CONTINUITY IN ARCHITECTURE

Recently CiA were honoured to receive a guided tour the Scottish Ballet Head Quarters in Glasgow, by the project architect, Clive Albert of Malcolm Fraser Architects. The building shares an entrance with the Tramway Gallery, and we although we had been warned about the inauspicious entrance, as we approached the building from Pollokshields station, the building did indeed look almost derelict. The SBHQ is actually entered from a staircase within the lobby of the Gallery, which deliberately encourages interaction between the different types of artist endeavour. The building itself is regarded as a place of work, rather that a place for performance, almost akin to an office and so it has a sense of serine calm and privacy rather than the dramatic flamboyance of a theatre. The dancers and all of the support staff turn up for workin the morning, just as the rest of us do.

The exterior of the building is tough, robust and somewhat uncompromising, however the interior is intricate and fastidious accomplishment. The sheer scale of the dance studios dictates the plan, but even so, these huge orthogonal spaces are skilfully arranged around a top-lit communal area. It is from here that the intricate three-dimensional relationships that have been created within the building are visible.

The timber-clad interior exudes the kind of warmth that the dancers need to keep their muscles supple. The studios themselves are uncluttered and clean. The space is graduated, so that the busy-ness of the ceiling space seems to recede into the greyness, leaving the pure white walls of the lower area to define the studio itself.

It is the fastidious attention to detail that ultimately defines this building. From the vertical timber batons on the interior walls to the deliberate inconsistency of the colour of the exterior cladding, it is clear that the architects have carefully considered the manner in which the building is used, the effect of weathering, and the experience of occupying it.

Buildings Outlast Civilisations. Throughout history buildings have been reused and adapted, they survive as culture and civilizations change. The already built provides a direct link with the past; it is a connection with the very building bricks of our society. The existing tells the tale or story of how a particular culture evolved. A simple building may depict a certain moment in time; it may relate the particular sensibility of specific era. A more complex collection of structures may have a much more elaborate story to tell. Jorge Silvetti describes this direct link with the past as part of our “fundamental urban condition”. He links the physical survival of particular elements of any built environment with the spiritual survival of our civilisation, and it is this visibility and durability of the physical man-made environment that are testimonies to the societies that produced them. “At the risk of sounding too partisan and biased, I would say that even in historic times documents were not always available, and buildings (monuments, vernacular constructions, and public works) are themselves important texts, often providing the first and most lasting impression of a culture.”*

 This little building stands as testament to an earlier period; it was previously the storage and distribution point for the village fuel. Achintraid, which is a small village on the edge of Loch Kishorn, on the North-West coast of Scotland, was once difficult to access by road, and as was the norm for these remote shore-side settlements, most of the important provisions arrived by boat. The coal was delivered to this little building, which is situated in a sheltered but accessible point on the bay, and was then distributed to the occupants of the small village. Nowadays, oil is generally used, it arrives by lorry and the coalhouse is no longer needed. More than a decade ago the little shed was converted into a home. The adaptation is very sympathetic, the materials are local, the walls feel as if part of the rocks and the roof is as grey as the winter loch. The internal organisation also reflects the extreme context; the main living rooms are situated on the upper floor, thus taking advantage of the incredible views across Loch Kishorn to the mountains of Skye. Long horizontal windows at first floor reinforce the orthogonal quality of the building while the small windows at ground level reflect the need for protection against the weather. The house does appear to be a product of its particular situation, but does not resort to pastiche, it is appropriate to its time. I have no idea who designed the conversion.

 Kenneth Frampton, talks about the need for architecture and design to have the…“capacity to condense the artistic potential of the region while reinterpreting cultural influences coming from the outside”. This building does indeed show a great understanding of both place and tectonics, and…”evokes the oneiric essence of the site, together with the inescapable materiality of building”.**

* Interactive Realms’ by Jorge Silvetti

** Prospects for a Critical Regionalism by Kenneth Frampton

A model of the uncovered villa. Sicily.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     To the east of Barcelona lies the small town of Colònia Güell. This compact settlement was constructed to house the workers and the factories upon which Eusebi Guell’s fortune was based. On the outskirts lies the local church, or rather the crypt of the unfinished church. This is an expressive and atmospheric structure designed by Antoni Gaudí. Of course Güell and Gaudí had a long and fruitful relationship, with the construction of a number of much more well known buildings. This structure nestles into the rock of the hillside and is obviously intended to appear as if it is part of the landscape. The building is random yet exact. The stone is irregular at the building’s corners with what looks like a volcanic infill.  The columns rise at acute angles from the earth and almost become flying buttresses as they struggle to hold the crypt itself in place. The interior is equally mysterious, the large open space is calm and organic, the unfinished quality adds to the drama. The only slight anomaly is the recent pavings, which is set in a regular manner around the building and becomes a podium upon which the building sits, thus breaking the illusion of the building growing from the landscape. The crypt is certainly big enough to hold the congregation, so perhaps that is why the ambitious building was never completed, but then again Gaudí and Güell have a reputation for taking their time.

