Situate, Manipulate, Fabricate

An Anthology of the Influences on Architectural Design and Production

Chad Schwartz, Chad Schwartz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429582806
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

This anthology of selected works outlines three critical instigators of architecture, all tied directly to the tectonic makeup of our built environment – place, material, and assembly. These catalysts provide the organizational framework for a collection of essays discussing their significant influence on the processes of architectural design and construction.

With content from a diverse collection of notable architects, historians, and scholars, this book serves as a theoretical structure for understanding the tectonic potential of architecture. Each chapter is thematically driven, consisting of a pair of essays preceded by an introduction highlighting the fundamental issues at hand and comparing and contrasting the points of view presented.

Situate, Manipulate, Fabricate offers an opportunity to explore the essential topics that affect the design and construction, as well as the experiential qualities, of our built environment.

Part I

Situate

Figure P.1 Igualada Cemetery | Igualada, Catalonia, Spain | Enric Miralles and Carme Pinós | 1985-1994

Situate | to build in a certain place; to put in context

Situating a building in its context involves not only the thoughtful design and care of the building, but also ownership of the place in which it resides. According to Glenn Murcutt, however, ownership does not involve possession. We must acknowledge place; we must carefully consider and examine it; we must “own” it by understanding it. In addition, ownership involves protection as “we have a responsibility, as caretakers or stewards of the earth, to craft our societies and the technologies in it in a way that allows for the continued survival of our species and those that we share it with.”¹ Understanding place, and how we occupy it architecturally, contributes to this stewardship.

The texts presented in this section examine the role place plays in the tectonic realization of architecture. Each chapter focuses on one of three essential conditions of place that dictate response in the development of an architectural work: the site (and ground), the culture, and the environment. Through an acknowledgement of and a responsiveness to these aspects of context, a building has the potential to be successfully interwoven into the complex tapestry of its surroundings.

Note

1 Jason F. McLennan, The Philosophy of Sustainable Design: The Future of Architecture (Bainbridge Island, Washington: Ecotone Publishing Company, 2004), 37.

1 Site

• Groundwork | Robin Dripps | 2005
• The Foundation of Architecture | Rafael Moneo | 1993

Before transforming a support into a column, roof into a tympanum, before placing stone on stone, man placed a stone on the ground to recognize a site in the midst of an unknown universe, in order to take account of it and modify it.¹

Vittorio Gregotti, Lecture to the New York Architectural League, 1983

The two essays presented in this chapter examine the importance of site in relationship to our development of the built environment. In “Groundwork,” Robin Dripps navigates the complexities of “the structure of the ground,” illuminating the potential for engagement between architecture and earth.² In the quote above, Gregotti alludes to a relationship between ground and site: the former a given condition and the latter an imposed definition. Dripps’ discussion aligns with this positioning of the two terms but furthers the distinction, stating that site and ground are far from equal despite the terms often being used interchangeably.

Per Dripps, the ground consists of not only the physical structure and processes of the earth but also the metaphorical patterns that interweave to create the context for our lives.³ The ground is complex and systemic; it is vast and resists compartmentalization. Site, on the other hand, refers to the segmentation of the ground into regular geometric parcels suitable for human inhabitation. A site imparts a political abstraction on the ground and tends to be decontextualized from the larger systems of the earth. According to Dripps, this conflation of terms has led to a devaluing of the ground, of the “background” conditions of our existence, and to the development of a “terminal insensitivity to the rich subtleties of the teeming wild, the variegated forms and materials of the landscape, the nuanced patterns of urban texture, and the rituals of the everyday.”⁴

Figure 1.1 Excerpt from a Map of the City of New York | Egbert Viele | 1865 The composite drawing shows the political boundaries of Manhattan overlaid on a mapping of the evolving topographical features of the island. The image pictured is a small segment of a much larger map developed by Viele which can be found here: https://www.loc.gov/item/2006629795/.

While site reduces complexity in order to establish rules and order, ground supports “various patterns of physical, intellectual, poetic, and political structure that intersect, overlap, and weave together to become the context for human thought and action.”⁵ This rich palimpsest of both man-made and natural systems actively informs the built environment. In “The Foundation of Architecture,” Rafael Moneo argues for a responsiveness to this complexity of place throughout the architectural design process. Architecture, for him, must be influenced by the character and the qualities of a place; it must be designed for that particular place as “it is the site, with all of its tangential implications, that composes the first material manifestation of any construction.”⁶

With respect to this charge, Moneo discusses the contemporary phenomenon of the “anywhere place” arising from the global condition also critiqued in the work of Hassan Fathy and Glenn Murcutt. He cautions that the practice of building untethered from the specificity of context “haunts our world today” and believes architects must be educated to recognize the indigenous attributes of a site and the surrounding context prior to initiating the design process. This sentiment also registers in Dripps’ writing, where emphasis is placed on carefully studying the complex systems of the ground to inform the decision-making process embedded in the design of the urban fabric.

For further discussion of the philosophies of Fathy and Murcutt see Chapter 3 | Environment.

