EoYS21_MArch_49

Studio —Study Gradient Transient —Gifu Kitagata —Mechanizing the Kitchen Botanical Data Farm —Sky House 24X24 Library —Facade Detailing —Stacks, Stacks, Stacks Public School Post Script —The New, New Law —Taking Apart Banham Indigenous Desettlement Corps —Twisted Corner Aramco World —AM / PM

Genevieve Mateyko

Columbia GSAPP 2021

Studio

A comprehensive collection of work developed in the six design studios at Columbia GSAPP.

Study

Precedents, research, details and experiments that informed or influenced design work through the practice of ‘study’.

Table of —of Contents Gradient Transient

4

—Gifu Kitagata

20

—Mechanizing the Kitchen

30

Botanical Data Farm

36

—Sky House

52

24X24 Library

56

—Facade Detailing

70

—Stacks, Stacks, Stacks

72

Public School Post Script

74

—The New, New Law

88

—Taking Apart Banham

92

Indigenous Desettlement Corps

96

—Twisted Corner

108

Aramco World

110

—AM / PM

132

Genevieve Mateyko

Columbia GSAPP 2021

Gradient Transient

New Normal: Scales of Time Traditional models of domestic living, coupled with ideas about accessibility and aging in place, are coincidental and overlap with more transient models of living in the Melrose neighborhood in the Bronx.

Living in less permanent ways is the new normal, and while new housing stock in New York City should reflect that, it should also overlap with existing typologies of traditional permanent housing types in order to capture the true diversity of the existing community’s demographics.

A stacked slab intersects with a pile of shifting terraces, rental units are stacked, allowing for flexible scales of rentalownership models. Domestic programs are suppressed in favor of economics and space.

Core Studio Adam Frampton, Only-If Architecture Part to Whole, After The Nuclear Family Collaborator Liza Tedeschi

5

Site Axonometric

Two shifting slab-like buildings envelop an interior courtyard and generous outdoor spaces are created through the exposure of terraces, rooftops and open ground floor conditions.

6

Transverse Section

8

A staggered section cut North-South through the site reveals the programmatic stack in the South Building, and the vertical circulation as a continuous core in the North Building. In plan, the circulation core appears to shift, in section it is the slabs that move.

South Building

North Building

9

Across the Courtyard

10

A ground-level view from the interior courtyard, looking out towards the North building. Housing typologies are stacked, shifted and punctuated with distinct fenestration and facade detailing.

Elevation Rendering

Interior Courtyard

11

The Front Door

12

A taxonomy of elements match a traditional style of longterm living. Ownership models are tied to rental units above the ground floor units.

±10—30 Years

±3–10 Years

Owner-Occupied

For Rent by Owner

13

On-Demand

14

In a city where everything is available for delivery 24/7, how could new models of housing not account for a diminishing interest in chores?

±6 Months—3 Years

Less Than 6 Months

Informal Co-Living

Micro-Transient

15

16

Massing

Section—Wall Detail

17

An Abrupt Stop

The facade on the North collides with the West, turning a corner and disappearing instantly.

18

Rendering

19

Gifu Kitagata Kazuyo Sejima A study of Kazuyo Sejima of SANAA’s contribution to Arata Isozaki’s social housing masterplan in the Gifu Prefecture of Japan.

Model built at 1/16”=1’-0” scale in 2 phases per the building’s actual construction.

STUDY

PRECEDENT

Core Studio Adam Frampton, Only-If Architecture Part to Whole, after the Nuclear Family Collaborator Liza Tedeschi 20

Looking In

STUDY

PRECEDENT

22

Facades

Typical Floor Plan, Tatami Grid Layout

23

STUDY

PRECEDENT

24

Ground Level Parking

1/16” = 1’-0”

25

STUDY

PRECEDENT

26

Phase 1

1/16” = 1’-0”

27

STUDY

PRECEDENT

28

Phase 1

Phase 2

29

Mechanizing the Feminine Kitchen —Excerpt

the widespread disappearance of servants from the domestic sphere: domestic labour should no longer be viewed as an arduous chore to be simply completed and then forgotten, but instead as a jubilant personal expression of the housewife’s love and devotion for her family. As a result of this shifting set of values from economic to emotional, women were now expected to complete domestic labour with the same level of efficiency as her husband on the factory floor, without compensation, and with a sense of deep gratitude for the opportunity to

History Sequence Nader Vossoughian Questions in Architectural History II

perform it for her family.

