Grid, Experience and Living
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Construir en el aire \ viviendo en el aire
Building in the air / living in the air
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Building in the air means using some kind of developed framework. Obviously, there are frameworks on a ground plane; we live in buildings based on a structure, aligned to a street network that is in turn related to other networks of transportation, towns, cities, highways, and borders. But when living at height, every action is mediated so strongly by a physical framework that keeps us in the air, separates us from those more recognisable frameworks of the ground. This framework is at a recognisable, tangible scale to us, one of girders and pillars and supports, whether it is a skyscraper or a rail bridge. You could say that a framework of this sort acts as a constant physical reminder of the energy involved in sustaining urban forms and urban living, more so than the often invisible or low-profile frameworks of the ground; they support your weight but also intrude, limiting where and how you can move, build and live.
As a framework, a square grid is the most familiar in both two- and three-dimensional space. It is the most simple and regular arrangement of perpendicular lines, defining space into a series of vertices and right angles, forms that are comfortable to build with and conceptualise within. Hence, the city block grid, squared graphing paper, the coordinate grid. Structuralists like Hertzberger and van Eyck used the square grid as the base for many complex, polyvalent buildings. The square grid has a simplicity of form that is semiotically neutral, whilst allowing for a wide variety of expression to occur. This form, uncommitted and full of potential, can be well utilized in the context of building in the air. The primary way in which to affect the square grid’s neutrality and give it phenomenological meaning is through scale: the 1x1cm grid is used for maths homework, the 5x5m grid is used for bridges and skyscrapers; scale suggests use, and determines form expressed forthwith from the grid.
One problem I’ve been wrestling with is how a large, three-dimensional grid in the sky is experienced (and thus represented) in an architectonic manner. A grid is easily shown in plan and section: a series of perpendicular axes that intersect regularly. But how does that translate into a walk to the shops, or a view from a bedroom window? A grid is experienced best in its traversal: the following of straight axes and the regular crossing of perpendicular axes. In the third dimensional grid, it can be seen as layers of mediation between you and the ground, and you and the sky, stretching above and below you, filled with buildings, paths, escalators, lifts and most importantly people. This is a complex experience. You are at once disconnected from the ground but more aware of what you stand upon, and exposed to the built environment in all directions: below you are roofs, and above you, floors. There is a spatial disconnect between you and others, who may be able to spend almost all their time on a completely different vertical level than you (not just living as in high rise flats, but shopping, visiting friends, going to the park and to work). This means that the design of space like these must encourage vertical commutes as much as we encourage horizontal commutes on the ground, with pavements, crossings, underpasses swapped for escalators, ramps, stairs and elevators. If this is done, the experience of living in the air becomes one of freedom, more so than the ground. Imagine, light dapples your path through the branches of an oak tree twenty metre above you, so you hop on an escalator and take in the sun from a park suspended a hundred metre above the city centre, before riding a lift another storey up to visit family for dinner.
How do you sum up this experience of living in a grid into an architectonic image, or even series of images? With difficulty, and with unconventional methods. Depicting these imagined journeys, pathways up and down the structure could be valuable, showing the structure as a system of interlocking relationships and buildings that creates experience, in the whole. Dividing the work into architectonic drawings that depict form, and pictorial representations of experience, although not the mot engaging, is also a simple method to communicate both aspects. Finding a way to combine the two, is the challenge.
Building onto a grid framework in the air can generate experiences that are new and liberatory, that encourage movement and moments of socialisation between strangers, friends, and neighbours. It can generate experiences that are dense and meaningful, where you can look above and below you to see sights of the city, to see a vibrant urban fabric existing and taking place all around you. More than that, it can generate new ways of looking outward, and experiencing the city at large in a new way, from a different vantage point and a different form of living.
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Construir en el aire \ viviendo en el aire
Building in the air / living in the air
-
Building in the air means using some kind of developed framework. Obviously, there are frameworks on a ground plane; we live in buildings based on a structure, aligned to a street network that is in turn related to other networks of transportation, towns, cities, highways, and borders. But when living at height, every action is mediated so strongly by a physical framework that keeps us in the air, separates us from those more recognisable frameworks of the ground. This framework is at a recognisable, tangible scale to us, one of girders and pillars and supports, whether it is a skyscraper or a rail bridge. You could say that a framework of this sort acts as a constant physical reminder of the energy involved in sustaining urban forms and urban living, more so than the often invisible or low-profile frameworks of the ground; they support your weight but also intrude, limiting where and how you can move, build and live.
As a framework, a square grid is the most familiar in both two- and three-dimensional space. It is the most simple and regular arrangement of perpendicular lines, defining space into a series of vertices and right angles, forms that are comfortable to build with and conceptualise within. Hence, the city block grid, squared graphing paper, the coordinate grid. Structuralists like Hertzberger and van Eyck used the square grid as the base for many complex, polyvalent buildings. The square grid has a simplicity of form that is semiotically neutral, whilst allowing for a wide variety of expression to occur. This form, uncommitted and full of potential, can be well utilized in the context of building in the air. The primary way in which to affect the square grid’s neutrality and give it phenomenological meaning is through scale: the 1x1cm grid is used for maths homework, the 5x5m grid is used for bridges and skyscrapers; scale suggests use, and determines form expressed forthwith from the grid.
One problem I’ve been wrestling with is how a large, three-dimensional grid in the sky is experienced (and thus represented) in an architectonic manner. A grid is easily shown in plan and section: a series of perpendicular axes that intersect regularly. But how does that translate into a walk to the shops, or a view from a bedroom window? A grid is experienced best in its traversal: the following of straight axes and the regular crossing of perpendicular axes. In the third dimensional grid, it can be seen as layers of mediation between you and the ground, and you and the sky, stretching above and below you, filled with buildings, paths, escalators, lifts and most importantly people. This is a complex experience. You are at once disconnected from the ground but more aware of what you stand upon, and exposed to the built environment in all directions: below you are roofs, and above you, floors. There is a spatial disconnect between you and others, who may be able to spend almost all their time on a completely different vertical level than you (not just living as in high rise flats, but shopping, visiting friends, going to the park and to work). This means that the design of space like these must encourage vertical commutes as much as we encourage horizontal commutes on the ground, with pavements, crossings, underpasses swapped for escalators, ramps, stairs and elevators. If this is done, the experience of living in the air becomes one of freedom, more so than the ground. Imagine, light dapples your path through the branches of an oak tree twenty metre above you, so you hop on an escalator and take in the sun from a park suspended a hundred metre above the city centre, before riding a lift another storey up to visit family for dinner.
How do you sum up this experience of living in a grid into an architectonic image, or even series of images? With difficulty, and with unconventional methods. Depicting these imagined journeys, pathways up and down the structure could be valuable, showing the structure as a system of interlocking relationships and buildings that creates experience, in the whole. Dividing the work into architectonic drawings that depict form, and pictorial representations of experience, although not the mot engaging, is also a simple method to communicate both aspects. Finding a way to combine the two, is the challenge.
Building onto a grid framework in the air can generate experiences that are new and liberatory, that encourage movement and moments of socialisation between strangers, friends, and neighbours. It can generate experiences that are dense and meaningful, where you can look above and below you to see sights of the city, to see a vibrant urban fabric existing and taking place all around you. More than that, it can generate new ways of looking outward, and experiencing the city at large in a new way, from a different vantage point and a different form of living.
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