This week, I and Elmas Sultan Şimşek, have prepared a presentation about 1848 Paris. 19th century Paris was dealing with lots of rebellions and their consequences. The atmosphere was corrupted, dirty, and unsettled. The dates of the rebellions were 1830, 1832, 1848, and 1871. The rebellions were tried to be stopped by barricades and temporary walls. But the city plan of Paris that day was not appropriate for police to intervene. The streets were narrow and complex, which allows the rebellions to get bigger instead of being stopped. In 1932, there was also cholera which caused the death of lots of people. So the atmosphere was very bad. It also inspired some artists too. For example, Les Miserables by Victor Hugo was written in 1862. After the rebellions, it was obvious that the streets of Paris should be rearranged. This duty was given to Haussman. He was not an architect or city planner, he was a French administrator but he got the duty because of his close relations with the king. Haussmann transformed the city completely. He re-designed the roads where soldiers and polis can easily intervene. He placed the poor away from the city center and placed the rich into the center. This resulted in Paris being a bourgeois paradise. While arranging the city, he has divided the roads into three categories as primary, secondary, and tertiary road networks. The logic was the same with the human body and veins. The primary roads were bigger, the secondaries were smaller and the tertiary roads were tiny ways that mostly connect the building blocks. This categorization is also valid for public spaces. The primary public spaces are the big areas that are created by the intersections of the primary road networks. The second public spaces were smaller and they were mostly generated by hollowing a block, and tertiary ones mostly appear through the urban fabric. The classical Parisian apartment blocks that we know today are also design by Haussmann. They are known as the Haussmannian block. They have a continuous façade which is applied to any building no matter what. In a classical building, the first floor hosts a business. The second floor has the highest ceiling and balcony. The second and third floors have an identical, slightly lower ceiling height, and the fifth floor is endowed with a balcony. The sixth, mostly the top floor, has the lowest ceiling height and houses the servants’ quarters under the eaves. This pattern is repeated in every apartment block in Paris.
Here is a drawing of a classical Haussmannian Block.
The city that Haussmann designed is the Paris that we know today. The street arrangements and other things are still protected and used as Haussmann designed. But there are some problems with that city plan which occurs today. For example, he has planned big roads as a primary road network, but today, this approach causes big problems with traffic. Also, he is the reason why Paris is such an expansive city today. I think the designing business should be left to the designers. Because Haussmann has planned the city but he was not a designer, he was an administrator, and that affects the future of the city too. Today, every street in Paris is the same. In my personal opinion, I don’t think this is a good approach. The facades and heights and other things about the buildings should change according to the context or the surroundings of the building. There are rules in Haussmann’s design and every entity in the city obeys the rules, but I think design shouldn’t have that many strict rules. Design changes according to the context or to the surrounding environment. Also, he has designed the city with a bird view. We can see today that this is not the best way for a design approach, because people live in the ground. Circulation is in the ground. Designing everything from the top view without checking the eye view is not the best approach according to me.
This week’s topic was 1755, Lisbon Earthquake by Buse Mert and Mehmet Abdullah Ünlü. There were 4 categories of content, Lisbon before the earthquake, 1755 the earthquake, approaches for reconstruction, and lastly, the new Lisbon. Before the earthquake, Lisbon was known as a wealthy trade center and it was a central point for the country. There were lots of immigrants in the city and there was also hierarchical order, slavery was existing. The rich people were at the top of that hierarchical order. Christianity was a major religion and the planning of the city were depending on the church. The planning of the city was not that much neat and tidy, the cluttered look was dominating the city. Lastly, as we can understand from the date, the Baroque architecture can be seen in some buildings of the city. The date 1755 was a huge disaster, it was called ‘doomsday’. Because the earthquake was not the only thing, fire and tsunami followed the earthquake. It was a big shake for 10 minutes, the magnitude was 8.5-9. The durability of the buildings of that time was easily broken, because of their heights and the type of soil. After the earthquake, the fire caused by a gas explosion burned the city down. The tsunami followed the fire. People trying to escape from the earthquake were caught by the fire or the tsunami, which was horrible for people living there and they called that day a doomsday. 80.000 to 90.000 people died and 85% of the buildings were destroyed during the disasters. After the disasters, the city needs to be reconstructed, obviously. Jose de Carvalho e Mello, later named Marques de Pombal, was responsible for the reconstruction and he comes up with a four-part strategy. He was going to keep an inventory first, then he has prohibited all the construction outside the city walls because people escaped there and started to build there improperly. Then he prohibited building in the city also because he wanted to control everything. Lastly, he tried to find funding. After that 4 strategies, he created a group of architects to create a simpler city plan. There were 5 site planning options, all of their pros and cons are calculated and he chooses to demolishing the remaining buildings and then building a new, modern city. This option was the better one because the old city was problematic. They needed lower building heights, the wider streets which will allow the walking public and carriages, and they wanted to reflect the spirit of European enlightenment. After that decision, there were 6 city plans and the most appropriate one was the grid-iron plan. This was a huge change, and it also represents the new order and the total change of the city. Now, the citizen was at the center rather than a church. Also, with the effects of the earthquake, the city infrastructure has improved. Now, there were earthquake-resistant houses. Those disasters and reconstruction of the city also have some effects on the future. The style called Pombaline Style, which is named after Pombal, became the Portuguese architectural style. This was a style proposing the first anti-seismic system and also it was the first pre-manufactured method in the construction world. Another new thing was the birdcage system, which is a light-wooden structural system, is implanted on the structures. Lastly, the church is now not the main or central element of the cities. They are treated like all the other structures.
