FRUSTRATION

The second project is not as fulfilling as the first one. The designing process become a constant bargain between me and the studio instructor. Every time I spend hours and hours doing something, she will discard it and simply redirect me to do something that I think I did. I tried to follow her instruction completely, but even so it turned out that it is not what she really wanted, and I will have to return to the original point. It is really frustrating and I do not think I got enough attention and instruction during the process. At the same time, the incentive to produce drawings and models are discouraged due to the fact that she is not demanding anything concrete but rather toggling back and forth between what I had and what I have now. IT IS NOT MOVING FORWARD!

Ok, so I will loosely define my hidden here:

IT IS about negation of expectation, or hide the truth/next step/room until the end of the passage.
The hidden room in the middle is simply a room of passage, not a room of dwelling, and it connects the.

Her being prescriptive makes the progress really hard and I am always interrupted in my own thinking in terms of work flow. Now what happened in the previous project happened again, and I think we are still having communication difficulties.

HIDDEN is the ramification of intentional concealment, which comes in package with unintentional revealing. It is a game between the deception of the architect and the false expectation of the occupants. In the end, revelation should be achieved through one or a series of negations of such expectation. I would illustrate the hidden with some twists near the end of the dwellings.

In this design, two diamond shaped volumes intersect with each other thus creating an suspended space in the center which looks like it is standing on a single point. No one would assume there is space on top of that point, and this is the common expectation. Therefore the encounter of the central volume is a negation of dwellers' expectation and it is by definition assumed to be hidden. The suspending effect is further accentuated by the repetitive and puzzle-like qualities of the four rooms around it, as well as the transparency created through the cracked openings that can be seen through.

To access the hidden room: Circulation is hidden within the walls, and only at the end of passages can the dwellers know what is in store around the corner. The ascending grand stair from exterior is a cue to the hidden elevated space, but people can only experience the volume without seeing it until they come down to see the volume through the crack near the end. Then people will descend down to the other rooms on the floor (interior access), the hidden space become hidden again.

MIND TRAP

I had the idea of hidden defined, which is really hard to even express in words, let alone to translate it into architectural language. The difficulty is not coincidental, there are people who were trained in the thought that architecture is a language just as literature and arts and made tremendous effort to work out a parallel system, but at GSD architecture is treated more like a mode of knowledge, and design is the experiment through which knowledge is gained (Quote SH).

Therefore, instead of trying to pin down what hidden means metaphysically, I went ahead and made something straight from instinct. Because, knowledge can only be gained retrospectively through excessive trails and testing in some sense. Just let go of the mind and play hide and seek with the project.

So, I am at a stage where the basic scheme is settled that a single elevated hidden room in the middle surrounded by four compressed rooms that have cracks between them. The lightness of the walls and the central volume resting on a single point present its hiddenness. No the problem is how to make the spatial arrangement more three dimensional, and my instructor's advice is to think more about the access to and from the hidden room, and achieve that through circulation. I think I need to think about it more diagrammatically and post-rationalize a lot of stuff I made.

PRIVACY/HIDDEN/IMGAINATION

THE HIDDEN - implication of privacy?

There was a commonplace analogy in 17 century literature that compared a man's soul to a privy chamber, then the significance of the separation of public and private space is arguably analogous to the containment of inner spirituality.

Dividing the house into two domains, an inner sanctuary of inhabited, sometimes disconnected rooms, and unoccupied circulation space, it came a recognizably modern definition of privacy. Kerr made diagrams that reduced house plans to these two categories of 1) trajectory 2) position, proposing that their proper arrangement was the substratum upon which both architecture and domesticity were to be raised.

In 19 century,  the matrix of connected rooms (Rafael's lineage) is replaced by the corridor plan (Kerr), which is not carnal, and sees the body as a vessel of mind and spirit, and in which privacy is habitual.  The architecture in the last two centuries incidentally reduced daily life to a private shadow-play and might need a kick-back of such passionate architecture that recognizes passion, carnality and sociality.