The comparison of the housewife to the factory worker did not go unnoticed, even during its more nascent years. Domestic advice columnist Constance Peel wrote abundantly in the 1920s and 30s on the subject of household care for women,

1. Meghan Morris, “Things to do with Shopping Centres” in Grafts. Feminist Cultural Criticism, ed. S. Sheridan, (London, Verso, 1988), 202.

“Modernity crept in through the back door, via the kitchen.”1

openly drawing comparisons of the home to the factory floor: “Take your minds for a moment from the home to a modern, well-managed factory, where every movement of the worker is considered with a view to saving unnec-

THE MECHANIZATION OF THE KITCHEN in the single-family home during the

essary labour. In a factory you cannot afford to waste human energy. That is the

mid-20th century was instrumental to enforcing the notion of gendered spaces

system we want applied in our homes.”2

2. Deborah Sugg Ryan, Ideal Homes, 1918-39: Domestic Design and Suburban Modernism. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018), 101.

in the home through the combined methods of specification, typification and psychological ownership of space. A direct result of the labour-saving tech-

The mechanization of the kitchen began with the shifting mindset towards the

niques derived from time-motion studies originally developed to streamline in-

position of women in the home, reframing domestic labour as employment in the

dustrial processes, this paper examines the compounding effects of the Frank-

home. Women were given the position of both administrator and staff member in

furt Kitchen as a prototype for the mechanized kitchen, followed by a connected

the home, and as the kitchen became mechanized with technologically innovative

sequence of progressively mechanized examples from the Cornell Kitchen Study

tools, experts of their domain, further cementing them into their place of libera-

of the 1950s to representations of the kitchen in media. The portrayal of female

tion whether they wanted to be or not. Soon, a change in the physical configura-

domestic life in both print culture and film contributed to and critiqued the role

tion of the kitchen would contribute to this dominating rhetoric of the feminine

of the mechanized kitchen in defining the domestic female role. The post-war

home.

housewife is cloistered further into the kitchen due to a combination of effects: the strategic physical design of the kitchen, shrinking to a perfectly house-

The Frankfurt Kitchen

wife-sized footprint; the emergence of virtue taking precedent over duty as paid

In the wake of the destruction caused by the First World War, a housing shortage

domestic labour diminishes, and the socio-psychological impact of consumable

led to the creation of a prototype for the mechanized home, via the Frankfurt

identity through corporate design.

Kitchen. City architect Ernst May invited Grete Schütte-Lihotzky to be the sole female designer for his new socially idealistic housing project in Frankfurt, and

The kitchen was emerging as the primary domestic site for scientific manage-

she in turn gained acclaim for her space-saving design, a forerunner to the fitted

ment in the post-Industrial era, and housekeeping as the site for lines of inquiry

kitchen model now seen as typical. Schütte-Lihotzky however, although female,

likening the home to the factory. The significance of this comparison insinuates

was not particularly interested in being empathetic to the needs of women in

a need for greater efficiency in the home, and thereby a need for more efficient

the domestic environment, and looked to industrial examples of food prepara-

women. A parallel discourse emerged after the First World War as a result of

tion as sources for heightened efficiency in the kitchen, such as the kitchens on

30

Mechanizing the Kitchen—Excerpt

QAH II

31

3. Susan R. Henderson, “A Revolution in the Women’s Sphere: Grete Lihotzky and the Frankfurt Kitchen” in Architecture and Feminism, eds.

Debra Coleman, Elizabeth Danze and Carol Henderson. (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996), 235.

ships, trains and ‘lunch wagons’3 rather than inquire with domestic women (those

or not. The units came with a default of an electric fridge, range and oven, with

who were wives and homemakers) on their particular needs in the kitchen. Every

an option to add an electric dishwasher if desired. With or without the optional

movement and task was rationalized and optimized into a rigid, didactic system

dishwasher, electricity costs in rural areas of America at the time of the Cornell

of carefully curated movements throughout the kitchen. The relentless attention

Kitchen studies could be prohibitively high for households, and costs for running

to spatial efficiency reduced the footprint of the kitchen in the home, simulta-

the electricity to kitchen appliances would have deterred many rural residents

neously diminishing the importance of the kitchen as the “hearth” of the home,

from even considering their purchase. But the Cornell Kitchen was only interested

as well as denying access to more than one user comfortably in the space. The

in the needs of its test subjects insofar as it aligned with their corporate sponsor-

person preparing the food became the unseen servant of the household. Objec-

ship, since it relied first on the sponsorship for production, and secondly on the

tive functionalism was the primary motivation behind the design rationale for the

success of the produced units in the homes of its testers.

Frankfurt kitchen, and only later would the introduction of an emotional aspect be seen in the Cornell Kitchen Study.

