Reading 1: Paris/La Villette

For the first design project of this semester, we have been given the task of designing a folie to sit on the Howard Smith Wharves, a site that is currently unoccupied and inaccessible but which was previously intended to be redeveloped into a parkland. I had previously only known of a folie as a small building in the land of wealthy families; as far as I'm aware, they weren't generally used as more than decoration. In order to learn more about what a folie can be in another situation, I read G. Bure's Paris/La Villette (2008), and was really interested in a lot of the ideas and concepts that Tschumi used when designing his folies.

The history of the site greatly informed his design choices (p.47); as the site was neglected, it was perceived by many as a space of little importance, a "perfect void" (p.48). In order to counteract this, Tschumi's installations revolved around the concept of "space, event and movement" that would help to activate the site. I think that this concept is an important one, especially in the site that we have been give, which at the moment, due to the cliff face and lack of connection between the riverside walk and the site, is on a separate plane to that on which people exist day to day. I feel that a passive structure would do little to reenergise the site and bring people to it, whereas a structure that embodies "space, event and movement" could be used to get peoples' attention at a distance and draw them to the site.

I was also particularly interested in the reasons for Tschumi's selection as the competition winner. His design was selected because of its "readability, rigor and simplicity of expression, combined with complexity of reasoning and multiple possibilities" (p.54). I think that it would be interesting and useful to the project to try and create "multiple possibilities", which Tschumi created through a series of structures, in our one structure, as I believe that this could do a lot to activate the space and create an unusual but effective learning environment. The concept of readability in a design is also important in this situation. I'm interested in abstraction the shapes that can be found in the surrounding areas, as well as drawing on the materials used both currently and historically to create a structure that can be understood by the user and that fits in the site.