FUNDAMENTALS PAGE 187

elements of
architecture
central
pavilion
PAGE 188 ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE

directed by
rem koolhaas

art direction and design

irma boom, ibo

developed with
amo

research and development

stephan trüby

research associate
manfredo di robilant

amo
federico martelli, james westcott
antonio barone, rebecca bego, janna bystrykh,
ben davis, giulia foscari, alice grégoire, caroline
 james, sofia koutsenko, brigitta lenz, elizabeth
macwillie, mikel orbegozo, cédric van parys,
stephan petermann, todd reisz, annie wang,
eric williams, sergio zapata

research team
harvard university graduate school of design
cynthia dehlavi, stefan dileo, heather dunbar,
elizabeth eckels, elle gerdeman, andrew gipe,
patrick hamon, see jia ho, jenny hong, kangil ji,
alison kung, will lambeth, jingheng lao, alison
ledwith, difei ma, elizabeth macwillie, arthur liu,
 jielu lu, kurt nieminen, tiffany maria obser,
nicholas potts, annie wang, eric williams,
max wong

thanks to
koos bosma, chris carrol, jean-louis
cohen, chris dercon, ekaterina golovatyuk,
bregtje van der haak, hou hanru, richard
ingersoll, sebastien marot, niklas maak, mohsen
mostafavi, charlotte newman, rotor, hans ulrich
obrist, antoine picon, werner sobek, abraham
thomas, ungers archive for architectural studies,
fang zhenning, zus zones urbaines sensibles

the following donors have generously

supported elements of architecture
gieskes-strijbis fonds
akzo nobel
v-a-c foundation
oscar engelbert
zublin
cisco
dress & sommer
schindler
harvard university graduate school of design
FUNDAMENTALS PAGE 189
PAGE 190 ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE

“WHILST, O Caesar, your god-like mind “Surrounded as he was by the bodhistattvas possessed of the ten sak-
and genius were engaged in acquir- tis, attended by the chiefs of sura and asuras, garuḑa, yaksas, gand-
ing the dominion of the world, your harvas, pannagas, siddhas, vidyādharas, devas, kinnaras, hosts of ap-
enemies having been all subdued by sarases and in Nārada and other divine sages, Buddha, the Blessed
your unconquerable valour; whilst the One, Teacher, Lord of the World, who abounds in boundless joy and is
citizens were extolling your victories, holy and the purest, was in their midst when Mañjusrī, who was happily
and the conquered nations were await- seated among them, knower of the proper time for the exposition of the
ing your nod; whilst the Roman senate Doctrine, approached Him and asked Him with folded hands: ‘Pray, how
and people, freed from alarm, were en- is the birth of the vāstuśastra and the procedure with regard to the other
 joying the benefit of your opinions and allied sciences, the various rules and their application?’”
counsel for their governance; I did not 5TH–7TH CENTURY CE VĀSTUVIDYĀŚĀSTRA ASCRIBED TO MAÑJUSRĪ
presume, at so unfit a period, to trouble TRANSLATION E. W. MARASINGHE, 1989
you, thus engaged, with my writings
on Architecture, lest I should have
incurred your displeasure.”
1ST CENTURY BCE THE ARCHITEC-
TURE OF MARCUS VITRUVIUS POLLIO
TRANSLATION 1826 (GWILT)
“I heard that ‘roof above
and support below to
take shelter from rain and
wind’, in I Ching, is about
the era of ‘Da Zhuang’;
‘acquiring precise orien-
tation of south and north
when building the capital
city’ in Chou Rites, is a ceremony when the world is in peace. The name of the official
position ‘Gong Gong’ was given in the time of Shun. The official position ‘Da Jiang’ was
started in Han Dynasty. These offices have their responsibilities, and did their jobs. For
the capital city that is a thousand Li in length, and the palace that
has nine levels, the sequence and position of the buildings must “I offer obeisance to Ganesa, to the su-
be considered. The official buildings must be related to each other, preme energy begotten from Adigauri and
and set according to certain sequence. to Sambhu so as to accomplish the object
“To build a house with Dou, Gong and Column to build, must use of the successful completion of writing
compass, rulers, level-meter and ink-line at first. Using a variety of this treatise without any hindrance.“
materials, many buildings are completed. Gathering the workers on 12TH CENTURY CE PRASADA
schedule, then build the house that has a wing-like eave. MANDANA OF SUTRADHARA MANDANA
However, the worker’s hands, though dexterous, sometimes make
mistakes. And the administrators are unable to know all about the
technics. They don’t know how to use Cai to measure the building’s
proportion and scale. Some even the size of Dou to as a module to decide other lengths.
Faced with these problems, accumulated and lack inspection, if someone doesn’t have
adequate knowledge about architecture, how can he set new rules?
“The emperor ordered me to write a manual about architecture, and deliver it to be
reviewed. Though I have fished writing this manual, I feel that I have failed to live up to
his expectation, wasting a lot of time and having little contributions. The emperor is fru-
gal, benevolent, and born wise. Under his reign, the country is tranquil and the people
are settled, and everything is kept in order. The offices have capable people, and the
regulations are set. The bad climate like Duke Lu Zhuang’s time exists no more, and the
good climate like Da Yu’s time has revived.
“The emperor has decreed about construction, and consulted someone has little knowl-
edge like me. I looked into the old regulations, and gathered many people’s wisdom. I
set three grades of Gong (work), according to its level of craft need. Amount of labor is
calculated according to different daytime of different seasons. Even the softness of tim-
ber is categorized. Calculate the earthwork according to the distance, so the labor can
be easier to manage. Each issue is listed by category, and set with regulations. Though
I studied hard and thought deeply, the text may not be enough. So I made drawings
according to the regulations, and hope it will help in the future.”
1103 AD YINGZAO FASHI, LIE JIE
 FUNDAMENTALS PAGE 191

