Robert Frank, "Barber shop through screen door, McClellanville, SC, 1955," from "The Americans" [1]
"(...) When we sit at a desk in a room by a window, the distant view, light from the window, floor material, wood of the desk, and eraser in hand begin to merge perceptually. This overlap of foreground, middle ground, and distant view is a critical issue in the creation of architectural space. We must consider space, light, color, geometry, detail, and material as an experiential continuum. Though we can disassemble these elements and study them individually during the design
process, they merge in the final condition, and ultimately we cannot readily break perception into a simple collection of geometries, activities, and sensations. (...)" [2]
Steven Holl
[1] [2] HOLL, Steven, ´Questions of Perception. Phenomenology of architecture´ in HOLL Steven, PALLASMAA Juhani, PÉREZ- GÓMEZ Alberto, Questions of Perception. Phenomenology of
architecture. William Stout Publishers, A+U, 1ª ed., San Francisco, 2006 (original ed.: A+U Questions of Perception. Phenomenology
of architecture, Special Issue, July 1994), pg.45
“(…)INVISIBLE:
Notations go beyond the visual to engage the invisible aspects
of architecture. This includes the pheno
menological
effects of light, shadow, and transparency; sound, smell or temperature, but also– and perhaps more significantly– program,
event, and social space. Notations are not pictures or icons. They do not so much
describe or represent individual objects, as they specify internal structure and
relationships among the parts. Inasmuch as the use of notation
signals a shift away from the object and toward the syntactic, it might open up
the possibility of a rigorous, yet non-reductive abstraction. The use of
notation marks a shift from demarcated object to extended field.(...)" [3]
Stan Allen
[3] ALLEN,,
Stan, ´Notations+Diagrams: Mapping the Intangible' in ALLEN, Stan, Practice: Architecture, Technique, and
Representation. Routledge, New York,
2009, pg.64
>>>>> [A3] Window Diary / Mapping the Intangible
Diller + Scofidio Case #00-17163 [4]
Things around us— as a snow flake— have hidden aspects, some internal logic, system or mechanism that is more complex and richer than the outward image we perceive. Thus, we will try to transcend an understanding of the window as an evident (mostly industrialised) architectural component, seeking its expanded definition through conceptual and material logic and sensory experience and comprehending the window as a complex and operational element - a device of aesthetic [5] engagement and phenomenological manifestation. The main objective of the unit is to explore how particular architectural concepts in relation to the site, the environment, the necessities of the user etc. become performative, adaptable and variable and generate a continuously changing space. In this context the window is seen as a generative tool - perceptual apparatus - which leads to the creation of specific scenarios or atmospheres, opening as a design technique and architecture as a discipline that draws out the dynamics of everyday life and experience, translating them into graspable form. Oscillating between the material and the immaterial, the fixed and the flexible, the evident and the unexpected we will experiment with space, attempting to spatialise the phenomena.
A window as an architectural construct defines a concrete physical connection to our body and the environment and implies a great number of conditions that affect, and are affected by its size, position, materiality, typology, complexity, function... Thus, the relation of the opening to the space, the environment and habits is to be tested and evaluated for its understanding and redefinition.
Being aware of the operative and performative scope of architecture is essential to recognizing all factors implied in the design process. Thus, the unit investigates how our awareness of effects is shaping contemporary spaces, understanding architecture as a spatial-temporal configuration far from formal forecasts or analogies, materiality as an active and dynamic element and form as a response to complex conditions— as a result rather than anticipated intention. Moreover, instead of talking of a linear approach from form to tectonic, where the material appears in the end of the design, the unit puts an emphasis on the identification of the inherent conditions and effects of the materials as the data upon which the project is developed, seeking to originate a line of experimentation and enquiry, inherent to the instrumentality of materiality and perception.
The crucial final stage in this approach is to seek to produce sensorial, performative and responsive spaces, and to provides students with the technical and analytical skills required to think of and reflect on these conditions.
Following the meticulous collective documentation of selected windows, where the students analyzed the spatial, tectonic and structural aspects, the second phase of the research turns to the individual analysis focused on effects and experiential sensations in addition to spatial and material conditions and environmental and atmospheric considerations. The window is to be investigated in light of contextual qualities — these will be methodologically questioned to reveal its intangible and phenomenal specificities.
Phenomenological registrations / spatial investigations explored and presented in 2D media. Specify the significance / essence of you window - provide you window with a title.
context: your window at home method: mapping
[2D] drawings (hand-, digital-), photo (digital, analog pinhole / polaroid), film, collage, mixed-media, acetone
[cycle] [movement] [duration] [atmospheres] [obstacles] [transparency] [observatory] [visibility] [effects]
Choose two of the keywords above, supplementing each other - unfold your window through mappings realated to the keywords.
[4] Diller + Scofidio Case #00-17163 in: CRARY, J; KWINTER, S (ed.): Zone 6: Incorporations, Zone Book, 1992, pgs. 347 - 348
[5] In the context of our course we will approach aesthetics bearing in mind the real and much wider meaning of the term (transcending the traditional and anachronistic parameters of the aesthetic theory, focused on the matter of beauty and restricted to the fine arts), as accord- ing to its etymological roots, aesthetics [gr.: aisthēsis] means perceived by the senses. See: BERLEANT, Arnold: Sensibility and Sense: The Aesthetic Transformation of the Human World, Imprint Academic, 2010
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