existence minimum...
is a Masters' Studio, Waterloo Architecture Cambridge, devoted to a particular subject – the theory, the history, and the work of a sensibility that is part architectural position, part architectural practice, and part architectural technology – a subject that remains both a distinct ethic and a compelling aesthetic. We are bringing several different, but mutually complimentary, kinds of work into the studio, and organizing this work around the theme dwelling – existence minimum.
Manifesto and Biograph, our personal stake
In order to assay the personal value of this sensibility, each member of the studio will consider some aspect of his or her own practices, not as autobiography, or self-criticism, or as confessional, but as a two-part personal essay – written, graphic, and architectural – coming to terms with the questions we bring to the support we provide for our lives, coming to terms with dwelling.
Monograph, individual and collective
As a way of extending the study's collective and individual literacy, each student will take on a piece of research into architectural history, either as a survey of some phenomenological aspect of the subject, or as an in-depth study of the meaning and character of dwelling, a particular episode, a particular place, a particular time. This will be a scholarly essay, albeit perhaps a wide-ranging and unconventional one, probably richly illustrated, but adhering to the conventions and standards of an M.Arch thesis. The seminar will post these essays as part of a web log devoted to the work of the group.
Topograph, the value of a sensibility
So that we are in touch with community, with a real sense of the value of this particular approach, the entire seminar will work together to sketch circumstances that bear the promise of a compelling, beautiful, and useful application of the sensibility existence minimum, explored through research, documentation and analysis.
Building, informed by a sensibility
Finally, central to the term's work, each member of the study, working individually or in a small group, will prepare an architectural design for existence minimum. Each will present the designs as a model, supported by documentation that makes each of these designs transparent to a broad public.
We intend to see a broad selection of this work assembled in a sponsored exhibition, supported with a catalogue that will gather together much of the work of the studio. The work of the term itself will support people going on to pursue their own thesis, one where existence minimum may play a greater, or a lesser role.
is a Masters' Studio, Waterloo Architecture Cambridge, devoted to a particular subject – the theory, the history, and the work of a sensibility that is part architectural position, part architectural practice, and part architectural technology – a subject that remains both a distinct ethic and a compelling aesthetic. We are bringing several different, but mutually complimentary, kinds of work into the studio, and organizing this work around the theme dwelling – existence minimum.
Manifesto and Biograph, our personal stake
In order to assay the personal value of this sensibility, each member of the studio will consider some aspect of his or her own practices, not as autobiography, or self-criticism, or as confessional, but as a two-part personal essay – written, graphic, and architectural – coming to terms with the questions we bring to the support we provide for our lives, coming to terms with dwelling.
Monograph, individual and collective
As a way of extending the study's collective and individual literacy, each student will take on a piece of research into architectural history, either as a survey of some phenomenological aspect of the subject, or as an in-depth study of the meaning and character of dwelling, a particular episode, a particular place, a particular time. This will be a scholarly essay, albeit perhaps a wide-ranging and unconventional one, probably richly illustrated, but adhering to the conventions and standards of an M.Arch thesis. The seminar will post these essays as part of a web log devoted to the work of the group.
Topograph, the value of a sensibility
So that we are in touch with community, with a real sense of the value of this particular approach, the entire seminar will work together to sketch circumstances that bear the promise of a compelling, beautiful, and useful application of the sensibility existence minimum, explored through research, documentation and analysis.
Building, informed by a sensibility
Finally, central to the term's work, each member of the study, working individually or in a small group, will prepare an architectural design for existence minimum. Each will present the designs as a model, supported by documentation that makes each of these designs transparent to a broad public.
We intend to see a broad selection of this work assembled in a sponsored exhibition, supported with a catalogue that will gather together much of the work of the studio. The work of the term itself will support people going on to pursue their own thesis, one where existence minimum may play a greater, or a lesser role.
Donald McKay
Robert Jan van Pelt
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This is a studio about architecture living light. In a moment where architecture is recovering from a period of wretched excess it seems worthwhile stepping back and joining into a long tradition, working to develop a valid economy for architecture.
The Goals
The first goal for a M1 program is to address several of the skills – researching and reflecting, recovering your own thoughts, documenting places and events, integrating information and generating new information, writing and editing, framing a narrative or argument, consolidating a rhetorical format, presenting difficult material effectively, and of course, designing – that a candidate needs to bring to an architectural thesis. At the same time, the studio needs its own coherent form, or we abdicate our responsibility as an institution, a responsibility to format itself. So, between these responsibilities – to the candidate, to the institution – an M1 studio must, on one hand, range wide, and on the other, dig deep.
