EXCERPTS FROM ARCHITECTURE AND DISJUNCTION BYBERNARD TSCHUM

Figure 1: Book written by Bernard Tschumi

In this book, Bernard Tschumi talked about the contradiction in architecture. For Bernard Tschumi, the short half-life of function and the inability to know beforehand how people will use a building or place are chief examples of "disorder, collisions, and unpredictabilities entering the field of architecture. Although these challenges seem impossible to archive the rule ridden practice of architecture but then they emancipate architects and their arts.




"So architecture seems to survive only when it saves its nature by negating the form that society expects of it," he writes. "I would suggest that there has never been any reason to doubt the necessity of architecture, for the necessity of architecture is its non-necessity. It is useless, but radically so. Its radicalism constitutes its very strength in a society where profit is prevalent" by Bernard Tschumi.

Figure 2: Disjunction

However, Mr. Tschumi does not originate his arguments from analogies with linguistics or philosophy, but rather from the architecture itself. His writing is relatively clear, even lively because of the very low standards of contemporary architectural theorizing.




Mr. Tschumi's art seems to exist in a hermetic world that lacks the primitive, truly architectural pleasures created by light and shadow, color and texture, expansiveness and enclosure, rhythm and incident. His architecture is an occasion for explication, not joy. Mr. Tschumi repeatedly describes architecture as sensual and pleasurable, but the eroticism he finds in architecture is really an obsession with rules and the architect's desire both to impose and to transgress them. Design is bondage; learn to enjoy it.

EXCERPTS FROM THE RADIANT CITY BY LE CORBUSIER

Figure 1: The conceptual city by Le Corbusier

The Radiant City which Le Corbusier's ideal city was inspired by the functions and arrangement of the human body. Each organ has to work together to make the body perfect the same as the city. In the ideal city of Le Corbusier, the strategy was to create enough space between vertical and horizontal areas. The vertical space provides people to use and enjoy then the horizontal used as corridors which the public landscapes with greenery. Therefore, vehicles and pedestrians also have their own areas to move. All spaces in the city were symmetrical and in modern style. The city has underground transit that links between the residential zones and commercial zone which convenient for people to move easily from one place to another place. This underground transit is same as the LRT or MRT at Kuala Lumpur.

Figure 2: The sky garden and pedestrian walkway on top of the road

The Radiant City had been designed in a symmetrical plan that each street has the same amount of buildings. The business area at the center and the residential at the side which surrounding the commercial area that convenience for the residents to buy things by walking or using the underground transit. The residents stay at the apartment or residential area will keep away from the industrial zone. From our sites, the residents of Kajang mostly work in the industrial area so they have to take the bus from their residential area to the working place.

From Radiant City, I learn that the design solutions in Radiant City are quite the same as Malaysia's city plan which the industrial will located far from the residential areas and the commercial area.

ORNAMENT AND CRIME BY ADOLF LOOS

Figure 1 Book written by Adolf  Loos about ornament

Adolf Loos discovered that only the removal of ornament of the past to let the cultural evolution succeed. But the new source is given by Adolf Loos which he thought to be helpful to the world was not accepted by the people. The ornament existed for a long time. The world needs to have some changes to improve the country's development.

Adolf Loos think that decoration is bondage to humanity. So he gave the new source which will free the human from the decoration. But people do not want to be free from the bondage. The state moved backward when the state subsidized for the decoration which Adolf Loos disagreed with it. 

He said that the rhythm of cultural progress has been blocked because of the stragglers. When you live in 1908 but you or your friends still live in 1880. It will waste time for the country to develop.

The two types of people in which the twentieth and nineteenth-century will have the same needs, the same income but in different cultural. From the economics part, the people in the twentieth century more richer than the people in the nineteenth-century as they just need simple things. The twentieth-century people can pay for his needs with much less capital and can save because of the simple and lesser things. But the other man doesn't. He wants complex things which will cause a lot of money and time.

Therefore, more the damage ornament inflicts on the workers. As ornament needs to hire the labour to make it. Besides, the labours need to bear the heavy workload but just get little salary. Ornament is wasted labour and hence wasted health. Then, it is also waste material, and waste capital.

Last but not least, it's true that the ornament brings crime but it's still indispensable elements that contribute to the architecture.

THE PLAN OF THE MODERN HOUSE, LE CORBUSIER,

Figure 1: Plan of Villa Savoye in Poissy, France.

"The plan of the modern house" by Le Corbusier is a text which talks about the Modern Architecture by following the "Five points of Architecture" that developed by him. The Five points of architecture are a list of provided elements that need to be incorporated in the design. The five points are raised structure, free facade, open floor plan, ribbon windows and rooftop garden. All these elements can be found in Le Corbusier's work, Villa Savoye in Poissy, France.

