Academic year 2024-2025
ADO[1] Studio Anatomy [Window] Details
Master of architecture – phase2 – autumn semester (semester 3) Campus Ghent
Engagement: Mediating Tactics
OPO 34 design studio
| Semester | Phase 2 – Autumn semester |
| Startweek | Week 1 |
| Review week / sign in moment | Week 5, 8, 13, evaluation |
| Credits | 15 |
| Number of students | 12 |
| Language | English |
| Titular and teacher | Prof.dr. arch. Jo Van Den Berghe |
Image left: Plan scale 1/10 and details scale 1/1 garage door, project WoSho (Jo Van Den Berghe architect 2019).
Pencil and ink on thin white paper.
Title:
Prototypes of Window Details:
the Room within the Window within the Room within the Window
Introduction
This studio is a critical reflection on standardized architectural thinking and an act of resistance against it. Hereby it is the aim is to push boundaries through rigourous material investigations of experimental and provocative architectural (window) details that go beyond the normative and the ‘acceptable’. Architecture should not be fenced in by the paralyzing anxiety for ‘the thermal bridge’ and its liated techno-political correctness. Architecture is Art, and as such its freedom of speech and expression, of thought and action should remain unlimited, and definitely so in the fundamental research this studio is pertaining to. By doing so, this studio aims to breach the threatening stagnation of architectural practice and its risk of (self) imposed censorship that claims to be based on ‘common sense’.
This research is happening through and in the architectural drawing that becomes the LOCUS of investigation and reflection. The drawing lodges the acute moments of architectural creation and accommodates limitless technical experimentations that may generate phosphorizing architectural experiences. As such, this studio is a critical reflective practice ‘in exile’. This exile is either self-chosen as a safe haven and imposed upon us by a mind-numbing bureaucracy under the command of monocultural business models of building industries, their shadowy lobbyists and their political and administrative myrmidons.
Hence, the aforementioned resistance happens in the drawings in a way The Paper Architects did under the totalitarian regime of the Soviet Union in the 1970’s (https://032c.com/magazine/the-lost-psychedelic-paper-architects-of-the-soviet-union). Here we mention Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin, Dmitry Ivanov, Ain Padrik, Iskander Galimov and others. We also mention the Arts and Crafts movement, more specifically John Ruskin’s ‘The Seven Lamps of Architecture’ (1849), in response to the Industrial Revolution and its ambition for standardization, mass production and anonimization of man mades. Finally, we mention the Arts and Crafts movement as the cultural roots of Sint-Lucas School of Architecture, now KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture.
Not wanting to avoid the hard core of architecture, i.e. the stubborn endeavour of its material making, this studio, and ‘drawing’ as mentioned above, revolve around the mastery of Technè that can become the generator of the poetic image[1] in architecture. So, the mastery of Technè becomes the indispensable condition for the young architect to fully deploy freedom of expression. One needs skilled fingers to play the piano properly. As such, the mastery of Technè, acquired through drawing material experiments and architectural details, begins to act as an instrument of self-empowerment for the (young) architect. Karl Friedrich Schinkel argues that “Our mind is not free if it is not the master of its imagination; the freedom of the mind is manifest in every victory over ‘self’, every resistance to external enticements, every elimination of an obstacle to this goal. Every moment of freedom is blessed” (Snodin 1991).
With this mastery the intentions of the architect either succeed or fail. The intentions of the architect are seldomly clear from the beginning of the design process, which is perfectly acceptable, and drawing enables the desiging architect to overcome these initial uncertainties. Hence, drawing (verb)—mainly drawing by hand—constitutes the core of the method in this studio, and the drawing (noun) is the LOCUS of the research. The intense inhabitation of the drawing by the student is key. Technè guides the architect to fully and meaningfully confront the question: how does a culture of making (building) contribute to making (building) a culture?
