The cubist canvas was the locus where the painter simultaneously presented several aspects gathered successively with the purpose of suggesting a higher reality. —Marta Braun

The solitaire

Occurring during 1909–11 and claiming to be a realist movement, Cubism came as the mother of all the radical art movements which coincided with the transformation taking place on the world stage at the turn of the twentieth century, especially in the fields of science and technology.

The paintings of its main protagonists—Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque— came to counterpoint the arrival of new and revolutionary theories of matter and the challenging concepts of space, time and energy embedded in Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity (1905).

Georges Braque Bottle and Fishes c.1910–12

By allowing their paintings and collages to respond to a binocular (two-eyed) vision rather than a monocular (one-eyed) perception, Cubism came to shatter the single vanishing point of a Renaissance linear perspective into a multiplicity of viewpoints.

By compressing and flattening several views of an object into a single composite, and by expressing the idea of the object rather thanany one exclusive view of it, their experiments dramatically expanded the shifted viewpoints found in Paul Cézanne’s later paintings.

This also caused the two-dimensional image to fracture into tiny facets, and thereby release form from its hitherto naturalistic representation and move it towards its abstract conclusion. In parallel with the upsurge of a Modernist thinking, this shift toward fragmentation, which depended upon the relative position of the viewer, involved a temporal dimension.

In its recording of the lapse of time, the dynamic of the artist’s eye reflected that of shifting camera angles in movie-making—the ultimate image involving the ‘simultaneity’ of compressed time. This aspect of Cubism was profoundly influenced by the philosophy of Henri Bergson who saw time as an essentially intuitive experience and reality as resulting from a simultaneous flow of past and present into the future.

Le Corbusier was well aware of the Cubistic mode of juxtaposing a multitude of meaning into the simultaneity of a single statement. Indeed, some of his buildings reflect this ‘collage’ approach in their elevations and in the layering of contrasting cultural and historical references.

Design rationale is a term used to focus on the underlying reasoning behind a design intention.

It concerns the basic structure of thought that brought the design into being. Sometimes referred to as ‘intellectual underpinning’, the design rationale aims to distinguish between the intuitive and the cerebral, and to represent the bedrock on which concepts are structured.

However, it must be added that while it is difficult to apply logic to an instinctive approach, the ultimate response may represent a balance between the two.

‘Pet idea’ is a common type of design rationale that typically needs to be aired early on so it can be discarded or be allowed to evolve into a legitimate design rationale. When a developed intention is declared in a ‘mission statement’ or presented as a mini-manifesto and, hopefully, made visible in the proposed design, the design rationale flies in the face of whimsical or willy-nilly design attitudes and challenges a ‘prima donna’ approach.

"Natural landscapes may exhibit the beauty of rhyme and contrast simply in their static structure. But people who live in the landscape —as men live in cities—the dynamic structure, the diachronic rhymes, add a new dimension to aesthetic pleasure. They see the same landscape in a state of flux. But, through every change, the landscape retains its identity and each transformation gives them new insight into its essential character." — N.Humphrey

The word diachronic refers to comparisons we make through time. This term offers the architect a very direct and meaningful description of an arrangement or treatment of parts or events occurring not at the same time but through the variable of time.

Although the word is not in use in everyday conversation, it can capture the transformations in appearance through movement, weather, night and day, and time very clearly. One could conceptualize the comparison from one second to the next or from one season to another.

Another example in the field of colour theory is the concept of ‘successive colour contrast’, where the same colour appears to differ in chromatic strength (saturation) if preceded by its complementary colour.




If one walks through a green corridor, for example, prior to moving to a red one, the red appears stronger or more vivid.

In the context of the study of aesthetics, the term ‘diachronic rhyme’ has been specifically used by Nicholas Humphrey (Architecture for People [Mikellides [1980]) to refer to the pleasure we get when comparing something to its precious self—the rhyme of the flower with the bud, the rhyme of the recurring musical composition.

