The Architecture of Persistence: Designing for Future Use 0367486385, 9780367486389

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The Architecture of Persistence

The Architecture of Persistence argues that continued human use is the ultimate measure of sustainability in architecture, and that expanding the discourse about adaptability to include continuity as well as change offers the architectural manifestation of resilience. Why do some buildings last for generations as beloved and useful places, while others do not? How can designers today create buildings that remain useful into the future? While architects and theorists have offered a wide range of ideas about building for change, this book focuses on persistent architecture: the material, spatial, and cultural processes that give rise to long-lived buildings. Organized in three parts, this book examines material longevity in the face of constant physical and cultural change, connects the dimensions of human use and contemporary program, and discusses how time informs the design process. Featuring dozens of interviews with people who design and use buildings, and a close analysis of over a hundred historic and contemporary projects, the principles of persistent architecture introduced here address urgent challenges for contemporary practice while pointing towards a more sustainable built environment in the future. The Architecture of Persistence: Designing for Future Use offers practitioners, students, and scholars a set of principles and illustrative precedents exploring architecture’s unique ability to connect an instructive past, a useful present, and an unknown future. D. Fannon is an architect and building scientist whose work integrates research and design to provide occupant comfort and wellbeing in long-lasting, low-resource consuming buildings. He is jointly appointed associate professor in the School of Architecture and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northeastern University. David earned a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a master’s from UC Berkeley, and is a registered architect in the State of New York. He is a Member of ASHRAE and a LEED Accredited Professional with B+DC specialty. M. Laboy is an assistant professor in the School of Architecture at Northeastern University, with affiliate appointments in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs. As co-founder of FieLDworkshop LLC, she leads research-based transdisciplinary approaches to heighten the connections between people, buildings, and landscapes. Her research and teaching examine how socio-ecological thinking influences architectural theory and practice to shape human experience, performance, and adaptability to dynamically changing environments. Michelle holds a Master of Architecture and a Master of Urban Planning from the University of Michigan and a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Puerto Rico, and is registered as a Professional Engineer. P. Wiederspahn is an associate professor at Northeastern University, Boston, MA, and principal of Wiederspahn Architecture, LLC. His research and pedagogy are focused on architectural design, production, performance, and systems. In particular, he has conducted research on: wood construction and its cultural impact at the detail, architectural, and urban scales; high-performance, rapid-assembly, structural/thermal component construction system as an alternative to wood framing; light-weight flat-pack, rapid-deployment, long-term-use emergency shelter systems; and furniture design. His architectural practice has received numerous design excellence awards for residential, multi-family, commercial, and interior architecture projects. Peter earned his Bachelor of Architecture from Syracuse University and his Master of Architecture from the Harvard University.

The Architecture of Persistence Designing for Future Use D. Fannon, M. Laboy and P. Wiederspahn

First published 2022 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn The right of David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Fannon, D. (David J.), author. | Laboy, M., author. | Wiederspahn, P., author. Title: The architecture of persistence: designing for future use / D. Fannon, M. Laboy, P. Wiederspahn. Description: New York : Routledge, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2020052435 (print) | LCCN 2020052436 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367486389 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367486372 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003042013 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Architecture—Human factors. | Architecture—Philosophy. Classification: LCC NA2542.4 .F36 2021 (print) | LCC NA2542.4 (ebook) | DDC 720.1—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020052435 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020052436 ISBN: 9780367486389 (hbk) ISBN: 9780367486372 (pbk) ISBN: 9781003042013 (ebk) Typeset in Corbel by codeMantra

Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction: Motive, Context, Method D. Fannon, M. Laboy, and P. Wiederspahn

vii 1

PART I

Material Ecologies M. Laboy

15

1. Essential M. Laboy

41

2. Durable D. Fannon

61

3. Simple P. Wiederspahn

69

4. Situated M. Laboy

87

PART II

Changing Uses P. Wiederspahn

113

5. Timely P. Wiederspahn

146

6. Humane M. Laboy

160

7. Complex P. Wiederspahn

180

8. Anticipatory D. Fannon

197

vi

COnTEnTS

PART III

Alternative Futures D. Fannon

213

9. Memorable D. Fannon

227

10. Evolving M. Laboy

236

11. Indeterminate D. Fannon

257

12. Timeless P. Wiederspahn

268

Conclusion: Towards an Architecture of Persistence D. Fannon, M. Laboy, and P. Wiederspahn

283

List of Interviews Index

291 295

Acknowledgments

This work is primarily the product of the 2017–19 Latrobe Prize, awarded by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) College of Fellows, and we are very grateful for this honor and support. Special thanks to Terri Stewart at AIA National for her coordination through the grant period. In addition to the financial support, our work was greatly aided by the connections and opportunities that emanate from this prize. We gratefully acknowledge Dean Elizabeth Hudson and the Northeastern University College of Arts Media and Design (CAMD) for material and moral support of our endeavors, with a special recognition of Tammi Westgate and Katherine Calzada. We also extend our sincere gratitude to Mary Hughes, the Administrative Officer of the Northeastern University School of Architecture for her constant assistance. We are deeply indebted to the numerous students who contributed to this project as research assistants. Joshua Friedman, Hannah Ostwald, Nina Shabalina, Sara Soltes, Kristen Starheim, Sarah Warren, and Dominik Wit all worked to document the case-study buildings and support the early development of the themes. Alya Abourezk, Ghalia Ammar, Alex Bondi, Emma Casavant, Josie Cerbone, Laura Gómez, Jennéa Pillay, Abby Reed, and Avery Watterworth prepared additional drawings, models, graphics, and data. Kanani`ohokulani D’Angelo, Ellen Eberhardt, and Elizabeth Tandler all assisted with transcribing interviews. Adline Rahmoune was instrumental in securing images and rights for publication. Several exhibitions related to our Latrobe Prize research helped refine and clarify the essential concepts for this book, and we gratefully acknowledge the people and organizations who supported them. The Boston Society for Architecture (BSA) Foundation sponsored Durable: Sustainable Material Ecologies, Assemblies and Cultures. Special thanks to Paige McWhorter, Pamela de Oliveira Smith, and Maia Erslev, and our co-curators at OverUnder, Hannah Cane, Chris Grimley, and Shannon McLean. Anthony Morey from the Architecture + Design Museum in Los Angeles, along with John Dale and Stephen Kendall from the Council on Open Building supported Persistent: Evolving Architecture in a Changing World. Michael Grogan at Kansas State University College of Architecture, Planning and Design, and the Flint Hills Chapter of the AIA supported Persistent traveling to the Midwest.

viii

Acknowledgments

Our heartfelt thanks and appreciation to the many colleagues and critics with whom we taught the comprehensive design studio at northeastern University School of Architecture: the crucible in which we developed and refined ideas of future-use architecture. We would like to offer special recognition to Michael Leblanc for his many years of contributing to this studio. We extend our deepest gratitude to the generations of comprehensive design studio students, who helped test the ideas of designing buildings to anticipate future change and then carried these concepts into the world through their practice. As a work of grounded theory, this book grows out of the seeds of ideas that emerged from our many delightful and thought-provoking research interviews with historians, architects, building owners, and managers from around the world who shared their time, thoughts, project histories, and documentation, we thank them all. A critical sample of their intellectual contributions is quoted in the chapters and their names are listed at the end of the book. We would like to offer special appreciation to Bob Miklos and Nick Berube from designLAB for their willingness to test the interview questions early in the process and providing valuable feedback that informed our process. We also appreciate all the firms and artists that granted us permission to use drawings and photographs to illustrate and explain these ideas. Thanks to Erin Laboy for providing editorial advice, and guidance on interview citation strategy. Additional thanks to Russell Wiederspahn and Donald Fannon for editorial advice. Thanks also to our team at Routledge, especially our Editor Krystal Racaniello and Editorial Assistant Christine Bondira for their support and answering our many questions, and to Katharine Maller who walked us through the initial stages. We are grateful to Sofia Buono for suggesting many improvements to the manuscript text and index, but of course any remaining errors are our own. Finally, a special thanks to our families for their love and support. Leah, Eleanor, Samuel, and Benjamin. Noah and Josh Michaele, Russell, David, and Elizabeth

Introduction MOTIVE, CONTEXT, METHOD D. Fannon, M. Laboy, and P. Wiederspahn

Motivation In a prominent site in the Tuscan city of Florence, between the Piazza della Signoria and the Baptistery of Saint Giovanni, stands a building with a 700-year history of changing human uses. Originally built circa Figure 0.1 Exterior view, with original arches, replica sculptures in the niches with tabernacles. Neri di Fioravante, Benci di Cione and Francesco Talenti, Simone di Francesco Talenti; Orsanmichele (Florence, Italy), 1337–1404. Photograph by Gabriele Maltinti.

2

INTRODUCTION

1290 on the site of an oratory, it burned down in 1304, and was rebuilt in 1337 as a market. Over the centuries of its existence and many physical transformations, it changed from a place of commerce to a place of devotion, and later of exhibition. The architecture was not static; each change in use added or subtracted something significant, although the changes grew smaller in scale and less frequent over time. The structure required partial reconstruction after suffering fires and floods, and demanded significant effort to preserve, but people found it worthy of their efforts and memories, and the building compensated them with ongoing usefulness. Through each major change the essence of the building remained—whether physically or emotionally, it persisted. Orto San Michele has been called a place of epiphanies and phoenixlike resurrections (Zervas 2012, 13). This building’s history raises important questions. Why do buildings like Orsanmichele remain useful for so long, while most do not? What enabled Orsanmichele to endure so many changes to its context and use? Surely it depends in part on the durability of the building’s robust materials and its prominent location, not to mention devotion to the Madonna della Grazie—whose painted image on one of its pillars has been credited with miraculous cures of the fourteenth-century plague. Perhaps it is also the pragmatic utility of its structure—hollow columns that allowed grain to travel from the storage lofts above to the open market below—or their arrangement in six structural bays connected by arches that place two massive columns at the center of the space, providing an open loggia with access from all sides, and precluding centrality or hierarchy. Most notable today is the cultural value this prominent site is imbued with due to generations of cultural and artistic production that adorned the niches in the building’s thick facade for centuries. The craft guilds that commissioned the first sculptures during the fifteenth century gave the building a new civic

Figure 0.2 Changes in use and architectural changes over seven centuries. Neri di Fioravante, Benci di Cione and Francesco Talenti, Simone di Francesco Talenti; Orsanmichele (Florence, Italy), 1337–1404. Drawing by authors.

INTRODUCTION

use that evolved into its main role as a museum today. Yet, the form of the building defied any of the traditional patterns and typologies common in buildings with similar uses. Orsanmichele’s architecture is often associated with the terms loggia and palazzo, having elements of both but not a pure example of either, drawing from these typologies, even though those uses were never intended for the building (Bartoli 2012, 37). Somehow this building, in spite of additions and transformations always maintained the sense of continuity between past and future. Recently, Orto San Michele has developed certain useful inertia. Other than structural repairs, the last changes of significance prior to the twentieth century occurred in the eighteenth century, when the well-known sculptures in the niches of its facade were displaced by replicas. Recent changes to the ornamentation have been limited to conservation and restoration efforts—moving the original sculptures from the facade to the interior where they would be protected from the environment. The relocation accompanied the latest change of use for the upper levels of the building: historically used as grain storage or archives, they are now a museum for permanent display of the sculptures. Fortunately, this permanent exhibition attracts smaller crowds than temporary exhibitions do, allowing the building to meet the Italian fire-code (Nanelli 2012, 317). The last substantive changes included a new entry and stair that was added in the 1960s (Nanelli 2012, 317), connecting to the adjacent palazzo via a bridge, and making the museum effectively autonomous from the church on the ground floor. These changes stimulate an ongoing debate among historians and conservationists about the appropriateness and merits of these efforts. Perhaps because buildings are often defined by their function, replacing the sculptures with replicas raised questions about authenticity and about the purpose of Orsanmichele since the facade no longer displays original art to the public. Some scholars suggest the result is an indoor museum focused on the statues, and a separate open-air museum focused on the building itself and its niches for sculpture (Strehlke 2012, 310). Some worry that becoming a precious historical object housing a permanent collection of decontextualized historical art means people will no longer use the building, stopping Orsanmichele’s story of dynamic evolution. However, Diane Finiello Zervas suggests that its very history offers hope, recalling that “destruction and renewal have always been core activities at Orto San Michele,” noting how changes in use prompted the structural modifications built from the ninth to the fourteenth century: “the monastery, the grain market and loggia, and the granary and oratory known as Orsanmichele—were created and adapted to serve the changing needs of the Florentine people and pilgrims (Zervas 2012, 13). The premise of this book is the idea that buildings can be built to last, serve and adapt to the changing needs of people, and thereby become an integral part of the history of a place. Today’s buildings—if built to last—will become the found environments to which future generations adapt. The process of thinking through the material strategies for long-lasting buildings, to challenge the functionalist paradigm, and imagine uncertain futures, is at the core of this book. The three parts of this book argue the merits of investing material, expertise, and time into buildings that benefit contemporary and future

3

4

INTRODUCTION

generations. The question of how to design long-lasting buildings for future use is urgent. Humanity must rapidly work to adapt the built environment to mitigate the environmental harm from its construction and operation. While architects need to focus on dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the next few decades, designing buildings that last and remain useful for generations is a critical consideration in a lower carbon future. In the context of population growth, mass migration, and urbanization, the built environment must accommodate humanity’s urgent and changing needs at an ever-larger scale. Architects must provide humane and resilient spaces to dwell, learn, work, heal, gather, celebrate, and worship. Designing buildings that can adapt to many of these uses over their life span and that people want to invest effort into for many generations, should not be revolutionary. This book challenges architectural practice to think far beyond the limited life of contemporary building. The architecture of persistence, like Orsanmichele, outlives its original purpose but remains both useful and cherished for the long term. Persistent architecture not only outlives a typical contemporary building but may well outlive the expected life of its own materials. The idea that persistence describes the continuance of an effect after the cause is removed closely aligns with buildings where the proximate purpose for their construction (functional, financial, political) may change, yet buildings endure. Designing for persistence is predicated on the idea that the site, material, form, assembly, and proportions of architecture continue to welcome human use, inspire care, and allow the possibility of change for generations. The research described in this book foregrounds consideration of the temporal dimension of architecture, and demonstrates a broad range of design strategies for useful longevity.

Context This book weaves together many threads of individual and group inquiry by the authors as practitioners, scholars, and educators about buildings that change over time by accident or design. It is the direct product of a three-year investigation about designing buildings to support human occupancy in many possible but unknown futures, supported by the Latrobe Prize from the AIA College of Fellows. The roots of that research lie in the Comprehensive Design Studio and its concurrent and associated course Integrated Building Systems at northeastern University, where over many years the authors developed a pedagogy using ideas of resilience and future change to help students learn the inherent logics of building systems, their architectural arrangement, and the resulting cultural value over the long term. The resulting projects integrate architectonic, environmental, and structural systems into high-performing, long-lasting buildings that adapt to unknown future environmental, spatial, and human conditions. While the speculative nature of student work and the descriptive and didactic examples in class were suggestive, neither was systematic nor formally theorized. This model of teaching studio—intertwining the students’ design processes with technical understanding and creativity—demonstrated that remarkable buildings can emerge from a design process that transcends use and time. Finding evidence of that creative potential in architectural practice motivated this research.

INTRODUCTION

5

Method 1 The ideas in this book emerged from an empirical process of qualitative research using Grounded Theory methods. Grounded Theory is sometimes called a “bottom up” method because it starts with observation and experience of the world—in this case, the built environment— seeking patterns and themes which ultimately coalesce into a coherent theory of the world (Bollo and Collins 2017). As noted, years of background literature and teaching demonstrated that physical durability and spatial arrangement and metrics, while necessary, were not themselves sufficient to explain building longevity. In that sense, persistent architecture—like architecture generally— defies quantitative analysis. Furthermore, the attributes that allow (or cause) buildings to endure are inherently project-specific and contextdependent cases of broader general phenomena. These types of contingent, complex, multivariate problems can only be understood through observation and analysis of projects, practices, and people, operating in different contexts through qualitative research. Critically, Grounded Theory is a systematic method of analysis that makes research using qualitative data rigorous and valid.

1 For an academic treatment of the selection and implementation of research methods used in this project, please see Fannon, David. and Michelle Laboy. “Methods of Knowing: Grounded Theory in the Study of FutureUse Architecture.” In Future Praxis: Applied Research as a Bridge between Theory and Practice: Proceedings of the 2019 ARCC International Conference. Toronto: Ryerson University, 2019, from which some words and ideas of this chapter are extracted, and for which the authors retain rights to publish here.

Interviews

DIDACTIC

Although a study about buildings, the primary source of data for this project comes from structured interviews with architects, clients and managers of buildings, especially of long-lasting buildings. Interviews

EXPOSITORY

Curation

SYNTHETIC

ILLUSTRATIVE PRECEDENTS

Pedagogy

OF

ANALYTICAL EXPLORATORY

Figure 0.3 Simplified, linear concept diagram of the research process, grounded in multiple data sources (bottom), which are synthesized and analyzed to identify the attributes, which are in turn explained and ultimately disseminated (top). The words on the right characterize the dominant mode of enquiry. Drawing by authors.

Educational Modules

Scholarship

Exhibitions

THEORY PERSISTENCE

Grounded Theory Method

Structured Interviews

PEOPLE

Analytical Drawings

Primary Documents

PROJECTS

Quantitative Data

6

Table 0.1 Questions used in Structured Interviews. Table by authors

2 Thanks to nan Regina, Director of the Office of Human Subject Research Protection at northeastern University, who suggested this analogy to explain that this project was not human subjects research because buildings rather than people were the subject of the study. The people were interviewed in their professional rather than personal capacity.

INTRODUCTION

Structured Interview Questions When and Where

Has your work considered change over time? Can you suggest specific projects should we talk about?

Why

Are the buildings you’ve worked on—whether new, renovated, or buildings in general—worth keeping?

How

Does the design process change when considering longterm future change?

What

Design strategies and project attributes enable longterm future change, and which preclude or challenge it?

Who

Prompts considerations of future change, who benefits, and who pays?

Would

You be willing to share documentation with us to support our research? Is it okay if we contact you with any follow up questions?

bring out the context and motivations behind buildings and practices, capturing things not accessible by studying the work alone. Interviews also trace the intersection of design theories with the complexities of practice, and outline the role of clients, users, and other stakeholders in future adaptability. Most importantly, interviews can tap the elusive wealth of experience, the sum of accumulated lessons from studying old buildings, participating in evolving projects, and correcting occasional failures. In some ways, this research resembles an oral history of persistent buildings: gathering information not published in books or embodied in physical artifacts, but residing only in human memories, and accessible only by asking and listening.2 The structured aspect of the interviews provides the consistency and rigor needed for systematic analysis, which distinguishes them from merely thoughtful but wandering conversations. The structure involved asking each subject identical and pre-planned questions (Table 0.1), and limiting what and how much the interviewers said to avoid leading the subject to preordained responses that simply reinforce the interviewer’s existing views. The questions provide a common starting point from which each interview naturally takes its own course and prompts varied follow-up questions. Good questions must balance the specificity needed to enable structured analysis by eliciting responses about a consistent set of issues while remaining open to prompt unexpected insights. Of course, all interviews depend on the selection of subjects, and here the team cast a broad net, inviting architects, engineers, developers, financiers, lawyers, contractors, construction managers, property owners, facilities managers, and researchers based on their connection to specific buildings or the topic generally. A comprehensive list of interviews, and an alphabetical list of interview subjects may be found in the appendices. To capture them as data, interviews were recorded, and the audio recordings transcribed to text for subsequent analysis through a process known as coding. A hallmark of grounded theory, the coding process consists of close and careful reading of transcribed texts, during which the researchers mark or “tag” sections of text with additional information, for example, connecting them to specific topics or themes,

INTRODUCTION

or across texts. Once texts are embellished in this way, researchers can aggregate and synthesize the tags and notes to interpret and understand the overarching ideas emerging from the full corpus of texts. As a qualitative method, grounded theory embraces the iterative evolution of the codes and coding process as researchers work through the project. In this case, the team established some codes based on prior literature review, but many emerged directly from the reading and subsequent discussion. With multiple researchers and multiple interviews, maintaining a limited code list and applying it consistently demanded significant discipline. If coding itself is difficult, the synthesis and consolidation of ideas are even more challenging, particularly with a team of three researchers each approaching the problem with a unique perspective and expertise. Analytical Drawings While the interviews capture the human perspective and history, the research also includes carefully studying buildings themselves to understand physical and non-physical attributes, which requires identifying buildings to study! Fortunately, as with the interviews, grounded theory embraces iterative selection of case studies, precluding the need to identify a set of perfect case study buildings to study at the inception of the project, or indeed, the idea that such a sample could exist. It is important to distinguish case study buildings—selected for the analysis that shaped the theory of persistent architecture—from precedent buildings chosen to illustrate, explain, or exemplify those set of ideas, for example, in this book. A list of possible case study buildings also emerged from the teaching experience and expanded thanks to suggestions during the interviews, yielding the projects that shaped the ideas and examples in this book. In addition to the design and construction data represented through drawings, quantitative metrics of energy, economic and environmental performance, as well as primary sources like specifications fleshed out the case study buildings. In a deliberate analogy to the process of coding transcripts from consistently structured interviews, the analysis of buildings proceeded by graphically coding information on a consistent body of drawings. The production of drawings began by establishing a standard format for levels of detail, layer naming, and other properties, based on initial hunches about the questions this graphic dataset might help answer, and proceeded to produce a graphically consistent set of plans, sections, and elevations for each building. This body of drawings serves as a foundation for the subsequent analysis by layering and removing information to interpret features of these buildings, such as arrangement of spaces and structural patterns. The drawings also generate additional data, such as aspect ratios, dimensions, and window-to-wall ratios that may be compared graphically or numerically. Finally, comparisons made across and among buildings through grouping, arrangement, and contrast revealed attributes, patterns, and common organizational strategies of the case studies. To that end, a series of comparative graphic matrices arranged the individual buildings based on attributes, so that the arrangement and relative position of

7

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INTRODUCTION

drawings carries meaning and reveals trends. Each of the three parts of the book presents an example of one such thematic matrix. Initial sorting by obvious attributes—such as floor area or structural material— sometimes revealed unexpected affinities, and prompted more sophisticated organizations, such as relating the distance between vertical circulation and the facade to the shape of the building. This comparative graphic approach resembles the text-based interpretation and theory-building, and the processes reciprocally informed the other. The graphic analysis sometimes highlighted the absence of relationships, as with exceptional buildings that persist for their economic or cultural value regardless or in spite of their physical form. Finally, and perhaps most gratifyingly, the emergent themes and attributes here do not mirror, and in some cases frankly contradict, the researchers’ initial speculations on this topic. The fundamental test of a good research method lies in its ability to produce new knowledge, and while conducting interviews and making analytical drawings has the appearance and form of research, the rigorous structure of grounded theory means this project has the substance of research, rather than simply reflecting the researchers’ preconceived notions.

Organization of the Book This book is organized into three primary parts framed around different aspects of the temporal dimension in architecture and identified with Roman Numerals I, II, III. Each section begins with an extended essay introducing the historical and theoretical discourse that situates the constituent chapters contained in that section. The first part, Material Ecologies, explores the relationship between buildings, materials, and sites that enable and give rise to long-lasting architecture. The second part, Changing Uses, addresses connections between people and buildings, to shelter human activities. The third part, Alternate Futures, explores the place of the future, and the response to the inherent uncertainty of building. In separating the physical, the useful, and the poetic elements of persistent architecture, these parts echo—unintentionally, if perhaps inevitably—the Vitruvian triad of firmitas, utilitas, venustas, and the earliest written traditions of Western architecture. Certainly, this work is the product of scholars rooted in and drawing upon the intellectual discourse, built work, and professional practices of that tradition. It is important to acknowledge the prevalence of projects located in North America, Europe, and Japan, and the scarcity of projects from the Southern Hemisphere. The regional clustering is particularly relevant to the full-spread matrix diagram found in each part. Developed from the analytical drawings prepared during the research process, the three matrices enable not only the study of individual buildings and comparisons among them but also reveal patterns or trends across the full set of case studies, and perhaps the limits of this set. Each of the three primary parts are further divided into four thematically linked and sequentially arranged chapters labeled with Arabic numerals 1 through 12. The twelve numbered chapters each introduce and describe one attribute of the architecture of persistence. These attributes emerged from and evolved through the grounded theory

INTRODUCTION

9

1 ESSENTIAL

12

S GIE LO O EC

2

TIMELESS

ERNATE FUTU ALT RE S

MA TE RI AL DURABLE

11

3

INDETERMINATE

SIMPLE

10

4

EVOLVING

SITUATED

9

5

MEMORABLE

TIMELY

8

6

ANTICIPATORY

HUMANE

7 COMPLEX

C H A NGIN G

E US

S

Figure 0.4 Diagram of the book structure, showing the three main sections, the chapters in a clockwise sequence beginning at the top, and the connections of paired chapters across the book. Drawing by authors.

research process as traits commonly (though by no means universally, or, for that matter exclusively) found in the case studies of persistent architecture. Where the introductory essays in each part draw primarily from the written discourse of architecture and are illustrated with examples as needed, the twelve chapters focus on individual attributes and draw more heavily on the interviews and building analysis. In addition to the sequence of connected ideas in each section and introduced in the initial essay, ideas also link across sections (Figure 0.4). While relevant cross-references appear throughout the text as needed, an additional set of strong structural connections bind specific pairs of attributes. Some of these sibling chapters (and the underlying attributes) stem from seeming contradictions, as with Timely and Timeless or Simple and Complex. In the same vein, the attributes Anticipatory and

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Indeterminate describe nearly opposite approaches to planning for the future. As with human siblings, the antithetical framing reveals each while also pointing to a greater synthetic truth. Other pairs illustrate architecture’s reciprocal relationship between buildings and people. Perhaps most obviously—and with apologies to Louis Kahn—Essential considers what a brick wants, while Humane considers what people want from persistent architecture. Similarly, Durable traces the material integrity buildings need to physically endure, while Memorable emphasizes the emotional and cultural integrity that prompts people to keep them. Other pairs are questions of degree, for example, the attribute and chapter Situated speaks to grounding buildings in the enduring aspects of their place, while its sibling Evolving describes slow or sometimes imperceptible changes occurring over generations. In all these cases, the same author wrote both chapters as a pair, resulting in a secondary structure of connections that weaves throughout the work helping overcome the decomposition inherent to an otherwise linear and analytical method. Finally, the conclusion identifies additional overlaps and contrasts between ideas, integrates the various threads, and frames the new possibilities that emerge for an architecture of persistence.

References Bartoli, Maria Teresa. 2012. “Designing Orsanmichele: The Rediscovered Rule.” In Orsanmichele and the History and Preservation of the Civic Monument, edited by Carl Brandon. Strehlke: 33–52. Studies in the History of Art; 76. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art. Bollo, Christina, and Tom Collins. 2017. “The Power of Words: Grounded Theory Research Methods in Architecture & Design.” In Architecture of Complexity: Design, Systems, Society and Environment: Journal of Proceedings: 87–94. University of Utah: Architectural Research Centers Consortium. Nanelli, Francesca. 2012. “Orsanmichele: Some Recent History.” In Orsanmichele and the History and Preservation of the Civic Monument, edited by Carl Brandon. Strehlke: 315–38. Studies in the History of Art; 76. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art. Strehlke, Carl Brandon., ed. 2012. Orsanmichele and the History and Preservation of the Civic Monument. Studies in the History of Art; 76. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art. Zervas, Diane Finiello. 2012. “‘Degno Templo e Tabernacol Santo’: Remembering and Renewing Orsanmichele.” Studies in the History of Art 76: 7–20.

STRUCTURAL MATERIAL

STEEL

CONCRETE

MASONRY

WOOD

FEET 10,000 FLOOR AREA: SQUARE SQUARE METERS 1,000

20,000 2,000

Figure I.0 Precedent Matrix: Structural Material and Building Size. This image shows 43 case study buildings on a graph, all plans at the same scale, and all oriented to true north. The vertical axis tracks the primary structural material from wood at the bottom to brick masonry, then concrete, and steel at the top. The horizontal axis measures the total area of the building footprint (floor plate) from the smallest at the left to the largest at the right. Drawing by authors.

30,000 3,000

40,000 4,000

80,000 8,000

Part I

Material Ecologies M. Laboy

The Poetics of Material Decay Architecture is defined by many intangibles: space, light, memories; but mostly, change in architecture involves a physical change to its materiality. From the moment a raw material is extracted from the earth, through the transformation of resources into building products, starts a process of environmental deterioration and human-led modification. The eventual failure of some or all components leads to the removal, replacement, reuse, and end-of-life deconstruction. This chapter examines the history of theories and practices that take a critical approach to material change in architecture, and explores the meaning of material persistence as the foundation of persistent architecture. Tracing what changes in architecture, both as a result of environmental exposure and human acts, helps understand the more constant and unchanging, that which can or should be designed to remain throughout the life of a long-lasting building. Architects seldomly think of the life of the building after design—somewhat considering it during construction, hardly at all post-occupancy, and much less at the end of its life. By engaging in a nuanced examination of material change in architecture, this chapter argues the ecological basis and motivations for an architecture of persistence, and theorizes material approaches that extend the life of the most resource-intensive and place-specific elements of construction. Architectural theory and history are full of conflicting views about architecture as both permanent and transient, monumental and ephemeral. On one hand, as historian Daniel Abramson shared during an interview with the authors, embracing continuous change in architecture runs somewhat counter to fundamental assumptions about architecture’s aesthetic and psychological role as a stable object providing permanent identity (D. Abramson 2018). Edward Ford acknowledges this “ideological baggage” often makes us “uncomfortable with the idea of transience and impermanence in thinking of the institution and the monument” (Ford 1997, 5). On the other hand, the evidence for Ford’s argument for a theory of impermanence is the many historically significant structures still perceived to be long-lasting and monumental despite alterations and near-full replacements, which were suppressed from collective memory to preserve their image rather than their materiality (3).

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The notion of impermanence in architecture is as much rooted in the material reality of buildings, as it is connected to the emotional power and creative potential of history and memory. In fact, the decaying edifice, real or imaginary, played an essential role in the study and representation of architectural history and in the formulation of new theories and methods. The artist recognized as archaeologist Giovanni Battista Piranesi represented the architectural ruin as a history partly erased, which has to be examined closely in order to be reconstructed. Piranesi’s quote from 1743: “Speaking ruins have filled my spirit with images that accurate drawings could never have succeeded in conveying” is believed to credit their physical incompleteness with stimulating the imagination of the architect to enter into the surviving work and exercise their creativity (Translation quoted in Pinto 2013, 231; from Wilton-Ely 1978, 45). Pinto connects the eighteenth-century English idea of empiricism—the importance of evidence—with the idea of the imaginary—the role of myth and fantasy in recovering the past and introducing subjectivity (45). This is at the core of what Stan Allen called a paradox: while claiming to record evidence in Rome’s Campo Marzio, Piranesi in fact achieves what no single author has achieved, a “paradigmatic formal method” to author the city where “time is represented by the accumulation of material and its decay and transformation” (Allen 1989, 76–77). This creative potential serves as a premise for a theory of persistence in architecture. The idea that some materials are erased over time in order to reveal more enduring elements is powerful, especially when what remains becomes an invitation to reconstruct the past Figure I.1 Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Ichnographia of the Campus Martius of the Ancient City. 1757. Image courtesy of the Yale University Art Gallery.

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and imagine better versions of what architecture could have been. A critical awareness of material change in design can create a framework for future appropriation, reinterpretation, and reinvention, giving architecture the potential to fulfill its original promise. Like Stan Allen’s idea for the city, time in the landscape is also represented by material accumulation and decay. The architectural ruin in a natural environment has a long tradition in landscape painting, mediating the sublimity of the natural landscape and the smallness of human figures to create narratives about the power of nature, the passage of time, and the enduring aspects of everyday life. The caprice or capriccio, a genre of dreamlike ruin painting, usually depicts a change in the material and human use of buildings as signs of both persistence and decay of architecture. “The crumbling, though sacred edifice, populated not by worshipers, but by itinerants who display drudgery or everyday existence along its walls…” become building blocks, a fabrique that “makes a landscape agreeable to look at and be in, the most basic definition of the picturesque… the representation of ruins to include the spectator’s own sense of drama” (Augustyn 2000, 335–41). Analyzing the work of Denis Diderot in Salon de 1767, the ruin is revealed to engage two drivers of human imagination—memory as the “vehicle for daydream” of the creative amateur, and fear of a “universe in ruins” (442–44). The nostalgia and fear inspired by material decay are recurrent elements in the architectural imagination, but these emotions alone cannot advance the contemporary practice of designing for persistence without proactive approaches to material change. Material decay fuels the work of artists and architects because it imbues buildings with the passage of time. A pragmatic approach to an architecture of persistence recognizes the emotional and creative power of allowing traces of time to be registered in buildings while negotiating the inherent risks, technical dimensions, and performance criteria for contemporary material culture. This is not an argument for an uncritical acceptance of impermanence, nor an appeal for traditional but naïve notions of permanence. This is an argument for embracing the role of materiality in the cultural persistence of buildings, to guard against unnecessarily accelerating the path to decay or demolition long before a building’s material life span. This section of the book examines the material dimensions of durability, stability, resourcefulness, openendedness, and place specificity, in order to extend the life of the building beyond expected moments of temporary obsolescence.

Ecological Metaphors and Realities of Long-Life Buildings Buildings emerge from and contribute to a constantly evolving global ecosystem, regardless of how long they last or what impact they have on a specific ecosystem. The last 50 years can be described as a progression towards an ecological moment in architecture, where architectural theory shifted from ideas of continuity and permanence to ideas of temporal cycles and dynamic equilibria. Ecology is a field that studies the relationships between living organisms—including people—and their environment. The influence of ecology in design practice prompted a shift from thinking of buildings as static objects to understanding them

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Figure I.2 Hubert Robert. The Return of the Cattle. Oil on Canvas. ca. 1773–75. Pendant to The Portico of a Country Mansion (35.40.2). Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Bequest of Lucy Work Hewitt, 1934.

as dynamic configurations of matter, energy, and populations in constant flux. Ecological theories in design often represent buildings either as organisms (living things in relationship to environments) or as habitats (environments for species, including people). Architectural theory often adopts metaphors from ecology that relate to the environment of a species: cradles, graves, affordances, and niches (O’Donnell 2015; Laboy 2017). An ecological paradigm means seeing the context of the building as a dynamic system, where buildings can settle into many different conditions, rather than a fixed situation or a single equilibrium.

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The concept of dynamic equilibrium emerged in ecology to describe periods of gradual and rapid change in ecosystems (Folke 2006), related to the flows of material and energy in systems. This ecological metaphor in architecture expects buildings to exist in multiple states throughout their life, resulting in constant material and energy flows triggered by social and environmental forces that weather, destroy, strengthen, and rebuild materials. The focus of ecological design on regeneration and restoration of lost or damaged ecosystems connects architecture with principles and theories emerging from landscape theory, to conceive of buildings and their sites as productive parts of multi-scalar systems (Laboy 2016, 83). Recent calls from professional practice to integrate principles of regenerative design in architecture (Busby, Richter, and Driedger 2011) borrow from John Tillman Lyle’s theory, which sought to achieve a sustainable and dynamic balance with ecosystems (Lyle 1994). Lyle used ecosystem theory and biological processes as the model for design; most notably “seeking optimum levels for multiple functions, not the maximum or minimum level for any one” (Lyle 1994, 40–42)— an idea analogous to designing architecture for future-uses. Steward Brand’s (1995) seminal book How Buildings Learn (a title that assigns buildings human intelligence) used O’Neill’s Hierarchical Concept of Ecosystems (O’Neill 1986) as a metaphor for how the material systems in buildings change over time. Categorizing components based on different rates of change, what Brand called Shearing Layers of Change: Site, Structure, Skin, Services, Space Plan, Stuff—was an adaptation of Frank Duffy’s Shell, Services, Scenery, and Set (Brand 1995,

Figure I.3 Shearing Layers of Change with added arrows and the additional layer of Surroundings, to illustrate the shearing dynamism of the site’s constantly changing conditions. Drawing by authors, adapted from Stewart Brand and Frank Duffy.

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12–13). In this ecological metaphor, the slowest-changing components, such as structure, are analogous to the redwood trees in a forest that not only are “in charge” but also mostly oblivious to but gradually integrating the rapid changing components—especially at times of major changes—most influenced by them: “the speedy components propose, and the slow dispose” (17). In Brand and Duffy’s theory, the site is a static element and structure is the next most resistant to change. The structure does tend to last longest—using more robust materials and static patterns that are often protected by the enclosure and other interior systems. But according to George Gard, one of the team members interviewed by the authors at Bruner/Cott Architects in Cambridge, “part of what is creating the shearing above is that our sites are always changing” (Gard 2017). Brand referred to the fact that the siting (location) of a building rarely changes. But the site of a building is a dynamic environment influenced by technological, infrastructural, social, political, and economic conditions that are likely to change at different intervals during the life of a building. Figure I.3 shows a proposed revision of the Shearing Layers diagram, a dynamic reading of the site as infrastructure (ground), and the changing environmental and cultural conditions (atmospheres). This proposes a seventh S, surroundings which is inclusive of and expands Brand’s unofficial seventh S: “human Souls, the servants to our stuff” (17). The changing social context of a site deeply influences material change in architecture. Some aspects of a building’s surroundings are fairly permanent (sun path, soil type, etc.) Others change in the generational time scales associated with the living systems it sustains (climate, land use, access, users, tree canopy), and others much more rapidly (seasonal weather, water levels, etc.) Architects often expect and plan for the faster rhythms of change, but even when not planned for, buildings will absorb many of these medium- to slow-changing and unanticipated conditions, even if poorly. Architecture has also been the subject of speculations on biomimicry, a theory defined as “Nature as Model, Nature as Measure, Nature as Mentor” which explores natural processes such as photosynthesis and natural selection to design echo-inventions that copy the “design and manufacturing processes to solve our own problems” (Benyus 2002, 2). These design paradigms expand into the hypernatural, a level beyond the natural, “working directly with natural forces and processes—rather than against them—in order to amplify, extend, or exceed natural capacities… to counteract the increasing fragility and degradation of the natural environment” (Brownell et al. 2015, 19). Brownell et al. point out the differences between biomimicry as a representational approach and bioengineering or geo-design, which engage directly with organisms and natural processes towards a human-initiated purpose, but critiques the duality of these paradigms for limiting design aspirations (9). These ideas aspire to make architectural materiality responsive, intelligent, regenerative. What they have in common is a desire to think of buildings as part of and engaged with natural processes, and the need to put human ingenuity towards making that engagement productive and constructive, rather than destructive. In these frameworks, long-lasting buildings have the potential to not only depend on the

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natural environment as a source of materials but also contribute to the persistence of relationships in a particular place and ecosystem, especially an urban ecosystem. Some natural metaphors in architectural theory are not derived from living systems, but from the underlying mineral systems that structure and nurture life on Earth. The theory of metamorphosis defines the origins of the architecture at a geological scale, such as the physical transformation of natural materials into buildings, and the evolution and transformation of their construction logics into monumental forms and styles (Moravánszky 2017, 193). The idea that the natural logic of construction emerges from the properties of materials suggests that any deviation from that must reveal challenges, requiring intention and rationalization of a process of technological innovation. This process of material transformation is intellectual—not necessarily in a way that reveals the logic of what it is made of, but the logic of how culture got there…an aesthetic that echoes, or transfers… “a phenomenon which is familiar in the history of architecture and design: the transfer of forms that were originally connected with the way in which one material was processed to other materials” (Moravánszky 2017, 15). The theory of metamorphosis originates in the seminal work of Gottfried Semper’s Four Elements of Architecture. According to Moravánszky, metamorphosis is translated from stoffwechsel (meaning metabolism, material transformation) and refers to the creative process of making appropriate use of materials: each material giving way to technical forms which then become artistic motifs, and influence new forms of representation (187). While written in the nineteenth century, Semper’s theory continues to have relevance today, especially the preoccupation with continuity in change, which “makes it possible to knit them into the fabric of the computer age” (Moravánszky 2017, 209). Quoting Andrea Deplazes, who remarked on the metamorphosis of timber from tectonics to stereotomy: The issue is change and continuity, the constant renewal of form which reflects the story of its own creation. The freedom is not unlimited, the new materials and objects are integrated in a prestructured system which is adequately elastic and which promotes rather than restricts reinvention. (Deplazes 2001; in Moravánszky 2017, 213) Wherever theories remained representational, the result likely is a superficial language with little impact on the actual adaptability of buildings. The Metabolist movement of the 1960s was a metaphor of vitality and transformability translated into modular forms reminiscent of building blocks of living cells. The original manifesto by Kisho Kurokawa, Fumihiko Maki, and others, used the English word for Semper’s theory of stoffwechsel, which is why Semper’s is translated as “theory of material change” (Moravánszky 2017, 202). This analogy between built and natural environments is a cautionary tale for architects interested in theorizing change in architecture: when the metaphor does not translate into performance over time, the language of the architecture is more likely to remain a static representation of dynamic processes, rather than a realization of the true persistence of ecosystems.

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Theories of change in architecture draw heavily from Darwinian theories of the evolution of species, a slow process that happens over generations. When talking about evolutionary design—the idea that design should be variance-driven rather than equilibrium-based—Steward Brand proposed: “A building is something you start. A building is not something you finish” (Brand 1995, 188). William McDonough sees what has happened to the natural and built environment as a deevolution—"simplification on a mass scale… a tidal of sameness spreading from sea to sea…” against which we must advance the principle of respecting not only biodiversity but diversity of place and culture (McDonough 2002, 119). Diversity recognizes that ecosystems depend on relationships, “the uses and exchanges of materials and energy in a given place…” and that means that human systems must “work toward a rich connection with place, and not simply with surrounding ecosystems” (McDonough 2002, 121–22). It also means recognizing the diversity of needs and desires of people, by designing buildings that “can be adapted to different uses over many generations of use, instead of built for one specific purpose” (McDonough 2002, 139). McDonough refers to the enduring advantages of the lofts in TriBeCa and SoHo designed with “high ceilings and large, high windows that let in daylight, thick walls that balance daytime heat with nighttime coolness” that today would be considered inefficient but are both appealing and endlessly useful (139)—a paradigm for architecture that shifts form follows function to form follows evolution (141). Diversity is a characteristic of resilient social and ecological systems. The recent discourse on engineering resilience focuses on return to function (Tierney and Bruneau 2007)—mostly in the face of disaster; while the adaptive model of socio-ecological resilience engages the complexity of human beings using buildings differently and, thus, changing them over time as cultural ideas, physical artifacts, and environments (Laboy and Fannon 2016). In other words, materials will persist when people can get what they need from the space because people will care for them even as they disrupt their patterns or change their function. “People want diversity because it brings them pleasure and delight.” (McDonough 2002, 144) Persistence negotiates the evolutionary and functional paradigm by focusing on the enduring qualities of material systems to remain useful and delightful but not functionally specific.

End of Life in Architecture Codes use historic data to guide the design process, but this approach may limit the conditions in which materials will perform well in the future. Optimizing material capacities to conditions at the time of their design may be economical but can accelerate the end of life of a building. This is why resilience can be in conflict with sustainability. The focus on short-term mitigation may inadvertently overlook the very longterm waste created when buildings face premature failure because of a lack of abundance and diversity. This balance is not easy: there are urgent problems that need to be solved now, e.g. resource consumption and carbon emissions need to be minimized rapidly. But in buildings those goals cannot be shortsighted, or society will find itself again in a new cycle of demolition, resource extraction, and reconstruction that can undo all the progress made before. Artificial intelligence is

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seen as a potential path to address these uncertainties and build on the capacity of the social actors that maintain and transform buildings over time (Keenan 2014). This idea imbues architecture with the adaptive qualities and resourcefulness of a human brain. Materials that respond to stimuli, components that track their maintenance and replacement needs, skins that can transform as the climate changes, could very well be part of the solution in the future. But even intelligence and knowledge evolves, which means that whatever materials constitute or govern those systems and algorithms will also deteriorate, may be subject to obsolescence and to cultural shifts that may result in their premature replacement. This is why any theory of material change in architecture needs to engage with the end of life question. Building materials are entangled in a global web of industrial ecology, processes of resource extraction, fabrication, construction, deconstruction, and disposal, impacting global and local environments, economies, and cultures. Industrial ecology, which also relies on metaphors to analyze impacts and speculate alternative models, provides tools to understand the impacts of specific buildings, products, or even individual human decisions (Eckelman and Laboy 2020). There is an urgent need to reduce the environmental impacts of construction and operation of buildings. The ecological argument for long-lasting buildings is to reduce the number of resources used, and in turn reduce per capita impacts, by reducing how many buildings are built to serve the needs of each human generation. Nearly 50 years after RIBA President Alexander John (“Alex”) Gordon’s challenge to design buildings that have long life, loose fit, low energy (Gordon 1972), the idea of low energy needs to be reconsidered in light of the relationship between material reuse and carbon. That is, the advantage of long life, loose-fit buildings can be measured in terms of low embodied energy (Lifschutz 2017, 8). This idea, translated as embodied carbon, first emerged in a 1973 ecosystems theory article, borrowing concepts from economics to analyze input-output processes. Bruce Hannon proposed that “if carbon flows (or any element) are proportional to the direct energy flows then a component’s direct and indirect connection to the rest of the ecosystem can be expressed in terms of carbon flows” (Hannon 1973, 545). Embodied energy describes the building as a component of a global ecosystem that requires energy inputs and outputs, measured in equivalent carbon used to extract, refine, fabricate, assemble, and later discard or recycle materials. Therefore, that energy is embodied in the completed structure from the day it opens, before any energy is used on operations like heating, cooling, lighting, equipment, and so forth. Embodied energy is increasingly the argument for preservation, and in turn, future preservation becomes the impetus for embodying more energy into buildings. As Tod Williams shared in conversation with the authors, “if a building is built well, it [took] a certain amount of energy, to the extent we possibly can, we should try to keep it.” Of course, a well-built building, as opposed to an ephemeral one, will require considerably more energy to construct, and so it must be able to endure and worthy of being kept to justify that initial investment. Embodied energy informs materials selections, through

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life-cycle accounting of the equivalent carbon emissions resulting from the production, assembly, and end-of-life processing of building materials. The embodied energy in buildings makes an ecological argument about recycling in that the same material is being used multiple times for different uses during its life. The difference is that recycling uproots material to be reintroduced elsewhere, whereas design for persistence seeks to preserve a building’s material in situ. A strong argument for producing longlived buildings is so we can benefit from the embodied energy of a building’s material and constructional effort over a much longer period of time. When deciding whether to keep a building or build a new one, embodied energy is an important metric. During an interview with the authors at the Portland office of ZGF Architects, Baha Sadreddin, a highperformance specialist who creates life-cycle tools for decision-making during early design, discussed the complicated relationship between durability and embodied carbon in the built environment: demolition and recycling means processing energy. Concrete could last for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. A major [carbon] impact of new construction comes from concrete. And within concrete, probably eighty to ninety percent of the impact comes from Portland cement. (Sadreddin 2019) While the industry searches for ways to reduce the environmental impact of materials and increase their durability, what is already built represents carbon emissions already expended in the environment, and yet not all of it is feasible to reuse. If a material makes the building last, the embodied carbon benefits of adaptively reusing the building can be significant. Comparing the life cycle impacts of a new high-performing building to the material modifications necessary to keep the existing one can be enlightening. During the interview with the team from Bruner/ Cott Architects, the authors learned that the Life Cycle analysis for the renovation of an old brick masonry industrial building for the expansion of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA) in North Adams, Massachusetts revealed that it would take more carbon to take the building down than what it took to transform it into the museum, even before accounting for what it would have taken to build a new building (Gard 2017). But as discussed in more depth in Chapter 5 Timely, the building was saved for many other reasons, connections to geography and human histories that made it worthy of reuse. Developing better building materials is important, but making buildings worth keeping is imperative. There are other important ways to measure the life cycle impacts of buildings: whether building materials make people sick or leave toxins in ecosystems. The designation of a Living Building has become the highest metric of sustainability in architecture in the United States. The system of criteria for the Living Building Challenge (LBC) certification includes a list of materials that cannot be used in buildings, whether because they pollute the environment, bio-accumulate up the food chain, or harm construction and factory workers (International Living Future Institute 2016). LBC requires design narratives that explain how buildings may change over time (adaptable reuse) and deconstruction—how its

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Figure I.4 Interior lobby space, exposed bolted connections in timber structure. Bruner/Cott Architects, RW Kern Center in Hampshire College (Amherst, Massachusetts), 2016. Photograph by © Robert Benson Photography, courtesy of Bruner/Cott Architects.

material may be used at the end of the building’s life, in order to “conserve natural resources and to find ways to integrate waste back into either an industrial loop or natural nutrient loop” (International Living Future Institute 2014). The architects Bruner/Cott explained how writing this narrative and various program test fits for the recently Living Building certified RW Kern Center in Hampshire College, Massachusetts (2018) that informed not only the space configuration and selection of materials, such as timber for the structure and cellulose for insulation but also the detailing of bolted connections and simplicity of assembly to facilitate reuse and reduce the work of separation and sorting at disassembly (Forney 2017). There is an inherent risk in building, especially, with new materials of unknown impact on human health and ecosystems. An Architecture of Persistence must focus not only on the ability of a building to last or be adapted to new uses but most importantly on the quality of human life and use that such buildings sustain.

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The concept of Circular Tectonics suggests that life cycle considerations in architecture are fundamentally a question about how we build, associating theories and methodologies linked to tectonics (e.g. materiality, joinery, detailing, contextual positioning, spatial construction) with the idea of ‘circularity’ (e.g. ecology, re-use, re-cycle, and cradle-to-cradle) (Hvejsel and Beim 2019, 52). Hvejsel and Beim make a compelling case for why the emphasis of the circular economy movement on the ‘positive society-wide benefits’ resonates with the role of architecture in society, and caution of the risk that any focus that prioritizes cost may suppress the qualitative benefits of social and cultural value (52–54). An Architecture of Persistence makes that fundamentally ecological link, emphasizing the material decisions that create lasting social and cultural value to ensure that people want to keep buildings for a long time, are able to reuse and repair, and ultimately remanufacture.

Persistence as an Ecological Concept Persistence, a term commonly used in evolutionary ecology, refers to the significant inertia and resistance in ecological systems, which usually favors demographic and environmental stability such that essential resources are maintained (Falk, Watts, and Thode 2019, 2). The term also differentiates the features of structured habitats in stable and resilient ecological communities from unstructured habitats (Hyman et al. 2019, 5). The concept is place-specific, connected to the evolution or adaptability over a long period of time of an ecological niche, a range of conditions within which a species can live (Holt et al. 2014, 288–96). Persistence has negative associations as a characteristic of invasive species, even though these characteristics make those species highly adaptable to many conditions, and in some cases, powerful providers of ecological services to humans, albeit often at the cost of diversity. Persistence also emerged in the literature review on the resilience of socio-ecological systems—the capacity of institutional or physical infrastructure designed by humans to cope or adapt to certain kinds of external variability (Janssen, Anderies, and Ostrom 2007, 309). Persistence is the first stage and precondition of resilience at the individual level, enabling resilience at other scales: recovery at the population scale and reorganization at the community scale (Falk, Watts, and Thode 2019, 2–10). These definitions of persistence have many parallels in a long-lasting building, which absorb slow and constant variability in populations of users, and contribute to the resilience of the community that may need to reorganize uses in the future or restructure the building when conditions of drastic change demand it. As new populations come into a building, people need to reappropriate space, read the potential in the structure, and find the material and labor resources necessary to reorganize into a new temporary or stable configuration. Persistence also has cultural definitions that translate into architectural practice: perseverance in the face of adversity, a dogged determination, adherence to or seeking something valued, cohesive. These are the necessary qualities of critical practices seeking to design architecture that persists, especially when economic systems do not reward long-term thinking, and instead expect to produce buildings expediently, often

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with lower quality materials to be discarded faster, cheaper, and with limited regard to long-term global environmental or social impacts. Thus, the theory of persistence is rooted in the creation of material ecologies and economies of resistance and long-lasting value, and must be produced by an alternative design culture focused on the most fundamental and enduring qualities of architecture, to challenge current material practices.

Drivers of Material Change: Environmental Forces and Human Agency The material of architecture mediates the dynamic relationship between social and natural environments. The forces driving material change can be external (sites, climate, infrastructure) and internal (occupants, people, economy). Brand (1995) argues that interiors change radically while exteriors maintain continuity (Brand 1995, 21). The reality is more nuanced. A building’s outer layers are exposed to weather, while interior layers experience wears from human use. For example, curtain wall facades tend to have significantly shorter life spans than the structure. Interior technologies may be replaced for efficiency or taste, but in buildings where a concrete, brick masonry, or timber structure is exposed their long-lasting finishes may remain for the character they give to the space. It is often the intermediate layers—the hidden, structural, and formative—that are most challenging to access or modify, and therefore responsible for the success or failure of the building as a persistent physical and organizational framework for sustained human use. Designing for persistence means making decisions about the nature and the assembly of materials that enable a dynamic equilibrium between gradual and rapid change, between externally driven and internally driven forces. The lifetime of architectural materials and the degree of their entanglement as assemblies determine the simplicity or complexity of their repair or replacement. These rates of change are not all predictable. Materials may get replaced before the end of their actual physical life due to unforeseen changes in performance criteria or human preference. Environmental forces also vary in time scale and predictability. Many are consistently cyclical (solar radiation), others are constantly variable (wind), and some are gradually changing (climate). The certainty of these forces and predictability of their effects on materials has been theorized as the end of the process of construction: or weathering, the ever-changing finishing of the surface of a building through the simultaneous subtraction and sedimentation of materials (Mostafavi 1993, 16). However, some forces are gradually increasing in magnitude, accelerating the rate of change, or changing abruptly in ways that are unpredictable and potentially disruptive. The most notable are climate change and urbanization, which relate to trends of mass migration, industrial decline, environmental degradation, and remediation. These trends will translate into new regulatory, technological, programmatic, and performance requirements for building materials that, if not anticipated now, may accelerate the need for change, repair, and replacement.

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Human agency is also a somewhat unpredictable force. People choose to change buildings or their components for any number of reasons, long before the materials reach the end of their life. The sense that societal change can be brought about through innovation, inspiration, and creativity (Hammett and Wrigley 2013) means that material change in architecture and the city are a concrete vehicle to represent progress towards certain ideals, and may often seek to intentionally break with the past. Starting in the nineteenth century the western culture of permanence began to shift towards a belief that architecture should be a reflection of its age, and that “shorter building lives would reflect and impel radical change in each generation”—the precursors to the twentieth-century concept of obsolescence that emerged with depreciation, a capitalist tool for financial risk management (D. M. Abramson 2016, 14). For Michael Sorkin, delinking architecture and privilege was contingent on empowering people to not only find but also change an environment to one where they can flourish—referencing Lefebvre’s idea in “Right to the City” about the power of changing ourselves by changing the city (Sorkin 2013). It is interesting that much of what capitalism deemed obsolete in the last century became the richness found by communities looking for spaces that invite creation and entrepreneurship. The qualities people find in what capitalism discarded, e.g. the old industrial buildings, became the vehicles for urban regeneration. In this way, the material persistence of buildings that can weather a degree of decay affords time and supports efforts to preserve a diverse building stock with a wide range of age and levels of affordability; to resist the always new mindset of capitalism and empower communities to find spaces of robust materiality to transform on their own. While generations often seek to make space their own by reconfiguring or restructuring some of architecture’s material—a sign of the desire to shape their environment or to leave an imprint—most of that change occurs at the scale of the impermanent: from furniture to temporary or non-load-bearing partitions. New leadership, new workplace policies, new cultural practices and tastes, revisions to building codes that place new demands on systems, zoning codes that alter land uses, tax codes that encourage or discourage demolition—all are factors that can unexpectedly affect how people value—and ultimately use buildings. The rapid social and political changes of the twentieth century saw the emergence of architectural design theories that empower users to change their environment by changing important parts of the architecture. These theories focus on architecture as an infrastructure, the basic system that services and cedes control to people. John Habraken’s proposal for an open architecture, which will be discussed in more depth in Part II Changing Uses, differentiated levels of control through material properties: the permanent supports of long-lasting structure and the more ephemeral user-adjustable infill (Habraken 1972). The architectural responses to this body of work were most notably and often focused on housing (Kendall and Teicher 2000, 12–13)—the most intimate and deeply personal space where people are most likely to want control. Ordinary buildings that constitute the fabric of cities often speak to a particular time of building, a repetition of material strategies and

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assemblies that define the character of an entire urbanism. A building may not be individually listed as historically significant, but it can be part of districts seen as an essential part of the urban landscape and the social history of a place. South End rowhouses in Boston, industrial buildings in districts of Portland, Chicago, New York, Boston, and many other cities, often have a repetitive logic and a robustness of material that help them persist. Individual buildings may go away over time, but many remain and are repurposed or retrofitted to extend their life. During a phone interview with the authors, Paul Alessandro from HP Architecture, a firm that works in many adaptive reuse projects in Chicago, reflected on why these ordinary buildings are worth keeping: “they’re part of the overall character of a place, something that’s intrinsic to the nature, the value, livability of a place” (Alessandro 2017). All of these trends point towards the idea that material persistence is especially important in the most ordinary buildings because these will become the material fabric that gives character to so much of the found urbanisms of the future, the districts where capitalism will flow in and out, that will persist for communities to reappropriate and reinvent. Land value, especially in urban areas, significantly influences the cost and investment in buildings, and subsequently the effort it takes to keep them. In cities, it is not uncommon for the land to be worth more than the building. In a self-reinforcing cycle, as society builds cheaper buildings, land value is more likely to become the main driver of those decisions. Land value is similarly susceptible to cycles of investment and disinvestment. At moments in history, when land becomes devalued, buildings can sit abandoned for a long time. Long-lasting buildings may better weather these long periods of land devaluation, often decades until changing environmental, economic, and cultural conditions invite a reconsideration of their value to a place. This was certainly the case in warehouse or Figure I.5 Brick rowhouses of the South End, considered the largest Victorian row house district in the United States, where alterations are guided by the South End Landmarks District Commission. Photograph courtesy of littlenySTOCK.

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industrial buildings in urban districts: the durability of the load-bearing masonry and timber systems was critical to their persistence during long periods of neglect, while other systems were often severely deteriorated or more likely to be replaced at later times when buildings were reclaimed for new uses. The historian Daniel Abramson explained during a conversation that in the American context these periods of neglect happen when “people aren’t seeing any value in the underlying land. It’s not even worth taking them down. Capitalism is always moving from place to place. It’s much easier to go find some new place to build…” (D. Abramson 2018). This is what made some of these generously sized buildings not only spatially but financially attractive to the communities of artists, makers, and inventors that infused a new life into so many of them. Abramson added that eventually, buildings become so devalued that investors look back when it becomes cheaper to build in them: “Capital has a spatial quality… it leaves a place, eventually it might circle back around.” In a perverse twist, this has often happened when communities create enough of a thriving life in these buildings and districts to make them attractive again, and the capital arrives to displace them. In the American context, tax breaks are often used to incentivize the preservation of certain landmarked buildings. But tax structures are reflections of cultural values, and as such can shift and conflict with other public priorities. During a meeting with the authors at the Kansas City Design Center, director Vladimir Krstic noted these cultural shifts happening there around tax abatements, Tax Incentive Financing (TIF), and other tax mechanisms: “the local community is starting to really be opposed to that…because the result is that the city needs to give up [something] to give it to developers, and how’s that affecting some other things?” (Krstic 2019). In this contested environment, architects may need other mechanisms and arguments to ensure the preservation of building materials. Abramson offered a compelling case for architects to have agency in prompting building reuse: Obsolescence was a process of cultural devaluation or functional devaluation, but people found a way to revalue the obsolete… that revaluation always takes some kind of effort and agency…and certainly architects can revalue what was considered obsolete by getting people to look at it differently…. (D. Abramson 2018) Despite the pressure for development, many modifications to existing buildings are made to reduce their size, especially in deep floor-plate buildings, to let more daylight in, improve air quality, and provide a more humane space. When these modifications are not possible, the building becomes vulnerable to changes in societal values and expectations. Matt Noblett from Behnisch Architekten reflected on a significant challenge for architects today—designing the future of a good portion of the unredeemable buildings from the twentieth century that exists around the globe. Referring to a common type along Park Avenue in Manhattan as “giant, fat, 50,000 square feet [4,600 square meter-floor] plate office building… nicely finished but deadly space…” he asked: “What is the future of

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Figure I.6 Park Avenue in Manhattan, with 270 Park Avenue (formerly known as Union Carbide Building) on the far right. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (New York, NY, USA), 1960. Photograph by Mariolav.

occupation in all of these buildings?” (Noblett 2019). The real estate market in New York is such that, according to Noblett, carving out “nice big light wells and reducing square footage” is not an imperative. Even buildings of significant architectural or historical value, like the Union Carbide Building at 270 Park Avenue by Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (see Chapter 1) are in the process of demolition to be replaced by taller, better-performing buildings. David Nelson of Foster + Partners, explained: The zoning laws in Central New York have changed significantly which will allow building owners to either completely demolish or heavily modify buildings within a certain vicinity, and in many instances to be able to build more than twice the size that what we are seeing at the moment. (Nelson 2019) Land use regulations can not only accelerate the demise of architecturally significant buildings but also unintentionally result in the preservation of ordinary buildings. For example, a building that is larger than what a code allows becomes grandfathered into smaller-scale urbanism. This was the case of 1K Fulton—a 1920s cold storage building converted into an office and retail space in Chicago’s Fulton Market district. While one can assume that the building was preserved due to its long-lasting concrete structure and industrial character, Paul Alessandro shared that it was saved because it was much taller than what is allowed to be built in the district, despite the fact that it required significant effort and cost to thaw the ice inside the building, repair the degrading concrete frame, and completely reclad the previously opaque building (Alessandro 2017). The tenants, now mostly occupied by the offices for the technology company Google, may find the history and character of the old concrete structure appealing and valuable. This is different than the trend of facadism—the facadectomy projects that keep a historic facade

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Figure I.7 (a) Original concrete facade by Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill (1975), and (b) new facade by Cutler Anderson Architects, and SERA Architects (2016). Edith Green Wendell Wyatt Federal Building (Portland, Oregon, USA). Photographs courtesy of M.O. Stevens licensed under CC-BY-SA-3.0.

and build a completely new building behind it—which only preserves the memory of the original building through its street presence but it is rarely considered the same building. In contrast, in the more ordinary old buildings when the structural components remain, it is often saving the most space-defining and carbon-intensive material. Interestingly in the 1K Fulton case, the structural concrete frame was all that needed to be kept in order to still be the same building grandfathered as nonconforming with zoning rules. The 1K Fulton concrete structure, with its column caps, is visible through the new glazed facade, and still stands about five stories taller than adjacent buildings. Heavy structural systems do have perceived inertia that leads them to persist, which many of those interviewed put in terms of both carbon and dollars, taking as much of both to demolish than to renovate. This was certainly a factor in the conversion of Mass MoCA, discussed earlier. At its conception the institution was looking for an inexpensive, large space for large art installations that could be more experimental and site-specific than what traditional museums offered. The architects believed that the mere size of the heavy load-bearing masonry building was a reason to keep it because the community loved the history of this building but would not accept building anything new at that scale. Changes in energy performance goals also drive material changes in building enclosures, which usually have a significantly higher impact than the structure on operational energy. In recent decades energy codes have changed faster and more dramatically than structural codes. Goals to improve operational performance often lead to facade changes that can produce dramatic transformations on the pattern (e.g. window-to-wall ratio), materiality (recladding), and performance (thermal resistance). The General Services Administration (GSA) is an agency constantly driving significant changes in energy performance standards for a large number of buildings in the United States. The GSA owns or

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ft 4.9

9.8m

Figure I.8 Typical upper floor plan and building section. SOM (1975), Cutler Anderson Architects and SERA Architects (2016). Edith Green Wendell Wyatt Federal Building (Portland, Oregon, USA). Drawing recreated by authors.

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leases over 8,000 assets of the US federal government, and maintains more than 370 million square feet (34.3 million square meters) of workspace for 1.1 million federal employees (“Public Buildings Service” n.d.). The Office of High Performing Buildings develops best practices, guidance, and tools to advance innovations in planning, design, and operations of federal buildings, including improvements in energy costs, human health and performance, and environmental impacts. Their goals change depending on the administration, as was evident in the transition from the Obama to the Trump administration when it shifted from life cycle and human productivity to energy cost savings. The authors interviewed the dean at the University of Washington, Renee Cheng, who is an expert researcher on the work of the GSA. Cheng shared that the GSA does extensive evaluations on whether to renovate a building, sell it and buy a new one, or demolish it and build new: “every couple of years a new executive order would ramp up the [energy] goals…and there would be an inventory look to see which buildings were not meeting those new standards (Reneé Cheng 2017). In the 2010s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), an economic stabilization policy of the Obama administration looked for “shovel-ready” projects, accelerating the completion of over 500 projects in all 50 states and territories. One of these projects was the Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt federal building in Portland, Oregon, originally designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in the 1970s, and later redesigned by Cutler Anderson Architects. After being on hold for a couple of years—Cheng explained—ARRA had increased standards that required redesigning of the facade, and yet because ARRA was set to move quickly the decision to keep and renovate the building was not revisited: “It would likely had been a more difficult decision given the challenge of meeting more strict standards” (Reneé Cheng 2017). This modernization project transformed the 18-story building into one of the highest performing federal buildings, saving the concrete frame and cladding it with a new facade system that provides a geometrically intricate addition of floor plates to all sides of the building, replacing mechanical systems, and anticipating the demands of unknown tenants (Renée Cheng 2015). Clearing the facade 22 inches outside of the existing frame added 33,000 square feet (3,065 square meters) of space (Libby 2013). Cheng recalls that the clever decision emerged from realizing that the addition of that small depth of floor space with the facade would significantly improve use flexibility (Reneé Cheng 2017). Reducing the weight of the concrete facade also eliminated the need for seismic retrofits to meet stricter standards, extending the life of the building (American Institute of Architects Committee on the Environment 2014).

Design for Material Persistence In light of the inevitable material change in buildings, an important question for this research was, what should persist in long-lasting buildings? Certainly, the elements that persist must be robust and long-lasting enough to mitigate the impact of their construction on the environment (sustainability) yet give people the ability to adapt and thrive under

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different conditions (resilience). For Daniel Abramson—the answer to that question historically has been an issue of identifying which part of the building would maintain a sense of identity, and which would be susceptible to change (D. Abramson 2018). This is at the core of monumentalizing “the relationship between the fast-flowing time and the peaceful haven of permanence” (Moravánszky 2017, 193). Persistence is first focused on the architectural attributes that have the most inertia— the slowest changing throughout the long life of buildings. This prioritization means that the materials that persist in all conditions have the most capacity and highest performance to create meaningful connections to place, cultural significance, and richness of human experience. An ecological view of architectural material points towards designing a productive resistance or inertia in buildings. That buildings are “ponderous, hard to move into the future”—an idea shared by Randal Heeb during an interview with the authors at the office of Opsis Architecture in Portland—results from accumulating value through the significant time and energy it takes to extract, produce, and assemble its materials (Heeb 2017). Stability, not permanence, is how architecture ultimately absorbs cycles of variability—a metaphor from ecology that says that in the complexity-stability dynamic of systems, principles of connectivity, richness, nestedness, and strength of interactions, dampen oscillatory dynamics and increases the persistence of ecological communities (Landi et al. 2018). In socio-ecological systems, the tolerance to certain kinds of variability can make you vulnerable to other forms of variability, trading off capacity for a highly uncertain environment (Janssen, Anderies, and Ostrom 2007). What does that mean in architecture? Accepting variability in performance will need to be defined within a limited range: balancing resistance with the possibility of change through reoccupation, which means recognizing that others will need to work on it. This recognition prompts important considerations during the design process: How do materials reveal their logic? How will future users make space their own? How much room is left for new connections, new layers, different levels of performance? What is fundamental about the architecture that remains, and what lives and dies? These questions are analogous to finding the keystone species of an ecosystem, and identifying the other species that have a narrower tolerance for variability. These are primarily material questions because architects must choose where to invest more resources and energy. Not everything should change, but some things will. The stable material properties carry architecture into the future. Designing these with enough capacity and strong connections to place, while simultaneously allowing a richness and diversity of opportunities for change allows the life within it to thrive and reorganize in many different conditions. Focusing on making elements movable, retractable, etc. is what Ann Beha called trying to save “small money.” It is also futile, as these elements often are very unlikely to change or move. An anecdote shared with the author during a tour of Milstein Hall at the Cornell School of Architecture by OMA, brought this issue into focus. The architects carefully planned movable partitions in the lower level gallery, some using expensive hardware and wheels. But after completion some

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remained unmoved for so long, that when they finally decided to move them, the tires were flat and could not be moved. Being too heavy to lift for replacement, they are now flat tires fixed in place. This is not a big problem for them, as they had not seen much need to move them to begin with. But it was perhaps an investment of effort and resources best spent elsewhere during design. Nonetheless, it provides a good lesson for other systems that do need to change fast, e.g. environmental or communication technologies: simplicity, access, and manageability for human bodies are key. Architects should design materials into configurations that make some modifications possible, rewarding, desirable, and sustainable. As we will see in later chapters, modifications are possible when the logic of the materials are legible and honest; rewarding when they improve connections to place; desirable when the changes can significantly advance human values; sustainable when they leave something better behind for future generations.

Material Implications of Designing for Persistence Louis Kahn is said to have designed buildings as if they were wrapped ruins—appearing to have neither glass nor function (Scully 1993). This raises an interesting tectonic question for architecture designed for future reuse: for the architect designing with the expectation of change over a very long time, what else should be expressed other than its most robust materiality and connection to place? To answer this question, perhaps better than designing a building to appear like a ruin, designers could imagine the essence of architecture long after the moment of its making: how would the architect design those elements found after the actual ruin of the building is rediscovered?

Figure I.9 View of the courtyard and water feature. Louis Kahn, Salk Institute for Biological Studies (La Jolla, California, USA), 1965. Photograph by Shawn Kashou.

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What about that which is not erased by the passage of time inspires its reinvention? While it may not be the same building once transformed and reoccupied, the building of the past and the building of the future will share a material essence. In that imagined material state lays the creative potential of Ruskin’s call: when we build, let us think that we build for ever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone; let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them… (Ruskin 2001, 243) The dynamic relationship between material, land, and social context is complex. There can be no prescription that guarantees a long-lasting building. This is why the theory of persistence argues for prioritizing the investment of effort and capital on the primary material systems that sustain value for many possible forms of human occupation in their specific place. To build an architecture of persistence is to understand the temporality of materials and components, while rejecting the nihilistic practices that produce excess waste. To aspire to maximize the useful life of buildings means to facilitate replacement, maintenance, and eventually recycling or upcycling through the well-considered selection and organization of its materials. The chapters in this first section of the book examine how durable, legible, simple and place-specific material logics enable future adaptive reuse. The literature and theory examined here provide an ethical justification for this investment of effort, material, and time. It provides an intellectual context and theoretical framing for the exploration of material practices and projects in subsequent chapters, all of which deal in different ways with the attributes of long-lasting materials and assemblies—their ability to negotiate internal and external forces driving change. The chapter Essential examines the role that material integrity and legibility play in the most indispensable and fundamental aspects of longterm buildings. Two primary case studies, the RMIT Hub and the Wood Innovation and Design Centre, illustrate how material decisions create natural logic for future occupation and adaptation in both the architectural objects and practices. The chapter Durable explores the necessary conditions for physical things to persist in the face of environmental forces. Adopting a lifecycle perspective, this chapter touches on the properties of materials, their assembly into buildings, and ongoing regimes of maintenance and repair that enable architecture to withstand the vicissitudes of time. The chapter Simple will explore architecture that relies on carefully calibrated interactions between site, material, form, and performance. This chapter is centered on a close reading of the experimental 2226, a building that creates thermal comfort and well-being through the refined interactions among nature, physics, and tectonics without the aid of mechanical equipment. Finally, the chapter Situated examines the grounding of long-term structures in what is enduring about a place. Three laboratory buildings by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects,

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Hopkins Architects, and Behnisch Architekten, show how unique site and tectonic solutions achieved similar goals: to negotiate the general needs for adaptability with the specificity of place, landscape, and social context.