This week’s lecture was about the great fire of London in 1666 and the rebuilding of the city after the fire. Before the fire, London was a crowded big city. By the 1660s, the city was the largest in Britain. But the city was an unplanned one with organic growth. It was disordered, the streets were narrow and houses were mostly made of wood. The big fire has begun in a bakery named Pudding Lane. The fire spread everywhere, and the spreading was not hard because of the formation of the city. Narrow streets made the spreading easier and wooden houses can burn easily. But the River Thames was a natural barrier for preventing the fire to cross across the other side of the river. But the fire was very devastating, four-fifths of the city was destroyed. 13.200 houses were burned down and the big public buildings were affected also. St. Margaret Fish Street Hill, Royal Exchange, Guildhall, and St. Paul’s Cathedral are some of those.
When this much of the city burned down, obviously there is a need for a new city plan. So II. Charles wanted some suggestions about the city design and opened a competition. There were 5 plans proposed. The first one is Robert Hooke’s design. This was an orthogonal grid plan with large squares. This plan preserves the general structure of London. The second design belongs to Valentine Knight. This plan has a grid formation also, dividing the area with the help of main canals and main roads. The third plan belongs to John Evelyn and this plan suggests the reconstruction with squares and wide avenues according to an Italian-style radial plan. The fourth proposal belongs to Cristopher Wren. This one is similar to John Evelyn’s design, but Wren maximizes the potential of public buildings. The last proposal belongs to Richard Newcourt and we see a hierarchical order in this plan. In this plan, there are public squares and a church placed in the middle of each of the squares. This order is repeated and created a city plan. Those plans were presented to the king but none of them were implemented. Because lots of people immigrated during the fire and it was impossible to know which property belongs to who in those conditions, and there was nobody around to contact with. So until 1677, the city was not recovered or rebuilt. In 1677, the city was rebuilt on the same street plan but with wider avenues. The reason for building the same streets can be the urban memory in a navigational way because people get used to using those streets, and they find their way in that street formation. Changing everything would have created some problems for the people living there. This time, streets were now more open and accessible. And also, houses were not made of wood this time, they used brick and stone. Additionally, there was a Fire Office established. And another result was, the plague was cleared automatically with the big fire. Lastly, a monument was designed by Cristopher Wren and Robert Hooke for the memorial of the fire and located in Pudding Street where the fire has started.
In 1347, the Black Death ravages Europe for the first time. 50 million died because of the plague, in some places, 70% of the population has died. The symptoms were starting with some black swellings in the arm, I guess this is the reason why people call it Black Death. The plague came from Asia and spread to a very wide area. Doctors were wearing those beak-like scary masks to avoid the disease.
At that time Lucca and Bologna were important cities to check. Lucca was a city with orthogonal street formation. The city has city walls for defensive reasons. Also, it was a decentralized city. Rather than having a landmark in the center of the city, there were palaces, churches, and markets spread in the city plan as some important buildings of the city. And the other city Bologna was a city with the pattern of the Roman settlement. Bologna has city walls too. In the presentation, I liked the page in which we see the plans of those two cities together.
There were some organizations and people who are dealing with the public health issue. There were health boards, which is a governmental department that deals with public health. And there were fango officials, who try to keep the infrastructure clean.
The Black Death of course creates a huge impact in every aspect of life. For example, as a long-term socio-political effect, the feudal system has declined. The impact in the art can be seen in the numerous paintings made about the Black Death. The impact that I find interesting is the impact on architecture. The plague has contributed to the ending of the gothic period and the starting of renaissance architecture. Gothic was more sacred and related to religion, but at those times people were probably in denial because they were thinking that god sends them that cruel plague. And also economic conditions were very bad and this also caused the end of gothic.
