Solids and Cavities in Architecture

Architecture is an art that on first glance is given to us by visual observation. Something that is mistaken often is that we put focus only on the part of the design that is there (solids) and we forget how important the parts that are missing (cavities) are.

The way we look at designs and sketch our ideas is more important than we are aware of. There’s solid-minded architects and cavity-minded architects. This depends on the way the architect chooses to start a design, from the solid part or the spaces. For example, in some cathedrals the detail and uniqueness of the design is focused on the mass solid part (Gothic Architecture), in some others it is focused on the big spaces on the interior of the cathedral (Renaissance Period).

Frank Lloyd Wright shows a perfect example on Falling Water about the ways to achieve harmony between them two, and now to use them as just a vast ornament, which has failed a lot of times previously when other architects have tried to achieve it. Frank Lloyd Wright on his design shows the most important and beautiful ornament that other architects have misses: nature.

This class in my opinion was one of the most important ones because it connected really close with the studio designs that we make. For example in our two cubes we had two different main focuses, because in the first cube we had to think about the cavities we were going to create from the amount of Styrofoam that we carved and in the second cube we had to design with solids around cavities. In the current studio design we also have to put a lot of thinking when it comes to solids and cavities and the way we are going to portray them in our design.

I think learning more about the importance of solids and cavities will benefit us a lot even in the future projects and throughout our Architecture journey because it is one of the most crucial parts while designing.

From the past to the present

What makes Architecture unique from all the different arts is the need for building construction thinking.

Nervi made an experiment where he looked at architectural works from two different aspects: from a Builder’s point of view and from a non-technicians point of view.

After the dual investigation he came to the conclusion that a building may be perfect technically and not be aesthetically pleasing, but an architectural work that is aesthetically pleasing is always accomplished on it’s technical side. This is because if we make a technically perfect work, the rules followed and it’s correctness make it aesthetically pleasing.

Building technology has to make use of the solid materials, define spaces on their particular functions and protect the structure from external elements.

The most important part of building correctly are:

Stability- a building has to have resistance to external forces. For example in places with a lot of earthquakes building construction changes to adapt to the needed conditions.

Durability- different materials are used to support different conditions so durability can be achieved.

A functional structure and economic efficiency are the result of the proper proportioning of the sizes and relationships of spaces.

If we compare architectural projects from the past up until very recently, the technological refinement and addition of ornament have improved massively, but that doesn’t mean that they haven’t been acknowledged in the past as well. For example, if we see the columns of the buildings, they are built for technical means, but the refinement and decoration of them in the top and bottom shows us that even if it has been improved drastically, people even in the ancient Greek period had the aesthetic sense and were conscious of this fact.

To sum this up, the relation between building construction and technology has always been there and there are many building that show this. They go together and to have a successfully constructed building we have to express and achieve both of them.

Color In Architecture

Color is the place where our brain and the universe meet. It creates, enhances, changes, reveals and establishes the mood of the design. In my opinion this was one of the most important lectures, because as future architects, we have to pay a lot of attention to the way we use and design with color. We also got to practice this in studio when we did the color designs, and we saw how beautiful and difficult at the same time it is to work with colors and the ways we can pair them and make 2 or more colors compatible with one-another.

All the colors are created by the three primary colors: Red, Blue and Yellow. They then are divided to warm and cool colors. This division is important and we encounter it unconsciously on a daily bases: we see red always related to warmth and blue to coolness. (weather reports, thermometers etc.).

Every color has it’s unique features: value, chroma, tint, hue, tone and shade.

Another type of color relationship that we got to practice on studio is monochromatic, achromatic and complementary colors. We got the chance to choose which type of relationship we can use on our design: monochromatic or complementary. Monochromatic is using the different shades of the same color, and complementary is using two colors that are on the opposite side of the spectrum.

Another importance of color is it’s psychology effects. It can have a huge effect on our mood or the way we look at a building. We can see that in a lot of houses when a room is smaller, if we want it to look bigger we design it with lighter colors, and vice-versa, dark colors make a room look smaller. Our brain always relates the color white to cleanness and freshness or we relate green to nature and eco-friendly environment. It can also be used for cultural differences. Us Albanians, always get a home-friendly feeling when we see the colors red and black together, because it reminds us of our home country.

In architecture color has been used since ancient times as a very important element. We use color for division (In our university every class has it’s own unique color.). When we see a kid’s room painted in blue, we know the child is a boy and when it is pink it’s a girl. We can identify modern architecture by looking at it’s typical colors: brick red, marble white and concrete gray.

Every space can be distinguished with its approach towards the human and non-human interaction. Architecture plays an important role in promoting it, and color in architecture helps understand that interaction better.

Daylight in Architecture

Light is not so much something that reveals, as it is itself the revelation. The relationship of a space with the daylight affects it’s design detail discovery, the way we perceive the textures and it effects our psychology. We feel differently on contrasting spaces because of the way the space is lit. The areas with a good interpretation of natural lightning tend to make us happier, contrary to the places with not very successful natural lightning, which make us feel stressful and less creative.

Based on the way a space is lit, we have three categorizations: The bright open hall, the room with a skylight and the room with the light entering from the side.

The open hall consists of a roof held by columns. We can see this type of design on Mahadeva Temple, Kaitabhesvara temple, Market hall etc. Architects have also tried to use this method of lightning on enclosed rooms.

