Stratégie versus composition | EPFL Graph Search

To avoid chaos and arbitrariness architects have traditionally looked for ways to structure buildings as wholes that can be factorised into parts. This approach to the nature of architecture is that of composition. After the Second World War, the world of architecture saw the development of new ways of conceiving of buildings. One of the most prominent of which appeals to strategies. This development, which first occurred in painting and sculpture, leads to a rejection of composition. In their rejection of composition, many post-war American artists abandoned the notion that there should be any equilibrium or relational properties between the parts that constitute a work of art. In architecture, rejecting composition goes by looking for strategies that are determined by the programmatic, urbanistic and cultural contexts to which a contemporary building has to adapt. Also, lack of land entails an urban density so that by necessity – by non-choice – buildings have to be shaped by contextual boundaries, which makes it impossible to conceive of these buildings according to the precepts of composition. Since the 1960s, buildings or architectural complexes have had to be able to evolve, to adapt to new usage. This requires architects to think of them in a new way, according to a logic of indeterminate – thus non-composed – planes. Further, architects abandon composition in that they start looking for arrangements that are already present in the surrounding visible world and integrate them to the projection of buildings by the strategy of transfer. The key hypothesis of this study is that composed planes came to be replaced by strategies such as non-choice and transfer that generate neutral arrangements – neutral because their parts cannot be factorised from the whole; because these parts are without intrinsic individuality. Understood as a body of actions mapping shapes to contextual parameters, these strategies also require us to rethink the notions of subjectivity and of the self-effacing of a project's author. For instance a transfer is generated by a certain automatism of the form, as opposed to a preconceived architectural intention. This study reviews and analyses these strategies, these new modes of architectural arrangements. It does so by examining recent buildings and projects and also by drawing parallels with the plastic arts. Its aim is to articulate these new complex forms so as to offer a conceptual grid of contemporary architecture.

Habiter la ville ouverte

Didier Challand

Between 2002 and 2004 Martin Steinmann gave a close insight to the urban villa, a building type well-known a century ago in our cities and recently brought to the foreground as a major architectural issue in the German speaking part of Switzerland. Through an article1, an exhibition2 and his architectural design teaching at the EPFL3 he introduced various interpretations of a pre-existing housing type's new identity, which this dissertation suggests to further investigate. In the spirit of a monographic contribution, we analyze the urban villa as a multi-unit housing type through its key historical moments, from the rented houses of Lausanne built around 1900 (Part I – Première actualité) until contemporary outstanding realisations (Part III – Nouvelle actualité). Through a typo-morphologic analysis and a sensitive reading of space, major issues such as the urban villa's placement among its surroundings, the subtle amalgamation of individuality and collectivity, as well as the insertion of a constructed nature into the urban cityscape, arise. In the spirit of a polemic contribution, we consider the ville ouverte issue as an intermediate condition of groups of villas or small blocks enhancing all four orientations (Part II – Habiter la ville ouverte, cinq essais). In order to describe the spatial mechanisms of their so-called urbanity, we analyse some coherent groups of urban forms, which belong to the hygienist era running from 1850 until 1930. Those correspond to various programmatic motivations and socio-economical conditions, whose architectural effects we highlight. The contribution of this research is particularly important in view of contemporary residential areas' densification, for it is a densification willingly crystallizing into open urban forms composed of small multi-unit blocks. As neat as they may be, those buildings have not much to offer other than merely "a cute view", "the freshening greenery around the house" or "that big balcony". In his article in 2002 Steinmann proposed a more complex reading of this open urban forms' architecture, which he based on "the sensitive experiences' density". Through the writer's references, a tendency to interpret urban space as a fluid sequence is made apparent. In the Introduction, we thus describe this affinity as "nemourian imaginary"4. Consequently, this preference invites us to speculate towards other imaginaries, rooted as well in the histories of the green city and of the intermediary scale open morphology. In these imaginaries, the plots5, the street6, the court7, or even the private garden8, participate in various scenarios of free space partitioning, between the individual and the collective whole. Finally, to expand the research field will serve to enrich the contemporary urbanism theories that pertain to free spaces, whose plurality of characters, uses and sensations we plead for. The term "urban villa"9 contains a semantic paradox full of promises. In its loneliness, the urban villa represents the individuality dreamt of by many multi-unit housing inhabitants. As the villa gets isolated from neighbouring houses and from the street, however, it is also a dialectical object, which liberates its surroundings while at the same time depending on them. On the one hand, its four elevations tend to open themselves generously towards the sun and to the views. On the other hand, in the case of dense groups of villas – which interests us most here, as it is the major trend in contemporary suburban context –, the free space is valued as a possession tightly shared. This is done in a very distinct way as in the compact city, and the urban villa becomes a particularly demanding performer/Schau-spielerin in matters of living and dwelling together. In such open urbanity forms, the closed universe of private life and the open one of the shared landscapes interact in a totally different way than in the modern scattered green city, particularly with regard to narrow density interactions and juxtapositions. The starting point of our research is to postulate that these interactions are able to generate an urban spatial tissue of high quality. The main objective is to recognize, to expose and to analyse the spatial modalities, architectural as well as scenic, through which this aim can be achieved. ________________________________________________ 1 Martin Steinmann, "Sinnliche Dichte, Die neue Bedeutung eines alten Wohntyps", werk, bauen + wohnen, n°10, 2002, pp. 10-19. 2 EPFL-ENAC-LHab, Prof. Martin Steinmann (direction) and Didier Challand (organisation), La villa urbaine : Exhibition, EPFL, 12-28 January 2004 ; seminar, 15 January 2004, with the participation of Martin Steinmann, Bruno Marchand, Adrian Meyer, Martin Hofer (Wüest+Partner), Didier Challand. 3 EPFL-ENAC-LHab (Laboratoire de l'Habitation Urbaine), Prof. Martin Steinmann, 3rd and 4th year. Winter 2002-2003; Villas urbaines - Le Clos Veyrassat, Rolle/VD ; Winter 2003-2004 ; Villas urbaines - Les Gönhardgüter in Aarau. 4 "imaginaire nemourien", in reference to Le Corbusier's sketch for Nemours, Algeria (around 1935) 5 We propose some examples around each topic, here : Brauerquartier, Winterthur (Blatter, Meili, Lerch, 1898-1899) 6 Une Cité Industrielle, Quartiers d'habitation en commun (Tony Garnier, between 1904 and 1917) 7 Quartiere operaio della Società Umanitaria, dit alle Rottole, Milan, (Giovanni Broglio, 1909) 8 Quartiers modernes Frugès, Pessac (Le Corbusier, 1925-1926) 9 The contemporary use of this term started from the late 70s in West Berlin and was stimulated by O. M. Ungers, H. Kollhoff and A. Ovaska.

