Composite and Aggregate: Dr. William Tozer RIBA

an architecture of seriality and curation“Why is it not possible to derive a theory of architecture from a consideration of

architecture.” Robin Evans, The Projective Cast: Architecture and Its Three Geometries (Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press: 1995), xxxvi.

As a challenge to the widespread dominance of notions of novelty and invention, this studio proposes that the design of architecture be considered as a serial process, in which one’s design moves are constantly reevaluated, rearranged, recomposed, curated and redeployed.

The use of the term “practice” can be seen as recognition of the fact that architecture is in some respects an inherently repetitive undertaking, and that design mastery and innovation emerge not in spite of this but because of it. While architects are seen as practitioners in part simply due to their professional status, specific qualities of architecture and the architectural design process are particularly well suited to critical and productive repetition. Students in this studio are encouraged to think of their master’s final project as an opportunity to reflect critically on the arrangements of form and space in their design work from the preceding years of architecture school—and to curate and recompose them into a single project that can operate as a proposition for their own forthcoming practice.

Architecture can be understood as a mode of building or art practice, in which ideas are communicated through form and space. It is this propositional quality of architecture that distinguishes it from other building, and it is the fact that these ideas are proposed through the media of building form and space that separates it from other modes of art. The spatial and formal compositions of architectural projects emerge out of specific requirements of a site and program, and from ambitions to elicit particular emotional and intellectual responses from viewers or inhabitants. Identifying the characteristics of each component or arrangement that perform these various roles, however, enables an architect to redeploy them in different circumstances and for different utilitarian and conceptual ends.

Each student will put forward a unique conceptual proposition through their project, and select their own building programme and site to resonate with the ideas communicated through the spatial and formal moves of their scheme—mirroring the process by which practicing architects conversely design space and form to conceptually respond to a particular location and use. Projects can be of any size, but the extent of resolution will need to be inversely proportional to scale in order for smaller projects to demonstrate a comparable degree of critical thinking.

Fig. L: A water feature adjacent to Le Corbusier’s chapel of Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp (1954). Fig. R: The chapel of Le Corbusier’s Sainte Marie de La Tourette (1960) is a similar form and composition at a much larger scale.

ARCH 8299: Master’s Final Project 2013 wtozer@umn.edu

Proposition & Arrangement: aggregation | composition

‘Sometimes a building is not the best means to explore architectural ideas. Consequently architects, especially famous ones, tend to talk, write and draw a lot as well as build’.

Jonathan Hill, Immaterial Architecture (London: Routledge, 2006), 37.

Architects are prone to the misapprehension that they communicate entirely through drawings. This belief probably has its origin in the fact that visual representation is the medium particular to the profession, but in reality the vast majority of communication about architecture is not drawn, but written and spoken. Perhaps as a consequence, architects are also notoriously imprecise in the way they write and talk about their designs—in contrast to the carefully chosen words architects use for technical and contract documentation, architects tend to describe their creative moves with obfuscatory language and vague reference to other artistic disciplines in a way that is generally very difficult to relate to anything particular in the built or drawn work.

Be straightforward and precise in the language you use to describe the compositions of form and space in your design work so that you can identify the elements and arrangements that are critical to their success or otherwise. Doing this in relation to your previous work will enable you to make informed decisions about how to arrange, combine and compose them for different ends. Ask yourself how proportions, dimensions, material selections and details relate to the particularities of programme and site, and the emotional or intellectual responses elicited by inhabiting the architecture. Assess how these conditions or objectives differ in this project by comparison to the preceding ones. Compose elements of your body of work into a proposal for a particular site and programme, and be specific about the experience of perceiving and inhabiting it.

Fig. L: Mies van der Rohe—quoted as remarking “Build—don’t talk”—in an intense architectural conversation.Fig. R: “The architect’s medium ... is drawings and drawings only” said Erno Goldfinger, seen here talking on the telephone.

week 1 PROPOSITIONweek 2 ARRANGEMENTweek 3 AGGREGATION POINT OUTLINE DUE week 4 COMPOSITION FIRST INTERIM REVIEWS: initial research and focused proposal

ARCH 8299: Master’s Final Project 2013 wtozer@umn.edu

Evaluation, Deployment & Refinement: reevaluation | rearrangement

The difference between the necessary and the superfluous is inherent in a work, and is not defined by the work’s relationship—or lack of it—to something outside itself’

Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Functionalism Today,’ in Rethinking Architecture, ed. Neil Leach (London: Routledge,1997), 7.

The word “architect” is widely used outside of the architectural discipline to describe a person with overall vision and foresight—the initiating or driving force behind an idea or project. Conversely, the word’s meaning within the discipline has become limited and focused on the professional aspects of the architect’s role in the building industry. This professionalised definition of the “architect” has disconnected the discipline from the broader definition—focussing on delivery, competency and scale, rather than vision, creativity and quality. Rather than looking to other disciplines where our skills can be used in an economic climate where jobs for architects are in ever shorter supply, this studio challenges participants to make propositions for reclaiming the broader meaning of the word “architect.”