Research statement
The central discourse of this studio revolves around this basic argument: a creation process in architecture is generally considered as a unidirectional process that starts with the poetic image π (see above), that subsequently is substantiated on the construction site ©.
The research of Jo Van Den Berghe (Van Den Berghe 2012, 2016, 2021, 2022) reveals that this assumed unidirectionality is false. The process of creation, which includes the substantiation, is much more negotiated, two-directional. The poetic image π is often triggered by construction practice ©.
Design brief
The proces starts from drawing window details on scale 1/1, out of which you ‘gradually’ draw a window frame that becomes a room (the Room within the Window) on scale 1/10, in which you draw a next window out of which you ‘gradually’ draw a next room (the Room within the Window within the Room within the Window), and so on. By doing so, draw a sequence of 3 rooms that becomes a suite of rooms: the (1) Shop window + (2) Workshop + (3) The Other Room.
(1) Room 1: Shop window:
The shop window, and the inhabitation of this window, is the core and the onset of the process. The shop window is meant to display the artistic work of a goldsmith-watchmaker. It is much more a high-end exhibition display of elevated culture and ideas than flat commercialism. Through cyclical drawing (Critical Sequential Drawing (CSD)(Van Den Berghe 2021)) the shop window is emerging in the drawing process.
The windows are meant to be prototypes (experimental), however banking on the knowledge of window-making in regular architectural practice (archetypes)(wood, steel, …), of which abundant drawings and references will be available on a Google drive for the student.
(2) Room 2: Workshop:
Subsequently, the shop window, and the small shop that is growing out of it, is further developing (by drawing) into a workshop for the goldsmith-watchmaker. All these places and architectural elements grow out of the initial inhabitation of the shop window. The transition between the shop and the workshop will also consist of (a series of parallel or offset) experimental windows, window frames, … .The workshop is the place where the goldsmith makes jewels and watches, which will be shown to the world in/through the space of the shop window (see Room 1). The workshop is, of course, related to and connected with the shop window/the window shop, and with the shop.
(3) Room 3: The Other Room:
This is the room where the goldsmith-watchmaker is musing deeply about this precious thing (s)he is making in room 2. The Other Room is a room of withdrawal and contemplation about thickness, substance, depth and darkness (or perhaps: life and afterlife).
Inevitably, drawing these rooms implies that ‘the windows’ can de doubled or tripled or offset. They form the transitory architectural elements between the rooms. These experimental transitory windows as prototypes must be designed meticulously, into their very full-scale architectural window details. The exact kind and the beauty of ‘the screw’ counts to the full extent!
The study of the window includes a comparative study on three levels:
(1) scale 1/10: the opening (the view) in the (existing) architectural body (building)
(2) scale 1/1: the frame (the window detail), hence tackling respectively (a) the theme of looking and seeing the physical and material world (sightlines, the reading of the topography, …) combined with (b) more imaginative and symbolic ways of ‘seeing’, and (c) the deep study about how to materialize this looking and seeing by developing fulls scale details with noble and refined materials. What does it feel like when you begin to make things touchable!
(3) scale 1/10: the opening (see 1) and the frame (see 2) together in the context of the architectural body (see 1), including structural decisions (column, beam, …).
This drawing process is aiming for dimensional precision that must encompass both the technical and emotional level. It takes emotional precision by the architect to identify what needs to be expressed, like it takes technical precision by the architect to express these emotions that are urging the drawing architect to be expressed in substance. Consequently, a further developing of technical precision may give rise to the discovery of new and unsuspected emotional precisions that otherwise might remain hidden, but which are becoming explicit through the meticulous exploration and comparison of the technical possibilities. Every cycle in this Critical Sequential Drawing brings the architect closer to identifying these emotions and their material expressions.
Site: to be confirmed.
Timing:
Important: every student will upload his/her work on a weekly basis in the Google drive folder where the studio work will be stored.
Phase 1 (week 1-5):
Prototypes of Window Details: The Room within the Window within the Room within the Window (see design brief above)(individual work). Quotation.
