Architect Notebook ..... ORGANISING THE PLAN

ORGANIZING THE PLAN

As the building design develops from the initial diagram, it is essential on the one hand to maintain the clarity of that diagram and on the other to keep testing its validity as the architectural problem itself is clarified so that the part i is constantly revisited for reappraisal.

This whole process of establishing in detail the building’s three-dimensional organisation is best
explored through the medium of drawing; a facility for drawing in turn facilitates designing in that ideas can be constantly (and quickly) explored and evaluated for inclusion in the design, or rejected.

Circulation

But apart from expressing an organization of disparate functional parts, Stirling’s three dimensional models express ideas about circulation within the building. Indeed, concern for imparting some formal expression to horizontal and vertical circulation systems within buildings has constantly been an overriding concern to architects of modernist persuasion. Hence the obsession with free-standing stair towers and lift shafts which connect by landing and bridge to the principal building elements, and the equally strong desire to express-major horizontal circulation systems within the building
envelope.

 

 Horizontal circulation
Essentially, such devices will serve to punctuate these routes by variations in lighting, for example, which may well correspond to ‘nodes’ along the route like lobbies for vertical circulation. Further punctuations of the route can be achieved by ‘sub-spaces’ off the major route which mark the access points to cellular accommodation within the building.

Such ‘sub-spaces’ may also provide a useful transition between the route or concourse, and major spaces within the building.

Vertical circulation
The location of vertical circulation also contributes substantially to this idea of ‘reading’ a
building and clearly is crucial in evolving a functional plan. There is also a hierarchy of
vertical circulation; service or escape stairs, for example, may be discreetly located within
the plan so as not to challenge the primacy of a principal staircase.

Moreover, a stair or ramp may have other functions besides that of mere vertical circulation;
it may indicate the principal floor level or piano nobile where major functions are
accommodated, or may be a vehicle for dramatic formal expression.

The promenade
Closely associated with any strategy for circulation within a building is the notion of ‘promenade’ or ‘route’. This implies an understanding of buildings via a carefully orchestrated series of sequential events or experiences which are linked by a predetermined route. How the user approaches, enters and then engages with a building’s three-dimensional organization upon this ‘architectural promenade’ has been a central pursuit of architects throughout history.

The external stair, podium, portico and vestibule were all devices which not only isolated a
private interior world from the public realm outside but also offered a satisfactory spatial
transition from outside to inside.

The exemplar
By the late 1920s Le Corbusier had developed the notion of promenade architecturale to a
very high level of sophistication. At the Villa Stein, Garches, 1927, a carefully orchestrated
route not only allows us to experience a complex series of spaces but also by aggregation
gives us a series of clues about the building’s organization. The house is approached from
the north and presents an austere elevation with strip windows like an abstract ‘purist’
painting. But the elevation is relieved by devices which initiate our engagement with
the building. The massively-scaled projecting canopy ‘marks’ the major entrance and relegates the service entrance to a secondary role.

Spatial hierarchies

Whilst such patterns of circulation and the ordering of ‘routes’ through a building allow
us to ‘read’ and to build up a three-dimensional picture, there remains the equally important question of how we communicate the essential differences between the spaces which these systems connect. This suggests a hierarchical system where spaces, for example, of deep symbolic significance, are clearly identified from run-of-the-mill elements which merely service the architectural programmed so that an organisational hierarchy is articulated via the building. Similarly, for example, when designing for the community it is essential that those spaces within the public domain are clearly distinguished from those deemed to be intensely private.

Sub-spaces
This whole question of spatial hierarchy may also be applied to sub-spaces which are subservient to a major spatial event like side chapels relating to the major worship space
within a church. At the monastery of La Tourette, Eveux-sur-Arbresle, France, 1959, Le Corbusier contrasted the stark dimly-lit cuboid form of the church with brightly-lit side chapels of sinuous plastic form which were further highlighted by the application of primary colour against the grey be´ton Brut of the church (Figure 3.54). Such a juxtaposition served to heighten not only the architectural drama but also the primacy of the principal worship space.

Inside-outside
Establishing and then articulating these spatial hierarchies within the context of a functional
plan has exercised architects throughout history; a system of axes employed by Beaux Arts architects, for example, greatly facilitated this pursuit. But many architects of modernist persuasion, in their desire to break with tradition, have shed such ordering devices and have espoused the liberating potential that developments in abstract art and building technology seemed to offer.