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| Faber Dumas Building, Ipswich, 1978 |
WALL MEMBRANES
The idea of ‘layering’ a series of
planes to form the wall takes on further
meaning when dealing with framed structures
whose wall membranes have no structural
function other than resisting wind loads. At one
level, a structural frame may be totally obscured by a
heavy cladding which looks as if it is
load bearing, suggesting that the designer has
had other priorities in fashioning the
elevational treatment than straightforward structural
expression.
This was certainly the case in the chapel at Ronchamp by Le Corbusier
where massive rendered walls of rubble
completely conceal a reinforced concrete frame
which supports the shell-like roof. An
apparently random fenestration pattern is
ordered not only by the Modular proportioning
device, but also by the requirement to
avoid the column positions buried within the wall.
The simplest method of structural
expression of the frame is for the cladding to
fill the void between column and beam so that
structure and wall share the same plane. Various devices have been used to
express the non-structural nature of such
infill like providing a glazed interface between
structure and cladding so that the two
systems appear visually, and therefore ‘read’ as,
functionally separate.
We have already seen how architects
have projected the idea of tectonic
display to express not only loading and structure, but
also ventilation ducts, or movement via
staircases, lifts and escalators. But many designers
have sought to express not only
structure but also how the entire cladding system is
assembled, so that each component (and in
extreme cases the actual fixings which provide
their location) is revealed.
This is one direct method of
imparting visual incident to the elevation, the end
result of which equates to the practice of
applying decoration,a course shunned by modernists but reinstated by their post-modern
successors.
THE CORNER
The whole idea of visual intensity
and how it may be achieved applies to the
treatment of the ‘corner’. The classical language of
architecture provided several devices for
celebrating the corner, and nineteenth-century
eclectics delighted in applying the whole
gamut of their ‘free style’ to augment the
corner. the so-called post-modernists have
felt free to celebrate the corner, most notably
at No. 1, Poultry, London, by Stirling and
Wilford, 1997, but also equally successfully by Terry Farrell for a modest
speculative office building in Soho, London. In each case the density of visual
event increases towards the corner.
Farrell uses simple means of
achieving this like intensifying the fenestration
pattern and introducing increasingly decorative
brickwork patterns as a prelude to the corner
which in each case is formed by a careful
articulation of two adjacent fac¸ades. To the
modernist, the idea of celebrating the corner was
somewhat more problematic, but the corner
and particularly the corner column, how it is
fashioned and how it joins to beams, wall and
roof cladding, has assumed a central importance in
the appearance of framed buildings,
particularly those employing an exposed steel
frame.
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