CARTHA
There’s no “I” in Team One can say that “knowledge” has been growing at an unprecedented pace since the first industrial revolution. As any other field of knowledge, architecture is no exception. Where architecture differs is in its assimilating character; architecture tends to integrate innovations from other fields, even whole new fields, into its processes. […]
There’s no “I” in Team
One can say that “knowledge” has been growing at an unprecedented pace since the first industrial revolution. As any other field of knowledge, architecture is no exception. Where architecture differs is in its assimilating character; architecture tends to integrate innovations from other fields, even whole new fields, into its processes. This has a direct influence on the depth and range of comprehension that is now requested from the architect.
Although we can still agree with the vitruvian view of the architect as a “generalist specialist”, the idea of architect as “master builder” is something we cannot conceive at this moment. When the role of the architect must be one of overview, how can she/he deepen all necessary aspects of the process to the point of mastering them, if they keep on multiplying at an exponential rate? For one person to call upon himself the responsibility for all the subparts of the process is not only egotistical but also reckless.
Architects should act as coordinators, should attain a position of overview by acknowledging the necessary work of other “players” at different phases of the process, not by proclaiming themselves as the sole responsible for the built environment. As we see it, the built environment is as much a consequence of the conceptual work of the architect as it is of the quality of the construction industry, of the engineer‘s ingenuity or of the nature of local laws.
With this issue, we want to pay homage to all the other entities that take an active part in the act of building by picturing these teammates from the perspective of the architect, our perspective, by discoursing on our reality and understanding how intertwined it is with the ones of those who build with us. To the rest of the team, our most honest thank you.
Francisco Moura Veiga
It is easy to sit across Samuel Schultze. Leaning back on the chairs inside one of the meeting rooms in the freshly renovated Basel office, overlooking the fig trees in the interior court-yard, one can’t help but feeling comfortable. The room I am in is one of the few enclosed spaces in the huge office. […]
Nowadays the architect doesn’t have the same role as he did in the past. He used to be not only architect but also master-builder and that worked perfectly back then. His fields of knowledge were vast, therefore he was able to implement his artistic ideas backed by a comprehensive amount of information. He would do an apprenticeship, he would learn from his master and further developed his skills. The trade he learned enabled him to look at a task in its entirety, he had the overview. With the separation of design and execution, the architect’s role changed. He draws the plans, he is still versed in construction matters but he does not implement his ideas himself anymore, this task was taken over by the “new” specialized master-builder.
At the beginning of the XXth century when architecture crystallised into a separate discipline. In the last century, the architect has missed out on strengthening his position as leader of the planning and the execution phases and was gradually displaced by the general contractor. The general contractor was better in all matters of accounting and timing and the architect didn’t deal with this part of the process because he concentrated more and more on the design part. Nowadays, this kind of specialization reached a new level: today we have planners, estimators, acoustic engineers, e.g. We have specialists for everything.
I think that our relation towards specialists is rather ambivalent. On the one hand I’m convinced that we need expertise in order to deal with the complexity of the tasks that we are given today. On the other hand we have to consider the fact that this expertise are also highly restraining for us if we do not question them. Therefore, it is very important that we challenge the expertise they are adding to the project and that we extract what we need to know in order to implement their knowledge in an intelligent way. We have to learn to work with the information the experts are giving us and trust their experience without adopting their inputs 1:1. This is a crucial task. Experts often have a very clear idea of how something has to be done. The job of the architect is to bring together different aspects of a project in an intelligent way. He is supposed to overview the whole process and the entirety of the task. In this sense the architect needs to reconquer his position, which once was hold by the “master-builder-architect”.
This position is taken over by construction managers, people who primarily organize, structure. They are used to make logical decisions but have no affinity with architecture. They are trustees, guiders, schedulers… We shouldn’t allow alienation of the overview position over the project, otherwise the architect becomes just another expert who is supposed to bring inputs.
In a way it is an ingrate job when you have been given the task of guiding the “design architect”. You act as the go-between who has to fulfil the needs of two parties, the client and the “design architect”. The client doesn’t dare to give instructions to the “design architect”, afraid of interfering with the “Architecture”… The design-architect on the other hand is often struggling with deadlines and financial specifications he does not fully understand. The local architect/project manager is the middleman, the mediator because he speaks both languages. It is of great importance that he knows well the design-architect’s point of view and is able to represent it toward the client, the same way that he has to represent the interests of the client toward the design architect. It is a very demanding job because you run the risk of being ground down between the two positions. And, at the end, your contribution to the project’s realisations is substantial but you are not benefiting from it. The design architect is the one who gets the credits and is published. The client is happy and proud of the result whereas you are not getting recognized for the indispensable job you did. This can be quite frustrating. There was a time when B+P worked in this function for Libeskind, Renzo Piano or Tadao Ando, amongst others. It was extremely educational in the sense that we got privileged insights into their working methods and ways of thinking but, even with this conceptual and theoretical compensation, we are not putting ourselves in that position anymore. We retired from this kind of business because we are convinced that we are good enough to realise projects like that by ourselves.
I am against an exceeding specialization. I believe that the architect needs to handle the devices himself in order to design, plan and communicate his ideas. Certainly there is a kind of specialization, like budgeting or logistics e.g. where, due to the increasing complexity of projects, the architect couldn’t possibly manage everything by himself. Still, we would like to keep that kind of knowledge within the company in order to be able to cover all aspects of the project, during all phases, including the concept and design.
To work for the municipal authorities was a big and essential experience for me. But you shouldn’t feel too important and get presumptuous. The committee’s first goal is to push the good and outstanding projects forward. Often, these good and outstanding projects are not conforming to the law. So, if you manage to convince the authorities and find solutions together to realize projects because they are above average, then you did a good job. The second goal is to prevent projects below average. And the third goal is to partially improve a great deal of all the other projects. The city’s organism is not only living on the outstanding projects, it is living on the average. Average is sufficient, as long as you have highlights in between. But obviously there are limits: A “Stadtbildkommission” can not bring average quality to a high-level because the project leaders are not able to do so. It’s not like in university, where you can tell the students what to do in order to get a better grade, it is much more difficult than that. In Switzerland for example, the profession of the architect is not protected (by law). It practically means that anybody can be an architect and hand in a building application. If you talk to this kind of people the way you talk to your students, they won’t understand a word. Actually this job is much more about interpersonal relations, comprehension and communication.
The architects need to make sure that in the future they still can do normal projects (small scale residential, medium scale housing developments). More and more people want to do their project by themselves because it’s cheaper. For instance, to build a single-family house, one could just go to the construction material market and do it oneself. Or small companies that directly address general contractors or contractors and tell them “Build me something. We don’t need an architect who just brings expenses”. For these small scale projects you have pre-fabricated structures, modular structures and general contractors that displace the architect, making him redundant. It is important that the architect can strengthen his position and show that he is needed. Nowadays, architects tend to be judged by “spectacular” large scale projects like airports, museums or projects for companies that use architecture as a marketing tool. That’s all good but the architect has to make sure to not only take on these large scale specific projects but also smaller scale projects. Otherwise “the cookie will only get smaller”. I think the building industry in Switzerland is doing well, and will do well in the future because the current building stock is, and will continue to be, in need of rehabilitation. In general we have to stimulate the building culture. The architects should not only be considered for spectacular projects but for normal residential projects of high usability and good quality.
