exposition uses these recycled
bottles as its primary building
material. The translucent
blocks can be disassembled
and reused elsewhere.

Environment

Caroline ODonnell of CODAs

Party Wall uses detritus
from a skateboard
manufacturer as its primary
cladding for MOMAs PS1
2013 summer pavilion. The
scalelike wooden shards
create a porous skin that not
only offers summer shade but
can also be detached to
provide event seating.

62

compacted, is transformed
into various shapes that can
be subsequently assembled
for new construction.
The city is continuously
rebuilding itself from what
has been discarded.

63

Terreform ONEs Rapid Re(f)

use: Waste to Resource City
2120 project proposes a
landscape in continuous
motion, where nothing is ever
really thrown away. Here,
trash is separated into
material categories and,
instead of being arbitrarily

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

In architecture, a sense of mass is

derived from the noticeable presence
of volumetric density.

mass
Paradoxically, a sense of massiveness can be most evident in conditions of apparent
weightlessness.

64
65

Most consider the making of buildings to be an additive

processand indeed it usually is. It is the layering of
multiple materials and systems that, together, construct
the completed edifice. However, when a work is conceptually conceived as a monolithic volume, the resulting
mass transcends the thinness of these layers.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

The walls of Wang Shu and

Lu Wenyus 2008 Ningbo
Historic Museum in Ningbo
China are constructed of
bricks and tiles recycled from
local buildings. A delicate
imbalance is achieved
between the massive form
with its tilting surfaces and

And though buildings tend to be thought of

as massive if they are very large, a sense of
mass in and of itself does not necessarily
suggest scale. Mass is the distinct presence
of volumetric density.
The pyramids of Egypt are masses that
convey solidity and impenetrability.
Embedded within their cores are the inner
sanctums of the pharaohs for whom they
were built. Here, mass is both a literal volume
of stacked blocks of stone and a symbolic
one of impenetrability and longevity. The
secret passage through which the mummy
was transported is conceptually understood
as an excavation within this massa negative
space that is conceived through the removal
of mass.

In Peter Zumthors Thermal

Baths in Vals, Switzerland,
mass is achieved at two
distinct scales. A series of
(often occupiable) piers in
spatial dialogue with one
another together construct
mass at the building scale.

The spaces that are defined

between these piers are read
as the primary spatial voids.
At another scale, bands of
compressed gneiss produce a
monolithic mass of material
density.

Alberto Burris Crettoa land

art installation in Gibellina,
Sicilyis conceived as a
memorial to the victims of
the 1968 earthquake that
destroyed the town. Here, the
wreckage was amassed back
into the blocks by which the
town had originally been
organized and a blanket of

concrete poured atop the

rubble. The abstracted urban
monolith references the
towns physical past and
embedded within the masses
that construct the ghosted
streets is the physical
detritus of imagined
narratives.

Processes
A sense of mass is achieved by the relentless
repetition or aggregation of material or
volume that subsequently transcend their
individual incrementalism in favor of a
monolithic surface or volume. Yet, conceptually,
mass is conceived as a solid form, from which
spaces have been subsequently carved.
Additive
A sense of mass is exaggerated by the
repetition and accumulation of elements that
are known to possess considerable massas in
a pile of stones or bricks or a stacking of logs.
(continued on page 69)

the seeming fragility of each

material component. It
stands as a monumental
testament of the absence of
those structures devastated
by disaster and of the
presence of (vanishing)
construction traditions.

Mendes da Rocha
and the Levitation of Mass
The Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes da
Rocha asks a group of students if they know
why the pyramids were built. After all of
the traditional answers have been hesitantly proffered and rejected, with Mendes
da Rocha all the while shaking his head, he
goes on to say, The pyramids were built
because someone pointed at a giant rock
lying on the ground and asked, How can
we get this up there? and then he points
up into the sky.
The exhibition of getting this up there is a
recurrent theme in his work, which inevitably involves masses that are not simply
floating but, at times, appear to be caught
between ascent and descent, hovering over
plazas, pools, and even other buildings.
Because concrete, his material of choice, is
intrinsically very heavy, to see it float is to
witness an almost supernatural event, with
viewers responses being more of a subjective, emotional order than an objective,
rational one. Still, the levitation of mass
demands a resolution in physics, and
Mendes da Rocha supplies these resolutions sparingly.
One encounters the importance of mass at
the Brazilian Museum of Sculpture in So
Paulo. If the neoclassic museum required
a grand portico to signify its entrance as
well as its importance, Mendes da Rocha
uses a giant beam spanning the site to mark
the presence of this important museum.
This hollow beam, delicately supported on
its two end walls with seven steel joints,
houses lighting and storage for outdoor
events, while protecting from sun and
weather the plaza that is in turn the actual
roof of the museum as well as its principal
exterior public space. Investigating this
hulking yet buoyant block, one discovers
the primary interior spaces of the museum

Mendes da Rocha: Brazilian Museum of Sculpture,

So Paulo, Brazil, 1988

Mendes da Rocha: Underground passage entry on the Patriarch Plaza,

So Paulo, Brazil, 1992

Mendes da Rocha & METRO Arquitetos: Cais das Artes, Vitria,

ES, Brazil, 2008

below, carved into the gently sloped site

on a corner of a residential neighborhood.
The block provides the museum with its

The main gallery block of the Cais das

Artes (Arts Quay) in Vitria, designed with
METRO Arquitetos, seems to leap and frolic

symbolic portico, yet preserves the scale

of the neighborhood by reducing the bulk
of the museum itself.
Similarly, the huge steel blade that soars

above the pavement of the quay, permitting

views of the bay beyond and contrasting
with the resolute groundedness of the auditorium cube. Supported only on three pairs
of columns, the massive hollowed concrete

above the entrance to the underground passage in Patriarch Plaza in So Paulo protects
the escalators and stairs from the elements
while sketching an elegant arched entryway
over what might otherwise have been just

side walls (gigantic trussed beams, actually) support the interior floors, their
varying heights indicated by the steps of
the walls. Light reflected from the plaza
below lights the galleries through the gaps

a hole in the ground. The huge square arch

that marks entry into this important space

between the staggered floor slabs. One

moves about within the museum with the

seems almost to twist and crack as it sends

two brackets downward to support the
asymmetrical, curved arch over the stairs.
This arch then frames views from within
and through the space, ironically providing
a human scale from beneath while presenting a monumental scale when viewed from
the city, a monumentality that suggests the
importance of the gallery buried below,
giving access to one of the citys primary
urban parks.

same grace the museum moves about the

quay. Once more, Mendes da Rocha derives
lyricism from massiveness.
Concrete becomes cloudlike.

Mass

and space results from a

subtractive process, a literal
excavation that simultaneously produces the mass
(solid) of the church and its
occupiable spaces (voids).

In Ethiopia, Bete Giyorgis

(or the Church of St. George,
twelfth century) has been
carved from the solid volcanic
rock in which it is located.
Here, the construction of mass

Subtractive
By cutting into a solid, its thickness is
revealed; massiveness is disclosed by the
removal of substance that allows one to
perceive its dimensions.

The showers, toilets, and

cupboards of Pierre
Chareaus 1928 Maison de
Verre in Paris, France, occupy
the poch that sculpts the
spaces of the principal
bedrooms and bathrooms.

Their volumes reveal their

programmatic contours
and dimensions while
establishing the spatial
perimeters of the spaces
that their surfaces define.

The Nolli Plan of Rome, for example (see

chapter 11), represents the city as a solid mass
within which a series of gural voids has been
conceptually excavated. There, the city is
conceived as the inhabitable poch of everyday
life whose building surfaces produce the
background for the figural voids of civic and
religious spaces. Here, the public interior
spaces of the city are given for the first time
equivalent status as public exterior spaces,
producing a seamless spatial condition of
quotidian market, palazzo courtyard, religious
sanctuary, and ceremonial piazza, all dened by
the backdrop of the inhabitable mass of the city.

69

of the regulating lines and

data of the surrounding
context: extensions of
existing campus paths, views
that align the building with
the distant landscape, and
parapet heights of adjacent
buildings.

68

Conceptually understood as
an initially solid volume from
which discrete masses have
been removed, the resulting
voids in I. M. Peis 1973
Johnson Museum in Ithaca,
New York, are spatial
inscriptions and extensions

Architectural poch, on the other hand, is

the occupiable space that appears to be
excavated within the mass. Typically, it is
hierarchically secondary in programmatic
significance yet introduces another spatial
layer within the ground of the mass whose
surfaces define the primary spaces of the
building. This ground can often become a
figural accomplice to the shaping of
architectural space.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

In Pezo and Von Ellrichshausens 2005 Casa Polli in

the Collumo peninsula of
southern Chile, the cubic
mass of rough concrete
emerges from its site as a
lighthouse might on the
rocky precipice of the

Grafton Architects sectional

study model for their 2008
Bocconi University in Milan,
Italy, demonstrates a spatial
density where both the
primary auditoria and
streets between buildings

are conceptually carved from

a geological mass, producing
an occupiable landscape that
mediates between the scale
of the building and the scale
of the city in which it is
embedded.

The Siamese Towers of the

Technology Center at
Catholic University in
Santiago, Chile, are clad in a
series of skins, an outer one
of clear glass and an inner
one of fiber cement. The
collectively opaque, yet
constantly transforming

surface, privileges the

reading of a solid massone
where scale and detail give
way to profile and silhouette,
a monolith set against the
distant snow covered
mountains. Alejandro
Aravena, 200305

Pacific Ocean. The perimeter

walls that also define its
primary spaces not only serve
to locate its services and
circulation, but they become
the primary screen through
which the landscape and gaze
is framed and mediated.

Characteristics
Density and gravity are terms that are most
commonly associated with massthe impenetrability of a volume or its perceptual weight.
Density
A sense of mass can be achieved through
material or spatial density, as in a stone wall
or a medieval village, where the heaviness of
the material and the relationship of solid to
void contribute to the perception of density.
Monolithic form can also convey a sense of

masshowever here density is not equated

with weight or lack of space, but rather with
opacity and lack of scale.
Gravity
While all buildings are in a perpetual state of
resisting gravitational forces, an awareness of
this resistance can be amplified through
detaching or articulating a structure from its
ground. It is in this condition of apparent
weightlessness that a sense of massiveness
can be most evident.

7
are embedded the museums
auditoria and supporting
spaces) and the hovering
mass above creates the
Belvederean urban piazza
that connects the Paulista
Avenue to the city of So
Paolo and the distant
mountains beyond.

71

1944. Here, the solemnity of

the event is given presence
through the mass of the
enormous concrete
sarcophagus that hovers
above the graves and beneath
which the visitors pass.

Lina Bo Bardis 1968 So

Paulo Museum of Art lifts the
volume of the museums
primary galleries and
suspends it from two
enormous beams supported
on four pillars. The resulting
space captured between the
lower ground plane (in which

70

Mario Fiorentino and

Giuseppe Peruginis Fosse
Ardeatine, the 194552
cemetery and monument
outside Rome, marks the
mass execution of Italian
civilians by the German
occupation on March 24,

detaches its industrial

context from its interior
sacred space. The idealized
interior is suspended within
this exterior shell by strands
of concrete shafts that, in
turn, draw exterior light to
its interior.

Mass

The two shells of

Massimiliano Fuksass San
Paolo Apostolo in Foligno,
Italy (200109), are
simultaneously heavy and
light. The exterior concrete
shell is a seemingly
impenetrable box that

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Structure can be understood to be that

aspect of every construction that assists
in countering gravity and transferring
loads into the ground.

structure
The interplay between elements in tension and those in compression has been a
fundamental aspect in the development of architectural forms.

72
73

A common metaphor, whereby architecture is

represented as a body, considers structure to be a
form of skeletal system. This is only sometimes true,
however, in the cases when the various building
systemsskin, mechanical, interior finishes, and so
onare separated. It is perhaps most profitable to

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

The Hemeroscopium, a house

outside Madrid, Spain,
completed in 2005 by Antn
Garca-Abril and Ensamble
Studio, is a composition of
expressed equilibrium,
comprised of six different

beams piled in a spiral that

culminates in a twenty-ton
counterweight that is located
at the G[ravity] Point. Two
beams of waterswimming
poolsoffer compositional
balance to the construction.

consider structure to be that aspect of every

construction that assists in countering gravity
and transferring loads into the ground. While
gravity is a constant for most earth-bound
architecture, loads can vary widelyeven
during the life of a buildingdepending on
the materials used, the occupation of the
building, and even the effects of wind and
precipitation.
The beautiful efficiency of the earliest human
shelters probably developed from the
occupation of natural structures: caves and
trees. Once humans found themselves
searching for food in situations where there
might have been no available shelter,

branches, leaves, and bark were most likely

used to simulate the protection of trees. It is
commonly believed that with these branches
and the trunks against which lean-tos were
supported, columns may have had their origin.
Perhaps memories of the spatial characteristics
of caves encouraged the development of
vaults and domed spaces.
Regardless, most early structures were
composed primarily of elements that were
in compression; that is, the tree trunks,
bricks, and stonesthen columns, walls,
and archeswere typically being squeezed
by gravity.
(continued on page 77)

The billowing and apparently

weightless roof structure of
the 1972 Munich Olympic
Stadium by Frei Otto and
Gunther Behnisch is only one
part of a comprehensive
architecture that connected a
number of the Olympic sites
beneath a continuous mesh

of steel tensile structures

covered with PVC-coated
polyester and supported by
steel masts and concrete
anchors. As with traditional
tent structures, the Olympic
buildings were fully
constructed off site, and then
erected in just a few days.

Shigeru Ban and the

Softness of Structure
Shigeru Ban delights in making strong
structures out of weak material. Through
multiplication and increases in dimension,
previously unimagined structural properties are introduced to standard materials.
The result is a structural expression that is
characterized by the distinct qualities of
the weak material, one that is simultaneously familiar and yet abstract. The
buildings spatial program is the structure
and whether it is through recycled paper,
cardboard tubes, wood laminates, or shipping containers, the structures are
designed according to the strength of the
material used, taking advantage of the
characteristic of the material itself. The
material operates as a found object,
imparting its inherent limitations to its
creative redeployment.
Shigeru Ban has said that he discards
material preconceptions and in so doing
is able to connect the material or shape of
a standard material with an abstract idea,
one that is often informed by an environmental sensibility. As with his 2009
installation for the London Design Festival,
his paper-tube structures have introduced
a poetic value to a relatively low-tech and
adaptable material. Here, the triangulated
filigree of compressed cardboard tubes
rose 72 feet (22 m) above the south bank
of the Thames, a skeletal structure that
simultaneously evoked the areas industrial past while referencing the underlying
timber-framed structure of the nearby
reconstruction of the Globe Theater and
the timber navigational pylons of the
Thames. A material normally used to make
boxes was redeployed to produce a geometric spider web that not only pushed the
boundaries of the materials potential, but
situated it within a complex set of cultural
and historical contexts.

Shigeru Ban: London Design Festival,

London, England, 2009, tower and detail

Shigeru Ban: Temporary Housing Shelter,

Onagawa, Japan, 2011, axonometric
Top: Shigeru Ban: Paper Bridge, Gardon River, France, 2007
Above: Shigeru Ban: Haesley Nine Bridges Golf Club House,
Yeoju, South Korea, 2009

In Onagawa, Japan, following the earthquake of 2011, Shigeru Ban deploys a

checkerboard of 20-foot (6 m) shipping

challenges our material and structural preconceptions. In the shadow of the massively
constructed stone bridge of Pont du Gard,

Club House in Yeoju, South Korea. The bundling of individual timber elements gives
way to a hexagonal latticeworkfusing col-

containers to construct a temporary housing shelter. Here, the prosaic shipping

container is reused as the basic building
block of a three-story structure. The structural expression of the construction
emerges as a result of the multiplication
and stacking of the standard container, a
found objectthe alternating arrangement
producing the simultaneous spatial
requirements for both storage and open
living spaces.

a proliferation of lightweight cardboard

tubes construct two arched trusses that
support a suspended walkway of recycled
paper and plastic, a ghosted reference to
the Roman engineering that preceded it.
Not unlike the stone that produced the
Roman bridge, the spanning structure is a
demonstration of the discovered properties of the cardboard tubes that function as
its primary building block.

umns with surface into an uninterrupted

structural expression. The aggregation of
an otherwise inconsequential material
amplifies its structural and spatial potentialthe material itself seems to have been
enlarged under a microscope as we experience the beauty of its magnified world.

Imagine a bridge that would span a river,

and that bridge would be made of paper. In
the south of France, Shigeru Ban again

Structure itself is decoration, Shigeru

Ban explains in a 2007 Design Boom interviewand nowhere else is this more evident
than in the 2009 Haesley Nine Bridges Golf

Perhaps it was the bending of saplings

against stronger trees, and the stretching of
ropes, and later chains, upon which bark or
slivers of stone were added, that led to the
usage of structures in tension. When a
material is in tension, it becomes stretched
by gravity, even if such stretching is not
noticeable to the naked eye.

Walls
It is not surprising that most of the earliest
architecture to survive until our time was
a mural architecture, that is, buildings
composed of walls. Walls could be easily
constructed by stacking earth, wood, or
masonry. Thick walls, whether straight sided
or battered (with sloping sides), are among
the most efficient methods for transferring
loads from a roof into the ground. They are
also very effective in the separation of
spaces, especially in dividing the public from
the private elements of a building or city
(not to mention fortified walls, separating a
city from an attacking enemy).

Structure

Elements
The basic elements of a structural system are
also the primary elements in the production
of architectural space: columns, walls, beams,
slabs, and their various combinations.

The interplay between elements in tension

and those in compression has been a
fundamental aspect in the development of
architectural forms.

For the Burgo Paper Factory

in Mantua, Italy (completed
in 1963), a column-free area
of almost 90,000 square feet
(8,100 sq m) was needed to
accommodate the paper
manufacturing equipment

and its linear processing

of wood pulp into rolls of
newsprint. The architectengineer Pier Luigi Nervi
designed a graceful suspension bridgelike structure,
815 feet (248 m) long and

98 feet (30 m) wide, supported

by two pylons that clearly
communicate the transfer
of loads from cables into
the ground.

In the Johnson Wax

Headquarters building in
Racine, Wisconsin (193639),
by Frank Lloyd Wright,
columns gradually spread

toward their tops to become

elements of a roof network,
with ample skylights
spanning between the
hovering, disclike slabs.

The effect is of a carefully

modulated grid of delicate
columns with a flood of
natural light penetrating
between their canopies.

77

Columns
In addition to collecting roof loads from
arches or beams and then transferring them
vertically into the ground, columns provide
a way for space (and people) to move
through the various layers of a building. In
their earliest manifestations, columns were
understood as pieces of a discontinuous wall,

76

Retaining walls are used to hold back earth

or sand and to prevent erosion and other
forms of soil migration. It is often necessary
to construct retaining walls in order to
stabilize the ground when constructing on a
slope. Retaining walls essentially reconfigure
hillsides, transforming a natural topography
into an architectural feature.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

squarish in plan and massive in dimension.

Eventually, columns began to become more
objectlike, and archesespecially when
connected in a seriescould span fairly large
distances, with their loads carried downward
by increasingly slender columns.
Perhaps originating as replications of trees
or, among the more nomadic groups, of tent
poles, columns have always been considered
to be among the most expressive elements
of architectural construction. Since the
ancient Egyptians modeled columns on the
culturally significant papyrus plants, palm
trees, and lotus flowers, with faceted sides
possibly implying tree bark, columns have
been among the most sculptural components
of a building. Columns have been shaped to
reflect theories of architectures origins, of
classical perfection, or harmonic order.
While a wall can be composed of a variety
of pieces, even of mud and piled stones,
singularly or in combination, columns require
more carefully constructed elements; the
failure of a column tends to be more perilous
than the failure of a piece of wall. It is not
surprising, then, that in order to symbolically
fortify the apparent strength of a column, one
even nds columns that personify the carrying
of weight: female caryatid gures appear on
the Acropolis, with the male versionsatlantes
and telamonsbecoming very popular from
the sixteenth century onward.
It is a testament to the architectural
importance of columns that, as architecture
evolved, columns were even applied to walls
as a form of decorationpilasters and half
columnsas if to bring to the surface the
latent strength and order that columns can
impart to a wall.

The Porch of the Caryatids at

the Erechtheion in Athens
(c. 420405 BCE), probably
sculpted by Phidias,
demonstrates columns in
their most decorative and

metaphorical condition, with

the massive weight of the
roof transferred through the
necks of the individually
carved maidens.

8
Structure

Beams
Beams are a buildings principal element of
horizontal structure. Beams typically accept
loads along their entire length to be
transferred downward to be collected into
two or more points, on either walls or
columns. Most structures have a hierarchy
of beams, with primary beams being the
principal contact with the vertical structure
and secondary beams (or joists) spanning
between these primary beams. In the case of
especially large structures, there may even
be tertiary beams.

is composed of individually
shaped laser-cut curved wood
beams supporting a series of
thinner roof membranes. The
effect is that of being in an
expansive interior landscape
with very few columns, from
which one can view the
distant Alpine landscape.

79

Trusses are composed of triangulated

elements, usually of metal or wood, that can
span great distances with less mass and
greater efficiency than most beams. Because
trusses are largely open, they offer greater
possibilities for containing service elements
and, if large enough, even entire floors.

Slabs
As Sandaker, Eggen, and Cruvellier point out
in The Structural Basis of Architecture, The
slab is perhaps the most ubiquitous and yet
under-appreciated of all structural elements.
Providing the predominant horizontal surfaces
of a building, slabs often present themselves
as oors and ceilings. The structural aspect
of slabs (they could be considered to be
expansive, at beams) is often overlooked.
Not only do slabs span between columns, they
can also provide stability to the perimeter
walls, support intermediate non-load-bearing
partitions, and carry the massive live loads
essentially people, vehicles, furnishings, and
occasionally wind, rain, and snowthat a
building needs to accommodate.

The Rolex Learning Center in

Lausanne by SANAA
(completed in 2010) is
composed of an undulating
base slab, much like a series
of domes that forms a rolling
interior terrain of mounds,
archways, and courtyards.
The equally undulating roof

78

While walls and columns are generally being

compressed, beams are most frequently in a
state of bending. For this reason, beams are
usually composed of materials that can
withstand a degree of flex. Occasionally, a
beam will be comprised of laminated layers,
often of glued wood, in order to more
effectively resist bending.

Structural archesmore common today in

bridge construction than in architecture
might be considered to be bent beams. They
are wholly in compression, transferring their
forces downward in an arc onto a column or
wall. The addition of hinges at the two points
of contact and, on occasion, also at the apex
of its arc, allows an arch to flex under a
variety of loads and changes in temperature.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Slabs do not necessarily need to be at or even

straight. While the tops of slabs usually provide
the basic surface of floors, the undersides of
slabs can be ridged, providing directionality, or
with deep wafflelike indentations, thereby
performing in a multidirectional mode. When
exposed, the undersides of such slabs can
provide a visual complexity that can bring
scale and texture to a space.
Hybrids
A vault might be considered to be like either
a bent slab or an extruded arch. Vaults can
span large distances, transferring their loads
both downward and outward along their two
sides. Because of the massive loads that can
be deposited along these sides, vaults are
usually constructed either with thickened
walls lining their edges, additional countervaults converging on the sides, or some form
of buttress that can assist in transferring the
loads diagonally downward into the ground.
Domes might be considered to be like arches
that are spun along their central axis. In fact,
beginning with gothic architecture, many
domes consist of a series of arched ribs that
converges in a center. As with vaults, domes
require a considerable amount of support
along their edges in order to transfer the
radial forces diagonally downward. As
materials evolved, it became common to
see tensile elementschains, iron rods, and
cablesemployed in vaults, domes, and
similar structures to bind the opposing sides
together in order to resist outward thrusts,
holding the structure together from within.
Space frames are essentially three-dimensional trusses: vast expanses of lightweight
elementsusually steel or aluminuminterlaced in a large, triangulated mat, like a giant
tabletop requiring few points of vertical
support. Because of their internal geometries, space frames can be modified to take
on virtually any profile, even highly irregular
configurations.

Felix Candelas Bacardi Rum

bottling plant in Cuautitlan,
Mexico (1959), is one of the
most elegant examples of a
reinforced concrete shell
structures. Composed of a
series of groin vaults
(two vaults intersecting at

90 degrees) that are little

more than an inch thick at
their peaks, the structure
presents large, high-ceilinged
interior space while providing
ample light for the industrial
operations yet limiting direct
sunlight.

The works of Spanish

architect Santiago Calatrava
consistently propose an
elaborate balance between
elements in tension and those
in compression, rendered
completely in white so that
the structural figures
coalesce to form a singular

composition. The results

often resemble the delicate
skeletal structure of birds,
though at an enormous scale,
as here at the Quadracci
Pavilion of the Milwaukee Art
Museum (completed in 2001)
with its combination of sunscreening with enclosed spaces.

with movement flowing freely

around them. At the opposite
extreme, a row of piers can
appear opaque when viewed
on the oblique but emphasize
movement parallel to their
long surfaces.

As more materials and processes of fabrication became available, the elements of a

buildings structure began to develop greater
efficiencies and capabilities. It became easier
to subsume structure within the thickness of a
oor plane or the thinness of a membrane,
hiding the structure from view.

81

But, regardless of the visual evidence of a

buildings structure, the enactment of its
battle with gravity and its accommodation
of loads continue to have a profound effect
on architectural forms, on the shaping of
spaces, and on our experiences of the work
as a whole.

80

Columns, their shapes, and

spacing, can determine the
ways in which spaces are
perceived and imply the ways
in which one might move
from one area to another.
Round columns, for instance,
tend to be multidirectional,

Structure

Structural Space
In the earliest times, a construction was its
structure. The exterior forms and interior
spaces of prehistoric and ancient architectures were inevitably a direct manifestation
of their structure. As time passed, the desire
to embellish this structure with additional
elements, to infill gaps with windows or
decorative features, to attach finials and
gargoyles and false faades, led to a certain
cloaking of structure. Issues such as acoustics
and temperature control eventually led to
the separation of a buildings interior
elements and its structure (one thinks of
wood paneled libraries and the vast
reverberation chambers above theaters).
Exteriors even displayed layers of implied
structureaedicules, niches, pilasters, half
columns, and latticelike gridsthat masked
the actual structure within.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

A buildings surface is quite literally

its face to the public, its civic mask.

surface
A buildings enclosure is its primary contact with an exterior. Like clothing, its role is
protection, while offering an insight into the personality it projects.

82
83

Just as a first impression is often drawn from the

expressiveness of a face, the vertical surfaces of a
building are usually the first, most communicative
aspect of a structures design. From tepees tattooed
with autobiography to chalets embellished with
painted window frames, from the portals of gothic

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Within a thickness of just a

few inches, Michele
Sanmichelis Palazzo Canossa
in Verona (1527)
accomplishes an abundance
of apparent depth. Like a
huge and complex basket,
horizontal moldings weave in
and out behind pilasters and
in front of windows; in the
rusticated base, window sills
appear to be squeezed from a
recessed band; the pilasters
on the upper floors seem to
penetrate the massive cornice
line; and a central element of
three large archesduplicating the proportions of those
abovelead the eye into a
deep porch and further to the
banks of the River Adige.

cathedrals encrusted with saints to the

faades of Renaissance palazzi proffering
treatises on architecture, from the mechanical
efficiencies of early industrial buildings to the
meticulously detailed slickness of a corporate
curtain wall, surfacestransparent or
opaquewill always introduce a buildings
essence. A surface is a buildings face to
the public, its physiognomic expression,
and its civic mask.
In most incarnations, the surfaces of a
building display to an observing public the
function of the structurehome, place of
bathing, place of worship, place of fortification, place of imprisonment, place of
education. However, these displays tend to
become subtler at times when architecture
passes through periods of reevaluating its
material elements, when it becomes
engaged in the polemics of other arts, or
when it is determined to demonstrate a
scientific argument.

Perception
During the Renaissance, for example,
architectural treatises were inevitably based
on the then newly defined artistic fundamental of linear perspective. Perspective in the
arts gave us an awareness of the horizon, of
the vanishing point, andperhaps most
important for the evolution of surfacesof
the picture plane. The surface of a building,
especially the buildings most frontal surface
(the one facing the ideal viewer), could be
considered equivalent to the surface of a
painting: it can project objects from behind,
suggest objects in front, introduce various
subjects one in front of the other. A
buildings surface can, within just a few inches
of thickness, imply unfathomable depths.
The effects of light and dark, as well as of
colors also lend a buildings surface a sense
of relative depths, or of layers of information,
or even of a type of camouflage: it can blend
in with its landscape, develop an affinity for
its neighboring buildings, or recede into a
texture of other, similar volumes.
(continued on page 87)

The eighteenth-century
French architect
Jean-Jacques Lequeu was
convinced that human
physiognomy could inform
the design of buildings and
that the overall facial
distortions resulting from
specific emotional and
physical impulses could be
translated into elevations
that could communicate

similar information. His

Nouvelle Mthode text
employed numerous
self-portraits (including Le
Grand Baailleur [sic], or The
Large Yawn, of 17771824),
then transferred by the
gridded techniques used by
draftsmen in representing
both human figures as well as
engineering projects and
military architecture.

As ones eyes move over and

around a surface, it is
possible to encounter many
levels of suggested depth. In
this wooden model of
Michelangelos project for the
faade of San Lorenzo (made
to his specifications in 1517),
the two buildings that appear
to be stacked on top of each
other are unified by three
openings topped by arches.

The central opening at the

top appears to recede into
an illusory depth, suggested
by a false perspective.
Upon focusing on this deep
window, the proportional
affinities to the larger door
belowframed by the two
original openingsbecome
apparent, leading it to appear
to emerge into an artificially
close foreground.

Barkow Leibinger and

the Active Surface
The architectural surface is normally conceived of as a vertical plane that encloses
one that is primarily concerned with providing security and ventilation and
demarcating the limits between public and
private. Barkow Leibinger challenge these
assumptions, arguing instead that the
architectural surface, regardless of its orientation, is one that has a responsibility to
demonstrate the ephemeral traces of a particular program and site. Their surfaces are
conceived as topographical landscapes that
actively register the passage of light or of
gaze, the dimension of structural increment, the polychromy of context or the
collection of water. In so doing, they produce the spatiality of the surface, blurring
the boundaries between inside and out,
between sky and ground.
In their 1998 Laser Machine and Tool
Factory in Stuttgart, Germany, the roof is
the primary surface that is activated. A
normally static membrane is here transformed into an undulating surface of glass

Barkow Leibinger: Laser Machine and Tool Factory, Stuttgart, Germany, 1998
axonometric and exterior view of roof

and aluminum clerestories that simultaneously illuminates the production halls

below and collects rainwater for laser cooling. The resulting three-dimensional
patchwork references both the physical
context of agricultural fields and an historical context of annexed allotments.
The tower addition proposed in their
Bremerhaven 2000 competition entry
fuses surface with building mass. Surface
here is not relegated to a more or less
modest planar dimension. Instead, surface
is a volumetric registration of the buildings programsa seamless expression of
the spatial configuration and material differences of a wide range of programmatic
variables that are literally stacked one atop
the othera full-scale Rubiks Cube, where
a standardized unit gives way to a highly
articulated increment.

Barkow Leibinger: Bremerhaven 2000 competition entry, 2000,

exterior rendering and upper floor plan

Barkow Leibinger: TRUTEC Building, Seoul, South Korea, 2006,

exterior view

In Barkow Leibingers TRUTEC Building in

Seoul, South Korea, an entire city is registered within an 8-inch (20 cm) surface.
Glass shingles clad an otherwise modest
structure, and yet it is the precision of their
crystalline chamfers that collapses animate readings of its physical and ephemeral
context onto its surface. The surface is a
pixelated skinan architectural Chuck
Closewhose reading continuously fluctuates, a function of weather, sun, angle of
vision, and evolving urban contexts. Here,
the surface performs: at times the building
is camouflaged as it reflects (becomes) its
surroundings, at others it is a beacon of

polychromatic lightlike a 1960s Moon

crystal that splits the spectrum into its corresponding colors and is simultaneously
invested with its (urban) healing powers.
The load-bearing concrete grid of precast
elements drapes itself across the rectangular body of Barkow Leibingers 2012 Tour
Total headquarters building in Berlin. The
surface behaves as a structural moir, folding and crimping as it appears alternately
opaque and transparent. Here, surface operates as a constructed geometric pattern, one
that is programmed by a dynamic interface
between gravity, scale, and material.

Barkow Leibinger: Tour Total, Berlin, Germany, 2012,

exterior view and exterior detail

varying degrees of depth to

the openings, ranging from
very deep terraces (as above
on the right), to subdivided
windows inches behind the
surface frame, to volumes of
glass that protrude inches
from the surface.

express the public face of the building while

confronting its numerous environmental
conditions. Inner layers may include
structure, mechanical systems, and insulation.
The most interior layer may express the
specific requirements of various interior
spaces, providing utilitarian amenities and
comfort to the occupants. If the outermost
surfaces are required to provide the greatest
visual effects of a buildings designed
intentions, the innermost layers of a
buildings surfaces are often those that are
engaged most tactilely by the users.
Performance
All exterior surfaces of a buildingroofs,
walls, foundationsare obliged to prevent
weather from rendering a structure unusable,
whether through rot, insects, the penetration
of moisture, inhospitable temperatures, and
so on. At the same time, these surfaces must
often also be able to breathe: to allow gases
and moisture (often in the form of condensation) from within the building and its walls to

aluminum screen (with a

bubble pattern suggesting
the rivers proximity) and
external window shades, all
of which cast shadows on a
wrapper of steel and glass

panels on a concrete frame.

The solar heat is controlled
through these layers, while
the giant conical holes
facilitate air movement
through the structure.

penetrate outward. These surfaces might

also breathe in that they may be required to
control natural ventilation and heat gain from
direct solar penetration.
In order to more effectively control solar
penetration of a building, both for environmental purposes as well as for privacy and the
control of views, the exterior surfaces of a
building may often be composed of screenlike
components. These screens may take many
forms, such as concrete brise soleil, perforated
metal panels, or even computer-controlled
arrays of louvers. Screens can provide a
building with something like an exterior armor,
rigid and impenetrable, or a oating veil,
translucent and elastic.
The enclosure of a building is its primary
contact with an exterior. Like clothing, its
role is protectionof the buildings occupants,
interior finishes, and often its structure
while offering an insight into the personality
it projects.

87

As interfaces, the surfaces of a building may

contain numerous layers. The outer layers

The Orange Cube in Lyon,

France by Jakob + MacFarlane
Architects (completed 2011),
achieves the effect of
considerable depth of surface
by layering a perforated

86

Interfaces
A buildings exterior surfaces are, in effect,
interfaces between outside and inside, public
and private, between the population of a city
and the occupants of a building. The surfaces
and the various membranes of which they are
composed help to keep the occupants warm
or cool, prevent the penetration of precipitation, control sound levels, modulate the
penetration of light, provide for the privacy
of those inside, frame views, provide access,
and facilitate egress. Depending on a designs
functionstheater, bank, farmers market,
prison, courthouse, department store, and so
onthe surfaces of a building may be
required to perform additional duties, such as
to display the interior to a large audience outside its volume, communicate the buildings
function, propose its potential occupation,
suggest security or permanence, or to invite
or dissuade entrance.

Surface

Giuseppe Terragnis Casa

del Fascio in Como, Italy,
(193236; now a civic office
building and renamed the
Casa del Popolo) is
proportionally a precise half
cube. Each of its four sides
has a similar geometric
organization, but with

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Materials carry meanings through

embodying traditional materials,
methodologies, and rituals of
construction as well as through the
less tangible aspects of the uniqueness
of place, program, and culture.

10

materials
Materials, both natural and artificial, retain traces of their origin, and they communicate
intrinsic qualities that evoke associations and responses in their perceivers.