“GREAT care ought to be taken, before a building is “Imitation is of so extensive and so varied an import,
begun, of the several parts of the plan and elevation when its relations and effects in all that falls within
of the whole edifice intended to be raised: For three the scope of the faculty of imitating are considered, a
things, according to VITRUVIUS, ought to be con- faculty which is one of the distinctive characteristics
sidered in every fabric, without which no edifice will of man, that ever to have a complete and exhaustive
deserve to be commended; and these are utility or treatise on the subject may well be despaired of.“
convenience, duration and beauty. That work there- 1837 AN ESSAY ON THE NATURE, THE END,
fore cannot be called perfect which should be useful AND THE MEANS OF IMITATION IN THE FINE ARTS
and not durable, or durable and not useful, or having QUATREMÈRE DE QUINCY TRANSLATION LEVART
both there should be without beauty.” LODGE, 1837
1570 THE FOUR BOOKS ON ARCHITECTURE
ANDREA PALLADIOTRANSLATION 1997
“Our Ancestors have
left us many and various
Arts tending to the Pleas-
ure and Convenience of
Life, acquired with the
greatest Industry and
Diligence: Which Arts,
though they all pretend,
with a Kind of Emulation,
to have in. View the great End of being serviceable
to Mankind; yet we know that each of them in par- “Comrades! It is a long time since
ticular has something in it that seems to promise a we last had a National Conference
distinct and separate Fruit: Some Arts we follow for of Builders and there is now great
Necessity, some we approve for their Usefulness, need for such a conference. It is
and some we esteem because they lead us to the my opinion that the present meet-
Knowledge of Things that are delightful. What these ing will be to the great good not
Arts are, it is not necessary for me to enumerate; for  just of construction, but of all our
- they are obvious.” work both in industry and in other
d 1485 THE ARCHITECTURE OF LEON BATISTA sectors of our national economy.”
ct ALBERTI IN TEN BOOKS LEON BATTISTA ALBERTI 1954 INDUSTRIALIZED BUILDING
g TRANSLATION 1755 SPEECH NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV

...ceasar, buddha, ganesha,

comrades, ancestors ...
all have had architectural
manifestos dedicated to
them...
PAGE 192 ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE

4
11
14
12 15
 FUNDAMENTALS PAGE 215
Engineer at work,
Sobinco factory.

the producer

2014 Remi Van Parys, founder of Sobinco. During the

late 1950s, Remi Van Parys became the director of a Belgian
ironmongery company in Congo. He travelled through
Congo, visiting window and door makers, and heard the
same complaint everywhere: the fittings they could buy
came from Germany and did not fit in Belgian windows.

In less than one year he conquered eighty percent of the

Congolese market with the first fittings specifically de-
signed for the imported Belgian steel windows. Then, in
1961, back in Belgium, implementing the same strategy,
he was the first to design fittings for steel and later for
aluminum windows, forming the company the family still
runs today, Sobinco (Société Belge de l’industrie et de la
commerce).

Over the past fifty years what began o n small scale in the
owner’s back garden has grown into a leading company
with 30,000 square meters of production space, offices
in Belgium and Portugal and points of sale in Poland and
China, and with products exported over sixty countries. In
a globalized market of mass produced windows, Sobinco
is the only factory in Europe capable of producing every
moving part of a window—sixty-nine fittings is typical—in
one factory.
PAGE 216 ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE CORRIDOR

Evacuation simulations Raumfolgen by Stephan Trüby’s

by One Simulations Walter Niedermayr History of the corridor

Smart corridor floor Video of the nineteenth-century corridors

by Desso and Phillips of Welbeck Abbey, by Claudi Cornaz
and Hans Werlemann
 FUNDAMENTALS PAGE 217

developed with
stephan trüby & tu münchen

contributors
corridor
Originally, “corridore” referred to a person who ran to transfer a mes-
claudi cornaz sage, and later to the space for running on or next to city walls. When
walter niedermayr it first appeared in fourteenth-century Europe, the corridor was a rather
one simulations unique space outside buildings. Only later did it become a fundamental
the harley gallery, welbeck element of architecture in organizing space, finding its apotheosis in
hans werlemann the architecture of modernity (asylums, prisons, social housing projects,
etc.). Now, corridors are everywhere. They are the paths of trains, planes,
with the support of and cars, and they are the territories through which today’s economy is
gira sustained. The corridor became a global element, no longer arrested by
scale of architecture. And although the corridor is crystallized today as an
with the technical support of escape route through increasingly massive buildings, paradoxically, we
desso will never be able to escape from corridor.
gira
iguzzini The installation brings together exit signs from all over the world, five evacu-
kef ation simulations by One Simulations—of Rome’s Palazzo Venezia (built ca.
knoll 1466), Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary (1821–1836), the Pentagon,
phillips lighting Arlington County, Virginia (1941–1943), Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation,
Marseille (1947– 1952), plus the Padiglione Centrale—a newly developed smart
thanks to floor by Desso and a selection of corridor photographs by Italian artist Walter
derek adlam Niedermayr (b. 1952). The selection of eight diptychs from Niedermayr’s Raum-
wolfgang a. herrmann folgen (1991– ongoing) deals with functional spaces in prisons and hospitals.
martin luce Corridors in this context work as in-between spaces which serve as guidance
robert mayo systems as well as meeting and exchange points for the people forced to be
william parente there.
welbeck estates company
sophie wolfrum All this is historically anchored in the filmic and photographic reconstruction of
the legendary underground corridor network built by William Cavendish-Scott-
Bentinck (1800–1879), the Fifth Duke of Portland, on his estate of Welbeck
Abbey in Sherwood Forest near Nottingham toward the end of the nineteenth
century (by Claudi Cornaz and Hans Werlemann). The Fifth Duke’s work at
Welbeck Abbey could be viewed as the culmination of corridor segregation,
that was pioneered in the building of prisons at the beginning of the nineteenth
century and further developed in the construction of country homes at the end
of the nineteenth century.
PAGE 218 ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE CORRIDOR

