CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE

MODULE 03:

CHARLES MOORE: IDEAS & WORKS 1925-1992

ORINDA HOUSE-CALIFORNIA, PIAZZA D’ITALIA- NEW ORLEANS

CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE
AR. INDU SATHYENDRAN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, BGSSAP
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AR. INDU SATHYENDRAN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, BGSSAP
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ARCHITECTURE RIGHT NOW, BE LIKE !!!!!

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AR. INDU SATHYENDRAN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, BGSSAP
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 CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE
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Born in Michigan 1925
Under Graduate Degree in Architecture at University of Michigan ( Ann
Arbor).
Master’s and Doctoral Degrees from Princeton.
Early in career worked with Stein, Mario Corbett, Hervey Clark and a host of
others in the Bay area.
His first teaching job was at University of Utah, where initial belief’s in
architecture were postulated: Cultural History, primacy of site, perception
and scenographic manipulation of space.
After his Princeton days as a student, tutor and post doctoral fellow, Moore
joined Berkeley to teach and started his first architectural firm MLTW ( Moore,
Lyndon, Turnbull and Whitaker).
Moore shifts to Yale to head its architecture school and starts another
practice. Practice was known as “Centerbrook”, it was a collection of varied
individuals, including many of his students.

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Moore moved to UCLA to teach and establish another practice known as
Urban Innovations Group.

Moore, Ruble, Yudell was another firm established at Santa Monica,

California.

He finally moved to University of Texas at Austin to conduct a specific

graduate programme, which was called as “Moore Studio” and also start his
last firm Moore and Anderson,

Teaching, traveling, lecturing, designing, and running his various studio’s

Moore was constantly moving from place to place, yet his commitment to
each of the tasks is legendary; He was the best teacher with innovative
methods, he was a collaborator on all ideas, he had the ability to design
rapidly, once he was convinced about the idea which was being pursued
by his collaborators.

Hall mark of all this studios is the continuum he maintained between his
academic studio and professional studio and involvement of students.

Three distinct set of projects: Museums, Single and Multi family residences,
Academic buildings.

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Charles Moore is generally credited as the instigator of post-modernism, the
term coined by Charles Jencks for architecture which overtly and explicitly
reflects symbolism and iconography, in simplified, abstract or reflected form,
in a period that commences roughly with the mid-1960s.
Postmodernism broke free of Modernism’s pure functionalist doctrine to
embrace an ironic, overtly stylised symbolism.

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 Principle One
The space we feel, the shapes we see,
and the ways we move in buildings
should assist the human memory in
reconstructing connections through
space and time. Those passages of
mind were oppressive at certain times
of history, but to clean the entire past is
to destroy human memory. It is
important to establish and re-establish
roots, a built environment can do it. This
should be the first goal of architecture.
New Orleans Exposition

Principle 1 speaks of living and speaking places, in which habitation supports

interplay between occupant and structure that leads to a particular kind of
relationship. Good buildings evoke thoughts, feelings and stories. They convey
stories about their location, their construction, and about the people who
made them, have lived in them and use them.
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A ‘neutral’ building—Moore’s term for a modernist structure devoid of symbolism,
decoration or expression–cannot consider the needs of people or of a complex
environment. Modernism isolated, iconised monuments, devoid of symbol and
connection with place, present or past.

Buildings are not merely a play of forms in light, they are important as
transmitters of memories, taking the things of everyday life as generally
intelligible metaphors.

The purpose of a building is not to celebrate itself or its designer’s ego,

rather to overcome the distance between user and the space.

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 Principle Two
If buildings are to speak, they must
have freedom of speech. People
will loose interest in buildings if the
buildings have nothing to say.
There should be surprise and
wonder, if architecture has to
survive in human consciousness.
Let the buildings say, wistful, wise,
powerful, gentle or even silly.

New Orleans Exposition

If buildings can ‘speak’ about how they were built and about the people who
use them and who built them, then what they say must be unconstrained. This
principle declares the right of freedom of speech for architecture and the
architect. In reaction to the possible perception that modernism’s strict
functionalist code stifled freedom of expression, architects must not have their
voices dictated, Moore declares.

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When an architectural paradigm or period ends, it must be possible
for the architect to express a new collective or personal voice,
without the ‘censorship’ imposed by a dominant design theory,
paradigm, movement or fashion.

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 Principle Three
Buildings must be inhabitable, by the bodies
and minds and memories of humankind. The
urge to dwell, to inhabit, enhance, to
protect, to fashion an inside, distinguish from
outside is one of the basic human drives. This
urge has been curbed, to trigger it, one
needs help create allies like light.