References Abramson, Daniel. 2018. Professor of Architectural History, Boston University Interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn. Boston, MA. Abramson, Daniel M. 2016. Obsolescence: An Architectural History. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Alessandro, Paul. 2017. Partner, Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture Interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy. By phone. Allen, Stanley. 1989. “Piranesi’s ‘Campo Marzio’: An Experimental Design.” Assemblage (10): 71–109. American Institute of Architects Committee on the Environment. 2014. “Edith Green Wendell Wyatt Federal Building Modernization.” 2014. https://www. aiatopten.org/node/354. Augustyn, Joanna. 2000. “Subjectivity in the Fictional Ruin: The Caprice Genre.” Romanic Review; New York 91 (4): 433–57. Benyus, Janine M. 2002. Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. New York: Harper Perennial. Brand, Stewart. 1995. How Buildings Learn: What Happens after They’re Built. Reprint edition. New York: Penguin Books. Brownell, Blaine, Marc Swackhamer, Blair Satterfield, and Michael Weinstock. 2015. Hypernatural: Architecture’s New Relationship with Nature. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Busby, Peter, Max Richter, and Michael Driedger. 2011. “Towards a New Relationship with Nature: Research and Regenerative Design in Architecture.” Architectural Design 81 (6): 92–99. https://doi.org/10.1002/ad.1325. Cheng, Renée. 2015. “Integration at Its Finest: Success in High-Performance Building Design and Project Delivery in the Federal Sector.” www.gsa.gov. ———. 2017. Dean, University of Washington Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Deplazes, Andrea. 2001. “Indifferent, Synthetic, Abstract – Kunststoff. Prafabrikationstechnologie Im Holzbau: Aktuelle Situation Und Prognose.” Translated by R.H. Werk, Bauen + Wohnen 1–2: 10–17. Eckelman, Matthew J., and Michelle M. Laboy. 2020. “LCAart: Communicating Industrial Ecology at a Human Scale.” Journal of Industrial Ecology 24 (4): 736–47. https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.12978. Falk, Donald A., Adam C. Watts, and Andrea E. Thode. 2019. “Scaling Ecological Resilience.” Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/ fevo.2019.00275. Folke, Carl. 2006. “Resilience: The Emergence of a Perspective for Social– Ecological Systems Analyses.” Global Environmental Change, Resilience, Vulnerability, and Adaptation: A Cross-Cutting Theme of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change Resilience, Vulnerability, and Adaptation: A Cross-Cutting Theme of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change, 16 (3): 253–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2006.04.002. Ford, Edward. 1997. “The Theory and Practice of Impermanence: The Illusion of Durability.” Harvard Design Magazine, no. 3. Forney, Jason. 2017. Principal, Bruner/Cott Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. Cambridge, MA.

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Gard, George. 2017. Project Manager, Bruner/Cott Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. Cambridge, MA. Gordon, Alex. 1972. “Designing for Survival: The President Introduces His Long Life/Loose Fit/Low Energy Study.” Royal Institute of British Architects Journal 79 (9): 374–76. Habraken, N. J. 1972. Supports: An Alternative to Mass Housing. New York: Praeger Publishers. Hammett, Jerilou, and Maggie Wrigley. 2013. Architecture of Change: Building a Better World. Albuquerque, United States: University of New Mexico Press. Hannon, Bruce. 1973. “The Structure of Ecosystems.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 41 (3): 535–46. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-5193(73)90060-X. Heeb, Randal. 2017. Associate Principal, Opsis Interview by David Fannon. Portland, OR. Holt, Robert D., Michael J. Donoghue, Simon A. Levin, Trudy F. C. Mackay, Loren Rieseberg, Joseph Travis, and Gregory A. Wray. 2014. “Evolution of the Ecological Niche.” In The Princeton Guide to Evolution, edited by Jonathan B. Losos, David A. Baum, Douglas J. Futuyma, Hopi E. Hoekstra, Richard E. Lenski, Allen J. Moore, Catherine L. Peichel, Dolph Schluter, and Michael J. Whitlock, 288–97. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt4cgc5m.42. Hvejsel, M.F., and A. Beim. 2019. “Circular Tectonics? A Critical Discussion of How the Architectural Discipline Can Drive Ecological Continuity.” In Structures and Architecture – Bridging the Gap and Crossing Borders: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Structures and Architecture (ICSA 2019), July 24–26, 2019, Lisbon, Portugal, edited by Paulo J.S. Cruz, 51–58. London: CRC Press. Hyman, A. Challen, Thomas K. Frazer, Charles A. Jacoby, Jessica R. Frost, and Michał Kowalewski. 2019. “Long-Term Persistence of Structured Habitats: Seagrass Meadows as Enduring Hotspots of Biodiversity and Faunal Stability.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 286 (1912): 20191861. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.1861. International Living Future Institute. 2014. “Living-Building-Challenge-3.0Standard.Pdf.” https://living-future.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/LivingBuilding-Challenge-3.0-Standard.pdf. ———. 2016. “The Red List.” November 8, 2016. https://living-future.org/ declare/declare-about/red-list/. Janssen, Marco A., John M. Anderies, and Elinor Ostrom. 2007. “Robustness of Social-Ecological Systems to Spatial and Temporal Variability.” Society & Natural Resources 20 (4): 307–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920601 161320. Keenan, Jesse M. 2014. “Material and Social Construction: A Framework for the Adaptation of Buildings.” Enquiry : The ARCC Journal of Architectural Research 11 (1): 18–32. Kendall, Stephen H., and Jonathan Teicher. 2000. Residential Open Building. New York: E & FN Spon. Krstic, Vladimir. 2019. Director and Professor, Kansas City Design Center Interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn. Kansas City, MO. Laboy, Michelle. 2016. “Landscape as a Conceptual Space for Architecture: Shifting Theories and Critical Practices.” The Plan Journal 0 (0). https://doi. org/10.15274/TPJ-2016-10007. ———. 2017. “Performance Niche: An Ecological Systems Framework for Technology and Design.” In Architecture of Complexity: Design, Systems, Society and Environment: Journal of Proceedings: 269–77. University of Utah: Architectural Research Centers Consortium. http://www.cap.utah.edu/ wp-content/uploads/2016/06/ARCC-Proceedings-2017-FINAL.pdf.

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Laboy, Michelle, and David Fannon. 2016. “Resilience Theory and Praxis: A Critical Framework for Architecture.” Enquiry: A Journal for Architectural Research 13 (2). https://doi.org/10.17831/enq:arcc.v13i2.405. Landi, Pietro, Henintsoa O. Minoarivelo, Åke Brännström, Cang Hui, and Ulf Dieckmann. 2018. “Complexity and Stability of Ecological Networks: A Review of the Theory.” Population Ecology 60 (4): 319–45. https://doi. org/10.1007/s10144-018-0628-3. Libby, Brian. 2013. “Edith Green–Wendell Wyatt Federal Building, Designed by Cutler Anderson Architects.” Architect, September 16, 2013. https:// www.architectmagazine.com/design/buildings/edith-greenwendell-wyattfederal-building-designed-by-cutler-anderson-architects_o. Lifschutz, Alex. 2017. “Long Life, Loose Fit, Low Energy.” Architectural Design 87 (5): 6–17. https://doi.org/10.1002/ad.2210. Lyle, John Tillman. 1994. Regenerative Design for Sustainable Development. Wiley Series in Sustainable Design. New York: John Wiley. McDonough, William, and Braungart, Michael. 2002. “Chapter Five: Respect Diversity.” In Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, 1st Edition: 118–57. New York: North Point Press. Moravánszky, Ákos. 2017. “Metamorphism: Material Change in Architecture.” Birkhäuser. Mostafavi, Mohsen. 1993. On Weathering : The Life of Buildings in Time. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Nelson, David. 2019. Senior Executive Partner and Head of Design, Foster + Partners Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Noblett, Matt. 2019. Partner, Behnisch Architekten Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. Boston, MA. O’Donnell, Caroline. 2015. Niche Tactics : Generative Relationships between Architecture and Site. New York : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. O’Neill, Robert V. 1986. A Hierarchical Concept of Ecosystems. Monographs in Population Biology ; 23. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Pinto, John. 2013. “Speaking Ruins: Piranesi and Desprez at Pompeii.” Studies in the History of Art 79: 229–44. “Public Buildings Service.” n.d. Accessed August 19, 2020. https://www.gsa.gov/ about-us/organization/public-buildings-service. Ruskin, John. 2001. The Seven Lamps of Architecture. Transcribed from 1988 Edition. London: Electric Book Co. Sadreddin, Baha. 2019. Associate, High-Performance Design Specialist Interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy. Portland, OR. Scully, Vincent. 1993. “Louis I. Kahn and the Ruins of Rome.” Engineering & Science 56 (2) Winter: 12. Sorkin, Michael. 2013. “Foreword.” In Architecture of Change: Building a Better World, edited by Jerilou Hammett and Maggie Wrigley. Albuquerque, United States: University of New Mexico Press. Tierney, Kathleen J., and Michel Bruneau. 2007. Conceptualizing and Measuring Resilience: A Key to Disaster Loss Reduction. Emmitsburg, MD: National Emergency Training Center. Wilton-Ely, John. 1978. The Mind and Art of Giovanni Battista Piranesi. London: Thames and Hudson.

1 ESSENTIAL M. Laboy

The bare bones are really interesting. And that’s partly what we’re interested in: how do you do something with the integrity of the author and their work? — Jennifer Yoos, FAIA, Principal, VJAA

The Essential Vitruvius’ idea that “nothing suffers annihilation, but at dissolution there is a change, and things fall back to the essential element in which they were before” (Pollio 1914, 225) is a fundamentally ecological formulation about the life cycle of materials that sustains life on Earth. Architectural space aspires to support human life by inspiring use and reuse. Herein lies the paradox, so well-articulated by Andrea Deplazes: “although ‘space’ is its first and highest objective, architecture occupies itself with ‘non-space’, with the material limiting the space, which influences the space outwards as well as inwards” (Deplazes 2005, 19). Time leaves physical imprints in that material. Over time some modifications erase materials, but many others leave traces in the components that are hardest to build or modify, more embedded, more durable, more meaningful: the essential. What is essential in architecture? This chapter examines what—amidst the many competing forces shaping architecture—is absolutely necessary, indispensable, unavoidable. On the one hand, the essential is primarily defined by physical properties of materials (structural capacity, thickness, depth, thermal conductivity, corrosion resistance, hardness, smell, texture, color, reflectivity, patina) as well as their role and configuration (hierarchy, geometry, pattern, aspect ratio, orientation). On the other hand, what is dispensable largely depends on the perspective of a user in a moment in time. Every new user will likely change or discard something considered obsolete, outdated, obscuring, or obstructing. We can glean that by looking back at the histories of old buildings. Ann Beha, the founder of Ann Beha Architects in Boston, referred during the interview to the chronologies of change: “a summary of alterations to date,” because in buildings of any age: “Time has not stood still. Alterations and adaptation for more functionality, new collections, new ideas, new missions emerging, have taken root” (Beha 2017). Understanding material changes in relation to changes in use and to the construction

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technologies and systems of different times is the key to uncovering the essence of a building: what remained and why? That is, what material systems connect with what is universally necessary for human use? This may explain why Ann Beha believes that the harder projects are the ones that have not really changed. There is no absolute dictate on what is essential about all buildings, although this and subsequent chapters identify principles and patterns that emerge as universally important to an architecture of persistence. What is clear is that when designing architecture that lasts, the primary preoccupation of the architect and the largest commitment of intellectual and material resources need to go into the material strategies that influence architecture’s most critical performance over time: human comfort, safety, circulation, sensory experience, socialization. Architects must have the foresight to write the future histories or chronologies of change when designing new buildings; to design the essential with intentionality, with both a purposeful resistance to and the expectation of change.

Integrity During many interviews, a common idea about a building that lasts is that it is built well, or that it has good bones. This idea had different meanings in different contexts or projects, but often involved the general notion of building with integrity. The term integrity has two connotations: one is related to the moral virtue (honesty and moral uprightness), while the other is related to physical property (the state of being whole or undivided). It can be said that the latter is about the integrity of the material, while the former is about the integrity of the argument. Materials with integrity are whole or undivided: ideally, one thing throughout, to facilitate end-of-life disassembly and reuse. A material with integrity is more likely to stay together. Often architects interviewed for this research expressed skepticism of new materials found in catalogs, advocating for long-tested materials that are proven to hold up over time. This is particularly important in a culture of decreasing maintenance. At a visit to the firm Opsis in Portland, Randal Heeb described the enormous impact of maintenance in a high school renovation project, where the facilities staff went from ten in the 1950s to one now (Heeb 2017). Most materials degrade or dissolve over time when not maintained and exposed to the elements, and most can last forever if protected like artifacts in a museum. Therefore, it can be said that integrity is inherent to a material’s ability to be reused and repurposed with low effort, whereas durability is characteristic of architectural assemblies and dependent on sustained efforts by people over time (for an expanded discussion on the durability of architectural assemblies, see Chapter 2 Durable). Material integrity is also related to the idea of integration. Because building materials are resource-intensive, integrating multiple functions into a material can mitigate environmental impact. When multiple aspects of building performance are integrated or undivided, those

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parts are less likely to be discarded—they become more essential. While the authors visited a project with Roger Tudó Galí, principal at H Arquitectes in Barcelona, he talked about this idea of how the elemental in architecture becomes the fundamental: “The roof protects from the rain, but if it can be connected to something more holistic or with more complexity, to how the air is moving, then it is fundamental—what is important in buildings in the long term” (Tudó Gali 2019). Integrating the life span of materials with the life span of ideas or experiences means that the essential only ends when the building ends and should be built with utmost physical and ethical integrity. The ethical definition of integrity has to do with the integrity of the argument: why we use a material, how we use it, and what we leave for others. All architecture is an argument. Material decisions are an ethical argument, representing how society values quality, the environment, and the next generation’s inheritance. Ann Beha described to the authors this system of values in her practice, “We want to be able to explain to people why we’re doing something, not just that we’re doing something…if there isn’t a why, then it’s a little bit incomplete” (Beha 2017). Philip Chen, Beha’s partner, believes this to be especially important when working between historic and contemporary architecture: “in order to have a clear dialogue, a conversation, there has to be integrity to the argument” (Chen 2017). The ethical dimension of integrity connects tectonics—the expression of a material or system of construction that is true to its own logic—to industrial ecology, the methods and assemblies that eliminate waste at production and encourage reuse. All materials change over time, and all buildings need to be repaired and rearranged. The forethought to think about how things come apart, and about the use and impact of materials at the end of the life of a building, is an ethical and pragmatic argument for accessibility and legibility of maintenance, repair, and modification. Being true to material logic is often expressed as material honesty: the notion of authenticity, exposing and expressing the true character by conforming or detailing of assemblies that acknowledge material properties and construction process; an ethos about leaving things for others to understand and modify.

Legibility While interviewing Gerard Damiani and José Pertierra-Arrojo, two educators and practitioners in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the conversation turned into the haunting impact of searching for clarity and legibility in architectural education. This ethos follows them in practice, where they constantly think about how the next architect in each project will see what they were trying to do with the permanent structure, how they added layers to that carcass. Their practice, which started with many renovations and adaptive reuse projects, is driven by what Damiani called a dialogue between what they are adding and the pre-existing building (Damiani 2019). The hope is that this clarity makes it possible for future architects to know how to respond to and layer onto this architecture.

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Critical approaches to integration must consider when separation and legibility are necessary. Integrity does not mean a building is one thing all the way through, but that its individual layers are designed with an intentional approach to maximize function, legibility, reuse, and recyclability. In an interview for this research, David Nelson of Foster + Partners debated the motivations and potential downside of layers: Architecture is layered… the way you draw [it], everything is layered… In an integrated building the structure might combine rainwater harvesting with the facade… to use less material but get greater performance…The downside of it is that one could design something that’s inflexible and harder to adapt through time. (Nelson 2019) The impulse to integrate is a reaction to what Donald Del Cid, an architect at Waggoner & Ball in New Orleans interviewed by the authors, referred to as the Piece Architecture of the industrialized world: We depend on ten million fasteners, specific joints, extrusions, and we complicate our lives… the so-called third world cannot afford all these millions of pieces, because the economy and technology is different, so you use less materials to accomplish exactly the same thing. I think that’s the difference between durability and complication… when you have to keep the building for a long time and the pieces begin to fail, not the materials. (Del Cid 2018) This critical distinction again reminds us that the long-term performance of materials is essential to but does not guarantee the performance of their assemblies. Maintenance regimes express the integrity of materials—materials that are one thing right through, especially natural materials, may develop a sacrificial layer of oxidation or char on the surface, but what you find underneath will always be the same material. In an interview, Garth Rockcastle, founding principal of MSR Architects in Minneapolis, described the diversity of opportunities that comes with that: “you can bring back the luster of a metal, or you can let it create a charm because it’s weathering or it’s decadence is aesthetically pleasing, especially in opposition to other materials that are part of the same assembly” (Rockcastle 2017). Weathering creates the possibility of buildings aging better, by sometimes becoming more resistant over time, and almost always adding significance to durable buildings (see Chapter 2 Durable.) No exposed material is free of maintenance but for some clients even minor maintenance requirements are an unsustainable burden. Architects must recognize when the end-of-life considerations become more urgent. Yanel De Angel, principal at Perkins & Will, explained during her interview that the recyclability of metal cladding is the driver in material decisions when using wood represents an investment in upkeep that clients are not able to do (De Angel 2018). While metal cladding may be perceived as aging less elegantly— denting or scratching—it mostly can be recycled back into building components without loss of quality.

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The toxicity and legibility of materials also matter decades or centuries later, when a building reaches the end of its life. Shortly after rezoning in East Midtown Manhattan, plans to replace the Union Carbide Building, originally completed by Natalie Griffin de Blois from Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in 1974, started to take shape. The proposed demolition caused consternation, but critics who believe this project unworthy of saving saw it as a case study for salvaging material at this large scale (Shaw 2018). Foster + Partners made a list early in the project of how materials could be used; a strategy that at the time of the interview, Head of Design, David Nelson believed would be adopted (Nelson 2019). Its location in the heart of Manhattan meant that the process of demolition could not use implosion, instead required meticulous control of deconstruction. The building is now believed to be the tallest controlled demolition in history (Ali Oriaku 2019). While often the cost of disposal makes it more economical to recycle some materials—the steel frame and concrete most likely— deconstruction requires a significant amount of energy consumption and waste. Designers can exert influence on the market—in the selection of materials, the planning for change, and the valuation of the material afterlife of the building. While the entire industry and financial system need to change, architects need to bring that value system into projects because often there will be few incentives for it. At the very least, architecture should not get in the way of material reuse. Designing buildings with an awareness of end of life and deconstruction can make it easier to take them apart and find an appropriate next use for its materials.

A Case Study on Legibility: RMIT Design Hub The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) Design Hub (2012) in Melbourne, Australia, designed by Sean Godsell Architects, embodies the legibility of change and replacement in its spatial and material strategies. Designed to anticipate fast advances in photovoltaic technology, the facade components are modularized and layered, acting as automated sun shading that can be fitted with solar cells in the future. The strategy recognized that solar technology may change faster than the building and expressed the ambition of eventually generating all of the building’s electricity. Preparing buildings for a transition to solar power means buildings become more sustainable and resilient as technology advances. In conversation with the authors, Sean Godsell explained the key attributes that enable the facade to be adapted over time. The first is the structural autonomy and accessibility of the outer skin. A surface walkway separates it from the glazed enclosure. Godsell believes: “The building can survive…without it altogether. It can survive portions of the facade being changed in different ways” (Godsell 2020). The second is its connectivity to what Godsell called the building intelligence, the building management system. The facade is continuously screened by more than 9000 discs of sandblasted glass, each attached to an axel that in some cases can rotate. The finish of the discs provides a simple and analog response to changes in weather: the sandblasted discs are translucent on sunny days and clear when there is rain. These are organized in panels of 21

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Figure 1.1 Exterior facade with shade structure. Sean Godsell Architects with Peddle Thorpe Architects, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) Design Hub (Melbourne, Australia), 2012. Photograph by Earl Carter Photography.

discs, a 3x7 vertical grid with four rows of operable discs between floors and three rows of fixed discs near the floor slabs. While the panels are vertical, the galvanized steel frames that project 700mm (27.6 inches) from the curtain wall remain behind the discs, creating a pattern of horizontal and seamless banding in a 4:3:4:3 rhythm on the facade that speaks more to the function of the discs as shading between floors than to their modular structure. However, from the interior of the service walkways, the vertical galvanized frames are more legible, giving clarity to the organizational system for maintenance, replacement, and control. The design, coordination, and execution of this seemingly simple pattern was more complex than it seemed, explained Godsell: It’s a 300-mm (12 inches) module that grows into the entire building grid. The whole façade is a series of panels craned into place, hooked on, and completely seamless. It’s a real tribute to the people who made that. You can remove, replace, if you ever need to. And each level is independent, with its own storage capacity for batteries. (Godsell 2020)

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The spatial strategy is often referred to as TARDIS, from the popular TV show Doctor Who, because as Godsell explains: “It is bigger on the inside” (Godsell 2020), leveraging the excess capacity of its primary structural material. The form of the building is a simple rectangular floor plate with two asymmetrical structural bays. The core with elevators is off to one side, creating a narrow space used for exhibitions, and a wide warehouse for research on the other side. The space is relatively narrow and elongated in plan but according to Godsell, it provides a deliberately complex—as opposed to the functional—route. In such a narrow building—20m (66 ft) wide, the warehouses are very generous—10m (33 ft) wide column-less space. The asymmetry of the core is not ideal for the stiffness of the tower, requiring a post-tensioned concrete slab of the warehouse side, supported by conventional reinforced concrete columns at the perimeter to both support the facade system and provide lateral stiffness. According to Sean Godsell, this was possible by using concrete of super high strength of 80 mPA (11,600 psi). For reference, 41 mPA (6,000 psi) is considered high strength, making this mix almost three times stronger than conventional concrete used in commercial construction. The high capacity and configuration of the concrete Figure 1.2 Structure for shading discs seen from inside. Sean Godsell Architects with Peddle Thorpe Architects, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology Design Hub (Melbourne, Australia), 2012. Photograph by Earl Carter Photography.

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Figure 1.3 Floor plan and section. Sean Godsell Architects with Peddle Thorpe Architects, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology Design Hub (Melbourne, Australia), 2012. Drawing recreated by authors.

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system enable the temporal aspects of adaptability. The narrow bay is a

Figure 1.4 (a) Smaller bay for circulation, small gatherings and display. Sean Godsell Architects with Peddle Thorpe Architects, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) Design Hub (Melbourne, Australia), 2012. Photograph by Earl Carter Photography. (b) Larger bay of RMIT Design Hub for research space. Sean Godsell Architects with Peddle Thorpe Architects, RMIT Design Hub (Melbourne, Australia), 2012. Photograph by Earl Carter Photography.

generous circulation core that doubles as a space for collaboration, display, critiques, and socialization. The wide bay serves changing research and fabrication needs. A raised floor allows data points and power points to come through where needed. By limiting the building width to the span of concrete, uninterrupted spans leave no columns or beams to interfere with distribution, while allowing plentiful daylight into the full floorplate. The primary and secondary structures are the essence of the building; there is not much else to the architecture other than a kit of parts for partitions and furniture designed by the architects to move around the floor where needed. People demand constant change, but familiarity often drives their reactions to new material strategies. The building has an unusual and unique material presence in its urban context, which Godsell believes required a period of adaptation. According to Godsell, the facade left the public unsure about what the building was for: “They were disturbed by the fact that the ground level wasn’t fully transparent. But people adjust… Your immediate environment will become familiar enough that it ceases to be an issue. And that’s pretty sound advice. Change is challenging” (Godsell 2020). High-performing material strategies that surprise and evoke a strong cultural response make lasting impressions and connections with users. Durable, simple, and generous structural and spatial configurations allow the building to weather the time it takes for culture to develop familiarity with these new material expressions. While structure becomes essential to the stability, facade strategies designed for performance-driven change leave open the possibility that the expression of the building will always remain of its time.

Building Naturally When Louis Kahn asked “What do you want, brick?” (Kahn 2003, 271) the arch was the persistent and logical response. It gives the brick structural independence and stability. Essential materials have configurations and logic that optimize form, maximize capacity, and reduce

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vulnerable dependencies. But when in conversation with Jason Forney from Bruner/Cott Architects in Boston, he warned: Styles and trends change so quickly that the quest for authenticity and timelessness is really hard… but we know how people respond to things like masonry and stone and wood… materials that come from the natural environment… people have some innate connection with [them], that none of us can explain. (Forney 2017) Building naturally means engaging the social and ecological dimensions of material performance. This creates buildings that improve over time and endow human life with a purpose that transcends functional needs (Hvejsel and Beim 2019). It means using materials in a way that fits their physical properties; detailing them so that they acquire character with time; providing clarity about their logic to future generations of architects, users, and managers so they can maintain or modify the building. The physical structure and material dimensions inevitably place constraints on human use. During an interview in which she spoke of her time working on the renovation of the embassy of the United States in Athens, Greece (originally designed by Walter Gropius in 1961) Ann Beha said she searched for a natural way of occupying the building such that “You are not completely restructuring the building for some programming protocol” (Chen 2017). Invasive structural modifications should be reserved for very large and specific public functions. At the embassy, an original loggia for an underutilized courtyard had the capacity to support a new long-span roof that will internalize it as a better skylit interior space for gathering, ceremony, and diplomacy. Designing a new building for future adaptive reuse demands thinking about how the material configurations will create some diversity of structural spans and spaces that reveal to future users the natural ways of occupying the space in the future (for a discussion on place-specific structural patterns that configure an enduring public realm, see Chapter 4 Situated). Well-known and tested materials draw on the accumulated knowledge of construction throughout history. One reason a new material risks a shorter life is not just its unknown performance over a longer-term but most importantly people’s lack of familiarity with its maintenance and retooling. Architects that work in adaptive reuse often transfer knowledge of materials in old buildings into new buildings. In the last century, a strand of modernism rejected the focus on new and ephemeral materials. Henry-Russel Hitchcock differentiated Frank Lloyd Wright’s work from the work of Sullivan and other international functionalists, which he saw as immaterial (Hitchcock 1975, 27–29). For Hitchcock, it was not Wright’s style but the feeling for the nature of materials and their relationship to the natural environment—the structure and mass in relationship to space and site—that generated a lasting and organic architecture (39). Louis Kahn, an architect whose idea of order consisted of integrating the permanent structure with the distribution and concealment of infrastructural systems in buildings (Kahn 1955, 51), also proposed massive approaches to modernism relying on traditional

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materials like brick and concrete. During the interview with the authors, it became clear that the work of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects builds on this tradition. The partners believe an architecture of mass and earthen materials signifies the character and quality of long-term building. Most importantly for them, an architect must find the natural places for these materials: “Brick is used when brick seems normal. Stone should be used when stone seems normal… We look for normal materials that are available and seem related to the place where we’re building” (Williams 2018). This is why they often work with institutions that are interested in long-term building. The increased use of composite materials and adhesive attachments in contemporary architecture represents an end-of-life challenge for future building reuse. An interview with Bruner/Cott Architects in Boston revealed why they limit their material selections to what George Gard described as “materials that are single things…when you start gluing things together, they can’t be easily separable in the field” (Gard 2017). They describe this approach as deliberately not fancy and the results as not any lesser. British Columbia architect Michael Green expressed a similar concern with the culture of wet construction in contemporary architecture. Green, a practitioner committed to heavy timber construction, is concerned about the hidden qualities of structures, for example, rebar in concrete, which makes cutting the slab possible but more complicated. For Green, when materials are bonded together “The end-of-life story becomes a big problem. You can’t take the thing apart or adapt it as easily” (Green 2019). This is not to say that new materials or composites cannot generate an architecture that persists in the long term. But rather to suggest that the architecture and construction industry should commit to a more robust process of research and development. For example, according to Michael Green, the next generation of timber building will be 3D printed in wood fiber to reduce waste and material. But bio-based thermoplastics need to overcome sourcing, recycling, and performance issues. Designers and scientists can collaborate in determining the efficiency and necessary strength of more redundant and integrated design approaches that thicken and void the material in order to do more than one function, e.g. structure and insulation. These wood-derived materials may require an architecture of stereotomy rather than tectonics, a metamorphosis that has already been happening in timber (see Part I Material Ecologies) and that requires more experimentation. Collaborations between science and designers can define the natural way of building with these new materials. Parterships of architects with building and material scientists in applied research can more systematically uncover the natural logics, potential failures, and full life cycle implications of any new material before it is widely used in long-term buildings. Research-based architecture firms like Perkins & Will, are investing significantly in this, albeit outside of traditional peer-review protocols, but leveraging their position in the market to make change happen. As principal Yanel de Angel explained, “We are pushing the industry… to tell us how are those materials coming together and how can they be taken back to where they were in

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some shape or form” (De Angel 2018). Until these answers emerge, the industry should exercise caution in using them for long-term buildings.

A Case Study on Building Naturally: Wood Innovation and Design Centre Michael Green Architects (MGA) is credited with material-based design research that is transforming the construction industry in north America. Committed to experimenting with timber to challenge current limitations in regulatory systems, MGA was in search of a durable and robust structure that can address the urgency of climate change: capturing carbon. The Wood Innovation and Design Centre (WIDC) is an example of a deep investigation of the performative, social, and environmental dimensions of one material—an attempt to demonstrate that you can build taller and longer-lasting buildings that are mostly all timber. The WIDC is located in Prince George, British Columbia (B.C.), one of the world’s most important sources of timber for the construction industry. The building emerged from a particular moment in the history of B.C., following the enactment of a Wood First policy (Province of British Columbia 2009). This act reversed the conventional paradigm of codes where concrete is unquestioned for buildings of any size, yet wood has to be justified. Instead, wood is required in all buildings with provincial funding, or you need to justify why it cannot be used. This policy intended to support a local timber industry, and quickly became an opportunity to innovate. The University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) was launching a new engineering program on Integrated Wood Design, and the WIDC would serve as a testing lab and a demonstration of the capacities of the material, to enhance the B.C. forestry and manufacturing economy (University of Northern British Columbia n.d.). MGA experimented with making as much of the building of one material. Timber makes the gravity structure, which is relatively easy, but also the lateral-resisting cores and envelope (contrary to common belief this part of BC has relatively lower seismic hazard than the coastal areas North America's pacific northwest.). In addition to glued laminated columns and beams, the interior is defined by an exposed cross-laminated timber (CLT) floor system and CLT cores. The exterior envelope is a Figure 1.5 Panelized facade alternating natural and charred cedar with glass. Michael Green Architects, Wood Innovation and Design Centre (Prince George, British Columbia, Canada), 2014. Photograph by Peter Wiederspahn.

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panelized wood rainscreen, using rot-resistant cedar in a pattern that alternates unfinished cedar and charred cedar. The black charring called shou sugi ban is a traditional Japanese treatment to make wood more weather and insect resistant. The building expands the use of wood to its mechanical systems, even if invisible, by connecting to the downtown district heating system fueled by wood waste from the surrounding milling industry. The other non-wood materials in the building are secondary or invisible: adhesives in the timber products, the intumescent coating on the CLT of stairs and elevators, the rigid insulation board behind the wood rainscreen of the envelope, the glazing (although the frames are wood), the hidden steel and aluminum connections, and the site-cast concrete foundation and ground floor slab. The WIDC has a very legible structural pattern and tectonic approach. In an interview with Michael Green, he shared his technical philosophy not as future-proofing, but future use because “Wood structures that are dry… screwed together with common screws…can be unscrewed and stripped for parts or adapted all with very low technology…a really honest system where you can see everything, so you can adapt it really easily” (Green 2019). However, at the WIDC the metal connections are hidden, with the exception of the column bases at the ground floor which lift the wood away from grade. The beam-to-beam connections, aluminum plates with teeth that act like traditional dovetail connections, are mounted at beam ends. These hidden connections make the disassembly harder, a compromise of legibility in favor of durability. The thick timber protects the more vulnerable steel from fire, challenging the perceived vulnerabilities of wood by using its natural fire resistance to ensure a longer life and higher performance. The testing of these assemblies pushed the limits of wood construction beyond building codes. Durability was not only a practical necessity; it was essential to the goal of carbon sequestration. For Green “The building is worth keeping by simple virtue of the fact that it’s actually this amazing carbon sink” (Green 2019). If the building is taken down, or allowed to rot or burn, all that carbon is released back into the atmosphere. This was MGA’s motivation to use the WIDC as a demonstration of how to design wood buildings to last for centuries. Manufacturing of large timber cross sections can be engineered to have additional thickness—a layer that can slowly char for hours without compromising the structure. Unlike steel, this form of fire protection relies on the same material rather than treatment. There are still some challenges to this natural material. For example, the WIDC researchers observed that in regions like B.C., where the humidity can be as low as 5 to 12 percent, scabs open up in the wood joints, which is perceived as a problem even if it does not affect its structural capacity. Part of the purpose of the WIDC was to change perceptions codified in regulations, especially around fire. As the climate resilience of steel and concrete is increasingly questioned, e.g. the threats to concrete through carbonation and chlorination (Saha and Eckelman 2014) the advantages of timber become more apparent. By testing its resilience to fire, this project started shifting the narrative about wood and expanding its role in the urgent crisis of climate change.

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Figure 1.6a–d Connection details, clockwise from the top: (a) wood to column connection with no visible hardware (b) exposed steel plate at column base with timber held up from the floor about four inches (16mm) (c) Special aluminum connectors for beam ends, (d) exposed steel holdown at crosslaminated timber cores. Michael Green Architects, Wood Innovation and Design Centre (Prince George, British Columbia, Canada), 2014. Photographs by Peter Wiederspahn.

The long-lasting qualities of wood transcend physical performance; its biophilic qualities have long-term cultural value (for further discussion of how biophilia principles align with the notion of persistence, see Chapter 11 Indeterminate). Green’s explained his understanding of the power of these biophilic qualities: We heal faster, we feel less stressed in a wood environment. We learn more quickly and we work more productively when we’re surrounded by natural materials in general… these are all incredibly positive things, and from an evolutionary point of view that makes sense. Only for the last century has mankind surrounded itself with man-made materials, and we’ve certainly learned that many manmade materials are not healthy for us. (Green 2019)

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The configuration of the structural pattern also took advantage of the site. The placement of the core created two longer bays on the southern side of the building, a deeper space that is most advantageous for solar heat gain in this very cold northern climate. Coupled with a gradient of opacity on the facade, achieved by varying the density of cedar panels these structural and facade patterns, created a solar responsive building. Timber construction has long traditions and well-known logics, but the advances in engineered wood products are overcoming the limitations of member size and capacity while projecting the timeless language of wood-framed buildings. When touring the WIDC with Professor Guido Wimmers, a part of the discussion centered around the question of what an architecture that persists through multiple uses looks like, or how to maintain relevance over the years. For Wimmers energy efficiency is always going to change the way buildings look (Wimmers 2019). The WIDC certainly generated a new language for timber construction that embodies the expectation of change through its longest-lasting components. The staggered CLT floor panels expose and organize the distribution of systems. Services run above and below the CLT in gaps created by the staggering of CLT layers. Systems of sprinklers are exposed in the ceiling but neatly organized in the lower gaps between staggered layers of CLT. Electrical and water pipes are hidden in the upper gaps of the staggered CLT, below the floor finish. Wimmers believes concrete topping would provide better acoustic qualities to the floor system, but it was important to push this idea of all-wood construction as a demonstration (Wimmers 2019). This form of legibility transcends the individual project: how material experiments change perceptions, regulations, and practices—and hold didactic value in the long-term. The WIDC project required a special building code applicable to only its site: the Wood Innovation Design Centre Regulation combined research and testing to provide code-equivalent levels of safety to those required for similar buildings of non-combustible construction

Figure 1.7 Interior with staggered crosslaminated timber floor slabs. Michael Green Architects, Wood Innovation and Design Centre (Prince George, British Columbia, Canada), 2014. Photograph by Ema Peter.

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Figure 1.8 Typical upper floor plan and section. Michael Green Architects, Wood Innovation and Design Centre (Prince George, British Columbia, Canada), 2014. Drawing by authors.

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Figure 1.9 Detailed peel-away axonometric of the assembly. Michael Green Architects, Wood Innovation and Design Centre (Prince George, British Columbia, Canada), 2014. Drawing by authors.

(Canadian Wood Council, n.d., 4). Green’s approach does not follow prescriptive code but instead: “We always expect to be working beyond it, and we accept the cost of dealing with it,” which as he explains, pays off not in awards, but in helping reshape “where we’re all going… and what our profession is willing to own of our responsibility” (Green 2019).

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The Essential in the Future In 2016, four years after its completion, the RMIT Design Hub was scheduled to replace sections of the facade discs with Building Integrated Photovoltaic Cells (BIPV), as part of what the chancellor called a living laboratory and a teaching showcase. The faster than anticipated replacement, though, was prompted by two discs breaking and falling on the ground. This event raised questions about why the BIPV was not installed in the first place. Kate Rhodes, a curator of the gallery at the Design Hub, described how the in-progress work happening and exhibited there allows audiences to be in contact with design research, creating friction that gives the work a chance to grow and change to do its work well (Design Matters Victoria 2014). As it turns out, this is an apt description of the building itself. The facade of the Hub requires the patient embracing of the messiness of design research, to engage in a process that takes a very long time. Until the BIPV becomes feasible at this scale, the building also stands as a work in progress in anticipation of future growth and change. As a result of the innovation achieved in the WIDC, UNBC anticipates that building codes will allow timber buildings to be built 27 stories higher than the WIDC’s seven stories (University of Northern British Columbia n.d.) The WIDC was only a step in uncovering potential new logics of timber as a construction material, which Michael Green believes will unleash a new era of innovation in the industry, by moving to all off-site construction, rethinking the process of and, integrating construction into design, and constantly reassessing that model. Michael Green believes timber hits the sweet spot of offsite construction because it is “A material you can lift but still is robust enough to be able to truly off-site as much of the building componentry as possible” to reduce on-site work, and cost of construction (Green 2019). Uncovering the potential of timber as a material for off-site construction, expanding the market, and capturing carbon as quickly as possible, are important motivations for Green. Our role is to educate…to share… to be as generous as possible… through buildings that provide templates for others to follow…to look for what’s next and try to do that with the right mission, which is to solve real global problems: social issues, affordability issues, human health wellbeing issues and planetary issues. Our process is designed for change. (Green 2019) These templates of practice, focused on ethical arguments and human values and rooted in architecture’s lasting material essence, can result in what Green called “a family of buildings that are really quite neutral but really quite adaptable to whatever comes in the future.”

References Ali Oriaku. 2019. “JPMorgan Chase Plans Tallest Controlled Building Demolition in History.” The Architect’s Newspaper, March 1, 2019. https://www. archpaper.com/2019/03/jpmorgan-chase-plans-tallest-controlled-buildingdemolition-in-history/. Beha, Ann. 2017. Founding Partner, Ann Beha Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. Boston, MA.

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Canadian Wood Council. n.d. “Wood Innovation and Design Centre.” Wood Works. http://wood-works.ca/wp-content/uploads/151203-WoodWorksWIDC-Case-Study-WEB.pdf. Chen, Philip. 2017. President, Ann Beha Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. Boston, MA. Damiani, Gerard. 2019. Founding Principal, studio d’ARC & Associate Professor, Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture Interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn. Pittsburgh, PA. De Angel, Yanel. 2018. Principal, Perkins & Will Interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy. Boston, MA. Del Cid, Donald. 2018. Architect, Waggonner & Ball Architecture / Environment Interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy. By phone. Deplazes, Andrea. 2005. Constructing Architecture: Materials, Processes, Structures. 1st Edition. Basel, Berlin, Boston: Birkhäuser. Design Matters Victoria. 2014. RMIT Design Hub. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=ENk01rWxlsc. Forney, Jason. 2017. Principal, Bruner/Cott Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. Cambridge, MA. Gard, George. 2017. Project Manager, Bruner/Cott Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. Cambridge, MA. Godsell, Sean. 2020. Founding Principal, Sean Godsell Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Green, Michael. 2019. Founding Principal, Michael Green Architecture Interview by Peter Wiederspahn. Vancouver. Heeb, Randal. 2017. Associate Principal, Opsis Interview by David Fannon. Portland, OR. Hitchcock, Henry-Russell. 1975. In the Nature of Materials: The Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright 1887–1941. 2nd Printing Edition. New York: Da Capo Press. Hvejsel, M.F., and A. Beim. 2019. “Circular Tectonics? A Critical Discussion of How the Architectural Discipline Can Drive Ecological Continuity.” In Structures and Architecture – Bridging the Gap and Crossing Borders: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Structures and Architecture (ICSA 2019), July 24–26, 2019, Lisbon, Portugal, edited by Paulo J.S. Cruz, 51–58. London: CRC Press. Kahn, Louis I. 1955. “Order and Form.” Perspecta 3: 47–63. https://doi. org/10.2307/1566835. ———. 2003. Louis Kahn: Essential Texts. Edited by Robert Twombly. New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company. Nelson, David. 2019. Senior Executive Partner and Head of Design, Foster + Partners Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Pollio, Vitruvius. 1914. “Book VIII.” In Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, translated by Morris Hicky Morgan, 225–50. Cambridge: Oxford University Press. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044029248044. Province of British Columbia. 2009. “Wood First Act.” BCLaws. October 29, 2009. https://www.bclaws.ca/civix/document/id/complete/ statreg/00_09018_01. Rockcastle, Garth. 2017. Founding Partner, MSR Design Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Saha, Mithun, and Matthew J. Eckelman. 2014. “Urban Scale Mapping of Concrete Degradation from Projected Climate Change.” Urban Climate 9 (September): 101–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.uclim.2014.07.007. Shaw, Matt. 2018. “The Union Carbide Building Should Not Be Saved, It Should Be Torn Down.” The Architect’s Newspaper, March 6, 2018. https://www. archpaper.com/2018/03/please-tear-down-union-carbide-building/. Tudó Gali, Roger. 2019. Founding Principal, H Arquitectes Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. Barcelona.

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University of Northern British Columbia. n.d. “Construction of the Wood Innovation & Design Centre.” University of Northern British Columbia. Accessed July 15, 2020. https://www.unbc.ca/engineering-graduate/ construction-wood-innovation-design-centre. Williams, Tod. 2018. Founding Partner, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Wimmers, Guido. 2019. Associate Professor and Program Chair of Master of Engineering in Integrated Wood Design, University of Northern British Columbia Interview by Peter Wiederspahn. Prince George, British Columbia.

2 DURABLE D. Fannon

There’s no question that light architecture has a place, but I don’t actually think that it has much to do with sustainable work. It’s work that disappears. —Tod Williams

Physical Forces Physical durability constitutes something of a prerequisite for persistent architecture, Randall Heeb, an associate principal at Opsis Architecture, shared the maxim that buildings “have to last in order to change over time” (2017). Proposing an ethos of durability challenges the wasteful culture of architectural fashion designed for visual consumption and rapid obsolescence, arguing that unlike clichés to tread lightly, the true measure of architectural sustainability is the longevity of a building’s materials and the usefulness of its space. Chapter 1 discussed the essential qualities of materials and the opportunities they afford before, during, and after their life in a building. This chapter continues that discussion by considering materials’ ability to withstand physical, chemical, and biological forces when built into assemblies and buildings. Cliff Gayley, a principal at William Rawn Associates sums up these practical requirements for long-lived buildings quite succinctly, “The technical level is obviously keeping the water out, and making sure the building doesn’t degrade on its own, that it’s easy to upkeep. But that’s a baseline” (2018). Durability engenders persistence by resisting decay, setting itself against merciless time. The Architecture of Persistence endures, not as the romanticized image of a ruin, but as a lasting layer of built ecology and landscape, providing a useful and valuable shelter in which human life may unfold.

Durable Materials In an interview about Bruner/Cott’s experience working to adapt old buildings, Principal Jason Forney identifies durability of materials as one of three key criteria for building future adaptability into their work,1 calling for “materials that are going to last a long time: floors, walls, and again structure…just building that stuff to last.” (2017). Architects quickly separate long-lasting materials from shorter-term ones and choose accordingly.

1 The second criterion is a clear and logical pattern for the structure within which other elements can change. The third is a connection to the exterior through light and air. These ideas are addressed more fully in Chapters 4 and 6 respectively.

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Figure 2.1 Plaster render is readily repaired when damaged. Photograph by David Fannon.

In a similar conversation, Paul Alessandro, a partner at HPA, suggested durability as a critical criterion especially for enclosures, saying “Thinking more long-term with regard to materials, going with stone or brick other permanent materials as opposed to metal panel or Dryvit” (2017). It seems self-evident that long-lasting materials, carefully assembled, should engender long-lasting buildings, but it is worth considering that long-lasting buildings also enable materials to persist. In an interview Alan Camp—an architect for the US General Services Administration, the client for federally owned buildings—points out that requirements for seismic design, blast resistance, and progressive collapse generally result in quite robust structural systems, which could theoretically last in perpetuity if protected from exterior conditions. As a result, the real challenges of material design for these public buildings relate to the weathering of the exterior envelope and the durability of the human-facing interior finishes. This knowledge leads the GSA to require durable materials and thoughtful details in those areas. Fortunately, Camp points out that long service life can often justify the expense of better materials, as Camp says, “when you’re building a building for long-term you raise the standards and thankfully you raise the budget, so you can afford the best and the highest quality. ” (2019).

Durable Assemblies Beyond material properties, durability demands thoughtful assemblies of materials to allow a building to persist. For example, the enclosure of a durable building must protect all the other systems within it from moisture and temperature changes while providing the building with an identity and perhaps communicating its longevity through changes to surfaces over time. In turn, the materials of the primary structure protect systems of less structural capacity from the effects of movement caused by lateral loads or other impacts. These examples point to a

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Figure 2.2 Rainscreen manages moisture and pressure to preserve the wall assembly. Photograph by David Fannon.

hierarchy of material, technical, and spatial performance. Thus, architecture designed for durability favors spatial adaptability over systems flexibility, demanding a larger investment on the durable components of the architecture—such as primary structure and perhaps enclosure— rather than on the changeable systems. Conversely, the changeable systems can and should calibrate their durability to their expected life, as Sean Zaudke, an Associate Principal at Gould Evans, notes, in all likelihood when you design walls that can be easily moved they’re usually less durable… but they’re not intended to be because that notion is kind of contrary: if it’s meant to stay then it’s not going to change. (Zaudke 2019) Randall Heeb, an Architect at Opsis Architecture, goes further, seeing in this intentional use of materials a path to build adaptability into every project, noting that it is pretty easy to change “a gyp board stud wall, which is not that material intensive. It’s not expensive” (2017). Even permanent elements may have differential durability based on their service, and not every element needs the longest possible life. At Spencer Brewery—discussed in greater detail in Chapter 8—the client elected an exceptionally hard-wearing industrial tile with a very long lifespan for wet and heavily trafficked areas in the production facility, but opted to use simple polished concrete in offices and an epoxy coating in the bottling plant based on the budget and expected wear. Calibrating the life span of assemblies is especially important in buildings built with the intention to change or adapt. Over a long conversation, Michael LeBlanc, a Principal at Utile, described a nuanced approach to material choice in a parking structure designed by his firm as part of a planning effort for a new development in Boston. A steel primary structure would have been faster to erect and less expensive than concrete, however, the exterior exposure and road salt in a

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garage result in a harsh, highly corrosive environment for steel structures, with occasionally tragic results. The team estimated a useful life of only approximately 35 years, quite short compared to the horizon for the planned development. Instead, Utile proposed a robust concrete primary structure, with somewhat higher initial environmental and financial costs, but a much longer life. Interestingly, because they were engaged as planners, the firm then felt the estimated 100-year life for the concrete structure was too long for a garage on that site, As LeBlanc recounts, “The highest and best use of that particular building at that moment in time would have been a parking structure. You could absolutely imagine a scenario where thirty years from now that would no longer be the case.” (2018). He continues enumerating reasons why structured parking might become obsolete, pointing to reasons like rising property values, planned expansion of mass transportation, and future changes in urban mobility. With all that in mind, Utile proposed that this robust concrete primary structure be designed for parking first, but with the ability to convert in the future to other uses, compatible with the future needs of this district not yet planned. As with the projects discussed in Chapter 8, Anticipatory, the decision to imagine a use beyond parking had a range of consequences. First, Utile needed to resolve the dimensions of two different systems, especially the bay spacing between columns and to support parking spaces and drive aisles for cars, and adequate floor-to-floor heights for subsequent human uses like offices or residences. Any future use would of course require enclosing the open-air garage, so the building would need to accommodate adding a facade, structurally and tectonically. The team developed a straightforward approach using a curtain wall system that clipped outside the primary structure. Garages often have minimal floor-to-floor heights and few mechanical services, but the pattern would need to accommodate the future addition of service distribution, yielding a greater height. Garages often have sloped floors, but most human occupancies require flat floors. Rather than leveling after the fact, Utile designed the garage with flat, fixed parking levels accessed via an adjacent sloping speed ramp. Returning to the question of durable materials, that ramp was needed only as long as the building remained a garage, at which point it would be removed, leading Utile to specify that ramp as steel. LeBlanc explains this material choice, Steel is eminently recyclable when it’s coming off a building so…the plan was to use it in those parts of the building which were less permanent, those parts of the building where its removal would open up new and flexible possibilities. (LeBlanc 2018) Thus, the durability of steel—which first prompted the discussion of a subsequent use—lies not in maximizing resistance to wear and tear but as a demountable and recyclable material that enables longer life for the rest of the structure. In an interview, David Nelson, Head of Design at Foster + Partners, described a set of strikingly similar projects undertaken in the UK noting, “They might open as a car park, ten years later it might be an

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office space, ten years after that it might be residential; and it’s the same space” (2019). He describes similar urban development forces, design techniques, and the importance of aligning material durability with assembly and building life span. Acknowledging reasonable arguments to design more durable equipment with a longer life span, nelson sounds a note of caution, saying “in the ever-changing world that we’re in, there’s a lot of pressure to go in the opposite direction and actually do something very temporary that could easily be updated and changed as things move on. So, there’s a balance there to be struck.” These garage conversion projects illustrate the importance of such balance to enable persistence because many buildings cease to be considered useful before their most durable components wear out. Historian Daniel Abramson explored this idea and the many forms and sources of obsolescence in his book of the same name (Abramson 2016). Ron McCoy, Princeton University Architect, discussing certain campus buildings offers a pithy formulation, observing “these buildings will become obsolete programmatically before they become obsolete physically” (2017). Persistent architecture demands realistically assessing the differing life span of various systems—their durability—to design balanced rather than uniformly long-lived assemblies.

Weathering Aesthetic Thankfully, materials and assemblies rarely fail completely and quickly, instead they wither slowly away through an array of evocative processes—rotting, decaying, corroding, molding, spalling, peeling, staining—which fall under the broad idea of weathering. This slow change makes durability a continuous rather than discrete property of materials: their lives lack clear-cut beginnings and ends, as discussed more fully in Part I. Weathering reveals as much about the attitude towards materials as about material’s inherent physical and chemical properties. Even choices about words illustrate attitudes, since Figure 2.3 Cedar door and frame weathers gracefully. Photograph by David Fannon.

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chemically identical processes may be deplored as corrosion corrupting a sound material, or aesthetically valued as patina. Architects have long appreciated the aesthetic character certain materials acquire over time. Tod Williams, in an interview, favorably compares old materials to new, praising the texture, warmth, and quality saying, “The basic building materials, I think, have historically been of a wonderful quality, because [they] actually preexist architecture” (2018). Reflecting on his career as a campus planner at the University of Oregon, Fred Tepfer contrasts brick with metal panels, noting he and his colleagues prefer “a material that looks better as it ages, rather than materials that tend to look worse” (2018). In their book, Mostafavi and Leatherbarrow (1993) unpack the conceptual, ethical implications of this continuous, infinite process of change all buildings experience. Advancing this line of inquiry, Jorge Otero-Pailos suggests that preserving buildings requires, in part, preserving the dust that accumulates on them, and that dust, therefore, becomes a component of cultural legacy (Raskin 2011). The same argument applies to historic graffiti preserved on old structures. Together these thinkers point to an attitude about materials as responsive to time, and durability as a question of aligning chemical properties with building needs. Just as exterior surfaces and materials exposed to environmental conditions weather so too do interior surfaces and materials wear based on their exposure to human use and users. Ruskin spoke approvingly of “walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity” (2001, 243), and certainly, Alan Camp’s comments above echo that notion for long-lasting civic buildings. Yet the rapid turnover of interior finishes in some buildings would make such durability futile, and even wasteful as durable materials make way for fashion and changes in use. A value judgment embedded in interior material choice balances

Figure 2.4 Replaceable tatami mats. Photograph by David Fannon.

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between the precious, which precludes change, and the disposable which changes all too quickly. Sean Zaudke, Associate Principal at Gould Evans, pointed to the materials choices while walking around the Missouri Innovation Campus, described in detail in Chapter 11. Noting the campus’ expected heavy use by teenagers and college students, as well as reconfiguration over time, the building employs a sturdy palette he describes as “raw materials: steel, exposed structure, extension cords in your ceiling, and raw wood” (2019).

Enduring Time Where weathering describes the aspect of durability related to changes from external forces, maintenance and repair describe the changes wrought by humans in response. Regimes of maintenance and repair extend durability beyond the life of any individual component or material, by replacing individual components as needed (Sample 2016). Maintenance has ontological dimensions because persistence resides not in the perpetuity of materials, but in situating space, as mentioned in Chapter 4, and retaining memory as mentioned in Chapter 9. Western philosophers for at least 25 centuries—from Plutarch to Heraclitus, to Plato—wrestled with these questions through the thought experiment now known as The Ship of Theseus, which contemplates whether a ship retains its identity after replacing every component, and so it is with the inevitable repair of buildings over time. In an interview, Garth Rockcastle cautions against eliminating choices based on upkeep, saying “just because a material requires maintenance, let’s say repainting a surface, or polishing a metal, or restoring a stone surface, “it is not inherently bad” (2017). Indeed, echoing Ruskin, Rockcastle finds opportunities to enhance material and building character because the act and effort of upkeep “adds to [a material’s] meaning, or its significance.” (2017). Noting during a phone call that, “Whenever possible, we take material which is close to the building,” former Abbot Martin Werlen of Einsiedeln Abbey, in Switzerland, explains local sourcing increases the odds of securing matching material for future repairs or replacement— especially for natural materials like stone (2017). While not guaranteed, the knowledge about and experience working with local materials tends to persist locally as well, increasing the odds of access to the human capital for future repair, a resource which may matter as much or more over the life of a long-lived building. While forestalling the disposal of the entire building represents a significant environmental benefit of maintenance, the processes of maintenance and repair also have ecological dimensions of their own, consuming resources and producing waste just as the initial construction. Here again, local materials reduce transportation impacts and waste materials tend to persist locally, although in both cases geography may matter less than political and regulatory constraints. Design for durability occurs at the intersection between the ecology of materials—their life cycle from extraction, processing, transportation, construction, maintenance, disassembly, reuse, and eventual

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disposal—and the life cycle of the building—design construction, occupation, change, abandonment, demolition. Garth Rockcastle sums this all up by saying “There isn’t a universal truth [that the] most durable and low maintenance is somehow better than its opposite.”(2017). Indeed, only continued human use and occupation can justify durability, lest the environmental impacts persist but not the benefits.

References Abramson, Daniel M. 2016. Obsolescence: An Architectural History. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Alessandro, Paul. 2017. Partner, Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture Interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy. By phone. Camp, Alan. 2019. Project Manager, General Services Administration Interview by Michelle Laboy. By phone. Forney, Jason. 2017. Principal, Bruner/Cott Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. Cambridge, MA. Gayley, Clifford. 2018. Principal, William Rawn Associates Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. Boston, MA. Heeb, Randal. 2017. Associate Principal, Opsis Interview by David Fannon. Portland, OR. Leblanc, Michael. 2018. Founding Principal, Utile Interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn. Boston, MA. McCoy, Ronald. 2017. University Architect, Princeton University Interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy. By phone. Mostafavi, Mohsen, and David Leatherbarrow. 1993. On Weathering : The Life of Buildings in Time. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Nelson, David. 2019. Senior Executive Partner and Head of Design, Foster + Partners Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Raskin, Laura. 2011. “Jorge Otero-Pailos and the Ethics of Preservation.” Places Journal, January. https://doi.org/10.22269/110118. Rockcastle, Garth. 2017. Founding Partner, MSR Design Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Ruskin, John. 2001. The Seven Lamps of Architecture. Transcribed from 1988 Edition. London: Electric Book Co. Sample, Hilary. 2016. Maintenance Architecture. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Tepfer, Fred. 2018. Design & Construction Manager for Academic and Research Facilities, University of Oregon Interview by David Fannon. By phone. Werlen, Martin. 2017. Priest and Former Abbot, Einsiedeln Abbey Interview by David Fannon and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Williams, Tod. 2018. Founding Partner, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Zaudke, Sean. 2019. Associate Principal, Gould Evans Interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn. Lee’s Summit, MO.

3 SIMPLE P. Wiederspahn

How far can we get with passive means, by construction, by geometry? — Peter Widerin, TAU GmbH

Material Culture We admire indigenous architectures like we admire objects of nature. Their eidetic presence and timeworn patina seem to grow out of the environment in which we find them. Their apparent simplicity belies the inherent complexity of the material culture from which they are derived. We compare the authenticity of this Architecture Without Architects (Rudofsky 1988) to the contrived architectures we most typically inhabit in our commodity culture where the ontological notions of belonging and dwelling (Heidegger 1977, 324) give way to social transience and real estate value. There are contemporary architectural precedents, however, that do evoke meaningful and environmentally beneficial connections to particular contexts. First, let us analyze our attraction to the simple architecture of the pre-modern world, and then we can understand how those qualities have successfully informed some contemporary practices. Simplicity in architecture materializes through a series of interrelated attributes: material purity; constructive clarity; formal restraint; spatial regularity; environmental affinity. Material purity is the revealing of building materials in their natural state without being altered by additive surfaces, like the wall of a Celtic church made of irregular stones that fit together with remarkable precision. Constructive clarity is created when building materials are deployed according to their logical performative potential, and the processes of making the building are integral to its architectural expression. For instance, the truss of a wooden barn takes advantage of wood’s tensile properties for a long span, and the mortise and tenon joints disclose to us how the parts of the truss are joined together. Formal restraint is derived from the economical use of building materials and their assembly with no gratuitous shapes or decorative elements added. American Shaker architecture, for example, achieves an abstraction in form and an efficiency of material that emanates from an ethos “not to make what is not necessary,” and to “make necessary things beautiful” (Sprigg 1986, 21). Spatial regularity emerges as the reflection of a building’s constructional logic like a hand in a glove, thereby producing a predictable and consistent order.

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This tectonic-spatial reciprocity is clearly evident in the whitewashed agricultural buildings of northern Tunisia that are defined by a set of parallel load-bearing walls that are just as far apart as the brick vaults that spring from them can span (Carver 1989, 173). Lastly, environmental affinity grows from a building’s response to the climate and available materials, such as an adobe dwelling in the American Southwest. The region’s red clay is used to form sun-dried mud brick to construct thick solid walls that can regulate the heat transference of the diurnal cycles of the desert’s hot days and cold nights through an empirically calculated thermal lag (Rael 2009, 114). These characteristics of indigenous architectures emerge from finely tuned responses over time to the natural and cultural contexts from which the buildings are born. They demonstrate that simplicity in architecture emanates from a sophisticated intertwining of material economy, topologic affinity, and empirical knowledge. In spite of the enduring aesthetic and performative paradigms that pre-modern architectures embody, contemporary building culture has evolved into an additive process in which more products, more layers, and more systems accumulate, each responding to an ever-increasing array of performative mandates (Moe 2008, 6). This vast assemblage of components demands specialist skill to design, install, and operate, requiring ever-increasing resources to maintain the desired performance. Over time the potential persistence of a building is challenged by the complexity of systems that are inherently locked into their ultimate obsolescence due to their temporal and technological specificity. The architecture thus cedes its intrinsic value to systems that are concealed within the negative spaces of gypsum board walls and dropped ceilings. Reyner Banham, in his book, The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment, suggested that modern mechanical systems would be liberating: “In freeing architecture from local climate constraints, mechanical environmental management techniques have given carte-blanche for formal experimentation” (1984, 239). Form can, of course, provide significant environmental advantages if calibrated in consort with local climatic conditions, but formal experimentation that is unmoored from any performative benefit becomes as extraneous as applying the classical orders to a steel-framed building. The cultural value of architecture cannot be redeemed or enhanced from the inauthentic application of shape-making but can hold meaning by how it interacts with the external and internal environments it creates. In the architecture of persistence, we identify performance as two distinct yet interrelated concepts. One is the technical performance of building systems, but not as systems in isolation. Instead, a building’s performance is the cumulative effect of systems operating as a synergistic, dynamic, and responsive ecosystem both internally and in resonance with its macro and micro site conditions. The other is use performance, that is, a building’s ability to facilitate the change of uses in perpetuity. Similarly, Anastasia Karandinou describes building performance as a dynamic unfolding of transformation over time: In architecture…the notion of the performative involves issues of process, changeability, signification, event, function, program – in other words it can be interpreted as what the building does. (2013, 87)

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David Leatherbarrow elaborates on this construct by balancing the precise measurement of performance over time with the provisional variability of performance as experienced in situ. He writes: I (distinguish) between two kinds of understanding in the theory of architectural performance: the kind that can be exact and unfailing in its prediction of outcomes, and the kind that anticipate what is likely, given the circumstantial contingencies of the work. The first sort is technical and productive, the second contextual and projective. There is no need to rank these two in a theory of architectural performance; important instead is grasping their reciprocity in their joint necessity. (2005, 21) Both definitions of performance transcend the notion of buildings as static and inert entities and recognizes the active fluidity of the structural forces, thermodynamic flows, social fluctuations, and changing uses. Many contemporary architects are finding alternatives to mechanized strategies for creating interior comfort like the pre-modern architecture described above. This chapter will provide a close reading of 2226 (Figure 3.1), designed by Baumschlager Eberle Architekten and completed in 2013, to demonstrate how it utilizes traditional building strategies merged with new simulation and sensor technologies to capture the enduring qualities of persistent architecture. 2226 has an enigmatic Figure 3.1 A white cube on a white ground plane, Baumschlager Eberle Architekten, 2226 (Lustenau, Austria) 2013. Photograph by Norbert Prommer.

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presence at the edge of the small Austrian town of Lustenau on the Rhine River, which marks the Swiss border. It is almost a perfect cube of 24 meters (79 feet) with deep-set windows arranged within its four taut white facade surfaces. Even at a distance the building’s abstract form and repetitive fenestration pattern exude a sense of calm order. It is a completely rotational object with each facade being nearly identical, thus creating a visual center of gravity for its exurban context much like the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, designed by Giovanni Guerrini, Ernesto La Padula, and Mario Romano and built in the EUR district south of Rome, colloquially known as the “Square Colosseum” (Curtis 1996, 361). Geometry, proportion, order, and pattern replace the more conventional architectural visual signifiers such as frontality, base/middle/top, and other forms of compositional hierarchy. In this landscape of an urban periphery, the lack of specific architectural ornamentation denies an immediately legible scale so the observer must rely on the poplar trees that are architecturally arranged on the site to provide a sense of dimension. Even the ground surface is rendered abstract by a thick layer of white crushed stone that is spread to the edges of the lot. The building’s massing and its landscaping are pure, clear, and restrained: a white cube on a white ground plane. 2226 relies on its construction material in a carefully calibrated form to provide its heating and cooling, insulation, natural light, ventilation, air quality, future adaptability, and long-term resilience (Junghans 2016, 46–54). This building uses no active mechanical equipment to create interior comfort. Instead, the thermal mass of its masonry architecture combined with sensor-driven automated natural air vents provide interior comfort year-round. The architects first theorized that the 2226 concept would be possible; they modeled its environmental performance extensively in the design process, then they set out to prove their thesis in built form as a challenge to those who design and produce the built environment to radically rethink our practices.

Abstraction Here in this building we want to make it very, very clean and very, very abstract. — Jürgen Stoppel, Baumschlager Eberle Architekten Modern Austrian architecture is steeped in architectural abstraction. Adolf Loos, a cultural critic and practicing architect in Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century, provided an influential intellectual platform for the disavowal of ornamentation as much for its associations with bourgeois elitism as for its being “wasteful of labour and material” (Frampton 2007, 91). Kenneth Frampton postulates that in a Loosian worldview: …the architect from the city was uprooted by definition and hence categorically alienated from the innate agrarian (or alpine) vernacular of his distant forebears, then it followed that he could not compensate for this loss by pretending to inherit the aristocratic culture of Western Classicism. (2007, 91)

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In his own work, however, Loos does not fully repudiate forms of architectural ornamentation. In fact, in his interiors, he deploys a rich palette of natural stone surfaces, figural spaces, and reductive versions of classical pilasters, columns, and capitals. Loos, in this way, is a liminal figure between nineteenth-century idioms of classical references and the subsequent rejection of classicism in early European modernism. Benedetto Gravagnuolo recognizes the complicated position Loos occupies in the genealogy of modern architectural expression when he states: Loos’ work cannot be made to fit into naively linear interpretations of the history of the Modern Movement, and that an unreasonable attempt has been made to interpret his ‘architecture without ornament’ as an anticipation of Rationalism. (1982, 78) The Wittgenstein House represents a pure distillation of Loos’ intellectual project in architectural abstraction inside and out (Figure 3.2). Paul Engelmann, a pupil of Loos, was hired to design a house in Vienna for Margarethe Stoneborough, the sister of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Engelmann reportedly drew the original plans for the house, but soon after, the project was taken over by Wittgenstein himself with Engelmann acting as an assistant to the project (Hyman 2001, 144). Like the exteriors of Loos’ freestanding villas, the Wittgenstein House is a series of white cubic volumes with large punctured openings. But unlike the rich range of materials and color of Loos’ interiors, the Wittgenstein House continues the vocabulary of austere and unadorned surfaces inside. Wittgenstein eschewed the natural patterns of exposed materials in preference to artificial materials, such as stuccolustro wall and ceiling surfaces, monolithic grey terrazzo floors marked only by a grid of joints, and rigorously crafted exposed steel doors and windows (Leitner 2000, 12). Wittgenstein’s architecture was distilled to the essential architectural elements. As John Hyman comments, “When ornament has been eliminated, materials, proportions, and the play of light are all important” (2001, 144). Figure 3.2 White cubic volumes with a regular and repetitive window pattern of horizontal and vertical alignment, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Paul Engelmann, Wittgenstein House (Vienna, Austria) 1928. Photograph inventory number 2699-B, courtesy of Architekturzentrum Wien. Photograph by Margherita Spiluttini.

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The window and door systems are a mechanical tour de force that Wittgenstein took a full year to design (Leitner 2000, 73–80). He had originally studied engineering, so it is not surprising that he could devote the same studied intensity to architectural detail as he did to language. There are separate bi-folding doors that align with both faces of the thick masonry walls at each opening between rooms. One must pull the first layer of doors towards oneself to gain access to the second layer of doors that swing away. The dual door system intensifies the experience of passing through each threshold as a series of distinct spaces between each room of the house. The windows and doors at the exterior walls of the house have “metal curtains” that weightlessly rise out of the floor with just one hand due to an ingenious system Wittgenstein designed of counterbalances that are discreetly hidden in the floor below (Leitner 2000, 121–26). In the Wittgenstein House, ornamentation is displaced by performative mechanical precision. Wittgenstein, a personal friend of Loos, intensified Loos’ dictum for the reduction of unnecessary or historically referential architectural articulation. Bernard Leitner describes Wittgenstein’s design process as adding meaning while editing form when he writes, “In Wittgenstein’s architecture simplicity does not mean functional-objectivity. Austerity is not an expression of modesty. Reduction is minimal, multi-layered form” (2000, 12). On the one hand, the simplification of architectural articulation Wittgenstein achieved in the house for his sister parallels a progression towards greater abstraction of architectural space and surface in European Modernism. On the other, the house does not break new ground of building technology. The walls are traditional load-bearing masonry, the windows are large enough to provide ample natural daylight and ventilation, and the heating is a conventional system of radiators (Leitner 2000, 168–69). (The radiators are unique in that Wittgenstein applied a similarly rigorous design process to them as he did for the doors and windows. They are in the form of right angles so they can nestle into the corners of each room.) Aesthetically, however, the Wittgenstein House is a closer progenitor to 2226 than Loos’ work due to its purity of surface, regularity of fenestration, and articulation of the thickness of the masonry construction as a critical form of architectural expression and building performance.

Performance We are trying to produce something that is so clear, with enough space, light, and thermal qualities that we have the sensation that it can be used and reused without changing. — Roger Tudó Galí, H Arquitectes Like the Wittgenstein House, the vertical walls of 2226 are also masonry, but of a very particular type. They consist of a unit masonry called Porotherm (Figure 3.3), a terra-cotta block produced in Austria and India by Wienerberger AG (Pepchinski 2014, 72). Serving as both the vertical structure and thermal barrier, Porotherm eliminates the complex layers of contemporary construction in favor of a simple, monolithic, and durable enclosure. The terra-cotta is extruded as a series of vertical

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Figure 3.3 Porotherm terra-cotta masonry blocks: the more insulating block at left; the more structural block at right, Wienerberger AG. Photograph by Peter Wiederspahn.

micro-walls less than a centimeter wide that are arranged in a diagonal pattern with spaces in between to maximize strength and stability while minimizing the amount of material. Those spaces trap pockets of air within each terra-cotta block to greatly reduce the speed of heat transfer within the wall, thus creating the insulating effect (Junghans 2016, 46). 2226 deploys two types of Porotherm blocks in adjacent vertical layers, or wythes. The exterior wythe traps relatively more air providing more thermal insulation, though it still has significant structural strength. The interior wythe has more terra-cotta, making it stronger in resisting gravitational and lateral forces within the building, but also maintains significant thermal capabilities. Together, these layers create a wall that is 76 centimeters (30 inches) thick. Because the mortar joints conduct heat more readily than the terra-cotta block, the two wythes of the block are offset from each other vertically by one-half of a block module so no mortar joints pass straight through the wall. This staggering of the mortar joints reduces the total thermal conductance of the wall by about 50 percent (Aicher 2016, 137). The interior walls are also constructed with Porotherm blocks, thereby contributing to the thermal mass strategy of temperature moderation, and are organized in a radiating pinwheel pattern that subdivides the plan into four quadrants in each corner of the building (Figure 3.4). These walls create a series of narrow zones for vertical circulation and a wet core, but large mechanical spaces are noticeably absent since no heating and cooling equipment is needed for the building. The cubic geometry of the building massing minimizes the exterior wall-areato-interior-volume ratio, and the spaces have high ceilings so in the summer the warmest air can rise above the occupants: all factors that further augment 2226’s overall passive thermal performance. When striving to provide the greatest amount of interior comfort passively, the insulating qualities of the exterior walls are only part of a complex set of thermodynamic relationships. The masonry walls also possess a substantial thermal mass to store heat energy and moderate

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Figure 3.4 Typical floor plan, thick exterior walls, and a pinwheel interior wall pattern creating four spatial quadrants, Baumschlager Eberle Architekten, 2226 (Lustenau, Austria) 2013. Drawing recreated by authors.