THE HIDDEN - to escape observation/ to create variation - challenge the principle presumed/ imagination versus rationalization




THE RECHERCHE

What is it to illustrate the concept of the hidden, then?

Thoughts 1: The truth of reality is hidden in imagination - “The material world abounds with very strict analogies to the immaterial; and thus some color of truth has been given to the rhetorical dogma, that metaphor, or simile, may be made to strengthen an argument, as well as to embellish a description. Maybe the truth lies in the rhetoric metaphor rather than the material reality? And the truth is hidden within the material realm but could be revealed in a spiritual rhetoric?

This reminds me of Hegel saying that art in some sense is more true than reality itself. It is to allow us to contemplate and enjoy created images of our own spiritual freedom—images that are beautiful precisely because they give expression to our freedom. Art's purpose, in other words, is to enable us to bring to mind the truth about ourselves, and so to become aware of who we truly are. Art is there not just for art's sake, but for beauty's sake, that is, for the sake of a distinctively sensuous form of human self-expression and self-understanding.

Thoughts 2: The hidden will translated into the retainment of privacy in space.

Thoughts 3: Negation of expectation

I would try out the first concept first and try to translate such intangible idea into manipulable architectural language. To be more explicit, for instance, a book has its material implication of being readable, but also immaterial implication as the carrier of knowledge or associations with reading experience. To disappear the material while giving out its immaterial implication is what hidden means to me.

HOW TO TRANSLATE the concept into architecture then? The implied space? To hint that the space was there and its enclosure, and then remove the actual wall and imply the space - like the figure ground relationship; in three dimensional space, the volumetric spaces shaped or implied by the placement of solid objects are as important as, or more important than, the objects themselves.

Then the first four rooms should provide the enclosure experience as a primer and simultaneously imply the contour of the fifth room.

FIRST REVIEW @ THE GSD

Stayed up all night before the review and pampered myself with a shower and make-up. I felt pretty good about myself at that point. All things were done and ready to be presented. Good.

The presentation went by fast and the jury was just consist of my studio instructor and another studio instructor. I was grouped with another girl in my studio under the category of "floorplate". There are other categories like "walls", "volume balanced", "porche" and "transitional geometry". I was stunned by her ability to see through the nature of the everyone's project and hit on the head of every nail. This is even more obvious when she saw my project and coin the thesis as the "oblique" even though I have no idea what it has become of. (this question should be addressed later)

Anyways, the all-nighter did really bad thing to me and I wasn't able to speak properly. But the idea got across, just in a piecemeal fashion...

RECAP:

The project is called "between incompatible plans", which requires us to negotiate two given orthogonal plans (plan 1 & 4 in the drawings) three-dimensionally.

My design is about creating an oblique flooring system as a critique of orthogonality. My approach to marry the two incompatible plans is to search for an intermediate level which is geometrically referential to both plans and simultaneously challenges the conventional floor stacking system in the third dimension.

As you can see the ramps are positioned in a rhythmic way between the two plans while creating volumes both above and below.

• using the plans and sections to show the positioning of ramps and floor plates

The application of such topology to the building as a whole establishes a new type of connection between floor plates (in this case, two incompatible plans), amplifying the connectivity through the oblique, which blurs the boundary of floors as well as de-emphasizing the distinction between habituation and circulation.

• The genealogy of the intermediate floor plates based on the geometry of the two plans
• The connectivity (the diagram showing the oblique floor plates connected as a whole)

the questions I got were:

1) The directionality of the oblique: why in a single direction not the other?
2) The parallel grains versus the cross grains: there are definitely clues regarding the spatial possibilities of those cross grains, but my design only reflected the upward motion and connectivity along the longitudinal axis. Why is that?
3) Spatial qualities of the compression and the extension created by the floor plates: there should be an agenda which dictates these relationships
4) The clarity of the circulation and habituation can be improved so as to create a complete experience through the oblique system
5) The oblique should be registered in both basement and roof - to announce itself, or I should be ambitious about how it should manifest itself within a box.

