Spacial Extension Research Booklet

F O R W A R DB A C K W A R DSPATIAL EXTENSION

Architecture implies space both directly and indirectly. This analysis aims to discover the suggested spaces beyond the direct realms of visual space, physi-cal boundaries, and explicit understanding. Ten projects are investigated through five spatial typologies. By understanding the formal manipulations, one better appreciates the space around and beyond oneself.

SLIP FRAMESEQUENCEBOUNDARY CURVE

TYPOLOGIES

BOUNDARY SEQUENCESLIP


TYPOLOGIES

FRAMECURVE


SLIP BOUNDARY

CARPENTER CENTER FOR THE ARTS, 1960Le Corbusier: Cambridge, MA

SLIP - BOUNDARYColumns extend space past physical boundary of the ramp plane, giving the impression of a taller space. A folded handrail invites one to stop, in contrast to an open edge which implies movement. The ramp and one’s body moving on it slip past the frame of the building extending the space outward.

SLIP BOUNDARY



SLIP BOUNDARY



FRAMESEQUENCE CURVE

TENDING (BLUE), 2003James Turrell: Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas

SEQUENCE - CURVE - FRAMEThe project creates a frame of the sky and simultaneously brings the exterior conditions inside. A curved entry created a projected image of the full curvilinear entrance. To see others, within the large primary square volume, gazing upward at what first appears as a framed blue image in the center of the ceiling, one is perceptually drawn into the space and upward through the frame once one realizes the edgeless frame open in the center and revealing the sky above.

SLIP BOUNDARY

MAISON A BORDEAUX, 1998Rem Koolhaas: Bordeaux, France

SLIP- BOUNDARYA small bathroom is amplified through the use of a visually removed exterior wall, a mirror, vertical column. The displaced boundary wall doubles the percieved space. Coupled with a mirror on the other wall of the room, the space is doubled again. a column penetrates the exterior space, visually extending it upwards and downwards.

MAISON A BORDEAUX, 1998Rem Koolhaas: Bordeaux, France

SLIP- BOUNDARYA small bathroom is amplified through the use of a visually removed exterior wall, a mirror, vertical column. The displaced boundary wall doubles the percieved space. Coupled with a mirror on the other wall of the room, the space is doubled again. a column penetrates the exterior space, visually extending it upwards and downwards.

SLIP BOUNDARY

SALAMANCA UNIVERSITY, 1124 - 1529Various Architects: Leon, Spain

BOUNDARY - FRAMEA beveled frame allows for an unbounded view on the interior, which allows one to experience the outside condition without a boundary and so extend one’s percieved space outward to the image in the window. From the outside looking in, the typical window perspective is accentuated.

FRAMEBOUNDARY

UNTITLED COLLAGE, 1996Eduardo Chillida

BOUNDARY - FRAMEThe canvas acts as a frame for the rest of the collage, providing a foreground. A second layer of texture rests in what appears to be behind the frame. Finally, a third layer of deep space emerges in the darkest moments as a plane from which the other two emerge.

FRAMEBOUNDARY

TZARA HOUSE, 1925-1926Adolf Loos: Paris, France

SEQUENCE - FRAMESequential frames meter the experience of passage through the house and set up visual thresholds within the space. As one descends through the house one sees the rear balcony, yet to reach it, one must take a circuitous route around each frame and down a set of stairs. This drama of visual movement through a variety of scaled spaces extends the initial experience and becomes primary to the secondary path of one’s body.

FRAMESEQUENCE



FRAMESEQUENCE



FRAMESEQUENCE

YAD VASHEM HOLOCAUST HISTORY MUSEUM, 2005Moshe Safedie: Jerusalem, Israel

SEQUENCE - FRAMEThe breaks in the initial framed visual extension of Yad Vashem are cuts in the earth. The constant view at the end of the primary triangular volume of the building serves a symbolic purpose as well, a constant reminder of the hopeful ending to the dark circuitous route of memory through the Holocaust.

FRAMESEQUENCE

YAD VASHEM HOLOCAUST HISTORY MUSEUM, 2005Moshe Safedie: Jerusalem, Israel

SEQUENCE - FRAMEThe breaks in the initial framed visual extension of Yad Vashem are cuts in the earth. The constant view at the end of the primary triangular volume of the building serves a symbolic purpose as well, a constant reminder of the hopeful ending to the dark circuitous route of memory through the Holocaust.

FRAMESEQUENCE

FUSHIMI INARI SHRINE, 711Kyoto, Japan

SEQUENCE - CURVE - FRAMEReading the sequence of frames, one follows the inner curve around the bend and perceives that the frames are continuous outside of one’s immediate visual perception. This creates an extension around the bend. This contrasts a straight set of frames where the end is known, not suggested.

FRAMESEQUENCE CURVE

FUSHIMI INARI SHRINE, 711Kyoto, Japan

SEQUENCE - CURVE - FRAMEReading the sequence of frames, one follows the inner curve around the bend and perceives that the frames are continuous outside of one’s immediate visual perception. This creates an extension around the bend. This contrasts a straight set of frames where the end is known, not suggested.

