I began with architectural studies that connected people and place across multiple scales. Both Carlo Scarpa and Louis Kahn engage in this manner. With the Fondazione Querini Stampalia and Brion Family Cemetery, Carlo Scarpa provides architecture that expresses the specificity of site and the nature of the client within a broader context. Both exhibit a spatial atonements and social interactivity that resonate in a humanly restorative manner. Scarpa’s attention to materiality and movement fosters a haptic experience that charges these projects with a strong sense of Place. At the Exeter Academy Library, Louis Kahn uses movement, light and material to ritualize the process of academic inquiry pushing it toward personal expression and enlightenment. With this, he establishes both a visceral resonance with the internal volume, and an existential connection between the self and learning.
Fondazione Querini Stampalia – Carlo Scarpa
Carlo Scarpa provides a beautiful example of architecture that connects people with their environment and, also, their social context. He achieves the first through his meticulous use of materials and his attention to the joint in particular. The second is addressed by his involvement of local craftsmanship and keen awareness of local tradition. Moreover, he is moved not from an idea about tactility, but by achieving a full, rich expression of place.
“The joint is treated as a kind of tectonic condensation; as an intersection embodying the whole in the part, irrespective of whether the connection in question is an articulation or a bearing or even an altogether larger linking component such as a stair or a bridge.”
The Essay on Tomb Brion Carlo Scarpa
... to construct and in the process Scarpa drew 1200 drawings for the Tomb. (Carlo Scarpa – a Profile, 1996) POETIC ARCHITECTURE ... of the dead alive in their final resting place. (Saito, 1997). What has emerged is architecture as ... the water. (Saito, 1997) TOMBS The final resting place of the Brion family is the Tomb. The ... could emanate a sense of formal poetry. The place for the dead is a garden. I wanted ...
Scarpa uses the joint as the generator of his form. He also uses the joint as the basis of his creative solutions within a particular spatial condition. This arises from his methodology in creative process that moves directly from drafting to making, a process that cycle between interpreting a form and constructing its realization. Tactility and other sensory perceptions are embedded in his entire process. Indeed, Scarpa’s link to material, and its crafted form, is lauded throughout his life. It is this way of working – through perception and production – that sets him apart from his Modern contemporaries. He activates the entire sensory network. His details are not minimal through mass production but inextricably tied to human spirit through craftsmanship.
He explores form and composition through differences, not by minimal them like early modernist. He uses modern materials as an allusion to other material not as simulation. He evolved his joints functionally and as celebration of craft. He renovated and reorganized existing structure rather than tearing them down. He worked with the layers of material and time as one member in the sequence, not as the definitive one. He embraces the duality of water as a life force and as the depths of death. He embraces mortality rather than shutting it away.
The tactility of his joints and the way he treats his materials creates an activated hap tic realm. There is an intimacy created though his process of accepting the past and manifesting integrity of spirit. Ultimately, his joints between physicality’s become existential bridges. Scarpa employs the joint to provide pause. This is a dramatic counter balance to the hectic pace of society. We enter the moment of now. It is not a moment outside of time like other Modernist. He creates a moment situated within the progress of time. He is not reliving the past nor hypothesizing the future. He does not offer resolution in grand utopian schemes but rather access on a very human scale. That pause is timelessness, and a momentary relief from the tension of duality. He provides a connection to both the environment and the social context.
The Term Paper on Light Quality On The Rate Of Photosynthesis Measure
Abstract This study was undertaken to determine the relationship of different wavelengths of light and the rate of photosynthesis in spinach leafs. The rate of photosynthesis was measured every five min under light colors of white, green, red, blue and yellow under a light intensity of 2000 lux. The rate of photosynthesis was measured by the spinach disk method in which we replaced the air from ...
Exeter Academy – Louis Kahn
Louis Kahn uses movement, light and material to ritualize the process of Academic inquiry pushing it toward personal expression and enlightenment. With this, he establishes both a corporeal resonance with the internal volume, and an Existential connection between the self and learning. Delivered in 1972, Philip Exeter Academy received a new library that met its concerns about fitting in with the campus of Georgian buildings and providing the ideal environment to study. To achieve this, Louis Kahn began with two ideas about ‘light’ and the ‘room’.
“A man with a book goes to the light. A library begins that way.”