Usually architecture is particular; you always have prototypes. Architecture is consistently reinvented. On the one hand that is important because we need to come up with site-specific and customized solutions and carefully analyse the given situation. Now the question is if this is going to work as well in the future and if architecture can sustain all these prototypes? And if, in the future, our society can still afford this kind of architecture or will we rather turn to standardisations? Generally the architect does not like the concept of standardisation because he does not have the same kind of freedom of expression. On the other hand, we have to face the economic pressure and it absolutely makes sense to force standardisation. This is a challenge and it certainly can be an interesting topic. For example, we have to find solutions to provide affordable housing space. Housing space is getting more and more expensive if we build it new. This is a never-ending process. In order to provide new affordable housing space we have to find intelligent solutions and standardisation makes absolute sense in this context. Therefore we have to work with flexible typologies. There was a time where, for every problem, you would come up with an individual and fixed solution. Then the needs changed and the house was not usable anymore. Only old houses with very simple structure survived. They were former office buildings, then residential buildings and are still functioning today. They are flexible enough to fill new needs. Of course the individual house will always exist. Nevertheless, we have to consider both sides and it is important that we develop typologies based on ecological and economical considerations and which can fulfill future needs in a sustainable way.
Architects need to become all-rounders again, they have to widen their horizon. They need to be curious and interested in all the different aspects of a project. They do not have to be experts but they need to know how to integrate the experts inputs in a clever way and to use it in their favour. They need to be the spider in the net, to stand where everything merges in order to have more influence on the design part. They shouldn’t become a pawn at the hands of the client, they should rule the game.
Joanne Pouzenc
Feminine thinking A couple of weeks ago, I received an impromptu invitation to a fabulous dinner. Based on an original idea from Niche Berlin with Rosario Talevi and supported by Perspektive – a programme of the Institut Français in Berlin – the hosts gathered around the table some 20 special guests to think about the […]
A couple of weeks ago, I received an impromptu invitation to a fabulous dinner. Based on an original idea from Niche Berlin with Rosario Talevi and supported by Perspektive – a programme of the Institut Français in Berlin – the hosts gathered around the table some 20 special guests to think about the production of space from a feminine point of view. The guests were all space related, mainly architects and apart from two witnesses coming from the male‘s league, they were all women. But whereas architecture was our common point, almost none of us was still a practitioner: all of our career paths brought us to wider our horizon and to diversify our practices to the cultural, artistic, curatorial or teaching field.
Why that? Have we made a step forward on our individual pathways or have we intended to flee from our architectural fate?
Before that occasion presented, I didn‘t really embarrass myself with feministic thoughts. My experiences taught me not to dissociate males from females and certainly not to claim any difference. I always accepted as law that women who decide to make a man‘s job should be aware that the same qualities would be expected from her. Whereas around the table, some very strong characters preferred to defend the idea that women need to fight to get their own way in a man‘s world, I‘d rather defend that women need to adapt and that the dichotomy between men and women should be just ignored. But that dinner blew my mind: of course this distinction exists and is extremely present. Furthermore, to what exactly should women adapt? Very often if not daily, women suffer from machist untold rules in their work environment. And if those rules don‘t apply, for cultural or societal reasons, it‘s sometimes the woman alone who is forcing herself in being as efficient and as productive in every field in which men excel, if not better.
The first time I visited a building site, I was still a student. In the frame of an „on the ground“ training, I had picked a woman architect to follow one of her project in the process of being built. The project was relatively small – a couple of houses in an urban environment – but already very impressive for the future architect-to-be that I was back then. Actually, any project was truly impressive: as a student, I was constantly asking myself how is the shift operated between the drawing on the paper and the built reality. I was frightened by the amount of information I would still need to get to be an architect – hopefully, a good one.
As I was waiting for that lady architect to come, I was surprised to see her coming with her „lady“ style: heels she could exchange for the non-secured yet „at least closed“ ballerinas she had in her bag, a normal-formal skirt and jacket, and her dog on a leash. It seemed pretty relaxed. After five minutes of courteous hand shakes and smiles, she asked one of the worker to hold the dog for her whereas meanwhile she would climb a ladder and go check the first floor with another guy. I didn‘t think this was truly efficient but I felt relieved. Efficiency might not always be the only measurement tool. As anything else, measured „efficiency“ as a productive factor should also be considered on short terms and long terms perspective. What I observed back then was maybe the insurance that the relation Architect/Worker did in fact work quite well. It helped me understand there was a possibility to express and assume femininity anywhere, and also – of course – within an architectural practice.
When I finally graduated, I was very proud to bring my architect title onto conversation. At least the first few times. There is always a moment when people are asking you „What are you doing for a living?“ and this question often comes right after the „What‘s your name/ Where do you come from“ one – in the first five minutes. Depending on the milieu or location I was when asked this question, I had often – very often! – to face a strange reaction after I proudly brought the „I‘m an architect“ answer. Immediately, as a reflex, people would answer: „You mean Interior Designer?“ = choosing the carpets, the colors of the pillows, the fabric of the curtains and the pictures to be framed on the wall. The worse though would come from the fact that women as well had that question-reaction. I apparently didn‘t fit with their image of „The architect“ and if falling in such clichés is a widespread practice, let me risk myself in bringing some more stereotypes.
Men to men relations when becoming conflictual or having to defend opposite interests are often based on force, strength or pressure. Threats, anger or loud voices are current issues on construction site. I‘m not saying that construction sites are necessarily a matter of conflicts and I have also seen some smooth ones going on… but conflicts appear and men and women seem to have a very different approaches to it. Of course, the architect has always the same threatening tool that doesn‘t depend on gender: money. But the way deals or negotiations are made differs definitely from one gender to the other. I‘ve seen working men on construction site spending the first minutes testing out the competences of the woman architect. By arriving, the woman architect will be asked a series of tricky technical questions for which maybe even the man architect wouldn‘t have any answer. Her competences would be then stated in front of the group according to the answer she would give.
I wondered for a long time what the good answers were: I have tried several techniques before finding the best fitting one, the one that would give me the green light to lead the construction site and gain the initial respect from the group of people with who I would be working in the next months. I‘ve faked a «good» answer that appeared to be the wrong one, I‘ve tried to change the topic by pointing out another more urgent emergency, I‘ve initiated some sexists jokes or jumped on the occasion to laugh at some, I‘ve tried the „I don‘t know – I‘ll ask my boss and give you an answer (once he has enlightened my dark ignorance)“, I‘ve made it evolve into „I don‘t know – I‘ll make some researches and I‘ll give you an answer“ and that was the closest possible answer to gaining respect I could find. Until I just decided to be honest and stop caring: there are things I know, some I don‘t, some I‘m good at, some I suck at. And it can be gender related – or not at all.
As well within the construction process, I‘ve experienced that gentleness, politesse and understanding can also be used to obtain good results. Moreover, when those protocols are combined with an already acquired respect, the global mood along the construction goes smoother and all the team works together to match a common interest: making it happen and making it good.
With more experience, the process of being respected gets maybe faster, but undoubtedly, one has to go through the exact same power testing in the beginning. But in the cultural-architectural sector, feminine presence seems to be much more accepted. Furthermore, in Berlin, women seem to have the leadership of architectural content: the cultural teams of architectural curatorial practices are often built under the lead of strong connected women who are entitled to bring back on the paper – and on exhibition spaces – what one has been building and concreting somewhere else.
I‘ve been working in the last year with and within women team: not that femininity was a requirement for getting the job: it was simply a coincidence of fitting curriculum vitae cumulated with the wish to bring to their architectural practices some meaning. At first being a bit worried, aware of the hard competition level that women operate between same gender individuals, I quickly observed how women communities can work efficiently together, whatever tasks would be given.
