Lec 7 MIT 4.125 Architecture Studio Building in Landscape

PROFESSOR: The other piece of teaching is giving talks. I'm not so sure I refer to them as lectures, but really talks about work. I bring in my own work that I've done in the form of slides, often, to explain particular ideas about architecture. Although there is no great knowledge that can be passed on, there are some ideas that you learn over the years that you can pass on. And the talks are a way of doing that. Today's talk about the space between buildings is a topic that interests me, and is very important for this particular project. So what you're about to see is a typical slide talk of which there are also, usually, about 10 during the semester on different subjects. At MIT, I teach studios, which obviously, this is one. But we also have a very unique thing, which are workshops, which I'm trying to actually make more available for undergraduates. And in the workshop, we explore topics that we couldn't normally do in the studio as a collective kind of group. And I just came back from my meeting with my workshop on what is known as the "Space Within," which is an interesting workshop. There are two kinds of workshops that I teach. And I will show you samples of both. One is international workshops where, with engineers and planners, we go to some place like Turkey or Honduras, Bhutan, India, and do an actual project working with different disciplines. And I'm supposed to go to Turkey, is related to that workshop. And there's probably 10 countries that we've worked in. So that's one form, which is exposing students to other cultures, but also exposing you to other cultures, such as planners, and engineers, and other people at the Institute, and the notion being that architecture gets richer when you have that. The second kind of workshop is this, which is exploring ideas that normally you can't do in a studio, but basically eventually may influence the studio teaching. So this is the space between workshops, which I have done several of, and there's a publication I'm going to give you. And it suggests a way of thinking. Now, by the way, I think that the idea of a teacher for me is one who practices architecture, that I do, and does-- I will not call it research, but searching for ideas that influence both the practice and the teaching. So all three of them are related. I couldn't teach without practicing. I couldn't practice teaching. I couldn't search without teaching. The trick is to do all three at the same time, which is not always easy, but somehow it happens, or most of the time it happens. For some time, I have been interested in the issue of space. We all talk about it, often referred to as "negative space," "leftover space." I would like to think about it as positive space, and in this project particularly, sensitize you to the notion of making space as opposed to making objects. We have, historically, always been making objects, without much regard to the space between the objects. That is to say, you make your object, I make my object. I don't care if it fits or not. This site that you have in this project is such that space and object almost has to be related. And we talked about this a little bit yesterday. So I show some images. I love, and I spend hours, sketching. I try to draw. This is on Block Island, these objects. But the more I do it, the more I'm interested in the tension that they create and the space that they make. So this, for me, is a piece of architecture-- that is, the space between the objects. So my interest has shifted from the object to the space that they create. Now, I know this is a reciprocal relationship and I'm turning you on your head. But what I'm trying to do is see if we can think about the nature of this, and define that as an architectural building tool. We've done very well with the object, or better, let us say. Next. So for me, the Forbidden City in Beijing, China, which is made up of a huge place, and made up of paths and places, which is the basis of this-- this street is not to buildings, but it's a space moving through, as an example. And by the way, the Chinese, in a historical sense, understood the notion of space better than any other civilization, and they designed this space. Next. Or in the case of Siena, the space of the streets, which are paths, in this case leads to a place, which is the-- I hope I have a slide of it, which is the greatest space in the world-- the Campo and the tower, which accents the Campo. And the two work together. And by the way, a tower in the space is an object that I say is the controller of space, that is, you understand the space because of it. Take it away with your mind, and there's no space there. That draws your attention to it. So church steeples, towers, et cetera, are ways, in my way of thinking, of activating space. The Pyramid is not an object in my mind, but it's actually a recognition of space around it-- just a slight twist. Next. So then the question is, how can we think about this? And I've tried to study that. I don't if you can focus that any better. No? Try it manually. If we think about the woods, a woods-- maybe out of focus-- it's not a bad picture. It's a very good picture. I took it, but I don't know what's wrong with this. I know what's wrong. Never mind, it's digitized, and then it went bad. If you think about a woods, you have trees, which is meaningless unless you can experience it. This is like a building, in my opinion. So we have to find a way of experiencing the woods. So that's the beginning of understanding space. Next. So the first definition for me of space is a path that moves through the woods. That is to say that as we move, we create a path. And a door for me-- that door is not a door, but it's an echo of a person moving through space. And that's why it's 6' 8" by 2' 10", because that's the size of the body. It's always related to the body. So therefore, the first parameter for me of understanding the space between is understanding paths. So in the woods, we wouldn't know this was here unless we had the path. Now, in