RE-STABLISHING WHERE WE STAND

Dear e-archidoct students

First of all, I would like to wish you a happy New Year with lots of creativity and professional success alongside good health and world peace!

I am sorry to have to moan at a time of festivities but to my disappointment seven out of nine of you have subscribed with the Blog I have organised for our course and none of you has responded to the two tasks I set back in November with deadlines on 10 and 20 December respectively. As I am informed our course has to be completed by the end of February. I am afraid that with such delayed and slow pace we will be unable to meet any expectations of a reasonable standard.

I will circulate this same note on the blog and re-invite you all to join. For the ones who are already subscribers in the Blog please do not bother.

I am expecting your immediate response.

Best regards,

Dr Maria Voyatzaki

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF FIRST COURSE WORK

Please find the introductions of the first two books of the bibliography of the first lecture at: 



We will have to decide how to go about the bibliography. As I explained in my last email what we are doing (Scanning and uploading books) is not the best solution. Either your institution will buy the books I can indicate for the course as soon as possible or you will have to find your own sources for each lecture in agreement with me. Let us discuss on the blog which way you want to go.

Wednesday 18 February 2009







I would like to work on the intellectual system Deconstruktion.

Monday 16 February 2009

Table Sidonia Teodorescu

University of Architecture and Urban Planning Ion Mincu, SITT, 2008, 3rd semester
TH02 Intellectual Systems and the Materiality of Architecture

Prof. PhD. Maria Voyatzaki
Arch. Sidonia Teodorescu

Architecture and materiality
Intellectual system:

BEFORE MODERN:

VALUES
-formalism
-the Da Vincian figure (The Vitruvian man) becomes the rule, the order and the reference for the beauty of a form
-ornaments
-Renaissance
-natural beauty
-elegance

HUMAN BEING
-the human = a divine image, a model, an ideal, an exemplar

ARCHITECTURE
-hybrid ornamentation
-Beaux-Arts

MATERIALS
-wood, baked and compressed earth, masonry, brick, stone, metals, reed
-limestone, marble

TECHNIQUES
-resistant structures
-equilibrium of forces
-stability, solidity
-vaults
-timber barns
-brickwork

ARCHITECTS
-Vitruvius, Leon Battista Alberti, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Andrea Palladio

BUILDINGS
- Stonehenge, the Egyptian Pyramids, the Doric temple, Collosseum, the Gothic cathedral, The Sistine Chapel, San Pietro Cathedral -Rome, the Chambord castle, Villa Rotonda, Taj Mahal, the Louvre

SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL CONTEXT
-Christianity
-Absolutism
-Renaissance

“TRANSCRIPTION” OF VALUES AND PRINCIPLES INTO FORMAL PROPOSITIONS AND CONSTRUCTION METHODS
-formalism
-confidence and serenity

MODERN:

VALUES
-democracy
-standardization
-clarity, purity and honesty
-function
-system

HUMAN BEING
-modular
-optimum expression of functionality and of the Ideal Machine

ARCHITECTURE
-linear
-pilotis
-flat roof
-free plan
-absence of ornament
-The international Style

MATERIALS
-reinforced concrete
-steel, iron, glass
-bearing and non-bearing materials
-mass produced elements
-minimal and true use of material

TECHNIQUES
-frames; skeleton and skin; brickwork
-repetition
-economy of material and equilibrium
-truth to material

ARCHITECTS
-Viollet-le-Duc, Victor Horta, Otto Wagner, Louis Henri Sullivan, Charles Rennie MacKintosh, Antoni Gaudi, Antonio Sant’Elia, Adolf Loos, Auguste Perret, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Alvar Aalto, Marcel Breuer, Jorn Utzon, Marcel Iancu, Horia Creanga, Oscar Niemeyer


BUILDINGS
-Brooklyn Bridge, Crystal Palace, Eiffel’s Tower, Villa Savoye - Poissy, Unité d’Habitation – Marseille, Casa Milà – Barcelona, Brasilia Cathedral, Technology Institute of Illinois, Seagram Building – New York, Johnson Building, Guggenheim Museum – New York, German Pavilion in Barcelona Exhibition (1929), Tugendhat Villa, Sydney’s Opera House

SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL CONTEXT
-The two World Wars, The World Economic Crisis