Similar to the Frankfurt Kitchen that preceded it, The Cornell Kitchen prescribed both the kinds of actions and the types of foods to be prepared with it. Larger

4. Barbara Penner, “The Cornell Kitchen: Housing and Design Research in Postwar America” in Technology and Culture 59. No. 1 (2018): 68.

The Cornell Kitchen

appliances, such as the refrigerator, range and oven were wired into the free-

The Cornell Kitchen was a rural housing experiment conducted by Professor Glenn

standing units, but smaller tools, such as a can opener, a paper towel holder and

H. Beyer, director of the Center for Housing and Environment Studies at Cornell

breadbox were also part of the package unit. These built-in tools dictated to its

University between 1950 and 1955. Significantly, Beyer was not a designer but an

users the kinds of foods that could and should be prepared in the modern kitchen.

economist, and hired Modernist architect Frank Weise to design the fitted kitchen

The most notable gadget is the inclusion of the can opener, indicating a call to

units. Weise had “sterling modernist credentials”4 and previously studied under

cook from pre-packaged foods to fulfill the preparation of meals. As a product

Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. This pedigree gave the project a ring of credi-

of convenience, the can opener implied that the housewife could prepare meals

bility in the design world, despite complaints from the users of major oversights

more quickly with the labour-saving tools at her disposal.

in design, such as cleanability of the kitchen, something which had not been 5. Ibid, 77.

expressly outlined as a requirement in its design.5

5

5. Barbara Penner, “The Cornell Kitchen: Housing and Design Research in Postwar America” in Technology and Culture 59. No. 1 (2018): 60, figure 5.

Part of the study emphasized a prioritization of female ergonomics, known as the “female work curve”, which would clearly point to a physical gendering of the space, but this facet of the project would in fact be implemented in rhetoric alone. Due to concerns over financial feasibility, the kitchen units were standardized to suit industrial optimization during the manufacturing process rather than human ergonomics. In principle, or at least with intention, the Cornell Kitchen strengthened its hold on women in domestic spaces by openly advocating for female ergonomics in the kitchen. In practice, the kitchen utilized other methods to feminize the kitchen, including the use of the standardized units to promote aesthetic ramifications. The cabinets could be replaced with colorful fronts, and

Built-in gadgets of the Cornell Kitchen: can opener, towel storage, a cutting board and breadbox.

the kitchen again becomes the individual expression of the housewife through customization of parts.

Reports for the Cornell Kitchen touted an express concern for the psychological and emotional well-being of the female homemaker through four distinct cat-

The Cornell Kitchen was electrified; it was a pre-wired fitted unit that integrated

egories to be tackled by the design of the fitted kitchen units: family-centred

three to four appliances into its design, whether the consumers wanted them

living, social standing, physical convenience and aesthetics. Although physical

32

Mechanizing the Kitchen—Excerpt

QAH II

33

convenience might ostensibly be proven by ergonomic studies, it was well-doc-

Bibliography

umented that the “female work curve” was overlooked in favor of a twenty-four

Beecher, Catharine E. and Harriet Beecher Stowe. The American Woman’s Home.

New York: J.B. Ford & Company, 1869.

inch standardized unit, to both save on tooling costs during production, and to allow for interchangeability of parts in the event of a malfunction or breakdown during use. This would conveniently also have the added marketable advantage of expression of identity through a choice of colour in the cabinetry. The other three categories were aspirational rather than calculable, and it was never clarified by the research team how success in these categories might be measured. Values of aesthetics and social standing could not be rationalized by scientific means; instead, it appears that these claims were largely motivated by corporate intentions to sell more products by appealing to the emotional senses.

The mechanization, or automation, of certain aspects of housework did little to relieve women of time spent performing chores in the home; again, the concept of “labour-saving” was often conflated with “time-saving”, as many of the work pro6. Ruth Schwartz Cohen, More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology From The Open Hearth To The Microwave. (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 200.

cesses that were streamlined through technology were traditionally associated with tasks considered “sex-acceptable”6 by men; garbage removal was delegated to the disposal, and washing up to the electric dishwasher. The mechanization of the kitchen relieved men of their obligations to participate in domestic labour, even when managing mechanized processes required equal, if not additional amounts of work. Cohen goes one step further and suggests that because the work process had become mechanized, men simply could not believe that the

7. Ibid, 200.

Coleman, Debra, Elizabeth Danze, and Carol Henderson, eds. Architecture and feminism: Yale publications on architecture.

New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996.

General Electric Kitchen. Planning a General Electric Kitchen.

