Contaminazioni linguistiche | EPFL Graph Search

In contemporary debates about sustainable development, vernacular architecture plays an important role. Presenting itself as a dictionary of man’s constructive logic, it declares with no uncertainty its own usefulness, its connection to the soil, to the climate, the economy and technology. The capacity to incorporate change, to absorb the passing of time without losing the architectonical idea on which it lies, has made its forms intelligible and its language comprehensible to everybody. These qualities, together with the wide variety of forms that are found available within it, make vernacular architecture a reserve from which one can draw in order to stimulate creative thought upon a project. Despite vernacular architecture having been partially revalued, the role that it has played in the debate around ‘modernity’ and its contribution to the birth and development of modern architecture have been scarcely analysed and very much undervalued by both critics and historians. This thesis demonstrates the importance of the contribution made by vernacular architecture, investigating the architectural practice of some of the most renowned protagonists of architecture in the 20th century, among whom Mackintosh, Hoffmann, Loos, Le Corbusier, Sert, Aalto, Figini, Ponti, Rudofsky, Stirling, Abraham, the Smithsons, Venturi and Scott Brown. Furthermore, this thesis shows how some linguistic contaminations have been produced in the work of architects through their encounter with vernacular architecture during travels in native lands and abroad, and through the resulting theoretical reflections which have been documented in a large quantity of written material. For linguistic contamination I mean the analogous action undertaken by an element over another, on a morphological or semantic level. These actions are the result of a process that starts with the act of seeing, of observing and which matures in the thought put down on paper. For this reason I have decided to structure my thesis around the activities peculiar to architectural practice – seeing, thinking, projecting – to which the three sections of this thesis – travels, writings, projects – refer to. The first part demonstrates the importance of travel as a means to discover and gain direct knowledge of vernacular architecture and its legacy. For legacy I mean that baggage of impressions, sketches and photographs used by architects for reference in their future intellectual work. The second part highlights the existence of a large quantity of written material (articles, essays, books, conference papers) that witnesses the real and steady interest of modern ‘orthodox’ architects towards vernacular architecture. This section also considers the way in which some theoretical parameters of ‘modernity’ have been defined according to the observations contained in the written material. Finally, the third part shows the presence, in modern projects and works, of elements, structures, materials, and spatial and morphological devises that can be traced back to vernacular architecture, and that allow me to support the hypothesis of contaminations of vernacular architectural language on modern architectural language.

Densité et logement collectif

Nicolas Bassand

As a measurement, built density (coefficient of land surface to be built and total floor space) has been the object of numerous researches on urban morphology and architectural forms during the twentieth century. However, for the last ten years, its sensory and qualitative dimension seems to be particularly valued: the perceived density. In multi-unit housing, dense, innovating and compact forms show a significant change of architectural and urban conception. In fact, project practices seem to have been marked by three major changes. Firstly, the importance of the precept of sustainable development, attempting at reducing urban sprawl. Secondly, the increased interest in urban values and the idea of "building a city within a city". Lastly, the current asserted need to redefine density: on one hand, new means are being researched to control it, on the other hand there is a widening of its definition due to the main impulse of architects and researchers. Within this framework, it is illuminating to reconsider the multiple disciplines using this term, as well as the distinct spatial scales tackled in this notion and changes in its use through time. However, focusing only on built density, the present research concentrates on the architectural and urban framework, also known as physical density. It is measured by a density figure but is also qualified by the perception of density. We propose as preliminary approach, an examination of this perceived density in fields where it is more frequently used, such as literature, painting and music. Another important notion of this research requires definition: architectural and urban innovation. Standing out from pure invention, this type of innovation consists essentially in a reinterpretation of previous architectural and urban productions worth naming "retro-innovation". Despite a housing program dependent on past models reluctant to rapid and important changes, radical innovations do occur, though more seldomly. Several ''moments'' of the collective housing architectural history allow for an updating of the different stakes manifested in the density – innovation relationship. Density perception plays a large role in a particular problem emerging from these two notions in contemporary Switzerland. The issue is how encouraging people coming back to the urban centers by proposing larger apartments with more square meters and urban architecture composed of numerous and various spaces, but protecting them at the same time from too close a proximity between neighboring housing and from environmental nuisances. The state of the art brings to light the enormous influence of the researcher and anthropologist Amos Rapoport on perceived density starting with his article, "Towards a Redefinition of Density", published in 1975. For more than thirty years now, architects, psychologists, city planners and geographers refer to this work when defining this notion in their respective fields. As a consequence, it nourishes several reflections in this research. Following these various observations, we propose the analysis of fourteen contemporary multi-unit buildings. They represent the current urban stakes at play and show the architectural and urban conception facing the double requirement of density: to insure a high enough floor area ratio (measured density) and to qualify the housing density (perceived density). In parallel, this research determines if this conception, unique to dense multi-unit housing, tends to modify architectural practice. In the first phase, we examine seven rectangular housing units, in which the width of the building is significant, and seven courtyard buildings in order to examine the exterior spaces contained by the building's volumes. In the second phase, we focus our attention on the wall expression of the fourteen buildings. In this way, these distinct analyses offer three new definitions of the perceived density expressing conception aspects particularly significant for understanding the architecture and urbanity of these dense multi-unit buildings. As a fundamental knowledge, it is shown that density, within the corpus, orientates the architects project's mode. The frequent reinterpretation of paradigmatic dense lodgings is one of the most striking proof of this conceptual change searching for innovations in the register of collective housing. So, in the density of depth, introversion and anonymity on the exterior seems to encourage distinct individualized space within the building as common domestic spheres only opened towards the inside of the apartment. In several cases, the usual urban and public spaces are integrated into the private interior of the apartments as if to domesticate a certain urbanity. In the density of the void, the proposed introversion of semi-public courtyards seems to help maintaining a larger sense of community in these multi-unit buildings. Altogether, it demonstrates a particular capacity to produce small cities within the city, at the same time independent and linked to the city. Finally, through the analysis of wall density, the exterior materiality and expression, dynamic or static, monumental at times, present a decidedly urban architecture enhancing a compact city in quest of new inhabitants.