When considering the conditions we are living in today, the topic was interesting. We are dealing with a virus and the most important issue for today is health. The situation was almost the same at those times. There are again quarantines, masks, and people who work for public health today. The opportunity to compare today with the 14th century was interesting for me.
Since the beginning of the settlements, Chinese cities were dealing with water problems. The Yangtze River and the Yellow River covers a huge part of the land and that causes a great risk of flooding. Even in the last 150 years, there are 7 major floods in the area. The floods create huge damage but the type of damage changes from past to the future. The number of death decreases from past to future, but the economic loss increases. As the world deals with Coronavirus people don’t realize the facts in 2020 but even now in 2020 China still tries to deal with the water problem.
When we look more closely, the main factors affecting flood disasters are land use practice, human settlements, and climate change. Especially now in the contemporary world, agricultural areas are urbanized and that causes the loss of forest areas and vegetation. When human settlements spread all around the world, the population also increases, and that naturally causes more and more urban areas. That rapid urbanization also causes an increase in the impermeable surfaces, so the soil can’t absorb the water anymore. And obviously, this is bad for a country who deals with a water problem since ancient times.
The most important tools to control water are river basin regularization, city planning, and architectural design. Site selection is the first important step. A sufficient distance between the river basins is necessary. Another key point is locating the city to high ground. Linzi can be an example of that kind of city. Also, there can be natural barriers to protect the city from the water, Guilin is an example of that. What impressed me most about the lecture was the canals and drainage systems in ancient cities. People had to deal with the water issue so they have come up with solutions in every part of history. For example, Suzhou’s canal systems were used for lots and lots of centuries, but they have always been useful for the city. Lastly, there were very strong city walls for the cities. The foundations were very strong to keep the walls strong.
Hey! Here I am to share the final products of ARCH401 studio. Firstly, here are our lexicon and our previous studies that effects our design ideas.
After that, we have our program proposals. You can see our programs for pause and play; and then we have some visualizations for our activators. Lastly, we have collages to understand the concept better.
After the program proposal, here comes the system proposal. We have stated our concern first. Then we have a strategy, there are operations we used and we have created a tool kit. Our proposal is created by using that tools and operations.
After introducing the proposal, we have the design of the system. To make that step more clear, we have two catalog that explains our operations. Here we aim to explain how we created the grid which we are using while creating the project.
Lastly, here are our diagrams, drawings and renders.
Hey! This post is a bit off topic, this is not related with architecture but I wrote this paper for my music history class and I wanted to share it with you too. Here is some information about Mozart’s life and his great unfinished work Requiem.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791), full name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a composer of the Classical period. He was born in Salzburg. His father Leopold was his teacher and he started to compose at the age of 5, he wrote his first symphony at 8. Between the years 1762 and 1773, he was traveling with his family and performing with his sister Nannerl in child prodigies. During his trips, Mozart met lots of important musicians including Johann Christian Bach. In Milan, in 1770 he wrote the opera Mitridate, re di Ponto and this led to further opera commissions. He was employed at Salzburg court between the years 1773-1777. He worked in many genres including symphonies, sonatas, string quartets, masses, serenades, and also a few minor operas but he resigned in 1777 because of the bad work conditions. When he visited Vienna in 1781, he chooses to stay in Vienna where he spent his last years. He was married in Vienna to Constanze in 1782.
Vienna was the city where he composed his most well-known symphonies, concertos, and operas. Requiem was funeral music which is also composed at that time. He started to compose Requiem in Vienna in 1791, but he died on 5 December and left Requiem unfinished. When he died, only two parts of the composition were complete; the Introtious and the Kyrie. In 1792, a completed version is produced by Franz Xaver Süssmayr. The requiem was commissioned by Franz von Walsegg for his wife’s anniversary. After Sussmayr delivered the requiem to Walsegg, he was probably intended to pass the piece to himself as his composition but he was stopped by Mozart’s wife Constanze. She arranged a public concert to made Requiem performed. There are claims for Requiem such as Mozart get the commission from a mysterious messenger and wrote the requiem for his funeral. The claims probably belong to Constanze. Mozart died without finishing the Requiem but in his 35 years short life, he composed more than 600 works including symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and also choral music.