88
89

Materials are an architects instruments. When a

composer writes a piece of music, it makes a considerable difference if it is to be written for a solo piano,
a string quartet, an orchestra, or a marching band.
Similarly, an architects choice of materials has a
profound effect on both the form of the work and its
reception by an audience.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

A materials behavior bears witness to its

interaction with a variety of both ephemeral
and physical contexts while its properties
inform its constructive processes: its
fabrication, transformation, potential
perforations, types of apertures, and the
details of its interactions with other materials
within a construction and its environment.
Materials, both natural and artificial, retain
traces of their origin, and they communicate
intrinsic qualities that evoke associations and
responses in their perceivers.
Characteristics
A material is often identified with its
sensorial capabilities, which in turn inform
how a space is perceived and how a surface
performs.
Phenomenal
Intrinsic to each material are its physical
attributes, which can perhaps best be
described by a series of pairingsthick or
thin, opaque or transparent, matte or
reflective, dark or light. It is the qualities of
these attributes that suggest meaningful
associations with not only the program of a
work, but also its perceptual experience. A
wall made of glass might appear to dissolve
the boundary between public and private, or
inside and out, but it can also convey a crisp
brittleness and a reflective hardness that
suggests an atmospheric serenity. Of course,
the manipulation of this very same material
tinting, screening, sandblasting, for examplecan easily reverse these characteristics,
and it is in exploiting these reversals that a
materials capability to expand its programs
and perceptions is often discovered.
(continued on page 94)

Overlooking Lake Lucerne in

Meggen, Switzerland, stands
Pius Church designed and
built by Franz Feg between
1964 and 1966. Here, marble,
a typically opaque material,
has been thinly cut to just
over 1-inch (2.5 cm) thick to
produce a surprising
translucency, demonstrating
a characteristic that is not
normally associated with the

material, but one that brings

unexpected programmatic
(stained glass windows) and
perceptual (illumination)
associations. The work
exploits marbles potential as
a material that can simultaneously demonstrate multiple
characteristics: from the
exterior, it is a cubic rock by
day and a lantern by night.

Material and De-Material in the

Architecture of Herzog & de Meuron
The Swiss rm of Jacques Herzog and Pierre
de Meuron, has been based in Basel since
1978. While their designs favor basic, easily
recognizable volumes (traditional house
forms, simple boxes), their provocative and
unfamiliar usage of materials has consistently altered our understandings of the role
materials can play in an architectural work.
Herzog and de Meuron consistently deprive
materials of certain of their expected properties, leading the observer to experience
aspects of the buildings ambitions that
would normally be obscured by the grip of
the materials more familiar usage.
As is already clear in their first Ricola
warehouse, it is very common for the language of materials to communicate
through several modes of signification. The
scale and detailing of the material not only

Herzog & de Meuron: Stone House; Tavole, Italy, 198588

suggests similar constructions, such as the

wooden tobacco barns throughout the U.S.
that fascinated Herzog, but the horizontal
layering of panels reflects the horizontal
layers of limestone immediately adjacent

house with its site. It appears to be a decorative touch, elaborated by the apparent

to the building. The use of materials can

suggest a function: In this case, the dense
storage of goods is represented in a building that looks as if it were, itself, a pile of
stored wood. At the same time, the viola-

absence of the concrete on the corners. In

reality, the concrete is the structure, with
smaller columns tucked within the corners.
The dry masonry walls play no structural
role, being instead exactly what they

tion of some of the materials expected

traits serves to signify a deeper sense of
the building: The wood is actually cement
panels; its stacking is accomplished
through loose attachment to a frame; its
solidity is actually highly permeable.
In the Stone House in Tavole, Italy, the dry
stone masonry walls at first suggest the
other stone houses of the village, as well as
the retaining walls that shore up much of
the hill town. Thin concrete bands divide
the walls, apparently mere traces of an
organizing geometry that connects the

appear to be: a film of lightly stacked

stones collected from the area. While the
apparent lightness of the concrete leads us
to believe that it has no structural value,
the apparent massiveness of the stone suggests structure. The house leads us to
question our material prejudices, referring
to the traditional usage of materials while
drawing us into new, unexpected impressions. A material seduction begins to occur.

Herzog & de Meuron: Ricola Warehouse; Laufen, Switzerland, 1987

Herzog and de Meurons most recent work

seems to employ more subtle modes of
material manipulation: materials such as
stone, metal, and concrete develop unexpected textures, and these fundamentally
opaque materials join essentially transparent materials, such as glass and plastic, in
beginning to assume a quality of translucency and reflection.
For example, the gabions that line the exterior walls of the Dominus Winery in
Yountville, California, at first produce the
image of a massively rusticated country
wall. Gabionswire mesh cages usually
containing rough stones collected on-site
are traditionally used for retaining walls,
most familiar for their usage in highway
construction where their strength seems to
be equated with their apparent solidity and
opacity. At the winery, however, Herzog and
de Meuron have used the gabions as an exterior cloak, filling the cages with varying
sizes of rock and, occasionally, with no rock
at all. From the interior, glass walls behind
the gabions take advantage of the dappled
light that filters through the stones. What
is understood to be solid and opaque is
instead permeable and translucent.

Herzog & de Meuron: Dominus Winery; Yountville, California,

199698

In the Laurenz Foundation art storage facil-

Subverting some of the traditional percep-

also because a projects physical character-

ity, the thick exterior surfaces of excavated

earth panels with exposed pebbles propose

tions of a material lead to that materials

perceived de-materialization, limiting a

istics are usually surpassed by its conceptual values. The architecture of Herzog

a massiveness that protects its contents,

both environmentally and in terms of secu-

materials anticipated characteristics,

while suggesting unexpected, previously

and de Meuron, however, proposes a sensuality that can be discovered only through a

rity. Yet this massiveness is belied in

unimagined traits that are often even oppo-

thoughtful encounter with the work. We

several ways. A large, horizontal cut on two

sides of the building is intentionally irregu-

site the initial impression. Herzog and de

Meuron assume that material has no funda-

find architectures intangible values firmly

rooted within our experience of materials.

lar, digitally derived and constructed to

suggest enlarged pebblelike forms.

mental qualities, that the quality lies in the

work itself, where the material attains spe-

Although this gash serves to demonstrate

cific value that leaves bare materiality

the walls thickness, its horizontality

simultaneously undoes the walls mass.

behind; [it] is no longer a purely representative means and therefore no longer

Then, as these apparently heavy walls make

their way toward the street side, they seem

restricted to the visible surface. Actually,

in contemporary architecture, the immedi-

to end abruptly, with a knifes-edge transition to a large, scaleless polygon of flat

white surfaces that defy scale and deny

ately visible is perhaps the least reliable

indication of a materials attributes, not
only because of the capacity of certain

material.

materials to mime the traits of others, but

Herzog & de Meuron: Laurenz Foundation Schaulager;

Basel/Mnchenstein, Switzerland, 19982003

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Walls of scalelike glass

shingles envelop an interior
of cast concrete drawers
in Peter Zumthors
Kunstmuseum in Bregenz,
Austria (199097). The
contrasting materials
produce an atmospheric
dialogue that shifts between

the reflective and translucent

exterior lantern to the stark
and cold of the concrete of
the gallery spaces. The two
are brought into focus as the
light filters in through the
plenum areas and the
polished concrete galleries
begin to glow.

Textural
Materials can develop textures through their
installation, manipulation, finish, and wear.
These textures have significant impact not
only on a materials durability, penetrability,
and usage, but also on the distinctness of
space and surface. If cast concrete is highly
polished, it can virtually disappear as it
reflects the environment surrounding it. Or
its normally hard, inelastic surface can be
softened through the imprint of the traces
of its forming. Or if it is subdivided into
individual blocks, it can be stacked into a
porous screen. The texture of a material can
determine the sharpness or blur of a shadow,
can suggest the finite or infinite impressions
of a space, and can tempt or inhibit the
tactile engagement of a surface.
Acoustic
Materials can be acoustically hard or soft;
they can cause echoes or muffle voices. An
acoustically reverberant space can appear
to be exaggerated in its vacancy or in the
grandness of its scale. A space that is
acoustically absorbent can be perceived
as more intimate, more comfortable. The
materials of a oor or path can make our

The walls of the

Kunstmuseum in Vaduz,
Liechtenstein, by the Swiss
architects Morger and
Degelo, with Christian Kerez
(19972000) are of cast
concrete, and it is the sanding
of their exterior surfaces that
reveals its composition:

basalt, nearby Rhine river

gravel, and black cement. The
result is a highly polished
surface that reflects the
surrounding buildings,
connecting the building with
both its built and geological
contexts.

Texture is the material of

Heatherwick Studios Seed
Cathedral built for the 2010
Shanghai Expo. While the
primary structure is a wooden
box, 60,000 clear acrylic rods
intersect its surfaces,
blurring the boundaries
between building and sky.
250,000 seeds are embedded

into the tip of the rods,

which are illuminated by day
as the sun shines through
and, at night, by light sources
embedded in each rod.
The swaying of the rods in
the breeze is a material
expression of its program:
the seeds growing into a
field of wheat.

steps seem stealthy or monumental, modest

or emphatic, unobtrusive or processional.
The acoustic traits of materials can inspire
associations related to memories, perceptions,
and even other arts such as lm or music.
Permeability
The way a building can weep or breathe is an
important and even necessary aspect of the
selection of materials. The permeability of
materialsespecially those used in the
exterior membranes of a buildingcan keep
a structure and its components dry or humid,
hot or cold, fresh or musty, even light or
dark. As a result, a materials degree of
permeability has a direct relationship to all
of the above material characteristics.
Behaviors
It would be a mistake, however, to consider
the nature of materials as being permanent
and unchangeable. An understanding of the
behaviors of materials not only plays an
important part in protecting the integrity of
a construction and ensuring the quality of
life of those within, but it can also contribute
significantly to the aesthetic qualities of a
building.

that enable the concrete to

take on the characteristics of
the adjacent polycarbonate
faade. This intentional
engagement and registration
of temporal aspects of the
environment allows these
unrelated surfaces to be
brought into material
conversation, temporarily
transforming the concrete
volume into a glistening
crystal.

Simon Ungerss T-House,

Wilton, New York, built in
1992, is a project that blurs
the boundaries between
architecture and sculpture.
Its fundamental geometry
and the relentless use of
weathering steel suppress all
detail and scale, reinforcing
the notion of the building as
a sculpture. Steel is also used
as a functional material
capable of accommodating

the extreme cantilevers of

the raised library block. The
houses dimensions are
determined by its mode of
transportation: It was
constructed off-site in a
factory, brought to its site on
eighteen-wheelers, and
assembled in situ. Over time,
the steel has rusted to a dark
brown, its weathered surfaces
merging with the forested
landscape.

10

Herzog and de Meurons

Ricola-Europe production and
storage hall built in
Mulhouse, France (199293),
is a concrete box with a
northern face that opens up
as if to expose the strips of
polycarbonate panels at its
entry faade. The buildings
drainage has been
intentionally choreographed
to spill down its matte
concrete surfaces and it is
these newly striated surfaces

Materials

Responsiveness
Very few materials are entirely static. Most
respond in a direct way to the stresses of
gravity, heat, cold, moisture, and so on, albeit
in varying degrees. Some of these responses
can be permanent, as with cracking or
erosion, while others can be cyclical, as with
expansion and contraction or flexing and
straightening. Recognizing these behaviors,
not only at a materials various scales and
dimensions but the interaction of these
behaviors among different materials, is
critical in accommodating these inevitable
transformative behaviors.

94
95

Weather, or the inevitability of transformation

All materials have a lifespan, but how a
material transforms over time is unique to
its composition and to its interaction with a
specific weather and environment. It is
important to understand that the end of the
construction process is but the beginning of
a course of weathering and entropy, most of
which can be anticipated. At the very least,
most materials change color or texture when
wet. However, some materials are much more
reactive, with transformations that can be

quite pronounced, as in the case of copper as

it changes from reddish brown to green, with
weathering steel as it oxidizes to an earthen
rust, or with cedar as it weathers from a
reddish brown to gray. Less predictable is the
staining and eventual erosion of more
resistive surfaces that allow initially untainted
materials to slowly fade into their surrounding
context, to return to the earth. Mohsen
Mostafavi and David Leatherbarrow
speculate on the intentional deterioration of a
funeral chapel, used deliberately as a
device for marking and infecting the purity of
the new building surface, as the possibility
for showing the life of the building in time.
(Mostafavi and Leatherbarrow, page 103.)
Anticipating such material transformations is
a significant aspect of the design process.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Through the use of thin-film

photovoltaic textiles, KVAs
2007 Soft House transforms
the prosaic curtain into an
energy-harvesting textile
that can generate and
distribute up to 16,000 watts
of renewable electrical power.

Translucent, movable curtains

convert sunlight into energy
throughout the day while
facilitating changing spatial
configurations. Parametric
design software developed
for the Soft House project
allows the homeowner to

Smart materials
Smart materials are materials that are
designed to actively perform, whose shape or
properties change in response to an external
stimulus. Michelle Addington explains that
smart materials design behaviors, with the
actual materials being secondary to the effect
that they produce. These behaviors are
programmed into the materials composition
and when activated (by for example
temperature, moisture, electricity, or stress)
the materials functionality is transformed,
allowing it to perform in or adapt to a particular set of circumstances. The use of smart
materials alters our understanding of
materials from being static elements that are
meant to withstand one or more predetermined environments to being animate
substances that have the potential to engage
continuously changing environments and
are fully capable of reconciling the body with
its cultural and physical environments.

customize the energy density

of the textiles according to
need and guides the
relationship of building form
to site: Technological
invention produces the
spatial experience.

Similarly, nanotechnologies provide us with

the ability to manipulate material at its atomic
and molecular scales. The material scientist
Michael Cima speaks of simultaneous
fabrications in which multiple programs are
embedded within a single material structure.
Like a hearty stew, various predetermined
material properties (such as transparency,
acoustic properties, strength, warmth, and
illumination) might be layered into the process
of their fabrication, introducing an interactive
programmatic complexity to a single
composite material. These nanocomposite
materials not only improve material strength
and performance, but recent exciting research
reveals a potential for introducing multifunctionality into singular building surfaces.

Inspired by homeostasis in
biological systems (a system
that regulates its internal
environment and tends to
maintain a stable, constant
condition of properties such
as temperature) Decker
Yeadons Homeostatic Faade
System regulates a buildings
climate by responding to
environmental conditions.

It does so by using a simple

actuator, or artificial muscle,
to transfer electric energy
directly into mechanical
work. The faades silvercoated ribbons automatically
deform in response to heat,
increasing their surface area
and thereby preventing
thermal gain and reducing
energy consumption.

David Adjayes Genesis

pavilion installed at the
Design Miami 2011 fair is
constructed of hundreds of
equally dimensioned wooden
timbers. Floors, walls, and
ceilings are created out of the
same material increment, and
it is the manipulation of the
spacing between these planks
that allows for the various
programs of sheltering, structuring, entering, framing,
viewing, screening, and
reposing.

Constructive Processes
Constructive processes are often a function
of a materials properties and of their intrinsic
dimensional standards and limits, which can,
in turn, greatly influence its usage and how
it might be detailed. These processes are
equally a function of the location of the
project (ease of accessibility, the expertise
of those building it) and affordability.

Yet a temporary church in

Yogyakarta, Indonesia, (right)
demonstrates a decidedly
alternative application. Here,
the architect Eugenius
Pradipto transforms bamboo
into a series of attened
shingles that wraps the
churchs structural framework. In both of these
examples, bamboo is
alternatively exploited as
both structural framework
and porous skin.

97

Manufacturing processes not only inform a

materials dimension but can also demonstrate a unique characteristic or behavior. For
example, a quarried block of granite can be
cut into monolithic blocks or sliced into thin
slabsthe one producing the effect of a
massive wall while the other, a thin membrane. The exploitation and exaggeration of
these processes can be a powerful tool in the
development of an architectural concept.

96

Bamboo is highly regarded for

both its material behavior and
sustainable properties. Its
usage is directly related to
the method by which it is
processed. Its stems can be
bundled, cut, split, attened,
twisted, woven, and laminated, each process lending
itself to a unique constructional process. Simon Velezs
Church without Religion in
Cartagena, Colombia, exploits
bamboo as structural
armature, a framelike lattice
of bamboo rods that tethers
the building to its site.

Manufacturing Methods
The dimensional limits of a material are either
determined by its natural state or imposed on
it by the manufacturing processes used to
transform a material from its natural state into
a useful building material. This link between
origin and application can be exploited
in projects where a materials dimensional
increment, either in its natural state or as
manufactured, is consistently registered while
accommodating a variety of programmatic
and environmental concerns. For example,
the densification or expansion of a particular
dimensional increment can alter a surface
membranes porosity or provide the logic for
the operation of its apertures.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Massimiliano Fuksass
Museum of Graffiti in Niaux,
France, completed in 1993, is
located in an extreme site on
the side of a hill and at the
mouth of a subterranean
passage that leads to
prehistoric cave paintings
dating from 11,000 BCE. The
difficulties of access required
the on-site assembly of steel
components that had been
precariously transported up a
small access road. Not only
does the rusting of the

weathering steel components

protect the structure and
minimize the necessity for
maintenance, but their
apparent weightlessness is
suggestive of the delicacy of
the cave drawings to which
the pavilion provides access.
The line of the cave drawing
is conceptually extended out
to the face of the mountain,
erupting into a three-dimensional expression of the
two-dimensional drawings
deep within the mountain.

Assembly
Site access, methods of transportation,
and builders expertise can further inform
material choices. Transportation and site
access can limit the dimension of materials
that can be delivered to a site, which will
then either require on-site assembly of
smaller components (that have been
fabricated elsewhere) or demand on-site
fabrication. In these extreme sites, an
understanding of local or traditional
construction practices can inform material
choices and construction processes.
Detail/Jointure
Materials undergo various degrees of change
as they react to environmental conditions
(gravity, temperature, erosion, and pollution)
or as they react to other materials (corrosion
and staining). Strategies for addressing these
changes are often demonstrated at the
intersections between adjoining materials. For
example, each material responds to tempera-

ture variations by exhibiting a unique range of

expansion and shrinking behaviors. As one
material meets another, these behavioral
differences must be acknowledged either
through not letting the two materials touch,
as in a reveal (a small gap left between the
materials), by allowing the materials to
overlap so that they can move independently
or by inserting a third material that can
mediate two materials distinct behaviors.
Differences in dimensional precision between
materials that are fabricated using precise
tools (as in steel fabrication or wood
cabinetry, for example) versus those that are
fabricated on-site using less controllable
technologies (as with poured-in-place
concrete) can also be accommodated by a
reveal, or by introducing a third material that
can accommodate the differences between
the two (for example by inserting a piece of
cork between a precisely milled wood and a
rougher concrete surface).

The glass panels that enclose

Sverre Fehns 1973 Hamar
(Norway) Bispegaard
Museum float slightly away
from the thick exterior stone
walls of the existing barn.
This detail negotiates the
distinct dimensional
differences between the
manufactured crisp glass
edges and the fluctuating

stone profile, while permitting some of the weather into

those parts of the museum
where controlled climate
might be dangerous to the
artifacts. The detail also
reinforces the primary
concept of the project, that
of a series of material and
historical layers.

Chamber music was written

to be performed in intimate
spaces, often made of wood.
The interior of the Sala
Suggia in OMAs Casa da

Musica in Porto, Portugal,

2005, though of another
scale, refers to that tradition
and the resonant qualities of
a wooden music box.

10
Materials

Indices
Materials carry meanings through embodying
traditional materials, methodologies, and
rituals of construction as well as through the
less tangible aspects of the uniqueness of
place, program, and culture.
Site
A material often operates as an index to a
particular site. The use of wood from a local
forest not only inextricably links the work to
its immediate physical context but to those
projects that share a similar material source.
The ways in which materials are connected to
each other can further reiterate a context by
referring to traditional building techniques.
Program
Often, the performance requirements of a
particular function will motivate material
selection. A wood railing carries with it
material warmth that is smooth to the touch,
or a stone staircase will withstand centuries
of wear.

98

Blocks of locally hewn granite

form the cubic mass of
Ensamble Studios Musical
Studies Center in Santiago de
Compostela, Spain, built in
2002. The hydraulic drilling
techniques related to the
stones extraction are
expressed and celebrated on

its surfaces, transforming a

prosaic and unremarkable
constructive detail into an
essential ornamental motif.
The material is converted
into a didactic tool, an index
to a fast-disappearing quarrying technology.

99

Cultural
Materials often carry symbolic expectations,
as in a granite tomb or a marble city hall or
a wood cabin. Granite implies eternity,
marble alludes to grandeur, and wood to a
natural primitiveness. It does not necessarily
mean that all tombs should be granite, but
it is important to be aware that traditional
associations exist, and they may be unique to
each culture in which a work might be situated.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Space encompasses the stage for human

activity, the cadence of our movements,
the duration of our experiences.

11
space

Space may be the principal defining characteristic of architecture and what distinguishes
it from the other arts.

100
101

Wallace Stevenss poem, The Snow Man, concludes

with what might be a good definition of the distinction
between a void and what might be considered
architectural space: the Nothing that is not there
and the nothing that is. If a void is the nothingness
that is absent, space might be understood as the
nothingness that is present.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

As Constantinos Doxiadis has

famously diagrammed in his
Architectural Space in
Ancient Greece, one can
understand the organization
of the structures of the
Acropolis as being based on a
series of uninterrupted visual
scans, radiating from a
position at the portico of the

Propylaea at the entry to the

complex. This conception of
space might be described as a
site of perceiving, in that
the objects arrayed about the
Acropolis are perceived in
their relative positionshorizontally and verticallyas
distributed across the site.

Architectural space provides the range

across which our gazes pass before resting
on objects, surfaces, and other people. Space
encompasses the stage for human activity,
the cadence of our movements, the duration
of our experiences. Space contains that
which is within our physical grasp and that
which may be graspable only through
perception, comprehension, and memory.
It was probably August Schmarzow who, in
1898, first argued that the manipulation of
space is the principal defining characteristic
of architecture and what distinguishes it from
the other arts, such as sculpture. This is not to
say that architectural space did not exist
before 1898certainly the Pantheon exists as
an emphatic spatial volumeonly that its
identity had not been adequately described.
There is also that conception of space as a
site of perceiving. In this sense, space is the
range within which a person, located at a
point, apprehends his or her environment,
actually constructing this environment based
upon prior knowledge, experiences, and
techniques of observing.
(continued on page 104)

Giambattista Nollis 1748

map of Rome is remarkable
not only for its accuracy, but
it endures as an example of
the spatial equilibrium that
occurs during the experience
of a city. The contrast
between the darkened fabric
of the city and the white,
figural spatial elements

elegantly demonstrates the

way that public exterior
spacessuch as piazzas and
courtyardsand public and
semipublic interior spaces
such as the Pantheon and
various churchesbecome
equal participants in
establishing a pedestrians
perception of a city.

Phenomenal Transparency
in the Spaces of Le Corbusier
In the twentieth centurythe century

the spatial implications of modern art and

roughened by unimaginable wars, yet

emboldened by velocity, stream of con-

of Cubism, in particular. Based on Gyorgy

Kepess notionpresented in his Language

sciousness writing, nuclear fusion, motion

pictures, jazz, Futurism, and Cubism

of Vision (1948)of the Cubist-based phenomenon whereby two or more overlapping

there was an impulse to construct a concept

of space that was as unique to architecture

figures claim the overlapped zones with

equal priority (as opposed to the fore-

as the century was to its predecessors.

ground figure occluding the background),

Sigfried Giedions Space, Time, and Architecture, based on a series of lectures given
at Harvard from 193839, proposed a formulation of Einsteinian spacetime as an

transparency connotes a simultaneous

perception of different spatial locations,
imparting a continuous oscillation of spatial definitions. Rowe and Slutzky introduce
the distinction between literal transpar-

intrinsic aspect of the new architecture.

Although ultimately more of a metaphor

encywhich simply involves a clear layer,

as vision through a filmand phenomenal

than a scientific validation, Giedions

theory introduced Cubism as a form of spatial research, with important architectural

transparency, in which multiple and simultaneous spatial interpretations are evoked,

and the transparent ceases to be that

implications.

which is perfectly clear and becomes

instead that which is clearly ambiguous.

Bruno Zevis Saper Vedere LArchitettura

(1948, translated as Architecture as Space:
How to Look at Architecture) came later,
arguing that the history of architecture
was largely a history of architectural space,

(page 23) And Rowe and Slutzky find that

such clearly ambiguous transparencies
are especially evident in the work of Le
Corbusier.

by which he meant especially enclosed

space. Like Giedion, Zevi also argued that
time was an important component of the
newer concepts of spatial definition, incorporating the experiments of the Italian

The view from the terrace of his Villa

Savoye in Poissy (1928-31), for example,
affords numerous such spatial transparencies (fig. A). Beneath the roof of the outdoor
pavilion, one already participates in several

futurists, for whom speed was a Muse. He

spaces: that of the pavilion itself, of the

promoted a version of organic architecture, a compilation of theories founded on

gothic architecture and the work of Frank
Lloyd Wright, stressing spatial ambiguity,
with an indefinite flow of spaces often
crossing functional boundaries.

exterior spaces, and of the shaft of space

that moves directly into the house (see the
blue zones, fig. B). A band at the horizon
line (yellow/orange) extends from the terrace through the interior, circumscribing
the peripheral frame of the house; and a
large exterior space (reddish) open to the

Then, combining their expertise in architecture and the fine arts, Colin Rowe and
Robert Slutzkys Transparency (1955), proposed a more articulate argument regarding

sky moves from the center off toward the

right. Figural, in a more painterly way, is
the band of greenery (green, fig. C), which
begins beyond the house on the left, visible

Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret: Villa Savoye,

Poissy, France, 192831

through the horizontal slot and then above

the roof, to emerge both upon the terrace
and on the roof above; both outside and
within the volume of the house, the greenerys ambiguous presence is emphasized by
the setlike walls (orange) that alternately
act as frame and backdrop.
Here, one finds the spatial depiction of the
twentieth century fully realized.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Just as a street can exhibit

spatial qualities, both formal
and experiential, an arcade is
perhaps the most spatial
form of street. Developed
primarily in the early
nineteenth century, arcades
utilized the previously
inaccessible inner blocks of
large cities, increasing the
quantity of commercial
properties while providing
safe routes independent of
the crowded streets. In Paris,

where there was once over

130 arcades, the very
successful Passage des
Panoramas (bottom of plan,
1799) was followed by the
first metal and glass arcade in
the city, the Passage Jouffroy
(center and photograph,
designed by FranoisHippolyte Destailleur and
Romain de Bourges, 1845),
and the Passage Verdeau
(top, 1847).

Spatial Zones
One of the most important aspects in the
formation of architectural space is the concept
of definition. Just as the space within a
deflated balloon is difficult to grasp, and that
within an inflated balloon is clearly intuited,
in order to grasp a spatial figureor spatial
zonea sense of boundary is necessary.
However, it is possible that several spatial
zones might overlap, and that it is possible to
occupy several of these zones simultaneously. The complexity of such spatial
overlaps is resolved perceptually, with the
viewer understanding one set of boundaries
at a time, perceiving additional zones
through movement and shifts of viewpoint.
We can usually understand the relative
dimensions of height and breadth simply by
standing within a space. Depth, however,
requires at least some movement into or
around that space. This movement permits
us to extrapolate approximate depth, based
on our understanding of the relative
locations of surfaces and objects within our
angles of vision as we establish focus and
understand our movement in relation to time.
Because movement across a distance is an
essential facet of spatial experience, many
theorists find that time is an inextricable
component of space.

Artist Rachel Whitereads

Ghost (1990) is the solid
casting of the interior of a
London room. One can see
the imprint of the fireplace

and the protrusion of the

hearth in the foreground.
Essentially, Ghost is space
made solid.

In this plaster model from his

Structures and Sequences of
Space in Spazio 7 (195253),
Luigi Moretti constructs as
solid the principal spatial
sequence in the interior of
Guarino Guarinis baroque

Church of Santa Maria of the

Divine Providence in Lisbon,
Portugal (shown in partial
plan on the left). The
solidification of space makes
its intangibility immediately
graspable.

One of the most effective methods of

promoting the understanding of depth is by
means of the rhythmic organization of
surfaces: the columns lining a cathedrals nave,
the beams of a ceiling, or the patterns in a
oor. The measures of repetition are essential
in understanding the depth of a space.

compression, all within a

depth of just 5 to 10 yards
(4.5 to 9 m). In this low relief
model by Jonathan Negron
(faculty, Jerry Wells), one
can easily understand the
spatial depths implied by
the warping, overlapping,
alternatively convex and
concave sequence of mildly
curved surfaces.

Renaissance artists would

often supplement
constructed perspectival
depth with gridded surfaces,
such as paving patterns and
ceiling coffers, as in Piero
della Francescas Flagellation
of Christ (c. 1457). The
repetition of a grid of squares
receding in depth assists in
the location of figures within
an illusory, and symbolically

charged, three-dimensional
space. The low horizon, the
strangely located vanishing
point, and the clear distinctions and resemblances
between the foreground and
background scenes not only
contribute to interpretations
of the paintings themes but
also serve to imply the viewers
location within the space in
front of the painted panel.

Space

Linear perspective also permitted the actual

construction of illusory space in architectural
design. While height and breadth are clearly

Pietro da Cortonas design for

the exterior of Santa Maria
della Pace (165667) presents
a faade that suggests a
round, temple-like object
nestled within a semicircular
concavity. Located in a very
confined alley in Rome, the
architect, a master of illusionistic perspective, uses forms
composed of elliptical objects
in various degrees of

11

While traditional architecture generally

establishes spatial organizations axially upon
our introduction to a space, modern architecture would often promote entry into the
corners of spaces, so that our first glance
would be diagonal. In order to emphasize
this concept of spatial depth, architects such
as Le Corbusier frequently utilize the long
dimension, essentially the diagonal view that
penetrates a space or across multiple spaces.

Spatial Illusion
The development of linear perspective
affected many aspects of architectural
design. It altered the ways in which space
was represented in architectural renderings.
It provided architects with a tool for understanding what might be visible (or hidden)
from specific points of view. The mechanisms of perspectivehorizon, vanishing
point, picture plane, and pyramid of vision
not only assemble an illusory space within a
frame, but also locate a viewer in a space
constructed in front of the frame: the viewer
becomes an implicit subject of the work.

104
105

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

understood when viewing a surface, an

object, or into a volume, the spatial
dimension of depth can potentially be
constructed through more painterly means:
through the visual illusions of a perspective
construction combined with the memorys
allusions to previously experienced spaces.
This is a technique that was developed most
effectively in the architecture of the late
Renaissance and baroque periods, where one
can find numerous examples of relatively flat
or gently molded surfaces invested with
waves of implicit depths.
Building on these developments, a new form
of perspectivethe panoramawas developed
in the late eighteenth century. Rather than
simply present an illusory depth on a at
surface, the panoramas of the nineteenth
centuries enveloped their audiences with their
massive scales, multiple vanishing points, and
epic themes, transporting their viewers into
the midst of another time and place. Buildings
that housed these articial worldsoften

Vincenzo Scamozzis set

designs for Oedipus Rex
(1585), have been permanently installed since the
inaugural production in
Andrea Palladios Teatro
Olimpico in Vicenza. Constructed in a false perspective,
the sets represent the seven
roads of Thebes within the
relatively limited depth of

themselves called panoramas or cycloramas

appeared in cities throughout Europe and
the United States, and are continuing to be
constructed throughout Asia. As a tool,
panoramas changed the way designers could
see and interpret urban space, allowing the
viewer to move casually through a 360-degree
environment.
Eventually, panoramic paintings gave way to
similarly constructed photographs, and finally
panoramic cinemas developed popularity,
although all forms are currently being revived
as interest in immersive representation is
increasing. The rapid development of video
games, in which the viewer is an active
participant in a virtual three-dimensional

the theaters backstage. From

the abstract interior space of
a theater that evokes impressions of a grand outdoor
amphitheater, one looks into
the spaces of an idealized
and imaginary ancient city,
to eventually return to the
real streets and spaces of
Vicenza as perceived through
fresh eyes.

environment, complete with audial and

additional sensory (haptic) effects, will
certainly influence both the interactive
nature of modeling and presenting architectural projects, and the development of
spaces in which the mobility of the viewer
is an integral factor.

mobility of the viewer around

and through an urban space
with frequent opportunities
for retrospection is an
important aspect of spatial
organization. His famous 1831
rendering of the main
staircase of his Altes Museum
shows gures ascending from

below, then strolling through

the upper vestibule, which
provides a vantage point as in
a panorama: elevated above
the plaza, with columns
framing fragmented views of
an urban panorama of an ideal
Berlin that vies for attention
with the works on exhibit.

107

Karl Friedrich Schinkel was

highly skilled in the constructions of panoramas and
illusionistic stage set designs,
and, as historian Kurt Forster
has demonstrated, applied
this knowledge to his
architectural designs for
Berlin. For Schinkel, the

106

of Historic Places, it is a
unique spatial invention
a cathedral of sortsa deeply
beamed concrete nave
alternating stroboscopic
shafts of daylight with the
ghosted diagonal traces of
cross streets above and a
series of rugged side
chapels casting variegated
light onto the roadway.

Space

design. This sunken roadway

is naturally ventilated and lit,
open to the sky along its
northeast edge, with its
southeast flank a series of
arcades exhibiting, sequentially when leaving the city: a
chasm of concrete light wells,
rough rock formations, and
impromptu thickets of trees.
Listed in the National Register

11

The Lower Roadway of New

Jersey Route 139 (William
Sloan, Fred Lavis, Sigvald
Johannesson, and the New
Jersey State Highway
Commission, completed in
1929)born of the postwar
necessity for the efficient,
exclusive accommodation of
vehicular trafficwas
unprecedented in scope and

In the early twentieth century, people were

exposed to spaces that were previously
unthinkable, spaces initiated by internal
combustion, witnessed through auto glass
and dedicated to velocity, the combination
of distance and time. New concepts of
spatial definition emerged, enveloped in
structures of heroic massiveness and rhythms
of increased rapidity. New types of architecture appeared, not only highway constructions themselves, but also the buildings and
spaces that began to materialize along these
new roadways, such as toll plazas, rest stops,
fueling stations, and so on. Perceived at high
speeds and sited on or along roadways, these
buildings address the highway and its
expanded vistas with spaces configured by
rates of acceleration and deceleration,
vehicular turning radii, driving lanes, and
viewing pyramids constrained by automotive
design and increasingly favoring the oblique
over the frontal. The result is an elongation
of spaces and the development of an
anamorphic architecture, one in which
landscapes, spaces, and volumes are
distorted in compensation for the visual
foreshortening and condensed observations
prompted by the highway.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

When it comes to scale, buildings are

eternal chameleonsshifty characters,
they thrive on belonging simultaneously
to multiple and interlocking scales.

12
scale

Scale can be fleeting or even imaginary, relational or perceptual.

108
109

Size is how big something isits actual dimension.

However scale is relative, it can be defined only in
relation to something. That something can be the
wholein other words, a door has a scale in relation
to the surface in which it is locatedor the perceived,
as in the position of the observer, from where (what

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

lvaro Sizas Santa Maria

Church in Marco de
Canavezes, Portugal (1996),
manipulates scale in relation
to multiple contexts. From
the square below, it appears
to be a modest church atop a
hill, with a traditional window
indicating its nave (although
this window is, paradoxically,
unseen from the interior).
Upon the hill, one finds the

entry door abnormally

enlarged, at a scale
appropriate to the ritual of
procession. Once inside, a
long, low horizontal window
at the eye level of seated
parishioners returns the
structure to human scale,
emphasizing the expanse of
the horizon and the valley
beyond.

distance, what orientation) he or she is

located. Scale is dependent on context, a
context that can range from the smallest
nanoparticle to a vast landscape. Scale is
fleeting, as a building for example can
simultaneously belong to multiple scales.
And, finally, there is the imagined scale
where the mythology of the object has
established a scale greater or smaller than
the actual. How many times have we come
upon something that we have always read
about or seen in images and think, Oh, how
much smaller (or larger) it actually is! where
its reality, once contextualized, is vastly
distinct from its imagined scale?
BODY
The body is a powerful determinant of scale.
It has the ability to generate measure through
either its necessity to physically engage an
environment at multiple scales and at multiple
speeds (be it a handle, a car, a parade) or
through locating its eye in relationship to that
environment (a window, a vista) so that it can
be perceptually experienced.
Physical
The height of a stair riser, the height and
profile of a handrail, the proportions of a
chair are all scaled to interact with the
dimensions of the human body. The bodys
(continued on page 112)

The profile of Alvar Aaltos

ceramic-clad volume of
the1968 Nordic House in
Reykjavk, Iceland, is shaped
simultaneously by the

Aldo Rossis Teatro del

Mondo, constructed for the
Venice Biennale in 1979,
endlessly manipulates our
perception of the existing
context. As this temporary
structure literally floats into
proximity with the citys
great churches, their scale is
suddenly transformed from
monumental and massive to
pavilionesque and fleeting.

acoustical necessities of the

auditorium that it encloses
and the mountainous
silhouette of the distant
Mt. Esja beyond.

