03.21.19 Student Lecture Series | Jeannete Kuo: Possible Futures

[Applause] not really used to sitting down to have a lecture thank you very much Jen for the introduction and also for the invitation to speak here tonight and also for another for allowing all of this to happen I would like to show five of our recent projects today a couple of which has have recently been completed but before I do that I'd like to try to construct a bit of a framework through which you might begin to understand a little bit of how we approach our work as well as some of our more recent preoccupations so many of you who have probably read the book One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez there's one particular scene in that book that stayed with me for you know for all this time even though the last time I read this book is probably about like 15 years ago so summer towards the end of the book the inhabitants of a fictive town called Macondo which has been plagued with insomnia see their memory deteriorate first to go were the names and notions of things and in an effort to fight his amnesia the patriarch of the town a certain kernel buendía said about labeling all the objects in his house but he soon realized to his horror that the day might come when things would be recognized by their inscriptions but that no one would remember their use the scene in the novel is brief appointment it highlights not only the relationship between our physical and cognitive world but also its vulnerability as a mental and cultural construct these are relationships that we often take for granted until a glitch calls attention to them well when the s preoccupation was on the functionality of things we can perhaps extend to claim that any physical construct has no meaning without its corresponding mental start whether functional or symbolic but what we flipped this condition on its head what if we saw the amnesia not as condemning but as liberating of course the mental construct is essential to understanding our physical environment but what if the freeing of the physical from a one-to-one association with a particular mental construct were to offer a different way of engaging with the world one that is open and capable of evolving if the modernist subject is defined by georg simmel as a individual numbed by the sensory overload of the metropolis then our contemporary subject is defined not only by the sheer volume of information and the plurality of self-expression but above all by the speeds and frequency of change in his studies in Teutonic culture Kenneth Trant enlists type technique topography and temporal circumstance as complicit and defining elements of a cultural condition though perhaps with varying degrees of importance of each and different projects it could be safe to argue that while each of these circumstances have been given emphasis at different historical moments we're witnessing a period in which the temporal or the a temporal depending on how you choose to see it has taken on a renewed meaning in the last decades we could argue for example that the high modernists were concerned with an eternal present there was an urgency to define a right way of doing things and to break radically from the past as a consequence functionality by way of top-down implementation became the paradigm post modest post modernism subsequently looked at the past history and tradition as a source for the autonomy of the architect reappropriation what their forebears had rejected today the emphasis has shifted instead towards the design of not quite predictable futures while this may in fact be nothing new the scale and pervasiveness of this preoccupation sing perhaps more than just a passing trend we see more and more in competition briefs that demand for flexibility adaptability or diversity the idea that the building serves a wider array of activities which will evolve and that the anticipation of such an eventuality is the responsibility of the architect we've seen this in commercial office buildings for a long time epitomize for better or for worse in the typical plan but we're seeing this now also for school buildings anticipating changing pedagogy or for housing serving a wider more diversified and more dynamic demographic professionally and pedagogically it sets us up for an interesting challenge in which the obsolescence of type use lifestyle or other similar factors lay pressure on the physical world arguably architecture remains for the most part a physical and immutable presence as we've learned from the unfulfilled promises of the metabolisms but such projects may be faulted not for their aspirations but for the scope and framework within which they operate the literal kinetic adaptation of megastructures seems in retrospect neither economically nor functionally judicious and the top-down attitude ignores space from the perspective of the person but perhaps their fatal mistake was in focusing on the fixed relationship between form and use within this dynamic context program has become secondary rather we see more and more the return to a tectonic or constructional focus where the relationship between the physical construct and the inhabitable space form ambiguities potentials for multiple readings that allows the project to constantly gain new life there's a loose fit between form and program there are of course rich examples of projects that by accident or by intention definitely confront this idea one canonical example is Vilanova Artigas is faculty Architects Apollo that creates a central void we know this iconic image mainly as an example of a container for events or political space for the masses but in fact what we often overlook is the importance that the discrete elements give to the understanding of the overall space as one that is democratic despite its monumentality not only through the scale shift that they provide but also the inversion of the typical interior/exterior relationship these volumes the asymmetry introduced with the interior facades the split-levels the ramps all seem to signal independent elements that are loosely held together by the continous roof overhead the space becomes simultaneously a room but also a plaza and it's this ambiguity that sets it apart from its contemporaries we find a similar attitude at a much smaller scale in Frank Gehry Santa Monica house this house is often regarded mainly from a stylistic point of view but I personally find it more fascinating as a study of space the wrapping of a new facade around the existing house creates a space of transition a new interior tea that in its informality and clash of materials creates a new hole that seems to be constantly evolving and never finished it's literally an in-between space a liminal space captured between old and new and therefore neither one nor the other but suspended in time even some of the furniture is placed on wheels suggesting a kind of evolving present an open endedness also doesn't have to translate only as a void or a kind of in-between space history has given us plenty of examples of highly specific buildings with multiple lives the Great Mosque of Cordoba saw violent takeovers which nonetheless added each time towards a new home for the iqs reservoir in Barcelona that became a hospital than an archive and a film studio and most recently a library strong plans that despite or perhaps because of their domineering structures inspire appropriation these projects reveal a more infrastructural attitude where the focus is perhaps on a series of relationships set up between highly specific but abstract geometries and their corresponding form of construction and yet there is a loose fit between form and program that allow for productive Mis readings a lot of these ideas were of course also testing in our own work for the archaeological Center in Basel lund it's a just outside or between Basel and and Zurich it's a competition that we won in 2014 the ability of the building to adapt to the changing needs of the future is actually central to the concept of the project for political and financial reasons the project has to be realized in multiple phases and at the same time the types of work as well as the types of spaces that were required vary quite dramatically from sort of workshops for archaeology and conservation to research and marketing departments and of course more than half of the program is storage and display of this kind of growing collection of finds from you from the archaeological site and above you know also beyond that they were asking for a certain flexibility in terms of being able to adapt for the future needs of the different departments so unifying all of this while still allowing for flexibility became part of the challenge of the competition brief the site is along the highway between Zurich and Basel as I say and this is it's actually a Roman site a Roman city which is kind of built over after many centuries and what you see in red are all the ruins that are still or that happen that they found but none of which really have been fully excavated our site is