Zibaldone 10

How does a building meet another building?

Zimbaldone Nove

The MIT Media Lab, being a architecturally significant building, turns the corner in a very interesting way. This corner, where Amherst st. and Ames St. meet, the building deals with it in a couple different ways. The first at the ground floor is where Maki removes the corner completely to provide an entrance. This takes most of the mass away and only leaves a couple of columns. The second way, at the glazing above, and more specifically, the screen system shows which street is more important and Maki making a conscious decision to avoid the corner altogether. The Ames st. Façade then gets a complete screen, where Amherst does not.

            The third way that he deals with this corner is the most interesting, because he curves the roof plane to avoid it. The part that is underneath the roof, and the part that is not then separate the deck. By removing this corner, at the top and bottom, Maki is creating different spaces.

Brendan Zibaldone 9

Turning the corner is arguably the most important issue to deal with in architecture.  A building cannot always simply just turn the corner because of issues that it may face with the façade or columns or structure.  At the turn of a building the detailing is always critical.  When glass turns the corner, there are a few options.  You can have a corner mullion or you can put goop in to make a clean finish which is not necessarily always the best option.  In the Mass General Hospital, the corner is turned with a transition of materials, and the glass turns the corner with no mullion, but with goop.   

Brendan Galinauskas - Zibaldone 8

A building can meet the sky in a number of different ways. When a building has a flat wall and just goes straight up and stops out of the blue, it is bad design.  The consideration of the sky is very important in design.  Often a parapet will be added so you don’t have a sense of the flat roof and the contents of it.  In addition to this parapet a beveled edge or color changed can be added. By having the top of the building bulge out, it is letting you know that the building is ending, it is considering the sky and not just ending abruptly.  

Zibaldone 9

    In this building, owned by Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Science (MCPHS), you can clearly see how and why this building turns the corner. For example, the first thing you notice is the shape of the building, which is defined by the plot of land and desire to take up the maximum space. The program of the building would make this evident. What I mean by that is that most colleges design buildings to acquire the maximum space they can on a given plot of land. Another spacial effect this building presents as it turns the corner is a contrasting effect on the interior where the stairs are located. Stairs line this side of the building's interior running from top to bottom along the glass portion of the facade. These stairs determined that this portion of the building's material would be glass because of how the landings are positioned. The landings extend into the corner to allow the person experiencing the space to stop and look outside of the building. The choice in turning the corner comes from obvious choices from the buildings use, location, and program. All of these can be found through this buildings corner (and a brief knowledge of it's use).

Zibaldone 9

When examining the Harvard building along Huntington Ave. the one face of the building looks like a 2 dimensional wall almost as if there isn't any building there. When you continue to walk  you realize that it isn't just a wall, however the a very acute corner condition of the building. Although visually from the outside this building implies a feeling that the building is thin or flat, on the inside it creates an unrealistic space. Similar to when you try to make grass grow in between two sidewalks at an acute angel, the corner in this building is creating a dead space. People can't inhabit the space therefore making this condition merely visual and not practical.

Zibaldone 9

How does a building turn the corner?  I find that a building turns the corner by the use of materials that the building is trying to connect.  The materials govern the possibilities and variety at which a building can turn the corner.  Brick will turn the corner much different than stone or wood would.  Many brick walls that meet at the corner alternate which creates an interlocking pattern between the two walls.  This pattern can be changed when the two walls that are meeting are not at a 90-degree angle to one another creating a gap in the corner bricks.  Stone may also turn the corner similar to brick, but with some larger pieces of stone that changes.  The stone will not be part of the structure, instead it will be hung and be one piece that turns the corner.  Wood I find to turn the corner with joints to create a more seamless transition or a rougher transition.  Sometimes the corner is meet by one wall running into the other, so that one would see the end of one wall and not the other.  Buildings turn the corner in many different ways that can be affected by the materials and the effect that the building wants to create visual.