Normative vs. Positive Theory

To better prepare myself for graduate school and academic research, I'm taking a course this semester called "Design Theory and Research." As part of the course requirements, we're to write reflective journals on the readings assigned every week, so I thought I'd include my thoughts for that class in this blog, and try and relate the readings to my work in studio.

The first reading, "The Nature and Utility of Theory" delineated the difference between normative and positive theory.

• Normative theory: theory that is a "prescription for action." Examples given: design principles, standards, manifestos, ideology on "good architecture"
  
• Positive theory: "a mental schema...that is believed to describe and explain a phenomenon or a group of phenomena."

From my understanding, the key difference between normative and positive theory is that positive theory does not make value-judgments. The reading states that this view of positive theory has been refuted, noting that researches choose to pursue positive theory in a subject of their interest (implying an intrinsic value-judgment on what is interesting). However, when speaking comparatively, positive theory seems to offer less good vs. bad solutions. For example, Kahn's statement on doing to the brick what the brick wants to be is a normative theory: it is a manifesto that implies that pursuing this theory will result in "good" architecture. On the other hand, a query into the reasons for circulation in Kahn's Exeter Library, would be a positive theory that can be extended to other designs (without judging the original or the new as "good" or "bad").

Brick.
Exeter Library.

I think the problem with design research is that most of it seems to be normative; every architect seems to write a manifesto, every design book delineates design principles. Some are helpful: understanding proportion, contrast, unity, etc. are essential to a field that is dependent on visual communication; these are tools that allow a rational analysis of intuitive gestures (ex: placing a large white square in opposition to a small dark square might be an intuitive act, that can be rationalized as an attempt at achieving balance). However, the manifestos, I think, is where you need a grain of salt. Which is where I'm running into issues with my thesis.

I've read four books so far, each offering a different normative prescription for good architecture. Downing's book suggests that good architecture is the result of tapping into place archetypes (domains). The Architecture of the Everyday has several essays, each offering a slightly differing perspective on essentially the same viewpoint: good architecture is architecture that makes anonymous the architect. The work of contemporary Starchitects stands in direct opposition to this normative theory: the goal of the architecture is first to provide the client with the image requested (a Gehry, a Hadid, etc.), i.e. to fulfill the architect's normative theories on what constitues "good" architecture, and secondly to address the program (positive theory). What happens, then, is precisely what the reading states:

"...in discussing architectural matters, we rarely achieve anything but a quarrel about what you like and what I like."

Which begs the question: does normative theory matter? Is it worth discussing? Shouldn't we focus on positive theory for discussion (since it can be disproven through real-world examples) and allow each his own normative theory? The benefit of discussing normative theory, I think, is to allow students/designers to develop their own thoughts on what is "good" architecture, for their own practice. And as long as they practice what they preach (theorize), the synthesis of postive and normative theories in the designer's work will produce something, whether good or not, that incorporates theory in an efficient manner.

Architecture of the Everyday: idea vs. aesthetic

In Mary McLeod's essay, "Henri Lefebre's critique of everyday life: an introduction," (the first essay in Architecture of the Everyday), she makes this statement:

"...the notion of everyday life carries its own risks of commodification...everyday life usually becomes a justification for the status quo or for a nostalgic return to humanist assumptions..." (28)

which I found particularly relevant to the topics I'm concerned with for my thesis: is it necessary to disassociate a visual aesthetic from an idea, that is to say, necessary so that the vernacular (the idea) is not nostalgic emulation (aesthetic)? How is it possible to disassociate the two when our field (architecture/design) is a visual one, when the user "reads" the building through visual imagery?

First, why is this question relevant to my thesis? By addressing GBJ as a potential Third Place, I am already in the realm of history: Oldenburg wrote his book in the 1980s, more than 20 years ago. Do Third Places still exist? Do we still need them as a contemporary community? Lisa Waxman's research is more recent, and suggests that the coffee shops Oldenburg references are still alive today, but perhaps not in the same way. Recent trends show that coffee shops are becoming the new workplace, as more companies allow workers to telecommute; in return for ordering a cuppa joe, you can sit with your laptop and work (ie: browse the internet without worrying about your boss looking over your shoulder). However, there are still the locals that come in after work, the students that swing by after school: this afternoon, I sat at Mill Mountain Coffee and Tea, across from a gentleman loosening his tie and reading the newspaper, watched a group of women grab a table and gossip, saw college students working on their laptops - the signs of the Third Place as Oldenburg envisions it. So there is that.

