>>>>> Lecture Mixed City

>>>>> Lecture: Models

>>>>>Wednesday February 20^th at 13.00 Lecture Models by Chris Thurlbourne 

Big Auditorium

>>>>>[P1] The Williamsburg Trilogy/ Constructing a scenario [3]

>>>>>[P1.3] Program/ Constructing a strategy:

>>>Duration: 2 weeks

>>There is no architecture without action, no architecture without events, no architecture without program (…)<<[1]

Bernard Tschumi

Architecture and Disjunction

Cedric Price, Diagram mapping program and community for Inter-Action Centre London 1977 [2]

>>To what extent could the literary narrative shed light on the 
organization of events in buildings, whether called "use", 
"functions", "activities" or "programs"? If writers could
 manipulate the structure of stories in the same way as they
 twist vocabulary and grammar, couldn't architects do the 
same, organizing the program in a similarly objective, detached, or imaginative way? For if architects could self-consciously use such devices as repetition, distortion, or 
juxtaposition in the formal elaboration of walls, couldn't
 they do the same thing in terms of the activities that occurred
 within those very walls? Pole vaulting in the chapel, bicycling in the laundromat, sky diving in the elevator shaft?
 Raising these questions proved increasingly stimulating:
 conventional organizations of spaces could be matched to 
the most surrealistically absurd sets of activities. Or vice
versa: the most intricate and perverse organization of spaces could accommodate the everyday life of an average suburban family(…)<< [3]

Bernard Tschumi

Architecture and Disjunction

Very often the significance of program had been neglected and reduced to mere functional aspect and list of specific requirements. However, program involves complex readings and reciprocal relationships. Taking into consideration the existing conditions and the explored potentials of the site, as well as the requirements of our clients/users we will seek to elaborate different strategies for organizing and accommodating these matters and data as a program- i.e. to explore how these issues can be processed spatially. Thus, we will focus on program in terms both of spatial and functional conditions, as well as events, scenarios, or atmospheres. You will be asked to develop mixed organisms that respond to definition of hybrid buildings, as these “enjoy dense and fruitful atmospheres, which favour the natural appearance of unexpected activities”[4].  The scale of the proposal and the diversity of uses are up to you. However, it should be based on the premise that at least 50% of its area will be dedicated to housing.

Bearing this in mind, we will take as a point of the departure a pilot initiative launched in July 2012 by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD)- adAPT NYC. The aim of this program is to develop a new model of housing adapted to the City’s changing demographics. It defines so-called micro-unit that measures 25-35 m², as an innovative apartment model which includes a kitchen and a bathroom that are smaller than what is allowed under current regulations. [http://www.nyc.gov/html/hpd/html/developers/HPD-adAPT-NYC-RFP.shtml] 

>>(…)Sociability


The ideal hybrid feeds on the meeting of the private and public spheres. The intimacy of
 private life and the sociability of public life find anchors of development in the hybrid building.

The permeability of the hybrid makes it accessible from the city and the private use of its
 services extends its timetable to 24 hours a day. This means that activity is constant and
 is not controlled by private or public rhythms. Another use category is created, a full-time 
building.(…)

Programmes

The mixing of uses in a hybrid building generates a potential which is transferred, as in a 
system of connected vessels, to those weaker activities so that all involved are benefited.
 Hybrid buildings are organisms with multiple interconnected programmes, prepared to
 house both planned activities as well as those unplanned activities in a city(…).<<

Javier Mozas [5]

Henceforward you will be asked to work in teams of 2, and to define and quantify different uses according to your mappings and reflections on the site, existing and imagined scenarios, events, conflicts and potentials.

Keywords: [scale] [area] [high] [form] [materiality] [ambient conditions] [orientation] [atmosphere] [cycle] [events]

> Catalogue of situations and spaces + diagram of connections, interrelations and cycles

> Collage- using existing examples (plan 1:100) 

> Diagrammatic models of the program focusing on interrelations and spatial conditions (1:200)

> First colonization of the site/ plan + section 1:100 + working models 

---

[1] TSCHUMI, Bernard: Architecture and disjunction, MIT Press, 1996, pg. 121

[2] in:  GARCIA, Mark (ed.): The Diagrams of Architecture, AD Readers, Wiley, 2010, pg. 215

[3] Ibid. pgs. 146-147

[4] MOZAS, Javier: ’This is a Hybrid… and also this’ in A+T Hybrids II – Low-Rise Mixed-Use-Buildings FERNANDÉZ PER, Aurora; MOZAS, Javier, ARPA, Javier (eds.), pg. 5

[5] MOZAS, Javier: ’Mixed uses- A Historical overview’ in A+T Hybrids II – Low-Rise Mixed-Use-Buildings FERNANDÉZ PER, Aurora; MOZAS, Javier, ARPA, Javier (eds.) pgs. 23-25

>>>>>Monday Lectures

>>>>> Monday February 11^th at 10.00 Lecture Thresholds & Transitions  by Stephen Willacy.

