Open Form

“Architecture comes to be experienced as a complete whole only when it has lost its place in our life and lies behind us, when it has become a monument.” -Karsten Harries: The Dream of the Complete Building

For generations, architects in both the academy and practice have worked toward a ‘complete’ architecture, attempting to align narrative, reason and form.  For Karsten Harries, Juhani Pallasamaa and numerous other theorists, artists and architects, the idea of completeness does not allow for ‘living’ architecture, ‘open’ to change. From the early 20th century, the term ‘open form’ was synonymous with a limitless composition. More recently, Umberto Eco, Oskar Hanson, Robert Irwin and others speak to an ‘open’ form of expression which is activated when engaged. For them, the ‘open work’ is immediate, here and now yet endlessly intertwined.  “The open work assumes the task of giving us an image of discontinuity. It does not narrate it; it is it…” (Eco: The Open Work)

In this studio, we challenge students to read the city and create within its context elements that are ‘open’. Open to interpretation, growth and change. This architecture starts with materials, the movement of light, the influence of natural forces, found space and daily ritual. These influences combine in forms that are meant to be accessed, occupied and intertwined with the existing world. 

 

Open City

“…only a certain kind of place, an open city, will stimulate you -- and that stimulation comes in particular form. Jacobs says, in a famous declaration, “if density and diversity give life, the life they breed is disorderly.” The open city feels like Naples, the closed city feels like Frankfurt…” -Richard Sennett: The Open City

For Richard Sennett, Jane Jacobs and many others, the city is not truly ‘open’ without discontinuity, flow and exchange. The New York City of recent history is caught between competing interests, private/public, haptic/controlled, yet much of it remains in Sennett’s terms, a context of “ambiguous edges, open building forms, and unresolved planning narratives”.  New York has developed so thoroughly that it is now pushing to its edges and outer boroughs for new land. Its these edges where private development conflicts with public use. Within what remains of the ‘open’ context in New York City, we ask if it is possible to imagine forms of architecture which stimulate engagement, which keep the ‘open’ city open? 

Thanks in part to its notorious superfund project and current industrial zoning, the Gowanus neighborhood in Brooklyn is the on battlefront between gentrification and preservation. This is also a place where the collision of the city grid and the winding canal create unresolved conditions, natural discontinuity, and ‘ambiguous edges’.  Students will visit and examine sites where developments are encroaching on the existing industrial fabric and produce architectural interventions (infrastructure and public program) which work as mediators and stimulators. During the studio, we will also visit with architects, developers and stakeholders to learn what they have already discovered about the neighborhood and its future.

 

Studio Process: Drawings and Making   

In this studio we push formal boundaries through precise material and spatial investigations and challenge conventional problem solving focusing on the whole life of buildings and the way they interact with context. Our primary mode of discussion will be roundtable discussions for the first part of the semester with desk crits during the later half.

Documentation - Students will be asked to look deeply into the existing conditions of the ‘site’. This includes elements that create ‘character’ such as existing materials light and atmosphere. Photographs written impressions and other forms of ‘collection’ will be employed.

Workbook (11x17 loose leaf) - Each student will keep a large process sketchbook during the studio, which will include drawings, photos and writings, editing it as the work progresses so that it can be used to understand the work trajectory.

Making - We will use large models and material studies as ‘proofs of concept’ and to address the relationship between space, materials, and craft. During the semester, we will choose materials to investigate, folding these investigations into studio projects.

Reading and Writing - We will read short essays dealing with cities, buildings and ‘open form’, spatial experience and the life of cities and buildings. 

Major Assignments

Detailed assignments will be distributed at key points during the semester. Below are key goals and dates for the semester.

PART 1 - Site Visit, Written Impression (1 page any form), Site Analysis and Documentation and Diagramming (Daylight, Circulation, Public/Private Use, Materials, Scale), Written ‘Agenda’ (Observations about the site). 
Important Date: Pin Up Oct 6

PART 2  -  Programming, Concept Definition, Study Model, Preliminary Materials Investigations. 
Important Date: Mid- Reviews Oct 23

PART 3 - Project Development, Materials, Details. 
Important Date: Final Reviews Dec 12


Site Maps, History and Resources

History: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/harborwater/gowanus_canal_history.shtml

Visual history: https://issuu.com/proteusgowanus/docs/gowanus_history_presentation_final_lowres

Bridges: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/infrastructure/bridges-gowanus.shtml

Planning: https://plangowanus.com/

Issues Mapping: https://plangowanus.com/about2/maps/mapgowanus

EPA Gowanus Superfund: https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/cursites/csitinfo.cfm?id=0206222

Superfund Mapping: http://habitatmap.org/markers

NYT Superfund Info: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/27/nyregion/as-cleanup-plan-is-set-for-gowanus-canal-violations-continue.html


Selected Readings

Working at Scales from the city to the building to materials, we will examine ‘openess’ as described in the following essays (Please note they are organized in the order we will read them):

Richard Sennett, The Open City
https://www.richardsennett.com/site/senn/UploadedResources/The%20Open%20City.pdf-arch_u-eco.pdf

Karsten Harries, The Dream of the Complete Building
http://designspeculum.com/FIT/dream%20of%20complete%20bldg%20jharries.pdf

Umberto Eco, Function and Sign: The Semiotics of Architecture, Part One
https://marywoodarchtheory.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/function-and-the-sign-the-semiotics-of

Umberto Eco, The Open Work, Chapter 4: The Open Work in the Visual Arts
https://monoskop.org/images/6/6b/Eco_Umberto_The_Open_Work.pdf

Valerio Olgiati, On the Non-Referential
http://archdesign.vt.edu/news/images/Sulla%20non%20referenzialita%20(Domus,%20November%202013,%20Breitschmid).pdf

Vincent Kompier, The Heavy and The Light
http://www.oasejournal.nl/en/Issues/91/TheHeavyAndTheLight#108
 

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