Cleveland: Unknown, 1937.

Hayden, Dolores. The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighbourhoods, and Cities.

London: MIT Press, 1981.

Hochhaeusl, S. “From Vienna to Frankfurt Inside Core-House Type 7: A History of Scarcity through the Modern Kitchen.”

Architectural Histories, 1(1), p.Art. 24. http://doi.org/10.5334/ah.aq

Oldenziel, Ruth and Karin Zachmann, eds. Cold War kitchen: Americanization, technology, and European users.

Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009.

Penner, Barbara. “The Cornell Kitchen: Housing and Design Research in Postwar America.”

Technology and Culture 59 no. 1 (2018): 48-94. https://muse.jhu.edu/ Plante, Ellen M. The American Kitchen 1700 to the Present: From Hearth to Highrise.

New York: Facts on File, 1995.

Roberts, Marion. Living in a Man-made World: Gender Assumptions in Housing Design.

New York: Routledge, 1991.

Rosner, Victoria. Modernism and the Architecture of Private Life.

New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.

work was onerous.7

Ryan, Deborah Sugg. Ideal homes, 1918-39: Domestic Design and Suburban Modernism.

Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018.

Mechanization of the kitchen failed to deliver on its promise of providing house-

Schwartz Cohen, Ruth. More Work For Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology From The Open Hearth To The Microwave.

New York: Basic Books, 1983.

wives of the post-War era relief from domestic labour afforded by so-called ‘labour-saving’ or ‘time-saving’ devices. Instead, it merely shifted the focus from essential domestic practices to more elaborate and metaphysical domains.

Women of the mid-century were now expected to extol the virtues of housework

Sonderegger, Christina. “Between Progress and Idling: The Standard Kitchen; Notes on the Development of the Swiss Kitchen Norm” In The Kitchen, edited by Klaus Spechtenhauser, 48-61.

Basel: Birkhauser, 2006.

Tati, Jacques. Mon Oncle. France. Victorine Studios, 1958.

as a personality trait, rather than merely a chore, and as a sorceress of great skill and deep mystery in the household. From Catharine Beecher through to the satire of Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle, the history of female domestic labour has continually been reinforced through the particularities in both the physical design and representative media surrounding the role of the female in the domestic household.

Initially thought to empower rather than diminish the housewife, a paradoxical combination of architectural innovations led to women being further sequestered into their roles inside gendered spaces of the home in the mid-century.

34

Mechanizing the Kitchen—Excerpt

QAH II

35

Botanical Data Farm

Toxic Technology Remediation A site for a new form of agricultural knowledge, this proposal takes over the former I.B.M. manufacturing facility and EPA Superfund site just outside of Kingston in Upstate New York.

Engagement with hyper-local conditions of the contaminated site subverts a tradition of technological production holding hegemonic value over the land it occupies, instead imagining a new campus that manifests a productive synergy between analog and digital data.

Advanced Studio Nahyun Hwang, N H D M Knowledge Territories: R/Urban Ecologies II Collaborator Ian Wach

Partial Study Model

37

38

Site Axon

Existing Condition

39

40

Plumes

Exposure Pathways

41

Cause & Effect

42

Contamination in the groundwater was first detected in 1978, but not discovered publicly until the sale of I.B.M. in 1998 to Alan Ginsburg as TechCity.

Contamination

Remediation

43

Now, Then Later

46

Paired components that occur either concurrently or sequentially on the site. Elements of the project revolve around the remediation of the site at multiple points in time.

Permanent Housing

Short-Term Dormitories

Seedling Farm

Phytoremediation

Field Lab

Community Kitchen

Data Centre

Thermal Desorption

Taxonomy

Program

47

Table for Two

48

Remediation labs give way to on-site farm programming in later phases.

Cross Section

Digital Agriculture

Monitoring wells continually register above what is below in real time.

Monitoring Wells

49

Sky House Kiyonori Kikutake

Architectural Drawing & Representation I Lexi Tsien-Shiang, Soft-Firm The Metabolist family home of architect Kiyonori Kikutake, Sky House is both an infinitely replicable series of modules for living, and host to a layering of historical palimpsest.

STUDY

REPRESENTATION

52

Exploded Axonometric

Section Perspective

53

Sky House Kiyonori Kikutake

Left: A stroboscopic animation of a dancing, exploding Sky House, expressing the living nature of the Metabolist ethos. Influences from the illuminating 1968 short film ‘Pas De Deux’ by Canadian filmmaker Norman McLaren.

Right: Three one-way mirrors make up the sides and bottom of a quarter-model of the Sky House. Look into the corner, and see the Sky House completed and repeated into infinity.

