P3 Final

M+M SKETCHES

S4-Week6 - Nykredit building in Copenhagen and the Ara Pacis  in Rome

S5-Week7 - Parco Della Musica in Rome

S6-Week9- Arzignano Church

S7-Week10- Castlegrande Bellinzona

S8-Week11- CastleVecchio

S10-Week13- Black Diamond in Copenhagen

S9-Week12- Gypsoteca in Verona

P3X4: Matrix + Section

Matrix + Structure plan + Detail sketches

Longitudinal section showing truss system on top of columns with hanging spaces

Cross Section

Detail of how the box hangs from the truss

Detail of how the housing box sits on the truss

P3X3 PECHAKUCHA

Sketches of Giardino Salvi

P3X2 Focus for P3 Programming and Schematic

List of program elements / percent area / sf / sm
1. Studio Apartments ----------------50%-----50,000sf-----4645sm
2. Recreational Sports Facility------25%-----25,000sf-----2322.5sm
3. Cafe----------------------------------10%-----10,000sf-----929sm
4. Soccer Piazzas ---------------------15%-----15,000sf-----1393.5

A statement of program intent
The program intends to charge the street by becoming a neighborhood hub as well as become a public show for the people sitting in the park. It will add a new level of excitement for both the players and the spectators. The people that sit to watch a game can liven the space just as much as the players running after the ball. The small piazzas will become publicly and spontaneously filled by soccer players looking for an empty spot to play. The idea is not to design these spaces, but to leave them unplanned and flexible enough so that people can become the focal point of its activity. The sense of neighborhood will come together with the program of studio housing for the working people of Vicenza.

PART2: Points of Influence - Ara Pacis Museum

 

The museum for the Ara Pacis by Richard Meier serves to protect the monumental altar. It is a volumetric container that allows the Ara Pacis to remain the main exhibition of the space. It accomplishes this through the use of architecture’s role in the city using factors related to context, form/performance, and detail. Meier’s Ara Pacis museum lends way to the image of a modern city, which is “characterized by impure mixtures of old and new” (pg.13). The existing and intervention start to harmonize over time and create a coexisting fabric that encourages even further development. The way that we choose to formulate what is intangible or ‘virtual’ becomes the language (successful or not if it sticks out like a sore thumb) that communicates between the building and the city fabric.

Courtesy of Richard Meier & Partners Architects, © Roland Halbe ARTUR IMAGES

The form is generated by the context. The proportions of the plan of the rectangular form correlate with the surrounding buildings. The layering of the rectangles takes shape as the form hugs the corner of the curb. The length of the loggia traces the Tiber River and faces the existing Mausoleum of Augustus. The facades facing these two historically significant points remain mostly transparent to connect visually to each of the two North and South relationships.

            The form is generated by the performance of the space. The power of a linear organization in plan forces the act of viewing and progression in circulation. The inhabitant moves directly up into the center of the altar then down and out of it. The loggia raises the building from the public ground level perhaps hindering the public action above ground level. However, the northern low wall offers seating for the public street adjacent to it and people gather around the fountain at the street to the south.

Site plan by Richard Meier & Partners Architects, © Roland Halbe ARTUR IMAGES

            The details of the building focus on the use of natural light and avoiding shadows through the use of skylights and curtain walls. The loggia has constructed details that draw directly from the immediate context like the low wall that traces where the edge of the Tiber River used to be and how the balcony breaks into the loggia at a point that registers with the building directly across the street.  Meier uses a play in tectonics that creates a language, which is specific to only this building in comparison to its surroundings. It does not mimic the old but speaks of it with a new language drawing on the existing forms of rigorous symmetry and repetitive elements. This is an opportunity for the growth potential of Rome to become a more flexible city that allows for further integration of architecture that changes with time.

            I am interested in this building because of its insertion in such a historically preserved context. Meier displays clues of thinking about architectural issues that are meant to create a seamless transition between his creation and its context. I looked at the way that he handles the context, form/performance, and detail. The place shows that certain forces that exist in the context played a role in the creation of the building. The collision of distinction is interesting part of how the architecture is handled. Taking a stance on how to bridge the “tension across seams of difference” (pg.12) when inserting a project into any context requires a focus on the issues of context, form, performance, and detail among other factors. This becomes a way to make an intervention seem seamless.

           

PART1: Points of Influence - Conversation with Irma and Devyn

ME: “Architectural drawings can be understood as a kind of geography”. How can the drawings that we make to study something become relevant in the way that the production of a form is created?

IRMA: Most of the drawings that are created when we want to analyze something become mirrors of what we percept. It doesn't necessarily mean that by looking at one or even a few, we'll be able to come up with an explanation of what we want to do or design or depict. I think it takes many drawings to investigate the meanings or forms that are latent within our perceptions; therefore drawings are not merely related to the production of the form but are influences to the entire design as a whole.

ME: So that a city becomes a “montage” over time, how do we relate to an old, existing city fabric without copying what is there so that the city still maintains an opportunity for growth and change?

IRMA: One of the discussion points that the reading mentioned was that "form matters, but not so much the form of things but the forms between things". I'm not entirely sure what it means when it says between things but it makes me think of how the surrounding architecture should have an influence on the form of the thing being built. Sometimes some people can't even tell the similarities between new architecture and the old fabric it sits in and then that building is criticized for not being conventional. Projects become accepted into the city overtime maybe because instead of resisting the "unreal likeness", they make it "function as the real".

ME: Is there a possibility that any construction could be inserted into a place and be considered a harmonious relationship between the building and the fabric?

DEVYN: There are many opportunities for constructions to integrate harmoniously into an existing fabric. I think it is achieved more often in the urban context, but it can be very challenging. When interventions are placed in open fields rather than dense urban fabrics, the building has a tendency to become a monument that distracts the flow of space. Today, New York City blocks are a mixture of old and new; and they seem to integrate together nicely because the new constructions relate to the forms and materials of the older existing context.

ME: Remember Corbusier’s plan for a house that was drawn out first and then sited? Does the density of the city fabric dictate how much freedom we have to create without the boundaries of referring to the site forces?

DEVYN: In many ways the site dictates the boundaries for a construction, but I think this is only truly restricted on the ground floor of the building. The space and levels above the base floor can be more freely determined by the architect with the use of elements such as sky bridges, openings in the façade, and fragmentation. Today we always look at site restrictions first, but Corbusier never designed with a specific site in mind, so his options were more limited in the urban fabric.  He had to search for the perfect site that would accommodate his building. He flipped the order, but most architects today do not have that option.

Copenhagen (Part 2!)

PARIS

Arrived at Paris Charles De Gualle Airport

SNAILS! yum.

great view from the Eiffel Tower

Notre Dame

Dany eating a horse

Arch

Musée du Quai Branly / Jean Nouvel

PARIS!!