What does it mean to arrive at an edge? Is it merely a limit, a boundary… the end? Or does an edge imply something more? An apotheosis, maybe.

An analysis of Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in Marseilles, France, yielded a under­standing of the edge as opening rather than closing, as possibility rather than hopelessness, as mythical rather than ordinary. In his attempt to create an ideal (micro)city that completely juxtaposed Marseilles, Le Corbusier explored how to endow the edge with revelatory qualities. In my understanding, he designed the building as an architectural promenade that “transformed” the subject as he/she wandered through its halls. First and foremost, the building gathers in what is understood as unstructured (chaotic) movement of the city. Once in the Unité, Le Cor­busier sought to structure not only the city, but the individual. The building includes numerous programs that deal with both the activities of the city and the nurturing of a human being: private residences, a hotel, a kindergardten, shops that include retail stores as well as pharmacy and butcher, gym, outside theater, among others. Although I will not push forward a humanist reading of the program tied to the medieval soul, somewhere within his intentions lays a Greek philosophy of nurturing the body and spirit.

Architecturally, nevertheless, the building has its moments of “revelation.” As one moves through the Unité, it directs movement on a center axis, but also propels movement away from the center. As such, the a person is always being directed towards the edge. On the lower levels of the building, arriving at the edge means a relationship with nature. The most important moment of arrival occurs in the crowning moment of the roof, where Le Corbusier creates a space where people can come together as a collective (as an Utopian city), but also individually, promotes a relationship between Man, the Earth, the Sky… and maybe even the divinities.

Learning from the findings about the Unité, I set out to apply these principles in the Commons area in Ithaca, New York, for – as the final project’s guidelines prompted – the Women’s Council Building. The program of the building al­ready resembled a city, with its need for flexible spaces that could accomodate a wide range of activities, from the completely public to private realms. And further, the ide­als of the WCB not only further women’s rights, but offer a space for the whole city to come together as a collective.

My goal became clear: to open up a space that accomodated the needs and philosophy of the WCB, but more importantly, that offered any visitor an experience of compression and release, i.e. of revelation. In the end product, an experience that relates man to “something” else became a gradual process. Several moments occur as one traverses through the building. Beginning on the roof, one is impelled towards the edge that overlooks Greent St. At this point, one only has a visual relation to the Commons and so the visitor is redirected inwards to the building. Once inside, he/she arrives at the reception space where he travels through a semi-open plan. Then the traveler reaches the west edge where a relationship is instituted between the individual and the sun comming in through the skylight and a green wall adorned with a kind of garden. Then, one moves through the most private spaces, which are architecturally de­scribed by their serial nature. Actually, the design process was catapulted by the formal quality of these repetitive volumes which served as a limits to the distance a floor slab would slip and slide according to the ideas of movement topologically interpreted from scheme of movement in the Unité. Finally, one reaches the most open space, the ground floor, which has the ability to morph accordingly to a desired program, but also spreads out towards the Commons, activating Green St. and motivating it to become the culture infused street it has always wanted to be.

These is the plot with I assembled for my final presentation. Click to enlarge.

For the final studio project with Prof. Jim Williamson, we designed a facility for visiting scholars. The site was set on a relatively small sports facility with squash courts in the Cornell Campus. One of the purposes of the assignment – which heavily influenced my proposal – was to begin to understand how to read a site as a tool for design.  We were each asked to envision a building that would reflect (or reject) the life of a visiting professor.

For me, visiting professors live in constant negotiation. Travelling endlessly from one academic institution to another, they repeatedly have to come to terms with new places, other people, and the world of ideas. This project recaptures this condition of having to negotiate between different and often opposing aspects of life. In the proposed building, architectural elements – such as walls, doors, level changes, sky lights, and floor patterns – co-exist in conflict and tension to each other, displacing notions of cohesivity. Thus, the disagreement and miscommunication within the architecture summons people into a kind of communicative action, i.e. individuals are called to reconcile these oppositions. Nevertheless, there is no right way of dwelling in this space, but it is always up to the inhabitant to decide in which manner he/she wishes to experience it.

Here are the plots and model I used in my presentation…

Visual interpretation of the negative space in the Herbert F. Johnson Museum.

