Jorn Utzon: Thin Air

JØRN UTZON

Thin Air: between ground and sky Jørn Utzon’s Additive Architecture Armando Birlain + Clara Goitia Prof. Kenneth Frampton 05.04.2012

It is significant how the great architecture of the XX century has been a product of travel. The exploration of one’s cultural limits and their extension to what another society offers has been clearly exploited by many of the main figures in the architectural scene of the century. Le Corbusier and Louis I. Kahn rediscovered the power of classical systems of order and monumentality in the greek acropolis and the northern shores of Africa. The Mexican architect Luis Barragán was strongly influenced by the gardens and courtyards in Morroco and the Arab cities in Spain, together with the neoplastic movement from the Netherlands. Frank Lloyd Wright’s trip to Japan forged his idea of a textile approach to architecture and construction.

Figure 1. Utzon with a model of the Sydney Opera House.

Jørn Utzon too was strongly influenced by the trips he made along his life. Early in his profession, still in Architecture school, he made a trip to the southern states of Mexico, where he experienced the pre-Hispanic ruins of Monte Alban, Chichen-Itza and Uxmal. There is something unique about the Mesoamerican ruins that is not likely to be found anywhere else: there is a strong composite sensitivity based on a dialog between the ceremonial centers and the surrounding topographies. Located just above the Tehuantepec Gulf, close to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, Monte Albán is perhaps the best example of a pre-Hispanic settlement merging smoothly with its environment. The site is located at the top of a flat mount, surrounded by a subtle hilly landscape. There, the Mixtec-Zapotec decided to design their ceremonial center using a series of plateaus to contain the space and imitate the surrounding topography. Utzon’s sketch (Figure 2-3) on the site perfectly captures the essence of this manipulation of the earth, either adding volume or subtracting it, to enclose the site and tie it together.

The power of the plateau as a composite element and a frame is best understood in the Mayan sites where the challenge has been to discover a new idea of the site once the jungle has been overcome by the pyramid. The stepping monument that 1

mexican influence_monte alban

Figure 2. Pyramid at Uxmal: The canopy roof becomes the temple’s lawn.

Figure 3. The composition of Monte Alban imitates the hilly landscape by manipulating the ground trhough added and subtracted plateaus.

was before immersed in the middle of the dense green now finds itself solitary over the fake lawn created by the canopy of the trees (Fig. 4). A new construction of the site is created by the challenge the structure confronts its environment to. On this matter in his article “Platforms and Plateaus” he wrote:

By introducing the platform, with its level at the same height as the jungle top, these people had suddenly obtained a new dimension of life, worthy of their devotion to their gods. On these high platforms many of them as long as 100 meters - they built their temples. They had from here the sky, the clouds and the breeze, and suddenly the jungle roof had been converted into a great open plain. By this architectural trick they had completely changed the landscape mexican influence_chichen-itza/uxmal and supplied their visual life with a greatness corresponding to the greatness of their gods.

The relationship between the structure and its environment is evident in Utzon’s designs for major public works such as the National Assembly Building in Kuwait and the Sydney Opera House. One can tell that for Utzon the insertion of a building into its physical site not only meant taking it to its structural limits but it also meant dealing with the memory of the place and the construction of a cultural identity using the built form as a channel for change.

It is in China though where Utzon discovers how the plateau becomes a stage for a larger spatial gesture to happen. He understands that the pagoda is an exercise of oppositions, where the “culture of the light and the culture of the heavy” (Frampton, 248) are represented through the masonry podium and the floating timber roof on top. His sketch on this phenomenon will become a recurring formula in Utzon’s work, the timber roof becoming a shell or slab and the podium the earthwork modeled as the frame for the building to happen.

Regarding this discourse of oppositions between the light and the heavy, Utzon is joined by other of his contemporaries in the exploration of the juxtaposition of both concepts. While Louis Kahn shares the approach towards a heavy, present and confronting space, others like Renzo Piano would base their careers in the search for lightness. The idea of gravitas and levitas working as engines to develop technology allows for the

Figure 4. Pyramid at Uxmal: The canopy roof becomes the temple’s lawn.

construction of more immaterial structures to rise. Utzon’s way

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In other words, there are two issues that come together with Utzon, we speculate a heterotopic view in the way in which he dealt with the idea of platforms versus plateaus: The first issue is this alternation that one can trace in vernacular architecture throughout the world, almost completely between earthwork and roofwork. It depends on the culture, either the earthwork rises more or the roofwork dominates, becoming an interpretation of dominating facts. The second issue involves the discussion of the body in relation to the components that make up the built environment. Not only is the discussion based solely on platforms versus plateaus but in the case of Figure 5. Jørn Utzon’s sketch on the Chinese pagoda.