The Glasgow School of Art flickr site now includes Steven Holl’s proposals and sketches for his new scheme opposite the Glasgow School of Art.

Link: GSA Flickr

Urban Realm website. Scheme description/press release.

Some architecture students I recently met had never heard of Peter Zumthor (!). I offer a photoset of the Kolumba Museum in Cologne as a reminder.

Photoset

It is hard to put in words the effect of this extraordinary intervention by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa at The Serpentine Gallery in London (until 18 October). A sinuous silhouette characterises the slender reflective roof suspended on tentative mirrored columns above a simple screeded floor. Those are the bare facts.

But the impact of these simple gestures are magical. The rhyming of columns and trees is a commonplace of organic design but is here given literal depth with the doubling of the column height through reflection. The depth of the visual field collapses through the folding in on themselves of covered and uncovered spaces. The implicit gravity of light from the sky is brought into doubt, as it is revealed to be a reflection from the ground. And just momentarily one experiences a figure ground reversal, when a solid leaden summer sky contrasts with the light and space seen on highly polished surface.

For a different view of another work by SANAA, their NewMuseum of Contemporary Art in New York see this film by recent MSA graduates.

The Barn, Exmouth by Edward Schroder Prior, 1896. Photoset taken this week.

In The Nature of Gothic John Ruskin proposed a list of the characteristics of Gothic architecture. This was an attempt to describe architecture as a living process rooted in building. In the sphere of the builder the characteristics of Gothic were: Savageness or Rudeness, Love of Change, Love of Nature, Disturbed Imagination, Obstinacy, Generosity.

E.S. Prior’s buildings embodied Savageness in an architecture that tried to link the discipline to the process of building rather than the professionalism of the Victorian era. His buildings are traditional and experimental employing novel plans and uses of material and allowing the process of building in a specific environment to decisively affect the character of the building.

The butterfly plan of The Barn creates a sun-trap between its arms and exploits wide views of the sea (the English Channel). It has a linear arts & crafts plan broken to shorten circulation and respond to entrance and view. The house was built out of local stone - ashlar mixed with pebbles and boulders - and originally thatched (the house burned in 1905 and the roof was re-covered in slate).

Before the fire, from The English House by Hermann Muthesius

Threshold of Sleddale Hall, one of the most remote houses in England, Uncle Monty’s Cottage in the film Withnail and I, has graffiti in the form of lines from the film.

Andrea di Pietro della Gondola, born 30 November 1508.

The Basilica Palladiana in Vicenza. The red plan is Palladio’s design as depicted in his Quattro Libri. The black plan is the structure as built, incorporating elements of the previous buildings on the site.

Graphic by Denis of CiA BArch Studio, Manchester School of Architecture.

Our other Palladio posts.

Carlo Scarpa was commissioned to design the Olivetti Showroom in 1956 and the work was completed over the next couple of years. The site was awkward, long and thin, and at about four meters high, hardly able to support a second level. But it was also engaging, a corner position overlooking St Marks Square. Scarpa placed long wooden balconies along the long edges of the space, and these were accessed from a slightly off-centre stretched suspended marble staircase. Together these served to accentuate the length and height of the space, while also allowing the qualities of light and air to be gradually appreciated as the visitor moved from the entrance to the centre of the shop. The tiled floor appeared as if moving water and the display tables that were cantilevered from the windows seemed to float into the space.

Olivetti have long since left the premises and the shop now houses objet d’art. The decorative finishes are beginning to age, the plaster is stained, the bronze is tarnished and in places the marble has decayed, but the distinctive character and exquisite nature of the space is still very evident.

Richard Meier’s new Arp Museum sits on a wooded slope overlooking the Rhine near Remagen. It is conceived as an annexe to the existing Rolandseck railway station which is also mostly converted to exhibition space, although the trains still stop.

The new building is entered via a tunnel under the railway line and a lift shaft cut into the mountain side.

Meier, denied the possibility of a normal public aproach to the building, presents his building from a number of vantage points: on the bridge from the lift to the main block and on exterior balconies in the main block itself.

The building benefits from its woodland setting and the drama of the internal approach in tunnels and shafts. The collection of Hans Arp sculptures struggles for attention, overwhelmed by the building and the magnificent Anselm Kiefer exhibition in the lower gallery. As a local tourist information officer said: Most people just go to see the building

Photoset (August 2008)

Arp Museum, Rolandseck