38 Buildings
B U I L D I N G S.
Buildings imaging trees.
Places and Spaces I've been, (Byrd.D, 'Places & Spaces', 1975, Blue Note, USA), include towns, cities, the beach, but there is something majestic about the dopamine fuelled forest; expounding oxygen, and magnifying magnificent magnitudes of flight, scabrousness, furfuraceous, scurf, on the ground, and a gradual gradation grinding up the trees, and letting go of buds, seeds, caps, and leaves themselves, for the trees speak to me; and then I switch on the radio.
As described on Radio 4 recently: 'Poetry is a trapping of now in the moment'. There is a long history of the poetics in architecture. As discussed, (The South African Journal of Art History, 'Poetics of Construction', Volume 32, number 2, 2017; ISSN: 0258-3542.) in the poetics of construction, that 'the poetics of architecture addresses the “making of architecture”, simultaneously as an act of physical construction and a mental act of construing'. This allows for a conceptual paradigm in architecture, where the minds workings reach a satisfactory 3-dimensional mass in view of the maker. It goes on to say that it ‘acts as a condensing agent in our “lived world”'. For it is an art yet stems from and attributes itself with information as a methodical, organised, and efficient life enhancer, never mind the primordial element of the necessity for shelter.’
There is a picture in a magazine. We all want a house like that. An aspiration to a new life, and new ways of living through the architecture as a result. And without style, architecture becomes an art of future thinking. Floating lands and hover cars are the epitome of the future for architectural living cities: 'cities for living in', but their culmination may never see the light of day, when we would be dictated by technology, for technology's sake. The visceral per chance is more of now.
The article concludes: 'The poetic eludes definition in favour of continual aspiration towards it'. From where our constant dive into the future resides. A computer programmable, of running people and a city for people to live in, based on historical behaviour leaves behind though, the rectification of the living arts in architecture's light. And so, we must continue to see the talent of art in architecture as it's true poetry just as a 1960's Claus Oldenburg sculpture still stands up to today’s rhetoric in re-interpretation of object through material.
The image of trees is timeless yet poetic. We rely on trees for our oxygen levels, to balance the nitrogen and carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere; levels of oxygen should be around 20%, carbon dioxide < 0.4%, and the majority 78% is nitrogen. In every breath 20% is oxygen and 15% is exhaled, using 5% of the volume of air around us, and therefore 0.042% is exhaled as carbon dioxide, however particles in pollution are the killer not the carbon dioxide levels; it has been found 95% of Londoners live in areas that exceed the limit of PM2.5 particle pollution by 50% or more.
We hope we are retaining good levels of oxygen in an age of remedy; so, plant trees. Literally billions of hectares of forest are being grown across the major continents of the world, according to a new report, (Vidal.John, Guardian, Tue 13th Feb. 2018, 01:00EST, online), 'China plans to plant forests the size of Ireland', and 'England is to: plant 5 million trees in a new coast-to-coast forest', also, 'more than 120 countries promised in 2015 to plant and restore large areas of forest as a response to the climate change crisis, and the UN has set a target to restore 350m hectares by 2030 – an area bigger than India'. This is all good news, but why is England deemed the origin of so many native trees, when they probably have evolved across the northern hemisphere; to those found in the UK and spread at the same time.
The astronaut talks about the 'interconnectedness of the Universe' (Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14). And well the Universe does represent something of an embryonic disc like tree, especially when one connects the stars through invisible geometric vectors. With a star at the centre of every galaxy. There are therefore (with 300b. stars and 1.2b. galaxies): (3bn. to the power of 2.9bn. over 1.2 bn.). ‘N’ no. of trees in the Universe = 160,129,147,903.1097 galaxy trees.
A tree has a root network; as big, out-stretched and as wide and deep, into the ground, as it’s canopy. This is where we begin our tree, yet there is building above ground: a trunk to reach to the sun. Starting as a sapling with a few leaves and buds it starts to grow. That is our foundation. We explain its growth based on photosynthesis of the chlorophyll in each leaf aiming for the heights of the sun, giving energy back to buds, which in turn allow them to grow, giving trees a halo of magnetism around the circumference of the canopy; similarly, it is continually growing downwards searching for nutrients and water for growth above carried in the stem of the wood and making sap like rubber: the saliva of the wood on its way. Buds form in early spring and fall in autumn, protected over winter by a variety of cases, buds, pockets, and helicopter types as hard outer forms to fly in the winter breeze; to begin growth in the ground, from walkers and animals burying the seeds.
It is simply a beautiful process. The trunk can of course be cut to count its history through rings of stories, otherwise known as ‘years of growth’. Its true magnetism measured. The tree is believed to have been founded in a double, sequential, forked, strike of lightning in a shallow, possibly, salt water marshland; the Hd²O was carried from another galaxy tree as great asteroids, (do we square 1.2b. galaxies because of the overlap, making more galaxies than stars?), to the “blue marble” (Apollo 17 1972), from which the first tree grew. The salt nurtured growth and sanitised bad bacteria from the good seeds and amoebas to take growth for the first time, plant, animal, not mineral = ‘the bed rock’. Whilst architecture is classically rock, rock is also dark matter the collusion of gas as a product. Timber lightens the load and makes fine buildings as well. The tree is the first life on planet earth, and so life was born. As trees may have been responsible for creating atmosphere!
Buildings imaging trees conjures many ideas from their cathedral like presence to Tolkien’s inanimate objects talking to me. Recently reported on Radio 4, many of the countries that are growing, are struggling to breathe properly, and whilst deeply spiritual, if medicine pockets have their way, then they will be surviving on modern oncology from the Western World. Therefore, it is so important that we lead the way in imaging trees for the sake of the environment in all sorts of ways.