EPFL2010

Architecture without Content 4: Necessary Architecture

Kersten Geers, Andrea Zanderigo

The Data Center is the most definitive and yet invisible typology of our contemporary world. It is the densest spot in our digital universe, a physically invisible space virtually visited by many. In a time when the collective spirit of the net itself is more and more in peril, these privately owned devices represent, in many ways, the pinnacle of our shared infrastructure. Therefore, Data Centers are intrinsically collective infrastructures. Unfortunately the buildings themselves remain largely invisible. Subject to technical and environmental requirements, they tend to hide in the fringes of our world; fringes that are increasingly scarce. The Cloud, inhabitant of the data center, struggles with its own invisibility as the place where our valuable content is stored. Both dynamics are problematic but offer an opportunity. As in our cities, what was formerly considered collective is increasingly privatized (one thinks of schools and communal offices). It might be argued that Data Centers are amongst the few leftover opportunities that, because of their intrinsic content, have the potential to acquire collective meaning. This is not the first time we have investigated this potential. Two years ago, in the first studio at Columbia called Architecture without Content we tried to portray the absolute potential of these big boxes because of the evident impact of their sheer mass when projected in the even covered field. In this studio Architecture without Content 4 we return to the center of the city and investigate the potential of these enormous buildings if they would be located on Roosevelt Island; formerly the outskirts of Manhattan, today the very center of New York. Roosevelt Island is strategically positioned and highly wired. It has a latent potential for symbolic representation, as was recently exemplified by the posthumous execution of Kahn’s Roosevelt memorial and the numerous paper projects that preceded that monument. In parallel, it is undergoing a process of reinvention as a new center of excellence, as exemplified by the recently announced plans of Cornell University to open a new hightech campus on the island. Within all this activity, an overall project is lacking. Architecture without Content 4 reconnects to Venturi’s concept of a Difficult Whole. The Difficult Whole is not a group form, nor a mere collection of elements, but a formal strategy that seeks for a cohesive composition of parts through inflection. Each of the parts influences each other, while the parts retain their individuality. Each of the Data Centers on Roosevelt Island aspire to do the same. Their content is an alibi for architectural form whereas their position is integrally part of the overall project for the island. The immutable forms of these big boxes are able to capitalize on their invisible content to create a disposable sanctuary for our contemporary Information Age. The project for Roosevelt Island announces its very decay the day of its completion—an empty civic center.

2013

L'oeuvre de Leandro V. Locsin (1928-1994), architecte à la recherche de l'identité élusive de l'architecture philippine du second après-guerre

Jean-Claude Girard

Filipino architect Leandro Valencia Locsin (Silay1928 - Makati 1994) produced an architectural work that involved 250 projects, of which at least more than half were completed and mostly in his country of origin. A graduate in architecture of San Tomas de Manila University in 1953, his career began after the Second World War, which left the capital city all but destroyed following airstrikes by the allies that served to liberate the Philippines from the Japanese occupying forces. Following his studies, Locsin is immediately solicited with requests which leads him to open his office and give up the idea of completing his graduate studies in one of the prestigious American universities, which at the time had welcomed great masters who had sought exile from Europe to the United States in the 1930s. For a member of a privileged social class, this atypical career path makes Locsin a singular figure in the architectural landscape as he will immediately focus his interest on questioning the specificity of Filipino architecture. In a 1989 interview, Locsin confirms his career-long interest in researching the boundaries between local culture and international influences. The study of the vernacular tradition in his country will orient his work towards defining certain architectural principles to allow for the emergence of a new contemporary Filipino architecture. The post-war period, involving innovations in technical resources and favorable political and economic conditions for urban development, will serve to render all the more complex a body of work that is difficult to apprehend and qualify. In a 1964 text, Locsin refers to the elusive identity of the Filipino architectural spirit which, according to him, is the result of an assimilation of various external influences, given the geographic positioning of the Philippines and its colonial past. His work never ceased to reflect this quest for identity in built representations. While Leandro V. Locsin has been called "the poet of space" for the quality of his projects characterized by a great attention given to the sense of space, abstraction, symmetry, proportion, and materiality linked to the use of concrete and traditional materials his work has never been the subject of a complete study. Few scientific contributions exist and remain partial, in that they focus on certain specificities of his production. Further, there are no studies that offer a complete review of his office archives, a necessary step towards uncovering and highlighting the unique characteristics of a multiform production. The objective of this dissertation is to provide a complete overview of the work of Leandro V. Locsin, notably through a survey of his projects, and an analysis of the condition of their production in a local and international context, in order to render explicit the specific qualities that make this work a unique example of architecture of the period and from the Philippines.

EPFL2018