My dad once told me that there are two kinds of architects: the ones who can understand spatial transparency (the privileged) and those who cannot (the rest). Robert Slutzky and Colin Rowe develop in “Trasparency” and “Transparency 2″ (from Architecture Culture: 1943-1968, by Joan Ockman) an understanding of how a building’s formal structure can demarcate spaces. They single out two types of transparencies: the literal and the phenomenal.  The first refers to how a material like glass, although physically “transparent,” is still tangibly present in the structure’s form. In contrast, phenomenal transparency allows for a simultaneous perception of different spatial locations within the same space. The idea is that, like in an optical illusion, forms are suggested –or implied, as Peter Eisenman would prefer to say– rather than depicted. In other words, it allows for spatial stratification within given limits. Phenomenal spaces are never different, but differentiated. Like in Cubist paintings, phenomenal forms are suggested, not stipulated. The viewer defines what he/she sees.

In ‘Transparency 2″, the authors try to explicate more concretely the idea behind literal and phenomenal transparency. Two examples stand out: the facades of Le Corbusier’s Algiers Skyscraper and Michelangelo’s  San Lorenzo. The facades have a basic, skeletal organization, yet a closer look reveals that “objects function as a series of relief layers for the further articulation of th[e] space” (Ockman, 218). That is, the arrangement of the formal elements can refer to multiple interacting planes at the same time. The shapes get “transfigured,” since they “change,” while still preserving their original form. Hence, different understandings get revealed through the interrelationships between figures within a composition. Like in a El Lissitzky painting, each figure, in relation to another, exists in a kind of floating tension that “forces” one’s eyes to focus on them in various ways. Possibilities are rather endless.

As a result, phenomenal transparency can efface the boundary between the figure and its ground – which alludes to the way we phenomenologically experience the world around us as a sum totality. This refers to Gestalt psychology and means that our sensory perception already processes the information it receives before transferring it to the mind. If, our senses are “intelligent” (Ockman, 224), then the possibility of apprehending new levels of information expands the potentialities of space.

This being said, “Transparency 2” lags behind its first part because it is limited to the discussion of phenomenal transparency in façades. “Transparency 1,” by focusing on how phenomenal transparency gets revealed through the interplay of architectural spaces, the authors could show how the built environment as a whole and not just figural elements on the façades can communicate powerful implied meanings. If the architect should be assigned a social role, then the interaction between spaces can be imbued with philosophical, social, and political messages through phenomenal transparency. For now, I will briefly focus on phenomenological implications.

While theorists, critics and the common person alike tend to argue in regards to design styles that the essence* of architecture lays somewhere within the topic of space. Although I consider that architecture cannot just be simplified into the issue of transparency – style, technique, representational medium, etc. are indeed important –, I agree that it founds the architecture discipline. While painting concerns itself with paint (and color), sculpture with an array of materials, and dance with movement, architecture irreducibly deals with space.By understanding the literal and the phenomenal we can analyze how space can affect a spectator (consciously and subconsciously –I even  wonder, sexually? –). As the authors note: transparency “is richly loaded with the possibilities of both meaning and misunderstanding” (Rowe and Slutzky, 22). If space can serve as a tool for human self-reflection, then through transparency, the architect can reveal different ways of what it means to be human: not only the beautiful, the pleasant, and the entertaining, but also the ugly, the offensive, and the uncanny. In depth interpretations of how literal and phenomenal transparencies affect spectators can transform the architectural practice into a way of being that interprets and renews human existence in the world more honestly.

On a final note, as the philosophical postmodern trend grew on me in the last years, I have constantly looked for definitions or interpretations of what would be the postmodern space. From the literature – primarily focused in Derrida with side readings of Eisenman, Venturi and Scott Brown –, I can say that po-mo spaces (try to) recognize the Other to reflect tensions and contradictions.  I now think that if we classify traditional space as literal and modern as phenomenal, only the latter – by opening up the possibility of multiple spatial readings that simultaneously include and exclude each other – can realize postmodern principles. But then, how can one differentiate between modern and postmodern built environments aside from preferences in style? Maybe the postmodern intelligently uses both transparencies at the same time. Nevertheless, no doubt many architects through history have playfully and successfully employed the use of transparencies – evidence that for now makes my answer seem sophomoric and baseless.

(Writing this I wonder: Could the construction of a text yield readings of phenomenal transparency?)

*I usually avoid using the word ”essence” because it implies a traditional philosophical notion of Truth and its understanding that can never be grasped. Even though I have decided to insert it in the text, I clarify that the essence is somewhere within the boundaries of the topic of space, which means that it can never be fully grasped.

Herbert F. Johnson Museum: Exploring how the negative space of the facade blends in with its environment.

As part of the first exercise for first-year drawing class of the M.Arch. I at Cornell’s Architecture School, my classmates and I were asked to go around the campus and free-hand draw three structures. The assignment was completely open, as we could draw anything we wanted to portray. The purpose of the exercise  was to begin thinking about how we “see” buildings and how we can represent those ideas about them. I centered on the Herbert F. Johnson Museum, the Sage Chappel, and Uris Library. I wish to share part of my outcome…

Herbert F. Johnson Museum: Floor plan of one of the galleries.