STUDY

REPRESENTATION

54

Animation Stills

Model Photograph

55

24X24 Library

Stacks Stacking discrete and abstracted precedents generated a conversation through design about the possibilities of a new library in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The 24x24 Library imagines a Third Space accessible twentyfour hours a day along a winding exterior ramp, mirrored by an interior that both mimics and contrasts it.

Doubling is present everywhere in the 24x24 Library, and oversized 2’x2’ (or 24”x24”) beams and columns run relentlessly in pairs across all axes, creating architecture at every scale—from habitable moments for books and people, to the overall massing and structural elements.

Core Studio Emmett Zeifman, Medium Office Stacks, Stacks, Stacks

56

1/32” Concept Model

57

58

West Elevation

11:59

59

60

West Elevation

23:59

61

Exterior

62

A shell of extruded chrome beam and column elements create a dazzling reflection of the surrounding site at Sara D. Roosevelt Park.

63

Interior

64

Relentless doubling happens everywhere, from program to material to structure.

65

Symmetry Line

66

A ribbon-like bookcase defines and divides the East and West facades, separating inside from outside with a shared wall of books.

Rendering

Section

67

68

Day Section

Night Section

69

Building Technologies Elective Kevin Schorn

Collaborator Steven Corsello

DETAILS

STUDY

24x24 Library Facade Detailing

Section A–A

70

1/4" = 1'-0" Section

Section B

71

Stacks, Stacks, Stacks Proto-Building

Bibliothèque Nationale Henri Labrouste

PRECEDENT

STUDY

A discrete stack of diagrammatic precedent models generates a protobuilding. A connection between the stacked spaces through the alignment of a vertical corridor creates a centralizing programmatic approach and a double-layered building, or a building-within-abuilding

Vasconcelos Library Alberto Kalach Sendai Mediathèque Toyo Ito

Core Studio Emmett Zeifman, Medium Office Stacks, Stacks, Stacks 72

Model Photograph

73

P.S.

Floating a Proposal A new school typology confronts a dynamically evolving issue of over-crowding in elementary public schools in Manhattan due to artificial boundaries that separate and segregate students.

P.S. proposes a floating infrastructure that can accommodate the needs of public school elementary school students across Manhattan and its outer boroughs and promote creativity, learning, interaction and integration through a shared, mutually beneficial and financially viable resource—a permanent temporary that can grow, shrink, move and multiply around the endless skyline of Manhattan from the water.

Core Studio Anna Puigjaner, MAIO The Grand Interior

75

Manhattan Piers

No elementary school in Manhattan is ever further than 1.9 miles from a serviceable pier.

76

77

Classroom Configuration

78

Felted walls run on tracks to cordon off spaces for quiet instruction in the day.

Vignette

Out To Sea

An undulating appendage to the structure allows for safe play on/in the water.

Aerial View

79

Plans & Sections

81

Research Booklet

A 48-page accordion booklet containing research, additional work, and a continuous skyline of Manhattan from the water.

82

Avery Hall

83

Post Script

84

Policy privileges affluent young students as school district boundaries are gerrymandered to suit lobbying parents with the means to influence local legislation. If this proposal seems silly, it only serves to highlight the red-tape absurdity of New York City’s broken public school system.

School Districting

Research Booklet

85

86

Moving Images

Review

87

East River Homes GSAPP Housing Lab

STUDY

REPRESENTATION

Supervisors Adam Frampton & Daisy Ames Collaborator Maru Perez Benavides 88

Site Axon

517 E 77th St, New York NY

89

Amalgamated Housing GSAPP Housing Lab

STUDY

REPRESENTATION

Supervisors Adam Frampton & Daisy Ames Collaborators Maru Perez Benavides, Adela Locsin 90

Site Axon

98 Van Cortlandt Park S, The Bronx NY

91

Taking Apart Banham and The New Brutalism —Excerpt

Banham’s “New Brutalism” was a fiction to some extent, or at the very least in its contention, identified it as theory. In a later interview with art critic and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist in 2000, long after Banham had passed away, Peter Smithson is noted for saying of Banham:

“Brutalism was not what Banham was talking about.”1 History Sequence Mark Wigley The History of Architectural Theory

1. Dirk Van den Heuvel. “Between Brutalists. The Banham Hypothesis and the Smithson Way of Life” 297.

A historiographically strategic editorializing of long stretches of architectural history during the inter-War period ironically bolstered the facade of continuity that was required in order to maintain the narrative of historical and aesthetic linearity in Pevsner’s arguments. Pevsner would link post-War Modernism directly