Moneo uses the phrase appropriate to describe the way in which an architect should respect and respond to place. He states, however, that appropriate architecture is not “purely derivative of its encompassing environment.”⁷ While place informs architecture, the act of building involves, as posed in the opening quote by Gregotti, taking possession; it is an act of “territorial domination” that “fundamentally transforms the site, giving it a new role in architectural history.”⁸ Moneo believes that the architect must discern which contextual conditions are integrated into the architectural scheme as well as which should be ignored, transformed, or even eliminated.

This concept stands in contrast to Murcutt’s position on ownership as described in the Situate Section Introduction as well as in Murcutt’s interview in Chapter 3 | Environment.

Figure 1.2 Toledo Convention Center | Toledo, Spain | Rafael Moneo | 2010 Situated on a steeply sloping hillside, this project stitches an array of programming into the urban and historical fabric of the city.

As such, Moneo positions the ground somewhat differently than Dripps. He asserts, “[t]he ground in architecture is always expectant: always waiting for the arrival of the building.”⁹ The earth, conceptually, is presented as a foundation, a stable condition on which to erect a structure. It provides material strength, as well as character, to support the built environment. Conversely, Dripps sees the ground as a woven array of patterns and systems that are continuously operating. In this light, the ground does not await architecture. Instead, man-made systems must be carefully stitched into the fabric of the earth. These contrasting points of view underpin the two essays, one archi-centric and the other ground-centric.

Commonalities can also be found, however, in the two authors’ arguments regarding the relationship between architecture and the ground. Moneo states that there should be “no direct cause and effect relationship between the two.”¹⁰ A given condition on the site, therefore, should not elicit an isolated response as context is too complex for basic reciprocity. Dripps agrees that “[s]ingle, uncomplicated meanings are rare” when dealing with the ground.¹¹ Superficial responses, driven only by immediate observation, inadequately address and potentially damage larger systems that extend well beyond the limits of a site. True understanding, according to both authors, requires seeking knowledge to act and, for Dripps, opens an alternate reading of the site, one that considers it as “a special repository of clues – an opening to more extensive and varied grounds.”¹²

Also central to the arguments of both authors is the concept of dialogue. Dripps describes the complex layering of the ground, especially in areas that have been continually inhabited for a period of time, as a “dense sectional collage,” a palimpsest of politics and geometry. An excavation of such a location “tells a story of constant negotiation between a place, its people, and the political intentions that bear on it from the outside,” while embedding the present in a discussion of the past and linking site with ground.¹³

For Moneo, the architect must also utilize negotiation “to stimulate a discourse between place and object in architecture.”¹⁴ This communication distances the resulting object from the pure will of the architect and, instead, situates it contextually within a reciprocal relationship between idea and place. It also undermines the tendency towards the architecture of “anywhere” and reinforces the fact that “architecture, in the end, belongs to th[e] site.”¹⁵

Authors

Robin Dripps earned an undergraduate degree in architecture from Princeton University and a Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. She serves as a professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia and has taught extensively in the design studio while also engaging students in courses centered on architectural theory and the architectural detail. Her teaching excellence earned Dripps the Distinguished Professorship Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture in 1992.

Dripps’ writings include her book The First House: Myth, Paradigm, and the Task of Architecture, which received a Phi Beta Kappa Book Award in 1999. In addition to her academic pursuits, Dripps has spent the past three decades leading the exploratory practice Dripps+Phinney Studio with Lucia Phinney. The practice examines the intersection of construction and ecology with their work taking on a variety of forms including earth and water works, material studies, and constructed interventions that reveal “different ways that the interior life of architecture can engage its political and natural context.”¹⁶

José Rafael Moneo Vallés has an architectural pedigree derived from academic pursuits at the Madrid University School of Architecture, from his apprenticeships with Francisco J. Sáenz de Oiza and Jórn Utzon, and from his research fellowship at the Academy of Rome. In 1963, when Moneo returned to Spain from Rome he leapt into an academic career that has rivaled his notable professional accomplishments. Most notably, Moneo served as the Chair of the Graduate School of Design at Harvard from 1985 to 1990.

Moneo seemingly has very little interest in a defined personal style of design. His body of work “contains buildings which, on superficial inspection, have relatively little resemblance to each other.”¹⁷ Instead, he designs from a careful reading of the place, time, culture, and context of each individual project. For Moneo, structure plays a key role in project development, as do the rhythms of the built environment. He designs with great respect for materials and for their intersection with each other. However, “[a]t its best, Moneo’s architecture is about tying together the damaged tissue of the city and evoking memory.”¹⁸

Notes

1 Vittorio Gregotti, “Lecture at the New York Architectural League,” Section A 1, no. 1 (1983).

2 Robin Dripps, “Groundwork,” in Site Matters: Design Concepts, Histories, and Strategies, ed. Carol Burns and Andrea Kahn (New York: Routledge, 20...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword | Patrick Rand, FAIA, DPACSA
• Preface | Revisiting the Framework
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction | Inducing Architecture
• PART I Situate
• PART II Manipulate
• PART III Fabricate
• Figure Credits
• References
• Index