015 Machine as Heart: The House of Floirac

The house was completed in 1998 on a hill top outside Bordeoux in nothern of France.

Koolhaas suggests that it is not a house for an "invalid" but an architecture that denies "invalidity". The House is organised with a total of four vertical movement systems connecting three formally distinct floors.

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Heavy Mass - Kitchen.

The base level in on entry courtyard with car access, framed by the house. The house is excavated from the hillside and likened by Koolhaas to a "sequence of caves" or "cellar" having the entry, kitchen, wine cellar and the television room. 

Highly Transparent.

The level is transparent, glass enclosed slice of living/dining and gallery/study areas structured into one large field of visual and functional encounters.

Heavy Mass - Sleeping.

The bedroom accomodating is enclosed in a horizontal slab pierced with hole sized windows, and disigned to appear as if suspended above the transparent living zone. 

The four vertical movement systems are three stairways and an open elevator.

A platform "the elevator" (3x3.5m) rises and decends on hydralic columns to align with each of the three floors. The platform has no walls or ballustrades, it becomes a part of each room it allign with, "The movement of the elevator changed, each time, the architecture of the house. A machine was its heart"

The four vertical movement system generates a highly connected spatial structure for the lower floors.

1. Mother's Stair

2. Guest's Stair

3. Children Stair

4. Father's Elevator

Father elevator - 

This is the "heart" of the house, where it transforms the architecture. The father controls the architecture and the position of the elevator becomes a signifir of his presence and obsence. The void is created. The central living space of the house is secure only when the father is present. 

The adult bedroom is structured in a loop with two bedrooms at once separated and connected by a bathroom and a balcony. 

The children bedroom form a mere traditional tree-like syntax which is in accessible to the father. Surveillance over children is the only function not applied to the father. 

The house is known as an innovative and imaginative house, have both formally and spatially. It combines a rethinking of the dialectic of inside/outside - as in Mies' Formsworth house, and vertical/horizontal - as in Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye, but with greater programmatic dynamism and complexity, as in the Rietveld Schroder House. 

This social structure of the house is highly ringy on the lower levels, it is also conceptually tree-like with the elevator as its stem. It embodies new form of both liberation and social control. The structure of the house remains heirachical. 

Is this new spatial hierachy an accidental by product of Koolhaas obssetion with the elevator?

Koolhaas treats interiors space as fields of play that resists any relationship with social structuring, and a permeable spatial network is a primary design tactic. He wants to defy the social logic of space to free up the pragrammatic imperatives, that lock up architecture into the service of a highly ritualistic reproduction of social life. 

Kipnis suggests that:

"for Koolhaas, architecture is able...to engender provisional freedoms in a difinite situation, freedoms as the experiences, as the sensations and otherwise of undermiming select patterns of regulation and authority"

Koolhaas does indeedchallenge the primary genotypes of sociospatial reproduction, yet at the same time he generates illusions of an architecture that has been freed from spatial ideology. These illutions can be a cover of new practices of power or for more of the sane.

014 The Educatorium At Utrecht

The university was completed in 1997. It holds a cafeteria, two large lecture theaters and a cluster of examination rooms. 

It was recognised as a "rendezvous and exchange point, creating a new center of gravity" where it was conveiced on the hub of a campus serving fourteen facilities and research facilities. This was to embrace the university experience with the social encounters of the cafeteria space, the leaving and exchange in the auditoria/classrooms and the individual rights of passage played out in the examination hall. 

The building conceives of attempts in generating forms of social encounters. 

It seeks potential of overlapping between individual programs and encouraging exchange between users of its diverse functions, while allowing a pragmatic use of individual space.

"Synthetic Landscape" a metaphor that OMA uses to describe the characteristics bluring of inside and outside. THe main entrance is seen as a tilted ground plane and urban plaza that then continues as an interior sloping 'field' which the two auditoria are placed like figures in the landscape.