By taking an issue – the essence of the architectural enterprise, economy, a minimum, a distillation – rooted in architectural history, an issue that has been renewed and transformed regularly, often to great advantage, we can give the studio specific format. By picking a subject that we can re-apply in fresh form – dire need, here and now – we have motifs for the thesis: development, transformation, and renewal. This would seem an obvious direction for almost any thesis program, until one reflects that it would be quite as easy to imagine that a thesis could be a consolidation of knowledge already developed, or just as easily, a refutation of that knowledge, a rupture or revolution.
Existence minimum, as it is treated here, is very much a “third way”, a negotiation between acceding to the nature and the shape of the architectural discourse as it is, and setting out to blow it up. In All That is Solid Melts Into Air, Marshall Berman makes the case that the criticism of an institution is, in modern life, absorbed into it, transforming it, contributing to its survival. (Berman's title draws it's inspiration from The Communist Manifesto of 1848, Marx and Engels. It's hard to find a better one sentence introduction into modern life: All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.)
In some sense, this program of study – recalling the foundation mythologies of architecture, reconsidering its purpose, actively, in the work itself – is both a criticism of architecture as we know it to day, and a strategy that renews it. That is, in some sense, by ignoring classic architectural values, by walking away from issues of form in favor of questions of performance, of value, by reducing and perhaps distilling architecture, we may find fresh architecture, and participate in renewing a discourse.
I would be interested in examining an “existence minimum” dwelling in suburban Ontario.
ReplyDeleteIf we could make a change in the way that suburbia develops, it would radically change the streetscapes of many GTA cities. Suburbia is, quite frankly, getting out of control. I have not yet discussed this with any other classmates, so I would be flexible within the context of a suburban site. That being said, within the GTA, I have the most experience with the suburban city of Oakville. I find it fascinating how the bungalows and split-level homes South of the QEW are being replaced by monstrosities in order to match the mansions on Lakeshore or the ever-growing neighbourhoods of ‘giant cookie’-cutter homes North of the QEW. The most practical housing types that allow for the highest population density and create quiet pedestrian streets are being destroyed.
I’d like to investigate this location not only because I think that we need solutions to this malignant growth, but also because the issues raised here apply to many Canadian cities. Commuters are willing to live farther and farther from the city in which they work, but the oncoming increase in population will require the suburban commuter to live like a city-dweller. Broadening the application of this project is what makes it a more useful study than a particularly rigid site-specific solution. If so many cities have the same problem- can we not all learn the same lessons together?
Also, in considering the meaning of “existence minimum” I was primarily imagining this as a study of minimizing resource use, which would not only mean a smaller building footprint, but also require an efficient building enclosure and informed building material selection. These are related to climate and site, thus in order to be applicable to us as Canadians, we must produce solutions which will stand up to snow storms in the winter and heat waves in the summer. My standpoint on 'minimum' will be based on what a middle-class (and well informed) couple or small family would consider acceptable as a home. Simply because you could survive in a place does not make it a practical solution to housing commuters today.
I would like to use the provocations set forth in the Existence Minimum M1 studio to study the rural Canadian condition. That of a small town, or county, preferably in Southern Ontario or Eastern Saskatchewan. I choose this topograph because my interests beyond the M1 pertain to the regional settlement patterns of Southern Ontario. I will use the themes evoked by Existence Minimum to get very close to the essential tools needed for settlement, namely the axe, the plow, and the mill.
ReplyDelete“...In any care, the tragic truth is that much of suburbia is unreformable. It does not lend itself to being retrofitted in the kind of mixed-use, more fine-grained walkable environments we will need to carry on daily life in the coming age of greatly reduced motoring.” - J.H. Kunstler
ReplyDeleteThis may hold out to be true if we ever do reduce motoring. Much of the outer suburban fabric that ballooned in size from the 80's on was built at a tragically inhuman scale. At the heart of many mature suburbs however we'll find derelict main streets in need of revival and flanked by the houses our grandfathers built... Modest, progressive and respectable homes who's owners have regrettably aged in place despite exponential growth in traffic and supplanted local merchants. Or worse we'll find megalithic malls and deserts of asphalt wrapped suffocatingly around the likely single transit station in the area. Whatever the scenario, the core presents us with the pivotal points in retrofitting suburbia; access to transit and mixed-zoning. These aged neighborhoods are the same all over Canada, bungalow ownerships well passed their best before-dates and over-due for a new generation that never came. They “improved” nearby until nearby became elsewhere rather than improving in situ. It's terribly tragic to expect an expiry date on the property you bought to raise your family.
