On Forensics

During a conversation with ESR forensic scientist Douglas Elliot, three areas of forensic science emerge which can be related to architectural design.

1. Reconstruction of Event

2. The Laboratory

3. Archiving / Databank

1. Reconstruction of Event

After the event, the forensic team arrives at the ‘scene of the crime’ as quickly as possible.

Through careful collection and observation of objects and their relative positions on the site, a past event, or narrative, is reconstructed by the scientists. Invisible traces and residues of bodies and actions are made visible or made explicit through techniques of chemical staining.

The scene is divided into ‘hot, warm and cold’ areas, the spatial framework of a laboratory and auxiliary functions are overlaid onto the scene.

Hot is the area of investigation & examination, this is the ‘laboratory’, warm is for storage of equipment, cold is for discussion and eating etc.

2. The Laboratory

In the laboratory, it’s auxiliary rooms and circulation spaces, a strict order of control and safety is adhered to because of the sensitive, mobile nature of the evidence, DNA.

The analysis of the evidence, not only can be interpreted in plan as an architectural layout of rooms and circulation, but also the techniques of analysis can be transferred to the process of design.

For example, analysis of evidence to obtain a DNA profile, is a way of visualising DNA in an abstracted manner, here in a graph format. The person can be identified through matching this graph to the DNA profiles in the archive. One could say the invisible (person) is made present though the drawing – here the drawing is the computer generated graph.

A second technique is the re-staging of possible actions which may have caused patterns at the crime scene. The restaging is captured by slow motion camera, and ‘splatter’ patterns observed. Time-based methods document the dynamic patterns of the event.

3. DNA Databank

ESR is the custodian of the National DNA Databank. This is an electronic archive of DNA profiles, collected from individuals.

Is there a near-future possibility of storing information on DNA? DNA is the most compact format onto which one can to write and store information. It can survive for long periods of time without special climatic requirements. DNA will not have to undergo reformatting as technology changes, DNA will never become obsolete.

Future practice may be a Mobile Laboratory, where DNA profiles can be revealed on site. DNA may soon be analysed to determine where in the body the blood came from, and potentially reveal characteristics of the individual – race, height, hair colour.

Reconstruction of an event is a feature of forensics, archaeology, performance, and architecture. It evokes the ‘archival impulse’ identified by Hal Foster (2002).

Michael Shanks, Professor of Archaeology at Stanford, describes archaeology as ‘an ecology of mobilizing resources, managing, organizing, persuading, of practices like collecting, walking, and intervening in the land.’ (Shanks, 2001: p.50)

He states:

‘So archaeologists do not happen upon or discover the past… archaeologists … take up and make something of what is left of the past. Archaeology may be seen as a mode of cultural production.’ (p.50)

An argument which brings us close to the interpretive and creative process of architectural design.

Shanks utilizes performance as a method to investigate the past: ‘Performance and archaeology favour body, object and place, activity and context… Both performance and archaeology work with fragment and with trace.’ (p.55) Additionally, he notes the ‘Plurality of event. Many different, sometimes contradictory and divergent, narratives are generated’ (p.60)

The connections between the disciplines is evident in etymological roots, Michael Shanks also writes:

‘archive - architecture - archaeology

The prefix arche (found in archive and architecture and archaeology) is Greek for beginning, origin, foundation, source, first principle, first place of power, authority, sovereignty. It represents a starting point or founding act in both an ontological sense ("this is whence it began") and a nomological sense ("this is whence it derives its authority").

Archives are all about narratives of origin, identity and belonging, and the politics of ownership, organization, access and use.’

From http://michaelshanks.org/

The analogies between forensic science and architecture prompt us to speculate, what would a Mobile Laboratory for Architecture be, and what new instruments could it contain for investigation of site? What forensic methods can architects draw on to expand their definition of site analysis and what kind of time-based documentation will be required? How can architects, like archaeologists, make visible an invisible narrative?

Reference:

Theatre/Archaeology by Mike Pearson and Michael Shanks (Apr 27, 2001)

http://www.mshanks.com/figure-and-ground/

Wainuiomata Kaleidoscope

Tom, Iain and myself completed a 24 hour competition entry hosted by the Architectural Centre in Wellington.

The brief was to write a 'counterfactual history', to propose what may have happened to an uncompleted tunnel, running between Wainuiomata and Lower Hutt, in the decade of the 1980s.

