CONTINUITY IN ARCHITECTURE

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 

Travelling to London from the north-west of England and faced with Euston Road on emerging from the railway station, it is tempting to turn around and get back on the train. Luckily it is first possible to stand and admire the LCC Euston Fire Station, a delightful exercise in English free-style, functional architecture designed by the London County Council Architect’s department and completed in 1902.

Musing on the ‘lost city’ of the Arts and Crafts, Peter Davey wrote*:

…it could be the corner of a (very large) Arts and Crafts country house. It shows that, at its best, Arts and Crafts architecture knew no differentiation between public and private buildings and none between provision for the rich or the poor. The lost city of the Arts and Crafts movement would have been less grand than the Edwardian cities that were actually built. But it would have been a city with a human face; gentle, witty, occasionally dramatic, kind to its surroundings and responsive to the needs of its citizens.

Davey goes a bit too far in his projection of the benefits and intentions of Arts and Crafts but perhaps “gentle, witty and occasionally dramatic” is enough.

 More pictures

* Peter Davey, Arts and Crafts Architecture, Chapter 11 ‘The Lost City’

The building now known as the Basilika in Trier, Germany was actually the throne room of the Emperor Constantine and formed part of a wider palace complex when the city was a capital of the Roman Empire. The footprint of the Roman building (c 310 AD) and elements of its enclosure survived centuries of change prior to reconstruction by the Prussians following the defeat of Napoleon. The illustration shows elements of the building (’c’ is the Roman apse) incorporated into a palace complex during the Renaissance period.

The extraordinary juxtaposition of the Basilika and the baroque palace in front is explained by the new significance of the building following the continuing unification of Germany under Prussia. Frederick William IV of Prussia ordered the reconstruction of the 33m high ‘basilica’ as a Lutheran church - a project that was completed in 1856. The building is remade to correspond with a new function and and rises up to dominate the palace structure it had served for centuries. The Prussian structure reflected the architect’s ideal project - the reconstruction of a Roman ruin. The architect interpreted the remains as an early-Christian basilica and borrowed the organization and stylistic elements of early-Christian architecture in Rome.

The building was destroyed by allied bombs in 1944 and reconstructed again in the ‘fifties. The destruction of the Second World War was interpreted by some as a judgement. In its newest form the great hall was stripped of all decoration and given a pre-stressed concrete coffered roof. According to the official history available in the church: The new idea of the reconstructed church can be interpreted as follows: expression of worldly power and its spirituality has been conquered and extinguished by the Nazarene’s message: to put service before all else.

Nostalgia…The Brion tomb (1969-1978) near Treviso by Carlo Scarpa, note the sarcophagi leaning towards each other below the reinforced concrete arch.

Arcosolium

Intended context and current condition (slideshow).

The Economist Building (photoset)

and

Robin Hood Gardens Design Competition (BD Online)

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Giovanni Muzio’s Ca Brutta (1923) faces Gio Ponti’s Palazzo Montecatini (1936) across the junction of Via Fillipo Turati and Via Moscova in Milan. The buildings were completed within fifteen years of each other and display different approaches to to a similar problem: how do you make a facade which forms a thin sheath on a modern structural frame? Muzio in the Ca Brutta (’Ugly House’) chooses to ignore the structural concrete frame beneath and emphasise the individuality of the residences and homeliness of the building. This was an explicit rejection of the ‘renaissance palazzo’ type as a model for urban housing in which the individual apartments would be dominated by the overall composition. The sense of bricolage in the Ca Brutta was implicit in the client’s brief - Muzio was required to incorporate windows that had been purchased before the scheme was designed. The Palazzo Montecatini is of course a different building type: a headquarters building. The central entrance is emphasised and the window frames are pushed to the face of the cladding. The central block in the composition includes vestigial acroteria perhaps indicating a root for Ponti’s style in the clasically derived rational architecture of Vienna at the turn of the century.

Ca Brutta