As such, within Berlin Unlimited (which counted only two late coming men within a team of 15), women have designed, organized, estimated, negotiated and built up the entire structure – literally and metaphorically – for a seven days long festival about Arts, Architecture and Urban Research. Whereas I was stuck on office duties, my collaborators sent me a video of the construction site. The short video featured a couple of beautiful women mastering the art of loud power drills and screwdrivers, singing some famous jazzy balades over the music in the background, covering the noise of their tools while assembling the structures. I wondered quite a lot why no men had joined this adventure. Perhaps men were just more pragmatic and not willing to give their competences for free to a cultural cause. But the more I receive new applications for future projects, the more I have to face it: they keep coming mainly from the feminine sphere. Women might just need «more» to fulfill their satisfaction ratio. More challenges, more overviews, more domains of expertise, more diversity, more contacts, more adaptability… Unless, once again it‘s purely coincidental. Surely, the place I chose for a living might influence and/or enhance these tendencies: in France, I‘ve had more balanced experiences, in New York, I was the only girl in a 90% gay firm (who actually interpreted from the lack of picture on my resume that I was a boy – funnily and naturally), in the Bauhaus in Dessau, we were 20 ladies out of a research team of 24. I deliberately chose to exclude from my considerations the parts of the world where the differences Men/Women are in fact the most pregnant: I just have absolutely no clue about those parallel realities and I unlikely would be the right speaker to depict them. But before calling it a «women phenomenon», I will just keep my eyes and feminine high sensitive receptors wide open: maybe there are in those differences a lot to learn from to finally reach a real balance.
Mathieu Bujnowskyj on Joël Tettamanti
Joël Tettamanti is a Swiss artist and photographer, born in Cameroon and graduated from Ecal in Lausanne. Tettamanti is mainly known for his meticulously composed large format photographs of alpine landscapes and for “local studies” of various remote locations, from african savanna to arctic harbours. If there are generally very few protagonists in the composition […]
Joël Tettamanti is a Swiss artist and photographer, born in Cameroon and graduated from Ecal in Lausanne. Tettamanti is mainly known for his meticulously composed large format photographs of alpine landscapes and for “local studies” of various remote locations, from african savanna to arctic harbours. If there are generally very few protagonists in the composition of Tettamanti’s pictures, the human presence and influence on the environment is a recurrent theme that could be understood in the lineage of the New Topographics exhibition. His images testify moments in the human alteration of environments – construction, utilisation, décrépitude of artefacts or landscapes.
It is interesting to note that Joël kept for a long time two twin websites, tettamanti.ch and tettamanti.li. A white one for his personal projects, and a black one for various commercial works commissioned by architects, international brands and magazines. The present selection of Tettamanti’s photographs is issued from these two collections, mainly from his personal works. In the context of “Mannschaft”, his ambiguous status between independent artist and commissioned photographer allows us to think about the position of artistic photography in the valorisation cycles and communication strategies of contemporary architects.
In an era of speed and digital fluxes, Joël still captures his observations of natural and built environments through large format (4×5) film cameras mounted on tripods.These Traditional and heavy tools that he carries with him around the world, allow him to slow down the photographic process. Even in commissionedprojects, because of low flexibility and very small series, each picture becomes unique and strongly authored by Tettamanti. His workflow has intrinsic qualities and aesthetics that support his peculiar vision on the captured subjects, and differentiate him from many other architectural photographers who work digitally with extended series and options. This phenomenon reinforces his authorial (artistic) status.
From the early days of 20th century, Modernism happened along with the birth of a new kind of Prometheous architects well illustrated for example, by personalities such as Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe or, more recently, Rem Koolhaas. Architects presented as charismatic visionaries with ambitious responsibilities for society. These architects understood well the continuous logics between the invested efforts in the development/construction of a building and its presence to the world afterwise.
Architectural communications have developed exponentially with this necessity to valorise as much as possible ideas and built production in order to consolidate architects status. An increasing number of architects started to invite artists and photographers to document the evolution of their projects under construction, and to portray their representation once finished. The images are then used in various publications, such as monographs, magazines, supporting the visibility and the credibility of the architects.
These produced images can both be understood as the representation of an architectural product, as much as an autonomous image supporting an artistic statement where architecture acts only as inspirational subject. The presence of this iconographical duality creates an artification of the architectural communications. It showcases, honestly or not, a supplementary cultural value through artistic collaboration. The reputation and the universe of the commissioned artist or photographer is transferred to the documented building through his production, to the benefit of architects.
Fabrizio Ballabio
A concrete pad of circa five meters in volume sits below a concrete deck. The pad accommodates a column which is secured within a slot. On two of such columns sits an inverted Y beam spanning 12 meters in length. The trylith is then offset at circa 18 meters distance and connected to the previous […]
A concrete pad of circa five meters in volume sits below a concrete deck. The pad accommodates a column which is secured within a slot. On two of such columns sits an inverted Y beam spanning 12 meters in length. The trylith is then offset at circa 18 meters distance and connected to the previous via 4 hollow V beams laid at regular intervals between them. To a certain extent, this bare and almost rudimentary assemblage of prefabricated elements amounts to the entirety of the architectural manoeuvres deployed by Industrial Designer and Architect Marco Zanuso in his project for the Olivetti Factory in Scarmagno begun in 1968 – no definitive form, no fixed internal layout.
Part of a second wave of plants the Italian typewriter manufacturer had inaugurated at the end of the 1960s 1, the project also sits within a broader range of works carried forth by Zanuso in flourishing Post-War Italy in which the attempt was made to reach the complete industrialisation of the architectural project. As one might sense, the system described above denotes a module of the building and were it not for the refined, faceted forms in which the elements had been cast, at a first glance it would be probably seem no different from any standard application of pre-fab, post-lintel concrete structures the last century has seen. And yet, it is precisely in the intricacy of its tectonic resolution that one can gauge the project’s relevance – both in its mirroring of the circumstances in which it came into existence as in the context of more recent debates around collaborative design processes. If, in fact, Zanuso’s factory in Scarmagno stands as a testament of exquisitely ‘Olivettian’ value systems whereby the myths of social collaboration and interdisciplinarity would permeate the most dispersed aspects of civic life, it is interestingly also an incarnation ante litteram of what Mario Carpo would refer to as an ‘architecture of many hands’ 2. One where the managerial nature of the design processes is made entirely visible through the concrete disposition of architectural form.
Zanuso first came in contact with Adriano Olivetti around 1954, when the company was undertaking a vast program of expansion which would result in the construction of a number of new factories both in Italy and abroad. Strong of international funding and of an unprecedented wealth in sales, Olivetti was seeking for opportunities to decentralise its production activities towards the underdeveloped regions of Southern Italy (Campania, Basilicata, Puglia) whilst investing in new foreign markets in South America, Africa and the US. In this context, Zanuso’s first commissions consisted in the design of two production units in Brazil and Argentina adding on to what Manfredo Tafuri would ironically describe as Olivetti’s personal architectural vitrine.
