LECTURE 13
ARTICLE READING
Based on your current design project on which you are working on. Discuss the characteristics of the project in regards of it having a “phenomenology of place”. How does your work illustrate a sense of being “place-based” or does it focus on “placelessness”.
Phenomenology of place is considered as an aspect of sensory design applied in order to establish experiential, architectural space. Phenomenology demonstrated in architecture is the manipulation of space, material, and light and shadow to create a memorable encounter through an impact on the human senses. This theory promotes the integration of sensory perception as a function of a built form. This creates an experience that is beyond tangible, but rather abstract, observed and perceived.
Phenomenology of Place
Design Project
The objective of the project in the current semester is to design and develop a given site into an artist village through the concept of adaptive reuse. I believe in the past semester we were given quite some freedom on our design project, and lecturers are very lenient to us on the quality of space design. However, this semester, we are going through a transition in to the architecture world, and I believe that spatial quality it’s the key in the transition. Therefore, I believe that this semester we should be learning to go deeper into the aspect of design, that goes way beyond the ordinary architectural principles and organizations of shapes and forms, instead we should look more into spatial quality, which we were told so much about in this semester. In the process, we are guided into the consideration of site context a lot more than before, and I felt that in order to create a phenomenology it’s important that we, at first hand, experienced it for ourselves. Therefore, through the several sites visits we learn a few things or two which could guide us in the process of creating phenomenology of place.
My project applies the concept of preserving the structure and provide changes to the interior spaces. This way I could preserve the materiality of the original building and provide a new experience to the interior spaces. As you walk in to the entrance of the building, you will be greeted by a series of tall bear structures which consists mainly of wood, and numbers of newly added structure built on top of the old ones, as a way to emphasizes on the materiality of the local context. Not only the materials of the outer skin but also the free standing of spaces of the new volume reflect the local architecture of vernacular houses. In these structures, there are trees that are planted through squares of slab opening and provides shades for the user and creates a series of tiny light penetrations through the trees, which mimics the phenomenon created by the surrounding greeneries and plantation. Along the side of the structure are cables tied to the beams up top which allows creeper plants to climb up the cable which acts as a sort of natural boundary and also natural screening of light penetrations.
Following the same theme, the rough scrubbed concrete columns and the new floor to ceiling opening is in subtle contrast with the exposed, restored timber structure and the newly added, but equally wooden interior volumes and roofs. Just as a house introverts itself for protection, the artist working and private resting spaces are equally oriented towards the inner yard of the building. The border between inside and outside fades because of the plantations created as a reminiscent of the natural boundary of property in the rural area of the site.
Besides the functional transformation of homestay and hostel, the liberation, restoration and redevelopment of the relicts on site such as the existing buildings, and surrounding context, also breathe an atmosphere of respect and distinct to the local landscape, architecture, lifestyles, value and vernacular poetry.