mediating geography: threshold places
DESCRIPTION
SAUL Final Year Thesis 2012 Alan HilliardTRANSCRIPT
Mediating Geography :Threshold Places
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Abstract 3
Essay - Mediating Geography : 4 Threshold Places
Introduction
Place
Journey
City
Theatre
House
Door
Window
Body
Conclusion
Testing - Landscape thresholds : Shannon wash houses project 23
Mediation Studies 28
Site 30
Programme / Schedule of Areas 38
Concept and design development 39
Bibliography 64
Contents
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My thesis investigations are based on ideas of threshold and mediation in architecture. Movement or mediation between distinct places implies thresholds; skin, walls, doors, bridges etc. This mediating geography describes the physical conditions of the elements that enclose, separate and negotiate between us and the surrounding world. These elements have a duration and an intensity of experience as we pass through them or a power and significance as they enfold. Exploring mediations at various scales, from the city to the house, and the door to the skin, further the ideas of an architecture of reconciliation (reconciling between two or more specific places). This is about finding an architecture based on the meeting place between conditions; light and dark, public and private, fast and slow, which might become more than an object building, to be a geography of mediation which meaningfully describes the spaces, structures, programmes and experiences of inhabitation.
The first part of the project consists of an essay entitled ‘Mediating Geography: Threshold places’, in which these ideas are outlined and explored at a conceptual level, engaging with other texts, images, buildings and experiences to highlight areas of testing. Some of the ideas are then tested on a specific site, creating an architectural project which begins to question the thesis at a small, easily digestible scale.
Abstract The second part is a more developed site specific architectural project. This allows the thesis to be tested using physical parameters of local environment and geography, social and economic conditions, programme and users experience to enhance the possibilities of the exploration.
Following my investigations in mediation and the space between conditions, the programme for the project developed as a place of performance including making, movement and learning as part of performance. The traditional thresholds between actor and spectator are questioned and spaces of circulation (procession) mix with programmed spaces (ritual) creating experiential relationships between active and passive users. Along with performances, events, rehearsal and teaching spaces the programme extends to costume and stage set making as well as the making of stage boats which move up river to interact with the city, making the river part of the public space of the city and testing the boundaries/thresholds of inhabitation along the river edge.
Engaging with the ideas raised in my essay, the design project aims to test the notions of mediation and threshold in the built environment at varying scales and intensities, from a person entering a space, to the building’s relationship with the city, and beyond to the city’s connection with its river.
The bias towards form making and programmed ‘rooms’ which we move between as quickly as possible shifts to highlight the importance of the geography of the space between and the way in which we traverse it. In the inhabitation of, and protection from the surrounding elements, every opening (door, window, vent etc.), circulation space or enclosing envelope, everything which describes a point of mediation/transition in the built environment, takes on a significance beyond physical necessity, becoming social and psychological expressions.
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Spaces have multiplied, been broken up and have diversified. There are spaces today of every kind and every size, for every use and every function. To live is to pass from one space to another, while doing your very best not to bump yourself.
In this description of inhabitation, building and living from Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, Georges Perec highlights the movement from “one space to another” as living; as a fundamental of our inhabitation of the spaces around us. In this movement, between these places, there is a mediator or connector. These spaces of mediation/movement in which we must, as Perec notes,
1. Georges Perec and John Sturrock, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces (London: Penguin, 2008), 6.
Fig. 1. Built threshold - Ballybunion, Co. Kerry.A small intervention describes a line in the landscape, marking one place bounded from another.
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do our very best not to bump ourselves, affect the way we live and inhabit. In exploring this place to place, or space to space movement, it is the in-between space that is important; the place that one passes through on the journey. These threshold spaces are as varied as a door or a bridge, a signpost or a treeline, a cloister or the city limits but are always highly significant in the conception and experience of architecture. These thresholds are mediators that set up physical, emotional and psychological lines which act as meaningful barriers or connectors, in and between space. They define and control social practices, public and private spheres, and levels of interaction and intimacy between the self and the external world. It is perhaps these threshold places which are most significant in the art/architecture of inhabitation. The bedrooms, classrooms and offices could be understood as objects dispersed in the spaces between this architecture. Internal and external space (outside the home, inside my room, in my skin etc.) is described between the threshold, and it is this mediating space which is most exciting.
The movement between places implies a threshold that has a duration and an intensity, both of which fluctuate creating physical and psychological changes to experience. Moving to the water’s edge for example or arriving at an area sheltered from the wind; these journeys influence our perception of the places we have come from and the ones we are going to. The possibilities in this stretched threshold for an experiential architecture are
Introduction
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5numerous. Memory, time and emotion fluctuate with the structures, materials, sounds, smells, associations, implications and details which are all potentially critical. These points of threshold/mediation set up and control relations between the inhabitant and the surrounding environment. In The poetics of space Bachelard suggests that a storm makes sense of shelter for us, and shelter makes the storm good, enjoyable and recreational. In this reciprocal relationship two separate entities/conditions are required, as well as a mediator which changes how we think about our surroundings. Georges Perec further describes the psychological significance of the threshold, noting:
We protect ourselves, we barricade ourselves in. Doors stop and separate. The door breaks space in two, splits it, prevents osmosis, imposes a partition. On one side, me and my place, the private, the domestic….on the other side, other people, the world, the public, politics…You can’t simply let yourself slide from one into the other…You have to have the password, have to cross the threshold, have to show your credentials, have to communicate, just as the prisoner communicates with the world outside.
