Elements of a Design Strategy 設(shè)計策略的要素

文/卡里?約爾馬卡 By Kari Jormakka

Elements of a Design Strategy 設(shè)計策略的要素

文/卡里?約爾馬卡 By Kari Jormakka

除了提出將世界從裝飾中解放外，阿道夫?路斯（Adolf Loos）的“空間體量設(shè)計”理念還掀起了建筑領(lǐng)域的哥白尼式革命。他曾說：“人類過去無法進行空間思維，建筑師不得不把浴室設(shè)計得和客廳一樣高”，但“人類終將學(xué)會玩三維棋盤，所以未來的建筑師同樣也將解決三維建筑設(shè)計問題?！?/p>

但到目前為止，似乎多數(shù)人都沒能達到路斯的預(yù)期。斐迪南?馬克（Ferdinand Maack）于1907年發(fā)明了德國式空間國際象棋，但其從未得到普及，如今，人們多是通過《星際迷航》系列電影才知道三維國際象棋的。然而幸運的是，仍然有建筑師實現(xiàn)了路斯預(yù)言的后半部分，德魯甘-麥斯爾聯(lián)合建筑師事務(wù)所即是為數(shù)不多的“三維棋盤”建筑大師之一，相比平面，它的設(shè)計更注重剖面效果。

DMAA近期設(shè)計完成的蘇格蘭敦提市維多利亞和阿爾伯特博物館即是這種設(shè)計理念的突出例證。該博物館位于敦提市濱海區(qū)，占地面積極小，猶如巨大的冰川漂礫，長達40米的懸臂甚至超出了建筑大師奧斯卡?尼邁耶（Oscar Niemeyer）最狂野的想象。但是，其地面并非天然的，同樣也是建造出來的。德魯甘-麥斯爾將公共廣場延伸至了泰伊河河口，同時將其合攏，提供了進入懸于其上主樓的入口。因此，公共廣場垂直向內(nèi)翻轉(zhuǎn)進入建筑，所有功能區(qū)域圍繞這個“公共空間”分組布置。

類似的剖面理念同樣為阿姆斯特丹電影博物館增添了生氣和活力。博物館泊靠于艾河北岸，從城市中央火車站跨水而建，水晶般的光芒使佇立其旁的歐法赫斯塔黯然失色。博物館內(nèi)部，四個放映廳、一個研究中心、一個圖書館、一間餐廳、一間商店和多個工作空間圍合成一個大型火山口式中庭，或者說更像一個競技場，為城市生活的演繹提供了各色舞臺。

景觀

從外部看，這些大型建筑就像抽象雕塑，內(nèi)部通過廣闊視角、傾斜平面、大量樓梯和闊景陽臺開辟出人工景觀。的確，建筑根據(jù)景觀模型塑形是DMAA作品中反復(fù)出現(xiàn)的主題，無論是維也納Wimbergergasse的辦公大樓還是公寓建筑，亦或經(jīng)過精心打造的薩爾斯堡上行觀光電梯都是如此。盡管沒有大型項目攝人心魄的懸臂、Ray1的鋼質(zhì)健身房或RT私人住宅的人工景觀，電梯與陡壁完美地融為一體，成為了其不可分割的一部分。

DMAA室內(nèi)裝飾的效果不僅僅依賴于動力地形的形式美學(xué)。對地面基準的重新定義是一種更為強大的表現(xiàn)手法，相比其他形式處理，其能更直接地吸引觀者。由于我們往往或多或少地局限于水平面設(shè)計，因此，我們能敏銳的察覺到建筑體的垂直位置。同時，德魯甘-麥斯爾似乎還采用了英國人文地理學(xué)家杰?阿普拉頓（Jay Appleton）的“瞭望”和“藏匿”景觀美學(xué)原理。在伯克崇高理論和達爾文進化論的基礎(chǔ)上，阿普拉頓提出，看見和隱蔽的能力，即“瞭望”和“藏匿”對生物體在人類和次人類層面的生存前景都非常重要。他進一步提出了四種不同的視野，即全景廣角視野、遠景框架視野以及全景和遠景的間接視野，例如從塔樓看到的二次全景，或從籬笆縫隙獲得的偏轉(zhuǎn)或偏置遠景。同樣，“藏匿”也可以有很多形式。