FRAMESEQUENCE CURVE

BLIND SPOT, 2003-2004Richard Serra: New York, NY

SEQUENCE - CURVECreating a compressed curvilinear space one is aware of both the full passage one is moving within and the inaccessible void next to it. Following the curve of the steel, the assumed opening does not come. Once one sees the first interior corner, one projects the most recent space and expands on the perceptually chained spaces. One continues to move foreward never quite sure when the experience ends unitil abriptly a central spot terminates the spatial sequence.

CURVESEQUENCE

CANALAlgiers, New Orleans, LA

SLIP- BOUNDARYFrom one side the actual boundaries are the canal at the valley of the hill and the bridge across. Reading the top of the alternate bank as a single plane of grass, one’s perceived space is doubled. While the bridge itself acts as a physical barrier, the columns supporting it drop down into the canal, drawing ones eye down the channel and connecting the two sides of the bridge into one spatial experience.

boun

ded s

pace

extended boundary

SLIP BOUNDARY

CANALAlgiers, New Orleans, LA

SLIP- BOUNDARYFrom one side the actual boundaries are the canal at the valley of the hill and the bridge across. Reading the top of the alternate bank as a single plane of grass, one’s perceived space is doubled. While the bridge itself acts as a physical barrier, the columns supporting it drop down into the canal, drawing ones eye down the channel and connecting the two sides of the bridge into one spatial experience.

SLIP BOUNDARY

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verti

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lip

horizontal slip

SPATIAL EXTENSION_textWilliam S. NemitoffProfessor Tiffany LinLooking Forward and BackwardAHST 6760_Spring 2013

Architecture implies space both directly and indirectly. This analysis aims to discover the suggested spaces beyond the direct realms of visual space, physical boundaries, and explicit understand-ing. Various techniques are utilized to create these spaces including slips, boundaries, sequences, curves, and frames. By understanding the formal manipulations, one better appreciates the space around and beyond oneself. Through ten architectural examples, this paper will analyze spatial extension. To begin, it is necessary to describe the various techniques that will be referenced: slip, boundary, sequence, curve, frame. First, a slip refers to a situation where one is situated on a plane and a verti-cal element slips past without touching the initial plane. This effec-tively draws one’s eyes upwards or downward, projecting one’s initial space past upwards or downwards in relation to the body’s plane. This technique can be used to make a small space feel larger and more dynamic. Second, a boundary extension refers to the displacement of a plane from the immediately occupied space on one or more sides. A second form of boundary extension occurs when the occupied plane is broken and then continued past the break. This allows a space to feel as though the displaced boundary is real, increasing the the initial space. Third, a frame works to stop one’s physical motion and extend one’s visual space. Deep frames serve as thresholds to the image plane

beyond and create the boundaries for a projected space. The alternative is an open or edgeless frame which creates a bounded space through the framed image, which shifts to a completely unbounded perception once looking out through the frame. Fourth, a sequence is a combination of frames and boundaries, describing a path which one follows, contrary the framed views and boundaries one perceives. This creates movement and the continuation of the sight path as a secondary space to the space the body is occupying. The use of a frame in conjunction with a sequence provides spatial boundaries to the secondary space. Lastly, a curve utiliz-es an extended horizontal slip, as one wall appears longer than another, one reads that the perceived shorter wall actually extends to create a bounded space. The same effect can be achieved with one wall, where the knowledge that the curve continues away from one’s self implies the extended space one knows is there, but cannot see. While this is not a comprehensive list, it is a starting point from which to analyze architec-tural projects and begin to understand the spaces they create. Le Corbusier’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts is located on Harvard’s campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Specifically, the spatial qualities surrounding the ramp, which passes through the two masses of the building, deal with boundary extension and vertical slip. On one side of the ramp, a dematerialized handrail, reveals the ramp plinth offset from the vertical wall of the building, which slips past. This gives the ramp and impression of floating in a deep space. Contributing to this ef-fect is the slip of a column past the ramp in the surrounding triple height space. James Turrell’s project Tending (Blue), 2003 in the Nasher Sculp-ture Center in Dallas, Texas plays heavily on the ideas of sequence, curve,


and frame. Turrell sets the project up so that one enters the space on axis through a curved tunnel. One sees the longer wall of the curve extending around to a light source at the end, and read the complete volume of the arc. Before exiting the arc, one experiences a further extension as one sees others,within the large primary square volume gazing upward at what first appears as a framed blue image in the center of the ceiling. One is perceptually drawn into the space and upward through the frame once one realizes the edgeless frame open in the center and revealing the sky above. This further extends the spatial experience. One may conjecture that the title, “Tending (Blue),” deals with the forward moving and suggestive nature of the spatial and visual experience, which holistically draws one’s perceived space upward to the blue sky. In Rem Koolhaas’s Maison a Bordeux in Bordeaux, France a long skinny bathroom is amplified through the use of boundary ex-tension and vertical slip. Koolhaas essentially doubles the space by creating an entire wall of glass that disappears to reveal a wall across a small vertical shaft that runs the length of the bathroom. By placing a mirror along the other wall, the spatial experience is doubled again. Within the vertical opening, a column extends from beneath the floor plate to above the roof extending the space both upward and down-ward through sight-lines. Salamanca University in Leon, Spain deals with spatial exten-sion through the use of frame. To allow more visibility from the interior, the window is carved out creating a minimal frame on the inside that extends views outwards. The exterior view creates a fluctuating experi-ence depending on whether one is at the window looking out, or far

