See Jia Ho

Harvard University | Graduate School of DesignMaster in Architecture (MArch I) | 2015

Portfolio

C o n t e n t s

1. Highrise...........................Fall 2015 (Thesis advised by Mack Scogin)...........................p.2

2. Field of Windows...........................Spring 2014 (Ciro Najle Studio)...........................p.24

3. Elements of Architecture........................Fall 2013 (OMA Rotterdam)..........................p.34

4. Urban Fiction...........................Spring 2013 (Danielle Etzler Studio)...........................p.36

5. Vertical Campus...........................Fall 2012 (Vincent Bandy Studio)...........................p.44

6. Greenhouses at Wellesley..................Spring 2012 (John Hong Studio).......................p.48

7. Brookline Athletic Center.................Spring 2012 (John Hong Studio)...................p.54

9. Hidden Room............................Fall 2011 (Cameron Wu Studio)...........................p.56

8. Gate Building..............................Fall 2011 (Cameron Wu Studio)...........................p.58

8. The Gatekeeper........................................A short story.............................................p.60

HighriseFall 2015 | Thesis advised by Mack Scogin

The following is an extract from my thesis book World(floor): Do Highrises Dream of Technicolor Floors? available on blurb.com:

This is a thesis project about a residential highrise building in Singapore. I never liked highrises, and I didnt know exactly why. It could be that I thought they were arrogant because of the unmistakable verticality that rises from a flat ground and the obviousness of human effort that erected such tall structures, but I also thought there was yet something else that bothered me about highrises. Far more than aesthetic appearances and questions of style it seemed to me that there is something limiting about the world they imply, contain and purport to be.

World - definition 1I started by approaching this question architecturally (or physically.) If the world is what we perceive with our physical senses (Definition 1: WorlD as physical experience), then it can

be said that the city dwellers world is the urban context. It is here where one experiences the city, the cars, people, signage, noises and all the paraphernalia of the city.

Vertical continuityDoes this city extend upwards with the skyscraper? In A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander talks about how after the fourth story a highrise inhabitant is no longer able to connect to the ground floor city context.

Above four stories these connections break down. The visual detail is lost; people speak of the scene below as if it were a game, from which they are completely detached. The connection to the ground and to the fabric of the town becomes tenuous; the building becomes a world of its own...- Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language

If we agree that the four storey limit applies, then the highrise after the fourth storey disengages from the urban context and becomes a world of its own.

fracture

In Delirious New York, Rem Koolhaas presented the 1909 theorem, a Life Magazine cartoon, as the prototype of the skyscraper with fractured floors.

Each of these artificial levels is treated as a virgin site, as if the others did not exist, to establish a strictly private realm [and] create at each elevator stop a different lifestyle and thus an implied ideology...The life inside the building is correspondingly fractured....Incidents on the floors are so brutally disjointed that they cannot conceivably be part of a single scenario.- Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York

The elevator enabled the addition of more and more floors in the sky, in that way it is the generating mechanism of the skyscraper. This mechanism works by way of a box that travels vertically, carrying passengers to each floor of the highrise. The elevator is the only thing that moves; the passengers are stationary. With the modern push-button smooth-travelling elevator, it can be said that the fractured floors of Theorem 1909 are expressed faithfully, each floor of a highrise is a different world to be

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entered into from the elevator portal. Each world is distinct from any other world in the building, they cannot be experienced as a single world.

World: floorThen, as such, a highrise building cannot exist as a world to be experienced as a whole; the experienced world is limited to the floor of the highrise, one at a time. The famous scenario of the naked oyster-eating boxers in the Downtown Athletic Club at first glance seems to illustrate the strangeness and excitement of the mashing together of worlds that could happen in a skyscraper, but I was somewhat disappointed by the realization that this is only the result of a single floor. The oyster bar, the locker room and the boxing ring are all on the 9th floor; architecturally, this does not require a highrise - the same scenario can take place in a one-floor building... But this is a good example of fractured world-floors, predicted in Theorem 1909. What then am I disappointed with? Why does the original cartoon hold so much more promise and imagination than the Downtown Athletic Club section?

World - definition 2Theorem 1909 seems to give the promise of a satisfying slice of world at each floor (Definition 2: WorlD as a set of components - grounD,

sky, air, scenery, habitation, urban

context.) Each floor is not treated as a floor in a building but as an entire landscape, or its own (sub)urban context. We see this actually illustrated in the cartoon that comes right after Theorem 1909 in Delirious New York, titled Cosmopolis of the Future. This is a more faithful development of Theorem 1909: the urban context is replicated in the air by the elevated and air-borne traffic systems. This is very different from the

Downtown Athletic Club where each floor is tethered to the ground floor urban context by the elevator.

replicationThis replication of the urban context in the sky is illustrated with great power in many science fiction movie backdrops (such as The Fifth Element) and in sci-fi futuristic art. These artworks are usually densely populated with moving vehicles, inhabitants, bridges and sky traffic systems that imply a great density of life and complex social interactions (congestion is desirable.) At every vertical strata, a great amount of activity is taking place, in effect the city exists at all levels. The ground floor has finally lost its status - in fact, there is no ground floor.

SkyTake my love, take my landTake me where I cannot standI dont care, Im still freeYou cant take the sky from me.-Opening theme, Firefly TV series

Light is a powerful substance. We have a primal connection to it. -James Turrell

We are born of light. The seasons are felt through light. We only know the world as it is evoked by light.-Louis Kahn

The history of architecture is the history of the struggle for light.-Le Corbusier

The necessity of sky (and with it sun and daylight) as a component of the world (Definition 2) cannot be understated. Sci-fi futuristic art is usually dark. The sun cannot be seen, the sky is glimpsed through gaps between infrastructure and the air is a perpetual fog. The level of daylighting in The Fifth Element cityscape cannot be achieved naturally. Worlds (Definition 2) in the dense sci-fi art are broken: the ground can be replicated

but not the sky.

obSerVation deckOn the other hand, Le Corbusiers Contemporary City for Three Million Inhabitants ignores ground replication. All movement and urban context is limited to the ground level, as it is in most cases today. Floors in the Contemporary Citys highrise towers are not complete worlds (Definition 2): lacking the urban context each is only an observation deck tethered to the ground floor. However, the important component sky that is missing in the each of the sci-fi citys broken worlds (Definition 2) can be experienced here. Because Le Corbusier did not bother to replicate the ground plane, he had no need to replicate the sky either - one sky is enough for one world.

World - definition 3The worlds discussed so far are physical. There is also a non-physical world (Definition 3: WorlD as experienceD in the minD.)

My first story had to do with a dog who imagined that the garbagemen who came every Friday morning were stealing valuable food which the family had carefully stored away in a safe metal container. Every day, members of the family carried out paper sacks of nice ripe food, stuffed them into the metal container, shut the lid tightly and when the container was full, these dreadful-looking creatures came and stole everything but the can. Finally, in the story, the dog begins to imagine that someday the garbagemen will eat the people in the house, as well as stealing their food. Of course, the dog is wrong about this. We all know that garbagemen do not eat people. But the dogs extrapolation was in a sense logical given the facts at his disposal. The story was about a real dog, and I used to watch him and try to get inside his head and imagine how he saw the world. Certainly, I decided, that dog sees the world quite differently than I do, or any humans do. And then I began to think, Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world, a world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans. And that led me wonder, If reality

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diff ers from person to person, can we speak of reality singular, or shouldnt we really be talking about plural realities?-Philip K Dick, How to Build a Universe Th at Doesnt Fall Apart Two Days Later

Many science fi ction novels and movies have been made regarding the multiplicity of worlds as experienced by individuals. Architecture has very little to do with this last type of world. A man with a book in a prison cell could have a larger world (Definition 3) than a man in a palace with nothing - how does one measure this world? Is it the necessities that make a suffi cient world? If there is a supermarket down the street, does this make a world? Or, one can live in a room with a computer and the internet without ever having to leave, is that a world? But, all things being equal, architecture could infl uence a Defi nition 3 world. If one man lives in a windowless basement while another in a light-fi lled apartment (assuming all other things equal including a preference for sunlight), we can assume that the second mans world is better. In this case, architecture defi ned a Defi nition 2 world (with sky as a component) which aff ected the Defi nition 1 world (physically sensed world) which in turn infl uenced the Defi nition 3 world (world in the mind). All defi nitions considered, it is a mistake to think that architecture cannot change the world.

