Peripheral by robert_sipchen

ERAL PERIPHERAL PERIPHER

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PHERAL PERIPHERAL PERIPH

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an introduction

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Robert Sipchen SCIArc Spring 2020 Thesis Prep Advisor: Marcelyn Gow

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Cultural Agent: Erik Ghenoiu

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Odd and unusable things proliferate around the construction of urban and architectural spaces. Buildings and infrastructure define the built environment, but at their edges there is a peripheral strangeness that offers new territory for design. The peripheral confronts the marginal and looks for the value in dull, important things and how they can be used as material in the creation of public space. The peripheral is the odd placement of a generic detail, the back-endforgot-to-design-it surface, the leftover space from making something huge. Egress stairs, cores, mechanical rooms, and toilets are peripheral to program and mass. The peripheral is banal and weird and ugly. It is simultaneously familiar and alien, an omnipresent and universal half memory in the city. The peripheral does not seek to expand the territory of architecture by looking forward to other things. The peripheral does not reinforce the past. The peripheral keeps pace and looks near in an effort to expand the design territory of Architecture from within. A peripheral architecture is a building sized commitment to public placemaking. It requires a contortion and negotiation between things in the real world. The peripheral comes from buildings and the city and maintains a position between. The museum, the library, and government office increase the surface area for the public, but each determines the use of the enclosed space through an inflection of its programming. The peripheral alternative explicitly excises a programmatic regime and leaves the question of use to the occupant. A peripheral building takes on the same formal characteristics afforded by other large buildings, but upon closer inspection resolves into something stranger. If the odd back sides of big things are the remainder of inattention in design, the peripheral building is an intentional and flexible mirror of that aesthetic. The peripheral is an advocacy for zeroing in on and designing for the wrong thing.

an introduction

The peripheral can be pursued at several overlapping scales. from odd surface details to marginal sides of buildings to urban subregions that emerge through the construction of big things architecture is an agglutination of peripheral things the overlap of these elements can define design territory and provide the material to make new public spaces. The P eripheral

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detail building

city

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A related list of loaded terms: Odd Wrong2 Unusable3 Vague4 Awkward5 Memory6 Boring7 1

Infrastructure10 Junk11 Perturbed12 PERIPHERAL

These terms are pulled from sources of research and inspiration. As a collection they form a conceptual framework; the content of the associated works helps to define and position the Peripheral.

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[1] Odd: Robert Sipchen

[2] Wrong: Robert Sipchen

[3] Unusable: Robert Sipchen

[4] Vague: Michelle Chang Something Vague

a quality that makes a building or detail appealing. Just slightly beyond the normal and rather inexplicable

a designation that should be closely considered. Why something is unusable is important and contestable

[5] Awkward: Andrew Zago Awkward Position

the awkward as described by Zago takes a similar conceptual position as the peripheral in relationship to architectural discipline - it is outside of the conventional. The contortionist’s confrontation of a public stair illustrates the type of move a peripheral building needs to perform.

[7] Boring: Andrew Atwood Not Interesting: On The Limits of Criticism in Architecture

while peripheral and boring are not synonymous, Atwood’s description of the shift of responsibility for focus from author to observer when encountering a boring thing helps to reveal the value of peripheral things.

[11] Junk: Rem Koolhaus Junkspace

Koolhaus writes about residual spaces created by the enclosure and control of urban spaces. Junkspace is not the same as peripheral space, but the origin stories for both are similar.

a state of being that opens a great deal of latitude when thinking about things made or written by other people

chang’s explanation of indeterminate borders of classifying - the example of a sand heap - is very useful in framing the peripheral. edges are unclear and shift when defining peripheral things resulting in loose classification that is assisted by multiple points of reference.

[6] Memory: Aldo Rossi The Architecture of the City

collective memory runs simultaneously with living in urban space, the peripheral is similar to memory though it is more immediate and relies less on deep social history. the everyday familiarty of moving between urban regions highlights the weirdness of peripheral transition spaces.

[10] Infrastructure: Something Fantastic Infrastructure Space: A Visual Atlas

this intensive documentation of infrastructure projects illuminates many of the peripheral sites that are remainders from the construction of cities - infrastructure is made explicit as an accidental generator.