Gerrit Rietveld
and the Scales of Art
De Stijl was the name chosen for the collective efforts of a group of loosely
organized creative people in the Netherlands in the early twentieth century. The
work of this Dutch group coalesced around
the musings published in an eponymous
magazine. During its brief period of publication, De Stijl showcased images of
archi tecture, painting, sculpture, and
furniture-making amongst literary musings
that trended towards a heady sociocultural
cocktail of transnationalist politics and
universalist metaphysics. The second issue
of De Stijl, published in 1918, set out the
groups manifesto. Painting was singled out
as the seminal visual discipline capable of
expressing a floating, unbounded spatial
continuum. Initially, there was resistance
to the inclusion of architecture due to its
obligation to address structural and functional needs. The painter Piet Mondrian
noted within the pages of volume five,
What was achieved in art must for the
present be limited to art. Our external environment cannot yet be realized as the pure
plastic expression of harmony.
In the face of the skepticism of Mondrian
and others, Gerrit Rietvelds Schrder
House was a remarkable achievement. The

Gerrit Rietveld: Schrder House, Utrecht, the Netherlands, 192324

exterior and interior

Gerrit Rietveld: Berlin Chair, 1923

house forcefully made a case for the expressive capabilities of architecture and became
a canonical representation of the spatial
continuum admired by the De Stijl group.
The interior and furniture of the Schrder
House is beholden to the same conceptual
thinking as the building shell. Walls on the
exterior are simple rectangular surfaces
that in many cases appear to float in defiance of gravity. Inside, walls are movable
partitions (thus literally achieving the
aspect of floating implied on the exterior). In the open position, interior
partitions allow space to flow unimpeded,

creating territories of use in place of traditionally defined rooms. Throughout the

house, rectangular surfaces are singled out
at a variety of scales and finished in bright
primary colors. This consistency of treatment extends from large architectural
surfaces, such as a balcony wall, to small
details, such as the end of a chairs arm.

windows, partitions, and furnitureare

conceived and executed under a rigorously
consistent regime. The geometry, surfaces,
and color of all of these components were
carefully considered and controlled by
Rietveld. While providing a reasonably
accommodating domestic environment,
he organized the house as a singular
declarative representation of the principles of De Stijl.

The Schrder House is a curated environment where a variety of normally disparate

componentsroofs, balconies, walls, Steven Fong (University of Toronto)

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Michael Webbs 196667

Cushicle is a nomadic unit
that provides self-sustaining
functions to one individual.
In its closed skeletal
position, it is carried on a
persons back and supports

its various appliances; in its

open position, it is an inflated
domestic skin. Both
positions are scaled to the
human bodys proportions
and range of motions.

proportions and range of motion determine

the scale of physical form that operates as an
interface between a body and its ability to
comfortably occupy and navigate architectural space. This scale of engagement is most
discernable within domestic spaces whose
primary responsibility is to house the body
and is critical in accessible spaces that
accommodate specialized user needs
(disabled, geriatric, children, and so on).
Perceptual
The eye of the observer locates the origin of
the gaze that establishes both the horizon
line and the cone of vision. As this gaze is
superimposed onto an infinite picture plane,
the near and the far can be brought into
immediate relation to each other, giving
scale to an otherwise scaleless environment.
If site lines used in determining the locations
and dimensions of apertures, frames, and

In Torino, Italy, the Fiat

automobile factory, designed
by Giacomo Matt Trucco
(192123) juxtaposes two
scales, one motivated by the
movement and turning radii
of an automobile test track,
the other by the repetitive
structural frame dimensioned by the large machines
and assembly lines of the
factory floor.

12

Conceived and perceived as

two enormous rocks
buttressing the banks of San
Sebastins Urumea River,
Rafael Moneos 199199
Kursaal Auditorium and
Congress Center exists at the
scale of the surrounding
landscape. Yet, as one enters
the lobbies of each volume, a
picture window frames that
distant landscape,
transforming the San
Sebastian bay and the
mountains of Mount Urgull
and Mount Ula into
projected still lifes that
appear to be drawn onto its
interior surfaces.

Scale

grids through which views and light pass are

carefully calibrated to the origins of both
static and animate gazes, then these devices
have the ability to register the scale of the
human body. These foregrounds introduce
scale to distant backgrounds and horizons by
juxtaposing them alongside the scale of the
body, establishing a tangible relationship
between the human body and the context in
which it is located.

112
113

THE NEAR AND THE FAR

Buildings are eternal chameleonsthey are
shifty characters that thrive on belonging
simultaneously to multiple and interlocking
scales. As one views the Eiffel Tower from a
distance, it is a marker, an orienting pin that
protrudes from a once homogenous Parisian
skyline. Yet as one approaches, its scale
transforms to a monumental one, an upward
thrusting demonstration of engineering
ingenuity that dwarfs the observer. And
finally, from within its rooftop restaurant, it is
an instrument, a camera lens, scaled to the
body, with which to frame the city below.

Adolf Looss 1922 competition entry for the offices

of the Chicago Tribune is,
on one hand, a 120-meter
(131 yd) high office building
scaled for human occupancy
and, on the other, a singular
and monumental column
made of black granite.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

From 1556 until 1573 a

pentagonal fortification in
Caprarola, Italy, was
transformed into a villa by
Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola.
He also reconstructed the
main street through the
village, so that the new Villa
Farnese could be experienced
at a variety of scales upon

approach, with a constantly

changing juxtaposition of elements: At first a loggia over a
modest entry door, then as a
heavily rusticated base upon
which an intermediate floor
appears below the loggia, and
finally as a massive
pentagonal construction
upon a generous terrace. On

Multiple Scales
One might askwhat scale must a work be?
A work can be of a more familiar and
intimate scale or of a monumental, largerthan-life scale, one that impresses or awes.
But regardless, the scale of a building is
informed by the scale of the context in which
it is located, by the scale of the context from
which it is experienced, and finally the scale
of operation that it serves. And these scales
are often at odds with each other. A building,
for example, exists at the scale of a city
where it interacts with urban infrastructures
of public thoroughfares, spaces, and vistas. It
exists at the scale of the street as it interacts
with adjacent buildings. It exists at the scale
of the body, which allows an occupant to
access it and interact with it both physically
and spatially.

mounting this terrace, ones

eyes move upward through
the villas various floors as
they shift in scale until the
uppermost floors, where the
diminished windows cause
the bulk to appear to have
swollen to enormous
proportions.

Scale is relativeand it is the various

contexts from which buildings are experienced (and to which they are attached) that
inform the various scales. As the cone of
vision is reduced, as the building begins to
lose its relationship to its broader context,
new references are established, ones that
more directly engage the body and the
sensual. For example, when considered
through the wide-angle lens of an urban
skyline, like a Morandi bottle or a Czanne
apple, a buildings responsibility is to interact
with its neighbors, the collection of buildings
that constitutes the city. Here, exaggerated
proportions and crisp profiles allow this
relationship to become legible at the scale
of the city. That very same building, however,
approached from a lesser distance and
at street level, might take on a much more
defined scalewhere proportions, color,
material, and textures become important
characteristics in defining its relationship
to its immediate surroundings.

The independence of the

primary steel structure from
the exterior and interior wall
panels of Pierre Chareaus
1931 Maison de Verre in Paris,
France (with Bernard Bijvoet
and Louis Dalbet), results in
an open and continuous
spatial experience. Here,
walls are freed of structural

responsibility and this

independence is reiterated
at the scale of the sliding,
folding, and rotating screens
that choreograph a series
of transforming interior
experiences that allows for
simultaneous, yet independent, programmatic and
spatial interpretations.

12

concrete floor slabs to the

glazed enclosure walls sliding
independently of the existing
stone walls, to the bridges
that extend the circulation
between buildings. Here the
architecture operates as
intermediary device that
bridges the intimate scale of
the body and the enormity
of the ancient fort structure.

Interlocking scales
Like the nesting of Russian matryoshka dolls
whose theme informs the painting of each
successively scaled doll, an architectural
concept informs the development of a
building at multiple scales. In other words, a
detail, a door, a room, a building is developed as variations of an overriding concept
that informs the totality of a work.

structure that marks the site

of the 1764 origin of the city
and shifts to an imagined
scale as gateway to an
expansive western landscape.

Kurt Schwitterss 192337

Hannover Merzbau was
constructed as an entire
environment whose scale and
content fluctuated almost
daily. Constructed from
scavenged detritus, it was
simultaneously full-scale
room and model of the world,
one that housed an incrustation of talismanic traces
and imaginary narratives.
(Reconstruction by Peter
Bissegger, Hanover, 198183)

114
115

Quotidian versus Monumental

Buildings, cities, and landscapes are
experienced at an everyday scale: the familiar
of the daily and the prosaic. It is through
making this scale unfamiliar, seemingly larger
or smaller than the familiar in relationship to a
specific context, that monumentality is
achieved. But they can also have a largerthan-life scaleone that operates at the scale
of the imagination. And while these
monuments are often large in size, their
power resides in their ability to convey
meanings that transcend the quotidian.

The Gateway Arch in St. Louis,

designed by the architect
Eero Saarinen and structural
engineer Hannskarl Bandel,
transcends its status as a

Scale

Carlo Scarpas 195864

renovation of Veronas
Castelvecchio is conceived as
an independent programmatic,
material, and circulatory
overlay onto the ancient
medieval twelfth-century
fortification. This concept of
separate but connected
systems informs the design
of the building at multiple
scalesfrom the floating

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

It is the manipulation of form through

an understanding of the shadows that
are cast that registers the generative
presence of light.

13
light

Le Corbusier has said that light for me is the fundamental basis of architecture.
I compose with light (von Moos, page 98).

116
117

Imagine if one were to begin with a box, a dark box

or a surface, a dark surfacehow might light be introduced into that space or onto that surface? How might
light structure a space or surface so as to bring order
to itbring it scale, bring it texture, bring it hierarchy?
As light is incrementally introduced, objects and

Light is given a spatial

presence in this 1970
Sculpture Gallery by Philip
Johnson in New Canaan,
Connecticut, as it structures
the surfaces onto which it is
cast. Its traces not only help
to define the dimensions of
the works exhibited but
transform the gallery itself
into a work of art.

The introduction of natural

light at the perimeter of Eero
Saarinens 1955 Chapel at
MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, accentuates the
plasticity of its interior
surfaces. The roughness of

the brick courses and

geometries of the undulating
walls are surfaces that are
activated by the filtered light
that is reflected off of the
exterior moat that surrounds
the chapel.

surfaces are articulated as they come in and

out of focus and it is the dialogue of this
light with the surfaces that it illuminates or
passes through that produces an expanded
spatial experiencea continuous transformation of form.
Yet, it is not the light, per se, that creates
the spaceit is the shadows that are cast
that construct the space, for as Louis Kahn
said, All material in nature, the mountains
and the streams and the air and we, are
made of Light which has been spent, and
this crumpled mass called material casts a
shadow, and the shadow belongs to Light.
(Lobell, p. xx) Thus, it is the manipulation
of form through an understanding of the
shadows that are cast that registers the
generative presence of light.

Spatial Transformation
Light is temporal and as it moves through a
space it has the capacity to transform it. As
surfaces come under the spotlight, they can
alternately advance and recede from view,
and the space through which light moves can
expand and contract along its path. Materials
can appear altered as their textures transform
and volumes can seem distorted as their
proportions appear to change.
Textures
The surface onto which light is directed not
only becomes hierarchically more significant
than one that remains in relative darkness, but
it amplifies its presence through the shadow
that it casts. Textures can be revealed and
exaggerated through exposure to light, just
as they can be smoothed and made flat.
(continued on page 121)

The church at Le Corbusiers

Sainte-Marie de La Tourette
monastery complex in Eveux,
France (195659), is a large
concrete volume whose
apertures obscure the direct
source of natural light. Not
only are the churchs rough
concrete surfaces animated
by kaleidoscopic patterns of

moving light, where ones

gaze is continuously
refocused to sequentially
illuminated focal points, but
the sanctuary itself
transforms spatially as the
surfaces alternately flatten
and advance as the shadows
come and go.

Steven Holls Sculpting of Light

Steven Holls architecture is one that

deeply engages the senses, and it is through
the interplay of light, color, shadow, and
time that he choreographs an architectural
experience. One could even say that his
built forms are a result of the sculpting of
light, and that it is this light that constructs the space of his architecture. His
works are perceived as compositions of
light that are literally experienced as one
is drawn from space to space and further
enriched as the gaze is guided toward the
imagined spaces created by distant illuminations appearing within the surfaces that
define the very same spaces through which
one is moving.

Steven Holl: The Chapel of St. Ignatius,

Seattle, Washington, 1997
views of exterior and interior

In his Chapel of St. Ignatius, completed in

1997, it is the sculpting of light that not
only produces the three-dimensional forms
that emerge from the rectangular shell of
the chapel, but it is the light that these
forms in turn produce that renders tangible St. Ignatius foundational guidebook
and teachings: the necessity for moving
between and making decisions amongst
constantly shifting lights and darknesses.
Spatial complexity is subsequently produced within an uninterrupted interior
volume through a series of spatial zones
that are choreographed by these lightproducing forms. As with Le Corbusiers
light towers at Ronchamp and his light cannons over the priests altars of La Tourette,
Steven Holls bottles of light continue
the modernist tradition of constructing
light as a primary generator of both architectural form and architectural space. And
not unlike Morandis still life paintings
of the 1920s that construct a canvas of
(exterior) spatial relationships, the collection of St. Ignatiuss Seven Bottles of
Light represent a canvas of volumes that
have been carefully selected to devise an
interior space of gatherings of different
lights. (Holl, Cobb, page 9)

Le Corbusier: Notre Dame du Haut,

Ronchamp, France, 1954
interior and exterior views of light towers

Giorgio Morandi: Still Life, 1952

Here, continuous yet spatially distinct

three-dimensional spaces are constructed
through the projection of these volumes of
light onto surfaces that are as if permanently imprinted by the transmitted light,
resulting in a series of abstracted interior
canvasses. The necessity of fixed threedimensional form gives way to continuously
transforming spatial compositions that are
defined by these intersections of surface
and light.
In the expansion to the Nelson-Atkins
Museum of Art, the introduction of light
occurs at multiple scales. At the scale of
the landscape, the enormous buildings of
light that serve to illuminate the embedded
galleries operate by day as sculptural pavil-

Steven Holl: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art,

Kansas City, Missouri, completed 2007
view of exterior light boxes

ions around and between which leisure

activity occurs, and by night as luminous
lanterns that suggest imagined worlds
lurking below the surface.
At the building scale, these volumes create
Piranesian spaces of light and shadow that
draw the visitor to the galleries below.
And, finally, at the infrastructural scale,
the fusing of structure, air, environment,
and light produces the optical instruments
that can be precisely calibrated to experience the collection of art.
In Holls architecture, light is the protagonist in the production of a relentless merging
and blurring of architectural space. And it
is in the construction of the softness of
these volumes that one experiences the
pleasure of his architecturethat one
inhabits the glow.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi: Untitled etching (called

The Smoking Fire), plate VI from The Imaginary
Prisons (Le Carceri dInvenzione), Rome, 1761 edition

Steven Holl: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art,

Kansas City, Missouri, view of light structure

Steven Holl: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art,

Kansas City, Missouri, view of interior

13
Light

Light reinforces the spatial

order of the Pompeian house.
The atrium is the first room
into which one arrives, above
which is centered an aperture
that admits both natural
light and rainwater. Both

symbolically and physically,

this central space of light was
the heart of the household,
around which guests and
families would meet and
water would be collected.

within a fairly shallow space. Volumes can

appear flatter or more three-dimensional
and dimensions can appear increased or
decreased. Spatial sequences are introduced
as one is drawn from dark to light. Alternately,
boundaries between spaces can be blurred as
light becomes more uniformly distributed.
This play of light cannot only produce
simultaneous and shifting spatial readings
but it also challenges static programmatic
relationships, where unique behavioral
patterns emerge as occupants gazes and
movements seek shade and/or light.
Color
In his Theory of Colors, Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe writes The eye sees no form,
inasmuch as light, shade, and color together
constitute that which to our vision distinguishes object from object, and the parts

In Sauerbruch Huttons
200209 Brandhorst
Museum in Munich, the
polychromatic faade
connotes its program. It
stands as a three-dimensional
Pointillist painting whose
independent layers of
bicolored sheet metal and

multicolored ceramic rods

combine to produce a
continuously fluctuating
faade that alternately
intensifies and fades, and
solidifies and dematerializes,
as one experiences it from
close and afar, frontally
and obliquely.

of an object from each other. (Goethe,

page xxxviii) And as all color perception is
both relative to the eye of the observer and
to the (often colored) context in which it is
perceived, it follows that an understanding
of color in architecture introduces a potent
symbolic and dynamic dimension to
architectural form and space.
Symbolic
Colors have traditional meanings associated
with themmeanings that shift, depending
on the culture in which they are located. Red
is a symbol of luck in Asian cultures and often
the color worn by brides, yet in South Africa
it can symbolize mourning. Colors are also
thought to produce certain environments that
can alter perception and behaviors.

121

Distortion
Spatial experience can be intentionally
transformed through choreographing the
relationship between a light source and the
surface onto which it falls. As darker spaces
tend to recede and brighter spaces advance,
three-dimensional depth can be exaggerated

presence. The minimal

dimensions of these
apertures exaggerate the
contrast between the sunlit
exterior and the dark interior,
while the profiles of the
incisions simultaneously
convey religious meaning.

120

Chiaroscuro
Establishing contrast between light and dark
serves to delineate spatial and programmatic
boundaries. The crisp profile lines that
render legible contrasting patterns of light
and dark, control the effect of this duality.
Extreme contrast can be achieved by the
introduction of light through a controlled
aperture where the profile of the cut is
important in demarcating the amount of light
that enters a space, allowing the imagination
to complete that which is left in darkness.

Tadao Andos Church of the

Light in Ibaraki, Japan
(1989), is conceived as a
concrete box that is
subsequently incised to
introduce natural light to its
interior. Here, light has both
a physical and spiritual

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

The color of Luis Barragns

Casa Gilardi (1976) in
Tacubaya, Mexico, not only
recalls Mexican textiles and
pottery, markets and sundrenched street walls, but
illuminates the interior
spaces of an elongated site.

The dining-pool room at the

rear of the house introduces
an almost mystical source of
light where color, through its
palette, reflectivity, and
intensity, creates the illusion
of infinite spatial depth.

Perceptual
Certain materials and colors reflect light,
others absorb iteffects that can accentuate
formal relationships. For example, spatial
depth can be exaggerated within a shallow
field by juxtaposing a lighter colored surface
against a darker background. Or a white
volume against a black background will
appear larger than a black volume against a
white background: The perception of scale is
always a function of the interplay between
forms. Color can compensate for light or
darkness and provide solace or destination or
it can animate an otherwise uniform surface.
Instrument
Entire buildings can operate as instruments
for light, and nowhere is this more evident
than in the Pantheon in Rome. Its 27-foot (8 m)
diameter oculus dramatically illuminates
spiritually, literally, and temporallythe vast
space over which it presides, and as the Sun
moves across the sky, its sculpted light is cast
onto the domes spherical surface. The
building is an instrument that produces a
visible measure of the passing of time.
Devices that capture or filter light can
become a dominant, sometimes singular,
characteristic of a project. Often, these
optical devices motivate exaggerated forms
that are capable of directing or modifying
generic light for a specific interior condition.

The cinema and ballroom of

the Caf Aubette in
Strasbourg, France, designed
by Theo van Doesburg, Hans
Arp, and Sophie Taeuber-Arp
and opened in 1928, deploys
color as a device that negates
any sense of materiality while
simultaneously blurring the
boundaries between floor,
walls, and ceilings. The
diagonal compositions are
inspired by van Doesburgs
own paintings, an exploration
in creating a corresponding
three-dimensional colored
atmosphere.

13

The faade of Jean Nouvels

Center for the Arab World in
Paris, France, is an optical
instrument constructed of
thousands of individually
calibrated lenses that
respond to changing lighting
conditions. This mechanical
brise soleil (sun breaker)
retracts and opens its lenses
as the sun intensifies or
fades, the resulting spatial
(and audial, as the metal
shingles click open or closed)
effect being one of flickering
shadows and changing
landscapes.

Light

Hweler + Yoon Architectures

2004 installation in Athens,
Greece, constructs a space of
illumination and sound. As
individuals move through a
field of optic rods and floor
speakers, emitted light and
sound register their
movements, producing a
constantly transforming
and fleetingspatial field.

The painted corrugated-metal

siding of the houses in
Valparaiso serve to delay
their inevitable rust in this
Chilean seaport. Reputed to
have come from the shipping

containers of passing
freighters, these colored
panels introduce a vibrant
palette to this hillside
community.

Louis Kahns 1972 Kimbell

Art Museum in Fort Worth,
Texas, is an instrument for
producing light. The parallel
rows of the iconic concrete
cycloid vaults that distinguish
the buildings form are a
function of Kahns desire to
introduce indirect natural
light to illuminate the gallery
spaces. Skylights located
between the extruded shells
of concrete allow natural

light to enter and be

reflected back upward to the
underside of the smooth
concrete vaults by aluminum
reflectors that are attached
beneath the skylights.
The now indirect light is
subsequently diffused
downward along the curved
surfaces of the concrete
vaults into the gallery spaces
below, where the artworks
are displayed.

122
123

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

It is movement that transforms an

otherwise monosyllabic and inert
architecture into an endlessly complex
and animate one.

14

movement
Like a symphony, an extended sequence often has an identifiable theme that begins with a
whisper and concludes with a bang, exploring along the way variations on the central theme.

124
125

Movement through a building or a city is a way of

organizing ones experience of it, of orienting the
body in relationship to something outside of itself.
And while architectural and urban form and space are
typically static, it is ones movement through them
that constructs a continuously changing environment.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Le Corbusier, in his 1929 Villa

Savoye in Poissy, France,
constructs a series of architectural compositions that
subsequently choreographs
the movement through the
building and landscape. The
relationship of volumes and
surfaces in space and light
creates a series of still lifes
that the observer passes
through as he/she navigates
the building. A ramp carries
the gaze diagonally through
the building, from the entry
vestibule up toward the raised
courtyard and, finally, toward
the sky.

As relationships between forms and spaces

transform, and as one perceives these spaces
and forms from multiple points of view, an
otherwise monosyllabic and inert architecture
is transformed into an endlessly complex and
animate one. And it is the structuring of
these relationships through a variety of
movement systems that choreographs and
defines that experience. A stair can collapse
vertical relationships between spaces while
a ramp might construct a more elongated
unfolding of the architectural experience.
Regardless, it is the introduction of space
through time that produces a series of spatial
and formal relationships, a fourth dimension
to architecture.

Curating Space
Choreographing the movement through
space constructs formal relationships and
reveals concepts. The order in which elements
are experienced and the way in which they
are framed become powerful lenses through
which a work is given meaning.
Filmic
Le Corbusier coined the term promenade
architectural where architectural elements
are not experienced from a single point of
view but from multiple vantage points as one
strolls through the architectural landscape. In
this case, architecture can be thought of and
experienced as a series of spatial stills or
filmic frames that together constitutes a
complete spatial experience.

Processional
The reliving of a memory or the reenactment
of an historical event can be embedded in the
architectural works that mark that route. Like
the Stations of the Cross that line cathedral
walls and religious walks and are used especially
during Passion ceremonies, architecture can
thus preserve the eeting event as a
permanent memory. At a larger scale, there
are, for example, several pilgrimage routes
that traverse Spain and end in Santiago de
Compostela, where the apostle St. James is
entombed. El Camino de Santiago is marked
with Romansesque churches with enormous
portals designed to accommodate vast
numbers of pilgrims and that, during much of
the year, serve as a reminder of the now
largely touristic but once ecclesiastical ritual.

14
Movement

Richard Meiers 1975

Atheneum in New Harmony,
Indiana, is essentially a
viewing machine that uses its
circulation to constantly
reorient the visitor to its
historic site: first to the
modern town, then to its
location next to the river,
then to other nearby
structures, and, finally, to
the historic village of New
Harmony. The sequence
initiates from the edge of the

Wabash River, moves through

the buildings interior ramps
and stairs, ending with a
stepped ramp that gently
deposits the visitor at the
entry to the historic village.
The central ramp further
maps the formal and spatial
structure of the building
as it adjusts and resolves
its shifting geometries so
that it addresses the
elements contained within
its historical narrative.

Narrative
Architecture can tell a storyreal or
imaginedabout an individual, a place, an
event. The circulation can operate as an
armature that collects and frames the visual
icons that render the narrative legible.

127

In Lina Bo Bardis SESC

Pompia So Paulo
Recreation Center in So
Paulo, Brazil (1977), a spatial
web is constructed by a
continuous circulatory scan
as athletes pass between the
changing-room tower and the
sports facilitiesas if actors
on display for the audience
below and yet afforded a
privileged view of those who
are, in fact, watching them.

126

Theatrical
Architecture has the ability to frame the
relationship between its various occupants
and, in so doing, either establish or
reinforce various behaviors. Movement
through space continually reframes the
occupants visions, constructing roles that
shift from actor to audience.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Sequence
The type of movement and the speed in
which a work is revealed defines the
architectural experience. A sequence can
be highly choreographed and follow a
specific (physical and spatial) itinerary or
it can be intentionally random and allow for
a multiplevirtually infinitevariety of
encounters. It can be defined with a clearly
articulated path (as with a bridge, stair, or
ramp) or it can be constructed through
formal and spatial relationships, where one
moves toward a source of light or toward and
between figural forms (as through a row of
columns or between two volumes).
Continuous
An uninterrupted sequence creates a fluid
and continuous spatial experience with each
space unfolding into the next. This sequence
is often associated with ramps or generous
staircases, where the speed of movement
allows for an extended gaze that scans and
collects the near and the far.
Attenuated
Like a symphony, an extended sequence
often has an identifiable theme that begins
with a whisper and concludes with a bang,
exploring along the way variations on the
central theme. It often responds to contextual conditionsa narrowing of the space,
an elevational differenceand occupancy
a trickle of wanderers versus a crowded
stampede.

Adalberto Liberas 1938 Casa

Malaparte in Capri, Italy, is
an extension of the rock
from which it appears to
seamlessly grow. Its majestic
staircase triumphantly
extends the circuitous rocky
ascent that is initiated in the
sea far below it, culminating
the sequence with the view
of a distant horizon.

Circulation and gallery space

are fused in Frank Lloyd
Wrights 1959 Guggenheim
Museum in New York City.
Here, an enormous ramp
defines the space of circulation, of art gallery, of interior
court, and of building form.
It allows for both near and
distant views of the displayed
works, with the movements
of the visitors defining the
space of the interior.

Tethered to the hillside by a

light metal bridge, Mario
Bottas 197173 single-family
house in Riva San Vitale,
Switzerland, collects both
distant and near views of the
landscape, beginning with
the bridge and continuing as
one descends the central
staircase. Each level radiates
from this spiraling stair,
which in turn registers
openings in the perimeter
walls that reveal the forested
landscape and lake beyond.

14
Movement

Each of the eighteen National

Tourist Routes in Norway has
a unique constellation of
service buildings and access
infrastructures (bridges, paths,
parking) that reference a

routes own particular history

and character. These
fragments are discovered at
unique moments along each
routeconstructed traces
that render each route visible.

For example, along the Senja

Route, Code Arkitekturs
Tungeneset rest stop (2006
07) extends the islands
perimeter road, gesturing
downward to the sea.

Throughout the archeological

park at Gigon Guyers
Museum and Park Kalkriese
in Osnabruck, Germany
(19992002), a network of
symbolic paths represents
various layers of occupation,

Guy Debords psychogeography (1955) develops

the idea that a thoughtful
understanding of the city is
developed by an aimless
wandering, one driven by
impulse rather than order,
where one can construct a
series of narratives that is
unique to each itinerary.

from the Roman Legions

route along the ramparts, to
the Teutons positions as they
advanced and retreated, to
a nonmilitaristic neutral
layer of park trails. Three
pavilionsSeeing, Hearing,

and Questioningare
distributed throughout the
park, points in a landscape
between which multiple
encounters and trajectories
can occur.

Interrupted
The experience of a building or a landscape
need not be continuousin other words,
fragments of primary spatial experiences
can be collected and reconstituted in ones
memory as a comprehensive, if not
continuous, experience.

128
129

Random
Here, the accidental encounter is privileged
over the controlled, where the movement
through a building or landscape is intentionally unstructured. This creates an experience
that allows for a continuous recombination
of architectural experiences, with each
combination producing a unique reading
of the work.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

The building volumes of Zaha

Hadids 199699 Landscape
Formation-One in Weil am
Rhein, Germany, are an
extension and transformation
of the parks existing

networks of meandering
circulation paths, creating a
three-dimensional spatial
weave and obscuring the
distinctions between
architecture and landscape.

Dialogue
Movement through space is often a distinct
system that establishes a dialogue with a
particular context. It can either amplify and,
in so doing, render legible an existing
infrastructural network or it can overlay a
distinct spatial, material, and temporal
dimension. The dimension, geometry, and
material of movement systems often
demonstrate their occupants requirements,
from turning radii (automobiles), to angles
of incline (accessibility), to minimum widths
(egress safety).
Amplification
Movement systems can originate within the
context in which the work is situated. They
can attach themselves to existing circulation
networks, amplifying their presence into
three-dimensional form, thereby blurring the
boundaries between exterior and interior,
landscape and architecture.
Interface
Systems of movement can operate as
material and spatial mediators between
distinct conditions: between past and
present, between two scales, between two
programs, between two materials, between
two speeds. Often, they introduce the
human being into a liminal space between
two conditions, establishing a critical
dialogue that allows one to be understood
from the lens of the other.

Studio Labics and Nemesi

Architetti Associati
(19992004) overlaid a
system of steel bridges,
ramps, and thresholds onto
the archeological ruins of
Trajans Market in Rome,

Italy. The distinct material

and dimensional layer
introduces an independent
circulation system that allows
the visitor to navigate the
traces and remains of the vast
113 CE brick structures.

each layer, introducing yet

another dimension and
operation to the folded plates
as the inner surfaces adjust
to the human scale. An
elevator adds a third means
of navigating the structure
a direct route back to the top
layer of parking.

130

formed and deformed as a

function of the automobiles
external upward spiral,
transforming the car from
prosaic machine to exhibited
object as it navigates the
ramped surfaces. The
pedestrians inner descent
ramps back down through

Movement

Multiple/Parallel
Simultaneous or parallel sequences reveal
alternate architectural experiences: The short
and sweet is distinct from the long and
leisurely, the honorific from the prosaic, the
once a year from the every day. The
enormous central brass doors to the Vaticans
St. Peters open on special occasions, allowing
for an axial procession up the stairs and into
the central nave, versus the everyday
perimeter doors that provide access to the
local and the touristic. Courthouses also have
multiple sequencesone for the accused, one
for the public, and a third for the judiciary
each demonstrating various scales of access
and security that reflect the special circumstances of each group.

14

Multiple movement systems

define the architecture of
Centre Georges Pompidou,
designed by Richard Rogers
and Renzo Piano and
completed in 1977 in Paris,
France. Be it the movement
of air, water, electricity, art,
or people, each system is
given a clear expression that
defines the form of the
building. The city of Paris is
displayed as a picturesque
canvas as one moves up the
exuberant, and now iconic,
escalators that traverse the
exterior of the building.

131

The form of the 2008

Automobile Museum in
Nanjing, China, by 3Gatti
Architecture Studio is a
function of the buildings
independent, yet intertwined,
circulation trajectories.
The buildings paper-thin
concrete floor wafers are

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

It is through dialogue that everyone

becomes an architect.

15

dialogue
A work is constantly renewed by its encounters with new perceptions, new works.

132
133

Most works of artincluding, of course, architecture

are evaluated by their capacity to live beyond their
boundaries. That is, a work is seen to have an enduring
artistic value when it repeatedly transcends its superficial subject matter, and to engage others in an ongoing
exchange of observations, understandings, and even

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

The Vietnam Veterans

Memorial wall in Washington,
DC (designed by Maya Lin,
completed in 1982) is a
complexly dialogical construction that has evoked
countless, occasionally
contradictory interpretations:
a wound in the ground,
a ditch, a bulwark, a V
(Vietnam or victory?),

a transitory bolt of lightning,

a timeline, an arrow, a mute
tombstonelike symbol of
death, a vibrant mirrorlike
reflection of life. Here, the
construction of memoryand
meaningis wholly the task
of the individual visitor.
However, concern over the
unpredictability of interpretation led politicians to

Rafael Moneos El Greco

Congress Center (2012)
establishes a clever dialogue
with the fortified walls of
historic Toledo, Spain, but
incorporates the traditional
rubble construction within
bands of concrete, and the

irregular system of
buttresses that resonates
with other externallysupported ramparts that were
reinforced by necessity over
time, are in reality, hollow
ventilation shafts serving the
subterranean parking garage.

Ragnar stbergs Stockholm

Town Hall (1923) is a festival
of dialogues, from the
historic to the internal. Its
Riddarfjrden faade is
composed of bands of
windows that seem to follow
their own rhythms, reminiscent of the Doges Palace
in Venice, an allusion to
Stockholms maritime

behaviors that can persist long after the work

is complete, even after the author and the
original audience are no longer present. Such
works initiate an open-ended, dialogical
engagement with their world. Indeed, much
of a works meaning and identity is developed
by an audiences past and present experiences
as elicited by the work, and of their perceptions of the works relationship to other works.
A work is constantly renewed by its encounters with new perceptions, new works.

worlds. This work insists on the unambiguous

singularity of its meaning and resistsoccasionally fearsmultiple interpretations. It is
the unequivocal voice of authority. Monuments will often adopt a monological tone,
lest the subject of their commemoration be
subject to unanticipated interpretations.
Also, buildings considered to be primarily
utilitarian might operate monologically
(factories, water towers, electrical substations, and grain silos), but this does not
preclude them from being overlaid with
imposed interpretations, or for these
functions to be accommodated in a design
that has more expansive aspirations.

A monological work, on the other hand, has

no intention of engaging its audience in a
new or transformed understanding of their

supplement the wall with a

realistic sculpture representing three male soldiers
and, later, another depicting
three female nurses and an
injured soldier, explicit
representations intended to
delimit the range of possible
commemoration.

affinities. Additionally,
details such as the
occasionally aberrant
columnonly one in the
loggia being octagonal for
instancesignal their varying
roles within the circulatory
paths of the building.
With its blind windows,
apparently erratic apertures,
subtle brick hieroglyphs

(like the crescent moon to the

right of the large window),
and intentional misalignments, Stockholms Town
Hall keeps the viewers eyes
dancing and mind speculating
on its countless layers of
meaning and elusive systems
of order.

Architecture also approaches the status of

a monologue when it is designed with a
singularity of intention (perhaps a work
intended as a manifesto) or one in which the
designer is determined to make an autobiographical or otherwise private statement,
with the identity of the author being the
predominant message. Works of limited
capacity for dialogue include those that
simply mimic another worklike someone
who annoyingly repeats anothers words
or those that merely negate without rebuttal,
a no without any positive assertion.

are dialogically open ended; they have no

determinate past and can have no xed future.
The role of the architect is to facilitate the
discursive aspect of forms, and by engaging
various types of dialogue, to allow the
continuous redefinition of a works meanings
by all of its observers and all of its contexts.
In the more dialogical works of architecture,
everyone has an opportunity to construct
the work, to assign it values and meanings,
both internally and in relation to its
environment. It is through dialogue that
everyone becomes an architect.

135

bulge at the Oratory; the belt

across the Oratorys middle
aligns with the churchs
lower cornice and frieze;
the capitals of Borrominis
pilasters are reductive
versions of those at the
church; and while the church
steps forward at its center,
the Oratorys faade presents
an emphatic concavity.
The main entry to the new
complex is through the small
door in the gap between the
faades, duplicating the
dimensions of the churchs
side doors.

Inevitably, architectural forms invite a certain

amount of discourse. No architect can be fully
aware of the meanings that have accumulated
in even the simplest of forms, forms saturated
by centuries of history and the countless
recollections, world views, and experiences of
individual observers. For this reason, most
formsfrom spheres and cubes to petalshaped roofs and insectlike substructures

Fernando Tvoras Pousada

Santa Marinha in Guimares,
Portugal (1984). Viewed from
above, this new wing appears
to be a simple terrace; it is
both literally and figuratively
a new ground for the convent.