apotheosis of the corridor

2014 Above and underground corridor network

built by William Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck
(1800–1879), the Fifth Duke of Portland, on his estate
of Welbeck Abbey in Sherwood Forest near
Nottingham toward the end of the nineteenth century.
Photos: Hans Werlemann.
PAGE 234 ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE BALCONY

1871 1947
Ecce Homo, Antonio Ciseri Queens Elizabeth + Prince Phillip w
i  
n T 
v h 
 e  e
n  c
 t  
 e  o
 d  d n
 a  e
 t   n
B  s
 e  e
l   r 
l  
L  m
 a  c i  
 b  r 
 s  o
i    p
n h 
1   o
 9  n
1   e
 6   ,

1914 1947
Kaiser Wilhem II + Prince Phillip Charles Lindbergh

...without the balcony,

there would have been
no history...

1918 1952
Lenin, Moscow Winston Churchill, Whitehall

1917 1960
Bolshevik Revolutionary T  1 
Mao Propoganda Poster
 e  9 
l   4 
 e
v 1 
i   F 
 s i  
r 
i    s
 o
n  t  
B 
r 
 o
 a
 d 
 c
 a
 s
 t  

1939 1963
Benito Mussolini JFK Inauguration
 FUNDAMENTALS PAGE 235

1965 1973
ce Phillip wedding LBJ Inaugeration Nixon + Brezhnev

1970 1989
Mishima Protest, Tokyo Bucharest, Romania

1970 1989
tehall Emperor Hirohito Václav Havel, Prague

 d  

1970 2012
r Dissed and disused: Palazzo Venezia circa 1970s Julian Assange, Ecuador Embassy London
T  1 
 e  9 
l   7 
 e
v 2 
i   C
 s
i   o
 o
n m
 p
B  l  
r   e
 o  t  
i  
 a  o
 d  n
 c  o
 a f  
 s  C
 t  
i  
n  o
 g  ol  
r 
 c
 a
 s
 t  
i  
n
 g

1972 2012
Munich Olympic Games Royal Wedding, Buckingham Palace
PAGE 236 ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE BALCONY

from open...
1907 Queen Alexandra sanitarium, Davos, with canopied
balconies to provide consumptive guests with maximum
exposure to curative fresh air. One of the inspirations
for Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain... “Hans
Castorp stayed out on his balcony, looking down on the
bewitched valley until late into the night... His splendid
lounge chair with its three cushions and neck roll had been
pulled up close to the wooden railing, topped along its full
length by a little pillow of snow; on the white table at his
side stood a lighted electric lamp, a pile of books, and a
glass of creamy milk, the ‘evening milk’ that was served to
all the residents of the Berghof in their rooms each night
and into which Hans Castorp would pour a shot of cognac
to make it more palatable.”
—Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, 1924

from dense...
1890s City of balconies: mashrabiyas of Lahore
(now Pakistan) define the entire urban realm.
Upper right: two boys peek from an openable hatch.

from social democratic...

1927 Parallel to the political exploitation of the balcony
in the twentieth century as an instrument to exert power,
the balcony is discovered by politicians and architects
as a tool of mass emancipation. Already associated with
bourgeois leisure and health, the balcony is the obvious
element for architects to disseminate in their newfound
social mission, transforming it into an emblem of social
democracy. Generously balanced Karl Marx-Hof, Vienna,
by Karl Ehn: largest single block of apartments in the
world.
 FUNDAMENTALS PAGE 237

...to closed...
Hanoi’s contemporary balconies—referred to as
“tiger cages,” boxed in by mesh and corrugated
metal to enclose the space but still allow air-flow
—subject to overspill from increasingly prosperous
lives and crammed living spaces...

...to sparse... table and chair

dubai’s high-end balconies: table

chair

symptom of thinning chair

More and more cities are inhabited on a provisional
coffee table
basis. Their low intensity of use is not sad proof of
uselessness but the promise of a future usefulness.
In Dubai life is registered not by human occupation,
but by signs of irregularity on the finished towers— table chairs
usually on the balconies.
lounge chair
houseplants

chairs clothes drying

rack
chairs

human

...to social media...

