More Change

Buildings may have 5 rates of change, but there are other kinds of projects that change at other rates. Some of them include:

• Tents and temporary structures for special events. These can be used for a couple of seasons, but the amount of time they can be used is affected by weather conditions. Most temporary structures trade air quality for insulation and are not designed to be used for extended periods of time.
• Tech buildings/floors: this isn't quite the right name, but many buildings have raised floors and/or lowered ceilings to hide the wires, etc. that come with technology. These spaces are accessible because tech needs change a lot and so they need to be accessible.
• Special event buildings. One great example of this is buildings for the Olympics. Stuff put up for the 2010 Olympics is supposed to look nice, but will only be used for a few weeks. To get around this, the stadiums and housing is actually designed for future use and is adapted for the Olympics. For example, the Athletes Village is going to be market housing after the Olympics. Although athletes don't have kitchen appliances in their spaces, the apartments will have room for them so they can be put in afterwards.

I think that microarchitectural articulations (MA's) should be tied to structure and movement through the building (that is, stairs & hallways) because they should not be changed through the life of the building. The whole point is they are designed so they don't need to be changed and so that any changes that do occur in the building in the future are directly affected by the placement of the MA's. If they are carefully and thoughtfully deployed, they can direct design alteration and additions to the building after the architect is no longer involved.

When architects design refits and additions to buildings, they always leave certain things as they are. In most cases the structure and some of the exterior walls stay the same. I think that if I use MA's in a design. they should be considered stable elements in a building in the same way as the structure is. They can't just be artistic frills or extras that are part of an architectural language: they need to be the meat of what the designer is saying. MA's underscore the primacy of inhabitants in a building.

Rates of change

So, yesterday I determined that I need to find the right program and site to showcase the MA's, and one of the ways to do this is to find a site that has a lot of programmatic variation. I thought about programs that vary from day to day, hour to hour, and seasonally. Unfortunately, while I am interested in buildings that vary from year to year it is not possible for me to forecast what program will exist in a building in the future, so I can't use it as a design criteria.

The speed of variation seems to be an important factor, and it ties into my argument. Adam Greenfield has an interesting article that talks about different rates of change in designed objects. Buildings have a number of layers that change at different rates from furniture that can be frequently changed with little expense, to foundations and structure that change infrequently because they are so complex and expensive. Fashion is one of the designed objects that changes the fastest because it is a badge that displays how how close the wearer is to the cutting edge: when the majority of people are wearing something, the trendsetter has moved on to prove that they have financial and stylistic access to the very newest.

My interest in this article is because I think I need to locate where microarchitectural articulations fit into this rate of change to get a better idea of what kind of program would best showcase what MA's are good at doing.
What is the rate of MA's? What is the rate of change in the building around them? How do the different parts interact?

Buildings can break down into the following rates of change:

1. Fastest: moveable furniture. Folding chairs/tables or chairs/tables on wheels can be moved several times in an hour. Their placement can change significantly during the day and the can be moved around to suite many kinds of programmatic needs. To respond to this constant movement, folding (or stacking) chairs/tables are cheaply made of lightweight material so they can be easily moved and replaced if they become damaged.
2. Fast: furniture. Most furniture can be moved with a certain amount of effort. The amount of effort, of course, is related to the scale of furniture. Desks, bookshelves, sofas, tables and chairs can be made of moderately heavy materials (wood is a favorite) and may be upholstered. Uphosltery is not a very durable material and will eventually show wear, but this is a trade for the increased comfort in a padded chair. Another example is the rubber chair used by Rem Koolhaas in the SPL: durability is increased by materials, but any material that is comfortable to sit in will not be as durable as one that is very hard.
3. Moderate: Partition walls. Partition walls are intentionally constructed to not be very durable. Often they are no more than 2x4's (or steel stud) with GSB and paint. This occurs because while they are very important in the programmatic breakdown of a building, partition walls need to change when the use of a building changes. A building partitioned with brick or concrete will not be able to adapt to new uses.
4. Slow: external cladding. The only reason that external cladding ever needs to be replaced is the reduced preformance caused by aging of materials. Roof shingles need to be replaced because they rot, caulking because the volitile gasses that keep it soft evaporate, wood because or rot and/or insects, tiles because of moisture ingress... The intent of an architect should be to minimize replacement of external cladding/envelope unless there is a very strong reason to do otherwise.
5. Slowest: Structure and vertical movement. These two parts of a building are often connected and I think it is because they are the two parts that, if they must be replaced, there is a need for a new building. While it is possible to replace structural elements in a building, it only happens if there has been an unexpected failure or if the building is significantly older than its projected lifespan.

