A Pattern Language

The pattern language is a combination of 253 patterns that can be seen and utilized in current and future design. He refers to it as A pattern language, meaning that there are other pattern languages and there are other ways to talk about pattern in our designs. He does however still have this “end all be all, this is it” mentality. He encouraged and encourages people to add to it in the future.

What do we mean when we say pattern language? Pattern comes in a variety of form. Pattern is using a single element repetitively and that element can come from a variety of sources (i.e. columns can be used in a pattern so it has a motion or experience.) Landscaping has pattern within it (shrubs as a wall, stacked and layered / garden layers in the gestalt of the building.) The purpose of this language was to say, Take this book. It’s organized in greatest city and regional scale to the minute detail.

Central Point Trax station, Pattern of Fence, Trees and Train as Layers

When they made the pattern language at UC Berkeley they identified a problem, or something that they saw that they felt wasn’t right or could use some refinement, then they used a pattern to correct it.

In doing this exercise in class we chose different problems on campus we would like to see address and used 3 steps.

Step 1. Identify problem.

Step 2. How do we correct it with a pattern?

Step 3. Correct the problem and see how it works.

One problem I have with campus is that there’s a discontinuity of flow between buildings, almost giving the buildings an island effect. The school of Architecture and the school of Business is a good example. The business buildings communicate with each other based on their orientation and the Spencer Eccles talks more to the business class building than the architecture building talks to the business class building, but they are the same distance apart. There is a pathway between the architecture and business building that students treat as a road with two skyscrapers on either side that they can’t go into. The problem is that there is no reason to recognize the buildings and connect them together. You might as well be in a canyon that you want to get out of.

This can also apply to buildings between each other in the city. They talk to each other based on their main tying feature of being a skyscraper with certain features. In the last 30-40 years, buildings are all glass curtain, boxy, square angles, and that is the conversation in the area. Buildings in this area talk to each other and have flow, but buildings that are different are set apart do not flow. I identify this discontinuity between buildings that might not look the same but are equidistant to each other as an issue on campus and in cities as whole.

So what do you do? How do you connect them together? We can look at examples of this separation and in my eyes, it is because of pathways. It’s a two-way road between the buildings. When people walk down the road they’ll walk down one side. It is also a main service vehicle entrance to the campus and may as well be a road. But how can these buildings separated start talking to each other?

Highline walkway melts away

Looking at paths and passageways that are rectilinear and rigid but have done more than just be a simple path, we start looking at examples like the highline in New York. The highline is an interesting thing that people forget about why it’s so cool. It does have turning and twisting, not much, based on the turning radius of a subway train. It’s a rigid restriction, but if you walk down it you can’t imagine that you’re in a restricted area. The 50 foot wide subway platform doesn’t change throughout the park, but it doesn’t feel like a consistent 50-foot wide space. It feels like the space is constantly changing, fluid, and organic—not linear and in the middle of NYC nonetheless. It’s beautiful and necessary, in my opinion.

Highline Bench and Lookut

The highline in the context of the architecture/business building issue can be applied. The path has objects and things that are coming off and around it that break the linear travel down the path. Maybe it’s landscaping, maybe it’s a bench that rises from the pathway. The pattern solution to the problem of “how to tie buildings together” is concentric engagement. If you can have levels of engagement surrounding a building, then the buildings will flow better together and the pathways will acknowledge that engagement. There needs to be a reason to stop on the pathway, and engagement will do that. Less walls (think juniper bushes) and more invitations (benches, entrances) into the building.

All in all patterns are always around us being used to solve issues. We can use that same process everyday to improve our lives and develop the language of patterns that we can use.

Firmitas, Utilitas, Venustas

Vitruvius’ virtues of architecture; firmitas, utilitas, and venustas, are one of the oldest methods used for evaluating the success of a structure. The closest English translations would be structure, utility, and beauty. Structure includes how it’s constructed, the method or style of construction and the materiality. Utility is primarily its function; as an example looking at a free-flow design of a more modern approach to what a room is, a room can be a separation of utilities (i.e. kitchen/living room in one with an island as the separation). And finally venustas, which is from the Greek goddess Venus, goddess of beauty, is the aesthetics of a building.

Aesthetics has always been an important topic for me because aesthetics has everything to do with personal opinion and personal experience. Looking at my personal experiences recently, I went and toured a few of the Utah Valley Parade of Homes. The parade essentially is a number of construction and build/design companies that make these over the top extravagant homes for clients. The homes are touted as having multi-million dollar price tags and features that are in no way necessary but add to the allure of it being a “beautiful home”.