Figure 2: Facade of Villa Savoye 

From the Villa Savoye, the raised structure element we can find it elevated from the ground and supported by reinforced concrete stilts. The stilts provide support to the dwelling. Then, the free facade is that the structural support of the stilts allows the non-supporting walls that can assist the architect's design what he wants. Same as the facade, the open floor plan made by the supporting stilts system. The open space lets the architect free to form into rooms or re-purpose to fit some design. From figure 2, we can see the long ribbon windows on the first floor that allow wide views of the surrounding. Besides the views, the ribbon windows also allow the large amount of natural lighting into the interior spaces. The fifth point is the rooftop garden designed to replace the land of the ground floor area which used to be the green area. The idea is to move the green area from ground to the roof.

Figure 3: The rooftop garden of Villa Savoye.

"To create architecture is to put in order. Put what in order? Function and objects " - Le Corbusier. Le Corbusier's organisation and proportion of a modern house or building are quite different from others such as Palladio. Le Corbusier's organisation is based on a lifestyle standpoint, the establishment of a modern house for living and function. Therefore, the circulation of the house also an important point in his house planning. For the proportion, he discusses more on how people feel the proportion and the one must able to judge the proportion. “Proportion provokes sensation” - Le Corbusier. Le Corbusier's theory for the organisation and proportion of the space can be defined by asymmetry, elevation and diffusion.

Le Corbusier was known as a pioneer of modern architecture. His view of the architecture is always so unique than other architects which can be seen from the Le Modular. Because of the unique, not all accept his ideas but undeniable that he is one of the most contributions architects in the architecture world. 

Excerpts From Le Modular, Le Corbusier

Figure 1: Le Modulor, the standing man with a raised arm.

"The Modulor" or Le Modulor created by the architect, Le Corbusier is an anthropometric scale of proportions that used to determine the unit proportions in architecture, technology, and his furniture design. Le Corbusier described "The Modulor" as a measure which based on human scale and mathematics, numbers and the blue and red lines. We can often see the presence of repeated silhouette appears: The Modulor Man in Le Corbusier's buildings and arts. The Modulor man is a six-foot man supposedly based on the height of the detectives in the English crime novels that LeCorbusier enjoyed. This system is based on three aspects: human measurements, the Fibonacci numbers, and the golden ratio.

Figure 2: The "Stele of the Measure" at the Unité d’Habitation in Marseille.

Le Corbusier created the Modular by following the Vitruvian Man that made by Leonardo da Vinci, an Italian polymath, and others attempt to figure out mathematical proportions in the human body and how it improves the architecture, furniture, art, and technology. Besides, the Fibonacci Numbers is about the sequence of number in which the first number is 0, the second number is 1, then the following number is equal to the sum of the previous two numbers of the sequence. Next, the Golden Ratio (1.618) also called as golden mean or golden section. The golden ratio talk about the ratio of two quantities is in Golden Ratio if the sum of those quantities and the larger one in the same as the ratio between the larger one and the smaller.

Figure 3: The Golden Ratio in geometry: Golden spirals

The Le Modulor has shown the Modular Man in six-foot height (about183cm) man with the raised arm (to 226cm) was placed into a square that the ratio from the height of the man (183cm;6') to the height of his navel (at midpoint of 113cm) was in a Golden Ratio. Based on the basic plot at the Le Modular are 113,70, and 43cm. When they combined, they will be other measurements that related to the Modulor. For example:43+70=113,113+70=183 and 113+70+43=22, the three results determine the space human body occupies.

Therefore, the Golden Ratio can be found in the Capital Complex in Chandigarh designed by Le Corbusier. Besides that, we can also see the Golden Ration from the facade of the Unite D'Habitation in Marseilles by Le Corbusier.

Figure 4: Capital Complex in Chandigarh with Golden Spirals.

Last but not least, I admire Le Corbusier's creativity and the courage to create what he felt is needed in the construction field and can help in the art field. He is a great artist to the architecture of the world although the Modular Man he created is not accepted by all.




Written by: Kong Yi Xuan 1001852931

Delirious New York by Rem Koolhaas

Delirious New York is the book of Rem Koolhaas which talked about Rem Koolhaas’s ‘Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan' assume New York as the arena for the terminal stage of Western culture. In the book, it wrote about remarkable history of the city and the ‘retroactive manifesto’ of the architecture and city planning. The content of the book is the special work of art which text work well with the illustration and many different types of writing.

Rem Koolhaas describes Manhattan as a ‘mythical island’ and declaring himself as the ghost writer of the city. For me, the most impressive thing in this book is he tells that the background of an urban experiment in which the city becomes a factory for man-made experiences, a laboratory to test the potential of modern life. Based on Rem Koolhaas, ‘Manhattanism’ is the one urbanistic concept that revels in ‘hyper density’ and is fuelled by the magnificence and suffering than come with the urban condition of man-made living. Using Manhattan as a example, this book is a blueprint of the congestion of culture.

The first part of the book talks about the overview history of the island that describes by a French artist as “A Utopian Europe” which regrouped from an existing component into a single location. The grid system in Manhattan predicted the future condition of the city; its restrictions gave way from two-dimensional to three-dimensional freedom, and the millions of people that it now houses were envisaged far before a tiny proportion were even present. That the area was filled up by the houses, shops even high rises has been divided by the road or street.

Written by Kong Yi Xuan, 1001852931