Schematic Compositions

New Park for Green Era:

While we may have an idea of the activities and be able to imagine the infrastructures that support them, the physical constraints of the site will also exert their influence in the process of design.  Some activities may need to be adjusted according to available space.  The geometry of the site may constrain certain relationships between spaces or the way one moves through them.  Adacent activities (e.g. train lines), or topographic changes (changes in height) may invite or inhibit certain activities or relationships. 

This exercise is conceived to reveal some of these tensions.  Its also designed to introduce systematic techinques for composing the arrangement of spaces to expedite critique and subsequent development.

Instructions

Mining the Catalog of Spatial Typologies you previously prepared, you can now collage elements to explore composition.  In this workshop, we will generate a series of three different ways to orgnanize the landscape.   

Size matters.  This collage should be to scale -- 1”=100’ (1:1200).  This is also the scale of the site model that’s provided.   To generate three different schemes, one could begin with an initial thesis, choosing an ordering system that seems like a promising way to fulfill it.  Once complete, consider the antithesis and a related ordering system.  Having established polar opposites, consider a third option that is unrelated to the that polarity. 

The following list might help you start.  None of what is listed below should be considered “solutions.”  The items on the list are merely organizational approaches that will reveal surprises and may have implications to advance our understanding and discussion:

1. A landscape organized in bands or other zones of similar or complementary activities.
   
2. A landscape organized by size or height in a gradient, for example spaces small to large, regardless of use.
3. A landscape organized to make an elaborate composition out of the inherent patterns of lines or fields of objects implied by the conventions of infrastructure (e.g. the lines of sports field, the lines curbs, lines of plants on a farm), ignoring use.
4. A landscape thats organized to align the direction of movements for every activity implied by the infrastructure -- like a choreography.
5. A landscape that arranges the visual mass of vegetation and other growing matter (farm rows, hedges, groves, etc.) as buffers or walls between a composition of clearings and spaces of human-centered activity.
6. A landscape that creates productive conflict or beneficial frictions between activties.
7. A landscape that’s organized into a pallette of ground surfaces to support free interpretation, perhaps calibrated and measured by using the catalog as an implied rather than expressed presence or layer of potential.
8.  A landscape organized according to what is visible or invisble from its  periphery.  See Rem Koolhaas, Bigness.
9. A landscape that superimposes infrastructure to allow for multiple interpretations of how to use spaces.  For example, a multi-use sports court.
10. A landscape organized to make a composition of the sound implied by parts.
11. A landscape that organizes constituent parts to create or influence an economy or ecology.
12. A landscape that is zoned by the implied time or timings of activites or to respond to environmental, climatic, or season changes.

Collaborate in Teams:

In teams of 2 or 3, produce at least 3 versions.

This preparatory step will facilitate an in-class workshop next week, and may be exchanged during our studio session, so your work should be coherent and legible to others.

Possible Tools:

Collage on Paper
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop

Reference Texts:

OMA, Parc de La Villette
Brian Eno, Systems, Generating and Organizing Variety in the Arts, 1976.
Merijn Oudenampsen, Aldo van Eyck and the City as Playground

Other Texts of Interest:

Alex Lehnerer, Grand Urban Rules
Sol Lewitt, Paragraphs on Conceptual Art
Chantal Mouffe, Agonistic Public Spaces

Other Inspiration:

Wucius Wong, Concentration.

Thinking about Drawing

This is a step in preparing to develop models and plans as constructions in themselves.