World: floor - definitionMans physical constitution, and also his sense of orientation, is geared to predominantly horizontal movement. His life unfolds in horizontal expanse, and thus it is in confl ict with the vertical dynamics of all substance.- Heino Engel, Structure Systems

World: fl oor is an expression of World as fl oor - the world experienced as a fl oor; alternatively

written as World(fl oor) or the world which is the fl oor. Th e fl oor is defi ned as the inhabitable and predominantly horizontal plane, the result of the horizontality of mans movement (the world is what you walk on) and sight (the world is what you see), both related to the notion of ownership and possession.

World(floor) in tHeHiGHriSe Th e world(fl oor) concept is applicable universally beginning from fl at earth, but it becomes particularly prominent in the case of the highrise building where the mechanism of the elevator creates a distinct and unique world(fl oor) at each elevator stop. In a highrise building, each fl oor is its own world; there are worlds stacked upon worlds, and these do not interact or add up into a bigger world. In the existence of parallel worlds, our experience is limited to one.

expandinG tHe World(floor)methoD 1Expanding the fl oor height vertically or the walkable fl oor expanse horizontally.methoD 2Providing visual accessibility between fl oors.

I sought a few examples of various architects addressing the issue:

ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, 1992, OMA (Th e building) is composed of discontinuous and diff erentiated plans. Inside the rather cubic building, plans punctuated with the vertical struts of six-meter-deep Vierendeel trusses alternate with column-free plans to produce a stack of spaces that, like an architectural montage, evoke a series of radically diff erent architectural types, or the architectural equivalent of time travel. - Preston Scott Cohen, Successive Architecture Th e fi rst example is not at all about expanding the world(fl oor). Rem Koolhaas design for Karlsruhe accepts that fl oors in a building are

fractured, hermetic worlds, and does not attempt to subvert the condition. He designed each world to be diff erent and unrelated.

Jussieu Library, 1992, OMAIn this project, ramps and escalators are used prolifi cally to create a continuous ground plane in the building (method 1 & 2). As opposed to accepting hermetic worlds, it sought to puncture and melt the worlds together.

Guggenheim Museum, 1959, Frank Lloyd WrightA continous spiral as ground plane (method 1) attempts to create a building with just one world(fl oor.) In other words, Guggenheim can be said to function as a world(building). Th e void in the center of the building also functions as the atrium in John Portmans hotels (method 2), discussed in the next example.

Hotel Atriums, John PortmanRather than trying to make connected (inter-walkable) worlds, the atriums of John Portmans buildings bore holes through the world(fl oors) for purely visual connection; inhabitants of one world(fl oor) can see into another one (method 2). Th e staggering stacks of worlds that exist in a building are exposed. Th e glass elevators also make visible the mechanism of travel; it is no longer teleportation, but like a railway train there are windows and passing scenery.

Unit dHabitation, 1952, Le CorbusierTh e Unit has a shopping street located about halfway up the building, which is a fl oor stretched vertically to about two to three stories tall (method 1). Th e urban context is missing from this world (see World: Defi nition 2) at mid-building: there is no traffi c in or passing through to create business for the shopping street, which remained

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Site plan

East-west section with underground carpark

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mostly deserted.

Habitat, 1967, Moshe SafdieSafdie wanted every home to have a garden in a high-density housing complex: garden is here part of the (sub)urban context of the Definition 2 world which is replicated. In the sense that from one vertical strata other floors are visible (terrace scenario), it can be said to be a Method 2, together with open circulation stairways as Method 1.

Linked Hybrid, 2009, Steven HollHoll used skybridges to expand the world(floors) at certain stratas, linking isolated islands into a bigger walkable world(floor), creating a new ground plane condition in the air (method 1). The city context is however not replicated; there is simply not enough density, activity and players.

Renewal of Tsukiji District, Tokyo, 1966, Kenzo TangeKenzo Tange and the Metabolists wanted to save Tokyo which was becoming increasingly congested in the 60s. The Metabolists were concerned about moving things quickly and efficiently; in a pre-digital age, communication (the life-blood of the city) was strongly dependent on physical transport. In short, the Metabolist city is about a superefficient traffic system. Their bridges in the sky (unlike Holls bridges) are built for megacity density and movement - if realized, it will be a type of true replication of the urban context. (Method 1 can be seen here on a large scale.)

Hexahedron Arcology, 1966, Paolo SoleriIn Paolo Soleris Arcology, urban sectioning takes the place of urban planning. Public, City Center, Commercial, Residential and other zones are laid out vertically, occupying different stratas of this

world in a terrace condition (method 1 & 2). Because the context permeates every level, there are no observation decks here.

Hyper toWerSSoleris Arcology leads into a discussion of the so-called Hyper Towers, massive structures such as Sky City 1000 and X-Seed 4000 in Tokyo, or Friedrich St. Florians Vertical City - usually an entire city is contained within a building frame. If the city context is replicated at every major vertical strata (for instance, ever 4 or 5 storeys), the outcome approaches the scale of the Metabolist cities or the Hyper Towers. The monumental scale of the massive framework is inseparable from an image of power, which is very antithesis to the spirit of this age that resonates with individual freedom and choice. Other than that, there is also the question of material consumption and cost of construction.

tHe anti-Hyper toWerThe anti-Hyper Tower expands horizontally as much as it expands vertically.

builDing scaleAt the scale of the building, each floor is expanded vertically (see expanding the world(floor), method 1, p.59); each floor contains a world (see 3 definitions, p.20).

toWn scaleAt the scale of the town, bridges link each world(floor) to adjacent existing buildings at the same strata to create an extended world(floor) (see expanding the world(floor), method 1). At a further point in time, new buildings are built with a similar concept. As with existing buildings, bridges link each floor to create an extended world(floor).

city scaleThe city gradually transforms.

tHe caSe of tHe GotHic catHedral

Written in a rambling style, carelessly: Before I ever was an architect, I loved Gothic cathedrals. Not so much other things like Greek, Renaissance or Romanesque structures. For instance, I didnt feel much for the Pantheon. (Not to mention modern architecture, which I found inexcusably boring.) But I liked Baroque a lot, and even more so Rococo. In short, I was a lay person. I never let go of the fact that I was educated to appreciate modern architecture. It didnt make much sense to me, that something as

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North-south section with subway stations

Program diagram showing carpark, childcare center, food center, covenience store, residence

center, open spaces and green space

Site plans showing extended bridges linking elevator towers at different levels

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universal as architecture becomes an exclusive type of academic pursuit and acquired taste... at the worst moments I wondered if architects are content to just design for the appreciation of other architects; what about all the rest of the people? Is it worth a thought? It seems that in recent times more architects have given that a thought. We see the proliferation of ornamented facades - digital displays, lace, hexagonal structure, etc. Building form, massing and silhouette are also articulated to become a sort of ornament (if ornament is defined as that which is not structurally required but something for the eyes, for affect). Farshid Moussavi and Michael Kubos The Function of Ornament lays out many examples of such. But this treatment of ornament didnt seem satisfying, as much for the masses as I think architecture should be, using ornament as a sort of aesthetic wrapper seems condescending. It is a type of marketing in general (the issue of packaging versus the actual goods...) Very old-fashioned-ly, I thought it is the best to be good both inside and out, but if there had to be a choice between the two, I would buy an ugly box of really good chocolates rather than a beautiful box of really bad ones. As non-consequential as this sounds, it had been a topic of debate for centuries in diverse arenas and fields (significantly in the literary and oratorical arts.)

...men began to hunt more after words than matter; and more after the choiceness of the phrase, and the round and clean composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of the clauses, and the varying and illustration of their works with tropes and figures, than after the weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention, or depth of judgment.- Francis Bacon, On the Vanity of Words without Matter (16th c.)

He should also avoid, so to speak, cementing his words together too smoothly, for the hiatus and the clash of vowels has something

agreeable about it and shows a not unpleasant carelessness on the part of a man who is paying more attention to thought than to words. But his very freedom from periodic structure and cementing his words together will make it necessary for him to look to the other requisites. For the short and concise clauses must not be handled carelessly, but there is such a thing even as a careful negligence.- Cicero, Orator (46 B.C.)

Here, Ernst Gombrich talks about ornament and decorum.

