ARH_170_OL2: Projective Drawing and Perspective

● Plan as Generator

● PLAN AS GENERATOR

●The plan is the generator… the plan is at

its basis. Without plan there can be neither

grandeur of aim and expression, nor

rhythm, nor mass, nor coherence. Without

plan we have the sensation, so

insupportable to man, of shapelessness, of

poverty, of disorder, of willfulness...To make

a plan is to determine and fix ideas. It is so

to order these ideas that they become

intelligible, capable of execution and

communicable.

● Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture

● If anything is described by an architectural

plan, it is the nature of human

relationships, since the elements whose

trace it records—walls, doors, windows and

stairs—are employed first to divide and

then selectively to re-unite inhabited space.

● Robin Evans, Figures, Doors and Passages

●The plan represents the most fundamental

drawing in architecture. The plan outlines

the way we move through space and sets

our pace and experience according to a

route and a sequence prescribed by design

intent. The plan organizes the basics of

program and function into understandable

sequences and proximities.

● The organization of the plan is based upon

predetermined hierarchies that are a

response to a multitude of factors—from

structure and technology or site and local

or regional cultural practices and building

typologies, to abstract concepts of order or

individual expressions of form.

●Plan drawings reflect these underlying

ideas and concepts. We touch upon just a

few significant architectural examples

below to introduce various plan-making

strategies.

●Classical Architecture and The Pursuit of

Perfection through Poche

● Let's look at two archetypal plans of

western architecture: the Pantheon and the

Villa Capra La Rotonda. The Pantheon is a

Roman temple structure rebuilt in its

present state by the Emperor Hadrian

around 126 AD. Villa Capra La Rotonda in

Vicenza, Italy was designed by architect

Andrea Palladio, who wrote one of the first

treatises on architecture, at the height of

the Renaissance era in the 1500s. Both

buildings embody the pursuit of beauty and

perfection through the use of pure

geometric forms and proportions in their

designs.

●

● Enlarge Image +

● The Pantheon, Rome

●

● Enlarge Image +

●

● Enlarge Image +

●

● Enlarge Image +

●The circular sanctum of the Pantheon and

its hemispherical dome (the world's largest

unreinforced concrete dome in existence)

houses perfectly a 142-feet-diameter

spherical void in height and width. The

oculus at the temple's center was meant to

"bring the heavens down to earth" and

casts a beam of light into the otherwise

dark interior space that tracks the

movement of the sun throughout the day.

●

● Enlarge Image +

● Villa Capra "La Rotonda" by Andrea Palladio, Vicenza in Northern Italy

●

● Enlarge Image +

●

● Enlarge Image +

●Villa La Rotonda expresses its perfect

symmetry through its uniform four-sided

façade as well as the double axes of

symmetry and the concentric square grid

used to define its proportions.

● The individual spaces and rooms of both

buildings—the Pantheon and Villa

Rotonda—are subservient to the overall

geometric form. Their overall dimensions

and proportions of the rooms, as well as

the paths of circulation, are fit into overall

identifiable "perfect" shapes.

● The plans of these two buildings also

demonstrate what is called a poche

condition.

●

● Enlarge Image +

● Plan of Villa La Rotonda

●

● Enlarge Image +

● Plan of Pantheon

●Poche is a French term, and typically refers

to the solid spaces between walls. The

masonry construction and technology at

that time often required walls and

structures of significant thickness to

support the loads and spans of interior

open space. In the plans above, you can

see the thicknesses of the walls that are

cut in plan filled with dark color.

● Poche was also used as a device to shape

interior spaces. In the Pantheon, niches

were carved out of the thick circular wall of

the sanctum, housing statues of different

gods. In the Villa La Rotonda, the central

space is circular in plan, but this circle of

space is inscribed into a solid square. The

poche between the circular plan of the

dome and the square figure surrounding it

was thick enough for Palladio to house

four, small winding stairwells within the

poche.

● Ideal geometries and the use of poche

occupied the work of a famous mid-century

modern architect, Louis Kahn. Kahn

understood and used poche to distinguish

between two different types of spaces: the

"served" and the "servant" spaces. This

was learned from his studies abroad in

Europe, including his visits to British

castles, where he sketched the following

plan diagrams:

●

● Source: Brownlee, David B. and David G. De Long. Louis I. Kahn: In the Realm of Architecture, Rizzoli, 1991, p. 68.

● In conclusion, these various examples

demonstrate plan-making as part of a

pursuit of ideal geometries.

●