our environment of MIT, we don't have any paths, we have highways. The Infinite Corridor is the I-95 of paths. And except for-- which is very exciting-- at the end of it now, where they've opened it up and you can look in, you have no idea what's going on. You're just speeding along. If anybody stops, there's a major traffic jam there. I was trying to pass somebody and I felt as though I needed to have a blinker light to be able to do it in there, and make sure no one was coming forward. So we don't understand that notion. But paths are the most beautiful beginning of understanding space. And I don't care if this is the design of the city, or your building, or a house. It's the same notion-- that is, it can be made up of paths, which are not circulation as we think of it, but there are places where the people are, the good stuff. Next. So this is the very basic path on Block Island. It's been worn slightly. If you look carefully, you'll find what I call the "decoration of architecture." Certain flowers and plants will start to bloom along it because the light hits it. And it's a way of experiencing the trees or the building. It's the same thing. Next. It's the good stuff. Here's a very beautiful one in Japan, which is very subtle, but a path that's moving through the woods in such a way that is, if you wish, making me aware of trees in the space. It's through that path that I understand the place as it moves through. And by the way, it looks natural. It's not. It's all built. It's the same old issue of what's Nature and what isn't. Next. Or just the space between may have been in the North End-- it is in the North End-- between two buildings acts as a space that can focus something, in this case buildings. And we have those on our site. Next. Sometime-- and my hope is in your building-- the path becomes a major part of the building. And this was what I call the public framework of paths. This is in Berkeley. And this is the old School of Architecture called the Ark Building. The exciting thing is that the architectural school went up the side of the hill on the south side of a courtyard, several courtyards, these steps. And the studios were off of these at various levels. And so this was the place where everybody met. And you would bump into people between the courtyard and the studio-- quite different than what we have here. So the good stuff was not the studio, but it was the path. It was the actual movement through. So you might think of your building this way. Next. Well, it's obvious, then, if we have paths which are movement, then we have places which are non-movement. We have a place here, kind of an executive place here, this table. Sit around, the board members, et cetera. But nevertheless, we're making a place in the spaces here, and all of you are controlling the space. She's a little bit out of it. It doesn't quite make it, but still, we have something of a place. So the place is the second way of defining the space between. Therefore, in our buildings, places in the building that we can define are the good things. That's where people come together. In the woods, it's where the sun is. And so you are drawn towards that like a moth towards a light. Next. Well, the Chinese water gardens are wonderful at making these places, which actually also involved every element of architecture-- the ground, the in between, the sky, the trees, the water, the people. It's all one thing. You can't focus on a piece of architecture there. It's a total experience. Next-- which is a place-- next-- which has a path in this case. Ah, the Campo. Anybody been to the Campo? It is, in my opinion-- the Campo is in Siena. I'll tell you just quickly the story. There were three villages around Siena, or in Siena, I should say. They were having little fights. And during the Renaissance, they said, let's build one place that will celebrate the three, which was in between the three in the valley. And it became this great living room, if you wish, of not only Siena, but of the world, or certainly of Italy, which is activated by all kinds of activities-- commercial, major events. But you can go there any time of the day or night, and something will happen. Something is taking place. It's a living room for people. We've talked a little bit about that in terms of some of the things you're doing, making living rooms outside living rooms of community spaces. This is one. And frankly, I don't know of one that's any better in the world than this in terms of proportion related to it. It's almost a half circle. It's sloped slightly. There's a fountain here that water runs through. Campers will camp out on it. People will sing on it. There are coffee shops, et cetera. Next. And one a year is the Palio, the great horse race that I attended several times, which only takes, I think 90 seconds. At that point, the living room is transformed into a place for people. These are seats. And all these are seats, as you can see-- people all over. And 40,000 or 50,000 people will be in the middle. And you can see that there's a track that runs around it for a horse race that I think takes 90 seconds. And the intention is that each neighborhood has a horse and they're betting on it to win. For 90 seconds, the horse race takes place. There's a winner. And then there's all kinds of fights because the horse race has been fixed purposely. Because at that point in Italian history, they recognized that there will always be war. So that's our one day of it, as opposed to what's going on now-- brilliant, in a way. Gets your aggressions out. And when I lived there one year, I was living in the snail community. And I had a badge. And I got mixed up into the elephant community, and all of a sudden I found myself in a fight. And I had no idea why I was being hit, but I was, because I was the wrong person, which was fine. I shouldn't have been there. But it's an incredible event to come together. Yes. STUDENT: Oh, I [INAUDIBLE] we could get to a testing program that leads a caterpillar. PROFESSOR: Oh, OK. STUDENT: [INAUDIBLE] what? PROFESSOR: Caterpillar-- it's