[APPLAUSE]
Thank you, Laura, for that
introduction-- and Rob as well,
and the university
for the invitation
to be able to not
work in my office
here this evening in
conjunction with the publication
annual section.
But I also want to start by
acknowledging [INAUDIBLE]----
is he here?--
for all your work
on the exhibition.
It's really coordinated.
And it looks fantastic.
So, thank you so much.
[APPLAUSE]
What we're going
talk about tonight
is the work that went into
this book, Manual of Section.
But really in perspective
the work we did in the office
and have been
doing for 21 years.
It's very much a
collaborative small studio
located in New York City.
And it's work that we've worked
on Section since we started.
And particularly when we're
working on construction,
we're almost inevitably
doing some kind of section
to be able to communicate
to a contractor.
But for us, Section
is also the language
we really examine
space, particularly
through a two-point perspective
sectional kind of lens.
This allows one drawing to see
a whole range of [INAUDIBLE]..
It's particularly
useful for competitions
when board sizes
are really limited.
We've also used it as a
way of stitching drawings
together, linking one section
perspective with another
to show the relationship
between one floor to the other
with a heightened
representation between hand
drawing and digital media.
We've also been--
and very interesting,
this is a 22-year-old model
where we're, at that point,
really excited about
the opportunity
to be able to do a section
model drawing for that edition
to reveal the spatial condition
and the drawing condition,
which simultaneously is so
to show two hands together.
But what we realized in
starting, looking, and teaching
is that there wasn't really a
good discourse for sections.
In other words, there
wasn't in English
a published book on sections.
You can find lots of books
on plans, on axonometrics,
on how to do
perspective, but almost
nothing written substantially,
other than a couple
of articles, on this really
well-known section type.
More importantly,
we couldn't find
a single comprehensive
history of section.
When did section drawings start?
You can date plans
very long way back,
but sections come into
architectural practice
relatively late.
So we wanted to be able to do a
publication that would combine
the history of architecture
with an examination of how
to talk about
sections with a play
in terms of what our work is,
and I might be able to do all
of those tonight.
Starting with the
history, this is, we
think, one of the
earlier section drawings,
and it's barely a
section drawing.
It's a section drawing only
because this moment cuts away
the side of the cathedral to
reveal the buttresses that
trace their lines down in
Villard de Honnecourt's Reims
Cathedral demonstrating an early
drawing that tries [INAUDIBLE]..
It's subject though
isn't really here.
The subject is the
elevation structure.
You couldn't really
get the development
of the section drawing, which is
essentially a vertical cut, as
opposed to a plan which is a
horizontal cut, a vertical cut
through the building
in the Renaissance.
Particularly in the 1480s
to the turn of the century,
you get two things happening.
One, architects
looking at ruins,
so the buildings are already
sectioned, all right,
drawing those.
And interest in
anatomy, particularly
in the work of
Leonardo, where they're
cutting quite literally through
the body and drawing literally
the cut body.
You can see here this
is the cut as they
were cutting into the skull.
You have these two ways
of looking at the section
as a way of seeing
past the world
that you see with the naked eye.
It only comes with a cut, either
when a building is demolished,
or you cut open a head.
What happens though
is the realization,
well, we can use this
as an analytical tool
for buildings that
haven't fallen down,
particularly the Pantheon.
The Pantheon becomes a
really interesting source,
where they're using the
section drawings to find out
why it's still standing
1500 or more years later,
and everything else fell down.
Why did this one stand up?
Or the Tempietto, trying to
look at in terms of how can we
organize space.
What's interesting
in both of these
is that the section drawing,
when it first starts,
is not just a section as we
know it with an elevation view.
It's a section with a
one-point perspective.
So it's a way of revealing,
like the stage set,
the world that was going to
happen beyond the section
in the project itself.
It's fascinating that the
early section drawings
aren't sections purely.
They're section-perspectives.
You get the triad of
the section, elevation,
plan only about 100 years
later, canonized by Palladio
and others who were effectively
arguing that the plan is
the organizing principle.
It's the largest
one on the page.
The elevation is here,
and interestingly enough,
the section, because it's
a symmetrical building,
only has to be shown in half.
What for us is
interesting is the drawing
of that same
material cut in plan
is shown as solid, but in
section that same line here
is shown as white.
Because what it's doing is
privileging the space beyond,
whereas the plan privileges
the cut of the wall.
You already have in some
sense a hierarchy set up
between the plan dominant,
and the section as secondary.
And this is usually the case
in architectural discourse
and practice.
The plan dominates.
Section is the result.
We want to flip that.
We actually want section
to be a driver, equal,
sitting next to the plan,
as well as the elevation.
With the development
of technology,
section takes away,
really showing
the relationship
between the engineering
and the architecture
of the interior.
You get greater sections of--
mountains.
[LAUGHTER]
You get sections here when
they city starts developing
its complexity, particularly the
complexity of the metropolis.
Section is the only
way to reveal and show
how sewer systems, how power's
going to be distributed,
all the things underneath your
feet that make up the city.
And this becomes
even more the way
in which you understand
transportation systems.
This is a map of New York City.
And for us, one of
the favorite things
about this drawing
from 1929 is that this
is the proposed development
of the Second Avenue
Subway, which is here.
One spur of it was finished
like two years ago.
[LAUGHTER]
So it takes a little bit of time
to build an underground rail.
But what section allows
is the combination
of different levels and,
more importantly, the ability
to see through this drawing
to things that are not
visible to the naked eye.
In our contemporary period, in
which environmental and energy
issues are drivers,
section is the best place
to examine thermal forces, in
part, because hot air rises.
It's very hard to see
hot air rising in plan.
It's much easier to see it
and to organize it according
to the section of a building.
You get this combined with
the scale of the human figures
in the Bucholz McEvoy drawings,
plus the movement of wind,
in this case, the Venturi effect
pulling across their screens,
given the continuous
winds in Ireland,
where this project went up.
The challenge though,
and we're educators,
is what if you go to
reviews and someone
has a really nice
section, there's
no really good language
for the development of it.
