CASA DA MUSICA

a theoretical exploration

ERIN KLINEGHISLAINE GARCIA

GIOVANNA LANGEMMANUEL MANOLUKAS

CONNOR HYMESDIEGO MACIAS

CONTENTS04 // ABSTRACT06 // CASA DA MUSICA08 // REM KOOLHAAS & OMA10 // ARCHITECTURAL INTENT12 // PRECEDENTS16 // PROCESS & THOERY26 // CONCLUSION30 // WORK CITED

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ABSTRACT

// This is a theoretical exploration of the design concepts and architectural intent of the Casa da Musica by Rem Koolhaas and OMA. We attempt to dive deeper into the understanding of the buildings construction process through a series of plaster cast models.

// We dissect the architectural intent of the building, and model it in a simplified, conceptual manner. This process required us to look deeper into the theory of deconstructivism and how it applies to Casa da Musica and our conceptual model.

// Our goal was to pull from the original desired form (a shoebox) the “gem-like” shape that Koolhaas desired. Then with the sculptural form, shove the rectangular auditorium back in to the heart of the structure.

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CASA DA MUSICA

// In 1999 after Porto had been named “European Culture Capital” for 2001, a competition was launched to design a new concert hall in the city’s historical center, Rotunda da Boavista. OMA was invited to participate in a competition for the construction of a concert hall for the city of Porto, Portugal. With Rem Koolhaas heading the design for this competition he looked to a project which he had just been working on as the main inspiration.

// The project started with a search for the human need of storage space in a dwelling. The design originated from a commission for a house that he was designing in Rotterdam. He scaled the design of the house up and adapted it so that the core void became the main performance hall, with foyers, rehearsal halls and offices packed into the leftover space around it. The change in scale transformed the expression of a single client’s obsession into a more dynamic communal experience. The central theme is still the same: a rational ordered environment animated by the chaotic social and psychic forces whirling around it.

// Located in the city of Porto Portugal the Casa da Musica is surrounded by history dating as far back as the ancient Romans. The region and the city of Porto have played larger roles throughout history in the development and wealth of the northern region of Portugal; so much so that in 1996 it was proclaimed as a World Heritage site by UNESCO.

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REM KOOLHAAS & OMA

// Looking to Rem Koolhaas & OMA’s pervious works shows that they have made attempts in design similar to that of the Casa da Musica.

// Their work in 2003, the Paard Van Troje in The Hague, Netherlands has a similar program and design goal as the Casa da Musica. In both projects the architects wanted to achieve acoustic isolation for the concert halls housed in the buildings. In both project the concert halls where separated from the rest of the building by large isolating buffers that were mounted and faceted to the structure of the building.

//Their work in 2004 on the Hamburg Hafencity in Alemania Germany contained a central void in the program that was used to house an auditorium. The aim of creating this void was to offer unique views of the sea and the city from the auditorium, much like that of the Casa da Musica.

// Koolhaas tends to have consistent intents when it comes to his designs; formal clarity and surface articulation. Casa da Musica does not stray from these over riding ideas, in fact, the building is centered around them.

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ARCHITECTURAL INTENT

// Most cultural institutions serve only a part of the population. A majority knows the exterior shape, only a minority know what happens on the inside. OMA’s intent was to re-address the relationship between the hollowed interior concert hall and the public outside. The building reveals its content to the city without being didactic; at the same time the city is exposed to the patrons inside in a way that has never happened before. The main idea was to have the concert hall as the most acoustically perfect shape; a rectangle. However, Rem Koolhaas did not want the “shoe box” to be the main drive for the aesthetic form. Thus, he took a solid orthogonal mass from which he then carved out a “gem-like” form. This form houses the “shoe box” auditorium in the heart of the structure and all other program revolves around it. All of this reaches towards Rem Koolhaas’ consistent ideas of formal clarity and exposing program to the public.

// The Casa da Música is situated on a travertine plaza, between the city’s historic quarter and a working-class neighborhood, adjacent to the Rotunda da Boavista. The square is no longer a mere hinge between the old and the new Porto, but becomes a positive encounter of two different models of the city.

// In the process of depicting OMA’s architectural intent, we considered the deconstructed building being carved from a solid mass, which in turn had the concert hall carved out of its center.

// The chiselled sculptural form of white concrete houses the main 1,300 seat concert hall, a small 350 seat hall, rehearsal rooms, and recording studios for the Oporto National Orchestra. A terrace carved out of the sloping roof line and huge cut-out in the concrete skin connects the building to city.