this parcel over here and the rest of it is kind of an open-air museum that's sort of situated in between the fabric of the existing town and there's been excavations going on here for more than 500 years the site was first discovered in the 1500s but only about 10% of the Roman city has been exposed we forget that oh gosh takes quite a lot of effort and resources and finances also to maintain the artifacts the moment they are assumed so what they've done is mainly focused on the monuments that were there which is this kind of small portion of the of the actual city and so far even with just 10% being excavated they already have over 1.7 million artifacts which they have to store and of course this collection just keeps growing the more that they they dig this leads to a kind of logistical challenge these and these types of situations which is a little absurd you will see these kind of ancient Roman columns that are parked underneath the eaves of a shed a kind of garden shed where they keep their kind of gardening tools and materials trying to shelter it from the weather smaller pieces are stored like this in these kind of containers where there's no temperature or humidity regulation and but also beyond the issues of conservation of these pieces they have also been in a kind of institutional crisis because most of their workspaces have been sort of scattered throughout the city in different spots that they've rented over the years so the department's are never really in contact with each other nobody's really understanding what the whole you know endeavor let's say of this of this foundation is about and you know what they need to be doing together in order to improve on their kind of working relationships and things like that and so the competition was an effort to find a solution under this very very tight budget budgetary constraints and also to to find a way not only to sort of store and display these these artifacts but to unite everyone under one roof so we when we think of storage and sorting and the kind of retrieval of you know millions of things we were interested in the kind of justice of these two field conditions on the left they hyper efficiency of the Amazon warehouses and then on the right you know the kind of mystery and aura related to kind of archeology which was captured in movies like Indiana Jones's Raiders of the Lost Ark so for us in a way it became an starting point that our first act was not so much to design an object we weren't designing a building but we were designing a system a spatial structure in this case a kind of a Vav system of structural bands that would allow individual rooms and departments to expand and contract while allowing clear circulation of of people and artifacts and also all the technical services to sort of run through all the time and into this field we would then insert sort of fixed infrastructures like stairs shafts elevators bathrooms and things like that which helped to create a kind of let's a subdivision and differentiation in the plan that would allow it also to absorb all the different requirements over time the whole structure would then sit on a plate over the ruins we actually had to build on top of one of existing ruins but because the the whole sort of archeological endeavor happens over such a long period they determined that that site they would not excavate in the next 50 years or so but what that meant was that we needed to still be able to preserve what was underneath so everything had to be balanced on top of a plate that essentially would just hop near kind of sit on top of the site so there can be no pylons or anything drilled into the ground that meant that the construction had to be light as light as possible but that the weight also had to be evenly distributed which meant for example that we were juggling in a way how to deal with the different programs that would occupy this this long building and so the workspaces for example are stacked on two floors to balance off the weight of a large haul of artifacts and when we look more closely at the workspaces they're kind of defined by two spatial experiences within this within this field condition on the one hand a kind of horizontality and transparency across departments which allows them to kind of reconnect with the kind of identity of this of this institution this would then be punctuated by the occasional verticality which would bring lights and views into this kind of deep floor of the of this field on the outside to reduce cost we used actually some very common everyday materials in this case for the facade its corrugated steel cladding which actually would be of different sizes and different densities that when stacked becomes a kind of sedimentation that gives a sense of an abstract almost primordial expression the linearity of the building allows the construction to be easily faced and extended over time which was one of the requirements so in a way it could appear complete at any given moment so if the client runs out of money and had to stop or if they actually made more money and decided to extend it could in a way go on forever the Biden Secondary School is a project in Rakas Fiona which is about an hour east of Zurich and we finished this project in 2017 after a pretty rushed construction schedule the larger context of this school campus is rather unremarkable it's kind of typical of most agglomerations and the periphery of the cities in Switzerland so you see that there's a little bit of housing some industrial sites and then to the north a lot of sort of agricultural fields still and then in the middle of it all this little campus school campus of primary and secondary schools and when we went to first visit this campus for the competition which we were invited to participated we were struck by the kind of peaceful and Oasis character of of this kind of idyllic site the existing schools were these low-lying pavilions very very low density and you had this very Park life setting and this kind of giant plinth that seemed a little bit over proportioned for the for the size of the existing school and the original secondary school had nine classes and the new program called for 24 new classrooms a double Sports Hall and sprinkling of other types of programs like workshops and teaching kitchens and things like that and so we had you know a couple of challenges that were that we had to confront one was how to add a building three times the size of the existing into this context without completely destroying the park-like atmosphere at the site and how to also create a kind of stronger identity in the kind of constellation of buildings that we're adding to so we decided actually that the solution of least impact was to create a singular volume that would stack two floors of classrooms and timber construction on top of sports hall in concrete construction the competition brief was written in such a way that you could actually you know place the building anywhere and also have separate buildings if necessary most people in fact have proposed the Sports Hall as a completely separate building and it's essentially covering most of the site so we were one of the one of the two teams I think that that that went for a more you know a compact building like this and you know for us then this this kind of existing plinth between the the existing secondary school and then the new building would become a kind of common entry court and so spanning the classrooms over the gym meant that we got a much deeper floor plate than usual and we took this as an opportunity to kind of request in the typology of a school and the kind of common distribution of a school you know I think father we all have some or at least I do some forms of traumatic memories of corridors and and you know long corridors endless corridors in in high school and and we wanted to actually sort of give something back to the experience of of this school so instead of corridors we introduced into this very very deep plan a kind of brand central hall and this central hall which would be on each of the classroom levels would be a kind of flexible undefined space that was simultaneously a distribution zone but also a study space that could be used for different events you know when when students were waiting between classes but also for things like school dance or parent-teacher conferences where they would set up exhibitions and things like that and and now for example they they organized once a semester I think a kind of class Breakfast where they set out a long table and everybody sitting you know having croissants there it's a very common actually the nine o'clock breakfast break so courtyards bring in light and help to break down the scale of this kind of large hall into a sequence of more intimate spaces when you walk through the space kind of opens up in the center as a larger hall but still allows for areas of retreat and spatially the courtyards act like rooms they in some ways I would say inverts the relationship between inside and outside where the outside actually becomes a kind