"Social magic carpet" a metaphor that is used to describe the roof of the building. The rising floorplate, which folds upwards and back becomes the wall and the roof of the building. This creates an urban landscape of play and social encounters inparted into the architecture. The ampitheater and the examination rooms are described as interiors set into the landscape due to the folding floor.

The spatial structure is designed to mainly act as a netwrok in where individuals, i.e students, are free to discover their own shortcuts and to mavigate through the builging. The design of the building is to seek a synthetic landscape where it opens to individual choice. 

By reffering to the diagram, it is seen that the building for its size and complexity, it s a very shallow structure, i.e. all major spaces and accessed within six levels of depth. The building has three functional "attractors"; the auditoria, the examination room and the cafeterial - each of which is coupled with a major social circulation space. 

The four major foyers form a series from the ramped plaza on the exterior to the main foyer, which leads upwards to the foyer and then back to a balcony foyer outside the examination room. The main foyer also operates as a control space through which all of the open circulation systems within the building pass.

The educatorium is described as a "factory of learning". While knowledge is produced in the research centers, fragments of this knowledge are revealed in the spetacle of the lecture theaters, discussed in foyers and cafeteria spaces and exammed in enclosed rooms. The spatial diagram illustrates the depth of the location in these sources. The knowledge that is brought into the light or the social space is located on the shallow term of the diagram. The deeper the spatial structure gets, the more private/enclosed the social encounters become i.e. examination rooms. The spaces where students perform are found deep within the 'hub'. 

The Educatorium becomes partially reserved. 

The examination zone is five to six levels deep within the building; here it does not receive the level of architecture that is featured in the shallow zones. Here the field of play stops and work begins. Although all examination rooms have multiple points of entry, they are each end points to spatial movement. 

One can read the Educatorium as a radically inovative building at its shallow levels with a conservating depth. All the socialization, contact and the sharing of ideas all take place in the shallow network. This implies in the legitination of institutional being located in the deepness of spatial structure.

The two key metaphors of "synthetic landscape" and "factory of learning" reflect the ways that the field relations of the landscape have been imported into the factory to urbanise the building. 

Throughout this, Koolhaas's work enbodies a dialectic between the freen and the tree like institution structure.

The circulation system in this building is in many ways a masterful piece of design, but it achieves by integrating such programmatic innovation with entrenched spatial genotypes.

013 Spatial Syntax Part 04 - Total Depth

Configurational Formalism - The most powerful in detecting formal and functional regularities in real systems. 

The main reasons:

1. The problem of understanding the simultaneous effects of a whole complex of entities on each other through their pattern of relationships, (configuration). This is why formalism often seem to offer mathematical sophistication out of proportion to the empirical results achieved. 

With configurational analysis, it leads to a disproportionate success in finding significant formal and form-functional regularities. 

2. The representation of the spatial or formal systems that is to be analyzed as to the method of quantification. By doing this we conclude with trying to represent space in terms of the type of function we are interested in. 'j-graphs' creating formally or functional thoughts of informative results. 

3. The graphic representation of the results of mathematical analysis. Creating a graphical representation rather than a mathematical understanding. By representing mathematical results graphically, a level of communication is possible that permits large numbers if people to be interested and knowledgeable who would otherwise fall at the first fence of mathematical analysis. 

The 'Space Syntax' itself has been researched at UCL University. It has been drive by a remark of Lionel March's: 'The only thing you can apply is good theory'.

The techniques of spatial representation and quantification proposed here are essentially survivors of an intensive program of empirical investigation. 

Defining Configuration *relating back to Part 3

1. Simple relation was defined as a relation between any pair of elements in a complex.

2. Configurational relation defined as a relation insofar as it is affected by the simultaneous co-presence of at least a third element, and possibly all other elements in a complex. 

In figure one, a and b are two cubes standing on a surface. The relation of a and b is symmetrical in that a being the neighbor of b implies that b is the neighbor of a. 

