Facts wear. Reality is consumed.

DIACON

Towards Final Review

Making Sense:

1a. Figure/Ground, i.e. Aggregation

1b. Parts/Whole, i.e.Aggregation

2. Disciplinary Question of Autonomy: DIA-CON production of the diagrammatic icon or diagram icon

3. Architectural Implications

4. Urban position - City/Building Building/City

There have been varying points of both resistance and lack thereof throughout my unigroup process.

Relieving the Tower

The origin of our formal investigation here is the Willis Tower. Formerly known as the Sears Tower, the tower was originally conceptualized as structurally bundled tubes.

I would like to consider and perhaps implicate REM’s mid to late 20th century reading of individual floors as ‘virgin sites’ - grounds maintained via perpetual discontinuity. Our site, our project, is not a tower. But, we are accepting the premise and willingly appropriating those part to whole ideals projecting onto a sectional interrogation. By way of this acceptance, we are working with typologies, not topologies and the correlating set of disciplinary concerns.

So, the tower establishes a ground whereby aggregation is the politic, the method. My question becomes, as I unpacked the set, peering inside and exposing the constituents: Does only architecture, that is building, aggregate. Or does politic too not also aggregate? For politic to aggregate, whence by producing as its consequent structure urban form anew. Can this activation of grounds maintain or perhaps reconstitute a position of autonomy, and within the urban feild. Out of this line of thought then, does the thing, the architecture, continue to qualify as autonomous if it is responsible for a product other than a simulacra or REplication of itself within the feild?

SECTion

(Move forward and backward so that each slide plays multiple purposes, fast and slow.)

4. Le Corbusier removed the ground as a means of releasing architecture from the social or societal constraints (wrong word). He relieved the part from its duty to the whole, freeing it. What have we done here to the ground of the city other than reinforce it?

2. The disconnectedness of the aerial plots seemingly conflicts with the fact that together they add up to a singular megaform or building.

My understanding of a hope of the work has been to establish a position, within the productive realm of the tower-aggregate through which to negotiate a typological shift.

There is effectively no ground until Architecture produces it as such.

What is the regime of aggregate autonomy?

What is the figure that emerges?

How does this figure that emerges differ from the figure of origination?

What is the diagram of the whole?

What is the diagram of the parts?

Can these be reconciled - or rather should they really?

In exercise, once acted upon, the lobby is redefined, reconstituted. The lobby then serves as the new ground. It is the point of arrival of multiple forms.

My goal was to play with the middle ground, with the same mindset that one would rather dwell in the rabbit hole than construct a way out of it.

One of the architectural implications that my diacon has produced is the necessity of rethinking requirements of general and specific inhabitation at every differential.

140-160 Words per minute = 800 words.

5. Is the next perceivable transformation of the city a matter of development, from figural space to formal objectifiable space. We use the word aggregation, and understand it as something clean and orderly, but the possibility of aggregates of that formal specificity occurring in the city is all but an impossibility. I ask to consider in the context we have produced, the differential of aggregate and agglomerate. What is the proposed direction in regards to urban form, towards mimicry or intervention?

If the function of aggregation and the goal of the digital is to produce similar yet unlike parts, how have we done that? What, as aggregates, is their purpose? What is required of the city to surpass the modernist positioning of the building on a ground in a field?

'Jog' the section

Begin Again

Sacred Cows: The Modernist Project of Histories

Wollflin's

Principle of Art History

From linear to painterly

From plane to recession

From closed tectonic to open a-tectonic form

From multiplicity to unity

From absolute clarity to relative clarity of the subject

Architecture is not Art History.

Trouble with the Part

I am struggling with the parts as the object becomes a section. Currently there is no scale differentiation, but I had been understanding an important thing to occur with each intersection, i.e. as a point of 'squish' if these were 'noodles.'

Is it so different that it is not considered as a project under the same umbrella as the rest of the section. Parts to whole, figure figure. 

Where did Eisenman play out his figure figure, and has it not been so pronounced as perhaps should have been, i.e. there were other things (ideas) that got much more 'play.' 

Nolli Construction

Drawing with the machine and perspective. 

Parallel

After finding a form of appropriate density to operate on, I will execute a technique of projecting a reading of figure ground onto the object. I will then tackle to problem of what (part of the city) is being aggregated or agglomerated. "But if there is no such thing as a figurative object, as Tafuri claims, then the architectural figure can be understood as an agglomeration of inhabitable cells."

So, mass at 6 is good - or massing from my physical model is better density to experiment figure ground with? Both have conditions of collision, but what I think using mass 6 would yield would be the invention of non-figure within the massing diagram that comes out of reading the figure ground, a method which may be applied to a mass with 'better' intentionally arrayed parts.

Problematics of the Array

Learning

Clearly I need to learn how to script.

lomera
rega

 

Thought being that this accretion happens/time but resulting perhaps more in the thing illustrated here

Agglomeration

I have not yet invested in 'opening' the form due to a dissatisfaction with the scalar relationship and position on the site. 

  

There are other iterations of the deconstruction of the tower that may be more or less suitable, or perhaps from an original post, there is another typology more appropriate to operate through given our context.

The replication of the tower is not necessarily applicable here unless the entirety of the city is understood as tending towards tower, which as an urban strategy is illegitimate. 

Chris commented on the fact of unrecognizably of the referent as a factor of distortion of volume in the situated mega-forms. I agree but have yet to reconcile.

