|
View previous topic :: View next topic
|
| Author |
Message |
ronchamp
Joined: 08 Jan 2009
Posts: 1
|
 Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 3:55 pm Post subject: standardised architecture |
    |
|
| Any interesting opinions about boring architecture where the uniqueness of craft is being lost through generic design. i.e the same old construction details/ use of materiality etc. etc. keep popping up all the time where as the only difference being the form of the building to which they are attached. anyone know of any publications or articles that might deal with this subject or similar opinions?
|
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
lekizz
millennium club
Joined: 11 Jan 2006
Posts: 1212
Location: UK
|
| Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 3:51 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: | | ...the uniqueness of craft is being lost through generic design. |
Wasn't that an argument of the Arts & Crafts movement 120 years ago?!
Recently I have seen more arguments for the opposite to your proposition, i.e. the construction industry needs to take on some of the efficiencies of other systems using, for example, generic details/components and off-site factory prefabrication.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
nanrehvasconez
Joined: 25 Feb 2008
Posts: 329
|
| Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2009 9:55 am Post subject: |
|
|
This is an area when architecture, especially creative architectural design, is limited and slowdown by obsolete building codes, (though the codes are upgraded yearly).
Not fast enough to allow the introduction and use of new materials such as structural plate glass, columns and beams fabricated with laminated carbon fibers, building facades made with durable steel alloys that will not oxidize in touch with the greenery roots to be used as natural insulation that absorbs carbon monoxide and nitrates from smog.
The architect has to include a great time allowance or consideration to test new material, and deal with stubborn and pompous city officials.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
solidred
Joined: 05 Jan 2006
Posts: 728
Location: Scotland
|
| Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2009 3:59 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I think Lekizz refers to the likes of the Egan Report in the UK, where the construction industry was compared to manufacturing industries and the basic conclusion was, to paraphrase: no wonder architecture's inefficient when it works more like Saville Row rather than Benetton. Quality and uniqueness and craftsmanship are all very nice but the vast majority of people simply can't afford this and still the vast majority of people need buildings so, architects, get real please. Get production-line thinking into your heads and put the artist-craftsman thing to one side.
Problem is, whilst hospitals and shops and railway companies, universities and so on are these days run by MBA's more interested in the dynamics of economics than they are (or know much about) healthcare, the products sold in the shops, railway travel or education, what they gain in cost-efficiency costs dearly in other ways. It makes hospitals, shops, trains and lecture halls less passionate; less interesting; less doing what they're there to do. Because economics is all about 6 monthly or yearly balance sheets whereas the core activities of the establishments being run are about human lives.
Is that an answer? Unfortunately it's not. But I still have a hunch and as I grow older I'm less inclined to keep my emotions a secret. I'd rather be in debt after buying a beautiful, shiny chromium Italian-designed toaster that makes me smile every morning than be fine with the bank and the owner of a beige plasticy thing that merely makes toast. I don't equate my bank account with my moral one. And I see some non-destructive forms of sheer self-indulgence to be making a substantial profit in terms of how much my life is worth at any given moment.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
erjavi
Joined: 10 Jan 2009
Posts: 229
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 5:57 am Post subject: standardised architecture |
|
|
| I ask myself if tunning present buildings with crafts details elements can be a temporal solution for avoid that standard industrialized forms show a monotone urban landscape. At long term, the eco-effciency design will add new esthetics, not necessary in the actual predominant line that looks for biologic or oniric lines (imagine a whole city designed with Gaudi criterias, can be awful, a simple line can be a visual relax)
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
csintexas
millennium club
Joined: 06 Feb 2006
Posts: 2174
Location: USA
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 9:23 am Post subject: |
|
|
Just my opinion but if anyone where to measure the quality of their life by the quality of their possessions I would think they are on the wrong track.
I do not see where mass production excludes quality though. Beautiful, shiny chromium Italian-designed toasters can be mass produced as well as beige plasticy things that merely makes toast.
I think we need to stop this disposable consumption based way of living. We need to figure out a way to only make quality products that are repairable and last 100 or more years and then finally get completely recycled.
As far as unique or extraordinary craft in architecture goes, it is not beyond the means of the average buyer they are simply not demanding it. On the other hand non of my customers wants their house to look exactly like the one next door.