In figure two, a and b are brought together, which again is a symmetrical relation. These two conclude to have a neighbor relation. 

However, figure three, does not. The conjoint object formed by a and b in figure one and two is taken and rested on one of its ends, without changing the relation of a and b. B not appears to be above a, and the relation of being above is not symmetrical but asymmetrical, i.e. b being above a implies that a is not above b. 

The surface is introduced as a new relation to these three figures, known as c. In figure one and two, the surface to which the cubes are standing on, say the surface of the earth, have a symmetrical relation as to each other. Therefore we can say that a and b are symmetrical with the respect to c. 

This is a configurational statement, since it describes a relation of at least a third. 

Observing figure three, a and b are asymmetrical with the respect to c. 

This is a configurational difference due to figure 1-2 and 3 being totally different, i.e. symmetrical/asymmetrical. 

The relation of a and b to each other is changed if we add the 'with the respect to' clause which embed the two cubes in a larger complex which includes c. 

The situation clarified by the justified graphs 

j-graph:

Nodes are aligned above a root according to their depth from the root of the configurations shown above. The bottom node is the earth itself, with a cross indicating that is the root. In the first two figures, a and b are each independently connected as neighbors to the earth. In figure three, the relation between b and c is broken creating a 'two deep' relation. 

The numbers that are attached to each node in the j-graphs, indicate the sum of 'depth'. This is a total of sum from node to another node in the system. 

TD also known as Total Depth, is the total sum of all the nodes. The distribution of TD and their overall sum describes at least some configurational characteristics of these composite objects. (less amount of TD, more integrated the system is)

These figures here take this notion of TD into a complex stage. They are all composed of seven identically related cells plus an eighth one which is joined to the original block of seven initially at the top end in the leftmost figure, then progressively more centrally from left to right. 

The two principal effects from changing the position of this single element:

1. The total depth values and their distribution all change. 

2. The sum total depth for each figure change, reducing from left to right as the eighth element moves to a more central location. 

As you can see, the least amount of depth is in the fourth figure, making this system a much more integrated scheme. 

The two key principals of configurational analysis: 

1. Changing one element in a configuration can change the configurational properties of many others.

2. The overall characteristics of a complex can be changed by changing a single element, that is, changes do not somehow cancel out their relations to different elements and leave the overall properties invariant. Virtually any change will alter the overall properties of the configuration. 

012 Spatial Syntax Part 03 - Configuration

Syntax Analysis - used to clarify the depth of all spaces in a pattern from a particular point. 

The word configuration is applied to the analysis. Its a concept addressed to the whole complex. If we define spatial relations as existing when there is any type of link between two spaces, then configuration exists when relation between two spaces are changed according to how we relate one or other or both to at least another space. 

Configuration is a set of interdependent relations in which each is determined by its relation to all the others. 

First figure, explains a simple j graph that is composed of "ring" network combination. It is clear here that the relation is formally "symmetrical" in the sense that a is to cell b as b is to a. This symmetry is clearly an objective property of the relation of a and b and does not depend on how we choose to see the relation. 
This is seen as a configurational statement. 

Considering the second figure, linear combination, where only a is directly permeable to c. This means to get to b, we must pass through a to get to b from c, the relation becomes asymmetrical. 
This is seen as a configurational difference. 
Where a, separates b and c making a the difference. This gives a, an importance to its field.

Lets try to detect the presence of cultural and social ideas in the spatial forms of buildings. These here are the ground floor plans of three French houses, with their j graphs drawn initially from the outside and to the right  is three further j graphs justified from three different internal spaces. 
Looking at the j graphs drawn, we can see that in spite of their geometrical differences of each house, there is one strong similarity in the configuration. 
The Salle Commune lies on all non trivial rings (a trivial ring is one which links the same part of spaces twice)links directly to an exterior space- that is - it is a depth one in the complex - and acts as a link between the living spaces and various spaces associated with domestic work carried out by women. 
The configuration of this space is seen as the leas depth throughout the analysis, than any other space. The general form of this measure is called integration. The less depth from the complex as a whole, the more integrating the space is. Therefore, every space in these three complexes can be assigned an 'integration value'. 