another neighborhood. STUDENT: Yeah, and they're-- PROFESSOR: No animals are-- STUDENT: So continues to email me the updates on every race. PROFESSOR: Oh, really? STUDENT: All the play by play of the race. It's really fun, but-- PROFESSOR: You didn't see the race? STUDENT: No, I didn't see it. I wasn't there to-- PROFESSOR: It's one of the most incredible events to see, these horses going around this for 90 seconds. But to me, it's the highest form of civilization, and the highest form of a community center that we have, the Siena Campo. It's a space. It's not a bunch of objects. And it's a place where people will come. And by the way, some of you are hinting towards this in what you're doing in our project, in a smaller scale. Next. OK, so now my study has been to try to understand how we might classify space. One of the problems with our profession is that we don't have a knowledge base. I can't pass out knowledge as I could if I were a doctor or a lawyer. We really haven't built a knowledge base, which we need to do. Well, if you were a doctor, there's a medical school. You would get case studies of the past, which has led us to where we are now. Because you're standing on the shoulders of some other doctor previously. In architecture, we don't do that as much. Because we have an emphasis on creativity, I think, which is fine. But I think we could have more of a knowledge base that we could pass on. And what I'm attempting to do in space to see is, can we build a knowledge base that we can pass on. So how to do that? So I started some time ago with trying to understand a space. This is Louisburg Square. Everybody know it? In Beacon Hill. STUDENT: What's that? PROFESSOR: Louisburg square. Don't know? I don't know. Well, go to Beacon Hill and walk around. It's interesting in the north end. This is the square in it-- little precious now. It's got a fence. You can't go in unless you've got a key, but nevertheless, it's a space. This is a typical way of looking at it from an architectural point of view-- objects. And then the space is vacant, left over, negative. Next. So the first exercise that I did-- and this is the very first one-- was trying to understand if I could categorize the space in terms of paths and places. And in this case, the clear Plexiglas was showing the paths in different ways. And the gray area was showing the place. But even in the place, there are paths. And then finally, the blue was the inside paths of the house, which to my opinion is public in a house. Everything is either public or private depending on its proportion. So in a house as an example, the stairs are public to everybody in the house. The living room is a place that's public. So the blue was showing what goes on inside and what you don't-- and this is the backyard, which is space. So in this case, I've just turned the world upside down. What you don't see is the objects. And what you do see is the space. And from the study of this, I could understand that space is made up of several things. One is always the body, the size of the body. And the second is the size of the house, which is related also to the size of the body. So there's some proportions there that relate. Next. We then did studies of one semester on paths. So these are paths that we analyzed around Boston, the space of the path, a street, perhaps. Again, what you don't see are buildings, but what you do see are the colors representing different varieties of space outside. Not all space is neutral, nor is all space the same. In fact, now we're working on space within, which is a space within a concert hall. And we've classified 12 kinds of space-- everything from what we call "hot space," which is the seat right next to the orchestra, the intimate space, which is a space way in the back where you can hide, soaring space, which is in the center, et cetera. So we tried to understand the different kinds of layers of space that is created. Next. There's some more streets, the clear being the street. Each student would represent slightly different in the way that they were talking about the space. Next. And still another one, not obviously as contained as the first one, as you can see. This is Mass Avenue, actually. Next. And this is Charlestown, on a hill, and the street, and how spaces are acting off of that. You don't see any buildings here. Next. If we are talking about space, we have to talk about new ways of representing it. This was hand drawn, and now we're working on digital. But the white is space, and what you don't see back in here is the object. So these are different kinds of outdoor, private spaces connected to the white space which is public. So you have transitional space and very private space outside. Think about that again in relationship to this notion that I've introduced of transitions from the inside the outside. There are different kinds of space from one to the next. Next. The same is true in drawing of a section. This is a section of space. The kinds of space that you find at the bottom is different than the kinds of space at the top. This is the sky, and then there's a building around that. It's just turning it upside down, just making you think differently. Next. These are, then, analyses of places. This is Harvard Square, trying to show the forces of Harvard Square producing different kinds of places and spaces. Plexiglas, by the way, was a good material because it's-- I call it "frozen space" because you could see it through it, and still acted as an object. Next. Another one-- an intersection of two streets making a place. Next. This is, in fact, Harvard Square Brattle Theater complex, which is interesting. You know Brattle Theater area, the paths and places? It's one of our more interesting places, I think, to be, which is made up of paths and places, but space as you move through it. Next. And still another one-- oh, sorry. Then-- let's see what the next one is. OK, let's go back. This is still a-- thank you. This is Harvard's Holyoke Center Place, and part of the path, trying to show the intensity. Holyoke, you