Big Auditorium

>>>>> Monday February 11^th at 13.00 Lecture Diagrams by Tine Nørgaard

Big Auditorium

>>>>>[P1] The Williamsburg Trilogy/ Constructing a scenario [2]

>>>>> [P1.2] Who? What? Why?/ Constructing Fiction

>>>Duration: 1 week

Designs for clothes (Teddy Tinling) for the ‘inhabitants’ of the House of the Future by Alison and Peter Smithson 1956 [1]

>>(…) To live is to leave traces," writes Walter Benjamin, discussing the birth
of the interior, "In the interior these are emphasized. An abundance of
- covers and protectors, liners and cases is devised, on which the traces 
of objects of everyday use are imprinted. The traces of the occupant 
also leave their impression on the interior. The detective story that 
follows these traces comes into being. . . . The criminals of the first 
detective novels are neither gentlemen nor apaches, but private members
of the bourgeoisie."

There is an interior in the detective novel. But can there be a detective 
story of the interior itself, of the hidden mechanisms by which space is 
constructed as interior? Which may be to say, a detective story of
 detection itself, of the controlling look, the look of control, the controlled 
look. But where would the traces of the look be imprinted? What do we
 have to go on? What clues?(…)<<[2]

Beatriz Colomina

Privacy and Publicity

The detective story is a vehicle for observing, following, recording, unraveling habits and discovering traces left by characters. Both writers and architects construct places- using different mediums. In the first stage, the architect uses representational tools as a means to generate new scenarios- construct new realities.  In 1955 The Daily Mail newspaper sponsored the Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition in London, Alison and Peter Smithson were commissioned to design the future house. In this set-up they had to imagine also the future users. During the exhibition, hired models- dressed by designer Teddy Tinling – in the role of the inhabitants, performed the future life- the way the house worked.

You will also be asked to define characters- Mr./Mrs. Black or Mr./Mrs. White who will reside in a place that responds to the peculiarities of their activities. They may either be a real person you met during the visit to the site or totally unknown. Using your Atlas [P1.1]- you will be asked to (re)-construct the narrative about the site, involving the characters and responding to the questions Who? (characters) What? (diagnostic) Why? (arguments) and presenting your story, both through text and visually (video, which should not exceed 2 minutes and drawing/collage).

>> (…)Like
 Jarmusch's earlier work, it is about relationships, and chance encounters (though in this case the various groups inhabiting the
three rooms don't actually meet - even though some of them are acquainted with one another - but pass on, blissfully unaware of
 the others proximity). Like his previous two features, it shows a fascination with changing light as an index of time and place [...]. It also serves,
 to some extent, as a playful exercise in genre: its three parts may be viewed as offbeat variations on the romantic comedy, the ghost story, and the crime thriller.
[…]
The result of Jarmusch revealing 
the connections between all these disparate elements only gradually is not only that we are forced into the position of having
to investigate the 'mystery' of the narrative - to piece together the jigsaw, as it were - for ourselves; it also means we are continually required to reassess the meaning of what we have already
seen and heard, as people, places, events, sounds, objects and
 sounds recur in different contexts or are shown from different
 perspectives. The film, then, explores, and makes explicit, both
the fundamental methods of cinematic storytelling and the 
experience of watching and understanding a film: in each activity, meaning is derived by positing some sort of relationship between characters, actions, objects, sounds, time and 
place, and alters precisely according to the changes that occur within those very relationships.(…) << [3]

Geoff Andrew

Mystery Train, Jim Jarmusch

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[1] In: RISSELADA Max; HEUVEL van den, Dirk (eds.): Alison & Peter Smithson: From a House of the Future to a House of Today, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam, 2004, pg. 95

[2] COLOMINA, Beatriz: Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media, MIT Press, 1996, pg. 234.

[3]ANDREW, Geoff: Stranger Than Paradise: Maverick Film-Makers in Recent American Cinema, Limelight Editions; 1st Edition, 2004, p. 151 - 152