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Toshiko Mori
Professor in Practice Department of Architecture |
Core Studios
| Third Semester Core: Architectural
Design with Tectonics, Urbanism and Civic Presence The Court House as a building type embodies one of the most powerful potentials for architecture to express meaning and symbol in our civic life. It demonstrates the ideal for a democratic process and its legal system to function in order to protect the public by balancing freedom and constraint, the visibility, openness and accessibility to this institution are balanced by necessary security separation and privacy through specific and intricate ritual and internal organization. There is an enormous opportunity for the language of architecture to articulate and describe specific function, character and sequence of spaces. Conditions of light and accessibility to views can be manipulated to produce subtle narrative and metaphorical references. The recent burst of Court House building activity fueled by an initiative of the GSA coincides with a worldwide phenomena of rethinking about visual manifestations of democracy, redefinition of democratic space and finding a new meaning for the role of judicial systems in our society. We are in the midst of one of the most active periods for the reconsideration of this building type. There are multiple examples and precedents, which offers a wide range of points of view, interpretation and architectural styles. It is up to each architect to reflect upon the role of this building type, to carefully construct a thesis and design through a deliberate and calibrated use of tectonic language where the message and meaning becomes clearly visible and legible to the public. In this re-thinking of urban civic institutions that comes with the increase in complexity of our society, building types are produced that may not be easily characterized by simpler and singularly identifiable typologies. How do the parts relate to each other and to the whole? How can one, solely through the language of architecture, tectonics and structural expression, establish an identity and civic presence for such an entity? Much discourse has taken place on this subject in the latter half of the 20th century. The Postmodern period has produced many unsuccessful buildings that borrow their appearance from historical periods, appealing to sentimental associations with the exterior identity of buildings and the traditional images of certain typologies that they evoke. In the more recent past, attempts to address these multiple identities have produced confusing collages of forms and facades thinly veiled with imagery, strategies that become uncritical reflections of aggregate programs or facetious nods to the context. The selected site is located at the outer boundary of Allston, a terrain vague, waiting for an active future. New development fueled by Harvard’s Campus expansion Plan and re-establishment of viable community is currently taking place. This new Court House will become one of the most visible symbols for the identity of this new community. With this project, one is asked to develop a thesis (position) and an argument on the role and nature of identity in this Court House for this site. Program and Site Program and Tectonics To properly address the tension and balance between tectonics, urbanism and programmatic study, a strong strategy and clear concept is required to the architect. These opposing and dialectical issues are negotiated by the interplay of various scale elements and their program and use on the site, particularly the allocation of open spaces and their planning, consideration of nature vs. artifice, private vs. public, processional vs. static spaces, and experiential vs. virtual. This investigation of the Court House is developed throughout the semester as a cumulative series of studies. The course schedule is designed so that the project is developed discursively, with periodic evaluations at progress reviews, in an effort to encourage open-ended explorations. The schedule implies an inevitable linear sequence, but the work should embrace increasing breadth and depth of complex material resource that requires constant reference to many scales of events. It is our pedagogical goal to form a cohesive set of documents, at least four scales should be included for consideration: urban site scale, architectural scale, furniture, human scale, and detail and material scale. Topics of Study
An Urban Conglomerate: Tectonics and Urbanism Toshiko Mori (Coordinator) In this re-thinking of urban civic institutions that comes with the increase in complexity of our society, building types are produced that may not be easily characterized by simpler and singularly identifiable typologies. How do the parts relate to each other and to the whole? How can one, solely through the language of architecture, tectonics and structural expression, establish an identity and civic presence for such an entity? Much discourse has taken place on this subject in the latter half of the 20th century. The Postmodern period has produced many unsuccessful buildings that borrow their appearance from historical periods, appealing to sentimental associations with the exterior identity of buildings and the traditional images of certain typologies that they evoke. In the more recent past, attempts to address these multiple identities have produced confusing collages of forms and façades thinly veiled with imagery, strategies that become uncritical reflections of aggregate programs or facetious nods to the context. The selected site is located at the boundary of Boston and Cambridge on waterfront, a forgotten or a left over piece of land after an intensive development of Central Artery Project in Boston and commercial and institutional development in Cambridge. With this project, one is asked to develop a thesis (position) and an
