McCullough- Discussion

For me, personally, the McCullough essay articulated two important issues. The first has to do with using our hand and sensory experience to learn and gain a deeper understanding of volume, numbers, and space. I was reminded of “numbers day” in elementary school, when each student was assigned a number from 0 to 100, and was required to bring in that select number of select objects, such as pennies, jelly beans, or buttons. The act of touching and holding these objects really solidified my conceptual understanding of counting and grouping.

The second issue that I think needed more emphasis during discussion was the key importance of understanding how places are made. This includes materially, construction process, structural expression, and overall aesthetic composition of architecture. When a visitor to a place can identify a certain function of a structural or architectural element, or identify its creation or construction history, for example the saw marks on a timber, or the imprint of wood grain formwork left on concrete, the easier it is for that visitor to relate to the place. This type of comprehension, I think, appeals to our human curiosity and desire to personalize and emphasize the uniqueness of different places. Understanding how another man’s hand worked to shape the places we inhabit is a natural instinct, and one that gets lost amid the rush of anonymous materials production and dishonest material and construction expression in architecture.

Harris/Happold Reading Response

One of the interesting aspects about the gridshell design, and research into this type of form-finding typology, is the issue and resolution of the joint. The presentation on Friday that covered Shigeru Ban raised some important questions for me about the relative practicality of building a gridshell structure when the joint or node design is not a priority in the overall architectural scheme. Why would an architect choose to build a structure whose entire existence depends on the, “minimum use of material and structural efficiency ,” by creating a complex system of interwoven laths or strips whose function depends on the repetitive and frequently occurring element that has not fully been resolved, (Harris 2)? By using a grid pattern to emulate the properties of a shell, as the Harris reading states, an architect or engineer is choosing a geometric pattern whose very definition is that of a series of overlapping joints. To me, lashing the cardboard tube to create quick and efficient joint resolutions, as Ban did in his Japanese Pavilion, is not an eloquent solution. In the Harris reading, the author suggests using longer members to eliminate the need for more joints, which he argues, are aesthetically unpleasant, (Harris 3). I think this aspect of the gridshell design should be celebrated, as it is such a crucial component to the success of the building type.

Another question that the nodal resolution brings up is that of physical model making versus in-field trial and error. One of the issues that the reading discussed was that of experimenting with smaller wire mesh or wood models before engaging in the construction process. It seems that finding a nodal solution would be most practical during this experimental phase of design, yet the physical properties of wood and steel connectors can only truly be analyzed at full scale. This discrepancy leads me to believe that thorough design investigation is a synthesis of model making, computer analysis, drawing, and in-field trial and error, along with any other tool available to architects.

One last observation from the reading is the contrasting relationship between age old material knowledge, applied physics and new computer technologies. As stated in the reading, the desire of the client and architect was to create, “a new building that would be the best that the early 21st century could produce,” by using a traditional method of simple and efficient timber and wood technology through harnessing the analytical capabilities of the computer, (Harris 4). This suggests that although designers might have a skillful knowledge of timber and woodworking, and an interest in form finding and pushing the limits of gridshell innovation, the best experimentation and construction of gridshell design has been conducted with the computer at hand. Interesting dichotomy.

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