Advanced Architecture Theory
Youssef Yasser
Thoughts// Reflections
On
what makes an architect? Holger Gladyes Sara Rabie Menna Hamdy Prof.
Abstract
This is an academic journal written by Youssef Yasser on what makes an architect. In what makes an architect, Youssef reflects on the content of the course readings and lectures - through his own set of things that contributed to his making as an architect, artist, and human, both personal and collective. It re-discoverers his journey at architecture school in a critical manner, In an attempt to know his position and direct his path not just in architecture but rather in life. This is part of the advanced architecture theory course in the tenth semester. Which is taught by Professor. Holger Gladys, TA. Menna Hamdy and Sara Rabie in architecture and urban design program at the German university in Cairo - GUC.
Prerequisites //Sensorial Experience 01, March 2022
on// John Locken, Ibn Sina Theories, and old readings
Week01
What Makes an Architect? 01, March 2022
on// Kikkert, J. R. (2016) What Makes an Architect? Amsterdam: Academy of Architecture
Week01
250 Things an Architect Should Know 01, March 2022
on// Sorkin M. (2018) 250 an Architect Should Know in What Goes Up, The Right and Wrongs to the City.
Week01
Travel, Read, and watch Films 01, March 2022
on// What Makes an Architect? 250 things an architect should know
Week01
On the Road to Find Out 15, March 2022
on// LEC#1 Waleed Arafa, Cairo:: On the Road to Find Out. The Expression of Cultural Identity
Week02
The Primitive Essence 08, March 2022
on// Lec Waleed Arafa, Cairo:: On the Road to Find Out. The Expression of Cultural Identity
Week02
Towards Critical Regionalism 15, March 2022
on// Frampton, K. (1983) Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance.
Week03
The Corrupted Theory 15, March 2022
on// Frampton, K. (1983) Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance.
Week03
My Friend’s Debate On Modernism 15, March 2022
on// Frampton, K. (1983) Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance.
07-10
Week03
01 11-14
01.1 15-20
01.2 21-28
02 29-32
02.2 33-36
03 37-50
03.1 51-54
03.2 55-58
Critical Regionalism for our Time 22, March 2022
on// Szacka, L.-C., Patteeuw, V. (2019) Critical Regionalism for our Time. London: AR November Issue
Week04
PostModern Regionalism! 29, March 2022
on// Hartoonian, Gevork. “Critical Regionalism: Whatever Happened to Autonomy.” Fusion Journal, no. 4, 2014.
Week05
Architecture of Sensitivity 05, April 2022
on// LEC#2 Holger Gladys :: A Shift from Center to Periphery: Sensitive Architecture that Bridges Generations
Week06
Architecture of Place+ The History of Cultural philosophies 19, April 2022 on// LEC#3 People. Place, and Purpose. What Makes an Architect? Mariam Kamara. Niamey
Week07
The Regionalist Avant-Garde 26, April 2022
on// LEC#4 People. Place, and Purpose. What Makes an Architect? Radwa Rostom, Cairo
Week08
Environmental Sensitivity in Architecture 10, May 2022
on// LEC#5 Holger Gladys :: Environmental Sensitivity in the Design and Architecture of Bangladesh and Vietnam.
Week09
Comparative Study; two Self-selected Projects 10, May 2022
on// Comparative Study of Two Self-selected Projects.
Week09
Emancipation+Swati 17, May 2022
on// Hertwerk, F. (2018) Positions on Emancipation, Architecture between aesthetics and politics.+ LEC#6 People. Place, and Purpose. What Makes an Architect? Swati Janu.
Week10
Note to Self; Conclusion 31, May 2022
on// All the Previous Content; The Journal
04 59-62
05 63-68
06 69-72
07 73-78
08 79-82
09 83-86
09.2 87-94
10
95-102
103-106
Week12
Extra Content
Prerequisites Youssef Yasser
on// John Locken, Ibn Sina Theories, and old readings
Week01
01, March 2022
Please meet:
The Sensorial Experiance; How we percive reality as human beings.
The Conceptualization of the sensorial experiance in a general model.
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Sensorial Experiance
Prerequisites
Adult Sensorial Experiance “The Constant”
Adulthood
Our senses are the tools by which we draw the cosmic map, our perception of the universe and its parts, and that map by which we live and define everything around us. But how accurate are our senses in perceiving the facts? Unfortunately, our senses are imprecise tools that depend on the number of sensory “illusions” which put together a world for us that we agree to call “reality.” For example, the blue color of the sky is not blue for a color blinded person or any other creature because there is no something originally in nature called blue color. The mind is stimulated by such illusions and starts to connect the dots and complete the experience and let you see what you call blue, for example. The mind receives sensory information from a place or time, sorts it out, and then archives it as “facts” within groups, each of which has been named a sensory experience. Sensory experiences change from time to time and from place to place. (The experience cannot be erased, repeated, or transmitted by any direct method, nor can two sensory experiences be sensed simultaneously). Like all scientists who study psychological phenomena, emotional scientists divide sensory experiences in several ways, one of which is the method shown in the following diagram.
Child Sensorial Experiance “The Pure”
ion ect f r Pe
Conscious Sensorial Experiance
The Dynamic Experiance
“Dynamic Constant”
“There is frenquently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discource of men” -John Locke
Child Sensorial Experiance: A child is born capable of hearing, but he needs at least forty days to adjust his sense of sight and comprehend his experiance as a child at that age. What does he feel? What does he hear? We do not know. We have to wait and see until he grows up and his rational structure is complete to tell us then what we already know! Because then he will become a prisoner of the sensory experience of adulthood that we all live in, he does not add to what we know. When he was a child, his perception was pure, but he became a prisoner of his language, culture, and education once he became an adult. Adulthood Sensorial Experience: There is not much to say about the adulthood experience because you become a prisoner of your own language, culture, and education. Simply the more phrases your language has, the more expressions you have to express what you want to say, and that’s why bilingual people tend to be more expressive than ordinary people. Your culture makes you appreciate some acts more than others. It also makes you feel certain emotions towards some colors and things that may not relate to the true feelings of your sensorial experience. Conscious Sensorial Experience: It’s the process of unlearning and learning again to acknowledge the limitations of the adulthood sensorial experience. Hence start again by tuning your senses and knowing the truth. The Dynamic Constant is a total experience. The whole body consumes its senses, mind, and physiological structure. Therefore, advancement in it is not limited by rational perception but rather by an integrated human construction in which intellectual ability converges with physical ability and sensory ability to build an integrated human conscious sensorial experience. 9
What Makes an Architect? Jan-Richard Kikkert
Kikkert, J. R. (2016) What Makes an Architect? Amsterdam: Academy of Architecture
Week01
01, March 2022
Please meet:
Architecture Nature 2022 Architecture Education Teachers vs Studnets GUC Architecture Senior Student Experiance.
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What Makes an Architect? “What makes an architect?” is the name of the advanced theory course this year. This question can be understood in two ways: What makes an architect in terms of the knowledge, experience, and training required to complete architecture education - formal or informal - to be an architect. Or it can be understood as the products that the architect produces. The name of the course came originally from Jan-Richard Kikkert, an Amsterdam-based architect. Kikkert gave an Inaugural Speech for his Designation as the head of the department in the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture. On the 13th of October, 2016, titled “what makes an architect?” The speech has been turned into a publication with some added photos/content, which we read in the class. This was the context in which the idea and the name of the course arose in.
In his speech, Kikkert talked about many things that constitute the basis of architects’ knowledge, experience, habits, and practice as architects, students, and teachers. In the opening pages and throughout the publication, Kikkert presented photos from his travels around the world, seeing the Architecture of great masters, to feed his strong desire to visit good buildings as he said on it: “The personal experience of those buildings contributes to the passion for architecture, as a creator, as a participant or simply as an admirer.” He spoke about the changing of the role of the architects due to the changes in the field in which they operate, especially in a post-modern society where a lack of dogma led to free-for-all infinite architectural possibilities and accepted realities. This infinite - accepted to be true - perspective has emerged as a postmodern axiom in response to modernism dogma, or the only truth, that produced many inequalities and failed to achieve its promises of being liberative and progressive. As the world progressed, many new problems emerged, from climate change to urbanism to the lack of supply. However, the younger generation is responsive to such issues; it is still a pressure on the position of the architect. One more reason is capitalism, and how big companies take over a lot of architects’ jobs, and the actual job is reduced to designing a facade! Architects are designers that should be aware of the world, the problems, the consequences, and the technical and artistic possibilities of a design; this empowers and enables them to provoke a change in society. However, Architecture can not solve the world’s problems. Following that, every student should experience designing byby hand and create a personal dogma, a definition of architecture, and the parameters of your role as an architect. What about the learning environments, then? The learning environment of some schools is competitive in an unsettling way that proves an unease attitude towards education itself. Architecture is a field of discussion, its art, and science. This means there are always topics open for interpretation, opinions, and experimentation. That requires a space that supports love and respect for each other, seeking knowledge and passion for debates. It should be a healthy competition. A fight against ignorance instead of each other.
3rd Year Design Studio By Youssef Yasser
A critical attitude towards the students follows a good learning environment. The role of a teacher is to advocate for the students to students to ask questions and not take anything for granted as each student differs. How do we get these unique qualities of each student on the table and start to push them? How do teachers help them to find themselves? What matters is them, their opinions, and what they are capable of doing not the teachers’ own beliefs! The teacher might be critical of the students’ assumptions but never discuss a passion. Travels and field trips are essential to the students in the learning process; meeting new cultures, seeing different architecture, and confronting different beliefs and realities help them understand the world better and form a critical position as an architect. In Egypt. GUC - a private architecture school - is the place where I am studying architecture. I can safely say that I am privileged to be educated by many beautiful people who evoked me a lot during my years of education. However, it is also crucial to admit that some of my professors had no clue of what architecture education should look like and were imposing their own dogma and ideas on us as students in a horrible way, not only threatening us with grades to do what exactly they asked! Also, I found it very devastating to see what is happening in public Architecture schools in Egypt. Where the students are told what to do always but professors who are very likely to be dictators - of course not everyone - and curriculums that contain structural technicalities more than theory and design, if it is a civil school of architecture! Now I’m rewriting this chapter two days before the submission. I found out that the conclusion of my Journal was in this statement written on the third page “We need to create a personal dogma in each student, a definition of what architecture is and what the parameters are of your role as an architect.”
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250 Things an Architect Should know Michael Sorkin
on// Sorkin M. (2018) 250 an Architect Should Know in What Goes Up, The Right and Wrongs to the City.
