Paste your essay in here…Abstract
How has the process of developing architecture progressed through time and what is the importance of quality of space in contemporary architecture?
Peter Eisenman writes that “The entire nature of what we have come to know as the reality of our world has been called into question by the invasion of media into everyday life”(Eisenman 1992). As seen with the two World Wars, new technologies radically shape our world today. The subsequent emergence of modernist architecture fundamentally altered the ideation and production of built form. The shift from the mechanical to electronic paradigm offers yet another transformative moment, yet as Eisenman argued, it has not tremendously affected architecture and seems “little changed”. For Eisenman, the theory of folding as seen in the work of Giles Deleuze has the potential of developing spaces that sit outside those considered as traditional. In this respect Tadao Ando typifies the denial of the electronic transformation; Ando works through traditional drawing methods to play with basic geometries and further enhance spatial experiences. Focusing on the effects of technology on the development of techniques representing architecture, this paper compares how the shifts in how one draws effects contemporary architecture.
This paper will argue the importance of having spatial qualities in architecture that has been the subject of importance since 25 years ago and how these experiences in space can be achieved. The topic will compare three different methods to achieve experiences in space. Firstly, the idea of unfolding spaces and using technology to realise the idea. Secondly the use of traditional theories and basic geometries to create intricate spaces. Lastly, the combination of traditional drawing and technology to further enhance the meaning of spaces. Despite the digital turn and our reliance on technology, technology is not the ultimate means to achieve spatial qualities.
Space and Experience
Space is closely associated with architecture. Louis Kahn mentions that ‘architecture is the thoughtful making of space’ (Journal 1957). But most importantly, what is space? Space is more than just a vacuum that we are surrounded by. It can be described through its physical form by concrete characteristics such as length, plane, scale, geometry or color or light. On the other hand, it possesses other characteristics that are abstract and complex and difficult to describe.
Space has been a topic of discussion in philosophy and the natural sciences since ancient times. Lao Tzu argues that the mass (architectural elements) is the servant of void (space) and Plato claims that space is one of the fundamentals that make up the world as interactions would not occur without space. Space is core to architecture. However, it only recently appeared in architectural theory and became the key exploration into the principles of architecture in the 20th century. The industrial revolution has brought technological advances which brings attention in the new technologies, materials and functions which leads to the increase growth of architectural philosophy. In the 19th century, there is an unpredictable emergence of variety of styles and as a result, architects become eager to find solutions and new visions of architecture. The idea of space is introduced to help diminish the importance of historical styles. However, a void can only be considered space only if our body and the five senses recognises it. Thus no architecture is spatial without an experience that includes both interior and exterior. Space and its experience becomes fundamental to architecture in the 20th century (Zevi 1993).
The Action of Creating Space / Design Process
Designing architecture in the early stages involves a wide range of different design activities. Spatial configuration become the subject of concern to architects. Designing a building is an action of creating space. The first step of design usually involves the process of drawing diagrams and sketches. Drawing in the early stage of a design process helps to portray designer’s decisions and at the same time a degree of ambiguity and vagueness is present. The ambiguity and vagueness allows architects to freely design without having to worry on the boundaries of solid elements such as dimensions, or shapes. Thus a modelling tool for designing a space should still maintain the natural characteristics of early schematic design which are abstraction, ambiguity and vagueness.
After all, “the purpose of architecture is to create space” (Berlage 1996)
In 1992, Peter Eisenman release his work, “Visions Unfolding: Architecture in the Age of Electronic Media” which addresses some issues of architecture since the Second World War. Despite the paradigm shift from mechanical to electronic that has taken place fifty years after the Second World War, architecture has not been greatly effected (Eisenman 1992). Media has changed the way we perceive things. But how has the electronic paradigm effect architecture?