134

The faade of Francesco

Borrominis Oratory of the
Filippini on the left
(completed 1650) both
translates and analyzes its
neighbor, the Chiesa Nuova
(faade by Fausto Rughesi,
c. 1605); to gaze at one is to
interpret the other. The
Oratorys segmented gable
refers to the subtle layering
of that on the church; the
small arch of the churchs
upper window becomes a
flattened half dome in the
Oratory; the shallow arch
framing the churchs central
doorway sponsors a shallow

experiences, and by seeing architectures

capacity for shading the memories of past
experiences and establishing a framework
for future observations.

Above: The minimally

punctured wall of a wing of
the former convents cells
serves as both a background
and a primary rhythm for the
syncopated rhythms of the
new, highly fenestrated wing
of hotel rooms in this part of

Dialogue

The architectural designer has numerous

resources for the production of a work that
engenders dialogue: program, site, various
forms of representation, other buildings
(adjacent as well as unseen or even unbuilt),
materials, forms (basic and compound),
personal experiences, memories, and the
participation of a cadre of others. The role
of these othersinstructors, critics, collaborators, clients, users, historians, and casual
observersis essential to the continuation
of a works capacity for dialogue, not just
through active critique, but also by placing
a work in the context of other works and

the thinness of the steel.

Fragments of now irrelevant
masonry protrude along the
clean, scarred wall, joined by
rust stains leaching from the
newly inserted balcony.

15

Left: In converting the ruined

Santa Maria do Bouro
Convent in Amares, Portugal,
into a hotel (198797),
Eduardo Souto de Moura uses
contemporary materials to
articulate the modern
occupation of the structure
while scrutinizing its former
status both as a once grand
convent andperhaps more
compellinglyas a ruin.
Highly reflective, frameless
windows simulate the empty
apertures of a ruin,
pretending to reveal sky
within. A weathering steel
panel traces the windows
proportions while displacing
it in space, underscoring the
massiveness of the wall with

Giuseppe Jappellis Caff

Pedrocchi (183142) in the
historic center of Padua,
Italy, is triangular in plan
and uses the same motif to
establish multiple dialogues
in varying contexts. The

porch motif with its largely

blank background story with
a single door and embedded
frieze sits alone in one piazza,
establishing a center to the
space while appearing to be a
pavilion embedded in the

Forms of Dialogue
One of the most effective techniques of
interpreting forms is to measure them
against other forms, not just through
similarities but also through differences.
Contrast
The dialogue between two contrasting
forms is especially powerful, in that contrast
provides a relational means of defining a
form. To perceive something as being small,
it is necessary to perceive it in relationship
to something else that is big. Heaviness
is understood in its relation to lightness,
roughness to smoothness, oldness to
newness. Without a sense of one of these
terms, the value of the other remains
undefined. Moreover, each term carries
within it a remnant of its opposite: The
concept of natural always retains traces of
artificial. In each case, further dialogue can
lead to a reorganization of these terms, with
something heavy, for example, suddenly
understood as being weightless.
A work can also develop through a series of
internal dialogues: unique versus repetitive
elements, curvilinear as opposed to

fabric (although the gothic

structure to its left is actually
a later addition by the same
architect, engaging his own
building in a complex,
time-bending dialogue).
A street faade in which two

of these motifs are used as

bookends terminates in
another piazza in which two
of these porch/pavilion
motifs are subordinated to
framing a large central bay,
sheltering an outdoor caf.

orthogonal forms, figural components within

background field conditions. It is also
possible for an element to develop evolving
understandings when understood in dialogue
with an environmental or temporal phenomenon. For example, a form can be understood alternately as opaque, translucent, or
transparent, based on the time of day,
changes in location of the Sun, the engagement of screens, or the transitions between
external daylight and internal artificial light.
Enrichment
The enrichment of meanings can also arise
from a dialogic engagement. For example, a
design can elaborate on the meanings of an
existing building or site by highlightingby
framing, isolating, or uncoveringpreviously
underemphasized or hidden aspects of the
previous forms.
Dialogue can arise from the reiteration of
forms, supplementing meaning by resituating
or reframing other forms in differing contexts.
A formjust as a phrasetransplanted into
a different context absorbs new inferences,
new potential meanings, that reflect back
onto the original.

Within a former cloister near

the entry of the Santa
Marinha Convent in
Guimares, Portugal, now a
pousada, Tvora reveals the
buildings promiscuous history
of repeated reconstructions

by excavating a carefully
delineated window into the
wall, making the viewer aware
of the buildings complex past
while establishing the case for
its current transformation
into a hotel (completed 1984).

Redirection
Redirection can also be a means of engaging
a work or form in a dialogue. This can occur
by means of reprogramming, as in the case
of a doorway becoming a window, a factory
becoming a museum, or a garden becoming
a roof. It is possible to directly supplement
the meanings of a form by adding or
subtracting details or characteristics.
Examples of subtraction include cutting into
buildings in order to reveal aspects that
might have been previously unconsidered,
to open views previously inaccessible, or
to introduce new sequences that retell a
buildings narrative.
Addition
Addition may produce an expanded or
unexpected interior within the implied
volumes of an exterior, bring new emphasis
to one component in a series, or suggest
further meanings by presenting a form or
motif in an alternative material (what was
brick becomes stone) or shape (one in a
row of round columns is hexagonal instead).

a populations shared memory. Many public

buildings (especially courthouses throughout
the United States) have made reference to
the Parthenon when they attempted to appeal
to a sense of monumental importance.
Similarly, a work might recall a local building
technique or typical materials and utilize
these resemblances to develop a design that
establishes a dialogue with a vernacular.

Indexing
Some facets of dialogue are derived from the
concept of indexing, whereby there is an
indirect, relational aspect between a form
and the perception of its meanings, often
one that has been learned from experience.

A work can also index other works, usually

historical, that may or may not be an aspect of

The Building
A design can engage another existing
building in a new dialogue, superimposing
new modes of understanding on a once
familiar structure or condition. Such
engagement can reinforce another buildings
role within a community. It could also subvert
previous understandings of a building to
suggest new values and significances.
The Detail
Or a design can address specific details of its
precedents: a roof shape, a traditional system
of joinery, an entry condition. Dialogical
engagement of details can focus attention on
aspects of craftsmanship, can reinvigorate
forms that have become overly familiar, can
overwrite previous implications, or can even
infer new or forgotten social or cultural
interpretations.

137

remodel. A sunken door

beneath an asymmetric
window is reorganized into a
balanced composition with
the forceful interruption of
the new window. More than a
door and window, the result is
a trio of diverse voices.

The City
Urbanistically, a design can engage an
aspect associated with its citya canal or
a boulevardpresenting it in a unique way.
A building can reiterate the massing or
silhouettes of other structures in its vicinity
while introducing a new pattern of usage. Or
a building can open unseen vistas into some
of the unobserved crevices of its urban
fabric, suggesting through a dialogical
engagement those conditions and traits that
introduce new perceptions of a city that had
once been known in a very different way.

136

In transforming the
Monastery of the Lima
Refios into the Agrarian
Graduate School of Ponte de
Lima, Portugal (19871993),
Fernando Tvora clearly
indicates his newer
intervention, but with no
attempt to simply restore or

Just as smoke seen rising from a chimney is an

index of a re inside, certain forms have had
either a general (to a population) or specic
(to an individual) relation to meanings. For
example, the typical image of a house form
a rectangular box with a gabled roof, a single
door, and possibly a chimneyis a standard
index of home, despite being as historically
associated with classic Greek temple forms
and traditional barn structures as with any
actual residences. In the world, very few
individuals actually lived in buildings that
looked like this house. Nevertheless, works
that incorporate such a form may resonate
with some viewers as having a cozy, familiar,
domestic impression, despite being perhaps
institutional or commercial structures.

Scales of Dialogue
Architectural dialogues can occur at multiple
scales: at the level of the city, of the building,
or of the detail. It is even possible for a dialogical relation to cross over scales: for a building
to engage a city, or for a detail to consider
the entirety of a building in microcosm.

Dialogue

suggests a portal composed

of a thin roof draped over two
logs supported by four bulls,
but it is, in effect, a covered
stairway descending to the
garden from a courtyard,
revealing a large gap to a
green space opened beneath
the heavy walls of one wing
of the castle.

the result is a clever formal

conversation that challenges
the viewer to interpret the
surface and its components
pilasters, railings, frames,
brackets, aperturesin
contrasting sets of
implications, depending on
whether one reads from the
left or from the right.

15

As much because of his

unique style as because of
his brilliant application of
complex forms, Joe Pleniks
interventions in the Castle of
Prague suggest an indefinite
chronology while suggesting
possible systems of
symbolism. His Gate to the
Garden of Paradise (1925)

As the faade of
Michelangelos Palazzo dei
Conservatori at the
Campidoglio in Rome wraps
the corner of the building, its
elements incrementally
merge with the medieval
fabric of the earlier building.
Whether this resolution was
originally intended or not,

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Tropes build connections between

many aspects of our world, proposing a
relativity between the knowable and
yet-to-be-known phenomena we observe.

16
tropes

A trope may be employed in order to instigate fresh understandings of something that

has become conventional.

138
139

Conceptions founded on rhetorical figuresespecially

the tropes of metaphor, metonymy (and synecdoche),
hyperbole, irony, and personificationhave been instrumental in the design and reception of countless artistic,
scientific, and even cultural constructions. Ubiquitous
in every branch of the arts and sciences (one thinks of

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Commercial architecture
often indulges in overt
metonymy, with restaurants
shaped like chickens or
flanked by lumberjacks, and
corporate headquarters
configured as their products.
The famous Brown Derby
restaurants in Los Angeles
(the first was constructed in
1926) were extremely

successful, due largely to

their conspicuousness and
the mock monumentality of
their gigantic derby hat cum
dome. The hat suggested
associations with Western
heroes and outlaws, as well
as famous Hollywood
characters such as Charlie
Chaplins Tramp.

the atom as a miniature solar system, or the

flow of electric currents), tropes are
frequently assimilated so completely they
often go unnoticed. Buildings, for instance,
are described as sitting by the road,
facing the park (both personifications),
cascading down a hill (metaphor), or the
White House announced (metonymy).
At first, a trope is evasivethe actual subject
is temporarily absent, replaced by something
elsecreating a diversion that initially
defamiliarizes the original subject, distancing
it from the observer. But upon realizing a
connectedness to the original subject, tropes
ultimately prove to be devices for familiarization. Architecture, for instance, usually
constrained by its own internal language of
forms, is made familiar by its association with
more universally recognized forms or ideas.
Tropes build connections between many
aspects of our world, proposing a relativity
between the knowable and yet-to-be-known
phenomena we observe.

Eero Saarinens TWA Flight

Center at John F. Kennedy
Airport in New York City
(1962) sought a formal
vocabulary that could
represent the spirit of
flight, as well as embody a
fluid efficiency from arrival

to ticketing to boarding. One

of the most exhilarating and
iconic airport designs ever
produced, its layered
metaphors conjure an elegant
raptor just before flight, and
a weightless sense of soaring.

Types
There are many types of tropes, with many
classes and subclasses. But certain tropes
have appeared with greater frequency
throughout architectural history and continue
to have a value in the design of buildings
and the education of architects.
Metaphors
In a metaphor, something that is potentially
unfamiliar or less known is elaborated by a
reference to something that is knowna
similarity is established. This usually involves
removing one component from its literal
meaning so that it can stand for something
else. When, for example, Jimi Hendrix sang
(in 1967), And so castles made of sand fall in
the sea, eventually, he was not discussing
castles, sand, or seas but, instead, aspirations,
time, and fate.
Aristotle argued that metaphors were the
greatest tools of the poet, and that they
instigate learning in their audiences. Kenneth
Burke saw the analogical extensions we develop
through interpreting metaphors as essential
in shaping our perspectives of the world.

The oversized vitrine of

Bordeaux Law Courts
(France, completed 1998), by
the London-based Richard
Rogers Partnership, not only
argues metaphorically that
the transparency and
accessibility of a courthouse

is analogous to the same

characteristics in the law,
but the buildings seven
wooden casklike courtrooms
metonymically refer to
Bordeauxs preeminence as
a wine region.

Tropes

speak directly to its

audience (architecture
parlante). tienne-Louis
Boulles metonymic design
for a Cenotaph for a Warrior
(c. 1780) proposes the
monument as a colossal
sarcophagus.

16

The use of tropes was

especially pervasive in the
architecture of eighteenthcentury France, when a
reaction to the exuberance
of the late baroque led to a
reductive classicism and an
attempt to make architecture

The summer house that

Franoise Racine de Monville
designed for his estate at the
Dsert de Retz near Marly,
France (1774), is an example
of a synecdochic architecture.

Because, as with most poetic language,

metaphors usually exceed their boundaries,
their analogous relationships can bring new
insights to otherwise insufficiently observed
phenomena. At the same time, because they
are susceptible to layers of interpretation,
often based on individual experiences,
metaphors can occasionally spin out of
control. (For example, Romeos Juliet is the
Sun hardly means that she is yellow or
round, although to some of todays audience,
it could mean that she is hot.)

If there is an intrinsic romantic poeticism to

metaphor, metonymy is basically realistic.
While the series of possible analogs
accompanying a metaphor often extends
beyond the initial presentation, in metonymy
there is a focus on a singular condition, with
an abridged, delimited perception. In
synecdoche, this abridgement can even lead
to a sense of surrealism, as with Nikolai
Gogols The Nose, in which a minor
officials nose surpasses its owners social
prominence. Architecturally, metonymy can
be employed as a type of shorthand,
providing immediate recognition of a
structures function or character.

Jean-Jacques Lequeus
project for a Rendezvous at
Bellevue (17771814)
represents the other aspect
of synechoche, in which the
parts are composed of
wholes. Here, a Greek temple
becomes the lantern of a
Renaissance tower that is, in
turn, attached by an Islamic

arcade to a Palladian pavilion

in the attic of a composite
villa, and so on. The project
a rendezvous of formsis an
argument for the idealization
of episodic architectural
events and the potential
harmony of eclecticism.

141

Metonymy
With metonymy, there is contiguity between
the original and its substitution, which is
often an associated icon. The classic example
is, The pen is mightier than the sword,
where pen stands in for writing and sword
for combat. Related to metonymy is the
synecdoche, in which a whole is replaced by
one of its parts, or a part is replaced by a
whole. Most movie criminals seem to be
named synecdochically, as in Louie the Ear
or Bertie the Chin.

140

Words and images accumulate metaphorical

values through time, occasionally displacing
their objective identitiesthink of storm,
willow, snakeevoking instead emotional,
behavioral, mythological, and even ethical
associations. In the same way, after thousands
of years, most architectural forms have been
overcome by metaphor: hearth (heart of the
home, warmth of family), thickened wall
(protection, security), gabled roof (shelter,
homestead), lighthouse (forewarning,
guidance), gateway (initiation, transition).

The entire house is built

as a fragment of a colossal
column, implying the
imaginary presence of a
gigantic temple that has
since collapsed in ruin.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Irony
While there are many forms of irony, they
all share the characteristic that what is
presented has some opposition to what is
intended. Jonathan Swifts famous essay,
A Modest Proposal, in which the author
seems to advocate the eating of children as
a solution to rural poverty, is considered to
be a masterpiece of ironic writing.

Oswald Matthias Ungers used

Shakespeares retelling of
Ovids Pyramus and Thisbe
myth as the central theme for
a house in West Berlin (c.
1976), not far from the Berlin
Wall, on a site once
containing a medieval wall.
The story tells of two lovers
from neighboring estates,
forbidden to meet by their
feuding families. Their only
communications occur
through a crack in the wall.

Irony is one of the more difficult tropes. An

audience unaware of the ironic intent (usually
indicated by a larger context or a subtle
wink) may understand an assertion at its
face value. Irony constantly fluctuates
between seriousness and jest, between
positive and negative poles. While Swift was
not advocating cannibalism, for example, a
simple understanding of the oppositethat
cannibalism is badwould also miss his point.
In architecture, ironies are most effective in
challenging beliefs that may be entrenched,
or in overturning formal complexes that have
been overcome by facile interpretations. For
this reason, one finds that many memorials,
especially those that remind us of painful
historic eventssuch as acts of genocide
employ ironic formal devices: Determined to
be noticed, they invert traditional monumental forms such as obelisks and stelae or tease
with an act of disappearance (as in the
Monument to the Deportes, chapter 20).
Hyperbole
Hyperbole is an obvious exaggeration,
intended to emphasize a specific characteristic or condition, as in waited an eternity.
The architectural hyperbole is often
incorporated when the designer wishes to
introduce a new form-type (a cone in place
of a dome), to emphasize the uniqueness of
a feature (bulbous protrusions on a rectangular block), or to underscore a characteristic
(as with exaggerated classical motifs on a
design grasping at monumentality).
One occasionally finds hyperboles opposite,
understatement, incorporated in architecture
that attempts to recede into an urban texture,
where conspicuousness may be considered a
liabilityas with certain clandestine clubs or
utility buildings, for instance.

The Barrire du Trne (1787),

comprising two identical
pavilions and two giant
columns, is one of Claude
Nicolas Ledouxs tollhouses
at the gates to Paris. The
pavilions combine a
hyperbolic monumentalitya
massive faade containing a
grandiose arch with

As in Shakespeares version,
the wall is also a character in
Ungers design, with the
house bisected into a work
cube and a residential cube,
connected only through a
single aperture in the thick
wall. More than a house built
on personification, Ungers
Pyramus and Thisbe develops
a metaphor and eventual
commemoration for the
divided Berlin.

exaggerated voussoirs
surmounted by a pediment
shouldered by inflated
bracketsleading to a
remarkable understatement
an unassuming doorway.
Hyperbole denotes the
structures civic pomp while
understatement connotes the
civic functionaries within.

Frank Gehrys NationaleNederlanden building in

Prague (1996) is known as
the Dancing House. Its
forms originated in part as a
personification of the famous
dancing duo of Fred Astaire
(the portion with the more
vertical deportment) and
Ginger Rogers (the more
dynamic). The dancing metaphor is especially appropriate, given the buildings
proximity to neighboring
baroque structures,
extending their regularity
with its fanciful distortions.

16
Tropes

Carlo Mollinos Teatro Regia

in Torino, Italy (completed in
1973) incorporates a subtle
form of personification with
its plan assuming the

contours of a female torso, a

figure the architect held in
the highest esthetic regard.
The auditorium volume itself
is a deep reddish-violet, a

Personification
With personification, animals, natural
phenomena, abstract concepts, and
inanimate objects are given human traits.
Personification is very common in fables,
fairy tales, and mythologies.

An expressive trope is central to the designs

concept and, when understood by the
observers of a work, provides them with tools
for expansive interpretations. A trope may
instigate a range of fresh understandings for
something that has become conventional. An
architect might also use an expressive trope
to introduce an audience to an unfamiliar or
ineffable program that has no established
formal language.
There is, however, an inherent danger with
tropes, for both the designer and the
observer: one can become lost in the endless
analogs of the metaphor, the fragmentation
of metonymy can permanently obscure the
whole, or one might become content with
the absence of the actual subject.

Joe Plenik wanted his

Church of the Sacred Heart in
Prague (1932) to incorporate
a brick pattern that suggests
the texture of an ermine
cloak. The metonymy here is
a reference to the traditional
cloak of royalty and a central

symbol in Christianity,
incorporating the nobility of
Christ and, because the
ermines coat becomes
darkened in the summer to
lighten again in the winter, a
reference to resurrection.

143

Values and Perceptions

In the design process, there can be both
operative and expressive tropes. An operative
trope is used primarily for motivating the
design process and is usually buried as the

process progresses, often overcome by

additional design concerns or by other
conceptual investigations. To some extent,
every diagram is an operative trope.

142

Personification can also have a double

reading, in that while a fox might be
presented as a man, there is the implication
that men can be foxlike. Personication can
be a technique for representing architectures
abstract characteristics in a way that can be
understood on a human level, as with
Lequeus attempts to apply physiognomy to
faade design. It has also been quite prevalent
in architecture that addresses the human body
as a source for the organization of space.

reference to womb and

royalty, with the stages
proscenium intended to
suggest the shape of a
television screen.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

The goal of defamiliarization is to prompt

others to actually perceive for the first
time something that has perhaps already
been seen on countless occasionsto
grasp the extraordinary in something that
has, until now, been routine.

17

defamiliarization
By introducing unfamiliar sources of conjecture as well as unfamiliar techniques of observing, of conceptualizing what is observed, and of describing what has been conceptualized,
the architect is able to cultivate a set of enhanced sensibilities.

144
145

Just as a building is expected to provide shelter, facilitate our day-to-day activities, and give us a sense of
comfort and familiarity, architecture may also on occasion lead us to question what we believe about the
world, to contemplate what has become customary or
habitual, to reevaluate what makes us comfortable, to

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

From its exterior, the Me

Dgua Amoreiras Reservoir
in Lisbon (constructed 1834
from designs by Carlos
Mardel), seems to be an
elegant urban monument,
perhaps even a temple. The
roof is a public plaza,
providing vistas of the city.
Inside, however, the structure
is full of water, being the
termination of an eighteenthcentury aqueduct, once the

This pencil drawing by a

first-year student illustrates
an interpretation of the
defensive movements of a
vampire squid. While not an
anatomical representation,
the record of these
movements is already
anticipating the construction

of an animated model that

may later be used to propose
a structure capable of turning
itself inside out.
Student: Allison Wills
(faculty: Val Warke &
Jim Williamson, teaching
associate: Larisa Ovalles)

challenge what we think we know. Similarly, in

the education of an architect, evoking the
unfamiliar is an essential technique for
motivating the creative process and going
beyond mere reiteration. By introducing
unfamiliar sources of conjecture as well as
unfamiliar techniques of observing, of
conceptualizing what is observed, and of
describing what has been conceptualized, the
architect is able to cultivate a set of enhanced
sensibilities. An architecture that results from
this process can provide the observer with an
exceptional way of comprehending the world,
and consequently an expansive, intensified
way of living in the world.
Defamiliarization was first evoked by the
literary theorist Viktor Shklovsky in Art as

citys primary source of fresh

water. Occupation of the
interior had been limited to
the perimeter, with a grottolike cascade announcing the
waters grand entrance into
the city. The Me Dgua
Reservoir diverts notions
of building and landscape,
inside and outside, rustic
and urbane, even floor and
wall from the realm of the
expected.

Device, published in 1917. He saw

defamiliarization (his term was ostranenie)
as a technique, central to many of the arts,
whereby the reader or observer is given
a more indirect perceptual route than in
everyday presentations. The goal is to
prolong the act of perception in a poetic
work, to make it less automatic and
more thoughtful.
While we may feel close to the familiar, such
closeness may obscure the genuine object.
Defamiliarization distances the object from
its observer, opening a space of cognition
that requires thoughtful navigation. But there
is more than poetry in this gap. If there is a
comfortable stability to what is familiar,
defamiliarization ultimately discloses the
instability lurking withinthe variability of
observations across times and cultures and
from individual to individualas well as
exposing the opaque veil that familiarity
often constructs around a subject, preventing
one from seeing its deeper significance.

This acrylic, glass, steel, and

wood model illustrates
concepts derived from a
drawn analysis of the
expansion of a cheetahs
spine and the lowering of its
body as it accelerates. This
model represents an
intermediate stage in the

development of a design for a

structure capable of physical
expansion as it adapts to
variable site configurations
and circulation routes.
Student: Lisa Zhu
(faculty: Val Warke and
Jim Williamson, teaching
associate: Larisa Ovalles)

17
Defamiliarization

There are consequences to defamiliarization:

when practiced by the producer of a work, an
understanding of the unfamiliar is inevitably
and eventually practiced by its perceiver.

its cornice, a croquet lawn as

carpet, and the fireplace
which appears to smoke
when steam is exhausted
from a flue behind the
wallas an Arc de Triomphe,
suggesting simultaneously
that the Arc de Triomphe is
a fireplace (that does not
function) and that every
fireplace might aspire to
being an Arc de Triomphe.

Subversion
Another technique involves the overthrow of
a form or formal complexs traditional values
or relationships, perhaps by upsetting its
hierarchical status (a kitchen might supplant
a living rooms predominance, an electrical
substation might be a civic monument), by
making it nonfunctioning or dysfunctional
(a gabled roof is filled with holes, a staircase
goes nowhere), or by distorting its customary
social value (a shunned subject is framed as
if an object of reverence, a private space is
made very public).

147

Appropriation
Architectural concepts can be derived
through analysis and conceptualizationfrom
virtually any artifact, even those that are not
explicitly architectural (such as a tree, a beetle,
a crinoline, a periscope). The appropriation of
forms, operations, or representational methods
from the investigation of such sources is one
of the most common techniques a designer
can employ in defamiliarizing a design process
during its early stages.

It is the discovery of a fluid relationship

between thingsforms, contexts, functions,
and scalesthat consistently renews our
understandings of the world around us,
suggests new questions, answers previously
unresolved problems, and initiates one of
architectures most powerful discursive
capabilities.

146

Le Corbusiers de Beistegui
Penthouse (completed
1930) was located atop a
nineteenth-century
apartment building on the
Champs-Elyses in Paris.
It is an essay on surrealist
defamiliarization in
architecture, whereby one
term partially displaces
another. In this view, a
rooftop room has the sky as
its ceiling, the hills of Paris as

Operations
Defamiliarization can play many roles in the
design of a project and especially in the
education of an architect. An architect may
sketch a mountain silhouette that later
becomes a roof, dissect a fruit cart in a local
market that later becomes a preschool, translate
the translucent tessellations of a Paul Klee
painting into an urban design, or apply a pigs
penchant for wallowing to a design for desert
structures. Mining the unfamiliar often results
in an expanded inventory of forms, contextual
and environmental responses, and analytic
and representational techniques.

Even the tools of design can be redefined:

one can challenge the implications of
representational conventions (a photograph
might be interpreted as a plan, a silhouette
as a basis for a model), or unlikely objects
can be incorporated in a representation
(childrens toys in a model, anatomical
illustrations in a section).

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

In these instances, the designer, critics,

and observant colleagues should remain
receptive to the serendipitous potential such
accidents might provide for defamiliarizing and reinvigorating a process. While
accident is often considered an antonym
of design, many schools even attempt to
promote the occurrence of such accidents
as valuable opportunities for expanding a
students repertoire, an important aspect
of self-education.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohes

German Pavilion for the 1929
International Exhibition in
Barcelona (rebuilt 1986),
introduced modernism to an
unaware audience using
simply walls, columns, a floor,
and a ceiling. Large, polished
planes of glass and marble
appear to wander, unadorned
throughout the pavilion,
touting the virtues of an
independent column grid
and free plan space.
Defamiliarized by reflection
and controlled illumination,
marble surfaces dematerialize
before our eyes as glazed
surfaces solidify. The thickest
wall in the pavilion is actually
a well of translucent glass;
milky and luminous, it casts
no shadows. And as the glass
wall symmetrically disposed
between the black pool and
carpet within fluctuates
between being a vitrine and a
mirror, the carpet seems to
ripple while the Georg Kolbe
sculpture dances inside
the structure.

More than a simple inversion, the subversive

operation in design may permanently and
even retroactively reorient an observers
interpretation of a form as well as of all
similar forms.
De- and Recontextualization
Because much of interpreted meaning is
derived from the context in which a form is
situated, relocating a form or system into a
newand possibly resistantcontext will
inevitably defamiliarize the original. When
an opera house is placed beneath a highway,
ones biases regarding the status of the
institution may be altered, taking with them
the material aesthetic sensibilities of the
project. When a tenement becomes
isolated in a park, it begins to assume a
monumental presence.

Reception
The work that proposes a defamiliarized view
of the world often fosters in its observers a
modification of their familiar world, although
it would be incorrect to say that reception
is an exact mirror of production, since
cognition is always personal and temporal.
Nevertheless, there is an illuminating force
behind defamiliarization, one that permits
designers and observers to consistently
exchange roles.

Accident
Occasionally, during a design process, an
accidental understanding emerges from the
misinterpretationintentional or notof a
representation: solids might be interpreted
as voids, paving as ceiling, a detail or an
urban plan mistaken for a building. This
could even be the result of misreading site
or program data: An incorrect scale, an
exaggerated or inverted topography, a
demolished building may be absorbed into
a proposal.
Alternatively, an actual accident might foster
alternative understandings: a drawing may be
damaged, reversed, or misprinted; a model
fractured, incomplete, or inverted; a wrong
word might be used in a verbal presentation.
By disengaging intention from execution, the
assimilation of such accidents can inspire a
designer to consider an approach outside a
familiar method.

Receptivity
Since all forms have promiscuous and
unknowable pastsno one can know all of
their liaisons and manifestationsthe
acceptance of cursory, preconceived
interpretations is the most efficient path for
the observer. The viewer of a defamiliarized
formal complex must be willing to reconsider
forms within the entirety of a new context
and to disengage some of these forms from
their prior, more supercial denotations. Since
many of these forms are fully present only in
memory, the effect may be retroactive.
Wonder
Whenever one encounters something for the
first time, especially when that thing is
somehow extraordinary, there is inevitably a
sense of wonder. Since the goal of defamiliarization is to prompt others to actually
perceive for the first time something that
has perhaps already been seen on countless
occasionsto grasp the extraordinary in
something that has been routinethe
observers first reaction may be one of
wonder. The emotional tingle of wonder is
generally followed by an inquisitive urge
and, eventually, a critical sensibility.

drapery, window as opening

or marking, and building as
entity or material. A familiar
building is rendered unfamiliar,
promoting previously
unthinkable perceptions of
architecture. The adjacent
Vertical Garden by Patrick
Blanc (2007) further
defamiliarizes concepts of
mass and material, with
wall as ground, suggesting a dislocation of the
nearby botanical gardens.

17

The CaixaForum gallery in

Madrid by Herzog & de
Meuron (completed 2007)
incorporates the brick body
of a former power station,
estranging its fundamental
character: its stone foundation is removed; its brick
envelope suspended above a
sunken entry court; and a
ponderous, oxidized steel
volume erupts as an alien
mansard. The manipulation
of the older structure
contests our understandings
of brick as structure or

Defamiliarization

Poetics
The defamiliarized form, shaken loose from
its rote denotation, is free to develop new
levels of connotation. With this thickening
of architectures language, observers become
aware of architectures capacity for poetic
implication: Even the most prosaic forms
begin to resonate with unforetold significations and possibilities. These poetic
consequences may influence our societal,
environmental, ethical, emotional, and
esthetic prejudices and understandings.

columns seem to grow from

the dirt, lighting fixtures
seem as sunlight penetrating
a canopy of foliage, walls as
fragments of a ruin. The
persistent whiteness, almost
a platitude in modern
apartment lofts, exaggerates
the unnatural contrast,
suggesting a reciprocal
artificiality between the
vacancy of the loft and the
soil permanently tilled for
growth that never happens.

149

Extension of Awareness
When the vinyl wood-grained body paneling
fell from a colleagues 1970s station wagon,
she felt it was necessary to somehow cover
the exposed splotches of black glue and
rusted screw heads. Combining inexpensiveness, efficiency, and an architects sensibility,
she replaced the plastic wood with thinly
molded sheets of plastic bricks. The
unremarkable wagon became a very
remarkable object. While few people were
willing to park next to it, many were willing to
comment on what the wagon revealed of the
suburban esthetic it engaged: wood siding
on automobiles represents a very peculiar,

Exposure to the unfamiliar aspects of the

familiar, the habitual, and the commonplace
not only discloses the lost and hidden
meanings behind the forms in our world, but
frequent encounters with the unfamiliar
extend our abilities to read the world
through forms.

148

Walter De Marias The New

York Earth Room (1977),
curated by the Dia Foundation,
consists of a second-floor
Manhattan loft filled with
140 tons (127 metric tons) of
dirt. Discovering the loamyscented space in Soho not
only underscores the rarity of
earth in this part of the
cityof country relocated
into citybut it suggests a
reevaluation of the elements
comprising the space:

almost perverse, collision of vehicular and

domestic cultures. For those observers, the
defamiliarization of the cladding of an
everyday, mass-marketed wagonan object
that would normally be visually consumed in
a momentinitiated a thoughtful contemplation that would forever alter their perceptions of such wagons and, possibly, of
artificial veneers and even industrialized
domesticity.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Architectures capacity for transformation

can sponsor alternative programs, inhabitations, appearances, and performances.

18

transformation
Transformations occur at multiple scales, from the smallest particle to an entire building,
and at any interval, from a one-time event to a cyclical transformation.

150
151

While the material of architecture might be predominantly staticconcrete, steel, stone, glass, woodthe
experience of architecture can be a highly dynamic
one. Architecture has the capacity to transform from
minute to minute, day to day, year to year.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Ernst Giselbrecht in 200507

created the Dynamic
Faade for the Kiefer
Technic Showroom in Bad
Gleichenberg, Austria. Here
an independent surface of
perforated light metal bifold
panels can be positioned in
an infinite variety of ways,

allowing for both personalized

orientations and environmental responsiveness.
The origamilike surface
continually transforms the
experience of the building
and the landscape from
within and from without.

By inserting a series of fullheight steel doors into the

vast, seemingly limitless
space of the former
slaughterhouse structure,
Iaqui Carniceros 2012

Hangar 16 in Madrid, Spain,

creates multiple spatial
readings that also facilitate a
range of programmatic scales
from intimate art openings to
full-blown rock concerts.

These transformations can be literal, implied,

or often both. In other words, a panel can
slide from one position to another, or as light
moves across its surface, it can transform
from reflective solid to transparent. But in all
cases, this transformative capacity can
sponsor alternative programs, inhabitations,
appearances, and performancesin other
words, architecture really is never very static
at all.
Literal
A kinetic architecture not only registers and
adapts to the effects of external stimuli but it
also provokes behaviors as a function of its
transformation. External stimuli can be
environmental (shutters adapting to the

movement of the Sun), programmatic (a

train compartment transforms from living
room by day to bedroom by night with the
lowering of the bunks), or spatial (a volume
enlarges as its occupancy increases).
Transformations occur at multiple scales,
from the smallest particle to an entire
building, and at any interval, from a onetime event to a cyclical transformation.

Temporal (Animation)
Architecture registers the passage of time.
Embedded within its transformations are the
traces of human rituals and environmental
stimuli. The sliding, rotating, opening, and
closing of surfaces have the ability to
transform spatial scales and relationships,
determine conditions of public and private,
and transform functions and operations.

For example, it is very common in modern

theaters for the audience/performance
relationship to be physically altered by
rotating stages, lifts, and movable loge
seating; while projection technologies can
perceptually alter the sense of enclosure,
weather, and time.

Topological
Architectural space, form, and surface can
also transform through the deformation of
underlying structural patterns, based on
mathematical models that subsequently
inform the qualitative aspects of such
patterns. As an alternative to literal

18

movement, these seamless physical

transformations produce a fluidity of form
where walls become floors become ceilings
as they respond to programmatic stimuli.

Implied
Architecture transforms in nonkinetic ways
as well, where the implication of transformation can reside in programmatic, formal, or
perceptual interpretations.

In 2013, Skylar Tibbits of the

Self Assembly Lab at MIT,
along with Stratasys and
Autodesk Inc., have
developed a process whereby
a composite material can
expand and deform according
to preprogrammed constraints.
The binding together of a
malleable material with a
polymer-based, water-

absorbing material equips

the resulting composite
material with a built-in
functionality when exposed
to water, one that, when
multiplied and introduced
over a larger territory,
anticipates the transformation of form as it responds
to external stimuli.

153

Programmatic
Buildings that undergo programmatic
transformation appropriate elements that
were once designed for another specific
purpose. For example, light projected
through the stained glass windows of a
church-turned-nightclub transforms the
meaning of those windows from religious
texts to disco balls. While nothing has
physically changed, it is the context of the
experience that transforms ones perception
of the work.

152

Smart Materials
Programmable materialssynthetic materials
that can be stitched into everyday materials
and that self-activate when exposed to heat,
water, and electricitytransform the surfaces
and forms into which they are embedded
through processes such as contracting,
swelling, and thinning. Often these
activations occur at the nanoscopic scale
the scale at which particles, hence material,
undergo change.

furnishings transform to
serve multiple spatial and
functional programs. The
entry halls extendable
wardrobe expands to
accommodate its changing
contents, but in doing so,
transforms the entry halls
spatial sequence.

