1985 Master of Architecture
The Single Building as Urban Intervention

The recent past has seen the fragmentation of the physical form of the city. One result of this fragmentation has been a loss of the perception of the city as a place representing the collective shared ideals of society. If we are to regain a richness of meaning in our built form that can make for a worthwhile existence, then there is a need to reestablish a clarity of development in our cities. One strategy for giving order to the city is to recognize the potential of the individual building to develop formal and social relationship that have significance on an urban level.

I propose to study the ways in which a single work of architecture has the capacity to reinforce, transform, or comment on its immediate surrounding and the city as a whole. Specifically, I am interested in the way that an independently sited institutional building may be seen as both an ideal form with its own internal logic and as a primary element of the entire city. The social role played by this kind of building necessitates that both of these aspects be considered as integral parts of its design. For example, on one level, the Palazzo Farnese is a private residence ordered around a central cortile. Simultaneously, it is a symbol of the power of the church in Renaissance Rome and it creates and dominates an open public space. Also, its internal sequence established a connection between the city and the gardens across the Tiber.

There are several critical factors that all the selected buildings have in common and that make them examples of intervention on an urban level:

• Location: The buildings are associated with existing important streets or spaces, or through their site planning, create a place of importance.
• Scale: The buildings may be objects that stand unattached, they may constitute an entire block and/or they may literally be larger than surrounding structures.
• Architectural Expression: Through the formal elaboration of the program (plan, section, elevation), the buildings describe the nature of the institution that they represent and its relationship to the city.

The Paris Opera House, for example, encompasses all three of these factors. It is located at a major intersection of streets, it has a greater scale than the surrounding buildings, and its architectural expression relates the requirements of program to the orientation of the building in the city. The buildings that I wish to visit are important representative examples of the political, religious, and cultural institutions that were traditionally responsible for ordering the city. In particular, several are excellent architectural expressions of the emerging public institutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By considering only those buildings designed by architects, I mean to focus on the role deliberate intentions have played in the creation of a built work. This study will exclude such urban interventions as the medieval cathedral, which arose slowly over time and whose formal implications were often not realized within the lifetime of its builders. I have limited my exploration to nine examples that would form the core of a nine-month study. The travel will focus on European precedents because it is in Europe that one first finds buildings of this quality being made. This information, however, will be relevant to the situation that I will face as a designer in American cities, many of which have their formal and cultural origins in the cities of Europe. The final example, Grand Central Terminal, will give me the opportunity to relate my studies in the context of an American city.

Prior to and during my trip, I will gather information documenting site conditions as they existed before and after the architectural intervention was made. Early maps, drawings, and written accounts will be used to help explain the historical development of the site area. Sketched, including maps, perspectives, analytical diagrams, massing studies, and plans/sections/elevations will be made to critically evaluate the current conditions brought about by the selected buildings. A comparative analysis of the physical conditions before and after will form the core of my method of study. The social changes arising from this physical development will also be studied as an important component of this formal documentation. Past course work at the University of Virginia (The History of Urban Form, The Critical Analysis of Building Types), as well as a current class at Princeton (The History of the Preindustrial City) will provide vital background information for this trip.

Itinerary

England
All Soul’s Church, Langham Place, London, John Nash, 1822–25

France
The Opera, Paris, J. L. C. Garnier, 1861–74
The Bibliotheque St. Genevieve, Paris, Henri Labrouste, 1845–50

Sweden
The City Library, Stockholm, E. Gunnar Asplund, 1924–47

East Germany
The Altes Museum, East Berlin, K. F. von Schinkel, 1824–28

Italy
The Basilica, Vincenza, Andrea Palladio, 1549
The Palazzo Farnese, Rome, Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, Michaelangelo, 1580–89
The Case del Fascio, Como, Giuseppe Terragni, 1932–36

United States
Grand Central Station, New York, Reed and Stem, Warren and Wetmore, 1903–13

Impact of the Award

June 1996

It has been ten years since I returned from my travels on the SOM Foundation fellowship. From September 1985 to the summer of 1986, I focused on the “Single Building as Urban Intervention.” Specifically, I examined the relationship of nine public institutional buildings in eight cities (mostly in Western Europe) to their physical and cultural contexts. These buildings are recognized historic monuments representing widely different historical periods. My intention was to learn how these structures defined relationships between themselves and the city, while addressing the specific requirements of the program. I remained in each city for approximately one month, during which time I made multiple visits to the building, to other buildings by the same architect or to the work of contemporary architects to document the physical qualities of each. I also studied the history of the place and experienced how the buildings of the cities had transformed over time to their present condition. Perhaps most important, regular and lengthy observations allowed me to understand the buildings not simply as historical artifacts but as vital elements of the present.

I returned to complete my graduate education inspired and informed that architecture was more than an intellectual exercise, formal exploration, or technical process but a social act bound up in its time and place. I strove to emulate the directness with which I had experienced architecture as a product of culture during my travels. The way I began to represent my work changed—I used pencil to emphasize how material and light added detail and scale to a building. It was important to “build” each project by drawing every material joint and layering gradations of shadow upon the paper. The content of my work changed—my thesis project was a public elementary school in my hometown of Albany, New York. The project, a bridge between postwar low-income housing towers and a nineteenth-century neighborhood, was an opportunity to test what I had explored on the SOM Foundation fellowship.

Upon graduating, I wanted to be as closely and directly involved in building as possible. I chose to work in a small architecture office so that I could “learn the ropes” and gain firsthand knowledge. Following this, I worked for Steven Holl for four years as a project architect on several different projects. One of these was the Stretto House which won a national AIA Honor Award in 1992. At Holl’s office, the emphasis on the perceptual aspects of architecture reinforced what I had experienced while on the SOM Foundation fellowship.

I left Holl’s office in 1992 to assume a teaching fellowship at the University of Michigan. Subsequently, I taught at the University of Virginia and Yale University. The inspiration and content for my teaching again had its foundation in the SOM Foundation fellowship. I developed studio projects that required students to work within difficult urban or suburban contexts to develop small-scale public buildings. The basic intention was that students understand buildings not as objects but as participants in urban relationships. I also created a seminar course called “Ideas and Practices of Detail,” which proposed (through both historical readings from treatises and from actual construction projects) the integral connection between issues of construction and design intentions.

Currently I am a principal in my own architectural practice that I founded in 1993 with two partners [Architecture Research Office]. During the past two and a half years, I have worked with my partners and our staff to realize a diverse body of work. My desire is to continue to develop as an architect through the process of practicing architecture. One recent project for which I was responsible is a fence on the corner of Thompson and Broome Streets in Manhattan. Here, with an economy of means determined by function and budget, I sought to make an urban intervention. In many respects, the influence of the SOM Foundation fellowship is evident in this simple and modest fence.

The SOM Foundation fellowship enabled me to experience architecture directly and to realize that architecture is a participant in culture. It also reinforced my interests in materials and methods of construction. Especially today, when so much of our understanding about architecture is filtered through written interpretation and graphic representation, the memories of my travels remain a touchstone. My conviction in practicing architecture is to make a contribution beyond the limits of a particular circumstance––to define relationships that connect each project to a larger context. This fundamental basis of my design approach was nurtured by the SOM Foundation fellowship.