To my knowledge buildings within a community have always been fairly uniform. I agree with lekizz and would say just the opposite of the original post.
It is a lot of fun to have no rules and just design whatever. (like a collage project) Personally I am glad that every house does not strive to be iconic.
_________________
-Chris Stewart
http://bcshdb.blogspot.com >
The B/CS Home Design Blog |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
solidred
Joined: 05 Jan 2006
Posts: 728
Location: Scotland
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 10:10 am Post subject: |
|
|
| csintexas wrote: | | Just my opinion but if anyone where to measure the quality of their life by the quality of their possessions I would think they are on the wrong track. |
I suppose material possessions are a rather lazy form of self-expression. Self-expression is, however, important because it's a way for us to externalize our internal sense-of-self and thus to make sense of ourselves as individuals of meaningful purpose within the world.
That's one reason 'standardisation' doesn't hit the nail on the head. And 'standardisation' isn't exactly the same as 'mass production.' The new Fiat Cinquecento is, for example, mass produced but, if buying one, one is given a large number of options. Now that women are an important part of the car-buying market, these include inventive choices of colour schemes or upholstery etc. as well as the longer standing options on, say, engine size.
There is, therefore, a balance to be struck between the interests of economy, in the broadest sense, and the even more complex mechanisms of human minds. At the end of the day, it doesn't actually take much for people to 'feel' in some sort of control: just give them a say; give them some choices. Then the rest of it all can be standardised.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Checkpoint43
Joined: 22 Mar 2007
Posts: 180
Location: Lexington, VA
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 3:01 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| "There are only 3 colors, 10 digits, and 7 notes; it's what we do with them that's important." - Ruth Ross
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
WalkerARCHITECTS
Joined: 25 Sep 2007
Posts: 105
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 5:38 pm Post subject: |
|
|
How we measure architecture is important. The point of architecture is to afford delight and service. To short change either quality is to abdicate architecture. We capture quality with light and surface and acknowledge that all we have to work with is to inhabit the site and design with intelligence to the best possible result within the constraints of resource, place and occupants. The discipline is demanding and simply not the same as designing a housing product to be built by mass production on speculation for the consumer, as if all consumers were the same and all sites were the same.
The term standardized architecture makes as much sense to me as standardized art............that is to say, conceptually an intellectually bankrupt term.
Is there any possible way you can explain what this discussion might be about?
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
djswan
millennium club
Joined: 17 Aug 2007
Posts: 1121
Location: Montana, USA
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
solidred
Joined: 05 Jan 2006
Posts: 728
Location: Scotland
|
| Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2009 1:18 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Re: WalkerArchitect's comment: I'm thinking that even if the houses Chris here, say, builds in Texas are each unique, that doesn't mean that all the rafters aren't to standardised cross-sectional sizes or that the doors aren't made in a factory, or the taps. Hence my allusion to an admission of a degree of standardisation.
Of course, standardised overall designs located with little regard for genius loci are nothing more than a blot on the landscape and impoverish us all.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
djswan
millennium club
Joined: 17 Aug 2007
Posts: 1121
Location: Montana, USA
|
| Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2009 3:00 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Whatcha think of Roy Underhill solidred?
Woodworking Jedi. 
_________________
n/a |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
erjavi
Joined: 10 Jan 2009
Posts: 229
|
| Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 11:17 am Post subject: |
|
|
wow, I signed it like new post but I wanted only reply it!
Sorry Ronchamp, I think I didn´t read well your post last time. Now we produce cities like Ford produced cars 100 years ago, not necessarily blacks but …what is more, now a company is going to initiate mass production of concrete panels and walls (http://www.habidite.com/english/index.html ). Now we see watches (Swatch) computers (Mac), wear (H&M,Zara) and many consum products with a strategy of variety, and always remains the question if it´s productive initiate a production (cars, houses or cities) with a percentage of shades from the beginning.
You can form an image bank with locals construction details, most of them very cheap, and incorporate them from the beginning of the project, or tunning the building after.
Before Ford´s paradigma most of the local structure guidelines were highly schematic, but little variations in contrast were very creative, maybe a self-balance of the society. What is more in Munich the houses were built again after the II World War with concrete, but painted and with many simple crafts elements, the aesthetics of manual tradition still remained on the air.