When it comes to the achievement of excellent light, quality is more important than quantity. Having as much light as possible isn’t preferred to having good quality lighting.

Front lighting is poor quality because it doesn’t have good textural or shadow effect.

In the old theaters, floodlighting was used to give an enchantment feeling, and it also had good shadow effect so the audience can sense the textural effect too. In the modern theaters they use the opposite logic, even the richest materials appear flat and shoddy.

The room with a skylight is a room that is closed in all the sides and opened at the top. The most famous and dramatic use of skylight in architecture is the Pantheon in Rome, 126 AD. The lighting in Pantheon is so successful and so well-thought that many architects have unsuccessfully tried to copy it and use it in their buildings. It’s fascinating to see such good architecture being used back in that time.

The room with the light entering from the side is commonly used in the Dutch houses. It is used when there is no space for windows in the other sides of the building and the light comes only from one side. In an experiment by the School of Architecture in Copenhagen, they discovered that by shutting the lower shutters in a Dutch house the light evens in the entire room and by shutting the upper half the light concentrates on the window area of the room.

In conclusion, if you want to create a more concentrated area, we need to make the sources of lightning fall into one area, to give us the best quality of form ant texture. On the other hand, it we want an openness effect we cannot use this method because we need the light to spread all around the area.

Daylight is one of the only things an architect can’t control directly, so the way we build should adapt to the amount and quality of daylight there is.

Scale And Proportion

Steen Eiler Rasmussen was a famous architect and urban planner. On his book, “Experiencing Architecture”, some of the things he pays attention to are scale and proportion.

In our last session, we got the chance to learn more about scale and proportion. Proportion refers to the relationship of parts of a body to one another and to the body as a whole, whereas scale is the comparison we make of a form to the size of another form. In architecture, scale is used to compare the size of the drawing to the size of the actual building.

There are two types of scales: Visual and Human Scale.

The visual scale is the act of comparing the sizes of two forms visually.

The human scale compares our human size to a building or a form.

We saw examples of how different architects have used the human scale in the past. Michelangelo purposely enlarged the sizes of the doors and windows, so he can give the building a simplistic view.

Proportion refers to the harmonic differentiation of one part to another or one part to the whole. This is also important in the compositions we make where we have to consider the part to part relationship and the part to whole relationship.

There are some theories of desirable proportions that can assist order and the perception of buildings.

The golden section is the most common used order. The ratio is defined by the number Phi (1.61). It is used way more than we think in buildings, nature and the human body as well.

The regulating lines are the lines that help us connect to form with each other. These are really important in every design, especially on the compositions we are making.

Le Corbusier developed a theory called The Modular, which is based on the golden section and the human proportions. He took the average human size 183 cm. He adapted his designs on a way so they can be more approachable and usable on our day-to-day life.

Anthropometry is the act of designing based on our body measurements and designing for the disabled people.

During our lecture, we also got to see and learn more about the principles of compositions, how important they are, the ways we can follow them on our compositions and how architects follow them on every design.

Perceptual bases for Architectural Design

The way you can tell if a building has good architecture is by the way the elements communicate with one-another. This communication can be achieved with vision, temperature, humidity, sound and texture. The architect has to select the communication image and design techniques. He has to pay attention to making the architectural form a composition of components. A big design issue appears when the architect has to find the substance of the architectural expressions. There are three important alternatives when it comes to architectural statements. We have to know the meaning of the building and the forms or images related to that meaning, the relative importance of the meanings have to be expressed and a logical order of building construction that will develop these images visually while providing good physical enclosure.

The image communication in architectural design can be approached in different ways:

The architect has to know the room shapes and sizes, who is going to use the space and for how long and he has to have environmental control. They have to know the building type, because there’s specific designs for some types of building, like schools, hospitals, banks etc. The architect also has to analyze the site and the approachability of the terrain. Every architect has it’s own style and they express it in every one of their works. They study the environment and the human behavior. Building technology is a relevantly new concept but it has become really important in the past decade. All of these have to come together to create a successfully designed building.

The next step for the architect is the ordering of the spaces that are required in the building.

Signs and Symbols are used to understand the function of the building or the spaces within the building.

Our minds are structured to perceive our surroundings in a way that organizes our visual field. This is called gestalt psychology and the organizations we see are called gestalts.

Figure-ground designs are presented when we can’t tell which part is the background and which is the physical figure.

Center of gravity is when our understanding of the composition develops from their relationship to the center.

Configuration is the process of our mind simplifying the visual elements in order to understand it.

When an object’s form, color, texture, sense of mass and cultural signification can be used to create hierarchies between it and other objects, we have similarity.

Proximity allows the designer to relate two dissimilar objects by placing them near each other.

Symmetry produces visual groupings to hold our attention longer.

Closure and good continuation is the concept of our mind finishing incomplete objects.

The concept of Form Reproduction argues that we will visually complete a form that we’ve seen before from our memory.

Vignettes are powerful images that are not exact in the way they are produced.

Archetypes are common used rules in different constructions for a specific reason.

Structural and mechanical systems follow well-defined Patterns, as does the process of constructing a building.

The architect should be continually conscious of the design objectives and the way the form of space will convey these concerns to the user.

Texture