Back to the plan - again

I was very lucky. Not for the following, I'll get back to that. From school at age sixteen, I went to, what was then, Salford Tech. I did an art foundation course at the Adelphi Building. This was many years before the Centenary Building was built a few meters away. There seems to be a pattern of the buildings in Salford I've studied and taught in being knocked down. Even spookier is that they're great pieces of architecture. If you read my previous blog you'll see how brilliant my infant school was. Both the Adelphi Building and Centenary Building are being knocked down this month.

I was so lucky to meet a tutor called Travis Isherwood who blew my uneducated Salford mind with his vast knowledge of art and architecture history and philosophy. I've spoken about him in previous blogs. One of the things he told me about was Le Corbusier's belief that the plan is the generator (Le plan est le générateur). My interpretation at the time was that you feel the plan as you three dimensionally move through a building. And I don't think it's changed much. Although, I did go through a phase of thinking the volume as a whole could be designed without the plan being resolved. But even then, I always came back to the plan eventually. 

There's something primary about the plan. I think it has something to do with it being invisible. We generally move through spaces looking horizontally. We mostly see elevations dynamically flattening and tapering with perspective. We never really get a direct visual of the plan view. And yet it is always there - unconsciously structuring the building. Diagrammatically thinking, we move through buildings, in a two dimensional sense, locked to the plan. Even when we rise up ramps or stairs the Z coordinate is mostly miniscule compared to the X and Y.

I very rarely show my plans, because people don't understand them in the same way they understand three dimensional images. When I drew with ink, before computers, I would draw plans from below looking up into the space with perspective. And sections the same way, but looking horizontally. My attempt to bridge the gap between the invisible plan and our common understanding of the insides of buildings. Coincidentally my very first job after leaving the Royal college of Art was in James Stirlings office. All his beautiful hand drawings - axonometrics from below with the floor removed, plastered the Georgian walls of 8 Fitzroy Square in London. None were in perspective though!

Here are some plans below of my projects. I've chosen ones that show how the essence of the building is generated from the plan.