Week01
01, March 2022
Please meet:
250 Things an Architect Should Know Architecture Knowledge / Education Architecture Schools in Egypt
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01. The feel of cool marble under bare feet. 02. How to live in a small room with five strangers for six months. 03. With the same strangers in a lifeboat for one week. 04. The modulus of rupture. 05. The distance a shout carries in the city. 06. The distance of a whisper. 07. Everything possible about Hatshepsut’s temple (try not to see it as ‘modernist’ avant la lettre). 08. The number of people with rent subsidies in New York City. 09. In your town (include the rich). 10. The flowering season for azaleas. 11. The insulating properties of glass. 12. The history of its production and use. 13. And of its meaning. 14. How to lay bricks. 15. What Victor Hugo really meant by ‘this will kill that.’ 16. The rate at which the seas are rising. 17. Building information modeling (BIM). 18. How to unclog a Rapidograph. 19. The Gini coefficient. 20. A comfortable tread-to-riser ratio for a six-yearold. 21. In a wheelchair. 22. The energy embodied in aluminum. 23. How to turn a corner. 24. How to design a corner. 25. How to sit in a corner. 26. How Antoni Gaud modeled the Sagrada Famlia and calculated its structure. 27. The proportioning system for the Villa Rotonda. 28. The rate at which that carpet you specified offgasses. 29. The relevant sections of the Code of Hammurabi. 30. The migratory patterns of warblers and other seasonal travellers. 31. The basics of mud construction. 32. The direction of prevailing winds. 33. Hydrology is destiny. 34. Jane Jacobs in and out. 35. Something about feng shui. 36. Something about Vastu Shilpa. 37. Elementary ergonomics. 38. The color wheel. 39. What the client wants. 40. What the client thinks it wants 41. What the client needs. 42. What the client can afford. 43. What the planet can afford. 44. The theoretical bases for modernity and a great deal about its factions and inflections. 45. What post-Fordism means for the mode of production of building. 47. What the brick really wants. 48. The difference between Winchester Cathedral and a bicycle shed. 49. What went wrong in Fatehpur Sikri. 50. What went wrong in Pruitt-Igoe.
51. What went wrong with the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. 52. Where the CCTV cameras are. 53. Why Mies really left Germany. 54. How people lived in Çatal Hüyük. 55. The structural properties of tufa. 56. How to calculate the dimensions of brise-soleil. 57. The kilowatt costs of photovoltaic cells. 58. Vitruvius. 59. Walter Benjamin. 60. Marshall Berman. 61. The secrets of the success of Robert Moses. 62. How the dome on the Duomo in Florence was built. 63. The reciprocal influences of Chinese and Japanese building. 64. The cycle of the Ise Shrine. 65. Entasis. 66. The history of Soweto. 67. What it’s like to walk down the Ramblas. 68. Back-up. 69. The proper proportions of a gin martini. 70. Shear and moment. 71. Shakespeare, et cetera. 72. How the crow flies. 73. The difference between a ghetto and a neighborhood. 74. How the pyramids were built. 75. Why. 76. The pleasures of the suburbs. 77. The horrors. 78. The quality of light passing through ice. 79. The meaninglessness of borders. 80. The reasons for their tenacity. 81. The creativity of the ecotone. 82. The need for freaks. 83. Accidents must happen. 84. It is possible to begin designing anywhere. 85. The smell of concrete after rain. 86. The angle of the sun at the equinox. 87. How to ride a bicycle. 88. The depth of the aquifer beneath you. 89. The slope of a handicapped ramp. 90. The wages of construction workers. 91. Perspective by hand. 92. Sentence structure. 93. The pleasure of a spritz at sunset at a table by the Grand Canal. 94. The thrill of the ride. 95. Where materials come from. 96. How to get lost. 97. The pattern of artificial light at night, seen from space. 98. What human differences are defensible in practice. 99. Creation is a patient search. 100. The debate between Otto Wagner and Camillo Sitte. 101. The reasons for the split between architecture and engineering. 102. Many ideas about what constitutes utopia. 103. The social and formal organization of the villages of the Dogon. 104. Brutalism, Bowellism, and the Baroque.
105. How to drive. 106. Woodshop safety. 107. A great deal about the 108. The architectural impa of North Africa. 109. A distaste for imperia 110. The history of Beijing. 111. Dutch domestic archite 112. Aristotle’s Politics. 113. His Poetics. 114. The basics of wattle an 115. The origins of the ballo 116. The rate at which copp 117. The levels of particulate 118. The capacity of whi carbon. 119. Where else to sink it. 120. The fire code. 121. The seismic code. 122. The health code. 123. The Romantics, throug 124. How to listen closely. 125. That there is a big d medium. The logjam you don’ will be broken by a shift in re 126. The exquisite corpse. 127. Scissors, stone, paper. 128. Good Bordeaux. 129. Good beer. 130. How to escape a maze 131. QWERTY. 132. Fear. 133. Finding your way ar Johannesburg, Kyoto, Rio, Me Leningrad, Isfahan. 134. The proper way to be 135. Maya, Revit, Catia, wha 136. The history of big m can fly. 137. How to calculate ecolo 138. Three good lunch spots 139. The value of human life 140. Who pays. 141. Who profits. 142. The Venturi effect. 143. How people pee. 144. What to refuse to do, 145. The fine print in the co 146. A smattering of naval 147. The idea of too far. 148. The idea of too close. 149. Burial practices in a w 150. The density needed to 151. The density needed to 152. The effect of the desig for fresh produce. 153. Lewis Mumford and Pa 154. Capability Brown, An Olmsted, Muso Soseki, Ji Chen
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atrick Geddes. ndr Le Ntre, Frederick Law ng, and Roberto Burle Marx.
208. Where north (or south) is. 209. How to give directions, efficiently and courteously. 210. Stadtluft macht frei. 211. Underneath the pavement the beach. 212. Underneath the beach the pavement. 213. The germ theory of disease. 214. The importance of vitamin D. 215. How close is too close. 216. The capacity of a bioswale to recharge the aquifer. 217. The draught of ferries. 218. Bicycle safety and etiquette. 219. The difference between gabions and riprap. 220. The acoustic performance of Boston Symphony Hall. 221. How to open the window. 222. The diameter of the earth. 223. The number of gallons of water used in a shower. 224. The distance at which you can recognize faces. 225. How and when to bribe public officials (for the greater good). 226. Concrete finishes. 227. Brick bonds. 228. The Housing Question by Friedrich Engels. 229. The prismatic charms of Greek island towns. 230. The energy potential of the wind. 231. The cooling potential of the wind, including the use of chimneys and the stack effect. 232. Paestum. 233. Straw-bale building technology. 234. Rachel Carson. 235. Freud. 236. The excellence of Michel de Klerk. 237. Of Alvar Aalto. 238. Of Lina Bo Bardi. 239. The non-pharmacological components of a good club. 240. Mesa Verde National Park. 241. Chichen Itza. 242. Your neighbors. 243. The dimensions and proper orientation of sports fields. 244. The remediation capacity of wetlands. 245. The capacity of wetlands to attenuate storm surges. 246. How to cut a truly elegant section. 247. The depths of desire. 248. The heights of folly. 249. Low tide. 250. The Golden and other ratios.
250
should know
e Gothic. act of colonialism on the cities
155. Constructivism, in and out. 156. Sinan. 157. Squatter settlements via visits and conversations with residents. 158. The history and techniques of architectural representation across cultures. 159. Several other artistic media. 160. A bit of chemistry and physics. 161. Geodesics. 162. Geodetics. 163. Geomorphology. 164. Geography. 165. The Law of the Andes. 166. Cappadocia first-hand. 167. The importance of the Amazon. 168. How to patch leaks. 169. What makes you happy. 170. The components of a comfortable environment for sleep. 171. The view from the Acropolis. 172. The way to Santa Fe. 173. The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. 174. Where to eat in Brooklyn. 175. Half as much as a London cabbie. 176. The Nolli Plan. 177. The Cerdà Plan. 178. The Haussmann Plan. 179. Slope analysis. 180. Darkroom procedures and Photoshop. 181. Dawn breaking after a bender. 182. Styles of genealogy and taxonomy. 183. Betty Friedan. 184. Guy Debord. 185. Ant Farm. 186. Archigram. 187. Club Med. 188. Crepuscule in Dharamshala. 189. Solid geometry. 190. Strengths of materials (if only intuitively). 191. Ha Long Bay. 192. What’s been accomplished in Medellín. 193. In Rio. 194. In Calcutta. 195. In Curitiba. 196. In Mumbai. 197. Who practices? (It is your duty to secure this space for all who want to.) 198. Why you think architecture does any good. 199. The depreciation cycle. 200. What rusts. 201. Good model-making techniques in wood and cardboard. 202. How to play a musical instrument. 203. Which way the wind blows. 204. The acoustical properties of trees and shrubs. 205. How to guard a house from floods. 206. The connection between the Suprematists and Zaha. 207. The connection between Oscar Niemeyer and Zaha.
things every architect
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250 things an Architect Should Know 250 things every architect should know by Michael Sorkin is a chapter from his book What Goes Up: The Right and Wrongs to the City. Here Sorkin puts a list of - what he believes to be - essential knowledge for each architect. The writing is wise, poetic, practical, philosophical, political, and critical. Sorkin wrote it in 2014, when he was 66 years old, 4 years before his death. It contains 66 years of his knowledge and practice as an architect, urbanist, critic, and force for justice and equity in design.
The writing really unfolds the possible potential of knowledge of understanding the world, and in architecture, that goes beyond the education in architecture schools. To be an architect is to set the domain in which life occurs and people act, which means the architect should at least know what life is and what is people and who they are, and of course, in addition to other things. The book in which the chapter is published is What Goes Up: The Right and Wrongs to the City. Only from the title you can predict that it has at least knowledge about people, how they live, and their cities and their governors. The problem is that this knowledge is not apparent in architecture school or, at least, where I come from, Egypt. And instead, a knowledge about either overly loaded construction knowledge usually in public architecture schools or knowledge about designs and arts in private architecture schools. If all world’s renowned architects and Pritzker prize winners have one thing in common, it would be that they developed their own theory about the practice that somehow affects and change people and the practice. People from my school consider me a knowledgeable person; However, when I read Sorkin’s point, I realized that I know nothing. If the above statement is true, then we have a problem. If the knowledge student knows nothing, then the other has no clue! This adds an ethical responsibility on us as students to explore the possibilities of architecture through the knowledge of the world. I marked 100 points as essentially important for me, 24 points touched me deeply, and I googled 87 points. I will list the 25 here below. And mark the important 100 on the whole points page. When I put the chosen 24 points together, I noticed that it is more or less the same things that caught my attention in real life. It covers a range of topics like: The authentic - tactile - feeling of the space and material, the importance of philosophy, my love for arts, the pleasure of suburbs, how to jump into the unknown, my desires, and what makes me happy. Those 24 reflect me quite well through the lens of Michael Sorkin
5. The distance a shout carries in the city. 24. How to design a corner. 44. The theoretical bases for modernity and a great deal about its factions and inflections. 59. Walter Benjamin. 71. Shakespeare, et cetera. 75. Why 76. The pleasures of the suburbs. 78. The quality of light passing through ice. 82. The need for freaks. 92. Sentence structure. 96. How to get lost. 99. Creation is a patient search. 101. The reasons for the split between architecture and engineering. 123. The Romantics, throughout the arts and philosophy. 124. How to listen closely. 125. That there is a big danger in working in a single medium. The logjam you don’t even know you’re stuck in will be broken by a shift in representation. 144. What to refuse to do, even for the money. 154. Capability Brown, Andr Le Ntre, Frederick Law Olmsted, Muso Soseki, Ji Cheng, and Roberto Burle Marx. 169. What makes you happy. 170. The components of a comfortable environment for sleep. 190. Strengths of materials (if only intuitively). 215. How close is too close. 225. How and when to bribe public officials (for the greater good). 238. Of Lina Bo Bardi. 19 247. The depths of desire
Travel, Read, and Watch Films Youssef Yasser
on// What Makes an Architect? 250 things an architect should know
Week01
01, March 2022
Please meet:
The stages of architecture education; my experiance.