從私人住宅和公寓到大型公共建筑，DMAA的所有作品無不體現(xiàn)了“藏匿”和“瞭望”的相互作用，一種景色小巧、隱蔽，另一種景色則廣闊而明亮。除了形式體系，德魯甘-麥斯爾還傾向于將建筑視作行為的舞臺。尤其是進入、穿過和觀察建筑的意境都經(jīng)過精心排布，通過駐足凝望將各個空間聯(lián)系起來。

展演

展演性對DMAA的作品至關(guān)重要。建筑設(shè)計并非源于場地、項目或地形分析，而更多受到背景、活動和建筑類型的影響，這點在公共建筑中尤為明顯。在搭建前，我們甚至不知道DMAA建筑的功能是什么，因為建筑學(xué)干預(yù)影響著文化感知和社會傳統(tǒng)。同時，建筑外形也加強了建筑的展演性。除了美觀外，復(fù)雜的折疊幾何形狀與羅伯特?莫里斯和其他上世紀六十年代極簡抽象派藝術(shù)家的雕塑作用類似，即通過外形的不斷轉(zhuǎn)換，引導(dǎo)觀者從不同角度對建筑進行探索。

對于極簡抽象雕塑早期批評家邁克爾?弗雷德（Michael Fried）來說，作品和觀者的相互依賴性實際上犧牲了藝術(shù)的純粹性。他認為，極簡抽象作品實際上是擬人化、對抗性和“戲劇性”的，因為它影響了觀者的身體尺度，同時需要觀者去完善作品所表達的關(guān)系網(wǎng)。盡管如此，如果我們將這種觀點應(yīng)用在建筑中，很快我們就會明白，弗雷德關(guān)于極簡抽象主義的批判，包括觀者與作品融合、作品體驗的時間展開及尺度的身體感知和理解正是建筑，尤其是DMAA作品的內(nèi)涵所在。

生理學(xué)

與試圖以額外建筑理論為基礎(chǔ)的現(xiàn)代建筑實踐不同，DMAA的作品善用文字手法，與描述和外形截然不同。這種手法的力量源自人類身體和建筑背景的餅子，形式的意義體現(xiàn)在其產(chǎn)生的活動中。在某種程度上，德魯甘-麥斯爾走近了尼采所許諾的生理美學(xué)。

盡管許多DMAA項目的外觀引人入勝，但其并不僅僅是迎合視覺感受，而更多地是對運動物體速度的組織。在空間體驗中，重要的是人體成為可能性行為的系統(tǒng)，正如莫里斯?梅洛-龐蒂（Maurice Merleau-Ponty）所說，“我的身體即有待作出行為的所在?！边@也是為什么不能撇開人體、功能和時間去思考空間的原因。

維也納威滕伯格（Wienerberg ）的城市LOFT項目（2004）即是生理手法的一個簡單示例。建筑外立面體現(xiàn)了將建筑外表作為獨立元素的情致，同時，也表現(xiàn)出了對現(xiàn)代裝飾的巧妙探索。建筑剖面依然是欣賞建筑最重要元素的最佳手段。與2.5m相同層高的樓層反復(fù)疊加不同，建筑在南側(cè)設(shè)計了3.4m高的居住區(qū)，而北側(cè)更加私密的放松或休息區(qū)則采用了2.4m層高，從而將不同層高融于一體，讓空間體量設(shè)計相互關(guān)聯(lián)。公寓類型和空間條件的異常多樣性來自這樣一個極為簡單的理念，即響應(yīng)人體的功能性、生理性和結(jié)構(gòu)性需求。