We can know ask how the different functions in the house are 'spatialized'. By observing these diagrams, we find that it is very common that different functions are spatialized in different ways. and that this can often be exposed clearly through its 'integration analysis'. 
In the three French houses, for example, we find that there is a certain order of integration among the spaces where different functions are carried out. If all the functions of the three houses are set out in order of the integration values of the spaces in which they occur, beginning with the most integrated space, we can read this as the salle commune being the most integrated that the corridor, which is more integrated that the exterior, and so on. 
To the extent that there are commonalities in the sequence of inequalities, then we can say that there us a common pattern to the way in which different functions are spatialized in the house. Common patterns called 'inequality genotypes'. T this is because they refer to deep structures underlying spatial configuration and their relation to living patterns. 

The relation of visibility, which passes through space:
This is done by drawing up the center points of each wall within a room and thus covering half of the space in the room. The idea of this diamond shape is that the space use is normally concentrated within the diamond shape, the corners commonly being reserved for objects. 
The reason in doing this is that it becomes another basis for quantitative and statistical analysis. The diagram shows that the salla commune has a far more powerful visual field than the salle itself. This type of method allows us to retrieve from house plans configurational properties that relate to the social and culturally functioning of the house. through this spatial configuration are embedded in the material and spatial 'objectivity' of building. Good way to express its concept and its architectural response. 

"We think of 'buildings' as whole entities through the unconscious intermediary of configuration, in that when we think of a particular kind of building, we are conscious not only of an imagine of an object, but at the same time of the complex of spatial relations that such a building entails"

011 Spatial Syntax Part 02 - The Habitus

The embodied divisions and hierachies between things, persons and practices that construct social world. 

Our positions within buildings leads our dispositions in social life; the spatial "division" of our world becomes a vision of our world. 

What kinds of agency are enabled and constrained by the particular building genotype within which it is structured and whose interests are served? How is everyday life bracketed and punctuated into socio-spatially framed situations and locales?

Hiller distinguishes between "long" and "short" (or deep and shallow) models of spatial structuring:

The Long Model - conserves and reproduces statues and hierachy. 

A "ritual" is a long model social event, since all that happens is governed by rules, and a ritual typically generates a precise system of spatial relationships and movements through time. 

The Short Model - generates new possibilities for social relations.

A "party" is a short model event, since its object is to generate new relationships by shuffling them in space, and this means that rules must be minimized by using a spatial "short model"

A permeable network of space can be associated with practices of social freedom. 
Buildings are assigned to produce an illusion of freedom coupled with the reality of control and surveillance. 

Hiller and Hanson term correspondence as a spatial zone that "corresponds" to any social groupings. 

High Correspondence Level: 
Deterministic of patterns of social encounters, i.e space that operates to exclude random encounters and to keep "difference" at a distant. 

Non Correspondence Level:
A system that will mix people of different social patterns , i.e it is a spatial model that breeds encounters with difference. 

This analogy of various levels of correspondence relates to the social independency of interior and exterior space. 

The interior space is more strongly structured and segmented, therefore the correspondence model prevails with a primary function in the reproduction of social relations. 
The external space is more countered by the non correspondence space. 

If these correspondences were to be exchanged, they would contradict themselves. 

Interior Space on a Non Correspondence Level - Random encounter would undermine the social reproductive function of the interiors.

External Space on a High Correspondence Level - The determinism of interior structures would kill urban densities, i.e. tree-like genotypes (housing enclaves) would invade public space. 

These relationships and contradictions is where Koolhaas attempts to try the opposite. He does this by playing with the tension between inside and outside, using the encounter structures of urban space to effect innovations in interior space. Koolhaas appears to adopt a Deleuzian epistemology incorporating ideals of "smooth space", where as Hillier is more materialist and empirical. 