The factories were campaigned as the spatial embodiment of the company’s excellence providing a tangible image of it to be showcased globally. If this form of architectural marketing is vastly common in contemporary corporate environments 3, the current case was in actual fact part of a broader strategy A.O. himself had devised since he had first joined his father‘s company on return from his American studies. Creating and running the firm‘s Publicity Office in 1928, over the course of 30 years the young heir had attempted to reinvent Olivetti’s image claiming the factory as a crucial locus for social, cultural and political reform. To this objective, architects and planners came to be involved within much larger interdisciplinary exchanges involving industrial designers and graphic designers but also social scientists, doctors andwhatmore. Under the tuneful banner of Comunità, a movement and editorial project which promoted technological development and social cooperation within a quasi federalist conception of the State, A.O. and comrades presented cohesive studies for new societal models informed by participatory practices and a re-newed, ’humanitarian’ ethos.
If the majority of these propositions was doomed to remain on paper, around the 1950s a concrete implmentation of A.O.’s ideas had found its place in the Canavese district (the geographical area of which the main town is Ivrea). Contingent to the expansion of the company‘s Headquarters in Via Jervis were in fact a number initiatives in the surrounding territory which nurtured distributed production strategies as well as concrete forms of social assistance. Respectively in 1954 and 1955, A.O. founded I-RUR, the institute for urban and agricultural renovation 4, and the League of Municipalities of the Canavese (Lega dei Comuni del Canavese) – two organisms which catered the construction of smaller craft-oriented production facilities, centres of formation, social services and more – all of which pertaining to the factory and its ‘community’. Approximately 15km south of Ivrea, the factory in Scarmagno was arguably one of the last actualisations of this pervasive regional scheme. Appointed to Zanuso by A.O. himself prior to his mysterious disappearance in the February of 1960 5, the plant was intended on the one hand to consolidate the district as an industrial complex of regional scale – integrated and overlaid to the previous agricultural substructure of the area; and on the other, to explore the possibilities arising from the introduction of electrical apparatuses in production processes 6.
This latter aspect in particular rendered the project a significant instance for Zanuso to put in practice ideas which he would later gather under the architectural mantra of ‘participatory design’. The sheer complexity of the mechanical and electrical servicing, coupled with the ever more fluctuating demands of the market, called for a strategic spatial diagram wherein distinct systems (the production line, the services and the built matter) could be modulated to the highest levels of performance. Effectively, what this lead to was an escalation in the forms of expertise involved in the design process, each with its own requirements and operational parameters 7. If this collaborative model may seem common (or even cliched) in the current multilayered nature of design processes – after all, the building industry has taught us that the number of subcontractors and stakeholders involved increases as technology moves forward – there are at least two aspects which make the case an unusually significant one: on the one hand, it’s ideological ancestry in Olivetti’s Comunità; in ascribing to the cults of interdisciplinarity and collaboration, the project reproduced at an architectural resolution the company’s complex managerial dynamics at the scale of territorial governance 8. On the other, the literalness with which the model would inform the actual design strategy; here, architectural elements, technological circuitry and mechanical production are integrated into a single isotropic system. 
In broad terms, the project can be understood as the sophisticated application of a series of basic, yet effective, architectural principles determining the factory’s overall layout as much as its finer detailing. Responding to demands for high levels of spatial and operational flexibility 9, the whole site was structured to follow a rectangular grid of 18 by 12 meters – a curious reminder of the ubiquitous presence of the productive process within the surrounding land. Correspondingly, the grid defined a modular unit composed of 4 pillars, 2 primary beams and 4 secondary beams, all made of pre-stressed concrete and easily assembled. As explained at the start, the vertical elements would be slotted in the foundation plinths tapering from a square foot at the base to a rectangular plan at the top. Primary beams were then laid on half of the upper rectangle leaving space for the next module to develop on the vacant side. If this detail allowed for the building to be expanded in all four directions with the simple addition of supplementary components, it also embedded an element of incompleteness in the peripheral columns which Zanuso eloquently exploited as an expressive means.
The tectonic qualities of this junction, where the mismatch between the elements resulted in a greater legibility of the overall system, evokes the syntactic character pertaining to classical architecture spared of its figurative and symbolic motifs. This analogy is made even more relevant when considering how the single module would inform the make-up of the entire system.
Rather than relying on proportional rules, here, the relationship part/whole is determined by the mechanical capacity of the ventilation ducts of which the terminal channels are duly integrated into V-shaped secondary beams. Far from a continuum, the factory was in fact parcelled into four interconnected plants each equipped with its own powering mechanisms and cluster of auxiliary facilities (changing rooms, offices, a cafeteria and so forth) denoting a larger productive module which could be governed independently and repeated at will.
In closer detail, the intricacy of the internal infrastructure found its apt resolution in the stratigraphic organisation of the factory’s flows in section. It is here that the project took on the vertical complexity of a city-fragment bringing in the managerial methods and design criteria typically pertaining to urban planning. Ensuring a maximal degree of operational independence, the multiple vectors running through the space (at this point it is questionable if we can even call it a building) were assigned autonomous horizontal planes, each at its own altitude – starting from the ground where the indefinite circulation of humans and goods took place 10, moving to the electric system which was hung below the secondary beams, further into the ventilation ducts and ending in the power supply systems (mechanical and electrical) which were brought into the space via a much larger and sparsely distributed grid of square-sectioned ‘tunnels’. This complex webwork of human activity, assembly chains, cement, air supplies and electrical circuitry assumes the vertical semblance of an architectural mille-feuille wherein the multiple voices involved in the design process would act on distinct, punctually connected, levels.
Zanuso’s ‘module-object’ (the precise name with which the architect refers to it) can here be understood as the witty managerial tool which denoted the respective distribution of the collaborative processes within the system, while at the same time portioning it into easily quantifiable units.
In 1945 Adriano Olivetti published ‘L’ordine politico delle Comunità’, a compendium of thoughts formulated during his ‘exile’ in Switzerland which in many ways could be considered as a manifesto of his ‘communitarian’ thinking. More than that, the book was a thorough proposal for social reform in which material interests were invested with highly moral concerns. Imbued with evangelical spiritualism and socialist hankering, in many ways it ironically anticipated the political turncoats of the later Christian Democrats which at their own convenience would alternately take sides with both Socialists and Communists. Central to Olivetti’s thesis was the organisation of society in discrete territorial units of roughly 100’000 citizens gathered around localised administrative organs and highly integrated productive processes (agriculture and industry). This decentralised and distributed entity would act as an easily manageable interface between the individual and the region which, in turn, would respond to the larger body of the Federal State. If in Olivetti’s treatise, the proposed downscaling of administrative bodies to defined geographic areas was deeply rooted in a romantic sense of fraternity amongst men, the ethos behind this model could in fact be better grasped through the entrepreneurial jargons of optimisation and quantifiability. It is in correlation to these that a feedback loop can be established between Zanuso’s modular constructions and the company’s post-political initiatives in the broader Canavese district.
In capitalist frameworks, management is commonly understood as the ability to put reason into practice. It is an instrument intended to legitimise decision-making on the basis of quantifiable bits of information, ultimately driven towards an increase in productivity. Writing at the dawn of the 20th century, manager-engineer Henri Fayol denoted management as the ability to forecast and plan, to organise, to command, to coordinate and to control 11. In architecturalterms, such are the actions facilitated by modular organisations as that implemented in the construction of the Olivetti Factory in Scarmagno, wherein building timelines (construction to maintenance 12), material resources, servicing and operational parameters but also human behaviour would be made easily measurable for strategical decision-making. Architecture here took on the character of a vast three-dimensional spreadsheet in which complex data could be analysed/processed in basic tabular form. If Keller Easterling has recently advanced that “the projects of Cedric Price and Christopher Alexander are on the threshold of designing an architecture that has become information”, one may wonder whether the project being discussed has in actual fact succeeded in the trespassing of it 13.