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temperature changes (Junghans 2016, 47). When the weather is cold, that mass retains warmth generated by the occupant’s body heat and their lighting and electronic equipment, creating a heat source. Conversely, when the outside air is warm relative to the interior spaces, the walls act as a heat sink that absorb heat energy. These fundamental physics maintain the interior temperatures between 22 degrees and 26 degrees Celsius (71 degrees and 79 degrees Fahrenheit), hence the building’s name. Performance data collected over multiple years show that the only time 2226’s interior temperature exceeds this range is over the Christmas holidays when there are no occupants to generate heat that would warm the building’s thermal mass (Junghans and Widerin 2017, 114–22). All of the masonry walls and concrete ceilings of 2226 are finished with white lime plaster. Although it visually conceals the building’s primary structural material, the plaster provides integral contributions to the interior comfort concept (Aicher 2016, 136). The plaster continues to

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harden as it cures over many years making it increasingly resistant to staining, a chemical process that simultaneously absorbs carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. The plaster is also hydrophilic, so it will absorb moisture into its pores from the interior spaces when the conditions are humid and will release moisture when they are dry. This helps moderate the interior humidity thereby increasing interior comfort. The careful design consideration of every detail in 2226 contributes to the larger passive energy concept like a self-reinforcing ecosystem. The window system in 2226 is another critical component of the building’s passive energy performance. First, the solid wood window frames are set deeply within the exterior walls so they are flush to the inside surface (Figure 3.1). The resulting exterior deep space provides shade for the windows to minimize solar heat gain in the warm months when the sun angles are higher, yet invites the sun’s rays into the interior in the cool months when the sun angle is lower. Second, these deep pockets of space create microclimates of still air protected from the swirl of ambient breezes. The temperature of this air is then moderated by the building surfaces in the deep space, thus reducing the temperature difference between the exterior and interior. Third, the glazed area of the exterior walls, or the window-to-wall ratio, is just 16 percent (Figure 3.5), and the glazing is triple-paned (Aicher 2016, 136–37). This type of glass greatly reduces heat losses by conduction in cold weather and overheating from solar gains in warm weather. Fourth, the proportion of the windows is relatively narrow and tall, and they extend up to the underside of the white ceiling surface. This reflects natural light deep into the interior space, reducing the energy required for artificial lighting. Also, the white vertical surfaces of the deep pocket of exterior space help reflect diffused natural light laterally throughout the interior spaces. Fifth, the deep sills at the windows are made of an indigenous Rorschach sandstone (Aicher 2016, 136). The stone is non-porous and is carved to create shallow tubs that retain the water or snow that lands there, instead of shedding it out and away from the face of the building as most sills do. The captured water then simply evaporates over time. This eliminates any sill or scupper projections from the smooth face of the lime-plastered facades. The sandstone is light gray so it too reflects light up and into the interior spaces. Last, the cumulative effect of the windows being organized in a regular and repetitive fenestration pattern on all facades ensures an excellent distribution of natural light throughout the building (Figure 3.6). The windows in 2226 not only control the temperature and natural light but equally importantly the manipulation of fresh air. Wood ventilation panels (Figure 3.7) are integrated into the window frames with automated opening devices that are controlled by separate environmental sensors in each quadrant of the plan on each floor (Widerin 2016, 57–68). If the interior spaces become too warm or if the carbon dioxide levels become too high, the two automated vent panels at opposite corners of

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Figure 3.5 Elevation with a regular and repetitive window pattern of horizontal and vertical alignment, Baumschlager Eberle Architekten, 2226 (Lustenau, Austria) 2013. Drawing recreated by authors.

Figure 3.6 Interior illuminated by diffused natural light, Baumschlager Eberle Architekten, 2226 (Lustenau, Austria) 2013. Photograph by norbert Prommer.

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each quadrant open to induce cross ventilation. Also, because the vent panels are as tall as the windows, hot air can escape out from the top of the vent opening while cooler air can enter at the bottom of the same opening. During the warm months, all of the vents open overnight to cool the thermal mass, called a night purge, so it can act as a heat sink by the time people return in the morning. The building’s users can also instruct the vents to open or close to their own liking whenever they want. This electronic sensing and control system merges the discrete sophistication of digital technology with the natural thermal performance of the massive masonry architecture to provide comfort and well-being to its occupants (Hugentobler 2016, 146). Though repetitive in its order and minimalist in its articulation, 2226 establishes a complex and carefully calibrated reciprocity between its exterior and interior environments in its every detail. Like the indigenous architectures of which we are so fond, 2226 not only defines its surroundings but is also defined by them. In contrast to 2226’s thick vertical masonry construction, its horizontal floor and roof structure is reinforced concrete (Stoppel 2016, 96–99). Like the walls, these horizontal elements are also composed of distinct layers to optimize their overall performance (Figure 3.8). The first layer

Figure 3.7 Deep window pocket with automated vent panel, Baumschlager Eberle Architekten, 2226 (Lustenau, Austria) 2013. Photograph by Peter Wiederspahn.

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Figure 3.8 Detailed axonometric drawing showing the layers of construction and building systems: the double wythes of Porotherm blocks; the lime plaster veneer; the wood window frames with automated natural air vent panel; and the raised floor systems to provide systems adaptability for the long term. Baumschlager Eberle Architekten, 2226 (Lustenau, Austria) 2013. Drawing by authors.

is thin precast, prestressed concrete slabs that span from the interior to the exterior walls without requiring any intermediate supporting columns. This structural layer then becomes the formwork for the second layer of site-cast concrete. Together, the two layers of concrete provide an additional thermal mass to the building. The third and last layer is a raised floor system to provide both acoustic separations between the floor levels and a horizontal chase for electrical and plumbing services.

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The false floor is a critical feature of the building’s potential longevity. As uses inevitably change over time, new services can be deployed within the raised-floor cavity where necessary. To complement the future adaptability provided by the raised floor system, the desired interior comfort conditions can also be set differently for each new use since the temperature and air quality sensors operate distinctly for each spatial quadrant. Currently, the building already houses a wide range of uses—professional offices, an art gallery, a gym, and a residence—and the raised floor system makes the building pre-configured for a diversity of new uses.

Collaboration We’ve done too poor a job of acknowledging the other key players outside of architecture, from the contractor to the engineers and the critical role that they play. — Michael Green, Michael Green Architecture 2226 shares some formal and performative characteristics with the Zollverein School of Management and Design in Essen, Germany (Figure 3.9), which are instructive to analyze here. The Zollverein School by SANAA (Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa), completed in 2006, was designed to be a new face for the defunct and repurposed Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex, which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site (Weiss 2006, 10–13). Both 2226 and the Zollverein School are freestanding cubes designed with a refined simplicity. Unlike the regularity of the fenestration pattern of 2226, however, the Zollverein School has an asymmetrical array of square windows that range from large to small. The fenestration pattern does not reveal where the interior floor levels are located inducing the visual sense of an undifferentiated monumental volume. In fact, the sectional qualities of the Figure 3.9 Cubic exterior volume with cast-in-wall “active insulation” radiant heating and cooling, SANAA, Zollverein School of Management and Design (Essen, Germany) 2006. Photograph courtesy of Getty Images.

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Zollverein School vary greatly, especially compared to the stacked floor levels of 2226. Both buildings deploy a monolithic wall construction for combined structural and thermal solutions derived from their site conditions. The manner in which these buildings manage their performative relationships with the environment, however, are quite distinct from one another. The exterior wall construction of the Zollverein School is 30 centimeters (12 inches) of solid site-cast concrete, which is unexpectedly thin relative to the building’s monumental form. Matthias Schuler of Transsolar, the energy consultants for the project, explains that the interior lighting levels became too low when a traditional wall system of multiple construction layers and insulation was digitally simulated (Schuler 2006, 111). So, the consultants devised a more radical solution: like 2226, the Zollverein School does not have an insulating layer to thermally break the exterior from the interior. Unique to the Zollverein School’s context is that it sits above defunct coal mines 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) below the surface that are filled with water (108–9). The water temperature is naturally raised to 29 degrees Celsius (84 degrees Fahrenheit) by the warmth of the surrounding earth. The heat energy of the mine water is exchanged at a pump station on the surface to serve a hydronic radiant heat system embedded in the exterior walls. This cycle is reversed in the summer to provide radiant cooling. The design team designated this as an “active insulation” that is free of cost and emits no carbon dioxide (111). Although much of the heat energy is radiated from the face of the building in the cold months, the energy source is inexhaustible. The energy management solutions for these two buildings reveal two significant performative differences between them even though they both have the ability to maintain year-round interior comfort without expending any fossil fuels. 2226 maintains its interior temperature primarily through passive means by the effects of the thermal mass of its construction, while the Zollverein School actively produces comfort through the use of geothermal energy exchange. The design team for the Zollverein School found its energy solution by solving the issues of natural interior lighting by making a thin exterior wall. The design team for 2226, conversely, found a synergy between the wall thickness of its masonry construction and the ability of its white plaster veneer in the deep window pockets to bounce diffused natural light throughout the interior. What most closely connects 2226 and the Zollverein School is the fact that their relationship between form and performance was generated by the close collaboration of the architects and the consulting engineers early in the conceptual design stages of the projects to maximize the use of the available energy sources in the local environment. Building scientist Lars Junghans provided 2226’s design team with computer simulations that could confirm the architect’s intuitive and empirical assumptions about the thermal mass energy strategy (Junghans 2016, 49). Similarly, Transsolar conceived of the active insulation solution for the Zollverein School by conceiving the building systems as extending

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well beyond the perimeter of its exterior walls (Schuler 2006, 109–10). In both cases, the design processes for building performance and interior comfort have produced exceptional technical solutions that translate directly into equally extraordinary forms of architectural expression.

Simple Let’s make the process complex now so that later the building can be simple. — Michael Leblanc, Utile, Inc The robust masonry walls of 2226 are the epitome of an integrated system for structure, enclosure, thermal performance, and natural lighting and ventilation. But this material choice represents a life-cycle conundrum. The initial embodied energy and embodied carbon investment are high. For example, the terra-cotta, lime plaster, and the cement for the concrete and mortar all need to be kiln-fired at high temperatures (Aicher 2016, 135–36). Yet, the resulting edifice greatly reduces its operational energy required to provide interior comfort. Time, however, is the element that merges these two conflicting energy scenarios because the robust construction is designed for physical durability and useful longevity. 2226 does not have a plethora of distinct building systems, instead, its few systems are carefully calibrated to be unified as a self-reinforcing and integrated whole. The architects leverage modern technology, such as the use of innovative computer simulation and modeling in the design process, to create an architecture that can respond to its climate and its occupant’s comfort all year, and in perpetuity, without mechanical equipment. The simplicity of 2226’s material construction and performative synergies reduces the vulnerabilities of the systems obsolescence and the demanding maintenance and replacement regimes. Its multiple open loft-like spaces on each floor can provide uses of diverse sizes with a proper fit, and each user can install the necessary electrical and plumbing services in the raised floor system where and when needed. And the abundant natural light and ventilation greatly reduce energy consumption while creating spaces for the users’ well-being. These well-orchestrated design strategies produce a durable and resilient architecture that does not need energy-dependent systems to maintain the essential qualities of comfort and delight over the long term. Alan Lifschutz sums up well the importance of designing for the temporal dimension and how it can manifest itself in a building’s morphology. He writes: The key to appropriate building design is an understanding of time, a predisposition towards buildings in continuous flux rather than as static lumps. In this light, the role of the architect is to facilitate change, and to liberate users to achieve their destinies. Simple plans and sections, generous volumes, and structural capacities are at the heart of that liberation. (Lifschutz 2017, 17) The architects of 2226 found that the building produced some very positive financial and energy results when compared to more conventional construction systems, based on their gathered data. 2226 has a savings

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of 25 percent in construction cost, 49 percent in life cycle costs, and 67 percent in operational energy consumption in just 50 years. When amortized over an extended duration, the initial energy and carbon investment continuously declines relative to the accumulating years of the building’s usability. The architects are now referring to this building as 2226 Lustenau to distinguish it from variations of the 2226 concept that have been implemented in other locations, such as 2226 Emmenweid and 2226 Lingenau. Although the new buildings respond quite differently to their contextual particularities, the essential material, constructional, and performative attributes have been replicated. The successful redeployment of this design strategy suggests that the architects are establishing a new building type, one not based on use but instead on an ethos of persistence. 2226 honors the memory of pre-modern building strategies that have proven over time to be well-tuned to their environmental contexts and enduring in the face of cultural vicissitudes. Dietmar Eberle recognizes the valuable lessons that past architectures can provide contemporary architects when he states: History teaches us that buildings have to be robust. Robust refers to the materiality of the building and its simplicity, but also to the architectural qualities of the building: arrangement and dimension of rooms, daylight, and the ability to provide comfort and wellbeing. This type of robustness guarantees a long life for the building. (Aicher and Eberle 2016, 166) Simplicity in the design of buildings seeks the most essential qualities of architecture. It prioritizes the integration of building systems rather than creating a series of building components that perform distinct roles. Reducing the number of systems increases the significance of the few that remain, both performatively and perceptually. Thus, simplicity requires sophisticated design processes because each element must perform multiple roles, and the interactions among these fewer elements must be carefully calibrated to mutually augment their performative capacities. As Jürgen Stoppel, project architect for 2226, admits, “We always try to create something simple, which, in truth, turns out to be not so simple at all, although it looks extremely natural and never contrived” (2016, 87). Simplicity is a challenge to contemporary practice about what is important in architecture. It provokes us to once again appeal to the enduring attributes of an architecture that creates reciprocity with nature orchestrated through material, structure, space, light, proportion, and time.

References Aicher, Florian. 2016. “Baustoff, Bauart, Baustelle \ Material, Type, Site.” In be 2226: Die Temperatur Der Architektur: Portrait Eines Energieoptimierten Hauses / The Temperature of Architecture: Portrait of an Energy-Optimized House, translated by Geoffrey Steinherz and Elizabeth Schwaiger. Basel: Birkhäuser. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783035603873-011.

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Aicher, Florian, and Dietmar Eberle. 2016. “Mit dem Nutzer rechnen \ In Defense of the User.” In be 2226: Die Temperatur Der Architektur: Portrait Eines Energieoptimierten Hauses / The Temperature of Architecture: Portrait of an Energy-Optimized House, translated by Geoffrey Steinherz and Elizabeth Schwaiger. Basel: Birkhäuser. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783035603873-014. Banham, Reyner. 1984. The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment, 2nd Edition. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Carver, Norman F. 1989. North African Villages: Morocco; Algeria; Tunisia. Kalamazoo, MI: Documan Press. Curtis, William J.R. 1996. Modern Architecture since 1900, 3rd Edition. New York: Phaidon Press. Frampton, Kenneth. 2007. Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 4th Edition. New York: Thames and Hudson, Ltd. Gravagnuolo, Benedetto. 1982. Adolf Loos. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc. Green, Michael. July 23, 2019. Founding Principal, Michael Green Architecture Interview by Peter Wiederspahn, Vancouver. Heidegger, Martin. 1977. “Building Dwelling Thinking.” In Basic Writings, edited by J. Glenn Gray, translated by Albert Hofstadter: 323–39. New York: Harpers & Row, Publishers, Inc. Hugentobler, Walter. 2016. “Gesundheitliche Aspekte \ Health Aspects.” In be 2226: Die Temperatur Der Architektur: Portrait Eines Energieoptimierten Hauses / The Temperature of Architecture: Portrait of an Energy-Optimized House, translated by Geoffrey Steinherz and Elizabeth Schwaiger. Basel: Birkhäuser. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783035603873-012. Hyman, John. 2001. “The Urn and the Chamber Pot.” In Wittgenstein, Theory and the Arts, edited by Richard Allen and Malcolm Turvey: 136–51. London and New York: Routledge. Junghans, Lars. 2016. “Die energetische Konzeption \ The Energy Concept.” In be 2226: Die Temperatur Der Architektur: Portrait Eines Energieoptimierten Hauses / The Temperature of Architecture: Portrait of an Energy-Optimized House, translated by Geoffrey Steinherz and Elizabeth Schwaiger. Basel: Birkhäuser. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783035603873-006. Junghans, Lars, and Peter Widerin. 2017. “Thermal Comfort and Indoor Air Quality of the Concept 22/26, a New High Performance Building Standard.” In Energy and Buildings 149: 114–22. Karandinou, Anastasia. 2013. No Matter: Theories and Practices of the Ephemeral in Architecture. London and New York: Routledge. Leatherbarrow, David. 2005. “Architecture’s Unscripted Performance,” in Performative Architecture: Beyond Instrumentalism. New York: Spon Press. Leblanc, Michael. January 25, 2018. Founding Principal, Utile, Inc. Interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn, Boston, MA. Leitner, Bernard. 2000. The Wittgenstein House. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Lifschutz, Alex. 2017. “Long Life, Loose Fit, Low Energy.” Architectural Design, September 2017: 6–17. Moe, Kiel. 2008. Integrated Design in Contemporary Architecture. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Pepchinski, Mary. July 2014. “Lead by Example: Baumschlager Eberle Designs an Elegant, Efficient Home for Its Own Firm.” in Architectural Record 202 (7): 72. Rael, Ronald. 2009. Earth Architecture. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Rudofsky, Bernard. 1988. Architecture Without Architects. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press edition by arrangement with Doubleday & Company.

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Schuler, Matthias. 2006. “Collaboration between Energy and Design: Energy Concept.” In The Zollverein School of Management and Design in Essen, Germany, edited by Kristin Feireiss: 108–13. Munich: Prestel Verlag. Sprigg, June. 1986. Shaker Design. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art in association with W. W. Norton & Company, New York. Stoppel, Jürgen. 2016. “Pläne und technische Daten \ Drawings and Technical Data.” In be 2226: Die Temperatur Der Architektur: Portrait Eines Energieoptimierten Hauses / The Temperature of Architecture: Portrait of an Energy-Optimized House, translated by Geoffrey Steinherz and Elizabeth Schwaiger. Basel: Birkhäuser. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783035603873-009 ———. June 29, 2018. Partner, Baumschlager Eberle Architekten Interview by Peter Wiederspahn, Lustenau. Tudó Gali, Roger. April 30, 2019. Founding Principal, H Arquitectes Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, Barcelona. Weiss, Roland. 2006. “Genius Loci Zollverein.” In The Zollverein School of Management and Design in Essen, Germany, edited by Kristin Feireiss: 10–13. Munich: Prestel Verlag. Widerin, Peter. 2016. “Die Steuerung \ The Control System.” In be 2226: Die Temperatur Der Architektur: Portrait Eines Energieoptimierten Hauses / The Temperature of Architecture: Portrait of an Energy-Optimized House, translated by Geoffrey Steinherz and Elizabeth Schwaiger. Basel: Birkhäuser. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783035603873-007. ———. June 29, 2018. Founding Principal, TAU GmbH Interview by Peter Wiederspahn, Lustenau, Austria.

4 SITUATED M. Laboy

If you want a building to last, you need a good foundation. And then, you build from there. — Tod Williams, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects|Partners

The Enduring Nature of Place Designing buildings to absorb change is more dependent on the notion of a stable foundation than on any notions of ephemerality. For Steven Holl, the site is that physical and metaphysical foundation: “Architecture is bound to situation. Unlike music, painting, sculpture, film, and literature a, construction (non-mobile) is intertwined with the experience of a place” (Holl 1989, 9). The site is where the building can find a powerful connection to what is enduring about a place. Dolores Hayden defined the power of place as “The power of ordinary urban landscapes to nurture citizen’s public memory, to encompass shared time in the form of shared territory” (Hayden 1995, 9). The notion of the shared in architecture can be present in common spaces that most people can experience and transform over time to become part of social history. For Hayden social history is embedded in urban landscapes and needs to be “Grounded in both the aesthetics of experiencing places with all five senses and the politics of experiencing places as contested territory” (43). Thus, a long-lasting architecture must be in a dialogue with the urban landscape. Hayden argued that the power of place remained untapped in most urban preservation efforts, especially that of ordinary spaces and histories (9). This chapter argues that this power also remains untapped in the discourse of long-term building adaptability, which too often focuses on the attributes of the artifact itself. The role of place, landscape, and shared territory—the public realm connected, created, or enhanced by a building—remains absent from most technical accounts of architecture designed for change. Urban preservation, which Hayden calls “the presence of the past in the city,” needs cultural and urban landscape history as a unifying and coherent framework to bring together the conceptualizing and planning work typically done by disparate areas of practice—social historians, architectural preservationists, environmentalists, and public artists (45). Architecture that is to be preserved in the future must become an integral element of that landscape, as it is the presence of buildings

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in the collective consciousness that enables them to become part of a shared place identity—what Hayden called storehouses of urban landscapes: “The physical or spatial features that frame the lives of many people and often outlast many lifetimes” (9). Hayden’s argument references two key concepts from Edward S. Casey’s seminal work on place memory that are particularly relevant to persistence: the idea of place creating a stabilizing persistence and grounding what is remembered (For more on the role of place and buildings in different forms of memory, see Chapter 9: Memorable). Building from Casey’s concepts of place memory, it can be said that the persistence of architecture must be tied to the persistence of place, and the situation of a building needs to be well-grounded in the collective identity, public realm, and social history of a particular urban landscape. This chapter seeks to uncover the material and spatial ways in which a persistent architecture is grounded in place, through the power of more meaningful and lasting connections to the evolving social and ecological dynamics of its situation. 1 For an expanded discussion of the structural implications of grounding, please see: Laboy, M.M. “Temporal Reciprocities of Building and Site: Structural Patterns for Resilient Future-Use Structures.” In Structures and Architecture: Bridging the Gap and Crossing Borders, edited by Paulo J.S. Cruz, 1st edition: 1031–40. London: CRC Press, 2019. https://doi. org/10.1201/9781315229126123. Some ideas of this chapter were preliminarily explored in this conference paper, from which some words are extracted, and for which the authors retain rights to republish here.

Grounded in Place 1 WG Clark wrote one of the most compelling descriptions of architecture’s role in making people of the place and not merely on it: At the necessary junction of culture and place, architecture seeks not only the minimal ruin of landscape, but something more difficult: a replacement of what is lost with something that atones for the loss. In the best architecture this replacement is through an intensification of the place, where it emerges no worse for human intervention, where culture’s shaping of the land to specific use results in a heightening of beauty and presence. In these places we seem worthy of existence. (McCarter 2019, 237) Building persists in a changing social, political, and economic context by becoming more deeply connected to the stabilizing frame of place and urban landscape. While the architectural theory may favor universal principles and generalizable rules, this reality requires more critical approaches to engage specificity. Herein lies the paradox of the specificity of place in service of adaptability: The placement of architecture in the real world often seems contaminated by a multiplicity of socio-economic structures and processes, but its situation in the world is also what provides an opportunity to engage in the making of a landscape where over time architecture finds a critical autonomy and relevance. (Laboy 2016, 78) How buildings are grounded in a place is as important to persistence as their technical attributes and excess capacities. The term grounding here has two interdependent meanings. Grounding a building structurally means transferring loads to the ground to anchor the building on the physical site—how that physical act transforms the ground plane,

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topography, hydrology, and geology of a site to improve its situation. Grounding a building culturally means establishing a long-lasting imprint on the social condition—how a reconfiguration of spatial patterns and flows of people and resources permanently weaves the space of the building into a dynamic cultural and economic context. Grounding a building permanently transforms a place even after the building is no longer there. As WG Clark so beautifully articulated, there is something of greater importance that we are trying to reach when we build: “The joining of structure and land, and how this can and should result in a sureness of place that is made all the stronger by the union” (McCarter 2019, 239). The structural and cultural grounding of a building in a place aligns with the most enduring aspects of the life of a building, even when sites are in constant flux. The structure is physically harder to change and thus easier to argue for. On the other hand, the envelope as a public face is more vulnerable to changes in social and cultural context. During a visit by the authors to the Portland office of ZGF Architects in Portland, architect Baha Sadreddin described this risk: “Most clients, even with these carbon goals, want to create a beautiful building that doesn’t look like a building from three decades ago. And architecture firms usually don’t want to get involved with risks of leaky envelopes” (Sadreddin 2019). Envelopes are often subject to change when buildings expand. During a visit to their studio, Katie Bennet, architect and director at Thomas Phifer’s office described their project at the Clemson School of Architecture, which was the third addition to the building, as recladding of a tower to help with sustainability but also to “tie it together with the rest of the project” (Bennet 2018). Similarly, in their museum project in the factory town of Corning, new York, the original factory floor, cage structure, and trusses remained, but were reclad to bring up to energy code. “The character of the space comes from the original use as an industrial production facility,” explained Stephen Dayton, a partner and founding member of Phifer’s office (Dayton 2018) which led to the repurposing of its interior (for more on this project see Chapter 9 Memorable). In long-lasting buildings, the primary structural system exerts the most resistance to change. Structural design is inherently about stability and inertia, relying on current occupancy and historical data to define design loads. For these reasons, designing for future changes that may require higher loads represents a challenging question (Wright, Ayyub, and Lombardo 2013). However, leveraging the durability, capacity, and redundancy of structural systems to create more meaningful and long-lasting patterns on the landscape can build the social and ecological capacity to persist. There is more pressure to get right the interactions between the primary structure—usually the largest components anchored to the foundation—and the site in order to provide a stable but adaptable framework for changing systems and human uses. The secondary structure is less critical, as it is usually easier to change without significantly altering the primary load paths, overall configuration, and patterns landing on the ground. The notion that place and primary structure are both connected to the land provides a productive

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alignment of temporal scales. Architects need a better understanding of place in order to develop patterns for long-term habitation that build upon and heighten the connection to land, memory, and history on a site. WG Clark describes the site as containing three places: The physical place with its earth, sunlight, and rain; a cultural place, the locus of the traditions of human intervention; and a spiritual place, a place of evocation that stirs our imagination and reminds us of far away, ancient images and analogs. (McCarter 2019, 239) The last two constitute a dynamic human context that is less predictable than the first. Sites are not really defined by a boundary, instead are in a continuum with landscape and region as a social and ecological place. In that way, sites can also operate at slower scales and rates of geological or climatological change. The place provides a necessary stability, but often any form of specificity is seen as an inherent risk: fixing a building to a moment in time in a way that may preclude adaptation to future changes in its surroundings. However, the differentiated configuration and dimensioning of the structural patterns can mitigate that risk by negotiating a range of opposites: exterior and interior landscapes, public and private realms, the general and the specific, and ground and atmosphere.

The General and the Place-Specific An architecture of persistence must reconcile the generality of adaptability with the specificity of place. Place specificity can be transformative rather than fixative: a catalyst for the creation of place and social space that heightens the experience of the surrounding environment. Adaptability can be place-specific too, by organizing programmable space and infrastructure, based on general patterns of daylight that support most changes in use. When interviewing the team at Behnisch Architekten, Abigail Ransmeier spoke of this ongoing conflict between flexibility and specificity, and the effort it takes: “to convince clients and ourselves that flexibility doesn’t mean an open floor plan…a box, but it is something that has enough of a life that regardless who goes in there, there is a way to make it a home” (Ransmeier 2019). Ransmeier’s critique from the perspective of practice resonates with more academic criticisms of the term flexibility: “the idea of a generic loft-like space in which anything might happen—a particular and persistent vision of both utopian and dystopian flexibility” (Jonathan Ochshorn 2019, 614). Alex Gordon’s call for Long Life, Loose Fit, discussed in Part I Material Ecologies, is often interpreted as large, robust, and generic structures. However, generic by definition suggests a lack of originality or individuality, a characteristic that architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable associated negatively with the flexibility of “all-purpose spaces in blind, bland boxes” (Huxtable 1981). Persistent architecture must be grounded in place and, therefore, is not inherently generic. Instead, it relies on an intentional balancing of its general and specific qualities. General, unlike generic, refers to what is true for most or all conditions, as opposed to the exceptions, and as such does not necessarily negate

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a rich articulation of space, structure, and surface to modulate its relationship to the more universal aspects of the site. The duality of specificity and generality ensures that exceptional spaces respond to the idiosyncrasies of place to maintain a long-lasting connection with its social context, while the general spaces respond to the more constant environmental aspects of site to enable changes in use over time. Connectivity to the social context is crucial to make lasting architecture that is place-specific. Social space in buildings has a natural affinity with the commons, the cultural and natural resources beyond the building. A program does not usually list common space or public realm as a space requirement, instead in the development business speak it gets lumped with the list of spaces that make a building [in]efficient: elevators, lobbies, corridors. Yet good common or public space often proves to be an essential element of a long-lasting building. It may be designed into specific spaces or emerge unintentionally in residual spaces, in special places with a privileged view, or hidden nooks. But their placement and configuration within the building can make them exclusive or absorbed into the private realm. The most impactful strategies intentionally invite the public realm in, thoughtfully connect it throughout the building, and permanently configure it in dialogue with the landscape to ensure its vitality and long life. An idea that emerged in many interviews is that good architecture lasts because its interior social spaces are open, transparent, and continuous with the exterior social context, allowing the building to register and absorb the evolving social life of a place. This openness need not, and for many reasons should not be the dominant condition in the whole building. Balancing conditions of public and private, transparent and opaque, open and dense, becomes permanently articulated by shifts in structural patterns and capacities; for example, between the singular long-span spaces and the repetitive, short spans of divisible spaces; or between tall and short spaces, with the structural implications of column slenderness. This challenges long-standing assumptions that the solution to adaptability is endlessly generic, uniform, and long-spanning structural patterns everywhere. A robust structure can take many different densities as long as its place-specific patterns perpetually engage a fluctuating social context, and the general patterns prioritize daylight and maximize opportunities for different-use configurations.

Ground and Atmosphere In many case studies, the balance between a general fit-tosurroundings and a specific fit-to-place, is articulated through the differentiation, structurally or phenomenologically, between ground and atmosphere. This distinction is evocative of Semper’s Four Elements of Architecture (Semper 1989) which can be divided into two related material traditions: the plinth and the hearth being earthen (stereotomy and ceramics) and the frame and the skin being ephemeral (tectonics and textiles). The earthen elements are about raising, marking, anchoring, protecting, centering, gathering. The ephemeral elements are about wrapping, filtering, sheltering. Most

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interestingly, Semper’s symbolism of the hearth as the center of social interaction and thermal comfort is anchored on the plinth as the grounding element—connecting the public and social realm with the land. Speaking with Tod Williams, this connection is both symbolic and performative: We’ve been trying to set our buildings into the land so that they are not dominating the land, but sit within the land. And only rarely choose to make objects on the land. Doing this means that they’re actually more connected to the Earth, they’re made of mass. They take the cool and the warmth from Mother Earth. (Williams 2018) The thermal connection to the ground is an important affordance of site, one that imbues the building with the inertia and significance of the oldest parts of the Earth. While visiting the ICTA-ICP project (Chapter 7) with the architect Roger Tudó Galí of H-Arquitectes in Barcelona he explained to the authors that the need for geothermal systems to exchange heat with the space required the concrete to be exposed, making it “really connected to the feeling or the flavor of the building” (Tudó Galí 2019). He compared the long life of radiant systems to the typical air conditioning machine that last ten years, as a rationale for using carbon-intensive concrete, its thermal mass providing a strong patrimonial element that extends its life. As a surface, the ground plane defines the relationship of the public realm to the interior life of a building. This relationship often is exceptional—a differentiation of the spaces of ritual, gathering, welcoming, from the spaces of routine. At certain times in history, societal changes prompted new approaches to public or civic space that created vulnerabilities when buildings failed to create a meaningful relationship to the ground. In conversation with Cliff Gayley at the office of William Rawn Associates in Boston, he shared how the reconfiguration of the ground floor became the key to saving Philip Johnson’s 1971 addition to the central Boston Public Library (Gayley 2018). During a hearing to resolve the conflict between those that wanted to see the concrete building gone and those who wanted to preserve it exactly as it was, the architects shared a quote they uncovered by Philip Johnson himself claiming he ‘didn’t get the entry right.’ This quote became the justification for removing enormous granite blocks on front courts that isolated the library from the life on the street and removing the mezzanine on the main entry side to increase height and transparency, creating what Gayley called a big urban room (Figure 4.1a-b). The previously dark and underused wing is now a thriving, transparent public space. It stands in sharp contrast with the adjacent nineteenth-century McKim wing, where the civic space of the introspective reading room is elevated above street level, reached through an opaque and monumental entry and stair sequence that speaks of a different time and social context. When asking Tod Williams about how their work considers change over time, he emphasized the importance of the ground floor as an equalizing space for all people: “The very first and most important level is the public, the democratic level, the level of the street. The next most important level

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Figure 4.1 (a) Exterior before renovation ca. 1972–79, showing granite blocks that isolated the ground floor from the street in all but the entry bay. Philip Johnson, Boston Public Library (Boston, Massachusetts, USA), 1972. Photograph courtesy of Stamped: Massachusetts Department of Commerce and Development, Division of Tourism, 100 Cambridge St., Boston, Mass. Held by the Boston Public Library. (b) Exterior after renovation ca. 2016, showing more transparent facade with granite blocks removed and improved connection to the public realm. William Rawn Associates, Boston Public Library Johnson Building Improvements (Boston, Massachusetts, USA), 2016. Photograph by ©Bruce T. Martin. All Other Rights Reserved.

is the one above that… or now, one below that” (Williams 2018). He fears buildings getting too tall, as they risk a meaningful relationship to the public sphere of the ground. Their work often turns permanent but inhabitable structures, such as the concrete egress cores at the Logan Center for the Arts in Chicago, into spaces of social connectivity. Connecting egress stairs with landscape views, abundant daylight, and lounges for socialization at landings, grounds the tower to its site. The use of structural cores as magnets of social space and their placement in privileged locations create continuity at upper levels with the public spaces of the ground. Permanently configuring the public realm in a building makes the building specific to place, but need not limit adaptation to future uses. Not all corridors are good public realm, but circulation can double as social space, especially when balancing its permanence with indeterminacy (see discussion on circulation in Chapter 11: Indeterminate). When the public realm is articulated with primary structure, integrated with circulation and thermal comfort, it is not only more likely to remain public but also to become a social catalyst: spaces of collaboration, special encounters, and shared memories. Atmosphere is often used to describe an ambience, the mood or feeling of a space—a result of many sensory qualities, from color or lighting to sound or humidity. But this can also be quite literally a reflection of the relationship between interior space and the air and sky, to which human beings can have profound emotional responses. “It is actually the same concept applied at different scales—reinforcing the idea of architectural space as a microcosm or fragment of the firmament” (Brownell et al. 2015, 55). Atmosphere can also be defined by the social feeling of a space, whether it is welcoming or exclusionary.

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Daylight and connectivity to social spaces are important attributes for long-term fitness to site. Or what McDonough called fitting-est: “an energetic and material engagement with place—and an interdependent relationship to it” (McDonough 2002, 120). In an interview at the Office of the University Architect for Princeton University, Ron McCoy subcategorized this idea of fitness into fitness to function and fitness to campus—proposing that either can save a building (McCoy 2017). Formal proportions and structural patterns can define thresholds, transitions, and gradients between building and sky, and between the interior commons and the exterior public realm. Some structural proportions and patterns can severely limit these interactions, making buildings unfit or unredeemable. McCoy shared the example of the decision to demolish Princeton University’s Butler College dormitories by Hugh Stubbins (1960s). While generally found to be a mediocre design by students (Wasley 2007) and architectural critics (Goldberger 1983), McCoy found that what ultimately led to its demise was its failure-to-fit to both function and campus. The structural configuration of parallel load-bearing walls and concrete waffle slabs created a dark atmosphere and could not adapt to provide the desirable social spaces that students now expect. The campus had also evolved around it with pathways, vistas, and connectors, making the opaque building an obstacle to the coherence of that external social context. Both internally and externally it failed to adapt to the changing social context, creating a discontinuity with the public realm. The Cutter Ziskind dormitory at Smith College, designed by SOM in 1957 (College Planning & Management 2016) had a different fate. Despite being considered out of character with the traditional campus, its columnar structure was recently reused and renovated to swing between a contemporary student dormitory during the academic year and a hotel during the summer. Speaking with Charlie Conant, Senior Project Manager of Campus Facilities, he explained that the simplicity and proportions of the columnar structure allowed improvements to daylight and thermal performance (Conant 2018). Simply eliminating partitions periodically connected the double-loaded corridor to the window wall, creating open spaces for social gathering that activated the circulation zone. Moving common amenity spaces from the basement also activated the open ground floor and improved its connection with campus life. It can be said that the proportions of its columnar structural pattern saved the building, while its recladding extended its life. The adaptability of the structure for many functions or human uses often relies on dimensions parallel to the envelope: modules that factor the placement of partitions and furniture. The dimensions perpendicular to the envelope should be controlled by daylight: a spacing not much deeper than the depth of reasonable daylight penetration in a building, before another source of daylight is needed, whether it is the other facade of a bar, a skylight, an atrium in deeper buildings, or a courtyard. Structural solutions to provide daylight in spaces can create moments of excess capacity that give the building resilience. Obstructions, shade from surrounding buildings or natural features, can inform the placement of internal voids—the internalized landscapes or loose spaces that expand the reach of daylight and connect the public and private realm. Taller ceiling heights help with cooling and daylight. This quality

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Figure 4.2 Conceptual sketch of the typical floor section. Foster + Partners, Gerling Ring (Köln, Germany), 2001. Drawing by Narinder Sagoo / Foster + Partners.

is characteristic of what one of the interviewees, Mac Ball, principal at Waggonner & Ball in New Orleans, called the warehouse implication of many old buildings that were designed for a time when there was no electricity (Ball 2018). Foster + Partners exploited this interaction of depth and height in a clever sectional strategy at the Gerling Ring project in Cologne, Germany (2001). On the phone from London, the partner David Nelson described the project to the authors as “fundamentally designed to have many uses” (Nelson 2019). Codes in Germany at the time limited the depth of office space to a relatively shallow 9–12m (30–40ft). By “playing around with the ceiling heights” in this mixed-use building, the structure can quite easily adapt to residential uses and maintain a reasonable floor-to-floor height. The structure has two lines of deep girders below the finished floor level creating a narrow structural bay that defines circulation at the center of the floor plate—furthest from the facade. The end of the two wider bays is picked up by two perimeter lines of upstand girders running parallel to the facade and coming up above the finished floor. This puts the structure at the bottom of the window wall rather than at the ceiling to maximize the useful range of daylight in section. The secondary slab spans at an angle from the bottom of the dropped girders to the upstand girders, creating a tapering profile that leaves a deeper void at the floor near the circulation zone, to allow reconfiguration of infrastructure where daylight is less critical—whether for the frequent distribution of utilities (bathrooms, kitchens) in residential use or for power and communication requirements for office use. The location of heavier structures closer to the center creates a more transparent condition at the perimeter of the much taller ground floor. The tapering profile is visible at the short facades of the bars and is echoed at the underbelly of the building where the public realm flows into inner courtyards. Nelson considers the relationship to the inside

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Figure 4.3 Site section showing the undulating structural pattern of the floors; the negotiation of landscape, infrastructure, and public space; and the expression of the tapering soffit under the building. Foster + Partners, Gerling Ring (Köln, Germany), 2001. Drawing by BPR for Foster +Partners.

and the outside important to long-term buildings, whether that’s in a big-scale park or whether it’s in a tight urban context: “That’s still the public realm, and that’s crucial to us because that’s where the people are” (Nelson 2019). The architects were able to convince the fairly conservative city to allow a taller building based on the premise that the use-adaptability strategies would make for a long-lasting building. According to Michael Leblanc of Utile in Boston—a firm interviewed for this research because of their work integrating future-use principles into developer-driven projects—the taller floor-to-floor height on the ground floor and shorter floor heights above are part of a common economic calculation (Leblanc 2018). The ceiling plane of the ground floor is where many mixed-use urban buildings change in use from the more repetitive spaces above to longer spans with a more transparent enclosure below, often requiring fire separation and rerouting of utilities to keep the ground floor free from obstructions. Keeping the upper floor plates shallow in shorter spaces is more critical to maintain a general atmosphere of daylight and natural ventilation. Leblanc emphasized the importance of a thick plane at the ceiling of the ground floor, where all these different structural patterns come together, to enable a large structural transfer and plenum space of at least one meter (3 ft) or more, that enables changes in the use above that preserves the integrity and openness of the ground floor below. The flow of the public realm from outside to inside is the result of intentionally porous tectonic strategies. Andrea Deplazes describes the design process usually advancing the same way “from the urbane to the

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architectural project…” where architectural matter “stands as the boundary and transition zone between the inside and the outside and unites in itself all architectural, cultural and atmospheric factors, which are broadcast into the space” (Deplazes 2005, 19). This boundary can meaningfully connect the building to a public realm to protect it from other systems of devaluation (economic, regulatory, programmatic). Citing the University of Oregon’s many quads and buildings with atriums while speaking with the authors at the office of Opsis in Portland, Randall Heeb described how the sentiment that the landscape and buildings work together becomes an immutable aspect of a place: “They are proud that the interior space and the exterior space talk to each other. You can work in that idiom, with the theory that even if it changes, then it’s changing for a lot of buildings” (Heeb 2017). This is what WG Clark called the cultural place: “the source of patterns of habitation” which create “sympathy of existence between neighbors, as well as times.” (McCarter 2019, 240) While the private realm is controlled by a smaller group of users that change over time; the public realm is shared and contested, which means it often changes slowly and organically. Structural patterns can register these differences to maintain continuity of the public realm across generations of occupants.

Case Studies: Place-Specificity in Three Adaptable Laboratory Buildings Laboratory buildings are a typology that is both highly specialized and in constant change. They need to provide a robust infrastructure that can expand or transform without interrupting research progress while attracting new generations of researchers and funding to completely remake the space to their vision. The Salk Institute (1965) by Louis Kahn is a seminal example of this idea: a strategic organization of column-free spaces for research supported by deep spaces for infrastructure within the depth of long-span Vierendeel concrete structures: giving as much sectional space for systems as there is for research. Yet Salk’s most recognized image is the powerful symmetry of the courtyard with a water feature heading into a horizon (see figure I.9 in Part 1 Material Ecologies). The site has become the memory of a place that still speaks for Salk more than half a century after it opened. The three labs examined here share broad principles of adaptability but contrast greatly in response to site and place. This place-specificity is central to their goal of persistence. All became engaged in the broader project of constructing a landscape that advanced social and ecological goals to make their situation a catalyst in the transformation and heightening of place. The balance of the general and the place-specific is legible in their distinctly different urban, formal, and spatial strategies, demonstrating that there are no prescriptive formulas for adaptability.

Tale of Two Labs Two case studies are comparative: laboratory buildings built around the same time on the same campus. Their situation is especially relevant. Princeton University has a vast collection of culturally significant and durable buildings. Some of their laboratories have been the subject of study in the discourse of long-life and adaptable buildings. In his 1994 seminal book, Stewart Brand discussed Princeton’s Lewis Thomas

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Molecular Biology Laboratory (1986)—designed by Venturi Scott Brown (VSB)—as an example of insightful programming and spatial planning focus on community and collaboration. Brand credits the generous dimensions of corridors and stairs and the height limitation of three floors, which was designed to encourage people walking and stopping to talk, with making room for unanticipated needs and the tripling of the population in the building (Brand 1994, 179–80). A few years before becoming the University Architect, Ron McCoy was the project architect for this laboratory as part of Venturi & Scott Brown. He considers the building the first of a generation of loft-like lab buildings, a model of adaptable lab buildings he attributes to Venturi & Scott-Brown’s decorated shed versus duck idea (McCoy 2017). The decorated shed was the building “Where systems of space and structure are directly at the service of program, and ornament is applied independently of them” (Venturi 1977, 87). In contrast, the duck was the building “Where the architectural systems of space, structure, and program are submerged and distorted by an overall symbolic form…The building becoming sculpture” (87). McCoy believes that the duck’s highly individualistic configurations are inappropriate for many functions, whereas sheds are founded on Venturi’s belief that architecture is the most ephemeral art. Like Stewart Brand, McCoy still found the building to be very functional, but he believes it was not lofty enough for today’s expectations for daylight. A recent visit to the laboratory made it evident that the equipment and carts have taken over the corridor, compromising daylight and the sense of social space in the building. More than 20 years after the completion of the Thomas Laboratory, McCoy led the process of finding sites and models for new laboratories at Princeton, emphasizing the importance of daylight, landscape continuity and social connectivity that provides a general fitness to function and a specific fit to campus. Princeton University was built around a core campus with a strong social fabric of courtyards connected by paths. In 1912, Princeton hired Beatrix Farrand as Consulting Landscape Gardener, a post she held for decades while she transformed the campus’ many courtyards into gardens that prioritized an aesthetic and instrumental role for plantings: trees for wind protection, espalier to keep the ground free and maximize light and air for buildings, and climbing plants (Maynard 2012, 111–12). The campus expanded outwards and now straddles an ecology of streams with woodland. Writing in 2012, while studying the 2008 campus master plan, the Professor of Art and Architectural History, W. Barksdale Maynard, pointed at the inevitable conclusion that the university was nearing a crisis of ‘build out’ with the potential for leap-frogging of Lake Carnegie to the grassy acres south of the main campus (Maynard 2012, 244). Instead, the plan that was followed by planners Beyer Blinder Belle and landscape architects Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA) recommitted to intensifying the campus while preserving open space and restoring the woodland ecology of streams that fed the campus stormwater into Lake Carnegie. The two laboratory projects, commissioned between 2005 and 2009, had the task of infilling sites with innovative research programs while advancing the landscape goals of the campus plan.

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The Andlinger Center for the Environment at Princeton University by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Planners (2009–16) fit itself into a tight infill site, doubling the usual campus FAR in a corner of campus while inventing a new model of intensely gardened courtyards, designed by MVVA, that reinterpret Farrand’s landscape strategy in a more urban configuration. Increasing the amount of ground surface through excavations and terracing roofscapes, the strategy for densification consisted of an expansive but bright underground floor with a series of smaller built volumes above, which look over sunken courtyards and landscaped roofs. During the interview with the author, Billie Tsien described the laboratory as a garden: “Welcoming people into a series of public courtyards around which science happens” (Tsien 2018). The masonry-clad perimeter makes the building feel earthen, while glazed edges around courtyards form a network of social space connected to the life of the campus. The architecture became primarily a landscape project, the design of the substructure and ground planes. Figure 4.4 Building entry between sunken courtyard and roof landscapes, nestled between other academic buildings. Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment (Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA), 2016. Photograph by Michael Moran.

Figure 4.5 Main stair at lower level looking towards the sunken garden. Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment (Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA), 2016. Photograph by Michael Moran.

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Not unlike Kahn’s Salk Institute, the volume has almost as much sectional height for systems as it has for people—explained Tsien (Tsien 2018). The carving of the program into the ground enabled a generous floor-to-floor height for laboratories without standing taller than the adjacent campus fabric. The main egress stairs, similar to the Logan project, are structures strategically placed to have privileged views of the courtyards, anchoring the social space of the building to the campus public realm. Built as sculpted concrete cores with open corners filled with daylight, the stair landings connect each level to lounges for socialization and study with views of gardens, even on the sunken floors. The intensification of the landscape in the courtyards gives each level a feeling of being at the ground level. McCoy shared during his interview that densification strategies like this one are crucial for new laboratory buildings in the future, to maintain the atmosphere of open space that supports the cohesive and evolving social context of the campus (McCoy 2017).

2 For an earlier investigation of how stormwater strategies in this project , see: Laboy, Michelle. “Performance Niche: An Ecological Systems Framework for Technology and Design.” Architecture of Complexity: Design, Systems, Society and Environment: Journal of Proceedings: 269–77. University of Utah: Architectural Research Centers Consortium, 2017. http://www. cap.utah.edu/wp-content/ u p l o a d s / 20 1 6 / 0 6 / A R CC Proceedings-2017-FINAL.pdf.

The campus master plan proposed restoring ecological streams and woodland buffer corridors, using primarily landscape-based strategies to reduce runoff, improve stormwater quality and increase groundwater recharge. Its implementation must leverage strategic building sites in the more ambitious and sensitive areas. MVVA initiated the most significant stream restoration project on the site of the new Frick Chemistry Laboratory building (MVVA n.d.). The building, completed in 2011 by Hopkins Architects and Payette, was sited next to the Washington Road stream to enable the restoration of woodland and reestablish ecological flows on the site. The North-South orientation for the building conceded a less ideal orientation in favor of advancing campus goals2: eliminating the source of pollution adjacent to the stream—a 124-space parking lot—and replacing it with three bioretention rain gardens that treat close to half of the roof stormwater runoff, retaining or reusing over 1.1 million gallons (4,100 m3) on site (Princeton University 2011). The restored woodlands extended the campus nature walks through the site and the building tucked

Figure 4.6 Site plan (top left) and composite site section of Andlinger Center for the Environment at Princeton University. Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment (Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA), 2016. Drawing by author.

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Figure 4.7 Comparison of diagrammatic floor plans with structural pattern, at the same scale. The dark tones identify small repetitive spaces like offices and work rooms, the middle tone identifies service and circulation cores, and the lightest gray and white identify the larger laboratory spaces. Left: Hopkins Architects and Payette, Frick Chemistry Laboratory, 2010; Right: Venturi Scott Brown, Lewis Thomas Molecular Biology Lab, 1986 (Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey). Drawing recreated by authors.

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Figure 4.8 Cafe space in the atrium, with laboratories on the right, open stairs to the office wing on the left, and bridges, stairs, and entry in the background. Frick Chemistry Laboratory Building, Princeton University, by Hopkins Architects and Payette (Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey), 2010. Photograph by Michelle Laboy.

covered walkways facing the rain gardens on its ground floor. The open stairs landed at seating areas on each floor that interrupt blocks of cellular spaces to connect the central atrium to the west woodlands (Figure 4.7). The central atrium separates laboratory and office functions, brings plentiful daylight into the social heart of the building, and allows passive exhaust of offices and heat recovery for the more energy-intensive lab side. By being separated, offices can keep a shallow footprint, draw fresh air and views from the woodland side of the building, while remaining closely connected to the laboratories with frequent bridges across the multi-story atrium. The structural patterns align across both sides of the atrium, negotiating an ideal module to cluster service zones along circulation spines and bridges, multiples of office modules, and laboratory grids with mechanical risers. These two buildings stand in stark contrast to each other in their reading of place and the integration of general spaces with a highly specific and transformative landscape. One builds on the tradition of formal courtyards and intensifies them with sectional complexity,

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social space connectivity, and roof landscapes. The other restores and intensifies a hypernatural landscape that integrates with the system of campus paths with streams, laminating layers of office, atrium, and laboratory next to woodlands with a cross-grain of social spaces that exist between and inside and outside condition. Both are held as transformative models for a campus with a long tradition of integrating building and landscape, and aspire to resolve the conflicts of densification and open space conservation while advancing an ecological campus strategy. In connecting the general spaces of the lab to these new landscapes, the structure of these buildings, one deeply earth-bound and the other intensely atmospheric, build on the campus landscape history to heighten the experience of place and bet on their long life.

The Persistence of Landscapes N

The Terrence Donnelly Center for Cellular and Biomolecular Research at the University of Toronto by Behnisch Architekten, completed in 2005, registered and heightened the experience of a historically important landscape feature that had been partially erased from the city of Toronto. Its site is a narrow space between two older campus buildings in what used to be a recessed dead-end street. The sectional difference of the road and adjacent buildings to the north, east, and west were the only clues to the past of a creek that used to run through the site. This stream was important to the original settlement around the St. George campus. The new building creates an interior public landscape on the split-level ground floor that reconnects the city and campus and negotiates all the different topographies meeting on this site. The interior Figure 4.9 Main entry space and atrium, with round columns supporting the upper levels of the new laboratory building, and the façade of the older campus building defining the edge of the interior garden space. Behnisch Architekten, Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2005. Photograph by Michelle Laboy.

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Figure 4.10 Service entry, like other entrances, negotiates various levels and connects to the building on the north and west. The Donnelly Center is on the far right, and the two older adjacent buildings are in the foreground. Behnisch Architekten, Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2005. Photograph by Michelle Laboy.

landscape connects with the network of pedestrian paths that lead to the Philosophers Walk to the north—the ravine landscape created by the same Taddle Creek and now in the center of campus (TCLF n.d.) The building to its north had a significant portion of its south wall removed to extend the public space from Donnelly to the north campus. The ground floor includes multiple entrances that converge campus and city paths into the heart of the building. The building tucked specialized laboratory program and service zones below grade, negotiating vehicular and pedestrian access successfully. When interviewing Martin Werminghausen, an architect who worked in the early stages of the project, he described looking at the tight space of the site and realizing that nothing solid should occupy the space. The architects thought they could use the neighboring building spatially as part of an entry hall, which resulted on the new building having a clear pattern on the ground floor: “you enter the building and it is public space and various things happen…things you would see in a plaza or in a very good public space—the opportunity to walk around freely to connect to nature, daylight and people” (Werminghausen 2019). Shallow floor plates and short spans in the elevated volume above help maximize daylight and minimize vibration; leaving a gap for sunlight to penetrate deep into this interiorized landscape created between the mass of labs and the adjacent building as a semi-outdoor public space. The

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Figure 4.11a-b (a) Floor Plan and (b) Section. Behnisch Architekten, Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2005. Drawing recreated by authors.

ground floor is porous enough that—as the lab manager shared—there is so much movement of air in winter that the species of bamboo originally planted had to be replaced with a more cold-hardy variety, which is now thriving. The regularized structural pattern of the labs carries to the ground but it is perceived as less clearly regular at the public space by the undulating landscape and the more organic placement of closed rooms that appear as objects. The structure gives the illusion that the lab tower floats above an exterior landscape, marked by a change from short square columns above—mostly hidden in service zones—to round slender columns with a taller span below. The mezzanine administration space at the lower level flips the legible row of columns from the open lab side above to the garden side below. In contrast to the ground floor, which Werminghausen called a plaza, he refers to the upper floors as the building (Werminghausen 2019). A middle zone for mechanical spaces in the building feeds systems up and down to reduce the total amount of air and the duct meters, making it as flexible and direct as possible. During that same interview, partner Matt noblett explained that having two penthouses above means you are not relying on driving everything from the basement up, or from the roof down, resulting in a very open ground floor, except for “these little eggs of classrooms” (Noblett 2019). Three mechanical spaces are

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Figure 4.12 Two spaces on either side of the service spine: (a) Circulation space at the top of the atrium (left). Photograph courtesy of Behnisch Architekten. Photos by Tom Arban & Stefan Behnisch. (b) Laboratory spaces showing the service structural bay with lower ceilings on the left and the bench area on the right with exposed concrete ceilings (right). Behnisch Architekten, Terrence Donelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2005. Photographs courtesy of Behnisch Architekten. Photographs by Tom Arban & Stefan Behnisch. Figure 4.13 Double height atrium with kitchenette and southern garden, with the formerly exterior wall of the adjacent building and the main entry atrium in the background. Behnisch Architekten, Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2005. Photograph courtesy of Behnisch Architekten. Photograph by Tom Arban.

tied together by 12 small distributed shafts on the narrow structural bay, creating what noblett referred to as a filigree. This distribution creates a delicate threshold between the public and laboratory spaces. Avoiding large shafts frees up the narrow floorplate to create consistent layers of laboratory support, bench, and write-up zones—the latter placed at the facade to be naturally ventilated—and defined by the two asymmetrical structural bays. The proportions of these general work areas make them very suitable for other uses. The team at Behnisch Architekten tested and refined the structural pattern and vertical distribution of shafts by doing test fits of residential and academic office spaces to ensure future use adaptability. Evidence of success came in a short amount of time, when much of the lab work went electronic, the

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spine of the lab support zone was quickly retrofitted into server zones with additional cooling. Conference rooms, kitchenettes, and shared amenities are clustered around smaller multi-story atrium spaces with planters, trees, benches, and privileged city views. These atria are anchored on the public realm of the ground by open stairs that travels through the larger atrium, integrating public realm, daylight, and natural ventilation strategies. The spaces along corridors and gardens are very popular with researchers, who often prefer working there over the write-up zones in the labs. People eat and socialize in these spaces all the time. Dr. Sara Sharifpoor, Director of Research Operations & Strategy, explained that these spaces are managed centrally to be shared by different labs and research teams (Sharifpoor 2019). The placement of these shared spaces and gardens varies on every floor, which Sharifpoor thinks makes the space allocations more challenging but not problematic. The building had as many as 30 principal investigators and 600 people, with significant turnover as investigators move to be directors elsewhere. The changeover has been successful. The building restored the importance of this urban space, connecting history, landscape, and public realm in a thriving ground floor that carries the life of the city into the adaptable workspaces above. But it also extended the life of the adjacent old building that it absorbed into its atrium space. The pedestrian connection at an upper floor, and the allocation of research spaces for the adjacent engineering department at Donnelly—while intended to incentivize interdisciplinary collaborations, also created a collaboration between the old and the new building. An upcoming renovation of the older building hopes to draw from and recreate the atmosphere of light, air, and landscape from the newer building in the old.

Situated Persistence When buildings have the power of place, they become interconnected elements in the woven fabric of the urban landscape that evokes social history. In a metaphor of urban preservation, the structure of a building is analogous to the geology of a site: the slowest and most stable element that gives shape to life on Earth. The atmosphere of a building sustains a dynamic and variable community of users, in the same way that light and air nurture dynamic ecosystems. The situation of a persistent building connects its most enduring qualities, and place imbues it with a thriving and evolving social life. Grounding a building in place means making meaningful connections to history, to community, to earth, to nature—to ensure that the public realm remains a stable foundation upon which to absorb changes in the nature of human use.

References Ball, Mac. 2018. Principal Architect, Waggonner & Ball Architecture / Environment Interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy. By phone. Bennet, Katie. 2018. Director, Thomas Phifer and Partners Interview by Michelle Laboy and David Fannon. New York.

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Brand, Stewart. 1994. How Buildings Learn: What Happens after They’re Built. 1st Edition. New York: Viking Adult. Brownell, Blaine, Marc Swackhamer, Blair Satterfield, and Michael Weinstock. 2015. Hypernatural: Architecture’s New Relationship with Nature. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. College Planning & Management. 2016. “Smith College: Cutter and Ziskind Houses.” February 2016. https://webcpm.com/articles/2016/02/01/smithcollege.aspx. Conant, Charlie. 2018. Senior Project Manager, Smith College Facilities Interview by Michelle Laboy. Northampton, MA. Dayton, Stephen. 2018. Partner, Thomas Phifer and Partners Interview by Michelle Laboy and David Fannon. New York. Deplazes, Andrea. 2005. Constructing Architecture: Materials, Processes, Structures. 1st Edition. Basel, Berlin, Boston: Birkhäuser. Gayley, Clifford. 2018. Principal, William Rawn Associates Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. Boston, MA. Goldberger, Paul. 1983. “Architecture View; Small Building, Big Gestures; Princeton, NJ.” The New York Times, June 19, 1983, sec. Arts. https://www. nytimes.com/1983/06/19/arts/architecture-view-small-building-biggestures-princeton-nj.html. Hayden, Dolores. 1995. The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Heeb, Randal. 2017. Associate Principal, Opsis Interview by David Fannon. Portland, OR. Holl, Steven. 1989. Anchoring. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Huxtable, Ada Louise. 1981. “Architecture View; The Legacy of Museum Design of the 1960’s.” The New York Times, November 29, 1981, sec. Arts. https:// www.nytimes.com/1981/11/29/arts/architecture-view-the-legacy-ofmuseum-design-of-the-1960-s.html. Jonathan Ochshorn. 2019. “Flexibility and Its Discontents: Colquhoun’s Critique of the Pompidou Center.” In 107th ACSA Annual Meeting Proceedings, 614– 19. Pittsburgh, PA: Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. https:// www.acsa-arch.org/chapter/flexibility-and-its-discontentscolquhounscritique-of-the-pompidou-center/. Laboy, Michelle. 2016. “Landscape as a Conceptual Space for Architecture: Shifting Theories and Critical Practices.” The Plan Journal 0 (0). https://doi. org/10.15274/TPJ-2016-10007. Leblanc, Michael. 2018. Founding Principal, Utile Interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn. Boston, MA. Maynard, William Barksdale. 2012. Princeton: America’s Campus. University Park, PA: Penn State Press. McCarter, Robert. 2019. Place Matters: The Architecture of WG Clark. Novato, CA: ORO Editions. McCoy, Ronald. 2017. University Architect, Princeton University Interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy. By phone. McDonough, William. 2002. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. 1st Edition. New York: North Point Press. MVVA. n.d. “Princeton University.” Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates Inc. Accessed February 9, 2017. http://www.mvvainc.com/project.php?id=95. Nelson, David. 2019. Senior Executive Partner and Head of Design, Foster + Partners Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Noblett, Matt. 2019. Partner, Behnisch Architekten Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. Boston, MA. Princeton University. 2011. “Stormwater Management.” Report on Sustainability. Princeton University Reports. Princeton University. http://www.princeton. edu/reports/2011/sustainability/conservation/stormwater-management/.

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Ransmeier, Abigail. 2019. Architect, Behnisch Architekten Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. Boston, MA. Sadreddin, Baha. 2019. Associate, High-Performance Design Specialist Interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy. Portland, OR. Semper, Gottfried. 1989. “The Four Elements of Architecture.” In The Four Elements of Architecture and Other Writings, translated by Harry Francis Mallgrave and Wolfgang Herrmann. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sharifpoor, Sara. 2019. Director of Research Operations & Strategy, The Donnelly Centre at the University of Toronto Interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy. Toronto. TCLF. n.d. “Philosopher’s Walk.” The Cultural Landscape Foundation: Connecting People to Places. Accessed September 13, 2020. https://tclf.org/ landscapes/philosophers-walk. Tsien, Billie. 2018. Founding Partner, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Tudó Galí, Roger. 2019. Founding Principal, H Arquitectes Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. Barcelona. Venturi, Robert. 1977. Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wasley, Paula. 2007. “The Modernist Falls Victim to Changes in Taste.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 23, 2007. https://www.chronicle. com/article/The-Modernist-Falls-Victim-to/8510. Werminghausen, Martin. 2019. Architect, Behnisch Architekten Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. Boston, MA. Williams, Tod. 2018. Founding Partner, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Wright, Richard N., Bilal M. Ayyub, and Franklin T. Lombardo. 2013. “Bridging the Gap between Climate Change Science and Structural Engineering Practice.” Structure Magazine, September 2013.

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Figure II.0 Precedent Matrix: Core Location and Building Size. This image shows 43 buildings on a graph, all at the same scale, and all oriented to true north. The vertical axis tracks the location of the vertical cores in relation to the building perimeter. There is a progression from central-core buildings at the bottom, perimeter cores in the middle, and external cores at the top. The horizontal axis measures the total square feet of the building from the smallest to the left to the largest to the right. The larger the building, the more cores populate the plan. The wider the plan, the more central are the cores. The narrower the plan the more peripheral the cores are located, and cores in particularly narrow plans are often located externally. Drawing by authors.

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Part II1

Changing Uses P. Wiederspahn

Lexicon When we evoke use in architecture, we automatically also invoke the user. An architecture of use inherently posits people as the subject, not the object, of what transpires in buildings. The humanity implied by use is distinct from terms that are often deployed interchangeably with it in the everyday lexicon of architectural practice, namely program and function. Blending these terms ignores critical distinctions among them, and their differences are much more than simply semantic. These terms arise from distinct epistemologies and impulses of pre-modern and modern theory. A brief analysis of these terms and the associated literature that supports their definitions will also beget alternative readings of them and will generate additional terms, such as measurement, codification, occupancy, and purpose, ultimately leading to a more nuanced and constructive understanding of the implications of all of them relative to each other. Additionally, we will view these terms through the lens of persistence in architecture to understand the architectural, cultural, and philosophical implications of transformations of use over time.

Program If you understand the underlying currents that might motivate change, I think that’s a better starting point than a specific program. — Jason Forney, Bruner/Cott Architects A program is a synopsis that acts as a guide or framework for something to come, a prospectus. This understanding of program as an overarching structure is in contrast to contemporary architectural parlance that generally defines program as a list of the specific floor area requirements and efficient adjacencies of spaces needed in the planning process of a building. Although both variations embrace the notion of affecting outcomes over time, the former definition of program is broad in scope and aspirational in character, while the latter is limited to dimensions of space planning that reduces the eventual users of a building to just more objects to be measured. Where did program gain such a position in the current practice of architecture? John McMorrough identifies John Summerson as the

1 Parts of this chapter originally appeared in the previously published articles, “The Dimension of Use: From Determinism to a New Humanism,” in Enquiry, The Journal of the Architectural Research Centers Consortium (ARCC), Vol. 15, No. 1 (2018), by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn, and “Open Building and Future Use Architecture: A Comparative Analysis,” in Open Building for Resilient Cities Conference Proceedings, at the Architecture + Design Museum, Los Angeles, December 2018, by Peter Wiederspahn, but much of the original text has been altered.

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twentieth-century theorist who “distinguished program as the novel innovation of modernism,” and that to Summerson, “architecture is based not on a figurative idea but on a social one, and therein established program as that which was truly distinct in the modern” (2006, 105). Summerson’s embrace of the social dimension of programming keeps the user as an integral consideration of the architectural design processes. But this human centricity begins to wane in the post-war era with the advent of programming, a subdiscipline that has inserted itself into the accepted sequence of architectural design processes as part of a pre-design project phase. The goals and structure of programming as a means to serve the growing corporate class have been most clearly articulated by William Peña through his decades of professional consulting work and his perennially updated book Problem Seeking (Peña and Parshall 2012). In his method, Peña structures a five-step sequence of exercises for the client group to collectively gather organizational data and identify their needs. At its best, the programming process wrests clear goals, requirements, and criteria from the chaos of conflicting or misaligned desires, thus defining the problems that will be solved through design. Programming is a powerful tool for advancing architectural planning but offers as many limitations as advantages (McMorrough 2006, 103). It becomes most problematic when purely quantitative criteria of exacting room sizes for every distinct use imposes a tyranny of specificity. Even though buildings are relatively long-lived, programming commonly fixes dimensions based on the near term without regard for the multi-generational duration of buildings. Stewart Brand defines this dilemma as such: The great vice of programming is that it over-responds to the immediate needs of the immediate users, leaving future users out of the picture, making the building all too optimal to the present and maladaptive for the future. (1994, 181) Brand offers an antidote to the near-term fixity of programming: “scenario planning” (1994, 178). He explains that scenario planning has been extensively practiced in military and corporate contexts for decades to help foresee challenges for which an organization should prepare. Like programming practices, scenario planning also has a specified sequence of exercises for the group or institution to follow. But scenario planning interjects time as an integral planning factor. This makes it particularly pertinent to planning for buildings because they can last for generations and centuries. In fact, given a building’s potential longevity, designing for time like we design for other inexorable forces, such as gravity and climate, seems not just reasonable but imperative. Good architecture always incorporates the demands of time on buildings—such as proficient detailing to mitigate the effects of weathering or water infiltration, or choosing materials that are durable in context—but not always in terms of its current and future uses. By interrogating not only current needs, scenario planning anticipates how those needs will change, and change again, well into the future. For example, scenario planning displaces goals with “plot lines,” a narrative about how “driving forces” might redirect future needs (Brand 1994, 182). And the outcome of a

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scenario planning process is not an architectural program of fixed spatial units. Instead, a strategy of long-term and fluid planning develops that helps maintain an expansive view of potential opportunities and challenges to a building over time. Brand explains that: Like programming, scenario planning is a future-oriented formal process of analysis and decision. Unlike programming, it reaches into the deeper future—typically five to twenty years—and instead of converging on a single path, its whole essence is divergence. (1994, 181) The fluidity of scenario planning’s outcomes becomes critical when trying to anticipate an uncertain future. Scenario planning is a way to redirect programming away from a practice of near-term specificity toward a conceptual framework for longterm adaptability and resilience. In this way it becomes a performative strategy to facilitate the change in uses over time. But this is not performance in an active sense, such as deploying mutable partitions or kinetic elements that can transform a space immediately from one use to another. Long-term adaptability is generated through the durability of material systems and usability of spaces that are open and unrestrained by spatial specificity. In 1972, Alex Gordon identified these qualities as necessary for a new architecture in his aphorism, “long life, loose fit, low energy” (1972, 374). He advocates for an architecture in direct contrast to programming’s specificity towards a robust architecture with more regular spatial configurations to increase a building’s capacity to accommodate a wide range of possible future uses. Kiel Moe observes, Many of the most compelling and complex aspects of architecture arrive in time, not space. The purpose of program should therefore be to coordinate unanticipated events as much as organize specific spaces. As such, a building can be thought of as a setting that anticipates—captures and channels—events. (2013, 247) Figure II.1 New England nineteenth-century mill buildings (Lowell, Massachusetts). Photograph by Walter Bibikow, courtesy of Getty Images.

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In this paradigm, the program becomes a set of performative parameters instead of spatial requirements so the building remains stable and the uses change without having to significantly modify the architecture. Gordon formulated his thinking for long-life architecture in the context of John Habraken’s concepts for open building. Habraken first developed open building principles in his polemic 1961 book, Supports: An Alternative to Mass Housing, which was translated into English in 1972 (1972). His focus on creating alternatives to the predominant mass housing solutions in Europe in the post-war era implicitly addressed multiple scales of design simultaneously: the scale of the individual dwelling units; the scale of the architecture containing the living units; and the urban scale of the community-generated by housing so many people in concentrated districts. The pressure in post-war Europe to produce housing for millions of people was intense, and each nation had its government-run programs to solve the housing shortages as quickly and inexpensively as possible (Kendall and Teicher 2000, 29). Habraken’s book was his reaction to the top-down planning that had produced large-scale housing projects in the 1950s and 1960s that were derived from CIAM strategies and other modernist agendas (2017, 21–22). His critique is evident in this scathing assessment: What happens today is nothing but the production of perfect barracks. The tenement concept has been dragged out of the slums, provided with sanitation, air and light, and placed in the open. (Habraken 1972, 13) At the urban scale, this is a denunciation of the modernist towers-in­­ the-park schemes that neither create nor interact with a traditional urban fabric of dense housing, streets, and other legible public spaces. Habraken did not limit his critique of mass housing to the design of the architecture. He also challenged the very process of design that produces what he saw as, and what history has since demonstrated to be an alienating architecture that does not adequately address the needs or desires of the inhabitants. He targets bureaucratic systems that produced monotonous mass housing districts by advocating for an inclusive process where the users design and redesign their own dwelling over the time of their occupancy. He accomplishes this by distinguishing the permanent building shell, which he calls supports, from an everchanging and more mutable interior infill. The relationship between what is logically fixed in architecture being articulated as distinct from what can possibly change in the interior opens up the opportunity for the inhabitant to have more control of the design of their personal environment instead of living with predetermined configurations by an architect at the initial conception of the building. Habraken discusses the interrelationship between the supports and infill-like musical themes in jazz that provide an overall organizing structure for the individual improvisations (Lüthi and Schwarz 2013). Alex Lifschutz summarizes Habraken’s concepts as follows:

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He argued that the external form of a building should be decoupled from its interiors, which should be ‘possessed’ and altered by its users at will. (2017, 8) Habraken himself continues to actively advocate for these same principles he started in the 1960s. In 2013, he reiterates a clear synopsis of his ideals: Proper distribution of design controls leads to variety. Shared typology, or patterns or systems, produce coherence. Control of all design decisions by a single party in a particular area soon results in repetition and uniformity. Partial change and variety come naturally when individual inhabitants control their own space. (Habraken 2017, 21) The primary tenets of Habraken’s alternative philosophy of participatory design have been followed by many of his contemporaries and subsequent advocates and students, albeit in evolutionary forms. His protégés Stephen Kendall and John Teicher published a book called Residential Open Building that focuses on Habraken’s ideas as applied to housing production in different building cultures, most notably in the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and Japan (2000). Kendall and Teicher provide a clear and nuanced taxonomy of Habraken’s interrelated concepts of levels, supports, infill, unbundling, and capacity. Levels refer to the hierarchy of decision-makers in a design process. To Habraken and his ideological descendants, the changes made in a building over time are also a record of changing regimes of control (Kendall and Teicher 2000, 31). Supports are the common building elements, including “building structure and façade, entrances, staircases, corridors, elevators, and trunk (main) lines for electricity, communications, water, gas, and drainage” (Kendall and Teicher 2000, 33). Infill is the mutable interior fitout, preferably in the form of a coordinated system of components. As Kendall and Teicher explain, infill becomes the democratizing element for the control of a living space (4). Supports and infill have different time horizons: supports are “intended to accommodate and outlast infill changes, to persist largely independent of the individual occupants’ choices, while accommodating changing life circumstances” (33). Unbundling suggests that distinct building systems should be kept spatially apart so each one can be maintained or changed without affecting the other. The authors use this concept as a critique of highly integrated buildings where the close coordination of building systems can unduly intertwine them, thus impeding their potential future access, flexibility, maintenance, and replacement (37). Directly related to unbundling is capacity, the ability of buildings to accommodate multiple uses over time. Capacity becomes yet another challenge to common tropes of design thinking, where a spatial fixity is supplanted by use adaptability: “In Open Building practice, capacity replaces the set program and its functional specificity during initial design” (38). Habraken’s ideas are also still very much evident in contemporary architectural practices globally. A good example is West 8’s adaptive

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reuse of a former docklands in Amsterdam, called Borneo Sporenburg. Planning parameters assured that a fine rhythm of unique forms of architectural expression and individual input would create a vibrant variety of the overall urban block fabric (Machado 2006). Multiple architects and their clients designed individual townhouses within non-stylistic, dimensional, and configurational mandates. Integral to the overall urban plan were medium-sized multi-dwelling buildings and large-scaled housing blocks. The different housing types could appeal to a broad range of household incomes, so the overall effect is an urban district of significant architectural and socioeconomic variation. The precepts of open building form a program for a humane architecture of plurality and evolution. It embraces a diversity of uses, personal expression for its users, and continual change and renewal for the city.

