ARCHITECTURE
elegantly explained by Siposito Ceramictops
when and then ?
so, when? that was how we began our talk modern architecture in the posttramaticstress dsiorder we call ‘wurld’.
now a building is not just a building is not just a hut i snot just a shed is not just a house is not manay of the things that a building is not. a building is an insipidation to us all. to me. to you, ah but you are not you you are me in the words of douglasquaid
as a student and academic of architecture allow me to share the foundational principles of of the domicile. the basics, the fundamentals, the underpinnings, and of course the foundation of the thing we hope will not fall down soon. we have to got a doorway. no doorway no inside. ahaaha but if a window is a point of entry [sniggering]. not caught out, a window as a point of entry is now a doorway. ahahaha what if domicile has enourmous gap in walls is not a doorway. not caught out a big gap is now a doorway and so on and so forth and so on and so on whatever lack of solid you choose to make entry by is now a doorway. thus without a point of entry, a doorway, there cannot exist an inside.
now for the sake of argument, a heated one during which things are thrown, supoose you build a building that is four hundred meters tall and you place a “window” at the three hundred and seventy-five meter mark. that is now a doorway, it just so happens to be a doorway that requires a ladder to use. moving along. a domicile window is another basic building block of building a building. windows, it oughtily be noted are optional. some climates are not window climates some are. hot place window keep sun out stay cool, cold place let warmth out less warm. in a sense it does not make sense but of course have a thunk about it and then share. unlike a doorway, a window can either be openable or not openable partially openable optionable.
are we getting ahead of ourselves.
where are we going to put these doorway and windows. in a wall
walls can be constructed from a varirety of materials traditionally wood stone mud straw brick and more modernly steel working together with glass. for practical reasons a wall will usually begin at the ground and extend toward the sky but sometimes they go down into the ground quite a lot and sometimes do not go up beyond the ground but down instead and thus make a cellar a basement a lair or a sunken
our walls for the shake of argument go up form the sky downward and stop where they meet the ground. we will have four walls in our demonstation house all of which join to one-another at ninety degree angles, not all of them but two and two so if we number our wall from one to four then looking at wall one faceon it joins to walls two and four at ninety degrees and touches not wall three except by means of proxy via walls two and four as previously mentioned. wall two joins to wall one and wall three at ninety degrees and has no business with wall four except by virtue of holding hands with wall wall conjoining walls. all of walls for the sake of augment are of equal width and height square making a square floor and a square where the roof will go.
in one of the walls we will make an opening taller than it is wide that accepts the form of a standing walking average human it does not matter where you place it at this conjuncture calling it the doorway
should you choose to do so you may have as many windows as pleases you. these can be of any size and shape but they should be able to allow light to enter into the room, the window hole filled with either glass or paper as is traditional.
you may recall that without a doorway through which to enter the domicile we had no inside but we made a doorway and thus we have created an inside, outside of our walls we will call the outside. it is like this. inside we have space that is one a large area contained by our walls. we will call this area a room.
place a lamp inside the room
this is what our domicile should look like now
it should not look like this
now, humans on earth have to deal with the elements the weather it is a primary reason for the domicile so with that in mind lets consider the next vital element in our list of fundamental architectural bits of house: roof.
this goes on the top the top is closest to the sky the roof should cover all of the areas of inside that we want to remain dry. if we want inside to remain either cool or warm depending upon climate then roof should adjoin walls in such a way so as to limit the flow of air upwards. roof is typically more difficult to construct than wall because it covers all of the area defined by the walls and is subject to gravity in such a way as to require that it not collapse into room. for this reason roof is commonly not flat. roof viewed from the side is like an upside-down “V” shape and from the front or back roof requires that the mind understands perspective.
modern architecture is such that seldom is a building fabricated without all of these basic elements. while describing roof it has become night, you may now illuminate room by lighting the lamp.
by building on the ground we have without any real effort of our own created floor.
floor is the antithesis of roof, lying at the opposite end of our vertical walls anti-skyward from roof. gravity, that natural force applied to all things on Earth maintains the logical balance between “up” and “down”, making certain that roof remains up and floor remains down. this provides both shelter and something to stand on respectively.
up and down are layman’s terms that may cause confusion if you imagine laying out the technical drawings for the design of a building on a table with a person each viewing the drawing from a different side of the table from the other. for this reason the architectural terms for up and down are cloudward and shoeward. on an architect’s technical drawings confusion is avoided by having these directions printed in large bold lettering accompanied by large bold arrows pointing the correct way ‘up’ and ‘down’. building in modern times are seldom constructed cloudwardside-shoeward but in ancient times and indeed right up until the middle of the seventeenth century it did.
happen
it as at this point we have all the basics of architecture clearly defined. the execution of our domicile is now in the hands of either a carpenter, a builder or perhaps an engineer.
the more experienced architect may also be tasked with creating a building that goes far beyond the already complete design as outlined so far. let us continue with our domicile example as other types of building are beyond the scope of this discussion. who are you talking to it is only you. no i am here too. alright then it is a discussion and no longer a monologue. imagine if you will an inside divided into more than one section, that is to say we place within our four walls a fifth wall that spans the distance from wall one to wall three effectively dividing room into two equal parts. we now refer to inside not as room but as rooms. rooms are contained within inside and inside has not changed conceptually. it has not grown or diminished in size. room has halved in size and becoomes rooms. there are two rooms. we would do this for a number of reasons. perhaps we want to separate where we sleep from where we cook and eat or perhaps we want one room for lying down in and another for standing up in. whatever the reason for which we created our rooms solution we have also created a problem: doorway.