These are really constructive comments and I think all these questions came along during the shifting of my design thesis. If I had clarified the thesis earlier and communicate well with my instructor, I would have been able to think about the project in the oblique mentality and start to ask myself theses questions.  I felt that my thinking process is interrupted in a way that is clear to her but not clear to me.  Therefore I wasn't really going after what I had started out doing but changed my project to a product that I am not familiar with. I should have consolidated the idea along with each step of the design, and constantly ask questions about every move I make.

But I do appreciate the statement that my design has made. It is really about the oblique, which has endless potential in the third dimension and is a great way to resolve the problem I had about the connectivity between orthogonal planes. Overall the process is very rewarding and I realize the importance to have an agenda in making design decisions. However, being open-minded and change as it goes is always good if not necessary, only it has to come to a point where design is finished and start the representation process to show where the project is at.

Need to communicate more and think harder during the design process.
Then carefully make  the graphics and the model to tell the same story.
Execution should be fast and clean!

Some people played with the wall as a connector between floors, which is a great way to resolve the incompatibility, but there were few people who actually exploited the possibilities resided within the plans. Other people had played with the volume or the experience, and sees the body moving through spaces almost as a carving operation. Transitional geometry might look fancy but the operational/functional aspect can be tricky.

Other great things I learned in the review:

1) always pay attention to what the architect is not showing you - which normally is what they have not thought about
2) always being consistent in the rhetoric of your design - the perception of the viewers should be the same through the drawings, models and the words, which means the orchestra of the representation plays an important role in the story that you want to tell
3) architectural design is always about translating ideas generated in other fields into architectural language. This means not to be literal about the idea or inspiration you have had but to utilize the principles/diagrams/imagination that is inherently alien to conform architecture - to use the idea and play with the spaces. That is to say, instead of relying on metaphors and pure ideals, the design process should be building upon architectural elements translated/transcends from its original form. It also requires activators. The activators can be anything - program, subject/object relationship, light, experience, stairs or anything else that is important.  Of course each architect does it differently, that is why we need to study from each other and to see how each person makes that jump/push in the design.
4) the specificity of design: what is what - oblique is oblique, transitional geometry is transitional geometry. Do not lose the specificity and legibility of the design while making changes and adjustment, always being mindful about what the story is and what you want to convey to the audience.

THE OBLIQUE

So my instructor didn't like the new ramping Koolhass system...she asked me to go back to the previous idea  Sadly I had to abandon all the drawings I made for the other idea but it is ok.

The Oblique Function was first developed in the 60's by Architecture Principe (Claude Parent & Paul Virilio) and since then is still the main element of Parent's architecture (Villa Drusch built in Versailles in 1963). It goes beyond the Euclidian geometry and explore a new dimension in space.

My design is about creating an oblique flooring system as a critique of orthogonality. My approach to marry the two incompatible plans is to search for an intermediate level which is geometrically referential to both plans and simultaneously challenges the conventional floor stacking system in the third dimension.
As you can see the ramps are positioned in a rhythmic way between the two plans while creating volumes both above and below.

• using the plans and sections to show the positioning of ramps and floor plates

The application of such topology to the building as a whole establishes a new type of connection between floor plates (in this case, two incompatible plans), amplifying the connectivity through the oblique, which blurs the boundary of floors as well as de-emphasizing the distinction between habituation and circulation.

• The genealogy of the intermediate floor plates (the hand-drawn diagram I showed to you)
• The connectivity (the diagram showing the oblique floor plates connected as a whole)

Still developing

BABE in the WOODS

Things are little bit out of control, and I found it hard to negotiate between my own intention and what my instructor was asking for. Self-doubt produced by non-exciting design is further exemplified by lack of sleep. I wonder what is the yardstick that we can evaluate our design against? SH told me that no design can be pro in every aspect, but we always aggregate our attention to a certain criterion such as functionality/aesthetics or philosophy. So it is extremely important to know that what the project is really about.