of intimate room within this kind of larger field and around the periphery of each of these kind of central halls you have a series of classrooms which are connected by a non feel awed this is in some ways in response to also something in the brief that they had written they they wanted to be able to flexibly pair up classrooms for their kind of pedagogical I would say ambitions in a way that they that they could start teaching also in parallel with other classes and so this kind of pump ulid allows them then the flexibility of pairing between different spaces as well as a kind of consciousness that you belong to a kind of larger home and and the other thing that we were very consciously also engaging with was was the idea that the exposed beams which are on each of the floors also on the kind of lower floor you will see later are something that that are always kind of pulled through continuously that unify the the entire level extending also to the outside where we have the egress balconies that that lie in the building so maybe one of the things that to kind of also explain a little bit more precisely is that the Eagers balconies isn't just about a kind of expression to the outside which was but it also is the thing that allows this kind of central hall to be flexibly furnished and used because basically they they in case of fire everybody just goes immediately to the periphery and to the outside and does not have to re-enter the center of the building on the ground-floor the lobby the teachers rooms and conference hall wrap around a sunken gym creating a kind of immediate adjacency and visual exchange so in this image you're just entering the building from the main entrance with a view into this gym and also the stairs that go up to the classrooms and so the gym which is you know usually something which is completely hidden either it's like in a totally different building or something you know completely sunken underground now becomes a kind of central part of the school it becomes a kind of active moment within the school but also offers a sort of transparency to to other parts of the public programs there as well what you're seeing now is looking into the kind of multi-purpose lecture hall on the ground floor and and also you know of course that gym doubles up as a kind of event space when they have larger performances and things like that in the school as well and and in some ways also has a kind of contact to the outside and so while the stacking meant that there was a certain height that we introduced into this this campus which was relatively low-lying what was surprising was that despite its size the building come kind of becomes a less logical anchor to the entire campus providing a kind of clear edge to this previously oversized plinth and and making it a kind of a real sort of meeting space in central plaza the house on a slope is one of our newest construction sites we just started a couple of weeks ago it's a big hole right now that's starting to be filled up it's actually a housing project despite the name in fact it's a project with six apartment units in a posh Villa neighborhood with lake views just outside of Zurich and the project in a way you could argue is a little bit if I borrow a term from Barbara Bester a kind of stealth density it's an apartment building disguised to look like a single-family house and partly that as political reasons because of the way in which projects can be contested by neighbors and being that this is a lot of rich neighbors with you know powerful access to lawyers we wanted to remain under the radar as much as possible so here the question of flexibility is approached from a very very different perspective instead of the typical subdivision of units into this building into self-similar units the diversity of the units becomes the kind of flexibility that allows the client to attract a wide range of mixed income renters so most of the time when the building is on a slope we see projects that maximize the envelope by approximating the slope through a terracing so you know for example the buildable envelope in in this town is defined by the offset of the existing terrain so what we chose to do instead is just to follow that diagram dumbly so the roofline that you're seeing is essentially the maximum height that is that is allowed and this allowed us essentially to to not only integrate the building into this kind of villa context with this gable roof but also to produce a kind of series of radically different apartments with different sort of spatial experiences and also different points price segments so you see for example a kind of split-level garden unit accessible apartments that would be on the ground floor and pitch roof apartments on the upper levels each of and one of these actually also was recently converted into a kind of duplex loft unit so the client was interested in a way in units that would cater to small families and young professionals that were priced out of the center of Zurich so while they might be slightly smaller unit types each one has quite specific characteristics that are driven by the spatial sequence of the common areas so you would see for example in gray the the common areas inside the apartments one for example which is the garden unit facing directly and opening generously sort of directly onto the garden another being is kind of snake-like zigzag that provides a very long diagonal space with two sort of exposures my favorite actually I think is this which is a very long narrow sequence of spaces going from a study to a kitchen to a dining space to a living room so each apartment has at least two exposures and a generous outdoor space and that was something that we kind of gave ourselves as a requirement and at the same time they're they're packed quite densely into this larger whole revolving around one relatively compact circulation core the landscape we just allowed to sort of run continuously we didn't actually design that really except to introduce two very clearly sort of geometrical interventions so two circles one at the upper sort of main entrance from the street which uses the circle to negotiate the handicap ramp and another which is a larger circle at the the garden level below that becomes a kind of gathering space for the different people that would be living there so this is maybe the latest Whedon update these slice or these images so much but this is the latest model we had before we went into construction which is an update on the kind of facade concept we're essentially using a pigmented concrete a dark sort of anthracite sort of pigmented concrete which gives it almost a velvety look which is actually quite quite curious and and so this is a project also a competition that we got in through an RFQ but which we didn't win unfortunately but it's something that we still enjoy looking at it's a town hall in a compound called fightin buff which is also you know just about maybe 15 minutes outside of Zurich and it's a town that is I would say they're they're the greatest claim to fame is that they are the first town to have gotten an Ikea outside of Sweden that kind of gives you a sense of what type of town it is it's probably you could say it would be the armpit of of Switzerland in some ways but we were given this site which is in the middle of this hodgepodge of different types of buildings none of which were really remarkable and there is not really any clear center and and into this context we were to introduce a town hall so when you look at the Town Hall as a kind of typology it's actually something quite curious obviously as a strong representational role as a seed of a local government but programmatically it's actually 80 percent bureaucratic and only about 20 percent ceremonial and most of the time the 20% which is ceremonial so things that are like you know the meeting halls the wedding halls and things like that or need to be independently accessible even during office hours so they have to function in a way almost like separate buildings and in older buildings like the Paris townhall which is shown here or even the the Zurich one the circulation is usually quite labyrinthine once you go inside and the different ceremonial halls are sprinkled throughout making the kind of control of access quite difficult and on the other hand we quite liked the idea that the roof scape would be giving a kind of stately character to the building and maybe even something more than that our proposal then essentially consolidated all the ceremonial programs onto this top floor which would also become this expressive crown to the building that would allow then the rest of the building to just fulfill the kind of functions of bureaucracy so the geometry of the groove meant that each hall had its own special form and a spatial experience but that nonetheless would come together as a kind of richer whole each space also has its own aperture and relationship to the outside so the main foyer and and reception area for example with large windows to the city more intimate corners of