Lec 4 MIT 4.125 Architecture Studio Building in Landscape

PROFESSOR: There are several mediums of working with students in the process of designing. There are desk-side crits. There are reviews. There are lectures. And there are pinups. In this studio, every week, a piece of the project is due, whether it be a model or a drawing. And we have what we call pin up, when all the students pin up their work and quickly explain what they are doing. And then I and other members of the class try to give comments on what they've seen to try to help to the next step. Because architecture is not just one step. It's a continual process that changes. Perhaps people have the idea that it comes all at once. It doesn't. It comes over a period of time. So the pin up is a very valuable part of that. Because it's giving students a feedback as to how they're moving. And slowly, adjustments are made for the next step. So what you're about to see is a typical pin up of which happens almost every week during the semester. STUDENT: When I first visited the site, I was pretty amazed by the view, obviously. Because we're up on the roof. We get to look over all of the north end. And I unfortunately, am blocked from Boston. I have a wall. There's a better view. Well, there's a wall on the-- what side is that? Is this the east? PROFESSOR: Yeah, the east. STUDENT: East side? PROFESSOR: Yeah. STUDENT: Well, on the east side there's a wall. So I can't see Boston. But I see all of the harbor and the north end. Anyway, that wall is going to act as my entrance. It's perfect for that. But I still want to be able to see over that. I'd love to have my bedroom like looking over Boston. That would be pretty cool. So my idea was to have my main floor below the wall and then have some kind of spiral staircase that leads up to a room on posts, looking over Boston, and another one that's looking out over the harbor. In 10 years, I see myself happily married with a firm of my own, successful firm. AUDIENCE: Architecture firm? STUDENT: Architectural firm. And yeah, so no kids. PROFESSOR: No kids? STUDENT: No kids. No time. PROFESSOR: How about cats or dogs? STUDENT: Actually, I didn't think about that. I'll think more on that. Anyway, my needs would be a bedroom, a guest bedroom, two bathrooms, a kitchen, dining room, and a study. And I'd like the study to be the other room that's elevated. That would be the one looking over the harbor. And then my bedroom would be looking over Boston. Oh, my site clue, funny story. So I was going up on a fire escape to get photos of my site, this photo actually. You can see the fire escape. I got up there. And the thing is horrible. It is rusty. And it's about to fall down, the entire thing. And about every step, something was shaking. And finally, I stepped on one step. And it just completely gave way. And then it clink, clink, clink all the way down and landed on the ground. So I didn't think of bringing it back as a site clue until later. And I went up and saw the Paul Revere thing. And then someone helped me think of it, that that would be an amazing site clue. So I went back. And it was lying on the ground. So I grabbed it. Yeah, so it's pretty straightforward. It should be fun. OK, I was inspired-- I think these are granaries. I don't know exactly. But they're just cylindrical and metal. And there's a barn underneath. And I kind of want a rectangular main floor with a kind of metallic, spiral staircase, and then these rooms off shooting as curved, like partial circles. I want to capture the panoramic view, like is done on this corner. It's curved. So you can see the hole. So I like that a lot. So that was the way I wanted to incorporate it. PROFESSOR: And I'm just going to pump for some more information. STUDENT: Sure. PROFESSOR: What about the area or the north end? How did you react to it? STUDENT: Oh, I really like the rooftop view. What do you mean north end? PROFESSOR: Well, the north end is a very special kind of physical neighborhood, as well as social. In the United States-- STUDENT: It was very touristy, I noticed. And I like the roof, because you get away from all the tourists. And I agree with you. There's like a completely separate world up there. I know personally, like my roof of my house right now, if you go up there, there's people having parties randomly on rooftops. And it's kind of cool just to check it out. And I went by to one the other day. The next door neighbors were having like a barbecue and everything on their roof. So that was kind of cool. But I think that's going to happen a lot here. So I want to have roof access as well. PROFESSOR: Well, for me, seeing the site for the first time is one of the most exciting parts of architecture. I can't sleep the night before when I see a site. And I was curious how you people were going to react to the north end. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] PROFESSOR: The night before? I find I'm like a kid. I'm up all night. I'm going to see a new site next week. And I just-- I can't wait to see it. AUDIENCE: I was conserving my energy for last night. PROFESSOR: Uh-huh. AUDIENCE: I was up all night doing [INAUDIBLE].. PROFESSOR: Well, that's a little different problem. And I got another site from Turkey today, which I have to go for-- I will be going on a Friday and coming back on a Monday morning in a couple of weeks or so. But I saw the site in photographs. And it's very exciting to see a new site. So I was curious to see how you folks would react to that. A couple of things. Good start, guys, as always. You guys always have good starts. In Philip's case, a couple of things that I thought were interesting. He did not tell us that his site is probably one of the most important ones, because-- where did he go? There he is. He is the busybody, or the caretaker, of our public site down below. The other thing is immediately jumping from the program, no kids or one kid? I can't remember. No kids, OK. That's good. Because you may lose them all up here in the-- AUDIENCE: He can just put them in the [INAUDIBLE].. PROFESSOR: Right. That's what this could be. What's quickly very interesting about this sketch from where he is is that we have a delicate kind of dance between contextual and non-contextual architecture, that which fits and that which doesn't, which was the case with the last project. It's no different. It's always the case, whether it's a quarry as we're using this or a so-called natural quarry, as the last one. What I find interesting is that this kind of vocabulary, which we can start to imagine fits in very much to the roof scapes that we know. For instance, those who are from New York, you will find every roof has a water tower on it. And here we don't for some reason. I'm not sure why. But the kind of form that this is starting to suggest, suggests that it's part of the roof, part of the sky. I don't know how it works yet. But I think your decision of using the back wall to move into it and using this as a generator, a very strong generator, of the view-- and then I'm not sure what this is-- moving off of this is very powerful. So it's a good start, Philip. What we've got to do now is to make this work in plan. I mean, there's no plan there yet. There's ideas. But the idea is there. The conceptual form making is very strong. I would invite you to use this as a clue as to what kind of architecture you might find up here. A light steel construction might work. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] PROFESSOR: Yeah, as opposed to heavy. This is heavy. But the notion of the skeleton kind of form might be another interesting way of being up there. STUDENT: So my first idea is when I got to the north end, the first things that I noticed were just the fact that there is a lot of layering. And I like the fact that material merged into other materials. Here I tried to mimic the cobblestones in the street and then the pavement, how it just merged into the pavement. Just that idea I liked a lot, how materials merged into other materials. And this is the facade of my building. Here is where we met. And my building is-- it's really two buildings. And my site is either on top of both or on top of one of them. And I'm thinking of taking over both sides for now. But what I liked a lot about the facade, just looking at it, is the fact that you can tell the history of the building. You can see how it has evolved over time. This is somewhat different to the next level, which is somewhat different to the next level. But they merge. I like the way the materials merged. And I want my building, my apartment, to merge with that, to be another layer of the building. So that's my main idea. I envision myself being married, I think. At first I thought, well, I'm not sure. There's so much to do before getting married, so many places to visit in the world that I wanted to visit. But right across from this is the playground. And I sat in the little playground. And I thought, this would be really nice to have kids. So I hopefully will be married. And if I am, I'd have two kids. But if I wasn't, I think at that point I'd adopt a child. And if I live here, I have to have a kid. There's a beautiful playground right across. So just the community seemed very friendly. When I was there, I talked to a woman. And she had her child with her. And just a very open-- it seemed like a lot of parents were there. So this idea of merging and this idea of creating layers, I decided that I would use the facade to guide the way that I was going to design. Because I couldn't get myself away from this idea that I want the materials to merge. I just couldn't start thinking about what the form of the building would be. So what I did was I just decided that I'd make a grid. I feel like I have a lot of leeway here. I have a site that doesn't have a problem, such as Sarah's. Sarah has [INAUDIBLE] she has to deal with. I feel like I don't have such a problem that is prominent. And so I need some parameters to help me try to design. So part of my program would be I wanted to have a fencing room. Because I saw myself as either an assistant coach or a competitive fencer. But I was told that would be a better idea for the community center. So I can coach there, if I need to. PROFESSOR: Well, you might fall off the roof is the point. STUDENT: But I do want a garden, I think. I love gardens. I love trees. And I'd like some way to have a garden surrounding the house to make [INAUDIBLE] buildings right at this very little corner. They merge. And they continue. And so I like that idea. And I'm thinking even there having my chimney just extend from there. This is another view from the back, from the alley, just to see where things are. And that's Sarah's site. And mine's right on top. So maybe we can-- I don't know-- get together. But I don't have any idea what my form of my building is going to be. I think the last couple of days has just given me the opportunity to think about what kind of parameters I want. PROFESSOR: I think that's interesting for me to see how people relate to the north end. And one of the reasons why I chose the north end is that it's a very rich place architecturally, socially. And she has found this notion that she calls merging of materials, time, which is what the north end is all about is a merging of time. And we get Paul Revere around the corner. But we can find young professionals living here. So there's a merging over time. And also, that results, I think, in what happens here of the style. I'd like to, as I mentioned to her the other day, to consider another word, which I will talk about on Thursday, which is layering. There are layers of different time or different materials in the north end, which is quite different than any place else that we would be. You have the layers of different materials. The fire escapes, for me, is a layer of something against the hardness, very skeleton. So this notion, as indicated by the sketch-- by the way, how many kids we got? One, three, and two, so we've got six already. It beats last year's class, where we only had three I think. And incidentally, the observation is very revealing of the north end as a playground, if you think about the exposure of children or us to other people, which is quite different than if we had to pick the site in the suburbs, which we wouldn't have. Because this has a lot of opportunities for exposures, all kinds of exposure. You meet somebody from Iowa walking up. And I found-- I have asked you, but I continually find that the North Enders are friendly people. They'll stop and talk with you. I never have been challenged, unlike the suburbs. You go to the suburbs and you try to talk to someone, you'll be arrested probably on the spot. Because you're up to no good. But that's not the case here. It's a very public thing. So I thought that was an interesting observation. But I just want to pick up on this, which she has suggested in a geometric way. And I think she's actually suggested in an architectural way what I would like to talk about. But in plan, if this is the roof, that these layers might not necessarily-- these are planes of part of the floor, and the walls, I should say-- may not at all line up with the old layer. They may miss it, in two ways. This is, if you're following me, this is a setback of a plan. This is her garden and her design. This is light comes through. But that's one way. And then the other way, if that's the boundary, the layers could come out, which we may see in others. So instead of a direct interpretation of it, you could think of this as coming up to here. And the geometry picked up. But the layers are maybe set back, which means that on top of this, then we have these kind of transitions, or layers, of different materials. And they could be entirely different. You didn't talk about the roof form, sky form. You may need a cloud floating by or something. Think about that. But that quality of this sketch is very powerful on that place. So I think that's a great start.