I mentioned this briefly in
the exhibition this afternoon,
but for us, it was
kind of foundational.
We felt that it was really
important to elevate section
not just as a drawing type, but
to connect it to a discourse,
connect it to an organizing
basis by which communication
can be had shorthand between
students and their professors,
between practitioners, so
that one can see and organize
the way in which you design
by having a shorthand,
essentially a categorization
system for talking
about sections.
So this was one
of the conditions
of the book is that we felt it
was going to be important to be
able to reduce, in some
ways, all section types
to seven very simple
types of sections.
We'd argue that these
are the seven things that
can categorize all section
types, plus hybrids,
which is when one or
more of these sections
is offered simultaneously
in a project.
To really demonstrate this,
what we did was to look at,
and we chose an arbitrary
date of 1900 to 2013 and 2014,
roughly buildings
at half that point
and, chose the 63
best examples that
would demonstrate this heuristic
system, this organizing
system, categorizing system,
and at the same time show
some of the more interesting
sections that come
from hybrids and hybridization.
We did each of them as
one-point perspective drawings,
so the section is true.
In other words, it's
dimensionally measurable.
It is parallel to the picture
plane and is not introspective.
Then there is a
one-point perspective
located intentionally to
reveal the latent thesis
or conditions of that project.
In this case, the
perspective point
is way out here, because it's
in the vineyards of a building
designed to rotate
around its podium,
so that it can turn and
always face the sun.
This is outside of Verona.
It's the Village [INAUDIBLE].
So this whole thing is
staircase literally rotates
with the whole building.
Just so it's very clear.
Every project we did
a section of is built.
So you can go visit this.
And for us, it's a
great example of how
the site continues down here.
That's all soil.
This is the podium, and this is
the lightweight structure that
pivots around the landscape.
So one drawing telling
the history or the thesis
of the arc of the
project, a short history,
the date of the project,
and what kind of section
that it is, and
that's 157, which
is the page number in the book.
So what I'm going to do is
walk through the seven types
and then connecting how
we think about sections
as a driver for projects
in our own office.
So extrusion, first up, the most
basic systems, literally plan
extruded, literally lifted up.
One of the best examples
is the Glass House,
where they're taking a plan--
it's a single-floor building.
You take a plan and literally
extrude the columns,
and you have one singular space.
One of the things you can
adjust in this type of section
is the height.
So [INAUDIBLE] project, you
go up substantially high.
You can see the
scale figures here
for something that's
basically 65-feet high.
So the extension of that height
becomes the dramatic thing
that you can control.
Or, for instance,
in our project,
we were literally limited to a
single-story extrusion project
by code.
This is from an early-childhood
education center in Arkansas.
Adjacent to Crystal Bridges,
on a site that was very open,
effectively single-story site.
The challenge is that if you
do an early-childhood education
center for six weeks
to roughly pre-K,
every single classroom has
to be on the first floor.
It has to be directly exit-able.
You can't put anyone
on the second floor.
So we knew we were dealing
with a single-floor plan that
had to be efficient with
a double-loaded corridor.
There's a budget classroom here
and outdoor classroom exterior.
Same thing on the other side.
This is then the section.
The challenge is then how
do you use these conditions,
constraints of the project, as
the driving condition, so you
can reveal even more about
the process or the project?
So we took the floor plan and
spun it around a central core,
so the parents when they're
dropping off their kids
have a shorter
distance, and there's
more control from the front
for security purposes.
And then looking at
the 21 classrooms
and designed within
it, a shaped figure
that would be lower
than that section, that
would be in the shape of
a house to be basically
a home away from home for
kids who would literally
be here more than they
are in the awake hours
of their own house.
Dropped off at 8:00 in the
morning, picked up at 6:00.
So it had to be a
home, and that home
is under that felt-plaid
acoustic canopy that
extended out to the
exterior, producing
in the shape of the corridors
effectively a series of houses
going down that corridor.
Each of the classrooms
is directly connected
to the play space, so you can
take kids who are increasingly
spending close to 90%
of their time indoors
and make sure they want to spend
most of their time outdoors,
not inside.
Omni-direction a big influence
going out to their playscapes.
In the center,
[INAUDIBLE] rooms,
otherwise known as play rooms,
would be more volumetric.
You raise the height up.
So it's almost a
story-and-half higher.
And then one of
the real challenges
is how do you design security
around these playscapes
so that kids are
protected, and you're not
showing a giant, chain-link face
as the image of the building.
Because that's what has to be
wrapped around this essentially
spoked condition.
So what we did was extruded
fairly-sizable columns
the height of the building,
so that, in fact, it
becomes a kind of decorative
figure all the way around,
marking the exact
height of the building,
becoming kind of a
figure in the landscape,
particularly around
the playscapes.
But also it then becomes
a sculptural figure
in a field adjacent to
the Crystal Bridges.
Pushed in the entrance,
pulled out those fields,
so you basically get
a welcoming calm that
echoes the thing that you
see as you drive around
and enter into the building.
Within the entrance
of this, they're
slightly deformed to accommodate
different geometries.
We call this the
incompetent panopticon.
[LAUGHTER]
None of these actually line
up, which is intentional,
so that you come in, and
you get a sense of play.
At the heart of
the building-- this
is the drawing of the
incompetent panopticon.
A competent one would
have all the lines
from the center
clearly recognizable.
Here the point is you
meander around like kids
and play in this active space
at the heart of the project,
with doors that can
open up and allow
those rooms to be a part of much
more public space for Christmas
pageants and other things.
And this is currently
the project.
It's slated for
completion in March.
And these are the central
areas showing basically
the original section diagrams.
Extrusion, high extrusion.
The next type of
section is stack.
It's basically
extrusion ad nauseam.
It's the developer's wet dream.
It takes one floor and repeat
it, and repeat it, and repeat
it to maximize my value.
It's most architecture
in this country.
It doesn't have to be just
repetitive skyscrapers.
