Can’t Decide on Your Jeans? Try a Baggy Fit!

Taxonomies are great. Especially if you can fit an idea into one of the categories it proposes. When you can’t, though, it’s rendered a bit murky. Alejandro Zaera Paolo, who brings up excellent points about building envelopes, breaks down building types into four categories in which to base said envelope on. Considering X and Y are the planar dimensions, with Z as the vertical third dimension, his categories are as follows:

X=Y>Z (Flat horizontal, i.e. warehouse or shopping mall)

X=Y=Z (Spherical, i.e. museum or library)

X=Z>Y (Flat vertical, i.e. apartment buildings, office high rises)

Z>X=Y (Vertical, i.e. towers, skyscrapers)

That covers almost all of the combinations you can get from that formula. All of them, in fact, except one: X>Y=Z (Horizontal, i.e. RootEd by Kathleen Feuerborn & Austin Lemere) I believe there are others in our studio that this missing category may apply to as well.

Here’s how I’m going to approach this, but based on others interpretations of the categories please feel free to comment how you think an envelope should be applied to the forgotten Horizontal category. First, this is the general envelope approach to each building category:

Flat horizontal: Loose fit

Spherical: Relaxed fit

Flat vertical: Slim fit

Vertical: Tight fit

I guess Alejandro is a jeans guy. Staying in that vein, and seeing Vertical as one end of the spectrum containing the “tightest fit”, one can assume Horizontal would be the opposite end of the spectrum with a “looser fit” than “loose”. Therefore I propose the following:

Horizontal: Baggy fit

What does a “baggy fit” envelope mean? For basic purposes, I’m going to read it as an even stronger version of what Zaera Polo describes as “loose”, which I believe is distilled best in this quote from the reading:

“As energy concerns grow, the incorporation of passive technologies such as daylight provision and natural ventilation is quickly entering the mainstream: sealed envelopes are no longer the default solution as a more gradual engagement with the surrounding atmosphere is proving to be more sustainable. While compactness is one of the most energy-efficient qualities of an envelope, the edge surface and the roof may be able to enhance the relationship between the internal and the external environments – both as a climatic device and as a physical and visual boundary. The material and geometrical configuration of the edge is crucial to the articulation inside and outside: insets of the footprint or corrugations of the vertical surface and the use of permeable materials may contribute to enhancing osmosis between the contained program and its surroundings.”

I especially appreciate how he talks about osmosis between the program and its surroundings. The envelope of our agricultural school should (and already is in many places) gradually erode into the surroundings, in this case mostly natural and earthy, as seen in the trellis configuration, deep southern balconies and overhangs, and further efforts to “soften” the shell of our building. In an urban setting, this could indicate the use of awnings or other covered circulatory paths, and potential deep inset arcades and open through-connections to other sides of the block.

In conclusion, here’s a picture of Alejandro Zaera Polo wearing jeans, proving that he is in fact a jeans guy.