Herbert F. Johnson Museum: Interiors.

Herbert F. Johnson Museum: Concrete detail and Axonometric.

Sage Chapel: The Environment overpowers the building.

Sage Chapel: Floor Plan.

Sage Chapel: Details (middle column reinterpreted).

Uris Library: An entrance.

Uris Library: The old with the contemporary.

Uris Library: Main area floor plan.

Uris Library: A.D. White Library... freeing up constricted space.

L’avenir,

For this blog, I currently represent the Future, i.e. an intentional attempt by my brother, Alberto, to (re)invent the content of his page. Yet, what subsequent years hold for us, I do not/cannot know. How will I affect my brother’s design thinking? And – more importantly for my wellbeing –  How will he deflect my way(s) of perceiving the Human Being and its World, which (mis)guides me towards specific problematizations and reconcialiations.

In short, how will l’avenir unravel in Refraction? I can never predict it.

Nonetheless, Refraction will write the evolution of our project. Not only by focusing on different themes, but by seeing how those thoughts bounce back into unforeseen realms. We hope that our thoughts, deflected, will survive.

But what does that mean: that our vestige will survive us? Is it possible? For how long? (Obviously not for eternity.) Derrida asserted: “The trace neither lives nor dies, but survives us.” Such a claim denies existence to the trace, but endows it with a personal utility of extension or continuation of one’s life after death. Yet, this quasi-satisfactory move towards the achievement of immortality (always knowing its implied impossibility) may confuse a reader into believing in an explicit, discoverable link between an origin and its footprint. The trace, always-already disentangled from the origin and henceforth being observed through varying interpretative eyes, can never open the path to recapture an original essence (i.e. thought, feeling, concept, experience, etc.). So, even if MY-trace can never be recovered, my-trace  does not merely survive, but is exists! It has its own existence, endowed by the eye of the beholder. Don’t get me wrong, my writing exists because of me, but continues to be in spite of me. (I hope that the reader nourishes the life of my-trace, to prevent its inevitable death.)

My small book collection at Cornell.

Indeed for me, these times need of introductions. First, because most of you, who have decided to read posts by my rather keen brother, may not know me. Second – I have to admit ­- this would be the first time I bring my thoughts into a blog. And finally, I am getting acquainted with a new setting.

Two weeks ago, I arrived at Cornell University to begin my Masters in Architecture 1. The experience of meeting new people from widely different track records – architecture, furniture design, engineering, physics, business, among others – has been exciting, but has also motivated me to reflect back on my persona. Seeing how many already possess jaw-dropping abilities, I felt compelled to review what I had apparently done right to be accepted into the School of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP). Reviewing my application materials, I came across my essay, which began:

“I do not want to study architecture.”          These words quickly became my answer to those who presumed that as the son of an architect and the brother of a graphic designer, I would pursue an undergraduate degree in the arts.

Right there, in the opening sentence I referred (subconsciously?) to probably the most influential artists in my formation: my father and my brother. My family – including my mother and sister – has always been my harshest critic, demanding inconceivable versions of myself. (I don’t know if I heard this from one of my siblings first, but I like to joke around by saying that while in kindergarten, my finger paintings where never pinned up at the refrigerator if ugly.) Nevertheless, I now endeavor to create beauty, mainly out of respect for the work, talent, and dedication of the two designers in my home. I hope one day to feel as their peer.

Let me stress that when the time came to decide whether I would study design for my undergraduate education, I opted for a humanistic education. Shaping my character largely through philosophy, history, and literature significantly altered my perceptions about the world. Therefore, I now enter the M.Arch. 1 with my own set of apperceptions that actually fuel my curiosity. Introducing previously gathered knowledge into my (re)discovered passion towards design, particularly architecture, will hopefully lead to a kind of oneiric experience.

About the possibility of contributing in this blog, this interests me: the chance to expound my preconceptions, challenge my brother’s perspectives as well as mine and of others, amend my way of thinking, and finally, see how my thought process evolves. In the end, the blog will become a trace of deflections in thought.

So, let’s take my first entry as my official act of induction into the website, but my subsequent entries as my attempt to be inducted into a life of design.

A FINAL NOTE TO ANY READER: Consider all my musings as arguments, even if they can be (mis)interpreted as opinions or beliefs. I like to be reminded that usually I use frames that are too small to hold the pictures.