2005 VM Homes, Copenhagen, by PLOT Architects
(Bjarke Ingels and Julien de Smidt): each protrusion
a transparent platform on which to fabricate,
display, and overlook individual identity—realization
of the balcony as a type of social network...
PAGE 240 ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE FIREPLACE

...no element split off in so many

different directions—what started barbecue
with fire became through the shift /
translation into electricity, the most
ubiquitious element of all...

wall fireplace

 f i re
fireplace
floor
ground place

pit

smoking

candle
 FUNDAMENTALS PAGE 241

oven
microwave

toaster

kettle
electric range

gas range

nuclear power plant

coal power plant p.#

fuel range
hot air furnace forced air

HVAC
   g 
   n
    i
    k
stove    o   g 
   o    n
    i
   c    t
  a
  e boiler
    h
“learning”
thermostat
thermostat

radiant heating
oil heater
radiator

mobile heat beams

nintendo wii

radio
TV laptop

electric fireplace smartphone

PAGE 242 ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE FIREPLACE

local warming
A staggering amount of energy is wasted on heating
empty offices, homes, and partially occupied buildings.
Local warming addresses this asymmetry in a radical way,
by synchronizing human presence with climate control.
A rank of responsive infrared heating elements are guided
by sophisticated motion tracking, creating a precise
personal (and personalized) climate for each occupant.
Individual thermal “clouds” follow people through space,
ensuring ubiquitous comfort while improving overall
energy efficiency by orders of magnitude.

From grotto to fire pit, from Victorian pipes to central

heating and suburban thermostats, man exerts more
and more control over his temperature.

“The fireside circle could no longer serve as social glue.

The old social fabric—tied together by enforced common-
alities of location and schedule—no longer coheres. What
shall replace it?” (William J. Mitchell). A new paradigm of local
warming could spark vibrant encounters as people share
their personal climates. The radical inversion of the hearth
is complete: man no longer seeks heat—heat seeks man.

MIT SENSEable Cities Lab

 FUNDAMENTALS PAGE 243

the thermostat achieves consciousness: the Nest

Learning Thermostat, the first domestic device to be part of
the internet of things, records patterns of usage, receives
remote instructions from your smartphone, uses motion
sensors to detect when users are at home... From this data,
the Nest creates a heating program that automatically
saves energy when the occupant is away or asleep, and
incentivizes the user to adopt more sustainable heating
habits... Its design is in the lineage of the classic Honeywell
Round (1953) and also of the iPod (2001)—the device has
been designed by former Apple designer Tony Fadell, who
comments: “Nest’s algorithms are common, but the output
of the algorithms are highly personalized, based on habits
of the home, the weather around the home, the thermal
constants of the home, as well as the heating and cooling
systems. All of these things are learned, and we adapt
those as we get more data points over the life of the
product.”
PAGE 248 ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE FAÇADE

glass façades

1960s The all-glass façade has always been associ- 1970s Increasing environmental conscientiousness 1980s The curtain wall as we know it today was
ated with democratic and societal transparency, resulting from multiple ecological disasters and the oil formalized by post-War American corporations.
though it also has a history in exhibition and consum- crises of the 1970s led to a boom in passive building Mistrust in corporate power has lead to a recent
erism. Advanced glassmaking technology has made technology. At first representing a kind of antisocietal boom in curtain walls which not only block or transmit
available increasingly large and strong panes of glass, trend, passive climatic mediation technologies were light in a certain way, but also tend to warp or distort
allowing the façade to disappear nearly entirely. quickly adopted by corporations. views, providing new and unique perspectives.

2014 all-glass façade by Octatube 2010 double façade by Permasteelisa + KSP Jürgen 2003 curtain wall façade by Cricursa + Permasteelisa
Engel Architekten + Herzog and de Meuron

Quattro Node Supports Deutsche Börse Prada Aoyama

Eschborn, Germany Tokyo, Japan
 FUNDAMENTALS PAGE 249

immaterial façades

1900s The media façade is often associated with 1930s The kinetic façade has always been a dream 1970s Green façades have become popular in recent
advertising and signage, but it also has a history of architects. In the 1930s, as an onslaught of tiny years as “green” has become increasingly desirable
involving massive cultural gatherings and entertain- motors invaded the American home, mechanizing win- and necessary. This shift has come as the result of
ment program. Coney Island, Las Vegas, and music dows, garage doors, heating and cooling, architects policy changes and environmental movements dating
festivals all feature media façades not only conveying desired a fully mechanized home. However, it is only back to the 1970s becoming increasingly influential in
information but also generating atmosphere. in recent years that this has become possible. the public consciousness.

2014 media façade by StandardVision 1962 kinetic façade by Jean Prouve 2014 green façade by Air-Garden + Gruppo Fiandre
Iris Ceramica + MAQLA-adiu

LED Light Blade System Cité Scolaire de La Dullague Vertical Planters + ACTIVE Ceramic
Béziers, France
PAGE 250 ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE ROOF

Translation and construction of

a roof based on the first Chinese
treatise on architecture Yingzao
Fashi  (1103 CE)