You can adjust the floors,
which is what Mies does,
so the lower floor here is much
smaller than the higher floors
here, all held up above
by the steel beams.
Or you can stack them and
adjust the relationship
between the served
areas, which is the labs,
and the service core, which
are almost fully-standing,
occupied spaces for
the maintenance guy.
[INAUDIBLE]
You can organize space
by stacking them,
so that you stack two floors
like Lina Bo Bardi does, where
they have an exhibition space
over a giant public space,
and then other things
drop down into the grounds
to negotiate the terrain of
this particular location in Sao
Paulo.
Or in Starrett & Van Vleck's
Downtown Athletic Club,
the stacking takes on a
slightly not absurdest, but kind
of programmatic condition.
His masks provide
the self-similarity
with the facade.
But in here, you get
pool, you get gym,
you get lockers,
offices, et cetera.
Point of note, that's not
my brother's apartment.
[LAUGHTER]
Or in NVRDV's version of this,
the ecological landscapes
get pulled together in the
for the Netherlands Pavilion.
From my standpoint, we're
really interested in exploring
what happens with
stacked conditions,
particularly in terms
of mitigating some
of the negative conditions
of pure extrusion,
particularly in big box stores
and suburban houses, in which
the giant roofs are
there to produce
the illusion of coherence of
a series of rambling rooms
that sprawl out on typically
a single story or double story
spaces.
So we thought what better
thing to do then just
bring these two together,
with the residential
over the big box
stores, and see what
happens with this new maiden.
You can actually have all
of your big box stores
enter through here.
The residential coming up
through here with the houses
above and the exact
same structural system
as the big box store down below.
And this produces some
interesting matings
that we were hoping to reveal
in section perspectives, things
like you could go down
and get your lawnmower,
and then mow your
lawn to test it out,
and then return it quickly
if you didn't like it.
Or you could have a sprinkler
system for the big box store
be the perfect sprinkler
system for your lawn.
The [INAUDIBLE] would be in the
north, not here In the north,
you'd have green
lawn year round.
You'd drive in exactly
where the truck drives in.
All the commodities that
you buy here and put them
in your shelving right above.
So a couple things that
try to reveal the extent
of the project through section.
The mating of these
two conditions
would really be a lot in plan,
but not if you deal in section.
And then the urban proposal
that came off of that.
In a more realistic project,
we've been asked recently--
this is Post-Sandy--
to look at the redesign
of the Steeplechase Pier.
Steeplechase Pier
is in Coney Island.
And before Sandy,
it's essentially
a boardwalk walking
out with a crossing,
but Hurricane Sandy
did a number on most
of these kind of structures
around the Atlantic.
And this is what it
looked like afterwards.
But essentially, the fact
that the boards were all
tied into the bulkheads meant
that the boards literally
became a giant sail or
battering ram ripping up
the bulkheads, which
is where the money is
if you replace this.
The thing is three
football fields long,
so it has a kind of quality
that comes from purely
the accumulation of surface.
But the interesting thing
about Steeplechase Pier
is that it was never
designed as a destination.
It was designed so that ferries
from Manhattan and elsewhere
would bring customers to
the Steeplechase Amusement
Park that would be on land.
So they would come by ferry,
use this, and extend out,
go to the amusement
parks at Coney Island.
Now that's reversed.
You now go out to the
outside as a kind of walking.
You go out to the water.
So what we wanted to do is try
to keep this sort of tension,
the sense of history, but also
have an opportunity to reinvent
it within the framework.
It was something that we had
a bit of a challenge to do.
This is a point for
students, in particular.
We were given one week to
design this and four weeks
to do the CDs.
Because it had to be
open by Memorial Day.
Sandy occurs in the Fall.
Processes occurred.
Mayor Bloomberg said,
this must happen.
So we get a completely
different way
of working through the
process, by mandate.
It was great.
So what do you do?
We realized the
first thing to do
is we had to think sectionally.
We had to radically separate
the bulkheads down below,
and all the pilings, the piers,
from the sacrificial depth.
Because another
hurricane will come,
that deck will be blown away.
Where most of the money is is
in here, not up in the deck.
So these little points are
little points of securing,
so if that gets ripped
off, it literally rips off,
and they just put it back.
It's temporary.
Up above though,
a good opportunity
to re-imagine this
building entirely.
We did so by changing the
way the benches were done.
So the benches, in this
case, acknowledged--
they were all against here--
they acknowledge that people
are people watching as well
as looking to the outside.
Also we were able to
produce a wave bench
for collective suntanning.
And at the crossing point
we could introduce another,
by just extruding a series of
columns, a kind of sunshade,
which they wanted
in the program,
but turn that sunshade,
through a series of metal tabs
into something that if you're
flying into LaGuardia or JFK
on a sunny day, you can see
that it says, "Coney Island."
We also anticipated
that if you fell asleep,
you'd get a temporary tattoo.
[LAUGHTER]
And at the end,
this is where you're
adjusting slightly
the section, we really
wanted that kind of "I'm
the king of the world"
Titanic moment, where
instead of acknowledging
that people are going out to
see the water, particularly
those living in New York.
This is a kind of end condition.
So what we did is lifted
up the centerpiece only,
and then put a seam all
the way around the outside,
so that this didn't have
to be guardrail height.
That could be just
simply a railing height.
It didn't have to be 42 inches.
It could be 36 because the
fall was less than 30 inches
off the outside.
This on the outside
is 42 inches,
and it has a kind
of fishing rail.
And this is really the point
where you can look out.
Kids can look out the
back end of the ferry,
particularly small kids, to
have that sense of viewing out.
But also you would lift it
up, so you can view back
to the original
purpose of this, which
was access to the
Steeplechase Amusement Park.
This is one of the
few, [INAUDIBLE]
is one of the few
of our [INAUDIBLE]..
All just trying to adjust and
play with section [INAUDIBLE]..
And this is quite
literally a man
in a gorilla suit jumping
off the side, which
is, we're convinced
he understood
the pleasures of sections.