Folding is a method Eisenman proposes to change the traditional space. Folding means “to assimilate independent matters in a constant mixture” (Greg Lynn). Fold means layer; layers that there is no importance among them. The idea of the fold is partially based on the theories of Gilles Deleuze, whereby the traditional form and material relation as a spatial design, gives way to “a continuous variation of matter as a continuous development of form” (Deleuze, 2003)
The traditional architecture is structured within the concept of the subject and the four walls. Folding helps to establish new relationships between vertical and horizontal, figure and ground relation, inside and outside, all of which are found in the structural elements of the traditional space. “The Fold no longer privileges planimetric projection; instead there is a variable curvature” (Eisenman 1992). The idea of the fold is made possible through the practices of digital technology.
The Max Reindhardt House is one of Eisenman’s early project that is the product of folding. He abandons the traditional geometry to explore new territories through the idea of folding. The house becomes the product of cross-fertilisation of the interpretation of the Mobious strip and concept of the fold. The process involves digitally joining a set of lines and twisting uniformly according to a circular path which results in a simple Mobious strip. Afterwards he moulds the silhouette of the tower, and tries to get visual continuity. Whereby traditionally the act of designing architectural space is theorised as Cartesian space known as a ‘series of point grids’. However, the fold is no longer concerned with the framing of space but instead it creates a temporal modulation that implies a continual variation where “no longer is an object characterised by an essential form”(Eisenman 2007). The spatial experience if further intensified in the aesthetic of abstraction in his work for the Aronoff Center for Design and Art and the Colombus Convention Center. He articulates architecture whereby the user is more informed by “interiority”, where it “has nothing to do with the inside or inhabitable space of a building but rather of a condition of being within”
The fold, made possible through digital processing, nonetheless helps to add another layer of spatial qualities through the blurring of “a matrix of forces, a condition of becoming that uncovers potential effects of space previously pressed by the formal”(Eisenman 2003).
Tadao Ando
Tadao Ando is a Japanese architect who introduces the idea of the postmodernism to Japan. Ando’s work “Toward New Horizons in Architecture.” (Ando 1991) was published around the same year as Eisenman’s ““Visions Unfolding: Architecture in the Age of Electronic Media”. Working in the same era as Eisenman, Tadao also criticizes Postmodernism and its failures to recoup “richness” after modernism. Tadao believes that in order to progress in architecture, we must push towards an architecture that is logical yet abstract, integrates nature, and rediscovers place. In his work, he argues when one is creating architecture, they must consider four main factors which are transparency logic, abstraction, nature and place (Ando 1991).
Transparent logic: Ando argues that architects must understand that it is not a simple logic that meets the functionality of a program. But it is a logic that looks at and the whole context of a project.
Abstraction: to link human daily activities with abstract geometrical form.
Nature: Nature brings theoretical and ideological architecture a reality that awakens man to life. Life does not control nature but instead it draws in nature, blurring the boundary of exterior and interior, and create a mutual permeation.
Place: Ando aims to create a place in regards to its context of landscape and draw out its formal characteristics, cultural traditions, and natural environment.
Tadao Ando describes his own process of creating architecture to begin with seeking the logic of place and an understanding of the age-old customs people will carry into the future. With the surge of technological advancements during Ando’s time, he chose to work with simple geometric forms and common materials to solve the problem of postmodernism and offer a new abstract logic into spaces. Rather than making extravagant forms, he focused on simple geometries to draw delicate yet dramatic experience in space through the use of light and shadow.
Coming from the Japanese Metabolist movement, Ando is deeply rooted with Japanese culture. He believes that modern architecture should embody spaces that follow Japanese sensitivities. The idea of continuity between exterior and interior space is one characteristics of traditional Japanese architecture.
Material is an extremely important part of Ando’s main technique to achieve abstraction of space. He sees any given material and explores its characteristics and enhance its expressive potential to the highest level to bring to it radiance.
Another fundamental dyad underlying Ando’s work is the conflict between geometry and nature. While his geometry determines the built, it is nature that he incorporates to infiltrate the enclosed volume and extends the boundary of space to a recessive landscape. This method helps to produce a kind of absolute architecture in which Ando calls “an original form of space” (Ando 1991) where geometry and nature balances in respect to one another.
