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conditioning, lighting and blinds. The traditional composition of panes to the new aluminum-
framed double glazed windows further recalls the historical function of the building.
Working with Arup Engineering, Borgos Dance have removed all of the columns from the
ground floor by suspending lightweight floors for the upper levels from two 27 metre long, 2.5
metre high roof trusses. The resulting free-space of the ground floor heightens the dominance
of the iconic image of a factory space by enabling views from one end of the 42 metre long
building to the other. Maintaining this abstract quality, a displacement air-conditioning system is
concealed beneath the power-floated concrete of the ground floor, while the ceilings throughout
are treated with a render system to improve acoustic performance. Triple-height clear glazing at
the junction of the floors and one of the elevations heightens this sense by enabling an
unbroken view of the window openings.
A grid of beams to the 10.5 metre high entry space allows for the support of large works of art.
This triple-height space punctuates a visitor’s entry to the building, creating an interior space at
the scale of the exterior streetscape. From this space one moves either into the 4 metre high
main gallery space or into the café, which possesses something of the quality of an exterior
space through its positioning outside the monolithic form of the main building and the
incorporation of a fully-glazed roof. While the angled wall of the entry space functions to
announce the imposition of a new function within the existing building, the curved wall of the
café space seems somewhat incongruous with the geometry of the rest of the project.
Glare and black-out blinds to all of the windows are automated to respond to the sun to control
lighting conditions in the gallery spaces. While each of the window sills incorporates a lighting
feature by American artist James Turrell, the varying degrees of opacity created by the
architects’ use of blinds also recalls the artist’s work. The abstract, massive and planar
appearance of the windows and shadows and silhouette that they produce also resonate with
the work of Turrell, whose work filled the gallery spaces for the opening of the Institute. The
building’s plant is concealed behind a polycarbonate screen on the roof of the building, also
illuminated by Turrell. This screen encloses two translucent glass roof-lights that bring natural
light into the top floor. Like the roof of the café space, their sloped form and visible fixings
circumvent an abstract resonance, but nonetheless this roof glazing recalls Turrell’s Skyspaces.
The sparseness of the Louise T Blouin Institute and a number of other recent gallery projects in
London could be interpreted as a reaction against more obviously figured or spectacular
proposals for art projects. However, to describe The Institute as a blank canvas because of its
lack of overt formal gymnastics would be to exclude the possibility of more subtle forms of figure
or spectacle. Like Caruso St John’s recent Gagosian gallery in London’s Kings Cross, the
Louise T Blouin Institute is no less sculptural than Herzog and de Meuron’s proposal for the
extension of the Tate Modern, but rather its sculptural gestures operate and at different scales.
The Louise T Blouin Institute resonates particularly with the work of James Turrell but will
undoubtedly also provide a provocative context for the work of many other artists. In this sense
the building should not be seen as a rebuke of the importance of the architectural diagram, but
rather an example of the importance of the relationship between an architectural diagram and
architectural detail.
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Zaha Hadid: William Tozer, ‘Inner Light,’ Monument, issue 79 (June/July 2007): 60–64.
[Copyright image removed. Refer print version in UCL library.]
Despite her international notoriety, it was not until the completion of the most recent Maggie’s
Centre that Pritzker Prize winning architect Zaha Hadid had completed a building in the United
Kingdom. Facilities for the support of cancer patients and their friends, families and carers,
Maggie’s Centres are the brainchild of Maggie Keswick Jenks, the late wife of architectural
theorist Charles Jencks. Maggie ‘had a unique ability to make everyone feel special by giving
them the time and space to express and be themselves’, says Hadid. ‘I hope that the look and
feel of the Centre in some way enhances a visitor’s experience and provides a warm and
welcoming place for them to relax and access the support they need’.
Underlying all practice of architecture is some degree of belief in environmental determinism,
the concept that one’s environment can elicit behavioral, emotional or intellectual responses in
its inhabitants. While this notion generally goes unnoticed and unconsidered by most architects,
it would be difficult to overlook in a building where the brief is to promote the well-being of
cancer patients and their friends, family and carers, before, during and after their medical
treatment, It is rare that a building brief requires that the environment promote anything other
than a positive response from its inhabitants, but the Jewish Museum in Berlin is an obvious
example, and its architect, Daniel Libeskind, is one of the other well-known names currently
being called upon to design Maggie’s Centres. This raises interesting questions in relation to the
ability of architectural form and space to affect such change, and the appropriateness of
different formal and spatial qualities to elicit a rehabilitative response. With the Dundee
Maggie’s Centre, it seems that Frank Gehry felt the need to depart from his normal curvilinear
formal vocabulary to create an appropriate environment. While a large diversity of geometries
are evident in Gehry’s career, the curvilinear, abstract expressionist phase has dominated in
recent decades and so it is difficult to see his Maggie’s Centre as anything other than
recognition that he felt this vocabulary not sufficiently reassuring. Despite the comparatively
dark qualities of her architecture, Hadid has not felt the need to append a detached an element
of her normal vocabulary to an otherwise familiar building in the way that Gehry has done. The
angular, black Fife Maggie’s Centre is unashamedly recognizable as the work of Zaha Hadid.