[LAUGHTER]
Shape is the third one, and
shape is quite literally
what we just did.
It's the shaping
typically of the roof,
often for acoustic or
structural purposes.
But occasionally we're
shaping the floor.
In the Bagsverd
Church by Ultzon here,
the shaping of the interior for
effects of light and acoustic
is radically different
than the exterior skin
here, so that the ceiling is
shaped, the skin is shaped.
This is all about rain.
This is about the
interior environment.
For Le Corbusier at Ronchamp, we
had to do not only examination
and modeling to be
able to make sure we
get that roof right, but
also in doing so realized
that the rubble that they used--
there was a church here that
was demolished in the war, they
used the rubble to rebuild it.
That's what's in these walls.
I always thought it
was in these walls,
and these walls are hollow.
The super-thick at Ronchamp
with the colored glass
are actually sprayed
gunite onto chicken-wire.
And that's what the
deal here as we follow.
To do this, we have
to do archival work
to be able to make sure
that what we're showing
is as close to we can
get as-built conditions.
For Claude Parent and
Paul Virilio-- may
he rest in peace--
is this sloped floor.
The sloped floor to reinforce
a sense of community
within this particular church
as well as the canopy up above.
For Toyo Ito,
shaping now takes on
a whole structural and
volumetric condition.
So you're not only shaping
the ceiling and the floor,
but also the walls through
this series of catenoids.
I think there are 58
catenoids that interrupt
a series of stacked conditions.
In our own work, we've
hinted at how we view shape
to frame the houses,
but we're also
interested in using shape
to help define spaces,
particularly at a sizable scale.
For a project for
Claremont University,
we were asked to turn
a service building
into the administrative
headquarters,
the home of the vice presidents,
and HR managers, business
operations.
It's about a
football-field-long,
column-free space--
in a series of moments,
you'll trust this.
We were asked to basically turn
this into a desirable place
to go to work.
[LAUGHTER]
So one of the first
things we realized
is we got all this embedded
energy we want to keep,
but we're going to have
to radically adjust
all the ventilation, bring
160-plus solatube skylights in.
Is what's here.
And make it, essentially,
serve from the ceiling down.
They don't want to
interrupt the element floor.
The next step is how do
you actually make a ceiling
without just dropping it.
How do you make that
ceiling animate the space?
So we had to work
with, essentially,
riggers for the movie
industry to have them pin up
1600 individual baffles
that are acoustically
padded on both sides
that could produce,
essentially, a new surface
that could negotiate all
these requirements,
but at the same time
produce a dramatically-new
space on the inside.
We've unified the space,
but at the same time,
allowed it to drop
down to deal with some
of the other mechanical issues.
And for us what was
really important is this
is in Southern California.
You want to make sure you
know where daylight is.
So the combination of electric
light and daylight changes
over the course of the day.
You see clouds moving through.
As things are dropping down,
the electric light kicks up.
So if you're in there, you know.
That's a time-lapse over
the course of a full day.
And here you can see
we had no problem
with you looking up and
seeing the campus at night.
Because a lot of energy
went into it, why hide it?
But it also means we could
shape the lower floor
and produce spaces that could
go from a small gathering
to a performance space,
coupled with the idea
that we had to radically
transform the exterior.
This is what it
used to look like.
We had to keep that
invested value in that
and make it look like an
inviting place for the town
to come into.
We did it by a 700-foot linear
screen that's folded and shaped
as it frames the outside
space of the building,
effectively changing what
used to be just a shed
into a welcoming place,
producing shade moments
for outside work, to extend
the inside to the outside,
and then becoming a kind
of canopy for light--
well, to speak more
particularly for those
in the town who will use the
meeting rooms, the gathering
rooms, the seminar rooms
as part of the extension
of their services.
And an entrance space
that was effectively
redesigned by just
this one thing, trying
to do as many things as
possible by changing the shape.
There are other projects.
This is another project
where we worked on ceilings.
What we literally had to
work on was the ceiling.
We couldn't really
touch the floor.
We couldn't really
touch the walls,
because it's an
historic building.
This is the [INAUDIBLE]
building at Columbia University.
This is where they give
out the Pulitzer Prizes.
And this is the space that they
used to give out the Pulitzer
Prizes in, a place like this.
So we were charged with
really opening up--
you can see here
the problem, right.
You can't really see
the [INAUDIBLE] windows.
The space isn't inviting.
It's not adjustable.
[INAUDIBLE] And all
the systems up above
are detracting from the
quality of the historic space.
So we realized we had
to design something
that would hold all
that equipment, all
the light, the projectors, all
the acoustics, all the fire
suppression systems, while
giving it a new image,
recognizing its
history simultaneously.
So this was really inventing
a new ceiling again,
one that could literally
drop down and canopy.
Holding back to the back
is where the projector is,
acknowledging the entrance,
and then keep everything else
on the floor open, changing
it so that the canopy can
be the site for all
the illumination,
lighting is integrated
within that ceiling.
The curtains when
they're pulled,
are acknowledged as independent,
so that there's clearly
a kind of lights-off
soffit up there.
And then we had
to figure out how
to make this as malleable
as possible with really one
or two moving pieces.
The first was getting as much
ample storage as you can.
These pieces, these walls,
fold to become the place
where you can move
all the chairs that
can be adjusted or
put away, and then
a custom stage that
could change from being
one person to multi-person
to a central stage piece, all
within that hole we
[INAUDIBLE] wall.
So that you're
essentially trying
to recognize through an
examination of a section
where you should work and
where you should adjust.
Shear is the next one.
Shear is a little complicated.
There are two different
types of shear.
There's vertical shear, and
there's horizontal shear.
What I mean by shear, it's
like you take a solid object,
you cut it vertically,
and you slide it.
Or horizontally,
and you slide it.
So they're working in
relationship to each other.
They produce totally
different effects though.
But we felt it was
important to recognize
there's an adjustment
between them
whether it's vertical
or horizontal.
