ARC132H1 Week 6 Reading - GIEDION, SPACE, TIME AND ARCHITECTURE, 1941.

P491-497

1. The Building Program

a combination of institutions: Bauhaus the School of Design, trade school of the city of Dessau, dorm-studio complex for students I guess unlike UofT these buildings all had to be connected as well, as opposed to being a cluster or a neighborhood. a clear separation of each of these functions from the others, at the same time not isolating them but bringing them together into efcient interrelation If Giedion means functions by the three elements listed above, then it reminds me of a professional distance. If he means functions like auditorium, studio, administration, dining, etc then, well, it sounds many colleges, like Trinity. Trinity, not including St Hildas, also has a hall/auditorium (Seeley Hall), dining (Strachan), dorms divided into houses, administration offices on the ground floor, a chapel and school of divinity all around a quadrangle.

On the left is the chapel at Trinity, on the right is a church from Grundtvigs, Denmark. I think they look remarkably similar. laboratories of design - completely intentional scientific/rationalistic metaphor. Functions requiring different designs all of which the Bauhaus buildings housed: 1 private studio for Gropius 2 dining hall 3 stage 4 administration rooms 5 dwelling quarters 6 student studios 7 cabinetmaking 8 theatrical crafts 9 dyeing 10 weaving 11 printing 12 wall coverings 13 metalworking 14 lecture halls. Each has a small balcony, a concrete slab which juts out into the open space. These slabs give the building its singular and exciting aspect The sentence structure suggests each dorm had its own concrete slab (enclosed by glass I hope for safety). This I find exciting because every such balcony in Toronto is a single long horizontal slab, separated by a thin metallic panel which divide the balcony for individual units. Individual balconies would look less polished than a single strip across, but the single strips is ubiquitous.

ARC132H1 Week 6 Reading - GIEDION, SPACE, TIME AND ARCHITECTURE, 1941. P491-497

The students building connects directly with the School of Design through a one-story wing. The wing ingeniously combines an assembly hall, a dining hall, and the stage of the school. These rooms can be thrown open to form a single hall accessible from the aula I like this layout. Dining halls/assembly spaces do not belong with either dormitories or proper lectures and studios. Their designation together as a flat, single-story building, like an exaggerated hallway both adds to the elevational dynamism of the complex, but also suggests a proportionality of importance as expressed in isolation and volume. This passerelle or connecting bridge was reserved for administration rooms, meeting places, the department and private atelier of Gropius. Again, single functions, as opposed to repeated functions like classrooms or dorms, are squeezed into connections/ passageways/large hallways. Trinity isnt like that. Its a complex shape. I like the idea of having different wings and connecting them more, because it makes the space more interesting structurally. There is less ornamentation on the Bauhaus buildings - Trin has lots of faces, scriptures, spirals, things and things - but I prefer structural interestingness.

Neither of these are fantastic pictures. They are shots from a place called Anor Londo in the video game Dark Souls. Watching my boyfriend play this game last summer made me want to pursue architecture. It was just so breathtaking. Anor Londo is only one of many, many extremely elaborate, extremely expressionistic settings in this game Anyway, in Anor Londo there are lots of structures connected via paths like the one you see here. In that its like the Bauhaus buildings P:)

ARC132H1 Week 6 Reading - GIEDION, SPACE, TIME AND ARCHITECTURE, 1941. P491-497

2. The Signicance of the Glass Curtain

The continuous glass curtain is brought into abrupt juxtaposition with the horizontal ribbons of white curtain wall at the top and bottom of the building. They are mere ribbons: supporting nothing. Atectonic. The glass curtain ows smoothly around the building, the corners showing no vertical supporting or binding members. This is because the pillars from which the curtains hang are set behind the glass, making the curtain a specimen of pure cantilever construction. So I didnt know what a cantilever is, and looked it up. I found another quotation by Giedion from the same book online: A good cantilever can make or break a project. Writing in Space, Time and Architecture, Sigfried Giedion saw in Wrights extensive use of the cantilever a revolution in design, where space becomes an essential part of the structure, molded as an inseparable part of it. Cantilevers found widespread favor in the development of Modern architecture in the last century. Mies van der Rohe used them to extend his universal space and to further dematerialize the eld of vision in his projects. Architects who practiced certain strains of Modernismthink of the hanging corners at Hugh Stubbinss 1977 Citicorp Center in New Yorkpreferred to disrupt, sometimes unintentionally, architectural stability with the cantilever.

Is this what the author meant by hanging corners?

The glass curtain is simply folded about the corners of the building; in other words, the glass walls blend into each other at jst the point where the human eye expects to encounter guaranteed support for the load of the building. Thats amazing. I never paid attention to the glass corners before. I guess there is an expectation for a support when we look at corners. Corners must be something architects pay a lot of attention to because its where two walls meet. Ive never thought of corners in that light before.

Seattle Public Library by Rem Koolhaas

Where you expect a corner you find a triangle. And whats more the triangle is in fishnets.

ARC132H1 Week 6 Reading - GIEDION, SPACE, TIME AND ARCHITECTURE, 1941. P491-497

5. FLW and Gropius

FLW used hovering vertical and horizontal planes in his houses, and open planning during his Chicago period. Ground plans can be extended and complicated and sometimes connected by bridges, but are always strongly attached to the ground. In a way, they resemble tentacles of an earth-bound animal - they do not hover, as evidenced by their sudden structural changes, overhanging eaves and complicated relief. Giedion is a clear writer. Im surprised I understood that without seeing any photos.... With lots of arrows and explanations...

6. A different feeling for space

1926: artistic discoveries made since 1910 AND new methods of construction. How to make sure the first isnt directed by the second? Is there any literature justifying the precedence of artistic consciousness over unconscious outgrowths of engineering advances, as Giedion put it, in design? Is artistic consciousness simply a priori? In what sort of a ideological and aesthetic world would we live if it were beautiful to build simply in ways you couldnt before? Is that what the Modern Movement purported to be? The Bauhaus complex is a bunch of cubes, one juxtaposed against another, in different sizes, locations and materials. The aim was to have them hover: this is the reason for the winglike connecting bridges and the liberal use of glass - a dematerializing quality. Giedion has impressed me by articulating what I have only been able to vaguely and crudely gesture at. I think I am taken by connecting wings precisely because it provides a hovering feeling. I do not want to see a building in mid air. I want to see a building like FLWs, having tentacles it reaches out within small distance to the Earth. There is a sense of tension - immense pressure - in the mass hovering so low to the ground and the opaque shadow it must cast at all times. I think I am drawn to massive and tense structures more than other ones. I wouldnt use much glass, I dont think, perhaps lots of tinted, sheer black glass.

7. New organization of volume

The cubes interpenetrate so subtly and intimately the various volumes cannot be sharply picked out. Interpenetrate is everyones favorite word. Also, form this line I can see how Giedion argues Bauhaus is like Picassos stuff. Yet... Out of the sentence, and into the picture, they look utterly different. The ground plan lacks all tendency to contract inward upon itself; it expands, on the contrary, and reaches out over the ground. In outline it looks like a pinwheel, suggesting a movement in space that can be seized and held.

I thought the ground plan looked like a undone swastika.