Fig. 2. Coastal edge condition - Ballybunion, Co. Kerry.Extended and fluctuating boundary of tidal zone as threshold/mediating geography between land and sea.
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2. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas (Boston: Beacon, 1994).
3. Georges Perec and John Sturrock, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces (London: Penguin, 2008), 37.
In exploring these boundaries of experience in varying contexts and scales, from the scale of the city to the house and from the door to the skin, which may be real or imagined, explicit or implied, we can examine and understand this mediating geography and better know the context in which we work, inhabit and live.
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What does it mean, to live in a room? Is to live in a place to take possession of it? What does taking possession of a place mean? As from when does somewhere become truly yours? Is it when you’ve put your three pairs of socks to soak in a pink plastic bowl? .... Is it when you’ve experienced there the throes of anticipation, or the exaltations of passion, or the torments of a toothache?
To begin exploring spaces of mediation (the place between), it would be useful to first discuss the meanings and implications of the concept of ‘place’. Paul Selman has described place as “a
4. Georges Perec and John Sturrock, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces (London: Penguin, 2008), 24.
5. Paul Selmon, People, Place and Nature, lecture (12th October 2011).
8. Selmon, People, Place and Nature, lecture.
6. Tim Cresswell, Place: a Short Introduction. (Malden, Mass: Blackwell, 2011), 8.
7. Cresswell, Place: a Short Introduction, 2.
distinct, recognizable and consistent pattern of elements that make one landscape distinct from another, rather than better or worse.” This differs slightly from Yi-Fu Tuan’s description as a “meaningful location” which we get to know and endow with value in that it allows for the inclusion of natural forces and forms as place makers. It suggests there can be a ‘place’ which is distinct from any other and yet no one has to spend any time there getting to know it or making it their own in order for it to be a ‘place’ rather than a ‘space’. It may then be the case that it is process which makes place, whether human or natural. The recession of a glacier changing the landscape has the same place making effect as a family decorating their home, hanging personal pictures and creating memories through their daily inhabitation. In these processes the scales/rates of change and the actors involved vary greatly but the process is always temporal.
In this way space has a history. Tim Cresswell describes this as “the hauntings of past inhabitation,” Paul Selman defines it as ‘revelence’; left over residue. To explain this Selman gives some examples, noting that if you put a magnet to iron, when you take it away some magnetism is left behind in the iron, or if you delete the contents of floppy disk, wiping it clean, some information will always remain. Applied to the landscape or to the city these concepts have significance in our experience and memory of places and their associated meanings. These meanings are temporal however and inevitably lose value in time. To take an example of
Place
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7this ‘revelence’; Thomond Bridge in Limerick city centre which was built in 1836 by James Pain is a seven arch bridge which was built to be wider and more accessible than the previous bridge on the same site. The previous bridge had fourteen arches and as can be seen from the drawing in fig. 3 the new bridge incorporated the pier foundations of the old bridge. While maintaining the same route and reusing the dimensions/scales of the old (spanning to every second foundation – fourteen arches becoming seven arches) the new bridge maintains some of the memory of the old within the context of those who experience the city; it is informed by its historical context. These concepts of memory and history are important factors in our experiences and attachments with specific places. In Remembering the City: Characterising Urban Change, Stephen Dobson explains that “city form conveys two images – the experiential and the remembered….in this sense the temporal and spatial components of the city merge to form our interpretation of city space.” He suggests that failing to think about these transformations “represents a process of dislocation between people and place.” He is not suggesting a preservation of the city as it stands today but a process of change that will allow changes to place “to erode at a pace which is acceptable to those for whom these may have meaning…the rate of change is as important as the nature of the change itself.”
While understanding of place is temporal, it can also be described as dynamic. Discussing ‘place’ as opposed to ‘space’ Yi-
9. Stephen Dobson, “Remebering In The City: Characterising Urban Change,” Town Planning and Architecture 35, no. 2 (June 2011): 104-109.
10. Cresswell, Place: a Short Introduction, 8.
Fu Tuan suggests that their differences are based in movement, in which place is a pause in space:
What begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value….The ideas ‘space’ and ‘place’ require each other for definition. From the security and stability of place we are aware of the openness, freedom, and threat of space, and vice versa. Furthermore, if we think of space as that which allows movement, then place is a pause; each pause in movement makes it possible for location to be transformed into place.
While this remains the case there are, within the space of movement, within the space in-between places, other powerful and meaningful places. Their meanings can be attributed to context and participation, as context plays a dominant role in place description, i.e. the specifics of a place are defined, understood and remembered in their difference from other places; the things that make it specific. With separate and distinct places contextualized, there is a point of change, a moment between two places in which the specifics of both are experienced and related to each other, which is a place in itself. This place is given its
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8 identity by both surrounding places and allows for an experience which is an emergence of the two surrounding experiences. Kurt Koffka’s quote describes the relationship well:
It has been said: the whole is more than the sum of its parts. It would be more correct to say that the whole is something else than the sum of its parts, because summing up is a meaningless procedure, whereas the whole part relationship is meaningful.
These in-between ‘places’ or thresholds are dynamic and have the potential for an experiential architecture of their own. They are the mediators between places, between nature and the built, between public and private, big and small or light and dark. They are vital amplifiers and protectors in our understanding and inhabitation of the world.
Beyond the meanings of places in their temporal and immediate experience, places have a significant role in identity, both personal and collective. An extract from Hortense Calisher’s Early Lesson’s describes the intimacy between place and self:
11. Kurt Koffka, Principles of Gestalt Psychology (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd, 1955), 176.
12. Hortense Calisher, “Early Lessons,” New York Times Magazine, April 28th, 1985, 34.
13. Juhani Pallasmaa, “Space, Place, Memory and Imagination: The Temporal Dimen-sion of Existential Space,” in Spatial Recall: Memory in Architecture and Landscape ed. Marc Treib (Routledge, 2009), 197.