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Hadid is known for the darkly futuristic formalism of her work, and in the Maggie’s Centre this is
manifested in a black, angular, folded exterior surface perforated by triangular openings to a
curvilinear white interior. The contrast between the exterior and interior could be understood as
a metaphoric representation of cancer and recovery. Hadid describes the goal of the form as
creating an edge to the coal mining hollow that adjoins the site. This hollow is perhaps the
inspiration for the sparkling black surface treatment, achieved through the application of black
liquid polyurethane with silicone carbide grit. The sculptural quality of the folding gesture is
supported by the treatment of the roof and walls in same material, and the articulation of other
enclosing elements visually neutral through the use of clear or translucent glass. The folded
form seems likely to be a metaphoric gesture of protective enclosure, turning its back
defensively on the hospital. Spatially this metaphor is extended to embrace the ‘distinctive
protective environment’ of the coal hollow onto which the Centre opens. The building is
conceived as an enhancement of this quality, incorporating ‘a wall that gradually rises to
separate the public space of the entrance from the private spaces of the terrace. It terminates
by wrapping around the southern tip of the Centre as a south-facing terrace which feels
shielded and protective’. The architects describe the building as possessing a ‘strong directional
language’ and the form as a ‘directional surface [that] moves the visitor’. This language
suggests that through the spatial arrangement, Hadid has attempted to give a sense of
progression analogous to a patient’s treatment, recuperation or self-realisation.
The realization of Zaha Hadid’s design for the Fife building is the fifth Maggie’s Centre. Another
seven centres are planned in the next five years; for Lanarkshire, London, Oxford, Cheltenham,
Nottingham, Cambridge and Swansea. Richard Rogers and Daniel Libeskind are among the
star architects donating their time to the design of these buildings. Meanwhile, following on from
the successful completion of her first building in Britain, we can now also look forward to the
scheduled completion in 2008 of Zaha Hadid’s design for The Architecture Foundation Building.
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Herzog and de Meuron: William Tozer, ‘Character Lines: Herzog and de Meuron’s
CaixaForum,’ Monument, issue 89 (February/March 2009): 82–89.
[Copyright image removed. Refer print version in UCL library.]
The new Caixaforum building by Pritzker Prize-winning architects Herzog and de Meuron
shares its site with an historic existing building. The removal of this building would undoubtedly
have reduced the construction cost of the project, and little more than the original facade
remains. However, the dynamic relationship between the two types of architecture creates a
potent composition.
Rusted steel forms the facade of the new building, and its orange shade of brown sets up a
visual relationship with the faded terracotta and brick of the original building, without resorting to
the familiar conservationist device of matching materials. The form of the addition makes a
similar allusion to the original building, extrapolating the pitch of the gabled roofs into forms that
pitch and crank in three dimensions. The ornamental quality of this form, and the surface
perforations with which it is detailed, perform an analogous role to the surface decoration that
adorns the original building. Increasing the height of the building establishes a less diminutive
relationship with its contemporary neighbours, and the greenery treatment of the adjacent
elevation of one of the neighbouring buildings reinforces the connection of the abstract building
form to its context. The language and materiality of the new facade is carried through into some
areas of the interior—such as the subterranean auditorium—which is otherwise composed of a
contrasting vocabulary of white and steel elements articulated in rectilinear, curvilinear and
folded geometry. Within the original building the interaction of the interior with the exterior takes
the form of visually neutral frameless glazing, which does not match but is proportional to the
removed traditional fenestration. Above the level of the original building, however, the new
building envelope takes the form of orthodox black-framed window openings. This gesture
seems more convincing where it assumes a relatively neutral rectilinear form, rather than
deferring to the geometry of the rusted facade, such as in the stairwell. Plain white surfaces are
largely reserved for the predominantly rectilinear walls and ceilings of the galleries and ancillary
spaces, but are also applied to the more overtly sculptural curvilinear staircase. The installation
of lighting into the underside of this staircase—rather than illuminating it from the adjacent walls
or floor as is the case elsewhere in the building—somewhat diminishes its sculptural quality.
