Practical Poetics in Architecture

Leon van Schaik

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781118828892
• eBook ISBN: 9781118828946
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

Integrate poetics into real-world spaces by bringing theory down to earth

Practical Poetics in Architecture takes poetics out of the theory class and into the design studio, showing architects how the atmospheric and experiential qualities of built structures can be intentionally considered and planned. With an emphasis on analysing and explaining the sensibility of poetics at work in designing and constructing architecture, this book features projects from architects around the world that demonstrate the principles of poetics come to life. The rich illustration of two hundred colour images, including analytical diagrams, plans, sections, and photos, make this insightful guide a highly visual foray into a topic that has thus far remained more theoretical than practical. The text is matter-of-fact and concrete, yet remains richly connected to its forbears and the writings of William Lethaby, Gaston Bachelard, and Steen Eiler Rasmussen. The perspective is contemporary in its examples and its connections to the evolving science of perception.

An established seminar topic in theory classes around the world, poetics tends to rely heavily on classic philosophic texts — until now. Practical Poetics in Architecture brings theory down to earth to show architects how to invoke poetics when designing real projects.

• Integrate poetics principles into real-world designs
• Consider atmosphere in terms of form, space, and acoustics
• Study actual projects that bring poetics into real spaces
• Take cues from analytical diagrams of projects accounting for context

Poetics — the accumulated experience of place, space, and culture — has become more critical in recent years as the atmospheric and experiential qualities of built spaces have become more elusive in the virtual age. Practical Poetics in Architecture provides real guidance for real projects, and brings poetics out of the mind and onto the plans.

1
Making Home

‘Making home' is the fundamental basis of architecture. As in other fields of human endeavour – music, literature, sport, cooking – there is a continuum between what people do every day and what the most skilled professionals do. Economists argue that all of industry is outsourced domestic activity. If architecture is the elite expression of everyday acts of domesticating the world, then it is no more elite than is the opera singer or pop star we admire as we sing in the shower, the football star we think of as we kick a ball with our children, or the famous chef whose risotto we attempt to replicate at home. The architecture of making home, when understood, enables everyone to engage knowledgeably in the continuum of spatial thinking. Here is a range of exemplars that reveal architects working through differing poetic thresholds to create accessible architecture.

Feary + Heron, Plant Room, Eagles Nest, Zennor, Cornwall, ongoing

Treehouse, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

Richard Blythe, 2013

Architect and educator (Dean of Architecture and Design at RMIT) Richard Blythe, like Anaximander the Greek philosopher, argues that the making of a model precedes thinking about meaning in designing. Here Blythe uses mathematics to create a model and think that through into an architecture that does not symbolise an idea.

What are architecture's beginnings? This question haunts every consideration of the nature of architecture, its particular reality: what differentiates it from unselfconscious building.¹ To grasp the creative mind at work, consider the architect as a reader of texts, using ‘texts' as a term that denotes what has been read by a particular architect; consider ‘to read' as an expression for what has been absorbed from the culture the architect inhabits. Consider also the human capabilities or ‘human-givens' that the architect brings to that reading.² These givens are better and better described by science,³ have evolved over millennia and we all share them. Readings however are specific to every individual and if we want to understand a work of architecture we have to map the readings of its architects. That is why ontologies in architecture are so hotly disputed. Does architecture begin in a cave, when stones and boulders are rolled into a circle around a fire and sleeping platforms are carved into the softer flanks? Does it begin when branches or fronds are stacked against the trunk of a tree to make a circle of shelter? Or does it begin when saplings are bowed down into an arc and green wands of growth are woven between them?

Leon van Schaik, research ideogram, 11 February 2014 Drawn at the conclusion of researching the project.

Probably we cannot know, because while archaeology unearths the things that have shaped our minds,⁴ it barely hints at the spaces that have shaped our spatial intelligence.⁵ We could explore these old disputes, but best begin with a work of architecture: consider a treehouse designed and built for his two daughters by architect Richard Blythe. As we examine his drawings we discern the specific intelligence he brings to bear, what he is reading, and we see what readings he avoids.

Note how sparse and factual the drawing is. First Richard measures up a copse of trees in a steep gulley along the bottom boundary of his site. He has a section in mind, he has selected a level for the treehouse floor, and he measures the tree trunks at this level. Three substantial trees on the closer bank are shaded in grey. One of these leans across the gulley in a trajectory shown here in plan – a long rectangle running to the lower left. Two others, more slender, further into the stream, are drawn as hollow circles. The limits of the canopies above are borne in mind. Between the trunks Richard strikes an axis parallel to the line of the stream, a line that bisects the space defined by the trunks. This is an act as old as our first attempts to understand the universe. Sketching in this space, his hand brings an ellipse to mind, an instinctive nesting form derived from our even more ancient habits of mind, and he anchors this to the axis. We see this floating easily in the copse. We see it tested for size. Is it habitable? Yes it is! The architectural idea has arrived.

Richard Blythe, Treehouse, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, 2013 The oval of the treehouse (photographed in 2014) nestles between the trunks of the trees – two hollow circles to the left, three shaded circles to the right.

Now notice the traces of the construction idea: four thin rectangles depict temporary scaffolding bolted to the trunks. One pole spans between the leaning (grey) trunk and its (clear) opposite number. Three others seek to brace this scaffold and form a platform on which the ellipse can rest. But this is not the structure. If it were – thinks Richard – this would be the treehouse he could have made as a raw boy, nailed inexpertly into the tree trunks, soon ripped apart by the movement of the trees. The ellipse must hang between the trunks. He seeks out tethering points: the ellipse will be hung on chains, more docked in the space formed by the trees than forcing them to become the structure. As the axis bisects the space, it bisects the ellipse, and it suggests a grid that forms the hardwood base platform of the treehouse. By now it is a hanging structure, much as the basket hangs from a hot-air balloon. This resonance is seized upon. The sides are hardwood strips woven between arced uprights, their arcs drawn freestanding to the left.

Richard Blythe, Treehouse, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, 2013 The treehouse suspended between the tree trunks.

The elliptical base is built in the driveway nearby, rolled sideways between the tree trunks and then rotated on its axis and lowered onto the scaffolding. Chains are attached, the scaffold is removed. The geometry holds and facilitates the construction idea.

Richard Blythe, Treehouse, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, 2013 The treehouse seen from the driveway where it was constructed before being rolled and then rotated into position.

Richard Blythe, Treehouse, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, 2013 The abstract purity of the elliptical form complements the trees; it does not mimic...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Making Home
• Chapter 2: Feeding, Body, Mind and Soul
• Chapter 3: Healing our City
• Chapter 4: Capturing Nature
• Conclusion
• Select Bibliography
• Index
• Picture Credits
• EULA