Making History: Building On, Around, and Over the Past Instructors: Bruno Giberti and Kent Macdonald “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” – William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun A wide variety of contemporary projects engage the history of architecture. By this, we mean not only the history that exists in books but also the history that is embedded in the built environment – existing structures and contexts, sites and cities – to which architects add, subtract, and otherwise modify. We also mean the history of architectural ideas that is represented by the study of precedents and building types, which is essential to every fifth-year project and which underlies nearly everything that architects produce. Simply put, architects spend a lot of their time looking at what others have designed and built in the near or distant past. The simple fact that a city or a building endures over time, or that a mark in the soil endures for centuries, means that every work of architecture is, at some level, an exercise in memory. To invoke a precedent is, of course, not to copy it but to learn from it, to be inspired by it, and ultimately to make it your own. It is to participate in the grand conversation about form and function that architects conduct across time and space, as they encounter new work and allow themselves to be influenced by it. In this fifth-year studio, then, we seek to engage students in projects that address this kind of recollection and renewal. Since every thesis project is expected to address the use of precedents, every project is a potential candidate for this studio. Precedents: History in Many Guises The ways in which architects invoke (and rewrite) history are many. Consider first Frank Gehry’s design of Disney Hall, whose beautiful and finely tuned performance space, its stage surrounded on all sides by terraced seating, is an explicit recollection of a particular building, specifically, Hans Sharoun’s Berlin Philharmonic Concert Hall – a post-WWII building that continues to serve as a significant precedent for concert halls everywhere.
Disney Hall, Los Angeles: performance space and exterior. Berlin Philharmonic: performance space.
Prospectus – 2 Sometimes the reference is not to a specific building but to a building type. Such is the case in BIG’s Number 8 House in the new Ørestad district of Copenhagen. Here the connection is to the perimeter block type of housing that is typical of all traditional European cities, although in this case the type has been deliberated warped to respond to the demands and specificities of the site and program. At the same time, there are features of the design that cannot help but recall Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in Marseilles, with its interlocking apartments and street-in-the-air.
Number 8 House, Copenhagen: warped perimeter and street-in-the-air. Unite d’habitation, Marseilles: building section.
This studio is an appropriate environment for projects like the ones above. It also welcomes those that seek to restore, preserve, and rehabilitate existing buildings (which is really historic preservation), or to adaptively reuse, recycle, and repurpose existing buildings with the aim of conserving both memory and material (which is really a form of sustainable development). An enormously successful example is New York City’s High Line, in which the renovation of an abandoned railroad viaduct has been the catalyst for the transformation of an entire district, including new residential buildings such as Neil Denari’s HL 23.
High Line, New York City: view of elevated walkway, HL 23, and detail showing new planting between the old railroad tracks.
Such projects can be responsible without seeking to reproduce historic forms. A time-tested approach is the skillful insertion of appropriate modern construction, either at the scale of the building or the city. At the level of the building, you might look to Renzo Piano’s scheme for the Morgan Library in New York City, in which the addition of a central glass pavilion created an internal connection between three previously disconnected buildings. At the scale of the city, you might look at the Dansk Design Center in Copenhagen. The building is thoroughly modern in its expression, detailing, and materials, but it fits in comfortably into the existing context by maintaining the street wall and height limit of its neighbors.
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Morgan Library, New York: entry pavilion exterior and interior. Dansk Design Museum, exterior views.
Projects in this studio may take a more confrontational approach to history. They may make significant additions or modifications to existing buildings, as in the Zahles Gymnasium in Copenhagen, where a lacy screen hides a penthouse addition to a 19th-century building. The scale of new construction may even be such that it subsumes the existing building, as in the Hearst Tower in New York, where Renzo Piano gutted an entire structure in order to create the base and lobby for an iconic new skyscraper. Liebeskind’s additions to a San Francisco landmark for the Contemporary Jewish Museum are equally aggressive.
Zahles Gymnasium, Copenhagen. Hearst Tower, New York. Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco.
Projects in this studio may propose entirely new buildings that do not change existing structures so much as they develop or extend existing urban patterns. An example of this type is the new Opera in Copenhagen, which addresses the axial composition of the 18th century Marble Church and Amalienborg Palace, and thus draws a visual line across the city’s main waterway. Leon Krier’s scheme for the Rauchstrasse in Berlin recreates a pattern of housing blocks, each one designed by a different architect.
Opera, Copenhagen, and view toward Marble Church and Amalienborg Palace. Rauchstrasse, Berlin: axonometric site plan.