Utzon’s work there exists a stereotomic situation in which the

of dealing with it is quite particular, as it can be a combination

relationship of the body to the wall and the floor influences the

of both approaches. At first glance, his work has a feeling of

decisions made upon the tectonic aspects in his designs. As

being strongly tied to the ground, with material structures that

stated by Utzon in his article for Zodiac magazine:

clearly dominate the scene, but once the evident presence of the structural components is overseen, there is an analogy one can make between the “floating cloud” that the pagoda is over its masonry podium. The shells are an essential component of this, helping achieve maximum spans and physical presence with minimum material and construction costs.

“...the floor in a traditional Japanese house is a delicate bridge-like platform. This Japanese platform is like a table-top and you do not walk on a table-top. It is a piece of furniture. The floor here attracts you as the wall does in a European house. You want to sit close to the wall in a European house, and here in Japan, you want to sit on the floor and not walk on it...” -Jorn Utzon, Zodiac 10, 1962

On his way back from China Utzon visited Japan where he was greatly influenced by the simple but very intricate work involved in Japanese building typologies. Contrary to the Mexican rock-like feeling of the platform previously discussed, in Japan Utzon found a different view on architecture which appeared in his studies of traditional Japanese one-story house partitions, shutters and modular floor panels (Figure 6-7). We could even begin to speculate that this unrefined orthogonal format largely influenced Utzon’s later architectural projects giving them a kind of coherence between the outside scheme and the built structure.

Figure 6. Detailed section of a typical Japanese house showing the platformelevated from the ground.

Figure 7. Details on the tatami and mobile paper panels in a Japanese house.

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As translated in Utzon’s architecture, every component of the building is interrelated to each other both conceptually and tectonically. In Japanese architecture the concept of layered transitional space may be related indirectly to the distinction that Semper draws between the symbolic and technical aspects of construction(Frampton, 16). Through the use of different materials and tectonic elements Utzon is able to accentuate this transitional space by integrating both the skin and the core of the building without loosing sight of the work as a whole.

Additive Architecture We can similarly see the importance of Utzon’s travels as they also influenced and inspired his concepts on additive architecture in terms of the virtues of mass production. The homogeneity between the forms and materials seen repeatedly in his projects allow a certain uniformity between the spatial elements and the modular systems. Nevertheless Utzon was able to achieve truly organic forms regardless of the individual geometric character of the components he used.

The proposals for Farum’s Town Center, the Expansiva Housing system and the school complex in Herning demonstrate how effectively Utzon used his concepts on additive architecture as they can be seen implemented not only in plan but also in section.Taking the Japanese lessons into the design of his work, it could be noticed that there is almost an obsession, for better or worse, to reach into all the layers a building is composed of and exploring under the same thematic lenses every project developed. On this matter, Utzon wrote about a conversation once held with Mies van der Rohe, specifically on Mies’s tectonic consistency: “Mies once mentioned to me , once a design was established and finalized, he made every effort to ensure that this design was emphasized in the design of secondary elements, such as doors, windows, non loading bearing walls and so on.” (Utzon, Jorn, “Own Home at Hellebaek, Denmark”, Byggekunst 5, 1952 p. 83). The strong link of every piece that was built into a space was always to be a testimony of the concept and process that generated such work. “…he has himself described the path to the understanding of the essence of architecture as constant experimentation with space and forms, empathy with the properties of the materials and contact with the time in which we live; but also insight into the diversity of forms of human expression…”(Weston, 71) Figure 8. Chocolate model explaining the additive system.

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Throughout his projects concrete shell structures seem to repeatedly be conveyed as symbols for public elements which are distinguished from the earthwork or platforms that appear more as anchors that hold the iconic shells overhead.“...In the Sydney Opera House scheme, the idea has been to let the platform cut through like a knife and separate primary and secondary functions completely...”Jorn Utzon, Zodiac 10, 1962 One could even begin to assume that in this concept Utzons intent was to simulate the platform rising from the land which so characteristically defines the pyramids in Monte Alban that influenced him early on in his career.

Of the twin forms from which Sydney is composed the earthwork/podium was the easiest to resolve (poner footnote).

The final solution for the shells was designed while the platform underwent its final phases of construction, it involved the production of arched segments of varying curvature but precast from the same modular unit. The shells were eventually generated by cutting a three sided segment out of a sphere.

