Developing the Architectural Concept - Architecture Short Course (Part 2)

In part two of the architecture short course we’ll be taking the design concept presented in part one and begin converting it into architecture by designing the floor plan and making decisions about form, space, and order. Abstraction allows us to imagine how our work might be experienced, or viewed absent a physical reality. Concepts are abstractions of reality, and it’s where we started in part one.

But abstract ideas aren’t architecture. The first step in making the concept real – for me - is to sketch a floor plan and then give that plan a three-dimensional form. A floor plan is a quick way of describing the hierarchy and relationship of spaces and it begins fixing their real physical dimensions and shapes.

Throughout the design process architects must continually consider the design in both the plan, or overhead view, and the sectional, or volumetric view. The easiest way I’ve found to do this is to begin by sketching a plan and then constructing a three-dimensional version of that plan either in model form or by sketching. Here you can see the sketches from the early phase of our Squid Cove project.

Things always begin this way, it’s really messy. There are many ideas that we must then edit into a coherent primitive building. To get here, we’ve already discussed in the previous video the best general area on the site to build and the approximate size of the structure.

This, you’ll recall, is tied to the client’s needs and their budget. From that point, I begin roughly sketching over the site plan allocating spaces where they make sense. The spaces at this point are nothing more than a diagram, small squares on a page and many architects refer to this as a bubble diagram.

The bubbles represent the rough size of the rooms and each has specific adjacency requirements. For example, the master bedroom will want to have a dressing area and a bathroom nearby. The living room wants to be near the dining and kitchen, and so forth.

Referring back to the encampment concept I’ve intentionally divided the building footprint among smaller simple building volumes positioned on the site. I begin by dividing public and private spaces and choosing where to locate each, then I start tracing circulation pathways that link the two together. Here’s a basic public-private diagram we started with.

The public spaces are central, the private are positioned above and below on the topography and each has their own unique aspect. I want to also use these structures as wind screens to create a variety of micro-climates the client can use at different times depending on the weather. So, no matter which direction the wind is blowing from, the building will buffer it.

They’re also good devices for capturing and reflecting natural light. To locate the structures and keep them closely knitted to the topography, I began developing a series of stepped terraces in the landscape. This helped to establish transition zones and small plinths that tied the camps to the landform.

These also extended the perception of interior space and the indoor footprint as well as created an indoor-outdoor connection. Notice the plan layouts start out as general and very loose, I’m not placing every door and window, I certainly don’t have the toilet locations decided or the furniture layout determined. I’m starting with basic orientations, where is the entry, or where do I want glass and where do I want wall?

I know, for example, that I want the living room to be thrust into the view and the barn to be located uphill positioned to receive the cars. The master probably wants to feel secluded and private. So, you’ll note in the diagram that there’s one color for public spaces, and one for private spaces and one for circulation and support spaces things like bathrooms, stairs, and closets.

Now, if you’re not able to achieve this level of clarity in your diagram at this early stage, it’s a sign that you to keep editing. The plan layouts are showing some clarity now and suggesting a formal language. What I’m noticing is a common series of gestures these sort of interlocking l-shapes.

The ells have both sheltering and open qualities. One side protects and shields while the other invites and expands outward. Placing these at various points on the site allows us to carefully control the experience of the occupant.

We can invite the sun, create privacy, block wind, or welcome a view for example. Now once we have some basic plan layouts, we need to make some decisions about form. When we speak about form we’re referring not only to a building’s shape but also to its size, the scale, its color, and texture; basically, all the visual properties of an object.

Form has a direct relationship to space in that it influences both interior and exterior rooms. Form is perhaps the most obvious and outward expression of our perception of architecture. In many ways it’s like an icon, it’s what we think of when we imagine a building.

For example, the gable – at least in Western culture - is an iconic architectural form associated with home. The way a building looks is known to architects as its formal language and, much like developing a concept, creating one isn’t a singular act. We’ll test various forms over the course of our early design and as you might imagine the way architects choose to design a building’s form and how it shapes space is very personal.

Now, it would be difficult to explain precisely how architects do this in this short course so I’ll keep it brief and basic and list the resources in the description for you to investigate further. You’ve probably heard the quote from the architect Louis Sullivan, often distilled to just its essence, “form follows function. ” Certainly, this is one relatively compelling, modern idea on how we might design a building’s form, but it doesn’t even come close to capturing the near infinite options we have at our disposal.

In addition to function, form can be developed as a response to context; for example the climate, the site conditions, local constraints as well as the cultural context or local building traditions. Form could be a result of the building’s size, how big or small it is, and also the result of the materials we choose to make it from. The laws of physics would tell us that a steel and glass structure must have different formal properties than a concrete structure for example.

A building’s form is an important signifier of what it is and what we can expect it to be in a given context. A cathedral, for example, has a distinctive form. The massive scale and size of the cathedral and its spire were intentional cues that conveyed the idea that – at least at the time - nothing was more important than the church’s power in society.

