Thinking about Architecture by Davies Colin;

Author:Davies, Colin;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Laurence King Publishing

Le Corbusier said that a house was a machine for living in, but his houses, like the famous Villa Savoye, looked more like three-dimensional Purist paintings than functional machines.

High Tech buildings, however, did look like machines. They were made of synthetic materials like metal and glass rather than natural materials like stone and wood, and they took every opportunity to expose their shiny, articulated steel structures, often painted a bright color. Actual functioning machinery, such as boilers and chillers, with all their attendant tanks, pipes, and ducts, were not hidden away as they usually are, but were put boldly on display, often on the outside of the building. This machinery was essential to the functioning of the building and the doctrine of honesty demanded that it be visible.

The Inmos Factory by Richard Rogers, near Newport in Wales, is typical of the style. Its exposed steel trusses are assisted in their unusually long span by a central row of suspension structures towering over the roof. The air-conditioning plant sits between these structures, visibly feeding ducts in the roofs on either side. The whole thing, especially in cross section, is indeed vaguely reminiscent of some early experimental airplane. It looks as though it has been designed to do a practical job as efficiently as possible with none of the pomp and ceremony associated with traditional architecture. Architecture it is, nevertheless, not engineering, and its apparent purposefulness is as contrived and artificial as any neo-classical facade. There are many cheaper, more practical ways to do the job that this building does. Nevertheless, if we can accept this proviso, the building’s most important characteristic is its complete, almost puritanical honesty. All of this visible structure is real. It does a real job and it is seen to do a real job. It is made of steel and nobody could possibly mistake it for any other material. Those air handlers really handle air, pushing it down those real ducts, and that square-gridded, lightweight-paneled, non-load-bearing external wall is exactly that.

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