additionally, you should not have placed inside wall such that it obscures doorway. if you did then you have removed inside and you must now move inside wall such that entry to inside can once again be gained via doorway. that said, the problem we have created which to this day in all forms of architecture from domestic to industrial is that we are now required to create a second doorway in inside wall so that a person can enter the half of inside that has ceased to exist since the inclusion of inside wall without it yet having a doorway into the annexed half of inside. the placement of doorway on the inside is critical in the design of inside and can have serious consequences for the functionism of outside. it is here that we could begin to discuss the greater abstract and practical elements of architectural design but given the introductory scope of this dialogue we will limit the discussion of our second doorway to a few choice words. place inner doorway preferably at floor height on inner wall in such a way as to allow a normal average human being to easily gain access to room number two from room number one. it is insignificant which of your two rooms you number one and two, just remember which is which.
now turn the lamp off dawn has morninged,
taking what we know about walls, roof, floor, doorway and windows we can continue to design and add practical features to our building. a common addition to any home could be a training room for swordsmen or a room full of water for sitting in. there are no limits to the imagination of what you can design a room for. I myself me once was asked to design a room that was to have an actual real fire in it. having cautioned the owner-to-be on the dangers of fire within a building he decided to go ahead with it regardless. i was then tasked with finding a novel way in which to contain the fire and prevent the house, for it was to be a place of living, from burning to the ground. the solution i happened upon was to place a large stone slab on the floor and upon it i designed a circular arrangement of stones no more than fifty centimeters in diameter and twenty to thirty centimeters in height. thus the fire was contained, or rather restrained, within the designated area.
this indoor fire worked exstreamle well from the first draft but for one detail. i may remind you that the flow of air out of roof has been severely limited. smoke everywhere. could not breath must leave. made a hole not in roof but in wall and made a long pipe from hole to above but not on fire to help with removal of smoke. some people refuse to listen to advice but would raaaather pay hourly fee for solution to problem instead of removing problem altogether. deep sigh. deep breath.
our house is for argument sake now complete except for some things that can be thought luxury and therefore superfluous or not. although uncommon in contemporary times once it was that the people of the world had water inside their houses. you could design a house to contain water. but why. well. for cooking and cleaning.
in my own house i have a table and two chairs providing a place of rest, i can sit on one of the chairs and sleep on the table. i can use the table as a support should i be required to stand with only one foot and the chairs i am able to sit on should i want to rest. the table doubles as a bed when i am tired and no longer want to sleep on the floor and the chair doubles as something to stand on should i want to pretend i am taller than i am or should i want to reach up into the air above me. all this exercise can make me tired and that is why i have obtained a table as place on which to rest and perhaps nap when i become exhausted. from inside i like to look outside though the window. then i go outside navigate to the window and i look inside. returning to door i pause and i look inside there is a vantage point spanning an ark from which outside can observe inside.
an advanced architectural example (or teo)
other types of building may include buildings for other uses or as we say in architecture other types.
these other types may include other features take for example the loading bay feature of a factory where a truck is required to deliver employees in bulk every morning and remove them late at night after they have been expended. this requires a bay higher up than a normal door on par with the height of a lorry’s load area. should an inexperienced architect not raise the height of a load bay some inconvenience and injury may occur during loading and unloading remember to have strict contractual clauses negating any liability from your own inattention to detail. an optimal design would then require that that the architectural drawings or plans specify a distance from the ground to the level surface of the bay
a common mistake is to measure from the Karman line one-hundred kilometers from the earth to the surface of the loading bay. this creates a problem should the builder of the bay not have an anti-gravitational helicopter to hand and a very long measuring band. very few buildings require measurement form earth’s exosphere, thermosphere, mesosphere, stratosphere or troposphere as it often easier to measure from the what you are standing on up. the thermosphere is in addition useful for measuring the remaining volume of tea.
imagine if you are able a mass transit system in a city in which there are distributed at intervals designated lighting and alighting positions for a vehicle such as a multi-story bicycle or even a bus. an architect’s job is to create a shelter of some kind and some steps possibly a single step to assist people and animals in falling into and from mass-transport carriages. to a layman it may seem inexcomplicated to design such a wotnot and it is true as in Boolean True for someone like i am with some years of experience and the mind like several quite untelligent minds fused together. but for you in the fætal begining of your career this may require some pointers.
firstly place the places where people will queue in convenient places. if there is a hill place one “stop” at the top and another at the bottom preventing people from the necessity of orienteering the hill by foot. such like considerations in mind. these small shelters should provide comfortable shelter from the elements for one person only although they ought to be large enough to house several people partially exposed to wind, rain, sleet and sun with a degree of discomfortitude preventing them from becoming permanent residences. those are really the only rules that need be followed as these mass transit systems are typically in place for the less fortunate who are accustomed to stomaching inconvenience.
that about wraps up part one of our complete guide to architecture for the inexperienced. if you are attending the lectures accompanying this course you have time travel as they took place in the seventh century. additional material can not be found on our companion website [this address]. comments and suggestions are not encouraged and may result in spiteful correspondence. Part 2 of “Modern Architecture” will appear in a future edition of this periodical but will discuss another subject entirely different from architecture or modernism, so keep an eye out for that.