A T E L I E R G R A F T O NA A M - A U T U M N S E M E S T E R 2 0 2 0

H O U S E G R O W I N GI N V A R I O U S A L T I T U D E S O F T I C I N O

H O U S E G R O W I N G G R O W I N G H O U S E

Architecture is an ancient art, which needs each of us to continue and trans-form it.Being an architect means that we add to the ‘crust’ of this fragile planet. We need to add beauty and be efficient with the resources we specify. Materials enclose spaces, shelter our physical and phycological selves. Materials from the earth forms our palette, from which we need to choose carefully. Contin-uing the research into the Earth as Client, our Atelier will focus this year on Carbon Neutral House and Housing. Carbon neutrality aims to achieve zero carbon emissions. The chosen material is concrete.

“House Growing” will investigate issues related to time, changes, flexibility and adaptability. The home is understood as a domestic landscape that grows and adapts to the ways of living. A living space that does not end in its own historical time, but rather opens up welcoming changes.

Bas Princen, Petra Pillar, 2011 The earth from space

Carbon Neutral House

Students will be invited to focus their attention on the subject of concrete construction with carbon neutrality as a guiding principle. The projects will consist of structures with significantly reduced energy consumption throughout the entire life-cycle of the building combined with the use of low carbon energy sources to meet the remaining demand. The project is intended as a path: students will work on different scales, each one fundamental for the understanding and development of the project, from the scale of territory to details.

Alison and Peter Smithsons, Upper Lawn Pavilion, 1959-1962

P R O G R A M M E

The course will focus on the theme of space in a family unit. Families grow, shrink and change and so do the occupants and their needs. With the impact of Covid_19, the demand for having adaptable, flexible or additional uses in our homes has opened up the question of combinations and flexibility.

How can we design and construct growing houses? How can we imagine intelligent houses, that predict and allow for adaptability?

Each individual house will be an opportunity for each students to respond a specific and detailed program. A site and a client will be assigned by lottery to each student. The clients are families composed of 2 parents, 2 kids and a domestic pet. Every family has different story, needs, wish and request to relate with.or an additional function.

The letter of Jim Berger, a 12 years old, to F. L. Wright requesting plans for a house for his dog, Eddie. 1956.

Each student will design an house of 100 sqm + an extra space for an addi-tional function.

This is a space, for example, for working, hobby, rental or commercial use. It may be integrated into the house or it may be separate and perceived as an independent unit.

We will explore the growing house and the importance of treshold, intimacy, hierarchies, private, common, family and work, shadow, sun-light and win-dows, stairs and movements, trees and nature, concrete and section.

Each student in the atelier will research sustainability in terms of construc-tion and employed materials but also concerning the economy and efficien-cy in managing the space where a family will live.

Henri Matisse in his house and studio, 1941 The Eddie’s house, built in the 1960’s

Wright plans for Eddie’s house. 1956

C O N C R E T E

Concrete is over 4000 years old. The first evidence of the use of concrete reaches back to prehistoric times. It was the Romans, however who man-aged for the first time to produce this man-made stone in a controlled manner. The Roman concrete “opus caementitium” was base on a recipe, which has almost fallen into oblivion. Natural lime used to be reinforced by natural fibres such as horsehair and other chemical additives gained from volcanic ashes. The animal hair prevented material cracks and the so-called “ Pozzolana” worked as a natural catalyst for a hydraulic process, which made the material harden faster and more resistant to fractures. Roman concrete is considered, in comparison to modern concrete, to be extremely stable. Its production however, was a time-consuming and difficult procedure. Every casting of a shape had to go through different stages of manual condensa-tion and shaping over days or months.

The use of Roman concrete must count as a key event in the history of archi-tecture. Freed from static restrictions of stone and brick, the Roman concrete allowed revolutionary approaches to new architectural designs in terms of structural complexity and dimensions. The Pantheon sets a landmark in the history of ambitious building projects. Surprisingly enough, the following revolution of contemporary concrete - composed of cement send and gravel - took other thousands of years. It was not until the eighteenth century that the technology took a big leap forward. Today concrete is the most widely used building material.

Thomas Struth, Pantheon, Rome, 1990 Pantheon, detail section 124 A D Villa Garbald, detail section,Miller&Maranta, Castasegna, 2010

Concrete is a composite of sand, cement, aggregate (crushed rock or peb-bles), miscellaneous additives and water. Cement, when mixed with water, undergoes a chemical reaction to form the hydrated paste that bind togeth-er the aggregates and gradually hardens. The properties and appearance of concrete can change considerably by using different mixtures or quantities. The water content, for example, has a crucial influence on the quality of the concrete: less water means fewer pores and hence a concrete with improved strength, density and durability.

