Library in the Labyrinth
A Bachelor’s of Architecture Thesis Presented to Cornell University by Justin Michael Wadge with advisors Vince Mulcahy Jim Williamson May 2015 Degree Conferral
Š 2015 cannot be reproduced without written consent of the artist
Dedicated to my parents, Geoffrey and Lisa Wadge with a special thanks to my advisors, Vince and Jim Inspired, in great part, by John Hejduk’s Victims
The wind blows. It glides along the canals and brushes the leaves. It sweeps through the streets. It feels their faces. It climbs the stairs and gets lost in the passages. It moves from the water to the sky where it is released; there, the wind reaches across to touch the distant horizon.
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Chapter 1
A Continuous Experience
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Sequence near Palazzo della Minerva, Rome
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Designing to Produce a Sequence (Creating Narratives)
Choisy
The Greek Temple The Greeks were among the first to carefully consider the way an architecture is encountered perceptually. The linear approach at an oblique angle to the front faรงade of the temple, often up hill, was conceived as a dramatic means of coming to know an architecture. The oblique view provided a three dimensional reading from a distance. The uphill climb created a sense of spiritual elevation and brought the inhabitant to a dramatic view. There is a process of coming to know the temple through a journey, developing anticipation and understanding along the way, and then reaching a pinnacle and turning out towards a view of the landscape. These notions are developed to their pinnacle with the Acropolis. There, ideas of how to know an architecture before entering the interior are further explored with circumambulation, and the oblique/three-dimensional reading of a volume is multiplied around a central point to become an encompassing collection of volumes. 7
Piranesi
The Picturesque Garden While the Picturesque Garden approach to perceptual sequence is also intended to develop a rich narrative, the notion of understanding the architecture of the space is abandoned. There is no longer a link to the mental construction of space, instead the organization of the space is convoluted and escapes understanding by the inhabitant. The Picturesque Garden denies the plan as a diagram to know place. It is an important development for the way that it disregards the traditional role of architectural composition and privileges the role the of moving through space as the only way to know it.
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Sketch by Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye Through the lens of fast paced and continuous movement allotted by the machine age, Le Corbusier explores the way by which circulation through architecture can become a developed set of perspectival compositions. He constructs, perhaps for the first time to this degree within an architecture, a sequence of space that is a synthesis of the classical and picturesque traditions. On one hand, the elements that support movement are clearly visible in plan, section, and axonometric drawings. It a complicated parti of movement, but exists within a classical composition that can be conceptually reconstructed. On the other hand, the sequence, by wrapping in on itself, still has the potential to evade immediate comprehension. It is full of surprises, looking inside and out, that maintain a sense of adventure for the inhabitant. It cannot be understood until experienced by walking through the entire project. The plan shows the path of movement, but the relationship to framing the landscape and interior spaces cannot be understood by architectural drawings (though Corbusier’s perspective sketches come close to this). 9
Richard Meier’s House in Old Westbury (Classical) and The Athenaeum (Picturesque) Direct developments on this theme can be seen in Richard Meier’s House in Old Westbury (the unraveling of the narrative to a less compact and more linear sequence), and in the Athenaeum (a return to the complex twisting and overlaying of a sequence of space). The House in Old Westbury (1971) reconstructs the perceptual moments of the Villa Savoye. The same dichotomies unfold between plastic forms/grid, elongated/compressed circulation, interior/exterior etc. Therefore, moments such as the entry, ascent, movement outside and back in, have direct perceptual parallels to Corbusier’s sequence. However, instead of wrapping the sequence in a clean volume, the form unfolds in a more natural and linear sequence. Because of this, the sequence is more legible formally within the object. An axon is unnecessary, the project can be easily read with a plan and section. It is more predictable like the Greek Temple, and the surprise we are accustomed to in Picturesque Garden is reduced.