EPFL2009

Linguistic contamination: an epistemological tool for interrogating vernacular tradition and contemporary architecture

Paola Tosolini

In 1919 in an essay entitled Tradition and the Individual Talent T. S. Eliot stated that a poet “is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living”. The paper will investigate the idea of tradition intended as 'matière vivante', as an operative tool used in architectural practice. A tradition, whose epistemology can be achieved through the analysis of what I call linguistic contamination. It is through this analogous action, made by one element over another on a morphological or semantic level, that tradition "moves" regenerating its forms and meanings. This approach allow to liberate the classical concept of tradition from its historical, time-bounded limits and to consider it in a new dynamic way. Tradition can be recognised in the survival of "architectural constants" ferried from the past to the present, sometimes remodelled and sometimes deformed under the flux of progress and change. The epistemic exercise will focus on the identification of the different kinds of contaminations which have occurred between vernacular architecture and modern architecture. The way in which a lexicon of the past has been used in a language whose syntax is yet new, will be investigated through some case studies from modern and contemporary times.

IASTE Center for Environmental Design Research2008

Vernacular Landscape: memory of a present continuous

Paola Tosolini

In 1984, in his Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, John Brinckerhoff Jackson stated that it is through the study of the vernacular that we could finally arrive to give a complete definition of the landscape and of its beauty because it expresses the idea of a place where man creates his own human organization of space and time, where the slow processes of growth, maturity and decline are deliberately put in brackets and history takes their place. The concept of landscape implies at first a ‘design’ dimension. It is the result of a conscious action made by man for man. It is, quoting Pierre Deffontaines, the “oeuvre paysagique de l’homme”. Vernacular landscape is the place where the relationship between man and environment has been better expressed for what it is the immediate correspondence between structures and human needs, between art of building and local culture. It presents itself as a dictionary of man’s constructive logic, declaring without ambiguity its utility, its links to earth, climate and technique. Its capacity of including changes, of absorbing the passing of time without losing the architectural idea on which it lays has made its forms intelligible, its language accessible to everybody. The cultural dimension of vernacular landscape is far from being only related to the past and to “architecture without architects”. Traces of it could be found throughout the 20th century in some of the most important works of modernity. A large number of Masters travels sketches displays anonymous rural buildings, countryside and coastal landscapes. Their critical writings reveal the changing of these ‘recorded’ images into an ‘operative tool’. Their works are evidence of the ways through which memory has finally become a living present, a source of timeless modernity. The paper will suggest the idea of a vernacular cultural landscape intended as a memory of a present continuous. It will do so by analysing the layers which have been superposed on it by the changing of time and space. It will show, for instance, how the interlocking stone volumes of Scottish rural architecture, the typical chimney of the Swiss Jura farms, the Finnish tupa, the Spanish porxet, the rustic column of Capri’s peasants houses, the Mediterranean patio, the brick walls of north Italian barns and other architectural and spatial elements are to be found in modern architecture, tracing a map of memory and change through the flux of tradition and its absorption.

Ministero de Fomento CEDEX-CEHOPU, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid2007

Densité et logement collectif

Nicolas Bassand

EPFL2009

Vernacular Landscape: memory of a present continuous

Paola Tosolini

Ministero de Fomento CEDEX-CEHOPU, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid2007