The structural repetition that defines Utzon’s work is not only characteristic of his obsessive idea with additive architecture but it also demonstrates his firm belief that the concept should be experienced in every aspect of the building. This idea is most evident in the way in which the colors of the tiles in the shells vary from matte to glossy depending on where they are located.

The modularity in the design for the structure of the shells perform two main functions: to find a geometric logic to the form and later, to allow for a clear reading of the components and methods that involve the construction of the space.

However, finding a structural solution that would remain faithful to Utzon’s design was not an easy task as Ove Arup states: “…Utzon’s design for the roof of each of the halls consisted of four pairs of triangular shells supported on one point of the triangle and each of the two symmetrical shells in a pair leaning against each

Figure 9. Pre-fabricated modules that wrap the shells of the Sydney Opera House, using the danish tiles.

Figure 10. Model explaining the geometry behind the shells of the Sydney Opera House.

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Figure 10. The plateau and the shells of the Sydney Opera House.

Figure 11. Section detail of the fenestration system and the precast structure of the shells.

Figure 11. Detail of the union of the shells.

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other like a pair of hands or fans. If we counted on the shells being fixed at the supports we were up against the fact that just where the greatest strength is needed the width of the shell is reduced to a minimum. Moreover each pair of shells is not balanced longitudinally but transmits a force to the next pair of shells. Longitudinal stability can therefore only be obtained by considering the whole system of four pairs of shells as one. These shell pairs are connected by eight side shells spanning like vaults between the sides of two adjoining pairs of shells and by louvre walls which are cross walls closing the opening between the two shells of a pair in a rather unsatisfactory fashion structurally…”(Frampton, 278)

Moving forward with the idea of the shell and the plateau, for the National Assembly Building in Kuwait Utzon was, in terms of the site’s location, less constrained. There was more an opportunity to think in terms of how the spatial and construction systems encompass repetition and growth: the main ideas behind the additive architecture principle. “…the building is a prefabricated concrete structure in which all elements are structurally designed to express the load they are carrying, the space they are covering-there are different elements for different spaces…in the national assembly complex you see very clearly what is carrying and what is being carried. You get the secure feeling of something built not just designed…”(Frampton, 295)

Figure 12. Construction of the Assembly. The prefabricated and teh on-site structures are evident.

Figure 13. Detail of the structure and the vaults that form the shell.

Figure 14. Sketched design process of the generation of the concept behind Kuwait’s National Assembly.

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Figure 15. An interior shot of the shell.

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Utzon combined this principle and extrapolated it in the mass produced elements of the shells, with a monolithic construction of the main bearing components of the structure.

Together they work in harmony and act as a type of “city in miniature”. (poner footnote para esto de city in miniature) The components that make up Kuwait seem to be unified by the monumental concrete shell roof structure that covers both the open ocean square and the assembly building. The building not only exemplifies an iconic structure but also brings the idea of a place where the people from Kuwait can feel secure and protected.

The hierarchical aspect of both Sydney’s Opera House and Kuwait’s National Assembly is later abstracted too in a housing

Figure 17. Bruno Taut’s sketch of the idea of “City Crown” in the book Alpine Architecture.

project at Odense, Denmark. Utzon assembles the housing system previously mentioned into a larger urban whole. In this

Figure 16. The master plan of Odense’s project.

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Figure 18. Plan and section of the city

project 200 patio dwellings radiate out, Radburn style from a “city crown”. In this case there is also an opposition with Utzon’s work that defines a contradiction between the private patios in each dwelling and the public realm that surrounds the city hall which is roofed by a concrete shell structure. Utzon orchestrated this to resemble a traditional Islamic city where each individual courtyard house is bonded to the next as part of a continuous fabric. “…as Sigfried Giedion and others have remarked, Utzon’s work displays that rare capacity of combining organic with geometric form and of creating the former out of the latter…”(Frampton, 265) In the scheme for the new town center at Farum Utzon wanted to implement a similar scheme of ideas that were applied in the design for the Sydney Opera House. At a larger scale Utzon

Figure 19. Model.

Figure 20. Drawings of the Farum town center.

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pretended to extrapolate the modular forms used in the erection of the Opera House as a new way of town planning design. “…the plans show square modules set on either side of sinuous covered arcades. Inspired by the shop lined internal streets of an oriental bazaar, the scheme responded both to the requirement for commercial premises and to the enclave-like character of a site that had very few points of access…”

In this project an extensive urban matrix was projected on site taking as a base for design the repetition of a single spatial unit derived from a series of precast modules.