New York and I have been together since I was born. I own tone poems of its sounds, playable on no earthly cassette of present design. My brain is scrawled with its old byways, which, if streets had sexes, must several times have shifted roles.
In Space, Place, Memory and Imagination, Juhani Pallasmaa suggests that the role of architecture is to “provide the ground and projection screen of remembrance and emotion.” He proposes that memory is the ground of self-identity, that we find ourselves in our remembered experiences and they help to shape us. As all memories are “spatialized and situational”, it follows that the buildings and landscapes we inhabit form part of our self-identity. Architecture then has the task of “expanding and reinforcing our sense of self.” This identity that he discusses can be both individual and collective. He suggests that collective events form part of our regional identity, and that the spaces these histories play out in are the physical manifestations of our collective memory, reinforcing the relationship and connection we feel with those around us. In this way specific places are formed with meaning and memory engrained.
With thresholds outlined as significant places, vital amplifiers and protectors in our understanding and inhabitation of the world, it follows that they are also part of the formation of identity. But how is this identity formed, what is our relationship with these places?
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14. Cresswell, Place: a Short Introduction, 10-11.
15. Alberto Perez-Gomez, “The space of Architecture: meaning as presence and representation” in Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture, (San Francisco, CA: William Stout, 2006), 17.
The physical and psychological positioning of the inhabitant in place/threshold experiences is central to defining their relationship. While the majority of spaces in the built environment are named and therefore programmed, we often maintain only a passive relationship with them, whereas in crossing the threshold between two places, whether it is a doorway, a bridge, a half an hour walk or a four hour flight, active dynamic participation is required. We are involved in negotiating the space rather than passively viewing/consuming it. We are in a process of movement, however fast or slow, imperceptible or even imagined, we are at that boundary of transit between two conditions. These active/passive relationships can also be seen in the difference between ‘landscape’ and ‘place’ as discussed
Journey by Tim Cresswell in Place: A Short Introduction. He suggests that “Places are things to be inside of,” whereas landscapes are a visual construct in which the viewer is outside of the place. Landscape is what is seen from a particular location; “We do not live in landscapes we look at them.” These concepts, which can also be described as spectator/actor relationships, are also discussed by Alberto Perez-Gomez in The space of architecture: meaning as presence and representation in relation to the advent of the Greek theatre:
The introduction of the amphitheatre poignantly represents the profound epistemological transformation signalled by the advent of philosophy. This becomes a place for seeing, where a distant contemplation of the epiphany would have the same cathartic effect on the observer as was accomplished previously through active, embodied participation in the ritual.
Here he is discussing the differences between the Chora (or dance platform) on which everyone was involved and active in the performance, and the amphitheatre which changed the relationships of performance and the levels of immersion in the ritual, creating the boundary between spectator and actor.
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16. Jane Wernick, Building Happiness: Architecture to Make You Smile, (London: Black Dog, 2008), 26.
17. Wernick, Building Happiness: Architecture to Make You Smile, 19.
18. Tim Ingold, Lines: A Brief History, (London: Routledge, 2007), 72-76.
10 spaces of movement and pause set up a social and physical structure of exchange, encouraging human interaction in both rituals and routine behaviour, and space for serendipity.
In Tim Ingold’s discussion of movement in Lines, he explains the meanings of wayfaring as opposed to simply travelling. In many modern environments movement is considered only as a way of getting from place to place, with each place being a terminus where one re-enters the world which you were exiled from while in transit. Wayfaring on the other hand is not a transitional activity, but a way of being, a way of living. In the journey a stop is only temporary: an “unsustainable moment of tension”. He outlines this as the difference between a walk and an assembly, in which a walk is a continuous line and an assembly is a series of locations which must be joined up as quickly and efficiently as possible. These differences describe ways in which we inhabit and move in the world, and with Keith Bradley’s suggestions of these in-between places as where most meaningful social interaction occurs, and Scharoun’s ideas of relationships instead of objects in mind, how can we craft spaces that that are more about wayfaring than transit.
The following chapters begin to discuss these mediators, thresholds, frontiers and boundaries of varying scales, experiences, understandings and meanings.