away from the window looking at it. Edward Chillida’s collage deals with frame to create depth. The canvas acts as a frame for the rest of the collage, providing a foreground. A second layer of texture rests in what appears to be behind the frame. Finally, a third layer of deep space emerges in the darkest moments as a plane from which the other two emerge. Adolf Loos’s Tzara House in Paris, France utilizes sequential frames to meter the experience of passage through the house and to set up visual thresholds within the space. As one descends through the house one sees the rear balcony, yet to reach it, one must take a circu-itous route around each frame and down a set of stairs. This drama of visual movement through a variety of scaled spaces extends the initial experience and becomes primary to the secondary path of one’s body. Moshe Safedie’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Israel uti-lizes a very similar technique to the Tzara House, yet differs in that the breaks in the initial framed visual extension of Yad Vashem are cuts in the earth, in contrast to the frames of the Tzara House. The constant view at the end of the primary triangular volume of the building serves a symbolic purpose as well, a constant reminder of the hopeful ending to the dark circuitous route of memory through the Holocaust. The Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto, Japan is an expression of frame and curve. Each set of two frames defines its own space. Reading the sequence of frames, one follows the inner curve around the bend and perceives that the frames are continuous outside of one’s immedi-ate visual perception. This creates an extension around the bend. This contrasts a straight set of frames where the end is known, not suggested. Richard Serra’s sculpture Blind Spot, deals with curve at its most


rudimentary form. Simply creating a compressed curvilinear space one is aware of both the full passage one is moving within and the inacces-sible void next to it. Following the curve of the steel, the assumed open-ing does not come. Once one sees the first interior corner, one projects the most recent space and expands on the perceptually chained spaces. One continues to move foreward never quite sure when the experience ends unitil abriptly a central spot terminates the spacial sequence. A number of canals in Algiers, New Orleans, while conceived as purely engineered infrastructure, convey strong architectural ideas of spatial extension through boundary and spatial slip. From one side the actual boundaries are the canal at the valley of the hill and the bridge across. Reading the top of the alternate bank as a continuous plane of grass, one’s perceived space is doubled. While the bridge itself acts as a physical barrier, the columns supporting it drop down into the canal, drawing ones eye down the channel and connecting the two sides of the bridge into one spatial experience. In conclusion, this project analyzes spatial extension in ten architectural projects the the typologies of slip, boundary, sequence, curve, and frame. These techniques are illustrated to allow greater un-derstanding and appreciation for architecture and space.


SPATIAL EXTENSION_annotated bibliography Gagosian Gallery. “Richard Serra: Blind Spot / Open Ended.” Gagosian. com 27 Oct. 2009. 9 May 2013. <http://www.gagosian.com/ exhibitions/october-27-2009--richard-serra/exhibition-imag es>.

Richard Serra’s two works, brought together in this New York, NY gallery, deal with one’s perception of the body in space. One sculpture disorients by guiding one into a small ring at the center of concentric shapes. The other achieves a similar concentric projection, only with two modes of exit.

Geoff, Emily. “Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts.” Archdaily.com 13 Mar. 2011. 9 May 2013 <http://www.archdaily.com/119384/ ad-classics-carpenter-center-for-the-visual-arts-le- corbusier/>

The only building in the United States by Le Cor-busier. The Carpenter Center draws from many of Corbusier’s previous buildings and adheres to his five points of architec-ture. The architect never got to see the work finished due to his health

Locardi, Elia. “Sacred Path.” Blamethemonkey.com 10 Jul. 2012. 9 May. 2013. <http://www.blamethemonkey.com/sacred-path-kyoto-V>

The Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto, Japan is a series of torii gates, which frame a pilgrimage path weaving a mile up Inari Mountain to the shrine.

Safdie, Moshe. “The Architecture of Memory.” In Yad Vashem: Moshe Safdie, The Architecture of Memory, edited by Diana Murphy. Baden: Lars Müller, 2006

This book analyzes the historical and cultural implica-tions of Moshe Safedie’s design for the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Israel. Through a series of essays, one gains a better perspective on both the building and the contributing factors to its creation and sustenance.

Xiong, Frank. “Algiers, New Orleans: Canal.” 27 Jan. 2013

Across the street from the Magellan Community Garden, a canal cuts through the landscape as a barrier to the neighborhood. After further analysis, the canal is found to be rich in architectural language and purpose.


WILLIAM S. NEMITOFF TIFFANY LIN SPRING 2013

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Spacial Extension Research Booklet