My instructor said that my project has really evolved into an amplification of the irony between the floor plates and it is going to be a critique of such. Therefore, I would go to an extreme and demonstrate the subversion of the paradigm. I was hesitating on doing that because I was worried that it is too literal to just copy the idea from Rem in his Library project, but I guess the idea of such critique is there, and I should find a way to communicate that out either in the same form as Rem or another system by my own invention.

All the unnecessary work were done due to the fact that I did not understand the intention of her mentioning the example and did not understand correctly what the example was really about.

SH also pointed out that my design is not quite interesting enough, for it lacks spatial diversity and novelty/exciting moments. Also I should think about the sense of arrival, about fluidity and statics. There has to be a story of such trespassing/ journey otherwise any structure can do the same thing. Motivation of each component is also very important in design.

Mine was not quite there in amplifying the continuity that I wanted to bring up to table. Therefore, I decided to amplify the connection between floor plates to an extreme, almost like a vertical Boulevard so people can traverse freely from the lower plan to the upper plan while creating a progression through a sense of arrival - rising - climax - diminishing - resolution.

REM's library: instead of a simple stacking of floors, section of each level are manipulated to touch those above and below; all the planes are connected by a single trajectory, a warped interior boulevard that exposes and relates all programmatic elements. Through the scale and variety of spaces, the effect of the inhabited planes becomes almost that of a street; this boulevard generates a system of supra-programmatic urban elements in the interior: plazas, parks, monumental staircases, cafes, shops. To enrich the circulation experience, and to introduce more dfficient and utilitatiran paths, escalators and elevators create short circuits that complement pedestrian options with mechanical ones and establish the necessary programmatic connections.

THE KEY to this exercise is 1) generation of the intermediate planes using geometrical rules; 2) connection/communication between floor plates which subverts the conventional floor paradigm via utilizing a vertical boulevard ( which is simultaneously a circulatory apparatus and a critique to the paradigm) ; 3) such manipulation is aimed to create various scales of spacial experience. 4) think about the hierarchy of spaces and how it ties to this new form of geometry?

Stop self-doubting and just go to work!

LOOSING CONTROL?

Maybe looking up precedences IS a good way to move forward. I decided to  my project from a more volumetric perspective and instead of ramps, I think I am going to go with linear connections between the floor plates.

Since the scheme I came up with for the intermediate plan was different but referential to both plans (cross-symmetry and juxtaposition of big + small rooms), I think I will carry that to the vertical dimension in that the connections between floor plates should have an "alternating" pattern to create interesting spaces. At the same time, these connecting "ramps/slopes" will displace most of the walls and be indicative of a spatial system, which I have not quite figured out yet.

As for legibility, I think this is a better representation of my idea to have a "in-between" plane.
My concern is whether my design was too dependent on the formal relationships and the spaces created was not interesting enough. Maybe this is still not a thesis? 

I went ahead and modified the floor plates and to actually connect these planes, at the same time I was hoping to create a continuous system that almost looks like the floors are cracking. But I found that the circulation system is not too harmonious with the planes I created. At this point I think my thesis on the vertical level is still unconsolidated..  so I still find it difficult to make closures.  I asked my instructor whether I should work on the geometry in section to come up with a thesis or I should just think about it 3-dimensionally and continue tweaking the floor planes, her words:


"very exciting - that the circulation is not harmonious is exactly great - now use it and think of transitional geometries, think of how the stairs push out in space and may take that which contains them with them. (you may study Scott Cohen, Tel Aviv Museum for that, or his house in ordos. See how geometry is used to emphasize tension, incongruities in the design, or also suggests a dynamic)
Try to propose several solutions for the stairs and also the facades."

