SITE AND COMPOSITION

Design Strategies in Architecture and Urbanism

Enis Aldallal, Husam AlWaer and Soumyen Bandyopadhyay

Site and Composition

Site and Composition examines design strategies and tactics in site making. It is concerned with the need for a renewed
understanding of the site in the twenty-first century and the need for a critical position regarding the continued tendency
to view the site as an isolated ‘fragment’ severed from its wider context.

The book argues for revisiting the traditional instruments or means of both siting and composition in architecture to
explore their true potential in achieving connections between site and context. Through the various examples studied
here it is suggested that such instrumental means have the potential for achieving greater poetic outcomes. The book
focuses on the works of twentieth-century architects of wide-ranging persuasion – Peter Eisenman, Le Corbusier, Frank
Lloyd Wright, Alvaro Siza, Herzog and de Meuron and Charles Correa, for example – who have strived in quite different
ways to achieve deeper engagement with the physical qualities of place and context.

Departing from a reconsideration of the fragment, Site and Composition emphasises the role of the ‘positive fragment’
in achieving both historical continuity and renewed wholeness. The potential of both planimetric and sectional
compositional methods are explored, emphasising the importance of reciprocity between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ – between
fragment and the whole, as well as materiality. Written in a clear and accessible manner, this book makes vital reading for
both researchers and students of architecture and urbanism.

Enis Aldallal has been practicing architecture in the United States since 2011 and is pursuing licensure in the state of
Illinois. Before coming to the USA, he practiced architecture for six years in renowned architectural firms in the Middle East.
He holds a MArch from Illinois Institute of Technology (2011) and an MPhil from the University of Liverpool, UK (2009). His
interest in place-specific approaches to architecture support his research on site-related challenges and how they engage
with his architecural designs.

Husam AlWaer is an urbanist with a background in architecture, urban design and sustainability. He is Senior Lecturer
in sustainable urban design and evaluation in the School of Social Sciences (Architecture & Planning), having previously
researched, practised and taught at Reading and Liverpool Universities. Husam’s work has had considerable impact in
academia, practice and in the field of community out-reach. With Barbara Illsley, he is currently editing Place-making:
Rethinking the Master-planning Process – with contributions from internationally reputed scholars and experts in the field
(ICE Publisher, expected 2016).

Soumyen Bandyopadhyay holds the Sir James Stirling Chair in Architecture at the University of Liverpool. Director of the
research centre, ArCHIAM (Architecture and Cultural Heritage of India, Arabia and the Maghreb), he has published widely
on aspects of Indian modernity and vernacular architecture of Arabia. His recent publications include The Territories of
Identity (Routledge 2013, co-edited with Guillermo Garma-Montiel) and Manah: Omani Oasis, Arabian Legacy (Liverpool
University Press, 2011).
Site and Composition
Design strategies in architecture
and urbanism
Enis Aldallal, Husam AlWaer and Soumyen Bandyopadhyay
First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2016 Enis Aldallal, Husam AlWaer and Soumyen Bandyopadhyay

The right of Enis Aldallal, Husam AlWaer and Soumyen Bandyopadhyay to be identified as
authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
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trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

[CIP data]

ISBN: 978-0-415-49825-8 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-415-49826-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-73037-0 (ebk)

Typeset in Myriad Pro

by Karen Willcox, www.karenwillcox.com
 v

Contents

Contents

vii List of illustrations 056 Sectional analysis

060 Boundary as communicative space
001 Preface
065 Conclusion: site at different scales of
005 1 Introduction: site and integrity and fragmentation

composition 071 4 The planimetric

012 Fragment and fragmentation
composition of site
015 Wholeness
073 Introduction
017 Fragmentation in architecture
073 Drawing and composition in architecture:
020 Notes information and disegno

023 2 Resilient fragments 075 The mediating projection

077 The intrinsic role of section or the tyranny
025 Introduction
of the plan
029 The persistent shadow of injustice
081 Exclusivism versus inclusivism
031 The rise of the fragment 082 Topography as a font of design

and ‘measure’ 083 The completing plan: or how topography is

both the signified and the signifier
035 An ‘archipelago’ of fragments
083 Horizontal flow: Zaha Hadid’s ‘LF One’
040 Tapestry as vêtement
landscape exhibition
046 3 Site readings 085 Emergent fragment: Peter Eisenman’s
049 Introduction: site as an urban fragment Wexner Centre

049 Site-by-site and figure–ground relationship 086 The pre-existing buildings

051 Figure–ground 088 Landscape, the Oval and the promenade

052 Site fragments: the Wexner Centre for the 089 The geometry and the defining grid
Visual Arts
vi Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
Husam AlWaer and in architecture and urbanism
Soumyen Bandyopadhyay

091 The fragmented palimpsest and the

119 6 Materiality and the
articulated excavation
092 Mediation: Peter Eisenman’s Aronoff Centre
culture of place
for the Arts 131 Introduction

094 Conclusion: emergent composition 132 Place considerations: place between

perception and materialisation
096 5 Enmeshed horizons: 133 Place extension: immediate context,
interior and exterior spaces ultimate context and material invention

103 Introduction: space experience in 133 Local materials or the influence of

architecture immediate context

105 In-between chora 137 Regional materials or the influence of

ultimate context
108 Reciprocity and disjunction versus
convergence or stasis versus flow 143 The play of mediating boundaries

112 The defining horizon 147 Conclusion: camouflage

115 Charged fragments: reciprocity in Le

153 7 Conclusion
Corbusier’s Mill Owners’ Association,
161 Illustration credits
Ahmedabad
165 Bibliography
117 Porosity
175 Index
120 Fragments
122 Reciprocal construction of site
123 Conclusion: the residual mission of site
 vii

List of illustrations

Illustrations
viii Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
Husam AlWaer and in architecture and urbanism
Soumyen Bandyopadhyay

Figure 1.1 Diminutive cupola, the bumah on top of Omani Figure 2.10 The Assembly Building: detail of ‘Modulor Man’
mosques used for the call to prayer impression on a pylon

Figure 1.2 Natural fractal Figure 2.11 The Assembly Building: detail of serpent
impression on a pylon
Figure 1.3 Gestalt interpretation of Greek vase
Figure 2.12 Le Corbusier. The Secretariat Building,
Figure 1.4 Juxtaposing and repeating the Greek vase to Chandigarh: view of front facade
read as a balustrade
Figure 2.13 Le Corbusier. The Tower of Shadows, Chandigarh
Figure 2.1 Le Corbusier. The Mill Owners’ Association
Building, Ahmedabad: entrance facade Figure 2.14 The Assembly Building: view of the southwest
facade
Figure 2.2 Le Corbusier. The High Court Building,
Chandigarh: courtroom facade Figure 2.15 The High Court Building: detail of the High Court
facade
Figure 2.3 Le Corbusier. The Capitol Complex, Chandigarh:
view of the Assembly Building from the High Court Figure 2.16 Le Corbusier. Sketchbook drawing (213) showing
the buildings and installations of the Capitol Complex in the
Figure 2.4 Chandigarh master plan: sector organisation context of the surrounding hills
showing the many villages and hamlets destroyed through
the establishment of the city Figure 2.17 Le Corbusier. Sketchbook drawing (209) showing
foreground grid used as a device to connect the built fabric
Figure 2.5 Nek Chand Saini. The Rock Garden, Chandigarh: to the natural topography
view of a passage
Figure 2.18 The Assembly Building: detail of ceremonial door
Figure 2.6 The Rock Garden: wall detail showing salvaged
fragment from earlier inhabitation Figure 2.19 The High Court Building: tapestry in the
courtrooms
Figure 2.7 Le Corbusier. 1911. Skyline of Istanbul;
watercolour on blue paper, 9 × 29.5 cm Figure 2.20 The Rock Garden, Chandigarh: feminine figures
draped in broken glass bangles
Figure 2.8 Le Corbusier. 1911. Photograph taken of the fire
of Istanbul on the night of 23 July 1911 Figure 3.1 Map of Rome, Giambattista Nolli, 1748

Figure 2.9 Le Corbusier, after 1931. Drawing based on Figure 3.2 Competition entry of the Civic Centre; Derby,
collected postcard of nomadic tent in the Algerian desert; James Stirling
graphite and coloured pencil on cardboard, 24.5 × 32 cm
 ix

List of illustrations

Figure 3.3 Peter Eisenman. The Wexner Centre for the Figure 3.17 In-between urban spaces represented in
Visual Arts, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio: city– different densities of shading
site axis, looking westward
Figure 4.1 Action and representational meaning
Figure 3.4 The Wexner Centre: site–campus axis, view from
the east Figure 4.2 Frank L. Wright. Robie House, Chicago, Illinois:
third floor plan
Figure 3.5 The Wexner Centre: campus–site axis, looking
eastward Figure 4.3 Peter Eisenman. The Cultural City of Galacia,
Spain: topographic study
Figure 3.6 The Wexner Centre: diagram illustrating how the
urban axes fragment the building Figure 4.4 Piazza Della Signoria, fourteenth century CE, plan

Figure 3.7 Le Corbusier. Atelier Ozenfant, Paris: view of the Figure 4.5 Alvaro Siza. Swimming Pools, Leça da Palmeira,
front facade and longitudinal section Portugal: plan

Figure 3.8 Peter Eisenman. Aronoff Centre for the Arts, Figure 4.6 Antoine Le Paurte. Hotel de Beauvais, Paris: plans
University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio: location between
the ‘natural’ and the urban topographies Figure 4.7 Zaha Hadid. LF-One Exhibition Landscape, Weil
am Rhein, Germany: the dynamic plan
Figure 3.9 Aronoff Centre: conceptual sketch – between
the ‘natural’ and the urban topographies Figure 4.8 Peter Eisenman. The Wexner Centre for the Visual
Arts, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio: view looking
Figure 3.10–3.12 Aronoff Centre: the series of overlays north
and torques applied to the boxes to define sectional
configuration Figure 4.9 The Wexner Centre: the boat-like object resulting
from alignment with the Weigel Hall
Figure 3.13 Frank L. Wright. Robie House, Chicago, Illinois:
the communicative space of the house defined between Figure 4.10 The Wexner Centre: north-eastern forecourt,
the two arrows view looking west

Figure 3.14 Robie House: communicative space defined by Figure 4.11 The Wexner Centre: south-eastern forecourt,
the overhanging roof of the living room view looking west

Figure 3.15 Aronoff Centre: 3. Level +400 plan showing the Figure 4.12 The Wexner Centre: the relationship between the
communicative spaces Oval and the city

Figure 3.16 Aronoff Centre: inside the communicative Figure 4.13 The Wexner Centre: brick presence
space
x Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
Husam AlWaer and in architecture and urbanism
Soumyen Bandyopadhyay

Figure 4.14 The Wexner Centre: a tower trace; half-sunk, Figure 5.11 The Mill Owners’ Association: entrance ramp and
half-exposed presence within the site’s topography staircase

Figure 4.15 Peter Eisenman. The Aronoff Centre for the Figure 5.12–5.13 Mill Owners’ Association: the breakdown of
Arts, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio facade as ‘hewn-out’ mass from the building’s cuboid form
is displaced outside to form a staircase
Figure 4.16 The Aronoff Centre: compositional process of
the curve(s) Figure 5.14–5.15 The Mill Owners’ Association: deep planters
within the brise soleil and the gradual reclamation by nature
Figure 4.17 The Aronoff Centre: site composition showing of the rear facade
relationship with the DAAP
Figure 5.16–5.17 The Mill Owners’ Association: framed view
Figure 5.1 Man in space of the Sabarmati River through the rear facade

Figure 5.2 The Greek temple`s inner void Figure 5.18 The Mill Owners’ Association: interlocking
curved walls housing the toilets
Figure 5.3 Boundary and the in-between space (chora)
Figure 5.19 The Mill Owners’ Association: roof detail with
Figure 5.4 Peter Eisenman. The Aronoff Centre for the Arts, free-standing column and conference room roof
University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio: the tectonic,
ornamental continuation Figure 5.20 The Mill Owners’ Association: free-standing
plane at the entrance with inset aperture and ‘spout’
Figure 5.5 Frank Gehry. Jay Pritzker Pavilion, Chicago,
Illinois: the sculptural and fragmented structure of the Figure 5.21 The Mill Owners’ Association: site plan
pavilion
Figure 6.1 Richard Meier. Douglas House, Harbor Springs,
Figure 5.6 The chora and the defining horizon – Michigan: view from Lake Michigan
topography
Figure 6.2 Charles Correa. British Council Headquarters,
Figure 5.7 Peter Eisenman. The Wexner Centre for the Delhi: front facade detail showing red sandstone cladding
Visual Arts, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
Figure 6.3 RoTo Architects. Architecture and Art Building,
Figure 5.8 Frank L. Wright. Robie House, Chicago, Illinois: A&M University, Prairie View, Texas: undulated brick
the inside-out/outside-in yard masonry wall

Figure 5.9 Le Corbusier. The Mill Owners’ Association Figure 6.4 Zaha Hadid. Contemporary Arts Centre,
Building, Ahmedabad: facade Cincinnati, Ohio: material continuity between the sidewalk
and the lobby
Figure 5.10 The Mill Owners’ Association: plans
 xi

List of illustrations

Figure 6.5 Herzog & de Meuron. Caixa Forum Building,

Madrid: juxtaposition of old brick facade and acid-oxidized
metal clad extension

Figure 6.6 Alvaro Siza. Galician Centre for Contemporary

Art, Santiago de Compostela

Figure 6.7 Peter Eisenman. The Wexner Centre for the

Visual Arts, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio: the
fragmented presence of brick masonry

Figure 6.8 Charles Correa. The Gandhi Memorial Museum,

Ahmedabad: brick piers, rural iconography and the raised
plinth create a ‘horizontal’ monument to Mahatma Gandhi

Figure 6.9 Gandhi Memorial Museum: infill panels, view

from one of the gallery interiors and exterior view

Figure 6.10 Charles Correa. Handloom Pavilion, Delhi

(1958): section showing mud walls and fabric ‘parasols’

Figure 6.11 Charles Correa. Hindustan Lever Pavilion, Delhi

(1961): formal study

Figure 6.12 Herzog & de Meuron. Casa de Piedra (Stone

House), Tavole: facade study

Figure 6.13 EHDD. Pritzker Family Children’s Zoo, Lincoln

Park Zoo, Chicago, Illinois: facade detail with the ‘ivy wall’

Figure 6.14 Gandhi Memorial Museum: porosity of the

interior
 001

Preface

Preface
02 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
Husam AlWaer and in architecture and urbanism
Soumyen Bandyopadhyay
 003

Preface

The book is concerned with the need for a renewed to question the lenses of preconceptions through which their
understanding of the site in the twenty-first century and works are regarded and promptly put into artificial ‘political’
the establishment of a critical position regarding the categories. However, more importantly, it is a plea to treat
continued tendency to view the site as a fragment severed architecture and the city not as a collection of disjointed
from its wider context. The dominant Modernist tendency objects but as overlapping networks of relationships, cutting
to regard the world around as a fragmented phenomenon, across temporal and cultural boundaries.
which replaced the world of pre-Modern certainty, has been
found inadequate in the Postmodern era of globalisation, We would like to thank all those who have helped the long
and amidst a renewed interest in achieving wholeness. journey of this book from an initial idea to fruition. Our
Even as we have to treat sites increasingly as assemblages sincere thanks to those who read and commented on the
of orthogonal projections – which have no doubt helped initial proposal, including Professor Graeme Hutton; special
designers often operating remotely in today’s globalised thanks are due to Professor Nicholas Temple who read and
world of architectural practice – such abstraction need commented extensively on an earlier draft of the book.
not necessarily prevent us from considering the deeper, Thanks are also due to Desiree Campolo and Manwinder
often latent and less obvious knowledge about the site. Lall for preparing the illustrations for publication; Desiree
Instrumentality and abstract codification per se, we argue, has worked tirelessly to ensure that all photographs are of
are not the problem, and, as Alberti’s survey of Rome uniform quality and has helped prepare a number of drawn
demonstrates, are even critical to our understanding illustrations that accompany this book. The North American
of orders of things. It is the counter-creative and anti- material was collected through fieldwork visits to the key
anthropological manner in which we have increasingly buildings discussed in this book, helped by numerous
treated such material that has caused the crisis. individuals: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House in Chicago;
Zaha Hadid’s Contemporary Arts Centre in Cincinnati; and
Addressing these tendencies, this book has argued for Peter Eisenman’s Aronoff Centre for the Arts in Cincinnati
revisiting the instruments of both siting and composition and the Wexner Centre for the Visual Arts in Columbus.
in architecture to explore their true potential in achieving Some of the Indian material on Le Corbusier and Charles
connections between site and context. Departing from Correa was collected during the course of an Arts and
a reconsideration of the fragment and the process of its Humanities Research Council (AHRC) supported research
formation, fragmentation, the book emphasises the role of on Modernity in Indian architecture and Nek Chand’s Rock
the ‘positive fragment’, and the role such positive entities Garden in Chandigarh. OTTO Archive, Richard Brook, Clive
could potentially play in achieving both historical continuity Gracey and Dr Ana Souto have kindly permitted the use
and renewed wholeness. It focuses on architects of wide- of their photographs of the following buildings: Douglas
ranging persuasion of the twentieth century – for example, House in Harbor Springs, Michigan; Caixa Forum in Madrid;
Peter Eisenman, Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Alvaro a traditional mosque in Manah in Oman; and the Galician
Siza, Herzog and de Meuron and Charles Correa – whose Centre for Contemporary Art in Santiago de Compostela.
work defy categorisation under simple binary oppositions. Dr Iain Jackson has permitted the use of photographs of a
Through the various examples studied here, we suggest that drawn illustration of Chandigarh city plan and photographs
the instrumental means have the potential for enhanced of the Mill Owners’ Association Building in Ahmedabad.
analogical and scalar relationships capable of achieving Fondation Le Corbusier has kindly allowed us to use
poetic outcomes. By considering such architects’ works of reproductions of photographs and drawings by Le Corbusier
diverse periods and geographical locations, one intention is and of his sketchbook pages.
004 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
Husam AlWaer and in architecture and urbanism
Soumyen Bandyopadhyay

For various reason this book has been a long time in the
making. We would like to acknowledge the continued
patience of the editors and designers at Routledge for
their support of this project. Earlier ideas on Le Corbusier’s
design approach in Chandigarh involving fragments were
presented at the 2009 ‘Architecture and Justice’ conference
held at the University of Lincoln, and a preliminary study of
reciprocity in the Mill Owners’ Building in Ahmedabad was
published earlier in 2007. We would like to thank Professor
Tom Jefferies and the Manchester School of Architecture
at the Manchester Metropolitan University for the support
extended towards the publication of this book. Last but not
least, we would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to our
families, as without their continued support the book would
not have materialised.
 005
Introduction:
Site and composition

1 Introduction:
Site and composition
006 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
Husam AlWaer and in architecture and urbanism
Soumyen Bandyopadhyay
 007
Introduction:
Site and composition

The need to revisit our understanding of the site and its and accessibility, solar gain, minimal environmental
relationship to its surroundings has become necessary – footprint, community benefits, to name a few – is both
more than ever before – at the end of the first decade of the limiting and abstract in its scope.2 On the other hand,
twenty-first century. rising demand for expediency in building procurement,
cost optimisation and the persistent shadow of the
Such a necessity has arisen for a number of reasons. The conservationists looming large over architects engaged in
reality is that site considerations have received progressively suburban volume house-building projects have limited the
less attention in the academic and professional practice opportunities for engaging with site and context.
of architecture over the past decades. The proliferation
of iconic buildings – Venturi’s ducks1 – have resulted in The age of frenzied information production and exchange
distinctive, formally unique architecture, claiming special has arguably turned our world into a global village with
symbolic and aesthetic qualities. Formal iconicity has also a flattened geography with no peaks and troughs. More
been proclaimed and acquired through the unbuilt, such than ever before, architects and architectural practices are
as in Libeskind’s proposed extension to the V&A Museum working at locations across the globe – and often remotely.
in London and Alsop’s Fourth Grace project in Liverpool. The ‘foreigner’ could potentially bring in a critical dimension
Aspiring to be the object of veneration itself, such iconicity – a refreshed dialogue – to energise debate regarding
is removed from previous understandings of the term as the reshaping of a built environment; however, this is not
representation or resemblance of a sacred persona or work always the case. Beyond the obvious technical expertise
of art generated following established conventions. This the foreigner adds to the project – the perceived universal
solipsistic isolation and narcissism has often resulted in applicability of which, in itself, is not bereft of a problematic
little attention being given to the qualities of their sites, political dimension – the interventions remain global and
and the building and site’s relationship to the surroundings. are seldom localised due to lack of knowledge of site within
Venturi’s decorated shed, exemplified by the myriad out- specific locales. Perhaps paradoxically, this demand has
of-town shopping complexes and the supermarket of our now been given added impetus by the desperate need
neighbourhoods, has also remained uneasily situated within for expansion outside the West in the light of the present
a landscape essentially shaped by the need to optimise economic downturn that has changed the architectural
car-parking arrangements. Contrary to Venturi’s belief, these profession forever.
structures housing mundane and everyday activities have
hardly carried any enduring symbolism, meaning or social Burns and Kahn define the understanding of site under
messages, to which the insensitive, banal treatment of site three distinct areas of concern:
and context have contributed. Sadly, architectural education
has not been immune to such developments and pressures. the first … is the area of control, easy to trace in the
property lines designating legal metes and bounds.
The welcome rise in environmental concern has also The second, encompassing forces that act upon a plot
ushered in a kind of myopic, conservative instrumentality without being confined to it, can be called the area
into the way both architects and students of architecture of influence. Third is the area of effect – the domains
are now guided to handle sites. The tendency to assess the impacted following design action. 3
appropriateness of a site for building and its relationship
with the wider context through a set of overly simplistic and These concerns have important scalar implications, both in
determining criteria – site geometry, orientation, transport terms of the actual physical extent of the sites but also in
008 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
Husam AlWaer and in architecture and urbanism
Soumyen Bandyopadhyay

their perceptual qualities – from within and without. The a number of significant places in the expanse between’.4 The
book aims to address this by considering a wide range of mathematical understanding of the city he thus developed
scales and definitions of sites. The examples chosen for employed an abstract – and thus transparent – matrix,
discussion include, of course, the bounded and defined which ignored or temporarily suspended the consideration
urban site, of which Le Corbusier’s Mill Owners’ Association, of the in-between terrain. Although known extremely well
a building we discuss in some detail, or Herzog and de through everyday lived experience of the city, for Alberti
Meuron’s Ciaxa Forum, which we consider in terms of its the substrate could be seen to have withdrawn ‘into a kind
materiality, are excellent examples. Alvaro Siza’s Galician of darkness, a blind spot, remaining latent and unnoticed’.5
Centre for Contemporary Art, although part of a larger Leatherbarrow highlights this inversely proportional nature
collection of buildings, nevertheless sits on a fairly defined of the relationship between the refined and abstracted
site. Such examples characterise the restricted, or enclosed, nature of the mathematical (instrumental) and the latent
urban sites typical of most urban developments in cities. existential knowledge of the site. The mathematical method
However, recognising the emergent contemporary of ‘seeing through things’ – more often through orthogonal
condition of expansive ‘campuses’ or ‘parks’ produced projections such as plans and sections, does not necessarily
by global corporate developments, many of the case need to reject the ‘tacit thickness of things’ – the knowledge
studies included here examine buildings, or complexes of that eludes instant enumeration.6 This thinking provides the
buildings, whose site boundaries or edge conditions are central thrust of the book.
not so clearly defined or, in the extreme case, even non-
existent. Peter Eisenman’s Wexner Centre for the Arts at the The above unfolds a number of issues central to this
Ohio State University campus and the Aronoff Centre for book. Alberti’s treatment of the city was evidently not
Design and Art at the University of Cincinnati, or the siting homogeneous, for the potent latency of the middle
of the High Court building within the Capitol Complex at ground also gave prominence to selected structures
Chandigarh – and even Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House and buildings – urban fragments consisting of buildings
– are sites that are expansive, with varying degrees of situated on sites – which appeared as positive, projected
definition, which acknowledge – and are acknowledged figures within a recessive backdrop.7 Yet these fragments
by – larger geographical terrains beyond their immediate were never extraneous to the city, never able to evade
surroundings. As we will find out, this results, in various the influencing omnipresence of the urban context. The
ways, in buildings becoming expansive with respect to context thus not only surrounds a site but pervades
surrounding land and horizon. and permeates all aspects of it; the urban fragments
perform within an un-homogeneous – viscous – field of
Returning to Burns and Kahn’s first concern, the area relationships that create a tacitly acknowledged wholeness.
of control, the most spatially and temporally limiting That the site should indeed be regarded as a fragment
attribute of a site, is unfortunately regarded as its prime of a wider whole, connected by intense and reciprocal
characteristic. The second one is rather more difficult relationships between the site and its context – between
to fathom but remains closely connected to the first. In overlapping fragment and the whole, forms part of the
describing Alberti’s attempts at surveying the city of Rome central argument of this book. Indeed, wholeness was
(Forma Urbis Romœ) using an instrument he called a Horizon, once better understood – within traditional and pre-
Leatherbarrow notes how he ignored the terrain between modern environments, and fragmentation was essentially
the Capitoline Hill – the position of the instrument – and the a product of modernity. Today, a refreshed understanding
city wall, choosing to plot ‘key points on the perimeter and of the fragment and the processes that manifests it –
 009
Introduction:
Site and composition