Transformation

Eileen Grays expanding

wardrobes in Tempe
Paillathe house she
designed for herself in
Castelar, France, from
193234, are but one example
of an interior conceived as
an enormous piece of
furniturewhere both
surfaces and freestanding

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

The ground floor of Norman

Fosters HSBC building in
Hong Kong (197885) is a
permeable space that, during
working hours, operates as
institutional entry to the
banking halls and offices
towering above, yet on
Sundays is transformed into a
marketplace and gathering

In their 2009 design for the

Astana National Library in
Kazakhstan, BIG (Bjarke
Ingels Group) combines a
series of geometries to

produce a continuous
spiraling path, a threedimensional Mbius strip,
that begins as a horizontal
space but that shifts to a

to enclosed on only the two

short sides. Any single
volume does not literally
transform, but when
experienced as a collection,
the implication is that each
container and each cluster is
a formal variation of the
other, as if an animated
filmstrip were dissected into

its individual frames and

strewn across the landscape.
The comprehensive
understanding is of a form
and of a space that is
undergoing transformation
and as a result transforming
the perception of the
landscape in which they have
been located.

space used by Filipina

domestics. Plugged into an
existing infrastructure of
pedestrian, vehicular, and
subterranean networks, it is
a continuously transforming
public space with the ability
to be appropriated by an
evolving urban culture.

Theme and Variation

Recognizable repetition that constructs a
recognizable and cohesive overall pattern
permits uniqueness and difference to exist
within it without destroying the cohesiveness
of the whole.
Role of Perception and Memory
Things once experienced in a specific way
appear to undergo change when perceived
from a context that has been altered.
Architecture has the ability to anticipate,
and even produce, this altered context.
On the other hand, memories of previously
experienced architectures rarely remain
intact when revisited, as meanings are often
drawn from and transformed by experiences
collected over time.

Donald Judds 198084

collection of sixty-four 2.5 x
2.5 x 5 m (2.8 x 2.8 x 6 yd)
concrete boxes distributed in
fifteen clusters across the
Chinati Foundations valley in
Marfa, Texas, are each
constructed in one of several
states of enclosure, from
enclosed on all sides save one

vertical one, where the

patterns of its surfaces map
the thermal requirements of
its changing orientations.

Bernard Tschumis Parc de la

Villette in Paris, France
(198298) presents a grid of
thirty-five pavilions superimposed onto an open field to
create an urban park. While
each pavilion is related to the
other in its basic dimension
(10.8 x 10.8 x 10.8 m [11.8 x

Through the carefully

calibrated orientation of the
exterior glass surfaces of
Philip Johnsons 1949 Glass
House in New Canaan,
Connecticut, the solid plaster

11.8 x 11.8 yd]), its material

(steel), and its color (red),
each pavilion is a unique
spatial exploration of the
cubic volume, developing its
specificity in relation to the
spontaneous programs that
they were intended to sponsor.

ceiling of the interior is

perceptually dematerialized,
transforming the space into
an exterior arbor supported
by trunks of steel and bark.

154
155

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Infrastructure introduces a systemic

order, an identifiable armature to which
other components can be subsequently
attached.

19

infrastructure
Infrastructural systems are intermediary devices between the requirements of the program
for which they have been designed and the context in which they are located.

156
157

Like the human body, buildings, cities and landscapes

have intertwined layers of independent networks, or
infrastructural systems, that work together to create
a total system. A network not only serves a specific
function, but that function, in turn, establishes the
parameters of the networkits scale, its dimension,

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

The infrastructural network

of Japans highway system
follows an entirely
independent spatial logic
than the cities over which it
passes. Motivated by automotive access to dense urban
conditions with severe spatial
constraints, these layers of

highways produce an
independent, constructed
landscape. The Hakozaki
Interchange of the Tokyo
Metropolitan Expressway is a
dense structural web of
enormous scale, transforming
the exterior spaces of the city
into a cathedrallike interior.

its functionality, and its visibility. And like an

orchestra, where each instrument contributes
to the overall symphony, each network is also
independent, serving a specific purpose and
behaving in a specific way, yet together they
operate to create the larger work.
Infrastructural systems can be physical or
ephemeral. As a physical network, they are
intermediary devices between the requirements of the program for which they have
been designed and the context in which they
are located. A network of highways operates
as an interface between the speed and
turning radii of the automobile and the city
or topography through which it passes.
Alternatively, one may have an ephemeral
network that is not physically constructed.
For example, the Freedom Trail is a
collection of buildings and sites where
important events throughout Bostons history
have occurred. It is an historic armature that
crosses time and space, marked by a simple
red line inscribed on the sidewalks of Boston.

Physical
Infrastructure introduces a systemic order, an
identiable armature to which other things can
subsequently attach. At a larger scale,
infrastructure often becomes the connective
tissue that links fragments of existing
programs, creating a larger and more visible
network. A series of parks can establish an
urban infrastructural network, with individual
neighborhoods organizing themselves, both
culturally and physically, around a specic park
along the network. Alternatively, a system of
repeating structural pylons that supports an
overhead viaduct might become an organizing
device that serves as points of reference for
the neighborhoods nestled below.
Systemic Armatures
Like the grand structures of the Roman
aqueducts, basic infrastructural amenities
such as transportation, water, plumbing,
electricity, and so on can operate as
architectural armatures that spatially
organize the complexes they serve. When
visible, they become orienting devices that
provide an underlying structure to the
context within which they exist.

Weiss/Manfredis 2007
Seattle Art Museum: Olympic
Sculpture Park blurs the
boundaries between museum
and city, building and
landscape. Conceived as a
continuous landscape linking
the citys sidewalks above to
the waterfront esplanade
below, the museums concept
motivates all architectural
and environmental decisions.
At the urban scale, its
undulating topography both
houses the museums
principal galleries and service
spaces and creates

uninterrupted circulation
through the complex site,
spanning existing highway
and rail infrastructures while
providing site drainage and
remediation systems. Within
the building, the topography
is reiterated at a smaller
scale, as a sequence that cuts
through and connects its
galleries. Finally, its exterior
surfaces provide outdoor
amphitheaters and exhibition
areas, expanding the
museums cultural program
into the city.

a spine of commercial activity

to areas that would otherwise
be too dangerous to venture
within, much less service.
Here, infrastructure operates
both as cultural lens and as
connective and programmatic
armature, transforming
the context through which
it passes.

At lvaro Siza Vieiras 1977

Quinta da Malagueira
housing community in vora,
Portugal, a system of raised
concrete aqueducts not only
provides the infrastructure
necessary for water and
electric distribution but also
an armature to which each of

the separate residential

clusters is attached. The
structures that support the
raised channels overhead
mediate between individual
houses and shops and the
adjoining public spaces while
creating shaded loggias along
which the residents circulate.

Diller Scofidio + Renfro

Architects and James Corner
Field Operations with Piet
Oudolf (Phases I, II , and III:
200915)

Infrastructure

Introducing a formal circulation network into the

informal hillside neighborhoods of Medelln, Colombias
Metrocable links the crowded
and marginalized, often
dangerous, communities to
the citys primary subway
routes. Floating gondolas
that scan the densely
populated landscape not
only bring an audience to
communities that are
typically very insular, but the
cable car stations introduce

buildings into primary faces,

always demanding alternate
forms of orientation and
access. The continuity of this
new linear park overlays an
uninterrupted spatial
experience onto what is
typically the interrupted
series of urban blocks and
streets below.

19

An abandoned rail line that

once served to bring meat
into lower Manhattan is
transformed into an urban
park, lifting pedestrians into
a part of the city they were
never intended to utilize.
This now occupiable
infrastructure reframes the
urban experience as it
develops a secondary route
that engages the city in
unanticipated ways,
transforming the previously
inaccessible backs of

Proyecto Urbano Integral

(Integral Urban Project),
The Metrocable San Javier,
completed in 2008

158
159

Exquisitely thin armatures

inscribe pedestrian
movement over and through
the Icelandic landscapelifting skyward what appear to
be mysterious traces of
Viking passages. Studio
Grandas 2003 Footbridges
over Hringbraut & Njardagata

introduce a series of
structural ribbons that
tip-toes three dimensionally
across a newly constructed
highway and from which
pedestrians can experience
an expanded and directed
visual field.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

One of the ten themed

gardens at Parc de la Villette
in Paris, France, Alexandre
Chemetoffs Bamboo Garden
(1987) is sunken below the
rest of the park. In so doing,

it not only creates an isolated

and unique ecosystem of
bamboo forests and falling
waters, but also exposes the
layers of infrastructure that
normally remained concealed.

Here storm drainage pipes

become elevated thresholds
beneath which one moves,
assembled into a network of
bridges and walkways
hovering above.

Scales of Engagement
Bus stops, street furniture, fountains, street
lighting, and the like, are infrastructural
elements whose details, textures, and
dimensions introduce a scale of engagement
that mediates the human body with its larger
environment.
Evanescent
Making visible what is typically invisible or
appropriating existing infrastructural
elements in surprising ways are devices that
can raise ecological consciousness, often
introducing an unexpected dimension to an
otherwise necessary, yet prosaic, function.
In other words, while infrastructural projects
might be motivated by functional necessities,
they can also provide shelter, recreational,
environmental, and cultural amenities.
Cultural
Processional routes can be important
infrastructural systems that reside in the
memories or behaviors of the cultures in
which they occur. Sometimes unmarked, it is
through their occupation that they momentarily isolate a particular route within an
otherwise unremarkable context. Pasadena,
Californias annual Rose Parade celebrates

In the Netherlands, Thor ter

Kulve converts the prosaic
urban infrastructures of
streetlights and fire hydrants,
parking poles, and garbage
receptacles into whimsical
and unexpected programs.
Temporary installations
attach themselves directly
to existing structures,
interpreting their intrinsic
and passive functions into
playful urban interventions.
A fire hydrant is transformed
into sprinkler, a metal
signpost into swing, a
garbage can into barbeque,
and a streetlight into
glowing place marker.

In his meticulous urban

renovations for Guimares,
Portugal (begun 1987),
Fernando Tvora uses paving,
an occasional fountain, and
various infrastructural
elements to initiate what is,
in effect, an analytic dialogue

with the historic city,

underscoring the bay
rhythms and motifs of the
citys more public buildings.
Here, in Largo de Joo
Franco, the round windows of
the building at the end are
translated into spheres of the

same diameter, which then

serve a series of functions:
as fountain ornament, as
boundaries for the pedestrian
realm, and even as parking
bollards.

Constructed from the

material in which they are
located, rocky cairns, like
these in Iceland, are an
example of way-finding
devices that mark routes
through often inhospitable
landscapes. From each one,
the next is perceived,
bringing measure to an
otherwise infinite horizon.

19
Infrastructure

the first day of the new year with flowercovered floats, horses, and bands as it
follows a 5.5-mile (9 km) route defined
primarily by the hundreds of thousands of
spectators that line its sidewalks.
Circulatory
Circulation networks that are embedded
within or overlaid upon existing urban
landscapes are rendered visible by the
bridges, shelters, or pathways that mark their
trajectories. A bus route, for example, is
populated at specific intervals throughout the
day and night, marked by a series of shelters
that line its path and that serve to trace a
route that would otherwise be invisible.
aquatic. Additionally, the
spatial experience, and often
the separation of one system
from the other, is achieved
through sectional and
topographic manipulation,
carefully calibrated to choreograph views or minimize
conflicting programs and
experiences.

161

Frederick Law Olmstead and

Calvert Vauxs 185873 New
York Central Park created a
series of independent
circulatory networks that
was given material and
dimensional specificity
according to the particular
program for which each was
designedbe it vehicular,
pedestrian, equestrian, or

160

Anticipatory
An infrastructural network can be openendedexplicitly designed as an incomplete
system that provides the framework for
transformation over time. Because the
precise requirements for future usage can
never be known, with changes in population,
changes in technology, and changes in
society and taste, the network that anticipates change will inevitably be the one that
remains functional for the longest time.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

The five main arteries that

constitute the backbone of
the Bus Rapid Transit system
in Curitiba, Brazil, are
identified through their
raised cylindrical steel and
glass bus stops through which

the riders pass, purchase

tickets, and access the buses.
They provide not only shelter
and functional requirements
of accessibility and ticketing,
but have the added
functionality of news kiosks,

post offices, and small retail.

Dimensionally and formally
suggestive of the buses to
which they allow access, the
kiosks mark a route that
would otherwise be invisible.

Cedric Prices 196061 Fun

Palace is an example of a
structural infrastructure
in this case a steel grid of
occupiable columns (containing stairs, plumbing, electrical)
and beamsone that anticipates programmatic elements
that could be subsequently
attached or suspended. These
plug-in elements comprised
floors, walls, and ceilings, as
well as theaters, restaurants,
and workshops; and, as with a
theatrical production, the
elements were to be easily
mounted and demounted to
produce a continuously
transforming environment.

19

In New York City, a series of

urban infrastructural
initiatives aims to construct
the missing links of a
continuous 32-mile (51 km)
Waterfront Greenway Park
that encircles Manhattan
Island. SHoP Architects East
River Waterfront Esplanade
(200711) is defined by an
armature of plug-in programs
that include bicycle and pedestrian paths, recreational, event,
and community spaces with
seating areas, all serving to
dene this urban infrastructure.

Infrastructure

162

with each unit subsequently

and progressively modified
by its inhabitants. An
infrastructural field is
introduced that facilitates
individual transformation
and yet resists total chaos.

163

Alejandro Aravenas 2001

low-cost housing project,
Quinta Monroy in Iquique,
Chile, introduces an
aggregation of standard
concrete units that are
intentionally incomplete,

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

A datum is the point of reference

that collects dissimilar or random
elements into a unified whole.

20
datum

Common data are surfaces, spaces, geometric organizations, visual phenomena, and very
large masses.

164
165

A datum can be thought of as a singular and hierarchically identifiable object, space, or organization. It is the
common denominator, the point of reference, by which
dissimilar or random elements can be measured, located,
or given dimension or scale. A datum can be composed
of similar elements that, together, form a primary and

Le Corbusiers 193233 City

of Refugeor Salvation Army
Buildingaggregates the
repetitive dormitory spaces
into a hierarchically dominant
linear building in front of
which are collected a series of
smaller unique buildings that

contains the communal

spaces of entry, reception,
and library. Here, the
dormitory building operates
as a datum that provides a
common background surface
for the objects arranged
along its base.

In their 200407 public

housing scheme in Madrids
new peripheral district of
Carabanchel, Design
Dosmasuno Arquitectos
cantilevered steel-framed
object rooms to extend the
interior spaces that reside in
the concrete wall of the
primary apartment block that
supports them. These
additions reflect the variety
of apartment types and sizes
producing an ever changing
shadowed texture onto the
surface datum from which
they are attached.

Adler and Sullivans 188689

Auditorium Building in
Chicago, Illinois, is a
multifunctional building of
theaters, offices, and hotel
rooms. Instead of expressing
each floor as a separate
entity, its faade collects
multiple floors into discrete

zones (a base, middle, and

top). This faade interface
thus operates as a datum that
simultaneously registers
two scales: one of its interior
organization that then
gives way to the scale of its
urban context.

recognizable figure that has the ability to

subsequently organize its surrounding field.
This datum figure can take on many forms:
a surface, space, grid, axis, horizon line, mass,
and so on.
A continuous street wall, for example, can be
the organizing surface that connects a series
of individual buildings. A courtyard can be
the organizing space that relates the irregular
rooms that surround it. An identifiable grid
of streets produces an organizational
structure that collects an infinite variety of
individual buildings and programs. An axial

relationship between two or more elements

establishes a visual datum along which other
unrelated elements might be gathered. A
horizon line or plane provides a singular
visual reference that locates elements that
are either below or above it. A mass is a
recognizable volume from which spaces are
excavated or objects are extruded.
Surface
A surface can be a principal organizing
device as it provides visual continuity. Like a
canvas, a vertical surface can provide the
backdrop for a series of independent objects
(continued on page 169)

John Hejduks Protagonist Wall

In John Hejduks Wall Houses, his multiple

meditations over the tensions between the
two-dimensional surface upon which artists and architects work (draw) and the
three- or four-dimensional world that is
depicted upon that surface is fundamentally important. In fact, one might say it is
the whole point. As such, it represents an
invitation for us to ponder basic questions
about representation and larger philosophical questions about our place in the world.
In all of the Wall Houses the place of this
tension is most clearly enacted by the wall,
a datum that paradoxically both joins and
separates the independent elements in the
houses composition. Typically, the freestandingand functionally purposelesswall divides the support elements
of the house (a ramp or passageway and
services such as stairs and bathrooms)
from the living elements (living, dining,
and sleeping spaces). One approaches the
house and enters through a threshold in
the wall that would typically mark the transition from exterior to interior, only to find
oneself on the exterior once again.
This experience is repeated as one passes
through the wall and from exterior to exterior whenever one passes from one room to
another. In this way, the wall is both the
primary, mysterious protagonist of the
house and also that element that structures
a profound engagement in space and time;
or as Hejduk himself stated, The wall is a
neutral condition It is a moment of passage. The wall heightens that sense of
passage, and by the same token, its thinness heightens the sense of it being just a
momentary condition what I call the
moment of the present. (Hejduk, page 67)

John Hejduk: Wall House 2 (Bye House),

Ridgefield, Connecticut, USA, 1973
Model by the NAi Collection

Hejduk was an architect who built very

little but drew very much. The drawings of
the Wall Houses, particularly the frontal
drawings of the major living elements of
the Bye House, embody some of his most
important preoccupations with representation. This is the transformation of the three
dimensional into the two dimensional and
the moment that stands between them: the
blank surface of a piece of paper. And it is
made possible by Hejduks use of oblique
axonometric projection where plan and
section are simultaneously present without
the distortions of conventional axonometric projection.
Drawings such as these tend to flatten
the illusory space of the drawing and
emphasize the surface of the page. And in
the case of the Wall Houses, this becomes
true for the wall that is drawn upon it as
well. In this way, the present moment to
which Hejduk refers is also the threshold
between the architect and an idea that
he or she might project into the future.
The datum, in this case, is the paper itself,
the sitefor Hejdukof the mystery of
architecture.
Jim Williamson (Cornell University)

John Hejduk: Wall House 2 (Bye House),

Ridgefield, Connecticut, USA, 1973
Drawing by John Hejduk, Collection
Museum of Modern Art, New York

addition of this new roof not

only collects the existing and
randomly organized buildings
into a cohesive whole, but it
produces a discovered space
of walkways and suspended
seating areas: an extension of
the urban landscape beyond.

Datum

the technologically
sophisticated new structure.
And while the old buildings
house the spaces traditionally
associated with an art and
education centerexhibition
spaces, a library, a cinema, a
restaurant, and apartments
for faculty and studentsthe

20

At Bernard Tschumis 199197

Le Fresnoy Art Center in
Tourcoing, France, a new roof
blankets the existing 1920s
structures, collecting them
beneath one continuous
surface, producing a liminal
space between the roofs of
the old and the underbelly of

that might otherwise not have any spatial

relationship to one another. It can also serve
as an interface that simultaneously separates
yet collects opposite conditions on either
side of it. A horizontal surface, as in a large
roof, for example, can act as an umbrella,
one that collects smaller elements beneath it.
Likewise, it can be a common base on which
a variety of structures might stand.

This is true even of curved armatures. The

Grand Canal in Venice, for example, is not
only an armature collecting the palaces that
line its edges, but it is also a datum that
provides spatial orientation within the citys
dense urban fabric.

169

again objectified, while also

producing a continuous
pattern of volumes on the
other side that allows it to
stich itself into the dense
urban fabric surrounding
the temple. Here, the datum
has two faces, operating
as a mediator between two
distinct conditions.

168

Jos Mara Snchez Garcas

2011 project in Mrida, Spain,
mediates between the
archeological ruin of the
Temple of Diana and the
existing encroaching urban
fabric, producing a perimeter
wall on one side that makes a
continuous backdrop for the
temple and a cleared space in
which the temple is once

Space
Spaces are recognizable references that
exist in both buildings and cities. Spaces
with recognizable shapessuch as squares,
rectangles, or ovalsact as orienting devices
to which one often returns. These become
especially recognizable references if they
exist in contrast to a series of smaller spaces,
as with a significantly larger space or
exterior courtyard surrounded by smaller
rooms or, within the density of an urban
fabric, as in a public square or a larger
avenue flanked by a continuous surface of
similarly scaled buildings.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Joo lvaro Rochas 199198

National Veterinary
Investigation Laboratory in
the parish of Vairo in Vila do
Conde, Portugal, is an
example of a datum that
physically constructs the
circulation zone as a wall that
links the head administrative
block, the blocks of

laboratories of varying sizes,

the employee cafeteria, and
the oval animal corral at its
end. This space of circulation
steps down the sloping
terrain as it provides the
skeletal armature for the
various building blocks that
are plugged into it from
either side.

Axis and Grid

An axis is a line that connects two or more
things (this line might be folded or bent). It
determines the relationship between a series
of spaces or things. This line can be a visual
and/or physical one, such as a line of sight or
a procession along which one walks (as in a
series of rooms enfilade). A grid, on the
other hand, provides a reference field, a
continuous framework of repeated and
recognizable dimensions by which multiple
objects can be measured.
Horizon
The horizon is the line that literally separates
earth and sky and, as in a perspective drawing,
it is the line of human sight. In architectural
space, the horizon line is a constant visual
datum that locates and relates elements that
are both below and above it. It is also the datum
shared by both innite space and foregrounded
elements. Spatial depth is shaped by the
continuous dialogue and fluctuation between
this background and foreground.
Mass
A dense volume can serve as a powerful
physical datumit can be a constructed
object or a metaphoric ground. It is the
mass from which occupiable space can
be extracted or objects can be extruded.

Aurelio Galfetti and Flora

Ruchats 196770 public pool
in Bellinzona. Switzerland, is
an elevated open-air
circulation path that begins in
the city and extends to the
river, a linear datum that
collects a series of pools and

sports facilities along its way.

Nestled beneath the walkway
are the entry stalls, changing
rooms and facilities through
which the pedestrians access
the variety of pools below.
The concrete path not only
physically connects the

various programs at multiple

scales but also provides a
continuous line through
which the sky, the horizon,
and the landscape can be
measured.

20

In Frank Lloyd Wrights 1908

Frederick C. Robie House in
Chicago, Illinois, the unbroken
rhythm of continuous
fenestration reestablishes the
horizon line of what was once
an open prairiea space
captured between the planes
of the cantilevered roof and
continuous terraces and
parapets. The domestic rituals
of living and dining play out
against this horizontal datum
interrupted only by the
vertical chimney mass.

Datum

170
171

Paolo Davids 2004 Arts

CenterCasa Das Mudas in
Vale dos Amores, Madiera,
Portugal, is conceived not as
an object but as an extension
of its surrounding landscape.
This topographic datum
produces a surrogate ground
from which the occupiable
spaces appear to be excavated.

Georges-Henri Pingussons
195362 Memorial to the
Martyrs of the Deportation
in Paris, France, is located
on the southeastern tip of
le de la Cit. The sequence
into the memorial is
initiated by symmetrical
staircases inscribed into the
horizontal ground plane of
the island, bringing the
visitor down into the space
of the river below. Its
interior spaces are
subsequently excavated into
the mass of the island,
terminating with an
infinitely projected hall of
illuminated glass beads.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

In architecture, the concepts of order

that are evident in a design can affect
our understandings of a designs
intended uses, of its potential alternate
use patterns, of its sociocultural
milieu, and of its designers attitudes
and priorities.

21
order

A reason that the orders of architecture have occupied much of architectural is that they
inevitably brought order to programs that were becoming increasingly complex.

172
173

Whether because of an innate need or an intel-lectual

desire, much of mankinds inventivenessartistic and
scientifichas involved a search for order, and for new
systems of order when older systems seem insufficient.
We look for order in nature and, if we suspect that it
is not there, we find ways to formulate the disorder, to

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

An undulating landscape of
2,711 concrete blocks of
varying heights memorializes
the approximately 6 million
Jews who were killed during
the Holocaust. The seemingly
infinite pattern of blocks
creates an intentionally

Moshe Safdies Habitat 67,

(constructed 196467) in
Montreal, Canada, arranges
354 externally similar,
prefabricated concrete units
stacked in three pyramids to
produce a dense urban
structure. The suburban
prototypical characteristics
of individual identity,
exterior gardens, and

nonhierarchical space without

orientation or reference, a
city of the dead that is
subsequently appropriated
and brought back to life only
by an engaged public. Peter
Eisenman: Berlin, Germany,
completed 2004.

program randomness, to find complex layers

of order in chaos.
In architecture, the concepts of order that
are evident in a design can affect our
understandings of a designs intended uses,
of its potential alternate use patterns, of its
sociocultural milieu, and of its designers
attitudes and priorities. This is as true for the
design of a doorknob as of a city.
Repetition
A basic design tenet has always been that
like elements should be treated alike, and
different elements should be treated
differently. This is especially helpful in large
complexes when there is a field comprising
many similar units (such as housing) against
which one can identify a number of unique
objects (community facilities).
Also, whereas some projects might be
designed to suggest to observers something
mysterious or ineffable, it is much more
common that a work communicates a sense

multiple levels are combined

with the urban prototype of
communal dwelling, building
density, and collective
amenities. Up to eight
concrete boxes are linked in a
variety of combinations to
provide a range of dwelling
sizes, each with multiple
views and exterior terraces.

of engagementsuch as probable entries

and possible destinationsand, at times,
even a sense of program. An observers
recognition and identification of such
components (the first stage of a discursive
engagement) can occur at the level of the
system, of the unit, or of the increment.
To this end, similar elements are most often
placed together in a row, in a stack, or in a
mat. The degree of similarity (as with two
versus one bedroom apartments) or the
irregularity of secondary attributes (terraces
appearing off living versus dining rooms)
may suggest an overlaid system, a counterpoint rhythm.
The apparently endless repetition of objects
is undoubtedly dramatic in certain circumstances, rousing the sense of awe that can be
inspired by magnitude. However, when the
designer is required to accommodate a large
number of similar elements for inhabitation
(continued on page 177)

The iconic form of the single

family house has been
abstracted, repeated, and
aggregated to form
Vitrahausa showroom for
domestic furniture designed
by Herzog & de Meuron in
200609 in Weil am Rhein,
Germany. A suburban field of

twelve iconic single-family

houses has been repeatedly
stacked, with each house
focusing on a remote
landscape. The intersecting
volumes introduce an interior
spatial complexity that cuts
diagonally up and across the
domestic shells.

Louis Kahn, Rome,

and the Greek Cross
The dictionary defines order as A condition of logical or comprehensible arrangement among the separate elements of a
group. For Louis Kahn, especially after his
experience in 1950 as a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome, the discovery of this
logic became the main challenge in the
design process.
Kahn discovered, in some of the ancient
buildings of the city, a deep connection
between the geometry that forms the space
and the program for which it was designed.
For example, the circle that generates the
plan of the Pantheon is a perfect response
to the structures goal: defining a space for
a multitude of divinities without preference for any individual god.
Frank Brown, a former history professor at
the American Academy in Rome, taught
Kahn that the first Roman architects were
the priestly leaders who prayed, made sacrifices, and asked the gods for signs. For
these rituals of worship they framed the
appropriate spaces. The idea that event
generates space will be present for the
remainder of Kahns career, despite his
defense of the the room as a generic
space where various programs can occur:
Architecture comes from the making of a
room, he said, and [i]t is the creating of
spaces that evoke a feeling of appropriate
use. (Kahn, page 68)
The architecture of Andrea Palladio offered
Kahn a great source of inspiration, particularly in the ways in which a geometrical
pattern can be used to dene a specic order
and hierarchy among spaces. Similarly, Palladian villas would constitute excellent
examples of the richness and variations that
can be achieved between parts and a whole.
Louis Kahn used the drafting table as a laboratory for discovering the patterns that

Louis I. Kahn (with Anne Tyng): Trenton Jewish Community

Center Bath House and Day Camp, Ewing, New Jersey, 195459,
sketch plan and photograph

define the perfect relationships between

spaces. His design process generally began
by dening a generic spacea roomwith
its own structural and functional identity, a
unit he would repeat until fullling the program requirements. In his own words, The
plan is a society of rooms where it is good
to learn, good to work, good to live. (Kahn,
page 254) The process ends with the discovery of an overall geometry that perfectly
adapts and transforms a collection of individual spaces into a whole.
After 1950, Kahn returned to Philadelphia
and began using a specific formthe Greek
cross, with its four equal armsas a mechanism to provide order, constantly reusing
it regardless of program or scale. We recognize this form as an obsession in designs
such as the Trenton Baths, the Washington
University Library competition, the Millcreek Apartments, and the Adler, Fleisher,
and Goldenberg houses.
In some cases, Kahn implements this geometry as a constraint that would remain
through the final versionin the Trenton
Baths, for instancewhereas, in other
cases, such as the Adler House, the Greek
cross that appears in the early sketches
disappears once the final program is
installed into the plan and the house begins
to address its context. Kahn consistently
used the historically symbolic geometry of
the Greek cross as the primary mechanism
for initiating a comprehensive arrangement of the distinct elements of a plans
organization.
Iaqui Carnicero (Cornell University;
Polytechnic University of Madrid)

Louis I. Kahn: Adler House, 195455

project sketches

often the case with housing, offices, or

schoolsthe challenge is to avoid tedious
repetition, ideally without resorting to
arbitrary distinctions.

A typical strategy in organizing highly

repetitive elements is to emphasize the
individual systems that comprise the

wholecirculatory, services, units, and

possibly even structural and mechanical.
It is often common to identify the various
hierarchies that emerge within these systems,
with, for example, entry circulation, vertical
circulation, and horizontal circulation each
given a distinct form. This can even extend
to the level of the city, with hierarchies of
vehicular traffic or public transit being
articulated in terms of highways, boulevards,
streets, and alleys, or hierarchies of building

heights or volumes based on degrees of

public or private usage.
The organization of similar elements that
vary only slightly (by volume or height, for
example) can be accommodated through
clustering or by serial sequencing, whereby
both their similarities and their differences
are identifiable.

176

MVRDVs 200112 Mirador in

Madrid, Spain, takes the
typical urban block composed
of a series of individual apartment typologies surrounding
a collective courtyard space,
and conceptually hinges it
90 degrees to create a single
vertical neighborhood of
connected, yet still distinct,
apartment complexes with
the former courtyard
becoming a window that
frames the city beyond.

program are iterations of the

same form, increasing in scale
from the smallest which holds
26 persons, to the largest
which holds 238, all fanning
out as the principal marquis
for the buildings entry from
the town square below.

Order

In projects founded on texture, especially

those involving pattern fields, the manipulation of the patternthree dimensionally,
morphologically, through distortion or
transformationis the primary tool in
developing a sense of variation and order.

The four distinct programs of

the Wolfsburg Cultural
Center, designed by Alvar
Aalto in 195862 in Wolfsburg,
Germany, are organized
around an exterior central
court. The five lecture halls
that comprise the adult
education component of the

21

Especially with housing, it is often believed

that the ability of people to identify their
own units is an important aspect of promoting a sense of individuality within a context
of community. The challenge is to develop
distinction within a repetitive system, often
accomplished by composing variable overall
masses, arranging the units into several
typologies (such as courtyards, slabs, and
towers), or, often with less success, using
changes in materials or colors to artificially
indicate uniqueness. Of course, when every
unit is treated distinctly, the opposite of
particularity occurs; the complex is perceived
as a uniform, mottled texture.

177

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

While the plan of Jrn

Utzons Bagsvrd Church
outside Copenhagen,
Denmark (completed 1976),
is extremely straightforward,
the interior section is defined
by an undulating concrete
roof plane that begins with a

Aggregation
The designer is presented with different
challenges when attempting to represent
order when given a series of individual
elements with little or no repetition. Decisions
must be made regarding how the identity of
the elements might be constituted and how
conspicuous these identities might be. The
designer must consider the varying scales
that must be accommodated, even when
those scales run counter to the relative
importance of the elements. Finally, perhaps
of the greatest consequence, is the problem
of how the disparate elements might be
associated. In situations involving the
aggregation of such elements, the connective
tissuecirculation, structure, services,
surfacesmight, paradoxically, be the most
important aspect of the design.
The designer may choose to merge a
collection of distinct elements into the
intrinsic differences of a city, dispersing a
building throughout an urban fabric or
simulating the production of a new city

fragment. The various programmatic

elements might be given their own materials
or even their own stylistic languages.
Alternatively, the designer might wish to
suppress difference, to cloak everything
within the same skin, possibly within a
singular mass, so that only internal divisions
determine the differences.
Similarly, a reason that the orders of architectureTuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and
Composite, among the most familiarhad
occupied much of architectural theory from the
Renaissance until the twentieth century is that
they inevitably brought order to programs that
were becoming increasingly complex. There
were prescriptions regarding the appropriate
hierarchies of orders and even suitable
functional uses for the orders when used in a
design. Each order proposed its own proportioning system. It was possible to understand
the interior of a building by reading the orders
used on its exteriors. A street, district, or entire
city could be unied by subscribing to a
consistent theory of the orders.

modestly dimensioned space

above the congregation and
builds to an enormous wave
of concrete reaching toward
the sky above the altar,
capturing the Nordic light
and drawing it deep into the
primary space of the church.

Hierarchy
Hierarchy can provide an ordering system in
which elements or groups of elements, while
recognized as being related to an overall
whole, are not necessarily of equal significance. It is this inequality that signals the
relative significance of the part to the whole.
Hierarchies are revealed in every aspect of
architectures constitution. One can identify
levels of importance in the composition of
plans, in the development of sections, in the
disposition of elevations, and in the production of distinctive objects or figural voids.
While a program might suggest hierarchies,
the designers determination of programmatic hierarchy can have great significance.
When designing a city hall, for example, an
architect communicates much about a
government when determining whether the
meeting hall or the mayors office predominates in the buildings organization.
Hierarchy can also be sociocultural. For
example, the mihrab, denoting the direction

for prayer in a mosque, may be one of its

smallest spaces, but it is also one of its most
hierarchically important components, a focal
point of the mosque. Or the only fragment
of a village to have survived an earthquake
may develop a special place in the new city.

Order

While rare, the absence of hierarchy may

be intentional in designs where complete
equality or anonymity is desirable. And while
a sense of order may be one of the basic
human compulsions, human involvement
can always be counted on to introduce an
element of vital disorder to even the most
rigorously ordered architectural designs.

21

When the components of a work are nested

within each otherwhen the overall architecture frames other architectures, like a
set of matryoshka dollsthe sense of order
resembles the mise en abyme effect: the
process of penetrating buildings within
buildings reveals the relationships between
the pieces. This is, for example, frequently
the case in buildings like theaters and
concert halls, where one moves through
numerous distinct buildinglike spaces
entryway, lobby, stairways, loges, hall, and
then (vicariously) the space of the stage
with all of its autonomous architectures
each proposing its own identity.

Louis Kahns Dominican

Sisters Convent designed in
196568 organizes the cells
into a perimeter wall,
creating a large container
within which is arranged the
communal programs of the
convent, with the exterior
spaces between these primary
figures and the enclosing
cell wall forming a series of
private cloisters. The corner
connections allow for a
continuous sequence through
the interior of the complex.

The forum of Pompeii is the

primary urban courtyard
around which the citys public
buildings are gathered,
and the first of a series of
courtyards begetting
courtyards. This organizing
device of a primary space
lined by subsidiary spaces is
a frequent motif in ancient
Roman towns. From the
forum one moves to the
basilicas and markets with
interior spaces also organized

around large open spaces.

Beyond are the residential
blocks, with interior courtyards that both organize
and bring light to rooms
that surround them while
choreographing the sequence
that moves from the public
street to the atrium and
finally to the inner sanctum
of the peristyllium (garden
courtyard).

which are located the

complexs more public spaces,
their forms demonstrate their
programmatic and cultural
significance. Additionally, the
complexs siting on the capital
citys main visual and organizational axis announces its
signicance at the urban scale.

178

The two distinct semispheres

of Oscar Niemeyers 195764
National Congress of Brazil in
Brasilia both house and
represent the two principal
government bodies, the
Senate and the Chamber of
Deputies. Juxtaposed against
the low rectangular plinth in

179

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

A grid is the stage on which something

might happen. It exists in anticipation
of an event.

22
grid

Without the ideal aspect of the grid, the distinctiveness of the incidental would
go unnoticed.