Like other building elements, space—although less tangible in physical terms—possesses specific characteristics that affect the manner in which it is articulated. Evaluate where arrangements of space in your project are deployed to elicit intellectual or emotional responses, and where space conversely operates—either as simply a functional enclosure, or in service of other building components in order to facilitate an intellectual or emotional response from them. Experiment with varying and refining the handling of space at various different scales. Examine the varous ways that space is articulated in your previous projects for cues—a spatial arrangement at a small scale might be usefully deployed or rearranged to organize space at a much larger scale, or vice versa.

Fig. L: The floor plan of Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion (1929). Fig. R: The site plans of Mies van der Rohe’s larger projects, such as the Lake Shore Drive Apartments (1951), exhibit similar characteristics to the Barcelona Pavilion plan, which are not evident at the scale of the floor plans.

week 5 EVALUATIONweek 6 DEPLOYMENTweek 7 REFINEMENTweek 8 REEVALUATIONweek 9 REARRANGEMENT SECOND INTERIM REVIEW: specific design development

ARCH 8299: Master’s Final Project 2013 wtozer@umn.edu

Curation, Recomposition & Redeployment: redevelopment

“Works can be produced that transcend self-referentiality and tautology, becoming privileged places of pf poetic epiphany.”

Alberto Pérez-Gómez and Louise Pelletier. Architectural Representation (Mass.: MIT Press, 1997), 395.

The engagement of an architect can be understood as comprised of two quite separate components, an appointment and a commission, pertaining to quite distinct roles as a professional and designer respectively. This studio calls on students to counter the general retreat into autonomous realms of academic and professional conceptions of architectural practice. Professional skills are increasingly perceived as the factors distinguishing “architects” from the other designers who are responsible for the bulk of our built environment—not just those who operate under that moniker, but the building contractors, engineers, developers, owners and others who construct buildings without our involvement. This studio asks how we can place ourselves to design a greater share of the built environment by demonstrating the potential of our creative leadership rather than our professional competencies.

Curate the articulation of external form so that it best supports the idea that you are trying to communicate through your architecture, and redevelop its relationship to the surrounding built and natural environment. The reception of your building as the physical expression of an idea requires suppression of the perception of elements of structure and function that would circumvent this reading. Explore the possibility of manifesting parts of your building as functional and others as sculptural, and external form as a continuation of the visual composition of the interior forms, or vice versa. Examine how the different ways in which the interior and exterior are perceived affect the manner in which they need to be designed—and recompose them to ensure that different strategies support rather than diminish one another.

Fig. L: OMA’s Y2K House, Rotterdam, Netherlands (1998). Fig. R: The building form of the Casa da Musica in Oporto, Portugal (2005) is a direct reworking at a larger scale.

week 10 CURATION PROJECT SUMMARY DUE: 8 pagesweek 11 RECOMPOSITIONweek 12 REDEPLOYMENT REVISED POINT OUTLINE DUE week 13 REDEVELOPMENT JURY PRESENTATION DRAFT REVIEWS: internal

ARCH 8299: Master’s Final Project 2013 wtozer@umn.edu

Reflection & Resolution:recomposition

“Research functions not as a distraction from practice but as a development of it.” Donald A Schön, The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action (London: Ashgate, 1983), ix.

While the very process of teaching of design through the studio format is inherently modelled—at least in part—on the professional model of apprenticeship, this studio recognises the limits of apprenticeship in relation to scholarship. Proceeding from the premise that practice-based knowledge only becomes research when it can be distilled into ideas that are meaningful beyond reference to itself, each student’s scholarship will be critiqued by its own frames of reference rather than directed by an external agenda. Not all research is design, and not all design is research—but progressing research through design is the objective of this studio. While many of the processes of practice are generally given only professional rather than academic consideration by academia, they can be considered part of the design process because they are influential on architectural outcomes in this context.

Reflect upon the resolution of thresholds and details in your preceding design work and how these moves could be recomposed to perform the same or different roles in your project. Consider how scale, program, and site affect the way you handle the transitions between spaces and from the interior to the exterior, and the detailing of these and other junctions in relation to progressing the idea or ideas that your scheme proposes. Resolve whether openings are articulated as utilitarian components that announce their function, or if their function is suppressed and they are articulated as gaps in or between elements of the external form—and whether smaller building elements and fixtures and fittings appear as integral to or distinct from the larger scale compositions.

Fig. L: The cast concrete elevation of Carlo Scarpa’s Gavina showroom, Bologna (1963). Fig. R: An element of Scarpa’s Brion Family Cemetery (1978) recomposes the same elements.

week 14 REFLECTION PROJECT SUMMARY DUE: 12 pagesweek 15 RESOLUTION INTERNAL PRESENTATIONS: students of concernweek 16 RECOMPOSITION FINAL JURIES PROJECT SUMMARY, DIGITAL ARCHIVE & PUNCH LIST DUE

ARCH 8299: Master’s Final Project 2013 wtozer@umn.edu

READING LIST

Adorno, Theodor W. “Functionalism Today.” In Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory, edited by Neil Leach. London: Routledge, 1997.