Concrete is strong in compression and weak in tension. It is necessary to add reinforcement that can provide the, the most common type of reinforce-ment used in concrete is steel. This composite material is called reinforced concrete. This is the type of concrete used the most.

Concrete components. Source: Louis Kahn Dhaka, Edition Dino Simonett, 2004 Felix Candela, load test on an umbrella pillar, 1953

Concrete buildings are either cast in place or prefabricated off site. In situ concrete ( also called shuttured, poured or cast-in-place concrete) has the potential to create monolithic and structure. The structure is read as an entity, rather than as a distinction of elements such as walls, floors and beams. Building with prefabricated concrete is a work of assembling elements, an art of framing and joint-making. In prefabricated structures the construction method can be more leg.

There is no limit to the dimension, the form or the expression of a concrete structure. Concrete is not a material with a precise intrinsic nature. It is rather a highly controlled process that answers to forces within architectural culture more than to properties of the material itself.

“ What then should be the Aesthetic of concrete?”, asked the American ar-chitect F.L. Wright in 1927. “ Is it Stone? Yes and No. Is it Plaster? Yes and No. Is it Brick or Tile? Yes and No. Is it Cast Iron? Yes and No. Poor Concrete! Still looking for its own at the hands of Man.”[ F.L Wright, ‘ In the Cause of Architecture VII: The meaning of materials - Concrete’, Architectural Record ( August 1928)]

L. Kahn, National Parliament, Dhaka, 1982 A. Mangiarotti, Stabilimento Elmag, Lissone, 1964 John Lautner, Arango House, Acapulco, 1973

The panel in the Olivetti showroom was the first important work created by Costantino Nivola with the sand casting technique.Sand casting was born from an intuition of Nivola himself. He applied the sand casting technique, already used in metallurgy, to the creation of con-crete panels with a face decorated with bas-reliefs.To trace his footprints Nivola used sand washed and deprived of the saline fraction. To make the mold definitive before pouring the concrete from the mixer, he poured a f thin layer of very liquid white cement over the entire surface and manually filled with mortar concrete for the larger areas.

Concrete is created by first making a formwork, or frame, which is then filled by concrete. After the concrete has cured, the framework is removed.The concrete finish is the reflection more of the formwork, or of that frame, then the concrete itself.

For the Truffle House, Anton Garcia Abril, used the earth as a temporary mould. Concrete was poured between into an earthen framework and hay bales. When the concrete cured, and the front of the building was sliced off, a calf named Paulina ate away the hay to reveal the room. The built object seems part of a prehistoric landscape.

Anton Garcia Abril, Truffle House, 2010 Costantino Nivola, Showroom olivetti, New York, 1953

Concrete is always the expression of human work. It is an highly manu-factured process that cannot exist without the human labour or a machine action by which it is prepared and used.

The concrete walls of casa Butanta from Mendes da Rocha are like a novel of that human labour. Exposed concrete reveals everything: how skilled was the man who built it, which framework was used, if it rained that day or if it was cold.

The walls of the Taliesin West tells another story about concrete.Based on the principle of “learning by doing”, the complex was built by Wright apprentices, largely by hand, using local stone, concrete, redwood, steel, reclaimed glass and fabric. Wright, in this occasion, developed a new type of construction system, which he called “Desert Masonry”, obtained by filling the wooden formwork with local stones of different colors, meticulously selected and positioned, then adding a ‘dry’ concrete, made with Portland cement, sand and very little water (the site was rich in sand and rock while the water was very scarce).

Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Casa Butantã, São Paulo, 1964 Apprentices smooth concrete at Taliesin West in 1949

Today - right after water - concrete is the most used resource on earth. One cubic meter of concrete is produced per human on earth every year. The production of every ton of concrete also produces almost a ton of CO2 emmission. The reasons for this high pollution value are different. Cement, the biding agent of the concrete mixture, is mainly lime. In order to get lime, limestone is cooked at over 1400 °C. During this process the limestone releases all of its CO2. The fuel used to heat the limestone also gives off CO2. Anywhere from seven to five percent of the CO2 generated by man every year comes from the manufacture of cement. Quarrying for the rock aggregate, crushing it, then mixing it together with the other elements creates a lot of dust, that is, air pollution. If we look at the worl’s landfills, almost a fifth of all the waste therein is either concrete or concrete byproducts.