Function Function is used to describe the action or use of a thing for which it is specially designed and formed. It implies a direct instrumental correlation between the object and the need it is intended to fulfill. In architecture, this translates to buildings being configured not only to fit volumetric requirements as in space planning but also to describe architecturally what spaces are used for through their forms. Anthropologist Edward Hall, in his seminal work The Hidden Dimension, explored buildings—from their subdivision into rooms to their groupings in villages and cities—as expressions of the social-spatial organization of people. Although subdivisions of interior space are longstanding, their assignment by function is a recent phenomenon dating only from the eighteenth century, before which rooms were used as needed. Hall credits the advent of the corridor, which allowed for privacy, social class segregation, and sanitation, with developing new patterns for family structure and asserting a reciprocal relationship between social relationships and the built environment, just as zoning later developed new patterns of community structure (1990, 102–03). Starting from an architectural rather than an anthropological perspective, Robin Evans arrived at the same conclusion by contrasting the connected enfilade rooms typical before the nineteenth century with the advent of the corridor plan. Evans describes how new attitudes made carnality distasteful, leading architecture to limit encounters and friction of bodies, thus creating “the logic now buried in regulations, codes, design methods and rules-of-thumb” that still dictate contemporary design practices (Evans 1997, 85–86). Where the dimensions and disposition of building elements traditionally negotiated scale to “effect the connection between the person and the building,” these same tools became instruments to separate human bodies within and from buildings (Johnson 1994, 363). Hall’s and Evans’s anthropological and architectural studies point to an important nineteenth-century shift towards what can be identified as functionalist architecture, one that physically embodies and indeed enforces social structures by parsing and controlling human activities. Function, like programming, is extolled as defining the larger modern project (Anderson 1987, 21). Ironically, one of the strongest associations

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Figure II.2 Tall building, composed of a base, repetitive vertical window pattern in the middle shaft, and a crowing cornice at the top, Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, Guaranty Building (Buffalo, NY) 1896. Photograph courtesy of the Historic Architecture and Landscape Image Collection, Ryerson & Burnham Archives, The Art Institute of Chicago. Digital File # 49090.

between function and modern architecture derives from misquoting Louis Sullivan. His actual prose in “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered” is focused on essential principles of design as “pervading laws of all things…physical and metaphysical,” from which he asserts that, “form ever follows function” (Sullivan 2014, 213). Kiel Moe suggests that Sullivan derived his laws from his Whitmanesque observations of nature (2013, 252). But the colloquial misquoted phrase has been stripped of its nuance and reduced to a more mathematical equation, form follows function. John Hendrix reinforces the discrepancy between the actual and misinterpreted meaning of Sullivan’s prose when he writes: The functional and structural requirements of a building play no role in the art of architecture for Sullivan, because they have no relationship with nature, but only with the technological progress and material development of society. (2013, 120) Hendrix expounds further on Sullivan’s more dialectical approach derived from an allegiance to American transcendentalism: Sullivan was inspired by the transcendentalist writers Emerson and Whitman, who had made the first significant and uniquely American contribution to world culture. Sullivan’s transcendentalist architecture involved the dialectical method in multiple ways in his design process: subjective/objective, appearance/essence, rational/emotional, geometrical/organic, form/function. Form and function can more accurately be seen as dialectical opposites in Sullivan’s design process. (2013, 121)

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Konstantin Melnikov’s Rusakov Worker’s Club of 1927 is often cited as an example of functionalist architecture due to the expressive forms of the raked theaters projecting outward beyond the main volume of this building (McMorrough 2006, 104–5). Seeing this building through a distorted lens of Sullivan’s prose would suggest that there is a one-to-one correspondence between its shape and its use. But understanding Sullivan’s search for the essential nature of architectural form in relation to its larger cultural connotations allows us to see that the Rusakov Worker’s Club is as much an expression of the new communal Soviet society as it is a sign of the theater function it contains. Sullivan applied his principles to the nature of the compositional logic of the exterior of the commercial high-rise type, as in his Guaranty Building of 1896 (Figure II.2) with the central shaft of repetitive office floors framed by a base of retail activity to augment an urban street life, and a cornice that defines a tall building’s profile against the sky (Huxtable 1985, 30–32). Sullivan reveals his rationale for the composition of parts in a tall building when he writes: Does this not readily, clearly, and conclusively show that the lower one or two stories will take on a special character suited to the special needs, that the tiers of typical offices, having the same unchanging function, shall continue in the same unchanging form, and that as to the attic, specific and conclusive as it is in its very nature, its function shall equally be so in force, in significance, in continuity, in conclusiveness of outward expression? (2014, 213) The interior organization of his office buildings shares a similar rationality, with a regular structural grid, centrally located vertical elevator and stair core, and a vertical courtyard to provide natural light and ventilation for all the floors of the building. Commercial office buildings emerged in the nineteenth century as a dominant building type in the city center parallel to the factory type that proliferated at the urban periphery. The hard industries of the industrial revolution increasingly required the strategic organization of the soft clerical activities of the office worker (Frampton 2007, 55). This created a schism in the city between the dirty smokestack-filled environments of material production and the clean well-lit offices of corporate leadership and their supporting staff. Commercial office buildings provide open and continuous workspaces for a broad range of commercial activities and large populations of white-collar employees that can work within an efficient proximity to their coworkers to facilitate communication and collaboration. They also take on a new function as a sign of the corporations or institutions that produced them. Commercial architecture is the primary driver of architecture that functions both as building and brand (Abalos and Herreros 2002, 271). By the late nineteenth century, tall commercial high rises developed at the confluence of technological advancement in building systems, social transformations of the workplace, and economic pressure to maximize urban real estate value. Frank Lloyd Wright, the intellectual protégé of

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Figure II.3 The introverted atrium dedicated to the clerical workers, Frank Lloyd Wright, Larkin Building (Buffalo, NY) 1906. Photograph by Edward Van Altena. Historic Architecture and Landscape Image Collection, Ryerson & Burnham Archives, The Art Institute of Chicago. Digital File # 47013.

Sullivan, designed the administration building for the Larkin Company (Figure II.3), a soap manufacturer in Buffalo, New York, completed in 1906 (and needlessly torn down in 1950). It had a light-filled atrium at its center where the clerical workforce was on display accompanied by a symphonic drone of typewriters, accounting machines, and hushed conversations that filled the space (Alofsin 1994, 35). The interior spandrels that overlook the atrium were replete with inscribed paeans to corporate unity and ethical injunctions. Grabow and Spreckelmeyer suggest that the Larkin Building: …can be seen as an architectural attempt to embed in the environment the human value of commercial work and thereby create a modern agora of information that elevated the clerical function to something that could be understood and shared in the public realm. (2014, 43) The Larking Building, however, was introverted, and the open lightfilled spaces of the interior are in stark contrast to the defensive and monolithic exterior projected to the public sphere that protects the (mostly female) workforce from the gaze of anyone outside of the corporate family. This architecture sends one message of enlightened unity to the employees who use the building, and another of corporate secrecy to the world at large. Wright returned to the corporate headquarters type in his design for the Johnson Administration Building in Racine, Wisconsin, completed in 1939 (Figure II.4). This building repeats the theme first explored in

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Figure II.4 Light-filled atrium for the corporate employees, Frank Lloyd Wright, Johnson Administration Building (Racine, WI) 1939. Photograph courtesy of Getty Images.

the Larkin Building of having an open, light-filled atrium as a space to honor and put on display the corporate clerical employee. But instead of having the supervisor’s offices surrounding the atrium as in the Larkin Building, the Johnson Administration Building was accompanied by a tower for the corporate management, which has rounded edges and horizontal bands of translucent glass tubes for its fenestration. Anthony Alofsin connects these two projects as possessing functions beyond creating workspaces when he writes: Following the remarkable synthesis of the Larkin Building, Wright’s design for the Johnson Administration Building produced a new standard of representation for modern corporate America. It expressed its function as an administrative headquarters in a lyrical brick building in which light became as important an articulating device as space… The Johnson Administration Building turned in on itself in an attempt to create an idealized environment, just as the Larkin Building had thirty years earlier. (1994, 46) Corporations wished to assert their identity at the scale of the city, and the ever-rising urban skylines physically chart corporate power and wealth, particularly in New York and Chicago. Historian David Handlin quotes Harvey Wiley Corbett, architect of early twentieth-century skyscrapers, saying “Advertising, exploitation, and publicity were the animating agents behind the commercial age,” and that, “the job of the architect was to give expression to these forces. The skyscraper must have a distinct physiognomy which would readily identify the company that erected it” (1985, 183). One only needs to consider three skyscrapers all completed in 1930 in New York—the two projects of Raymond Hood at either end of 42nd Street, the vertically composed Daily News Building to the east and the horizontality of the McGraw Hill Tower to the west, and the Chrysler Building by William van Alen with its crowning silver pinnacle in between—to understand the power that

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architecture had in a pre-television era for projecting corporate brands to an urban public (Curtis 1996, 222–25). The impetus for branding that animates commercial building design starting in the late-nineteenthcentury continues even in today’s digital age, albeit with transformed modes of expression. Architecture-as-branding is not exclusive to commercial interests. The United Nations Headquarters on the East River in New York—designed by a consortium of prominent architects, initially including Le Corbusier, and finally completed by Harrison and Abramovitz in 1952—is a constructed symbol of a new progressive post-war world order (Curtis 1996, 410). The assembly hall at street level has become recognized as a center for the peaceful public negotiations among nations, while the tower contains the bureaucracy that undergirds the Un’s political machinations. The tower’s tectonic expression becomes an integral part of its progressive global message. It deployed the first glass curtain wall for a high rise, furthering the connotations of transparency and hope for a technologically advanced global culture. The United Nations Headquarters and the Lever House, completed in 1952 on Park Avenue in New York by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, represent the next evolution in tall building design. Both buildings eschew the masonry-clad steel-frame ziggurats that dominated inter-war skyscraper design in favor of a slender rectangular slab form. At the Lever House (Figure II.5), the ground level offers an open colonnade and courtyard for social gathering and art exhibitions that acts as an open-air museum and an extension of the street life of the city, thereby equating corporate power with social benevolence (Curtis 1996, 410). This private-public space contrasted sharply with the street wall of the existing urban fabric on Park Avenue and surrounding side streets. Similarly, the volume of the Lever House tower pulls away from the mass of the neighboring monoliths creating an elevated urban space within which the building stands out proudly and distinctly. Lever House projects a rational, transparent, and welcoming architecture that also deploys a curtain wall facade (Abalos and Herreros 2002, 106). The facade is a composition of cool blue and green gleaming glass and stainless-steel mullions in a tartan grid that connotes a progressive, well-organized, and immaculate corporation. Leland Roth positions the building in architectural history as a paradigmatic shift at the dawn of the post-war era, writing, “The first of these corporate images in New York was Lever House…the product of an office that quickly became a leading force in American architecture” (1980, 227–28). The transparency of the Lever House’s curtain wall, especially at night, displays its busy workforce to the city at large. However, the connection is purely visual: there are no operable windows that might permit noise and air pollution from the city to infringe upon the important business being conducted in the interior workspaces. This architecture-as-brand was further reinforced by the dance of the window-washing gondola that was lowered and raised from the roof over the course of each business week to clean the building facade using the soap produced by the Lever Brothers corporation (Sample 2016, 35). This conspicuous display at the

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Figure II.5 Public courtyard at the base of the towering slab above; both elements are shrouded with a curtain wall, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Architects, Lever House (New York, NY) 1952. Photograph courtesy of Getty Images.

scale of a skyscraper promised the effectiveness of the company’s products, demonstrating that when architecture serves as a corporate symbol, the care and maintenance of the building becomes integral to the corporate ethos. At the time of the building’s completion, Lewis Mumford noted, “This perfect bit of symbolism almost justifies the all glass facade” (Mumford 1952). Maintenance and repair are necessary to maintain all buildings’ communicative power and image. In some cases, as with Lever House, the act of maintenance itself contributes to the substance of that image. Foster + Partners 1986 Hongkong and Shanghai Bank (HSBC) Building in Hong Kong (Figure II.6) evinces a deliberate high-tech aura with an exposed muscular structure of bundled columns and spanning suspension trusses topped by a prominently visible mechanical arm (Pawley 1999, 75). The arm supports an automated window washing apparatus like Lever House to keep the building looking new. The arm is also a hoist mechanism to swap out the mechanical modules that plug into the ends of the structural bays to periodically update the building systems (Abalos and Herreros 2002). These systems modules pay homage to the Japanese Metabolists’ explorations of prefabricated building components within an architecture that acts as an infrastructure to receive and support them. The multi-functional arm operates on different cycles depending on what the building demands. It cleans the

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Figure II.6 Exposed column clusters, suspension trusses, and mechanical service arms at the top, Foster + Partners, Hongkong and Shanghai Bank (HSBC) Building (Hong Kong, China) 1986. Photograph by Philippe Lopez, courtesy of Getty Images.

exterior surfaces on a weekly cycle, replaces the systems modules on a decadal cycle, and swings into action to perform sporadic maintenance tasks when needed. It is, therefore, both a tool to aid in the functioning of the building and a sign of short- and long-term renewal for an architecture of persistent change. In 2017, Foster + Partners also designed Apple Park, the corporate headquarters for Apple Inc. in Cupertino, CA (Figure II.7). In Chapter 8 Anticipatory, the internal spatial systems of Apple Park that enable useful change are analyzed. Here, we will focus on the building in its larger social context. This building, for example, projects a much different image than the HSBC Building: it is a monumental low-rise, 1,500-foot (460 meters) diameter glass ring that sits within a protective constructed landscape. Any structural expression has been displaced by smooth glass surfaces inside and out. The all-glass enclosure is shielded from the sun’s rays by concentric cantilevering shading shelves at each of the four floor levels. Perhaps unselfconsciously, Apple Park reflects a corporate ethos of secrecy made possible by a complete, self-contained world that is separated from its suburban

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Figure II.7 Apple’s glass ring with concentric sun shading shelves and a surrounding protective landscape, Foster + Partners and Associates, Apple Park (Cupertino, CA) 2018. Photograph by P. Wei, courtesy of Getty Images.

context by its strategic landscaping and control of any public vantage points. Like Wright’s Larkin Building and Johnson Administration Building, Apple Park is a study in corporate introversion and secrecy at the expense of public engagement with its surrounding community. Adam Rogers suggests that Apple Park, unfortunately, replicates the failures of past suburban office parks in its isolated perfectionism. He notes, “Apple Park is an anachronism wrapped in glass, tucked into a neighborhood…the Ring is mostly hidden behind artificial berms, like Space Mountain at Disneyland” (Rogers 2017). A less entertaining metaphor could also be applied to Apple Park’s pure geometry and introversion: that it has become a west coast counter-balance to another pure geometric and monumental center of command-and-control on the east coast, namely, the Pentagon. Office buildings serve deeper cultural roles than providing dense workspaces and developer profits. They also function as building-scaled signifiers of the ethics and values that a corporation wishes to project to its context, and by extension, the world. Where the Larkin Building protected its workforce from the gaze of anyone outside of the corporate family, employees in the Lever House are part of a public spectacle of white-collar work visible up and down Park Avenue. In the Lever House, the image of the building, with its public courtyard and gridded curtain wall, and its literal and figurative maintenance of the immaculate, hermetically sealed workspaces, promotes a benevolently civic, technologically progressive, and trustworthy corporate image. The image of technological promise is reinforced in the late twentieth century by High Tech buildings such as the HSBC Building. Its structural expressionism and explicit maintenance mechanisms simultaneously connote stability and regeneration. Apple Park ushers in a new corporate image of digital inscrutability where its literal transparency of glass surfaces is countered by its opaque corporate activities of personal data collection, surveillance, and global reach.

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Intrinsic to each of the office buildings discussed above, however, is their ability to adapt to different workforce activities as time progresses. Simon Austin and Robert Schmidt III define adaptability in architecture as, “The capacity of a building to accommodate effectively the evolving demands of its context, thus maximizing its value through life” (2016, 45). They suggest that we consider buildings as perpetually “unfinished” objects that are constantly evolving to “fit functional, technological and aesthetic transformations in society” (xx). Like early manufacturing spaces, such as the New England mill building (Figure II.1) or urban industrial loft buildings, office buildings create repetitive, structurally rational buildings with abundant natural light at their perimeter: all attributes that facilitate change over time. Kiel Moe designates such buildings as being “specifically generic,” where there is a “latent functionality that anticipates next-uses” (Moe 2013, 261). For office buildings, function becomes a factor of the universality of space as an agent of change instead of a fixed spatial configuration that serves only one initial use. High-rise office towers magnify these attributes by repeating them vertically, thereby increasing the possible density of uses on a given building site, and by extension, increasing the economic and social intensity of the city. Cities with districts of tall buildings have a latent capacity to accommodate changing economic drivers in the short term that, in turn, creates long-term and persistent viability.

Measurement “We should be developing structural systems that are not only robust enough to support the loading requirements of a great many uses, but that also deploy dimensional metrics which accommodate multiple, predictable types within it.” — Michael Leblanc, Utile, Inc Architecture mediates physical relationships between people and their constructed environment, connecting human uses with the formal, spatial, and tectonic performances through acts of measurement. Whether assessed by human perception and experience (composition, perspective) or objectively evaluated with technology (performance, conformance), architecture relies on measurement—the “comparison with some standard, such as measure, scale, or the human body” (Johnson 1994, 349–51)—to develop a set of ideal, optimized, precise dimensional relationships. Measurement is the tool of translation from concepts of human use to the pragmatics of buildings, so it lies at the core of architectural practice. Tracing the evolution of the measure of architecture from its proportional roots, through the pragmatic service to modernism, and ultimately to the deterministic application enabled by codification will reveal how it increasingly has been used to reduce human experience to standard dimensions and quantitative metrics. Early civilizations relied on anthropocentric measurements. Even when units of measure existed, early architectural thought and practice relied less on the specific units than on proportions—the relative measure of elements typically found in whole-number ratios—as both technical

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Figure II.8 The classical orders illustrating proportional relationships based on empirical measurement of particular buildings listed below each example. Image was reproduced from Meyers Kleines Konversationslexikon (“Baukunst” 1892, 194).

and theoretical means (Figure II.8). In part, this stemmed from the limitations of the tools available. Walker and Tolpin describe artisans’ use of manual dividers to understand proportions in nature and to project their own ideas onto buildings and objects without recourse to systems of units, arguing that “measurements as we know them in a modern sense were largely unknown and unnecessary” (2013, 10–11). Such proportional measuring systems would continue from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome through the Renaissance and Baroque eras, all developing standard units in relation to the human body such as the finger, palm, foot, cubit, and fathom (Tavernor 2007, 22). N

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horizontal dimensions in paces and vertical dimensions by reach. He writes, “What you can do in it determines how you experience a given space” (Hall 1990, 54). Renaissance artists and architects rediscovered, expanded, and systematized the classical relationships between bodies and buildings. Rudolf Wittkower demonstrated how Francesco di Giorgio Martini and Leonardo da Vinci applied the Vitruvian human-body-based proportional system to the geometries of centralized-plan churches (Figure II.9), writing: “this man-created harmony was a visible echo of a celestial and universally valid harmony” (1971, 8). By adopting human proportions as static measurements, this approach changed the Vitruvian kinesthetic sense of the human body moving through space to an intellectual experience of architectural proportions that combines visual perception of building elements with a cognitive appreciation of an abstracted rational order.

Figure II.9 The search for architectural proportion in the human form. Plan of a basilica by Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1481–89) Trattato d’Architettura, from the Codex Magliabechiano. Image courtesy of the archives of the Biblioteca nazionale Centrale di Firenze.

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For his part, Renaissance architect and humanist author Leon Battista Alberti asserted that dimensions and proportions are derived from observations of nature (Johnson 1994). Alberti interpreted the proportional, whole-number geometries of ancient Roman architecture as part of the lineamenta, “the line,” understood cognitively as part of an architectural order quite separate from the tangible material of architecture (1994, 7). Humanist philosopher Francesco Giorgi proclaimed Pythagorean and Platonic relationships between numbers and cosmic order in musical scales. And architect Andrea Palladio developed systems of proportion relating rooms in the plan, about which Wittkower opines, “The systematic linking of one room to the next by harmonic proportions was the fundamental novelty of Palladio’s architecture” (1971, 130). These mathematical abstractions emerged in early architectural theory to represent the unity between art, science, geometry, and symbolism, and such relationships continued to fascinate into the twentieth century. Colin Rowe compared Le Corbusier’s purist Villa Garches and Palladio’s Villa Malcontenta (see Figure II.10), proposing a shared mathematical standard of “natural beauty,” and identifying different approaches but a similar confidence in an objective basis for aesthetics (Rowe 1984, 3–5). Palladio considered proportions as the “projection of the harmony of the universe,” while Le Corbusier described them as “des vérités réconfortantes” (comforting truths) (8). The relationship between the human body and measurements is not abstract: it embodies performative relationships. Proportion, for instance, has quantifiable impacts on building performance, architectural expression, and human use. Some architectural proportions facilitate use by harmonizing architectural form with the climate to afford environmental control with few or no power-operated systems. Physical proportions—relationships rather than measurements—shape the flows of heat, light, and air in, around, and through buildings. For example, cultures in hot climates around the world adopted courtyard forms that have an aspect ratio to control natural light and passive ventilation. Conversely, many cold climate indigenous buildings—from the igloo to the yurt or the tipi—adopt nearly round plan shapes which maximize useable space for a given enclosure and equalizes the proximity to a central heat source. In these examples, the form and geometry are derived from the constraints of physics even without a mathematical understanding of the underlying principles. Other considerations of context, climate, and exposure influence or even dictate proportions, and the integration and interaction of these complex and dynamic systems give rise to architectural form. For example, while the solar control of a direct beam of sunlight is a strictly geometric proposition relating buildings to the sun, daylighting for interior illumination and comfort presents a more complex problem of multiple reflections and potentially diffuse light from the sky and surrounding environment. Prior to the advent of reliable electric illumination, architecture was necessarily designed around daylight proportions and human perception. Christoph Reinhart cataloged different versions of the ubiquitous Daylighting Rule of Thumb (DRT), which relates the depth of the usefully illuminated floor to the height of the window and

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Figure II.10 Comparison of plans for Villa Malcontenta (top) by Palladio and Villa Garches by Le Corbusier (bottom). Image from Colin Rowe, The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays, page 5, © 1976 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, by permission of The MIT Press. Drawing recreated for clarity and to overlay additional information by authors.

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Figure II.11 Height-todepth aspect ratios for natural ventilation in spaces with one- and two-sided openings. Drawing by authors.

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evaluated them through simulation across a range of variables (2005, 106). His findings support the notion that the depth of useful illumination will extend into the building between 1.5 and 2.5 times the height of the window head. N

Modern practice may still employ empirical proportions, but architects must verify dimensions of environmental performance through detailed testing and measurement in service of human experience. These examples elucidate the multivariate, occasionally contradictory, and complex nature of dimensional and performative parameters in architectural design for human use. Paul-Alan Johnson reminds us that proportions in the classical sense no longer represent mystical and symbolic connections to the cosmos: he ironically writes that “Proportion has been entrenched in architecture for so long that it has come as a shock to find that if the proportionate ratios of the traditional kind are ignored, nothing nasty happens” (Johnson 1994, 371). Yet the relationships embedded in these proportions of environmental performance continue to relate physical buildings to the flows and laws of nature, and they continue to be valid, increasingly well-understood, and even used as a basis for contemporary environmentally responsible design (Lechner 2001, 9). Proportion was the system of measurement of the classical era, but increasing rationalism demanded precise dimensions with new standards and tools. Alberto Pérez Gómez suggests that western thought

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began reconciling formal and transcendental dimensions during the Galilean revolution circa 1600, which produced a complete divorce between faith and reason by the 1800s (1983, 238–39). He writes that by this time, newtonian science and non-Euclidean geometry unleashed an era of conceptual and material efficiencies, prompting a “functionalized theory subsumed by technology” (238). In architecture, this resulted in the technical control of dimensions through quantifiable loads and material properties. The metric system—as radical a product of the French Enlightenment as the French Revolution itself—enabled and signified this change by displacing the king’s foot as a unit of measure. Instead of symbolic proportions or anthropocentric dimensions, precise scientific measurements were adopted based on logical inquiry that reflected “the new understanding of the mechanical universe—the natural rhythm of time as the earth rotates daily on its axis, and annually around the sun” (Tavernor 2007, 72–83). Applying the new rationalist measurements in his position at the new École Polytechnique in the early nineteenth century, J. N. L. Durand transformed architectural education to essentially eschew the human body. In his Précis: des leçons d’architecture (Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand 1985), Durand removed human references from the systems of proportion, replacing them with abstract standards based on social utility, efficiency, economy, Cartesian geometry, and material logics, as shown in Figure II.12 (Tavernor

Figure II.12 Plate 20 Ensembles d’Edifices from J. N. L. Durand’s Précis des leçons d’architecture données a l’Ecole impériale Polytechnique (Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand 1985). Image courtesy of Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

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2007, 107–12). It is assumed that each one of these geometrical figures are abstractions of one or more buildings, which Durand categorized according to function (Madrazo 1994, 13). Following classical conceptions of virtue, architecture originally embraced sufficiency and economy of measurement as aesthetic and ethical mandates. For example, Alberti described the architects’ duty “to prescribe an appropriate place, exact numbers, a proper scale, and a graceful order for whole buildings and for each of their constituent parts,” asserting “it is wrong to make either the width or the height of a wall greater or less than reason and scale demand” (Johnson 1994, 362). Art historian Arnold Hauser claims that a “scientific conception of art” began with Alberti, who was: …the first to express the idea that mathematics is the common ground of art and the sciences, as both the theory of proportions and the theory of perspective are mathematical disciplines…the first to give clear expression to that union of the experimental technician and the observing artist. (Hauser 2005, 21) Pérez Gómez claims that the complete “mathematization of theory” in architecture originated with the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century focus on statics and strength of materials as the rational drivers of form (1983, 244–53). This application of rational engineering principles to architecture prompted quantitative approaches to dimension and scale, the development of scientific understanding of structures, and structurally efficient designs. One metric of structural performance is maximizing useful spans for the minimum material used, goals often coupled to, though not synonymous with, assumptions of least economic and material cost. Efficiency requires both seeking lighter, stronger, and less expensive materials, and configuring them most effectively. In structures, material thickness (tectonic dimension) and span (spatial dimension) have a simple and direct proportional relationship to patterns of material use. For example, longer spans demand greater material depth. Structures designed for economy also generally adopt repetitive patterns, using similar components and assembly processes. Frequent points of vertical structure require smaller structural elements, increasing beneficial redundancy but reducing flexibility for use configurations. Less frequent points of vertical support require longer structural spans, resulting in deeper material thickness and reduced redundancy, but potentially increasing the potential diversity of use configurations. Structural efficiency is one of many ways in which engineering rationalism influenced architectural theory. It was precisely while teaching engineers in nineteenth-century France that Durand developed his major works, applying principles of scientific classification systems to geometric genres or typologies largely based on function, and to the compositional principles that combined modular components to the systematization of architectural knowledge (Madrazo 1994, 12). The mandates for economy, efficiency, and optimization evolved with the technological advances of the nineteenth-century industrialization,

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through twentieth-century automation, and ultimately to twentyfirst-century algorithmic systemization. Each technological advance promised—and sometimes even provided—lower cost and commensurate greater democratic access to good architecture, thereby enhancing the quality of life for all. However, the purity of reason and the perfection of technology also become ends unto themselves rather than tools to advance architecture toward more human-centric environments. When the limits of available technology become the standards for architectural production, the optimal may well replace the good. Increasingly scientific approaches tended to separate building production from the core of architecture through the proliferation of disciplines. Henry Cowan helped establish the field of architectural science and published multiple books outlining the history of science in architecture in the mid-twentieth century. He lamented that the masters of modern architecture proclaimed the importance of science and technology without possessing a sound knowledge of building science or a holistic view of technology (1966, 1977, 1978). In response, Cowan founded the first graduate program in architectural science (a program he compared and contrasted to architectural engineering) calling for better methods to predict the physical behavior of buildings and the social response of people, and to integrate these findings into design (1980). But these appeals mostly led to increased specialization rather than integration, thereby reducing the complexity of human experience to single metrics supported by specialized and isolated regimes of measurement.

Codification Technological measurement allows architects to generalize, simplify, and aggregate humans and human activity to unidimensional loads defined primarily by function. For example, occupancy loads, live loads, and internal thermal loads each possess their own hidden histories and logics, and each account for only one aspect of a building user. These loads translate directly into the design of a building’s overall morphology and constituent systems and serve to simplify design decisions through generalization. However, by eliminating the nuance and complexity of specific human comfort in the interest of measurable clarity, such loads do not necessarily support continued human use (Herdeg 1983, 12). Building standards are literally codified: contemporary codes and standards dictate acceptable dimensions for the arrangement and size of whole buildings and the parts within them to protect public health, safety, and welfare. Although seemingly objective and technocratic, such standards are never neutral, and while these thresholds yield significant good, they also enable new avenues of mediocrity, which hold the merely acceptable as sufficient, and then enshrine it as the objective for optimization. Barbara Erwine decries such misapplication of codes and standards in contemporary practice, describing a process “stalled at the level of commodity with nothing to say about delight” (2016, 12). Maximum heights, number of stories, floor areas, and minimum separations

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are all governed in codes by construction type and occupancy. Occupancy loads are organized by function, not so much to ensure the provision of adequate personal space, but to calculate a total occupancy (number of people per room) and width of egress paths for life safety. For example, in the International Building Code, the requirement of 15 square feet (1.39 square meters) per person in assembly occupancies defines the load, and the provision of 0.2 inches (5mm) per occupant sets the width of the egress corridors (International Code Council 2014). Modern building regulations also define the live loads that floors must carry based on occupancy or function of the space (American Society of Civil Engineers 2010). Therefore, occupancy determines the dimensions of buildings, their structural components, and the rooms, doors, and corridors. Similarly, the sizes of mechanical and plumbing systems are determined largely by occupancy type, heating loads, ventilation rates, and building areas, all regulated to protect public health, and all conspiring to reduce those humans to quantitative measures of a volume of fresh air, a quantity of heat gain, a plumbing fixture count, etc. Critically, the converse relationship is equally—and perhaps more permanently—deterministic. Once a depth and span are established, the live load and, therefore, the possible uses for space are also constrained. Avoiding occupancy determinacy—or achieving long-term use-adaptability—may require designing for excess demand (e.g., greater density of people, higher live loads) than the code minimum for the initial occupancy type. As minimum standards, no code prohibits additional capacity for egress or structural strength, however, adding capacity beyond minimum requirements reduces the structural and economic efficiency. In what might be dubbed reciprocal functionalist determinism, occupancy defines the dimensions of buildings, and then those dimensions effectively reify that occupancy into the fabric of the built environment for the long term. Codified building dimensions also influence cultural relationships. Edward Hall calls this the cultural dimension, and identifies its reciprocal influence, saying, “The relationship between man and the cultural dimension is one in which both man and his environment participate in molding each other” (1990, 4). In a 1943 speech, Winston Churchill offered the pithy formulation of such reciprocal influence, saying “We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.” Minimum clearances—the dimension between components to accommodate installation, movement, or access (Ballast 1994, 269) as shown in Figure II.13—and functional adjacencies have come to define many humanarchitecture relationships in the planning, distribution, and allocation of space (Reinhart 2005). Granting its practical necessity, clearance as a minimum provision of space is a curious mechanism by which to define relationships: one based on an enforced separation between people and their environment, rather than their closeness. For example, significant architectural moments predating such regulation, such as Wright’s famously low entry ceilings and the central ramp at Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye exhibit the power of intimate sensory experience using approaches that would not satisfy current codes. Adjacency,

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Figure II.13 Clearances for accessibility, originally drawn by Niels Diffrient and Alvin R. Tilley of Henry Dreyfuss Associates New York. Image published in Architectural Graphic Standards (2000) by Wiley & Sons. Used with permission: license 1059609-1.

while perhaps less isolating, collapses a range of nuanced relationships between parts to mere spatial proximity or minimal dimension. Yet together, clearance and adjacency enshrine function in the spatial dimension, thereby enforcing particular patterns of human use. While all architecture inherently embodies or represents cultural values and ideologies that can be interpreted and appropriated, the coercive social power of codes and standards can regulate dimension to actively concretize social structures, such that the evolution of building codes provide an “index of changing social values and at the same time a strategy to enforce those values” (Moore and Wilson 2012, 213). The congressional findings establishing the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) explicitly recognized the power of the built environment to manifest and enforce particular social dynamics, noting “the discriminatory effects of architectural, transportation, and communication barriers” (Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 1990, vol. 42, sec. 2). The Design Standards stipulated by ADA establish a set of minimum dimensional requirements for building design to ensure individuals with disabilities can access and use public, commercial, and government facilities. These dimensional building blocks—such as the provision of sufficient clearance for wheelchairs—in turn, provide sufficient space for all users, but not necessarily ideal space for any of them (American Institute of Architects 2016, 42).

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ADA standards have dramatically changed the built environment since its inception. Peacock, Iezzoni, and Harkin count the influence on the built environment as a success: Since the passage of the ADA, there have been extensive gains in access to public services, the built environment (e.g., crosswalks with curb cuts for wheelchair access and accessible pedestrian signals to assist people who are blind or have low vision), and attitudes toward and understanding of the abilities of people with disabilities. (2015, 892–93) Ironically, the codification of accessibility, although it creates a new architectural order available to a broader population, also reduces a diverse human population to standardized dimensions based on quantifiable measurement and ergonomics. By codifying the dimensions necessary to ensure the health, safety, and accessibility of the built environment, modern regulations and standards replace complex patterns of human use with occupancy-determined measurements. In part because they take the form of minimum thresholds rather than absolute prescriptions, these dimensions attract scant critical attention in their role as progenitors. However, absent critical understanding of their originating logics and effects on human occupation, the dimensional requirements embedded in codes are abstractions of people separated from human experience and use. Indeed, Moore and Wilson suggest that rules and codes are internalized by forgetting the reason why they were made (2012). Even in the service of human values such as equal access, the dimensional codification is not necessarily humane.

Comfort Introducing time to architecture for me is the best way to introduce comfort. — Roger Tudó Galí, H Arquitectes Universal Design emerged from a critical architectural stance of the evolving cultural attitudes about disability over the past century— from protective paternalism to accessibility as a civil right, to modern conceptions of universality—and seeks to provide a more holistic and human-centered approach. Architectural Graphic standards notes; Public accessibility standards establish general design specifications that broadly accommodate minimal needs… It is also likely that people with disabilities will appreciate universal design approaches because they improve function beyond minimum requirements and increase social participation and safety. (American Institute of Architects 2016, 39) The potential for greater human satisfaction and superior architecture that transcends legal minimums and better addresses the diversity of people must start as Monica Ponce de Leon says, “by acknowledging that we all have different degrees of abilities” (Ponce de Leon 2010).

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The advent of performance-based design in the late twentieth century represents a similar critical approach and marks a transition back to providing for human needs. Performance-based design focuses on what a building does for human beings, rather than prescribing the materials, measures, and methods of its construction. In short, “the performance approach is no more than the application of rigorous analysis and scientific method to the study of the functioning of buildings and their parts” (Working Commission W60 1982, 1). Rather than simply applying formulaic requirements, performance-based standards use code requirements as a threshold against which to test performance. Restoring code to its rightful place and adopting the process of falsification characteristic of science increases design freedom. Modern codes increasingly include performative as well as prescriptive methods of compliance. For example, in the area of energy and sustainability, the performative approach focuses on reducing environmental impacts and ensuring human health and comfort, rather than achieving prescribed interior conditions using specific criteria or equipment. Designs comply by demonstrating performance superior to a baseline of a deterministic, minimally compliant, theoretical version of the building. Similarly, the focus on resilience in design disciplines, and particularly in models of socio-ecological resilience, rejects the notion of a single equilibrium or optimization for current loads, and instead supports robustness and redundancy. Rather than optimizing space for initially deterministic functions, designers can develop performance criteria and dimensional qualities that support active human use or inhabitation over time. This alternative concept for multiple equilibria may define the parameters of use for a truly resilient building. In fact, building resilience in architecture has been defined in opposition to engineering’s functionalist approach, which prioritizes a return-to-function in disaster-recovery, by instead focusing on the resilience inherent to the natural and cultural structures where human beings thrive over time (Laboy and Fannon 2016, 43). Pérez Gómez observed that our quantitative gain in life expectancy— a product of advances in medicine and the design of the physical environment—is “the most powerful and unquestioned argument on behalf of the superiority of our technological ways,” but he contends that it can also limit the architect’s “traditional role, contributing to the psychosomatic health of society” (2016, 6). A growing interest in evidence-based strategies for health in the built environment represents an opportunity to re-examine the architectural dimensions of human well-being and comfort that build on a decades-long movement to assert the importance of sensation and experience, perhaps best illustrated in thermal environments. Since the advent of air conditioning, the conventional approach to the thermal environment strove for undifferentiated consistency, neutralizing the environment to what James Marston Fitch described as “a thermal steady-state across time and a thermal equilibrium across space” (1999). These attempt to eliminate all thermal stress by creating consistent thermal conditions in a constant manufactured environment mistakes the absence of discomfort for comfort itself, and gave rise to architecture that is isolated from bioclimatic response and

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human inhabitation. A climate-control approach that separates building inhabitants from the natural ambient context both demands vast quantities of energy to achieve and deprives humans of the richness and pleasure of thermal diversity. Our mechanistic model of comfort produces “spaces that are everywhere the same and nowhere special— environments that are acceptable but not inspiring, comfortable but not comforting, predictable but not memorable” (Erwine 2016, 12). The study of, and strategies for, human thermal comfort have undergone significant transformations, with seminal contributions from both the scholarship of architecture (Heschong 1979) and engineering (de Dear and Brager 1998). Michelle Addington draws on this work to examine the notion of the human body in a neutral or steady space, criticizing the focus on technologically advanced envelopes to compensate for poor formal and material choices, and expands her critique by focusing on the architectural dimension of the thermal zone (2009, 12–17). Holistic and adaptive models tune the thermal dimension by including human physiological and psychological factors: e.g., salutogenics, biophilia (Mazuch 2017, 42–47), and alliesthesia (Parkinson and De Dear 2014, 288–301) to create comfort and delight. Of course, architectural experiences involve more than thermal sensation, as Juhani Pallasmaa states: The authenticity of architectural experience is grounded in the tectonic language of building and the comprehensibility of the act of construction to the senses. We behold, touch, listen and measure the world with our entire bodily existence, and the experiential world becomes organised and articulated around the centre of the body. (2013, 69) A deeper understanding of, and the design for, the sensory qualities of architecture could displace the standardization of technical provisions for physiological conditions with new dimensions of human perception, comfort, and well-being.

Changing Uses Most all buildings have future uses. — Garth Rockcastle, MSR Design In his book The Poetics of Space, French philosopher Gaston Bachelard writes, “It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality” (1994, 61). Architecture is the embodiment of Bachelard’s impermanence. When we first complete the construction of a building, it is a beginning, not an end. When we first inhabit a building, we engage in a reciprocal learning process about how our senses respond to qualities of light, texture, sound, proportion, rhythm, space, and sequence, measuring ourselves against the order of the architecture. We can also measure how the architecture must change as we change, prompting adaptations, additions, or subtractions to the building. And we can measure time through the seasons of shifting shafts of light,

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years through the subtle weathering of the building’s skin, and generations through the deformations of the surfaces that yield to the constant friction of our bodies. Pallasmaa describes the interaction between the useful and the purposeful in architecture as generative when he writes, “Human use and specific purposefulness is constitutive of the art of building” (2014, xiii). Human use, thus, stands in contrast to the overly reductive space planning process of professionalized programming. Purpose is akin to function because both terms imply a level of specificity between an object, like a tool, and its use. But purpose implies projective intentionality: it exists within time. So, an architecture of purpose differentiates itself from function in that, like use, it is generated through the psychophysical criteria of a building’s inhabitants, instead of by disembodied metrics of prescriptive building codes or the over specificity of functionalism. A purposeful architecture, therefore, is human-centric, in that, it can anticipate the evolving needs and desires of its users. It is synonymous with designing for future use: it prioritizes the dynamic lived experiences that unfold within buildings. Philip Nobel suggests that “If architecture is an art, it is a contingent art” (2012, 40). So what are the contingencies that a building may need to address over time? The answer is simple: we don’t know. Stewart Brand offers us some guidelines about how we can embrace such uncertainty by reconsidering program as a long-term strategy for the transformation of uses over time, instead of a one-time spatial organization exclusively for present needs. Habraken incorporates the users as active agents of change, and personalized inhabitation becomes an alternative to predetermined architectures generated from strict quantitative metrics of efficiency. The evolution of the modern office building—from its origins in the nineteenth-century loose fit manufacturing typologies of the mill building and urban industrial loft, to the proto-skyscrapers of the Chicago steel frame, and ultimately to the towering corporate curtain wall high rises that populate most major urban centers globally—charts a course of architectures devoted to short-term adaptability to create long-term economic and urban vitality. It is these architectures that facilitate the change of uses that paradoxically also establish cultural stability. Lastly, Pallasmaa suggests that an enduring architecture must also nurture the human spirit over lifetimes. He writes, “In order to touch the human soul, architecture needs to speak of its human purpose, cultural motives, and structural and material essences, as well as humane destiny” (Pallasmaa 2014, xiv). For an architecture to persist, it must be an object of durability, an agent of accommodation and transformation of use, and a place where people are comforted in mind and body. In Part II, we will explore different facets of how changing uses are fundamental to an architecture of persistence. The Chapter Timely will interrogate how architecture invites transformations of use through its durable fixity, not from a short-term adaptability. Two buildings, the reused Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and the reconstructed Neues Museum, will demonstrate how design acts as a

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bridge between the past and the future. The Chapter Humane examines not only how buildings sustain continued human occupation but also advance the human condition. Case studies on university buildings challenge the notion of generic space designed for flexibility and alternatively focuses on design for long-term buildings that are unchanging, historically continuous, open-ended, and universal. The Chapter Complex will investigate the evolution of articulated building systems in modern architecture and how this paradigm engenders transformations of use. This chapter will culminate with an analysis of the synergistic bioclimatic building systems of the Research Center ICTA-ICP. The chapter Anticipatory, considers the possibilities and limitations of predicting and planning to accommodate future needs and conditions. The range of examples including Spencer Brewery, the Salt Lake City Federal Courthouse, and the Foster and Partners Office, illustrate that even use-driven buildings can anticipate future-use transformations to extend the life of a building.

References Abalos, Iñaki, and Juan Herreros. 2002. Tower and Office: From Modernist Theory to Contemporary Practice. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Addington, Michelle. 2009. “Converging Behaviors.” In Energies: New Material Boundaries, edited by Sean Lally: 12–17. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Alberti, Leon Battista. 1994. On the Art of Building in Ten Books, fourth printing, translated by Rykwert, Joseph, Robert Travernor, and Neil Leach. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Alofsin, Anthony. 1994. “Frank Lloyd Wright and Modernism.” In Frank Lloyd Wright Architect, edited by Terence Riley and Peter Reed: 32–57. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, distributed by Harry N. Abrams, Inc. American Institute of Architects. 2016. Architectural Graphic Standards, 12th Ed., edited by Dennis J. Hall. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. American Society of Civil Engineers. 2010. Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Other Structures. Reston, VA: American Society of Civil Engineers: Structural Engineering Institute. Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. 1990. U.S.C. Vol. 42. https://www.ada. gov/pubs/adastatute08.htm#12101. Anderson, Stanford. 1987. “The Fiction of Function.” Assemblage (2): 19–31. https://doi.org/10.2307/3171086. ASHRAE. 2016. n.d. “Standard 62.1 Ventilation for Acceptable Indoor Air Quality.” https://www.ashrae.org/File%20Library/Technical%20Resources/ Standards%20and%20Guidelines/Standards%20Addenda/62.1-2016/62_ 1_2016_l_20190912.pdf. Austin, Simon, and Robert Schmidt III. 2016. Adaptable Architecture. London and New York: Routledge. Bachelard, Gaston. 1994. The Poetics of Space, translated by Maria Jolas. Boston, MA: Boston, Beacon Press. Ballast, David Kent. 1994. Handbook of Construction Tolerances. New York: McGraw-Hill. Brand, Stewart. 1994. How Buildings Learn: What Happens after They’re Built. New York: Penguin Books. Churchill, Winston. 1943. “Churchill and the Commons Chamber.” Presented at the House of Commons (Meeting in the House of Lords), London, October 28. http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/building/palace/ architecture/palacestructure/churchill/.

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Cowan, Henry J. 1966. An Historical Outline of Architectural Science. Architectural Science Series; Architectural Science Series. Amsterdam: Elsevier. ———. 1977. The Master-Builders: A History of Structural and Environmental Design from Ancient Egypt to the Nineteenth Century. 1st Edition. New York: John Wiley & Sons. ———. 1978. Science and Building: Structural and Environmental Design in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. 1st Edition. New York: John Wiley & Sons. ———. 1980. “Architectural Science and Post-Modernism.” Architectural Science Review 23 (1): 7–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/00038628.1980.9696433. Curtis, William J.R. 1996. Modern Architecture since 1900. New York: Phaidon Press Inc. de Dear, Richard, and G.S. Brager. 1998. “Developing an Adaptive Model of Thermal Comfort and Preference.” ASHRAE Transactions 104, Part 1. https:// escholarship.org/uc/item/4qq2p9c6. Durand, Jean-Nicolas-Louis. 1985. Précis Des Léçons d’architecture Donées a l’École Royale Polytechnique (Reprint of Original from 1819). Nördlingen, Germany: UHL. Erwine, Barbara. 2016. Creating Sensory Spaces: The Architecture of the Invisible, 1st Edition. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315688282. Evans, Robin. 1997. “Figures, Doors, and Passages.” In Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays, edited by Robin Evans, AA documents: 54–91. London: Architectural Association. Fitch, James Marston, and William Bobenhausen. 1999. American Building: The Environmental Forces That Shape It. Revised and expanded Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, USA. Forney, Jason. December 6, 2017. Principal, Bruner/Cott Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, Cambridge, MA. Frampton, Kenneth. 2007. Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 4th Edition. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd. Gordon, Alex. 1972. “Designing for Survival: The President Introduces His Long Life/Loose Fit/Low Energy Study.” RIBA Journal 79 (9): 374–76. Grabow, Stephen, and Kent Spreckelmeyer. 2014. The Architecture of Use: Aesthetics and Function in Architectural Design. London and New York: Routledge. Habraken, N. J. 1972. Supports: An Alternative to Mass Housing. New York: Praeger. Habraken, John. September 2017. “Back to the Future: The Everyday Built Environment in a Phase of Transition.” Architectural Design 87 (5): 18–23. Hall, Edward T. 1990. The Hidden Dimension. New York: Anchor Books. Handlin, David P. 1985. American Architecture. New York: Thames and Hudson. Hauser, Arnold. 2005. The Social History of Art, Volume 2: Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque. London and New York: Routledge. Hendrix, John Shannon. 2013. The Contradiction between Form and Function in Architecture. London and New York: Routledge. Herdeg, Klaus. 1983. The Decorated Diagram: Harvard Architecture and the Failure of the Bauhaus Legacy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Heschong, Lisa. 1979. Thermal Delight in Architecture. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Huxtable, Ada Louise. 1985. The Tall Building Artistically Reconsidered: The Search for a Skyscraper Style. New York: Pantheon Books. International Code Council. 2014. 2015 IBC: International Building Code. Country Club Hills, IL: International Code Council. Johnson, Paul-Alan. 1994. The Theory of Architecture: Concepts, Themes & Practices. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

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Kendall, Stephen, and Jonathan Teicher. 2000. Residential Open Building. London: E & FN Spon. Laboy, Michelle, and David Fannon. 2016. “Resilience Theory and Praxis: A Critical Framework for Architecture.” Enquiry: A Journal for Architectural Research 13 (2): 39–53. https://doi.org/10.17831/enq:arcc.v13i2.405. Leblanc, Michael. January 25, 2018. Founding Principal, Utile Interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn, Boston, MA. Lifschutz, Alex. 2017. “Long Life, Loose Fit, Low Energy.” Architectural Design, September 2017: 6–17. Lechner, Norbert. 2001. Heating, Cooling, Lighting. 2nd ed. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Lüthi, Sonja, and Marc Schwarz. 2013. De Drager: A Film about the Architect John Habraken. Zurich: Schwartz Pictures. Machado, Rodolfo. 2006. Residential Waterfront, Borneo Sporenburg, Amsterdam: Adriaan Geuze, West 8 Urban Design & Landscape Architecture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Graduate School of Design. Madrazo, Leandro. 1994. “Durand and the Science of Architecture.” Journal of Architectural Education (1984-) 48 (1): 12–24. https://doi. org/10.2307/1425306. Mazuch, Richard. 2017. “Salutogenic and Biophilic Design as Therapeutic Approaches to Sustainable Architecture.” Architectural Design 87 (2): 42–47. https://doi.org/10.1002/ad.2151. McMorrough, John. 2006. “Notes on the Adaptive Reuse of Program.” In Praxis: Journal of Writing + Building: Re:programming, (8), edited by Amanda Reeser Lawrence and Ashley Schafer: 102–110. New York: PRAXIS, Inc. Moe, Kiel. 2013. Convergence: An Architectural Agenda for Energy. London and New York: Routledge. Moore, Steven A., and Barbara B. Wilson. 2012. “Architectural Production and Sociotechnical Codes: A Theoretical Framework.” In Building Systems: Design, Technology, and Society, edited by Kiel Moe and Ryan E. Smith: 212– 28. London and New York: Routledge. Mumford, Lewis. 1952. “The Sky Line: House of Glass.” The New Yorker, 9 August 1952. Nobel, Philip. 2012. “Introduction.” In SHoP: Out of Practice, edited by Kimberly J. Holden: 31–43. New York: Monacelli Press. Pallasmaa, Juhani. 2013. The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. Somerset: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ———. 2014. “Forward: The Use of Art.” In The Architecture of Use: Aesthetics and Function in Architectural Design, edited by Stephen Grabow and Kent Spreckelmeyer: xiii–xvi. London and New York: Routledge. Parkinson, Thomas, and Richard De Dear. 2014. “Thermal Pleasure in Built Environments: Physiology of Alliesthesia.” Building Research & Information, Vol. 43, No. 3: 288–301. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09613218. 2015.989662. Pawley, Martin. 1999. Norman Foster: A Global Architecture. New York: Universe Publishing. Peacock, Georgina, Lisa I. Iezzoni, and Thomas R. Harkin. 2015. “Health Care for Americans with Disabilities — 25 Years after the ADA.” New England Journal of Medicine 373 (10): 892–93. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp1508854. Peña, William M., and Steven A. Parshall. 2012. Problem Seeking: An Architectural Programming Primer, 5th Edition. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Pérez Gómez, Alberto. 1983. Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ———. 2016. Attunement: Architectural Meaning after the Crisis of Modern Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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Ponce de Leon, Monica. 2010. How The Disabilities Act Has Influenced Architecture Interview by Robert Siegel. Radio. http://www.npr.org/ templates/story/story.php?storyId=128778558. Reinhart, Christoph F. 2005. “A Simulation-Based Review of the Ubiquitous Window-Head-Height to Daylit Zone Depth Rule-of-Thumb.” Building Simulation 106 (3): 1011–1018. Rockcastle, Garth. November 1, 2017. Founding Partner, MSR Design Phone Interview with Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, Minneapolis, MN. Rogers, Adam. 2017. “If you Care About Cities, Apple’s New Headquarters Sucks.” WIRED, October 5, 2017. Roth, Leland M. 1980. A Concise History of American Architecture, Revised. New York: Harper & Row. Rowe, Colin. 1984. “Mathematics of the Ideal Villa.” In The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays, third printing, edited by Colin Rowe: 102–110. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Sample, Hilary. 2016. Maintenance Architecture. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press Stone, Mark H. 2014. “The Cubit: A History and Measurement Commentary.” Journal of Anthropology 2014: 11. https://doi.org/10.1155/2014/489757. Sullivan, Louis H. 2014. “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered.” In Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings, Revised Edition, edited by Isabella Athey: 202–13. Eastford, CT: Martino Fine Books. Tavernor, Robert. 2007. Smoot’s Ear: The Measure of Humanity. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1xp3thg. Tudó Gali, Roger. April 30, 2019. Founding Principal, H Arquitectes), Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, Barcelona, Spain. Walker, George R., and Jim Tolpin. 2013. By Hand & Eye. Fort Mitchell, KY: Lost Art Press. https://lostartpress.com/products/by-hand-eye-1. Wittkower, Rudolf. 1971. Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Working Commission W60. 1982. Working with the Performance Approach in Building. 64. Rotterdam: International Council for Building Research Studies and Documentation.

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It’s always building a bridge between times, between purposes…the architects are able to understand other traditions and other times and other understandings of life. — Father Martin Werlen, Einsiedeln Abbey

Embodied Time Architecture, of human endeavors, bridges eras exceedingly well. Buildings address a contemporary need or desire, and history shows that they often outlive their original use (Brand 1994, 2). Measured against human life spans, buildings, until the advent of modern medicine, would typically outlive their creators. In the pre-modern world, the notion that buildings would continue into perpetuity was a given, and the buildings that have endured through history demonstrate that they were built with perpetuity in mind, that is, they were built to last. Ironically, the longer our life span, the shorter the planned life spans of buildings have become. In the modern era of accelerating technological advancement and urban expansion, we can witness major cultural, technological, and architectural transformations unfold within our lifetimes. Architecture, once a stable presence for generations, is now as much in flux as life itself. As populations expand and more architecture is produced to match growing demographic needs, buildings that have stood for generations and centuries become a smaller percentage of the built environment. Historic buildings nonetheless can provide valuable insight into why some buildings have persisted and how they have been changed to match evolving needs. Buildings that have persisted are timely, not in the sense of being punctual or prompt, but in terms of being of time, opportune in their ability to remain useful, auspicious in that they survived when other buildings did not, and provide a window into the architectural practices of the time of construction. To borrow Walter Benjamin’s terminology, we may observe that persistent buildings possess an “aura” of authenticity that only time and patina can garner (Benjamin 1969). The effect of time on a building is inscribed into its surfaces through weathering and use (Leatherbarrow 2018, 214). If we identify the accumulated resources needed to construct a building as its embodied energy, we may also consider the collective effects of a building’s

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Figure 5.1 Campus of existing mill buildings and courtyards, adaptive reuse by Bruner/Cott Architects, MASS MoCA (North Adams, MA, USA) 1999–2017. Photograph by Douglas Mason.

persistence as “embodied time” (Wiederspahn 1999, 384). Embodied time is integral to the development of a building’s authenticity, extending past the material denotation of natural and human inscriptions, and including the gathering of cultural significance and history over time. It connotes value that such a building was preserved and protected by the society that lived with it, even though society inevitably changes over a building’s life span. Persistence is dependent on a building maintaining its social, cultural, and useful value through the vicissitudes of time. The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, better known as MASS MoCA, was designed by Bruner/Cott Architects, and occupies a preexisting building complex in North Adams, MA (Figure 5.1). It sits at the confluence of the north and south branches of the Hoosic River, a location specifically chosen to generate hydromechanical power for the industries that once occupied the buildings (Heon 2000, 9–10). The complex was originally built by Arnold Print Works, a major textile manufacturing and printing company with a global reach. This company closed its doors in 1942 due to international competition in the textile industry, but the electronics manufacturer Sprague Electric immediately moved into the manufacturing complex to supply the World War II war effort. Sprague was viable for the next 40 years, but once again manufacturing elsewhere forced the closure of this company in 1985, which effectively ended significant manufacturing in the western Massachusetts Berkshires region (Campanile 2001, 42). The Berkshires’ proximity to the urban megalopolis that includes New York and Boston, however, helped transform the region into a major arts destination in its new post-industrial incarnation. In 1986, staff from the nearby Williams College Museum of Art were seeking spaces to display large-scale art works when they discovered the manufacturing halls of the old Arnold Print Works (Thompson 2000, 15). Interest in using these mill buildings for art spaces became the catalyst for what is now one of the largest institutions dedicated to contemporary art and performance in the United States. The first phase of MASS MoCA opened in 1999, and the final phase was completed in 2017. This history is significant because it demonstrates how changing global economic conditions can affect local economies, and that the architecture built to support the Berkshires’ industrial activities can adapt to meet new needs.

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Future Use How come that architecture has resisted over time? And how can we today respect that change and try to forecast what’s going to happen next? How come that place is still there, still talking and explaining and telling a long story, but at the same time is available for the future? — Maurizio De Vita, De Vita & Schulze Architetti The buildings of MASS MoCA, mostly completed by 1874 with additional buildings constructed up to 1900, reflect the predominant construction type of new England’s early industrial architecture commonly referred to as mill buildings. Although mill buildings were built in many different scales and configurations, they possess a set of essential tectonic components and spatial characteristics. These include a masonry exterior shell with a repetitive fenestration pattern, a relatively narrow planimetric footprint, a heavy timber interior structure, and open continuous spaces (Dickson 2017, 113). A brief analysis of these elements and attributes will reveal how these buildings were generated by the needs of their original purposes, how they continue to be useful in the present day, and why they will remain valuable buildings well into the future. The masonry exterior of new England mill buildings serves a multitude of performative roles in this typology’s useful longevity. It provides a durable and maintenance-free exterior surface that is relatively impervious to the extremes of winter and summer conditions. It creates both the vertical structure at the perimeter of the building and the lateral stability to resist wind or seismic forces. The masonry exterior combined with its fenestration is also the environmental barrier. Many modern and contemporary buildings disallow significant environmental reciprocity with the exterior, choosing instead to condition the interior as a separate controllable environment powered by fossil fuels. Mill buildings, conversely, have a permeable environmental barrier that augments the interaction between the exterior and interior. In the era before electrification, manufacturing spaces were dependent on abundant natural light and ventilation for their operations. As a result, the window pattern is regular and ubiquitous, providing a uniform distribution of natural light (Figure 5.2). Additionally, each window is tall and wide to project the maximum natural light deep into the space, and the windows were operable so natural ventilation could moderate the high temperatures generated by the industrial processes. The beneficial effects of the fenestration geometry were augmented by having a relatively narrow planimetric footprint. Mill buildings, therefore, have long and continuous spaces on one axis but are narrow on the perpendicular axis to maximize the benefits of natural light and air. Also, the windows are separated by a solid masonry pier for vertical structural continuity, plus providing the ability to bring a subdividing partition to the exterior wall without having to intersect a glazed opening. This becomes a critical feature for adapting mill buildings to uses as large as the full space within the masonry shell or as small as one window bay.

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Figure 5.2 Gallery with repetitive windows, natural light, existing structure, and the patina of time, Bruner/ Cott Architects, MASS MoCA (North Adams, MA, USA) 1999–2017. Photograph by Michelle Laboy.

The interior structure of mill buildings is comprised of timber or cast-iron columns supporting heavy timber girders, beams, and solid wood decking. The heavy timber floor system is tied into the perimeter masonry wall for both gravitational and lateral support (Allen and Iano 2019, 132). The columns are spaced at a dimension that balances the desire to minimize the vertical points of structure in plan with the need to support the heavy industrial machinery, the hundreds of workers that operate them, and the goods that come and go. The ceiling heights are tall, which has a number of performative benefits: it helps project natural light deep into the space; it lets the warm air rise up and away from the workers; it accommodates manufacturing equipment of any height that might need to be installed. The resulting space is open from exterior wall to the exterior wall with minimized interruptions of vertical structure to allow for maximal use adaptability. These tectonic and spatial characteristics not only produced good manufacturing conditions in the nineteenth century but also show that mill buildings remain versatile spaces, and their long history suggests that they will continue to be useful well into the future. In retrospect, they are a prescient embodiment of Alex Gordon’s mandate for long-life and loose-fit buildings (Lifschutz 2017, 8). The longevity of mill buildings assures a low embodied energy when its carbon footprint of construction can now be amortized over centuries. Unintentionally intentional, the New England mill building typology is a quintessential future-use architecture. Another critical and consistent characteristic of mill buildings is their site relationship: they typically stretch along running rivers from which they derived their operational energy for manufacturing before the widespread use of steam-powered engines and electrification (Figure II.1). The rivers were often in rural locations, but the economic activity generated by the manufacturing attracted settlers, thereby stimulating

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the development of villages, towns, and cities. The mill building typology served as a paradigm for the development of its related urban counterpart, the industrial loft building. They share tectonic and spatial characteristics of ample and repetitive fenestration and an open floor plan derived from a minimal grid of vertical columns. The primary differences of these types are that industrial loft buildings were developed later at a time when cast-iron then steel construction was adopted to minimize the danger of catastrophic fires, that they were built to their urban lot lines which necessitated windowless masonry party walls, and that their operational energy was created off-site. But like the mill buildings, industrial loft buildings fed economic fuel to the rapid urban expansion of the nineteenth century. Whole urban districts of loft buildings were developed as centers of manufacturing, and the infrastructure needed to supply these industrial activities could be shared and supported by their municipalities. As the manufacturing industries moved out of city centers in the twentieth century, these districts were re-occupied with lighter commercial, artistic, and residential uses. Such urban transformations extend future-use adaptability to the scale of the city, such as Fort Point in Boston, Tribeca in Manhattan, River North in Chicago, or the Pearl District in Portland, OR. The success of these urban districts to transform en masse over time demonstrates the ability of its adaptable architecture to affect larger cultural and social trends such as the flourishing of artistic activities and economic innovation, and the creation of new residential stock and related urban amenities.

Reuse We think about making the building continue. It’s been here for 125 years. And we feel like it’s still going to be being used 125 years from now. — Larry Smallwood, MASS MoCA How we design the reuse of buildings has a direct impact on their architectural expression of time. A simple synopsis of the terms for the practice of conserving and reusing buildings begins to reveal the complexity of this topic and its range of methodological philosophies: preservation; rehabilitation; restoration; renovation; reconstruction; anastylosis. It is not the point of this chapter to define or debate these terms or review their extensive epistemologies. There are a plethora of established guidelines for changing a building’s use or form, including, but not limited to the following: the 1964 Venice Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites, which emphasizes the conservation of all layers of a building’s history; the 1979 Burra Charter, which aligns with the Venice Charter but accentuates maintaining the cultural heritage of historic sites; the 1994 Nara Document on Authenticity, that reinforces the conservation of a site’s cultural diversity; the US Secretary of Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties. Given this range of terms, standards, and recommended procedures, what we can understand is that context, be it natural, cultural, political, or economic, will determine what conservation path a project might follow,

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that these methods are often used interchangeably in practice, and that they will produce widely different variations of embodied time. The mill building complex that MASS MoCA now occupies is a total of 280,000 square feet, covers one-third of the central business district of north Adams, and its adaptive reuse from conception to completion took approximately 25 years (Thompson 2000, 15). The scale and ambition this project represents are truly profound, and the expectations of it to create an internationally recognized center for contemporary art and to revitalize the town and the surrounding Berkshires region are no less grand (Bruner 2000, 113). The existing condition was a campus of historic building shells filled with the functional apparatus of electronic manufacturing. The architects’ primary design moves were more subtractive than additive. First, they removed the most ephemeral elements, such as the manufacturing equipment, non-load-bearing partitions, window coverings, and obsolete mechanical, electrical, lighting, and plumbing systems. Bruner/Cott was careful not to erase all evidence of the building’s previous lives. Wall surfaces were scraped and cleaned revealing the materiality of the masonry walls and timber structure, but evidence of the previous layers of plaster and paint, and marks of wear and tear, were left to provide a painterly patina of color, texture, and time. Architect Simeon Bruner describes his design ethos as leaving the “evolutionary relics behind, helping guide the observant user through the transition from what was to what is… MASS MoCA’s own roots in the past reinforce its own history and continuity in the 21st-century” (119). Bruner/Cott also made more intrinsic edits to the architecture itself, such as strategic subtractions of floors to create taller gallery spaces or vertical circulation atria. Although such design moves are more deconstructions than conservation, they may be acts of preservation by creating such extraordinary spaces that we will want to keep them in perpetuity. There are many moments within the complex where Bruner/Cott made discrete additions. For example, specific column lines have been

Figure 5.3 Existing shell and structure with added structural prostheses painted black, Bruner/Cott Architects, MASS MoCA (North Adams, MA, USA) 1999–2017. Photograph by Douglas Mason.

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replaced with a new long-span structure to create continuously open spaces. In other cases, structural prostheses were added to shore up the structure to meet contemporary building codes, as seen in Figure 5.3, where the architects added structural steel interventions to strengthen the existing structure. The architects used similar materials and articulation for these reinforcements so they are reminiscent of the practicality of the original architecture. But they then painted these new steel elements black to subtly differentiate the new interventions from the existing building elements, thereby adding the next layer of history. Modern services needed for the thousands of visitors to MASS MoCA and museum staff had to be woven into the existing spaces in such a way as to not greatly alter the existing architecture. Bruner/Cott cunningly superimposed a logical and continuous circulation system that leads the visitor throughout the campus to create a coherent museum experience (Bruner 2000, 114). In multiple places, narrow spaces that existed between two buildings were used as multi-story atria for vertical circulation (Figure 5.4), and the galleries themselves are connected enfilade for the lateral circulation. The length, width, height, and the sheer number of the resulting gallery spaces greatly exceed those possible in most urban museums, creating a truly unique art institution. Also, the abundance of space allows the curators to install long-term exhibitions without compromising their ability to have other exhibits that turn over more frequently. For example, over 100 wall drawings by the artist Sol LeWitt that total over one acre of wall space will be on permanent display for 25 years (Cotter 2008). The design process was a way to reveal and foreground the visual power of the tectonic elements of the mill building type. It is the first time in the life of the building when structure, space, and light were the focus of the buildings and not just an instrumental need for manufacturing operations. The interior spaces are not the only parts of the campus that give MASS MoCA its unique vitality. The exterior spaces between the buildings are an integral part of making this a popular cultural destination. As you Figure 5.4 Interstice between buildings is transformed into a skylighted atrium, Bruner/Cott Architects, MASS MoCA (North Adams, MA, USA) 1999–2017. Photograph by Douglas Mason.

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approach the museum complex, there is a forecourt of exterior spaces with commercial and culinary uses populating the buildings that form it. This forecourt is actually formed by removing a small mill building (Bruner 2000, 115). A low wall of its masonry foundation, however, was left intact and filled with greenery as a trace of the building that occupied that space. Once you enter the museum proper, you can choose to circulate within the building or to pass through the renovated architecture into yet another courtyard. In fact, there are a series of interconnected exterior spaces for art and performance. These spaces are intertwined with the mill building galleries giving the visitor an ideal vantage from which one can readily grasp the materiality of the masonry exterior and the deliberate rhythmic pattern of the windows. Historian John Heon recognizes how these tectonic attributes make the temporal dimension of the architecture now occupied by MASS MoCA legible and palpable when he writes: A great part of the complex’s historical and architectural significance arises precisely because the site was not designed by a master architect, but rather by masons, carpenters, and engineers who built ad hoc, reflecting the industrial purposes, building styles, techniques, and materials of 19th-century New England mill architecture. (2000, 12) The connection to the local geography is still present in the two rivers that frame the campus, although they no longer produce energy used in the buildings. The economic activity generated by this largescale institution still provides an important financial foothold for the region much like the textile and electronics industries that previously occupied the buildings. And the accentuation of the tectonic elements and spatial qualities of the mill building typology reinforces the architectural heritage of industrial New England. Bruner/Cott’s managing partner for the MASS MoCA project, Jason Forney, identifies these essential features as the foundation of a persistent architecture. He recounts: We do spend a lot of time working in old buildings, and we see what works and what doesn’t when we try to transform them for the present. Things like clear, structural patterns that allow for things to change underneath them…how the building interacts with the outside environment and bringing in light, air, and space, and the durability of materials that are going to last a long time. Bruner/Cott’s strategic subtractions, along with discrete additions, engenders long-term adaptability for any manner of art installations by exploiting the stable fixity of the primary tectonic elements and the resulting open spaces they create. The museum’s original director, Joseph Thompson, who was indispensable to the process that brought the MASS MoCA concept into being, made the temporal dimension an integral part of the museum’s fundamental conception. He writes: In describing MASS MoCA as a platform rather than a box, I hoped to create a home for art that would be responsive to an unknowable

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future, and accommodating to works that were as often performative as visual. A platform is an open structure, offering the drama and peripatetic advantage of the stage, and the saving grace of the provisional. (Thompson 2000, 19)

Restore I think that restoration is something that we do for the future: it’s the hinge between past and future… Restoration is the opposite of freezing a building. Restoration is giving a building life. — Maurizio De Vita, De Vita & Schulze Architetti The Neues Museum in Berlin has had a much more turbulent history. Unlike MASS MoCA, the Neues Museum was originally built as a museum and yet it has not been continuously inhabited as such. In fact, it was severely damaged by Allied bombs in World War II (Figure 5.5). So, the only other use that the Neues Museum has served is that of a ruin, a melancholic reminder of the destruction Nazi Germany brought to the world and onto itself, and of the inability of the East German regime to effectively manage its architectural heritage. It was originally designed by Friedrich August Stüler and completed in 1855 as a double courtyard building organized on either side of a central grand stair hall (Nys 2013, 198). The courtyards ensure that there is always natural light available to the galleries that encircle them. The sequence of interior spaces was designed to illustrate a historical chronology of artistic periods, which was reinforced by creating elaborate, and somewhat fictional, decorative schemes for each room that supposedly corresponded to the art it would contain. Karsten Schubert describes this as a waning moment in curatorial philosophy when he writes: The Neues Museum was the embarrassingly late child of the Enlightenment, the last attempt at a universal encyclopedic museum organized under a single narrative arc, but by the time of its realization the idea’s moment had already passed. (2009, 76) In World War II, the southeast risalit and the northwest wing of the building were completely destroyed, and a good proportion of the remaining building lay open to the sky. All of the decorative work on the walls were damaged or completely destroyed. The communist regime did construct some temporary shoring and roof shelters to staunch the continuing deterioration, but simultaneously destroyed other valuable parts of the building. Once Germany was reunified a competition was held to rehabilitate the museum, and the commission was awarded to David Chipperfield Architects in 1997 (Balfour 2009, 91). Chipperfield proposed to reconstruct the parts of the building that were destroyed but to do so with a new architecture, an architecture of its own materiality and expression. Additionally, he proposed not to erase the ravages of war and ruin, but to leave those layers of history evident and integral to the surfaces and

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Figure 5.5 Southeast risalit of the original building in ruin, 1958, after its destruction in World War II and neglect by the East German regime, Friedrich August Stüler, original architect, Neues Museum (Berlin, Germany) 1855. Photograph courtesy of SMB/Zentralarchiv and David Chipperfield Architects.