Prospectus – 4 Another type of project that could be considered for this studio is the special case of an architect’s response to tradition. For example, the history of modern architecture in Japan constitutes a continuing meditation on the relationship between traditional forms and modern buildings. Santa Barbara, meanwhile, looks backward: its Mediterranean aesthetic represents an invented tradition that continues to be enforced through a restrictive design code. The Mashi Crafts Trading Post, a small store selling traditional crafts at a rural crossroads in Namibia, is a humbler example that appropriately invokes traditional forms while combining old and new materials – wood, thatch, corrugated metal and plastic, plaster, brick and concrete masonry. The architectural theorist Kenneth Frampton might have called this an example of critical regionalism, since it incorporates the evidence of both local culture and universal civilization.
Mashi Crafts Trading Post, Kongola, Namibia: veranda detail, exterior, interior, and outbuilding.
The Constitutional Court of South Africa Ultimately, this studio hopes to inspire projects that work on multiple levels: recalling, referencing, preserving, conserving, completing, confronting, developing, critiquing, and even revealing the history latent in the world around us. An excellent and little-known example is the building housing the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg. A symbol of the new South Africa, this building was constructed in the midst of a historical complex of prisons that played a dark role in the struggle against Apartheid. Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi were both imprisoned there along with thousands of others in appalling conditions. The design of the court called for the nearly complete destruction of one of these prisons. Three stair towers were retained and redeveloped as illuminated pylons that stand as symbols of enlightenment and transparency. The red brick of the demolished prison was reused in the courtroom itself as a constant material reminder of the tense but necessary relationship between old and new. The design self-consciously rejects the conventional imagery and hierarchical spaces of similar structures in other countries. Tribal justice was dispensed under a tree, so this becomes the symbol of the court, not an allegorical figure from an alien tradition. The tree also provides a poetic analogy for the entry space with its canted columns and leafy chandeliers.
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Constitutional Court, Johannesburg; view of pylon from prison, courtroom, and “tree” chandelier.
In contrast to the long and controlled path that might be found in similar buildings (think of our own Supreme Court building in Washington DC), the route from the entry to the courtroom is short and direct, allowing for a feeling of access and openness. Any sense of superiority among the judges is subverted by their relatively low position in the room and a continuous strip of glass that reveals the feet of people walking on the ramp behind. It is difficult to visit this building without feeling moved. The design is of a high quality, and the search for new forms that can repudiate a long history of injustice has been carried out with a clear-eyed seriousness and intelligence. The surrounding prisons make for a sobering visit, and yet the partial views of the new court and the surrounding city are constant reminders that this grim and sorry past, if not dead, has at least been transcended, not only by political change but by a work of architecture. Questions to Consider As illustrated by the projects described above, we have conceived this studio broadly to call forth a variety of thesis proposals. At the same time, we hope that the students making these proposals will share a common focus and be interested in entertaining a consistent set of questions, such as the following: • • • • • •
What is the relationship between invention and tradition, between individual creativity and the shared body of knowledge that is architecture? Can any site or situation truly be considered a tabula rasa, a blank slate? What should dominate in the conception of a building, the internal pressures that are identified with the program, or the external pressures that are identified with the site or context? What is an architect’s responsibility to what has been done before? When should a building be a unique part of the foreground, demanding attention for its own symbolic form, and when should it play its part in the background? Does the urban situation demand a certain kind of propriety from the architect? What are the expectations, if any, and when is it OK to flout them?
This is not meant to be an exclusive list. We of course hope that you bring your own questions to the table.
Prospectus – 6 Outline of the Thesis Year The four courses that comprise fifth-year (Arch 492 and the three quarters of 481) form the scaffold for the most important project that you will undertake at Cal Poly. Your senior thesis is a capstone that gauges your ability to synthesize all of the various aspects of your education within a single endeavor. In contrast to previous design courses, where problems were assigned to you, the thesis is largely selfdefined and self-driven. The scope of the project allows you to explore specific architectural issues more freely and more deeply than you have before. It should also give you the space to develop your own sense of direction regarding your future after Cal Poly. Fall Quarter. The boundary between the two fall classes will be fluid, but Arch 492 will primarily be devoted to critical reading, writing, and discussion. The aim will be to explore the theoretical underpinnings of the topics outlined in this prospectus. Meanwhile, Arch 481 will focus on your selecting and analyzing a site, developing a program, and investigating relevant precedents. The quarter will end with you having settled on a strong architectural concept for your project. Winter Quarter. With the start of the New Year you should begin your design work in earnest. This quarter of Arch 481 will be similar to the schematic design phase in professional practice. It will involve much exploration: testing possible solutions, keeping things that work, rejecting those that do not. By spring break, the basic outline of your project should be firmly in place: its form, scale, major materials, and building systems. Spring Quarter. During the first half of Arch 481, you should be working to consolidate your efforts into a coherent whole: fleshing out the design in terms of its materials, building systems, and typical details, all equivalent to the design development phase. During the second half of the quarter, you should be spending more time on your final presentation, in booklet form and for display in the Berg and Chumash shows. Throughout the year, in addition to the usual activities of the seminar and studio, we do hope to make field trips that everyone can participate in: money and schedule are prime concerns as we look into the alternatives. New York and its environs are certainly one possibility; Las Vegas is another. One idea – in order to create a sense of shared investigation and purpose – is to combine group field trips with visits to your individual sites.
