Presentation: Spatial Organization
Spatial Organization is used to describe the location of places, objects, and people in space. It is also used to describe movement through space. For example, spatial organization is used by architects to describe buildings, by engineers to describe parts of an engine and by historians to describes the routes explores followed.
There are three basic forms that help architects to create spaces: Columns, arches and Domes. In this presentation we are going to be explaining through some examples the used of these basic forms.
The Taj Mahal
The Taj Mahal rises on a high red sandstone base topped by a huge white marble terrace on which rests the famous dome flanked by four tapering minarets. Within the dome lies the jewel inlaid cenotaph of the queen. Its central dome is fifty-eight feet in diameter and rises to a height of 213 feet.
The large garden contains four reflecting pools dividing it at the center. Each of these four sections is further subdivided into four sections and then each into yet another four sections.
The composition of the forms and lines of the Taj Mahal is perfectly symmetrical. Here we meet with a beautiful admixture of lines, horizontal with vertical, and straight with curved, all harmoniously set together in the total unity. They adopt each other with amazing uniformity. The combination is entirely rhythmic and melodic. Especially the semi-octagonal alcoves at the chamfered angles which are perceptible from every perspective view and give a 3-dimensional appearance from the outset. They emphasize the diagonal lines and suggest depth. The great depth has also been further suggested by the double arches, one over the other, on each side of the central portal. The solids and voids have very judiciously been distributed to provide a variety, yet an undiminished uniformity. These alcoves, the balconies in each minaret, the chartist near the dome, and certain pronounced projections in each facade allow a beautiful play of light and shadow.
The Parthenon
The Parthenon is a Doric peripteral temple, which means that it consists of a rectangular floor plan with a series of low steps on every side, and a colonnade (8 x 17) of Doric columns extending around the periphery of the entire structure. Each entrance has an additional six columns in front of it. The larger of the two interior rooms, the naos, housed the cult statue. The smaller room (the opisthodomos) was used as a treasury.
The three main types of columns used in Greek temples and other public buildings are Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian. The truest and most basic difference among the orders has to do with proportions (Doric columns, for example, being thicker and shorter, Ionic columns taller and slimmer). As a shortcut, the orders may be distinguished most easily by their capitals (the tops of the columns). As you can see from the following examples, the Doric capital has the simplest design; the Ionic has the curlicues called volutes, and the Corinthian has the acanthus leaves:
Doric is not only a type of column, but an "order"; this means that temples of the Doric order not only have this type of column, but also have a certain structure at the upper levels. The different types of orders (column plus entablature) are illustrated by these diagrams, from Perseus: Doric order, and Ionic order. The Doric order is characterized by the series of triglyphs and metopes on the entablature. Each metope was occupied by a panel of relief sculpture.
The Parthenon combines elements of the Doric and Ionic orders. Basically a Doric peripteral temple, it features a continuous sculpted frieze borrowed from the Ionic order, as well as four Ionic columns supporting the roof of the opisthodomos.
Douglas house
It is not until one passes through the door that the size of the house (it has 5,000 square feet of space on five levels) begins to become clear. The upper floor contains only an entrance vestibule; the rest of the space is given over the roof decks. The use of rounded metal rails and the round exhaust pipes create a nautical sense -an illusion here heightened by the panoramic view of the lake.
The view of the lake is more restricted from the vestibule; one gets only a narrow glimpse of the spectacular view to be experienced later from elsewhere in the house, and then turns to the right to an enclosed stairway. The stairway deposits the visitor on the main bedroom floor on a balcony overlooking the two-story living room. Here, the view opens up fully as the wall of glass facing the lake becomes visible.
The vertical path moves next to the living room floor itself, which also contains the master bedroom, and then to the floor below, which contains the dining room, kitchen, and another bedroom. An enclosed floor below that, not accessible from the main stair, contains basement area.
A cantilever stair flies out over the treetops to connect the living room-level and dining room- level decks, and a set of steep outdoor steps connects to the bedroom-level deck, creating a complete alternate system of vertical circulation between the three main living floors.
Each floor is divided by a corridor running parallel to the lake which separates private areas, such as bedrooms, from more public spaces. Since the bedrooms are stacked vertically, rather than arranged horizontally, the corridors function is only as circulation space but as an interface, separating and defining the territory that would normally be defined by a floor of its own. Since the bedrooms are below street level and face the landscaped bluff as it rises toward the road, the normal problem of privacy on the street side is avoided.
The interface between the private and public sections of the house is further delineated by a light well which cuts through the entire living space, bringing light from a skylight at the entry level through the two-story living room and through an elegant, curved cut in the living room floor clown to the dining room level. This .well ties together all of the spaces on the lake side, enhancing the sense of vertical division in the house and the separation between the unified public space and the enclosed bedrooms
The trame pattern of the two-story window walls works not only as a visual composition, but serves to mark other spatial divisions of the house. A double mullion carries the line of the balcony overlooking the .living room across the window, with another mullion running below, in the middle of the first floor, single this time since it does not denote a floor division but exists rather to satisfy the
psychological desire for a railing.
Horizontal circulation takes the form of tour open corridors, stacked one above the other. This inflected strip of circulation, unlike its lineal counterpart in the Smith House, affords a real spaciallinterplay between the public and private parts of the house, between openness and closure.
The wall flanking the corridor on the west is eroded by horizontal strip-openings, which not only open the corridors to the west view flashlight coming from the skylight above, but make the circulation wall a visual element in the public space on the east side, the bedrooms and service spaces open into the corridors in a straight forward manner, while on the west side the public spaces are entered both directly and by way of a stack of curved landings diminishing in size from top to bottom. On the upper level, this landing space, which projects over the double-height living-room volume below, serves as a study.
The interior stair runs from top to bottom of the house, beginning adjacent to the entry vestibule, and is the major means of vertical circulation. Diagonally opposite it in plan is a second vertical system, an exterior steel stair connecting the upper-level bedrooms of the main living level.
Circulation stops at the lake shore. As one looks back up at the house, the various levels can be traced in the mullions of the glazing, which project the cross-section of the house over the transparent rear face.
Through this examples we showed the organization of spaces on those buildings and how the basic forms helped the architects to built beautiful and useful spaces.