Not to say that I'm in favor of the wholesale “urban renewal” of times passed. In the worst case I know, Lebreton Flats(a medium size district just adjacent to Parliament Hill) was expropriated and raised in the sixties, growing grass and weeds for nearly half a century. I hate to see the bungalows and CMHC small homes disappear at the rate they do. I'm very nostalgic for that era of housing, built in a time of trades and public service, but I doubt that retrofitting suburbia would be selective enough to treat them any differently without federal intervention in reality. I'd be interested to find out what percentage of the housing stock today is from the post-war period. It must still be a rather large figure(not percentage) so there will be casualties unfortunately. The areas with the nicest sites get replaced with a fat cake decorations and others will fall into disrepair. The ones in the 40s and 50s are on their last legs without reinvestment. I'm open to different strategies though I think the two suburban core scenarios are the logical places to start and we can haussminimize outwards from there. As for a specific location, I'm sure we can each name a few.
My instinct in choosing a topograph for studying the concepts of existence minimum, is to choose a place that will have more bearing on my thesis after M1. Personally this would entail a place that feeds my fascination with a particular North American region, and helps me develop an increasingly richer image to pursue and distill. I would propose a rural Canadian setting, where harsh climatic and economic forces give great value to the idea of “Architecture Living Light”. A rural Canadian topograph also offers a rich contrast between abundance and hardship, where the question of minimal existence is increasingly more relevant and complex.
ReplyDeleteIt does not make any sense. No sense at all that some were born in wealth and abundance, while others should have to struggle most of their life for subsistence, and sometimes recognition.
ReplyDeleteAs human beings, we owe ourselves, when in need, to humbly try to mitigate one’s pain.
As Architects, we should aim at implementing buildings which mediate the surrounding environment and adapt to our changing world.
Catastrophes encountered by the third world are mere premonitory captions of a denied future, that will globally affect us.
Attempting to solve today’s situation will help to anticipate tomorrow’s. Haiti is only one of many instances.
I feel personally vulnerable coming from a small island facing similar concerns. Putting ourselves in such conflicting situations, at an architectural, ecological, sociological and above all, political level, will greatly engage us with this ultimate reality.
We, Gabriel and Nik, want to use the Holcim Sustainable Awards platform to investigate existenzminimum as a catalyst for sustainability in architecture. The area of Cambridge will offer a specific site for investigations in adaptive reuse, urban planning, and construction techniques, etc.
ReplyDeleteThe Holcim Awards platform outlines several benchmarks, standards that will inform the development of our project. These include:
-innovation and transferability
-ethical standards and social equity
-environmental quality and resource efficiency
-economic performance and compatibility
-contextual and aesthetic impact
Nik and Gabe
Our footprint in the world stretches beyond a simple local land boundary. It is intrinsically linked to zones all across the globe in varying scales of consumption and growth, and as such, architecture has become a global product in itself touching upon everyone in some way or another.
ReplyDeleteThe very products that occupy our lives and direct our ability to work and live. Apart from the usual bombardments of product status derived from media and marketing, the desire to own seemingly useless items of luxury has engulfed architecture as well. Rather than designing for a more practicable existence, the machinations by what we live by in society are an excess of what we want and can have, rather than of need which is something that we should want.
The suburban crisis in itself, from my own personal experiences of in Mississauga, has demonstrated unstable longevity of large detached homes. The typical nuclear family of two parents, two kids, is engaged in a particular destitute cycle of decay and disuse; the very home supporting them was too large to begin with; sections of the house never used, the basement a storage container for junk. Decades later the very shell that accommodated a large family of which the children have grown and moved out from the house, becomes empty and misused for a working class couple day in and day out. Rather than accommodating an expanding and contracting family size through efficient and comfortable design, suburban homes have instead accommodated an accumulation of products to fill its voids rather than a sensible holistic integration.
Engaging in such a topic presents a wide scale of opportune investigation, as this popular building model has engulfed western culture for decades and challenging its forms can help understand how architecturally the existence minimum continuously shifts in scales throughout history.
Jamie