In this context of active journey spaces and passive static spaces, the dynamics of social interaction as well as the interaction with the built surroundings change. At the 1951 Man and Space conference in Darmstadt, Hans Scharoun discussed a philosophy of ‘relationships’ as opposed to ‘objects’ as a way for a building to be a sensual rather than a purely visual experience. Without careful consideration of the in-between space, of the relationships between places, we are left with a series of objects which we move between as quickly as possible. It is active participation and immersion in the places of the journey/mediation that enhances the phenomenological possibilities in the experience of a place. In The happiness in-between Keith Bradley suggests that it is in these in-between places where most meaningful social interaction occurs; outside of programmed spaces, and he laments the loss of importance given to these types of place in recent building due to demands of cost and spatial economy:
They are places that you rush through, spending the minimum amount of time in…Historically, circulation spaces have been given more importance. Spaces for movement, whether cloister, gallery or hallway, were planned for informal or ceremonial enjoyment. The routes from entrance to room, and from one space to another, had significance and value…These
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Fig. 4 Tim Ingold’s Wayfaring vs Travelling sketches
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Fig. 3 Plan of Darmstadt Primary School, Hans Scharoun
Fig. 5 Tim Ingold’s Wayfaring vs Travelling sketches
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The mediating boundary between the city and the rural landscape is often described as sprawl. Dominated by a loose collection of object buildings in open space and low density suburban housing, this extended threshold often develops with little or no relation to existing city fabric. This condition is explored by Steven Holl in Edge of a City in which he argues for the densification, both physically and programmatically, of the fringes of our cities, aiming at both “liberating the remaining natural landscape, protecting hundreds of species of animals and plants that are threatened with extinction” and at a clearer delineation between “urban form and the agrarian landscape beyond”. In this overlapping “middle zone” he argues for the creation of spaces rather than objects, stating that “in the
City modern city the voids between buildings, not the buildings themselves, hold spatial inspiration”, creating an intensified urban realm where the city could grow, creating density rather than sprawl. Holl sees this area being constructed with human experience as an important factor, a phenomenological approach in which the senses, memory and imagination are engaged. In this engagement the consideration of threshold/mediation has vital impacts on understanding and experience. Threshold implies another space, one beyond the one you are in. It is a mediator between two places, two conditions, two experiences. In Holl’s arguments for city edge conditions he refers to this as a way of invigorating space. He states that:
The dimensions of an interior may well exist below or above the physical limits of its geometry. Spatial extensions beyond a room’s interior – those in a room flanking an open court, for example – may engage and extend the spirit of their interior. This spatial projection can be a way of invigorating minimal spaces.
The results of Holl’s proposed interventions are two-fold, like a door that both invites one to rest inside and allows one to escape out into the world, this edge looks two ways. It would
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21. John Hill, “Teatro Del Mondo,” A Weekly Dose of Architecture, 8th February, 1999, http://archidose.org/wp/1999/02/08/teatro-del-mondo.
22. John Hill, “Teatro Del Mondo,” A Weekly Dose of Architecture.
19. Steven Holl, Edge of a City, PAMPHLET ARCHITECTURE 13. (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1991).
20. Steven Holl, Edge of a City.
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13With neither theatre nor architecture existing without an event, Rossi focuses on the unexpected occurrences, the ever changing meanings of a place due to ever changing events. His theatre is not a place solely to watch performances but also a place to be watched, a place to observe and to be observed. This is accomplished on two levels, by placing the theatre as an object in the water and, on the inside, by placing the stage in the centre of the seats. As spectators become part of the backdrop for the theatrical event, the city of Venice is drawn inside through window openings in the upper balconies. An uneasiness occurs as the people sitting in these areas are aware of the presence of boats and the visual rise and fall of the theatre on the water.
In this condition which Rossi has set up, the position of the edge has changed, the event has changed and the spectator is now both inside and outside the event. The threshold has both multiplied and disappeared.
be protective (for the habitats and landscape beyond) as well as generative (in the more productive and active urban form at the city fringes).
Within the city limits, other boundaries such as rivers, boulevards, parks and railways are incorporated into the urban fabric, and in their extended thresholds, can enhance the understanding and experience of the city. They are part of the landscape of the city, experienced and remembered. They can also be obstacles, barring connections and limiting experience, depending on their relationship with the city.
A project which experiments with and blurs the lines of one such mediating boundary, temporarily altering the landscape of the city, is Aldo Rossi’s Teatro Del Mondo built for the 1979 Venice Biennale. Rossi was interested in the possibility of the city as theatre, architecture as a backdrop to life. In the theatre of the city bodies of water could be considered as stages or events. Boardwalks along riversides or promenades along seafronts set up the water as spectacle: it is the view that makes it a more pleasant walk. The introduction of Rossi’s theatre boat into the architectural event moves spectators onto the stage, blurring the lines between active participation and passive viewing. John Hill has written of Rossi’s Teatro Del Mondo as an event that changes boundaries and meanings, setting up new relationships. He describes it in the following:
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fig. 6, 7 & 8 Aldo Rossi’s Teatro Del Mondo
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23. Louise Pelletier, Architecture in Words: Theatre, Language and the Sensuous Space of Architecture, (New York: Routledge, 2006), 59.
24. Pelletier, Architecture in Words: Theatre, 60.
The traditional representation of a boundary line in theatre between actor and spectator is the proscenium arch. This is the arch surrounding the stage that frames the view of the action. It not only frames but it also hides. All the mechanics and secret craft of performance can be hidden from view, veiling reality and re-enforcing the illusion. If, as Rossi suggested, architecture is related to theatre in that it provides a backdrop for life, then are there also these relationships of actor and spectator, active and passive within social spheres? If so where do they fall in the geography of mediation?
Eighteenth century social life was widely influenced by the theatre. As Louise Pelletier notes in Theatre, Language and the Sensuous Space of Architecture;
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Theatre The role of the theatre became much more broader than dimply a form of entertainment; it changed how individuals related to one another in society. Acting was no longer restricted to the performing stage in theatres: it became a way to conduct oneself in society.
Inside the theatre the lines between actor and spectator were also blurred, with people reacting to and loudly getting involved with the action on stage. Pelletier suggests that this blurring was in part due to the design of the auditoriums, noting that;
Most boxes in a horseshoe theatre did not face the stage, so spectators attention tended to drift to their peers…Moreover, the numerous spectators (mainly the young and members of the upper rank) who sat on the stage of the Comedie francaise in Paris until 1759 often moved around freely and invaded the performing area. The presence of both actors and spectators on stage and the almost uniform lighting throughout the theatre made it difficult to distinguish the acting in the play from other kinds of acting.