The value of traveling, reading and watching films as an Architect.
21
Travel, Read, and watch Films Travel, Read and watch films. Three favorite activities of my professor - Rita Pinto - intrigued me, and quickly I realized that I share the same love for these activities. As architecture students, we are trained to do many things, concepts, designs, details, assignments, presentations, etc. We are usually consumed by the design and its infinite manners to the extent that we forget that we are also architecture users. The first stage: The Pure Before architecture school, I usually don’t notice much of building’s elements or details; they act as a background for our life activities and experience. Yet we can vividly identify the smell of our grandparents’ house, the door sound, and the feeling of home in our bedroom after a long day at school. In this stage, we have the purest experience of the architecture we consume. The second stage: The Constant After the first year in architecture school, you see the built environment as architectural elements and notice its details. You keep observing and analyzing what you have learned. Till the moment where you are separated from your sensorial experience to the built environment, then what’s left is the intellectual process of identification of these elements and their relation to each other. We forget that we consume architecture as we design it. In the second stage, we have a very manipulated experience of the architecture we consume.
First Years in Architetcure “The Constant”
Adulthood
The third stage: The Dynamic Constant In the last semester in architecture school, when you finish learning all the basics of design and know the meaning of juxtaposition and paradigm. You start to get rid of these terminologies, elements, and details of architecture at the back of your head. Hence the consumption of the details is gone, but the knowledge is there. You start to compare your true feelings with your knowledge till you reach a point of authentic, more tuned sense of architecture that you consume. In the third stage, you have the most tuned and authentic experience of the architecture that we consume.
Before Architetcure “The Pure”
tion fec r e P
Last Years in Architetcure “Dynamic Constant”
The Dynamic Experiance
Bacholar Project: “The Submirrsive Mother” Ground Floor Plan by Youssef Yasser.
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Travel, Read, and watch Films Travel, Read, and watch films; the three musketeers that open your eyes to the world. Traveling: Traveling allows you to experience new cultures, talk to different people, eat new food, listen to new phonetics, consume different architecture, live in different weathers, see things differently: colors, fashion, traditions, manners, aesthetics, and much more. This opens up a vast amount of opportunities to bring all these new things into your designs and life. Do you know the feeling of the Japanese and Islamic courtyard? The difference between India and Cairo in terms of chaos? Reading; Literature Reading helps widen your horizon. It allows you to travel through ages and cross cultures in a matter of hours. Or let you comprehend someone’s lifetime study in a few months. Or even you can find an expression for a feeling that you felt for so long but can’t express in words. Books let you think and rethink the knowledge you have and the one you are reading. It opens up doors of knowledge and expression. Watching Films; Cinema “Cinema doesn’t tell you what to desire; It tells you how to desire.” Cinema is creating culture from culture. It opens up your imagination in a more visual matter than books. It acts as a visual manifestation of books and cultures. One text has infinite visual manifestations; one film is one of them. The three elements are catalysts for growth. They help you have a more sophisticated understanding of the world and a more tuned sense of the things we experience and allow you to be a better designer and human.
The Dreamers (2003) Director: Bernardo Bertolucci. Favorite Film.
Barcelona Summer2019 By Youssef Yasser
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Barcelona Summer2019 By Youssef Yasser
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On the Road to Find Out. Waleed Arafa
on// LEC#1 Waleed Arafa, Cairo:: On the Road to Find Out. The Expression of Cultural Identity
Week02
15, March 2022
Please meet:
Waleed Arafa vs Rem Koolhaas Philosophy and path Waleed Arafa and Critical Regionalism
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On the Road to Find Out On the 8th of March, 2022, Waleed Arafa gave a lecture on what makes an architect? It is the second lecture of the “what makes an architect “lecture series. Waleed Arafa is an award-winning Egyptian architect and the founder of Dar Arafa Architecture. Waleed earned his B.Sc. in architecture, urban design, and planning from the Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University. He also holds a master’s in the Conservation of Historic Buildings from the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, UK. His thesis was titled: “The Mosque in Britain: British Heritage?”
Waleed has a great interest in “understanding the essence of the architecture of Islam. He is hoping that one day he may be able to revive it and relink his practice to its forgotten chain of transmission. He believes that Islam can inspire new approaches to architecture offering the world ways out of its spiritual, intellectual and creative deadlock. His approach is based on finding ways to continuing the discontinued architectural past of countries with an established legacy in the architecture of Islam, such as and especially Egypt. But equally, looking into how to bring forth new architecture(s) of Islam in completely new contexts, which have their own time-honored architectural traditions, nonetheless have no precedent in producing architecture of Islam in particular, such as that of Britain and/or the Occident at large.” When Waleed was graduating during his bachelor degree, he started to wonder about: What is the meaning/set of meanings that he - exclusively - must serve? What architectural quiddity does the world exclusively expect from himself and his colleagues? What is Egyptian architecture? And what is its relation to the international schools of thought? Finally, what is its relation to all the previous historical manifestations that have preceded it? Is there a common thread that weaves all of this, linking the past with the present and taking us into the future? From his beginning and through his practices to this very moment, he continuously attempts in search to answer these questions. Waleed is a unique architect, especially in Egypt. He doesn’t follow a trend or the market. The motivation behind his practice is a much deeper and more meaningful one, a constant search through his culture, religion, beliefs, and himself. While he explores architecture through his questions, he also explores himself. This reminds me a lot of Rem Koolhaas. When he asked what his goal with his practice was, Koolhaas answered: “to keep thinking about what architecture could be. What I could be.” There is a great resemblance between Waleed and Koolhaas in the sense of their practice goal. Regarding Waleed Practice, it’s a manifested answer to his question about the linkage between past, present, and future in architecture? He studied the past in great detail - Islamic and Egyptian architecture then he considers the present state. The site and the conditions in which the project is realized. Finally, to build into the future. As he said himself, Egyptian in terms of thought, not in shape. He designs considering the users using sustainable materials - like rammed earth - considering the present and future state. This is his way of going into the future. His theory and building seem to align perfectly with Frampton’s critical regionalism; However, Waleed never said a word about critical regionalism. Waleed is an extraordinarily inspiring person; in fact, this is one of the most inspiring lectures I have ever attended. The lecture inspired me to write the following paragraphs as it aligns with my philosophy, and I consider it part of my credo
Waleed Arafa in Basuna Mosque By Unknown
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The Primitive Essence Youssef Yasser
on// LEC#1 Waleed Arafa, Cairo:: On the Road to Find Out. The Expression of Cultural Identity
Week02
15, March 2022
Please meet:
Philosophy and path Classification of Architects Quote from Friedrich Nietzsche.
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The Primitive Essence I believe that this chapter will be a bit messy, but it is a necessary evil, After I was Inspired By Waleed Arafa ‘s lecture to write it. In the primitive essence, I will discuss the idea of the “WHY” the reasoning methodology that is used to frame decisions in the a chosen direction. Yes, you guessed it right, it’s “the concept” but in a more abstract manner.
As I established before that architecture is a very complex discipline, in fact, it’s a multidisciplinary discipline. Which makes it easy to get lost in the shreds. It is easy to get lost in sustainably, trends, politics, money, engineering, philosophy, social sciences, books, and much more. This is where the narrative is important. The narrative contains your philosophy and the primitive essence of your decisions. As Buildings have concepts, Architects have philosophies - like a concept but in a wider more abstracted manner -. architect’s philosophy is a changeable domain ruled by the architect himself yet guides him through the journey. It tells you what major to specialize in, what book to buy and which job to accept, how to approach design problems. It puts the chaos into order and tells you what to look at and what to ignore. Some people argue that philosophies are limiting your freedom, which is partly true. However, I see the complete opposite. Philosophies sharpen your vision and act as the agent that assure you didn’t get lost in the chaos. In addition to that, you can tune your philosophy to be open to experimentation and new ideas. This is the core of the primitive essence, It can be applied to us as architects and on buildings as concepts. One very good example I would like to share with you is Waleed Arafa’s Basouna mosque. In this mosque and generally in Waleed’s architecture; he is free of distractions. He didn’t check how the other contemporary mosque are done to take inspiration, but instead, he deconstructed the mosque to its very basic parts and meanings then he choose the qualities that he wants to imply, finally starting to merge the qualities with the elements of the mosque creating a very unique piece of architecture. Classification of architects by Amr Helmy: 99 % of the architects are recyclers, 0.9 % of the rest are poets, and the rest 0.1 % are philosophers. Recyclers are aesthetic slaves that open Pinterest to steal hundreds of references and put them in the same way. Poets are the architects who are trying to design a certain feeling in a space. They live in it so they can design it. Philosophers are architects who are poets but have the ability to comprehend and conceptualize their feelings into words and theories which allow them to find their own vocabulary and a way of building things. Not all architects have philosophies and I see this as a good thing. Finally, let your head fly in the sky, but your feet must be on the ground. Get back to the fundamentals, know why you are in architecture in the first place, document your narrative and enjoy the journey.
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how” FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
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Towards Critical Regionalism Kenneth Frampton
on// Frampton, K. (1983) Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance.
Week01
01, March 2022
Please meet:
Six Points of Frampton Modernism Axioms Deconstructivism Resistance Rules Prevent being Slave to Desire Frampton Vs Venturi Imposing Man-made Order on Nature Frampton and Pallasmaa
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Towards Critical Regionalism Modernization has limited the possibility of architecture and urban design/planning due to its universal technology optimization in the creation process. This puts architecture and urban planning as servants to modernization and negates their true potential. It is evident in the radical transformation of developed countries’ urban fabric due to the phenomena of the freestanding high-rise and the serpentine freeway. The downtown has changed from a mixture of residential stock with tertiary and secondary industry has transformed into a burolandschaft city-scape. Since the enlightenment, Culture has been primely concerned with expression. Civilization is concerned with instrumental means; however, in the modern days, these instrumental means are embroiled in a never-ending chain of “means and ends” wherein, according to Hanna Arendt the, in order to - the potential of Culture and civilization- has become the content of for the sake of; - the grand narrative/vision of modernization - utility established as meaning generates meaninglessness.
One of the most significant modernization axioms is the grand narrative. This contains the fact that one way of building is the right way, which is evident in modernization. This way of building was under the idea of massive production, which implicitly refers to the eminent control of science and capitalism. This grand narrative is also social. Men are blue. Girls are pink. Smoking cigarettes, owning a car, red dresses, fit people, the phenomena of the supermodel, and much more were shaping the desires and the identity of the society. Also, consumerism affects marketing, mass media, and advertisements. This is the evidence of manipulation and controls the society in favor of one size fits all social aspect. Apparently, architecture and urban planning were subordinated to modernization’s control of the society to achieve its grand narrative, which negates the real potential and power of architecture and urban planning and their effects on people’s life - the in order to of Hanna Arendt.