[12] Perturbed: Robin Evans The Projective Cast

the analysis of several competing centers in Renaissance churches is useful in thinking about overlapping peripheral elements displacing the cognition of a peripheral building.

defining

far from

the PERIPHERAL is UNSETTLING

kind of

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a part of

the PERIPHERAL is

ARCHITECTURE (potentially)

distinct from

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A table of contents: Closely Related

Odd Features By Satellite

Hardcore Core

Project and Site

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12 16 28 44 56

Thrasher covers capture an attitude towards peripheral urban space that this thesis values and aspires to mimic Back end staircases, freeway infrastructure, handrails, drainage pits, concrete and steel are all the territory for the performance of trangressive misuse of architecture and its context

The final cover shot rarely captures the multiple attempts to navigate these spaces and land a particular trick. It is a brutal, agonizing process that requires a dogged commitment public space.

These skaters have an incredible intuition for the peripheral and using things wrong. these tricks are correct.

a predecessor

Atelier Bow-Wow : Made in Tokyo

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The Peripheral Thesis has an affinity for this project led by Aterlier Bow-Wow. It is an archive of the periphery in Tokyo, a dutiful documentation by architects of odd buildings and shapes in the city that are a little bit off. Each piece of the archive diagrams a built environment and pairs the analysis with a small narrative of what the building does in the city. It is unclear the degree to which the text is speculative fiction

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Odd Features Scale: The Detail: subtle moves and placements

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The vernacular architecture in Los Angeles (or vernacular architecture anywhere) is by no means a new territory for analysis. Nor is this line of inquiry the main focus of designing for the periphery. The following pages are a nod to predeceeding views of peripheral urban space and look to the odd detail as a building block to influence a larger application of thinking towards what a peripheral architecture might be. The vernacular is a gut feeling and a wild venue for the weird.

odd features

Peripheral: through Los Angeles Vernacular These odd buildings

have qualities I like

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The character and physical location of these buildings exist in spaces to the side of (A)rchitecture -Notable buildings absorb attention and the vernacular fills in the fuzzy margins

far from

the PERIPHERAL is

BLANK kind of

Something is wrong here

it is hard to imagine designing this particular detail

masking out another

a continuous painted surface

Simultaneously out of place and synced to a particular LA rhythm

continuity a 50/50 split with vertical mirroring

There are common qualities of color material proportion and ready-made components as a set these buildings form something close to generic, but the odd specifics maintain a distance from that designation

a wall-thinning window

subfoot embedded mailbox

a part of the CITY

the PERIPHERAL is

These buildings have an address, but they seem unfixed and able to reappear endlessly throughout the city

distinct from

window line and building bump out

the right, slightly off yellow in two tones

Names are not attached to these buildings and the absence of an obvious author lends to the impression that the strange design decisions materialize from nowhere

It is possible to copy the individual moments but can the whole disposition be reproduced through a new building?

unexpected iridescence

in-line asymmetry

undisclosed interior transition a staircase that wraps the edges

The Los Angeles vernacular is not a complete set of odd and remarkable buildings most of the urban fabric passes by without incident

extremely subtle two tone shift

front access half screen egress

tucked in foliage burst

There is something special in the way the everyday building can grab attention quietly and require a meditation on the disposition of windows and railings

bumpy green shade accent

mostly even facade distribution

far from

the PERIPHERAL is UGLY

which is valuable

kind of

thick walled not windows

elevated single point entry

disrupted bevel meter

snugly placed misfits

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By Satellite Scale: The Building: weird faces and things nearby

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Moving from the detail to the building as a whole, the peripheral starts to appear on the sides of buildings that seem left out of the design considerations, and the spaces close to buildings that are outside the usual space of cognizing achitecture. This section places labels on these areas of interest to suggest a territory for design. Look for the things that are here

by satellite

here here Disney Hall Frank Gehry

here

Ramon C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts Coop Himmelb(l)au Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels Rafael Moneo PERIPHERAL

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“buildings never enter the world cleanly they’re always kind of monsterous.” - used out of context from a SCIArc conversation Major architectural projects are physical behemoths and yet are bound to a larger construct - the Urban Architecture rarely becomes part of the city without some degree of misalignment. The space around the surfaces of buildings - the awkward sides and weirdo backends define the peripheral.

by satellite

Significant buildings are comprehensively designed - teams of well trained and engaged professionals agonize over the whole these buildings approach the limit of what anything can be considered as complete but still there is room for more gaps and opportunities emerge around architecture, potentially space for peripheral design PERIPHERAL

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here

Helsinki Dreispitz Herzog and De Meuron

here

Schaulager Herzog and De Meuron

here

by satellite

here

New Museum SANAA

The peripheral is not locked to an orient most interesting opportunities

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here?

here

Museum Brandhorst Sauerbruch Hutton

tation or a particular side, but some of the

are between unrelated structures

by satellite

here?