Amorphous, flexible, scalable, quantifiable and multi-layered, Zanuso himself described the outcome as no more than convergence of data stemming from disparate disciplinary fields. At a time which cybernetic thinking permeated the most distinct branches of intellectual production, the choreographic nature of Zanuso‘s work as planner in mediating the relationship between commissioners, consultants, and the users of the building (namely the labourers) is a heroic attempt to reduce architecture to a purely organisational matter where productivity and pragmatism become the only valuable assets. It doesn’t surprise that in the very same years Italian historian Manfredo Tafuri would assert that,
In the face of modernised production techniques and the expansion and rationalisation of the market, the architect, as producer of ‘Objects’, became an incongruous figure. It was no longer a question of giving form to single elements of the urban fabric, nor even to simple prototypes. Once the true unity of the production cycle has been identified in the city, the only task the architect can have is to organise that cycle. 14
With hindsight, we can of course deem the project as a filamentary pursuit. It is by now common knowledge that the integration of services into architectural elements has proved itself to be a shortsighted design solution. This pattern makes itself visible via the tyranny of the drop-ceiling in contemporary work environments which, in a way, is but a step towards the complete schism between architectural form and the myriad of technological apparatuses facilitating contemporary life. Yet it remains a somewhat heroic failure, wherein strategies of embedment take on an almost military role allowing architecture to retain an agency of sorts in the definition of the end-product. Although only partial, Zanuso’s ‘module-object’ contained the whole of the project’s architectural DNA within a single unit –it’s anatomical qualities as much as its technical capacities. It is from instances as these that new lessons can be learned to confront the imminent questions posed to the architectural profession by collaborative frameworks such as Revit, Archicad or any other BIM CAD software 15. If as Mario Carpo maintains in his book The Alphabet and the Algorithm16, the times are ripe for a complete re-assessment of architects’ authority and authorship within design processes, Zanuso’s factory in Scarmagno provides an interesting way forward.
Mio Tsuneyama
In early spring of 2015, I, along with two professors, went to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Jiyu Gakuen Myonichikan. After attending the meeting that brought us there, the manager showed us the construction site of the restoration of the auditorium on the southern part of the site. This timber structure was built in 1927, just after […]
In early spring of 2015, I, along with two professors, went to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Jiyu Gakuen Myonichikan. After attending the meeting that brought us there, the manager showed us the construction site of the restoration of the auditorium on the southern part of the site. This timber structure was built in 1927, just after the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake by Arata Endo 1.
After breaking the “Sakoku” 2 in 1875, the Japanese government invited foreign teachers in order to teach western technology, culture, philosophy and also architecture. This was the very first moment the “architect” as a professional was recognized in Japan. Traditionally, the “architect” had not existed in Japan, in his place, the “Toryo” 3, the master carpenter planned, built and managed the construction site.
The manager of Jiyu Gakuen told us that during the restoration, they founded a lot of experimental traces of Arata Endo. For example, when the the wall and ceiling finishes of the main space were removed for the structural reinforcement, they found that the structure did not look like it had been built by the “Toryo”, who generally lead the construction site of timber structures at the time. An unusual construction was used, a “2×4” roof construction brought by F. L. Wright, carried by only four pillars and high beams in the longitudinal direction, which seems an influence of japanese conventional wood framing, to gain stability against horizontal forces making it indispensable after the earthquake. This unusual structure system makes the main hall unprecedented in its constructive aspect.
At the time of post-earthquake rehabilitation, when budget and materials were limited, the Jiyu Gakuen needed the space for lectures, as soon as possible. In order to overcome the shortage of time and funds, Endo hired normal carpenters without so-called “Toryo” who were open to new ways of construction and detailing, not bound by preconceived ideas, and who could also take time to consider and try again and again with the architect. Endo made this experiment possible by taking responsibility over the budget and hiring and managing the workers.
We are currently facing poverty that could be compared to the one felt at the time of Arata Endo after the Great Kanto earthquake. This poverty does not mean starving or shortage of materials, but lack of quality of life. People have to work hard from day to night just to earn enough to cover their basic needs in modern urban society. To break free from this state of being “working poor”, people are shifting their lifestyle and workstyle too, trying to cut costs in renewed ways. The prevalence of the “Share house” model is one of the phenomenon caused by this situation. People prefer to share apartments or houses with other people in order to be able to “have” larger spaces without having to spend large amounts of money with the rent in the middle of city.
In the Spring of 2013, I was invited to renovate the house of a former school friend. She had bought a 1970s two-storey detached house, together with her partner. The house had a large storeroom on the ground floor and they planned to renovate it into a house for seven people, who would live together sharing a living room, a kitchen and a bathroom – a so-called “share house” 4. In order to fit the new uses into the share house with seven bedrooms, we needed to re-organize the plan. The budget was limited, so the clients and I decided to paint the walls, floors and ceilings ourselves, helping to reduce the construction fee.
The Client, the client‘s parents and myself painted at the end of the construction process, for a period of ten days in total. I was very pleased to join for the painting as a friend, to spend time with them and to get to know their parents. On the other side, I ended up not being able to check on the other work still going on on the construction site. To have missed these inspections caused misunderstandings with the workers, who had to do things again. This imposed a burden on them and, at the end, it could have created an additional fee for the client. The aim was to make the cost lower but this process was reversing the seemingly logical order.
The house has become charming and seems to be a happy place for its inhabitants now. It has also gained some architectural interest by creating several shared spaces for them. But the experience at the end of construction in the site made me think about the role of the architect. By inserting myself in the construction process as a “construction worker”, I might have lost the real workers confidence on me and, what is worse, they might have seen me as an intruder. I asked myself whether painting was just my egotism as an architect to achieve my ”ideal space”…
We increasingly see young architects “do it yourself” with their client to realize their design, professing it as part of their design concept or working attitude as an architect. The reason might be that the client’s budget might not be large enough and/or that to pay for an architect is not yet instilled in Japanese culture. With this kind of DIY approach towards construction, the quality is clearly not the same as it would be when the construction is done by workers who have trained for years to master a specific technique. I am not skeptical towards “do it yourself”, because it might be the trigger for clients to decide that a house is not something to buy but to be built. But if the architect joins in, it might mean that unprofessional detailing or construction is admitted. This in turn ignores the worker’s value and prevents the inheritance of knowledge and the high quality technic of Japanese construction, which we can be proud of it.
A year and half after the completion of the FUDOMAE House, the construction manager was declared bankrupt. He was an independent contractor and worked as such: he received his orders from the architects, arranged all the workers and managed all the cost; this is the general situation of construction in Japan. Therefore, the quality of the construction greatly depends on the building contractors.
The architects who worked with him were admired and pleased when they understood that the construction manager was very conscious about design issues and had a really good network of all different kinds of qualified professional workers. Also in the FUDOMAE House, the workers were concerned not only with their task, but with the whole construction, allowing them to help each other and discuss details and possible solutions to unexpected situations. This created a good team, which also included the architect and the client. I do not think that it was only the FUDOMAE House’s construction that brought financial problems to the construction manager, but it is not difficult to imagine that the architect‘s amateur attitude, like the one I had, affected his budget little by little.
This incident indicates that the existing system we have in Japan, does not fit to small projects with small budgets. It would have probably worked well if the clients would/could spend more money on the construction process and this would allow the contractors to pull some money for covering unforeseen trials and tribulations during the construction process.