// Stairs lead from the ground level plaza to the foyer, where a second staircase continues to the Main Hall and the different levels above. The main auditorium, is enclosed at both ends by two layers of “corrugated” glass walls. The glass, corrugated for optimal acoustics and sheer beauty, brings diffused daylight into the space.

// During the design phase, OMA researched new applications of existing Portuguese materials. The walls of the large hall are paneled with sheets of plywood that are embossed with an over scaled, gold-leaf pattern of wood grain. The principal materials of the project are white concrete, corrugated glass, travertine, plywood, and aluminium.

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INITIAL MASS

CORE ELEMENT

EXTRACTED FORM

INITIAL MASS

CORE ELEMENT

EXTRACTED FORM

INITIAL MASS

CORE ELEMENT

EXTRACTED FORM

INITIAL MASS

CORE ELEMENT

EXTRACTED FORM

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PRECEDENTS

RED LOCATION MUSEUMSouth Africa//Noero Wolff Architects//Cultural//2005

// Red Location was the first settled black township of Port Elizabeth. These were part of a Boer concentration camp and moved in to Red Location. It became a site of struggle during the years of Apartheid. Many prominent political and cultural leaders were either born or lived in Red Location. The Museum is designed to challenge conventional views of museum design. The conventions of representing history as a single story are challenged through the design of the museum spaces.

// Red Location offers the opportunity to draw together the strands of struggle that mark the attempts by different groups in South Africa to free themselves.

// Red Location makes a call to the Casa da Musica through its notion of a carved monolithic form that encases the buildings driving programmatic function.

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CHURCH OF ST. LAWRENCEPorto, Portugal//Baroque//Cathedral

//The church is situated in an urban area, encircled by a churchyard. It is delimited by an elevated platform over the natural terrain, supported by walls in masonry and mortar. The interior is completely decorated in 17th century azulejo tiles with scenes from the life of Saint Lawrence.

// Baroque architecture in Portugal enjoys a very special situation and a different timeline from the rest of Europe. It is conditioned by several political, artistic and economic factors, that originate several phases, and different kinds of outside influences.

// The Casa da Musica calls back to this era of Portuguese Baroque architecture. It calls back through Koolhaas’ use of materials but also his strategy of elevating the monumental structure on a platform that takes up an entire city block.

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PROCESS & THEORY

THEORY: DECONSTRUCTIVISM

// A practice of post-modern architecture that began in the late 1980s which was influenced by the theory of “Deconstruction”, to take a non-orthogonal shape to house all the programmatic elements within it (controlled chaos). By manipulating the structure’s surface it creates distortion and manipulated perspectives. Viewing the monolithic form from the exterior gives the viewer a sense of imbalance, which was the architect’s intent by keeping the tectonics hidden.

// In the creation of Casa da Musica, OMA was successful in capturing the relationship between the exterior conditions of Porto, Portugal and bringing it into the building. The building reveals the inner workings to the city, where the city simultaneously presents itself to the interior spaces through the generous openings on the facade. The integration of all of the architectural systems becomes apparent in this building through structure, mechanical, circulation, code, and relationship to the environment.

CONSTRUCTION

// One of the main challenges facing the assembly of “Casa da Musica” was the construction that entailed the design. The construction of the building is based on two structurally independent grids, a vertical steel structure and a wooden oblique structure. The shell of the building required a specific case study to determine the phasing of construction.

// 88 phases of concrete construction was defined for the construction of the building and each was studied individually. Adjustments were made to the stability of the structure by leaving “false work” up that would temporarily hold the completed structure in tact while other phases were added on.

// To get to our final product in our hermeneutic approach to reconstruct the Casa da Musica, we split up our construction methods into four main phases. To begin, we created our wood work that would serve as the form-work for the vacuum form mold. Next, we created a vacuum form-work through the use of polystyrene, a material that took the shape of the wood form. The polystyrene was used to serve as the mold for the plaster that would be cast inside. All of these layers of materials that used one another to create the nesting affect all would lay inside the shape of an orthogonal box.

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DIGITAL MODELING

// Through the advancement of digital modeling we have been able to accurately represent our building, allowing us to evolve our understanding of the building form, tectonics, programmatic spaces, and overall architectural intent.

// The process in which we extracted the digital model into realistic massing and volumetric formwork is directly relatable to the actual construction process and takes a deeper look at the concept behind the form itself.

// Looking at OMA’s overall idea of creating a box within a box we looked at various ways to convey this idea.