Now the global city moved the global village, and the global suburb moved to the global city like main actor in urbanism (thanks to car) and architecture. There are very very issues focused on this subject that advances quickly than our mind (i.e., The Challenge of Suburbia, and Cities of Dispersal, both from Architectural Design). And the crafts you´re talking about are enriched specially when the communitary beauty of one place is looked for.
If you´re looking only for personal beauty, just select a place with hills and vegetation and you´ll be able of mix all styles in thousands of houses avoiding even green walls (i.e. the surroundings of Lucca, Italy). And if you add a communiarian view, see for instance how the andalusian Pueblos Blancos mix a lineal structure in a irregular land (both due to orography and the heritage of Arabic cities masterplan) with a surprisingly number of particular details.
There are many attempts of use new crafts in old urban aesthetics (http://elciego.blogia.com/temas/frank-gehry-bodega-marques-de-riscal.php ) but usually the final results it´s a lack of dialogue between the crafts of the buildings, if not the buildings itself. Most of the concrete buildings of the XX century will not stand in XXII due the concrete corruption motivated by several factors, and a number of communitary aesthetics will fall down. Leslie A. Robertson (www.lera.com ) was thinking after the first terrorist attack to Twin Towers about how dismantle a skycraper without cut the traffic, and he thought in a subterranean ring in Manhattan. The cathedrals live longer than modern skycraper and usually there is only one per city, now build vertical became more and more complicated. But till now the skyscrapers are looking too for new aesthetics, not so oniric like museums or official centers , but always without guidelines.
If some tendencies in architecture consists in develop changing skins to the buildings (http://elciego.blogia.com/temas/frank-gehry-bodega-marques-de-riscal.php or some olympic chinese buildings, with flexible or rigid fachades) or move the elements of the city (http://www.rolfdisch.de/project.asp?id=45&sid=-1469504479 , using too textile architecture http://www.tecnologiaverde.com/textil/index.php?fun=encurso.php , http://www.danda.be/reviews/forum_by_toyo_ito_and_andrea_branzi/ ), or moving the buildings itself (www.sevenspiritbay.com ) the debate about crafts and standarised architecture become more complex.
But there some guidelines that soon or after will be a reference, and they are related with sustainability. In 20-30 years more of the consum products, with their aeshetics, will fall if they are not eco-designed, and that´s include building, and cities (if not look the sovietic cities quality of life, or the development projects in Aral sea, or the suburbs cities in Latin America). Most of the world cities, village and suburbs must reshape their crafts, their standarisation details, their urbanism in a search of pubilc beauty too, and their sustainability. What I wanted say is that industrial standarisation, manual or industrial crafts production is not isolated in the middle of the countryside, and if general beauty is not looked together with flexible wildlife corridors and agriculture will not have a nice future,over all in times of climate change.
That´s why I begin think in urban landscape initiating the perspective in the old (and longer) part of the cities like visual references, for after look for collective design tools that promote the dialog of a very complex visual city, and for me this is the point where creative urbanism can be a help for a bursting craft collective creativity explosion.
I designed a conciliation between the human masterplan of the city of Ronda (Málaga, Spain) and the natural masterplan of the area like job prerequisite. Maybe without that, the other partial solution I found to the economical eco-equation I proposed in the blog, that consists in the classical advance of science (like in the last 26 centuries) in manipulation of things trought the better understanding of microcosmos applied to architecture standarization, an idea developed in 1938! In Scandinavia) will be not sufficient.
Best regards, Ronchamp
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
erjavi
Joined: 10 Jan 2009
Posts: 229
|
| Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 7:14 pm Post subject: tools for standardised architecture |
|
|
What can be standardised in architecture and what not? If you think that nature consists in a continous recombination of elements, you can choose the level you want standarize if you have the technology and know how. If your perspective is sustainable your potential number of possibilities burst, and if not, the planet works like and atom which is pressioned by our “radioactivity” and look for new stability, in one way or “another”.
If you think the world is an inmense laboratory our tools are T square and set square for the majority of scientifics, and for the biological sciences the compass too. In addition, architects use paintbrush too because they are theorically between arts and sciences.