Alberti, Leon Battista. On the Art of Building in Ten Books. Translated by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, Robert Tavernor. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988.

Anderson, Stanford. “Critical Conventionalism in Architecture.” Assemblage 1 (October 1986): 6–23.

Anderson, Stanford. “The Fiction of Function.” Assemblage 2 (February 1987): 113–117.

Dodds, George. Building Desire: On the Barcelona Pavilion. Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2005.

Evans, Robin. The Projective Cast: Architecture and Its Three Geometries. Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press, 1995.

Forty, Adrian. Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2000.

Gannon, Todd, ed. The Light Construction Reader. New York: Monacelli Press, 2002.

Hill, Jonathan. Actions of Architecture: Architects and Creative Users. London: Routledge, 2003.

Hill, Jonathan. Immaterial Architecture. London: Routledge, 2006.

Jencks, Charles. “Fetishism and Architecture (with Apologies to Adolf Loos and Gore Vidal).” Architectural Design 46 (1976): 492–495.

Kinney, Leila W. “Fashion and Fabrication in Modern Architecture.” The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 58 (September 1999): 472–481.

Morra, Joanne, ed., Marquard Smith. Visual Culture: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies. Abington: Routledge, 2006.

Pérez-Gómez, Alberto and Louise Pelletier. Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge. Mass.: MIT Press, 1997.

Rendell, Jane. Art and Architecture: A Place Between. London: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd, 2006.

Rowe, Colin. “Mannerism and Modern Architecture.” The Architectural Review (1950).

Rowe, Colin. The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1976.

Schaik, Leon van. Mastering Architecture: Becoming a Creative Innovator in Practice. Chichester: Wiley-Academy, 2005.

Schön, Donald A. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. London: Ashgate, 1983.

Smith, Albert C. and Kendra Schank Smith. ‘Architecture as Inspired Machine.’ Built Environment 31 (2005).

Tozer, William. “A Theory of Making: Architecture and Art in the Practice of Adolf Loos,” doctoral thesis, University College London (2011). http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1331912/

ARCH 8299: Master’s Final Project 2013 wtozer@umn.edu

Tozer, William. “A Theory of Making: Methodology and Process in Architectural Practice.” Architectural Research Quarterly, (Cambridge University Press, volume 12, 2008): 134–148.

Vidler, Anthony. Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008.

Vitruvius. The Ten Books of Architecture. Translated by Morris Hickey Morgan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1914.

Venturi, Robert. Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1966.

Wigley, Mark. White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995.

GENERAL

This syllabus is not intended to be read as a chronolgy—all of the themes and criteria referred to should be dealt with at some point during the semester, but in no particular order. The sooner that all aspects are addressed the better, giving the maximum opportunity for resolution and refinement. Students may proceed from the macro to micro scale, or vice versa, but it may be more advantageous to oscillate between them to test your ideas from one week to the next. Students will be expected to propose their own set of deliverables for approval, in recognition of the fact that each project will require different representations to adequately describe it. Successful fulfilment of a list of deliverables is both quantititve and qualitive, and the responsibility of each student.

The specific syllabus for this section should be read in conjunction with the University of Minnesota common syllabus for ARCH 8299: Master’s Final Project 2013. This common syllabus includes the general course objectives, scope of work, course requirements, a reading list, and information on the grading process. Please ensure that you obtain a copy of this common syllabus document. Refer to the University of Minnesota website for information on disabilities, scholastic conduct and academic policies.

Attendance at all group and individual presentations—otherwise known as crits, reviews, juries or pin-ups—is essential to completing the course successfully. Approach your own presentations as an opportunity to receive feedback from faculty, students, and visiting reviewers. Utilise others’ presentations to measure your own progress, provide feedback and ask questions. You are just as likely to get an insight into how to proceed with your project during someone else’s review as you are during your own. Dates and specific objectives for presentations are subject to change with reasonable notice. Guest reviewers will attend some of the presentations, and you should take advantage of their various areas of expertise—depending upon the type of development you are presenting, this may take the form of critique of your existing proposals, or suggestions for how to approach an area of your scheme that you have not yet addressed. Ask questions to ensure that you understand how these criticisms or suggestions can be adapted to address you specific design approach.

ARCH 8299: Master’s Final Project 2013 wtozer@umn.edu

Fig. above: A diversity of design approaches and representation methods in student work taught by William Tozer at the University of Minnesota (top row) and the Canterbury School of Architecture (bottom row)Fig. below: The distinctly different design cultures of the Bartlett and RMIT schools of architecture.

ARCH 8299: Master’s Final Project 2013 wtozer@umn.edu

Fig. above: Interpolation House (2009) and Composite House (2008), William Tozer Associates. Fig. below: Published articles by William Tozer: Wigglesworth Till, Herzog and de Meuron, Zaha Hadid, Spacelab.

ARCH 8299: Master’s Final Project 2013 wtozer@umn.edu