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15fun of those who are performing above, and they in turn laugh at those below. But those who exert themselves the most are certain people who are chosen for this purpose at an early age, to endure fatigue. They are obliged to be everywhere: they go through places that nobody knows except themselves, and climb with surprising skill from tier to tier; they are up, they are down, and in every box; they dive, so to speak; they get lost, then reappear; often they go away from where one performance is going on in order to act in another. Eventually everyone goes off to a room where they act a special sort of play: it begins with bows and continues with embraces. They say that however slightly one man knows another, he has the right to suffocate him.
Montesquieu highlights the lack of difference in the situation, the lack of two distinct conditions and a mediator between them, as well as the “complementarities of seeing and being seen”. The city is an extension of the theatre.
25. Charles de Secondat, Baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu, Persian Letters, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), 79.
26. Pelletier, Architecture in Words: Theatre, 60.
Illuminating these physical and social threshold fluctuations in theatre, the character ‘Rica’ in Charles de Secondat, baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu’s novel Persian Letters describes the scene that she sees upon visiting the theatre; the performances of the spectators:
Yesterday I say something rather odd, although in Paris it happens every day. Toward the end of the afternoon, everyone assembles and goes to perform in a sort of show, called, so I have heard, a play. The main action is on a platform, called the stage. At each side you can see, in little compartments called boxes, men and women acting out scenes together, rather like those that we have in Persia. Here there may be a woman unhappy in love, who is expressing her amorous yearnings, while another, with great vivacity, may be devouring her lover with her eyes, and he looks at her in the same way. Every emotion is displayed on the face of these people, and conveyed with an eloquence which is all the more effective for being silent. Here the actresses are visible only down to the waist, and usually have a shawl, out of modesty, to cover up their arms. Down below there is a crowd of people standing up, who make
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27. Arnold Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, (London: Routledge, 2004), 15.
28. Simon Unwin, Twenty Buildings Every Architect Should Understand, (Oxon, England: Routledge, 2010), 156.
29. Unwin, Twenty Buildings Every Architect Should Understand, 156.
Fig. 9 (This page) Sequence of thresholds at dwelling entry.
Figs. 10 & 11 (Next page) Study model of Glenn Murcutt’s guest studio in Kempsey, New South Wales, Australia.
The door is a boundary between the foreign and the domestic worlds in the case of an ordinary dwelling, between the profane and the sacred worlds in the case of a temple.
Describing the route from outside to inside in the theatre is the ‘front of house’. This includes the lobby, ticket booths, cloak room etc. and is where gathering and meeting take place before and after the performance. Although this route moves from public to semi-public, and the expectations of the space and the experience change, it is not as meaningful and sacred as the threshold into the domestic space, the space of the home and
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House the private self. This protective skin mediates between two very different worlds and there are often contradictions in the need for a refuge and the desire to live closer to nature; to bring the outside in. In urban settings these frontiers are often described by a small walled ‘garden’ to the front, followed by a porch and then the front door, leading onto a hallway or reception room. Variations on this include stoops, lawns, gates etc. The architectural framework of this edge is psychologically and socially important.
Glenn Murcutt’s guest studio in Kempsey, New South Wales, Australia, carefully describes the space between inside and outside by the use of additions or extensions to a regular form. These additions mediate between the architectural object and the landscape. Jay Appleton’s prospect and refuge theory, as outlined by Simon Unwin, suggests that the way we feel about the landscape around us is directly related to the “sense of advantage we feel over its possible threats when enjoying a protected refuge with a wide view of the land around,” Considered in this sense the relationships of the built elements to each other and to the landscape set up a protected place. Unwin continues to describe this relationship in the following passage:
Prospect and refuge is a concept fundamental to architecture. Even a small shed establishes “
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17a centre, a home in the wide world, a datum against which one may know where one is…they change the generality of the open landscape by establishing somewhere specific – a place. Such places hold psychological emotional power as well as providing physical comfort. We gravitate towards them. We occupy them. We enjoy the containment and security they offer. We also like to sit in their mouths, anchored but able to take refuge if necessary, surveying the prospect of the world around. ”29
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The door offers the means to settle, but it is also what permits one to step out, to cross the border, to unsettle. The sedentary notion of lodging should never be thought without opening up the prospect of a nomadic dislodgement.
The door is a fundamentally significant part of the making of space, of the marking out of a place which we inhabit, because it is the point at which we move between the two conditions of “foreign and domestic”. There are an innumerable variety of durations and intensities to these spaces of movement which vary with culture, climate and context. Georg Simmel describes the
30. Georges Teyssot, “Windows and Screens: A Topology of the Intimate and the Extimate”, Log, no. 18, 2010, New York, 75-88.
31. Arnold Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, (London: Routledge, 2004), 15.
32. Georg Simmel, “Bridge and Door,” in Simmel on Culture: Selected Writings, (London: SAGE, 1997), 170-174.
power and significance of the door in the following passage from his essay Bridge and Door:
…the door demonstrates in a decisive fashion how separating and connecting are only two faces of one and the same action. Like the first man to build a road, the first to put up a door increased specifically human power as opposed to that of nature, cutting out a part from the continuity and infinitude of space and shaping it into a particular unit in accordance with one sense. In this way a fragment of space is unified and separated from the rest of the world. Given the fact that the door creates a sort of hinge between the space of man and all that lies outside it, it overcomes the separation between inside and outside. Precisely because it can also be opened, its closing produces an even stronger sensation of a separation from all that lies outside this space than that produced by a mere undifferentiated wall. The wall is mute. But the door speaks. It is essential to man in the deepest sense, placing a limit on himself, but with the freedom to take it away again, of being able to go outside it.