Looking at one of these homes in particular, it has a 7+ million dollar price tag. The home is nearly 20 thousand square feet, primarily due to a combination of 3 different rooms, namely a basketball court under the garage as well as a racquetball court and then the garage itself. The vertilitas of this home as an evaluation through the lens of Vitruvius is really nonexistent and pointless as a resident and as a mechanism for the family. This is purely extravagance and, was it done well? I really don’t think so. There is no utility or useful thing in relation to its residents. Does the home flow well? Generally speaking, sure. You can make a big old loop of the house and not see the same room or cross paths twice. That’s great, but really the utility isn’t there. The ultity of this home would be there if it was a 10-person family who did all of those things (basketball highs school super star, kids are great rock climbers) is a whole other topic and utility but do you need these things even if you can afford it?

The fermatas for this home, and my biggest argument of the parade as a whole is, not designed by architects who have evaluated some nice building techniques to apply to the home or the space. It has everything to do with a construction method, construction company using traditional building methods to form how this home will be constructed. It still just looks like a regular Ivory home constructed at a massive level. The fermatas elements that went into designing the home had every to do with “this is what we want, this is our basic site layout, and this is the method we’re going to do it” the design of the home did not inform the method of construction, the method informed the design for the home. The structure of this home (other than the basketball and racquetball court) is not really all that complicated. It’s not impressive; it’s just well paid for. The structure is not impressive. It is a standard home on a greater scale and exaggerated in every way.

The venustas is just an exaggeration of a standard home. This says, “I am wealthy. I am worth more than you or your home.” And this has everything to do with the quality and the involvement of trims and packages that aren’t necessary. In this home there is a drop box frame coffer ceiling. What is the point of that? It looks good, I guess, but box frame was developed because structures were built with eaves that spanned the length of the ceiling as a structure piece to hold up heavier stuff (brick, ceiling, other floors and rooms), and since this home is not built this way the ceiling has all the features that are 100% false, fabricated, and unnecessary. All it says is “this home is worth a lot of money and I have a lot of money to spend.” It’s one thing to design a certain number of rooms for people to have certain features like a weight room, court, or pool house.

I think this home is worth maybe 2 million in this in construction and 5 million in trims, which is sad. This says that these people spend extra literally on additives and things that maybe to them will persist as being good looking, but I don’t see that being the case for even residents of Utah Valley which want to be here or be in their “favorite home.” I don’t think in 15 years this design and overall aesthetics will accomplish what it has set it out to do. In 15 years it will look tacky. The style, or the introduction of “nicer building and construction techniques” will make it outdated.

Vitruvius evaluated homes, structures designs, and buildings using these three ideas. And it’s extremely helpful for us to evaluate as designers and as people. We ask ourselves: is what we’re looking at and experiencing here really accomplishing what we want it to.

Picture: http://utahvalley360.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/UV-Parade-Feature-930×310.jpg

Eyes on the Street

I had the fortune of finding Jane Jacobs early on in my pursuit towards becoming an architect. I was enthralled with the idea of this battle between Jacobs and Moses.

Moses was THE city planner architect responsible for many of the bridges into Manhattan, but Tunnels did exist at the time he was designing. Moses felt like bridges were a more visual and visceral experience involved in personal vehicle automobile traffic. Unfortunately they take up more space and destroy the interior of the city. My wife and I were able to go to NYC and we walked the Brooklyn Bridge and one of the only reasons that we went so deep into the city was to physically get on the bridge as pedestrians. He really wanted to whitewash the city into a clean and streamline feeling.

Moses’ Plans

Jacobs had this mentality, and a correct one in my opinion, that the unique elements of the city are what make the city what it is. Old and new, multiple uses, all hours. What currently existed in the city in all it’s parts made the city. Some people mistakenly think she had no interest in development of any kind but she was never opposed to newer buildings and services. She did however want it to be controlled. She wanted to see a good gradient of new to old.

One of the key points that came from this diversity was the idea that the city street and sidewalk need eyes on it at all times for the protection and experience of the city. If you have people of the streets at all times of the day for different purposes than more eyes will be on the street and it will be safer. Wall street is an example of failure of eyes on the street. There is a large influx of people at the start and end of the day and lunch, but any other time there is no reason to be in the financial district. It becomes a ghost town and all that expensive space is wasted and underutilized. The city is safest and strongest when there are people using it for different reasons at all times.

