Whim of the Week: Incision and Subtraction
5:24 PM
For this week's Whim of the Week, I thought I could share a subtraction exercise that I've been working on in studio at MIT.
The project itself seemed simple: to carve 4 rooms with specific viewpoints - 1 horizon view, 1 sky view, 1 ground view, and 1 with no view - along with appropriate circulation (read: stairs) out of a preassigned site. The sites themselves were based off of Japanese wood joints that we had studied and explored previously in the class, mine being the triple-faced half rabbeted scarf splice with key.
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| The one on the left is the original triple-faced half rabbeted scarf splice source: http://www.aisf.or.jp |
I began by exploring different circulation-based and space-based schemes, as shown in the matrix below. Before I began, I had a few preliminary ideas in mind: I wanted a "light well" that cut through the site vertically for my no-view room, and I wanted the circulation to wrap around the outer edge of the site.
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| brainstorming phase: matrix of different schemes |
The first scheme looks at circulation, in which the circulation is integrated with the spaces such that one traveling through the site would be required to enter each room in order to continue upwards.
The second scheme looks at space geometry manipulation, which I dubbed the Incision Scheme (this is the one I ultimately ended up focusing on). I took rectangular prisms and stuck them through the site in the direction of the required views, and then cut the bottoms so that they would have the required minimum square footage. Afterwards, I scaled and manipulated the spaces to further aid the views.
The third scheme looks at branching, in which there is a central light well "core" with all the other rooms branching directly off of it, so that they had views but also could look into the light well. The dumbness of the shapes contrasted with the weird geometry of the site actually formed a pretty interesting picture!
The last scheme goes back to circulation, and the spaces are not integrated into the circulation so one has a choice whether or not they go into the rooms.
I ended up scrapping the last scheme - due to the narrowness of the site, it really wasn't very achievable - and semi-combining the first three. I tried to have the circulation wrap around the site, although in some places it was more successful than others - since the geometry of the spaces were really bold and drove the project, the circulation ended up being a little less of what I wanted ideally in order to fit better. I also incorporated the branching scheme by scaling all my space geometries up so that they intersected with the light well.
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| section and plan drawings |
The project ended up being fairly successful - the diagram was clear, the models were nice, and the reviewers had some great feedback to offer. Obviously there were a lot of things that I still needed to work out, but overall I'm pretty happy with what I did!
Although that might be the tiredness talking. Over this past three day weekend, I was home for about 7 hours total (my roommate counted). The rest of the time was spent pretty much exclusively in studio or in dance. I spent approximately 35 hours building 3 models and watched multiple seasons of tv shows.
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| instagram photo of my board and my models! I'll have documentation of the models and can post them next week |
Finally, my project statement:
Incision and Circulation
orientation of the rooms themselves and how one can extend sight-lines by manipulating elevations and circulation.
This project was particularly inspired by the way the lines of sight were manipulated by space in Adolf Loos’s Villa Müller and by the integration of circulation and space in UN Studio’s Mercedes-Benz Museum. Those inspirations were explored by extracting specific qualities of each and experimenting with inserting their logics into the site.
For the circulation-based experimentations, the circulation mimicked the Mercedes-Benz museum where it wrapped around the edges of the site and the spaces were arranged with or around the circulation. Since the site was so narrow, the explorations showed that integrating the spaces into the circulation was a much more efficient solution.
Different geometries for the spaces were also explored. An incision scheme, where rectangular prisms stabbed through the site in the directions of the intended views, proved to be the exploration with the most straight-forward logic and yet interesting shapes. Those shapes were cut and warped to further aid the views and to create a branching-type relationship between the spaces.
The branching scheme, directly inspired by Loos’s manipulation of sight-lines, was also incorporated such that there was one prominent light well and all the other spaces branching off of it such that the spaces had the views required but also looked into the light well.
This project is about working with the relationships between spaces and between the spaces and the circulation. Though the design process was fairly simple and the diagrams very direct, it is clear that even the most direct of ideas can form interesting relationships between spaces. With the spaces cut so boldly, the circulation was forced to take a tamer and more subtle approach, and yet they still form an interesting relationship with the spaces in the way that they cut through and integrate with each other. The constraints from the site, the way each incision was cut off for the platforms, and the way the spaces intersect to form a type of branching light well are all relationships that I am excited to explore further in future exercises.
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