Design
- Corridor / Balcony
- Tall Timber
- Pottery Museum
- ZeroWaste Center
- Inside Out
- Circular Urbanism
Professional
About
Contact
Design
Professional
About
Contact
Primary Advisor: Britt Eversole
Advisors: Julie Larsen, Sinead Mac Namara
Syracuse University School of Architecture, Thesis
Introduction
Beginning in the late 18th century, Carlo Lodoli’s doctrine of truth in materials launched a rebellion against imitated materiality and decorated wallpaper. While this polemic sought to return architecture to fundamentals, it undermined Vitruvian notions of the timber origins of decorated details.4 In the mid-19th century, the cultural and formal implications of material transformation were revisited by Gottfried Semper in his theory of style. 5 This phenomenon of transformation is also prominent in the early modern movement; when materials such as iron, steel, and concrete were first introduced into architecture, they were assembled with methods derived from stone and timber constructions. Alongside the imitation of material qualities, surfacing techniques which dissimulate load-bearing forces were also a popular modernist operation. The surface manifests the architect’s ideology by rendering the desired image, even though a different material supporting the weight remains invisible. Although the doctrine of truth in materials and the phenomena of imitation and dissimulation seem contrary, they share a fundamental similarity which aligns materials with preconceived qualities.
Today, materiality often arises as a simulacrum, due to economic and manufacturing logics. The durability once symbolized by stone has been abandoned in favor of its image transmitted through thin façade cladding, whereas the nostalgia for wood’s organic warmth is now communicated as images or textures on a layer of plastic. Expanding on this irony, this thesis challenges the connection between materiality and its corresponding mental concept, undermines moral approaches to material semantics, and sidesteps outdated oppositions between real and fake, authentic and simulated.
1. Rusticated stonework, a decorative tradition from Roman architecture, is a defining feature of the Richardsonian Romanesque style, named after Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886).
2. Referring to the popular paint brand Ripolin, Le Corbusier (1887-1965) declared in 1925 that whitewashed walls could possess a spiritual and moral cleansing power.
4. In “Ten books of Architecture,” Vitruvius discussed the ontology of decorative detail in stone and marble came from / is the imitation of the structural logic of carpentry. Similar doctrine was illustrated by Auguste Choisy (1841-1909), describe Doric temple as a petrification of formwork in wood.
5. "Stoffwechsel," literally translated as "metabolism," is a concept introduced by Gottfried Semper (1803-1879) to describe how architectural forms and styles evolve through material transformation and adaptation. Semper observed that architectural elements often retained their original forms even when recreated in different materials, disconnecting from their original function over time.
Timeline of Research Content
Late 18th- century - Mid 19th-century
“Truth to material” was a rebellion against imitated materiality and decorated wallpaper. The doctrine was proposed by Carlo Lodoli and disseminated and theorized by his followers started from the late 18th century.
According to the publication in 1784 by Francesco Algarotti, “truth to material” was Lodoli’s attempt to return architecture to its fundamentals. To them, “practice “and “theory” contradicted each other when the visible surface did not represent the material of architecture. In other words, the stone should appear to be stone, and wood should appear to be wood; architecture should be represented truthfully with the texture and properties of what it is built out of. To summarize, “What it is” should also be “what it looks like.”
Lodoli’s theory of truth, the visibility of material, situated the relationship between structure and surface to the principle and debate of architectural morality. Subsequently, the notion of “truth” was expanded by the architects of their successive generations when imagery surface had become more and more popular.
Mid 19th-century - Late 20th-century
Imitation
Despite the criticism of imitated materiality, the notion of imitation was very prominent in the early modern period in the form of material transformation.
When iron, steel, and concrete were introduced to the construction of architecture, they were applied with existing construction techniques originating from traditional materials like stone and timber.
Dissimulation
Compared to the notion of imitation, dissimulation is not antithetical. Dissimulation required imitation, imitating something else to hide what it truly is. Nevertheless, in the architectural context, the attitude of John Ruskin toward painted material may well define the difference, which accepting brick wall that covered with plaster while rejecting plasterwork that imitates stone.
The notion of dissimulation appeared in modernist architecture, which often links to the image that the architect intends to present. Often, to display the desired image, “what it is” is dissimulated by “what it looks likes.”
Contemporary
Today, materiality often arises as a simulacrum due to economic and manufacturing logic. The durability once symbolized by stone has been abandoned in favor of its image transmitted through thin façade cladding. Materials today are also bound with specific “imagery,” our preconception of materiality derived from history, culture, craftsmanship, and physical properties rarely indicates the reality of material today. It raises the question, is “what it is” still matter?
While the two phenomena (Truth to Material & Imitation | Dissimulation) seem to contradict each other, they are not dissimilar in terms of the preconception of materiality, which doesn’t seem to define the truth of the material.
Drive from the interpretation of this irony, this thesis challenges the connection between materiality and its corresponding mental concept and undermines moral approaches to material semantics.
Chapter 1: DISSIMULATION
Through historical and cultural influence, architectural objects embedded stereotypical meanings. Especially in epic architectural pieces designed by world-renowned architects, the physical entities have been transcended to architectural signifiers. The exercise aims to explore alternate qualities and implications from the sacred monument through the material transformation of one of the most iconic columns in the discipline of architecture.
Chapter 2: SYNONYMS
A: L”art de batir chez les Romains, Auguste Choisy
B: Notre-Dame-du-Travail, Jules Astruc
The image illustrates the aggregation of slender steel trusses that imitate the massiveness of classical marble “arch.” Through formal imitation, a different language is generated and redeployed for further manipulation.
A: Parc de la Villette, Bernard Schumi
B: Sommerfeld House, Walter Gropius, Adolf Meyer
The second image aims to create a contradiction of Bernard Schumi’s follies. Follies are a series of superimposed structures on the site and claim no relationship with the immediate context and historical reference. In the drawings, the clean surface is transferred to wood, and the structure was attached with the traditional architectural element, gable roof, to express the primitiveness and its connection to existing typology. The imitation of the rusted effect serves as a dissimulation layer, telling that the structure is not something new and suggesting the sense of context even though it does not exist.
Molding & Casting
A: The Crystal Palace, Joseph Paxton
B: Kimbell Art Museum, Louis Kahn
The drawings refer to Crystal Palace and Kimbell Art Museum, which have similarities in their formal language and program, while their materiality is entirely different. The design intends to bridge the two distinct structures with a decorative motif, manifested in the concave texture that follows the same rhythm of the trusses.
Chapter 3: THE TREACHERY OF MATTER
Ambiguity
In terms of ambiguity, it resonant with the surrealist painting, the treachery of image. The painting shows a realistic signifier of a pipe with a sentence saying “This is not a pipe” underneath. It depicts an ambiguous concept that happened in the viewer’s mind with the alignment of signifiers.
Similarly, the design tried to provoke the embedded concept of materiality with visible qualities while undermining it with the ambiguous implications that communicate in its transformation and composition.
Continuousness
Architecture has been understood traditionally as the composition of discrete elements. From the classical order of Ancient Greek to “elements of architecture” published by Rem Koolhaas, the fundamental of architecture has been classified by parts; for example, the base, shaft, capital or floor, ceiling, roof, etc.
The design tries to deviate from this type of definition in the exploration of materiality. Instead of reducing the concept of the object to a static definition, it views architecture as qualities that may not be classified into a specific category.
Award: The Architecture Drawing Prize 2021
Digital Category | Finalist