Both works rest upon shared claims about the importance of social encounters and shared concerns for architecture as a "machine". 

010 Spatial Syntax Part 01 - Architecture and Freedom?

Spatial Syntax was mainly developed by Hillier and Hanson. Its a system that architects use, i.e. OMA that attempts to reveal deep social structuring of architectural space. From this analysis, buildings operate to constitute social organizations as spatial dispositions. 

Architecture mediates social reproduction through spatial genotypes. 

Spatial "genotypes" are clusters of spatial segments structured in certain formations with syntactic rules of sequence and adjacency. These seen as institutionally embedded. The forms of schools, offices and houses are reproduced from a number of genotypes. Each of these forms link into specific social institutions, i.e. school - knowledge, office - production and house - reproduction. 

The spatial syntax theory itself is perceived as positivism and reductionism. Koolhaas's programmatic innovations demand analysis and the link between spatial structuring. This complies to the syntactic analysis where the outcome would reveal its complexity and the links in social structure.

This here is a loose adaptation of the syntactic analysis that translates the building plan into a diagram of how life and social encounters are formed within it.
The diagram illustrates three primary cluster relations: the string structure (linear) with no choice of pathway, the fan structure with access controlled from a single segment, and the network structure with multiple choice of pathways. Architecture inevitably involves the combination of these three.

The linear syntax illustrates an enfilade of spaces with controlled movement. This is common mainly in traditional centers of power, such as Versailles, and in modern retail buildings where the entry is at one end and the exit is at the other. 
The fanned syntax emphasizes on the characteristic of bureaucratic organizations with large numbers of cells controlled by a hallway. 
The network syntax is defined by a choice of pathways which is often called permeability. 

When a linear syntax is combined with a fanned syntax, the result is a tree i.e. a linear series of fans. This creates a continue of many linear syntax duplicating itself within the fan syntax. 

The idea of syntactic analysis is the degree of network connectivity "ringness" vs tree-like heirachy of spatial control. The network syntax structure is defined by its multiple and lateral connections, many possible pathways through it, and dispersed control. The tree-like structure controls the circulation and social interaction in certain key access spaces. A hallway is the only access to cluster of rooms and has a high level of control over flow of everyday life. The permeable network syntax offers many possible pathways and diverse encounters however the flow of life through space is only loosely controlled. 

Another characteristic that can be derived from the syntactic analysis is the depth or shallowness of spatial structuring. A deep structure requires many segments with many boundaries and points of control. 

The syntactic method shows the spatial segments of the building layered into levels  of depth so that the level of space indicates the shortest route from the exterior (first node). The issue of depth is an important mediator of social relations both inhabitants and visitors. Domestic spaces and gender divisions are often structured in deeper segments while mediating a contact of visitors in the shallower end of the analysis. Examples such as prisons, hospitals, asylums, schools locates it subjects under surveillance deep within its spatial structure.  This verifies that the deeper the structure, the more secure and exclusive the spaces will become i.e. less integrated within the structure.

This diagrammatic method is not made up of plans; they are designed to reveal the nodes of access and control through the spatial structure. A breakdown analogy of spatial encounters and flow of everyday life within a building. >

009 "The Office for Metropolitan Architecture"

A vision fueled by the formal and social mulplicities of urban life, which we read as both architecture of the metropolis and as insertion of the metropolis into the architecture. 