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The Athenaeum (1979) goes in the opposite direction. The perceptual sequence is longer than that of the Villa Savoye, and the wrapping on itself is more complicated. The only linear component of the project is the oblique point of entry which generates one of the main twists in plan. From there, the sequence is entirely illegible in plan or section. In fact, the complexity of the project can hardly be read without an axonometric view. Having not visited the project, I have difficulty understanding it. To conclude the developments of Richard Meier, these two projects each take one of the components that exist in balance in the Villa Savoye (Classical sequence with ability to reconstruct conceptually and understand in plan vs. picturesque sequence that cannot be reconstructed and only understandable by perceptual experience). And in both cases, the exterior reading is antithetical to the internal sequence. The Athenaeum has a picturesque complexity of space condensed in a tight formal enclosure with classical approach, and the House in Old Westbury has a classical clarity of space in a form produced as the by product of sequence (like picturesque). The Athenaeum is, for me, a particularly appropriate point of departure from the traditional approach of developing a Narrative in architecture for its relationship to urban context. Unlike the other situations discussed, the narrative of the Athenaeum exists at the edge of an urban condition. The produced narrative therefore begins in the built landscape, and the project becomes an extension of that towards the water. I am very interested in the means by which a Narrative is not rationally invented within the natural landscape, but rather is discovered and extended in an urban condition. In this case, it can become an extension of an existing sequence of space, and therefore a means of making the project deeply contextual. Even in the developed precedents of Le Corbusier and Richard Meier discussed above, the Narrative is only an intended end product. It is in the mind of the architect and informs design decisions throughout, but the sequence is not fully understood until the project is developed planimetrically. I am interested in an architecture that is produced through the process of Narrative. In a previous studio project (following spread), my site studies consisted of perspective drawings of the approach. I returned to redraw the approach as the project developed. The sequence was more than an intended product; it became part of the process of design. It completed the narrative of place, and therefore roots itself into the existing fabric. I am interested in expanding this concept beyond the production of discrete views in dialogue with the conceptual construction of space.
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Sequence through Ithaca Commons
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Designing through a Sequence (Narrative as Process) When exploring the generative methods for a Narrative, I will begin with examples that are elemental in their translation (visual to visual), and move towards more complex translations (developed story of place to architectural space).
Gordon Cullen’s Concise Townscapes (plan drawing to perspective drawing) Gordon Cullen is fundamentally concerned with making architecture contextual by integrating with the existing narrative of the site. His Concise Townscapes, is above all, a means to integrate and organize the existing fabric according to a clear and unifying narrative that is found in the place.
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Further, I am concerned with his method as an introductory means to constructing a narrative of a place. Cullen takes the existing plan of a place as the point of departure, and imagines a series of perspective views (the discrete sequence) based on the information in plan. It is a way of constructing a narrative that is at once contextual but also imaginative. I will consider this the first and most elemental approach to inventing a relevant narrative. 16
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Richard Meier’s Metamorphosis (text on paper to text in space) An alternative inspiration for the narrative that will produce more imaginative results is the use of literature. The translation from the abstract and sometimes impossible space of written text to a definitive form is a sufficient jump to infuse the imaginative in the process, as opposed to the direct translation of a visual sequence of space. Here, Meier tries to create a labyrinthine space composed of three dimensional blocks of text that is moved through the way the mind reads through the writing of Borges. The references are at once directly literal and imaginatively spatial. Richard MeierMan Transforms, Exhibition for the Opening of the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum, New York (1976) “The architectural process takes a peculiar route through space and time – beginning with an idea and its conceptual language, drawing, and ending with a built object and its experiential dimensions of mass within real space. The metamorphic exchange between these oppositions – idea and reality, the conceptual matrix and the phenomenal resolution – is the residue intended by the notion of Architecture. Metamorphosis, the configurated space which I have created for this exhibition, can be seen as a re-enactment of the process of design projected as an environment. The lattice which moves off the drawing board with all its implications of the Cartesian grid, enstates itself within real space as a complex and changing set of myriad relationships experienced as suspense: the labyrinth. Because of the conceptual nature of this work, it seemed important that its medium be not only drawing (and its material counterpart, the lattice), but language itself and its transformational counterpart, the anagram. In “The Fearful Sphere of Pascal,” Jose Luis Borges traces the history of a particular metaphor for the idea of God, as it was shaped by the Classical philosophers, reshaped by medieval theologians, and ended by being “a labyrinth and an abyss for Pascal.” In tracing the history of a metaphor from the experience of form to the experience of matter, “The Fearful Sphere of Pascal” depicts the labyrinth as a geometric absolute, the structure of which has moved beyond the limits of instant comprehension. In that sense the labyrinth maps the movement from the idea to the real. In so doing, it is the prototype of Architecture.”
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John Hejduk’s Masques (collected story of place to architecture) Finally, Hejduk’s Masques reflect the most developed approach to creating architecture through a process of Narrative. His work is the first instances discussed here that is not about constructing a series of fragmented picture frames. It is not about walking in a sequence, confronting a composed perspective, and breaking through the picture plane as you move to the next view. Hejduk constructs Narratives rooted in place that are not tied to discrete views. He imagines them as part of a continuous experience of emotion and memory with the landscape. Hejduk’s Masques become markers between the known and the unknown. His are the most imaginative of narratives, as the labyrinthine nature combines seemingly disparate elements to construct a story. In his case, the coherence and continuity of the narrative is perceived and then constructed. Without his imposed system of logic, there is no narrative. Architecture, in this case, has become less about literally translating a narrative, but rather constructing a system that allows disparate elements to read continuously. In the case of the House of the Suicide and the House of the Mother of the Suicide, the narratives are developed out of a seemingly random combination of the triangular lights of Cezanne, the Claw of the Ingres painting, and the story of the public suicide of Polok, a young French Poet. Once a form has arisen from this imagined narrative, it is placed in Presidential Gardens of Prague, becoming an integral part of the ritual of changing of the guards.