“TRANSCRIPTION” OF VALUES AND PRINCIPLES INTO FORMAL PROPOSITIONS AND CONSTRUCTION METHODS

-"function follows form", the function should be clearly expressed,"purism", "fidelity for the used materials”
-standardization; industrial methods of building
-internationalisation
-“The Architect is a carpenter who learned Latin” (Adolf Loos)
-material efficiency
-structure=architecture
-transparency
-monolithic construction
-the cult of everyday

POST-MODERN:

VALUES
-need for collective memory references

HUMAN BEING
-expressive skin of the social and cultural body

ARCHITECTURE
-the elevation is an intelligent façade or skin, which reacts dynamically to stimuli
-"Neo-eclectic", where reference and ornament have returned to the facade, replacing the aggressively unornamented modern styles

MATERIALS
-materiality of the non-load bearing elements, which become the building elements capable of alluding to meanings
-material choice is part of the design process
-intelligent materials:
1. the sensitive materials that gather data around the environment;
2. the active materials;
3. the adaptive materials;
4. those materials that learn and select from the way in which they will react.

TECHNIQUES
-new digital technologies
-seeks exuberance in the use of building techniques, angles, and stylistic references.
-materiality of the skin

ARCHITECTS
-Michael Graves, Philip Johnson, Robert Venturi

BUILDINGS
-Michael Graves' Portland Building in Portland, Oregon
-Philip Johnson's Sony Building (originally AT&T Building) in New York City
-Piazza d'Italia by Charles Moore

SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL CONTEXT

“TRANSCRIPTION” OF VALUES AND PRINCIPLES INTO FORMAL PROPOSITIONS AND CONSTRUCTION METHODS
-borrows elements and references from the past and reintroduces color and symbolism to architecture
-the design of architectural forms is being perceived as the analogous of the genetic process

DECONSTRUCTION:

VALUES
-influenced by Russian Constructivism (1920) and by the works of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida

HUMAN BEING
-gathering of genetic information and data that control the evolution of life

ARCHITECTURE
-non-Euclidian
-chaos
-distortion of architectural elements
-the building as an artifact

MATERIALS
-the grill; layers

TECHNIQUES
-Deconstructive buildings may seem to have no visual logic. They may appear to be made up of unrelated, disharmonious abstract forms.
-fractals

ARCHITECTS
-Peter Eisenman, Bernard Tschumi, Daniel Libeskind, Jacques Derrida (philosopher), Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Rem Koolhaas, Herzog and De Meuron

BUILDINGS
-Parc de la Villette – Paris (1982), Wexner Center for the Arts - Columbus - Ohio, Imperial War Museum North – Manchester, dancing House in Prague, Seattle Public Library

SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL CONTEXT

“TRANSCRIPTION” OF VALUES AND PRINCIPLES INTO FORMAL PROPOSITIONS AND CONSTRUCTION METHODS
-controlled chaos, the dream of pure form has been disturbed
-the vague space
-the grill
-simultaneous presence
-layers of physical and cultural archaeologies at each site

DIGITAL:

VALUES
-immaterial, hybrid, composite, in-between, mutable
-the building is a living being

HUMAN BEING
-unique and independent, mutable

ARCHITECTURE
-living architecture
-a material art

MATERIALS
-diminution of the distinction between load-bearing and non load-bearing building materials
-the integration of the creation of a material in the design process
-experimentation in the material
-use of new materials produced through new digital production technologies
-‘genetic material’ of the form

TECHNIQUES
-new digital production technologies
-rainscreen cladding

ARCHITECTS
-Peter Eisenman, Greg Lynn, UN Studio, MVRDV

BUILDINGS
-Silodam in Amsterdam

SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL CONTEXT
-global warming
-sustainability of resources

“TRANSCRIPTION” OF VALUES AND PRINCIPLES INTO FORMAL PROPOSITIONS AND CONSTRUCTION METHODS
-immaterial, hybrid, composite, in-between, mutable
-the building is a living organism; as an artifact, it manifests its new relationship and admiration to the natural, the living, the alive
-skin is the new space
-fractals, holograms

Thursday 5 February 2009

table

Dear professor Maria Voyatzaki,

I sent to you the table on e-mail address. I will try to submit it to the Blog for see all the participants.

As we discussed in last e-mail, it would be useful to my doctorate to work on
the pre-modern era.

Please inform me what is the next?
As you informed yet, our course has to be completed by the end of February.
What must contents the final paper that we must prepare for the finish of this course?
When is the dead line for it?


Best regards,
Ioana Urdea