fragmentation, is therefore necessary for the restoration of Le Corbusier, the site had to be reduced to the irreducible
a renewed wholeness. fragments or the resilient cultural remains – its historical
and poetic essence, and an artificial datum established
This book also highlights the importance of optimising by the deposition of the accumulated detritus. These
the potential of the existential and the instrumental fragments and the datum provided the armature for his
relationships between site and its context, which we architecture to explore and provide measure for issues
undertake mainly – but not exclusively – through the of cultural and social significance, helping the architect
work of Peter Eisenman in the United States from the late- to adopt a polemical position. If Le Corbusier’s approach
1970s and Le Corbusier in India in the 1950s. The choice is about clarification through reduction, Eisenman’s
of architects, apparently with such diametrically opposed approach, resisting reduction, sought decadent immersion
tendencies as Le Corbusier and Eisenman, requires some in the opulence of the site’s historically and culturally
explanation. The categorisation of architects and their layered nature. Through a series of largely unbuilt
works into Modern, Postmodern, Neo-Rationalists, and so experimental projects from the late-1970s he identified
on, to begin with, is extremely problematic. Such divisions the crucial importance of composition as the basis for re-
are essentially temporal classifications of convenience establishing multivalent relationships between site and its
rather than evocative of distinct intellectual orientations. urban and regional contexts. The artificial, playful assembly
Eisenman’s work of the 1980s and 1990s have carried of the archaeological/topographical layers through the
forward concerns central to Modernists in their heyday, infusion of narratives is the basis of this reconstructive
as did Le Corbusier’s post-Second World War projects process. Their works and methods locate them at two
anticipate Postmodern concerns well before its formal extremes of a spectrum; overt instrumentality characterises
proclamation. The projects cited in this book, we believe, Eisenman’s process, while Le Corbusier’s instrumental
transcend these artificial boundaries and are not necessarily moves – employing drawings and texts – have largely
or solely ‘Modern’ or ‘Postmodern’ in their orientation. operated from his sketchbooks.
The works of architects as geographically removed as
Neutra and Correa from the 1950s demonstrate sensibilities Especially at Ronchamp but also in Chandigarh, Le Corbusier
that ventured way beyond the premises established by had moved away significantly from the typological and
normative Modernism. The evolved Postmodern sensibility technological concerns of the 1920s towards a pronouncedly
is crucial to our position, as it helps us re-evaluate existential take on architecture. His sketchbooks were
trajectories of historical development in understanding glyptic recordings of experiences joined up through
relationships between site and architecture, and question mathematical notations, which appear to be simultaneously
ideas of progress, as well as problematic aspects of order alluding to the abstract ‘high-altitude thinking’ and the
and hierarchy (of both ideas and buildings). ‘mundane horizon and … individual action’.8 The mundane
outline using textual fragments – barely revealing a
In spite of their obvious differences, the works of both Le profile – encoded a depth of experiences, an approach
Corbusier and Eisenman show remarkable interest in the also identifiable in his high-altitude landscape sketches
constructed nature of the site and in methods of reading representing archipelago of selected topographic fragments
these. Both have focused on the historical and mytho- spaced out by expanses of white. For Le Corbusier, such
poetic contents that sites and their contexts offer and textual and drawn recordings were economic means of
have searched for methods of first de-constructing and representation, analogous to plans and sections. Like the
later re-constructing it as part of the design process. For employment of oppositions in his work, fragments spaced
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out yet connected by abstraction ‘provoked his imagination, obscuring the dialogic potential of architecture through
his creativity, and his myth making’.9 what are essentially static, monologic exercises. As we
aim to demonstrate later through the siting and design
The implied possibility – or at least, the promise – of of the Aronoff Centre (see Chapter 4), Eisenman’s work
orthogonal projections to return to the ‘thickness of things’, deserves a more sympathetic understanding. His work has
in effect highlights the analogical and scalar relationships demonstrated the infinite inventive capacity of geometry
that exist – and could exist – between the fragment and the to visually construct relationships, which when employed
whole. The instrumental and the existential, traditionally the perceptively, could enrich the formal architectural
domains of rationalists and phenomenologists, respectively, vocabulary. However, behind the bewildering eloquence
have featured in the projects and proposals of some of composition also lies several both playful and serious
architects of the late twentieth century. Their drawings attempts at achieving sensitive dialogic relationships, for
‘consist very often of no more than fragments of potential example, through the technique of grafting – the careful
objects, which come to exist only through the process of implantation of extraneous catalytic fragments.
transformation and projection – or to use the architect’s
words, ‘deconstructive constructions’.10 While the latter term A fixed view of what constitutes reality has unfortunately
refers to Daniel Libeskind’s description of his own work, the limited our understanding of site as merely an ‘area of
method of using transformational drawings – anamorphosis control’, and rendered composition – the act of siting
using projective geometry – has also been an important buildings – processual, reducing composition to the
tool for Peter Eisenman, especially between 1978 and 1988, unquestioned and predictable methods of relating the
when he produced a cohesive body of work under the title fragment to the whole. Eisenman’s gradual shift away
Cities of Artificial Excavation.11 Eisenman employed methods from the solipsistic compositional formality of his early
of repeated tracing and overlapping, and varied scalar houses (Houses I–IV, 1967–71, built and unbuilt) – where
impositions as tools for unearthing histories, questioning he searched for an autonomous architectural syntax
memories and revisiting the notion of composition, the based on the analysis of seminal works of the Modern
latter long considered the means of relating site to its Movement by Le Corbusier and Giuseppe Terragni –
context. Instrumental methods, aptly employed, could however, is instructive regarding the evolutionary potential
therefore act as vital tools of incision that allow views of instrumental compositional methodologies. In House
into deeper and imagined realities, both extending our VI (1976) Eisenman relinquished the ‘limited range of
access to the ‘thickness of things’ by stretching our ability formal experiments’13 in favour of a ‘new linguistic and
to ‘experience, visualise and articulate – in other words to semantic sensibility’,14 a transformation complete by the
represent so as to participate in the world’. 12
time of House X (1975–77, unbuilt) that engaged with the
considerations of the site and the outside. To emancipate
This approach, however, is not without its critics; in composition both from its classical roots, as well as its
particular, questions have been raised regarding how Modernist adherence to transformation of ideal typologies,
the combination of a repetitive process and somewhat he introduced de-composition, prompting him to replace
wilful manipulation of figure–ground relationships that the cube, ‘the preferred generating volume of his first
emerge from the conjunction of layers can usefully sustain houses, with the fragmentary “el”, a three-sided portion of
a collective memory of the urban legacy of site and its a hollow cube’.15 In House 11a (1978, unbuilt) the departure
relationship to the larger city or region. Such abstract, from the obsessive certainties of Euclidian geometry to
geometrical manipulations have been criticised as the ambiguities of the contemporary human condition
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Site and composition

is apparent, with the ‘els’ assuming quasi-topological bodies of representation. In turn, this confrontation has
qualities – yet retaining the resonance of the archetype it inevitably exacerbated the representational dilemma,
dismantles – heralding a closer link between the building, precipitating further and renewed cultural fragmentation.
its site and wider context. If perceptual wholeness is a quality that is preferable to the
human psyche – as one that aids creativity and innovation,
Eisenman’s move from the formal to the semiotic and finally, then its characteristics require exploration in relation to
as he claims, to the poetic – moving from composition fragmentation. To restore that wholeness, the discussion
through decomposition to excavation – indicate a shift will argue that buildings, and especially sites – as fragments
from the syntactic to the fictional. It unveils the possibility of a whole – have the potential to complete a reordering
that composition could be the poetic and fictional through design by virtue of their latent collective qualities.
exploration of a site’s constitution. As such, composition Fragment is not a shredded, broken-off piece of an object,
is design that resists making the distinctions Burns and but a positive entity in a constant state of becoming, which
Kahn make between the encompassing forces in action – through manipulation by designing, and the employment
and the impacted domain of influence. The interplay of of formal language – establishes connections with both
diverse fragments of spatialities and temporalities, and the other spaces and human actions. Such completion
interrupted forces of histories, cultures, social motives and therefore requires reading the site both as a fragment and
structures, of economies and technologies – to name a few as part of a wider set of fragments, especially important
– create the essentially non-homogeneous constructedness to the understanding of urban infill, as well as to the
of sites. The archaeologist Hodder reminds us of two types methodology of this book.
of contextual meaning; one refers to the ‘environmental,
technological and behavioural context of action’ and the This book argues for the need to revisit the opportunities
other is to do with the idea of context being ‘with-text’, offered by the idea of composition – both as constitution
thus introducing ‘an analogy between the contextual and as re-ordering by combining – to reinvestigate
meanings of material culture traits and the meanings of the relationship between site and its wider context for
words in a written language’.16 Crucially, Hodder emphasises contemporary architecture to return to a new wholeness.
the importance of the notion of ‘text’ over ‘language’,17 The remaining part of this chapter is devoted to
articulating the text’s predilection for content over symbol understanding the nature of the fragment and the processes
and as an embodiment of content, to which the language of its generation – fragmentation – as well as the ideas
provides supportive infrastructure. surrounding wholeness. The fragment is both ‘received’
and ‘created’; their reverberating, dynamic nature defies
Nothing stands on its own; dichotomies – autonomy/ severance from its origin or past. The perceptual processes
dependency, harmony/cacophony and fragmentation/ that combine fragments to produce the whole are also
integration – shape both living organisms and man-made discussed. Chapter 2 explores the potential of the fragment
systems. Throughout the ages cultures have encapsulated by arguing that at the High Court in Chandigarh Le Corbusier
such dialectics through divergent modes of representation employs the primordial fragment to explore the notions
– literature, painting, sculpture, architecture and urbanism. of social justice and, thus, truth. This stands in contrast
It could be argued that the portrayal of our contemporary to Charles Correa’s employment of temporal or historical
aspirations as the confrontation between technological fragments to redress balance between cultures at the British
revolution and a nostalgia for the past has prevented Council Headquarters in Delhi. Chapters 3 and 4 analyse how
cultures from recollecting its dispersed and fragmented Peter Eisenman, in two of his key built projects belonging
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to the ‘Artificial Excavation’ phase, employs planimetric and pursuit of absolute wholeness has led to their unavoidably
sectional devices to construct real and fictive relationships stumbling on fragments.
between the site and its surroundings. Chapters 5 and 6,
using examples from diverse parts of the world, explore The desire to study fragments and fragmentation are
how reciprocity between the inside and the outside, as well products of modernity and traditional societies rarely felt
as materiality, could achieve the wholeness contemporary the need to identify a cultural object or text as a disjointed,
architecture so desperately desires. autonomous fragment. This becomes clear when we
consider the role of ruins and relics; while no longer
Fragment and fragmentation fulfilling their original purpose as permanent places of
habitation, ruins on the edge of a village provided places of
In discussing the ambiguous meaning of an object or refuge from the all-devouring darkness of the approaching
artwork, André Breton described it as a ‘crisis of the object’ night, from the natural elements and from the undesirable
resulting from its essentially fragmented nature, where elements of human society. Not subjected to entropy-
‘the object ceases to be fixed permanently to the near defying preservative forces of modern fragmentation,
side of thought and re-creates itself on the further side they became temporary sanctuaries of the societal other.
as far as the eye can reach’.18 Analogous to nuclear fission The naturally occurring wholeness in vernacular societies
that releases sub-atomic particles into unpredictable, was given cohesion through entropy – through death and
reverberating motion, fragments are volatile; ‘and disorder – from which the modern fragments appear to
fragmentation is movement’.19 The crisis of the object have found emancipation.
described by Breton due to its ambiguous fragmentary
nature is also its source of strength; its meaning derived The emergence and acknowledgement of fragments seems
from the constituent fragments. Seen in this way, to accept a state of severance amidst cultural continuity.
the fragments are the most enduring and normative Wheeler, in his inspiring study of the place of rituals and
conditions, while the totality – the whole – which perhaps relics in Islam, has explored how Muslim scholarship has
there was none, is ephemeral.20 Discontinuity characterises linked ‘selected objects, actions and locations to the origins
both the spatiality and the temporality of wholeness, and development of Islamic civilisation’.22 One of the
in which the fragment extends between the past and examples he cites is the recovery of the treasures (relics)
the present and between the near and far grounds of of the Ka’bah.23 Wheeler argues that the contents of the
representation: they have a history and a presence. treasure signify a transition between two fundamentally
important states of human existence and society. The
Since Alberti’s assertion that a house is a small city and a recovered treasures and their association with pre-Islamic
city is a large house,21 the idea has become the maxim for prophets and kings tie the utopian state of existence
all those who adopted the relational idea of universality in the Garden of Eden to the later condition of Islamic
and locality. This relationship has emerged as the criterion civilisation culminating in the Prophet and the institution
for evaluating fragmentation or integration in various of Islam, suggesting the ‘received’ nature of the relics. This
cultural disciplines, including architecture and urbanism. attempt at creating a meta-narrative incorporates Islam
Over time this has inspired some critics to invent the phrase and the Prophet into an extended topography of histories,
‘part-to-whole’ relationship which, in turn, prompted many conceptions and prophets going back to Adam and his
designers to claim absolute wholeness in their work and expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
through their representations of the world. However, the
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Introduction:
Site and composition

Fragments are also continually ‘created’ alongside being when attention fragments are combined within the brain
received, illustrating the contrasting modalities of their to form a “pattern” which has coherence and elegance.’29
existence.24 The small cupola atop the prayer halls of central A fragment, in some way, possesses a history linking it
Oman – the bumah (Figure 1.1) – derived both its name and to its origin or the place which granted that fragment
its form from the third millennium BC beehive tombs that its structure and identity. Fragments are endowed with
surround many oasis towns. In Arabic it is also the owl – the characteristics and values resident in the whole,30 allowing
cupola perhaps deriving the name from the immobile form reading those fragments as representatives of their wider
of this solitary nocturnal bird silhouetted against the sky. context to perform loyalty to the whole. That is why the
In Arabia the owl has been largely regarded as inauspicious treatment of fragmentation on a purely formal basis is
and connected with death, calamity, the spirit or the ghost. highly limiting as it neither acknowledges its history nor
The Ibadi Muslims seem to have preferred this diminutive its present. Consequently, it is not possible to comprehend
form in their mosques to the towering minaret for the the fragment in isolation, but only in relation to its settings
purposes of adhan (call to daily prayers). Given the beehive – whether of dependency or of independence. In other
tombs’ pre-Islamic origin (the days of ignorance, jahiliyah), words, fragments always have situational structure defining
and its profanity due to the original sepulchral role and their position towards themselves and the world. The
association, its incorporation into the sacred mosque in transplantation of a fragment may potentially lead to a
the guise of the diminutive bumah suggests a gradual semantic transformation of its new context,31 which could
acceptance (reception) and transformation (creation) of a well have positive or negative impact. Understanding what
relic from a world forbidden from discussion.25 impact fragmentation is likely to have can be achieved
through two essential actions; first, through the method of
Understanding the phenomenon of fragmentation and representation, and second, through references to contexts.
its relationship to the idea of wholeness entails tracing
their emergence in our modern cultural life, heavily The emergence of fragmentation within modernity made
reliant on the oculocentric representation of objects. As us aware of its exciting transformative and representational
Vesely points out, ‘the emergence of the fragment as a potential. Tschumi viewed the phenomenon as a tool for
significant phenomenon can be traced back to the origins epistemological transformation when he claimed that, ‘in its
of perspective’,26 although its clear manifestation could disruption and disjunction, its characteristic fragmentation
be detected in the subsequent emergence of the Cubist and dissociation, today’s cultural circumstances suggest
works of Picasso and Braque produced between 1907 and the need to discard established categories of meaning
1912.27 Its appearance as a noticeable phenomenon in and contextual histories’. 32 Yet, fragmentation has also led
painting suggested new and unforeseen re-groupings of to fragmentary ways of reconstructing and representing
representations and the world of emergent fragments that our beliefs, resulting in deep cleavages between nature
were no longer related to a coherent whole, independent and man and between man and man. 33 Fragmentation
from their parts and settings.28 What usually helps to has divided our built environment and our thinking about
identify incidents of fragmentation or integration are it. 34 The condition is the product of a mentality ‘which
references to the contexts of their source and destination. seizes on isolated elements that can be combined at will,
Taking for granted that the juxtaposition of fragments has its origin in the late-eighteenth century, when the
as a method of innovation would result in coherence is elements were treated for the first time as real fragments
problematic as ‘mere juxtaposition does not inevitably able to generate their own context’. 35 Fragments could
produce aesthetic potentials. The aesthetic response occurs be recovered and re-aggregated through a series of
014 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
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Figure 1.1 Diminutive cupola, the bumah on top of Omani mosques

used for the call to prayer.
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Introduction:
Site and composition

surgical procedures according to the designer’s intentions. better or for worse. Interiority is the content and what is
Fragmentation, however, cannot be employed as a tool embedded inside us, in systems or larger structures. 39
either to deconstruct the cohesive structure of extant These oppositional pairs – unity/diversity, relationship/
systems or to retrieve their original wholeness. Others, uniqueness and context/interiority – help evaluate the
however, have attempted to seek regularity, harmony and perceptual wholeness. The unity of the parts emerges from
continuity – intellectual, physical, social and individual – as a the consideration of whether they develop a single idea
counterforce to the inevitability of fragmentation. For them, or the interrelationship of several ideas.40 This stance has
for wholeness and harmony to overcome fragmentation, been addressed in Gestalt psychology, which ‘considers a
the configuration should depend upon the extent to perceptual whole the result of, and yet more than, the sum
which unifying elements overweighed disintegrity. 36 What, of its parts … it is dependent on the position, number, and
therefore is the nature of the new wholeness? inherent characteristics of the parts’.41 Others have claimed
that perceiving wholeness requires taking certain steps,
Wholeness which are ‘identifying the parts, specifying the properties
of these parts, specifying the relations between them, and
What distinguishes wholeness is the existence of specifying the relations between the whole and the parts’.42
fragmentation. As a reaction to the phenomenon which This four-step mechanism has also underpinned certain
appeared, as Vesely reminds us, ‘as an unwanted guest, a notions of regularity and beauty, as Smith highlights:
by-product of an underlying tendency in the evolution of
modernity’,37 wholeness has reasserted its necessity as a Beauty consists in a rational integration of the
demanding, organising counter-power to the contemporary proportion of all the parts of a building, in such a
condition of fragmented representation. Hence, its way that every part has its fixed size and shape,
significance lies in the desire for ordering as a fundamental and nothing could be added or taken away without
quality of the human psyche,38 and only through destroying the harmony of the whole.43
relationships can wholeness be achieved. To identify
the aspects of perceptual wholeness, certain qualities As a first step, in order to perceive ‘formal harmony’ as
that characterise this phenomenon – unity and diversity, beauty, Smith had argued that four basic aspects need
relationship and uniqueness, and context and interiority – consideration: coherence, proportion, internal integration
requires consideration. and cosmic integration. Since the classical era the notion
of formal coherence has been used to understand the
Unity includes anything that holds a whole together, logical shifts between the beginning and the end of an
that makes it one thing; it contains and sustains systems. entity that consists of two parts or more.44 Coherence
Diversity, on the other hand, provides options, resources and is in turn influenced by the ‘systems of “proportion”,
simulation, resulting in evolution and vitality. Relationship which have been more or less axiomatic tend to lay down
connects things and people, and ideas and images, linking relationships in which one entity exceeds the other by an
together or intertwining them. The power or weakness of amount sufficient to cause acceptable tension but not
the whole lies in the relationship of its parts. Uniqueness dominant’.45 The internal integration results from the unity
implies that everything, everyone and every moment has its of parts that give the whole a chance to interact positively
own identity and characteristics. Context is what surrounds with what is outside. Thus the power of a system lies not
us like conditions, forces, structures, and circumstances. only in the internal integration of its parts but also through
Context can even influence events and concepts for their rapport with the wider context to achieve the cosmic
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integration. Recognising these aspects opens the door for and is ‘programmed to seek meaning and significance in all
understanding architecture from an urbanistic standpoint, sensory information sent to it’.47 Relationships of solid/void,
as Venturi reminds us, by focusing comprehensively on the vertical/horizontal and enclosure/disclosure are aspects
true extent of its exteriority and interiority.46 Venturi points
of interrelations that the human mind tries to perceive
out that, while perceptual wholeness is difficult to achieve,constantly. The main focus of Gestalt psychology is to
attempting to understand the perceptual whole could interpret those pairs in the image of meaningful patterns.48
bring into discussion an entire range of complexity. This According to it, the human mind constantly attempts to find
complexity lies either in the multiplicity and/or diversity an ultimate command as well as regularity, thus preferring
of the parts or in the inconsistency of the weaker parts in and tending to a status of absolute uniformity. Uniformity
relation to the stronger ones. consequently seeks an organisational relationship between
the entities without dismantling the identity of any. It
In disciplines where the visual attributes of a phenomenon is important to mention that perceiving the uniformity
make up the main standard of communication, the focus is is not restricted to identical objects and patterns that
always on the manner in which they can be represented and have the same size, shape, colour and so forth; instead,
perceived. In fact, the understanding of any relationship is in terms of scale and function, for example, the variety of
significantly influenced by the oculocentric nature of our functions and elements at a smaller scale are important
perception, which stores what we see as images and then for perceiving large-scale coherence.49 Thus the mind
converts those into subconscious knowledge. The human perceives organisational relationships in patterns regardless
mind, in this process, projects most of the data into images of the ‘scale’ of the fragments. What best describes such
circumstance is the fractal composition, where all fragments
have the same properties but differ in scale (Figure 1.2).