that reception space as well as more introverted sort of salons which would open onto enclosed roof terraces that they can rent out for for parties and and you know weddings wedding receptions and things like that while the roof has an overall systematic logic it results in each facade being quite different so given this kind of immediate context the building is actually not really experienced in any way as a kind of pedestrian do but but really as a kind of drive-by or as a as an object that seemed more from afar so we were interested in this kind dynamism of how the building can potentially change form depending on how and where you approach it from the Institute for sport sciences is a project that we won in an open competition in 2013 and we just finished building it last year after having a kind of six month break it's a building on the campus of the University of Lausanne that unites four public and private organizations that research and teach sports sciences and on first glance it's a very dill excite with you know amazing views of Lake Geneva which is down here these are actually sports fields of the University there is a beautiful sort of al-ahly of plane trees there and if you go this way you head into the city of ulsan if you go this way just about a kilometer down it's the the EPFL campus with the Rolex learning center of sedge EEMA so it's it's a very very prominent site in a way but the campus is characterized by these types of behemoths you know ladies that are kind of from the from the 70s in a way that are fortress-like that give a kind of representational character but not necessarily something which is which is inviting or or you know communicating necessarily with the rest of the campus so we wanted to in some ways respond to that and to offer a kind of counterpoint something which is maybe more modern and self-confident but not a complete rejection of the campus we were interested in an expression which was which was maybe more quiet but also light something which conveys a certain technicality and and and maybe also you know anti-gravity that would hop over almost in the landscape and in some ways identify a little bit with the kind of athletic prowess of the people that would be inhabiting this building and when you study office buildings you know so we decided you know with that idea also quite early on to to have a very compact form which is a cube of about 35 to 40 meters in depth and when you study office buildings of this size the typical response is to either fill the center where you normally don't get any daylight with a massive core or to make a void and in both cases the experiences you know rather soul burn and expected so we were interested in rethinking the problem of this Center we wondered what would happen if the center was both the kind of infrastructural core as well as a rich experience conceptually we split the building into two halves or two you know two parts let's say a hyper rational and flexible ring of workspaces and a porous mass of service and shared spaces the outer ring would accept a certain you know convention of office planning based on a modular grid of the facade that would allow for all the different sizes of offices that they had asked for but also for the kind of flexible repartition in the future so you know that became something which was which was quite systematic these offices were also less than five meters in depth which allowed every workspace to have optimum access to daylight and then you know after the the kind of office ring was then a ring of corridor and distribution which allowed all the kind of technical services to be distributed to each of those spaces so this kind of hyper rationality freed us up to explore the core in the center as as this kind of spatial it's a experience there these are a few of the many iterations we did during the competition process before we decided on the final logic and in some ways what surprised us was that one of the most simplest schemes was in fact the one that for us worked not only the best in terms of the performance of all the things that it had to take on but also provided one of the richest sort of spatial sequences it was a series of alternating stacked bars that allowed us also to create a kind of internal landscape and of course this mass absorbs all the spaces that don't need daylight the vertical shafts elevators stairs but also bathrooms kitchens archives and also these physical testing labs that they have where they hook athletes up to treadmills and and and essentially make them do sort of physical exercises at the same time it's a kind of spatial experience and a collective heart of the building and structurally these two parts the lightweight sort of ring of plaits and columns is braced by the inner core to form a kind of interdependent whole I'm just showing you some of these images which were things that we produced for the competition but these also became working models that we started sort of modifying what after winning the competition but maybe this is just for you to get a sense before I show you the completed project in fact how similar it ended up being so this is the kind of internal landscape which in some ways provided a space that would allow for the synergy of the four different departments or institutions that occupy the building the ring becomes a kind of backdrop to these daily exchanges and and there's always a kind of visual continuity between the two parts so that even while you're sitting in your private office you're looking out into this space where you know you know that you're part of a larger whole so again there there's also a variety of sizes and scales of spaces that allows for you know moments of respite and concentration as well as you know other render moments and so this is the the building that has been finished now the photos were actually taken before they completely fully occupied it so it's a little sparse but this is when you first make your way up into the center of the building the space begins to open in different directions with views to the different floors and also in some ways to the outside it's in fact the the ring became way more transparent than we even imagined it would be there's this kind of internal landscape of vertical circulation that allows the kind of chance encounters and and places for people in the different departments to meet also these moments of Brander when you realize you know that you're that you're in a building with four other institutions but that there's a certain sort of visual connection between all of them and and then also the kind of possibility for retreat and for privacy so that you know you can also sort of be within your own office space and looking out into this kind of atrium where all the services are contained so these bars so on the other side of the HBM you would have these corridors where on the one side is our office spaces and on the other these kind of physical testing labs where you have also windows into them these labs are highly controlled environments because they're they're measuring the kind of heart rates and physical characters of the of the athletes they had to be very much highly controlled and and also the building is in a way you know we don't always present it through that through that lens but the building is actually a very very ecologically performative building it uses I should both passive and active technologies for example heating and cooling with the lake water through the using the the sort of thermally activated building and slats so you'll see for example the office spaces that the the ceilings are all exposed concrete because it's radiant heating and cooling from above and and of course what I said before also the daylight that being optimized basically meant that there's very low energy consumption and and also a kind of in general a high level of comfort and here's one of the classrooms we unfortunately didn't get to spec all the furniture but but at least they have a great view at and while many of our projects are done under extremely tight budgets we like to imagine that there's always a kind of spacial specificity and a kind of architectural character that remains beyond program and beyond user and also beyond the kind of initial designation so this character that we introduced is not always the same sometimes it's more assertive sometimes it's more reticent but each time it attempts to act as a kind of infrastructure to the life that would unfold inside thank you very much [Music] [Applause] should I ask the third question I'm very open to questions yeah we so we used a lot of models and a lot of models of different scales but especially very large scale models we so I showed some of the models that you know the small sort of blue foam stuff but but there's also a lot of models that we built really to study this space we don't usually use renderings we haven't used digital well it's not true I mean we use digital sort of tools but mainly to supplement the things that we would be doing in physical models and and sometimes