Theoretical physics use comics too, philosophers nobody knows and informatics don´t use nothing, they just push buttons for the rest without understand (jaja it´s a joke)
If you think the reality is bigger than a burble of dynamics and statics elements into a laboratory, the question begins to be interesting…soon more suggestions
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
erjavi
Joined: 10 Jan 2009
Posts: 229
|
| Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 4:10 pm Post subject: general productivity and standardised architecture |
|
|
I sincerely think that it is possible to carry out one the biggest urbanism and architectural challenge of the history conciliating human plan for the territory with nature one; and, understanding both, is easy choose priorities about standardised architecture guidelines. From millenniums agricultural lands has been worked with geometric furrows, and cities were ordered with hippodamic criteria, and that vision prevailed in the landscape drying slowly land´s futures perspectives worldwide. Civilization after civilization, our mental idea of the space was in part out of reality, isolating us from sustainability.
In few words, human presence in valleys and grasslands moved animals to the mountains (present exceptions are gnus in Africa thanks to tse-tse fly, gazelles in south Sudan due to the war, and gazelles in Mongolia due to weather, shepherding and a scarce agriculture) and cities occupied forested areas near rivers for agriculture and domestic cattle was developed at big scale. Maritime trips increased the scenery before the process was accelerated employing industry coordinated with a logistic each time faster, recently improved by computing technologies.
Final results consists in simplify landscape, and automation of all works as much as possible in order to increase a productivity based on homogeneity. So cities are a mass production consume product too, specially suburbia that usually lacks of human measure or historical perspective, “a new frontier” for standarization without any urbanism.
Productivity and related standardised architecture models changed trought time. I partially inspire for this part in one of the best books that explores relationship between landscape perspectives of each civilization, and nature dynamic (“Almería:hecha a mano”, the authors, brothers García Latorre are historian and forestry engineer, respectively, only available in spanish, http://www.fundacioncajamar.es/prensa/convoca/140607.htm )
Great rivers surrounded by desserts and mountains both concentrated and communicated people in very fertile lands at similar latitudes, like the case of ancient Middle East and Egyptian cities. Water irrigation management and adobe houses favoured a spontaneous urbanism that only with time became ordered. The natural instability of land (deltas) resulted in a mosaic of tells when human activity stopped. Indian and Chinese cities were relatively similar, application of dynamics forces of nature for determine the emplacement of some activities (i.e. Feng Shui) and the more rainy weather gave some structural differences to that of Middle East.
Greco-roman cities were less productive and became parasites of the countryside due to slavery, and gave proportionally less importance to manufactures or other jobs. The decadence of roman empire is related with the fall of cities´s prestige. In addition, people lived from agricultural (for get mass production of olives, wine and bread) and cattle species imported from Middle East, in general more prepared for dry areas in contrast with the more humid weather of the north Mediterranean region. In fact the “hot” places inside the region like some parts of Greece and Almería (Spain) were the scouting party of the new way of life. Roman used natural concrete, the “puzzolana”, and their buildings and bridges still stands up.
Arabs-berber middle age urbanism was focused in “forget” countryside and work intensively the areas close to the rivers. Diet was again richest, the silk taxes moved artisans and the commerce in the extent Islamic world let the development of enormous cities without manipulate many the surroundings. In the case of Spain, many natural areas were restored spontaneously. Construction material didn´t use intensive materials form mines like in the roman period. Arabs-berber urbanists specialised in reinforced the humidity of wet agricultural lands, in contrast with the drier scenery that looked for the roman urbanist Vitrubio.
Scientific advances in Europe led to invade mountains better for get agricultural lands. Most of the previous civilizations looked it as marginal lands and it kept the natural wildlife corridors (flora and fauna), so that nature followed attracting humidity, moderating weather, and maintaining the biggest part of biodiversity intact and able to recolonize the countryside. But the advances in machines and fossil fuels guided the attention to the traditional lands because the productivity was now 3 times higher in north Europe respect the Mediterranean area, and the weather helped to make more respirable the pollution of factories: in fact the increasing of commerce thanks to the increased excedents between farmers and manufacturers as Adam Smith suggested, was in origin a local experience. West European cities flourished practically without slavery and really followed the race that initiated Middle East thanks to the modern artisans, the industry. British copied artificially the roman concrete, but the best Portland cement has a life expectancy of 400 years, but combined with other elements, less, and bad worked or worked in a hurry, less yet. After 1500 years, after roman period, the sea became safer again and international routes were opened avoiding Islamic intermediation.