崇高

盡管DMAA可以說已經(jīng)顛覆了弗雷德對戲劇性的批判，建筑和雕塑依然存在巨大差異，其中一個便是尺度。正如埃德蒙?伯克（Edmund Burke）在1757年提出的崇高理論中所稱，大尺度開辟了全新的美學(xué)效應(yīng)，尤其是崇高體驗。大尺寸往往容易喚起崇高感，同時，伯克還認為，高度比長度和寬度更加有效，因為其更能與人體生理極限形成對比并讓其主位化，而保時捷博物館或達拉特國王阿卜杜拉二世文化和藝術(shù)館中的巨大懸臂則以人們在自然界中前所未見的方式克服重力作用，當然也產(chǎn)生了最徹底的崇高效應(yīng)。

除了將崇高體驗稱為思想能夠感知的最強烈情緒外，伯克還解釋道：“思想被其對象塞得太滿，而無法容下任何其他事物，或被其所思事物的后果和原因所取悅。”盡管如此，崇高感并不能通過自身呈現(xiàn)。它是在人類思想面對超出界定之外的事物時所產(chǎn)生的。伯克和伊曼努爾康德（Immanuel Kant）認為，崇高不可分類，同時也不可確定，其產(chǎn)生于人們試圖在有形事物中呈現(xiàn)不可見和無形事物時。這也是為什么追求崇高感的建筑必須拋棄具象、表象和指示性，同時排除記憶、聯(lián)想、懷舊、傳奇或神秘等其他障礙的原因。讓-弗朗索瓦?利奧塔（Jean-Francois Lyotard）說，我們這一時代的精神無疑是“內(nèi)在的崇高精神，涉及不可見的精神?！?/p>

外表

由于DMAA的作品與崇高效果大量相關(guān)，人們不應(yīng)去尋找隱含意義，這是應(yīng)當由批判家去挖掘和發(fā)現(xiàn)的秘密。建筑墻壁沒有在其后藏匿任何事物，相反，墻壁本身即秘密。在保羅?瓦勒里（Paul Valéry）的解讀中，我們可以指出，DMAA建筑作品的最深層次即建筑外表。

近年來，建筑越來越面臨設(shè)計僅流于外表（具有或無媒體立面）的風(fēng)險。DMAA的裝飾物實驗，如在Wimbergergasse或Paltramplatz的住房項目初看似乎與二維的類似情致背道而馳。盡管如此，對于他們來說，外皮中的真實建筑學(xué)理念與城市戰(zhàn)略或總體建筑外形中體現(xiàn)的一樣多，同時，外表是組織空間和社會關(guān)系的工具，而非僅僅是一個界定面或廣告牌。

如果說雕塑是外部視覺觀察的對象，則建筑不僅提供了外部美學(xué)特征，同時還提供了進入或拒絕進入建筑內(nèi)部的閾值。打開或封閉建筑空間的外表通過過濾視覺、聽覺、物理和其他連系，定義了開放性和隱私性程度。如同生物有機體，在DAMM的許多項目中，建筑外皮實際上并非二維表面，而更多地是定義其內(nèi)部空間的一個器官。

DMAA的一個秘密就是在各個尺度和材料上運用相同原理和空間思維，同時關(guān)注各個元素的美觀性和展演性的能力。

In addition to liberating the world from the burden of ornament, Adolf Loos boasted of having launched a Copernican revolution in architecture with his concept of the Raumplan. In the past, he claims, “mankind was unable to think in terms of space,and architects were compelled to make the bathroom as high as the salon,” but “as man will one day succeed in playing chess with a three-dimensional board, so other architects in the future will also solve the plan in three dimensions.”

So far, mankind at large seems to have failed Loos’ expectations. The Raumschach game, as introduced by Ferdinand Maack in 1907, never made it big, and today most people know three-dimensional chess only from old episodes of Star Trek.Fortunately, however, there are architects who have lived up to the second part of the Loosian prophecy. Delugan Meissl Associated Architects are among those few who really do play architecture on a three-dimensional board: their designs live from the section even more than the plan.