Once again there is an obvious transition from the conviction that the charms of ornament can be used for a base purpose, to the suspicion that a profusion of such charms is likely to conceal a base purpose. The old proverb that a good wine needs no bush has its correlate in what advertisers call sales resistance to conspicuous bushes. In the history of Greek rhetorical theory such sales resistance developed into an aesthetic prejudice on the part of the purists against the artifice of so-called Asiatic oratory with its rhythmic cadences and its far-fetched imagery. Their cult of the plain and simple threatened indeed to subvert the whole tradition of rhetoric with its panoply of tricks and devices. It was for this reason that Cicero expended much energy...in countering their arguments while conceding the limited validity of their case. Briefly, he acknowledged the force and value of the plain or Attic style where such a style was appropriate. But he urged that there were also occasions to which more solemn and artificial diction was appropriate. This is the influential doctrine of decorum, which lays down the conditions under which display is admissible and even necessary, while appealing to good taste to set it limits and to be aware of its pitfalls.- Ernst Gombrich, The Sense of Order (1979)

And pushing exactly at those limits of good taste were the decorated sheds of Venturi and Scott Brown. But here, Venturis observations from the point of view of contrasting scales and layered openings shed a certain angle of light on the power and mystery of the Gothic facade:

...the complex super-adjacencies in the cloister facades at Tomar compose a wall validly containing spaces within itself. The multiple layers of columns - engaged and disengaged, large and small, directly and indirectly superimposed - and the profusion of superimposed openings, architraves, and horizontal and diagonal balustrades create contrasts and contradictions in scale, direction, size, and shape. They make a wall containing spaces inside itself. ...the Gothic traceries of the cathedral at Strasbourg, or the interior of the choir at Notre Dame, Paris...are all disengaged and superimposed on contrasting window patterns. The big public-scale and the rigid order outside contrast vividly with the small private-scale patterns required within. This play of layers of openings...- Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction (1966)

tHe amienS catHedral flipbookOn the right page in this chapter is a flipbook of the facade of Amiens Cathedral. It strips away the ornament a little at a time - first the filigree (including all surface detail such as brick work) and small sculptural elements, then removing the depth of the openings by uniform shading, and

72nd Floor Pizza PlaceIf the world at the 72nd floor is complete, man does not have to go down to the

ground floor. If the world at the ground floor is complete, man does not have to

go up to the 72nd floor. There are fractured worlds in a high-rise but each world

is not a vacuum. If you live on pizza on the 72nd floor for the rest of your life,

someone would have to deliver it to your door from the ground floor, human or

android. If the pizza place is on the 72nd floor someone would have to deliver

the ingredients from the ground floor. If the ingredients are on the 72nd floor

someone would have to grow the wheat somewhere in the world on the ground

floor. If the wheat field is on the 72nd floor then we have a whole new world. p.14

Tower elevation Tower section

Axonometric of a portion of the linked towers

Sequence showing the possible stages of interior construction after a young couple moves into an apartment. p.15

finally removing even the idenitity and hierarchy of the openings and the building silhouette, forming a uniform field of windows that become subdivided further. The end result is a stock image of an office building.

filiGreeLooking at the original image of the cathedral facade on paper, it can be argued that all detail is filigree. Filigree is a predominantly two-dimensional surface ornamental treatment with no depth. If at first glance it is all filigree, the shadows lead us to think there is depth. The existence of depth then leads to the next thought: the existence of spaces. Then, spaces lead to life, life leads to activity, activity leads to interaction - all these that make up the urban context or the desire to live in the city.

toileA relative of the filigree is the French toile. Although physically even flatter than the filigree (it being a canvas print), the toile presents a deeper and bigger world (Definition 3). The toile plays not only with repeating pattern, but also with hierarchy: the scenes themselves are most emphasized, then smaller objects (like the hot air balloon in the above example) and finally foliage that fills in the gaps. When looking at a toile, our eyes zoom in to check out the details of the scenes, and they find human figures, horses, romance... These are the ingredients of a story. The Amiens facade is a story-telling facade. The most obvious being the sculptures and reliefs that tell stories from the bible, but the hierarchy of the portals also tells of grandeur and order and places of entry, and the existence of spaces in the layered wall system tells of spaces where life could be contained. Because so many ingredients are in this story, the eye

is occupied and the mind wanders to form a conclusion; compare this with the final image of the office building - even though a degree of filigree is achieved, there is no element of toile; there is no deepness of world nor ingredients of a story. We can understand one window and understand the entire facade, or we can understand nothing and the facade is as a black hole of meaning.

inSide VerSuS outSideThe facade of the Amiens Cathedral is not to serve the those who are inside the cathedral. The facades service is to the city outside that looks upon the cathedral building which occupies, as a tall building, a prominent visual space in the city. Inside, it is a different agenda. The sculptures and narrative of the facade cannot be read inside. Here, stained glass windows and soaring arches: all strive to be as tall and as high as possible. It is hardly about the view out; it is about the light coming in. In Delirious New York, Koolhaas presented the complete disconnection between the inside and the outside of a skyscraper (the lobotomy.)

Buildings have both an interior and an exterior. In Western architecture there has been the humanistic assumption that it is desirable to establish a moral relationship between the two, whereby the exterior makes certain revelations about the intenor that the interior corroborates. The honest facade speaks about the activities it conceals. But mathematically, the interior volume of three-dimensional objects increases in cubed leaps and the containing envelope only by squared increments: less and less surface has to represent more and more interior activity. Beyond a certain critical mass the relationship is stressed beyond the breaking point; this break is the symptom of Automonumentality. In the deliberate discrepancy between container and contained New Yorks makers discover an area of unprecedented freedom.... The architectural equivalent [of surgical lobotomy] separates exterior and interior architecture. In this way the Monolith spares the outside world the agonies of the continuous changes raging inside it. It hides everyday life.

- Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York (1978)

The outside of the Downtown Athletic Club hides the life that takes place inside it; there is no story to tell when looking at its facade or its massing. However, all the devices that are at play in the narrative facade of the Amiens Cathedral is multiplied at a megascale in a proliferate amount of varied details when one looks not only at the Club building but at its surroundings - the Manhattan cityscape.

manHattan VS. amienSThe reason for the powerful visual attraction of Manhattan when seen as a whole (in panoramic bird-eye shots or when standing in the middle of a major street) lies in the fact that at that scale, all the individual buildings and their facades become the filigree and the toile. In the case of the Amiens, it was built as the single high structure in a medieval city - lacking the backdrop that the Manhattan building has, the cathedral had to be the filigree and the toile all by itself.

tHe filiGree VS. tHe toile Is it necessary for a city to be like a story-telling toile? If every facade in Manhattan was the same, it would not have the power seen in the aerial shots. A city like this is rarely seen, but can be approximated by some housing block landscapes (p.108). The filigree by itself cannot imagine life, but is the first step at suggesting spaces for life - this can be seen even in the same housing block landscape; almost every city approaches a toile to some extent. In the design of a new highrise structure, the design of the exterior facade, form and massing is in effect an exercise in completing the toile or inserting a new element into the toile. It can be said that the design of the outside is more like painting and graphic art.

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Death of the High-RiseThe high-rise is dead, and no one is mourning. Conceived and birthed by

a young urban context, it was murdered by the elevator in its infancy. Its

carcass was cloned and piled up, sometimes with earnestness, sometimes

with callous indifference, sometimes with swiss precision, nonetheless like

pancakes. The elevator that murdered the high-rise did it over and over

again, placing the carcasses on display like an obsessive serial killer with

a penchant for arrangement and artistic expression - masterpieces wrapped

in shiny material as if to hide the ultimate lifelessness and futility of the

effort; like a rain soaked cigarette butt on the pavement it is no longer able

to invent any future. The elevator has one quest: height. It is a psychopath

unable to deal with emotions, sympathy or context. Lacking the ability to

dream of anything other than height, it created taller and taller pancake

towers, sometimes constructing gymnastically impressive pancake towers.

Its accomplice and hustler is the square foot price. Prestige and status are

its ancient lovers and patrons.

The ElevatorThere is no high-rise building. The only thing that rises is the elevator, skewering through stacks of single-storey worlds.

Each floor is lifted from the ground like a baby with its umbilical cord still attached. The elevator has always suffered

from an inferiority complex - it is the underachieving sibling of the teleport machine. The reigning king of worlds

survives on cables and maintenance men and can hardly yet deviate from the straight line, but it does its job. It does not

matter that the floors are stacked vertically: if the 3rd floor is in Antarctica and the 72nd floor is on Venus, we are in still

in a high-rise, unless our eyes (these days we can trick them) tell us that we have moved a hundred million kilometers

between two worlds.

Below: plan showing five apartments on one major floor of one tower. Above: second to fourth storeys of each apartment constitutes an empty space without floor slabs at the beginning of occupation.

Plan of housing complex with 41 towers (26 are visible at this level.)

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tWo interior WorldS1. James turrell: sky Without

contextLight is a powerful defining ingredient of a space, and the sky with its light is the most important component of a world (Definition 2). The gothic cathedral demonstrates this in the interior.