180
181

If there is perhaps one central phenomenon to all of

architecture, from the smallest shed to the largest city
and even, at times, to entire states and provinces, it is
the grid. Given the expansiveness of the environment
in which we live, laying out a grid provides an accessible field of operations for the designer. It provides a

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

A gridded forest of 856

columns fills the interior of
the Mosque-Cathedral of
Crdoba (first built 784786,
extended 833852, 961976,
987; current church inserted,
with modification, in the
sixteenth century). The
various building campaigns
are evident in the thickened
walls and piers in this plan by
James Cavanah Murphy,
published in 1816, with the

cathedral being methodically

inserted into the midst of the
column field. Despite their
uniform layout, the columns
reused from various Roman
and early Christian constructionsretain their individualities, each telling of a different
past. Their rhythm and regularity is alternately disorienting or serene, facilitating
meditation and reverie.

means of marking locations within a potentially boundless field. From the earliest
days of human settlement, the grid has
represented humankinds attempt to organize
nature, to propose an order, even where
a sense of order seems ungraspable.
Grids are always implicitly infinite, and so
they end only by collision with a natural or
constructed entity, with a predetermined
boundarysuch as a property line or a zoning
envelopeor by the intentional decision of
the designer. Still, while grids can suggest
infinity, they also foreshadow their own ends.
The regular pattern of a grid means that
each section forecasts every other section,
thereby already implying in their centers
their eventual and probable boundaries.
A grid can be two dimensionalflat on the
ground or on the surface of a buildingor
three dimensional, as in a structural grid.
Grids often represent an ideal condition
that can be replicated throughout a building
or a site. It can be a condition derived from
the proportions of the human body (as
with the tatami mats of traditional Japanese
residential construction), from an optimal
dimension for spanning a space, from
harmonic proportions derived from natural
phenomena, or from the apparently efficient
accommodation of a programmatic requirement (as with classroom sizes, parking bays,
and hotel rooms).
(continued on page 185)

Since the sixteenth century,

the rooms of traditional
Japanese homes were often
composed of an array of
tatami mats, usually made of
rice straw and in a 2 : 1
proportion, with its length
close to the dimension of a
prone human body. These
mats bring not only a sense of
gridded order to a dwelling

but also a refined sense of

proportion. In his own home
in Seijo (1953), for example,
Kenzo Tange combines a grid
of tatami mats and sliding
fusama screens with a very
slender wooden skeletal
structure and an open plan
to achieve a modern version
of the Japanese house.

Mies van der Rohe

and the Grid as Site
The grid is the beginning and end of Miess

perspective-negating fluctuations of vision

architecturethe site of architectures

emplacement and its eventual effects.

produced in Crown Hall, where the glass is

frosted to a line just above the horizon, thus

Miess grid operates on two different planes.

The first plane is the plane of Idea. The grid

forbidding access to the stabilizing vanishing point; or the whirl of space in the plaza

on the plane of Idea is a template comprising instructions for organizing forms,

in front of Seagrams vibrating surface, as

well as surface qualities like reflectivity,

materials, and functions to which it stands

refractivity, dullness, and blankness; or the

in a transcendental relation. This grid is

deeply imbricated in the history and discipline of architecture, which provides
specific precedents (Schinkel, Behrens, and
Wright among them) and guarantees rigor

6-foot (1.83 m) deep roof of the New

National Gallery, floating on trabeated
whispers, disturbing the certainty of stability of the earth itself. This second plane
brings together heterogeneous elements

and relationship. Consider, for example, the

urban connections organized by Miess plan

and makes them function together, creating

unprecedented and continually shifting

of IIT, where the gridoriginary diagram

of the polis itselfrepresents the ideal
urban condition of Chicagos South Side. Or

relations without unifying or fixing them.

The vocation of this plane is not to produce
a whole but to constantly search for the new.

the metrically controlled surface of glass

and metal panels at the Seagram Building,

Its nature is virtual and abstract.

which confronts metropolitan chaos with

the sheer materiality of abstraction.

Thus the grid as site comprises both generative concepts and relational, sensual
events. The grid announces and insists on
architectural autonomy and authority, and
yet is infinitely productive of difference

Miess grid operates simultaneously on a

second plane, which is a virtual site where

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe: S. R. Crown Hall

interior (with the architect), IIT, Chicago, 1956

architectural experiences and events cir- and otherness. The grid is pure relationculate, combine, and recombine. It is the
ship, perhaps the degree zero of architecplane of Event. This plane hovers just above
tural thought.
or just below the actual elements of architecture, more like a field of potential K. Michael Hays (Harvard University)
charged by invisible forces than a thing or
even a geometry. The grid on this plane is
not an inaugural ground or the source of an
idea. Indeed, the grid on this plane is but a
shimmering phantasm, the constant flux of
immanent material and spatial images.
Here percepts and affects are organized
into material architectural experiences.
Examples of such experiences include the

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe: Seagram Building, New York, 1958

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

The founding of the New

World required the founding
of a multitude of new settlements that attempted to
represent the coloniesand
later, countrys aspirations
for legislating and formalizing
an egalitarian society by
means of property divisions.
In Philadelphia, seen in this
detail of Thomas Holmes
1705 map of Pennsylvania

presented by William Penn

the grid became the device
of choice. But such neutrality
is never ensured, if even
desirable: the occasional park
or nearness to water eventually alters the value of one
property over another, so
that the development of the
grid inevitably becomes
distorted by economic and
environmental pressures.

Each grid type carries its own spatial and hierarchical implications when used to influence the organization of structure or partitions.

The four-square grid provides

equal status to each of its
quadrants and suggests a
centrifugal movement pattern.
Medieval chapter houses were
often versions of this grid type,
with a large, supporting column
located in the center, branching
into an ornate ceiling.

The nine-square grid, on

the other hand, brings an
inherent dominance to the
space located in its center.
Such grids were strongly
preferred in church design,
most evident in those of the
equal-armed Greek cross
plans in which the central
element would be topped
with a dome.

Once the grid reaches a

certain density, the relative
equality of the bays is ensured
and the grid begins to imply
infinite extension, although
peripheral bays might assume
some prominence, as in the
case of market buildings.

Irregular grid patterns,

however, can relocate these
hierarchies, suggesting,
for example, diagonal
developments.

Irregular grid patterns can

also create a mixture of major
and minor zones as in a
tartan grid, suggesting
directional movements as
well as possible service and
stair precincts. This is an
organization common among
villa designs from Palladio
onward through Wright
and Le Corbusier.

Of course, not every building

utilizes an obvious grid.
The absence of a grid makes
the columns or partitions
dominant elements of the
composition. This situation
can emphasize the presence
of a casually defined space,
like a clearing in a crowd.

Reference
Just as a Cartesian coordinate system
provides an essential tool for understanding
the characteristics of various points, lines,
and figures, grids permit occupants of an
architecture to fully understand the locations
of elements within a space, from columns
and walls to constructed and inserted
furnishings.

Grid

Another important trait of the grid is its

usefulness as a measuring device. As
discussed in chapter 11: Space, grids can
provide an indication of height and width,
and a useful indication of spatial depth.
After walking through one bay of a grid, we
develop a sense of cadence and an anticipation of our further movements through a
space. In this sense, grids can be understood
as demarcating linear measurements,
volumetric measures, and increments of time.

184

The grid has long been used

as a device for the transfer
of one image to another or
from an actual figure to a
drawn representation. In
his Draftsman Drawing a
Recumbent Woman from his
Four Books on Measurement

(1525), Albrecht Drer

demonstrates the use of a
gridded wire frame and an
obelisk (in order to fix the
location of the eye) in
transferring a figure to
a similarly gridded piece
of paper.

185

The Carr dArt in Nmes,

France (198793), by Norman
Foster + Partners, provides
one edge of a large plaza
containing the Maison Carre,
a Roman temple from the
first century BCE. Fosters
building is itself a temple of
expanding and contracting
grids, with a huge but slender
five-columned portico that
contrasts with the regularity
and density of the columns of
the Maison Carre, beneath
which a smaller, six-columned
volume corresponds more
directly to the size and front
portico of the monument.
From the interior, the columnar
grid of the Carr dArt provides
both a measure and a locator
for the temple outside.

But it is also a function of the grid, fundamentally neutral and indefinite, that the
intentional disruption of its regularity
through the introduction of a rotated grid,
sudden shifts in bay sizes, or the insertion of
figures that resist conformitycan bring note
to unique or special elements. In the later
grid paintings of Piet Mondrian, for example,
the variable grid itself becomes the subject
of the work. Without the neutral, ideal
aspect of the grid, the distinctiveness of the
incidental would go unnoticed.

22

The surfaces of Charles

and Ray Eamess own house
(Case Study House #8) in
Los Angeles, (completed
1949) consist of a regular
steel grid approximately
7.5 x 8 ft. (2.3 x 2.4 m)
tall, with additional subcomponents between the
floors. This grid not only
summarizes the architects
aspirations for industrial
prefabrication but also
generates both structural
elements as well as interior
partitions, collects a variety
of infilled elements, and
lends the overall structure
a unified system while
visually organizing the
trees on the site.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Tartan plaids are composed

of specified combinations
of colored threads woven
together in perpendicular
warp and weft patterns of
varying dimensions,

establishing a complex
arrangement of varying color
fields. In architecture, the
tartan grid is a term used
to describe a similarly
variegated grid comprising

multiple rhythms of
superimposed grids. On the
right is a tartan grid derived
from the MacGregor of
Cardney tartan shown on
the left.

For the final version of his

courthouse addition to the
Gothenburg (Sweden) Town
Hall, completed in 1937, Erik
Gunnar Asplund constructed
a version of the underlying
organizational grid that

In one sense, a grid is the ultimate abstraction, most evident in its ability to legislate
an order without being fully present; in
another sense, it is one of architectures most
substantive mechanisms of comprehension.
In the end, a grid is the stage on which
something might happen. Grids exist in
anticipation of an event that is then
quantified and identified by its occupation
within the gridded system.
Rhythm
While structural grids are the most common,
grids can be composed of circulation paths,
service elements (like plumbing or lighting
systems), systems of furnishing (such as
library shelves or auditorium seating), or
even daylighting elements (including
skylights or windows).
The proportions of the
human body have been a
frequent template for the
disposition of grids, even
when not at human scale, as
in this sketch for a church
design by Francesco di
Giorgio Martini (c. 1492).
This often follows from the

belief that the human body is

shaped in the image of God,
which would suggest that
proportions derived from the
body would transfer upon a
building a divine and
therefore beautiful harmony
and coherence.

Often, a grid may consist of more than one

increment, as in the case of tartan grids, with
their counterpoint of major and minor bays.
Such complex grids can also be understood
as an overlap of grids, with a consequent
compounding of rhythms, hierarchies, and
programmatic attributes.

structured the faade of the

existing town hall. While this
reductive approach was
considered scandalous at the
time, it has proven very
successful in asserting its
presence as a functionally

distinct component of the

town government while
maintaining a staid symmetry
for the original structure and,
at the same time, providing a
consistent surface for one
edge of a major public square.

Additionally, a grid can be generated from a

distortion of an orthogonal grid, warping a
pattern so as to imply a directional inflection,
an adjustment to an irregular site boundary,
the accommodation of an irregular insertion
(such as a theater volume), or even an
attempt to develop an exaggerated depth or
shallowness by means of false perspective.
Proportions
The selection of a grids increment is perhaps
the clearest way in which to develop a
proportioning system that can permeate a
buildings design, unifying its parts with its
whole. A grid might be based on specific
dimensions (such as those of a standard
human body, of a regularized work space, or
of the predominant grid in a neighboring
structure), or on proportional relationships
that are independent of scale (as with
proportions derived from string lengths in
the production of musical chords).
Regulating lines have been an important
aspect of architectural aesthetics since
ancient times. Such lines are based on the
characteristics of similar trianglesthose
sharing identical angles, regardless of the

In his Vers une architecture of

1928, Le Corbusier dedicates
a chapter to the importance
of regulating lines, which he
considers to be an inevitable
element of architecture and
a basis of construction and a
satisfaction. He illustrates
this chapter with numerous
buildings of historical
importance, among which he
locates several of his own,
such as the Villa Schwob in La

Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland
(1916). The repetition of
angle A (and its complementary angle) across the
elevations provides the villa
with an intrinsically harmonic
proportioning system
whereby the proportion of
the elevations central block
is present throughout the
various subdivisions and
fenestration elements.

22
Grid

lengths of their sides. Such triangles will

always share proportional relationships
among their sides, so that the use of
regulating lines in architectural design lends
a consistent proportion to the entirety of the
structure. For this reason, regulating lines
are considered an effective technique for
guaranteeing harmonic proportions
throughout a building, from elevations to
sections to plans, with regulating lines
often providing the basis for variations and
subdivisions within the fundamental grids.
From the Renaissance onward, there was a
distinct relationship between the use of such
lines and the construction of linear perspectives, where similar rectangles would be used
to imply the recession of a figure in depth.

187

figures, service elements,

circulation systems,
enclosure, glazing, and
gradients of density. The
result is a house that uses
one of architectures most
fundamental and abstract
components, the grid, as an
all-encompassing generative
device, eliminating nearly all
the artifacts of traditional
domestic architecture.

186

An active grid becomes the

subject and object of Peter
Eisenmans House II (1969)
in Hardwick, Vermont. The
building is the consequence
of a series of three-dimensional manipulations of a
basic nine-square grid
dislocations, solidifications,
evacuations, transpositions
that leave traces that
engender elements such as
physical structure, spatial

Le Corbusier was one of modernisms most

vociferous advocates of regulating lines
more often than not based on the golden
section ratioseeing in them [t]he
obligation to order. The regulating line is
a guarantee against arbitrariness. It brings
satisfaction to the mind. (Le Corbusier,
page 132) Despite this, very few of his
contemporaries had enthusiasm for what was
inevitably considered to be a remnant of the
architecture they were trying to leave behind.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

A knowledge of geometry not only

provides the architect with the ability
to represent and communicate basic
ideas, but it is also an essential aspect
of understanding the genuine and
illusionistic aspects of architectural
space, for calculating the actual surface
areas and volumes being described, and
for describing the potential fabrication
of forms to others.

23

geometry
There is a certain aspect of descriptive geometry that pregures the visual impact of certain
forms: geometry can present not only what something physically is, but projective geometry
can also pregure what can be seen from specic viewpoints, and how complex gures can be
broken down into buildable components.

188
189

As alchemists sought inscrutable objectives that included

philosophical and spiritual insights, material transmutations, astrological projections, and even immortality, they
forged a path that led them to discoveries in sciences
such as chemistry and medicine. Similarly, architects

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

The golden section rectangle

has been used throughout
much of architectures history
as a proportioning tool. Here,
it is superimposed on
Michelangelos restructured
faade for the Palazzo del

Le Corbusiers Modulor 2
proportioning system begins
with the height of a 6-foot
(1.83 m) personthe ideal
English detective hero,
according to Le Corbusier
with an uplifted arm at 7 feet,
5 inches (2.26 m), subjecting
the increments to subdivision
by means of a Fibonacci
series. His belief was that the

In Jan Blaej Santinis

exuberant Church of St John
of Nepomuk at Zelen hora in
dr nad Szavou (Czech
Republic, 1721), the numbers
five and threewhich figure
prominently in the saints
hagiography as well as
Christian theologysymboli-

(continued on page 192)

use of these proportions

throughout a building would
assure a harmony of the parts
and a sense of human scale
as well as to foster the
development of potential
standards for building
materials and fixtures. It is
here imprinted on his Unit
dhabitation in Marseille,
France, of 1947-52.

cally appear in every aspect

of the building complex,
often combined with the
figure of a tongue, relating
to the legend of St. Johns
martyrdom upon his reputed
refusal to break the silence
of the confessional.

Senatore in Rome (completed

in the seventeenth century),
revealing golden ratios
between the base and upper
stories as well as within the
overall dimensions of the
surface.

with diverse utopian aspirations, including

the idealization and optimization of various
spiritual, cultural, aesthetic, material, health,
and environmental goals, have found their
paths most frequently plotted through
geometry.
For thousands of years, most architecture has
been composed of cubes, cylinders, spheres,
cones, and pyramids. Perhaps more than the
development of new materials, new representational techniques eventually accompanied
by new skills in fabrication have caused
architectural form to develop more elaborate
geometries. Guilds of medieval stonemasons
sharpened their skills as cathedrals reached
higher. In the Renaissance, linear perspective
expanded techniques for the study of
descriptive geometry. Later, in the baroque,
geometries merged and warped as stereotomic techniques were perfected and
craftsmen developed skills in turning wood
and ivory on lathes in fabricating exceptionally complex objects.
Numbers
Perhaps the most pervasive and persistent
geometries are those based on the golden
ratio. Known since the time of Pythagoras,
this ratio has fascinated mathematicians and

Vincenzo Scamozzis
Palmanova (designed 1593)
was considered to be the ideal
fortified outpost city of the
Venetian Republic. Its
original ramparts form a
nine-pointed star with its
three entry boulevards
culminating in a hexagonal
central piazza. Its
geometriesnonagons

merged with hexagons,

squares embedded in
trapezoidscombined
optimized strategies of
defense with Renaissance
theories of ideal proportion
and universal harmony. As
with most intended utopias,
Palmanovas idealization has
proven uncongenial to
everyday inhabitation.

artists for over 2500 years. Golden ratios

and their rectangles have a capacity for
continuous regeneration and subdivision,
and can be found throughout nature, from
nautilus shells to the length of our finger
bones, and it forms the basis for many
investigations into five-fold symmetry
(important in pattern theories). Perhaps
because of its ubiquitousness, artists and
architects have long considered the golden
rectangle to be one of the most visually
pleasing geometric figures.
The golden ratio is closely approximated by
the more finite Fibonacci series1, 1, 2, 3, 5,
8, 13, and so onwhich approaches the
golden ratio of 1: (1.6) as it progresses.
The Fibonacci series forms the basis for
Le Corbusiers Modulor proportion system
as well as numerous theories of plant and
animal growth.
Religious and governmental architecture
has frequently employed geometries for
their symbolic significance, with equilateral
triangles, squares, pentagons, hexagons,
and so on being used in plan, elevation,
and volumetrically in order to emphasize
the liturgical or historical importance of
certain numbers.

Geometry of Pure Motion: Buckminster Fullers

Search for a Coordinate System Employed by Nature
Richard Buckminster Fuller, a self-proclaimed
design scientist, is perhaps best known for
his lightweight geodesic domes and his
structural concept of tensegrity. While his
applied geometries in a variety of forms
from tents to domesserved highly
functional purposes for clients including
the U.S. military, and also garnered numerous patents, Fullers dedication to solving
the worlds problems through functional
geometries was driven by a much larger
obsession with the fleeting relationships
between nature and mathematics. Fullers
obsession was rooted in an omnirational
understanding of the universe, where

Buckminster Fuller: Geodesic dome

(U.S. Pavilion, Montreal, Canada, 1964-67)
drawing

form emerges from a continuous chain of

connected events. He understood the limitations of the Cartesian system as it

described as a network of discrete com-

concept of synergy as it forms a bridge

emphasizes fixed coordinates as opposed

to coordinated variations of geometry and

pression components held in continuous

tension. Each member is dependent upon

between the purity of mathematics and

geometry with the instability and complex-

matter. Fuller was interested in a design

space that embraces all the known mathematics from Euclidean to non-Euclidean.
Therefore, he abhorred disciplinary
silos as they fundamentally undermined

the next in a network of forces that undulates in an on/off fashion, much like
the process of weaving. Fuller observed
the efficiency and economy displayed by
the sculptural work of the artist, Kenneth

ity of nature. Given the systemic properties

of these lightweight skeletal assemblies,
such structures are capable of changing in
response to their environments. The result
is a variegated tensegrity system where

his concept of synergy, that is the behavior of whole systems unpredicted by

the behavior of their parts taken separately. Fullers applied projects such
the Dymaxion House (a conflation of

Snelson, thus leading to Fullers term

tensegrity, a combination of the terms
tension and integrity.

internal rule systems share reciprocal relationships with external and environmental
forces. This differentiated behavior operates at the level of the individual com ponents and at the level of the global

dynamic + maximum + ion) explored dynamics in form through the application of his
synergetic principles combined with a
search for structures that he considered
minimal through a reduction of overall
weight but were ultimately limited in their
ability to change dynamically in response
to environmental conditions. Interestingly,
Fullers concept of tensegrity, which he
understood as a system of energy where
space is not static, has subsequently been
adopted by the pioneering cell biologist,
Donald Ingber, as a model for understanding how cells are structured at the nanometer scale. Tensegrity may be simply

ernist bias toward the reproduction of

system. Imagine these structures growing,
single parts, Fuller was not able to realize
contracting, and expanding in response to
his theories of variation between parts and
the presence of people, light, or temperawhole systems in his functional geometries. ture. Fuller pioneered a systemic design
Recent advances in digital and fabrication
process, where flows of energy connect
technologies allow for the exploration of
form with communication, geometry, and
interconnected parts and material behav- matter. Digital technologies and computaior, where forces external to three- tional thinking have afforded a material
dimensional tensegrity structures may
translation of Fullers geometry of thinkinfluence and alter the continuity of the
ing that will finally fully realize his
tensional forces and the discontinuity of
functional geometries, as informed by the
the compressive forces. Ingbers link
dynamics and complexity of an expanded
between the mechanics of the cell cytoskel- context.
eton with the dynamics of tensegrity is,
perhaps, the closest translation of Fullers Jenny Sabin (Cornell University)

Perhaps limited by technology and a mod-

Donald Ingber: Geodesic form

in the tensed cytoskeleton of
a human cell, 2011

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

In his treatise of 1567,

Le Premier tome de
lArchitecture, the French
Renaissance architect
Philibert de LOrme
illustrates his method of
stereotomically representing
the squincha vaulted
transition between an inside

corner and a convexity

beneath a small chamber in
the Chteau dAnet. Careful
reading of the drawing
reveals the actual dimensions
and angles a mason would
need in order to accurately
cut the seven pieces of ashlar.

Descriptive Geometry
Every architect can benefit from an understanding of the fundamentals of descriptive
geometry (also called applied or constructive geometry). Not only is the ability to
represent three-dimensional forms two
dimensionally a necessity for representing
and communicating basic ideas, but it is also
an essential aspect of understanding both the
genuine and illusionistic aspects of architectural space, for calculating the actual surface
areas and volumes being described, and
for describing the potential fabrication of
forms to others.
With descriptive geometry, one can present
not only what something physically is, but
projective geometry can also prefigure what
can be seen from specific viewpoints, and
how complex figures can be broken down
into buildable components.
Modern descriptive geometry also assists
the designer in being able to identify and
quantify linear curves in space, as well as the
measures of warped surfaces and irregular
volumes. But while many computer graphic
programs can simulate much of the constructive aspects of descriptive geometry, allowing
programs full control over the formation
of such figures means that the designer
becomes merely a consumer of predetermined forms and techniques. For example,
rather than understanding a sphere as a
singular geometric figure, certain programs

Amid concerns regarding the

structural and constructional
possibilities of the shells in
the original design for the
Sydney Opera House (inaugurated 1973)especially based
on the technologies of
1960architect Jrn Utzon
demonstrated with this

wooden model (c. 1961) that

each of the shells could be a
segment of the same sphere,
meaning that curvatures
would be identical,
facilitating structural
calculations and
prefabrication.

23
Geometry

UNStudios Burnham Pavilion

in Chicagos Millennium Park
(2009) begins with a platform organized on Daniel
Burnhams famous Chicago
grid as its initial figure and

then distorts the roof plane

of this grid using various
parametrics in recognition of
specific vistas within the park
and toward the city.

Also, the use of parametrics in design has

become a significant tool in the designers
repertoire, influencing every scale and aspect
of design, especially in academic settings.
Parametrics, at its most fundamental,
involves the use of a set of parameters or
limitssuch as networks of circulation,
patterns of congregation, or measures of
daylightas a means for exploring a range
of geometries through multiplication,
distortion, transformation, or all three.
Various meshes can also be introduced,
whereby an aggregation of surface geom-

etries can approximate highly irregular and

even organic figures. Nonhierarchical meshes
can be subjected to specific metricsby
means of Voronoi diagrams or Delaunay
triangulationsin order to achieve more
regulated surfaces and masses. These
techniques are especially important in the
development of responsive surfaces.
In these instances, the geometric complexities often prohibit nondigital methods of
three-dimensional modeling.
The challenge is for parametrics, useful for
developing tantalizing formal abstractions,
to transcend predictable outputs based on
predetermined inputs. A continuous reevalua-

193

Complexities
The combination of forms through Boolean
operationsmerging positive forms (solids),
positive and negative (subtractive) forms
or more complex combinations resulting in
the systematic addition or subtraction of
overlapped formsis one aspect of design
that has become vastly facilitated by digital
representation. Such Boolean operations are

central to constructive solid geometry (CSG)

techniques of modeling solids.

192

require it to be understood as a polyhedron

that approaches an infinite number of sides, a
hosohedron composed of lunes, or a circle
rotating about one of its diameters. The
version of the sphere to which one subscribes
directly affects the transformations to which
the sphere can be subjected.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

It is often assumed that there

is a singular relationship
between the geometry of
a structure and the materials of its construction.
San Franciscobased
IwamotoScott Architectures

In this project by James

Pelletier, a simple repertoire
of formsteardrops, wedges,
and tubesis distorted,
multiplied, rescaled, and
treated alternately as solids
and voids, and then used as
the geometric primitives
for the simultaneous
development of both a
complex architecture and
the manipulation of its site.
Such modeling would be
impossible using exclusively
analog tools. (Critics: Andrew
Batay-Csorba, Thom Mayne,
and Val Warke; Cornell
University)

tion of the initial and evolving parameters

is critical to its instrumentality. And for
meshed surfaces, which tend to solidify their
responses to the designers input during
the design process, to become actively
responsive during the life of a construction.
Variability
Genuinely responsive surfaces and objects
those that morphologically alter throughout
the life of a structureare beginning to
appear as new materials and techniques are
being developed, often through convergent
technologies and disciplinary hybridization.
One of the issues facing architecture is the
extent to which variation and variability enter
the process, and for how long they persist
within the work. In biology, a homogeneous
system, determined by genetics, is often
transformed into a heterogeneous system
by its immediate contexts, deforming a
predetermined and undifferentiated

Line Array project (2010)

proposes the use of
protocell-based materials in
the construction of an
asymmetrical, highly variable
structure with irregular spans,
loads, and that even change

from columns to beams and

from tensile to compressive.
These materials are composed
of cells capable of gathering
or dispersing at the nanoscale
in response to requirements
at the macroscale.

organization through constant adaptation.

Many architects argue for an architectural
version of this biological epistasis in which
variation occurs well beyond the onset of a
buildings design, even throughout the life of
the building. The configurations of spaces
might change as the users age, with changes
in family dynamics, with altered economic
situations, or with seasonal and long-term
climatic changes.
Similarly, concepts of self-organization
whereby a system finds its own optimized
structure, often with very little predictabilityseem to more fully duplicate natural
human settlement patterns. Self-organization
may prove quite valuable at developing
large-scale organizations.
Networks
Today, there can be a direct, instantaneous
connection between design, two-dimensional
digital modeling, rendering, and three-

23
Geometry

The sinuous geometries of

Trahan Architects Louisiana
Sports Hall of Fame Museum
in Natchitoches, LA, USA
(2011), would have been
virtually impossible to construct a decade ago. The close
digital collaboration, beginning with the architects
three-dimensional documents,
included steel consultants
David Kufferman and Method
Design, and fabrication and

BIM management company

Case, making it possible to
carve a path directly from
design to fabrication. The
interior is shaped by over
1,000 individually cast stone
panels supported by an equally
individualized steel framework
with thirty connection types,
all digitally programmed
through a combination of ten
software packages.

It is becoming increasingly necessary for the

designer to utilize and combine numerous
software systems during each phase of the
design process, especially as the information
involved in producing the representation of
a design can also be used to investigate
multiple facets of that design. Digital models
can be used to evaluate a works environmental relationships (such as solar orientation,
heat loss or gain, and various comfort
criteria), material usages (including types and
amounts), contextual aspects (shadows cast,
view corridors, public accessibility), and even
legal compliance (zoning or other codes).

Graphic programs have fostered an

ability to generate forms that are imaginable
only through digital processes. As these
programs become more available for
adaptations and modifications through
scripting, designers begin to require a keen
knowledge and skepticism of available data
sources, with input needing careful ranking
and traceable algorithms so that portions
of the process can be edited or redirected
upon evaluation of the output. Such
evaluation will require the development of
effective skills and tools. While the digital
realm will provide real-time data as a design
evolves, the designer will still need to
select and prioritize the data, humanize its
conclusions, and assess esthetic qualities.

Additionally, building information modeling

(BIM) has become a contemporary version of
stereotomy, with digital representationseven
during the earliest stages of a designcapable

195

of being shared among architects, project

consultants, fabricators, and contractors,
whereby changes made to one element
instantly affect changes in related areas.

194

dimensional modeling, so the designer has

immediate access to a vast array of
representations and viewpoints for exploring
the qualities of a design.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Aspects of fabricationthe equipment,

tools, and methods that form and
assemble a structures materialsare
essential in defining the character of
a finished work.

24

fabrication
Techniques of fabrication often expand the characteristics of an existing technology that
might have originally been intended or limited to a particular, even nonarchitectural application, making material and structural discoveries that were previously untapped.

196
197

Construction methodologieshow a material, a detail,

or a building is madeare an important aspect of the
design process. Where a knowledge and appreciation
for a specific construction method is privileged
and subsequently embedded within the conceptual
development of a work, the specifics of those methods

concepts into houses and

academic structures. Here
the construction process
emphatically does not come
from a set of architectural
drawings. Instead, it is the
result of a continuous and
ongoing processan
architectural laboratory for
the testing of ideas,
materials, and rituals in a
continuously evolving
environment.

In Laxe, Spain, in 2010,

Studio Ensamble constructed
the Trufflea mass of space
that emerged from its
environment. A hole was dug
and subsequently filled with
bales of hay, with the existing

earth serving as formwork

into which the concrete was
poured. As the concrete
hardened and the earth was
scraped away, the hay was
slowly consumed by a cow,
revealing the space within.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

The architecture of Ciudad

Abierta in Ritoque, Chile, a
school that was founded in
the 1970s, is a built
expression of a participatory
process that engages an
unstable landscape of sand
dunes and wetlands.
Architectural concepts are
initiated through poetic
collective events and
happenings, with faculty and
students developing these

24

the fabric-lined formwork

that was used to construct it.
The concrete takes on a
surprising fragility, as if, like
a curtain, it is about to sway
in the wind.

inform the characteristics of the architecture.

For example, the dimensions of plywood
panels that compose the formwork of a
poured-in-place concrete wall are permanently inscribed, as measure and as texture,
onto the surfaces of the wall that they have
formed. The plug holes that served to
distance the plywood surfaces into which the
concrete is poured, and that are either left
open or subsequently plugged, provide yet
another clue as to its process of coming into
being, adding another scale of measure and
texture to its surfaces. Similarly, a wall might
be constructed of a series of individual
metal components where the potential for
incremental geometric mutation and variation
is inherent to the walls fabrication. The
computational and fabrication systems
necessary to both conceive of and
manufacture each component are traced
within the walls scalelike surfaces as well
as its responsive geometries.

teepee formation upon which

the concrete was layered.
Their textured residue bears
witness to the farmers use of
local materials to construct
this modest chapel.

The walls of the 201113

Kantana Film and Animation
Institute, designed by
Boonserm Premthada of
Bangkok Project Studio in
Nakorn Prathom Province in
Thailand are built of bricks
handmade from the

surrounding paddy fields.

The stepping of each brick
transforms the massive wall
into an undulating curtain
full of light and shadow,
punctuated by openings that
reveal its thickness and mass.

CRAFT
The act of building can be understood as
the result of a process, one that through a
series of steps produces the finished work.
While drawings typically serve as the
instruction manual for the construction
process and operate as intermediaries
between the designer and the finished work,
the equipment, tools, and methods that form
and assemble the materials are essential to
the characteristics of the finished work.
The characteristicsphysical, cultural, and
economicof the site in which the work is
constructed and the methodologies of local
building practices can provide a unique
specificity that clearly situates a work within
a particular context.

Fabrication

The enclosing wall of Hanil

Visitors Center & Guest
House in South Korea,
completed in 2009 by BCHO
Architects with Mark West of
CAST, registers the trace of

The inner space of the Bruder

Klaus Field Chapel by Peter
Zumthor in Wachendorf,
Germany (2007), was created
by burning away the locally
forested spruce trees that
had been arranged in a

Beginning with an abstracted

doric column, Michael
Hansmeyers Sixth Order
installation at the 2011
Gwangju (South Korea)
Design Biennale explores a
subdivision process where
inherent formal charac-

DIGITAL FABRICATION
Digital fabrication generates form directly
from computer drawings, enabling increasingly complex forms to be constructed.
Designs and details are developed using
specific computer software that is compatible with various types of fabrication
machinery. These drawings are then
transmitted to machines that subsequently
fabricate the forms. This fabrication can
occur at multiple scales and with extremely
precise detail and dimensional tolerances.
Furthermore, while industrialization
introduced an efficiency that depended on
the repetition of both assembly and
fabrication, the development of computational design and fabrication processes
brings an equal efficiency to the mass
production of differentiated elements, where
standardization is no longer necessary for
either material or economic optimization.
And not all fabrication processes are initiated
within architecture. Techniques of fabrication
often expand the characteristics of an
existing technology that might have initially
been intended or limited to a particular
(and perhaps nonarchitectural) application,
making material and structural discoveries
that were previously untapped. While the
technology remains embedded within the
work, these technological misuses can
often produce surprising results that expand
an existing technologys potential.

SHoP Architects Camera

Obscura, completed in
Greenport, NY, in 2005, is an
early example of a project
constructed entirely from
digitally fabricated
components. Each material

systemwhether it be the
wood cladding or the metal
panels or the steel connector
platesnecessitated a unique
fabrication technology,
which was then subsequently
assembled on site.

teristics are individually

tagged and then assigned
specic behavioral parameters.
The result generates an
ornamental system of endless
variation and complexity, yet
one that retains a sense of
overall order.

24
Fabrication

Jenny Sabins myThread

pavilion, exhibited in 2012 at
the Nike Stadium in New York
City, deploys textile-based
technologies to weave
reactive and photoluminescent threads into a gauzelike
fabric. A skeleton of
aluminum rings stretches the
fabric into spatial tubes that

weave the pavilion into the

surrounding space. The
scale at which the textile
is deployed, along with its
reactive capabilities, introduces new and surprising
characteristics to a familiar
technologythis is no longer
a sweater.

200
201

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

An architecture of prefabrication is often

conceived as a mobile architecture, one
that can either be moved or reassembled,
or one that touches lightly on the land,
minimally disturbing the context to
which it has been brought.

25

prefabrication
Prefabrication often begins with a specific set of performance criteria that leads to an
idealized solution.

202
203

As a boat is fabricated in a shop and then introduced to

water, a prefabricated architecture is simultaneously
site-less and site-ed. It is constructed away from its site
and subsequently brought to its site, either as an entire
module or as a kit of parts that can be assembled upon
arrival. It is often made of standardized parts or modules

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Studio Ensambles 2007

Music Tower for Berklee
School of Music in Valencia,
Spain, proposes a system of
prestressed concrete beams,
of the scale and profile more
typically associated with
infrastructural projects (such
as bridges and overpasses).

The beams are brought to the

site and stacked into place,
producing a dense structural
skin that both supports its
interior floors and allows
for cantilevers that create
enormous voids of suspended
exterior piazzas.

that can be repeatedly (mass-) produced or

it can appropriate existing already-made
components that have not necessarily been
fabricated explicitly for architecture. A
prefabricated architecture is one that is often
conceived as a mobile architecture, one that
can either be moved or reassembled, or one
that touches lightly on the land, minimally
disturbing the context to which it has been
brought. Technological experimentation and
ease of assembly are often motivated by a
sites remoteness or difficulty of access, a
need to quickly expedite shelter in a time of
crisis, or the ability to incrementally expand
over time through accretion of additional
modules or assemblies.