But I go back to the fact that Oldenburg wrote his book 20 years ago. Is the idea of the Third Place a nostalgic one? Is it the commodification of the everyday? By commodity, I'm assuming McLeod is using the word's negative characterstics: a "product" (not an art), something sellable/buyable (not priceless), a convenience (valued for quantity not quality). By this definition, the everyday becomes cheap (in both senses of the word). Is nostalgia for the Third Place such a bad thing? One can argue that the nostalgic is precisely what spurs on the Third Place, it is the comfort-zone, the we-know-each-other, the regulars, the peeling wallpaper and the warped wood floor, and here we are at the question: is it the visual or the idea that must prevail?

Oldenburg never requires a particular aesthetic for the Third Place (though he discusses several visual qualities that Third Places have had). His requirements are that a Third Place simply:

• be free/inexpensive
  
• have access to food/drink
  
• be proximate (walking distance)
• have regulars.

No wainscoting, no old wood floors, no crown molding, no pendant light fixtures and wobbly café tables. Where did this aesthetic come from, and why do we cling to it with every iteration of the coffee shop as a Third Place?

The Original Starbucks

Post-branding Starbucks.

Take Starbucks, a "modern" chain, if you will. Its original shop is very much the bric-a-brac aesthetic prescribed to coffee shops. Post-branding, the stores are a "modernized" version of this aesthetic, juxtapositions of contemporary finishes and archaic leftovers (note the chair rail). Why can't a coffee shop be bright orange, or neon green? What part of Oldenburg's Third Place idea states that a coffee shop as Third Place must be dark, moody, homey?

Of course, there might be no need to separate the idea of the vernacular from the aesthetic prescribed to it. Perhaps it is intrinisic to the vernacular Third Place that there be well-worn materials? A vernacular architecture is a response to the environmental demands; if the user requires a comfortable place to lounge (the environmental demands of the coffee shop), the response is a couch: but must it always be a couch? The slouchy couch? I disagree. Just like architecture evolves over time, all the while responding to the same site's demands (see MoMA's evolution), the aesthetic of a coffee shop as Third Place must also evolve over time.

There is an everyday of today that is different from the everyday of the past; there must be a coffee shop of today that is unlike the coffee shop of the past, that reflects the everyday of today without resorting to a nostalgic aesthetic to resolve contemporary environmental demands.

Trying out Downing's Spatial Solitaire

Unfortunately, Downing doesn't spell out the details of the parameters for her Spatial Solitaire game. But I really want to try it out, so I've made up some of my own, following the references she makes to the game in her book:

1. Part I: Brainstorm memorable places from my past
2. Part II: Categorize spaces remembered
   
3. Part III: Assess relevance of remembered places to thesis (GBJ)

I allocated 20 minutes for each part (I always work better under pressure...), so here we go!

Part I: What are these memorable places?