Of these 5 rates of change, I think that MA's should be 4 or 5 -- slow or slowest. They are supposed to be flexible enough to respond to unanticipated needs.

Sticking and/or stuck

I set today aside as a day to work late. I was going to sit at my computer and sort out this program/site thing so everything was a little clearer. Yesterday I didn't spend very long at school, I figured, so I would really settle in today, do some work and sort some stuff out properly.

Sure.

So far I've caught on all the websites I visit, eaten lunch, read a whole archive's worth of comics and done nothing.

uh, yay?

Control freak seeks same

My friend AL is kind of a control freak -- I'm sure everyone in architecture is, since we try to design everything in the buildings our users inhabit. She argues that she wants to control every experience users have in her buildings, every moment, every action. Her buildings are great and she does this well, but I don't feel the same way. This causes problems. I don't feel comfortable masterminding every action of users in the buildings I design because I feel that when people can adapt and change the buildings they use they are more satisfied with their environments and develop affection for their spaces. I'm not a good enough designer to guess what might need to be changed in the life of a building, so I want to design for change, design in a way that lets users adapt the building to their needs so the building doesn't need to be torn down because it can't be changed. I don't think anyone is a good enough designer to guess what use a building might have in 50 years -- not even the great ones. The best we can do is design in a way that allows buildings to adapt.

This is part of where the microarchitectural articulations (MA's) come from. It seems like a contradiction: putting furniture scaled elements into a building that I want to last a long time. Wouldn't it make more sense to leave the space as open and unworked as possible? Some natural light and good ventilation might make this a good building. But buildings have people in them, and I don't think it's reasonable to pass the design buck to furniture when the building needs to accomodate users. No one wants to work in a giant warehouse: someone has to make decisions about dividing walls and ceiling heights.

These surfaces are an attempt for the architect to do that. They aren't walls and ceilings. Instead, they are elements that limit where walls and ceilings can go. In the same way as a fireplace in a room will affect where all the furniture goes, MA's suggest different types of use in spaces.

I'm not suggesting that a building be made up of MA's. They are most useful as hubs. Strategically placed combinations of MA's act as social condensors. They create the kitchen party. You know how when you go to a party, especially in a large space, people always cluster together at the least convenient place? It could be the kitchen or the bar, or maybe by the stereo (depending of course on the type of party). This is especially visible at parties in rooms that are basically big open spaces. The reason for this is the kitchen, or bar, or stereo area is often the only part of the room that is scaled to the person. It happens in big plazas too: the whole thing is just so damn big that people cluster at the edges.

So MA's can provide the kitchen at the kitchen party: the human-scaled part of a space. If it is done carefully, it should be possible for them to work in a wide variety of situations. A large courtyard, for example, could be activated by these dohickeys. This is why choosing the program and project for my thesis is so important.

I could stick MA's into a preexisting building -- something warehouse-y and souless, and argue that they give human scale and make the place more liveable. This could work because I would have to use them to mediate current programmatic needs of the building and there would be some constraints because the building already exists. There aren't a lot of really large buildings that work poorly in this way in Vancouver that I can think of, so I'm not sure what building I could pick.

I could design them into an otherwise warehouse-y and souless building and argue that they make it less of both of those things, but I would still need to pick a program and site, and there aren't enough parameters to make the project rigorous. I've proved that I can stick articulated surfaces together to create interesting spaces. What I haven't done is found a mechanism that will help me determine how they should go together. The warehouse-with-MA does not provide this. My thesis advisor, M, has suggested that I do a meta-building that will work with many different programs and can be deployed in different situations.

