Performance-Oriented Architecture E-Book

Michael Hensel

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Architectural Design Primer
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 192

Beschreibung

Architecture is on the brink. It is a discipline in crisis. Over the last two decades, architectural debate has diversified to the point of fragmentation and exhaustion. What is called for is an overarching argument or set of criteria on which to approach the design and construction of the built environment. Here, the internationally renowned architect and educator Michael Hensel advocates an entirely different way of thinking about architecture. By favouring a new focus on performance, he rejects longstanding conventions in design and the built environment. This not only bridges the gap between academia and practice, but, even more significantly, the treatment of form and function in design. It also has a far-reaching impact on knowledge production and development, placing an important emphasis on design research in architecture and the value of an interdisciplinary approach. Though 'performance' first evolved as a concept in the humanities in the 1940s and 1950s, it has never previously been systematically applied in architecture in an inclusive manner. Here Michael Hensel offers Performance-Orientated Architecture as an integrative approach to architectural design, the built environment and questions of sustainability. He highlights how core concepts and specific traits, such as climate, material performance and settlement patterns, can put architecture in the service of the natural environment. A wide range of examples are cited to support his argument, from traditional sustainable buildings, such as the Kahju Bridge in Isfahan and the Topkapí Palace in Istanbul to more contemporary works by Cloud 9, Foreign Office Architects, Steven Holl and OCEAN.

Leseprobe

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Foreword by David Leatherbarrow

Introduction: The Task at Hand

Chapter 1: A Brief History of the Notion of Performance

Chapter 2: A Brief History of the Notion of Performance in Architecture

Chapter 3: Non-Discrete Architectures

Chapter 4: Non-Anthropocentric Architectures

Chapter 5: Traits of Performance-Oriented Architecture

Local Climate and Microclimate

Material Performance

The Active Architectural Boundary, the Articulated Envelope and Heterogeneous Environments

The Extended Threshold

Second-Degree Auxiliarity: Supplementary Architectures

First-Degree Auxiliarity: Embedded Architectures

Multiple Grounds and Settlement Patterns

Chapter 6: The Road(s) Ahead

Select Bibliography

Key Search Terms

Picture Credits

Performance-Oriented Architecture

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ISBN 978-0-470-97332-5 (hardback)

ISBN 978-0-470-97331-8 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-118-57011-1 (ebk)

ISBN 978-1-118-57012-8 (ebk)

ISBN 978-1-118-57013-5 (ebk)

ISBN 978-1-118-64063-0 (ebk)

Executive Commissioning Editor: Helen Castle

Project Editor: Miriam Swift

Assistant Editor: Calver Lezama

Dedication

To my wife, mother and late father with much love.

Acknowledgements

This AD Primer offers a theoretical framework for an inclusive approach to architecture, the built environment and questions of sustainability. It stems from what continues to be an invigorating and prolific collaboration with much-valued friends and colleagues, researchers and students to whom I am profoundly grateful.

I wish to express my heartfelt appreciation to my numerous companions and collaborators en route to performance-oriented architecture. To name but a few, I offer thanks to my long-term companions at the OCEAN Design Research Association and at the Sustainable Environment Association (SEA), and in particular my friends and colleagues Ludo Grooteman, Prof Dr Christopher Hight, Dr Pavel Hladik, Prof Dr David Jolly Monge, Sabine Kraft, Prof Dr David Leatherbarrow, Prof Dr Birger Sevaldson, Jeffrey Turko and Prof Dr Julian Vincent for their generous support. As the core of this work was developed in my PhD thesis I wish to express my sincerest gratitude to my supervisor Prof Emeritus Dr George Jeronimidis, as well as to the University of Reading for bestowing a DTA grant, which made it possible for me to undertake my PhD. My sincere gratitude belongs also to my committed students at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, the Architectural Association, the Izmir University of Economics, the Rice School of Architecture, the University of Technology in Sydney, and numerous other schools, who have tremendously contributed to this work through their dedicated individual and collective efforts.

My deepest gratitude belongs to my wife Defne Sungurolu Hensel for her continuous contributions, constructive criticism, invigorating enthusiasm and steadfast support and patience, and to my mother and late father who made absolutely everything possible for me.

For many years of highly committed and constructive collaboration on numerous publications, and this book in particular, I am most grateful to Helen Castle, commissioning editor of AD at John Wiley & Sons. Many thanks also to Miriam Swift, Calver Lezama, Abigail Grater and Karen Willcox for their committed work on this book.

This Primer can obviously only provide a brief introduction to a complex subject that keeps evolving and that requires a much more extensive and sustained discussion. I take full responsibility for any shortcomings that may result from its necessary conciseness.