WE HEREBY PROPOSE:

Site Plan of Wellington Area

Completed in 1980, the tunnel was converted into the world's Largest Kaleidoscope. The people of Wainuiomata viewed the events of the 80's through the lens of the Kaleidoscope and rebuilt their urban plan based on the euphoric visions they saw.

The rebuilt urban plan of Wainuiomata based on Kaleidoscopic images of 1980s

"kaleidoscope" is derived from the Ancient Greek καλ(ός) (beauty, beautiful), είδο(ς) (form, shape) and -σκόπιο (tool for examination) – hence "observer of beautiful forms."

Long and cross - section through tunnel / kaleidoscope.

"The 1980's look so beautiful viewed from Wainuiomata"

Bill Wilson 'Real House'

'All activities occur in space. All life is movement in space. Beneath our lives there is a discoverable pattern of coming and going, of moving in this space. The pattern of movement becomes the plan of the house - it is the plan of the lives of the people. The architect does not invent plans - he discovers them.

Space is one, indivisible. You can't divide it up into little parcels. When you try, space is lost. Volumes result. If you plan volumes (boxes) in which activities are to occur, you have to put them together in such a way that the people can get from one to another. You are forcing people into packages, however well designed they may be'.


Bill Wilson 'The Small House' (1948) Annual Magazine of the Students Association of Auckland University College

From: Shaw, Peter (2003) A History of New Zealand Architecture, Rev 3rd Ed. Hodder Moa Beckett

Bill Barton, Mathematician

On Mathematics and Architecture.

Bill Barton is a Math Educator, we discussed the potential of mathematics to enable possibilities for architecture. Bill mentions a salient example of this ‘possibility’ - Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia, the ongoing construction of which involves a design team including Mark Burry, an architect, and his wife Jane Burry, a mathematician.

Bill says ‘a lot of people perceive mathematics to be restricted, ordered and non-creative, so rectilinear sets of buildings and ordered things, where identifiable patterns are fairly clear, would be seen as mathematical, but something like the Guggenheim in Bilbao or La Sagrada Familia might not be. And yet in fact it’s exactly that highly designed disorder or highly designed creativity which is more mathematical, so I much rather think about mathematics and architecture as mathematics providing creative opportunities, rather then mathematics providing templates of order.’

Bill suggests that mathematics can act as the enabler, ‘its not fundamentally a source of ideas, it’s something that enables ideas to happen.’ It can be a way ‘to communicate, to activate, to develop it in strange ways, it doesn’t restrict you.’

Mathematics, like architecture, is not pre-determined, one is not learning what has already been decided. Math can enable this opening up of the field of possibilities.

In terms of education this poses an interesting question, how to educate architecture students about the possibilities offered by mathematics?

In the case of La Sagrada Familia, an understanding of mathematical principals enabled Gaudi to revise the catenary arch, the form of the towers. Math is now the mode by which the Burrys describe the lines of Gaudi’s sketches, to seamlessly document the complex geometries to enable fabrication and constructability.

Mathematics is also integrated with architecture at the scale of the detail. Bill talks about the Fale Pasifika at the University of Auckland, specifically the lalava or lashing around the intersections of the high wooden beams.

The ‘incredibly complicated’ lashing or binding and was installed by an artist Filipe Tohi. On his website Tohi writes ‘I believe lalava patterns were a mnemonic device for representing a life philosophy.’ Tohi also creates large sculptures based on the mathematics behind the lashings.

Photo Credit eventpolynesia.com

Within this lashing detail we have integration between art and sculpture, mathematics and architecture, memory and culture. Bill states ‘when I say its mathematics that creates the opportunities, I refer to this binding as much as I’m referring to the beautiful curved surfaces of Bilbao.’

I ask Bill about the future of maths. He describes an exploratory process that sounds very similar to the creative process identified by Edward de Bono. Bill describes mathematicians working away without necessarily knowing where this activity might suddenly turn out to be useful, but it almost always does. Edward de Bono argues that one cannot with only logic achieve a creative idea, but once you have come up with the idea, it will be logical in hindsight. (This is based on the mathematical premise of asymmetrical patterning behaviour of the brain).

Bill also describes an emergent field within mathematics, whereby its practitioners ‘link the strands’ of mathematics, which have otherwise lost touch with each other, to find solutions.

