Klein Dytham ar chitectur e: Billboar d Building › Finding a pr ocess
Klein Dytham architecture was founded in Tokyo in 1991 by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham. Their multi-disciplinary practice encompasses architecture, interiors, public spaces and installations. They also lecture and teach internationally. This case study illustrates their approach to developing an architectural concept and applying it to both develop a design and communicate it to the building’s client and users.
The project
Klein Dytham architecture work in a rapidly changing city with an appetite for stylistic innovation and few aesthetic restrictions. Their response to this demanding environment is to create architecture that is memorable through the ideas it communicates: the building may be short-lived but people will remember fondly the positive message that it projected. This approach requires the creation of inventive and engaging architectural concepts that convey a clear message about what and who the building is for. In their book Klein Dytham architecture – Tokyo calling, Astrid Klein explains that ‘We don’t want to be elitist and our approach is far from academic. Architecture is all about the visual; you never find a note inside that describes the concept. Just look at it. See it.’
The Billboard Building demonstrates very clearly how architects can make creative use of an architectural concept. Every architect will give you a different answer to the question ‘what is an architectural concept?’, but in essence, a concept is the idea behind a project that elevates the building from just being a building towards being architecture. This idea should be understandable not just to the architect but to the people who walk past and who use the building.
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Case study
The design pr
oject
Klein Dytham architecture: Billboard Building
Located on a tiny site tapering from 2.5m to 0.6m wide in a prominent position, these challenges became virtues. Klein Dytham architecture recognised that the slender building would be almost entirely façade and that this was a condition similar to the billboards nearby. Their concept was therefore to design a building that would in effect become an occupied façade and their treatment of this would ensure that the shop would advertise itself as effectively as a billboard. One of the most striking qualities of this building is the legibility and resolution of its concept.
Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham have also devised ‘PechaKucha Night’, which is another way to learn about
architecture and the way that architects think (Pecha Kucha is Japanese for the sound of conversation). It is an informal event where a group of designers, in front of an audience, are asked to talk about 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds (see www.pecha-kucha.org). This is a simple way for designers to show their work and reveal the conceptual ideas behind it. Connections can be made between different strands of thought from other designers, encouraging a more dynamic and reflective discussion of ideas than would occur at a conventional lecture or crit.
Interior of Billboard Building
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‘Being nearly all front, we let it be what it so obviously wanted to be – an inhabitable billboard.’
Klein Dytham architecture Shop as illuminated billboard
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1 Linear sequence 2 Testing or scanning 3 Systematic production of
alternatives
4 Forming alternatives in a multi-step process
The design pr
ocess
Finding a process
Analysing the process of design
In his book Tools for Ideas: Introduction to Architectural Design, Christian Gänshirt shows four alternative diagrams that Horst Rittel used to describe the design process. The first and simplest diagram, a ‘linear sequence’, shows activity followed by a decision, which leads to further activity, which leads in turn to another decision and so on. In theory, this linear process could describe a very experienced architect who is solving a problem similar to previous, successfully solved ones. However, when applied to architectural
problems, this makes the assumption that an architect would wish to solve a similar problem in a similar way rather than to continually seek innovation, as most would strive to do. The second diagram, ‘testing and scanning’, shows an attempt by the designer to use the first solution that occurs to them. When this does not produce the desired result, the designer returns to the beginning and tries a different solution. The third diagram, ‘systematic production of alternatives’, shows a designer who is consciously setting up several alternative approaches and exploring them before using critical judgement to make a decision. The fourth diagram, ‘forming alternatives in a multi-step process’, describes a designer who will develop multiple solutions but with self-imposed constraints to reduce the number of alternatives to a manageable amount.
The fourth version seems the closest to the reality of the design process. It admits the imposition of constraints by the designer in order to make the task manageable and therefore introduces an element of arbitrariness and subjectivity, which certainly exists, however logical the reasons for the decision made by the designer.
Horst Rittel’s diagram of four ‘design processes for generating variety and reducing variety’:
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