you know maybe later in later project phases but the physical model was a way for us not only to explore the things that we wanted to do I mean one of the things that we did when we moved to Switzerland we kind of started to reevaluate a little bit how we wanted to approach the way that we design and and I think that in a way we questioned how we had been working before or how for example my own education had been which was really looking as buildings as kind of objects that you would design from the outside as a kind of you know form and that somehow you would eventually make your way inside and maybe discover to your horror that maybe there was not really a space that was occupiable so we kind of flipped the equation or we wanted to flip that equation and we start a lot of projects sometimes from very very basic principles of understanding you know organization plans but but always together with space we never look at them dryly as as a drawing but always together with what that would be so the the blue phone models allow us to very quickly test at but the large spatial ones also allow us to kind of keep working on that so for example the model that I showed of the house on a slope with the new facade at the end that state was with us all throughout the design process which was like a whole year long thing and we kept hacking into it and replacing the facade and changing the interiors and you know shooting it in different ways that's a long answer to your question and you and how is allow certain flexibility for the things that are not determined resonating but for the years to come so can you elaborate upon the project housing the domestic paradigm is very much ingrained in a lot of people and therefore the program is in some way rigid and you mentioned in the Italo project that there's a in addition between where's the bureaucratic spaces and where the conference or ceremony or spaces and when those maybe these suit out paradigms are too much determined even before you tap into this project and what specifically you did to sort of inject a little bit of flexibility for those possible futures so I think that there's always the kind of MIS misconception that flexibility has to be generic or you know that's what we knew it is I I don't think that that's the case that's Chloe comes in many different forms it's a word it's a it's a word that's being thrown around a lot lately but but that's kind of a thing that we wanted to investigate in a way is how can we be more precise about that and what does it mean and for each project it's very different so in the housing one it's very clearly not the same type of flexibility I mean I think if you look at a typical housing project the paradigm for that is the the mezzo Domino of kakuzu right like you just have these like that's what you see mostly also for the speculative housing that's done in here in New York even it's like you have these sack weights you can take out all the walls and it becomes a generic plate that you can reinvent in any way and so we weren't really interested in that we were interested in spaces that have character and and the diversity of those types of spaces or meaning the diversity of the types of units became a kind of flexibility you know because there was not it was not about a one-size-fits-all it's about very specific units that somebody but but but because it's so specific then you might get you know different people that want to inhabit that in their own way it's also that in some ways we see it that the that that it might also offer them something which they hadn't imagined of of using or a way of living that they hadn't done before so in some ways it's a kind of dialogue between the people that would inhabit it later and in the building that kind of get in there in the other project what's different is that so the idea maybe the kind of idea of the loose fit between form and program is not to say that there should be no form but rather that the form doesn't predetermine a program you know so even those spaces under the roof they're ceremonial but it doesn't necessarily say that it has to be a specific thing or another we just give a collection of very different sizes and forms and then they they eventually find a kind of matching use for it which may also change in the future and then the kind of and and the thing that we kind of allowed to happen and that's a little bit similar to the last project that I showed is the fact that we we then also embrace the conventionality in some ways of what was underneath you know so so those became more the kind of typical plan of office spaces that you could kind of reconfigure in a more emetic generic sense factor another in your descriptions and in your responses the play of organization with the issue of character norming a mistake no accept that so the play of organization for us has a very immediate relationship to the play of space and it is the space that gives the character so the the juxtaposition of of types right like in the sense of the grid versus that atrium or the or the gym versus the the other you know spaces that encrusted that in some ways and the and let's say the kind of exposure of the structure as an underlying thing that holds it together for us as the character so there was another discussion about four years ago where all of those people that were writing about type and typology we're trying to come around discussing the difference between type and character action yeah and what happens in your work is is a pretty significant consistency of language also there is the kind of the restraint of concrete and a certain type of expression which in fact refuses to partake in certain kinds of iconographic excesses or one could say alternatively that are so focused on the language that that in itself is a goal and I'd like you to speak a little bit more about those qualities of materiality that you see as part of your project those parts of materiality that you think are naturally Swiss those parts of your projects which you see as a perk of being able to do things you could do there that you could not do here for instance but and sort of show us some of the behind-the-scenes strategies that you think you're employing with your character so there's a few things so materiality to us you know one of the things that I was saying before when we kind of requested a little bit how we wanted to approach things meant that we wanted to also strip everything back you know we were interested in and and this is because a lot of the competitions that we go for our public institutional projects which naturally have quite restrictive budgets and in some ways for us it was important to consider what can we do you know that basically maximizes the potential of what what is put into the project both financially but also in terms of architecture and what that meant was to say well why don't we you know really start from everything that needs to be there so the structure that you know the infrastructure everything that needs to be considered for the building to function not to treat that as a thing that comes afterwards to be solved but really as the the thing that drives the project so the materiality comes in some ways from that from the fact that there is a very structural sort of response to the choices that we make the for example in the the secondary school the wood construction we were interested in wood because we had you know we those two projects that are better built that I show they were done at the same time in the office we won those projects within two weeks of each other and those we knew we were doing a concrete one and we didn't want to do another fully concrete one so we specifically chose wood but it also turned out to be a good choice because the wood made the whole construction lighter and faster I mean that project so we won we started as the secondary school later than the university project but we finished it before because the wood construction was all prefab and you know and was done in such a short time and but the thing was that you know for us so you know going back again to this kind of swiftness it's difficult because obviously we're not Swiss we're we're we're I mean not not only I actually taken the am Swiss now but we're not Swiss in the sense that we weren't really like fully you know embedded into that culture there before but at the same time we're operating in that culture and and that culture comes with not only a lot of you know know-how that has been built up over the years and kind of conventions and things like that that they use but also a certain kind of [Music] conservatism you could say because the way that the system there works is every single public project that is built goes out to to vote you know like so people vote too the project or not which basically means that there is a certain sort of risk aversion there is a you know people want projects that can actually go through and can can be can be constructed and so they usually go for projects that seem like it would be easy to to not only to construct but