• My grandmother's kitchen, blue tiles white grout, cold, with window and crows cawing - my grandparent's apartment in Mumbai, Scandinavian furniture - low, small, wooden legs at angles, watching TV with grandfather on couch, the side room with the built-in cabinetry, writing desk, figurines I can't reach, the entry foyer with the "old-school" phone, wooden divider between foyer and dining room, balcony overlooking pool.
• Queen Mary School: courtyard, dusty, with basketball hoops, corridors along interior, open to atrium, the bridge (overpass) to the school - steps (steep for a child) coming down to the school's entrance.
• Carcassonne: the wall-walk, old stone, Roman brick wall, reconstructions, spaces between walls as rooms, open to the air above, grass as floor, tiny streets, cobblestone paths, ivrée, raining, wet dark.
• My room (s) at the MIJE in Paris, the courtyard (1: main entry, stone feet-smoothened steps, rough cobblestone, sparrows, wandering ivy; 2: side entry, protected from street by wall, very secret, discovered), the view from the window to the photo museum across the street
• The café outdoors, on steps, slow meandering, right near the Seine
• The hallways in Craig Manor Apartments: playing with barbies, secret club meetings, access "through" buildings
• Honeysuckle growing on the path behind the apartment building, riding bikes on path to local 7-11 store
• Cowgill ledge: sitting on ledge, 1 story above ground, legs dangling, smoking cigars and watching the sunset over the parking lot, yellow glow of lights
• Airplanes: view from airplanes of Roanoke, coming into the city, night, day, rolling hills
• Room in La Tourette: small, stucco walls, sharp, insects, torn screen door, dimly lit
• Sagrada Familia: bright, light (no roof!), dancing colors, cool stone, walking down from tower - view of city not as breathtaking as the building itself
• Parc Guëll: view from above purple-flower planters, onto plaza, view from tile-covered benches, talking to artist at top of planters, wandering through park, finding park (lost! help from Asian boys from Ohio)
• Crazy Crab restaurant in Barcelona: sitting outside, watching clouds, thunderstorm roll in over Mediterranean Sea
• View of water feature from basement floor of East Wing of National Gallery of Art (not specific at all...): awe, at first seeing it, the tunnel to the floor, brushing hands against the curved wall as floor moves beneath me
• Paley Park: peaceful. quiet. step out: hello City / missing parks in Harlem
• The Chinese restaurant in NYC we went to with Moriah's friends: eclectic design, mixture of Classical columns and Asian inspired prints, artwork, beautiful lighting (low, warm, cozy), dark bathrooms with individual stalls with doors, tall tall ceilings in bathrooms
• Mill Mountain Coffee and Tea in Salem, VA: red walls, crown molding and green up-lighting, tin tile ceiling painted white, couches always changing, locals enter in back, newbies in front
• Park in Savannah, GA, where two girls were practicing (volleyball? field hockey? lacrosse?), sunlight through foliage, cast shadows, housing on all four sides, structure and freedom
• The un-restored room in Fontainebleau castle, with the silk wallpaper - bright where sheltered from sun, faded in other parts, the wall covering peeling from the walls, tufted seats torn, shredded, still delicate and beautiful

Part II: Domains and remembered places

• Outdoor spaces: Parc Guëll, Paley Park, missing parks in Harlem, Cowgill ledge, Queen Mary School, Carcassonne, café in Paris, Honeysuckle path, (Sagrada Famila), Savannah Park, MIJE courtyards, Crazy Crab restaurant
  
• Indoor spaces: grandparent's apartment, MIJE rooms, Craig Manor hallways, La Tourette bedroom, Sagrada Familia, National Gallery basement, Chinese restaurant in NYC, Mill Mountain Coffee and Tea, Fontainebleau room
• Dark places: side room in grandparent's apartment, Craig Manor hallways, La Tourette, Chinese restaurant, Fontainebleau room, Carcassonne, thunderclouds at Crazy Crab, stairs to Queen Mary
  
• Light-filled places: grandparent's balcony, Carcassonne wall-walk, MIJE, Paris sidewalk café, Sagrada Familia, Parc Guëll, park in Savannah
• "Up high": Carcassonne, airplane, grandparent's balcony, Sagrada Familia, MIJE room with a view, overpass near Queen Mary
  
• Alone (people-less): Carcassonne wall walk, café in Paris, Airplanes, La Tourette, Sagrada Familia, Crazy Crab, Fontainebleau room

It was significantly easier to come up with the places than it was to categorize them - maybe because I had Downing's domains in mind, and yet wanted to try and ignore them to come up with my own categorizations. With categories like "alone" and "up high," it's not so much that there weren't any people there, but that my memories of those places are not contingent on people being there - they are more about my personal experience of the place, not the people in the place. Of course, like Downing notes, each places as several attachments: Carcassonne, one of my favorite places in the world, is such because I associate several memorable "happenings" with the place: meeting fellow travelers, watching the rain, the textures of the place itself (sensate place), my own epiphanous moment (place of self).

I noted earlier that I often dream of places, imagined places and places I have visited that I recreate to suit my dream world (sometimes mixing and matching) - in my attempt at this game, I mentioned two places that feature in several of my dreamscapes: my grandparents' apartment and the bridge near my school (Queen Mary) in Mumbai. Ancestral places, perhaps, with some tinge of secret place, place of self, and sensate place. Today, rain will always remind me of Mumbai (monsoon season, wading through water that came up to my thighs, even though I'm 5'0" that's still quite a lot) and crows will forever remind me of my grandmother's kitchen and balcony (I used to chase them away while she and her servant cooked). My dreams imagine these places relatively accurately (though once I put a shower in her kitchen); these aren't "designed" places, the bridge and steps from it are quite ugly, dirt covered, strewn with garbage, and yet they continue to have a power over me...it's not that I don't appreciate the modern white on white aesthetic, I wouldn't mind playing around with it in my own work, even, but these places (for the most part) are dark: is that why Tanizaki's In Praise of Shadows resonates with me so?

