SITE STRUCTURE UNITY IN ARCHITECTURE

1. SITE-STRUCTURE UNITY Tediously prepared by: aProf JEAN MARIE VILLAMOR JUANGA

2. SITE-STRUCTURE UNITY We have discussed the importance of developing responsive site-project relationships. Let us now consider other means by which we may achieve site-structure unity.

3. Site structure unity: yacht club, terrace, and restaurant have been planned to the natural ground forms, which overhang and command the bay. Boat slips are fitted to the protective ridge. The beach area extends the soft receptive wash of the harbor. Cabanas follow the natural bowl.

4. The breakwater and light extend the existing rocky shoulders of the point. The parking areas are “hidden” in the shade of the existing grove. Such a simpatico feeling for the existing topography ensures a plan development of fitness and pleasant harmonies of aesthetics and function.

5. SITE STRUCTURE UNITY We may design the structural elements to utilize and accentuate landforms. We may design the structural elements to utilize and accentuate landforms.

6. A lighthouse, for example, is an extension of the jutting promontory. By Courtney Corlew on Unsplash

7. The ancient fort or castle extended, architecturally, the craggy top of a hill or mountain. • Hohenzollern Castle, Germany https://prussianhistory.com/5-interesting-facts-about-the-hohenzollern-castle/

8. Our modern municipal water tanks and transmission or relay towers rise from and extend the height of a topographical eminence. • https://www.alamy.com/support-of-high-voltage-transmission-lines-in-the-mountains-image220151297.html

9. SITE STRUCTURE UNITY These applications are obvious. Not so obvious is the location of a community swimming pool to utilize and accentuate the natural bowl configuration of a landscape basin or valley. More subtle yet may be the conscious planning of a yacht club to utilize and emphasize the structural protective shoulders of a point or the soft receptive forms of a quiet bay.

10. These applications are obvious. Not so obvious is the location of a community swimming pool to utilize and accentuate the natural bowl configuration of a landscape basin or valley. Natural Swimming Pools Let You Beat the Heat, and Ditch the Chemicals https://inhabitat.com/

11. More subtle yet may be the conscious planning of a yacht club to utilize and emphasize the structural protective shoulders of a point or the soft receptive forms of a quiet bay. • Subic Bay Yacht Club • https://www.tripadvisor.com.ph/

12. Terraced ski lodges stepping down the snowy slope of a mountain, floating structures on water, light, airy structures fixed against the sky, massive structures rooted in rock—each draws from its site a native power and returns to the site this power magnified. • Whole cities have been imbued with this dynamic quality—Saigon overhanging its dark river and slow-flowing tributaries, Lhasa braced proudly against its mountain wall, Darjeeling extending its timbered mountain peaks and towers into the clouds.

13. A structure and its site may be strongly related by architectural treatment of site areas or elements. Clipped allées and hedges, water panels, precise embankments and terraces, all extend the limits of design control.

14. Many of the French and Italian villas of the Renaissance were so architectural in their treatment that the entire property from wall to wall became one grand composition of palatial indoor and outdoor rooms.

15. French and Italian villas • These grandiose garden halls were demarcated by great planes or arches of sheared beech, of masonry and mosaic, rows of plinths, and elaborate balustraded walls. Villa Medicea in Poggio a Caiano

16. French and Italian villas • They embraced monumental sculptured fountains and parterre gardens of rich pattern or mazes of sharply trimmed box hedges. The integration of architecture and site thus became complete. Villa Medicea in Poggio a Caiano

17. Unfortunately, the results were often vacuous: a meaningless exercise in applied geometry—the control of nature for no more reason than for the sake of exerting control. Many such villas, on the other hand, were and still remain notable for their great symphonic beauty. In these, without exception, the highest inherent qualities of the natural elements of the site—plants, topography, water—were fully appreciated by the planner and given design expression.

18. Seldom, for instance, has water as a landscape element been treated with more imaginative control than at Villa d’Este in Tivoli, where a mountain torrent was diverted to spill down the steep villa slopes through the gardens, rushing, pouring, gushing, foaming, spurting, spewing, surging, gurgling, dripping, riffling, and finally shining deep and still in the stone reflecting basins.