Calvin Klien billboards in 1999 and 2019
Culture and Civilization.
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Towards Critical Regionalism The rise of the avant-garde has been evident throughout the last century and half. They took very different roles and what is common between them is the adversary stance. Which made it a facilitator for modernism and enlightenment at some time in history, and at other times was against modernism and universalization. The fall of the avant-garde can be predicted and noticed since the took over of modernism. Modernization continued unbeaten through the critique of it by the avant-garde. In addition, the changes in the political agenda after world war I and the global economic crisis made the state interfere and betray the liberal aspect of cultural modernization due to the need for psycho-social cultural stability. Which puts something like avant-garde culture aside hidden from the scene; it killed it. The aftermath conflict between socialism and capitalism - the political conflict - killed the possibility of avant-garde existence! “ This renunciation is predicated on the belief that as long as the struggle between socialism and capitalism persists (with the manipulative mass-culture politics that this conflict necessarily entails), the modern world cannot continue to entertain the prospect of evolving a marginal, liberative, avant-gardist culture which would break (or speak of the break) with the history of bourgeois repression. “ Finally, in the era of post-modernism, there was a prominent role of entertainment and commodities in relation to identity. Avant-garde architects into this realm of pure technique and scenography. Which fall from the trajectory of avant-garde adversary stance from the beginning, or in other words “ the betrayal. “ Avant-Garde is originally a military term that refers to the advance force, the first row which sees and leads the army. However, the term has devolved into a cultural meaning: an intelligentsia that develops new or experimental concepts. So by definition, an avant-garde pushes the limits of the known, and this implicitly implies the adversary stance of the avant-garde that Frampton was stating. Throughout history, avant-garde took several different roles. So it was with modernism as a liberative stance aligned with the enlightenment and against the monarchy and church. In others, it was against the universalization and idealism of modernism. Modernization is the most prominent cultural movement/ ideology in the history of being. Yet, at the same time, capitalism is the most powerful economic ideology in history. Their co-existing was so powerful that regardless of any critique or avant-garde stance left them unbeaten. It was invading all aspects of life. It was prominent to the degree that goes beyond avant-garde power to push it away. This is where the betrayal of the avant-garde happened. Their lack of power to resist the whole system made them retreat into a formalistic resistance to modernism. This retreat is evident in movements like deconstractivism: the entire notion opposed the belief that modernism is the era’s zeitgeist. As claimed, these idyllic modernist buildings represent life and people. Hence they take the opposite position provoking architecture that expresses the complex nature of being and the nature of their era. Such post-modern movements were definitely political and in opposition to modernism but didn’t solve the problems of modernism. In fact it made the situation much more complex and harder to solve. The position turned from the impossibility of pushing forward towards fewer problems to the possibility of resistance, which Frampton suggested as arrier-garde in his writing.
t s i e g t i e Z The rise and fall of avant-Garde.
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Towards Critical Regionalism Since the un-risible fall of the avant-garde. Frampton argues the only way to sustain critical architecture practice is if it assumes an arrire-garde position, “one which distances itself equally from the Enlightenment myth of progress and from a reactionary, unrealistic impulse to return to the architectonic forms of the preindustrial past.” It removes itself from modernism optimization of advanced technology and the tendency to regress into the past. The term arrire-garde must be separated from conservative policies like populism or sentimental regionalism. But, more importantly, to root the term arriere-garde in critical practice, it must be coined with the term critical regionalism. Critical regionalism can be understood through the tension between the individual and the local architectonic features against the universal and abstract ones. It mediates between the original culture of a particular place - the quality of light, history, tectonics, and topography - and the impact of universal civilization: construction techniques and technologies. Critical regionalism is a cultural strategy that is considered a world culture since it does not belong to one specific region; hence it is a vehicle for universal civilization. But in a world where every culture has mixed origins in addition to the blended universal culture, critical regionalism should first deconstruct the world culture that it inherits, then active a manifest critique of universal civilization through synthetic contradictions. An excellent example of critical regionalism is Jorn Utzon’s bagsvaerd church. On the one hand, it has a rational grid with a modular facade that eases the construction and benefits from modern construction techniques. On the other hand, it has arational and idiosyncratic forms, which have semiotical and associational value in the sacred spaces.
The situation changed from avant-garde pushing forward and exploring new concepts to an arriregarde - part of a military force that protects it from attack from the rear, either during an advance or withdrawal. The term can also be used to describe forces protecting lines - that implies a form of resistance. It resists architecture from falling into absurdity and from being economized. It saves architecture’s true and full potential from getting lost in modernization and capitalism. Instead of the absurd visions of going into the future like what happened In 1980, the first Venice architecture biennale took place. Titled “the presence of the past.” Frampton suggests resistance and holding positions, then a critical strategy to move into the future. It is not that we have a future in the past, but rather, we have underlying findings/clues in the past that help us to move into the future. Critical regionalism offers a way of carefully considering the past while critically utilizing the present to go into the future. The theory reminds me of a book titled “12 rules for life. In the book introduction, Jordon Peterson talks about the negative psychological effects of regulations on our life since we are free, liberated creatures in the world; however, if we live our lives to the full, free of all the rules of the world whether cultural, political, social or religious, we will be slaves to our human desires. We will not be as free and liberative as we think. Hence, the book’s rules are the essential guidelines to save you from falling an enslaved to your desires. It assumes an arrire-garde position, just the same as Frampton’s critical regionalism to architecture, exactly identical
- Resist desire - Fight Post-Modernism
I lik et his
Critical regionalism and world culture.
guy
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Towards Critical Regionalism Since the rapidly increasing number of cities and megalopoleis after 1961, urban design has been degraded into a theoretical practice that has no contact with reality. Soon after, urban planning entered the crisis. The practice of the planning has been reduced to land use and the logistics of distribution. On a temporal snese, it concerned itself with the changes in land use and the existing distribution systems; which kills the potential of the planning or the design and makes every place alike. This phenomenon of universal placelessness, coined by Martin Heidegger rooted in the lack of space/place boundary. As he writes, “A boundary is not that at which something stops, but, as the Greeks recognized, the boundary is that from which something begins its presencing.” The phenomenological experience of the human into space must contain a boundary to perceive and identify to dwell in it. So in order to have a critical practice, one must have a clear bounded domain to cultivate architecture of resistance. The place-form also has a political aspect of gaining power as Hanna Arendt argues that the material prerequisite of power is living together, close to each other. In a boundless place, there is a lack of definitive public realms like piazzas or squares in favor of coffee shops, malls, and highways. This acts as the secret weapon of controlling public power used by the state; it is very noticeable in Egypt after the 2011 revolution and the speculative creation of the new capital with the ugly second-floor bridges realized in the country nowadays.
Robert Venturi wrote one of the most influential books in architecture titled “complexity and contradictions in architecture,” He argues the importance of the diversity of forms and shapes of the architecture in the city. Moreover, his belief that simplicity is boring, And that cognitive satisfaction is achieved through the tension and complexity in the forms. Finally, he believes that architecture has favored simplicity over diversity. Venturi’s points may not explicitly include the support of boundless place form. However, it includes the push towards maximum diversity and freedom of expression, which contains a boundless space somewhere. This is where Frampton is against Venturi. Because Frampton believes that there is a better way of creating architecture, that is critical regionalism. But in a sense, it limits the absolute possibility of expression. But, on the other hand, it saves us from falling into modernism’s meaninglessness and placelessness phenomena. Venturi’s advocations can easily fall into absurdity and meaninglessness since it supports the infinite number of expressions and forms. A critical theory and practice of architecture must be understood between the opposing poles of Frampton’s right - as claimed- the dogma of creating architecture and Venturi’s advocations for the importance of diversity and maximizing the freedom of expression. More importantly, consider that they both oppose modernism and its functional technocratic beliefs.
Critical....what?
Sa an y it yo d I w agai u ill s n ue
The resistance of place-form.
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Towards Critical Regionalism Critical regionalism involves a more dialectical and authentic relationship with nature than the more abstract modern architecture. So Frampton divided nature into the following five aspects: topography, context, climate, light, and tectonic form. Topography: it’s most prominent and self-evident in Le Corbusier’s tabula rasa. There is a tendency to flatten every plot favoring the optimum use of earth moving machines as it is regarded as the most economical act, which leads to an absolute placelessness. Context: Frampton dealt with the context in two manners, the geographical in which it shows the last instance of the region’s specific culture. The second is the historical manner in which it shows this culture across time. Both of them are inscriptions of the place, and when this inscription manifests itself in the form and the project, it gives the building many layers of significance. Climate: the climate is closely related to local light due to the issue of climate control. One good example would be the case of glass buildings in hot regions since it requires a tremendous amount of energy to cool them down. Because “the generic window is obviously the most delicate point at which these two natural forces impinge upon the outer membrane of the building, fenestration having an innate capacity to inscribe architecture with the character of a region and hence to express the place in which the work is situated.” Light: this point relied on artificial light domination and the negligence of natural light. This is self-evident in the case of museum and art galleries, which tends to reduce the artwork to a commodity. This prevention of the play between the natural light and surface of art kills the aura - quality integral to an artwork that cannot be communicated through mechanical reproduction techniques - and establish a state of placelessness. Tectonic form: the primary principles of architectural autonomy lies in the tectonic rather than scenographic. The autonomy is embodied through the bond between the construction and how its syntactic elements resist the action of gravity. However, tectonics is not about pure technicalities but rather the simple revelation/expression of the skeletal framework. The tectonics expresses its function and purpose; it gives it meaning as stated here “The sense of bearing provided by the entasis of Greek columns became the touchstone of this concept of tectonic.” It is the art of construction; it is poetic rather than descriptive or representational of a building.
For a very long time on earth, people could not win over nature in the sense of architectural construction. They were and are ruled by the limit of their knowledge of construction methods till the triumph of science in modernism. For the first time in history, that made man win over the environment. Impose his visions over it. It is apparent in the technological optimization of modern buildings. It is more than that; it’s the underlying belief of the triumph of science or the control of humans over nature, which vividly appears in every point of Frampton’s writings. The argument can take a further push to relate this imposition of the man of nature to super studio super-grid collages as a radical modernism theory.
Super Grid by Super Studio.
Culture vs nature: topography, context, climate, light and tectonic form.
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Towards Critical Regionalism There is a capacity of the body to read the environment other than the visual alone. The intensity of the light, darkness, heat and cold, the feeling of humidity, and the material’s aroma are under the umbrella of the tactile experience—a neglected experience in modern technologically optimized architecture for the sake of visuals and scenography. An excellent tactile experience is evident in Siza’s Synatsalo town hall. In the building, there are many tactile as they are visual. For example, the entrance and stairs are lined in red brick and contrast with the timber flooring after the stairs. The kinetic energy of the body is felt through the climbing of the stairs, and the shift of texture to timber marks and defines the energy of each texture through the experience of the building. “From this example, it is clear that the liberative importance of the tactile resides in the fact that it can only be decoded in terms of experience itself: it cannot be reduced to mere information, to representation, or to the simple evocation of a simulacrum substituting for absent presences.” Hence, Critical regionalism seeks to complement the visual experience by re-addressing the tactile range of human experience against the western tendency of the visual domination of scenography and images. Finally, “The tactile and the tectonic jointly have the capacity to transcend the mere appearance of the technical in much the same way as the place-form has the potential to withstand the relentless onslaught of global modernization.”