John Entenza, the editor of

Arts and Architecture, wrote
in the 1945 announcement of
the magazines case study
house program, The house
must be capable of

duplication and in no sense

be an individual performer.
Pierre Koenigs 195960
Case Study House #22 is an
example of a project that,
while designed for a very

Standardization
In his foreword to the 2008 MoMA
exhibition catalog Home Delivery: Fabricating
the Modern Dwelling (page 7), museum
director Glenn Lowry writes that mass
customization [will] trump mass standardization. And while, certainly, there is a
paradigm shift under way concerning the
definition of standardization in light of
emerging digital technologies, where the
production of identical parts is no longer
a prerequisite for the efficiencies typically
associated with standardization, optimization
(as defined by the speed of production,
minimum waste, and reproducibility) remains
one of its most identifiable characteristics.

specific site, was constructed

of standardized steel and
glass components that could
be recombined and deployed
on a very differentand less
extremesite.

The scale of standardized components can

range from a brick, a plywood panel, a 2-inch
x 4-inch (5 x 10 cm) wood stud or a steel
beam, to a room or even an entire building.
All depend on repetition, expansion or
aggregation to construct something larger
than itself. It is a unit of measure that is
embedded in the material (or space, or
process) that not only facilitates duplication
but also brings a form of logic to the
constructive process.

25
tects Jose Maria Saez and
David Barragan conceived a
universal system where each
prefabricated module can
serve alternately as planter,
storage unit, or bookshelf,
while wooden planks slipped
between each course serve
as stair, table, or chair.

Prefabrication

Prefabricated 1.00 m (l) x

0.20 m (h) x 0.28 m (w)
(1.09 yd x 8 in x 11 in)
concrete troughs are stacked
to construct the primary
bearing and space-defining
walls of the 2006 Casa
Pentimento in La Morita,
Quito, Ecuador. The archi-

(B)

(E)
(A)

(C)
(D)

The capsules were prefabricated in a shipping

container factory. They are welded, lightweight,
steel truss boxes clad with galvanized ribbed

Large trucks transported the capsules 280

miles from the assembly plant to the outskirts
of Tokyo where they were individually loaded
onto smaller trucks (D).
The capsules were lifted by crane and bolted
to the lift core with four high-tension bolts,
and all were attached within thirty days (E).

The Nakagin Capsule Tower

in Tokyo, Japan, designed
in 1972 by Kisho Kurokawa
consists of 140 individual
living capsules cantilevered
from two concrete cores.
While these cores are built
on-site and contain the
buildings main infrastruc-

tural elements (stairs,

elevators, utilities, and so
on), the +/100 square-feet
(30 sq m) steel modules are
fabricated off-site and
individually bolted to the
concrete corethey were
designed to be replaced every
twenty-five years.

205

The service risers were, in fact, exterior fins

on the lift shafts, eventually concealed by the
attached capsules (B).

steel panels, rust-preventative paint, and

a weatherproof plastic with an estimated
twenty-year life span (C).

204

Theelevator shafts were surrounded by a

reinforced concrete spiral staircase, enclosed
in the lift-formed concrete stair shaft. These
stairs were usable throughout the construction
process (A).

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Sitelessness
Prefabrication often begins with a specific
set of performance criteria that leads to an
idealized solution. While usually developed
independent of a specific physical site, the
manner in which a prefabricated project is
transported to a site, the way in which the
work is eventually situated on a site, and how
it might engage a sites environmental and
programmatic factors can have an enormous
impact on the initial design parameters. This
expanded context for a prefabricated work
suggest that there be a certain adaptability
built into the work, that it have embedded
within it the potential for local modification
(legs that adjust, panels that operate) or
incorporate adaptive components that allow
for an eventual expansion through the
addition of additional bays or components.
A prefabricated architecture is often entirely
independent of site but, necessarily, deeply
adaptive to it.

Difficult access to this

remote Icelandic site
necessitated that the 1999
construction of this
summerhouse, by li
Mathesen of Glama Kim
Architects, occur off site.
The dimension of the
transporting truck and the
weight of the overall
structure were critical

parameters of the design

process. Using standardized
materials of corrugated metal
(recalling the Icelandic
houses of the early twentieth
century) and an interior
lining of plywood panels, it
is through its precise dimensions that it has the ability to
bring measure and scale to its
endless landscape.

Albert Frey and A. Lawrence

Kochers 1931 Allied and Arts
Industries exhibition house
Aluminaire was entirely
manufactured from existing
new materials. Here, form
was developed independent
of site, with lights that
simulated daylight recessed
into ceilings and projected

from window frames.

Innovative building materials
and construction
technologies were used to
propose an affordable
architecture that could be
produced in a factory setting
and subsequently erected on
any site in only ten days.

25

Shipping containers are

transformed into occupiable
space through Spillman
Echsle Architektens 2006
design for Freitags Zurich
showroom. Units that were
designed according to a
distinct set of dimensional
and material parameters are
now reused in an entirely new
context, where high fashion
now rubs up against industrial
grit and demonstrates both
the company and architects
commitments to sustainability and recycling.

Prefabrication

Yona Friedmans (Untitled)

Bridge proposes a spatial
infrastructure that has the
ability to undergo infinite
incremental change through
the multiplication and
densification of the basic
component units that
populate its megastructure.

206
207

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Presentation drawings are intended to

stand in for the form and the experience
of an eventual, constructed work.

26

presentation
A presentation will amplify the most important readings of a work, directed toward a
specific audience.

208
209

The presentation drawing or model represents the

conclusion of a particular phase of a design process.
Once the design process is complete, a presentation
drawing or model does not serve as a set of instructions
to construct the work but, instead, as a device that
embodies and communicates the most important ideas,

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

BIGs (Bjarke Ingels Group)

2011 competition presentation
drawing for Europa City, a
new commercial center near
Paris, France, realistically and
emphatically presents the
underlying concept of the
work: the fusing together of

urban block and topographic

landscape into an enormous
earthwork that collects retail,
cultural, and recreational
programsa modern medieval
city presented from above
within the context in which it
is located.

Frank Lloyd Wrights 1936

colored-pencil and pastel
perspective of Edgar J.
Kaufmanns house, Falling
Water in Mill Run,
Pennsylvania, gives us a very
real sense of the final work.
The use of perspective

looking up from the falls

reinforces the primary
understanding of the house
both as an extension of its
rural landscape and as a
series of Cartesian planes
superimposed and hovering
above it.

the critical characteristics, of the work. And

while it often documents a work whose
intention is to be materialized, it can also
present a body of speculative ideasin other
words, it can be an end in and of itself.

Hugh Ferriss delineations

advertised the buildings to
the consumers for whom they
were intended. This 1929
moody nighttime image of
the Chanin Building in New
York City designed by Sloan
& Robertson was a real estate
marketing tool. A silhouette

that emphasized the

buildings mass, light, and
shadow with very little
attention to detail, the
drawing intentionally
presents a building full of
mystery, waiting to be
inhabitedthe luminous star
emerging from the city below.

Audience
A presentation takes into consideration its
audience or the context within which the
presentation will be read and understood.
An architectural competition jury is distinct
from a fund-raiser, which is distinct from a
client presentation, which is distinct from
a museum exhibition. Each forum has unique
criteria through which the work will be
considered, criteria through which the
architectural concept must be framed.
The presentation will inevitably amplify

a particular reading of the work that is

most important to be communicated to a
particular audience.
Documentary
Presentation drawings and models can be
documentary and serve to explain, to
demonstrate, the project. They are intended
to stand in for the form and the experience
of an eventual, constructed work. For
example, a perspective might demonstrate
to a client the experience of what its like to
occupy the building or what will be seen
through the architectural lens of the
buildings skin. Or a site model might show
the buildings mass and scale in the context
of its surrounding contexthow tall or how
bulky it is in relation to its neighbors.
(continued on page 213)

The Projections of Zaha Hadid

In a strict reading of the terms, presentation conveys ideas that may have not yet
been materialized but that are conceptually
determined. In contrast, representations
denote the presenting again of an idea
that may already exist in another medium
such as photography or life drawing, or the
progression of an idea that is in the process
of coming into being.
Architectural drawings, images, and models
are presentations of constructions prior to
their being built. Photorealistic renderings
seek to collapse presentation into reality,
masking the unsettling gap between. Alternatively, architects can exploit the power of
architectural presentations by heightening
the distinctions between realism and presentation, destabilizing expectations and
understandings of the world to come. Within
the discourse, most architectural presentations privilege not the construction yet to
come but the conceptual framework and
ideas that have informed the design process.
Their role is often to seduce the audience
into a specic understanding of the work.
Zaha Hadids work explores the immense
power of architectural images to be both
presentations of a new world to come as well
as the visual documentation of the theoretical structure of images understood as
representations of ideas. Hadid built her
reputation as an architect by dispensing
with the obligation to present architecture
according to rules of construction, choosing
instead to construct striking and unexpected presentations of her projects as she
would have us see them. In her drawings for
the Peak, a 1981 competition for a social
club high above Hong Kong, Zaha Hadid
demonstrated a project that lacked any
overt concern for tectonics, gravity, structure, enclosure, or faade, organized instead
by the underlying rules of the presentation

Zaha Hadid: The Peak Leisure Club, Hong Kong, 198283

Zaha Hadid: Cardiff Bay Opera House, Wales, UK 199496

Zaha Hadid: Hoenheim-Nord Terminus and Car Park,

Strasbourg, France, 19982001

technique deployedperspectival drawing

and oblique projection. The Peak and Hong
Kong were cast in representational capitulation with the logic of her design, as if the

opened up an unsettling gap, exemplified

early in her career by the controversy over
the Cardiff Bay Opera House: Her winning
presentation was never built, doomed by

entire parking surface is rendered as a

large canvas, presenting the systems of the
transportation hub to the user. In Zaha
Hadids recent work, the development of

city would be entirely remade through the

lens of the competition presentation.

misperceptions regarding the capacity of

the drawings and images to be realized.

Zaha Hadids presentation drawings and

models become complicit in the exploration
of their architectural ideas. Her work is not
simply illustrated through perspective, but
it is spatially transformed by perspectival
presentation, conflating the design with its
presentation. By pursuing the explorative
potential of presentation over the tectonics
of building, Zaha Hadids work has often

digital technologies has enabled the visualization and subsequent construction of

complex spatial conditions. Yet, as presentation succumbs to the seduction of
photorealism, it paradoxically erases the
tension once held in her earlier presentations: that of a didactic tool for imagining
what we are about to experience.

These early paintings and drawings prefigured her future built works. While the Vitra
Fire Station and IBA Housing demonstrate
the constructive ambitions of her early
perspectival drawings, the Hoenheim-Nord
Terminus and Car Park convincingly merge
presentation with the final project. Oblique David J. Lewis (LTL Architects; Parsons,
angles of the building solidify in concrete
the New School for Design)
the explorations of drawings, while the

contemporary society. The

collages that they produced
to envision this new world
were populated with people
imported from contemporary
and popular magazines. Ron
Herrons Tuned Suburb
collage, produced for the 1968
Milan Biennale, proposed a
Popular Pak of imported

technologies that might

invigorate a banal suburban
landscape. The convincingly
invented existing suburb is
populated with background
drawings of amusement park
structures and foregrounded
with collaged figures of
everyday life.

Superstudios 1969 photomontage The Continuous

Monument: An Architectural
Model for Total Urbanization
begins with a photograph on
which a drawing is subsequently overlaid. The shift
in both technique and scale

reinforces a visionary
scenario of a distinct
world defined by its
monumental scale and
abstracted vocabulary,
one that proposes a future
order superimposed over a
messy and obsolete past.

213

Archigram argued for the

cultural aspect of building by
placing it within the context
of what was occurring in the
sixties and seventies. They
were producing structures
that would often require
technologies that did not yet
exist, arguing them within
the framework of

212

brink of the abyss. Here,

the drawing operates as
simultaneous metaphor and
critique of a relentlessly
banal state of contemporary
architectural production
and thought in Russia.

Presentation

Alexander Brodsky and Ilya

Utkins 1987 competitionentry drawing, entitled
Bridge over a Precipice in the
High Mountains, constructs a
magical glass chapel
impossibly teetering on the

Media
The media of presentation serves to reinforce
the architectural concept. While collaged
material will often carry with it the meanings
and textures embedded in the fragments that
are appropriated into the collage, it is the
process of overlaying multiple voices in the
presentation (styles, materials, and scales)
that can reinforce an architectural dialogue
fundamental to the concept being presented.
Video animations or walk-throughs place the
audience within the work but can also present
a temporal experience that was critical to the
development of the architectural idea. While
computer-generated images can introduce an
uncanny reality, they can demonstrate with
great precision and detail the responsive and
often environmentally interactive dimension
that informs the nal forms and geometries.

26

Evocative
A presentation can be more conceptual and
suggest an intention of a potential work, an
evocative image that envisions a future world
or what architecture could possibly be. In the
hands of architects like Giovanni Battista
Piranesi or Lebbeus Woods, these drawings
and models can take the form of an architectural manifestoa speculative position that
encourages debate and often critiques the
contemporary views on architecture and the
city, imagining a world free of the material,
structural, and political conventions with
which architecture is bound. Their strength
often lies in their ambiguity and their ability
to suggest rather than explain.

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

The Telamon Cupboard of

Ben Nicholsons 19861990
Appliance House exaggerates
the prosaic repository for
everyday detritus into an
(only partially) accessible
domestic instrument. The

Buildings and cities are

intrinsically static, bound by
material and by gravity. Yet
the drawings of Bernard
Tschumis 197681 Manhattan
Transcript project present an

precise pencil drawings

demonstrate the cabinets
structure, hinges, knobs,
mechanisms, and operations,
while the collages suggest
the materialistic density for
which they are intended.

alternative view, a city of

relationships between spaces
and their use, between form
and program. The drawings
leave behind more singular
representations of space and

urban form and instead

borrow freely from filmic
conventions such as the jump
cut, the montage, and the
splice. Here, photographs,
architectural drawings, and

motion diagrams, together,

construct urban storyboards
that fuse the physical with
the ephemeral, the
permanent with the fleeting.

26
Presentation

C. J. Lims collage drawings

construct visual narratives
dreamlike landscapes that
intertwine the real and the
fictional through hybridized
drawings and models. In his
proposal for a Sky Transport
for London, he pays homage
to the cartoonist Heath
Robinsons crazy contraptions. Here, he lifts and
transforms Londons

underground transportation
system into a floating
infrastructural network
a sky-river for both
commuters and recreational
enthusiasts alike. Ink
drawings serve as context for
pop-up paper models that
reinforce the dialogue between
the real and the imagined,
the familiar and the strange.
Battersea, London, UK, 2007

214
215

Andrew Kudlesss drawings

for his 2012 Chrysalis III
structure required the use of
particular computer software
to generate a complex
barnaclelike surface of unique
shapes. The undulating

surface of 1,000 digital cells

is suspended from an
underlying body, with each
cell competing for spatial real
estate as they compress and
expand three dimensionally
into their nal state.

Glossary
abstraction a translation that condenses a
complex form or concept to a fundamental
figure or principle

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

anamorphic distorted when viewed from

most positions, but normalized when seen
from a specific point of view
axis an imaginary line that connects a range
or sequence of spaces or objects.
axonometric a constructed drawing on the
oblique in which a plan view is kept
undistorted, and vertical surfaces are
projected upward or downward.
brise soleil a sun-breaker, is a device
usually appended to a structureintended
to control the penetration of sunlight.
chiaroscuro the relationship between light
and dark, generally established through
contrast
context the situationsformal, temporal,
climatic, and so onin which a building finds
itself, and that will inevitably affect its
perception
cornice a horizontal projection, often
emphasizing the top of a building, the upper
boundary of a segment of a faade, or the
ceiling of a room
defamiliarization the process of construing
something that is normally very familiar to be
something unfamiliar in order to promote
new observations or fresh understandings
dialogical participating in a discursive
exchange, whereby meaning is expanded,
exchanged, and renewed through the
engagement of one or more other voices or
artifacts; the opposite of monological, in
which only a single voice can be perceived
eclecticism the deliberate combination or
merging of various styles, expressions, or
doctrines

elevation an architectural drawing that

provides the measured documentation of
one side or flank of a structure, with no
perspective distortion

poch the less consequential aspects of a

building or city that usually serve as background or supportive material for the more
signicant aspects of the building or city

enfilade a series of spaces connected along

an axis or line, generally through a range of
doorways

precedent something that has come before

and that is evoked in the production of
something new

faade a building's face, it is a structure's

most public visage; buildings can have more
than one faade, especially if they front on
multiple venues.

rusticated a surface (often at the base of a

building) composed of large masonry blocks
with a rugged texture and rough joinery; or
alluding to such a surface

familiarization a process whereby

something that is unknown is represented in
terms of one or more things that are known

section an architectural drawing that reveals

what can be understood when an imaginary
vertical slice is taken through a building,
garden, or city, usually suggesting the
vertical relationship of spaces

loggia an open, exterior gallery, usually at

ground level, through which people might
circulate
membrane a thin structure or layer that
separates two conditions of differing spatial
characteristics, functions, temperatures, and
humidity
mimetic exhibiting a characteristic that
resembles in some manner the characteristic
of another entity
perspective a simulated three-dimensional
view, generally constructed from a specific
vantage point along a horizon, with one or
more vanishing points toward which surfaces
appear to converge
pilaster a rectilinear suggestion of a column,
usually emerging from the surface of a wall;
occasionally used to refer to a half column,
which is semicircular in plan as it engages a wall

scale a relationship of size between one

entity and another; in architecture, human
scale refers to the relationship between a
body's dimensions and range of motions and
the architecture designed to specifically
accommodate these dimensions
site the physical location in which a building
is to be located, possibly including those
nearby features that shape its views,
approach, and configuration
space a definable volume of emptiness that
can be occupied, or that otherwise establishes the range across which an observer
perceives enclosure
trope an aspect of language in which
something is used to stand in for something
else with which it has some association
void an indefinite emptiness

plan an architectural drawing that represents

the parts of a building, a complex of
buildings, or a city, looking downward from a
horizontal slice generally taken at eye level
(in building plans) or from an indefinite
position above a city or complex

Bibliography
Sources in bold are recommended as general introductions to architecture. Numbers in brackets [ ] indicate chapters to which the texts refer.
Addington, Michelle, and Daniel L. Schodek.
Smart Materials and New Technologies for the
Architecture and Design Professions. Oxford:
Architectural, 2005. [10]
Cook, Peter. Drawing: The Motive Force of
Architecture (Architectural Design Primer).
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2008. [3]
Doxiads, Knstantinos Apostolou.
Architectural Space in Ancient Greece.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1972. [11]
Evans, Robin. The Projective Cast: Architecture and Its Three Geometries. Cambridge,
MA: MIT, 1995. [23]
Forster, Kurt W. "Schinkel's Panoramic
Planning of Central Berlin." Modulus 16,
Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1983,
6277. [11]
Giedion, S. Space, Time, and Architecture;
the Growth of a New Tradition. Cambridge:
Harvard UP, 1954. [11]
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Goethe's
Theory of Colours: Translated from the
German. Trans. Charles Lock. Eastlake.
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Hejduk, John, with Kim Shkapich (editor).
Mask of Medusa: Works, 19471983. New
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Kahn, Louis I. Louis Kahn: Essential Texts. Ed.

Robert C. Twombly. New York: W.W. Norton,
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Le Corbusier, Jean-Louis Cohen (introduction), and John Goodman (translation).

Toward an Architecture. Los Angeles, CA:
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Regg, Arthur. Le CorbusierPolychromie

architecturale. Basel: Birkhuser Architecture,
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Lobell, John. Between Silence and Light:

Spirit in the Architecture of Louis I. Kahn.
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Mohsen Mostafavi and David Leatherbarrow.
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Moos, Stanislaus von. Le Corbusier, Elements
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Otto, Frei. Occupying and Connecting:
Thoughts on Territories and Spheres of Inuence
with Particular Reference to Human Settlement.
Ed. Berthold Burkhardt. Stuttgart: Edition Axel
Menges, 2009. [23]
Prez-Gmez, Alberto. "The Space of Architecture: Meaning As Presence and Representation." Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture. San Francisco, CA:
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Ramsey, Charles G., and Harold R. Sleeper.
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NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2007. [4]
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Press, 1962.

Samuel, Flora. Le Corbusier and the Architectural Promenade. Basel: Birkhuser, 2010. [14]
Sandaker, Bjorn N., Arne P. Eggen, and
Mark R. Cruvellier. The Structural Basis of
Architecture. 2nd ed. Hoboken: Taylor and
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Sherwood, Roger. Principles of Visual
Organization. Philadelphia: M.C. De
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[Introduction]
Thompson, D'Arcy Wentworth. On Growth
and Form. Ed. John Tyler Bonner. Cambridge:
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217

Holl, Steven. The Chapel of St. Ignatius,

introduction by Gerald T. Cobb. New York:
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Herzog, Jacques. "Conversation Between

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Kepes, Gyorgy. Language of Vision: With

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Contributor Directory

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

3Gatti
3gatti.com
131 (bottom, left & right)

Code: Architecture
code.no 129 (top & middle, left)

Herzog & de Meuron Basel Ltd.

herzogdemeuron.com
31 (top, right)

MVRDV
mvrdv.nl
177 (middle, left & right & bottom)

Steven Holl Architects

stevenholl.com
20; 35 (middle)

Nacasa & Partners Inc.

nacasa.co.jp
23 (middle & bottom)
Netherlands Architecture Institute
nai.nl, 167

David Adjaye Associates

adjaye.com
97 (top, left & right)

Cornell University, Department of

Architecture
aap.cornell.edu/academics/architecture, 1517

Alejandro Aravena Arcuitecto

alejandroaravena.com
70 (middle, right); 163

Decker Yeadon LLC

deckeryeadon.com
96 (top, right, middle & bottom)

Hweler + Yoon Architecture

hyarchitecture.com
123 (middle)

Allied Works Architecture

alliedworks.com
25 (bottom, left & right)

Diller Scodio + Renfro

dsrny.com, 31 (bottom); 159

Iaqui Carnicero Architecture

Office
inaquicarnicero.com
152 (bottom, left)

Amateur Architecture Studio

chinese-architects.com/amateur
66 (top)
Anathenaeum of Philadelphia
philaathenaeum.org, 184 (top)
Archigram
archigram.net, 213 (bottom, left)
Architekturbro Ernst Giselbrecht
giselbrecht.at
152 (top & middle, left & right &
bottom, right)
Archivo Histrico Jos Vial
Armstrong
Escuela de Arquitectura y Diseo,
Ponticia Universidad Catlica de
Valparaso
ead.pucv.cl, 198 (top)
Diego Arraigada Arquitectos
diegoarraigada.com
53 (bottom, right)
ARX Portugal Arquitectos
arx.pt, 24
Atelier Bow Wow
bow-wow.jp, 57 (top)
Barkow Leibinger
barkowleibinger.com, 8586

dosmasunoarquitectos
dosmasunoarquitectos.com
166 (bottom, right)
Eisenman Architects
eisenmanarchitects.com
53 (middle); 187 (bottom)
Ensamble Studio
ensamble.info
74 (top, left); 99 (middle & bottom);
198 (middle, bottom, left & right);
204 (top, left)
EPIPHYTE Lab
epiphyte-lab.com, 62 (top)
The Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller
buckminsterfuller.net, 191 (left)
Fondation Le Corbusier
fondationlecorbusier.fr
126; 147 (bottom); 187 (top)
Fondazione Aldo Rossi
fondazionealdorossi.org
10; 35 (top, left); 110
Fondazione Il Girasole
61 (bottom)
Foreign Office Architects
61 (top, right)

Beinecke Rare Book &

Manuscript Library, Yale University
beinecke.library.yale.edu
129 (bottom)

The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation

Archives, Avery Architectural &
Fine Arts Library,
Columbia University
franklloydwright.org/about/Archives
210 (middle)

Bibliothque nationale de France

bnf.fr, 141 (bottom)

Carlo Fumarola Architekt ETH

crola.ch, 92 (top)

Bjarke Ingels Group

big.dk
154 (top, left & right); 210 (top)

Fundacin Anala y Armando

Planchart
fundacionplanchart.com
34 (bottom, left)

Mario Botta Architetto

botta.ch
128 (middle, top & middle, bottom)
Alexander Brodsky, 42; 213 (top)
Canadian Centre for Architecture
cca.qc.ca, 162 (bottom)
Centraal Museum, Utrecht
111 (bottom, left)
Chicago History Museum
chicagohistory.org 183 (top)
CODA
co-da.eu 63 (bottom, left)

Gigon/Guyer Architekten
gigon-guyer.ch
129 (top, right, middle & middle,
right)
Grafton Architects
graftonarchitects.ie
70 (top, right)

IwamotoScott Architecture
iwamotoscott.com
194 (right)
Jakob & MacFarlane Architects
jakobmacfarlane.com
87 (top, right)
Jarmund/Vigsns AS Arkitekter
MNAL
jva.no
23 (top, right)
Jos Mara Snchez Architects
jmsg.es
169 (bottom)
Kennedy & Violich Architecture
kvarch.net
96 (top & bottom, left)
Labics
labics.it, 130 (bottom)

Ben Nicholson, 214 (top)

Paulo David Arquitecto Lda
171 (bottom, left)
Pezo von Ellrichshausen/
Mauricio Pezo & Soa von
pezo.cl, 70 (middle, left)
Eugenius Pradipto
designboom.com
97 (bottom)
Preston Scott Cohen, Inc.
pscohen.com, 35 (bottom)
Richard Nickel Archive, Ryerson and
Burnham Archives, The Art Institute
of Chicago
artic.edu, 171 (top)
Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, Inc.
feldmangallery.com
213 (top)
Royal Institute of British Architects
Library Books & Periodicals Collection
architecture.com
113 (bottom); 192 (bottom)

Louis I. Kahn Collection, The

University of Pennsylvania and
the Pennsylvania Historical and
Museum Commission
design.upenn.edu, 175 (bottom); 176

Jenny Sabin
jennysabin.com, 61 (top, left); 201

LTL Architects
ltlarchitects.com
35 (top, right)

SHoP Architects
shoparc.com
163 (top & middle); 200 (bottom)

Machado and Silvetti Associates

machado-silvetti.com, 13 (top)

Simn Vles/DeBoer Architects

deboerarchitects.com, 97 (middle)

Massimiliano Fuksas Architetto

fuksas.it, 71 (top, right)

Spaceshift Studio
spaceshiftstudio.com, 199 (bottom)

Matsys
matsysdesign.com, 215 (bottom)

Studio 8 Architects
studio8architects.com, 215 (top)

Richard Meier & Partners

Architects LLP
richardmeier.com, 14; 127 (top)

Studio Granda
studiogranda.is, 54 (top, right); 159

Metro Arquitetos Associados

metroo.com.br, 68
Morger Degelo Kerez Architekten
94 (top, right)
Morphosis Architects
morphosis.com, 29; 30

Guerilla Office Architects

g-o-a.be, 166 (top)

Muses de Strasbourg
musees.strasbourg.eu, 122 (middle)

Michael Hansmeyer
michael-hansmeyer.com
200 (top)

The Museum of Modern Art

moma.org
31 (top, left); 63; 122 (bottom);
168; 213 (bottom, right)

Shigeru Ban Architects

shigerubanarchitects.com, 75; 76

Trahan Architects
trahanarchitects.com, 195
Bernard Tschumi Architects
tschumi.com
155 (top, left); 169 (top, left & right);
214 (bottom)
UNStudio
unstudio.com
32 (top); 55 (top, right); 193
Zaha Hadid Architects
zaha-hadid.com
25 (top, left & right, middle);
130 (top, left); 211; 212

Photographer Credits
Photographs courtesy of the authors with the exception of the following:

219

Taleen Josefsson, 185 (top), Deuk Soo Jung, 47,

Tad Juscyzk, 115 (top, left), Drawing: Mia Kang,
153 (top, right), Aya Karpinsk, 103 (bottom, left),
Emil Kaufmann, Three Revolutionary Architects
in Transactions of the American Philosophical
Society, Vol. 42, Part 3, p. 545, 1952, 141 (bottom),
Ros Kavanagh, 70 (top, right), Joseph Kennedy,
135 (bottom), Kennedy & Violich Architecture/
kvarch.net, 96 (top & bottom, left), Yongkwan Kim,
199 (top, left), Florestan Korp, 160 (middle & bottom, left & right), Andrew Kovacs, 39, Yoshinori
Kuwahara, 148 (top), Natalie Kwee, 33 (bottom),
Labics, 130 (bottom), Ryan Lancaster, 115 (top,
right), Andreas Lechtape, 121 (right), James
Leftwich, 111 (top), Paul Lewis, Marc Tsurumaki,
David Lewis, Alex Terzick, 35 (top, right), Licensed
by SCALA/Art Resource, NY, 28 (left), C. J.
Lim/Studio 8 Architects, 215 (top), Tiffany Lin, 66
(bottom, left & right), Arwen O'Reilly Griffith, 43,
Jeff Lodin, 41, Lotus International 22, 1978, 142
(top), Louis I. Kahn Collection, The University of
Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Historical and
Museum Commission, 175 (bottom); 176, Lanfranco Luciani, 71 (top, left), Mark Lyon, 114 (bottom), Machado and Silvetti Associates, 13 (top),
Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas, Architects/
Photo: Moreno Maggi, 71 (top, right), rni Sv.
Mathiesen, 206 (left & right), 2012 Matsys, 215
(bottom), Mitsuo Matuoka, 121 (middle), Creative
Commons, 142 (middle), Stephen McCathie 75
(bottom), Ken McCown, 120 (top), Stefano Abbadessa Mercanti, 71 (bottom), Jos Mara Lavena
Merino, 74 (top, right), Metro Arquitetos Associados, 68, Enric Miralles and Carme Pins, 28 (right),
Leonard Mirin, 161 (bottom), Mobius House,
1995, UNStudio/ Christian Richters, 55 (bottom,
right), Rafael Moneo, 134 (bottom, left), Photo by
Michael Moran, 113 (top), Morger Degelo Kerez
Architekten, 94 (top, right), Courtesy of Morphosis Architects, 29; 30, Muses de Strasbourg/M.
Bertola, 122 (middle), The Museum of Modern
Art/ Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY,
31 (top, left); 122 (bottom); 168; 213 (bottom,
right), Courtesy of MVRDV, 177 (middle, right &
bottom), Courtesy of MVRDV/Photo: Robt
Hart, 177 (middle, left), Nacasa & Partners Inc., 23
(middle & bottom), Leo T. Naegele, 148 (bottom),
Jonathan Dietrich Negron, 105 (top), Netherlands
Architecture Institute, 167, Ben Nicholson, 214
(top), Courtesy of Nike, 201 (bottom), Allen
Nolan, 46, Nicole Nuez, 86 (bottom), Victor
Odd, 70 (middle, right), Ken Ohyama, 158 (left),
Ziver Olmez, 154 (middle), Courtesy of Orfeus
Publishing, reproduced from Sverre Fehn: Samlede
Arbeider, 21 (right); 23 (bottom), John Ostlund,
183 (bottom), Larisa Ovalles, 118 (top, left), Mia
Ovicina, 15 (top), Cristobal Palma, 70 (top, left),
Paulo David Arquitecto Lda, 171 (bottom, left),
James Pelletier, 194 (left), Pier Luigi Nervi Project
Association, Brussels, 77 (top), From Giovanni
Battista Piranesi, Le Carceri dInvenzione, Rome,
1761, (public domain), 120 (middle, left), Karel Polt,
142 (bottom), Eduardo Ponce, 66 (middle, right),
Neil Poole, 190 (top, left), Eugenius Pradipto,
97 (bottom), Matthias Preisser/matthiaspreisser.
ch, 94 (top, middle), Preston Scott Cohen, Inc.,
35 (bottom), Printing kept at the public library
of Varese. This reproduction was realized by the
Municipal Administration on the occasion of the
ceremony for the Unescos certicate registration
of the site., 55 (top, left), Private Collection, 10
(top left), psmodcom.org, 206 (top, right), Wajeha
Qureshi, 115 (top, middle), Mahuqur Rahman/
Arlington, Virginia, 134 (top)

218

Courtesy of 3Gatti, 131 (bottom, left & right),

Travis J. Aberle, 120 (middle, right), Courtesy
of Allied Works Architecture, 25 (bottom, left
& right), Lus Ferreira Alves, 170 (top), Pirak
Anurakyawachon/Spaceshift Studio, 199 (bottom),
Archivo Histrico Jos Vial Armstrong Escuela de
Arquitectura y Diseo, PUCV, 198 (top), Gianluca
Aresta, ITS LABI Think Sustainable Laboratory,
71 (middle, left), Ptur H. rmannsson, 110
(middle); 161 (top), Anna Armstrong, 119 (middle,
left), Arnauld Duboys Fresney Photographe, 160
(top, left), ARX Portugal Arquitectos, 24, Atelier
Bow Wow, 57 (top), Peter Bardell, 123 (top, left),
Barkow Leibinger, 85, David Barragan, 205 (top
left, middle & right), Joaquim Barros, 146 (top,
right), Bednorz-Images, 182 (top, right), Courtesy
of Benjamin Benschneider, 18 (right), Bernard
Tschumi Architects, 155 (top, left); 169 (top, left &
right); 214 (bottom), Jordan Berta, 174 (top, left),
Hlne Binet, 212 (top, right), Courtesy of Bjarke
Ingels Group (B.I.G.)/big.dk, 154 (top, left & right);
210 (top), Cameron Blaylock/cameronblaylockphoto.com, 115 (bottom), Ignacio Borrego, Nstor
Montenegro, Lina Toro/dosmasuno arquitectos/
Photo: Miguel de Guzmn, 166 (bottom, right),
Courtesy of Mario Botta, Architetto/Photo:
Alo Zanetta, 128 (middle, top), Mario Botta,
Architetto, 128 (middle, bottom), From Robin
Boyd, Kenzo Tange, New York: Braziller, 1962,
182 (bottom), Alexander Brodsky, 42, Burin
YILDIRIM, 22 (top, right), Burnham Pavilion in
Chicagos Millennium Park, 2009, UNStudio,
193 (bottom), Burnham Pavilion in Chicagos
Millennium Park, 2009, UNStudio/Christian
Richters,193 (top), Chalmers Buttereld, 140 (top,
left), Barnabas Calder, 175 (top), Canadian Centre
for Architecture, 162 (bottom), Iaqui Carnicero/I.
Vila A. Viseda, 152 (bottom, left), Llus Casals,
54 (top, left), Celtus, Creative Commons, 186 (top,
right), Centraal Museum, Utrecht, 11 (bottom,
left), Evan Chakroff, 66 (top), Shu Chang, 136
(left), Hong Ji Chen, 199 (top, right), Kimberley
Chew, 17, Chicago History Museum, 183 (top),
Justin Chu, 15 (middle), Justin Clements, 69 (top,
left), Courtesy of CODA, 63 (bottom, left), Code:
Arkitektur AS, 128 (middle, left), Wayne Copper,
Cornell University, 50 (top, left), Cornell University, Department of Architecture, 15 (bottom);
16, Conor Cotter, 75 (top), Nils Petter Dale, 23
(top, left), DeBoer Architects/Simn Vlez, 97
(middle), Courtesy of Dia Art Foundation/Photo:
John Cliett, 149 (bottom), Didier Boy de la Tour,
76 (top, right), Diego Arraigada Architects and
Johnston Marklee, 53 (bottom, right), Digital scan
from printed map (no copyright information, recto
or verso); printed in Denmark by Permild & Rosengren c. 1957, in collection of Beinecke Rare Book
& Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven,
CT., 129 (bottom), Courtesy of Diller Scodio +
Renfro, 31 (bottom), Drawings: Mikhail Grinwald,
34 (top); 94 (top, left), Drawing from Arabian
Antiquities of Spain, by James Cavanagh Murphy,
1816; reproduction by Kroch Library, Cornell University, 182 (top, left), Drawings: Anh K. Tran, 69
(middle, right); 81 (bottom); 104 (right); 177 (top);
178 (right); 179 (top & middle); 184 (bottom);
186 (top, middle), Ludovic Dusuzeau/Elementa,
Tadeuz Jalocha, 163 (bottom, right), Courtesy of
Eisenman Architects, City of Culture of Galicia,
study model, 1999, 53 (middle), Courtesy of Eisenman Architects, 187 (bottom), Courtesy of Pezo
von Ellrichshausen, 70 (middle, left)