Possible field trips: New York, Las Vegas, and Bali (in your dreams).
Prospectus – 7 Two for One The thesis experience that we are proposing will be a new undertaking: you will have two professors instead of one throughout the year. One of us will take the lead in Arch 492, but both of will share responsibilities for the work in each of the three quarters of Arch 481. This arrangement is not as unusual as it might sound. In many architectural programs, thesis students have committees, with up to three professors overseeing the work. But we realize that you still may have questions: How will the studio work? Will you have to pick one professor to talk to rather than the other? What if we give you conflicting advice or disagree about the direction you should take? We don’t have all the answers to every eventuality. But, having worked together for some time, we can say that we have reasonably similar outlooks on most things having to do with architecture. Where we don’t, we are accustomed to and respectful of each other’s points of view. We do debate things rather a lot, and we hope you will feel comfortable in joining that debate. In any event, we do expect that we’ll both talk to all of you. We think having two pairs of eyes instead of one can be of benefit: one of us may see a possibility in your solution that the other does not; one may see a flaw that the other has missed.
Old and new in Barcelona: Caixa Forum entry; Palau de Musica Catalonica; Mercat de Santa Catalina; Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia.
At some point, it may well be that you do get conflicting advice from us. But we think that this, too, may be a good thing: our different critiques may help you to see more than one path to a solution. Certainly, this will not be the first time in your design experience that you receive input from more than one source. Think back on all of the formal reviews and desk crits you have experienced in the last four years here: no doubt you’ve had different reactions and conflicting suggestions to deal with. The challenge was then, as it will be in the coming year, to listen, to consider, and ultimately to make your own informed judgment. In the final analysis, our job as critics is to make suggestions, not demands. The thesis is your project, and finding your way to a successful outcome is a matter of your researching, analyzing, and making hard choices between often conflicting priorities. This is the essence of critical thinking in architecture, and indeed, the basis of your entire educational experience at Cal Poly: to find a reason for doing one thing over another. Whatever decision you make, our job is to make sure your argument for that choice is as strong as it can be.
Prospectus – 8 About Us Bruno Giberti. I have three degrees in architecture: a BS from Cal Poly, an MArch from UC Berkeley, and a PhD, also from UC Berkeley. After working in architecture and architectural journalism, I returned in 1994 to Cal Poly, where I have taught architectural history, theory, and third- and fourth-year design. My book, Designing the Centennial: A History of the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia (2002), earned the Material Culture Award from the University Press of Kentucky. After completing this publication, I passed the required exams and became a registered architect in California. I served as Associate Director of the Architecture Department and am now returning to the department after a two-year stint as director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, which promotes excellence in the Cal Poly curriculum and co-curriculum. My teaching philosophy reflects an understanding that architects make not buildings but ideas about buildings, which may or may not be realized. This means that all architects are intellectuals, even if they are not always very good ones. As intellectuals, architects must inhabit the boundary between theory and practice. The best ones are fluent in the language of each. Every design is an abstraction about something very concrete. This is the rub of architecture; the pleasure lies in the translation of one into the other. Kent Macdonald. I’ve taught in several areas of Cal Poly's architecture program since 1994, but for the last four years my primary responsibilities have been in second-year design and practice (where I no doubt got to know a few of you), along with professional practice (Arch 443). Prior to this, I taught in fifth year, where my several studios focused on community design, housing, and smart growth. These subjects were also the emphasis of my professional life prior to teaching full-time. After graduating from Berkeley with an MArch, I worked for nearly 20 years on my own and with firms in San Francisco, New York, and Washington DC, specializing in multi-family housing and community revitalization projects in the US and in Asia. I’ve also been involved in large-scale institutional work, historic preservation, and adaptive reuse. A number of these projects have won major design awards. In addition, I’ve entered several design competitions, some successfully and some not. C’est la vie. I take the view that a student learns to design buildings by designing buildings – not fragments or stand-ins. I also believe, given the multiple approaches that exist today, that there is no one right way to design. That’s the excitement of our times: the lack of an architectural orthodoxy means that there are multiple paths to take: in design as in the profession. That said, I believe that architecture is largely a public act, not a private one. While I think the essence of my teaching is to help you find your own creative voices, I hope you do something more with your talents than express yourself. Presumably, as architects you’ll be trying to make the world a better place – more attractive, more efficient, more sustainable, more humane. It’s an uphill battle, but I think there’s something noble in putting up the good fight. Our example of the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg epitomizes the potentially transformative power that all architects should attempt to exercise.
