SKTCH Compilation : Lines/words

We speak through lines. 

Not “we” as in Architects, or even designers, but as in everyone; lines are not in a exclusive relationship with us: they like attention, they like to be used, and they like to be shared. Through lines we express thoughts in the form of “sketching” as equally as we express them in the form of words. However, when we write space, experience, and ideas , it sometimes is in a language not able to be captured by an alphabet. In these moments we resort to different lines. 

Sketching is the result of an exploration and exploitation of lines that create  conversations between the experience and the place, sans words. But lines come in various forms: theyre fat and fuzzy, theyre colorful and watery, they wander sometimes, theyre geometric, theyre permanet, theyre giudes, theyre straight, theyre crooked...but most importantly lines are stories. No matter what line we use, they capture a feeling and a subject, and as architects and designers, we rely on these lines to be our words to tell our stories. 

Whether quantitative or qualitative ideas, we trust lines to be the medium to carry our message. The form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived. 

we speak through lines, because lines are all we have.

“The medium is the message” -Marshall McLuhan

P3 Giardino Salvi:Foundazione Morseletto Centro Culturale di Vicenza

Giardino Salvi is part of the network of rooms in the city, but unlike the more lustrous rooms such as Piazza dei Signori and Palazzo Porto, Giardino Salvi is like the room under the stairs:  Opposing to what a public space in the city should carry under its characteristics, Giardino Salvi turns its back against the city, turning a potential sociological stich between city and people into a decaying corner of the city.

Historically, the giardino was a walled oasis for the higher class bourgeoisie. Initially, the giardino was designed as in the style of the Italian Parterre gardens that were popular amongst the higher social class It. allowed for privilege citizens to enjoy a room within the city fabric, creating loggias as philosophical places to rest and ponder. The giardino, however, did not allow for the full integration of the city fabric within its boundaries, therefore not allowing itself to be at the service of the urban context. Even in its conception, Giardino Salvi was a dislocated site within the city.

During the 19^th century, the giardino was opened to the public and reimagined as a public space. In 1946 Fiera di Vicenza at Giardini Salvi created new public buildings, new civic structures for the city, and new residential neighborhoods. The fair established the giardino as the cultural epicenter of Vicenza.

Currently, the site is composed of a dilapidated building that promotes the dislocation of the giradino within the fabric of the city. Visually and physically impairing, the current building that occupies the site restricts social permeation through the giardino and the city. Mainly the giardino lacks in an active program that can tectonically create an architecture of social inclusion.

The site sits on the end axis of the entrance of the city from the south, allowing for possibilities to create once more a cultural beacon for the city, a spatial introduction to Vicenza. However currently, the northern edge of the giardino barriers itself from the remaining of the urban fabric, erasing any possibility for permeation of space. The giardino is one that has potential to serve as a main space for community and development as well as transition of the hard - soft - hard edge.

The proposal is to create a duality of permeability and boundary through exploration in materiality and structure. The goal is to re-imagine the spatial, haptic, and sociological characteristics of the park so that it allows itself to be at the service of the city. Similar to Nouvel’s Fondazione Cartier, the proposal will deal with layers of transparencies, ecological integration, and architecture as a cohesive image of the city. Also, similarly to Zumthor’s project in Chur, the proposal will explore the capabilities of creating a flux of outdoor/indoor spaces though methods of tectonics.

Programmatically, the site will once more become the cultural epicenter of Vicenza, housing Foundazione Morseletto, the leading architectural stone provider of the Veneto region: Foundazione Morseletto Centro Culturale di Vicenza will contain housing galleries, public theaters, and a library at ground level (30,000 ft²). Sectionally, the site will also include co-habitating residential units with communal spaces and private elevated gardens, interspersed with commercial units at various levels and small artist studios (70,000 ft²). Morphologically, the proposal will reinforce entrances to park at two locations, connecting the existing loggia to the park as well as creating a node of entrance between the neighborhood of Contra Mure Porta Nouva and Giardino Salvi.