Figure 5.6 Southeast risalit reconstructed, David Chipperfield Architects, Neues Museum (Berlin, Germany) 2009. Photograph by Ute Zscharnt for David Chipperfield Architects.

spaces of the museum. This generated a substantive public debate with many critics advocating for a complete restoration of the original building, which would erase a shameful cultural history. Chipperfield found a much more nuanced approach that would preserve the museum’s multilayered history, not an ahistorical recreation. His primary strategy

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was the “reestablishment of form and figure” of Stüler’s overall organization by reconstructing the parts of the building’s volume that were missing (Nys 2013, 200). His project was a process of careful restoration and reconstruction over 12 years, not a singular vision implemented all at once. The Neues Museum was completed in 2009. Chipperfield chose to use brick as the new exterior surface of the reconstructed sections to distinguish them from the limestone veneer of the original building (Figure 5.6). Bullet holes and shrapnel scars are left untouched in the limestone revetment as a stark reminder of the battles that were waged there at the end of World War II. Alvaro Siza characterizes the interweaving of the new interventions with the existing distressed architecture as connecting the museum to its troubled history, as he writes, “Chipperfield’s sensibility yielded, in a coolly calculated way, to the painful beauty of the ruins, as if consolidating instantly a timeless latent process of decay” (2009, 9). The Interiors that had to be newly constructed were made with a highly refined precast concrete with an aggregate made from a local marble to give it a bright, finely textured, yet robust surface. This new interior architecture is crisp in its articulation and is an objective “dehistoricised reconstruction” in its relationship to the dramatic pattern of loss and replacement of all of the existing repaired surfaces (Irace 2013, 12). For the interior spaces that were not completely destroyed, Chipperfield’s office collaborated with the conservation expert, Julian Harrap, to perform a meticulous restoration of the existing surfaces on a case-by-case basis depending on the level of destruction and deterioration (Figure 5.7). Extant fragments of the original decorative work were preserved and the missing portions filled in with new nondecorative surfaces. This gives the visitor a glimpse into the original decorative schema and the curatorial history it represents, records the devastating effects of the war and subsequent neglect, and Figure 5.7 Fresco fragments, original brick structure, and new precast concrete interventions, David Chipperfield Architects, Neues Museum (Berlin, Germany) 2009. Photograph by Peter Wiederspahn.

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makes the processes of preservation, restoration, and reconstruction an integral component of the museum’s architectural expression. Joseph Rykwert describes how the museum communicates and chronicles its non-linear history, when he writes, “The reborn building now speaks anew to the visitor in accents that echo the intentions of its original designers and assumes the role of a witness to its own tragic story” (2009, 35).

Timely Any time we can have a bridge to the past we will have a better understanding of ourselves. — Mac Ball, Waggonner & Ball Architecture / Environment MASS MoCA and the Neues Museum are both timepieces that capture their histories in built form. MASS MoCA conveys time as an armature of transformation. Its material organization facilitates the ability to inhabit and re-inhabit its spaces with a huge spectrum of possible uses. It is currently deployed as an arts institution for the display of large objects and installations that simply could not fit in most art museums. This propensity to accommodate the extra-large is an intrinsic attribute of the mill building typology due to its initial industrial uses that required space for large manufacturing equipment and ample natural daylight for the workers to operate them. It is what Kiel Moe refers to as a “maximum power design,” where a large embodied energy creates an architecture of great durability and commensurate longevity (2013, 97). The scale of mill buildings and the over-design of their structure yields adaptability for extreme conditions. Yet the narrow dimension of mill buildings also makes them equally viable for more modest scaled uses, such as workshop spaces, office spaces, restaurants, and residential uses since there is always good proximity to natural light and air. The Neues Museum connotes time as an architecture of revival. The original building was dedicated to a brand of contrived linear historicism, and the architecture provided a three-dimensional figure eight for the visitor to explore and become steeped in its worldview. Its reconstruction reifies this essential spatial organization, but a more complex conceptual order arises from the differentiated and episodic responses to a wide spectrum of conservation obligations. There is no logical singular response to preserve what was still intact and to reconstruct what was absent. Instead, a combination of conservation methods had to be applied to capture the full history of the building. Both architects have preserved the literal layering of finishes on the interior surfaces as another way to signify time. The spaces of MASS MoCA that are adorned with rough timbers, bolted steel connections, exposed brick walls, and a mixture of concrete or wood floors exude a pragmatism of work being done year after year. New layers of white paint on the heavy timber ceilings are more purposeful than aesthetic, helping reflect natural light throughout the gallery spaces. Otherwise, the surfaces were only scraped down but not painted over, leaving evidence of the many layers of time as measured by a long process of sedimentation. In contrast, the fragments of the beautifully crafted

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decorative walls and ceilings in the Neues Museum construct a melancholy narrative of the loss of precious cultural artifacts and the violence that took them. The fact that each room required its own unique preservation response due to the chaotic pattern of destruction creates an ever-changing palimpsest of both clarity and obscurity. These surfaces signify an interrupted history. But as one moves through the sequence of galleries, the discontinuity of apparent time becomes increasingly normal, and the oscillation between historic fragments and contemporary interventions creates a dynamic coherence. All buildings generate histories, and the longer a building persists, the more it can teach us about persistence itself. To understand how to design buildings to last, we can study buildings like MASS MoCA and the Neues Museum that have already endured a long time. Each possesses a deliberate spatial organization that predetermines a logic of re-inhabitation. Each has abundant sources of natural light readily available in all parts of the architectural plan. And each connects to a cultural heritage that grounds the institutions in legacies greater than themselves. In MASS MoCA, the architects rely on the power of the buildings’ tectonic expression to create a new cultural institution that connects the past to the future. In the Neues Museum, amidst the variability of absence and repair, it is the discerning hand of the architect that is logical, consistent, and ultimately reassuring. These architects demonstrate that through careful observation, analysis, and response, a continuum of reuse and reinterpretation can instill persistence in architecture.

References Allen, Edward, and Joseph Iano. 2019. Fundamentals of Building Construction: Materials and Methods, 7th Edition. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Balfour, Alan. May 2009. “The Rebirth of the Neues Museum Is the Latest Stage in the Architectural and Political Evolution of the Spreeinsel, Berlin’s Historic Museum Island.” In The Architectural Review 225: 88–91. London: EMAP Publishing, Ltd. Ball, Mac. June 19, 2018. Principal Architect, Waggonner & Ball Architecture / Environment Interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy, New Orleans, LA. Benjamin, Walter. 1969. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn. 217–252. new York: Schocken Books. Brand, Stewart. 1994. How Buildings Learn: What Happens after They’re Built. London: Penguin Books. Bruner, Simeon. 2000. “Architect’s Statement.” In MASS MOCA: From Mill to Museum, edited by Jennifer Trainer: 113–19. North Adams, MA: MASS MoCA Publications. Campanile, Robert. 2001. North Adams. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing. Cotter, Holland. 2008. “Now in Residence: Walls of Luscious Austerity.” In The New York Times, December 4, 2008. De Vita, Maurizio. June 17, 2019. Founding Partner, De Vita & Schulze Architetti; Professor of Architecture, Università degli Studi di Firenze Interview by Peter Wiederspahn, Florence. Dickson, John S. 2017. Berkshire County’s Industrial Heritage. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing.

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Heon, John. 2000. “History and Change at the Marshall Street Complex.” In MASS MOCA: From Mill to Museum, edited by Jennifer Trainer: 9–13. North Adams, MA: MASS MoCA Publications. Irace, Fulvio. 2013. “Simple, Ordinary, Complex.” In David Chipperfield Architects. edited by Rik Nys. 8-14. Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter König. Leatherbarrow, David. 2018. “Relative Permanence.” In Journal of Architectural Education, 72:2. doi: 10.1080/10464883.2018.1496729 Lifschutz, Alex. September 2017. “Long Life, Loose Fit, Low Energy.” Architectural Design 87 (5): 6–17. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Moe, Kiel. 2013. Convergence: An Architectural Agenda for Energy. London and New York: Routledge. Nys, Rik. 2013. “Neues Museum, Museum Island, Berlin, Germany 1997–2009.” In David Chipperfield Architects. Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter König. Rykwert, Joseph. 2009. “The Museum Rejuvenated.” In Neues Museum Berlin, edited by Rik Nys and Martin Reichert: 25–35. Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter König. Schubert, Karsten. 2009. “Contra-Amnesia: David Chipperfield’s Neues Museum.” In Neues Museum Berlin, edited by Rik Nys and Martin Reichert: 73–83. Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter König. Siza, Alvaro. 2009. “Preface.” In Neues Museum Berlin, edited by Rik nys and Martin Reichert: 9. Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter König. Smallwood, Larry. February 14, 2018. Deputy Director and COO, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art Phone Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, North Adams, MA. Thompson, Joseph. 2000. “Director’s Statement.” In MASS MOCA: From Mill to Museum, edited by Jennifer Trainer: 15–19. North Adams, MA: MASS MoCA Publications. Werlen, Father Martin. November 1, 2017. Priest, Former Abbott, Einsiedeln Abbey Phone Interview by David Fannon and Peter Wiederspahn, Einsiedeln. Wiederspahn, Peter. 1999. “Embodied Time in the Urban Artifacts of Rome,” in La Citta Nuova: Proceedings of the 1999 Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) International Conference, Summer 1999: 384–88.

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We always talk about melding the quantitative and qualitative aspects of sustainability. The qualitative makes people want to stay in a building…It’s always all of those more human attributes that make the space amenable to change over time. —Abigail Ransmeier, Behnisch Architekten

Humanizing Architecture Colin St. John Wilson quotes the late Finnish architect, Alvar Aalto, as saying “It is not what a building looks like on its opening day that matters but what it looks like thirty years later” (Wilson 1995). Wilson points out that many of Aalto’s buildings—designed as an alternative humanized model to early modernism—“have enjoyed satisfied occupation for fifty to sixty years, the proof of which rests in their excellent preservation” (Wilson 1998, 464). Sustained human occupation and care over generations can be evidence of some inherently lasting value to human beings. The challenge for a generalizable theory is that the human dimension of persistence is complicated by the same diversity, complexity, and contradictions that make people hardly generalizable. Yet that has not stopped the sciences and the arts from engaging in advancing and challenging our understanding of human nature. This chapter sheds light on what makes architecture humane, and how design can advance higher human values that can transcend the time and physicality of its construction. Alvar Aalto believed that the only way to humanize architecture was by expanding functionalism from the technical field to the human or psychophysical fields (Aalto 1998). In examining Aalto’s synthetic functionalism, Juhani Pallasma contrasts the reductionist and polarizing purity and expression of the modern movement with Aalto’s synthesis of the technical and psychological complexities of design that sought to reconcile opposites: tradition and innovation, the universal and the regional, the intellectual and the emotional, the rational and the intuitive (Pallasmaa 1998, 20). Therein lies the challenge to humanize architecture: the embrace of the complexity and contradiction of the human condition, the understanding of architecture as the embodiment of human values, and the intention to engage the emotional as much as the rational. Aalto’s position was not a rejection of rationalism, but an elevated form of it—a “super-rationality, one that deliberately

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Figure 6.1 View of the terrace leading to the courtyard. Alvar Aalto. Säynätsalo Town Hall (Jyväskylä, Finland), 1949. Photograph by Michelle Laboy.

incorporated psychological, intuitive, and subconscious factors within the design equation” (Pallasmaa 1998, 22). In other words, rationalism which is inclusive of human subjectivity. In Aalto’s work, this translated to the “subtle manipulation of materials, respect for their natural and historical associations, utilization of a formal vocabulary that favored free form over regularity, and his profound and acute understanding of the individual site and circumstance” appealing for its “sensory, visceral, and ultimately humane qualities” (Reed 1998, 113). A humane architecture need not be overly specific to a user or client but must consider the universal qualities that sustain human occupation. This idea is no more challenging to realize than any other seemingly quantifiable aspect of architecture, which inherently has to negotiate many conflicting and competing goals. Just like the chapter, Essential, examined many complex and conflicting considerations of material performance in long-lasting architecture (what materials want), this chapter must examine the human condition as both constant and ever-changing (what people want). If we are to develop general principles and strategies to design an architecture that persists in the long term, a sense of humanity is as important as its material essence.

The Humanity of Building A building persists not only because of its material durability or robustness but because people see themselves reflected in, and welcomed by, its material and spatial dimensions. They see it as worthy of their efforts to care for, maintain, and eventually save and reclaim at the end of its current life. The most profound question asked during the structured interviews for this research was: what makes buildings worth keeping? In conversation with Mac Ball, principal of Waggonner & Ball in new Orleans, he described a moment while visiting Aalto’s town hall in Säynätsalo, looking up the terrace into that courtyard, when he realized what makes architecture worth practicing and worth inhabiting: “That was the day I decided I wanted to be an architect. It was so

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beautiful. Brick buildings, these interesting windows, this passage into a place of wonder. To me every building should be a journey like that” (Ball 2018). Responses to that question ranged from the philosophical to the pragmatic. But even material or pragmatic considerations are connected to a genuinely ethical preoccupation about sustainability and the urgent issues of the times affecting humanity. While some qualities can be measured quantitatively—such as cost or economic value— most responses focused on the qualitative. The idea that deeply human emotions and perceptions drive why buildings persist: identity, mission, character, stability, memory, history; cemented the notion that a persistent building is a reflection of how humans think about themselves: simultaneously rooted and always moving forward—what Mac Ball’s colleague, Donald Del Cid, called: “a free spirit” (Del Cid 2018). The words used to describe the characteristics of buildings that are worth keeping usually define what they do for people: comfortable, welcoming, functional—concepts that may seem highly subjective. When examining each of these ideas through interviews and case studies, it became clear that these humane qualities can be translated into very measurable forms of performance in architecture. Health and wellbeing, the balance of public and private space, and the scale relative to the human body are often connected to the phenomenological drivers of comfort: daylight, temperature, and air quality. During the interview with the Behnisch Architekten team in Boston, Martin Werminghausen proposed that these elements of comfort define the one key to human nature: “if these things are out of balance… [the building] might have all the systems, but a building that works without systems is a better building…” (Werminghausen 2019). Acknowledging the uncertainty involved in designing for an unknown future, Werminghausen argued architects must focus on “What is not uncertain…the human being. If there is a human being there are certain things we rely on. This won’t change. This has to do with the social sustainability that must be found.” Melding passive comfort and social space is a strong and visible driver in the work of Behnisch Architekten: buildings that maximize passive strategies by integrating generous common spaces that connect people to each other, to nature and context (For examples of this work see Chapters 4 Situated, which examines The Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research at University of Toronto, and Chapter 10 Evolving, which examines the Robert L. Bogomolny Library in Baltimore). A person that inhabits a building and wants to invest their time and effort in it for longer terms needs to find it feasible and worthwhile to make space their own. Design experiments focused on how people best use and appropriate buildings over time point to the meaning derived from making decisions collectively and addressing urgent social issues, such as climate change and the healthcare crisis (Vervloesem et al. 2016, 13–15). How people appropriate space, however, can also be defined in more precise architectural terms. Seen through the lens of appropriation and use gives “a strong sensitivity to the potential of space to contribute to the construction of alternative social spaces” (Vervloesem et al. 2016, 15). Or what Luc Deleu refers to as “a flexible and beautiful structure that makes room for change, because all and everyone finds purpose in it” (Vervloesem et al. 2016, 15). This tectonic

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approach suggests that humane architecture involves the creation of spatial patterns and aesthetic qualities that not only offers but inspires opportunities for reappropriation. When discussing with the authors what long-lasting buildings offer, Billie Tsien from Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners in New York, talked about the sense of humanity in buildings that are constantly welcoming and yet filled with possibilities for change (Tsien 2018). That negotiation of stability and open-endedness is often a characteristic of buildings that are adaptively reused after a long life. People think buildings are worthy of preservation and reinvention because they find familiarity and stability in the connections to their personal histories, generations of families, the growth of a community, a sense of a shared place, and even an industry that provided them livelihood and pride in what they made. In the transformation of those spaces, communities can also find renewed hope, building new traditions that become reflected in its architecture. The transformation of Mass MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts (Chapter 5 Timely) exemplifies how an industrial town overcame the loss of the factory’s closure through the adaptive use of the building, connecting new forms of art-making to the pride in its manufacturing past. The contemporary language of The Corning Museum of Glass by Thomas Phifer and Partners in Corning, New York, was propelled by this community connection to the past (see Chapter 9 Memorable). When speaking with the architects in their New York office, Stephen Dayton noted the community’s sentimental attachment to the iconic form of the roof, which was designed to ventilate heat generated by glass production (Dayton 2018). The project architect Katie Bennet shared the impression left on her when visiting the town for meetings and being woken up by a whistle: “even though there is no operating factory, the chimney remains and the factory whistle still blows in the morning and evening” (Bennet 2018). If architects are to design buildings today that develop this deep sense of connection and identity with many generations long after that use ends, they must think about the conditions in which human labor occurs, the qualities of space that improve not only productivity for industry, but the human comfort and satisfaction with the act of working within its walls.

Evolving Knowledge Buildings are an essential part of how human beings build an understanding of the world and themselves. The term human scale is used often to describe a humane quality of good architecture that people can relate to. This intuitive idea is rooted in science. Cognitive neuroscience has evidence that human beings develop frames of reference to inform spatial perception and memories of place based on the ability to measure them relative to their bodies, as well as to other objects they become familiar with relative to their bodies (Galati et al. 2010, 109–18). The human body dimension can be legible in the material qualities of buildings, just as the dimension of time can be seen in the character of the surfaces that have been worn by their users. While speaking with the authors about their work in the adaptive reuse project at Mass MoCA, Jason Forney from Bruner/Cott Architects, explained how the original brick of the industrial building negotiated the monumental space of the

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museum space with a human scale: “you wouldn’t normally line a space that big with a material that small” (Forney 2017). The dimensions of brick are made for assembly by human hands, such that even when the spaces change in proportions, they can retain a sense of humanity. In conversation with Billie Tsien about what makes long-lasting buildings valued, she also described the human aspect of construction: “Things like brick or stone, even concrete…often reveal their makers. We are all involved in a very digital world. But there’s another kind of digit that becomes ever more valued, the skill of a human being through their hands (Tsien 2018).” When buildings leave traces of their making by human hands, future generations not only appreciate the human effort and time invested in its materials but also can more easily and willingly learn how to repair and modify its assemblies. In that way, they are also better able to advance those traditions and grow with the context of labor and culture. Buildings can reveal how they are made, but also how they can be maintained and remade. Construction is a form of human knowledge. It registers the abilities and scale of human bodies, and their ingenuity in designing tools as extensions of the body. Advances in the knowledge of construction seek efficiencies for human economies, but will not translate to humane architecture unless it also advances higher human values: sustained beauty, comfort, health, and wellbeing in the face of urgent societal challenges like climate change or housing affordability. It is not just what can be done through construction, but why it is done, that makes buildings meaningful enough to inspire sustained human occupation. Construction is very specific to social context and traditions. Building practices and materials that are specific to the skills and cultural traditions of people are more likely to evoke familiarity and to inspire the creativity and effort needed to reinvent them when they become functionally obsolete. During an interview at HOK in Washington, DC, N. Scott Jones, who amassed a portfolio of 30 years of adaptive reuse projects primarily at the firm Burt Hill, reflected on some of the 100year old buildings he worked on and the skills of the construction trade at the time that built such robust and long-lasting buildings with minimal direction from architects. Studying the archives of Georgetown University while researching a renovation project, he found that the building had been built with simple plans, building sections and elevations, and only one detailed ¾”:1’0” (1:16) scale wall section in a 6-foot (1.8 meters) long drawing that went uninterrupted from foundation to roof, showing all possible conditions in a single drawing (Jones 2019). It is sobering to realize that the significant increase in the number of drawings produced today, the higher capacity for complex coordination, and the advances in construction systems, efficiency, and methods are not resulting in longer-lasting buildings. Each act of construction, reappropriation, and addition is an opportunity to build on and advance the traditions of building as part of social history. The exchange between architects, engineers, construction trades, and building managers is not limited to a project, it happens across generations. Many architects interviewed for this research expressed a similar and deeply human sentiment experienced when doing the archaeology of an old building: the magic and wonder of exposing many layers of

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renovation, the possibilities that become apparent when uncovering a hidden structure, and the appreciation for qualities that they want to carry into new projects.

Institutional Knowledge There is an inherent tension between keeping traditions and advancing knowledge. Serial builder institutions—the long-term owners, builders, and managers of collections of long-term buildings, constantly negotiate these two goals. Governments, universities, religious institutions, museums, conservation trusts, and others, can have multiple buildings of different eras of construction, some limited geographically and others dispersed over many regions and cultures. They build with the idea of being there forever, some with more or fewer expectations of changes in use. The sense that the institution will always exist means the buildings should speak to that. These institutions accumulate significant knowledge about how buildings and sites change over time. They are not only custodians of buildings but also of the institutional knowledge that comes with building. They create entire agencies, like the General Services Administration of the Federal Government, or full departments for Facilities or Offices of Design and Construction at Universities, where they invest significant human and economic capital to the process of acquisition, planning, design, building, managing, maintaining, repairing, and renovating. They develop traditions over decades if not centuries, in the forms of protocols and standards that reflect preferences and lessons about material durability and detail performance. They constantly codify, review, and refine human skills and practices upon reflecting on what went right and what did not in each project. They engage architects with the expectation that they will learn and follow these traditions, but they also identify opportunities for innovation, pushing the architecture profession to negotiate traditions with the desire to advance institutional knowledge. In this research, this tension and dynamic became most evident in examining the process of design and building for the institution of the university. The university’s central mission has evolved from keepers of tradition and guardians of knowledge into the advancement and generation of new knowledge, and that transformation is reflected in the way they build. Universities are not inherently preservationists, but as Sharon Haar points out, they are increasingly engaging as large realestate developers, playing a role in the preservation of a large stock of historic buildings not initially designed for educational uses, saving some “from the wrecking ball… by giving the underutilized building a new purpose” (Haar 2011, 154). Universities often hold massive collections of historic or culturally significant buildings from many eras—the stewards of the “heritage of architectural history”—as described by Yanel de Angel, FAIA—principal of Higher Education at the architecture firm Perkins & Will—when explaining their work with this client type (De Angel 2018). When architects work with these institutions in new buildings or renovations, they often become a part of the process of uncovering and writing that history. Philip Chen, principal and president of Ann Beha Architects in Boston—a firm with deep expertise in higher education projects—explained to the authors that civic institutions are

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often very interested in the intellectual content generated in the process of designing a renovation or restoration: Understanding the construction technology of the time… the kind of cultural heritage or the cultural history, the history of use, of the context surrounding these buildings. We often come up with aspects of the building that our clients hadn’t known. That usually becomes a launching point for our projects… they are imbued with content. (Chen 2017) The campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts is an interesting case study for many reasons: it’s standing as one of the most prestigious research universities in the world; its large collection of buildings from many eras designed by some of the most recognized architects in the world in the twentieth century, Bosworth, Saarinen, Aalto, Gehry, Pei, Maki, Holl, and others; its ongoing climate action plans to improve sustainability and resilience in a campus built on fill land adjacent to a river in a vulnerable coastal city. MIT owns and manages a collection of 190 buildings with over 13 million square feet (1.2 million square meters) acquired or built since it moved from Boston to Cambridge in 1916 to begin expanding into the current 168 acres (68 ha) campus (“MIT Facilities – Maps & Floor Plans” n.d.). Similar to other major research universities, MIT prides itself in building significant architecture but unlike older campuses, it is less tied to a historic core. This makes their campus both a living museum and a laboratory of recent architectural history; their facilities group an archive of the history of construction in the northeastern United States since industrialization. Some of their facilities managers are very active in professional organizations, attending conferences to share technical knowledge acquired through managing and renovating their buildings. They shared with the authors many lessons learned about eras of construction through the process of failure and repair. This kind of knowledge is accumulated in individuals and translated into standards and practices that guide the work of architects. Universities are custodians of buildings for generations—documented, maintained, repaired, and managed by an in-house staff of architects, engineers, field managers, and skilled trades. Centralized campuses like MIT manage extensive networks of infrastructure, including utilities providing cooling, heating, and even electricity through cogeneration plants. Through this process, these professionals and tradesmen accumulate deep institutional knowledge of processes and systems of construction, codified in campus standards. These standards are detailed documents expressing preferences for processes, products, assemblies, and performance criteria: an expression of values, ambitions, and lessons learned. The MIT Facilities Department describes their goal as defining a process “to communicate its needs to designers… for Design Review and a set of Construction Guidelines” (MIT Department of Facilities 2001, 6). The design handbook, as the guidelines are now known “promotes an ongoing dialogue between design consultants and the experienced Engineering, Construction, Maintenance, and Operating Groups within the Department of Facilities” –referred to as MIT Stakeholders (6). The handbook builds and expands on codes and industry standards, organizing the information according to the 16 divisions

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of the Construction Specifications Institute’s (CSI) Master Format, the most widely used in the United States and Canada. While this document may seem prescriptive, its organization into divisions of construction leaves the aesthetic, organizational, and urbanistic goals of each project open to the agenda of the building committee of users and clients, which working with the architect defines the role of a particular building on the campus and in the field of knowledge that it is intended to advance and teach. The contested negotiation between the ambitions of designers or donors for unique building experiments and the concerns of facilities departments for longevity are the result of externalizing maintenance, repair, and adaptability in the architectural discipline. There is much to be gleaned about these concerns from the accumulated institutional knowledge embedded in campus standards. Designing for persistence must seek to internalize the kind of knowledge that is embedded in these technical documents into the broader practice of architecture. As historical documents, they reveal how this form of institutional knowledge fares against the motivations of advancing academic knowledge. The role of the university in advancing this form of new knowledge is often overlooked, but it continues to live and evolve in these institutions, seeking ways to transform design practice.

Advancing Knowledge The MIT campus is also of interest as a subject of scholarship. Some of its buildings have been the subject of analysis, in particular by Stewart Brand in his publication about the first MIT Media Lab (1987), and later in How Buildings Learn (1994). Since that original publication, a new Media Lab was built next to the original, inviting another look at the evolution of the institution and its buildings. The history of the old and new Media Labs speaks to the rapidly evolving models of interdisciplinary collaboration at research universities. The twentieth century was the beginning of a critical age for the University—a “confrontation between accumulated heritage and the modern imperatives of society” (Kerr 1987). This confrontation is evident in campus architecture. As one of the most enduring institutions in the world, Universities were often centered on a core of masonry architecture where a very personal pursuit of knowledge would take place—a metaphorical Ivory tower where one could retreat from other concerns. new buildings for research universities embody ambitions to be leaders of a global community advancing knowledge through collaboration and peer review. Buildings in this context become vessels for ideation, collaboration, experimentation, and incubation of ideas. While advancing knowledge through research and discovery has come to overshadow the transmission of knowledge as the central mission of today’s American research university (Cole 2016), the modern research-university building is conceived for both students and research-active educators. Like knowledge itself, the University campus both endures and constantly grows to support emerging areas of research and increasing demands of students, making planning and building essential activities. University buildings embody both the academic and research mission and the value of longevity and pragmatism

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that emerges from long-term maintenance. While the built form of the American University campus sought to create an open environment in sharp contrast with the medieval monastic foundations of European and especially English universities, the rising fears that the university’s rapid expansion in the early part of the twentieth century threatened traditional collegiate values prompted a return to Oxbridge models of planning (Coulson, Roberts, and Taylor 2015). Still, the built environment of the University campus today aspires to, at least in theory, represent values of free inquiry and communication of ideas, happening in spaces where “knowledge could grow freely, relatively undisturbed from external and internal interference, and where there were mechanisms for combining research and teaching experience” (Cole 2016). The relationship between Universities and the outside world changed during World War II, with new attention on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics happening in research laboratories fueled by government funding. President Roosevelt’s fear that scientists who had worked on war efforts would retreat to universities after the war produced “the greatest stimulus for exceptional university-based research in our nation’s history” (Cole 2016, 79). Formerly dependent primarily on tuition, the funding model for Universities changed to competitive, peer-reviewed government awards to support facilities and personnel conducting research that advanced national priorities. This expansion was accompanied by increasing specialization of disciplines and the creation of departments (Cole 2016, 187), leading to what Clark Kerr dubbed the “multiversity” (Kerr 2001, 5). At the same time, exploding enrollment as veterans supported by the GI Bill created unprecedented growth in the student population, prompting the addition of campus planners to the university staff (SCUP 2015). The Society for College and University Planning (SCUP) was formed in 1966 to share knowledge in this area of planning. As campus-owning clients, Universities plan constantly: often renovating, reconfiguring, or expanding existing buildings, while also designing new construction that will be owned and maintained for decades or centuries. Research universities also build to recruit: hoping to attract, retain, and support the most talented faculty in the most comfortable, productive, and cutting-edge spaces in which to pursue their ideas. In all, universities remain significant clients of architecture, ranking as the sixth-largest sector measuring revenue for the United States architecture industry in 2016, following office, healthcare, retail, hotel, and local governments (Building Design + Construction 2016). The university has long cultivated innovation and advancement of architectural ideas; since Christopher Wren’s axial collegiate architecture in Oxford and Cambridge, star architects have sought to build prestige for higher education (Coulson, Roberts, and Taylor 2015). The contemporary focus on research with high funding potential, cultivation of donors, and growing endowments has only increased the perceived value of iconic buildings by famous architects for University clients. The Media Lab at MIT—first housed at the purpose-built Wiesner Building designed by I.M. Pei and completed in 1986—illustrates this ecosystem dynamic of constant evolution and adaptation. A contemporary MIT newspaper article described the building as “bringing together diverse people with very

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different backgrounds…” seemingly ensuring that “a unique process that may evolve from the exploration, advancement, and understanding of these people” (Druin, Richmond, and Waldes 1985). One of its first occupants was Steward Brand, who thought the very worst buildings are the famous new buildings, would-be famous buildings, and their imitations (Brand 1994, 52). Brand described the Media Lab as “not unusually bad,” a badness that he believed had become normal in buildings overdesigned by architects (53). Questioning how architects came to be such an obstacle to adaptivity in buildings, Brand criticized the structural system and details of Pei’s Media Lab for inhibiting change, and especially the atrium for cutting people off from each other, consuming already scarce space, and failing to provide room for casual meetings. Compared to Building 20 just across the street, where he previously worked, Brand claimed that the original Media Lab building did not work well, could not adapt to new demands of research and teaching, and could not foster the relationships and collaborations to which the University aspired: “Groups in the building that want to collaborate are kept isolated by the design, there’s scant adaptability in the structure, and working floor space is in chronic short supply” (Brand 1987, 82). Figure 6.2 Atrium of the original building, creates limited visibility and connectivity of research areas. I.M.Pei, MIT Media Lab (Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA), 1986. Photograph by Michelle Laboy.

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Perhaps proving Brand’s point, just over a decade after its completion the Media Lab began planning a new building. Rapid technological change and dependence on vanishing corporate funding threw the Lab into a crisis of obsolescence soon after its start, and the new building was aggressively pursued as a necessary infusion to a program “teetering on the brink of breakup, or even worse, irrelevance” (Koerner 2003). The new Media Lab by the Tokyo-based Maki and Associates was delayed due to a lack of funds for nearly another decade when a private donor funded the new building (Santos 2010). Inspired by the one space in the Pei building that worked well for collaboration, a twostory lab called The Cube, the Maki Media Lab (2009) features more open and vertically interconnected spaces, and upon opening was celebrated as enhancing MIT’s profile (Santos 2010). The new Media Lab has many tall spaces, but avoided the singular atrium starting at the ground, instead favoring a more complex sectional relationship between the entry space and a more modestly scaled but tall social room overlooking many tall and transparent labs. The contrast between the buildings simply demonstrates that loosely fit spaces with social connectivity and good quality daylight make better space, for any use. However, the adjacency between the buildings brings to focus a larger issue. Although the new building connects to the old, only a handful of laboratories on the third and fourth floors connect through a corridor between the buildings. Most of the Pei building remains as administrative offices; a center for Art, Culture, and Technology, and a Visual Arts Center. Despite the promise of the Media Lab to combine the arts and sciences, the Pei building remained mostly separated from the new life of the Maki Media Lab. The visual arts gallery is accessed from the old atrium, connecting to the public realm of the campus but having little to no presence in the new lab. In this sense, the Maki building learned from the mistakes of the previous to create better-scaled spaces for collaboration, but missed the opportunity to reinvent the Pei building, and potentially extend its life, by allowing the connections to the new building to change the way the old one was perceived. As a result, Figure 6.3 View of laboratories in the new building, overlooking one of the vertically interconnected spaces. Maki and Associates, MIT Media Lab (Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA), 2009. Photograph by Michelle Laboy.

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Figure 6.4 Building section through the upper atrium. Maki and Associates, MIT Media Lab (Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA), 2009. Drawing recreated by authors.

the process of technological invention and accelerated obsolescence became embodied in the relationship between these two buildings. Ironically, Brand’s book, written as a first-hand account, predicted the shift of the old lab to the visual arts long before the new Media Lab was built. “Best appreciated as habitable sculpture… One senses in the building the residue of campus politics and an architect perhaps more interested in the eye than the whole collaborating human” (Brand 1987, 82). Nonetheless, Jonathan Cole held the idea of the Media Lab, not necessarily the buildings, as an innovative model to foster interdisciplinary collaborations, in contrast to the disciplinary specialization resulting in campus planning and building insufficiently guided by the pace and process by which knowledge is growing (Cole 2016, 191).

Building Experiments While the two experiments of the Media Lab demonstrate that advancing human collaboration and knowledge generation through the building is potentially fraught, one thing that buildings can do is generate new knowledge about buildings. With the advance of the climate crisis and the transition from mitigation to adaptation, or from sustainability to resilience, architecture itself is more than ever the object of research and innovation. The new impetus for institutions to design high-performing buildings is making way for buildings as ongoing experiments—prepared to be retooled and advancing building science in preparation for an uncertain future. For some universities, the

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building experiment is not only a demonstration of new knowledge but an instrument for advancing knowledge on and about buildings. These buildings provide an accelerated model of how static systems remain open-ended enough to allow dynamic technologies and systems to be tested and replaced. Examples of this new model include the RMIT Design Hub (2012) in Melbourne, Australia, by Sean Godsell Architects (see Chapter 1), which is wrapped in a shading structure that can be outfitted with photovoltaic cells as the technology advances. The Syracuse Center of Excellence at Syracuse University (2011) in Syracuse, New York, by Toshiko Mori, was designed as a testbed for environmental and energy technologies, including its green roof and changeable facade. The SUnY College of Environmental Science & Forestry (2013) by Architerra, also in Syracuse, new York; integrates campus heat and power co-generation, regional forestry and environmental systems within a building housing the academic program that can advance knowledge on biomass-fuels. These building experiments are templates for an architecture of persistence: high-capacity long-lasting structural systems and proportions, that embody the universally constant physiological and psychological needs of people, and shorter-lived but changeable living or active systems that mediate interior space and the changing natural environment. They represent the evolving human needs and aspirations for the positive role buildings can play in the environment. They are driven by the highest human values: sustaining life, advancing knowledge, and leaving an inheritance. They leave evidence for future generations about human life at that moment, the current climate, and the architecture’s response to the environment. An early example of this model of building experiment is the Institute for Physics at Humboldt University, also known as the Lise Meitner Haus,

Figure 6.5 Courtyard with a green wall on the left with glazed facades ahead and to the right with a pattern of three horizontal bands at each floor: the center is glazing and two narrow opaque bands at the top and bottom, with outward-swinging horizontal hopper metal vents. Georg Augustin Ute Frank, Institute of Physics (Humboldt University Berlin, Adlershof Campus, Germany) 2003. Photograph by © Simon Menges.

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in the Adlershof area of Berlin, Germany, completed in 2003 by Georg Augustin und Ute Frank. This project negotiates the stability of what is universal about human nature with adaptability to a rapidly changing context: the evolving nature of research, its expanding urban context, and the uncertainty of climate change. The building not only hosts laboratories for the generation of new knowledge but it also is in itself a laboratory of building physics. It is a contemporary experiment on what Alvar Aalto characterized as humanized architecture. Aalto’s reversed imagery of outdoors and indoors in the design of courtyards and entry halls was part of the strategy of reconciling opposites, the creation of synthetic landscapes, and the integration of architecture with its setting (Pallasmaa 1998, 22). The Lise Meitner Haus goes further by integrating the high-performance energy and water systems into the courtyard landscapes, balancing passive and active, public and private, stability and change. It transforms the traditional centralized courtyard typology into a decentralized network that democratizes daylight, views of nature, and program space in a large footprint to maximize performance benefits, even in more challenging future climates. The building intimately connects users to living systems that provide local stormwater management integrated into passive air conditioning in order to sustain human use in the long term. The organization of the plan around a series of courtyards creates “network-like interlinked pathways and spatial relationships, which correspond to the current and prospectively changing use of the structure” (augustinundfrank / winkler Architekten n.d.). The multiple courtyards turn a very deep footprint into thin layers of work space with abundant daylight. The circulation strategy often shifts from single-loaded to double-loaded corridors, alternating between wide bays and shallow bays, and thinning and thickening spaces without exceeding the daylight parameters. This spatial organization provides an easy connection between laboratories and faculty offices. The longer circulation spine at the center and the two perimeter corridors in the long building dimension are frequently interrupted by views into staggered courtyards, intersected by shorter connecting corridors in the perpendicular direction that provide distant views at corners of courtyards. Multiple intersections marked by exterior views break the regularity of the plan, shorten distances, provide plentiful daylight, and serve as an orientation device for wayfinding. This plan makes possible multiple configurations for research clusters: organized around courtyards, along or across central corridors, or at the corners of the perimeter. The structure of the Lise Maitner Haus builds specificity for certain labs, creating a haus-in-haus construction where the structure of areas sensitive to vibration are isolated from others with separate foundations. These areas have a higher structural capacity (depth to span ratios) to control vibrations, making them more resilient to future changes into less sensitive uses. Most of these are on the ground floor, a logical location for the higher structural capacity that aligns with the typical specialization of the ground floor. The ground floor already houses all the large public areas, including the lecture hall, library, and administration around a foyer or lounge with a large figural stair and double

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Figure 6.6 Floor plan. Georg Augustin Ute Frank, Institute of Physics (Humboldt University Berlin, Adlershof Campus, Germany) 2003. Drawing recreated by authors.

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Figure 6.7 Section showing three shallow bars of interior space surrounding two courtyards, and facades inside the courtyards beyond. Georg Augustin Ute Frank, Institute of Physics (Humboldt University Berlin, Adlershof Campus, Germany) 2003. Drawing recreated by authors.

Figure 6.8 (a) View of office façade from the interior, with ventilation elements and structural service shafts. Georg Augustin Ute Frank, Institute of Physics (Humboldt University Berlin, Adlershof Campus, Germany) 2003. Photograph by © Simon Menges. (b) View of two courtyards from corridors, with structural service shafts at ground floor. Georg Augustin Ute Frank, Institute of Physics (Humboldt University Berlin, Adlershof Campus, Germany) 2003. Photograph by © Simon Menges.

height spaces. This strategy places the longer span spaces with lower daylight requirements below, making the courtyard footprint smaller at the ground but stepping back above with green roofs to maximize open vegetated space and daylight for upper floors. The building uses structure to create long-lasting spatial patterns that are specifically responsive to the site and integrated with human comfort. In response to orientation, the structure changes from columns to load-bearing walls, combining stiffening cores with a reinforced concrete flat slab into the zoning strategy. Exposed ceilings and floors with a topping of industrial screed provide an optimized thermal mass for the natural ventilation system. Structural shafts provide electrical distribution near both corridors and the facade (Figure 6.8 a-b). The columns seen in the exterior hold bridges of circulation between clusters of offices and labs that overlook courtyards. These slender columns use an innovative precast concrete technology: a spun concrete using a high strength mix with low water content spun at high speed in a rotating

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Figure 6.9 Upper floor bridge overlooking courtyard with a stormwater pond. Georg Augustin Ute Frank, Institute of Physics (Humboldt University Berlin, Adlershof Campus, Germany) 2003. Photograph by © Simon Menges.

formwork to compress and compact the concrete, eliminate voids, and produce a more durable concrete surface with a slimmer cross section than other comparable concrete columns. Three distinctly different facade systems lining the courtyards and the perimeter of the building respond to orientation, prioritizing seasonally responsive passive energy through structural means integrated with living systems. The street facade (northwest-facing) has concrete walls with radiant heating elements behind channel glass for thermal mass. This system reduces the transport of dust particles compared to a forced-air system. The field-facing exterior facade (southeast) and many of the courtyard facades have a green wall of Wisteria growing from the ground, with fiber cement troughs of water supported by an exterior steel and bamboo structure at various elevations. Elsewhere, the thermal envelope is zoned horizontally, with fixed glazing in the middle—and opaque vents above and below for effective room ventilation and night-time cooling. Blackout and glare protection systems are limited to the middle zone to prevent interruption of the ventilation when shades are closed for glare control. Green roofs and courtyards provide a multi-tiered system of vegetated vertical and horizontal building surfaces, ponds, and gardens to retain and biofilter all the stormwater that falls on the site, using it for facade

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irrigation before letting it infiltrate on the ground. The facade structure is set at a distance from the thermal envelope to provide a maintenance walkway, with a rope-guided safety system. An adiabatic and evaporative air-cooling system leverages the agricultural system of irrigation to provide natural air conditioning. The deciduous plants provide heat protection in summer and passive use of solar energy in the winter (Berlin Bauen n.d.). The shading and cooling concept responds to the high heating loads in the labs and the regulatory requirement to use all rainwater within the site. The building is an ongoing experiment on building physics, resilience, and sustainability. Professors from the physics department instrumented the building to measure the performance of these natural conditioning systems: measuring among other factors the temperature differences, evaporation, and the adaptation, growth, and water use of different planting species. The knowledge generated in and about this building informs future building practices. It remains a model on how to integrate buildings into resilient energy and water systems for more productive urban landscapes. This form of building expands the role of architecture in long-lasting institutions dedicated not only to the advancement of knowledge but also to the improvement of the human condition in a time of great uncertainty. In a personal communication with the author, Georg Augustin reflecting on the life of the building for the last 17 years: “Seen from today, it is really an architecture for future use” (Augustin 2020).

Figure 6.10 (a) Interior radiant concrete facade behind channel glass. Georg Augustin Ute Frank, Institute of Physics (Humboldt University Berlin, Adlershof Campus, Germany) 2003. Photograph by © Simon Menges. (b) Service zone for green wall facade. Georg Augustin Ute Frank, Institute of Physics (Humboldt University Berlin, Adlershof Campus, Germany) 2003. Photograph by © Simon Menges.

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Designing Humane Buildings A humane architecture does more than provide shelter and comfort, it continues to welcome and sustain evolving human uses over time. It leaves more than traces of evidence about the time of its construction, pursuing a higher purpose and advancing human knowledge in the future. While the discourse on adaptability is overly focused on what needs to change, the salient lesson from the research presented in this chapter is that creating the potential for inhabiting differently means negotiating the universally humane qualities found in all good architecture of the past with an intentional openendedness that enables its reappropriation and transformation in the future. Jennifer Yoos—Dean at the University of Minnesota and principal of VJAA in Minneapolis, referred to this notion as the continuum that drives long-lasting architecture (Yoos 2018). This ethos instills a sense of humanity into architecture by negotiating tradition and innovation.

References Aalto, Alvar. 1998. “The Humanizing of Architecture.” In Alvar Aalto in His Own Words, edited by Göran Schildt: 102–7. New York: Rizzoli. Augustin, Georg. 2020. Principal. augustinundfrank / winkler Architekten. Interview by Michelle Laboy. augustinundfrank / winkler Architekten. n.d. “Institut Für Physik.” Augustinundfrank / Winkler Architekten. Accessed August 29, 2020. https://www.aufw.net/. Ball, Mac. 2018. Principal Architect, Waggonner & Ball Architecture / Environment Interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy. By phone. Bennet, Katie. 2018. Director, Thomas Phifer and Partners Interview by Michelle Laboy and David Fannon. New York. Berlin Bauen. n.d. “Institute of Physics Berlin-Adlershof: Urban Ecological Model Projects.” Berlin Senate for Urban Development. Accessed November 26, 2018. http://www.gebaeudekuehlung.de/faltblatt_institut_physik_engl.pdf. Brand, Stewart. 1987. The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT. New York: Viking. ———. 1994. How Buildings Learn: What Happens after They’re Built. 1st Edition. New York: Viking Adult. Building Design + Construction. 2016. “2016 Giants 300 Report: Ranking the Nation’s Largest Architecture, Engineering, and Construction Firms.” https://www.bdcnetwork.com/2016-giants-300-report-ranking-nationslargest-architecture-engineering-and-construction-firms. Chen, Philip. 2017. President, Ann Beha Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. Boston, MA. Cole, Jonathan R. 2016. Toward a More Perfect University. 1st Edition. New York: Public Affairs,. Coulson, Jonathan, Paul Roberts, and Isabelle Taylor. 2015. University Planning and Architecture: The Search for Perfection. 2nd Edition. London: Routledge. Dayton, Stephen. 2018. Partner, Thomas Phifer and Partners Interview by Michelle Laboy and David Fannon. New York. De Angel, Yanel. 2018. Principal, Perkins & Will Interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy. Boston, MA. Del Cid, Donald. 2018. Architect, Waggonner & Ball Architecture / Environment Interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy. By phone.

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Druin, Allison, Jonathan Richmond, and David Waldes. 1985. “Weisner Building Opens in Celebratory Mood.” The Tech, October 4, 1985, Volume 105, Number 39 edition. Forney, Jason. 2017. Principal, Bruner/Cott Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. Cambridge, MA. Galati, Gaspare, Gina Pelle, Alain Berthoz, and Giorgia Committeri. 2010. “Multiple Reference Frames Used by the Human Brain for Spatial Perception and Memory.” Experimental Brain Research 206 (2): 109–20. https://doi. org/10.1007/s00221-010-2168-8. Haar, Sharon. 2011. The City as Campus : Urbanism and Higher Education in Chicago. Urbanism and Higher Education in Chicago. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Jones, Scott. 2019. Senior Project Manager, HOK Interview by Michelle Laboy. Washington, DC. Kerr, Clark. 1987. “A Critical Age in the University World: Accumulated Heritage versus Modern Imperatives.” European Journal of Education 22 (2): 183–93. https://doi.org/10.2307/1503216. ———, ed. 2001. “The Idea of a Multiversity.” In The Uses of the University: 1–34. Harvard University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wpqkr.5. Koerner, Brendan I. 2003. “The Lab That Fell to Earth.” Wired, May 1, 2003. https://www.wired.com/2003/05/mitlab/. MIT Department of Facilities. 2001. “MIT Building Systems Design Handbook Version 1.2.” MIT. “MIT Facilities – Maps & Floor Plans.” n.d. Accessed August 27, 2020. https:// web.mit.edu/facilities/maps/build-info.html. Pallasmaa, Juhani. 1998. “Alvar Aalto: Toward a Synthetic Functionalism.” In Alvar Aalto: Between Humanism and Materialism, edited by Peter Reed: 20–45. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/ mdp.39015045638825. Reed, Peter. 1998. “Alvar Aalto and the New Humanism of the Postwar Era.” In Alvar Aalto: Between Humanism and Materialism, edited by Peter Reed: 95–115. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/ mdp.39015045638825. Santos, Adèle Naudé. 2010. “A Study in Transparency.” MIT Technology Review, April 20, 2010. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/418511/a-study-intransparency/. SCUP. 2015. “SCUP at 50.” Society for College and University Planning. https:// scup-framework-production.s3.amazonaws.com/cms/asset_version/ file/12/07/120702.pdf. Tsien, Billie. 2018. Founding Partner, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Vervloesem, Els, Michiel Dehaene, Marleen Goethals, and Hüsnü Yegenoglu. 2016. “Social Poetics: The Architecture of Use and Appropriation.” OASE 96 (June): 10–19. Werminghausen, Martin. 2019. Architect, Behnisch Architekten Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. Boston, MA. Wilson, Colin St. John. 1995. “‘What Is It like 30 Years Later?’ An Assessment of Alvar Aalto’s Work.” RSA Journal, Bossom Lectures on the Making of Great Architecture 143 (5463): 52–62. ———. 1998. “Review of Alvar Aalto: Between Humanism and Materialism.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 57 (4): 463–65. https://doi. org/10.2307/991464. Yoos, Jennifer. 2018. Principal and COO, VJAA Interview by David Fannon. Minneapolis, MN.

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Great buildings, like great people, are often, layered, complex, multivalent, and somewhat ambiguous. They are worth the investment of our time and attention to what they’re about, how they’re made, what they might mean, and what has happened to them. — Garth Rockcastle, MSR Design

Articulated Systems All buildings are complex. Their conception requires great imagination, speculation, anticipation, and coordination between owners, financiers, regulatory agencies, architects, and their consultants. The sourcing, refining, and transporting of construction products and components are truly global in their economic and environmental impact (Moe 2017, 28–29). The construction of buildings requires massive logistical organization of materials and labor, and processes can be greatly complicated by particular site constraints, such as tight urban plots or ecologically sensitive contexts. Most modern buildings are comprised of an array of distinct responsive building systems, such as structure, enclosure, passive and active energy systems, and electrical, lighting, fire safety, and plumbing systems, and each of these system types are composed of an equally complex series of subsystems. The coordinated performance of these systems during the useful life of a building must be able to react to a plethora of variables: natural weathering; seasonal climatic variations; long-term and inexorable changes to the global climate; extreme natural forces such as high winds, snow loads, or seismic activity; changes of use; the vagaries of human wear and tear, personal preference and comfort, and well-being. Buildings must also be able to adapt to cultural transformations and volatile economic pressures to remain viable (Abramson 2016, 34–37). They require significant and constant maintenance from basic cleaning and repair to major renovations to keep them functioning properly and to take advantage of new developments in building technology, energy performance, and patterns of use (Sample 2016, 7–9). The end of a building’s life also represents these complexities in reverse, such as processes of dismantling a building, sorting materials for reuse or disposal, and transporting materials to new useful locations or responsible waste facilities (McDonough and Braungart 2002, 103–5). The full life cycle of

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buildings from inception to demolition represents huge investments of creativity, cultural capacity, energy, and capital. Simplicity enables longevity through reductive, high-performing, lowtech buildings that are easy to understand, maintain, renovate, and adapt for future uses. However, creating simplicity in material forms or spatial organization may not result from a simple process, on the contrary, simpler buildings often require greater complexity in the design process, as Randall Heeb of Opsis Architecture asserts: “Architecture practice is complicated so that buildings are not” (interview 2018). This statement points to important differences between needlessly complicated buildings and a necessarily complex process. Uncertainty makes designing architecture now for future adaptive reuse necessarily complex: physical systems must respond to uncertain criteria, and the design must account for multiple future scenarios that cannot be fully predicted. The necessary complexity of design is sometimes manifest in the material and spatial logics of the architecture. Even monolithic architecture designed for passive comfort demands complex tools to design and sophisticated sensing and control technologies to operate. Alternatively, regulating complex flows of energy between outside and inside most typically requires a thick zone of layered materials and spaces that respond to both the exterior environment and interior inhabitation, rather than just denying any reciprocity between the two. Moving from the notion of a boundary to a permeable zone requires significant depth—whether for material thickness or useable space—prompting careful consideration of performance relative to other social functions. Similarly, usually complicated building services can be simplified through a complex planning process to not only facilitate future access but also to inspire respect for the order and pattern of even mundane aspects of architectural systems. Complex architecture does not hide its systems behind thin layers of interior finishes, rather it organizes and reveals them in architectural space. Complex architecture requires keen foresight and constant rigor in the process of design, coordination, and oversight of construction because exposed systems constitute both its performance and visual expression. The inherent complexity of buildings takes on many different forms of tectonic resolution. Eduard Sekler defines tectonic as the “expressive qualities which have something to do with the play of forces and corresponding arrangement of parts in the building” (1965, 89). Some buildings subsume their innate complexity into a simplified form where building systems and their performative roles are highly integrated into a consolidated and monolithic architectural expression, such as 2226 (Figure 3.1) that is analyzed in the chapter, Simple. Other buildings reveal the diversity of architectural components in a visual display of an orchestrated complexity of articulated systems. In fact, we can view the expression of building systems as distinct from each other as a leitmotif that progresses through the evolution of modern architecture. Le Corbusier laid the theoretical foundation of this recurrent tectonic theme in his revolutionary Five Points of a New Architecture, first

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published in his journal L’Esprit Nouveau in 1926, where he advocates for the articulation of vertical pilotis, or columns, separated from the building facade (Le Corbusier and Jeanneret 1984, 129). This lets the facade become a free facade, absolved of any structural obligations. The non-structural nature of the facade is further reinforced by deploying another of his Five Points, the horizontal window that can span the full width of the facade, thus denying its ability to support gravitational loads, and through which one can see the columns passing by as distinct objects in space. The clearest demonstration of Le Corbusier’s five principles is the Villa Savoye, completed in 1931. It is a rectangular volume raised on an offset grid of freestanding columns with four nearly identical facades replete with horizontal windows. The resulting open plan is connected visually to a panorama of the surrounding countryside through the elongated fenestration. Its free plan objectifies the motion of automobiles sweeping among the columns on the ground level, and the vertical movement of its inhabitants in a corkscrew stairway and centralized ramp that ultimately leads to a roof terrace. The columns support the floors, and the floors support the facade: each element possesses its own presence in a dance of proximate tectonic relationships. Figure 7.1 Double height piano nobile, glass block enclosure, and evident planning module, Pierre Chareau, and collaborators Bernard Bijvoet, and metal fabricator Louis Dalbet, Maison de Verre (Paris, France) 1932. Photograph courtesy of CC0 Public Domain.

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Contemporaneous to the Villa Savoye is the Maison de Verre (House of Glass), designed and built by Pierre Chareau in collaboration with Bernard Bijvoet in central Paris between 1926 and 1932 (Figure 7.1). The Dalsace family bought a three-story masonry dwelling between an inner urban block courtyard through, which one enters off Rue St. Guillaume, and a garden (Bauchet, Futagawa, Vellay 1988, 7). The lateral walls abut other existing buildings, so just the front and back facades could receive light and air. Plus, the uppermost floor was a separate apartment occupied by an existing tenant who did not want to vacate, so her apartment had to remain intact. These particular site circumstances led Chareau to consider novel construction and material choices. First, he displaced the masonry structure of the lower two levels with an exposed steel frame that supported the upper masonry apartment. This created an open floor plan with minimal vertical structure that could maximize the penetration of natural light throughout the newly created volume. Within this volume, Chareau inserts three new levels: the ground floor, which is primarily dedicated to Dr. Dalscace’s medical practice; the mid-level, or piano nobile, which is dominated by a double height space for social gatherings; the upper level, which is devoted to the bedrooms. Second, he used an expanse of translucent glass block for the totality of both the courtyard and garden facades, again to avail the interior space with the maximum amount of natural light (Brace Taylor 1998, 28). The large glass block enclosures, which give the house its moniker, act more as membranes than walls between the outside and inside, letting diffused natural light permeate the interior while restraining the public gaze. At night when the interior is illuminated, the glass membranes glow and give vague shadows of the life unfolding within. Both the steel frame and the glass blocks of the Maison de Verre were, until then, only used for industrial applications. So, in the context of a residential building, these construction choices were as avant-garde as the cultural activities the Dalsaces would host in their double height piano nobile behind the skin of glass. And like the Villa Savoye, these essential structural and enclosure systems are held apart. In the Maison de Verre, however, Chareau separately articulates all building systems and domestic equipment as a pervasive form of architectural expression. Interior partitions, for example, are screens of translucent glass or perforated metal panels, and repetitive closet units are articulated as freestanding volumes, all supported on a steel framework that defines a rigorous dimensional module that delineates the tectonic organization of the house (Frampton 1984, 240). Each stair is a freestanding tour de force of steel fabrication, and even the light switches are mounted on freestanding posts that extend up from the floor instead of being embedded within a wall. As a point of contrast, the construction of the Villa Savoye is concealed under an omnipresent layer of white plaster. As Edward Ford reveals in his book The Details of Modern Architecture, the construction of the Villa Savoye is fairly hybrid, with floors of site cast concrete over hollow terra cotta tiles, known as a lost tile construction, and walls of unit masonry with concrete lintels over the horizontal windows that are hung from the floor above (1990, 248). The abstracting layer of plaster removes the building’s constructional specificity, and

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the building becomes only an image of a monolithic construction. The exposed detailing of the Maison de Verre instead grounds the architecture in the realities of construction, in what Kenneth Frampton would refer to as the “ontological” versus the “representational” expression of the Villa Savoye (1995, 16–19). To achieve a high level of craft for the multitude of custom architectural details, Chareau partnered with the metal fabricator Louis Dalbet. These two men had complementary abilities of imagination and craft that combined to create domestic objects that embraced both modern sensibilities of form and material yet inscribed with the marks of their hand-made custom fabrication. Brian Brace Taylor explains that Chareau: …was deeply committed to a quest, embodied in his collaborative approach with Dalbet and others: namely, a quest for quality of conception through the intimate association on innovative craftsmanship and intellectual, artistic creativity in the modern age. (1998, 27) Chareau introduces an added complexity of having many everyday elements of the domestic space be hinging, rotating, sliding, or swinging (Vellay 1984, 179–80). In the Maison de Verre, these kinetic qualities of the furniture, built-ins, and architecture are designed to interact with the human body in very intimate ways, such as bathroom fixtures, including cabinets, toilets, and bidets that can swing out into a position for more convenient use, or the pull-down ladder/stair that connects Madame Dalsace’s day room on the piano nobile directly to the master bedroom above without having to enter the more public domains of the double height social space (Brace Taylor 1998, 21). As a system of domestic control, perforated screens can rotate into different positions to either welcome social visitors to ascend the stair to the piano nobile when open, or to keep the doctor’s patients from entering the private realms of the house when closed. Similarly, Dr. Dalsace’s library on the piano nobile has a perforated metal partition that can be slid laterally to create a direct extension of the double height space. The motile elements of the Maison de Verre can multiply the complexity of the architecture by transforming the patterns of living at any moment. This choreography of objects is “not merely a mechanized manipulation of architectural accoutrements,” but it is the cycles of domestic life embodied in the built form (Wiederspahn 2002, 265). Le Corbusier and Chareau were professionally and socially engaged with others in the avant-garde art, design, and architecture community in Paris, such as Robert Mallet-Stevens, with whom Chareau collaborated, Gerrit Rietveld, who also fused his furniture-making with his architecture designs, and Jean Prouvé, with whom Le Corbusier and his partner Pierre Jeanneret collaborated on several projects (Brace Taylor 1998, 11). Like Chareau, Prouvé also dedicated himself to the production of modern design using metal. Starting in 1923, his practice progresses in scale from furniture to architectural components, and ultimately to full buildings (Peters 2006, 7–17). His design sensibilities and manner of production, however, differed significantly from those of Chareau. Prouvé transcended the craft of unique object fabrication and instead designed for serial manufacturing. His workshop first designed and produced

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furniture and classroom systems for educational contexts. The types of metal components he used, whether it be flat bar, tubular steel, or sheet metal, and the shapes into which they were formed had a direct expression of the forces the object had to resist. For example, the tabletop for the Aeronautical Table, designed in 1924, has a thick middle where it is connected to the vertical support and experiences the majority of bending forces, but tapers toward the cantilevering edges as the bending forces diminish (Van Geest 1991, 94–96). Prouvé’s design method of developing a taxonomy of material types and expressive shapes continues as he begins to develop architectural components in collaboration with architects, such as welded bent steel columns and beams, stamped sheet metal exterior modular panels, and prefabricated freestanding steel stair systems. Designing these individual building components inherently induces a systems approach of off-site prefabricated production processes of elements that fit into a pre-determined construction module. Prefabrication and modularity, in fact, become the hallmarks of Prouvé’s architecture. His major pre-World War II architectural commission is the Maison du Peuple (House of the People), completed in 1939 in collaboration with architects Eugène Beaudouin and Marcel Lods in the city of Clichy just outside of Paris (Peters 2006, 26–29). Like the articulated systems of the Maison de Verre, the Maison du Peuple reveals all aspects of its conception and making. Visually evident is the modular planning as defined by the repetitive shaped metal mullions running along the exterior of translucent glass panels. The cantilevering canopy that extends over the sidewalk tapers like the Aeronautical Table as a way to express the diminishing structural forces towards the edge. The sanitary facilities are prefabricated pods that plug into the structural grid. And the primary structure that creates the long span for the grand interior hall stands separate from the building enclosure like an over-scaled table. There is an integrated system of temporary partitions that can hang from the primary structure to subdivide the space as needed. All of the materials are rendered in their natural finishes, and their shape is generated from a performative necessity. This is a complex architecture born out of its systemization that is prefabricated offsite and assembled within a strict geometric order.

High Tech Although Chareau produced very little architecture after the completion of the Maison de Verre, the influence of the building inspired a new generation of post-World War II architects. Both Kenneth Frampton and Richard Rogers “rediscovered” the project and published papers on it in 1966 (Brace Taylor 1998, 36). Prouvé continued to produce furniture, building components, and full building systems in the post-war era, and his work also informed a cast of rising architects. In fact, Prouvé was the chairperson for the competition to design a new museum in the Marais district of Paris that would become the Centre Pompidou (Silver 1994, 38), which opened to the public in 1977 (Figure 7.2). Prouvé and the others on the competition jury selected the project of the team of Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers (who was a former business partner of Norman Foster) for a proposal of an architecture of articulated systems

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Figure 7.2 Architecture as articulated systems, Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, Centre Pompidou (Paris, France) 1977. Photograph courtesy of Getty Images.

writ large. The architecture of Centre Pompidou is generated as much from its tectonic elements as the space they create. For instance, the dominant images of the exterior are the tube of escalators that hangs off the vertical structure on the front of the building overlooking the public plaza, and the mechanical ductwork that is painted in primary colors that rise vertically between the structural bays on the backside of the building. Reyner Banham, who tries to raise the status of environmental building systems to the level of serious architecture in his book The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment, describes the Centre Pompidou’s architecture of “Exposed Power,” as opposed to “Concealed Power” of hung ceilings and hidden plenums, as such: “the environmental services… were not merely exposed but gaudily flaunted all over the Centre’s public street front” (1984, 264). The interior loft floors of the Centre Pompidou created by the repetitive bays of the over-arching long-span trusses is a space of continual flux, unimpeded by intermediate vertical structure and dividable by temporary non-load-bearing partitions. The vertical structure along the front and back of the building that supports the large trusses is separated into thin tensile rods and thick compression columns. These two elements are connected by pivoting pins that support the ends of the long-span trusses in a visual balancing act of structural forces in equilibrium. Diagonal tensile bracing connects each structural bay to provide the lateral bracing for the structural frame. Behind this lattice of articulated tensile elements are repetitive modular glass panels that constitute the building enclosure. Peter Rice, the engineer in charge of the Centre Pompidou for the consulting firm Ove Arup and Partners describes his sense of the affiliative roles played by the architect and the engineer: The architect, like the artist, is motivated by personal considerations, whereas the engineer is essentially seeking to transform the problem into one where the essential properties of structure, material or some other impersonal elements are being expressed. (2017)

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These comments are a provocation: is the Centre Pompidou a dialectical balance of the potential poetics of architecture and the objective calculus of engineering, or have the architects surrendered their voice to the technological prowess of the engineer? By extension, we might also more generally ask, is the visual articulation of the complexity of building systems culturally significant, or is it rhetorically and unnecessarily complicated? The Centre Pompidou heralds a new wave of projects in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s derived from an enunciated engineering that comes to be known as “High Tech” architecture, or “structural expressionism” (Rappaport 2007, 16). Its roots may have evolved from the work of Le Corbusier, Chareau, and Prouvé, but it was further informed by the post-war “technocratic ideology” of Buckminster Fuller, the Japanese movement of the 1950s and 1960s architects known as Metabolism, and the utopian/dystopian urbanisms of 1960s British collective Archigram (Frampton 2007, 281–83). As prefigured in the Centre Pompidou, the characteristics of High Tech architecture include a preoccupation with the ordered articulation of all building technology as an architectural gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art). The sensibilities of the design engineer are no longer subsumed by a revetment of architectural surfaces. Instead, the explicit expression of the engineered components constitutes the architecture. The integration of mechanical systems into the thickness of architectural construction, such as in the work of Louis Kahn, becomes magnified as exposed ductwork networks didactically reveal their functional organization. The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts by Foster + Partners, for example, uses a repeated triangulated space-frame truss to create an open-ended shed of column-free space. The depth of the structure provides a zone for the mechanical, electrical, and lighting services that are as visibly available as the art that hangs in the gallery below. David Leatherbarrow recognizes the dual technical and rhetorical roles that building systems play when he states, “All of the equipment installed in buildings to respond to changes in the weather, seasons, and climate serves both practical and representational functions” (2018, 213). Ed Ford extends this argument further by suggesting High Tech’s articulated systems are as much a contrived narrative as they are performative: High Tech architects…have found it necessary in most instances to construct a structural fiction, a narrative device to technically explain the construction of their buildings; and while these narratives use actual construction systems of the buildings as a point of departure, and in many cases the actual raw materials of these systems, they all depart in some way from reality. (1996, 419) On a pragmatic level, however, the exposure of all building systems as distinct objects in space adds considerably to their required maintenance. As Hilary Sample observes in her book Maintenance Architecture, “Architecture is the receiver of weather, nature, and elements whose factors constantly change its properties. Even as architecture remains vertical or standing, it is changed in perpetuity” (2016, 69). Revealing

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systems that typically are hidden from view creates an abundance of surfaces and details that are exposed to the deleterious effects of weathering, wear, and obsolescence. In the case of the Centre Pompidou, the representational value of exposed building systems as a sign of a progressive and benevolent French state that sponsored its creation is offset by the collateral consequences of the enduring costs of its upkeep. In this way, the optimism of a new and well-ordered technological future that is expressed in High Tech architecture is challenged by the corporeal effects of time. This architecture of articulation not only faced such practical dilemmas but also generated significant criticism based on its philosophical implications, as is clearly expressed by Florian Aicher: Building has become the domain of experts, be it in the creation of self-referential ‘machines for living’ starting from the premise of energy efficiency or of signature buildings that seek to overwhelm with technological eccentricity. These currents converge in the euphemism of the intelligent building – linguistically obviating the notion of a user. (2016, 21)

Nurturing Nature All species on Earth, flora and fauna, evolve effectively to find the lowest energy solution to thrive and propagate… The story of architecture should be much more akin to the story of how all other species on the planet learn and thrive and survive, which is looking to the laws of nature. — Michael Green, Michael Green Architecture In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the technical proficiency of High Tech architects moved past its representational foundations of formal expressionism and became increasingly dedicated to building performance in the context of the growing social and disciplinary awareness of the building industry’s impact on the global environment. Under the new banner of ‘sustainable’ architecture, architects designed buildings to reduce operational energy with passive strategies, such as increased natural daylighting and stack-effect ventilation, and active energy capture strategies, such as double skin facades to mediate exterior and interior temperature differences, photovoltaic panels for generating electricity, and geothermal energy exchange to heat or cool hydronic radiant systems. These practices were incentivized by a proliferation of voluntary green building rating systems, such as the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), and Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM). Major projects from Foster + Partners Commerzbank Tower in Frankfurt, Germany, completed in 1997 with a series sky gardens to induce natural convective ventilation, to the Bank of America Tower in Midtown Manhattan by CookFox Architects, completed in 2009 as the first major skyscraper to achieve a LEED Platinum rating, employed green building strategies to both reduce their operational resource

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Figure 7.3 The roof form shields the glass enclosure from the sun and captures the wind and rain, Glenn Murcutt, Magney House (New South Wales, Australia) 1984. Photograph by Max Dupain, courtesy of Glenn Murcutt and the New South Wales State Library.

consumption and to appropriate the value the market was placing on being green (Pawley 1999, 171). Sustainable design strategies were proliferating in smaller practices, as well. The architecture of Glenn Murcutt was born out of a necessary response to the harsh and remote environments of Australia. His work demonstrates that a careful empirical understanding of local building traditions could be generative of great formal and performative innovation. His Magney House (Figure 7.3), completed in 1984, is one such example. It is a long bar of domestic spaces that is just one room deep that is perched at the edge of the Pacific Ocean in an arid territory of New South Wales with a persistent prevailing wind (Beck and Cooper 2002, 80–89). Like the indigenous architectures of the original people of the continent, the house is configured to collect the breezes and rain while rejecting the heat of the sun. The cross section of its curvilinear roof consolidates a complex set of environmental responses into a singular and elegant form (Ford 1996, 417). Its leading-edge cantilevers beyond the long front facade to shade the glass enclosure below from the harsh Australian sun. The roof then pinches down into the interior of the space so the cross breezes accelerate by the Venturi Effect, inducing a sense of coolness for the inhabitants. The roof then curves back upwards toward a high strip of windows to let the breeze run through. And the valley created at the center of the roof becomes a rain capture device that leads to an underground cistern preserving that precious resource. This architecture invites nature into the house to connect it to its context while creating comfort for its inhabitants. Murcutt’s deft connections to the natural environment based on regional indigenous architectural precedents gained international credibility when he was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2002. From that point forward, every architect understood that they too could effectively incorporate care for the environment as both a technical and ethical mandate for their

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Figure 7.4 Bioclimatic skin over a robust concrete frame, H Arquitectes and DataAE, Research Center ICTA-ICP (Barcelona, Spain) 2014. Photograph by Peter Wiederspahn.

design work. At the turn of the twenty-first century, the budding digital age made sophisticated digital simulation and modeling tools accessible to anyone when just a few short years earlier such tools were the domain of larger architectural offices. In part due to the system of open architectural competitions for major projects in Europe, the small architectural firm H Arquitectes, in conjunction with the architecture and engineering firm DataAE, was awarded the commission to design a new major research facility for environmental sciences and paleontology on the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) campus. This project, known as the Research Center ICTA-ICP, completed in 2014, is designed in direct reciprocity with its natural environment as a performative partner in creating interior comfort (Figure 7.4). Tectonically it uses construction materials with divergent temporal horizons from durable to ephemeral. The primary structure is a robust site-cast concrete frame of columns and post-tensioned floors that are designed to be unchanging for the life of the building. Four tall atria penetrate the plan of the concrete structure, bringing natural light down and passive convective ventilation up through the whole building (Figure 7.5). Stairs populate the atria connecting researchers on different floor levels to foster social and intellectual interaction. The concrete’s thermal mass moderates the interior temperatures and its thermal inertia is augmented by pushing air that has been pre-conditioned by passing through subterranean interstitial zones in the basement’s concrete construction through hollow cores in the floor. Additionally, geothermal energy exchange powers a radiant heating and cooling system cast into the concrete at the ceiling and the floor surfaces. This significant complexity of performative roles is literally and figuratively embedded into the concrete structural frame. The building envelope of Research Center ICTA-ICP is the diametric opposite to the structure (Figure 7.6). It is a lightweight, prefabricated, standardized, and inexpensive greenhouse system of translucent panels. This system of galvanized steel and polycarbonate panels will be relatively short-lived, requiring significant maintenance over time but

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Figure 7.5 Typical floor plan with four tall atria, open common space, and freestanding rectangular bars of office and lab spaces, H Arquitectes and DataAE, Research Center ICTA-ICP (Barcelona, Spain) 2014. Drawing recreated by authors.

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easily replaced when necessary. The panels open and close automatically based on a programmed environmental sensor system to create what the architects refer to as bioclimatic skin. Counter to the popular practice and the code-driven mandates to seal buildings tightly, this skin is a permeable boundary that allows for the flow of the ambient nature to pervade the interior of the building (Addington 2009, 78). The robust fixity of the concrete structure and dynamic operation of the enclosure function as integrated partners in regulating interior temperature and air quality while both provide sources of daylight to minimize the need for artificial light. Another quasi-ephemeral system is the series of wooden box spaces that house the offices and the laboratory spaces (Figure 7.7). These boxes seemingly slide in between the concrete floors and ceilings like freestanding crates on a shelf. To reinforce this reading, the plywood veneer of the box walls has an enunciated grain that is in strong visual contrast to the monolithic grey concrete. This detailed articulation implies that the wood boxes could easily be taken off of the shelf at any time if new uses were needed. They are pulled back from both the exterior enclosure and the vertical atria creating common open spaces around them, and they have their own sealed windows to control the interior environment more precisely.

