BUILDING TEXTS CONTEXT III_CHIEH CHIH CHIANG_60804699

Assignment 2
The object of architecture to be analyzed in this ekphrasis is OMAs Villa DallAva, a
residential project located in Saint-Cloud that was constructed in 1991 and a canonical project in
OMAs ouerve. What follows is first a formal analysis of this building as object vis-a-vis the
archetype, followed by a semantic analysis of the objects meaning in the broader architectural and
urban context. In both the formal and semantic analyses, the media of representation and their
agendas inform ones reading of the object.
That the object to be studied is not explicitly stated to be a depiction of an architectural work
- be it the Wasmuth portfolio or a Corbusier sketch - but rather the building itself, a home for a
family of four in the outskirts of Paris, suggests that an ekphrasis has to account for all forms of
representations and depictions of the said object. In the case of the Villa DallAva, these run the
gamut from traditional media of plans and sections - spatial information encoded into lines and
lineweights - to photography, perhaps the most ubiquitous of the objects presence outside its
physical form. Crucial to the following analysis is the distinction between representation and
depiction - their agendas, media, parameters and consequently, their meanings. The information of
Villa DallAva as physical building - formal composition, means of construction, material use, flow
of spaces - is disseminated in the form of architectural representations while the meaning of the
Villa DallAva as an architectural object, including the phenomenological, is depicted by images
still and moving - the invisible writ large upon the animated plane. In short, formal information is
represented and underlying semantics depicted.
The distinction between representation and depiction matters in the case of the Villa
DallAva because of its multiple identities. A deeply layered project typical of OMAs critical
juxtaposition of program with form, the Villa is simultaneously a tug of war between the city and

BUILDING TEXTS CONTEXT III_CHIEH CHIH CHIANG_60804699

the countryside, a domestic abode, a riff on architectural modernity, and a study of affect. Operating
on disparate scales ranging from the urban to details, these identities are indispensable to a total
understanding of the Villa DallAva and are disseminated by different means: Representation in the
case historical precedents, and depiction in its urban character and affects. Domesticity occupies a
more nebulous middle ground, as both representation and depiction are necessary media to convey
the irony and humor at play. That these particular media of dissemination disseminate different
identities could have been by design, given OMAs mastery of new media and classical
representational techniques.
Any formal analysis of the Villa DallAva must capture its distinctive s-bend plan and
sectional change as the transition from driveway to forest straddles a mild mound. Composed of two
major volumes: A rectangular block facing the street and an L-shaped block extending to the foliage
behind, the villa is simple in plan and sectionally rich. A forest of thin columns nestled in the
hillside support the cantilevered volume of the bedroom above. Unlike OMAs later work, the Villa
is represented almost entirely in plan and section - little information is lost between construction
drawing and popular dissemination. The diagram, a staple of the Dutch school and OMA in
particular, does not find a demand in the Villas representations.
The drawings themselves, print and digital, are simple: Poche to indicate the load bearing
walls that curate the interior sequence and define the Villas lower half, and a narrow range of
lineweights to convey interior information such as the custom-designed furniture, finishing, and
walls. Section drawings are primarily limited to two views, with the two large circulatory elements
of the interior ramp and swimming pool given center stage as they slice their way through the
warren of otherwise simple rooms. While fenestration is drawn in elevations, external details are
largely kept to the minimum. It is perhaps no coincidence that the Villa DallAva, both in design
and representation, is a riff on the long lineage of modernist homes - especially the Villa Savoye.
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BUILDING TEXTS CONTEXT III_CHIEH CHIH CHIANG_60804699

The dominance of the strip windows in every elevation drawing illustrates this clearly, as do the
free flowing sequence of ramps and stairs through the Villa. Circulation and fenestration, an
economy of material, and a porous interface with the nature outside - these are formal organizations
that shape the classical representations that convey much of the buildings architectural information
and which directly connect the Villa to the modernist lineage.
Yet there is more to the Villa DallAva than its relation vis-a-vis modernist residential
archetypes: It is no mere one-liner. The Villas many identities speak to its complexities. If there is
an archetype that the Villa aspires to, it is no the domestic abode or even one typology, but instead a
confluence of many. The twentieth century is one of multitudes: layers of meanings, functions, and
resonances. Though a house by program, representation does not capture these other meanings:
There is only so much that lineweights and poches could do. The intent of the project, if one is to
hazard a guess, is to encapsulate such complexities within the humble confines of a family home.
The ensuing contradiction is better served by the image and its capacity to depict.
Semantic analysis of the Villa DallAva has to tackle irony and humor, two tenets of the
Villas design that are manifested in its take on domesticity, its urban character, and affect - and
which are necessary to convey the contradictions embedded in its formal and material choices. The
image - both the building itself as narrative device available primarily to its owner/users and the
photographic image in print and digital - shows the viewer these tenets. Thus, the Villas subtle
undermining of domesticity by juxtaposing decidedly un-homely orange cordons and its
incongruous use of industrial materials such as corrugated metal and unfinished concrete shear
walls could only be expressed with color images taken with intent: to draw ones attention to
deliberate design choices.
A similar situation can be found in the Villas identity as an urban gateway between city and

BUILDING TEXTS CONTEXT III_CHIEH CHIH CHIANG_60804699

country. While a large urban site plan might have been able to capture the full extant of the Villas
mediation, the site plans as presented in architectural drawings do not disseminate this crucial role
as effectively as the image does. It is clear from images such as the shot of the diver facing the
glittering lights surrounding the Eiffel Tower, the pool reaching across the frame as if a bridge that
the dramatic urban character of the Villa requires highly curated views - views that were very likely
to have been designed.
The media of depiction is by its very nature fragmentary. Short of the immersive virtual 3D
experiences that might just be the primary form of visualization in the future - but which are beyond
the dissemination tools available to the Villa - depiction via the photographic image is inherently
incapable of presenting the totality of the phenomenological experience. In the case of the Villa
DallAva, this fragmentary depiction works in its favor, as its architectural affect is indeed one of
contrasts and switchbacks, reversals and contradictions. The interior experience is one composed of
a sequence of moments almost cinematic in their compositional intent, juxtaposing external nature
and an artificial interior, private spaces with a public promenade slicing through the house, tension
of the cantilevered form and the oblivious bedroom within, and of course the swimming pool
bridging city and country, located in the most unexpected part of the home - its roof. All these
moments and more, curated and designed to serve the express purpose of embedding complexity
within the humble home, are manifested as fragmentary moments that have since been disseminated
as images that are almost iconic - the aforementioned diver, the forest of tangled columns within a
forest of trees, the squat red box of corrugated metal atop a glazed living room, the translucent
curve of the kitchen.
A building as complex as the Villa DallAva and the contradictions embedded in its design
can only be disseminated by representation and depiction in conjunction. The means of classical
architectural representation - drawings of plans, sections, and elevations - convey the basic spatial
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BUILDING TEXTS CONTEXT III_CHIEH CHIH CHIANG_60804699

and functional information of the building but are unable to express the material and
phenomenological qualities that are essential to understanding its architectural intent within the
context of modernity. Depiction through the photographic image - fragmented, imbued with
narrative bias - is indispensable in this regard. Thus, the formal and semantic analysis of the Villa
DallAva is also a story of our reading of buildings in the twentieth century, as facilitated by media
old and new, complete representation and fragmented depictions.