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Chapter 2
The Library of Babel
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Boullee
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Hejduk
Two Conceptions of the Library With respect to an already dense thesis, the program will be easily satisfiable. I consider the most appropriate program for a space that invokes narrative to be a library. But this will not be a traditional public library. It is a place where you go to get lost in a book. The persistent tradition of grand reading rooms seems antithetical to getting lost in a book. The large scale of the space and numerous inhabitants are constant distractions. I imagine, instead, the study as the ideal place to get lost in a book. However there is a component to the public library that allows it to persist, and it is not spatial. It is the idea of rhythm in the use of the place. People go to a library to read in order to become part of a collective ritual. The numerous other people engaged in reading become proponents of the fact that the space is intended for reading. What if a library, which in the contemporary sense I understand as a place conducive to getting lost in a book, could incorporate the spatial qualities of a study and the rhythmic qualities of a large reading room? The answer lies again Borges. The Library of Babel excerpt “The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries. In the center of each gallery is a ventilation shaft, bound by a low railing. From any hexagon one can see the floors above and below – one after another, endlessly. The arrangement of the galleries is always the same: twenty bookshelves, five to each side, line four of the hexagon’s six sides; the height of the bookshelves, floor to ceiling, is hardly greater than the height of a normal librarian. One of the hexagon’s free sides opens to a narrow sort of vestibule, which in turn opens onto another gallery, identical to the first – identical in fact to all. To the left and right of the vestibule are two tiny compartments. One is for sleeping, upright; the other for satisfying one’s physical necessities. Through this space, too, there passes a spiral staircase, which winds upward and downward into the remotest distance. In the vestibule there is a mirror, which faithfully duplicates appearances. Men often infer from this mirror that the Library is not infinite – if it were, what need would there be for that illusory replication? I prefer to dream that burnished surfaces are a figuration and promise of the infinite… Light is provided by certain spherical fruits that bear the name “bulbs.” There are two of these bulbs in each hexagon, set crosswise. The light they give is insufficient, and unceasing.”
This description is the prototype for my program. It offers a profound new approach to the idea of a public library while also offering an easily satisfiable program such that the complexity of site derived narratives can be overlaid (lets say, as the circulation between the hexagonal rooms). 24
Etchings of Library of Babel by Erik Desmazieres
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The Labyrinth in Borges Hejduk’s understanding of the narrative as a system to tie together disparate experiences, the process of weaving together a story, is no doubt the most imaginative approach. However, it is also worth considering the work of Borges for the way by which this system is read. Hejduk produces objects with his narratives, and sets them a context within which they resonate. I am equally interested in the way by which the narrative produced architecture is experienced through sequence, how an architecture can not only be generated and sited like the work of Hejduk, but read like the work of Borges. The Labyrinth becomes a powerful conceptual approach. It implies a complexity of readings and perceptual opportunities. Whereas Hejduk produces Masques with ambiguous readings, Borges’ short stories have numerous overlapping readings. The Garden of Forking Paths excerpt “The Garden of Forking Paths is an enormous riddle, or parable, whose theme is time; this recondite cause prohibits its mention. To omit a word always, to resort to inept metaphors and obvious periphrases, is perhaps the most emphatic way of stressing it. That is the tortuous method preferred, in each of the meanderings of this indefatigable novel… In contrast to Newton and Schopenhauer, your ancestor did not believe in a uniform, absolute time. He believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent, and parallel times. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embrace all possibilities of time. We do not exist in the majority of these times; in some you exist, and not I; in others I, and not you; in others, both of us.”
As I imagine a place for the thesis, the labyrinthine qualities of Venice make it an obvious choice. It is a city fabric already rich with overlapping narratives, and implies a complexity and variety of experiential readings.
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Chapter 3
The Labyrinthine City
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The largest of the six sestieri (regions) in Venice, Castello poses several interesting site conditions as an area of less attention from visitors. The Biennale is the focus, though the green space and lack of canals make it immediately distinct with respect to the island as a whole. 33
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The use of the Arsenal as an exhibition space for the Biennale suggests the need for a direct circulation path through the selected site.