Courtesy of Ensamble Studio/ensamble.info,

99 (middle & bottom); 198 (middle, bottom, left
& right); 204 (top, left), Courtesy of EPIPHYTE
Lab, 62 (top), Jonathan Esslinger, 163 (bottom,
left), The Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller, 191
(left), Marloes Faber, 10 (top, right), Courtesy of
Per Olaf Fjeld, reproduced from Sverre Fehn: The
Pattern of Thoughts, 22 (top, left & middle), Fondation Le Corbusier, 126; 147 (bottom); 187 (top),
Fondazione Il Girasole/Angelo e Lina Invernizzi,
61 (bottom), Foreign Office Architects, 61 (top,
right), David Franck, 32 (bottom), The Frank
Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum
of Modern Art/Avery Architectural & Fine Arts
Library, Columbia University, New York), 210
(middle), Frederick C. Robie Residence, Chicago,
IL, 1906-1909, Frank Lloyd Wright, architect.
Richard Nickel Archive, Ryerson and Burnham
Archives, The Art Institute of Chicago. Digital
File #201006_120118-014 The Art Institute of
Chicago, 171 (top), Yona Friedman, 207 (bottom),
Andrew Fu, Cornell University, B.Arch, 2014, 94
(middle & bottom); 128 (bottom), Carlo Fumarola/
crola.ch, 92 (top), Fundacin Anala y Armando
Planchart, 34 (bottom, left), Aurelio Galfetti &
Flora Ruchat/Drawing: Anh K Tran, 170 (bottom),
Genesis by David Adjaye for Design Miami, 2011,
97 (top, left & right), Gigon-Guyer Gigon/Guyer Architekten/Photo: Henrik Helfenstein, 129
(top, right, middle & middle, right), Giselbrecht,
152 (top & middle, left & right & bottom, right),
Paola Giunti, 143 (top, right), Eileen Gray Archive/
Photo: Eileen Gray, 153 (left, top & bottom), Juan
David Grisales, 162 (top), Guerilla Office Architects, 166 (top), Wojtek Gurak/bywojtek.net, 99
(top); 130 (top, right), R. Halbe, 85 (middle),
2013 Duyi Han, 69 (middle, left), William Harbison,
204 (bottom, left), Ron Herron of Archigram/
Ron Herron Archive, 213 (bottom, left), Herman
Hertzberger, 13 (bottom), Herzog & de Meuron,
31 (top, right), Detail of drawing by Thomas
Holme, Library of Congress, 184 (top), Courtesy
of Hweler + Yoon Architecture, 123 (middle),
Arthur Huang, Jarvis Liu/Miniwiz, Ltd., 63 (top),
Li Kwan Ho Felita, 174 (bottom), Hugh Ferriss Architectural Drawings and Papers Collection, Avery
Drawings and Archives, Columbia University, 212
(bottom), FG+SG Architectural Photography, 53
(top), Figure from Architectural Space in Ancient
Greece by Constantinos A. Doxiadis, published
by MIT Press, 102 (top), Leonard Finotti, 92 (bottom), Thomas Flagg, 107 (top), ickr.com/photos/
marinanina/2068310964, 111 (bottom, right),
Courtesy of Kenneth Frampton, 69 (bottom),
Flagellation of Christ, by Piero della Francesca,
collection Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino,
Italy, (public domain), 105 (bottom), Gustavo
Frittegotto, 53 (middle, bottom), Photo: Masako
Fujinami, 154 (bottom), Carol M. Highsmith, This
is America! Library of Congress Collection, 77
(bottom), Eduard Hueber/archphoto.com, 95
(middle & bottom), In the public domain, 84 (top,
right); 102 (bottom); 185 (bottom, right); 186 (bottom); 190 (bottom), Donald Ingber, 191 (right),
IwamotoScott Architecture, 194 (right), Jolle Lisa
Jahn, 131 (top), Jakob & MacFarlane Architects/R.
Borel Photography, 87 (top, right), Tadeuz Jalocha,
163 (bottom, left), Aris Jansons, 143 (bottom),
Jarmund/Vigsns AS Arkitekter MNAL, 23 (top,
right), Xavier de Jaurguiberry, 123 (bottom),
Mitchell Joachim, Maria Aiolova, Melanie Fessel,
Emily Johnson, Ian Slover, Phil, Weller, Zachary
Aders, Webb Allen, Niloufar Karimzadegan, 63
(bottom, right), Jos Mara Snchez Architects,
169 (bottom)

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Reproduced from Bernard Rudofskys Architecture

without Architects, Wulf-Diether Graf zu Castell
Munich/Reim, 56 (bottom), Reproduced from
Klaus Herdegs Formal Structure in Indian Architecture, (1967), 54 (bottom), Reproduced from Philibert de lOrme, Architecture de Philibert de lOrme
...: Oeuvre entiere contenant onze liures, augmente
de deux , Kroch Library, Cornell University,
(public domain), 192 (top, left & right), Reproduced
from Thomas L. Schumachers Surface and Symbol:
Giuseppe Terragni and the Architecture of Italian
Rationalism, drawing #31, 34 (bottom, right),
Reproduced from Spazio, Vol. 3, No. 6, December
1951April 1952, 12, Reproduced from Spazio, Vol.
7, December 1952April 1953, 11; 104 (right), Courtesy of Richard Meier & Partners Architects LLP,
14; 127 (top), Siobhan Rockcastle, 62 (bottom);
79, Courtesy of Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New
York/feldmangallery.com, 213 (top), Richard Rosa,
40, Corinne Rose, 86 (top, left & right), Aoife
Rosenmeyer, 112 (bottom), Eredi Aldo Rossi, 35
(top, left), Aurlien Le Rou, 141 (top, right), Royal
Institute of British Architects Library Books &
Periodicals Collection, 113 (bottom); 192 (bottom),
Andy Ryan, 120 (bottom), Jenny Sabin, 61 (top,
left); 201 (top), Mikaela Samuelsson, 155 (top,
right), Saramago, Pedro/Me Dgua, Lisboa, Portugal, 2012, 146 (bottom, right), Nathaniel Saslafsky, 121 (left), From Ottavio Bertotti Scamozzi, Le

fabbriche e i disegni di Andrea Palladio, Vicenza,

1796; Kroch Library, Cornell University, (public
domain), 106 (right), From Karl Friedrich Schinkel,
Sammlung architektonischer Entwrfe: enthaltend
148 Kupfer-Tafeln mit erlauternden Text, Potsdam,
18411843; Kroch Library, Cornell University,
(public domain), 107 (bottom), Chris SchroeerHeiermann, 199 (top, middle), Michael Schroeter,
190 (top, middle), Scott Schultz, 66 (middle,
left), Kyle Schumann, 50 (bottom), Michael
Schwarting, 206 (top, left), Davide Secci, 149
(top), Seier + Seier, 178 (left), Courtesy of Shigeru
Ban Architects, 76 (left), Courtesy of Shigeru Ban,
Architects/Photo: Hiroyuki Hirai, (76 (bottom,
right), SHoP Architects, PC, 163 (top & middle);
200 (bottom), Sigurgeir Sigurjnsson, 159 (bottom, left), Petr mdek, 56 (top), Margherita
Spiluttini, 91; 95 (top), Courtesy of Steven Holl
Architects, 20; 35 (middle), Still Life, c.1952 (oil on
canvas), Morandi, Giorgio (18901964)/Private
Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library, 119 (bottom), Francis Strauven, 45, Studio Granda, 54 (top,
right), Subdivided Columns, Michael Hansmeyer,
2010, 200 (top), Mathew Sweets, 204 (bottom,
right), Ida Tam, 159 (top); 182 (middle), Roland
Tnnler, 207 (top), Photo: Taxiarchos228, 174 (top,
right), Team Leader: Dana Cupkova, Design Team:
Monica Alexandra Freundt, Andrew Heumann,
Daniel Quesada Lombo, Damon Wake/Photo:

Andrew Heumann, 33 (top, right), Team Leader:

Dana Cupkova/Design Team: Monica Alexandra
Freundt, Andrew Heumann, Daniel Quesada
Lombo, Damon Wake, Consultant: William Jewell,
Ph.D., 33 (top, left), Teatro Regio Torino/Photo
Ramella & Giannese, 143 (top, left), Mari Tefre/
Global Crop Diversity Trust, 57 (bottom), Skylar
Tibbits, 153 (bottom), Janice Tostevin/jhtostevin@
ntlworld.com, 140 (bottom), Trahan Architects,
195, Anh K. Tran, 140 (top, right), Turismo FVG
ph Fabrice Gallina, 190 (top, right), Courtesy of
UNStudio, 32 (top); 55 (top, right), Omar Uran,
159 (middle), Mauricio Vieto, 74 (bottom); 78;
81 (top); 106 (left); 122 (top), From Visionary
architects: Boulle, Ledoux, Lequeu, Catalogue of
an exhibition held at the University of St. Thomas,
1968, (public domain), 141 (top, left), Rajesh
Vora, 60 (top), Jarle Whler, 129 (top, left),
Michael Webb, 112 (top), Kathy Wesselman, 119
(top, left & right), Julian Weyer, 71 (middle, right),
Wikipedia, 38 (left); 69 (top, right); 192 (middle),
Allison Wills, 146 (left), Duncan Wilson, 128 (top),
Decker Yeadon LLC/deckeryeadon.com, 96
(top, right, middle & bottom), 2010 Sophie Ying
Su/sophienesss.com, 119 (middle, right); 204 (top,
right), Zaha Hadid Architects, 25 (top, left & right,
middle); 130 (top, left); 211; 212, Lisa Zhu, 147
(top), Giorgio Zucchiatti, 110 (bottom)

de Beistegui Penthouse, 147

Belvedere, 71
Berkel, Ben van, 32, 55
Berklee School of Music, 204
Berlin Chair, 111
Bernini, Gian Lorenzo, 12
Bete Giyorgis, 69
Bijvoet, Bernard, 114
Bissegger, Peter, 115
Blanc, Patrick, 149
Boa Nova Tea House, 51
Bo Bardi, Lina, 71, 127
Bocconi University, 70
Bordeaux House, 3940
Bordeaux Law Courts, 140
Borromini, Francesco, 10, 12, 135
Bos, Caroline, 32
Botta, Mario, 128
Boulle, tienne-Louis, 141
Bourges, Romain de, 104
Braghieri, G., 35
Brandhorst Museum, 121
Brazilian Museum of Sculpture, 67
Bremerhaven 2000 competition, 85
Brown Derby restaurants, 140
Brown, Frank, 175
Bruder Klaus Field Chapel, 199
Burgo Paper Factory, 77
Burnham, Daniel, 193
Burnham Pavilion, 193
Burri, Alberto, 66
Bus Rapid Transit system (Brazil), 162

Carthage section, 34
Casa da Musica (Portugal), 99
Casa das Historias Paula Rego, 56
Casa Das Mudas, 171
Casa del Fascio, 34, 87
Casa del Popolo, 87
Casa Gilardi, 122
Casa Girasole (Sunower House), 61
Casa Malaparte, 128
Casa Pentimento, 205
Casa Polli, 70
Case Study House #22, 204
CAST, 199
Castelvecchio, 115
Castle Hedingham, 13
Castle of Prague, 137
Cenotaph for a Warrior, 141
Center for the Advancement of Public Action, 50
Center for the Arab World, 123
Centre Georges Pompidou, 131
Cha, Jae, 47
Chanin Building, 210
Chapel at MIT, 118
Chapel of St. Ignatius, 119
Chareau, Pierre, 69, 114
Chemetoff, Alexandre, 160
Chew, Kimberly, 17
Chicago Tribune office, 113
Chiesa Nuova, 135
Chinati Foundation, 154
Chirico, Giorgio de, 10
Chrysalis III, 215
Church of Santa Maria, 104
Church of St. George (Ethiopia), 69
Church of the Light (Japan), 121
Church of the Sacred Heart (Prague), 143
City of Culture of Galicia, 53
City of Refuge, 166
concept
exibility and, 20, 23
ideas compared to, 20
material models, 24
overlays, 24
parti diagram, 24
relief models, 24
sketches, 2325

Index
Aalto, Alvar, 110, 177
Abierta, Ciudad, 198
Acropolis, 78
Adaptive Component Seminar (2009), 33
Adler and Sullivan, 166
Adler House, 176
Agrarian Graduate School of Ponte de Lima, 137
Allied and Arts Industries, 206
Altes Museum, 107
Aluminaire, 206
analysis
abstraction, 1415
coauthorship, 16
components, 14
diagramming, 15
intermediary devices, 1517
interpretation, 1517
precedent, 10, 13
project givens, 10
Ando, Tadao, 121
Appliance House, 214
Arc de Triomphe, 38, 147
Arch, B., 17
Arch of Augustus, 38
Arp, Hans, 122
Arts Center (Portugal), 171
Asplund, Erik Gunnar, 186
Astaire, Fred, 142
Astana National Library, 154
Atheneum, 127
Auditorium Building (Chicago), 166
Autodesk Inc., 153
Automobile Museum (China), 131
Bacardi Rum bottling plant, 80
Bagsvrd Church, 178
Bamboo Garden, 160
Bandel, Hannskarl, 115
Barlindhaug Consult, 57
Barragan, David, 205
Barragn, Luis, 122
Barrire du Trne, 142
Batay-Csorba, Andrew, 194
BCHO Architects, 199
Behnisch, Gunther, 74
Behrens, Peter, 183

Caf Aubette, 122

Caff Pedrocchi, 136
Cais das Artes (Arts Quay), 68
CaixaForum gallery, 149
Calatrava, Santiago, 81
Camera Obscura, 200
Campidoglio, 137
Candela, Felix, 80
Carabanchel housing project, 61
Cardiff Bay Opera House, 212
Carnicero, Iaqui, 152, 175176
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 44
Carr dArt, 185

thumbnail sketches, 2324

Congress Hall, 10
context
environmental context, 5657
ephemeral context, 5456
extreme variability, 56
historical, 56
infrastructural context, 5354
layers, 53
material, 50
narrative, 55
networks, 54
physical context, 50, 53
scale, 50
site, 53
space, 53
tradition, 55
weather, 56
Cortona, Pietro da, 105
Cretto, 66
Crown Hall, 183
Cruvellier, Mark, 79
Cupkova, Dana, 33
Cushicle, 112

Galfetti, Aurelio, 170

Galician Center of Contemporary Art, 5152
Gallaratese II Housing, 10
Garca-Abril, Antn, 74
Gateway Arch, 115
Gehry, Frank, 142
Genesis pavilion, 97
geometry
Boolean operations, 193
building information modeling (BIM), 195
complexities, 193194
constructive solid geometry (CSG), 193
descriptive geometry, 192193
golden ratio, 190
networks, 194195
numbers, 190
parametrics, 193194
variability, 194
German Pavilion (International Exhibition, Barcelona), 148
Giedion, Sigfried, 103
Giorgio Martini, Francesco di, 186
Glama Kim Architects, 206
Glass House, 155
Global Seed Vault, 57
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 121
Gogol, Nikolai, 141
Goldenberg House, 176
Gothenburg Town Hall (Sweden), 186
Grand Canal (Venice), 169
Gray, Eileen, 153
Greek cross, 176
Green Negligee, 62

Habitat 67, 174

Haesley Nine Bridges Golf Club House, 76
Hakozaki Interchange, 158
Hamar Bispegaard Museum, 98
Hangar 16 (Spain), 152
Hanil Visitors Center & Guest House, 199
Hannover Merzbau, 115
Harris, Kerenza, 30
Hays, K. Michael, 183
Heatherwick Studio, 94
Hedmark Cathedral Museum, 22
Hejduk, John, 167168
Hemeroscopium, 74
Henan province, 56
Hendrix, Jimi, 140
Herdeg, Klaus, 54
Herron, Ron, 213
Hertzberger, Hermann, 13
Herzog, Jacques, 31, 41, 9193, 95, 149, 174
Heumann, A., 33
Hoenheim-Nord Terminus and Car Park, 212
Holl, Steven, 20, 35, 119120
Holme, Thomas, 184
Homeostatic Faade System, 96
House II, 187
House in Djerba, Tunisia, 13
House in Pound Ridge, 14
Hringbraut & Njardagata, 159
HSBC building (Hong Kong), 154
Hutton, Sauerbruch, 121
IBA Housing, 212
Icelandic turf house, 60
Ihida-Stansbury, Kaori, 61
IIT, 183
infrastructure
anticipatory networks, 161
circulatory networks, 161
context, 5354
cultural networks, 160161
evanescent, 160
physical, 158, 160
scales of engagement, 160
system armatures, 158, 160
Ingber, Donald, 191
Integral Urban Project, 159
International Exhibition (Barcelona), 148
Ito, Toyo, 20, 23
Ivernizzi, Angelo, 61
James Corner Field Operations, 159
Jappelli, Giuseppe, 136
Jewell, W., 33
J. Mayer H., 32
Johannesson, Sigvald, 107
John F. Kennedy Airport, 140
John Nichols Printmakers, 29
Johnson Museum (New York), 69
Johnson, Philip, 118, 155
Johnson Wax Headquarters, 77
Judd, Donald, 154
Kahn, Louis, 123, 175176, 179
Kahns Dominican Sisters, 179
Kantana Film and Animation Institute, 199
Karkkainen, Maija, 21
Kaufmann, Edgar J., 210
Kepes, Gyorgy, 103
Kiefer Technic Showroom, 152
Kimbell Art Museum, 123
Kocher, A. Lawrence, 206
Koenig, Pierre, 204

221

Eames, Charles, 185

Eames, Ray, 185
East River Waterfront Esplanade, 163
EatMe Wall project, 33
EcoARK, 63
Eggen, Arne, 79
Einar Jonsson House, 50
El Camino de Santiago, 126
El Greco Congress Center, 134
Entenza, John, 204

fabrication
craft, 199
digital fabrication, 200
Falling Water, 210
Fehn, Sverre, 2122, 98
Fencing Academy (Rome), 11
Ferris, Hugh, 210
Fiat automobile factory, 112
Fibonacci series, 190
Fiorentino, Mario, 71
Fleisher House, 176
Fong, Steven, 111
Formal Structure in Indian Architecture exhibition, 54
Forster, Kurt, 107
forum of Pompeii, 179
Fosse Ardeatine, 71
Foster, Norman, 154
Francesca, Piero della, 105
Frederick C. Robie House, 171
Freedom Trail, 158
Freitag, 207
Freundt, M., 33
Frey, Albert, 206
Friedman, Yona, 207
Feg, Franz, 90
Fuksas, Massimiliano, 71, 98
Fun Palace, 162

grids
proportions, 186187
reference, 185186
rhythm, 186
tartan grid, 186
Guarini, Guarino, 104
Guggenheim Museum, 128
Gwangju Design Biennale, 200

220

Dalbet, Louis, 114

Danish Design Center, 15
datum
axis, 170
grid, 170
horizon, 170
mass, 170
space, 169
surface, 166, 169
David, Paolo, 171
Debord, Guy, 129
defamiliarization
accident, 148
appropriation, 147
decontextualization, 148
extension of awareness, 149
operations, 147148
poetics, 149
reception, 148149
receptivity, 148
recontextualization, 148
subversion, 147148
wonder, 148
De Maria, Walter, 149
Dsert de Retz, 141
Design Miami 2011 fair, 97
Destailleur, Franois-Hippolyte, 104
Dia Foundation, 149
dialogue
addition, 136
contrast, 136
enrichment, 136
indexing, 137
redirection, 136
scales of, 137
Doesburg, Theo van, 122
Doges Palace, 134
Dominus Winery, 92
Double Chimney House, 57
Doxiadis, Constantinos, 102
Duganne, Jack, 30
Drer, Albrecht, 185
Dymaxion House, 191
Dynamic Faade, 152

environment
energy, 62
holistic view, 62
instrumentation, 6062
materials, 62
passive instrumentation, 60
recycled materials, 62
remediation, 62
responsive instrumentation, 60, 62
static instrumentation, 60
sustainable environments, 6263
Epi-phyte Lab, 62
Erechtheion, 78
e-Skin project, 61
Europa City, 210
Eyck, Aldo van, 45

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

Kolbe, Georg, 148

Koolhaas, Rem, 39
Kudless, Andrew, 215
Kufferman, David, 195
Kulve, Thor ter, 160
Kunsthal, 40
Kunstmuseum, 94
Kurokawa, Kisho, 205
Kursaal Auditorium and Congress Center, 113
KVA, 96
Landscape Formation-One, 130
Largo de Joo Franco, 160
Laser Machine and Tool Factory, 85
Laurenz Foundation, 93
Lavis, Fred, 107
Leatherbarrow, David, 95
Le Corbusier, 34, 44, 47, 103, 117, 118, 119, 126, 147,
166, 187, 190
Ledoux, Claude-Nicolas, 45, 142
Le Fresnoy Art Center, 169
Leite Siza, lvaro, 53
Lequeu, Jean-Jacques, 84, 141
Lewis, David J., 16, 212
Libera, Adalberto, 128
light
chiaroscuro, 121
color, 121122
distortion, 121
instruments, 122
perceptual color, 122
spatial transformation, 118, 121
symbolic color, 121
textures, 118
Lim, C. J., 215
Lincolns Inn Fields, 43
Lin, Maya, 134
London Design Festival, 75
Loos, Adolf, 113
Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Museum, 195
Lower Roadway (New Jersey Route 139), 107
Lowry, Glenn, 204
LTL Architects, 35, 212
Lucia, Andrew, 61
Lu Wenyu, 66
Me Dgua Amoreiras Reservoir, 146
Maison Carre, 185
Maison de Verre, 69, 114
Manhattan Transcript, 214
Mardel, Carlos, 146
Marklee, Johnston, 53
mass
additive processes, 66
characteristics, 7071
density, 70
gravity, 70
processes, 66, 69
subtractive processes, 69
materials
acoustic, 94
assembly, 98
bamboo, 97
behaviors, 9496
characteristics, 90, 94
constructive processes, 9798
cultural indices, 99
detail/jointure, 98
environmental changes, 98
indices, 99
manufacturing methods, 97
models, 24
nanotechnologies, 96
permeability, 94
phenomenal characteristics, 90, 94
program indices, 99
responsiveness, 95
site indices, 99
smart materials, 96
textures, 94
weather and, 95

Mathesen, li, 206

Matt Trucco, Giacomo, 112
MAXXI Museum of XXI Century Arts, 25
Mayne, Thom, 2930, 194
Melville, Herman, 12
Memorial Sloane-Kettering Cancer Center Lobby,
35
Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation, 171
Mendes da Rocha, Paulo, 6768
Method Design, 195
Metrocable San Javier, 159
Metropol Parasol, 32
Meuron, Pierre de, 31, 41, 9193, 95, 149, 174
Michelangelo, 11, 28, 84, 137, 190
Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, 11, 31, 148, 183
Milan Biennale, 213
Millcreek Apartments, 176
Milwaukee Art Museum, 81
MINIWIZ, 63
Mirador (Spain), 177
Miralles, Enric, 28
Mbius House, 55
Modulor 2 proportioning system, 190
Mollino, Carlo, 143
MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), 63, 168, 204
Monastery of the Lima Refios, 137
Mondrian, Piet, 111
Moneo, Rafael, 54, 113, 134
Monville, Franoise Racine de, 141
Morandi, Giorgio, 119
Moretti, Luigi, 1112, 104
Mosque-Cathedral of Crdoba, 182
Mostafavi, Mohsen, 95
Moura, Souto, 56
movement
amplication, 130
attenuated, 128
continuous, 128
curating space, 126127
dialogue, 130
lmic, 126
interface, 130
interrupted, 129
narrative, 127
parallel sequences, 131
processional, 126
random, 129
sequence, 128129
simultaneous sequences, 131
theatrical, 127
Munich Olympic Stadium, 74
Murphy, James Cavanah, 182
Museum and Park Kalkriese, 129
Museum for Roman Artifacts, 54
Museum of Graffiti, 98
Musical Studies Center (Spain), 99
Music Faculty (Austria), 32
Music Tower (Berklee School of Music), 204
myThread pavilion, 201
NAi Collection, 167
Nakagin Capsule Tower, 205
National Congress of Brazil, 179
Nationale-Nederlanden, 142
National Music Centre, 25
National Tourist Routes (Norway), 129
National Veterinary Investigation Laboratory, 170
Negron, Jonathan, 105
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 120
Nemesi Architetti Associati, 130
Nervi, Pier Luigi, 77
New Jersey Route 139, 107
New National Gallery, 183
New York Earth Room, 149
Nicol, F., 61
Niemeyer, Oscar, 179
Nike Stadium, 201
Ningbo Historic Museum, 66
Nolli, Giambattista, 102
Nolli Plan of Rome, 69
Nordic Biennale Pavilion, 22

Nordic House, 110

Norman Foster + Partners, 185
Norwegian Glacier Museum, 21
Nose, The (Nikolai Gogol), 141
Notre Dame du Haut, 119
Nouvel, Jean, 123
ODonnell, Caroline, 63
Olmstead, Frederick Law, 161
Olympic Sculpture Park, 158
OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture),
3940, 99
1111 Lincoln Road garage, 41
Orange Cube, 87
Oratory Complex of Saint Phillip Neri, 10
Oratory of the Filippini, 135
order
aggregation, 178
hierarchy, 178179
repetition, 174, 177
stberg, Ragnar, 134
Otto, Frei, 74
Oudolf, Piet, 159
Ovalles, Larisa, 146, 147
Palazzo Canossa, 84
Palazzo dei Conservatori, 137
Palazzo del Senatore, 190
Palazzo Ossoli, 12
Palladio, Andrea, 106, 175
Palmanova, 190
Pantheon, 122
Paper Bridge (France), 76
Parc de la Villette, 155, 160
parti diagram, 24
Party Wall, 63
Passage des Panoramas, 104
Passage Jouffroy, 104
Patriarch Plaza, 68
Pavilion for Vodka Ceremonies, 42
Peak Leisure Club, The, 211, 212
Pei, I. M., 69
Pelletier, James, 194
Penang Turf Club, 30
Penn, William, 184
Perot Museum of Nature and Science, 30
Perruzzi, Baldassarre, 12
Perugini, Giuseppe, 71
Pevsner, Nikolaus, 6
Pezo, Mauricio, 70
Phidias, 78
Piano, Renzo, 131
Piazza di Spagna, 46
Pingusson, Georges-Henri, 171
Pins, Carme, 28
Piranesi, Giovanni Battista, 120
Pius Church, 90
Plenik, Joe, 137, 143
POLLI-Bricks, 63
Pompeian house, 121
Pont du Gard, 76
Ponti, Gio, 34
Porch of the Caryatids, 78
Pousada Santa Marinha, 135
Prada Tokyo, 31
prefabrication
sitelessness, 206
standardization, 204
Premthada, Boonserm, 199
presentation
audience, 210, 213
documentary, 210
evocative, 213
media, 213
Price, Cedric, 162
program
bodies, dimensional accommodation of, 38
codes, 4344
dimensional imperatives, 38, 41
empathy, 45
empirical aspect, 38, 4144

functionality, 42
hybridization, 46
innovative program, 4547
limitations as advantages, 4647
orientation, 43
relational elements, 4243
Proyecto Urbano Integral (Integral Urban Project),
159
Quadracci Pavilion, 81
Quesada Lombo, D., 33
Quinta da Malagueira, 159
Quinta Monroy, 163
Rahul Mehrotra Associates, 60
Rapid Re(f)use: Waste to Resource City, 63
Rendezvous at Bellevue, 141
representation
analog drawings, 28, 31
digital drawings, 3233
sketches, 28
representations
animations, 35
axonometrics, 34
elevations, 34
hybrids, 35
perspective drawings, 35
plans, 34
sections, 34
Richard Rogers Partnership, 140
Ricola-Europe production and storage hall, 95
Ricola Warehouse, 91
Rietveld, Gerrit, 111
Robinson, Heath, 215
Rocha, Joo lvaro, 170
Rockcastle, Siobhan, 62
Rogers, Ginger, 142
Rogers, Richard, 131
Rolex Learning Center, 79
Rome International Exposition, 10
Rosa, Richard, II, 3940
Rowe, Colin, 103
Royal Saltworks, 45
Ruchat, Flora, 170
Rughesi, Fausto, 135

Ungers, Oswald Matthias, 142

Ungers, Simon, 95
Unit dhabitation, 190
Utkin, Ilya, 213
Utzon, Jrn, 178, 192
Vairo parish, 170
Vaux, Calvert, 161
Verdeau, Passage, 104
Vertical Garden, 149
Vienna Hofburg, 50
Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 134
View House, 53
Vignola, Giacomo Barozzi da, 114
Villa at Carthage, 34
Villa Planchart, 34
Villa Savoye, 103, 126
Villa Schwob, 187
Vitra Fire Station, 212
Vitrahaus, 174
Wake, D., 33
Wall Houses, 167168
Wang Shu, 66
Warke, Val, 146, 147, 194
Washington University Library competition, 176
Wasserman, Jeff, 30
Waterfront Greenway Park, 163
Webb, Michael, 112
Weiss/Manfredi, 158
Wells, Jerry, 14, 105
West, Mark, 199
Whiteread, Rachel, 104
Williamson, Jim, 146, 147
Williams, Tod, 50
Wills, Allison, 146
Wolfsburg Cultural Center, 177
Wright, Frank Lloyd, 77, 103, 128, 171, 183, 210
Yang, Shu, 61
Yeadon, Decker, 96
Zenghelis, Elia, 39
Zevi, Bruno, 103
Zhu, Lisa, 147
Zumthor, Peter, 66, 94, 199

223

Taeuber-Arp, Sophie, 122

Taipei International Flora Exposition, 63
Tange, Kenzo, 182
Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), 60
Tvora, Fernando, 135, 136, 137
Teatro del Mondo, 110
Teatro Olimpico, 106
Teatro Regia, 143
Technology Center (Catholic University), 70
Tempe Pailla, 153
Temple of Diana, 169
Temporary Housing Shelter (Onagawa), 76
Terragni, Giuseppe, 10, 34, 87
Terreform ONE, 63
Thermal Baths, 66
T-House, 95
Ting, Selwyn, 29
Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway, 158
Tolo House, 53
Tour Total, 86

Town Hall (Reykjavk), 54

Town Hall (Stockholm), 134
Trajans Market, 130
transformations
implied, 153154
literal, 152153
perception and memory role, 154
programmatic, 153
smart materials, 153
temporal, 152
theme, 154
topological, 152153
variation, 154
Trenton Jewish Community Center Bath House and
Day Camp, 175, 176
Trinit dei Monti, 46
Trombe walls, 60
tropes
expressive tropes, 143
hyperbole, 142
irony, 142
metaphors, 140141
metonymy, 141
operative tropes, 143
personication, 143
types, 140143
values and perceptions, 143
Truffle, 198
TRUTEC Building, 86
Tsien, Billie, 50
Tugendhat House, 11
Tungeneset rest stop, 129
TWA Flight Center, 140
Tyng, Anne, 175

222

Saarinen, Eero, 115, 118, 140

Sacro Monte, 55
Saez, Jose Maria, 205
Safdie, Moshe, 174
Sainte-Marie de La Tourette monastery, 118
Sala Suggia, 99
Salvation Army Building, 166
SANAA, 79
Snchez Garca, Jos Mara, 169
Sanctis, Francesco de, 46
Sandaker, Bjorn, 79
San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, 11
San Lorenzo, 84
Sanmicheli, Michele, 84
Sanne, Dyveke, 57
San Paolo Apostolo, 71
Santa Maria Church (Portugal), 110
Santa Maria della Pace, 105
Santa Maria do Bouro Convent, 135
Santa Marinha Convent, 136
Santini, Jan Blaej, 190
So Paulo Museum of Art, 71
Sasaki, Matsuro, 23
scale
body, 110, 112113
interlocking scales, 115
multiple scales, 114
near and far, 113115
perceptual body, 112113
physical body, 110, 112
quotidian versus monumental, 115
Scamozzi, Vincenzo, 106, 190
Scarpa, Carlo, 115
Schinkel, Karl Friedrich, 107, 183
Schmarzow, August, 102

Schrder House, 111

Schwitters, Kurt, 115
Sculpture Gallery, 118
Seagram Building, 183
Seattle Art Museum, 158
Seed Cathedral, 94
Self Assembly Lab, 153
Sendai Mediatheque, 20, 23
Serigraph, 29
SESC Pompia So Paulo Recreation Center, 127
Shakespeare, William, 6, 142
Shanghai Expo, 94
Shklovsky, Viktor, 146
Siamese Towers, 70
Simitch, Andrea, 16
Simmons Hall, 20
Sir John Soanes Museum, 43
Sixth Order, 200
Siza, lvaro, 110
Siza Vieira, lvaro, 13, 5152, 159
Skylar Tibbits, 153
Sky Transport (London), 215
Sloan & Robertson, 210
Sloan, William, 107
Slow House, 31
Slutzky, Robert, 103
Soane, John, 43
Sderman, Peter W., 57
Soft House, 96
Soltan, Jerzy, 44, 47
Souto de Moura, Eduardo, 135
space
spatial illusion, 105107
spatial zones, 104105
Spanish Steps, 46
Specchi, Alessandro, 46
Spillman Echsle Architekten, 207
S. R. Crown Hall, 183
Stevens, Wallace, 101
Stone House, 91
Stratasys, 153
structure
beams, 79
columns, 7778, 81
domes, 80
elements, 7780
hybrids, 80
slabs, 7980
space, 81
space frames, 80
trusses, 79
vaults, 80
walls, 77
Study of Fortications Number 27, 28
Superstudio, 213
surface
interfaces, 87
perception, 84, 87
performance, 87
Sydney Opera House, 192

T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E

About the Authors

Andrea Simitch is an educator and an
architect. She is the Director of the Bachelor
of Architecture Program at Cornell University, and an associate professor with tenure.
She has also served as Associate Dean of
Cornell's College of Architecture, Art, and
Planning, and as Director of Undergraduate
Studies. She studied architecture at the cole
Spcial d'Architecture in Paris and received
her B.Arch. degree from Cornell University
in 1979. She began her teaching career
at Cornell in 1983 and was the first female
architect to be granted tenure in the
Department of Architecture there. She
teaches courses in architectural design as
well as architectural representation and
furniture design, with works by her students
having been exhibited at the International
Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York.
She has taught extensively for Cornell in
numerous international venues that include
Europe, Central America, and South

America. She has been a panelist on the New

York State Council on the Arts and a visiting
professor at numerous universities including
The University of Toronto, Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute, Tunghai University, and
The University of Minnesota. She is also a
principal of Simitch + Warke Architects, a
collaborative practice with work that includes
residential, commercial, and speculative
projects. Her collages have been included in
Joao Alvaro Rochas monograph Architectures,
and she has contributed several essays to the
Cornell Journal of Architecture, most recently
"Re-Collage" in number 8.
Val Warke is an associate professor at Cornell
Universitys Department of Architecture, where
he has been a department chair, a director of
graduate studies, and the coordinator of the
first year B.Arch. program. In addition to
architecture, he is also a member of the
graduate field of Fabric Science and Apparel

Design at Cornell. Previously, he was an

assistant professor at Harvard University's
Graduate School of Design. He has authored
numerous essays on architectural design,
criticism, and theory, which have appeared in
journals such as Assemblage, A+U, Cornell
Journal of Architecture, and Harvard Design
Magazine, as well as in many monographs;
and he has collaborated with Thom Mayne in
writing the book Morphosis. Recently, his
research has focused on genre theory, including
issues of fashion, formalism, populism,
reception, and various associations to literary
theory and criticism, especially as related to
the work of Mikhail Bakhtin. As a partner in
Simitch + Warke, he has collaborated on
the design of numerous projects and
competitions from the scale of the house
to that of the city. He received his B.Arch.
from Cornell University and his M.Arch.
from Harvard University.

Acknowledgments
Few books are solitary events, and this one,
especially, was a group effort. Everything
began when Sheila Kennedy sent this project
in our direction. Ashley Mendelsohn helped
us get started, plotting the original maps
so that we could trace a route. Mikhail
Grinwald and Natalie Kwee were with us for
the duration, and have done everything

technologically and logisticallywe couldnt

possibly have done. Anh Tran, Caio Barboza,
Mia Kang, and Mauricio Vieto provided
significant assistance along the way. Special
thanks are owed to Iaqui Carnicero, Steven
Fong, Michael Hays, David Lewis, Richard
Rosa, Jenny Sabin, and Jim Williamson,
who spiced the broth with their insightful

contributions. The Department of Architecture and the College of Architecture,

Art, and Planning at Cornell generously
supported this project with additional
funding. And finally, we wish to recognize
our colleagues, whose banter and observations can undoubtedly be seen percolating
throughout these pages.