Mix of traditional
Indonesian roofs
and their advanced
geometry relatives
 FUNDAMENTALS PAGE 251

developed with
the shenzhen & hong kong bi-city
biennale of urbanism\architecture
fang zhenning
roof
Perhaps as a result of our gratitude to the roof-over-our-head, it has
 jia zhao always been super-charged with local cultural meaning. The paradox of
 jiren feng the roof is that this indelible regionalism—styles are ultrarecognizable
marieke van den heuvel (the Black Forest roof, the Chinese roof...)—coexists with universal
principles and physical structures that must be adhered to in order to
students keep out the weather. In the twenty-first century, while most elements are
陈姗婈 chen shanling, 邓博仁 deng becoming homogenized, a consensus has yet to emerge about the roof.
boren, 何子聪 he zicong,  罗祎倩 luo
yiqian, 谢天阳 xie tianyang, 朱远志 The roof room features a unique project to produce the first ever English
zhu yuanzhi 邓博仁 deng boren, 韩 translation of the 1103 Chinese architectural manual the Yingzao Fashi , and an
玮 han wei, 黄嘉懿 huang jiayi, 黄敏堃 attempt to follow its instructions for the assembly of a standard Chinese roof
huang minkun, 梁媛 liang yuan, 刘竞 using blue foam. Juxtaposed with this endeavor: a collection of models from
翔 liu jingxiang, 罗祎倩 luo yiqian, 伍 Amsterdam’s Tropical Museum of traditional Indonesian dwellings, and
思泓 wu sihong, 谢天阳 xie tianyang, advanced geometry roofs being built all over the world today...
叶青 ye qing, 郑贤发 zheng xiangfa,
朱远志 zhu yuanzhi, 庄燕珊 zhuang
yanshan

contributors
ateliers jean nouvel
gta archive /eth zürich
mecanoo architecten
the trustees of the british museum
national museum of world cultures,
amsterdam, the netherlands
zaha hadid architects

with the support of

nl fund for creative industries

with the technical support of

barkow leibinger
kef
fondazione prada

thanks to
alpha suen
ole bouman
martijn j. de ruijter
una helle
 jorn konijn
neil macgregor
 jill maggs
rj models shenzhen
 jan willem sieburgh
floortje timmerman
richard van alphen
koos van brakel
vivian zuidhof
PAGE 252 ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE ROOF
ARCHITECTURE  ROOF

Confronted with a our ignorance of ancient Chinese architecture, AMO consulted

the Yingzao Fashi , the first complete treatise of Chinese architecture, written in
1103 CE. Only rediscovered in the the 1920s by historian and architect Liang
Sicheng, there is still no complete translation into English. AMO, supported by
a team of experts including Jiren Feng, Fang Zhening, Jia Zhao, Marieke van
den Heuvel, and students from Harvard, Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, gave
it a first stab. Following intricately detailed and precise language, the team set
up a workshop at the Shenzhen Hong Kong biennale to reprototype a roof
structure described in the Yingzao Fashi  in  in blue foam...

Early twentieth century

depiction of a Song
Dynasty bracket set

1. cap block
2. mud-line arm
3. flower arm
4. long arm
5. melon arm
6. second jump flower arm
7. regular arm
8. long arm
9. regular arm
10. playing head
11. inclined cantilever
12. long arm
13. regular arm
14. playing head
16 15 15. lined square head
11 16. locking pins
10 9 8 12 13 14
17. connection block
18. mid block
6 5 4 7
19. end block

3 2
1
 FUNDAMENTALS PAGE 253

A “full heart” construction 計心造 and a “stolen-heart”

construction 偷心造 are the Yingzao Fashi  technical terms
for two types of bracketing structures, which figure as an
early form of value engineering.

Amidst technical and bureaucratic descriptions, we found a set of

architectural elements developed over centuries to prevent corruption and
include value engineering, while embracing complexity and elegance...
PAGE 254 ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE ROOF

from the vernacular

5900 BCE–4000 BCE < 1949 < 1887

Tell Al-’Ubaid, Iraq Tongkonan Model of an Indian hut
British Museum Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands Tropenmuseum

< 1913 1852–1857 < 1821

Rumah balai-balai Batak-landen Model of a Karo-Batak skull house
Tropenmuseum Tropenmuseum Tropenmuseum

< 1927 < 1927 1980

Roemah godjak makaram lojang Sungai Mandala, Negara Model of a house
Tropenmuseum Tropenmuseum Tropenmuseum
 FUNDAMENTALS PAGE 255

to the parametric

1956 1970–1980
Parroquia de San Antonio de las Huerta. Miguel Hidalgo, Mexico. Bubble System Fargeau Ponthierry; Büro-Pavillon;
Enrique de la Mora, Fernando López Carmona, Félix Candela Club-Lokal, Heinz Isler Archive
Loan courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects

1983 Unknown
Opera house in Paris, Heinz Isler Unnamed model
Heinz Isler Archive Zaha Hadid Architects

2006 2007
Wei Wu Ying Center Heydar Aliyev Center
Mecanoo Zaha Hadid Architects
PAGE 256 ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE DOOR

Airport security
diorama

998 Doors by
Het Nieuwe Instituut

Hochosterwitz castle
diorama 1:1 mock-ups of doors from A short history of door
various architecture treatises handles by FSB and
Rainer W. Leonhardt
 FUNDAMENTALS PAGE 263