know that place? One of the most active places in Harvard Square most of the time. So place, space, and activity of people are also interconnected, as was pointed out the other day by Sara in relationship to William White's work. Next-- which, by the way, influenced this work. We also tried to see ways that we could photograph, or document, or understand space. So you don't have the normal kind of photographs. These composite photographs started to show space a little bit more. Next. All these were experimental. There's Holyoke, where you kind of get the feeling of the space, which is not easy to capture. We talk about space as architects, but we don't know exactly what it is, how to represent it, certainly not in the form of section and plans that are the usual things that we do. Next. So then, that led to a design problem that you see here, where people were designing pieces of a larger community-- only space. Next. And that ended up with this basic community, again, of designing the space first, and then we fill in the objects. There was a program, of course, but we purposely did not work on objects. This is exactly what I'm doing this term with the Space Within. We're designing a concert hall, but we're designing only the space of the hall, not the exterior form, although obviously, it's going to influence it. Next. More detail of that. Next. That led to a set of conclusions that you see here in sections about the different kinds of space that you might have in an area-- light space, private space, et cetera, transitional space that makes up, then, a neighborhood. Next. All space is not equal. And then finally came out to this notion of plan zones of transitional space between the inside and the outside. This is in Puerto Rico, actually, where there's a courtyard space inside. So you could start to define a body of knowledge about the kinds of spaces that make up a piece of architecture or an area of space. Next. And in section, the same-- a space that moves through a house. This is very private. This is the public stairs of the house. Next. And then again, design spaces, in this case, the Cavalieri of Puerto Rico, by using photo montages and drawing at the same time to try to represent what it is that we're designing. Next. And then the final design, which came about. You see objects here, but they really came about from a space, so the white is the most public and the yellow is most private, but the black thing is the objects. Next. And then the project that you saw in my office, which was the redesign of Mission Hill. And there's two ways of representing space, which I'm still experimenting with. This one is intensity of activity, which has to do not only with physical form, but people using it as in William White. And therefore, this area I predicted or hoped would be the most intense as opposed to this, which would be less intense. Next. Next. And this was a backyard space, which was very small chunks of space, very informal-- not nearly as intense as the other. Next. And then projects that people did-- on the left is a space between model of an area in the North End, a different site, by the way. And on the right, then, is a result of that. You do the space first and then the object second. Next. Another one. Next. And people have done over the years, different ways-- no it's not, different site. But you'll find, in this case, solid blocks are of space, not a building. Next. Another one-- next-- always space, always space. So these are balconies off of something, which are in between an object and what you don't see here, which is the-- I'm sorry, in between the space and the object that you don't see here. Next. And this end was an exercise where-- I think, I hope-- the next slide, a set of buildings, were programmed. But we started with designing with Plexiglas. By the way, what's not shown here is a set of proportion of space blocks based on the human being of sizes that you could work with. So this is like a set of Froebel blocks, but instead of being positive, they're negative, so you could build with them. Next. And out of that-- go back, if you can-- you do this first, and then next, you do the object, which is resultant of studying the space. You get that? It's just twisting it. Go back and forth. The first shot at it, the space, the kind of thing that the person wanted in the space. And then that's the translation of that into an object. Just turns the world upside down because what architects usually do is when they're done with the space, they throw, as I say, trees at it, and benches, and cars, and people. And they say, oh, it's going to be active. But it isn't. It's usually horrible. So I'm attempting to make the space the more important thing and the building second. Now in reality, of course, it's both is needed. But it takes one trip up Route 1 North to understand what I'm talking about, when you find Dunkin' Donuts, and that funny boat, and all these little individual actions with no relationship to each other, which has cluttered up our landscape. Or Shanghai, where everybody is competing with everyone to make objects of great interest, but no relationship to each other. STUDENT: Like Vegas. PROFESSOR: Sorry? STUDENT: Is Vegas the same way? PROFESSOR: Oh, God, Vegas is-- that's what makes Vegas what it is. And that is another-- Vegas is nothing but a big billboard, of course. So they're purposely doing that. There is no space in Vegas, which is kind of interesting. It's all objects. Next. And that's it. So I would like-- just wanted to introduce that to you because in this project, because of that site-- and we talked about that yesterday a little bit-- you can't design this without thinking about space. The two have to come together. And we talked yesterday about the spaces that came to an angle. Who was it, Felix, which-- STUDENT: [INAUDIBLE]. PROFESSOR: It was you? OK. Well, and the dead cat space, the leftover space that nobody wants to be in. That was you. That's what I want you not to do. I want you to think about the space simultaneously with the design of the object.