Materials make Reference to the world. Buildings (and landscapes) have meaning by how they are detailed with materials.
Materiality is important in hMa's projects, and is also important when we teach. Tactility refers to how we read space with our hands. The haptic sense is a way to understand space.
Glass is different from stone. Above, we show human hands, in reference to both materials. On the left - a hand touches glass; on the right, we show hand imprints on a stone cave wall in Patagonia.
Musicians and people who deal in sound understand materiality as timbre. Timbre is a term that describes the materiality of sound.
Timbre is affected, for example, by the materiality of a Musical Instrument. A metallic instrument wired for electricity sounds very different from the same instrument as an analog.
In architecture - timbre is registered through footsteps, or the voice. These can be ‘live’ and echo; or muted and soft. Both reactions are ‘soundings’ that give very different spatial readings. This reading relates partially at least, to the materiality of the space.
Large stone halls like Cathedrals sound different from small, informal residential spaces, where sound is muted by fabrics, and materials that absorb sound, and prevent reverberation.
Each space and each object in the hMa Diagram, above, has a ‘Timbre’: WaterFall Table has stainless steel beads that reference water; DWi-P is a glass façade that represents WaTER; the LightScore is a series of light waves, 'played’ onto concrete surfaces, at the Kitchen in NYC.
hMa uses stone, glass, steel and wood in projects, as a conscious way of referencing materials and Timbre in space. Trees are living organisms - cut using calibration to impose mathematic scaling onto an organic system. Digital Water i-Pavilion's (DWi-P) façade is a sound wall scored into equal divisions. At hMa's Holley House in upstate New York, parallel stone walls make a house.
Program is – whatever you - as the designer - make it. Program is like a movie script - it’s a fantasy. The program does not exist until the designer envisions it.
I will show four hMa Programs. The first program, shown above, is: Flatness of Space, or Infrathin, demonstrated by hMa's DWi-P and hMa's design for the Queens Museum of Art. Both of these are projects with complex programs, compressed within thin, compact sections, or Infrathin// or the 'Flatness of Space'.
hMa's program of 'Repetition' is demonstrated, above, by the Won Buddhist project, where repeating channels of wood as screens - and punched windows - create a clear sense of repetition in the buildings. To the right, benches and light lines at hMa's Infinity Chapel located in downtown Manhattan, create repetition. Above, the frit pattern of the Schumacher score on the facade of DWi-P, along with the repetition of steel mullions, creates a pattern of repetition at hMa's DWi-P, at Battery Park City in NYC.
hMa also creates programs based on 'Embedded Objects'. At the left, above, is hMa's Infinity Chapel, where a series of embedded spheres create a room with curved surfaces that filter light. At the right, Pratt Pavilion sits as an embedded object between two existing 19th century industrial brick loft buildings, at Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn, NY.
Above, we show an hMa project to demonstrate 'buildings with sound as their program'. Shown above is hMa's Ojai Pavilion also referred to as : - ‘Sound Vortex’.
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