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…between world and subject there is always something that mediates – not so much a medium per se, but something that connects all those outside things and us.
In Windows and Screens: A Topology of the Intimate and the Extimate, Georg Teyssot outlines the characteristics and devices of the window. He describes the window as “an apparatus that separates and unites”. This description becomes clear in the etymology of the word window which derives from ‘wind’ and eye. It is both a defence against the external elements and an opening to look through, both in and out. The window as a device sets
33. Georges Teyssot, “Windows and Screens: A Topology of the Intimate and the Extimate”, 75.
34. Georges Teyssot, “Windows and Screens: A Topology of the Intimate and the Extimate”, 76.
35. Georges Teyssot, “Windows and Screens: A Topology of the Intimate and the Extimate”, 76-77.
Fig. 12 Camara Obscura, Mario Bettini, 1642.
up the conditions of an inside and an outside. It implies two distinct places that it separates and connects. Teyssot explains that these two places are not equal, and this inequality sets up “the conditions for the modern spectator. One can stare through a window and look at the view or at the passer-by, but without being seen”. This sets up, as he describes, “many sets of opposite spaces: the exterior and the interior, what is illuminated and what is adumbrated; the visible and the invisible, the manifest and the hidden”. The internal and the hidden becomes the intimate, and the relationship with the outside changes further as this intimacy creates a sense of ownership and privacy, a freedom from public gaze and opinion. The relationships that the window opening sets up are much more than simply the visual.
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Window
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Spheres determine (and are determined by) the interval between here and there. Placed between finite and infinite, and located between the symbolic and the diabolical, spheres are defined precisely by an inter-betweeness…In their intermediate role between encirclement and symbol, spheres create a situation of intermediality.
In Architecture as Membrane, Georges Teyssot describes architecture in terms of spheres which define our environment. In inhabiting the world we first create a clearing, and then construct
36. Georges Teyssot, “Architecture as Membrane,” in Explorations in Architecture: Teaching, Design, Research. Staub, Urs, and Reto Geiser. Basel: Birkhauser, 2008. 172.
37. Georges Teyssot, “Architecture as Membrane,” 170.
a skin/membrane to mediate with the surrounding conditions, creating an interior. Considering this enclosing skin/threshold from an unconventional point of view of Teyssot considers the possibilities in the use of prosthesis in determining this mediating membrane between the self and the external world. He describes new technologies and media as unavoidable and states that it is “urgent to conceive the body in relation to these new means – these new media: digital, virtual etc”. He continues to describe the potentials of technological integration as mediating membrane in the following:
Technology may not be integrated by ‘imagining’ a new environment, but perhaps by reconfiguring the body itself, pushing outwards to where its artificial extremities encounter the world. It is not so much a case of devising new dwellings for cyborgs. Those semi-human, semi-synthesized, constantly mutating entities are already environments, surfaces where relationships of self to world come into play. What is required is a reconsideration of the body, a literal re-crafting of it as an improved organism equipped with instruments, so that it can ‘inhabit’ the world and negotiate transactions with the multiple spheres of physical and mental comfort, media, and information.
Body
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38. Georges Teyssot, “Architecture as Membrane,” 170. 40. Georges Teyssot, “Architecture as Membrane,” 170.
39. Georges Teyssot, “Architecture as Membrane,” 170.
In allowing the spheres that define our environment to become an extension of the human body, not a separate architecture, but an integrated, fluctuating one, it becomes possible to, as Teyssot describes, “conceptualize them as a means of transforming our manner of seeing and conceiving the world, just as perspective was conceived in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance”.
This is an interesting reconsideration of the threshold between inside and out, between the ‘me’ and the ‘object’. The level of intimacy of this new threshold redefines these relationships from an enclosing element around the self to a situation where the thresholds have both multiplied (body to artificial extension, artificial extension to external world) and disappeared (direct inhabitation and control of surrounding conditions/media without a separate external skin). Teyssot describes the resultant conditions of the inhabitation of an interior, stating that:
The interior of the dwelling, finally, might be redefined as the movement of the body toward the exterior, in a state of ek-stasis (stepping forth), through the various filters which delimit our surroundings (places, vicinities, gateways, thresholds, frameworks, ledges, windows, openings, vistas, frontiers, borders, breakthroughs, gaps, screens, interfaces, cables, wireless networks).
One of the most interesting results of these explorations is the shifted position of architecture, of our relation to, and our participation with the built environment.
Given this novel situation, an architectural design no longer leads simply to something to look at (such as an object or building), but rather becomes an apparatus that allows the viewer – i.e. the user – to behold something other than the thing itself.
This is comparable to the changing positions of theatre spectators and performers as previously discussed, in its fluctuating position of participation, of seeing and being seen, of being protected and exposed.