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Figure 7.6 Operable translucent polycarbonate bioclimatic facade detail, H Arquitectes and DataAE, Research Center ICTA-ICP (Barcelona, Spain) 2014. Photograph by Peter Wiederspahn.

The remaining common space is for general circulation and social interaction. These spaces are only conditioned through the opening and closing of the building envelope and the thermal mass of the concrete structure. Although the environmental conditions in these spaces are not as precisely controlled as the functional wood box spaces, the temperature is greatly moderated from the exterior extremes so the active mechanical systems can operate much more efficiently. In this way, energy is expended only where it is necessary within the wooden boxes, and the open common space is sufficiently comfortable based on the bioclimatic system.

Complex This is a contradiction as a theory: the thing that is going against long-term buildings are the construction systems that are easy to change. The thing that is introducing the clarity of the quality in the future is something that is not easy to change. — Roger Tudó Galí, H Arquitectes Kenneth Frampton culminates his book Studies in Tectonic Culture with an observation about what conceptually binds the tectonically articulate precedents he analyzes throughout the book:

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Figure 7.7 Interior atrium for natural light, convective ventilation, and social engagement, H Arquitectes and DataAE, Research Center ICTA-ICP (Barcelona, Spain) 2014. Photograph by Peter Wiederspahn.

What all of these works demonstrate in different ways is a mastery over the means of production and the ability to break down the construction of a building into its constituent parts and to use this articulation as a stratagem bestowing an appropriate character on the work at hand. (1995, 386) Edward Ford, however, offers a less benevolent reading of the architecture of articulation just one year later, when he writes: It may be that the highly evocative forms of High Tech will be the beginning of a new architectural language, but that there is little doubt that it represents an end not a beginning, that is the culmination of an old Modernism, not the birth of a new one. (1996, 381) Hindsight would suggest that form-making may not be the lasting legacy of High Tech architecture, but that thinking in terms of systems can lead to innovative performative strategies that are more sympathetic to their environmental impacts. In this way, the Research Center ICTA-ICP is a compelling link in a century-long trajectory of architects celebrating

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Figure 7.8 Detailed axonometric drawing showing the layers of construction and building systems: the lightweight and relatively short-lived bioclimatic skin; the robust, long-lasting concrete structural frame with embedded mechanical systems for altering the temperature of the thermal mass; and the changeable wood-clad laboratory and office spaces. H Arquitectes and DataAE, Research Center ICTA-ICP (Barcelona, Spain) 2014. Diagrams by authors.

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the inherent complexity of the multitude of systems intrinsic to modern buildings by making them visible, formally distinct, and now, performatively environmentally responsible. It can be understood as the distillation of tectonic paradigms of its modern predecessors. Like the Villa Savoye’s articulation of structure as distinct from the enclosure, it too distinguishes its concrete frame from the dynamic polycarbonate skin. But the Research Center reinforces the difference of systems through their material expression and intrinsic time horizons of durability. Like the translucent glass block of the Maison de Verre that brings diffused natural light deep into the house, the Research Center’s skin of translucent polycarbonate on the facades and the roof lets natural light pervade the building. Like the accelerating breeze through the Magney House, the operable bioclimatic skin breathes in fresh air that then rises through the atria by natural convection. And like the increasingly sophisticated energy management systems of the mature High Tech architectural practices, the Research Center deploys geothermal energy exchange to moderate the temperature of the concrete frame’s thermal mass, which in turn moderates the temperature of the interior habitable spaces. The Research Center ICTA-ICP not only expresses its constituent building systems, but also explicitly demonstrates their distinct performative roles in material, space, and action, and their direct interchange with nature. The context to which the building responds is climatic in scale, creating a meaningful connection to its site through technical performance that is authentic and beneficial to its inhabitants. The Research Center ICTA-ICP’s layering of components also provides a visual narrative of the relative temporality of the separate building components like a materialization of Stewart Brand’s diagram of “Shearing Layers” (1994, 13). The concrete frame is built to endure for hundreds of years, and could support any manner of changes that the building might undergo. Its durability, thermal mass, and atria will have the same performative advantages for as long as the concrete structure exists. The polycarbonate skin, however, has a much shorter useful life expectancy but it also represents a much lower investment in embodied energy and cost, so its upgrading or replacement in the short term is less consequential. Similarly, the interior wooden boxes are subject to the changing needs and uses of the science being conducted within them, making them versatile, not precious. Persistence in the architecture of the Research Center ICTA-ICP, therefore, is strategically contingent and variable among its multiple systems.

References Abramson, Daniel M. 2016. Obsolescence: An Architectural History. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Addington, Michelle. 2009. “Sustainable Situationism.” Log (17) Fall 2009: 77–81. Anyone Corporation. Aicher, Florian. 2016. “Baustoff, Bauart, Baustelle \ Material, Type, Site.” In be 2226: Die Temperatur Der Architektur: Portrait Eines Energieoptimierten Hauses / The Temperature of Architecture: Portrait of an Energy-Optimized House, translated by Geoffrey Steinherz and Elizabeth Schwaiger. Basel: Birkhäuser. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783035603873-011.

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Banham, Reyner. 1984. The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment, 2nd Edition. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Bauchet, Bernard, Yukio Futagawa, and Marc Vellay. 1988. La Maison de Verre. Tokyo: A.D.A. Edita Tokyo Co., Ltd. Beck, Haig, and Jackie Cooper. 2002. Glenn Murcutt: A Singular Architectural Practice. Victoria: The Images Publishing Group Pty Ltd. Brace Taylor, Brian. 1998. Pierre Chareau. Cologne: Benedikt Taschen Verlag GmbH. Brand, Stewart. 1994. How Buildings Learn: What Happens after They’re Built. London: Penguin Books. Ford, Edward R. 1990. The Details of Modern Architecture. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. ———. 1996. The Details of Modern Architecture, Volume 2: 1928–1988. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Frampton, Kenneth. 1984. “Pierre Chareau: An Eclectic Architect.” In Pierre Chareau: Architect and Craftsman 1883–1950, edited by Marc Vellay: 231– 48. Translated by Bridget Strevens Romer. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc. ———. 1995. “The Owl of Minerva: An Epilogue.” In Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture, edited by John Cava: 377–87. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. ———. 2007. Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 4th Edition. New York: Thames and Hudson, Ltd. Green, Michael. July 23, 2019. Founding Principal, Michael Green Architecture Interview by Peter Wiederspahn, Vancouver. Leatherbarrow, David. 2018. “Relative Permanence.” Journal of Architectural Education 72: 2. doi: 10.1080/10464883.2018.1496729. Le Corbusier, and Pierre Jeanneret. 1984. Le Corbusier et Pierre Jeanneret: Oeuvre Complète, Volume 1–1910–29, 11th Edition 1984. Zurich: Les Edition d’Architecture (Artemis). McDonough, William, and Michael Braungart. 2002. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. New York: North Point Press. doi: 10.1177/0276146704264148. Moe, Kiel. 2017. Empire, State & Building. New York: Actar Publishers. Pawley, Martin. 1999. Norman Foster: A Global Architecture. New York: Universe Publishing. Peters, Nils. 2006. Jean Prouvé 1901–1984 La Dynamique de la Création. Translated by Hélène Piper. Cologne: Taschen GmbH. Rappaport, Nina. 2007. Support and Resist: Structural Engineers and Design Innovation. New York: The Monacelli Press. Rice, Peter. 2017. An Engineer Imagines. London: Batsford Publishing. Sample, Hilary. 2016. Maintenance Architecture. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Sekler, Eduard. 1965. “Structure, Construction, Tectonics.” In Structure in Art and Science, edited by Gyorgy Kepes: 89–95. New York: George Brazilier, Inc. Silver, Nathan. 1994. The Making of Beaubourg: A Building Biography of the Centre Pompidou, Paris. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Tudó Gali, Roger. April 30, 2019. Founding Principal, H Arquitectes Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, Barcelona. Van Geest, Jan. 1991. Jean Prouvé: Möbel/Furniture/Meubles. Translated by Hugh Beyer. Cologne: Benedikt Taschen Verlag GmbH. Vellay, Marc. 1984. “Obsessions and Variations on a Theme.” In Pierre Chareau: Architect and Craftsman 1883–1950, edited by Marc Vellay: 177–96. Translated by Bridget Strevens Romer. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc. Wiederspahn, Peter. 2002. “Mutable Domestic Space: The Choreography of Modern Dwelling.” In Occidental/Oriental: Proceedings of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) International Conference, Summer 2002: 265–69.

8 ANTICIPATORY D. Fannon

What was it? What are we making it? And what would it be after, when the next owner, the next architect visits? — Bob Berkebile, BNIM

Architecture anticipates, first imagining a world that does not exist, then developing through representation, before solidifying into built form. Like mythological Fates, architects exert their greatest influence on buildings—perhaps even setting the length of its life—during these relatively brief initial stages between architectural conception and building construction, In the liminal space and time of design, the architect synthesizes a host of criteria, envisioning space, organizing material, managing costs to shape the course of the future. Acknowledging that architecture influences but does not ultimately control the future, anticipatory design seeks to wield its power over the future with intention, facilitating future adaptation to extend the lives of buildings and improve the lives of occupants. Stewart Brand pointed out the futility of attempting to dictate the future through architecture, writing, “A big physical building seems a perfect way to bind the course of future events,” (Brand 1995, 181) before describing the many ways in which unpredictable developments confound such expectations. Thus, anticipatory architecture means providing a set of interrelated systems that respond to uncertain and dynamic future exigencies, rather than merely accommodating a sequence of functionalist test-fits. Chapter 11 approaches issues of intention and specificity from a different direction, but this chapter describes forms of anticipation and their consequences for architectural projects.

Anticipating Conversion The United States Courthouse for the District of Utah, in Salt Lake City, designed by Thomas Phifer and Partners and opened in 2014, demonstrates that even highly program-specific buildings can anticipate programmatic changes—such as adding or reducing capacity— and illustrates the effects of such pre-planning. The US Federal Court System, along with the General Services Administration (GSA)—the agency which serves as the government’s landlord—carefully plans and programs new federal buildings to meet both current and anticipated future needs, using a 30-year planning window. In Salt Lake City, that required the possibility of adding additional courtrooms, along with

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Figure 8.1 Exterior Photograph of the United States Courthouse for the District of Utah. Thomas Phifer and Partners (Salt Lake City, UT) 2014. Photograph by Peter Wiederspahn.

associated judge’s chambers and other support spaces. Although the District did not need—and the budget could not include—these courtrooms at the time of construction, the designers adopted a core and shell approach by constructing the fifth floor with sufficient height, capacity, and even slab knockouts to accommodate courtroom space and infrastructure, but not fitting them out as such. Instead, the GSA fitted that floor out as less-expensive office space for other federal agencies related to the court, in this case, the Probation System, and could simply relocate those offices to complete the planned courtrooms when required by an expanding docket. The courthouse anticipated change at multiple scales. Site planning for security anticipates a new building adjacent to the courthouse, and the sub-grade parking incorporates foundations strong enough for a future four-story structure. This low-rise building could house the various agencies that would move out of the courthouse to make room for additional courthouses in the future. On an internal, space-planning scale, the design adopted an approach called “collegial chambers.” Traditional courthouses assign a courtroom and adjacent chambers to a single judge, which requires one courtroom for each judge in the district, and leaves those rooms empty whenever that judge is not holding a trial or hearing. On the other hand, multiple judges sharing a pool of courtrooms would increase space utilization, allowing the same number of rooms to support more judges, and thus cases. Although the district does not presently operate in this way, the design enabled courtroom sharing in the future by locating all the judges’ chambers on the ninth and tenth floors, rather than attached to individual courtrooms. Anticipation does not always mean growth for increased capacity; the initial design for the courthouse held 14 courtrooms, with the provision

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Future courtrooms can be added by converting probation space and transferring any building Future courtrooms can be added by converting ceremonial courtroom and transferring any

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to add four more by renovating the fifth floor as described above. However, well into the design process, the legislature adjusted the appropriated budget as a cost-reduction measure, supporting only ten courtrooms. The design team achieved the cost savings by applying the shell approach from the fifth floor to the sixth floor as well, avoiding

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Figure 8.3 Peel away axonometric of the United States Courthouse for the District of Utah. Thomas Phifer and Partners (Salt Lake City, UT) 2014. Diagrams by authors.

the need to remove a floor of the building—which would add costs and delay the project. In this way, an approach designed to increase capacity in future enabled an immediate reduction in present cost.

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Anticipating Stability Designed by LTT Architects and opened in 2014, Spencer Brewery explores many opportunities for expansion or contraction of a process and the building that shelters it. Like other manufacturing buildings, the process—in this case brewing beer—drives the design but does not necessarily dictate it. Discussing the building in a phone call, Architect Li Lian Tan points out all buildings have constraints, and even a new building on an empty site does not have complete freedom, noting “in some ways you have a lot more freedom than a typical space where you’re dealing with existing conditions, but there are still existing conditions here” (2018). The location to the west of the existing buildings on site meant the extensive utility services for electricity, propane, and water enter through the building’s east side. Although solar considerations would normally militate for an east-west bar, the steep drop to the west and an existing bioswale to the east combined to recommend a northsouth bar. Furthermore, industrial occupancies like the brewery require access and turning space for large vehicles to deliver ingredients, ship finished products, and to allow access for firefighting apparatus. The gentle slope down to the south minimized the cut and fill needed to Figure 8.4 Exterior photograph of the northeast corner of Spencer Brewery. LLT Architects (Spencer, MA) 2014. Photograph by © Anton Grassl.

Figure 8.5 Interior photograph looking northeast across the brew room, mash tuns are to the left adjacent to the windows, boiling kettles to the right. Spencer Brewery. LLT Architects (Spencer, MA) 2014. Photograph by © Anton Grassl.

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provide a floor-level loading dock on that end, establishing the linear brew process should run from the north to the south end, establishing the overall organization. The internal arrangement of space and infrastructure follows the demands of brewing. The main production occurs in a series of large, high-volume spaces arranged linearly from north to south around the brewing equipment and process. During mashing, grain and water are mixed and heated for several hours to break down the starches in large vessels called mash tuns, located adjacent to the north windows. The resulting liquid, called wort, moves to kettles on the other side of the room where it is boiled along with other ingredients such as hops to establish the flavor, color, and concentration of the liquid. After several hours of boiling, the wort is filtered, rapidly cooled, combined with yeast, and piped into a tank in the adjacent room for fermentation. After

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Figure 8.6 Floor plans of the current and potential expansion of Spencer Brewery. LLT Architects (Spencer, MA) 2014. Drawings recreated by authors.

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several weeks, the beer is piped to the next large space to fill bottles and kegs. Some Spencer beers ferment a second time in the bottle, so yeast is added before sealing the bottles, and they are stored for several weeks in climate-controlled storage adjacent to the loading dock. A row of smaller rooms adjacent to these main production spaces house and separate services like mechanical, electrical, fire pump, storage, and restrooms, all collected into a bar along the east side for easy utility access. These functions need only a single-story, reducing unused volume while avoiding an expensive elevator. The low roof also provides a location rooftop HVAC equipment. A set of silos at the northeast corner of this bar store grain for production. A spine of circulation for people and the overhead distribution of ducts, pipes, and electrical service mediates between the large production space and the supporting services bar. Just as these constraints of site and process shaped the present building, the building anticipates future change by understanding and preparing for changes in that process. The brewery uses state-of-the-art equipment, and a high degree of automation and control to reduce the total human labor but started with modest production while planning for significant expansion if successful. At present, the Brewery only brews a few days each week, but simply brewing more frequently or even multiple shifts per day would increase production without any additional facilities. Since fermenting takes much longer than mashing and boiling, the number of tanks presents the first limiting factor. The initial construction included eight fermentation tanks, and the brief required space and services for eight more. Laying out the building, Tan found that other elements of the production line established the width of the building, so an efficient layout afforded space for an additional row of fermentation tanks, increasing planned expansion. Increased production would demand more space for the second fermentation after bottling, accommodated in a planned extension to the south, essentially moving the loading dock to create more storage. The single-story service bar can extend at the same time, affording additional MEP spaces and other services for the new volume. Figure 8.7 Interior photograph looking west across the bottling line at Spencer Brewery. LLT Architects (Spencer, MA) 2014. Photograph by © Anton Grassl.

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The plan anticipates changes to support an even greater increase in production, one requiring additional mash tuns and boiling kettles. Currently, a small, enclosed area in the northwest corner of the double-height production spaces houses the tasting room and administrative offices. If demand exceeds the capacity of the mashing and boiling tanks, adding a single-story addition on the north could accommodate these accessory uses, freeing the high-bay space for additional production equipment; as built, an exterior niche along the west side houses a washdown pad for bottles and equipment but enclosing that space would provide room for another nine to twelve fermentation tanks to support the increased capacity. The clear, linear organization anticipates extensions to the north and south, boxing in the centrally located bottling line. However, the efficiency of the automated line means it can likely accommodate even significant production increases, especially if much of that additional beer were finished in kegs rather than bottles. The rational design and future planning at Spencer Brewery provide an interesting example of anticipatory design but understanding the building’s relationship to the future also depends on the unique client, in this case the Trappist monks of Saint Joseph’s Abbey. Formally known as the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, Trappists adhere to a stringent interpretation of the rule of Saint Benedict, written in the mid-sixth century CE to structure both material and spiritual aspects of monastic life (Theisen 1995). The monks profess three vows: obedience to the rule, to superiors and by extension to God; stability to live in the same monastery; and Conversatio Morum, which is variously translated as conversion or citizenship but reflects both the continuous conversion of the monk’s individual life, and his duties to the life of the community. Modern English language scholarship sometimes expresses these vows as to live in this place as a monk, in obedience to its rule and abbot (Pennington 2015). So, although the rule says little about the design and construction of buildings, and the vows nothing at all, together they establish the rhythms and ideals of monastic life, offering a lens through which to consider their architecture over time (Knowles 1963, 181). The Rule does state “they are monks in truth, if they live by the work of their hands” (Saint Benedict [1886] 1906, chap. 48), and the monks of Saint Joseph’s elected to start brewing beer to support themselves and their charitable work, anticipating the decline of their current enterprises of making jams and liturgical vestments, and in the number and health of monks. The design of the Brewery expresses the Benedictine tradition of Ora et Labora—work and prayer—in which work not only supports the contemplative life but is itself a form of prayer. In that sense, the use of light, carefully considered materials, and absence of ornament echo historic Cistercian church architecture, as Li Lian Tan explains that “Cistercian Architecture is actually very minimalist in its roots. I always say that they were the minimalists of the Medieval Age” (2018). The orientation of the monastery around the pursuit of holiness both depends on and creates an environment that imbues every activity with the pursuit of perfection, including the beer. As the only Trappist

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brewery in the United States, Spencer draws on centuries of tradition and experience in European monasteries for practical guidance, to ensure quality, and to position theirs as a premium product. Of particular interest in this chapter is stability; in the Benedictine tradition stability entails a lifelong commitment to a specific monastery. While the monks’ primary conception of the future relates to their belief in eternal life, the knowledge that he will live out his days in a place— and his brothers will live there after him—engenders a particular permanence to the culture, including the architecture, as Irvine writes, “the monastery witnesses to stability, and to the value of a commitment to place…in which individuals are brought together and incorporated within an enduring community” (Irvine 2011, 42). The Abbey stands on a forested hilltop outside Spencer, Massachusetts, and the brewery building lies west of the existing buildings on the border of what is called the monastic enclosure—the interface between the secluded monks and the outside world. Although not attached to the living and worship spaces, the Brewery aligns with and extends the physical grid and the contemplative community embodied in those structures. This liminal placement anticipates a monastery and a brewery in perpetuity— whether operated by the monks themselves, or by hired outsiders, or by some hybrid of both.

Anticipating Change As discussed in the introduction to Part II, uncertainty presents both the underlying motivation and the greatest barrier to designing for the future. Adding capacity beyond present minimum requirements offers an obvious and sometimes effective anticipatory design approach. Unfortunately, adding extra capacity—whether structure, space, skin, or services—increases environmental and often economic costs, and, therefore, demands care and precision. As observed about structural design in Chapter 4, the question of total capacity matters less than how that capacity is used. A conversation with Stephen Dayton and Katie Bennet at Thomas Phifer and Partners offered a successful example of planning with additional capacity. For a university project, the design team made the case to include the additional cost of increased structural capacity to allow a future green roof that did not fit in the immediate project. Accounting for the substantial weight of the soil and water ensured this option would remain viable in the future. Furthermore, Bennet shared that the architects even developed two parallel sets of roof details, one for the lower-cost conventional roof, the other for the future vegetative one, to ensure the design worked both ways (2018). In the end, the forethought about adding capacity carefully paid off when a major gift enabled the client to change to the green roof part way through construction. Since anticipatory design does not blindly overbuild, it must select for long-term effectiveness rather than short-term efficiency. Reflecting on his experience in education projects, Sean Zaudke, an Associate Principal at Gould Evans explains that standards and design guidelines for spaces like classrooms typically err on the side of smaller spaces for

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sake of numerical efficiency but fail to anticipate effects on teaching, noting, “when you work within a standard module…those things can be pretty efficient but they’re also very limited in terms of how they can change inside” (2019). Although it does not guarantee rooms will accommodate all future changes, Zaudke encourages clients to rightsize the rooms by testing several possible room configurations based on different learning approaches, adding just enough space to ensure effective teaching in each. To illustrate a similar point about optimization and effectiveness, David nelson tells a story about a hospital project which had a plethora of slightly different “standard” room sizes each precisely sized for the specific medical specialty and location in the hospital. Foster + Partners’ analysis identified a single spatial module that accommodated all the present needs across departments while allowing any of the spaces to adapt to any of the others (2019). Ironically, this exact problem animated hospital designers in the middle of the twentieth century, leading John Weeks to decry the unimaginative application of efficiency techniques like time-motion studies as leading to disputes over small variations in room size with no apparent difference in function (Weeks 1965, 201). While Nelson offers a vivid example of good design overcoming the sometimes-absurd outcomes of ruthless optimization, the story does not end with this important but typical architectural exercise. The conversations about space needs for different medical procedures led the client to develop a novel treatment model in which patients remain in their rooms and various specialists and equipment come to them, a gain in the effectiveness of care and quality of experience for the patients. N

While detailed planning makes sense for projects with clear intentions and anticipated futures, overspecification also carries risks. Sean Zaudke, an Associate Principal at Gould Evans, observes “we could design [a building] so specifically towards an instance in time that once the technology changed it becomes outmoded” (2019). Faced with similar challenges Jean Stark, a planner at JMZ, describes asking clients “[are] you sure you want to build something so idiosyncratic to a specific technology or a specific program?” (2017). Reflecting on his career at the University of Oregon, Fred Tepfer cautioned against letting the present dictate the future, wryly warning “By the time we move in, the building has the potential to already be obsolete” (2018).

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Figure 8.8 Interior Photograph of the Riverside Apartments and Studio Foster + Partners (London, UK). Photograph by nigel Young / Foster + Partners.

Figure 8.9 Section drawing of the Riverdale Apartments & Studio showing the public space at the ground level and the double-height studio that could be subdivided into additional apartments above. Foster + Partners (London, UK) 1990. Drawing by BPR for Foster +Partners.

Conversely, highly specified buildings do not necessarily anticipate the future. In a phone interview, David Nelson, Head of Design at Foster + Partners, recalls the firm’s experience in historic institutional buildings like the British Museum and the German Reichstag as evidence that elegant, well-proportioned spaces can enable long-term adaptation without any particular need to plan the future, saying “you could design a sequence of elegant rooms on projects and build them out of masonry and they could have long term flexibility and be easily adapted to other uses” (2019). Fixed spaces do not prescribe fixed occupation, so long as their original intention does not proscribe change. N I suppose if you really don’t know what the future’s going to be—and it is very difficult for anybody to predict—the idea would be to create space that, if it’s to be subdivided, it’s done with lightweight partitions…and could easily demount divisions of space without necessarily making changes to the more substantial structures. (Nelson 2019)

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Foster + Partners own office in London, UK also illustrates this approach. The building contains both offices and housing, and the dimensions allow the interchange of these uses in response to economic forces. Continuing the conversation at Thomas Phifer and Partners, Katie Bennet points out the physical model of a project that breaks somewhat from the firm’s typical approach to anticipation, embracing highly dynamic responses for unforeseen conditions of an experimental theater company. The artistic vision for the TR Warszawa Theatre in Warsaw incorporates the space changing on multiple time scales, across a season, between shows, even during a performance itself. To that end, Phifer designed a large flexible space they compare to a warehouse or hanger. Bennet recounts the motivation to prepare for the unknown, recalling that “The director literally said, ‘I want you to design a space that allows me to put on a production of a possibility I haven’t even thought about yet.’” (2018). In response, the design makes extensive provisions for technical rigging and includes a set of large doors opening the theatre to the adjacent square. The division between highly specified buildings planning the future and the highly changeable building open to future modification appears repeatedly concerning long-lasting buildings. As discussed in Chapter 4, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown would likely classify the former as ducks and the latter as decorated sheds (1977). Stewart Brand ascribes almost human qualities in his distinction between thoroughly designed, durable “high road” buildings, and the responsive, “low road” to capture the difference between them. Interestingly—and presaging the topic of Chapter 9—he sees these ideas not as strategies for design so much as ways that buildings can become loved (Brand 1995, 23). However, the examples point to less clear-cut divisions where unique duck-like buildings remain open to dramatic change, where sheds achieve unique character beyond mere decoration, and where beloved buildings take the high, the low, or some other road entirely. That brings the narrative back to Foster’s Apple Park, which as the introduction to Part II describes, seems from the outside the most expensive of possible ducks on the most secretive of high roads. Granting his perspective as a designer on the project, nelson brought up Apple Park unprompted during the conversation, citing it as a good example of buildings that enable long-term change. He describes the building as one huge space over four floors, with strong connections to nature, logical organization for structure, clear sequence of circulation, and provisions for life safety. Although the present configuration subdivides the space into pods and cellular offices, the flexible component-based system can be demounted, rearranged, or even removed, as he says, “the whole project could be rethought of as something else” (2019). While focused on the building rather than the site, Nelson takes a much longer view of the building than the electronic products designed inside it, saying, “if you went fast forward 50, 60 years from now, or maybe more—and whether we are even going to be working in the same external context—that building could still stand, and it could be reinterpreted and readopted.” Of course, just as fixed buildings cannot bind the future, flexible ones cannot compel their long-term adaptation; Apple’s

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previous campus served less than a quarter-century from its opening before the new Apple Park superseded it. Enabling a truly persistent architecture requires anticipatory design to exercise control proportional to its future agency, and to the extent of its future knowledge.

References Bennet, Katie. 2018. Director, Thomas Phifer and Partners Interview by Michelle Laboy and David Fannon. New York. Brand, Stewart. 1995. How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built. Reprint edition. New York: Penguin Books. Dayton, Stephen. 2018. Partner, Thomas Phifer and Partners Interview by Michelle Laboy and David Fannon. New York. Irvine, R.D.G. 2011. “The Architecture of Stability: Monasteries and the Importance of Place in a World of Non-Places.” Etnofoor 23 (1): 29–49. Knowles, Dom David. 1963. The Historian and Character and Other Essays. Edited by C. N. L. Brooke and Giles Constable. London: Cambridge University Press. Nelson, David. 2019. Senior Executive Partner and Head of Design, Foster + Partners Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Pennington, Emma. 2015. “Conversion.” Sermon Presented at the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, Cuddesdon and Horspath, December 25. http://www. gchparishes.co.uk/2015/02/03/conversion/. Saint Benedict. (1886) 1906. The Rule of St. Benedict. Translated by D. Oswald Hunter Blair. 2nd Edition. London: Sands & Company. Stark, Jean. 2017. Lead Planner, JMZ Architects | Planners Interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy. By phone. Tan, Li Lian. 2018. Principal, LLT Architects Interview by David Fannon. By phone. Tepfer, Fred. 2018. Design & Construction Manager for Academic and Research Facilities, University of Oregon Interview by David Fannon. By phone. Theisen, Abbot Primate Jerome. 1995. “About the Rule of Saint Benedict.” The Order of Saint Benedict. 1995. http://www.osb.org/gen/rule.html. Venturi, Robert. 1977. Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Weeks, John. 1965. “Hospitals for the 1970s.” Medical Care 3 (4): 197–203. Zaudke, Sean. 2019. Associate Principal, Gould Evans Interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn. Lee’s Summit, MO.

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Figure III.0 Precedent Matrix: Date of Construction and Building Size. This image shows 43 buildings on a graph, all at the same scale, and all oriented to true north. The vertical axis tracks the date the building was constructed, with the oldest buildings at the bottom and more recent buildings at the top. The horizontal axis measures the total square feet of the building from the smallest to the left to the largest to the right. Drawing by authors.

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Part III

Alternative Futures D. Fannon

Time-Oriented The Temporal Dimension As physical artifacts, buildings obviously exist in time as well as in space; demarked by physical and temporal extents. Yet, human experience and knowledge of buildings unfold in moments and over periods of occupancy no less temporal for all they are unmeasured. In his gentle defense of what he calls time rich environments, Ralph Knowles (1992) argues that humans must occupy space, must “remain a while,” for time to unfold, and these experience and activities of occupation resonate to lush natural rhythms of light and shadow, warmth and cooling. Knowles sees in these situated rhythms of life the possibility of human expression, which may become a ritual, and ultimately, memory. Perhaps, both positivists and phenomenologists could find a common cause with Peter Zumthor when he says “Architecture is a spatial art, as people always say. But architecture is also a temporal art” (2006, 41). Temporal Intention Like any process, the action of building occurs over a span of time, but intention toward the future distinguishes architecture from other processes with mere duration. The temporal intention requires present action in the form of design or representation, to direct future action of construction (Evans 1997, 153), both pointing towards the desired future state of inhabitation. Peter Zumthor captures this architectural process in an elegant sequence, saying of design “I would need someone to be the owner, so we could get together and arrange things—first in our heads, and then in the real world” (2006, 23). Architecture first imagines alternative futures not yet present, then strives to organize material reality to conform with chosen intention, in order to bring about a future different from a mere continuation of the present. Writer Michael Pollen prefaces his so-called biography of a building with his wonder at this process of turning dreams into drawings, which are turned into physical materials and so create our physical world, saying, “Architects do their work on the frontier between the ideal and the practical, translating wisps of ideas into buildable facts” (Pollan 2008, ix). Put another way, architecture stands amidst the already-present, imaging the notyet, while seeking to mold the yet-to-come.

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Unknowable, Uncontrollable Yet those imagined futures can mislead architects who believe them inevitable. If problems describe the difference between what is and what ought to be, and dreams speculate on the difference between what is and what could be, an honest consideration of the future starkly confronts the impossibility of knowing the difference between what is and what will be. Although the future embraces both an indefinite period to come and an event expected to occur then, ultimately absence defines the future—a time literally not yet present and characterized by lack of knowledge and therefore lack of certainty. More than merely unknown, the future is unknowable, and no amount of intelligence or inquiry can illuminate it. Furthermore, and as a direct consequence, no present action can confidently ensure an expected future outcome. Facing the unknown, humans seek to fill their ignorance with predictions based on past events, models based on present behavior, and scenarios based on potential possibilities. Faced with uncertain outcomes, humans choose present actions across a gamut from attempting to lock-in the future by controlling as much as possible on one extreme, to leaving the present unfinished and open-ended for future definition on the other. These general approaches, of course, manifest in architecture, the former elaborated in Part II and Chapter 8 Anticipatory, the later in this part and Chapter 11 Indeterminate. Yet while the future is unknowable, and uncertain—which makes choosing the right action difficult—that same lack of certainty means the future is nascent and indeterminate: making action possible. Offered the possibility of action, humans continue to envisage alternatives for the relentlessly unfolding future.

The History of the Future Persistent architecture, even more than other architecture, grapples with the aesthetic, cultural, and philosophical challenge of designing for an unknowable and uncontrollable future. Looking to the past offers examples of the times and places architecture embraced or turned away from alternative futures: from the optimistic predictions of modernism to the concrete control of neobrutalism—what Pasnik, Grimley, and Kubo (2015) would call Heroic—structures. While not a comprehensive history, this section outlines previous conceptions of and alternative visions for the future in Western Architecture. From Futureless to Futurism Lack of knowledge and certainty about the future presented few problems for architecture from the classical period through the Middle Ages. The future resembled the present, which in turn resembled the past: all subject to the same daily and seasonal rhythms and manifesting God’s Plan. Such relative constancy characterized the worldview through the Middle Ages in Europe—an idea Stevens captures neatly by pointing to the medieval belief in the changelessness of the [Holy] Roman Empire, writing, “There has always been an empire, it is thought, and there always will be” (Stevens 1990, 161). Influenced by Christianity, any idea about future times

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to come implied the eschatological day of judgment, rather than a plan for building an alternative vision of the future. In this context, long-lasting buildings—primarily churches, monasteries, and to a lesser degree, palaces and fortifications—were essentially permanent. To the extent such buildings expressed an attitude about time, they embodied the hierarchical ordering of the universe such that each element and entity corresponded with the others in patterns consistent with the divine will: closed, finite, and eternal. Architecture existed within the boundaries of established orders, styles, and schools, which grew and evolved in response to technical, religious, and political pressures, not denying the existence of the future, but never suggesting multiple alternative versions or human agency in shaping it. Similarly, vernacular buildings drew on generations of situated experience provided near certainty of success in a world in which change was inconceivable, and alternative futures non-existent. Prior to the scientific revolution, these empirical approaches offered the best hope for both the aesthetic and technical success of each individual project even while preserving a historically minded tradition (Cowan 1977). Beginning in the early fifteenth century, Italian scholars rediscovered the achievements of the ancient world lost in Western Europe but preserved in Byzantine and Islamic worlds, in the process revealing the decline of the supposedly unchanging Roman Empire. It took the better part of a century, a period of critical inquiry now known as the Renaissance, to revive the classical heritage. By revealing the possibility of change, the Renaissance created the possibility of progress, as Stevens summarizes, “The moderns believe that the world has progressed since ancient times. Their descendants triumphantly made the next leap: We can progress to future times” (1990, 248; italics in the original). These intellectual descendants launched a period of sustained intellectual inquiry and an explosion of knowledge. A product of the Renaissance, Thomas More in 1516, published his description of a fictional society on an island off the coast of South America, coining the term Utopia, from the Greek for “no place.” While building on the model of Plato’s Republic, and generally understood today as a commentary or satire rather than a proposal, Utopia not only prompted others to create and share their own descriptions of rationally organized societies, it gave these proposals its name. More himself observed the similarity between the word he chose, utopia, and the similar eutopia, meaning a good place, yet usage over time shifted the meaning so that utopia came to describe an ideal community, and perhaps a desirable one. The Enlightenment’s success in applying scientific methods to analyze and explain the natural world quickly spread to other areas of human endeavor. The rational application of science to human problems promised not merely to understand but to shape the world, shining the light of reason into the darkness of ignorance and uncertainty about the future. This possibility quickly became normative: if design founded on abstract and rational principles could bring about a new and better world, it therefore should. Western architecture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century witnessed a succession of movements attempting to break from the past to make buildings of their time, all part of a broader cultural

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Figure III.1 Woodblock print illustration of Utopia from the first edition (1516) of Thomas More’s book. Image is faithful reproduction of a public domain work (the author died in 1535). Image held by Bibliothèque Mazarine, France.

movement now identified as modernism. Embracing the promise of technology, ascendance of scientific rationalism, dramatic social changes, and utopian ideals of the time, modernist architects sought new formal and spatial paradigms to shape a new and different future. Kenneth Frampton identifies this strain of utopianism as the first of two main threads in architectural discourse since the enlightenment. He describes the second as its opposite, calling “that anti-Classical, antirational and anti-utilitarian attitude of Christian reform first declared in Pugin’s Contrasts of 1836” (1992, 9). The movement demanded new aesthetic expression for the social and political agenda, embracing abstract forms, stripped of historical ornament, and employing new construction technologies and industrial materials. Perhaps the most rhapsodic modernist rhetoric emerged in Italy in the early nineteenth century. The self-identified Futurists projected new forms of art, architecture, politics attuned with their understanding of modern life, an understanding based on movement, and above all on speed (Giedion 1967, 444). Their militant rhetoric glorified the destruction of culture and the triumph of industrialization (Frampton 1992, 88). For the built environment, Architect Antonio Sant’Elia’s Città Nuova drawings depict the formal implications of a city organized by, for, and around speed: with

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Figure III.2 An example of Futurist design, ink and pastel drawing by Antonio Sant’Elia titled Stazione d’aeroplani e treni con funicolari e ascensori su tre piani stradali (Air and train station with funicular cableways on three road levels) part of the La Città Nuova series (1914). Image is faithful reproduction of a public domain work (the author died in 1916).

separate linear paths for people automobiles, trains, and aircraft. Beyond merely accommodating motion or the formal expression of speed, the futurists argued for architecture based on mobility and change: lightweight and unburdened by the weight of the past (Giedion 1967, 447). Sant’Elia, and others of his generation died in World War I, though many of the arguments were later adopted by Russian Constructivism, and less directly, Italian rationalism (Frampton 2015, 85). Limits of Rational Planning Beginning in the middle of the twentieth century, even as the modernist project reached its post-war apotheosis, evidence mounted for the limits of the power of rational planning in buildings and beyond. In part this may stem from a fundamental misapplication of the scientific method, which works through falsification to test theories and build models that explain reality (Popper 2002, 65–66), yet offers little by way of knowledge to create reality. For all the promise of the new relationship between buildings and time and the power of rational architecture to remake the future, the resulting architecture often simply reinforced existing political and economic structures. Although often portrayed as a ubiquitous cultural movement founded on universalist principles, Modernism was neither equally available nor equally desired. In her review of Jean-Louis Cohen’s The Future of Architecture Since 1889, Kathleen James-Chakraborty points out “Alternatives were always available, but they could be too expensive,

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as well as simply unfashionable. And not everyone wanted to imagine, much less inhabit, the future” (James-Chakraborty 2012, 611). N

Environmental Movement As time exposed the limits planning the future, increasing levels of pollution and visible destruction of species and habitats exposed as deeply flawed the belief that human reason could access limitless material and energy resources, or that the earth’s vast land, air, and water could absorb any impact. Faced with mounting evidence, a chorus exemplified by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (Carson 1962) suggested that, far from the promised eutopia, present human activities might in fact produce a future wasteland. Rather than a sign of limitless progress, the future became a source of fear, anxiety, and resignation. Further, the realization that such problems arose unforeseen and unintentionally pointed not only to moral failures of arrogance and indifference but to epistemic failures and the premise of planning itself, thus “calling into question the paradigm of scientific progress that defined postwar American culture” (Lytle 2007, 166). The environmental thread continues today, expanding beyond the future ecological harms human activity causes to natural systems, to consider the future shocks and disruptions these perturbed natural systems may cause on humans, an idea frequently described with the term resilience (Laboy and Fannon 2016, 42). The challenge to techno-utopian thinking transcends buildings, for example, Fleming (2019) traces a related arc of hubristic technocracy in Landscape Architecture. Flexibility versus Adaptability Designing for the future presents a linguistic challenge, as designers and thinkers employ the same terms to describe different, and occasionally contradictory ideas; for example, flexibility future-proof, open, adaptive, responsive, changeable, dynamic. In their thoroughgoing book about change in buildings, Schmidt and Austin (2016, 68–70) suggest a

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comprehensive taxonomy, consistent with their ongoing efforts to define the terms of the discussion (Schmidt III et al. 2010; Pinder et al. 2017). While the subject of the present work, persistent architecture, focuses more on the enduring than the changeable, it seems every author must address at least the more commonly used terms. A conversation with Architect Randall Heeb from Opsis, usefully distinguished accommodations constrained by anticipated needs—which he dubs flexibility—from longer-term affordances that gracefully enable the unexpected—which he calls adaptability. While “flexible” building elements can move, demount, or adjust in the future, they do so within a limited range constrained by the present conceptions of potential future requirements. On the other hand, adaptable elements, by not specifying the probable future, allow many more possible alternative futures. Heeb does not use these terms neutrally, saying “we think that frequently there’s too much emphasis on flexibility, and not enough on adaptability” (2017). Confusingly, others use the same words with different meanings, or different words and the same intent. For example, Fred Tepfer, a campus planner at the University of Oregon noted in an interview “When I talk about flexibility it’s not things like demountable wall systems, just being very smart about how MEP systems are distributed. Where structure is and isn’t” (2018), a description Heeb would likely classify as adaptable. Finally, it is important to point out the value judgments implicit in all these terms. To make this point Garth Rockcastle of MSR questions the virtue of attempting to prepare for all possibilities—what he memorably described as “an architecture that anticipates its widest and most expansive flexible future repurposing” (2017). Future Anterior The phrase future anterior—also the name of a journal of historic preservation—references the grammatical tense and describes a sense of time concerned with both what has already occurred, and what is yet to happen. Aron Vinegar, using the term to write about Viollet-le-duc, points out the complexity, noting “We must be careful not to overstress the anticipatory aspects of the future anterior. If we do, “the what will have arrived” disintegrates into the much less interesting simple future, ‘it will arrive,’ and the simple past, ‘it has arrived.’” (Vinegar 2006, 62). Stefano Corbo writes, …it is no longer possible to look at history according to processes of clock time, stable and linear. Spaces we inhabit become a direct response to a wider condition that deals with unstable configurations, patterns of self-organization, and morphogenetic fields. Consequently, space can be understood as adopting unpredictable processes of generation and use that oblige people to constantly adapt to change. (Corbo 2018, 190) Vinegar, eager to rehabilitate Viollet-le-duc from his reputation as a structural rationalist whose notion of “preservation” consists of creating a perfect vision at a specific point in time, ascribes to him a complex notion of time, writing “In an age of rampant historicism, Viollet-le-Duc was not content to provide an account of architecture that was simply “in” history or

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time…but rather one that opened up a time and history for architecture to come” (2006, 56). Whether exemplified by Viollet-le-Duc or not, this idea of time as implicated, a complex, in-woven mesh rather than a sequence of movements and periods challenges the linear anticipation of the future. In an echo of the futurist’s obsession with speed, modern technology and even violence, Sanford Kwinter offered an extended analogy comparing Rem Koolhaas with fighter pilot Chuck Yeager and architecture with aerial combat. Arguing for a four-dimensional integration of space and time, Kwinter suggests that Koolhaas supports dynamic architecture that rejects stable and eternal solutions in favor of temporary resolutions of conflicting flows, saying “His solutions have half-lives, they are temporally and historically determined, they move with the stream of the world and so build in flexibility and allow for immense programmatic turnover” (Kwinter 1996, 81). Like the Futurist antecedents, Kwinter collapses notions of time and space, describing an architecture of infinite alteration and future change.

Attributes of the Future In their seminal paper, Horst Rittel and Martin Webber (1973) decry what they characterize as misplaced efforts to apply rational principles from science and engineering to the realms of planning and people: a class of problems they famously dub “inherently wicked,” by which they, of course, do not mean evil, but rather ill-defined, open-ended, requiring judgment, subject to contingent resolutions but never closed solutions, problems, in short much like the future. The focus on the nature of problems, rather than solutions, reflects Rittel and Webber’s growing concern that the planning professions (including architecture) should focus rather more on the objectives than methods of inquiry: not merely doing things right, but doing the right things (1973, 156–57). The following sections outline some possible attributes of the potentially wicked alternative futures in which persistent buildings might exist. Unforeseen Europe after World War II combined the urgent need to quickly house the population with the ardent desire to forge a new and modern world out of the ashes and destruction. Working on housing in the Netherlands, Architect John Habraken recognized the tension between the rational desire to account for inevitable future change, and the fundamental futility of such an effort, which necessarily reduces the ability to adapt to unforeseen circumstances. Habraken noted the tendency to deal with future uncertainty through increased knowledge control, saying “Mass housing attempts to grapple with the unknown by carefully calculating future trends. Such a strategy is essential for its operation, but sooner or later it will have to be revised when confronted with the unforeseen” (Habraken 1972, 42). Habraken argues that a design process based on predicting the future has only two possible responses when confronted with new information. On the one hand, it may begin again creating a new plan that incorporates the hitherto unknown but now recently discovered—resigning itself to an endless

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cycle of from-scratch revisions. Alternatively, it must resign itself to endless, ad-hoc piecemeal revisions. Habraken chooses a military metaphor, comparing the design of mass housing to a marshal organizing a military parade, in which any unforeseen circumstance catastrophically disrupts the perfectly prepared evolutions of well-ordered ranks of soldiers. Yet, Habraken does not oppose planning for the future, nor doing so with some exactitude; he objects to forms of planning that restrict possibilities, rather than affording them, that disable rather than enable the future, saying “We should not try to forecast what will happen, but try to make provision for cannot be foreseen” (Habraken 1972, 42). Unbounded Similarly, in Britain, economic conditions, population growth, reconstruction after war damage, and advances in medical care and treatment prompted something of a hospital building boom following World War II. However, as early as the 1960s, even relatively new hospitals struggled to adapt to rapid changes in medical knowledge, standards of care, and bureaucratic organization. In his studies of hospital design and planning, Architect John Weeks carefully differentiates change from growth, terms he uses to distinguish between planning for internal adaptability of use versus systemic increases in capacity. Even in the 1960s, Weeks believed that architects generally accommodated internal change using well-understood planning principles, approaches that offered “a high-degree of flexibility, without altering the building physically” (Weeks 1965, 198). However, he found less success in the areas of growth, and proposed the notion of “indeterminate” design, suggesting that the building, like a plant, might continue to grow indefinitely, saying “This design, then, will not be a finite precise and perfected design but one which is forever unfinished—a design for an indeterminate hospital” (1965, 200). Inefficient Building on this argument, Weeks decried the mistaken assumption that the application of sufficient time and expertise to problems, can result in “perfect” answers. Perfection, Weeks argues, is not merely elusive, but illusory, pointing to the example of the small but meaningless variation in room size across various hospitals yielding no difference in function, and marginal difference in efficiency (Weeks 1965, 201). Indeed, clothed in the power of rationalism, borrowing methods from applied science, and renamed as “optimization,” perfection promises a singular “efficient” solution to the problem, and removes all doubt. Not unique to architecture, Rittel and Webber also point to an ethos of rational perfectibility shared among many professions, who believe they “can deliberately shape future outcomes to accord with our wishes—and that there will be no future history” (1973, 158). John B. Jackson, surveying the American Landscape from his own position of expertise, ponders the relative weight of expertise and individual freedom in controlling the future, observing “it is very difficult for us to suppose that an optimum environment can not [sic] or should not be created by the expert” (Jackson 1986, 8).

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Unfinished Perfection and optimization assume a moment of static completeness when building ceases to change. Yet buildings evolve, if not continuously then fitfully; Stewart Brand aphorized that “a building is not something you finish. A building is something you start” (1995, 188). Weeks too understood the building-as-process, rather than building-as-object, calling for “A breakdown of our traditional concept of a work of architecture as a determinable and finite object” (Weeks 1965, 197) The ongoing transformations take place coincident in both time and space with the occupancy of the building and the changing context, leading De Carlo to challenge traditional power structures and call for new structures of participatory design, saying “…all barriers between builders and users must be abolished, so that building and using become two different parts of the same planning process” (De Carlo 2005, 13). Every building— by intention or accident—contains and lives out a series of alternative futures, each shaped by the realization of earlier decisions into physical form. The extent to which those prior decisions constrain the present distinguishes anticipation as discussed in Chapter 8 Anticipatory and indeterminacy discussed in Chapter 11 Indeterminate. Unassuming Alternative futures have aesthetic consequences. In his close reading of Ruskin, Lars Spuybroek argues for a twenty-first-century aesthetics based on the idea of sympathy more akin to the romantic tradition than the modern. He admiringly describes Ruskin’s aesthetics based on looseness, imperfections, and fragility as the Radical Picturesque, calling it “the art of things that are under way…the art of the object being overwhelmed by time” (Spuybroek 2020, 158). The right response to the vicissitudes of time may not require greater strength to stand firm against tide and time, but greater affection for the fragile, the inprogress, and the changeable, simply because they are so. Reflecting on his practice, Peter Zumthor contemplates the life of his building— and the lives of those who use it—as extending beyond his own, writing, The idea of things that have nothing to do with me as an architect taking their place in a building, their rightful place—it’s a thought that gives me an insight into the future of my buildings: a future that happens without me. That does me a lot of good. (Zumthor 2006, 39) One might almost describe this thought as a form of nostalgia for a future that has not yet happened. Critically, he sees the focus on the life of the building beyond him as doing him good, inculcating a self-effacing humility. Unconstrained Architecture translates the ideal of an imagined future and realizes it in the present, taking on the cultural and practical burden of creating and then enforcing that future by transforming physical material and space. Designers and clients imagine buildings as establishing permanent reality: carved in stone, cast in concrete, wrought in steel, hewn into the very

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earth. Not content to create the future, these buildings intend to constrain it, and by extension the occupants. As Brand writes “A big, physical building seems a perfect way to bind the course of future events” (1995, 181). Of course, this effort inevitably fails, no matter how thoroughly planned, the future never cooperates. David Nelson, Head of Design at Foster + Partners, captures the difficulty well, commenting in an interview that “the trouble with the future is it never does what you think is going to do, and always does something else” (2019). In the face of this sort of perversity, Stewart Brand suggests buffering with multiple scenarios as discussed in Part II, a fine strategy to address future uncertainty, but hopeless if the failure lies not in the imperfect forecasting but the domineering desire to restrict rather than enable future change. While Louis Kahn famously distinguished between servant and served spaces based on the human use, Habraken, classified building systems into levels (support and infill) based on who controls them. Thinking similarly about agency and compulsion, Weeks, chose to distinguish between causes and consequences, saying “The directions of the internal street system define the future form of the hospital, they are not the result of it,” (Weeks 1965, 200), clearly attending to the constraints imposed by design decisions. Even designs that recognize future adaptation may seek to limit the extent and nature of changes based on present conceptions of the future. Randall Heeb of Opsis Architects recalls discovering moveable partitions that never moved over decades of use, noting designers “think they know that something is going to happen, and it doesn’t” (2017). Rosenberg critiques traditional approaches to architecture for assuming specific present and predictable future conditions necessarily imply a unique architectural solution. Instead, Rosenberg suggests two broad design considerations to afford the future greater agency, saying “…Designing the Range refers to transformable buildings able to offer a variety of states, Enabling the Choice refers to the users’ selection of states, within the range” (Rosenberg 2009, 19). Persistence not Permanence Taken together, these attributes of alternative futures suggest the distinction between persistence and permanence lies mainly in the balance between potential and actual building. While architecture cannot ensure future uses, it can lower barriers to avoid precluding them; though it cannot know the stresses of the future, it can offer the affordance of quality and durability; though it cannot foresee future changes, persistent architecture remains open to potential alternatives.

Overview of Chapters in This Part In the film developed based on their answers to questions about design posed by curator Madame L’Amic, the Eameses explain their philosophy of design based on purpose. Considering the ephemerality of design, Charles Eames notes that needs might be ephemeral, adding, “Those needs and designs that have a more universal quality, tend toward relative permanence” (1972). The notion of relative permanence, and the importance of universal quality underlie the chapters in this final portion of this book,

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each of which identifies an attribute of buildings that persists even in the face of the alternative futures described above. Where Durable focused on the persistence of physical things, the chapter Memorable describes the role of physical objects like buildings in preserving ephemeral experiences and culture. It postulates a reciprocal power in which physical buildings beguile humans and their memories into preserving them. The chapter Evolving examines the evolution of buildings after they are occupied, and how design processes change to consider the next generation of architects and users that inherit buildings. The case studies in this chapter, including Quinta Monroy by Alejandro Aravena, Super Lofts by Marc Koehler, and San Marino World Trade Center by Foster+Partners, illustrate architecture designed to persist and evolve attuned to the universal and the ever-changing among generations. The chapter Indeterminate confronts the uncomfortable arrogance of imposing a present design solution onto unknown and unknowable future needs or future conditions. By tracing practices and projects that embrace constant evolutionary change and the possibility of infinite future solutions, this chapter argues that avoiding precisely defined end results enhances the possibility of persistence. Finally, the chapter Timeless argues that architecture of memory can escape the order of linear time into a time without measurable duration. Toyo Ito’s Tama Art University Library serves as an example of trans-temporal architecture that fuses the past, present, and future.

References Brand, Stewart. 1995. How Buildings Learn: What Happens after They’re Built. Reprint edition. New York: Penguin Books. Carson, Rachel. 1962. Silent Spring. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company. Corbo, Stefano. 2018. “Air Design, Meteorological Architecture, and Atmospheric Preservation: Towards a Theory of Feeling.” Arq: Architectural Research Quarterly 22 (3): 188–93. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1359135518000490. Cowan, Henry J. 1977. The Master-Builders: A History of Structural and Environmental Design from Ancient Egypt to the Nineteenth Century, 1st Edition. New York: John Wiley & Sons. De Carlo, Giancarlo. 2005. “Architecture’s Public.” In Architecture and Participation, edited by Peter Blundell Jones, Doina Petrescu, and Jeremy Till: 3–22. London and New York: Spon Press. Eames Office. 1972. Design Q&A. https://www.eamesoffice.com/the-work/ design-q-a/. Evans, Robin. 1997. Translations from Drawing to Building. AA Documents 2. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Fleming, Billy. 2019. “Design and the Green New Deal.” Places Journal, April. https://doi.org/10.22269/190416. Frampton, Kenneth. 1992. Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 3rd Edition, rev.enl. World of Art. New York: Thames and Hudson. ———. 2015. A Genealogy of Modern Architecture: Comparative Critical Analysis of Built Form. Edited by Ashley Simone. Zürich: LARS MULLER. Giedion, Sigfried. 1967. Space, Time and Architecture; the Growth of a New Tradition, 5th Edition, rev.enl. Charles Eliot Norton Lectures 1938. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Habraken, N.J. 1972. Supports: An Alternative to Mass Housing. New York: Praeger Publishers.

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Heeb, Randal. 2017. Associate Principal, Opsis Interview by David Fannon. Portland, OR. Herdeg, Klaus. 1983. The Decorated Diagram: Harvard Architecture and the Failure of the Bauhaus Legacy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Jackson, John B. 1986. “A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time.” Oz 8 (1): 6–9. https:// doi.org/10.4148/2378-5853.1111. James-Chakraborty, Kathleen. 2012. “The Future of Architecture. Since 1889.” The Journal of Architecture 17 (4): 609–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/13602365. 2012.709030. Knowles, Ralph. 1992. “For Those Who Spend Time in a Place [Light in Place].” Places Journal 8 (2): 42–43. Kwinter, Sanford. 1996. “Flying the Bullet, or When Did the Future Begin?” In Rem Koolhaas: Conversations with Students, edited by Sanford Kwinter. Houson, TX and New York. Rice University School of Architecture and Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. Laboy, Michelle, and David Fannon. 2016. “Resilience Theory and Praxis: A Critical Framework for Architecture.” Enquiry: A Journal for Architectural Research 13 (2). https://doi.org/10.17831/enq:arcc.v13i2.405. Lytle, Mark H. 2007. The Gentle Subversive : Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement. New York: Oxford University Press. More, Thomas. 1516. Libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus, de optimo rei publicae statu deque nova insula Utopia. Nelson, David. 2019. Senior Executive Partner and Head of Design, Foster + Partners Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Pallasmaa, Juhani. 2012. The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses, 3rd Edition. Chichester: Wiley. Pasnik, Mark, Chris Grimley, and Michael Kubo. 2015. Heroic: Concrete Architecture and the New Boston. New York: The Monacelli Press. Pinder, James A., Rob Schmidt, Simon A. Austin, Alistair Gibb, and Jim Saker. 2017. “What Is Meant by Adaptability in Buildings?” Facilities 35 (1/2): 2–20. https://doi.org/10.1108/F-07-2015-0053. Pollan, Michael. 2008. A Place of My Own: The Architecture of Daydreams. Reprint Edition. New York: Penguin Books. Popper, Karl R. 2002. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. 1935 as Logik der Forschung Julius Springer (Vienna). First English ed. 1959 Hutchinson & Co. (London). Reprint, London and New York: Routledge Classics. Rittel, Horst W.J., and Melvin M. Webber. 1973. “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning.” Policy Sciences 4 (2): 155–69. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01405730. Rockcastle, Garth. 2017. Founding Partner, MSR Design Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Rosenberg, Daniel. 2009. “Indeterminate Architecture: Scissor-Pair Transformable Structures.” Footprint 4 (6): 19–39. https://doi.org/10.7480/footprint.4.1.717. Schmidt III, Robert, Toru Eguchi, Simon Austin, and Alistair Gibb. 2010. “What Is the Meaning of Adaptability in the Building Industry?” In: Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on “Open and Sustainable Building,” 17–19. Bilbao, Spain: Labein Tecnalia, 2010. Schmidt, Robert, and Simon Austin. 2016. Adaptable Architecture: Theory and Practice. London and New York: Routledge. Spuybroek, Lars. 2020. The Sympathy of Things: Ruskin and the Ecology of Design, 2nd Edition. Place of Publication not Identified: Bloomsbury Visual Arts. Stevens, Garry. 1990. The Reasoning Architect: Mathematics and Science in Design. New York: McGraw-Hill. Tepfer, Fred. 2018. Design & Construction Manager for Academic and Research Facilities, University of Oregon Interview by David Fannon. By phone.

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Till, Jeremy. 2013. Architecture Depends. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Vinegar, Aron. 2006. “Viollet-Le-Duc and Restoration in the Future Anterior.” Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation, History,Theory, and Criticism 3 (2): 54–65. Weeks, John. 1965. “Hospitals for the 1970s.” Medical Care 3 (4): 197–203. Zumthor, Peter. 2006. Atmospheres: Architectural Environments. Surrounding Objects. Atmospheres. Basel: Birkhäuser.

9 MEMORABLE D. Fannon

More fundamental is having buildings that people care about and want to preserve in the long-term, to fight for, to defend…that means creating buildings where people want to be and want to return to, that they identify with, and develop a relationship with. —Cliff Gayley, William Rawn Associates

Chapter 2 describes physical durability as a prerequisite of persistence, and greater care in the choice of materials and construction increases the odds of physical endurance. However, no matter how durable the physical components, buildings exist only as long as humans suffer them to do so, and the odds of such preservation increase when people care about the building enough to care for it through maintenance and adaptation. This chapter proposes that persistence depends to some degree on mutual care; that people rather than buildings cause architecture to persist. At the beginning of an interview about his work preserving historic buildings, Italian Architect Maurizio de Vita takes pains to start with people, saying “The real conservation is people….people that stay in building, that take care of the building, that make maintenance [sic] of that building. ” (2019). Buildings must first persist in human memory in order to persist in the physical world. In some ways this inverts the ideas of Chapter 6, in which humane buildings care for people, by suggesting that people care for memorable buildings. At the same time buildings provide physical shelter, they also house memories of shared and individual experiences. So, just as material durability in Chapter 2 resists changes wrought by physical forces, durable memory resists changes in time, preserving a non-physical piece of the past against the forgetfulness of the changing future. Persistent buildings preserve human memories, and people preserve memorable buildings. Arguing for long-lasting buildings based solely on their future uses risks a sort of survival of the useful: buildings that continue to support necessary functions survive, and buildings get replaced when they become use-less. Taken to its Darwinian extreme, Chapter 8’s arguments for anticipating future change could promote a generic or undifferentiated architecture—ready to convert to anything—as most likely to survive. Indeed, so-called “speculative” design or development deliberately targets neither a specific person nor activity, instead embracing the ability to transform to the whims of every theoretical consumer, as

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allegedly represented by the abstraction of “the market.” While surely one approach to future change, the resulting architecture too often sacrifices the fullness of the sensory experience of place—a topic also addressed in Chapters 4 and 6—in pursuit of short-term efficiency and the superficial marketing of a commodity product (Erwine 2016). Ironically, undifferentiated space provides at best superficial adjustment, as Jennifer Yoos, principal at VJAA pointed out during an interview, “These kinds of preconceived solutions that are universal and seem to apply to everything are a kind of a false flexibility” (2018). Beyond the ethical question of whether such impoverished buildings ought to persist, the absence of humanity makes them less likely to do so—forgettable architecture destined for demolition. Memorable architecture demands some building-specific character to make a building worthy of memory, and, therefore, of preservation. Put another way, the loose fit Alex Gordon famously enjoined may afford comfort across a range of activities, contexts, and life changes, but as with clothing, too much ease and looseness are merely baggy, unflattering, and wasteful. Counterintuitively, sometimes challenging buildings, by inhibiting change, cause greater affection. Pointing to examples of concrete and masonry, Garth Rockcastle, a founding principal of MSR Design, uses the term “resistance” to describe the benefit of physical material’s stubborn opposition to change, noting resistance “propagates a kind of creativity, and reinterpretation, and a kind of playfulness that the ubiquitously flexible doesn’t.” (2017). The resistance to change ensures continuity of character or identity for memorable places, rather than the benign banality of pliant but forgettable spaces. Unloved buildings exist only as economic entities, shelters for money, but not for memory. Just as buildings do not require maximum material durability everywhere, every element of every building does not require a unique character inscribed forever on the human mind. Ron McCoy, Princeton University Architect, raises the issue of balance in a conversation about the evolution of that historical campus buildings, asking rhetorically, “how do you create enough generality that has intrinsic flexibility but also give it enough specificity that it can have the value of kind of good architecture and a good campus.” (2017). Like the place-specificity described in Chapter 4, and the evolutionary practices in Chapter 10, to persist, buildings require significance sufficient to prompt care.

Building Memory As long-lasting—or Durable—cultural artifacts, buildings ground human memory by anchoring it to a particular place. Dolores Hayden notes the power of this place-memory, writing, “Place memory is a stabilizing persistence of place as a container of memorability… We might even say that memory is naturally place-oriented or at least place-supported” (1995, 46). By lending ephemeral experiences an anchor of physical association, persistent architecture may serve as both a physical repository for and expression of memory. So powerful are place memory and spatial awareness that a remembered or even imagined building may serve as a mnemonic device to enhance recall of unrelated information.

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Classical rhetoricians describe “placing” memories in specific locations of a building and then moving through that space to recall them, a technique known as the method of loci, or memory palace, and still widely used today. Conscious of its power, John Ruskin selected “Memory” as the sixth of his seven lamps of architecture, writing about architecture’s stability compared to humans, calling it as “a watchful observer and steady contrast to the vagaries of human affairs” (2001, 243). Such a building may celebrate or memorialize, it may teach or admonish, and it might occasionally nag. Stevens describes churches of the middle-ages as explicitly didactic, saying “their windows and carving tell the stories of the church to those who cannot read” (1990, 129). In all events, by their continued existence buildings forestall forgetting, testifying about the lives and times of the people who built them, and passing along a cultural legacy to subsequent generations. Part I discusses persistent buildings’ role in the cultural value of place, valuable as a witness to history, or as exemplars of it. A conversation with architects Tod Williams Billie Tsien about their work began—like all interviews—by asking what makes any building worth keeping. Tsien responded quickly with a question of her own, asking simply, “Why are memories worth having?” immediately establishing a degree of equivalence (2018). She continues, explaining that while not all buildings are worth keeping, the layering of buildings over time adds character to a place, concluding “there are always some buildings that are worth keeping even as you start to add new or make changes ” Even modest buildings, not memorable for themselves, can contribute to the cultural value of places, for example, the office for Opsis Architecture occupies an adaptive reuse of the former stables associated with a hardware store in Portland, Oregon. Neither a landmark building nor particularly notable before the renovation, the firm determined to keep the structure because it contributes to the fabric of the neighborhood. Just as place-memory may reside in collections of buildings, buildings collect and store shared social memories. In conversation, Jason Forney, a Principal at Bruner/Cott, paints a vivid picture of a century-long entanglement between the community of north Adams and the building which now houses MassMoCA as deeply woven into the community, noting  

Sean Zaudke, an Associate Principal at Gould Evans, expressed similar sentiments about architecture that invites and then reflects community investment, “this may be sort of a vain architect, but I believe that when you do it well the community gets invested in it. And then they buy into it and there’s a sense of community pride that can lead to…continued investment.” (2019). More than merely reinforcing or reflecting the community, buildings become a totem and an artifact around which to

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Figure 9.1 Corning Museum of Glass Contemporary Art + Design Wing showcasing the unique shape of the old ventilator building that now houses the amphitheater for glassblowing demonstrations. Thomas Phifer and Partners (Corning, New York) 2015. Photograph by Iwan Baan.

forge a group identity. Architect Ann Beha, founder of the eponymous firm, describes the “emotion and loyalty that people have to a building as an identifier for its institution” (2017). As part of a new wing at the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, NY, Thomas Phifer and Partners designed an amphitheater inside the ventilation building from the closed Steuben Glass factory. The iconic form of the building roof derives from its original purpose of exhausting the extreme heat produced by continuously operating glass furnaces. In an interview, Katie Bennet, a principal in the office, points to the ventilator as embodying history and identity for the community, saying “It resonated with the people in the town…they wanted to stake a claim on that as part of their history. They didn’t want to erase it. They wanted to celebrate it” (2018). Beyond preserving the symbol of glass manufacturing on the site, the building’s present use as a theater for glassblowing demonstrations continues and reinterprets the traditions of the past and propels the building forward into the future. Museums and libraries present something of a twofold cultural memory, existing to house collections of history and knowledge while themselves becoming vessels of place memory. A renovation and addition designed by William Rawn Associates and Ann Beha Architects for the Public Library in Cambridge, MA negotiated these conditions by carefully balancing

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demolition, restoration, and addition. The design removed a dark and unloved earlier addition, which cut off part of the community from their library, allowing restoration to the original beloved nineteenth-century core. Finally, a new, light-filled wing meets current needs and established connections to the surrounding environment. The bonds of shared memory not only anchor people to buildings but they also tie buildings to people. During an interview in BNIM’s Kansas City offices, Associate Principal Jeremy Knoll recounted his experience of shared memory working in New Orleans, LA after Hurricane Katrina, recalling his initial belief that the community would wish to rebuild buildings with historical events and heritage. Instead, he found that strong community memories associated with prosaic buildings animated their repair and reconstruction, recalling “it’s not necessarily tied to historic value, but it’s the use and cultural connection to a place that I think is fundamental” (2019). Such is the power of memory that even buildings destroyed by floods may persist: first in memory and then recreated in fact.

Stained by Time Though long-lived compared to humans, persistent architecture is not perpetual. Ruskin—a tireless advocate of preservation—does not see architecture as changeless, writing that the value of age comes from changes wrought and recorded in the fabric of the building. In fact, Ruskin describes the glory of an old building, and its value and life, as residing in the effect of people and occupancy, a mark he describes as “that golden stain of time” (2001, 244). The golden stain—what one might call history— is not simply the accretion of events or a mass of collected but individual experiences and recollections. Building on Tsien’s question about the value of memories, Tod Williams asks, “I would say ‘is history worth keeping?’ Actually, it is critical that we are working in the present, and using all our resources in the present, but respecting that it all connects to history” (2018). The invocation of history here situates the building in time, and people in relation to it. If history is an attempt to make meaning out of the past and explain the present, then buildings—as emissaries from the past that continue to exist in the future—enjoy a special place as a thing worthy of care in part because others have cared for it. Often the material, spatial, and historical dimensions are caught up together, especially in the restoration or adaptive reuse of old buildings, even buildings that were, in their day, quite utilitarian structures like mills, warehouses, and factories. The folks at Bruner/Cott note that the public often feels a stronger emotional connection to massive, old materials like brick and iron compared to modern materials like EFIS, especially when the adaptive reuse allows people to experience the old in new and unexpected ways, or perhaps to have modern spatial experiences but with historical materials. Jason Forney explains, “By removing two floors and creating a three-story tall gallery, you’re making dramatic space that people can fall in love with” (2017). It seems fitting that the architecture of memory is, in some ways, the architecture of removal as much as retention, an editing process Larry Smallwood of MassMoCA

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described in an interview as “removing the right things.” He continues describing the process in the renovations of MassMoCA, saying The careful and thoughtful removal of a floor here or there, or replacing a post line with a truss has really made our grandest architectural moments, not by cluttering it up with trying to execute a new idea, but sort of taking things away to illustrate an idea. (Smallwood 2018) This careful curating of the architecture echoes the approach to the collection and the process of curating past events into a legible history. David Nelson, Head of Design at Foster + Partners, adopts a less poetic but equally vivid medical analogy, describing “a whole delicate game of surgery” to modify historic buildings, and noting that “you want to keep the essence of the spirit of what the building was originally about, but also to be very clear about the new uses that will be inside it” (2019). To state a difficult problem simply, persistent architecture entails keeping the right old stuff, and adding the right new stuff. In some cases, the unresolved contrast between old and new reveals the character and motivates people to keep a building. Sitting in the firm’s office in Portland, Randall Heeb points out that the traces of the past might inspire affection, noting, We frequently get in to buildings that have awkward moments because you have adapted them, but people also tend to love that, because it is the history of the building and you get that sense of how something might’ve been used in the past and that give meaning and value to the space. (Heeb 2017) That such affection can overcome the pure logic of inconvenience or inefficiency again speaks to the power of memory. Pointing to the kingpost trusses overhead—made by cutting columns a few feet below the roof beams and connecting the dangling stubs back to the beam with diagonal tension members—Heeb notes the structural solution creates more open space for the office than the former hayloft. He also notes that the trusses predate the office renovation, so some prior occupants wanted a more open space too, a quirky reminder that the building lived multiple lives even before this conversion. Some buildings are valued simply because they are old, with the sense that simply by lasting, by resisting the ephemeral and the transient, architecture forges an emotional connection with the people that ultimately preserve them. Listing on a historical register formalizes or memorializes these buildings as worthy of memory. During a personal conversation about the role of landmark status on now historical modernist buildings, Professor Michael Grogan observes the irony in the fact that the threshold of 50 years for formal landmark recognition sometimes prompts a rush of changes and even demolition of historic buildings just before that age. (2019). Michael Green, Principal of MGA,

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describes a similar form of selective memory, and makes an explicit connection to changing taste, saying during an interview Every generation looks back 40 years and says, ‘That’s ugly.’ But then ten years later looks back at that same building and goes, ‘Oh, it’s charming. It’s part of that time.’ So, it’s overcoming that moment of the 40-year-old building…if you can just overcome it then that building survives and becomes something that people value. (Green 2019) The arrival of so-called brutalist—or heroic—buildings at these thresholds presents a new test for this theory of time-sensitive memory and the pattern of mutual care (Pasnik, Grimley, and Kubo 2015).

