Masters Theses

Date of Award

5-2006

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Architecture

Major

Architecture

Major Professor

Marleen K. Davis

Committee Members

Scott Wall, Barbara Klinkhammer

Abstract

STATEMENT OF THESIS/HYPOTHESIS

This thesis explores the reciprocal relationship of the building and the city. I argue that the building can be a microcosm of the city, as Alberti has said: " . . . for if a city, according to the opinion of philosophers be no more than a great house, and on the other hand the house be a little city . . ."1

In demonstrating the interrelationship of building and city as reciprocals, I have analyzed three precedents, which will inform my design approach. Based on Kevin Lynch's analysis2, I have identified five fundamental elements:

District

Path

Edge

Node

Landmark

While these elements are common to most cities and buildings, I argue that specific design is developed based on transformative factors in two broad categories:

Socio-cultural factors, arising from cultural tradition and social norms.

Physical factors, arising from physical settings.

Furthermore, I will demonstrate that a building with physical and spatial continuity to its city environment can be fully involved in the urban context. It connects the urban fabric physically and programmatically. In my design thesis, I will argue that the building can be interpreted as a microcosm of the city in this way.

I have selected Knoxville, Tennessee, because it is a typical example of 20th century American urbanism: a grid with a central business district, pockets of urban decay, and ambiguous sprawl.

I have selected a specific vacant site in downtown area, which is the best representation of Knoxville's urban fabric. I have decided to provide a multi-use Institute of Culinary School, because the programmatic and structural diversity of such a building represents the diversity of a city, in both physical and programmatic aspects. Through my design, I will demonstrate that a building can be a microcosm of its city context in a reciprocal way.

EXPLANATION OF MY HYPOTHESIS

A city is a network of spaces, in which Kevin Lynch identified the importance of paths, nodes, edges, districts, and landmarks. The city is defined by particular parts within it. A building, as one of the units of the city, has structural coherence with the city. The building is organized to some degree much like a city. In a building, "paths" are the circulation zones, "nodes' are more active areas within the building based on program or movement, "edges" define spaces, "districts" are differentiated areas in a building often for differentiated users, and "landmarks" are the critical focal points within a building. In this way, a building can be understood as a small city.

A city and its parts exchange their analogies of structure between the spaces, e.g. corridor/street, courtyard/square, etc. We can suppose that these two systems, a city and a building, can have the same geometrical characteristics of spatial forms, but at different scales. "They are differentiated only by the dimensions of the walls which bound them and by the patterns of function and circulation which characterize them."3 We can picture this sort of unity by taking the logic of a public place into the interior of the building. Moreover, a building can also have the same diversity of functions. Both cities and buildings are platforms for events. Buildings are not isolated and self-contained sculptures. They play an explicit part in the continuity of the urban fabric and the urban social life. Thus a building can be a microcosm of a city by the similarity of physical structure and programmatic structure. I advocate that the city and its buildings form a reciprocal relationship. The more involved a building is with the form and content of its surroundings, the more those surroundings become appropriated by the building. And just as a building changes the image of its surroundings, so the surroundings will change the image of the building. This reciprocal relationship states that a city and its buildings reinforce each other and interact.

I will explore this hypothesis in three ways:

1. Through program (mixed use)

2. Through a design strategy which focuses on the utilization of path, node, edge,

district and landmark

3. Through a design in which the building and its context are inextricably linked

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