South East Asia Architecture Field Trip

coming soon....

PLAY TIME

"Play Time" was directed by French director, Jacques Tati, who himself played as a Monsieur Hulot in the movie. Tati has built an enormous set specially for the film with complex visual sound and low level of dialoge as a background noise. Here are some ideas after i watched this movie. 

As i started watching "Play time", confusion came to my mind........

The movie started with the scene at the airport where a group of american tourist arrived to Paris. The officer inside the airport acting and dressing neatly and moved orderly. There is less dialogue but more of the natural voice from the scene in the movie which let viewer a chance to guess and perceive what the director trying to show. As I started to observed the background and architecture in the movie, I found that there is a glass box building appear in the movie a lot. I can see from the interior of the building like airport, office, and the scene where there was a product sale event or something. The interior looks light with white color and glass facade, also appear to be geometry shape for the furniture. When the American tourist come to the outside of buildings, there happened to be a lot of high rise buildings around the area which all of them again, looks like a glass geometry box shape. The tone of the movie looks like it was shooting in black and white film, but it was not because i still see some color in the movie. I think it reveal the idea of modern where the object or architecture come up with natural and pure color. 

Tati has built his enormous set of background, furniture, and architecture especially for his film. The inspiration would be from modernism because when look back to the time when this movie produced, it's like the time when modernism has been effective to the world. Mies van der rohe is one of the famous architect known in modernim period. He is Mr. "Less is more", that known for simplicity, and geometry shape. Just like in the movie, architecture that appear in the film happened to be like Mr. Less is more's. Anyway, i think "Play Time" is a good and also weird movie which confused me a lot with the voice, the character, but not the architecture. It tells the story itself that it is a lovely modernism. 

Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman

I have a chance to watch one of the best documented film in History of Architecture class. It is a film documented the action of Julius Shulman while he was capturing the images of architecture, name Visual Acoustics, narrator by Dustin Hoffman

The film started with and old man, Mr.Shulman, intruducing himself and talking about modern architecture. He is the world's greatest architectural photographer, who brought images of modern architecture to people which also to the American mainstream. He used his sense of feeling, eyes and composition to capture architecture and make the picture look more being a warm architecture by adding context like furniture or people into the picture. 

In this documented film, the main architecture that Shulman documented and photographed was the Case study house no.22 by Pierre Koenig. It is a modernist house in the Hollywood Hills, California, where you can see magnificent view of the city down below. The house is also considered an iconic representation of modern architecture in the 20th century. Julius Schulman documented and photographing this house in a panoramic view of the city through the floor to ceiling glass walls at night with two women sitting at a corner as he was trying to make his picture looks more than just "architecture" by adding context. 

Stahl House (Case study house no.22) by Pierre Koenig

One thing that i understand in this film is the relationship between "text and context". Architecture is just architecture when not adding context like furniture and people that live in the house like what Shulman trying to say through his photograph. 

 

Modern Architecture: Le Corbusier VS Tadao Ando

When i think about “Modern Architecture”, i would think of a house or building with plain, pure, transparent, and simple form. I did mention about history of Modern architecture in “From Bauhaus to our House”, that it was started in the early 20th century and gained popularity after the second World War until now. I think Modern architecture shows the development of technology and engineering through the buildings structure, materials, and form. 

Again, when talking about modern architecture, one architect that i always think about is Le corbusier. He was the very first architect who started Modernism and well known from his famous work like Villa Savoye.

Villa Savoye is a modernist villa in Poissy that built between 1928-1931, by Le Corbusier. It was designed with pure geometry form and supported by a lot of columns to elevated the building from the ground and allowed the continuity of garden beneath. The roof serving as a garden and terrace to occupied nature even a person stay within the building. Villa Savoye is a free floor plan that it's structure supported by columns.

In comparison to my studio work that I choose to work on Tadao Ando's building called, 4x4 house, Villa Savoye and 4x4 house is a modernist house but yet, they are different in some way. 