also for people to embrace and usually that means then it's a kind of happy median things that are not necessarily to rocking the boat too much no I don't make no I mean I don't know no but the thing is that what we try to do is we try to be more subversive about the things that we want to inject into it which is why a lot of the projects are maybe not so much exuberant on the outside like the university project place that will be very consciously you know went for something which was in some ways kind of austere you could say you could walk by and not even realize what it is you're walking by but we also liked that juxtaposition we liked the idea that you know it's kind of the secret life that only the users of the buildings would be able to enjoy and to to note that you know people don't get to see every day from the outside because in fact the building are for the people it's not for the you know the guys that drive by and in the cars and the soap from the outside it's relatively simple but still in some ways a kind of you know comment on the buildings that were existing in the in the campus building on the democratic process by which something is built would suggest that the natural predisposition of the Swiss is to vote for austere things whereas everybody in America is voting for good English things because they need it to be warm and fuzzy and that is the big thing that is quite discernible about the work is its brighness could their their their beautiful Swiss watches but at the same time their rugged warehouse prisons and so and it's your ability to negotiate that fine line that makes the character of those buildings so alarming and I'm saying character from my perspective not from the way not the way they gather describing character because it's it is a very hard architecture and so so are you saying that the Swiss actually embraced this kind of generic news or st. Louis common denominator well it's not yeah I mean I think that to a large extent yes I think we were we were lucky in quite a number of ways I think a lot of the projects that we wanted had great juries on them that were able to sort of push things through that otherwise would not have probably been accepted this for example I think was was maybe more daring than the average project would have been but but if you see actually most of what is being built I mean there's a lot of you know a lot of projects being built with public money that is about the safe you know the safe solution that solves the brief very very well but doesn't necessarily address a kind of extra value in in terms of what that might mean for the experience of the users and I think we we were always trying to bring in that extra element and I think that the the so I can I can give you a kind of anecdote when we moved to Switzerland there was a petition are two competitions that were running parallel one in Basel and one in Zurich they were both for museums for each of the cities the one in Basel was of course you know juried with jacquard silk and things like that had fantastic collection of star architects one in Zurich also but Zurich is a much more conservative town Basel has you know the money but also the had something our name that was pushing everything behind and and you know Kristin gone to find one the one in Basel and in Zurich it was a Chipperfield project which was probably the most conservative project because it was essentially a copy-paste extension or stretch of the existing building and that's the kind of thing that we face on a on a daily basis in a way most of the projects that are one are are these projects that fit in that essentially are the end I work very well but they're not necessarily agree questioning anything at its at its paces [Music] perhaps just a few offices popping up in numbers actually a manifesting themselves in different ways and I just speak to that I can ask you mr. cover questions can you speak to the difference between the actual physical and carcass of the special organizations begin debating and the actual structure so should you catch the physical website so the actual physical podcasts on the spaces within the envelope myself actually the actual physical embodiment of this special attention to the projects the difference between there and the very structure okay where they coincide or become coincide they're the same thing or not that's first question second question are you guys giving any thought to how this particular approach could be extended beyond the architectural scale into the greater scale so in other words this kind of idea of special infrastructure source which combines all flexibility and or specificity in special terms the special quality but at the same time certain capacity for adaptation and and change of use can you actually begin to think how to apply that had the skill to so maybe I start there no but that's a great suggestion I'll think of that next time and for the first as for the first question I would think so most of the time there is a kind of correlation between the structure and the space of course they're not always sort of one-to-one there's sometimes also very conscious some slippage is in a way between the two but I would say that most of the time they're there there is a set of relationships and usually there they're structured through the load-bearing structure so for example in the Lausanne project those those bars that are actually crossing the agent they are actually bracing but they are also containing spaces but the the ring also the kind of rhythm of the of the structure is the rhythm that actually determines also the the kind of facade and suppose odd modules and by extension therefore the office modules sorry organization is the thing that brings space its character and if so what about your question that just happened why are you interested in offering that just position between program and structure them um so I hate it it's not just it's not as simple as just form in structure I would say I think that you know those are the things that we use as starting points but of course it's it's a combination of how you express it and the you know and the spatial sort of definition of it so maybe what a maybe what I define as character is more the kind of spatial definition of the experience that you would have in a building meaning that if you strip everything down right you should still experience something it's not that in the so in the full generic nosov what we use to understand as flexibility as the kind of let's say the typical plan of the 50s office building you strip everything down and all you get is this kind of massive floor clinked which might i should be cool stuff it's something but but you know like I think what I'm trying to get at is that the the character of the space should not be dependent on or in our point of view dependent on something that you have to add to it or that therefore you could also potentially value engineer out of it because that's most of the time what happens so for us it's about the kind of integration of all these different elements that that then provide for a spatial experience I don't know if that answers your question and I guess the first two decisions of what you like to reference one of your products you put six apartment units in a house and like you said stealth disguised or whatever the term was there's a certain juxtaposition of those two decisions from the ground from the foundation of it that I think implies that character what I guess you're out here or maybe I'm just protecting here but I'm interested if that's the conscious decision or if that's something I'm reading into I don't think I'm just so that but I think well if you're referring to this idea of form and structure being the generative force behind what's character then yes we are very consciously working with structure as a generator or form in space so they were flexibility it's a very flexible work now in our day we could think about flexibility defect or any such thing we were reminding the materiality of most architectures very differently how it grows over time we can think about flexibility about housing using complete constructions will keep on growing over time and this would give a very different materiality service order and your case is really interesting the fact that you are talking about flexibility in a contest was where everything seems to be fixed and rigid in a week and I was wondering I was enjoying how for you the world flexibility becomes more like like an ethic in a way so I mean I think it doesn't have to do with the fact that this is a society over time I don't imagine many of these especially not all over time I think this world gives you a certain constraints in terms of or a certain need for integration structure geometry materials everything together a logic that has to do with flexibility but at the same time precise work yeah no I mean I think I think I think I I could see where you're I could see where you're going with that I think that'd be um so for us maybe we were more interested in in or let's