By the late 1960s, he was also experimenting with outdoor light. He painted the windows of the hotel and scratched lines in the paint, allowing narrow slits of light to enter the room. He found that he could create patterns and illusions, much as he had with the projector. He called the series Mendota Stoppages, and he felt they had at least one advantage over the projection series: Because the light came from outside, there was no machinery in the room. He had created a gallery in which the art was made entirely of light. By the early 1970s, Turrell was exploring another phenomenon with natural light. Instead of scratching paint on the windows, he cut large holes in the walls and ceiling of the old hotel to create a view of the open sky. With the right size of opening and the right vantage and some careful finish work, he found that it was possible to eliminate the sense of depth, so the sky appeared to be painted directly on the ceiling. Then he pointed electric lights at the hole, marveling at the dissonance between the light coming in and going out. He discovered that when he changed the color of the electric lights, he could change the apparent color of the sky. He called the series Skyspaces.- On James Turrell, New York Times article (2013)

Turrells Mendota Stoppages can be compared with the detailed windows of a cathedral (art made entirely of light from the outside). His Skyspaces can be seen as worlds (dEfInITIon 2) because the weightier component of sky is present, trumping the lack of context.

2. koWloon WalleD city: context

Without skyKowloon Walled City is the opposite of Turrells Skyspaces. Admired by outsiders for its density, chaos and

mysterious atmosphere, it is not what would be called humane architecture. Besides the lack of toilets, plumbing, waste disposal system and water supply, most apartments apart from the outermost have no source of daylight.

An informal network of staircases and passageways also formed on upper levels, which was so extensive that one could travel north to south through the entire City without ever touching solid ground.

While they are steeped in context, the interior worlds have no sky. While the imaginative power of the maze that is the Kowloon Walled City continues to inspire and is referenced by designers who wish to create an intensity of context (e.g. video game designers), the physical City cannot conceivably be rebuilt the way it was; is there meaning in creating a Kowloon Walled City that is humane? Not only this, but is it possible at all, at what point does it stop having the spirit of Kowloon Walled City? And not only that, but what is that spirit, and is it desirable? On the other hand, Skyspaces would make a really poor video game setting with no context and no plot, but here is the difference between life and game.

skyscraper anD catheDralThe highrises of today are more like Turrells Skyspaces than they are like Kowloon Walled City. Each floor is all sky with no context. The Cathedral, on the other hand, is more like the City than like the Skyspace: an interior full of context but without a view of the sky.

duxton plain public HouSinG: international deSiGn competition

In 2001/2 the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), on behalf of the Ministry of National

Development (MND) and in consultation with the Singapore Institute of Architects (SIA), organised an International Architectural Design Competition for a high density and very highrise public housing development at Duxton Plain in the Central Area of Singapore. In view of the historical significance of the site as the place where the first public housing blocks were built by HDB (Housing Development Board) in the area in 1963/4, the development is envisaged to be a landmark housing development.... ...To meet the Concept Plan 2001 objectives, the density and height for the Duxton Plain site will be increased to between 7.4 and 8.4 plot ratio and up to 50 storeys. The new development will therefore be a landmark: the tallest public housing in Singapore. This public housing scheme, which will provide up to 1,800 new homes, will be built by the HDB...

deSiGn brief and tecHnical requirementShistorical significanceIn view of its historical significance as the site of the first public housing built by HDB in the Tanjong Pagar area, the Competition called for the proposals to be innovatively and meaningfully designed to capture the memory of the existing two housing blocks, and re-site and integrate the plaques commemorating the laying of the foundation stone, on 15th March 1963, and the opening ceremony, on 10th April 1964, which were officiated by the then Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, now the Senior Minister.

tanJong pagar community clubThe Competition also required the design proposal to relate to the adjacent Community Club, which was built by the Peoples Association in 1960 as part of the first batch of community centres, so that it formed part of the housing community and incorporate a 25m wide view corridor to increase the visibility of the building from Cantonment Road.

Duxton plain park anD lanDscaping

strategyCompetitors were also required to

p.18

H I G H -R I S E{The world as fl oor}

WORLD : FLOORdo high-rises dream of technicolor fl oors?

Worlds

World - De nition 1I started by approaching this question architecturally (or

physically.) If the world is what we perceive with our

physical senses (Definition 1: WorlD as physical experi-

ence), then it can be said that the city dwellers world is

the urban context.

22

It is here where one experiences the city, the cars,

people, signage, noises and all the paraphernalia of the

city.

Vertical Continuitydoes this city extend upwards with the skyscraper? In APattern Language, Christopher Alexander talks about how after the fourth story a highrise inhabitant is no longer able

to connect to the ground fl oor city context (p.24-29).

23

World: Urban Context

Above four stories these connections break down. The visual detail is lost; people speak of the scene below as if it were a game, from which they are completely detached. The connection to the ground and to the fabric of the town becomes tenuous; the building becomes a world of its own...

- Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language

If we agree that the four storey limit applies, then the

highrise after the fourth storey disengages from the urban

context and becomes a world of its own.

World: Building

Fracturein Delirious New York, rem Koolhaas presented the 1909 theorem (p.33), a Life Magazine cartoon, as the prototype of the skyscraper with fractured fl oors.

Each of these artifi cial levels is treated as a virgin site, as if the others did not exist, to establish a strictly private realm [and] create at each elevator stop a different lifestyle and thus an implied ideology...The life inside the building is correspondingly fractured....Incidents on the fl oors are so brutally disjointed that they cannot conceivably be part of a single scenario.

- rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York

30

The elevator enabled the addition of more and more

fl oors in the sky, in that way it is the generating mecha-

nism of the skyscraper. This mechanism works by way of

a box that travels vertically, carrying passengers to each

fl oor of the highrise. The elevator is the only thing that

moves; the passengers are stationary. with the modern

push-button smooth-travelling elevator, it can be said that

the fractured fl oors of Theorem 1909 are expressed faith-

fully, each fl oor of a highrise is a different world to be

entered into from the elevator portal. Each world is dis-

tinct from any other world in the building, they cannot be

experienced as a single world.

World: FloorThen, as such, a highrise building cannot exist as a world

to be experienced as a whole; the experienced world is

limited to the fl oor of the highrise, one at a time.

31

World: Floor

The famous scenario of the naked oyster-eating box-

ers (p.37) in the downtown Athletic Club at fi rst glance seems to illustrate the strangeness and excitement of the

mashing together of worlds that could happen in a sky-

scraper, but I was somewhat disappointed by the realiza-

tion that this is only the result of a single fl oor. The oyster

bar, the locker room and the boxing ring are all on the 9th

fl oor; architecturally, this does not require a highrise - the

same scenario can take place in a one-fl oor building...

But this is a good example of fractured world-fl oors,

predicted in Theorem 1909. what then am I disappointed

with? why does the original cartoon hold so much more

promise and imagination than the downtown Athletic

Club section?

World - De nition 2Theorem 1909 seems to give the promise of a satisfying

slice of world at each fl oor (Definition 2: WorlD as a set

of components - grounD, sky, air, scenery, habitation,

urban context.) Each fl oor is not treated as a fl oor in a

"Arise, walk about the land through its length and

breadth; for I will give it to you."

(Genesis 15:17)

Your world is what you walk on.

The LORD said to Abram, after Lot had separated from

him, "Now lift up your eyes and look from the place

where you are, northward and southward and eastward

and westward; for all the land which you see, I will give it

to you and to your descendants forever.

(Genesis 15:13-14)

Your world is what you see.

54

Major Floor

High-rises create ripples in each major floor.

+0 feet

+40 feet

+80 feet

+120 feet

World:Floor

World:floor is a world read as a continuous stack of floor planes without any gaps in between each plane.Conventionally, world:floor is simplified to the visualization of only major stratas, set at every 40 feet.

+0 feet

+40 feet

+80 feet

+120 feet

55

38 39

building but as an entire landscape, or its own (sub)urban

context. we see this actually illustrated in the cartoon that

comes right after Theorem 1909 in delirious new York,

titled Cosmopolis of the future (p.34). This is a more faithful development of Theorem 1909: the urban context

is replicated in the air by the elevated and air-borne traffi c

systems.

This is very different from the downtown Athletic

Club where each fl oor is tethered to the ground fl oor urban

context by the elevator.

ReplicationThis replication of the urban context in the sky is illustrat-

ed with great power in many science fi ction movie back-

drops (such as The Fifth Element) and in sci-fi futuristic art. These artworks are usually densely populated with

moving vehicles, inhabitants, bridges and sky traffi c sys-

tems that imply a great density of life and complex social

interactions (congestion is desirable.) At every vertical

strata, a great amount of activity is taking place, in effect

the city exists at all levels. The ground fl oor has fi nally

lost its status - in fact, there is no ground fl oor (p.42-45).