4x4 house is a minimalist house with full of functions and necessities things that people need. The given site was 65.42 meter square but Ando design the house with only 22.56 meter square. Ando propose a new design in his personal remembrance of the destruction of the earthquake with a four-story high building facing toward the island. He came up with 4-by-4 meters rooms that stacked one top of another like a block and be restrict with rules of building’s height and also off-street-parking. The first and second cube were stacked on one another but the third cube were stacked shifted to the east by one meter.  4X4 house is a load bearing wall structure, meaning that there is no column inside the house to support the structure but instead, load bearing wall use a walls instead of columns to support the structure. 

These two houses are both pure and simple form. The architects designed a geometry shape like box and circle, also play with windows and lights. But Villa Savoye has been supported by column and up lifted above ground which I somehow think about Greek architecture. But for Tadao Ando's building, 4x4 house, I think it's very pure and always signify Modern Architecture. 

Responses to the Metropolis

I always love watching black and white film. Metropolis is another classics film that i had a chance to watch in History of Architecture class. The uniqueness of this film is not just it is a classics black and white film, but it is a silent film too. There is no dialogue in the movie but the action of the actors could tell all the story. 

The film is set in a futuristic city Metropolis, where the society was divided into two classes: high class and low class. High class people usually be a thinker or manager who live higher above the ground, up in a luxurious skyscrapers but in opposite way, low class people like workers who work with machines live and work desperately underground. After a while, when the scene change from the underground factory to a luxurious city above ground where everything is magnificent, a girl appeared with kids and then the son of Metropolis's master followed her to the underworld. The fact that low people live and work underground, rich people above ground could not see the poor people. The man was surprised with what he saw. At this point I started to get some point from the story which is about the differences of level of people and society.  

I think the movie is trying to tell the differences between classes of people through the society, environment, and architecture. Higher level of people usually rich and live in a high rise luxurious building while the worker living underground. Comparing to our present society, the idea of classes of people still there, through people's living and society. High rises building or skyscrapers come up more in a present day to serve anyone that have enough money to buy a tiny room in a huge building. But where are the place for poor people? Is it underground like Metropolis's workers?

From Bauhaus to Our House [History of architecture class]

In the last two decades in architecture, modern buildings occurred and spread out the trend all over the world, from a small group called “Bauhaus” in Germany. The building started to covering more with glass, aluminum, steel and concrete, as ornate buildings with the exterior decoration of stone go down.  The size and shape of the building changed, from a dome to just a box like shape as well as high rise building or skyscrapers go up, taking stranger and stranger shapes.

In From Bauhaus to Our House, Tom Wolfe give the view of art to the world of architecture. Thus, the reflection of a philosophy or theory had occurred in the twentieth century of architecture. According to Wolfe, the philosophy that explains architecture is Marxism, the central vision that was translated into main form of architecture in the century. 

Tom Wolfe wrote in the introduction chapter in his book, “From Bauhaus to Our House” that, “I doubt it seriously. Every child goes to school in a building that looks like a duplicating-machine replacement-parts wholesale distribution warehouse. Not even the school commissioners, who commissioned it and approved the plans, can figure out how it happened. The main thing is to try to avoid having to explain it to the parents.” Wolfe had extend his idea of opposing a modernism theory hilariously. He called building in New York city, a “Glass box”. 

Glass House, connecticut in America, by Philip Johnson

From Bauhaus to Our House started with the Bauhaus and its founder, Walter Gropius, the silver prince that took place in Weimar, Germany capital city in 1919 after World War I. Walter Gropius brought all the arts together. Young architects and artists who came to approached in this school has to “starting from zero”, which the major focus of this school was to create original and innovative ideas, along with theories. Bauhaus also invited technology to form a new unity of “art and technology”. 

Bauhaus were later fleeing Nazi Germany and brought the international style with them to America and accepted major teaching at the nation's most famous academic institution, empower them to manage generations of American architects. So later, american architecture as looking from the view of America, is fulled of “glass box”. 

This book emphasizes the movement of Modernism and the principle of architecture for being “Modern”. It is surprisingly that a 'small' group of people called “Bauhaus” built a theory, and spread it throughout the world and that changed the world, arts of architecture in a completely different way. From the exterior decorative stone or marble building that made buildings look so dense and thick, to a look-like light, soft, airy glass building. It's completely different when we compare and contrast them together.