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Mediating geography describes the physical conditions of the elements that enclose, separate and negotiate as well as the effects these conditions have on human activity. These elements have a duration and an intensity in experience as we pass through them or a power and significance as they enfold. Rather than the conception of forms and objects in the built environment, architecture can be considered as a meeting place, one that, as Teyssot describes, “brings the dialectic sides into contact and reconciles their opposing forces. It is an architecture of reconciliation…taking place between the polarities of inside and outside, here and there, small and large, part and whole, house and city, form and structure, and so forth”. This reconciling zone describes and enhances our experience of places, programs,
relationships and meanings. The bias towards form making and programmed ‘rooms’ which we move between as quickly as possible shifts to highlight the importance of the geography of the space between and the way in which we traverse it. Mediation between varied programs and environments allows for a diverse and rich place making with relationships that are both implied and explicit, real and imagined, remembered and learned. The exploration of interactions between the self and the external world, and ideas of ownership and privacy, seeing and being seen, acting and spectating at widely varied scales brings new ways of thinking about these places as well as new descriptions of their opposing conditions of public life and communal experience. In a reciprocal/dual relationship the conditions of the context effect and enhance the meeting place between, and ideas of spatial projection as discussed by Steven Holl allow for more vigorous and exciting spaces and relationships. Teyssot’s discussion of prosthesis as mediators brings new ideas and possibilities to this architecture of reconciliation. Beyond the body, in the inhabitation of, and protection from the surrounding elements, every opening (door, window, vent etc.) take on a significance beyond their physical necessity, becoming social and psychological expressions.
Conclusion
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41. Georges Teyssot, “Aldo van Eyck and the Rise of an Ethnographic Paradigm in the 1960s,” in joelho, Nov, 2011. Available at: http://ojs.eventos-iuc.com/ojs/index.php/joelho/article/view/373/299.
23Testing:Landscape thresholds - Shannon wash houses project
Aerial photograph of Shannon Town and Airport
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A study/development project undertaken in Shannon explores movement within/between places and seeks to mediate our experience of the landscape and the processes we are involved in. With the airport lying one metre below high tide level of the river Shannon the embankments and the drainage of the land are important features in the making and maintaining of the place. Despite its importance the drainage channels are unseen, not hidden but not noticed. Beside one of these drainage channels sits the Methodist church. Its timber frame structure is raised off the damp ground on concrete footings. The existing embankment on the river edge protects the space from flooding. Its height also offers some protection from the wind and visually separates us from the estuary. Moving onto the top of the embankment allows a view of the mud, the water and the expanse of the estuary.
1. Drainage plan2. Ground condition section
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1. Existing church sketches2. Ground condition and drainage photographs
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Two wash houses are proposed, positioned either side of the embankment, one in, one out. One protected, one not. One is public and is where mud walkers might shower. This one is located inside the embankment. After being out in the exposed estuary walking in the mud the route takes you back over the embankment to the protected side. This is the first move from the exposed to the protected. A large concrete wall protecting from the wind is the second. Moving under the roof then protects from the rain and one more layer in, but still what could be considered outside is where the showers are located. These use water channelled from the existing drainage channel through a series of filtration layers. After showering you move inside the changing rooms which are the most ‘inside’ place in the structure, with complete enclosure but without insulation.
1. Concept / Site strategy drawings2. Wash house plans 1 : 2503. Wind diagram4. Plan and section development
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The second wash house in owned by the nearby church and it is located outside the protective embankment. From the church a pathway leads towards the estuary, becoming more exposed as it leads closer to the water. The path then moves over the embankment into the estuary landscape. Here you are exposed to wind, rain, and the expansive view of the water. The structure sits on stilts raising it out of the water (most of the time). It is high enough to be protected from high tide but may be submerged during the higher spring tides. This becomes part of its feeling of exposure and prevents its use at particular times. The movement out to this structure from the church for the purpose of washing (baptism?) is a significant journey/threshold. This significance is a direct product of its position in the landscape and the movement that position implies. This ties the structure to the place; it is engrained there and could not exist the same in another location. This happens within an existing condition which is structured in a new and particular way to allow a different experience and a new understanding of the place.
1. Site Plan (not to scale)
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28 Mediation Studies
Georgian buildingsLimerick, Ireland
This page1. Profiled solid outer masonary walls supporting timber floor spans2. Facade/Entry mediation
Oppostite3 & 4. Study model of Glenn Murcutt’s Guest studio, Kempsey,New South Wales, Australia
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Glenn Mucutt Guest StudioKempsey, New South Wales, Australia
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Site1 : 20000 Part plan of Limerick City along the River Shannon showing docklands to the south west.
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Limerick city, and more specifically the docklands area, is the chosen site for my thesis proposal. Limerick city once consisted of two more separate walled towns to the north and south – ‘English town’ and ‘Irish town’. The city was then developed on a Georgian grid to the south-west of this older development along the banks of the Shannon. This grid is now surrounded by a loose collection of suburban estates, and at the point between the two conditions; city centre to suburbs, there are some larger scale ‘entry buildings’ as shown in Fig. 2 overleaf. I am highlighting these as the points at which one is aware of entering the Georgian grid of the city. The docklands site is one such entrance to the grid, marked by the tall mill buildings on the docks site and acting as an entry/pivot point at the start/end of the grid.
1. Sketch of the docks site looking south west2. View of the quays and dock from the north bank near the parkland
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1. Walls of Limerick drawing showing old wall and adjacent buildings2. Limerick city centre grid drawing with surrounding large scale buildings defining edge of city centre. The docks is located to the south west.3. Docks object buildings4. Docks wall / skin structure
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It is a walled site, separate from the public life of the city. The continuous wall surrounding the docks makes it hidden from view and in-accessible. Once a thriving dock it has recently been in decline and its main sources of profit now come from the storage/export of scrap metal, and fertilizer imports. It is relatively underused and there have been calls in recent years for its redevelopment with mixed use housing and retail. The dock facilities consist of a large wet dock with one gate to the west and a small unused dry dock to the east. The old clock tower still stands beside this dry dock marking the old eastern gate to the wet dock. The existing buildings on the site can be separated into object buildings and buildings which are incorporated into the wall/skin of the site. On the opposite bank of the river Shannon there is a wet-parkland area popular with birdwatchers.
