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Grounds and envelopes
Thirty Projects
Thirty selected projects are portrayed in this part of the book. These projects adopt a variety of different approaches to the questions of grounds and envelopes. Half of these projects address the question of ground while the other half addresses the question of envelope. Some projects even combine interesting approaches to both ground and envelope. The different ground-related projects address questions of continuous, multiple and provisional grounds. They often either accentuate existing terrain conditions such as slopes or embankments and incorporate landscape features as an integral part of the architecture, or, in cases where terrain articulation has already been erased by human intervention, construct new grounds and tectonic landscapes. The envelope-related projects demonstrate how the multiplication of envelopes and/or the deepening of the threshold between exterior and interior can offer transitional and interstitial spaces that provide a broader range of environmental conditions and habitational potential. None of the selected projects coherently and decisively embodies the various aspects and traits of intensely local and embedded architectures that are addressed in the reflections of the first half of the book. Nor is it the intention that this initial discussion reflects and contains a definitive set of traits that could be used as some sort of handbook for design. On the contrary, each thought and each project is an invitation to critically reflect and to boldly project further. It is an invitation to neither let architectural discourse exhaust itself in specialist deliberations, nor to allow it to become entirely insubstantial. After all, architecture co-defines how one dwells, relates to, interacts with and transforms our shared environment: it is one key factor in the rapid changes that our world undergoes and in which architecture plays a central role, whether one wants it or not. Thus architects and clients alike cannot reasonably deny responsibility. However, for architecture to be exciting, relevant and responsible, doom and gloom seem not to be the best approach; instead one may look forward optimistically fuelled by the fact that there are indeed many projects that are worth looking at carefully and that can contribute en route to non-discrete architectures.
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Grounds
Project 1
Brazilian Pavilion
Osaka World Expo 1970, Osaka, Japan, 1969
Paulo Mendes da Rocha
World Expos and similar high-profile venues appear not to be the first places that come to mind when searching for projects that may be considered to be non-discrete architecture. What one associates instead with such events are highly idiosyncratic architectural projects designed to stand out even in a dense context of a large ensemble of similarly expressive objects. In so doing, World Expos tend to more and more resemble today’s urban condition in booming locations: increasing amounts of eccentric architectures that accumulate to a fabric of folly, yet one that is built to last. The Brazilian Pavilion, designed by Paulo Mendes da Rocha for the Osaka World Expo 1970 located in Osaka, Japan, is one of the few unexpected exceptions to this engrained pattern in that it withdraws from the cacophony of eccentric objects and instead engages a continuous if constructed ground condition in the articulation of space and an extended threshold condition. There is almost no real object to behold. The plot for the pavilion was located along the northwestern perimeter of the Expo site and close to the Monorail station, the Expo’s main mode of transport. Given this location, the site could be thought of as both an entry to the Expo beyond and an experience en route.
1.1 Four views of a scaled model of the Brazilian Pavilion. The way the model is made evidences that the ground is thought of as continuous and as actual ground and not as object. The canopy constitutes the only object-like architectural element but does not amount to a built volume. The project is accessible along its entire perimeter. Copyright: Paulo Mendes da Rocha.
The project constituted, in the words of da Rocha, ‘a reflection, in the realm of architecture, on the relationship between nature and construction’ (da Rocha 2007: 74). However, instead of insisting on foregrounding the opposition between nature and construction, the project presents an attempt towards their explicit integration by way of a constructed landscape with architectural features and a spatially articulated thick ground. A concrete canopy with glassed bands covered a constructed undulating landscape. Beneath the landscape surface and connected by ramps, a small theatre, exhibition space and utilities were located. Landscape surface, ramps and below-ground surfaces in the burrowed space were articulated as a seamless transition with no real terminal locations and instead a continuously extended threshold. The sections were key to the development of a continuous yet particularized space that featured different characteristics: compressed and locally grounded by the combination of the landscape and sheltering canopy, and burrowed space set within a thick ground. The combination of shelter and burrow and the spatial transition and fusion via the continuous landscape surface is of specific interest, as through these means the entire project constitutes an extended threshold in which surfaces that have some sort of enveloping function step back and are unassuming, and no architectural object is discernible except for the canopy. In addition, the glassed bands in the canopy enabled shifting bands of sunlight that animated the constructed and continuous landscape surface beneath. Abstract land form, a continuous yet sectionally particularized space, a continuous (landscape) surface and a transition from a sheltered to a burrowed space appear in a particular line of projects in da Rocha’s work, such as the unbuilt Caetano de Campos Education Institute (1976) or the Brazilian Museum of Sculpture (MuBE) (see p. 87). Such projects clearly de-emphasize the architectural object and integrate the architecture within an extensive landscape design.
1.2 Various sketches of the Brazilian Pavilion by Paulo Mendes da Rocha. The sketches convey a dune-like landscape framed in its horizontal extent by the canopy and light touched by structural elements. Copyright: Paulo Mendes da Rocha.
What is interesting to note is a condition brought to light when colour images of the scheme were made available: the ground is painted flamboyantly in the colours of the Brazilian flag but the canopy is left in its exposed raw state. This feature is not evident in the typical black and white photographs of the project under construction that are best known today and that are preferred by Mendes da Rocha, thus indicating that he may not have approved of the colour scheme. In consideration of this feature it is of interest to speculate further and to pay some attention to the specific way in which the constructed landscape meets the extended surface of the surrounding context. One may consider three different versions: (1) clear demarcation of the extent of the constructed landscape by changing materiality and coloration of the ground surface at the border of the plot; (2) continuation of the surface material and coloration of the surrounding context throughout the project; (3) gradual change in the materiality and coloration of the ground surface from the border towards the centre of the plot. The first and actually built version emphasizes the discreteness and objectness of the scheme in spite of the existence of a continuous space, based on the perception of a demarcation line between project and context. The second version would operate on the perception of some kind of contraction of the context into an unfamiliar configuration. The third version would operate on the perception of a gradual movement
1.3 Five sections of the Brazilian Pavilion. The sections reveal both the continuity of the ground surface and the fact that the ground is constructed. T...