argument on the role and nature of identity in this urban conglomerate. Program and Tectonics To properly address the tension and balance between tectonics, urbanism and programmatic study, a strong strategy and clear concept is required to the architect. These opposing and dialectical issues are negotiated by the interplay of various scale elements and their program and use on the site, particularly the allocation of open spaces and their planning, the consideration of nature vs. artifice, public vs. private, performance vs. spectacle, and experiential vs. virtual. This investigation of the urban conglomerate is developed throughout the semester as a cumulative series of studies. The course schedule is designed so that the project is developed discursively, with periodic evaluations at progress reviews, in an effort to encourage open-ended explorations. The schedule implies an inevitable linear sequence, but the work should embrace increasing breadth and depth of complex material resource that requires constant reference to many scales of events. It is our pedagogical goal to form a cohesive set of documents, at least
four scales should be included for consideration: urban site scale, architectural
scale, furniture, and human scale, and detail and material scale. Site and Urban Strategy Landscape and the relationship to the ground plane Size of the proposed building in relationship to its context Organizational relationship of the programmatic elements Circulation: stairs, corridors, passages & sequence Scale of architectural elements: window, room, furniture Conditions of light: natural and artificial Structure and infrastructure: mechanical and technical integration Issues of public safety and security Sustainability and economy of means Materials and Details
Library and Media: Architectonics of Internal and External Library and Media: Literature is not composed simply of books but of libraries, systems in which the various epochs and traditions arrange their "canonical" texts and their "apocryphal" ones. Within these systems, each work is different from what it would be in isolation or in another library. A library can have a restricted catalogue, or it can tend to become a universal library, though always expanding around a core of "canonical" books. This is the place where the center of gravity resides, marking off one library from another even more than the catalogue. The ideal library that I would like to see is one that gravitates toward the outside, toward the "apocryphal" books, in the etymological sense of the word: that is, "hidden" books. Literature is a search for the book hidden in the distance that alters the value and meaning of the known books; it is the pull toward the new apocryphal text still to be rediscovered or invented. The library is a building type where the site strategy, program, materiality and tectonics of the building can reflect the philosophy of the architect in a particularly potent way. It is ideally suited to put forth a cohesive argument for the architect's intentions regarding both its geographical place in the city, and its temporal place in history. Architectonics of Internal and External: The library, through its tectonic construct, should strive to express a specific attitude regarding the relationship between its internal and external presence. Human activities, such as research, reading, gathering, and their relationship to books, other media, space and light, form the core internal relationship of the library. At the same time, a library assumes an external and urban public presence to announce its role within society. The public nature of a library with reference to its obligation for the functionality, efficiency, security, accessibility and visibility is observed through the analysis of historical precedents. At the same time the private nature of a library, how it is used by an individual and how the technology is slowly transforming the manner of use of a library, introduces contemporary issues that were previously not integrated into the program of a library. The tension between the internal and external issues of this building type requires a philosophical consideration by an architect. The opposing issues that rise out of this tension are: public vs. private, knowledge vs. information, timelessness vs. temporality, and books vs. computer technology. A position must be taken by each person to define the role and the character of the library/media tech. With this theme of internal and external, a library building was developed throughout the semester. It was our pedagogical goal to form a cohesive set of documents including drawings, models and texts that describe the thesis of each individual student. A set of drawings and models were reviewed each week. This discipline, wherein thoughts and processes are documented in a creative, yet consistent manner, is necessary to develop any architectural endeavor. Within each set of documents, at least four scales were included for consideration: site, architectural, furniture and details. Topics of study:
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