10. The Soft Umbrella Diagram Frank O. Gehry, Peter B ... · PDF fileThe Soft Umbrella Diagram Frank O. Gehry, ... S. Hambright Drawing Canonical Ideas in Architecture UofA . ... Gehry,

Lecture 11: Frank Gehry, Peter B. Lewis Building, 1997-2002

10. The Soft Umbrella Diagram Frank O. Gehry, Peter B. Lewis Building, 1997-2002

S. Hambright Drawing Canonical Ideas in Architecture UofA



“Greg Lynn, in his Embryological House and in several recent projects, proposes another kind of diagram, one that has no originary condition. Lynn suggests that form harbors, as an integral aspect of its being, conditions which he calls form’s own diagrammatic necessity.’“

Greg Lynn, Embryological House



“This internal logic renders it possible to produce diagrams that refer not to an external transcendental signified, but to their own operations…not depend on any of the a priori notions…such as site or program.“

Greg Lynn, Embryological House



Greg Lynn, Blobwall Pavilion

“Lynn’s work deals with the component as an infinitely repeatable entity. He suggests that it is possible to work on components – whether they are components of a building or components of the city – which have no necessary relationship to the whole, nor to a precedent, but result from a set of internal or computational logics.“



“Lynn argues that a computer algorithm operates both in the Peircian sense of the symbol and index, in that its meaning is legible as a representation of such processes and that these operations take place over time, which recorded in an indexical manner.“

Discuss the statement below using these images.



“Lynn’s argument implies that these prior conditions of architecture’s own disciplinary precedents are not necessarily relevant to those of the future, given that these algorithmic processes are in fact unfamiliar to architecture.”



“This argument about the role of the digital in undermining architectural precedents is useful in considering the relationship of digital and analogic processes in Frank Gehry’s Peter B. Lewis Building for the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve.”

Ghery, Peter B. Lewis Building



“While Gehry might argue that his work is the result of computation, it could similarly be argued that Gehry occupies a terrain that is not as clearly defined, being sited between personal expression – or analogic processes – and digital processes….the diagram in Gehry’s work is iconic…it situates his work in the realm of the phenomenal.”


What does Eisenman mean by the statement below?



Discuss the two processes below differing the conceptual from the phenomenal?

“The crucial difference between the conceptual and the phenomenal lies in the domain of close reading, with the nexus of attention shifting from the eye to the mind in the conceptual, and from the mind to the eye in the phenomenal.”




“Gehry’s diagram could be called a ‘soft umbrella,’ which settles in various ways over an internal organization of spaces and structure. This type of diagram depends on the articulation of the roof and roof’s impact on the section; the plan becomes residual to the process.”

Frank Gehry



“While the digital processes are those from which the precise form is generated, the conceptual diagram remains analogic.”




“In addition to engaging Gehry’s soft umbrella diagram, another of the originary conditions for Gehry’s Lewis Building for the Weatherhead School of Management is a classical precedent, more precisely, Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Altes Museum.”

Karl Friedrick Schinkel, Altes Museum



Discuss the quote below using the images above.

“Gehry uses the classical plan as an a priori ideal that evolves vertically, and at the same time challenges the idea of sectional extrusion implicit in the classical plan.”

Schinkel’s Altes Museum and Gehry’s Peter B. Lewis Building



“The result resembles a classic Gehry expression, but the building requires the digital processes of the computer to erode the section, which begins as an orthogonal condition, in a way that would not have been possible with analogic methods.”

Schinkel’s Altes Museum and Gehry’s Peter B. Lewis Building



“This invocation of the digital is crucial to understanding the evolution of the Lewis Building, and its conceptual differences in engaging precedents, from Lynn’s work, which undermines the role of precedents.”



“The earliest study models of June 1997 reveal a tension between orthogonal organizations with clear historical precedents and biomorphic forms related to Gehry’s exploration of digital modeling.”

Gehry, Peter B. Lewis Building, study model, June 1997



“A two-color model, reminiscent of a Richard Neutra or Rudolf Schindler project of the 1920s and 1930s in terms of its blocky massing, has a base on which the smaller blocks of its uppers level sit..”


Neutra, Kaufmann House

Schindler, Schindler House


“This U-shaped organization of blocks is frontalized like any classical building with a distinct propylaea or frontispiece…clearly articulated, voided space…bi-nuclear element…vertical cut…strong central axis…recall both classical and neoclassical precedents.”


Gehry, Peter B. Lewis Building

Karl Friedrick Schinkel, Altes Museum



“A second model…its voided center is a wellspring for curving and biomorphic forms in metal and plastic…the energy is not coming from above, as would be the case in a soft umbrella diagram, but from below, as if the blocky organization of the model were being overcome from within.”




“The next model, from September 1997, returns to a building of boxlike units, yet introduces a distinct pinwheeling character.”