Foreword

This book’s ambition is considerable. A different style of thinking is called for, one that rejects long-standing habits of thought in favour of a focus on performance. The theme is not presented as new to architecture, just newly significant, because the object-oriented methods that still dominate design and criticism have brought the field to a critical condition. I suspect that the ideas and projects set forth in this text will attract wide readership; but like many topics that garner popular interest this one is understood in many ways. The real force of this book’s thesis can only be grasped if its sense of performance is distinguished from usage that merely renames old conceptions.

Many designers and critics regard architecture as a particular form of representation. The common idea is that the buildings that have been designed creatively are meant to be perceived aesthetically and valued economically, in the interrelated transactions of experience and exchange. An innovative opera house, for example, brings pleasure to its spectators, fame to its designer, and revenue to its owner, or home city. Assumptions about the visual character of architectural experience support this view, as do ideas of design authorship. Although current, this way of understanding and describing buildings adopts premises that were proposed centuries ago and then subsequently naturalised in professional writings and public discussion, which is why we take it for granted uncritically. More importantly, this conception ignores the fact that the full sense of a built work is neither immediate nor transparent, despite recent accounts of design as a form of branding, and associated ideas of the work as a cultural commodity. A distant view merely initiates a sequence of perceptions – some visual, some tactile or motor, and others auditory – that successively augment and qualify the initial perception. Nor is a building’s role in practical affairs limited to signification. This is because buildings are at once representational and operational. When the architectural image is tied to the building’s modes of performance, when the work’s look is linked to its behaviours, its ways of responding to environmental forces and the requirements of inhabitation, the inadequacy of the idea of the building as something designed for an appreciative glance becomes obvious. This Primer advances this more complete vision: the building revealswhat it does.

The performative turn in other fields – theatre and linguistics especially – parallels and may have prompted the growing concern for performance in architecture. Perhaps the first question to be asked of current ideas is whether or not they advance anything more than old-style (early-modern) functionalism; which is to say, the long-familiar idea that utility is the essence of the architectural solution, that buildings are really instruments in service of some clearly specified purpose, that form – after all – is the result of function. Perhaps all that has changed in recent years is technique, now that instruments of measuring and modelling give us outcomes that are more certain and objectively descriptive. What, if anything, is really new in current thinking about performance, in this Primer in particular?

The idea that well-defined functions or space-specific uses are decisive in architecture has appealed to many over the past several decades because it is entirely congenial to the technical nature of modern design practice. In both functional and technical thinking, foresight is key. It is the business of design to anticipate and govern both construction and occupation. Buildings themselves are likewise anticipatory, for when they are designed to serve specific needs they anticipate practical affairs. Architecture is thus doubly preparatory. So much for the functionalist stance.

This position will be overcome only when the preparations of a well-designed construction are seen to be inevitably inadequate, when the finished work is understood to be necessarily incomplete, because the world of which it is part is recognised as a field of forces that will, over time and unpredictably, re-qualify what design and construction had pre-qualified. Engagement with what will change redefines the work. The building’s interactions with changing conditions of use and the environment – necessary interactions, if the work is to fulfil its purposes – mean that it eventually becomes something other than what design intended. When the building is understood as the locus of performances (not functional solutions), it can be seen as both a preparation and a response; an ensemble of conditions that not only anticipates occurrences but reacts to them, by virtue of foresight in the first case and participation in the second. The idea of participation (involvement, or ‘embeddedness’ in the arguments of the text that follows) suggests a simple ratio: what a part is to its counterpart, the work is to the world. And once our plans for the work allow it to act in concert with the play of social and natural forces, its harmonies will enrich our lives in ways that are at once unexpected and wonderful.

David Leatherbarrow

Introduction

The Task at Hand

‘The environment must be organised so that its own regeneration and reconstruction does not constantly disrupt its performance.’

Christopher Alexander, Notes on the Synthesis of Form, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1964, p 3

‘The notion of environment (milieu) is becoming a universal and required way of capturing both the experience and the existence of living beings and we could almost speak of it being a category of contemporary thought.’

Georges Canguilhem, ‘Le vivant et son milieu’ [1952], La Connaissance de la vie, J Vrin (Paris), 1980, p 129 (translation by Graham Burchell)

‘Above all we must remember that nothing that exists or comes into being, lasts or passes, can be thought of as entirely isolated, entirely unadulterated. One thing is always permeated, accompanied, covered, or enveloped by another; it produces effects and endures them. And when so many things work through one another, where are we to find the insight and discover what governs and what serves, what leads the way and what follows?’

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, ‘Versuch einer Witterungslehre’ (1825), translation in D Miller, Goethe: Scientific Studies, Suhrkamp (New York), 1988, pp 145–6

‘One can start from the idea that the world is filled not, in the first instance, with facts and observations, but with agency. The world, I want to say, is continually doing things, things that bear upon us … as forces upon material beings.’