The fragment–whole relationship in architecture should

eventually result in a meaningful language of expression
that relates part to part and parts to the whole through
certain criteria.50 The most common graphical method of
representing the fragment within its wider context has been
the figure–ground paradigm, exemplified by the simple
representation of a Greek vase in Gestalt psychology. The
drawing in this example illustrates two basic themes; the
first, providing a ‘ground’ is the profile of two human heads
facing each other, framing a void, while the latter, offering
the shape of a Greek vase, appears as the ‘figure’ (Figure
1.3). Here, the mind is caught in a dilemma prompted
by the illusion presented in this drawing: which one to
perceive; the heads or the vase? A third illusion also arises,
which is through the attempt to perceive all the fragments
collectively at the same time, i.e. reading the heads and
the vase as one entity. This phenomenon relies on the
Figure 1.2 Natural fractal. triggering of the subconscious knowledge prompted by
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Introduction:
Site and composition

symbolic meaning when the juxtaposition takes place away

from that context. According to Vesely,

what is common to all is the reference to the original

context to which they represent. The fragment of
a building, the torso of a sculpture, an object taken
out of its context, and an artificial ruin often initiate
‘symbolic meaning’ and reference more powerfully
than does the piece intact in its original setting.51

Therefore perceiving the fragment within the

understanding or image of a whole ‘depends on
possibilities of representation in which a part can be a
believable equivalent of the whole or at least a promise
of the whole’.52 Figure 1.4 shows one possibility of
a systematic juxtaposition of the Greek vase for the
collective set of fragments to read as a balustrade. The
above illustration is admittedly overly simplistic, as the
opportunities for such a repetitive, systematic occurrence
within our built environment are rare. Many architects are
also quick to guard against such instrumental productions,
which – rightly or wrongly – they fear are limiting in the
production of structures and systems supporting human
habitation, and that, spatial productions, as a result, could
be in danger of losing their credibility through extreme
regularity.53

Fragmentation in architecture
Figure 1.3 Gestalt interpretation of Greek vase.
Fragmentation, introduced into modern art through
the figurative indications. Thus, whether it is an artwork Cubism, soon found similar compositional resonances
or an architectural product, it is the representation that within techniques of collage production and slightly
determines our perception. Both present modes of later in Surrealism. During the early twentieth century,
representation which are simultaneously aesthetic and Modern movement architecture was trying to be the
material; however, architecture distinguishes itself by being total architecture and even a totalitarian discipline54 that
inhabitable and experiential. intended to replace the Beaux Art style. Yet Douglas Cooper
thought that Cubist methods – precisely fragmentation –
The meaning of an architectural object has a great deal to do influenced Modern architecture after the First World War.55
with juxtaposition. An object gains in significance when it is Some two decades later, one of the earliest treatments
located among similar ones in its original context; it gains in relating Cubism to architecture appeared in Gideon’s book,
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Tschumi had once supposed, deconstruction emerged as a

practical and positive force.59

Architecture can only exist through the world in which

it is located.60 Given its heterogeneous, encompassing
organic nature, architecture enters into a constant state of
becoming through its fragmentary structures. As Cohen
suggested: ‘Either consciously or unconsciously, architecture
comes to embody the most stable and persistent values of
a culture and through this institution becomes symbolised
by their buildings, their values become associated with
Figure 1.4 Juxtaposing and repeating the Greek vase to read as
architectural forms.’61 The circumstance of becoming
a balustrade. make possible the ‘composition, the ordering of objects
as a reflection of the order of the world, the perfection
Space, Time, and Architecture (1941). The employment of of objects, the vision of a future made of progress and
the fragment and fragmentation in architecture appears to continuity … conceptually inapplicable today’.62 On the
have been manifested through three phases: first, through urban scale, where systems are much bigger and parts vary
the revolutionary impulse introduced from Cubism in the in identity, property and relationship, fragmentation is more
1910s and 1920s; second, through its appearance as a way obvious and palpable.
of humanising modern architecture during the post-war
years; and finally, in the period running up to the present The belief that both art and architecture could grant shape
that could be termed as the end of humanism and the end and meaning to an independent, self-contained framework
of the age of modernity.56 From the paintings of Cubism to or fragment is in itself flawed and is evidence of the modern
the architecture until the demise of the Modern movement, crisis of fragmentation.63 To be self-contained is to have
the fragment has appeared ‘as an object, as a structure, or as the entire circumstances and events located within the site
a complete and coherent system’.57 and to make those substantial parts of the architectural
programme and experience. The emphasis, instead, should
From Cubism to Deconstruction the interpretation of be to perceive the site and architecture as a fragment of
fragmentation in architecture has produced ever more a potential larger object or whole that endeavours for,
complex representations mainly through its appearance, physically and culturally, the completion of a higher system
aiming to question the very structure of objects by of synthesis and virtue. Aldo Rossi’s trials to complete the
manipulating the material world through architecture. wider structure of a city through its artefacts – monuments,
What distinguishes deconstruction from other trends is its typologies and so forth – contaminated by a monumental
attempts to find ways of externalising and materialising interpretation of city structure – had entrapped him in a
the chaotic dislocations of Cubism through persistent vicious circle of juxtaposition of images devoid of sense of
breakage of the structure of objects, realising imaginal, scale and belonging.64 Rossi attempted to legitimise it as
inscriptive worlds that are impossible to materialise per se. ‘individuality’: ‘the figure is clear but everyone reads it in
It became mainly an exercise in making representation – a different way. Or rather, the clearer it is the more open
descriptive drawings and projective geometry – material.58 it is to a complex evolution.’65 For him, this individuality
Although unable to question the idea of structure, as had two attributes; first, each artefact had its own history
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Introduction:
Site and composition

exclusively rooted in its place; and second, its own form was
necessarily inherited in its function. Paradoxically and more
ambiguously, the radical concern that Rossi had expressed
with regards of bringing an object into a new context led
him to neutralise his standpoint by adopting Francesco
Milizia’s position: ‘The comfort of any building consists of
three principal items: its site, its form, and the organization
of its parts.’66

Bringing the architectural object into a new circumstance

entails inflecting its structure. Considering the notion of
reading architecture as a fragment of a certain setting has
found unique reverberations in the Prairie style of Frank
Lloyd Wright. Venturi commented that,

in accommodating his rural buildings to their

particular sites, he [Wright] recognized inflection
at the scale of the whole building. For example,
Falling Water is incomplete without its context – it
is a fragment of its natural setting which forms the
greater whole. Away from its setting it would have no
meaning.67

Unlike the Prairie style, the Modern movement’s reading of

intervention has idealised site circumstance in a way that
presented architecture as fully detached from its unique
place and references, leading to its suppression.68 Idealising
site’s circumstance presented by the Modern movement
is not very different from that in our contemporary days.
Elizabeth Meyer articulated that ‘a range of other concerns,
such as abstraction and invention, the autonomy of the
art object, mechanistic and technological metaphors, and
standardization and mass production, served to marginalize
site practices as nostalgic or instrumental’.69
020 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
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Notes 10 Vesely, D., Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation: The

Question of Creativity in the Shadow of Production, Cambridge, MA:
1 Venturi, R., Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, New
MIT Press, 2004, p. 319.
York: Museum of Modern Art, 1977 (reprint). Also see discussion
on the ‘iconic’ in, Sklair, L., ‘Iconic Architecture and Capitalist 11 Bédard, J.-F., ‘Introduction’, in Bédard, J.-F. (ed.), Cities of Artificial
Globalisation’, in Herrle, P. & Wegerhoff, E. (ed.), Berlin: LIT Verlag, Excavation: The Work of Peter Eisenman, 1978–1988, Montreal
2008, pp. 210–219. and New York: Canadian Centre for Architecture & Rizzoli
International, 1994, p. 9.
2 See, for example, Sassi, P., Strategies for Sustainable Architecture,
London: Taylor and Francis, 2012. 12 Vesely, op. cit., p. 4.
3 Burns, C. & Kahn, A., ‘Introduction’, in Burns, C. & Kahn, A. (eds), 13 Eisenman, P., ‘Interview with David Cohn’, El Croquis 41, 1989, p. 9.
Site Matters: Design Concepts, Histories and Strategies, New York
and Abingdon: Routledge, 2005, p. xii. 14 Bédard, op. cit., p. 11.

4 Leatherbarrow, D., Uncommon Ground: Architecture, Technology 15 Ibid.

and Topography, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002, p. 5. 16 Hodder, I., Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation
5 Ibid., p. 11. in Archaeology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986,
p. 153.
6 Ibid., p. 12.
17 Ibid., pp. 153–154.
7 Nicholas Temple’s observation provides useful background
to this emerging relationship between monuments and the 18 Breton, A., quoted in Vesely, op. cit., pp. 318, 320.
city’s abstract order, which ultimately led to the emergence of 19 Tronzo, W., ‘Introduction’, in Tronzo, W. (ed.) The Fragment: An
abstraction in modernity: Incomplete History, Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute,
Radical as it was, Alberti’s survey was undertaken 2009, pp. 1, 4.
in the light of a still deeply embedded medieval 20 Ibid., p. 4.
tradition of the civic (civitas), that saw the city as
a constellation of symbolic relationships rooted 21 Cited in Tavernor, R., On Alberti and the Art of Building, New
in a mytho-historic worldview. Whilst … [rightly] Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998, p. 190.
Alberti’s approach seemed largely indifferent to
22 Wheeler, B., Mecca and Eden: Ritual, Relics and Territory in Islam,
questions of symbolic value of individual buildings
Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2006, p. 11.
or monuments, it is clear that implicit in the project
was an intention to redefine in cartographic terms 23 Bandyopadhyay, S., Manah, an Omani Oasis, an Arabian Legacy:
the topography of the city, and its arrangement of Architecture and Social History of an Omani Settlement, Liverpool:
venerated buildings/monuments, in much the same Liverpool University Press, 2011, pp. 208–212.
way that the perspectival ‘scaffold’ of a Renaissance
24 Tronzo, op. cit., p. 1.
painting served to re-situate a sacred event and the
inter-relationships between its participating bodies. 25 Bandyopadhyay, op. cit., pp. 232–239.
It is this analogy between actual and pictorial
space, during the Renaissance, that serves … as an 26 Vesely, op. cit., p. 320.
interesting prelude to the ultimate abstraction of 27 Evans, R., The Projective Cast: Architecture and its Three Geometries,
actual and representational space in modernity, of Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995, p. 57.
which the treatment of site is largely symptomatic.
28 Tschumi, B., Architecture and Disjunction, Cambridge, MA: MIT
(N. Temple, 2013, personal communication) Press, 1996, p. 180.
8 Leatherbarrow, op. cit., p. 16. 29 Smith, P., The Dynamics of Urbanism, London: Hutchinson, 1974,
9 Ibid. p. 74.
 021
Introduction:
Site and composition

30 Vesely, op. cit., p. 325. 53 Schulz, C.-N. (Nasso, C. & Parini, S., eds; Shugaar, A. trans.),
Architecture: Presence, Language and Place, Milan: Skira, 2000,
31 Tschumi, op. cit., p. 183.
p. 225.
32 Ibid., p. 208.
54 Evans, op. cit., p. 57.
33 Bohm, D., Wholeness and the Implicate Order, London and New
55 Ibid.
York: Routledge, 2002, p. 3.
56 Ibid., p. 55.
34 Ellin, N., Integral Urbanism, New York and London: Routledge,
2006. 57 Vesely, op. cit., p. 322.

35 Vesely, op. cit., p. 324. 58 Evans, op. cit., p. 94.

36 Smith, P., Architecture and the Principle of Harmony, London: RIBA, 59 Ibid., p. 84.
1987, p. 27.
60 Tschumi, op. cit., p. 176.
37 Vesely, op. cit., p. 322.
61 Cohen, S., ‘Physical Context/Cultural Context: Including it All’,
38 Smith, P. Dynamics of Urbanism, p. 76 in Hays, K.M. (ed.), Oppositions Reader: Selected Readings from a
Journal for Ideas and Criticism in Architecture 1973–1984, New York:
39 www.co-intelligence.org/I-wholeness.html, accessed 21
Princeton Architectural Press, 1998, p. 66.
December 2012.
62 Tschumi, op. cit., p. 176.
40 Holl, S., ‘Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of
Architecture’, in Holl, S., Pallasmaa, J. & Gómez, A., Questions of 63 Vesely, op. cit., p. 330.
Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture, Tokyo: A+U Publishing;
64 Moneo, R., Theoretical Anxiety and Design Strategies in the Work of
San Francisco: William Stout Publishers, 2007, p. 119.
Eight Contemporary Architects, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004,
41 Venturi, op. cit., p. 88. p. 104.

42 Meirav, A., Wholes, Sums, and Unities, London: Kluwer Academic, 65 Rossi, A., The Architecture of the City, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2003, p. 10. 1984, p. 19.

43 Smith, Dynamics of Urbanism, op. cit., p.74 66 Francesco Milizia quoted in Rossi, op. cit., p. 40.

44 Ibid., p. 75. 67 Venturi, op. cit., p. 96.

45 Ibid., p. 76. 68 Redfield, W., ‘The Suppressed Site: Revealing the Influence
of Site on Two Purist Works’, in Burns, C. & Kahn, A. (eds), Site
46 Venturi, op. cit., p. 86.
Matters: Design Concepts, Histories and Strategies, New York and
47 Roth, L., Understanding Architecture: Its Elements, History, and Abingdon: Routledge, 2005, p. 190.
Meaning, Boulder, CO: Westwiew Press, 2007, p. 67.
69 Meyer, E., ‘Site Citations’, in Burns, C. & Kahn, A. (eds), Site Matters:
48 Ibid. Design Concepts, Histories and Strategies, New York and Abingdon:
Routledge, 2005, p. 117.
49 Salingaros, N., ‘Complexity of Urban Coherence’, Journal of Urban
Design 5(3), 2000, p. 291.

50 Clark, R. & Pause, M., Precedents in Architecture: Analytic Diagrams,

Formative Ideas, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Academy, 2005, p. 239.

51 Vesely, op. cit., p. 322.

52 Ibid., p. 324.
 023

Resilient fragments

2 Resilient
fragments
024 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
Husam AlWaer and in architecture and urbanism
Soumyen Bandyopadhyay
 025

Resilient fragments

Introduction prominent – but larger – curvilinear volume is repeated

on the first floor for the guest bath, this time visible
While designing the foyer of the Pavillon Suisse (1932), Le through a horizontal slit in the facade. Both are secondary
Corbusier found success in composing with fragments, programmatic components (servants’ toilets and guest
an aspect he recounts in the Œuvre Complète, 1929–34. bath) that have been given prominence through a formal
This, as Peter Carl points out, became an important device device incongruous with the otherwise orthogonal spatial
in the architectural formulations of his late phase and arrangement. In associating distinctive formal devices
appears to have played a key role in such buildings as the – or fragments – with ‘peripheral’ functions and thus
chapels at La Tourette and Ronchamp, at Chandigarh and rendering those a prominence, Le Corbusier appears to
the Philips Pavilion.1 At Shodan House, Ahmadabad, he be interrogating prevailing societal prejudices. At the Mill
employs an especially prominent bulbous projection at Owners’ Association (Figure 2.1), by apportioning locational
its north-eastern corner of the entrance facade to house and formal prominence to yet another fragment – the
the toilets designated for the domestic hands. A similarly toilets at two successive levels, cupped between a pair of

Figure 2.1 Le Corbusier. The Mill Owners’ Association Building,

Ahmedabad: entrance facade.
026 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
Husam AlWaer and in architecture and urbanism
Soumyen Bandyopadhyay

curvilinear enclosure walls and held together by a column understanding of truth and societal justice set within a
passing through them – the institutional spatial hierarchy unique cultural encounter.
and therefore its raison d’être was being questioned,
pointing instead to the iconic prominence of the machine at This chapter extends the discussion in Chapter 1 on sites
the heart of wealth creation in Ahmadabad (see Chapter 5). as fragments, and our longing for wholeness, which, one
Yet again, a larger fragment – the womb-like meeting room could argue, exists only as a result of the preponderance
– is located at close proximity, to which the toilets form an of fragments in modernity and the myriad processes of
embryonic adhesion; the fragments present a genealogy fragmentation. Through the analysis of Le Corbusier’s work
through scalar differentiation, yet an indication also of in Chandigarh in India, a different understanding of the
mutual support.2 fragment–whole relationship is presented. Contrary to
the idea of breaking apart, at Chandigarh fragmentation
It would appear that Le Corbusier’s late architecture in was understood as a clarification through reduction to its
India is engaged with addressing the issues of social resilient cultural/primordial essence. An artificial datum
stratification and hierarchy, and the role of institutions or a grid was introduced as a device to further clarify and
within a broad spectrum of concerns surrounding social foreground the ‘archipelago’ of fragments, forcibly burying
justice and their evocation in architecture. In Poème de the once-encumbering detritus (which included the many
l’Angle Droit he employs the Open Hand as a metaphor villages that once stood on the city site). The fragments
for an open society that is free to interact, ‘Open to at Chandigarh and Ahmedabad suggest the presence of
receive/Open also that others/might come and take’, meta-narratives: they are both historical and yet ahistorical
‘it is open because/all is present available/knowable’.3 – primordial, positive entities capable of achieving
Fragments – vertical, erect – play an important role. For renewed wholeness. This denuded primordial armature,
him, the right angle (l’angle droit) stands for rectitude, in conjunction with the datum that formed a framework
‘Categorical/right angle of character/the heart’s spirit’,4 for measuring against, made possible the exploration of
produced from the clarity of the heart and mind.5 At the issues of social justice that appears to have been at the
Mill Owners’ the fragments are situated within a three- heart of Le Corbusier’s High Court building in Chandigarh.
dimensional orthogonal grid – a giant scaffold that rises Like the tapestries hanging behind the judge’s seat that
from a plateau elevated above ground, supported by the helped complete a common man’s transformation into this
‘deposition’ of subordinated servant programmes forming elevated position, the new architecture stretched over the
ground and foundation. The plateau – a clarificatory fragments like a garb. The High Court illustrates various
datum that heightens the presence of the fragments architectonic measures to connect distant topographic
placed above – engages directly with the horizon across features – mountains, intervening landscape and the
the river Sabarmati; the latter here drawn into an intense horizon – as part of Le Corbusier’s attempts to integrate
relationship through the grid of sun breakers, which the new city with its natural surroundings. Despite these
introduces geometry as a device for measuring both attempts, the relationship between the Capitol Complex
horizon and depth of field. The Shodan House employs and its surroundings remained problematic, giving rise to
a similar device to hold the fragments; only its plateau is Nek Chand’s Rock Garden, which serves as a mytho-poetic
divided into a series of interconnected levels. Fragments, counterpart to Le Corbusier’s parliamentary complex.
datum, geometrical measure, the horizon and the sun
are the ingredients of this architecture in Ahmadabad; In this chapter we explore this notion of justice and the
together they appear to articulate Le Corbusier’s role of the architectural fragment in its contextualisation,
 027

Resilient fragments

Figure 2.2 Le Corbusier. The High Court Building, Chandigarh:

courtroom facade.

mediation and representation in independent India by India’s independence in 1947, had recognised justice,
addressing the case of Chandigarh as the capital of the then liberty, equality and fraternity as the fundamental principles
newly formed Indian state of Punjab, a city design generally on which the sovereign, democratic republic of India
attributed to Le Corbusier. This we do through analysing was founded. The concepts of secularism and socialism,
the design of the courtrooms at the High Court building in embedded within the Indian Constitution from its inception,
Chandigarh, but also in the conception of the central terrace were later articulated through the 42nd amendment
of the Capitol Complex (Figures 2.2, 2.3). The Constitution introduced in 1976.
of India, the supreme law that came into being following
028 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
Husam AlWaer and in architecture and urbanism
Soumyen Bandyopadhyay

horizon and nature. Justice was seen as articulated in two

ways; in both, an understanding of measure was pivotal.
First, as the measure of difference these fragments establish
from their historical antecedents, usually undergoing a
violent process of severance. And second, through their
harmonic integration with nature – measurable through
the play of temporal rhythms, but also usually through the
incorporation of light and temporal symbolism. At the High
Court in Chandigarh a further device has been employed
in connection with the discharging of justice – the tapestry
that simultaneously provides a woven topographic
backdrop for the judge’s seat and is a robe that elevates
the individual to a role of judgement, vesting the person
with the authority of meting out justice. Le Corbusier’s
work is ahistorical. The universal and secularised principles
of justice represented in the planning and architecture of
Chandigarh, especially that of the Capitol Complex, has
remained at odds with history and the deeply entrenched
age-old local practices and beliefs. However, as we contend,
in introducing the tapestries into the courtrooms, combined
with the impossibility of denuding the fragments entirely
of their history, the confusion of history is reintroduced;
the implications of this in the design of the Capitol are far-
Figure 2.3 Le Corbusier. The Capitol Complex, Chandigarh: view of reaching.
the Assembly Building from the High Court.
We suggest that this conflict was initiated well before the
The chapter contends that Le Corbusier’s Indian work was planners and architects were chosen, as administrators of
largely concerned with the understanding of truth. His the newly formed Punjab state decided to acquire several
attempts at achieving a renewed wholeness through the villages and associated agricultural land for the purpose.
architecture played a crucial role in this. This also paralleled Approaches and means of rehousing these groups, and also
his contemporaneous exploration of the ‘right angle’ in those displaced from West Pakistan, were ambiguous at best.
his significant text, Poème de l’Angle Droit, as symbolic of This a-priori creation of a tabula rasa, we argue, fitted well
action emanating from a discerning, true knowledge, in with Le Corbusier’s approach towards integrating modernity
turn a product of rectitude of mind in communion with with traditional cultures. This integration, for Le Corbusier,
nature. Truth for him was universal, which in architecture takes place through the dissolution of the everyday
he naturally associated with primordial architectonic traditional city, leaving behind a real invincible historical core
fragments – salvaged from the huge, meandering confusion to be incorporated into the Cartesian grid of the modern city.
of history – denuded of their unnecessary encumbrances. Le Corbusier regarded the grid and the Capitol Complex as
The introduction of a datum – the tabula rasa – was thus integral with nature, and similarly invincible. However, Le
necessary as the clarificatory device in dialogue with the Corbusier’s impressionistic recordings of the local, we argue,
 029

Resilient fragments

go beyond the mere incorporation of inert relics; these were Conflict between local and regional justice, and a
seen as essential ‘garments’ which elevated the universal to nationalistic agenda that foregrounded the need to secure
the status of the exalted. a replacement of Lahore, was prominent in the violent
appropriation of the site even before the planners were
The persistent shadow of injustice appointed. The act certainly sought to underscore the
symbolic importance of upholding ‘the valiant spirit of
It is important to emphasise at the outset the collaborative the Punjabis’, as Nehru suggested in his inaugural speech,
nature of the master plan’s evolution, as Evenson, Sarin, by associating the city with the location of the temple
Kalia and, more recently, Perera6 have demonstrated. dedicated to Goddess Chandi, embodying shakti (power). At
Quite clearly, much was at stake in the construction of the least 27 villages and hamlets were destroyed to make way
new city and involved not only the high officials of the for the new city, resulting in the eviction of 6,000 people;
newly formed Indian state of Punjab, which had lost its an even wider area of 58 villages of 21,000 inhabitants and
traditional capital, Lahore, to West Pakistan, but attracted 22,000 acres of cultivated land was also acquired by the
the direct involvement of the first Prime Minister of India, government under the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 (Figure
Jawaharlal Nehru. The views on Indian Modernity expressed 2.4).10 The legacy of rural inhabitation had persisted when
by Nehru are often oversimplified in a frequently used work began on the Capitol Complex, as Yosizaka recounted
decontextualised quotation from his inaugural speech at on his first visit to Chandigarh towards the end of the
Chandigarh, suggesting that he desired a city ‘symbolic of autumn of 1952,
the freedom of India, unfettered by the traditions of the
past ... an expression of the nation’s faith in the future’.7 In earthen farm-houses stood in the vicinity.… In the
fact, as Perera suggests, arising out of a deep and strong middle of all this scene was a giant banyan tree,
understanding of Indian history, his position was much casting a cool shadow. There was a stone-rimmed
more complex yet dynamic,8 as illustrated by the following, well just beside it.11

there can be no real cultural or spiritual growth based However, the suggested nationalistic imperatives were
on imitation … true culture derives its inspiration hardly upheld through land acquisition and planning
from every corner of the world, but it is home- gestures and instead, a new datum – an abstract, platonic
grown and has to be based on the wide mass of the and universal tabula rasa – was created for the Capitol
people. Art and literature remains lifeless if they are Complex as Le Corbusier took over, denuded of any local
continually thinking of foreign models.9 (i.e. historical) or nationalistic association. The temple of
Goddess Chandi, after which the city was named, was not
Nehru advocated an indigenous development of the incorporated; meanwhile, the debris from the removed
plan or at least one involving foreign architects with a villages accumulated nearby. The wider agenda of housing
deep understanding of the Indian context, which led to the displaced population from West Pakistan was treated
the appointment of Albert Mayer as its original planner. at best with ambiguity, as Nehru’s cautionary note to Mayer
However, his views often clashed with those of the Punjabi would suggest.12
officials who were more inclined towards a European
modernity. Following the death of Matthew Nowicki, The fragments from the destruction of the villages found a
Mayer’s principal associate, the officials were able to appoint more permanent – but initially secret – abode in the Rock
Le Corbusier. Garden at the base of the Capitol hill (Figures 2.5, 2.6).
030 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
Husam AlWaer and in architecture and urbanism
Soumyen Bandyopadhyay

Figure 2.4 Chandigarh master plan: sector organisation showing the

many villages and hamlets destroyed through the establishment of
the city.
 031

Resilient fragments

dissociation between ‘form’ and ‘matter’. To these we shall

return shortly.

The rise of the fragment and ‘measure’

This attempt at establishing a tabula rasa by consigning

the local to the status of mostly non-essential relics shoved
under an impervious and abstracted cartographic datum,
and the notion of a ‘measure’ emerging from the difference
between the ideal and the real – between ‘truth’ and
‘history’ – appear to have their origins in Le Corbusier’s early
perception of the Orient and the experience of Istanbul
during a fire on the night of 23 July 1911. Embarking on his
travels to the East in 1911, Le Corbusier speculate:

I want Stamboul to sit upon her Golden Horn all

white, as raw as chalk, and I want light to screech on
the surface of domes which swell the heap of milky
cubes, and minarets should thrust upward, and the
sky must be blue.15

Istanbul, however, presented a different reality: ‘Why is

Stamboul so grey? Stamboul should be all white and the

Figure 2.5 Nek Chand Saini. The Rock Garden, Chandigarh: view of
a passage.

