Pattern 240 - Half Inch Trim

It's a kind of bible of architecture, A Pattern Language came out in 1977, and in over 1,000 pages codifies the language of the built environment, or how it ought to be. It's a guide to livable cities and livable buildings. Maybe it's a bit Cali-centric, with all it's recommendations for outdoor space design, but it serves nonetheless as a builder's guide to making nice places to be in. 

The book is over 1,000 pages, and not until page 1,112 do we see Pattern 240 - Half Inch Trim. It is the most beautiful, simple, and airtight explanation in the whole book.

Pattern 240 - Half Inch Trim

Totalitarian, machine buildings do not require trim because they are precise enough to do without. But they buy their precision at a dreadful price: by killing the possibility of freedom in the building plan. 

A free and natural building cannot be conceived without the possibility of finishing it with trim, to cover up the minor variations which have arisen in the plan, and during its construction. p1112

The principle goes on to explain that it is essential that cuts be inaccurate within a half-inch or so, to avoid waste, but also to allow subtle adaptations.

And it goes on to explain why the modern practice of using precision building components is a bad idea:

"This one aspect of construction has by itself destroyed the builder's capacity to make a building which is natural, organic, and adapted to the site." p1113

But this is not the real argument for Half Inch Trim. The real argument is more deeply psychological, and underlies a quantitative, and universal, feature of aesthetic sensibility:

Our own bodies and the natural surroundings in which we evolved contain a continuous hierarchy of details, ranging all the way from the molecular fine structure to gross features like arms and legs (in our own bodies) and trunks and branches (in our natural surroundings).

We know from results in cognitive psychology that any one step in this hierarchy can be no more than 1:5, 1:7, or 1:10 if we are to perceive it as a natural hierarchy. We cannot understand a hierarchy in which there is a jump in scale of 1:20 or more. It is this fact which makes it necessary for our surroundings, even when man-made, to display a similar continuum of detail. 

Most materials have some kind of natural fibrous or crystalline structure at the scale of about 1/20 inch. But if the smallest building detail dimensions are of the order of 2 or 3 inches, this leaves a jump of 1:40 or 1:60 between these details and the fine structure of the material. ... [and 1/20 inch is 1:10 to a half inch] p1114-1115

Notes:
A Pattern Language - Towns, Buildings, Construction
Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein. Oxford University Press. New York. 1977.

Simulacra City

Meet N.J.'s newest downtown, designed for kids and adults with special needs
Aug 2019, nj.com

Here's an urban design story you don't hear too much. It looks like a typical downtown, with stores and sidewalks, but it's indoors. It used to be a warehouse in Livingston, New Jersey, but now it's kind of like a Disney village.

It's got normal stores and full time workers and patrons from the community, but with jobs prioritized for people sensitive to dynamic social interactions - there's just enough but not too much people buzzing around. And so they get to be gently immersed in everyday activities, to build up their people skills.

With the metabolizing gray blob of abandoned strip malls that sprawls over New Jersey, there's plenty of room for a few more of these.

Buildings On Ice

No it's real though.

If there is one thing I learned in architecture school, it's that water is the building's number one enemy. (Insects are number two, by the way.)

High winds turned this New York home into an ice house
the internet, 2017

Architrays

Architecture inspired concrete desk accessories - The Islam. 

The artist/teacher/architect/art historian in me is really excited about this project that recently debuted - Architrays are an art history lesson in the form of indulgent decoration. These concrete trays are designed and fabricated by 7thFl, an industrial design duo (from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, same place I spent a good 5 years of my life learning about sustainable design). Each tray they make represents a historical period of architecture, from Gothic to Roman to the Islam tray pictured above. When it comes to geometric design, Islam knows what's up.

Here you see an example of how this kind of design is developed from a very simple algorithm, genius in its simplicity. You start with a circle, then you draw another circle so that its center lies anywhere on the first circle. Then you draw a third circle, again so that its center lies on the first circle, BUT so that the center of all three circles now make an equilateral triangle with 60 degree angles.

If you repeat this pattern all around the first circle, you get a hexagon. Look at the points of the image in the upper left, and see that they can make equilateral triangles and a hexagon. This is the starting point for the most complex, most beautiful of patterns.  And this is the theme cast into concrete by 7thFl for their Islamic Architray. In other words, these 'architrays' are a beautiful reminder of a rich history of art, design, and architecture. Check it out

Beyond Biomimicry

The Pompidou in Paris, built in 1970's by  Richard Rogers, Renzo Piano and Gianfranco Franchini. It's not under construction, it's an inside-out building. It's probably easier to fix this way, but do we like the way that looks? (It's actually a nightmare to clean the place.)

Color-changing materials could be used to detect structural failure in energy-related equipment
phys.org, July 2016

"Researchers at MIT are making fluorescent polymer gels that change color when they're shaken, heated, exposed to acid, or otherwise disrupted. Given such a response, these novel materials could be effective sensors for detecting changes in structures, fluids, or the environment."

Buildings are not alive, so they don't heal themselves. It's hard for us to find out what's wrong with them, because most of their critical parts have been made invisible according to our cultural-architectural preferences.

But now, if there's structural damage in a place that's been doped with pressure-sensitive colorgel, we can see it.

Memetics in Building Systems User-Interface

The User

The topic of user-interface doesn’t come up much between architects and designers. And it’s no wonder why. To quote from another text:

Blueprints and regulations are complex, but people are all the more. The planner draws straight lines and geometric shapes. The architect uses energy-efficient systems and strategies. Then people come in. They cut corners; they walk on the grass and right through the bushes. They turn off the automatic light sensors. “If only there were no people to complicate things and reveal the flaws in my design…”

-Crowdsourcing Reform, 2010

Yet, the implementation of energy efficiency in buildings comes down to the user. Design all you want, the user will tear that up. Automate? Override.

The building is, both phylo- and ontogenetically, a Dawkins’ Extended Phenotype, in direct contact with the user.

Buildings vs. Building and Users vs. User

Building systems need to be easy-to-understand for the user, and that need is not overshadowed here. However, the kind of user-interface that can be affected by such ‘educational’ characteristics of building systems is for the individual user. What is now deemed a manipulable component of this interface, by the rising attention to memetics, is the attitudes and beliefs of the user-at-large in regards to what a building is and what it does, and especially what their place is in the relationship between them and the built systems.

The Communicability of Building Systems

A “self-propagating” meme is one with high visibility; photovoltaics and fashion trends are examples. “Cast iron cookware is awesome” is not a self-propagating meme; it is much less visible. Surely this has been proposed before, and the Pompidou pays the price, but it must be recontextualized in our current social and physical infrastructure: Building systems must make themselves more visible, while clearly communicating what it is they do and what should be done with them.

It must be noted, it is not being said, for example, that the 'wiring' needs to be visible, just the 'light switch'. And perhaps not even that, but some-thing that communicates what particular part of the electrical system it is and what is to be done with it (depending on environmental and user conditions alike).

See also Architectural Semiotics