The core of architecture lies in the premise that architecture cannot be evaluated or understood without the users’ experience of it. The dominance of visual and scenography appears due to post-modern and modern philosophies; a contributor to this is also the invasion of the mass media that allows people to consume architecture only through visuals and then to evaluate it, which corrupted the authentic tactile experience of architecture in a sense. McCarter and Pallasmaa, in their book “understanding architecture, “ argues that “Architecture has meaning, and matters to us only when it is experienced, when all our senses are simultaneously engaged in its inhabitation, and when it provides the settings in which the acts and rituals of daily life take place.” Moreover, in Pallasmaa’s book “the eyes of the skin” where he argus the importance of the holistic experience of architecture using all the senses. And the interchangeable use of them in different scenarios as he says: when someone in a hot bath in their home and close their eyes, in that moment they turn off the sight and open a room for the other senses to take over, which sharpen them in a sense. This is precisely the case of modern and post-modern visual dominance; it sharpens the sight sense but slowly kills the other senses and negates a prominent part of the human experience of the spaces.
They are not fighting
An interview with Kenneth Frampton and Juhani Pallasmaa By Ingerid Helsing Almaas
The visual versus tactile.
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The Corrupted Theory Youssef Yasser
on// Frampton, K. (1983) Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance.
Week03
15 March 2022
Please meet:
Class Discussion On Frampton Theory vs Style; Understanding, differences and relation. Theories go corrupt, Explained!
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The Corrupted Theory In the last class, there was a long discussion about theory vs. style. Also, how theories got corrupt; hence in this chapter, I will discuss the difference between theory and style. Moreover, how an architectural theory can be corrupted.
A theory is a kind of ideology that contains a set of beliefs that generate certain understandings and guidelines that can be followed, But It does not control the outcome. Style is only about aesthetics, a set of characteristics and features that produce similar aesthetics and hence a style. Theories tend to generate similar characteristics, and that is why most of the theories have styles named after them due to their similar aesthetics. However, there is a significant difference between the theory and the style because when you follow a theory, you understand each act you do and its reason. On the other hand, style followers are clueless recyclers of various materials to generate the desirable aesthetics, making their work cheap and shallow. When a theory becomes well known, recyclers consume it everywhere, they turn it into a popular style/trend, so it loses its purpose and effect on people, hence becoming corrupted. Theories that generate aesthetics of great similarities have a higher chance of being corrupted; Because it is easier to decode the theory into its aesthetical elements that are repeated in projects adopting it. Therefore easier to be recycled. Good examples of architects adopting the same theory but generating different architecture and aesthetics are: Le Corbusier and Oscar Neymar. Both were modernists, but their architecture was very different. Another good example is peter Eisenman and Frank O.Gehry. Both are post-modern deconstructivists; however, their works have no similarities. The examples of style that is recycled are self-evident everywhere. You can see cheap copies of Hadid’s parametric architecture specifically in students’ projects. This is because the recyclers - professionals or students - tend to look only at the final output “style/aesthetics” and ignore the actual theory behind the work. Another scenario of the corrupted theory is when the theory maker architect him/herself uses the theory as an end and not as a means/method. One perfect example of this is Deconstravtivism: Deconstructivism is a theory that emerged firstly as a literary analysis theory and tool by the AlgerianFrench philosopher Jacques Derrida. Then adopted by architects in the 1980s as a response to modernism, declining the idealism and the lack of human touch in modern architecture. Hence they oppose modern architecture and traditional architecture methods, creating tensions, fragments, and collisions in their architecture. One essential aspect of Derrida’s deconstructivism is that people understand through oppositions - contrast - which makes it crucial to oppose the context where you are designing. To create this collisional relation between ordinary buildings and sometimes within the deconstructed ones and themselves.
Deconstructivism is not an excuse to create whatever fragmented shapes; it has a logic and reason behind it. This means in a context full of Mies you need to be Gehry, but in a context full of Gehry, you need to be Mies. The thing is that deconstructivism is not the end; we do not use the theory as a motive to produce architecture but rather as a communication method/means to express an emotion or message. So it becomes corrupted once the theory is used as an end instead of method/mean. These previous arguments raise a critical question: when is it legit to adopt deconstructivism in any project? It depends on the concept of the project and the objectives that the architect wants to achieve. Maybe it is to introduce the opposite side of things or to create interest by creating collisions in the context. The use of deconstructivism requires a justification behind it, so it is not for the sake of itself and, therefore, corrupt! This applies to any theory. Architects must understand the theories they are adopting, justify them, and choose an adequate project to use it. Remember, means not ends, reason not arbitrary!
COOP HIMMELB(L)AU - WOLF D. PRIX & PARTNER ROOFTOP FALKESTRASSE, WIEN
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My Friend’s Debate on Modernism Pardis Helmy and Youssef Yasser
on// Frampton, K. (1983) Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance.
Week03
15, March 2022
Please meet:
The Golden rule of Debating
Where did Modernism came from?
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My Friend’s Debate on Modernism In the last class, I had a long discussion after our lesson about “ what is the essence of modernism as an architectural theory? So I decided to document it and put it here in the journal.
Debating is a blood sport where you engage in a battle trying to find fetal mistakes in your opponent’s arguments in order to blow them away out of the field and win. Most people think and believe this, but in reality, this can not be more wrong or at least in a particular context! Is debating a win or lose activity like a game of squash? This depends on the context in which the debate is taking place. If you are in a debating university club preparing for a semi-final, it is very much expected that there will be adversaries and, eventually, a victory. Points are scored. There are juries to adjudicate, and You might win a prize at the end. However, not all debates are like this one; in fact, most of our debates in life don’t include prizes. Based on this, we need to re-establish the notion of debates as a competition to debates as the notion of enjoyable and improving activity. It is not me against you. It is you against the naive, dumb understanding and me and toward a more sophisticated and holistic view on the topics. Especially in a felid like architecture, which is considered an “art and science,” a tiny number of debates will have solid and single answers, and the rest will require arguments to prove it. Hence if we consider debates as competitions, we will not find a better understanding of architecture, and they will be heated and not enjoyable. A good debate lets people be thrilled, not heated! One day after our theory class me and my friend - Pardis, who happened to be an architect and colleague - had this debate about modernism’s simplicity. Whether it comes from the rejection of ornamentation that was dominating and overfilling the architecture scene for decades or the facilitation of modernization means - the industrial bomb and the fast manufacture of buildings- which affected the architecture style to be very simple to facilitate fast building methods.
Alberto Sartoris Buildings and Drawings
My argument: I separated modernism as an architectural theory/style from modernization as a political, social, and economic ideology. From reading the history books, you will notice an exciting pattern in the human race; when something dominates people’s lives for so long. But then, the same people rebel and find what they think is the complete opposite. It happened due to the ornamentations that dominated the buildings before modernism, which is why simplicity was the rebel answer against ornaments. On the other hand, there is the theory of modernism by architects like Le Corbusier, Louis Sullivan, Walter Groupies, and much more, which is a vast body of work done by those developing the architectural theory and buildings. This made it evident that modernism was there and developing for the sake of architecture and not for modernization. Lastly, our professor said that sometimes Le Corbusier was trying to take the steer of the modernization train for his own sake and, consequently, for the architecture’s sake.
Her arguments Pardis tend to think that modernism as an architectural theory/style is at the core a by-product of modernization as an ideology. In her own words: “Modern architecture emerged in the first half of the 20th-century, holding the main goal of creating an image of mass-production architecture to serve the needs of mass society.” She continued the argument with: “Modernism sticks to the image, material, and abstract form without considering the continuous change in the environment. It obeys specific rules in all cases, even if they are different. one of the major examples is “Unite D’Habitation” It was built in 1952 in Marseilles, France. The apartments are beautiful, but the children’s rooms are mere closets, six feet wide, some with no windows. This was great for an artist, but for kids, there was no privacy—and no place to go but out. He described his works as “pure prisms raised against the sky”—a beautiful image, but not related to the way people lived inside them. “ She saw the standardization of modernism as a by-product of modernization ideology.
In conclusion I also believe that the problem with modernism is that the architects considered it the zeitgeist of the era. Which implicitly neglects any human needs change that requires any different architecture! My zeitgeist argument aligns with her standardization argument - which I find very accurate - but on a different scale, from the user’s changes in one building to the user’s changes in different times and contexts. Pardis’ standardization argument convinced me that parts of modernism are a by-product of modernization. However, I still believe that modernism used modernization as an instrumental means, but this made some design principles rely solely on the means. In that case, the means turn to an end. I believe that modernism and modernization are woven together, creating fabric, the architecture, that contains modernism architecture theory as a majority and modernization ideology as a minority. 57
Critical Regionalism For Our Time Lea-Catherine Szacka and Veronique Patteeuw
on// Szacka, L.-C., Patteeuw, V. (2019) Critical Regionalism for our Time. London: AR November Issue
Week04
22, March 2022
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The Context in which Critical Regionalism emerged
Venice Architecture biennial
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Towords a critical regionalism Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance is an essay written by Kenneth Frampton - British architect and critic - in 1983 in “ The Anti-aesthetics. Essays on postmodern culture.” In 1980, the first Venice architecture biennale took place. Titled “ the presence of the past. “ curated by Paolo Portoghesi - Italian architect and theorist - executed upon the question of “ what to do after high modern architecture? “ a question that was asked to the whole architecture community, and from the title of the biennale Portoghesi suggested this idea of what if architects deconstruct the past and reconstruct it again as a new architecture. Many architects who contributed to the biennale investigated and variated on that concept. Except for Kenneth Frampton, who saw another possibility of moving into the future without going to the past. This was the context in which critical regionalism emerged by Frampton for the first time and then wrote the essay in 1983, three years after the biennale.
