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THE LANGUAGE OF ARCHITECTURE
Curating Space
Choreographing the movement through space constructs formal relationships and reveals concepts. The order in which elements are experienced and the way in which they are framed become powerful lenses through which a work is given meaning.
Filmic
Le Corbusier coined the term “promenade architectural” where architectural elements are not experienced from a single point of view but from multiple vantage points as one strolls through the architectural landscape. In this case, architecture can be thought of and experienced as a series of spatial stills or filmic frames that together constitutes a complete spatial experience.
Processional
The reliving of a memory or the reenactment of an historical event can be embedded in the architectural works that mark that route. Like the Stations of the Cross that line cathedral walls and religious walks and are used especially during Passion ceremonies, architecture can thus preserve the fleeting event as a permanent memory. At a larger scale, there are, for example, several pilgrimage routes that traverse Spain and end in Santiago de Compostela, where the apostle St. James is entombed. El Camino de Santiago is marked with Romansesque churches with enormous portals designed to accommodate vast numbers of pilgrims and that, during much of the year, serve as a reminder of the now largely touristic but once ecclesiastical ritual.
Le Corbusier, in his 1929 Villa Savoye in Poissy, France, constructs a series of archi- tectural compositions that subsequently choreographs the movement through the building and landscape. The relationship of volumes and surfaces in space and light creates a series of still lifes that the observer passes through as he/she navigates the building. A ramp carries the gaze diagonally through the building, from the entry vestibule up toward the raised courtyard and, finally, toward the sky.
As relationships between forms and spaces transform, and as one perceives these spaces and forms from multiple points of view, an otherwise monosyllabic and inert architecture is transformed into an endlessly complex and animate one. And it is the structuring of these relationships through a variety of movement systems that choreographs and defines that experience. A stair can collapse vertical relationships between spaces while a ramp might construct a more elongated unfolding of the architectural experience.
Regardless, it is the introduction of space through time that produces a series of spatial and formal relationships, a fourth dimension to architecture.
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Movement Wabash River, moves throughthe building’s interior ramps and stairs, ending with a stepped ramp that gently deposits the visitor at the entry to the historic village.
The central ramp further maps the formal and spatial structure of the building as it adjusts and resolves its shifting geometries so that it addresses the elements contained within its historical narrative.
Richard Meier’s 1975 Atheneum in New Harmony, Indiana, is essentially a viewing machine that uses its circulation to constantly reorient the visitor to its historic site: first to the modern town, then to its location next to the river, then to other nearby structures, and, finally, to the historic village of New Harmony. The sequence initiates from the edge of the
Narrative
Architecture can tell a story—real or imagined—about an individual, a place, an event. The circulation can operate as an armature that collects and frames the visual icons that render the narrative legible.
Theatrical
Architecture has the ability to frame the relationship between its various occupants and, in so doing, either establish or reinforce various behaviors. Movement through space continually reframes the occupants’ visions, constructing roles that shift from actor to audience.
In Lina Bo Bardi’s SESC Pompéia São Paulo Recreation Center in São Paulo, Brazil (1977), a spatial web is constructed by a continuous circulatory scan as athletes pass between the changing-room tower and the sports facilities—as if actors on display for the audience below and yet afforded a privileged view of those who are, in fact, watching them.
THE LANGUAGE OF ARCHITECTURE Tethered to the hillside by a light metal bridge, Mario Botta’s 1971–73 single-family house in Riva San Vitale, Switzerland, collects both distant and near views of the landscape, beginning with the bridge and continuing as one descends the central staircase. Each level radiates from this spiraling stair, which in turn registers openings in the perimeter walls that reveal the forested landscape and lake beyond.
Sequence
The type of movement and the speed in which a work is revealed defines the architectural experience. A sequence can be highly choreographed and follow a specific (physical and spatial) itinerary or it can be intentionally random and allow for a multiple—virtually infinite—variety of encounters. It can be defined with a clearly articulated path (as with a bridge, stair, or ramp) or it can be constructed through formal and spatial relationships, where one moves toward a source of light or toward and between figural forms (as through a row of columns or between two volumes).
Continuous
An uninterrupted sequence creates a fluid and continuous spatial experience with each space unfolding into the next. This sequence is often associated with ramps or generous staircases, where the speed of movement allows for an extended gaze that scans and collects the near and the far.
Attenuated
Like a symphony, an extended sequence often has an identifiable theme that begins with a whisper and concludes with a bang, exploring along the way variations on the central theme. It often responds to contex-tual conditions—a narrowing of the space, an elevational difference—and occupancy—
a trickle of wanderers versus a crowded stampede.
Circulation and gallery space are fused in Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1959 Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
Here, an enormous ramp defines the space of circula- tion, of art gallery, of interior court, and of building form.
It allows for both near and distant views of the displayed works, with the movements of the visitors defining the space of the interior.
