Main Relationships of Architecture with the Environment:

Place

Space

Form

Function

1. PLACE

Contrast

Camouflage

Organicism

Contextualism

1.1 Relation of Contrast

The relation with the place is of juxtaposition or abstraction.
Architecture dominates the landscape (dancing house) or is alien to it (Villa Sovoie ).

1.2. Relation of Camouflage

The relation of the building with the place is of extreme integration: mimesis.
ex: (Aloni house, Greece)

1.3 Relation of Organicism

Building is a nod to the place. Integration is done by reinterpreting its elements. It shows sensitivity towards the place.

Ex: Kauffmann hause.

1.4. Relation of Contextualism

It has to do with the meaning expressed by the building. The relationship with the place is justifiable.

Ex: Spain National Roman Museum

Quotations

–“The reality of the building was not the roof and walls but was the space within to be lived in.”

-“The space within the building is the reality of that building.“

This means that the real architecture is the interior where the people is going to live, and it is going to make them happy. Not walls, not floors, not the construction but the inteiror.

-“The internal space, that space that (…) cannot be completely represented in any form, neither learned nor lived, but by direct experience, is the protagonist of the architectural fact. (…)
The four facades of a house, of a church, of a palace, however beautiful, constitute nothing more than the box in which the architectural jewel is included (…) In every building, what it contains is the box of walls, the content is the internal space.”

The real architecture is the experience of living in a building.

SPACE
2.1 Classic Space

The CLASSIC space is closed and compact, it is centralized, with at least one axis of symmetry. BAROQUE follows the classical heritage and experiments with centralized spaces with tension (two axes in the ellipse).

2.2 SPACES WITHOUT A CENTER

Japanese (traditional) space

Based on modules of tatami. It is never perceived as a whole or subdivided unit, as in the West, but as the sum of the individual rooms.

Modern Space

The Modern Movement breaks the compact space and lets the space flow, allowing:

• horizontal connections: (interior-exterior)
• vertical connections:

1. Raumplan:
   1. Depending on the height of the space, the dimensions changes.
2. Wright Fluid Space
3. Universal Miesian Space:
   1. Continuous Space, percieving a complex space
4. Double height spaces. Le Corbusier:

Contemporary Space

Total and absolute confusion of the public space with the space of relation. The entire building space is unique and continuous. The concept of FREE SECTION is born. It consists of ending the tyranny of the horizontal plane, deforming it, twisting it…

FORM

Rhythm

Axis

Symmetry

Hierarchy

Module

Grid

Movement

Unity Centrality

Rythm

Sequence/repetition of shapes in space. The rhythm sets the time.

example: by separating windows in the wall, columns in a colonnade, pillars in an arcade.

Axis

Linear element that marks a direction and distributes the space or elements around it.

Symmetry

Regular arrangement of the parts or points of a body or figure in relation to a centre, axis or plan.

Hierarchy

Relationship of supremacy of an element over others based on an established approach.

By the size

By the form

By the situation

Module

A unitary element which serves as a proportional unit, and which is repeated on the same scale or at different scales.

Grid

Composition based on a net of axes serving as a guide.

Movement

The irregularity of forms and the variants of order inspire the idea of movement, of displacement.

Unity Centrality

The relationship of the parts to the whole so that nothing should be removed or added.

Balancing

Complementary relationship between the elements of a composition:
speak about static equilibrium.
• If they are compensated by geometric difference,
color …, we speak about dynamic equilibrium.

Limits

It is the edge of the elements of a composition where there is a change from the rest.

Light

Architecture is the learned game; correct and magnificent of forms assembled in the light. Our eyes are made to see the forms under the light: the shadows and the clearings reveal the forms.
[Le Corbusier]

Contrast

Contraposition of elements on the basis of volume, colour, shape, texture, size, disposition…

Colour

Chromatic manifestation of the elements to be used.

Texture

Surface finishing of the elements involved in the final perception of architecture.

Proportion

Harmonic relation of dimensions according to certain mathematical or geometric rules.

Scale

Relation between the size of the building and the size of the human being.