US airports: twenty-layer security 2014 TSA Airport Security

As logical entrance and exit points to the city for millions of travelers, airports
represent the modern equivalent of the city gate, bearing all its symbolic weight.
In the Jet Age 1960s, airports are built as glamorous places; even through the
1970s, after the first modern hijackings, security involves
involves relatively lightweight
X-ray equipment. In the US, 9/11 provoked a dramatic escalation of ever more
demanding
demand ing procedures, with each subsequent terror scare provoking
provok ing new
rituals: the removal of shoes, bans on liquids, full body scans. “While security
represented 5– 8 percent of airport operating costs a decade ago,” ago,” notes the
International
Interna tional Air Transport Association, “that figure has increased to as much
as 35 percent at some airports today and there can be no confidence that this
trend will change...” Today, the Transportation Safety Authority boasts no less
than twenty separate checks on travelers. Screenings, searches,
searches, and scannings
are only the most obvious manifestations
manifestations of a procedure that extends well be-
fore and well after arrival. The airport becomes an endless door stretching
stretching out
ahead of travelers...
PAGE 264 ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE DOOR
ARCHITECTURE  DOOR

conservator–restorer

Julia Ludwar M.A. conservator

conservator–restorer
–restorer,, at the Bavarian building
preservation and restoration advice center...
 FUNDAMENTALS PAGE 265

curator

2013 Paul van Duijn, senior curator of furniture at

2013 Paul
the Rijksmuseum storage in Lelystad looking for doors...
PAGE 266 ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE WALL

2014 Shoji sliding 2014 Translucent 2014 Mud wall, Atelier 1740 Period wall seventeenth
partition by Lixil, Japan concrete wall, Lucem, Kéré, Accademia reproduction, Neil century
Germany di Architettura England with Sarah Dutch oak paneling,
di Mendrisio, Mayfield, England Rijksmuseum,
Switzerland– Netherlands
Burkina Faso

. .

. Floor pattern (hidden) showing

.
.

earlier demolished walls

in the room...
. .
.
.
.
.

LL LL 7

2014 Concertina fire 2013 4Akustik, 2013 SC&A glass 2014 Kinetic skin wall, 2014 Brick wall
curtain, Coopers Fire, acoustic paneling, partition system, Barkow Leibinger, 3 E E E E E E

England Fantoni, Italy Unifor, Italy Germany

E E E E E E

3 - 33 E - 3 E
HE K F E GL : n 3 n E L Y: u r m
i i inr l h m l i
3 E E E 3 , h uil in i n ni r in m l i , h riin hn in h nrl i ll i n. 3 E E E
  r h r l h r uh nn i n
n j n uil in r j .
 FUNDAMENTALS PAGE 267

contributors
atelier kéré, accademia
di architettura di mendrisio
wall
cultural heritage agency of the The meaning of the wall is just as diverse as the uses of vertical surface
netherlands can be, but there are at least two essential functions: providing structure,
neil england’s company and dividing space. The two can be separated, and thus the wall itself
rijksmuseum divides into two, as the bearing wall and the partition wall: the “neces-
the russian museum of ethnography, sary” wall, separating roof from ground; and the contingent wall, organ-
st. petersburg izing movement within the resulting container. The former, it would seem,
unifor is as stable as the human need for shelter; the latter as changeable as our
forms of sociability. Seen in time-lapse, the history of the world’s architec-
wih the support of tural plans would be the history of changing forms of civilization, as new
lixil corporation segmentation of spaces is demanded by new forms of society. The single-
unifor cell house, with occupants huddled in shared space (probably around a
central fireplace), gives way to ever more complex configurations of boxes
wih the technical support of within boxes. Increasing standards of modesty and individualism demand
barkow leibinger new walls around new bedrooms; new family norms even divide off the
coopers fire nursery. With the advance of technology, the wall, no matter how tempo-
fantoni rary or flimsy, becomes more and more permeated with wiring and plumb-
lucem ing, insulation and acoustic engineering, even as outwardly it becomes
increasingly bare, minimal, even transparent.
thanks to
zhanna chistyakova Walls always have to be made of something. T he installation aims to reveal the
dirk-jan de vries hidden complexity in the section of the wall—the part we typically never see—
peter don through showcasing a series of different wall types, from solid to insubstantial,
vladimir grusman including a seventeenth-century stone wall from the Huis Huydecoper in the
wobke hooites Netherlands, a brick wall made on site in the Central Pavilion, a Russian Yurta
sarah mayfield mesh partition, and a retractable fire curtain, among others...
anna nikolaeva
kayoko ota The installation also explores the history of the Central Pavilion itself, stripping
olga starostina back the existing plasterboard walls, revealing the solid brick behind, and mark-
università della svizzera italiana ing on the floor the shifting positions of the room’s partition walls since the late
paul van duin nineteenth century...
 PAGE 268 ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE WALL
3. shangarak  (dome) is
lifted from the center of the
structure, with the help of a
special pole called a bakan .

4. seventy uuks   (spokes)

are put in place to hold
up the dome. The top end
of the uuk  is inserted in a
specially crafted recess in
building a yurta
the edge of the shangarak ,
the lower end is tied to the
1. door jambs and leaves
top edge of the keregi .
are the first elements to be
put in place.

2. six keregi  (foldable
walls) are tied to the door
 jambs in a circ le. Wh en
5. ropes + decorated folded the height of a
bands are used to pull keregi  is app 1.7 m, and
the structure together they can be stretched
and secure. as needed, adjusting
the height of the whole
6. thatch the walls are 1902 installing a yurta, Turkmens, Trans-Caspian region. structure.
wrapped with thatch braid-
ed with colored threads.

7. woollen coverings
the whole structure is
wrapped in five woollen
coverings.

