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Architectural “strategy” that needs to have a relation with its environment
Hello friends,
I’m a 3rd year architecture student, and I’m trouble with this teacher I have. He keeps insisting on not liking the concepts I’m coming up with, and says that I need to make “resolution” higher in my drawings. My real question is, I actually am trying to design a building with an agriculture area, in addition to that I have to place a library and some workshop areas for people to come and get education. Since this neighborhood I’m working on is a slum place, I need to think what they might be comfortable with. I also need to relate the building with its environment and current situation, but I’m seriously confused and don’t know where to go. My main idea was to create some place that allows users to use their senses except sight. I mean while they can’t see it, they might get the smell of grass or hear the people who work on farming. So, I need a suggestion about what may I do to relate this to the context of the building itself and the main strategy behind it.
"My main idea was to create some place that allows users to use their senses except sight."
There's your problem. Why? Buildings are visual things first and foremost. By removing sight (which is pretty damn silly and impossible), you're relying on non-design items (smell grass, sounds of heavy machinery, etc) to make your design. How about you actually look at the design of the spaces and how they relate to each other before laying on a thick layer of abstraction. I did get a good chuckle at the thought of some people randomly wandering around in the dark and bumping into a corn harvester or some sort of plow.
I think that's how someone loses a limb
You really didn’t think I was gonna ignore the sight completely...or did you? Of course sight is important and essential, which is very normal since it’s our most dominant sense, but what I was trying to say is other senses might have the same value through people’s minds and this can be created through some spaces that senses like smell slightly take the upperhand. There’s a book named the eyes of the skin by Juhani Pallasmaa and he mentioned this kind of a feeling there. Hope this explanation resolves the misunderstanding.
Thank you for clarifying, but I believe you've just answered why your prof is asking you to work on resolution. Can't solve design problems without design.
If you don’t want to rely on sight, then don’t...just push it to the extreme. Nothing worse than not following through on your own concept, either stick with it or come up with something else.
Looking at our built environment there are plenty of architects that totally ignore the sense of sight in their projects!
Thanks for the comment, and yes actually I was researching some architects like Peter Zumthor, and in Therme Vals he is creating a sense of hearing such an atmosphere that it really serves the building’s purpose and I kinda seek for that kind of a feeling in my project as well. Actually, my teacher liked this idea but it’s going to be about how may I create such feeling with some section and ground relationships. Anyways, thanks against for the comment.
The acoustics or audio qualities / sense of hearing in Therme Vals were not designed nor intentional though, but simply a result of the materials used...FYI
I once heard Michael Rotundi of early Morphosis describe the arrival sequence to Louis Kahn's Salk institute. It was all about the arousal of his senses, sound of gravel in the parking lot under car tires, walking across the gravel, forest walk through the buffer of trees, sounds in the forest, darkness in the forest, contrast with the blazing sun as he walked out to the concrete plaza and of course the crazy water feature through the plaza out to an infinity view of the pacific ocean. ( that's the coles notes version ) but it was pretty impressive description and when I went to visit it myself years later his whole description came rushing back.
So as much as architecture is largely a visual medium capturing a means to express or reveal the place using your other senses is very compelling.
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