Part III: What kind of place should GBJ be?

A Third Place like GBJ is inherently a sensate place (the smell of coffee, the feel of the chair beneath you). But it is also a secret place. Within the experience of a coffee shop, there is the idea of being alone with people: you come to do your work (I am sitting in Mill Mountain as I type this), in your own "zone," with the bustle of the shop and its other clients in your periphry.

I decided to use my memory of the hallways in the apartment complex in which I grew up (Craig Manor) to sketch the possibility for secret place within the GBJ complex. This secret place is for Sarah, a first-year Industrial Design student. She spends a lot of time in studio (in Cowgill, the building next door), and sometimes just wants to get a way for a few minutes.

I wanted to create a small space that allowed her to sit and observe the action without feeling obligated to participate, where she could view but not be viewed...here's the sketch from my Moleskine...not perfect, by any means, but a start.

The Interior Design Exquisite Corpse Experiment

My thesis this semester will have several components, one of which is an experiment I will be conducting with Greg Tew. Since I'm exploring the relationship between time and authenticity (can a design be authentic to place and time - something that is very much of the here and now?), we thought it would be interesting to simulate a design that is produced over time (as opposed to a "one-shot" solution that generally occurs in the design world).

I will be working with Greg's Contemporary Issues/Business Procedures class (mostly juniors in the Interior Design program), on what I'm calling "The Interior Design Exquisite Corpse Experiment." The exquisite corpse is a game that has existed for a while: originally played as a word game, where the players would take turns writing a sentence on a piece of paper, folding it over and passing it along, to unv, eil a bizarre collection of phrases (a "story") in the end. The Surrealists took the idea and applied it visually, producing strange images.I'd like to extend the game further, into 3D imagery.

Exquisite Corpse exercise by André Breton, Jaqueline Lamba and Yves Tanguy.

The parameters for the experiment are as follows:

1. Students will be provided with a Google SketchUp model of the existing space (modified to suit the experiment).
2. Students are asked to make an intervention. They can change only one thing in the building. This can be in the form of a simple addition, or a subtraction followed by an addition.
3. Their intervention cannot "undo" any action conducted in the last 5 "moves."
4. Students must turn in their modified Sketchup Model, a perspective and a floor plan of their proposed change, and a brief statement explaining their decision-making process.

There are about 21 students in the class that meets Wednesdays and Fridays. Each class period, one student will be given the space and asked to make an intervention; the following class period, the student will present their subtraction/addition and will pass the model to the next student.

For the experiment we will be using a modified version of the space I am addressing in my thesis project: the coffee shop in Johnston Student Center at Virginia Tech. Currently, the space is somewhat functional, but does not fulfill the site's potential as a Third Place. Third Places, as defined by Ray Oldenburg, are those at which people congregate that are not First (work) or Second (home) places. Third places are often free/inexpensive, have access to food/drink, are proximate (waLking distance from First/Second places) and have regulars. The site was chosen for my thesis because it fulfills three of the four qualifiers: it is inexpensive (coffee in general is overpriced, but this is cheaper than Starbucks), has access to food/drink, and is proximate (for Virginia Tech's campus community). Yet it lacks regulars - perhaps because the atmosphere is not the "home away from home" Tech's website professes it to be.

Some questions arise: What does a Third Place look like? Lisa Waxman's research on coffee shops as Third Places provides some insight; her research concludes that place attachment occurs in coffee shops based on several variables, some of which include architectural and environmental factors (ex: cleanliness, day lighting, comfortable furnishings). But that doesn't answer the question of aesthetics. An archetype of the coffee shop should be open, like Downing's domains; yet today, the coffee shop has a certain image (slouchy couches, wooden café tables, chalkboard menus, etc.) that is quite limiting. Is it possible, then, to "update" the image of the coffee shop to reflect the identity of our time (there is no reason a coffee shop of 2009 has to look like the first Starbucks store opened in 1971). Can we open up the type to an archetype? What does the domain of Third Places look like, and how can a coffee shop embody this domain?

Jung, Architecture, Existentialism and Romance

“Typologies are important to designers, because they represent a social contract between society and those who design and build. ” (49)

Last week I read Frances Downing's Remembrance and the Design of Place. (You might be wondering how I picked this book: I am an Amazon book search junkie, and spend my free time searching random keywords and browsing the "people who bought this also bought..." sections...this was bought by someone who bought something else I also bought.)