OMA have been termed as the "social condensers of our time". This reflects a return to the early modernist imperative towards an architecture that would remake the habitat and habitus of everyday life. As analyzed previously, the work of Koolhaas, is strongly ordered by trajectories of movement through buildings. Mainly focused on vertical movement, i.e. escalators, stairs, ramps and lifts, which becomes the modes of access to fields of encounter or "event-fields". He visualizes this notion as a multiple of "freedoms" for new forms of action that architecture is seen to make possible. He seeks an architecture that can resist the imperative to become a diagram of social and institutional structure, which he terms "social mimesis". 
Koolhaas seeks an architecture that encourages an irruption of events, social encounters and opportunities for action. He concentrates on setting up a spatial structure that creates a multiplicity of choice for individuals and encounter. Koolhaas wants to:

"liquefy rigid programming into non-specific flows and events...to weave together exterior, interior, vestigial and primary spaces into a frank differential matrix that rids the building of the hackneyed bourgeois niceties of cosmetic hierarchies"

Buildings as spatial "fields"
Koolhaas often designs interiors as if they were exteriors, i.e. Metropolitan Architecture, importing exterior urban space into interior space. These interiors are often visualized as fields of play or artificial landscapes that dissolve boundaries between inside and outside, between architecture and metropolis. These spaces are mainly functionally open and visually transparent to engaged maximum social encounter.

Post Civil Society: Publicity/Privacy = Freedom/Control - Koolhaas's work enables patterns of free-play with spatial order. His work insists on the relationship between this randomness and freedom and the presence of some rigid, inhuman, non-differentiated form that enables the differentiation of what goes on around it occur by itself. 

This diverges into another way of thinking. It shifts from a focus of an architectural object to a focus on field relations, paralleling the development of field theory in mathematics. 
A field consists of forces, trajectories and patterns of movement.
The field is a material condition rather than a discursive practice. A system with permeable boundaries, flexible internal relationships, multiple pathways and fluid hierarchies is capable of answering complexities of new urban contexts. An innovation in which Koolhaas's work lies in the extent if utilizing such strategies in the interiors of buildings, where it contributes towards new kinds of social encounters. 
The idea of a building as a "field" rather than an architectural object entails a shift in critique from form to spatial analysis. 

Spatial analysis = Spatial Syntax

008 Typical Plan

Typical plan is known to be "a plan without qualities". 

A plan that repeats itself. A plan with depth and closure. A plan that can be seen "bad". Its only purpose is to populate and to office, i.e business. This program is the most circusmscribed program, it is formless. It takes no demands. Its only function is to let its occupants exist. This program supports the intention of repetition throughout the sectional design of the building.

Typical plan is minimalist for the masses. By the sixties it was refined as a seusous science of co-ordination - Column grids, facade modules, cealing tiles, lighting fixtures, partitions - which emerge in a domain of pure objectivity.  

The main rapresentation of the spaces that are created in a typical plan are mainly in a retangular form. Any other forms, i.e. square would be known as atypical.

Typical plan implies repetition: 

TP x Nth plan = building. 

The plan itself is formed up of four different components... floors, cores, the perimeter and a minimum amount of columns.

The positioning of the cores on the plan has a suprematist tension, which is equivilant to concrete poetry. 

Morgan Bank - Amsterdam - OMA

This building is known to be configured as a typical/atypical. Its set up along axis and co-ordination given as essence of typical plan. The roof if summed as atypical due to the extra program intended to re-create the environment as not "bad behaviour". Typical plan has severe constrains to its proposed rules. Creating this name of 'bad' which can be diluted as a visual of a storage space of men in suits. Its only purpose is to populate and to office. European potential under goes this dilemma and re-creates this monstrophic box like closure, to a more open-accomodating vibrance, known as 'Not-office' program. 

Universal Headquarters - Los Angeles - OMA

This building is seen as a notion of "attacking the typical plan"

The building was to illustrate a basis of a typical plan for offices that are revitalized by the insertion of urban like elements, such as platforms, places and towers, in persuit of an "experimental identity", i.e. "office life style"

The concept conceived of a typical plan, i.e. multiple floors stacked on one another, which were then subdivided into 4 characteristic towers. The only connection between these towers were the rectangular slabs (typical plan), which were seen as the floor slabs throughout the building. 