Imaging trees invokes ideas like Richard Rogers’ concentric cities: In ‘Cities for a Small Planet’ by Richard Rogers himself. And tree like cathedrals, as I mentioned, as structures. One can imagine a new building, with glulam timber round branch like structures. London still has the tallest timber set building with glulam and CLT (Cross laminated timber panels) in the UK, but also once in the entirety of Europe, at, Hackney London. Wenlock Cross, is a 10 storey, 50 home building. Whilst the tallest wood building in the world was planned again for London by PLP Architecture, and Cambridge University’s Architecture Department in 2017, it has been largely beaten for a 350m tower planned early February this year. There is, as a result, no fear of building high rise buildings, in timber these days. Wooden structures to give us scope, need to be more tree-like. From the burnt timber surface of DSDHA’s café/restaurant on the Southbank, London, and its innocuous presence, from a very stark process of preparation to construction - to Windmill Hill: Waddesdon Manor’s extension of angular, cuboid, pitched roof, geometric construction, by Stephen Marshall Architects, near Aylesbury. We have seen a plethora of innovation and command over the accurate and precise use of timber as a building material.
How do we get the image of the tree to translate into the built environment?
Simply we could print a black glass box with images of trees, or use glass to reflect the surrounding trees, like a mirror, or as simply mirrored glass.
We could upcycle a tree in its entirety: using roots, branches, bark, buds and leaves. The bark is the interesting part; and there are a great number of varieties in the forest. Maybe a square box with the bark markings of a peeling eucalyptus or fissures on a silver birch as the façade. To hack into some square cut logs; bark on, to allow natural habitats in our harsh exterior and smooth interior cuboid in the forest, pegged through.
To look at stripes, like the tree, gap, in the forest.
To use leaves and buds, by glazing them, in a vacuum slice so as they do not age, to allow a natural brises soleil, making images inside the building through light and shade.
To build a basement and building above on legs with a glazed unit at ground level, like an enclosed covered garden to your make-believe tree house but squared off.
Like all nature we tame it, and so buildings tend to be tame, but stilts would give us extra height to view the surroundings, and nearby trees from.
Wood’s dead once you have cut it, but you soon forget what the tree looked like. Tree type symbology on the cut plank.
It is interesting to notice, without glass, timber tends to overlap at the 90º joints, to incur strength, durability, and insulation.
Or even a green wall like the Musée du quai Branly, in Southern France, there are simply so many opportunities.
To prove Darwin’s theory of evolution we know that: The ancestors of flowering plants diverged from gymnosperms in the Triassic Period, 245 to 202 million years ago (mya), and the first flowering plants are known from 160mya, 42 to 85 million years later. They diversified extensively during the Lower Cretaceous, became widespread by 120mya, 40 million years later, and replaced conifers as the dominant trees from 100 to 160mya. There are today, 60,065 species of tree worldwide from 6 tree genera; including 1. Flowering, 2. Conifers [soft wood], 3. Ginkgos, 4. Cycads, 5. Ferns, & 6. Fossils, of which most are flowering. The flowering trees are the angiosperms, carrying ‘angio’ – case, and ‘sperm’ – seed. There are enough species of tree to come up with thousands of ways of building with them based on their stress tolerances per cubic square metre. Civilising the forest builds over and above the evil of the pollution of the city, and never mind what lurks there! Like a pack of weasels, as we find in Wind in the Willows, poor badger suffers but man is mightier.
This is a healthy revolution in our time. Where pixels make circles from squares. We can pace out our rubber less dried wood, in circles, or mind maps of circles joining nodes into complex structures. Tree houses make headway for buildings imaging trees, the most original way to inhabit the tree itself as opposed to abstract connotations; the original den. It is believed the sap rubber creates the magnetism just as there is spirit in the water. The rings are stories telling of old. A round space depicts a mud hut from East Africa, like the Masai, or more commonly thought of as a tepee or wigwam, as a tent like structure. There are many interpretations of the tree, as stories were always told in the round. But todays polemic is one of 3 Dimensions. Whilst concentric trunks depict round spaces in the landscape, we must also enjoy the process and the result, and look further afield to buds, caps, wings, and flowers for inspiration. The process is the result, and however much we try to escape it, there is a true magnetism in building that is square, by cutting planar pieces of dead wood, for our living dreams. Buildings information from trees makes healthy buildings imaging trees, simply if it is a wooden, well detailed box.
A list of the top 11 'monouni' wooden structures:
· Tokyo Skyscraper, by Sumitomo Forestry, 2018, 350m, (£4.3bn.), Tokyo, Japan.
· Mjøstårnet Building, by Moelven, 2017, 80m, (£?), Brumunddal, Oslo, Norway.
· International House Sydney, Tzannes Architects, 2017, 45m, (£?), Sydney, Australia.
· ‘The Cube’, Wenlock Cross, by Hawkins Brown, 2015, 33m, (£10.5m.), Hackney, London, UK.
· Lake Rotsee Finish Tower, Fuhrimann & Hächler Architekten, 2012, (£?), Lucerne, Switzerland.
· Watson House, John Pardey Architects, 2011, (£?), New Forest, Hampshire.
· Leis House, Peter Zumthor, 2009 (£?), Vals, Switzerland.
· The Savill Building, Glenn Howells Architects, Buro Happold Engineers, 2006, (£4.8m) Surrey, England.
· Welsh Assembly, Rogers, Stirk, Harbour and partners, 2005, (£41m.), Cardiff, Wales.
· Bordeaux Law Courts, Rogers, Stirk, Harbour and partners, 1998, (£27m.), Bordeaux, France.
· Tjibaou Cultural Centre, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, 1998, (£?), Noumea, New Caledonia.