In the essay, Frampton’s text investigates the question of the question of the biennale “what to do after high modern architecture, but without being regressive? And how to become modern without subverting to a globalized architecture? In an attempt to answer these questions, Frampton suggested the solution by mediating between the “old culture / the past “and the present “global civilization- modernism.” It is a mediation between universal “techniques” and place “culture.” He built his arguments on the paradox of “how to be modern and return to the resources; how to revive an old dormant civilization and take part of universal civilization” moreover that architecture has lost its connection with reality and become the same everywhere in the world. Due to the flattened cultural value in architecture and the negation of its possibilities by Modernism. Hence Frampton argued the importance of resistance: “in a climate where culture becomes a global concept, a certain form of resistance seems to find added value in the locality of a given.” He saw that the possibility of critical practice of architecture is only possible if it assumes an arriere-garde position. “one which distance itself from the enlightenment myth of progress and from the unrealistic impulse to return to the architecture forms of preindustrial past” The strategy of critical regionalism is to mediate of universal civilization with elements derived indirectly from the peculiars of a particular place. Frampton also stressed the importance of elements of the place, the nature of the place, which he called culture vs. nature: topography, context, climate, light, and tectonic form. So he did not only consider the culture in respect to the contemporary time but also the site and its elements. Finally, the use of modern techniques while building the project. Last but not least, critical regionalism was not specific to any time and region; instead, it’s a world culture that can be used as a guideline to create architecture at any time and place on the globe. Critical regionalism can be seen as an authentic framework for creating architecture, which assures the architecture is true. True to its place, its culture and time, its circumstances, and finally, true to its users
Frampton’s work can be partly understood as an opposition to post-modern philosophies. This is self-evident in his rejection of the endless processal flux of the megalopolis or the abstract concept of space as an endless continuum of subdivided spatial components. He also argued the importance of a bounded domain in creating architecture of resistance. In other words, he is against the post-modernism axiom, the infinite number of narratives to understand the world and the absence of objective truth. Moreover, his work can be viewed as a criticism of modernization and what effect it had on the world, as it negated the cultural importance and favored one empty universal culture. a criticism of the promise of emancipation and liberation that failed to be achieved by modernism. Leaving the world with the never-ending chain of means and ends caused by the technical advancements. Modernism, capitalism, universalization, and globalization are all ideologies that Frampton is against due to their destructive effects on the human connection with culture and the inequalities they caused. However, Frampton seems to align with two aspects of modernism; the first is that people can use technological advancements as a means to realize their ideas and designs. Secondly, the axioms of modernism: having an objective truth, a grand narrative so we can judge and resist the incomprehensible rapid change of the post-modern society that we live in.
Venice architecture biennale pubication cover 1980
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Postmodern Regionalism! Gevork Hartoonian
on// Hartoonian, Gevork. “Critical Regionalism: Whatever Happened to Autonomy.” Fusion Journal, no. 4, 2014.
Week05
29, March 2022
Please meet:
Liane Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonis new update to Critical Regionalism Critical vs Realism
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Postmodern Regionalism! In the class, each student was required to get one article of their selection on critical regionalism and reflect on it critically. In my case, I got “Critical Regionalism: whatever happened to autonomy,” written in 2006 and rewritten in 2014 by Gevork Hartoonian. He is a Professor of the history and theory of architecture at the University of Canberra, Australia. He was born in Iran in 1946, and received a Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, USA, and has taught in a number of American universities, including Columbia University.
Since the 1970s - the time of post-modernism - while the architects have this impulse for historical eclecticism and drive toward formal autonomy. Frampton aimed to “provide deeper meaning not by returning to older systems of belief, but through the creation of new values in and through art.” His text was saying something about his theoretical affiliation with Marxism. It also separates his discourse from any form of vernacular, sentimental or otherwise. In 2005 Frampton wrote critical regionalism revised and he defined architecture as the art of the construction of the life-world with the capacity to promote a critical relationship with the technology beyond the nostalgia implied in the German word Heimat and the spectacle permeating the culture of the megalopolis. Due to the identity crisis due to late capitalism- post-modernism- Frampton Therefore was interested in architects whose work is focused on the projection of national identity rather than merely mirroring its time, technically and/or aesthetically. What differentiates architecture from most arts is the capacity to be temporal and historical. And since Architecture is an everyday life object; therefore, Architecture is history and historical. The following is where things start to be interesting. Liane Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonis reformulated their theory in a book entitled Critical Regionalism: Architecture and Identity in a Globalized World (2003); they re-define critical regionalism according to the situation of contemporary architectural praxis; this time, the situation is very far from Frampton’s stance. In the original theory, critical regionalism opposed global culture and formulated a resistance. But now, it attempts to present a critical regionalism thematic that is defined by the universalism deployed through the globalization of information and western cultural values. Hence, Opposite to Frampton’s national identity projection. It will take whatever identity exists in the current situation. The book defined the region as “ the value of the singular circumscribes projects within the physical, social, and cultural constraints of the particular, aiming at sustaining diversity while benefiting from universality.” It tends to design identity as is mapped in globalization. Fredric Jameson criticized it, saying “ it problematizes the assumptions of critical regionalism itself, and has indeed called postmodern marketing.”
They wanted to substitute the term “critical” with “realism” as now there are no conflicts of the past in which the term critical emerged. As they wrote, “critical works challenge not only the established actual world as confrontational works do, but the very legitimacy of the possible world views which interpret it in the mind.” This is Venturi’s argument for maximum diversity and freedom of expression. It is a postmodern ideology. That suggests we now live in the present, where we should have the identity as projected. Moreover, to keep the tectonics and the contextualization of Frampton so we can change “critical regionalism” to “real regionalism.” In that sense, a theory like Deconstructivism is real regionalism Its justification is: to represent the common state of society and people. Moreover to negate modernism claim of being the zeitgeist. My bachelor project building subscribes to Deconstractivism in that manner. However, the critique is quite harsh on it, as mentioned by Robert MacLeod. “ if the turn to Realism defines critical regionalism according to a paradigm centered on differentiating modernity from capitalism, a distinction essential to Jameson’s reading of Frampton’s discourse on the same subject, then one can claim that Tzonis’s text fails to accomplish this task. The differentiation of late capitalism and modernity is important: it allows one to see the relationship between region and late capitalism as parallax, meaning that those forms or tropes that have the potentiality to define the identity of a region are paradoxically by-products of late capitalism.” At the end of this never-ending debate, I want to ground Frampton’s core understanding of architecture against any postmodern understanding. Frampton doesn’t see Architecture as much of art but as the art of construction promoting a critical relationship between technology and culture through the creative act of the architect. But Venturi or postmodern understand Architecture as an art that expresses messages and emotions. 65
Bacholar Project: “The Submirrsive Mother” 3D Shot by Youssef Yasser.
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Architecture of Sensitivity Holger Gladys
on// LEC#2 Holger Gladys :: A Shift from Center to Periphery: Sensitive Architecture that Bridges Generations
Week06
05, April 2022
Please meet:
Modernism vs Post-modernism and Frampton position
Sensitive/Critical Architecture
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Architecture of Sensitivity On the 5th of April 2022, Prof. Holger Gladys gave us a lecture titled “A Shift from Center to Periphery: Sensitive Architecture that Bridges Generations.” Holger Gladys is an architect and urbanist and has been teaching since 2016 urban design and theory at the German University in Cairo.His activities are mainly dedicated to the 5th year Major Urban Design Studies, a pre-master program composed of intense design instruction and extensive applied research on the urban environment. Gladys is also a member of the faculty’s curriculum committee. He is also the professor of advanced architecture theory; the course in which I am writing this journal.
The first half of the lecture was on Frampton’s critical regionalism and its core concepts. First, however, I would like to emphasize the opposing aspects of modernism and post-modernism: meta-narrative vs micro-narrative, objective reality vs subjective reality, globalization vs identification, universalization vs individualization, normalization vs specialization, homogenization vs diversification, standardization vs craftsmanship. This is interesting because all post-modernism axioms are opposing to modernism, and Frampton is contending modernism or, in other words, he is critical about it. But is this makes Frampton a post-modernist? The short answer is no, but it is more complex than that. Frampton is supporting many post-modernism axioms; this is not absolute support. Instead, it is in a particular domain. Frampton believes in micro-narratives of the regions, and he supports the diversity of different sites in different places, as he calls it “particular place.” But he also believes that his critical regionalism theory should be a world culture that is a global thought in a sense. What is more accurate is that Frampton is critical of both. He rejected the technological optimization and globalism of modernism, yet he also rejected the infinite narratives of post-modernism like what he did in the 1980 Venice Biennale “returning to the past”. His theory is very critical and hard to identify in such axioms of modernism vs. post-modernism comparison. So the best definition for it is “Critical theory.” However, this comparison is still meaningful and valid, because it illustrates the history of cultural philosophies in a much clearer manner. For instance, the universal truth of modernism or the grand narrative is what noted architecture other than modern as primitive and not worthy. Hence modern architecture is the center, and other is on the periphery of attention. Consequently, the modern values kept invading and invading till the world reached a point where we view and value architecture and life from the lens of modernism; hence one might spectate the history sense modernist historians write it. This is where people like Frampton were fighting to save the complete reality. The architecture of sensitivity is the buildings that have a tactile experience as much as a visual experience that is authentic/real to its context, site, climate, time, and people. Architecture that is critical, and has very delicate qualities.
Alvaro Siza’s Vieira’s Piscinas de Mares (Pools on the Beach)
Holger, during the lecture, stated his frustration about his education. Such architecture did not appear in the curriculum during his education, but it appeared only during his post-graduate research studies. This is evidence that even the education system is following the same beliefs of modern and post-modern ideologies. I want to conclude with Peter Zumthor’s words, which resonate with either Frampton’s work or sensitive architecture. “I believe that architecture today needs to reflect on the tasks and possibilities, which are inherently its own. Architecture is not a vehicle or a symbol for things that do not belong to its essence. In a society that celebrates the inessential, architecture can put up a resistance, counteract the waste of forms and meanings, and speak its own language. I believe that the language of architecture is not a question of a specific style. Every building is built for a specific use in a specific place and for a specific society. My buildings try to answer the questions that emerge from these simple facts as precisely and critically as they can.” from Thinking Architecture (2006)
Nordic Pavilion in Venice / Sverre Fehn
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Architecture of Place Mariam Kamara
on// LEC#3 People. Place, and Purpose. What Makes an Architect? Mariam Kamara. Niamey
Week07
19, April 2022
Please meet: Special Places Euro-Centrism vs Multiculturalism Can non-European think? Universal questions; Particular Answers the history of cultural philosophies for dummies
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Architecture of Place On the 19th of April, 2022, Mariam Kamara was supposed to give us a lecture on what makes an architect. But this didn’t happen due to scheduling problems. So instead, we watched her online lecture at Harvard university graduate school of design from the Aga Khan Program on the 7th of March, 2022; Titled: “atelier masimi: pedagogy, practice and (shifting) possibilities.” Mariam Issoufou Kamara is an architect from Niger who studied architecture at the University of Washington. In 2014, she founded atelier masimi, an architecture and research practice with offices in Niger’s capital, Niamey. The firm tackles public, cultural, residential, commercial, and urban design projects. Kamara believes that architects have an essential role in creating spaces that have the power to elevate, dignify, and provide people with a better quality of life.
She argues about the importance of the “architecture of place.” The architecture that is specially designed to the place where it exists and how this empowers its people and is authentic to their lives, culture, environment, and collective memory. Architecture around the world has become the same everywhere, and this same is come from one place: Europe. Due to the age of colonialism and how Europe had colonials all over the world. But the fact is that colonialism is a relatively short time compared to the rest of the history of the colonized countries; however, somehow, the identity and culture of these places seem to be erased in favor of the modern Eurocentric base of knowledge. The previous argument takes us back to the opening paragraph of Frampton’s Critical regionalism essay on how to be modern and return to the resources? Since it is established to be modern, you need to have and accept European principles like secularism, individualism, domination of science, and mass production. That slowly negates and erases the old culture of the place that was inherited through history. Eurocentric architecture became the universal truth; hence any other architecture is primitive and does not meet architecture standards. This goes deeper into the education system itself as Karama said, “Studying in us felt like being asked to unlearn what I knew to be true.” And even when she started to study history. She found out that it may be fraud because the historians themselves may believe the same claim and axiom of the modern world and consequently degrade other cultures and places as primitive and not worthy of attention. It reminds me of the book “Can Non-Europeans Think?” Hamid Dabashi - the author - forges a new perspective in postcolonial theory by examining how intellectual debate continues to reinforce a colonial regime of knowledge, albeit in a new guise. It continually relies on a Eurocentric perspective, but I believe it is vital to introduce ethnocentrism and multiculturalism as a response to what is happening. If the course of history is retraced through the lens of ethnocentrism and multiculturalism, the results would definitely be different from the existing so-called truth.