Sky

Take my love, take my landTake me where I cannot standI dont care, Im still freeYou cant take the sky from me.(opening theme, Fire y TV series)

Light is a powerful substance. we have a primal connection to it. (James Turrell)

we are born of light. The seasons are felt through light. we only know the world as it is evoked by light. (Louis Kahn)

The history of architecture is the history of the struggle for light. (Le Corbusier)

The necessity of sky (and with it sun and daylight) as a

component of the world (Definition 2) cannot be under-

stated. Sci-fi futuristic art is usually dark. The sun cannot

be seen, the sky is glimpsed through gaps between infra-

structure and the air is a perpetual fog. The level of day-

lighting in The Fifth Element cityscape cannot be achieved naturally. worlds (Definition 2) in the dense sci-fi art are broken: the ground can be replicated but not the sky.

Observation Deckon the other hand, Le Corbusiers Contemporary City for Three Million Inhabitants (p.46-49) ignores ground repli-cation. All movement and urban context is limited to the

ground level, as it is in most cases today. floors in the

Contemporary Citys highrise towers are not complete worlds (Definition 2): lacking the urban context each is

only an observation deck tethered to the ground fl oor. However, the important component sky that is missing

in the each of the sci-fi citys broken worlds (Definition

2) can be experienced here. Because Le Corbusier did not

bother to replicate the ground plane, he had no need to

replicate the sky either - one sky is enough for one world.

34 35

Table of Contents

Chapter...............................................................Page No.

1. Highrise 13

2. World: 3 De nitions 21

3. World: fl oor (Insert) 51

4. World: fl oor (World as oor) 59

5. filigree and Toile: Amiens Cathedral ipbook 81

6. do highrises dream of technicolor fl oors? 129

7. Singapore Highrise 139

8. World: fl oor (Proposal) 155

Afterword 180

Appendix 189

24 25

32 33

40

World - De nition 3The worlds discussed so far are physical. There is also a

non-physical world (Definition 3: WorlD as experienceD

in the minD.)

My fi rst story had to do with a dog who imagined that the garbagemen who came every friday morning were stealing valuable food which the family had carefully stored away in a safe metal container. Every day, members of the family carried out paper sacks of nice ripe food, stuffed them into the metal container, shut the lid tightly and when the container was full, these dreadful-looking creatures came and stole everything but the can. finally, in the story, the dog begins to imagine that someday the garbagemen will eat the people in the house, as well as stealing their food. of course, the dog is wrong about this. we all know that garbagemen do not eat people. But the dogs extrapolation was in a sense logical given the facts at his disposal. The story was about a real dog, and I used to watch him and try to get inside his head and imagine how he saw the world. Certainly, I decided, that dog sees the world quite differently than I do, or any humans do. And then I began to think, Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world, a world different from those inhabited and expe-rienced by all other humans. And that led me wonder, If reality differs from person to person, can we speak of reality singular, or shouldnt we really be talking about plural realities?

-Philip K dick, How to Build a Universe That Doesnt Fall Apart Two Days Later

Many science fi ction novels and movies have been

made regarding the multiplicity of worlds as experienced

by individuals. Architecture has very little to do with this

last type of world. A man with a book in a prison cell could

have a larger world (Definition 3) than a man in a palace

with nothing - how does one measure this world?

Is it the necessities that make a suffi cient world? If

there is a supermarket down the street, does this make a

world? or, one can live in a room with a computer and the

internet without ever having to leave, is that a world?

But, all things being equal, architecture could infl u-

ence a defi nition 3 world. If one man lives in a window-

less basement while another in a light-fi lled apartment

(assuming all other things equal including a preference for sunlight), we can assume that the second mans world

is better. In this case, architecture defi ned a Defi nition 2 world (with sky as a component) which affected the defi -nition 1 world (physically sensed world) which in turn in-

fl uenced the defi nition 3 world (world in the mind).

all defi nitions considered, it is a mistake to think that architecture cannot change the world.

41

This is a thesis project about a residential highrise build-

ing in Singapore.

I never liked highrises, and I didnt know exactly

why. It could be that I thought they were arrogant because

of the unmistakable verticality that rises from a fl at ground

and the obviousness of human effort that erected such tall

structures, but I also thought there was yet something else

that bothered me about highrises.

far more than aesthetic appearances and questions

of style it seems to me that there is something limiting

about the world they imply, contain and purport to be.

20

World{3 Defi nitions}

The world is a floor.

world

sky

round earth

The world is a floor.

world

sky

flat earth

52 53

36 37

W o r l d

{ T h r e eD e f i n i -t i o n s }

W o r l d : f l o o r

1: World as Physical Experience

2: World as Set of Components - Ground, Sky, Air, Scenery, Habitation, Urban Context

3: World as Experienced in the Mind

Hexahedron Arcology, 1966, Paolo Soleri

In Paolo Soleris Arcology, urban sectioning takes the

place of urban planning. Public, City Center, Com-

mercial, residential and other zones are laid out verti-

cally, occupying different stratas of this world in a terrace

condition (methoD 1 & 2). Because the context permeates

every level, there are no observation decks here.

70 71

Hexahedron Arcology

46 47

94 9586 87

...men began to hunt more after words than matter; and more after the choiceness of the phrase, and the round and clean composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of the clauses, and the varying and illustration of their works with tropes and fi gures, than after the weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention, or depth of judgment.

- francis Bacon, On the Vanity of Words without Matter (16th c.)

He should also avoid, so to speak, cementing his words together too smoothly, for the hiatus and the clash of vowels has something agreeable about it and shows a not unpleasant carelessness on the part of a man who is paying more attention to thought than to words. But his very freedom from periodic structure and cementing his words together will make it necessary for him to look to the other requisites. for the short and concise clauses must not be handled carelessly, but there is such a thing even as a careful negligence.

- Cicero, Orator (46 B.C.)

Here, Ernst gombrich talks about ornament and decorum.

once again there is an obvious transition from the conviction that the charms of ornament can be used for a base purpose, to the suspicion that a profusion of such charms is likely to conceal a base purpose. The old proverb that a good wine needs no bush has its correlate in what advertisers call sales resistance to conspicuous bushes. In the history of greek rhetorical theory such sales resistance developed into an aesthetic prejudice on the part of the purists against the artifi ce of so-called Asiatic oratory with its rhythmic cadences and its far-fetched imagery. Their cult of the plain and simple threatened indeed to subvert the whole tradition of rhetoric with its panoply of tricks and devices. It was for this reason that Cicero expended much energy...in countering their arguments while conceding the limited validity of their case. Briefl y, he acknowledged the force and value of the plain or Attic style where such a style was appropriate. But he urged that there were also occasions to which more solemn and artifi cial diction was appropriate. This is the infl uential doctrine of decorum, which lays down the conditions under which display is admissible and even

62

cepts that fl oors in a building are fractured, hermetic

worlds, and does not attempt to subvert the condition. He

designed each world to be different and unrelated.

Jussieu Library, 1992, oMA

In this project, ramps and escalators are used prolifi cally to

create a continuous ground plane in the building (methoD

1 & 2). As opposed to accepting hermetic worlds, it sought

to puncture and melt the worlds together.

Karlsruhe ( oor plans)

63

guggenheim Museum, 1959, frank Lloyd wright

A continous spiral as ground plane (methoD 1) attempts to

create a building with just one world(fl oor.) In other words,

guggenheim can be said to function as a world(building).

The void in the center of the building also functions as the

atrium in John Portmans hotels (methoD 2), discussed in

the next example.

Jussieu Library

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

82 83

The Case of the Gothic Cathedral

Written in a rambling

style, carelessly:

Before I ever was an architect, I loved gothic cathe-

drals. not so much other things like greek, renaissance

or romanesque structures. for instance, I didnt feel much

for the Pantheon. (not to mention modern architecture,

which I found inexcusably boring.) But I liked Baroque a

lot, and even more so rococo. In short, I was a lay person.

42 43

90 91

openings and the building silhouette, forming a uniform

fi eld of windows that become subdivided further. The end

result is a stock image of an offi ce building.

FiligreeLooking at the original image of the cathedral facade on

paper (p.83), it can be argued that all detail is fi ligree. filigree is a predominantly two-dimensional surface orna-

mental treatment with no depth.

if at fi rst glance it is all fi ligree, the shadows lead us to think there is depth. The existence of depth then leads to

the next thought: the existence of spaces. Then, spaces

lead to life, life leads to activity, activity leads to interac-

tion - all these that make up the urban context or the desire

to live in the city.