Beguiling and Beloved Persistent buildings seduce people into loving them. Certainly, people preserve functional buildings, but even use may be more than purely transactional, as Artist and Architect Mac Ball commented in an interview, “[if] it’s not going to be useful; it’s not going to be loved. Therefore, it will not have another life” (2018). Jeremy Knoll, an Associate Principal at BNIM, more directly connects long-lasting buildings with affection, saying “It’s about making places that people can be in love with and will therefore maintain and sustain over time” (2019). Sitting in his campus office discussing his book Obsolescence—which in part questions the value of longevity—historian Daniel Abramson observes that people striving for long-lasting buildings frequently turn to affection, joking “I suppose someone would say ‘just make it really beautiful’ so that people will love it” (Abramson 2018). The joke is revealing; on the one hand, it is difficult to imagine a building enduring without ongoing human care and investment, but on the other, designing a loveable building seems somewhat silly. Jason Forney from Bruner/Cott neatly captures that ambivalence when he notes “It’s a little clichéd but, a building that people love, they’re going to try to…they are going to want to keep it” (2017). His colleague Christopher Nielson builds on this, pointing to the Living Building Challenge which mandates beauty as an imperative for sustainability, as he says requiring to “ design a building that people will love and take of care of so that it lives on. ” (2017). In a separate conversation, Larry Smallwood approaches the connection from the other direction, of buildings affording people an emotional entry, saying about MassMoCA, “But we’d be in a lot of trouble if they didn’t love the building. You know what I mean? If there weren’t all these people who had a way in, that have an emotional way into the place.” (2018). To become beloved, one might say buildings must be loveable. In his lecture, now a book, Atmospheres, Peter Zumthor writes about the importance of an emotional connection, of buildings and the built environment becoming part of people’s lives, touching them, framing

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memories, and prompting recollections. He means this not in the sense that the building becomes famous, or the architect widely known, but that the building embodies a human memory, seducing occupants into the experience, rather than compelling them. Perhaps recognizing the romantic and almost confessional nature of this thought, Zumthor says “Perhaps—and I suppose I’d better admit this – perhaps it has something to do with love” (Zumthor 2006, 65). The turn of phrase may signal a deep truth coupled with mild embarrassment at an emotional rather than rational approach to architecture, and discomfort with the attendant vulnerability; for loving buildings means admitting the possibility of being moved by them, and the vulnerability to that experience. Reflecting during an interview about the long-lasting buildings witnessed over his career as a planner at the University of Oregon campus, Fred Tepfer unabashedly embraces the emotional experience compared to the technical attributes, saying, Last, and by no means least was the importance of humanistic and experiential qualities…creating spaces that people found attractive that made people want to come to work every day and study every day was at least as important as everything else. (Tepfer 2018) Tepfer returns to this point repeatedly throughout the conversation, including an economic perspective, saying “every time we invested in buildings people loved, it always paid back.” He shared specific examples of building elements that shape human experience, namely “Daylighting, views, operable windows, rational circulation systems,” that produce a kind of mutual infatuation between buildings and occupants. Through these elements, the material form of architecture reaches fully for the non-physical intangible: not use but poetry, spirit, and memory. Tepfer concludes by adding that, “lovability of buildings was essential, and beauty was important.” A humane building might care for its occupants, perhaps prompting them to care to for it in return; a beloved building persists because occupants cannot help but cherish it.

References Abramson, Daniel. 2018. Professor of Architectural History, Boston University Interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn. Boston, MA. Ball, Mac. 2018. Principal Architect, Waggonner & Ball Architecture / Environment Interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy. By phone. Beha, Ann. 2017. Founding Partner, Ann Beha Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. Boston, MA. Bennet, Katie. 2018. Director, Thomas Phifer and Partners Interview by Michelle Laboy and David Fannon. New York. De Vita, Maurizio. 2019. Founding Partner, De Vita & Schulze Architetti & Professor of Architecture, Università degli Studi di Firenze Interview by Peter Wiederspahn. Florence. Erwine, Barbara. 2016. Creating Sensory Spaces: The Architecture of the Invisible. 1st Edition New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315688282.

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Forney, Jason. 2017. Principal, Bruner/Cott Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. Cambridge, MA. Green, Michael. 2019. Founding Principal, Michael Green Architecture Interview by Peter Wiederspahn. Vancouver. Grogan, Michael. 2019. Assistant Professor of Architecture, Kansas State University Interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn. Manhattan, KS. Hayden, Dolores. 1995. The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Heeb, Randal. 2017. Associate Principal, Opsis Interview by David Fannon. Portland, OR. Knoll, Jeremy. 2019. Project Manager, BNIM Interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn. Kansas City, MO. McCoy, Ronald. 2017. University Architect, Princeton University Interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy. By phone. Nelson, David. 2019. Senior Executive Partner and Head of Design, Foster + Partners Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Nielson, Christopher. 2017. Architect, Bruner/Cott Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. Cambridge, MA. Pasnik, Mark, Chris Grimley, and Michael Kubo. 2015. Heroic: Concrete Architecture and the New Boston. New York: The Monacelli Press. Rockcastle, Garth. 2017. Founding Partner, MSR Design Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Ruskin, John. 2001. The Seven Lamps of Architecture. Transcribed from 1988 Edition. London: Electric Book Co. Smallwood, Larry. 2018. Deputy Director, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Stevens, Garry. 1990. The Reasoning Architect: Mathematics and Science in Design. New York: McGraw-Hill. Tepfer, Fred. 2018. Design & Construction Manager for Academic and Research Facilities, University of Oregon Interview by David Fannon. By phone. Tsien, Billie. 2018. Founding Partner, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Williams, Tod. 2018. Founding Partner, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Yoos, Jennifer. 2018. Principal and COO, VJAA Interview by David Fannon. Minneapolis, MN. Zaudke, Sean. 2019. Associate Principal, Gould Evans Interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn. Lee’s Summit, MO. Zumthor, Peter. 2006. Atmospheres: Architectural Environments. Surrounding Objects. Atmospheres. Basel: Birkhäuser.

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We have been very interested in how this generation imprints an existing building, but still safeguards that another generation can continue to reconsider it. —Ann Beha, Ann Beha Architects

A Life of Its Own The evolution of a building only starts after construction is completed. Evolution in architecture—the process of adaptation to new social and environmental realities—is primarily a human-driven process. Every building will undergo modification by a new generation of occupants. Experiencing the evolution of a building, seeing its details and configurations changed after construction, can bring about the recognition that the building’s reality will almost immediately depart from the future the architect imagined. Rafael Moneo shared the powerful implications of this realization: The building itself stands alone, in complete solitude—no more polemical statements, no more troubles, it has acquired its definitive condition and will remain alone forever, master of itself. I like to see the building assume its proper condition, living its own life. Therefore, I do not believe architecture is just the superstructure that we introduce when we talk about buildings. I prefer to think that architecture is the air we breathe when buildings have arrived at their radical solitude… when architects realize that a building masters its own life, their approach is different; it changes radically. Our personal concerns become secondary and the final reality of the building becomes the authentic aim of our work. —Jose Rafael Moneo (Moneo 2004, 615). This quote by Spanish architect José Rafael Moneo, delivered when accepting the position of chair at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1985, challenged architectural education to engage with the realities of construction and social context. According to Moneo architecture students always start with that intention yet they “often take a wrong path and become prophets of utopian dreams” (609). That is in part because architects, and humanity more generally, are naturally motivated by a sense that this generation can and should do better than the last. Better design tools, better technology, better education— architects believe—will finally empower them to solve the wicked problems of the world through buildings alone.

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This utopian attitude at times exploits the profession’s connection to power, to break with the past and lose connection with the generations that were and continue to be builders and custodians of the built environment. At moments in history, architects and planners used the power of the bureaucracy in the name of Public Health to deem entire neighborhoods of the city obsolete or blighted. Driven by a positivist, elitist, and socially or racially biased view that something wasn’t working about them, professionals acted like only they knew what was best for people, uncritically assigning problematic categories of unsound building to the homes of generations of families (D. M. Abramson 2016, 54) because they believed their generation would provide better buildings. The irony of this professional arrogance was exemplified by the redevelopment of Boston’s West End—a neighborhood evaluated by planners as a slum and razed during Urban Renewal and completed “just in time for an unanticipated postmodern backlash” that made the vast portion of new buildings designed on modernist principles immediately obsolete (D. M. Abramson 2016, 56). This is the blind spot of utopian thinking: it only generates more obsolescence. In conversation with the authors, Daniel Abramson blamed a lack of empathy for these outcomes: You can always find things that aren’t working. But usually that’s a projection of your own values and measurements… Instead of going into the neighborhood and trying to figure out what is working—as sociologists would have done and tried to do back then—planners lacked the imagination to realize that what they came up with may be susceptible to obsolescence. (D. Abramson 2018) Many architects interviewed for this research shared moments in their careers that filled them with humility and empathy, as they observed their buildings evolve into their own through the process of construction and inhabitation, as they received feedback from users, or more—seeing award-winning projects razed a short few years or decades after construction while they were still practicing. They spoke specifically to how these experiences changed their approach to design, their attitude towards existing buildings, and their view of their own role in that process. Many of these conversations resonated with Moneo’s call back in 1984: “The work should be shared by others, or at least, it should not be so personal as to invade the public realm in a manner that no longer belongs naturally to the sphere of the public environment” (Moneo 2004, 611). This chapter examines design processes and their architectural manifestations resulting from these profound lessons and realizations. The projects and ideas discussed in this chapter point to how the design process changes to be inclusive of the next generation of architects and users that will inherit buildings. These ideas are in dialogue with the ideas presented in Chapter 4—that if architecture persists by being permanently situated in what is enduring about a place, it must also evolve with what is ever-changing between generations.

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Acts of Humility and Optimism Keeping a building is an act of humility—it means building from and in relation to the work of others that came before. A project of renovation, alteration, or addition means uncovering material and construction logics of a different time, understanding the intentions and norms that led to its making, and taking a position in direct relationship to that history. It is often the harder option. The arguments architects make now, the quality they invest in projects built today, will define how hard it will be for future generations to uncover the current logics of construction, to understand their intentions, to share its value, and make the argument to save that work. Tod Williams, principal of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners in New York, shared with the authors the importance of working in relationship with other generations despite its challenges: It is a great deal more difficult than imagining that you can start with a tabula rasa…there’s a labor of love in all we do that brings out the quality of the work and the quality of our society. It’s never supposed to be easy. It should be joyous… The client rarely wants a harder option. That is architects. And the client rarely wants a more expensive option. So, we have to advocate for building well. (Williams 2018) Keeping a building is an act of optimism. The premise is that the building is valuable enough to make it worth the effort to leave a new mark, to become part of the continuum of history while pushing a new generation forward. That optimism bordering on naiveté often allows people to jumpstart a renovation, likely saving more than one building before everyone involved realized how much harder it would be. Tod Williams believes that everyone underestimates the difficulty of building, even more so the difficulty of renovating. “We’re all optimists. We’ve often said architects are optimists. Clients are optimists. Contractors are optimists. We’re all trying to do our best, but we tend to look at things through the glass being half full” (Williams 2018). When architects recognize the difficulty of renovating, the hard work it takes to make way for a new life and use of a building, it makes them both proud and weary—afraid to be blinded to the difficulties they create for others that come after them. Todd Williams believes they have been guilty of this, and explained why they need to think about it all the time: “Not to kill our creativity or optimism, but rather to be aware that you don’t want to leave things behind that are a problem for other people” (Williams 2018). Sometimes buildings do not last long, despite being built with the greatest quality and deep care of architects committed to lasting architecture. When it happens prematurely to a building that is beloved and studied by many—like the American Folk Art Museum in New York City (2001–14) which was demolished for an expansion of the Museum of Contemporary Art in New York—it rattles the profession and provokes deep reflection. The year of the demolition, the architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien issued a statement suggesting that the decision not to

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keep it was an indication that “the imagination and the will were not there” (Pogrebin 2014). Nonetheless, in their conversation for this book they reflected on some of the technical aspects of that project that changed how they practice now. Tod Williams talked about how mechanical systems were built like they were “going into the bowels of a submarine” (Williams 2018). His reflection turned more broadly into a generational approach to work and life, a theme of family that was recurrent in interviews. I’ve decided I’m no longer a mechanical engineer. I never was one. I don’t want to be so strong as a person that I don’t take the advice of someone else… A certain humility relative to the building is critical. I have grandchildren now. When I think: do you want to leave problems behind, or do you want to leave positive stuff behind?… You have to be, without being overly cautious, humble enough to realize that it can’t all be your own way. Perhaps that’s true in art, it certainly can’t be in architecture. (Williams 2018) This idea reemerged later in the conversation with his partner Billie Tsien, discussing institutional clients like Exeter Academy: there is a sense that you’re not just doing it for now, and you’re not just doing it for the immediate users, but you’re doing it for a future user. It’s always a larger population that you’re working for. And always a longer chronological time span that you’re trying to address. (Tsien 2018) Working in these contexts demands that the architect give up some control of the project. As Tsien responded to Williams during the interview: “‘It can’t all be your own way’ should be written across the studio wall.” Designing a building now to be transformed by others requires imagination and clarity of purpose. Buildings seldom belong to their architects, so contemplating their life after design also prompts a humility to speak to future generations of architects through the language of their work. At various points of the interview with Gerard Damiani and José Pertierra-Arrojo of studio d’ARC in Pittsburgh, they shared the hope that architects in the future will still think in a similar-enough way to them, that if the work is clear enough they will read the thinking from it, providing them a useful framework for adding their own layer in response to their own time and place (Damiani and Pertierra-Arrojo 2019). This hope also reflected from them an expectation and open-mindedness to future generations of architects changing and practicing in new ways.

Generations as a Measure Every 20 years, in the ceremony of shikinen sengū, a new generation of carpenters rebuilds and relocates the Shinto shrines in Ise, Japan near the location of the current, renewing them with fresh cypress grown, logged and milled mostly near the site for this purpose. While Ise has

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been extensively discussed in scholarship, here again—like the physical shrines themselves—it has a renewed relevance. The Ise Grand shrine manifests the idea that long-lasting architecture is more than its materials, it is an idea in the minds of people. In the words of historian Daniel Abramson: “the Japanese material impermanence fixes permanent principles; each generation internalizes the religious and architectural lessons of the past” (D. M. Abramson 2016, 14). Despite being always new, the shrines are very old “because they are identical with the ones that stood there at least as early as 685” (Burchard 1965, 9). The building thus acquires meaning as a locus of human perseverance, rising anew as a symbol of traditions renewed by each new generation. As stated by Kenzo Tange, an influential figure to the Metabolist movement in Japan: “Tradition by itself cannot function as the driving force for creativeness, but it always bears within itself the chance to stimulate creativeness” (Tange 1965, 52). Ise persists in its unchanging form and details to represent the stability and traditions of a society, but its patterns of renewal every 20 years provide a lens through which to look at its changing social context—“a special vantage point across Japanese history as well as the social and economic meanings of this ritual” (Andreeva 2018). The material renewal and rebuilding of each generation is planned for and celebrated in Ise. It is not uncommon for contemporary buildings to be designed for a 20-year life span. But there is no planning or ritual of reconstruction. There is no forest regenerated and cared for to always provide its replacement. The idea of the building does not persist for thousands of years. It is forgettable and easily erased from memory. The materials and energy that went into its making and then its demolition are wasted. Most architecture should experience some necessary renewal, to evolve with the changes in its material and social context. But an architecture that persists should be designed for a longer time frame and an ecological mindset, with the intention that future generations will find meaning not only in preserving it but also in participating in its renewal. Figure 10.1 Characteristic timber details of thatched roofs on Shinto shrine ca. 2008, built using the same manual timber construction methods from 1,500 years ago. Ise Shrine (Ise, Mie Prefecture, Japan). Photograph by n Yotarou, licensed under CC-BY-SA-4.0.

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Amid a dynamic world changing at many scales, buildings—or the idea of them—seem a fixed reference in a changing world, concrete examples of our effort to stand outside of time. And yet we know buildings do change, overlaid with human schedules for work, and worship, marked by events momentous and small, and stained by ceaseless weathering, they bear the marks of time and human use. In a book about long-lasting architecture, it is important to consider what “long-lasting” means, and how to measure it. Buildings designed for human use embody and acknowledge human dimensions of time just as they acknowledge human dimensions of space. While celebrating all manner of rhythms and scales of change in both the human and natural environment, the measure of persistent architecture is on the scale of human generations. Generations, not unlike units for dimensions of space, emerged from a human dimension: the average span of time between the birth of parents and that of their offspring, which is generalized as groups of individuals born and living contemporaneously, or having contemporaneously a lived experience.1 Generational time places the metric of persistence in terms of the human lives touched by the building. In contrast to Ise’s renewal cycle of rebuilding at generational intervals, the western monastic idea of generational time assumes the building as more static, its life measured by the human life spans of caretakers that pass through the same physical artifact. Institutions like monasteries offer a particularly vivid example that the continuity of buildings is, in fact, a continuity of people. Father Martin Werlen, abbot emeritus Einsiedeln Abbey, explained in an interview why architects and clients must spend enough time in projects, years if needed, to make better decisions as part of a community, to design buildings that last at least as much as a human lifespan, that is, a 100 years or more. Sheltering and being cared for by multiple generations for such a long time imbues the building with the meaning of continuity while the human life within it brings its renewal: “we are the same family, built a thousand years ago… we continue what the people before us have done… studying the old windows and using the experience of times ahead to make something modern which continues this tradition” (Werlen 2017). Einsiedeln Abbey, founded in Switzerland in 934, continues to use some centuries-old buildings in new ways and brings their sensibility to modern construction with architects like Diener and Diener Architekten (Figure 10.2). This attitude acknowledges the worth of and gives due care to future generations, leaving open the possibility for them to modify buildings for their own future needs and to leave their own imprint on them. The inheritance of future generations cannot rely on unreasonable expectations of materials resisting by themselves, but acknowledge the efforts of people who care for buildings. Monks have been living and working in these monasteries for a thousand years in some cases. They see future monks as family—brother monks—an attitude that ensures continuity. Not all buildings need to last that long to require an empathetic sense of

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1 The definition of generation is also translated to objects: the type or class of objects usually developed from an earlier type. “Definition of GENERATION.” Accessed September 5, 2020. https:// www.merriam-webster.com/ dictionary/generation.

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Figure 10.2 Exterior view of new building inserted between other buildings around a cloister. Diener + Diener, Music School in Einsiedeln Abbey (Einsiedeln, Switzerland) 2011.Photograph courtesy of Getty Images.

the caretaker as family because buildings that are cared for stand a better chance of persisting. The observation that “building maintenance has little status with architects,” (Brand 1995, 112) is changing, as the discipline ponders the future of deteriorating cities, infrastructure, buildings, and even human bodies and minds. “Breakdown is now our epistemic and experiential reality… maintenance has taken on new resonance as a theoretical framework, an ethos, a methodology, and a political cause” (Mattern 2018); Professor of Anthropology, Shannon Mattern, used the example of Rem Koolhaas’ reaction of disappointment to the 2008 documentary film Koolhaas Houselife, which focused on the housekeeper’s interactions with Maison Bourdeaux, as an indicator of both the elevated role of maintenance in architectural discourse and the profession’s continued misunderstandings of their own role in inspiring good maintenance habits. Moreover, blaming the housekeeper for a lack of imagination signals the profession’s own lack of imagination and general lack of empathy for the present and future work conditions of generations providing the labor required for maintaining buildings. Generational time in architecture engages the sociological origins of the concept. Generation is connected to the seminal concept of a cohort, which emerged in demographic studies of social change. A birth cohort is defined by the structural transformations of society as “a functioning collectivity… that persists as if independent of its membership,” because each cohort “makes fresh contact with the contemporary social heritage and carries the impress of the encounter thorough life…. the intersection of the innovative and the conservative forces of history… not to cause change, but to permit it” (Ryder 1965, 844). As a product of a particular cohort, architecture needs to permit social change if it is to persist. Operating in generational time suggests that architecture is imprinted by the markers of those that shared a lived experience. It

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assumes that the same building will evolve into new versions of itself in response to the kind of structural change that differentiates human generations—but not necessarily in response to the daily, monthly, or annual fluctuations in an individual’s habits and preferences. The frequency within which architecture needs to absorb change can be defined by birth cohorts (15–20 years), financing of construction through mortgages (15–30 years), the average life span of materials (10–50 years), all of which are complicated by the increasingly shorter cycles of obsolescence in communication technology (1–3 years). Yet the total life of the most long-lasting building today (commonly a 50- to 60-year old building) is shorter than the average life of a person in the United States, which is currently 78.6 years (CDC 2020). The most pressing changes affecting architecture in the twenty-first century are generational in nature: longer life spans, lower birth rates and overall aging population in industrialized countries, exploding global population growth, massive migration into urban areas, extreme income inequality, higher retirement age, and many others. As architecture innovates solutions for these complex problems, generational changes in family structure, succession of leadership, labor, and housing, will inevitably need to shape the design of buildings that last. A long-life building should welcome constantly changing cohorts of owners, managers, and users while providing them a stable, empathetic, and slowly evolving framework in which to absorb change over long periods.

Finished by the Life within Twentieth-century ideas of unfinished architecture took a position of restraint, limiting what the architect should control to only the fixed or infrastructural elements that support and enable the user to finish it. Recent manifestations of these theories aligned themselves with a genuine humility and optimism driven by the social contexts in which they emerged. Some exhibit remarkable entrepreneurship, developing not only architecture but building systems and development principles that consider a range of lifestyles, urban environments, and potential modifications made by future generations.

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Figure 10.3 Quinta Monroy project by Elemental, 2003 (Iquique, Chile) explained as a manifestation of John Habraken’s levels of control. Drawing adapted from Age van Randen by authors.

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2 Age van Randen founded the Open Building Simulation research group at the University of Technology at Delft in 1984 and invented the Matura Infill System with John Habraken in the Netherlands in 1993 (Kendall and Teicher 2000, 16, 196). His diagram appears in multiple publications on the subject of Open Buildings – the earliest identified is in a TU Delft magazine (Broos 1989). The diagram was updated by the authors of this book to illustrate how the Quinta Monroy project by Aravena exemplifies and clarifies these principles.

Utility/service spaces in the permanent base structure

The early work of Alejandro Aravena’s firm Elemental in the Quinta Monroy project, in Iquique, Chile (2003) represented a remarkable shift in how architects address issues of affordable and dignified housing. Working with financial constraints to build just what is needed, the difficult parts, with enough thoughtfulness, durability, and room for expansion, imbued the project with the identity, continuity, and intelligence of a stable framework that visibly embraces the role of users in continuing the process of building. This approach to architecture evolves with the size and structure of each family, and celebrates the values of individualism and the collective. As an urban proposition (Figure 10.3), it is a concrete example of what Age van Randen2 diagrammed for the levels of decision-making, which appears in much of the literature on Open Buildings (Kendall and Teicher 2000, 6). Habraken’s theory of Supports (see Part II) notably embraced the field (patterns and hierarchies of the urban environment) to create variation, adaptation, and coherence between buildings (Habraken 1994). This is in effect working at multiple scales of generational time and space-making. The celebrated work in Quinta Monroy embraced informality and a certain raw quality to architecture. But Elemental later expanded this model of the half-finished house in other regions, with more refined and cohesive forms, adding roofs over the empty gaps as part of the basic infrastructure, and adapting the form of the concrete framework to different materials and climates in places like Monterrey, Mexico.

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Figure 10.4 Elevations and sections of basic housing units, half-finished in expectation of user additions. ELEMENTAL, Quinta Monroy (Iquique, Chile), 2003. Drawings by authors.

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Figure 10.5 Sections showing (a) empty structural shell (above) and (b) potential added mezzanines (below). Marc Koehler Architects, Superlofts (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), 2016. Drawings by authors.

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Figure 10.6 Construction showing Cross Laminated Timber slabs suspended with steel hangers from the concrete ceiling. Marc Koehler Architects, Superlofts (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), 2016. Photograph by Marcel van der Burg.

Figure 10.7 Loft space, showing double height concrete structure with suspended CLT mezzanine, and sliding door to balcony. Marc Koehler Architects, Superlofts (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), 2016. Photograph Jansje Klazinga.

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In contrast, the Superlofts concept, developed by Marc Koehler Architects and constructed on several sites in Amsterdam, provides an open physical framework for the changing patterns of a human dwelling while maintaining formality in the urban context. This development model, best exemplified by the Houthhaven Plot 1, 2 & 4 (2016), is a more internalized approach to user control than Elemental’s halffinished house. The architectural framework does exert some control: the reinforced concrete wall system constrains the width to 5.7m (18.7 feet) and the skip floor elevator system fixes some units to two-story height. But that tall loft space of 5m-height (16.4 feet) enables different configurations of space and unit sizes that can expand floor area by as much as 70 percent, or shrink back the size of units by subdivision. It effectively democratizes access to views and daylight while allowing some variation in height and depth according to occupant needs and household size. The façade is more uniform in materiality than in Quinta Monroy given the nature of its urban infill sites, but the prefabricated aluminum window system allowed some variation in openings to be selected by the first occupants, perhaps later changed again by every few generations when it is time to replace the facade. The expressed structural rhythm and transparency of the facade reveal the varied patterns and scales of living spaces. A fixed physical frame of structure and infrastructure supports the infill of living spaces that individual owners can personalize, adapt, and modify to changing circumstances, living and working arrangements, and family structure. This level of individual control and private space in the unit and balconies is balanced by shared spaces in the courtyard and roof. The cooperative model of co-living and co-creating was financed by the future owners and the architect, rather than a developer, during the global financial crisis of 2008–12, demonstrating that architectural change can be an expression of structural transformations in society.

Figure 10.8 Balconies and shading structure. Foster + Partners, San Marino World Trade Center (Dogana, San Marino) 2004. Photograph by Nigel Young / Foster + Partners.

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This entrepreneurial model of unitized architecture exists in larger-scale single-owner buildings that intend to embrace a constant and dynamic flow and mix of uses. The World Trade Center San Marino (2004) in Dogana, Serravale by Foster + Partners is a mixed-use development designed to not only have office, residential, and commercial uses within the same building, but the units of offices are designed to flex from office to residential use as needed. The structure meets the needs of a center of international trade for San Marino—a microstate surrounded on all sides by North Italy—by providing temporary offices and housing for companies exploring international markets. The space is not infinitely neutral, in fact it is defined by clear modules of space limited or enabled by specific structural dimensions. The structural pattern allows different users to fit out and adapt individual units to their use, dividing the depth of the floor plate into approximate thirds, and creating a cellular system that is flexibly compartmentalized. As partner David nelson explained in a phone interview, uses can be mixed at every level, even if divided—such that one can be in an office and walk down the corridor to where they live (Nelson 2019). The adjoining building has the same adaptable plan but is completely fitted out as a hotel. Not unlike the later version of Elemental’s roofs, which unified the empty gaps with the half-finished architecture, the facade of balconies at San Marino acts as both a shading and privacy device but also as a unifying veil that absorbs constant changes in use.

Coming of Age Many mid-twentieth-century projects, products of a post-war generation that led the cultural revolution in labor, research, education, and civil rights—are recognizably different than the early generation of modernism. These buildings are arriving at a 50- to 60-year mark when they often face either demolition or landmark status. A body of developer-driven spec buildings of that era—with large floorplates, early generation curtain wall facades, and outdated mechanical systems, are a sizable and problematic architectural inheritance in need of reinvention and accelerated evolution. This is one of the most challenging questions and intriguing opportunities for architects of the twenty-first century interested in preserving the embodied energy already expended in the built environment. How will this generation’s values about quality living and working shape the future of that inheritance? Partner Matt Noblett reflected on this question during a visit by the authors to the office of Behnisch Architekten: “what are the strategies you use to make it inhabitable, and make it live another 50 years?” (Noblett 2019). This is especially true for the mid-century brutalist buildings, usually carbon intensive concrete structures representing an important but short moment in architectural history that almost always has to be defended against demolition. Noblett added: how can we rethink that building so that people learn to appreciate it, and love it the way that we see it… It is an intellectual challenge to come up with a solution that makes it interesting again and thereby save it. (Noblett 2019)

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Behnisch Archiktecten tackled that challenge in the Robert L. Bogomolny Library (2018) in Baltimore, Maryland, previously known as Langsdale Library. Not unlike the new Donnelly Center in Toronto (Chapter 4) this renovation and addition focused on strengthening the connection to the place through a glass hall and entry that improves Figure 10.9 Northwest exterior view of reclad building with added glass entry hall. Behnisch Architeckten, Robert L. Bogomolny Library (Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A.) 2014. Photograph courtesy of Behnisch Architekten. Photograph by David Matthiessen.

Figure 10.10 Interior view of new Glass Hall next to original waffle slab structure. Behnisch Architeckten, Robert L. Bogomolny Library (Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A.) 2014. Photograph courtesy of Behnisch Architekten. Photograph by David Matthiessen.

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daylight and connectivity to campus. It creates a new generation of a library that is designed to “meet contemporary research, scholarship, archival and environmental demands… acknowledging a new era of library use that privileges learning and interaction… and signal the University’s commitment to developing a strong and welcoming urban presence” (Behnisch Architekten n.d.). The recladding and opening of the building to its context facilitated the preservation of the most carbon-intensive concrete structure. The architects recognized that the massing had good basic proportions that made it redeemable. Other than the new entry hall, most of the effort to preserve the concrete frame went into cleaning up and reorganizing mechanical systems, and reprogramming to take maximum advantage of the daylight around the perimeter. The architects added another layer of functionality to the waffle slabs, with a pixelated gradient of color in the deep recesses of the grids, defining loosely differentiated spatial zones in the mostly open plan. Noblett’s colleague Martin Werminghausen suggested that the ultimate measure of success is that the nature of these interventions gave the client a new perspective on the old building, revealing to them what only the architects had seen in the waffle slab construction: “we probably did a good job, they are still there, we exposed them” (Werminghausen 2019).

Evolutionary Practices The interviews for this research provide good and extensive insight into critical design approaches that bring a multi-generational perspective to architecture. Many of the firms interviewed demonstrated thoughtfulness and innovation in redefining the nature of the design processes and the scope of architectural services. This chapter extracted and reorganized this knowledge into salient themes. These can be read like a list of imperatives that collectively have the potential to transform design practice. Engage Future Leaders Architects often reflected on the investments and efforts of those that came before, and credit specific people who had a uniquely long-term view of the institutions they worked with. Many interviewees suggested that without those figures at the table, project committees can be more narrowly focused on immediate needs. Designing architecture takes a long time, especially from the initial stages of funding to construction. That means that the people driving the early part of the process, often senior leaders, may be nearing retirement by the time the project ends. This was a common anecdote during interviews, including those with Janice Barnes, formerly Global Resilience Director of Perkins & Will and now Managing Partner of Climate Adaptation Partners in New York City. Barnes suggested that architects need to seek multi-generational, cross-functional engagement: “To get the voices of emerging leaders who typically don’t have a lot of power, but who more likely will be in the driver’s seat by the time occupancy, or certainly, for the long-term future use of a facility” (Barnes 2018). This requires a deep knowledge

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of organizational culture and a good working relationship with current leaders. It is important for architects to learn to speak the native language of an organization or user group to help clients see beyond their current moment, to anticipate design change within their organization. Barnes emphasized being mindful of designer shorthand that is unfamiliar to other fields, and that the motto Meeting people where they are is a meaningful grounding to make a transformational change (Barnes 2018). Architecture discourse and practice need to expand the tools to guide institutions and organizations to see where they need to go, to be agile engaging in different contexts, and to work in a way that is meaningful to people. Architects can draw on consultants or strategists from organizational change management to help institutions understand their path to change. Perkins & Will, a firm deeply invested in research, began training specialists within their firm in this area and integrating this service into standard pre-design services. Barnes described the change management process as a pyramid of people—starting from the base envisioning the future and then training up the top of the pyramid where people are usually the greatest resistors (Barnes 2018). Yanel de Angel, principal at Perkins & Will, contrasted programming, where “you know what it ought to be” and are simply defining areas and adjacencies, with change management where “you’re hovering much higher, you’re not that close to the ground… you’re talking about re-invention to stay relevant in a market.” As such, this service “dovetails with the traditional design process in order to help people realize that long-term future” (De Angel 2018). Consider Short-term Change Changes can happen in many time scales, sometimes quicker than anticipated, even during construction. Philip Chen, president of Ann Beha Architects in Boston, proposed during the interview with the authors that architects do not need to ask clients to think that far into the future. “You can get people thinking just by asking ‘Where do you think teaching will be in ten years from now? What are the changes that are affecting the way you do your job now?” (Chen 2017). Even during the programming phase, explaining that it will take two to five years to move into the building can push the conversation away from current experience. In fact, for some fast-changing uses, generational changes can be extremely short. For example, Scott Jones of HOK told the authors that the work of future-proofing laboratories is about thinking five years from now (Jones 2019). The premise is that if those buildings absorb that magnitude of change in five years, they can likely absorb change in one hundred. Sometimes the shortest-term change happens during the design process. Sean Godsell, architect of RMIT Design Hub (see Chapter 1) believes clients often arrive with the best ideas, but also that architects should test a few more before landing on one because looking at what stays the same from one option to the other gives everyone a good sense of what is important (Godsell 2020). These design iterations, when

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examined intentionally, can provide a glimpse of how the project might change over time, but also reveal the aspects of the project that should be designed to resist counterproductive change. Paraphrasing an interview with Garth Rockcastle, founding principal emeritus at MSR Architects in Minneapolis, architects must control what matters. For Rockcastle, this is not just about making change and adjustments possible but also about making certain changes more difficult: “Some of the best work that I have been involved with has had to work around difficulties…the ever-flexible building is as much a problem as the inflexible building” (Rockcastle 2017). It is also important to be thoughtful about leaving something for others to change. Working on older buildings can create a heightened consciousness in architects. Ann Beha is always concerned about how the next generation of architects will view and reconsider their work because, as she shared with the authors, “we’re always undoing the work of somebody that came before us” (Beha 2017). These short-term considerations are not limited to the design process. The architect needs to be fully engaged and attentive to the process of construction, willing to consider modifications suggested by the people in the field. If they question the execution of the design for being unnecessarily complicated or potentially problematic, it is likely that others in the future will too, and this could hinder the ability to maintain or adapt. Listening and being inclusive of those that build is an invitation to co-ownership and perhaps even sustained care after construction. Tod Williams shared why they try to meet with all of the trades working on the building, even if their hands are not seen: “the hand of the plumber is a point of pride for us all…for your children and your grandchildren, who might say my dad worked on that building… The hidden work is as important as the visible work” (Williams 2018). Short-term thinking can be critical and useful when long-term thinking seems hard and uncertain. Speaking with Paul Alessandro from HP Architects in Chicago, he suggested that if architects want to know what is essential or important in the long term they should try reversing the question in the short term, to imagine how the design process would be different when they are not trying to consider long term future use: “What shortcuts would you be willing to take… in construction, in consideration of systems, in consideration of how things are maintained?” (Alessandro 2017). Look to the Past Evolution means a clean break with the past is an impossibility. Not every idea has to be new. Architecture often builds from precedent because there is great value in looking to the past and learning from old buildings. Maurizio de Vita, an architect and professor of restoration in Italy interviewed for this research, thinks looking at the change of the past means “really understanding and revealing how the building has responded to the needs of people and how people have responded to understanding of buildings” (De Vita 2019). Experience changes architects profoundly, in large part by teaching them what not to do. Donald Del Cid quoted his colleague Charles

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Sterkx, saying, “we have to grow old doing these things to stop being experimental all the time” (Del Cid 2018). Yet, few architects do postoccupancy evaluations. When the opportunity came up for JMZ, a campus planning firm in New York that was hired to do the second renovation of an Empire State College building they had done years before (see Chapter 11)— the team asked clients and users: “let us hear the good, the bad, and ugly because that’s how we learn and that’s how we can improve things” (Schmitt 2017). Understanding the existing building as more than what it is now requires research into its past evolution to uncover important lessons. For Ann Beha, the founder of a Boston architectural firm with deep expertise in historic preservation projects, a building’s chronology of change (Chapter 1) also reveals who changed it and why, “In order to track where we would change it, and why, and how that fits into the overall evolution of the building” (Beha 2017). Beha explained that seeing that pathway provides an invaluable perspective for the client, particularly with larger building committees and stewards of the institution: “it puts a lot of oxygen in the room because people realize they’re not the first to think about this and they won’t be the last.” This realization empowers architects to design to the client’s current aspirations for the institution, while leaving a building that can be changed again. Practice Empathy Designing a building or a space is often a very personal, consequential, and overwhelming experience for clients. The impulse to respond to their every perceived need can result in specificity that does not serve future generations of users well. In any project, architects need to bring clarity and guide clients through a process to establish priorities. Program is such a dominant force in architecture, that it takes restraint to provide the simpler solution (for an in-depth examination of overspecification to the present and program, see Chapter 8 Anticipatory and Chapter 11 Indeterminate). If architects think about themselves not only as designers but as users of buildings, they can bring empathy and consideration to those users or future generations that are not at the table. Michael Green, architect of the Wood Innovation and Design Center (Chapter 1) described the warehouse space that his office occupies as: “Nothing special, and yet exactly where I want to be because it’s a big tall space with wood columns and wood structure, and it’s raw, and it’s adaptable, and we’ve been able to make it our home for now” (Green 2019). Green explained to the authors that designing spaces like this for others takes “a willingness to not be the big kid on the block…” and as a result “make buildings that are just good neighbors and good quiet, modest, and highly adaptable buildings.” Challenge Specialization Specialization is a sibling problem to specificity. Architects are increasingly dependent on highly specialized consultants for more technically challenging projects, which results in often failing to question whether that knowledge will serve users well in the future. Reflecting on the

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design process of the Donnelly Centre in Toronto (Chapter 4) Martin Werminghausen of Behnisch Architekten thought more direct communication with the director and the scientists meant they could discuss openly instead of following rigid formulas of grant dollars per square foot, grids, and modules typical of lab consultants: “It is better if you forget your specialization” (Werminghausen 2019). The result was a fine grain of laboratory distribution systems that is not overwhelming because he explained: “You hardly see any air ducts.” Behnisch’s partner Matt Noblett confessed that more than bravery this required being “a little bit naïve” (Noblett 2019). The best evidence of that problem is that despite Donnelly’s success when the architects show this project in interviews for other lab buildings and talk about the distributed shafts, many researchers and lab planners in the committee still react with skepticism. Noblett shared this cautionary tale with the authors: “Specialization can preclude the ability to loose-fit the project or to imagine other futures…When people looking for architects ask ‘show me 10 projects that you’ve done of this type’… the answer is you are going to get number 11.” Engage with the Public Process Certain cultural practices and policies can be slower to change than the crisis of the moment allows. Referring to the urgency of climate change, Michael Green believes that architects cannot wait the six to ten years it takes for codes to evolve. Green believes to affect change “You have to work beyond the code, and the system has to allow it… this gets into the politics of what we do. When we work on a project, I try to get the know the governor’s office” (Green 2019). But regulatory change also requires a long-term view. One of the most innovative aspects of the Living Building Challenge as a sustainability metric is the value it placed in advocacy. The International Living Futures Institute (ILFI) recognized that certain aspects of projects may not meet their most stringent criteria due to regulatory constraints— wastewater treatment on-site being one of the most challenging. When projects cannot meet the criteria, ILFI credits the project for the team’s efforts to push for regulatory and cultural changes through advocacy and education of public officials, acknowledging that structural changes are the markers of generations. Model Humility During the design process, especially when asking clients to consider difficult decisions, architects need to model the values they advocate for. Tod Williams believes that giving up something, especially those things that are important for the architect’s ego, lets clients know that they are serious. Williams added: “We’re doing this together…a great building requires a great client, and great client deserves a great architect. Both have to make sure that it’s a continuous and integrated conversation. If one of you wins, both will lose” (Williams 2018).

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An Evolving Architecture Buildings must embody the awareness of generations that came before and after, the appreciation of that inheritance, and the understanding that this generation is neither the pinnacle nor end-point of evolution. Rafael Moneo’s lecture 35 years ago is a good reminder of why evolutionary practices and generational time scales matter: Today, I am certain that once the construction is finished, once the building assumed its own reality and its own role, all those concerns that occupied architects and their efforts dissolve. Our pleasure lies in the experience of this distance, when we see our thought supported by a reality that no longer belongs to us. What is more, a work of architecture, if successful, may efface the architect. (Moneo 2004, 615) An architecture of persistence can only emerge when architects realize that buildings outlast their makers, that they will be transformed by future generations they will never meet, and that it is only through the clarity and humility of the work that will they have a voice in shaping its future.

References Abramson, Daniel. 2018. Professor of Architectural History, Boston University Interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn. Boston, MA. Abramson, Daniel M. 2016. Obsolescence: An Architectural History. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Alessandro, Paul. 2017. Partner, Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture Interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy. By phone. Andreeva, Anna. 2018. “Review of a Social History of the Ise Shrines: Divine Capital by Mark Teeuwen and John Breen.” The Journal of Japanese Studies 44 (2): 414–18. https://doi.org/10.1353/jjs.2018.0050. Barnes, Janice. 2018. Former Global Director of Resilience, Perkins & Will. Currently Managing Partner, Climate Adaptation Partners Interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy. By phone. Beha, Ann. 2017. Founding Partner, Ann Beha Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. Boston, MA. Behnisch Architekten. n.d. “Robert L. Bogomolny Library.” Accessed August 18, 2020. https://behnisch.com/work/projects/0860. Brand, Stewart. 1995. How Buildings Learn: What Happens after They’re Built. Reprint edition. New York, NY: Penguin Books. Broos, Philip. 1989. “Open Building: Anticipating the Individual’s Needs.” Delft Outloof: Research and Education at Delft UT, 1989. Burchard, John. 1965. “Introduction.” In Ise; Prototype of Japanese Architecture, by Kenzo Tange and Noboru Kawazoe, 8–11. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015006728250. CDC. 2020. “Life Expectancy.” Center for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Health Statistics FastStats. 2020. https://www.cdc.gov/ nchs/fastats/life-expectancy.htm. Chen, Philip. 2017. President, Ann Beha Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. Boston, MA.

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Damiani, Gerard, and José Pertierra-Arrojo. 2019. Architects, studio d’ARC, and Professors, Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture Interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn. Pittsburgh, PA. De Angel, Yanel. 2018. Principal, Perkins & Will Interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy. Boston, MA. De Vita, Maurizio. 2019. Founding Partner, De Vita & Schulze Architetti & Professor of Architecture, Università degli Studi di Firenze Interview by Peter Wiederspahn. Florence. Del Cid, Donald. 2018. Architect, Waggonner & Ball Architecture / Environment Interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy. By phone. Godsell, Sean. 2020. Founding Principal, Sean Godsell Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Green, Michael. 2019. Founding Principal, Michael Green Architecture Interview by Peter Wiederspahn. Vancouver. Habraken, N. John. 1994. “Cultivating the Field: About an Attitude When Making Architecture.” Places 9 (1): 8–21. Jones, Scott. 2019. Senior Project Manager, HOK Interview by Michelle Laboy. Washington, DC. Kendall, Stephen H., and Jonathan Teicher. 2000. Residential Open Building. New York: E & FN Spon. Mattern, Shannon. 2018. “Maintenance and Care.” Places Journal, November. https://doi.org/10.22269/181120. Moneo, José Rafael. 2004. “The Solitude of Buildings.” In Rafael Moneo, 1967– 2004, edited by Fernando. Márquez Cecilia and Richard C. Levene: 608–15. Madrid: El Croquis Editorial. Nelson, David. 2019. Senior Executive Partner and Head of Design, Foster + Partners Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Noblett, Matt. 2019. Partner, Behnisch Architekten Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. Boston, MA. Pogrebin, Robin. 2014. “Architects Mourn Former Folk Art Museum Building.” The New York Times, April 15, 2014, sec. Arts. https://www.nytimes. com/2014/04/16/arts/design/architects-mourn-former-folk-art-museumbuilding.html. Rockcastle, Garth. 2017. Founding Partner, MSR Design Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Ryder, Norman B. 1965. “The Cohort as a Concept in the Study of Social Change.” American Sociological Review 30 (6): 843–61. https://doi.org/ 10.2307/2090964. Schmitt, Kristin. 2017. Vice President, JMZ Architects | Planners Interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy. By phone. Tange, Kenzo. 1965. “Ise; Prototype of Japanese Architecture.” In Ise; Prototype of Japanese Architecture, edited by Noboru Kawazoe and Kenzo Tange: 13–57. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/ mdp.39015006728250. Tsien, Billie. 2018. Founding Partner, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Werlen, Martin. 2017. Priest and Former Abbot, Einsiedeln Abbey Interview by David Fannon and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Werminghausen, Martin. 2019. Architect, Behnisch Architekten Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. Boston, MA. Williams, Tod. 2018. Founding Partner, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone.

11 INDETERMINATE D. Fannon

It is not just a big empty space. It is something that is clearly defined in architectural terms but still has inherent adaptability and flexibility. — David Nelson, Foster and Partners.

Programmatic Determinism The connection between built form and human occupation presents a particular challenge when imagining the next and future uses of buildings, because many buildings are not only designed as but defined by their type—schools, hospitals, housing, offices. Clients and architects may find in these types a rational justification for design decisions about buildings’ appearance and performance: as though building design derives directly from its use. Nowhere is this determinism more apparent than in the process of programming, as discussed in Part II, the program defines the requirements and needs for the project to satisfy. William Peña famously coined the phrase “problem seeking” to describe programming and contrasted it with the “problem-solving” of design (Peña and Focke 1969). Pushing this rigorous process to its logical extreme would yield architecture that must necessarily take specific form because of the unique set of programmatic demands and constraints—whether regulatory, economic, or other—to which it responds. However, this deterministic approach of perfect correspondence between current need and built form risks obsolescence when needs change because such perfectly fitted buildings cannot adjust to the unknown (and unknowable) future needs and future contexts. While Chapter 8 describes methods and examples of anticipating future needs and conditions, no amount of planning or strategy can overcome the assumed correspondence between the use of the building and its physical form. In an interview Sean Zaudke, an Associate Principal at Gould Evans, pointed out that the particular—and sometimes peculiar— needs of a program type can drive towards a fixed solution. He describes an almost mechanistic design process, in which architects “design a type of module based upon some problematic component that says it has to be this specific size, and then the building is limited by that size,” in which the unique component comes to shape the building (2019). The problem comes not from lack of knowledge—solvable with more research—indeed greater knowledge could easily drive design towards finite ends. This chapter cautions against allowing any needs—however

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forward-looking—to lock the design into fixed paths. Stewart Brand mentions this briefly, crediting Viollet-le-Duc as the “forefather of modernism” for embracing the connection between needs and building, and notes that programming “make[s] explicit a systemic fault in modern architecture” (Brand 1995, 178), Yet while Brand readily identifies the fleeting and fickle human as the most changeable element of buildings, and even as he proposes building for change, all his incisive critique and his practical suggestions may elide the underlying assumption that building use should drive building design. Living in, maintaining, renovating, and expanding the centuries-old structures built to house the monastic life of Einsiedeln Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in Switzerland, has given former abbot Martin Werlen a unique perspective on the connections between people and their buildings which he shared in an interview. Although the monks work and pray in much the same way as they have done for more than a millennium Werlen observed the limitations of perfect correspondence between a building and its initial use, decrying the current tendency in architecture “to make just a functional purpose. And then, you build it for some purpose, and if you have no longer the use for this purpose, the building is no longer usable” (2017). If even the stability of monastic life does not determine a necessarily fixed and finite architecture, then perhaps problem-seeking for persistence must not lead to an answer, but an infinite set of solutions.

Infinite Episodes Programming’s great power to define space risks determinism, but that same power makes it a useful tool, even Stewart Brand dubbed it “one of architecture’s great achievements” (Brand 1995, 178). By setting the scope and describing spatial needs the programming process provides an invaluable starting point for design, as John Weeks wrote more than a half-century ago, “although it is necessary to produce a brief in order that an architect can begin to work, this brief will be an episode only in the life of the hospital” (Weeks 1965, 200). Of course, the idea of episodes applies to the lives of all buildings, and persistent architecture reclaims the power of programming by recognizing it as a single moment in an essentially infinite sequence of time, a start but not a finite end. Remarking in an interview that changes to building use do not advance like a watch mechanism, George Gard, an architect at Bruner Cott, suggests that “if you understand the underlying currents that might motivate change, I think that’s a better starting point than specific program.”(2017). In a different conversation, Ron McCoy, the University Architect at Princeton, made a similar point, suggesting that programming must “get people to not just project their preconceived notions on something but to pause and somehow get them to think authentically about the latent needs of program” (2017). Jean Stark, a planner and Vice President at JMZ, describes the challenge of breaking out of short-term and programmatically deterministic thinking, sharing that “many times we’ll sit down with a group and they have a very, very straightforward idea of exactly what they want because it’s what they’ve had and they can’t really see beyond that ” (2017). Stark and her

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colleagues have developed a range of strategies to move teams beyond the present object. For example, simply asking users to recall how they did things 15 years in the past, and then to imagine how they will do them 15 years in the future. Stark’s colleague and fellow Vice President Kristin Schmitt finds this prompt does more than help shift people’s thinking from present uses to future uses, it encourages an open-ended approach to building. As Schmitt recalls dryly, “that question, that usually stumps them a bit and if they don’t know the answer to that, then it is a good argument for flexibility” (2017). Campus planner Fred Tepfer explained in an interview that he and his colleagues at the University of Oregon went even further, finding it took as much as two to six months of working with users to identify a future building’s goals and develop the essential character before bringing in a design team to start programming. Acknowledging this sort of pre-programming adds another phase and more time to the project, Tepfer recalls “people would say that’s crazy and then after we did it most people would say that was a really good idea because we really didn’t know what we wanted until we did that.” (2018). These ideas about underlying currents, latent needs, and essential character all speak to the need for purposeful yet not definitive programs, ones that align buildings’ durable features with more than transient function. For persistent architecture, programming must seek not so much to align use with space as people with places. A campus center designed by JMZ Architects and Planners illustrates this intentional yet open-ended approach. Empire State College (ESC)—a

Figure 11.1 Axonometric sketch of the renovation for Empire State College, Saratoga, showing one possible arrangement of uses inside the former grocery store. JMZ (Saratoga Springs, NY) 2003. Drawing by JMZ Architects and Planners, P.C.

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part of the State University of New York—primarily serves working adults, offering nontraditional learning tailored to specific individual circumstances and locations. As a result, the College changes rapidly in response to enrollment, innovations in learning, and evolving workforce demands, making space planning something of a moving target. The project, in Saratoga Springs, serves the increasing student population in the area and provides for in-person opportunities for students engaged primarily in remote learning. Demands of location, speed of construction, and limited budget-led ESC to acquire an unused grocery store to adapt. Describing the project in a conversation, Kristin Schmitt explained that during the initial feasibility study, the team embraced the undefined nature of the large volume of the existing space. As shown in Figure 11.1, JMZ proposed a sort of garden of interventions that can evolve with the shared life of the building and College, a design Schmitt likens to “a landscape within the building.” As shown in Figure 11.2, the renovation added brightly colored finishes, admitted daylight, and replaced the building services, and while certainly not unfinished, it maintains some of the open-ended opportunity of the original space. That character accommodates short-term changes, providing “a lot of different offices and different clusters that the departments could easily grow or shrink within” (Schmitt 2017) as well as gracefully incorporating multiple renovations over the following years. Underlying and supporting these changes, a raised access floor allows easy modifications to cable distribution and mechanical conditioning. Schmitt points out that although theoretically desirable, adding excess wiring or connections in the name of future flexibility is often prohibitively expensive, yet the cost and disruption of subsequent installations also inhibit future change. On the other hand, the raised floor, though a significant first cost, enables subsequent, unpredictable changes by allowing cabling and HVAC distribution essentially anywhere with little or no disruption. Schmitt summarizes the benefits of this physical

Figure 11.2 Interior of the empty grocery store prior to renovation. Photograph courtesy of JMZ Architects and Planners, P.C.

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Figure 11.3 Entry of the Empire State College student center. JMZ (Saratoga Springs, NY) 2003. Photograph courtesy of JMZ Architects and Planners, P.C.

manifestation of planning for the unplanned, concluding “the raised floor allowed them to make changes pretty easily to the infrastructure, so that that works well” (2017). Perhaps influenced by the firm’s combination of planning and architecture, JMZ opted to create openended infrastructure for the ESC, rather than a fixed defined solution. While not a panacea, the raised floor exemplifies the distinction made in the introduction to Part III, Chapter 8, between “flexible” building elements that can limit possibilities by predicting the future, and adaptable ones that enable opportunities by providing for it. Perhaps persistence lies in continuous provision, without fixing a definite end.

Infinite Designers Interestingly, JMZ continued to work with ESC over nearly two decades after the initial conversion, participating in and learning from the ongoing transformations, an unusual opportunity for one firm but not an atypical rate of transformation for a building. The designer who brings a building into being is only the first of many hands that shape it—doubtless, the designers of the grocery store never imagined it becoming a College. Jorge Otero-Pailos points directly to the unwritten histories of future change, writing that Buildings are both much more and far less than what their original architects intended. They have a life that the first architects cannot control. If they stand for more than a few decades they will invariably be maintained, completed, improved or mangled by subsequent generations of users, builders and architects. (Otero-Pailos 2008, 57) Although the future is unknown and unknowable buildings need not choose whether to satisfy current needs or to remain open to a range of future ones. Chapter 8 suggests approaches by which present design can anticipate the future, however, an opposite and equally valid approach invites the future to infect the present by leaving opportunities for future designers to respond to future needs. This demands a

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slight shift for the profession, as Alan Lifschutz writes, “the role of the architect is to facilitate change, and to liberate users to achieve their destinies” (2017, 17). Paul Alessandro, a partner who leads the Preservation Group at HPA, offers a simple but powerful test for designers creating future opportunities, saying in an interview  

He goes on to caution about the opposite situation, warning “if you design a building and there’s only one way that it works, then you start to think that you’re building a building that is not going to be usable long term.” (2017). Speaking about designing to adapt historic buildings, Bob Berkebile, a founder of BNIM, offers the reverse suggestion of imaging the original design intent, saying “[we] put ourselves, if we can, in the shoes of the original architect or the original owner…what would they have done if this was their program?” (2019). Both ideas suggest a degree of humility about the embodied wisdom of the present design, and trust in the ability of future generations to better understand their needs, and—thanks to lived experience—the buildings they modify. John Weeks described this rather neatly, saying We have, therefore, to design as if the final building is to be the end of the matter; but to deal with the actual situation this design must contain the possibility of continuous adjustment to reality during the lifetime of the occupation of its site. (Weeks 1965, 200) At the Missouri Innovation Campus (MIC) in Lee’s Summit, Gould Evans created a new building to house a dynamic educational program that brings together secondary and post-secondary education in one facility while leaving open the possibility to meet future requirements; like at Empire State College, a new model for education—in this case a partnership between the University of Central Missouri and the Lee’s Summit school district—required a new approach to building. During Figure 11.4 Exterior Photograph of the Missouri Innovation Campus. Gould Evans & DLR Group (Lee Center, MO) 2017. Photograph by David Fannon.

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a conversation about (and inside) the building, Architect Sean Zaudke observed that the goal of innovation—expressed even in the name of the campus—presents a challenge for architecture, asking “how do you define innovation?… innovation can look like the Jetsons, but [that approach is] going to look like the Jetsons do now to us today” (2019). The alternative, as Zaudke says “design it to be something that embraces the act of being messy.” Note his careful selection of words: this approach does not abdicate responsibility resigning itself to an undesigned mess, nor does it try to control the mess, but rather to design in a way that enables a productive form of mess to unfold in the future. That greater freedom for the future may also enable greater freedom in the present, as Zaudke says Change and innovation is not pretty. It takes spilling stuff and breaking stuff, and mistakes, and all of that kind of stuff. And so, let’s think about the building design as a place where you’re going to make mistakes and messes. (Zaudke 2019) This approach demands a partnership between clients and architects— who mutually develop the pace of change and the built consequences— and between present and future. In this case, the firm and the client constructed a set of classroom mock-ups in the school’s existing space where faculty and students could test alternative configurations and furniture options. This exercise—also used in the design of medical facilities— invites broader participation in the design process, it draws users into earlier episodes in the life of the building. As with the discussion of programming above, using mock-ups risks over-specifying to present needs at the expense of future ones. However, by consciously testing multiple configurations of physical space, not merely numbers and drawings, this approach can also reveal the limitations of those familiar assumptions. Thinking of the building as experimental also tends to deemphasize appearance, in favor of performance, as Sean Zaudke notes, “you’re not designing a form as much as you’re thinking about it as a system.” Walking around the campus, Zaudke points out how specific building features enable future changes, such as a robust and widely spaced structural system that accommodates changing loads; durable but not precious materials for floors and ceilings; lightweight partition and furniture systems; open, accessible, expandable distribution pathways for MEP systems; removable facade system to change fenestration or connection additions. Even the site plan organizes the parking, entry, and circulation systems so they do not impede growth in multiple directions. The point is not that Gould Evans designed specific expansion plans, but rather it established adaptable systems to enable—and avoid precluding—multiple possibilities. This allows future designers to decide how best to allow ongoing educational innovation to flourish.

Infinite Possibilities Avoiding programmatic determinism and affording successive generations the opportunity to participate in space share the idea of removing restrictions, allowing buildings to unfold continuously through time. As

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the physical and spatial manifestation of movement, circulation plays a vital and long-established role in subsequent adaptation. Listing the physical characteristics that make growth and change possible in hospitals, John Weeks accorded primacy of place to circulation, mandating “an internal street pattern designed for systematic extension” (Weeks 1965, 200). Interestingly, while Weeks proposed the term indeterminate buildings to convey something not precisely fixed, the patterns of corridors he advocated tend to direct and precipitate change, as discussed below. While Chapter 4 discusses the importance of vertical circulation elements—stairs, elevators, and shafts—anchoring buildings into their situation, this section turns to horizontal circulation—doors, corridors, chases, trays, plenums—which simultaneously enable, direct, and define future changes. Weeks established a spatial and functional division by considering the distribution of MEP services separately from the “streets” or corridors intended for people, however, this chapter treats all forms of horizontal circulation as conceptually similar. Perhaps, integrating all forms of circulation in terms of their stance towards future change avoids the neglect of MEP systems which existed even in Weeks’ day, when he wrote with no little understatement that “services remain a problem which is not always well realised” (Weeks 1965, 198). David Nelson at Foster + Partners brought up the place of corridors during a chat about buildings that change use, contrasting the experience of moving directly through a succession of elegant, beautifully proportioned rooms in an historic museum with that of the clear and efficient hallways demanded by a hospital (2019). While both systems enable change, they operate at different temporal scales and engender different experiences. The fixed pattern of corridors establishes a hierarchy for change and growth, anticipating rapid “plug and play” modifications of individual rooms within the system, especially because the service distribution aligns with the human circulation. Over the long term this approach directs the growth of the circulation spine by extension, as with Spencer Brewery in Chapter 8. On the other hand, the network of interconnected rooms, though perhaps physically fixed, may support open-ended occupation and change over time. Seated in an open area of MIC that serves as both an informal lounge and circulation to other rooms, Sean Zaudke jokes that he is an evangelist against corridors, finding they often waste space, hamper adaptation, and are difficult for people to occupy. Instead, he suggests matrices of interconnected spaces, saying “the more that we can think about spaces that are one space flowing into the next space into the next space, the more alive these buildings feel, and the nicer they are to inhabit.” (2019). As described in Part II, Robin Evans considered the spatial and architectural implications of connected enfilade rooms compared to rooms connected—or perhaps divided—by corridors (Evans 1997). That said, many architects and planners, especially those working in higher education, remark that generous corridors and stair landings can encourage interaction and serendipitous meetings. Perhaps by becoming spaces unto themselves, places of interaction and occupation, corridors become less anticipatory and more indeterminate. A vivid example of the potential placeness of corridors comes from Einsiedeln

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Abbey. Former Abbot, Martin Werlen recounts how the Monks can use the wide baroque hallways for many purposes: as a place for meetings, for contemplative walking, as a restaurant after musical performances, and even for additional worship space. More than merely providing sufficient space to accommodate uses, Werlen describes the generous proportions as changing the nature of the space, observing the hallway serves “not just a function to go from one room to the other but, it’s a space you can live in. ” (2017). Werlen notes other Baroque features that contribute to this living quality of space, including the paint colors and the large windows necessary for illumination without electric light also lend a feeling of being outdoors, even during cold and snowy winters. Werlen describes working with architects to understand the idea of a corridor as a place to stay, not merely pass through, adding wryly, “it’s not a hallway like how you make today.” Clearly, over the past few centuries the living spaces of these corridors expanded rather than circumscribed the lives of the monks and the larger life of the Abbey. Drawing to the end of a wide-ranging conversation that touched on long-lived buildings, firms, and architects, BNIM founder Bob Berkebile and director of design Steve McDowell, along with their colleagues Jeremy Knoll and Jeremy Kahm pointed to the features of the conference room and office, an adaptive reuse inside a sprawling modernist

Figure 11.5 Interior Photograph of the Missouri Innovation Campus. Gould Evans & DLR Group (Lee Center, MO) 2017. Photograph by David Fannon.

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Figure 11.6 Interior photograph of a corridor at Einsiedeln Abbey. Photograph courtesy of CC0 Public Domain.

office complex in Kansas City, MO. Expanding on the idea of reuse, Berkebile, an early leader of the environmental movement in architecture offered a living, or biophilic, understanding of persistent architecture. Tracing the evolution from early ideas about sustainability as doing less harm towards regenerative approaches actively seeking positive good, Berkebile suggests the natural environment as a model for the constructed one, as in current efforts to incorporate and emulate living systems. Berkebile paints the image of a persistent building not merely conforming to, but emerging from natural and physical laws, such that it “behaves like nature. It breeds like nature. It changes as the light changes and so on” (2019). In addition to the immediate benefits for human health and well-being inside buildings, those living systems guide future change without dictating it, as Berkebile says, as you find the need to change the performance or the configuration or what’s going on in this space…those biophilic attributes will be retained the most aggressively, and they will influence the next things that come because that’s what people relate to. In this vision designers, by emulating natural processes, set in motion systems that encourage but do not compel the future performance of buildings, as Berkebile says, providing “more opportunities for [future

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designers], for that, if you will, subtle guidance system.” Drawing on the history of architecture, literature, and Art, Peter Zumthor arrives at a poetic formulation for a similar idea which he dubs coherence, defining it as “the idea of things coming into their own, of finding themselves, because they have become the thing that they actually set out to be” (Zumthor 2006, 69) Unlike the confines of programmatic determinism, subtle guidance and coherence embrace the constraints inherent to natural and human systems as pathways to open ends. This conception of an indeterminate living architecture finds in its indefinite reality an infinite possibility.

References Alessandro, Paul. 2017. Partner, Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture Interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy. By phone. Berkebile, Bob. 2019. Founding Principal, BNIM Interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn. Kansas City, MO. Brand, Stewart. 1995. How Buildings Learn: What Happens after They’re Built. Reprint edition. New York: Penguin Books. Evans, Robin. 1997. “Figures, Doors, and Passages.” In Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays, AA documents: 54–91. London: Architectural Association. Gard, George. 2017. Project Manager, Bruner/Cott Architects Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. Cambridge, MA. Lifschutz, Alex. 2017. “Long Life, Loose Fit, Low Energy.” Architectural Design 87 (5): 6–17. https://doi.org/10.1002/ad.2210. McCoy, Ronald. 2017. University Architect, Princeton University Interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy. By phone. Nelson, David. 2019. Senior Executive Partner and Head of Design, Foster + Partners Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Otero-Pailos, Jorge. 2008. “An Olfactory Reconstruction of Philip Johnson’s Glass House.” AA Files (57): 40–45. https://www.jstor.org/stable/29544691. Peña, William, and John Focke. 1969. Problem Seeking: New Directions in Architectural Programming. 1st Edition. CRS Investigation 18. Houston, TX: Caudill Rowlett Scott. Schmitt, Kristin. 2017. Lead Planner, JMZ Architects | Planners Interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy. By phone. Stark, Jean. 2017. Lead Planner, JMZ Architects | Planners Interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy. By phone. Tepfer, Fred. 2018. Design & Construction Manager for Academic and Research Facilities, University of Oregon Interview by David Fannon. By phone. Weeks, John. 1965. “Hospitals for the 1970s.” Medical Care 3 (4): 197–203. Werlen, Martin. 2017. Priest and Former Abbot, Einsiedeln Abbey Interview by David Fannon and Peter Wiederspahn. By phone. Zaudke, Sean. 2019. Associate Principal, Gould Evans Interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn. Lee’s Summit, MO. Zumthor, Peter. 2006. Atmospheres: Architectural Environments. Surrounding Objects. Atmospheres. Basel: Birkhäuser.

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12 TIMELESS P. Wiederspahn

There’s always the underlying intention in everything that we do to try to be timeless. — Sean Godsell, Sean Godsell Architects

Traces As you walk along Bernauer Straße near the center of Berlin, you encounter a fence of closely spaced oxidized vertical steel bars that separate you from the open field of Mauerpark. Mauerpark (Wall Park) is an open-space memorial to the Berlin Wall. The vertical bars are located where the concrete wall once stood, and the open field behind it is where the notorious Death Strip was created for anti-personnel and anti-tank defenses. Your perception begins to vibrate as the vertical bars of the fence interact visually with a cluster of vertical wooden slats in the distance. You finally encounter a wide gap in the steel bars and find yourself looking directly at a curiously distorted oval of tightly spaced vertical wood members that stands discretely in the open zone of the former Death Strip. A large cross is stained into the wood on the nose of the oval: this Christian symbology is unambiguous. As you move towards it, you find yourself stepping over an outline on the ground of a building that must have stood here at an earlier time. To your left is a rectangular volume defined by horizontal wood slats, and within it you can see a heavy timber structure supporting a set of large bronze bells. An abstract, rectangular, metal portal sits just under the stained cross of the oval, interrupting the repetitive rhythm of vertical wood, inviting you in. Passing through this deep threshold, you enter a space of shadow and light created by the sun slipping between the vertical slats. In front of you is the rough surface of an earthen wall with irregular horizontal striations. As your eye follows this surface that bends away from you in both directions, you realize it is another curvilinear volume, creating an undulating interstice between the light wood veil on the outside and the solid wall of earth within. Your eye detects fragments of color and decorative patterns on shards of terra-cotta that are embedded in the rough surface of the inner wall. These shards are small enough that they do not reveal the larger whole to which they belong. Another deep rectangular portal breaches the earthen wall, ushering you into an embracing egg-shaped space. As your eyes acclimatize to the dim interior light, you begin to detect that the elements of this space are few: the texture of the inside of the curving earthen wall; an abstract

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rectangular altar made of a smoother earthen surface; a top-lit niche that houses a hand-crafted reredos from a previous era; deep wooden beams that support a solid wood roof; a skylight directly above the altar that bathes it in diffused natural light. The space is quiet because the sound is absorbed by a myriad of void spaces within the wall’s rough surface, and there is no ornamentation to steal your gaze. You are left with your thoughts, with the memory of the city that has been erased, a landscape of death that traded lives for ideology, and a collection of architectonic fragments that don’t align in history. It is then that you feel that time has been superseded; that this place is timeless. This sensorial journey has taken you into the Chapel of Reconciliation (Figure 12.1) designed by architects Rudolf Reitermann and Peter Sassenroth, completed in 2000 (Bahr 2008, 2–5). The earthen wall at the center of the chapel is rammed earth, and its construction was directed by Martin Rauch, an earth building specialist (Sauer 2015, 52–55). The essential techniques that created the rammed earth architecture have been in use for the duration of human history. The chapel wall is massive in its presence, pure in material, non-referential in form, and abstract in detail, creating a space that is at once archaic and contemporary. The wooden screen wall at the perimeter of the chapel creates a space between it and the earthen wall that is both interior and exterior, covered by the roof but exposed to the atmosphere. It allows the eye to catch veiled glimpses of the earthen wall from the outside and provides a panorama of Mauerpark from the inside. The Chapel of Reconciliation was one of the first memorial artifacts to be reconstructed in the zone of the Death Strip, also known as No-Man’s Land, even before the idea of Mauerpark had come to fruition (Bahr 2008, 41). Now the park reveals and maps the traces of the Berlin Wall and its associated territory of control and death. It features the largest extant part of the former wall that has otherwise has been assiduously erased from the urban landscape of the city. This fragment of the wall has been decontextualized and, therefore, dematerialized from matter to mirage or myth. In this

Figure 12.1 Chapel commemorating the former Church of Reconciliation that was destroyed by the East German government, Reitermann and Sassenroth, Chapel of Reconciliation (Berlin, Germany) 2000. Photograph by Petr Šmídek.

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way, the chapel and the landscape within which it sits are replete not with objects from history, but provocations of memory. The outline of the building etched into the ground between Bernauer Straße and the chapel is that of the Church of Reconciliation, which was caught in the Death Strip when the Berlin Wall was constructed in 1961. The church was completed in 1894 in a neo-Gothic style (Ladd 1997, 34), an anachronistic simulacrum of a bygone architecture. Its steeple towered over the wall just a few meters away and was used as an observation post for armed soldiers to surveil the Death Strip in case people tried to escape across it to West Berlin. Like Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, the steeple was always watching (Foucault 1979, 195). But the East German government razed the church in 1985 to create more continuous views for the soldiers down the Death Strip. Just four years later, the Berlin Wall came down through popular will (Sorotte 2014, 147). The bronze bells that once hung in the steeple, the terracotta fragments that were integrated into the rammed earth wall of the chapel, and the pieces of crafted wood that were reassembled to create the original reredos for the new niche, all periodically emerged out of the earth on the site of the original church after the Berlin Wall came down. These objects are not only pieces of an absent architecture but are also displaced in time like spolia to be incorporated into the construction of a new building. They act as artifactual memories rearranged in the same place but not in their same cultural or temporal context. As Adam Sharr points out (2010, 783), the reconstructed reredos, ornaments that are typically positioned behind an altar, is situated on an axis with the original church nave facing east, but stands alone at a 45-degree offset from the new altar, dislocating tradition in its contemporary context (Figure 12.2). The architects are not trying to create a temporal layering through the architectural sequence of traces, objects, fragments, and walls. Instead, they abandon temporal continuity to create a gap between historic references by making the new chapel a place of unique architectural invention. Petra Bahr suggests that the visitor assumes the role of a sleuth searching for the meaning of the chapel when she writes, “There are powerful signs next to signs that require deciphering; the obvious is right beside the hidden. The power and aura of this site are provided by the things that are not readily visible” (2008, 12). An example of such an enigma is the amoeba-like plan of the chapel. It sits on the area of the apse of the original church, but the nature of its geometry denies axiality. In this way, it severs any geometric resonance to the nave typology of the original church. There is no explicit translation of one form to another through time, there are only clues, ciphers, and contradictions of what has occupied the site in the past and the present. Bahr observes, “Whoever enters the terrain of the new Chapel of Reconciliation can find traces of the site. For memory creates the future. People who sing and pray in this chapel share this conviction” (2008, 12). Here she suggests that the systems of Memoriam orchestrated by the urban landscape and the chapel are not about preserving the past. The past is too recent and real: it is painful. Instead, the experience of moving past screens, over traces, within interstices, and through walls is one of purgation, a cleansing of memories to create a new collective narrative for moving forward emotionally.

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Figure 12.2 Floor plan with exterior wood screen wall, interstitial ambulatory, and thick rammed-earth inner sanctuary wall with the old and new altars on distinct axes, Reitermann and Sassenroth, Chapel of Reconciliation (Berlin, Germany) 2000. Drawing recreated by authors.