This ‘other’ Chandigarh, in effect inverting all the rules

on which the city was founded, emerged surreptitiously
in the shadows of the High Court as the Capitol Complex
neared completion.13 The Garden’s prolonged illegal status
until the mid-1970s indicates its problematic positioning
within the Chandigarh schema. Its persistent otherness
as the complex and vital repository of fragmentary
reminders of local histories and representations of life
appears to have been vital in the construction of the
Capitol’s identity by establishing a continual ‘measure’
of difference.14 The distancing of the temple of Goddess
Chandi from the city named as her ‘abode’ or ‘seat’ Figure 2.6 The Rock Garden: wall detail showing salvaged fragment
(garh) could equally be seen as providing a measure of from earlier inhabitation.
032 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
Husam AlWaer and in architecture and urbanism
Soumyen Bandyopadhyay

mosques radiant and the light should stream with colours Yet this ‘dissolution’ of the city in the conflagration, as Kries
and not be wan and faded’, he disappointedly remarked suggests, seem to have also intensified his perception
to Karl-Ernst Osthaus on arrival.16 Yet he never appears to regarding the real core of this oriental city, its permanent
have lost belief that the eternal and true orient lay hidden foundation:
and emerged briefly above the foggy shroud that hung
over Istanbul in the early hours of the day.17 Views of the every mortal’s dwelling is of wood, every dwelling
skyline of Istanbul painted during this visit employ the of Allah is of stone [the city] sheds its skin in this way
horizontal, reinforcing this idea of the datum as a device every four years [and] only the great mosques remain
for extracting the essential (Figure 2.7). There, foreground invincible.19
and depth coalesced into an agglomeration of fragments
of varying densities, providing only a shadowy indication Perhaps in Istanbul Le Corbusier first realised the
of what lay buried. importance of the horizontal as an abstract device for
foregrounding the modern city as a representation of the
The fire in the Old Town of Istanbul Le Corbusier witnessed ‘truthful’ nature of modernity, consigning the confusion
on the night of 23 July 1911 that destroyed neighbourhoods of the traditional city into the depths of its topography.
and dwellings further highlighted this perception (Figure This reduction of the past to what he would consider an
2.8). His initial expression was a chromatic impressionistic invincible – irreducible, truthful – core that consisted of
one which, as I shall show later, is also a device he employs salvaged essential fragments, he later applied to Algiers,
in studying the local in India: tearing down almost 60 per cent of the traditional city (the
casbah), but also in Rio and Buenos Aires.20
At the horizon, the sky is getting dark and changes
from emerald green to a deep ultramarine diluted It is important to note the pivotal role of the reduced
with green like a glaucous sea. Against it, the minarets fragments in the conception of Le Corbusier’s modern
and domes of Bayazit are outlined in a splendid unity, Oriental city, and Chandigarh had none as he arrived on the
incomparably majestic, carved out of solid gold.18 scene. The purificatory reductions appear to be associated
with and achieved through violent means, actions and

Figure 2.7 Le Corbusier. 1911. Skyline of Istanbul; watercolour on blue

paper, 9 × 29.5 cm.
 033

Resilient fragments

Figure 2.8 Le Corbusier. 1911. Photograph taken of the fire of Istanbul

on the night of 23 July 1911.

events, i.e. resulting from conflagration, by highlighting the bodies as if to retrieve the truthful fragments. Truth is
prevalence of disease and epidemics in traditional cities ‘simple and naked/yet knowable’,22 their retained closeness
and through planning interventions that Edmund Brua to the ground – to earth – is recognised.23 Intensely grouped
described as ‘architectonic bombardment’.21 They indicate bodies are captured foregrounding a nomadic tent from
distancing through extraction and therefore indicate a which they have emerged (Figure 2.9). Such emergence
reliance on measure. appears to have parallels with the rising of the invincible
fragments of Istanbul above its foggy shroud, ornamented
The drawings he prepared of Algerian women, based on by the brief passage of light every day. The tent, often used
postcards he had collected, show deliberately denuded interchangeably by Le Corbusier with the cave to represent
034 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
Husam AlWaer and in architecture and urbanism
Soumyen Bandyopadhyay

Figure 2.9 Le Corbusier, after 1931. Drawing based on collected

postcard of nomadic tent in the Algerian desert; graphite and
coloured pencil on cardboard, 24.5 × 32 cm.

the sacred shrine,24 is also here the secular repository questions regarding whether shearing off the cultural
of ‘culture’, to the depths of which the bodies will once histories of primordial spatial fragments is ever feasible. The
again be reconsigned.25 Here again, brief illumination of drawing therefore also presents a genealogy of primordial
the body fragments should be noted, denoting these as fragments (body, cave/tent), differentiated by scale, as we
the battleground between the universal forces of nature have noted at Le Corbusier’s Ahmedabad buildings.
and darkness of the chthonic space. Their distancing
from the chthonic context is measurable – both through Analogous to ancient foundation rituals, Le Corbusier’s
their illuminated foregrounding, as well as the degree of fragments of the eternal city are thus predicated on the
violent cultural severance the bodies have undergone. The deposition of cultural historical detritus. In Chandigarh,
ambiguity posed by the treatment of the cave as both a ‘measure’ appears to have become similarly embedded
sacred and a cultural repository is significant, and poses through an incident Yoshizaka reports, when Le Corbusier
 035

Resilient fragments

gradual dissolution of its interior fabric (cladding, settings)

a result of what would appear to be an uninterrupted fluid
flow down the access ramp, rendering the orthogonal
volume into a cave-like interior (see Chapter 5).31 Both in
Ahmedabad and Chandigarh such large-scale primordial
fragments are employed to cocoon smaller fragments.
At the Capitol Complex an ‘archipelago of architectural
fragments’32 of such scale and proportion rise above the
tabula rasa – ‘the terrestrial plain of things knowable’,
‘edged with horizon/Facing the sky’.33 Standing erect
on the plain they are thus in ‘solidarity with nature’
and ‘fit for action’,34 the edifices where the notion of
truth is explored and measured. Significantly, however,
although they rise from the violent processes of history
(destruction of villages, partition), unlike the fragments of
Stamboul or Algiers, they are not salvaged or clarified but
Figure 2.10 The Assembly Building: detail of ‘Modulor Man’ instituted and therefore artificial – without a history. This
impression on a pylon.
apparent triumph of the ahistorical, and the promise of
the clarified primordial fragment is, however, shortlived, as
lost his hand-made Modulor roll, kept normally in a film even a cursory glance at the Assembly Building and High
can; this was later reported as ‘Le Corbusier’s Modulor
sown into Chandigarh soil’.26 History for Le Corbusier, as
Carl contends, citing Poème de l’Angle Droit, is a ‘dialectic
between confusion and truth (between deviation and
assertion of straightness – droiture)’,27 between meander
and trajectory.28 ‘The truth is present/only in some spot
where the current [of the river water] always seeks out
its bed!’29 The fragments provide the ‘obstacles’ in the
meandering and confused fluidity of history to ‘trigger’
truth, the eternal presence,30 yet they are also inevitably
formed by the actions of the fluid passage. The fragments
thus are the battlegrounds between truth and history – the
former measurable through the struggle between light and
darkness, as we also notice in the Algerian drawing.

An ‘archipelago’ of fragments

At the Mill Owners’, activated by the machine – suggested

by the giant iconographic presence of the pinion of a Figure 2.11 The Assembly Building: detail of serpent impression on
water mill, the meander of the fluid carves the interior. The a pylon.
036 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
Husam AlWaer and in architecture and urbanism
Soumyen Bandyopadhyay

provides the reference; they indicate a context from where

they will have been initially ‘snatched’ and, consequently,
they carry forward traces of narratives.36

There are three giant fragment types at work at the Capitol

Complex: the wall (the Secretariat), the cave (Assembly
and Tower of Shadows) and the tent (High Court); together
they form a landscape which is ‘both coming into being
and passing away (reminiscent of a field of ruins)’ (Figures
2.12–2.14). 37 Facing each other across the podium and both
representing what Carl describes as ‘agonic’ settings, i.e.
‘situations of conflict and decision’,38 the Assembly and
the High Court present opposed architectural conditions,
indicative perhaps of their differing roles. The former
is a ‘closed cuboid cave’, holding within it two further

Figure 2.12 Le Corbusier. The Secretariat Building, Chandigarh:

view of front facade.

Court, as well as his Ahmedabad buildings, reveal their

debts to Western and Indian classicism. The impressed
near-Egyptian representation of the Modulor Man on
one of the Assembly pylons, as well as the ‘serpentine’
representation of history on another, indicate the
contaminating existence of pre-history alongside nature
and natural history (Figures 2.10, 2.11). These articulate
Vidler’s assertion that Modernists struggled to shed all
traces of nostalgic flavour to the fragment in their anxiety
to move away from nineteenth century’s ‘unhealthy
investment’ in the past. 35 Fragments, Vidler writes, are
characterised by scale, context and narrative; they are part
of a world of ‘scaled elements’, for which the human body Figure 2.13 Le Corbusier. The Tower of Shadows, Chandigarh.
 037

Resilient fragments

Figure 2.14 The Assembly Building: view of the southwest facade.

chthonic elements (the lower and the upper houses of the (Legislative Assembly) at podium level is crowned by a
Assembly) – opposed in their architectural and symbolic large, hyperbolic shell that allows sunlight to play with the
qualities. The enclosed nature of the Assembly hall is given acoustic clouds along its base. Two of the large fragments
greater prominence with the columns disappearing into – the Assembly and the Tower of Shadows – literally expose
the unfathomable darkness of the ceiling painted black. the depth of the plateau within their interiors, indicating an
The interior is highly intense, packed with fragments and intense archaeological interest, reminiscent of his painting
other interpenetrating architectural elements, which capturing the skyline of Istanbul and the accumulated
Jencks has termed ‘compaction composition even more nature of the intervening ‘cultural’ field. This topographic
compacted’.39 Jencks has suggested the intense interior revelation through recesses in the earth enhances the
as Piranesian in nature40 – alluding in all probability to its suspended quality of the lower chamber. The suspended
parallels with the Carceri images – an important observation smaller cuboid of the upper chamber (Governor’s Council),
given the legislative nature of the building. However, these with its pyramidal roof, is held in place by the orthogonal
suspended fragments and intense composition could also grid structure. The distinction between the crowning
be read as the iconic symbol of an industrial setting (given elements – one representing human civilisation of the past
to the making of law). The circular-plan lower chamber (pyramid) and the other of the future (cooling tower) – is
038 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
Husam AlWaer and in architecture and urbanism
Soumyen Bandyopadhyay

obvious. What is less obvious, perhaps, is a comment

on the perpetuation of colonial governance structures
and the defunct nature of the upper chamber. As Jencks
notes, in an attempt to remove hierarchical organisation,
Le Corbusier abolished the speaker’s platform, increasing
the opportunity for debate. In the true democratic spirit,
each ‘orator’ was provided with a microphone to interrupt
legislative proceedings, if necessary.41

The High Court, in contrast, is an ‘open tent’ with the

subordinated cave-like fragments exposed to the podium
and facing the Assembly, reminding us of the tent
foregrounded with bodies in the Algiers drawing, drawing
closer the analogy between Corbusian bodies and chthonic
receptacles. As opposed to the classically organised
facade of the Assembly, the possible influence of Mughal
and other Indian precedents on the over-scaled ‘parasol’
entrance portico (darwaza) have been noted, which
comes to an abrupt end at the administrative ‘wall’. Here,
the ‘tent’ holds the cave-like volumes of the courtrooms;
the openness of the building further enhanced by the
direct access given to the courtrooms from the podium. In
Chandigarh, Le Corbusier realised that ‘the sun was not only
a friendly Mediterranean play of light but also the principal
adversary in a battle’:42 ‘The sun master of our lives/far
from indifferent/He is the visitor – an overlord/he enters
our house’, and, ‘brutally/he breaks it twice –/morning and
evening’.43 The battle was thus entered invoking the aid of
the brise-soleil, the sun-breaker, its shield encrusted with Figure 2.15 The High Court Building: detail of the High Court facade.
the painted yellow horns of the bull; the horns appear to
be also present atop the hyperbolic tower to ward off the enhancing the grounded nature of the cave-like courtrooms.
sun’s rage (Figure 2.15). The numerous photographs of the This, combined with the lateral western light, created an
courtroom interiors attest to the efficacy of the brise-soleil, important distinction through the play of temporal rhythm
although glare was not completely eliminated, leading some from the top-lit and reflected light receptacle of the law-
of the judges to switch ‘the operation of the courts around, making Legislative Assembly; the enhanced horizontality
placing themselves against the brilliant light. How could you aligning here with the meting out of justice to the people
tell if the accused were lying if you could never see his face of Punjab and Haryana. Given the originally intended
because of the glare?’44 At the High Court the sun breakers, orientation of the courtroom, the horizontality of the brise-
however, established a more intimate relationship with soleil will have given the judge the opportunity to calibrate
the horizon, reminding us of the Mill Owners’ and further the extent of deviation from the ultimate truth of nature.
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Resilient fragments

The horizontal has the ability to distinguish the fragile from logical that his primordial fragments formed part of the
the invincible, as it provides opportunity for integration narrative of a topographic phenomenon – emerging or
with nature. The displacement or extension of the horizon perhaps receding. His fascination with aerial views of
through numerous benches, tables, ledges, parapets and vast landscape formations that first surfaced with his
other horizontal furniture devices within the architecture maiden voyage to South America in 1929 forged a new
illustrate this reciprocal intention. Le Corbusier conceived relationship between the abstracted grid – that diverted
of the Capitol Complex as the permanent foundation of the Chandigarh plan away from Mayer’s conception – and
Chandigarh, intending the buildings to remain invincible the surrounding natural features. On the other hand, long-
in the face of natural and calamitous change. Conceived distance perspectives were used to visualise his architecture
thus, the buildings were seen as part of the extended with a foreground grid, fixing those permanently to the
natural landscape, unchanged and unyielding. In his many topography through what he termed ‘the inexpressible
preparatory sketches for the Capitol, Le Corbusier aspired space; impossible to dimension’ (Figure 2.17). Here, urban
for its reconciliation with the surrounding Shivalik Hills design assumes that the city is in perpetual making,
as a legitimising and redeeming gesture (Figure 2.16). delivered through the continual experience and habitation
For him, the hills surrounding Chandigarh were material of an embryonic urbanising intervention.
manifestation of absolute order and therefore it was only

Figure 2.16 Le Corbusier. Sketchbook drawing (213) showing the

buildings and installations of the Capitol Complex in the context of
the surrounding hills.
040 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
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Figure 2.17 Le Corbusier. Sketchbook drawing (209) showing

foreground grid used as a device to connect the built fabric to the
natural topography.

Tapestry as vêtement re-garbing. The giant enamel-painted door at the Assembly

is essentially a curtain facing east that highlights the
Removal of the cultural ‘fabric’ through disrobing (Algiers significance of the horizon (complete with its undulating
drawing) or dissolution and redundancy (Mill Owners’) is a hills) in distinguishing between the subterranean cultural
method Le Corbusier employs to arrive at his irreducible, deposition and the eternal rhythm established by the solar
primordial body/fragment. The opposite – a re-garbing – passage (Figure 2.18). It is this solar clock that gives rise to
seems to have been at work in his reconciliatory gesture the ‘sun-breaker’45 where it is most required – the western
towards artefacts of everyday culture, giving them renewed facade of the High Court. This re-garbing is extended
iconographic status as reminders of the context from which into the court interiors, where giant tapestries form the
the primordial fragments were originally extracted. The backdrop for the judges’ seats (Figure 2.19). The chromatic
chromatic encrustation of the brise-soleil, especially with impressionistic recording of the local, simultaneously giving
the bull motif already discussed, form part of a repertoire of rise to an abstract – almost mathematical – containing
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Resilient fragments

analytical structure, was a key feature of Le Corbusier’s courtroom knows the judge’s name, afterward no
sketchbooks, for which the following is a good example: one cares. By means of the vestments this person
becomes that office.47
2 Sikh types on bicycle. // colours: turbans – green
// – red + some white (or pants? // underneath)? +: the The chromatic applications at the High Court – derived
basis of the colour equation, // it’s the shirt W which from his intuitive observation of the local – are, in effect,
is ‘broken’ – black – red – white // authorise variation such vestments employed to elevate the universal – the
according to the quantities of red // [authorise ordinary – to the role of the specific and the exalted. The
variation according to] nature [of red] // mix value 40% double columns of the entrance portico are combined,
gunnite sprayed and painted to give it the appearance
There could be equation), black + yellow ochre + white appropriate for its special role. The tapestries Le Corbusier
// in [black] green + [white] // [in black] blue + [white]46 designed for the individual courtrooms – which provided
the backdrop for the judge’s chair – were inspired by his
The reduction of the local into a mathematically classified observation of the tattered curtain, that fragile piece of
collection of symbolic chromatic and figurative relics ruined fabric he observed and noted in his sketchbook,
– the latter perhaps best represented in the bull horns which provided ‘an Indian [brand of] Héraclite comfort’.
Le Corbusier studied so exhaustively – we would argue, Thus a quintessentially local was elevated as a garb for the
allowed its later subsumption, subjugation and framing highest place of the judiciary. Extending beyond the relic,
within the universal. In Chandigarh, the abstract grid
refined through the use of the Modulor as an expression
of the universal and the natural, is all-pervasive. Le
Corbusier employed this containing arrangement to
structure his canvas for the subjective and selective
representation of the local.

However, here we would argue that some of these

representational devices are more than relics. David
Leatherbarrow, citing Paul Claudel’s description of the
essential in the Japanese house, suggested that the
traditional house in Japan is ‘less a box than a vesture
(vêtement, in French), an apparatus for living and
breathing’. He asks:

What if a person or artefact were stripped of its

‘vestment’? Without robes a priest or judge would
be (again) just like you and me, not only ineffective
in ecclesiastical or judicial affairs but also only an
individual. Not only is power an attribute of the
person who has been vested, but so is a particular
kind of anonymity; during the trial no one in the Figure 2.18 The Assembly Building: detail of ceremonial door.
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Figure 2.19 The High Court Building: tapestry in the courtrooms.

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Resilient fragments

objects of potential misfortune into colourful drapes on

his anthropomorphic sculptures. The tragedy attached to
most of the discarded materials is in this way reversed as
Chand transforms the objects while retaining their original
use as vestment. The bangles once worn on the arms as
symbols of femininity and puberty are now writ large and
enrobe the body; they become the girl. They confront the
audience – primarily Indian, hailing from the strictures of
the male-dominated society. They face the audience in
their multitude, which seldom the girls could in their own
societies. They ask questions.

Figure 2.20 The Rock Garden, Chandigarh: feminine figures draped

in broken glass bangles.

the strategic emplacement of the local accentuating the

universal indicates an important understanding of social
justice within the universality of Chandigarh’s planning and
architecture.

A similar vestment or garbing is employed by Nek Chand at

the Rock Garden to empower his feminine figures (Figure
2.20). A group of the sculptures is clad in thousands of
coloured glass and plastic bangles that have been salvaged.
The bangles relate to the huge multitude of the girls who
once lived, and are possibly still living, in Chandigarh.
Broken bangles retain misfortune, prompting the owner
to discard them forthright. Chand transforms these
044 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
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Notes 13 Bandyopadhyay, S. & Jackson, I., The Collection, the Ruin and the
Theatre: Architecture, Sculpture and Landscape in Nek Chand’s Rock
1 Carl, P., ‘The Tower of Shadows’, in Architectural Association,
Garden, Chandigarh, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007.
Le Corbusier and the Architecture of Reinvention, London:
Architectural Association, 2003, p. 102. 14 It is therefore no coincidence that both represent the work
of outstanding creative individuals – Le Corbusier’s articulate
2 Some aspects of the Mill Owners’ Association building I
‘international’ approach sharply contrasted by Nek Chand’s
discuss in Chapter 5 and also in Temple, N. & Bandyopadhyay,
introspective ‘local’ outlook.
S., ‘Contemplating the Unfinished: Architectural Drawing and
the Fabricated Ruin’, in Marco Frascari, M., Hale, J. & Starkey, B. 15 Le Corbusier (Žaknić, I., trans.), Journey to the East, Cambridge,
(eds), From Models to Drawings: Imagination and Representation in MA: MIT Press, 1987, p. 85; also quoted in Kries, M., ‘S, M, L, XL:
Architecture, London: Routledge, 2007, pp. 109–119. Metamorphoses of the Orient in the Work of Le Corbusier’, in
von Vegesack, A., von Moos, S., Rüegg, A. & Kries, M. (eds), Le
3 Le Corbusier (Hylton, K. trans.), ‘Poème de l’Angle Droit’, Section
Corbusier: The Art of Architecture, Weil am Rhein: Vitra, 2007, p. 170.
F3: Offering (The Open Hand), in Architectural Association, Le
Corbusier and the Architecture of Reinvention, p. 94. 16 Kries, op. cit., p. 170, citing Le Corbusier’s letter to Karl-Ernst
Osthaus, dated 28 July 1911.
4 Ibid., Section E3: Characters, p. 90.
17 Ibid., p. 172, citing Le Corbusier’s (Charles Édouard Jeanneret)
5 Ibid. ‘She is rightness child of/limpid heart present on earth/
letter to Charles L’Eplattenier, dated 18 July 1911.
close to me’.
18 Le Corbusier, Journey to the East, op. cit., pp. 156–157, also quoted
6 Evenson, N., Indian Metropolis: A View Toward the West, New
in Kries, op. cit., p. 173.
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989; Sarin, M., Urban Planning
in the Third World: The Chandigarh Experience, London: Mansell, 19 Le Corbusier, Journey to the East, ibid., p. 98, also quoted in Kries,
1982; Nihal Perera, ‘Contesting Visions: Hybridity, Liminality and op. cit., p. 173.
Authorship of the Chandigarh Plan’, Planning Perspectives 19(2),
2004, pp. 175–199. 20 Kries, op. cit., pp. 166–167, 174–175.

7 See, for example, Southall, A., ‘Circle and the Square: Symbolic 21 Eduard Brua quoted in Kries, op. cit., p. 168.
Form and Process in the City’, in Nas, P. (ed.), Urban Symbolism, 22 Le Corbusier ‘Poème de l’Angle Droit’, Section G3: Instrument,
New York & Leiden: Brill, 1993, p. 386; Tan, T. & Kudaisya, G., The p. 96.
Aftermath of Partition of South Asia, London: Routledge, 2000,
p. 190. 23 Ibid., Section E3: Characters, p. 90.

8 Perera, op. cit., pp. 179–184. 24 See, for example, Le Corbusier ‘Poème de l’Angle Droit’, Section
C2, p. 78:
9 Nehru, J., The Discovery of India, Calcutta: Signet Press, 1946,
p. 564. For home from home is/in the great cavern of/sleep
that other side of/life at night. How/rich alive is night
10 Kalia, R., Chandigarh: The Making of an Indian City, New Delhi: in the/warehouses collections/libraries museums of/
Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 12. sleep! A woman passes./Oh! I was sleeping, forgive
11 Yoshizaka, T., ‘Chandigarh: A Few Thoughts on How Le Corbusier me!
Tackled His Work’, in Le Corbusier: Chandigarh, The New Capital of 25 Carl, op. cit., p. 104, where he also cites lithographs for G2 and G4
Punjab, India 1951–, Tokyo: A.D.A. Edita, 1974, p. 2. of Poème de l’Angle Droit by Le Corbusier to support his assertion
12 ‘there is one fact to be borne in mind, and I hope it does not regarding the interchangeable use of the tent and the cave.
come in the way of your general planning. This is to make 26 Yoshizaka, op. cit., p. 4.
provision for the displaced persons from West Punjab.’ Jawaharlal
Nehru, letter to Mayer, 23 May 1950, in Kalia, R., Chandigarh, p. 35, 27 Carl, op. cit., p. 108.
also cited in Perera, op. cit., p. 183.
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Resilient fragments

28 Le Corbusier ‘Poème de l’Angle Droit’, Section A4: Environment, 47 Leatherbarrow, D., Uncommon Ground, Cambridge, MA: MIT
p. 66. Press, 2002, p. 149.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid.

31 This dissolution is discussed in Temple & Bandyopadhyay, op. cit,

p. 114, where the parallels between the entrance facades of the
Mill Owners’ and the rock-cut cave at Karle is noted (p. 114); see
Chapter 5.

32 Carl, op. cit., p. 106.

33 Le Corbusier, ‘Poème de l’Angle Droit’, Section A4: Environment,

p. 64.

34 Ibid.

35 Vidler, A., Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern

Culture, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001, p. 151. Vidler describes
the nineteenth-century Romantics’ obsession with the ruin –
fractured and affected by the ravages of time, but also indicating
‘a possible world of harmony in the future’. These ideals were
subsequently tempered by, on the one hand, Ruskin’s indication
at the improbability of both a return to the past and any
authentic restoration, and Violet-le-Duc’s view that restoration
could finally complete the fragment in its ‘previously unrealised
perfection’.

36 Ibid., p. 153.

37 Carl, op. cit., p. 106.

38 Ibid., pp. 102, 105.

39 Jencks, C., Le Corbusier and the Tragic View of Architecture,

Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987, p. 154.

40 Ibid., p. 155.

41 Ibid.

42 Carl, op. cit., p. 114.

43 Le Corbusier ‘Poème de l’Angle Droit’, Section A1: Environment,

p. 60.

44 Jencks, op. cit., pp. 156–157.

45 Le Corbusier ‘Poème de l’Angle Droit’, Section B4: Mind, p. 74.

46 Le Corbusier, Le Corbusier Sketchbooks, London: Thames &

Hudson, sketchbook N56 January 1959 New Delhi; 31 March 1959
Chandigarh.
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Enmeshed horizons

5 Enmeshed
horizons
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 103

Enmeshed horizons

Interior and exterior spaces

Michelangelo did not first conceive the inside of the

basilica, then the outside, separately. He created the
whole organism simultaneously.

Bruno Zevi1

In order to understand, it is immensely important for

the person who understands to be located outside
the object of his or her creative understanding....
Outsideness creates the possibility of dialogue, and
dialogue helps us understand a culture in profound
way.