Now and thanks to fossil fuels and the car, urbanism has expanded the cities, the first time in history that it happens, and the mountains are conquested, wildlife corridors fragmented, the suburbia and infrastructures occupied agricultural territories and new cities without inhabitants -like industrial areas or malls - or temporal inhabitants -like touristic cities or non-stop chalets´s coasts - appears deserting the biggest part of the territory at industrial speed. That´s include a systematic lossness of natural soil productivity due to quimics and now transgenic that kill a considerable part of the microorganism, and in the seas is the same but without cities, a situation specially delicate in times of climate change were higher natural resistance is needed. In contrast verticalism in downtowns now is a race for prestige and progress (New York, Honk Kong, Singapur, Dubai,…), using an urban tool like strategy for development; a tool specially focused on services - rather than in land, energy or industrial productivity due to the mass production of them- , and the cities, now worldwide, tends to loose autonomy in the sense of self-sufficency - and “real” productivity? -. Present crisis is originated in a moderate increase of productivity in IT technologies applied mostly in urban services in the mid 90´s. Post –financial measures for avoid recession expanded credit over general productivity and actives are now overvalued. The growing worldwide economic media class impose their continue authority – an unaware and soft dictatorship, “I want it like him/her and I want it now because I pay it”, and if it´s cheaper regardless sustainability, doesn´t matter, anonymacy of the customer is guaranteed into the mass of the cities or suburbia-.
This a parasit way of civilization because the general dampness falls down, the economical possibilities of economy tends to disappear if they are accompanied with the dessert, and opportunities for children worldwide descends continously; it´s just like work in a mine till the business finish.
If we consider nature as an silent agent of our plan for the territory we, for first time in history, will change the tendence respect all of our ascendants and will increase the real opportunities for our descendents. With this perspective is easy find productivity and sustainable proposals for standardise architecture. But that implies hear and know a reality that not speaks, not votes in parlaments, don´t follows our rules and acts anyway. If rains, it rains if we are agree or not. So, if you decide what you want in your portion of land, it works only if nature agree, and the scale of activity of both are not equal. Anyway and surprisingly we can manage it because dominate the nature doesn´t means destroy it.
If we came back to present productive we can remember the recent study (www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/rogoff/files/Aftermath.pdf) that argued we need 8 years to recover productivity/per capita, and more in the relation productivity/employment. A hard adjustment. So if productivity is the priority to make this period shorter, nature can help us in many ways because has a capacity of recombination elements higher than that we manage daily, it´s only question of see, experience and learn, and the usually unknown international architectonical good practices al little scale can help us to launch if we consider them together.
The new productivity is already invented and tested.
It´s only necessary look the maps and see how nature restore the land following a different plan that supposed. In the Sahel rain and vegetation are not correlatives…http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/04/sahel/paul-salopek-text
And the conventional distribution of people in cities, villages and suburbia and the respectives flows of commodities between them, shows dynamic images of interaction with nature that needs been explored with new tools, http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/ , http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/picturegalleries/3109042/The-Atlas-of-the-Real-World.html
Where World Heritage Sites are in harmony with natural reserves the situation remains equilibrated and changes are adapted slowly, but these cases tends to be an exception, and at same time an example to follow reshaping the present context with a new aesthetical language, http://www.unep-wcmc.org/sites/wh/index.html
A preliminary confluence between both in a “common” scenery can be seen in the file I attached (fig 14, http://historiadeunrescate.iespana.es (click on Paisajismo Sostenible, click in Proyecto Llley, 1st part) A sistematic search of good architectural practices that solve the conflictive points has been made.(only available in spanish)
More suggestions soon with the websites of good practices, please let me some time to translate ideas to english, …
| Description: |
| human plan of the territory and natural plan together |
|
Download |
| Filesize:
|
34 KB
|
| Downloaded:
|
315 Time(s)
|
| Description: |
|
Download |
| Filesize:
|
34 KB
|
| Downloaded:
|
440 Time(s)
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
blogger
del.icio.us
digg
slashdot