say you know for some time we were kind of looking at a lot of projects that for us have been really sort of canonical as spatial examples and references and you know some of them also kind of infrastructural and that have kind of stayed on overtime or that people have reappropriation and used you know and and and I think what fascinated us was like why do you know why are some buildings torn down and why are others kept you know why do people you know like to inhabit certain buildings over and over whereas others are you know discarded even though they're equally built well or like you know solidly and so for us this my kind of reference to the character has to do with something which kind of you know gives it life even if it's unoccupied you know that the idea that the building still retains an experience which is which is not just about the program that's inside of it but about the space that exists I don't think [Laughter] you might see the role more explicit material finish explorations and the spatial narratives all of the projects I think are in a way diagrammatic Jefferson positions you establish the certain reporter ones regular and rational and then they wanted divergent from it and that diagram is fulfilled with such thorough austerity I'm curious because I I have suspect that you enjoy the fact that the distinction within this puzzle is not one that's made through a material distinction but at the same time I can want to know more about how you might conceive of the role of materiality as part of understanding this narrative mm-hmm I mean then actually it is I mean so maybe to the part of the austerity is that we are very conscious about the spaces also being a kind of background meaning that it's not the thing that dominates your experience but rather the backdrop that allows the way in which you inhabit to to be there so the idea for example for this building was that there is a certain sort of reduction in terms of color and things like that of the built stuff so that the things that come into inhabit become the color for it so there was supposed to be a weight in way more furniture that's there but because of budget cuts thing they got fewer but the furniture for example were the kind of colorful soft elements and things like that I would that we begin to inhabit it we also thought that once the students come in there will be posters and things that kind of you know what would be on those walls so in a way the kind of austerity of it was a kind of backdrop to allow for that chaos to happen that was one thing but it's also that that diagram that you're talking about is actually materially supported I mean I'm just gonna try to go back to a maybe you can see that better here is that so we had two types of concrete in that atrium space the grid is actually a white concrete so it had white pigment in it and then the the what he called flood these big planes of concrete that actually embracing their Verity like walls that are flying through space that those are actually in just a normal natural concrete and we very we had to fight for that because of course the white concrete is more expensive but for us it was actually an important distinction that it wasn't about this kind of overall hole but it was about those two parts and so that materiality is I mean it's a bit matter istic maybe like I think in a real of two Swiss office would probably not do that distinction I think it's it's too much of that diagram but for us it was interesting to to to understand that also as two separate types of spaces no well we we would if we had to let's say but we we didn't like where are my limits kind of things yeah I'm trying to test your limits and what constitutes in your mind applied characteristics is painted occasion versus an aggregate which is not so I have a confession I will go back to another slide for that confession sorry it's a sorry for the dizzying speed but I just want to know you know what it's too far it's too far back Shay so where would it be the most oh I don't have the image that shows it on the other side anyways but she maybe I opened this one so in the image below you see the the Biden school with the with the beams coming out yes alright so that was important to us that that came out but it's it's not truly truly the extension of what is inside and despite the fact that it is wood construction which is the only material that technically would allow for you to have no thermal great bridge you know and you know we had originally conceived it that way but then the kind of fire protection authorities came in and you know basically said it could not be continuous it had to be broken and so we had to introduce a thermal break in there even though we didn't really need it and so those beams no they're not to spend it from the roof they're just tied back into the facade but they're not as continuous as we had wanted them to be the ones on the general problem of there were held in tension yes exactly and that was because we wanted the uniform expression we wanted on the outside confidence yeah and you know and also they turn the corner because actually they don't turn the corner but they do [Music] looking around this swiftness because that switches never do that there's a subtle non-swiss miss to all your projects and I think that's what makes them interesting and it's not it's not flexible I think the closest I can come is juxtapose which I think the number of people have pulled out that a lot of your products are really two buildings a building inside a building or two buildings kind of in a slight conflict with each other that in in that kind of moment produces this other nuts not the super tight tight Swiss fit and maybe there's some maybe there's something wonderful about two things that are so tightly fit together the fact that they rub against each other produces this slight nonce business that's evocative or elusive to a possible misuse or mystery dinner or flexibility that's not actually flexibility in planning the flexibility and misappropriation yeah actually I could I could go with that just last moment of curiosity because you're one of the few lecturers were both educated and have taught at European and American institutions do you think this sort of like conservatism or a historic act architectural character of a country is encouraged in the academic institutions or higher education schools in that country for example ETH that different from Jersey it's very different it's very very different and do you think the sort transition is it is a restraining or a sort of fun a change that you do not want to confront or is this something that meant progress sorry the suck those how do you view those differences when you transition I see them as a result of a context so you know the the Swiss context or the European context it's very very different it's also a context that has been built up over a number of years same thing with the American context and I enjoy them for the different aspects that they bring to the table I have to say I probably have an affinity now more towards this sort of European context that I did before but but it's also because I operate there now I think you know one of the reasons that that I moved there you know it's not just me it's my partner and myself and and he is from there but we neither one of us really practiced in Switzerland before we went and started our office there but we very consciously chose to go there because we wanted to build we wanted a practice that was building we wanted to actually be engaging in work where we could test our ideas and part of that was also my own you could say insecurities and and frustrations while I was here trying to start an office and we were in New York we were bunking it out in the West Village trying to get you know projects and then realize that we were doing competitions in Europe and flying over there to hand in these models and you know and it just wasn't worth it and and and I think you know for me also like I had a huge insecurity about teaching before having built my project under my own name you know I had worked on projects and other offices but it was something that I really wanted to do and and I just didn't feel like I had the authority to command you know the the attention of students if I didn't actually have that under my belt so it was a very personal thing I I don't you know necessarily think that everybody has to approach it that way but but for me that's the kind of context that I chose and I think in in Switzerland you are able to do that because the because the the context of academia and practice is not so distinct it's really about feeding into each other and therefore for better or for worse you know there may be a certain let's say what would be here perceived as a certain kind of conservatism but there it's actually it's much more about experimentation through a kind of constructive practice which basically means we are bound by the constraints of what is possible in the realm of construction at that time or within a limited scope of time sorry