Mikhail Bakhtin2

While it is natural and necessary for architects to

concentrate on the building itself, the bright light of
Figure 5.1 Man in space.
this focus eclipses the surrounding world, darkening
the very horizon that grants the building its standing. This chapter argues that to achieve an optimum integrity
between site and context the spatial organisation of
David Leatherbarrow3 site should privilege the notion of sequential reciprocity
between the interior of a building and its immediate
Introduction: space experience in architecture exteriors, on the one hand, and between the site and its
immediate vicinity, on the other. This calls for a closer
No vacuum can be identified as a space if not registered examination of the term in-between – the boundary –
with the corporeal experience. No architectural construct as the common denominator distinguishing all such
is spatial without an experience of it that encompasses transitions. Balanced focus on the spatial settings of
both its interior and exterior, enabling the human body interiors and exteriors in any design approach entails
to experience a transitioning from the outside – from the giving equal attention to the inside-out, as well as the
space of the city – to the intimate spaces of the interior. In outside-in relationships. Examining the site simultaneously
other words, a void can be called space only if accredited from inside-out and outside-in highlights and heightens
by our body and its entire system of senses (Figure 5.1). The our awareness of the binding socio-cultural constructs that
experiential equilibrium, here, results from the reciprocity resist isolation and autonomy, and enmesh both spaces
between the inside and the outside. Site as a social-cultural and experiences.
construct – a positive fragment that contributes to and
completes frameworks of spatialities – is part of a sequence To begin with, two important conceptions about
of spaces connected through, often hierarchical but architectural space need to be considered; together
nonetheless communicative, spatial relationships. they form the fundamental ground on which the
104 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
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interrelationship of inside and outside is based. First, that and all the complexities of perception of the human body.9
space is a void unless defined by human bodily experience; In architecture – analogous to a hollowed out sculpture
and second, the interaction between the spatial fragment and a series of overlapping canvases – we apprehend
and the surrounding whole is sustained through ideas that the interior and exterior by moving through it, engaging
help transform the perceptual properties of space into the fully through the dimension of time. Given that humans
concretised presence of architectural experience. are both the subject and the object of architecture, to
retain the experience of the event equally and continually
‘There is no architectural space’, Tschumi suggested, on the inside and out, focus should be on integrating
‘without something that happens in it, no space without experiences into one meaningful continuum. For Zevi, the
content.’4 To define a space through events that take interpretation of architecture as space became meaningless
place in it is intrinsic to its very character, as it implies and spatial experiences lost their legitimacy if two essential
engagement of the somatic with the actuality of ‘misunderstandings’ about space were not removed. First,
architecture. Kant defined space as a property of mind, that ‘architectural space can be experienced only in the
constructed within it, so that space exists as a pure interior of a building, and therefore urban or city-planned
intuition.5 While this is fundamental in terms of observation, space, for all practical purposes, does not exist or have
conception and projection, as elaborated in earlier chapters, any value’. And second, ‘space is not only the protagonist
in materialisation ideas enter into the realms of physical of architecture, but represents the whole of architectural
modes of representation. Spatial experience or spatiality,6 experience, and that consequently the interpretation of a
therefore, not only involves the virtual, intangible qualities building in terms of space is the only critical tool required in
of space, but also those projected by materials and judging architecture’.10
experienced or sensed, which makes the ‘conceptual’ space
a tangible part of the ‘corporeal’ existence. The nature Spatial experience is reliant on the two mutually associated
of space identified here, therefore, ‘is not an abstract set – yet independent – threads of visual and non-visual
of relations (nor an “ether”) within which the life-world is perception. They interrogate the boundaries of reality
structured. Rather, the lived experience of the body-in- and truth, as Tschumi points out: ‘Architecture constitutes
space is the primary relation from which all conceptions the reality of experience while this reality gets in the
of space are constructed.’7 For Bruno Zevi, the spatial way of … vision. Architecture constitutes the abstraction
experience cannot be comprehended until the actual of absolute truth, while this very truth gets in the way
material expression has manifested the conceptual one of feeling.’11 Feeling – as offered by the senses – can be
through the human body by all means. 8
considered the perceptive lenses of human interpretation of
constructed space.12 Zevi highlighted the three categories
Both the real and the virtual spaces have divergent of spatial interpretation in architecture as content-based
manifestations not only in the domain of architecture but interpretation, formalistic interpretation and physio-
also in other disciplines such as painting, sculpture and psychological interpretation.13 The lack of bodily experience
filmmaking, some of which are planar while others are of the ‘architectural object’ dismantles its adjectival
spatial. In most sculptures, for example, a spatial experience essence and reduces it to a void where there is no sensible
is generated when looked at from the outside. In painting, experience of event, light, material or detail. An example
on the other hand, the spatial experience generated is of this kind is the Greek temple, where the interiors were
ultimately limited by the planar qualities of the canvas. It is effectively voids, not spaces, for all the rituals and human
only architecture, however, that can provoke all the senses experiences took place outside, in the open14 (Figure 5.2),
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Enmeshed horizons

Figure 5.2 The Greek temple`s inner void (after Trancik, R., 1986,
Finding Lost Space).

which is also the case with the cuboidal structure at the For Plato, to enter the human realisation of space, reality
centre of Islamic worship, the Ka‘bah, where the cell-like must have three components, which establish the bases
interior is never open to experiencing. It is worth noting for the communication with space – being, becoming and
that, in defining architectural space, Rasmussen used the chora.19 The first two entities clearly deal with object-like
term cavity to refer to the limited, architecturally formed properties that have the qualification to form a tangible
void, whereas he employed space to define the wider space. The chora, on the other hand, is something that has
context allowing its foregrounding.15 a dream-like, imaginal quality: an abstract characteristic of
space that is both omnipresent and metaphysical.20 Zevi’s
In-between chora ‘content-based’ spatial properties thus parallel Plato’s being,
the ‘formalistic’ aligns with the becoming, and the ‘physio-
To the ancient Greeks, however, both architectural space psychological’ parallels the condition of the chora.
and reality were profound symbolisations of their Gods.16
Hestia and Hermes represented ‘a religious articulation of Defining the nature of the chora assumes importance in
space and movement, of centre and path, of immutability the context of our fragment–whole paradigm. First, it could
and change’.17 Hestia was a symbol of the earth, darkness refer to those key imaginal (virtual) qualities of space that
and femininity and all qualities of ‘interior space’, whereas underscore materialisation of space; and second, it could
Hermes symbolised openness and contact with the refer to thresholds or boundaries that define the sequential
outside – qualities associated with the external, public spatial transitions between inside and outside. For Plato,
spaces.18 However, it was not until Plato that the Greek the chora lacks identity of its own as it always falls between
idea of space and its reality was definitively articulated. the real and the ideal. Thus chora is also the ground that
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Figure 5.3 Boundary and the in-between space (chora).

 107

Enmeshed horizons

allows the process of transformation from the conceptuality Further, they possess the ability to change the apparently
of drawing to the materiality of building. The property of contradictory relationship between site and context,
space involves two interconnected references: a property public and private, and the particular into an unexpected
of enclosure – corporeal (according to Semper) and a reciprocity. 27 The public is always open to external
property of mind – conceptual (according to Kant).21 These scrutiny, whereas the private is a shelter of life defined
references are framed within the coordinates of both space by one’s family and friends. The particular articulates a
and time, which are not just a-priori mental or conceptual higher level of intimacy that defines a particular event
constructs but also corporeal ones, and whose counterparts in a particular place and space. Between these entities
are cultural and social forms of embodiments.22 Hence, it Tschumi identified three categories of sequences: ‘First,
is important to bear in mind that the virtuality of chora is, an internal relation, which deals with the method of
for sure, not limited to the arena of representation. This work; then two external relations – one dealing with the
virtuality is an ingredient of what is real or what exists: ‘the
juxtapositions of actual spaces, the other with program
capacity of walls, boxes, windows, and corners to function (occurrence or events).’28 Venturi defined the in-between
in more than one way, to serve not only present functions as ‘residual space’,29 and further distinguished between
but others as well, is already part of the ingenuity and closed and open residual spaces; to him these were the
innovation of the virtual in the real’.23 results of overlapping enclosures – enclosures within
enclosures, serving as thresholds between what is on the
Architecture is not only defined through the inside and perimeter and what is at the centre. He also argued that
outside but also through the middle event – the in-between. the closed were subordinate to those that were open, since
While everyone would recall Venturi’s maxim – architecture in the process of making the architectural sentence the
happens at the walls24 – it is equally important to remind former were neither experienced nor apparent, while the
ourselves that ‘it is no longer a sure thing that architecture open ones were engaged in that process and thus they
takes place in walls, since walls no longer constitute a clear were essential and dominant. However, the reduction in
division between the interior and the exterior’;25 and that importance of the closed ones was, in fact, a reduction
even the ‘site is best viewed from points in between’.26 of their connective role between the dominant ones.
To further underpin the reciprocal dialogue between the Merleau-Ponty described the in-between as something
fragment and the whole, we aim to consider the event less tangible but more phenomenological in nature. He
of the in-between (the boundary) – the chora, where the described it as the ‘ground’ on which universal things
transformational mediation of programme and space takes can be brought together and could rest,30 suggesting a
place. Already, in previous chapters we have highlighted possible intersection between his vision of the in-between
the boundary as the ‘communicative space’, that is, the and Plato’s chora.
space that harbours the transitional movements and spatial
overlaps from the smallest brush strokes of a painting to the Continuities, reciprocities or displacements imply sequences
artefacts of a city. and/or disjunctions of space/event/movement, on which
the meaning of any architectural situation is dependent. 31
The in-between spaces carry divergent implications The purpose of the in-between, therefore, is critical in
according to the locations they occupy; they perform aiding spatial reciprocity; being in a state of perpetual
divergent roles according to their scale and articulation, construction and becoming, the choric space is directional
segregating architectural sequences – the inside, the – simultaneously constructing defined relationships, both
building, the outside and the context (Figure 5.3). outside-in, as well as inside-out. A choric space has the
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ability to articulate the transitional shifts between the enclosures, which open the door to interaction between
interior, the building, the exterior and the context, providing series of internal and external worlds.
the shared ground where the conflicting/divergent
polarities could interweave. Elizabeth Grosz argues that it is not the convergence but the
disjunction of spatial sequences through which the outside
Reciprocity and disjunction versus convergence is active in the production of the inside. 34 However, given
or stasis versus flow that space in its very nature is also continuous, conflict or
indifference does not necessarily characterise reciprocity,
Key to the interplay between the inside and the outside but resolution and reinforcement – a mutual relationship
of an organ, the human body, a system or architecture between inside and outside. Convergence or disjunction
is the physical skin that distinguishes them from their operates through the perpetual reconfiguration of sites in
surroundings. In The Shape of Touch Pallasmaa explores terms of delineation, space, surface, movement, stasis, flow
the profound parallels between body and home, and the and so on. This is where the play is enacted between the
protective warmth ensured by the skin and the building fragmentary quality of the architectural site and its wider
enclosure, that fill the human psyche with comfort and surroundings; the site bears the capacity and provision of a
intimacy. Through the skin our bodies are not only open mediating existence that is in a perpetual state of becoming
biologically to their surroundings but also psychologically, through its character as a chora.
socially and culturally. In this sense our bodies are
permeable – porous and incomplete on their own,32 which The evolutionary vision of site, a sustainable and ever-
draws attention to the extant reciprocity between bodies changing position, hinges on two aspects of continuity or
and their surroundings. Thus architecture’s role in fulfilling flow: first, the formal, compositional continuity between
the analogous relationship between body and building – by inside and outside; and second – resulting from the first
addressing the reciprocity between inside and outside – is – the constant growth and decline resulting from the
significant. Equally, for a site to act as a positive, interactive materialisation of the architectural object. Hence, reciprocity
fragment (see Chapter 3), reciprocity needs to be given of the inside and outside is defined by both the chora and its
careful consideration. defining topography, keeping the human events in constant
reciprocity, as far as the spaces could accommodate. This
Reciprocity, performed by the syntheses of spaces or notion gains in strength as long as the site remains open
actions, is about sequential enclosures and disclosures that to evolution, i.e. retains its continued ability to receive and
bring the outside-in and the inside-out; the outside and include rather than to reject and exclude.
the inside are transmutable, as if one includes the other.
Sequential spaces articulate the relationship between Speaking of polarities – inside/outside, private/public and
inside and outside in terms of time, programme and stasis/flow – provokes the understanding of architecture
juxtapositions. Reciprocal relationships between different as a series of contradictions, oppositions or conflicts. The
spatial entities, therefore, are articulated through events or existence of such polarities does not require choosing
human actions that render tangible this relationship. Venturi one over the other; rather, architecture has to oscillate
elaborated this event as the convergence of both exterior between these poles, accelerating their mutual reciprocity,
and interior forces of use and space33 and as the record of maximising their conflicting status or even signifying their
spatial overlaps. On the scale of an individual site a building indifference toward each other. Fixity of action and stasis
can include spaces within spaces and enclosures within are in fact manifestations of disjunction of sequence of
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Enmeshed horizons

both events and spaces, a condition identified by Thom In Venturi’s view, the continuity presented in Renaissance
Mayne as characterising the contemporary city: ‘the architecture had taken a formal rather than a compositional
physical manifestation of these destabilizing forces is mode, as far as space was concerned. The continuity of
that our contemporary cities are no longer identifiable mouldings, cornices, ornaments and pilasters in scale as
as entities. A coherency of place (order) is lost as is the well as material – found in churches and cathedrals – from
perceptibility of an edge or boundary.’ Making manifest inside to the outside, signalled the notion of flow. 36 A similar
the latent order addresses the morphology of a place, sort of contemporary compositional and tectonic continuity
ensuring its continued coherency. is found in Eisenman’s Aronoff Centre for Arts (1996; see
Chapters 3 and 4; Figure 5.4). Referring to plate tectonics,

Figure 5.4 Peter Eisenman. The Aronoff Centre for the Arts,
University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio: the tectonic, ornamental
continuation.
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Enmeshed horizons

to drifting, rocking and pulsing, Eisenman envisaged utilitarian, while an architecture determined by the need for
this building as ‘nature systemic, systematic, rhythmical, symbol-milieu ... monumental.’40 In Graves’ view, the crisis of
dynamic – and hence inherently decorative or ornamental’. the Modern movement was not only a historic one but also
37

one of maintaining the cultural continuum.41 The formal,

The notion of flow and continuity expressed by the early picturesque historiography of the postmodern movement,
Modern movement was often more passionately proclaimed however, entrapped itself in the futility of the recovery of
than manifested by its protagonists. Apart from Wright’s the historical image, disjoining architecture from its role in
Prairie Style houses and those designed by Loos, the early the present and the future: ‘[w]e cannot rely on any kind
Modern works contemplated especially by Le Corbusier of convention’, Rykwert once emphasised, ‘the world of
and Mies van der Rohe engendered disjunction rather than tangible ‘form’ has to be learnt anew’.42
continuity. In spite of developing significant architectural
vocabularies, their buildings remained autonomous – Eisenman’s work of the 1980s aimed to distinguish itself
formally, spatially and culturally, emanating stasis, not from postmodern conventions by employing strategies
flow. The claimed flow between inside and outside, by of artificial recovery (see Chapter 1). Tschumi echoed
substituting the conventional solid walls for window walls, Eisenman’s sentiments for retrieving the fictional
for example, remained imperfect solutions – products of archaeology of a site when he asserted that ‘architectural
an over-simplistic understanding of spatial continuity. At sequences do not mean only the reality of actual buildings,
the Glass House of Philip Johnson and at Mies’ Barcelona or the symbolic reality of their functions. An implied
Pavilion, the move creating a utilitarian core that supposedly narrative is always there, whether of method, use, or form.’43
accelerated the sense of openness and transition between At Eisenman’s Wexner Centre, for example, ideas of flow
the living spaces and the outside was ineffectual, as the and sequence take on complex articulation through the
glass curtain became an inactive accent within dominant scaffold and grids, which explores the potential of the
openness. 38 Aldo van Eyck called it the modern ‘sicknesses’ chora as liminal space. Such articulation not only hinges
of spatial continuity;39 to him the transition between inside on the formal, compositional and aesthetic considerations,
and outside should be articulated through well-defined but also on ensuring cultural accord. The former can be
in-between configurations that should not imply continual considered as the basis for the latter, or in other words
open sequences and endless postponements of progression as a tool to achieve cultural continuity. The solutions are
between inside and outside. While largely remaining object often characterised by a fractured nature and fragmentary
buildings, Le Corbusier’s post-Second World War works in quality that provide a perpetual unfinished property to the
India exhibit a critical understanding of both spatial and projects.44 This we discuss later with regard to Le Corbusier’s
historical continuity, anticipating well in advance significant Mill Owners’ Association building in Ahmedabad, India.
strands of postmodern thinking.
In constant search of new and redemptive forms,
In reaction to Modernist disjunction, postmodernism contemporary architecture, represented by a new avant-
represented by its writer-architects – Aldo Rossi, Robert garde, not only adopted the trends illustrated above but
Venturi, Michael Graves and others – envisaged the recovery reviewed, re-envisaged and reproduced them laced with
of historical continuity in a picturesque solution. Already the influence of both linguistics and the fine arts – painting
Norberg-Schulz had called for an architecture that was and sculpture, in the main. These architects have employed
interpreted through two major aspects: ‘An architecture the phenomenon of fragmentation, once so emphatically
which is determined by the need for physical milieu ... championed by the Cubists, as a countermeasure to
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remedy the disjunction engendered through modernism constant interaction between the inside and the outside
and postmodernism. Zaha Hadid, a key member of this would greatly impact on both the formal language of
group, once claimed that the task of contemporary architecture, as well as on its experience.
architecture is to discover the territories of the Modern
movement that have not yet been discovered.45 However, The defining horizon
what precisely this discovery might entail has remained
unclear. Grassi is correct in suggesting that ‘for architecture A simple example of an architectural device aiding spatial
today to enter, in a real sense, into conflict with the cultural reciprocity is the Venetian window type, as Norberg Schulz
superstructure according to which it is judged, it must be describes, usually located on the corners of a room, which
unambiguous, to the point of didacticism, and not vague makes visible the water reflections of the canals against the
or indistinct’.46 Much of their work, conceived through walls.52 There, the distinction between inside and outside
highly sophisticated drawings, paintings and ambiguous was not dismantled; rather, the condition was reinforced
diagrams, have created an autonomous world offering through the introduction of window walls, projecting slabs,
few means of interpretation into real buildings, other than cantilevers, transparencies and stratifications, making the
a literal translation. As Eisenman’s claim that architecture positioning of the window an implicit response to a specific
does not solve problems, architecture creates problems47 exterior circumstance. The ‘destroyed box’ of Wright was
would suggest, this new avant-garde appear to have set among the earliest Modern manifestations of bringing the
themselves the task of solving false problems.48 Admittedly, natural environment in. Between the Venetian window,
the objective of the architectural endeavour is not to solve Wright’s destroyed box and the window walls of Mies, the
all of humanity’s problems, as Rykwert once observed,49 reciprocity between the inside and the outside exhibited
but equally its mission is not to plunge into a solipsistic diverse relationships. These varied from an expression
exercise in representation. of formal openness toward the outside, to much more
carefully constructed – and deeper – manifestations of
Libeskind suggested that his work ‘in search of architecture welcoming the outside atmosphere, ushering the distinct
has discovered … no constant form and no universal sense of place into the inside.
type.… Architecture is neither on the inside nor the outside.
It is not a given nor a physical fact.’50 The contemporary
avant-garde’s largely unsubstantiated rhetorical and, at
best, theoretical claims of continuity have in reality made
their architecture manifest disjunction and fragmentation
instead of flow and continuity. Such approaches have
given rise to the shredded, fragmented body of Gehry’s Jay
Pritzker Pavilion (2004) at the Millennium Park in Chicago
or Coop Himmelblau’s Falkestrasse in Vienna (1988) that are
made up of ‘lifeless forms bringing together fragmentary
body parts in a kind of anatomical Lego game’ (Figure 5.5).51
The suggestion is not to impose any universal type but a
sensitive situational elaboration, in which the site and the
building present significant opportunities of alignment Figure 5.5 Frank Gehry. Jay Pritzker Pavilion, Chicago, Illinois: the
with both context and culture. A method that addresses the sculptural and fragmented structure of the pavilion.
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Enmeshed horizons

At Alvaro Siza’s Galician Centre for Contemporary Arts concrete boundaries, without identity of its own. It is a
in Santiago de Compostela, spatial reciprocity has been recipient, collective space, which takes from the outside
given substantial manifestation. An implicit, perspectival to preserve the identity of inner spaces. The porosity and
relationship between the museum, its interiors and its permeability of boundaries – building envelope, property
surrounding urban landscape – especially with the medieval boundary, immediate context and regional context –
cathedral, underpins the design.53 Through an inverted define sequences of events – of being and becoming – that
window created by the wedge-shaped alignment of the characterise and make perceptible interior and exterior
external walls, the museum draws within it the presence spaces through differing scales of concretisation. The
of the cathedral. By responding to adjacent topographical location of choric space is always reliant on the position
features through the alignment of walls and boundaries of of observer/perceiver – all placed, in turn, within the
the surroundings with those of the building, the internal encompassing physical and cultural topography. Thus, ‘The
spatial arrangement acknowledges the outside, granting consequence of these more concrete continuities between
the museum a unique experience from inside-out and vice the interiors and their landscape setting’, as Leatherbarrow
versa. Framed within the hollowed-out sculptural entrance elaborated, ‘was that architectural design was discovered
porch, the ramp and the staircase provide access into the to be an art of articulating topography, its continuities,
building, extending in the stratigraphy of the surrounding reciprocities, and displacements.’54
site and the approaches formed by pathways and steps. A
further realignment inside the gallery congeals ramps and Architecture forms a small part of this embracing
staircases into a formal axis of movement. topography. Two interdependent aspects of movement
could be envisaged: first, the flow of landscape – that of
From the interior space of the Galician Centre to the site – in its wider vicinity; and second, the flow of bodies as
urban space of the city, thresholds (choric spaces) objects in the landscape. Since the somatic experience of
mark transitions. These thresholds help distinguish space is guided and conceived by the sequences of spaces
yet interrelate the different events of architecture and and enclosures through the dimension of time, topographic
history in the city. For Plato, chora is a strange condition horizons or its perceived extents define this movement or
of being or transitional construct. It is a space without flow. A building’s context is the horizon of the building’s

Figure 5.6 The chora and the defining horizon – topography (after
xxxx).
114 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
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exterior, which is the horizon of the building, which in turn inside we are inhabitants, whereas on the outside we are
again is the horizon of the interiors (Figure 5.6). spectators. On the outside we are more open to changes
informed by a broader consciousness of what surrounds
The role of the in-between chora as a reconciliatory us. Due to the implied opposition between the particular
medium for the meeting of object and field is central to (inside) and the general (outside), architecture manifests
expressing the cultural topography and for strengthening different experiences and thereby suggests differing
the experience of place and identity. As already discussed intellectual orientations toward the comprehension
(see Chapter 4), at the Wexner Centre the architecture of the world. Such convictions have unfortunately led
meets diverse and distant horizons – the ‘prairies’ and the many designers to split sharply and radically their design
‘Jeffersonian grid’, for example – through the landscaping approaches between the inside and the outside, instead
of its forecourt (Figure 5.7).55 The presence of the regional of treating these as co-dependent entities. This, in turn,
plantation, the grid and the pathways make simultaneous has not only created artificial disciplinary divisions such as
references to the immediate and the more distant horizons. architecture and landscape architecture, it has also given rise
How materiality in architecture could make references to much divided thinking characterising architecture either
to both local and regional horizons will be discussed in as art or as an exercise in narrow functionalism.56
Chapter 6.
Certain Modern movement architects followed such
In architecture, where the spatial experience of our bodies assumptions, developing their architecture in relative
entails moving from our personal space to the collective detachment following the dictum ‘from within to without’,
and vice versa, a key consideration in place-making. On the privileging use, ergonomics and instrumental spatiality,

Figure 5.7 Peter Eisenman. The Wexner Centre for the Visual Arts,
Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio: north-east forecourt (chora),
a spatial experience referring to the prairie landscape.
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Enmeshed horizons

on the one hand, and form and aesthetic appearance, on

the other. This resulted in added emphasis on Cartesian
abstraction detaching architecture from the body,
matter and feeling.57 Decades later the postmodernists
tried to fix this by referring to the outside solely through
representational means, resulting in further detachment.
The contemporary experimentations emphasising
formal play and further – largely solipsistic – conceptual
abstraction has exacerbated the gap between the physical
and the sensual essence of architecture.58 Also, the sensual
relationship between body and building, established at the Figure 5.8 Frank L. Wright. Robie House, Chicago, Illinois: the inside-
onset of the design process through the contact between out/outside-in yard.
the hand and the pencil, has been replaced by digital means
of production. The contemporary architects are, as Frascari senses. While the Modern machine culture, he observed,
laments, ‘happily and gruesomely clicking on the mouse at was giving people comfortable lives within their homes
their workstations, these designers seek cockatrices, and – technologically, the price paid for this was a certain
produce behemoths’.59 The detachment could be attributed disharmony.62 The inside-out facilitates
to the anxiety among many architects to objectify their
subjective and intuitive views into concretised resolution as the emergence of what is hidden or obscured …
soon as they have emerged. it speaks of individual and collective experience
because the process itself is the subject, because it
When Wright destroyed the box at Robie House (Figure includes people as well as time and space and place
5.8), it was done with the intention of inviting inwards the … it is tension because it is a search for balance
outside environment, both physically and perceptually. This among resources, needs, and purposes, because it is
was necessary to bring the light inside, engage materially more than a participatory event: it is the struggle of
with the surroundings, and to render tangible – by engaging new forms becoming manifest.63
all human senses – the spatial and material experiences
between body and building. ‘No concept of interior space By contrast, the outside-in is a collective effort, gathering
alone’, as Hoffmann wrote, ‘could have resulted in such a the exterior forces that broaden the cosmic understandings
transition, as Wright hinted when he wrote of the organic of our consciousness. Aalto’s Pension Institute in Helsinki,
relation between exterior and interior. To an important Asplund’s Royal Chancellery in Stockholm and Stirling’s Civic
extent the Robie house is shaped from the outside in.’60 The Centre Competition for Derby, are examples of this outside-
poetic progression from outside inwards was described by in approach.
Edgar Tafel when he visited the site with Mies van der Rohe
and Wright: ‘he had planned the visitor’s progression … a Charged fragments: reciprocity in Le Corbusier’s Mill
whole architectural sequence, one event after another’.61 Owners’ Association, Ahmedabad

Aalto possessed a similar sensitivity towards achieving Michel Jeanneret had suggested that the Renaissance
conjunction between outside and inside through space, was guided by a perpetual state of becoming, in
materiality and especially through engagement of the which notions of the unfinished constituted a cultural
116 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
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Figure 5.9 Le Corbusier. The Mill Owners’ Association Building,

Ahmedabad: facade.

condition for reinvention and rediscovery.64 Such a Corbusier’s sketches during his Indian visits were complex
cultural phenomenon has important implications far fragments recording hitherto unencountered experiences,
exceeding the particular worldview of the Renaissance, yet their incompleteness was replete with possibilities
as a reading of Le Corbusier’s Mill Owners’ Association of connections. The extreme fragmented nature of his
building in Ahmedabad, India will aim to argue (Figure 5.9). text entries, with suggestive connections codified in
Incomplete fragments were instrumental in the creation of mathematical symbols (e.g. +, –, =), and the occasional
a fused but porous whole, suggesting a strong reciprocity underlined emphasis on phrases and words, created a
between the building fragments, its immediate site and multi-planar Cubist text, simultaneously finite and prosaic
wider cultural topography. yet evocative and poetic, liberating space from the confines
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Enmeshed horizons

of stagnant words,65 making it difficult not to misread the

most prosaic of entries as poetic text.66 Of particular interest
is the manner in which Le Corbusier strove assiduously
to reconcile the quasi-mythical with the mathematically
charged fragments to arrive at a unique encompassing
poetic whole, as if the latter was the result of a mysterious
alchemical transformation.67

Equally engaging was his treatment of the architectural

‘image’ appropriate for the newly independent country,
where he sought to embody the ambition of the future
in the ‘incomplete’. While arguably such a conception
emerged out of an enduring presence in his mind of the
Acropolis and the Indian ruins, a crucial distinction lay in the
fact that the idea underpinned architectural evocations for
a future, perhaps affirming Vladimir Nabokov’s view that
‘the future is but the obsolete in reverse’.68 Together with
the conscious employment of fragments, his Ahmedabad
projects made use of the conception of the ruin as a
powerful expression of a new future, created by collapsing
and fusing the past and the future into a single space of
a seemingly entropy-defying present.69 By disrupting our
longing for completeness, the incomplete holds within itself
both an enhanced indication of what it could become, a
result of our mind’s projective cast into the future, as well as
a sense that it has always been.