The vertical geometry should then be able to convey tension/incongruities/dynamic between the floor plates, between floor plates and the stairs, between the facade and the interior spaces. I have to work out several solutions to this problem. I feel a little bit lost since I am not sure this direction I went is the most appropriate one, but I guess I will have to work it out and see what's in it then. Sometimes going without knowing might be a bliss.

WHEN YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO...

I am still unable to come up with an overall thesis that dictates the spatial arrangements both in plan and section. Although I came up with the merging intermediate plan, I was fudging on the design in the vertical direction, which was soon exposed. My studio instructor saw that right away and told me to look up the Paris Library designed by Rem Koolhaas where the floors are interrelated to each other and in constant communication. My intention was not legible enough and I still need a strong thesis that makes me authoritative in every design decision I make.

What should I do when I reach an impasse? Looking at precedents is definitely an option, but is that always the case?

I really appreciate my instructor's word that the thesis should be a very personal thing which explores what you would like to express through the building. Maybe just go in and think about the spatial experiences without too much emphasis put on the concepts and forget about trying to make some rules out of it? Hmmmm....

ZEBRA or GREY HORSE [HOUSE]

As I have said I re-studied the plans and found that there is a recursive hierarchy of the spaces on the upper floor whereas a strong central axis dominates the lower level and split the whole space into two major parts.

I also studied the Villa Muller by Adolf Loos and was inspired by his distinctive hierarchy among the architecture of the rooms and the architecture of displacement/stairs/circulation, but contradictory between the two. His spatial arrangement was based on function/program, which is not something that I would like to go into, but I do need some clue/system that directs the way I arrange the spaces.

I tried to make a transitional floor that disrupts the symmetry of the lower floor as well as the hierarchy in size on the upper floor, but SH made a comment that it is too solid as opposed to the transparency that we are asked to achieve. He pointed out that the right thing to do is to come up with a floor with transparency (ref. Colin Rowe), which is referential to both floor as a zebra to a black and a white horse rather than a grey one ( I love this analogy a lot!). The intermediate floor should be able to be interpreted in both ways!

Now the key thing is to play out the 3-D arrangement of the floors (maybe the answer to a planar puzzle lies within sections? ), which is totally arbitrary and I am not comfortable doing without any reference. What would the reference be then?

The stairs? It seems that so far I have placed all the floor planes onto the circulation path that I created from the plan, which is subjected to change (study more about the possibility of stairs and their relationships to the rooms!) Also note that the circulation is possibly very long due to the fact that the plans are not compatible.

Or try to elucidate the key feature of both floors, the apply its genetics to the intermediate level, and then combine it two the parents in the way that's only logical.

So, for the upper level, Plan A, rooms are of a discursive hierarchy, size-wise, and also symmetrical along the central horizontal axis; the circulation is invasive and curly in the end.
For the lower level, Plan A, strictly symmetrical along the central vertical axis; circulation is in the center and on both sides towards the center.

Therefore, the intermediate plan should be symmetrical in both ways (point symmetry) and have one pair has discursive spaces. There should be a central circulation goes in and two on the sides. But how to arrange them in the third dimension? Complementary to the circulation planes?

Note that I should make the 3D arrangement in a way that could make two radically different interpretations, as transparency dictates. Also note that the circulation should be properly planned out.

WHERE SHOULD I START?

THE THINKING PROCESS

Where should I start? Faced with the two incompatible plans to be married for our first assignment, I have no clue of how to approach it. I started to lay them over using traces and sketches, and then here is the question:

Do I find formal similarities/relationships between the two plans that I can latch on to?
Do I construct a tectonic system (grid/any kind of reference) that is somewhat relevant to the logic embedded in the existing plans/buildings?
Do I seek an apparatus suitable for the idea/concept given?
Do I find an overarching idea/quality/thesis in the work and the derive everything from it?
And many other options. I am trying to accumulate the design modes that I have encountered, and I think all these approaches have their merits.