Constructed in two to three

hours, yurtas today are
an integral part of life for
Kazakhs, nomadic Uzbeks
and Turkmens as a dwell-
ing, summer home, and 1906 Kazakhs, Semipalatinsk region.
for rituals. Manufacturing
of a yurta’s core elements
is done by special crafts-
men; all other elements are 8. decorated bands
the dome and the walls of
produced by women of the interior are covered with
the family. The structural decorated bands which
elements can last up to 150 play a structural as well as
an important aesthetic role.
years, woollen coverings
up to 100 years. For some
1,500 years, the structural
elements of a yurta have
remained unchanged.

1902 Interior of a wealthy Kirkiz yurta, Alai valley.

 FUNDAMENTALS PAGE 269
1639–1943–2014 Huydecoper House
In 1943, a British military plane crashes into one of
the most impressive homes in Amsterdam’s canal
district, the Huydecoper House. Built between
1639 and 1642 for city nobleman Joan Huydecoper
and designed by famed Dutch classicist architect
Philips Vingsboon, the façade is highly un-Dutch. In
the context of the brick-based architecture of the
Netherlands, this Bentheimer sandstone façade,
thirty centimeters thick, is a marvel of its time. After
the plane crash, the city council launched an effort
to preserve the façade of the building. After an initial
period of storage, the façade fragments were moved
to several locations throughout the city and were
finally dumped in an open storage facility in the late
1980s where the fragments began to rapidly disap-
pear. After failed attempts at reconstructing the origi-
nal façade, since 2003 they have been in the Dutch
Cultural Heritage collection, where only fourty-three
fragments remain representing less than ten percent
of the original...
PAGE 278 ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE STAIR

Catalogue of stair types: German terminology

Collected diagrams and definitions
FUNDAMENTALS PAGE 279
PAGE 280 ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE STAIR

Balustrade archive at Friedrich-Mielke-Institut für Scalalogie, OTH Regensburg.

1990 “Laurin” stair developed with Friedrich Mielke and the sculptor Werner
Bäumler, with steps gradually increasing and, in the end, decreasing in height.
 FUNDAMENTALS PAGE 281

2014 Staircase models at the

Friedrich-Mielke-Institut für Scalalogie.

Folders with dossiers on staircases in One of several wheeled storage cabinets full
Swiss farmhouses from the Friedrich-Mielke-Institut. of records of the world’s staircases...
PAGE 288 ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE TOILET

Wallpaper based on
Alexander Kira’s 1976 Films: Peter Greenaway’s 26
book The Bathroom. Bathrooms  (1985)
 (1985) and William
E. Jones’s Mansfield 1962.

Collection of historic toilets

including an ancient Roman
toilet, a baroque urinal,
and a toilet developed for
the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation’s “Reinvent the
Toilet Challenge.”
 FUNDAMENTALS PAGE 289

contributors
alexander kira
 jpg toilets
toilet
peter greenaway No architectural treatise cites the toilet as the primordial element of
laufen bathrooms ag on loan from architecture, but the toilet is today the fundamental zone of interaction
peter stieg, vienna between humans and architecture on the most intimate level. Once a
eoos / eawag respectable communal activity in Roman cities, going to the toilet gradu-
the trustees of the british museum ally became privatized, enclosed within architecture. In the nineteenth
laufen bathrooms ag on loan from century, enabled by flush technology, the S-trap, and modern plumbing,
thomas engele, innsbruck the toilet united in a single r oom with the bath—a union of the dirty and
toilet museum, laufen bathrooms ag the clean that had only been safely achieved a handful of times in his-
weald and downland open air tory. The domestication, privatization, and proliferation of the toilet is the
museum great unspoken driver behind much arc hitecture and urban planning. But
william e. jones at the moment where the globalization of the Euro-American toilet and its
lixil corporation attendant behavior is on the brink of completion, the model it depends
on—abundant water, sophisticated plumbing, large-scale sewage and
with the support of purification systems—is increasingly untenable and unaffordable. The
lixil corporation toilet is at once the most private and the most political element, subject to
government interference at least since King Francois’ 1539 edict instruct-
with the technical support of ing the citizens of Paris to take responsibility for the collection and proper
barkow leibinger disposal of their “waters.” Toda
Today,
y, the toilet is the site of cultural superim-
kef positions (sit-toilets with grated sides for squatting on) and resistance,
philanthropy (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s challenge to “reinvent
thanks to the toilet”), and habits that only seem to be intractable...
una helle
neil macgregor The toilet room features a range of crucial historical toilets, from a Roman char-
 jill maggs iot model found at the baths of Caracalla to the latest Japanese washlet, with
warming, music, lighting, and deodorizing ordered in advance by smartphone,
to a new typology of toilet, the “Blue Diversion,” developed as part
of the “Reinvent the Toilet Challenge,” issued by the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation. On the walls: the groundbreaking ergonomic research of Alexander
Kira from his 100,000-sel
100,000-selling
ling 1976 book The Bathroom , plus two films on diver-
gent toilet experiences, Peter Greenaway’s 26 Bathrooms  (1985)
 (1985) and William
E. Jones’s Mansfield 1962 .
PAGE 290 ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE TOILET

ca. 211–224 Chariot latrine at baths of Caracalla, Rome

Similar in shape—with its circular cutaway—to earlier communal toilets,
the single chariot latrine individuates and exalts the act of defecation,
a precursor to modern “thrones”...
 FUNDAMENTALS PAGE 291