BORNE FROM APOCRYPHAL BEGINNINGS, Reyner Banham’s introduction of ‘The New Brutalism’ is a shape-shifting hypothesis on an avant-garde architectural movement that was originally published in the December 1955 issue of Architectural Review, and bookended quite literally by the expanded book The New Brutalism: Ethics or Aesthetics? eleven years later in 1966. Banham presupposed the academic aspirations of the movement, differentiating it from other, stylistic inclinations of architectural movements in the era contemporaneous to Brutalism, using specific and deliberate techniques of language and context to help strengthen his theoretical proposal for the New Brutalism. Despite a convincing argument, Banham could not control the outcome of the movement he championed, and ultimately condemned its fate as newer, more suitable movements to his theories cropped up.

from the 1914 Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne, Germany2, skipping over non-rational, chaotic, aformal experimentation that occurred during the period Banham called the “Zone of Silence”3. Pevsner was also a through-and-through Anglophile, German origins notwithstanding, and a revivalist of the English tradition of the picturesque. Banham refers scathingly to this impulse as the “so-called ‘William Morris Revival’, now happily defunct” 4. Concurrent to the publication of ‘The New Brutalism’ in Pevsner’s Architectural Review (as Pevsner was on the editorial board of the magazine at this juncture), Pevsner was in the midst of completing a

bination of nationalistic solipsism within the British avant-garde arts and architecture community and a benevolent suspicion that the author was opportunistic in his professional interest in becoming New Brutalism’s earliest champion.

Banham’s placement in the immediate group of participants surrounding the movement for which he is writing about makes him an unreliable narrator of the Brutalist movement. His direct involvement with the Independent Group of the 1950s at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London pinpoints his association with the young British architects Peter and Alison Smithson, who became the de facto heroes of New Brutalism for Banham in the late 1950s. Whether they were prepared to participate readily in Banham’s schemes or not was not made explicit, though there was a late rebuff from Peter Smithson that did clarify that

92

Taking Apart Banham—Excerpt

3. Reyner Banham, “History Under Revision,” Architectural Review 127 no. 759 (May 1960), 326.

4. Reyner Banham, “The New Brutalism,” Architectural Review 118, December 1955, 356.

series of BBC audio programmes for The Reith Lectures entitled ‘The Englishness of English Art’.

In a later article penned for Architectural Review in 1960, titled ‘History under

5. Banham, “History Under Revision,” 326.

Revision’, Banham highlights the “Zone of Silence”5 roughly during the inter-War The underlying mechanics of Banham’s New Brutalism functions through a com-

2. Todd Gannon, “In Search of Alternatives: Banham, Britain and The New Brutalism,” Reyner Banham and the Paradoxes of High Tech. (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2017), 17.

years, between 1910 and 1926. Banham calls out this period of time as one which architectural historians consciously developed a blind spot in favor of a more satisfying linear narrative linking Functionalist and Rationalist movements in the late 19th-century with the Modern movement, and more specifically, the International Style which would become exceptionally enduring throughout the 20th-century. Banham picks out what he calls “aberrations”6 during this period, like the Sommerfeld House by Walter Gropius in 1921, to highlight the bias of the

6. Gannon, “In Search of Alternatives: Banham, Britain and The New Brutalism,” 18.

historiographical methodologies employed by those insistent on a historically continuous Modernist narrative. In a typically memorable epithet by Banham, he accuses those skipping over the messier bits of early 20th-century Modernism as having “decided to cut off half their grandparents without a farthing.”7

7. Reyner Banham, “The Glass Paradise”, 89.

On the other side of the pendulum swung the movement within which Banham

History of Theory

93

appeared to position himself. Along with the Smithsons, Banham valorized the

are the visible and identifiable characteristics of these two structures? Both have

term ‘Brutalism’ in architecture, which at that point was primarily associated with

formal, axial plans…”10, but the inclusion of a “formal legibility of plan”11 in Ban-

10. Banham, “The New Brutalism,” 357.

a kind of aformalism and textural quality present in radical art that was anteced-

ham’s checklist for Brutalism is quickly erased a few pages later and replaced

11. Ibid, 357.

ent to the Pop Art movement, and only loosely connected to architecture through

with the more flexible “memorability as an Image”12 Whether this was a method-

12. Ibid, 361.

various legends. A coarseness of texture in the works of the 1952 Parallel of Life

ological safeguard approach to allow for the fickleness that Banham would later

and Art show, including those by artists Jean Dubuffet and Eduoardo Paolozzi,

exemplify in following writings or not is not definitive, but a seductive notion to

meshed well with the material qualities present in Banham’s New Brutalist build-

contemplate nonetheless.