I guess there is no panacea in desing as in everything else, then it just comes down to choose the most appropriate method to solve the design problem, as the problem is in itself seeking the key that matches perfectly. Louis Sullivan has said that "A proper building grows naturally, logically, and poetically out of all its conditions." Thus understanding one's project in a serendipitous way is essential in finding the most suitable design solution.

Whenever you do not know what to do, just dig deeper into the project to reveal what is in its genetic code and the poetry lies within it. Of course it is subjected to individualistic interpretations, but that's how design/architecture works - architecture is the projection of the architects themselves in both actuality and fantasy.

So, to understand my problem to a finer degree,  I would love to speculate about the followings:

The divided spaces suggested by the floor plan, and what might be hidden
The symmetry
The typology of rooms/spaces
The geometry/formal relationships
The connections/similarities

What else?

Also, See Hong said that trying to formulate a story and construct a hierarchy is a good way to move forward.

Stay tuned. I love to speculate about the design process!

ON CONTRADICTION and TYPICAL PLAN

Studio has started! The first project is to marry two incompatible plans as an exploration into the spatial relationship between two set points and to design from plans.

One of the readings is Venturi's Complexity Contradiction, which considers a new dimension of "time, space, and architecture"with multiple focus thus multiplicity and flexibility. Here are some notes:

The tradition of "either-or" versus "both-and" architecture;
         The source of the both-and phenomenon is contradiction, its basis is hierarchy, which yields several levels of meanings among elements with varying values.
          => produce ambiguity and tension
          => valid ambiguity promotes useful flexibility

Both-and versus double-functioning
the "both-and" architecture emphasizes double meanings and the relation of the part to the whole, and the "double-functioning" element pertains to the particulars of use and structure.
          =>(parallel to) the "vestigial element" discourage clarity of meaning, it promotes richness of meaning instead
            => (like) the "rhetorical element", is infrequent in recent architecture and mostly ornamental

TYPICAL PLAN by REM
   
The significance of typical plan:

• the end of architectural history: fetishization of the atypical plan
•     typical plan is part of an unacknowledged utopia and the future of architecture, which strip out all the traces of uniqueness and specificity: the plan without qualities yet of primary importance, since on the floor performed all the activities
•  //it never occurred to me how bad I am at reading plans and to spatially visualize the orthographic drawings from the paper. The different sets of rooms and sections tell different stories about a lot about how human would occupy the space and what kinds of interactions would take place. Or even, how we architects can direct people through the spaces

The characteristics of a typical plan

• rectangle: pragmatism
• minimalism for the masses: pure objectivity
• can only be in typical plan, but not sleep, eat and make love.
• deep: beyond the assumption that the contact with the exterior is a necessary condition for human happiness
• a world laundered of ego
• western: the stamp of modernity itself; but failed in Europe
• a place of worship
• relentlessly enabling, ennobling background
• repetition: indeterminacy; undefined
• typical plan * n = a building
• the authors as erasers
• hidden affinities with other arts; the positioning of its cores on the floor has a suprematist tension
• as empty as possible: exclusion, evacuation, non-event
• typical plan makes no choices, and postpones the decision, therefore keeps it open forever
• // design is a process which leads to the reduction of possibility/entropy, in contradiction to other natural processes
• An absence of content in quantities that overwhelm or simply pre-empt intellectual speculation

//I'm not sure that I understand it correctly, but it seems to me that Rem is proposing/unrevealing a typical plan for modern day business that strips all the superfluous addition of architecture that aims at the optimization of work space, which arguably contributes to the modern day white-collar caricature. Through the stacking of the typical plan skyscrapers erect. Within each typical plan, the positioning of the program creates a tension, both on the same level and onto other connective levels.

How would these contributes to my design of marrying two plans?