SUMMARIES

Deep Space, Thin Walls: Environmental and Material Precursors to the Postwar Skyscraper

1. The Historically Invisible Prudential Building
   1. Chicago’s Prudential building (1955) ignored as a major development in Chicago by Architectural Forum’s 1958 coverage on the inland steel building which was claimed as the first major structure to be built in Chicago in over 20 years
      1. This is because it used the older method of construction, utilizing a solid skin of limestone slab with punched out windows vs the newer method of utilizing skins of aluminum, steel, and glass
   2. “Glass box” buildings made possible by strong postwar economy and the development of AC, fluorescent lighting, automated plate glass manufacturing, double glazing, and heat absorbent glass
2. The Windowless Building of the Future
   1. Glass was deemed as soon-to-be obsolete
      1. Glass and windows in general were architectural vulnerabilities to insulation and structure
      2. Glass was expensive
      3. Development of AC and fluorescent lighting were a cheaper alternative to windows that served the same function
3. Toward the Deep Plan: Air Conditioning and Fluorescent Lamps
   1. Old design:
      1. Working spaces toward exterior of the building for access to ventilation and light from windows
      2. Service facilities in the center of the floor to allow working spaces with the most light and ventilation
   2. Air conditioning and fluorescent lighting eliminated the need for spaces to be adjacent to external walls
      1. As a result, the service facilities no longer needed to be central, and buildings began to experiment with moving the service facilities to a less central area, allowing for more open working space designs
4. Toward the Glass Skin: Twin Grinding, Insulated Glazing, and Solex
   1. Three developments transformed plate glass from a handcrafted process to an industrialized one
      1. The continuous furnace
         1. Long ribbon of glass drawn from molten material through rollers and annealing chambers
         2. Streamlined the process by combining melting, shaping, cooling, and annealing into a single, linear production line
            1. Removed most of the labor involved and reduced glass price
      2. Twin grinding and polishing lines
         1. Finished both sides of the glass simultaneously, where previously they had to run it through the line twice
   2. Still had problems with insulation, heat gain, and condensation
      1. Thermopane unit helped with insulation and condensation
         1. Two layers of glass held together by a continuous rubber strip, and separated by dehydrated air
            1. Solves the condensation problem and the problem of contraction and expansion depending on temperatures
   3. Glare and unwanted heat/light gain still an issue
      1. Heat absorbing glass was developed and enhanced
         1. Adding iron to the glass with additives like carbon, aluminum, antimony oxide, cobalt, fluoride, salt, calcium, and alumina decreased radiant heat by more than 75% and reduced the visible light spectrum by 25%, reducing the negative aspects of the sun while maximizing its benefits
      2. Solex (product of this type) became the industry standard for plate glass
5. Early Applications, Mixed Results: Equitable Building, U.N. Secretariat, and Lever House
   1. Equitable Building
      1. Double pane Solex
         1. Minor failures – Solex cracked due to uneven heating – but mainly performed well
   2. U.N. Secretariat
      1. Shading and insulated glass were suggested, but rejected by U.N. in favor of operable windows
      2. Used uninsulated, single thickness Solex
      3. Very problematic – humidity infiltrated the entire building and the sun beat out the air conditioning
         1. Installed heat-reflective film inside the windows, but this trapped the heat in the glass and cased several windows to break from thermal strain
   3. Lever House
      1. Single glazed Solex, but fixed in place and inoperable to keep dirt, humidity, and noise out
      2. South facing façade taxed the AC system, and the fire protection above and below the glass left an unventilated space that could not dissipate heat buildup, resulting in many cracked spandrels due to thermal stress
6. The Ongoing Case for Solid Skins
   1. Buildings slow to adopt glass skins because of these shortcomings, well into the 1950’s (Prudential as an example)
      1. This is why Prudential did not break much new ground in architecture
7. Inland Steel: “Column-Less Space and Wafer-Thin Walls”
   1. New performance standards let Inland Steel building take advantage of new fire codes and allowed them to ditch the old fire code that its predecessors fell victim to
   2. Implemented a column system that was located outside of the skin, providing more useable interior space
   3. Utilized insulated Solex
8. Coda: Further Developments in Postwar Cladding
   1. Aluminum cladding was an important development left out of the Inland Steel building’s design

The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered

1. I
   1. There is a modern, unsolved problem of the design of the tall office building
      1. All tall office buildings contain these parts:
         1. Underground floor for building processes, like boiler
         2. Ground floor with a singular public entrance and shops
         3. 2nd floor accessible by stairways, usually subdivided and a sort of addition to the ground floor
         4. Numerous floors for offices
         5. “attic” space that is “physiological” and devoted to the life and usefulness of the structure
2. II
   1. Office building designs must be bold, as they should be an “exhibition of human perversity that  must give us pause”
3. III
   1. Thought one: true prototype of the office building is the classical column consisting of base, shaft and capital
   2. Thought two: office buildings capitalize off of being split into three parts, divided vertically
   3. Thought three: offices should have a beginning, middle, and end that are each clearly defined in three parts vertically
   4. Thought four: design should be organic, ex/ flower with a bunch of leaves and long stem
   5. Thought five: office buildings should read as one thing standing out on its own, with subdivision permissible if it does not interfere
   6. Everyone agrees: office buildings should not be made a field for the display of architectural knowledge in the encyclopedic sense
      1. Ex/ the office building shouldn’t be 16 different buildings and styles piled on top of one another
      2. “9/10” office buildings are designed this way by architects who make this mistake
   7. Office buildings must have a form that “tells us what they are”/reads as a single entity
   8. “Form follows function”: this is the law