Herning Educational center The project for the Herning school complex is an extrapolation of the Expansiva system into a larger scale building. It is also the design of a module that scales up or down, depending on the activity needed to be hosted. Utzon developed the concept of a campus that can be imagined from its plan as a chain of growing organism responding to larger hierarchical spaces within the campus. These modules take the form of the program

Figure 21. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City.

they host, being the minimum unit a typical classroom for 12 people. Elaborating on the Expansiva module, the one used in the Herning Educational Center creates a core in each one of the four corners of the piece, for structure and services to run through. These nuclei are aligned into a Cartesian grid, and the organic character of the building comes more from merging the pieces and forming them into clusters than the possibility of getting them aligned in curvilinear axis.

It is interesting to attempt an application of the concept of the roof-work/earth-work into the selection of the modular system that relates more to the idea of spaces being added. The four walls that conform the module, together with its structural cores in the four corners of the piece, can be approached as a compact plateau. Specially when noticing the module from the outside, the tightness of the boxes force the viewer to redirect the attention on the freely evolving roof, which mutates according to the program in various shell-like slabs.

Little has been written about the strong influence Frank Lloyd Wright was for Utzon. Even in his texts, Utzon mentions Wright occasionally. Never-the-less, there is an awareness on the concepts and the idea of form that the northamerican architect worked on that played a strong role in Utzon’s approach to a modular textile-like architecture and its relationship with the site

Figure 22. Herning’s Education Center.

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Figure 23. Herning’s Education Center.

Figure 24. Herning’s Education Center. Details of the modules.

Figure 25. Herning’s Education Center. Facade.

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it is built in, as well as the modeling of the surfaces of a space based on the function of the building and its relationship with the natural environment it was placed in.

The Herning campus plan calls out Wright’s Broadacre city masterplan, all proportions reserved, where the “patches” that compose the city as a quilt of various programs and their exchange with nature can be compared with the sprawling nature of Utzon’s campus, where the module branches out formations of program defining clearly a relationship between this formations and the un-built. The negative space becomes a critical compositive element that suggests almost that a school, Figure 27. Steven Holl’s Interior of the Herning Museum of Contemporary Art.

as a building, is about “packages of information” and the transitional spaces that run through the open spaces linking this moments of programatic intensity.

Even though there was only a small portion of this campus built, left as a prototype, the trascendency of Utzon’s concepts were overtaken by the Northamerican architect Steven Holl with the project for the Herning Museum of Contemporary Art. There, a clear reference to the idea of the shell as a wrapping cave were light is projected and smoothly brought to different intensities reminds of Utzon’s Bagvaerd’s Church roofwork. An interesting contrast though can be thought of between the idea of addition versus that of excavating spaces. While Utzon relies on putting spaces together, Holl’s project is more about the interior space carved and subtracting volume with the helpfull shells that allow the fluidity of light inside the building.

The Expansiva Housing system of mass produced generic elements had the intention to inevitably enable anyone to build any house, anywhere. Each unit in the expansiva building system consisted of laminated timber structures, a pent roof of stressed-skin plywood with rockwool insulation and a floor of lightweight concrete decking supported on prefabricated reinforced concrete foundation beams. (Weston, 80) Although this additive system expressed a good idea theoretically the fact that it was a generic structure that could be placed anywhere contradicts Utzon’s initial concepts of integrating the context into the building as we can see in his later projects for the Kingo and Fredensborg housing. Also the size of each component whether primary or secondary was governed by one and the same dimension-once again derived from a brick: 120mm.(Weston, 81) This fact is also contradicting Figure 26. Steven Holl’s Interior of the Herning Museum of Contemporary Art.

when comparing Utzon’s later works especially in the 13

Figure 28. Expansiva system detail and its application on the Bagsevard Church.

concept for the Sydney Opera House where each component, depending on the area of placement, varied in size and color with the intent of achieving a more complex visual of the organic form. Refering back to Utzons influences made by his travels to the far east the plans made by Utzon for Expansiva simulate increasingly elaborate configurations, where successive additions enfold courtyards, where circulation areas become galleries which serve living spaces on one side and compose uniform elevations onto patios on the other(Weston, 81). “…his houses grow, like organisms, they reflect the form of nature’s growth, they are not theoretical frameworks for human life but live their own life because they are structured according to the same physical laws that govern their inhabitants… ”(Frampton, 250)

Figure 29. Fredensburg Housing complex

Figure 30. Detail of the houses.

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Figure 31. Kingo housing complex aerial view as it looks today.

Figure 32. Fredensburg aerial view.

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The housing schemes designed by Utzon for both Fredensborg and Kingo are an example of how this additative system can be taken to its ultimate consequences by establishing a close relationship between the public sphere, with the courtyards, and the private sphere. Both designs are based on a typology of a 1-story square atrium house arranged in different clusters of varying size placed on an irregular site. This difference in orientation not only remained faithful to the topography but also allowed for a more dinamic placement of the houses which comprised both earthwork and roofwork into one single module.