Phase 2 (week 6-7):
Intensive workshop: measuring, drawing and scale modeling the façade and entrance lobby of De Grote Post in Ostend (1953)(arch. Gaston Eysselinck) (group work per 3 students). Sectional scale model (wood, scale 1/10) and drawings (vertical sections scale 1/10 and window details scale 1/1) of the building and its stylobate. Quotation.
Phase 3 (week 8-12):
Prototypes of Window Details: The Room within the Window within the Room within the Window (see design brief above)(individual work). Quotation.
Phase 4 (week 13-14):
Finalizing the project. Preparing the exhibition as the setting for the examination (group work). Final assessment and quotation.
Network
ADO Studio Detail operates in an international network of research and practice:
- Ecole Fédérale Polytecnique de Lausanne (EPFL): prof. Jo Taillieu (Atelier Tomographie)
- Politecnico di Milano: Prof.dr. Gennaro Postiglione
- IUAV Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia: Enrico Miglietta
- Queen’s University Belfast (UK): prof. Michael McGarry
- Studio Anatomy: www.studio-anatomy.org
- the TDC (Technical Documentation Centre of the faculty)
- the ongoing research of Jo Van Den Berghe, and the repository of 32 years of architectural practice of JVDB (full scale drawings of architectural details, investigation processes of architectural details, …) and related architectural practices
- the Juliaan Lampens foundation
Evaluation format
The evaluation will assess the aspects as formulated above, i.e. the process and the final production.
Criteria: see ects file and competention matrix.
The output will be presented on a weekly basis by the student, and in intermediary reviews in the presence of the whole group (reviews) and evaluated.
The reviews will be peer review, up-liner review by guest critics and academic review by the professor. There will be a final presentation with a public exhibition in the final week of the course for a jury of internal and external critics.
Objectices / Specific objectives and Learning Outcomes: see ECTS Sheets.
See https://onderwijsaanbod.kuleuven.be/opleidingen/n/CQ_51522855.htm#activetab=doelstellingen and https://onderwijsaanbod.kuleuven.be/opleidingen/e/CQ_51522858.htm#activetab=doelstellingen.
References:
- Ruskin, J. (1849). The Seven Lamps of Architecture. Smith, Elder & Co. publ., London.
- Snodin, M. (1991). Karl Friedrich Schinkel, a Universal Man. Yale University Press.
- Van Den Berghe, J. (2022). Antiphon for a Sabbatical: Revisiting the Mind of a Man formerly known as an Architect. Drawing reflections for the Works+Words Biennial, 2022 Royal Academy, Round Tower’s Library Hall, Copenhagen.
- Van Den Berghe, J. (2021). Critical Sequential Drawing: a drawing method to close the gap between the Poetic Image and its Material Presence. Stoa Journal 2, Dipartimento di Architettura Università. degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Naples, pp. 168-179.
- Van Den Berghe, J. (2016). Drawing Is / Not Building. Treadwell, S. and Twose, S. eds., Victoria Universiy of Wellington, New Zealand, pp. 82-83.
- Van Den Berghe, J. (2012). Theatre of Operations, or: Construction Site as Architectural Design, Ph.D Dissertation, SmallBook 2, RMIT University.
- many more architectural references will be distributed at the introductory session and as the course proceeds.
[1] ADO: Academic Design Office. This is a pedagocical environment, developed at KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture, in which education, architectural practice and research in architecture cross fertilize and merge.
[2] The concept of the poetic image has been brought forward by Vitruvius, who called it the architectural idea, and following from this, Alberto Pérez-Gómez has further elaborated on it, “… the poetic image, called after Vitruvius the architectural idea … the images that are proposed by the architect, issuing from his or her mind’s eye” (Pérez-Gómez 2006).
Sketches preliminary details scale 1/5 garage door, project WoSho (Jo Van Den Berghe architect 2019).
Pencil, ink, markers on recycled paper.