This ‘linking across the strands’ is a valuable model for architecture, particularly in this interdependent and fragile world. Not one discipline in isolation can resolve the complex problems of our ecological predicament. Architects facilitate the expertise of other consultants during the design process, so are in a position to make lateral connections across disciplines, to collaborate with like-minded people with a vision.

Mathematics is one of these disciplines that can be utilised as an enabler, to integrate source material, to open up design possibilities, and therefore increase the probability of discovering creative solutions to better the environment.


References:

de Bono, Edward (2009) Think, Before It’s Too Late; Vermillion, London

Tohi, Filipe (URL accessed 2011) http://www.lalava.net

A Jane Burry lecture on her book with Mark Burry The New Mathematics of Architecture

http://www.aaschool.ac.uk//VIDEO/lecture.php?ID=1281

Te Waimate Mission Station

The Mission House at Waimate holds the title of the second oldest standing building in New Zealand (1831). It was built after the Kemp House at nearby Kerikeri Mission Station, which was constructed in 1822.

The Mission house is interesting on account of some slightly odd and quirky architecture, as well as some atmospheric interior moments.

From the front of the house, all seems to be in symmetrical order, however from the side elevation the house seems sliced in half, and from a rather bulky behind project several quite unexpected angular roof forms.

Below is the porch, with exposed shingle canopy.

Inside one is enclosed in beautiful wide Kauri boards, lining the floors, walls and ceilings. The Kauri lining, architraves and door panels were hand adzed by Maori carpenters (Shaw, 2003).

Corridors are not well loved in this age of open floor areas, however I do appreciate a darkly glowing spectral hallway, the light at the end of the ‘tunnel’.

In this house the corridor divides the front rooms of the house from the back rooms, demarcating a change in territory from public to private. The narrow space contributes to the variety of ‘species of spaces’ (Perec).

Rongo pai, the missionaries ‘Good News’ flag under a dormer window.

A form of wall lighting - candles over the stairway.

Reference: Shaw, Peter (2003) A History of New Zealand Architecture, Rev 3rd Ed. Hodder Moa Beckett

Compact House Series

These two houses are the first in a series of compact 'apartment' houses designed by Tom Locke in Waimate North. 

Up north, Tom observed, once people buy a piece of land, they will often chuck up a quick shed or park a caravan on the site, before gradually building up around it.  

The first building the owners put on the site won’t be positioned to face the best view, but the following buildings, a long drop, a workshop, a sleep-out, slowly build towards one location the owners have identified that will frame the ultimate view.

These two Waimate houses use this observation to develop the sites. The houses represent that first placing of the ‘caravan’ on the site, the initial utilitarian building, a minimum requirement to enable the owner to function.

This initial building anchors an outdoor communal setting, a courtyard or garden, that future buildings can congregate around.

Tom proposes this fascination with the view parallels the culmination of the journey of life. One works and struggles through the phases of life, building slowly towards the view. When you get to that point and the activity finishes, you can finally sit back in front of that picture window, watch the change of seasons, contemplate, rest.

The Waimate houses are essentially ‘flash caravans’ with the wheels taken off, a simple and efficient form.

The exterior is inspired by woolsheds - such as the sliding barn door above, which is painted with a motif from Le Corbusier's nunnery at Ronchamp. The interior embodies the spatial economy of apartment living.

Kitchen & dining, the offset windows from within.

Headboard of concrete block and plywood with wardrobe behind. 

Clear corrugated panels over windows create a lantern effect at night.

In the second Waimate house, the 'flash caravan' prototype is modified to accommodate changes in site levels, orientation and materiality.

Clerestories in the bedroom, from the bed one can watch the moon travel from one opening to another.

The Waimate site strategy is a metaphor for a living process, a slow accretion of material and geometric forms, a time-based building process that parallels life's growth and struggle, towards a final framing of the horizon.

Sketches show site development, the shaded area is the 'caravan'. The strategy allows the client time to pause and consider what future building is necessary, these decisions can change when the client is inhabiting the site.

Houses are one bedroom, 90 sq m including garage. 

Anna's Mandala Barbeque

This concrete crop circle enclosing a rotating barbeque is located in a suburban sliver of green named Harry Dansey park, the semi-private backyard of our resident archivist Anna.

The pure geometrical forms revealed in plan suggest a higher destiny for the ubiquitous barbeque, the design invokes the ancient Egyptian symbol of the sun, Aztec zodiacs and ancient Chinese coins.