ToileA relative of the fi ligree is the french toile. Although

Filigree: Ornamental work especially of ne wire of gold, silver, or copper applied chie y to gold and silver surfaces (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

Habitat, 1967, Moshe Safdie

Safdie wanted every home to have a garden in a high-den-

sity housing complex: garden is here part of the (sub)ur-

ban context of the defi nition 2 world which is replicated.

In the sense that from one vertical strata other fl oors are

visible (terrace scenario), it can be said to be a Method 2,

together with open circulation stairways as Method 1.

renewal of Tsukiji district, Tokyo, 1966, Kenzo Tange

Kenzo Tange and the Metabolists wanted to save Tokyo

which was becoming increasingly congested in the 60s.

The Metabolists were concerned about moving things

quickly and effi ciently; in a pre-digital age, communica-

tion (the life-blood of the city) was strongly dependent on

physical transport. In short, the Metabolist city is about

a supereffi cient traffi c system. Their bridges in the sky

Linked Hybrid, 2009, Steven Holl

Holl used skybridges to expand the world(fl oors) at cer-

tain stratas, linking isolated islands into a bigger walkable

world(fl oor), creating a new ground plane condition in the

air (methoD 1). The city context is however not replicated;

there is simply not enough density, activity and players.

66 67

Habitat 67

Linked Hybrid

Renewal of Tsukiji District

Hyper Towers

Soleris Arcology leads into a discussion of the so-called

Hyper Towers, massive structures such as Sky City

1000 and X-Seed 4000 in Tokyo, or friedrich St. florians

Vertical City - usually an entire city is contained within a

building frame.

72 73

X-Seed 4000 appearing like a mountain in the background. (1995)

Friedrich Saint Florian, The Vertical City (1964)

48 49

T h e E x o d u s

In the year 200-009-x-78-fx-6-1, the floor made its great escape via plutonic anti-gravity soil simulator.

56

T h e R u i n s

In the year 200-009-y-78-fy-6-1, the post-sea-level-crisis network of raised transportation finally replaced the ground floor, where silt, debris soil, mud and trash archaelogized the first four stories of the original world.

57

88 89

necessary, while appealing to good taste to set it limits and to be aware of its pitfalls.

- Ernst gombrich, The Sense of Order (1979)

And pushing exactly at those limits of good taste

were the decorated sheds of Venturi and Scott Brown. But

here, Venturis observations from the point of view of con-

trasting scales and layered openings shed a certain angle

of light on the power and mystery of the gothic facade:

...the complex super-adjacencies in the cloister facades at Tomar compose a wall validly containing spaces within itself. The multiple layers of columns - engaged and disengaged, large and small, directly and indirectly superimposed - and the profusion of superimposed openings, architraves, and horizontal and diagonal balustrades create contrasts and contradictions in scale, direction, size, and shape. They make a wall containing spaces inside itself. ...the gothic traceries of the cathedral at Strasbourg, or the interior of the choir at notre dame, Paris...are all disengaged and superimposed on contrasting window patterns. The big public-scale and the rigid order outside contrast vividly with the small private-scale patterns required within. This play of layers of openings...

- robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction (1966)

The Amiens Cathedral Flipbookon the right page in this chapter is a fl ipbook of the facade

of Amiens Cathedral. It strips away the ornament a little at

a time - fi rst the fi ligree (including all surface detail such

as brick work) and small sculptural elements, then remov-

ing the depth of the openings by uniform shading, and

fi nally removing even the idenitity and hierarchy of the

Hotel Atriums, John Portman

rather than trying to make connected (inter-walkable)

worlds, the atriums of John Portmans buildings bore

holes through the world(fl oors) for purely visual connec-

tion; inhabitants of one world(fl oor) can see into another

one (methoD 2). The staggering stacks of worlds that exist

in a building are exposed. The glass elevators also make

visible the mechanism of travel; it is no longer teleporta-

tion, but like a railway train there are windows and pass-

ing scenery.

Unit dHabitation, 1952, Le Corbusier

The Unit has a shopping street located about halfway up

the building, which is a fl oor stretched vertically to about

Hyatt Regency San Francisco, 1973

Unit dHabitation, Marseille

64

two to three stories tall (methoD 1). The urban context is

missing from this world (see world: defi nition 2, p.31)at mid-building: there is no traffi c in or passing through

to create business for the shopping street, which remained

mostly deserted.

65

84 85

I never let go of the fact that I was educated to ap-

preciate modern architecture. It didnt make much sense

to me, that something as universal as architecture becomes

an exclusive type of academic pursuit and acquired taste...

at the worst moments I wondered if architects are content

to just design for the appreciation of other architects; what

about all the rest of the people?

Is it worth a thought? It seems that in recent times

more architects have given that a thought. we see the pro-

liferation of ornamented facades - digital displays, lace,

hexagonal structure, etc. Building form, massing and sil-

houette are also articulated to become a sort of ornament

(if ornament is defi ned as that which is not structurally

required but something for the eyes, for affect). farshid

Moussavi and Michael Kubos The Function of Ornamentlays out many examples of such.

But this treatment of ornament didnt seem satisfy-

ing, as much for the masses as I think architecture should

be, using ornament as a sort of aesthetic wrapper seems

condescending. It is a type of marketing in general (the

issue of packaging versus the actual goods...) Very old-

fashioned-ly, I thought it is the best to be good both in-

side and out, but if there had to be a choice between the

two, I would buy an ugly box of really good chocolates

rather than a beautiful box of really bad ones. As non-con-

sequential as this sounds, it had been a topic of debate for

centuries in diverse arenas and fi elds (signifi cantly in the

literary and oratorical arts.)

60

Hacking the World( oor)

Mans physical constitution, and also his sense of orientation, is geared to predominantly horizontal movement. His life unfolds in horizontal expanse, and thus it is in confl ict with the vertical dynamics of all substance.

- Heino Engel, Structure Systems

World: oor - De nitionworld: fl oor is an expression of world as fl oor - the

world experienced as a fl oor; alternatively written as

world(fl oor) or the world which is the fl oor. the fl oor is defi ned as the inhabitable and predominantly horizontal

plane, the result of the horizontality of mans movement

(the world is what you walk on) and sight (the world

is what you see), both related to the notion of ownership

and possession (p.54).

World( oor) in the Highrise The world(fl oor) concept is applicable universally

beginning from fl at earth (p.52), but it becomes particu-

larly prominent in the case of the highrise building where

the mechanism of the elevator creates a distinct and unique

world(fl oor) at each elevator stop.

In a highrise building, each fl oor is its own world;

there are worlds stacked upon worlds, and these do not

interact or add up into a bigger world. In the existence of

parallel worlds, our experience is limited to one.

Expanding the World( oor)methoD 1

Expanding the fl oor height vertically or the walkable fl oor expanse horizontally.

methoD 2

Providing visual accessibility between fl oors.

I sought a few examples of various architects ad-

dressing the issue:

ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, 1992, oMA

(The building) is composed of discontinuous and differentiated plans. Inside the rather cubic building, plans punctuated with the vertical struts of six-meter-deep Vierendeel trusses alternate with column-free plans to produce a stack of spaces that, like an architectural montage, evoke a series of radically different architectural types, or the architectural equivalent of time travel.

- Preston Scott Cohen, Successive Architecture

the fi rst example is not at all about expanding the world(fl oor). rem Koolhaas design for Karlsruhe ac-

61

82 83

The Case of the Gothic Cathedral

Written in a rambling

style, carelessly:

Before I ever was an architect, I loved gothic cathe-

drals. not so much other things like greek, renaissance

or romanesque structures. for instance, I didnt feel much

for the Pantheon. (not to mention modern architecture,

which I found inexcusably boring.) But I liked Baroque a

lot, and even more so rococo. In short, I was a lay person.

90 91

openings and the building silhouette, forming a uniform

fi eld of windows that become subdivided further. The end

result is a stock image of an offi ce building.

FiligreeLooking at the original image of the cathedral facade on

paper (p.83), it can be argued that all detail is fi ligree. filigree is a predominantly two-dimensional surface orna-

mental treatment with no depth.

if at fi rst glance it is all fi ligree, the shadows lead us to think there is depth. The existence of depth then leads to

the next thought: the existence of spaces. Then, spaces

lead to life, life leads to activity, activity leads to interac-

tion - all these that make up the urban context or the desire

to live in the city.

ToileA relative of the fi ligree is the french toile. Although

Filigree: Ornamental work especially of ne wire of gold, silver, or copper applied chie y to gold and silver surfaces (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

86 87

...men began to hunt more after words than matter; and more after the choiceness of the phrase, and the round and clean composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of the clauses, and the varying and illustration of their works with tropes and fi gures, than after the weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention, or depth of judgment.

