Bathroom Design Proposal. Also, Some Stuff About Envelopes.

 

This isn’t the first time I’ve been advised or assigned to read Zaera’s The Politics of the Envelope. I’ve gotta say that for a text that, I’m told, is an important document, I’m not really sure what all the fuss is about. 

I mean, Zaera makes good points, but I have questions. For instance, Zaera writes that “[t]he discipline has been split between those who believe architecture is a mere social construct and those who believe that architecture’s facts are determined by the inexorable laws of physics, economics, buildability, climatology and ergonomics.”

But is that really true, though? I’m not an expert on architecture, but I can’t help but question the validity of this statement because after 6 semesters of architecture grad school (Team MArch I) I’ve yet to encounter anybody in the practice or teaching of architecture who seems to believe that this kind of dualism is really the “crucial battleground” that Zaera describes. Really, it feels to me like the situation isn’t that the discipline is polarized, but rather that it’s scattered all over the place and a bunch of stuff is connected and some stuff is kind of its own thing or it isn’t really its own thing except that in architecture it is and that’s why we have to sometimes say “materiality” instead of “material” and “poche” instead of just leaving it at “section cut”.

"Hold on while I make this map of architecture for Professor Newman's class"

Anyway, my point (other than to express my frustration with the perceived false premise) is that one of the main proposals of The Politics of Envelope – that architecture needs to double down on the critical assessment of the façade – is one that I mostly agree with. Really, I think it’s stating the obvious. Not that I think that this means architecture needs to necessarily turn into a profession of Exterior Decorators or curtain wall performance analyzers, but I don’t see why façade design shouldn’t be a major point of discourse even more so than it already is.

I mean, think about it: sure, we spend a lot of time inside of a few buildings, but statistically the way that we experience most buildings is from the outside and most people aren’t going to know how brilliant your plan is or about that moment in the stairwell when everything is just so or about the hilarious architecture joke you told when you made that one unresolvable corner into an 8x8 bathroom with a 40-foot-high ceiling and the only light fixture in it is a bare bulb on a dangly 32-foot cord with a dangly string to turn it on and off (SD sketch below, you’re welcome to use it in your comp project).

Proposal for bathroom

All that stuff is important, but it’s going to be lost on most people. Not because they’re not intellectually equipped or spatially/emotionally sensitive to it, but simply because most people aren’t ever going to go inside. They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but I dunno: if you’ve got to spend millions of on your building’s dust jacket, I feel like a critique is in order.

I love this detail, but I don't like the idea of the resources that must have gone into making all of these 2-ply glass assemblies that are only a cladding.  Could Petie Z have done something that's just as good but with less?