This atelier will research not only the technological advantages of this material, but also its environmental impact. We will research contemporary responses to concrete, which we are continually setting into this world.

The atelier will ask the questions: how can we cut the energy consumption during life cycle of a building starting from the most used building material?

Carbon impacts of concrete, © Inc. Architecture 2030 Concrete pouring work

C A R B O N I M P A C T S O F C O N C R E T E C A R B O N N E U T R A L C O N C R E T E

C A N T O N T I C I N O

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The region of Ticino will be the laboratory for the Atelier to investigate how to live in three different conditions.

It will be the context for students’ projects, to be observed, understood, inhabited, integrated and re-invented.

Geology has the fascination of opening a window on the past of our territo-ry. The knowledge of the subsoil represents one of the main aspects for all activities related to the world of construction.

Building in concrete also means to take something from the earth. We will focus on the soil, its evolution, movements and stratifications with all the components, fundamental materials for concrete construction.

Canton Ticino, geological mapUnknown, La scoperta del Monte Generoso

3 S I T E S 3 A L T I T U D E S O F T I C I N O

Ticino map, Keller Heinrich, 1835 3 sites 3 altitudes, aerial view

3 sites: 3 conditions which characterize the Canton Ticino, 3 different mo-ments of the Swiss region for climate, landscape, habits, topography and geology are chosen.

Lake of Lugano, the “Mediterranean” of Switzerland.

The meadows of the Muggio valley in the complex of Monte Generoso, a condition somewhere between the countryside and the mountain land-scape.

A mountain village in the north- west of Ticino.

“Ognuno di noi ha una quota prediletta in montagna, un paesaggio che gli somiglia e dove si sente bene.”

“La montagna non è solo nevi e dirupi, creste, torrenti, laghi, pascoli. La mon-tagna è un modo di vivere la vita. Un passo davanti all’altro, silenzio tempo e misura.”

Paolo Cognetti, Le otto montagne

Bosco Gurin 1504 s.l.m.

Pianspessa 1050 s.l.m.

Morcote 442 s.l.m.

Morcote is a village of about 750 inhabitants on Lake Lugano, the “Mediter-ranean Sea” of Switzerland. It develops longitudinally parallel to the water, facing the lake: the south. The name Morcote derives from the protolatin term MORA which indicates a stony area and CAPUT which stands for head or end. MORAE CAPUT there-fore means end of the mountain or rock, tip of the peninsula.

Morcote has a very dense fabric between the lake and the mountain.Observed from above Morcote, looks like a cluster, a dense nucleus in be-tween water and mountain vegetation.

The place benefits from a very special climate, were natural vegetation is lush.

M O R C O T E

Pianspessa is an open area of 13 hectares located above Mendrisio, on the eastern side of the Generoso massif, in the valley of Muggio.It has a nucleus of about 8 buildings dating back to the late 1700s, memo-ries of the agricultural and farming past of this area. They are testimonies of the interaction between man, nature, climate and social structures that have followed one another over time.

It is a quiet and isolated place, characterized by a gentle landscape of green meadows bordered by magnificent forests of broadleaf trees, with rich fauna.

The nucleus of Pianspessa is composed of about 8 buildings, which were used for living, cultivating, cooking, housing sheep, chickens and other animals.

Slightly detached from the main complex, in between mature maples trees, there are two very particular structures: the roccolo and the nèvera. The “roccolo”, is a tall building to control birds and protect crops. The “nèvera” had the function of our refrigerator. It used to be filled with compact snow during the month of March in order to keep milk and butter cool during the summer.

P I A N S P E S S A

B O S C O G U R I N

Bosco Gurin is a municipality located at the end of the Bosco Gurin valley, near the Italian border, closed between the Alps and a vast forest. Located at an elevation of 1,504 m, it is the highest village in the whole Canton.

The history of Bosco Gurin goes back to the beginning of the 13th century, when an entire clan of Germanic descent, the Walser, settled in this place sheltered from the wind and from the raids of bandits that populated the Alps in the Middle Ages. In the following 800 years, little has changed in the histo-ry of Bosco Gurin, who lived happily ignored by the rest of the world. Bosco Gurin has now 46 inhabitants.

This geographic and social isolation strengthened the independent living habits and traditions.

The area of Bosco Gurin has an unique building tradition.