The sense of order gradually emerging as we pass through the streets of a town Like Amsterdam is an example of diachronic rhyme according to Professor Peter F.Smith: ‘Amsterdam is a case of what Gerard Manley Hopkins called “likeness tempered with difference” extended over the city.’

Keith_Albarn,_Pattern_and_Belief_at_The_Minories_Galleries,_Installation_view_02

A diagram is a drawing that, stripped of all superfluous and distracting data, shows the general scheme or outline of an idea or object and its parts.

Operational, flow, and functional (bubble) diagrams.

 “True equilibrium is expressed by the straight line,” wrote Piet Mondrian.

 For him and his modernist allies, that line was inevitably black. Architects like Rietveld, and later the Eameses, gave architectural expression to arrangements of brightly colored planes organized by black.

In the same way, today’s architects and designers use black as an essential structural element.
Aloof from the vagaries of fashion and trendiness, black is a timeless choice. 

 It represents at once a totality—a convergence of all colors—and the most primal act of a designer: Taking black ink to white paper.

Peter Marino + Assoc Architects, Chanel Store, Paris, 2003.

Harrison and Abramovitz, Corning Glass Center, Corning, New York, 1951.

Peter Marino + Assoc Architects, Chanel Store, Paris, 2003. 

Zaha Hadid Architects, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, 2003

Zaha Hadid Architects, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, 2003.

Zaha Hadid Architects, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, 2003.

 

Zaha Hadid Architects, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, 2003.

Zaha Hadid Architects, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, 2003.

Zaha Hadid Architects, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, 2003.

Eric J. Cobb Architect, Stretch Residence, Seattle, 2003

Eric J. Cobb Architect, Stretch Residence, Seattle, 2003.

Eric J. Cobb Architect, Stretch Residence, Seattle, 2003.

 

Eric J. Cobb Architect, Stretch Residence, Seattle, 2003.

Gabellini Associates, Park Avenue Apartment, New York, 1998

Gabellini Associates, Park Avenue Apartment, New York, 1998.

Gabellini Associates, Park Avenue Apartment, New York, 1998.

 

Gabellini Associates, Park Avenue Apartment, New York, 1998.

The image of classical architecture as pristine white marble temples set against the blue sky is largely a figment of the twentieth-century imagination. 

The great Greek and Roman sites were, in their day, effusively polychromous—blue friezes, red capitals, statuary as tarted up as any in Las Vegas.

The multicolored architecture of the Renaissance is epitomized by the white, green and red scheme of the Duomo in Florence. 

In the gray ashes of World War I, the modernist Die Bauwelt published an issue titled “A Call for Color in Building.” Polychromy had became an act of revolution.

  Rockwell Group, Pod Restaurant, Philadelphia, 2000.

 As a response to a structural engineer’s drawing showing the gravitational loads along the building’s façade, the architect decided to allow this sketch to drive the exterior color scheme. Thus, areas in red denote the heaviest loads, those in blue the lightest, with yellow and orange in between.

Sherwood Mills and Smith, St. Mark’s Church,
 New Canaan, Connecticut, 1961.

Sherwood Mills and Smith, St. Mark’s Church, New Canaan, Connecticut, 1961.

 

This is a modern take on the splendid multicolored stained glass windows that were the artistic achievement of the Middle Ages. Here the windows are set in a staggered pattern within walls in a brick herringbone pattern, the light brown color allowing the effusive glass to stand out. Also blending into the background is the white ceiling, acting like a screen onto which streaming shards of color project at key times of the day.

Sherwood Mills and Smith, St. Mark’s Church, New Canaan, Connecticut, 1961.

 

Toshiko Mori Architect, Compound on the Gulf of Mexico,
 Sarasota, Florida, 2002 

Toshiko Mori Architect, Compound on the Gulf of Mexico, Sarasota, Florida, 2002.