Agglomerated: Review w/ T + U

This is a measure of investigation to date. In response to a question about the thing in the bottom right, I made the distinction of it being an agglomeration and not an aggregation. It is pleasing to me as a form, or formal diagram, in the relationships it demonstrates as it distorts. 

One of the criticisms was of my beginning and initial reading of what the operation was on whom, or what. The fact of an agglomeration, as different than an aggregation, is that it is a build up, not a sequential function but consequential function. 

The YES Man: Implicating the Popularity of Research

City Un-sidious

 with Mendelsohn's Hat Factory and Palladio's Villa Rotunda

"A guide to the future of shopping put together by a team of academic architects may be in the same category as an instruction manual on the future of sex coming out of an anthropology class." -Joan Ockman

A Quest Through Aggregate Grounds

Density & Resolution

Maximum Severance vs. Maximum Cohesion

Between the two forms exists potential for variation. 

Within the two forms exists potential for variation. 

Within the two sets of variation lies the form. 

The Left is a misreading.

I have chosen to maintain as given the set of proportion and adjacent continuity embedded within the Willis Tower. These conditions carry through and resonate from the figure regardless of the manipulation of form.

Harmony

a la Rossi

Stake No Claims

Lobbies are empty or full?

The tower establishes a ground. Subsequently it acts as its own ground. There must be an origin if the architecture or building is not about what is outside, an origin that ultimately produces the ground.

What is the origin for an autonomous thing (structure?)

The city defines itself through the ground, with the ground. When to consider and when not to consider the politics of the ground? If architecture is the ground for the next piece of architecture, could AZP's envelope be applicable to the aggrega-tion of the politic of the ground? Does politic aggregate or does only architecture aggregate, whereby producing a new form of politic as its resultant structure and thereby maintaining autonomy? Does the thing still qualify as autonomous if it is responsible for a product other than a simulacra or replication of itself?

Le Corbusier raised the building as a means of releasing it from the social. Here the origin is the removal of the ground, not necessarily the raising of the building. This is an architectural agreement.

The tower as a diagram is an autonomous agreement in the city. We are not working necessarily with the diagram of the tower are we? Go back to Polo’s text to better understand the basis of the diagrammatic family we are working within and challenge everything based on that renewed or repositioned idea of the diagram.

Our site, our project is not a tower.

In this exercise, we are working with the diagram of a tower. The difference between the aggregate diagram being produced and the project that we will later be pursuing is the original typological assessment and the subsequent manipulation or repositioning of that diagram.

So what then is the relationship of the series of figure/ground diagrams to the tower and subsequently to our typological positioning in Philadelphia? What fundamental truth does the tower-as-ground aggregate allow as a starting point for operation on the typological condition at our site? Define the typological condition present on our site. Define the relationship between the tower typology and our zoned, FARed condition. As a result of the initial Sears tower exercise, produce the opportunity for a reading, or readings as a conclusive as means of beginning the next production. Establish a position, with in the productive realm of the tower-aggregate through which to negotiate the typological shift.

The tower as diagram is an autonomous agreement in the city. Architecture is a production of the City. The City is a production of Architecture.

If there is no ground, until the Architecture produces it, then what holds it, or offers it forth? Economics and ownership hold the construction. Truly autonomous architecture is not bound by these forces, but rather enacted through them.

The ground is landscape, street, and theatre. The ground is a shared collective. The building is identified as individual, as capital.

There is potential for massive ground to be inhabited. Write out what you intend to do using language, taking into consideration both the building and the ground. Execute the idea.

Grids are not autonomous.

What is the part to whole relationship within an aggregation?

What is the part to whole relationship of the aggregate?

What is the political relationship conceived of in aggregating?

What is the political relationship of the aggregation?

What is the politic of the aggregate?

Can the ‘political’ be considered ‘systemic’?

The collage (city) is interesting as a result of a different understanding of the individual, or social right.

Establish the whole as a formation of the political position of the aggregate. It is a cumulative construction or an accumulating relationship.

What is the figure that emerges?

What is the [regime] of aggregate autonomy?

Does the figure that emerges or results differ from the figure of origination?

What is the relationship between the figure and formalism or a formalist approach?

Density is solidifies connectivity. Find the form or configuration of the density of the city. Due to the fact of air conditioning, the arguments for light and air have been obliterated. Their functional necessity, as a means of mitigating disease, has been nullified by modern hygiene and lifestyle habits. Disease is irrelevant. We now have purel. Air served as a function of pressure and as an argument for orientation due to the production of flow. Light and air represent more a problem of purpose than of function. So what then is the relationship of purpose to architecture, and outside of the question of the relationship of function to architecture?

The goal is “The Production of Space.” Fragmentation doesn’t serve the argument. What is the diagram of the whole? Does it differ from the diagram of the parts?

Once acted upon in the exercise, the lobby is redefined, as with the ground in the perpetual tower argument. The lobby serves as the new ground. It represents and functions as the opening or entrance point. It is the point of arrival.

Using the diagrams of Ledoux, Corb, Mies, and Loos and perhaps Wright. What is the evolution or relationship of these diagrams in plan? Do the sectional diagrams of figure/ground relationships have planar implications? Play with the middle ground. What do you do with it, and how can it become the point of departure or new ground. What is it exactly, in Corb, in Ledoux, in Mies it is clear, in Loos? What is its function? What is it doing?

Control the void space. Joining is an entrance. If the new and the old, or the generational gaps do not connect in surface, joining them is necessary. What are the methods for joining? Investigate the geometrical implications of the non-unified platonic solid.

Ursula and Thomas will provide translational tools.

Sketch

Normal