ings. Banham, through the New Brutalism, embraced the tumult of the inter-War

8. Banham, “The New Brutalism”, 361.

period dismissed by more conservative theorists in the “Zone of Silence”, and was

That Banham rests the weight of his New Brutalism’s genesis and apotheosis on

tinder for his call to “Une Architecture Autre”8. Banham would hang Brutalism on

a narrow slice of work by a pair of young designers, proved to be problematic. It is

the Smithsons’ mantle, but as the years progressed, the Smithsons would eventu-

far easier to wrangle a bygone era or a dead architect’s work into a neat and linear

ally disappoint Banham’s vision for the movement by revealing an alignment to a

theoretical argument than to make a wish on a couple of architects with radical

morality more inherent in the Arts and Crafts tradition: “In an unpublished type-

ideas during the preliminary phase of an avant-garde movement.

script on Brutalism (from 1954), Alison Smithson explained that to her ‘the doing 9. Van den Heuvel. “Between Brutalists. The Banham Hypothesis and the Smithson Way of Life,” 304.

is the craft. The doing must not be confused with the built form.’”9 Banham would

The conception of New Brutalism, its emphasis on Image and the clarity of the

eventually be left alone with his ideal of the New Brutalism, until he too aban-

reading of the building ultimately superseded the ethical ambitions of the move-

doned the pursuit with the conclusion of his 1966 publication of New Brutalism:

ment, which in the post-War era was primarily concerned with making do in a

Ethic or Aesthetic?

time of austerity. Banham’s 1955 proposal in ‘The New Brutalism’ was predicat-

There is a persistent and false collective memory that accepts Banham’s writings as the primary source for a unified theory on New Brutalism.

The Hunstanton School in Norfolk, along with the unbuilt Soho House project, are the two primary examples from Alison and Peter Smithson that Banham uses as the exemplary pillars of the New Brutalism movement, and attempts to draw out

ed on an assumption on how the movement might or should proceed. He uses language powerfully to substantiate New Brutalism by introducing a new definition for imageability of a building, and braces the argument by allowing for a certain vagueness. Banham’s indeterminate approach to defining New Brutalism gives his theory an impenetrable mechanism by which it could function, and the self-awareness in his withdrawal from Brutalism in 1966 allows Banham to slip away with clean hands.

Bibliography

a logic and thesis by which the movement can be measured against. It becomes

Banham, Reyner, ‘‘History Under Revision,’’ Architectural Review 127, May 1960, 326–332.

quickly evident, even by the end of his short piece in Architectural Review, that

Banham, Reyner. “The New Brutalism” Architectural Review 118, December 1955, 355–361.

any possible formal or static logic of New Brutalism eludes Banham, and re-

Banham, Reyner. The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic?

London: The Architectural Press, 1966.

visions to the theory are made seemingly ad hoc throughout the course of the article. There is a persistent and false collective memory that accepts Banham’s writings as the primary source for a unified theory on New Brutalism, despite contradictions within and between his texts on the subject. Early on in the article, Banham writes explicitly about the shared formal characteristics of both of these projects: “Hunstanton, and the house in Soho, can serve as the points of architectural reference by which The New Brutalism in architecture may be defined. What

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Taking Apart Banham—Excerpt

Gannon, Todd. “In Search of Alternatives: Banham, Britain and The New Brutalism” Reyner Banham and the Paradoxes of High Tech. (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2017) 15–51.

Stalder, Laurent. “‘New Brutalism’, ‘Topology’ and ‘Image’: some remarks on the architectural debates in England around 1950” The Journal of Architecture 22:5, 949–967.

Van den Heuvel, Dirk. “Between Brutalists. The Banham Hypothesis and the Smithson Way of Life.” The Journal of Architecture 20:2, 2015, 293–308.

Vidler, Anthony. “Another Brick in the Wall” October Vol. 136, Spring 2011, 105–132.

History of Theory

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Indigenous Desettlement Corps

The New, New Deal Alaska is on the frontlines of forced climate migration in the U.S. Remote Indigenous communities are being forced to make impossible decisions about how to continue existing.

Introducing renewable energy infrastructural loops shared between Kivalina, AK and neighboring villages along traditional transportation trails, this proposal offers rural citizens in remote regions a second chance at the New Deal through a phased relocation from static settlement nodes towards fluid de-settled pathways, creating systems of support and self-preservation within historically disenfranchised indigenous communities.