what the word of growth yo the word like appropriation has been used through I was running what are your thoughts perceptions so appropriation well in the way that I'm understanding you're asking it is like people that appropriated after its use or that's kind of how I was introducing it before in that context I mean I think a lot of architects are afraid of people coming in and and inhabiting their buildings like if we see a lot of architectural photography for example they're empty spaces that are empty or you know buildings and and of course a lot of famous architects even book clauses and then contracts where you know people can't touch their buildings afterwards I think we have a very relaxed attitude about that or in fact we we maybe even embrace that the fact that the moment we hand over the keys that building doesn't belong to us we may you know have the privilege of having our name associated with it but it's not ours it's it's it belongs to the people that inhabit it and and they should be able to appropriate it in the way that they need to of course you know it would hurt if they actually started to change things in a way that didn't in some ways support the the kind of experience of that of that space but it's also something that you know we just have to understand is part of the kind of reality I mean the moment we walk away we can't control what happens inside a building I mean maybe it's also one of the reasons why we try to do things that are hard and that are to some degree austere that that that actually you know kind of puts a framework around what they can or cannot do there's quite a number of them in Switzerland well you know the thing is that a lot of so you know what you guys see as Swiss architects here are obviously the ones that are not the Swiss architects that are doing the competitions we're doing you know because they're like you know they have they have they're in the league of their own where they have private clients and the freedom to do things that we would never have I mean we're competing with kind of you know like the the standard office you would say which goes for public projects and those are not glamorous projects we try to make them in our own way but you know there are yes and there's all sorts of legal moves now for clients trying to own the contract documents which you know are an instrument as a service there's all sorts of new clauses that are trying to overturn any presence of the architect whatsoever so I'm just impressed that my questions are they just the elite yes well I mean let's just put it this way there are architects or a in architect who can basically you know tell a client when and how long he needs to build a building and also you know the the kind of budget that he would command and that same type of architect would be also you know the one that can put these types of clauses in his favor power well power in the sense that you know he doesn't need projects to survive he he does projects because you know he can he can command that well it's not a fact well I mean get him to but but it's nice and what is it would make a client want to change a building or not afford to kind of honor the character and to for plan to feel that part of the relationship they sustained with an architect in the building is the stewardship yep and I think here I mean it's pretty Cooper because in the foundation building there's something about the austerity of this building the interior of this building that in many ways is invisible and so our client sometimes the stewards of this building they can't even see the character of the building it is so austere so you know I think there's something interesting about the conversation of the swiftness and like how much character do you need to put into a building so that its qualities and characters are visible and a client our user understands how to sustain it and to honor the character and when discipline we have a similar condition across the street where our new academic building it is extremely in your syncretic and its architectural character our character is is in some ways very aggressively and it's a response when a moment may come for applying to make and necessary adjustment to the building to this it's kind of willfully it's a little hard for me your work your interior work is so finally resolved it's a yes I mean I'm for sure I would care but I think that there is a kind of idea so this is why I like I'm you know the word appropriation was also a little unclear in terms of what type of appropriation but I mean I think that in a way we imagined that the building could just be used in many different ways without having to be restrictive you know so they could reappropriation there's a certain logic so I think it's the difference between forcing people to do some you know in a certain way so buildings that are maybe so idiosyncratic that you force the users to only be in a certain way are I think for us not necessary what we deem as character for us it's it's really about a kind of generosity of what we offer so we put down you know some guidelines of types of spaces that provides a kind of possibility and usually there's multiple possibilities and in that multiple possibility there there is a kind of ethic generosity of experience that that you can gain from that and I don't know I don't know if that's that's clear but it's it's so yes of course I would care if they completely you know changed it but to some degree I'm also in some ways hopeful that once they understand that logic they will change it together with that logic so the interesting thing for example with this project in Lausanne we faced so there were four users actually two of them were also co-owners so we were dealing with like whatever like for clients basically because but the real client was the Canton that the state of bowl which is a political body which has nothing to do whatsoever with the school they don't occupy the building at all they're just like the people that hold the purse strings and and the whole process was about you know making them understand the value of this space because the first meeting we went into one of those co-owners basically which is the the private institution that occupies the top floor and a half wanted to close off their floor entirely and completely essentially eliminate the top part of the atrium you know together with a skylight business and and so we fought that a lot they still you know they didn't understand it all throughout the process and then what is the most surprising and this is why I'm hopeful is that afterwards they are now the biggest fan of ability they moved into the space and like at all the time we're like receiving emails from them but also you know there were some journalists going there independent of us we didn't you know chaperoned them or anything and and they spoke people on that floor and though they were gushing about the project in a way that you know we didn't prompt them like we we were actually hoping that journalists would not make their way up there because we were afraid of what they would actually say and and so I think that you know look we were a lot of the debates that happen in house and are sort of design process and when we make decisions is about finding that thing that moment when it's when it seems natural when things but you know like basically a lot of the times when we say okay this is it it's because it's like oh that works everything clicks into place it works and it seems natural and it's it's not that we're forcing something to happen but that we can step away and say okay it people will know how to use that without with us telling them how to use it so sorry this is part of her I had I just came from Toronto yesterday and I gave the earlier talk as well as another another extension of that earlier talk which is a view into our office which is this and and so these are kind of books that I had published research that I did when I was teaching at the EPFL so this one is a cover for a book called space of production where I was looking at basically industrial spaces this particular one is the boots quits factory which is in in England that was left in the 30s and and it's the kind of construction over the the assembly line process that's there but we work so these two books I don't know are you interested in that why would it call them ever do that and why would a cult this is not a caller this is actually you know the thing that the conveyor belts that takes those boxes whatever it is why would they come abeer built ever do that because you have actually I don't even know if it's conveyer belt so much like whatever they sent down the chute but the these boxes are the the the what I call it the supervisors of that production of line so I assume they're shooting something down to these people down there [Laughter] [Applause] [Applause]

Channel: The Cooper Union

Views: 993

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: gy71LZznLj8

Length: 95min 46sec (5746 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 27 2019