Adalberto Libera’s 1938 Casa Malaparte in Capri, Italy, is an extension of the rock from which it appears to seamlessly grow. Its majestic staircase triumphantly extends the circuitous rocky ascent that is initiated in the sea far below it, culminating the sequence with the view of a distant horizon.
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Movement InterruptedThe experience of a building or a landscape need not be continuous—in other words, fragments of primary spatial experiences can be collected and reconstituted in one’s memory as a comprehensive, if not continuous, experience.
Random
Here, the accidental encounter is privileged over the controlled, where the movement through a building or landscape is intention-ally unstructured. This creates an experience that allows for a continuous recombination of architectural experiences, with each combination producing a unique reading of the work.
route’s own particular history and character. These fragments are discovered at unique moments along each route—constructed traces that render each route visible.
For example, along the Senja Route, Code Arkitektur’s Tungeneset rest stop (2006–
07) extends the island’s perimeter road, gesturing downward to the sea.
from the Roman Legion’s route along the ramparts, to the Teuton’s positions as they advanced and retreated, to a nonmilitaristic neutral layer of park trails. Three pavilions—Seeing, Hearing,
and Questioning—are distributed throughout the park, points in a landscape between which multiple encounters and trajectories can occur.
Each of the eighteen National Tourist Routes in Norway has a unique constellation of service buildings and access infrastructures (bridges, paths, parking) that reference a
Guy Debord’s psycho- geography (1955) develops the idea that a thoughtful understanding of the city is developed by an aimless wandering, one driven by impulse rather than order, where one can construct a series of narratives that is unique to each itinerary.
Throughout the archeological park at Gigon Guyer’s Museum and Park Kalkriese in Osnabruck, Germany (1999–2002), a network of symbolic paths represents various layers of occupation,
Dialogue
Movement through space is often a distinct system that establishes a dialogue with a particular context. It can either amplify and, in so doing, render legible an existing infrastructural network or it can overlay a distinct spatial, material, and temporal dimension. The dimension, geometry, and material of movement systems often demonstrate their occupants’ requirements, from turning radii (automobiles), to angles of incline (accessibility), to minimum widths (egress safety).
Amplification
Movement systems can originate within the context in which the work is situated. They can attach themselves to existing circulation networks, amplifying their presence into three-dimensional form, thereby blurring the boundaries between exterior and interior, landscape and architecture.
Interface
Systems of movement can operate as material and spatial mediators between distinct conditions: between past and present, between two scales, between two programs, between two materials, between two speeds. Often, they introduce the human being into a liminal space between two conditions, establishing a critical dialogue that allows one to be understood from the lens of the other.
networks of meandering circulation paths, creating a three-dimensional spatial weave and obscuring the distinctions between architecture and landscape.
Italy. The distinct material and dimensional layer introduces an independent circulation system that allows the visitor to navigate the traces and remains of the vast 113 CE brick structures.
The building volumes of Zaha Hadid’s 1996–99 Landscape Formation-One in Weil am Rhein, Germany, are an extension and transformation of the park’s existing
Studio Labics and Nemesi Architetti Associati (1999–2004) overlaid a system of steel bridges, ramps, and thresholds onto the archeological ruins of Trajan’s Market in Rome,
THE LANGUAGE OF ARCHITECTURE
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Movement Multiple/ParallelSimultaneous or parallel sequences reveal alternate architectural experiences: The short and sweet is distinct from the long and leisurely, the honorific from the prosaic, the once a year from the every day. The enormous central brass doors to the Vatican’s St. Peter’s open on special occasions, allowing for an axial procession up the stairs and into the central nave, versus the everyday perimeter doors that provide access to the local and the touristic. Courthouses also have multiple sequences—one for the accused, one for the public, and a third for the judiciary—
each demonstrating various scales of access and security that reflect the special circum-stances of each group.
Multiple movement systems define the architecture of Centre Georges Pompidou, designed by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano and completed in 1977 in Paris, France. Be it the movement of air, water, electricity, art, or people, each system is given a clear expression that defines the form of the building. The city of Paris is displayed as a picturesque canvas as one moves up the exuberant, and now iconic, escalators that traverse the exterior of the building.
formed and deformed as a function of the automobile’s external upward spiral, transforming the car from prosaic machine to exhibited object as it navigates the ramped surfaces. The pedestrian’s inner descent ramps back down through
each layer, introducing yet another dimension and operation to the folded plates as the inner surfaces adjust to the human scale. An elevator adds a third means of navigating the structure—
a direct route back to the top layer of parking.
The form of the 2008 Automobile Museum in Nanjing, China, by 3Gatti Architecture Studio is a function of the building’s independent, yet intertwined, circulation trajectories.
The building’s paper-thin concrete floor wafers are
THE LANGUAGE OF ARCHITECTURE