The first, which is
a horizontal shear
is a great way that
Henri Sauvage figured out
to make sure that every
one of the apartments
gets great daylight.
You literally slide
the top one back,
producing balconies overlooking,
as opposed to a shear
wall, a cut wall.
One of the interesting
things in this diagram
is what he put in the middle.
And that's what the
communal pool is.
So the communal
pool has occupied
that space required for all
that horizontal shear to occur.
Or in Bjarke Ingels
and JDS Architects,
now BIG, the horizontal
shear is fairly extreme.
See the slope, so that you
get really rushed terraces
and underneath is a parking
lot, and a funicular,
a mountain-climbing
elevator, that would allow
you to get to your apartment.
For Barnard College, the Diana
Center by Weiss and Nanfredi,
the shear is a series
of volumes going
up so that the social spaces
can all be linked through here.
And then [INAUDIBLE]
the shear occurs
in a series of dramatic
conditions, either going down,
so it steps back that way.
It steps back that way,
so it allows light in,
and it allows people to
come in and see what's
happening with this facility.
Vertical shear is different.
It produces a kind of split
section between pieces.
So for Hertzberger's project
for the Apollo Schools,
there was a capacity
to not have to build
an auditorium separate.
The auditorium could be
right in that section
between these big split halls.
It also means the
staircase these two wings
and allows them to accommodate
the pilasters each side.
[INAUDIBLE],, that shear is
super-obvious at the front
of the building.
You walk in, you look
up, and you look down.
You walk in here.
You would go up
into this room, you
can look down into
the performance space.
And as you go up into
all these spaces,
you can look across at a
series of different things
would have been happening within
the Center for the Performing
and Creative Arts.
But the double-skin of the
glass, while allowing vision,
keeps the acoustics separate.
[INAUDIBLE]
We haven't had the opportunity
to do as much vertical shear.
It's something we're really
excited about trying to engage.
But in one project we have,
we were asked to effectively,
in an apartment
building that was
an accumulation of
different properties, which
had eight different levels.
Instead of demolishing, allowing
all those to be more seamless,
we told the client,
actually what would be great
is to make this the
driver of design.
So we will look at a really
interesting feature staircase
that allows you connection from
the entrance to this floor,
to that floor, to this
floor, to this floor,
to the one on the
backside in the basement,
off this level, this
level here, and that level
in the back, and then the roof.
So the stair can take on all
these qualities of screening,
animating, connecting, being
the very thing that allows views
or occluding those
views, in addition to
allowing circulation as
you move up from the lower
levels all the way up to
the private properties.
So it's essentially
seeing vertical shear
as a way of animating views
between different, disparate
forms.
The next one is hole.
Hole operates as you
would anticipate.
It's a hole in
something, it's a void.
So it's really a kind of second
order of sectional operation.
You have to have material
there, but that void
becomes the dominant piece.
This as simple as Le
Corbusier's [INAUDIBLE]
where the void allows
double-wide space
or connections between, or an
atrium-like void in the Larkin
Building by Frank Lloyd
Wright that turns essentially
work into a moment of spectacle,
kind of a cathedral of work,
complete with an organ.
This, is a modification, to some
extent of the Wright building
by [INAUDIBLE],, where the
hole in the middle allows
for the foundation, for everyone
working there to see each
other, as well as seeing
what's happening with the other
administration [INAUDIBLE]
In the Marriott Marquis,
you've got a hole
as the central--
Has anyone been?
If you go to New York, this
is the cheapest free ride
you can get.
Get in these elevators and take
them all the way to the top,
and you'll experience
sectional hole, spectacular.
You come out here, and you
go through a little hole,
and all the sudden, you're in
a giant void with these views
looking towards these stacked
accumulations of rooms
out to New York City.
Really amazing place.
[INAUDIBLE]
[LAUGHTER]
You got to pay for
the ride somehow.
The next one is the [INAUDIBLE].
Here the holes are literally
driven through the plan
and then inserted with a
series of structural pieces
that could not only
support all the floors,
but actually become the
places for circulation,
for all the services,
for all the things
that need to go up
between the floors
and provide visual connections
between disparate [INAUDIBLE]..
In our work, we
use hole as a way
of thinking about
how we want to work
on renovations, translations
to existing places.
So we could use
this to change what
used to be a theater in
Austin to a department store,
to now a contemporary
art center,
by thinking about our work as
a series of tactical insertions
and removals.
So if these are the
tactical additions,
the removal is
literally allowing
that space, that
hole with a staircase
to exist inside the
building, coupled
with making certain
that [INAUDIBLE]
on the outside of the
building, that window
is a dramatic piece,
becoming, to some extent,
the image of Arthouse
at Seventh and Congress.
When you enter through the
lobby, what you immediately see
is the staircase.
It's cut into the
building, essentially
allowing you to see up
through the [INAUDIBLE]..
The staircase treads extend
down and come the desk, so
that you know exactly
where to get your ticket,
where you're supposed
to go without having
someone tell you.
Because It's obvious that you're
supposed to line up there.
But more importantly, it
allows the Texas light
to draw down in, filling that
and animating that space,
[INAUDIBLE] as a whole.
The angle of each
of these treads
is half the angle of
the riser of a stair.
So it does follow the
logic of the stair,
but more importantly, allows
that dramatic connection
between two floors
were previously
only accessed from a side
stair and an elevator.
This causes a bit of a
problem when you talk
about holes with contractors.
Because they tend to like
to build them up first.
But in this case, we
had to actually keep
the hole open, because
the contractor [INAUDIBLE]
was putting all the timber
in, and they were all
coming in as single pieces.
They had to leave the
building's hole open
so they can drop them
in, because there's
no other door big
enough to slot them in.
You can see this caused great
joy for our contractor, who
had to figure out
how to get them
to fit between two points
of connection, one up there
and one here.
So it's held at two points.
Like a giant hockey pucks.
And this is the stair at the
backside, stair at the topside.
It intentionally tapers
because the angle of the side
is equal to the
angle of inclination.