This prompted in my mind a challenge we face as architects. We have these structures that we are designing and when we design them we’re really giving up on this whole concept that this buildings has anything to do with it’s surroundings. There is no integration between these spaces. We as designers need start to look at the surrounding buildings and streets and features and say what if we were able to have some design feature that is currently present in your structure and have it speak to what were designing over here. We need to Incentivize our surrounding adjutancies. If we can integrate ourselves, no longer is there this discontinuous feel or sensation or appearance it’s this injection of our design into others and others design into ours. Its no longer just what can I do currently to push my design to speak to everything around it, but it’s what can everything around me do to speak to my design here. I think that’s an important thing that current development isn’t doing or resolving. Then we no longer have these islands of buildings but we have a web of structures that flow together.

Incentivized Adjancencies

Picture: http://i1.wp.com/99percentinvisible.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/robert-moses-highway-plan.jpg?resize=530%2C407

To Ornament isn’t Crime

One thing I love about Loos is his passion. To be so fired up and upset about decoration would be an interesting sensation to say the least. But as he describes his point of view I can understand it more and more.

He begins by ascribing the Papaun society and it’s cannibalism and tattoos to an infant society and that we as a developed and more advanced society have progressed past this state of degeneration to a position of removed ornamentation. He even states that in our current society, “if someone who is tattooed dies at liberty it means he has died a few years before committing a murder.”

Papaun Warrior

While this is a gross exaggeration and inaccuracy of people with tattoos of course, his point is that ornamentation is the result of baser urges to visually display your personality and presence. But ultimately we as a society and culture are far better the more ornamentation we are capable of removing especially from objects and structures of utility.

Additionally Loos explains how ornamentation wastes time and effort and materials and is therefore a crime. To say to the Cobbler, your show is more sturdy when wing tips are on it is a lie and the ornamenting process a waste of his ability. In Loos’ eyes if he could be free to hand made his shoes without time spent decorating it, then not only would he refine that craft of a well made show but the craft work itself is the ornamentation and is worth the cost. The cobbler then will make more and earn more based on the utility of his product.

The Hand made shoe

While I agree with the fact that ornamentation can distract or mask the craft behind a product to say that ornamentation is a crime is truly an exaggeration as a society that values appearance. We can however begin to remove ornamentation in an attempt to be economic and to express the real quality of our services and skill.

Pictures: http://41.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0z3f73VXI1qcaiw9o1_1280.jpg,http://blog.krrb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Laughingcrowe-Leatherworks-Shoemaking-Class3.jpg

Architect as Tool (Westward Moving)

In the Westward Moving House, J.B. Jackson narrates an evaluation of the differences and similarities between generations of those experiencing American Westward movement. The terminology used by Jackson is inextricably linked with the concept of the American Westward Expansion. During this important era in American History the Frontier represented self-creation and the ability to form your own destiny. As we’ve grown as a nation to fill this continent and to establish an order to our society through governments, we have slowly transformed. We’ve transformed from self-producers to communal consumers. To some this innovation has created a society of dependents, while others suggest it as a progression into a higher mentality of thought and modernization. Considering the benefits of this mutually dependent existence, we now have time to attend university, to research, to invent, which previously were only reserved to the wealthy and to the cause of necessity. We have in a way simplified the physical frontier and are now pioneering technological frontiers intended on solving the world’s problems and future proofing our current way of life. But the heart of the frontier is still ever present in our hearts as a people and as ones who have been given the rare chance to dwell in this society.

Rifkinds Therapy

I was able to evaluate the The Long Island House by architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien and the residents the Rifkinds. To the Rifkinds their home is used as a refuge from city life within the Hamptons. In their home time is passed rather than collected, while memories are collected as the rest of the world passes them by. Their home then is an anchor for transformation, a sort of transition from the reactionary city lifestyle to one of reflection and communication. Improvement of emotion and clarity of mind can only be achieved by being there. What purpose would it otherwise serve? Why it’s deliberate creation and the hiring of a professional designer just for somewhere to be? The Rifkinds as clients helps represent their economic and social standing and creates a bridge from the world we currently live in of specialization and our ability to find success and meaning in a life otherwise devoid of a traditionalist view of self-sufficiency, to the past of exploration.

The architect has in our current society become the extension of the client’s personality, like a tool to construct a home as much as a hammer is a tool to construct a home. In this train of thought we can then evaluate the design of the home as still holding true to the self-creation of the American Frontier and it’s design as a valid response to the need to settle the wild.

Self Disclosure (Intimacy) Gradient

Hall speaks of the hidden dimension that we all exist within as social beings. There are certain spaces around us that act as cues for the interactions we feel we should engage within. The 4 spaces are as follows from furthest from us.