// The digital model was built at a 1’-0”=1’-0” scale, then it was scaled to 1/16” = 1’-0” in order to make it relatable to the materials we were using. In order to extract the digital model to create the mass, we took a section cut of the entire model; this section was used in order to emphasize the importance of the auditorium in its relation to the overall form. The section model was cut horizontally at ¾” layers (the thickness of the MDF). This vertical layering mimics the construction process in the way that the concrete was poured. After exporting the layer cuts from Rhinoceros, two dimensional line work was made and printed. The medium-density fiberboard was then cut to these contours.

// In regards to the complex nature of this building a digital model was necessary in order to completely understand all of the building systems; but the model was simplified to express the concept and architectural intent.

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MDF FORMWORK

// In order to create a successful casting you must first have a well crafted fromwork to create the mold. With the intention of eventually vacuum forming our formwork to create the mold we chose to use a sturdy 3/4” thick MDF as our material. The thickness of the MDF informed the spacing for the horizontal section cuts made in the Rhino model that resulted in the template for the MDF formwork.

// The first step in creating the form was to trace and cut out the numbered pieces out of MDF, once cut out the pieces were then laminated together in appropriate order, clamped and left to dry.

// The step after the glue dries is to then sand down the right angles of all the edges of the laminated pieces so that they become a smooth and seamless form. This process needs to be done slowly and carefully to assure that the form is not over-sanded or deformed.

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VACUUM FORM

// Once the final MDF form was done, the next step was to create a mold to cast the plaster into. To create the mold for the positive plaster cast, a vacuum forming process was used.

// Vacuum forming is a process in which a hard plastic, in this case polystyrene, is heated to a temperature where the plastic becomes soft and formable. The plastic is draped over the mold with the suction power of the vacuum to create a thin single surface mold.

// Following the vacuum forming, the plastic is often stuck to the form and needs to be separated. Holes are drilled into the exposed MDF form in order to insert screws so that the MDF could be pulled away from the plastic.

// Once the MDF and polystyrene are separated, the final plastic mold is ready for the plaster cast.

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PLASTER CASTING

// The concept for the model involves the creation of three separate pieces that all fit into each other. The choice of plaster is a reference to the actual construction of the poured in place concrete exterior of the Casa da Musica.

// The base piece is the negative model, a rectangular block with a central void that is in the form of Casa da Musica. This was accomplished by creating a rectangular framework that plaster was then poured into with the MDF formwork pushed into the top of the pour to create the negative form. Removing the formwork from the plaster was tricky because as plaster dries it shrinks and constricts around the MDF form. To prepare for this issue, we coated the formwork in Vaseline to make the removal process easier. Once the plaster was dry we removed the formwork, and leveled and smoothed the surfaces by shaving it down with files and razor blades.

// The second piece is the positive model, taking on the actual form of the section of the Casa da Musica. This piece would fit into the base piece, while having a void within its central interior to house the auditorium. This was accomplished by pouring plaster directly into the vacuum formed polystyrene, and then adding a foam rectangular form onto the top of the pour to create the void for the third piece. Once dry the plaster form was removed, cleaned and smoothed in a similar fashion to the base piece.

// Once both plaster pieces were completely dry, we sealed them with a clear matt fixative to protect the surface.

// The third and final piece was that of the auditorium. Due to the size, program, and materiality of the actual auditorium in Casa da Musica, we chose to make the auditorium model from basswood. This difference in material from the rest of the pieces reinforces the idea of acoustic and structural isolation from the rest of the building. This was articulated with a simple rectangular form showing the slope of the seating and the two ends were capped with plexiglass.

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CONCLUSION

// The final product is a series of three models that reflect OMA’s conceptual design and architectural intent. Just like the actually construction, our model construction took on many phases in order to reach the end product. Each model rests within its larger counter part as if they were carved out of each other (even though each model was cast or built in different stages of the project).

// The process of building these models resulted in a deeper understanding of the Casa da Musica’s design concept, while showcasing the importance of process and construction within design. Construction is a delicate process, and it requires a full understanding of a structure conceptually and technically.

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WORK CITED

Cohn, David. “Rem Koolhaas/OMA Challenges Old Notions of What a Concert Hall Should Be in the Sculptural CASA DA MUSICA. Architectural Record. July 2005: 100-11. Print.

AMOMA Rem Koolhaas II: 1996/2007: Teoría Y Práctica = Theory and Practice. Ed. Fernando M. Cecilia and Richard Levene. Madrid: El Croquis, 2007. 202-57. Print.

“Casa Da Musica in Porto.” Interior Surfaces and Materials: Aesthetics, Technology, Implementation. Ed. Christian Schittich. München: Edition DETAIL and Birkhauser, 2008. 62-67. Print.

“Historic Centre of Oporto.” - UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Web. 15 Nov. 2014. <http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/755>.