Bauhaus aesthetics Building
Mariam Kamara’s Building
Getting back to architecture, it is so self-evident, especially in modern buildings, where you find Le Corbusier buildings everywhere in the world regardless of their context, place, time, and history. A glass office building would be a microwave in Nigeria and requires tons of energy to cool it down. Architects should celebrate the places of the buildings and respect their circumstances and try to deal with them instead of imposing something external on it. Kamara closes her talk with an interesting statement that I will finish this writing by: The questions on architecture, whether for identity, techniques, or style, are universal, but the answers are not! And it should lead you to a different response. But the problem is when we have a universal answer.
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The History of Cultural philosophies
Throughout the journal till this point, I wondered about what happened between modernism and post-modernism. Both of them are touched by almost every speaker or article. I was interested in knowing what happened through history before modernism, then the transition with postmodernism till this day. So after some research, this is “ the history of cultural philosophies for dummies.”
Cultures
Modernism Universal Culture
The Old History
Monarchy/church During such a period, the rules of the king/ the queen and the church existed. This was the absolute power in the country; people were small in number, collective communities, and committed to rigid cultural and civilizational aspects. There were apparent aesthetics and way of building for each one them.
modernism Modernism was revolutionary at that time. It liberated the world from the monarchy, the church, and even the different cultures. Its axioms of it were: democracy, secularism, individualization, logic, the triumph of science, and universal culture, a grand narrative that represents the universal truth. Modernism flattened the different cultures and histories. It came to be emancipatory and liberative. But soon enough, these claims fell and what left was many inequalities just like before.
Solid Narrative
Infinite Cultures
The Old History
postmodernism Postmodernism acted against modernism. Post-modernism destroyed the grand narrative of modernism to be an infinite number of narratives; all of them are true. This was a response to solve the inequalities; However, it left us with a bigger problem, the lack of dogma, that eventually leads to nihilism. Since anything and everything is true, you can’t have morals, either path that is better than the others, since they are all true and equal.
Postmodernism now Architects and theorists like Waleed, Arafa, Mariam Kamara, and Kenneth Frampton are trying to assemble these small narratives/ pieces together in order to stand on solid ground and have a narrative!
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The Regionalist Avant-garde Radwa Roston
On// LEC#4 People. Place, and Purpose. What Makes an Architect? Radwa Rostom, Cairo
Week08
26, April 2022
Please meet:
Radwa Rostom and Hand Over Authantic Resistance.
a regionalist avant-garde in construction industry in Egypt.
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The Regionalist Avant-garde On the 26th of April, Radwa Rostom, an Egyptian civil engineer and the founder of Handover - an awardwinning social enterprise - gave a lecture on what makes an architect?
After graduating, Radwa explored several fields in the realm of civil engineering, energy, and sustainability. She also volunteered in multiple charity organizations and NGOs, and the UN doing housing projects for unprivileged communities in different places. However, she felt that something was wrong, and this was not enough. Hence she decided to merge her education knowledge with the will to help people to provoke a change and create sustainable and effective change on a bigger scale, not just on a social level but also on environmental and educational levels. From that moment, she took several workshops and training, granted a fellowship from Hamburg, Germany, which prepared her to start Handover. “Hand Over is an award-winning social enterprise that utilizes sustainable construction for the sake of community development by building houses and structures that are beneficial for unprivileged communities. Hand Over tackles climate change by using local and earth materials as the main building components. Hand Over empowers and trains architecture and civil engineering students and connects them with the local community so they can work jointly on the designs and the implementation of the new buildings. At the same time, Hand Over collaborates with local NGOs and private-sector companies to facilitate the process. Hand Over strives to upgrade and empower underprivileged communities through environment-friendly techniques.” Hand Over practice in a place like Egypt is not easy due to the mindset of people, clients, NGOs, and the government. Also, as the political agenda of the country. Due to that, Radwa faced many challenges convincing people about their different building techniques, why its practical, and why it is more ethical in the first place. However, after ten years, the company is now in a good place with proper exposure and trust, operating on several projects around Egypt with the government, NGOs, and private clients. They also operate abroad in hot climate countries like South Africa. They occasionally enter competitions and win several times the first place. Weather Radwa or her enterprise represents an authentic model of an Avant-garde. They push the boundaries of construction norms in places like Egypt, which is very hard! They introduce new knowledge and hand it over the other architects, schools, and people. However, they do not have a particular design philosophy; their architecture is a social and political act but lacks a level of complexity in the designs themselves and the theory behind them. They use sustainability as an end rather than a means. Almost all architecture and construction companies here in Egypt claim they use sustainable construction methods. Nevertheless, they are doing concrete and steel huge buildings with full glass facades in a hot climate like Egypt. On the other hand, Hand over, and Radwa Rostom understands sustainability and how to apply it to people and the planet earth. Radwa Rostom represents a regionalist avant-garde in construction industry in Egypt.
HAND OVER DESIGN + BUILD Projects
HAND OVER DESIGN + BUILD Competitions
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Environmental Sensitivity in Architecture Holger Gladys
on// LEC#5 Holger Gladys :: Environmental Sensitivity in the Design and Architecture of Bangladesh and Vietnam
Week09
10, May 2022
Please meet:
Bricks, Bricks, Bricks, Bricks, Bricks, Bricks, Bricks, Bricks.
Bricks, Bricks, Bricks, Bricks, Bricks, Bricks, Bricks, Bricks.
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Environmental Sensitivity in Architecture On the 10th of May 2022, Prof. Holger Gladys gave us a lecture titled “Environmental Sensitivity in the Design and Architecture of Bangladesh and Vietnam.” Holger Gladys is an architect and urbanist and has been teaching since 2016 urban design and theory at the German University in Cairo.His activities are mainly dedicated to the 5th year Major Urban Design Studies, a pre-master program composed of intense design instruction and extensive applied research on the urban environment. Gladys is also a member of the faculty’s curriculum committee. He is also the professor of advanced architecture theory; the course in which I am writing this journal.
Brick is the smallest construction element that is modular and variates in size and material in different regions. It is very durable and has high thermal mass and a long life span, making it sustainable to use in most cases. It is one of the most used materials in construction in the world. Almost all countries and regions have used bricks at some point in history. But it is a bit different in Bangladesh and Vietnam. Bangladesh stands as the fourth largest brick producer in the world. The country has more than 7,000 brick kilns, producing about 23 billion bricks annually. The industry accounts for approximately 1% of the country’s GDP and generates employment for more than a million people. In architecture, it is an ancient construction technique. Nowadays, it is still one of the most common materials used due to its responsiveness in Bangladesh’s hot climate. It is cheap, affordable, easily available, and resonates with cities history and culture. Architects like Maria Tabassum and Kashef Mahboob use it a lot in their work in Dhaka - the capital of Bangladesh. Aside from its aesthetics, it has environmental qualities in which it keeps the buildings hot on winter nights and prevents the heat from entering summer mornings. It allows the architects to play with light and forms, from its perforations - which can also be used in ventilation - to its curve forms that can be realized. It is also a solid textured material that adds a lot to the tactile experience of a building. The user can feel its heaviness, texture, and smell while they are experiencing the building. Bricks have this earthy feeling; it feels raw and not synthetic like aluminum facades. Finally, as shown in the photos, it is not a material for the poor since it can create extraordinary and exciting spaces. Due to the reasons mentioned above, brick buildings in places like Bangladesh and Vietnam are very sensitive to the environment and considered critically regional.
ALVAR AALTO SÄYNÄTSALO TOWN HALL, 1951
Marina Tabassum, Bait Ur Rouf Mosque, Dhaka 2012
LVHQ Le Vu Hong Quang, F-Coffee, Quang Binh 2014
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Comparative Study; Two Self-Selected Project. Youssef Yasser
on// Comparative Study of Two Self-selected Projects.
Week06
05, April 2022
Please meet:
Modernism vs Post-modernism and Frampton position
Sensitive/Critical Architecture
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1330 House Location: Mahabad, Iran Architect: Mohammad Kanisavaran Area: 270 m2 Year: 2020
Reimagined as culture center
Inside out House Location: Hamedan, Iran Architect: MA Office Area: 470 m2 Year: 2021
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1330 House
Reimagined as culture center
The 1330 House in the Kurdish city of Mahabad started from a 70 years old house. This house had a residential use before and has a different history in its background. Part of the old building was built 70 years ago, but during the reconstruction process, clues have been found that show the adobe bricks in some walls date back to more than 100 years. Over the past seven decades, due to changing lifestyles, owners have removed or added some parts of the building to meet their needs. The new use of the house has come alive with the support and investment of the private sector, to preserve the building and create a new space to spread the culture and art of Kurdistan. The strategy of the project was the creative division of spaces and the definition of uses in the design process so that the spaces can have a new and different definition from their past. So Uses had to be diverse and heterogeneous to create a combination of diverse functions and meet the needs of the area today The cultural-artistic part of this house is the core of new collective experiences. Entering the 1330 house, the music scene is adjacent to the central courtyard and is a cozy place for listening to Kurdish music, which has been formed to support the Kurdish women singers or musicians. For young people who have been deprived of having a cinema in their city for 20 years, there is a small space called a small cinema room to show movies next to the café. Due to the lack of art gallery spaces in this city, the four main halls of this house are dedicated to supporting artists in displaying or selling their works and providing special support to women and socially disadvantaged groups, such as women prisoners. At the end, the old house is deserved. The new elements only gave the life to the new functions in the place; It worked as a catalyst for change. It didn’t interfere the structure or the aesthetics of the old one. It is adding on, while keeping the old but with youth spirit. The building is serving as a social and cultural catalyst. True to its context, history, culture, and users.
Inside out House
The urban context of Hamedan has been transformed to the in-fill from under the dominance of the comprehensive plans for five decades. The result of such planning is the creation of a specific relation between the mass and the space for lighting from the south and the formation of the so-called south-facing and north-facing lands. Meanwhile, there is less interest in north-facing houses in building and sales due to lighting from only one direction. In north-facing houses, lighting is provided from the surface of the courtyard and the space at the end, which often provides unsuitable light to the posterior spaces. This is a south-facing land that is almost 200 m2. The client requested that all the rooms should have natural sun light and he showed an interest in the growing plants. However there was only 10m opening to receive light from due the the dimensions of the land. One more thing was the clients tight budget. So the project has this parameters; the orientation, the sunlight with the limitation of the small facade area, the clients budget. The architect tackled the parameters and achieved the goal “by moving the vertical empty space of the roof light to the center of the house and connecting it to another horizontal empty space that is like a porch in traditional one-sided houses in Hamedan - such as Ghazanfari and Sharifi houses - as a semi-open space that brings light to the heart of the house, the main question of the study was answered: directing all the main spaces towards this central empty space at the heart of the building and creation of an internal space directed towards the outside and obtaining the maximum natural light.” The architects understood the history, culture of the place and the needs of the clients. Which made this building is so authentic to its place, satisfying to the clients needs and has an extraordinary qualities that stands on the traditional architecture of its context woven with the new and modern look and techniques of 91 architecture paradigm.