1. Collective Tower: container space for meeting rooms

2. Executive Tower: container space for management teams.

3. Circulation Tower: same as a lobby of American Skyscraper.

4. Virtual Tower: labs, research and experimentation center. 

The towers in the building have properties of an Unique identity. The circulation, high level correspondence (social encounters)and services are mainly designed and configured within the tower elements. This gives a rational uptake in the design by constructing these rules to maintain strict order. However, the repeatative creation of floor slabs that connect these towers as a whole (typical plan), are labeled as a Generic pattern. This has no form or creativity to its existance. Its a general element to this composition. By having these dignified towers, it breaks up this deep plan into a more elegant and a much more open type of environment. 

The office floors provide the necessary flexibility while the tower elements guarantee that a single entity is maintained.

The whole idea of towers begins to comply with the bigness of it. It starts to become urban. No longer soloists. Urbanistically, the entire building becomes an urban quarter.

Could this mean that the urban grain could be superimposed on the building section or plan?

007 The Plan - The Section

Plan, as the horizontal expression of a vertical intention, the plan is an abstraction. The plan is about the horizontal movement. It is a function of mobility of man, who is restricted to horizontal or near horizontal planes. 

The plan is dimensionally a function of human mobility. 

The plan operates in a neutral environment. The only substantial and important constraints are pre-existent, external and non-negotiable i.e. movement of the sun on a pragmatic level, the contours, shape and size of the site. The plan is divided up into three different kinds of 'room' that can be identified as Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Space. 

Primary space = space that is a programmed architectural response 

Secondary space = created at the same time to serve the primary space, i.e. circulation

Tertiary space = is seen as building material and services i.e. the fabric of the building

These three diagrams illustrates on how P/S/T contributes together within a plan. Two words have been set up to illustrate the potential of these three different kinds of 'room', repeat (Generic) and Unique. The first diagram on the left, clearly illustrates a sign of repetition through out the plan. On each corner of the the primary space is the secondary spaces that then branch out into tertiary spaces. This can be labeled as Generic, where the patterns have been repeated within the plan itself. This is seen in a typical plan of the Lloyds Building, London. The second illustration presents a balance between Generic and Unique. Again placing the Primary space in the center, with Secondary spaces adjacent to one another. This is a typical plan of Claypotts Castle, Scotland. Thirdly, this illustrates Uniqueness. Its a straight-forward heirachy presentation on how each independent room collaborates with one another, where P/S/T are place together functionally as one. 

Section, it presents 'external' physical and constructional issues such as light gravity which cannot be placed aside. The section is more 'real'. 
The section is a function of the unvarying measure of man and gravity. 
The gravity effect on the vertical dimension is unique to the section. The constraints seen by casting the  section are materials and services, raising of people, resisting structural instability which are the fore front issues in multi-level arrangements. 
The primary division of sectional circumstances is of single or multiple stacking of planes. The latter involving a complex tri-part arrangement of top, middle and bottom. The top and the bottom spaces are seen as the most Unique spaces within the multi-level arrangements. The bottom space has the relationship of the entrance and the connection of the external environment, however the top space, casts the potential of roof lighting give the essence of being Unique. The middle space is seen as Generic. Its composition is repeating its self through the building. Has no Unique vibe to it. Only continuation. 

As of the plan diagrams above, the  Generic and Unique system has been used with the sectional theory of top middle and bottom spaces. The second diagram is an abstract version of the T/M/B analysis, where the top and bottom are Unique spaces and the middle is Generic. This is demonstrated in a typical section of Simshill school, Glasgow. The first diagram clearly demonstrates all the floors in being repeated of its size, giving this a Generic label to its configuration. This is demonstrated in a typical section of the Torre Velasce, Milan. The third diagram is conceived of solely a Unique space. Giving no creation of a T/M/B space, this only composes of a singular uniqueness to this space. 

These ideologies of The plan and The section creates a formality to designing. Creates rules and boundaries that orders designs to compose as a rational uptake. Everything is sorted in itself, everything composes together. 