I could identify two physically demanding programs and merge them by using MA's that address both at once. This sounds great in theory, but I'm having a tough time working out what programs they could be. Some possibilities include:

• Something that varies seasonally: A building that is used for festivals, or where the use changes significantly with the weather. An ice rink?
• A swing space - varies unpredictably: there's one on campus at UBC already... and the thing about swing space at the school is that offices and classrooms are all the same, even if they are needed for different faculties.
• Something that varies by day; something that is used for different programs during the week than over the weekend. Some possibilities could be office space/farmer's market or something like that. What kinds of activities only happen on weekends? Grocery shopping? it's been so long since I've had a real weekend, I don't know.
• Something that varies by hour: I gues this could be a school that is used for something different in the evenings (what, I don't know), or office space that turns into something different at night... It's a tough call, because any place where people spend a significant amount of time is a place where they will want to leave things all over their desk/office/bedroom.

Of these, the seasonal variation sounds the most interesting. Maybe there is a way to create a rental space in one of the parks in Vancouver that can act as a bunch of things: a gallery, a party room, a place for festivals... but these programs still aren't physically demanding enough.

Again, something that bears further thought...

Muy Fantastico!

One of the things my advisor M suggested I do to get ideas for my thesis project was to make a list of things that are totally awesome and fantastic about these miroarchitectural articulations (or MA's). I'm much more critical than positive and tend to have problems arguing in favour of my ideas, but I thought I would give it a shot. So, in no particular order, here are some reasons MA's are the best thing evah.

• They provide a mechanism for architects to investigate the composition of solids and voids (a good exercise for architects, but it's unlikely that laymen would care)
• They encourage users to interact with the designed space (almost always a good thing, unless you have a problem with homeless people lying around your building)
• They add human scale to buildings (I think this is one of the best reasons to use them because the zoom capabilities of AutoCAD make it easy for architects to remember what size a person is in their building and so make spaces far larger than they need to be)
• They mediate between specificity and flexibility, allowing designers to create one space that encourages lots of different uses (this is the main argument in my Directed Studies)
• They encourage architects to use a new design strategy and work from small details up to a building (I like this one a lot because being an architect is all about having lots of different design strategies that you can deploy in different situations. They're the tools in our toolbox, and are far more useful than knowing how to use AutoCAD)
• They encourage playful interaction in buildings (this is similar to encouraging interaction, but the key word here is play. Because the surfaces are ambiguous, people need to think about how they might want to sit or work on them, and I hope that increased awareness of bodies in space will lead users to test their own physical boundaries and consider what is comfortable for them.
• They can be combined/assembled to fit any program and any site (not a great argument, because this is true of most design things)

I think of these, the idea of a different design strategy is the most interesting, then the idea of human scale, and finally the interaction argument. Of course, the point of MA's is that they allow architects to combine physically demanding programs in new ways. It's taken me a while to realize this, but I am comfortable arguing that surface articulations of this kind are most useful when programs that need permanent fixtures such as benches, tables, stairs, podiums, counters, chairs and risers are combined. An example of this could be the combination of a movie theater and a lunch counter (the second program still needs a little work, I think).

A movie theater has very specific physical needs. There must be seats, a screen, and some mechanism that allows everyone to see the screen (be that a raised screen or raked seating). A lunch counter has very different needs: a counter that is close to a kitchen and some kind of seating. Microarchitectural articulations are designed to mediate between these two programs and create possibilities for other, unrelated kinds of use.

Microarchitectural Articulations: Hubs

Microarchitectural articulations are most effective when they are placed together. This particular example combines a counter, some seating and a desk space (not visible) in a highly articulated area that can be occupied in various ways. The point is that because use is not immediately clear, users are able to project their own uses on the surfaces so that they fit in with changing programmatic requirements. This particular example is also playing with ideas of materiality: these surfaces have no depth and use rounded edges to investigate continuous surfaces.

Microarchitectural Articulations: Surfaces

I thought I would take a minute to post an image of exactly what I mean by a microarchitectural articulation. This example shows two ways of using a combination of solids and voids. When these are intersected with the envelope of a building, opportunities are created for users to inhabit the surfaces in a variety of ways that may not neccessarily be controlled by the designer.

The idea is that if enough variations of this kind are assembled, spaces can be inhabited in unexpected ways by users, but also support many different kinds of programs. MA's can be grouped to create hubs, and I think that the combination of different surfaces also provides opportunities for users to occupy them in new ways.

At the moment, the problem is that while I can assemble MA's in many different combinations there is no measuring device to say if it is correct or incorrect: there are no rules for them to follow or break. Hence the problem, hence the thesis, hence the blog.