“The room is the beginning of architecture. It is the place of the mind. You in the room with its dimensions, its structure, its light responds to its character, its spiritual aura, recognizing that whatever the human proposes and makes becomes a life. The structure of the room must be evident in the room itself. I believe, Structure, is the giver of light.”
The structure of the library can be seen as three concentric rings that give form to these ideas. Within this form he creates space for freedom and a strong sense of place to ground inhabitation. The interplay of the individual with light and material creates a physical path from the stacks to the study corral, through space and into place. Generations of students have embodied this ritual, lacing together not only the room and light, but also the individual and the quest for enlightenment. Kahn establishes the outer ring with a load bearing brick façade. The locally made brick and pattern of fenestration establishes the library in its Gregorian neighbourhood. Its load bearing nature, carrying deduced loads as it rises, is expressed by the tapering of the brick piers. Fenestration between the piers holds both glasses to flood the interior with light and smaller wood panels. The wood panels mark the location of the wood carrels inside.
The 16-foot wide outer ring harbours the perimeter carrels and communal worktables to the interior. The load bearing masonry walls provide natural alcoves and vaults giving this space the necessary grounding to feel personal. By chamfering the corners of the building, he also allows us to infer that this is not the only structural layer The middle ring is built of reinforced concrete and supports the heavy stacks of books. Circulation towers and others services are located in the corners of the library with the metal book stacks filling between them. Light filters into the stacks from the large perimeter windows to one side and the central core from the other. The inner ring is the dramatic open space surrounded by the stacks. The concrete walls have huge circular openings that reveal the books and wooden ‘podium’ edges. Overhead are two massive concrete crossbeams that also act as reflection plates for the clerestory windows. Light fills the central cavity from overhead and filters through the circular openings.
The Research paper on Library – Books
Computer is almost in all places. It has changed how people work and the routine of the companies and procedures on other establishment. It is resourceful and performs wide variety of task. Computer increases productivity for both individual and organization because they are fast, accurate, able to process huge amounts of information and eliminate tedious task. It is an integral part of today’s ...
The cathedral-like feeling provides a humbling entry into the library. Kahn is at his best using heavy structure and warm wood to create a place of light. As we move up into the stacks, Kahn employs this monumental presence in another manner. The use of woodwork in the library is not structural but selected to mark places where students and books interact. This includes the carrels and study tables as well as the card catalogs, reference desks, and tables at the perimeter of the central atrium. The ritual of books and learning, light and enlightenment activates with entry into the grandeur of the central atrium. The strength and power concentrated in this place acts as both a moment of departure and arrival. We leave the ordinary world, take a breath, and arrive in a sacred place. This communal portal sets a tone for the personal journey ahead.
The student rises into the stacks searching for the text and moves through the heavy concrete, middle layer with soft light filtering in from both sides. After selecting the text, he moves toward the light, toward the central atrium. The wooden tables along the perimeter of the atrium provide the student a place to examine the books away from the dimly illuminated stacks. These tables act as long podiums looking out into the monumental core. The student is now located within the grand, circular, concrete cut-out and positioned to read the text to the people below. We have become a part of the mythic process.
The carrels are in partnership with the atrium tables. With the text calling for deeper investigation, the wooden carrels provide a personal place to study. Moving from the atrium to the perimeter carrels we re-emerge into natural, direct light behind the brick façade. Here, at the carrels, the individual dives into their personal journey. Kahn has created a refuge. The mythic atrium has established an openness and comfort for the psyche. Using contact with wood Kahn leads the students to their own personal sacred space, the carrel with light flowing through the window. The operable portion designed into the wood panelling reinforces the personal nature of this place.
The Essay on A Clean Well Lighted Place 2
RESPONSE TO "A CLEAN WELL-LIGHTED PLACE" The old man, who we will call the "Gentleman," – to keep the confusion minimal between the old man and the old waiter — in "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" cannot be happy without his wife. The two waiters represent the Gentleman? s battle of his inner consciousness. The waiters portray the demons of the Gentleman? s personal heaven and hell. We ...
Students have control over their own light. An individual can choose to be alone even with others near. Kahn ritualizes the path toward knowledge raising it to a level of enlightenment. Beginning with a search and finding of text, the individual proceeds to the light, opens themselves up to the larger than life experience, and is provided refuge as an individual to integrate this into a new sense of being. The careful orchestration of material, structure, and movement engages the individual and the community in a library that is more than just a repository books.