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5. Limerick docks site plan6. Limerick docks site section
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1. Model of docks site2. Sketches3. Image of the wall surrounding the site facing onto the dock road4. Image of the wet dock from the west side looking east showing the clock tower and Bannatyne mill silo
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1. Photograph showing the working graving dock, clock tower and old eastern entry into dock
2. Photograph showing dock extended to west and the start of the new western entrance to the dock which would replace the eastern entrance.
3. Photograph showing active use of the Shannon river in the limerick docklands.
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4. Photograph showing the ‘Flying Huntsman’ in the graving dock.
5. Fishing from the old eastern side of the docks.
6. Photograph showing the old Ranks mill buildings including a bridge crossing the main dock road. (All of which are since demolished except for the large mill building to the right of the image which remains on the docks site.)
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Programme/Schedule of Areas
Following my investigations in mediation and the space between conditions, the programme has develpoed as a place of performance, including making, movement and learning as part of performance. The traditional thresholds between actor and spectator are questioned and spaces of circulation (procession) mix with programmed spaces (ritual) creating experiential relationships between active and passive users. Along with performances, events, rehersal and teaching spaces the programme extends to costume and stage set making as well as the making of stage boats in the graving dock which move to interact with the city, making the river part of the public space of the city and testing the boundaries of inhabitation along the river edge.
Performance spaces (Auditorium) x 3 1.External Auditorium 430 sqm total - 160 sqm seating 2.Internal Auditorium 570 sqm total - 420 sqm seating 3.External event space 1100 sqm approx
Rehersal studios 3 x 85 sqm 1 x 35 sqm (beside stage)
Costume making 80 sqm
Set making / Stage boat building 1800 sqm
Learning spaces (Informal) 2 x 20 sqm
Offices 3 x 10 sqm
Storage (sets etc) 200 sqm
Archive 30 sqm
Bar 80 sqm
Café 140 sqm
ToiletsShowersChanging
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39Concepts and design development
Utilizing the strong existing conditions of the site became an important factor from early on in the project. Locating the proposal at the city end of the site allowed for the most engaging relationship with the city centre and its georgian grid while also allowing incorporation of the existing graving dock and clock tower.Fig.2 shows a concept montage of the ‘Flying Huntsman’, a Limerick boat, in the graving dock superimposed onto an image of the Salle du Manege; the indoor riding academy situated in the north end of the Tuileries Gardens in Paris which was the seat of deliberations during most of the French Revolution, from 1789 to 1798. This montage explores ideas of re-use and re-inhabitation of existing infrastructure for new public uses.
1. Diagram of traditional theatre layout2. Concept montage of the ‘Flying Huntsman’ in the Salle du Manege.
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Redefing the structure and boundaries (mediators) of theatre/performance spaces, the traditional gantry over the stage extends to cover the entire programme, allowing for its use and experience in all parts of the project. Moving up into this traditionally private space of the theatre becomes part of the structure and daily public use of the space.
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Inhabited gantry
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1. Concept drawing of a traditional theatre (black) with gantry extended over entire space (red) and being used as an aid in the building of Aldo Rossi’s Theatro Del Mondo.
2 & 3. Concept drawings of the inhabited gantry
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1. Model of graving dock and timber spans for auditorium seating.
2. Illustrations from 1737 and 1762 editions of Alain-Rene Le Sage’s ‘The Devil upon Two Sticks’ which were refered to throughout the project when developing concepts of threshold, privacy and internal/external relationships.
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1. Development models of mass concrete elements and filigree timber gantry.
2. Early design sketch of a circulation space showing concrete ground and object buildings with timber gantry over.
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1. Sketch sectional model through graving dock and external auditorium.
2 & 3. 1:250 Sketch model.
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1. 1:250 Sketch model.
2. 1:100 Part model testing structure, space and scale.
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The final project is a low energy structure in which the mediators between internal and external are blurred and often only suggested. It is mainly an external structure which can be utilized by the public on this riverside site. Some areas are more sheltered from the elements or serve as enclosed storage areas. The plans shown in Figs. 1 and 2 describe the varying levels of interiority (darkest being internal). These vary from protection from the weather, visual seperation from the exterior or a move to a more private space.The concrete object buildings at ground level set up a sequential promenade in which the user passes through or near the spaces of activity (making, performance, learning) and through varying levels of privacy, becoming part of the life of the building, and often part of the performance, blurring notions of seeing and being seen, actor and spectator. A large open public space for events is made to the city side of the site, with the proposed structure enclosing the space and finishing the city grid. Another smaller and more enclosed external event space is created beside the water of the dock, with the existing clock tower at one end and the large opening doors of the auditorium at the other. The structure of the gantry over the concrete base then takes the form of a series of trusses which vary depending on their use.
1. Ground floor plan.
2. First floor plan.
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1. Cross sectional perspective through graving dock (external auditorium space, theatre boat building area and central circulation route, all with gantry building over).
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River Shannon
1. Long sectional perspective from street to river
Main internal auditorium
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Central external event space Graving dock (theatre boat building) Stage set making and painting Archive / set storage Dock roadRehearsal
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571. Exploded axonometric view of proposed structure and its ralation to the docks, the river, and the city beyond
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1. 1:50 Section through part of boat building space and rehearsal/performance spaces developing construction details.
2. Render of costume making workshop.
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1. 1:100 concrete and timber part structural model
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1. Concept image showing Aldo Rossi’s Teatro Del Mondo in Limerick docks.
2. Perspective of gantry over main auditorium space showing view down into audience and view out to dock and river.
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