Downing's basic premise is somewhat Jungian: an individual's memory of a place falls into one (or more) "domain" (archetype): secret places, ancestral places, places of self, sensate places, places of desire, places of comfort, gregarious places, places of region, vicarious places and abstract places. Since everyone can group their memories within these domains, designers can use their own personal memories of places, identify them with one (or more) domain(s) and use that domain (those domains) to generate new spaces that resonate with the client/end-user. To come to this conclusion, Downing created a game of "Spatial Solitaire," where she asked designers (young and old) to recall spaces, group them (according to the individuals sorting schemes) and then analyzed the results. Part II of the game asked the designers to use remembered spaces to generate a new space for an imagined client.

As I read this text, I'm pulled in two directions. At moments, Downings poetic writing makes me stop and recall my own experiences of place, play along with Spatial Solitaire, if you will. And then, I remember reading Edward Hall's The Hidden Dimension and become cynical: can there really be such a thing as a collective architectural conscious, one that spans cultural and geographic differences?

My own game of Spatial Solitaire would go something like this: my Grandmother's blue kitchen, the dark spaces beneath the overpass near my elementary school in Mumbai, the stairs down from that overpass to the school, the small hut near the beach in India with the well outside, the hallways in the apartment complex, the path behind the apartment buildings lined with honeysuckle, the Salem Public Library, the Hicks' garage, the locker room entrances at Allegheny High School, the back entrance to Mill Mountain Coffee Shop (with the old couches), the long walk with the steps up to the concert hall in Ohio (?), the National Gallery of Art, Villa Savoye, Carcassonne, Cezanne's garden studio, the steps with the café one block from the Seine in the 4th arr., the Lyon TGV station, the parcours in Lyon, the concrete loungers on Barcelona's beach, etc...

Each space has something of a story to it, some events have been fabricated from photographs (those spaces that I inhabited as a very young child), some have evolved in my dream world (I often dream of my Grandmother's kitchen and the bridge by my old school in India - I'm no longer sure if my memories are real or imagined), and some are still very real.

My own reading of the text responds to the questions of cultural barriers: as an Indian-born American (I was born in Mumbai and moved to the US when I was 7), I recall my Grandmother's kitchen in Bombay with its 4" blue tiles, white grout, stone counter tops, a grated window upon which crows would perch in the afternoon until I chased them away - an ancestral/sensate place that Downing (an American raised on farms in California) can relate to (in the text, images of her Grandmother's kitchen play a sizeable role). Sure, I have some American influence, but this memory in particular occured before my move to the US. I would be interested to see if my mother (who has spent the majority of her life in India) has similar memories of that kitchen.

What becomes the more pressing question, then, is whether the recognition of domains (by the designer and public) are important at all. The idea of the "design intent," when applied to this thesis (of memory and place-making), might suggest that the designer "intends" a particular interpretation of the domains present within the new spaces. But Downing warns against this:

“The designer’s ‘use’ of memory is free of any one construction.” (70)

In fact, Downing notes that the use of memory by designers is often subconscious, and wonders if we'd be better designers by making this use a conscious decision. She pursues and existential path:

“The expert designer simply ‘works’...is less conscious of her or his own process...It is probably only when they must explain themselves to others—builders, clients, users—that designers become more aware of how they reach certain conclusions in design.” (91)

Here, the "doing" is what is important, not the questioning of the process while in the midst of creation, only after the completion of the design act. Which begs the question: if Downing is writing about the important connection between memory of place and designing new places, is Downing's book moot? Does knowing about the relationship between memory and place-making help me design a memorable place (if, in the end, my memory-design is a subconscious act in order to be most successful)? Must I know what I do as I do it, if not knowing is what makes me do it well?

The Obligatory Introductory Post

About 24 minutes ago, when I first thought about writing this post, it was still January 1st; my original intentions were to kick off this blog with the new year, and since I haven't yet gone to bed...I'm just going to pretend it's still the 1st of January. So, Happy New Year, and welcome to my Thesis blog!

A little bit about me and what you can expect to see in this blog: I'm a senior Interior Design and French student at Virginia Tech. As part of my Honors Baccalaureate diploma, I am conducting research in both majors; I have taken Rosalind Krauss' writings on the "index" and Ray Oldenburg's theory of "great good places" as my starting points. I hope to use this blog to generate writings (in English and French) that reflect my readings and design process this semester. Ideally, I'll be writing every day, so look for one more post pretty soon!