Porosity

The Ahmedabad projects express diverse notions of the

ruin. The brise soleil appears to have its early manifestation
– so it has been suggested – in the unfulfilled Carthage
project of 1928.70 Paradoxically, it is in his observation of
life of the Indian poor that we detect its other origin, in an

Figure 5.10 The Mill Owners’ Association: plans (after Global

Architecture 37); (a) entrance level: (1) Ramp, (2) entrance hall, (3)
reception, (4) president’s office, (5) vice president’s room, (6) waiting
area, (7) sub-committee room, (8) meeting room, (9) managing
committee room, (10) office, (11) toilets. (b) Upper level: (1) meeting
room, (2) cloakroom, (3) toilets, (4) lobby.
118 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
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Figure 5.11 The Mill Owners’ Association: entrance ramp and

staircase.
artefact of everyday use nearing obsolescence: the tattered Mill Owners’ and Sodhan House are overt embodiments
curtain. It provided the basis for the eight vibrant perforated of this idea of the brise soleil as ruin, both exploring
tapestries of the High Court in Chandigarh (see Chapter 2), further how this condition weaves into, expands or even
as well as the brise soleil in Ahmedabad. The connection interrupts the day-to-day inhabitation of these buildings.
– at least in Le Corbusier’s mind – between the brise soleil At Mill Owners’ (Figures 5.10–5.13) the facade breaks down
and the fragile piece of fabric offering ‘an Indian [brand – as hewn-out mass from the building’s cuboid form is
of] Héraclite comfort’,71 points to the essentially ‘extra- displaced outside – to create a rusticated, cavernous zone
architectural’ nature of the screen and parallels the origin of transition, made even more rugged through the strong
of Indian architecture itself, in the rock-cut Buddhist cave Ahmedabad sun. It recalls the dark hollow beaconing of
temples of western India – in which Lutyens failed to find elaborate entrances of rock-cut cave temples; at Karle, for
any architectural merit at all. example, nature and the essentially incomplete character
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Enmeshed horizons

of human intervention overlap, fused further by the play of suggest the emergence of a choric space of event, where
light, a quality the early romantic etchings so appropriately the natural landscape kept at bay by the expanding city is
captured.72 Equally Romantic is Le Corbusier’s Mill Owners’, drawn into dialogue with the materiality of the building.
for not only does his screen anticipate a gradual reclamation
by nature (through the growth of vegetation within the Beyond, a vertical concrete plane deliberately obstructs
brise soleil plant beds), but it itself displays the paradoxical direct view by rising through the double-height entrance
qualities of fragility, but also depth and density (Figures 5.14 space, with a rectilinear aperture positioned along the
and 5.15). Considering the building outside-in, the formal centre line of the ramp that leads up to the entrance, forcing
ambiguity of the building’s membrane and vegetation a visitor to re-orient oneself to access the central space.

Figure 5.12–5.13 Mill Owners’ Association: the breakdown of facade

as ‘hewn-out’ mass from the building’s cuboid form is displaced
outside to form a staircase.
120 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
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Figures 5.14–5.15 The Mill Owners’ Association: deep planters within

the brise soleil and the gradual reclamation by nature of the rear
facade.

The orthogonal geometry set up by the facade extends argue plays a key role in a topographic fabrication that
inwards, flanking this space, which overlooks the river attempts to reconcile the opposition of nature and the man-
from an elevation. Another screen – a much shallower and made. Congealed within the porosity of the facades are
more delicate one – frames the view of the River Sabarmati diverse cultural horizons separated in time and space.
(Figures 5.16 and 5.17). Together with what Frampton
called the upper level ‘minstrels gallery’,73 the space recalls Fragments
Kailasha, Cave XVI in Ellora, a representation of the celestial
abode of Lord Shiva. In being lifted up the ramp and drawn The treatment of this theme of the ‘inhabited ruin’ extends
into the central space one is transformed into an object inwards through the spatial organisation. The central space
of ritual offering to the river, a holy rite practised on the consists of a series of curvilinear fragments or situated
banks of Indian rivers. To understand how precisely the moments, orchestrated around the orthogonal presence
redemptive space functions, one has to look into the role of a monolithic lift core. The three curvilinear elements are
played by the ramp and the vertical plane, which we would the reception desk, the table in the waiting area and, finally,
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Enmeshed horizons

(vagina) implicit in the phallic representation of Lord

Śiva.74 That the ‘churning rod’ was a conscious conception
is clear from its projection above the roof plane; this axis
mundi appears to be held in place by the ground (which
also includes the ground floor, below the main entrance
space, invisible and subordinated through its ‘servant’
programme). At roof level, a curious juxtaposition of
the extended column and the projected incline of the
conference hall roof also lend themselves to a more prosaic
reading of this central feature: that of a fragment of a giant
machine – perhaps wheels of a water mill or a spindle
associated with the textile industry, the raison d’être for the
Mill Owners’ – positioned carefully in proximity to the river
(Figure 5.19).75 While this device and the floor plans indicate
Le Corbusier’s continued fascination with interiors as
discreet arrangement of equipment,76 given his fascination
with the rivers of India and notions of purity and sanctity,77
will have been employed with a purificatory intent, in
the manner that Lord Śiva – neelakantha, the one with a
blue throat – drank the venom to clarify the nectar. At Mill
Owners’ we are therefore presented with both a prosaic
icon of productivity that lay at the heart of the city’s wealth
creation and a profound creative allusion, and the results
(or products) of such actions. The cusped toilets, therefore,
could be seen to be the key embryonic implantation
instigating the reversal of obsolescence, contributing to the
Indian project of renovatio.

the interlocking curved walls holding between them the

male and female toilets – a delicate, perhaps precarious
embryonic adhesion to the voluptuous female body of
the conference hall (Figure 5.18; see Figure 5.10). While
the tables designed in the manner of the roof cut-outs are
indeed microcosmic representations, the male–female
union is indicative of two crucial mytho-religious themes:
the creation myths relating to the churning (manthana)
of the eternal sea that brought forth the nectar using
the mythical serpents as the churning chord, and the
penetrative union of the linga (phallus) and the jyoni
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Figures 5.16–5.17 The Mill Owners’ Association: framed view of the

Sabarmati River through the rear facade.

Reciprocal construction of site one uninterrupted fluid flow, a theme that also features in
his treatment of the water channel in Sodhan House, which
The mediating role of the vertical plane positioned at the runs down from the roof in conjunction with a staircase,
entrance is further articulated by the aperture set within it, echoing the relationship between these two elements at the
with its projected ledge focusing down the ramp (Figure Mill Owners’. The building’s obsolescence is perpetuated
5.20). Through this ingenious device the ritual passage turns by a questioning – perhaps even subversive – employment
back on itself to re-orient away from the river, towards the of programme, which expands its monumentality. The
city. The redemptive role of the central space with its mytho- prominent positioning of the toilets cusped between
religiously charged fragments is completed by the implied the erotic curvatures within the main space interrogates
issuing forth of the nectar through this ‘spout’, embedded the spatial hierarchy of served and servant spaces. To an
within which is the reconciled duality of purity and impurity extent, the move renders the surrounding programme
(of water). Only now can one comprehend the pivotal role of obsolete, flushed out, as it were, with the flow. Significantly,
his recordings of the ‘water mill’ of Amritsar or the aerial view in the unbuilt site plan proposal the relationship between
of the sloping track for drawing water.78 It has been argued orthogonal and curvilinear elements found inside the
how the interior of the building, with its stone-faced walls, building was reversed in the exterior landscape (Figure 5.21).
stands in contrast to the bold ruggedness of the exterior Within the building, curvilinear elements are held in place
concrete.79 The hand-finished paving slabs on the ramp, as by an orthogonal grid arrangement; this is reversed in the
well as the paving on the ground beyond, pick up the order landscape proposal, where diagonally placed orthogonal
of the interior stone facing and appear to bring it down in servant quarters and guard houses – with curvilinear
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Enmeshed horizons

its site at the Mill Owners’, employing and manipulating

a simple, instrumental opposition, Le Corbusier not only
grounds the building within its site but also constructs a
site out of virgin development by firmly establishing its
relationship as a fragment to a wider whole. The building’s
ability to bring together – yet question – diverse cultural
horizons, is remarkable.

Conclusion: the residual mission of site

Intimacy versus formality, and subjective versus objective,

are driving forces of human innovation. Without the
subjectivity (thinking from inside) it would have been a
world of banal manifestations and repetitive production.
Without the objectivity (thinking from outside), on
the other hand, this world would be a chaotic place
of personal statements and self-centric ideologies.
Architecture has the ability to render visible and make
experiential all such dialectics. This chapter began with
the suggestion that a legitimate architectural experience
of space is subject to a culturally conditioned bodily
understanding of inside and outside.

The site was seen as a set of hierarchical and sequential

events and spaces – the interior, the building, the exterior

Figure 5.18 The Mill Owners’ Association: interlocking curved walls

housing the toilets.

adhesions similar to the Sodhan House servants’ quarters

– are contained within a pronounced curvilinear wall. Le
Corbusier’s employment of curvilinear and orthogonal
orders to represent nature–culture or female–male is well Figure 5.19 The Mill Owners’ Association: roof detail with free-
known. In employing reciprocity between the building and standing column and conference room roof.
124 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
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Figure 5.20 The Mill Owners’ Association: free-standing plane at the

entrance with inset aperture and ‘spout’.

Figure 5.21 The Mill Owners’ Association: site plan (after Global
Architecture 37).
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Enmeshed horizons

and the context – defined by the choric condition of the

ambiguous in-between that is simultaneously defining and
porous. It has the ability to transform the ideal aspects of
space into the tangible. Each event is defined by the horizon
of the former one in a way that it contributes to hierarchical
overlaps and movements between an ‘inside’ and its
‘context’. Each horizon contains a terrain – an expansive
cultural topography encompassing all human endeavour,
overlapping with spatial experience. Topography is thus
critical to the reciprocity between inside and outside –
between those sequential events and experiences. Unifying
the human experience of architectural space of inside and
outside is an exercise in privileging the spatial experience
of the architectural object by keeping the sense of place at
its heart as the true generator. Pulling the inside out and
bringing the outside in is not only a matter of installing
window-walls that accelerate the sense of flow and visibility
between them. It is a matter of simultaneously articulating
boundaries between them, the in-between chora, an event
that congeals our intimate, particular experiences, as well
as our cosmic understanding. The positive-fragmentary
quality of a site emerges from such profound collaboration
between defining topographies and choric spaces.
126 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
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Notes 19 Ibid., p.12.

1 Zevi, B., Architecture as Space, New York: Horizon, 1957, p. 51. 20 Ibid., p. 13.
2 Morson, G. & Emerson, C., Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics, 21 Forty, op. cit., p. 258.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990, p. 55.
22 Grosz, E., Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real
3 Leatherbarrow, D. Uncommon Ground: Architecture, Technology, Space, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001, p. 32.
and Topography, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p. 170.
23 Ibid., p. 90.
4 Tschumi, B., Event-Cities 3, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004, p. 11.
24 Venturi, R., Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, New
5 Forty, A., Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture, York: Museum of Modern Art, 1966 (1977 reprint), p. 86.
London: Thames & Hudson, 2000, p. 258.
25 Norberg-Schulz, C. (Nasso, C. & Parini, S., eds; Shugaar, A., trans.)
6 For spatiality, see Leatherbarrow, D., Architecture Oriented Architecture: Presence, Language and Place, Milan: Skira, 2000, p.
Otherwise, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009, p. 243. 317.
7 Dovey, K. Framing Places: Mediating Power in Built Form, New York: 26 Burns, C. & Kahn, A., ‘Introduction’, in Burns, C. & Kahn, A. (eds),
Routledge, 1999, p. 39. Site Matters: Design Concepts, Histories and Strategies, New York
and Abingdon: Routledge, 2005, p. xxiii.
8 Zevi, op. cit., p. 29.
27 Tschumi, Event-Cities 3, p. 14.
9 Holl, S., ‘Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of
Architecture’, in Holl, S., Pallasmaa, J. & Pérez Gómez, A., A+U: 28 Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction, p. 153.
Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture, San
Francisco, CA: William Stout Publishers, 2007, p. 41. 29 Venturi, op. cit., p. 80.

10 Zevi, op. cit., p. 214. 30 Holl, citing Merleau-Ponty, ‘Questions of Perception’, p. 45.

11 Tschumi, B., Architecture and Disjunction, Cambridge, MA: MIT 31 See, for example, Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction, p. 162.
Press, 2004, p. 48. 32 Franck, K. & Lepori, B., Architecture from the Inside Out: From
12 Onians, J., ‘Greek Temple and Greek Brain’, in Dodds, G. & the Body, the Senses, the Site, and the Community, London: Wiley
Tavernor, R. (eds), Body and Building: Essays on the Changing Academy, 2007, p. 48.
Relationship of Body and Architecture, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 33 Venturi, op. cit., p. 86.
2002, p. 45.
34 Grosz, op. cit., p. 68.
13 Zevi, op. cit., p. 214.
35 Mayne, T., ‘Connected Isolation’, in Jencks, C. & Kropf, K. (eds),
14 Ibid. Theories and Manifestoes of Contemporary Architecture (second
15 Rasmussen, E., Experiencing Architecture, London: Chapman & edition), London: Wiley Academy, 2006, p. 301.
Hall, 1959, p. 48. 36 Venturi, op. cit., p. 70.
16 Pérez Gómez, A., ‘The Space of Architecture: Meaning as 37 Cobb, H., ‘A Note on the Criminology of Ornament: From Sullivan
Presence and Representation’, in Holl, S., Pallasmaa, J. & Pérez to Eisenman’, in Davidson, C., Eleven Authors in Search of a
Gómez, A., A+U: Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Building, New York: Monacelli Press, 1996, p. 97.
Architecture, San Francisco, CA: William Stout Publishers, 2007, p.
13. 38 Venturi, op. cit., p. 82.

17 Ibid. 39 Ibid., p.80.

18 Ibid. 40 Norberg-Schulz, C., Intentions in Architecture, Cambridge, MA:

MIT Press, 1965, p. 185.
 127

Enmeshed horizons

41 Graves, M., ‘A Case for Figurative Architecture’, in Jencks, C. 58 Pallasmaa, J., ‘An Architecture of the Seven Senses’, in Holl, S.,
& Kropf, K. (eds), Theories and Manifestoes of Contemporary Pallasmaa, J. & Pérez Gómez, A., A+U: Questions of Perception:
Architecture (second edition), London: Wiley Academy, 2006, p. Phenomenology of Architecture, San Francisco, CA: William Stout
93. Publishers, 2007, p. 29.

42 Rykwert, J., ‘Ornament is no Crime’, in Jencks, C. & Kropf, K. (eds), 59 Frascari, op. cit., p. 259.
Theories and Manifestoes of Contemporary Architecture (second
60 Hoffmann, D., Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House: The Illustrated
edition), London: Wiley Academy, 2006, p. 65.
Story of an Architectural Masterpiece, New York: Dover
43 Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction, 1996, p. 163. Publications, 1984, p. 44.

44 Mayne, op. cit., p. 302. 61 Ibid.

45 Hadid, Z., ‘The Eighty-Nine Degrees’, in Jencks, C. & Kropf, K. 62 Schildt, G., Alvar Aalto in His Own Words, New York: Rizzoli, 1998,
(eds), Theories and Manifestoes of Contemporary Architecture p. 150.
(second edition), London: Wiley Academy, 2006, p. 280.
63 Franck & Lepori, op. cit., pp. 41–44.
46 Grassi, G., ‘Avant-Garde and Continuity’, in Hays, M. (ed.),
64 Jeanneret, M., Perpetual Motion: Transforming Shapes in
Oppositions Reader, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998,
the Renaissance from da Vinci to Montaigne, Baltimore, MA:
p. 393.
John Hopkins University Press, 2001, cited in Temple, N.
47 Eisenman, P., Lecture at the Aronoff Centre for the Arts, & Bandyopadhyay, S., ‘Contemplating the Unfinished’, in
University of Cincinnati on the tenth anniversary of its Frascari, M., Hale, J. & Starkey, B. (eds), From Models to Drawings:
inauguration, 2006. Imagination and Representation in Architecture, London:
Routledge, 2007, p. 110.
48 Grassi, op. cit., p. 392.
65 See, for example, Le Corbusier, Le Corbusier Sketchbooks, London:
49 Rykwert, J., ‘The Necessity of Artifice’, in Rykwert, J., The Necessity
Thames & Hudson, 1981–2, Sketchbook F27, p. 895.
of Artifice, London: Academy Editions, 1982, p. 58.
66 See, for example, ibid., a programme brief in Sketchbook F25, p.
50 Libeskind, D. ‘Unoriginal Signs’, in Jencks, C. & Kropf, K. (eds),
806.
Theories and Manifestoes of Contemporary Architecture (second
edition), London: Wiley Academy, 2006, p. 281. 67 See, for example, ibid., Sketchbook F24, p. 700; also E23, p. 694
and F24, p. 756.
51 Frascari, M., ‘A Tradition of Architectural Figures: A Search for Vita
Beata’, in Dodds, G. & Tavernor, R. (eds), Body and Building: Essays 68 Flam, J. (ed.), Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, Berkeley,
on the Changing Relationship of Body and Architecture, Cambridge, CA: University of California, 1996, p. 11.
MA: MIT Press, 2002, p. 259.
69 Ibid., pp. 10–23, 301–309.
52 Norberg-Schulz, Architecture: Presence, Language and Place, p.
70 Frampton, K., ‘Le Corbusier and the Dialectical Imagination’,
163.
Global Architecture 37, 1975, pp. 2–5.
53 Temple, N., Disclosing Horizons: Architecture, Perspective, and
71 Le Corbusier, op. cit., Sketchbook: E18, p. 359.
Redemptive Space, London and New York: Routledge, 2007, pp.
150–159. 72 See, for example, Ferguson, J. (Burgess, J. & Spiers, R., eds),
History of Indian and Eastern Architecture 1, Delhi: Munshiram
54 Leatherbarrow, Uncommon Ground, p. 176.
Monoharlal, 1876 (second Indian edition, 1972), p. 144 (fig. 69).
55 See Leatherbarrow, Topographical Stories, pp. 238–239.
73 Frampton, op. cit., p. 4.
56 Franck & Lepori, op. cit., p. 23.
74 For an indication of his awareness, see Le Corbusier, op. cit.,
57 Ibid., p. 154. Sketchbook J36, p. 298.
128 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
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75 Ibid., Sketchbook F24, p. 756.

76 Leatherbarrow, Architecture Oriented Otherwise, p. 136.

77 Le Corbusier, op. cit., Sketchbook E23 p. 26; J35, p. 222; J37, pp.
366, 368.

78 Ibid., Sketchbook: H30, p. 1056 and E18, p. 346.

79 Frampton, op. cit., p. 4.

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Materiality and the
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6 Materiality
and the culture
of place
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 131
Materiality and the
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The acknowledgment of new cultural pressures ideogram, nor by self-referential compositions. For, if design
and new materials was not to put an end to the is seen as that ingenuous process of transformation that
transmission of past practices but to serve as the conjoins anthropological demands (i.e. use, inhabitation,
provocation for their renewal and redefinition. history, culture and societal demands) with the site,
the relation between past and present could hardly be
David Leatherbarrow1 regarded as being static. Instead, reconciling the conflicting
memories of the pre-existing and the aspirations of the
Introduction new by exploiting to the fullest the building’s mediatory
role is the tool to achieve that resistance. Thus, discussion
During the past few years, especially but not exceptionally in this chapter suggests that places are places before and
within the pedagogic environment, the term materiality after the process of remaking the site has taken place
has gained prominence in architectural discourse and and the advent of the building; what matters are the
praxis. One can draw parallels between the performance perceptual qualities of the material intervention in ensuring
of space, spaces and spatiality, on the one hand, and anthropological and cultural continuity. Departure from
material, materials and materiality, on the other. Space and meaningful materialisation in architectural practice today
material are both ‘conceptual and universal’, which can be could be attributed to a number of reasons. Today, it is
distinguished from spaces and materials, which are ‘at once not often that material selection takes into account site-
particular and factual, known directly and immediately specific references, especially within a rapidly globalising
as the fabric and framework of our lives’.2 However, scene of architectural practice, which has removed much
like spatiality, materiality refers ‘not to the phenomena of the cultural considerations of place. It has also widened
themselves but to one’s experience and sense of them’. 3 the chasm between occupants and buildings, on the one
The employment of materials suggests decision-making; hand, and sites and their wider built and natural context,
considerations such as physical properties, availability, on the other. The consequent treatment of architecture as
aesthetics, environment and comfort, can be the basis for autonomous object has eclipsed the capacities of elements
material selection. Materiality, thus, mediates between the such as the building envelope to achieve meaningful
conceptual and the concretised nature of architecture; it is dialogue with context.
that which gives material architecture its relevance or makes
it meaningful. In order for the site to become an expressive spatial
experience that implies place identity, it should provoke
An important source of materiality often misunderstood certain responses by means of its materiality that renders
by architects – but especially conservationists and the abstract tangible, for ‘the experience of space is not
planners – is the contextual employment of materials to communicated until the actual mechanical expression has
ensure continuity with its immediate surroundings. Here, rendered material the poetic conception’.4 Looking at site
instrumental thinking has generally prevailed in upholding through different levels of totality is necessary to examine
place identity, emphasising a literal continuity of material its fragmentation (dissociation) versus the defragmentation
use, supported by graphic and scalar analytical and (connectedness) discussed in earlier chapters. Enmeshed
representational methods to demonstrate the building’s experiences considering material transformation between
resistance to the threat of contextual and temporal rupture parts and the whole identify the embracing role of
posed by the process of design. This resistance, however, topography in siting practices. Indeed, discussions on
can neither be achieved by literal continuity of image or the materiality in the nineteenth century have highlighted
132 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
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topography as the substantial source of material selection. strangers, we have limited knowledge of the specificity of
The buildings studied in the following discussion will a place. Equally, as blasé insiders, too frequently exposed
thus be defined by two topographical extensions: the to place specificity, we become nonchalant, detached and
immediate context (locale) and the ultimate context even ignorant actors. The lack of attention to circumstance,
(region). Identifying those totalities without defining therefore, can negatively affect the nature of place in
their boundaries – i.e. those constituent surfaces of site significant ways. Dovey’s view that our experience of place
spatiality that distinguish and separate them – would be ‘marks the beginning and the end of every architectural
pointless. The purpose of introducing the term boundaries and urban design project’,5 i.e. the site is a midway station
into this discussion is to highlight its role in what could be between place and place, is poignant here, a notion
termed material metabolism in relation to the topography discussed in Chapter 4 in terms of projection. Sadly, the void
of a place. Material metabolism possesses the capacity for created through disengagement with place is being filled by
ensuring the site’s continued relevance over time; boundary too many self-referential architectural objects.
considerations bring in the idea of mediation into the
collective material representation. The role of architecture, in many ways, is similar to that of
place; they both crystallise the connection between life and
Place considerations: place between perception a given ambient. Site materialises our interpretation of both
and materialisation place and life. While such interaction was examined spatially
in Chapter 5, where site was defined as a social construct
Materiality in architectural design could be seen as the whose spatial setting addressed the overlap of actions, the
projective relationship between drawing and building, present chapter will discuss aspects of material reciprocity.
between abstract conception and material manifestation; In Heidegger’s view, the imaginative projection of a place
its significance lies in its alternation between eye/drawing involves linking up its material and anthropological aspects
relationship and body/building experience. Though through us, thinking of its qualities, its memorable events,
existing as discrete stages, often separated chronologically people associated with it and even the fictions made about
from each other, the eye/drawing and body/building it.6 Pallasmaa, on the other hand, arguing for the need
relationships highlight the acute interdependency between for a highly attuned sensitivity, has suggested that we
perception and materialisation. regress back into our bodies – to include the skeleton and
the muscles, besides our five senses – to establish a fully
The dematerialisation of the architectural object, originally comprehensible experience of place.7
championed by the Modern movement but enhanced in
the contemporary age of increasing globalisation of the Intervening on-site as a place-making mission suggests
architectural practice – the latter helped by technological linking its parts progressively to a whole that extends
advances in the fabrication of the building envelope – has, beyond the site itself. The ‘identity of figures’, as
however, precipitated a crisis regarding its representational Norberg-Schulz suggests, ‘is not in fact an absolute idea,
content and nature. The clash between the local and the but a manifestation of a way of being open’.8 To retain
global makes our place experience alternate between place specificity, Gunnar Asplund treated each project
familiarity and unfamiliarity. These two terms impact not individually; each had its own specificity and its own way of
only on our perception of place but also on our judgement producing the details.9 More recently, Zumthor’s approach
of it, which affects the form of intervention. Unless trained has paralleled Asplund’s, who has addressed the anchoring
otherwise, as outsiders, acting as unfamiliar actors or of place by suggesting the collecting of memories
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culture of place