- francis Bacon, On the Vanity of Words without Matter (16th c.)

He should also avoid, so to speak, cementing his words together too smoothly, for the hiatus and the clash of vowels has something agreeable about it and shows a not unpleasant carelessness on the part of a man who is paying more attention to thought than to words. But his very freedom from periodic structure and cementing his words together will make it necessary for him to look to the other requisites. for the short and concise clauses must not be handled carelessly, but there is such a thing even as a careful negligence.

- Cicero, Orator (46 B.C.)

Here, Ernst gombrich talks about ornament and decorum.

once again there is an obvious transition from the conviction that the charms of ornament can be used for a base purpose, to the suspicion that a profusion of such charms is likely to conceal a base purpose. The old proverb that a good wine needs no bush has its correlate in what advertisers call sales resistance to conspicuous bushes. In the history of greek rhetorical theory such sales resistance developed into an aesthetic prejudice on the part of the purists against the artifi ce of so-called Asiatic oratory with its rhythmic cadences and its far-fetched imagery. Their cult of the plain and simple threatened indeed to subvert the whole tradition of rhetoric with its panoply of tricks and devices. It was for this reason that Cicero expended much energy...in countering their arguments while conceding the limited validity of their case. Briefl y, he acknowledged the force and value of the plain or Attic style where such a style was appropriate. But he urged that there were also occasions to which more solemn and artifi cial diction was appropriate. This is the infl uential doctrine of decorum, which lays down the conditions under which display is admissible and even

94 9584 85

I never let go of the fact that I was educated to ap-

preciate modern architecture. It didnt make much sense

to me, that something as universal as architecture becomes

an exclusive type of academic pursuit and acquired taste...

at the worst moments I wondered if architects are content

to just design for the appreciation of other architects; what

about all the rest of the people?

Is it worth a thought? It seems that in recent times

more architects have given that a thought. we see the pro-

liferation of ornamented facades - digital displays, lace,

hexagonal structure, etc. Building form, massing and sil-

houette are also articulated to become a sort of ornament

(if ornament is defi ned as that which is not structurally

required but something for the eyes, for affect). farshid

Moussavi and Michael Kubos The Function of Ornamentlays out many examples of such.

But this treatment of ornament didnt seem satisfy-

ing, as much for the masses as I think architecture should

be, using ornament as a sort of aesthetic wrapper seems

condescending. It is a type of marketing in general (the

issue of packaging versus the actual goods...) Very old-

fashioned-ly, I thought it is the best to be good both in-

side and out, but if there had to be a choice between the

two, I would buy an ugly box of really good chocolates

rather than a beautiful box of really bad ones. As non-con-

sequential as this sounds, it had been a topic of debate for

centuries in diverse arenas and fi elds (signifi cantly in the

literary and oratorical arts.)

92 93

physically even fl atter than the fi ligree (it being a canvas print), the toile presents a deeper and bigger world (Defini-

tion 3).

The toile plays not only with repeating pattern, but

also with hierarchy: the scenes themselves are most em-

phasized, then smaller objects (like the hot air balloon

in the above example) and fi nally foliage that fi lls in the

gaps.

when looking at a toile, our eyes zoom in to check

out the details of the scenes, and they fi nd human fi gures,

horses, romance... These are the ingredients of a story.

The Amiens facade is a story-telling facade. The

most obvious being the sculptures and reliefs that tell sto-

Toile de Jouy, sometimes abbreviated to simply toile, is a type of decorating pattern...depicting a fairly complex scene, generally of a pastoral theme such as a couple having a picnic by a lake or an arrangement of owers. (Wikipedia)

88 89

necessary, while appealing to good taste to set it limits and to be aware of its pitfalls.

- Ernst gombrich, The Sense of Order (1979)

And pushing exactly at those limits of good taste

were the decorated sheds of Venturi and Scott Brown. But

here, Venturis observations from the point of view of con-

trasting scales and layered openings shed a certain angle

of light on the power and mystery of the gothic facade:

...the complex super-adjacencies in the cloister facades at Tomar compose a wall validly containing spaces within itself. The multiple layers of columns - engaged and disengaged, large and small, directly and indirectly superimposed - and the profusion of superimposed openings, architraves, and horizontal and diagonal balustrades create contrasts and contradictions in scale, direction, size, and shape. They make a wall containing spaces inside itself. ...the gothic traceries of the cathedral at Strasbourg, or the interior of the choir at notre dame, Paris...are all disengaged and superimposed on contrasting window patterns. The big public-scale and the rigid order outside contrast vividly with the small private-scale patterns required within. This play of layers of openings...

- robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction (1966)

The Amiens Cathedral Flipbookon the right page in this chapter is a fl ipbook of the facade

of Amiens Cathedral. It strips away the ornament a little at

a time - fi rst the fi ligree (including all surface detail such

as brick work) and small sculptural elements, then remov-

ing the depth of the openings by uniform shading, and

fi nally removing even the idenitity and hierarchy of the

96 97

ries from the bible, but the hierarchy of the portals also

tells of grandeur and order and places of entry, and the

existence of spaces in the layered wall system tells of

spaces where life could be contained. Because so many

ingredients are in this story, the eye is occupied and the

mind wanders to form a conclusion; compare this with the

fi nal image of the offi ce building (p.127) - even though a degree of fi ligree is achieved, there is no element of toile;

there is no deepness of world nor ingredients of a story.

we can understand one window and understand the entire

facade, or we can understand nothing and the facade is as

a black hole of meaning.

Inside versus OutsideThe facade of the Amiens Cathedral is not to serve the

those who are inside the cathedral. The facades service

is to the city outside that looks upon the cathedral build-

ing which occupies, as a tall building, a prominent visual

space in the city.

Inside, it is a different agenda. The sculptures and

narrative of the facade cannot be read inside. Here, stained

glass windows and soaring arches: all strive to be as tall

and as high as possible. It is hardly about the view out; it

is about the light coming in.

In delirious new York, Koolhaas presented the com-

plete disconnection between the inside and the outside of a

skyscraper (the lobotomy.)

Buildings have both an interior and an exterior. In western

At every vertical strata, the sci- futuristic city is full of activity and movement: the city exists at all levels.

44 45

92 93

physically even fl atter than the fi ligree (it being a canvas print), the toile presents a deeper and bigger world (Defini-

tion 3).

The toile plays not only with repeating pattern, but

also with hierarchy: the scenes themselves are most em-

phasized, then smaller objects (like the hot air balloon

in the above example) and fi nally foliage that fi lls in the

gaps.

when looking at a toile, our eyes zoom in to check

out the details of the scenes, and they fi nd human fi gures,

horses, romance... These are the ingredients of a story.

The Amiens facade is a story-telling facade. The

most obvious being the sculptures and reliefs that tell sto-

Toile de Jouy, sometimes abbreviated to simply toile, is a type of decorating pattern...depicting a fairly complex scene, generally of a pastoral theme such as a couple having a picnic by a lake or an arrangement of owers. (Wikipedia)

68 69

(unlike Holls bridges) are built for megacity density and

movement - if realized, it will be a type of true replication

of the urban context. (methoD 1 can be seen here on a large

scale.)

Renewal of Tsukiji District (model)

A m i e n sCathedralF l ipbook

{ F i l i g r e e & Toile}

city scale

The city gradually transforms.

78 79

154

The winning entry Pinnacle@duxton (p.141, 153),built and completed in 2009, is a group of seven high-

rise towers linked mid-level and roof-level by bridges that

serve as parks in the sky. The strength of this building lies

in the set of plug-in components (bay windows, planters,

balcony, etc) that are randomized to form a pattern which

renders an otherwise plain and repetitive facade with a vi-

sual complexity (they can be said to act like fi ligree.) The

combinations of plug-ins created numerous slightly dif-

fering apartment confi gurations which were marketed as

unique, increasing interest and sense of ownership. But

otherwise, it is a conventional high-rise (stacked fl oors

with doubled-loaded corridors).

In the next chapter, I will be using the background,

program, site and guidelines of duxton Plain housing de-

sign competition as a basis to propose an alternative build-

ing based on the investigations of the highrise as laid out

in this book, including the world(fl oor), the anti-hyper

tower, the fi ligree and the toile. I understand that my proposal cannot be said to be

complete, lacking the elaboration of factors such as cost

feasibility and structural resolution, but it is an ongoing

investigation of the high-rise in a country fi lled with and

building more highrises (see Afterword, p.180).

