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.