The Requiem belongs to the Classical period. The period refers to a period between 1750-1830. It comes after the Baroque period. The music of the period is less complex and more natural than Baroque music. It has a clearer texture and less ornamentation. Sonata form was the main structure of the movements. The textures were mainly homophonic with choral accompaniment. The orchestra increased in size and range. Piano replaced the harpsichord and now, the basso continuo was not commonly used as before. Now, the composers are also composed for concerts, not just for court or church. Now music belongs to the public too; and to make it so, music is more understandable, natural, and clear. The most important composers of the era were Mozart and Haydn. Mozart is considered an innovative classical composer because he experimented in all genres.
Mozart’s one of the most important piece, Requiem, is a mass for death. The word ‘Mass’ comes from history, it is the final blessing said by the priest. The mass is a piece of music which is made to be sung by a choir. A mass is one of the central elements of catholic worship, so it is one of the most important religious services. So obviously, Requiem is a piece of religious music. It was also an important musical form for the Classical period composers. There are two kinds of masses; the Ordinary and the Proper. Ordinary consists of the sections that have unchanging texts. The Ordinary consists of five sections; Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei. Another kind is the Proper and it has changing texts for the specific day. The Proper consists of the Introit, Gradual, Alleluia, Tract Offertory, and Communion. A Requiem mostly combines the sections from both Ordinary and Proper. It commonly uses Introit, Kyrie, Gradual, Tract, Offertory, Sanctus, Agnus Dei, and Communion. The sections are variable according to the composer. The sections of Mozart’s Requiem are Introitus, Kyrie, Sequentia, Offertorium, Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei, and Communio. The Sequence has 6 movements named Dies Irae, Tuba Mirum, Rex Tremendae Majestatis, Recordare, Confutatis Maledictis, and Lacrymosa. Also, the Offertorium part has 2 movements; Domine Jesu and Hostias.
The Requiem was first published in July 1800 and since then; it is an important piece of choral repertoire. The symphony deserves its name; the music is full of tension. While the music of the Classical Period often has homophonic texture, a primary melody accompanied by other voices, through the end of his life, Mozart assimilated polyphonic texture into his works. It is possible to hear that polyphony in Requiem too. The main concern of the music was to express emotions, and Mozart tries to do that in his Requiem too. He makes changes in instrumentation and orchestration. Also, the tone color helps him to highlight dramatic changes in emotions.
The instruments used in Requiem were a bit different at that time. There aren’t any flutes or oboes used. There are basset horns instead of clarinets. Other instruments used are 2 bassoons, 3 trombones, 2 trumpets, an organ, and timps. The trumpets are mainly used for lower and middle notes. There are no horns. But in the piece, the instrumental element was kept at the minimum; the main substance of the work was the voices. His aim was probably to write a piece that takes the voices in the center.
The first part, Introitus begins with an interesting opening. With the bass line and string chords, a lonely bassoon enters and it is being followed by a basset horn. The opening music makes us feel the death; the music makes us feel terrified, sad, and alone. In the Introitus part, an ancient Gregorian chant melody is also used with a soprano soloist. Then chorus enters and repeats the Gregorian chant theme with the soprano section. While listening, it is possible to feel the gradually rising tension and dark, horrifying feelings in the music.
Kyrie Eleison part is an emotionally powerful fugue. Here, there are two principal themes that Mozart uses and ups and downs in the intensity.
The next six movements belong to the part called ‘Sequence’. The first part of the Sequence is, Dies Irae. It is the part that describes the Day of Wrath. The tension of the music makes people feel the doom of the scenes described.
Then comes the Tuba Mirum. This part is a virtual opera scene with four vocal characters. This part is a great quartet. It begins with a very famous trombone solo, then the bass soloist enters in a very serious manner. After that, the tenor enters. In here, there is a passionate request for mercy. Then the third one, alto comes with a piece of more stoic music, and finally, the soprano enters with glowing humanity of hope. When the quartet is completed, they sing together and the movement ends with the feeling of hope for peace.
The next movement Rex Tremendae Majestasis is also an operatic scene like the former movement Tuba Mirum. In here, the Rex means the king and the movement starts with a call from the chorus to that king. After the part by the chorus, winds, trombones, trumpets, and timpani, a more lyric section follows. In one part, all of them come to a climax, and then everything changes, a piano comes with choir pleads.
The following Recordare contains lots of contrasting emotions blended perfectly. The contrasting sections follow each other fluently and as a result of that, the piece evokes serenity.
Confutatis Maledictis is an operatic part again. Here we see the ostinato of the strings and the tenors, basses contrasting with it. The music starts with high tension and it slowly gets lower makes us think that the section is over, but after a pause, an unexpected chord with strings comes in again and continues the story.