006 Program as a "Starter"

In the end of week two, as a group, we were assigned to give out a speech about, as individuals, our proposals for the year. This mainly intended of our research that we mainly focused on. As this is an early time to compose such belief, most proposals will conclude into being a vague outcome. 

Here was the slide that I presented on the day of the presentation..As you can see, within the rationalist traces group, each individual has its own focus that gives some relations to one another. Mine is Building.

Speech:

This title implies on the concentration of program. This is where the program of a chosen typology, i.e. galleries, plays as important role. This is where the outside geometry is not so determent due to the program being the creative factor. This sectional diagram illustrates on how Primary, Secondary and Tertiary spaces are imprinted into form creating this structural rational intake, i.e the Tertiary space has a thicker wall maintaining a rational structure form. 

The hyper rational process would then be differentiated with elements such as light, that would compose its external geometry envelope. 

005 Program over Form

Program over form was my first initial starting point to individual research. This vague focus was a step forward into knowing what to achieve by the end of this year. Rem Koolhaas, i.e. OMA, are clearly an important reference point. By starting to analyze and research in their theories and workings, I would be able to narrow my concentration into an area that can be revised and tested. Therefore, 
program can be seen as an active factor. 
This spatial analysis is firstly conceived in a diagrammatic form and then is cast backwards into plan fragments. Therefore, an ideology of P/F can be summarized as a series of processes and experiments on how to convey such equilibrium of a chosen typology.

The term rationalism (latin ratio or reason). The earliest form in philosophy is stoicism, i.e. making personal + political view of people as orderly. Stoicism believed that the fundamental injection laid in human beings is to follow the law of nature and in the development of stoicism this injection acquires a systematic meaning. The history of the systematic philosophizing about the arts in a rational way began with Plato. His approach in developing his attitude towards the arts was the issue of their social meaning and responsibility because he wished to make sure that the arts would subordinate themselves to the good of every citizen. 
For the arts to have an enjoyable efforts upon society excessively enervating elements and excessive individualism must be removed. 
This concludes in a measure of various experiments to manifest the concept idea of different arts composing a functioned society and eliminating individuality within certified typologies. 

These illustrations exposes diagrammatic formulas on the concentration of program itself. From left to right, the first diagram, illustrates how a solid form of building starts to embrace the program within. As the program distinguishes its configuration, the form itself is forgotten. The second and third diagram illustrates the x-y and z co-ordinates. These represent one being a spatial diagram on a plan and the other of a section. However, by concentrating only on plan and section the diagrams differ from one another. This could either be a social clash of arts or the heir-achy of space comes into play. The last diagram is an abstract version of a solution on how to portray this program over form on an actual site. This diagram illustrates the possibilities on implying just building on the site and then carving and place programmatic relations within itself. Here is a simple program where the importance of space is on the higher ground and the tertiary space, i.e servicing and plant areas are located at ground level. Can this be a touch point into hyper-buildings? 

Precedents:
Louis Kahn - Phillips Exeter Academy Library

004 Capturing Space

Capturing space was a side project that we all assigned our selfs as a group to investigate. Each individual was aligned with an artist that Doug Pearson (a PHD student, currently studying Stone Houses) mentioned to us at a meeting and we analyzed their work. Jan Dibbets was my concentration for this area. His work was very intriguing to pursue due to the way he worked with the use of different mediums. He captured space in a very unique kind of way. He starts off by drawing either a horizontal or curved line. Then mortgaging the picture together, by aligning its horizon line with the line he first drew. This starts to create a particular image that a view would have to manipulate in order to grasp what the image firstly was. The second layer that he encounters the image with is more of a tonal interpretation that he uses to expand the image creating an individuality and framework to his composition. This is seen mainly throughout his work. 

Here are a few examples of my interpretation of Jan Dibbets's work. The main focus was the inspired space which I analyzed at Elcho Castle. Most of these drawings are hard to configured on what exactly it is but within each one there is an explanation to be given on why it appears the way it is.