Explanation on How and Where the Contemporary Architectural Has Challenged the Convention - Essay Example

Diagrammatic Transformation of Architecture Explanation on how and where the Contemporary Architectural has challenged the Convention Diagram Analysis Case 1: The Mercedes-Benz Museum The Museums shape and size is stylish, has a unique synthesis and structural appearance. The circulation of the structure’s program appears over the surfaces rising in an increasing manner from ground level. The Museum familiarity starts with visitors climbing up through the atrium and to the highest floor. The visitors pursue two core paths unfolding in a pattern as they fall through the structure. The two main trajectories, one being a car and truck collection while the other consisting of historical displays called the Legend rooms. It spiral descending on the perimeter of the display platforms and intersect with each other at several points allowing the visitors to change routes (David 4). The museum is a building that claims to have generated its typology and at the same time claims to evolve from parameters that are integral. There is also an association of the form of the building with different elements such as the DNA helix, Mercedes-Benz tripoint star emblem, the functional integration of spaces and the continuous circulation system. The form, however failed to address the complexity nature by which a building can both be a work of technical ingenuity and a work of art that can be seen and interpreted every time differently. However, this complexity is inherent in the nature of the museum as it displays the works of engineering feat as works of art and admiration in a historic loop of continuous development. A reading of the proposed building is a frozen instance in the development and exploration of the interconnectivity of spaces for object display. It is then not unforeseeable reading a building under many formal languages. The observation of the body of the building embodied the infrastructure developed for the automobile. The Body of the building is an abstraction of the trajectory of the body and its patterns of movement. The observation of the body of the building from a futuristic perspective, in which the building embodies, represents the dynamics of motion of the displayed vehicles(David 8). To approach the issue of technique as presented in this analysis, it requires the development of a hypothesis into the architects intent, method, philosophy and ultimately technique. By its very nature, it is impossible and impractical to assert the extent of incorporation of any of these elements into the design. Therefore, a certain level of cross-pollination and exploration between them was expected and perhaps desirable. It is perhaps through this approach that the analysis can yield emergent information that communicates other levels of complexity and processes that were perhaps at play, but yet intangible during the process of conception of the building. It is through the exploratory diagramming of the building that intend to unfold both the process and technique deployed during the conception of the building, and the process and technique itself of conceptual analysis through diagrams. The building, the building landscape and the highway appear to be in motion. Much like concept cars, they project this dynamism. The seductive lines are there in part for aerodynamics, but they are mostly there to make the building and the car appear to be fast and dynamic(David 32). Source: Adopted from David, 2010; photo one; the Mercedes-Benz Museum building Case 2: Seattle Public Library The project is for a new central library for the city of Seattle. It seeks to redefine the modern library, balancing the presentation of all forms of media with the increase in social functions and programmatic intricacies typical of modern libraries. The project begins with research focusing on the expansion of media types and social functions of modern libraries. As with other buildings and projects, this project is meant to be understood as generating Seattle Public building form in a particular way. A description of the library as a specimen of hyper‐rational structures, whose form is found by translating representations of diagrams into built form. The irony of that description is that the physical structure that results in the end is not at all rational in visual observation. Rather, it is boxy, irregular and crumpled on the outside. On the inside, the atrium is structured touching a concrete interior that abuts floorplates of different dimensions. There is joining of the entire interior with abstractly surface treatments and shaped masses(Zook and Bafna 1).   There is also an observation of several strategies for the architectural application phenomena. The very typical defamiliarization and very powerful method is that there is an organization of many parts of the diagrams. The appearance is from the outside. It is black, red strip facade, occurs as a free plan, with a blank face saving a few bands of windows. The diagram does not express programmatic function. The portions of trajectories that are vital to the practical organization of the plan often vanish behind objects or edges requiring users to travel into spaces they cannot first take prospect. It is the case when lifts slip behind narrow holes into floors and mezzanine facades. As a sort of completing this method, the museum building often frames to enhance seeing users in incomplete arcs of action(Zook and Bafna 17). There is an observation that the flexibility of generic floors common in the library design is a shortcoming of the building type as the expanding collection encroaches on the public space of the library. This organizing principle is expressed using conceptual diagrams. Although clearly distinct from its urban surroundings, the Seattle public library features an unconventional level of integration with its public urban surroundings. It begins with a pedestrian thoroughfare through the building and generous public lobby which work together to create a more permeable building edge. The interior of the building feature qualities of landscapes. The compartmental offsets create continuous interiors that spiral up through the building, allowing physical and especially visual connections between the layers of the building (Zook and Bafna ). Source: Adopted from Zook and Bafna, 2012, Photo two, Seattle public library Case 3: Guggenheim Bilbao Basques in 1989, devise Guggenheim Museum idea, and it has formed major part of a bold urban renewal scheme. It was intended to transform the deteriorated port of Bilbao. Bilbao was afflicted by accumulated debts, a 25% unemployment rate, pollution by industrial activities and outmoded steel and iron trades, into the center of clean industries with important tourist and cultural offerings. Analysis of the Plan configuration Asymmetry; it has no defined pattern of symmetry on any axis, and it is not clear and freely designed. Focal point is seen converge in the center in all sections of the building and the long rooms in particular seen to create a radial design. In terms of hierarchical, it is placed at different height, and none are exactly the same shape. There are also shapes of rooms and defined geometric shape and central atrium serves as a point of convergence. In plan organization, it is indirectly centralized as there is a circulation of space. The space is a system of curvilinear bridges, glass, elevators and stair towers connect the exhibition galleries concentrically and all converging in the central atrium (Gehry, 176). The total site area is 32,500 square meters located at a bend in the Nervion River on a former industrial site. The museum becomes a gateway to the city business from this position and historical districts and is seamless integrated into the urban context. Nervion river and the city surrounds the museum. The site has a vertical drop, and so built part of the building was under the bridge. In conclusion, its design is random and free but reflects the nature in that its organic forms and radial diagram configuration (Gehry 176). Source; adopted from Gehry, 2010. Photo three of Guggenheim Bilbao Museum Diagrammatic Transformation of Architecture is evident in all the buildings where the design methodologies employed make use of diagrams. The utilization of diagrams in the design methodologies has become popular in comparison to the use of drawings. Works cited Knoespel, Kenneth J. "Diagrammatic Transformation of Architecture Space." Philosophica 70 2002: 11-36. Somol, Robert E. "The Diagrammatic Basis of Contemporary Architecture." Diagram Diaries (1999): 168.Document. David, C. Formal Strategies: Case Study Diagramming the Building: UN studios Mercedes- Benz Museum (2010). Document. Zook, Julie B. Bafna, S. Imaginative and Building form in Architecture. The Seattle Public Library. 8-20 .Document. Read More