The next movement, Lacrymosa means ‘the day of weeping’. The weeping here is depicted with piano and violins, violas. Then the chorus comes and it gradually gets higher. The first eight measures were by Mozart but the rest of the movement was completed by Sussmayr. So the ending of the Lacrymosa, which means the end of the six movements of the Sequence section, is written by Süssmayr.
The next two movements, Domine Jesu and Hostias belong to the Offertory part. The first movement Domine Jesu contains quick contrasts. The following Hostias has an impressive melody sing by the chorus against the string accompaniment. The Hostias is more calm and simple compared to Domine Jesu and this creates an impressive contrast.
The final three movements which are Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei, and Communio are estimated to belong to Süssmayr. There are of course people who criticize those parts but some musicians think that the parts that Süssmayr produced are also magnificent and they perfectly match with the parts that Mozart himself produced. The Requiem ends with a powerful final fugue which makes people feel that they come to the end of their human journey and make them think about mortality.
Sources
Boccara, A. (2017, November 25). Everything you always wanted to know about… Mozart’s Requiem.
In my previous post, I have shared the cases that we have analyzed to create a program proposal. We have created two program proposals that hybridize the programs in the case studies. Our main approach while creating the programs was pause and play. As you know, our main topic was agriculture and in agricultural field, planting stops when its fallow time; we call this time as ‘pause’. So what happens when an agricultural field ‘pauses’? We thought that we need some programs to activate the stopped area again. Then we have come up with the ‘Activator’ idea. Our activators are the programs that activates the agricultural field when it has paused. Here is our first proposal where you can see the play and pause programs;
We have categorized our programs as Cultivation Hub, Living Space, Logistic and Storage, Observatory, and Activator. On the left side of the proposal, you can see which program is taken from cases for which category. Cultivation Hub is a category related to agriculture. It contains programs like vertical farming, terrace farming, and such. The second category is Living Space and concerns about where will the seasonal workers live and socialize. It has programs like accommodation, retreat, or community center. Another category is Logistic and Storage, which is related to how to distribute the agricultural product to other places. The fourth category is observatory. This category is for examinations and it is basically a school-like laboratory. Our last category is Activators. They are the ones that come when a program has stopped working. In the right part of the proposal, you can see the play, pause programs that I have explained in the first paragraph.
Here is our second proposal;
This proposal is not completely different from the first one. We have the same program categories that we had in the first proposal and we again have the activators. But this time we have analyzed the working pattern of seasonal workers in the area and distributed the programs accordingly. You can see the program distribution on the right side of the first page. The second page is about activators. On the second page, you can see the detailed distribution of programs and the 3 types of activators. The diagram below shows how activators work. For example, in winter there is a plant nursery program. In spring it pauses and cow garden comes in that place as an efficient activator and in autumn plant nursery plays again but in that time this program is more efficient than its previous situation.
Hi! After pre-jury I, we have started to analyze some cases to understand their program distribution. We have choosen the cases from a list that our instructors gave us, and tried to make our choices according to features of our site and also our approach to the site. The next step is to take the programs from the cases that we have studied on and create a program proposal for our site. The cases that we have worked on are Seoullo 7017 Skygarden by MVRDV, Ecorium of the National Ecological Institute by Grimshow Samoo Architects, Modular Vertical Urban Farms by Andreas Tjeldflaat, Tainan Market by MVRDV, Floating Farm Dairy by Goldsmith Company, Pixel Cropping, and Umm Abirieh Farm by OMA.
At the end, we have prepared a table which contains all of our cases in terms of scale, number, privacy, accessibility, determinacy, enclosure and serving. Here is the table as a summary of all of our case studies;
As I have mentioned in my previous post, we need to create a topography according to the subject that we are working on. Our previous work was the topography of the risk but what we need to do is to create the topography of the site by considering the risks, so we tried to do that for Pre-Jury I. Firstly, we have listed our risks for the site. Then we have revised our lexicon and put it in our presentation too. After that, we have produced maps about the risks that effect agroscape and put the resources, supporting maps, and pieces of information for the main map. You can see them below.
After that, here is the part about topography. We are focusing on agriculture and firstly we have analyzed 3 maps from different times. When the grid became denser, that means that area is cultivated on that map. After analyzing all 3 maps, we have overlapped them and come up with a map that shows the most planted areas. The most planted areas are the riskiest areas for us because of the use of agricultural products and such. After that, we have also added the other risks that we mapped to our grid on the second page. On the last page, we have created a topography by analyzing the overlapped risk map that we have created. Then we have made some operations to the topography to show how the risks deform our agroscape.
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