This is the Blog for ARH 608 at the Academy of Art. Please post your thoughts on the reading here. Be sure your posts are original posts, not comments. That way we can all see them.
“Programming the Urban Surface” by Alex Wall incorporates concepts of using the landscape as an active surface, connecting functions and programs, and organizing the changing activities and elements of the urban space. Before I had thought of landscape as a more static element but Wall incorporates the landscape in a connective capacity that contributes to a relationship with the evolving site conditions. When Wall discussed “green” design he brought up the Melun-Senart in France by Koolhaas and OMA in 1987. What made this project sustainable was its adaptability over time. By shifting concentration from building planning and placement, to a concentration on voids, adaptations can be easily made for future developments. I had not thought of green architecture in this way before. Typically green architecture applied to material concepts exclusively, but the idea of utilizing the site in an adaptable way to encourage sustainability is new to me. This idea works with the notion that instead of creating new projects in pristine sites, the role of the architect may adapt, with the urban landscape, to incorporate projects that involve the transformation of pre-existing buildings. If projects took into account sustainable site factors such as the Koolhass project, then the function of design would become more about transformation and less about destruction and the accompanying creation.
“Programming the Urban Surface” by Alex Wall incorporates concepts of using the landscape as an active surface, connecting functions and programs, and organizing the changing activities and elements of the urban space. Before I had thought of landscape as a more static element but Wall incorporates the landscape in a connective capacity that contributes to a relationship with the evolving site conditions.
ReplyDeleteWhen Wall discussed “green” design he brought up the Melun-Senart in France by Koolhaas and OMA in 1987. What made this project sustainable was its adaptability over time. By shifting concentration from building planning and placement, to a concentration on voids, adaptations can be easily made for future developments. I had not thought of green architecture in this way before. Typically green architecture applied to material concepts exclusively, but the idea of utilizing the site in an adaptable way to encourage sustainability is new to me.
This idea works with the notion that instead of creating new projects in pristine sites, the role of the architect may adapt, with the urban landscape, to incorporate projects that involve the transformation of pre-existing buildings. If projects took into account sustainable site factors such as the Koolhass project, then the function of design would become more about transformation and less about destruction and the accompanying creation.