19. Villa d’Este, Tivoli • Water as a landscape element has been treated with more imaginative control • Water, slopes and plant materials were handled architecturally to enhance both the structure and the site and superbly unite the two Photo source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Villa-dEste

21. Alternatively, the landscape features of the site may be embraced by the dispersion of structural or other planned elements into the landscape. The satellite plan, the buckshot plan, the finger plan, the checkerboard plan, the ribbon plan, and the exploded plan are typical examples. Dispersion of structural or other planned elements

22. Such is true of our national parks with their trails, lodges, and campgrounds sited to unfold to the user the most interesting features of the park. Such is true, in linearplan expression, of any well-planned scenic drive or highway extended into the countryside.

23. Linear Plan EXAMPLES • National parks • Scenic drives/highways Yosemite National Park Yosemite National Park, California. © Digital Vision/Getty Images COURTESY OF KANSAS TOURISM OFFICE https://www.countryliving.com/life/travel/g4454/most-scenic-drives-in-america/

24. Our military installations are often, in plan, scattered over extensive land areas, each function—be it rifle range, officers’ quarters, tank proving ground, tent sites, or artillery range—relating to those topographical features that seem most suitable. For this same purpose, many of our newer schools are exploded in plan.

25. Exploded Plan EXAMPLES • Military installations • Schools https://www.districtenergy.org/events/event-description?CalendarEventKey=5369dcd7-abe6-4089-9e48-17b61596d162 St. Theresa’s College Quezon City

26. Unlike the old three-story monumental school set on the land, the newer schools of which we speak are planned to the landscape, embracing and revealing its more pleasant qualities with such success that school and landscape are one.

27. Common areas • The site and the structure may be further related by the interlocking of common areas: patio, terraces and courts, for example. • Feature of a landscape display from/in such a court makes it a specimen held up to close and frequent observation under varying conditions of position, weather and light

28. Landscape feature A simple fragment of rock so featured acquires a modeling and a beauty of form and detail that would not be realized if it were seen in its natural state. Image source: https://www.popularmechanics.com/home/lawn-garden/how-to/g2581/landscaping-ideas-for-low-maintenance-yard/

29. Landscape feature As we watch it from day to day—streaming with rain, sparkling with hoarfrost or soft snow, glistening in the sharp sun and incised with shadow, or glowing in subdued evening light—we come to a fuller understanding of this landscape object and thus of the nature of the landscape from which it came. Image source: https://www.popularmechanics.com/home/lawn-garden/how-to/g2581/landscaping-ideas-for-low-maintenance-yard/

30. The landscape may be even more strongly related to structure by the orientation of a room or an area to some feature of the landscape, as by a vista or a view. • A view or a garden may be treated as a mural, a mural of constant change and variety of interest, extending the room area visually to the limits of the garden (or to infinity for a distant view). Butchart Gardens: Italian GardenItalian Garden at Butchart Gardens, Victoria, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.© 2009fotofriends/Shutterstock.com

31. It can be seen that, to be pleasant, the scale, mood, and character of the landscape feature viewed must be suited to the function of the area from which it is observed. Butchart Gardens: Italian GardenItalian Garden at Butchart Gardens, Victoria, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.© 2009fotofriends/Shutterstock.com

32. To the foreign visitor in a traditional Japanese home, one of the most appealing features of many is the use of smoothly sliding screens of wood and paper by which the entire side of a room may be opened at will to bring into the space a cloudlike flowering plum tree, a vigorous composition of sand, stone, and sunlit pine, a view through tiered maple branches to the tiered roof of a distant pagoda, or a quiet pool edged with moss and rippled by lazily fanning goldfish. Japanese home

33. Each feature viewed is treated with impeccable artistry as part of the room, to extend and unite it with the garden or landscape. The Japanese would tell us that they have a deeper purpose, that what they are really trying to do is to relate people and nature completely and make nature appreciation a part of their daily lives. Japanese home A Traditional Japanese Interior By David A. LaSpina