Gehry, Peter B. Lewis Building, study model, September 1997



“The tension between the biomorphic and orthagonal forms is poignantly captured in a sketch for the Lewis Building from October 1997, which appears at first glance to be little more than a doodle.”

Discuss the base condition, forces, and volumes in the image above.

Gehry, Peter B. Lewis Building, sketch, October 1997



“The model of October 1997, seemingly based on this sketch, suggests the integration of a U-shaped and corner-towered palazzo with a diagram of biomorphic forms exploding from a voided center.”

Gehry, Peter B. Lewis Building, study model, October 1997



“The digital model produced in April 1998 manifests the coexistence of these two types of organizations, maintaining their distinction in its two-color scheme. This is not a top-down strategy, nor is it a monochromatic or monolithic material strategy, but one that remains dialectical in its nature and bi-nuclear around a voided center.”

Gehry, Peter B. Lewis Building, digital model, April 1998



“The two study models of May 1998 and March 1999 are sectional models revealing the presence of the base and corner towers, which are articulated in a different material.”

Discuss the base, external wrapper, voided center, bi-nuclear central element, and interior/exterior wrapper

Gehry, Peter B. Lewis Building, study model, May 1998



“These two components – base and biomorphic forms – share a dialectical relationship, but the question remains whether the biomorphic forms are coming up from the base, being pulled down to the base, or, alternatively, are suspended between the base and the roof.”




“More interesting is that the sectional energies in the May 1998 and March 1999 models present a section in which the biomorphic form becomes a wrapper for an internal volume, a form within a form.”

Gehry, Peter B. Lewis Building, study model, March 1999



“The section produces a dialogue between container and contained, figure and ground, vertical and horizontal, and forces of erosion and stability. All of these dialectical characteristics are apparent in the model.”

Gehry, Peter B. Lewis Building, section, 2000

Discuss the dialectical conditions using the section above.



“While supposedly an expressionist artist, Gehry adopts a process, as evidenced in these study models, that combines intuition with the understanding of the less-than-conscious influence of historical precedents.”

Gehry, Peter B. Lewis Building, study models



“The corkscrewlike energy of the section differs significantly from that at Le Corbusier’s Palais des Congres-Strasbourg or from the ramp at Poissy.”

Le Corbusier, Villa Savoy, sketch Le Corbusier, Palais des Congres-Strasbourg



“The section for example, is reminiscent of James Stirling’s Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, suggesting that a critical evaluation of the relationship between the Altes Museum, the Staatsgalerie, and the Lewis Building could prove interesting..”

James Stirling, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, Germany



“These are important conceptual images reiterating a concept of a quasi-invisible ‘ground’ which is rooted in historical precedents, such as corner towers, set against the energy of emergent biomorphic forms.”



“The project for the Lewis Building falls between the conscious and the unconscious, between the analogic and the digital, and as such is different from Gehry’s other projects.”

Gehry, Fred and Ginger Building

Gehry, Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao

Gehry, Fish sculpture, Barcelona



“Digital modeling provides the possibility of an extension of space that is no longer necessarily Cartesian, yet is different from Koolhaas’s Agadir section or Libeskind’s erosion of the x-axis at the Jewish Museum.”

Libeskind, Jewish Museum

Koolhaas, Convention Center, Agadir




“The lateral and continuous extension of space as a horizontal datum seen in the Maison Dom-ino can now be modulated in a more nuanced manner, as is the case in Agadir, or in Foreign Office Architects’ project for Yokohama, each of which focuses on the disturbance of the horizontal section as their thematic.”

Le Corbusier, Maison Dom-ino

Foreign Office Architects, Yokohame Ferry Terminal



“It is the rethinking of section – differently from Koolhaas, Libeskind, and Le Corbusier – that makes the Lewis Building again a fulcrum between past and future ideas of section.”




“The Lewis Building is a cusp project between the past as present and the present as future, and broaches the underlying paradigm shift that occurs in questioning the precedence of the unity of the classical part-to-whole relationship.”




“Historically, any paradigm shift begins with the denial of precedent as a necessary agent. In this sense, the analysis here may be a work of sublime yet necessary uselessness in the face of the evolving ability to produce conditions internal to component relationships that have no necessary analogic relationship to any prior, or precedent, condition.”



“If anything architecture has changed as a result of these ten buildings, it is primarily the subtle change in the relationship of subject to object. This occurs in two senses: first, the change in close reading necessitated by the emergence of figural forces produced through digital processes; second, the change in the subject’s physical relationship to the object, with the subject himself becoming an object of the gaze.”

Documents

10. The Soft Umbrella Diagram Frank O. Gehry, Peter B ... · PDF fileThe Soft Umbrella Diagram Frank O. Gehry, ... S. Hambright Drawing Canonical Ideas in Architecture UofA . ... Gehry,