1330 House
Reimagined as culture center
- Use modern techniques, elements, and materials - The presence of the local materials, and Spirit - Take clues from and relate to the context’s culture and history - Satisfy the users need - Acts as Social catalyst
Inside out House - Use modern techniques, elements, and materials - The presence of the local materials, and Spirit - Take clues from and relate to the context’s culture and history - Satisfy the users need - Understand and respond to the context architecturally
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Emancipation+Swati Pardis Helmy and Youssef Yasser
on// Hertwerk, F. (2018) Positions on Emancipation, Architecture between aesthetics and politics.+ LEC#6 People. Place, and Purpose. What Makes an Architect? Swati Janu.
Week10
17, May 2022
Please meet:
Critical Practice Today Capitalism Political Architecture Autonomous Architecture Architecture thinking 5 Trends
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Positions on emancipation In the spring of 2017, a debate was held in Schengen as an attempt to make various explicit trends in architectural thinking aiming at liberating architecture from the excesses of capitalism and not from other disciplines such as sociology, economics, and geography. Several architects and researchers joined the debate. Then in 2018, their discussions and respective stances were collected into a book titled “positions on emancipation: architecture between aesthetics and politics.” Florian Hertweck - an architect and Professor at the University of Luxembourg who has a master’s in globalization and urbanization - curated, edited, and wrote the introduction for the book. He explains a brief history of the relation between architecture, aesthetics, and politics. Moreover, he established the point of the debate: emancipation.
An Introductary summary of the history He started with Frampton’s regret at the lack of clear positions in architecture. Frampton considers it a neo-liberal indifference, which he attributes to modernism’s lost claim of being emancipatory and educational. What is left true of modernism is the technological advancements. He continued the argument by stating capitalism, the most powerful economic ideology of history, that caused essentially two things: the first is the end of history. The second is that it rendered the architects incapable of dealing with the societal challenges caused by globalized capitalism. In fact Two patterns were noticed by architects to deal with the situation, either by forging links in the world of economics and politics or by retreating into the realm of phenomenology and rhetorical exercises. In the world of capitalism, where architecture is economized, demonstrated by the phenomena of “starchitects.” Some other architects wished to distance themselves entirely from this economic process. The whole situation caused the architects’ work to be reduced to the architects’ signature under their drawings or lectures, which resulted in apolitical architecture. Hertweck talked about his architecture education in the mid-90s when the whole education system was depoliticized. Especially after the fall of grand narratives axiom by modernism and economized architecture made universities and architecture theory struggle in dealing with the situation. Due to that and the constant pressure of the academic sector, several texts are being produced, and events are being organized to find a way of dealing with the situation. However, the methods by which architecture can be political were never touched upon.
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Positions on emancipation There was a common rage against capitalism and its depoliticization effect on architecture. In that sense, you become a good person if you are anti-capitalist; this is how autonomous architecture justified its existence. Aldo Rossi was the initiator of autonomy as he saw the possibility of an absolute architecture that transcends any effects and restrictions from external factors such as capitalism. So Autonomous architecture is the Architecture that separates itself from all kinds of factors that affects the architecture itself. But even the autonomous architecture is not free of either economic or cultural determinants - which have their significance in the making of the city - hence, as it is designed to be built, it’s not that autonomous. Subsequently, it fails to separate itself from capitalism. Venturi also had the same vision when he wrote in the introduction of his book complexity and contradictions in architecture, “I will try to write in architecture rather around it.” Architects who support autonomy like Venturi or Eisenman tend to push the creative limits to the maximum, simultaneously distancing themselves from a political stance. As a result, autonomy becomes architecture rhetoric and usually falls into Formalism. So, in the end, Autonomous architecture failed to justify it as capitalism-free and political. On the other hand, you can find a very political theory like critical regionalism, but it partly limits the maximum potential of expression. Moreover, doing so reduces the architect’s role as a designer. Hence, to sustain a critical practice today, it should be active between two poles, firstly, the autonomy in which there is maximum freedom of expression. Secondly, critical regionalism in which architecture takes a political, authentic, and ethical stance towards people and the environment. In the 1980s, political architecture started to enter the semiotics-identity play of post-modernism. An example of it is Norman Foster’s New German Parliament, which is transparent, reflecting Germany’s political transparency. Hetwerk saw it as an absurd move; However, semiotics was never excluded from architecture since Greek and Romans till Frampton’s suggestions on keeping the site’s geological qualities as it gives a layer of significance. Rem Koolhaas contributed to political stance in architecture; the third way. The Third Way is a political position akin to centrism that attempts to reconcile right-wing - political - and left-wing - capitalism - politics by advocating a varying synthesis of center-right with some center-left policies. This is Koolhaas’ way of dealing with the “dirty reality,” as he mentioned it. Hence, he sometimes goes with capitalism more and other times becomes more critical and political. Koolhaas was almost bankrupt before, and now he has a $5 million net worth.
Autonomous Architecture
Critical Architecture Practice
Critical Regionalism
After all the preceded What form would the politicization of architecture between activism and autonomy take today? Five trends have emerged from the debate. The first has an activist slant, following the students’ movements of 1968 against capitalism. The process of activism trend least engaged in architectural design. Instead, architects are involved in pressure groups, human rights, advising positions, or advocates. They usually participate in public debates. The second trend is programmatic in character. It supports the idea of engaging architecture design and urban planning as it engenders social change. This trend is least critical since it generally resigns itself from having a particular client who, in most instances, has different interests. The third is programmatic in nature; This trend advocates earlier involvement in the production of spaces by participating more actively in architectural programming. They are focused on implementing standards, norms and regulations. The fourth is analytical in nature. It views architecture and urbanism not so much as experimentations with forms and spaces but rather as analytical fields capable of rendering visible social or economic problems and contradictions. Lately, they have developed a growing need for a scientific and interdisciplinary approach because of the increasing complexity of the large scale. The fifth is narrative in character, the most controversial. Its objective is to develop a utopian narrative based on critical research using architectural drawings or different mediums like film. However, it can reach a wider audience beyond the architectural discourse, exhibitions, and publications. There is no critical practice between activism and autonomy to this point. The trends are usually at one of the poles. Even if there is one in between, none established a manifesto, like Frampton did in critical regionalism. It is not reasonable for a debate originally to group the thinking trends to generate a manifesto for each of them. However, the architects who inherit these trends in their work should develop more in-depth writing about it, how it is realized, its limitations, and why it is crucial to this time? Moreover, some others should start to investigate the possibilities between the poles, as mentioned in the previous text, in an attempt to have a more comprehensive understanding of the situation.
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+ Swati On the same day, the 17th of May 2022, Swati Janu gave us a lecture titled “Three provocations on the role of the architect: being an activist l, archivist and community facilitator.” Swati Janu is an architect, writer, and community artist based in Delhi whose work engages with housing rights and urban informality in Indian cities. Her social practice combines architectural activism, community engagement, policy advocacy and design pedagogy. A graduate from School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, Swati also holds an MSc in Sustainable Urban Development from University of Oxford, UK. She has taught design at Ambedkar University, Delhi and School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi.
India has insufficient urban planning, which leads to increasing land prices and causes unaffordable housing; this phenomenon causes people to build their own houses, consequently creating informal settlements. These informal settlements are illegal, and the government takes them down wherever it can. Due to the current situation, Swati questioned her practice as an architect in India. However, she knew that what was happening was not right, and these people needed to have their own rights. Through her practice and belief in doing so, three possibilities for an architect emerged. As an archivist: As people’s houses were demolished, there was an urgent need to document the places and the houses of these people. As an activist: In India, there was evacuation for farmers in favor of a new masterplan on the riverfront full of bike lanes and public parks built on productive urban farming lands. An architect/activist must be there. Show people that this is not the right thing to do. She designed a master plan collectively with a design team and 56 local farmers that provided people leisure spaces on the riverfront without sacrificing productive lands. Finally, they proposed the master plan for the government as a counteraction to what was happening. As a community facilitator: the fact of engaging 56 local farmer families in the master plan is the perfect example of being a community facilitator as an architect. Moreover, a school was demolished in a new development plan. However, the local people got permission for a temporary school. Swati and her team talked to the children and involved them in a temporary school design and construction that could be assembled, dissembled, and moved somewhere else. What architects like Swati is doing is far from architecture design. It’s a form of survival, a fight to provide an adequate quality of living for everyone. It resists the forced change of late capitalism. Her work and theory resonate with Francis Kere - the recent Pritzker Prize winner - when he said: “I considered my work a private task, a duty to this community. But every person can take the time to go and investigate from things that are existing. We have to fight to create the quality that we need to improve people’s lives.” Swati’s work is also considered an activist slant, the first architectural thinking trend of Positions on Emancipation book Introduction. It manifests the first thinking trend in a more practical manner. and I want to finish this with an important question “do we will have to keep this resistance forever, or will there be any end to this situation soon?”
Modskool Rebuilding by Swati Janu
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Note to Self; Conclusion Youssef Yasser
on// All the Previous Content; The Journal.
Week12
31, May 2022
Please meet:
Message to myself and the Final Conclusion.
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I think at the end of this. Architecture is beyond a simple compression in some paragraphs; it is more than that; it is life in a sense. More precisely, it is the domain in which life operates. Whether technically or poetically, it is a lot of things that have infinite manifestations. What truly makes an architect: is their positioning in these infinite possibilities, the critical understanding and practice of architecture through their interests and conditions. for me, this painting by Lebbeus woods closely represents the positioning of the architects in the field throughout their lives. Where the black canvas represents the infinite possibilities, the variated white lines represent the practice of each and every architect in a sense. Some might be rebels, others solely pragmatic, some are poetic, a few are philosophers, and a lot are recyclers and occasionally a Nihilists or lost. Whether concisely or not, each of them chose a dogma that represents themselves and defines their practice. Even these dogmas are subject to change; moreover, they can pick multiple dogmas interchangeably. This was the story of architectural practice from the beginning to the present, and, I believe till the end of the future. Finally, this puts an ethical and profound question/load on me to define my own practice that didn’t start yet or frankly started a while ago! I found out that I don’t like the work of Swati or Kamara that much, nor the theory of Frampton that architecture is not an art and the limitations of space and context. Not because I don’t believe it, but because I love to create. I love the buildings of Siza, Alto. Frank Gehry’s mess and Hadid’s interiors. I prefer furniture design over interior design. I love creating things with no rules and are not bound by limitations! I define myself as a multi-disciplinary artist. I use photography, film, graphics, writing, and apparently, architecture to express and communicate my ideas and beliefs? What I just realized is that my ideas and beliefs are not maturely comprehended yet. Through the practical practice and philosophical stance, I need to define a direction for my path that I believe in using what I love the most. Film, photography, Writings, Graphics, and Architecture.
Conflict Space 3 by Lebbeus Woods
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