Architecture

Culture

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ject

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ent I have been exploring issues of design and construction that contradict the idea of building as an

one time event with an object (the building) as the end result. Most buildings are designed as a static product, where the maintenance and lifespan is secondary and unimportant to the concept of the building. The building is meant to be an icon of itself until the end of its lifespan, when it is demolished and replaced by something new. Fast pace change in society, technology and culture make this the norm. I want explore new way of approaching design and construction that can create a duality between permanence and change through materiality and maintenance. A built form could be thought of like a living thing with seasonal rituals of maintenance that create tension between the transient and the permanent. Through the use of materials with different rates of change and a cultural ritual of maintenance, a dynamic design can be achieved. The blending of the permanent and the temporal creates meaning because it brings awareness to the inhabitant of the passage of time through the material qualities of architecture. Slow changing materials embody memory, history and permanence while temporal material highlights the advancement of time through its weathering and the rituals of maintenance that renew it. It brings awareness of the past, present and future. This awareness of the present could bring with it a mindfulness of social, environmental, economic, and technological issues of the culture of construction.

The inspiration for my thesis came from my family’s adobe houses in Jalsico, Mexico. My Dad’s Family owned land on a mountain top. The farm is called Las Jollas. My parent’s house was part of a family complex of four or fi ve houses and some corrals and pig pens. My oldest memories of this house are of it having a roof and complete walls. The old complex was abandoned when the new house was made out of concrete block on the fi eld in front of it. As the years went by it started to fall apart because of lack of maintenance. Once the roof collapsed, the house went down even faster. I learned that there used to be a cycle of maintaining not only the roofs but the face of the homes every year after the rainy season. What I fi nd interesting is the way that the lifespan of the house was extended by having a continuous interaction with the people who inhabited it through a ritual of maintenance. The awareness of the method of construction and the resources necessary to upkeep it becomes transparent in a manner that in modern buildings, with complex systems, it is not. The materials of stone, wood, adobe brick and adobe fi nish come together, each with a different length in lifespan. The stone’s lifespan is indefi nite, although the dry stacked stone would need some maintenance over time. The individual adobe bricks lifespan would be signifi cantly less than the stone. The mud facing’s lifespan would only be one year, after which a refacing of the house would be needed.

Diagram of a section through the houseDiagram of the plan of the adobe house

Yearly Mud Refacing

Adobe Brick

Stone

Defi nitions of Time : When thinking of design that is dynamic through time, It was important to recognize that there are different ways of describing time. Two of the main defi nitions are time as a linear concept and time as a cyclical concept. Modern construction follows the linear concept in that there is a beginning and an end but no connection between the two. However, there are examples of cultural architecture that has a cyclical nature to its lifespan and design.

Linear: Time defi ned as one continuous path that can be ticked off into measurable units.

Cyclical: Time described as a cycle where the beginning is the end and the end is the beginning. The cycle is repeated continuously as long as there is a cultural agency for the rebuilding ritual.

Standard Life of a building:

Lifespan of Ise Shrine:

Old Shrine

New shrine adjacent to previous one

Deconstruction of the Oldand planting of trees

New ShrineUnbuilt Lot New Construction Addition or Renovation Demolition Empty Lot

Construction Material

Construction Rubble

In his book, How Building Learn: What happens after they’re built?, Brand compares the systems in a building to Robert O’Neill’s A Hierarchical Concept of Ecosystem. O’Neill describes an ecosystem as a system with components with different rates of change. They happen at the same time and place each working in a different time cycle. The slow changing components provide the foundation for the quick changing ones. (pg 17)

The design of architecture should take into consideration the temporal qualities of materials chosen for construction. Dynamic design would use both temporal and slow changing materials to create architecture that response to time, human and natural infl uences.

Materiality and Maintenance creating Culturally Sustainable ArchitectureBy Maria Arellano

Advisor: Phoebe Crisman

Questions:How can the design of architecture become more dynamic in its response to time and culture?What are historical and contemporary projects where a strong relationship between culture, materiality and architecture are present?How do these projects respond to materiality and time?What kinds of connections to sustainable practices are obtainable in with these themes of culture, time and materiality?Who would be involved in the continuation of the projects? What are examples is the cultural agency in architecture?

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Bibliography

Beswick, Jon. “Djenne: African Cirty of Mud”. Architecture Review 227 (March 2010): 90.

Bourgeois, Jean-Louis. “The History of the Great Mosques of Djenné.” African Arts 20.3 (May, 1987): 54-63+90-92.

Brand, Stewart, How Building Learn: What happens after they’re built?, New York, NY, Penguin Group, 1994.

Domone, P. and Illston, J., Construction Materials and their Nature and Behavior, New York, NY, Spon Press, 2010.

Leatherbarrow, D. and Mostafavi, M., On Weathering: The Life of Buildings in Time, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1993.

Nute, Kevin. Place, Time and Being in Japanese Architecture. London: Routledge, 2004.

Rael, Ronald. Earth Architecture, New York, NY, Princeton Architecture Press, 2009.

Rauch, Martin. Terra Cruda. Boston, MA. Publishers for Architecture, 2001

Reynolds, Jonathan M. “Ise Shrine and Modernist Construction of Japanese Tradition.” The Art Bulletin 83.2 (June 2001): 316-341.

Salvati, Laura. “City of Mud.” Domus 846 (2002): 63-70.

Schittich, C., In Detail: Building Simply, Basel, Switzerland, Birkauser, 2005.

Weston, R., Materials, Form and Architecture, London, UK, Laurence King Publishing LTD, 2003.