Casa de Musica OMA

Iconic architecture pushes the periphery out a little further PERIPHERAL

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by satellite

here

Gothenburg City Hall Gunnar Asplund

juxtaposition helps to clarify th PERIPHERAL

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he peripheral

here

Stockholm Public Library Gunnar Asplund

by satellite

examining the back reveals peripheral territory on

here

here The Guild House Robert Venturi PERIPHERAL

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and around

here

San Cataldo Cemetery Aldo Rossi

by satellite

here

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Signal Box Herzog and De Meuron

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here

Caltrans District 7 Headquarters Morphosis

requires CONTEXT

the PERIPHERAL

is indifferent to

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Hardcore Core Scale: The Interior: unimportant important elements

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Through strict regulation and structural determination, cores, bathrooms, and egress stairs are commonly relegated to a mundane task in architectural design. These spaces are not exciting and are placed within the building with as minimal an impact as possible. But as dull as these spaces are, theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re often the places that gives the most control to the public. The next set of diagrams is an excessive inversion of the core as a practice of teasing out a new approach to public agency inside a building.

hardcore core

New Art Gallery Walsall Caruso St. John

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The programmatic spaces that help define other buildings

New Art Gallery Caruso St. John (all core)

are absent.

hardcore core

Mimesis Museum Alvaro Siza

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Get rid of the books, art collections, stages, and shelves.

Mimesis Museum Alvaro Siza (all core)

Keep the toilets and stairs.

hardcore core

Kunsthal OMA

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A focus shift from the general quality of the building to the specifics of public use

Kunsthal OMA (all core)

oment.

ilizing m should result in a destab

hardcore core

Tama Art University Library Toyo Ito

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The same envelop contains

Tama Art University Library Toyo Ito (all core)

a different pattern of movement and access

hardcore core

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Messezentrum Basel Herzog and De Meuron

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Messezentrum Basel Herzog and De Meuron (all core)

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Project and Site Scale: Building/City: a public occupation of space

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One of the several challenges of using the peripheral as a design ethos, is that the peripheral does not have a fixed position or image. To materialize the peripheral as a building, an architect needs to pull off a trick - to flip the qualities of the near into the forefront without dissipating the strange fringes - and stick the landing. A peripheral building is dependent on the site. Nearby infrastructure, other buildings, and weird urban environments define the peripheral building and set its physical and aesthetic boundaries.

Potential Site: Los Angeles:: near Downtown

A peripheral building is dependent on the site.

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Nearby infrastructure, other buildings, and weird urban environments define the peripheral building and set its physical and aesthetic boundaries.

requires an EDGE

the PERIPHERAL

is indifferent to

project and site

A peripheral architecture is a building sized focus on public placemaking and will be typologically similar to other institutional buildings that shape the public and cultural space of a city.

Union Station Gateway Center Perkins Eastman

here

The peripheral building explicitly excises a programmatic regime and leaves the question of use to the occupant.

here

Twin Towers Correctional Facility HOK

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Vehicle Lot here

Metro Gold Line

The museum, the library, and government office increase the surface area for the public to move in the city, but each determines the use of the enclosed space through an inflection of its programming.

here

Metro Gold Line here

here

Union Station Signal Box

here

Alpine Street

While functionally similar to a park, the peripheral building has the advantage of being able to contort and negotiate through sites that are already filled with infrastructure and buildings - increasing public access to unusable space

project and site

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out of

SCALE the PERIPHERAL is

dependent on

far from

the PERIPHERAL is FAMILIAR

kind of

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A proposal for representation: this thesis can be presented in a number of formats - its success should not be hinged on a specific medium But location and context are important and a peripheral thesis would be well positioned at this specific location in the Southern California Institute of Architecture

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PHERAL PERIPHERAL PERIPH

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