34. To this end they introduce into their dwellings the best of those objects of nature that they can find or afford. The posts and lintels of their rooms, for instance, are not squared and finished lumber but rather a trunk or limb of a favorite wood shaped, tooled, and finished to bring out its inherent form and pattern of grain and knotting. Each foundation stone, each section of bamboo, each tatami (woven grass mat) is so fashioned by the artisan as to discover, and reveal in the finished object, the highest natural quality of the material that is being used. Japanese home

35. In the Japanese home one finds plants and arrangements of twigs, leaves, and grasses that are startling in their beauty. Even in their art forms the Japanese consciously, almost reverently, bring nature into their homes. Japanese home Okochi-Sanso garden in autumn © shikema / Shutterstock.com

36. In such ways we, too, may relate our projects and structures to their natural setting. Using large areas of fenestration Devise approaches and paths of circulation to achieve the most desirable relationship Adapt landscape colors, shapes and materials Projecting into the landscape certain areas of interior paving and by extending structural walls or overhead planes We may break down or vignette our structures from high refinement to a more rustic quality as we move from the interior outward. This is a reverse application of the quality wabi mentioned before. This controlled transition from the refined to the natural is a matter of great design significance.

37. If a building or plan area of any predetermined character is to be imposed on a landscape of another character, transition from the one to the other will play an important role. Example: a civic plaza and art museum are to be built at the edge of a city park, all plan elements will become more “civic” and sophisticated as one leaves the park to approach the plaza. Lines will become more precise. Kaohsiung Port Station Urban Design Winning Proposal By Ager Group Shutterstock

38. Forms will become refined and architectural. Materials, colors, textures, and details will become richer. The natural park character will give way gradually, subtly, to an intensified urbane character consonant with the planned expression of the museum. Conversely, if a park or wooded public garden is planned in a highly developed urban district, plan forms will relax and be freer and more natural as one approaches the open space. Such controlled intensification, relaxation, or conversion of plan expression is the mark of skilled physical planning. Example Kaohsiung Port Station Urban Design Winning Proposal By Ager Group

39. Such controlled intensification, relaxation, or conversion of plan expression is the mark of skilled physical planning.

40. THANKS Reference: Starke, B., & Simonds, J. O. (2013). Landscape Architecture, Fifth Edition: A Manual of Environmental Planning and Design (5th ed.). United States: McGraw-Hill Education.

41. REFERENCES • Starke, B., & Simonds, J. O. (2013). Landscape Architecture, Fifth Edition: A Manual of Environmental Planning and Design (5th ed.). United States: McGraw-Hill Education. • Lighthouse Photo By Courtney Corlew on Unsplash • Hohenzollern Castle, Germany https://prussianhistory.com/5-interesting-facts-about-the-hohenzollern-castle/ • https://www.alamy.com/support-of-high-voltage-transmission-lines-in-the-mountains-image220151297.html • Natural Swimming Pools Let You Beat the Heat, and Ditch the Chemicals https://inhabitat.com/ • Subic Bay Yacht Club https://www.tripadvisor.com.ph/ • Villa Medicea in Poggio a Caiano • Villa Photo source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Villa-dEste • Yosemite National Park, California. © Digital Vision/Getty Images • Scenic drive courtesy of KANSAS TOURISM OFFICE • https://www.countryliving.com/life/travel/g4454/most-scenic-drives-in-america/ • https://www.districtenergy.org/events/event-description?CalendarEventKey=5369dcd7-abe6-4089-9e48-17b61596d162 • St. Theresa’s College Quezon City • Villa Sapiro, Italy http://www.visitsitaly.com/tours/campania/rentals/villa_sapiro/villa_sapiro_terrace3.jpg • Garden image source: https://www.popularmechanics.com/home/lawn-garden/how-to/g2581/landscaping-ideas-for-low-maintenance-yard/ • Butchart Gardens: Italian GardenItalian Garden at Butchart Gardens, Victoria, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.© 2009fotofriends/Shutterstock.com • A Traditional Japanese Interior By David A. LaSpina • Okochi-Sanso garden in autumn © shikema / Shutterstock.com • Kaohsiung Port Station Urban Design Winning Proposal By Ager Group • City photo from Shutterstock