3D Vello Clarice

Refresh (square) Quinta Moda

Galerie Galerie Plan Encore

2013 Twyford range: Triumph of minimalism

With the strapline “A place that’s all yours. For life.” Twyford launches the latest all-
white (except for the art-deco inspired “Clarice,” with black seat) range, free of the
decoration that routinely adorned the toilet bowl a century earlier—as if puritanical
design can combat the inevitable dirt the toilet will confront. Elaborate molded shapes
like the lions and dolphins of the Unitas have also been eradicated in favor of minor
variations on a single shape...
PAGE 292 ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE TOILET

1976 Wallpaper based on Alexander Kira’s research

for the book The Bathroom.
 FUNDAMENTALS PAGE 293

alexander kira and

the science of “evacuation”
PAGE 304 ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE ELEVATOR

Improved prototype of
a patented horizontally Capsule used in 2010
moving elevator by to rescue trapped
Eindhoven University miners in Chile
of Technology
Robotics

Scaled protoype
of a circular elevator
by Lerch Bates
 FUNDAMENTALS PAGE 305

developed with
eindhoven university of technology
robotics
elevator
anne krus, han meyer, harrie van de The history of the elevator is one where existing technologies—the safety
loo, rené van de molengraft, wouter trap, traction, electric propulsion—combined to trigger a revolution of
houtman, freek ramp architecture and the city. As the enabler of the skyscraper (and therefore
the modern metropolis), the elevator’s origins first in the mining industry
contributors and later in theater scenography were mostly forgotten as it disappeared
lerch bates into the core. Its potential for visual drama diminished in favor of a dis-
museo regional de atacama— connected experience shuttling between floors, a system that has remained
gobierno de chile fundamentally unchanged since 1853. In the mid-1990s Otis, one of the
pioneers of the original elevator, experimented with a radical new type
with the technical support of which would be able to move both horizontally and vertically—a long-held
barkow leibinger dream of architects—called the Odys sey. After two years of testing, the
noraplan project was abandoned due to a perceived lack of interest from the market—
kef the patents filed for this event now lie expired in the desk drawers of history.

thanks to Together with the engineering department of the Technical University of

adrian godwin Eindhoven, a new prototype of the world’s first horizontally moving elevator will
cristobal molina baeza be built and tested in the room. Based on the original expired patent by Otis
and updated with the use of robot technology, the potential still remains to
break the monotony of the box-on-a-rope principle and revolutionize the way
we think about architectural and urban infrastructure.

A second invention that promises to end the monopoly of the vertical presented
in the room is the Skytrack system developed with Lerch Bates: a motor-driven
elevator able to move around buildings in a loop.

Recalling the heroic origins of the elevator in mining, the room also features
the capsule used to rescue trapped Chilean miners in 2010.
PAGE 306 ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE ELEVATOR

going down the rope

Throughout history the rope has remained the most important component
of the elevator. Known and used from prehistory, the rope reveals a fundamental
common misunderstanding and semantic mistake in the origin of the elevator:
going down actually preceded going up. While in New York, the alleged
“birthplace” of the elevator, elevators reached forty meters in height, elevators
in the mineshafts in Central Europe were breaching one kilometer in depth...
They have something in common though, in that they both suffer from a law of
diminishing returns: what critical floor efficiency ratios (the number of elevators
needed to reach a height vs. the available floor area) are for going up, heat
and climate control are for mineshafts going down...

15 m high

~2500 BCE 2000 BCE ~300 BCE

Grime’s Graves (flint mines) Great Orme (copper mines) Laurion silver mines
Norfolk, Britain. Wales, Britain). Athens, Greece.
15 m deep 70 m deep 92 m deep

Job 28:1-12 
1 “People know where to mine silver 
 and how to refine gold.
2 They know where to dig iron from the earth
 and how to smelt copper from rock.
3 They know how to shine light in the darkness 
 and explore the farthest regions of the earth
 as they search in the dark for ore.
4 They sink a mine shaft into the earth
 far from where anyone lives.
They descend on ropes, swinging back and forth.
5 Food is grown on the earth above,
 but down below, the earth is melted as by fire.
6 Here the rocks contain precious lapis lazuli,
 and the dust contains gold.

Book of Job 28:1-6. Holy Bible: Old Testament.

New Living Translation (NLT), 2007.
 FUNDAMENTALS PAGE 311

Power packs Range finders

PAGE 312 ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE

from book for architects developed with

wolfgang tillmans
Architecture is an expression of desires, hopes, and ambitions, but also
practical needs and financial limitations. Over the past ten years, I have studio assistant
photographed buildings in ordinary and extraordinary contexts. When simon menges
I look back at these pictures, I am always taken aback by the madness,
the complexity, and the irrationality—neither ironic nor bleak, they seem courtesy
to me a little daunting, but always taken with a kind eye. david zwirner, new york, london
galerie buchholz, cologne, berlin
Book for Architects  is presented in Venice as a projecte d sequence of still maureen paley, london
images displayed on two screens, the majority of which have never before been institut für auslandsbeziehungen
published. Rather than isolating individual buildings, which is commonly seen —ifa
in architectural photography, my interest is in making images that echo what
the built environment actually looks like to me. I don’t use wide-angle or shift
lenses, but a standard lens that most closely approximates the perspective
of the human eye. The various elements of architecture encountered in the
previous fourteen rooms appear here at times clearly and cleanly, and at other
times in a layered and convoluted fashion. As such, the photographs represent
the impurity and randomness as well as the beauty and imperfection that typify
built reality, both past and present.

The following thirty-two page insert entitled from book for architects  is a
work conceived and designed for this Venice Biennale catalogue. It does not
represent the actual projected work.