But as we are facing the “lack of budget”, using this system is unreasonable. If architects would not break-through the existing system and would not contrivehow to manage the construction site, we could not support the small networks of workers like the construction manager of FUDOMAE House had, they could never assure the quality of their work. To use a product which is embedded into industrialization, is cheaper and easier. If the architect does not find the quality of experimental construction and manages to convince the client of this added value, the client will go to the easier solution, as to buy a ready-made house. Then clients will tend to “buy the house” and not “build the house”. A direct consequence of this, from my point of view, would be that architecture could be completely absorbed by the system of industrialization.
The working environment that Endo tried to create with the Jiyu Gakuen Auditorium made experimental construction possible with a small budget. But the way he did it, investing time in trying and thinking together with carpenters, looking for solutions for the structure’s system or detailing, was only possible at Endo’s time when the labor was not as expensive as it is today. Or is it? How can we recreate this kind of experimental construction site without going into DIY or exploding the available budgets?
As a young architect, who has small scale projects with small budgets, I struggle with the fatalism of industrialization. The DIY is a possible stand against this situation but it does not necessarily leads to an improvement of the architectural realm. Our role as architects is not only to design, but also to care for the inheritance and development of quality of workers’ skills. To build a network of qualified workers that will then in turn assure the quality of the work of the architect. Maybe then, we will get the chance to attain a high level of quality in our built environment, from the design phase to handcraft detailing, despite our small budgets, despite the industrial system, despite our own egos.
Alan-Miguel Valdez, Ruben Valdez
Fig. 1 A $250 device from august you attach to your existing deadbolts that allows you to control your door lock through your smartphone via Bluetooth. Cities are not stable entities. The physical component, represented by buildings and infrastructure, may appear solid, but urban flows and networks that take place within are in a constant […]
Cities are not stable entities. The physical component, represented by buildings and infrastructure, may appear solid, but urban flows and networks that take place within are in a constant movement driven by the social and economical contexts surrounding them. They are the concrete embodiment of a population’s economical and political policies.
A neoliberalist-oriented market adapted to specific contexts has been a key feature of the western world ideal economic policies, with a pervasive effect on all dimensions of society including (for good and for bad) the reconfiguration of urban areas. A mix between the will of economical interests and the implied correctness of democratic politicians and city officials has clearly ruled the development of the cities in the last 40 years 1. It is no novelty that space by itself is a market commodity which has been poorly regulated by most state institutions 2 and that the city itself has a great profitability. Money, power and economical interests have set the rules of how we build the city almost since its existence and have greatly defined the physiognomy of contemporary urban zones.
However it is interesting to note that in the last 20 years the economic speculation of the city’s space has been in juxtaposition with the discourse of sustainability, efficiency and competitiveness that culminates in the emerging vision of the smart city. We cannot neglect in the discourse the advantages of the smart cities and architecture if they’re sustainable, competitive and efficient, nevertheless the contradictions within this juxtaposition of values are worth to reflect on.
Recently Koolhas stated that: “As a substitute for the French Revolution’s liberté, égalité, fraternité, a new universal trinity has been adopted: comfort, security,sustainability” 3; we could hardly argue against the authoritarianism of correctness, the lactose and gluten free city shouldn’t disturb us because it is being shaped for our own good, for us to have better quality of life and more opportunities.
On the other hand as much as state institutions have been drawn into ever more explicit forms of the creative destruction of urban built environments in order to promote even more intensively marketized land use regimes 4, speculation is not only about space anymore, is about automated life and about smart cities shaping smart citizens who are digitally savvy, efficient and entrepreneurial.
Last June Google’s sidewalk labs was announced, “An urban innovation company that will develop technology at the intersection of the physical and digital worlds, with a focus on improving city life for residents, businesses and governments” 5. The head of the project Dan Doctoroff, mentioned in the official announce of the company that: “We are at the beginning of a historic transformation in cities. At a time when the concerns about urban equity, costs, health and the environment are intensifying, unprecedented technological change is going to enable cities to be more efficient, responsive, flexible and resilient. We hope that Sidewalk will play a major role in developing technology products, platforms and advanced infrastructure that can be implemented at scale in cities around the world.” 6
Technocentric neoliberal utopianism in which it is unquestioningly assumed that technology development and business growth will automatically improve quality of life within the city and its space, its not only a google’s feature, an immense number of entities are hands-on on the smart city and its market based on promises of a better life. By doing so they are completely changing the way we move, inhabit and read the city, creating an incredibly vast and unprecedented infrastructure of services directly related to it, not only redefining existing cities, but already defining the ones to come.
Ironically, what may have been Le Corbusier’s idea that a house is a machine for living has been extended to the whole city, empowered through Lewis Mumford’s 7 conception of large hierarchical organizations as mega machines – machines using humans as its components, the city becomes a machine for living, a digital one, and in consequence life itself becomes subject to technological automatization with digital placemaking substituting actual sense of place, and digital capital replacing social capital. The digital and physical space merge in the contemporary city completely changing the creation of a place and therefore the people defining it.
The smart city’s digital place is almost as present in our consciousness as the physical one, our relation towards the city depends everytime more of the screen as an interface to inhabit it, perceive it and share it. The architect has never been alone in the shaping of the city, but never before has been more accompanied in defining the relationships towards the city space. An army of software engineers, entrepreneurs and investors are slowly kicking the architect out of imagining the future city or using him as a necessary marketing accessory. The discipline may not disappear or be substituted by graphic designers 8 in the near future, but the role of the architect as the catalyzer of the space available to citizens in their pursuit of a meaningful relationship with the city is on stake. For how long the discipline will remain relevant under such scenario?
Cristina García Baeza
‘Architecture has many aspects (…) we analyse Architecture as a complex fact so that in every project all the elements may find their balance‘ 1 Cruz y Ortiz arquitectos Architecture construction process as a molecule and the anamorphosis 2 of its atoms As society evolves the realm of knowledge increases in complexity and new disciplines have […]
‘Architecture has many aspects (…) we analyse Architecture as a complex fact so that in every project all the elements may find their balance‘ 1
Cruz y Ortiz arquitectos
As society evolves the realm of knowledge increases in complexity and new disciplines have to be taken into account for the development of construction processes. Social complexity and the evolution of the cities require and establish a constant readjustment. Architecture is a multidisciplinary process, involving artistic, technical, economic and social concerns. There are no doubts that, historically, architecture has always connected different realities: the material to humanize the natural space, the individual and social needs that move architecture, the site conditions, the economic impact, or the public policies. This complexity has been growing over time but now we are more aware of the importance of how all these disciplines in the different stages of construction, may modify the conception of architecture.
Therefore, this is why architects are becoming part of continuously growing architectural teams, where professionals of different disciplines work more closely linked than ever: engineers, quantity surveyors, landscape architects, topographers, sales assistants, etc. Like in molecules, the construction process in architecture gains complexity with the addition of new components inside the process molecule.
In my experience, within the perspective of architecture as a set of disciplines, I have seen that concerns may arise resulting from the potential risk that architecture could be trivialized, losing its leading role in the construction process. In this sense, the influence of upcoming local and global factors and conditions in the entire building process is definitely changing the realm of architecture. These changes might be considered as a hazard and as an opportunity since the result of its evolution will determine the new role of architecture.