Space

1. “Space” as an architectural category developed in Germany
   1. German word for space “Raum” signifies both a material enclosure and a philosophical concept
2. “Space”‘s definition in architecture changes throughout the times

1. The Preconditions of Modernist Architectural Space
   1. Philosophical space likely informed the way space is defined in architecture
   2. Architectural “Space” was likely defined by one of two ways:
      1. Attempting to create an architectural theory out of philosophy
         1. Associated with Gottfried Semper
      2. Concerning a psychological approach to aesthetics
   3. Gottfried Semper largely responsible for the introduction of “space” into architecture
      1. First impulse of architecture is the enclosing of space
      2. The spatial enclosure was the fundamental property of architecture
   4. Camillo Sitte expanded enclosure of space to exterior spaces as well as interior
      1. Space belonged outside of buildings as well
   5. Newer understanding of space related to aesthetic perception, associated with Kant
      1. “Space is a property of the mind, part of the apparatus by which the mind makes the world intelligible”
      2. “Space does not represent any property of things in themselves, nor does it represent them in their relation to one another” space exists “in the mind a priori, as a pure intuition, in which all objects must be determined”
      3. The conceptual space is a tool humans use to help understand things
   6. Nietzche’s Space: space is not empty here or there, but rather as force throughout, as a play of forces at the same time one and many, increasing here and at the same time decreasing there
   7. Hildebrand suggests three things:
      1. Space itself is the subject matter of art
      2. Space is a continuum
      3. Space is animated from within
   8. August Schmarsow: history of architecture demonstrates realizations of spatial constructs
   9. Conceptions of space in 1900 can be explained by the problems it had been developed as a solution:
      1. To describe the original motive of architecture -> spatial enclosure was the purpose
      2. To describe the cause of aesthetic perception in architecture -> space stimulates aesthetic perception
      3. To satisfy the expectation that works of art should reveal movement -> static works of architecture imply uses of space and movement
2. From Space to Spatiality
   1. August Endell:
      1. Essential in architecture is not its actual substance, but the space, the void, that expands between the walls and is defined by the walls
   2. Rudolf Schindler:
      1. The modern architect no longer focuses on shaped material mass, but rather conceives the room and forms it with wall and ceiling slabs
   3. Riegl:
      1. Ancient Romans defined space as a cubic material quantity, the space the architecture and sculptures actually takes up vs. the space it creates
   4. Paul Frankl:
      1. Additive space: fusing together of two spaces
      2. Spatial division: separating a space into two spaces
3. Built Space
   1. Modern architects needed to identify and legitimate the modern, and “space” helped them do this:
      1. Concept of spatiality offered as good a case as any for a new sort of architecture
      2. “space” offered a non-metaphorical category for talking about architecture that could be understood by physicists and philosophers as well
         1. Allowed architects to present their labor as mental vs manual
   2. Three different senses in which space was used by architects:
      1. Space as an enclosure
      2. Space as a continuum
         1. The notion that inside and outside space were continuous and infinite
      3. Space as extension of the body
         1. Space was perceived in terms of the body’s imagined extension within a volume
   3. Maholy: The root of architecture lies in the problem of the mastery of space
      1. Accepted that space was a biological faculty but recognized that spatiality was historically conditioned and specific to each period in history
      2. The task of architecture is to bring awareness of the present consciousness of space
4. Heideggar and Lefebvre
   1. Heideggar:
      1. Space is neither a property of mind to perceive the world, nor does it exist previous to one’s being in the world
      2. Architecture creates “locales”, and the term “space” is reserved for “that which room has been made for”
   2. Lefebvre:
      1. Architectural space: one of the means by which social space is produced
      2. Space of architects: the manipulation of space effected by architects in their professional practice and the discourse in which that activity takes place

CRITICAL RESPONSE

Space is not a simple concept to define, nor to effectively apply to architectural design. As discussed in “Space”, there are very many different ways to go about conceptualizing space, and the way the designer views space has the potential to affect the spatiality of their work. If that weren’t enough to complicate things already, “Deep Space, Thin Walls” provides another compounding influence on the designer’s exploration of space: practical and technological limitations. Given the amount of variability that is generated within even just this one architectural concept (space) by these two influencing factors, it becomes easy to see why architectural works and architecture as a whole is so subjective. “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered” explores this concept somewhat, outlining the different ways tall office buildings are constructed by designers, and even suggesting a way they should be designed by architects, after setting very specific parameters and characteristics that each individual of this type of building must embody.

APPLICATION

The White U House, designed by Toyo Ito in 1976, can be analyzed to better understand several of the different conceptualizations of “space” and “spatiality” that were presented in the “Space” article. The U-shape of the building embodies Gottfried Semper’s understanding of architectural space as the simple enclosing of space. The house was designed specifically to enclose the residing family off from the world as much as possible, as to create room for their mourning of a lost loved one. This design intention also aligns with Heideggar’s understanding of space, as the building itself produces the “locale” for the family’s grieving, or “space”. The area including the illuminated chair (featured below) represents this concept of space particularly well, as it was intended to be a place for contemplation or meditation.

White U House by Toyo Ito 1976. Exterior.

White U House contemplative space.

TAKE-AWAY

• “Space” is a lot more complex than the way it is commonly understood
• The changing technology and advances of the times informs our understanding of space just as much, if not more so, than our actual definitions for it