The Indigenous Desettlement Corps seeks to undo a portion of colonial harm, reframing the act of relocation as an act of de-settlement, de-colonization and de-carbonization.

Advanced Studio David Benjamin, The Living Climate Design Corps

Renewable Energy Utilidor

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Villages at Risk

76 98

Twelve Indigenous villages are actively exploring relocation.

Future Risk

By 2030

Four will be gone within the next 10 years.

Imminent Risk

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Regional Loop

Relocation Proposal

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Project One

Modular Housing

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Project Two

Community Subsistence

105

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Project Three

Ice Wall

107

Twisted Corner Transitional Geometries

Visual Studies Elective Joshua Jordan

A modular tile was developed in the illusory spirit of Erwin Hauer, defying axial perception as the body of the tile continually twists away.

STUDY

MATERIALITY

108

Together

Alone

109

Aramco World

Road Tripping the Saudi Arabian Oil Superhighway This proposal aims to amplify key moments in Saudi Arabia’s history of oil, revealing the ways in which power has been produced by the kingdom through a set of interventions designed as viewing devices for these moments.

Three significant sites are recognized as monuments along an oil-induced road trip, with the act of visiting each site by car as the tool of encounter tying together the sites in a singular narrative of Saudi Aramco’s deliberate production of power. The journey of the road trip itself is a tracing of Aramco’s extensive territories of oil in Saudi Arabia through careful engagement with its various instruments of control.

Advanced Studio Mark Wasiuta Detox USA: Chemical Modernities Collaborator Florencia Yalale

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Moving Car Images

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112

Aramco Employee On-Boarding

Procedure Diagram

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The House That Oil Built

A vernacular shift is seen on the Aramco compounds from ‘American suburb in the desert’ to a new, more permanent and synthetic cultural concentration.

This shift in architectural style points to a departure from national identity to a more corporate style that is evocative of the ‘global city’— that is, a community that is both everywhere and nowhere.

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Suburb in the Desert

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Border Walls The border wall between Saudi Arabia and Saudi Aramco in Dhahran was originally constructed in the 1930s as a symbolic gateway between the American-owned camp and its host country.

It has since been fortified so heavily over the last 80 years that it now effectively operates as a controlled state border between the conservative kingdom and its secular corporate state.

Along with the actual gate mechanism, concrete perimeter walls and razorwire fences underpin the curated visuals of segregation.

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Coordination Centre Saudi Aramco's mechanism of territorial control is explicated by siting it directly at the location of its perception—the gate to the Dhahran Residential Compound. The system of the existing border wall is amplified through the addition of three co-located programs: a compressed entry sequence for Aramco employees, Saudi Aramco's supercomputer, and a road trip coordination centre.

By siting these three programs together at the gate, travelers of the road trip witness the procedure and the power of Aramco’s control over the information of oil, while participating in its system through their own orientation that precedes the road trip.

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Interview Floor

122

On lower levels in the building, access to the canted LED display strips is limited or obstructed.

Digital Facades

Dammam Well No. 7 Originally discovered in 1938, Dammam Well No. 7 was the first commercially viable oil well in Saudi. It now sits inside the secure boundary of the Dhahran Camp.

The infrastructure of the roadwork encircles the monument, and effectively cuts off access to the site for those within the boundary of the Aramco compound.

The roadwork is accessible only to the public from the Coordination Centre, and through its implementation as a divider of space, reclaims the territory of the site as that belonging to Saudi Arabia.

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Trans-Arabian Highway Hotel

Located in ten 100mile intervals along the Trans-Arabian Pipeline, repeated instances of the Highway Hotel offer both a respite and recognition of the hypnotic state the Tapline Road induces.

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The 1,000 Mile Hotel

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A Shift in Perspective

128

A splayed form emphasizes the visual experience of a rolling shutter. Hypnosis is amplified through formal qualities, engaging visitors more directly with the sensation.

Unit Axonometric

Tilting Plans

129

Recharging

130

Low windows and sunken sleeping spaces allow for quiet contemplation.

Bedroom

Refreshing

In shifting landscapes, the pipeline outside remains a constant.

Bathroom

131

Rendering is taken beyond its typical output by imbuing it with a painterly, evocative and voyeuristic quality.

REPRESENTATION

STUDIES

AM/PM Ultrareal

Visual Studies Elective Joseph Brennan & Philip Cruppi Collaborator Florencia Yalale 132

Looking In

133

Views into, and out of, an imagination of quarantine living in New York City during the Pandemic Spring of 2020.

STUDIES

REPRESENTATION

135

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Genevieve Mateyko

Columbia GSAPP 2021