and actions linked to it. ‘It is essential to the quality of Frampton suggested, ‘is to mediate the impact of universal
intervention’, he elaborated, ‘that the new building should civilization with elements derived indirectly from the
embrace qualities which can enter into a meaningful peculiarities of a particular place.’14 Tensions of local/global,
dialogue with the existing situation. For if the intervention is immediate/ultimate and so on, entail drawing careful
to find its place, it must make us see what already exists in a attention to their meanings within specific cultural, spatial
new light.’10 The material chosen could potentially influence and material strategies and contexts of their appearance.
both the form as well as the perception of a building; at Because material selection is always defined by context,
the very least, emplacement can impact on a building’s the basis for such selection can be raised to review two
aesthetic qualities.11 conceptions of context: the immediate context – the locale –
and the ultimate context – the region.
The fragment–whole relationship thus raises the possibility
of interaction between the pre-existing and the new, which The immediate context or ‘locale’ is the set of places and
suggests that what already exists is either proclaimed in spaces that directly surround the site and, hence, its impact
the man-made work (i.e. through site and the architectural on site is prompt, instantly drawing in the influence of
object), as evidenced in Zumthor’s architecture, or that this place. The aggregation of ‘locales’ constitutes the second
work fills a gap identified in the surrounding environment.12 category – the ultimate context or region, which extends our
An example of the latter is Richard Meier’s Douglas House perception of context to an even broader territory. That the
in Harbor Springs, Michigan (1973; Figure 6.1), which siting of Douglas House could be considered both within
through its taut, white enclosure simultaneously disrupts an immediate context of a steeply sloping topography and
the uniformity of the natural vegetation of its steeply dense foliage, and as part of the wider landscape of Lake
sloping site, and introduces a device for viewing nature. As Michigan, offers a simple example of the simultaneous
these examples indicate, this is not a call for a conservative, existence of the two contexts.
retrograde idealisation of place circumstance in the sense
of a return to the primitive. Instead, it is a call for avoiding Local materials or the influence of immediate
the dangers of superficiality brought on by interventions context
that address narrow personal architectural predilections,
on the one hand, and the new tendencies towards universal Criteria for material selection, such as their properties,
uniformity posited by globalisation, on the other. Thinking techniques of production and employment, durability,
of material selection in terms of place extension, thus, could availability, and their architectural interest, are all decisive
constitute an important part of a renewed addressing of the factors in architectural materialisation. These considerations
sense of place, identity and interaction. alone, however, could potentially limit the ability of a
material palette to express place identity. The selection
Place extension: immediate context, ultimate of a certain local or non-local material could be subject to
context and material invention wider logistical constraints rather than the appreciation
of the perceptual and anthropological qualities of place.
Ideas of place extension and their impact on site identity Leatherbarrow’s view that ‘it was not always the case that
are embedded in Frampton’s idea of Critical Regionalism,13 all materials could be sent to all places’,15 while highlighting
where architecture simultaneously resists and mediates this obvious problem of material procurement, also alludes
between the local/global pressures on a particular place. to a more important question of whether all materials
‘The fundamental strategy of Critical Regionalism’, should be sent to all places. Materials – their various
134 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
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Figure 6.1 Richard Meier. Douglas House, Harbor

Springs, Michigan: view from Lake Michigan.
 135
Materiality and the
culture of place

qualities and properties – through their employment the Casa. The dominant use of brick at the Casa suggests
over centuries, have acquired specific meanings within modesty with respect to the rich maturity of the travertine
defined contexts, and have therefore evolved as cultural at the Santa.
assets. Familiar materials provide the context for unfamiliar
material importations to exist and vice versa, suggesting Wearing certain tones or colours of a locale could provide
the opportunity for the designer to speak through architecture with the opportunity to present the past in a
materiality. This ability to comment on the human and new light. This would not necessarily mean a detachment
material condition at a given place and time – and at from the contemporary; rather, it could be seen as an
divergent levels of perception – is what removes material attempt at anchoring the new into the history of a place.
employment away from being a mere instrumental act into Jean Philippe Lenclos analyzes the colours he finds that
a deeply perceptual practice. As Rykwert aptly put it, it is constitute a colour palette of the vicinity for his intervention
the architect’s comment on ‘both action and material which in that environment.20 Material and colour theory for the
regulates the surface of the artefact, and the very word city, he contends, ‘has to be seen in this greater context
“comment” in this context robs the architect or planner of and used, where that is possible, for decorating the
any pretence at objectivity, in the sense of neutrality’.16 The city by creating harmony where none may exist’.21 The
rise of architects and practices with signature forms and accord between art and earthwork is vividly apparent,
material palette at their disposal – ready to be deployed in as Leatherbarrow suggests, ‘when colour is used in
any corner of the globe at the first available opportunity construction finishing, for hues made out of local pigments
– unfortunately removes that potential for optimising the will always result in relationships of harmony’.22 Charles
perceptual contribution of materials. Correa’s use of sandstone cladding at both the Jawahar Kala
Kendra and the British Council Headquarters does indicate
Although ‘the high ground of modern architecture was a desire to conform to local architectural and material
commanded by a dematerialized vision of space and time as precedents in Jaipur and Delhi (Figure 6.2). Conforming
the basis for the international style’,17 as Weston contends, to place identity through materials is not necessarily an
the oeuvre of Gunnar Asplund and Wright, beside the post- obstacle for architectonic and structural expressions either;
Second World War work of Neutra, Scarpa, Aalto and Kahn, responding to both the materials and tones found in the
and certain works of Le Corbusier, confirm the continued locale, Michael Rotondi combined inventive architectural
engagement with the inescapable role of materiality form with contextuality at the Architecture and Art Building
in place-making. While the use of typical, entirely local at Prairie View A&M University (Figure 6.3), highlighting
materials in these works would have resulted in ‘buildings of the versatility of the brick as a structural material. As
intrusive banality’,18 the exclusive use of ‘modern’, universal Amelar points out, Rotondi’s retrieval of original and
materials would have equally eliminated the sense of place. authentic structural methods make the brickwork become
Expressing the sense of place through the use of local extraordinary within a contemporary context: ‘Using old-
materials could transcend the banal superficiality resulting fashioned, wire-cut clay bricks, instead of the more artificial-
from their overly familiar use, as Leatherbarrow reminds looking versions that clad the surrounding buildings, RoTo
us. A fragment–whole relationship is strongly present in inventively explored corbelling, displaying a jubilant range
Casa dei Filippini, where Borromini wanted to render visible of possibilities.’23
through its materiality the iconic mother–child relationship
between the Casa and its mother, the Santa.19 This was done Sensitivity to place morphology requires considering its
by introducing travertine from the Santa into the body of genius loci. The later essays of Wright addressed methods
136 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
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Soumyen Bandyopadhyay

who attempted to retrieve the tactile delights of materials

that early modernism had so vehemently shunned. Carlo
Scarpa was also among those who attempted novel poetic
compositional strategies using modern materials like
concrete, steel and glass in contexts where building with
brick and stone had had their traditional place. Through
sensitive contextual derivation, Wright allowed inflection to
occur that retained the whole but avoided literal imitation.
At Taliesin West he had collected rocks from the immediate
vicinity of the site, setting those in concrete, technologically
transforming the material, ‘tattooing’ the building with
the surrounding topography in the process. Several stone
walls and a central stone fireplace, combined with careful
placement of local rocks and boulders, form a close link with

Figure 6.2 Charles Correa. British Council Headquarters, Delhi:

front facade detail showing red sandstone cladding.

that envisioned the employment of modern materials at

different places, suggesting that their widened significance
lay in expanded visionary insights into how those
materials could be treated and transformed through new
Figure 6.3 RoTo Architects. Architecture and Art Building, A&M
artistic methods.24 In fact, his meditation on place and
University, Prairie View, Texas: undulated brick masonry wall (after
transformation of both new and old materials had inspired a photograph in www.rotoark.com/projects/education-cultural-civic/
second generation of modern architects like Richard Neutra, prairie-view-university, accessed 11 April 2015).
 137
Materiality and the
culture of place

the surrounding arid landscape at Neutra’s Kaufmann House

in Palm Springs, California. The coexistence of the dressed
stone quarried at a mine in Utah, and the natural form of the
local rocks, created a simultaneous ambiguity and extension
of the local, blurring the boundary between where the local
ended and the regional/global began. At the Guggenheim
Museum, New York, Wright expressed the fluid topography
of city life and its non-stop movement into concrete ramps
addressing ‘the new aesthetic of continuity’ of concrete
sidewalks.25 A similar attempt at blurring distinctions
between the site and the movement network of the
immediate context is present in Zaha Hadid’s Contemporary
Arts Centre in Cincinnati, where the poured-in-place
boundary is morphed to form both the museum’s entry
hall floor and the walkway on the outside of the museum,
drawing in the urban carpet of the surroundings (Figure
6.4). At the CaixaForum in Madrid Herzog & de Meuron’s
strategy was to use acid-oxidised metal panels to bring a
rich appearance of colour and texture to the extension to
respond to the brick of the original power station (Figure
Figure 6.4 Zaha Hadid. Contemporary Arts Centre, Cincinnati, Ohio:
6.5).26 Through its colour, texture and geometry, the material continuity between the sidewalk and the lobby.
building has succeeded in blending in with its surroundings
without losing its contemporary identity. given the multiplicity of materials that are at the ready
disposal of the architect, the ‘temptation to use them
Richard Weston had argued for a more anthropologically cosmetically is strong’.28 While there is nothing inherently
attuned understanding of the nature of material problematic about the use of materials as cladding, the
employment when he had concluded: validity of such use needs to be ascertained against
human engagement and inhabitation that is temporally
The interaction of materials and place confirms that and geographically specific. The above discussion has
any attempt to understand the ‘nature’, as opposed to covered the ‘locale’ where the site sits and interacts with
quantifiable properties, of materials independently of its immediate surroundings. The following discussion
their use in a specific location is misleading. Ignoring addresses the ‘regional’ scale by examining how the
this relationship may suit the aspirations of those regional or the global can affect the architectural language
[whose] reasoning is grounded in ideology, not the of the local.
science of materials – whose qualities and meanings
in architecture are inescapably place specific and Regional materials or the influence of ultimate
time-bound.27 context

The importance of such a selection criteria cannot be In the Casa, Borromini dealt with brick in a different
overstated in today’s divergent practices and trends where, way from others who built in that locale. His use of brick
138 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
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Figure 6.5 Herzog & de Meuron. Caixa Forum Building, Madrid:

juxtaposition of old brick facade and acid-oxidized metal clad
extension.

addressed an interrelationship between the Santa and her materials of the locale and the wider region. The regional
daughter, the Casa, as fragments of a larger whole. Such materiality that emerges, therefore, acknowledges the
dialogue was achieved by Borromini taking into account need for material selection based on both the local and
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culture of place

the wider context. While the latter could be understood between the inside and the outside – between site and
geographically at the scale of a city, a country or even place (see Chapter 5). Here, to resist the loss of place
an entire continent, it does not necessarily preclude the identity, he sought to make references simultaneously to
possibility of the use of a single material that is available the immediate and the ultimate context. Although initially
in abundance within a region. This is because the true contemplating an entirely contrasting appearance in
‘topographical possibilities’29 of a material could be concrete, Siza eventually sought to hide his contemporary
expanded through the intervention of technique, i.e. building, making it subservient to the medieval monastery
technological transformation could potentially give shape that provides its context. 35 His material references are
to the regionality of a material. twofold; the locale of the museum embraces a number of
classic buildings built in granite – one of them being the
Manifestations of this kind coincide with the idea of convent of Santo Domingo de Bonaval. However, it is the
articulating the wider topography of a place rather abstracted manner in which the museum employs the
than restoring regional identity solely through narrow granite on the outside – transformed through technology
instrumental responses. 30 Yet, responding to the into a thin, contemporary veneer – that sets it apart from
characteristics of the encompassing terrain could provide a the demanding, conservative existence of the Convent,
way into this complex phenomenon. The latter is the case simultaneously alluding to the regional – Galician –
at Wright’s Taliesin West and Neutra’s Kaufmann House, employment of the same material. Significantly, as Moneo
where the material attributes of the immediate terrain were points out, a single material – granite – ‘becomes the
seen as a means of accessing the immaterial – the one that protagonist’. 36 In contrast, on the inside, Siza has used
was difficult to fathom. This also appears to be the case in rendered wall surfaces painted white, referring to a local
the works of Jørn Utzon, the oeuvre of Geoffrey Bawa,31 finish – the white stucco – that covers the majority of the
and as Leatherbarrow so aptly demonstrates, in those of city of Santiago de Compostela. In employing the white
Aris Konstantinidis at Mykonos and Anavyssos in Greece. 32 stucco on the inside and the granite on the outside, Siza’s
What characterises these architectures is the use of regional approach to this project was as much practical as it was
materials – like stone and marble – quarried in or near their theoretical. Siza commented on the granite: ‘I ... thought
sites. The materials are transformed through technological that there was a case to be made for introducing a non-
applications setting those perceptually apart from the ones local material to an exceptional building in an exceptional
that originally existed on site, or by carefully interrupting the part of the city. We should not be afraid of that.’37 To him,
topographic continuity of the locale through contrasting using a material with wider regional resonance against an
material use. 33 Therefore, ‘material expression can be interiorised local materiality was a way of opening up a
understood only in a larger context embracing the place’,34 channel of communication with the immediate context, as
where successful material deployment is again capable of well as for establishing a dialogue with history.
constructing a liminal, regional materiality, crystallising
the tension between the local and the wider topographic History, collective memory and regionalism returned to
contexts into moments of accentuated dialogue celebrating the site as driving forces in the process of materialising
place identity. the museum and enabled this highly contemporary
intervention to address its place identity. Here, spatial play
An example of this accentuated dialogue could be found and materiality have combined to reconcile the opposites
in Siza’s Galician Centre for Contemporary Art (Figure 6.6), between new/old, local/regional and inside/outside. The
of which we have already examined the spatial reciprocity result of this compromise is what Kenneth Frampton
140 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
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describes as an architecture that ‘depends ... as much upon The early work of the Indian architect Charles Correa
the materials and the general tone of the ambient light as suggests a subtle reworking of a largely International
it does upon the specific nature of the space’. 38 A similar vocabulary and material palette to reflect emergent
attempt to restore the historical memory was undertaken regional and local dimensions. The Gandhi Memorial
by Peter Eisenman through the incomplete, deconstructed Museum in Ahmedabad (1963; Figure 6.8), where the
brick towers at the Wexner Centre, which recalled the once- immediate context was provided by the vernacular
present Armory towers (Figure 6.7). structures of Mahatma Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram, was
designed following a 6 m × 6 m grid. The raised plinth,

Figure 6.6 Alvaro Siza. Galician Centre for Contemporary Art,

Santiago de Compostela.
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Materiality and the
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Figure 6.7 Peter Eisenman. The Wexner Centre for the Visual Arts,
Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio: the fragmented presence of
brick masonry.

compositional aspects and formal iconography make direct outside, the brick piers appear to prop up the horizontal
references to the Memorial Museum’s immediate context concrete plate, a condition reversed on the inside, especially
but also to their roots in the International style. The brick around the courtyard, where the brick piers appear to be
piers and horizontal concrete elements, together, represent floating, held between the strong horizontal concrete
both the local and the global. Kahn’s Indian Institute of members: the continuous floor plate and the grid of the
Management – but also Le Corbusier’s Sarabhai House – roof beams. 39 This material-tectonic reciprocity closely
now indelible icons of Ahmedabad’s architectural heritage, corresponds with the spatial reciprocity between the inside
had just been completed. Correa drew on this recently and the outside at Le Corbusier’s Mill Owners’ Association
developed ‘local’ palette, which by proxy had introduced (see Chapter 5) – both products of highly porous or, in the
into Ahmedabad a post-Independence regional (Indian) case of Correa even non-existent, facades. The fragility of
interpretation of the International material palette. On the the surrounding Ashram hutment, where Gandhi lived for
142 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
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Figure 6.8 Charles Correa. The Gandhi Memorial Museum,

Ahmedabad: brick piers, rural iconography and the raised plinth
create a ‘horizontal’ monument to Mahatma Gandhi.

12 years, were interpreted as lightweight infill panels with wonder whether this material deployment introduced
open louvered windows standing on the edge of stone-clad a liminal – that is, regional – materiality, suspended
floor planes (Figure 6.9), and the more directly derived between the local and the universal. The term ‘regional’,
clay tile clad pyramidal roof. They also remind us of the here, acquires a meta-geographical connotation. This is
decorated timber infill panels found on facades of houses perhaps what Leatherbarrow means by suggesting that all
in Old Ahmedabad. Yet, employed carefully to capture materials are regional; that is, to transcend an instrumental
both the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi’s Ashram, as well as to application all successful material employment would
respond to the anthropological demands placed on the necessarily need to consider their ‘regionality’ to uphold a
new building, the horizontality, combined with a taut and deeper understanding of the more immediate context.
ingenious material deployment, simultaneously produced
the memorial and the universal receptacle of the museum. Materiality could also aid the crystallisation of contexts
Materiality thus fused context with use, leaving one to where none readily exists. While this might sound unusual,
 143
Materiality and the
culture of place

somewhat distanced, yet pervasive, rural environment. At

the Hindustan Lever Pavilion – where Correa continued
to explore the potential of the promenade architectural
– the elaborately folded sprayed reinforced concrete
enclosure assumes the form of a giant crumpled packing
crate – complete with the broken legends of this corporate
institution boldly stencilled over, alluding to both the highly
international commercial enterprise in question, as well
as the temporary nature of the exhibition venue. Through
its rustic incompleteness, the material employed draws in
and questions presumptions regarding the sophisticated
nature of multinational establishments and a linear
relationship between material employment and transience
in architecture.

The play of mediating boundaries

As an intermediary object the work of architecture

does not describe the world, rather it unifies some of
its aspects in a new meaningful whole.

Norberg Schulz40

Figure 6.9 Gandhi Memorial Museum: infill panels, view from one of The above discussion highlights the mediating role of
the gallery interiors and exterior view. materiality; it is a condition that stands in between and
consideration of two of Correa’s other early works – both makes manifest the interface between the inside and the
temporary structures built for trade fairs – would make outside, and between the local and the global. At the
this point clearer. The Handloom Pavilion (1958, Figure Casa de Piedra (Stone House) in Tavole, Italy (1985; Figure
6.10) at the International Fair and the Hindustan Lever 6.12), Herzog & de Meuron employ a method of selective
Pavilion (1961, Figure 6.11) at the Industrial Fair, both in revelation and extension of the concrete frame to establish
Delhi, were designed as temporary exhibition venues for continuity with the mountainous surroundings. Designed as
an independent India searching for its identity. In both, a stone cuboid with carefully composed facades consisting
consideration of a much wider context provides material of a limited number of openings, the architects have sought
manifestation. At the Handloom Pavilion, a space enclosed to hide the concrete corner columns by encasing those in
by the rendered brick and mud walls was covered by a stone. The resulting appearance of completeness of the
number of ‘inverted’ umbrella-like canopies constructed stone volume allows a geological continuity between the
of timber frames and covered in polychromatic handloom dry stone masonry of the building and its surroundings.
fabric. Albeit transformed through technological This continuity is further strengthened by the revelation
reshaping, together they provide material manifestation of columns at or near the centre of the facades, providing
to the quintessential setting of handloom production – a the edges with a sense of floating, boundless extension.
144 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
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Figure 6.10 Charles Correa. Handloom Pavilion, Delhi (1958): section

showing mud walls and fabric ‘parasols’ (after Khan, H., 1987 Charles
Correa).

Figure 6.11 Charles Correa. Hindustan Lever Pavilion, Delhi (1961):

formal study (after Khan, H., 1987, Charles Correa).
 145
Materiality and the
culture of place

means of sustenance for the interior, but also introduced

a degree of porosity into the otherwise impervious shell
of the pavilion. The devices introduced permeability of
people, air and light, and brought the materiality of the
outside in and inside out. The promenade also breached
the square enclosure at the decidedly more serene and
stable – yet equally defined – Handloom Pavilion. The
polychrome fabric canopies – much like sails – responded
to the changes in the external environment, affecting light
conditions and air movement inside. While the pavilions
followed Heidegger’s observation that, ‘people identify
places for themselves by lassoing “boundaries” around
them in their minds’,42 these boundaries, however, were
Figure 6.12 Herzog & de Meuron. Casa de Piedra (Stone House), never fully defined. The architectural fragments and their
Tavole: facade study (after Leatherbarrow, D., 2004 Topographical
materiality, sitting between an ‘interior’ and an ‘exterior’,
Stories).
introduced, and were introduced by, people and the
Although the building appears as a closed box on site, environment passing over and through them.
suggesting minimal relationship with the inside and thus
with inhabitation, the abstract concrete frame, which At the Pritzker Family Children’s Zoo in Lincoln Park Zoo,
orchestrates the few openings, extends beyond to suggest Chicago (2005; Figure 6.13) by EHDD, the transmittance of
extension of the inhabited interior. materials through boundaries or in-between zones is what
helps perform mediation between outside and inside. Its
Sites and buildings stand between local and global materialisation in concrete and glass curtain walling and the
contexts and topographies, helping to accentuate their crisp geometry of the facade are fronted by a tension cable
dialogue through the building’s materiality. In Correa’s grid supporting an ‘ivy wall’. While the bold orthogonal
exhibition pavilions, highly defined boundaries existed geometry of the building extends out to the grid, the
between the inside and the outside, as the pavilions growing ivy markedly softens its harshness, integrating
sought to address a wider context in the absence of an with and extending inwards the natural exuberance of
immediate one. Physically and anthropologically defined the zoo precinct. Externally, the glass curtain wall helps
interiors were thereby carved out from wider cultural ‘thicken’ the greenery through reflection. From the inside,
topographies of rurban India, on the one end, and the the ivy frame – or in fact, the combined materiality of the
corporate world of global multinationals, on the other. At in-between – modifies the climatic conditions on its way in,
the Hindustan Lever Pavilion the defined boundaries spoke being itself modified by the varying climatic impact over the
of a captured moment where the interior space seemed seasons. Visually, a visitor perceives the building to extend
to have been locked in an existential struggle with the beyond the glass panels to the ivy screen, which now frames
pulverising forces of the corporate, yet managing to fight the outside more acutely as one peers through it; a kind of
back somehow, resulting in a contorted concrete interface. active porosity has thus been achieved.
The entrance and exit shafts, the connecting promenade
architectural and the cannon-like top-lights employed Venturi conceived material mediation among spaces as the
to set up air convection currents,41 which provided the ‘graduated series of things in things or enclosures within
146 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
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Figure 6.13 EHDD. Pritzker Family Children’s Zoo, Lincoln Park Zoo,
Chicago, Illinois: facade detail with the ‘ivy wall’.