The type of construction process relies on how many agents and disciplines are involved (atoms), and can make an impact on the construction of the project (molecule) Different circumstances (social-political-economic context, people involved, type of design, budgets, materials, etc.) will always have an impact on the concept of architecture. Due to this complex hybridization architecture can no longer be defined as a clearly bordered activity, but as a blurred concept, determined in every single situation by the atoms that will compose and structure the final activity. The architecture trunk is branching out, and even though the upcoming new branches remain belonging to the same entity some gaps begin to exist amongst them, creating differences and singularities. Evolving architecture is plural. Therefore, from my point of view, architecture is a consequence of the evolution of its components. It is not a fixed or pre-established concept. As a matter of fact it seems to me that architecture shares this mutable quality with other phenomena as an immanent principle of our society.
This leads to the anamorphosis, phenomenon that somehow may clarify what happens inside the molecule of the construction process. We note that depending on the set position inside the “architecture molecule” and its view scope, architecture can be seen in many ways. In fact, just the position of the economic key factor within the “molecule” will influence the whole process, inducing the emergence of new architectural characteristics or the disappearance of historical features. From the position of each atom, where the whole process is perceived in a determined way, the architect should coordinate all parts of the process in order to achieve the most optimized and balanced architecture. Special attention should be given to clients or promoters/developers and particularly to the user needs, since the former act as a catalyst and the latter are the deepest reason of the architecture process.
The economic crisis in Spain has deeply affected the construction industry as the most important business in our country. In spite of it, this global crisis, almost as an oxymoron, has encouraged the development of good practice models in Spain. Maybe, because fewer construction processes are under development, architecture teams are investing much more time in each one of them, and reaching more imaginative and streamlined design solutions. Our first work developed as OAM arquitectos, diagram 3, is a good example for the molecular construction process described above.
This construction process was very special for its location – palimpsest place of the city of Málaga where coexist unequalled monuments of the Roman City (1st century) and Muslim City (11th century) in the heart of the historic centre, by the side of Picasso Museum-Buenavista Palace (16th century) and Aduana Palace (18th century) – and from its architectonic, urbanistic and heritage point of views. Many agents have been involved in it. Currently, it is not completely open to the public yet (broken link in the molecule), since the visits must be organized under agreement with local authorities.
One of the main concepts in this project is the addition of minimally invasive new material for the construction process with assembly systems that would future allow reversing the actions taken, in the light of new needs or restoration theories. We chose CORTEN steel plates as a very strong material, close to old stone, to limit depressed paths. This material choice worried and divided the local archaeologists of the Andalucía Heritage-Architecture Office in Málaga who scrutinized the design. Some of their technicians considered it an inappropriate material because of how it had been unfortunately used in other heritage architectural interventions in this city. Due to these fears and concerns, the process strongly slowed down. Andalucía Heritage Office, for the first time in Málaga, delivered neither a positive nor negative report, but a „non-adverse“ report.
During these months of uncertainty and varies meetings amongst our team, the Urban Municipal Office technicians and Andalucía Public Administration technicians, our office was taking advantage of the construction delay time developing and “purifying” the original proposal constructive details, and fully adjusting design and budget. Seven months after our first meeting with the Andalucía Heritage-Architecture Office, the construction process began. The first contractor was dismissed because of its budget proposal (first broken link inside the molecule) and was replaced by a second company.Besides the initial difficulties, the process developed well. The team embraced well with meetings happening, in situ, three times per week and, despite the low budget for the design, we tried to enhance the final result.
Analyzing this landscape-heritage architecture project molecule, we find that the biggest atoms are the public administrations: promoter and heritage supervisor office, and the powerful links are public administrations-architect and builder-architect. These two binomials were the core of this work. Good relations between them were essential to achieve a very satisfying work.
As said at the beginning: ‘Architecture is a complex fact so that in every project all the elements may find their balance‘. Therefore, architects should find their balance coordinating all atoms-agents. In this context, it seems fundamental to me to consider architects as global agents not only able to visualize or understand the architecture molecule-processes, but also to design them in order to achieve optimal architecture developing frames. These primary molecule-designs will ensure, or at least will help to search for excellence in architecture. Harmony is the key.
Vicente Nequinha
When we listen to classical music, even if it is inattentively, we can understand that there is a large number of musicians playing together with the common goal of creating a harmony. Each one of them has the responsibility to dominate the instrument and the music sheet. However, it is necessary that someone coordinates the […]
When we listen to classical music, even if it is inattentively, we can understand that there is a large number of musicians playing together with the common goal of creating a harmony. Each one of them has the responsibility to dominate the instrument and the music sheet. However, it is necessary that someone coordinates the whole orchestra; there can not be a violin playing a wrong note nor an oboe that is not on tempo. At the tip of the Maestro’s fingers, the leader of all the musicians, a Battuta is held. With it, he conducts the how and when of the orchestra‘s performance.
Just as in music, also in building is it possible to find a person who is in charge of a group of specialists and workers: the architect. Amongst the characteristics of the architect we can recognize the possibility, or the impossibility, of assuming the role of a master builder: the one who not only designs but also sees his designs through to their completion, taking the construction site under his responsibility.
The persona of a master builder was easily recognizable during the Middle Ages, where this character embodied the functions of the contractor, the mason, the engineer and the architect. Recognizing the master builder as a figure of prime importance, Fernand Pouillon writes the novel Les pierres sauvages, in which he describes the story of a character who faces all the difficulties of the living and working conditions in the Cistercian Abbey’s construction at the Le Thoronet, and in whom he recognizes himself, “I was applying my own character as it might have been within the context of such a magnificent architectural period.” 1
Pouillon was not interested in finding a theoretical discourse that could define his work, avoiding to seek a stylistic tendency – going against the spirit that fed the architects of his generation in the 1930s. “Pouillon was a modern architect, but he was not a modernist” 2, being far from architects’ meetings, such as the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM), to be focused on practical issues of architecture, and avoiding taking an ideological stance towards reality. It was this attitude that allowed him to develop some necessary assets, such as decision making and efficiency, that would later on allow him to act as he did. He acknowledged the act of building as a response to the homelessness as a need he felt passionate about.
His reputation as an architect was reinforced when he developed a lot of apartments in a tight schedule, in Aix-en-Provence, being responsible for all phases of the project, from urban design to architecture and construction. “Two hundred housing units at two hundred meters from the city, built in two hundred days, for two hundred million francs. (…) I planned the construction in cut stone, a Pouillon system of flooring, a Pouillon method of load-bearing brick walls, a Pouillon vaulted structure. This represented a housing development of simple invention, achieved at a cost as low as possible and within a schedule that nobody believed.” 3 This achievement convinced the newly elected mayor of Algiers, Jacques Chevallier, about his efficiency, leading him to invite Pouillon to be the Architecte en chef of the Algerian capital, where he was commissioned to design several large-scale housing developments.
Some years before his arrival to Algiers, Fernand Pouillon was responsible for the creation of the Société d’Etudes Techniques (SET) in France. This technical consulting office was in charge of the supervision of construction sites, time planning, and coordination between different constructors and entities, showing how the design, the development concerns and the construction can work together, testing the boundaries of the architect as an artist and inventor, the client as a developer and the general planer as a manager. With this model of a work process, Pouillon assured that the architect was able to coordinate all the design and construction stages.
The project Climat de France, in Algiers, was one of the most important commissions for Fernand Pouillon. During the 1950s, the French government started several social housing initiatives in response to the decadent social climate present in the North African colonial territories, Pouillon being in charge of one of the largest housing projects constructed in North Africa at that moment. Situated at a high point of the Frais Vallon Valley in the Algerian capital, Pouillon developed a “gridded” urban proposal, challenging the strong inclination of the site. Combining a variety of small and large buildings, it explored different dwelling typologies in order to understand and give a proper answer to the particularities of the cultural demands –in this case, the Muslim Northern African context.