So as you go up the
stairs, it gets wider.
Because there's less of an
angle for the rake of the side,
opening up to the
[INAUDIBLE] above.
These are all Michael
Moran's photographs.
A lot of the photographs
were taken by him.
These were critical
for picturing the work
we work in collaborations.
But the other
literal hole is that.
We cut a hole.
When we had done a
renovation subsequently--
when Arthouse
became contemporary,
they wanted a giant lift,
because they wanted larger art
that would fit in the elevator.
We [INAUDIBLE]
that giant scissor
lift in, so you can lift
art up, so it's literally
at the level of the road.
And then that drops
down into the floor,
and it closes up, so no
one falls into the hole.
Up above we had a rooftop
under the first renovation.
The second one,
they said, we really
want to make this
usable all year round.
Even when it rains, it
was a very popular site,
particularly for events
and weddings, et cetera.
What we realized we wanted
to keep was this deck,
and we wanted to keep that
sense of open connection
to the rest of Austin, but we
wanted to provide detection.
So the logical thing is to
extrude as thin a roof, as thin
a column as we possibly
can, up to a height
to protect it from rain.
[INAUDIBLE] 22-feet high.
So it's a canopy over
that rooftop that
frames the [INAUDIBLE] as well.
Reveals at night as a kind of
illumination, the building,
and a perfect backdrop
for the Women's March
almost two years ago.
One of the challenges
though is how do you
protect from wind-drift rains.
With a 22-foot high
roof, it's a little hard
to just order a stack curtain.
So we had to invent a curtain
with a curtain hanger.
Working with sail-cloth
manufacturers,
it effectively allows them
to close the curtain really
quickly, in case someone's
having a wedding,
and it starts raining.
This is my brother
pulling the curtain
to show how easy it is to pull.
And there's a series of grommets
that will either be hidden down
below with break-off points
when it hits a certain wind
velocity.
All of that had to
be organized in order
to deal with the challenges
of really high extrusions,
so that you can maintain
this dramatic transformation
from daylight with diffused
light on the inside,
coupled with the
capacity to make certain
that you still get views
to the outside of Austin.
[INAUDIBLE] party,
setting the stage,
really linking this building
and social activities to
[INAUDIBLE]
The next one is incline.
And incline is that
you're anticipating
to change your floor,
incline it, connect it
to another floor.
It's a fancy way of saying ramp.
But its literally you
are inclining surfaces.
An obvious example
is the Villa Savoye
by Le Corbusier does an incline
from one floor to the next,
or at the Guggenheim where one
incline is the museum, where
his belief is that
you'd come to the top,
and the building
would help you get
to the bottom as you [INAUDIBLE]
The [INAUDIBLE] at [INAUDIBLE],,
the ramp is quite literally
the piece that links all of it.
The auditorium comes down here,
links up to the galleries.
At the same time, another
ramp connects one part
of the city down to the park.
In our own work, we're
interested in how
ramps could be used to hybridize
seemingly dis-similar levels.
This is for the Venice
Biennale of 2004,
in which we were asked to
really look at and re-invent
the typical American
parking garage.
The challenges of
the parking garage
is that cars are combustion
engines producing toxic gas.
So what happens if you
collect your cars that didn't
have the negative consequences.
And you can interweave
the programs
of parking and
the upper program,
so that you can
potentially drive up
a skyscraper to the top.
Instead of parking
just down below,
you could drive literally
all the way up the building.
People love their cars.
Why not?
We organized the
program according
to the relationship
between parking and retail,
dictated by code with the least
parking at the highest level.
And then animate
the program so you
get a big box store
that is literally
shopping until you drop.
[INAUDIBLE] Here and then
you have a hotel or motel.
You have offices, and
then housing up above.
This produces some couplings.
This all through the
idea of the incline.
You could drive all
the way up through.
You can then have
continuous programs.
The advantage is
in a big box store,
there's no hunting for parking,
because all parking spaces
are great.
Because everyone's
next to the front door.
You park here, you
take the escalator,
you're right at the front door.
[INAUDIBLE] These are
one-point section perspectives
that reveal this.
[INAUDIBLE] hotel, you can
have the best of a motel
where you can drive
right up to your space
and have the grand atrium
of the urban hotel.
So all those combine
together, so you can literally
drive your luggage
up, go into your room,
then gather in a
collective space,
go to the other parking spaces,
and ultimately go to the pool,
and dive off of here,
which is, in fact,
the driveway continuing
up to other motel rooms.
And we acknowledge
no one would want
to drive this slow path if
they bought a condo in the sky.
So we put express paths.
[LAUGHTER]
Up above here you can
see the high-speed ramps.
For those people who
really love their car
so much, [INAUDIBLE]
front lawn, mow
their lawn, with electric
mowers, coupled with
[INAUDIBLE]
Nest is the last one, and
this is taking something
and nesting it inside of it.
This happens in various forms.
The most obvious one
is this, [INAUDIBLE]..
It's a Russian doll from Japan.
But you have the living here,
and you have the private area,
and then above we have outdoors.
It's literally
exterior-interior-more interior
space.
Another form of nesting
is volumes inside volumes.
So for Charles
[INAUDIBLE] own house,
he would use the
lightweight framing
as a way of figuring the
water and the sitting area
all with these light canons
that will animate the space,
and slide [INAUDIBLE] For
the project with Prada,
this is one where Herzog
& de Meuron introduced
a series of nested volumes,
in other words [INAUDIBLE]
the changing rooms.
They also help
stabilize the building.
One of the things I'll
note in this drawing
is that most of the
section drawings we did,
we didn't have
foundation orientation.
This one does, and
this is quite literally
the nesting of the building
inside the foundation
with dampeners and movement.
So this entire thing
can shake and move
in the earthquake zone of Japan.
So the nesting here is
literally the full building
on its foundation, as well
as the nesting [INAUDIBLE]..
A great example of
nesting by Corey
[INAUDIBLE] of SON, where
you have rare books,
packed within glass, not
only temperature control,
but then light control
[INAUDIBLE] from the outside.
