11th EAEA Envisioning Architecture: Design, Evaluation, Communication Conference in 2013

Track 3 | Conceptual Representation | Exploring the layout of the built environment

Trajectories of the hollow stone: representational strategies for visualizing the integrated structural space frame

Bruce Johnson

Keywords: representation; structure; spatial interpretation

ABSTRACT

In 1953, the acclaimed architect Louis I. Kahn expressed some of his early and formative thinking on the potential of the space frame, writing: “In Gothic times, architects built in solid stones. Now we can build with hollow stones. The spaces defined by the members of a structure are as important as the members….The desire to express voids positively in the design of structure is evidenced by the growing interest and work in the development of the space frame.” (Kahn, 1953, p. 23) For Kahn, the hollow stone became a metaphor for the integration of the latest scientific thinking in the building arts. He saw architecture as a researching of the history of materials and structure enhanced by a practical application of contemporary scientific thinking.
As a lightweight complex structural system, the space frame typology manifests significant representational challenges, whether with regard to illustrating the spatial implications of its many members and their varying trajectories or in terms of the joint/joinery of the system itself, where many structural forces intersect within a small node of critical connection. This paper examines representational strategies for manifesting the invisible spatiality of a structural system that is itself based on voids, and it also briefly examines the joints within this ‘hollow stone’ system. The vehicle for this discussion will be an outgrowth of two academic graduate level courses recently delivered; Architecture 811/812/Thesis: Transplaced by Pororsity: Geometry, Structure and Materials at Three Scales, and Architecture 409/Fabrication Studio: Steel Space Frame Pavilion, two recent competition entries that range in scale from that of a house to that of a bridge, and the scholarly research of a recent study of the space frame canopy over the Monlinete Roman Ruins in Cartegena Spain by the architects Amann-Canovas-Mauri. Representational images from these venues will advance a discourse on the merits of Planimetric, Isometric, Perspective, and Composite Drawing, with regard to the spatiality of various space frame derivatives.

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AUTHOR

Bruce Johnson

Department of Architecture, School of Architecture, Design and Planning, University of Kansas, Lawrence, USA

Bruce A. Johnson received his Undergraduate Degree in Architecture from Kansas State University where he was awarded the Skidmore, Owings and Merrill Bachelor of Architecture Traveling Fellowship, which afforded the study of sacred architecture in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. In 1994 he received the Lowenfisch Memorial Prize for his Split Level Sod House while completing his Graduate Degree in Architecture at Columbia University. He has practiced with Stanley Tigerman and is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Kansas where his research focuses on direct fabrication and systems integration within the space frame structural typology.

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