12’ and further from us requires very little interaction. We engage very little verbal communication and mostly body language. We only really at best want to address the individual and that is the depth of are conversation and reactions due to both the distance and the volume of our voices to reach them.

4’-12’ begins to be more business. We are close enough to converse but about nothing we hold value to. How’s your day, where are we going for lunch but at least at this level we don’t need to raise our voice higher than normal. This range is good enough for chit chat.

As someone draws nearer between 18” to 4’ we start to get more personal. We are able to lower our voices and still be heard in the event something private needs to be shared and we start to speak about personal things and share details about ourselves. We are able to feel comfortable with the other person the more we stay within this range.

And finally the Intimate space from 0”-18” is where we can break down barriers of emotion and begin to really share all of what we are feeling and being. It’s closer than arm’s reach and usually involves some touching. This is usually done intentionally and due to not feeling comfortable with others, it is done with out permission.

The reason I address these in reverse order from how it’s normally ordered, is because this is how we experience halls research. The range of emotion and conversation we experience as someone approaches us and we willingly engage with them in closer and closer proximities is extremely personal and unique. We all accept it at different speeds and levels and distances.

Distance increases level of self disclosure

In our society people are generally more rewarded for being able to close these gaps and barriers faster but most people do not feel comfortable rushing through this gradient.

We as architects have an important responsibility to control the spaces we make in order to accentuate and identify where these interactions should and shouldn’t be used. We have the responsibility of others emotions and experiences.

Awkward Adolescent Utah

Frampton as a more recent progressor of architectural theory speaks about tectonics and critical regionalism. He talks about how architecture is too caught up in the visual elements of how it is design with little recognition of the site or of the method of construction. “Architecture should be very site specific and that’s how architecture is purposeful”. Culture and climate should change the use of materials accordingly for example; you wouldn’t build an adobe home in Alaska. It is interesting to see that current architectural trends suggest we should be critical regionalists.

Frampton also juxtaposes the concepts of Topos, Typos and Tectonics. As an example in Utah we can address them in the following ways:

Vendiagram of successful building

Topos (Site and Region): Size of land. Climate. Earthquake. Slope. Material. Valley

Typos (type and style): ivory home, brown stucco, zone driven, faux craftsmen, sub-urbanism and large families, ski resorts, national parks,

Tectonics (Materials of the Region): pine, granite, copper,

Adolescent Utah

As Jordan Hogenson and I were first starting out the semester we were riding the Frontrunner south from the University and asked ourselves what is the identity of Utah? It has a relatively short history of design and little more that pioneer homesteads for classicism. Ever part it would seem is an adaptation from other regions. Nothing seems unique to Utah. We concluded that Utah is an adolescent in nature as a design space. It isn’t brand new in it’s development but it is certainly not matured. It is in this awkward phase of trying to realize what it is. I suppose that is an exciting thing for us as designers in Utah, because it means we can being to shape it’s course and provide it’s direction should we choose to stay here.

Picture: http://jhsdiggernews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/salt-lake-city-valley.jpg

Competency Press

I find it most informative to build into Lawton from Hall. Lawton developed the Competency Press Model. The competency press model suggest that there is a limited range of comfortable and engaging spaces depending on a persons ability to utilize and understand that space.

Compentency (Environmental) Press Model

Normally we design for people of high competency meaning that all their senses and cognitive functions still exist and are perfectly intact. There intelligence is sharp and there at a certain age of understand, almost at an adult level. But the world is made people of lesser vision and senses lesser physicality and mental function and age development.

Again speaking to halls intimacy gradient as well. We begin at 12’ and further away from us as public space and as we grow closer to others we are able to experience them more. But as Lawton addresses the unique Competencies of others this intimacy gradient begins to shrink especially in relation to older and aged people. The Soci-Cultitive space almost disappears and is replaced by Public space. The geriatric then need to be within 4’ to even being to address others or to be addressed.

Intimacy Gradient

We must then decide, what does the environment demand of you. This idea that our environment has a certain level of pressure that demands our attention begins to make us aware of our personal threshold for noxious stimuli or as described as the progressively lowered stress threshold.

The best way we can help alleviate this is to have clarity in our objectives as designers. When people have lowered competency, we will have a greater affect on them.

Pictures: Ecology and the Aging Process M. Powell Lawton and Lucille Nahemow, http://vhpark.hyperbody.nl/images/0/04/Intimacy_scale.jpg