Andrew Pickering, The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency and Science, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1995, p 6

Architects continually tackle the question as to what architectures should be and do, why this should be so, and how desired results could be accomplished. Much less frequently a considerably more significant question is asked, upon which the answer to the previous questions hinges: what is architecture, what are its core knowledge fields and what are its tasks?

Perhaps the answer to this question may seem too obvious for most to engage with seriously. After all, architectural handbooks, contracts, curricula and syllabi seem to deliver clear enough descriptions of the content matter of architectural practice and education. By combining these with the widespread supposition that architecture is a generalist profession which straddles the intersection between the arts, humanities and science, one could surely devise a sufficiently detailed universal statement about the discipline. And yet, this approach seems unsatisfactory for several reasons. For one, it would seem that handbooks, contracts, curricula and syllabi must be formulated according to a rather specific definition of the discipline in order to be instrumental. Secondly, it would seem of fundamental importance to recognise that the discipline evolves and changes together with the kind, range and complexity of its time-specific contexts and tasks. This has a significant impact not only on the definition of the perpetually shifting knowledge fields of architecture, but also on the consideration as to the other disciplines (such as engineering) with which it should seek affiliation. Therefore, if an attempt to define what architecture and its tasks are is based on the recognition of its inherently time- and task-specific characteristic, it becomes obvious that any such approach has a finite applicability. Configuring an approach that is open and inclusive enough to be adjusted, while at the same time being adequately integrated, may extend this duration.

As it would seem, architectural discourse has over recent decades become both increasingly diverse and fragmented. The beginning of this development cannot be assigned to any singular event or time. Numerous social, cultural and economic factors may have played their role in it throughout the previous century. At present, despite certain recurring themes, no discernible dominant architectural discourse appears to exist. This could be seen as an indication that the discipline has matured to the point where alternative choices are at hand when needed. However, today the field is dominated by specialist discourses that focus on more isolated topics. It may be argued that this development mirrors what is taking place in other disciplines where specialisation is accelerated to such an extent that general overviews are becoming increasingly difficult due to the amount of research and dissemination in each specialist field. With this in mind, it seems clear that architecture is urgently in need of integrative approaches that begin to coalesce specialist discourses for the sake of encouraging concerted efforts towards improving upon the built environment and its debilitating impact on the natural environment.

The task of this AD Primer is to provide a suitable framework for a specific definition of architecture and a cohesive discourse. It offers an integrated approach to architectural design, the built environment and questions of sustainability, entitled performance-oriented architecture, and examines relevant core concepts and specific traits in search of an architecture that is in the service of the natural environment. This has necessitated drawing on a number of disciplines. Emphasis is placed on the spatial and material organisation of architecture and its interaction with the environment. The aim is to arrive at an approach that is relevant to everyday architecture.

Chapter 1

A Brief History of the Notion of Performance

The notion of performance emerged in the humanities and social sciences in the mid-20th century and, following this development, also in the arts and science in general. It took shape during the 1940s and 1950s with an intellectual movement known as the performative turn: a paradigm shift in the humanities and social sciences, with a focus on theorising performance as a social and cultural element. Key to the movement were the works of Kenneth Duva Burke, Victor Witter Turner, Erving Goffman and others, which focused on the elaboration of a dramaturgical paradigm to be applied to culture at large and that facilitated the view of all culture as performance.1 Similarly influential were the writings of the British philosopher of language John L Austin, who posited that speech constitutes an active practice that can affect and transform realities.2 Due to the movement, performance is today commonly understood as a concept that provides a path to understanding human behaviour. This is rooted in the hypothesis that all human practices are performed and are affected by their specific context: the notion of activehuman agency.

The performative turn movement inspired a similar development in the arts. Fine art, music, literature and theatre all – in the words of Erika Fischer-Lichte, Professor of Theatre Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin – ‘tend to realise themselves through acts (performances)’, thus shifting the emphasis from works to events that increasingly involve the ‘recipients, listeners, spectators’.3 Furthermore, Fischer-Lichte proposed that Austin’s notion of the performative is not only applicable to speech, but that it can also be applied to corporeal acts. This relates to the development of the ‘performance arts’ as situation-specific, action-emphasising and ephemeral artistic presentations of a performer. It thus engages spatial and temporal aspects, as well as the performer and a specific relation between performer and audience.

