Architect Notebook .... Scale

In this discussion of how designers can determine how their buildings look, architectural scale has been alluded to. But what do we mean by scale in the context of architectural design? Scale is not synonymous with size; even buildings of modest size can be imbued with monumental scale and vice-versa.

Scale clues

But architectural plans, sections and elevations have a fixed scale-relationship with an observer who is interpreting them, whereas the scale-relationship between a building and an observer constantly changes as the building is approached and as more scale clues are revealed. So-called scale clues allow us to assess the size of a building by comparison with the sizes of known elements so that (either consciously or unconsciously) we learn to make judgements about a building’s dimensions by constant reference to familiar elements and artefacts of known size.  

 

These familiar elements fall into two categories. First there are general environmental elements which form the physical context for buildings, like trees and planting, vehicles, street furniture and even the occupants and users of the building; these are familiar objects and as environmental scale clues allow us by comparison to make some assessment of size. Second, there are familiar building elements like storey heights, masonry courses, windows, doors, and staircases which further add to our perception of a building’s size; these are building scale clues and are used by the designer to determine the scale of a building. Therefore, if these clues mislead, then we assess size incorrectly (Raskin).

Depending upon the intention of the designer, scale may be manipulated in quite distinct ways which leads us to four established categories of architectural scale: normal scale, intimate scale, heroic scale and shock scale (Raskin).

 

 

Normal scale

Normal scale is the ‘mean’ with which the other categories compare. Most buildings we encounter are of normal scale and generally achieve this in a relaxed fashion without any self-conscious manipulation of scale clues on the part of the architect. The size of the building and its constituent parts will be precisely as perceived and anticipated by the observer. 

Normal scale is most readily achieved when the building looks to be broken down into a series of lesser components each of which is ‘read’ and contributes to a sense of visual intensity.

Intimate scale

Intimate scale, as the term suggests, is more intense than normal scale. It is achieved by reducing the size of familiar components to induce a relaxed, informal atmosphere of cosy domesticity and is applicable to building types such as old persons’ housing or primary schools where a sense of comfort and security is induced by an environment of intimate scale. This can be achieved by reducing the height of window heads and sills and by reducing ceiling heights. 

Externally, eaves may be brought down to exaggeratedly low levels and entrance doors may be marked by canopies, all devices to increase the intensity of scale. Primary schools are equipped with furniture and fittings reduced in size which accentuate a sense of intimate scale. Although generous classroom ceiling heights are necessary for day lighting and ventilation, generous transoms or light shelves introduced at a lower level and broad, low internal sills are devices which may induce intimate scale.

Heroic scale

Heroic scale is the converse of intimate scale in that rather than enhancing the ego of the user, it seems to diminish it. Architects have consistently used the monumentality of heroically scaled building elements as symbols of power and authority to which an individual is unable to relate his relative smallness. Therefore heroic scale has been consciously applied to a whole range of buildings which need to express their civic importance; in extreme cases like the monumental architecture of totalitarianism, architects used a stripped classical architectural language to symbolize the power of the regime but also to intimidate the users by undermining their feeling of security.

In more recent times, architects have exploited the modernist tendency to express huge unrelieved surfaces in pursuit of heroic scale. W. M. Dudok’s Hilversum Town Hall, 1930, and ironically, in its modernity per-dating the Sheffield example, employs within a monumental De Stijl composition vast unrelieved areas of brickwork for heroic scale in a building which was to become a model for post-war civic architecture. Oscar Niemeyer used similarly unrelieved surfaces but combined with massive primary Euclidean forms such as rectangular prisms which formed a cleft Secretariat tower, an Assembly ‘saucer’ and a Senate ‘dome’ all in dramatic juxtaposition to create a governmental seat of suitably heroic scale at Brasilia in 1960.

Shock scale

Shock scale is of limited use architecturally but has been put to effective use by exhibition designers or in advertising to startle and excite the observer. It depends upon familiar objects of known size being exaggeratedly expanded or reduced so that they are seen in often amusing scale relationships with their environment like a beer bottle hugely enlarged to serve as a brewer’s dray. Painters like Dali also employed the idea of shock scale for

Surrealist effect.

Context

So far, we have discussed how the architect can manipulate scale to induce a per-determined response from the user, but when designing within established contexts, particularly of a visually sensitive nature, it is important that the designer responds to the scale of that context. When Alison and Peter Smithson designed the Economist building in St. James’ Street, London, 1964, they not only had to respond to the scale of the existing street which one of the site boundaries addressed, but also were building on an adjacent plot to Boodle’s Club, designed in 1765 by Crudeness in the manner of Robert Adam. 

The Economist complex comprises three towers, the lowest of which addresses St. James’ Street; the attic storey of the flanking towers at Boodle’s is reflected in an ‘attic’ storey of the Economist building and Boodle’s piano noble is reflected in the Economist’s first-floor banking hall, given further prominence by its escalator access. By way of a linking device, the exposed gable of Boodle’s received a faceted bay window detailed as the fenestration of the new building.

The clear message in these two examples is that the tenets of modernism may be applied successfully to the most sensitive of contexts without recourse to historicism, often a disastrous but always a problematic course. Such was the case when Robert Venturi extended the National Gallery, London, in 1990, following a now familiar ‘post-modern’ response to context; the new facade echoes the neoclassicism of Wilkins’ original facade (completed in 1838) but dilutes in its classical detail gradually as it recedes from the original.