 

An entrance hall to a beachfront house sports a prism-shaped skylight whose glass surface manages to change color with the time of day, indeed at times replicating the soft blues and pinks of a Gulf of Mexico sunset. Direct light pours in from an adjoining clerestory window, bouncing off of the angled glass surface and providing diffused light for the owner’s collection of modern art. 

Toshiko Mori Architect, Compound on the Gulf of Mexico, Sarasota, Florida, 2002.

Toshiko Mori Architect, Compound on the Gulf of Mexico, Sarasota, Florida, 2002.

Gisela Stromeyer Design, Club Incognito,
Zurich, 1998.

Gisela Stromeyer Design, Club Incognito, Zurich, 1998.

Five lanterns made of spandex stretched with fiberglass rings are illuminated. This effusive display of color and geometrics is something of a lesson in color interaction. The translucence and transparency of the fabric allows various layers to overlap; thus, blue over yellow yields green; yellow over red, orange.

Gisela Stromeyer Design, Club Incognito, Zurich, 1998.

Gisela Stromeyer Design, Club Incognito, Zurich, 1998.

The Moderns LTD, Rewarding Lives Exhibition for
American Express, New York, 2002. 

The Moderns LTD, Rewarding Lives Exhibition for American Express, New York, 2002.

The multi-hued spatial effects of the fabric-and-steel “tent” structures contrasts with the strictly black-and-white photography of Annie Leibovitz that was on display within. Because of the reflective nature of the fabric, only a small amount of color light is sufficient to give them the appearance of brilliant, oversized gems.

The Moderns LTD, Rewarding Lives Exhibition for American Express, New York, 2002.

The Moderns LTD, Rewarding Lives Exhibition for American Express, New York, 2002.

 Book Reference:
Architecture in Detail: Colors
https://amzn.to/3yfR3bA

Photo by James Woodward. © James Woodward, available from Artifice Images

In plan, the chapel of the Church at Bagsværd is the central space in a rectangular collection of rooms and courtyards, which are framed by perimeter aisles used for circulation throughout the church.

Natural light enters primarily through a large skylight located between the two uppermost folds of the curved ceiling, as well as through the glass ceilings of the perimeter aisles. The surface of this ceiling, which is at its lowest above the entry, compressing space over the congregation, vaults skyward toward the altar and accentuates lines of sight beyond the sacristy.

 A sequence of connected arcs evoking layers of clouds forms the sectional geometry of the ceiling.

 The ceiling is composed of thin board-formed concrete shells, which span 63 ft 8 in (19.4 m) between the two perimeter aisles and support the external metal roof. The structural relationship between the ceiling and roof inverts the typical hierarchy, in which interior surfaces are supported by exterior structure.

In this shaped section, the voluminous quality of the interior stands in extreme contrast to the flat surfaces of the exterior massing.

Architect: Le Corbusier
Location : Ronchamp, France  
Date:1955
Building Type :church
Construction System:reinforced concrete
Climate: temperate
Context: rural, mountains
Style:Expressionist Modern
Notes:Soft-form composition, deep windows with colored glass (wall thickness 4' to 12')

Photo By Gili Merin @Archdaily

Book reference : Manual of Sections

The section of Le Corbusier’s well-known pilgrimage chapels reveals material and structural paradoxes. Both the south wall and the roof appear to be massive but are hollow. The ceiling, over 7 ft (2.1 m) deep in some areas, is formed by curved concrete girders and parallel purlins that span between the girders. This structural system produces the convex underbelly defining the interior of the church and gathers into a single rain scupper at the rear.

Following the topography of the site, the floor slopes gently toward the altar. Unlike those religious spaces that use a concave ceiling to gather and focus an interior space, the convex, shaped section of Ronchamp pushes against the periphery, while merging with three smaller chapels at the sides of the nave.

A video on Notre Dame du Haut by Fourthwall:

Web Reference:
http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Notre_Dame_du_Haut.html
https://www.archdaily.com/84988/ad-classics-ronchamp-le-corbusier

https://amzn.to/3yjy9As