Memory Peter Eisenman writes, “When history ends, memory begins” (1989, 7). His equation suggests that history and memory are like magnetic poles; one cannot exist without the other but are simultaneously repellant partners. Peter-Klaus Schuster elaborates on the dynamic between these conjoined concepts when he states, “Memory interrogates history and sees ruptures and continuities where history merely marches on, indulging progress” (2009, 176). He demonstrates that the difference between history and memory is analogous to the difference between time and timeless. When we deconstruct the term timeless, time is the subject being erased, but it is necessarily still present because its reference is needed to know what it is that is being expunged. Like history and memory, time and timeless are dialectically linked. Time itself, however, is questionable. It has presented a long-standing philosophical

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challenge, as Ali Madanipour demonstrates in his analysis of Aristotle’s observations on time: Aristotle (Physics, Book IV, 10) was aware of the difficulties of proving the existence of time, as it was made up of parts which did not exist: the past (‘it happened and does not exist’), the future (‘does not yet exist’), and now (‘which is not part of time’) that links and separates the past from the future. (2017, 13) Contemporary physicist Carlo Rovelli describes how the concept of time has transformed in the modern era: “One after another, the characteristic features of time have proven to be approximations, mistakes determined by our perspective, just like the flatness of the earth” (2018, 4). As we can see from these examples, the concept of time as a continuous linear flow is, therefore, simply an artificial lens that we construct to fit our perception. Once we come to understand that time is not a constant but a variable, then we can consider timelessness as just one extreme facet of time’s elasticity. This chain of ideas regarding time and its antonym timelessness demonstrates a facet of the Einsteinian notion of time as elastic, not constant (2018, 75–79), and that our perception of time dwells in the imaginary (2018, 180). Timelessness in architecture offers us both a contradiction and a revelation that architecture is at once tangible and denotative, and conceptual and connotative. In this chapter, we explore how future-use architecture simultaneously draws from the past, operates in the present, and projects into the future when designing for the essential, universal, and timeless qualities of architecture. This spectrum of temporal variability also includes distinctions between the quantitative and qualitative. Duration, for instance, is the quantitative measurement of intervals between events: The difference of time with or without duration is the difference between history and memory. A history, whether experienced or interpreted, is the systematic compilation of disparate yet related events… Memory, on the other hand, is the collection of events that can be recalled in any order imaginable. (Wiederspahn 1999, 386) Memory, a psychological construct, is time without duration: it is timeless. Architecture of memory, therefore, psychologically transcends time and belongs with equal relevance to the past, present, and possible futures. Louis Kahn speaks of the psychological dimension in architecture through his own dyadic equation when he asserts: A great building must, in my opinion, begin with the unmeasurable, must go through the measurable in the process of design, but must again in the end be unmeasurable. The design, the making of things, is a measurable act…What is unmeasurable is the psychic spirit. The psyche is expressed by feeling, and also by thought, and I believe it will always remain unmeasurable. (1991, 11)

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In architecture, history is to time and the measurable as memory is to timelessness and the immeasurable. Because architecture is both artifactual and psychological in nature, these are constituent elements dependent on the presence of each other in the world and our minds. Kahn’s work is often identified as a vanguard of post-modern architecture, a challenge to doctrinaire modernism by evoking pre-modern architectures. He often builds in masonry, a material as old as architecture itself, pays homage to the tectonic forms natural to masonry construction, such as the arch, and, as Daniel Abramson so eloquently describes, creates “wrapped ruins,” screen walls of large-scale geometric openings that loosely envelope the functional parts of the building to produce spaces of an elemental monumentality that are “superfluous to programmed purpose, representing what Kahn believes to be architecture’s essence beyond use” (2016, 124). The Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, India, is a prime example of Kahn’s penchant for creating deep interstitial spaces defined by masonry walls and giant arches that possess qualities of both an abstract modernism and an ancient abandoned architecture (Ronner 1994, 208–33). Kahn’s contemporary, Sigurd Lewerentz, achieves a similar balance between pre-modern and modern qualities in his two late-career churches, the Church of Saint Mark in suburban Stockholm, completed in 1960, and the Church of Saint Peter in Klippan, Sweden, completed in 1966. Lewerentz also uses brick masonry, “which is laid in running bond with wide mortar joints, giving the walls a raw and ruin-like character” (Hultin 1997, 9). For Kahn and Lewerentz, they were not just incorporating formal and rhetorical historic references that so characterize post-modern architecture. Instead, they were invoking an aura of ageless presence and material permanence. An alternative term to describe work like their unique mélange of modern and archaic sensibilities is transtemporal, the ability of an architecture to resonate across time.

Familiar and Unfamiliar Even though the Chapel of Reconciliation in Berlin is in an urban environment, its position in the open space of the Mauerpark renders it like a feldkapelle, or field chapel, a Northern European tradition of building small chapels in rural and agrarian landscapes. Field chapels are sacred spaces of contemplation and congregation for rural communities that are removed from the habitual patterns of village life. Their remote locations induce processional pilgrimages out of the community and into the surrounding natural or agricultural environment. Like the compressed sequence through the Chapel of Reconciliation, a journey to a field chapel is one that leaves the quotidian world behind through the ritual of seeking, finding, entering, and being with just your thoughts. Field chapels are typically dedicated to people of renown within Christian religious traditions. Religious institutions are dedicated to the prolongation of their belief systems, and the permanence of architecture is a way to express the desire to communicate their philosophies beyond their present time. Peter Zumthor produced two field chapels, Saint Benedict Chapel in Sumvitg, Switzerland, completed in 1988 (Figure 12.3), and Brüder

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Figure 12.3 Exterior wood shingle skin and clerestory windows, Peter Zumthor, Saint Benedict Chapel (Sumvigt, Switzerland) 1988. Photograph by Felipe Camus.

Klaus Chapel in Wachendorf, Germany, completed in 2007 (Figure 12.5). Each generates a strong connection to their sites but in distinctly different ways. Saint Benedict Chapel draws connections to the building culture of its alpine context. It sits at the edge of a forest on a steeply sloping site overlooking the village below (Yoshida 1998, 44). The local architecture is defensive in nature, simple rectangular volumes made of heavy timber construction with a modicum of small windows and sloped metal roofs to protect against the harsh winter conditions. The chapel is also a singular volume but with a distinct tear-shaped plan, with its point facing uphill and its rounded apse-like prow facing the village. It is shrouded in a skin of wood shingles up to a ring of clerestory windows that wraps around the top of the curving exterior wall like a negative cornice. These windows are high enough to deny views into the interior from the surrounding landscape. The skin peels away from the main volume at the uphill side to create an entry vestibule. Upon entering the Saint Benedict Chapel, the visitor is greeted by closely spaced vertical timbers extending from the floor past the clerestory windows to support the heavy timber roof framing above (Figure 12.4). The vertical timbers are held away from the continuous surface of the encompassing exterior wall to distinguish structure from the enclosure. Each vertical member aligns with a corresponding horizontal roof beam creating a web of structure that reaches from the floor up to the central roof ridge beam. Natural light filters through the high windows behind the columns bathing the interior in its warmth while denying any direct visual distractions from the village below. Structure and light conspire to create a space of silence and introspection. This architecture does not mimic the neighboring buildings. Instead, it transforms their familiar building practices into a novel and sublime architecture that defies formal references and temporal connections to tradition. Peter Zumthor acknowledges the balance he finds between the local building culture and his distinct architectural expression when he writes, “Perhaps the chapel is a little wooden boat after all, built for an uncertain journey by local people born into the heritage of building with wood” (2014a, 63).

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Figure 12.4 Interior timber structural frame and clerestory windows, Peter Zumthor, Saint Benedict Chapel (Sumvigt, Switzerland) 1988. Photograph by Felipe Camus.

Figure 12.5 Inscrutable presence in an agricultural pasture, Peter Zumthor, Brüder Klaus Chapel (Wachendorf, Germany) 2007. Photograph by Peter Wiederspahn.

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Figure 12.6 Charred interior surface created by burning roughhewn timbers and an oculus to the sky, Peter Zumthor, Brüder Klaus Chapel (Wachendorf, Germany) 2007. Photograph by Peter Wiederspahn.

Alternatively, Brüder Klaus Chapel draws us in by its inscrutable presence in an open agricultural pasture. It is an abstract, asymmetrical, five-sided tower, 12 meters tall (40 feet), that is seemingly alien to its surroundings (Zumthor 2014b, 121–22). It is made from materials that are similarly unfamiliar. The surface of the tower is comprised of 24 uneven horizontal bands of rammed concrete (which is akin to rammed earth but uses concrete as a bonding agent instead of clay), and is pocked by a myriad of tiny holes. The lone aperture is an elongated metallic triangle that adorns one of the five faces, and its geometry is too strange to immediately be recognized as a door. The dearth of familiar references creates an object of curiosity that seems to demand our further inspection. The metal triangle will pivot open with a pull on its protruding knob, and it opens up to a world that is the diametric opposite of the exterior. The interior space of the Brüder Klaus Chapel is also triangular in section but is formed by a highly sculpted surface of blackened vertical flutes (Figure 12.6). The space rises and gets wider as you progress along the curving walls towards the dim light emanating from an oculus in the ceiling that is open to the sky, letting in the sun and rain alike. The scent of charred wood permeates the space, and you begin to realize that the vertical flutes are the negative spaces of rough-shaped wood timbers. Small dots of light begin to appear on the blackened sloping walls like

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stars in the night sky. You remember the small holes on the exterior and now realize that they are the source of these pinpricks of light. Your haptic, olfactory, and visual senses are saturated with an intense incongruousness of a space that is totally unfamiliar, compelling, and unsettling at the same time. In fact, the chapel is the result of an equally unique construction process that one might have surmised based on the strong and strange evidence: an ascending lean-to structure of wood timbers were encased in rammed concrete then set alight and ultimately dematerialized. Zumthor’s description of his design process emulates the experience the uninitiated have when visiting the chapel. He writes: In time, the design became clear and elemental: light and shade, water and fire, material and transcendence, the earth below and the sky above. And then, suddenly the little devotional space became mysterious. (Zumthor 2014b, 121) Saint Benedict Chapel elicits architectural invention from the familiar building practices of the region, whereas the Brüder Klaus Chapel is an unfamiliar architecture produced from unconventional processes. Sigmund Freud parses the psychological diptych of the ‘familiar,’ or in German, hiemlich, or homely as in comforting, and the ‘unfamiliar,’ unheimlich, or the ‘uncanny,’ as in strange, trepidatious, or uncertain (Freud 1955, 224–25). Freud writes: An uncanny effect is often and easily produced when the distinction between imagination and reality is effaced, as when something that we have hitherto regarded as imaginary appears before us in reality, or when a symbol takes over the full functions of the thing it symbolizes, and so on. (1955, 244) Homologously, Zumthor’s two chapels are the linked inverse of each other. Saint Benedict Chapel uses vertical wood timbers to raise our eyes towards the source of light above and gives us confidence in its tectonic surety. Brüder Klaus Chapel is the absence of its vertical wood, and its traces are captured in the encompassing concrete and the odor of its combustion. The former floats amiably above the village communicating its kinship through its material affiliation. The stark contrast between the latter’s austere exterior and the dark sensuousness of the interior reinforces the notion that the actual architecture has been usurped, and that we are left with only its constructed memory.

Equivocality Another type of institution that plans for longevity is the university. Like religious and governmental institutions, universities seek to perpetuate their mission. Unique to universities, however, is the propensity to evolve in the short term as knowledge, technology, and culture constantly shifts. Libraries are at the center of these educational transformations as pedagogic theories increasingly reinforce collaborative work and the use of new digital technologies over individual study. The Tama

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Figure 12.7 Crisscrossing concrete arches in curving walls of the structure, Toyo Ito and Associates, Architects, Tama Art University Library (Tokyo, Japan) 2007. Photograph courtesy of Getty Images.

Art University Library in the periphery of Tokyo by Toyo Ito, completed in 2007, is a building designed as an agent of possible transformation as much as it is the honorific heart of the university (Figure 12.7). Like the large geometric figures of Kahn’s facades, Ito constructs a two-level matrix of large concrete arches that crisscross the plan in curving walls of structure (Mostafavi 2009, 29); the point where two curving walls intersect, the arches in each wall come down to the floor to create a column of vertical structure. This tapering point of the structure down below is contrasted by the soaring arches and tall ceilings above. The resulting floor plan is a distorted grid of structure that produces variable and irregular spaces (Figure 12.8). The functional furniture of the library, such as bookshelves, media sources, work tables, and seating areas, are freestanding and disconnected from the architecture, but these elements wind through the idiosyncratic grid in their own curvilinear forms that emulate the sinuous surfaces of the arching structural walls. Although the plan is not based on a predictable orthogonal grid of structural bays, it still provides an openness that can be adapted freely as the library program continues to evolve. The concrete arches are also brought to the exterior surface of the library. Large frameless glass planes are made flush with the outside face of the concrete wall and fill the space of the arches. During the day, the reflectivity of the glass creates a coplanar surface with the concrete, fusing them into a singular taut skin. This conjoining of surfaces renders the concrete not as a robust and massive structural system, but instead as a delicate membrane for the play of light and shadow. In contrast, at night the artificial lighting emanating from the interior makes the glass disappear, revealing the monumental spaces and arches within (Mostafavi 2009, 29).

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Figure 12.8 Upper floor plan of curving structural walls with large arched openings organized in a distorted structural grid, Toyo Ito and Associates, Architects, Tama Art University Library (Tokyo, Japan) 2007. Drawing recreated by authors.

The composite impression of the Tama Library oscillates between being an abstract contemporary architecture signified by its highly refined qualities of concrete construction and glazing systems, and an ancient architecture defined purely by structure and light. Ito alludes to his penchant for ambiguities when he states that “I am very interested in the conditions where boundaries melt” (Fujimoto 2009, 14). The seemingly erratically arranged arches are reminiscent of Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s imaginary prison drawings of a tangle of giant arches that recede infinitely into the perspective (Harvey 1979, 32–59). But curiously, arches are not a tectonic form endemic to Japanese building traditions, so they don’t provide a familiar cultural reference that would connect them cognitively to architectures of the past. Of course, there is more to the building than meets the eye that posits it squarely in the twenty-first century. For example, the whole building structure floats on seismic isolators to resist the frequent earthquakes of the region. And concrete is not the actual primary structural material: the walls and their arches are made of welded plate steel that is then encased in concrete (Márquez Cecilia 2009, 109). Instead of conventional steelreinforced concrete construction, this building is concrete-reinforced steel. Last, there is a false floor through which the mechanical systems

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are run, and can easily be replaced or adjusted when the building’s uses change over time. This is a structure that is built to persist physically by being durable in its construction, resilient relative to seismic activity, and adaptable to the changes in the program that this typology will inevitably undergo. It also builds cultural value by possessing enduring qualities of dramatic structure, magnificent spaces, and abundant natural light. The confluence of these quantitative and qualitative attributes creates an expressive ensemble as both an austere archaism and a contemporary minimalism. The Tama Library is a study in equivocalities spatially, tectonically, culturally, and temporally.

Timeless It is very important that we don’t just build for today , but for what people will think in one hundred years about what we did today. — Father Martin Werlen, Einsiedeln Abbey The precedents portrayed in this chapter attempt to provide an underpinning of trans-temporal architecture. What these buildings have in common are expressive design and material responses to site, sequence, space, order, structure, texture, and light. Each of these buildings provoke us to move beyond the visible and tangible qualities of architecture and interrogate the intangible aspects of narrative, emotion, ambiguity, imagination, and memory. Time is an essential component of persistence, so the term ‘timeless’ would, on the surface, seem to be contradictory to it. But upon further consideration, we can observe that long-lasting buildings transcend time by enduring through the changes in the culture and nature within which they reside. Tama Library poses the question of whether the ability of a building to change uses creates a timeless architecture? Perhaps not in the sense of the sublime and the uncanny as discussed for the chapels, but it certainly contributes to a building’s longevity. After all, a building cannot be timeless if it does not physically persist. When designing for perpetuity, how can we ensure that future generations will perceive our sense of timelessness? Stepping into the small spaces of Zumthor’s chapels takes us out of the everyday and into a whole new universe of community and contemplation. One might ask, what is the imperative to strive for timelessness in the design of buildings? That question might best be answered with another: why are we not always designing for persistence and lasting value? The Chapel of Reconciliation suggests that the goal of societal healing can be achieved by creating new memories, not by simply recording history. The pursuit of timeless architecture can be elusive because it is dependent on the subtle balancing of the universal, the eternal, and the ineffable.

References Abramson, Daniel M. 2016. Obsolescence: An Architectural History. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Bahr, Petra. 2008. The Chapel of Reconciliation in Berlin, English Edition, translated by Dr. Christine Jakobi-Mirwald. Lindenberg im Allgäu. Germany: Kunstverlag Josef Fink.

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Eisenman, Peter. 1989. “Editors Introduction—The Houses of Memory: The Texts of Analogy.” In The Architecture of the City, by Aldo Rossi, edited by Peter Eisenman: 3–11. New York: Opposition Books, The Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies and The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and Punish: Birth of the Prison, translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books. Freud, Sigmund. 1955. “The ‘Uncanny.’” (1919). In The Complete Psychological Works, XVII: 219–50: Translated from the German under the general editorship of James Strachey, in collaboration with Anna Freud, assisted by Alix Strachey and Alan Tyson. London: Hogarth Press. Fujimoto, Suo. 2009. “Liquid Space and Fractal Boundary: A Conversation with Toyo Ito.” In Toyo Ito 2005–2009, El Croquis 147: 6–20. Edited by Fernando Marquez Cecilia and Richard Levene. Madrid. Godsell, Sean. July 22, 2020. Founding Principal, Sean Godsell Architects, phone interview with Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, Melbourne, Australia. Harvey, Miranda. 1979. Piranesi: The Imaginary Views. New York: Harmony Books. Hultin, Olof. 1997. “Church of St Mark.” In Sigurd Lewerentz: Two Churches, edited by Olof Hultin, translated by John Kraus and Michael Perimutter: 8–40. Stockholm: Arkitektur Förlag AG. Kahn, Louis I. 1991. Louis I. Kahn: Writings, Lectures, Interviews, edited by Alessandra Latour. New York: Rizzoli International Press. Ladd, Brian. 1997. The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Márquez Cecilia, Fernando. 2009. “Tama Art University Library.” In Toyo Ito 2005–2009, El Croquis 147, edited by Fernando Marquez Cecilia and Richard Levene: 106–25. Madrid: El Croquis, S.L. Madanipour, Ali. 2017. Cities in Time: Temporary Urbanism and the Future of the City. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Mostafavi, Moshen. 2009. “To Soften the Perfection of the Grid: Toyo Ito’s New Nature and the Artifice of Architecture.” In Toyo Ito 2005–2009, El Croquis 147, edited by Fernando Marquez Cecilia and Richard Levene: 21–31. Madrid: El Croquis, S.L. Ronner, Heinz. 1994. “Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India.” In Louis I. Kahn: Complete Works 1935–1974, Reprint 1994, edited by Heinz Ronner and Sharad Jhaveri. 208–33. Basel, Boston, MA: Birkhauser. Rovelli, Carlo. 2018. The Order of Time. New York: Riverhead Books. Sauer, Marco. 2015. “Rammed Earth Flooring.” In Martin Rauch, Refined Earth: Construction and Design with Rammed Earth, edited by Otto Kapfinger and Marco Sauer: 51–63. Munich: DETAIL-Institut für Internationale ArchitekturDokumentation GmbH & Co. Schuster, Peter-Klaus. 2009. “A Temple of Memory: On David Chipperfield’s Neues Museum.” In Neues Museum Berlin, edited by Rik Nys and Martin Reichert: 169–90. Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter König. Sharr, Adam. 2010. “The Sedimentation of Memory.” Journal of Architecture 3 (5). doi: 10.1080/13602365.2018.1495908. Sorotte, Mary Elise. 2014. The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall. New York: Basic Books. Werlen, Father Martin. November 1, 2017. Priest, Former Abbott, Einsiedeln Abbey Phone Interview by David Fannon and Peter Wiederspahn, Einsiedeln, Switzerland. Wiederspahn, Peter. 1999. “Embodied Time in the Urban Artifacts of Rome.” In La Citta Nuova: Proceedings of the 1999 Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) International Conference, Summer 1999. Yoshida, Nobuyuki. 1998. “Saint Benedict Chapel.” In Peter Zumthor, Architecture and Urbanism, February 1998 Extra Edition, edited by Nobuyuki Yoshida: 44–61. Tokyo: A+U Publishing Co., Ltd.

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Zumthor, Peter. 2014a. Peter Zumthor 1985–1989 Building and Projects Volume 1, edited by Thomas Durish, translated by John Hargraves. Zurich: Verlag Schneidegger & Spies AG. ———. 2014b. Peter Zumthor 1998–2001 Building and Projects Volume 3, edited by Thomas Durish, translated by John Hargraves. Zurich: Verlag Schneidegger & Spies AG.

Conclusion TOWARDS AN ARCHITECTURE OF PERSISTENCE D. Fannon, M. Laboy, and P. Wiederspahn

Every time we work on a project, we think about it lasting. If it’s lasting over that time, then certainly things will shift and change. It’s about making a container that has both the possibility of change, but also, it’s about a humanity that immediately welcomes people on the first day and can continue to welcome people over time. — Billie Tsien, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects|Partners

Dialectic The architecture of persistence is situated in resonance with its natural and cultural contexts; constructed for material durability and high performance; configured to adapt to diverse future uses; and conceived to provide humane environments devoted to the well-being of generations of users. This book presents a series of concepts and examples that describe facets of the architecture of persistence but it does not prescribe how to design long-lived buildings. Instead, the preceding chapters, in their aggregate, yield a range of possible strategies, frameworks and polemics for producing meaningful architecture constructed for long life cycles of material, spatial, and cultural performance. Some of these arguments may initially seem contradictory. As outlined in the introduction, the chapters present dialectical pairs of attributes, such as Simple and Complex, Situated and Evolving, and Anticipatory and Indeterminate. This structure reflects the fact that there is no universal architecture of persistence, but a general ethos emerges from these ideas to inform design towards long-term buildings in a myriad of contexts. Generally, each of the three parts of this book examines a particular milieu in which buildings are produced: their ecological, social, and temporal contexts. Moreover, the projects in each chapter illustrate the general principles of persistence as manifest in specific and complex contexts. These embedded structures connect strategies and concepts across multiple projects, places, and people within each section and throughout the book. The precedents in these chapters possess strong affinities to the ethos of persistence, but each clearly prioritizes some attributes over others. Part I Material Ecologies addresses the global industrial ecology in which buildings are entangled and makes an intellectual and ethical argument for extending the material life of buildings. To that end, Chapter

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1 Essential and Chapter 2 Durable advance arguments for investing in the material life of buildings after construction; addressing different scales and dimensions of maintenance, repair, and retooling, from the individual materials to the assembly of components. In contrast, Chapter 3 Simple argues for an investment of time and intellect before construction, illustrating the sophistication of planning needed to minimize material and energy flows throughout its life. Lastly, the laboratory buildings described in Chapter 4 Situated show that even highly material-intensive buildings requiring many cycles of change can challenge formulaic typologies to heighten place identity and restore ecological productivity. Part II Changing Uses examines the social contexts in which buildings exist and the different demands for use adaptability, arguing for universal human-centered design approaches. The four chapters that follow demonstrate design negotiating the specific priorities and challenges of current human communities with society’s anticipated future needs and challenges. For example, Chapter 8 Anticipatory demonstrates that even buildings designed for one long-term client and a single-use can and should anticipate future changes in their economic or cultural context that might demand growth or change of function. Chapter 5 Timely shows that historic buildings that were built for material durability and use adaptability have become integral to the social fabric of a place, providing continued economic and cultural value beyond their initial intent. Looking to the past provides valuable paradigms of persistence that can, and should, be emulated in contemporary architectural design. Chapter 7 Complex demonstrates that inviting natural forces into a building to interact with its thermal mass creates dynamic and diverse zones of comfort for specific forms of occupancy, from thermally variable social spaces to thermally specific workspaces. Chapter 6 Humane examines the role of institutions and custodians in accumulating knowledge about what makes architecture persist, and how architects engaged in that professional context can advance knowledge in the discipline. Part III Alternative Futures addresses the temporal context of architecture, and the chapters that follow challenge the discipline to engage intangibles like memory, humility, empathy, and uncertainty in the design process. Chapter 9 Memorable examines connections between place, memory, and persistence. In contrast, Chapter 10 Evolving argues for a design process that elevates and engages future generations who would otherwise not be at the design table. Chapter 11 Indeterminate explores the succession of future designs and designers that carry a building into the unknowable future. Finally, Chapter 12 Timeless invites architects to overcome their anxiety about the future by seeking truths that are universal across all times.

Synthetic You can’t completely predict what’s going to happen in the future, but you can look at how things have changed over the time that a building has developed, the way we are operating in it now, and what things are a continuum and universal between people. — Jennifer Yoos, Vincent James Associates, Architects

CONCLUSION

As the preceding chapters attest, many ideas emerged repeatedly during the research into persistent architecture, weaving through and connecting projects and writing. The authors deliberately left overlaps and even contradictions unresolved to illustrate the complexities of designing for persistence in specific contexts. The themes explored in each chapter extracted salient lessons from both historical projects and recent ones that sought to build for the long term but are yet to be tested in the decades to come. Through the voices of the people interviewed, nearly all chapters make the case that to look to the future architects must start by looking to the past. Historic architecture embodies edifying characteristics that enabled its long life. Buildings produced before the advent of modern environmental systems exhibits multiple long-tested approaches, such as responding to local climate; using indigenous materials and methods; embracing long-term weathering; aligning spatial capacities to allow new uses to continuously re-inhabit buildings. Old buildings, therefore, offer a view through time so architects can imagine designing buildings to become historic architecture of the future. New buildings examined in this book frequently reinterpret and reimagine long-tested ideas, charting new paths for architecture to achieve longevity and sustained significance.

Differentiated Many of the chapters uncovered the need to negotiate opposites in search of a meaningful form of longevity. Chapter 11 Indeterminate interrogates the idea that to persist, an indeterminate building must simultaneously welcome change and yet retain its identity. In a similar vein, Chapter 4 Situated examines the need for architecture to balance the adaptable qualities of generality with the grounding qualities of place-specificity. Chapter 8 Anticipatory argues for balancing the constructed specificity of now with future intention. Chapter 6 Humane argues for carefully balancing tradition and innovation. Chapter 9 Memorable makes the case that architecture that lasts cannot be generic because buildings’ survival depends on a specificity that inspires human care. Chapter 5 Timely demonstrates how a process of subtraction in old buildings can augment their generosity of space and light to add more diversity of spaces for new needs and uses. Like architectural space, these opposites are not physical features, even if their qualities are ultimately defined by the configuration of matter. These approaches to design embrace architecture as a contingent practice to create diversity. In turn, that diversity enables persistence because whatever comes, there will likely always be something about a diverse building that works, allowing it to better tolerate localized or momentary disruptions and inconveniences. Strategic Structure Given the difficulty of changing primary structure in buildings, several chapters examined the role of strategic structural patterns in creating diverse opportunities for occupation and spatial reconfiguration. Some chapters examined the advantages of the well-known open columnar system, whether in the cast-iron industrial lofts and mills of the late

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nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the steel frame of the Missouri Innovation Campus (Chapter 11 Indeterminate), the mass-timber construction of the Wood Innovation and Design Centre (Chapter 1 Essential), or the distorted concrete-reinforced plate steel grid of the Tama Art University Library (Chapter 12 Timeless). These patterns— when used in buildings of sensible proportions—provide open spaces minimally encumbered by structure to facilitate the possible transformation of uses. Some chapters examined projects demonstrating that strategic placement and differentiated patterns are equally or more important than the degree of openness and length of the span. In Chapter 10 Evolving, the Superlofts project in Amsterdam by Marc Koehler, showed that while parallel load-bearing walls constrain the space horizontally, expanding vertical space creates opportunities in the section for generational changes in household structure and work patterns. Many projects in Chapter 4 Situated show ways that structural densities and proportions may permanently define exceptional spaces to create a public realm within the building, while leaving general spaces adaptable. In the same chapter, the Gerling Ring project by Foster + Partners demonstrated the importance of the placement of horizontal structure in both plan and section, negotiating different heights to maximize daylight and facilitate distribution of services. Thus, strategic structural patterns that consider use adaptability not only challenge notions of typological classification but can also exert control in spaces that are critical to sustaining the cultural value and significance of a building over time. Tactical Tempering In support of the strategic approach to the long-lasting nature of the structure, a tactical approach to thermal tempering embraces the more particular and frequently changing nature of the enclosure and active systems. The persistent influence of these tactics on the desired interior conditions for the life of the building weaves through many chapters. Chapter 1 Essential, explicitly debated the potential advantages and risks of layered or integrated approaches to material integrity and legibility, and projects in various chapters illustrate this debate when describing the design of enclosure systems for adaptability. Some case studies employ thick building enclosures to mediate between interior and exterior conditions, such as the Research Center ICTA-ICP, discussed in Chapter 7 Complex. The flexible interior arrangement separates layers of partially conditioned and unconditioned social space as thermal buffers around the actively conditioned rooms—effectively thickening the definition of the envelope into a space of climatic mediation. The chapter Essential points to the RMIT Design Hub, which embraces and prepares for future advances in automation and energy technology with a layered enclosure system that provides shade today, but may also provide the building energy in the future. In contrast, Chapter 3 Simple details the monolithic insulating masonry construction of the experimental 2226, where carefully balancing ventilation with the internal loads from equipment and occupants obviates the need for active mechanical systems.

CONCLUSION

Similar ideas were implicitly presented across various chapters through the design of active thermal comfort systems for adaptability. For example, the Frick Chemistry Laboratory, examined in detail in Chapter 4, implemented a strategy common in modern laboratory buildings by physically separating the ventilation-dominated and energy-intensive laboratories from the less intensely conditioned office and meeting spaces. A tall atrium unifies the building socially, and acts as a passively assisted system of exhaust and energy recovery. The separation of systems happens in layers (or volumes) of space, and their strategic integration happens in the permanent and social heart of the building, allowing changes to the particular without disrupting the collective. As described in Chapter 8 Anticipatory, Spencer Brewery adopts a similar clarity in which a legible service spine of pipes, ducts, and conduit organizes the plan between service and served spaces, while meeting the present and future demands of the production process. In contrast, the Research Center ICTA-ICP, discussed in Chapter 7 Complex, integrates the active radiant heating and cooling system into the site-cast concrete structure, giving the image of monolithic concrete while obscuring the sophisticated system of thermal zones, sensors and controls. As noted, the structure and skin of the Research Center ICTA-ICP passively temper interior conditions in the common areas, where people congregate, circulate, or relax. The building deploys active systems only in areas that anticipate specialized uses and require stricter environmental controls. Alternatively, Empire State College described in Chapter 11 Indeterminate adopts a ubiquitous approach, providing fresh air and thermal conditioning through the raised floor plenum and thus liberating future spatial arrangements from systems constraints. Although these precedents employ different tactics of systems of energy management and thermal comfort, they all reveal the insistent influence of environmental mediation systems on persistent architecture. Flux Form Examples throughout the book make clear that the architecture of persistence extrapolates its expression from the tectonic systems and spatial patterns that facilitate both change and longevity, an expression born out of an enduring high performance. These human-centered structural strategies and tempering tactics for spatial organization result in adaptable, place-specific, and memorable architectural forms. What emerges is a new type where form that facilitates transformations of uses over time becomes performance, and type describes not what use a building contains but how a building can adapt and respond to the needs of the users. Use-based typologies such as a factory, school, or library, when cross-pollinated with the temporal dimension of an architecture of persistence, become a type of flux form that possesses an embodied intelligence of adaptability. The typical New England mill building typology, discussed in Chapter 5 Timely, is an example of creating adaptable spaces replete with tall ceilings and narrow floorplates for ample natural light, and a high structural capacity that can accept an infinite range of new uses. 2226, discussed in Chapter 3 Simple, affords similarly generous parameters as the mill building type in a

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much smaller building: tall ceilings; shallow spaces; abundant natural light, augmented by sensors, automated vents in tune with occupants in space, and a raised floor to provide systems adaptability. Such an architecture is thus conceived and understood not as static or inviolable objects, but as dynamic systems of change, ever incomplete and evolving. Importantly, the findings of this research, as illustrated by the Research Center ICTA-ICP project on Chapter 7 Complex, assert that flux form does not imply changes to the long-lasting tectonics of buildings, but a differentiated hierarchy of systems of persistence. As uses change, persistent architecture retains its material essence: that which provides continuity, absorbs the fluctuations of the faster-changing parts, and provides legibility for future generations to leave their imprint. The organizational strategies for each of the primary systems—site, primary structure, and vertical circulation—provide clear pathways for their counterpart secondary systems of landscape, enclosure, horizontal circulation, and mechanical distribution that become the instruments that adapt to the changing context of regulations, performance criteria, and cultural preferences. These systems leave clear logic for users to organize tertiary systems of partition and furniture in response to changes in use. Thus, tectonic transformations are intentionally designed into certain building systems that change relatively frequently while others are designed to endure for many generations. An architecture of persistence is therefore dependent on balancing the fixity and longevity of primary building systems with the unencumbered flux of the secondary systems; providing more precision for anticipated change and more generosity towards the indeterminate.

Persistence This book connects the ecological, social, and temporal dimensions of architecture, arguing that persistence provides a framework to engage history, address short-term needs, and afford the possibility of change in unknown futures. As Daniel Abramson observes, “The past persists as unpredictably as the future unfolds” (2016, 137). That argument builds upon and transcends several generative themes of twenty-first-century architecture, which, while addressing urgent challenges and opportunities, are also constrained by their relation to time. Beyond Adaptive Reuse Designing for future use enables the adaptive reuse of the future, through a commitment to long-term material, energy, economic, and cultural performance. The architecture of persistence, however, does not merely react to current conditions, it proactively organizes building systems in anticipation of unknown future spatial, structural, and energy needs. As discussed in Chapter 10 Evolving, the measure of future-thinking in architecture is generations, not the incremental or superficial changes of short-term occupancy. Steven Jay Gould elaborated upon Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by introducing the concept of “punctuated equilibrium” (2007). He hypothesized that species

CONCLUSION

do not evolve gradually, instead, they remain morphologically constant for most of their evolutionary existence, but that significant adaptation and transformation occur rarely and in relatively brief periods of time. Species that can adapt quickly in response to periods of significant environmental change survive and prosper. Analogously, buildings with the capacity to change, while retaining the significance which made them worth keeping in the first place, will be more likely to persist. The architecture of persistence offers the additional practical benefits of amortizing its embodied energy over longer periods of time, limiting demolition and new construction, and sustaining diverse human uses in many alternative futures. Beyond Sustainability Like persistence, many definitions of sustainability embody a temporal dimension urging careful consideration of present actions with an eye towards future consequences. While both terms describe something continuing more or less forever, the term sustainability in architecture suggests homeostasis, a sufficient but impoverished existence with just enough to survive and no more. Driven by climate change and the energy crisis, the historical discourse of sustainability in architecture focused heavily on operating energy efficiency. Recently, the increased recognition of the embodied carbon of materials, and effects on human well-being shifted the conversation away from minimizing harm or optimization, towards an idea of maximization of use and co-benefits. Persistence expands the discourse of long-term sustainability beyond physical endurance with minimal harm, to consider memory, humanity, and change. Persistence builds upon these values of sustainability by doggedly anticipating continual change within and without buildings. In this way it possesses a regenerative capacity that stubbornly preserves its cultural value while adding renewed vitality to its natural and built environment. Beyond Resilience The discourse around designing the built environment for resilience often focuses exclusively on resisting the initial shock from environmental impacts, such as extreme weather or seismic activity, and providing life safety and comfort when vulnerable systems are nonfunctional. The architecture of persistence transcends the functional pragmatism of such short-term resilience, by focusing on longer-term human-led changes, and building the capacity of people to retool and reorganize for uncertain futures. Architecture designed to provide stability and comfort passively, while allowing the possibility of change, offers environmental benefits for the long life of the building, as well as humane qualities that make it worthy to persist and embrace the different uses it may contain. Beyond Time Designing for persistence, time becomes as critical a consideration as gravity, site, space, structure, energy, and use. Persistence conceives of architecture as continually useful and culturally valuable long into

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an unpredictable future. Anticipatory design can balance the reactive desire to preserve a building’s embodied energy and proactive strategies to create an embodied time; to create architecture in which change is integral to its design. Configuring tectonic and spatial systems with embodied intelligence that negotiates resistance and transformation provides long-lasting benefits to present and future users. Like architecture, persistence is both a physical and a cultural act, demanding that buildings are sufficiently robust to face the inexorable forces of nature and the inevitable vicissitudes of culture over time. Like architecture, persistence is also an ethical choice, not merely to incur adverse impacts of constructing and operating buildings, but to send buildings of today into the future, imposing them upon or offering them to successive generations. Persistence, then, is an imperative for architects to integrate the temporal dimension into the design of the built environment by looking beyond the present to the lessons of the past and the promise of the future.

References Abramson, Daniel. 2016. Obsolescence: An Architectural History. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Gould, Stephan Jay. 2007. Punctuated Equilibrium. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Tsien, Billie. July 23, 2018. Founding Partner, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects Phone Interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, New York, NY. Yoos, Jennifer. July 24, 2018. Principal and COO, Vincent James Associates, Architects Interview by David Fannon, Minneapolis, MN.

List of Interviews

1. Daniel Abramson (Professor of Architectural History, Boston University), interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn, Boston, MA, February 21, 2018. 2. Paul Alessandro (Partner, Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture), phone interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy, Chicago, IL, November 15, 2017. 3. Mac Ball (Principal Architect, Waggonner & Ball Architecture / Environment), interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy, New Orleans, LA, June 19, 2018. 4. Janice Barnes (Former Global Director of Resilience at Perkins & Will, currently Managing Partner of Climate Adaptation Partners), phone interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy, New York City, June 5, 2018. 5. Ann Beha (Founding Partner, Ann Beha Architects), interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, Boston, MA, September 13, 2017. 6. Katie Bennet (Director, Thomas Phifer and Partners), interviewed by Michelle Laboy and David Fannon, New York, June 21, 2018. 7. Bob Berkebile (Founding Principal, BNIM), interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, Kansas City, MO, April 5, 2019. 8. Nick Berube (designLAB), interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn, Boston, MA, June 28, 2017. 9. Alan Camp (Project Manager, General Services Administration), phone interview by Michelle Laboy, Denver, CO, June 26, 2019. 10. Philip Chen (President, Ann Beha Architects), interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, Boston, MA, November 1, 2017. 11. Reneé Cheng (Dean, University of Washington), phone interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, November 29, 2017. 12. Charlie Conant (Senior Project Manager, Facilities, Smith College), interview by Michelle Laboy, Northampton, MA, September 24, 2018. 13. Gerard Damiani, AIA (Founding Principal, d’ARC, Associate Professor, Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture), interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn, Pittsburgh, PA, March 29, 2019. 14. Stephen Dayton (Partner, Thomas Phifer and Partners), interviewed by Michelle Laboy and David Fannon, NewYork, June 21, 2018. 15. Donald Del Cid (Architect, Waggonner & Ball Architecture / Environment), interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy, June 19, 2018. 16. Yanel De Angel, FAIA (Principal, Perkins & Will) interview by David Fannon & Michelle Laboy, Boston, MA, June 5, 2018.

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17. Maurizio De Vita (Founding Partner, De Vita & Schulze Architetti; Professor of Architecture, Università degli Studi di Firenze), interview by Peter Wiederspahn, Florence, June 17, 2019. 18. Jason Forney (Principal, Bruner/Cott Architects), interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, Cambridge, MA, December 6, 2017. 19. Clifford V. Gayley (Principal, William Rawn Associates), interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, Boston, MA, January 30, 2018. 20. George Gard (Project Manager, Bruner/Cott Architects), interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, Cambridge, MA, December 6, 2017. 21. Jan Gaun (Baumschlager Eberle Architekten), interview by Peter Wiederspahn, Lustenau, June 29, 2018. 22. Sean Godsell (Founding Principal, Sean Godsell Architects), phone interview with Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, Melbourne, July 22, 2020. 23. Michael Green (Founding Principal, Michael Green Architecture), interview by Peter Wiederspahn, Vancouver, July 23, 2019. 24. Michael Grogan (Assistant Professor of Architecture, Kansas State University), personal conversation with David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn, Manhattan, KS, April 7, 2019. 25. Randal Heeb (Associate Principal, Opsis), interview by David Fannon, Portland, OR, July 26, 2017. 26. Scott Jones (Senior Project Manager, HOK) interview by Michelle Laboy, Washington, DC, March 25, 2019. 27. Jeremy Kahm, (Project Architect, BNIM), interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, Kansas City, MO, April 5, 2019. 28. Tasso Katselas, (Architect, Tasso Katselas Associates) interview by David Fannon and Peter Wiederspahn, March 29, 2019. 29. Jeremy Knoll (Project Manager, BNIM), interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, Kansas City, MO, April 5, 2019. 30. Vladimir Krstic (Director and Professor, Kansas City Design Center), interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn, Kansas City, MO, April 5, 2019. 31. Michael Leblanc (Founding Principal, Utile, Inc.), interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn, Boston, MA, January 25, 2018. 32. Jack Livingood (Chairman, Big D Construction), interview by Michelle Laboy, Salt Lake City, UT, June 14, 2017. 33. Ronald McCoy (University Architect, Princeton University), interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy, Princeton, NJ, October 11, 2017. 34. Steve McDowell (Director of Design, BNIM), interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, Kansas City, MO, April 5, 2019. 35. Robert Miklos (Founding Principal, designLAB), interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn, Boston, MA, June 28, 2017.

LIST OF INTERVIEWS

36. Aoife Morris (Project Architect, Bruner/Cott Architects), interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, Cambridge, MA, December 6, 2017. 37. Christopher Nielson, (Architect, Bruner/Cott Architects), interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, Cambridge, MA, December 6, 2017. 38. David Nelson (Senior Executive Partner, Head of Design, Foster + Partners) phone interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, London, March 19, 2019. 39. Matt Noblett (Partner, Behnisch Architekten, Boston), interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, Boston, MA, April 1, 2019. 40. José Pertierra-Arrojo (Project Architect, d’ARC, Special Faculty, Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture), interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, Pittsburgh, PA, March 29, 2019. 41. Thomas Pope (Partner, Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture), interview by Michelle Laboy, Chicago, IL, June 29, 2017. 42. Abigail Ransmeier (Architect, Behnisch Architekten, Boston and Stuttgart), interview with Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, Boston, MA, April 1, 2019. 43. Garth Rockcastle (Founding Partner, MSR Design), phone interview with Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, Minneapolis, MN, November 1, 2017. 44. Baha Sadreddin (Associate, High-Performance Design Specialist, ZGF Architects), interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy, Portland, OR, October 18, 2019. 45. Sara Sharifpoor (Research Program Manager, The Donnelly Centre, University of Toronto), interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy, University of Toronto, Toronto, May 29, 2019. 46. Larry Smallwood (Deputy Director and COO, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art), phone interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, North Adams, MA, February 14, 2018. 47. Kathy Spiegelman (Vice President and Chief of Campus Planning and Development, Northeastern University), interviewed by David Fannon and Peter Wiederspahn, October 13, 2017. 48. Larry Smallwood (Deputy Director, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art), phone interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, North Adams, MA, February 14, 2018. 49. Jean Stark (Lead Planner, JMZ Architects | Planners) interview by David Fannon and Michelle Laboy, Glen Falls, NY, December 20, 2017. 50. Jürgen Stoppel, (Partner, Baumschlager Eberle Architekten), interview by Peter Wiederspahn, Lustenau, June 29, 2018. 51. Li Lian Tan (Principal, LLT Architects), phone interview by David Fannon, New York City, March 7, 2018. 52. Fred Tepfer (Design & Construction Manager, Academic and Research Facilities, University of Oregon), phone interview by David Fannon, Eugene, OR, February 7, 2018. 53. Gary Tondorf-Dick (Facilities Project Manager, MIT), interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, Cambridge, MA, December 13, 2017.

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54. Billie Tsien (Founding Partner, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects), phone interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, new York, July 23, 2018. 55. Roger Tudó Gali (Founding Principal, H Arquitectes), interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, Barcelona, April 30, 2019. 56. Father Martin Werlen (Priest, Former Abbott, Einsiedeln Abbey), phone interview by David Fannon and Peter Wiederspahn, Einsiedeln, November 1, 2017. 57. Martin Werminghausen (Architect, Behnisch Architekten, Boston and Stuttgart), interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, Boston, MA, April 1, 2019. 58. Peter Widerin (Founding Principal, TAU GmbH), interview by Peter Wiederspahn, Lustenau, June 29, 2018. 59. Tod Williams (Founding Partner, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects), phone interview by Michelle Laboy and Peter Wiederspahn, New York, July 23, 2018. 60. Dr. Guido Wimmers (Associate Professor, Program Chair of Master of Engineering in Integrated Wood Design, University of Northern British Columbia), interview by Peter Wiederspahn, Prince George, British Columbia, July 22, 2019. 61. Jennifer Yoos (Principal and COO, Vincent James Associates, Architects), interview by David Fannon, Minneapolis, MN, July 24, 2018. 62. Sean Zaudke (Associate Principal, Gould Evans), interview by David Fannon, Michelle Laboy, and Peter Wiederspahn, Lee’s Summit, MO, April 9, 2010.

Index

N 2226 37, 71, 71–2, 74–79, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81–84, 181, 286–7 Aalto, Alvar 160–61, 173 Abramson, Daniel M. 15, 30, 35, 65, 233, 237, 240, 273 abstraction 69, 72–74, 130, 134, 138, 228 active insulation 82 ADA see Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 adaptability: defined 127; and ecological niche 26; flexibility vs. 218–19; future 6, 61, 72, 81, 106, 150; internal 221; long-term 80, 87, 115, 136, 153; principles of 97; short-term 141; spatial 63, 117; specificity of place 88, 90; of structure 94; of use 96, 106, 117, 136, 149, 150, 284, 286 Addington, Michelle 140 Aicher, Florian 188 Alberti, Leon Battista 130 Alessandro, Paul 29, 31, 62, 252, 262 Allen, Stan 16, 17 Alofsin, Anthony 122 American Folk Art Museum 238 Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) 137–8 anastylosis 150 Andlinger Center for the Environment 99, 100 Ann Beha Architects 41, 230, 251 anticipatory: anticipating change 205–9; anticipating conversion 197–200; anticipating stability 201–205 Apple Park 125–6, 208 Aravena, Alejandro 224 archaism 280 Archigram 187 Architectural Graphic Standards (ed. Hall) 137, 138

Architerra 172 Arnold Print Works 147 artificial intelligence 22 Arup, Ove 186 atmosphere 20, 53, 77, 90, 93–94, 96, 100, 107 attributes of future 220–23; inefficient 221; persistence not permanence 223; unassuming 222; unbounded 221; unconstrained 222–3; unfinished 222; unforeseen 220–21; see also future Augustin, Georg 177 Austin, Simon 127 Bachelard, Gaston 140 Bahr, Petra 270 Ball, Mac 161, 162, 233 Banham, Reyner 70, 186 Bank of America Tower 188 Baumschlager Eberle Architekten 71, 71, 72, 76, 78, 79, 80 beauty 233–4; natural 130; and presence 88; of ruins 156; sustained 164 Beha, Ann 35, 41, 42, 43, 50, 165, 230, 251, 252 Behnisch Architekten 30, 38, 90, 103, 103, 104, 105, 106, 162, 248, 249, 254 Saint Benedict 204 Benjamin, Walter 146 Bennet, Katie 89, 163, 205, 206, 208 Bentham, Jeremy 270 Berkebile, Bob 262, 265–6 Bijvoet, Bernard 183 bioclimatic skin 190, 191, 194, 195 biomimicry 20 biophilia 54, 140 black charring/shou sugi ban/yakisugi 53 BNIM 231, 262, 265 Borneo Sporenburg 118 Boston Public Library 92, 93

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INDEX

Brand, Stewart 19, 20, 27, 97, 114, 141, 167, 197, 208, 222, 223, 258 brick 51, 62, 231; dimensions of 164; masonry 12, 24, 27, 273; with metal panels 66; rowhouses 29; structural independence and stability 49; sun-dried mud brick 70; walls 157 Brownell, Blaine 20 Brüder Klaus Chapel 275, 276, 276, 277 Bruner/Cott Architects 20, 24–5, 25, 50–51, 61, 113, 147, 147, 149, 151–3, 152, 163, 229, 231, 233 Bruner, Simeon 151, 152, 153 Brutalist architecture (heroic) 233, 248 building intelligence 45 building naturally (natural way of building) 49–52; Wood Innovation and Design Centre (case study) 52–57 Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) 188 Burra Charter, 1979 150 Burt Hill 164 Butler College 94 Cambridge Public Library 230 Camp, Alan 66 Campo Marzio 16 caprice or capriccio 17 carbonation 53 Carson, Rachel 218 Casey, Edward S. 88 causes and consequences 223 cement, Portland 24 Centre Pompidou 185–8, 186 changing uses: Apple’s glass ring 126; architectural proportion in human form 129; clearances for accessibility 137; codification 135–8; comfort 138–40; mill buildings 147; function 118–27; future uses 140–42; Lexicon 113; measurement 127–35; natural ventilation in 132; Orsanmichele 1–3, 1; program 113–18; repetitive windows 149 Chapel of Reconciliation 269, 269–70, 271, 273, 280 Chareau, Pierre 182, 183–85 Chen, Philip 43, 251 Chipperfield, David 154–6 chlorination 53 chronologies of change 2, 41–2

Chrysler Building 122 Churchill, Winston 136 Church of Saint Mark 273 Church of Saint Peter 273 circular economy 26 circularity 26 Cistercians 204; see also Trappist Clark, W. G. 88–90 Clemson School of Architecture 89 Climate Adaptation Partners 250 coding 6 cohort 242–3 Cole, Jonathan R. 171 collaboration 81–3 collective 187 collegial chambers 198 Commerzbank Tower 188 Commons 91, 94 complexity: of architecture 184; of building systems 187; in design process 181; of human beings 22, 135, 160; of material culture 69; of repair or replacement 27; sectional 102 Conant, Charlie 94 Construction Specification Institute (CSI) 167 CookFox Architects 188 Corbett, Harvey Wiley 122 Corning Museum of Glass 163, 230, 230 Cowan, Henry J. 135 The Cube, the Maki Media Lab 170 Cutler Anderson Architects 33 Cutter Ziskind 94 Daily News Building 122–3 Dalbet, Louis 184 Damiani, Gerard 43, 239 Darwin, Charles 288; theory of evolution 288 DataAE 190, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194 David Chipperfield Architects 154, 155, 156 da Vinci, Leonardo 129 Daylighting Rule of Thumb (DRT) 130, 130 Dayton, Stephen 89, 205 De Angel, Yanel 44, 51, 165 Death Strip 268–70 de Blois, Natalie Griffin 45 decay 15–17, 28, 61, 65, 156 de-evolution 22 Del Cid, Donald 44, 162, 252 Deleu, Luc 162

INDEX

Deplazes, Andrea 21, 41, 96 design for material persistence 34–6 De Vita, Maurizio 227, 252 dialectic 283–4 Diderot, Denis 17 Diener and Diener Architekten 241 differentiated 285, 286, 288; flux form 287–8; strategic structure 285–6; tactical tempering 286–7 di Giorgio Martini, Francesco 129 diversity 160; cultural 150; of needs 22, 285; of opportunities 35, 44; of people 138; of place and culture 22 Dryvit 62 Duffy, Frank 19 durability 53; assemblies 62–65; of building’s robust materials 2; design for 67–8; dimensions of 17; durable materials 61–62; enduring time 67; leveraging 89; of loadbearing masonry 30; of materials 61, 115, 153, 161, 165, 227–8, 283–4; physical 5, 61, 83, 227; weathering aesthetic 65–7 Durand, Jean-Nicolas-Louis 133 dynamic equilibrium 19, 27 Eames, Charles and Ray 223 Eberle, Dietmar 84 ecological metaphors 17–22 ecology 17–18; evolutionary 26; industrial 23, 43, 283; of materials 67; woodland 98 ecosystem theory 19 Einsiedeln Abbey 67, 241, 242, 258, 264, 266 Eisenman, Peter 271 elemental 43, 273, 277 Elemental (firm) 244, 247, 243 embodied energy (embodied carbon) 23–4, 83, 146, 149, 157, 248, 289–90 embodied intelligence 287, 290 embodied time 146–7, 151, 290 empathy 237, 242, 253, 284 Empire State College 253, 259, 259, 261, 262, 287 end of life in architecture 15, 22–27, 42, 44, 51 Engelmann, Paul 73 Enlightenment 133, 154, 215–16 Erwine, Barbara 135 L’Esprit Nouveau (journal) 182 Essential: building naturally 49–52; in Future 57; integrity 42–3; legibility

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43–45; RMIT Design Hub (case study) 52–7 Evans, Robin 118, 264 Evolutionary: design 22; practices 250–54 experiment: building 171–77; design 71, 71–2, 74–84, 76, 78, 79, 80, 162, 181, 286–7; material 54 fabrique 17 Farrand, Beatrix 98 feldkapelle (field chapel) 273 filigree 106 Fitch, James Marston 139 fitness 94, 98 Five Points of a New Architecture (Corbusier) 181 Fleming, Billy 218 flexibility 34, 63, 117, 134, 142, 207, 220, 221; vs. adaptability 218–19; planning for 259–60; and resistance 228; and specificity 90, 228 flux form 287–88 Ford, Edward R. 183, 193 Forney, Jason 50, 61, 153, 163 Foster, Norman 124–5, 185 Foster + Partners 31, 44, 45, 64, 95, 95, 96, 124–5, 187–8, 206–8, 207, 223, 224, 232, 248, 247, 264, 286 fragility 20, 222 Frampton, Kenneth 72, 184, 185, 192, 216, 218 Freud, Sigmund 277 Frick Chemistry Laboratory 101, 102, 287 Fuller, Buckminster 187 functionalism 141, 160 fundamental 8, 15, 26, 27, 35, 37, 41, 76, 128, 130, 141, 153, 217, 220 future anterior 219–20 future-proofing 53, 251 futures, alternative: attributes of future 220–23; history of future 214–20 future use 4, 5, 19, 53, 64, 93, 96, 106, 114–15, 141–2, 148–50, 181, 223, 257, 288 futurism 214–17 Gard, George 20, 258 Gayley, Cliff 61, 92 general 90–91, 96–8, 102, 106

298

INDEX

General Services Administration (GSA) 32, 62, 165, 197 generation 242; human 23; of loftlike lab buildings 98; as measure 239–43; of modernism 248; new 236, 238–40, 250; next 51, 224, 237, 252 generic: definition 90–91; or undifferentiated architecture 227; space 142; specifically 127 Georg Augustin and Ute Frank (augustinundfrank/winkler Architekten) 172, 173, 174–77, 177 geothermal energy exchange 82, 188, 190, 195 Gerling Ring 95, 95, 96, 286 gesamtkunstwerk 187 Giorgi, Francesco 129 Godsell, Sean 45, 47, 47, 49, 172 Gordon, Alexander John (Alex) 23, 90, 115, 149 Gould Evans 63, 67, 205–6, 229, 257, 262–3, 265 Gould, Steven Jay 288 Grabow, Stephen 121 Gravagnuolo, Benedetto 73 Green, Michael 51, 52, 53, 57, 232, 253 Grimley, Chris 214 Grogan, Michael 232 Gropius, Walter 50 ground 19, 20; and atmosphere 91–97; floor 3, 32, 53, 93, 92–96, 100, 104–107, 173, 175, 183; level 49, 100, 123, 182, 207 Grounded Theory (method) 5–8, 5 grounding 10, 37, 88, 88–9, 92, 107, 251, 285 Guaranty Building 119, 120 Guerrini, Giovanni 72 Haar, Sharron 165 Habraken, N. John 28, 116, 220, 221 Hall, Edward T. 118, 128 Handlin, David P. 122 Harkin, Thomas R. 138 H Arquitectes 43, 74, 92, 138, 190, 190–94 Harrap, Julian 156 Harrison and Abramovitz 123 Hauser, Arnold 134 haus-in-haus 173 Hayden, Dolores 228 Heeb, Randal 35, 61, 63, 97, 181, 219, 223, 232 Hendrix, John 119 Heon, John 153

Herdeg, Klaus 218 hiemlich 277 High Tech 124, 185–8, 193 history of future 214–20; environmental movement 218; future anterior 219–20; from futureless to futurism 214–17; limits of rational planning 217–18; see also future Hitchcock, Henry-Russell 50 Holl, Steven 87 Hongkong and Shanghai Bank (HSBC) Building 124–6, 125 Hood, Raymond 122 Hopkins Architects 38, 100, 101, 102 horizontal circulation 192, 263–64, 288 Houthhaven Plot 247 How Buildings Learn (Brand) 19, 167 HP Architects 254 human scale 163–4 human values 36, 57, 138, 160, 164, 172 Humboldt University 172, 172, 174–7 humility 284; acts of 238–9; genuine 243; model 254 Huxtable, Ada Louise 90 Hyman, John 73 hypernatural 20, 103 ideological baggage 15 Iezzoni, Lisa 138 imagining 197, 238, 257 imperfection 222 increase capacity 200 indeterminate buildings 221, 264; vs. programmatic determinism 257–8 Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad campus of 273 integrity 42–4; material 24–3, ethical 43 International Building Code (IBC) 136 Ise Grand Shrine 239–40 Ito, Toyo 278–9 Jackson, John B. 221 Jeanneret, Pierre 184 knowledge, institutional 165–7, 171, 173 JMZ Architects and Planners 259, 259–61 St. John Wilson, Colin 160 Johnson Administration Building 121, 122, 126 Johnson, Paul-Alan 132 Johnson, Philip 92, 93 Jones, N. Scott 164 Junghans, Lars 82

INDEX

Kahn, Louis 10, 36, 49, 50, 97, 187, 223, 272, 273 Karandinou, Anastasia 7 Kendall, Stephen H. 117 Kerr, Clark 168 Knoll, Jeremy 231, 233, 265 Knowles, Ralph 213 Koehler, Marc 224, 247, 286 Koolhaas Houselife (2008 documentary film) 242 Koolhaas, Rem 220, 242 Krstic, Vladimir 30 Kubo, Michael 214 Kurokawa, Kisho 21 Kwinter, Sanford 220 Langsdale Library 249 La Padula, Ernesto 72 Larkin Administration Building 121 Latrobe Prize 4 Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) 188 Leatherbarrow, David 66, 71, 187 LeBlanc, Michael 63, 64, 83, 96, 127 Le Corbusier 123, 130, 131, 136, 181, 182, 184, 187 Le-Duc, Viollet 219, 258 legibility 43–45; RMIT Design Hub (case study) 45–9 Leitner, Bernard 74 Lever House 123–25, 124, 126 Lewerentz, Sigurd 273 Lewis Thomas Molecular Biology Laboratory 97–98 LeWitt, Sol 152 life cycle 24, 26, 34, 41, 51, 67, 83–4, 180–81, 283 life span 4, 17, 27, 43, 63–5, 146–7, 240–41, 243 Lifschutz, Alex 116, 262 lineamenta 130 Lise Meitner Haus 172, 173 living building 24–5 Living Building Challenge (LBC) 24, 233; International Living Futures Institute (ILFI) 254 living laboratory 57 LLT Architects 201, 201, 202, 203 Local: climate 70, 82; community 30, 147; culture knowledge and traditions 67, 189, 274, 285; materials 52, 67, 156, 285 Lods, Marcel 185 Logan Center for the Arts 93 long life 17, 116, 243; loose-fit 23, 90, 141, 149, 228, 254; low energy 23, 115

299

Loos, Adolf 72–74 loose fit 23, 90, 141, 149, 228, 254 lost tile construction 183 love 231–4, 238, 248 low energy 23, 115 Lyle, John Tillman 19 Madanipour, Ali 272 Magney House 189, 189, 195 maintenance 124–5; accessibility and legibility of 43; components 23; culture of decreasing maintenance 42; demanding 83; environmental benefit 67; literal and figurative 126; long-term 168; organizational system 46; people’s lack of familiarity 50; regimes of 37, 44, 67; role of 242; scales and dimensions 284; see also repair Maison Bourdeaux 242 Maison de Verre 182, 183–85, 195 Maison du Peuple 185 Maki and Associates 170, 170 Maki, Fumihiko 21, 166 Mallet-Stevens, Robert 184 Marc Koehler Architects 247, 245, 246 mash tuns 202 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 166–7 Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) 24, 32, 147, 148, 147, 148, 149, 151, 151–4, 152, 157–8, 163, 238 materials: artificial 73; composite 51; designing for persistence 36–8; discard or recycle 23; durable 61–68, 62, 153; ecology of 67; end of life 27; environmental impact 24; erased over time 16, 41; essential 49–50; with integrity 42–4; life cycle of 41; life span of 43, 243; long-term performance of 44; lower quality 27; man-made 54; material culture 69–72; modern 231; natural 20, 44, 53–54, 62, 67; non-wood 53; preservation of 30; properties of 37, 41; robust 20; selection of 25, 114, 227; toxicity and legibility of 45; traditional 50–51; transporting 180; use of 21; well-known and tested 50; woodderived 51 Mattern, Shannon 242 Mauerpark 268–9, 273 Maynard, W. Barksdale 98 McCoy, Ronald 94, 98, 100, 228, 258

300

INDEX

McDonough, William (Bill) 22, 94 McGraw Hill Tower 122 McMorrough, John 113 Melnikov, Konstantin 120 memorable: beguiling and beloved 233–4; building memory 228–31; stained by time 231–3 memory 271–3, 289; building 228–31; cultural 230; durable 227; palace (see method of loci); placememory 88, 229–30; as “vehicle for daydream”17 metabolism 21, 187 Metabolist movement in Japan 21, 124, 240 metal panel 62, 66, 183 metamorphosis 21–2, 51 method: analytical drawings 7–8; Grounded Theory 5–7; interviews 5–7, 6 method of loci, or memory palace 229 Michael Green Architects (MGA) 52, 52, 54, 55, 56, 58 Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA) 98–9 Middle ages 214, 229 mill buildings 148 Missouri Innovation Campus 67, 262, 264, 265, 286 MIT Media Lab 167, 169, 170 modernism 50, 73–74, 114, 160, 193, 214, 216, 217, 248, 258, 273 Modern Movement 73, 215 Moe, Kiel 115, 119, 127, 157; monastic architecture 205, 241–2, 258, 265–6, 266; enclosure 205 Moneo, Rafael 236–7, 255 Moore, Steven A. 138 Moravánszky, Ákos A. 21 Mostafavi, Mohsen 66 MSR Architects 44, 252 Mumford, Lewis 124 Murcutt, Glenn 189, 189 Museum of Contemporary Art see MASS MoCA N natural materials 32, 44, 53–54, 67 Nelson, David 31, 44, 45, 64, 65, 95, 206, 207, 208, 223, 232, 248, 264 Neues Museum 141, 154, 155, 156–8, 156 neuroscience 163 Nielson, Christopher 233

night purge cooling 79 Nishizawa, Ryue 81 Nobel, Philip 141 Noblett, Matt 30, 31, 105, 106, 248, 250, 254 No-Man’s Land 269 obsolescence 17, 23, 28, 30, 61, 65, 70, 83, 170, 171, 188, 237, 243, 257 Obsolescence (Abramson) 233 ocular bias 218 O’Neill, Robert 19 Open Building 116–18, 244 Opsis Architecture 35, 42, 61, 63, 181, 229 optimism 188, 238–9, 243 optimization 134–5, 139, 206, 221, 222, 289 Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance 204 Orsanmichele/Orto San Michele 1, 2, 2–4 Otero-Pailos, Jorge 66, 261 Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana 72 Palladio, Andrea 130 Pallasmaa, Juhani 140, 141, 218 Park Avenue, Manhattan 30 parking structures (parking garage) 63–4 Pasnik, Mark 214 patrimonial 92 Payette 100, 101, 102 Peacock, Georgina 138 Pei, I.M. 168, 169 Peña, William 114, 257 Pentagon 126 Pérez Gómez, Alberto 132, 134, 139 performance-based design 139 Perkins & Will 44, 51, 165, 250, 251 permanence/impermanence 15, 16–17, 28, 35, 93, 140, 205, 223, 240, 273 persistence: architecture of 4; beyond adaptive reuse 288–9; beyond resilience 289; beyond sustainability 289; beyond time 289–90; design for material 34–6; designing for 4, 36–8; as ecological concept 26–7; of landscapes 103–7; not permanence 223; situated 107; theory of 27, 37 Pertierra-Arrojo, José 43 Piano, Renzo 182, 183 piece architecture 44 Piranesi, Giovanni Battista 16, 16

INDEX

place: diversity of 22; enduring nature of 87–8; grounded in 88–90; specificity of 88, 90 place-specific: general and 90–1; persistence of landscapes 103–7; Tale of Two Labs 97–103; in three adaptable laboratory buildings (case studies) 97–107 poetics of material decay 15 Pollen, Michael 213 Ponce de Leon, Monica 138 Porotherm 74, 75 post-occupancy 15, 253 preservation 23, 30–1, 87, 107, 150–1, 157–8, 160, 163, 165, 219, 227–8, 231, 250, 253, 262 Prince George, British Columbia 52, 52, 54, 55, 56, 58 Princeton University 65, 94, 97–9, 99, 100, 101, 102 problem seeking 257–8 Problem Seeking (Peña and Parshall) 114 programmatic 27, 97, 197, 220 programmatic determinism 257–8, 263, 267 programming 98, 114–15, 118, 141, 251, 257–9, 263, 267 Prouvé, Jean 184 public realm 50, 87–8, 91–4, 96–7, 107, 121, 170, 237, 286 punctuated equilibrium 288 Quinta Monroy 224, 244, 243, 244 rammed earth 269 Ransmeier, Abigail 90 rationalism 73, 132, 134, 160–1, 216, 217, 221 rationality 120, 160 Rauch, Martin 269 reducing capacity 197 regeneration 19, 28, 126 regenerative design 19 Reinhart, Christoph F. 130 Reitermann, Rudolf 269 Renaissance 128–30, 215 repair 26, 27, 31, 37, 43, 67, 124, 158, 166–7, 180, 231, 284 Research Center ICTA-ICP 190 Residential Open Building (Kendall and Teicher) 117 resilience 4, 22, 26, 53, 72, 94, 115, 139, 166, 171, 177, 218, 250, 289 resistance to change 89, 228

301

restore 154–7 Rice, Peter 186 Rietveld, Gerrit 184 right sizing 206 Rittel, Horst W.J. 220, 221 RMIT Design Hub 45–9, 46, 49, 57, 172, 251, 286 Robert, Hubert 18 Robert L. Bogomolny Library 162, 249, 249 Rockcastle, Garth 44, 67, 68, 140, 180, 219, 228, 252 Rogers, Adam 126 Rogers, Richard 185, 186 Romano, Mario 72 Roosevelt, Franklin D. (President) 168 Roth, Leland M. 123 Rovelli, Carlo 272 Rowe, Colin 130 ruin 16–17, 36, 61, 88, 154, 155, 273 Rusakov Worker’s Club 120 Ruskin, John 229, 231 RW Kern Center (Hampshire College) 25, 25 Rykwert, Joseph 157 Sadreddin, Baha 89 Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts 187 Saint Benedict Chapel 273–4, 274, 275, 277 Salk Institute 36, 97, 100 SANAA 81, 81 Sassenroth, Peter 269 Säynätsalo Town Hall 161 scenario planning 114–15 Schmidt, Robert 127, 218 Schmitt, Kristin 253, 259, 260 Schubert, Karsten 154 Schuler, Matthias 82 Schuster, Peter-Klaus 271 scientific method 139, 217 Scott-Brown, Denise 208 Sean Godsell Architects 45, 46, 47, 47, 48, 49, 172 Sejima, Kazuyo 81 Sekler, Eduard 181 Semper, Gottfried 21 servant and served spaces 223 service life 62 Sharifpoor, Sara 107 Sharr, Adam 270 Shearing Layers of Change 19, 19, 20, 195 The Ship of Theseus 67 shou sugi ban see black charring

302

INDEX

simple: abstraction 72–74; collaboration 81–3; material culture 69–72; performance 74–82 Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) 31, 32, 34, 45, 123, 124 Smallwood, Larry 150 Smith College 94 social 20, 52, 88, 147, 283, 288 Society for College and University Planning (SCUP) 168 socio-ecological (systems, resilience) 22, 26, 35, 139 Sorkin, Michael 28 space planning 113, 118, 141, 198, 260 speculative design or development 227 Spencer Brewery 63, 142, 201, 201, 202, 203, 204, 264, 287 Sprague Electric 147 Spreckelmeyer, Kent 121 Spuybroek, Lars 222 “Square Colosseum” 72 stability 17, 35, 49, 75, 89–90, 126, 141, 148, 162–3, 173, 204, 240, 289 standards 32, 34, 62, 132, 135–9, 150, 165–7, 205, 221 Stark, Jean 206, 258 steel 12, 54; bars 268; bolted 157; concrete-reinforced 279, 286; durability of 64; exposed 54, 73, 183; frame 45, 46, 70, 123, 141, 183, 286; galvanized 190–1; structures 64; tubular 185 Stüler, Friedrich August 154 stoffwechsel (material change, theory of) 21 stone 37, 50–1, 62, 67, 72–3, 77, 164, 222 Stoppel, Jürgen 84 strategic structure 285–6 structure (primary, secondary) 10, 62–4, 89, 93, 185, 190, 285, 288 Stubbins, Hugh 94 stuccolustro 73 Stüler, Friedrich August 154 subjectivity 16, 161 Sullivan, Louis 50, 119, 119, 120, 121 Summerson, John 113 SUnY College of Environmental Science & Forestry 172 Superlofts 245, 246, 247, 286 support and infill 223 Supports: An Alternative to Mass Housing (Habraken) 116 surroundings 20, 79, 90–1, 276 synthetic 284–5 Syracuse Center of Excellence 172

tactical tempering 286–7 Taddle Creek 104 Tama Art University Library 224, 278, 279, 286 Tan, Li Lian 201, 204 Tange, Kenzo 240 TARDIS 47 Taylor, Brian Brace 184 Tectonic Culture (Frampton) 192 Teicher, John 117 Tepfer, Fred 66, 206, 219, 234 Terrence Donnelly Center for Cellular and Biomolecular Research 103 third world 44 Thomas Phifer and Partners 163, 197, 198, 199, 200, 205–6, 208, 230, 230 Thompson, Joseph 153 Till, Jeremy 218 timber see wood time-oriented 213–14; temporal dimension 213; temporal intention 213; unknowable, uncontrollable 214 time rich environments 213 Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects|Partners 87, 283 Tolpin, Jim 128 Transsolar 82 trans-temporal 224, 273, 280 Trappist 204 Tsien, Billie 37, 51, 99, 163, 229, 238, 239 Tudó Gali, Roger 43, 92 uncanny 277, 280 uncontrollable 214 unheimlich 277 Union Carbide Building 31, 31, 45 United Nations Headquarters 123 United States Courthouse for the District of Utah 197, 198, 199, 200 universal 68, 88, 91, 128, 138, 142, 154, 160–1, 173, 223–4, 228, 272, 283–4 University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) 52, 57 University of Oregon 66, 206, 219, 234, 259 University of Toronto 103, 162 unpredictable 27, 197, 219, 260, 290 US Secretary of Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties 150 Utile 63–4, 96 Utopia 215, 216, 218 van Alen, William 122 van Randen, Age 244

INDEX

Venice Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites (1964) 150 Venturi, Robert 208 Venturi Scott Brown (VSB) 98, 101 Villa Garches 130, 131 Villa Malcontenta 130, 131 Vinegar, Aron 219 Vitruvius 41, 128 VJAA 178, 228 Waggonner & Ball 44, 95, 157, 161 Walker, George R. 128 warehouse 29, 47, 95, 208, 231, 253 weathering 27, 44, 62, 65–7, 114, 141, 146, 180, 188, 241, 285 Weeks, John 206, 221, 222, 258, 262, 264 Werlen, Martin 67, 241 Werminghausen, Martin 104, 162, 250, 254 wicked problems 236 Wiesner Building 168 William Rawn Associates 61, 92, 230 Williams College Museum of Art 147 Williams, Tod 23, 37, 51, 66, 92, 99, 163, 229, 231, 238, 252 Wilson, Barbara B. 138 Wilson, Colin St. John. 160 Wimmers, Guido 55

303

Wittgenstein House 73–4 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 73, 74 Wittkower, Rudolf 129, 130 wood 12, 51–7, 58, 276, 277; 3D printing in wood fiber 51; ceiling 158; fiber 51; floors 157; heavy structures 268, 274; interior structure 148–9, 275; laminated slabs 246; rainscreen 53; roofs 240, 269, 274; ventilation panels 77; vertical 274; window frames 77, 80 Wood Innovation and Design Centre (WIDC) 37, 52, 52–7, 54, 55, 56, 58, 286 World Trade Center San Marino 248 wort 202 Wren, Christopher 168 Wright, Frank Lloyd 50, 120, 121, 136 Yoos, Jennifer 178, 228 Zaudke, Sean 63, 67, 205, 206, 229, 257, 263, 264 Zervas, Diane Finiello 3 Zollverein School of Management and Design 81, 81 Zumthor, Peter 213, 233, 267, 273, 274, 277, 280