One of the most peculiar elements of this project is a rectangular housing block that defies the limits between the monumental and domestic scales. This “scale’s game” is easily perceived in the contrast of the closed character of the outer facade and the impressive colonnade in the inner courtyard composed of 200 columns – giving the building the name “200 Colonnes”. A strategy used by Pouillon to emphasize the cohesion among all the buildings involved in the project, was an attentive choice and use of materials, opting for a system of modular stone panels, conceived by him, to cover the walls of the buildings and, at the same time, to give the modest construction a certain air of grandeur.
The particularity of his approach towards this commission was the fact that he did not face it as just a designer, “More and more I started to orient myself towards rapid and economic construction. I elaborated a method, a technique. I reworked the organisation of the construction process in order to make it more rational. I had to solve three problems: prices, deadlines, comfort (…). I was the first one to think simultaneously as an organiser, a financier, an engineer, an inventor and an artist.” 4 This attitude towards architecture becomes a work of coordination, just like as the Maestro and his orchestra. A capability to control all the stages of a project, from the design to its construction. For Pouillon, the most important role of an architect, as a master builder, is the capability to implement ideas and to find opportunities in the constraints that all projects present.
But how realistic is this master builder nowadays? It is difficult to compare the master builder of the Middle Ages and such a figure nowadays for different reasons; the cultural and social demands are not the same, as well as the construction techniques and tools. However, there is a critical understanding that we can recognize in this medieval character – besides his savoir-faire put at the service of a collective work, he had the desire to take complete control over the task at hand as a way to perceive what was being proposed. In Fernand Pouillon, we must recognize this attitude, not as result of nostalgia or admiration for an unachievable period, but as an intellectual capacity, as an architect, to critically understand how to operate in the reality that we are about to change.
“Supposing that one day, I would be miraculously recognised, a phenomenon which is yet to come, in the light of the influences, sensations and reflections that I will have inspired in the domain of art.” 5
Walter Achermann
The following notes are a result from a request of CARTHA’s editorial group to Walter Achermann of sharing his privileged view on the evolution of the construction industry and the role of the construction manager in it. He chose three projects; The first construction site where he acted as construction manager; a second one where the […]
1978, Engelberg (Lucerne)
Construction duration: 15 months
Cost: 2.5 million CHF
2 Housing Buildings, Vacation appartments, 2 x 12 APP
10 companies involved, around 60 workers in total
Working processes and tools:
– The Bauleiter (construction manager) took over the whole construction process, starting from where the Architect had left, the concept phase. The Bauleiter did the detail plans, the description of the materialisation and construction techniques to be used, dealt with the local officials, the few specialists and the client.
– At this time there were no computer or copy machine helping at work. Every correspondence was written on typewriter with carbon copy. To produce copies of submission papers a transfer matrix had to be made (“Umdruck”). Plans were drawn by hand on transparent paper with ink by a “Rapidograph” (instrument of drawing).
– Precision and detailing in the “Ausschreibung” (submission) phase was quite reduced when compared to today’s. This had two direct consequences; it was much faster and simpler to do but it required a more “hands-on” approach to the construction site management. This was only possible because when one would write, for example, “brick walls and concrete ceilings“, the construction worker and the contractor knew exactly what it meant and what was expected by the architect. Construction techniques were somehow less variable and the construction workers had a better understanding of the relation between different materials and building techniques. One can say that the workers were more qualified than now.
– This quality and know-how from the workers allowed the construction site manager to be more relaxed, to trust the contractors and workers when it came to competence during the building process.
– The only specialist needed for this project was the structural engineer. All the other aspects (electricity, sanitation, heating, so on…) were handled by the contractors, from the planning until the construction phase. There was a lack of specialisation, the skill sets needed to bring the planning and construction processes to its successful completion were held by generalist contractors and planners that handled the relatively simple act of building. The Bauleiter was also responsible for the coordination and correctly handled execution of these special technical crafts.
1989-1992, Hergiswil (Lucerne)
Project duration: 2.5 years
Cost: 9 million CHF
8 Single family houses, Lakeside Villas
25 companies involved, around 150 workers in total
Working processes and tools:
– The developments known in building technologies during the 80’s and 90’s, as a consequence of the oil crisis and increasing ecological and economical concerns, led to the multiplication of consultants and specialists. New categories and subcategories within the previous disciplines were born: Termic and energetic consultants had now an input when it came to heating and insulation techniques, a geologist had to be called in to deal with the risk of landslide into the lake, etc.
– Also in the planning phase, the Bauleiter had the representation of his inputs, detail plans, being drawn by draughtsman. This had consequences; the further interpretation of the desired materials and techniques by another person.
– Beginning of the use of computer as a tool for the submission phase. Material and construction techniques were now described using a computer program and a standard method (BKP and NPK from CRB). With this “help”, the submission documents could be more detailed. To a lot of contractors this was a new process and they did not understand the standardized descriptions what meant more work (explanations) to the Bauleiter.
– A system of coordination drawing known as “Tochterpause” was used to implement the knowledge and needs of each specialist into the project. The Bauleiter would draw the construction plans based on the architect’s plans, on a piece of paper. This piece of paper would then be sent to the sanitation planer that would draw directly on it. He would then send these plans to the heating planer, and so on, until all the consultants had drawn their contribution on the original construction plan. This would take around two months. It allowed for the prevention of planning mistakes as the planners knew where they could draw in first hand, it was clear on the plan they had in front of them. A meeting would then be held at the end of this process where all the specialists would meet and discuss minor details that had to be solved on the plans. A final coordination plan would then be drawn and the construction could start with a certain certainty that the layering of the consultants inputs would work correctly.
– Local authorities had only a rudimental control over the project. The submission plans would have to be approved and there was a zoning plan for the area but the presence of local authorities on the construction site was close to none. The single control was at the end of the construction process, before the owners would move in.
2006-2009, Basel (Basel City)
Project duration: Planning 2.5, Construction 2.5 years
Cost: 98 million CHF
1 Building in the Novartis Campus St. Johann (Office and Laboratories)
10 consultants and specialists involved
32 companies involved, around 1150 workers took part in the construction phase
The main architect was David Chipperfield, Burckhardt+Partner acted as local architect and con-struction manager.
The architect was in charge of the plans, including detail plans.
Local architect was in charge of the submission, budget calculation and served as specialist / consultant for local laws and construction processes, accompanying the project since the planning phase.
Working processes and tools:
– This project took advantage of all the technologies that nowadays offer. The computer was used for both drawings and text/documents production.
– An ever growing wish for optimization and costs reduction on the construction site had been gradually changing the methods and techniques. More and more, the construction elements and materials are pre-fabricated and processed in order to reduce the assembly and montage time on the construction site.
– Very high demands on safety and security meant a lot of additional work to the Bauleiter who had to control and adjust what was not according to the regulations of the law and of the client.
– The amount of involved companies, in coincidence with the tight time schedule, meant the additional task of managing weekly coordination meetings of the local architect – led by the Bauleiter – with the consultants, specialists and actually working companies. At the end of the project, over 130 protocols of this construction meetings had been written down.
– Following to increased regulations by the authorities, the Bauleiter needs much more time for the approvals of every single craft, especially technical equipement.
There is one aspect that did not change during this time and throughout these projects: The Bauleiter is the overall responsible for costs, time schedule and correctly executed construction.