A striking demonstration is the recent design for the Victoria & Albert Museum in Dundee, Scotland. The building sits at the waterfront on an impossibly smallfootprint like a giant glacial erratic, with its 40-meter cantilevers outperforming even the wildest dreams of Oscar Niemeyer. But the ground is not a natural given either, but rather a construct. The architects extended the public plaza o ff shore into the River Tay estuary, and folded it so as to provide access to the main building hovering above it. Thus a public square turns vertical inside the building, with all the functions grouped around this ‘public void.’

Similar sectional concept animates the Film Museum in Amsterdam. Anchored on the north bank of the Ij, across the water from the city’s central train station, the building eclipses its tall neighbor, the Overhoeks Tower, with its crystalline brilliance.Inside, four screening rooms, a study center, a library, a restaurant, a shop and workspaces are grouped around a large crater-like atrium, or ‘a(chǎn)rena’ that offers several stages for the performance of urban life.

Landscape

While from the outside these large buildings look like abstract sculptures, the interior opens up artificial landscapes with broad perspectives, tilted planes, massive staircases and wide balconies. Indeed, the shaping of the building according to a landscape model is a recurring theme in the work of DMAA, whether we think of their office and apartment building on the Wimbergergasse in Vienna or the unrealized panorama lift for Salzburg with its carefully orchestrated ascent to the top of the hill. Even without the death-defying cantilevers of the larger projects,or the steely gymnastics of House Ray I and the private house RT form artificiallandscapes, the latter one becoming literally part of the steep hill.

The effect of DMAA’s interiors does not only rely on the formal qualities of their dynamic topography. Rather, the redefinition of the ground datum is a powerfuldevice because it engages the viewer more directly than any other formalmanipulation. As we normally are limited to operating on a more or less horizontalplane, we are acutely aware of the vertical positioning of the body.

The architects also seem to make use of the principles that the British geographer Jay Appleton characterized as ‘prospect’ and ‘refuge’. Building upon Burke’s theory of the sublime and Darwin’s theory of evolution, Appleton suggested that the ability to see, a prospect, and the ability to hide, a refuge, are important in calculating a creature’s survival prospects at both human and sub-human level. He further articulated four di ff erent kinds of prospects: the wide view of a panorama vs. the framed view of a vista, and indirect versions of both, such as a secondary panorama from a tower or a de fl ected or o ff set vista from a break in a hedge. Analogously,the refuge can take many forms.

The interplay between refuge and prospect – one small and dark, the other prospect expansive and bright – is one of those aspects that run through the entire DMAA portfolio, from private houses and apartments to large public buildings. Instead of a formal system, the office tends to view architecture as a stage for actions.In particular, the conditions of entering, traversing and viewing the building are carefully arranged, linking spaces together through a situated gaze.

Performative

Performativity is crucial to the work of DMAA. In particular with their public buildings,it is clear that the design is not derived from an analysis of site, program or typology;instead, the context, the activities and the types are really e ff ects of the architecture.Before it is constructed, we don’t even know what a DMAA building is capable of because the architectural intervention affects cultural perceptions and socialconventions. The performative qualities are enhanced also by the shapes of the buildings. In addition to its beauty, the complex folded geometry functions much like the sculptures of Robert Morris and other minimalists in the 1960s: by constantly transforming itself, the shape invites the viewer to explore the building from allperspectives.

For an early critic of minimal sculpture, Michael Fried, such interdependence of the work and the viewer actually compromised the purity of art. He argued that minimalist pieces are implicitly anthropomorphic, confrontational and “theatrical” in that they implicate the scale of the body of the viewer and require him to complete the web of relationships projected by the work. If we try to apply this discussion to architecture, however, it soon becomes clear that the aspects of theatricality which Fried criticizes in minimalism – including the commingling of the space of the viewer and the space of the work, the temporal unfolding of the experience of the work and the somatic apprehension of scale – are the very stu ff of architecture, especially as regards the projects by DMAA.

