Architectural Design III: Ideal Architecture, Storage (E.Christ/Ch.Gantenbein)

Abstract

The time spent in the home office has led, among other things, to the accumulation of trillions of bytes. The question of storage arises almost automatically. Starting from historical architectures of storage in Switzerland (HS), we discuss social, political and ecological questions of contemporary globalised flows of goods and data (FS) and try answer through an architectural design.

Objective

HS21 Ability to systematically analyse buildings from different eras and describe them photographically. The study and understanding of architectural rules, qualities and principles by means of graphic representations such as axonometries, plan representations with shadows and colours, but also photographs and models. FS22 Develop an independent, responsible and visionary attitude to a current social issue using the medium of (plan) collages. Ability to critically read and discuss (architectural) theoretical texts and relate them to the question. Developing an independent project that is coherent in terms of urban planning, typology and form, which deals constructively with the topic of reuse and is presented by means of a model and plans.

Content

Ideal Architecture: Storage We understand the issue of storage space as an urgent and constant problematic for all human societies in all historical periods. Form the prehistoric jars to the city of Delphi where the ancient Greeks stored for the first time in history of Europe writ-ten documents and personal belongings. From the primitive caves to the Knossos palazzo, from the roman corn warehouses to the Nevada desert, where the hidden side of our cloud society lies with his enormous amount of space used for data storage. The act of storing something has to do with the issue of the “standard” measure. Every epoch and every society culturally defines what their standards are, based on the very necessity of their historical time, and so the architecture of the storage space adapts itself to the ever-changing standards and thus evolves. For many periods the most import-ant conventions about storing were derived from the human body. From the weight a healthy person can lift to the way a hand reaches for an object, the body conditions storage. To categorize the things our society stores, is as vast as the society itself. Along most Swiss train tracks, one can observe form de-signed to hold materials in different consistencies. From liquid to aeriform to solids, from bulldozed bulk freight to stacked blocks, the physical forces demonstrate the movement and storing. In this semester we want to look closely at the architecture of storage in Switzerland. By means of fieldwork, drawing, reading, discussion and designing we will search for the ideal in storage and propose a collection of the most interesting storage buildings. We believe that these buildings, in addition to being a crucial part of any functioning of society, possess an underappreciated beauty, and that through typological mapping have the potential to shed light on the mechanism of the built world. SS22 REAL ARCHITECTURE: SPACE OF ACCUMULATION Accumulation describes the gradual gathering of elements. It is the law by which many great things operate, such as civilization, history, economy and not least the formation of planets. Architecture is also subject to the law of accumulation, as buildings do not appear in an instant, but are gradually put together on the building site. What are the pyramids if not an accumulation of stones? One possible answer would be to say that they are storage; an architectural response to accumulation as old as time itself. Is the traditional storage still valid today? What can spaces of accumulation mean for architecture? With the increased focus on accumulation of capital, goods and data in today’s society, you’d think that spaces of accumulation would be an essential part of our daily lives. Instead it is suspiciously missing from the public imagination, hidden away as some-thing necessary but unsightly. It’s true that the complexity and scale of accumulation can be unnerving and as the saying goes: you don’t want to know how the sausage is made. Nevertheless, could it be necessary to understand the sausage for a sustainable future? In our studio, using the knowledge from the previous semester on the ideal storage, we will combine the ideal and the real in order to speculate about how recycling meets tomorrow’s space of accumulation, because we believe that answering the question about the accumulation of the future means implicitly linking architecture to the necessities and urgencies of the world to come.

Resources