“Shinta” is a Japanese term that Ando promotes to be incorporated in architecture, “by shintai I mean a union of spirit and flesh. It acknowledges the self”(Ando 1991). Only in this way that Ando believes our surrounding spaces will be manifested as a thing endowed with various meanings and values.
The Church of Light in Ibaraki, which is built in 1989, is the most notable project that Ando considers have encapsulated his key principles that he has been exploring throughout his career. The design is constructed by simple exposed concrete box with two rectangles that slices through. This allows vivid lights to enter the space, whereby the rays move over time and produce different experiences in space.
Comparison
Peter Eisenmann and Tadao Ando both puts forth the issue that arises from Postmodernism. Despite the technological advances, both architects feel that architecture has not had a progression in developing beyond the boundary that restricts space; the four walls. Whilst Eisenman believes in using technology to further enhance our experience in space, Ando argues otherwise. Ando resists the complete reliant on technology and affirms that he intends to go beyond it to highlight the poetic and spiritual features of a building. As he mentions, “What I always have in mind is not a life of abundance made possible by technology but a life of abundance that transcends technology, a life of abundance that allows for heterogeneity”
In architecture, the conceptual model visually perceives architecture as a practice to be regarded for its own sake, be it drawings or built work. However, renown architects who believes in phenomenology, such as Tadao Ando and Peter Zumthor, perceives buildings as objects that interact with and participate in human sensory experience. The work Eisenman produces during the 1980s through the medium of digital technology is one that Ando would consider “quickly becomes mired in hackneyed expression, producing a flood of formalistic play that is only confusing rather than inspiring” Ando refers to Eisenman and argues that although his spaces are in fact different from Mies and are not uniform and homogenous, are not also able to be „truly heterogeneous‟ (Ando 1994)
Instead Ando states that he incorporates digital technology in a different approach to Eisenman, “I apply modernist vocabulary and technology to my architecture, overlaid with distinct contextual elements such as regional identity and lifestyles of the users.” Instead of copying the formal tradition in the past he tries to define “new form though their interposition with people‟s lifestyles and their interrelationships with distinct regional societies” Ando believes that spaces and architecture should bring new energy and life through “constant dialogue and collision with contextual elements”.
Eisenman argues otherwise, “If there is a debate in architecture today, the lasting debate is between architecture as a conceptual, cultural, and intellectual enterprise and architecture as a phenomenological enterprise–that is, the experience of the subject in architecture, the experience of materiality, of light, of color, of space, and etc. I have always been on the side opposed to phenomenology.” (Ansari 2013) But why is Eisenman so against phenemology? Peter Eisenman is part of Deconstructivism, a movement developed by philosopher Jacques Derrida, whereby it believes that the form of the building alone will articulate the endless possibilities and solutions for a specific site, context and situation (Norris 2003). Eisenman’s critique becomes the development of built form and space on the foundation of theoretical architecture (Cairns 2016).
Perhaps that is what Eisenman’s design of creating space is lacking; the connection or relationship between the human and the space.
The methods of drawing at the early stage of designing a space that Eisenman and Ando utilises also differs. Eisenman favours the use of axonometric projection of its supposed objectivity. To him, the perspective is compromised by its subjectivity; it shows a single point of view that will be experienced differently for every viewer. Ando, on the other hand, evokes these same subjective qualities through his sketches, getting the observer to experience the quality of the spaces.
On the other hand, the ability to draw in axonometric means that Eisenman has successfully convert a technique of representation which contains characteristic mode of distorting into an object and makes those “distorted” relationships real. Despite the vagueness of the Eisenman’s axonometric drawing, it yields integrity that “explores the condition of representation and reading in architecture.” This is apparent in the Eisenman House. The advantages of utilising Eisenman’s method is its ability to produce the drawing with logic that are to scale. But how does his drawing prevail when being brought into a physical form. Does it still maintain its spatial qualities of distorting lines and planes? Is his axonometric drawing enough to evoke emotions and bring out spatial qualities that exists in the space he designs?
One could argue that architecture has directed itself to be consumed by its own image (Reichlin 1981). The electronic paradigm poses a great challenge to architecture as it describes reality in terms of media and simulation.