[INAUDIBLE] wasn't
just looking at this.
He was also looking at what's
necessary to allow this
to be such a pristine space.
All these services are
carried below through the hole
put into the middle.
The nest is the
dominant feature.
Nesting is really great
for environment performance
if you have a very large place.
You can do a very
large solar array,
so you can deal with
the climate and control
the difference between
outside air, semi-conditioned,
and conditioned.
So your delta has
gone from here to here
but is mediated
between these zones.
It's a really effective way of
negotiating in-between spaces.
This is what we really
started with on a project
for Telluride.
It's a competition project
we won about a year
and a half ago, in which we were
given essentially the existing
shells for the transferred
warehouse stone.
They wanted to put
a contemporary art
center in there for the
community at Telluride,
but maintain the historic
walls, the historic shell.
The roof had collapsed
about 400 years ago.
And it was used for gatherings,
impromptu gatherings.
It's really great to be outdoors
in the summer, not so great
when it's snowing.
So what we felt we would need to
do is not only draw and design
through sections-- these are our
sections as they evolve through
time--
but also think about this as
a nested sectional condition
where we would
protect the integrity
not only from the outside,
but from the inside
by pulling any interior volume
inside from those walls.
So those walls were revealed,
allowing an interstitial gap
between them that
would allow us to deal
with the thermal requirements
for an exhibition
where we would have temporary
humidity control in a very
varied climate, while
at the same time
allow temperature
mediation of this stone
because the stone walls won't
allow you to control humidity
in that museum-level quality.
[INAUDIBLE] drives the
drawing of the development,
stone walls,
concrete foundation,
timber feet here inserted within
that glass interstitial layer.
All added together
to produce something
that animates the
stone, recognizes
the contemporary insertion as
distinct with all that timber,
and provides a moment of
being inside the stone
but outside the volume
that's inserted,
nested inside this section.
We then allowed this to be its
own climate-controlled zone.
So you could control this.
If this was in climate, you
could pull the skylights
across.
These are the stone ones.
And then at night to be able
to deal with dark skies,
blind them out, so there's no
light interrupting the place.
The [INAUDIBLE] is the
moment of friction,
a whole new comes about by
the ability to nest something
within it, but also allows
openings and views within it,
essentially animating through
a hole, double light spaces.
And then showing in section
the nested relationship,
so you have effectively
the stone walls
and concrete foundation here,
the timber volume inserted
into the ground, and
all the way back up
to the rooftop platform.
This then allows us to be
able to show this connection
and then anticipate the
programmatic differences that
would occur.
So in the lower area where
they would have music,
they would have [INAUDIBLE]
this at night, no problem.
You'd have concrete
here, and then the timber
folding down to produce
the acoustic isolation
necessary for performance.
Walking up the staircase,
you're literally
in between the nested
pieces, between new timber
and old stone, raked
by the light that's
coming down from up above
and pulling your eye up
to the main gallery
space that is up here.
Then this becomes a more
neutral gallery space
within the volume.
A few moments where
we would heighten
the tension between
the old and the new,
particularly here, we
literally dropped down
and have the old windows and
new windows in juxtaposition.
So you can see to the
outside, as well as
from top-down the
relationships, not
simply from a sectional diagram
that the architects did.
This is the view from the
outside, the old here,
and the new in between.
Climbing up the
stairs, this is a kind
of carving all the
way up to the rooftop.
The carving to
the rooftop allows
you to go to see
this outside area
and get that sense
of vista [INAUDIBLE]..
And then, of course, we had to
do a sectional, nested box that
would fold up, so that we
could then close it and ship it
to them, so they could
put it in the box
as an exemplification
for the competition
of the thesis of the project.
The challenge, of
course, is this
didn't fit in the overhead.
[LAUGHTER]
So we learned the problem
with even the most
well-packaged, nested box
is that the airlines take
"fragile" and they chuck
it as far as they can.
[INAUDIBLE] So the
last one is hybrids.
I'm going to go
through these just
to show what happens when you
mix these section [INAUDIBLE]..
Where there isn't a dominant
one-- so, for instance,
[INAUDIBLE]----
definitely an extrusion.
It's definitely shaped space.
It's got holes in it.
You do see a kind
of complex building
through the examination
of that section.
[INAUDIBLE] Here you got
a stacked series of shapes
with nesting on top
[INAUDIBLE] brought together.
For [? Percer ?] and
[? Demaron, ?] the shape
of the houses for these
displaced showrooms,
[INAUDIBLE],, stacked on top of
each other, and then nested,
and inserted in between.
For the art and architecture
building of [? Ludolf, ?]
it's an extraordinary
collection to get the pieces
all brought together.
We'll acknowledge the
influence of his own drawings
on our own work.
Because this drawing is very
much taken from a vantage
point that he did.
His office did that drawing that
is well known of this building.
For Grafton architects,
stack and shape,
you have a series of an
incredible number of offices
in a university building in
Milan lifted up but separate,
so that light could cake down
in into the auditorium that
was sunk below grade
where all the parking,
and then lighten [INAUDIBLE].
Really an incredibly dense
urban space to make this happen.
And the last
project I'll show is
how we've operated on
this hyrbridatzion, trying
to really transform
a building that
literally had a deficit of
section other than stack.
It was essentially a stack
modern building from the 1950s
by [? Bergens and Will. ?]
We bargained with
[? Bergens and Will ?]
to re-do the
project, essentially
almost 60 years later for
[INAUDIBLE] University.
These are the section drawings.
And you can see, with
one exception here,
they're pretty much a
stacked set of extrusions.
And the facades reveal that.
So we felt it was important
in the transformation
of this building to
introduce section, precisely
because section
[INAUDIBLE] they told
us the program the existent
building didn't have,
which is none of the researchers
in a mechanical and aerospace
building knew what
each other was doing.
They didn't have a connection
from one floor to the other.
The building didn't
allow that, so we
had to introduce a
sectional continuity.