Principle 3 declares that occupiers must be able to imprint their lives on

a building. Architecture should celebrate the fact that the occupation
inevitably brings enhancement—extension, modification or
decoration. Moore notes that this is something modern man has become
unaccustomed to, to the point where enhancement is often done by bringing
in aids to personalise a space. A space can be enhanced, at small expense,
through symbols—architectural decoupage brought from the occupier’s lives
and means. Today, we do this with questionable effect using mass-produced
furnishings and household goods from global retailers.
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 Principle Four
For each of us to feel important ( in terms of
spatial experience) we need to measure and
describe points in space- in terms of ourselves,
not of the precise but meaningless relations of
Cartesian co ordinates or rational geometries.
We ( as humans) understand a sense of front,
back, left, center, down and up, which are so
strong that we assign moral significance to
them. If it is so innate, our architecture needs to
remember them, so that we feel with our own
bodies the significance of where we are , not
just see it with our own eyes or reason it out with
our minds.
The body and mind perceives the significance of place. This ‘sense of place’
should not merely be visible with the eyes but perceived by all the senses.
Memory demands more than the comprehension of geometric conditions,
such as right and left, or top and bottom, but also requires characteristic
forms and content, for the senses and the visual perception. To design a
building in which occupants perceive each space differently and
appropriately for the purpose of the room, is perhaps the greatest
design challenge. Few buildings consistently achieve this quality.
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 Principle Five
The spaces we feel, the shapes we see, and the ways we move in buildings
should assist the human memory in reconstructing connections through
space and time. Half a century ago, those passages of the mind seemed
oppressive, and full of cobwebs, and much effort went into cleaning them
out and closing them up. It certainly must have seemed a useful effort to Le
Corbusier and the others, more than adequately justified by their sense of
the oppressive shadows of the past and their faith in a future that would
sweep the past away.

If we are devote our lives to making buildings, we have to believe they are
worth it, that they live, and speak and can receive investments of energy
and care from their makers and their inhabitants.

Those of us—and that’s most of the world by now—who lead lives

complicatedly divorced from a single place in which we can find our
roots, can have, through the channels of our mind and our memories,
a built environment that helps re-establish those roots.

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MOORE HOUSE, Orinda. California. United States. 1962
Architect: Charles Moore

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AR. INDU SATHYENDRAN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, BGSSAP
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 “chances to pursue idea to the possible discomfort of no one but myself”

Moore

Influence of Japanese Pogoda, Mining towns

of Mexico and the need to built with the
least amount of finance.

Initial exploration of “inhabiting” which he

termed as basic human endeavor. House as
a stage where inhabitant can act out his/her
life.

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• Open square floor plan of
30sqm

• The corners of the house have

glass sliding doors which allow
light into the house as well as
opens up to the oak woods.

• Two different square spaces

define the domesticity of the
house and create a space of
seclusion within the window.

• The smallest square encloses a

bath, five steps below the rest
of the house, and the largest
square define the living room
of the home.

• This configuration is vertically

extended through two
pyramids that provide natural
light to the interior. CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE
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 FF Plan

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Book shelves were used to separate spaces for bedroom areas . A
multiple truss connect the two aedicule's.
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AR. INDU SATHYENDRAN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, BGSSAP
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AR. INDU SATHYENDRAN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, BGSSAP
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AR. INDU SATHYENDRAN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, BGSSAP
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 CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE
AR. INDU SATHYENDRAN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, BGSSAP
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PIAZZA D’ITALIA, New Orleans, United States. 1978
Architect: Charles Moore

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AR. INDU SATHYENDRAN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, BGSSAP
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Both a memorial and a public space, the piazza is a manifestation of Moore's
ideas of an "inclusive" architecture, which can speak to and be enjoyed by
anyone.

Completed in 1978, the piazza was conceived as an urban redevelopment

project and a memorial to the city's Italian citizens – past and present.

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 At the piazza, Moore turns this
decoration inside out. He
spatialised the symbols of
culture and heritage to become
a landscape.

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“Who threw this tantrum?”

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1. Design consists of circular pattern of cobble stones and granite, stone
sculptural form resembling foot of Italy, series of layered walls and colonnades,
creating an image of a grand entrance, as well as a background for the
cobble stone piazza. Five concentric colonnades represented the five orders
the sixth one was a combination of all ( like a sandwich).
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2. Piazza is part of Italian Foundation museum and offices, and was to
become the center of shopping area. But none of the real estate
surrounding the piazza has developed, hence remains an object by itself.

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3.Design incorporated several with
details:
• Column capital as a fountain
head,
• Stainless steel orders,
• Pedestals cut and
• Clad with marble,
• Water spouts resembling the face
of the architect,
• Doric orders acting like light
shafts,
• Column capital as lights.

4. Three different water shafts

representing three rivers of Italy were
incorporated in the design.

5. The piazza has been called the

most important development in
creating urban space
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AR. INDU SATHYENDRAN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, BGSSAP
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AR. INDU SATHYENDRAN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, BGSSAP
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Happily for its fans, it was fully restored in 2004, so it will continue to
confound architecture buffs and please members of the public for
decades more to come.

Moore out!

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