Designing in Section
How important is it to design in
section? What can it do to influence the activity of a building? Rem Koolhaas,
with the Downtown Athletic Club, reconfigured the thought process regarding the
design of a skyscraper. Rather than allowing the building to be read as a
repetition of a singular platform and understood in plan, he designed each
floor to operate and function as its own entity that can only be understand, as
a whole, by looking at it in section. This is what makes the building so
interesting.
Not only do sections express the
relationships between levels and their functions, they also connect the
building to its context, which in my opinion is what makes designing in section
exciting. This can be interpreted in various ways, one being designing the
building to fit into the flow of the context and fit into the terrain, and another
being to allow the context and the terrain to flow into the design of a
building. The two images shown below represent each of these ways. The Sao
Paulo Museum of Art fits into its context and creates an additional public
space, while the Rolex Learning Center allows the context to extend below and
through the building.
Harrison, you make a great point and I find the examples very informative. I also agree that sections help you visualize the relationship between building and context. Another comment to add on the use of sections that I find exciting/fun is scale in terms of experimenting with proportions to develop a "sense of belonging". I think this is another element in regards to how the section responds to context.
ReplyDeleteI am also very interested in designing in section versus plan because as you said, the section responds to the context. It prevents the building from being placed in any site and/or the program being completely re-imagined. In comparing plans and sections as design tools, the section ties everything together: the plan to the section, the sections to the elevations, etc.
ReplyDeleteNot only do you begin to see how the building works within itself and its surrounding context, but you can also start to have a better understanding of the building in relation to the human scale and how they can interact with it.
ReplyDeleteAgree! A good section design would make a project much more intriguing, and it could also show the design ability of the architects, how they deal with a more complex connection within the system vertically and horizontally and the scale of the space.
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