Landscape/Site/Time

Carol Burns, "On Site: Architectural Preoccupations" Drawing Building Text, ed. A. Kahn (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1991) 147-65

John Brinckerhoff Jackson, "The Word Itself" Discovering the Vernacular Landscape (New Haven: Yale University Press,1984) 2-8

Rafael Moneo, "The Murmur of the Site" Anywhere (New York: Rizzoli, 1992) 48-53

John Brinckerhoff Jackson, "A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time" A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time (New Haven: Yale University Press,1994) 24-26

Question:

Site and Landscape are terms that we have over used to the point that many of us no longer know the meaning of the words. Carol Burns defines site to mean the local position of a building, town, or monument, and landscaped is defined by this author as the portion of land that the eye can comprehend in a single glance. Having read these definitions I got to thinking, What is it that we are architects do to the 'site'? How do we treat the 'landscaped' that surrounds our given site? Have architects completely forgotten about the meaning of these words and thus have they forgotten their purpose?

Weathering/Shadow/Memory

Readings:

David Leatherbarrow and Moshen Mostafavi, On Weathering: The Life of Buildings in Time (Cambridge: The M.I.T. Press, 1993) 4-135 (text only)

Adolfo Natalini, "Forward" and "Places," Figures of Stone (Milano: Electa Editrice, 1984) 7-15

Alex T. Anderson, "Thinking in Shadow" Column 5: Volume 25 (Seattle: Department of Architecture, University of Washington, 2001) 40-45

Question:
Architecture and weathering, for many architect it is their job to create buildings that can withstand the test of time in some way. We look to the past for our examples of how well buildings should withstand the test that time sets forth. Many of the buildings we look at ruins are now, but at the same time they are still examples to how 100years or more should effect a building.

However, recent trends in architecture have lead us to believe that allowing a building to age is a bad thing. We are constantly preforming mini face lifts on building to keep them looking younger and new. By doing so we gradually change the building from what it was meant to be into something else. The building gradually loses its soul. That said if nothing were done the building would slowly fall apart and be no more. Is there a happy medium for building to be allowed to age to that perfect point were we love them all the more without falling into despair? Can we create architecture that bends in the wind but does not break? Architecture that ages gracefully without the constant need for maintenance?

Proportion

Readings:

Primary Readings

Aldo van Eyck, "place and occasion" (reformatted excerpt) Team 10 Primer, ed. Alison Smithson (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1968) 101(also available in other publications)

Aldo van Eyck, "Wasted Gain" Architecture in the Age of Scepticism; compiled by Denys Lasdun (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984) 234-236

Aldo van Eyck, "The Interior of Time" Meaning in Architecture; edited by Charles Jencks and George Baird (New York: George Braziller Inc., 1969) 171

Aldo van Eyck, "Building a House" (excerpts) Hubertus House (Amsterdam: Stichting Wonen, 1982) 43-65

Samuel Mockbee, "Rural Studio," Architectural Design : A.D Volume: 68 Issue: 7-8 (July 1998) 72-79

Samuel Mockbee, "The Role of the Citizen Architect," Good Deeds, Good Design: Community Service Through Architecture, edited by Bryan Bell (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004) 151-156

Secondary Readings

Robert Venturi, "The Inside and the Outside," Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1966) 71-89

William Willoughby, "'. . . place and occasion mean more.' -- Contested Divisions between the Inside of Occasion and the Tempo of Place" ACSA West Regional Conference, October 11-13, 2001 (Bozeman, Montana)

Question:

Proportion is something that is instinctual for so many people, we immediately know when something is off, or does not look right. We recognize symmetry, and use it to determine if something of someone is beautiful. However there are many measures of proportion, we could probably count forever trying to get an exact number, some of the more well know proportioning systems architects refer back to are the Vitruvian Man, Golden section, and the Fibonacci Spiral. That's all well said and done, but what is proportion?

Proportion is often said to be relevant. Out of context would you recognize the worlds smallest man, or the worlds tallest man? Probably not, but as an architect or a student of architecture shouldn't we have our own individual proportioning system or the ability of 'guesstimate' with in a reasonable degree? Architects that actually sketch freehand, may have the ability to make rough drawings that are nearly accurate (meaning a bathroom is proportionate in size to a living room or bed room), but in that process does the proportioning or measuring of the drawings need to come in before or after the sketching starts? And if proportioning and freehand, creative sketching must be separate in the initial design process when should they come together?

Video: smallest man, and tallest woman. (when you watch the smallest man look for his shoes on the window sill.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dJCfzyxTEY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSQ0PHHFHOs