The Torbe is a wooden construction built on a masonry base that normally housed the stable or a storage room. The wooden part is isolated by a num-ber of “mushrooms”, consisting of a stem (in wood or masonry), often sur-mounted by a roughly rounded granite slab to prevent mice from reaching the granary cell. The Torbe was the safest place to store various products such as rye and barley, protecting them from humidity and from rodents.

The “Gadumdschi” are buildings with dry-stone walls and roofs in stone with no access door, which served as barns.

M E T H O D O L O G Y - P R E C E D E N T S T U D I E S M E T H O D O L O G Y - R E C O R D I N G T H E S I T E

Divided into groups, we will deeply analyze 6 projects, in order to build a spatial repertoire to look at, to learn from and to confront during the first se-mester. Through a series of references of existing projects, we will better understand the construction process in historical and contemporary evolution.

Learning through scale:We will analyze the projects working with very different scales, from territory to details. Each scale is necessary for the comprehension of different issues a project holds together: place, space, construction and materiality.Drawings and model making are fundamental in the translation of an archi-tectonic idea and essential instruments of expression.

We will study the characteristics of the context to be aware of its origins and understand its current conditions and issues. The first step towards design will consist in observing the character of the place and documenting how the smallest construction is fundamental to define the territory and vice versa, how geology, landscape, topography, climate and the collective determine the small actions of everyday life.

We will concentrate on the stratification of the soil with all its components, as well as fundamental materials for concrete construction.

Through photographs, sketches, drawings, interviews and collection of material as an atelier we will build a repertoire of information and feelings about the place.

1:20 wooden model

A. Aalto, Villa Oksala

1:2 drawing

G. Caminada, Stivadamorts

1:200 paper modelP. Zumthor, Saint Benedict chapel

Spruce / Picea Abies / Kuusi

CHARACTERISTICS

- Family: Pinaceae

- Dimension: Large, fast-growing coniferous tree growing 35-55 m tall and with a trunk diameter of 1 to 1.5 m. �t can grow fast when young, up to 1 m per year for the �irst �5 years under good conditions, but becomes slower once over �� m tall. Plan with pyramid-conical deportment.

- Bark: Straight and columnar trunk, branched from the base with appendices almost horizontal in young specimens, while with age they tend to blend towards the ground. The bark is reddishocher in young specimens, grayish brown in adult ones� the e�terior part of the bark itself �lakesin plaques more or less big and thick according to age.

- Foliage and leaves: Leaves are persistent, needle-shaped, with square sectioned needles, rigid,dark green, 15-3� millimeters long, sharp and pungent. They �it radially into the small branchescovering them all.

- Flowers: The cones are 9-17 cm long (the longest of any spruce), and have bluntly to sharplytriangular-pointed scale tips. They are green or reddish, maturing brown 5-7 months afterpollination. The seeds are black, 4-5 mm long, with a pale brown 15 mm wing.

- Longevity: The spruce rarely e�ceeds a lifespan of ��� years. � spruce release from �mea�niversity says that a �orway spruce clone, carbon dated as 9�55� years old, is the � oldestliving tree ».

- �oots: The spruce has a �ibers deep spreading root system that makes this tree very wind �irmable to withstand winds up to 1��� �P�.

- Biological cycle: �t �lowers between �pril and �ctober, but it is still an evergreen.

- Cultivation and requirements: �t is largely spread in �orthern, Central and �astern �urope. �tdoes require abundant water and prefers hilly mountainous areas with acid, deep and moist soilfor adequate growth.

- �ltitude: �inimum of 35� m to ma�imum of 95� m.

- Temperature: �n Finland, 15- to ��-year-old natural stands of spruce werefrost hardy to -4 deg C in mid-summer, and frost hardy to -48 deg C in January.

- C��: Strong initial growth responses to elevated carbon dio�yde that diminished over the first 3 years. Trunk structure

SectionElevation

Winter PlanSummer Plan

Students work, Atelier Grafton SA2016 _ HerbariumStudents work, Atelier Grafton SA2016 _ Precedent Studies

T O O L S F O R L E A R N I N G S T U D Y T R I P

T I C I N O A N D S U R R O U N D I N G S

01-04 . 10 . 2020

Alvaro Siza sketching on site

W O R K S H O P

Cement and concrete

A T E L I E R G R A F T O NA A M - A U T U M N S E M E S T E R 2 0 2 0

PROFESSORS: Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara

ASSISTANTS: Margherita Lurani, Luca Mostarda, Camilla Pisani