This was made manifest in the architecture through an intentional distortion of the building’s form and scale. It was designed to make us feel small and insignificant standing there in the nave. Likewise, the spire was designed to be visible from all parts of the town; it was the architecture’s form that made the abstract concepts real.

Looking more closely, its walls were made of stone, the properties of which were required structural support and lateral bracing and thus the buttress was deployed to resist the tendency for the walls to bow outward; a material formal idea. Now, we may disagree whether these were the appropriate materials to use, or the proper scale, but the conceptual ideas quite obviously influenced the shape and formal language of the architecture. Now, there is a danger in fixing a building’s form too early in the design process, it can short circuit a deeper exploration of ideas and potential relationships.

One way to resist this is by using only the loosest of building forms to represent form in a model for example. I’ll use objects like blocks, or small strips of chipboard bent into l-shapes to visualize primitive forms. These don’t lock me into any one particular building shape.

You can use these to overlay on sketched plan ideas to suggest how spaces can be related to each other and they’re anonymous enough to be interpreted into many different formal directions as you develop the design. Now, it’s easy to fall in love with a process of highly expressive, idiosyncratic form-making. However, crafting beautiful objects while ignoring the tectonics or the physical experience of space – how it actually feels to be there - doesn’t necessarily make good architecture.

To help you avoid designing only the form or image of a building and prioritizing it above utility or function I recommend you imagine the experience of a place. Narrate it in terms of quality of light, or arrival, or the soundscape, or the proportion of it to the subject, to the landscape or other structures, or smells even. I find thinking early about a building’s materials and its relationship to natural light sets it in real human terms and it imbues the work with meaning and a sensory experience beyond our sense of sight.

You might lay out paths of travel on the site. Begin with the arrival, then the entry. Consider how one moves through a place.

Can the architecture enhance that experience, enrich it? Is it abrupt, or calming, disorienting, or deceptive? Uplifting?

Constricting, sheltering, or open? Exposed? Think about the scale of spaces, compression and release, darkness and light.

Here, we began by looking to the local vernacular saltwater farms for inspiration. Using simple barn-like extruded gables is one of the simplest of forms but we can achieve some fairly complex and interesting spatial relationships from the spaces these individual forms create between them. In New England, there’s a building organization typology known as the Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn and it was historically used to link farm structures together for convenience and to create the kind of micro-climates we discussed earlier.

Now, I’m counting on these simple forms to create complex, and interesting spaces. Functionally, the gable sheds water equally to either side of the long axis and it’s structurally efficient, but it is symmetrical and has a strong axis of orientation so we have to keep this in mind as we consider the interior spaces. Although it hints at the vernacular building type, I’m planning to treat the interior space and the exterior cladding in a way that will connote a much more contemporary feeling.

At this point I’m also thinking about the spatial experience and what distortions, things like very low or very high ceilings inside, that I can use to emphasize our ideas. Now, rather than create an overt exterior formal complexity we’re going to manipulate the experience of the place by changing the horizon line of the inhabitants multiple times and alter the interior scale at each transition point. The terraced site is the perfect opportunity to do this and I’ll be introducing short stair runs between each structure to reinforce the notion of separation and create deeper site connections.

The barn wing is positioned high on the site, then as you enter and navigate through the home you’re faced with different framed views of the site with each turn. Each circulation path has a different ceiling height, so you enter the site toward a sweeping view and are faced with a very low ceiling height. In this way, they synergize, enhancing their effects.

We’re using the building to change the experience of the place. The interior spaces are usually and in this case especially heavily influenced by the exterior form. We could’ve easily used different forms here, different shed roofs, a mono-pitch to sort of one corner, a butterfly; and this is where it gets tricky for the practicing architect.

Each option you explore has a financial implication for your client. Will you spend your fee chasing down the infinite formal options or will you test only a few safe ones? My approach is usually to propose three options.

One is what they might be expecting. One is a solution they definitely wouldn’t expect and the third is somewhere in between. No matter what you choose, after presenting you’ll have some revising to do.

All of these initial schemes were met with a lot of excitement, but as I expected none of them got it all right. And so we chose two to hybridize and continue iterating. Our early plan ideas are unresolved.

Sketches are approximations of space but once you assign some real spatial dimensions, you’ll quickly find all you’ve sketched isn’t reasonable. Early design work results in more ideas than you’ll be able, or want, to use. Good designers – like writers – know that the first draft is always terrible.

First drafts must be edited. What are the ideas that are energizing the design? Which ones will you draw to the fore and make more clear?

Editing your design is all about clarity. What aren’t you saying clearly enough? My trick for editing is to place a fresh layer of trace on the plan and begin diagramming it.

Can you diagram it at all? Is the circulation clear? Is the entry clear?

Are the spaces in the right locations? Are they roughly the right size for what you’re trying to achieve? What doesn’t make sense?

What can the concept we chose tell us about how we want to edit the plan and the model? You can’t possibly process all of the information you need to in the first round of revisions. This plan went through dozens of iterations before landing at the plan we’re actually building.

And during construction, things will continue to change. The next step in the short course is to consider the material concept and make the plan more realistic.