Subsequently the concept of performance also began to surface in the natural sciences, technology studies and economic science. Andrew Pickering, Professor of Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Exeter, charted a shift within the sciences away from a ‘representational idiom’ and towards a ‘performative’ one, proposing that:

Within an expanded conception of scientific culture … – one that goes beyond science-as-knowledge, to include material, social and temporal dimensions of science – it becomes possible to imagine that science is not just about representation … One can start from the idea that the world is filled not, in the first instance, with facts and observations, but with agency. The world, I want to say, is continually doing things, things that bear upon us not as observation statements upon disembodied intellects but as forces upon material beings.4

Pickering went on to write that ‘practice effects associations between multiple and often heterogeneous cultural elements’, as well as operates the production of knowledge and scientific activity as a way of doing things.5 In so doing, Pickering paved the way for an understanding of active human agency in the context of the sciences, and of the world being filled with and intrinsically characterised by active agency.

It becomes necessary at this point to clarify the concept of agency. In philosophy and sociology, agency refers to the capacity of a person or entity to act in the world. While studies of human agency are generally characterised by differences in understanding within and between disciplines, it is not usually contested as a general concept. The concept of non-human agency, however, has remained to some extent controversial. Actor–network theory as developed by Michel Callon, Bruno Latour, John Law and others is a social theory that postulates non-human agency as one of its core features. Bruno Latour explained that:

If action is limited a priori to what ‘intentional’, ‘meaningful’ humans do, it is hard to see how a hammer, a basket, a door closer, a cat, a rug, a mug, a list, or a tag could act. They might exist in the domain of ‘material’ ‘causal’ relations, but not in the ‘reflexive’ ‘symbolic’ domain of social relations. By contrast, if we stick to our decision to start from the controversies about actors and agencies, then any thing that does modify a state of affairs by making a difference is an actor – or, if it has no figuration yet, an actant. Thus, the questions to ask about any agent are simply the following: Does it make a difference in the course of some other agent’s action or not? Is there some trial that allows someone to detect this difference?6

Latour referred to such items as ‘participants in the course of action awaiting to be given figuration’.7 Moreover, Latour argued that such participants can operate on the entire range from determining to serving human actions and from full causality to none, and called for analysis ‘to account for the durability and extension of any interaction’.8 The proposed grading of causality is of interest in that it can serve as a systematic approach to specific aspects of performance-oriented architecture.

There are several fundamental criticisms of actor–network theory. One key criticism focuses on the property of intentionality as a fundamental distinction between humans and animals or objects. Activity theory, for instance, operates on intentionality as a fundamental requirement and thus ascribes agency exclusively to humans. In contrast, the concept of agency in actor–network theory is not based on intentionality, and nor does it assign intentionality to non-human agents.

Recognising non-human agency does not, however, necessitate the relinquishing of concerns for human intentionality. If architecture is thought to perform, this requires some concept of non-human agency and the integration of different forms and lack of intentionality in agency.

Moreover, the notion of agency is based on that of environment – a term which itself has greatly varying definitions and implications and therefore requires clarification. Thomas Brandstetter and Karin Harrasser highlighted two works that were key to the development of the related notions of ambiance and milieu from the 1940s onwards: Leo Spitzer’s ‘Milieu and Ambience: An Essay in Historical Semantics’ of 1942, and Georges Canguilhem’s lecture from 1946–7 later published under the title ‘Le vivant et son milieu’.9 Spitzer traced the development of the concept of ambiance from the Greek periechon and Latin ambiens, via the notion of medium, to the modern notions of ambiance and milieu. Canguilhem started from the 18th-century import of the notion of environment from mechanics into biology. Both cite Isaac Newton (1642–1727), who used the notion of medium to refer to ether as the locus of gravitational force, and Auguste Comte (1798–1857), who extended the French term milieu to encompass not only the physical medium that surrounds an organism, but also the general scope of external conditions that are necessary to support the organism’s existence. Where they differ, according to Brandstetter and Harrasser, is in assessing the work of the biologist Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944) who examined how living beings perceive their environment subjectively. Von Uexküll posited that:

All reality is subjective appearance. … Kant set the subject, man, over against objects, and discovered the fundamental principles according to which objects are built up by our minds.…

The task of biology consists in expanding in two directions the results of Kant’s investigations: (i) by considering the part played by our body, and especially by our sense-organs and central nervous system, and (ii) by studying the relations of other subjects (animals) to objects.10

Von Uexküll introduced a distinction between the general surrounding (Umgebung) and subjectively perceived environments (Umwelt), and between the latter and the inner world (Innenwelt) of an organism. The study of the relation of animals to their environments or Umwelten led Von Uexküll to argue that all organisms are subjects, because they react to perceived sensory data as signs. This gave rise to a field of study in biology entitled biosemiotics, a termed coined by the psychiatrist and semiotician Friedrich Rothschild (1899–1995). As Kalevi Kull explained: