Throughout the twentieth century architects have made the careful planning of space and material, and its experiential effects on the user, the primary medium in which they work. As such architects are often sticklers for form and demand a quality product, they view the accurate execution of the design as the ultimate success. But with such high standards they may often find themselves at odds with the city, with the builder, with economic restrictions, at times even with the client. It is in spite of these hurdles and compromises that the architect tries to make meaningful architecture. In the end they may succeed but the process is an uphill battle.
In addition to the difficulties in realizing any particular design, change in the world is accelerating, and the designer architecture of today is being replaced ever quicker by the next big thing. In such a temporary environment, where spectacle dominates, it becomes increasingly difficult to get support for an architecture of muted quality.
These are the difficulties-but rather than struggling against change as a compromising agent in the process, architects should embrace it and see the long term use of their buildings as the full realization of their architecture. As such, I choose to disengage from the details of form, space, and program, these should be left to the user to define for themselves and to continuously adapt based on need and want. Instead I choose to empower the user by developing a flexible system of building, a sort of genetic code for building, one with many possibilities that rather than defining the growth, defines the potential of the growth. It is this genetic code, embedded in the original building, created through a unique system which includes all aspects of the design and build process, that becomes the voice of the architect. In such a scenario the particulars of any building are no longer seen as permanent but as a temporary state in the evolution of the building. So like a living organism the building grows over time, re-worked, expanded, damaged and healed, as a seamless extension to the lives of the people within.
KieranTimberlake- Residential Design using BIM
The third annual BIM award show saw the "Loblolly House" by KieranTimberlake Architects, the authors of "Re-fabricating rchitecture" take away the prize in two catergories. This building begins to show the effectiveness of using BIM software at organizing a project at the residential scale, one which isn't formally complicated compared to many parametric buildings. The area in which BIM seems to helping the most in this project is to communicate the information of the building to different fabricating groups, which then allow them to build certain components off-site with higher tolerances. As argued in "Re-fabricating Architecture" the old idea of pre-fabrication is gone, KieranTimblelake have been pioneers in seeing a new age of pre-fabrication, mass-customization, and modular building design.
I want to propose a similar type of building construction methodology, yet one in which the 3d model is highly customizable based on the clients programmatic needs to the point that the client can almost design certain aspects of the house by themselves. From these flexible beginnings the 3d model will largely be produced automatically through high level scripting. The actual building could in the end be composed of 90% prefab solutions, 10% custom/unusual detailing. In this scenario it is not the individual building that should be judged for its merit but the entire series of buildings that are produced from the system that should be seen as one architectural endeavor.
Story & Artifact in the Creation of an Aesthetic Grammer
_________There is a strong potential for stories to bring meaning to the places we live and work. Our memories are one such example, the way a certain mark on the wall may help to recall a certain memory of the time a friend slipped and fell while trying to balance on a soccer ball at your twenty first birthday. In this way the houses we live in can be seen as physical container for the memories of our personal lives. But just as memories are relived within our imagination when they are recalled, daydreams and fictional stories can also be played out in our imagination with similar vividness. Such as the way a certain tree in the backyard may give one the creeps after hearing a ghost story about how someone once hung themselves there. Even when we know that it's not true our minds create a possible scenario which none the less changes the way we relate to the tree, and as a result give it a new, deeper meaning.
These personal meanings whether real or imagined overlay themselves onto our surroundings constantly but it is only through time that they accumulate to become the comfortable environments that we can call a cozy home. So it could be argued that one of the responsibilities of an architect is to provide a home that can act as a receptive container for memories, metaphorically speaking a container that has many drawers to place the events of our lives. Better yet, make for an architecture that recalls past event, stories, emotions through a form of association.
_________One possible approach is to create a densely layered environment that follows an internal relational logic based on stories and their artifacts. This fictional 'world' could give the building a history before even being built.
One such process of the creation of this world was done in Kyoto and is documented here:
_________The entire process was based on the training process of the Marathon Death Monks on Mt. Hiei near the Seika campus. This extreme practice in which a countless monks have died or committed suicide takes twelve years to complete and requires the monks to run a 100km daily for a hundred consecutive days with other week long physical tests. This process is what changes an ordinary man into a bodhisattva and became the structural backbone to the project. Initially the monks are required to recreate by hand, two ancient books that become the manual for their journey, in it are listed the rituals and locations that the monks must visit. In my case these manuals were to be two objects that formed an aesthetic foundation as well restructure the relationship between two other stories, the historical account of the burning of the temples on Mount Hiei by the first shogun to unite Japan, and the fictional novel 'Kafka by the Shore' by Murakami Haruki which I happened to be reading at the time. Physically, it began with the collection of two objects that happened to strike me, in this case a bamboo seedling found in the bamboo forest behind the dorms, and the muffler of a moped found on the way to school. These two objects were analyzed as two independent systems, each had inputs and outputs as well as certain functions they performed.
_________These two objects were then converted to clay and united into one object. By using a homogeneous and plastic material such as clay the two objects lose all but formal qualities. In this sense the two objects can be combined wholly into one object on a purely formal basis. This blending creates a new object in which the two independent systems have a unique and dependent relationship, such as the inputs of the bamboo shoot are now supporting the shield guard of the muffler.
_________The muffler was then thought of as the burning of Mt. Hiei and the bamboo as the each of the two stories in 'Kafka by the Shore'. The two clay objects now became the manuals that restructured and combined the relationship between the two stories and gave birth to two new stories. These were drawn up as two possible mangas in which one random page was actually drawn up, the intent to give a sense the one page is just a glimpse into a possible world. These were set to take place on two locations by the proposed build site, an old building in the water treatment facility plant that was to be converted to an artist studio.
Manga 1
Manga 2
The manuals themselves also became objects that found their way into the stories as a sort of aesthetic seedling.
_________The characters, scenes, actions, emphasis, timing, compositions and themes in the mangas were then translated to become spatial perspectives as well as a unique material pallet, including dried mud, ceramics, rope and silicon that were combined based on the internal logic of the stories. This construction logic determined the connection of the prefab artist living quarters to the existing building and formed the public gallery space.
_________In this way, through a self-referential combining of various stories, the artifacts created in the process became the building blocks of a new aesthetic vocabulary and a construction grammar. The outcome is an environment of richness in materials and internal relationships.
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