And at those moments of
sectional continuity,
the corners here,
here, and here provide
moments of socialization
withstanding the building.
But we kept the exact,
same concrete foot
because it was not only
embedded in a campus context,
but it was one in which
we wanted to serve all the
[INAUDIBLE] that went
environmental [INAUDIBLE]..
So in the 1950s, this is
the original building.
It had been accumulated with
additional buildings around it,
so it had lost its front door.
Our role was to strip
back, tame the concrete,
extend out into social
spaces, and then
add a super highly-tuned facade
on the outside, essentially
a MAR 26 on which
was probably a MAR 1
In order to make the
highest performing building
on the campus.
This is what it was before.
You can see the vented
windows reinforcing
the stacked condition
of the design.
And our transformation
was to really
open that up,
essentially open up
through changing the way
in which you're entering.
Here you might
[INAUDIBLE] fire stairs,
[INAUDIBLE] main entrance.
And reopening that as the
new entrance on the corner.
Really light animating it
so you can see it at night.
Think of New York
where it does get cold
in the dark relatively early.
[INAUDIBLE]
Above we then cantilever
out, we extend out
a series of stacked
lounges that would have
views of the engineering quad.
We changed these lovely
double-headed corridors
because they had no
access to the daylight.
But the only way you could
treat them was literally
get rid of them.
Because removing
back to the concrete,
cutting a big hole in the floor,
so that you're carving out,
removing material, to allow this
double height space to exist.
So you can connect
the main floor
and the floor of the
engineering quad altogether
to pull everyone up
shown in this rendering
in the main floor and then the
actual construction photograph,
connecting the buildings.
One of the challenges with this
building is that from one end
to the other, it's
a soccer field.
How do you make that
walk seem delightful?
It's the connection
from one side
of the campus effectively to
the entrance at the other side.
So one is to make sure it's
full of daylight and access.
The other is to
radically change the way
we think about the shape.
We didn't have much depth to
work in because the existing
floor plan was relatively low,
but instead of just putting
in a drop ceiling, we
changed the whole idea
of what a ceiling will be
within the topography, producing
microcosms of the facade,
mini versions of the shape
of the facade on the
inside, all custom-made
so we can accommodate the
lighting, all the equipment,
and produce a kind
of extraordinary view
that you know when
you're on the main floor.
Because you see that light.
You see that ceiling that
leads from one side all
the way to the other.
At the same time
opening up holes
that would cut into the space,
allow the social activities
of the student,
essentially maker spaces,
to be revealed to the pubic
that's walking to school.
Opening up those
spaces through removal,
so that this kind of activity,
spectacular on the lower
fields, is actually
put on display.
This is the corridor
from the other side.
On the other end, this
is what it looked like.
We really wanted to be able
to change it not only in terms
of its look, but
radically change
the window-to-wall ratio.
This is absolutely essential
in northern environments
to making a
high-performance building.
This has 60% window-to-wall.
This has 36%.
But it doesn't look
like it, because we
put the windows
where you need it,
the social spaces, not
in the faculty offices,
where most of the time they're
wanting to work behind desks.
And the space of
that office will
be fully illuminated by a
relatively small aperture,
particularly one that has
white frames around it that
are bouncing light
into it, so that those
are highly-animated
interiors through daylight.
The wall is almost
two-feet thick.
We had to carve back
that wall to make sure
that daylight was getting in, to
make sure that we were hitting
the R26 performance overall.
On the inside, we
wanted to make sure
that all these new lounges that
we added are all connected.
The only way to do
that is demolition,
cutting through the existing
slab of the building,
so we can tie one lounge
to the other lounge,
allowing viewing
connection to the labs
down the way at the joint
between this L-shaped building
where people get at
impromptu gatherings,
because that's actually where
the innovation in research
tends to happen, which
is the happenstance,
the unusual
conversational trips.
You get out of your head, and
all the sudden, you see it
in a new light [INAUDIBLE].
So this becomes the
central hub for making
sure the labs working as well as
possible, and at the same time
allowing daylight to
fill in [INAUDIBLE]
or where we couldn't make sure
that we're nesting volumes in,
so that graduate students
feel like they're in a space
as opposed to behind a wall.
So there's a sense of
movement down this corridor,
which then we had to
really keep that ceiling as
clean as possible.
There's a lot of systems
we run behind that.
You saw right here.
But that detail is
the key to making sure
that piece is read as a
volume, not an embedded part
of the outer wall.
From the outside, opening
it, transforming it,
so that this building,
clad in terracotta.
Terracotta goes from being
a kind of open spacing
to a tight spacing could
indeed meet the requirements
of a hundred-year building
with a super-thick facade
while using traditional
materials in an absolutely
new way.
On the outside, to
dapple the light,
animate it, to really make
it seem like a vibrant place
for studying.
Transforming a 1950s
buildings through section
and thinking through section.
I'll conclude here by
acknowledging everyone
that worked on this project.
this was a four-year
project to do this book.
And these are all
great individuals
that worked on it in a map
in the office [INAUDIBLE]
We worked on this project
with student assistants,
with members of our staff.
Everyone who worked on the
model project gets paid.
No one worked for free.
No one worked voluntarily.
For us that's really important.
For academic work,
[INAUDIBLE] we
acknowledge not
only they worked,
but we compensate
them for their time.
Also we realized that our
kids had to do something
at these parties,
so we printed out--
that's my son-- we printed
out a series of these section
drawings.
We figured they'd
color them, and they
did but we ended up
getting only blue variant.
[INAUDIBLE]
[LAUGHTER]
You know [INAUDIBLE]
re-imagined through the eyes
of a three-year old.
But ultimately we turned
this into a Manual
of Section Coloring Book.
It is an actual coloring book.
I will say though that the
coloring book costs more
than the book.
[LAUGHTER]
And we had someone hack
our SquareSpace account,
so we can't sell
it online anymore.
So that's the closest you might
get to the Manual of Section
Coloring Book.
Thank you very much for coming.
[APPLAUSE]