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The Arsenal is a key landmark within Castello. Along with the monasteries to the north, it was an original source for the habitation of this part of the island. Originally a repair yard for private vessels, the Arsenal became the most powerful and efficient ship construction yard in the world by the 16th century. It employed a peak of 16,000 workers and could produce a ship in a day. Galileo contributed to the engineering, and Dante mentioned it in his Inferno. This landmark maintained Venice’s powerful navy which, in turn, maintained the sea-merchant economy. 36
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The approach from the “local” side is shown here, note the remaining east end of the canal as a social barrier.
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The Via Garibaldi is a busy pedestrian street with popular shops and restaurants. Previously a canal that has been filled in, this street begins to mimic the density typical of other districts in Venice. However, this street is perceived as less touristy and more “genuine.”
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The selected plot is ingrained in another contextual issue: a strong perceptual axis with an unresolved ending. As shown previously in the site photo, the terminus of the existing axis fails to satisfy the perceptual frame created by the axis. The circumambulation around the statue is the beginning of a dramatic conclusion, but the architecture behind is unresponsive to this climax. It is synonymous with the rest of the urban fabric.
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The boundary between the dense pedestrian street Via Garibaldi and this “local� neighborhood is very shallow, created a harsh edge condition in the social fabric. This is present both socially and architecturally.
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A point of particular interest when I visited, these seemingly local regions had minimal pedestrians on the street or commerce. Clothes hangers strung across the streets suggest they are mostly occupied. The banal architecture suggests a middle to low income housing district, perhaps originally serving the monasteries or workers of the Arsenal. 40
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The selected plot occupies a point at the intersection of a series of edge conditions: the boundary of the arsenal, the beginning of Via Garibaldi, and the perceived beginning of the local.
As has been shown through analyzing the various neighborhoods and approaches to the site, there is already a rich series of narratives that overlap in the selected plot. This dense edge condition, depending on your approach, can provide numerous different contextual narratives. I am interested in the way by which one place can resolve these distinct and intertwined sequences. The generative narrative, then, becomes an interpretation of the various stories in place. This will result in a deeply contextual project. The desired qualities of Hejduk’s work (stringing together disparate stories through means of an imaginative narrative) will be found in the moments of intersection between these various stories. As in the case of Borges, the architecture will carefully generate alternative possibilities of time. Different realities, depending on the approach, will exist simultaneously at one time in one place.
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Chapter 3
Introduction to the Narratives
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Each Narrative begins with a summary. Each summary begins with the excerpt from one of Hejduk’s 67 Victims. Each excerpt is extrapolated to become a Character in Venice.
Characters in Venice include:
The Drawbridge Man The Mask Repairman The Accountant The Soloist
Before I begin, I offer a plan and outline of the Narratives.
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Chapter 4 or Chapter 5 or Chapter 6 or Chapter 10
The Drawbridge Man
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Chapter 4 or Chapter 5 or Chapter 6 or Chapter 10
The Mask Repairman
Chapter 4 or Chapter 5 or Chapter 6 or Chapter 10
The Accountant
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Chapter 7
A Narrative of Narratives
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Chapter 8
A Labyrinth of Labyrinths
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Collage with Etching by Erik Desmazieres
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Piranesi
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Piranesi
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Cuts
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A Model of Paintings
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The Accountant
The Mask Repairman
The Drawbridge Man
Planes Extruded to Illusionistic Depth
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Resulting Volumes
Worms Eye
Carved to Recreate Illusion
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The Drawbridge Man
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The Mask Repairman
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The Accountant
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The Labyrinth
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Chapter 9
The Thing Itself
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Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 and Chapter 10
The Soloist (or all of us)
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St. Jerome in his Study by Antonello da Messina
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Postface: The 21st Century Library
This thesis, in the end, has become more than a commentary on the potential of narrative in architecture. Through the process, I have discovered the importance of the journey, especially in library design. In the wake of a digital revolution and corresponding transformation of the library typology, this project rejects the notion that libraries are places to deliver content. I see the computer as the dissolution of the need for a library to deliver content. It does not matter whether these reading rooms are filled with books or a computer.
Library in the Labyrinth is about the intimate study as a comfortable place, part of a collection of other studies that partake in a rhythm. It is about what it means to arrive to this study and sit in a chair with an open mind, free of memories and pasts. The library becomes an instrument to elevate our spirits and bodies to an abstract place of presence.
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The journey to a place where I get lost in a book... This thesis goes beyond the tradition of designing an architecture that produces a narrative; it is a narrative that produces an architecture. I look to John Hejduk and Jorge Luis Borges as inspirations for producing an imaginative work that walks the line between what is known and unknown. This line is the journey from a reminiscient reality to an intimate reading room. Library in the Labyrinth is caught between the familiar and the uncanny; it is the maze that takes us to a place where the narrative of a book can flourish.
www.justinwadge.com