World: fl oor{Proposal}

102 103

Death of the High-Rise

The high-rise is dead, and no one is mourning. Conceived

and birthed by a young urban context, it was murdered by

the elevator in its infancy. Its carcass was cloned and piled

up, sometimes with earnestness, sometimes with callous

indifference, sometimes with swiss precision, nonetheless

like pancakes. The elevator that murdered the high-rise

did it over and over again, placing the carcasses on dis-

play like an obsessive serial killer with a penchant for ar-

rangement and artistic expression - masterpieces wrapped

in shiny material as if to hide the ultimate lifelessness and

futility of the effort; like a rain soaked cigarette butt on

the pavement it is no longer able to invent any future. The

elevator has one quest: height. It is a psychopath unable

to deal with emotions, sympathy or context. Lacking the

ability to dream of anything other than height, it created

taller and taller pancake towers, sometimes constructing

gymnastically impressive pancake towers. Its accomplice

and hustler is the square foot price. Prestige and status are

its ancient lovers and patrons.

130

The Elevator

There is no high-rise building. The only thing that rises

is the elevator, skewering through stacks of single-storey

worlds. Each fl oor is lifted from the ground like a baby

with its umbilical cord still attached. The elevator has al-

ways suffered from an inferiority complex - it is the un-

derachieving sibling of the teleport machine. The reigning

king of worlds survives on cables and maintenance men

and can hardly yet deviate from the straight line, but it

does its job. It does not matter that the fl oors are stacked

vertically: if the 3rd fl oor is in Antarctica and the 72nd

fl oor is on Venus, we are in still in a high-rise, unless our

eyes (these days we can trick them) tell us that we have

moved a hundred million kilometers between two worlds.

131

110 111

this in the interior.

By the late 1960s, he was also experimenting with outdoor light. He painted the windows of the hotel and scratched lines in the paint, allowing narrow slits of light to enter the room. He found that he could create patterns and illusions, much as he had with the projector. He called the series Mendota Stoppages, and he felt they had at least one advantage over the projection series: Because the light came from outside, there was no machinery in the room. He had created a gallery in which the art was made entirely of light. By the early 1970s, Turrell was exploring another phenomenon with natural light. Instead of scratching paint on the windows, he cut large holes in the walls and ceiling of the old hotel to create a view of the open sky. with the right size of opening and the right vantage and some careful fi nish work, he found that it was possible to eliminate the sense of depth, so the sky appeared to be painted directly on the ceiling. Then he pointed electric lights at the hole, marveling at the dissonance between the light coming in and going out. He discovered that when he changed the color of the electric lights, he could change the apparent color of the sky. He called the series Skyspaces.

- on James Turrell, New York Times article (2013)

Turrells Mendota Stoppages can be compared with

the detailed windows of a cathedral (art made entirely of

light from the outside). His Skyspaces (p.114) can be seen as worlds (Definition 2) because the weightier component

of sky is present, trumping the lack of context.

2. koWloon WalleD city: context Without sky

Kowloon walled City (p.116,8) is the opposite of Turrells Skyspaces. Admired by outsiders for its density, chaos and

mysterious atmosphere, it is not what would be called hu-

mane architecture. Besides the lack of toilets, plumbing,

150 151

SITE

The grain of the shophouses is small and uid (compared with the grain of the highrises.)

98 99

158

to live on one fl oor; when the family expands, additional

fl oors and stairs can be added inside the apartment enve-

lope. Anticipating this, windows openings are provided

for the future 2nd, 3rd and 4th fl oors. This gives an un-

limited amount of choice to apartment owners for interior

confi guration.

Each apartment sits on a world(fl oor) level, with its

front door opening into a walkway (like the fi ve-foot-way

of shophouses) that is shared by all fi ve apartments of one

tower in one world(fl oor). The 41 towers link to one an-

other by bridges on world(fl oor) levels.

Building

stage 1 - filigree

The highrise building complex is made up of the 41 tow-

ers on site, laid out in a grid following the grain of the

adjacent shophouses (p.161-62) and duxton Plain Park (p.164). They are laid out in a density that satisfi es the required number of apartments and the stated maximum

height of 500 feet. There is a degree of fi ligree caused by

the sheer number of apartments, their windows, the space

containing facade (fi ve-foot way and balconies), the verti-

cal gaps between towers and the horizontal gaps between

world(fl oors). A fi rst sign of toile is present in the ground

fl oor adjacent to duxton Plain Park, where blocks are re-

moved to create a continuation of the park (p.166).A-AElevation 1/16=1

Level +53

Level +33

Level +3

+53

+33

+3

a-aSection 1/16=1

AA

aa

BB

bb

106 107

facades become the fi ligree and the toile. In the case of

the Amiens, it was built as the single high structure in a

medieval city - lacking the backdrop that the Manhattan

building has, the cathedral had to be the fi ligree and the

toile all by itself.

The Filigree vs. the Toile Is it necessary for a city to be like a story-telling

toile? If every facade in Manhattan was the same, it would

not have the power seen in the aerial shots. A city like

this is rarely seen, but can be approximated by some hous-

ing block landscapes (p.108). The fi ligree by itself cannot imagine life, but is the fi rst step at suggesting spaces for

life - this can be seen even in the same housing block land-

scape; almost every city approaches a toile to some extent.

In the design of a new highrise structure, the design of the

exterior facade, form and massing is in effect an exercise

in completing the toile or inserting a new element into the

toile. It can be said that the design of the outside is more

like painting and graphic art.

Two Interior Worlds

1. James turrell: sky Without context

Light is a powerful defi ning ingredient of a space, and the

sky with its light is the most important component of a

world (Definition 2). The gothic cathedral demonstrates

tion, but movies and television show us possible (albeit

extreme) extrapolations of strands of reality. The entire

show business industry thrives on creating, describing, ar-

ticulating, fi lling with details, live-actioning and visualiz-

ing dreams of a better (or at least more interesting) world

for a humanity that feeds on hopes and dreams: Strange

days without the touching.

134

Salvation

It is argued that human beings cannot fl y. This is a serious

hindrance to the resurrection of the highrise, post elevator.

There is a need for human beings to live in highrises where

the demand for land exceeds the supply. (where there is

no need, there is no argument - like a copycat murder the

motive is only an attempt to achieve the originals fame.)

The limited physical potential of human beings with re-

gards to stair-climbing created the ancient scenario of ser-

vant attics and wealthy ground fl oor parlors. no sooner

had the poor hailed the elevator as a new saving power

that destroyed the airy graves, it revealed itself to be a

false messiah came only to lift the rich above the clouds.

But even for them it is a spurious salvation; there are no

worlds up there, only observation decks.

135

142

Duxton Plain Public Housing

: International Design Competition

In 2001/2 the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), on behalf of the Ministry of National Development (MND) and in consultation with the Singapore Institute of Archi-tects (SIA), organised an International Architectural De-sign Competition for a high density and very highrise pub-lic housing development at Duxton Plain in the Central Area of Singapore. In view of the historical signi cance of the site as the place where the rst public housing blocks were built by HDB (Housing Development Board) in the area in 1963/4, the development is envisaged to be a landmark housing development.... ...To meet the Concept Plan 2001 objectives, the den-sity and height for the Duxton Plain site will be increased to between 7.4 and 8.4 plot ratio and up to 50 storeys. The

143

new development will therefore be a landmark: the tallest public housing in Singapore. This public housing scheme, which will provide up to 1,800 new homes, will be built by the HDB...

Design Brief and Technical Requirements

historical significance

In view of its historical signifi cance as the site of the fi rst

public housing built by HdB in the Tanjong Pagar area,

the Competition called for the proposals to be innovative-

ly and meaningfully designed to capture the memory of

the existing two housing blocks, and re-site and integrate

the plaques commemorating the laying of the foundation

stone, on 15th March 1963, and the opening ceremony, on

10th April 1964, which were offi ciated by the then Prime

Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, now the Senior Minister.

tanJong pagar community club

The Competition also required the design proposal to re-

late to the adjacent Community Club, which was built by

the Peoples Association in 1960 as part of the fi rst batch

of community centres, so that it formed part of the hous-

ing community and incorporate a 25m wide view corridor

to increase the visibility of the building from Cantonment

road.

148

dUs; Additional lots for supporting uses

construction cost: S$125/sq ft (maximum) of internal

fl oor space of the dUs

SiteTanjong Pagar is a historic district located within the Central Business District in Singapore, straddling the Outram Planning Area and the Downtown Core under the Urban Redevelopment Authoritys urban planning zones. when Singapore was founded in 1819 as a British

trading port, the Tanjong