enclosures’,43 a condition Leatherbarrow also elaborated fabric, the implicit continuity between topography and the
through the relationship of material ‘in-ness’ between unpolished concrete panel on the fireplace was achieved
Borromini’s Casa and the Santa. The intermediary role of through a cryptic, ‘barely figurative’ – yet economic –
the architectural object is highlighted where the materiality notation crystallising the topographic attributes of the
of one is brought within the other, manifesting a higher surroundings.45
level of connectedness through a distended understanding
of their boundaries. The prominent marks, made on Porosity amounts to a near dismantling of the facade at the
the fireplace of Aris Konstantinidis’ Weekend House at Gandhi Memorial Museum as the surrounding context – or
Anavyssos, Greece (1962), draw the surrounding terrain perhaps we should say, contexts – invade the building’s
into the house.44 Aided by the porosity of the external ‘interior’ (Figure 6.14). The rhythm and regularity of the brick
 147
Materiality and the
culture of place

piers and the overhead grid of concrete beams draw on an guarding the relics of Gandhi’s life, the museum expresses
optimism expressed not that long ago through an identical the Gandhian world in microcosm.
austere modern vocabulary by Le Corbusier and Kahn. This
quintessentially post-Independence Ahmedabad interior Conclusion: camouflage
is infiltrated by the sun but also the gentle breeze from the
river Sabarmati, bringing it ever so close to the exterior. Materiality is the projective relationship between drawing
Playing out the rhythmic dance of light and shadows on and building; the appropriate use of building materials
the brick piers, and the occasional reflection of ripples manifesting an architectural form and appearance could
from the central water court, the building could be seen better align a building with its site and the anthropological
as the crystallisation of the relationship that had existed demands, through inhabitation and perception. By
between water, land and human habitation, whose main focusing on materiality of a building located on a site,
aim was to provide shade within this relatively inhospitable the intermediary role of the latter in place-making and
terrain. Horizontality is enhanced by the darkness of the its transformation is highlighted. It also relies on the fact
timber-clad ceilings of the pyramidal roofs and the dark that the architectural character of site lies in the character
stone floor, focusing the visitors’ mind on the sun-drenched, and qualities of its different surfaces, which in turn have
carefully composed focal courtyards, the strong horizontal a direct relationship to the embracing place.47 Following
character of the louvered infill panels, and the benches Frampton and Leatherbarrow, this chapter has identified
to rest on, which emerge as topographic notations from two extensions of the topographic horizon; the immediate
the floor. The benches further highlight the dominant context – the locale – and the ultimate context – the
horizontality of the building by establishing datum points regional, initially considered as offering distinctive material
as moments of repose, giving prominence to the streets opportunities in order to address place identity. However,
and passages that now emerge from the extensive and the discussion has soon highlighted the problematic
continuous floor plane, carved out through the placement nature of an instrumental consideration of local context,
of disaggregated spaces for the display of artefacts. Correa suggesting instead the need for a meta-geographical –
has written extensively about both the rural origins and the regional – understanding of materiality that transcends the
benefits of employing the disaggregated architectural form, abovementioned contextual distinctions and embraces its
which results in a ‘series of separate but interdependent anthropological dimension.
volumes’.46 Scale, horizontality, streetscape and the tiled
pyramidal roofs add to the rural character of the Museum. The interplay between local and ultimate contexts makes
The heavy brick piers and staggered stone paving indicate manifest the distinguishing boundary between inside and
a strong influence of the Sarabhai House, yet the floor outside through which material negotiations take place. The
along with the infill panels and the sloped roof speak of the characteristic of such boundaries were explored, moving
persistent presence of the disaggregated rural dwellings from highly defined ones where spatiality and materiality
of Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram as originally established. coincided in establishing distinctions, to more fluid and
Suspended among Ahmedabad’s emerging architectural distended relationships where materiality was transported
modernity, a strong expression of the rural, and a sensitive and transmitted across spatial boundaries to articulate the
appreciation of the natural setting, the museum’s true overlapping and latent contextual terrains. The resultant
interior – the memorabilia repositories – recedes into its spatiality and materiality acquire the characteristics of a
disaggregated cells – like Gandhi’s Ashram, isolated, yet liminal field, where the architectural object is in a perpetual
deeply interconnected through a unified mission. Closely state of becoming, highlighting the mediatory and
148 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
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Soumyen Bandyopadhyay

Figure 6.14 Gandhi Memorial Museum: porosity of the interior.

perpetually re-constructed nature of sites. Engaging the which material transmission and reciprocity across contexts,
perceptual qualities of materials to the fullest – their colours, and between context and inhabitation, plays a critical role.
textures and other actual material attributes, but also their Through a number of architectural examples this chapter
extensions in perceived densities, roughness, lightness or has examined divergent methods of interaction that
darkness – allow the designer the flexibility to articulate sought to keep place and site interdependent, in which the
complex contextual overlaps. architectural project played a facilitating and revelatory role.
Here, the new anthropological demands – the requirements
This chapter has sought to approach the site as a fragment and demands placed on a site through new inhabitation
that dissolves into the canvas of its context, emerging from and their implications – acted as catalysts for making, re-
its place history, its collective memories and experiences, making and enriching the place. While Correa’s exhibition
and enriching it on its return. This implies a peculiar kind of pavilions had to invent site and place within what could be
role any site necessarily needs to perform: a performance in termed a non-place (the fairground), the Gandhi Memorial
 149
Materiality and the
culture of place

Museum was essentially a reworking of many contexts:

local, the wider regional and the fast-emerging context of
Indian architectural modernity. At Casa de Piedra, Herzog
& de Meuron cautiously announced new inhabitation
through the extension of the concrete frame beyond the
stone cuboids. Pushing the boundaries of materialisation
further towards the idea of reciprocity, not only between
site and context but also between site and its interiors,
has transported the concrete urban carpet of the Museum
of Contemporary Arts of Galicia into a poetic dialogue
between the entrance lobby and the monochromic
sidewalks of the city.
150 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
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Notes 17 Weston, R., Materials, Form and Architecture, London: Laurence

King, 2003, p. 100.
1 Leatherbarrow, D., Uncommon Ground, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2002, p. 233. 18 Ibid., p. 109.
2 Leatherbarrow, D., Architecture Oriented Otherwise, New York: 19 Leatherbarrow, Roots of Architectural Invention, p. 173.
Princeton Architectural Press, 2009, p. 243.
20 Moughtin, C., Oc, T. & Tiesdell, S., ‘Colour in the City’, in Trasi, N.
3 Ibid. (ed.), Interdisciplinary Architecture, London: Wiley Academy, 2001,
p. 70.
4 Zevi, B., Architecture as Space, New York: Horizon Press, 1957, p. 29.
21 Ibid., p. 68.
5 Dovey, K., Framing Places: Mediating Power in Built Environment,
New York: Routledge, 1999, p. 50. 22 Leatherbarrow, Uncommon Ground, p. 190.
6 Sharr, A., Thinkers for Architects: Heidegger for Architects, New York: 23 Amelar, S., ‘Architecture and Art Building’, Architectural Record,
Routledge, 2007, p. 63. 1/2006, 2006, p. 105.
7 Pallasmaa, J., ‘An Architecture of the Seven Senses’, in Holl, S., 24 Hearn, M., Ideas that Shaped Buildings, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
Pallasmaa, J. & Pérez Gómez, A., A+U: Questions of Perception: 2003, p. 264.
Phenomenology of Architecture, San Francisco, CA: William Stout
Publishers, 2007, p. 30. 25 Weston, op. cit., p. 92.

8 Norberg-Schulz, C. (Nasso, C. & Parini, S., eds; Shugaar, A., trans.), 26 ‘CaixaForum, Madrid’, Architecture + Urbanism (A+U) 5/2008,
Architecture: Presence, Language and Place, Milan: Skira, 2000, p. 2008, p. 25.
223. 27 Weston, op. cit., p. 114.
9 Blundell-Jones, P., Gunnar Asplund, London: Phaidon Press, 2006, 28 Smith, P., Architecture and the Principle of Harmony, London, RIBA,
p. 229. 1987, p. 135.
10 Yoshida, N. & Zumthor, P., A+U: Peter Zumthor, Tokyo: A+U 29 Leatherbarrow, Roots of Architectural Invention, p. 146.
Publishing, February 1998 extra edition, p. 16.
30 Leatherbarrow, D. Uncommon Ground, p. 213; also,
11 Abercrombie, S., Architecture as Art, New York: Harper & Row, Leatherbarrow, D., Roots of Architectural Invention, p. ix.
1984, p. 96.
31 Taylor, B., Geoffrey Bawa, New York: Concept Media, 1986, p. 9.
12 Norberg-Schulz, op. cit., p. 159.
32 Leatherbarrow, Uncommon Ground, p. 189.
13 An essay first published in Perspecta in 1983, in which
Frampton’s contribution was to suggest a compromise between 33 Ibid., p. 191.
the extremes of Enlightenment idealism and New Historic
34 Weston, op. cit., p. 43.
materialism. Frampton, K., ‘Prospects for a Critical Regionalism’,
Perspecta 20, 1983, pp. 147–162. 35 Frampton, K. & Siza, A., Alvaro Siza: The Complete Works, London:
Phaidon, 2000, p. 336.
14 Frampton, K., ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an
Architecture of Resistance’, in Jencks, C. & Kropf, K. (eds), Theories 36 Moneo, R., Theoretical Anxiety and Design Strategies in the Work of
and Manifestoes of Contemporary Architecture (second edition), Eight Contemporary Architects, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004, p.
London: Wiley Academy, 2006, p. 97. 247.

15 Leatherbarrow, D., The Roots of Architectural Invention: Site, 37 Frampton, op. cit., p. 49.
Enclosure, Materials, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
38 Ibid., p. 46.
1993, p. 146.
39 Substantial brickwork inclines also ‘hold’ the rectangular
16 Rykwert, J., The Necessity of Artifice, London: Academy Editions,
wedged-in window element at Correa’s Ramkrishna House in
1982, p. 59.
 151
Materiality and the
culture of place

Ahmedabad, a building with strong echoes of the Sarabhai

House. In fact, both of Correa’s buildings indicate the capped
horizontality produced through the use of clearly articulated
concrete members. See, Khan, H., Charles Correa: Architect in
India, Singapore and London: Mimar/Butterworth, 1987, pp. 32–5.

40 Norberg-Schulz, C., Intentions in Architecture, Cambridge, MA:

MIT Press, 1968, p. 179.

41 Khan, op. cit., p. 30.

42 Sharr, op. cit., p. 62.

43 Venturi, R. Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, New

York: Museum of Modern Art, 1977, p. 74.

44 Leatherbarrow, Uncommon Ground, p. 217.

45 Ibid., p. 213.

46 Correa, C., ‘Transfer and Transformations’, in Khan, H., Charles

Correa: Architect in India, Singapore and London: Mimar/
Butterworth, 1987, p. 166.

47 Leatherbarrow, Roots of Architectural Invention, p. 215.

 153

Conclusion

7 Conclusion
154 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
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 155

Conclusion

The book is concerned with the need for a renewed A crisis, however, is also an opportunity for introspection
understanding of the site in the twenty-first century never to be wasted. Creativity and research have always
and the establishment of a critical position vis-à-vis the existed at the heart of architectural education and practice
continued tendency to regard it as a fragment severed – an advantageous condition the discipline should strive
from its wider context. This tendency, fuelled by the to maintain. Research has been central to architectural
demands of globalisation, effectively extends one of the design; in fact, one could argue that the architectural
most problematic aspects of the Modernist treatment of design discipline has largely – and uniquely – remained
the site as a given, isolatable entity, itself emanating from research-led. The essentially creative nature of research (and
Modernism’s obsession with the idea of the ‘fragment’. The by extension, of design inquiry) is acknowledged in Kant’s
problem with this decoupling has been the denial of the recognition of the close relationship between creativity and
effect of the encompassing forces that inevitably act on a imagination and his suggestion of the central role of the
site, as well as the failure to read the site’s extended impact latter in furthering understanding underpinning cognition.
following design action. The result is the impoverished The reciprocity between imagination and the ever-
architectural, landscape and urban design actions, which expanding and consolidating horizons of understanding
emerge as a series of unconnected contiguities, unresolved of both the human and the natural condition would
in their relationship. The site’s perceived isolation offers the therefore question the relevance of the notion of creation
architect the dubious opportunity to produce novel forms ex nihilo – i.e. the belief that true creative ideas emerge
that vie with each other for attention. out of nowhere, more often the force behind the drive
for novelty. Equally problematic is the belief in creativity
The reduction of the site into simple information sets has as a patchwork of ideas and methods indiscriminately
no doubt helped designers – often operating remotely drawn from other disciplines, since both approaches are
in today’s globalised world of architectural practice products of a weak – incomplete – understanding of the
– to produce buildings with relative ease and within condition. Creative imagination is thus only bounded by this
demanding time constraints. However, this has also ever-expanding horizon of understanding in which both
reduced the immense complexity of the site into little extant and emergent knowledge co-mingle. This provides
more than simplified geometries – mainly the result of a renewed opportunity for establishing the fragment’s lost
abstracted plot boundaries indicating legal limits. Site connections with the whole.
specificity is largely ignored and an overly simplified
instrumentality has prevailed in dealing with site and Artificially privileging the present-day knowledge and
design. As discussed in our Introduction, even as we have information over historical understanding and vice versa
to treat sites increasingly as assemblages of orthogonal have resulted in the plethora of instruments – many of
projections, such abstraction need not necessarily prevent which are, in fact, borrowed from other disciplines – that
us from considering deeper, the often latent and less have merely allowed the multitudinous expansion in
obvious information and knowledge about the site. architecture’s productive capacity. Both, however, have,
Instrumentality and abstract codification per se, we argue, at various points in history, put emphasis on the entirely
are not the problem, and as Alberti’s survey of Rome formal qualities of the built object – the architectural figure.
demonstrates, are even critical to our understanding Treated thus, architecture’s performative qualities and its
of orders of things. It is the counter-creative and anti- essentially anthropological nature – which abstraction had
anthropological manner in which we have increasingly proposed to capture in the first place – have fallen by the
treated such material that has caused the crisis. wayside; what has remained as the only possible avenues
156 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
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of mounting a critique of such architectural products are in architecture to explore their true potential in achieving
the narrow – and by now contested – understandings of connections between site and context. It focuses on
aesthetic codes and functionality. The conveniently reduced architects of wide-ranging persuasions of the twentieth
scope of the condition under scrutiny has resulted in the century – for example, Peter Eisenman, Le Corbusier, Frank
impoverishment of architecture and the accumulation of Lloyd Wright, Alvaro Siza, Herzog & de Meuron and Charles
detritus. Our existence increasingly is one of a foreigner Correa – whose work defy categorisation under simple
imprisoned in the socio-cultural debris of our own creation. binary oppositions. Through the various examples studied
here, we suggest that the instrumental means have the
In architectural design the problem also lies in the simple potential for enhanced analogical and scalar relationships
binary oppositions we have conveniently established for capable of achieving poetic outcomes. The dominant
ourselves – often in the name of professional practice – Modernist tendency to regard the world around us as a
between past and present, function and meaning, rational fragmented phenomenon, which replaced the world of
and irrational, object and performance, instrumental and pre-Modern certainty, has been found inadequate in the
existential, between architecture and non-architecture, postmodern era of globalisation, and amidst a renewed
and so on. Such oppositions emanated from the positional interest in achieving wholeness. Chapter 1 also attempted
and disciplinary fissures that occurred during the early to map the historical trajectory of the fragment. Contrary
Enlightenment, only to be re-emphasised through the to a commonly held notion that fragmentation results
emergence of the professional architectural training in in severed and emancipated unconnected entities with
the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The fissure, no histories, we have favoured the view that fragments
paradoxically, lies in the development of instrumental within a culture are continually both created and received
thinking in mid-eighteenth century theorising, especially – inflecting the fragment, as well as reshaping the
through Durand’s work at the École Polytechnique, which context. They are historical in the sense that they contain
also indicated the beginnings of overt technological characteristics and values resident in the whole. We have
intentionality. As a result, technology emerged as a utopia focused mainly – although not exclusively – on the potential
and a universal mentality configuring the modern world, of the planimetric treatment of the site and its surroundings.
extracting its potency from the human capacity to abstract.
This relatively recent phenomenon has contributed to a Sites are essentially artificially constructed phenomena,
certain kind of determinism and a calculated appropriation be it through the establishment of abstract property
of reality. Such intensely abstracted abstractions – of boundaries or the inevitable selective consideration of
which Mondrian’s paintings are good examples – have site conditions. Perhaps surprisingly, both Le Corbusier
removed the primordial experiences that humans have and Peter Eisenman share an interest in the creative and
shared since time immemorial as embodied, spatially imaginative potential of sites as artificial constructions: Le
oriented individuals, managing only to achieve universality Corbusier’s post-Second World War projects in India and
at the expense of meaning. As this book argues, it is vital Eisenman’s artificial excavation projects of the 1980s bear
that we optimise the potential of the existential through testimony to this exploration. Chapter 2 extended the study
the instrumental codifications of relationships between of the fragmentary nature of the site by considering Le
architecture and its widest context. Corbusier’s construction of site at the Capitol in Chandigarh,
India. There we argued that he regarded the constructed
Confronting these tendencies, this book has argued for site as a collection or an ‘archipelago’ of fragments, the
revisiting the instruments of both siting and composition irreducible, resilient remains of a culture – its essence,
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Conclusion

as it were – that stood composed on an artificial tabula the Modernist grid and postmodern fragments carrying
rasa formed by the forcible removal and burial of the historical resonance. In both Le Corbusier’s Atelier Ozenfant
once-encumbering detritus. Distinct from breaking up, in Paris and Eisenman’s Aronoff Centre at the University of
the process of fragment formation – fragmentation – here, Cincinnati we find a developed sectional understanding
was to do with reducing it to the irreducible – the essence. of both sites and evolving buildings as positive fragments.
Extending Vidler’s assertion, we argue that the fragments Instrumental manipulations, we demonstrate, remain at
at Chandigarh and Ahmedabad suggest the presence of the heart of Eisenman’s commitment to integrating site
not only narratives, but meta-narratives: they are both characteristics and the existing buildings, as well as his
historical and yet ahistorical – primordial, positive entities aim to embrace the less material but crucial spirit of the
capable of achieving renewed wholeness. This denuded institution. In attempting to connect, territorial edges
primordial armature made possible the exploration of issues need to be imaginatively reactivated to establish novel
of social justice that seems to have been at the heart of Le conjunctions, creating a new wholeness through considered
Corbusier’s Indian projects exploring post-Independence and creative instrumental manipulation.
concerns surrounding equality and universal access to
resources. Abstracted tapestry of assembled fragments In Chapter 4 we considered more carefully the role
re-applied as garbing produced a fragile, theatrical setting of planimetric drawing and composition in achieving
for anthropological actions, which enabled Chandigarh meaningful relationships between building and site and
to embrace the ‘other’ – abstract and non-contiguous but between site and its wider context. The role of drawn
nevertheless critical – sites of culture, while maintaining, studies and developmental orthogonal projections in
at the same time, certain problematic relationships with its providing the autonomous fora for the convergence of
immediate physical surroundings. the site and design intentions through interpretation
and crafting is highlighted. Projective drawings are, as
Considering further the nature of the ‘positive’ fragment examples as diverse as Gothic cathedrals and Wright’s
and the role it could potentially play in the sustenance of the Prairie House development demonstrate, mediating sites
built environment, in Chapter 3 we directed our attention of contemplation, where interpretation and representation
on the site’s relationship with its immediate surroundings. work in tandem. Eisenman’s emphasis on the plan –
The importance of edge conditions as the key facilitator the figure–ground relationship – is the product of an
for achieving interrelationship between sites, as well as established genealogy in Western architectural culture
between architectural objects, was highlighted. Peter extending back, at the least, to Giambattista Nolli’s 1748
Eisenman’s design for the Wexner Centre, we argued, fulfils engraving of the plan of Rome. However, what is distinctive
this role as a positive fragment mediating between the Ohio is his treatment of the many drawn interpretations of the
State University campus and the city of Columbus. This was site as artificially excavated layers of archaeology, into
undertaken on plan through a series of mainly instrumental which fictive and simulated layers are inserted or grafted
moves with far-reaching effect. However, like Le Corbusier’s to reinvigorate the characteristics of a place. Expanding on
Chandigarh, it was also concerned with wider themes of the two key Eisenman projects introduced in the previous
American history and the politics of cultural memory of the chapter, we explored extensively how site connections
preceding centuries. The abstract grid is employed here were achieved. Instructive in this is Eisenman’s skilful
for site construction into which reconstituted fragments employment of grafting that began in site interpretation
from the past are reinserted to provide legibility and – the careful implantation of extraneous catalytic
continuity. It establishes a significant interplay between fragments, resulting in new relationships, inflecting both
158 Enis Aldallal Site and Composition: Design strategies
Husam AlWaer and in architecture and urbanism
Soumyen Bandyopadhyay

the existing fragments and the graft. The grafting of the on a key example from late Modern architecture – Le
experiential through Laurie Olin’s forecourt design, which Corbusier’s Mill Owners’ Association Building in Ahmedabad
makes references to American Prairie landscape and the – an interesting example of reciprocity in establishing
Jeffersonian grid charting new territories, reconciles the a building’s relationship with a virgin site is presented.
abstract exploration of the horizontal with the equally Contrary to Wright’s destruction of the ‘box’ to invite the
abstract treatment of the vertical. The new ‘betweenness’ outside in, here the partial dissolution of the box not only
was extended further by the extension of the 15th Avenue, resulted in the outward flow of the interior contents but
which now extends the campus into the city. At both the flow through of the ‘purified’ Sabarmati river – raison
Wexner and Aronoff, Eisenman successfully expanded on d’être for the city of Ahmedabad, intended to connect
the true potential of the planimetric projective method also the cultural past with the future projected by post-
by relying on a-textual fictive site formations resulting independence aspirations.
from manipulations and abstractions of site geometry. The
mediatory properties of the ‘betweenness’ were illustrated Chapter 6 discussed the need for imaginative rethinking of
further at Aronoff, where the architect sought to employ materiality in achieving connections; to achieve a poetic
repetitions of the existing and proposed profiles in both wholeness we argued for both going beyond material
plan and section to achieve a successful cohesion with manifestation with literal and immediate connectivity in
surrounding landscape and structures. mind, and also the dematerialisation of the architectural
object and its setting. The material interpretation of both
The role of the edge condition formed the focus of immediate context (a locale) and ultimate context (a region)
discussions in Chapter 5, where we argued for the was considered, as was the context prompted by earlier
importance of reciprocity between interior and exterior presences. Early Modernist examples abound in their
spaces – between fragment and the whole – to achieve interest in achieving a dematerialised object, suspended
optimum integrity between site and context at differing in a void. This, however, was less important in the later
scales. Returning to the ancient Greek idea of the chora, phases of Modernism, especially through the post-Second
both as threshold between spaces and as receptacle for World War works of architects such as Aalto, Asplund, Kahn,
the virtual or imaginal qualities of space that underscores Le Corbusier and so on. The key postmodern concern has
its ‘materialisation’ and physicality, we highlighted been not only the seeking of material continuity with its
its contemporary relevance as a space of events. In immediate surroundings or even between technological
achieving reciprocity the importance of considering advancement and tradition, but the need to engage with
flow or continuity is highlighted – whose trajectory we the demands and speeds of globalisation and the resultant
chart from Modern to postmodern architecture – which demand for addressing diverse contexts as part of the
was largely absent from early Modern architecture, only idea of the region. Central to this is the interpretive intent
to be overly rated, misunderstood and misused in later as exemplified by the work of Herzog & de Meuron at
phases, as Leatherbarrow rightly suggests. At Alvaro Siza’s CaixaForum. Earlier, in the late 1950s, extending the event
Galician Centre for Contemporary Arts, thresholds are space of the boundary, Charles Correa’s work at the Gandhi
established to mark transitions between the interior and Memorial Museum at Ahmedabad had blurred the boundary
the urban setting – yet these simultaneously distinguish between inside and outside. This porosity, extending from
and interrelate historical, urban and architectural events imperviousness to expanding the boundary by turning it
by anticipating and allowing movement of landscapes, inside-out, is an important lesson for the postmodern era
as well as the flow of bodies in the landscape. Drawing that expands the possibility of the membrane.
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Conclusion

The implied possibility – or at least, the promise – to is possible for architecture to mount a positive response
return to the ‘thickness of things’, presented through to these issues. The discussions in this book revisit some
the remarkable and distinctive opportunities provided of the limiting problems inherent in the architectural
by orthogonal projections, highlights the analogical and processes employed today and offer alternatives to
scalar relationships that exist – and could exist – between enhance outputs. The intention here is to treat architecture
the activity fragments of the city – sites – and the city as a and the city not as a collection of objects but as an
whole. The instrumental and the existential, traditionally overlapping network of relationships, cutting across
the domains of rationalists and phenomenologists, temporal and cultural boundaries.
respectively, have for long been treated as if they were
mutually opposed political orientations. We argue for the
instruments of both siting and composition – the methods
of abstraction and codification in architecture – to return
to their originally stated intentions of encapsulating deeper
and more complex relationships between site and its wider
context. The understanding of the reciprocatory nature
of instruments and the phenomenon, co-mingled and
coexistent, provide significant methodological and creative
opportunities to students and architects in the early
twenty-first century.

Architectural design research is at a critical crossroad.

Much has been written recently regarding the state
of architectural education and practice which, it has
been argued, is losing its viability and relevance in the
fast-changing world of globalisation and in the face of
relentless production within the built environment at
an unprecedented scale. The current political debate
surrounding value for money in architectural projects
has called into question the traditional approaches in
architecture. The discussion surrounding the profession’s
social and cultural responsibilities and precisely what those
might mean is yet another concern. While a number of
these concerns may be well founded, the problem lies in
the manner the discipline has chosen to respond to this
situation of minor crisis. As in some previous instances,
instead of addressing the issues and demands from
within, the chosen approach generally has been to react
by adopting extraneous instruments, approaches and
aesthetic and technological devices. By imaginatively
revisiting the instruments at the architect’s disposal, it