Eisenman has always been so concerned with the production of objects. He limits his horizon with architecture and neglecting the city and the context in which his architecture sits. His House XI contains nothing as they are just simulacrum, solid blocks that are detached from life. However, following works published by Eisenman, we can see how his position regarding computers are quite ambiguous. In the late 1980s, he experimented with the pioneering software (FORM Z), and made a claim that technology is the only design process that will help architecture to move forward. Twenty years later, which is in the 21st century, he criticised the use of computers in architecture. He believes that computers are responsible in people’s perception on belittling architecture and the design process.
Tadao Ando’s method of using traditional geometry principles and harmonizing it with human’s senses could be one of the solutions to the lack of Eisenman’s digital pedagogy to create intricate spaces. However, it is also not to say that Ando’s design process is completely successful.
A project built in 2002 in central Manchester, England, by Tadao Ando did not have a long life whereby in 2016 it was announced to be demolished. The pavilion that was built in Picacadilly Gardens spans 130-meter-long concrete wall that curves across the area, protecting the green space from a transport interchange. Ando built the pavilion as part of the regeneration of the city following an IRA bomb in 1996. However the pavilion was dubbed the “Berlin wall” by locals and did not perform to be a sustainable design. Most importantly, the big issue here is that the local did not have any connection with the pavilion.
People start to question if the building was too good for a simple-minded population. But it was that it was not good enough. The building was deemed flawed: the concrete was not properly treated; the grim façade was too forbidding for a bustling city centre. It ended up being “ugly” and not in a sophisticated way. Great architecture actually need to please people and Ando’s pavilion in the Picadilly Gardens have failed to capture the heart of the Manchesterians.
In the book "Beyond the Bubble: The New Japanese Architecture" , Bognar mentions that "Much of what happens in Japan has its own particular reasons and, therefore, is not necessarily applicable elsewhere," (Bognar 2008)
It is quite possible that the use of Japanese traditional architecture, the confrontation with (abstract) nature, and the mystic use of light could not be applicable to all spaces; especially those that are in the Western world. Ando must learn to adapt his vocabulary and extend it beyond just designing spaces for the development of Japan.
A contemporary architect who successfully combines both Eisenman’s digital and Ando’s analogical principles is Frank Gehry. In his fascination with the digital, Eisenman and Gehry concerns for control and function. Gehry has always been working with a unique and hybrid position where digitial is constantly harmonized with personal and manual expression. Every digital process utilised by Gehry is combined with a traditional approach to architecture. For example, Gehry’s diagrams derives from analogical process through methods of drawing. As a result, Gehry manages to create spaces that are intricate using technology yet at the same time evoke feelings and emotions.
What’s interesting in Gehry’s work is there is no clear distinction between analogic and digital process. Whilst architects such as Eisenman and Greg Lynn asserts their passion for computers, and Ando and Koolhaas envisioned their work according to analogic process, Gehry focuses on hybridization.
Conclusion
Our architecture today continues to seek different methods of design to achieve a better design of architecture or spaces. Space is closely associated with architecture whereby the purpose of architecture is to create space (Berlage 1996). In order for architecture to become spatial, it must embody experience that includes both interior and exterior. Space and its experience becomes fundamental to architecture. In the 19th century, there was an unpredictable emergence of variety of styles due to the industrial revolution that gave rise to many technological advances. The idea of space was introduced to help diminish the importance of historical styles. Architects operating in the 1980s seeks to develop various methods to create a spatial experience that will progress in accordance with the world. The different approach to create intricate spaces in the 1980s can be explored through the works of Eisenman “Visions Unfolding: Architecture in the Age of Electronic Media” (Eisenman 1992) and Tadao Ando’s manifesto “Toward New Horizons in Architecture” (Ando 1991). Whilst Eisenman’s approach to create intricate spaces relied mainly on computers differs from Ando’s method of analogic process, they both contains each unique outcomes and design processes. When combined together, it creates a powerful hybridisation in which several architects of today have started utilizing.
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