Physiology

As opposed to many contemporary practices that try to ground their work on extraarchitectural theories, DMAA operate with literal, as opposed to depicted, shape.This approach derives its force from a visceral juxtaposition of the human body with the architectural setting where the meaning of the form is in the action it generates.In a way, then, the office approaches the kind of physiological aesthetics that Nietzsche promised.

Despite the spectacular appearance of many DMAA projects, their architecture does not work solely for the eyes but rather organizes the speeds of moving bodies. What counts in the experience of space is the body as a system of possible actions, and, as Maurice Merleau-Ponty used to say, “my body is wherever there is something to be done.” That is why space cannot be thought of without reference to body, function and time.

To take a simple example of the physiological approach, consider a project from 2004, the city lofts in Wienerberg in Vienna. The facades suggest an interest in the skin of the building as an independent element and present a skillful investigation into contemporary ornament. Still, what is most signi fi cant in the building can be best appreciated in section. Instead of stacking identical, 2.5 meter high fl oors on top of

each other, the design combines zones with di ff erent fl oor heights into a complex,interlocking Raumplan, allowing the height of 3.40 m for living areas on the southern side of the building but using 2.40m for more intimate zones of relaxation or sleep in the north. An unusual variety of apartment types and spatial conditions result from this apparently simple concept that responds to the functional, physiological and anatomical requirements of the body.

The sublime

Although DMAA can be said to have turned Fried’s critique of theatricality around,there are many big di ff erences between architecture and sculpture, and one has to do with scale. As Edmund Burke recognized in his theory of the sublime, published in 1757, vast size opens up a whole new set of aesthetic effects, in particular the experience of the sublime. While huge dimensions always tend to evoke the sublime, Burke argues that height is much more e ff ective than length or breadth,because it confronts and thematizes the physiological limits of the human body, and a gigantic cantilever – as in the Porsche museum or the Darat King Abdullah II for Culture and Arts, for example – that resists the forces of gravity in a way we never encounter in nature certainly produces the most radical of such e ff ects.

Claiming that the experience of the sublime was the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling, Burke further explained that “the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it.” However, it is not the object that would be sublime in itself. Instead, the e ff ect is created by the human mind confronted by something that resists de fi nition. For Burke and Immanuel Kant, the sublime is not classi fi able or determinable: it arises from the attempt to present the unpresentable, the invisible within the visible. That is why architecture that aspires to the sublime must reject fi guration, representation and indexicality, as well as other impediments of memory,association, nostalgia, legend, or myth. The spirit of our times, according to Jean-Francois Lyotard, is surely “that of the immanent sublime, that of alluding to the nondemonstrable.”

Skin

Since the work of DMAA is so involved with the e ff ects of the sublime, one should not look for a hidden meaning, a secret, that criticism should dig out and bring to the open. The walls of their buildings are not hiding anything behind them: instead, they are the secret. In a paraphrase of Paul Valéry, we could suggest that the deepest in the architecture of DMAA is the skin.

In recent years, architecture has increasingly faced the danger of being reduced to a mere design of attractive surfaces (with or without a media fa?ade). At first glance, DMAA’s experiments with ornamentation, as in the housing projects on the Wimbergergasse or Paltramplatz, seem to betray a similar interest in twodimensionality. However, for them, there can be as much real architecture in the skin as in the urban strategy or overall building shape: also the skin is a toolfor organizing spatial and social relationships, not just a delimiting surface or a billboard.

While a sculpture functions as an object of visual observation from the outside,architecture provides not only external aesthetic qualities but also thresholds that allow or deny access to the interior. The skins that open and close architecturalspaces de fi ne levels of publicity and privacy by filtering visual, acoustic, physicaland other connections. As with biological organisms, the architectural skin is in reality not a two-dimensional surface but in many of their projects rather an organ that de fi nes a space in itself.

One of the secrets of DMAA is their ability to apply the same principles and the same three-dimensional thinking across scales and materials, simultaneously focusing on both aesthetic appearance and performative force of every element.