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Browsing by Author "Lo, Bennett C."

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    6 houses for John Travolta and friends
    Lo, Bennett C. (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1995)
    It is impossible to say when man’s mind first conceived the urge to fly, The dream of moving through the air like birds. From Archytas of Taranto’s flying machine to Armstrong’s first step on the moon, flying has progressed from imaginary to an everyday part of life. This thesis is an attempt to establish a new housing type. It is a dialogue between ever changing technology and the timeless ideas of architectural composition. The house is an intersection of timelessness and temporality. Le Corbusier stated “The house of a man, irrespective of differences in time or climate, is a pure, organic organization, and the purer it is, the more it is a type. From hut to palace, this type based on a deeply rational and sensitive foundation and become distinctive in flow of time.” The housing complex, located at an airport near the Appalachian Mountains, consists of six dwellings- each of which accommodate an airplane. Steven Holl stated “The site of a building is more than a mere ingredient in its conception. It is its physical and metaphysical foundation. The resolution of the vistas, sun angles, circulation and access, are the ‘physics’ that demand the ‘metaphysics’ of the architecture. Through a link, an extended motive, a building is more than something merely fashioned for the site.” Architecture is a spatial art; unlike painting or sculpture, it cannot be understood at once. Like music, it is a temporal art that comes into being through movement. Architectural composition should be based on the awareness that architecture is a phenomenon that can only be appreciated with the movement of the observer. Le Corbusier stated “Architecture is judged by the eyes that see, by the head that turns and the legs that walk. Architecture is not a synchronic phenomenon but a successive one, made up of pictures adding themselves one to the other, following each other in time and space, like music.” In a building, the 3-dimensional volume is governed by the interaction of the horizontal (floors) and vertical (walls) planes. Through the articulation of these planes, a rhythmic movement can be achieved. As Gideon suggested in Space, Time and Architecture, time is not just a 4th dimension experienced in concert with action, there is a 5th dimension that has to do with the movement of psychological phenomenon. Time is not strictly sequential, it possesses depth, that is historical in character. It transcends simple sequences, generating connections and triggering psychological phenomena. Architecture is an assemblage of feelings and perceptions in which these five dimensions interact.