The intent is to reinvigorate the garden, becoming a cultural hub for the city of Vicenza. In the words of Benedetto, an Italian idealist philosopher, and occasionally also politician:

"It 's a garden(Giardino Salvi) in which the eye rests. Hath a general impression of calm that takes possession of the spirit ... the evening floating in the air the smell of foreign plants, the fragrance of tuberose acute, the gentle scent of jasmine. The passion flowers they climb along the walls; humble and low while sending away a breeze smelled the vanillas and cyclamen and a whole family of violets and herbs. That ... that makes the garden a place to run fast times in a calm that is good is the immense panorama that can be contemplated therein. Far azzurreggiano the mountains of the Alps, at noon laughing verdant slopes of the hills. The view is not never bored. Like the whiteness of winter nature asleep under the snow. It 's all a delight and a harmony that celebrates the feast of the flowers in May. What a superb exuberance of life beneath the kisses of the sun in July.How many colors, how many varieties quell'alternarsi in a thousand shades of green autumnal dying! Clash the yellow withered leaves crackle under your feet fall with their appearance on paper ... here and there skeletons shaking big arms leafless trunks like ghosts. " 

M+M Detail Sketches S1-S10

Torre Agbar, Barcelona : W3

Querini Stampala Bridge, Venice : W4

Media TIC, Barcelona : W5

Querini Stampalia, Venice : W6

Parco Della Musica, Roma : W7

Punta Della Dogana Museum, Venice : W9

Banca Popolore Di Verona, Verona : W10

Interior Alchemy : Palazzo Querini Stampalia : W11

Querini Stampalia Bridge, Venice : W12

Traverso Vighy Office, Vicenza : W13

Pecha-Kucha : Foundazione Morseletto Centro Culturale di Vicenza

In Discussion with Luis Ramirez : Points + lines

"Form matters, but not so much the form of things as the forms between things”.

In working through architecture as an internal effect of the haptic as form relating to experience, what then are the external responsibilities of architecture in a larger context?

I think that effects that architecture provokes occur at different scales, from a human scale or more individualistic, to a larger scale such affecting an entire society. Therefore, I believe that the form or façade of building also affect the mood of a certain space with larger qualities. For example, New York’s street level is controlled by the edge condition given from the multiple towers developing a faster pace within society.

Is form only related to the direct effects of its internal and external context? Or is form an effect of context?

Form should be the effect of context, but this is not always the case. I believe that when form is affected by context the architecture has a deeper connection to its spectator, making sense of the edges it develops and the reason to why it chose this certain location.

“One asserts that architecture will fade away under the advancing imperatives of technology. Under the domain of distraction, media and technology threaten architecture with its own obsolescence. This has led some architects to retrench, and insist ever more stridently on architecture's material specificity. Others submit to the imperatives of the new technologies and redefine architecture as media and image.”

If one views architecture as a technology, is architecture a type of distraction, or media?

I believe that technology does give the architect the ability to speculate and question different possibilities to architecture. I consider it as a media very similar to sketching where ideas can be vomited onto a piece a paper. This idea can then be reformed and reanalyzed through a sequence of processes.

How does architecture play a role in the image of the technological city?

Architecture becomes the product of technology because essentially this technologic city has transformed the space in which society lives through this media. Technology is just that material or detail to develop a certain experience of space to the city. 

How does architecture play a role in the integration of technology and people?

I would consider that architecture is such a broad field to deal with that technology can be part of the architecture or seen as the architecture of a certain location. The question I think should be “Is this architecture which involves the technology has connections with its surroundings”?

“From the manipulation of light and space in the work of Francesco Borromini or Guarino Guarini, to the fugitive tectonic effects of Mies van der Rohe, to the extensive spatial elaborations of Hans Scharoun, architecture's tangible presence is always informed by a corresponding virtual field. Only by creatively examining the role of the architect in these changing urban economies can architecture evolve the means to reengage the world”

How does architecture translate the virtual, into the physical?

I believe that there is always a certain loss of information when attempting to translate the virtual design to the physical simply because the advantages of the virtual world are the inconsideration of physics. As well as the manipulation of materials are much more feasible than in the physical world.

Spring Break 2014

Ya that is a snake charmer at the end of that.

Street Fart, I mean Art

Man of many talents

Apparently I'm always Late

Waterproof Mike

Time Out

Bride and Joy of Rome the mighty slime

Let out your inner tiger....