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321
Folded geometry is deployed in some areas of the gallery walls, but most extensively in
conjunction with the raw steel sheeting to the ceiling of the external undercroft of the building.
The undercroft space is the most dramatic spatial gesture of the project, and is reminiscent of
the architects’ earlier Barcelona Forum ( Monument 64). It creates an outdoor public space
connected to the street and adjoining square, providing cover from rain or harsh sunshine for
snaking queues of visitors. As with the earlier project, however, it seems curious that the
programme of the interior of the building does not interact more with this space—an engaging
spatial experience left largely uninhabited. This space opens onto open squares to both the
north and south of the building, the former of which is framed by the wall of greenery described
above, serving to appropriate this square more directly into the spatial ordering of the building.
Internally, the spatial distribution could be described as a series of stacked open-plan floor
plans, the lower of which have been given something of the character of landscapes through
changes of level and meandering circulation. These open-plan spaces are punctuated by the
stairwells, which create dramatic voids through the section.
This building is clearly part of a recent trajectory of Herzog and de Meuron projects that also
includes the aforementioned Barcelona Forum, the de Young Museum in San Francisco, and
the Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis. The departure from the rectilinear geometry that
characterised their earlier work has alienated many of their previous architectural admirers, but
it has been argued by this author ( Architectural Research Quarterly 12) that the partisan division
of architects along lines of geometry stems from the accepted conception of modern
architecture as rooted in issues of function, whereas fine art provides a more convincing
explanation. The minor reservations about the Caixaforum expressed above to some extent
stem from the fact that it is more difficult for architecture to convincingly function as art due to
the way in which it is perceived by comparison to other mediums such as painting and
sculpture. Herzog and de Meuron’s earlier buildings possess ambiguities between found object
and designed object, and between function and art, allowing a degree of latitude to their
perception as art objects. These ambiguities have become clear divisions in the more recent
projects, and the success of these buildings is diminished to some degree at any points of
contact between them that are less than perfectly handled.
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Document Outline - PhD_000_dissertation_final_ABSTRACT, CONTENTS ETC_copyright.pdf
- PhD_000_dissertation_final_INTRODUCTION_copyright.pdf
- PhD_001_dissertation_final_draft_art&function_copyright.pdf
- PhD_002_dissertation_final_architecture&art_copyright.pdf
- PhD_003_dissertation_final_art&ornament_copyright.pdf
- PhD_004_dissertation_final_draft_ornament&culture_copyright.pdf
- PhD_005_dissertation_final_draft_art&crime_copyright.pdf
- PhD_006_dissertation_final_draft_function&art_copyright.pdf
- PhD_007_dissertation_final_draft_ornament&education_copyright.pdf
- PhD_008_dissertation_final_draft_CONCLUSION_copyright.pdf
- PhD_009_dissertation_final_BIBLIOGRAPHY_copyright.pdf
- PhD_010_dissertation_final_APPENDIX_1_draft.pdf
- 11_HackneyHouse.pdf
- 12_WTAD_smoke&mirrors.pdf
- 13_ElegantShed.pdf
- 14_OneUpOneDown.pdf
- 15_OpenEnd.pdf
- 16_VictorianHoarding.pdf
- 17_Diorama.pdf
- 18_KarntnerHouse.pdf
- 19_LightBox.pdf
- 20_TerraceHouse.pdf
- 21_Pavilion.pdf
- 22_SemiDetached.pdf
- 23_InTheFold.pdf
- 24_WTAD_publichouse.pdf
- 25_TabulaRasa.pdf
- 26_Artefact.pdf
- 27_Sleeper.pdf
- 28_Landscraper.pdf
- 29_ExtrapolationHouse.pdf
- 30_WTAD_interiorstreet.pdf
- 31_WTAD_autonomousfragment.pdf
- 32_Stereoscope.pdf
- 33_WTAD_Karntner House 2.pdf
- 34_WTAD_striatedspace.pdf
- 35_CompositeHouse.pdf
- 36_WTAD_bridge_press release_pdf.pdf
- 37_AggregateHouse.pdf
- 38_SerialTerrace.pdf
- 39_WTAD_furnished space_press release.pdf
- 40_WTAD_interpolation house.pdf
- 41_WTAD_laneway.pdf
- 42_000_agora.pdf
- PhD_011_dissertation_final_APPENDIX_2+images_copyright.pdf
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