Derived from Utzons travels in China the Silkeborg Museum parti follows the organic forms of the caves in Tatung where Buddhist sculptures are cradled into the fissures of the rock formations inside the cave. The bowel like earthbound materiality and the interlocking circuits of circular ramps makes

Figure 35. Silkeborg Museum Plan

Figure 33. Silkeborg Museum Elevation

Figure 34. Silkeborg Museum Section

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Silkeborg one of the more unique of Utzons work. Silkeborg

The platform and plateau as a frame of space, as the mat

deals with the manipulation of the earthwork and making it a

and mattress where an event happens. The manipulation of

participative element in the spatial perseption of the museum.

the ground or the levitation of the space above. Both give

In contrast of other projects where the land is geometrically

containment to a later expressive structure that hosts the

dealt with, here it is through its excavation and subtraction how

“embodiment of an institutional form”(Frampton p. 247):

Utzon plays with a different concept of space, one that is barely

“...The contrast of forms and the constantly changing heights

expressed in the exterior of the building, but that in section

between these two elements (roofwork and platform) result

shows the real quality and scale of the pieces composing the

in spaces of great architectural force made possible by the

project, comprised by an earthwork that is sunken into the

modern structural approach to concrete construction, which has

ground and roofed by a mixture of both folded slab and shell

given so many beautiful tools into the hands of the architect...”

roof construction.

Jorn Utzon, Zodiac 10, 1962

This idea of the cave perhaps could have become in Utzon’s

A lifetime devoted to the exhaustion of an idea, the patient and

work the evolution of the idea of the shell and the roof-work.

recurrent search for the way answers can be solved. In the

The physical references in the Chinese caverns, as well ad the

end, this personal journey Utzon set himself to through his work

icebergs and other glacier formations as reported in Zodiac

rises the question of what is really a building culture? As we

magazine, where it is more evident formally a process of

look comparatively at different tectonic systems and how they

reduction, excavation and modeling of surfaces. Not to say

influence an architectural concept, Utzon’s work tells a story of

that there is not a relationship already, but perhaps the idea of

how an idea about space and its enviroment can be built upon.

additive architecture could have been confronted with that one of the generation of the form. One might wonder if even the generic use of mass produced elements would have found a

References

contradictory stage against the the strong concepts picked up in his journeys.

1. Weston, Richard. Jorn Utzon: inspiration, vision, architecture.

Hellerup: Blondal, 2002.

From the pre-Colombian cultures to China and Japan, Europe,

2. Ferrer Forès, Jaime J. Jorn Utzon: obras y proyectos. Barce-

and the Islamic culture, Utzon was greatly influenced by his

lona: GG, 2006

travels. The development of a conscious embracement of the

3. Moller, Henrik Sten. Jorn Utzon houses/ Henrik Sten Moller

ground and the kit-of-parts approach to architecture has had

& Vibe Udsen; photography by Per Nagel. Copenhagen, Den-

positive effects on the way in which we view modernization

mark: Living Architecture Pub., 2004

and especially prefabricated construction types: “…Utzon

4. Nieto, Fuensanta, Sobejano, Enrique. Jorn Utzon: Museo de

has always sought congruity between overall morphology and

Silkeborg 1969.

modular organization. By integrating the logic of construction

Madrid: Editorial Rueda, 2004

with the expression of plasticity, he aims to make structure and

5. Fromonot, Francoise. Jorn Utzon: The Sydney Opera House.

form, procedure and result, conceptual will and economy of

Corte Madera,

means, coincide in a constantly renewed total synthesis…

CA: Gingko; Milan: Electa, 1998 6. Utzon, Jorn. Additive Architecture. Denmark: Mogens Prip-

Perhaps the works that call out more relevance are those where

Buss: Edition Blondal, c2009

the problem is seen as an opportunity for continue elaborating

7. Norberg Schulz, Christian. Church at Bagsvaerd, near Copen-

culture, or to introduce it, as in Sydney or the Kingo housing

hagen, Denmark, 1973-76

model. As Rafael Moneo states in his essay “On Utzon’s

Tokyo, Japan: A.D.A. Edita Tokyo, 1981.

Architecture: Some Cordial Observations” in regards to his housing projects that they move within the realm of the familiar, they are modest, have an admirable sense of proportion and are organized to allow for the widest variety of inhabitants, whereas his public architecture always seeks for a heroic dimension.

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