Conceptual vs Physical:Two different ways that design can be preserved over time, by the continuity of the physical material or the continuity of the conceptual idea. These concepts could be a way to rethink the role of the architect in design.

Conceptual: The concept of the building, its form and method of construction, is what is valued not its actual materiality. A set of rules and methods is set up by the author that can be executed by anyone at anytime.

Physical: This is the most important factor in the continuity and conservation of most art and architecture in the western world, The actual and historical materiality of the object is what is valued the most. The old materials gain worth and meaning through age and use.

Mat

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lity

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itual

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ance The dynamic concept for a design needs an agency that performs the maintenance rituals

that allow for the performance of the building. The rituals of the Djenne Mosque and the Ise Shrine are embedded into a culture and religion of their location, so that the agency is the community surrounding the designs. However there are other examples were the connection between cultural construction techniques are infl uenced or reintroduces by architecture built by designers. The projects use architecture to teach technical skills for sustainable earth construction. These design strategies can create a new or renewed cultural practice that could perform the role of agency in the maintenance of a building. In order for the the exchange between culture and architecture, maintenance and construction to occur there needs to be a simplicity in construction, joints and materiality. The concept of Building Simply is to design with traditional construction methods with local and economical materials. (Schittich, 9)The Adobe Alliance and Adobe for Women Association are examples of Architecture and Cultural/Social agency coming together and infl uencing each other.

CultureConcept

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Program: Technical and Design School for Earth Construction

Location: Degollado, Jalisco, Mexico (near the city of Guadalajara)

The design would focus on the use of materiality and culture to create sustainable architecture that responds to temporal phenomenon. The students would provide the cultural agency needed to create a dynamic design that can be consistently maintained and reworked. The students would learn technical and material skills for constructions and design. The program would consists of interior an exterior spaces for classrooms, cafeteria, and workshops.

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While concrete and stone would take years to be transformed by some of these exterior infl uences, other ephemeral material could respond almost instantly such as a fabric curtain moving with the breeze or the erosion of the outer layer of earth in adobe construction. The durable materials provide a point of reference because they are slow changing, while the ephemeral materials mark the passage of time and the effect of natural and man made phenomenon. The markings, wearing and history of an object or material add value to it because it shows the accumulation of human investment to an appreciated building. This concept of adding value with time is referred to as age value. (pg 84)

Iconic Image rebuilt every 20 years

In On Weathering: The Life of Buildings in Time, Weathering is defi ned as “the gradual destruction of a building by nature in time”. However the word at one time described the drip surface on an external wall that threw off rainwater. The same word describes both the process of modifi cation over time on a building and the object that mediates the process on a building. Brand describes weathering as a Functional Deterioration where the breakdown or breakup of materials as a result of weathering “brings the project closer to a condition of actuality based on its potential transformation through time.” The transformation of the materials of a building create a connection between the present, the future and the past. A building always changed over time, whether the changes are desired or planned for by the designer. I think that the changes in materiality over time should be a driving force in the design of architecture. The allowance for changes would create a dynamic and malleable design rather than a static, rigid architecture.

Panoramic of the remains of the old adobe house The only surviving threshold made of carved stone and wood. The old family complex was replaced by a new concrete block house.

Weathering

Material Rate of Change

Studio of Martin Rauch in Shlins, Austria (1994) Central Wall of Adobe House Ruins Weathering on the Djenne Mosque

The Ise Shrine is an example of a conceptually driven design. The actual materiality of the shrine is not what is valued, rather its form and construction technique.

Plan DiagramElevation Diagram

This man created a job for himself making adobe brick to sell after learning adobe construction to make his own home. This house is the Camacho Residence in Chihuahua, Mexico, built in 1996

Yearly Ritual of Refacing the Djenne Mosque

Cultural Ritual of Maintenance

Djenne Mosque

Rainy Season

Protective Layer Weathers Away

Mixing of the mud for adobe brick to be used for a house built by the Adobe for Women Association.

The Adobe for Women Association teaches earth construction techniques to a community of women to empower them and provide them with thier own homes.

The Adobe for Women Association built 16 homes in 1990 and is the process of building 20 more homes in 2011.

Adobe alliance teaches new and traditional earth construction techniques to a community. This creates a source of skilled labor as well as jobs.

Fast Changing System

Medium Changing Sytem

Slow Changing System

Diagram of systems with different rates of change and possible interactions between the permanent and the temporal.

Chapel of Reconciliation in Berlin, Germany by Rietermann and Sassenroth (2000). This project is interesting in its use of materiality. The rate of weathering and change is distinct for each of the materials used (wood, earth, metal).

Site

The fi rst step would be the insertion of a durable foundational framework into the site.

Local Materials

The architectural design set up parameters for possible spaces and the use of durable or ephemeral material.

Cultural Rituals allow for changes in the organization of space to meet new needs

as well as maintenance if the design.

The use of local materials and simple construction techniques allow for easy reuse of material if the design reaches the

end of its lifespan.

The Center for the Blind in Mexico City designed by Taller de Architectura Mauricio Rocha in 2000 is an example of earth architecture used in an institutional design. My pallet for my proposed project would include earth construction.

A new vaulting construction technique was introduced to the region and taught to the community.

ReusableMaterials

Cultural Rituals of Maintenance

Diagram of Design Concept

Modifi ed diagram from Brand’s How buildings Learn. Instead of looking at the layers of building systems, this diagram looks at how a buildings interaction with time can be based on Materiality, Maintenance and Culture.

Possible Materials: