The 11th Weekly Opus "Road Trip"

~Wednesday, 15 April 2009
Roots
Root seems like a kind of own style in the field of architectural design. For example, Pyramid is treating as a Root of architecture because I also begun to learn about history of architecture from Pyramid of Egypt. There is an example of root for history of American architecture that is Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater. I think that Wright's Fallingwater is the root of American architecture, too. It shows that the harmony between nature and man-made structure and also harmony is the most important point for architecture over the world. Along the Arts and Crafts Movement, Americans could figure the root of history of American architecture. According to the textbook, Massey states that “The Arts and Crafts Movement had widened the debate about what constituted good design,... (31)."




Congruence
In architectural field, there are lots of attempt to accomplish the potential possibilities of architectural design. Among these, congruence would be one of the most important potential possibilities because architecture is all about "find out" the congruence as utilizing architectural elements. According to the textbook, "Both von Klenze's and Schinkel's galleries used reek details selectively, in buildings whose plans arose from a detailed analysis of contemporary functional requirements (Roth, 475)."

Above Image is an Example of "Congruence" between architecture and nature


Concept
For architecture, concept is representing the purpose of every buildings. For example, the concept of museum would be display and keeping artifacts, cafeteria would have a concept as a space for eating, and classroom need to be constructed to accomplish the concept of studying. Therefore, as an architect designer, it is extremely recommended to keep in mind the concept of each work to be seen better. There is an example of concept from the textbook. "focused on the elaborate staircase, which provides the perfect stage on which the operagoer can parade and exchange greetings (Roth, 483)."
Fallingwater is built for personal housing.



Materiality
Materiality helps spiritual thing to be physical thing; in other words, various kinds of materials helped to build Fallingwater and Monticello. As colors play huge role, materials also work as key element of architectures. It depends on how to apply materiality to build architectures because Fallingwater was built with stones and on stones itself. Therefore, it is able to have stronger intention on Fallingwater itself. "the greatest possible work is done by the least amount of material (Roth, 489)."


Compression : Release
Compression and Release could be seen like Limit and Free because compression is tying something together and release is to let something be free. Therefore, to find something in the field of architecture, light source would be the example in architecture because it shows two distinct effects on buildings. For example, Fallingwater and Monticello could be examples of compression : release which show the use of light source. In Fallingwater, dark hallway and bright private room. In Monticello, use of lots of windows on it. Moreover, the location of these two great architectures show compression : release because Monticello is located on the top of the hill and Fallingwater is located in the forest. “Built on a rocky hillside, the concrete structure cantilevers over a waterfall(Massey, 85).”




To sum up, this week's weekly opus project can be defined by Road Trip because I visited architectures which are the root of modern architecture of American. Also, these have congruence, materiality, and compression ; release as those concepts. As it was a really awesome experience for me, I hope that there would be a kind of landmark able architecture under my career.